sustainable food

Talking Company Sponsored Gardens with Fred Haberman

It's pretty hard not to be inspired by Fred Haberman. Although he apologizes profusely - and repeatedly - during our lunch for being exhausted ("I was at the farm before 5 this morning," he says, "I'm starting to feel dizzy"), Fred is articulate and passionate as he describes Haberman's company sponsored organic farm.

Read more »

Minnesota's Governor Tim Pawlenty Eats Local Food

I had the great pleasure to meet with Amanda Simpson, Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty’s Residence Manager, and Brian McClung, Governor Pawlenty’s Director of Communications, last week. Over the course of an hour, our far-reaching conversation centered on the role of local food at the Residence, also (briefly) touching on Minnesota food policy and what’s to come. (I even got a tour of the garden.) Amanda and Brian were refreshingly candid, and I was glad to meet them and see their work first-hand.

Read more »

Healing With Local Foods: Tracy Singleton of the Birchwood Cafe

This is an excerpt of an article I wrote for Live Green Twin Cities. To read the entire article, click here.

Read more »

What's at the Movie Theater This Summer? Food!

You might think, on the heels of the recent Minneapolis debut of the documentaries "Fresh" by ana Sofia joanes, and "Food Inc," (expertly reviewed by Kristen at Food Renegade this week), that we've had our fill of food at the cinema this summer. Even James Bond only releases one movie each year, right? Wrong! Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the most intelligent movie-going summer in recorded history.

Read more »

Local D'lish: the Cream and the Crop

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).

Read more »

6/21 is Strawberry Day at Harmony Valley Farm

strawberrydayAfter all of this blogging about the local, organic Minnesota food we’ve been getting from the Harmony Valley Farm CSA, I’m excited to finally get the chance to visit the place. Harmony Valley has named Sunday, June 21 Strawberry Day, offering farm tours, strawberry picking, and other fun activities for the whole family from noon to 6 pm. Here are the details of the event, straight from the Harmony Valley site:

Read more »

This Week at the St. Paul Farmers' Market: 5 Great Picks

tracy1There’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.

Read more »

What's in the Box? This Week's Farmshare Bounty

csa-boxHas it already been a week? Can you tell from the bigger that the bounty is getting bigger? It's much harder to make our way through an entire box of local, sustainable, organic fresh produce - no matter how wonderful - when we spend part of the week out of town (as we did last week). Lucky for us there's always a line up of family, friends, and neighbors willing to take an extra bag of spinach, green garlic, or bok choy off our hands in a pinch. Why is it so hard to let these treasures go?

Read more »

Making Sense of Organic Food

organicOkay, okay - it's organic food labeling that we need help with - not the food itself. The food itself? I'll let the excellent book Real Food by Nina Planck describe it:

Organic means food was produced without synthetic fertilizer, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, genetically engineered ingredients, and irradiation.

Read more »

Fixing a Broken Food Distribution System

wired-foodSeems like every few days I'm approached by someone with a local food focused business idea. Distribution is broken! We need a year round farmers market! CSAs are not the answer! Here's what I say: Yes. I've seen King Corn, FRESH, The Future of Food, and others.

Read more »
Syndicate content