Food Education

The new year has arrived, bringing along more wintry weather and the promise of a whole year to fill with excitement. It’s easy to feel sluggish and unmotivated in the cold, slushy darkness of these long winter months, but January can also be a time to think about change, renewal, and growth for the coming year. Let’s celebrate the start of a new year (and a new decade!) by committing ourselves to forming a new healthy or environmentally-friendly habit.

I wanted to introduce myself as City Market’s new Assistant Outreach & Education Manager. I drove up from my home in Delaware shortly after Thanksgiving, spending eight and a half hours on the road with podcasts, rock music, and some leftover pumpkin pie. When that first bit of snowy Vermont mountaintop came into view just as the sun was setting, something in my heart said, “Welcome home!"

It was a quintessential fall evening in Vermont. The leaves on the trees were a perfect mix of orange, yellow and red and the crispness in the air was something you only dream of. Honestly, on an evening like this, there is no place I would have rather been than Brot Bakehouse School & Kitchen- the location of our Intro to Sourdough Breads class.

Over the summer you might have noticed a change in our regular class programming as we headed out to farms and vineyards for events and programming rather than our traditional kitchen-based classes. Not to worry, the beloved A Mosaic of Flavor and Taste of Eritrea series (along with many others) will soon return with a full roster of cooking classes in September.

If you haven’t been to the Railyard Apothecary, you should definitely check it out! Living up to its name, the apothecary is nestled behind the old railroad tracks at the end of Battery Street and a stone’s throw away from the Burlington waterfront. The space sits right next to the Burlington Herb Clinic and has an herb shop. They also host educational classes, events and herb walks! Last month, Railyard hosted the “fermentation king”, Sandor Katz.

This past weekend we were busy visiting not one, but two farms to kick off the summer season! On Saturday, we visited Butterworks Farm out in Westfield followed by Green Mountain Bee Farm in Fairfax on Sunday. With beautiful weather both days, it was a great way to celebrate the start of summer in VT!  

The lake is thawing, the ground is muddy, and the sap is flowing which means only one thing, it must be springtime in Vermont! Our farmers are starting to till the ground to get ready for the growing season, and we are looking forward to local produce gracing our shelves. To provide some inspiration for your springtime culinary adventures, here is a short list of recipes that are perfect for a quick low-key dinner with friends or your first outdoor dinner party of the season!

Fermentation is everywhere! The process has been around for longer than we, most humans can probably imagine. There are a lot of different types of fermentation, and you have probably heard of some of the delicious products that result from the process. For example, there are many forms of vegetable fermentation, think pickles, sauerkraut, kimchi, the list could go on forever. How about grain fermentation which is how our beloved sourdough bread and beer are made and last but not least, dairy fermentation, this includes cheese, sour cream and yogurt!

February was flying by and before we knew it, it was the weekend of February 16^th, which marked the 37^th annual NOFA-VT Winter Conference. The conference highlights local farmers, gardeners and homesteaders and offers over 80 educational workshops, roundtable discussions, film screenings, and much more.

The U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (USCRI) Vermont formerly known as Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program (VRRP) and City Market have had a long-standing partnership for a number of years. Since 2011, we’ve partnered on a monthly cooking class series titled A Mosaic of Flavor, where different cooks from the Vermont refugee community teach a class showcasing food from their home country and tell stories about their background and journey to Vermont.