We’ve always been careful about politics, but “Concern for Community” is one of our founding principles, so we do keep an eye on current events and legislation. Two bills have recently passed the New Hampshire House, HB 177 and HB 544, and both have now moved on to the Senate. They also happen to correlate with our mission of promoting healthy choices for people and planet alike.

House Bill 177 states that “No new landfill shall be constructed near a State Park”, and directly protects 68 state parks in NH, including our own local Forest Lake State Park. This is something we can fully support as a business that strives for ecological sustainability. We’ve included some resources here courtesy of the North Country Alliance for Balanced Change, including a template you can use to reach out to your local representatives, a fact sheet, and Letters of Opposition.

House Bill 544 is intended to restrict the way that businesses and schools teach Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Our Board and employees have invested significant time and resources in educating ourselves about DEI here at the Co-op, as part of our efforts to support people in our community. This is an ongoing process and we feel we have the right to proceed without outside restriction.

I would encourage people interested in these issues to do their own research and get involved if they so choose.  I’m happy to talk about these and any other issues with our Members anytime. Thank you for your continued support!

Cooperatively,
Ed King, General Manager

Update Effective 5/28/2021 Vaccinated customers are strongly encouraged to wear a mask, but it’s no longer required. Customers who have not been vaccinated are still required to wear a mask here at the Co-op, on an honor-system basis. Our employees are required to continue to wear masks for the time being.

We decided to make this change after considering recent CDC guidance and the decline in local case counts. We appreciate everyone’s cooperation, and we trust our community members to do the right thing.

If you’re concerned about shopping in-store, we’re happy to offer our free Curbside Pickup Service. You can place your order online and we will gladly shop for you and bring your order out to your car.

We’re continuing to work hard to keep our store clean, safe, and welcoming for everyone. We’ve implemented many procedures and policies for COVID-19, most of which follow CDC and NH State guidelines. We’re committed to doing the best we can to take care of our customers and our staff, while still keeping our shelves stocked with essentials.

We have many procedures already in place to help protect the safety of our employees, members, and shoppers—procedures we rely on to reduce the spread of foodborne illness and seasonal colds and flu every year. We will regularly update this page as the situation progresses,  so please check back for updates.

• Masks are mandatory for all persons (over 2 years of age) who enter the co-op. This policy is strictly enforced.
• Please stay 6 feet away from other people while you shop.
• Please shop alone, in order to limit the number of people in the store.
• Stay home and do not shop in the store if you are sick.

Keepin’ It Clean

• We are making extra efforts to keep the store clean and sanitized, particularly in high-contact and high-traffic areas.
• Our staff continually cleans throughout the day.
• For health and safety reasons, we have closed dine-in seating in the co-op cafe. The sinks are still available for hand washing as needed.
• Our shopping baskets are sanitized each morning. We have sanitizing wipe stations in our entry and exit areas if you’d like to clean your shopping carts and baskets before use.
• We have touchless hand sanitizer stations now set up in the entry and exit, as well as near the restrooms, produce area, bulk area, meat department and dairy.  Please look for these grey wall-mounted boxes the next time you are in the store.
• Our cashiers disinfect the register belts and bagging stations between each order, as well as sanitize their hands before waiting on the next customer.   Please be patient while this process is taking place as it is for your health and protection.
• You may bring your clean reusable shopping bags in the store. Please bag your own groceries at the register. We also have paper bags for 10 cents each, as well as complimentary grocery boxes for you to pack your purchase in.
• Our credit card pin-pads are wiped down frequently. Please use the stylus to enter your information, since that is easy to clean between uses. We encourage customers to pay with debit or credit cards if possible, since it vastly reduces the amount of cash we have to handle. We also accept touchless payments such as Google Pay and Apple Pay, which are even safer.

Social Distancing

When you visit the store you will see many reminders about social distancing, shopping solo and wearing a mask.  Please keep away from other shoppers as well as our staff while they work, for your own safety as well as ours.

At the registers, we’ve installed plexiglass barriers to protect you as well as our cashiers. There are also marks on the floor so that you know where to stand while you wait in line, and stay a safe distance apart.  We have also discontinued the practice of having additional staff pack up your order.  We felt this introduced one more person handling your food as well as a challenge to proper social distancing at the checkout counter.  Please plan on assisting your cashier in bagging or boxing up your groceries.

In the aisles, please give employees extra space when they are stocking.  It is a difficult and challenging job keeping the shelves full while the store is open.  Please do not reach over employees or other shoppers to retrieve something from the shelves.  Maintain a safe 6-foot distance and ask about the item you need.  Our staff will gladly move aside or reach the item for you.

