Today is Tuesday, which during the summer and early fall months means it’s CSA day at Smock! Smock proudly subsidizes CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) memberships for all employees through a local organic farm, Grindstone Farm. Once a week, a big van full of freshly picked organic veggies shows up at our door and we always love digging through the boxes to see what we have that week. This year we’ve been eating a lot of rainbow chard, kale, bokchoy, a variety of lettuces, onions, garlic, lots of beautiful tomatoes, potatoes, and zucchini galore.
Here is a quick peek at today’s share – parsley, patty pan squash, three varieties of tomatoes, baby carrots, two varieties of radishes, lemon basil, lots of tomatillos and the first of this season’s apples.
With tomatillos greeting us week after week, we’ve all been sharing ideas on how to best use them up. The verdict is that a great roasted tomatillo salsa can’t be beat. We love this recipe from epicurious – it’s simple, quick and tasty. Does it get much better?
Roasted Tomatillo Salsa
1 1/2 pounds fresh tomatillos
5 fresh serrano chiles (or sub the peppers of your choice; remove the seeds for less heat)
3 garlic cloves, unpeeled
1/2 cup fresh cilantro
1 large onion, coarsely chopped
2 teaspoons coarse salt
Preheat broiler or grill.
Remove husks from tomatillos and rinse under warm water to remove stickiness. Broil chiles, garlic, onion and tomatillos on rack of a broiler pan 1 to 2 inches from heat (or on the grill), turning once, until tomatillos are softened and slightly charred, about 7 minutes. Peel garlic and pull off tops of chiles. Purée all ingredients in a blender.
Allow to cool to room temperature and serve with your favorite chips or Mexican fare. Enjoy!
One more reason to eat local and fresh from your farmer’s market or a CSA….turns out most canned food, even organic canned food, has substantial amounts of BPA, which has been linked to reproductive abnormalities, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease – ugh! BPA surfaced for anyone with young children a few years ago, when it turned out sippy cups & bottles (and even the hard clear hiking Nalgene bottles) often contained BPA. This new report on canned food + BPA came out recently through Consumer Reports and there’s really no excuse for companies to still be using this harmful material (other than the bottom line, I suppose).
We just joined our local organic farm’s winter CSA last week, so we’ll be getting local veggies through the end of December – meaning our stock of canned food has gone pretty much untouched of late. One of the many wonderful things about eating local is you know where the food has been (a farm, a truck, then you). Plus this winter CSA has already made me appreciate vegetables that I used to shun. Who knew there were so many ways to cook cabbage! And butternut squash! And potatoes! And more cabbage! And look, there’s more cabbage! Though we have two young kids at home, we’ve managed to make cooking local a priority this year by cooking massive amounts of CSA & farmer market veggies on the weekend, and soaking and boiling a pound of beans too, maybe broiling a pound or two of tofu, and making a few easy grains (barley, quiona, brown rice, and millet have been favorites). Maybe add one easy veggie soup too. Then the meals during the week are mixes and matches – a grain, some veggies and either beans or tofu for lunch and then a different variation of the same for dinner.
My love affairs with cook book authors goes in waves, but right now the guy who holds the key to my cooking heart is Mark Bittman (How to Cook Everything Vegetarian and Food Matters are his two books on my shelves and his blog, Bitten, turned me onto the BPA article. He also writes the Minimalist for the NY Times). His recipes are simple, easy, and full of variations – I love how he says “use more or less” or substitute away depending on what’s in the fridge. Perfect for those who have a negative amount of time to cook.
It’s not often we get to see what we eat outside of our homes and the grocery store. In September, a few of us had a chance to get up and personal with our peppers and onions during a tour of the beautiful Grindstone Farm in Pulaski, New York. Many Smock employees have CSA shares from Grindstone, and it was enlightening to get a good, hard look at what goes into creating our tasty, organic produce.
We spent a long time talking with Vic and Dick de Graff about what it’s like running a small organic farm in the snow belt of upstate New York, where snow comes early and often, and the local food movement is just catching on. They have adapted to the weather over the years by growing many of their vegetables in hoop houses, like the one featured above, in order to extend the growing season into November.
While Grindstone farm may look like an idyllic place to live, farming is anything but easy. One mistake, like forgetting to cover the lettuce before a potential frost, can ruin an entire crop for the rest of the year. As a farmer, your backyard is your home office, and there is always more work that should be done. But just like our love for creating beautiful, sustainable letterpress goes beyond the normal 9-5, the farmers at Grindstone choose this life because of a passion for growing and providing food for friends and neighbors, and because they want to spread the idea that feeding the world can happen one small plot of land at a time.
Interested in finding a farm like this near you? Check out localharvest.org for CSAs, U Pick Farms, Farmers Markets, Grocery Co-ops and more! Want to see more photos from our trip to Grindstone Farm & our CSA pick-up spot here at Bella Figura? Check out this slideshow!
