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Eating locally
May 9, 2012
Eating in season: Sweet onions, sweet corn, sweet rain
I don’t dare upset the weather gods by speaking too highly of all this precipitation we’ve been getting lately, but if I’m happy with a few extra inches, area farmers must be elated.
But most of them, like Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler at Boggy Creek, carry on with the same determination no matter if their fields are bone dry or soaking wet. They’ve learned over the years that it’s best to keep any weather-related joy to themselves, lest they jinx the good fortune.
Instead, they’d rather talk about sweet corn.
This is Butler’s second year of growing a sweet corn called Fantastic, which isn’t as easy as you’d think to grow in Central Texas. The first crop came in last week, and I snagged a few of the last ears at this morning’s farm stand. He’s hoping to harvest two more rounds of corn in coming weeks, and if they are as sweet as this first batch, I encourage you to pick some up. The kernels are so sweet and juicy, you might as well be eating a peach, so have a napkin handy.
In today’s food section, Renee Studebaker writes about her love of raw sweet onions, and even if you’re not a fan of eating them uncooked, she has some great recipes for caramelized onion pie, sweet onion pancakes and onion relish.
Plus, did you know that Georgia’s famous Vidalia onions were actually developed from a Texas A&M sweet onion called Grano 502?
With tomatoes, peaches and other crops summer crops coming in, this is one of the best times of the year to hit up local farm stands and markets, especially because it’s not 90 degrees by 9 a.m.
What are you enjoying from local farmers right now?
Onion photo by Renee Studebaker.
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April 28, 2012
A taste of Texas wines, peaches at Hill Country Wine & Music Festival
While some of you are enjoying the star-studded Austin Food & Wine Festival today, I’m in Fredericksburg at the Hill Country Wine & Music Festival rubbing elbows with absolutely nobody you know…but I’m getting through the wine line a lot faster than you are.
This fest is more like the informal grazing events you’ll find at a California farmers market. It’s not crowded, and those of us out at Wildseed Farms paid exactly $20 for seven wine tastings and music (just one stage, with four acts: Trevor Labonte, John Arthur Martinez, The Almost Patsy Cline Band and Thomas Michael Riley). You can also buy full glasses of wine and munchies such as pizza, cheese and fruit, chips and salsa and ice cream. It’s a laid-back scene, and the Austinites I’ve run into tell me they’re here and not at Austin’s festival because this one’s cheaper and it’s in the Hill Country. And from what I’ve seen, a good many people came to buy some seeds or a cactus (real or iron) and wound up tasting wine while they were at it.
Today’s event focuses on wine, but last night’s $100-a-plate, seven-course dinner at the Museum of the Pacific War’s Ruff Haus was about the food, as well. Recipes from Chef Terry Thompson-Anderson’s latest cookbook were prepared (very well!) by Delicious Details catering and served with Texas wines. Terry spent a lot of her career in Cajun territory, but last night’s offerings were Lone Star cuisine, including plump Gulf shrimp. My favorite course was probably a perfectly medium rare, tender lamb chop topped with cilantro-jalapeno pesto that had just right about of kick, paired with Sandstone Cellars XI, a blend that was mostly syrah, but mellowed by some other varietals including a touch of Viognier. (Sandstone’s in Mason County.)
Anyway: That was last night. Today’s one for tasting wines, hearing a little music and noshing. And, hey: Gillespie County peaches are showing up early this year! I just picked some up. They’ll be a cobbler tonight.
Photo by Helen Anders.
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April 18, 2012
Tired of eating, cooking loquats? Donate them!
After last week’s post about loquats ran in the paper this morning, I got a flood of emails and phone calls from readers who have more loquats than they could ever use. (Still looking for ideas? Check out Lisa is Cooking’s post on making loquat cocktails and The Alcholian’s loquat margarita.)
One reader emailed to say that her daughter, in an effort to earn Girl Scout service hours, is collecting loquats in their neighborhood to donate to the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, which accepts the fruit as part of its Grow & Give Gardener program.
The food bank, 8201 S. Congress Ave., accepts foraged produce — and any other homegrown garden goods, for that matter — from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays.
More than 30 of CAFB’s partner agencies also accept homegrown produce, which they then give out to Central Texans in need.
Happy foraging!
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Salt & Time to open butcher shop and salumeria
Salt and Time “Ben Runkle” from REVELATOR on Vimeo.
Salt & Time is getting a storefront.
The charcuterie company that started selling fresh sausages and dry cured meats at area farmers’ markets in 2009 announced this week that it would finally open a brick-and-mortar store at 1912 E. Seventh St. later this year.
Salt & Time Butcher Shop and Salumeria will allow owners Ben Runkle and Bryan Butler to expand their offerings to include sandwiches, soups and salads, as well as fresh cuts of meat from local and sustainable farms.
Runkle, who was profiled in this recent video from Austin film studio Revelator, says they hope to open the shop sometime this summer.
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April 13, 2012
Round Rock Farmers Market moves to Sundays
The farmers market in Round Rock that used to take place at Dell Diamond has a new home, a new website and a new day of the week.
Starting this weekend, the Round Rock Farmers Market is now from 12:30 to 4 p.m. on Sundays at St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, 1420 E. Palm Valley Blvd.
Market manager Carla Jenkins has also merged the websites for both her Cedar Park Farmers Market, which was formerly called the Cedar Park Farms to Market, and this market. You can find information about vendors and special events for both markets at TexasFarmersMarket.org.
The Saturday farmers’ market in Round Rock, which is run by the Georgetown Farmers Market Association, takes place from 9 a.m. to noon in the Scott & White Hospital parking lot at the corner of Oakmont and University. That market recently became a year-round farmers’ market.
If you’re looking for more places to buy locally grown food, check out our recently updated list of area markets, farm stands and community-supported agriculture programs at austin360.com/go/farmersmarkets.
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Making the most of this bumper crop of loquats
If there’s anything more prolific than wildflowers right now, it’s loquats, those yellowish orange fruits that, despite the name, are unrelated to kumquats but equally as edible.
Haven’t heard of them? You’re not alone.
Unlike pear, peach or pecan trees that also grow well here, loquat trees are considered ornamental because they don’t regularly bear fruit and the fruit can be small and finicky to peel and pit. (Because they bloom in late winter, they are particularly vulnerable to late freezes.) Some homeowners consider them a nuisance because they attract so many squirrels and birds, and the fruit that the animals don’t eat rots off the trees and can cause a bit of a mess.
This year’s bumper crop is likely due to two things: last summer’s terrible dry, hot spell and the warm, wet winter. Daphne Richards, the Travis County horticulture extension agent at the Texas AgriLife Extension Service office, says that after a long period of distress, trees will often produce more fruit than necessary in an attempt to ensure a next generation.
Lucky for us, that means more loquats than usual this year. The trees produce more fruit than any one family could eat, but it breaks my little forager heart to see the fruit go unpicked or, worse, unnoticed.
I first fell in love with loquats in Spain, where they are called nisperos and people buy them by the kilo at outdoor markets and in grocery stores. Loquats are beloved from Brazil to Japan, and it’s easy to see why once you’ve tasted a really ripe one: They taste like a cross between a peach and an apricot with a pear-like texture.
I prefer to peel the skin off, but my neighbor Tim is just as happy to bite into the whole thing and spit out the skin and the seeds. The loquats that grow around here can have pretty large seeds compared to the cultivated varieties elsewhere, but they are easy to pop out.
We aren’t lucky enough to have our own loquat tree, but I’ve literally been knocking on people’s doors to ask if I can pick theirs. It’s illegal to go onto someone’s property and pick their loquats, but door-to-door foraging isn’t your only option. I bet at least a few of your Facebook or Twitter friends have loquat trees, so consider asking around on social media, and if you find a loquat tree in a public park, you can pick them, as long as you don’t damage the tree. Currently, the city rules don’t explicitly allow you to pick fruit from a tree if it is hanging over a street or a sidewalk, but you can if it’s hanging into your yard.
I’ve gone through more than 15 pounds of loquats this week, making everything from jelly to pico de gallo. Kate Payne, who wrote “Hip Girl’s Guide to Homemaking” and teaches canning classes, says the fruits, especially the underripe ones, have quite a bit of pectin, so you often don’t need to add commercial pectin to help the jam, preserves or jelly set.
Loquats are one of the more tedious fruits to peel and pit, so in an effort not to have to peel each one, Payne pitted them, left the skins on and pushed the fruit through a food mill to make loquat butter. I used this recipe, which doesn’t require pitting or peeling, to turn 5 pounds of fruit into four half-pints of jelly (above).
Robert Mayberry, executive chef at the University of Texas’ Division of Housing and Food Service who is hosting a local harvest feast in the dining halls next week, combined diced loquats with onions, ginger, allspice, sugar, vinegar and guajillo chiles to make a loquat chutney, which he served with wild goose breast. Pastry chef Janina O’Leary at Trace at the W is serving a salted caramel loquat ice cream next week, and Jesse Griffiths is selling chicken liver mousse topped with loquat jam through his online butcher shop, Dai Due.
It’s pretty easy to turn a few handfuls of the fruit into a simple syrup that you can use to sweeten lemonade, tea or even Topo Chico. Slice off the end of the fruit that has the dried blossom still attached, pop out the pits and cover the fruit, skin on, with water. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for about 15 to 20 minutes. Use a potato masher to squeeze out the juice from the flesh, then use a colander to separate the skins and flesh from the liquid. Measure how much liquid you have and add an equal amount of sugar. Bring to a boil and then let cool.
You can also use loquats to make a shrub (scroll down to find the recipe), a concentrated mixture of fruit juice, vinegar and sugar that is often used in cocktails and was a popular way to preserve fruits before refrigeration. (Here’s a whole story from a few summers ago about simple syrups and shrubs.) Blueberries and raspberries are the most common fruits used in shrubs, but loquats work just as well and cost a whole lot less.
Even though I’m hoping to make a carrot cake this weekend and substitute some of the carrots with loquat preserves, loquats aren’t just for drinks or desserts. You could use the juice, fruit or syrup in a marinade for chicken or pork, and the loquat pico de gallo recipe that follows was a hit at the office.
Now is the perfect time to experiment with this underappreciated fruit. Who knows when we’ll have as good a crop again and they don’t cost you a dime. Sure, you might have to drum up the courage to ask a neighbor you’ve never met if you can pick a pound or two from his or her tree, but maybe you’ll make an acquaintance while you’re at it.
Loquat Pico De Gallo
1 cup chopped loquats, seeded and peeled
1/2 cup diced tomato
1/3 cup diced red or white onion
1/2-inch piece jalapenño, minced
1/3 cup chopped cilantro
Juice of 1 lemon
1/4 tsp. salt
Combine ingredients in a medium bowl, mixing thoroughly. Let rest for about 10 minutes before serving to help the flavors meld. Serve with tortilla chips. Serves 4.
Loquat Shrub
3 cups chopped loquats, seeded
1 1/2 cups vinegar (apple cider or white wine vinegars work well)
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
Sparkling water, tonic water, white wine, etc. for mixing
In a nonreactive bowl, combine loquats and vinegar. Cover and place in the refrigerator for three days. Once a day, mash and stir the mixture, cover and place back in the fridge. On the third day, strain the fruit from the remaining liquid, discarding the skin and mashed fruit. Combine liquid and sugar in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil and then turn off the heat and let cool. Combine about 1/4 cup of the concentrate with your choice of mixer and serve over ice. Store any extra shrub in the refrigerator for up to a month.
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April 11, 2012
After long battle over water, Tecolote Farm is finally moving on
Even though Tecolote Farm started Texas’ first community-supported agriculture program back in 1994, the farm in recent years had become more well-known for its water troubles.
In a story in today’s food section, we catch up with Tecolote co-owner Katie Kraemer Pitre, who became the very public face of the farm when their well started to dry up about six years ago. They had a long, drawn-out battle with the county, which finally ended in a settlement last year.
In late 2010, in an effort to start farming on land with a more reliable source of water, the Pitres bought property in Bastrop County on the Colorado River, and it is because of that land that they have finally opened up subscriptions to their CSA, which had had a years-long wait list for more than a decade.
Tecolote, of course, isn’t the only CSA in the Austin area, and we’ve added a list of farms that offer CSA subscriptions to our farmers’ market listing page at austin360.com/go/farmersmarkets.
Photo by Ricardo Brazziell for the Austin American-Statesman.
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April 3, 2012
Celebrating strawberry season with shortcake, pinot noir jam
Let’s be honest, jam-making is tedious.
Well, the making of the jam isn’t so time consuming as putting it up in jars. So much boiling water and specific tools, never enough of the right size jars and right size lids at the right time.
I admire the monthly or even weekly canners, but I just can’t get around to it that often. However, there’s nothing more motivating than a flat of fruit on your dining room table that is so fresh, it’s attracting every fruit flies within a quarter mile radius of your house.
It’s prime strawberry time right now. Maybe you’re thinking about going to the annual Poteet Strawberry Festival in Poteet, just south of San Antonio, April 13 through 15, or perhaps you and the family have plans to go to a pick-your-own farm this long Easter weekend.
(Sweet Berry Farm near Marble Farms is one of the biggest pick-your-own strawberry farms in the area, and according to one of the owners, this is the peak of the season and they should have berries for at least a few more weeks.)
Strawberries are at almost all the farmers’ markets, and John Lash with Farm To Table has been delivering plenty to area chefs. Practically every grocery store sets up strawberry shortcake displays right in front of the sliding doors, but before you reach for a bag of artificially preserved strawberries and sponge-like shortcake cake (unless that’s your kind of thing), consider that you could slice up strawberries, mix them with sugar and make a quick drop biscuit for similar, more time-consuming but better-tasting results.
Just clean and slice about a pound of strawberries, toss with about a quarter cup of sugar — you can always add more — and let sit in the fridge for about half an hour. (Whether or not you mash them with a potato masher is entirely up to you.) I’ve always been a fan of my grandma’s Bisquick drop biscuits that she baked in a toaster oven, and Simply Recipes has a number of biscuit recipes, including the one my grandma uses to this day.
If you want to go slightly more upscale, try one of the strawberry jam recipes from Paul Virant’s new book, “The Preservation Kitchen.” The chef behind Vie in Chicago offers a recipe for pound cake with dehydrated strawberry jam and sweetened creme fraiche that tempted me to pull out my dehydrator to try it myself.
In addition to the jam that called for partially drying the berries, Virant has another recipe for strawberry and pinot noir jam that sounded too good to pass up.
One 8-lb. flat of strawberries, two kinds of jams.
I was skeptical of dehydrating strawberries until I tried one of them after having tossed them in sugar. The familiar taste and texture was a revelation: This is where gummies come from. The final product was a little more like chunky strawberry preserves (great for pound cake, as Virant suggested), but not sweet enough for my taste. If I were doing it again, I’d keep the half-dehydrated strawberries on hand and just mix them with a little sugar for a quick sweet treat.
(You could always add more than the 2/3 cup of sugar that he calls for, but if you’re actually canning the jam, it’s unwise to change recipes because you change the pH balance, which can create an environment for bacteria to grow, even if the lid had sealed properly.)
The strawberry and pinot noir jam, on the other hand, turned out silky and complex, earning every “oooo” coming out of each person who has tried it. In addition to eating it on toast, which wasn’t actually as good as I’d hoped, so far, I’ve added a dollop of the jam to vanilla ice cream, ginger ale and even Prosecco, which was divine.
Strawberry and Pinot Noir Jam
4 lb. strawberries, about 14 cups
1 lb. sugar, about 2 1/4 cups plus 1 Tbsp.
1 bottle pinot noir (or similar light-bodied wine)
1 lemon, juiced
Hull the strawberries. Quarter or halve the large ones, but leave the small ones whole. In a large, heavy-bottomed pot over high heat, bring the strawberries, sugar, wine and lemon juice to a boil. Give the mixture a good stir and cook to dissolve the sugar and release some of the strawberry juices, about 10 minutes. Cool, transfer to a storage container, and refrigerate overnight or up to 5 days.
Strain the liquid into a large pot, reserving the strawberries. Cook the liquid over medium-high heat until the mixture has reduced by half and reaches 215 degrees, about 25 minutes. Return the strawberries to the liquid and continue to cook, skimming foam off the surface with a ladle, until the mixture reaches 212 degrees, about 15 minutes.
Scald six half-pint jars in a large pot of simmering water fitted with a rack — you will use this pot to process the jars. Right before filling, put the jars on the counter. Meanwhile, soak the lids in a pan of hot water to soften the rubber seal.
Transfer the strawberry jam to a heat-proof pitcher and pour into the jars, leaving a 1/2-inch space from the rim of the jar. Wipe the rims with a clean towel, seal with the lids, then screw on the bands until snug but not tight.
Place the jars in the pot with the rack and add enough water to cover the jars by about 1 inch. Bring the water to a boil and process the jars for 10 minutes (start the timer when the water reaches a boil). Turn off the heat and leave the jars in the water for a few minutes. Remove the jars from the water and let cool completely.
— From “The Preservation Kitchen” by Paul Virant (Ten Speed Press, $29.99)
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Funky Chicken Coop Tour returns Saturday, plus an update on my funky chickens
It’s no coincidence that this year’s Funky Chicken Coop Tour falls on Passover and Easter weekend, when eggs are on many of our minds.
The self-guided tour, which started in 2009, lets you get a glimpse of some of the most interesting coops in Central Texas and ask questions of experienced poultry keepers. The tour starts Saturday at 10 a.m. and ends at 4 p.m., and you can buy maps for $10 at the Buck Moore Feed & Supply, 5237 N. Lamar Blvd., which is also the information center on the day of the tour. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Green Corn Project.
When I was chatting last weekend with organizer Michelle Hernandez about how to keep both your backyard chickens and neighbors happy, she asked if I’d ever consider being on the tour.
I tried not to laugh. My coop and chicken set-up, which I started early last year, might qualify as funky, but it’s certainly not ideal.
The fence, made with chicken wire and 4-foot steel posts from Home Deport, only keeps chickens in and out about 50 percent of the time, which means we sometimes get an extra egg from this pretty little girl that belongs to my neighbor, Teri.
The goal was to try to fence the girls in so we could finally start gardening again, but they figured out how to get into the fence that surrounded the garden, too. Between all their dust bathing and dirt scratching and last year’s drought, we’re down to just a few onion sets, a cilantro plant, a Mexican mint marigold and this sage, which still has some bright purple blooms on it.
Long gone are the bountiful backyard garden days, but we just surpassed 400 eggs, which makes me feel a little better about dropping my garden trowel.
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March 28, 2012
Amity Bakery, Soup Peddler expand online offerings, delivery
For years, Barrie Cullinan has been baking some of the best bread in Austin and selling it to restaurants and other businesses that couldn’t bake bread in-house. Now Cullinan is shifting her efforts to sell directly to consumers through her online store, Amity Bakery. “Wholesaling has been great, but it’s not fulfilling for me to drop off bread and drive away,” she says.
On the website, customers can order everything from everyday baguettes and whole wheat bread to breakfast items such as chocolate croissants to seasonal desserts, which right now include strawberry scones, strawberry almond ring cake and brownies. Place orders by 5 p.m. Fridays for delivery or pick up at the Spirited Food commercial kitchen, 1208 W. Fourth St., the following week.
Another pioneer in the online delivery business is David Ansel, whose Soup Peddler delivery service turned 10 recently. Soup and dinner entrees might still be his mainstay, but Ansel has recently teamed up with a number of fellow small food businesses to offer a wider range of products.
You can now order for delivery items such as Cullinan’s baked goods, Rockstar Bagels, Zhi Tea, Round Rock Honey, Texas Olive Ranch olive oil, fresh pasta from Pasta & Co., Cuvee coffee and juices from his Juiceland-Soup Peddler hybrid eatery, the Juicebox. Order online by 11:59 p.m. on Saturdays for delivery the following week.
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March 20, 2012
New Tuesday market brings farmers, local food companies, incentive program to East Austin
On Tuesday morning, Sustainable Food Center, the nonprofit that operates three of Austin’s biggest farmers’ market, opened a fourth year-round market in East Austin that features a new program that doubles the purchasing power of customers using WIC and SNAP benefits.
A large storm that dropped almost four inches of rain on the area early this morning cleared out just in time for vendors to set up for the very first SFC Farmers’ Market East, which is open from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays in the parking lot at the YMCA at 5315 Ed Bluestein Blvd.
More than a dozen vendors, including Ottmer’s Family Farm, Munkebo Farm, Texas Produce Farm, Finca Pura Vida, Cake & Spoon, Happy Vegan, Gardener’s Feast, Round Rock Honey, Dos Lunas Cheese, WunderPilz Kombucha and TacoDeli, were selling everything from breakfast tacos to duck eggs to the biggest heads Napa cabbage one local gardener had ever seen.
St. David’s Foundation is funding the Double Dollar Incentive Program incentive program that allows customers using WIC and/or SNAP benefits to double the amount that they can spend on fruits and vegetables at the market, up to an additional $10 per week. Roberto Rodriguez, senior program official at St. David’s Foundation, says part of the initial grant of $45,000 went to a feasibility study to determine the best location for the market but that about $30,000 remains for matching some of the dollars spent there.
“Healthy choices are not easy choices,” Rodriguez said. They often cost more and are harder to access than inexpensive fast or junk food that is readily available but lacking in nutritional value.
Both the location of the market and the incentive program, which is the first of its kind in the state, will make buying fresh, whole produce more appealing choice, Rodriguez said. “Our goal is to make healthy choices the default choice.”
The incentive program is only available at the SFC Farmers’ Market East, but customers can use WIC and SNAP benefits at the other markets. (The only exception is that WIC isn’t accepted at the Triangle market on Wednesdays.)
Kinny Ochoa grew up in Elgin, surrounded by farms, but Tuesday marked his first trip to a farmers’ market. “You take (farms) for granted because they’re always there,” said Ochoa, who runs many of the youth and family programs at the Y where the market is located.
When Ochoa moved to Austin after going to college in West Texas, he got “city eyes,” that captivated look or state of urban living where you’re just doing your best to soak it all in. Many of the kids he works with at the Y have lived in cities their whole life and don’t have any sense of where food comes from, other than what comes wrapped in plastic or cardboard from the grocery or corner store. “Here they can come and see the different produce and build relationships with the farmers.”
Just before ringing the opening bell so that shopping could officially begin, U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett (D-Austin) applauded the Sustainable Food Center and its partners for creating a market in his neck of the woods. (When not in Washington D.C., Doggett and his wife live in East Austin.)
“There are so many good things going on at the Y, and this is just one of them,” he said. The market and the double incentive program are also a boon to local farmers, ranchers and small food companies, who now have yet another outlet to sell their products directly to customers. “It’s an opportunity for small businesses and for better health,” he said.
Then, just as he did nine years ago when SFC opened is flagship market downtown, he led a group of notables and one of the market’s first shoppers in ringing cowbells and jingle bells, which sounded almost like a coins in a cash register.
The SFC Farmers’ Market East is in the parking lot of the YMCA at 5315 Ed Bluestein Blvd., where U.S. 183 and 51st Street intersect. It is open Tuesdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. year round, and for more information, go to the SFC website.
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March 9, 2012
SXSW Eats: HOPE Farmers Market moves east for Sunday SXSW markets
For the next two Sundays (March 11 and 18), the HOPE Farmers Market will move several blocks east to the Hops & Grain brewery, 507 Calles St., which is at the east end of East Sixth Street.
The Hops & Grain tasting rooms opens at noon, and they’ll be offering free samples of their brews for farmers’ market shoppers. In addition to all the farmers, local food artisans and hot food vendors, the market will have some bands playing live music. The market is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.
In other HOPE news this month, the market is hosting pop-up markets every Wednesday from 3 to 7 p.m. at Cherrywood Coffeehouse, 1400 E. 38 1/2 St.
Market manager Greg Esparza says that with all these changes, they are in need of a few more volunteers this month. If you are interested, you can contact them through the website or the Facebook page.
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March 7, 2012
SFC's new year-round farmers' market starts March 20
The Sustainable Food Center already operates three farmers’ markets in the Austin area: Two on Saturdays (Republic Square Park and Toney Burger Center) and a third on Wednesday afternoons at the Triangle.
But to provide Austinites with even more access to locally grown food, the nonprofit is launching a new, year-round farmers’ market that will take place from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Tuesdays at the YMCA at 5315 Ed Bluestein, at the intersection of 51st and U.S. 183.
The market will be known as SFC Farmers’ Market East, and the grand opening is set for March 20. Susan Leibrock, community relations director for SFC, says that this will be the only market that they’ll be offering a Double Dollar Incentive Program. For every $10 spent on fruits and vegetables with a SNAP/Lone Star Card or WIC Lone Star Card, customers will receive another $10 to spend on fruits and vegetables at the market.
In other SFC news, ahead of the time change on Sunday, the Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market at The Triangle (above) springs forward an hour today, starting at 4 p.m. and ending at 8 p.m.
Photo by An Chih Cheng for the Austin American-Statesman.
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December 29, 2011
Kocurek Family Charcuterie closing in January
Charcuterie - A Documentary from Christian Remde on Vimeo.
LeeAnn and Lawrence Kocurek have announced that they are closing their charcuterie operation, Kocurek Family Charcuterie, “in early January.”
The Kocureks started the company in 2009 after both Larry and LeeAnn had spent years learning about the craft of curing meats as they worked in the food and wine world. Their duck bacon, rilletes and meat pies quickly became the talk of the farmers’ markets, and before long, the Kocureks were selling cured meats at more than half a dozen markets in Austin and San Antonio. The couple hosted a number of supper clubs and cooking classes, where Larry Kocurek would teach students how to turn every part of an animal into something delicious.
The Kocureks have been part of a wave of local charcuterie makers that have caught the attention of the national media, including Andrew Knowlton of Bon Appetit magazine, who led a panel that included Lawrence Kocurek at this year’s Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. Two well-produced videos — the one by Christian Remde at the top of the post and another with famed New Orleans chef Donald Link — captured the spirit of what the Kocureks were trying to do.
“This has been a wonderful ride,” they posted on their website. “We want to take time to thank those who believed in our dream and helped to make it what it was.”
LeeAnn has taken a managerial job at Perla’s on South Congress, while Larry and the couple’s baby, Eugene, “will for six months be living with an indigenous tribe in the amazon learning to make sausage and charcuterie and basic the cookery of Capybara and Anaconda.” It’s nice to see they are having fun with this otherwise sad news.
Photo by Rebecca Fondren for the Austin American-Statesman.
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December 13, 2011
Farmers' market favorite Bola Pizza adds frozen pies
Up until now, the only way you could get a wood-fired pizza from Bola Pizza was to stop by the booth at the downtown farmers’ markets or hire co-owner Christian and Jamie Bowers to cater your event, but the Bowers have recently figured out a way to freeze their popular pies — the Godfather, Truffle Daisy and Polka Dot — so you can reheat and enjoy them at home whenever you want.
Right now, you can only order them online for pickup at the downtown farmers’ market on Saturdays or for delivery through Farmhouse Delivery or Greenling Organic Delivery.
Christian Bowers said that the pizzas, which cost about $11 each, will probably be available in neighborhood markets soon.
Photo by Jody Horton.
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Stock up on locally raised meats through CSAs, bulk buys
No matter if you call it a community-supported meat program, a bulk meat buy or a buyers club, a number of local ranchers and meat producers are offering ways for customers to buy large quantities of meat at a discounted price.
Green Gate Farms is starting a six-month meat CSA that will include both small ($50) and medium ($100) shares of a mix of organic chicken, pastured beef, heritage and rare-breed pork, Nubian goat and Barbado lamb. The first shares will be available for pickup at the Canoga Avenue farm stand starting this week, but space is limited. More information online and by calling 484-2746.
(In other Green Gate news, Ten Thousand Villages, 1317 S. Congress Ave., is donating a percentage of sales that come in from 5 to 9 p.m. Friday to Skip Connett and Erin Flynn’s new non-profit, the New Farm Institute.)
Sebastian Bonneu of Countryside Family Farm is taking bulk meat orders starting today at the farmers’ market at the Triangle from 3 to 7 p.m. and on Saturday at the Cedar Park Farms to Market and Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market Downtown. Customers can order a $250 mix of chicken, duck, beef, wild hog, lamb and eggs, or buy in with at least $100 and pick the meats a la carte. For more information, go to Countryside’s Facebook page, email countrysidefamilyfarm@gmail.com or call 629-2883.
Bastrop Cattle Company is starting a buyers club in January that would guarantee monthly deliveries of various cuts of grassfed beef, but owner Pati Jacobs wants people who are interested to email her at info@bastropcattlecompany.com to indicate their interest before the end of the year.
If your favorite meat producer is offering a bulk meat buy, let me know and I’ll add it to this post.
Photo from Green Gate Farms.
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December 8, 2011
Longtime Texas winemaker Mark Penna dies
Mark Penna, a Driftwood winemaker who died Wednesday after a three-year bout with brain cancer, knew more about making wine than just about anyone in the state, but you wouldn’t know it.
“He wasn’t busy telling you how much he knew, he was quietly showing you,” said Duchman Family Winery winemaker Dave Reilly, who had apprenticed under Penna since 2006 and took over when Penna became ill in 2008.
Penna’s brother, Stan, said he used to lead canoeing and kayaking trips all over the country before he started settling into the wine business, and that it was Mark who did the genealogy work to discover that their family had been in Texas for eight generations.
“All along, he knew he wanted to get into the grape growing business,” Stan Penna said, but the unpredictable weather and hardships of farming frustrated him. He felt like you had more control when making wine, Penna said.
After growing up in Texas City, Penna studied plants and agriculture in college and after finally graduating from Texas A&M in 1990 — “He liked to say he was on the 19-year-plan,” his brother said — he moved to West Texas to work at a number of wineries in the High Plains before moving to Central Texas to help design the vineyards and winery at Trattoria Lisina.
Friends and colleagues remember him as a quiet man who was a student of the craft. “The guy was brilliant. He had a real dry sense of humor, but when it came to winemaking, he was very serious,” said Damian Mandola, the longtime restaurateur who started Trattoria Lisina and winery that is now Duchman Family Winery.
Mandola said few winemakers in the state could compare to Penna, who had worked at wineries including Llano Estacado, Rising Star, Cap Rock and Ste. Genevieve. “There are probably people who have been doing it longer than Mark, but Mark took it to another level. His wines could rival any from Italy or California,” Mandola said.
Up until late last year, Reilly said Penna would still come by the winery to check in on him and help however he could. “I can’t talk to anyone about winemaking without mentioning his name.”
Penna is survived by his wife, Pam Spooner; brother Stan Penna of Austin; sister Lee Smith of Alpine; and two nephews, Nathan and Dustin Penna. No service is planned.
2007 photo by Patric Schneider for the Austin American-Statesman.
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December 7, 2011
Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry on the mistake of agriculture and country life versus city life
At two sold-out shows at Stateside at the Paramount on Sunday, Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, two of the most respected men in the sustainable food movement, talked as much about the philosophies of human existence as the perils of modern agriculture.
Sure, they talked about the specifics of soil erosion, ethanol subsidies, carbon extraction and the over-grazing of pastured animals, but at the heart of their discussion with Edible Austin publisher Marla Camp at this Eat Drink Local Week event was a bigger, harder-to-answer issue: How do we survive as a species when we’ve spent 10,000 creating a civilization around taking more from the earth than we put back in?
“Agriculture is one big mistake,” said Jackson, who in 1976 started a nonprofit organization and farm called the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. Because we rely on annual crops — all crops, not just the genetically modified ones — we are putting everything at risk. “The rise and fall of civilization is determined on the condition of the soil,” he said. “We never had to think below the surface because we kept finding new land to exploit.”
Wheat, for instance, is an annual crop whose yearly harvest and planting requires farmers to disturb the ground, killing the ecosystems already living there. With grains representing 70 percent of our calories and 70 percent of tilled agriculture acreage, this leads to millions of acres of soil that erode easily in the wind and rain and contain vital ecosystems that have to start rebuilding themselves every year.
