EatLocal365 » Union Square greenmarket

Gilfeather Turnip Casserole

Lindsay — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 00:12:47 +0000

Here’s one more root vegetable recipe before we switch over to asparagus and salad greens. I clipped this out of a New York Magazine while we still lived in NYC, because we occasionally shopped at Windfall Farms. I also don’t really have any good rutabaga recipes, other than our standard roast-everything-in-a-pan method. “Hold on there, Lindsay”, you might say, “The title of this post says ‘turnip’ not ‘rutabaga’.” Yes, observant reader, it is actually a rutabaga, but Mr. John Gilfeather thought it was a turnip. Also, Jerusalem artichokes are neither Israeli nor artichokes. What can I say? Vegetable identity crisis.

The Gilfeather turnip is a Slow Food Ark of Taste product, which makes it worth seeking out. The Ark of Taste program finds and protects endangered flavors – those beloved by old-timers, but threatened by industrial agriculture. Just for fun, here are some other Ark of Taste products from the Northeast.

Bay scallops
Boiled cider (used as a sweetener)
“Old-Type” Rhode Island Red chicken
Shrub (okay, not technically a Northeast thing, but a new favorite of mine)
True Red Cranberry bean

Kind of makes me want to make an Ark of Taste bingo game…

Back the to rutabaga! It looks like a big white turnip, but is a little milder with less of a bite. Originating in southern Vermont, it’s even more local to us now that we’ve moved to Boston, so I was delighted to find one in one of our last CSA pick-ups.

This would make a great light lunch, but we cooked up some sausages to make a more substantial meal. It was nice and fluffy, like mashed potatoes, but with a more complex flavor – just enough peppery-ness.

Gilfeather Turnip Casserole

Serves 4 as a side or 2 as an entrée

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it (SWM = Somerville Winter Market)
2 to 2 1/2 pounds	Gilfeather turnips	You can use regular rutabagas if you can’t find Gilfeathers.	Red Fire Farm
2	Eggs		Red Fire Farm
1/2 cup	Milk		Shaw Farm (SWM)
1/2 tsp	Salt
1/2 tsp	Nutmeg	Freshly grated, if you can
Dash	Ground allspice
3 TBsp	All purpose flour		Wild Hive Farm
1 TBsp	Butter		Shaw Farm (SWM)
2 TBsp	Bread crumbs

Directions

Peel the rutabagas and chop them into cubes. Try to make the chunks close in size, so that they all cook in the same amount of time.

In a medium pot, add the rutabagas, a pinch of salt, and enough water to cover. Boil until the rutabagas are soft, about 30 minutes.

Once the rutabagas are soft, drain them and allow them to cool for a few minutes.

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Put the rutabagas, eggs, milk, salt, spices, and flour into a food processor and process until smooth. If you don’t have a food processor, you can mash everything by hand, but I’d recommend mashing the rutabagas until they’re smooth first, then the eggs (one at a time), then the rest. This will help you get all the chunks out.

Rub just a little of the butter on the bottom and sides of a 1-quart soufflé dish. Pour the mixture into the prepared dish.

Use a fork to mash the remaining butter into the bread crumbs and sprinkle it over the top of the rutabaga mash.

Bake for an hour or until the buttery crumbs are nicely browned.

Looking at that photo, I think that it would be a really pretty side for dinner guests if it were baked in individual ramekins. It’s not terribly attractive sunk down in that big soufflé dish (we don’t have a 1-quart one, so I used what we had).

Dark Days Challenge Week 1: How to Make Potato Gnocchi

Erik — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 14:25:06 +0000

To motivate ourselves through the winter, we have joined the Dark Days Challenge, which asks that we cook one meal a week focused on SOLE ingredients (sustainable, organic, local, and ethical). Right up our alley! Each blogger gets to set their own parameters within these guidelines. We’ll be sticking to the following rules for our Dark Days recipes:

Our primary sources for ingredients will be our CSA through Red Fire Farm, the Somerville Winter Farmers Market, and our canned/dried/frozen stores from the summer.
If we need to supplement, we’ll use ingredients from within 150 miles of home or those that we get from the NYC Greenmarket system while visiting friends and family there.
Salt, dried herbs and spices, baking soda/powder, and vinegar are fair game, but we’ll try to find local sources.

I sort of feel like relying on the Greenmarket is cheating, but we’re still figuring things out here and will be spending a time in NYC for holidays, so I’m giving us a pass. On to the recipe!