You couldn’t tell by the snow storm that slammed Central New York last night and early this morning, but spring is on the way! We’re getting so excited to start up our annual Community Supported Agriculture program with Grindstone Farm and it got us thinking about our friends at the Northeast Organic Farming Association of New York. We recently contributed pro bono letterpress printing to their fundraiser event at Candle 79 in New York City honoring chef Leslie McEachern of Angelica Kitchen for her 30 year career as a chef supporting local organic agriculture in New York State. It was an honor to be a part of this event!
All of the letterpress pieces feature our Rhon design printed in peach and taupe inks. We love this color combination! It felt appropriately earthy for this autumn event while still being super sophisticated.
NOFA-NY sent over a few photos from the event. The food looks so good! This is our kind of party.
Many thanks to our friends at NOFA-NY for extending us the honor of being a part of this important event and for your ongoing efforts! Read more about NOFA’s work on the NOFA-NY website.
Taking our commitment to the environment and green living seriously, Smock happily subsidizes CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) memberships for all employees through a local organic farm, Grindstone Farm. We receive weekly deliveries of fresh, organic veggies and herbs that are typically picked within just hours of reaching us – and they’re incredibly delicious, too! Because the old warehouse we call home, the Delavan Center, is the Downtown Syracuse drop-off location, our CSA deliveries literally come right to our door. We love seeing what awaits us as we fill up our bags and head home to cook. Tuesday becomes our favorite day of the week during CSA season!
Usually we can count on receiving an assortment of great lettuces, kale, fresh herbs like cilantro and dill, broccoli so delicious you’ll never want to eat anything other than organic broccoli again, garlic scapes, cool daikon radishes that resemble white carrots, and lots and lots of beautiful red radishes. As the season is progressing, so are the crops, but radishes have continued to greet us every week, which led a few of us to start looking into recipes that use radishes and ideally the radish greens too. After a while, we’ve found ourselves at a bit of a loss as to what to do with them other than slice them up for salads. After some hunting around, one of our letterpress printers, Carrie, who is one of the finest artisans we know to ever run an Original Heidelberg windmill, found and tweaked the following recipe that was so good, we just had to share it in the event any of you are at a loss as to what to do with radishes. If you like food with an Asian flair, you will love this recipe.
Asian Hamburger Skillet
- 1lb lean hamburger (although many of us are vegetarians so we substituted the Morning Star ground “meat” instead)
- 1 medium red onion, sliced about 1/4? thick then cut into 2? lengths
- 1 bunch of radishes, cut in matchsticks
- 1 bunch of radish tops, cut roughly into 1? pieces
- 4 carrots, julienned or cut into 1/4? slices
- 1-1/2 tsp ginger paste
- 2 tbsp fish sauce (although we’ve also tried General Tso’s sauce and it was delicious!)
- 1 garlic clove, minced
- 1 lime (optional)
- Freshly ground pepper, to taste
In a large sauté pan, cook hamburger (or meat substitute) over medium high heat, until just beginning to brown, breaking into small bits with spatula. Stir in onion and radishes and cook another 2-3 minutes. Stir in carrots, radish tops, ginger paste and fish sauce and cook 5-10 minutes until onions are softened and hamburger is cooked through. Sprinkle with lime juice (if using) and pepper, to taste. Serve immediately…and feel free to share your CSA-inspired recipes with us and we’ll post them here on the Smock blog!
Today we are thrilled to welcome a guest to the Smock blog, Seana, who recently hosted the most incredible first birthday party for her daughter Madeline. Inspired by the Smock letterpress party invitations she sent to guests, Seana crafted a beautifully handmade, eco-friendly party that has us dreaming up any number of excuses to host great parties. Without further ado, Seana shares with us more about Madeline’s fabulous birthday celebration…
A couple months after my daughter Madeline was born, I was perusing the web for eco-friendly paper companies who had cute birth announcements. I came across Smock and fell in love with the Horsey stationery suite. I decided right then and there they would be the invitations for my daughter’s 1st birthday party. Needless to say, I never actually sent out birth announcements (I know, bad mom!) but as Madeline’s June thirtieth birthday was approaching, I went back to Smock and bought the invites along with the matching Delft correspondence cards for thank you notes. They became my inspiration for her party! I went with an aqua and coral color scheme and started planning the decorations, cake and menu.
It is very important to our family that we make as little impact on our environment as possible so Madeline’s party was planned with that in mind. On my home computer, I designed and printed the happy birthday banner and the party favor nametags. I bought some scrap fabrics and ribbons in coordinating colors in order to make the flag banners and “doilies”. One of my favorite projects was the picture banner. I made a fabric flag banner but left some extra space between the flags, there I used graphic clothes pins to hang home printed pictures of Madeline starting at birth and on through her first year. There won’t be a birthday party for Madeline every year but I will continue to hang the birthday banner, I’ll just change out the number. I will also continue to hang the picture banner, switching out photos for ones from the year we are celebrating. It will become a birthday decoration tradition and it’s much better to re-use than to buy new every year.
