January | 2014 | The Boston Organics Blog

Join with Massachusetts GMO labeling advocates for a screening of the documentary Genetic Roulette (60 minutes) followed by a discussion about what GMOs mean for Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, and how we can work together to keep our communities safe and healthy.

When: Sunday, February 16th
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm

Where: Spontaneous Celebrations
45 Danforth Street, Jamaica Plain, MA

This event is free and open to the public.

What are the health risks associated with Genetically Engineered foods (GMOs)?

What can we do to protect our food and our health?

How can we support efforts to label GMO foods?

Following a screening of the award-winning documentary “Genetic Roulette: The Gamble of our Lives,” community members will join in discussion with Jack Kittredge, policy director at the Northeast Organic Farmers Association MA Chapter and Ed Stockman, biologist, organic farmer, and co-founder of MA Right to Know GMOs.

People will hear about the national and statewide movements for GMO labeling and discuss how to take action to declare our right to know what’s in our food.

Boston Organics and Life Force Juice are sponsoring the event and providing light refreshments.

For details and updates on the event, please visit www.marighttoknow.org/home/jp

About the Film:

Are you and your family on the wrong side of a bet?

When the US government ignored repeated warnings by its own scientists and allowed untested genetically modified (GM) crops into our environment and food supply, it was a gamble of unprecedented proportions. The health of all living things and all future generations were put at risk by an infant technology.

After two decades, physicians and scientists have uncovered a grave trend. The same serious health problems found in lab animals, livestock, and pets that have been fed GM foods are now on the rise in the US population. And when people and animals stop eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs), their health improves.

This seminal documentary provides compelling evidence to help explain the deteriorating health of Americans, especially among children, and offers a recipe for protecting ourselves and our future.

This sometimes shocking film may change your diet, help you protect your family, and accelerate consumer rejection of GMO foods.

geneticroulettethemovie.org

We hope you can make it to this important event and join the discussion about GMO labeling in Massachusetts!

Our Dogma Box includes organic fruits and vegetables sourced as close to Boston as possible throughout the year. Similar to a CSA or farm share, this box is filled with the best organic produce from local and regional farms.

This week’s Dogma Box has all the veggies you need to make a “super bowl” of soup. Start with some buttery Yukon Gold potatoes and sweet organic onions. Then add turnips, parsnips, carrots, or sunchokes – imagine the combinations!

This week’s Dogma Box contains:

Beets – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Parsnips – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Turnips – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Sunchokes – Deep Root Organic Coop (Johnson, VT)
Carrots – Deep Root Organic Coop (Johnson, VT)
Potatoes – Maple Row Farm (Ashfield, MA)
Onions – Porter Farms (Elba, NY)
Empire Apples – Dwight Miller Orchards (East Dummerston, VT)

Not in the mood for soup, but don’t know what else to make? If your imagination needs some inspiration, try this recipe for Crispy Cream-Braised Potatoes. Also, if you’re unfamiliar with the deceptively delicious sunchoke – read last week’s blog post: The Sunchoke Revealed.

Super Bowl Sunday is almost here, but last week’s bone-chilling weather makes us wonder if “Bowl of Soup Sunday” might be more appropriate. We have lots of great soup-making ingredients in the boxes this week – Yukon Gold potatoes, beets, parsnips, cabbage, and more. Check out the newsletter for Super Bowl snack recipes and tips for a super bowl of soup.

Don’t be fooled by the sunchoke—nothing is what it seems. With more names than the devil, sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes/sunroots can intimidate those unfamiliar the scraggly root vegetable.

It looks like ginger, cooks like a potato, but tastes like an artichoke. Here’s a one-stop spot for answers on the root vegetable that is as delicious as it is deceptive.

What do you call it?

This shifty root veggie is often referred to as the Jerusalem artichoke, though it is neither native to the Middle East nor related to the artichoke family.

The sunchoke is an edible tuber—the root of a prolific North American sunflower, Helianthus tuberosus. It seems that at some point in the sunchoke’s long history, the Italian word for sunflower, girasole, was corrupted into the word Jerusalem.

