 The following is a production of New Mexico State University. Welcome to another episode of VEGA, Vegetables in Great Abundance. I'm Carrie Bachman and I work with NMSU Cooperative Extension Service. I work in the area of nutrition education and with the VEGA show we are focusing on New Mexico grown vegetables. As you know, vegetables are very healthy and most of us don't eat as many of them as we really should. That's why we've named this program VEGA. You probably think of a VEGA as one of the main beams that supports the weight of an adobe house. Well, vegetables serve the same purpose in our own diets. They're one of the foundations of a healthy diet for children and adults. So with this vegetable show, we're actually going to be looking at different farmers markets in the Albuquerque area. Now many of you I know don't live that close to Albuquerque, but don't worry. You can call the number on your screen toll free and find out more about New Mexico farmers markets in your location. Farmers markets are a wonderful way to get involved in your community. They have a festive spirit about them. They really support local business, local economies, sustainable agriculture, and they're also a way to get healthier foods to become part of your diet and your family. Now sometimes children say that they don't really like vegetables, but one of the reasons they don't like them is they haven't been exposed to them very often. Think about it, if you don't bring vegetables home very often for your children to eat, when they do have a piece of broccoli in front of them, they're not going to be that excited about it. Much better is to actually go to a farmer's market with your children. Take a look at all the wonderful vegetables that are available. Talk to the people who grew them and who are selling them to you. Get some ideas on how to cook them. Let your kids help choose them. And then when you bring those vegetables home, your kids can also help prepare them in healthy, simple ways, which is what we're going to show you on these shows. Now, if you'd like more information about Vega, you can call to us at the number below on your screen and get some recipe cards, which are free. The recipe cards will show you not only how to prepare the vegetables, but also how to store them, how to choose them, and why they're healthy for you. Now, today we're going to be visiting the Corralis Growers Market. And let's go ahead and talk with Jim Fahey, who is the Market Manager. And after we talk with him, we'll take a look at our first vegetable. We're visiting today with Jim Fahey. He's the Manager of the Corralis Growers Market. And, Jim, we're so glad to be here with you today on the first Wednesday of the market for the season. Well, we're glad you're here. Thanks for having us. Tell us a little bit about the market and how you became involved with it. Well, this market has been here, not in this location, but in Corralis for probably 15 years. Okay. We've probably been in this location for about five years. I became involved after moving here and continuing to grow produce at our house and reaching a point where my wife actually said, you need to get rid of some of this stuff. And fortunately, there was an outlet where I could advance my hobby and actually use the monies obtained here to do more work at my place, to improve my place. Wonderful. So over time, in order to keep it a safe environment and to keep it running, you get involved. And so now this year, I'm the Market Manager. Okay. Well, that's great. And farmer's markets are really interesting collections of people. You've got growers small and large who come here with all different kinds of produce. And we're going to see a little bit of what Jim's Market has to offer in a second. Jim, I understand you're also a medical doctor. How does that impact your interest in vegetables at all? None. None? Well, as a nutritionist, that's one of the things that we try to do is make the connection between agriculture and the health of the human beings who are actually eating the food. And that's one reason we're featuring farmer's markets as a great source of healthy produce. Yeah. Do you eat a lot of produce yourself at home? Yes. Sweet. Everything we grow and most of our purchases at the grocery store are things like milk and cheese and occasionally eggs and meats. But we've pretty much grown our own produce for many years. Our kids grew up on this kind. No, I use this as an outlet. This was my method of relaxation. It wasn't developed or I didn't get into it because of my medical practice. Okay. It was just something to do to keep me busy and to get away from the medical practice. I mean, the stresses of it. Well, the stresses of many of our jobs are something that we need to be aware of and also balance with healthy activities like gardening, which is something, it's healthy to eat the food, but it's also really healthy to actually go out and grow the food and prepare it yourself as well. So thanks so much, Jim. We're going to go ahead and take a look at some of the vendors here today and we'll be back to visit with you in a bit. We really