This is actually two recipes, one for the gnocchi and another for the sauce. Both are variations on recipes from Lidia’s Family Table, which is a phenomenal resource.

Potato Gnocchi

Makes 4 servings

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
1.5 lbs	Potatoes		Red Fire Farm CSA
1	Egg	Beaten	Red Fire Farm CSA
2 cups	All purpose flour		Cayuga Pure Organics (NYC Greenmarket)
0.75 TBsp	Salt

Directions

Clean the whole potatoes and place them in a large pot. Fill with enough water to cover the potatoes plus a little headroom. Place on high heat, cover, and allow to boil for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender when poked with a fork but not yet falling apart. Drain the potatoes and let them cool enough to handle.

Rice the potatoes. This can be done either by peeling them and using a potato ricer, or by using a food mill (which will automatically remove and separate the skins). We used the attachment to our Kitchenaid stand mixer, which is actually two attachments, both the food mill attachmentand parts from the meat grinder attachment. It’s kind of complicated to put together, but it’s a real labor and time-saver. I wish we had taken pictures of the milling process (and construction), but we had just gotten back from Thanksgiving and were cooking for company coming over, so we were in a bit of a time pinch. Next time!

Rice / mill the potatoes on a sheet pan. Using a rubber spatula, mush and spread them out over the pan. Sprinkle the salt over the layer of potato. Let it cool and dry for lat least 20 minutes (up to however long you feel like it!).

Pour the beaten egg over the potato and then layer on the flour. [At this point in our timeline I finished the unpacking and cleaning up and made it to the kitchen to help, with the camera!] Start with about 1 cup of flour.
Using the rubber spatula, fold the bottom layer of the potato over the top around the edges. Repeat (gently) a few times until it begins to resemble a loose dough. Gradually add more flour until you have a kneadable dough. If you don’t add enough flough, the gnocchi will fall apart when cooked…but they’ll still be tasty!
Using your hands, finish the kneading process by making the dough slightly more consistent. Sprinkle on more flour if necessary and knead it in. It should feel more like a dough than mashed potatoes. Shape it into a ball and cut it into quarters.
Clean and lightly flour a work surface. (Up until now you could do it all on the sheet pan.) Roll out each quarter of the dough in an 18 inch rope. Cut each rope in half to make them easier to work with.
Cut each portion into pieces between 2/3 of an inch to 1 inch. Have a floury sheet pan nearby to start collecting the shaped gnocchi.
To give the gnocchi its classic shape, hold a fork so that the tines are facing downwards and push each piece onto the fork near where the tines join. The tines will make an impression on the one side and your finger will create a slight indentation on the other side. Then, roll the gnocchi off the end of the fork to make it more cylindrical and to create the tine impressions all around. Rumor is that eventually you can do this in one motion. I’m not there yet.
Once all of the gnocchi are shaped and on the sheet pan, toss lightly in the flour to avoid sticking and cover them with a towel. They should be boiled immediately at this point or frozen. They don’t sit around well in this form. Bring a large pot of water to boil (get this started in advance if you remember).

Using a kitchen skimmer / spider or slotted spoon, drop 5 or 6 gnocchi in the boiling water at a time. This is important because the water needs to be at the boiling temperature to form the “skin” that will hold the gnocchi together. The more gnocchi pieces are added to the water at one time, the more the temperature will drop and the longer it will take to recover. Limiting the number of pieces is annoying but in the end it will be easier and you will get better results.

Leave each batch in the water for 2 – 3 minutes, until they plump up a bit a float to the surface. Fish them out with your skimmer, but be gentle with them! Cooking for too long will lead to mush, so don’t be afraid to pull them out a few at a time as they float.

Simple Tomato Sauce

Makes a lot

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it
2 quarts	San Marzano / plum tomatoes	Previously canned (2 quart jars)	Cherry Lane Farms
1	Large onion	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Red Fire Farm CSA
1	Medium celeriac	Diced (about 1.5 – 2 cups)	Enterprise Farm (Somerville Winter Farmers Market)
3 TBsp	Olive oil
2 cups	Water
2	Dried bay leaves
1	Dried chile	Crumbled (substitute 1-2 tsp red pepper flakes)	Northshire Farm chiles dried last summer
1 tsp	Kosher salt

Directions

Place the oil in a Dutch oven or large pot over medium-high heat. Once it’s heated, add the diced onion and celeriac (or you can substitute carrot, celery, etc.). Cook, stirring frequently, for 3-4 mintes. You want them to soften but not brown. [Note: we made this sauce using our own canned tomotoes. You can use store-bought canned San Marzanos, if you must.]
Add the tomatoes, salt, bay leaves, and red pepper flakes. Swish the water around the tomato jar or can to get out the last bits and dump it into the pot. Turn up the heat, cover, and bring the sauce to a boil. Check on it and stir frequently.

