My New Favorite Veggie: Purple Potatoes

We started growing these last year, and all winter long when I'd go to the potato boxes I would reach for the purples before any other. These relatively uncommon tubers have flesh that ranges in hue from dark blue to lavender, sometimes mixed with a little white. They have a subtle nutty flavor; we think they taste even more "potato-y" than many white or yellow potatoes. Microwaving preserves the color the best, but steaming and baking are also favorable methods of preparation. When boiling, it's fun to watch the water change color! In fact, if you leave the skin on, prepare to see your potato water become a lovely shade of green. Since it's purple inside and out, the pigments make it very high in antioxidants - more, I've heard it said, than blueberries, pound for pound!

Here are a few ideas for adding this tasty, nutritious spud to your menu:

Combine it with other potatoes and veggies when doing roasted veggies

Mash some of these babies, and separately mash a lovely orange-colored winter squash, or sweet potatoes. Serve them side by side, or gently swirled together in a serving bowl.

Roast a couple and toss them with a baked spaghetti squash.

Prepare them as you would any other potato and surprise the family!

How about a specific recipe? This one's Fork Crushed Purple Potatoes

Enjoy!

What's that Moth?

From MSU's Landscape Alerts:

Butterflies and Moths on the Internet
Duke Elsner, MSUE Educator, Grand Traverse County

The Internet is loaded with sites that provide information on moths and butterflies. The great challenge in using these sites is picking out the good ones with accurate and useful information. I’ve been exploring these for some time now, and here are my favorites for help with the identification of butterflies and moths:

Butterflies and Moths of North America
http://www.butterfliesandmoths.org/ This is a searchable database of verified butterfly and moth records in the United States and Mexico. It includes dynamic distribution maps, photographs, species accounts, and species checklists for every U.S. county and each Mexican state.

The Children’s Butterfly Site
http://www.kidsbutterfly.org/ This is a companion site to the Butterflies and Moths of North America, intended for a youth audience.

North American Moth Photographers Group
http://mothphotographersgroup.msstate.edu/MainMenu.shtml The Moth Photographers Group is a non-profit organization with the purpose of aiding nature photographers and others in identifying moths. Their goal is to make accessible via the Internet photographs of most of the moths occurring in North America.

Images of North American Moth Species
http://eweb.furman.edu/~snyderjohn/leplist/ Access and links to photos of caterpillar and adult forms of thousands of North American moth species.

North America Butterfly Association
http://www.naba.org/ This the largest association in North America of people interested in butterflies. Its goal is to increase public enjoyment and conservation of butterflies. Their site includes information for locating and identifying butterflies, how to create successful butterfly gardens, and how to photograph butterflies.

Southeast Michigan Butterfly Association
http://www.sembabutterfly.com/index.html A great source of local information for Southeast Michigan, with links to many resources.

Thoughts on Growing Pesticide-Free Sweet Corn

My family is quite conscious of our community's desire for produce that nourishes, tastes great, and has low impact on the environment. We want to be able to provide that to them, and so began our quest to grow pesticide-free sweet corn. The learning curve has been quite a ride! From variety selection, to cover crop usage and selection, from weed control to just how much damage can be done by four-legged & six-legged pests, and even how and when to properly harvest, there are dozens of factors that go into how successful a sweet corn crop will be.

Variety selection might have been our most important step in protecting our crop from pests, and providing a long-lasting harvest. We chose varieties that would withstand cooler weather in the fall, so we can keep providing corn for a long season. Our other criteria included: a long holding life on the stalk, so we don't have to pick it all at once; a long shelf life after picking, so you can take home a dozen and eat it all week if you want to; a nice large ear and an extra-sweet, tender kernel for tasty goodness. But the trait that's been the most beneficial is the length of the husks - they're longer than many others, so the tip of the ear is down below the end. This hides the kernels from the insects that would burrow into the tip of the ear and chow down before we'd get to it. That means far fewer - almost zero - ears with worms in, even though there are no insecticides applied.


And that brings me to the "getting to it." That longer husk has made it challenging for some of us (ok, me - Christina) to learn how to select ears when picking. After picking every day for two weeks, this week I finally got the hang of it and realized that I'd been picking some of my corn early! It was tasty and tender, but not quite big enough. Now that I really know what I'm doing the corn I'm picking is a better fit for everyone who's coming to eat it.