McEwen & Sons Grits

The WestSide Grocery at the Windmill sells wonderful stone ground grits from McEwen and Sons right outside of Birmingham. We love their high quality product and thought this video was a fun glimpse into their world and their products! Enjoy.

McEwen & Sons True Grits from Jennifer Davick on Vimeo.

Third Plate- NPR Story About a New Look at Sustainable Farming and Local Eating

We found this recent NPR story fascinating and had to share! Click here to listen to the story on NPR.org.

'Third Plate' Reimagines Farm-To-Table Eating To Nourish The Land

by NPR STAFF  May 20, 2014

Perched on a farm along the Hudson River is Dan Barber's award-winning restaurant, Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The food that's harvested on the farm year-round is what is served to diners daily.

But this champion of the farm-to-table movement noticed that farming and consuming foods locally still wasn't all that sustainable.

"Tomatoes are the all star of the farm-to-table world. But in fact, they're like the Hummers of the vegetable world," he tells NPR Morning Edition host Renee Montagne. That's because they require more water and nutrients from the soil than a lot of other vegetables.

"At the end of the day what we need to support is all of the farming decisions that lead to that one great tomato," he says.

Fresh Hops + Local Crops

The Windmill Market, Sweet Olive and the Fairhope Brewery hosted a great event a few weeks back bringing together good food, great beer, local and seasonal stuff with fun folks in a new event called Fresh Hops and Local Crops. We hope this will be the first of many!

Sweet Olive Chef Brenden Lynch crafted a sensational seasonal menu that paired with several of the Brewery's beers that were brewed especially for that night. Some beers were poured right out of the tank, never to touch a keg. Others were poured with only natural carbonation, nothing added. The event got down to the pure essence of the brewing process and the food just complemented everything perfectly. Some of the pork was even braised in beer! My kind of meal.

Below is the menu that you missed (shame on you!) and the beers that were poured. Stay tuned for the next Fresh Hops Local Crops TBA!

PAIRING 1

Little House Farms pork sausage patty (house seasoned) over a cornbread crostini topped with savory apple gravy

Paired with the I Drink Therefore I Amber from the brite tank (this is the last tank the beer goes into before being kegged)

PAIRING 2

Salad- Fresh Baby green Salad with Candied Local Pecans and a Satsuma Vinaigrette served in a warm pastry crust

Paired with Firkin of Fairhope 51 with local satsumas and Mosaic hops 

PAIRING 3

Painted Black-braised chicken slider topped with caramelized onions and pickles on a sweet Challah roll

Paired with the Painted Black IPA with added whole leaf hops – the whole leaf hops are in their most natural form, as opposed to the pelletized hops we more commonly use

PAIRING 4

Chocolate citrus cream tartlets- gingersnap crust topped with chocolate ganache infused with local grapefruit and topped with a white chocolate cream cheese

Paired with the Section Street Wheat infused with local ruby red grapefruit – we will utilize our Randall device to infuse our wheat beer with local grapefruit

A little info about a Firkin...

“It is the fact that the firkin is typically dedicated to housing Real Ale (i.e., cask-conditioned ale), or beer that has not been cold-filtered, pasteurized and carbonated by outside equipment. The ale beer that is housed inside the firkin is naturally carbonated by its resident yeast and its ingredients have not been processed in any way outside of simple fermentation by the yeast. In essence, firkin-contained Real Ale is comparable to the ale beers that were produced hundreds of years ago, before industrialization subjected them to processes that removed and/or killed the yeast, stripping the beer of many of its inherent vitamins (especially the B vitamins), minerals, and perhaps most importantly, taste.”

"Loxley woman starts greenhouse business in her 50s"- Fairhope Courier

Posted: Friday, July 19, 2013 1:03 pm | Updated: 1:38 pm, Fri Jul 19, 2013.

By Jill Clair Gentry / Food editor

Anita Craine has always been passionate about providing safe, nutritious food for her family. Long before the local and natural food movement, she spent her time searching for local farmers who would give her food she believed was more healthful for her family. She grew the foods she couldn't buy herself.

Anita grew up in a farming family, and her grandfather developed the first farmers markets in Alabama.

“I cut my teeth on dinnertime conversation about a living wage for farmers,” she says.

However, Anita spent most of her adult life as a teacher, wife and mother — she grew her own food at home, but never dreamed she'd one day be a farmer who supplied other families with food. But at 56, she's doing just that. In January, Anita and her son Micah opened Craine Creek Farms, a hydroponic greenhouse business. They provide lettuces and herbs to local restaurants, markets and grocery stores, and in the future, Anita says she will sell directly to customers at the farm.

“We want to grow safe food, and we want to grow delicious food,” she says. “So it really has to be all about the product, all about the lettuce.”

Anita spent three years reading, studying and making contacts with businesses who were interested in buying locally-grown lettuce. She and Micah, who recently graduated from the University of Alabama with a business and economics degree, traveled to South Carolina to train on a hydroponic farm before they even started building. This preparation has led to a successful first six months.

“The learning curve is sharp and long, but we are way ahead of where we thought we would be,” Anita says. “We took the time to go out and meet people and develop relationships. We felt like we knew most of the people we're selling to before we ever built and planted, and that has made a huge difference.”

Literally Local... Online

A customer just introduced us to an online publication called Literally Local and we wanted to share. The e-zine says it mission is "celebrating foods grown and raised within a 200 mile radius of Pensacola and the restaurants, chefs and local businesses who use and sell them." 

This part of Baldwin County falls into that radius, and the publication features some of our favorite purveyors like Sweet Home Farm, Fiddler Farms, and more! The content is fun the images are beautiful. Worth a look...

Quinoa should be taking over the world. This is why it isn’t.

