Mississippi Market: Natural Foods Co-op

The grass-fed herd at Thousand Hills Cattle Company

As a Mississippi Market shopper, you already know the advantages that grass-fed beef offers environmentally and nutritionally; they’re probably why you buy it. Or maybe you’re nostalgic for the taste of beef you remember from a grandparent’s farm. That beef didn’t taste like feed-lot beef, and it didn’t cook like it, either. Neither does the beef from Mississippi Market’s meat department. It’s those cooking differences I’m addressing here.

Cattle came to be “finished” on corn in the post-Civil War era, when they were first herded into vast feedlots prior for slaughter. Corn made them gain weight quickly, and the fact that their digestive systems weren’t equipped to handle it didn’t matter when they were only days away from becoming beeves. Gradually, feedlot practices extended to more and more of beef cattle’s lifespan, because such practices made it possible for cattlemen to “finish” their animals at a much younger age. But by feeding cattle corn and soybeans after weaning, cattle ranchers also introduced digestive problems that they solved by dosing the animals with antibiotics. You’ve heard and deplored the rest of that story.

Grass-fed cattle are older and leaner than grain-fed ones when they go to slaughter. Because they’ve been eating sun-fueled grasses, their fat is yellower. Their meat is gamier tasting because their muscle mass is more concentrated—these cattle have moved around freely rather than being crowded together in concentrated feed lots.

What this tells us is that their meat should be treated more like game meat than conventional feed-lot beef:

1) Cook it low and slow rather than fast and furious. Happily, there’s a perfect, traditional medium for doing this: cast iron, which rewards slow preheating (5 minutes on MEDIUM) with juicy, crisp-surfaced beef patties, steaks, and braised cuts.

2) Anoint the meat with oil before pan-frying or braising it. Treat your grass-fed, whole-muscle cuts with an olive oil- or peanut oil-based marinade or rub. This meat isn’t as fatty as conventional beef – it needs a surface coating to protect it while it cooks.

3) Don’t overcook—remember, food finishes cooking off the heat. If you’re a bread or cake baker, you know that you can bend your ear to a baking pan you’ve removed from the oven and still hear the snapping and crackling of the grain 5 minutes after that pan’s been standing on a cooling rack. Similarly, meat continues cooking for about 10 minutes after it’s been taken off the heat. So quit while you’re ahead, particularly with grass-fed beef: give it time to complete its cooking off the heat source, and you’ll be rewarded by tastier, more tender meat.

4) Learn your cuts and adjust your cooking accordingly. Because of its leanness, grass-fed beef offers you less of a margin for error when it comes to choosing cuts and cooking methods. Take advantage of Mississippi Market’s full-service meat department to learn the optimal cuts for the dish you have in mind. For some, you may need to add extra fat in the form of, say, bacon or pancetta.

Grass-fed beef has a more vivid flavor than grain-fed beef, so you can pile on other strong flavors (tomatoes, mushrooms) without losing the terrific beefiness of a dish; you may need even less meat to accomplish the same culinary effect because of the concentrated flavor. Hey—worse things have happened!

Since World War II, kitchen countertops have been increasingly taken over by electrical appliances: food processors, electric grills, coffee makers, blenders, immersion blenders, yogurt makers, toasters, toaster ovens . . . Unless you’re an exceptionally austere cook or someone possessed of atypical countertop yardage, the chances are your prep space has decreased and the space occupied by electrical appliances has expanded over the years.

Take back some of that space through judicious weeding! Doing so will increase your mindfulness in the kitchen and considerably lighten your material load. Most of the handheld replacements described here are superior as cooking tools and far cheaper as well. I undertook a major purge of electrical devices about five years ago, and I’ve not regretted the loss of a single one. Here are some prime candidates for recycling:

Food processor 

If you’re over 50, you managed to cook without a food processor when you were young. The food processor became popular when ancient kitchen skills, like sharpening knives and efficient chopping and slicing, became rare. No question about it: chopping and slicing are real drags with dull knives—and most Americans’ knives are dull, mostly through no fault of our own: stainless steel is soft, and even chopping a carrot can bend a stainless knife’s edge enough to make it feel dull. For $10, you can buy a razor-sharp carbon-steel Chinese vegetable cleaver and say good-bye to dull knives. With your cleaver, chopping and slicing become pure pleasures. If ultra-thin slices are what you habitually use a food processor for, invest $25–30 in a Benriner handheld mandoline (and only a Benriner: its blade is made from superior Japanese steel; other handheld mandolines use soft stainless that isn’t up to the task), and it will still be razor-sharp 20 years from now. If you mostly grate hard cheeses in your food processor, invest $8 in a restaurant box grater at the local Hochenberg’s; its sturdy design is far superior to that of box graters intended for the domestic market, and it’s cheaper, too.

