Friday, June 17, 2011

Best Local Foods Challenge

The recent issue of Minnesota Monthly listed the best local foods. I thought it might be interesting to create a list of them to see how many we've already tried and how many more we can try this year. I've marked the ones we've had in red and added a few notes.

Dairy, Eggs and Grains

1. Cedar Summit Whole Milk
2. Kalona Chocolate Milk
3. Kalona Super Natural Yogurt
4. Kalona Super Natural Sour Cream
5. Autumnwood Milk
Cedar Summit Farm Cream Bottles
6. Cedar Summit Cream - Break the cream cap at the top of the sweet glass little jars for the most decadent addition to your morning coffee. Seriously good.
7. Johnson Quail Eggs
8. Auracana Blue Chicken Eggs
9. LTD Duck Eggs
10. Harmony Organics Chicken Eggs
11. Hope Unsalted Butter - This is the butter we keep on hand all the time in both salted and unsalted. The flavor is so outstanding compared to the national brands.
12. Nordic Creamery Butter
13. Rochdale Farms Hand-Rolled Butter
14. Parisserie 46 Miche
15. Country Choice Organics Duplex Sandwich Cremes
16. Potter's Crackers
17. New French Bakery's Sesame Semolina Loaf
18. Whole Grain Milling Company's Corn Chips
19. Bittersweet Farm Ruby Red Popcorn
20. Native Harvest Wild Rice - You can really tell the different when you buy a good hand harvested wild rice.
21. St. Paul Bagelry Everything Bagels
22. Rustica's Bostock
23. Birchwood Granola
24. Salty Tart Croissants
25. Rustica's Bittersweet Chocolate and Ginger Cookies
26. Surdyk's Pretzels
27. Sun Street's Baguette - We love most of Solvieg's breads. Having her bakery close by has made me stop baking my own because I could never get the quality she does.

Cheese

28. Montchevre Cheese La Chevriotte
29. Alemar Cheese Company's Bent River Camebert
30. Crave Bros. Petit Freres
31. Star Thrower's Raw Sheep's Milk Camembert-Style Cheese
32. Montchevre Cheese Bucheron
33. Love Tree Farm's Gabrielson Lake
Sheep
34. Love Tree Farm's Sweet Young Thing - A great sheep's milk cheese, perfect for snacking. It went over big at a party here topped with some of my Fig and Jalapeno Jam.
35. Crave Bros. Mascarpone
36. Crave Bros. Fresh Mozzarella
37. Kowalski's Fresh Mozzarella
38. Donnay Chevre
39. Northern Lights Blue
40. Shepherd's Way Big Woods Blue
41. St. Pete's Summit Winter Blue
42. Montfort Gorgonzola
43. Dunbarton Blue
44. Roth Kase Buttermilk Blue
45. Pastureland Meadowlark Cheddar
46. Marieke Gouda Belegen
47. Carr Valley Mobay
48. Bleu Mont Bandage-Wrapped Cheddar
49. Hook's 10 Year Cheddar

Sauces, Ice Cream and Candy

50. Groveland Confections Hazelnut Chocolate Spread
51. Golden Fig Salty Caramel Sauce
52. Minnestalgia Blueberry Sauce
53. Laura's Candy Marshmallows
54. Laura's Graham Crackers
55. BT Mcelrath Milk Chocolate
56. Haute Habañero Sauce
57. River Chocolate Company's Kumbe' African Chocolate Sauce
58. Ring Mountain Gelato
59. Heartland Red Fruit Sorbet
60. Heartland Strawberry Mint Sorbet
61. Izzy's Peace Coffee Ice Cream
62. Izzy's Summit Oatmeal Stout Ice Cream
63. Pumphouse Creamery Salty Caramel Ice Cream - 6/30 - Actually they call it Sea Salt and Caramel Ice Cream. Great texture and flavor. I feel like you can taste the milk in it. Homemade waffle cone tastes like Golden Grahams cereal.
64. Pumphouse Creamery Vanilla Ice Cream
65. Sonny's Spumoni
66. Sonny's Blood Orange Sorbet
67. Patisserie 46 Lime Coriander Bars
68. Thomasina's Cashew Brittle
69. Very Prairie Vanilla and Double Chocolate Marshmallows
70. BT Mcelrath's Prairie Dog Chocolate Bar - 6/26 - Good but I prefer the Salty Dog especially because it's dark chocolate.
71. BT Mcelrath's Blood Orange Blossoms
72. Sweet Jules Sea-Salt Caramels
73. BT Mcelrath's Strawberry Balsamic Caramels
74. Very Prairie Wild Meringue Mushrooms
75. Mademoiselle Miel Honey Bonbons
76. Very Prairie Vanilla and Chocolate Meringue Stars
77. Sweet Godess Butter Almond Toffee
78. Sweet Godess Peanut-Butter Cup
79. Groveland Confections's Dark Chocolate, Coffee and Sea Salt Bark

