Note: this article first appeared on Melissa’s personal blog, Little Locavores, where a lucky reader had a chance to win a copy of the book, Rainbow Bunch mentioned below.
Purple carrots, had only I known you six years ago. . .
Unlike many other purple vegetables, like purple Brussels sprouts and sadly even purple asparagus, purple carrots, the ones colored through to their core retain their vivid hue after cooking. Not only do they keep their color, but purple carrots lend it to their partner ingredients in a dish.
You won’t find these carrots at your ordinary grocery store. No, for these, you’ll have to make a stop at Green City Market. Look for Vicky Westerhoff of Genesis Growers, she’ll hook you up.
Purple carrots will help your kids to eat a rainbow – a recommendation that many a dietician and doctor would make for a healthy diet. Thor and I were given a terrific tool to keep track of his rainbow consumption from my friend, Kia Robertson: a Today I ate a Rainbow Kit. He tracks what colors he’s eating on the magnetized fridge chart, I plan for our week’s worth of rainbow foods with the shopping list, and we both enjoy her delightful book, The Rainbow Bunch.
Purple Bean Soup
Serves 4
6 cups chicken stock
1 ham hock
2 teaspoons extra virgin olive oil
1 red onion, chopped
1 purple carrot, peeled and chopped
1 celery stick, chopped
½ teaspoon cumin
3 cups cooked black beans
1 bay leaf
Pour the chicken stock into a large pot and add the ham hock. Bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 45 minutes. Remove the ham hock and reserve for another purpose.
Heat the oil in a medium saucepan or soup pot over medium high heat. Add the onion, carrot, and celery and sauté until the vegetables are softened. Sprinkle the cumin over the vegetables and cook for another minute.
Add the black beans and pour in 4 cups of the ham stock. The remainder can be frozen for another purpose. Drop in the bay leaf, 1 teaspoon kosher salt, and three grinds of freshly ground pepper and bring the stock to a boil. Reduce the heat and cook for 30 minutes.
Puree in a blender (be sure to cover the top with a clean dish towel) or with a stick blender. Ladle into shallow bowls and dollop with sour cream and a spritz of lime juice.
Editor’s Note: We pity locavores in other parts of the country. What do they do for cheese? For us in the Midwest, we have the opposite problem. We have so many great cheeses. With these choices, do you always know what to say? Our new cheese writer, Nick Lush (who, honestly sounds like the lead singer in an English punk band, no?), tells us to say gouda. In addition to talking about cheese on the Local Beet, Nick will be happy to discuss his favorites at Pastoral where he mainly works at the Lakeview location (but can be found at all three).
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!
For me this week in the roundup of blogs, the issue that was out there was the vote and the case of small farmers versus Monsanto, to get up to the minute information, become more informed and to take action on a grass roots level.. FooddemocracyNow.org is the place to go and be on their mailing list.
Winter does not hinder our friends at Growing Home.
Another great food activism site is Nourishlife.org
And as usual in the roundup I always check the positive daily posts of NourishingthePlanet.org
Farmer Ben Hewittt in Vermont puts out his weekly philosophical posts of life off the grid here..
For encouragement in locavorism, Chief Beet Rob Gardner recommends Bergen.com “Homegrown: How to Eat Local for the Winter” as well as Simple, Good & Tasty, “Fermentation: How to Live with Wild Things” and Rob ,also, recommends ChicagoRegen.com, an idea exchange on all things sustainable.
TheHonestMealProject.com by Dana Cox Lipe as she moves into Chapter 2 is one to keep on your radar screen.
To find out more about Hugh Amano’s Salons go to Food On the Dole, he has a Mid-Winter Market Salon coming up on Feb 9th. What is a salon? You are going to have to go here and read about it!
There is always a food experiment or insight going on at Michael Gebert’s SkyFullofBacon.com .
Blue-kitchen.com – Has a Feb. 1 post on brownies and squirrels.
Do you have a food/activism/locavore/farm that you check every week? Leave it down in the comments below!
This is what Nick sees every morning when he goes to work in an undistinguished industrial park in Munster Indiana
An open letter to Nick Floyd:
C’mon, man. Share the stage a bit.
I know that Three Floyds’ recent ranking on Ratebeer as the number one best brewery in the world isn’t your fault — blame the average scores of the 3.5 million beer reviews by true beer aficionados on that site. But, world’s best for the fourth year in a row? And five out of the last six years? Give it a rest. Maybe you could turn out at least one crappy beer to drive your scores down just one notch.
How about a Miller Lite clone?
Certainly, there are other brewers in the region you could share that crown with. Hell, just one state north, in Michigan, Founders (Grand Rapids) and Bell’s (Kalamazoo) came in as the second and third best breweries in the world. Maybe you could give one of those guys a shot at #1.
Sure, your Dark Lord came in as the 13th best beer in the world. But you’ve gotta respect your fellow local brewers, like the guys at Goose Island. Yeah, they’re owned by Anheuser-Busch now, but that doesn’t diminish the fact that their Rare Bourbon County Stout came in 10 slots above your Dark Lord, as the third best beer in the world. (The best was from someplace named Westvleteren Abdij St. Sixtus … it barely counts, because the brewery name is too hard to spell.)
I do have bottles of Goose Island Rare Bourbon County Stout and the 2011 version of Dark Lord in my beer cellar. In a year or so, I might let you know how the two compare head to head.
And, Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout (fourth best beer in the world), and Bell’s Hopslam (sixth best) also beat out your Dark Lord. Last spring, I had to jump on your website within the four minute window for the right to get tickets to purchase your Dark Lord, then wait in line a couple of hours at the brewery to get a measly four bottles. (It was a helluva party, though.) For the Hopslam, all I had to do was carefully time my appearance at the local liquor store and fork over $18 for a sixer.
