Some quick things:

• Want to receive this list via email each week? Sign up here.
• Bread schedule: Fresh Talking Breads on Thursday, NO FRESH BREAD FRIDAY (but an extra big stash of frozen), fresh McGrath’s arrives Saturday, 9am-ish.
• BUTTER BLOWOUT continues — Apple Valley Creamery’s grass-fed butter is on sale for $7/tub (usually $8.50).
• New products this week: a whole slew of Calicutts spices, a handful of new Torchbearer sauces, and a selection of expeller-pressed oils from Susquehanna Mills.

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

If you came to market last week, you saw that Radish & Rye has taken a little more space and rearranged a little bit. The new space is still very much a work-in-progress, but this week we’ve made a little more progress — we’ve brought in another freezer, which this week helps us out enormously with stocking extra frozen bread while Kevin McGrath is out of town for a few days, and moving forward will allow us to expand our lineup of frozen meats. We’re also this week bringing in expanded product lines from Calicutts Spices (this was something we heard you loud and clear on in our survey!) and Torchbearer Sauces. We don’t quite have room for the full product lines from either, but we expect we’ll be rotating through some of their less-common items so you can snag a bottle or a jar and hopefully it’ll last you until the next time that product cycles back in. (And if you ever have requests for what you’d like to see cycle in next, please us know!)

This week we also introduce a whole new category, from a new-to-us supplier — locally grown and pressed oils, from Susquehanna Mills. I can’t even tell you how excited I am about this.

If you’re anything like me, olive oil is probably a staple in your kitchen. Dusty and I use a lot of olive oil. Every time we go to the Big grocery store (admittedly not that often), we check to see if our favorite brand is on sale, and if it is, well, sorry if you’re the next person to come looking for it, because we usually buy everything on the shelf. Sometimes we leave one to be nice. I’m pretty sure that olive oil is our number one non-local food purchase by dollars.*

I’ve been developing and festering mixed feelings about this for the past few years. On one hand, sometimes olive oil is the only non-local ingredient** in my meal, and I’d love to take it over the edge into literally all local. On the other hand, it’s olive oil, and how can you live without it?

But then I read articles about how Spike Gjerde of Baltimore’s Woodberry Kitchen doesn’t use olive oil anymore. Like, what?

Spike Gjerde is a rockstar in the local food world, especially in the mid-Atlantic region. He’s also won a James Beard Award. Dusty and I admire what he’s doing enormously, and feel very lucky to be close enough to Spike’s turf that we’re able to use many of the same producers, and even benefit (culinarily) as he encourages folks to push the boundaries of local (and I don’t mean the geographic boundaries!). So, hey, if Spike Gjerde can give up olive oil, it’s worth thinking about, right?

Enter Josh Leidhecker, and his company, Susquehanna Mills. Josh’s interest in oil didn’t start with food, but with biodiesel. One thing led to another, though, and now Susquehanna Mills is making some of the highest quality vegetable oils you can find, from non-GMO seeds grown locally and sustainably. Vegetable oils have gotten something of a bad rap due to the way they’re processed — the oils are often extracted with chemicals, or under high heat that damages the oil, or both. But Susquehanna Mills is doing it the old-fashioned way, through expeller-pressing, with no chemicals or heat. This, according to most people, puts them in the “healthy fats” category.

It also makes them delicious in a way I didn’t know vegetable oils could be. To start, we’re carrying his unrefined (“Full Flavored”) Sunflower oil, which has an incredible warm, nutty flavor. We’ve also got a lightly refined (filtered) Sunflower oil and a lightly refined Canola. The full flavored Sunflower is great for salad dressings, drizzling over finished dishes, low-temperature cooking, and, I hear, on popcorn. The lightly refined oils are still not flavorless like most commercial vegetable oils, but are more suitable for higher heat cooking — the refined Canola is particularly popular in restaurant kitchens for frying. (Bonus — Susquehanna Mills retrieves used cooking oil from the restaurants it supplies, and then sells it to biodiesel producers who in turn sell the new finished product to local farmers.)

Since we brought home a sample of the Sunflower oil a few days ago, I haven’t reached for the olive oil once. I’m not saying I’m vanquishing it from my kitchen, but I am happy to have a local alternative that’s pretty awesome in its own right.

-Julia

*Just in case you’re curious — by volume our biggest grocery store purchase has gotta be Pamplemousse La Croix, because even we are not immune to mainstream food trends. De Cecco pasta, canned beans, and tinned sardines probably make up 95% of the remainder of what we visit the chains for.

**If you don’t count salt, but…

Last month Food & Wine did an article on Spike Gjerde and his sources — three of the eight featured are from Pennsylvania, and now I’m very happy to say, all three are also represented at Radish & Rye! (That’s Susquehanna Mills, Keepwell Vinegar, and Three Springs Fruit Farm, if you’re not feeling the click-through.) Also, here’s a Washington Post article about how awesome the SMC sunflower oil is.

Editor’s note: This article has been edited from the original version to correct what happens to used cooking oil retrieved from restaurants. The original version cited outdated information.

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Produce

[one_half]Braising & Salad Greens

• Rainbow Chard
• Spinach
• Baby Red Russian Kale
• Mesclun Mix
• Lettuce Mix
• Ruby Streaks Mustard Greens
• Pea Shoots

Fruit

• Fuji Apples
• Cameo and/or Gala Apples

Herbs

• Cilantro
• Parsley

Mushrooms

• Cremini
• White
• Shiitake
• Oyster
• Lions Mane?

[/one_half][one_half_last]Onions & Garlic

• Red Onions
• Yellow Onions
• Shallots
• Scallions

Potatoes

• Yukon Gold Potatoes
• Sweet Potatoes
• Japanese Sweet Potatoes

Roots

• Red Beets
• Carrots – ugly, regular, small
• Daikon Radishes
• Sweet White Salad Turnips
• Purple Top Turnips[/one_half_last]

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Bread

[one_half]McGrath’s Brick Oven Bakehouse
(fresh Friday & Saturday; frozen every day)

• McGrath’s Original
• Sesame Original
• Irish Oatmeal Pan Bread
• Cheesy, Cranberry Pecan, Nutty Irishman & more available frozen, while supplies last
• Baguettes (available frozen only)

[/one_half][one_half_last]Talking Breads
(fresh Thursday)

• Batard
• Ciabatta (frozen only)
• Miche
• Seeded

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