Electric grill 

Those bulky Forman grills are another good candidate for recycling. A plain, stovetop cast-iron grill pan produces superior results, and it contributes valuable, needed iron to your food as well. (Recent Centers for Disease Control studies point to iron deficiencies in all age groups, particularly among children, Mexican Americans, and African Americans.) You can pick up a partially seasoned Lodge cast-iron grill pan at Frattallone’s (Grand & Cambridge store only) for about $25. Used on medium heat only, it produces beautifully grilled steaks, boneless chops or chicken breasts, vegetables, polenta, or grilled-cheese sandwiches in no time. Nothing better for making crispy toast, either. And you can take it along when you go car-camping.

Coffee maker

Few people develop genuine fondness for their coffee makers, perhaps because the usual lifespan of such appliances is so short. Consider replacing your electric drip pot with a French press or a stovetop espresso maker. Neither takes any longer to produce coffee than an electrical behemmoth, and each produces far superior results. The first French presses brought to the US by travelers returning from Europe in the 1950s left a lot to be desired: the glass beakers cooled rapidly and broke too readily. Now you can buy metal vacuum French presses that keep coffee hot for hours. Because you aren’t filtering out the flavor-carrying oils when you use a French press, your coffee  will taste much livelier than paper-filtered coffee does. Stovetop espresso makers have undergone a revolution too: today, you can find inexpensive, whimsical stainless-steel models as well as the original aluminum ones. In five minutes, you’ll have a potent, memorable brew.

Local Sources

Carbon-steel Chinese cleavers  Unhappily, you won’t find these locally. The Wok Shop (www.wokshop.com) in San Francisco sells a variety of carbon-steel cleavers; the most useful is a #3 vegetable cleaver ($6–10). I can’t recommend these highly enough. Delivery is speedy.

Benriner mandoline  Most of the Asian grocery stores on University Avenue carry this extraordinary Japanese mandoline. Accept no substitutes! Also available from the Wok Shop online.

Restaurant grater  Hochenberg’s Restaurant Supply carries these admirable graters. Hochenberg’s recently moved from its old location on Kasota Avenue to a new one at 2015 Silver Bell Road in Eagan (www.hochenbergs.com).

Stovetop cast-iron grill pan  These are made by Lodge, the oldest culinary cast-iron manufacturer in the US. Versatile, venerable, and stackable (the same size as your big cast-iron skillet). Frattallone’s on Grand at Cambridge in Saint Paul is the place to find one.

French press  There are now so many brands of insulated, stainless-steel French presses—that’s a good problem to have! Nissan, Bodum, and Frieling make handsome ones. Their initial cost is higher than  for the glass models, but you’ll never need to replace a glass beaker again, and they produce far superior coffee.

Stovetop espresso maker  Mississippi Market carries the venerable Bialetti aluminum pot in several sizes. Bialetti also makes a wide range of sleek stainless-steel models; you can find these at local kitchenware shops.

A guest post by Joe Krawetz, West 7th Produce Manager

Studies come and go, the benefits of this or that food are confirmed, negated, and confirmed again, but one thing remains constant: People who eat more fruits and vegetables tend to have lower rates of heart disease.

Now, I’ve never been a proponent of “magic bullet” type diets, and that’s not likely to change anytime soon.  There’s no single plant in this world that you could eat every day to guarantee a life free from malady.  That being said, the more deeply colored fruits and vegetables tend to have higher vitamin C content which, among other benefits, may help to prevent hardening of the arteries.
It’s a large group:  Broccoli, kale, sweet potatoes, oranges, grapefruit and pomelo, bell peppers, and strawberries are just the tip of the iceberg.  We know that foods high in monounsaturated fats, such as avocados, are linked to lowered levels of LDL cholesterol, another benefit to heart health.  If dips and spreads are on the menu, make sure to include some freshly made guacamole.  Phytochemicals, which may help to decrease your risk of cardiovascular disease, also abound in fresh produce.  Raspberries, kale, mustard greens and carrots have all been shown to help your body absorb phytochemicals, and while fresh berries aren’t always a seasonal option, carrots and greens are available year round.

Food trends will change, breakthrough research will point to new superfoods each and every year, and keeping up with all of this information can be exhausting.  Thankfully, eating a varied diet tilted toward heavy consumption of plant based foods remains the surest way to a healthy heart, mind and body.