Here are some of the policies (and tips) we’ve implemented to keep everyone safe & healthy:

• Masks are mandatory for all persons (over 2 years of age) who enter the co-op. This policy is strictly enforced.
• Please stay 6 feet away from other people while you shop.
• Please shop alone, in order to limit the number of people in the store.
• Stay home and do not shop in the store if you are sick.
• Make a shopping list, considering ways to minimize shopping trips.  Plan your shopping trip ahead of time by using our map!
• Cover your cough or sneeze, wash hands often, use sanitizer and only touch items you intend to buy.
• Only buy what you need, and leave some for your neighbors.
• If possible, pay with a debit or credit card, or use contactless payment, which is far less germy than cash.

Food Safety

Our employees follow a strict set of standard operating procedures when handling products. No employee goes near the Co-op’s prepared foods or other products without extensive training on how to handle them properly and safely.

For the time being we are discontinuing our self-serve hot food stations, including soups, pizza, and self-serve coffee. Pre-packaged grab & go options are still available. All of our fresh-baked items are now packaged.

According to the Harvard Health Blog, it’s not clear if the virus can spread through food. Even if so, it would be highly unlikely. Regardless, health officials cannot absolutely rule out the possibility of transmission from infected food handlers – which is why we ask our staff to stay home when they are sick.

Supporting our Staff

Because of the increased risk of exposure that comes as a result of working in a grocery store, all of our staff are receiving hazard pay bonuses.

Out of care for our community, our policy has always been for staff to remain at home when they are unwell. All of our employees accumulate paid time off to cover sick time.

We have several options in place to provide paid time off for those employees who are self-isolating due to illness or immune vulnerabilities, as well as those who need to stay home to look after their children.

Events and Sampling

We have discontinued all food demos & sampling at this time. We are also suspending all community info tabling events.

We’ve also made the hard choice to postpone our sampling event days, in-store classes, and workshops.

In order to promote healthy social distancing practices, we have moved our monthly Board Meetings, our Annual Meetings, and Board Elections online.

We have suspended our regular Member Appreciation Days & Senior Discount Days since we don’t want to encourage shoppers to crowd the store on a single day. Instead we are offering extended “Floating Member Discount” and “Senior Five & Dime Discount” periods so that our Members can use their discount during those allotted times, during one shopping trip, and on the day of their choice.

Supplies

You may have heard stories about grocery stores running out of food and household needs as consumers stock up on the essentials. One of our strengths is that we source from multiple suppliers and don’t pull from a central warehouse.

We are working diligently with our suppliers to keep essentials and pantry staples in stock, but please bear with us as some items may become out of stock or unavailable.

Work with Us

Finally, we ask all of our members, shoppers, and employees to partner with us in this.  Please be courteous and mindful as you shop, realizing we are all working through these challenges together.  Please be patient when needing to wait, or when a product is unavailable due to supplier issues.  Social distancing is key – please stay 6 feet away from other shoppers and store employees.

WHO has great advice on how to be responsible in order to protect yourself—and by extension your community—from the virus.

Please shop alone, shop efficiently, and wear a face covering.  Again, we love seeing you all, and we’ll be here when brighter times are back for the usual smiles and chit-chat we all love in our co-op community. But for now, we’d like to try to reduce the number of people in the store at any given time, for the health and safety of everyone.

If you are older or in need of assistance with your grocery shopping, please give us a call. At this time we are unable to offer delivery or special shopping hours due to logistics and safety concerns. We do offer a Curbside Pickup service for seniors, people who are highly vulnerable to COVID 19, or people who are sick and staying isolated.

Learn More

More thoughts or questions? Reach out anytime. For general questions please call the store at (603) 444-2800 or email your comments to info@littletoncoop.org.  Remember that our employees on the front lines have their hands full with the challenging new essential position they have found themselves in.  If you have a concern or suggestion, please ask for a manager.  You can also email cwhiton@littletoncoop.org.  We will be glad to listen and provide assistance.

Updated 02/02/2021

With a dozen common varieties readily available, choosing a winter squash to prepare can be confounding for the home cook. We’ve compiled descriptions of common varieties as well as some handy tips for selecting the right squash for you and plenty of delicious squash recipes you’ll love.

General selection tips

Winter squash are harvested late summer through fall, then “cured” or “hardened off” in open air to toughen their exterior. This process ensures the squash will keep for months without refrigeration. Squash that has been hurried through this step and improperly cured will appear shiny and may be tender enough to be pierced by your fingernail. When selecting any variety of winter squash, the stem is the best indication of ripeness. Stems should be tan, dry, and on some varieties, look fibrous and frayed, or corky. Fresh green stems and those leaking sap signal that the squash was harvested before it was ready. Ripe squash should have vivid, saturated (deep) color and a matte, rather than glossy, finish.