Once it boils, turn the heat down to medium / medium-high to maintain a bubbling simmer. Cover and cook for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally. At this point you can continue simmering and cooking down for as long as you like, up to an hour. When the sauce is as thick as you want, remove the bay leaves, blend with a hand mixer to your desired consistency, and add salt to taste

We served our gnocchi and sauce with another round of our arugula, beet, and peach salad. We quenched our thirst with some delicious cider from Eve’s Cidery and capped it off with little parfaits of home-canned cherries in wine and whipped cream. Yum! Nothing better than an impromptu Sunday dinner with good friends.

Market Day!

Erik — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 20:05:03 +0000

We went to the greenmarket today with our friends Brian and Mary (and their baby daughter, Ellie). We only have a few pictures, but here they are.

Cayuga Pure Organics began putting their wares in bulk buckets a few weeks (months?) ago, and the system seems to be working well to scoop your own. Here is also a pile of lovely peaches.

The market today was overwhelmed by TONS of tomatoes. We saw San Marzanos (although I didn’t get a picture), and a HUGE variety of beefsteak, heirloom, and cherry tomatoes.

There were also plenty of good-looking eggplants, include the Glen Quagmire of eggplants… giggity!

Market Day!

Erik — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 22:40:49 +0000

The greenmarket early on summer mornings is the best. There is just so much, so much variety, and so many rare items that we’ve never seen before. You have to get there early before these more unique offerings sell out, but we do anyway due to the heat and the crowds (plus it’s easier to take picture).

One summer vegetable that is going crazy right now is eggplants. There were typical eggplants abound, but we saw these unique long eggplants, as well as the orange “Turkish eggplants” (no, they aren’t tomatoes!). We bought some so we will let you know how they are. Finally, we saw fairtytale eggplants again (the little ones) but we also saw one that belongs in a fairy tale, that is shaped like a head!

Tomatoes and bell peppers are also everywhere. Some of the heirloom tomatoes are beautiful.

Summer peaches and apricots…

… and cherries everywhere! Cherries are approaching the end of their season in NY, so Lindsay is going nuts canning them today. Look for more posts soon. The dark ones are sweet cherries and the lighter ones are sour cherries, although I would have guessed backwards on that one based on how they look.

Our friends at Northshire Farm had some excellent summer squash and zucchinis. They also had the onion blossoms below. I know, I hear “onion” and “blossom” in the same sentence and I think of a giant fried ball at Outback Steakhouse, but this is not that. The little white flowers have a very strong but unique onion taste… strong but kind of sweet. I’ve been picking at them all afternoon, but we’re trying to come up with a recipe to feature them in.

Anther new one for us was cranberry beans. The sign set up by Lani’s Farm says “LIke Lima beans they have a sweet and nutty flavor with creamy and meeaty textures. Shell and cook for 8-10 minutes.” We already had too much so we skipped them this week, but now that we know about them I want to try them next week.

Keith’s Farm also has it’s famous Rocambole garlic, which right now is halfway between being spring garlic and dries garlic. A few more weeks and those greens will be the dry husks that most people are used to. Once the garlic bulbs get to size they braid the greens of 10+ garlics and hang and dry the bunches (to keep vampires away).

Paffenroth Gardens has to many types of radishes right now: regular red, purple plum, white icicle, and white/pink French / breakfast radishes. Last weekend we tried the breakfast radished, sliced thinly and placed on buttered toast, then salted. They were delicious. I recommend. Finally, we saw the first real corn of the season!

Speaking of the corn, we couldn’t wait. We had it steamed for lunch, with some leftover homemade pizza from last night. In case you’re wondering, the pizza features red spring onions, spring garlic, fresh tomatoes, and purple Amaranth leaves, which were very bitter raw but mellowed out to a nice crunch and brought a really earthy flavor to the pizza.

Market Day!

