Results tagged “farmersmarket”

   

I’ve defended Whole Foods for years against cries of “Whole Paycheck” on the basis of quality, variety and their commitment to the environment. I still believe that they do good work, but the number of “buy local” banners popping up all over their stores led me to wonder: how much local produce does Whole Foods actually carry? Not enough, by our standards.

        

No matter how many times we go to Chicago Farmer's Markets, there is always something that surprises us. This week, we encountered a few new things: squash blossoms (which can be battered and fried), the first apples of the season, baby celery.

        

Summer's bounty is finally upon us! This was the first week where we could do ALL of our grocery shopping at the Farmer's Market, rather than using it to enhance our regular meals. The first root vegetables of the year have come in, and the market was stuffed with carrots, onions and the first small potatoes. Lettuces, Chard and other greens continue to come on strong, but the real stars of the show were berries. Cherries, Raspberries, Blackberries - even currants were for sale at this Saturday's Green City Market.

We’re in the midst of Asparagus high times, but before you know it, the season will be over until next year. Stacks of the green stalks reaching 3 feet high (and selling for reasonable prices) will give way to anemic bunches sitting in water-filled trays at your local market. How should you take advantage of this bounty? By learning something about this first veggie of the season, that’s how!

        

This past Saturday, we visited the outdoor Green City Market for the first time this season. It's open on Saturdays and Wednesdays,and, being lazy, we ignored the usual wisdom of "arrive early or everything will be gone." We got there at 11 and found plenty left to buy - maybe it was the threat of bad weather that kept people away.

This Friday, the Museum of Science and Industry is hosting the inaugural session of a new farmer’s market. Tomorrow morning, starting at 7:30, there will be a grand opening celebration featuring the Hearty Boys, as seen on the Food Network. They will be doing cooking demonstrations, making Orange Blossom pancakes with Mascarpone and fresh berries (yum).The farmer’s market, featuring produce, flowers, baked goods and other local products, will be held in the Museum’s East Parking lot. The cooking demos will be in the garden of the Smart Home.

         

In the gray days of March, when the produce at the store is looking its most tired and our spirits really need an infusion of chlorophyll, we start to crave farmer’s markets. Fresh vegetables, flowers, being outside, and getting as much produce as we can eat for whatever cash happens to be in our wallets; farmer’s markets help revive us after the long, hard winter. Daley Plaza (our usual haunt) doesn’t open for another month and a half, so that’s clearly out. Luckily, Green City Market has come to the rescue.

          

When we headed off to Daley Plaza this morning, we didn’t expect to find much that we hadn’t seen the week before. But the market always manages to surprise us and this morning was no exception! Some new items had come into season, and we found some new varietals to try out in the coming week.

        

Until this morning, we hadn’t been back to the Daley Plaza Farmer’s Market since our last round-up in late June. The full range of summer produce is out now, and the variety and quality was astounding. A lot of the early-summer favorites are still there, but on this visit we focused on things we hadn’t seen before.

Vendors at any of the 24 Chicago-run farmers markets won’t be able to participate in next year’s selling season unless they stop using plastic bags. The bag ban, imposed by the city of Chicago, is meant to reinforce the city’s message to “go greener.”

      

Question: You're at your local farmers market with $25 in your pocket. You want to buy a load of fresh herbs and vegetables and, maybe, something to nibble while walking around. What do you do?

Stopping by the Heartland Meats booth was a given while at Green City Market last weekend. The surprise came at another meat purveyor. Based in downstate Fairbury (just south of Kankakee), Tom and Amy Ifft of Twin Oaks Meats raise hormone-free pork. Additionally, the feed used to fatten their pigs contains no animal by-products or antibiotics.

Farmers markets aren't always about getting the freshest available produce. You can also find some surprisingly tender, free range meats. Mendota-based Heartland Meats is a regular fixture at Green City Market and a longtime favorite of former and current Chicagoist food staffers, including your lovable food and drink editor.

        

It was a bountiful morning at the farmer’s market! Spring and summer produce has begun to come out in full force – and there were some surprising things to be found. Fresh flowers were one of the stars this morning, with peonies and irises everywhere. Asparagus is still available, but has been replaced in the leading role by Strawberries, which are so plentiful they are overflowing off of the tables and stands. Nichols Farm stole the show with fresh Onions (red and white), green Garlic, all the greens you could ask for, Broccoli, baby Turnips and the first of the Sugar Snap peas of the year.

            

We woke up at 5AM to catch the opening of the first day of the Daley Plaza Farmer’s Market. It’s perfect for anyone who works downtown or who takes the CTA. Every Thursday morning for the rest of the summer you can see the plaza filled with flowers, plants and fresh food.

Recent weeks have been very busy at Blue Sky Inn. They just launched a revamped website, passed their Health Department inspection allowing them to open their new café and bakery in Albany Park, and are tying up loose ends in advance of their spring fundraiser next Friday at the Esquire Theatre.

