Cooking With Kristin

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I was talking all things gardening with I’ve had roasted garlic and found it to be deli“From the Fields” producer Mark cious, but I’ve never tried roasted onions. This is on Wettergren last week and he suggested a my to-try list. I can only imagine how aromatic it good topic for “Cooking with Kristin” must be and how tasty too! would be onions. Great idea, Mark! Whether you have lots of garden-fresh onions or just grab a bag of them whenRoasted Onions https://keviniscooking.com/roasted-onions/ ever you’re at the grocery store, onions Marinade: are always awesome. 1 cup water My all-time favorite onion rings are from Clementine’s — a restaurant in St. Joseph Michigan. My grandparents had a boat on Lake Michigan and kept it in a slip in St Joseph. We would visit them every summer and my grandpa would love to take the boat to Clementine’s for some tasty rings. The onion rings would arrive on a dowel — either six inches or 12 inches. We always went 1 cup red wine vinegar 2 tablespoons brown sugar 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary 1/2 teaspoon salt 1/4 teaspoon black pepper 1 pinch red pepper flakes optional 4 large onions chopped with the 12 inches. You can never get enough of fresh, crispy and Roasting: delicious rings. Here’s a recipe I’ve used that tastes a lot like 4 tablespoons butter those amazing Clementine’s rings I still dream about! 1 teaspoon fresh rosemary chopped Crispy Onion Rings Blend marinade ingredients in small bowl and pour into a bakhttps://realhousemoms.com/crispy-onion-rings/ ing dish that will hold all 8 onion halves. I use 8x8-inch baking 2 sweet onions (Vidalia or Walla Walla) 1 cup all-purpose flour 1-1/2 teaspoons seasoned salt 3/4 teaspoon baking powder pan or round 12-inch baking stone (pictured) depending on size of onion. Trim the end of onions and cut horizontal (leaving skin on) and place cut side down in marinade. Marinate overnight covered in refrigerator. 1 cup cold water Preheat oven to 400 F. Flip the onions over in the marinade, 2 eggs lightly beaten and lay on the flat bottom of each side. Top each onion with 1/2 Vegetable oil for frying tablespoon of butter and remaining teaspoon of rosemary. Roast Cut off the top of each onion and peel away the skin. Using a sharp knife, cut the onions into 1/4-inch slices (or thicker if you prefer). Separate the individual onion rings from each slice, discarding the centers. Set aside. uncovered in oven for 1 hour or until golden brown, basting once or twice during roasting. Remove from heat, spoon reduced sauce over and sprinkle with parsley or more fresh chopped rosemary. Remove outer skins before eating and serve.

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together flour, seasoned salt, n and baking powder. Add in water and eggs and mix until the bat- You can never have too many dips in your recipe arsenal. This ter is smooth. one utilizes the flavors in caramelized onions to create a deliHeat two inches of oil in a large pot to 375 F over mediumhigh heat. You can use a long stem thermometer to monitor the cious, creamy dip that goes well with veggies and crackers alike. Caramelized Onion Dip oil›s temperature. Dip onion slices in the batter, and shake gently https://www.acouplecooks.com/happy-hour-platter-caramelizedto remove any excess. Then carefully drop the onions into the hot onion-dip/ oil. Do not overcrowd the pot. Cook for 2 to 4 minutes per side, 1/4 cup olive oil or until golden brown. Use tongs or a spider strainer to remove 4 large white onions cooked onion rings to a paper towel-lined baking sheet. Repeat 1/4 cup red wine with remaining onions and batter. Serve onion rings immediately. 1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt or kosher salt, plus more as needed n 2 cups sour cream 1 cup Greek yogurt 1 tablespoon tamari or soy sauce Dash of freshly ground black pepper Make the caramelized onion dip: Finely chop the onions. In a large saucepan over medium heat, warm the olive oil. Add the onions and sauté for 20 to 25 minutes, stirring often, until golden brown. Add the red wine and sauté until the wine is cooked off, about 10 minutes more. Remove from the heat, add the salt, and let cool. Once cooled, transfer to a medium mixing bowl and fold in the sour cream, yogurt and soy sauce. Season with pepper and more salt, if needed. Cover and transfer to the refrigerator and chill for