Maybe you could let Pete Crowley have a shot at the limelight. His Haymarket Pub & Brewery (West Loop, Chicago) was rated #3 in the world among the 1,473 new breweries that opened in 2011. As far as brewpubs go, yours was beaten out by Pete’s Haymarket, and also by Revolution, in Chicago’s Logan Square. (Love the Scotch eggs at your place in Munster, though.) Look out, though, Villa Park’s Lunar Brewing is right on your heels.
Pete Crowley has fun with sanitation
So, please, give it a rest. I’ll make it worth your while. If you come in #2 next year, c’mon up here to Evanston and I’ll buy you a beer. Do you like PBR?
Sometimes I wonder if I can win the lottery, today, like yesterday here in Chicago, it feels possible. The weather yesterday, registered 60 degrees here.
I have short-term good news for gardeners here in Chicago. It’s short term as in probably good for at least 50 years or something like that. The USDA has revised the hardiness zones.
The hardiness zones provide information based on the weather and climate. Specifically, it provides the annual average extreme minimum temperatures. For gardeners, it tells us how long are growing season will probably be. It is the time when the tender plants, like tomatoes, eggplant, and peppers, can be set out without worry about overnight low temperatures harming them.
Drum roll please, Chicago is now in zone 6a. That means the last expected frost date is April 15th, instead of last year’s May 15th. Yippee for us in summer 2012 and probably bad news for the polar bears, and Gaia.
From the USDA:
WASHINGTON—The U.S. Department of Agriculture(USDA) today released the new version of its Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM), updating a useful tool for gardeners and researchers for the first time since 1990 with greater accuracy and detail. The new map—jointly developed by USDA’s Agricultural Research Service (ARS) and Oregon State University’s (OSU)PRISM Climate Group—is available online atwww.planthardiness.ars.usda.gov. ARS is the chief intramural scientific research agency of USDA.
For the first time, the new map offers a Geographic Information System (GIS)-based interactive format and is specifically designed to be Internet-friendly. The map website also incorporates a “find your zone by ZIP code” function. Static images of national, regional and state maps also have been included to ensure the map is readily accessible to those who lack broadband Internet access.
So what tender varieties are you putting outside in April?
Does not it seem lately that the Local Family column is an homage to the Book of Numbers in the Torah. Just endless lists. Don’t we want to move on the Deuteronomy, where we can brush up on the eating local laws, as well as finish the story? Or at least get some ideas on what we do with all that food we tuck away around the bungalow.
I’ll tell you up front, we use a lot of eggs. For instance there was that dinner last week. Mom baked eggs over locally sources corn grits, and garnished with frost-kissed winter spinach.
Did I say eggs. Or did I mean spinach. This was dinner two nights ago. We used recently purchased spinach in a Rick Bayless inspired wilted salad with C&D Pastured Pork chorizo and cubed apples (the apple’s substituting for the jicama in Bayless’s recipe).
Brewing for tonight, locally raised beef braised in Chicago lager, accentuated by storage turnips, carrots, and leeks. We would have eaten this last night if it was ready, but instead had to improvise with pesto from the freezer and a side of local mushrooms browned in the pan.
It seemed like for the longest time we did not need to brew up anything new because we were working and working and working our way through a pot of Michigan beans my wife cooked up with a large Wettstein smoked pork shank. In fact, after a while, she pureed the beans into soup. She made soup partially for a first course in a dinner she was trying to impress her brother with, but mostly to trick us into keeping on eating it. Those grits mentioned above, they came from this dinner too, where they served as the n’, in shrimp n’ grits. Who cared anyways if the entree was shrimp, the meal also featured a salad of winter cabbage, the now famous sauteed turnips, and a soon to be famous “hypocrite” pie of apples and custard.
Like shrimp, rice is not local to our area, but as the Local Family believes in a practical approach to eating local, we include things like them in our diet. And when the Local Mom makes rice, she makes almost as much rice as she makes beans. The first of it supported leftover Chinese food, but the second batch went with Kim Snyder’s Faith Farm bacon, freezer peas, and a local duck egg for fried rice. Leftovers from that, I made into rice salad with Wisconsin feta, salad turnips, and far-away anchovies. See how local food works.
We eat local all winter using a combination of foods stored and preserved and foods obtained over the season. Use what works for you. Use what you have. It helps to have made arrangements ahead of time so there’s a package of pesto from a fall market or you have several heads of cabbage in your fridge, but you can also hit one of the Chicago area markets for the mushrooms and spinach. We don’t just keep local food. We use it too.
It may or may not be winter on the Local Calendar. We are finding, for us, plenty of local produce, and we have tons of happenings and events to share.
WHAT’S IN SEASON NOW
Markets are showing some greens, lettuce, kale, and spinach, but they tend to sell out early. There may also be limited supplies of indoor specialty items at the Logan Square Farmer’s Market including cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers (yes!). We see a good abundance and variety of root vegetables and storage crops. At Genesis Growers, at Green City Market, their table had all these kinds of winter squash: Red Kabocha, Buttercup, Tirks Turban, Baby Hubbard, Butternut and Red Kuri. They also had red and golden beets, kohlrabi, purple top turnips, celeriac (celery root), napa cabbage, green cabbage, black spanish radishes and carrots, plus a few other items. Nichols Farms, at Evanston and Green City, had a ful table inlcuding carrots, a plentiful selection of apples, italian holster garlic, sweet candy onions, dried beans, lots of potato varietals (kennebec, norland red, red thumb, ozette, russian fingerling, rose finn fingerling, russina blue and yukon gold). Nichol’s also had a huge supply of their popcorn kernels and a really picturesque selection of radishes: winter rose, spanish black green meat, daikon and watermelon/beauty heart. The other farmers at Green City had a great deal of variety as well, Orianna was there was her delicious Asian pears. There’s always mushrooms and sprouts.