“We came here as poor people on rich land, but now we are rich people on poor land,” Jackson said. As we made “progress,” we didn’t realize what we were undoing in the process. Our society is built upon the withdrawal on the “capital stock of the earth,” he said.
What’s the alternative to agriculture? With 7 billion people and counting, I can’t imagine a world without agriculture, but Jackson is putting his energy into developing perennials that can provide us food and be productive year after year without replanting. (At his Kansas research farm, Jackson is developing perennial grains that have already been made into beer and whiskey, a true measure of the grain’s viability in modern culture.)
Jackson, the researcher, covered much of the science, while Berry, the much-lauded writer and poet, focused on the emotional connection between humans and the land they inhabit. “If you don’t have any land, then you know that it’s worth everything. If you don’t have any food, then you know that food is worth everything,” Berry said. The need for land and the affection for land are the only things that can motivate us to save it.
This isn’t a problem we can buy our way out of, Jackson said. “I worry that the material expression of those values is not making a difference in terms of public policy across the broader landscape.” What do we do with the savings of the squiggly light bulbs or a Prius? Spend it on other things, most of which require the carbon we’re striving to save when we splurged on environmentally conscious choice.
They did acknowledge that the masses of farmers’ market shoppers, Prius drivers, urban farmers and backyard chicken raisers are effecting change. “The leadership is now at the bottom,” Berry said, citing all the times he’s seen people take an idea and run with it without waiting on permission from some higher authority. He also advocated doing what you can to make changes at the city level, which is something Austin — with a generally local food-friendly City Council and a Sustainable Food Policy Board — knows quite a bit about.
It was odd to watch these two men on stage — in front of a very supportive, but undoubtedly urban crowd — talk about the problem of cities. “One of the characteristics of our society now is our ignorance of our own country. Nobody is watching what is going on in the countryside,” Berry said. “Almost nobody, even the people farming, are living in the country. Their pleasures are all urban, except during deer season.”
When an audience member asked how we city folk are to resolve this increasing distance between rural and urban America, Berry explicitly said he doesn’t encourage people to move out of the city and go start a farm. (For both the sake of the person and the farm, he joked.)
Which leads me to these girls.
My family and I are coming up on a year of raising backyard chickens.
It’s not exactly a farm and it certainly isn’t in the country, but I’d like to think that I’m bringing some of those values into my city life by having a little vegetable garden and three birds who have been laying between one and three eggs almost every day since March.
(Quick chicken update: We’re up to about 320 eggs which is about $130 worth. We’ve spent between $200 and $230, including the scrappy chicken wire fence I just built so they’d stop tearing up the yard, so we still have a while until we break even.)
Even though I grew up in rural Missouri in a town not far — both physically and culturally — from Jackson’s home in Kansas, I’d never raised anything close to livestock until living in Austin. Although we didn’t live on a farm, we were surrounded by farms and farmers who made a living off the rolling countryside that seemed to go on forever. It is exactly the kind of place with a high eyes-to-acres ratio that Jackson and Berry idealize.
The longer that I’m away from this country life, the more I appreciate it, but even after hearing Jackson and Berry’s talk, I don’t think I could go back to the woods or the prairie for good. Why? It took me leaving and moving to the city to be around people who were having this kind of conversation in the first place.
Technology and the evolution of the access to information has made it so that you can tap into new ideas and good conversation from no matter where you are, but the quality of life in college towns is generally higher for a reason: People on a quest for knowledge tend to flock and stay there so they can keep learning from each other.
My parents are both college graduates who still live in the small town of my childhood (and my mom’s childhood), but they freely admit to having a hard time finding like-minded people there.
Jobs and my aging grandmother keep them rooted in Aurora, but the irony is not lost on them that to have these kinds of thoughtful discussions about, say, the factory farming of chickens that happens just outside town, they have to come here (or some other city between here and there).
Of course, I’m making generalizations here. There are plenty of intellectuals and thought-leaders like Jackson and Berry that live far away from urban areas, and likewise, millions of I-could-care-less-about-any-of-this folks who don’t necessarily live in cities because of the exchange of cultures and ideas that takes place here.
“As rural life has declined, so has urban life,” Berry told the crowd on Sunday. “That leaves us with cities that look like ringworms extending outside a center that’s rotting inside like an old sycamore tree.”
With our urban gardens (and chicken coops, rabbit hutches, backyard beehives), we’re trying to keep the inside of the city at least a shade of the green that our friends outside the city limits enjoy, all the while enjoying the diverse joys that come with living in a city. (I’m looking at you, art museums and Vietnamese noodle shops.)
We’re so conditioned to think about growth, specifically economic growth, as a good thing, but “progress” isn’t necessarily a good thing if we lose our sense of place as we seek it. So what if we have every piece of information published on the Internet at our fingertips? “I think there’s a limit to human intelligence, and I think it’s a lot more limited than we are taught to think,” Berry said. “But this issue of ignorance and intelligence and the capacity of the human mind brings up the issue of scale. What is the scale at which a humanity can operate without catastrophic results?”
The fear of this kind of societal fall is what drives some people to start producing their own food in the first place, but not me. If the catastrophic happens, I’d be lucky to produce enough food for us to live on for a few days, but until then, I like having a reminder — even if it’s in the form of chicken poop stuck on my shoe — of life outside my little concrete bubble.
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November 29, 2011
Edible Austin's fifth Eat Drink Local Week starts Saturday
The magazine, which publisher Marla Camp launched in 2007, has become a fundraising machine, bringing in money for local nonprofits and helping promote cookbook authors and chefs with events throughout the year.
In June, the magazine’s Edible Texas Wine Food Match raised $10,000 for the Texas Center for Wine and Culinary Arts, a food and wine educational center that will be built in Fredericksburg, and in May, Edible Communities, the network of more than 60 Edible magazines that includes Edible Austin, won a James Beard Award for Publication of the Year.
But Eat Drink Local Week, which starts Saturday, is Edible Austin’s biggest effort: a collection of events that showcase the vibrant food community and raise money for Urban Roots, the local nonprofit program that uses agriculture to teach and empower teens. (Urban Roots started out under the umbrella of YouthLaunch but recently became an independent nonprofit. This year, in addition to Urban Roots, Edible Austin will give a portion of the proceeds to the Sustainable Food Center.)
Last year, they raised more than $40,000 for Urban Roots, and this year, Camp says she hopes to double that.
View Edible Austin Eat Drink Local Week 2011 in a larger map
Throughout the week, more than 40 restaurants will offer special dishes made from all local ingredients, but the big news is that eight Central Texas’ chefs — David Bull, Bryce Gilmore, Sibby Barrett, Jesse Griffiths, Terry Thompson-Anderson, Zack Northcutt, Will Packwood and the staff of Cocina Alegre, a cooking and nutrition branch of the Sustainable Food Center — are participating in an online auction, the winners of which get a personalized dinner for eight.
As always, the Eat Local Week events kick off with the Urban Farm Bicycle Tour on Saturday ($30, free for children younger than 16), a self-guided tour that takes cyclists from Bicycle Sport Shop, the SFC Farmers’ Market Downtown or the Triangle to 20 urban farms and community and school gardens. After the tour, Springdale Farm is hosting a pig roast and harvest dinner ($30) at 4 p.m. Saturday.
On Sunday morning at 11, learn about local chocolatiers and coffee roasters at the Coffee and Chocolate Festival ($25), which will take place at Texas Coffee Traders, 1400 E. Fourth St.
Wendell Berry and Wes Jackson, who have been sustainable agriculture advocates and pioneers since long before most omnivores knew they had a dilemma, are giving two sold-out talks on Sunday at Stateside at the Paramount.
The Alamo Drafthouse is serving a multicourse BeneFeast dinner to go with “Moonstruck” ($70) at 7 p.m. Monday, and from 4 to 9 p.m. Dec. 7, you can sample food and beverages from local chefs and stock up on gifts from local vendors and artisans at the Better Bites of Austin Holiday Fair at the Domain (free admission).
At 6:30 p.m. Dec. 8, cocktail and spirits enthusiasts will convene at the grand ballroom at the AT&T Executive Education & Conference Center for the annual Drink Local Night ($35), which for the first time will incorporate the Official Drink of Austin contest, a former Austin Convention and Visitor’s Bureau event that had waned in recent years.
Eat Local Week comes to a close Saturday, Dec. 10, with the Local Brew Fest ($20), an event showcasing the best craft beer made in and around Austin, from 1 to 5 p.m. at Black Star Co-op, 7020 Easy Wind Drive.
Information, tickets and VIP passes ($150) are available on the website.
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November 9, 2011
Parking in state garage near downtown farmers' market no longer free
Since the Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market Downtown opened in 2003, it has been located near and, as of last year, in Republic Square Park at the intersection of Fourth and Guadalupe Streets.
And since it started, the Texas Facilities Commission has allowed market shoppers to park for free in State Parking N, a garage at Third and San Antonio Streets.
But not any more.
Late last month, the Sustainable Food Center got notice that starting Nov. 1, the garage would cost $3 from 7 to 11 a.m. and $5 for anyone entering the garage after 11 a.m., even for farmers’ market shoppers.
Part of why SFC chose that location as home for the market was the free parking offered to them as an organization of “mission,” says Suzanne Santos, who directs the three SFC markets. There are a number of state-run parking garages downtown that are free on Sunday mornings for churchgoers for the same reason, Santos says.
But Mike Lacy, deputy executive director of the commission, says that since the initial agreement, downtown Austin has evolved. “We have statutory obligation to generate revenue after hours,” he says. The City of Austin recently started charging people to park on the street after 11 a.m. on Saturdays at a cost of $1 per hour, but City Hall offers its garage free to the public until 5 p.m. on Saturday. “Change is what it is,” Lacy says.
When asked if the commission would consider charging on Sunday mornings, Lacy said, “We’ll probably look at all of that in time.” He says that the decision to change the policy on Saturday mornings at State Parking N was primarily market driven. There are just more people wanting to park downtown on Saturday mornings, he says.
He also noted that the market will continue to have access to 75 free spaces in the garage for vendors and volunteers.
Santos says that SFC is appealing the decision, citing a 2003 bill that says parking in state garages could be offered for free if nonprofits asked for it.
She pointed out that there are still more than 100 free parking spaces for farmers’ market shoppers in the surface parking lot across San Antonio Street from the garage. Only half of that lot is available for shoppers, though.
“Our surveys show that over 70 percent of the people who come to the market wouldn’t come downtown if not for the market, and 40 percent say they go and shop elsewhere in the area,” Santos says. “If you keep people from coming downtown, you will lose money from sales tax.”
Photo by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
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November 8, 2011
New farmers' market on Sundays in Lakeway
Central Texas farmers aren’t letting the drought get the best of them, and neither are the people who manage the many farmers’ markets in the area. And now, customers have another market to choose from.
For the past month, Richie Romero has been running the Lakeway Commons Farmers Market from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays at the corner of RM 620 and Lakeway Boulevard in the Lakeway Commons Shopping Center.
“I moved out here from California, so I’m used to every town having a nice farmers market,” says Romero, a video-game artist who was also looking for a project that didn’t involve a computer. Romero had run a farmers market in nearby Steiner Ranch for more than a year but decided to move it to a more visible location.
The Lakeway Commons market has between 25 and 30 vendors right now, he says, including a number of farmers and food companies, including Bikkurim Farm, Comanche Oaks Farm, Round Rock Honey, Kala’s Cuisine and Dad’s Premium Granola, whose owners are pictured with Romero, above.
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October 25, 2011
Vegetarian chef dinner at Foreign and Domestic prompts look at state of meat-free meals in Austin
UPDATE: After I posted this item this week, I chatted with composer extraordinaire (and vegan) Graham Reynolds over on Facebook about the newly opened Wasota African Cuisine, a trailer on South First Street that is one of his favorites. He recommends the kele wele (plantains with garlic and ginger), egusi (spinach and pumpkin seed stew) and the black-eye pea veggie burger.
You don’t expect to eat an upscale vegetarian meal at a place whose mascot is a flying pig, but that’s exactly what I had a few weeks ago when Houston chef Justin Yu and friends, including Anvil’s Bobby Heugel, for a meat- (and liquor-) free dinner at Foreign and Domestic.
The ability of Heugel and his staff to create a series of very cocktail-like cocktails using only wine and beer is amazing, but this post is about what chefs and regular restaurant cooks are making without meat, which is traditionally the centerpiece of the American meal, especially when eating out.
In a recent story for Austin360, freelancer (and longtime vegetarian) Jane Sumner told us about her 10 favorite places in Austin for vegetarian meals. Some places, like Casa De Luz, Bouldin Creek Cafe, and Madras Pavillon, are considered the gold standard of vegetarian restaurants in Austin, while others, including Eastside Cafe and Bartlett’s, serve meat but don’t treat vegetarian dishes as an afterthought. (If you’re looking for other recommendations, check out VegAustin, which is probably the best resource for vegans and vegetarians in Austin.)
At a book festival party this weekend, I spoke with a longtime Statesman reader who didn’t necessarily agree with Jane’s piece, arguing that vegetarians and vegans here have embarrassingly few choices for a food town like Austin.
Yu’s dinner was out-of-the-ordinary, for sure. The most memorable dishes were the pickled daikon topped with tapioca and sea veggies and the a soft scrambled egg served in its shell on a bed of hay, which are a far cry from generic, if well-prepared and seasonal vegetables that you’d find at most restaurants. (You can read more about why Yu came to Austin to host the dinner on his excellent blog. To sign up for a newsletter to find out when he’ll be back in Austin, email him at eatdrinkjustins AT gmail.com)
Most chefs offer seasonal vegetarian specials, but few experiment with meat-free dishes at the level of places like Ubuntu in Napa Valley, which calls itself a vegetable restaurant, not a vegetarian restaurant.
But maybe there are some hidden gems out there.
I’ve heard that David Bull and Rebecca Meeker offer a nice vegetarian option on their prix-fixe menu at Congress, and Foreign and Domestic is hosting mushroom-focused dinners tonight and tomorrow night.
Who is serving the most creative vegetable-focused and meat-free dinners in Austin? Are you surprised at the number of meat-free eateries in the area? If no one here is serving the kind of vegetarian food you’ve come to expect, who outside the city is setting the bar?
Bouldin Creek Cafe by Ashley Landis for the Austin American-Statesman.
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October 21, 2011
Good Seed Burger sprouts from former trailer operation
With so many food trailers in Austin, it’s inevitable that some of them will close, but with luck, shuttering one operation can lead to opening another.
Oliver Ponce opened Good Seed Organics food trailer on Oltorf Street in South Austin in 2009 but closed it after about a year. After consulting with burger bar Hopdoddy, the former Casa De Luz manager who studied macrobiotics at the Natural Epicurean decided to take the most popular item on the menu and open Good Seed Burgers, a line of vegan burgers and breakfast patties made with sprouted hemp, chia, millet, lentil and pumpkin seeds. “When one door closes, another door opens,” he says.
You can find the patties at the Barton Creek Farmers’ Market, as well as Thoms’ Market and Hyde Park Market and on the menus at Red’s Porch and Native Nom Nom. In a few weeks, customers will also be able to find the gluten- and nut-free burgers at Wheatsville Co-op and the Whip-In.
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October 19, 2011
Learn how to help your school garden thrive
School gardens don’t just teach kids how to grow food.
Teachers can use gardens to teach just about every subject in the book and plenty that you just can’t cover with a textbook.
Austinites are so passionate about the educational opportunities gardens provide that there is an Austin School Garden Network to help connect gardeners, teachers, parents, students and even elected officials so that everyone can get the most out of the gardens.
On Saturday, the ASGN is hosting the Get Growing & Keep Going: Cultivating Wellness conference, which will feature sessions everything from schoolyard chickens and the Junior Master Gardening program to how kids can use their botany skills in the supermarket.
They have a really cool lineup, especially for parents or teachers who want to help kickstart their schools’ gardening programs. Registration for the day costs $30 ahead of time or $35 at the door, if there are still openings. (There are also a number of volunteer opportunities. Contact Paula McDermott for more info.)
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September 28, 2011
Helping new farmers find their way
Melody McClary and David Burk of Montesino Farm.
Today’s story about beginning farmers was a long time coming.
Ever since I learned about “The Greenhorns,” a documentary and online project about young farmers in America, I’ve wanted to write about the many people in Central Texas who didn’t grow up on farms but chose to get into agriculture as adults.
For a long time, if you were a farmer it was because your parents were farmers or ranchers and someone had to carry on the family business. Now, people — often college graduates with degrees in subjects other than agriculture or horticulture — are among the millions of locavores who are upset about the way the modern agriculture system operates, and instead of simply changing their buying habits, they switch gears and become producers themselves. (Click here to see a photo gallery that goes with the story.)
Skip Connett and Erin Flynn of Green Gate Farms are relatively new farmers themselves, and they’ve seen how thirsty aspiring farmers are for knowledge and experience. They host monthly farm camps to give newbies an idea of what goes into operating a farm and set aside a piece of their land for an incubator farm for people just getting started. Because they are already doing all this mentoring, they have decided to create the New Farm Institute, a nonprofit whose mission “is to educate, assist and inspire a new generation of sustainable farmers, with a focus on the urban fringe — an area defined as within 30 miles of medium to large cities.”
Neysa King, who writes the lovely Dissertation to Dirt blog, and husband Travis Czerw were the first farmers to work the incubator farm, and now, a young man named Mike Mayberry has taken over for the fall, winter and spring.
(Connett and Flynn are hosting an endless summer bash at the farm on Saturday to help raise money for wildfire relief and the New Farm Institute. Click here for details.)
There are so many farmers who fit this profile that it would have been impossible to include them all in this article, but chances are, if you shop at farmers’ markets, you have bought food from people who are relatively new to this whole farming thing.
And they aren’t necessarily young. Margaret Christine Perkins is young at heart, but at 47, she had careers in teaching and theater before buying land near Inks Lake to start From Maggie’s Farm with her husband, Tom.
It’s an unimaginable risk to start up a farm in Central Texas right now. We are a year into one of the worst droughts in our history, land prices (especially within an hour’s drive of Austin, where the majority of customers are) are sky high, wells are drying up, and on top of it all, the economy is in the tank, so consumers are seriously pinching their pennies.
But these hopeful farmers, like John Chandler at Tierra Madre Farms, who sells cut flowers and eggs at the SFC Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley, are taking on the task because they feel it’s the right thing to do, and if they don’t do it, who will?
Photo by Alberto Martínez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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September 16, 2011
ACL 2011: HOPE Farmers Market at Zilker; SFC merges downtown, Sunset Valley markets
The Austin City Limits Music Festival boasts a food court full of locally-owned businesses (see Matthew Odam’s top picks here), but did you know there will also be a farmers’ market inside the festival grounds where vendors will be selling foods made with locally grown produce and meats?
For the second year, HOPE Farmers’ Market is setting up a smaller version of the regular market, which is open from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sundays at the corner of Waller and Fifth streets, inside Zilker Park for the duration of the three-day music festival.
You’ll find drinks from Wunder-Pilz Kombucha and Casa Brasil, sweet and savory pies from Pie Fixes Everything, meat and vegan tamales from the Gardener’s Feast and picnic boxes and salads from Pâté Letelier.
Salt and Time butchers Bryan Black and Ben Runkle are again selling their mortadella hot dogs (above), as well as goat sliders, freshly fried chicharrones and Hot Dang veggie burgers. Lamba’s Royal Indian Food will have chicken tikka wraps, spinach pakoras, vegan channa masala and chicken biryani.
In other farmers’ market/festival news, because the ACL Fest usually causes a dip in attendance at the Saturday farmers’ market in Republic Square Park, the Sustainable Food Center is merging the downtown market with the Sustainable Food Center Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley, located at Toney Burger Center (see map above), this week.
Many vendors who are normally at the downtown market but not at Sunset Valley will be set up at Sunset Valley for the market, which starts at 9 a.m. and ends at 1 p.m.
The two SFC Saturday markets will be back to their normal locations on Sept. 24.
Photo from Salt and Time.
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September 14, 2011
Learn about Dumpster diving, food rescue at Blanton free screening
Filmmaker Jeremy Seifert’s 2010 documentary “Dive!” looks at food waste and what people are doing about it, including Dumpster diving.
At 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Seifert will be in Austin for a free screening of the movie at the Blanton Museum of Art. Seifert will join Capital Area Food Bank president Hank Perret, Ronda Rutledge of the Sustainable Food Center and the Sustainable Food Policy Board, UT professor Elizabeth Engelhardt and GivingCity Austin founding editor Monica Williams for a discussion after the film.
Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis at the Blanton starting at 5 p.m. on Thursday.
Photo by Seth Ferris.
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July 29, 2011
Charcuterie film about local artisans explores tradition of preserving meat
Charcuterie - A Documentary from Christian Remde on Vimeo.
Larry and Lee Ann Kocurek, the lovely couple behind Kocurek Family Charcuterie, star in a short film by Austinite Christian Remde that came out this week about the tradition of preserving meat.
The film is part of Remde’s Twelve Films Project, a year-long project in which Remde makes a short film — fiction or nonfiction — every month. Many of the films he’s done so far this year have had to do with food, including this cute short featuring a couple chatting over breakfast on their 30th anniversary and this documentary about Odd Duck Farm to Trailer.
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July 21, 2011
Smoke-dried tomatoes at Boggy Creek Farm
Despite the heat and drought, this has been a bumper year for tomatoes at many local farms, including Boggy Creek.
This means there will be plenty of farmer Larry Butler’s smoke-dried tomatoes, which he started making almost 20 years ago when he needed to find a way to quickly save a large crop of Roma tomatoes he’d grown on the part of the farm in Milam County. Because it’s so humid in Texas, Butler couldn’t sun dry all the tomatoes, so he build a smoke house and started smoking the tomatoes.
The tomatoes have become so popular that in years past, Butler has had to put a limit on how many people could buy, either at the Wednesday or Saturday farmstand at 3414 Lyons Road in East Austin or via mail order online. But after two off years, this year’s successful crop means even more smoke dried tomatoes than usual.
The tomatoes, which are not salted before they are smoked, and are sold in 2 ounce bags for $8.95.
Photo from Boggy Creek Farm.
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July 7, 2011
That's a big garden: Johnson's Backyard Garden nearly triples in size
That’s some backyard garden.
For the past two years, Johnson’s Backyard Garden, already one of the largest organic farms in Central Texas, has been trying to purchase 146 acres of farmland near its farm in Cedar Creek east of Austin.
This week, “with the help of the seller,” they were finally able to make it happen.
The acreage, once a dairy farm and outlined in red above, now brings the total at the River Road farm to 186, which dwarfs the 20 acres they first expanded to in 2006 at a property off Hergotz Lane near the airport. (Brenton and Beth Johnston first started growing produce in their East Austin backyard in 2005.)
“This gives the farm enough land to do a sustainable plan in one location,” says Johnson’s office manager Carrie Kenny. The goal is to move all the farm operations out to the River Road property and lease out the Hergotz farm, which is currently under cover crops, to another farmer or perhaps a group interested in growing food.
“We purchased this 146 acres to increase our sustainability, not our scale,” Brenton Johnson wrote in a blog post announcing the purchase. “We now have the land we need to slowly build soil fertility through the growth of cover crops.” Only a small part of the 186 acres will be used for growing produce at any one time, Johnson says. Part of it will be in cover crops, while another part will be used to grow hay for mulch.
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July 6, 2011
How to use a spigot to turn a watermelon into a drink dispenser
My first summer in Austin, way back in 2005, I snagged an invite to a backyard barbecue at the house of Andrew Smiley, director of the farm direct program at the Sustainable Food Center.
Andrew was probably the first foodie I got to know in Austin, and though he probably served a dozen amazing dishes at this party — I think it was for July Fourth — the only one that has stuck with me through the years was a watermelon-mint-lime tequila cooler that he served from a watermelon with a spigot screwed in the side.
A spigot in a watermelon? Genius!
With help from Andrew and a nice guy at Home Depot last week, I recreated this nifty serving device for a story about watermelons that ran in today’s paper.
The process for making this watermelon drink server is almost exactly like preparing a pumpkin to carve at Halloween, but you have to have a wok ring or small, but tall baking pan to set the watermelon upright.
Cut off the top and scoop out the insides. Mash the pulp in a strainer over a large bowl or pot to extract the juice. Drill or cut out a hole slightly smaller than the brass or plastic spigot from the hardware store or a plastic faucet from a drink dispenser that you’d buy at a store.
Depending on the kind of spigot you use (I used a 1/2-inch brass one), you might need a nut and/or oversized washer to help keep the spigot from leaking. On my first attempt to fill the watermelon, the spigot leaked, but I was able to stop it by screwing a plastic piece from a sink repair kit that the Home Depot employee helped me pick out when I told him what I was up to. (Thanks for not laughing at my strange little project, nice Home Depot guy!)
Now comes the fun part — what to mix with your watermelon aqua fresca.
Three parts aqua fresca to one part tequila, plus a handful of mint and a few tablespoons of lime juice is Andrew’s surefire recipe, but you could serve it spiked with vodka, white wine or serve it straight with just a little white wine or balsamic vinegar and a pinch of salt.
(For more than 200 ideas for drinks to serve this summer, check out Andrew Schloss’ new book “Homemade Soda,” which includes this recipe for watermelon mint cordial.)
Watermelon Mint Cordial
Big chunk of watermelon, about 1 pound, rind removed, cut into chunks
1/4 cup agave syrup or simple syrup
1/4 cup finely chopped fresh mint leaves
2 Tbsp. white wine vinegar (balsamic vinegar works well, too)
Combine the watermelon, syrup, mint and vinegar in a blender or food processor, and puree until smooth (though there still might be watermelon seeds and shards of mint floating around). Pour the mixture into a strainer set over a small bowl to remove the solid pieces. Gently lift and stir the mixture to help the liquid pass through, without forcing any solids through the strainer.
— Andrew Schloss, “Homemade Soda” (Storey, $18.95)
Some other highlight’s from this week’s watermelon story…
Square watermelons from Japan:
A video from Sarah Pember of The Smart Kitchen on how to pick out a ripe watermelon.
A recipe for grilled watermelon salad with feta and basil-infused olive oil:
Photos by Kyodo News via the Associated Press and Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: 15 Minutes or Less, Drinks, Eating locally
June 19, 2011
The cure for tomato fever? Tomato jam, salsa, green gazpacho
Nothing like 35 pounds of perfectly ripe tomatoes sitting on your dining room table to make you get over your fear of canning.
It was a lot easier to buy that many than grow them, which makes me appreciate what farmers have gone through to get so many ripe beauties despite the heat and lack of rain.
Tomatoes are one of the most work-intensive, volatile and potentially lucrative of the summer crops for farmers, and it’s been hit or miss for local growers.
While Green Gate Farms and Johnson’s Backyard Garden are reporting bumper crops, other farmers say it’s just gotten too hot too fast for the fruit on their plants to ripen. Katie Kraemer of Tecolote Farm east of Austin says the high winds, hot temperatures and lack of rain in the past three months mean their tomatoes are sitting on the vines and not ripening with any speed at all. They are having to cut their summer community-supported agriculture program short and hoping the fall CSA will help carry them through the winter.
However, just up the road at Green Gate, farmer Erin Flynn says they were able to keep their transplants from freezing in the greenhouses in February and were able to get their plants in the ground early this year.
“We took a risk by planting early,” she says, but now they have more tomatoes than customers to buy them at their farmstand, which is open Tuesdays from 4 to 6 p.m., Fridays from noon to 6 p.m. and Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at 8310 Canoga Ave.
“Although we have mountains of gorgeous tomatoes, selling them before they spoil is a real challenge…If we don’t find customers to pay a fair price at the right time, we don’t get paid for months of work.”
Johnson’s Backyard Garden overplanted tomato plants this year and are selling their tomatoes in bulk online. Dai Due chef Jesse Griffiths is hosting a tomato workshop ($30) at 10 a.m. Sunday at the farm near the airport, where he’ll be teaching canning basics and how to make ketchup and salsa.
If you’re new to canning, I’d recommend taking a canning class or buying a book or two to help you learn the correct way to do it. Botulism is rare, but it’s still a risk that’s not worth taking.
Plus, you’ll need recipes to work from. I quickly discovered in my research that you can’t just make up a big batch of your favorite salsa, boil it in some jars and assume that it will be safe to eat in December. I’m not a fan of using recipes for things like salsa and tomato sauce, but you have to follow a recipe that has been tested to make sure you have enough acid in the final product to keep whatever you are making from spoiling.
For salsa, I used a recipe from Sherri Brooks Vinton’s “Put Em Up!” (Storey Publishing, 2010). That book was also my guide for putting up about 10 pounds of whole tomatoes, which my husband will happily be using this fall in his famous “hot dish.” (Growing up, we called this mix of ground beef, pasta, tomatoes and onions goulash in my family, but he insists on calling it a hot dish. He’s the one who eats it, so I’ll let him call it whatever he wants.)
Marisa McClellan’s website Food In Jars is another great resource for beginning canners. McClellan is in the middle of writing her first cookbook, but on her site, you’ll find tons of recipes, including one for tomato jam. I put up about four pints of this tomato jam in a number of half- and quarter-pint jars that I’m already planning on giving away this Christmas.
But why wait until Christmas to give the gift of tomatoes?
Even with all the tomatoes we’ve been eating and putting up, perhaps the greatest joy has been sharing the bounty with my tomato-loving neighbors. (I even packed up a canning starter kit, above, for my neighbor Teri who has been itching to learn how to put up produce.)
They’ve been getting heirloom tomatoes that are just screaming to be sliced up and enjoyed on a BLT sandwich, and many of them got a jar of garlicky green gazpacho made with Green Zebra and sunburst tomatoes from Boggy Creek Farm.
It’s a good time to be a tomato lover, so take advantage of this year’s crop before it’s too late and all the perfectly ripe tomatoes are just a fond memory of this otherwise unbearable summer.
Tomato Jam
5 lb. tomatoes, finely chopped
3 1/2 cups sugar
8 Tbsp. lime juice
2 tsp. freshly grated ginger
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground cloves
1 Tbsp. salt
1 Tbsp. red chili flakes
Combine all ingredients in a large, non-reactive pot. Bring to a boil and then reduce temperature to a simmer. Stirring regularly, simmer the jam until it reduces to a sticky, jammy mess. This will take between 1 and 1 1/2 hours, depending on how high you keep your heat.
When the jam has cooked down sufficiently, remove from heat and fill jars, leaving 1/4 inch of head space. Wipe rims, apply lids and twist on rings. Process in a boiling water canner for 20 minutes.
When time is up, remove jars from water bath and allow them to cool. When jars are cool enough to handle, test seals. Store jars in a cool, dark place for up to one year. Makes 4 1/2 to 5 pints.
— Marisa McClellan, foodinjars.com
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
June 16, 2011
Don't throw away that pickle juice, plus jalapeño fennel pickle recipe
A friendly summer reminder from your favorite food writer not to throw out your pickle juice.
Sure, you can drink it in the form of a pickleback, but since cucumbers are in season, you might as well slice up some ‘cukes and throw them right back in that vinegar to make quick pickles.
I wrote a story about quick or fridge pickles and jam last summer, and in the year since, we’ve saved god knows how much money by reusing pickle juice.
Claussen pickles run about $4 a jar and last about three days in my pickle-loving house, but we’ll slice up fresh cucumbers either from our garden or the farmers’ market and stretch out that one jar for weeks.
I wasn’t getting many cucumbers in my garden recently and I thought it was just my lack of a green thumb. But when digging around under some of the cucumber leaves last week, I found this bad boy. A hoagie-sized cucumber that I sliced into spears and stuck in a container full of pickle juice left over from a friend’s near-perfect batch of crock pickles.
These two jars are full of fridge pickles that are just as briny and crisp as any you’d buy at the store or properly put up in jars.
John Bates, who makes just about everything from scratch, including the pickles, at his restaurant, Noble Pig, gave us this recipe for refrigerator jalapeño fennel pickles.
