Simple Good and Tasty

What a fun time we had at the Birchwood Cafe tonight! Cafe manager Jimmy Red Layer kept the crowd well fed and lubricated. He's shown having fun here with Simple, Good, and Tasty advisor Scott Danielson.

From the Mississippi Market website: MISSISSIPPI MARKET TO OPEN NEW ST. PAUL LOCATION TODAY

What a great feeling to get some good press, especially from Rachel Hutton at the City Pages, whose Hot Dish blog I visit on a regular basis. Here's what she wrote:

The local food website Simple, Good, and Tasty relaunched this weekend to include a couple of very useful features: a local foods-related events calendar (Troutfest at Mill City Farmers Market this Saturday, etc.) and a directory of local food producers and retailers (farms, co-ops, restaurants).

The blog says loads of other nice things too, which you can read here. Thanks Rachel!

The next Simple, Good, and Tasty local food dinner, on July 29 at the Red Stag Supper Club (that's head chef Brian Hauke in the above picture, left) in northeast Minneapolis, is completely full. For the lucky 50 people who signed up first, here are the details:

This is an excerpt from the full article “Local D’lish aims to be the cream of the crop” published by Live Green Twin Cities on June 30, 2009.

Local D’lish is a grocery and gourmet-food store near downtown Minneapolis that focuses almost exclusively on local foods. The care and planning that has gone into making the place both beautiful and inviting is immediately evident: Tomato plants greet visitors, and the warm, sunny walls make the little shop feel like a celebratory outdoor market; and the selection of foods and food products is vast and unique, made up almost exclusively of good, local, real foods made in Minnesota and surrounding states (Obsession Chocolates, made with fresh local ingredients in Wisconsin, are a particularly tempting find).

July is local food month at Live Green Twin Cities, a supercool blog that focuses on the “green lifestyle.” That’s good news for me, because I’m partnering with Molly Priesmeyer at Live Green to produce a bunch of new content throughout the month. Here’s what the site says:

We’ll introduce you to great local stores and shops that sell healthy and organic local food; local chefs focusing on sustainable practices; and local farmers producing healthy and organic produce, meats, and more.

Chef Lenny Russo

What a fun time we had at Heartland last night! The St. Paul, MN restaurant, packed with (nearly 50) local food lovers and friends, was a beautiful setting for a memorable meal.

Just a quick reminder for those of you who responded early enough to get one of this month’s coveted spots at the Simple, Good, and Tasty dinner at Heartland - tonight’s the night! Here are the details:

There’s little question that Farmers’ Markets are an easy and affordable way to support your local food producers while getting out and enjoying the festive open-air environment. So I jumped at the chance to report from the fabulous St. Paul Farmers’ Market for the Simple Good and Tasty blog! My favorite part about shopping the St. Paul Farmers Market is knowing that the vast majority of the food sold there was produced within 50 miles of the place.

When the most recent batch of local produce came from our Harmony Valley CSA last week, my kids wanted their pictures taken with each new vegetable. My daughter's colorful dress seemed like the perfect backdrop for this beautiful purple kohlrabi, which we ate over the weekend. To my less-than-expertly-trained palate, kohlrabi - which I'd never eaten before - tastes very much like cabbage.