And supplement with high quality preserved foods. Resist the tyranny of the fresh! Look for items like Tomato Mountain pureed tomatoes* or Seedling’s Fruit’s dried and frozen. Peter Klein from Seedling had plenty of cider and fruti preserves on hand at Green City Market. At the Logan Square Farmer’s Market you can get Michigan blueberries.
WHERE TO FIND LOCAL FOODS
These stores specialize in local foods:
City Provisions Deli 1818 West Wilson in Ravenswood, Chicago
Downtown Farmstand 66 East Randolph in the Loop, Chicago
Green Grocer 1402 West Grand Ave in West Town, Chicago
Dill Pickle Coop 3039 West Fullerton in Logan Square, Chicago
Marion Street Cheese Market 100 South Marion St. Oak Park
Butcher and Larder 1026 North Milwaukee in Noble Square, Chicago
Southport Grocery and Cafe 3552 N. Southport, Chicago
On top of these specialists, we still find local foods here and there at neighborhood grocery stores. Last week in Elmwood Park, the Caputo’s had Illinois grown beets. Michigan apples are still plentiful, although the varieties are falling off.
WHAT TO DO NOW
February 1
Chicago - Soup and Bread is back at The Hideout 5:30 – 7:30pm 1354 W. Wabansia What a mixutre they get of participants. Soups from: Cedar Valley Sustainable Farm’s Beth and Jody Osmund, Poet and writer Erika Mikkalo, Roommate’s Kent Lambert, Tiny Greens’ market manager Paula Jeremias, Annie Coleman, of Living Room Realty and the Golden Horse Ranch Square Dance Band, Simon’s Tavern chili cookoff champion Matt O’Neill, Our friends at Lula Cafe and Mary Black, with cooks from the Marjorie Kovler Center, beneficiaries of this week’s Soup & Bread donations. All this plus DJ Peter Margasak, bread from La Farine, and extra-special bread from the members of Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers.
February 2
Chicago - Slow Wine Guide - A walk-around wine tasting featuring over 100 wines from 45 Slow Wine Producers presented by Slow Food USA and Slow Food Chicago to celebrate the first ever publication in English of the Slow Wine Guide. Takes place at Spiaggia, 6-8:30pm 980 North Michigan Avenue $30 for Slow Food Chicago members $35 for general admission You can order tickets online here.
Chicago - Fresh Taste Open House - 5555 N. Sheridan Road Pool Terrace 4pm-7pm Join Fresh Taste as they celebrate local food, their new home and the hope that spring is around the corner!
February 4
Chicago - The Green City Market Held at the Peggy Notebaert Museum 2430 N. Cannon Drive 8am – 1pm GCM Chili Cook-off 10 finalists will compete against one another and the judges are Paul Fehribach, Big Jones, Jared Rouben Goose Island and Mark Psilos, Green City Market Associate Director. I will be at the Tiny Greens booth, come say hi and let me know what you think about the local calendar!
Chicago – First annual Lincoln Square Winter Brew Festival – 7-11pm at the Dankhaus Buy tickets here.
Elgin - Elgin Winter Market – 166 Symphony Way (right across the street from Centre -Kimball/Douglas) – 8 AM – 2 PM
Evanston – Evanston Indoor Farmer’s Market, at the Evanston Ecology Center, 2024 McCormick Blvd at Bridge St., (there is a large parking lot across the street), thrown by the Friends of the Evanston Market – Expect many of the vendors found at the summer Evanston markets, see here for a list of vendors and other information on the market – 2024 McCormick – 9 AM – 1 PM — Read a report from the market from Beetnik, Peg Wolfe here.
Geneva - Geneva Green Market – 27 N. Bennett (Geneva Place) – 9 AM – 1 PM
La Fox – Heritage Prairie Farmers Market – 9-1pm 2N308 Brundage Road La Fox
St. Charles – Farm Fresh Food Stuffs sponsors a market at St. Charles Place Steakhouse and Banquet -NEW MARKET starts in St Charles this Saturday. We will be on North Ave (route 64) on the east side of town between Kirk & Dunham Roads in the parking lot of St Charles Place. Open from 9am to 3pm,
February 5
Superbowl – Full disclosure..I am a fairweather Giants fan!! Go Giants!
Chicago – The Logan Square Farmer’s Market – 2135 N. Milwaukee at The Congress Theater 10am – 2pm
February 7
Chicago – Lincoln Square - C & D Family Farms selling their all natural free range meats from 7 to 11 am in the parking lot at Lincoln & Leland.
Chicago – Re-Thinking Soup – Jane Addams Hull House 12-1pm
Chicago – Andersonville – C & D Family Farms selling their all natural free range meats from 4pm to 7pm on Ashland at Berywn in front of the First Evangelical Free Church
SAVE THE DATE!!!!
February 9
Chicago - Food on the Dole – Winter Market Salon 7-10pm The Food on the Dole Salon is led by Chef Hugh Amano: part underground dinner, part cooking lesson, all delicious food that we cook and eat together. More information on this and other Salons can be found at Food on the Dole. Questions? Email Hugh at hughamano@yahoo.com. $50 Reserve a place here.
February 11
Chicago- Logan Square Kitchen Pastry Market 2333 North Milwaukee Ave – 10-3pm – LSK brings together a lot of the artisanal bakers, chocolatiers and artisans who use their kitchen. This is a very tasty opportunity with lots of opportunity to sample, check out and buy some of the goods that are being made in the kitchen.
Chicago - Pasta Puttana Chef’s Table Series “Salty, Tart, Savory & Sweet” 1407 W. Grand Ave 6:30-8:30pm $85 BYOB Reservations 773-439-9623 or email Jessica at Jvolpe@pastaputtana.com Oyster Agnolotti will be one of the starts of this 5-course feast based on locally sourced and sustainable ingredients, set in the Pasta Puttana space.
