One of the most common questions my colleagues and I get asked as cheesemongers is some variation of ,“how did you learn all of this?” The truth is that there isn’t really any uniform answer. For many of the mongers at Pastoral, cheese is, and has been, a passion for some time. For others, it’s something they want to learn more about. In any case, it’s something that we enjoy learning about and talking about both inside and outside of work.

For me, my interaction with cheese started extremely young, hanging around the kitchen with my Dutch granddad in San Francisco. He would have wheels of Gouda airmailed to him from shops in his native Amsterdam.  He would happily slice pieces for my lunch or just for a snack. Dutch cheeses are some of the first cheeses that I can distinctly remember having. Unfortunately, in the world of artisan cheese, Gouda has come in for more than its fair share of derision, and I have to admit that much of that is not without cause. Gouda, despite its world renown, is not a name-protected cheese. This means that unlike so many of the French cheeses that we know (or perhaps more accurately, know terrible approximations of—more on that in a later post), there is no legally protected recipe that must be used to use the name “Gouda”.

In the states, we can’t even agree anymore on how the word is pronounced. The traditionally anglicized “GOOH-da” works fine for me, but if you want to give the Dutch pronunciation—“HOW-da”—a go, I’ll still know what you mean, especially if you glottalize the “g” like the Dutch would. Think the “ch” in challah or Chanukah. This encourages some cool developments, like Marieke Penterman’s flavored Goudas (foenegreek and smoked cumin being my favorites), and a stunning range of wildly different cheeses based on aging time alone. However, it also prevents any standard being maintained for what Gouda is, or must taste like, and therefore there are scores and scores of bland, uninteresting, terrible, Goudas out there. Even in the Netherlands, the saying goes that Gouda is what the farmers sell at market, and boerenkaas (BOOR-en-cahs) is what they eat. Fortunately, boerenkaas has made its way stateside as well, and there are now several local farms producing top-quality stuff that would make the perfect partner to your beer, sauvignon blanc, or lighter-bodied, fruit-forward reds.

Marieke Penterman and her husband Rolf grew up on dairy farms in the Netherlands and are the founders of Holland’s Family Farm in Thorp, WI. Marieke also shares her name with their line of artisanal Goudas. In the Netherlands, there are legal restrictions on how many head of cattle and how much land a dairy farm can own (it is a small country after all), and so the couple moved to Wisconsin to start a dairy farm big enough to match their dreams. Since, they have received several awards from all sorts of different sources for both their matured Goudas, as well as their flavored Goudas, like the ones mentioned above.

Their matured Gouda, like the one we carry at Pastoral, is semi-firm in texture, with loads of complexity due to both the use of  raw, rather than pasteurized, milk and the attention to detail paid by Marieke, Rolf, and their team. It smells brightly lactic with some lingering notes of grass and still-baking bread. Its flavors are strongly reminiscent of custard with some citric notes and slight grassiness. There’s a bit of yogurt-y sourness, and even some flavors that remind me of a warm tortilla (the tortilla adds to the sensation of eating a bean and cheese burrito when you have the Smoked Cumin Gouda).

Marieke and Rolf’s boerenkaas Goudas are perhaps the best known in this area but they are far from the only ones doing it. Over in the small town of Oskaloosa, Iowa (unsurprisingly just outside the town of Pella, which is known for its Dutch heritage) are a pair of brothers who are producing some beautiful, traditionally-made boerenkaas to rival anything I ever had growing up. Mike and Jason Bandstra started Frisian Farms with just 10 Holstein calves and have since grown the herd to 80 head of dairy cattle. Jason also owns a nearby grain farm so that the brothers have complete control over what the cows eat, even when they’re not grazing on the brothers’ pastureland. Mike joined the team at Frisian Farms after a stint with Horizon Organic Dairy (you may be familiar with their milk and yogurt) where he learned quite a bit about hormone and antibiotic-free, organic dairy production.

