Brenckle's Summer Update

A few months ago, our team members visited Brenckle’s Farm in Butler to help plant some of our FarmSource vegetables for the season. Time has been flying by this summer and it's crazy how quickly those little seedlings have grown. It’s really cool to see our labor pay off as we enjoy those items that we helped plant. The zucchini and peppers that we planted are now being used in our restaurants for our Hand-breaded Zucchini Appetizer and on our salad bar.  

 

Picked zucchinis for our restaurants

  

Our pepper plants

We’re also pretty excited to now have local tomatoes, including the ones we planted at Brenckle’s!
 

Fresh tomatoes for our restaurants

But those aren’t the only items that are local in our restaurants; this week alone we have eight featured FarmSource items (look at the plaque on our salad bar to see the featured local items for each week, or just click here.)

Our FarmSource items on our Salad Bar

A little secret about me: I’m what you might call a closet canner, and tomatoes are what I enjoy canning. Not only do the Brenckle’s supply our restaurants with locally grown produce, they also provide me with some unbelievable canning tomatoes. I purchase their San Marzano tomatoes, which are a variety of plum tomatoes that are considered by many chefs to be the best sauce tomato in the world.

The San Marzano tomatoes take a little longer to mature than the Eat’n Park tomatoes, so these guys won’t be ready to be canned until the end of August. Once I’m done though, I’ll make sure that I update you on how my canning went!

Until next time,
Jamie