Jalapeño Fennel Pickle
1 1/4 lb. jalapeños
1 red onion
2 carrots
1 fennel bulb
4 1/2 cup red wine vinegar
4 1/2 cup water
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. sugar
1/4 cup plus 2 Tbsp. kosher salt
3 garlic cloves, sliced
1 Tbsp. whole black peppercorns
3 Tbsp. fresh Mexican oregano
Peel and slice carrots on a bias using a mandolin. Quarter the jalapeños. Peel and slice the red onion. Cut the fennel in half and slice on the bias. Mix vegetables and pack in jars.
Add red wine vinegar, water, sugar, kosher salt, sliced garlic, black peppercorns and Mexican oregano to a stainless steel pot. Bring the brine up to a boil and pour the brine into the jars filling them to the top of each jar. Seal each jar immediately. Refrigerate over night and enjoy.
— John Bates, Noble Pig
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
June 15, 2011
Fishing with Jesse Griffiths and Hank Shaw
Hank Shaw and Jesse Griffiths don’t exactly fish for a living, but as foragers and hunters who make a living off living off the land, fishing qualifies as work, which is why I didn’t feel too guilty asking if they wanted to go on a fishing trip early on weekday morning a few weeks ago when the California-based Shaw was in Austin for the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ annual conference.
As advocates for local, wild foods, Griffiths and Shaw knew of each other’s work but hadn’t met until we gathered at one of Griffiths’ favorite fishing spots outside Austin just after dawn.
(Griffiths also occasionally teaches creekside cooking classes where students fish for their own lunch. Sign up for the Dai Due newsletter to find out about all of Jesse’s classes because they usually sell out by the time they make it to the events page.)
The dozens of small fish we caught went into a bright-orange fish bisque that chef Jason Donoho of Fino made a few nights later for a special dinner featuring dishes from Shaw’s book. Another dinner of Jesse’s was featured as part of a story that ran in Wednesday’s paper about bycatch and alternative fish. (Click here to see more photos with both the fishing trip and the story.)
Provençal Fish Bisque
This recipe is one of many in Shaw’s “Hunt, Gather, Cook.” He writes:
This is a curious, blended fish soup I’ve been making, in various forms, for many years. I like blended soups, which can seem creamy even without cream, although this one does have a little cream added at the end. They’re just, well, more refined than a typical country soup. And sometimes I feel the need for a touch of elegance, even on a busy midweek night.
This soup only takes about 30 minutes to make. Yet, eaten with fresh bread and a glass of wine, you feel like you’re sitting at an oceanside bistro in Provence. The flavor comes mostly from the stock (shellfish stock or a combination of fish stock and clam juice), the orange zest, and saffron. You cannot substitute something else for the saffron; its color and aroma are integral to the soup. A pinch of cayenne adds the faintest zing that brings everything together.
Use any mild white fish but bluegills are ideal. Other good choices would be cod, haddock, any flatfish (flounder, fluke, halibut, sole, turbot, etc.), walleye, crappie or rock cod.
Once the soup is blended and you add the cream in, don’t let the soup boil; it could break. And if you have leftovers, just heat them gently in a pot until warm enough to eat.
3 slices bacon, roughly chopped (or substitute 3 Tbsp. olive oil or butter)
1 medium white or yellow onion, chopped
1 large celery rib, chopped
1 large carrot, chopped
Salt
1 lb. white fish fillets, roughly chopped
2 plum tomatoes, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp. orange peel
Pinch of ground red pepper
Large pinch of saffron
1 quart shellfish stock, or 16 ounces clam juice plus 16 ounces fish stock or water
1/4 cup heavy cream
Dill or fennel fronds, for garnish
Cook the bacon on medium heat in a 6- to 8-quart pot until it is crispy. Remove the bacon from the pot with a slotted spoon. Set aside on a paper towel to use for garnish later.
Increase the heat to medium high and add the onion, celery, and carrot. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes, stirring often, until the onion is translucent. Do not brown. Sprinkle some salt, to taste, over everything as it cooks.
Add the fish, tomatoes, and the garlic and cook for another 2 to 3 minutes, stirring often. Add the orange peel, red pepper, and saffron, then pour in the shellfish stock or whatever stock you are using. In a pinch, you could even use chicken or vegetable
stock, but the flavor of the soup will be different. Simmer this gently—do not let it get to a rolling boil—for 20 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Get another pot ready. Fill a blender a third of the way with the soup and blend it on high (starting on low then increasing to high) for 1 minute, or until it is well pureed.
Work in batches to puree the rest of the soup. Pour the pureed soup into the clean pot. Put the soup on medium-low heat and add the cream. Stir well and taste for salt, adding if needed. Do not let this boil, or it might break. Serve garnished with fennel or dill fronds, and alongside some crusty bread. A dry rose or light red wine would go well with this; I’d suggest a Beaujolais or a Pinot Noir. Serves 4 to 6.
Photos by Addie Broyles and Holly A. Heyser.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
June 13, 2011
What would you do with 35 pounds of tomatoes?
What would you do with 35 pounds of tomatoes?
When you add up the 30 pounds of #2 Valley Girl tomatoes from Johnson’s Backyard Garden’s bulk tomato sale, my own humble 3 pound harvest of Romas and 2 pounds of yellowish orange sunbursts, I have about 35 pounds of tomatoes to put to use.
It’s an envious bounty whose sweet, signature tang I once wasn’t so sure of. (Bathing in tomatoes at the 2003 Tomatina capped off a youth spent trying to avoid tomatoes at all cost, even in pizza sauce.)
I’m not quite the tomato head of some of my gardening peers, but I’m getting there. This is the most successful year growing tomatoes I’ve had, and I just happened to buy an old school pressure canner right as local tomatoes came into season at the farmers market.
The first round of tomatoes went into salads, both regular and chicken, but now I’m branching out. Salsas and sauces are up first, who knows what’s next.
How would you eat your way through a big box of tomatoes? Do you have a favorite way to preserve them, ie drying in the oven or freezing?
Permalink | Comments (14) | Categories: Eating locally
June 1, 2011
IACP: White House pastry chef gets in the garden with UT Elementary students
Bill Yosses, executive pastry chef at the White House who has earned the nicknamed “the Crustmaster” from the president, says it’s still cool enough in D.C. to be harvesting broccoli, kohlrabi, Swiss chard and kale and that he’s particularly excited about the blueberries, blackberries and raspberries that are ripening on bushes on the White House grounds.
“We’ve also had a bumper crop of rhubarb this year,” he said today after helping University of Texas Elementary School students harvest the last of their spring crop. (You know what that means: Rhubarb crisp for the first family. )
Laura Skelding AMERICAN-STATESMAN
Yosses was in Austin for a Chefs Move to Schools event at UT Elementary, where he helped harvest the last of the students’ spring crop earlier today.
The school has 20 4-foot-by-8-foot raised garden beds in the back of the school property and is one of hundreds of U.S. schools participating in Michelle Obama’s Chefs Move to Schools program, which pairs up schools with chefs to help students learn cooking skills and healthy eating habits.
“The things you are learning in the garden and the memories you are making are so huge, so important,” Yosses told a group of about 20 students at an event that was also part of the International Association of Culinary Professionals’ annual conference. (He later spoke at a rally at the capitol with Food Network star Ellie Krieger.)
After telling the students about his own recent vegetable discovery — carrot lemonade — Yosses asked the kids what they liked from the garden that they hadn’t tried before. “Sorrel,” one student said. “It tastes like lemon lime soda.” Yosses laughed. “I think I was 30 before I tried sorrel,” he replied.
Yosses, dressed in a light gray suit, led the students outside so they could harvest vegetables to take to Whole Foods Market’s Lamar Culinary Center, where they later cooked and served several dishes to their parents and IACP attendees who were tagging along.
Throughout the year, teachers at UT Elementary incorporate the school’s garden in the curriculum for all 260 students, but about 20 of them participate in an after-school program called WellNest, which gives them additional lessons in physical education, nutrition and cooking.
Bob Knipe, who coordinates the program, says it gives students and their families a boost to help put the wellness lessons to use, and it’s working for students like third-grader Felix Sanchez, who has lost 12 pounds in the past year.
With Sanchez (above, cooking at Whole Foods) picking cabbage out of earshot, his mom, Suzanne, said that he first realized he’d dropped a few pounds when his underwear stopping fitting him right.
“Our whole family has a history of diabetes and high blood pressure,” she said. “Growing up, we ate enough, but not the right foods.” Suzanne Sanchez says her son finally realizes what he needs to do to prevent that from happening to him.
Photos by Addie Broyles and Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman and Charles Dharapak for the Associated Press.Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
May 23, 2011
Think spuds are boring? You haven't tried purple potatoes
You don’t have to have a 4-year-old at home to get excited about purple potatoes.
Johnson’s Backyard Garden was selling them at the Wednesday afternoon farmers’ market at the Triangle two weeks ago, and I bought some to make into a potato salad for our Austin Food Blogger Alliance potluck.
(I figured I could get away with bringing a plain jane potato salad to a food blogger potluck only if there was some other noteworthy element, such as indigo-colored potatoes and backyard chicken eggs.)
Now, there are purple sweet potatoes and purple Peruvian potatoes, but these were purple majesty, a variety that was developed at Colorado State University to have higher levels of anthocyanin. (This flavonoid “has been shown in studies to possess anti-cancer and heart-protective effects, as well as benefits such as boosting the immune system and protecting against age-related memory loss,” reports the Chicago Tribune.)
Purple potatoes of any variety make beautiful chips and a gorgeous frittata. Just like other potatoes, they roast up nicely and can be deep fried. A squeeze of lemon juice will help them keep their color in things like fork-crushed potatoes. (El Arbol even has whipped purple potatoes on its menu.)
Johnson’s Backyard Garden, which just announced that it is expanding its community-supported agriculture program to include home delivery for an additional $5 per box per week, will have purple potatoes at its many farmers market stands for the next few weeks.
Keep your eyes peeled for them, though. Other local farms might be selling them, but I can’t say for sure which ones or at which markets.
(Didn’t mean to throw that pun in there, but on the heels of the 34th annual O. Henry Pun-Off in Austin, I think I’ll let it slide.)
Permalink | | Categories: Cooking, Eating locally
May 10, 2011
What's in the White House honey? Local beekeeper finds out
When Konrad Bouffard, owner of Round Rock Honey, was in Washington D.C., last week for the Future of Food Conference, he asked Sam Kass, the second in command in the White House kitchen, for a few jars of honey from the hives located on the grounds of the first residence.
When Bouffard was at the White House, he wondered how the meticulously manicured — and presumably heavily fertilized — lawn would affect the bees’ honey. He didn’t just want a taste of what might be the most famous honey in the country, he wanted to send it off to Dr. Vaughn Bryant, a scientist at Texas A&M, to do a pollen analysis, which is something he frequently does with his own honey to find out exactly what’s in it.
The results, which come just in time for President Obama’s visit to Austin today, were surprising. The analysis confirmed his first impression that the majority of the pollen in the honey came from clover, but that overall, it has a very low pollen concentration, which is unusual for clover honey. “This suggests that over the winter the bees may have been fed sugar water, thereby reducing the final pollen concentration value of the produced honey,” he says.
Although the dominant pollen is clover, the trees in the vicinity of the White House and the National Mall are what give its real character and flavor, says Bouffard, who has been keeping bees in Central Texas and selling honey since 2002. Dogwood, cherry, crepe-myrtle, elm and magnolia trees, as well as honeysuckle and even poison ivy, among others, provided the so-called minor pollen.
Bouffard says that the White House beekeeper, who is also a carpenter at the big white mansion on Pennsylvania Avenue, should try to convince the groundskeepers to let parts of the lawn near the vegetable gardens grow wild.
“Patches of un-manicured lawn are more important to producing quality honey than even herb and vegetable gardens,” he says. “Increasing the diversity of grasses and flowering weeds gives the bees more foraging options and helps maintain and preserve the natural pH and the humidity of the soil.”
Top photo from the White House, middle photo by Ron Edmonds for the Associated Press, bottom photo by Addie Broyles.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
April 20, 2011
Sign up now to buy locally grown veggies by the CSA box
Farmers’ markets aren’t the only way to get local vegetables, herbs and fruits straight from the person who grew them.
Community-supported agriculture programs, in which customers commit to buying weekly shares of the produce for an entire season, are the primary source of income for many local farmers.
Rather than ordering particular items, CSA members get a box of whatever produce is being harvested at the time, and they usually pick up the boxes once a week or every other week at pickup locations around town. Some of the farms even offer delivery or pickup a farmers’ markets.
Memberships cost between $20 and $40 a week, depending on how much the farm plans on including in each box, but there is usually more than enough produce to feed two people for a week.
I called around to a bunch of farms last week to find out which ones still have openings in their spring CSAs: Ottmers (512-276-7008), Urban Roots (342-0424), Green Gate (484-2746), Hairston Creek (512-756-8380), Tecolote (276-7008), Scott Arbor (830-379-0588), Millcan, Johnson’s Backyard Garden (386-5273) and Walnut Creek (512-303-3400)
Farm stands are another way to buy fresh produce directly from farmers, usually at the farm itself. Springdale, Angel Valley, Natural Springs, Boggy Creek, Green Gate and Montesino are just a few of the farms that set up stands at least once a week.
We recently updated our farmers’ market listing page to include farm stands.
Swing by and check one out this week! You’ll likely get to meet the farmers who grew the food you’re buying to take home to turn into dinner.
Photo from Green Gate Farms.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally
April 15, 2011
Growing Together: Submit your neighborhood, school, church or community garden
Gardens are popping up all over Central Texas and not just in residential backyards.
We’re starting a new feature for the gardening pages of the newspaper where we highlight gardens collectively tended by a group of people in neighborhoods, schools, churches and the like.
There’s something special that happens when people get together to transform an overlooked patch of grass into a certified wildlife habitat or vegetable garden, like the one Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders in South Austin, above. And, now that the city has made it easier for people to start and maintain community gardens, we’ll likely see even more of them around town.
We are asking people to send a photo or two of the garden, preferably highlighting the people who work in it, to abroyles@statesman.com along with the answers to these three questions: Who is tending the gardens and why? What kinds of plants do you grow? What’s the best piece of gardening advice you would give others trying to grow either edible or non-edible plants in Central Texas?
Please keep answers to 300 words or less and let us know where the garden is located. We’ll be running the photos and responses in the paper as a regularly occurring feature in the Saturday edition of the Statesman.
Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
April 6, 2011
New farmers market in Round Rock opens today
UPDATE: As of April 2012, this market has moved to Sundays from 12:30 to 4 p.m. at St. Richard’s Episcopal Church, 1420 E. Palm Valley Blvd. in Round Rock. Here is a link to the market’s new website, where you can find more information.
Many farmers’ markets in Central Texas are open year round, but the first week of April is traditionally when many of the seasonal markets reopen after a winter of hibernation, and starting today, there’s a new year-round Wednesday afternoon market in the parking lot of the Dell Diamond baseball stadium that will move to downtown Round Rock this fall.
View Central Texas Farmers Markets in a larger map
(Want to find a market near you? Check out our list of more than 30 area farmers’ markets.)
Carla Jenkins, who also runs the Cedar Park Farms to Market on Saturday mornings at Lakeline Mall, says the new Round Rock Farms to Market will operate from 4 to 8 p.m. Wednesdays at the Dell Diamond parking lot, off U.S. 79, but this fall, the market will move to a new city plaza under construction downtown.
(The Georgetown Farmers Market Association operates a Saturday farmers’ market from 9 a.m. to noon at 300 University Blvd. in downtown Round Rock.)
The new market, which is certified by the Texas Department of Agriculture, will have more than 40 vendors, many of which currently sell at the Cedar Park Farms to Market market that celebrated its first anniversary last weekend.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
March 9, 2011
Backyard chickens laid their first eggs, we just had to find them
It’s Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent. So exactly 40 days before Easter Sunday, when millions of children will go hunting for eggs in their backyard, we had our own little egg hunt.
For the past few days, Julia, the Rhode Island Red who is slightly older than the white Brahma named Cotton, had been disappearing into a large patch of cane that we have in our backyard. (Everyone calls it bamboo when they see it, but upon further inspection, we’ve discovered it is some other kind of equally invasive and towering cane.)
She was making some noticeably different sounds, too, which led me to believe that she was laying eggs somewhere back there, but we hadn’t found them yet.
But this morning, my husband went digging a little harder and found this.
Three decent-sized brown eggs, all in the same spot, way back in the corner where the cane runs up to the fence.
I squealed.
Not just a little outburst under my breath. Oh no, I made a joyous squawk loud enough for our backyard neighbors, who are raising little chicks of their own, to hear me through their open window and come outside to see what I’d found.
These little girls have been pecking around our yard for almost two weeks now, and I was beginning to think that they were just going to be our little backyard pets who follow each other around all over the place, hitting the compost pile, then the garden (more on that later), then the cane, then their hutch so they can scratch underneath and see what bugs have come to the surface since they last left it.
Even without the eggs, these personable little buggers have been really growing on us, but I don’t think we’ll ever quite go so far as some of the chicken lovers in “The Natural History of the Chicken,” a documentary that came out in 2000 that is streaming on Netflix.
The movie showcases some truly, um, unique people, including this woman (starting at the 5 minute mark) who has a very special relationship with her Cotton.
Chicken panties, who knew?
The chickens are fun, but they aren’t the only thing to tend to in the backyard this time of year.
Carol Ann Sayle of Boggy Creek Farm is going to chide me, but I went ahead and planted three tomato seedlings. The official planting guides and some longtime farmers like Carol Ann say not to plant tomatoes until after March 15, but after all these sunny days we’ve been having, I just couldn’t wait.
These are Roma tomatoes, I think. A seasoned gardener friend of mine gave them to me yesterday, and she wasn’t too concerned about not remembering the exact variety, so neither am I.
(Said friend also gave me a cutting of a lemongrass that she’s had for a long time. Mmm, I can smell the Thai soup I’ll make from this guy already.)
In a windowsill inside, I have two heirloom tomato seedlings started, as well as some lime basil, all of which come from seeds from Baker Creek Heirloom Seeds, a family-run company in Southwest Missouri that has grown to be the largest heirloom seed company in the country. (Their annual seed catalog is a work of art, I tell you.)
Last week, I was lucky enough to get invited to a seedling swap with some serious gardeners who are much better at starting seeds than I am.
Just like a cookie swap, guests brought as many seedlings as they wanted (I brought seeds) and put them all on a table and then we went around and picked up one of each. Melons, broccolini, tomatoes, peppers, Mexican feathergrass and a cool new hibiscus that apparently I can make tea from.
I planted a flat of seeds (everything from squash to dill) more than a week ago, but only one Israeli melon has sprouted. Oh, well.
Which leads me to the seedlings in the beds and the chickens that are eating them. I knew the chickens would like eating from the garden as much as we do, but the reality of how hard it is going to be to keep them from snatching up the lettuce, carrots, radishes and just about anything else that’s small and green and growing up from the garden beds is setting in.
For now, I’m trying to protect the young plants with just about anything I can find. Tomato cages wrapped in this green plastic stuff. Tomato cages opened up to make a dome and then covered in this green plastic stuff. (I learned this morning that tomato cages alone won’t keep them out.)
It’s going to be an ongoing battle until I finally cave in and either put a fence around the garden or a fence around the chickens.
I’ll decide later. It’s time to eat those first backyard eggs for lunch.
Also new:
A dwarf Meyer lemon tree that is full of blooms.
A garden bed on the side of our back porch that for now, has only a strawberry plant in it.
And I realized that I never showed off pictures from our snow day way back when:
How are your gardens growing?
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
February 28, 2011
Taking the backyard chicken plunge
Enough pecking around this backyard chicken business.
A few weeks ago, I wrote about buying a chicken for our neighbor’s coop, but when Julia started getting her feathers scratched out by one of the older hens (they didn’t name her Skeletor for nothing), it was time to finally get off the fence and commit to raising our own backyard birds.
I needed a coop, feed and another hen to keep Julia company, so one afternoon last week, I headed straight to Callahan’s General Store. (Buck Moore Feed and Supply on North Lamar Boulevard on has everything you need to get started with chickens, but Callahan’s is slightly closer to my house.)
“You must be here for chickens,” an older gentleman said to me as I walked into the feed and live animal area in the back of the store. I’m not sure what part of me, my style or the look on my face gave away my status as backyard chicken novice, but the man had clearly seen more than a few urban Austinites in recent years stroll into the store to get into an animal husbandry once reserved for farmers or hippies on communes.
With his help, I picked out a $75 hutch that will hold up to four hens. (I debated making my own but figured that by the time I bought or salvaged the materials, gathered the proper tools and actually built a coop, it would cost more, especially in terms of time, than if I just bought one already made.)
He again helped when it came time to wrangle another bird. Based on aesthetics alone, I picked out a white and black hen with feathers on her feet that I would later learn is a Brahma. (Julia is a Rhode Island Red, which lays more eggs than a Brahma, but both are hardy birds that can tolerate the cold and the heat.)
Even though I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, I knew we’d made the right decision within minutes of getting both birds home.
At first, they were wary of each other, keeping their distance from one another as they pecked bugs, pebbles and small pieces of food scraps near the compost pile. But as they roamed the yard over the next two days, we watched as the birds forged a sweet little friendship. It’s probably instinctual and out of necessity that wherever one goes, the other follows behind. They started sharing their water and feed bowls and snuggling together in the nesting box I set up in their hutch.
In Julian’s mind, we might as well as gotten a new puppy — but unlike a puppy, chickens don’t chew up furniture, bark at the mailman or require daily walks, poop bag in hand, through the neighborhood.
He named the white one Con Can Broyles Ann, which Ian and I have shortened to Cotton, and even though neither of the girls has laid her first eggs, we’re enjoying them for the character and entertainment they’ve added to our ever-evolving urban homestead. (And yes, I’m going to use those words despite all the hubbub recently over California bloggers trademarking the term and aggressively pursuing violators.)
By taking the baby steps of buying a chicken that the neighbors were raising, it wasn’t such a dramatic transition, but I still spent quite a bit of time online trying to figure out the best way to set up a nesting box and a roosting rod, how much and how often to feed them store-bought feed and food scraps, how to properly compost their poop and all the other specifics you don’t necessarily think of ahead of time.
And I still have a lot to learn. In order to make these hens more than just expensive pets, they’ll have to lay almost 300 eggs to make up for the $120 I’ve spent on them, their hutch and the feed.
However, even without the eggs, they are an exciting addition to our family. We’ve already given Julian the responsibility of making sure that they have food and water in their bowls, and 6-month-old Avery can’t keep his eyes off them. No, naming and fawning over them hasn’t changed my mind about wanting to eat them when their time has come, but everyone in the house knows that the only reason we have these birds is as a source of food.
It just so happens that they are pretty fun to have around, too.
Permalink | Comments (12) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
February 15, 2011
At grocery stores and restaurants, 'local' doesn't mean what it used to
UPDATE: I should have noted in both the story and this blog post that Dai Due, Jesse Griffiths’ supper club-butcher-shop was the highest ranked buyer of local produce but he wasn’t included on the list because he doesn’t technically have a restaurant.
In tomorrow’s food section, I finally got to write about a topic that restaurant owners, farmers and locavores have been talking to me about for years: local washing, where restaurants and grocery stores exaggerate their use of locally grown produce and ties to area farmers in order to attract the growing number of consumers who are concerned about where their food comes from and how it is grown.
I’ve been hearing off-the-record complaints about this for at least two years, but no one wants to point fingers at restaurants that aren’t telling the whole truth.
So a group of area farmers decided to compare invoice books to find out which restaurants are actually putting their money where their menus are. They sent a list of restaurants to about 80 farmers in Central Texas and asked them to report back on whom they had actually sold produce to, either at a farmers market or directly from the farm.
Odd Duck Farm to Trailer, Bryce Gilmore’s all-local trailer on South Lamar, topped the list, followed by East Side Show Room, Texas French Bread, Somnio’s Cafe, Jack Allen’s Kitchen, Olivia, the W Hotel, La Condesa, Peche and East Side Pies.
But just because your favorite chef or restaurant didn’t make the top 10 didn’t mean they aren’t sourcing produce locally; more than 50 restaurants made the Growers Alliance of Central Texas’ list and Katie Kraemer Pitre of Tecolote Farm, who helped spearhead the survey, says the group wants to reevaluate every year.
But what about grocery stores? Although grocers weren’t part of this particular survey, I know of a few that work directly with Austin-area farmers to sell their produce in stores, but I haven’t seen any evidence that the Austin-area grocery stores that have “farmers market” as part of their name have actually had any dealings with area growers.
Most of the time, when a grocery store labels produce as “local,” they mean it came from somewhere in Texas.
Not that there’s anything wrong with produce from Texas, but as Kraemer Pitre points out, just like the separation between local, state and federal governments, there’s a need for differentiating produce that’s grown locally from produce grown anywhere in the state.
Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally
February 3, 2011
For area farmers, long freeze could wipe out even cold-hardy crops
For farmers in Central Texas, it’s the length of the freeze, not necessarily how cold it gets, that’s going to hurt the most.
Even cold-hardy plants covered by protective cloth or plastic aren’t likely to stay alive when temperatures stay below freezing for more than 60 or 70 hours, said Hairston Creek farmer Gary Rowland, who grows vegetables on about 17 acres near Burnet.
“We won’t know for sure until it warms up and thaws out and we can really assess,” Rowland said. “The row covers are frozen down. I’d have to have a jackhammer to pry them up to look, but my instinct tells me is that it’s going to be worse than better.”
Sonny Naegelin of Naegelin Farm outside San Antonio said his workers harvested enough lettuce and other produce for three farmers’ markets this Saturday and that they’ve had to store them in a large cooler to keep from freezing.
“It’s about as bad as I’ve seen it in a long time,” he said. “I’m pretty sure we’re wiped out.” He said snow, if we actually get any, will actually help insulate the plants during the last part of this cold snap.
After the freeze breaks, Naegelin said they’ll probably have to replant one more round of winter crops before moving on to spring crops in a few weeks.
This cold snap is good news for peach farmers in the Hill Country because the trees require between 400 and 1,200 chill hours in order to set fruit in the spring. “As long as the sap is not up in the trees, it doesn’t hurt the wood,” said Bill Psencik, who grows peach trees near Fredericksburg.
“It’s when the sap gets in the wood in warm days in the spring and then we get a killing frost that does the most damage.”
Rowland said that the 1989 freeze, which affected even citrus trees in the Rio Grande Valley, was worse than this one.
“I’ve been expecting for a while,” Rowland said. “Like the coast waiting for a hurricane, it’s gonna happen sooner or later.”
I took these photos of my backyard garden this morning. “You might want to soup it before it thaws out,” Rowland told me in regard to that frozen head of cabbage. “Essentially, it’s been quick frozen. It’ll be good until it thaws out and turns brown.”
As far as I know, all of the area farmers’ markets will be open this weekend, selling whatever crops the vendors were able to harvest before the freeze and any produce like sweet potatoes or onions that can be stored in a cellar. As always, there will be lots of non-produce foods, including meat, milk, jams, bread, desserts, etc.
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February 2, 2011
Sizzling sausage, breakfast pizza and more hot food at downtown farmers market
With a wood-fired pizza oven blazing, a trailer serving hot breakfast and lunch and the smell of sausage patties wafting through the park, the downtown farmers’ market has become a dining destination.
Sure, you still can buy fresh-baked bread, artisan products and raw meat and produce to make your own meals, but in the past few months, hot food vendors including Bola Pizza, Dai Due and Zubik House are serving everything from breakfast pizza to acorn squash bread pudding while you shop or just enjoy a Saturday morning in Republic Square Park.
In this video, Statesman videographer and resident foodie Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon captures the vibrant hot food scene and talks with market manager Suzanne Santos about the regulatory changes the city made to allow it to happen.
Also worth noting: It’s not quite the full-fledged market that takes place on Saturday mornings, but today’s market at the Triangle is on, regardless of the freezing temperatures, Santos tells me.
UPDATE: Sam of TacoDeli left me a reminder message last week that he’s been the source of hot breakfast tacos — always made with farm eggs — for some time now. You can’t go wrong with some doña sauce early in the morning.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
January 31, 2011
In the backyard chicken business, the chicken comes first
The idea of getting eggs from my backyard has long appealed to me, especially after I started my vegetable garden two years ago.
Fresh eggs — the kind from happy chickens that come in a variety of colors and don’t have to be refrigerated — are better for you and richer tasting than the cheapies in Styrofoam containers at the grocery store, but in order to get them, you have to commit to taking care of chickens, which require a lot more work than seeds growing in the ground.
Our neighbors decided to build a coop and get two chickens late last year, and in talking with them about their new venture, we decided to invest in the operation by buying a chicken to add to the flock.
So, I went to Callahan’s General Store and bought a chicken.
It’s easy to type that sentence, to brush it off like it’s no big deal, but acquiring a living animal is always a strange process.
Walking around Callahan’s, it seemed like everyone’s boots were deeper in this farm business than mine would ever be, but shopping side-by-side with these professionals boosted my confidence.
If these 12-year-old 4-H’ers can raise pigs and cattle, I can manage one little hen, I thought to myself.
Just like you’d pick out a cat or a guinea pig, I pointed out which chicken I wanted — a beautiful Rhode Island Red that would balance the spotted hens my neighbors bought — and the Callahan’s guy caught it and put it in a box with air holes cut into it that used to hold Mason jars. He quickly taped the box shut and sent me to the cashier to pay.
With the swipe of a credit card — $20 for the laying hen; teenagers who still have a few weeks to go cost $14 — and she was mine.
(It’s worth noting that I planted my victory garden on President Obama’s inauguration day and I bought my first chicken on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but self-sufficiency as a political statement is a blog post for another day.)
As I brought the box from the car to the backyard, I had a little chat with our new girl, which Julian decided to name Julia.
“Alright, little chicky. We’re going to do our best to give you a good home and a good life for the next few years. All the food scraps and bugs you can eat. We’ll try to keep you safe from the opossums, raccoons and cats, and we’ll celebrate every single egg you lay. You’re going to nourish our bodies and teach our kids about food where really comes from.”
Just the week before, I’d seen the other end of a chicken’s life cycle by helping process two roosters from HausBar Farm. I thought about how I’d watched those roosters be cared for and killed with love and honor, and how I cooked them and served them in the same manner. (We ate the roosters at a dinner that was part of the first episode of Austin Supper Club, a TV show I’m hosting that will likely air later this year on KLRU. More on the show, to come.)
“And, when the time comes, we’ll honor you by eating you, too,” I whispered.
Maybe it was a macabre way to start our relationship, but I wanted to be up front about what we were getting into.
I let her out of the box and let the other chickens out of their coop and into our yard. They pecked all along the fence and found their way to the compost pile, where they happily scratched and ate, ate and scratched as my whole family watched in awe of the fact that we really did have chickens in our backyard.
Within the an hour of bringing her home, Julia was getting along just fine with Skeletor and Buttermilk, and we were all a little sad when we had to wrangle them through the gate that connects our backyards so they could go back to their home coop.
Even without eating their eggs, we’d gotten a taste of this backyard chicken business and knew that three birds between two households just wouldn’t be enough.
There’s something very gratifying about watching them roam around the yard, finding tiny bugs and weeds worth eating and knowing that they’ll turn that food into food for us. It’s easy to see how chickens, like gardening, can become more like an addiction than a hobby, but we haven’t splurged on buying our own coop just yet.
But having gotten over the hurdle of acquiring our first bird, it’s a matter of putting aside the money to buy or build a coop not the fear of having the chickens that is stopping us.
For now, our neighbors gather and divide the eggs, and once or twice a week, they’ll drop off a handful of them, which almost immediately go into a frying pan and into our bellies.
I have a feeling that these are just the first baby steps in what will be a long, chicken-crossed road.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
January 13, 2011
'Forks Over Knives' promotes health benefits of a plant-based diet, but I'm not giving up meat just yet
About every six months, a new food documentary makes the rounds, screening in small theaters or auditoriums across the country and showcasing the broken links of our food chain.