Erik — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 18:16:31 +0000

Today was a great day at the greenmarket because there are so many items just coming out. They are still all small and young, but it’s great to see all these things that have been missing from the market for 9-10 months.

Fairytale eggplants are the best, and great for grilling (Monday!). These are still tiny and they are the first that we’ve seen, but we can’t wait. Also, we saw fresh chickpeas, which are rare. Yes, those fuzzy grape-looking things are chickpeas! Both of these are from Lani’s Farm.

This is also the first of the fennel, and it’s still so young that there are no real “bulbs” on it; it looks like celery. (Non hot-house) bell peppers are also back.

We saw baby kohlrabi, of both the green and purple varieties. Kohlrabi will eventually be available that are the size of softballs, but for now it’s closer to golf balls. But these are tender and great to eat raw with dip.

We are also getting the first of the peaches, apricots, and plums. All of these are a little bit early, but from what we hear the early heat this year is causing everything to appear a few weeks early.

Sour cherries are in full swing, and Lindsay has elaborate plans to can some pie filling. We’ve been buying blueberries to snack on for a few weeks, but they haven’t been perfect until this week. Now they are plump, juicy, sweet, and at their finest. We’ve heard that they will still be around for a few weeks. Also, we saw almost no strawberries this week, but heard that they are in a harvesting lull and will be back again in coming weeks. The farmers rotate their planting and harvests and somehow it all seemed to line up this week.

Cherry tomatoes are here, including the very first Golden / Sweet 100s. In a few weeks those will be as sweet as a berry.

Keith’s Farm is selling whole garlic, meaning the bulb (which is finally full grown) with the stalk and the scape attached! We just got into garlic scapes this year (trying cooking them the ways you would cook asparagus). They are so good. It’s nice getting the various growth stages of garlic, because that something that you don’t see in the supermarket. The garlic you buy there (even at Whole Foods) is static an unchanging. We also noticed that Migliorelli had corn, the that (we think) we have seen, although it doesn’t seem to be at peak yet, because when it is, it will be everywhere.

Northshire Farm had quail and duck eggs. We also bought some honey. They carry a few different types, each made from a different type of pollen. Sp = Spring Flowers, F = Fall Flowers, L = Linden, G = Goldenrod, and I forget what SF stands for. We like the spring flower variety.

I like the Canuco Farm sign, “100% uncertified organic”. Our type of people! Lindsay is also expanding our fire escape garden. It now includes basil, thyme, cilantro, and parsley. We needed to get some potting soil. We drop off our compost every time we visit the greenmarket, and today we got to buy it back in the form of the potting soil that they sell. Buying back our own garbage?!

Market Day!

Erik — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 15:38:43 +0000

Here are our market pictures from the past two weeks. There are a lot of fresh new things in season.

First, the berries:

Spring onions and spring garlic. Over the past few weeks we have seen garlic and onions sold in various stages of growth. A few weeks ago they looked like scallions with a slightly bigger bulb on the end. Now they look like onions and garlic, but with fresh scallion-like greens sticking out of the top. This week we began to see the first garlic with the green dried into more of a husk. Fresh garlic is interesting to work with before it gets dried. Very flavorful!

Young beets and young carrots, with the greens still attached. We use beet greens like any other bitter leafy green. We don’t use the carrot greens.

Summer squash, which we will be posting a lot about in the coming weeks. This was a summer staple last year!

Fresh lavender:

S&SO always has such a nice haul of root vegetables and onions, and they set it up in such a pretty way. Same with Norwich Meadows and leafy greens.

Snap peas and purple string beans.

By the time we were done yesterday, out basket looked like it was exploding with green. Several people on the street commented (including a woman on Park Avenue S. who was stunned by how pretty it was). When we got home we rewarded ourselves with a snack made up of a thin slice of Cato Corner cheese and Lindsay’s homemade Cranbanerro Jelly. Yum!

Market Day!

Erik — Sun, 05 Jun 2011 02:29:03 +0000

Strawberries are here! A number of vendors in Union Square were exploding with them. We picked up a few pints from Hodgson Farm. Lindsay is making and canning a strawberry-lemon concentrate.

Spring onions are everywhere, and very pretty.

Asparagus is still going strong, and tomatoes have begun to appear in recent weeks from places without greenhouses.

Lani’s Farm was selling many interesting greens. We bought some yu choy sum, and will post when we figure out what to do with it. As always, they also had some beautiful swiss chard.