appreciate you being here. Thanks so much. Thank you. Well, I have found some wonderful garlic at the market and I'm here to talk with Bonnie Gonzalez, who's actually not the grower of the garlic, but a friend of hers grows it and tell us a little bit about how that works. Gail Levine owns Sensational Seeds here in the village and she has done garlic this year. This is an Italian purple neck garlic and it's got a very wonderful flavor and it's just a beautiful garlic and it's an early garlic, so thus it's here in June. You don't usually see garlic until later in the season, but she has done several varieties and this one is her early one. So if we wanted to keep this safe for a couple of weeks, how would you recommend storing it? I think pretty much as you would store a potato or any other fresh, you know, tuber. All right. You don't want it to get wet. You don't want it to get, you know, completely dried out. And you don't want it in the refrigerator. And you don't want to refrigerate it. Absolutely. You're right. Oh, it does smell. It almost smells sweet a little bit. It is. Does this have a different flavor than other varieties of garlic? Do you know? I wish I were more of a garlic expert. Cook it up and let's find out, you know. You guys are going to cook it, right? Well, you know, in fact, I'm not sure if we'll cook it or actually eat it raw. They're just eating it raw. I mean, it's so fresh. I'm tempted to chop it with a little bit of olive oil perhaps and eat it with bread in that form. So we'll see. I haven't decided yet. But it really is wonderful. And especially to see garlic this time of year, it's not usual. So you can come to the farmer's market and find things. You won't even know necessarily what you'll find from week to week. There are always new vendors. And as Bonnie said, you know, sometimes a vendor can't make it, but the vendor will send her stuff with somebody else. Someone else who's signed up for the market, should. It's a really nice kind of community, it sounds like, of growers. Yeah. Well, wonderful. We're going to get, I think, I think we'll go ahead and get all of this garlic, actually, that you've got out of the bags. It looks so beautiful. I can't pass it up. Check it out here. Check it all in one. That's fine. Well, here we are back in the kitchen with this lovely garlic that we bought from Bonnie. You may think of garlic as something that you always cook and put into an Italian sauce or some kind of a pasta dish, but I'm going to show you a couple of ways to enjoy garlic today that really make the flavor shine through. Now, that's one thing when you're buying garlic at the farmer's market, you'll come to realize there's so many different types of it. And as when I asked Bonnie at the market if she knew what this flavor was like, she suggested that we do a taste test and so that's what we're going to do today. I've actually got some of her beautiful purple, I've got some of her beautiful Italian purple garlic here. And you can see, look at that gorgeous color inside on the cloves themselves. Just beautiful. This is just one of many, many different types of garlic. Now, this garlic that I have here looks probably a little bit more familiar to you. It's a larger head and then you'll see that the cloves break off fairly easily and are fairly large. This is a soft net variety and so it's one that you normally find in the grocery store because they keep a little bit better than hard net varieties. What we're going to do today is actually a taste test comparing this Italian version that we got at the farmer's market with the grocery store version. Now, one really nice way to do that is to actually just go ahead and chop up some garlic. So if you've got a head of garlic like this, you can sort of separate it with your fingers. This one's pretty easy to separate and discard some of this extra papery skin. And then what you can do is take a clove or two and just gently with your knife, smash it. What that does is it starts to remove this papery skin from the garlic. And the skin is not something that you're going to be wanting to be eating. And this is a really easy way of doing it. You also can use a garlic press if you have one. But to be honest, I kind of like... I kind of enjoy getting the smell of garlic on my fingers. Now you want to then go ahead and split the garlic in half. If it's got a little green thing inside, you want to cut that out. This one doesn't. That can sometimes be a little bit bitter. Go ahead and split them in half. And then what you can do is go ahead and just coarsely chop being careful of your fingers, of course. And it doesn't really matter how fine or coarse you chop your garlic. I mean, it can be eaten both ways. In general, when you're cooking garlic, the finer you chop it or mince it, the more flavorful and strong it's going to taste. Whereas if you cook with a whole clove or just very lightly chopped, it's not going to have quite as much flavor. So we've got this here. Let's go ahead and we can mince it a little bit more. And then what you can do, if you'd like to do a puree, you can kind of rub the garlic on the side of