Seasonal Eating

YAY!!! We're finally transitioning from snow season to mud season! Things will be busy over the next few weeks between work, home, school and community events, so isn't it good to know that Pathfinder Produce, our weekly fresh fruit and veggie market, is here to help you eat better?

Our online ordering systems for both Edmeston and Morris pick-up are now open from Friday at mid-day through Wednesday at noon; order pick-up is on Thursdays: in Edmeston from 1 to 5 p.m. at the Pathfinder Village Commons; and in Morris, from 3 to 6 p.m. at the UMC (our 5210 partner), at 17 Church St. We've had some positive feedback on this new option, and we're pleased to offer this new service to our friends and neighbors.  

I want to give our Pathfinder Produce and Pathfinder Adult Day Service Members a big shout out too, as they prepare to take part in the 2018 Living Healthier Expo, organized by Matt Johnson at the Otsego County Dept. of Public Health.  This free event will be taking place at the Foothills Performing Arts Center on Friday, April 6 and Saturday, April 7, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.  Pathfinder Produce will be there handing out some healthy treats, selling yummy produce, and talking about our innovative program that serves our home communities and creates meaningful pre-vocational opportunities for people with developmental disabilities.

The Living Healthier Expo is another way we're celebrating our fifth anniversary of Pathfinder Produce … what an incredible five years it has been. I think I speak for the entire Pathfinder community and our 5-2-1-0 partners in saying that we're very proud of this sustainable, replicable, and meaningful program that has added value to our communities and helped families eat healthier, fresher foods.

Below, my colleague Sally Trosset shares thoughts on Season Eating.  YUM!

***

I had the good fortune to spend last weekend in Boston visiting family and friends.  While there were still snow banks at street corners and no visible signs of life on the bare trees, there were a few surprises -- green leaves pushing up through the earth, showing what soon will be blooming yellow daffodils.  Spring is coming!  I could feel it in the air.  The clouds didn't look as thick and the sun felt closer trying to peak through the thinned out clouds.

I love the start of spring.  Fresh seasonal fruits and vegetables, colorful and plentiful, slowly become available as we move into the summer months.  Eating seasonally is important and carries many benefits to your health, the planet, and your wallet.  One of biggest benefits I find is the money I save.  When buying in season, food is at the peak of its supply and costs less to get to your local market.  The best part about eating seasonally is you get the best tasting and healthiest food available.  Ideally, we are buying foods that have not had time to lose their flavor or their health benefits through long shipping times. 

It's very easy to learn what's seasonal where you live. The easiest place to learn is at your grocery store (or better yet, Pathfinder Produce!).  Take a look at the produce section and pay attention to prices and appearance.  If something is very expensive, is not plentiful and doesn't look as good as it should, then it’s probably out-of-season and has been shipped from far away.  If you notice an abundance of something specific, it looks fresh and the price is good, it is usually an indicator that it is an in-season item and readily available.  For more information about seasonal eating and to find a chart of seasonal foods in your area, check out The Seasonal Food Guide.

Some of my favorite spring vegetables are arugula, sugar snap peas, asparagus, and fiddleheads.  Fiddleheads are not easy to get and they have a very small window of availability, but they are delicious. (They should be cooked before eating).  The nice thing about the seasonal vegetables that I've mentioned is that each can be served and enjoyed relatively fast and easy with nothing more than olive oil, sea salt, and pepper. 

An arugula salad is my spring go-to salad.  Mixed with quinoa, goat cheese, craisins and a tiny bit of olive oil, lemon juice and salt, it filling and healthy!  Asparagus and fiddleheads at our house are usually prepared directly on the grill with just olive oil, salt, and pepper.  Either are good on their own or toss them into a pasta salad.  Sugar snap peas are best eaten raw as a snack or on a crudité platter.  For more spring recipes, that showcase the bounty of spring, check out the website of The Spruce.

Eating seasonally isn't a new phenomenon, although it has become trendier with the popularity of farmers’ markets, CSA's and new fresh food delivery services.  Long ago before the modern convenience of food preservation and shipping and transportation, eating seasonally was just something everyone did.  Maybe it’s time to go back to the basics and eat seasonally! 

Spring is here, enjoy the season!

Sally (and Lori)

School Spirit Week, WDSD and Slow Cooker Veggie Meals!

Hello everyone!  I believe spring is in the air, and we are celebrating Pathfinder School Spirit Week too!  During this colorful and fun time at Pathfinder Village, Monday is Pajama Day, Tuesday is school color day (green and white), Wednesday is WDSD-Crazy Sock Day (or wear blue and yellow), Thursday is Mismatch Day, and Friday is Dr. Seuss Day.

