April 2011

Cooking Up the Good Life with Jenny Breen and Susan Thurston

Jenny Breen is a Minnesota "good food" legend. She's a caterer, chef, Bush fellow, student in public health and nutrition, teacher, visionary, wife, and mom. She's very good at being all of these things, and chances are excellent that she knows more about good, local, healthy food than you do.

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Why Don't Minnesota Lawmakers Want to Talk About Proposed Law Against Videotaping Inside Animal Facilities?

The videos, if you can stand to watch them, are surreal and sickening. Calves being beaten by a pickaxe. Ill pigs being buried alive by a bulldozer. Live baby chicks being tossed into a meat grinder

 

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The Paleo Diet: What it Is and Why it Works

I’m on a very strict meal plan.

I’ve been eating grass-fed ground beef, steak skewers, pecan-crusted chicken, pork and fish. I’ve been eating eggs, sausage, yams, deviled eggs, cabbage slaw and curry. I’ve been eating spice-rubbed chicken, salmon salad, and pear salad with balsamic vinegar. I’ve been eating shrimp with red onion, garlic, green bell peppers, salsa verde and chili powder -- served with romaine lettuce leaves, spinach, mango and lime. My fridge is filled to the brim with fresh, local, and organic fruit and vegetables of all colors, and my freezer is full of grass-fed beef, turkey, lamb, and chicken. I haven’t been scrimping on fat, either. I cook my nutrient-dense meals with coconut oil and olive oil, and eat plenty of avocados and macadamia nuts and even a little bit of almond butter.

What’s missing from this list? Added sugar. Alcohol. Milk. Cheese. Grains. Legumes. I’ve decided to spend 30 days eating a strict Paleo diet.

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Sick of Cold Weather? Never Fear! Dinner on the Farm Season is Near

The lawn outside my window is a sloppy montage of green and brown. It’s still cold outside, and I’m still buried under layers of blankets inside my cozy house. Oh Mother Nature, you trickster! It’s almost May and we’ve been so patient! Can we please have our spring now?

I am optimistic!  In fact, a few days ago, I reserved my tickets for the inaugural 2011 Dinner on the Farm event. Knowing that in just a few short months I will be lounging in the sun-warmed grass of Crandall Garden Farme, sipping locally-brewed beer and enjoying a delicious curry dinner prepared with produce grown within hundreds of feet of me, reminds me that -- despite all evidence to the contrary -- a season of bountiful, fresh, local produce; reconnecting with fellow food lovers; and many more farm dinners is on its way.

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April's Simple Good and Tasty Book Club Pick: "Bringing it to the Table" by Wendell Berry

Author Wendell BerryAuthor Wendell BerrySpring, glorious spring! As our farmers’ markets start to ramp up for the season, our Simple, Good, and Tasty book club pick reminds us to stay in tuned with the who, what, where, and how of our food.  Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, by Wendell Berry, is a collection of essays about farms, farming, and eating throughout our modern history with food.

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Simple, Enlightening, and Tasty Earth Day Community Dinner at the Birchwood

Last Sunday night's Earth Day Community Dinner at the Birchwood Cafe was an event for the ages.

It wasn't just the food that made it that way, although the exceptional four-course menu (and appetizers) created by chef Marshall Paulsen featured pork belly, fiddle head ferns, beef tongue, and more (most foods purchased directly from local farmers). It wasn't just the music performed by Jack Klatt and the Cat Swingers either, although that was terrific too. It wasn't just the lovely dining room, which was decked out with the Birchwood's Sunday best.

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Valley Natural Foods Connects With the Community Through Gardening

Gary Johnson, Community Relations Developer at Valley Natural Foods in Apple Valley, is a busy man with big goals."We're trying to get the community to be smarter about their environment," he tells me, "we want people to have a positive experience with gardening, to have some success, and to have a non-retail experience with our co-op."

We're looking at a grassy area just off of busy County Road 11, approximately 64 by 40 feet. Gary tells me that there's space for 22 keyhole gardens and 34 field crop areas here, and that many of the garden spaces, which will be ready for planting in mid-late May, have already been claimed. I'm amazed and impressed by what Gary and the Valley Natural team are pulling off in this relatively small area. Gary hands me a colorful brochure and refers me to the Co-op Community Garden Vision printed on it:

People will drive by:

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Gardens of Eagan Turns the CSA Model on its Head

When I got the press release announcing Gardens of Eagan's unique new Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program last week, I was excited. Was it possible that Gardens of Eagan had found a way to address customers' primary concern -- that they're signing up for a box of foods they don't know what to do with -- while still directly supporting the farmers who grow local food? Here's a look at the press release:

Gardens of Eagan - the popular organic produce farm in the south metro - is debuting a unique CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) program that enables shareholders to select their produce items at their convenience throughout the 2011 growing season.

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Celebrate Earth Day by Winning a Free Organic Valley Product Every Week for a Year

If you read this website semi-frequently, you already know that I'm a big fan of Organic Valley's products, philosophy, and people. So when the good folks in LaFarge asked me if I'd host an Earth Day giveaway this week, they didn't have to twist my arm too much to get me to say yes.

For a few years now, Organic Valley has been hosting what they call Earth Dinners, events scheduled to coincide with Earth Day on April 22. Here's the explanation on the Earth Dinner website:

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Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, and How I Miss the Ranch

It’s strange to say that it was only six months ago that I ventured out from my beautiful ranch in Montana to the southern side of California and made a swap from rural to urban, country to city, ranch to condo and garden to supermarket. Super, emphasized. It feels like it’s been forever. It feels like I haven’t seen or felt real, solid dirt in too long. I miss driving along the dirt road and waving to farmers in their Carhartt bibs. I miss knowing that if I ever got a flat tire, the guy down the way would fix it. I miss walking a mile in any direction from my front yard without seeing anything but the great Big Sky.

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