Newsletters

Here's what's in store at MoGro for 2023!

3/6/2023

2023 is a year of growth and change at MoGro

In January we became our own nonprofit. It’s a big step, and we believe it will mean stronger relationships with our partners and supporters. This change will allow us to be more creative and responsive in meeting each community's unique strengths and needs, and we are ready to hear your ideas about how we can work together!

We’re focused on MORE community partnerships to expand food access

As we plan for the year ahead, we’re focusing our programs on what we do the best: working in collaboration with partner organizations. While we have closed our drive-through pick-up sites that were designed to help everyone get through the pandemic, we are expanding to new communities through community-scale ordering!

During the pandemic, we began collaborating with clinics, schools, and Pueblos to provide healthy food tailored to their communities. Over the last year, the need for this kind of collaboration continued to grow, with new partners reaching out every month. Last year, this included 11 partners to provide 25,000 bags full of fresh, healthy food to people all over New Mexico.

By focusing on partnerships, we will be 100% available to explore ways to integrate community work with good food and healthy eating. We believe this is where MoGro can do the most good. When we work together, we combine strengths and have a larger impact.

Help us continue to increase our impact!

If you’re reading this as a long-time MoGro Member and have ideas about how MoGro can work with an organization in your area, we want to hear from you! Every community's needs are different and we like to get creative: often creative collaboration with one partnership leads to innovation in others.

To all of our supporters, including MoGro Members, we want you to know that your support has made all of the difference. You’ve told your friends and neighbors about what we do. You’ve shared recipes and excitement about fruits and veggies. Many of you made donations during the pandemic to help us create partnerships that are still transforming communities. This new shift wouldn’t have happened without your help. Thank you!

As always, to get in touch about community partnerships, email us at info@mogro.net

To contribute to our new nonprofit and 2023 partnerships, donate now!

MoGro & Coronavirus Precautions

3/12/2020

We want to let you know the safety precautions we are taking for Coronavirus. We also want to ask you to take basic precautions as well!

Your food
MoGro already takes conservative measures when it comes to food safety practices. We wear gloves at all times to handle items, including pre-packaged items like bread and eggs. Most items are only touched once (with gloves) before being packed away in your bag, which is much less contact than at a grocery store. Bags aren't opened again until they are opened by you.

At your Pickup Location
Here’s where you can help. Please have someone else pick up your order if you aren’t feeling well. Please wash your hands before and after picking up your order, and while you’re picking up, try to refrain from touching people and surfaces as much as possible. On the other hand, please greet people warmly with your voice, as we all need to find ways to spread love and community right now. You will find that your Food Champion will carry themselves in the same way, in addition to wearing gloves for the distribution and wiping down surfaces with sanitizer.

Should I keep doing MoGro?
Deciding what you and your family should do to take precautions for Coronavirus is up to you. Public health officials recommend limiting time in public places, while also acknowledging that people need to take care of basic needs, like food. If MoGro helps you cut back on trips to the grocery store, it might limit time spent in public spaces, or it may not. We support you if you decide you need to put your MoGro participation on hold! If you do, we hope you find other ways to keep eating healthy, which is as important as ever!

At what point would MoGro decide temporarily close?
MoGro will continue as is until directed by authorities to do otherwise, at which point we will fully comply. In addition, if enough of our members stop participating, or if enough of our partner organizations (where you pick up your order) decide to put MoGro on hold, we may be forced to do the same. In any case, we will give as much notice as possible.

Produce Priorities

5/22/2019

Our first priority when it comes to our produce is plain and simple: to purchase from local farmers and producers. Each week when we’re putting together the Share, our first move is to call & text the local farmers that we’re connected with. One of our grants is called the Local Food Promotion Program grant, which allows us to pay our local farmers and producers a fair wholesale price for their goods. We purchase shelf-stable local goods year-round, and strive to always source from local farmers every week, but there are times in the year where that becomes a little bit more difficult (December-June).
When we can’t source 80%-100% of the items in the Weekly Shares locally as we do in the summer, our next priority is to source organically. Our organic suppliers sometimes have limited variety, but we do what we can to keep it exciting and to us it’s about the quality of the produce that we’re offering. We can confidently say that our Shares average about 80% organic produce throughout the year.
Finally, when we aren’t able to source organically we are extremely mindful of the non-organic produce that we choose to include in the Shares. We stick to the items on the “Clean Fifteen,” a list that was featured in our newsletter a few weeks ago. The items on this list have been proven to contain small amount of pesticide (kiwi, avocado, cantaloupe, etc). To read more about this list go to the Environmental Working Group’s website. We are concerned with offering healthy fruits and vegetables to as many people as we can, and this is the model that we have chosen to make it happen!

