Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 3, 2007 at 3:15 PM
Alan Richman's latest GQ column on San Francisco's Ferry Building, "the West Coast's new temple of tastes" is a riveting read until you hit this sentence:
"Alice Waters and sourdough bread aside, the Bay Area has contributed surprisingly little to the culinary ripening of America considering its proximity to fertile growing regions from the Central Valley to Napa and Sonoma counties."
and then all you can do is shake your head, furrow your brow, and start wondering if he's begun smoking crack. The SF Chronicle's Michael Bauer naturally took exception and wrote about it on his blog, saying, "I simply don't know where to begin. Has he heard of wine? Artisan cheeses? Arugula?" and promises to post a list of the Bay Area's culinary contributions tomorrow. (And no, I don't think Rice-A-Roni's gonna make the cut.)
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 2, 2007 at 4:30 PM
Ed Crowell, Kitty Crider, Dale Rice, and Renee Studebaker of the Austin American-Statesman all spent an entire week in April as locavores, trying their best to eat only food that was grown and manufactured within a 200-mile radius of Austin. Crider points out that "while Texas is a large agricultural state, Travis County is not," and so while there were many things they chose to do without (bananas, tortilla chips), there are also foods they expanded their definitions to include (oranges from the Rio Grande Valley, seafood from the Gulf), and others they rationalized into keeping like coffee, tea and spices saying, "after all, this country's pioneers traded afar for those things, too."
All four writers kept detailed diaries of where they shopped, what they ate and how they made it during their seven day experiment; they all ended up cooking much more than usual and eating out rarely, if at all. The diaries are an interesting read whether you're already a locavore, just thinking about, or think it's hogwash because at the very least you're bound to learn something about how other people make creative use of what they have at hand, which is really what cooking is all about. Crowell had a lot of difficulty finding food but concluded, "I'll continue to use more local foods because the fresh taste is better and I'd rather trust food from a farmer met at a market than an anonymous string of growers, packers and transporters."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, May 2, 2007 at 3:30 PM
It's not every chef who can say they've cooked for royalty, but after this Saturday's Kentucky Derby, Gil Logan will be able to say exactly that because Queen Elizabeth II will be visiting Churchill Downs and choosing from the menu he's put together:
"When it was decided that they'd be visiting the Derby and eating here, the queen's staff Googled me," Logan said. "The royal family prefers to eat organic, natural foods, and they travel with their own food service staff.
"But when they saw that I buy as much as I can from local farmers who are growing and raising food without pesticides or hormones or antibiotics, they were quite happy to eat from our regular menu."
Logan actually planned out this year's menu last June, long before the queen's trip was decided. He chose to do it so far in advance so he could have the time to properly source the ingredients from local organic providers.
So what's on the menu? One dish he'll be serving is his "Kentucky-fied" version of the classic French dish cassoulet: "Instead of just white beans, I use black-eyed peas. I use country ham, which is just as good as, if not better than, European ham like Serrano. And I splash in a little bourbon too." And among the desserts will be sugar cookies colored after the silks that Derby jockeys will be wearing on the day, "so you can bet on your cookie."
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 30, 2007 at 12:00 PM
The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Hsiao-Ching Chou talks to Greg Conner, the founder of Eat Local, an area company dedicated to providing frozen microwavable meals made with organic, sustainably-raised seasonal produce and meats that all come from within a few hundred mile radius of the city, cooked in small batches every day for maximum freshness. "The cost runs from about $7 for a single portion to $55 for an eight-person entree. "We're not the cheapest," Conner acknowledges. "But we know the provenance of the food. You pay for the safety in your food and you're having less impact on the environment." [via The Food Section]
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 14, 2007 at 6:02 PM
Meg Wilcox of the Boston Globe, on what makes a green restaurant green: "To qualify for green certification, a restaurant must recycle waste, be styrofoam-free, complete four environmental steps, and commit to four additional steps each year, says Michael Oshman, founder and director of the nonprofit Green Restaurant Association. "The key is completing additional steps each year," he says, "which could include energy or water conservation measures, elimination of toxic cleaners, sustainable food choices, using clean power, and others." More than 300 restaurants nationally have been certified -- bakeries, pizzerias, and luxurious dining rooms."
Eight Boston restaurants are certified, most are upscale and no, they don't have to be vegan or even vegetarian to qualify, just committed to the cause; food-wise this means buying local and sustainable whenever possible. "The certification may seem like a marketing tool for attracting socially conscious diners, but Lumiere chef and owner Michael Leviton says, "Some people get it and really appreciate it, and others will ask, 'Why don't you have any green vegetables [in winter]?"
Posted by Lia Bulaong, March 5, 2007 at 12:56 PM
Time Magazine's current cover story is Eating Better Than Organic by John Cloud, in which he explores the debate between buying local and buying organic. Which is better for the food system, food grown by a small farmer locally or one grown by a big organic firm that uses large-scale industrial methods? Is buying local food that might have been treated with pesticides better for the environment than organic food that's been trucked, shipped and flown from far away, using up tons of fossil fuels? Which tastes better? Cloud asked Whole Foods CEO John Mackey for his opinion:
He told me that when he can't get locally grown organics--and even he can't reliably get them--he decides on the basis of taste. "I would probably purchase a local nonorganic tomato before I would purchase an organic one that was shipped from California," he said. He called the two tomatoes "an environmental wash," since the California one had petroleum miles on it while the nonorganic one was grown with pesticides. "But the local tomato from outside Austin will be fresher, will just taste better," he said.
Cloud goes on to check out restaurants dedicated to local ingredients, like New York's Blue Hill which sources 80% of their food from within the New York region, or the free restaurant at Google HQ in Mountain View, CA called Café 150, which only uses food produced within 150 miles of them, as well as joining a Community Supported Agriculture, which lets you subscribe to a local farm and receive fresh produce every week or month.
