Cedar Summit Farm

The parks are closed and it is that time of year to take a road trip. Sure, you could go to Wisconsin or the Dakotas, but consider this: a weekend full of farm tours, small towns, rivers and lakes. Let me be your tour guide (something I am in no way qualified to do, by the way) as I point out the myriad possibilities presented by the "Eat Local Farm Tour".

On Valentine's Day, my husband and I were guests of Chowgirls, best known for catering, at their inaugural fine-dining event, the Locavore Love Affair, held in the Rosalux Gallery next door to Chowgirls' kitchen and office in NE Minneapolis. I've enjoyed meals catered by Chowgirls before, so I was especially glad for the opportunity to check out their new venture and talk to founders Heidi Andermack and Amy Lynn Brown.

I’m thinking a lot about food systems these days. Fundamentally, there seems to be collective agreement that ours is broken (unless you happen to work for Monsanto or Smithfield), so I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about how we might fix it. (Jill Richardson’s excellent “Recipe for America” has a few ideas too - that and her La Vida Locavore blog are well worth reading.)

Specifically, I’ve been thinking about food systems that are:

Photo Credit: Kate NG SommersPerhaps you shop at the local coops and look for that label on all of your purchases. But with a limited budget, maybe you’ve wondered what makes the most sense to buy organic. As a nutritionist working with people to improve the quality of their diet, I get asked this question a lot. So here are six suggestions for prioritizing your spending to maximize your dollars and your health.

Try to guess what suburban restaurant serves locally-raised, grass-fed, beef short ribs with caramelized-onion potato puree, and horseradish gremolata;  baked, free-range, Larry Schultz chicken with herb filling, wilted spinach, and caramelized-shallot, marsala, pan sauce; pastured pork, braised in apple cider and served with red cabbage, local apples, and ginger yams -- plus three kinds of burgers: bison, yellow-fin tuna, and walnut wild-rice.