As the cold winds start to blow and we focus in on the home and hearth, our bodies need grounding foods to nourish us. This is the time of year our cold climate ancestors started relying on the bounty stored in their root cellars. Few of us have root cellars anymore, but luckily we have several local organic growers with excellent root storage, enabling us to enjoy local roots well into the winter.
Root vegetables have been and still are a very important food source worldwide. Since earliest times people have relied on root vegetables. Early hunter-gatherers collected a wide variety of wild roots; early agriculturists cultivated, selected, and improved these primitive roots because of their storage capacity. Parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, & beets were absolutely crucial food crops (both for people and as animal fodder) throughout Europe during the Middle Ages until potatoes came along and overshadowed them. And potatoes were a staple in South America for millennia before they were introduced to Europe. In most tropical regions, roots like cassava, yams, sweet potatoes, & yucca have always been more widely relied on than grain & cereal crops.
So maybe root vegetables are such comfort food because they are familiar to us on a cellular/evolutionary level. Or maybe they’re just good for us, filling & delicious. In general, root vegetables are very low in calories, negligible in fat, & high in various vitamins & minerals. There’s a myriad of root recipes–from soups to stews to casseroles–out there to nurture you through the winter. In most recipes, roots can be mixed & matched. For instance, a parsnip or a sweet potato can be substituted for a rutabaga or a turnip.
Turnips & rutabagas, part of the cabbage family, are high in vitamins C & A. They are both well suited to roasts, stews, casseroles (like au gratins & scallops), & mashes.
Sweet potatoes (often commercially called yams, even though a true yam hails from Africa and is rarely available in the US) are from Central America & are one of the healthiest (and tastiest) vegetables around (we’re so grateful to get local ones, as they’re tricky to grow in northern climes!). One baked sweet potato contains over 250% of your RDA of vitamin A, as well as high doses of vitamins C, B6, potassium, & iron. Sweet potatoes are delicious baked by themselves, or in roasts, mashes, soups, and casseroles.
Beets are related to Swiss chard and come in a range of colors, from the vibrant gold of gold beets, to the quirky bull’s eye stripes of Chiogga beets (boil/steam them whole, then slice, to preserve vibrancy of color), to the deep scarlet of red beets. Beets are high in folate, potassium, fiber, and iron. They can be boiled, steamed, roasted, or grated raw in salads.
Parsnips, carrots, & celeriac are all members of the parsley family. Parsnips are high in calcium, potassium, & vitamins C, A, & folate. Their mild, sweet, nutty flavor is great in roasts, soups, stews, casseroles, & mashes. Parsnips’ shape makes them easy to substitute for carrots in recipes. Carrots are loaded with vitamin A. Native to Afghanistan, carrots were originally white, then purple, and only acquired their now ubiquitous orange color through breeding in Holland in the 17th century. Celeriac is a wonderful substitute for celery in soups, stews, roasts, & casseroles. It’s nutty, celery flavor and rich texture is far more satisfying than watery celery in winter fare.
Nurturing and grounding root veggies make lovely additions to your holiday meals. And they’re grown by local farmers – which we can all feel thankful for! Look for various recipes near the colorful root displays in the produce aisle, and enjoy this easy Roasted Root Veggie recipe on your holiday table.
Honey Roasted Roots
7 c. mixed root vegetables (carrots, parsnips, rutabaga, sweet potatoes, turnips, etc.), chopped or sliced into bite sized pieces.
1 c. shallots, coarsely chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
3 Tbsp. olive oil
1/3 c. honey
1 Tbsp. dried rosemary, sage, or thyme
Salt & pepper to taste
Toss all ingredients in large bowl & pour into large, oiled baking pan. Roast at 450 degrees for 45-55 minutes, stirring a couple of times.
by Dani Lind, Produce Manager
2007 has been a big year for us at Kickapoo Coffee. We bought the old train depot in town this January, renovated the building, installed our vintage roaster and fired ‘er up by June. More recently we developed a new logo, launched our website and took the huge leap to coffee cans, leaving our old plastic packaging behind for these reusable, recyclable beauties.
But perhaps most exciting of all: we were recently voted in as member/owners of Cooperative Coffees, the world’s first coffee importing co-op.
Cooperative Coffees allows small coffee companies like Kickapoo Coffee to import fair trade coffee directly from farmer co-ops from around the world. It’s all about economies of scale, allowing small roasters and small farmers to do international trade like the big guys out there. It would be impossible for us to buy small quantities from a single farmer without enormous shipping and administrative costs. Instead small farmers pool their coffee harvest and export it through their co-op. And through Co-op Coffees we pool our purchases and import coffee with 22 other roasters throughout the U.S. and Canada. This way we eliminate all the middlemen and the genius of cooperative businesses allows us to control how we practice fair trade.
Fair trade has come a long way, and it is now easy for roasters to purchase fair trade coffee from larger importers. This is good in many ways, but this approach is often lacking any real contact with the actual farmers. In our view fair trade is all about relationships and building trust.
This September I spent a week in Matagalpa, Nicaragua for the annual general meeting of Cooperative Coffees. Every other year we have decided to hold this meeting in a producer country and invite our trading partners (coffee farmers) to participate. This has proven to be an incredibly powerful tool for Co-op Coffees to make business decisions that are in line with the interests of the farmers we buy from. There were about 75 people in attendance in Nicaragua: members of Co-op Coffees like myself and representatives from farmer co-ops from Guatemala, Mexico, Dominican Republic, Colombia, Peru and Nicaragua.
Also present were fair trade “allies” - folks who represent fair trade certification bodies, green financing organizations, students and faith organizations. With all these voices in the room there was lots to talk about, but we were all focused on the same goal: how to improve this model and deepen the impacts of fair trade.
While I don’t have space to relay all of the conversation, in summary it’s clear how important direct relationships are, especially when the goal is mutual benefit. There were a lot of familiar faces in Nicaragua, folks I have met on previous travels to coffee lands. Doing business with people who ask about my family and who have fed me in their homes is so vastly different than how most coffee is bought and sold in this country.
I leave these encounters with great hope. These farmers are true ecological and social visionaries – they have clear goals for their communities and the planet. I feel blessed that I can participate in their efforts but I never lose sight we are on different sides of an unfair economic system. There is one clear message I garner from these meetings: these farmers are still not getting paid enough and we need to get the price of coffee closer to its true value. When you consider all the work that goes into a pound of high quality roasted coffee (there are 4,000 handpicked beans in there!) ten dollars per pound is a bargain.
by TJ Semanchin,
Kickapoo Coffee