Jersey City Farmers' Market Exploration #4. Journal Square

Jackie Robinson played ball here in 1946 at Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City.

It's August and the last month of summer is here. The farms are overflowing with corn, tomatoes, cukes, peppers, eggplants, zucchini - all the late summer crops - lettuces, beets and spinach, bokchoy, are still strong and the fruit crops have turned away from berries to stone fruits and melons. There is a farmers' market in Jersey City every day of the week, and the Friday market is held at Journal Square. In search of more delicious string beans and ripe tomatoes,

I ventured out to the PATH Plaza at the intersection of Kennedy Blvd and Bergen St. This location operates on Wednesdays and Fridays, and features the two big farmer's stands, Stony Hill Gardens, and Alstede's. They were rather evenly matched for produce, quantity, prices. 

The historic Loew's Theater stands proudly behind the canopied farmers.

I found an assortment of heirloom tomatoes and dill at Stony Hill; Alstede's offered purple podded string beans. Personal interaction and friendliness, evident here, are important qualities for sustaining the farmer-to-buyer relationship. Stony Hill customers are helped by cute twin girls from the JSQ neighborhood; international exchange students from Slovakia and Bulgaria are spending the summer working at Alstede's farms and market.

The fountain is dry.

I don't know yet, if it's typical of a Friday market there, but the only other vendors are Dr. Pickle (" he's got your cure") and the nut vendor. This urban location has a fountain, civic statues, a kiosk, some planters and shady trees and places to sit. It might be busier on Wednesdays, but the today, the combination of the traffic, empty lot, heavy 1970's-style architecture make it seem less vibrant than it should be. Strolling musicians would be nice.

The next day, my two friends and I set to work on a trio of recipes. We made a peach-cardamom jam, Moroccan-style preserved lemons, and dilly beans. The peach cardamom jam was almost preserves like in texture, and a bold spicy taste. The goal was to make a product that was lower in sugar and pectin, and this is what we did.
Ingredients:
6 lbs of peaches

4 lbs sugar
3 tablespoons dry pectin ( 1 box)
1/4 cup lemon juice, fresh 
1/4 teaspoon ground cardamom
Peel the peaches, and slice them into small pieces. We wanted a chunky texture. Put them into a very large preserving pan or dutch oven, and add the lemon juice. Cook over high heat until the fruit boils. Then add the pectin and the sugar. Bring to a boil again stirring well to dissolve the sugar. Add the cardamom and cook until the color darkens a little and the syrup thickens. Test for jell. Add a little more cardamom if you like. If the jam is too runny, cook at a steady boil for another four or five minutes, testing every 2 minutes. Yield: 8 half pints.

We love the widemouth short half pint Ball jar.

A jar packed with lemon rinds, waiting to be filled and capped

Cutting, rolling and juicing 2 dozen lemons.

The basic jar of string beans ready for different flavors.

Dilly Beans

I have been wanting to make dilled string beans for a long time. Yesterday I shopped at the Hamilton Park Farmers' Market and bought 5 lbs of nice green and yellow snap beans from my friends at Stony Hill farm, and a bunch of organic dill leaves from the organic farm stand.
Why are most of the pickles sold in stores and at the farmers markets, made from cucumbers? Sure, pickled beets are popular, but dilly bean pickles are rarely seen on a grocery shelf. I asked google, are pickles a healthy food?
You might be interested in what "the nutrition diva" had to say about it. When a pickle counts as a serving of vegetables, that's tops with me! "The Complete Book of Small Batch Preserving" by Ellie Topp and Margaret Howard has a big chapter on a variety of pickled vegetables.
I researched my "library" of canning books and found each one had a recipe for  Dilled Green Beans. All of them called for white vinegar, salt, dill, garlic and hot pepper. Some pre-cooked the beans, other recipes said to pack raw beans into the jars. I tried a batch each way. In the Better Homes and Gardens, there was an eyecatching photo of Lemon-Bay pickled beans. I made those also, with the yellow beans (to match the lemon). Then I had four cups of leftover pickle solution, so I cut up a huge onion and put that into a pickle.