Together, the brothers produce a matured Gouda that is simply beautiful. They are able to get an astounding complexity and depth of flavor into their cheese considering that they pasteurize the milk that they use, and are even able to preserve some of the color that comes naturally with milk from grass-fed cows. The scent of the cheese is reminiscent to Marieke while being a bit milder. The cheese follows suit in its flavors. Where Marieke can have yogurt-sourness, Frisian is bursting with hints of fruit, nuts, and cream.

These Midwestern cheeses share similar textures, but their flavors illustrate the wide variety available within farmstead Goudas, even in the same age range, just based on the differences in diet and location. Where Marieke is great with a hoppy beer, Frisian would be much happier alongside something with a maltier flavor profile. On a very broad scale, think ale for Marieke, and lager for Frisian. That’s far from the only use for these Goudas though, as they also make for great cheese plates, sandwiches, and cheeseburgers. In fact, Holland’s Family Farm and Frisian Farms both have whole sections of their website dedicated to recipes and entertaining suggestions. Check ‘em out!

Nick Lush is a new transplant to our fair city of Chicago, having moved in May of last year. He grew up near San Francisco in a food-obsessed family and with a grandfather who regularly had wheels of boerenkaas gouda airmailed to his home from his native Amsterdam. The foundations of his love of cheese were first laid with his first taste of Leerdammer, stripped fresh off the wheel with a wire and has only grown since then. After settling in Chicago, Nick immediately began cheesemongering for Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine and loves sharing his old favorites and new discoveries.

Storing food is an effective way to preserve produce at the height of its freshness.  By successfully preserving and storing my food, I can eat July’s blueberries in the middle of December.  I choose to store my food rather than buy it at grocery store because I like to know where my food is grown.  Since I grow much of my own produce, I can guarantee the quality and freshness of my fruits and vegetables.

Some processes I use to store food are canning, freezing, and drying.  I have been storing food for years, yet each year I learn something new that betters the process.  For example, when I learned how to can, I was able to free up space in my freezer and not have to worry about a loss of power devastating my food supply.  I used to cook, puree, jar, and freeze pumpkin, but now I have eliminated the last two steps in favor of canning.  Canning is convenient in that I can open up a jar whenever I need it and use it immediately, without needing to defrost.  I have filled the newfound space in my freezer with fruit, nuts, pesto, cheese, and bread instead.  As for drying, I dry pears, cherries, persimmons, and apples.

Some foods do not need to be canned, frozen, or dried if they are being stored for a shorter time.  I bury potatoes in sand and store them in my unheated crawl space.  Onions, garlic, and squash also keep well in an unheated crawl space. Certain varieties of apples also keep well in a cooler in an unheated garage or cellar.  If the temperature dips unnaturally low, I will throw a blanket over the cooler to ensure the apples do not freeze.  I don’t like to store apples in the refrigerator for an extended period of time because they will absorb the flavors of other foods.

20 pounds of frozen organic cherries, 25 pounds of frozen organic blueberries, 40 pounds of organic apples, 30 quarts of tomato sauce, 6 quarts of peaches, 10 quarts of pears in honey, 10 pints of dilly beans, 10 pints of dill pickles, 10 pounds of dried persimmons, 10 pounds of raw honey, 8 quarts of grape juice, pecans, pesto, dried tomatoes, and dried Asian pears will sustain me and my family through the long Chicago winter this year.  Storing food requires planning and organization during the harvest season.  Storing food can sometimes be overwhelming because it is time consuming, but the reward is eating local, fresh food for the whole year.  Give storing a try by picking an easy item like apples.  Make applesauce or keep your apples in a cool, dry place.  With practice, you will soon be able to experience the optimal tastes of each season, regardless of the temperature outside.

January’s nearing to a close, which is good time to reassess the resolutions of the New Year. Did you lose 5 pounds? Have you exercised daily? Don’t worry, neither did I.

There is one resolution that if you didn’t make, it’s a good one to adopt now: making family dinner a regular habit.

Statistics show that children who share a meal regularly with their families do better in school and have a better relationship with their parents. We all have to eat, so let’s do it together.

I may not have any advice about dieting or exercise, but this is one resolution that I can help with.