FInally, some peas and flowers:

Greens are back! Mixed Green Salad with Sunflower Thyme Pesto

Lindsay — Wed, 11 May 2011 00:05:19 +0000

Greens, I have missed you! After a winter of cabbage and root vegetables, I was DYING for a big green salad. Armenia has great tomatoes and cucumbers already, but they don’t really have a green salad tradition. I knew the first thing I would make once home would be a ridiculously huge salad.

We weren’t able to go to the market on Saturday because of a wedding (congratulations!!), so we went to the much smaller Monday market yesterday. Luckily, there was still a great selection of beautiful dark leafy greens and herbs and we bought a lot – two bunches of Swiss chard, one of red Russian kale, one of collard greens, one of komatsuna, and a bag each of spinach and arugula. This is pretty typical of us in the summer, but does take a little advanced planning. To minimize waste, we try to stick to the following rules:

When we get home, we wash and dry the greens before we put them away. We wrap them in big tea towels and then pack them in special reusable plastic bags, but you could use paper towels and regular plastic bags as long as they’re clean and dry. We also prep them by picking out any less than perfect leaves and removing stems and chopping, if necessary. This does take some time on Saturday morning, but it saves a lot of time during the week and makes it more likely that we’ll cook at home instead of ordering take out.
If we’re planning to eat any of the greens raw, e.g. in a salad, we do it early in the week. As greens age, they get more bitter and less tender.
If we’re planning any recipes where cooked greens are the star of the show, we make those by mid-week. The greens can wait a little longer, since they’re cooked.
Finally, if we have any greens left at the end of the week, we cook them and use them as an accent, e.g. pizza topping or frittata.

As an example, here’s our meal plan for the week:

Mixed green salad with sunflower thyme pesto (Monday)
Swiss chard with pinenuts and grain (Tuesday)
Herb salad with curry dressing (Wednesday)
Asparagus with “cheezy” sauce (Thursday)
Mashed sweet potatoes with ribbons of collard greens (Friday)

This salad is based on a recipe from Ani’s Raw Food Kitchen and definitely hit the spot last night. It’s hearty enough for dinner and a great introduction to raw dark leafy greens, if you’re a little hesitant. We used olive oil in the dressing, but realized right after we poured it in that we should have used our local sunflower oil. Next time! The recipe makes 4 large servings, but only dress what you plan to eat right away to avoid soggy greens. Don’t be too worried about the exact proportion of the greens. We used about the same amount of each type, but it’s not an exact science. It’s okay if a bunch of kale is smaller than a box/bag of arugula or whatever.

Mixed Green Salad with Sunflower Thyme Pesto
Makes 4 large servings

Amount	Ingredient	Preparation	Where we bought it (* Union Sq. Greenmarket)
1 bunch	Kale	Use red russian kale if you can find it, otherwise Tuscan/dinosaur/lacinato kale	Lani’s Farm *
1 bunch	Mustard greens	We used komatsuna, which was very tender.	Lani’s Farm *
1 bunch	Spinach	Or several handfuls, if loose	Lani’s Farm *
1 bunch	Arugla	Or several handfuls, if loose	Lani’s Farm *
4 TBsp	Fresh thyme	Strip the leaves off the stem by pinching your fingers around the stem and gently pulling down	Lani’s Farm *
2 cloves	Garlic	Finely chopped	Keith’s Farm *
1 cup	Oil	We used olive oil, but would use sunflower oil next time
1 cup	Sunflower seeds
1/4 cup	Apple cider vinegar
1/2 tsp	Kosher salt

Directions:

Remove the stems and ribs from the mustard greens and chop both the mustard greens and kale into 1/2-inch ribbons (see directions here).
Tear the spinach and arugula into bite-sized pieces and remove the stems, if they’re thick or annoy you (as they do Erik).
Put the greens into a big mixing bowl and toss to distribute everything evenly. If you don’t plan to eat the whole salad, put the amount you want to save back in the refrigerator.
Add all the dressing ingredients to a blender or food processor and process until it is as smooth as you’d like. I like it a little chunky. It will be thick like pesto.
Pour the dressing over the greens, remembering to save some of the dressing if you’ve saved some of the greens, and toss thoroughly. You might need to spread it around a little bit, because the dressing with want to clump in the middle of the salad. Refrigerate any extra dressing for up to four days.
Let the salad sit for about 10 minutes to allow the greens to soften a bit. Then chow down!