Dilly Beans, Lemon Bay Beans, raw pack Dilly Beans, Pickled Onion Rings

In all, I worked through the afternoon, washing, trimming, stirring and canning, and have 7 lovely pints of pickled beans and 2 pints pickled onion rings as my reward.
I learned a rule of thumb: one pound of green beans, trimmed into 4 inch pieces, will fill just 2 pints, packed tightly. 
Look for beans at the farm stand or pick-your-own farm, and buy an extra pound. Try this easy recipe, using a few common ingredients, and make two jars. It won't take much time, and you'll have a lovely product that you will not want to open because they look so nice! I mean - you will be so proud of them, you'll save them for a special occasion. Dilly Beans, from "Pickles and Relishes" by Andrea Chesman, page 90. I cut the recipe in half.
Ingredients: 1 pound green beans, washed and trimmed into 4 inch pieces
2 cloves of garlic
2 heads of dill (seed), or 4 stems of fresh dill leaves, or 2 tsp dill seed
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper, or 1-2 small dried red chili peppers
1-1/4 cup  water
1-1/4 cup white vinegar
1/4 cup pickling salt ( I don't want all that salt, I used one tablespoon)
Method:
1. Wash 2 wide mouth pint jars and heat them in a water bath canner put on medium heat. 
2. In a sauce pan, combine the water, vinegar and salt; stir to dissolve, then heat to boiling.
3. Remove the hot jars from the canner, and place them on their sides on a towel. 

Fill the jars laying on their sides, garlic, dill leaves, beans, then the vinegar. 

4. Into each jar, put a clove of garlic, a chili pepper and the dill. 
5. Pack the beans into the jars, so they are "standing up"in the jar. this is easier to do with the jar lying on its side, and using a little plastic fork to move the beans into place. 
6. Stand up the jars and pour the boiling vinegar into the jars, leaving 1/2 inch headspace and covering the beans with the liquid.
7. Wipe the rims clean and top with the lid and then the ring. Tighten the ring firmly but not terribly tight.
8. Process in boiling water for 10 minutes for pints, timing when the water returns to a boil.

9. Remove jars and let them cool, undisturbed. The lids should snap down.
10. If you do not yet have a water bath canner, you can use a large deep stock pot, with a little rack made of extra canning rings or a towel, filled with enough water to cover the tops of the jars.

Red, White and Blue at the Warren County Fair

I won't keep you in suspense -  I've won a ribbon for each entry in the Warren County Fair! How exciting and surprising. I'm so glad I took a chance.

First place and a blue ribbon for Chunky Mustard Pickles and for Apple-Mint Jelly. Second place and a red ribbon for Pineapple Marmalade and for Peach-Jalepeno Pepper Jelly, and third place and a white ribbon for Plum Jam. 
I'm really proud of them all.  The prize winning recipe for the pickles is in the previous post about Van Vorst Park Farmers' Market.

Second Place for the Peach-Jalepeno Jelly.

Each jar was displayed with the entry tag, recipe and the comment card. Judge's comment for mint-apple jelly, " sealed well, color and taste excellent, make some more".
That was my first time making herb jelly, a little challenging, but worth it. You can use other herbs too.
Here is the recipe, from the Better Homes and Gardens Canning special interest magazine, 2011, page 106
Mint-Apple Jelly
Ingredients: 
  3 ounces fresh peppermint leaves
  3 cups fresh apple juice
  1/4 cup lemon juice, fresh squeezed
  1 pkg, 1.75 oz, powdered pectin
  4 cups sugar
Method:
1. Wash, cut and measure 1 cup mint leaves. 
2. Simmer the apple juice and mint together for 15 minutes. 
3. Strain, reserving the juice, and discard the leaves. 
4. Combine the flavored apple juice, lemon juice and dry pectin in a large pot. 5. Heat to a full boil and add the sugar. Stir to dissolve completely.
6. Return to a full rolling boil for 1 minute.
7. Remove from heat, skim foam, fill jars to 1/4 " headspace and adjust lids.
8. Process in a water bath canner for 5 minutes, timing when the water boils.
Yields five 8oz jars.

The Concession stand and the Rides behind it.