February 12
Chicago - The Glenwood Sunday Market – Glenwood Ave at Morse “Your Green Stop on the Red Line at Morse!” 9am – 2pm
Chicago – DOSE Market is back! River East Arts Center – 435 E. Illinois 10am – 2pm If you don’t know what DOSE is about, go to the link and check it out!
Chicago – Screening of “The Greenhorns” at The Hideout 7-9:30pm 1354 W. Wabansia sponsored by the AUA(Advocates for Urban Agriculture).
Chicago – Logan Square Pastry Market continues – 2333 North Milwaukee Ave. 10-3pm
Chicago – Pasta Puttana Chef’s Table Series: Salty, Tart, Savory & Sweet. 1407 W. Grand Ave. $85 BYOB Reservations 773-439-9623 Jvolpe@pastaputtana.com One more chance to have a feast of locally sourced and sustainable ingredients, yum!
Chicago - The Trencherman Pop-Up Dinner at Logan Square Kitchen -2333 North Milwaukee 7:30pm -9:30pm Buy tickets here This is an opportunity to taste and try the food of Chefs and brothers Michael and Patrick Sheerin along with owners Matt Heisler and Kevin Heisner. The pop-up will feature a five course tasting menu with beer, wine and cocktail pairings by Trenchermen Beverage Director, Tona Palomino (wd~50) and will be a chance to preview dishes from the highly anticipated restaurant.($120/person)
February 13, 14
Chicago – The Trencherman Pop-Up Dinner -Logan Square Kitchen 2333 North Milwaukee 7:30-9:30pm The 5 course tasting menu created by Chef Michael Sheerin (Blackbird) and his brother Chef Patrick Sheerin(The Signature Room) continues join them 2/13 or 2/14. For more information and to purchase tickets go here...
February 17
New! Chicago – The Piranha Club Inaugural Feast The theme is “a tribute to our ancestors, The Bone Dinner” 8pm Noble Square 1034 N. Milwaukee $40 Go here for more information and to purchase tickets.
February 23
Chicago – Green City Market Junior Board - Book Club – “Read, Grow, Eat” 6-8pm The book being discussed is “Farm City-The Education of an Urban Farmer” by Novella Carpenter. Location TBS check their Facebook page.
February 25
Chicago – Growing Power celebrates it’s 10th anniversary 3333 S. Iron St. 1-6pm Aquaponics workshop, small bites, tours and cheers!
February 26
Chicago – Slow Food Chicago Annual Meeting – Peggy Notebaert Museum 2 -4pm
February 27,28
Chicago – The Stew Supper Club presents From Ukranian Village With Love with guest chefs The Underground Food Collective 4 course prix fixe $45 Tickets are available at Coopsauce.com
February 29
Chicago - Culinary Conversation, “Sweet Chicago” – Chicago’s Downstand Farmstand 66 E. Randolph 6-8:30pm Celebrate Chicago’s 175th Birthday by learning all abou lore t the origins, legends and of the city’s sweet history. Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson and Art Historian Rolf Achilles join Chef Jenny Lewis, author of the the new book, Midwest Sweet Baking History, for a fast-paced conversation filled with fascinating facts and fun tidbits of past and present. Admission is FREE, but reservations are required. Please contact the Ticket Office 312-742-TIXS (8492) to reserve your space.
Chicago - Edible Chicago and Brooklyn Breweries present the Quarterly Carousal “A Celebration of Beer, Food, and Stories” 7-9pm. Sheffields 3258 N. Sheffield Ave. Pick up the winter 2012 issue of Edible Chicago magazine and try Brooklyn Breweries latest beer, Mary’s Maple Porter while noshing on some local food goodies. RSVP to events@ediblechicago.com with “Quarterly Carousal #1″ in the subject line.
March 4
Chicago – Pleasant Farms in Bridgeport is holding gardening classes on spring planting, seed starts, planter box care and spring bed refreshing to help get you started on your garden. For more information and to register, please call 773-523-7437 or emailpleasantfarms@gmail.com. $20. Refreshments provided by Pleasant House Bakery.
March 6
Chicago – Quarterly Citrus Canning Workshop – Sponsored by Slow Food Chicago - Held at The Logan Square Kitchen – 6-9pm Order tickets here.
March 15-17
Chicago Good Food Festival – The schedule is out, go to the link and buy tickets now, it sounds like it is bigger, and bringing together more people focused on all aspects of sustainable, healthy, good, local food and the Chicago food shed than ever before! Beet Editor Rob Gardner is moderating a panel on fermentation, and he and other Beetniks will have a table in the Exhibit Hall. Make sure to say hi.
March 18
Chicago – Pleasant Farms in Bridgeport is holding gardening classes on spring planting, seed starts, planter box care and spring bed refreshing to help get you started on your garden. For more information and to register, please call 773-523-7437 or emailpleasantfarms@gmail.com. $20. Refreshments provided by Pleasant House Bakery.
April 28
Chicago – Pastoral Artisan Producer Festival – Chicago French Market 11-3pm This cheesy festival is back stay tuned for more details.
*Rob’s wife works for Tomato Mountain
Who knew? Avocados for breakfast? Yes, Ina Pinkney, the Breakfast Queen herself, made avocados work, in oh so many ways. I was happily invited to her eponymous Ina’s, 1235 West Randolph St for a recent avocado breakfast [full disclosure I did not pay for the breakfast, but I would have said the same things either way]. Between a Guaca-Mary, avocado mango parfait, Irish Oats with Avocado/honey, Indian rice and lentil pancake with avocado chutney, yummy spicy rock shrimp and grits, shirred eggs in an avocado shell and her surprise, thick and creamy hot chocolate, yes, with avocado in it. I think my favorites of the morning was the green smoothie, the Guaca-Mary made with avocado, cucumber, green grapes, cilantro, jalapeno and lime.
