- HALL’S CORN: Every member should take home 12 ears of Hall’s famous sweet corn with their Meat Club pickup on Friday, 8/18. This is a small thank-you for supporting our farm this summer.
- OPEN HOUSE: the entire community is invited to visit the farm from 1-5 PM on Sunday, August 27. More details below.
- September-December Meat Club: sign-up now! We need your support to help our farm grow. Local farming requires a strong, local community to support what we do. Keep sending your friends and family our way so we can continue to expand our offerings.
Your meat cuts for Friday, August 18:
Lamb: We’re continuing our exploration of the variety of delicious quick-cooking lamb cuts you can enjoy with lamb should steaks! Lamb is more than slow braises and large leg roasts and late summer is a great time to enjoy lamb steaks and Hall’s sweet corn, which each member is getting for free this week (more on that below)! Lamb shoulder steaks are a cut from the shoulder and oh man they are absolutely delicious. Make sure they are super dry on the outside, sprinkle with a generous handshake of kosher salt and cook on a medium hot/hot pan or grill for just a few minutes per side until 135 in the center. It won’t take long at all to get there. We’re also sharing a few more of our lamb shanks for your next braise.
Pork: We’ve got something new this week: the humble yet versatile pork cutlet! Our pork cutlets are pounded thin, perfect for crispy Japanese pork katsu or golden brown German pork schnitzel. These convenient cuts are packed with the same flavor as all of our pasture-raised pork, with the ease of being pounded thin and tenderized and ready for a light fry in your favorite cast iron pan or wok. We’re also featuring our pork bratwursts this week. Our larger-order Meat Club Members will also possibly receive pork chops or breakfast sausage.
Beef: We wanted to share three hard-working meats this week: the classic sirloin steak, our ground beef and our beef stew meat. We know beef stew and soup season isn’t here (yet) and there is no one wanting to hold winter at bay more than we do given our farm to-do list but we know stew season is coming. Our favorite late-summer use for stew meat is a quick farmers market beef, corn and vegetable soup. Cut your leftover Hall’s sweet corn off the cob and mix with fresh or canned tomatoes, local herbs, your favorite stock and any other vegetables that look good and cook until everything is tender. Larger portion beef subscribers will also possibly see a ribeye, beef breakfast sausage in addition to our sirloins.
Cheese: It’s a mixed-cheese week! Your cheese package this week contains three different cheeses from Boss Mouse.
Flowers are ready!
Thank you to all the folks who supported our Bendon Blossom Flowers offering this summer. This is our last week for flowers this summer and we hope everyone enjoyed the colors and smells from these local, native flowers all summer.
News from the farm!
Get Ready for the September Meat Club! We’re in crunch time for new and existing member sign-ups for our next Meat Club period. If you enjoy our products and would like to continue with our September-December Meat Club, we would love to have you. We are planning an expansion of our Meat Club in our next period and would love to have you (and your friends) join us again in supporting local farming. If you are interested (and we hope you are), now’s the time to start thinking about your order! Visit our Store to place your order and as always please do not hesitate to reach out or find a farmer when you visit the farm if you have questions or feedback about your order.
Hall’s Sweet Corn: a small thank-you for all our members
Every member should take home a dozen ears of Hall’s sweet corn on Friday, August 18, which is available for free to each member and will be on a table near under the porch to the south of our meat room. Hall’s Farm is an integral partner in our farm operations. While famous for the 4-5 weeks each summer they bless us with their sweet corn, we visit the family running Hall’s at least once a week year-round to purchase all of our non-GMO duck, turkey, chicken and pig feed (and mineral mixes). The Hall family is an incredibly important part of how we feed our animals and their proximity keeps the distance we travel for feed to an astounding minimum. Hall’s will have sweet corn available for just a few more weeks from their farm stand at 8118 N Long Lake Rd.
Community Open House: Sunday, August 27
Thank you to the 80+ people who came out to our Meat Club Member Farm Breakast on Saturday, August 5. We served around 8 dozen eggs, and a dozen or so more pounds of sausage and bacon. We had so much fun that we want to do it again, but this time for the entire wider community for a Sunday farm “lunch” of burgers and brats on Sunday, August 27 from 1-5 PM. We’ll ask for a small donation for food and show off our the hen’s new hoop house visible in the field to the side of the driveway. We’ll also give tours to anyone who is interested and we can all see how much our baby ducklings have grown.
