Eastside Food Cooperative

A lot of people have told Chef Erick Harcey what he can't do. He was about to open a restaurant in Northeast Minneapolis when the financing fell through. He found a place in North Minneapolis instead. The day he opened Victory 44, someone asked if he had sweet potato fries on the menu. When he said no, they said he'd never make it. In 2010, he reorganized away traditional servers and said the chefs would serve the food. Both the press and diners said it would never work. Harcey acknowledges the chalkboard menu on the wall and the tag team service, especially when the restaurant is busy, can make for an uneven experience. Yet fans and regulars praise the ambitious, changing menu, with healthful portions of high quality food at reasonable prices.

In my last article, I wrote about Brassica vegetables, which aren't the most popular items in the CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) box. This week, I've spent time with more widely loved summer vegetables, red potatoes and yellow squash.

Yogurt is one of the few real foods that hasn't been demonized in recent decades. Bread, butter, milk and meat have all come under scrutiny, but yogurt has retained its standing as a healthful food. While probiotics have become trendy, yogurt has always been a great source of the live bacteria – like acidophilus – that's beneficial to our digestive tracts. Plus, yogurt is a good source of protein and calcium. So what’s the problem?

Two things: One is that there hasn't been a good, local, organic yogurt widely available in the Twin Cities. And the other is the plastic containers, which Minneapolis and St. Paul recycling don't collect.