the knife a little bit. And you'll see that it purees pretty nicely here. Well, we're running a little short on time, so what I'll do is put this garlic into this dish. A little larger than we need it to be. Add some olive oil. And let's have it taste. Delicious. This is a special surprise. Mary Jane Rodriguez is here at the Corralis Grower's Market. Now she prepares by hand a whole bunch of different kinds of soaps, and she grows all the herbs herself. The other thing that I've discovered is she also makes jams and these wonderful butters here. The ingredients in it is, of course, a prickly cactus fruit. I used sugar and lemon, apple instead of the pectin, because pectin does come from apple, and the apple that I used does not interfere with the taste of the fruit. I use honey, which also brings out the fruit flavor of your fruit that you are processing, and then my little secret ingredient in there, tequila and a little dash of cinnamon, and that's how I prepare it. This is just such a beautiful color. You can see that if you're familiar with the prickly pear fruit, which is also called tuna, you see these growing all over in New Mexico, and most people just kind of let them fall off of the plant. Yes, they do. My grandmother used to make a cactus candy and also the jams. So this is really kind of a tradition that you're continuing on? Actually, I didn't get the recipe from her because it was lost in her belonging, so it just took me a while to develop and come up with what tasted like her jams. Well, it is a real traditional food. When I saw it here, I thought, we've got to have this. And unfortunately, it's Mary Jane's last jar, but at the end of the summer is when you're getting more of the fruits, right? That's where the fruit will be ready. And so then you'll be making a larger batch again, which hopefully will last for those of you who want to come to the market in the future. Well, thank you so much. Now, you may be wondering, what on earth are we going to do with garlic and prickly pear butter? Well, let me show you. I've gone ahead and mashed up a couple more clothes of that delicious Italian purple garlic. You can see it's kind of a cross between a puree and a mince. And we've got that in this dish. Now what we're going to do is add some of our lovely prickly pear butter. Look at the color of this. Is that not amazing? There's no other fruit that I can think of in this color as well as the texture and the flavor. It's a little bit pulpy. And in fact, the prickly pear is a great source of fiber. A lot of people are discovering that it can be a good part of a healthy diet and a way to get fiber that you may not normally think of. So we're going to add in. There's no measurement involved in this recipe. Add in some prickly pear. We'll add a little bit of oil. Now, I actually probably would like to use a slightly milder tasting oil, just fine. Now you want to choose something that's a little acidic. In this case, I've got some rice vinegar. That's a little milder than some of the vinegar's. Balsamic vinegar would also taste very nice. Just a little bit. And then in terms of seasoning, got a bit of salt here. Just add a touch. You don't need it too much. A little bit of pepper, freshly ground. And then I'm going to add just a tiny bit of honey. There's already some honey, as Mary Jane said, in the the prickly pear jam. But we're going to add just a bit more. Just a little touch for sweetness to counteract that vinegar taste. And then you can just whisk it up. Now you may say, well, I don't have any prickly pear butter where I live. Well, if you live in New Mexico, it's likely that you probably have prickly pears near where you live. And in fact, you can make your own prickly pear puree. All you need to do is get some tongs or a long skewer. And you can find your prickly pears. Summertime, early fall is when you're going to find them. Right now, we don't have any to show you. I wish that I did. You want to be careful when you pick them. Use the tongs or the skewer because they've got tiny little spines on them that will get in your skin and make you itch. So anyway, once you've picked them, you can go ahead and peel them to get rid of all of that skin. And then press them through a sieve or a strainer and you'll have some really nice puree. You can then add to salad dressings like this. You can freeze it for later use. You can put it in teas, lemonades. Prickly pears are actually grown on the nopal plant. And the leafy part or the stem of the nopal is also an edible thing. And in fact, I think on a later show, I'd really like to show you how we can prepare that as well. And both parts of the plant, as I mentioned before, are high in fiber and very healthy. And it's a traditional plant that most of us can grow and for free. So here we are at the farmer's market. We found a prepared product, but you can find it yourself and eat it at home. I hope you enjoy your prickly pear investigations. Well, so far today we've gotten some garlic, some prickly pear butter, and I'm back here with Jim, the market manager. And Jim, can you tell us about this crop? I pronounce it as