February - 2021

We've got a ton of great new items to offer for February like heritage flours, grains, pancake mix, chocolate chips and Alemar Cheese (St. James). Plus some returning favorites! (All beef hot dogs, stew meat or barley beef anyone?) PLUS some background about how the pastries are made. Not to mention an update about the end of soup season and an invitation to switch over to the new Albertville Neighborhood Pickup Site. Whew!

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New and Returning Items

We have a bunch of new stuff for February -- as well as a couple of favorites making their return. We've got the highlights below but be sure to read the full blog post if you want to get a little more detail about any/all of them:

New:

• Heritage flours, grains, pancake mix and more
• Chocolate Chips: (Dark, White, No-soy and vegan rice milk chocolate)
• Alemar Cheese - St. James

Returning:

• 100% beef hotdogs
• Stew meat
• Barley Beef is back

Organic Heritage Flour Products from Sunrise Mill:

• 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

These are selling a LOT faster than we expected. We only have a limited quantity of each this month. If anything is sold out: don't worry, we plan to have a lot more of each in March. You can check back for your March delivery (or tell us to let you know when it comes back in stock)

4 Kinds of Organic Chocolate Chips

We've added additional items from Pascha since 3 ingredient chocolate isn't typically available in the grocery .

Be sure to note the no-dairy milk chocolate and white chocolate chips! Rice milk is an ingredient in the milk chocolate - we are excited to have a high-quality vegan alternative.

• 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).
• Milk Chocolate Chips (no dairy)
  Sometimes you just want milk chocolate - it's nice to have amazing flavored chocolate without contributing to factory dairy farms.

TC Farm Meats Back by Popular Request: Stew Meat, All Beef Hot Dogs and Barley Beef

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 only listing the beef patties, roasts and a few other items. We hope to have steaks listed by the end of the month if you'd like to check back.

Stew Meat

Enough people asked for it that it came back! Our stew meat package contains two packs of dry-aged, hand-trimmed stew meat. Each pack is around 1 pound each. We will make stew meat only out of the best lean roasts. Hand trimmed and ready to enjoy. (We may include barley or grass fed beef in the stew meat packages)

Alemar Cheese - St. James

Several members have asked for Alemar's St. James Tomme-style cheese.

These are fermented in larger two pound+ 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.
This is your last chance to get the Sakatah until next fall.

Pastry Update - We have more this month + how they are made (mmmm)

We sold out of all of our pastries in January and had to get more for February to make sure we had enough for people. We can't guarantee they won't sell out again. These are SO good.

Part of what makes pastries good is the delicate handling of the dough -- all of these are laminated dough, meaning someone has to roll the dough out and then add butter on top of the dough. Then fold it and fold it. Then roll it out. Then fold it and fold it and roll it back out so it is a ridiculous number of layers of butter and dough. (The butter has to stay cold enough the entire time so that it doesn't melt into the dough (or you just have a dinner roll). But if it is too cold, it will not spread and roll out.) Then they are cut and shaped. In the case of the almond ones, the almonds are crushed into a paste since there isn't a way for us to buy high quality almond paste that is organic. Then the paste is rolled inside the pastry. It is baked and immediately put into the freezer to stop the cooking process. Then more paste is put ON TOP and it is quickly put into the hot oven to cook that paste and pulled out at just the right time and back into the freezer to prevent the pastry under it from being over cooked.

Wow!

End of Soup Season

February deliveries mark the end of soup season. Be sure to add your favorites to your February delivery (if it is still in stock).

Stay tuned for other new organic products we'll be adding for the spring and summer.

Need more people picking up at the new Albertville location

A couple months back we added a second Albertville location (Albertville - Near Cedar Creek Golf) to lighten the load of the first Albertville neighborhood pickup location (Albertville - 53rd and Labeaux). It is just down the road from the original location. We still need more of you to start picking up there. Towards the end of the month, if we haven't had "enough" people change their location to the newer one, we will need to be switching some people to the second location. (For sure we will let you know if we do!)