Outpost Natural Foods' In the Aisles Blog

Hail Hail Cara Cara

Tue, 3 Jan 2012 14:16:00 CST

I’m a big fan of citrus. I’m talking the “eat-oranges-till-your-mouth-hurts” kind of fan. I’m not ashamed to admit it. I’m sure it wasn’t good for my mouth or my teeth, but we’re OK now.

I still love citrus. For the longest time citrus seemed so mysterious to me. I’d picked fruits from trees before, but Midwest fruits like apples, peaches and pears. Citrus was so exotic.

Until a few years ago, I’d never seen citrus growing on the tree. I couldn’t wait to get to Los Angeles, where my sister-in-law lived, because she filled my head with fanciful tales of oranges. There were bags of them, free for the taking.

In some neighborhoods in southern California, people just give away their extra fruit — grapefruits, lemons and oranges. It was a dream come true. We visited one March, leaving the cold and miserable final days of a long Wisconsin winter. We arrived in Los Angeles at night. I awoke the next morning at dawn, walked into the yard and picked an orange from the tree. It is still one of my favorite memories.

I’d never tasted a Cara Cara Navel orange until I started working at Outpost. Everyone raved about them, as though there was no other orange worth eating. The first one I tasted reminded me of California. They’re extremely sweet, not too acidic (you still might want to monitor your intake) and seedless.

This is one of those items with a short season — now you see ‘em, now you don’t. That might be part of their charm. As I type this, Outpost is stocking Buck Brand Cara Cara Navels from Porterville, Calif. Later in the season, we could be stocking them from other growers and from other states. If you want to know where they’re grown, just ask one of the knowledgeable folks in our produce departments.

If you can’t visit southern California this winter, you’re best bet is to stock up on these oranges. It’s quite possibly the next best thing.

Learn more about Buck Brands Citrus or Deer Creek Heights Ranch

The gift of a good meal

Fri, 23 Dec 2011 09:16:00 CST

It’s getting harder to remember things from my childhood. It could be that I’m getting older. Maybe I’m too busy trying to help create memories for my own child that I don’t have the luxury of sitting around thinking about the time when I was her age. But it’s hard not to reflect at this time of year.

My family’s Christmas celebration is one of the few traditions I can remember from my childhood. More importantly, our Christmas Eve meal is what I remember the most. When my dad left Denmark as a young man, he didn’t look back. He arrived in this country and embraced everything about America, its customs and its traditions.

Fortunately, my parents made a point to create their own version of a traditional Danish Christmas Eve meal that we ate every year: roast duck, potatoes, red cabbage and rum pudding (my mother didn’t like rice pudding). Maybe this meal reminded my dad of his childhood. I never asked why we did things this way. It was just our custom.

Every year, we did the same thing. We went to church at 5 p.m. while our mom stayed home and prepared the meal. I can still remember the way the house smelled when we got home. We sat down at the table. We ate. Then we had dessert. One dish of pudding had an almond in it. Whoever had the almond received a special gift. Then we opened presents. Finally, we went to the midnight service at church. Every year, we did this, until my mom got sick. That’s when things changed.

I can’t remember the last time I had duck for Christmas. It was probably the year before my mom died. Christmas can be tough. It’s not easy conjuring up those memories, but it’s too hard to forget. The nice thing about those memories is that at the heart of it is a meal, prepared by someone I loved for someone I love. It was a gift that my mom gave to my dad. It was a gift that our family gave to itself every year, whether we thought of it that way.

Sure, we don’t eat duck anymore on Christmas Eve, but we’ll always have the memory of that meal, shared at the same time every year. That’s the wonderful thing about food. You can forget a lot, but you can always remember a good meal.

