Feburary's New Foods!

New this month

• Heritage flours, grains, pancake mix and more
• Chocolate Chips: Dark, White, No-soy and vegan rice milk chocolate
• 100% beef hotdogs
• Stew meat
• Barley Beef is back
• By popular request, one more Alemar Cheese - St. James

Organic Heritage Flour, Grains and More

When we asked Travis at Backwards Bread to custom make sandwich bread and pizza crust for us using the heritage wheat, we weren't logistically in a position to offer the flour itself. That didn't stop many of you from asking!

We're finally ready to offer Sunrise Mill's heritage wheat and organic products.

Heritage Flour Benefits

• Better digestibility: many on a Gluten-Free diet can eat heritage wheat even though it has gluten -read the story from the founders of the Sunrise Flour Mill.
• Higher nutrient density: heritage wheat has more nutrients
• Better Flavor - Seriously. So much better

Organic Benefits

• Organic also increases nutrient density
• Better for the environment, captures carbon
• No synthetic pesticides - Conventional grains are typically sprayed with chemicals after harvest (yuk !)

No Shortcut Grain

Just like TC Farm's meat, these grains are a 'no shortcut' product. Don't worry about bleaching or bromating or synthetic pesticides (we privately test to ensure there is no glyphosate) ... You won't find any of those 'gotcha' things found in other brands to make food cheaper with hidden costs.

One other example: These flours are ground with an impact Unifine mill. This means more nutrition and finer whole wheat flour which makes fluffier bread, pancakes and other treats.

Unifine mills keep the flour at lower temps than even stone ground which degrades nutrients. It also avoids the need for added moisture whiuch can cause rancidity in traditionally milled flours.

I can't stress enough about how big of an impact this unifine mill is for whole wheat (and more nutrient-dense) flours. It really keeps the flour fluffier-- the pancake mix has better flavor and the texture is almost as light as all-purpose flour. Normal store-bought whole wheat flour would never work like this.

Available Organic Products

• Heritage Flour: The Turkey Red variety we use in our sandwich loaves and pizza crusts (whole wheat or white)
• Heritage 7 grain pancake mix
• 7 grain cereal - make amazing porridge
• Thick-cut rolled oats

Coming soon: Heritage organic pasta (!)

If members express interest, we also could offer a heritage whole wheat pastry flour (better in scones, brownies and such) and fine or coarse cornmeal or polenta.

Pascha Organic Chocolate

Last month we offered Pascha's 70% dark chocolate bar. We love how intense the chocolate flavor due to a lack of emulsifiers, excess sugars, or any filler ingredients.

We decided to add additional items from Pascha since 3 ingredient chocolate isn't typically available in the grocery ...plus they are just darn tasty!

One unique offering from Pascha is rice milk as an ingredient in the milk chocolate and white chocolate chips. Organic 'factory' dairy is just something we prefer to avoid; having a high-quality vegan alternative is exciting.

• 55% dark chocolate chips - technically still a semi-sweet, you'll be surprised at the difference from the 45% version we offer from Tierra Farm.
• 85% bittersweet chocolate chips - you'll have to be a dark chocolate fan to eat these plain, but with some espresso? Sure!
  They are quite good in chocolate chip cookies or Betsy's scones (where we especially love them mixed with the cranberries!)
• White Chocolate Chips (no dairy) - Betsy is going to make up a dark chocolate cookie with white chocolate to share soon -- but Jack recommends making a parsnip soup with white chocolate. It will be the best soup you make this season (look for a recipe from us soon).
• No dairy milk chocolate chips - sometimes you just want milk chocolate - it's nice to have amazing flavored chocolate without contributing to factory dairy farms.

Restocked Beef Items

We are catching up after the crazy year!

100% beef hotdogs

After many requests, we've been able to make more of our organic 'grown up' hotdogs in a 100% beef version.

One trick to making 100% grass-fed 100% beef sausages is that we need a really well-finished steer to make the quality product we're after. This is especially true for hotdogs that need enough fat to properly emulsify and get the texture and bite we're after.

We never add any fillers or binders or other garbage to our deli items, so we need the prime of the prime trim off of our steers to make 100% beef sausages.

Barley Beef

Last year we had a mild winter and this winter is shaping up the same. Our grass-fed beef has been really consistent and tasty as a result. However, we are thrilled to have our organic fed barley beef back in stock again!

If you haven't yet, read all about the barley beef here.

Right now we are just listing the beef patties, roasts and a few other items. We should* have steaks listed by the end of the month if you'd like to check back.

New Cheese

Several members have asked for Alemar's St. James Tomme-Style cheese. These are fermented in larger 2+lb size wheels and we didn't think our members wanted an entire wheel!

Alemar was gracious enough to offer 1/6th sized wedges for TC Farm members. Like nearly all of our grocery items, you'll find this is priced at a discount for our members as well. Since they are cutting these by hand, please plan on some variation in size and don't plan on aging in your fridge for several months like you can do with their other cheeses (see our cheese tip article).

Here are all of Alemar's cheeses available, last chance to get the Sakatah until next fall.