The Warren County Fairgrounds are about five miles north of Phillipsburg NJ, and the fair is noted for its hot air balloon "inflation". It also features all the usual fun attractions of a county fair: carnival rides, strawberry shortcake; farm animals; quilts; pig races; beauty and baby contests; tractor races, vendors and community organizations, and something new to me "Polish-style hamburgers".There is so much to see and do and a lot of effort is put into it.

A girl and her goats.

I'd like to thank Becky Hummer, of the Warren County Rutgers Cooperative Extension office, consultant for the canning exhibits, who helped me fill out the paperwork and kept my opened jars an extra day so I could pick them up. Exhibitors who enter 5 or more items received a week long pass, and I wish I lived closer so I could take my son-in-law and my grandson to the competitive hay bale rolling and the 4 wheel drive truck pull. Maybe next year...






Next weekend I plan to enter more jams and pickles in the Middlesex County Fair in East Brunswick. Can this city girl win some more ribbons? 

Oh, you definitely want to check out this great article on canning, southern style, in the August issue of Southern Living magazine. Looks like a lot of fun and some new twists on traditional recipes, as well as a quick 3 step description of how to can and properly process your jars. I've been invited to make corn relish and tomato marmalade; and mango jam and Indian pickles; and zucchini sott'olio, sounds like a good time for a party?

Jersey City Farmers' Market Exploration #3 - Van Vorst Park

The Farmers' Market at Van Vorst Park is like a little gem tucked inside a secret garden. The market is set up in the center of the square around the gazebo and you walk down shady paths bordered with roses and flowers to reach it. Besides the farmers, there are the knife sharpener, Stella's Argentine empanadas, three tables of baked goods, and Dakota Dog selling the cutest handcrafted toys for pets. It's friendly, small and simply charming.

I needed ingredients to make Mustard Pickles and found them at the stand displaying a wide variety of fresh greens, reds, whites and purples. Their prices for Kirby cucumbers and bell peppers and white onions were a bargain and they had lots of corn, tomatoes, eggplant and nice looking leafy vegetables. Just because there was the “Jersey Fresh” label on the jar, I bought some really good honey made by Trapper’s Honey LLC from Clarksburg.  

I was happy to see a farmer advertising cheese and eggs for sale, Ed Huff of Central Valley Farms of Asbury NJ. His third generation family farm began years ago as a dairy farm, selling milk. Then, uncertainties with processing and marketing the fluid milk led to a change in direction, to making fresh artisanal cheese.

 Central Valley Farm's cows are grazing in green pastures all spring and summer - only this milk is used for the cheeses. Their booth displays beauty shots of the cows and the hens, giving them their due. Today the table has a smaller selection of produce, but coming soon are 30+ varieties of heirloom tomatoes and peppers Central Valley Farm rotates to Union Square (NYC) and an uptown market, plus a CSA. 

Bon Appetit' magazine has tips on shopping at a Farmers' Market. It's worth the look.

This is the batch of pickles I’m taking to the Warren County Fair. It's a quick and easy recipe which will be submitted in the category “Any other pickle”. 

Chunky Mustard Pickles

Yield: Six Pints, One Halfpint, and a Quart of Extra Pickle Juice 

Ingredients: the pickle solution:

   5 cups white vinegar

   ¼ cup prepared yellow mustard

   3 ½ cups sugar

   1/3 cup salt

   2 TBS celery seed

   2 TBS mustard seed

   ½ teaspoon ground turmeric

   ½ teaspoon whole cloves

 The vegetables:

     5 lbs Kirby cucumbers

     3 large white onions

     2 large green peppers

     4 medium stalks celery

1. Scrub all vegetables thoroughly in running water. Seed (if seeds are large) and cut the cucumbers into chunks.

2. Dice the green peppers, onions and celery.

3. In a large stockpot combine the vinegar, mustard, sugar, salt and spices.  Bring to a boil, stirring well to dissolve the sugar, salt and mustard.

4. Add the chopped vegetables to the pot, and heat until almost boiling, about ten minutes. Then reduce the heat to very low. Have clean hot pint jars ready.

5. Fill the pint jars with vegetables, and cover with vinegar solution to ½ inch of the rims. Using a canning funnel helps so much.

6. Wipe rims clean with a paper towel, adjust lids, and process in a water-bath canner, using a lower heat pasteurization method, of 30 minutes at 180-185 degrees.