If you’d like to join us in the celebration for World Down Syndrome Day, please wear the craziest socks you have on Wednesday, March 21, to join with people around the world in recognizing how people with Down syndrome make our lives richer.  Take a picture of your crazy socks and send them along to us … we’ll share them as part of our Facebook celebration!  We’ll be posting some pictures of all the fun goings-on here too.

Last week’s fifth anniversary celebration of the market was fabulous, and we thank all our tremendous customers who came out to shop.  We enjoyed all the extra special treats, prize drawings and sales prices too.  Our Adult Day Services folks really pulled out all the stops … they were even featured in the local newspaper! 

We were also pleased with the

number of online orders we received through our new ordering option for the Edmeston and Morris communities.  Our ordering site will now be open Friday at 10 a.m. through Wednesday at noon; you can access the markets using this link:  http://pathfindervillage.org/our-village/pathfinder-produce/.  Pick-up for both locations is on Thursday:  Edmeston, at the Village Commons from 1 to 5 p.m.; in Morris at the UMC, 17 Church Street, from 3 to 6 p.m.

Looking ahead, we’ll be starting up our free Dash to the Splash program on April 9, and the training program will run for six weeks, with participants meeting for group training sessions at Pathfinder Village on Mondays at 4:30 p.m.   Contact Monica Clark at (607) 965-8377, ext. 107, if you’re interested in enrolling in this fun fitness program in preparation for our fifth annual Splash Path 5K and Fun Walk, which is set for May 19, 2018.

Below, my colleague Martha Spiegel shares some of the recent slow cooker recipes she’s discovered that present some delicious possibilities for cooking veggie-rich dishes.

***

I love my crockpot. I love throwing some ingredients together in the morning and coming home to dinner all ready and smelling delicious. We use our crockpot all year long—in the colder months it’s wonderful to sit down to a bowl of chili or stew. In the warmer months, it’s nice to have a way to cook that doesn’t heat up the kitchen.

This week I researched healthy vegetarian recipes for the crockpot, and found there are a LOT to choose from. Even if you are not a vegetarian, it’s nice to have recipes that don’t require meat sometimes, since it helps keep the grocery budget in line. These recipes can help you add more vegetables to your diet in creative ways.

Here is a Skinny Lasagna recipe for the crockpot that calls for lots of chopped leafy greens. The author of the recipe blog used kale, but spinach, chard, or maybe arugula would work. See what’s available at Pathfinder Produce when you are ready to try this. You could even use more than one kind of greens.

If I’m going to eat vegetable soup, I want it to be thick and filling, and this recipe from the blog Flour On My Face fills the bill. It’s loaded with beans, tomatoes, corn, and spinach, not to mention a good amount of garlic. The blog even gives you a great idea for making your own vegetable stock from peels and scraps that you collect in a freezer container until you have enough for a pot full. This is also a great way to cut down on food waste!

For something really different, try this Slow Cooker Vegetarian Curry. It calls for ghee, which is a form of clarified butter from India, but if you don’t have that on hand, celebrity chef Alton Brown gives a simple way to make your own from regular butter. This curry sounds like it would have a very full flavor and would be a nice change of pace.

Don’t forget dessert! According to the food blog Coastal Girl Food n Fitness, this Hot Apple Dump Dessert has the flavor of hot apple pie without all the fat from the crust.  It’s not fat- or calorie-free, however, so eat it in moderation. Remember, if you share it with lots of your family or friends, portion control becomes easier!

Until next time, eat well and be well,

Martha (and Lori)

Rooted in Community!

Hello everyone, we hope you’ll join us this week for our FIFTH ANNIVERSARY celebration at Pathfinder Produce.  This Thursday, March 15, at our Edmeston Market, from 1 to 5 p.m., we are pleased to share some great market specials, with all our tasty produce items marked down 5%.  We also will have some fun giveaways, drawings, and some special blue-and-yellow decorated baked goods as part of our pre-celebration of World Down Syndrome Day, which will take place on Wednesday, March 21.

I’d also like to announce that our Adult Day Services has held a market slogan contest, as part of our fifth anniversary celebration.  ADS members Ted Ratcliffe and Joe Kirshoff were the winners with this great slogan:  Pathfinder Produce: Rooted in Community.  Ted and Joe were presented Pathfinder Produce gift certificates by ADS Program Assistant Kristy Turner for their winning entry.