From school lunches (“Lunch Line”) and agriculture (“Food, Inc” and “Fresh”) to food-as-medicine (“Food Matters”) and fast food (“Supersize Me,” “Fast Food Nation”), these movies have helped raise our collective consciousness about the health and environmental consequences of what we eat.
There is a lot of crossover between these food films, but each presents a slightly different argument — and the always-shocking data to back it up— about why you should change your eating habits.
But at some point, after you’ve watched them all, you have to start picking which science you believe.
Almost everyone concerned about rising obesity rates, heart disease, confined animal feeding operations and the use of chemicals to grow food agrees that reducing meat consumption is key to making any significant improvement to our current situation.
But “Forks Over Knives,” a new documentary featuring the father of the now-retired Austin firefighter, plant-based diet evangelical and author of “Engine 2 Diet” Rip Esselstyn that screened last night at the Bob Bullock Texas State History Museum, presents a the case that we need to eliminate meat and dairy products altogether.
The film doesn’t focus on the environmental or ethical reasons to reduce or eliminate meat consumption. Most of the movie is spent on data such as “The China Study” that link diets full of meat and dairy to increased rates of cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis and a slew of other health conditions. (It should be noted that “Food Matters” beat them to the punch with the “Let thy food be thy medicine and thy medicine be thy food” tagline from Hippocrates.)
It also profiles several people who have reversed life-threatening diseases by changing their diet and follows along as three people with high cholesterol and blood sugar improve their overall health — and even eliminate the medicines they were taking — by changing to an animal-free diet.
(Just don’t call them vegans. Longtime vegetarian Evan Smith, who moderated a panel after the film, was quick to call out the fact that the v-word wasn’t being used, and Esselstyn admitted that it has to do with public perception and avoid the negative connotations that “vegan” carries. They like the ring of “plant-strong diet.”)
But because most of the current discussion around meat and dairy involves reducing consumption and choosing foods that come from free-range or sustainably reared animals, it was disappointing that the film or the panel afterward didn’t acknowledge the growing body of information that supports the idea that limited intake of grass-fed beef and free-range chicken and pork isn’t as harmful as the products that come from conventionally reared animals.
“Weston Price is not scientific,” was the one-line answer from panelist Dr. Linda Carney when asked about sustainably reared meats after the movie ended last night.
Her response both surprised and infuriated me.
First, I was amazed that the Weston A. Price Foundation, which promotes eating a diet based in nutrient-dense foods including butter, raw milk and pastured or grass-fed meat, has become well-known enough in the past few years that she could get by with a passing reference to the dentist who traveled the globe studying the affect of diet and health. (It seems the vegans v. Weston A. Price battle has been going on for some time.)
But I was frustrated that we couldn’t have a longer discussion about alternatives to meat as we have known it for the past fifty years.
It’s hard to dispute the fact that to improve our nation’s health and the environment, we need to reduce overall meat consumption, and this film presents some of the strongest data to date to persuade even the most stubborn meat-eaters to eat fewer steaks.
However, by taking a radical stance that dismisses animal products altogether (and the science-backed initiatives that encourage us to eat higher quality meat from better-raised animals), the “plant-strong” advocates are isolating themselves and their cause.
Even though a plant-based diet is what farmers, scientists and activists in all of these food documentaries support, but because meat — and the idea that humans are omnivores and not herbivores for a reason — is so entrenched in the American diet you can’t just slam the door in the face of the sustainable meat movement.
People are going to keep eating meat no matter how many times they hear about a fifty-something man dropping his cholesterol 100 points in two weeks on a vegan diet or see the meat-free Esselstyn climb up a fireman’s pole using only his hands.
They say you can’t argue with science, but it all depends on which science you’re using.
UPDATE: The site says the movie will be in theaters on March 11, but when I asked Rip at the screening last night, he said he wasn’t sure about its release. I wouldn’t count on national distribution on March 11, but keep your eyes peeled for it to eventually make its way in theaters around the country.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
January 12, 2011
Making chips from kale, other greens on FOX 7
Kale chips have been all the rage on the blogosphere in the past year or so, but I just now got around to making them for a book club potluck last night.
It just so happened that Susan Leibrock of the Sustainable Food Center was getting ready to make kale chips on her weekly segment on FOX 7’s morning show. She invited me to come along with her this morning, and the swift folks over at FOX have already posted the video online.
SFC: Kale Chips: MyFoxAUSTIN.com
My big realization when making the “chips” for the party last night was that you can make them out of just about any leafy green. Mustard greens, chard, spinach, broccoli leaves, cauliflower leaves, Brussels sprouts, etc.
Just tear the leaves into chip-sized pieces, toss with a little olive oil, salt and pepper and bake in a 300 degree oven for 15 to 20 minutes or until the leaves are crispy.
This is my new favorite way to use up greens of any kind from my winter garden. They are light, delicious, healthy and oh-so-satisfying when you want a salty snack.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, How to video
January 11, 2011
Eat pie and help spread MLK Jr.'s message of peace, equality
It’s hard to disagree at a pie social.
Sure, you could banter about whose pie is the best or which pie is your favorite, but the there’s something unifying about getting together to eat something as beloved as pie.
That’s the idea behind the annual pie socials that Luanne Stovall coordinates around Martin Luther King Jr. Day next week. For the third year, Stovall is helping spread King’s message of peace and equality through pie, and this year, she has the City of Austin officially behind her.
At 5:30 p.m. on Thursday at City Hall, the Austin City Council will issue a “Peace Through Pie” proclamation. Following the reading, city officials and the public will have the chance to enjoy pies created by local chefs and Travis High School culinary arts students.
Also on Thursday, learn how to make the perfect pie crust at a demonstration by Jen Biddle from Texas Pie Kitchen at noon at the Spring Terrace Apartments, 7101 Interstate 35 North (St. Johns & I-35).
There are a total of six pie social happening in the next week. One of the biggest will be at the Sweet Home Baptist Church, 1725 W. 11th St., on Saturday and will feature the 3rd annual pie contest.
(These photos are from last year’s pie social and contest at the church where Leeann Atherton, above, with fellow Peace Through Pie coordinator Toni Tipton-Martin at right, won the ‘Best Nut Pie’ for her pecan pie )
At 1 p.m., home bakers can bring two pies, one to share with guests and another for the judges. A program featuring a reading of King’s “I have a dream” speech will take place at the church at 2 p.m.
Also on Saturday, the Victory Grill, 1104 E. 11th St., will host a pie social from 10 to 11 a.m., followed by a peacemaking discussion circle from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
From 1 to 2 p.m. on Sunday at St. James Episcopal Church, 1941 Webberville Road, enjoy pie at a social and bid on pies during a live and a silent auction that will benefit the church’s youth group.
On Monday, the Art Institute of Austin, 101 W. Louis Henna Blvd. in Round Rock, is hosting another pie social from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. featuring pies from culinary students and cooking demonstrations.
Photos by Deborah Cannon for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Chewing the fat, Desserts, Eating locally
January 4, 2011
Benefit show to help raise money for East Austin's first food co-op
In the past three years, more than half a dozen new stores specializing in organic and natural foods opened all over Central Texas, but not a single Sprouts Farmers Market, Sunflower Farmers Market, Natural Grocers, Whole Foods Market or Central Market exists east of Interstate 35 in Austin.
Flint Fancy, having lived in East Austin for 12 years and cooking soups and daily specials at the now-closed Cafe Mundi for seven of them, knew that the neighborhood options for buying products such as locally raised meats, organic produce and eggs, chemical-free household supplies, and bulk grains, teas and spices were limited to the urban farms, farmstands and the HOPE Farmers Market on Sundays.
“All the artists and the independent business community are centered in the east,” Fancy says. “You look at the East End and East Sixth and you see this mix of new and old, and it has so much potential … but there’s absolutely nothing within a bikeable, walkable distance.”
So, Fancy teamed up with Sarah Cheatham and Joe Egnot to start Happy Hobo Co-op Cafe and Grocer, the first cooperatively owned grocery store and cafe in East Austin. They found a 2,000-square-foot space (2502 Webberville Road, “right in the crux of it all,” Fancy says) and started raising money and spreading the word.
“We’ve got our local farms on deck and different vendors waiting, and hundreds and hundreds of positive responses from the community,” Flint says. “Carpenters, welders, farmers. People are helping in every direction, but money is the big issue.”
Several hundred people already have become consumer members ($50 for two years or $100 a year for families), but Flint says that with all the permitting expenses and start-up costs, they still have quite a bit of money to raise before they’ll be able to open.
On Saturday at 9 p.m., they are hosting a benefit show and fundraiser at Books Beyond Borders’ warehouse, 618 Tillery St., featuring food from Hot Mama’s and Ararat Cafe and live music from La Guerrilla and WinoVino. (Flint says this is the final performance for the Austin band WinoVino.)
Once they hit their fundraising goals, hopefully in the next few months, Flint says they will open the grocery and coffee shop part of the operation first, followed by a restaurant-like space where you can buy prepared food to go or to eat there.
Photos from Flint Fancy.
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December 6, 2010
What do I want in my stocking this year? Bourbon caramel, please
Last week, while I was writing a story that will come out on Wednesday about food-related stocking stuffers, I was feeling a little disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to include all the delicious, locally made products that I’d like Santa to leave in my stocking come Christmas.
And now that I’ve tried Blue Heron Farm’s bourbon cajeta, I’m downright bummed.
The photo shoot is done. The story is filed. It’s already laid out on the page, and now I’ve found a locally made treat that is easily in the top five products I’ve sampled all year.
As if caramelized sweetened goat’s milk isn’t enough on its own, Blue Heron’s cajeta — a traditional Mexican specialty that’s similar to dulce de leche — has just the right amount of bourbon to make even plain Jane apples taste like they are a dessert fit for a king. Oh, and it’s the perfect size to fit in the stocking that I just hung on my mantle this weekend.
(Carla Crownover, who is just about to complete her year of no grocery shopping challenge, gets the hat tip for turning me on to it.)
Last night, unless it was a dream, I warmed up the cajeta slightly and drizzled it over Blue Bell’s already rich Caramel Sundae Crunch, and tomorrow, I’m putting it in my coffee and telling as many people as I can to make up for the fact that it’s not going to be in the gift guide on Wednesday.
Oh, well.
You can buy both the regular cajeta ($10.99 for 8 oz.) and the bourbon cajeta ($12.99 for 8 oz.) at Antonelli’s Cheese Shop in Hyde Park, where co-owner Kendall Antonelli recommends pairing the cajeta with an earthy cloth-bound cheddar or zingy, tangy goat’s milk cheese. Lisa Seger of Blue Heron, which is located outside Houston, says you can also buy it at the Wine Cellar at the Salt Lick or you can contact them directly and they’ll ship it to you.
What locally made food products would you love to find in your stocking this year?
Permalink | | Categories: Desserts, Eating locally
December 2, 2010
From coffee to cocktails, Eat Local Week celebrates the best of Austin food
In the four years since the quarterly magazine hosted the first Eat Local Week, publisher Marla Camp says that it has gone from raising $500 in literal seed money to help Urban Roots buy seeds for its East Austin farm to last year bringing in more than $35,000 for the nonprofit that uses sustainable agriculture to teach teens leadership and business skills.
(The money raised from last year’s events helped Urban Roots to double the number of kids involved and triple the acreage they farm near U.S. 183 and the Colorado River, says Camp.)
View Edible Austin Eat Local Week 2010 in a larger map
Throughout the week, more than 50 restaurants and trailers that have donated to Urban Roots will be featuring locally sourced dishes.
This year, a dozen events will take place starting with a kickoff party at BookPeople on Friday night and ending with a Texas Craft Brewer Mini-Festival at Black Star Co-op on Dec. 11. You’ll find a list of participating restaurants, a detailed schedule and tickets online.
For the first time, Edible Austin is offering a $100 VIP pass, which gets you in to everything except the screening of “Chocolat” and the Michael Pollan talk and lets you skip to the front of the line at the festivals.
Here are some of the highlights:
On Saturday, the Urban Farm Bicycle Tour ($25 or $40 family) will take hundreds of cyclists from four starting points, including Bicycle Sport Shop, the Triangle and the farmers markets downtown and in Sunset Valley, to a handful of urban farms and community gardens in East Austin where they’ll meet with farmers and sample food made with produce grown from each farm. The tour culminates with a pig roast and harvest dinner ($35 or $20 with bike tour) at Springdale Farm.
Curvee Coffee in Spicewood is hosting Sunday’s Drink Local Coffee Festival ($10) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., featuring panels and plenty of coffee to sample.
On Monday night, Alamo Drafthouse chefs will prepare a chocolate-themed meal to serve during a screening of ‘Chocolat’ at the South Lamar Boulevard location ($65).
One my favorite events of the year is the Drink Local Night contest, which this year is taking place at Peche on Tuesday night. Sip on spirits from local distillers and watch Austin’s best bartenders compete ($25).
Stock up on locally made products, including desserts, olive oils, coffees, salsas, teas and chocolates, at the Local Holiday Gift Fair (free) at City Hall on Wednesday.
On Dec. 9, take a tour of local food, drinks and art during the Fine Art and Food Night ($20), which starts at Wally Workman Gallery, continues at the Austin Museum of Art downtown and ends at the nearby Arthouse.
“Omnivore’s Dilemma” author and food activist Michael Pollan will be speaking at Bass Concert Hall ($26-$42) on Dec. 10.
To help wrap up the week Dec. 11, I’ll be going head to head with FOX 7’s Nik Ciccone in a media celebrity cook-off at the downtown farmers’ market at 10 a.m., and the Black Star Beer Co-op will host the craft brewers’ festival from 2 to 5 p.m.
(A note: Keep your eyes peeled to Dustin Meyer’s blog for pictures during Eat Local Week. Dustin shot some amazing pictures at just about every event last year, and he’s planning to do the same this year. The photos in this entry are his, published with his permission.)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
November 19, 2010
Shop at farmers markets this weekend to localize your Thanksgiving
With about two dozen farmers markets in the Austin area, not to mention a growing number of community-supported agriculture programs, there’s no excuse for not being able to find fresh, locally grown produce.
We’ve recently updated our list of Austin-area farmers markets, and some of them, including Burnet, Dripping Springs, Round Rock and Buda, are hosting the last market day of the year this weekend.
In Austin, we’re lucky to have a number of year-round markets in all corners of the city, which makes it easy to incorporate seasonal ingredients into your cooking. In next week’s food section, which comes out on Monday instead of Wednesday, we’ve got tips and recipes for how to make your Thanksgiving a little greener by using locally grown, in-season foods. (You can find the full shopping list — don’t forget the kohlrabi! The creamy kohlrabi recipe we’re running is one of the best dishes I’ve had in a long while and is a nice substitute for green bean casserole — as well as last-minute resources for non-conventional turkeys in my Relish Austin column that appeared in the paper this week.)
View Central Texas Farmers Markets in a larger map
A note: While I was gone, the newly reopened Travis County Farmers Market on Burnet Road closed after being open for only about a month. The men who operated the market, Eric Snethkamp and Scott Spain, have relocated in a courtyard behind Cover 3 in the Village Shopping Center on Anderson Road. They are open there Monday through Friday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. On Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings, they have another market in front of the Big Lots near the intersection of Airport and Lamar Boulevards. Snethkamp told me today that while they have lots of locally grown produce, they will be sourcing some fruits and vegetables from farmers from outside the state during the winter months.
Also, in case you’re still confused about the situation with the farmers markets south of the river on Saturdays, here’s the deal: In March, the Sunset Valley Farmers Market moved to the parking lot near Dillard’s at Barton Creek Square mall and became the Barton Creek Farmers Market. The Sustainable Food Center, which operates the downtown and Triangle markets, opened a new market — now called the SFC Farmers Market at Sunset Valley — at the Toney Burger Center, near where the old market operated. Like all farmers market, each has its own personality and is packed with good food from local vendors. I hope you’ll check them out if you haven’t already.
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November 10, 2010
Splattered card carries recipe for a fall favorite -- apple cake
Although fall in Texas is just about the nicest six weeks of the year, I really miss Missouri this time of year.
Maybe you, too, came from a part of the country where fall means crisp afternoons and even crisper leaves to crunch through on a walk through the neighborhood.
Harvest means something different everywhere you go, but in the part of Missouri where I’m from, fall’s greatest harvest is apples from the nearby orchards in Marionville (home of the white squirrels. I’m not kidding).
During an October visit to see my family, I hit one of the last farmers markets of the year and made an apple cake with my grandmother.
(If you’ve been following along, she’s the grandma with the 150-year-old knife, not the one who gave me the juicer.)
This recipe came from Mary Lou Holmes, a friend of my grandmother’s and the wife of local notable and author Wayne Holmes.
‘1/4 c shortening, 1 ” sugar. Cream tog. Beat then add 1 egg. 1 c flour sifted with 1 tea soda, 1 ” cinnamon, 1 ” allspice. Put in 5 chopped apples and nuts. Bak 350 for 35 min’
Just as no one’s handwriting looks quite like my grandmother’s, and no ones hands, not even cooks 60 years younger, can peel an apple quite so quickly.
She relies on the recipe card, but these dishes that have comforted her and her family and friends through the years are made by feel as much as by following directions. She knows exactly the consistency she’s looking for in the dry and wet ingredients and how thick the batter should be going into the dish.
She knows her oven well enough to know that this particular cake will have to cook for nearly an hour in her 50-year-old oven.
Some might call this less of a cake and more of an apple bake, but it’s a cake in my vernacular. Texas apples are almost up for the year, but you might be able to find a few at area farmers markets this week.
Apple Cake
1/4 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 cup flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. allspice
4-5 apples, medium chop (my grandmother uses Jonathans)
1/2 cup pecans, chopped
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together shortening and sugar. When blended, add egg. In another bowl, sift together flour, baking soda, cinnamon and allspice. Combine wet and dry ingredients. Fold in apples and nuts. Bake at 350 degrees for 35 minutes.
— Mary Lou Holmes
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Cooking, Desserts, Eating locally, Recipes
November 3, 2010
Fan of Local Turkey?
The Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays are on the horizon, and holiday menu planning is about to ensue. While some are debating between sweet potatoes or mashed, green beans almondine or squash casserole, those who prefer locally-raised turkeys over store-bought will have one less spot to buy from.
This year, the Alexander Family Farm in Del Valle has decided to forgo selling their turkeys. The farm will still be providing eggs and beef.
More information is to come and for a list of where to buy other local turkeys, check out our list in next week’s Food & Life section.
Below is an email message from the Alexander Family Farm.
“The hardest part of our decision was knowing that we will miss seeing all of you. Thank you for your years of faithful patronage and we wish you and yours a very blessed Thanksgiving! - Kim and Gloria Alexander”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
October 10, 2010
ACL Food in Review
It’s Sunday and all those hungry mouths are taking their final bites and big gulps of ACL’S food and drink offerings. In the end, most people chose to stick with safe choices such as snow cones, hamburgers, fries, and of course, the all mighty chicken cone.
The distribution of the lines is quite uneven, with places such as The Mighty Cone, Snowie, P-Terry’s, and Maine Root Beverages drawing in the most crowds today, and truthfully, throughout the weekend.
Take a minute to look around, it seems as though restaurants aren’t pulling in as many hungry fans as one would expect. In this case, familiarity may breathe contempt when it comes to choosing what to eat. People don’t want to eat at restaurants at ACL. They want festival food, especially anything in a “cone-shape,” i.e. snow cones and chicken cones.
“I wouldn’t go to somewhere like Kerbey Lane at ACL because I go there all the time during the year,” Jenny Zhang, a festival attendee, said. “Plus, it’s so hot outside that all I really want is a snow cone.”
In terms of popularity, the chicken cone wins again and didn’t appear to have any close competitors.
“I heard the chicken cone was amazing and it looks really easy to eat. I’m certainly not disappointed,” Lauren May, a New York resident, said. “I don’t want to eat anything I can’t easily carry around with me.”
In all honesty, the cone is great, but the fact that so many Austin restaurants were selling at the festival that it’s a shame they didn’t bring in more of an audience. The best food I had was the bacon wrapped jalapeños from Olivia, the truffled macaroni and cheese from Lonesome Dove Western Bistro, the pulled pork sandwich from Stubb’s BBQ, and the fish and chips from Bess Bistro. And yes, the famous veggie burger from P-Terry’s found its way into my festival dining.
Judging from the photo evidence below, it seems as though people know what they want and they want what they want. My apologies to Austin restaurants.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Austin City Limits, Eating locally
October 9, 2010
Desserts find a home at ACL
With all the attention going to the barbecue, burger, and taco food vendors, it seems as though the beloved final course, dessert, isn’t getting its due at ACL this year. However, two Austin dessert staples, Tiff’s Treats and Amy’s Ice Cream, have their chocolate chips on and ice cream scoops in tow, ready to give the food scene a little sweetness to dive into, in a storm of savory overload.
Tiff’s Treats is known for their late-night deliveries and their delicious chocolate chip cookies, but at the festival, the attention falls to a different member of the Tiff’s Treats family. The Tiffwich, a chocolate chip ice cream cookie sandwich, is the biggest seller for the company at ACL. It was first introduced by the company in 1999, and the popular cookie sandwich has sold an estimated 5,000 Tiffwiches so far at this year’s festival, said Evan Jenkins, the Austin marketing director for Tiff’s Treats.
“It’s our first year here [at ACL], and we couldn’t be more thrilled with the way things are going,” he said. “We are starting to go to other festivals, but ACL is really the crown jewel of them all.”
Amy’s Ice Cream, unlike Tiff’s Treats, is not new to the grassy fields of ACL. The Austin ice cream store has been at the festival since its beginning nine years ago. Now, it’s something festival-goers have come to expect to see and eat.
“Amy’s is such a part of Austin, and it was really was a no-brainer from the beginning to be included in something like this,” Carol Campbell, the catering manager of Amy’s Ice Cream, said. “I’ve noticed there are so many more Austin fine dining places included [in the festival] this year. The food has definitely been taken up a notch.”
Amy’s available ice cream flavors for sale at the festival are Mexican Vanilla, Belgian Chocolate, Oreo, and Zilker MInt Chip. Mexican Vanilla has always been the company’s best seller at the storefronts and also at the festival, Campbell said.
“Belgian chocolate is the close second, and we brought Oreo because we wanted to give people that cookie texture to crunch on, and also because kids love it” she said. “Zilker Mint Chip was created in honor of ACL, so we obviously had to bring that with us too.”
This is the first year the ice cream store is selling floats at the festival, and Campbell said they are selling quite well, especially the Root Beer float.
So, in the midst of scarfing down all those entrees and listening to all that music, make sure your sweet tooth leaves satisfied.
Permalink | | Categories: Austin City Limits, Desserts, Eating locally, Snacks
October 8, 2010
Restaurants have arrived at ACL
Serving at the festival for the first time, Austin restaurants Olivia, Hyde Park Bar & Grill, and Bess Bistro have tweaked their usual menus and prepared boatloads of food for the ravenous ACL-goers.
Even though James Holmes, the chef and owner of Olivia, previously assisted Austin’s Best Burger at the festival, this is the first time he has brought his own restaurant’s food to ACL. Holmes ordered 200 pounds of cayenne pepper and assembled 15,000 bacon wrapped cheddar jalapenos ($5) to serve over the next three days.
In the midst of the madness of preparation, Holmes said he knew he wanted his menu to represent the South as well as Olivia, by including Southern comfort food such as a colossal bucket of fried chicken ($29, serves 4 people) and a Creole-inspired baked potato topped with okra ($6).
“We wanted to make food that would be easy to eat,” Holmes said. “And It doesn’t get any better than a bucket of fried chicken.”
Hyde Park Bar & Grill also wanted to maintain the integrity of its restaurant’s menu by serving their signature fries ($7). Preparing to come to the festival for the first time, executive chef Martin Frannea said he consulted previous vendors The Best Wurst and Boomerang’s Pies for advice on how much food to prepare for the stampedes of fans.
“The most important step in preparing is meeting with other vendors who can be honest about what to expect,” Frannea said. “We have close to 10,000 pounds of food for the weekend.”
He values how the ACL’s offering stay away from the traditional carnival food.
“The food here doesn’t come from huge corporations,” Frannea said. “We aren’t a corndog town. Austin loves to highlight their restaurants and we are glad to be a part of that this year.”
Amy Hughes, an attendee at the festival, had never heard of Bess Bistro before, but said she came running when she saw their semolina-crusted artichokes. She appreciates the unique menu options many of the vendors have.
“I have to have something unusual at a concert like this,” Hughes said. “I wouldn’t want fast food.”
Permalink | | Categories: Austin City Limits, Cooking, Eating locally, Eating out
September 3, 2010
Former chicken farmer making school food healthier, one lunch at a time
In the past few years, it’s no coincidence that the number of Austinites starting food businesses has grown while the economy continues to sink.
Food entrepreneurs abound, especially in a place like Austin because the people who live here are willing to support new businesses on blind faith and an empty stomach. There’s a waiting list, for example, for non-farm vendors at several local farmers markets because there are already so many food artisan vendors, and there’s not a week that goes by that we don’t highlight a new food business (pastry companies seem particularly popular this year) in the food section’s Food Matters.
In this week’s section, I wrote about Jeremy Barnwell, a chicken farmer-turned-school cook who saw a need for healthful, affordable school lunches at his wife’s Tarrytown private school and decided he could be the one to make it better.
Barnwell has started his second school year at Rawson-Saunders School, where he served mostly local and seasonal meals made from as many sustainable ingredients as possible.
Under Texas law, private schools don’t receive any federal money to subsidize lunches and they aren’t even required to provide a lunch option to students. Nearly 10 local private schools work with Patricia’s Lunchbox, a company run by Austin foodies Patricia Bauer-Slate and Jane King, so that students have the option of buying lunches made from scratch instead of pizzas and hamburgers that have been reheated in an oven.
We care more now than ever about what we are eating, and it’s inspiring to see how people who are passionate about food are finding business opportunities in this struggling economy.
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August 31, 2010
New farmers market to open in Salado
Salado, the small town just north of Austin off Interstate 35, is getting a farmers market.
Starting this Saturday, farmers, ranchers and artisan food purveyors will be selling their products at the Adela’s Farmers Market at 302 N. Main St. from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Market managers Jennifer and Kelly Angell, who also own Adelea’s On Main Bistro, say that to help kick off the fall season of the market, there will be live music, oven-fired pizza and wine by the glass available for sale. Kelly Angell says that the market will accept Women, Infant and Children vouchers as well as SNAP, formerly known as food stamp, benefits.
“As chefs we really care about where our food comes from and it’s frustrating to think we have to drive all the way to Austin where you can find the widest variety of local products in one place,” Jennifer Angell says. “We, like most people, don’t have the time to hunt down local farmers and go to each individual place in order to get the freshest ingredients.”
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August 26, 2010
Locally grown seaweed? In Austin? You read that right.
In a landlocked city like Austin, “local” and “seaweed” aren’t two words you’re likely to read in the same sentence, but Lewis Weil is changing that with his new company, Austin Sea Veggies.
After reading an article about how many of the world’s commercial seaweed beds are being contaminated with pollution, he started researching how to grow seaweed in aquaculture beds. He found a few varieties that grow well and taste good and is now selling them at the Sustainable Food Center’s Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley on Saturdays.
“There’s a lot more interest than I thought there would be,” Weil says. He knows there’s a certain novelty to his product, but he thinks Austinites are just open to finding interesting ways to use new products. “It works well as a green or an herb in a salad, miso soup or sandwiches,” he says. “Or you can use it as a filling in sushi or served with rice.”
He sells two varieties of seaweed (the coarse, moss-like ogonori and a large, thin-leafed sea lettuce) together in a mixed packed ($5).
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August 10, 2010
Travis County Farmers Market on Burnet reopening Saturday
Updated August 24 with new hours of operation.
The Travis County Farmer’s Market, 6701 Burnet Road, closed in 2007, but Lexington farmer Eric Snethkamp (left, with Scott Spain) has reopened it as a Wednesday-through-Sunday farmstand market on Saturday.
“We signed the lease to the be only produce vendors,” he says, “but whatever we don’t grow, we’ll co-op with other local farmers in the area.” Snethkamp says he’s built a dedicated customer base, especially with his tomatoes and watermelons, by selling at smaller locations around town. “There are certain things we do very well, and we don’t try to be everything to everybody,” he says. He says they plan to host workshops as the year progresses and “we’ll add things as we grow and get better,” including honey by the end of the month.
The market, located outdoors but under shade, is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesdays through Fridays and 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturdays.
Photo by Larry Kolvoord for the Austin American-Statesman.
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July 20, 2010
In the mood for Indian? Curries by Design offers same-day delivery
Some nights, especially during the workweek, you just don’t feel like cooking.
Eating out is always an option, but Curries by Design, a local catering and meal delivery service company, allows you to order Indian fusion meals for same-day delivery during the first half of the week.
Owner Aparna Nayani says that as long as you order online by noon on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday, one of her staff will deliver your order between 6 and 9 p.m. the same day. (Delivery to just about anywhere in Central Texas is free for orders over $40.)
Nayani, who first started to cook as a teenager living in Houston, says the menu is different each week because she’s always coming up with new dishes like tikka paneer quesadillas, spicy creole pasta and kebab-inspired sliders and meatballs to serve alongside traditional fare including samosas, curries, korma and keema. “I take world cuisine and try to incorporate Indian flavors into it,” she says. “It’s a never-ending process.”
During the second half of the week and weekends, Curries by Design switches gears into catering mode, preparing food for corporate events and weddings.
In a few weeks, the company is launching “Lap of Luxury,” a line of cookies that will feature flavors including masala chai, rose pistachio and saffron cardamom.
Photos by Jarrad Henderson for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Eating out
July 13, 2010
Smithsonian chef to prepare Native American dinner in Goldthwaite to raise money for museum
Goldthwaite is best known in the food world for its annual goat cook-off, but this weekend, the small town about an hour and a half northwest of Austin will host a fundraiser dinner that will feature the chef of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Richard Hetzler was the executive chef at the Museum of Natural History in 2003 when he helped develop the idea for a cafe serving seasonal indigenous foods that are the staples of native cultures in North and South America. The result is the Museum of the American Indian’s Mitsitam Cafe, which Hetzler now runs. (He also wrote “The Mitsitam Cafe Cookbook,” which comes out in November.)
Earlier this year, Fischer was dining at the cafe in Washington D.C. when she asked Hetzler if he wouldn’t mind sharing a few ideas for what to serve at a Native American-themed fundraiser dinner for the new museum. ” ‘How about if I cook it for you?’, he said,” Fischer recalls.
This weekend, Hetzler and several other officials from the Museum of the American Indian will be in Goldthwaite to consult with members of the Native American Interpretive Center’s board and attend the dinner on Saturday night, which will feature Native American dishes including sweet corn cakes, corn-infused crab cakes, grilled rosemary quail, calabaza squash soup, buffalo tenderloin and warm chocolate tamales.
Brennan Vineyards in Comanche will provide wines paired with each course. Fischer says there are still a few tickets ($200) available and that you can buy them by calling her at (325) 642-7527.
Photos from the Native American Interpretive Center and the National Museum of the American Indian.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, On the road
Olive oils, balsamic vinegars from new(ish) Dripping Springs company
We might not have the Mediterranean Sea, but Texas certainly shares the climate of many grape- and olive-growing countries in southern Europe.
In the 1970s, Texans wanting to get into the wine business figured out that they could grow varietals here that do well in the dry, hot climates of southern France, Spain, Italy and even Greece.
By the mid-1990s, the same thing was starting to happen with olive trees, and now, twenty years later, the Texas olive oil industry is a small, but growing industry.
One local newcomer is Texas Hill Country Olive Oil, a company founded in 2008 that is co-owned by brothers-in-law Rick Mensik and John Gambini.
Located on a 17-acre organic ranch near Dripping Springs, Texas Hill Country Olive Oil Company got a jump start on oil production in early 2009 by bringing in olive trees from California that were old enough to start producing fruit.
“The minute we put them in the ground, they started fruiting,” says Gambini, who noted that the company is halfway toward its goal of putting 2,000 trees in the ground. “The first batch was small, but it’ll be two more years before we’re 100 percent.”
