Number 9 chips and salsa

Just as I sat down at the market counter with a sandwich, in walked John, president of Paino Organics. Before I knew what was going on he had unloaded three bags of tortilla chips and four jars of salsa. I was hungry anyway, so I gave them a shot.

As you may estimate from the above photograph, John's products now occupy a generous piece of real estate on the Sherman shelves. Their name (Number 9) refers not to the Red Sox' legendary left fielder/fisherman/fighter pilot, nor to John Lennon's musique concrete masterpiece. John was eager to point out that each of his salsas contains no fewer than nine vegetables. A close observer of the above photograph will also notice the middle column of bags containing NINE VEGGIE TORTILLA STRIPS. From the ingredient list: Corn, butternut squash, sweet potato, garlic, carrot, tomato, beet, scallions, onion, potato. Including three alliums, that's ten.

So I tried John's chips and salsa. The salsas were all tasty and very fresh; the hot variety (the first I tried - surely the bellwether salsa) bore a sharp and creeping bite with a depth befitting the seven different peppers included (Want another list? Red peppers, poblanos, jalapenos, habaneros, serranos, guajillos, chipotles, in that order).

All the tortilla strips are pleasantly salty, and exceptionally crunchy as a result (I am told) of adding extra corn bran, which also serves to boost fiber content. The veggie chips have a pronounced sweetness and a pleasing squashy flavor - and I say this as a person who is quite satisfied with one bowl of squash soup per winter, thank you very much. Other than the straight corn chips, the third variety of Number Nines is the Ancient Grain Tortilla Strips, which are equally crunchy and loaded with exotic grains and seeds (What's one more?: corn, amaranth, quinoa, millet, sorghum, teff (!), brown rice, white AND black sesame seeds - nine). These are nutty and delicious. They remind me of the sesame sticks I ate when I was a kid, transposed into a salty chip. Dave looks displeased in this picture, but he finds these chips delicious:

What more is there to say about these? A few more points at the buzzer: All the chips are made from organic corn, and the salsas with lime juice and never vinegar. Most of all, compared to our prior corn chips, they're made far closer to home - Concord, MA, 15 miles away - and are a fair portion less expensive. So, as I said, we ordered some.

-matt

(maybe one more thing, courtesy Malcolm Gladwell, about variety, consumer choice, and why there's so many kinds of everything)

Organic Rye Flour

Recently arrived courtesy the Crown of Maine Organic Co-Op is organic rye flour from Aurora Mills & Farm in Linneus, Maine. I've just now packed this lovely stuff into pint and quart containers, at the expense of my black dress shirt, now covered in a faint patina of stray flour. We sell it for $1.50/#, which it's fair to say is dirt cheap for an organic, New England product.

About Rye: it's a grain (obviously), first cultivated in what we'd now call Turkey, possibly first harvested by accident due to its resemblance to its more accommodating cousin, wheat (which contains more gluten, and less soluble fiber). Rye is distilled into the characteristic North American spirit, rye whiskey (I strongly recommend Rittenhouse Rye if you can find it), and on less jovial occasions we know the grain as a pillar of the cuisine of Central and Eastern Europe, used in a variety of breads and crackers including the celebrated pumpernickel, or in New England-style brown bread (this in addition to its other, more dubious role in local history).



Doesn't that look tasty? We sell local beans, maple syrup, and slab bacon too, you know. A certain bakery in a neighboring city which will of course remain unnamed makes a very keen version of this bread, in case you are still uninspired. Once you are so inspired, come on in for some flour. I'm selling a lot of it to Cuisine en Locale for their upcoming Viking-related food event which you should of course attend, but the rest of the fifty-pound sack is yours for the taking.

-matt