Until last year, Purple Asparagus’ mission was to bring families back to the table. With our burgeoning work in the schools (more than 22 and rising), we revised our mission in 2011 to educating children, families, and the community about eating that’s good for the body and the planet. Believe you me, with the number of parent cooking classes I teach, I still have some tips, five in fact, about how to make family dinner 2012’s healthy habit.

1. Be flexible: The greatest enemy to the family dinner is the unrelenting devotion to the clock. Dinner in my house may at 5:30, it might be at 7:30; it all depends upon our schedules, individual and collective. If my son doesn’t get a bath that night, so be it, I’d rather have that half hour for our family to reconnect at the end of the day.
2. Embrace convenience: Don’t be ashamed to use convenience foods. While I know many a food snob that will turn a nose up at the idea of prepared cereals or a tub of hummus. I’m not one of them. Even though I often prepare bread or pasta from scratch, these are weekend activities, not a project to undertake when I’m trying to get dinner on the table after a long day at work. When there are so many wonderful food artisans creating nutritious products with top quality and locally sourced ingredients, there’s no shame in incorporating them into your weekly routine.
3. Upcycle your leftovers: Leftovers, whether from my own kitchen or a restaurant meal, are in regular rotation in my kitchen. Not just meat scraps, like beef or chicken strips that can be laid onto salads or rolled into wraps, but everything. For example, transform your mashed potatoes into a tart crust. Cold rice can be folded with a lemony dressing and garnished with oil-cured tuna. Both her and on my personal blog Little Locavores, I detail these tricks and many more make short work of dinner.
4. Make a plan: Don’t just make a shopping list before entering a grocery or visiting a farmers’ market, but also a plan. Wine Braised Pot Roast served with roasted vegetables can on the day after be a delicious topping for whole grain pasta. Making meatloaf, double the recipe and stuff half into peppers. If you’re not used to this type of cooking, there are lots of terrific resources for meal planning, including The Scramble and Feed Our Families. About two years ago, I ran a few of these meal plans on Little Locavores, including my own.
5. One of the best pieces of advice about family dinner came from a powerful women partner at my former firm. While she was a terrific cook, she freely admitted that she wasn’t always the one cooking for her family. What was more important to her was that the family ate together. If the meal was at a restaurant or from the take-out section of Whole Foods, it was still family dinner. I wasn’t ready to hear the advice when she gave it, only a month after my son was born, and it likely hastened my departure from my Big Law job. Nowadays, I get it. Restaurant dinners and healthy take out are also among the tools at my disposal to get family dinner on the table.

To make this last tip even easier to follow, there’s a brand new initiative taking place at many Chicago restaurants: Healthy Fare for Kids. Spearheaded by Chef Sarah Stegner (a mom herself), Alderman Michele Smith, and former public health profession Diane Schmidt, the program is committed to providing parents with healthy options for their children at restaurants. The restaurants participating in the program will offer at least one delicious and healthy meal for kids on their menus.

Healthy Fare for Kids provided guidelines to chefs, including limiting the bread on the table before the meal and instead providing fresh vegetables. It also asks restaurants to ensure some lean protein with the meal and to use whole grain breads and pasta. Other suggestions are to use cooking methods that are lower in fat, incorporating and local and seasonal products (a goal close to this Little Locavores’ heart), controlling portion size and serving no-sugar beverages and small, if any, desserts.

For more information about the initiative and to learn which restaurants are participating, visit the initative’s website or watch Chef Stegner be interviewed by the Fooditude kids.

There will be another batch of Local Beet beer coming out (it was Editor-at-Large Rob’s idea – blame him, not me).

We’re trying to figure out a way that you, dear reader, can sample some, perhaps in conjunction with The Local Beet’s upcoming anniversary.

It was late summer, 2009, that I made the first batch of Local Beet beer. I bored you by writing about that journey here, and here, and here, and here, and even here.

Fresh, in 2009, the color was pretty good.

I’ve kept a few bottles around. When it was fresh, the color was beet red (obviously). It’s now more amber, suggesting that the betalain pigments that give beets their deep red color degrade over time in an acidic environment like beer. Except for a slight beetiness in the flavor, you might think you were drinking a Scottish Ale – say, a 70 shilling heavy.