I don’t normally highlight our baked goods that we offer at the market, but our wonderful Pathfinder Baker Gary Gelatt has been doing some historical research that’s really rooted in the community too.  Working with the staff of the Edmeston Museum, Gary discovered a label for FREEDOM-Peet Hook Bread, baked by the Edmeston Bakery.  In the town’s published history, he learned that the bakery was making up to 250 loaves of bread each day in 1901.  In tribute to our local baking traditions, Gary’s come up with his own recipe that has simple ingredients: honey, yeast, salt, very little shortening, and white flour (no preservatives or high fructose corn syrup).  We’ll have these tempting loaves for sale on Thursday too.  (The bread is great for toast, grilled sandwiches, and French toast, and freezes well).  These loaves will go fast, I’m sure!

A historical note:  Many Edmeston traditions reference the name “Peet Hook.”  This recalls the influence of Dutch settlers in the late 1700s in our area: ‘Hoek’ (meaning corner) was at times used to describe a hamlet or settlement.  ‘Peet” refers to Benjamin Peet, a tavern keeper who operated the town’s first hotel at the site of the present Firehouse, at the turn of the 19^th century.   We hope to share more research on the Edmeston Bakery with our readers in a future post.

This week we’re also pleased to share that our online market ordering is now up and running.  If you would like to try this option, please go to this link on Monday or Tuesday (through 11:59 p.m.) and select the location you would like to pick-up your produce order at, either in Edmeston or Morris: http://pathfindervillage.org/our-village/pathfinder-produce.  Enter your order and pay securely online with your credit card; SNAP orders should be telephoned into our market staff at the SNAPline, (607) 965-8377 ext. 187.   Our friendly ADS staff will select and bag your produce on Thursday, and will have it ready for pick-up at the Edmeston market (from 1 to 5 p.m.) or at our Morris location at the UMC, 17 Church St., after 3 p.m. Talk about convenience.

We hope you’ll join us for our extra special market this week, and we thank everyone for their continued patronage and support.  Pathfinder Produce:  Rooted in Community!

***

Healthier Broiled Tilapia Parmesan

This week, our newest blogger, Jared O., is enthusiastic on sharing another healthy recipe with our market fans.  He discovered this dish at the website All Recipes.com; he wants to try this quick meal soon to share with his friends. 

Like many people, Jared wants to follow a healthy diet.  He did some research on selecting fish as a healthy meal option, and learned that “(Both) chicken and fish have less saturated fat than most red meats. The unsaturated fats in fish, such as salmon, actually have health benefits.  These omega-3 fatty acids are also found in some plant sources, and may reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.”  (Jared found this information at the website of the American Heart Association. 

To present a nutritionally balanced meal, Jared said he would serve the tilapia with fresh, steamed broccoli, seasoned with garlic.  “I would also make a spinach salad on the side.”  (For those of you who are really trying to cut down on fats, you may try the following recipe, but just cut back on the amounts of cheese and mayo, and on the butter just a tad.)

Prep: 5 min.; Cook: 10 min.  Serves 8.

Ingredients

1/2 cup Parmesan cheese

1/8 cup butter, softened

3 tablespoons light mayonnaise

2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper

1/8 teaspoon onion powder

1/8 teaspoon celery salt

2 pounds tilapia fillets

Directions:

1. Preheat oven broiler. Grease broiling pan or line with aluminum foil.
2. Mix Parmesan cheese, butter, mayonnaise, and lemon juice together in a small bowl. Season with dried basil, pepper, onion powder, and celery salt. Mix well and set aside. Arrange fillets in a single layer on prepared pan.
3. Broil a few inches from the heat for 2 to 3 minutes. Flip fillets over and broil for 2 or 3 minutes more. Remove fillets from oven and cover with Parmesan mixture on top side. Broil until fish flakes easily with a fork, about 2 minutes.

Nutrition Facts

Per Serving: 180 calories; 7.7 g fat; 1.1 g carbohydrates; 25.3 g protein; 56 mg cholesterol; 231 mg sodium. 

Five Years & Growing!

Hello, everyone! We hope that you are doing well after last Friday's “bombogenesis” nor'easter.  We also hope that you’ll be able to come down and shop for your fruit and veggie favorites at our next delicious Pathfinder Produce market, Thursday, March 8, from 1 to 5 p.m.

