The arrival of a new month means another marvelous edition of our First Friday Staff Picks! We think that our staff is the best in the business (okay, okay, we are a little biased), but the JBG family hails from all over the place and covers the gamut in talents and interests. We love sharing events, adventures, and side projects that inspire and excite our JBG-ers (food-related or not) with the community. Check out the staff-curated list of favorites below!

JBG Staff Happy Hour. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Casey Wiggins (Customer Service Extraordinare):  I've been in a pickling frenzy this week! The pickling cucumbers from the farm are so freakin' good, I just had to jar them up! I've added our carrots to a couple jars too. I'm going to pickle beets and radishes this weekend. Maybe even green beans and bell peppers too! Did you know you can even pickle watermelon rinds?! Is it bad for you to eat too many pickled things? Someone please let me know, but for now, more pickling!

Picklin' frenzy at Casey's.

Ada Broussard (CSA and Marketing Manager): With all the zucchini, squash, and cucumbers rolling in I've been loving my spiralizer that Mike Mo gave me. OODLES OF ZOODLES. If any CSA members are reading this and you don't already have a spiralizer: get one! It will change the way you look at a zucchini, promise.

Banana Mayo Sandwiches: Every Friday at the barn, we have an optional potluck at lunchtime. I've gotta say, the women at the farm are the ones who are really keeping this ritual alive (shoutout to Alli and Sarah). We all are pretty avid and regular home cooks, so our Friday potlucks are a great opportunity to finish off the week's leftovers or share something particularly delicious or innovative we've made, swap recipes, etc. It's a smorgasbord of local veggies, meats, cheeses... you name it. Last Thursday we were all swapping stories about the mysterious jars of pickled things that resided in the back corners of our fridge, and admitted that we were all a little timid to sample our own jars, yet completely willing and eager to give each other's a taste. So, last week's potluck theme (because some Fridays there is a theme) was: "Things we're afraid to eat". Needless to say (or perhaps it warrants a mention), everyone's pickled things were all delicious. We also sampled banana-mayo sandwiches whose flavors were a very distant memory to some Southerns in the group, but whose combination hadn't been revisited since childhood because "Things we're afraid to eat." I'm just here to say that a banana sandwich on white bread with a modest spread of Hellmann's mayo and a generous topping of Lays potato chips AIN'T THAT BAD. (And yes, I understand the social and environmental impacts of these ingredients, but for me, it's all about balance. CRUNCH.)

Mackenzie Smith (Recipe Blogger): Super jazzed about getting The World in a Pocket out onto the internet. For the past 5 years, I have been thinking about a way to talk about the idea that every culture or place has a pocket food (put simply, food-inside-of-food). Last month, Lauren Allen and I launched our little Pocketship and we are exploring the world through the lens of a dumpling (samosa, crepe, tamale, burrito empanada, etc)! We have a few recipes and stories up now, but we’re planning to expand our point of view by providing a platform where folks from all over can shine a light on their pockets, and the stories connected to them.

Photo by Mackenzie Smith.

Oh! And! My husband and I moved to Austin from NYC in September, and last Friday was his first dip into Barton Springs. Austin finally feels like home!

Megan Winfrey (Recipe Blogger): What I'm most excited about: TOMATOES! POTATOES! OKRA! PEPPERS! CUKES! SQUASH! This is my kinda produce. I love it, I live for it, I look forward to it every year.

What I'm also excited about: Some summer sun, hopefully?! I need to feel the incomparable combination of those hot hot sun rays on my skin followed by the icey icey water of Barton Springs. It's just not summer until that moment! Oh, and taking pics with an underwater disposable camera, obviously.

Barton Springs by Megan Winfrey.

Sarah Warren (Volunteer Coordinator): A friend of mine is moving to the Northeast for the summer and his dying wish was to have one last meat feast of Texas BBQ. Franklin's was recently outranked (according to Texas Monthly's survey) by a little BBQ joint in Lexington, so we decided to check it out. We camped out in Bastrop the night before and woke up at 6 AM to get there before the line got outrageous. That much meat on an empty stomach first thing in the morning was pretty rough, but baby, it was delicious and I never hurt so good. Also worth noting was the flea market across the street, where a bossy old lady sold me a little boy's cowboy hat (and a few other interesting items), pictured below:



And another glamour shot in my new hat, this one's for you mom!



Also! This hilariously passive aggressive, health conscious defacement of somebody's peanut butter in the break room! Someone's keeping someone honest and aware, tiny acts of kindness. It's things like these that make me feel that maybe the world's not such a big and anonymous place after all, you know?



Ryan Rosshirt (Barn Crew): So as far as vegetables go I've been making a lot of chilaquiles with squash and onions and Julio's brand salsa and lots of home fries with the potatoes and herbs from my garden.

As far as gardening I've really gotten into propagating cactuses from pads. People with large cactuses will give pads away for free and they're very easy to get going. Make sure you get prickly pear pads which are edible, have gorgeous yellow flowers in the spring and make those bright purple fruits all summer.

As far as activities go, we are kicking off the summer of resistance. You'll find me in the streets pretty much every weekend in June whether it's the March for Truth June 3, the March for inalienable Rights and Counteraction Against the Sharia Law March June 10, or block walking all month pushing for as much affordable housing as possible in the city code overhaul. There's also going to be a push for Austin to divest from fossil fuels and accelerate our clean power timeline. I could go on and on and on and on about opportunities to help our global community, underserved neighbors, and immigrant neighbors, but I'll leave that as my action summary for now.

Mike Mo (Wholesale Manager): Krishna. He's always keepin' the ship steady.

Krishna rules. Photo by Scott David Gordon.

Heydon Hatcher (Farm Blogger): Africa Night at the Sahara Lounge. My roommate had a visitor in town last weekend from Portland, and in an attempt to show him the best time ever, we gathered a little crew to see some dear friends sax it up on stage with their band, Zoumountchi. Their musical stylings are all improvised on stage, and it's incredible. We shook, shimmied, and jived until the wee hours of the morning. It is seriously the BEST time. Smiles from ear to ear abounded all evening.

When I was home in Alabama at the beginning of the month, I had the immense privilege of photographing Jim Scott's nonpareil garden paradise on Lake Martin in southern Alabama. This work of horticultural art is such a feat, it is jaw-dropping. Check out one of their docks below, it was definitely my favorite. Such a divine oasis.

A post shared by heydon (@heydopotato) on May 12, 2017 at 8:52am PDT