In October, they’ll pick the next round of olives, which will be milled on site. After resting for 30 days in barrels, the oil will be bottled and put up for sale. (In early October, Gambini says they’ll be hosting a grand opening event to showcase the art gallery, tasting room and other amenities that he hopes will draw people to the ranch.)
Earlier this year, the company diversified its product line by adding balsamic vinegars imported from Modena, Italy. Gambini says that he wants to experiment with making his own balsamic next year from Trebbiano grapes imported from California.
Inspired by a segment on TV about lobster fishermen in Maine who allow customers to adopt lobster traps, Gambini started allowing customers to adopt olive trees for about $175, which guarantees them six bottles of olive oil, several of which can be printed with custom labels.
Photo of olives from Texas Hill Country Olive Oil Company’s Flickr stream.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
July 12, 2010
Seasonal ice cream, gluten-free treats at Thai Fresh
It always amazes me that Thai Fresh has only been around since 2008.
Walking into the Thai restaurant tucked away in South Austin at the corner of West Mary and South Fifth streets, you’d think the place had been there for a decade. Thai grocery goods and fresh produce line the back wall. Regulars sip on tea while reading or chatting with friends, and there’s always buzz near the counter where you order from a range of rice and noodle dishes, curries, satays, soups and other Thai specialties.
Even though it’s just a toddler in restaurant years, Thai Fresh doubled in size earlier this year when co-owner Jam Sanitchat took over the space next door that used to be a yoga studio. The extra square footage has allowed her to add an ice cream freezer stocked with 14 seasonal frozen treats, a dessert case with an array of pastries, many of which are gluten free, and a tea bar, which features local teas from Zhi Tea, Sesa Tea and Barefoot Botanicals.
Like the food, all of the ice creams and desserts are based on seasonal and local ingredients, including herbs from Sanitchat’s backyard garden and fruit from local farmers markets. More than half the tarts, pies, cakes, cobblers, brownies, cookies and bars ($.75-$4.50 per serving) are made without gluten, and many of the ice creams ($8.99 per pint or $1.99 per scoop), including the ever-present chocolate, are made with coconut milk and are dairy free.
During a recent visit, Sanitchat was serving scoops of ice cream in flavors such as fig, sweet potato maple pecan, Thai basil, oatmeal raisin and Sweet Desert Delight, which is made with a cinnamon, coconut and anise rooibos blend that is one of Zhi Tea’s best-selling teas.
Many of Sanitchat’s inventive fruit-based flavor combinations like ginger peach, watermelon mint and cucumber melon eventually make their way into agua frescas ($2.99) that are also a recent addition to the menu.
Is your mouth watering yet? There are few restaurant owners who take eating locally, especially when it comes to desserts, as serious as Sanitchat does. One of the best parts? She’s always sharing recipes on her blog, Thai Cooking with Jam.
Photos by Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Desserts, Eating locally
July 8, 2010
UPDATED: Vendors, customers flocking to farmers market near Cedar Park
UPDATE: Starting July 17, the Cedar Park market will be moving down 183 to the Lakeline Mall between Sears and Dillards.
Walking among the booths at the Cedar Park Farms to Market, you’d never know the farmers market has only been open three months.
Dozens of vendors line up in a parking lot behind the Market 1890 Ranch Shopping Center at the corner of 183A and FM 1431 selling fresh produce, locally raised meats and dairy products and specialty items such as pecans from Schwegmann Orchard in Georgetown, baking mixes from a Cedar Park company called Blessed Blends and homemade dips from Juanita Garcia, aka Aunt Nita, who has been a staple at local farmers markets for years. One of the most unusual products is yak meat from Texas Yaks, a ranch near Weatherford.
Market director Carla Jenkins says the market, which is open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturdays, has grown steadily since it opened in March and that later this summer, she’ll be organizing a new market in the Lake Travis/Lakeway area.
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July 6, 2010
Urban Roots builds community, cooking skills through lunches
School is out for the summer, but the work isn’t over for local high school students who are part of YouthLaunch’s Urban Roots program.
If you’ve ever been to an Edible Austin event or shopped at the farmers markets downtown or at the Triangle, you’ve probably heard of or seen Urban Roots students in action. (In fact, Urban Roots is the benefactor of the money raised during Eat Local Week, the December celebration of all things local sponsored by Edible Austin.)
The 30 teens who made the cut for the program, which teaches leadership and development skills through sustainable agriculture, will continue to harvest vegetables and sell them at local farmers markets through the end of July.
This year, they’ll grow more than 30,000 pounds of produce, a third of which is donated to local nonprofits, and during the past few weeks, some of the food they’ve grown has gone to community lunches that the students prepare with the help of a local chef.
On an early morning a few weeks ago, a handful of teens met in the kitchen of La Condesa with chef René Ortiz, who helped put on his first community lunch last year.
“I call it a community chaos dinner,” Ortiz said jokingly as he maneuvered between stations, guiding his new cooks in how to chop chives or cut up eggplant. “This is what everybody looks forward to,” said Garza High School student Leffler Ramey as he plucked leaves off New Zealand spinach plants in the cool restaurant kitchen. “It’s a nice change to be working inside instead of on the farm.”
With the addition of a few other ingredients donated by Bastrop Cattle Company and Farm to Table, Ortiz and the students made enchiladas, chiles rellenos, fried okra, quinoa salad and jalapeño poppers that they served a few hours later under the shade of trees near rows of tomato and okra plants on the Urban Roots farm.
Ethan Holmes of Snap Kitchen will work with the students for the final community lunch of the summer on Friday, which sold out a few weeks ago. (Teresa Wilson of Aquarelle and Jack Gilmore of Jack Allen’s Kitchen led two other community lunches this summer.)
But just because the community lunches are almost over for the year doesn’t mean you can’t get involved with one of the most interesting youth development programs in the area. Visit the website for information about joining the community-supported agriculture program or buy produce from them at the farmers market on Saturday downtown and at the Triangle on Wednesdays. You can also work with the students on the farm on upcoming community volunteer days (from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday and 8 a.m. to noon on July 20, 22, 27 and 29.)
UPDATE: I just found out that Snap Kitchen, which has two Austin locations, is hosting a garden/kitchen tool supply drive for Urban Roots next week. Starting Monday, bring in an item from Urban Roots’ wish list and get a free menu item.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
June 29, 2010
Monica Pope to teach in Austin as part of tour for online cookbook
The book, Eat Where Your Food Lives (available online only, $35), features more than 100 recipes and reflects Pope’s signature style of cooking in-season, locally grown produce that she’s featured in her Houston restaurant t’afia since it opened more than six years ago. (She’s so committed to promoting local farmers and seasonal produce that the restaurant is the site of a weekly farmers market.)
And just because the new book is only available online doesn’t mean she’s not out on tour to promote it. She’ll be in Austin on Wednesday to teach a class at 6:30 p.m. at Central Market North. (Tickets $65.)
Pope’s cookbook is published by the Austin-based company, Keeper Collection, which has published digital cookbooks from fellow Texas chefs David Bull and Paul Petersen.
Permalink | | Categories: Celebs in the Kitchen, Cooking, Eating locally
June 18, 2010
Springdale Farm, new kid on the East Austin block, is bursting with tomatoes
Within one square mile off East Seventh Street in East Austin, you’ll find four urban farms. Almost 20 years ago, Carol Ann Sayle and Larry Butler paved the way with Boggy Creek, and in the past three years, Rain Lily, HausBar and now Springdale farms have followed.
But the farms and the farmers who run them aren’t just geographically close. Paula and Glenn Foore, who planted the first seeds at Springdale Farm in January of 2008, say their neighbors have been nothing but supportive as they’ve cultivated their 5 acres in the past year and a half.
“Dorsey (Barger of HausBar) will send an e-mail to all of us, ‘What are you all doing about these effing leaf-footed bugs?’,” Paula Foore told me earlier this week while we cooled off in the air-conditioned office that doubles as a farm stand on particularly hot Saturdays and Wednesdays.
In addition to their community-supported agriculture program, the Foores, who recently hosted a Dai Due Supper Club dinner, have started selling directly to chefs around town, and they just added the Wednesday farm stand this week to unload the hundreds of heirloom tomatoes that seemed to ripen simultaneously.
(The farm stand, 755 Springdale Road, is open from around 9 a.m. to at least 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Wednesdays, and you can check on their website to find out what they’ll likely be selling each week.)
It was great to get to know Paula and Glenn this week. They are great additions to the local food scene, and like their fellow East Austin farmers and in the true Austin spirit, have decided to chose community over competition.
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June 9, 2010
Butter, sugar and a little bit of magic make Hope & Glory Pastry treats stand out
I like the way Jesse Kelly-Landes thinks about sweets.
The owner of Hope & Glory Pastry says that pastries should be an indulgence. “It’s not a treat for good behavior. It’s not just for special occasions,” she writes on her website. “No day is complete without a sweet little nibble or a morsel of something rich and buttery.”
Kelly-Landes was a clothing designer in Austin when she realized that her though her “hobby gone haywire” was fun, she didn’t feel compelled to learn any more about it. “The only thing I wanted to learn about was food, and I saw that as a sign that I needed to change.”
She enrolled in a six-month pastry program at the San Francisco Baking Institute, where she thought she’d learn to become a bread baker, “but once I was there, I just fell in love with the pastry,” she says. “I still love bread, but I don’t want to make it in large quantities.”
She moved back to Austin and eventually started Hope & Glory, which launched with five products ($2.50-$3.50 each or $8-$11 per half dozen): brown butter shortbread, salted pecan praline polvorones, raspberry chipotle chocolate rugelach, a pecan-, caramel- and chocolate-topped salty sweet butter cookie called a magic bar and a gluten-free, spiced-filled meringue ball. To make the items, Landes uses local ingredients as much as possible, including eggs, pecan and honey.
The Magic Bar and the Meringue Épice are two of her tastiest and most unique creations (not to say that the shortbread isn’t anything short of divine).
For the meringue, Kelly-Landes says she was inspired by an Egyptian spice blend of nuts, coriander and cumin called dukka. “There are a lot of gluten-free desserts, but I’m never going to make a gluten-free version of chocolate chip cookie that I love as much as the original, so why not making something totally different,” she says.
It’s hard to say if it’s the pecans or the caramel or the sable breton crust that make the Magic Bar stand out, but the combination of salty sweet buttery flavors makes this one of the best locally made sweets I’ve tried in a long time.
You can buy Hope & Glory pastries at several shops around Austin, including Whip In, Cafe Caffeine, Genuine Joe, Royal Blue Grocery, Little City Coffee, Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, Breed and Co. and Farmhouse Delivery and online through Etsy.
To celebrate the launch of the company, Kelly-Landes is hosting a party at Bows + Arrows on South Lamar Boulevard from noon to 4 p.m. on Saturday with sweet treats and cocktails.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Desserts, Eating locally
June 8, 2010
Market Watch: Gulf seafood, ZubikHouse trailer, plums
Everybody asks about it, so Roberto San Miguel finally had to put up a sign:
Yes, seafood from the Texas side of the Gulf is fine to eat. No, the oil slick from the BP spill that is still gushing off the coast of Louisiana hasn’t made its way to the western part of the Gulf, which means that the shrimp, red snapper and other fish from the Freeport and Port Isabel area that San Miguel Seafood sells to both customers at the farmers market and local restaurants is safe to eat.
San Miguel says that the negative perception is having almost the same effect on sales as if the oil had floated this way instead of toward Alabama, Mississippi and Florida. Shrimp season is just around the corner and, barring any hurricanes whipping the slick hundreds of miles in a different direction, Texas shrimpers will make their hauls just like any other year.
Peaches have been getting all the love lately, but plums are also for sale at local farmers markets. I found these beautiful baskets at the downtown farmers market on Saturday.
Another fun addition to the downtown market is the ZubikHouse trailer, which features locally sourced dishes, including breakfast (kolaches and a spin on eggs Benedict were on the menu on Saturday) and desserts like fried strawberries. Andy Zubik, who also has a catering business, will soon be expanding to the Sunset Valley market on Saturdays.
UPDATE: Knitted or other crafted foods have become quite popular in recent years, and Vicky Chazan has started a company called Toys for Dogs, which sells knitted, squeaky dog treats. I found them at the Sunset Valley market a few weeks ago, but the best way to order them is online or by phone (512-468-6427). They might officially be dog treats, but I know of a few kids who might get just as much enjoyment from these toy fruits and vegetables.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally
June 4, 2010
Pick your own blueberries just east of Austin
Starting Saturday, Chickamaw Organic Farm in McDade will be open for pick-your-own blueberries.
Most of the pick-your-own blueberry farms in Texas are in the east/northeast part of the state, so to have a place less than an hour from Austin is pretty exciting for a Missouri girl like myself who stained her fingers blue picking blueberries and blackberries every June.
Pick-your-own berries (certified organic and biodynamically grown) at Chickamaw are $6 a pint, and you can only pick on the weekends. Call (512) 567-3456 if you have questions.
Directions: Go eight miles past Elgin on 290 to the little community of McDade. Look for a blinking light and turn right onto FM 2336, aka Swiftex Road. Continue approximately 2 miles or so and turn left onto Oak Hill Cemetery Road. Follow road exactly 2.1 miles (mark your odometer) to the Chickamaw gate on left hand side of the road.
Permalink | Comments (8) | Categories: Eating locally
May 25, 2010
Peach season is here! Celebrate with refrigerator jam
Central Texas peach growers have had a rough few years with the weather.
Too much rain, too little rain. Mild winters, late freezes. Hail, gullywashers. You name it, peach growers have faced it. After a number of lackluster seasons, it looks like this will be a good, if not great, year for peaches.
(I hope this doesn’t jinx anything, but I’ve even been hearing whispers that Hill Country farmers could be in for a bumper crop.)
Peaches have been at local farmers markets for a few weeks now, and roadside stands are starting to pop up all over town. Last week at a stand operated by Melody Taylor in front of Jaya Furniture, 902 N. Lamar Blvd., I bought a few pounds of Sentinel peaches grown at Zenner Farm.
Just down the road at the southeast corner of South Lamar Boulevard and Bluebonnet, Ron and Dianne Laird are selling Flavorich and Springold peaches from Mark Prehan Orchard in Stonewall.
I’m working on a story about quick pickles and refrigerator jams for next week’s paper, so I came home and, in just a few steps, turned the peaches into a peach ginger jam.
Rather than go through the process of actually preserving the jam in jars by canning them in a water bath, I made what’s called refrigerator or freezer jam. No matter what fruit you’re using, the process is the same: Cut up the fruit and heat it in a saucepan with sugar and an acid like lemon juice. (You can add pectin to thicken the jam, but most fruit, especially the skins, contain enough pectin naturally that it’s not necessary to add any extra.)
Peaches don’t have as much pectin as, say, citrus fruits, but that’s where the lemon juice and sugar comes in. The mixture thickens as it reduces, and you can test to see if it is thick enough for jam by placing a small spoonful on a cold plate and returning the plate to the freezer. After a few minutes, check the consistency of the jam. If it’s still too runny, cook a little while longer and then test again.
While the fruit mixture is reducing on the stove, place a few clean jars and lids in a pot of water and bring to a boil. Simmer for 10 minutes to sterilize and remove with tongs.
Once the jam has reached desired consistency, use a funnel or a spoon to fill the jars and let cool. Screw on lids and refrigerate. (You can also use plastic freezer jars, like the kind made by Bell, and store them in the freezer until you’re ready to use.)
I added minced ginger to this batch of peach jam while it was cooking, but you can experiment with adding other fruits, herbs, honey or even liqueur. The jam will keep for several weeks in the fridge, so don’t make a huge batch unless you eat a lot of jam or plan to give some away.
I made just more than two cups of jam from about two pounds of peaches, 1/2 cup sugar and one 1-inch piece of ginger, minced.
Easier, not to mention less messy, than a from-scratch peach pie, but don’t think for a second that I’ll let this peach season go by without making one of those, too.
How are you enjoying the season’s first peaches? Have you ever made refrigerator jam before?
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Cooking, Eating locally
May 21, 2010
Making sorbet from the last of the loquats
Have you tried a loquat yet?
Trees all over the city have been loaded with these small yellowish-orange fruits for the past few weeks. I unofficially declared the first week of May as Loquat Awareness Week, and it looks like you still have another week or so before the squirrels, birds and heat get to these little delicious, easily foraged fruits.
My neighbor’s loquat tree produced fruit for the first time this year, so last weekend, we gathered a basketful to make loquat sorbet.
I found a few recipes for nectarine and apricot sorbet and threw together a frozen treat that looks like ice cream but doesn’t have any dairy.
After tediously peeling them and removing their guts (seeds and their protective skin), I mashed the fruit over medium heat in a saucepan with sugar, lemon juice and a splash of vodka.
After 45 minutes or so in the trusty thrift-store ice cream maker , I had a frozen treat that I shared with the neighbors whose tree I foraged.
They flipped out that such a delicious dessert was made from something so easily overlooked.
Christian from Austin Food Journal isn’t letting a single loquat go to waste. He’s running them through a food mill so he can make cocktails like the loquat sour that the Tipsy Texans served at the Sustainable Food Center’s Farm to Plate fundraiser in early May.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
May 18, 2010
Making farmers market pie with pizza delivery driver/blogger
A Pizza Girl knows a thing or two about pie.
She’s been delivering pizzas in Austin for a year and a half. When she’s not dropping off pizzas — hoping, by the way, that customers will know that the delivery fee doesn’t go to her and that a $3 tip just barely covers the time and effort to make the delivery in the first place — she’s helping prepare them in a kitchen stocked with premade dough and frozen ingredients.
Against company policy, she and her coworkers eat slices from pizzas that don’t turn out right or that are made with the wrong ingredients, which means she eats a lot of pizza.
She works another tech-related job during the day, and after she’s done delivering pizzas, she comes home and writes Diary of a Pizza Girl, an anonymous blog about the adventures of being a delivery driver. (She also has a guest blogging gig on Slice, the national pizza blog from Serious Eats.)
Needless to say, there isn’t much time to cook, which is why her fridge is empty.
When restaurant critic Mike Sutter set out to do a story about pizza delivery for this week’s food section, I asked Pizza Girl to snap a picture of her fridge to share with Relish Austin readers.
She had a better idea: Let’s make pizza.
She didn’t want to just make any old pie; she wanted to make one using ingredients from a farmers market, a slow pizza made from scratch that’s exactly that opposite of the kind she delivers every night.
So we made a pizza date for Saturday. We started at the Barton Creek Farmers Market, where Jim Richardson sells the freshly ground whole wheat flour we’d need for the dough.
We passed on these delicious looking oyster mushrooms and went straight for tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli and Full Quiver mozzarella cheese.
We spent $17 on ingredients, far less than you’d expect to pay for a piping hot, already-made pizza from her employer.
She’d never made a pizza from whole ingredients, so, using Mark Bittman’s trusty recipe, I showed her how to make the dough while she cut up the vegetables.
We heated up the tomatoes with sliced onion and garlic, pulled straight from my backyard garden, and reduced the mixture into a sauce while the yeast worked its magic on the flour.
We were only able to let the dough rise for about an hour, which meant it was a far cry from the perfectly proofed dough Pizza Girl usually works with, but this is where her expertise came in handy.
Using a special technique with her middle and ring fingers, she pushed the dough down and under to create a moat of sorts that would make for a thick, well-established crust. As she turned the dough, she formed the edges and built up a mound in the center. She slowly flattened the pie by picking up the dough and slapping it from forearm to forearm. No rolling pin required.
Because Bittman’s recipe makes two pies, I tried my hand on the second one and it wasn’t nearly as round and even as hers, but I’m definitely going to use her technique the next time I make a pizza at home.
Pizza Girl knew exactly how much sauce to spread without making the dough too soggy, and to my surprise, she put almost all of the ingredients underneath the cheese before putting the pizza in the oven.
About 15 minutes later — just more than two hours after we bought all the ingredients at the market — she pulled out a nice-looking pizza that, despite being made on hurried and slightly over-salted dough, tasted fresh and full of flavor, not at all greasy or like the toppings had been defrosted in a plastic bag.
We ate our slices and Pizza Girl was off, just a few hours from starting her next delivery shift.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Cooking, Eating locally, Playing with your food
May 17, 2010
Market Watch: First peaches, soil-grown tomatoes and a drop-off for compost scraps
If you haven’t been to a farmers market in a while, get there now before it starts to hit 90 degrees by 10 a.m. It’s just about the most pleasant time of year to stroll the booths, and you can still buy lots of cool weather crops like greens and carrots, as well as summer highlights, including peaches.
The heat has been good to local tomato growers.
Jo Dwyer of Angel Valley Farm Northwest of Austin says that customers at their farmstands snapped up the first of their soil-grown tomatoes and that more will be available this week at both the Jonestown farmstand (9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays at the blinking yellow light on FM 1431 in Jonestown, 8 miles west of Cedar Park) and the Northwest Austin stand (10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesdays at 11713 Jollyville Road at the Asian American Cultural Center) .
It’s hard to say if pigs, chickens or farmers love food scraps more.
The first two happily eat the kitchen chum we so readily discard, and farmers turn it into nutrient-rich compost that helps their vegetables grow. If you don’t have your own compost pile, you can now save your food scraps and drop them off at the downtown farmers market on Saturday and the Triangle market on Wednesdays.
Market director Suzanne Santos says the food scraps go to either Animal Farm, Winfield Farm or Engel Farm. She says they’ll set up a Drop Spot system at the Sunset Valley Saturday market at a later date, when they get a sponsor and have enough volunteers. The first kiosks are sponsored by Wheatsville Food Co-op.
Not sure what you can compost? Just about everything that was once living that’s not meat or dairy, including paper. (Paper and cardboard are best recycled, but you can compost that entire that paper coffee filter full of grounds.)
Lots happening at area markets right now. What exciting things have you found lately?
Tomato photo from Jo Dwyer, compost drop-off photo of Sarah and Calum Worthy with their friend Chris Mallory from the Sustainable Food Center.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally
May 5, 2010
Southern food talk, 'Edible' book signing with Edible Austin
Edible Austin magazine is sponsoring two fun events this week:
- Join a discussion with some of Austin’s Southern food experts and enjoy samples of cocktails, beer and food at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the Austin Museum of Art, 823 Congress Ave. The event, which is part of an ongoing series of museum and food activities hosted with Edible Austin magazine, will feature food scholar Elizabeth Engelhardt, author and blogger Toni Tipton-Martin and chef Jack Gilmore. Also on hand will be Tracey Ryder and Carole Topalian, founders of Edible Community, who have just released a cookbook called “Edible, a Celebration of Local Foods.” $15, $10 for museum members. Visit the website for information and tickets.
- At 7 p.m. Friday, Ryder and Topalian will be signing copies of “Edible” at BookPeople, 603 N. Lamar Blvd. The book is a compilation of the best articles and recipes from the more than 65 Edible publications, including Edible Austin. Local farmers, producers and chefs will be on hand, and local food and drinks will also be available.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food
April 29, 2010
Johnson's Backyard Garden teams up with Whole Foods
As one of the area’s community-supported agriculture programs, Johnson’s Backyard Garden is always looking for new pick-up locations for its CSA subscribers.
CSA subscribers pick up boxes of produce once a week instead of buying that produce at a grocery store, which makes a new partnership between Johnson’s and Whole Foods Market particularly interesting.
Farmer Brenton Johnson met staff from Whole Foods Markets after the Slow Money Showcase at City Hall last week.
Johnson says they were able to work out an agreement where, staring next week, CSA members could pick up boxes of Johnson’s produce at the customer service counter at Whole Foods Market downtown. (You can sign up for the CSA online.)
Johnson also says that starting in about a month, Whole Foods wills start buying wholesale produce, starting with tomatoes and eggplants, from them on a regular basis to sell in area stores.
(In the photo above, farm intern Marissa Lankes weaves string around stakes to shore tomato plants on Thursday at Johnson’s Backyard Garden, where farm staff have planted about twenty-thousand plants in the ground.)
“They want to help us get equipment like a greens harvester and a bagging and wash line to grow and process stuff that they want to sell like baby spinach and salad mix,” Johnson says.
Another benefit, Johnson says, hopes to see come out of this new working relationship is that Whole Foods can train his staff in food safety as well as harvesting, packaging and post-harvest handling.
Photo by Alberto Martinez for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
Stay on the lookout for small orange fruits during Loquat Awareness Week
Have you seen this fruit?
These little orange fruits are called loquats, and they taste like a cross between an apricot and a kiwi (and no, they aren’t related to kumquats.)
I first tried them when I was living in Spain, where they are called nisperos and you can buy them by the kilo. I had no idea anyone grew them in the U.S., so you can imagine my surprise when I moved to Austin and found them in yards all over the city.
And the saddest part? Most homeowners lucky enough to have a loquat tree in their yard consider them a nuisance because the fruit overripens, makes a mess on the ground and attracts a ton of squirrels and birds.
Pear, peach, apple and lemon trees are prized for their fruit output, but everyone overlooks the lowly loquat, even though it produces one of my favorite fruits.
This is why I’m declaring the first week of May to be Loquat Awareness Week in Austin.
For the next week, keep your eyes peeled for these little orange jewels, and when you find one that is bright and is just soft enough to feel like a ripe nectarine, give it a taste and let me know what you think.
(You can eat the skin, but I prefer to peel mine before eating, and don’t eat the large smooth seed inside.)
If you find yourself with a huge crop of loquats, you can make jam or even cocktails and entire loquat feast like the Tipsy Texans did a few years ago.
I can’t even begin to tell you how many pounds of these nisperos we ate in Spain, and it makes me nostalgic every time I eat them here, even though I have to forage to get them.
Of note: Renee Studebaker of Renee’s Roots says that there probably won’t be as many loquats ripening on trees right now because of the harsh winter. Did your loquat tree produce many fruits this year? She says many of the Hyde Park trees don’t have fruit, but I’ve seen several loquat trees in South Austin with plenty of fruit.
Permalink | Comments (7) | Categories: Eating locally
April 15, 2010
Hill Country Wine & Food Fest: Stone House Vineyard luncheon
Bluebonnets and wine are excellent excuses to visit the Hill Country this time of year.
It just so happens that we’re having a banner year for wildflowers, including the beloved state flower, which made the drive out to Stone House Vineyard on Thursday for one of the first Hill Country Wine and Food Festival events even more enjoyable.
Many of the Hill Country Wine and Food Festival events happen in Austin, but a handful, including several sold-out luncheons today, take place at vineyards in the Hill Country west of the capital city.
Started by Howard and Angela Moench 11 years ago, the winery is known for growing Norton grapes, a disease-resistant varietal native to North America that often associated with my home state of Missouri.
With the help of a California-based winemaker, the Moenchs make two wines the Norton grapes: Scheming Beagle Port and Claros, a fragrant, acidic old world-style red whose “bark is bigger than its bite,” as one lunch guest complimented.
“It’s a purist endeavor,” Howard Moench said during a three-course lunch at the vineyard on Thursday. “We’ve made so many advances (since first bottling Claros in 2002), but the character has remained the same.”
Claros was sandwiched between two wines — Buckin’ Horse White and Muscato Blanco — from Flat Creek Estate, a winery just across Lake Travis from Stone House.
To kick off the lunch, guests enjoyed Buckin’ Horse White, what winery owner Madelyn Naber called a “phantom sweet” Viognier, paired with two hot and crunchy shrimp on a tomatillo carrot salad from Hudson’s on the Bend chef Kelly Casey.
Stewart Scruggs, chef and co-owner of Wink and Zoot restaurants, served pork on white truffle-infused polenta, which was a perfect complement to the tannic 2006 Claros.
For dessert, Rebecca Rather of Rather Sweet Bakery & Cafe in Fredericksburg prepared a lemon-lime pudding with a maple pecan shortbread to go with Flat Creek’s not-too-sweet muscato. (As soon as the lunch finished, Rather was headed to the Four Seasons in Austin to prepare for her first appearance at the Culinary Masters Dinner tonight. Her dessert will be capping off a dinner served by chefs David Bull, Elmar Prambs and Kent Rathbun.)
A very fine meal to kick off the 25th Hill Country Wine and Food Festival. There are still tickets available to several of the wine tastings on Saturday, as well as The Big One, the Stars Across Texas Grand Tasting Friday night at the Long Center.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food, Wine
Michael Pollan to speak at UT in December
Food activist and author (“The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food”) Michael Pollan is scheduled to speak at the Bass Concert Hall at the University of Texas in December.
Pollan’s talk is part of a just-released lineup for the 2010-2011 season of UT’s Texas Performing Arts and is presented in partnership with BookPeople and Edible Austin, which will be hosting Eat Local Week that week.
Tickets ($26-$42) aren’t on sale yet, but stay tuned to find out details on when you can buy them.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 12, 2010
Ample shade, produce at new West Lake Hills farmers market
One of Austin’s newest farmers markets is tucked away behind a flock of plastic flamingos and bluebonnets at northeast corner of Capital of Texas Highway (Loop 360) and Bee Cave Road.
The Truck Farm Farmers Market takes place from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursdays and, as of last weekend, 1 to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
You won’t find a sign (vendors told me that West Lake Hills officials have prevented them from posting signage near Bee Cave Road), but you’ll see the flamingos before the vendors, who are set up underneath the ample shade of the trees at the Pots and Plants Garden Center (aka The Flamingo Place).
During my first trip to the market last week, I picked up ground bison from Hill Country Bison, ground beef and short ribs from 6J Ranch and freshly picked carrots that went into a salad later that night. Other vendors at the market include Retro Bizzaro, Tommy’s Salsa, Me Myself and Pie, San Antonio cheesemakers Humble House Foods, Texas French Bread and Arte y Chocolate, as well as people selling soap, wine, pizza, Mediterranean food, Poteet strawberries and tons of spring vegetables.
The nursery has even set up tables covered in white tablecloths so you can enjoy the laid-back feel of the market while nibbling on food you’ve bought.
One of the best things I tried at the market were new gluten-free cookies from Austin market staples Jake’s Granola.
Jake’s owner David Levy says the so-called biscotelle are twice-baked cookies similar to biscotti, but unique in their own way. “Most people who go gluten-free feel like they have to imitate gluten full,” he says. Instead of trying to recreate a familiar product, Levy says he wanted to create a crispier, lighter sugar cookie type of treat with rice flour. The pistachio biscotelle I tried had that perfect melt-in-your-mouth crumble and burst of sweetness you’d expect from a cookie-like treat, gluten free or not.
You’ll find the biscotelle ($5, choose from white chocolate orange, chocolate chocolate walnut, almond, lemon poppy, pistachio crusted raspberry flavors) exclusively at the downtown, Truck Farm, HOPE and Cedar Park farmers markets.
“Farmers market (shoppers) are our focus group,” Levy says. “It allows us to hear right on the spot what people think,” and then we can adjust the product before it hits coffeeshops and the online store.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Eating locally
April 6, 2010
After farmers market shuffle, more really does mean merrier
Change isn’t always a good thing.
I was more than a little worried a few weeks back when news spread that the former Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market was changing its name and moving to Barton Creek Square mall.
At the encouragement of several vendors and farmers, the Sustainable Food Center submitted an application to the city of Sunset Valley, an enclave in South Austin, to set up a farmers market near the Toney Burger Activity Center.
The relationship between the Austin Independent School District, which owns the Burger Center property, and the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market folks had dissolved. The market had lost its lease and was looking to sign a new one.
A mall isn’t an obvious choice, but with less than a week’s notice last month, many of the vendors who’d been selling produce, meat, dairy, crafts and even poems at the Burger Center for years set up shop in the northeast corner of the Barton Square Creek parking lot.
However, a good number of the vendors decided to stay in Sunset Valley, switching to the market now run by the Sustainable Food Center, which also operates the farmers markets downtown on Saturdays and Triangle on Wednesdays.
After a few weeks to let the dust settle, I went to both of the markets to see how they were faring, and I couldn’t be happier to report that they are as thriving as they are different.