It ain't easy being green

Tue, 20 Dec 2011 15:06:00 CST

It’s been nearly 20 years since I ate my first sunflower sprout. I can’t pinpoint the time or day, but I can remember, with 100-percent certainty, the year. Not only that, but I remember how I ate them … on a salad. How’s that for innovative?
For a guy who grew up in a meat-and-potatoes kind of home, eating sprouts was a radical departure from what my family considered normal.
At that point in my life, my experience with sprouts was limited. Sure, I’d eaten alfalfa sprouts, but sunflower sprouts were different. It’s a stretch to call the experience an epiphany, I mean they’re sprouts.
I love sprouts, but they don’t lend themselves to vivid and colorful descriptions. They are not sensual and they aren’t complicated. They’re green. Heck, I’m pretty sure they even taste green. Not grass-like green, which would be bad, but healthy green, which is good. Sure, there’s a hint of sunflower taste and someone might try to be clever and describe them as earthy, maybe nutty
I went a long time without finding a steady supply of sprouts, until I had some from Milwaukee’s Growing Power a few years ago. Somewhere along the way, sprouts became micro greens.
Nowadays, when I buy sprouts, usually sunflower sprouts, I buy them from Outpost. Outpost gets sprouts from a few suppliers besides Growing Power, like Sweetwater Organics. There’s a whole world of sprouts out there though (pea, onion, broccoli, mung bean, etc.).
Apparently, you can grow your own, but I haven’t tried that yet, maybe I will some day. Until then, I will continue buying my sprouts at Outpost.

Want to know why the call sunflower sprouts a super food? Learn about it here.
Did you know someone wrote a thorough history of sunflowers? If you have the time, it's here for the reading.

An apple a day, how about three

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 16:13:00 CST

It won’t be long and that very last local apple will finally be eaten. If I do the math, I’ve been eating apples for the past 15 weeks, or so. I ate my first apple of the season in late August, when we picked some early apples in northern Michigan.
This season I committed myself to trying as many different apple varieties as I could (within my very limited parameters). I like tart, crisp, firm and juicy apples. Doesn’t everybody?
One of my minor hobbies is visiting orchards. I’ve visited several in Wisconsin. This year, for the first time, I visited with Bob Barthel and Nino Ridgway, the folks who own and operate Barthel Fruit Farm in Mequon. They’re great. They’re apples are great, too. I’ve made a few trips to the orchard — once, to talk with them about the orchard and another time to photograph families picking in the orchard.
Like a lot of orchards, Barthel Fruit Farm grows Honey Crisp apples, among other varieties. I tried to pretend I was above loving this apple. “Sure, I’ll eat a Honey Crisp, but I really prefer antique varieties.”
It’s not the apple's fault. Like a lot of things, it’s a victim of its own success. They’re in such high demand because they are one of the few apples people seem to ask for by name. Well that and they’re good. It's December and Outpost is still stocking them (at around $1.50/lb.) and I'm still eating them. They're not the easiest to grow, from what I understand, but quite popular to eat.
The ones Bob and Nino grew this year were unbelievable. I haven’t had a bad one and I figured after eating several pounds of them, during the past few months, I would have come across at least one bad apple. This year Bob and Nino had a bumper crop and a consistently good crop.
That’s not always the case. A year earlier, Outpost wasn’t selling Barthel Honey Crisp apples because a late spring frost damaged the crop. Gives you an idea of what farmers like Bob and Nino deal with annually and the challenges of providing a steady supply of food.
Nowadays, we don’t have to wait to eat apples, because they’re available year-round from all around the world. Personally, I prefer to wait for local apples. So, I’ll keep eating Barthel apples until there are no more Barthel apples left to eat. After that, I’ll keep my fingers crossed and hope there’s another bumper crop next season.

Pass the nuts

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 12:42:00 CST

Walk through the bulk section at an Outpost and you’re likely to stand in awe of the dizzying array of food available in bulk. Dried beans, nuts, grains, flours, snack mixes. You can get lost if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Just the other day, I knew what I was looking for: walnuts.

I know they’re nutritious, but sometimes I find myself choking down bitter walnuts from god-knows-where, promising myself they’re good for me.

Outpost has organic walnuts from Dixon Ridge Farms in California. They are exceptional ... buttery and not bitter.

If you run out of edible things to do, you could always make this lovely ornament ... that's right, it's a walnut shell.

Want to know why walnuts are so good for you? Here’s the scoop
Want to do something other than eat them raw? Try this tried-and-true recipe
Want to learn about one of the farms that grows your food? Read all about ‘em here