Public welcome to donate at https://www.caringcrowd.org/provide-meals-food-insecure-families-impacted-covid-19
Resulting from a successful partnership with AdkAction, The Hub on the Hill will deliver approximately 5,500 Emergency Food Packages (EFPs) by October 1, 2020. This project has supplied tens of thousands of meals and put food on the tables of hundreds of families facing increased food insecurity due to COVID-19.
Tomatoes are finally ripe, so here is a recipe for salsa fresca. Although it is delicious as-is, if it sits, covered in the refrigerator, for an hour or so before serving, the flavors have a chance to blend even better.
Salsa Fresca
Any type of salsa is delicious, but there is something incredible about salsa made from fresh ingredients, and not cooked or processed in any way.
If you like pesto, there is nothing quite like making and eating it fresh! Although you can substitute bottled minced garlic and shaker-can cheese for the garlic cloves and freshly grated cheese called for in the recipe, using fresh ingredients will make the flavors truly pop.
Ingredients:
AdkAction and their partners have been awarded $225,000 from the Adirondack Foundation, as well as the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, and the New York State Health Foundation to continue the Emergency Food Packages Project. The project provides healthy, locally grown food to Adirondack residents in need.
To date, over 2,300 food packages (about 35,000 meals) have been delivered to families with the help of 700 independent donors, and the Adirondack Foundations SUN Fund. Over $100,000 has been put into the local agricultural economy as well through this project, in turn supporting roughly 20 farms and 75 farmworkers. This new grant should double these results and assist AdkAction in building a program which will subsidize local food purchasing, and greatly increase Hub on the Hill’s food distribution capacity.
For an old-fashioned twist on a blueberry dessert, try this delicious blueberry cake recipe, created and shared by a very dear family friend. The flavors of blueberry and lemon blend beautifully, making it a lovely addition to any summertime meal. You can top it with vanilla ice cream, more blueberries, or just enjoy it as is!
Ingredients:
I love cooking outdoors, and also love to experiment with recipes. This burger recipe produces juicy burgers, regardless of whether they are cooked on a wood, charcoal, or gas grill.
You can use any type of ground meat, but red meat seems to work best for this recipe. Place on buns of your choice, top with your favorite toppings, and enjoy.
I made these burgers using bison meat from Adirondack Buffalo Company, and used some of their amazing mustards to top the burgers (not in the picture). Located in North Hudson, they offer fantastic farm products to the North Country
Editor’s note: As more people are cooking and eating a home during the COVID-19 pandemic, Cornell Cooperative Extension of Warren County is sharing recipes that are easy to make and can be made with locally sourced ingredients.
This recipe for beef stew comes courtesy of the West Virginia University Extension Service’s Dining with Diabetes series.
The Mobile Farmers Market returns for the 2020 season with community-based stops in Franklin and Clinton counties.
A program of the Joint Council for Economic Opportunity JCEO and the North Country Health Heart Network, the mobile market provides access to fresh fruit and vegetables, baked goods, and a salad bar. The market debuted in 2018 and has since expanded its stops and offerings. In light of COVID-19, this year, the mobile market will be following strict social distancing and health guidelines.
Warmer weather means grilling time! Instead of sticking to traditional grilling foods like burgers or hot dogs, why not consider grilling one of my personal favorite foods, pizza.
This fantastic dish can be modified to suit a variety of dietary needs and preferences, and can be easily adjusted to be a healthy food choice. Cheese can be substituted with vegan cheese or left off entirely for vegans, vegetables and fruit can be used as toppings, and some traditionally unhealthy topping choices, such as pepperoni or sausage, can be swapped for healthier options such as turkey pepperoni or venison sausage. Even more appealing, though, is the taste. Nothing truly compares to the smoky and savory flavors that combine in a good grilled pizza.
When Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed the executive order in March that shut down state commerce, Katie and Brandon Donahue, owners of Donahue’s Livestock Farm in North Bangor, had 30 sizable orders of top-shelf, hormone- and antibiotic-free beef and pork in the cooler destined for North Country restaurants.
