The Blog

Reprinted with permission from Farmers & Artisans; Artisan Bakery & Local Foods Market; A year-round food market featuring a wide selection of locally grown, produced, and crafted quality foods and food items.

It's that time of year when the maple tree sap starts flowing - freezing nights and a thaw during the day.  Over 500 maple producers across NYS are collecting sap in buckets or intricate lines of plastic hose connecting their maple trees. The sap is then boiled down in a sugar shack, evaporating the water, leaving thick, sweet syrup.  It takes 40 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup.

So don't limit yourself to this liquid gold on just pancakes or waffles.  We love it in our maple walnut scones, Pumpkin Maple Butter, drizzled over ice cream, or as a glaze on chicken or pork.

Stop in this weekend and sample our sweet, pure NYS Maple Syrup from Flyway Farm in Medina, NY, or pick up a map and visit one of WNY's Maple Producers March 19-20 & March 26-27 for the 16th Annual NY Maple Weekend!

Note from GrowWNY: You can also visit Buffalo Audubon's Maple Harvest Festival to see maple sugar made the Native American way - with red hot rocks, taste jack wax, "sugar-on-snow" and watch backyard sugaring.

Reprinted with permission from Farmers & Artisans; Artisan Bakery & Local Foods Market; A year-round food market featuring a wide selection of locally grown, produced, and crafted quality foods and food items.

Cherries are one of nature's most amazing foods! They not only taste wonderful, but also provide an array of health benefits.  Cherries come in two varieties: sweet and tart.  While both sweet and tart cherries are full of healthy antioxidants, it's the tart varieties that really pack a healthful punch. Tart cherries and tart cherry juice have long been used in traditional and complementary medicine as treatments for arthritis, gout, muscle pain, diabetes, and any diseases associated with inflammation such as heart disease and arthritis.

In 2008, the University of Michigan conducted a study in which participants consumed one and a half servings (6 oz.) of tart cherries daily and showed increased antioxidant activity in their blood which reduced the risk factors for diabetes, cancer, inflammation, and heart disease which are all leading causes of death in the United States.  The researchers found that the compounds responsible for these benefits are called anthocyanins.  Anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants and also give tart cherries their deep red color and tart taste.

Reprinted with permission from Farmers & Artisans; Artisan Bakery & Local Foods Market; A year-round food market featuring a wide selection of locally grown, produced, and crafted quality foods and food items.

Milk and egg shares have become very popular. Quite a few customers have been asking when the next round of shares will begin.  The current share will be completed the week ending January 29 and the next installment will begin the following week, January 31.

The share choices include our farm fresh brown eggs, by the dozen or half dozen, from free-to-roam pastured hens that have not been treated with either hormones or antibiotics.  We get comments on a daily basis on how much better our eggs taste than the eggs from the supermarket.

Our milk, in gallons and half gallons, comes from a herd of 100% Jersey cows that again are grass fed and not treated with any hormones or antibiotics.  The milk is low-temp pasteurized and non-homogenized, preserving nutrition that is lost with ultra-pasteurization and homogenization.

The shares are a win-win for everyone as they allow us to plan with the farmers how much to produce and we are able to pass along savings to our patrons.

Reprinted with permission from Farmers & Artisans; Artisan Bakery & Local Foods Market; A year-round food market featuring a wide selection of locally grown, produced, and crafted quality foods and food items.

Sunflower Oil

We all know that Extra Virgin Olive Oil is the king of the cooking oils.  It is heart-healthy, flavorful, and, well, popular.  It has simply become the norm in cooking (due, in no small part, to Rachel Ray and other TV food celebrities drizzling "E.V.O.O." around willy-nilly).  Olive oil has its place in cuisine, but it is not the be-all and end-all of cooking oils.  There are times when something lighter is called for, when a different flavor is needed, when oils need to have other properties that olive oil cannot provide.  Sometimes a less flavorful oil is required simply to let other food flavors shine through.

There is also the question of smoke point.  Bear with me while we talk science for a minute here. Various oils begin to burn at different temperatures. This is called their smoke point.  Olive oil has a fairly low smoke point, meaning that it is good for lower temperature cooking.  Of course it is also at is most flavorful and wonderful used cold, especially if you get a really good one.  Likewise, butter will burn at a fairly low temperature.  If you catch this at just the right point, and use it to your advantage, you end up with a lovely browned butter.  If not, you have a big pan full of charred butter or oil that tastes pretty nasty.