Get Your Turkeys!!

Thanksgiving is coming up, and it's time to think about reserving a locally grown turkey. We have 2 options for you this year:

Coon Creek Family Farm certified organic turkeys are locally raised, and will arrive at our store frozen for pickup or delivery on a few dates before Thanksgiving. If you’ve had them, you know how delicious they are. They are $4.49/lb, in sizes S (10-12#), M (13-15#), L (16-20#), XL (over 20#).

Beaver Creek Ranch is offering free-range fresh turkeys this year; they will be available for pickup at our store on one date before Thanksgiving (probably Nov. 21). They need to be kept at 35-38 degrees F, until you cook it on or before Thanksgiving day. They are $3.89/lb, and are available in L (16-20#) and XL (over 20#).

Quantities are limited, so please stop by the store to sign up for one or more turkeys as soon as you can. Deadline Nov. 17, but you want to get in earlier to ensure your selection. Or, e-mail Laura (at JustLocalFood.com) with your request, and she will either e-mail or call you to confirm your order was received. Include your name, your e-mail & phone number, the turkey type, size, and quantity, and whether you want to pick it up or add it to your delivery.

THANK YOU!

WOW! I don't want to sound too cheesy but... Eau Claire is a great place to live. We're so proud of our new store, and we're so happy to share it with you. The support for our new location is out of this world and beyond our dreams. This post is to say THANKS to YOU all! Large and small. Folks who talked with us about financing. People who scrubbed the floor underneath the shelves. Maybe you brought us a meal. Stopped in to grab a snack. Helped to move product, emptied freezers, organized shelves. Painted. Peeked in and said "hi"...

This is YOUR store, whether you are a shopper or local farmer, we are here to serve you. Please continue to share your thoughts and challenge us to be better. This is a journey, thanks for the fun ride!

Viking Beer Sampling Friday

Once again we will be having a beer sampling.

Stop in and try a few of the beers Viking Brewing has to offer.

And meet Randy and Anne of Viking Brewing Fame.

Friday October 24th
3PM-6PM
at the NEW Just Local Food Cooperative Building (1117 S. Farwell St.)

$4.99 4 packs during the sampling (reg. price $5.49)

a bit about the brewery...
Viking Brewing Company, established in 1994, was the first microbrewery in Northwest Wisconsin. Viking brought back that time-honored tradition of a local, family run brewery that takes pride in brewing unique and outstanding beers; over 22 different styles.

We're there!

Hey! We've moved into our new store!

Thanks so much to our many volunteers - cleaning shelves and floors, painting, moving product, more cleaning, making food for us to eat while cleaning... We couldn't have done this without you.

We can't wait to have you visit us in our beautiful new store. You are going to LOVE it!

And thanks so much to the employees at Johnny's Market for making it a smooth transition for us. We wish you the best!

new hours, new store!

We're busy gearing up for our new storefront, due to open in just over a few days! Thank you ahead of time for your patience and understanding as we make our new store a really great place to shop and work. We just wanted to let you know a few things as we get closer. Plenty more news will follow.

We're moving into Johnny's Market, 1117 South Farwell Street.

We'll be open at our current location up until Sunday, October 19th. We'll be open that Sunday but you'll definitely feel a moving vibe around the store. On Monday October 20th we'll be closed at both locations, making the major move, as all of our product will migrate to Farwell and we'll be setting up our systems. We anticipate having everything over there and open again for business that Tuesday, October 21st! The next few months will be full of tweaking and changes in our new store, and we're saving our official "grand opening" for January 2009. We're putting off the big party so we can listen to your feedback and tweak our operations to meet the growth and excitement of our new spot.

Starting Tuesday October 21, in the new location, our hours will be thoroughly expanded:

Monday through Saturday 8am to 9pm

Sunday 8am to 6pm

fresh produce

Roasting?

Local late season harvest continues! New in this week are purple top beets from Harmony Valley Farm in Viroqua, these awesome roots are certified organic and certified delicious - start your oven.

Also local, and also certified organic, are a wide variety of squash. Acorn, butternut, delicata, red kuri, spaghetti, sugar loaf and sweet dumpling are all in - pumpkins are squash, too. Prices vary from $.79 to $1.19 per pound - a great deal for some great squash.

We also have a variety of potatoes (yellow, red, red fingerling, russet, yellow fingerling) and yams.

Other fresh stuff:

Greens are rolling in on a regular basis. A new box of figs just came in, as well as some late season emerald beauty plums from California. Local pears & grapes. Plenty of mushrooms and garlic too!

beer sampling THURSDAY

beer sampling is over - it was awesome, and he'll be back again soon I'm sure!