indive. I've been told it's on-dive. And we also have Jan with us as well. She's a master gardener from the Sandoval County Extension Office. Jan, you have actually had some experience cooking with on-dive or indive. Tell us a little bit about what you do with it. It looks kind of like salad, but I understand it has a different flavor. Yeah, well, it's it's more bitter. Okay. If you don't want to use it as a green and salad, you can as I had mentioned to you earlier, the French that I knew would cut it up and saute it with onion and then when it was wilted somewhat, throw in some spices and then pee. Jim, you told me this is the first year growing this for you. Oh, yes. You're always experimenting with new plants? Sure, because, you know, it's a couple of years ago, actually about three years ago, I grew some Armenian cucumbers. Those are delicious. And they're wonderful. They're very unusual looking, but they're very tasty. So yeah, we try to see what grows well and to see how it tastes and see how it how it can survive our temperature. Exactly. And the soil. We don't know what kind of pH this thing needs to grow, but it seems to be doing okay. It sure does. Well, we're looking forward to trying it. I'm not sure yet if we're going to cook it. We're going to eat it raw. It's pretty bitter. Yeah, I think you're going to want to cook it. Yeah, yeah. Throw some balsamic vinegar on it. And garlic. Chilies. You know, this is one of the joys of coming to farmers markets. You can find vegetables that are totally new to you and get some ideas from the folks who are here about how exactly to prepare them, take them home, and it's really kind of like a fun experiment. And you're eating something healthy and supporting local farmers at the same time. After the market visit yesterday, I did a little bit of research on this endive that we've got in front of us. What on earth are we going to do with it? And in fact, I realized it's something that I actually am a little bit familiar with. Endive is related to a food that's very commonly eaten in Italy called escarole, and also to radicchio, which you might know. These are all kind of frilly greens that look like this. Some of them are a little bit more bitter than others. This endive is actually called and you can see how curly the leaves are. And it's quite different from the Belgian endive, which is actually grown blanched and is sort of in a conical shape and is very expensive. Now what are we going to do with this today? Well, I decided we would go ahead and rinse this and use it as a salad green. So all you need to do is basically pick off the stems, just as you would lettuce, and then dunk them in some water, swish them around, and you can break them into a better size if you want to use, you know, slightly smaller pieces. But don't throw away the stems. The stems are just fine to eat, too. Look at this gorgeous, gorgeous green color. Drain off some of that water. And then we've got our dressing ready to go on top. You can see we've got that prickly pear color shining through. And you're not going to need a lot of the dressing. That's probably even more than you would want. But you can just see what a beautiful presentation that would be on the dinner table. This is something that kids are really going to like to eat, too. The sweetness from the prickly pear will offset the bitterness from the curly endive. Now, what else can you do with this endive? Well, there are a lot of great things to do with it. One thing, you can put it into soups. And that's an easy way to prepare a vegetable that you're not very familiar with. One way that the Italians like to prepare it is putting it into a dish that has pasta, and then also some white beans. You can use any kind of beans that you liked, those are black beans. And you basically saute the endive in some olive oil with our friend, the garlic. And you've got a really nice, light, healthy sauce to serve on top of pasta. One other thing that I would like to remind you all, don't be afraid of trying these unusual vegetables at the farmer's market. I didn't know exactly what I was going to do with this, but I went ahead and bought it, did a little bit of research, talked to some people. And we came up with this wonderful salad using fresh ingredients that are locally grown right from our farmer's market here in Corrales. Now you're not going to find necessarily these same ingredients in your market, but what you do find, be sure to be adventurous and make a delicious vegetable dish. Well, here we are at the Corrales Market and look who we've run into. Actually, these are some of my colleagues also who work for the Extension Service, but as volunteers. Jan and Therese are both master gardeners of the Sandoval County Cooperative Extension Service. Tell us a little bit about why you're here today at the market. Well, there's one reason is to get gardening, good gardening information to the public. The second reason is as volunteers to keep our master gardener status, we have to contribute 40 hours in Sandoval County. It varies from county to county, but in Sandoval we have to put in 40 hours of volunteer