COOKING at least 30 minutes before serving. Can be stored in the refrigerWITH KRISTIN ator for up to three days. By Kristin Kveno n This wouldn’t be an onion-focused column if I didn’t include one of the very best ways to eat onions: French onion soup. If you haven’t made this soup yet, then give this recipe a try as it is pretty darn scrumptious. Rich and Simple French Onion Soup

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/13309/rich-and-simplefrench-onion-soup/ 1/2 cup unsalted butter 2 tablespoons olive oil 4 cups sliced onions 4 (10.5 ounce) cans beef broth 2 tablespoons dry sherry 1 teaspoon dried thyme 1 pinch salt and pepper to taste 4 slices French bread 4 slices provolone cheese 2 slices Swiss cheese, diced 1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Melt butter with olive oil in an 8-quart stock pot on medium heat. Add onions and continually stir until tender and translucent. Do not brown the onions. Add beef broth, sherry and thyme. Season with salt and pepper, and simmer for 30 minutes.

Heat the oven broiler. Ladle soup into oven-safe serving bowls and place one slice of bread on top of each (bread may be broken into pieces if you prefer). Layer each slice of bread with a slice of provolone, 1/2 slice diced Swiss and 1 tablespoon Parmesan cheese. Place bowls on cookie sheet and broil in the preheated oven until cheese bubbles and browns slightly.

Onions are versatile, flavorful and a fabulous addition to all kinds of recipes. From rings to dips to soups onion are tough to beat.

Kristin Kveno scours the internet, pours over old family recipes and searches everywhere in between to find interesting food ideas for feeding your crew. Do you have a recipe you want to share? You can reach Kristin at kkveno@thelandonline.com. v

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By RICHARD SIEMERS in the winter. (The hoop house is used for gardenThe Land Correspondent ing in the summer.) They raised about 1,200

GRANITE FALLS, Minn. — When farmers broilers on pasture last year; but with some carJosh and Randi Streblow (and their family) took ryover, did not repeat that this year. They also over Carl’s Bakery in Granite Falls from Tom and have ducks, geese and turkeys. Laurie Aus on September 1, 2019, they had no Josh and his brother rotationally graze a small experience at commercial baking. In fact, accord- group of eight cattle. Plans to increase the numing to their oldest daughter, Ariana, 19, who ber did not happen because of the drought. The helps manage the bakery, her dad’s only exper- cattle are overwintered on his place where he tise in a kitchen was using a toaster. stockpiles lowland vegetation and they bale

“Now,” Ariana said, “he’s baking bread for the graze the cattle. whole town.” In addition to the long tradition of their family

Josh and their oldest son, Isaiah, 21, work side in the community and on the land they own, the by side in the baking. Randi manages and cooks, other part of the “family” name is that it really is and most of their nine children have a role to a family venture, “in every way,” Josh said. Four play. Josh’s parents complete the family crew, of the children are between the ages of 16 and 21, and they have a few part-time employees. and three more are not far behind. All are active-

Carl’s Bakery is a Granite Falls tradition, ly involved. which is why the name hasn’t changed since Tom “They all have the desire to continue building Aus’ father, Carl, founded it in the 1950s. And to in this enterprise. But it also connects to my maintain that tradition, Aus worked with the father just down the road from whom I get a lot Streblows the first of the worldview and four months as part of the faith that grounds the purchase. us. My younger broth“He had refined [the baking] so much himself and was such a perfectionist in maintaining and doing the thing well, he worked with us to make sure we had the process,” Josh said. “The mechanics we had pretty well in hand by the end of 2019. Then Covid was a total upender.” er, Seth, and his kids coming up, we’re partnering on beef cattle. While the Streblow Family Farm at this time is our family, we have adult children coming into it and building their own ventures and enterprises, picking the thing that keys to their liking. But also, it is a means by which siblings and nephews are

Being an essential able to interact with business, they didn’t us. We are trying to have to shut down, and build a multi-generathe bakery does have a tional farm from the drive-through window get-go. That’s why — which Josh said really saved them. But all the bought the 20 acres of Minnesota River Valley land keeping it small and building from the ground up seasonal activity, corporate events and graduations in 2000 from the estate of a relative who had been and having our kids in it from the start has been a disappeared. living there. They ran different businesses from there very purposeful move.”

