Cooking Up A Hurricane - Applesauce (Part 1)

October 9, 2016

Hurricane Matthew made landfall in the Carolinas this morning, just north of Charleston, SC, and more than 5" of rainfall is expected for the Raleigh region over the next 24 hours. With the cool, windy and very wet weather keeping most of the Mid-Atlantic seaboard indoors until late Sunday it was time to get cooking.As part of this week's CSA delivery from The Produce Box I special ordered 15 lbs of slightly blemished Ginger Gold Apples from a local farmer to make applesauce in my pressure cooker.Apples were peeled (not guaranteed organic), cored and cut into 16ths. Some very small bruises were present and easily cut out.The apple chunks and spices were placed in the pressure cooker - I used Flo Lum's recipe with two variations, I added a bit of freshly ground nutmeg and cut my apple chunks a bit smaller for a smoother texture.The end result was a delicious treat that will not last long enough to worry about freezing.I know apples are traditionally paired with pork, but try pairing them with homemade cheese quesadillas, especially for the under 10 yo set!

22+ Reasons to Love Stone Barns Center

May 9, 2016

There are many more reasons to love the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture than the 22 that inspired this post, so after you have finished reading here, click on over to their site and see what the + is all about.Like so many others, I first learned of the farm at Stone Barns and the gifted Farm Director, Jack Algiere in Dan Barber's brilliant book The Third Plate, but it was not until last weekend that I actually visited the Center's website to see what I could learn about the farm itself.What I found was the truly inspired and inspiring gallery of images from each of the 22 weeks of the farm's 2015 CSA (community supported agriculture).Inspired because in addition to the beautifully photographed produce with variety labels, perfect for those of us looking to expand our varietal repertoires, the images also include a couple of lines for how to prepare them, sometimes individually and sometimes in combination with other items from that week's box, answering the ubiquitous CSA question of "Okay, I have it, now what do I do with it?".Inspiring because all the suggestions are for whole foods, so simply prepared that there are no recipes or even need of recipes.Part of the Stone Barns Center's mission is "to create a healthy and sustainable food system" and teaching a new generations of farmers how to grow healthy soil while growing healthy food is part of achieving that mission, but so is educating the consumers of that food system because it doesn't matter how healthy and sustainably food can be produced if the people shopping for food do not know what to do with a variety of fresh produce.Kudos to the Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture for this simple, but powerful idea to better serve their own CSA customers, but also for going a step further and making it available to anyone who might find themselves staring at a bunch of carrots (or leeks, or beets, or peppers, or kale, etc.) and wanting to make a great meal starting with whole ingredients!Click through the full 22 week gallery of their 2015 CSA and "Farm-Driven Cuisine".And a special thanks to the Stone Barns Center for allowing me to use two of the images from their gallery - in this case, a picture is worth four hundred and eleven words.

City Farm

January 23, 2016

"What if we ingeniously enriched that vacant land with waste wood products, waste food products and had a rich farm, employed local people to produce the healthy foods that community needs?" - Ken Dunn, founder of Resource Center and City FarmCity Farm is doing all of that and more! City Farm subsidizes their direct sales to the public by contracting with local restaurants wanting fresh, local produce on their menus. City Farm then picks up the restaurant's food waste to be recycled into compost to feed the rich soil that will grow more food.The images in this video capture the beauty of this little agricultural oasis against the backdrop of the Chicago skyline:For a more in depth look at how City Farm is diverting urban waste to create fresh, sustainable food for the local community:In December, City Farm began moving from it's location at 1204 N Clybourn to a new lot one block to the west. Each summer I attend a conference in Chicago for a few days in August and I can't wait to see the new farm when I am there!

A New Old Fashioned Barn Raising

December 20, 2015

I was researching a local farm that I am interested in purchasing from and ran across an article about their recent BarnRaiser.us campaign to improve the sustainability and profitability of their livelihood. I was intrigued and wanted to learn more about BarnRaiser.There are so many things to love about this artisanal food crowdfunding site:

The name is wonderfully evocative of the end goal, a community coming together to support the needs of farmers and food artisans
The admirable mission statement is "To put a billion dollars into the hands of food innovators as they reshape a healthy food world."
BarnRaiser fees are based solely on fully funded goals. No goal = no fee for trying
And like the other crowdfunding sites, the farmers and artisans looking to get funded offer up little goodies for supporting them at different levels
Projects seeking funding are listed in a gallery format with name and photo, a status bar showing how much money has been pledged and how much money and how many days are left to fund the project and, last but not least, location for the project
According to the FAQ, Project Creators are subject to some level of identity verification
The site is great exposure for the farmers and food artisans whether they reach their funding goals or not

Let's go raise some barns!

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