I felt a little guilty thinking about writing and posting about avocados on a blog all about trying to eat as local as possible. Maybe I am considered a middle-vore. I try to source a lot of produce locally, yet not everything I eat is locally grown. I eat coffee, ocean fish, etc. For people like me the goal, is to eat less of that far away stuff, but eat well and try to source as much local as I can. I put avocados in that mix. Rob Gardner, Editor of this site, and author of the Local Family, encouraged me to go for it. He reminded me that “local is as far as you need to go to get what you need.” I think he said something about stealing that phrase from a local farmer. That farmer and Rob knew that eating was no fun if you had to limit yourself to what you could find in your backyard. In fact, Rob told me he loves avocados, and he encouraged this piece of avocadophilia. Not do avocados taste good, they’re good for you, as I note below.
I had been meaning to go to Ina’s, not just for the avocados but because I admired Ina. I heard her speak at a sustainable food conference several months ago, and she was one of the founders of The Green Restaurant Association in Chicago, www.Dinegreen.com. On top of that, she is meticulous, obsessive, every adjective you can use about the source of the ingredients that she uses in all her foods. I left her restaurant knowing that I had put super, premium high-test fuel in my body after leaving her establishment.
At my breakfast with Ina, I learned some pretty quick and easy ways to get more from avocados. Ina put together avocado and honey for a pretty amazing combination that can be used in so many ways. The avocado chutney with dill in it was a pretty tasty combo as well.
Avocados from Mexico are available year round but the highest quality are grown and distributed in January. The particular avocados Ina used, were Hass avocados. The Hass get their fruit from the tree to table in less than a week.
The health benefits of avocados are listed below, which I found on the website www.fitday.com:
Avocados contain good fats, help to keep your cholesterol in balance, and even provide fiber to your diet. ”Avocado is an excellent source of monounsaturated fats such as oleic and linoleic acid. These fats promote the health of your heart. They play a vital role in regulation of cholesterol. The fats help to lower low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol and increase high density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol.
Monounsaturated fats also help to speed up your basal metabolic rate (BMR). This is the rate at which calories are burned when you’re in a state of rest. The calories are used to sustain basic functions such as cell repair, maintain body internal temperature and pump blood. Regular consumption of avocados can help you boost your BMR, which facilitates weight loss endeavors.
Avocados contain the highest amount of beta-sitosterol amongst fruits. This is a plant-based fat that plays a vital role in the reduction of LDL cholesterol. It blocks absorption of LDL cholesterol from the intestines. This helps to improve the ratio of LDL and HDL cholesterol, which promotes cardiovascular health.
Omega-3 fatty acids, which are also present in avocados, are polyunsaturated fats that help to stabilize blood pressure. They also help to sustain a normal heartbeat. This promotes cardiovascular health and reduces the risk of stroke and coronary disease.” (Information sourced from www.Fitday.com)
Avocados may not be local, but they are part of a heart healthy diet and pretty darn tasty as well. At the Local Beet, we don’t mind if you indulge…occasionally.
I had to pull dinner from off the bench. We were supposed to have a meal of roasted vegetables because I’d been eying a recipe for months.
Brussel sprouts, sweet potatoes, and mushrooms were to be featured. But what happens when you don’t plan your meals and coordinate that plan with your check of the produce at home and the list for shopping? Yep. You find yourself eyeing the River Valley Mushrooms at the farmers market for a very long time before you leave them on the table under the false belief that you have mushrooms at home.
You get ready to prep and realize your mushrooms aren’t fit to be fed to your worms and your sweet potato, you thought you had more than one, should be planted in the garden since it is sprouting.
Luckily, there is always garlic, olive oil, and pasta in your home. The last quarter of 2011, this was the fall back dish. Pasta Aglio e Olio is the new consistent player that always causes the Mister to be very happy and then ask me if I’m in court the next day. That’s his way of saying the garlic is enough to cause all vampires to stay away. I respectfully disagree.
The brussel sprouts are fierce! A bit of wow from the cayenne and an unbelievable sweetness, that can’t possibly be explained by the kiss of maple syrup.
Hat tip to Martha Stewart and Cook’s Illustrated.
Roasted Brussel Sprouts
Ingredients
2 lbs of brussel sprouts
1 T. EVOO
1T of Water
1 T. Maple Syrup
1/8 t. cayenne
1 t. coarse salt
Preheat oven to 500. Line a baking sheet or roasting pan with foil. Trim and halve, lengthwise, the brussel sprouts. Toss brussel sprouts, EVOO, water, and salt in a large bowl. Spread brussel sprouts onto baking sheet, cut half down. Cover with foil. Roast for 10 minutes.
Remove from oven and decrease temperature to 450. Meanwhile, mix cayenne and maple syrup in a bowl. Return brussel sprouts, uncovered, to the oven for 9 minutes. Remove from the oven and drizzle the maple and cayenne mixture over the brussel sprouts. Return to the oven for a minute to allow the flavors to meld.
Pasta Aglio e Olio
Ingredients
1 lb of spaghetti
6 -10 large cloves of garlic, minced
3 T. of parsley minced—don’t leave this out; it is way more than just garnish
2 t. of fresh squeezed lemon juice
3 T. butter**
3 T. EVOO
1/8 t. crushed red pepper flakes
1/2c. Parmesan cheese**
Salt
Bring 4 quarts of water to a boil.
While the water is boiling, heat a skillet over medium heat and melt 1T of butter. Turn heat to low and add 2 T of EVOO and garlic. Garlic should be golden in about 10 minutes. Remove from heat to stop the cooking process.
QUICK: While the garlic is cooking, add 1.5 T of salt to water and add your pasta. Cook until it’s done. I loathe al dente because it always tastes like under cooked pasta to me.