Acorn

This forest green, deeply ribbed squash resembles its namesake, the acorn. It has yellow-orange flesh and a tender-firm texture that holds up when cooked. Acorn’s mild flavor is versatile, making it a traditional choice for stuffing and baking. The hard rind is not good for eating, but helps the squash hold its shape when baked.

• Selection: Acorn squash should be uniformly green and matte—streaks/spots of orange are fine, but too much orange indicates over ripeness and the squash will be dry and stringy.
• Best uses: baking, stuffing, mashing.
• Other varieties: all-white “Cream of the Crop,” and all-yellow “Golden Acorn.”

Blue Hubbard

Good for feeding a crowd, these huge, bumpy textured squash look a bit like a giant gray lemon, tapered at both ends and round in the middle. A common heirloom variety, Blue Hubbard has an unusual, brittle blue-gray outer shell, a green rind, and bright orange flesh. Unlike many other winter squashes, they are only mildly sweet, but have a buttery, nutty flavor and a flaky, dry texture similar to a baked potato.

• Selection: Choose a squash based on size—1 pound equals approximately 2 cups of chopped squash (tip: if you don’t have use for the entire squash, some produce departments will chop these into smaller pieces for you).
• Best Uses: baked or mashed, topped with butter, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper.
• Other varieties: Golden or Green Hubbard, Baby Blue Hubbard.

Butternut

These squash are named for their peanut-like shape and smooth, beige coloring. Butternut is a good choice for recipes calling for a large amount of squash because they are dense—the seed cavity is in the small bulb opposite the stem end, so the large stem is solid squash. Their vivid orange flesh is sweet and slightly nutty with a smooth texture that falls apart as it cooks. Although the rind is edible, butternut is usually peeled before use.

• Selection: Choose the amount of squash needed by weight. One pound of butternut equals approximately 2 cups of peeled, chopped squash.
• Best uses: soups, purees, pies, recipes where smooth texture and sweetness will be highlighted.

Delicata

This oblong squash is butter yellow in color with green mottled striping in shallow ridges. Delicata has a thin, edible skin that is easy to work with but makes it a poor squash for long-term storage; this is why you’ll only find them in the fall. The rich, sweet yellow flesh is flavorful and tastes like chestnuts, corn, and sweet potatoes.

• Selection: Because they are more susceptible to breakdown than other winter squash, take care to select squash without scratches or blemishes, or they may spoil quickly.
• Best Uses: Delicata’s walls are thin, making it a quick-cooking squash. It can be sliced in 1/4-inch rings and sautéed until soft and caramelized (remove seeds first), halved and baked in 30 minutes, or broiled with olive oil or butter until caramelized.
• Other varieties: Sugar Loaf and Honey Boat are varieties of Delicata that have been crossed with Butternut. They are often extremely sweet with notes of caramel, hazelnut, and brown sugar (They’re delicious and fleeting, so we recommend buying them when you find them!).

Heart of Gold/Festival/Carnival

These colorful, festive varieties of squash are all hybrids resulting from a cross between Sweet Dumpling and Acorn, and are somewhere between the two in size. Yellow or cream with green and orange mottling, these three can be difficult to tell apart, but for culinary purposes, they are essentially interchangeable. With a sweet nutty flavor like Dumpling, and a tender-firm texture like Acorn, they are the best of both parent varieties.

• Selection: Choose brightly colored squash that are heavy for their size.
• Best uses: baking, stuffing, broiling with brown sugar.

Kabocha (Green or Red)

Kabocha can be dark green with mottled blue-gray striping, or a deep red-orange color that resembles Red Kuri. You can tell the difference between red Kabocha and Red Kuri by their shape: Kabocha is round but flattened at stem end, instead of pointed. The flesh is smooth, dense, and intensely yellow. They are similar in sweetness and texture to a sweet potato.

• Selection: Choose heavy, blemish free squash. They may have a golden or creamy patch where they rested on the ground.
• Best Uses: curries, soups, stir-fry, salads.
• Other varieties: Buttercup, Turban, Turk’s Turban.

Pie Pumpkin

Pie pumpkins differ from larger carving pumpkins in that they have been bred for sweetness and not for size. They are uniformly orange and round with an inedible rind, and are sold alongside other varieties of winter squash (unlike carving pumpkins which are usually displayed separately from winter squash). These squash are mildly sweet and have a rich pumpkin flavor that is perfect for pies and baked goods. They make a beautiful centerpiece when hollowed out and filled with pumpkin soup.

• Selection: Choose a pie pumpkin that has no hint of green and still has a stem attached; older pumpkins may lose their stems.
• Best uses: pies, custards, baked goods, curries and stews.

