Corned Beef, Spaghetti Squash, Mulled Wine

By Annie Corrigan

Posted March 10, 2012

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Know Your Farmer

The Bloomington Winter Farmers Market takes place Saturday mornings through the end of March. This month, we're featuring some of the vendors who set up shop every week. Today, in part two of our four part series, I stopped a table that sells no food at all actually. Cathy Crosson of Red Rosa Farm sells alpaca yarns and heirloom seeds.

If you're looking to find a winter market in your neck of the woods, do a search on Local Harvest.

Sustainable Living

Dandelion Village recently received city approval to rezone land for a cooperative village. It's scheduled to begin construction later this year. The village would house individuals and possibly even families who want to live together in a cooperative setting. Members all contribute their time and money to pay for food, transportation, housing and general upkeep of the land. For the second report in our three-part series on cooperative living, WFIU's Gretchen Frazee visited the co-op members as they cleared out the land they hope will soon become their "eco-village."

St. Patrick's Day Menu

We sent out a call to our listeners and readers last season to ask what ingredients you wanted us to cook with, and many of you mentioned spaghetti squash. This easy recipe takes no time at all and it's gluten-free. This will be the first of three recipes we're preparing today in anticipation of St. Patrick's Day. This Roasted Spaghetti Squash Boat would make for an excellent family-style starter.

We think of corned beef and cabbage as a traditional Irish dish, but it's really an Irish American dish. Corning was originally a method of preserving beef for ocean travel, where the beef would be stacked in barrels with corning spices and then when it was time to eat it, it would be taken out and boiled. Chef Daniel Orr explains that a corning paste is a mixture of peppercorns and seeds.

Our menu for St. Patrick's Day wouldn't be complete without an alcoholic beverage of some sort. Guinness beer is the traditional drink, but how about an option for folks who don't like beer -- a locally sourced option at that. We're using red wine from Oliver Winery for this mulled wine recipe.