The now Barton Creek Farmers’ Market has always allowed more vendors who sell crafts, prepared food and artwork than the Sustainable Food Center’s certified growers’ markets, which means that 51 percent of the vendors have to be growers or producers.
Last Saturday, I found that the jubilant fairlike vibe has followed the market to the mall parking lot, which is situated on a big hill overlooking the Austin skyline. Many of the familiar artists, jewelry makers and even Jena Gessaman, a fixture at the market who types poems on the spot on her old-fashioned typewriter, are right next to vegetable growers and other food artisans.
The new market at Sunset Valley, above, has the feel of the downtown market before it moved into the Republic Square Park earlier this year. A long line of vendors, primarily farmers and meat producers, and a healthy number of customers, including this young girl with her own little shopping cart, stocking up on goods.
Many familiar produce growers and meat producers who’ve always been in Sunset Valley are still in Sunset Valley, but there certainly wasn’t a lack of vegetables, meat and dairy available at the Barton Creek market. A handful of vendors who have been selling at the downtown market and now selling at both the downtown and Sunset Valley markets.
I didn’t seen any signs of discontent among vendors or customers after this big switch, which indicates that there’s enough of a demand for locally sourced goods — from milk and cabbage to black and white photography and handcrafted poems — that there’s plenty of room for both markets.
Next up to try: The new farmers markets in West Lake Hills on Thursdays at 360 and Bee Cave Road and in Cedar Park on Saturdays at US 183A and FM 1431.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
April 5, 2010
Funky Chicken Coop Tour makes me hungry for fresh eggs
The popularity of Austin’s Funky Chicken Coop Tour proves I’m not the only one smitten with the idea of getting fresh eggs from my backyard.
For the second year, the tour has allowed people like me who are curious about setting up their own backyard chickens to have a look at established coops around the city and talk to the people who’ve taken the poultry plunge.
More than 1200 people participated in Saturday’s tour, including Statesman writer Joshunda Sanders, who wrote this story for Sunday’s paper. (Here’s a gallery with more pictures.)
I checked out the coop at HausBar Farm, Dorsey Barger and Susan Hausmann’s new East Austin farm, with videographer Jorge Sanhueza-Lyon. They have 200 chickens, which combined with the chickens at Barger’s Eastside Cafe, provide all the eggs needed for the Manor Road restaurant.
We’d only need a few chickens to lay enough eggs for our family, but it’s a big jump to go from wanting chickens to actually building the coop, buying the hens and feed and making sure they are well kept.
Watching chickens and their owners in action on the tour has been a big boost to my own confidence that we could have a backyard flock, but I think the next step is a trip to a feed store to scope out chicks and supplies. We’re on the fence about whether we’d build a coop or chicken tractor or buy one already assembled.
We still have lots of investigating to do, but the temptation of having fresh eggs from our own chickens is pretty persuasive. Are you thinking about getting backyard chickens? If you already have them, what finally convinced you to follow through and get them?
Photos by Laura Skelding for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
March 30, 2010
Urban farm and chicken coop tours, Outstanding dinners and new Cedar Park market
Curious about backyard chickens? On Saturday, the second Funky Chicken Coop Tour will allow people who are interested in backyard chickens to tour a set of established coops and ask questions of the chicken owners. The self-guided tour is from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. this Saturday, and you can find the map of coops online.
From 1 to 5 p.m. April 11, four urban farms on the East Austin Urban Farm Tour will raise money for the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance. At Boggy Creek, Rain Lily, Springdale and Hausbar farms, watch chef demonstrations and try food made with produce from the farm. Guests can also sample food and wine, beer and spirits from local companies. Tickets cost $35 in advance and $40 at the door and can be purchased at Boggy Creek Farm, Eastside Cafe and on Farmhouse Delivery’s Web site.
Tickets for this year’s Outstanding in the Field supper club tour are now on sale on the Web site. The traveling supper club, which serves five-course, all-local meals at farms, will host four dinners in Texas in October. The ticket price includes wine, gratuities and a farm tour.
- On Oct. 6, Sharon Hage of York Street Restaurant in Dallas will prepare a meal at FM 1410 farm in Dallas. ($200)
- Jolie Vue Farm in Brenham will host Houston chef Paul Lewis of Cullen’s Grille on Oct. 9. ($220)
- Boggy Creek Farm in Austin will host two dinners. On Oct. 10, La Condesa chef Rene Ortiz will cook ($200), and on Oct. 12, James Holmes of Olivia will prepare the meal ($200).
Cedar Park has a new farmers market that started last weekend. You can now buy local produce, meat and dairy from local producers at the Cedar Park Farm to Market. The farmers’ market will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturdays at the 1890 Ranch Shopping Center near the intersection of U.S. 183A and RM 1431. For more information, contact market manager Carla Jenkins at 512-262-5700.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
March 26, 2010
Busy weekend for South Austin Food Co-op
Austin is no stranger to food cooperatives. Wheatsville Food Co-op has thousands of members and a newly renovated store on Guadalupe, just north of the UT campus.
A group of food-conscious Austinites has formed the South Austin Food Co-op, which has the goal of building a community-owned grocery store south of the river. Outreach and volunteer coordinator Katy Hamill says that, like many other food cooperatives, the store will be worker owned and support local farmers and producers.
The co-op has been gaining members in the past year, and two events this weekend bring a month-long membership drive to an end. At 5 p.m. on Saturday, bring a dish to the Human Potential Center, 2007 Bert Ave., for a potluck. From 3 to 7 p.m. on Sunday, listen to music from Matt the Electrician and other musicians at a fundraiser at Cafe Caffeine, 909 W. Mary St. (Admission to the show is $15 for non-members and $5 for co-op members.)
You don’t have to go to one of these events to find out more info or join. (Here’s a link to the online membership application.)
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news, Playing with your food
March 25, 2010
City council shows support of freshly cooked food at farmers market
UPDATE: At Thursday’s city council meeting, council members addressed the issue of hot food being served at farmers market. More than 40 people showed up to support changes to the city code that would allow hot food to be served weekly at local markets. Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club, who has been serving sausage and biscuits at the market for several months, also spoke to the council and mayor Lee Leffingwell. Council members voiced their support of finding a way for farmers market vendors to serve food cooked on site and instructed city staff to come up with proposed changes to the code by April 22.
Produce, meat and prepared food have been mainstays of the Austin Farmers Market for years, but in the past few months, several vendors have been serving freshly cooked food, including sausage and biscuits and gravy, lattes with steamed milk and Ethiopian food.
But after April 1, the vendors cooking food on-site won’t be able to get the temporary permit that has allowed them to do so in previous months.
Those temporary permits are designed to allow food preparation at events such as carnivals, South by Southwest and Rodeo Austin without the equipment and facility investments needed to meet standards for the mobile food vendor permits used by more than 1,000 food carts and trailers around the city.
Mark Parsons, supervisor of sanitarians for the Austin/Travis County Health and Human Services Department, said the temporary permits weren’t designed to be issued for events that happen week after week, as many farmers’ markets do. “You want to minimize your risk to the public when you start doing it routinely,” he said. Farmers who simply sell produce (and don’t slice it) don’t need a permit, Parsons
said, but permits are required for vendors who sell prepackaged foods or prepare foods on-site.
“I personally like farmers’ markets and going back to a less-centralized food system,” Parsons said. “I’m hoping we can achieve the goal without too much of a headache.”
Market director Suzanne Santos says that Jesse Griffiths of Dai Due Supper Club was the first to utilize the temporary permit to prepare food on-site. “We respect that they are meeting the needs of consumers and businesses, keeping them safe and managing the risk,” she said.
But Santos said cooking on-site isn’t just about providing food for people to eat while shopping. One of the Sustainable Food Center’s primary goals is educating the public, she says and people cooking on-site is a valuable teaching tool for customers who want to know how to use in-season produce in their own homes.
Santos said she’s interested in working with the city to establish a separate permit for farmers’ markets, as cities including Sunset Valley and Houston have done, that would allow vendors with temporary permits to cook on-site every week. “(The city) is on our journey with us, and we haven’t finished our journey,” she said. “We’ve just come to a rest stop.”
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
March 13, 2010
Sunset Valley Farmers Market moving; SFC opening new market
Starting March 20, the Sunset Valley Farmers Market is moving to Barton Square Creek mall, and the Sustainable Food Center, which operates the downtown and Triangle farmers markets, will begin operating a new market in the parking lot of the Toney Burger Center in Sunset Valley.
The new market, called the SFC Farmers’ Market at Sunset Valley, will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and will feature “a majority of the vendors from the previous Sunset Valley Farmers Market,” according to a press release on the Sustainable Food Center’s Web site.
“SFC has a temporary permit to run the market weekly, pending a review for a more permanent special use permit in April by the City of Sunset Valley. SFC’s intent is to run the market weekly, rain or shine, year-round,” the release states.
The Sunset Valley Farmers Market is now the Barton Creek Farmers Market, and will be open from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the mall parking lot next to Dillard’s department store.
Last year, this market lost its lease with the Toney Burger Activity Center, which is owned by the Austin Independent School District, and was negotiating for a new home with the City of Sunset Valley.
Permalink | Comments (13) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
March 2, 2010
New farmers market opening Thursday in West Lake Hills
Central Texas has a new farmers market starting this week.
The Truck Farm Farmers Market will hold its grand opening from 3 to 7 p.m. on Thursday at the northeast corner of Bee Caves Road and Loop 360 in front of the Pots and Plants Nursery.
Market manager Amy Ingram says local producers will be selling vegetables, fruits, eggs, meat, seafood and cheese, as well as flowers, honey and some specialty prepared foods.
The market, 5902 Bee Cave Road, will be open year-round on Thursdays no matter the weather, and look for fun events such as an Easter egg hunt in April, a watermelon-eating contest in July and pumpkin carving this fall.
Ingram also says that the market will be offering internships to students who are interested in working with farmers and learning about agriculture business.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
February 26, 2010
Week of Eating In: Backyard salad for deskside lunch
Five days into this week of eating in challenge, and I’m still going strong.
Had a moment of weakness yesterday afternoon when my unappetizing lunch of leftover pork and rice left me eying Lulu B’s and P. Terry’s for quick bite on the way home from work. I resisted eating out and made pasta and broccoli as soon as I got home.
Eating food that only I prepare takes A) planning and B) a willingness to experiment with new cuisines. One of the things I’m missing most this week is ethnic cuisines that I haven’t quite mastered in my own kitchen.
One thing I have mastered is growing lettuce in my backyard garden. For lunch today, I had a salad made from hardboiled eggs, raisins, nuts, homemade dressing and greens I picked this morning before leaving for work.
In Central Texas, we’re lucky to be able to grow salad fixin’s most months of the year (it gets too hot around June), and lettuce is by far one of the easiest and most money-saving crops I’ve tried.
Making vinaigrettes and other dressings at home will also save you a bundle. Three parts oil to one part vinegar or lemon juice, mixed with a little salt, spices and marmalade for a hint of sweet. An old caper jar is the perfect size to store enough dressing for a salad.
I figure the salad would have cost at least $6 if I would have bought it at a restaurant or cafe. I haven’t been tallying how much money I’ve saved this week by not eating out, but I’m sure no matter which way you cut it, I’ve spent less than I normally would.
Eating in this weekend will surely be interesting, especially because I’ll be under deadline for a story for next week’s food section about this little experiment, so stick around and see what I come up with.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
February 11, 2010
Antonelli's Cheese Shop brings artisan cheese to Hyde Park
John and Kendall Antonelli know that Antonelli’s Cheese Shop, their artisan cheese store at 4220 Duval Street that opened today, won’t have the biggest cheese selection in town — after all, the overflowing cheese counters at Central Market and Whole Foods are within five miles of their Hyde Park location — but they are hoping to offer cheese lovers a more intimate cheese-buying experience.
They know exactly how it feels to stand in front of hundreds of exotic-sounding cheeses and not know where to start. Three years ago, John was a certified public accountant and Kendall was working for a nonprofit. They were enamored with cheese, but mainly, they wanted to start a business where they could work together. On their honeymoon, John pitched an idea: What about starting a cheese business? Without hesitation, Kendall agreed.
They’ve spent the last two years learning everything they could about cheese, including what it takes to start a small-scale store. They visited Europe and followed the “fromage” signs on the side of the road to find cheesemakers who would become their teachers. John even interned in the caves of rural France to discover how terroir affects aging cheese.
“We cold-called cheesemongers across the country and not one person hung up the phone on us,” she said on opening day. “The cheese community has been wonderful to us.”
In addition to between 75 and 100 different kinds of cheeses, the Antonellis are also selling wine, charcuterie, crackers, chocolate, olives and other foods that you’d need for a cheese tasting party at your house. You’ll also find several Texas cheeses, including those from CKC Farms, Veldhuizen, Brazos Valley and Pola, in the refrigerated case.
After they get their legs under them, the Antonellis hope to start guided tastings and classes on Thursday nights to help customers learn even more about the complex world of cheese. “The thing with cheese is education. Teaching people about cheese and letting them try it before they buy it is so important,” John Antonelli said. “Telling people about the story behind the cheese and what makes it so special. That’s what we wanted to do.”
(4220 Duval Street, 531-9610. Open 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. on Sunday.)
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Grocery goods
February 10, 2010
Walmart holds own against Whole Foods in Atlantic Monthly taste test at Fino
For Atlantic Monthly’s March issue, food writer Corby Kummer devised a brilliant taste test: Using similar ingredients purchased from Walmart and Whole Foods, create two identical meals and ask tasters to pick which they preferred.
UPDATE: “Just Food” author and Texas State educator James E. McWilliams, who was also on the tasting panel, makes a key point: The people tasting didn’t know what was being tested beyond taste. They knew that the ingredients came from two sources, but not that one meal came from the world’s largest company and the other was from the pioneering Austin-based natural grocer.
What better restaurant for this task than Fino, whose chef Jason Donoho sources many of his ingredients from local farms. Kummer gathered more than a dozen food-connected folks, most of them Austinites, for the test. The results will shaken anyone’s preconceived notions of the quality of food found on the shelves of both stores.
The majority of Kummer’s article is dedicated to exploring Walmart’s attempts to “go local” by encouraging farms within a day’s drive of its warehouses to grow crops that currently are hauled across the country from states like California and Florida.
It’s ironic, of course, that Walmart is attempting to forge relationships with the small farmers whose livelihood they squashed in previous years in the quest for low prices. At a press conference late last year, I heard from Walmart officials, as well as a farmer or two, about this new initiative, which Kummer points out is a clear attempt to tap into the quickly growing “locavore” market.
At the Austin press event, I found a handful of products — including potatoes, corn, zucchini, squash, mushrooms, oranges — with a “locally grown” sign and the Department of Agriculture’s Go Texan logo, but no mention of exactly where in this gigantic agriculture state the produce came from.
The bright lights and cookie-cutter produce were a far cry from in-season, heirloom varieties found at any of the area farmers’ markets. Patrons of these markets, as well as those who prefer Whole Foods, won’t be making the switch to shopping at Walmart anytime soon, but the company’s efforts can’t be ignored.
When you’re a company that’s making more money in a day than every single farmers’ market in the country had made in the past decade, a move like this has the potential to change the game, especially when your produce beats Whole Foods’ in a blind taste test.
The complicated network of farmers and distributors required to keep Walmart shelves stocked, combined with the icky history Walmart has of doing whatever it takes to keep prices as low as possible, in no way fits the traditional locavore ethic, but I’m hoping their massive buying power can have a positive effect — for farmers and consumers — in the long run.
I’m probably wearing rose-colored glasses, but I long ago learned that no matter how long you pretend Walmart doesn’t exist, it always will, and the majority of Americans will continue shop there.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
February 9, 2010
At Rio's Brazilian Cafe, a little piece of Brasil in East Austin
For Elias Martins and Ben Googins, Rio’s Brazilian started in 2006 as a side project after the couple moved to Austin from Rio de Janeiro, where they met.
Martins continued to work in local restaurant kitchens, while Googins chipped away at building up the company, which sold malagueta sauces, pastries and cheese breads at area farmers markets. Eventually, the sauces — sold in original, mango and pineapple coconut flavors — took on a life of their own and were picked up by local Whole Foods and Specs as well as smaller stores like Whip-In and Royal Blue and the online food retailer Foodzie.com.
But it wasn’t until last year that they were able to start the wheels on their newest expansion: Rio’s Brazilian Cafe, a small but bright and energy-filled restaurant at 408 N. Pleasant Valley Road in East Austin that opened earlier this month. (The patio in the front of the building easily doubles the restaurant’s seating capacity.)
The cafe sells Rio’s signature savory pastries (or salgadinhos), including risolis, empadãos, pasteles and breakfast pockets made with egg and cheese, as well as sandwiches, salads, soups (caldo verde and sweet potato bisque) and, of course, their gluten-free cheese breads. Yuca root is a key ingredient in the cheese breads, and Martins and Googins also fry the root to create something similar to a French fry.
To lure morning commuters, they are selling breakfast and coffee through a drive-thru on the side of the building. (The coffee is from Casa Brasil, a local company that works directly with coffee growers in Brazil and even offers after-school programs and scholarships to kids in need in Brazil.) If you’re not in the mood for the savory breakfast-taco like pockets, try the banana pastel, a banana and cinnamon-stuffed pastry.
Googins says that the restaurant is BYOB until their liquor license is in place, and for Valentine’s Day this weekend, they are offering free champagne with a purchase and a special trio of desserts. Stay tuned to their Twitter and Facebook streams for more specials, especially for Carnaval, which starts this weekend.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Eating out
February 3, 2010
Bona Dea delivers fresh bread, rolls, scones
Lauren Hubele moved to Austin in 2008 with the goal of enrolling in a doctoral program, but before she’d completed a single class, she started another venture: a bread delivery company called Bona Dea.
Hubele, who spent the last 15 years teaching high school in Germany, has always been a baker. “My mom was a horrible cook,” she says. “So I was cooking for my whole family by the time I was 8.” She quickly found a spiritual connection to baking bread but didn’t take the plunge to make it a full-time job until after a career in education.
As a cancer survivor, she’s always trying to find ways to work in as many whole grains and antioxidant-rich ingredients into her fragrant and tender breads, including Lauren’s loaf ($5.50), a sourdough whole wheat baton made with flaxseed and oats, and scones ($7 for 4). Challah ($5.50 for a loaf or $6 for six rolls) is made with local organic eggs.
Through the Web site, you can order by the loaf or sign up for a monthly subscription for challah, scones or sourdough. Place orders by Wednesday for Friday delivery to a pick-up location of your choice. There are pick-up locations in several Central and South Austin neighborhoods, but Hubele says she’ll be expanding as orders come in.
Photo by Alberto Martínez.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
December 31, 2009
G'Raj Mahal's food, decor blur line between trailer, restaurant
At G’Raj Mahal Cafe, tucked a block south of Cesar Chavez Street near the corner of Red River and Davis streets downtown, chefs Sidney and Anthony Fernandes have created one of Austin’s most unique trailer concepts.
Technically, the restaurant, which opened a few weeks ago, is a mobile food truck, but with a half dozen tables set up under a pavilion and a server taking your order and delivering your food, it’s more like and outdoor restaurant. Sheer cloth hanging from the ceiling blows in the wind, strings of white lights help illuminate the seating area and small candles flicker on the tables.
Giant bike-art sculptures from the Austin Bike Zoo lurk outside the dining space, almost as if the butterfly and 80-foot long snake are eying the rich, colorful food being brought to the tables.
Austin native Sidney Fernandes, whose husband was born in India and earned his cooking chops at several upscale hotels there, says the design was inspired by Indian weddings and parties. “I liked the idea of a trailer, but I wanted more of an upscale trailer,” she says. (The name is a play on Taj Mahal and the fact that the site the trailer sits on was a car dealership for many years.)
Inside the decked-out silver bullet is a tandoor oven, which is the key to authentic naan and several of the grilled meats like lamb or chicken tikka. In many Indian restaurants in the U.S., Fernandes says, there’s this idea that “Americans like this and Americans don’t like that,” but she wanted to include dishes like rechard masala ($13), made with fish or shrimp and a fragrant red chili sauce, from her husband’s native state of Goa that you won’t find on many Indian menus in the U.S.
She says customers can also expect fresh instead of frozen spinach in the saag paneer, real butter instead of margarine and no food coloring. “Tandoor doesn’t have to be bright red,” she says.
Just a few days before Christmas, I took my parents, who were visiting from Missouri, to G’Raj Mahal and enjoyed classic onion curry with chicken ($11) and malai kofta ($9), or vegetable dumplings simmered in cream sauce, which were bursting with flavor and just enough of a kick. Garlic naan ($2), fresh from the tandoor oven, didn’t overpower the entrees.
You could make a fine (albeit light) meal out of the less-expensive starters, including samosas, breads, pakoras and soup, but the entrees range from $9 to $14, another reminder that you’re not at just any old food trailer.
If you forget a bottle of wine or beer (like many mobile food vendors, G’Raj is BYOB), try lassi ($4), chai ($3) or, for a real mash-up of cultures, a Mexican Coke or Topo Chico. We didn’t get to try desserts, but I’ve got my eye on the pistachio-cardamom kulfi and lemon sorbet as soon as the weather warms up.
G’Raj Mahal Cafe is only open for dinner (5 p.m. to 3 p.m.), but Sidney Fernandes says she hopes to be able to expand the daytime hours in 2010. Delivery is available downtown during their regular operating hours, and catering orders for at least 15 are available from noon to 8 p.m. (Place catering orders 24 hours ahead of time.)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Eating out
December 22, 2009
Holiday popcorn flavors, tins from Cornucopia
Cornucopia Popcorn is reinventing the longtime holiday gift tradition of the popcorn tin.
“It’s not like grandma’s popcorn tin,” says co-owner Nikki Dugas. “Because grandma would never put dill pickle, cinnamon toast and Madras curry all in one tin.” The company, behind Veggie Heaven on Guadalupe Street near the University of Texas campus, sells more than 45 flavors of popcorn year-round.
But for the holidays this year, they’ve created a line of spirited flavors including white chocolate cranberry and cinnamon roll. “Pumpkin pie didn’t work out too well, but the best one is the peppermint bark,” Dugas says. “We make candied peppermint popcorn and drizzle it with peppermint-infused milk chocolate and sprinkled with bits of real peppermint.”
Dugas, along with longtime friend Nadia Elhaj, opened the store last year, and their popcorn quickly became a cult favorite among Austin foodies. “Our overall best-selling flavor is dill pickle,” Dugas says. Other favorites are pesto, Texas chili and cheddar jalapeño, and each week, Dugas and Elhaj add two or three new flavors to the menu.
The store will be closed on Christmas Eve, but call ahead today or tomorrow and place an order for pickup. You also can order online and schedule a shipment to anywhere in the country. A six-pack sampler costs $30. Holiday tins, which you can customize with up to four flavors, start at $15.
Photos by Alberto Martínez for the Austin American-Statesman.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
December 15, 2009
Pie is the new duct tape
Colleen Sommers will put just about anything in a pie.
The Austin businesswoman started her pie delivery company, Pie Fixes Everything, earlier this year. “If it can go in a pie, I’ll put it in there,” says Sommers, who says she’s even baked chili in a pie pan. Sommers, a painter who grew up working on a farm in Michigan, uses as many local and organic ingredients as possible in her sweet and savory pies.
The established menu features fives quiches and more than 10 sweet treats, and the weekly specials vary depending on “whatever is in season, what looks good and what sounds good,” she says. Sommers says that most of the pies can be made wheat-, gluten- or dairy-free.
Order pies 48 hours ahead of time to pick up at her South Austin kitchen. Deliveries — free in Central Austin, $5 elsewhere — are made on Wednesdays. Order pies ($16-$24) online or by calling 695-6604.
On Thursday, Pie Fixes Everything will be the featured special on the discount site Groupon.
Photo by Dustin Meyer.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
December 14, 2009
Eat Local Week wraps with KGSR v. KXAN cook-off
Austinites should be proud of Eat Local Week.
Edible Austin has only been around for three years, and its publisher Marla Camp and her staff work incredible hard to not only put out a fantastic magazine but raise tens of thousands of dollars for local organizations.
Camp says this year’s Eat Local Week will raise between $30,000 and $40,000 for Urban Roots, a local nonprofit that helps teens by putting them to work growing and selling produce.
At the finale event on Saturday, Kate Weidaw, who works the morning shift at KXAN News, and KGSR’s Bryan Beck went head to head in a cook-off at the Austin Farmers’ Market.
It was cold and wet, but you couldn’t tell it by the crowd turnout and spirit. As emcee Jack Gilmore, whose new restaurant Jack Allen’s Kitchen will be opening at the end of the week in Oak Hill, peppered the contestants and judges with lively questions while Beck and Weidaw were cooking their dishes.
Beck, whose lovely wife the Fabulous Judy was on hand to help, cooked beef pinwheels — a rolled fajita steak with spinach, onions, herbs, mushroom and goat cheese — and served it with carrots and a citrus salad of fruit, cilantro and nuts.
Weidow’s pork chops from Peach Creek Farm, served with carrots and sauteed spinach and onions, were tender and well flavored, but Beck’s dish, in particular that citrus salad, wowed the judges, which included the esteemed Jim Hightower, Dishola’s Laura Kelso, Austin Farm to Table blogger Kristi Willis and several Urban Roots participants.
It was a delight to see the surprise on Beck’s face when Gilmore told him he won. This cook-off was just one of many successful events this week that showcase the fantastic produce, meat and artisanal products available in Central Texas and the wonderful people behind them.
A few more fun finds at area farmers’ markets lately:
I bought these sweet, juicy pineapple oranges on Saturday from some guys who grow them in the Valley and just started selling at the downtown market. At $5 for 10 pounds, they are just about the best deal to be found at the market right now.
Jim Richardson is selling freshly ground wheat at local markets and through Greenling Organic Delivery and Farmhouse Delivery. The flour costs $2 per pound and is made from wheat grown on his Rockdale farm.
Another grower named Jim Wheat (what a fortunate last name) is also selling freshly ground wheat and cornmeal at the downtown farmers’ market. I bought a bag of cornmeal for $3.
Just goes to show that nowadays in Central Texas, you can get just about anything from a local source.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally
Cozy up to Sharon Ely's Holy Posole
It’s always a crowd favorite at parties and events, she says, but now you don’t have to get an invite to enjoy the soup.
Made with green Hatch chiles and red Chimayo chile from New Mexico, Holy Posole is now available in 26-ounce jars at several area stores and by the cup at Jo’s Hot Coffee and Good Food on South Congress Avenue and on Saturdays at the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market.
It is also sold by the jar at Frank’s, Fresh Plus on West Lynn Street, Bubba’s Country Store and Maverick in Fort Worth and online.
Ely, wearing her signature pigtails and big smile, explained recently that Holy Posole isn’t her first venture in bottling a signature product. In the 1980s, she and her musician husband, Joe Ely, helped their friend and fellow Lubbock native C.B. Stubblefield, aka Stubb, first bottle his now-legendary barbecue sauce.
Stubb died in 1995, but Ely recalls how happy he was to see people fall in love with his product. Now it’s Ely’s turn. “I’m so excited to share my soup with the world,” she says.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
Free beekeeping classes from San Marcos Bee Wranglers
Last week, I wrote about a beekeeping class in Round Rock and Denise Benson of the San Marcos Area Bee Wranglers e-mailed me to tell me about a free four-week course in San Marcos.
From 7 to 9 p.m. on each Wednesday in the month of January, the Wranglers will be teaching a course to aspiring beekeepers at the San Marcos Public Library, 625 E. Hopkins St.
Register for the free class by calling the library at 512-393-8200. Benson says that various materials are provided for the class but that there is a $12 textbook that the recommend students buy at the first class.
If you already have hives in Hays, Comal, Caldwell, Guadalupe or Travis counties, you can join the Bee Wranglers group for free. They meet at 7 p.m. on the second Wednesday of the month (February through December) at the San Marcos Public Library. The group teaches this free class every January, Benson says.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
Local duck bacon? Smoked pork belly? Kocureks have you covered
Charcuterie plates, which feature processed meats such as sausage, pate or bacon, are one of the most popular food trends to hit American restaurants in recent years, and a new local company is selling an array of products so you can assemble your own during this season of entertaining.
Larry and Lee Ann Kocurek started Kocurek Family Charcuterie earlier this year, and they are now selling pates, terrines, rillettes, sausages and even some ready-made dishes at the Sunset Valley, HOPE and Triangle farmers’ markets.
Even though they’ve only been at the markets for a few weeks, word of their divine duck bacon and smoked pork belly has spread quickly. Lee Ann Kocurek says that the products they offer each week vary depending on what meat and produce they can buy from local farmers and ranchers. But on any given market day, you can find a wide selection of meats, a few relishes and condiments, as well as dishes such as lamb pie or a build-your-own cassoulet.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
December 9, 2009
Lara Nixon beats the boys to win Drink Local Contest
Lara Nixon, who as runs Boxcar Bar, a freelance cocktail and education service, held her own against the competition at this year’s Drink Local Contest at the Palm Door to win the annual Eat Local Week and Tipsy Texan event with her drink, We’re In It For The Corn.
Judges included last year’s winner Bobby Heugel, (above, left) who owns Anvil Bar and Refuge in Houston, Tipsy Texan Joe Eifler (above, right), Louis XIII cognac brand ambassador Sten Lilja, Maker’s Mark distillery diplomat Adam Harris and me.
She beat out Jeff Boley of Paggi House, Bill Norris of Fino, Ben Craven of Perla’s and Garret Mikell of Takoba, an interior Mexican restaurant on East Seventh slated to open in January.
After alternate Nate Wales of La Condesa kicked things off with an apple-pie inspired cocktail rimmed with streusel, Boley got to work on El Escorpion, a cocktail sweetened with kaffir lime syrup (made from a kaffir lime tree at Paggi House) made with juice from grilled pineapples and Treaty Oak rum.
Ben Craven of Perla’s was up next with his cocktail, The Sportswriter, one of the most interesting concoctions of the night: A gastrique made from Alamosa red wine and Meyer lemon, mixed with clove and cardamom turbinado syrup and sloe gin, topped with a garnish of a golf tee wrapped in candied orange.
Lara’s corntastic cocktail, made with sweet corn infused Balcones Baby Blue Corn Whiskey and just three other spirits, was a little heavy on the booze for my palate, but my fellow judges couldn’t get enough of the amped-up whiskey and adorable garnish that looked like a miniature cob of corn.
Fino’s Bill Norris was the most enthusiastic contestant, burning Mezcal-soaked rosemary in a jar and getting the crowd to cheer him on as he shook his cocktail, Texas Campfire Flip, which was one of two drink recipes that called for an egg in the ingredients. (Fellow judge Joe Eifler told me that Norris, one of Austin’s most well-respected cocktail experts, has recently had to alter the way he shakes drinks because he was getting a repetitive stress injury in his shoulder.)
Garret Mikell, who will be behind the bar at Takoba when it opens next month, shook a Hemingway daiquiri-inspired drink called the Hemingway Finn that was both fizzy and easy to drink. He infused Treaty Oak rum with cedar berries, which added depth to the grapefruit and lime juice.
To get a feel for the event, check out this blog post by photographer Dustin Meyer, who has been shooting many of the Eat Local Week events. Meyer’s photographs really capture the fun vibe of the party.
Props to Edible Austin and the Tipsy Texans for putting on such a great event. David Alan will be posting recipes for the drinks on TipsyTexan.com soon.
Top photo by Dustin Meyer.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
The sweet allure of beekeeping
For many of the aspiring apiarists I talked to in writing today’s story about a backyard beekeeping class, a thriving garden was the primary goal of setting up a hive on their property.
Even for Konrad Bouffard, owner of Round Rock Honey (who also blogs about beekeeping here), a better garden was the main attraction when he first got into setting up hives and tending colonies of European honeybees.
In my family, honey has always been the draw.
My great uncle Lee Handy tended hives after decades working his tail end off at a restaurant in Branson, Mo., back when it was a one-stoplight town. He and my aunt Mary put in 15 hour days there until they sold the restaurant, and he eventually established enough hives to have a second career as a honey salesman. (A strapping man in these family photos, Lee grew into the scruffy kind of old man whom I was always too scared to ask why he only had 8 and 3/4 fingers.)