Though it is botanically unrelated to the artichoke, its similar taste is likely the reason behind the shared name. Sunchokes are also commonly referred to as sunroots and earth apples.

At Boston Organics we call this polyonymous root a sunchoke—a name that was created by produce suppliers in the 1960s when the obscure vegetable started to gain popularity.

Sunchokes are the tuberous root from the sunflower, Helianthus tuberosus. Photo credit: Bondesgaarde (Flickr)

How does it grow?

Watch out! The sunchoke is notoriously resilient and difficult to eradicate from a field once it takes hold.

This tuber means business. It can tolerate hot weather and sub-zero temperatures. The first frost will kill the stems and leaves of the plant, but the tubers can survive in frozen soil for months.

Conventional potato-harvesting machinery is unable to efficiently harvest the tubers on a commercial scale. Hand-digging has the largest percentage yields, but it is a laborious and expensive process. Livestock like to “root out” the tubers, and sunchokes were historically used to fatten cattle, sheep, and hogs.

We primarily source our sunchokes through the Deep Root Organic Coop, a group of almost 20 small farms in northern Vermont and Southern Quebec.

Photo credit: Net_Efekt (Flickr)

How do you (and your body) store it?

Sneaky by nature, sunchokes are actually best stored underground as they rapidly lose moisture through their thin skin once they are dug up.

Sunchokes can be stored for a few weeks in a cool, dry and well-ventilated area. If you need to store them in your refrigerator, wrap them in a paper towel and a sealed plastic bag before placing in the vegetable drawer.

As expected, sunchokes are low in fat, but high in carbohydrates. They also have 3 grams of protein per 1 cup serving. Sunchokes are an excellent source of Thiamin and Iron and a good source of Phosphorus and Potassium.

Unlike the starch in potatoes, which the body breaks down into glucose, this tuber stores energy in the form of inulin, which the body breaks down into fructose. This makes the sunchoke a good substitute root veggie for diabetics!

How can you cook it?

This extremely versatile root will slowly gain your trust and then – Bam! – you realize you want to add it to everything.

Sunchokes can be steamed, boiled, grilled, fried, pickled, or microwaved. They can even be eaten raw!

Renowned farm-to-table restaurateur, Odessa Piper, recommends mincing raw sunchokes and adding them to vinaigrettes like you would with garlic. She’s also been known to use sunchokes to thicken broths while delicately adding flavor.

Before cooking, always scrub the nooks and crannies thoroughly. You can try to peel the gnarled root, but it’s not really necessary or worth the effort.

Recipes:

Don’t be fooled by the sunchoke. He may look twisted and grimy, but his taste and cooking utility is unparalleled. If you’re lucky enough to have captured some sunchokes, here are some recipes worth trying:

Little darling, it’s been a long cold lonely winter, but here comes the sun…chokes. This week’s Dogma Box includes the first sunchokes of the year! Beautiful purple top turnips, watermelon radishes, cabbage, and potatoes add to the celebration of New England’s winter bounty.

This week’s Dogma Box contains:

Sunchokes, also known as Jerusalem Artichokes, will contribute a hearty artichoke flavor to any dish without the extra effort required to prep a whole artichoke. This week’s Dogma Box recipe isn’t for vegetarians, but it puts your winter veggies to good use! Visit our website, and learn how to make Chicken with Parsnips, Beets, and Sunchokes with Beer Pan Juices.

Photo taken by Julia K. Ardila Zurek

This is a busy time of year and an exciting week for us here at Boston Organics– we’re expecting Tuesday to be our biggest delivery day EVER!

This week’s Dogma Box customers will receive the first sunchokes of the year! Also known as Jerusalem artichokes, these nubby little guys are perhaps the most gourmet thing you can find buried underground. Sunchokes look like ginger, cook like potatoes, but taste like artichokes.

Read this week’s newsletter to learn how many bananas Americans eat every year, how you can impress your Valentine, and how to make Tangelo Granita!

