Paul Szmal: Good morning, it's 8.15, it's FHELX Morning Thursday, and it's our monthly segment on nutrition and healthy eating and all things about good food with Candace Riegel from Cooperative Extension of Seneca County. Good morning.
Candace Riegel: Good morning, Ted. How are you?
Paul Szmal: I'm doing well. This is a fun time of year because we have so many crops that come along, and then it's apple and pumpkin time.
So let's start with the September National Fruit and Veggies Month. Most of us now, I think, have a pretty good idea of the health benefits of eating lots of fruits and vegetables, but tell us about Fruit and Veggie Month.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, so there's another National Fruit and Vegetable Month, which is June, but September is Fruits and Veggies Month. So this is just a good reminder that every time you eat, try to have a plant, either a fruit or a veggie, or even a grain or a legume. We just want to think about, like, the importance of eating fruits and vegetables at every meal. So every time you're getting a chance to have a snack or breakfast, lunch, or dinner, try to start with a fruit or vegetable first. Try to make those the main component of your meal, whether it's starting with, like, a soup or a salad or, like, a fruit tray or a fruit bowl, and then getting into your next meal. Or if it's just, like, your main dish, try to have your vegetables or even garbanzo beans or other legumes as, like, your main component and your protein, and then add in other animal proteins or other sides as well.
Paul Szmal: We've been, all summer long, there's a little produce stand. It's not even a stand. It's a card table next to somebody's house that sells the greatest tomatoes. So I've been having a tomato sandwich for lunch about three days a week all summer, and it's great.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, I mean, wherever you can get them, just try to make sure you do, like, two to three, you know, fruit a day, three to five vegetables a day, and try to just include one. The easiest thing about that is just try to include one at every meal. Every time you're going to grab some food, just try to hit a fruit and vegetable first, and then snack on something else, maybe.
Paul Szmal: We're getting down to the end of the Farmer's Market season, so a reminder for seniors and for WIC customers to use their FMNP coupons before the year's out, and you can also double your EBT dollars at Farmer's Markets.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, so your FMNP coupons are the Farmer's Market Nutrition Program, so those are just at Farmer's Markets. So within these last one to two weeks, I think there's like two weeks left at a couple of our markets, just try to go and use your checks if you have any left. Take advantage of them and grab your fruits and vegetables, and then your EBT bucks. Yeah, you can use it at the grocery store, but at the market, you get to double your bucks and get twice as much for your money.
So it's a good time to stock up on late-season veggies that you want a lot of, whether it's a lot of tomatoes to make sauce for the winter, or other things that you can preserve, like berries and pickling like beans and corn, canning corn, anything like that. And then things that you can store. So I always like to go and get a lot of winter squash, and they can store for months in your cupboard. You can do potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots, beets. Beets, not a lot of people think they store very long, but if you can cut off the greens and you just pop them in a drawer in your fridge, they will last like a month or two. I've had some stay in there for a long time, and they're still good. And of course, Cooperative Extension throughout the year offers food preservation classes, and you have the master food preservers. So if you don't know yet, you can take a course soon and learn how to preserve these things over the winter.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we do classes to help, and we have information, and you can always call us, and we'll give tips on just how to preserve anything that you want to keep throughout the year, or whether it's just cooking classes throughout the winter, we do as well, and using up some of those produce that you can store over the winter. And pumpkins. Pumpkins are a good one.
Candace Riegel: Yeah. That leads us to Pumpkin Days. Cooperative Extension's doing Pumpkin Days the last day of each of the markets in Seneca Falls. That's October 1st from 2 to 6 p.m. The Waterloo Farmers Market, October 5th from 9 to noon. Tell us about the recipes and pumpkin fun.
Yeah, so we've done this every year for, I want to say, like four or five years now, but we do our end of the season, let's cap off the markets, and we do a Pumpkin Day where we give out either free small little pumpkins for kids to decorate, or we do pie pumpkins so people can attempt to make their own pumpkin puree at home. Not a lot of people have tried it before, but it's super easy. You just cut them in half, you can turn them over on your pan, cook them for like an hour or so in the oven, and then just scoop it out and kind of put it in a blender if you want, and then you can make muffins, pumpkin pies, you can put them in your pancakes, put them in a smoothie, whatever you'd like.
Paul Szmal: When it comes to making pies, I mean, you can get pumpkins that are small, and you can get pumpkins that are 2,000 pounds that they grow for the contest. Is there kind of like a perfect size for a pumpkin pie?
Candace Riegel: It's more variety, so don't go with like any of your very large Jack O'Lantern-style pumpkins. Those don't taste as good. You want what they consider like your sugar pumpkins or your pie pumpkins, and we will have these handouts at the market as well. They're called like sugar pumpkins, but there's a couple different varieties. They're usually like a small to medium pumpkin, but they're a little bit sweeter, a little bit more of that darker orange color inside, so not your like really light yellowy inside when you carve your Jack O'Lantern, you know?
