New York is Finally Free to Bee

Posted on 03/16/2010 by Ariel

If you think bees are something to avoid, then  you might not understand why Section 161.01 which  bans keeping animals that are ”wild, ferocious, fierce, dangerous or naturally inclined to do harm.” being amended to allow bees to be kept within the city is so exciting. Before today, beekeepers in NYC  could be fined  up to $2,000.

To many bees are a mere menace, but it’s the bees and their business that actually make the world go round.

This movie will tell you all you need to know,

http://www.vanishingbees.com/B/Home.html

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jV5awkL0uc8ZccywaSYGPS7visJgD9EFSNF00

in the meantime, mind your bee’s wax. Really!

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On FoodTV and Me

Posted on 03/04/2010 by Ariel

According to its Wiki, the Food Network was founded in 1993, though food television as a genre had been around far longer and was actually a very memorable part of my TV laden childhood, right alongside Bob Ross’s happy trees.

As a child I had a few cartoons that I liked, maybe the Smurfs and a few others,  but what I remember watching was the Frugal Gourmet, Wok with Yan, and of course Julia and Jacques.  I remember scrambling for a note pad to copy down recipes from Regis and Kathy Lee’s cooking segments while home sick and remember my first cookbook being the result of something I saw on a morning show segment.  How to cook popcorn 100 ways, I remember it was a book I just had to have.

I ended up studying art in undergrad, but while attending school got my first food job at a small pasta shop. I worked the cash register but also learned a little in the kitchen, bringing me one step closer to cooking the food.

I ended up switching schools mid-way through undergrad. The move from small town Santa Barbara to San Francisco came with a desire to make more cash. I interviewed for a position as a cook and sold myself based off the fact that I had been watching the food channel for two years straight! The cook, eight months pregnant and needing someone to help her assistant pick up the slack, bought what I was selling, and I got the job.

The rest is a long and winding road I will save for another post  another day but for now I will say thanks, and give blame to the food channel for getting my tong in the door…  Salon ran this with interview with one of my professors on food TV this week,

http://www.salon.com/food/feature/2010/02/26/food_network_krishnendu_ray/index.html

and I agree with much of his observations.  We don’t know enough to say whether food TV is driving people to cook more or less. Considering that food TV had such a role in my involvement with food today, could it be playing that same role in many other peoples lives?  My mother didn’t cook much but her mother did. I learned to cook a bit from my dad but also from TV. If kids don’t know what vegetables look like anymore, because the food they eat comes prepackaged, and prepackaged food is certainly not running the risk of disappearing, is it then safe to say the more food TV the better? At least real food and cooking does not run the risk of becoming a lost art if it is in our faces every day.

While shows that highlight enormous portions or novelty food items  seem to dominate, Alton Brown is still up in there, and I’m sure there are a few others that at least show people the right way to hold a knife, breakdown an onion, roast a whole chicken, make a fresh sauce. These are important things to learn to do. Maybe it’s not boeuf bourguignon, but maybe that’s ok too.

Personally, I dont watch much Food TV, I find it painful and overly cheery. I find Martha Stewart’s cooking segments enjoyable still, she tends to be informative and technical. Anthony Bourdain is fun to follow around the world but every once in a while I land on some off channel cooking show with chefs from other countries really cooking. They are always a bit more droll than American food shows, which is what I prefer,  and they are cooking, really cooking . I’ve never met a chef with a perma-grin that I liked, andIf I liked them I’d probably doubt their culinary skills.

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Mid-Winter Breakfast…

Posted on 03/04/2010 by Ariel

This is the brunch I made this weekend and described in my last post. Would you like to know how to make baked eggs? If so let me know.

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A Can Opening Kind of Weekend

Posted on 02/28/2010 by Ariel

This year I took advantage of the summer bounty and learned to can.  In case you are not familiar, canning at home means preserving food in jars.  In my opinion its an art and one in which I had never dabbled.