But why is a farm family running a bakery in for about 13 years. Their size, and being light on infrastructure, has town? There may be days when they ask themselves Seven years ago they started using it as an active made it easier to weather the drought this summer. that question. “At times it has been exceptionally draining,” Josh said. But the Streblows are not typical southwest Minnesota farmers. farm, bringing back chickens and hogs. “We began to have a real yearning to produce for ourselves primarily,” Josh said, “and increasingly “We’re able to dial it back to what is realistic and manageable for this year without having massive overhead that demands that we keep pressing for-

Streblow Family Farms is not just a name. Part of wanted to do that in a way that stewarded the ward to keep the thing going. It’s very scalable for us the ‘family’ is the deep roots they have in the com- resource and not just exploited it. That pushed us in so that we are building it in a very holistic and manmunity. The ties go back to the 1800s on Josh’s a regenerative direction.” ageable way, and able to keep a momentum that can mother’s side, and the place on which they live (just outside of Granite Falls) was purchased in the 1930s by a great uncle, Elsworth Sandberg, who sold off parcels of the 300-400 acres through the years after operating a diversified dairy farm. Josh and Randi They raise pastured pork and poultry, will end up doing about 40 hogs throughout this year, and have about 300 laying hens. After a few sheep take down some of the vegetation, the “eggmobile” moves in with the laying hens. The hens move to a hoop house See STREBLOW, pg. 10 be built on in the next year.” No matter how high is the quality of meat and eggs one raises, one still needs a market. Not living near

Photos by Richard Siemers

Randi and Josh Streblow Carl’s Bakery has been in Granite Falls for over 60 years, and the Streblows are adding some new choices to go with long-time customers’ favorites.

The Land Correspondent

When we think of food cooperatives, most of us also think of organically-produced food products on sale. But the connection between the food cooperatives formed in the 1970s and ‘80s and organic foods was not inevitable, according to Craig B. Upright’s history of the rise of Minnesota’s New Wave cooperatives.

“First, cooperatives did not emerge primarily to serve as a vendor for organic and natural foods,” Upright writes in the introduction to his 2020 book, “Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota.”

“Cooperatives formed to promote social change … At first, selling natural or organic foods was an extension of other activities and interests, all directed towards critiquing the mainstream institutions of the day.”

Food co-ops were, and still are, an important part of Minnesota history. Upright’s research found that at least 80 of them formed in Minnesota between 1970 and 1999. Although many of them were in the Twin Cities, the majority were in small towns. Cambridge, Litchfield, Ortonville and Windom, among many others, all had a co-op.

“Grocery Activists” tracks the history of those food cooperatives and organically-grown food as the two developed in parallel before they eventually intersected and became connected.

In the books’ first chapter, entitled “The Cause of Organic Food,” the author writes about Rudolf Steiner’s biodynamic agricultural practices and J.I. Rodale’s experiments with what he grew to call organic farming and gardening. The general public started to pay attention to Rodale’s work following the 1959 Food and Drug Administration’s recall of carcinogenic herbicide contaminated cranberries two weeks before Thanksgiving.

Rachel Carson’s 1962 condemnation of the widespread agricultural use of DDT, in her book “Silent Spring,” left Americans wondering about the safety of their food, Upright writes.

Upright quotes a 1972 Washington Post editorial: “It is news to no one that a big tonnage of the food eaten every day by Americans is worthless, tasteless, contrived, and can occasionally be actually dangerous to health . . . in many cases the consumers who are rejecting it are turning to what are called organic foods.”

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture didn’t see it that way.

“Organic and natural are terms that have been used by some groups to refer to foods grown in soil fertilized with only compost or manure. However, no sound scientific evidence demonstrates that such foods have nutritive values or health factors superior to foods produced with an appropriate combination of fertilizers,” USDA’s 1965 yearbook wrote in an article entitled “Food Quackery.”

