Food & Drink: Food Matters

Casserole Queens, farmers' market, local produce, Cooking Light, Opal Divine's

By Kitty Crider, Dale Rice
Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Casserole Queens on your doorstep

Sandy Pollock and Crystal Oakes arrive at the door in '50s-style aprons carrying aluminum pans of comfort food — chicken pot pie, King Ranch or "Queen Ranch" casserole, baked ziti and more. They are the founders of Casserole Queens, a new Austin food service that delivers to 25 ZIP codes in Travis County. This is not a one-hour pizza service. Orders are processed each week for delivery the following week on this schedule: Tuesday, South Austin; Wednesday, Central Austin; Thursday, North Austin.

Pollock, a graduate of the French Culinary Institute in New York, came up with the Casserole Queens concept after cooking for her mom and siblings during a holiday visit. She hooked up with Oakes, who has a marketing background.

Theirs is not fast food — most of the casseroles take 30 minutes to an hour or more to cook, after thawing— but they offer convenience. Prices vary by dish and size: a 12-inch-by-6-inch container (5 servings) averages $25; a 10-inch-by-12-inch (10 servings), $35. Our newsroom tasters gave a big thumbs up to the garlicky baked ziti but only a shrug to a ground beef Mexican dish called California lovin'. Contact the queens at 905-6967 or casserolequeens.com.

Earlier to farmers' market, more local produce staff at Whole Foods

The Austin Farmers' Market outside Whole Foods downtown is moving its Wednesday shopping hours up to 8:30 a.m. to noon beginning today. Current farmers at the market include Animal Farm (Cat Spring), Bikkurim Farm (Lexington), Guinea Hill Farm (Elgin) and Ottmers Family Farm (Johnson City). Producers include Aster's Ethiopian Catering, Mediterranean Chef, and organic and vegan Pralinieres.

Meanwhile, the Southwest region of Whole Foods Market has created two new purchasing positions, a local forager and a local produce liaison, that will be dedicated to expanding the grocer's selection of homegrown foods. Lisa Gargas, the forager, was raised in a small Missouri farming community and moved to Austin in 1988. She has worked for Whole Foods Market since 2000. Thuan Nguyen, the produce liaison, spent 10 years building relationships with farmers while working in the produce industry in California and has been with the company since 2005. Gargas and Nguyen will focus entirely on purchasing local products for 13 stores in Texas and three stores in Louisiana.

Cooking Light says Austin is living right

Austin has received another top-city accolade, this one from Cooking Light. The food and fitness magazine has selected the Texas capital as one of the 20 healthiest cities in the United States.

Cooking Light, ranking Austin No. 17, cited the city's "abundance of vegetarian restaurants that make creative use of produce" from local farmers' markets and the nearly eight miles of hiking trails in the Barton Creek Greenbelt. It also lauded the large number of venues for keeping fit: "You can't swing a yoga mat in Austin without hitting a cool place to exercise — whether it's inside a gym or outdoors in a natural, spring-fed pool."

The magazine said the best places to sample the city's "eat smart" bounty are Mother's Cafe, Mr. Natural, Cosmic Cafe, Casa de Luz and Veggie Heaven. The top five healthiest cities in order of ranking by Cooking Light are Seattle, Portland, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis and San Francisco. Austin also was beaten out as a healthy place to live by Pittsburgh, St. Louis and New York.

Ahoy! Opal's heads north for third location

Opal Divine's now has the city covered, at least on a north-south axis. The local beer and food enterprise has opened its third location, Opal Divine's Marina, near MoPac Boulevard and Parmer Lane in far North Austin.

The Marina (12709 N. MoPac Blvd., 733-5353) joins the original Opal's Freehouse on West Sixth Street in Central Austin and Opal's Penn Field on South Congress Avenue in South Austin.

Taking over the old Sea Island location near Fry's Electronics, Opal's Marina is debuting its Austin grill menu featuring Zihuatanejo tacos, which are made with sautéed shrimp, bacon, avocado and asadero cheese and served on corn tortillas with cilantro-lime dressing and black bean-and-corn relish.

The expanded menu didn't jettison all the old favorites. It still includes fish and chips, cheesesteak tacos and the bratwurst and sauerkraut sandwich, to name a few.