Great Lakes Garlic:
Our close friends and fellow local farmers Kevin and Tiffany from Great Lakes Garlic Farm dropped off a few bushels of beautiful, Certified Organic and Buckley-grown chesnok red garlic for our members to purchase. We’re offering their garlic to members for purchase whenever is convenient (until it’s gone) for $6 for 3 cloves, $12.50 for half a pound or $25 for a full pound. Garlic just arrived on Thursday but we’ll get it bagged and packaged for everyone on Friday. See a farmer if you’re interested. It’s the best garlic our region has to offer and it’s certified USDA organic!
Bones, Organs Lard:
We’re in the process of overhauling how we label and share soup bones, organs and other non-standard items. Please email us or seek out a farmer when you stop by if you are interested in soup bones or organs and we can set up a special purchase. Rendered lard is in the fridge in half gallon jars – $20 for 3.5 pounds. Lamb and pork bones and organs are in the freezer above the dairy but we have so much more in our big freezer than what you see. Bones are $2/pound and organs are $4/pound but we can help if you don’t know what you want and are interested in trying something new. We have a bunch of great recipes and hints for how to truly utilize the entire animal if you are curious.
Eggs! Eggs are available above and beyond what you may have already paid for with your subscription. We welcome Meat Club Members and friends or family to purchase as many eggs as you would like for $5 a dozen. Please leave cash/check in the dropbox on the wall next to the freezer or send Venmo @anavery.
The Cookbook Bookclub
Last March a group of our friends decided to marry the concept of the “book club” and the “potluck” with a monthly gathering of food-curious people we call “The Cookbook Club”. The idea is simple: pick one cookbook each month, set a date and a place and each member bring a different dish from the same book. The result is a complete meal around a central theme. It’s been a great way for our group of busy friends and parents to slow down and cook something nice but also get together to talk about food. Through this effort, we’ve all reconsidered the cookbooks as an alternative to the internet for good recipes.
Cookbooks are incredible – they are generally quite beautiful, full of nice photos, usually well-edited, and often circle around a central theme or a style of cooking. In the last 10-15 years, we’ve all found ourselves turning more and more to the web for quick recipes or advice, with many of our favorites shared through this newsletter. Dust off whatever cookbooks you’ve had laying on a shelf, open the book, pick a recipe and cook something new. Or, consider a new cookbook for fresh inspiration.
As a local business, we rely very heavily on the friendship and support of other local businesses in the food and farming community. While not where we turn for feed or tractor lubricant, the amazing booksellers at Brilliant Books on Front Street supply us with a steady trickle of field guides, cookbooks, fiction, non-fiction, botanical catalogs and ruminant reference. Small, independent book stores are the backbone of a strong downtown and we want to ensure they stick around for a long time. Below is a non-exhaustive list of cookbooks shared amongst members of the Cookbook Club this year and other culinary reference we hope you enjoy.
- The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science and The Wok– J. Kenji López-Alt: We’ve shared many of Kenji’s recipes and articles. These cookbooks are a thesis on food. If you want to be a better home cook, The Food Lab is mandatory reading and The Wok will show you the infinite ways you can use the most humble of all stovetop pans.
- Endless Summer Cookbook – Katie Lee: This was our Cookbook Club pick for this month. We’re feeling the pinch of the possibility that the season could change so we’re hanging on to summer for as long as possible with these recipes.
- Milk Street: Tuesday Nights and Milk Street: Tuesday Nights Mediterranean: Christopher Kimball. This book series on simple, unfussy weeknight meals. Kimball’s Milk Street radio show/podcast, magazine and series of cookbooks are thoughtful, detailed, easy-to-follow and inspire a wider view of how to break out of a food rut on busy weeknights.
Some of our meat cuts may be very familiar and are easily incorporated into your regular kitchen repertoire. Some may be less familiar and we’re always hoping to inspire you to use our meats, bones and organs in a wide variety of ways. Don’t forget about the humble paper cookbook if you need a little extra inspiration. Open a cookbook you haven’t read in years, buy a new one from a local bookseller or trade an overworked cookbook with one from a friend. Whatever you do, sharpen your knives and keep on cooking.
Thank you so much for coming out to the farm this summer. We couldn’t do what we do without you, our Meat Club Members. We hope to see you again in the fall.
-The Anavery Fine Foods Farmers