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!

Farm Feature: Growing Opportunities

5/15/2019

Last week Kim from Growing Opportunities in Alcalde, a town in the Espanola Valley, reached out after hearing about us from a friend. Growing Opportunities was founded by Steve Martin in 1999. Kim joined shortly after in 2003. Growing Opportunities’ 4 hydroponic greenhouses sit on their 7.5 acre farm where they grow heirloom & beefsteak tomatoes, and English cucumbers.

Steve grew up on a dairy farm, but was ready for a change. After doing some research he landed on the idea of hydroponic growing because of its efficiency. Hydroponic growing uses 10% of the water to yield 10 times the produce of crops grown in soil. Hydroponic growing allows Steve & Kim to farm year-round, which means local tomatoes for you all year long!

They employ 5 folks full-time and hire seasonal employees for extra help during the summer months to prune, manicure, and harvest the cucumber and tomato plants. It’s a small but mighty operation and we’re so pumped to be working with a new local farm! You can find their produce at the Santa Fe, Taos, and Los Alamos Farmer’s Markets and at co-ops in Los Alamos, Albuquerque and Santa Fe! Check then out at www.gotomatoes.net

Click here to download a PDF of this wee's Newsletter!

Clean Fifteen / Dirty Dozen

5/7/2019

All research agrees on the health benefits of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables - they are essential to our health. Every year the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit that specializes in research in areas of agricultural subsidies, toxic chemicals and corporate accountability, releases two lists that many produce enthusiasts have come to depend on: The Clean Fifteen & The Dirty Dozen. These lists are guides for consumers to make the best choices for themselves and their families when purchasing conventional (non-organic) produce. They were designed as a resource to help us reduce our exposure to harmful chemicals in our foods. The foods on The Dirty Dozen list have tested positive for multiple pesticide residues. More than 90% of strawberries, apples, cherries, spinach, nectarines & kale tested positive for residues of at least 2 pesticides, even after washing. Pesticides have been proven to be harmful to our bodies and the environment. Try to avoid the Dirty Dozen and stick to the Clean Fifteen and purchase organic when your budget allows. Be sure to review this list each year, as it changes!
As an organization we try to be be extremely conscious about what we source conventionally. We rely on this list to help us in putting together the Share each week. In a way, we’re doing your shopping for you, and want to make the choices that we would make for ourselves.

Click here to read more about the Environmental Working Group and their work as well as more info on the Clean Fifteen & Dirty Dozen!

The Clean Fifteen:
Avocado
Sweet Corn
Pineapple
Frozen Sweet Peas
Onion
Papaya
Eggplant

Asparagus
Kiwi
Cabbage
Cauliflower
Broccoli
Cantaloupe
Honeydew Melon
Mushrooms

The Dirty Dozen:
Strawberries
Spinach
Kale
Nectarines
Apples
Grapes

Peaches
Cherries
Pears
Tomatoes
Celery
Potatoes

In Honor of Earth day..What MoGro doing as an organization to reduce our impact on the planet!

4/24/2019

It was Earth Day on Monday! We think every day should be Earth Day, but we digress. We are striving to build an organization that is environmentally sustainable, and we thought this would be a great time to share what we’re already doing to keep our environmental impact low. What is outlined below is a good start, and we hope find other ways to reduce our impact on the planet!

Facility: Roadrunner Food Bank is kind enough to rent us warehouse, walk-in cooler, and freezer space to store our products. There is a large solar array covering the roof of Roadrunner. The solar energy that they collect powers all of their cooler and freezer space, so our food storage has an extremely low environmental impact! Additionally, any food waste that we have (~10-20 pounds per week) is composted and taken to a loca pig farm to feed the pigs. We value our partnership with an environmentally conscious organization.