Red Kuri

These vivid orange, beta carotene-saturated squash are shaped like an onion, or teardrop. They have a delicious chestnut-like flavor, and are mildly sweet with a dense texture that holds shape when steamed or cubed, but smooth and velvety when pureed, making them quite versatile.

• Selection: Select a smooth, uniformly colored squash with no hint of green.
• Best Uses: Thai curries, soups, pilafs and gratins, baked goods.
• Other varieties: Hokkaido, Japanese Uchiki.

Spaghetti

These football-sized, bright yellow squash are very different from other varieties in this family. Spaghetti squash has a pale golden interior, and is stringy and dense—in a good way! After sliced in half and baked, use a fork to pry up the strands of flesh and you will see it resembles and has the texture of perfectly cooked spaghetti noodles. These squash are not particularly sweet but have a mild flavor that takes to a wide variety of preparations.

• Selection: choose a bright yellow squash that is free of blemishes and soft spots.
• Best uses: baked and separated, then mixed with pesto, tomato sauce, or your favorite pasta topping.

Sweet Dumpling

These small, four- to-six-inch round squash are cream-colored with green mottled streaks and deep ribs similar to Acorn. Pale gold on the inside, with a dry, starchy flesh similar to a potato, these squash are renowned for their rich, honey-sweet flavor.

• Selection: pick a smooth, blemish-free squash that is heavy for its size and is evenly colored. Avoid a squash that has a pale green tint as it is underripe.
• Best uses: baking with butter and cinnamon.

Miscellaneous Varieties

At some food co-ops, farmer’s markets, and apple orchards in the fall you may encounter unusual heirloom varieties of squash that are worth trying. If you like butternut, look for Galeux D’eysines, a rich, sweet and velvety French heirloom that is large, pale pink, and covered in brown fibrous warts. You might also like to try Long Island Cheese squash, a flat, round ribbed, beige squash that resembles a large wheel of artisan cheese. If you prefer the firmer, milder Acorn, you might like to try long Banana or Pink Banana squash. If you like a moist,dense textured squash (yam-like), try a Queensland Blue or Jarrahdale pumpkin. These huge varieties are from Australia and New Zealand, respectively, and have stunning brittle blue-green rinds and deep orange flesh. Both are good for mashing and roasting.

This article originally appeared on Co+op, welcome to the table

October is Co-op Month! Co-op Month has been celebrated annually across the United States for more than half a century. It is a time for cooperative businesses to reflect on their shared principles and to educate others about the value of belonging to a cooperative.

The theme for this year’s Co-op Month is “Co-ops Commit: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,” highlighting how co-ops like ours are working to create diverse, equitable and inclusive workplaces and boards, and how co-ops can better meet the needs of communities that have been excluded from economic participation and advancement.

We’re also celebrating Co-op Month in 2020 by promoting the Littleton Food Co-op Community Fund! During the month of October, all of the Round-Up dollars donated at the register will go towards our fund, with support from the Cooperative Community Foundation. Learn more about our Community Fund.

Across the Northeast, people have used food co-ops to improve access to healthy, local, affordable food, and build stronger, more inclusive communities. Most of these grocery stores got their start during times of social and economic change, enabling people to access healthy food, support local producers, and provide good jobs. More recently, a new wave of startups has been growing, representing a renewed interest in food security, and racial and economic justice. Today, the Neighboring Food Co-op Association (NFCA) includes 40 food co-ops and startups, jointly owned by more than 150,000 members and employing over 2,350 people. Together, these co-ops generate shared annual revenue of nearly $347 million, with local products representing close to a third of total sales.

Food co-ops are not alone in their contribution to more inclusive and resilient local communities. Co-ops are everywhere, and they provide all kinds of products and services. From farmer co-ops to worker co-ops, credit unions to mutual insurance, and housing co-ops to energy co-ops, co-operative businesses thrive across the U.S. economy, where 350 million people are co-op members. Nationwide, co-ops generate $514 billion in revenue and more than $25 billion in wages, according to NCBA CLUSA. And because they are member-owned, co-operatives are rooted in their communities and governed by the people who use them to meet their needs, rather than outside investors. Learn more in this great little video:

Stop by Littleton Co-op, or a nearby co-op if you’re not from our area, and learn more about what makes co-operatives different. Look for the “Go Co-op” signs on the shelves that identify products that were “co-op made”. You may be surprised by what you find, including dairy products from Cabot Creamery Co-op and Organic Valley, fresh produce from Deep Root Organic Co-op, fairly traded coffee, tea, and chocolate from Equal Exchange, beverages from Katalyst Kombucha and La Riojana wines, seeds and bulbs from FEDCO, naturally fermented vegetables from Real Pickles, Northeast Grown frozen fruits and vegetables from your Neighboring Food Co-ops — and many others!