City Island (Daytona Beach) Farmers' Market

Under the palm trees

Today it's Bike Week, Spring Break and St Patrick's Day in Daytona Beach, Florida, and the beautiful weather has everyone outdoors. My sister and I checked out the City Island Farmers' Market set up in a spacious lot between the city's library and the Jackie Robinson Ballpark. The long tables display a bountiful selection of fruits and vegetables from meyer lemons to brussels sprouts, and there are a few non-farm vendors in the mix.

  

They grow on a stalk!

Shoppers carry away trays of luscious red ripe Plant City strawberries (I can vouch for how good they are). Plant City, located between Orlando and Tampa, is famous for its strawberries and hosts a yearly festival where you might like to compete in a strawberry shortcake eating contest. 

Organic Alternatives

Ravi and Rich opened their Access to Organics stand to offer a selection of certified organic fruits and veggies. Ravi was so friendly and informative about the quality and freshness in sourcing organic produce. I bought some of their cucumbers for the new pickle recipe I plan to try. See Ravi's schedule of Spring activities here.

Sunny and Warm

I was surprised to learn that only one farmer there grows his own produce to sell. The other vendors buy from distributors for resale and much of the produce is trucked up from south Florida, or from further away. I found that farmer proudly hawking the biggest broccoli heads and the crispest chard that I had ever seen. His farm is in Samsula, a mere 15 miles west. His comments on the season so far,"pretty decent, a little hotter and a little drier than I'd like, but who's complaining". Asked about tomatoes, he doesn't grow them for market, only for his family - the economics of it favors the south Florida farms.

Midtown Ecovillage

At the citrus stand, there were samples of grapefruit and pineapple orange to taste. We bought some meyer lemons, as big as tennis balls, to make lemon curd. Feeling thirsty, we stopped by Ravi's friend's booth, for a smoothie. Omar and Camille have a good time doing what they believe in, creating a delicious drink and educating the public on good food and healthy lifestyles. A good idea - Smoothies and Movies . 

Ocie's has so many good flavors

I was excited to find a table full of jams, etc, by Ocie's Gourmet Preserves. Gloria and her sister carry on the business of canning and selling a whole line of jams, jellies, pickles and relishes begun by their mother. They grow some of their raw materials, and purchase some from their neighboring vendors in this market. So many treats I was eager to try: muscadine grape jam, mulberry jam, mango jalapeno jelly, hot pickled okra, the raw honey, sigh; I bought the sweet onion relish. They will ship their jars to you, write to them at      ociesgourmetpreserves@yahoo.com.
I enjoyed this Farmer's Market a lot, and I hope you clicked on the links to learn more. In my next post I'll report what I made with the produce I bought today.

The Wilkes-Barre Farmers' Market

Tents set up on W-B public square looking past a sculpture
towards the Chamber of Commerce and bank buildings

I grew up in Wilkes-Barre in northeastern Pennsylvania and lived there until our family moved to Edison NJ. The area always had a great sense of community and residents from Pittston to Nanticoke to Back Mtn identified with "The Valley". Going back 30 years or more, every Thursday from June through October, there is a farmer's market on Wilkes-Barre's public square and many of the same farms and stands still set up and sell locally grown vegetables, fruits, and honey. In town to visit family last Thursday, I made that familiar trip to the market in search of fresh corn, cucumbers, tomatoes, peaches, and hopefully, plums.  

Public square looking toward the Kirby Center. Farmer's tents
line two sides of the square, a bandshell is in the center.

 When I was a young mother, I often took my kids to the square to buy fresh vegetables, have lunch and listen to the bands entertain the crowds. In the photo at right, you can see that tradition continue. One of our favorites, Hillside Farms, was a local dairy farm known for its delicious ice cream. Now "The Lands at Hillside Farms", they are a proponent of organic, sustainable living and have a vision and a mission explained on their website http://www.thelandsathillsidefarms.org/  Recently, there are new CSA (community supported agriculture) farms which are increasing the ability of people to buy locally grown food.