The Minnesota food cooperative movement began two years before the Washington Post wrote its condemnation of American food. Those cooperatives were selling bulk organic nuts and grains from the church basements. But, in chapter two, Upright demonstrates that their historical origins were with the farmers cooperative of the late 19th century and the first half of the 20th century. He does an excellent job of showing the reader how this new wave of food cooperatives is linked to Minnesota’s (and the entire country’s) long history of cooperative development.

Cooperatives, Upright writes, were always formed due to some failure in the market. In the 1960s and ‘70s a growing number of young people felt that the increasing indus-

trialization of agriculture, combined with the corporate control of the nation’s food supply, were a significant market failure. Small cooperative grocery stores were a logical response to that failure. But the issue of whether or not those stores would focus on selling organically grown food was not settled until the mid-1970s, at the end of the Co-op Wars. In his fourth chapter, “Dissent Among the Dissenters,” Upright writes about the occasionally violent struggle for control between two factions of the largely Twin Cities based founders of the cooperative movement. There were two results from the 1970s Co-op Wars, Upright says. One was that food cooperatives became what we know them as today. The other was that, over the next decade, cooperatives spread across the state. That very success planted the seeds of cooperative’s potential doom, however. “Amazon’s (2017) acquisition of Whole Foods was just the latest piece of evidence that organic food had become a mainstream consumer item,” Upright writes. How can food cooperatives survive in the face of stiff competition from the likes of Amazon? Upright asks that question toward the end of the book and answers it. In fact, the entire book is an exploration of why cooperatives are surviving and will continue to do so. If you’re interested in cooperative, agriculture, food, or simply Minnesota history, you’ll find “Grocery Activism: The Radical History of Food Cooperatives in Minnesota” well worth reading. It’s published by the University of Minnesota Press and is available in book stores. v Family interest required Streblow operation to expand

a large population center, and given the small size of their farm, Josh and Randi understood it might not be enough.

“It was a long road for us to be able to be fully selfsufficient doing that,” Josh said. “We’re not in the right area to really monopolize on a small-scale regenerative farming enterprise — especially on the small land base that we have. We saw the bakery as a perfect intersect on a number of levels.”

One level is very basic. “We are deeply, deeply committed to this community,” Josh said. The bakery is an integral part of the Granite Falls community and they saw the opportunity to keep it going.

On another level, it fit a family with children who are ready to take on more responsibility.

“[The bakery coming up for sale] was the right time,” he said. “The Lord was good to us in making that time work for where we are at as a family trying to step farther forward. We have children who are coming in and saying, I’d love to take a part.”

On yet another level, the bakery is an outlet for what they produce. The eggs go into the breakfast sandwich and are sold by the dozen. Their hogs provide the breakfast sausage and patties, and brats served at lunch. They sell whole chickens and use a lot of the chicken in soups, tortillas, wraps, chicken salad.“That gives us a chance to be continually advertising the quality of the meat,” he said. Their brats are very popular, and people will buy a package after having one for lunch. The farm supplies the eggs, chicken, and pork, and eventually they will supply their own beef.

“The bakery would use about 12-14 cows worth of ground beef in a year,” Josh said. “We would sell the higher-value cuts through the bakery or through custom sales. Having the bakery as a primary customer gives us a predictable model for doing that.”

There are plenty of challenges. USDA processors are booked out 8-9 months, and poultry processors are almost non-existent. “There’s a tremendous demand that is not being met,” he said.

Being farmers and bakers is not a usual combination, but the Streblows have two years of experience now. While continuing what has made the bakery popular, like donuts fried in lard and BBQ on the noon menu, they have added their own innovations and brought their farm products to the menu.

“[Buying the bakery] was a way of putting us into the community and giving us a venue for the farm,” Josh said. “The last couple of years have been a dance of us trying to find that equilibrium between having a bakery, which in its own right is full time, but wanting to also continue to advance what we are doing on the farm.”

If you stop at the bakery to eat breakfast or lunch, or buy bread, sweets or meat, you get the distinct impression that the combination makes good sense.

Carl’s Bakery is located at 810 Prentice Street in downtown Granite Falls. To learn more (and see a photo of the entire family) check out www.carlsbakery.net or www. streblowfamilyfarm.com. v