Eat healthy For the New Year / Recipe Files

It is that time of year again- New year's resolutions are made to eat better, exercise more, try to undo all the damage we did from Thanksgiving to Christmas. It should be easy to change our diet and do what we know is best, but it never is!

The Windmill has an easy solution to your worries: The Produce Club. Every week we pack for our subscribers a delicious box full of the freshest local fruits and veggies around! You go home with a week's worth of fruits and veggies that will keep your diet on track by encouraging you to eat more produce and cut out all the carbs, fillers and processed food.

Below are the recipes from the first two weeks of January, including some healthy, detox recipes from Whole Living Magazine to get your New Year's Resolutions off and running!

January 2 Recipes

Grapefruit, Carrot, and Ginger Juice

Beet, Apple, and Mint Juice

Steamed Broccoli and Squash with Tahini Sauce

Roasted Garlic and Beet Soup

Scallion-and-Mango-Wrapped Shrimp

Beet and Brown Rice Salad with Goat Cheese

Chilled Sesame Spinach

Braised Turnips with Poppy-Seed Bread Crumbs

January 9 Recipes

Baked Sweet Potatoes with Citrus

Crispy Roasted Cauliflower Snack

Cauliflower with Orange Zest and Green Onion

Sautéed Green Cabbage with Country Ham

Moroccan Beef Stew 

** We think this recipe would translate well to our lean ground beef!

Stir-Fried Chicken with Radishes, Chipotles, and Lime

Carrots and Rutabagas with Lemon and Honey

Cauliflower and Broccoli Flan with Spinach Bechamel

Where Have all the Good Eggs Gone?

Well, they aren't all gone, just selling out quickly in the Windmill's grocery!

Chances are if you've come looking for eggs in the last two months you might have been disappointed at least once or twice that we were sold completely out of our fresh farm eggs! As soon as we get a delivery they are gone because the chickens just haven't been laying up to their usual amounts of late. The eggs have been trickling in from local producers just a few dozen at a time.

We are so used to our big box grocery stores always having what we want, when we want it. The convenience of that is undoubtable, but the reality of eating local and supporting local farmers is a bit more complicated. When working with small farms and small supplies there can be occasional times when we don't have all we want. Inconvenient... but interesting to think about all the behind-the-scenes of our local food system.

Case in point- last summer we experienced a small drought and cattle farmers feared their pastures and hay supplies wouldn't sustain their herds through the fall. They quickly sent their cattle to be processed all at one time, which completely clogged the states one tiny beef processor and the whole supply chain came to a screeching halt. So we were short of local ground beef in July, right when folks wanted to get the grill going and make a nice hamburger in the backyard. Poor timing, but interesting to think about the reason for it all.

Back to the issue at hand: EGGS.
Turns out (for us city-slickers who don't know these things) that chickens can be finicky layers. The slightest change can cause them to decrease their laying or stop all together! The short answer for the recent small supply is the cold weather. With the low temps we experienced over the holidays, and then the drastic ups and downs we've had the past two weeks, Baldwin County chickens are on STRIKE!

And after doing a little reading on the internet, I discovered lots of other interesting reasons a chicken might cut back on laying. One is that they might be hiding the eggs- production hasn't decreased at all! But once you have fished through all the hay and bedding and made sure the eggs are not there, here are some reasons for a decrease in production:

decreased hours of daylight

improper nutrition

disease

increasing age

getting too hot, or too cold

handling or moving the chickens or their coop

parasites

fright (limit the movement of children, strange dogs, livestock and vehicles)

predators such as foxes and eagles stress the birds and create a decrease in production

predators and snakes consuming the eggs

egg-eating by hens in the flock

insufficient nest boxes can cause excessive egg breakage

Click here to read more details...

And keep checking back! Call the Grocery anytime to check our supply and request eggs be put on hold for you, too! 990-8883