Nick, on the docks in Peru, where our bananas begin their 16 day voyage to the U.S.

In October 2012, Nick Foster-Walters, the West 7th store manager visited the Peruvian banana cooperative along with Equal Exchange and staff from other Twin Cities area food Co-ops. Here is his account of his visit:

Mississippi Market purchases our bananas from Equal Exchange, who partners with two co-operatives in northern Peru, APOQ and CIPEBO, and one in Sothern Ecuador, el Guabo, to supply us with certified organic and fair trade bananas. I was part of a delegation of five co-op representatives from the Twin Cities and three members of Equal Exchange that went to visit the growers in Peru who grow bananas that end up on our shelves. This trip provided a chance for me to see firsthand the small fields that our bananas come from. We stayed with three host families, over a course of five days, visiting organic banana farmers in a small village that is just outside of Piura. After a night of sleeping under mosquito nets, we walked to the fields with the farmers and learned about the activities involved with banana production. It was incredibly moving to talk with many of the growers and learn about their daily lives.

How could they grow bananas in such an arid land?

Flying into Piura in northern Peru I was surprised to see miles of sand. I wondered how bananas could grow in such an arid area. Then, in the distance I could see a wide swath of green. Under this green would provide my answer; irrigation canals from the main river. When we landed I received my second surprise—poverty, and lots of it. Coming from the land of plenty my first reaction was, how can we help? How could they grow bananas in such an arid land? How does purchasing these Fair Trade bananas make any difference to those living in this part of the world? Answers to these questions would also be revealed over the course of our visit.

Mississippi Market shoppers helped raise money for this bobcat after the banana farmers were hit by a tropical storm. The still use the bobcat today!

Equal Exchange is best known for its fair trade imported coffee, tea and chocolate. They work with small-scale farmers and cooperatives to help them bring their products to market. Originally founded in 1986, Equal Exchange was at the forefront of the fair trade movement. They started working with organic banana farmers in 2006 as a partner with Oké USA. The label was rebranded as Equal Exchange in 2009. Mississippi Market has been a strong supporter of these bananas from the beginning of Oké USA.Our connection to them was so strong that when the Ecuadorian farmers were hit with a tropical storm that caused major landslides, the Mississippi Market was able to raise over $10,000 that went toward the purchase of a new Bobcat tractor for the el Guabo co-op.

Bananas grow extremely well in the northern region of Peru. The dry arid air is good for controlling pests and diseases. The water to irrigate the banana plants comes from a dam that supplies water to the whole area. Each small banana producer owns around one hectare (approximately 2.5 acres) of land for growing bananas on. Great care is taken in the production of this fruit. The farmers are out in their field daily monitoring and preparing the bananas. Bananas do not grow on trees but are actually large herbivorous plants that produce one flower and then die.

Emerging bananas

Each new plant, called a daughter, starts out as a shoot from the base of the old plant, called the mother. The farmer monitors the progress of the flower -when it starts to set fruit, a bag is placed over the flower for protection. The farmer returns regularly to add protective pads in between the growing hands of bananas shield them from abrasion.

When the fruit reaches maturity, workers go to the field to pick and transport the bunches of fruit to a packing shed where the bananas are processed for shipment. Once, they are washed, sorted and packed in to a climate controlled container, the bananas are loaded on a ship and spend 10 days at sea before they arrive at a port in New Jersey. The bananas are still green at this point and will not begin to turn yellow until they have been shipped to J&J distributing, in St. Paul, where they spend 24 hours in a ripening room. Without going into a ripening room bananas will take up to one month or more to ripen. The bananas are either shipped directly from J&J to stores or to Co-op Partners Warehouse for direct distribution.

In 2001 they began organizing secretly in the fields and worked together, cooperatively, to negotiate a better price for their product.

The small banana farmers that we met have banded together, forming cooperatives, in order to improve their working conditions and their communities. Dole used to purchase 90% of the organic bananas in this area. The cost of production was high; Dole’s payments to the farmers did not allow them to improve their living situations. The farmers were making such a little amount of money that they were prepared to plow under their fields. In 2001 they began organizing secretly in the fields and worked together, cooperatively, to negotiate a better price for their product. Eventually they were able to work without Dole and get a better price for the bananas and, more importantly, control the conditions of their labor and their product. Now, Dole only controls 30% of the bananas in northern Peru.

Farmers take the group on a tour of the banana groves.