To call him a beekeeper alone wouldn’t suffice. There wasn’t nearly the market for honey that there is now, so he had to persuade a lot of people into buying his product in the first place. He sold it by the quart (a few dollars off if you brought your own jar) to people who followed the “Honey ahead” signs along the road leading to their country house.
Up until their deaths about a decade ago, they had a five gallon vat of honey in their kitchen that, with just a pull of a lever, would ooze the most beautiful golden honey. I can remember eating honey until I was sick in that kitchen. My dad, to this day, won’t drink coffee without honey because that’s the way his uncle taught him how to drink coffee.
I’d never thought about carrying on the tradition until donning a beekeeping suit for the first time for this story.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
November 19, 2009
Get tickets now for 3rd annual Eat Local Week
December might seem like a strange time to host Eat Local Week, but Edible Austin publisher Marla Camp says late fall is actually one of Texas’ most bountiful seasons.
For the third year, Edible Austin is hosting a week full of activities to bring together farmers, chefs, cooks and people who love seasonal food. Many of the activities are free, but for some of the events, you’ll need tickets that could sell out before Thanksgiving.
All the money raised goes to Urban Roots, a program that uses sustainable agriculture to transform the lives of area teens and helps increase access to locally raised food. Urban Roots participants help grow more than 22,000 pounds of food, 40 percent of which they donate to people in need and the other 60 percent they sell at local farmers’ markets.
UPDATE: Marla Camp says that for the next two Saturdays at Edible Austin booth at the Austin Farmers’ Market, they’ll be giving a $5 discount on seats for the screening of “Fresh” at the Paramount.
Here is a rundown of the events; details and tickets for all of the events can be found here.
- BookPeople is hosting a launch party from 6 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 4, that will feature Ana Sofia Joanes, director/producer of the documentary “Fresh,” and food and drinks.
- On Saturday, Dec. 5, the downtown farmers’ market will host the official kick-off event, complete with a 24-carrot salute and other free activities. The market is one of three starting places for the Urban Farm Bicycle Tour ($25 for individuals, $45 for families), which will hit a handful of local farms and community and school gardens. From 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. also on Saturday is the Edible Austin Tea Festival at Zhi Tea Gallery, 4607 Bolm Road. Taste teas from local tea purveyors for free and enjoy food from Ecstatic Cuisine for $10 a plate. At 7 p.m. on Saturday night, catch a special screening of “Fresh” at the Paramount Theatre, and stick around for a Q&A with the movie’s director and Joel Salatin, the farmer activist of Polyface Farms featured in Michael Pollan’s “Omnivore’s Dilemma.” (Tickets start at $15, and the $100 tickets include a pre-screening reception with Joanes and Salatin and food from local restaurants and drinks.)
- On Sunday, Dec. 6, Owl Tree Roasting is hosting the Drink Local Coffee Festival from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., and TipsyTexan.com is hosting the Drink Local Contest at the Palm Door from 6 to 9 p.m. that will pit local bartenders against each other to create the best drink from Texas spirits and ingredients. (Tipsy Texan David Alan is accepting entries for the contest through Nov. 22.)
- “Julie and Julia” author Julie Powell will be on hand for dinner and a screening of the movie inspired by her book at the Alamo Drafthouse at 7 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 7 ($75).
- From 6:30 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 8, the Austin Museum of Art hosts a Gulf Coast Sampler featuring a panel on regional seafood traditions ($15), and from 5 to 10 p.m. you can skate at Whole Foods Market downtown for $10 and enjoy samples of local food and wine.
- Create a custom holiday gift basket on from 4 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 9, at City Hall at the Local Holiday Gift Fair, which will feature members of Better Bites Austin, a coalition of local food artisans and businesses.
- From 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 10, browse food-themed art at the Wally Workman Gallery while eating food and sipping cocktails. A portion of the art sales will to go Urban Roots.
- Whip In Parlour Cafe and Market is hosting the Meet Your Local Brewers Happy Hour from 4 to 8 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 11, where you can sample local beers and list to music from James McMurtry and others. ($20, which includes six beers)
- Cheer on local media celebrities at 10 a.m. at the downtown farmers’ market on Saturday, Dec. 12, during a cook-off between Kate Weidaw of KXAN-TV and Bryan Beck of KGSR-FM.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food
October 22, 2009
Sunday farmers' market begins in E. Austin this weekend
A new farmers’ market is coming to a Sunday near you.
The Hope Farmers’ Market will have its inaugural market day on Sunday at 414 Waller St., at the southwest corner of Fifth and Waller streets.
Market manager Greg Esparza says there will be more than 20 food vendors on Sunday, but because the market is part of the Austin-based HOPE (Helping Other People Everywhere) Campaign, a nonprofit that brings artists and media to places in need, there will also be plenty of artists and nonprofits.
HOPE founders Andi Scull Steidle and Brian Steidle “wanted to throw the doors open to the community to have a festival every single week where people could come together around their passion and craft,” Esparza says. He says that the Hope Farmers’ Market, three blocks east of Interstate 35, is a way “to infuse this East Austin arts culture with the growing local food movement that has been picking up so much steam in the last couple of years.”
Esparza says they wanted a way to bring together all the subcommunities that call Austin home, a place where musicians could perform, artists could create and the community could learn from each other.
The market will be open from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. with free yoga from Empower Yoga at 11 a.m. This Sunday, there will even be free coffee (BYOMug, the Facebook page suggests)
If you’re interested in participating as a vendor, contact Esparza at 699-6077.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
October 9, 2009
For farmers, rain isn't always a good thing
I heard from Jo and John Dwyer of Angel Valley Organic Farm this week with another perspective on all this rain we’ve been getting.
This time of year, farmers such as the Dwyers are trying to get seeds and seedlings in the ground for fall crops. A powerful rainfall can wipe out weeks’ worth of work and put farmers perilously behind schedule.
Dwyer says their farm in Jonestown, 25 miles northwest of Austin, has been hit hard by several back-to-back deluges from the sky, including one stretch of seven inches of rain falling in 12 hours.
“(Last week) the soil was so saturated it delayed some of our fall planting,” Jo Dwyer writes. “Then finally…John was able to till and we scrambled to get as many transplants out of our greenhouses and into in the ground as possible.” That night, a storm dumped more than an inch of rain and nickel-sized hail in 10 minutes, crushing the tender plants they’d just put in the ground. “To say we were devastated is putting it mildly,” she writes.
Another two inches of rain the following day cemented the damage, which meant that the Dwyers would have to start from scratch on that round of planting.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she writes. “We’re thrilled that the lake is filling back up and the drought is getting a good dent put into it. We all need this water from the sky, just not so much in one fell swoop would be preferable!”
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
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.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
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.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
September 25, 2009
Weed-like purslane packs an Omega-3 punch
At a Friday afternoon visit to the Bastrop 1832 Farmers Market last week, I came upon a vendor selling this beautiful green plant. I hadn’t noticed purslane before, but I struck up a conversation with the farmer, Erika Bradshaw of Bradshaw Farm, who told me about the incredible amount of Omega-3 fatty acids found in purslane.
Apparently, purslane contains more Omega-3 fatty acids than any other leafy vegetable plant, and it can be used as eaten raw as a garnish or in a salad or added to a stir-fry, soup or any number of other dishes, even bread.
I added a few handfuls of purslane to a soup I made last week — served it with a slice of that homemade Addie’s Quick Bucket Bread that held up nicely in the freezer — to celebrate the return of fall.
You can imagine my surprise when today I spotted purslane on top of a dish by Jeffrey’s executive chef Deegan McClung, who is helping me with a story about pork belly I’m working on for next week. He used it as a garnish on top of pork belly, crab and moi fish served on a bed of charred poblano peppers, long beans and hearts of palm.
If you’re salivating at the sight of that dish, it’s available as a special tonight at Jeffrey’s.
Just goes to show that a weed as common as purslane isn’t always what it seems.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Cooking, Eating locally
September 21, 2009
Dear summer: Don't let the gate hit you on the way out
There’s little guarantee that today will be the last hot day of the year.
It is the last day of summer, however, and the gardener inside me couldn’t be happier to say farewell to this year’s oppressively hot season.
After months of triple-digit heat putting even my heat-loving plants in peril, I’ve been planting seeds for a fall garden over the past few weeks.
Broccoli, lettuce, Brussels sprouts, kale, carrots and garlic are in the ground, and I’ve already got some sprouts peeking out of the soil. My garden fairy suggested I use cotton burr compost as a way to add both nutrients and fluffy mulch-like material into the well-used soil of my two raised beds. (Because I didn’t have enough homemade compost, I also added a little bit of fertilizer to the third bed, which started as four tomato mounds in the spring and grew into a bed as I mulched over the summer.)
Because it’s still a little hot for lettuce, I’m keeping them under shade cloth. But with some of the seeds already sprouting, I should be eating backyard salads before Halloween.
A produce sticker is proof that I’ve been able to put the compost pile I started at the beginning of the year to use.
I’m also putting the last of the stevia and Thai basil to work. Stevia has been an easy plant to grow, and this weekend, I dried out some of the leaves so I can add just a hint of sweetness to tea without adding sugar or honey. I made this Thai basil pesto and froze individual portions in ice cube trays.
And I just can’t quit my pepper plants. Or maybe they can’t quit me. Out of the four plants I grew to maturity this summer, just three remain and as I start to celebrate the return of fall, one of them has finally — finally! — put off a few peppers.
Maybe there’s still time for a Squash and Pepper Summer Farewell…
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in your backyard
September 16, 2009
Texas' first whiskey hits the shelves
It’s hard to be a first in a state like Texas, but Chip Tate, founder of Balcones Distilling in Waco, has released Texas’ first whiskey, Baby Blue.
Tate says the whiskey, which is distilled twice and aged in new oak barrels, is also likely the only whiskey made from blue corn, which gives the spirit hints of buttery masa corn meal, toasted almonds and dark chocolate. “It’s not just any blue corn, but Hopi blue corn,” says Tate. A full-flavored midnight black blue corn is ground and toasted before distilling, according to Tate, who is a longtime beer brewer. Legally, it could be labeled as a bourbon, but it is not essentially bourbon-like in character, he says.
Also now in distribution from Balcones is Rumble, a rum-like spirit made with Texas wildflower honey, mission figs and turbinado sugar that tastes similar to a single-malt whiskey, aged mescal and even a young cognac, Tate says.
You can find the new products at Bess Bistro, Ranch 616, Grapevine Market, Spec’s and Austin Wine Merchant.
Photos by Jerry Larson for the Waco Tribune Herald.
Permalink | Comments (16) | Categories: Beer/Wine/Spirits, Eating locally
September 1, 2009
Ride the Slow Food train for less and help make change
Don’t confuse the Slow Food movement with food you make in slow cookers.
Slow Food, which started in Italy in 1989, was created “to counteract fast food and fast life, the disappearance of local food traditions and people’s dwindling interest in the food they eat, where it comes from, how it tastes and how our food choices affect the rest of the world.”
The organization has spread quickly into smaller chapters with more than 100,000 members.
But now, instead of charging a $60 membership fee, Slow Food USA is offering donate-what-you-can memberships through the end of September.
Lucky for Austinites that the Slow Food chapter here has revitalized itself in recent months by hosting more events, classes and community events, including a free cheese-making class on Thursday and a potluck on Monday (Labor Day) to brainstorm about how to improve school lunches.
The cheese-making event from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday is the group’s monthly Slow Session, an informative and fun event usually at Habitat Suites, 500 E. Highland Mall Blvd. Cheese-maker Scott Evans of Austin Homebrew Supply will explain the basics of home cheese-making, including history and where to get the ingredients. The event is free, and you can RSVP here.
The Labor Day potluck at 11 a.m. at Rain Lily Farm, 914 Shady Lane, is one of nearly 300 “eat-ins” across the country that are part of the Slow Food USA’s Time for Lunch Campaign, where food advocates are coming up with ways to get fresh, unprocessed foods back into schools.
The Austin chapter’s fall fundraiser will be a raw milk cheese tasting and talk with Cathy Strange, global cheese buyer for Whole Foods Market, at the Barr Mansion on Oct. 21. Kevin Brand of (512) Brewing Company will be pairing beers with the cheeses. Tickets are $50 ($40 for Slow Food members), and you can buy them here.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
August 13, 2009
A traveling restaurant passes through Austin
Diego Felix and Sanra Ritten are Casa Felix.
Sure, their house-turned-restaurant in Buenos Aires is also called Casa Felix, but for the past three months, they’ve taken their restaurant on the road through North America.
“The restaurant is the two of us,” Felix told me over coffee at Jo’s on S. Congress earlier this week. Felix and Ritten had hosted one of their supper club dinners at Clayton Morgan’s house on Saturday and were en route to the airport, where they were starting the last leg of their cooking tour in California. They were with Austinite Michael Dyer, who helped them host the dinner last week.
Nearly two years ago, Dyer and partner Lesley Boucher ate at Ritten and Felix’s speakeasy-style restaurant when they were on a trip to Argentina. Dyer says they loved the food and even more, the gracious hosts who were doing interesting things with food. “Whenever you come to Austin,” he told them, “give us a call.”
Sure enough, when the chef and his fiancee were setting up this summer’s trip, they planned a stop in Austin.
In May, Felix and Ritten started in Toronto and by the time they were in the Big Apple in June, the New York Times had picked up on their journey and wrote about a dinner they hosted in TriBeCa.
At each stop, including Saturday night’s dinner at Morgan’s penthouse home in downtown Austin, Felix cooks in someone else’s kitchen, using his hosts’ pots, pans, dishes and silverware to create a South American meal with a local twist. His eco-gastronomic philosophy is this: use seasonal, indigenous ingredients to produce dishes with South American cooking methods, techniques and recipes. “There’s nothing better than experiencing people from other places in the world, and in this case, their food styles,” Dyer says.
After a few dinners in California, they will head back to Argentina to host more supper clubs in their home and plan next year’s May to August supper club adventure in the U.S.
First stop? Austin.
Stay tuned to their Web site for details on how you can get a seat.
Photos by Lesley Boucher, George O. Jackson and Addie Broyles.
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally
July 20, 2009
Buy tickets now for screening of 'Fresh'
The problems of the modern agriculture system have been uncovered in dozens of books and movies in recent years. One of the most recent productions is “Fresh,” a movie that focuses on the new ways of growing, distributing and selling food. Unlike “Food, Inc.,” which was released to theaters nationwide this summer, “Fresh” is being shown at private and public screenings across the country.
On Aug. 25, Edible Austin and the Alamo Drafthouse are hosting a screening at Boggy Creek Farm in East Austin that will raise money for the Sustainable Food Center. Drafthouse chefs John Bullington and Trish Eichelberger will create a locally sourced picnic dinner to be served just before the film starts at dark. Buy tickets ($35) now if you want them; the event is well on its way to being sold out.
Here’s a trailer from the Web site:
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
July 9, 2009
Free screening of 'Food, Inc.' on July 16
If you haven’t had a chance to see “Food, Inc.” yet, consider it your duty as a foodie to do so. The movie is playing in theaters around the country, but on July 16, you can see it for free at Regal Arbor Cinema at Great Hills.
Chipotle Mexican Grill, which buys some of its pork from Polyface Farm, one of the farms profiled in the film, is sponsoring the screening at 7:30 p.m. on July 16.
Tickets will be issued on a first come, first served basis. Click here for more information.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
June 30, 2009
Downtown farmers' market to open, close an hour earlier
To compensate for the afternoon heat, the Austin Farmers’ Market downtown will open and close an hour earlier through October. Starting on Saturday (July 4), the market will be open from 8 a.m. to noon.
“This is a small way that we can gain some independence from the hotter than usual summer we see coming up,” says pun master and market director Suzanne Santos.
The hours will change back to 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Oct. 31, which is the same week the Wednesday farmers’ market at the Triangle will change from its summertime hours of 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. to 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.
To reward the early morning shoppers this week, the first 100 shoppers will receive a free reusable water bottle.
Also on Saturday, check out a chef demonstration by Jessica Maher of Dishalicious and Spoon & Co. and the second annual Farmer Olympics, which both start at 10 a.m.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
June 29, 2009
Find summer cocktail bliss in overripe peaches, garden herbs
This squishy peach is your key to summertime happiness.
Overripe fruit, especially peaches, are perfect for muddling, a technique that requires only a long blunt utensil and a strainer. When you combine the extracted juice with a few other ingredients, including — if you’re lucky — herbs from your backyard, you can make a cocktail that tastes like summer.
Muddled fruit isn’t reserved for summer or peaches or adult beverages, but overripe peaches just so happen to be plentiful right now (I found lots at the City Market near my house this weekend. Farmers’ markets are also a good place to find overripe fruit, sold at a discount price.), so peach cocktails are what I’ve been drinking.
Classic muddling involves a small baseball bat-like pestle and a pint glass. I’m more likely to press the fruit through a strainer with a strong spoon or a lemon reamer. (You could probably squeeze the juice out of the fruit with your hands if the peaches are as ripe as you are desperate.)
Summertime Bliss
1 oz. peach juice, about 1/2 a peach muddled
1/2 oz. lemon juice
1/2 oz. simple syrup
2 dashes bitters
3-4 sprigs of mint, lemon verbena, lemon balm or other garden herb
2 oz. gin or vodka
Combine ingredients in a Boston shaker with ice. Shake at least 10 seconds, strain and serve with a sprig of herb as a garnish. Makes one drink, but you can easily double the ingredients to make two.
I can’t speak for every nursery in town, but a stroll through the herb section of The Natural Gardener gives me hope that all is not lost in the summer heat. I came home with lemon verbena, lemon balm, Thai basil and sage to add to the lemongrass, mint, thyme and other basils already growing.
After one whiff those herbs, my garden frustrations eased and my mind went back to cocktails. You could add just about any of those herbs to a number of drinks, but instead of chopping them up into little pieces or muddling them, just give them a good smack between your hands to release the aromatic oils before adding to your drink.
Here’s a recipe for a lemon verbena liquor that you could mix with lemonade or sparkling water:
Lemon Verbena Liquor
1/2 cup fresh lemon verbena leaves
4 cups vodka
2 cups sugar
Chop fresh lemon verbena leaves and put in a jar. Add 4 cups of vodka and let sit, covered, for two weeks, shaking every once in a while. After two weeks, add 2 cups of sugar and shake to dissolve. Let sit for two weeks. Strain out the leaves and bottle the fragrant liqueur, which you can add to desserts or serve with seltzer or other drink.
Speaking of peaches, if you’re lucky enough to have a peach tree in your yard, like my friend Scott does, you’ve probably been thinning out these little peaches so the others can grow larger — that is, if the birds and squirrels haven’t beaten you to them. Scott brought these into work the other day, and they were much sweeter and tastier than I thought they’d be. They weren’t juicy enough, however, to muddle for cocktails.
Permalink | | Categories: Drinks, Eating locally, Food in your backyard
June 22, 2009
Farm eggs in jeopardy at restaurants, stores
Farm eggs — and the establishments that sell them — have been caught in a regulatory snare in the past few months.
City health inspectors have been cracking down on a city code that requires eggs that are sold in restaurants or in stores to be graded and labeled at least Grade B.
Problem is, farm eggs aren’t required to be graded.
“It’s not a change,” says Vince Delisi, a supervisor of consumer health for the Austin Travis County Health Department’s Environment and Consumer Health Unit. “It’s been part of the establishment rules.”
Under state law, grading isn’t required for eggs that are produced by a person’s own flock.
Delisi says farms can sell direct to consumers at either farmers’ markets or at their farms, but a retail establishment isn’t allowed to receive or sell eggs that aren’t graded.
So why don’t farms just have their eggs graded? Under the Texas Department of Agriculture’s Egg Law, producers who sell graded eggs also have to be licensed.
Delisi says his department has received confirmation from Texas Department of State Health Services and the Texas Department of Agriculture, as well as lawyers with the City of Austin, that its interpretation of the laws is correct.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture oversees the grading of eggs, but the Texas Department of Agriculture ensures that graded eggs are being sold under the correct label, according to Bryan Black, Assistant Commissioner for Communications for the state agriculture department.
“In Austin, there’s a growth of the buy local movement, which we certainly agree with, but we have to make sure they are in compliance with the regulations,” Delisi says.
“It’s sad that our food chain is coming to this and that we can’t support our local producers,” Emmett Fox owner of FINO and Asti restaurants, which serve food made with many locally-sourced ingredients.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
June 19, 2009
Dai Due Supper Club meats, condiments for sale
Chef Jesse Griffiths, whose Dai Due Supper Club is one of the most exciting things happening in food in Central Texas right now, has gained quite the reputation for what he can do with locally sourced ingredients.
When it comes to meat, his waste-not-want-not philosophy means that he’s just as likely to serve pork cheek as pork chop at one of his dinners, and he’s shown countless people who take his classes how to use up every last piece of edible meat on an animal in a tasty enough way to make you wonder how “offal” earned its name.
An now, you can buy charcuterie, sausage and condiments directly from the chef (which isn’t a substitute for enjoying a full Dai Due dinner, but it will definitely hold you over until the next one.)
From Griffiths’ newsletter this week:
All of our sausages, pates and terrines are made with the highest quality ingredients, such as Richardson Farm pork, Countryside Farm poultry, Boggy Creek and Rain Lily Farm vegetables, Southern Style spices, local eggs and fresh herbs from our own garden. The selection will change weekly to reflect the herbs, fruit, meats and vegetables available at the markets.
Send your order to info@daidueaustin.com and you’ll get an e-mail back with details about how to pick it up. (Sign up for the mailing list to find out what’s for sale each week.)
This week, he’s offering duck boudin with tasso ham, country-style sausage, chorizo, fresh fennel sausage, chevron, smoked pork rillettes, Fireman’s 4 mustard and peach and rhubarb chutney. Griffiths also says that custom made sausages are also available.
(Photo by Cliff Cheney.)
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
June 18, 2009
Dripping Springs gets its first farmers' market
Dripping Springs is getting a farmers’ market. Starting on Saturday, farmers will be selling seasonal crops at the northeast corner of U.S. 290 and RM 12 in Dripping Springs. City Secretary Jo Ann Touchstone says the market — a first for the city — will be limited to produce growers, but they might add food artisans in the future. The markets will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on the first and third Saturdays of the month through October. Call 512-858-4725 for more information.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
June 17, 2009
Foraging for fruit in public spaces
The New York Times has a story today about foraging for fruit. Writer Kim Severson found folks in Portland, Ore., Oakland, Calif., Los Angeles and New York who are getting together to harvest fruit from trees in public spaces.
Severson’s article is packed with good information, but it didn’t include anything about Austin’s own fruit rescuers.
Scott Dubois of the Blue Green Project started Austin Fruit Rescue in early 2008 and has organized outings for “fruit rescuers” interested in collecting fruit, which they split between themselves, local food banks and property owners (if they’ve been given permission to picking fruit on private property).
Dubois says the group has recently gone dormant, but you can e-mail him if you are interested in joining when the rescues get going again.
Up next? Figs.
If you know of trees in public spaces, you can add them to the Google map:
View Austin Fruit Rescue in a larger map
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food
June 16, 2009
How Hurricane Katrina led to a new gluten-free grain mix
Wirth and Erdem didn’t know each other pre-Katrina, but a mutual friend introduced them and before long, they were creating a line of gluten-free grains for their new company World Wise Grains.
The first product, Arzu, a mix of quinoa, buckwheat and legumes, was released at the end of 2008. Erdem says they were inspired to create a nutrient-packed grain mix because of the lack of healthy food choices in schools and hospitals. “We designed it to be a healthy food,” Wirth says. “We knew what we wanted in the nutrition panel and we worked backward from there.”
High in protein and fiber, Arzu can be made into a simple breakfast similar to oatmeal, but Wirth and Erdem say people are using it in cookies or with vegetables and meat. Look for a new product called Tasfa, which will include the Ethiopian supergrain teff, early next year. Arzu is available at People’s Pharmacy and in several shops inside Dell Children’s Hospital and Cedar Park Regional Hospital.
Wirth and Erdem will be hosting a tasting from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday at the People’s Pharmacy at U.S. 183 and RM 620. You can also order online ($2.50 per 1⁄2 cup package, or $68 for a bulk order of 31 packages).
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
June 15, 2009
Cute overload with Love Puppies Brownies
Austinite Joel Haro knew he had something special coming out of his commercial kitchen when he realized his catering business was churning out more brownies than anything else. The Culinary Institute of America graduate, who moved back to Austin in 2004 after working in New York restaurants, decided to focus on what he knew people wanted, and Love Puppies Brownies was born.
“I wanted them to be fun, upscale, but also something that everybody would enjoy,” Haro says. He also wanted them to be affordable. At $16 per dozen, brownies come in six flavors, including “Trailer Park Chic,” a custom blond brownie with pecans and chocolate chips that Haro made for the La-Dee-Dah trailer on South First Street. You can order the brownies online and have them shipped, or Haro will personally deliver them.
(Photo by Mike Sutter)
Permalink | | Categories: Desserts, Eating locally
June 9, 2009
Are Rockstar Bagels worth the hype?
Drummer Joe Humel’s hands are about to get even more worn out.
The New York native, who toured with bands on and off since the 1990s, got used to the rock-star life and the wear and tear on his cubs. But now his hands are getting used to the baker’s life, during which he gets up early and stays up late hand-rolling bagels for his newest venture, Rockstar Bagels.
He’ll be staying up later and later after the enormous amount of press lately, including this item in tomorrow’s food section:
“I always wanted to make bagels,” says Humel, 35. The self-described jack of all trades wanted to break away from touring and start his own business, so in January, he started spending up to 12 hours a day researching bagels online. In between watching videos and poring over recipes, he would bake batches of bagels in his kitchen, tweaking the recipes until he made a bagel that reminded him of home.
“I’m still tweaking all the time,” he says, but he’s getting busier by the day, filling orders from 15 coffee shops and stores, as well as personal orders via e-mail. He and two assistants are rolling by hand and baking more than 2,000 bagels a week in a small kitchen off West Fourth Street.
So what of the claim that New York’s bagels are better because of the city’s tap water? “New York has fantastic tap water, but Austin has great tap water as well,” Humel says. He’s planning on bringing back water from his next trip to New York to do a side-by-side test, but the bagels — which are made with malt instead of sugar and come in plain, salt, poppy seed, sesame, garlic, onion and “everything” — are already a hit with former New Yorkers used to lamenting that Austin doesn’t have any good bagels.
Places to find Rockstar Bagels include Summermoon Coffee Bar, Cherrywood Coffeehouse, Blue Dahlia Bistro, Cafe Pacha, Spider House Cafe and Royal Blue Grocery. To order bagels or find out where else to buy them, go to the Web site.
But are they worth their weight in New York tap water?
I brought back a half dozen bagels to the office last week and specifically asked the former New Yorkers for their opinions. All-in-all, they were impressed, especially, they said, considering there haven’t been any bagels with the right crust and fluffy inside that come close to what they used to get in The City.
Permalink | Comments (9) | Categories: Eating locally
Lunch bombs away!
Greenling Organic Delivery is always coming up with cool ideas to interact with the community, even with people who don’t buy produce from them. Today, for example, Greenling founder Mason Arnold and company have thrown together a “lunch bomb” at Somnio’s Cafe, the South First eatery that gets nearly all of its ingredients from local sources.
“There are lots of restaurants around town striving to use local products and they need us eating there,” the Facebook invite says. “We’ll try to fill the restaurant up to let them know we appreciate what they do.”
Sure, Greenling gets great exposure for doing this, as do other food businesses, caterers, restaurants, etc. when they sponsor fundraisers or donate goods. But unlike bigger projects that take a lot of time and resources to execute, today’s lunch bomb is merely a bunch of like-minded people getting together to grab a bite to eat at a restaurant that is just getting its roots set.
I love seeing businesses think outside the traditional marketing box to support other businesses and bring the food community together.
Social media makes it easy to organize and get the word out, so it’s up to us to come up with the ideas.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food
June 8, 2009
New farmers' markets in the 'hood
Farmers’ markets are packed this time of year, and the Sustainable Food Center has just launched a summer series of six neighborhood farm markets, which will go through the end of July. The markets, like their Wednesday and Saturday counterparts, accept WIC vouchers and food stamps.
View SFC neighborhood farm markets in a larger map
South Austin Multipurpose Center, 2508 Durwood, Wednesdays, 10 a.m. to noon
Northwest WIC Clinic, 8701A Research Blvd., Wednesdays, 9 to 11 a.m.
Dove Springs Recreation Center, 5801 Ainez Dr., Wednesdays, noon to 2 p.m.
Rosewood-Zaragosa Neighborhood Center, 2800 Webberville Road, Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
St. John’s Community Center, 7500 Blessing, Wednesdays, noon to 2 p.m.
Montopolis WIC Clinic, 1416 Montopolis Dr., Wednesdays, 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
June 1, 2009
Voice your food concerns tonight
Interested in starting a community garden? Frustrated with the lack of grocery stores near your house? Wish your kids’ school offered healthier lunch choices?
The Sustainable Food Policy Board wants to hear your thoughts on how to improve the availability of food that is safe, reasonably priced, nutritious and locally and sustainably grown.
The board is hosting one of its first large scale meetings at 6:30 p.m. on Monday at the Carver Library, 1161 Angelina St., and Edible Austin publisher and SFPB board member Marla Camp says the main goal of this meeting is gathering input from the community on which issues the newly formed board should tackle first.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
May 15, 2009
Austin Farmers' Market expands, but parking is still free
The Austin Farmers’ Market has grown to nearly 70 vendors, says Suzanne Santos, market director of the Sustainable Food Center, which means that the market has expanded from four rows to six rows. With Republic Square Park on the border of one side, the market had to expand into the surface parking lot, which means that the free parking in the surface lot is no longer available on Saturday mornings.
That doesn’t mean you can’t park for free at the downtown market, however. Santos wanted to remind people that there are 650 free parking spaces in the state parking garage next to the market (enter the garage on San Antonio Street). You can even park in the ones marked “reserved” on Saturday mornings.
With the new vendors, the number of farmers now totals 41, Santos says, and some of them have blueberries and peaches for sale. Plums will be in a few weeks.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
May 4, 2009
Whipping up real change out of food policy buzzwords
Sustainable. Food. Policy. Board.
Sounds exciting, doesn’t it? A buzzword — “sustainable” — combined with “policy” and “board,” which will make anyone’s eyes glaze over, and that almighty necessity “food.”
But, as a friend of mine used to pester me when I’d start talking big, what does it mean?
It would be easy for the good intentions of the Sustainable Food Policy Board, which formed last year and is made up of 13 people with strong ties to local food, to be squashed by the hurdles that inevitably get in the way when people try to affect change.
In any other city, in any other time, with a board led by any other folks, this might be the case.
So what does that mean, improving local food system?
Most of us take supermarkets for granted, Winne explained, but for many people without transportation, getting to and from a supermarket isn’t easy. Food boards can help reroute buses and even convince city governments to give incentives to supermarkets to open in neighborhoods where there weren’t any.
Protecting farmland is something else food policy boards, like the one in Portland, Ore., have accomplished. After a survey of the farms around Portland revealed that 85 percent of the farms sold directly to the city and its residents, officials decided to include farmland protection in the city’s long-term planning. The city even turned down proposals for subdivision that would adversely affect farms. (Farms in the Austin area that are on the brink of closing down because of water issues could greatly benefit from protection like this.)
In Cleveland, the food policy board made it so that community gardens, like the 4-acre Sunshine Community Gardens in Austin, would be protected under an “urban agriculture zone.” They also created an ordinance so residents, following certain protocol, could own backyard chickens and keep bees.
Policy boards — there are about 100 such groups in the U.S. — have created incentives such as seed grants to encourage farmers to keep farming and business opportunities for them to sell produce at local schools and government facilities.
