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Wednesday, September 30, 2009
Outstanding in the Field dinner at Johnson’s Backyard Garden
For 10 years, Outstanding in the Field founder Jim Denevan and a small crew have traveled around the country hosting farm dinners that feature an entirely locally sourced menu.
Outstanding in the Field served its 170th dinner yesterday — its fifth in Austin — at Johnson’s Backyard Garden, Brenton and Beth Johnson’s ever-growing farm near the airport.
Before the dinner started, the Johnsons, left, and Jim explained the roots of both the touring supper club and the farm to about 150 guests, most of whom traveled from Dallas, Houston and other Texas cities to enjoy a five-course meal cooked by Dai Due Supper Club chef Jesse Griffiths. Wines from McPherson Cellars in Lubbock and Stone House Vineyard in Spicewood were paired with each course.
(Many Central Texans might have shied away from the $180 per person meal because Griffiths, who shared the recipe for his famous apple cider-braised pork belly in today’s paper, serves similar locally sourced, family-style meals for $55-100 a person several times a month at his supper club.)
After the first courses of fish soup, cucumber and tomato salad and a charcuterie plate, Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler of Boggy Creek Farm made the rounds to explain to the diners how Griffiths uses their produce in his meals, including yaupon honey in a spicy mustard.
Just as the sun started to close in on the horizon, servers delivered massive bowls of perfectly grilled quail and antelope sausage that had even the only occasional meat eaters going back for seconds.
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Chickens, recycled garden beds at Austin City Limits
Chickens will be at the Austin City Limits Festival this year.
No, that isn’t the name of some newfangled band playing at the three-day event at Zilker Park starting Friday. Chickens of the feathered, clucking variety from Austin’s Rain Lily Farm will be part of a display of creative ways to reuse materials to landscape your yard and grow food.
As part of a project with Farmhouse Delivery, Rain Lily owners Kim Beal and Stephanie Scherzer have been putting together an array of container gardens made of tires, a vertical garden made out of old exercise equipment, a worm bin made out of an industrial spool and a moveable chicken trailer from bamboo and old bicycle wheels.
Beal says the project is meant to inspire ACL festivalgoers to find new uses for materials headed for the landfill, like 2-liter soda bottles that they’ve used as planters for herbs. To get people started, they’ll be giving away seeds that Scherzer has collected in the years since starting their East Austin farm.
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