A few lessons I’ve learned. For one, there’s no need to mash the beets – mashing is used to convert malt and other grains’ starches to sugar for the yeast to nibble on; the sugars are already present in the beets. So I’ll just add beet juice to the secondary fermentation for the flavor and color.

For another, I learned that the true flavor of beets is based on a balance of earthiness and sweetness. Once you ferment something with beet juice, the yeast converts the sweet beet sugars into alcohol and carbon dioxide. The remaining pure earthy flavor isn’t especially appetizing. So the sweetness has to be added back. Adding sugar would just further feed the yeast; it would up the alcohol content, but wouldn’t add sweetness to the end product. In the 2009 version, I used aspartame (I’ve had a long professional relationship with aspartame). It’s not fermentable, but some people aren’t comfortable with that combination of naturally-occurring aspartic acid and phenylalanine. It did add the needed sweetness, though.

For this batch, I’ll be adding lactose. It’s a milk sugar; it will add sweetness, but beer yeasts will ignore it.

So, the 2009 version wasn’t good for people with phenylketonuria.

The 2012 version won’t be good for people with lactose intolerance.

And, by the way, both contain gluten from the barley used in the mash, so they’re not good for anyone with Celiac disease.

Hell, it’ll probably be too dangerous for anyone to drink. I just might keep it all for myself.

Last year, as we started putting together our CSA Guide, we asked for your candid feedback on Community Supported Agriculture–you can see what happened last year here. Well, once again, we want to hear what you though about your boxes.  Specifically, we’d like to know:

• What did you think about the CSA to which you subscribed in 2011?
• What do/did you want in a CSA?  Did that CSA meet, exceed or fail to meet those expectations?
• Will you join a CSA in 2012?  Which one, and why?
• If you are changing CSA’s in 2012, why?

Please feel free to post comments below.  If you’d like to respond privately to the Beet, please do so here.  Private responses will be kept confidential. ]]> http://www.thelocalbeet.com/2012/01/09/wanted-candid-feedback-on-your-csas-again/feed/ 27 http://www.thelocalbeet.com/2011/12/27/root-cellar-diary-part-7-survival-of-the-fittest/ http://www.thelocalbeet.com/2011/12/27/root-cellar-diary-part-7-survival-of-the-fittest/#comments Tue, 27 Dec 2011 16:39:18 +0000 David Hammond http://www.thelocalbeet.com/?p=8742 We find easy ways to use old produce and eliminate vermin

Last week I reported on the problem we were having with mice.

I’m glad to say that this problem has been solved, in part, by Mina, our aged cat, who last week snared the mouse (or, more likely, one of the mice). This was a very good thing for our old cat, who has been feeling rather tired lately; the thrill of the hunt and kill had a salubrious effect upon her spirit. In the accompanying picture, you can see how she hid her bounty under a pile of New Yorkers before we relieved her of her grotesque and treasured toy. [Note: this is the first time I’ve ever posted a cat picture on the Internet. Honest. And likely the last.]

It’s very satisfying to have nature handle things. It’s somehow much cleaner to have a natural predator take care of a problem that would otherwise have been solved with poison we bought at the store.

It addition to inventory shrinkage due to vermin, we’re seeing a fair amount of apples lost to spoilage, perhaps upwards of 10%. I go through the apple cage a few times every week, weeding out the bad ones, and there usually are bad ones. Because some of the apples are getting soft (due perhaps to the unseasonably warm temperatures we’ve been having), we’ve been cooking them and juicing them, which is a good way to use otherwise less than desirable produce.

I’m glad we decided to periodically replenish the root cellar with local produce from Caputo’s and other places, where it’s been stored by professionals who know what they’re doing and do what it takes to extend the survival rate of fruits and vegetables.

And it’s reassuring that nature is providing controls on further mice incursions into our basement.

So, as of the beginning of the new year, we’re staying one step ahead of root cellar disasters.