Operations: We are constantly honing our systems to ensure that they are as efficient as they can be and that we have little to no waste. We transitioned from large, wasteful cardboard boxes each week to paper bags that we pack in reusable crates! Some folks bring their own reusable bag to their pickup location each week and send the paper bag back to be reused - we encourage this! We also reuse all of our swap boxes, and have seriously tried to cut back on our use of plastic bags - you may have noticed that we have stopped bagging a large percentage of our on the side produce. We are also going to start printing half-page newsletters in efforts to reduce paper waste. We’d love to hear your suggestions on how else we can work to reduce our environmental impact!

Product Sourcing: We try our hardest to source from local farmers and producers. While we aren’t able to offer 100% local produce in off-season, we use that time to develop new relationships with local producers, like Bob Thomson at Thompson Farms and Carla Gallegos from Sabor New Mexico. Sourcing locally helps to eliminate one HUGE factor that comes along with most large scale production and “big ag”: transportation. Instead of purchasing eggs from 500+ miles away, we source eggs from just 30 miles away. This helps to reduce emissions created by long-haul trucking, not to mention it supports our local economies and communities and creates resilience.

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!

The South Valley Economic Development Center

4/17/2019

Last week we highlighted Carla Gallegos-Ortega, owner of Sabor New Mexico. For those of you that may have missed last week's Newsletter, Carla makes salsas and sauces that we now offer. The South Valley Economic Development Center (SVEDC) is a nonprofit that offers a community kitchen, The Mixing Bowl, that Carla uses to cook and jar her salsa. Having a relationship with the SVEDC allows us to learn about new businesses that are incubating there, and to build relationships with emerging local producers. The SVEDC is a valuable resource in the Albuquerque community.

The SVEDC is an information and resource hub for community members that want to start a business or need guidance in growing an existing one. Their programming is divided into three main areas: The Mixing Bowl, The Virtual Incubation Program, and The Business Incubation Program. In addition, they offer trainings, small business support, and house Delicious New Mexico, an online platform for local producers to offer their products on the wholesale and retail markets. The Business Incubation program supports new and emerging local businesses by offering them the resources they need to grow so they can focus on meeting their goals. The SVEDC provides full-time business consultants to help assist with growth and operations.

The Mixing Bowl—the facet of SVEDC programming that helped Carla launch her business—is a large, community commercial kitchen (one of the largest in the country!) that offers use of equipment at an affordable price and in a healthy and positive environment. In addition to providing the space for a business to produce products, the SVEDC helps develop distribution avenues to facilitate businesses growth. There is a food consultant on-staff to help guide entrepreneurs through the nitty-gritty of starting a food business (food safety, regulations, permitting, etc).

The SVEDC is an amazing resource in Albuquerque that is providing support to those interested in starting their own businesses. They offer a warm, positive, and welcoming environment staffed by folks who truly care about supporting our communities and supporting those that are driven to starting their own businesses. Without them we wouldn't be able to offer the small-scale local products that we do.

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!

Sabor New Mexico!

4/10/2019

In the past few months we have had the pleasure of meeting new (to us) local producers making delicious, fresh, handmade products in our communities. We met Carla Gallegos-Ortega at the Three Sisters Evening Market on the same night we met Bob Thompson, our new egg farmer. Carla owns and operates New Mexico Sabor, a salsa and sauce company based in Albuquerque. She is best known around town for her salsas - you may have seen her smiling face at the Downtown Growers Market or you may have noticed her salsa on the shelves at John Brooks, The Valley Store, or Keller's. NM Sabor Salsa has a reputation around Albuquerque as one of the best salsas around. Check out NM Sabor's Facebook page - it is full of 5 star reviews written by her loyal customers.

Carla started small. She has always had a talent for making salsa and was often volunteered by family, friends, and coworkers to make her famous salsa for gatherings and office parties. One day her mom encouraged her to bottle her salsa and sell it. In 2017 Carla entered her salsa in the annual salsa competition at the Salsa Festival in Old Town. Carla made 16 gallons of salsa on-site at the event and received an award for her salsa on her first year at the competition, the rest is history. Since then Carla has been making and jarring her salsa and creating a name for herself and her company in Albuquerque. She currently uses the Mixing Bowl at the South Valley Economic Development center, a local nonprofit incubator that supports emerging entrepreneurs in Albuquerque, to create her tasty salsas.

Carla is committed to supporting New Mexico communities. She only buys chile from New Mexico growers, and gives back to her community by donating 10% of sales to local organizations. Additionally, New Mexico Sabor employs workers from Father's Building Futures - a program that ensures parents and families experiencing barriers from incarceration have the best opportunities for stability - emotionally, socially and financially.

