All Posts including “mustard”

Invasive weed makes a great pesto!

Invasive weed makes a great pesto!

You’ve probably seen garlic mustard during a walk at a park or pretty much anywhere in Pennsylvania. It’s an invasive, noxious weed that features broad, round-ish deep green leaves, and eventually puts up a stalk of small white flowers. It’s a hardy plant, sometimes even growing right through winter if it’s mild enough.

The plant is believed to have been brought here in the 1800s by settlers from Europe, and it has quickly spread. If left unchecked, garlic mustard can take over an ecosystem, and greatly harm native species. Deer do not care for it, so they end up eating competing plants, allowing it to spread even more efficiently.

Most biologists encourage removal of this plant when you see it on your property, and a great way to do that is harvest it to eat it, as garlic mustard is actually edible. And one way to do that is make a spring pesto with it.

Continue Reading: Invasive weed makes a great pesto!

{name} Posted by Jamie Oberdick on 03/29, 2017 at 08:59 AM

Tags: recipe | garlicmustard | spring | pesto |

Beyond yellow: ‘Big Al’ takes mustard to another level

Beyond yellow: ‘Big Al’ takes mustard to another level

Editor’s note: This is the first of our new Local Food Intern Anna Lombardo’s articles on the local food scene in Central Pennsylvania.

Next time you’re jonesing for that familiar kick of mustard on your hot dog or seeking out a dip for your big neighborhood shindig, set down the Heinz bottle and look no further than a locally brewed and packaged concoction: a jar of Big Al’s Sweet and Spicy Mustards.

You’ll know you have the right product when you find two adorably animated peppers—one yellow, one red—embracing each other as they beam and wave at you from the packaging. Inside the jar, things only get better. Big Al—also known as Allen Weimert, a retired schoolteacher, who makes the mustard right out of his Stormstown home alongside his wife, Maryann—uses only locally grown ingredients, many of which he grows in his own backyard. For example, the red, yellow, and orange peppers you find delectably strewn throughout the brew have most likely been cultivated at the hands of the Weimerts. What they can’t grow, they buy from local vendors. Al tells me that his business both flourishes and is dependent upon the availability of fresh, local foods grown in central Pennsylvania. He says that part of the reason that he and Maryann have been “blessed” with this project is because they have the local resources to do so.

Continue Reading: Beyond yellow: ‘Big Al’ takes mustard to another level

{name} Posted by Local Food Journey on 09/16, 2014 at 10:50 AM

Tags: mustard | condiments |

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