Market watch: Birchberry Native American Crafts

By Check out our new local, seasonal foods blog at startribune.com/farmreport .

May 28, 2008 at 11:00PM

Heidi Grika knows exactly what pushes her customers' buying impulses. "I think they appreciate that everything we sell is traditional; it's tied to the land," she said. It sure is. At her Birchberry Native American Crafts stand, Grika stocks an eye-catching array of products sourced from the White Earth Land Recovery Project on northern Minnesota's White Earth Indian Reservation. There's stew-friendly dried hominy and white flint corn, a marvelously fragrant maple syrup and beautiful wild rice, sold as is or incorporated into soup, cereal and pancake mixes. My favorite: a tangy maple vinaigrette, a perfect complement to spring greens.

RICK NELSON

Mill City Farmers Market, 2nd St. and Chicago Av. S., Minneapolis, 612-341-7580, www.millcityfarmersmarket.com. Open 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays. For a complete list of Twin Cities farmers markets, go to www.startribune.com/taste.

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Check out our new local, seasonal foods blog at startribune.com/farmreport .