Within minutes of the shutdown order, Donahue’s phone began blowing up with cancellations. Restaurants were either shutting down altogether or going to a pickup/delivery model that relied less on the more expensive, hence more profitable, cuts. By the end of the day, 27 of the 30 restaurants had called to cancel.
“I was panicking,” Donahue said. “I have 700 cows out in the field that still have to eat, and they don’t care about the coronavirus.”
One thing is sure: all of us have learned that the world can change overnight. So far, supply chains within the global food system have not been totally disrupted. Hopefully they won’t be. But food resiliency means a community has farms growing food on the soil surrounding community members. If supply chains break, your neighboring farms are growing food nearby. But in order for community farms to survive, they can’t be a last resort. Community members have to see the value in knowing that security is there, every day, and support it… or farms don’t survive.
Many people have been thinking about food differently during this unprecedented pandemic. Going out to get food means something different than it did mere weeks ago. We’re wondering where our food came from and how many people touched it before us. Or we don’t want to go out to get it at all…
So, like magic, local farm and food businesses in the Adirondacks have responded rapidly in innovative ways to feed the community. Local farmers’ markets, farmstands, cooked meal deliveries, and other local food vendors are noticing amazing support from the community. Adirondack Harvest wanted to understand more about the relationship of local food to the community during this unusual time. Here’s what you told us!
Dandelions: Landscape Weed or Beneficial Backyard Herb?
Dandelions (Taraxacum officinale) are probably the most recognized of all broadleaf ‘weeds’. Many people consider them a curse; a plant that can establish quickly, by seed, in a well-kept lawn and become extremely difficult to eradicate. Homeowners and groundskeepers spend tremendous amounts of time and enormous amounts of money annually, persistently trying to exterminate the tenacious, opportunistic, perennial wildflowers, which will re-grow vegetatively, if the taproot is not entirely removed, often even after being treated with herbicides.
Others value dandelions as one of the least-recognized of all multi-purpose herbs. They view them as nutritious, free food that can be easily added to most-anyone’s diet. They delight in collecting dandelion greens to add to soups or salads, and/or take pleasure in picking the flower heads (and digging roots) for a pot of tea or a crock of dandelion wine. I have a friend who remembers when, as a boy, he was paid a penny apiece for dandelion heads (blossoms), by an enthusiastic wine-making neighbor.
In the Adirondacks we are fortunate to have a growing number of small local farms to supply us with fresh, safe, and healthy food.
It is more important then ever during the COVID-19 crises to support the growing number of small farms that rely on the community to remain viable.
If you wish to join the Adirondack Council’s Essex Farm Institute in continuing to help local farmers, below are some suggestions of how you can give your support:
As the world is in the midst of a pandemic from the COVID-19 virus, maple trees that dot the landscape across the northeast continued to flow this spring like nothing had changed in the world. Despite the interruption to daily life for most Americans, sugar-makers continued to collect sap from their maple trees and boil it down into nature’s sweet treat – maple syrup. For sugar-makers, long days and nights of boiling and collecting sap are required. As a result, little time is left for socialization so life has not changed as drastically for sugar-makers as it has for others. Coronavirus or not, this was the time we had to collect the sap to make syrup. Maple is an agriculture practice and part of our food system so sugar-makers are deemed essential. Many who enjoy maple syrup would agree that maple syrup production is an essential job.
The sugar-making season and the weeks thereafter are an extremely important selling period for local producers. Unfortunately, the Covid-19 pandemic has seriously impacted, and may continue to impact, sales into and perhaps beyond the spring and summer seasons.
Many local maple syrup-producing farm-families take part in Maple Weekend, an annual event championed by the New York State Maple Producers Association (NYSMPA) and supported by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the Cornell Maple Program. Maple Weekend provides opportunities for interested individuals and families across the state to visit one or more of the state’s family-run maple sugaring operations to see, first-hand, how sugar maple trees are tapped and sap is collected and boiled into pure, delicious maple syrup.
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