I followed my roommates lead,  she had canned before,  and the sage advice found within a dusty copy of the Modern Encyclopedia of Cooking, published 1951.   A farmer friend gave me fifty pounds of cherry tomatoes,  carrots and cucumbers for days, and a restaurants supply of onions, garlic, sage,  and dill.  It seemed like my chance for an oft thought of canning foray.  I would have to buy a few pieces of equipment first.

It is recommended I have all sorts of canning specific utensils but with my well prepared kitchen I believed I could wing it and just buy the pot. The recommended pot is the ubiquitous large black and white flecked aluminum pot. It is called a canner but for me will always be where lobsters took their last breaths. I got a flat of large mason jars as well and hurried home. Every second wasted was freshness not captured within this glass…. or something like that. Culinary experiments excite me.

First step, process fifty pounds local and organic cherry tomatoes  into the most ridiculously sweet reduction. Figure out other food stuff to make in the meantime…. We settled on curried cucumbers and dilly carrots both stuffed with garlic, herbs and whatever else seemed to fit in.

Boil jars to sanitize, fill, remove bubbles,  cover but don’t touch the food or the rims. Boil again for @ a half an hour. Voila, cans. Er, Jars.

Now that’s the short version, of course, and I would seek the advice of a professional (a book, a blog, your grandma…) but its important to note that it was easy (though maybe I will grab some of the cool gadgets recommended next time) and the pay off is tremendous. On this cold February weekend as local root vegetable stockpiles dwindle down, nothing tastes or feels better than a jar of homemade tomato sauce.

Saturday Brunch Menu:

Baked Eggs with 100 Cherry Tomato Sauce

Homemade Pickled Carrots and Horseradish Goat Cheese from Nettle Meadow

served with a Greenhouse Salad Mix from Sang Lee farms.

(We will have to thank the French for this one too, as the process was invented there in 1795, by Nicholas Appert, a chef  determined to win a prize offered by Napoleon for a way to prevent military food supplies from spoiling.)

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Mushrooms, Medicine, and Culinary Magic with Dan Madura

Posted on 02/22/2010 by Ariel

photo credit: Tom Giebel

Dan Madura is the owner of MycoMedicinals, the premier Mushroom distributer of the New York City Greenmarket system. Upon approaching him for this interview, he wanted to clarify that he is not an entrepreneur, but happy to help you anyway he can. If I know anything about good business it’s an attitude like that, along side an exceptional product,  that keeps the customers coming back. Lets see if what Dan has to say helps you through your day. As for me, a few minutes with this man and a bunch or two of his magical mushrooms, is a fix for any ailment.

Tell us what you do?

I grow different varieties of greens, vegetables, and exotic mushrooms.

Does farming run in the family?

We have been farmers for generations.

Where is the farm and how many acres?

Goshen, Warwick and Minisink. My mother had 726 acres. She died last year and my father died this year. We made it thru, but it was hard. We had to divide the farm up amongst the siblings. All together 200 hundred acres were put aside for a bird sanctuary bordering the Wallkill River.

It must have been beautiful growing up there…

Oh yeah, we went fishing, swimming in lakes, trapping, skiing. We didn’t have snowmobiles then.

Do you enjoy coming south, mingling with city folks, selling us mushrooms?

I only come down on Saturday. It is a nice change of pace. You meet your customers. It reinforces what you are doing and why you are doing it. I go in to the city, and then I get back on the farm. I get the best of both worlds.

Are you working right now?

I am always working. I am used to working 100 hours a week. To this day, I work nearly ninety hours a week, maybe a little less in the winter but I love what I do. It is a passion.

I believe it was Jim Rodgers who called farmers the new rock stars, soon to be driving Lamborghini’s. Is that funny to you?

Well the Amish have rock stars and their Lamborghini’s are a horse and carriage. It is all in the interpretation of the mind. My Toyota 4- runner is my Lamborghini. I believe the more you give the more you get. The Hindus believe that too, they call it karma.

Your family farmed, but you started growing mushrooms on your own?

Yes. In 1977 in New York, we could grow lettuce only in the summer. California could grow all year-round and they would flood the market in the summers, lowering prices drastically, forcing us out of business. That was the game for years. I had to find another product. I knew they grew mushrooms in Pennsylvania and not New York. There was no competition. I started with the Portobello.

