Boston Organics Blog | Fresh. Organic. Delivered. (88)

Meyer lemons are a foodie favorite because of their sweet flavor and lack of a sour bite. Believed to be a cross between a lemon and a mandarin orange, Meyer lemons are sweeter than conventional lemons and taste reminiscent of tangerines. If you love lemon flavor but can’t handle the sour kick, you could eat Meyer lemons without puckering up!

While most Meyer lemon recipes lean towards sweet flavors, these lemons are easily adaptable in a range of recipes, from sweet to savory. Meyer lemons are great in baked goods, juices, sauces, cocktails, and even as pickles!

When you think of pickling, dill (cucumbers?) is the first thing that comes to mind. However, preserved lemons are commonly used in Moroccan cuisine and pack a fantastically subtle sweet flavor. You can preserve lemons by fermenting them in salt and lemon juice. Check out this recipe for Moroccan Preserved Lemons.

These little lemons can add a zip of refreshment to your winter culinary routine.

What’s your favorite recipe for Meyer lemons?

Lettuce us know on Facebook or Twitter!

It’s quite the week for specialty citrus! Blood oranges, honey tangerines, and Meyer lemons are going out on boxes and we’ve got plenty available as add-ons. We are always excited for blood orange season, and we were fortunate enough to bring the blood oranges and honey tangerines from California by train, which is a fuel efficient means of produce transportation. Learn all about these unique fruits and the rest of great items in this week’s boxes. Check out the newsletter!

Topics: Newsletter

Boston Organics Somerville customers receive 2 free food scrap pickups when you sign up for Bootstrap Compost!

Sign up with promo code: “New Year Promo” at www.bootstrapcompost.com

Bootstrap Compost customers receive $10 off your first delivery from Boston Organics!

Sign up with promo code: BSCOMP13 at www.bostonorganics.com

Offer expires Sunday February 3rd (Superbowl Sunday), 2013

We’re partnering to make green living easy! By participating you can:

Act Locally:

Boston Organics and Bootstrap Compost are small, independently-owned businesses operating in Charlestown, Mass. Both of the companies’ dedication to a local, sustainable food system is evident in their practices.

Boston Organics is deeply rooted in local and organic food production, buying thousands of pounds of local organic produce from farms in Massachusetts, and putting money directly into farmer’s hands.

Bootstrap Compost directly enriches local farms by providing the building blocks of nutrient rich soil. Their finished compost gets distributed throughout Boston to their customers, community gardens, and schools.

Eat Better:

It is important to eat your fruits and vegetables! Boston Organics believes eating organic is the best way to stay healthy. Certified organic produce is grown without synthetic pesticides, herbicides and other harmful agriculture chemicals. Additionally, cooking from fresh raw ingredients helps you eat healthier on a regular basis and can help you save money.

Reduce Waste:

In the United States we produce enough food scraps every day to fill Gillette Stadium to the brim. Yet, sadly, only 2.8% of these scraps are composted (EPA, 2010). Bootstrap Compost’s mission is to collect organic materials from city dwellers and redistribute them to local farms for composting. To date, they have helped divert nearly 170,000 pounds of organic waste from landfills in Greater Boston to create over 80,000 lbs of locally sourced compost.

By composting these food scraps, they are reducing the waste footprint of their subscribers, helping to close the food chain and supporting local food growers by providing them with valuable topsoil in the form of compost: a safe, nutrient rich and all-natural fertilizer.

Acting locally, eating better and reducing waste will allow us to bring our food full circle!

It’s hard to believe it, but this is the last week in January. With last week’s extremely cold temperatures, we hope you were all able to stay warm and keep healthy. Cooking is one of the best ways to warm up your house, and we’ve just launched our brand new Lentil Soup Kit to help you make big batches of hearty soup. This week’s boxes feature some Asian-inspired produce including Mung bean sprouts and daikon radishes, and we’ve got beautiful Chioggia beets for you this week. Plus, find healthy recipes for your Super Bowl parties. Check out this week’s newsletter!

Topics: Newsletter

You know it’s January in Boston when the Charles River looks more like an ice cube tray than a waterway. In this climate it can be difficult to keep warm and stay healthy. At Boston Organics we are arming you with fresh vegetables and a foolproof meal plan: winter soups!

To help make nutritious soups your easy go-to meals, we have developed an Organic Lentil Soup Kit! This kit contains everything you need to make a big ol’ pot of soup that you can eat throughout the week.