Reserve 1/3 c. of pasta water, and an additional 2 T. of pasta water. Drain pasta.
Add 2 T of pasta water, parsley, red pepper flakes, and lemon juice to the garlic and oil in the pan.
Place drained pasta back into the pot it boiled in. Add reserved 1/3 c. pasta water, remaining EVOO and butter as well as garlic and oil. Stir to mix. Serve and pass the Parmesan.
** Replacing the butter with EVOO and omitting the cheese makes the dish vegan without missing a beat.
Editor’s Note: Jeanne Calabrese recently ended a stint on the Board of Slow Food Chicago. While on the Slow Food Chicago Board, she participated in a myriad of activities, but she was especially known for putting on workshops and related events to assist people live the Slow life. Jeanne lives the life. You are bound to run into her at a farmer’s market. And she shops not just for the moment. Jeanne buys for all year. Like our friend David Hammond, Jeanne is a food storagist. She agreed to share some of her thoughts on why she does it and how she does it.
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.
When reading the New York Times Dining section a couple days ago, my eye was drawn to the headline, “A Winter Tomato Worth Buying.” Lured in, I read further that the venerable Florence Fabricant herself was claiming that a certain tomato shipped up to New York from Florida called Tasti-Lee was indeed worth eating in winter. Fabricant described Tasti-Lees as well-known secrets in Florida, and the darling of restaurants there during the winter months when even Florida tomatoes are wan specimens.
At first glance, I glean a well-oiled marketing machine behind this whole winter Tasti-Lee tomato business that’s packaging and selling the latest exclusive food novelty item du jour. For one, it’s being introduced for the first time ever in New York City, no less the trendiest place in the US. Second, they’re not cheap; two tomatoes to a precious carton sell for $2.50. (Need to make pasta sauce? A case of 24 packages sells for $56, plus shipping.) And, finally, to give the product a certain cache, only gourmet grocers, Agata & Valentina, Eataly, Gourmet Garage and Tarry Market in Port Chester, N.Y. are selling Tasti-Lees.
Granted, I’ve never eaten a Tasti-Lee, but I’m not falling for sales pitch. Haven’t we been down this road before? This is how the produce sections in major supermarkets evolved into meccas of mediocrity. I imagine it all started with the mid-20th century housewife being enticed by the bright red hue of a tomato in January. Then, it was the blush of a peach in February. It was natural for these consumers who were accustomed to only storage fruits and vegetables in winter to feel a rush seeing this out-of-season produce at the A&P in January. But this is how we ended up in 2012 with oversized, thick-skinned blueberries that are too bitter to really enjoy. I don’t mean to sound alarmist, but is this the beginning of the death knell for seasonal eating? When eating something out-of-season that’s been shipped cross-country becomes trendy again, I start to believe that it might be.
Having said this, I appreciate the role that technology can have in creating a sustainable tomato. We do have some local companies doing great things with hydroponics. For example, McWethy Farms in Three Oaks, Michigan supplies many Michigan restaurants with their winter tomatoes, albeit mostly used to dress pizzas or be turned into sauce. I’ve tasted McWethy’s hydro tomatoes – they’re good. (Not as good as a summer tomato, but still worth eating.) I was once given an impromptu tutorial on McWethy tomatoes by someone who used to work there. His enthusiasm for why they were different from other hydroponics was infectious; he said McWethy utilized a computerized system that maximized sunlight to grow the tomatoes. (I’m paraphrasing.) Anyway, I’m not saying that with the use of new technology we can’t ever have a winter crop that is decent – for winter. But when we start lowering our standards to invite good-for-winter crop to be shipped from warm weather areas like Florida, and package it as a rare gourmet item, I feel like we’re back at the supermarket with their clamshells of preciously-perfect “vine-ripened” tomatoes. That taste like cardboard.
I’ll save my tomato-eating for late summer, Flo, thank you very much.
Root Cellar 8: How I Would Die on the Prairie
New inventory for root cellar, courtesy David Hammond
Last week, my wife Carolyn and daughter Josie went to Costco to get supplies for our root cellar.
I realize restocking a root cellar is contrary to the way such food repositories have been run since the beginning of time, but we needed more stuff. I didn’t put enough away last autumn, and much of our stored food – like apples – is getting wrinkly and withered.
If I were living years ago, let’s say as a sodbuster on the Great Plains during the brutal winter, I would have died on the prairie of starvation because all my root cellar food would be inedible.
That’s why I’m looking at my root cellar as a replenishable domestic appliance. The goal now is not to store food to last us through the winter, but to store food long enough to get us through the cold days until the next trip to Costco.
This is not a tragic occurrence…because we’re not sodbusters living on the prairie during the winter. We can refill our root cellar and just use it as a cool dark place – a natural refrigerator – where we can load up a bunch of stuff.
We’re still using the earth as a resource to provide cooling, rather than relying upon electricity, and we’re saving on gas because we load up on stuff during each trip to Costco.
So even though I would have probably perished, along with the rest of my family, had our little house been on an eighteenth-century American prairie rather than twenty-first century Scoville Ave., I still feel good about my root cellar.
I know we’ll do better next year.The top of the pile of weekly posts this week, sometimes those top of the pile ones come after I hit the “publish” button, are the heartfelt comments of Rob Levitt of The Butcher and Larder, “Know Your Farmer”, on the sad news of the sudden death of Q7 Ranch Owner, Frank Morgan. If there is one thing about buying local, sourcing local, is that it reminds us that we are human, people, all connected, and part and participating in a community.