Why are mushrooms so good for us?

Because of the medicinal properties each contain. The Shitake contain lentinin. The Japanese were the first to use lentinin as a drug. They extract it and give it to people on chemotherapy or with HIV to help build the immune system. The oyster mushrooms have the statin. Statin is a drug they developed in 1987 from oyster mushrooms. It helps control blood pressure and cholesterol. Maitake is considered most powerful. It has the beta glucan, a polysaccharide that is highly anti-carcinogenic, a stress reducer that promotes a general well being of the body and increased immune system functioning. Yogis use maitake in a tea that helps them meditate.

Are mushrooms more powerful fresh or dried?

The maitake requires heat, which is why its good when you make the tea, the beta glucan is a polysaccharide that requires heat to release its full power. If you dry a mushroom, it looses the water weight. It becomes more intense in power and flavor. That is why many chefs take the mushrooms, dry them, and then add to their sauces. The sauces explode with complex flavor, a definite chef secret. I give one chef fresh garlic leaves, and he dries them in his dehydrator and adds it to his food. Different from garlic powder; he uses it the same way. This flavor is real.

No MSG in the dried garlic leaf powder?

Oh god no. I grow everything organically and there are absolutely no chemicals. You can always add your own chemicals later, but you are not going to get them from me.

Are you certified organic?

No. I do not need to go through the bureaucracy, just to have a label. It’s what you are doing that matters. I juice a lot so it is important to me personally that there are no chemicals in the food. I do not want chemicals on my carrots or yours. I guess the commercial guys feel that they have to do it that way. It is harder work to grow organically, but it is important to people, so we do it.

Do you think of your self as an activist?

I am an activist because I am excited about what I do. I believe food should be fresh. When I sell mushrooms to people, I tell them, do not go home, and leave these in your fridge for five days. Unless you are drying them, eat these now. The older the food the more tired you feel the more work your body does to derive the nutrients. Then you age faster. I do not know if they have done a study on that but they should. Compare people who are eating canned stuff with people who are eating fresh stuff and see who is aging faster, who has more diseases, and who goes to the doctor more.

Do you see a growing interest in small local food production?

Oh definitely, people are into the markets. Even in the poor economy. People know the fresher the food you eat, the better you feel and the better you are going to function. It is going to cut your health care costs. You are not going to be paying so much to doctors. I have markets all over the city and talk to all kinds of people. In the end, with over 250 languages in queens alone, when we get to the farmers market we are all communicating. We are all there for a common purpose.  The people in New York are all very grateful, not self-serving. The people of New York are good people. That’s it.

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Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course; There are so many outcomes that are worse.

Posted on 02/14/2010 by Ariel

A Speech to the Garden Club of America

by Wendell Berry from the September 28, 2009 issue of the New Yorker.

(With thanks to Wes Jackson and in memory of Sir Albert Howard and Stan Rowe.)

Thank you. I’m glad to know we’re friends, of course;

There are so many outcomes that are worse.

But I must add I’m sorry for getting here

By a sustained explosion through the air,

Burning the world in fact to rise much higher

Than we should go. The world may end in fire

As prophesied—our world! We speak of it

As “fuel” while we burn it in our fit

Of temporary progress, digging up

An antique dark-held luster to corrupt

The present light with smokes and smudges, poison

To outlast time and shatter comprehension.

Burning the world to live in it is wrong,

As wrong as to make war to get along

And be at peace, to falsify the land

By sciences of greed, or by demand

For food that’s fast or cheap to falsify

The body’s health and pleasure—don’t ask why.

But why not play it cool? Why not survive

By Nature’s laws that still keep us alive?

Let us enlighten, then, our earthly burdens

By going back to school, this time in gardens

That burn no hotter than the summer day.

By birth and growth, ripeness, death and decay,

By goods that bind us to all living things,

Life of our life, the garden lives and sings.

