A few quick things:

• Want to receive this list via email each week? Sign up here.
• This week: OPEN TUESDAY & WEDNESDAY (7am-6pm), closed Thursday, then open as normal Friday (7am-6pm) and Saturday (7am-4pm).
• We’ve got massive quantities of sweet potatoes, collard greens, regular potatoes, pie pumpkins, along with less-massive quantities of many less quintessentially Thanksgiving items, since you do need to eat on all the other days, too.
• Back to 100% local this week — the cranberries were a big hit, and I’m sorry to say we weren’t able to get more. (Didn’t get any for ourselves; hoping since both my mom and Dusty’s mom got some, we’ll still get to eat them!)
• Normal produce list is below, but since hours and deliveries are a little off this week, we’ve also compiled an expanded list with more detail about availability; if you’re planning your trip to the market around particular items, you may want to check it out.
• While we recommend getting your shopping done early, if you find yourself at the market late on Wednesday (after 5pm), we’ll have complimentary bubbly and Beaujolais to soothe your nerves. (Come back Friday after 5 for another special adult treat. Hint: it involves eggnog.)
• This week’s Staff Pick: Sweet Italian Sausage, selected by Marie, who will be here Tuesday and Wednesday evenings to help us out with the expanded hours.

Scroll down for the full list of what we’ll have this week!

I like Thanksgiving. I like the idea of a holiday celebrating the plenitude we have experienced through the growing season; I like the excuse to bring together so many loved ones around a common table; I like having a day where I’m not even supposed to think about anything other than food and family; and I like the reminder to spend time in gratitude. It’s kind of a perfect day.

Of course, like so much else in life, even the perfect (or at least the “kind of perfect”) can sometimes be a little overwhelming, and the days leading up to Thanksgiving, and the hours leading up to the meal, are no exception. I hope you’re able to take some time to savor the sweet parts.

As for me, life these days seems like a constant see-saw between feeling overwhelmed and feeling overwhelmed with gratitude. I say it every year, but if anything it is more true each year —

In so many ways, Dusty and I are so grateful to be here, to have the opportunity to be doing what we’re doing. Sometimes, I close my eyes and picture all the threads that run through Radish & Rye — all the farmers, the makers, the cooks, the eaters, our staff — all sharing something that came from the land that surrounds us. It is a great honor to have you all as part of our lives, and for you to allow us to be part of yours. We are very grateful.

Thank you.

-Julia

---

This week’s Staff Pick from Marie

Sweet Italian Sausage (North Mountain Pastures)
Normally $9, this week $7.65

Hi, I’m Marie, and I barely work here anymore! I started working at Radish & Rye last fall, but this summer I moved to Philly. I still have family and friends (the whole R&R crew, chief among them) in HBG though, so whenever Julia and Dusty ask if I can cover someone’s shift or just lend an extra hand, I’m happy to come back and help out. My main gig is freelancing as a content editor and web designer, although for the past five years I always seem to wind up with a side-job connected with local, sustainable agriculture…

I mostly grew up in Central PA, but I moved away to Boston for grad school and subsequently lived in Austin, Texas and rural Vermont. It was in Austin that I started helping out on a small permaculture farm run by an amazing couple. In addition to farming they were constantly coming up with new diy-food endeavors, like wild-fermenting their own beer. After I moved to Vermont, they inspired me to start my own vegetable garden and experiment. And when I saw community posting looking for garden help in exchange for free produce, eggs, and permaculture training, I jumped at the opportunity and found myself in the tutelage of another radical couple—one a pioneer of the organic movement, the other an eccentric and innovative woodworker. I learned so much from both of these couples about farming, food, and building a life.

So I don’t know if it’s unsurprising or if it’s just extremely lucky that not long after I moved back to PA, I wound up working for another entrepreneurial couple who are passionate about sustainable agriculture and obsessed with food. I still remember shopping at Radish & Rye before I worked here; I was amazed at how affordable it was to buy organic produce and impressed that the price cards said exactly where the farms and suppliers were located. But it wasn’t until I started working here that I fully grasped just HOW local everything was—with rare exceptions, everything is sourced within 100 miles.