The cake, cookies and mini smash cake were fantastic! I went to this really great bakery right down the street from our home in Chicago, The Bleeding Heart Bakery. It is an organic bakery known for their innovative designs and the environmentally responsible way in which they operate their business. I brought in the invites and thank you cards for inspiration and they came up with a delicious carrot cake with the invitation horsey on it. They also made the bird cookies to look like the bird sweetly perched on the horsey’s back. Madeline’s mini smash cake was actually sweetened with agave nectar instead of sugar, a request I made so as to curb that sugar overload for such a small body, and they were happy to oblige.
I will admit that if there is a way that I can get out of a lot of clean up after a party, I am all for it. One way is to use disposable utensils, plates and napkins. Unfortunately using all of that plastic is just not good for the earth so I set out to find some environmentally ways to make the party easier without compromising quality. After doing my research I found some great alternatives. We used disposable, compostable bamboo plates made by the company Bambu and we used disposable, biodegradable utensils made from potato, yes potato! Called Potatoware, these utensils were strong, in fact a lot less brittle than your regular plastic kind. I really couldn’t justify using paper napkins, so we went with cloth, but that was ok, it gave me another excuse to add some color by tying the rolled utensils with ribbon.
The simple menu consisted of:
• Green salad made from our CSA lettuce, organic cherry tomatoes, onions and artichokes all topped with a goddess dressing.
• Fruit salad made up of our CSA strawberries, in-season organic blueberries and in-season cantaloupe.
• Cheeseburgers with condiments also coming from our CSA.
It’s amazing how you can have a fairly simple meal taste SO good just by using fresh, in-season local food.
It was not a very large party, just a few of our close friends and their kids but it was such a nice way to get together to celebrate our little girl’s first year. Madeline is the joy of our lives; she is such a happy one year old and she thoroughly enjoyed her party. We look forward to many more birthdays in the future!
Thank you, Seana, for sharing Madeline’s party celebration with us – we are so completely inspired! And, a big Happy Birthday to Madeline from all of us at Smock!
Here at Smock, we are avid believers that small changes are the first step toward making a big impact so we wanted to share some tips on incorporating a little green into your life. In honor of Earth Day, our office manager Carrie, one of the most eco people we know, has shared some of her tips for adopting a greener lifestyle. Little steps can add up to big change, especially if you continue looking for ways to be more eco-friendly in your habits.
– Substitute 1 car trip a week by walking or biking instead
– Opt for paper egg cartons as they can be used to sprout seeds and then planted directly into your garden in the spring
– Recycle your plastic bags, whether they be from the grocery store or the bag that comes with your newspaper to keep it dry in the rain. These days, most every grocery store accepts shopping bags for recycling.
– Switch to reusable shopping bags. Not only is it more eco-friendly, but an increasing number of stores actually offer a small discount for providing your own bags, although you may need to ask for it when you checkout.
– Try to buy products of a high recycled content and/or look to make sure you’re choosing items that are recyclable in your area
– If certain kinds of plastics can’t be recycled in your area, reuse the contatiners around your home as storage containers or as planters
– Instead of tossing junk mail, reuse the backs of paper for scratch paper, making shopping lists, or even to use in your printer for everyday printing at home or at the office. At the very least, recycle junk mail instead of throwing it away.
– If you’re in the habit of doing so, quit buying bottled water and instead buy a reusable BPA-free aluminum or plastic bottle, some even come with water filters to remove the taste of chlorine
– Avoid large grocery purchases that might lead to wasted food – most people would be surprised to know how much energy goes into food production. Make smaller trips more often so you can use what you buy, which also saves money!
– Look into local Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) programs. Smock subsidizes CSA memberships for all employees through a local organic farm which means we get to enjoy delicious produce that doesn’t have to be shipped to us during the summer months.
– Try to make purchases that incorporate recycled or reused materials. These days you can find a ton of options for handmade jewelry, clothing and accessories either locally or via Etsy and similar online marketplaces
In addition to these great first steps, Carrie will be sharing more insight on how you can make green living a greater priority in your life as a part of Smock’s latest blog feature, Green Living. Let us know if you have any specific topics you’d like us to cover and we’d be happy answer your questions!
Over here at Smock, we believe that environmental letterpress and eco green printing is so much more than simply using recycled paper & soy inks. If a print shop is committed to the environment, its green practices should really affect everything that company does. So we were thrilled when our parent company, Boxcar Press, subsidized a 20-week Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm subscription for employees this year. It was a perfect fit: we got to love local organic farms; love the environment; and care for our letterpress team here too via really, really good vegetables. Tuesday was the last day that these amazing bins of produce got delivered to us from Grindstone Farm in Pulaski, NY and Wyllie Fox Farm in Cato, NY. We all know the growing season in CNY is pretty much over (we had our first snow fall this week too!), but we’re sure going to miss all the veggies. Pictured below is Carrie, our office manager, who helped organize everything. Thanks, Carrie + Grindstone + Wyllie Fox! We can’t wait until summer next year.