Every week, the contents of your box are carefully constructed by our incredible produce purchasing team: Jay, Miles, and Matt. As a company, we want to offer our customers something more than the produce that sits on the shelves of national supermarket chains. We strive to provide our customers with a variety of fresh, organic produce through a thoughtful and sustainable process that respects the environment, local farms, local businesses, and fair-trade practices.

The priorities that we consider when selecting the produce to go into your box are a core component of our company’s mission and values. As you might expect from our name, we believe there’s something special about organic produce. That’s why every week, every piece of produce in your box will meet the organic standard.

We proudly promote the organic label because it upholds a clearly defined and transparent standard that our growers and customers can agree on. You can read more about why we believe so strongly in the organic standard on our website, but in short, we believe that organic produce is healthier for our bodies, our children, our farm workers, our soil, our water, and our planet.

How many “Footprints” in a “Mile”?

When we were founded in 2002, the organic produce industry was still in its infancy.* But over the last 12 years we’ve learned that not all organic produce is the same. It takes time and a special understanding of the industry to provide our customers with the best produce at an affordable price. When our purchasing team builds your box, they evaluate what’s in season, which high quality items are available in appropriate quantities, whether or not you received something similar last week, and which items are on your “no-list.” But with each pound of produce we purchase, we also try to consider the environmental impact.

Eating organically and locally through a New England winter is difficult, especially if you want weekly variety without giving up an arm and a leg. For those who are up to the challenge, we offer the $29 Dogma Box year-round. With the Dogma Box, our purchasing team emphasizes curtailing food miles while working hard to keep each week’s box exciting.

Last week’s dogma box: apples, beets, cabbage, carrots, kohlrabi, onions, parsnips, potatoes, radishes

But for the rest of us who can’t live without some fresh salad greens in January, our purchasing team works diligently to find the best sources for organic produce while minimizing our carbon footprint.

We know that calculating carbon footprints is terribly complicated—it’s a step beyond simply counting food miles. The food system accounts for 19% of our country’s fossil fuel consumption, but only about a quarter of that is spent on distribution. A majority of the fossil fuel that goes into food production is expended before the crops leave the farm.

Fuel is burned to create fertilizers, pesticides, and other agricultural inputs that are then transported (often long distances) to the farm. Fossil fuels are required for on-farm mechanization, processing, and packaging. In other words, it doesn’t just matter where something is grown and how far it has to travel—you also have to consider how it’s grown, stored, shipped, distributed, and prepared.

As autumn winds down and the temperatures begin to drop below freezing, we continue to source as many crops as possible from our local suppliers. But in order to provide our customers with more variety, we also slowly look down the Eastern seaboard; getting organic produce from trustworthy sources in warmer climates. Sometimes, a terrible storm (or polar vortex) will ruin entire fields of crops and we’re forced to source some produce from much farther away; like California, the capital of organic agriculture.

When this is the case, we try to use the most environmentally friendly transportation methods possible. Last year, when the only organic citrus available was in California, we chose to have our tangelos and mandarins transported by train because it is much more fuel efficient than large trucks.

Photo courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Growing Together

In 2008, our founder and CEO, Jeff Barry, wrote in his first post on this blog:

We’re just as frustrated as you that we don’t have access to an abundant variety of local organic vegetables as well as winter friendly roots like beets, potatoes, parsnips, etc year round. We know you want them, we want to get them for you, and we feel we should be able to get them for you. The problem is that there is only a very limited supply available right now. As small of a company we are, our demand for local organic produce exceeds what our network of growers can provide us.

A lot has changed in six years. Even in the dead of winter, many of our vegetables come from New England farms. Local produce is fresher and tastes better. But most importantly, it means that we can develop real relationships with our farmers.

Our purchasing team maintains communication with our New England farmers year-round. We’re talking to them when the ground starts to thaw, while they sow their seeds, in the sweltering heat and when the first freeze hits. Our customers’ collective support for our company creates an environment where our farmers can trust that we’ll be there to purchase their crops come harvest time.