Paul Szmal: So you did some back-to-school open houses with recipe samples and the nutrition information, and of course the farm-to-school program, their gardens are yielding very nicely right now.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, so we're in the midst of all the open houses. They go through October. So we usually have a table where we do a lot of our just information stuff, some take-home stuff about our different programs we do in schools and out in the community, but we also do produce and recipe samples for people to try that we usually use in the school, whether it's 4-H, dairy, or farm-to-school, and our gardens. They get to check out some of our gardens if they're right close by, and they are producing like crazy tomatoes, cabbage, corn. We have a lot of gardens at several of our schools, so they have a lot growing right now.
And of course, part of the farm-to-school program is a lot of education. So kids are starting to get a pretty good idea now of where their food comes from.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we're just starting to set up our schedules of dairy lessons, and Ms. Rachel in our office has been in KD Stanton doing a lot of nutrition, farm-to-school, and dairy lessons to teach kids about local dairy farms and just produce, fruits, vegetables, grains. So we're already getting into that, and we'll be going all through December with our first round of lesson series in all of our schools, and then we'll start up again for the spring as well. But right now we're doing that, and we have potential field trips coming up, and one of them is a lot of our third through fifth grade classrooms are going to attend the Ontario County Fun on the Farm, which is one of our big dairy ones that Hemdale Farms is putting on, and it's September 27th on Friday for our schools, and then they have a public day on that, September 28th on Saturday, but you get to check out the dairy farm and all things to do with farming and dairy.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, and I just learned that. I knew the public day on Saturday the 28th. I didn't know your school kids had a day as well. So Friday, September 27th, and remind us where Hemdale Farms is located.
Paul Szmal: Yes, that is in Seneca Castle, I believe. So it's not very far from our Waterloo schools that we took last year, and we went and had a great tour there. And they do a really good day for the schools and the classrooms to come and see lots of different companies and see just a lot of different aspects of farming.
Candace Riegel: Now October is National Farm to School Month. The harvest of the month, of course, is apples. And I had no idea until I came to New York how many apple varieties were developed right in our backyard at the Ag Station in Geneva, and what a big crop that is in the state of New York.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, so we do farm to school all year, but October is our really big month, and we have a lot of things going on. We try to get into all the schools and do like apple sample taste tests where kids get to vote, and we try to select a couple, we do like two or three apples, and we usually try to go with some ones that are like developed here in New York or by Cornell, and give them a chance to try new ones versus old ones to see which ones they like better. And then Farm On actually does a New York Big Apple Crunch every year where schools can actually, I think this year it's on October 10th at 2 p.m., you can get a big group together, take a bite out of all the apples, and then you take either a picture or a video, and you can get awarded a grant money for a victory garden that you can have at your school. So it's a big thing we try to help out with.
Candace Riegel: Now this is neat too, the New York Kitchen in Canandaigua is going to host a farm to school training day for school food service staff to help them better integrate these local products into their menus.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, we specifically set this up, and we try to ask them to host us. We've done it for I think three years now. We go there and take our Seneca County food service staff from our schools, and we do that through Cornell Farm to School. We say, come on, come join us here at New York Kitchen. And they're great about hosting us, and they help teach about how to prepare whole produce, whole foods, how to make scratch cooking a little bit more efficiently, which is what we're going to try to focus on this year, how to make like base seasonings just to get more fresh and appealing and flavorful, colorful meals on the menu for kids in schools and try to make it more efficient, more easier, or an easier choice for a lot of food service staff and food service directors to make happen in their schools.
Candace Riegel: Now I just learned this the other day, New York is number one in beets.
Paul Szmal: Yeah, so Cornell is going to do a big campaign this year because New York is number one in beets. Nobody beats New York. I think that should be the slogan on their shirt, but they're going to do a great campaign this year through the month of October as well. Because we're number one for beets, it keeps growing, and we produce a lot of beets. And not a lot of people really go for beets as their first choice, but I think they're really great, whether you saute them, roast them in the oven, or you can do a fresh, like I like to do a beet and carrot coleslaw if you don't like cabbage or like the cold crops and if they bother you. Then I do a beet and carrot one that's really good. I'm the biggest fan now for the beet brownies. I got the recipe on the Ag Tour, and they're fantastic.
Candace Riegel: Those were great. They are. I can't even tell. And the chocolate, I mean, we all like to eat chocolate, most of us, I think, and they hide the earthiness a little bit, but you're getting a veggie in there, and kids don't even know it, and they're getting their vegetable.
Paul Szmal: Absolutely. Here, kids, have all the brownies you want. Maybe still limit a little bit, but yeah.
All this information and more at the website, SenecaCountyCCE.org. Candace, thanks as always.
Candace Riegel: Yeah, thanks. Have a great day, Ted.
