Are you curious about cooking with perennial foods? Wonder no more! FMR's Agricultural Policy Manager Peter LaFontaine has curated a basket of essential perennial foods and ingredients for your home. This is a perfect opportunity to help the river by helping yourself to a basket brimming with sustainable and ecosystem-friendly agricultural products.

Friends of the Mississippi River is leading a diverse coalition of partners who are working together to make clean water, perennial crops - like the items in this basket - economically viable for famers.

Perennial agriculture is the solution to many challenges we face from grain production today. Perennials are plants that can be left in the field to return for several years without the annual tilling that damages topsoil and leads to erosion and nutrient losses.

This basket includes:

• 14 oz bag of Perennial Pantry Kernza flour: Perfect for breads and baked goods. Whole Grain Flour, Unsifted.
• 5 oz. bag of Perennial Pantry Kernza crackers. Crunchy, flavorful, and climate positive. Try our new crackers, now in a Rosemary Garlic flavor!
• 1 lb of Perennial Pantry Kernza Campanelle Pasta. Introducing Perennial Pantry's newest addition to their lineup. Campanelle means little bells, and is a cone shaped pasta with a ruffled edge.
• 14 oz bag of Perennial Pantry Kernza pancake and waffle mix. One, 14 oz bag contains 3 cups of mix. 1 cup of mix makes 8x 4" pancakes. 24x 4" pancakes per bag.
• 500 mL of camelina oil: Three Farmers Camelina Oil is your salad oil, your cooking oil and your healthy Omega 3 supplement wrapped into one great tasting product.
• 5 oz jar of elderberry creamed honey: Missouri honey and River Hills Harvest Freeze Dried Elderberries spun together on the Giofre Apiaries farm where the honey was collected.
• 10 oz jar of elderberry jelly: made with River Hills Harvest pure premium ElderBerry Juice, lightly sweetened using pure cane sugar with just a hint of lemon. Jars are recyclable.

• 1 lb of hazelnut kernels: Grown by farmers in the Midwest. Great for baking, fresh-eating, confections, and anything else you can imagine. Roasting for 15 minutes at 275 brings out the full taste and aroma.

• 8 oz bottle of hazelnut oil: From American Hazelnut Company out of Gays Mills, WI.

• The Perennial Kitchen cookbook by Beth Dooley: James Beard Award-winning author Beth Dooley provides the context of food's origins, along with delicious recipes, nutrition information, and tips for smart sourcing. More than a farm-to-table cookbook, this book expands the definition of "local food" to embrace regenerative agriculture, the method of growing small and large crops with ecological services.