Beets are the new Breakfast

Morgantown celebrated summertime with our fifth Farmers Market of the season yesterday. Since I have to work, Keith and Delia went down and brought home some deliciousness. One bunch of chard, two green and two red tomatoes, some local honey, and my first bunch of beets of the season. They also got a cat grass plant, for Naomi's birthday as a gift for her cat Sharkey.

Since Delia was away this morning at the sleepover, I had the chance to make VEGETABLES FOR BREAKFAST, which is like a dream come true. I started out searching Swiss Chard recipes on Epicurious, and ended up intrigued by this one. But the beets were calling to me, and the chard will keep for supper. I made these little guys with the beet greens. I think I will call them...

BEETCAKES

If you think of beets as little slices that come in a can or a jar, you are missing out on over half the plant's bounty. Beet greens can be cooked just like any other greens, and they are an excellent source of carotenoids, flavonoid anti-oxidants and vitamin A. To prepare, chop the actual beet root off, leaving an inch of stem attached - this cuts down on bleeding. Then rinse the whole mess of greens in some cold water, I just put them in my biggest Fiesta bowl and swish them around, but cold running water works fine too. Then I shake them out a little and cut the leaves from the stems.

roots, stems and leaves

I like to cook the stems a bit more than the leaves, because they are kind of tough and stringy sometimes, and if you put everything in to cook together the leaves get all mushy by the time the stems are tender. So for this recipe, I chopped up the following:

One Bunch of Beet Stems
Half a Huge Onion
Two Cloves of Garlic

These were sauteed in a dollop of bacon grease plus a generous glug of olive oil in my trusty cast iron skillet. If that grosses you out of course you can use one of those heinous nonstick jobs coated with a light mist of canola oil or whatever babies cook with...

Once the onions start to turn translucent (and also the edges will turn all pink from the beets, it is super cute), add

A Splash of Red Wine Vinegar
A Tentative Pinch Of Ground Coriander
A Vigorous Shake of Dry Mustard
Tiny Pinch of Salt

Mix that up to distribute the spices and inhale deeply. Then toss in your chopped leaves and mix it up again, finally covering the whole mess for 2 minutes or so to let the greens wilt a bit.

MMMM GREENS!

Take the lid off and turn the fire up and evaporate out as much of the liquid as you can in the next sixty seconds. If it looks really wet, go ahead and strain out the juice. I put it in a strainer over a bowl in the fridge for a little while to cool. You don't want to add hot veggies to your eggs or it will end up all kinds of ugly. While that cools, make some breadcrumbs.

I made this loaf, and I get paid to do that so you don't have to!

You need about a cup of breadcrumbs, more or less, for this mess of pancakes. My current favorite is the West Virginia Wheat from the Bakery. I like to give a couple of slices a pulse in the food processor, but you could toast it and pulverize it a plastic bag with a rolling pin, or tear it apart meticulously with your fingers.

Once your veggie mixture is sufficiently cool (and not before!), into a large mixing bowl crack about 4 eggs. Add salt and pepper here if you like, beat them severely, then stir in the breadcrumbs. Stir in the beet mixture. Pretty cool looking, eh? All kinds of PINK.

Drop a heaping spoonful of this onto a medium hot skillet well lubed with bacon grease and olive oil, and fry!

It took about 3 minutes a side. Then you can keep them warm in a 300 degree oven till you finish frying up the rest, or just eat them at room temperature. I ate mine with a dollop of sour cream, Keith ate his with some awesome horseradish mustard, and I think the ultimate sauce would be the stuff Maxwells serves with their Spinach Balls - because that's what my taste testers said these beetcakes were evocative of.

Corn Maze!

Sunday we took Delia to the Corn Maze at Cole Farms in Jane Lew WV. It is a few minutes south of Clarksburg on I-79, incredibly easy to find. When you get off the highway at Jane Lew, there are signs pointing you in the right direction, you can't miss it.

They have a Haunted Maze on Friday and Saturday nights, and a Family Maze Saturday and Sunday during the day, which is what we did. It was super fun! Sponsored by the local 4-H and FFA clubs, they had a concession stand featuring homebaked cookies, coffee, cider, and HOT CHOCOLATE! Admission to the maze is $7 for all, and includes one pumpkin from the Pick Your Own Pumpkin patch for kids under 10. As usual, the folks who checked us in didn't offer that option to Delia, because she looks like she's about 14, and we didn't argue.

She picked a couple of pumpkins out at the Farm Stand which is in the barn across the road, they sell the produce that Cole Farms grows. Tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, corn, all kinds of squash, and of course, PUMPKINS! Delia got two small ones for $1.50 each. They had a few huge beautiful pumpkins, but they were $15 and up, so we just stuck to the little guys.

I got two luscious green tomatoes and we fried them up for dinner.

It was a nice way to get out and enjoy the crisp Fall weather. Also, the drive down I-79 is pretty spectacular in it's own right, the leaves are at about 60% of peak color right now. We literally "Oohed" and "Aahed" all the way down the highway.

Farmers Market Redux

Despite reassurances from the market manager and the president of the board, the Bakery's application to vend at the Farmers Market, as of 9AM this morning, was still not approved. So... We won't be seeing any of you there this Saturday. We MIGHT be there next week, but then, that's what I thought Last Week.

I think we are still one Vendor Vote away from being accepted, and the manager couldn't give us the go ahead without that vote. She figures it will arrive via e-mail any time now, people are just so busy doing their thing getting their produce ready for market. I don't think we're the only ones still waiting for approval. And my boss says she did get her application in a bit late. Argh, I can't help but feel like we're getting jerked around, but that may just be my pessimistic attitude and distrust of authority talking.

On the positive side, this means I get to sleep in till 4:45 for one more Saturday. Yay for sleeping in!

Farmers Market Time Again

I view the Farmers Market season with a mix of dread and joy. Dread, because it means I have to give up my Friday nights and get up at 3:30 or thereabouts on Saturday, and joy, because it financially supports my place of employ through the summer in a town where a huge chunk of the population leaves around the first of May and doesn't come back till August.

The Bakery has been in attendance at this market for several years, but if you go tomorrow morning, you won't find us there. Seems we are caught in a political argument of sorts, and the directors/organizers of the shindig still haven't given my boss the green light to come on out and set up the tent. Some people want the Farmers Market to make a statement I guess, that's why they have set up guidelines they can use to exclude vendors who aren't Local enough.

Some of the vendors do not like the fact that we don't grow our own wheat. I guess that's the biggest issue, and it kinda makes me mad. We do have a bread featuring wheat grown in WV. The Local Wheat Growers aren't growing hard red wheat, or anything really that is high enough in gluten to make decent bread, so I have to add bread flour (not Local) to the dough to get it to be bread and not dense cracker-like pancakes. The bylaws of the market, last time I checked, stated that 25% of the products you sell have to be local. Our WV Wheat has about 40% local flour. Can I count the water I use, cause it comes from the Mon River? We have local eggs in our scones & cookies, local honey, and local fruits and veggies when they're in season... And the biggest thing for me is that we're a community business. Everything we make is produced In Morgantown. How much more local can you get?

If you go to the Market, and you miss New Day Bakery products, please let someone there know. Maybe if the Local Community wants us there, it will help the board make up it's mind. And remember, we're only a few blocks away from the Market, so if you have a hankering for a good cup of coffee and a scone we can hook you up, whether we have a stall at the Market or not.




Disclaimer : The views expressed in this personal essay are mine and mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of New Day Bakery LLC or it's owners.