service. This is our means of getting our volunteer service. Great. Plus providing a lot of really necessary information, I think we tend to focus quite a lot on zaret gardening and the correct ways to do things in our climate for water conservation, in addition to every conceivable thing one might imagine. And we try to solve problems or we take it to the agent, the extension agent if we don't if we can't do that, but it's I think it provides quite a useful service. Well, it's really nice to see you all here because again, it bridges the gap between buying your food at the farmers market and actually growing some of your own food at home. And that's something that everybody can do. I mean, I'm a gardener, but certainly not an expert. I'm sure you all have had a lot more experience than I have. Yeah. A lot of failure. And that's part of the joy of gardening. You never know what's going to happen. You know, extension does so many different things and as a nutrition person, one of the services that we offer in our county offices is nutrition education classes, which are called ICANN. And if you're interested in enrolling in these classes, you can just contact your local county extension office and also contact your county extension office and find out if they have a master gardener program going on. You can join it and become a volunteer. Or as Jan said, you can call up with any kind of question you might have and there are people there ready and willing to help you. Yeah. And in general, everybody, you know, if we don't know the answer, we find out. The best part is everything is free. You're never a charge. That's true. Yeah. That's right. And thank you all so much for donating your time to not only the Coralus Growers Market, but also to all of the gardeners and growers in this part of the state. We really appreciate it. It's our pleasure. Thank you so much for visiting with us. Well, thanks so much for joining me for this episode of Vega, Vegetables and Great Abundance. We've had a wonderful time visiting with Jim Fahey and some of the growers at the Coralus Growers Market. Now, you probably are thinking, well, I don't have a market like that near me. But don't worry, this is a market you just need to investigate. Give this phone number a call that you see on your screen now. And it's a toll-free number that will let you know where farmers markets are in the state of New Mexico, what their schedules are. Some of them are on the weekend. Some of them, like this Coralus Market, operate during the week as well. Remember, if you're a WIC recipient, you can receive coupons at your WIC office that you can then redeem at your local farmers market for fresh produce just like this beautiful, beautiful curly end dive. Now, you remember, we started off with the garlic in this show, and you can see here, it's so beautiful and purple. Compare that to what you get at the grocery store in this container of garlic powder. Not to say that garlic powder doesn't have its uses, but what you're going to find at the farmers market is so much fresher, so much tastier, and there's so much more variety. You'll find several varieties of garlic that you can taste test side by side when you get home. Decide what you like the best. And as the master gardeners have just shared with us, you can also plant your own vegetables as well. Kids really get into planting vegetables. Some things like garlic don't take very much care. They'll take about half a year, seven or eight months to come up, but once they do come up, it's really exciting for children and for the adults that are looking after the plants as well. We've made this beautiful salad today, and of course you could modify this. You could find the same ingredients at your farmers market, but that's part of the joy of exploring at the local market and visiting with local growers. You could add New Mexico fruits, other vegetables like snap peas, serve this with a nice hearty loaf of bread, and you've got a very light summer meal that everyone in your family is going to enjoy. Don't forget when you go to the market to take your children with you. Part of the reason children don't like vegetables nowadays is that they're not very familiar with how vegetables grow, what they look like as they're coming out of the ground. And it's something that kids get more familiar with if they get to choose the vegetables and prepare them in simple ways like this at home, they will actually learn to like them better. Just be patient with your kids. They're not going to like everything, but that's okay. And be a good role model, too. That's a very important piece of being a parent. If you eat your vegetables, your kids are much more likely to do the same. Remember, you can call us at the toll-free number below if you would like to get some Vega vegetable cards that tell you how to prepare some of the vegetables we've seen on the show, as well as how to store them. Until next show, I hope that you will visit your local farmers market, support our local agriculture, and enjoy some healthy, fresh produce while you're at it. We'll see you in the next episode of Regents.