For a yoga-mate who’s resolved to take the first tentative steps toward local eating in the new year, I’ll wrap up a copy of The Locavore Way: Discover and Enjoy the Pleasures of Locally Grown Food by Amy Cotler. It’s a gently informative introduction to sourcing local food and cooking and eating seasonally. In simple, direct terms Cotler connects the dots between our choices at the market, in the kitchen, and in our communities and gives a novice the tools and information to make decisions that foster a sustainable food system.

For the twenty-somethings on my list, I’ll tuck a copy of Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen under the tree. Like my young friends, authors Anna Lappé and Bryant Terry are by turns serious and earnest about food policy and environment issues, practical and budget conscious about setting up an organic, sustainable kitchen, and adventursome, joyful eaters who love to cook and entertain friends. Their book is filled with practical advice and includes 24 mostly vegetarian menus complete with shopping lists and, of course, a music playlist to cook by.

Dedicated locavores know that eating local requires time and effort in the kitchen. While many disciples of local, sustainable eating have admirably high food IQs (thanks to food television, travel, and our city’s endlessly delicious and diverse restaurants) often these same hungry folks find their kitchen skills fall short or they get stuck in a rut once they stand facing the stove day after day. I have the perfect gift for them: Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food. Whether a new cook, one who needs to brush up on technique, or one in need of fresh, simple ideas, Waters primer gives us short, easy recipes that deliver deeply satisfying flavors. My sister, a grad student and the busy mom of two teenagers, was was blown out of her rut by Waters’ recipe for “Braised Duck Legs with Leeks and Green Olives.” Someone on your holiday list will be, too.

For the carnivore topping my list I’ll choose Odd Bits: How to Cook the Rest of the Animal, by Jennifer McLagan. This smart, engaging, thoroughly-researched, and entirely approachable treatise on snout-to-tail cooking confidently leads the adventursome and the squeamish alike down the delicious path to cooking with offal. Tuck a gift certificate from Butcher & Larder between the covers and your carnivore will have a very happy, meaty holiday.

We all know someone who loves to bake. Surprise them with Good to Grain: Baking with Whole-Grain Flours. Author Kim Boyce, a former pastry chef, began experimenting with whole-grains because she wanted to give her daughters healthy home-baked treats without the refined flour and sugar she once used in professional kitchens. As she worked with unusual grains like teff, kamut, amaranth, and buckwheat Boyce came to appreciate their unique flavors and textures and the surprising depth they lend to quickbreads, cookies, cakes, and tarts. Rather than stop at a simple one-for-one substituion for refined flours in the standard repertoire of home-baked goods, Boyce developed recipes that make the most of each grain’s unique characteristics. Who knew, for example, that teff flour and brown butter are soul mates? (Try Boyce’s “Hazelnut Muffins” and you’ll understand.) Or that rye flour has a “sweet, milky” profile that’s perfect in the crust for a fruit tart? As more local farmers grow and mill grains (Three Sisters polenta and corn meal or Heritage Prairie’s whole wheat and rye flours come to mind) locavore bakers are sure to find more locally grown flours. Our baker friends will be inspired by the new spectrum of flavors and textures in Boyce’s recipes and we, no doubt, will be rewarded with a share of delicious, local, homemade treats.

A thoughtful gift for the young family on your holiday list, Feeding the Whole Family: Cooking with Whole Foods by Cynthia Lair is a classic. First published 15 years ago and now in its third edition, it’s a terrific resource for time-stretched parents who want to cook a local, sustainable, healthy family meal that everyone at the table can enjoy—even babies as young as six-months. Lair, a nutritionist, teacher, chef, and mom, offers solid information on how to source clean, local food, transition infants to solid food, and introduce new foods as babies grow. The book contains strategies for coping with childhood food allergies and finicky eaters, inventive ideas for healthy and delicious lunch boxes, and best of all, terrific recipes and menus that will please picky little ones and the grown-ups who feed them. Generations of healthy happy families will thrive on this book.

