Not too long ago, a food industry acquaintance said that, “I always wanted to change things”.  She was talking about recipes and I don’t think she meant it as a compliment.  Then I stumbled across a piece where another food industry acquaintance was quoted talking about being served fake ribs, this was several years ago and I will never be convinced that he wasn’t talking about me.  It wasn’t complimentary either.  Now I rarely serve meat analogs to folks anymore—food industry or not—because my husband loathes them, but I have nothing against them and find some of them quite tasty.  Yes, even some of those that taste like meat that come from huge multinational conglomerates.

Unlike some people, I don’t own a lot of cookbooks.  In fact, I only purchased three cook books last year, and one used birthday gift certificates from amazon.com.  Instead,  I get many of my ideas from magazines and newspapers.  The problem for me is the same as it is for some folks who buy lots of cookbooks; I intend to get around to cooking that shiny new recipe and I just don’t do it.  Last year, I culled several recipes from my binder that included recipes for poultry and seafood back when I ate them.  I last ate poultry and seafood over 15 years ago.   Additionally, in 2011 I had an unofficial rule to cook more of those recipes, post-culling, from periodicals, including blogs, and have no repeats because I had more than enough old recipes, to do no repeats for the entire year!  This year, has gone well so far except Cook’s Illustrated’s Fluffy Scrambled Eggs and Blueberry Pancakes—we had fresh eggs—showed up two or three times last week.  This week’s recipe was made for dinner the Monday before the Super Bowl and I couldn’t help but think of how I wanted to change it to make it even better—although I thought the original was exquisite.  It was perfect to take to a last-minute-Super Bowl Party.

So here’s what we took to the Super Bowl Party as the “Vegetarian Option”, as my husband called it, and it held its own surrounded by chips, peanuts, salsas, guacamole, garlic bread, and three or four types of chicken wings.  This dish is fast, easy, delicious, and chock-full of beans and cruciferous vegetables.  The bonus is it is vegan!

One-Pot Curried Cauliflower Rice with Coconut Milk, inspired by Martha Stewart

Ingredients

4 t. vegetable oil

1 large head cauliflower, cored and cut into 1 1/2-inch pieces—close to 4 lbs or more prior to coring

Coarse salt and ground white pepper

1 medium yellow onion, diced

2 c. basmati rice

4 t. curry powder

2 cans (15.5 ounces) chickpeas, rinsed and drained

2 3/4 c. vegetable broth

1/2 cup Asian-style coconut milk, the kind that tastes like coconut, not the stuff you use as a replace for cows’ milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. In a Dutch oven or other heavy pot, heat 2 t. oil on medium-high. Add cauliflower and cook, stirring frequently, until browned in spots, about 10 minutes and don’t be surprised if all of your cauliflower won’t fit in one layer. Remove browned cauliflower and season with salt and white pepper. Add the remaining 2 t. oil and onion to pot; cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent, 3-5 minutes. Add rice, curry powder, and chickpeas  to the pot and season with salt and white pepper. Cook, stirring constantly, until rice is coated, about 2 minutes. Add broth and coconut milk and bring to a boil. Scatter cauliflower over top (do not stir to combine). Cover and bake for 15 minutes. Let cool 10 minutes before serving.

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.

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.

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 13^th 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?

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 15^th, instead of last year’s May 15^th.  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?

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.

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

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.

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.