These banana co-ops receive a fair trade premium of one dollar per box above the minimum price. Four dollars per box go directly to the farmer. Before the growers organized they were receiving only $1.90 per box. The members of each co-op vote on how the fair trade premium is spent. It is used on projects to improve the working conditions of the banana workers or upgrading the social infrastructure of the communities. They have purchased educational material and equipment for community schools, invested in business opportunities for the local youth, sponsored community events and helped families in financial need. One of the projects that was highlighted to us was the installation of a cable system to transport the banana bunches from the field to the packing sheds. Prior to the cables, workers in the field would have to carry the fruit on their backs, sometimes as far as one half mile. This improvement has increased their ability to process bananas by six times!

Fair Trade, cooperatively grown, Peruvian bananas

The history of banana production is not a good one. It is one of large corporations that promoted large plantations, low wages and heavy chemical use. It also is a history of strong arm tactics used to intimidate workers and overthrow governments, often, with the support of our government. The Fair Trade, cooperative system is the exact opposite of the old way bananas are produced and distributed. It gives the power to the producers and workers, promoting environmental stewardship and allows for democracy control of the working conditions.

When we visited the school in the village, the sixth grade class president explained to our group that the school has a garden that they watered everyday by carrying plastic buckets to the canal and back. She asked if we could help them by building the infrastructure for running water, so that they could water the garden with a hose. We did not have an answer to this request at that time; our answer will come from continuing to purchase and sell the bananas from her parents.

Most Twin Cities food co-op members associate the growth of co-ops with the period 1960–1975, when so many of our present co-ops began. A notable exception to the Sixties food co-ops was the Credjafawn Co-op Store, which briefly served the Rondo community in the years immediately following World War II. Its freestanding building at 678 Rondo Avenue lay only four blocks northwest of today’s Mississippi Market on Selby, at what was then the corner of Rondo and St. Alban, about half a block west of Dale.

The Credjafawn Co-op Store was a project of the Credjafawn Social Club (1928–1980), one of the Twin Cities’ earliest African-American social institutions. The Credjafawn was a community builder, sponsoring youth events, picnics, dances, concert recitals, and other events for the citizens of Rondo. During World War II, it organized its own credit union to lend money to members and bought war bonds to support the war effort. One of its immediate postwar projects was the Credjafawn Co-op.

Six seventy-eight Rondo Avenue had been constructed sometime between 1910 and 1925, when the neighborhood was still largely Jewish, and until the Credjafawns took over the store, it had been run as a neighborhood grocery by a succession of Jewish owners, including Jack Dimond, who supported the organization by buying ads in the Credjafawn’s concert programs. In those days, writes Evelyn Fairbanks in Days of Rondo (1990), both sides of Rondo Avenue were lined with groceries, bakeries, shoe-repair shops, banks, and other businesses, many of them in duplicate: one African-American owned, one Jewish owned, “but gradually the Jewish businesses followed the Jewish customers to their new homes in Highland Park.”

In 1946, Dimond sold or leased his store to the Credjafawn Social Club, which operated it as a food co-operative. The lively 1948 photographs of the Co-op Store document a tidy, well-equipped corner store with white-painted (or porcelained) cases, a two-tiered produce display (“Frigidmist Air Conditioned”) backed by tall mirrors, and grocery carts small enough to thread their way through very narrow aisles. The Co-op’s two big windows—one facing Rondo, the other St. Alban—were partly papered with posters featuring the National Cooperative Business Association’s familiar twin-pines logo.

The Co-op did not survive long; by the mid-1950s, the store had become Martin’s Grocery. Soon thereafter, it and its neighboring businesses were swept away: even before Interstate-94 hollowed out the Rondo neighborhood, its core was demolished to prepare the way for the coming freeway. Today, what remains of Rondo Avenue hangs on the southern lip of I-94, now renamed Concordia Avenue, its businesses long since gone.

Mississippi Market is proud to be the successor to this pioneering Saint Paul food cooperative. It’s fitting that we commemorate Credjafawn Co-op Store’s brief existence and display the photographs of the hopeful, committed co-op grocery that preceded the one where you shop today.

Photos of the Credjafawn Co-op Store are currently on display in the seating area of the Selby & Dale store throughout the month of February, in honor of African American History Month.

Special thanks to Lisa Tabor of CultureBrokers L.L.C., publishers of the “Spirit of Rondo” pamphlet for introducing us to the Credjafawn Co-op. For more information, visit www.culturebrokers.com 

If you’re fond of juices, smoothies, or any of Mississippi Market’s other juice bar drinks, you already know how intense, healthful, even playful they are. These are terrific arguments for bringing juicing home.  And what better time to try it than National Juice Week?