Every week I love checking what is going on at Nourishing The Planet, sponsored by the Worldwatch Institute, they tend to make posts every day. Their latest posts have included: 1/25 “Agricultural Innovation: Creating a Second Green Revolution“, NTP TV, “Creating Farms that Produce Food and Energy“, 1/24″Five School Programs Feeding America’s Children“, 1/23 “Canihua, Quinoa’s Little Cousin Packs a Nutritional Punch“, 1/21 “Denmark’s Tax on Fat, Trimming Waistlines or Wallets“, 1/20 “Changing the Way We Eat”, 1/20 “Resolving the Food Crisis” 1/19 “Innovation of the Week:Greening the Desert“.
When Ben Hewitt, the Vermont farmer and author of 2 books, “The Town that Food Saved” and “Making Supper Safe” posts again, I will update this page to a link to the new post.
Another out-of-towner whose post’s I love is Heidi Swanson out of San Francisco, she has published 2 books, “Super Natural Cooking” and “Super Natural Every Day” and her latest post at her site 101recipes is a “Miso Sesame Winter Squash Recipe“.
Docsconz – Anyone who is curious as to how artisanal chocolate is made, this is a great step, by step account of Mast Brothers chocolate.
As to local bloggers, Hugh Amano at Food On the Dole titled his latest post “Forget the Oscars-Come to the Salon” and he has more Salon dates open for February including, Rustic Italian, Mid-winter Market, No Valentine Required Brunch, and a Vegetarian Salon on the agenda.
Blue-kitchen.com has a post up on National Soup month here.
You can’t omit SkyFullofBacon here.
And then of course for the latest run down on chefs and food and fun, Beauty and Her Feast, Kiki Luthringshausen.
Oops, why did I only now discover The Backyard Navel?
Looking forward to posts about Chapter 2: The Farm to Table Couple at TheHonestMealProject.
And another favorite blogger, multi-talented like all the bloggers above but busy, so he hasn’t posted in January yet but looking forward to it when he does, Grant Kessler, at My Foodshed.com .
Well, folks, that does it for the roundup this week, if you do read this and have a favorite farm, food, forager blogger, here or yonder, leave the link in the comments section below.
UPDATE! – Close readers of this site will know that a few weeks ago we purchased lettuce and other local produce from an Illinois farmer using indoor production. Well, we could not keep that to ourselves, and we put the Logan Square Farmer’s Market in touch with him. This week he appears there for the first time, with lettuce and probably a few other treats to get your mind off of winter storage crops. See below for additional details on the Logan Square Market.
We’ve filled this Local Calendar with many events, markets and placeholders. Who thinks locavores slow down in the winter? And with cold and snow finally kicking in for a spell, you’d think the cupboards bare. No, our market correspondents found enough local foods last week, including greens, carrots, and herbs.
WHAT’S IN SEASON
Right now there are winter greens, spinach, kale, tatsoi, swiss chard, grown in Hoop Houses but the early shopper gets the greens, they go quickly!! Also grown indoors are mushrooms and sprouts. Seasonality is odd this time of year. On the other hand, what’s in season remains what the farmers and stores have left. There could be apples and potatoes as well as other storage crops like root vegetables (beets, celery root, rutabaga,turnip, radish), cabbages and winter squash. Unlike in previous years, we are still seeing garlic and onions at this time of year. Of course, we talked to a farmer who told us it was only a few weeks ago that he stopped cutting leeks and Brussels Sprouts from his fields. On top of all that, our friends at Fresh Picks continue to offer locally grown herbs.
And supplement with high quality preserved foods. Resist the tyranny of the fresh! Look for items like Tomato Mountain pureed tomatoes* or Seedling’s Fruit’s dried and frozen. At the Logan Square Farmer’s Market you can get Michigan blueberries.
WHERE TO FIND LOCAL FOODS
These stores specialize in local foods:
City Provisions Deli 1818 West Wilson in Ravenswood, Chicago
Downtown Farmstand 66 East Randolph in the Loop, Chicago
Green Grocer 1402 West Grand Ave in West Town, Chicago
Dill Pickle Coop 3039 West Fullerton in Logan Square, Chicago
Marion Street Cheese Market 100 South Marion St. Oak Park
Butcher and Larder 1026 North Milwaukee in Noble Square, Chicago
Southport Grocery and Cafe 3552 N. Southport, Chicago
WHAT TO DO NOW
New!! A few volunteers needed to help out for the General Members meeting of the AUA(Advocates for Urban Agriculture) on 2/1 contact Mhoekstra@plantchicago.org.
January 25
Chicago - Soup and Bread is back at The Hideout 5:30 – 7:30pm 1354 W. Wabansia Soups from: Mana Food Bar, Peasants Plot Sustainable Farm, Eat My Words blogger Gillian McLennan, Stephanie Beyne, Soup & Bread Cookbook editor Alison True, and at least two others. DJ: Hideout talent buyer Michael Slaboch All donations benefit Lakeview Pantry
Chicago -Bucktown Bee Loved Feast 1616 N. Damen 7-9pm Wine tasting and a special cocktail, the InCider, featuring Chicago Honey Coop Honey, $20. All proceeds to benefit the Chicago Honey Coop Apiary Relocation fund.
Chicago - The Butcher and Larder 7:30 pm 1026 North Milwaukee Ave Sausage Making Demo. Attendees learn how to make sausage and take home 1 lb. $55/person.
Chicago - The Portage 3938 N. Central Ave, Chicago is having a five-course dinner with Few Spirits of Evanston. Each course will be paired with a cocktail using Few liquor. Two seatings, 6 & 8 pm. $50/person. Call or email The Portage for more information.
January 26
Chicago - Goodgreens.org meets downtown at the FNS(Food and Nutrition Service) offices 10-12pm. Contact Alan Shannon his email address is on the website if you are interested in attending. Goodgreens is a meeting of meetings focused on good, healthy food for all in Chicago.
January 28
Chicago - The Green City Market Held at the Peggy Notebaert Museum 2430 N. Cannon Drive 8am – 1pm The chef demonstration which starts at 10:30 will be by Larry Donahue of Foodease.