We love to love Quinoa at the Windmill, and it is a daily staple on the Sweet Olive menu. So we thought this article from the Washington Post was interesting and wanted to share...

By Lydia DePillis, The Washington Post, Published: July 11, 2013

In the Andean highlands of Bolivia and Peru, the broom-like, purple-flowered goosefoot plant is spreading over the barren hillsides–further and further every spring. When it’s dried, threshed, and processed through special machines, the plant yields a golden stream of seeds called quinoa, a protein-rich foodstuff that’s been a staple of poor communities here for millennia. Now, quinoa exports have brought cash raining down on the dry land, which farmers have converted into new clothes, richer diets, and shiny vehicles.

But at the moment, the Andeans aren’t supplying enough of the ancient grain. A few thousand miles north, at a downtown Washington D.C. outlet of the fast-casual Freshii chain one recent evening, a sign delivered unpleasant news: “As a result of issues beyond Freshii’s control, Quinoa is not available.” Strong worldwide demand, the sign explained, had led to a shortage. A Freshii spokeswoman said that prices had suddenly spiked, and the company gave franchises the choice to either eat the cost or pull the ingredient while they renegotiated their contract.

Quinoa is a low-calorie, gluten-free, high-protein grain that tastes great. Its popularity has exploded in the last several years, particularly among affluent, health-conscious Americans. But the kinks that kept the grain out of Freshii that day are emblematic of the hurdles it will face to becoming a truly widespread global commodity and a major part of Americans’ diet. It shows the crucial role of global agribusiness, big-ticket infrastructure investment, and trade in bringing us the things we eat, whether we like it or not.

In short, it’s hard to keep something on the menu if you might not be able to afford it the next day. And the American agricultural economy makes it hard for a new product to reach the kind of steady prices and day-in-day-out supply that it takes to make it big.

Southern Lady Visits Downtown Fairhope

In the press AGAIN!

Windmill Market is thrilled to be featured in this Month's Southern Lady Magazine. The editors at SL visited all our favorite spots in Fairhope... Windmill of course, MaryAnn's Deli and Sweet Olive Bakery & Cafe included, but also Panini Pete's, Page & Palette, The Church Mouse and more!

You can see a few of the pages copied below, or click here to download the virtual version to your phone, kindle, nook or ipad.

Flying High in Sky Magazine

Sky Magazine just featured the state of Alabama and all the best things to do while there. A friend of ours happened to read it on the plane on the way back from an overseas trip and jumped out of her seat when she saw the WINDMILL featured at 30,000 ft!

Thought you guys might want to check it out! Click them image below to flip through the virtual pages!

Gulf Coast Newspapers: "Leave the shopping to the market"

Leave the shopping to the market

Windmill Market Produce Club brings together Baldwin County foods and local consumers

Friday, June 14, 2013

By Jill Clair Gentry Food editor people@gulfcoastnewspapers.com

Amy Ramagosa of Fairhope and her son Burke pick up their produce box at Windmill Market. Ramagosa says she loves teaching her son about different kinds of vegetables and how farmers grow food for their family to eat.

WHAT: Windmill Market Produce Club

WHERE: Windmill Market, corner of Equality and Bancroft streets in Fairhope

WHEN: Pickup is Mondays from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. in Fairhope and 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. in Mobile

MORE INFO: Stop by Windmill Market, call 251-990-8883 or email Maggie Lacey at maggie@windmillmarket.org.

Imagine: you don't have to go to the grocery store every week. The fruits and vegetables you feed your family tonight were harvested earlier today. You're trying vegetables you never would have bought at the grocery store and discovering you love them. You save money on food and are eating more healthful meals.

This might sound idyllic, but it's is a picture of a real-life program available here in Baldwin County — Windmill Market's Produce Club.

Every Monday for the past two years, dozens of people have flocked to the market to pick up a box of fresh and seasonal fruits and vegetables, dairy, bread, meats and specialty items like granola, soap or coffee.

“It's a ready-made meal plan for the week,” says Maggie Lacey, manager of the Windmill Market. “You've got it all packed up and ready to go, and you've got recipes to get you started.”

And every item is grown or made locally.

“It's as fresh as produce gets,” Lacey says. “We talk to the farmers all week long. Sunday nights, they tell us what they've got, and they harvest Monday morning. There's almost nowhere you can go to get produce that fresh.”

Lacey says about 90 percent of the vegetables come from Baldwin County, but for some items, they work with farmers in south Mississippi, Georgia or Florida.

Bloomin' & Growin'

The Windmill's garden is bursting with buds and tiny fruits everywhere you look!

We try to fill every container, planter and bed with something edible, showing that we can use the ground for both edible and beautiful things at the same time- it doesn't have to be one or the other!

Thanks to Father Nature Landscapes, who makes it all work for us while we stay busy with the restaurant and grocery.

The most interesting things popping up are our tomato plants, which we did not plant on purpose. We recently shifted our compost operation to make room for more back of house space. All the restaurant fruit and vegetables scraps have recently been going to feed Little House Farms heritage breed black pigs instead of making compost anyway, which we think is a fine use for all that. So the remaining compost was added to the beds a few weeks back. The millions of tiny tomato seeds down in the compost that we never once thought about decided to sprout and we now have tomato plants growing from our ears! Out of the base of fruit tree planters, in garden beds, you name it! What a treat to watch these accidental plants grow strong and make food once again!

Pictures of the tomato plants are below, as well as a few other delicious things just starting to pop out. Come by and check it all out for yourself!

Tomato Plants Taking Over!

Tomato Plants Growing Under Our Fruit Trees

Blackberries

Blueberries

Figs

Lettuces Sprouting out of the cracks in the sidewalks and the corner of raised beds!

Tiny Peppers still going and growing strong form last Summer! Mild Winter, I guess...