Protest over national vs. regional chains, the never-ending debate over the place of cars and bicycles in our metropolises, professional sports scandals, remembering a solemn day, and being issued a search warrant - it all happened across our sites this week! Another banner week at Chicagoist started off with daily reports from food writer Lisa Shames on her attempt to eat only locally grown and raised foodstuffs all week as part of a farmers market...

Londonist are starting to think their city is getting just a little bit too expensive, when even Christian Slater can't afford to go out there. And there's no escaping, as local singer Lily Allen discovered when she was barred entry to the US. The British mapping agency caused further bad karma, by blocking a 3-D representation of London in Google Earth. But the smiles returned to Londonist's faces as they interviewed Baroness von Reichardt,...

A couple years back we had a Chicagoist alum who chronicled his attempts to grow his own tomatoes from seeds. If you click those links, you'll notice that he wasn't very successful. Now, we have something of a green thumb. Our apartment is full of various ficuses, cacti, African violets, rhododendron, split leaf philodendron and other plants we've been tending for a friend for so long, they now qualify as ours. Still, we were hesitant...

We don’t know about you, but Chicagoist always feels healthier just by walking around a farmers market. And that’s even before we get home and sample any of our beautiful bounty. That’s especially true at the Green City Market, which features products from local, small-scale, certified organic/sustainable vendors twice at week at the south end of Lincoln Park. Perhaps it’s the colorful array of produce, soothing live music, pristine flowers and giggling kids here that feed our inner Pollyanna and make us feel that, yes, things really are going to get better (the occasional sighting of a hunky local chef doesn’t hurt either). Heck, even the dogs are down with the program and get along.

Saturday the sun and heat agreed with Chicagoist. So we saddled up on our seven-year-old Schwinn Mesa GS and beat a straight line north on Halsted to the Lincoln Park farmers market. We just had some chicken butchered for us at Chicago Live Poultry House in Little Village, and had some ideas of how we wanted to prepare the cuts.

Starting next Sunday, Chicagoans will be able to shop for fresh fruits and vegetables at the Logan Square Green Market using their food stamp LINK card, making Logan Square market the first food-stamp-friendly market in the state. Customers using the LINK cards will pick out their groceries and then pay at a central station, which allows individual farmers to skip the hassle of setting up a wireless credit card machine.

Let's start the buffet off with this video this video singing the praises of the Harold's 6-piece wing dinner. The language is NSFW, but if you're watching this in the office, you're probably the only one left, so crank it. Memorial Day is the (un)official start of grilling season. We've had the grill on an eternal flame for two months now, but loaded up on fresh vegetables from the farmer's market, tri-tip steaks from...

As you listen to the heat mercifully click on again, perhaps ushered in by the tell-tale blonks and cloinks of the radiator, you might be inclined to give in to the idea that winter is already here. That, once again, the icy chill will force you to wear a jacket over your Halloween costume. We know -- sigh.

If you’re like Chicagoist, summer is usually a time for a renewed effort to eat better and exercise more, mostly to offset our time spent at various drunkfests. We usually find inspiration for healthy, or at least more wholesome, eats at local farmers markets, which are now in full swing around the city.

Bloodshot Records has teamed up with Farm Aid to bring music to the farmer's markets around the city next week. These performances are early, and we all know the early bird gets the best produce. All shows are free and are scheduled as follows.

Are you like Chicagoist? Does the warmer weather coupled with the tourist-laden congestion of the city make you yearn for a simpler life? (Tourists…we love you! Please continue to visit! You help keep our sales tax down to a manageable 8.75%!). Do you have visions of turning your 10 x 10 patio into a Martha Stewart/P. Allen Smith heaven, without the jail time or southern drawl? But then, like Chicagoist, you realize you’d never find Thai food, you’d actually have to brew your own coffee, and the neighbor’s dog already does unmentionable things to the sad-sack plants you do try to grow outside. Your answer? Farmer’s Markets! They are all over the city and suburbs, and to ignore them is to ignore the bounty that is…oh, whatever, they’re cheaper than Dominick’s and Jewel and they stay fresher longer as well (as has been our experience).

Farmer's markets are cool. Period. You got your fresh tomatos, greens, maybe some fresh eggs, and then there's the whole thing where you get to meet the people that grew your food. When you live in a city, that kind of connection to the earth is a nice thing, and starting June 24, the Fulton Market area will have a night farmers' market every Thursday, 4pm to 8pm through October 28. For those of us who've been around long enough to remember when the swankiest place on West Randolph was Barney's teak house on Halsted and Randolph ("Yes sir, Senator!"), a night farmer's market seems like life coming full circle, since West Randolph and Fulton Market were actually wholesale food markets about twenty years ago.

Chicagoist is excited because the season of farmers markets around town has begun. Whenever we can cut out the middle man we are happy because that usually means lower prices. Also, the fruits and vegetables and flowers sold at the markets are always so much fresher than the ones you can get in your local supermarket. Chicagoist also enjoys the fact that at most farmers markets they let you sample the goods for free. So we spend the morning walking around sampling yummy food and buying fresh produce. It makes us feel very domesticated.. even if sometimes our fresh veggies go bad in the fridge because we are too lazy to make something with them.