As our demand for wintertime local, organic produce grows, the farms grow with us. In 2009, our friends at Red Fire Farm purchased new land. Last year they finished the process of rejuvenating the soil and received organic certification for their new fields. They also built greenhouses and high tunnels to extend the growing season. Atlas Farm, one of our primary suppliers, has expanded from a small piece of land into an 85 acre operation. But they remain true to their roots—producing almost 75% of the energy they use on the farm and heating their greenhouses with shelled corn, a locally grown and carbon-neutral heat source.

We love working with farmers like Michael Docter at Winter Moon Farm in Hadley, Massachusetts. He almost exclusively grows root vegetables and his stunning produce comes in bags with a label that reads “All local, All organic, All winter.” Not only are his crops organic; his storage system runs on solar energy and doesn’t use refrigerants. He also brings a lot of his harvest to market on a cargo bike (pictured above). Our purchasing team is constantly looking for farmers, like Michael, who share our priorities, and we proudly share information about our growers and their produce with our customers.

When you snack on a sweet rainbow carrot from Winter Moon Farm, you know you’re eating organically, seasonally, locally, environmentally, and hopefully also quite happily!

You won’t find that at your typical supermarket chain. And you won’t find this:

Michael Docter (left) bringing Jeff (right) and the purchasing team a pallet of local, organic beets

*Since our founding in 2002, the organic food industry has grown faster than a well-watered bamboo shoot, but it remains only a fraction of the total agricultural production in the United States. Between 2000 and 2011, the USDA reports a 110% growth in the number of acres devoted to organic apple production and a 206% growth in the acreage devoted to organic lettuce. Still, only 2.52% of tomato production and 2.29% of citrus production in the US is certified organic. (Table 3: http://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/organic-production.aspx#.UtbsfbQggpE)

We know what you’re thinking- “How do you have regionally grown tomatoes in the middle of winter?!?!”

The answer (and this week’s Dogma Box tomatoes) comes from L’Abri Vegetal, a member of Vermont-based Deep Root Organic Coop. Just across the Canadian border, Fréderic Jobin-Lawler grows these delicious tomatoes in his hot house using geothermal energy and we’re sending them out to you as a special middle-of-winter treat.

The strikingly beautiful watermelon radishes come from Winter Moon Farm, along with the beets, parsnips, and carrots!

This week’s Dogma Box contains:

Beets – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Carrots – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Parsnips – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Watermelon Radishes – Winter Moon Farm (Hadley, MA)
Potatoes – Maple Row Farm (Ashfield, MA) or Nature’s Circle Farm (Aroostook County, ME)
Empire Apples – Dwight Miller Orchards (East Dummerston, VT)
Onions – Porter Farms (Elba, NY)
Turnips – Deep Root Organic Coop (Johnson, VT)
Tomatoes – Deep Root Organic Coop (Johnson, VT)

We know that our loyal Dogma Box customers haven’t seen a tomato for a few months, so if you’re looking for a good recipe, grab some of our favorite Feta from Neighborly Farms and try this recipe for Fusilli with Tomatoes and Feta Cheese.

Last week’s “polar vortex” threw some of our growers for a loop, and freezing temperatures across the country are drastically affecting the nation’s citrus supply. This year’s citrus season may not be as “fruitful” as years past, but we’re feeling fortunate to have lots of navel oranges, tangelos, and mandarins going out in our boxes this week.

We also have tomatoes going out in this week’s boxes! The tomatoes in this week’s Dogma Box come from hot houses at L’Abri Vegetal Farm, a member of Vermont-based Deep Root Organic Coop. Also, we have plenty of root vegetables from Winter Moon Farm.

Every so often, it’s important to take a step back and consider the effect that your actions have on the world around you. The coming year promises to be an exciting ride, but as we buckle up for 2014, we wanted to reflect on 2013 and the impact that our work has on the environment and our community.

A big thank you goes out to all of our customers, farmers, employees, and their families– without whom our work would not be possible.