I know a beer-lover or three who are giddy about publication of The Oxford Companion to Beer, an encyclopedia of all things related to beer. Curated by Garrett Oliver, a Slow Food Founding Board Member and the highly respected Brewmaster at New York’s Brooklyn Brewery, it contains 960 pages and more than 1,100 entries. This impressive work taps the collective brain trust of 166 beer experts of on topics ranging from beer’s ancient and multicultural history to technical aspects of the brewing process, the development of the styles of beer, and the social and cultural impact of beer drinking. The print version weighs a hefty four pounds so I think I’ll e-mail my friends the Kindle edition—a perfect reference to download to a smart phone. They be able to check stats or prove one of the finer points of beer connoisseurship while sitting on a bar stool.

Strictly speaking, The Seasons on Henry’s Farm is not a cookbook (although it does contain recipes). But if the local eating credo exhorts us to “know your food, know your farmer,” there’s not better window into a farmer’s transcendent joys and grim disappointments than Terra Brockman’s lyrical account of a year on her brother’s downstate Illinois farm. It will fill you with admiration and wonder.

To earn a place on my overcrowded bookshelves a cookbook must have a distinctive point of view, one that amplifies or alters my perceptions. I may, for example, own more than a dozen Italian cookbooks, but each offers something unique. So it is with two books I hope to find wrapped in pretty paper under my tree next week.

Over the last six months, every time I’ve found myself in a bookstore I invariably gravitate to Plenty by London-based food writer, chef, and restaurant owner Yotam Ottolenghi. Now, I have at least a half-dozen vegetarian or vegetable-centric cookbooks at home but here I am, drooling over “Black Pepper Tofu” (this man puts butter on his tofu!), “Quinoa Salad with Dried Persian Lime,” “Cabbage and Kohlrabi Salad” (with dill and dried sour cherries!), and “Celeriac and Lentils with Hazelnut and Mint.” Ottolenghi regards food so familiar to me in a such a completely different light that it seems entirely new. Take celery root—for some reason I can’t seem to get enough of it this year. But I’ve never once thought of it as possessing “an elegant oily smoothness” as Ottolenghi describes it, and this has only heightened my obsession with the gnarly root. Nor has it ever occurred to me to transform a parsnip into a pillowy dumpling afloat in a vegetable broth enriched with prunes. This man has my attention. I hope someone out there takes the hint and drops this under my Christmas tree.

Compare the tables of contents in Chez Panisse Vegetables, a cookbook I own and adore, with that of Nigel Slater’s Tender: A Cook and His Vegetable Patch, and we find they’re virtually identical. This hasn’t stopped me from coveting Slater’s book. Why? I feel a deep affinity for the rustic Mediterranean elegance of Chez Panisse’s food and use their vegetable cookbook more often than any other in my collection. But as I leaf through Tender’s pages, I slip into Slater’s companiable prose as easily as a well-worn sweater. Before I know it I’m swathed in his fragrant curries, soothing roast beef with tomato gravy, and luxurious cauliflower cheese. There’s something seductive, intimate and yes, tender, in the micro-universe of Slater’s kitchen and garden. Chicago’s chill is still flushed with holiday excitement and the luster still glows on winter’s sturdy roots and leaves. But come February, when eating local means mustering the resolve to face down the wilted cabbage and surfeit of beets in the root cellar, I want Nigel in the kitchen with me, braising a “Quick Cabbage Supper with Duck Legs,” and baking “An Extremely Moist Chocolate-Beet Cake with Créme Fraîche and Poppy Seeds.” I’ll happily make a place for Tender on my bookshelf.

I’m going to go out on a limb and say that most locavores were not standing in line at midnight on Black Friday for the latest hot gift. Locavores, those strange denizens that avoid the convenience of the supermarket for the rush of finding the perfect, but odd-shaped heirloom tomato, generally favor, well, odd gifts. If you’re like us, then this is your gift guide.

For The Food-Lover

Local cheese. For instance, Uplands Rush Creek Reserve. (Keighty wrote about it here.) A cult favorite, it is released periodically and sells out. My suggestion would be to contact either Marion Street Cheese Market, Provenance or Pastoral and ask about their stock, and maybe request to be put on a list for when the next shipment arrives. It’s worth the wait.

