good food

Good Food for Everyone!

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

- Confucius

I live in Minneapolis, where eating lots of local food is not at all strange. Many of my neighbors are CSA members, and we have been known to share ingredients, recipes, and restaurant recommendations. On my block, nearly everyone seems to know how to cook kale and how to grow tomatoes. It's easy for me to think that this is normal. It isn't.

In the past two weeks, I've had the opportunity to attend two events focused on good food. Both were excellent, and left lasting impressions.

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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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Getting Good Food on the Table -- on a Weeknight

Alas, Pete Wells’ “Cooking with Dexter” series in the New York Times is going the way of Mark Bittman’s “The Minimalist.” (For the record, NYT, I still miss the “Eat, Memory” series, too.) I always enjoyed Wells’ tales of cooking with and for his sons -- a glimpse into another family’s food life that was inspiring, fascinating, and amusing. Like Wells, I enjoy cooking with and for my daughter, exploring various ways to work together in the kitchen.

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Local Mobs Gone Global: World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms

One of the best ways to experience a different culture is through its food, and one of the most fun ways of doing so is to travel to its place of origin. But that does not simply mean flying to Naples and enjoying an authentic pizza margherita in a real Italian osteria. If you truly want to get your hands on the roots of local food during your explorations, then get ready to dig in the dirt … literally.

Tapping into travelers’ insatiable appetites for gastronomic vacations, holiday tour companies offer everything from hawker stall hopping in Singapore to vineyard adventures in the Loire Valley to mole-making classes in Oaxaca. For many people, however, good food is not just about authentic flavors and traditional cooking techniques – it is also about the sustainable practices used to produce the ingredients that make up these regional cuisines. Now, there is a way for them to know exactly where their food is coming from, even when they are on vacation.

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Good Reasons Not to Eat Local Food

Last week I wrote a post on reasons to eat locally-sourced foods. While writing that article, it occurred to me that there are also good reasons not to eat local food. Oftentimes the “local” label is applied liberally to refer to food grown on small-scale farms who produce according to organic and sustainable principles. But really, “local” just means grown and/or processed within a certain radius of where you live.

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Please Come to Our Super Awesome Local Food Pig Roast and Potluck on August 15

When the folks at Simple, Good, and Tasty decided to host our first annual pig roast and potluck last year, we weren’t at all that sure of what to expect. Would anyone come eat with us? Would people bring potluck dishes that reflected our values, or boxes of Twinkies? Would we have enough food?

This year we’re a little bit wiser, and we feel a little bit more confident that we know what to expect. But what about you, dear readers? Do you know what to expect? This information should help.

Why Are We Having a Pig Roast and Potluck?

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For Beard Award Winner Alex Roberts, it’s All About Respect

Alex Roberts Photo by Kate NG SommersAlex Roberts Photo by Kate NG SommersChef Alex Roberts is a low-key kind of guy. He doesn’t yell or throw temper tantrums, a la Gordon Ramsay. He doesn't have the legendary ego of a rock star chef ("I don't feel that I'm the best at anything," he recently told the Star Tribune's Rick Nelson).

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Making Maple Syrup With The Perennial Plate

We're big fans and supporters of Daniel Klein's The Perennial Plate, a weekly video series focused on connecting people with good food and its producers. Daniel's quest to experience a full year of good, local food in Minnesota has already had him killing and carving up his own Thanksgving turkey and visiting a Minnesota greenhouse in the heart of winter. This week's video features Daniel's new tree-tapping friend Chris Ransom, working his maple syrup magic:

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An Open Letter to Our Children: We're Sorry About School Lunch

I recently had the chance to sit down with a handful of sixth graders at Sanford Middle School in Minneapolis. The students had been complaining that the lunches they were being served tasted bad and made them feel sick, and their teacher asked me to come answer questions, provide context, and make suggestions.

For an hour, these thoughtful students and I discussed healthy food choices, growing a garden, being pressed for time (a 12 year old girl told me she didn't have time to put an apple in her backpack in the morning), eating on a budget, and how to affect change. I've been thinking about the discussion ever since.

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Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables Produces Local, Organic Food for the Masses

There’s nothing typical about Featherstone Fruits and Vegetables, located in Rushford Vilage, Minnesota.

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