Honey, Jam and Hot Sauce

80. Ames Farm Honey - A very distinctive honey. I can tell when someone is using it just by the way it smells. 
81. Johnston Honey
82. Ames Farm Buckwheat Honey
83. Lucia's Pecan-Nut Honey
84. Birchwood Strawberry Preserves
85. Red Lake Nation Blueberry Jam
86. Lucille's Kitchen Strawberry Rhubarb Basil Jam
87. Lucille's Kitchen Mead Jam
88. Wee Willy's Barbecue Sauce - No one thinks of MN for barbecue but ,we love this sauce. It's basic but so good even Bon Appetite called it one of the best.
89. Lucky's Honey Mustard
90. Lucia's Plum Ketchup
91. Fanfrikkin'tastic Buffalo Wing Sauce
92. Lucky's Jalapeno and Garlic Hot Sauce
93. Kayak Kitchens Haute Habanero Paste
94. Sadia's Hot Sauce, Mild
95. Daddy Sam's Salmon Glaze

Syrup, Vinegar and Pickles

96. Red Lake Nation Chokeberry Syrup
97. Waletzko Family 2011 Maple Syrup
98. Stanley's Sugar Bush Grade B
99. Anderson's Apple Syrup
100. Lorence's Berry Farm Raspberry Syrup
101. Leatherwood Garlic in Mixed Fruit Vinegar
102. Leatherwood Rhubarb Vinegar
103. Golden Fig Rose Raspberry Vinegar
104. Talmadge Farms Spicy Green Tomatoes
105. Heartland Pickled Burdock
106. Tangletown Gardens Basil Bean Pickles
107. Tangletown Gardens Corn Relish
108. Papa Pat's Sweet Bread and Butter Pickles
109. Heartland Pickled Cherry Tomatoes
110. Heartland Sauerkraut

Beer and Meat

111. Summit Unchained Gold Sovereign Ale
112. Lift Bridge Farm Girl - Not a favorite of ours but we don't really like Saissons
113. Furthermore Fatty Bombalatty - One of Matt's go to beers.
114. Surly Darkness Stout
115. Surly Smoked Lager
115. Surly Abrasive Ale
116. Dave's Brew Farm Matacabras
117. Rush River IPA - Matt loves a good IPA & he loves most things Rush River does as well
118. Barley John's Old Eight Porter
119. Harriet Brewing Pils
Dark Abbey Release Day at Harriet Brewing
120. Harriet Brewing West Side Belgian IPA - We prefer their Dark Abbey
121. Town Hall Masala Mama IPA
122. Brau Brothers Bancreagie
123. Brau Brothers Sheep Head Ale
124. Whetstone Goose
125. Lorentz Pepper Bacon
126. Callister Farm Chicken
127. Wild Acres Duck
128. Pastures A Plenty Pork
129. Au Bon Canard Foie Gras Butter
130. Corner Table Paté - Scott has a way with meat and we order his charcuterie plate a lot. We've yet to be disappointed. 
131. Corner Table Chicken Liver Mousse - See above
132. Clancey's Pepper Bacon Paté
133. Clancey's Duck Prosciutto
134. Heartland's Mangalista Bacon
135. Hill and Vale Lamb Chops
136. Hill and Vale Rib Eye

Wow, we have a lot left to try. So, those of you in the area, anything on this list that you love and we absolutely have to try? Anything you're surprised to see or not see on here? I was surprised not to see any beers from Fulton, meats from Mike Philips or ice cream from Sebastian Joe's

If you are not reading this post in a feed reader or at http://agoodappetite.blogspot.com OR at http://agoodappetite.com then the site you are reading is illegally publishing copyrighted material. Contact me at katbaro AT yahoo DOT COM. All recipes, text and photographs in this post are the original creations & property of the author unless otherwise noted. © 2007-2011 Kathy Lewinski

7 comments:

Kate said...

New French Bakery's Sesame Semolina bread was my 2nd favorite loaf when I worked there, next to their amazing Chocolate Cherry bread which was discontinued. It makes terrific toast and even better grilled cheese.

While I do enjoy Sebastian Joes ice creams, the Mounds and Swiss Almond are delicious, the texture and consistency of Pumphouse is much better. If you haven't tried it, you really are in for a treat.

So much on this list, such amazing foods and it's all right out our back doors.

Manisha said...

I love Hope butter!

Alicia Foodycat said...

I knew you lived in cheese country but I had NO idea just how much Minnesota rocked the dairy! You are going to have a seriously fun year testing all that.

kat said...

Foodycat - I have to admit that local on this list doesn't just mean Minnesota some things are from Wisconsin too which is so close.

shopgirl said...

it's funny that you guys have tried a higher percent of the "beer and meat" category. And not as many of the "ice cream and candy". That totally fits you.

Natasha @ Saved by the Egg Timer said...

Love this list and many things on it. We LOVE the Cedar Summit Cream and whole milk. I almost eat the Kalona sour cream by the tubfuls/hour kind of deal...the very best. Kalona Chocolate milk goes fast here too. I will try to knock a few off this list this year too :) Gotta love MN even in this crumby weather, at least we can sit inside and eat good food.

Lori said...

Fun! I can see you are heavy on the cheese, meat and beer, as we would be. Ha, ha! A great challenge to try some new things as well.

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