The Lentil Soup Kit contains:

1 package of green lentils (Fiddler’s Green Farm Organic)
.5 lb onion
1 lb sweet potatoes
1 head of garlic
1.5oz baby spinach (Olivia’s Organics)
1 recipe card

We highly encourage loading the soup up with extra vegetables from your box. The recipe card includes a list of optional veggies that would work well with this recipe, but feel free to get creative. Our recipe card also includes some fun spice recommendations to kick the flavor up a notch.

Order the soup kit here. Happy eating and stay warm!

Topics: Newsletter

It may be winter, but there are still plenty of colors and local flavors in the boxes. A rainbow mix of potatoes are coming in from Misty Meadow Farms in Maine, and we have watermelon radishes and carrots from Red Fire Farm of Granby, MA. The featured add-on of the week is Taza’s Salted Almond Mexicano Chocolate discs, made right around the corner in Somerville. Check out this week’s newsletter!

Topics: Newsletter

The recent public health emergency declared by Mayor Menino over this winter’s flu outbreak has got us thinking about how important it is to stay healthy. Many of this week’s boxes include kohlrabi, potatoes, and several citrus varieties that are full of vitamin C. So eat up and stay healthy! This week we are featuring raw pecans from Tierra Farms, local Chioggia beets and Honey Bear squash. Check out this week’s newsletter.

Visit 12/21/12

We try to make an effort to visit our local growers and vendors at least once a year, and a few weeks ago we took a trip out to our new organic milk supplier, Shaw Farm of Dracut, Massachusetts! Located just an hour north of our Charlestown office, this family-owned dairy farm is about as local as it gets for Boston. After tasting some of their legendary eggnog and other products, we’re tempted to make our visits more frequent.

Shaw Farm operates their own farm store with fresh milk, ice cream, and even baked goods. The farm store is heated by geothermal energy – a renewable energy created by the heat found below the earth’s surface. It not only helps with their energy bill, but it also reduces greenhouse gas emissions on the farm.

1. Story and history of Shaw Farm

Since 1908 Shaw Farm has been providing high quality local dairy products to the Merrimack Valley. Located in Dracut, MA, the farm offers fresh milk, ice cream, and many other local products. Their tagline – “if they say it’s homemade, ask to see their cows” – reminds us of the true farm-to-table process and begs us to ask the question where does our food come from?

2. Why did they start the organic brand?

In 2007 Shaw Farm began to market its own “certified organic” milk products under the name New England Organic Creamery. Owner, Warren Shaw says changes in the marketplace driven by consumer demand for local organic milk have made this change important to the future of the farm. He saw that there was a demand for organic milk and realized that the transition to become certified organic was fairly simple since the farm already operated under many of the organic standards. Now they are the only certified organic milk producer in Massachusetts.

On extremely rainy days the cows stay indoors to prevent slips in the field. These girls are staying dry in the dairy barn!

3. How are the cows fed?

Shaw Farm has 16 cows that make up the organic herd. The cows go out in the morning to graze on organic pasture and relax in the field during the day. The majority of the organic herd’s diet consists of organic grass from their pasture and is supplemented with organic grains. Three generations of Shaw’s take care of the 150 acres of nutrient rich orchard grasses that help give the cows their proper protein and fiber. Warren also explained that he has never used antibiotics, growth hormones or anything that might taint the organic milk or harm his cattle.

4. How does farm legislation affect the Shaw Farm business and operations?

The recent nine-month extension of the federal farm bill allowed Shaw Farm to avoid an immediate rise in conventional milk prices. We asked Warren how the farm bill and other dairy industry legislation might affect his business, and he explained that federal milk subsidies and regulations only impact dairy farms that belong to co-ops, not independent dairy farmers like himself.

Because of Shaw Farm’s proximity to the city and densely concentrated population, they have direct access to a large customer base and are able to provide dairy directly to customers and retailers, such as Boston Organics. Because of our collective support, Shaw Farm will be able to thrive, operate, and continue their environmental stewardship of the land that has been in the Shaw family for several generations.

Topics: Organic Milk, Newsletter, Organic Farmers, Food Politics, Organic Grocery Delivery Boston

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and wish you a happy, healthy and “fruitful” New Year! We look forward to kicking off 2013 by delivering fresh, nutritious, and organic food to your homes and offices! We’ve got some great local beets and carrots in from Massachusetts this week. Our winter citrus offerings include satsuma mandarins, tangerines and navel oranges. Our featured add on is Neighborly Farm’s Pepper Jack Cheese. Check out this week’s newsletter!

Winter produce is in full swing, and we want to help you make the most of this season’s bounty. We’re handing out a Winter Produce Guide with produce profiles, cooking tips, and recipes for some of the produce you’ll see in boxes this Winter. Check it out!

Topics: Recipes, Winter Produce, Organic Grocery Delivery Boston, Guides and Infographics