We're so excited to be supporting a woman-owned local business created by a New Mexico native that is committed to supporting her community!

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!

In the limelight: Tomatillos How to Store, Prep, and Use this Husky Little Fruit!

4/3/2019

Native to Mexico, tomatillos (also known as Mexican husk tomatoes) can be eaten raw or cooked in a variety of dishes, most commonly in salsa verde. Tomatillos were cultivated in Mexico prior to the arrival of the Europeans and were a stable food in Mayan & Aztec diets. To this day tomatillos are a central part of many Mexican dishes.
Tomatillos are packed with nutritional value. They are a great source of dietary fiber, niacin, potassium, and manganese. They contain 20 percent of the daily recommended value in vitamin C, 13% of the vitamin K, and a healthy amount of iron, magnesium, phosphorus, and copper.

Storage:
Tomatillos are best used fresh and green. Raw tomatillos have a zesty, tart flavor that develops an herbal lemon flavor when cooked. Store tomatillos in their husks for about two weeks in a paper bag in the vegetable crisper section of the refrigerator (55° to 60°F). Tomatillos will suffer chilling injury if stored below 41°F.
Do not store tomatillos with apples or bananas. These fruits emit a natural gas called ethylene, which will cause tomatillos to darken in storage.
Tomatillos can be and frozen for later use. To freeze: remove the husk, wash the fruit, and freeze them whole in a freezer container or bag. Double bagging will prevent freezer burn.

If you don't have time for the chicken recipe on the back that features tomatillos, here's a really quick and easy way to use them in a homemade salsa verde:

1 pound tomatillos husked and rinsed
1 to 2 medium jalapeños, stemmed
½ cup chopped white onion
¼ cup packed fresh cilantro leaves
2 tablespoons to ¼ cup lime juice
½ to 1 teaspoon salt, to taste
Optional variation: 1 to 2 diced avocados, for creamy avocado salsa verde

1) Preheat the broiler with a rack about 4 inches below the heat source. Place the tomatillos and jalapeño on a rimmed baking sheet and broil until they’re blackened in spots, about 5 minutes.
2) Remove the baking sheet from the oven, carefully flip over the tomatillos and peppers with tongs and broil for 4 to 6 more minutes, until the tomatillos are splotchy& blistered.
Meanwhile, in a food processor or blender, combine the chopped onion, cilantro, lime juice and ½ teaspoon salt. Once the tomatillos are out of the oven, carefully transfer the hot tomatillos, pepper and all of their juices into the food processor or blender.
Pulse until the mixture is mostly smooth and no big chunks of tomatillo remain. Season to taste with additional lime juice and salt, if desired.
The salsa will be thinner at first, but will thicken up after a few hours in the refrigerator, due to the naturally occurring pectin in the tomatillos. If you’d like to make creamy avocado salsa verde, let the salsa cool down before blending in 1 to 2 diced avocados.

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!

Gluten Free Goods: Not Your Average Cookie!

3/27/2019

Some of you might recognize the woman in the photo below, Rita, from the growers markets in Albuquerque. Rita is the owner of Gluten Free Goods. She's the one responsible for creating the new gluten free vegan treats that you may have noticed on this week's product list. After becoming familiar with our market-style offerings, Rita reached out to us to see if we would be interested in listing her almond meal-based cookies on our website. We thought we would give it a try. The people have spoken! The entire case that we posted on our website sold out before ordering closed on Monday.

We are offering 2 different kinds of cookies: chocolate chip and cranberry walnut. They come in packs of 2 cookies that total 3.2 oz. Gluten Free Goods does not use refined sugar and uses a base of almond meal, tapioca flour and rice flour depending on the product. Their cookies also have other wholesome ingredients like walnuts, sesame seeds and coconut, which make them rich and protein and healthy fats that are easy to digest. Check out the product descriptions by clicking on the photos on our website to see a full ingredient list for each cookie.

Rita is a licensed nutrition educator and strongly believes in conscious and healthy eating. She is also concerned with making her products as accessible as possible and wants to change perceptions around gluten free foods. We are happy to be supporting and working with another local producer creating sweet, healthy treats. If you didn't have a chance to try them this week, toss a pack in your cart next week. You won't regret it!

Click here to download a PDF of this week's Newsletter!