I have a few upcoming Pathfinder news notices to share:

• Our OVER 21! Community Classes are getting underway this week with Yoga Sessions and ZUMBA, and our arts & crafts classes are starting up in April. Check out the downloadable registration form for more information.
• We'd also like to encourage everyone to sign up by April 1 for our upcoming DASH TO THE SPLASH sessions, starting on April 9.  This year's Dash program will feature meetings each Monday at 4:30 p.m. (for six weeks), to motivate you and help you train for the FIFTH annual SPLASH PATH at Pathfinder Village on Saturday, May 19. More information is available at our website. This year's Splash Path will be raising funds to start a new Mobile Market to help make fresh and tasty produce more available in our neighboring communities.
• Also, in celebration of World Down Syndrome Day on March 21 (3-21), everyone at Pathfinder Village will be showing off their crazy socks; it's part of a global movement to celebrate the contributions and talents of people with Down syndrome. We invite everyone to take part by wearing their craziest socks on Wednesday, March 21.  If you take a picture of you and your friends wearing your crazy socks, and send it by messenger to our Pathfinder Village Facebook Page, we'll share it with our fans and friends. It will be a lot of fun to see how creative and colorful everyone can be on this growing celebration of our brothers and sisters with Down syndrome.

****

One thing I've loved about my work at Pathfinder Village is the “can do” attitude that everyone shares in making our Village a vibrant, responsive, inclusive community. That "positivity" shines through every day as residents and students discover new skills and access more opportunities, and as staff and senior leaders work together to build meaningful programs that reflect and amplify our mission: Pathfinder Village will promote a healthy, progressive environment that respects the individual, supporting a life of value and independence.

That mission is our anchor and has led us to some amazing places …  like our upcoming Splash Path 5K, which will celebrate its fifth anniversary this year on May 19. Another “can do” project that has been incredible has been Pathfinder Produce.

Last week, as I was doing my shopping, I took some time to visit with my friends from Pathfinder's Adult Day Services, who do a great job in organizing and running the market each week. Brandy was at her station, handing out shopping baskets and greeting customers. Jared, now one of our bloggers, was running the produce scale. Daniel, a 2017 graduate of Pathfinder School, was learning the finer points of how to tally purchases on the register (something I'm not able to do, fumble fingers that I am). My good friend Chris, our anchor man at the check-out, was helpful in bagging my purchases. As I was getting my purchases together, there was a lot of friendly talk and smiles … something I look forward to on Thursday afternoons.

In the summer months, my friends at ADS also contribute to the market by growing fresh items at the three hoop houses and the Button Greenhouse. By having some locally grown items on sale, it nicely balances out the other produce items we feature at the market. This addition, which started back after we built our first hoop house through the proceeds of one of our first Splash Paths, is another way that synergy has taken root at Pathfinder.

Contrary to what Shakespeare opined about the Ides of March, this March 15 will be a red-letter day at Pathfinder Produce as we celebrate our FIFTH ANNIVERSARY; it’s quite a milestone to have created a reproducible solution to local fresh food desert dilemmas. As it has on each anniversary, the market will offer special 5% discounts on produce purchases, spotlight some prize drawings and give-aways, and start Pathfinder's official observance of World Down Syndrome Day, which officially is celebrated on March 21 – the 3-21 numerical representation of the date symbolizes the three copies of the 21^st chromosome, which is the genetic coding of Trisomy 21.

That week will also signify a new growth phase for the market: On Monday, March 12 and Tuesday, March 13, we will officially introduce our new secure online ordering platform and drop-off service for our loyal customers. Each week, we will post our market offerings online and customers can place orders up through 11:59 p.m. each Tuesday.

On Thursdays, as we're getting our Edmeston market ready, our ADS members will fill online orders and have them ready for pick-up by our patrons who appreciate healthy produce but may not have time to shop. Our “premium picked produce packages” will be available at two locations, either at the Edmeston main market (1 to 5 p.m.) or at our satellite location at the United Methodist Church, 17 Church Street, Morris (from 3 p.m.). Payment will be made online through major credit cards; those who use the USDA's Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program cards may telephone in orders at (607) 965-8377, ext. 187, on Mondays and Tuesdays during regular business hours.

We will continue with our weekly “veggie blog” and Facebook posts to share our market headlines, and will keep you posted as we work toward creating the new Mobile Market, a project that we're working on with area 5-2-1-0 Committee members, the Bassett Research Institute, private donors and other community partners who appreciate how important a healthy diet can be for everyone.

In closing, everyone at Pathfinder Produce and Pathfinder Village thanks you for a tremendous five years of the market, for your steady patronage and support, and for believing in “the little market that could!”

Until next time, eat well and be well,

Lori (and the entire Pathfinder Produce All-Star Team)