Minnesota has many great businesses that pertain to local food. Another find I recently came across is Lucille’s Kitchen Garden. She was just in the Mpls St Paul Magazine. She brings her wonderful jams to the Mill City Market every week.
The cornerstone to Lucille’s Kitchen Garden’s products is using produce grown locally by farmers committed to sustainable, responsible growing practices.
Visit her website: lucilleskitchengarden.com and why not make a visit to the Mill City Farmers Market it is open May 8 through Oct 15 from 8am-1pm
I asked Zoie questions about her business to share with you.
1. Jam is a very good thing to eat and tasty too. I love the flavors you have developed. Did these flavors come from many tastings or from recipes that you have “tweaked”?
Our flavor development is a bit of both tweaking and tastings. Once you have a basic understanding of how to make jam, you learn that there are parts of the recipe that can be changed such as the type of vinegar or fruit combinations. Our Cranberry White Balsamic Chutney, for example, took 11 different recipe changes to get it just right. When we develop a new flavor we have friends and family over and do tasting notes. Sometimes this helps us pick the one we want or it points us in the direction that we would like to go.
2. You must make a lot of jam, about how many jams do you produce per year?
We produce about 60 cases per week. During the holidays it is a bit higher then that. We cook it in 20 gallon pots and hand jar it all with each batch tasted individually. It is like any handmade item in that every batch doesn’t taste exactly the same, sometimes peppers are hotter then others, but every batch has to be good.
3. The garlic pepper flavor seems like it would have many uses. Are the peppers a combination of different varieties or just a jalapeno?
We use a combination of spicy and sweet peppers for all of our jams. The garlic pepper jams are really dependant on the right variety of garlic, since some varieties break down and lose flavor at high temperatures. Spend 15 minuets with a garlic grower at the farmers market and you realize that all garlic is not created equal
4. I see you get all of your fruit from local farmers. Do you get your blueberries from Minnesota too?
We are able to get some of our blueberries from Minnesota. If we can’t get them from a MN farmer we supplement with organics grown in MI and WI. It is really exciting to see some of the new varieties of fruit that are being developed for this region, so as those plants mature, get ready to see everything from more blueberries to peaches showing up at the farmers market grown locally!
5. Do you make jam in your own place on your property or do you have to go to another facility?
In order to sell to stores, you have to have a commercial kitchen facility and be inspected by the MN Department of Agriculture. We share a kitchen space with another small food company in NE Minneapolis.
6. Farmers markets seem to be the best source for fresh homemade food, why is it taking so long for the grocery stores to realize this, or is there more to the story because of corporations?
I think that there is a real movement toward buying locally. Several of the stores that we have gotten into were because of one or two persistent customers that have asked the manager and store staff to bring in our products. The problem is that there are these huge systems in place for the big food companies and grocery stores tend to be pretty married to the current systems. If a small company gains access to say the distribution system it increases the price of their product by 30%, and since the small companies generally have a slightly higher price, due to the higher quality of raw ingredients, it prices us out of the market. I have another small company, Midwest Pantry, that works to lower small food producers costs and create a clear message on how grocery stores can benefit from carrying more locally produced foods. So I could go on and on about this question.
7. How many years have you been making this jam, and how many flavors did you start out with?
We have been making these jams for years as gifts for friends and family. We started selling to our first retail location, The Turtle Bread Company, in the spring of 2008.
8. Have you heard about locals ever opening their own grocery store that sell only Minnesota grown or produced products in them. It would probably have to be in the metro area to sell enough. Or is there one that I do not know about? The coops sell food from all over the US, I am thinking about strictly Minnesota made/grown products.
I know that there is a store in Cannon Falls, MN called the Ferndale Market, that has a heavy emphasis on local. If I look into my crystal ball I would say that you will see a lot of locker plants moving in this direction. They already have a solid customer base selling locally grown meat and cheese, so they are really in a position to capitalize on expanding to more local food offerings, without having to put out money to open a whole new store. We find that we have a pretty easy time selling in our greater MN stores, because people still remember mothers and grandmothers who preserved their own food and they really see the value in it.
9. Are you working on new flavors for the future and how long does it take to develop a flavor?
Right now we are really working on our Little Lucy’s Line, where fruit is the first ingredient. It is a bit tricky since not all fruit can be made into jam with lower sugar and we aren’t comfortable with the sugar substitutes and additives that are out there. Our current flavors that we have are our Old Fashioned Raspberry Lime, Strawberry Vanilla made with a locally produced vanilla extract, and Real Apple Butter.
Sometimes new flavors come about really quickly. I made our garlic pepper on a whim one day in the kitchen and was like, “This is amazing” other times we work and work on a flavor and it can take 6 months before we really get it right.
10. Do you sell other products that are not on your website?
As well as the Little Lucy’s line, which we currently are only selling at the farmers market, we always have a seasonal jam at the Mill City Farmers Market. Our current seasonal favorite is the Rhubarb Strawberry Basil jam. We sell out of it almost every week. In the fall we switch to Ginger Pear Jam. That was another happy accident. Our Aunt Connie called and asked if we wanted some pears last fall and we said sure thinking that she would give us a couple of pounds of pears and we would preserve them for ourselves. Instead she showed up with bushels of pears and since we had been working on a ginger jam, we combined the two.
Originally Published: July 1, 2010 at 7:36 AM CDT