Chicago – First annual Lincoln Square Winter Brew Festival – 7-11pm at the Dankhaus Buy tickets here.
Elgin - Elgin Winter Market – 166 Symphony Way (right across the street from Centre -Kimball/Douglas) – 8 AM – 2 PM
Evanston – Evanston Indoor Farmer’s Market, at the Evanston Ecology Center, 2024 McCormick Blvd at Bridge St., (there is a large parking lot across the street), thrown by the Friends of the Evanston Market – Expect many of the vendors found at the summer Evanston markets, see here for a list of vendors and other information on the market – 2024 McCormick – 9 AM – 1 PM — Read a report from the market from Beetnik, Peg Wolfe here.
Geneva - Geneva Green Market – 27 N. Bennett (Geneva Place) – 9 AM – 1 PM
La Fox – Heritage Prairie Farmers Market – 9-1pm 2N308 Brundage Road La Fox
January 29
Chicago – The Logan Square Farmer’s Market – 2135 N. Milwaukee at The Congress Theater 10am – 2pm
Chicago – Woo hoo!!! It is their 4th Anniversary celebration at The Green Grocer - 10am – 7pm – 1402 West Grand Ave.
Chicago - Harvest Moon Customer Appreciation Day at Goose Island and Chili cook-off – 1-5pm Goose Island Wrigleyville
Park Ridge - Faith in Place Indoors Farmer’s Market in Park Ridge St. Luke’s Lutheran Church of Park Ridge 205 North Prospect Ave. 10am – 2pm More info here.
January 31
Chicago – Lincoln Square - C & D Family Farms selling their all natural free range meats from 7 to 11 am in the parking lot at Lincoln & Leland.
Chicago – Re-Thinking Soup – Jane Addams Hull House 12-1pm Learn from an ethnobotanist about the “miracle” fruit, Synsepalum dulcificum, a berry, that rewires the way your palate perceives sour flavors for an hour or so.
Chicago – Andersonville – C & D Family Farms selling their all natural free range meats from 4pm to 7pm on Ashland at Berywn in front of the First Evangelical Free Church
Chicago – Launch event for the release of The “ROC National Diner’s Guide 2012: A Consumer Guide on the Working Conditions of American Restaurants” hed at the Chicago Tmeple Building 77 W. Washington St. Lower level 9-11am. Megan Larmer of Slow Food Chicago will be one of the featured speakers.
SAVE THE DATE!!!!
February 1
Chicago – Advocates for Urban Agriculture Annual Meeting (AUA) 5:30 – 8pm Community Room Garfield Park Conservatory 300 N. Central Park Ave.
February 2
Chicago - Slow Wine Guide - A walk-around wine tasting featuring over 100 wines from 45 Slow Wine Producers presented by Slow Food USA and Slow Food Chicago to celebrate the first ever publication in English of the Slow Wine Guide. Takes place at Spiaggia, 6-8:30pm 980 North Michigan Avenue $30 for Slow Food Chicago members $35 for general admission You can order tickets online here.
Chicago - Fresh Taste Open House - 5555 N. Sheridan Road Pool Terrace 4pm-7pm Join Fresh Taste as they celebrate local food, their new home and the hope that spring is around the corner!
February 11
Chicago - Pasta Puttana Chef’s Table Series “Salty, Tart, Savory & Sweet” 1407 W. Grand Ave 6:30-8:30pm $85 BYOB Reservations 773-439-9623 or email Jessica at Jvolpe@pastaputtana.com Oyster Agnolotti will be one of the starts of this 5-course feast based on locally sourced and sustainable ingredients, set in the Pasta Puttana space.
February 12
Chicago – Screening of “The Greenhorns” at The Hideout 7-9:30pm 1354 W. Wabansia sponsored by the AUA(Advocates for Urban Agriculture).
Chicago – Pasta Puttana Chef’s Table Series: Salty, Tart, Savory & Sweet. 1407 W. Grand Ave. $85 BYOB Reservations 773-439-9623 Jvolpe@pastaputtana.com One more chance to have a feast of locally sourced and sustainable ingredients, yum!
February 25
Chicago – Growing Power celebrates its 10th anniversary 3333 S. Iron St. 1-6pm Aquaponics workshop, small bites, tours and cheers!
February 26
Chicago – Slow Food Chicago Annual Meeting – Peggy Notebaert Museum 2 -4pm
February 29
Chicago - Culinary Conversation, “Sweet Chicago” – Chicago’s Downstand Farmstand 66 E. Randolph 6-8:30pm Celebrate Chicago’s 175th Birthday by learning all abou lore t the origins, legends and of the city’s sweet history. Cultural Historian Tim Samuelson and Art Historian Rolf Achilles join Chef Jenny Lewis, author of the the new book, Midwest Sweet Baking History, for a fast-paced conversation filled with fascinating facts and fun tidbits of past and present. Admission is FREE, but reservations are required. Please contact the Ticket Office 312-742-TIXS (8492) to reserve your space.
March 4
New! Chicago – Pleasant Farms in Bridgeport is holding gardening classes on spring planting, seed starts, planter box care and spring bed refreshing to help get you started on your garden. For more information and to register, please call 773-523-7437 or email pleasantfarms@gmail.com. $20. Refreshments provided by Pleasant House Bakery.
March 15-17
Chicago Good Food Festival – More soon!
March 18
New! Chicago – Pleasant Farms in Bridgeport is holding gardening classes on spring planting, seed starts, planter box care and spring bed refreshing to help get you started on your garden. For more information and to register, please call 773-523-7437 or email pleasantfarms@gmail.com. $20. Refreshments provided by Pleasant House Bakery.
April 28
Chicago – Artisan Producer Festival – This cheesy festival is back stay tuned for more details.
*Rob’s wife works for Tomato Mountain