Shopping local is a big deal lately for a lot of good reasons: reducing your carbon footprint; supporting the local economy; building the local food system. But if you know Dusty and Julia, you know the reasons they insist on local really come down to quality, freshness, and knowing where the food comes from. And that includes getting to know the farmers and producers, like Brooks and Anna of North Mountain Pastures, one of R&R’s main meat suppliers. These two are yet another one of these sustainable food power couples. As you can read on the Radish & Rye website, “both care deeply about land and health, and see pasture farming as their form of environmental and social activism. They are grateful to be growing food and children on their 84 acre farm in Perry County, PA.” 

It’s really important to me to buy meat that comes from responsibly raised, happy pastured animals. I was a vegetarian for 18 years, because I care about animals and didn’t want any part of supporting factory farms. It was only as I got to know small-scale farmers who really cared about their land and their animals, that eating meat began to feel like an option.

Something I always bring back to Philly with me after a weekend at R&R is a package of NMP sausage. I wrap it in some ice packs and tuck it in my backpack for the two-hour train ride. When I get home I put the sausage package in a bowl of warm water. Then by time I’m unpacked, all I need to do to make dinner is slice some peppers and onions and fry them up in the pan with the sausage.

R&R carries several styles of NMP sausage, but something about the snow last week put me in the mood for sweet potato and kale soup with sweet Italian sausage. And this week, I’m thinking about making stuffing with sweet Italian sausage, apples, and sage. Sausage stuffing is so versatile! It could go in the bird, or you could omit the bread and bake it in a squash or make stuffed peppers for simple side dish, or maybe an easy day-after-Thanksgiving lunch. Really you don’t even have to stuff it in anything, check out these “stuffing” muffins. Swap out pre-seasoned packaged “stuffing cubes” with a loaf of McGrath’s Original, and you can find the local version of almost every ingredient at R&R.

In all of my travels, I’ve never encountered a grocery store like R&R. Harrisburg is really lucky! And I feel really lucky to be a small part of it and to have gotten to know the hard-working, inspiring couple behind it. I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving dinner later this week, but I’m honestly just as excited for our staff “Family Dinner” tomorrow night. With our hilarious and hyper-intelligent R&R crew, it’s sure to be filled with laughter, thoughtful conversation, and, of course, an abundance of great, local food. Here’s wishing you the same!

<3 Marie

---

Produce

[one_third]Braising Greens

• Collard Greens
• Green Curly Kale (but probably not until Friday)

Fruit

• Fuji Apples (limited Tuesday; lots Wednesday)
• Granny Smith Apples

Herbs

• Fresh Turmeric
• Parsley
• Sage (limited)
• Rosemary
• Thyme from our garden by request

Mushrooms

• Cremini
• White (limited)
• Shiitake
• Oyster[/one_third][one_third]Onions & Garlic

• Garlic
• Leeks
• Red Onions
• Yellow Onions
• White Onions
• Shallots

Other

• Cabbage
• Fennel (arriving sometime Tuesday)

Potatoes

• Blue Potatoes
• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Purple Sweet Potatoes[/one_third][one_third_last]Roots

• Red Beets
• Carrots
• Celeriac
• Parsnips
• French Breakfast Radishes
• Rutabagas
• Purple Top Turnips

Salad Greens

• Arugula (arriving Wednesday afternoon)
• Baby Red Russian Kale
• Lettuce Mix
• Mesclun Mix
• Ruby Streaks Mustard Greens
• Romaine Lettuce (maybe; somewhat urgent use)

Squash

• Pie Pumpkins
• Butternut Squash
• Delicata Squash[/one_third_last]

---

Bread

[one_half]McGrath’s Brick Oven Bakehouse
(fresh EVERY DAY!)

• McGrath’s Original
• Sesame Original
• Pumpkin & Butter Pan Bread
• Everything Bread
• American Harvest
• Baguettes (available frozen only this week)

[/one_half][one_half_last]Talking Breads
(frozen only this week)

• Batard
• Ciabatta
• Miche

[/one_half_last]