After eating this, I felt like my body was reset after all the travel and restaurant food of my business trip. Bring on summer!!

Market Day: Spring has Sprung (Delayed)

Erik — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 00:40:26 +0000

Last Saturday was the first day at the market that I would consider a true spring haul. While it’s been possible to buy some greens for about 6 weeks now, it was only from one or two vendors who grow their early greens under glass, and they charge a considerable premium when they are the only ones selling it. This week, though, there was much more. In addition, a few farmers who have been gone since the fall have returned, and more will reappear for each of the next few weeks.

Unfortunately, it was misting and looked like it might downpour, so I didn’t have my camera with me at the market. When I unpacked, though, I realized that I should take some pictures given all of the greens that I bought. Sorry for the delayed post!

Salad greens: spinach and arugula.

Leafy greens: Swiss chard and Tatsoi.

Spicy greens: spring garlic and ramps

In order to clear out the root vegetables that were still in our apartment, and as a combination “Goodbye dark days!” / “Hello greens!” meal, I made this roasted root vegetable-arugula salad, with thyme salt. The roasted root vegetables consisted of a sweet potato, a carrot, a parsnip, three burdock roots, a handful fingerling potatoes, and a few shallots. To make the thyme salt I stripped the tiny thyme leaves off of the thyme sticks, chopped the leaves finely, and ground them with an equal amount of kosher salt in a mortar and pestle. I tossed the roasted vegetables, thyme salt, and arugula with a tiny bit bit of oil. Yum!

Support Cayuga Pure Organics!

Erik — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 18:22:07 +0000

[UPDATE] We received a response from the GrowNYC; Cayuga stays!

Hello Erik.

Thank you for your email. I am happy to inform you that Cayuga Pure
Organic will remain at Union Square on Saturday.
This Saturday, look for them in the same location as last Saturday. You
will be able to find them on the northeast side of Union Square Park
beginning Saturday, April 16th.
They will also be at Union Square on Wednesday and Friday year round.

Thank you for shopping at Greenmarket.

Hooray!

——————————————————————–

The NYC Greenmarket (a program of GrowNYC) is taking away Cayuga Pure Organics’ spot at the Saturday Union Square market!

The Union Square Greenmarket has begun to expand again over the past two weeks after its winter hibernation, and the stated rationale is that they need to make room for sellers of fresh produce now that the weather is warming up. Cayuga will be welcomed back in the fall as the market shrinks again.

While we appreciate the fact that space is limited, and that sometimes tough decisions need to be made, we could NOT DISAGREE MORE with this decision. While we support their desire to offer as much fresh produce as possible, Cayuga is a truly unique vendor at the Greenmarket. They are one of only two vendors that sell locally grown and milled flour (of all types). They are the ONLY vendor that sells local beans and grains (again, a huge variety), as well as local oil that can be swapped in for olive oil, in the form of local sunflower oil. These local products can and should be made available year-round.

If you read EatLocal365 on a regular basis, you know that we frequently use products from Cayuga Pure Organics. In fact, if you search our site for “Cayuga”, two-thirds of our recipes show up in the results!

When they are available, we should all eat more leafy greens, fresh tomatoes, and all of the other great things that will be coming into season soon. However, that doesn’t mean that we won’t ever want to bake bread with local ingredients or sauté those leafy greens using local oil. If GrowNYC needs to find space for the summer months, there are better choices than sidelining the sole vendor of these types of products. Worst of all, Cayuga has one of the smallest footprints at the entire market, with a tiny stand and a small truck. GrowNYC could work with some of the larger vendors to carve out a small spot for them.

As of now, Cayuga will still be at the Union Square market on Wednesdays and Fridays, so they won’t be completely gone from the neighborhood. However, many people cannot make it to the market on weekdays, and for that reason Saturday is the most lucrative market day for vendors. Cayuga will no doubt take a hit in their business. For a business that is pretty much single-handedly trying to bring back local flour, grains, and beans to the NY area, that would be a shame. They need our support!

Call to Action:

Please send GrowNYC a message through their contact page (or call!). Feel free to use this text if you like:

Please reconsider the decision to take away Cayuga Pure Organic’s spot at the Saturday Union Square Greenmarket. As the only purveyors of local flour, grain, beans, and oil, they are a unique asset and we want their products to remain widely available through the Saturday market, year-round. While we understand the need to make decisions to allocate space at the market, please find an alternate solution!