This Week's Food

One of the very best parts of this job, beyond the weekly cornucopia of delicious goodies, is the people you meet. The amazing customers, talented farmers and the incredible, mission-driven colleagues in the field.  In the latter category Pan Denholm, of South Shore Organics, is the top of the class.
 
Pam started South Shore Organics in 2010, when Farmers' Markets were starting to take off and CSA's were gaining in popularity. Her aim was to provide the missing link for busy families: connection to local growers and purveyors through a convenient delivery. Pam wanted to develop a service that supported her community, but was scaleable. Farmers markets served immediate neighborhoods, CSA's relied on meeting at drop points, but with Pam anybody on the South Shore could get a delivery. (Sound familiar, Family Dinnerists?) This service was scaled over time, bringing delicious food to thousands of doorsteps. It became a year-round sustainable, reliable support for local growers who could not only plan their seasons, but find way to extend them into the off season.
 
Sadly, as many of you know, South Shore Organics closed its doors at the end of March. Their last delivery was March 23^rd, but their impact will be felt much longer. In Pam’s tenure SSO made over 100,000 deliveries, spent over $1.5M at local farms and donated over 50,000 pounds of produce to food pantries. Hers is an extraordinary contribution to the causes of farmers, environmentalists and fervent foodies alike.
 
Pam’s vision and her commitment to supporting local farmers is inspiring. We are humbled and proud to be working with her and her dedicated customers to bring Family Dinner to the South Shore. We hope to continue her mission and make her proud!

To our new South Shore Customers, welcome to Family Dinner. We are so happy to have you!

This week's writing is a bit conflicted.  We wanted to share our own thinking about the labels you see in grocery stores. Catchy and attractive adjectives describing food; words like "local" and "fresh" get bantered about pretty willy-nilly. Especially because the definitions of those words, which seek to be so meaningful, are actually quite vague. If you drag out your momma's Webster's, scan over to "local", you'll see its defined as "characterized by or relating to position in space : having a definite spatial form or location".

What does that really mean? Local to where? To whom? We're willing to turn the other cheek in Target when we see "organic gummy bears" but what is local about boxed Mac and Cheese? How is this local to Boston?

But we're not about to stand on a sustainably-sourced soap box about it. Nobody buys locally all of the time, including us. Nobody eats locally or organic all of the time, including us. 

What can we do?  If you care deeply about food, all of the hub-bub around food labels can leave in you in an existential crisis. For now, we believe the best thing we can do is highlighting food from local farmers and sharing that food to as many folks in our community as possible. Why do we do this? Because when you know who made your food, you have a much better idea of how it was made and what goes into it. Moreover, we love to talk about local producers and purveyors because we think food tastes better when you know where it comes from. Much better. Leagues and galaxies better. 

Oh, and this week we have blue potatoes. Nerd alert! They're blue due to the levels of natural anthocyanins, water soluble pigments they contain- what's up AP CHEM CLASS! They're beautiful and a little weird.

(We'll post a picture of these little blue pups in the AM, as soon as we get our hands on 'em!)

One of our favorite things is traveling to meet with our farmers and making new friends along the way- like this little love who is one of the newest addition at Clark Farm in Carlisle.  We went to pick up the Broccoli micro greens that Andrew planted for us and immediately got distracted by the sheep. What micro greens? It took everything in our power not to throw her in the car, tighten her seatbelt (safety first) and speed off in cloud of dust. But that would have been... baaaaad.

(Like that joke.)

Speaking of making friends, what better way to make 'em and keep 'em than Tacos. Tacos speak the universal language of awesome and we are thrilled to again highlight the Organic Tortillas from Mi Tierra Tortillas in Hadley, MA. They use no additives and no chemicals; just water, corn and lime. As they say "100 % corn, in the way our forefathers intended." (I hope our forefathers also intended us to eat a plate full of tacos and wash them down with a cold beer or three, because that's what we intend to do.)

Finally, this week Fran from Red's Best told us that scallops were not to be missed.  Unable to resist ourselves, we included them on top of the haddock that can be fried to perfection for your Taco Time. Double dose of delicious.

Often in this space we highlight a local farmer or ingredient or pair of overalls we are really excited about. This week we thought we would shine a light on a local organization we are proud to work with who is making a profound impact in our community.

The Somerville Homeless Coalition is a non-profit based in Davis Square in Somerville, taking a comprehensive look at the complex issue of homelessness. They run shelters, clothing and food drives, gift collections at the holidays etc.  They are an extraordinarily dedicated group of people whose motto is that they’re always trying to put "themselves out of business".

We’re in awe of what they do and have been trying to do our little bit to help. The first Sunday of every month Family Dinner brings a big, warm home cooked meal to the adult shelter. We buy as many ingredients from our farmers and purveyors as possible and spend the afternoon peeling, prepping and cooking dinner for 16 adults. Sometimes our farmers, like Tad, get really excited about the idea and donate 30 dozen eggs. Then, in addition to dinner, we find ourselves making giant mounds of scrambled eggs on a chilly morning. We really enjoy bringing Family Dinner to the broader community and finding ways in which food can be an expression of love and community. When you support Family Dinner you support this important mission and we are grateful for it.