I asked the man at O'Malia's tent how the heavy rains had affected their harvest. The tomatoes suffered the most, as the rain caused their skins to crack and split open, allowing insect and mold to spoil the fruit. Despite the weather, the tables were piled up with plenty of vegetables and it was hard to resist the large baskets of peppers, tomatoes, etc. But I had come to buy a quantity of a particular variety of cucumber, the kirby, which is the best one for making pickles, because of its thin skin, crisp flesh, and medium size. Then I walked around the whole line of stands looking for a particular red plum for my plum jam. Only one stand, Dymonds, was selling them and I was able to buy the last 3 quarts. Happy, I left behind bushels of beautiful apples, beets, tomatoes and more for another day.


CRUNCHY DILL PICKLES, a 3 DAY RECIPE

A plate holds the cucumbers down.

After soaking in brine and syrup.

I found a recipe I like on page 268 of Linda Arendt’s book Blue Ribbon Preserves. I took home the 20 kirby cucumbers from the farmer's market. I washed them well, removed the blossom ends ( typically this has a little scar, opposite the stem end which has the rough stub of a stem). I put them whole in a large bowl and covered them with a brine solution of 1/2cup pickling salt dissolved in 3 quarts of water. I placed a plate on top of the cukes and weighed  it down with a jar of water. The cukes must be submerged and soak for 24 hours. The next day I drained and rinsed the cukes, and put them back into the bowl.  I made a syrup with 4 cups of white vinegar, 1 cup of sugar and a spice bag containing 1 teaspoon each of dill seed, mustard seed, celery seed, coriander seed, and peppercorns. for good measure I added a bay leaf. This solution I brought to a boil for 5 minutes and took off the heat and removed the spice bag. Then pour this boiling hot syrup over the cucumbers. Cover the bowl again with a plate and jar making sure the cucumbers are completely submerged. Let them stand another 24 hours. The next day remove the cucumbers and put the syrup in a pot. Bring the syrup to a boil. Pack 3-4 cucumbers per pint jar, adding 3 sprigs of fresh dill to each jar. Ladle the hot syrup into the jars, with 1/2 inch headspace. With a flat blade of a plastic knife, for example, free any air bubbles trapped in the jars. Wipe the rims with a clean damp paper towel, adjust the lids and rings. Process in a water bath canner at 185 degrees for 30 minutes. Note: for Kosher Dills, add one peeled clove of garlic per jar.

Kosher Dills, pint jars

Packed and ready for syrup.

If the cucumbers are too large, you may cut them in half and / or cut them shorter. Pack about 3 cukes per pint jar. Yield: 7 pints.

ICICLE PICKLES HOMEMADE FROM MY "FARM"

 

 I have a little vegetable garden which is planted with a few cucumber vines, a half-dozen tomatoes, some pole beans and a couple zucchini, plus lots of herbs.  Just this week, in this heat, the cucumbers have grown like crazy, and I picked more than 5 pounds.

As you can see, the cucumbers are rather large, too large for whole dills. 

I found an easy recipe for "Icicle Pickles" in my old standby, the "Heinz Guide to Successful Pickling", easy because it calls for only a few ingredients and a quick method.

 The batch recipe called for 3 pounds cucumbers, trimmed and cut into spears, one large sweet onion, cut into 6 pieces, 6 (4 inch) pieces of celery, 1 tablespoon mustard seed, 1 quart white vinegar, 2-1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup pickling salt, and 1 cup water.  

 I had six wide mouth pint jars and lids on hand, so I washed them thoroughly, and put them aside. I washed the cucumbers in the sink with a vegetable brush to get rid of the spines and dirt, always wash the produce really well. Then I cut the cukes into spears, and put them in the crock and covered them with ice water to rest for a couple of hours, while I ate dinner.

After dinner, I drained the cucumbers and packed them cold into the jars, adding to each a piece of celery and of onion, and a 1/2 teaspoon of mustard seed.  The advantage of the wide mouth jars is that it is easy and quick to pack them. In the meantime, the vinegar, sugar and salt and water were put into a pot to boil.

 Filled the jars with the hot pickle solution and wiped the rims clean, put on the lids and rings. They were processed 10 minutes in the boiling water canner and then removed and left to cool. All of them sealed ( the lid flattens down), which is good! but I will have to wait a day or so to open one and taste the pickles. They do look very nice, don't they?