Once upon a time, not so very long ago, the only machines capable of pulling juice out of, say, kale or carrots were the Omega, the Champion, and the Acme. Each of them was the size of a washtub and the price of a washing machine, so only the truly dedicated acquired them. Then the smoothie came along, and it was just as happy being made in a $20 blender as a top-of-the-line juicer. Even more recently, true juicers have shrunk in size and become significantly cheaper, smaller, and lighter. Short of extracting the oil from flaxseed, there isn’t much you can’t juice nowadays with a small, inexpensive device.

The returns on doing so are sizable. If, say, one of your goals is to consume four cups of leafy raw vegetables and three of fruit every day, you’re likely to spend most of your time grazing—unless you concentrate those vegetables or fruits into liquid form. You consume all of the benefits of those many cups of fruits and vegetables in one or two tasty, frosty glasses. And because juicing doesn’t heat up vegetables and fruits significantly, their food value isn’t lost. What’s not to like?

That said, here are a few things to factor in when you contemplate juicing and smoothie making at home.

Oxidation
Once you’ve broken down the cell walls in fruits and vegetables, their juice and pulp oxidize rapidly, so don’t juice more than you can drink immediately. If you do have leftovers, store them in glass jars filled to the brim to exclude air, and use food-grade plastic lids to seal them up. Keep these in the fridge for no longer than a day—once you’ve broken them down mechanically in the blender or juicer, fruits’ and vegetables’ own enzymes complete the decomposition.

Focus on flavor
The simplest way to start juicing is to use a liquid base you already enjoy: for example, tomato juice, apple cider, pineapple juice, or orange juice. Add a small handful each of one or two vegetables or fruits that complement the flavor of your base. You’ll create more appealing juices when you limit flavors to only a few.

Play with color
Juicing is a terrific form of adult play: do it the way kids do—by color. If you want a purple drink, add blueberries; if you want a magenta one, add some beets. Several different berries (for example, strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries) create a dazzling, bright purply-red juice. Bright green? Add lacinato kale or spinach. Mix-and-match fruits and vegetables: if you add only small amounts of, say, spinach, you’ll achieve spring green but not a pronounced spinach flavor. Remember that adding a wide variety of colors produces a not very appetizing brown.

Don’t forget frozen fruits
Admittedly, we have a fairly limited range of fresh fruits available here in the Twin Cities in winter. Happily, juicing works just as well using frozen instead of fresh fruits. And now Stahlbush’s wonderful frozen organic berries are available in 5-pound Ziploc bags for all us committed daily juicers.

Play with texture
If you want your juice to have a silky, super-smooth texture, add a few slices of banana, avocado, or mango (frozen or fresh): these are guaranteed to knit the disparate textures together in a satin-y mouthfeel. If you want a more open texture, or a granita-like one, add unsweetened yogurt or an ice cube (lassi time!).

Gilding the lily
Add a spice or herb that complements the base and/or the added fruits or vegetables. Be conscious of the acidity (or lack of it) in your concoction: almost any juice brightens up considerably with a bit of acidity, whether that comes from the base (for example, orange juice), the fruits or vegetables you add, or a final squeeze of lemon or dollop of unsweetened yogurt.

Name it
You’ve produced something memorable—now you deserve naming rights!
The truth is, it’s pretty hard to make a lousy juice or smoothie. Here are several tried-and-true basics with knockout flavor and color. Send us yours, and we’ll add them here.

Each of the recipes below makes about 12 oz.

Magenta Mango
8 oz. apple cider
6 frozen strawberries
¼ c. frozen mango chunks
¼ c. frozen blackberries
Buzz in blender until thick and homogeneous or run through your juicer.

Hot Orange
8 oz. orange juice
3 small, sweet carrots, cut into 1” slices
1–2 inches of ginger, peeled
1 Tbs. honey

Buzz in blender until thick and homogeneous or run through your juicer.

Green Dragon
8 oz. lemonade
3 leaves of lacinato kale, stem removed, or handful of spinach
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored
½ tsp. ground cardamom or ginger

Buzz in blender until thick and homogeneous or run through your juicer.

Winter Hot Tomato
5 Muir Glen organic plum tomatoes, squeezed out (to remove seeds)
½ red sweet pepper, seeds and pith removed
½–1 tsp. Spanish smoked hot paprika (pimentón) or Sriracha sauce to taste
2 scallions
tomato juice from Muir Glen, to taste
sea salt to taste
squeeze of fresh lemon juice

Buzz in blender until thick and homogeneous or run through your juicer.