Local Honey. Chicago Honey Co-Op’s honey is made from Chicago bees. As reported recently on the Beet, Chicago Honey Co-Op lost the land for its apiaries, and is soliciting support. This is as good a time as ever to support them.

Sustainable, local caviar from Collins Caviar. Or Jo Snow syrups for coffee, Italian soda, or snow cones. Or canned goods from River Valley Kitchens. How does rum or bourbon-infused local maple syrup sound to you? Then try Burton’s Maplewood Farm. Or some of Lee’s scrumptious local pantry items.

For the meat-lover, The Butcher and Larder is offering gift cards, as well as taking orders for Allie Levitt’s famous Migas Bark and Shortbread (but hurry – orders need to be in by December 18th).

A deck of restaurant discounts from A La Card. This well-curated, Beet-approved, list of restaurants includes many that are focused on sustainable, local cuisine.

For The Home Cooks

As Kim our Cookbook Addict wrote, Martha Bayne’s Soup and Bread Cookbook is a local find. All recipes in the cookbook are for soups brought by volunteers in Martha’s soup-and-bread events at The Hideout in Chicago. (Stay tuned for Kim’s list of locavore-focused cookbooks.)  You might have been following David Hammond’s Root Cellar Diaries or maybe you started a root cellar yourself — Rob suggests this cookbook to help you find recipes for those overwintered vegetables.

For The Local Tippler

For the mixologist, I recommend two whiskeys — both local. I’m really enjoying Lion’s Pride single-barrel, single-grain organic whiskeys, and they’re made in Chicago by Koval, Chicago’s first post-Prohibition distillery. Another favorite is Templeton Rye, made in Iowa.  Check Lush Wine & Spirits (throughout Chicago), Green Grocer, and Binny’s for these bottles.  I’d also recommend one of Koval’s liqueurs, made in  flavors such as chrysanthemum honey, ginger, jasmine, coffee, and my favorite, rosehip. On the other hand, for brunch, nothing beats a bloody mary, and Tomato Mountain has a mix made from organic tomatoes, celery and jalapeños grown on their farm in Wisconsin. (Also sold at Green Grocer in Chicago. Note: Rob’s wife works for Tomato Mountain.)

Ever go to The Violet Hour and covet their eyedropper bottles of housemade bitters behind the bar? For $10 or so, Bittercube Bitters gets you close to having one, as well as a terrific stocking stuffer. Bittercube makes “slow-crafted Midwest bitters” (they’re made in Milwaukee) in unique combinations like cherry bark vanilla, two types of Jamaican-inspired bitters, and Blackstrap (with molasses, clove, sassafras and sarsaparilla aroma and flavors). They are sold at Lush Wine & Spirits, Green Grocer, and most liquor stores in Chicagoland.

For those friends satisfied with a good brew, Tom’s tried all the local, seasonal beers.

For The Outdoorsperson

For the year-round fisherman, how about a “certificate” for a day of fishing at Rushing Waters in Palmyra, Wisconsin (no license required)? Rushing Waters’ fish is served at many Chicago restaurants for a premium (with good reason), and catching them yourself costs only a fraction of the price. Otherwise, you can order fish from them directly. Rushing Waters promises that all orders are filled when placed – so your fish will be swimming at the time you order.

The Gift That Says You Should Eat Local

A CSA subscription! Our full searchable, sortable list from 2011 is a great place to start.

For The Preserver

Most grocery and hardware stores carry starter packs of Ball jars in assorted sizes (I recommend 1/2 pints for jam, pints for canning vegetables, and quarts for juice). But for the more ardent and experienced canner, check out the sleekly-designed Weck canning jars, produced in Crystal Lake.

Just getting started, get them some lessons from the Glass Rooster.

For the Preserver Who Never Gets Around to It

Dried fruits from Seedling Farm.

Jams from Rare Bird Preserves.

For The Marketeer

Consider a membership to the Green City Market for an ardent GCM shopper.

Know a fan of the much-lauded Madison farmer’s market? The market offers signature logo totes.

The Local Foods Wheel will help you eat seasonally even in winter (Rob collaborated with several others on this project).