Mark from
SAND CREEK BREWING CO.
of Black River Falls, WI
will be sampling BEER
THURSDAY October 9th
from 3-6PM.

Come try a ...
Sand Creek Golden Ale
Sand Creek English Style Special Ale
Wild Ride IPA
Sand Creek Hard Lemonade
Oscar's Chocolate Oatmeal Stout
Pioneer Black River Red

Also,
Sand Creek
six packs for
$6.99
during the sampling.

we're moving!

That's right! The stars have aligned and Just Local Food has found a new home for at least the next 15 years. When we began nearly five years ago, a grocery store selling half a million dollars worth of food and employing 12 people was a distant dream. Only with your help and the overwhelming support of our community could we have dreamed of, then procured, a prime retail outlet from which to feature our food. We're most of the way there.

Now you're probably gonna kill me when I say we won't be announcing our location until next week. But it is only fair to the people who are moving out of the building we'll be moving to. We'll have plenty of time to share the new address and make sure you know how to get there.

HINT: It's at the corner of Farwell and Washington.

For now, some details:

• we'll be saying "goodbye" to our chest freezers and welcoming big open glass doors - you'll be able to see all of our frozen items before making a selection! How novel, and grocery-store like!
• we'll also be saying "goodbye" to our cranky dairy and deli coolers and "hello" to a big walk-in cooler with floor-to-ceiling glass doors, how cool is that!?
  
• we'll have expanded hours, and a parking lot for bikes, strollers and cars
  
• all departments are researching new products, talking to producers and poring over catalogs to find new products to carry in our slightly expanded and more efficient retail space
• we're looking at more than doubling our produce section
• we'll be fully moved in and mostly through the transition before the end of THIS month, October 2008!

We will not be "running down" our inventory before the move, so please continue to shop at our store until we're through the move. And while we will be adding new products and making some changes - don't worry, we are still Just Local Food. We will be paying close attention to our food policy when making our decisions, and doing our best to communicate the facts about the food we sell.

So that's it for now, we're back to the new store layout, supplier calls, responding to customer input and, oh yeah, running our store as-is. Thank you so much for helping us make this dream come true!

“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” ~Cezanne

save raw almonds

We get a lot of requests for almonds, and we do carry some almonds in bulk from California. They can be labeled as "raw", but sadly, the federal government has made it illegal for farmers to sell truly raw almonds. Thankfully, the locally-rooted Cornucopia Institute, along with other consumer and farmer groups around the country, are challenging this insane law. Even though truly raw almonds cannot be (legally) sourced from farms in the USA, you CAN get truly raw almonds from abroad! Before we go buying almonds from China, we'd like to see a grassroots effort to overturn the law succeed. I've included part of an informative article below. Please stop by Cornucopia to learn more about how you can help!


From Cornucopia: “This is yet another example of how government, under the guise of ‘public health,’ is interfering with an individual’s fundamental right to consume the foods of their choice,” noted David G. Cox of Columbus, OH and a legal advisor to The Cornucopia Institute. “The government’s police power does not authorize the USDA to choose for the individual what foods should be in the marketplace.”

Mitch Wallis, another member of the Cornucopia legal team, added that “in one fell swoop, the USDA and its agribusiness-dominated California Almond Board, have taken away all consumer access to a truly ‘raw’ almond. Almonds are, especially in California, perhaps the ‘king of nuts.’ If they can get away with destroying the almond, what does this portend for the future of all nuts and ultimately for all raw and natural foods?”

“It goes against all reason for the USDA to require domestic almonds to be pasteurized while allowing unpasteurized almonds to be imported from abroad,” observed Eli Penberthy, a Seattle, WA-based food and farming analyst with The Cornucopia Institute. “Small-scale and organic farmers in California have lost sales to retailers and consumers who are instead choosing to buy truly raw almonds from Italy and Spain.”

Fatty Boombalatty

We have 10 cases of Fatty Boombalatty
left until next spring. Pick up a six pack while you can.

Off their website...
Fatty Boombalatty: a dangerously drinkable Belgian
Availability: Spring/Summer. ABV: 7.2%.

The conception and naming of this beer happened in one fell swoop. Unsure whether to offer a light session beer or a fun ball-buster as our warm weather seasonal, we decided on a beer that would be “a big, fatty boombalatty” version of a Belgian white. And away we went, taking a recipe for a white beer and ramping up the grain bill by 50%; we dropped the amount of wheat by 75% to keep the beer rough around the edges. We bucked tradition by steering the bitterness in the direction of a pale ale, and coupling hops with coriander in the fermenter. The resulting beer gives you all the bubblegum goodness of a big Belgian, with enough crispness to cut through the sweet profile, thus making you want to sip it again and again. Dangerous, indeed!
furthermorebeer.com
ready.fire.aim