Food policy boards can influence how cities respond to the push to post nutritional information on menus and to remove trans fats from restaurants. Boards can also help develop education programs to help kids understand nutrition. (Winne found some schools requiring as little as one hour per school year on health and nutrition. And we wonder why childhood obesity is reaching pandemic proportions, if I may steal another buzzword of late.)
“Focus on things that are closer at hand,” Winne told the group. His first suggestion was that the group assess Austin’s food system: Who are the stakeholders? Which organizations are already working in the community? Who doesn’t have access to fresh, quality food? What is the City’s buying power when it comes to food? Which schools have programs to improve kids’ lunches? Which schools are doing the best job educating their students on nutrition?
“Food has become a real exciting topic these days,” Winne told the board and about a dozen audience members. From farmers’ markets to salmonella to the rising cost of health care to the environmental impact of the food industry, people are talking about food like never before.
“We can make changes as a group that we can’t make as individuals,” he said.
(Mug shot courtesy of MarkWinne.com)
Permalink | Comments (3) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
May 1, 2009
New farmers' market in Round Rock
Tomorrow marks the grand opening of the new Brushy Creek Farmers’ Market at 16813 Great Oaks Drive in Round Rock (next to the Brushy Creek Municipal Utility District).
From 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., you’ll be able to buy fresh vegetables, fruits, flowers, herbs and locally raised meats, including beef, pork and chicken.
To kick things off, the market is hosting a barbecue cook-off tomorrow with barbecue vendors and live music.
If you’re interesting in being a vendor at the market, contact Amy Ingram.
(via Edible Austin)
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
Location change for Sunset Valley Farmers' Market
For the next two Saturdays (May 2 and May 9), the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market will move from Toney Burger Center to Sunset Valley Elementary School just around the corner on Pillow Road.
From the market:
Parking will be allowed on the Pillow Road side of the school and on the left hand (northwest) side of Pillow Road past where the market will be held….After you turn onto Pillow Road, there is an entrance into the elementary school parking lot on the right. If that is full, go on down past the market, and we will have someone in attendance to facilitate the parking.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
Channel your inner Michael Pollan
…or Alice Waters or your sustainable food activist of choice because you can help change the way we think about food. Join members of the Sustainable Food Policy Board for a public meeting on Monday at 12:30 p.m. in the city council chambers at City Hall.
The newly formed board will featured a special guest, activist Mark Winne, who has worked for more than 30 years on food and agriculture policy groups. The boards he works with, including Austin’s, focus on improving access to quality food, reducing hunger and food insecurity, educating the public on the benefits of local good and supporting local farmers.
When you think about it, food relates to everything: from oil (petroleum-based fertilizers are an industry standard at this point) to education (studies show that unhealthy kids don’t learn as much or as well as their healthy counterparts) to the environment (livestock are the largest source of methane from human-related activities) to, of course, our health.
FYI, parking will be free in the City Hall garage. Just bring your ticket with you and the city clerk with validate it. The full agenda will be posted here on the City’s site.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 23, 2009
Montesino CSA expands to Austin, has shares available
With the rise in popularity of eating locally, it’s no surprise that Central Texas community-supported agriculture programs, in which subscribers pay for boxes of produce delivered each week to a pickup location in the city, have quickly filled up. Most of the farms that offer CSA subscriptions in Central Texas have a waiting list to get in.
Not Montesino Ranch in Wimberley, which just this year started offering a CSA pick-up location in Austin. For $25 a week (purchased in either 5-week increments or all at once for the 18 or so weeks left in the growing season), you can take home a bag that includes a mix of vegetables, fruit, flowers (including onion blooms, below) and sometimes duck eggs at Emerald City Press on Thursday afternoons.
Like most CSAs, Montesino offers a work share day on Thursdays from 9 a.m. to noon, where people can come to the farm and help harvest in exchange for a share of produce.
You can also buy produce from the 8-acre organic farm, which Brenda and Scott Mitchell started in 2005, at the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market on Saturdays and at the Wimberley Farmers’ Market on Wednesday afternoons. The Mitchells escaped the freeze earlier this month that destroyed many of the peach and blackberry blossoms in the Hill Country, so by Mother’s Day (May 10), expect to find pints of blackberries in the CSA boxes and at the markets.
Here is the recipe for Brenda Mitchell’s blackberry cobbler pie was featured on the cover of Bon Appetit in 2006:
Blackberry cobbler pie
2 9-inch unbaked pie shells
Streusel topping:
3/4 cup flour
3/4 cup sugar
6 Tbsp. butter, cut in small pieces
Filling:
Enough berries to fill 2 shells (about 4-5 cups)
4 eggs, beaten
1 cup sour cream
1 cup flour, sifted
2 cups sugar
2 pinches salt
Preheat oven to 350. For streusel, combine flour, sugar and butter and work with hands until crumbly mixture forms. For filling, fill two pie shells with berries. In a large bowl, whisk together eggs and sour cream. In another bowl, mix flour, sugar and salt. Stir dry ingredients into sour cream mixture and pour on top of berries. Sprinkle pies with streusel, and bakes until pie top is golden and center is cooked through, 1 hour or more. Cool before serving. (Makes two 9-inch pies)
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
April 15, 2009
Hill Country peach crop devastated by freeze
Peach farmers from the Fredericksburg, Stonewall and Johnson City area confirmed this week that a cold night last week killed nearly all the blossoms that had already popped out on the trees.
Bill Psencik, a grower situated between Stonewall and Fredericksburg, says he thought he was in the clear: the average last date of a freeze is around April 1. “I keep hoping I might find some (unscathed blooms) under a limb, just enough for our use, but no. It’s a total loss.”
The impact of the peach industry on Texas’ economy is about $39 million; 40 percent of the crop is grown in Gillespie County.
Many farmers, including Psencik, have insurance to help cover the losses caused by freeze, but even with insurance, it’s a heart-breaking scene. “I have lost more than I have made in 12 years,” Psencik says. He says he’s had three full crops in that time; last year, his orchard produced 35 percent of a full crop.
Farmers suffered two freezes last week, but the second on Tuesday morning, when the temperature dropped to 28 degrees, was the worst. The peach trees only flower once, and once the pit is ruined, there’s no hope for a fruit, Psencik says.
Fredericksburg farmer Gary Marburger calls the freeze devastating, but it will be a few more weeks before he knows for sure. Some of the varieties could still bear fruit, but it’s not looking good. “We’re all gonna be surprised if we turn out anything.”
Paul Wood, who grows peaches north of Johnson City, says it’s still possible that his ranger and red haven peaches will bear fruit, but he doesn’t consider it likely.
Marburger says his strawberries are just fine; there are still a few weeks of you-pick berries available. But both his and Psencik’s blackberries, which were in the height of blooming, were wiped out along with the peaches.
“I was gonna make this my last year,” says Psencik, who he sat behind a desk in Austin for 45 years until starting a second career as a peach farmer more than a decade ago. “I’m 73 years, and it’s a lot of work. I might do it one more year. I really like growing things.”
Permalink | Comments (5) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
April 9, 2009
Loncito Cartwright raises more than sheep
In my article in the food section yesterday about Loncito Cartwright, the sixth generation Texas raising grass-fed lamb between San Antonio and Corpus Christi, I didn’t devote more than a short paragraph to Loncito’s family, which lives in San Antonio.
His three children, Lomenick, Lily and Mary, are a huge part of his life; when I was on his ranch late last month, he would happily drop whatever he was doing if one of them called his cell phone and he couldn’t talk enough about how proud he is of their accomplishments. They spend as much time together as they can, and I didn’t adequately explain their role in his life.
I wanted to share this letter to the editor Loncito wrote last night (with his permission):
Thank you for the nice piece on Loncito’s Lamb. Please let me make it clear: the whole effort would not be sustainable without the support and enthusiasm of my family and friends. My children’s hard work and encouragement through every step of the operation sustains me. It truly is Our Lamb.
Gentle Rains,
Loncito Cartwright
Many journalists, including this one, strive to be storytellers as much as reporters, and I hope Loncito’s story is a little more complete with this extra information about his family.
Now, about that lamb. I’ll be braising two lamb shanks on an Easter camping trip this weekend, trying to convince my lamb-shy dad that it’s not a “weird” meat with a “funny” flavor. (Wish me luck on that one!) I’m going to use the marinade from SWB chef Kevin Dee that was printed in the paper, but here are a few other recipes if you need inspiration:
Lamb, Lime and Mango Salad
3 cloves garlic, minced
10 sprigs cilantro, stemmed (reserve stems)
1/2 tsp. freshly ground black pepper
3 Tbsp. peanut oil, divided
12 ounces lamb steak, trimmed of fat
1 head butter lettuce
1 small firm, ripe mango, peeled, pitted and diced
1 small avocado, seeded, peeled and diced
4 large green onions, including light green parts, diced
Dressing:
1 Tbsp. low sodium Thai fish sauce
3 Tbsp. freshly squeezed lime juice
1 Tbsp. low sodium soy sauce
2 tsp. fresh red Thai or jalapeno, minced
2 tsp. brown sugar, packed
In a food processor, combine the garlic, cilantro stems, salt, pepper and 2 Tbsp. oil. Spread the paste on both sides of the lamb and marinate for 1/2 hour. Warm remaining 1 Tbsp. oil in a large heavy skillet, cooking the steak on each side 3 to 4 minutes for medium rare. Remove from pan and let cool.
Cut the lamb into strips. Divide the lettuce leaves among 4 plates and arrange the mango, avocado, green onions and strips of lamb on top. For the dressing, in a small bowl, combine all the ingredients and stir until the sugar is dissolved. Drizzle the salad with the dressing and scatter the reserved cilantro leaves over the top, add salt to taste. Serves 4.
Grilled Rack of Lamb with Fresh Lemon and Herbs
2 lamb racks, frenched
Salt and pepper to taste
2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice
1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 Tbsp. fresh Italian parsley leaves, chopped
1 Tbsp. fresh cilantro leaves, chopped
1 Tbsp. fresh ginger, grated
Pat racks dry with a paper towel and season with salt and pepper, set aside. In small bowl, combine lemon juice, olive oil, parsley, cilantro and ginger. Brush on all sides of rack. Grill over coals covered with gray ash for 10 to 15 minutes per side or to desired degree of doneness. Remove from grill, cover and let stand for 10 minutes. Serves 8.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally
January 22, 2009
Owl Tree is keeping Austin caffeinated
To Bingaman, running a socially responsible coffee business means working as closely as possible with the single estates in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia that grow the coffee Kizer roasts. It also means hosting events, such as concerts and coffee tastings, to bring the coffee community together and educate baristas, who are answering more questions than ever from customers about coffee origin and ethos. Owl Tree coffee is available at shops including Dominican Joe’s, Cupprimo, Whole Foods and Blue Marble Java in Pflugerville, or you can buy coffee by the pound ($10-$12) at the roasting facility located in a former gas station at 3421 N. Interstate 35.
Permalink | | Categories: Drinks, Eating locally
January 12, 2009
Want to learn more about macrobiotics?
If you are thinking about how to rejuvenate your diet this January, check out this free lecture on Wednesday at Casa de Luz off South Lamar Boulevard and Barton Springs Road. If you need a primer on macrobiotics, check out this story I wrote in November.
From the Natural Epicurean:
How food affects your health and emotions
Wednesday, January 14, 7 to 9 p.m.
In addition to the free lecture at 7 p.m., our free cooking demonstration this month will be presented by advanced student Carlos Moctezuma. He will be teaching us how to make macrobiotic Mexican Mole. Please join us at 6 p.m. in the Cielo Room at Casa de Luz just before the lecture.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
January 5, 2009
Bastrop farmers' market adds Tuesday hours
Starting tomorrow, the Bastrop 1832 Farmers Market will offer a Tuesday farmers’ market in addition to the regular Saturday market. The Tuesday market will go from 2:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. (Saturday market hours are 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.) Both markets are at 1302 Chestnut St. in downtown Bastrop. For the winter months, the market has moved into a metal building in the back lot of 1302 Chestnut.
Cool weather crops such as mustard greens, Chinese cabbage, broccoli, spinach, lettuce, Swiss chard, salad mixes (spicy and mild), radishes and snow peas are now available, say market organizers. Bradshaw Farm is also selling vine-ripened greenhouse tomatoes and peppers.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
December 12, 2008
Chocolates begging for a stocking to call home
Local chocolate company Arte y Chocolate was started in 2005 by Krystal Craig and Lila Browne, who wanted to use top-quality ingredients to make fine chocolates found in Europe and New York City.
At less than $20, their delightful bon bons (the one with peanut butter is my favorite) and beautiful chocolate bars, which Lila informs me are called barks, are perfect for stocking stuffers. The chocolate-coated graham cracker is also a favorite for either vegans (it is both vegan and nondairy) or kids (there is no paraffin, a type of wax, in any of their products).
Lila, who moved to Austin from New York, has a master’s degree in education, but fell in love with the art of chocolate making. “It was a way to be creative, but I’ve had a passion for my food for my whole life. “It’s like the French word ‘bijou,’ each piece is a little jewel,” she says. They keep it simple, using organic honey, cream, butter and coffee and local products when possible. For example, the filling for the peanut butter bon bon is simply honey, salt and peanut butter. “It’s what a Reese’s should taste like,” she says. “Chocolate doesn’t have to be this mystified thing.”
You can buy their chocolates at the Blue Genie Art Bazaar, Primadora on South Congress Avenue, Cafe Medici in Clarksville and Thom’s Market on Barton Springs Road.
“Fine things are made in Austin,” Lila says. “When I moved here there was this attitude that you have to go to New York to find fine chocolate. But beautiful things are made here and it’s a food renaissance.”
I couldn’t agree more.
Permalink | Comments (1) | Categories: Eating locally
December 9, 2008
Olives from Manor will spruce up your martinis
Kemp has about 1,000 olive trees in Manor, which makes it too small a farm to invest in a $40,000 press for olive oil, he says. So what to do with all the olives? Stick them in a brine and sell them to eat (or put in drinks if you’re a martini-lover).
The olives, which are arbequinos processed in apple cider, sit in a brine solution for 2-3 months before they are ready to eat. “It took several years to figure out how to do that,” he says of the various ways they attempted to prepare them. “The simplest way was the best way.”
The trees are just a side project; Kemp also runs Southern Style Spices, which supplies spices to places like Central Market, Whole Foods, Headliner’s Club to Torchy’s Tacos. His is the only commercial olive farm in Travis County and, as of Tuesday, the only way you can enjoy some of his olives is by e-mailing him at bbkemp@bbkemp.com. (He’s looking into several retail outlets in Austin.)
He’ll fill your mason jar or whatever you’ve got for $5 a pound, which is about a Ziploc bag full, he says, or by the gallon. Five bucks a pound is incredibly cheap. They might be small, but they are tasty and come from Austin’s backyard.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
October 29, 2008
When market changes are a good thing
Enough with roller coaster stock market changes! The Austin Farmers’ Market has a few changes coming up you should know about:
- The winter hours for the Triangle market at 46th Street and Lamar Boulevard begin today. To accommodate the ever-shortening days and upcoming time change, the Wednesday market will go from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. until spring.
- Next Saturday, Nov. 8, the downtown farmers’ market will have its regular hours (9 a.m. to 1 p.m.) at the location at Fourth and Guadalupe streets but it will be open again from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the new Mueller development where the old airport used to be off Airport Boulevard.
The afternoon market, which will be held in Browning Hangar near one of the Mueller neighborhood parks, will feature cooking demonstrations for both kids and adults, live music and, of course, food samples.
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news
October 22, 2008
A prize-winning journey in eating local
From the editor of the Statesman’s food section:
The American-Statesman food section’s experiment in trying to eat local for a week in April, 2007 took home a third-place award for Best Newspaper Special Food Project last weekend at the Association of Food Journalists convention in Houston. The article was based on food diaries kept by staffers Kitty Crider, Dale Rice, Ed Crowell and Renee Studebaker. They found it tough to eat only products from Central Texas for every meal for a week, but by expanding the local definition to the state of Texas there were enough options to feed themselves well.
Congrats, Ed, Dale, Renee and Kitty! (A side note: I got to spend lots of time with Mrs. Crider herself at AFJ last week. Kitty, who has graciously helped me on more than a few occasions in the months since I took her place, is quite happy cooking and writing at home these days. She still freelances for the Statesman.)
Permalink | | Categories: Eating locally
October 13, 2008
The first rule of Oyster Club...
Ask questions!
That’s the whole point of Oyster Club, says Marla Camp, publisher of Edible Austin, a sponsor of the monthly foodie club that raises money for the Rude Mechanicals theater company.
(Marla, the tireless voice of local food and art in Austin, is also vice president of the board of directors of the eccentric performance group that occupies The Off Center in East Austin.)
Oyster Club, though grounded in those lovable, delicious, slimy sea creatures, is about offering a place where people can eat — and learn — about all the wonderful foods our corner of the world has to offer, Marla explained to nearly 100 people who met for the group’s first gathering last night at The Plant at Kyle.
The second rule of Oyster Club: Don’t leak the location to outsiders!
This month’s OC, postponed a few weeks because of Hurricane Ike, was held at The Plant at Kyle, which I’m only allowed to tell you provided Texas scenery as breathtaking as the Gulf oysters were fresh.
Roberto San Miguel, who sells direct-from-the-Gulf seafood at the downtown farmers’ market every week, provided the oysters, gigantic shrimp and what Texas Monthly food editor Pat Sharpe called the best snapper she’s had in Austin.
Chef Jim Doss supplemented the raw oyster feast with Oysters Rockefeller, Oysters Bienville and paella, while chef Todd Duplechan grilled the shrimp and red snapper. Paula Angerstein of Paula’s Texas Spirits, the Tipsy Texans and Dr. Oolong of Zhi Tea served cocktails.
Throughout the year, club members will sample local food paired with some of the best music, film, dance, art and architecture Texas has to offer. You better hurry up if you want in. It costs $100 to join, which pays for membership through April, the last of the “r” months during which it’s supposedly safe to eat oysters. (It’s actually OK to eat them year-round.)
As of this morning, Marla says there are 15 spots left.
You can join by contacting the Rude Mechanicals.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Playing with your food
October 9, 2008
Squash and Pepper Summer Farewell or:
How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Heat
My happy culinary tale of realizing how wonderful really spicy food can be must start by telling you about joining a community-supported agriculture (CSA) program two weeks ago.
If you’ve never heard of a CSA, think of it like investing or buying shares in a farm. You pay for several weeks’ worth of fruits, vegetables and herbs (sometimes eggs, honey or other locally sourced products are included).
Then at a specified time and day of the week, you pick up a box or bag at some location around town of whatever the farm is harvesting and then take home with you the freshest of fresh produce that’s likely grown less than 30 miles from where you live. It’s always a grab bag of things, but most CSAs e-mail you a newsletter with what you can expect to receive in your box that week.
Mine costs $30 a week if you buy four weeks and $28 if you buy 10, and I’d say I’m getting my money’s worth. It would help if a certain someone in my house helped me eat all that eggplant, but the basil, squash, peppers and tomatoes are certainly not going to waste.
It was those peppers grown five miles from my house that led me to a major life revelation last night:
I’m not afraid of spicy heat anymore!
The spiciest food I’ve ever been able to handle is the equivalent of what a typical Texas-bred toddler, heck even my Texas-bred toddler, can handle. I have always enjoyed the Chuy’s salsa kind of hot (the fresh one, not the ketchup one).
But it was this bright, buttery and HOT squash pepper dish — paired with black beans, enchilada leftovers and some of that saffron rice in a bag that H-E-B sells for about $0.75 — schooled my wimpy palate. And, like any straight-from-the-garden dish should be, it’s s-i-m-p-l-e.
Squash and Pepper Summer Farewell
(Remember, the ingredient amounts are flexible. I think any garden-y dish depends on the level of heat in your particular peppers and the woodiness of your squash. Or zucchini, which of course would be a delicious substitute.)
2 Tbsp. butter 2 small hot and sweet peppers, de-seeded and minced 1 big clove garlic, minced 2 cups chopped squash (the stranger the variety and shape, the better) coarse salt pepper
Melt the butter in a large saucepan. Add the peppers and garlic and saute for one minute, then add the squash and continue cooking until squash soften, about six minutes. Season with salt and pepper.
(Optional, for newbies: Pour glass of milk.)
Enjoy!
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Eating locally, Recipes
October 5, 2008
Chutney in a pinch
My attempt this weekend to make homemade samosas was a relative success, but halfway through the process, I realized we didn’t have any chutney and I was out of steam to try to make some from scratch.
I rattled through the condiments in my fridge door and found a jar of Austin Slow Burn’s Green Chili Jam that I bought awhile back at Central Market.
Jill and Kevin have been making salsas, jellies, jams and quesos out of their kitchen since 1994 and have won countless awards and prizes for their long line of Southwest-inspired products.
At this year’s Austin Chronicle Hot Sauce Festival, Jill beat Kevin in the specialty salsa category, taking first with her roasted tomato mango salsa, which she’s in the process of bottling for commercial sale.
“We found out that you grow as your kitchen grows,” Jill says, so with the expansion of their kitchen, they are hoping to sell more fresh salsas and maybe even a tomatillo ranch jalapeno dip.
You can buy their products at all the Central Texas H-E-Bs, Central Market, Spec’s and Whole Foods, as well as specialty stores in the area and several places online.
Stock up on a variety of flavors, which of course would make a perfect gift, for glazing meats, using in sauces or in any number of dishes, even spaghetti.
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October 1, 2008
Buy some wine, save the Alamo
Ed and Susan Auler, the owners of Fall Creek Vineyards who are credited with bringing serious winemaking to Central Texas in the 1970s, have released two new wines to raise money to help restore the Alamo in San Antonio.
The wines, a 2007 sauvignon blanc and 2006 cabernet sauvignon, sell for $9.99 a bottle and are already on the shelves at H-E-B. Susan Auler says she hopes Twin Liquors, Spec’s and restaurants around town will pick them up soon.
These aren’t just gimmicky wines to commemorate an anniversary or a way to get rid of extra grapes. A friend of hers who is a member of the Daughters of the Republic of Texas talked with Susan about how badly the Alamo needs funding to help restore it and Susan knew she could help.
“We plan for it to be around as long as the Alamo is around,” Susan Auler says of the Misson San Antonio de Valero wines.
“We’re native Texans and the Alamo is a national treasure,” Auler says. The reasons for selling the wines are twofold: “We want to help raise awareness of the need to be good stewards for the Alamo and to raise money for it,” she says.
This is the first wine that Fall Creek has sold to raise money for a philanthropic cause. However, the Fall Fest, which is taking place October 31 through November 2 at Horseshoe Bay near Marble Falls, has been raising money for Texas wine research and the Boys and Girls Club for the past three years.
Permalink | Comments (4) | Categories: Eating locally, Wine
September 30, 2008
Eat a local lunch today, dinner tomorrrow
Eat Local Week isn’t until December, but in a place like Austin, every week can be eat local week if you get in sync with local farmers and organizations that are pushing local foods.
Today: Grab a local lunch between 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. at the South Congress Market in the Ragsdale Center at St. Edward’s University.
The university, which has a reputation for serving delicious, locally sourced food, is participating in Bon Appetit’s Eat Local Challenge by serving honey-rosemary glazed chicken with sweet pepper confetti rice and baked summer squash-goat cheese gratin made with ingredients from Wimberley, Dripping Springs, McDade, El Campo and several farms right here in Austin.
(Gez, that chicken dish sounds so good, I think I might head down Congress for lunch there. If you want to meet up, shoot me an e-mail or message me on Twitter.)
Tomorrow: The state department of agriculture has been gearing up for the Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up on Wednesday, which means that at dozens of restaurants around town, you can enjoy a meal that (partially) came from or was raised on Texas soil.
Another bonus: A portion of the cost of each meal is going back to the community in the form of a donation to Caritas or the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, which is where the next Appetizers with Addie monthly food meetup is taking place at 5 p.m. on October 9. If you’re interested in coming, you can RSVP on Facebook.
Local musicians Kelly Willis and Bruce Robison are helping promote Wednesday’s stateside dining out day with this video shot at the Sunset Valley Farmers’ Market recently.
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September 19, 2008
Show your farmers' market love
High winds from Hurricane Ike last weekend were enough to prompt the Sustainable Food Center to cancel last Saturday’s downtown farmers’ market. The Sunset Valley Market was open, but not nearly as many vendors or shoppers showed up.
Suzanne Santos, director of the SFC, says farmers lost more than $15,000 in sales because the market was canceled, which was the first time the market had done so since it started more than five years ago.
You can bet that tomorrow morning will be as crisp as this morning, which makes buying fresh produce and good from locals even sweeter.
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July 24, 2008
On the hunt for jalapenos?
If you’re in Austin and missed last night’s market, look forward to Saturday’s markets downtown and in the Burger Center’s parking lot in Sunset Valley. Georgetown’s market is today, as is Smithville’s. There are lots of farm stands and individual farmers with peppers, so if you are determined, you can get your hands on some salmonella-free jalapeños despite the recall.
Fresh out of jalapeños recipes? Here’s a rough approximation of the delicious creamy jalapeños dressing they serve at Chuy’s. Put it on a salad or use it as a dip for chips or veggies.
Creamy jalapeño ranch dressing
1 quart Kraft mayonnaise
1 cup low-fat* buttermilk
1 cup jalapeños w/juice (The recipe calls for HEB Harvest Moon, 12 oz jar, hot sliced, but use fresh if you’re feeling adventurous.)
1 cup green tomatillos w/juice
1 small bunch cilantro
3 packs buttermilk ranch dressing
*The original recipe does not use low-fat ingredients.
Put the buttermilk in the blender. Measure out one cup of jalapeños and juice. (Spoon out the jalapeños from the jar and pack down one cup and pour the juice over to fill the empty space. Jalapeños and juice together should equal one cup!)
Dump jalapeños into blender and blend on high until they look like the crumbs in the buttermilk.
Measure out one cup of tomatillos and juice the same way you did the jalapeños. Add to blender.
Pull cilantro leaves off of the stems and dump into blender. Blend on high until tomatillos are gone and cilantro is finely chopped.
Add mayo and all three packets of ranch dressing. Blend on high until blended together.
Permalink | Comments (2) | Categories: Eating locally, Food in the news, Recipes
June 29, 2008
Yummy local eats for $10 or less
I’ve come across three new delicious eats recently, one of which relies on local ingredients and another two that support local, homegrown businesses:
At the Four Seasons, TRIO serves up all-local breakfast
TRIO, the Four Season’s fabulously non-hotel-esque restaurant, has started offering a Farmer’s Market Breakfast for $10 Monday through Friday. All of the main ingredients are sourced from within 20 miles of Austin.
It’s two eggs, any style (from Alexander Family Farms), smoked sausage (Hudson Sausage Company), heirloom tomatoes and corn griddle cakes (Green Gate Farms) and goat cheese (Pure Luck Farms). That’s a smokin’ deal for $10, especially since it includes valet parking.
Whip-in for some Indian food
Whip In, the longtime beer, wine and specialty food store is branching out by offering house-made Indian dishes. You can buy the vegetarian ($5.99) and non-vegetarian ($7.99) items (herb lamb meatballs, Indian-spiced chili and garbanzo bean stew are a few of the highlights) to-go for now, but the store will soon be offering sit-down service and beer and wine by the glass. They’ve remodeled to make room for several booths and a music stage but are still waiting permits to allow in-store drinking.
I know, it sounds crazy that a beer and wine store can’t serve by the glass, but rules are rules, especially when they are TABC rules.
Very vegan and very good
In pursuit of the best iced coffees in Central Texas, I was at Flipnotics the other day and saw Ronnie’s Vegan Cookies, which are made in Austin. I couldn’t help but try the oatmeal raisin cookie, and it was delicious! (They might not technically be “new,” but they’re new to you if you’ve never tried them.) If you have a choice between Uncle Eddie’s and Ronnie’s cookies, go with Ronnie’s — they are local.
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June 18, 2008
Growing fresh food - and giving it away
Last year, John Paquin gave away 70 percent of the fresh produce harvested at his farm. How did he make ends meet as a single dad with three kids at home?
“It doesn’t take much to live on,” he says. Paquin, who formerly owned a construction company and farmed for many years with his family in West Texas, started Walnut Creek Organic Farm outside Rockne, near Lockhart, in 2000.
Since then, he’s built the farm into 48 acres with crops as varied as asparagus and watermelon, which two daughters and a son help cultivate. However, he didn’t want farming to be the only thing his children learned in the fields.
When Paquin was a child, his dad would drive around on Sundays with boxes of vegetables and hand them out to those in need.
“Having children, it just strains my heart” to see people go without, Paquin says.
“One day, me and my daughter were headed to the farmers market, and we saw this guy picking up cans. We took him to his home and started bringing by food on a weekly basis,” he says.
Soon, Paquin and his children, ages 10 to 14, were donating produce to the food bank in Bastrop. Now, the Austin Resource Center for the Homeless and Austin Salvation Army receive fresh fruit and vegetables as well. The Paquins make donations twice a week.
With fuel and commodity prices rising, Paquin says he’ll be able to give away only about 40 percent of his crop this year. The rest will be sold through his Community Supported Agriculture program — which has memberships available for $30 a week in 10-week increments for those looking to sign up — and area farmers markets, including the Sunset Valley and Austin markets.
Fuel prices are also affecting volunteers, usually some of the 85 CSA members, who usually come out to Walnut Creek to help in the fields.
“We don’t have people come out to help like they used to,” Paquin says.
For now, he’ll work the land with his kids and several other workers, bringing fresh, clean and safe food to hundreds of people across Central Texas, no matter if they can afford it or not.
If you want to volunteer with Walnut Creek, go to the farm’s Web site, http://www.walnutcreekorganicfarms.com/.
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June 16, 2008
You can taste the love in this food
We’re putting the finishing touches on Wednesday’s big package about food safety. Dale Rice took on the commercial/industrial aspect of the issue (i.e. the government’s hands-off approach to farm inspection, how inspectors figure out the cause of salmonella outbreaks, etc.) while I got to tackle the process of how farmers go about making sure they aren’t introducing harmful bacteria or diseases to their produce.
The Sustainable Food Center let me go along on several farm inspections at Walnut Creek Organic Farm and Milagro Farm, which are both near Rockne.
It was so cool to hear Kris and Amy Olsen of Milagro Farm talk about moving from a California farm to Central Texas to basically start over earlier this year. I met them at their 8-acre farm on Thursday, and on Saturday, bought garlic and two kinds of onions from them at the downtown farmers’ market.
Their garlic and sweet and red onions mixed perfectly with some fresh squash on the grill last night. It’s amazing how much better produce tastes the fewer miles it has to travel to get to your plate.
It’s nice to meet such good-hearted, hard-working people who are giving everything they’ve got because they believe in what they are doing. Kris, who is in his 14th year of farming, has tons of heirloom vegetables, whose seeds he harvests for the follow year’s crop, and a comprehensive knowledge of growing food. Amy, who recently stopped teaching to help Kris around the farm, lovingly polishes the tomatoes, peels the onions and braids the garlic, along with the dirty work out in the fields.
There’s no science to back me up here, but I think part of why their produce tastes so good is because they put so much love into the ground. It’s just the two of them, growing fabulous veggies for the families who’ve come to rely on them for delicious, nutritious and safe food.
What an awesome job.
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June 10, 2008
Pflugerville pfarmers' market drawing crowds
Want fresh, local produce in Pflugerville? Check out the farmers’ market on Tuesdays from 3 to 7 p.m., which started about a month ago, and according to volunteer market coordinator Micki Eubanks, it’s going well.
“It’s been really growing,” Eubanks says. “We started with 10 vendors and now we’re up to 32. And despite the heat, there’s been a good crowd every week.”
Musician John P. Funk will be playing tomorrow at the market, and kids can get all hot and sweaty in an inflatable play area while parents shop for locally grown produce, baked goods, honey, eggs, fruit and more.
This farmers market is at 500 E. Pecan St., next to the First United Methodist Church, which isn’t far from the I-45/U.S. 130 interchange, Eubanks says.
For more information, go to the market’s Web site, or call Eubanks at 589-2307.
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