For The Gardener or the Home

It’s paperwhite and amaryllis time — Green Grocer offers them from Illinois Specialty Cut Flowers, a family owned sustainable flower grower in Huntleigh, Illinois.

Our resident urban gardeners, Ava George Stewart and Peg Wolfe, have weighed in with their suggestions. Ava suggests that Earthboxes would be great gifts for urban gardeners. Here’s a starter kit. Also making great gifts: Heated seed flats or Kneeling cushions.

Peg suggests subscriptions to really good gardening magazines, such as Garden Design, BBC Gardens Illustrated, Organic Gardening, or Horticulture. Ava vouches for Garden & Gun.

For The Charitably-Minded

If you’d like to make a donation to an hyper-local organization in lieu of a gift, may we suggest the Oak Park River Forest Food Pantry (an organization close to the heart of Beet Founder, Rob Gardner), or Purple Asparagus, the organization that Melissa Graham (aka the Sustainable Cook) is dedicated to that brings families back to the table by promoting and enjoying all the things associated with good eating.

Some other worthy organizations that we support:

Honey Co-Op (Be sure to note that the donation is going to Honey Co-Op)
Family Farmed
Slow Food (Chicago)
The Land Connection
Seven Generations Ahead
Experimental Station
Growing Home
Growing Power
The Talking Farm
Resource Center

Upon arriving, we joined the Travises for lunch in the one room schoolhouse that serves as the meeting center for visitors to the farm. The Travis Family; Marty, Kris, and Will are direct descendants of the original settlers of the farm which is oldest continuous working farm in Livingston County.  After introductions, Marty told a story of his 7th great grandfather who arrived here in 1830.

Surrounded by a sea of commodity corn and soybean farms,  Spence Farm is an organic oasis which the Travises have developed into a very successful niche organic produce and grains business supplying the leading restaurants in Chicago and central Illinois with their products.  Disheartened every time that they saw a neighbor struggle and perhaps lose their farm, they formed The Stewards of the Land to help those neighbors access the markets to which the had Travises developed.

Realizing that their vision of a robust rural economy was more than selling, but also about educating, they started the Spence Farm Foundation in 2005.  Regrettably, even children in rural Livingston County don’t all know where their food comes from or how it’s produced.  Marty and Kris set out to change that with the Foundation, a registered educational non-profit organization.  They now have programs on the farm for 2nd and 5th graders from the schools in Livingston County.  Also offered are high school and university programs and farm tours for just about anyone who is interested.

While the weather was not as spectacular as 2010, this year’s Crop Mob to help with the harvest was just as rewarding.  And harvest we did!  I’m sure that I wasn’t the only one who might have been a little spooked when Marty said that they had 10,000 pounds of butternut squash to harvest. Amazingly, the 15 volunteers and the Travises harvested the entire field in just over an hour!

Look, I found a big one!

We then moved on to harvest potatoes and really get our hands dirty. Using a 100 year old potato harvester which they had saved from the junk man, Marty drove the tractor and son Will guided the harvester from behind. We volunteers followed on our hands and knees digging the loosened soil for tiny potato treasures. In all, we harvested 300-400 pounds.

Our day’s work amounted to a few hours, yet we saved the Travises two days of work that they alone would have had to do. Because small organic farms are typically family owned and operated, most of the labor is done by hand. The term “Crop Mob” was coined by city dwellers who have an interest in sustainable agriculture and would like to help more than just by going to the farmer’s market or joining a CSA.

For information about next year’s Crop Mob or to stay informed on happenings on the farm, please visit spencefarmfoundation.org and join our mailing list.

Chef Tom attended the Cooking Academy of Chicago and received his professional culinary certification in 1998. His restaurant career began at Patrick & James’ in Glencoe working with chef Don Yamauchi. He later moved to Mimosa Restaurant in Highland Park, IL working with chef/owner Kevin Schrimmer. He began as pastry chef, and after one year became chef de cuisine. His culinary training and restaurant experience provided Tom with the foundation of classic French techniques and devotion to the very best ingredients. Striking out on his own, Chef Tom started White Oak Gourmet in 2004.