The Wheel of Life, delight, the fact of wonder,

Contemporary light, work, sweat, and hunger

Bring food to table, food to cellar shelves.

A creature of the surface, like ourselves,

The garden lives by the immortal Wheel

That turns in place, year after year, to heal

It whole. Unlike our economic pyre

That draws from ancient rock a fossil fire,

An anti-life of radiance and fume

That burns as power and remains as doom,

The garden delves no deeper than its roots

And lifts no higher than its leaves and fruits.

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Cayuga in the Field: Local Grain Rising

Posted on 02/04/2010 by Ariel

Is it even possible to grow grains and beans in New York soil? New to the Greenmarket, Cayuga Pure Organics proves the answer is undoubtedly yes. The first vendor selling locally grown grains, beans and flours in New York, Cayuga’s liaison to the world, Tycho Dan talked with me about the business of beans and flour. While I have always considered making bread an art, when the bread baked is made from local Cayuga flour, the creativity starts from the seed.

Tycho, what does Cayuga Pure Organics sell?

Well, we have three categories of products. There are the dry beans, whole grains, and the milled products – polenta, cracked cereals, all-purpose, buckwheat, rye, and whole-wheat flour.

Everything is grown, milled, bagged, and sold in New York State?

Yes, I can confidently say that 99% of the operation is New York based.

Who is the top dog at Cayuga organics? Who’s the boss?

Erick Smith and let me tell you he is the cutest man in existence. You just want to help him out. He is too nice – not a negotiator.

Is that where you come in?

There is a small bunch of us. Erick and Dan are partners. They describe themselves as two old hayseeds about to retire. Then rather than retire they began this organic farm. They combined their old tractor collections, started tinkering around and getting to work. Now they are heroes.

How did they decide to grow organic beans and grains in NY?

Well, I think it was a process, not one conscious decision. The marketplace played a big factor for sure. A very common story is that farmers growing field crops got into conventional corn. Then the corn market fell apart. The bottom fell out and everybody started losing the farm. Growing conventional crops, they could not compete with the big farms. These large farm commodity crops make up ninety percent of agriculture, everything is mechanized, and your average farm is a million acres. Thankfully, New York is a progressive place and was ready for the organic movement to put down its roots. Cayuga Organics is simply a group of smart people who saw an opportunity. That opportunity has begun to pay off.

So there is a collective of growers represented by Cayuga?

Right. It happened quickly. Cayuga is not a cooperative. I think collective is a better word. Cooperative is not the best model for what is happening here. I really think cooperatives require a lot of direct human contact, not just communication but actual physical proximity. Within Cayuga, there are different projects going on. Grant funded or academic projects through Cornell extension and the USDA. Several of our farmers are participating in programs trying to preserve heritage and organic varieties of grains. They are bringing stuff in from the Middle East and Europe, anywhere they can get old strains of grain to propagate here.

How are your products different then what is commonly available?

Well the first thing most people notice about our product when they usually shop in the supermarket is the price difference. I talk about all the good things, but the reality is that the first thing 99 percent of people notice about our products is price.

Do you find yourself explaining to people what they are paying for? Absolutely. I find myself having to remind even existing customers. Education is a constant part of marketing and selling these products. Our main competition in the world of dry beans is China. Organic black beans at most high-end markets are from China. You can buy them off a container ship for sixty cents a pound. We would not be successful if we did not have the best product in the marketplace. People would not pay more otherwise.

How much will your beans cost me?

If you bought ours by the container full, you would be paying at least thirty percent more. If you are a restaurant and you are buying 25-pound bags, you are paying nearly three times as much as a container ship. At the farmers market, you are paying five times as much.

Do you teach your clientele on how to use the product as well?

Yes. We have to show people the distinction as well as how to use our products because we are asking a lot of money. Frekkah, roasted green wheat berries, is a grain many people are unfamiliar with but is now featured on the menus at Northern Spy, Gramercy Tavern, and Eat Café in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

Do you think chefs are using Cayuga Organics in their menus because of a sense of terroir, the local heritage, or because they see a difference in quality and find the end product to be superior?

I think it is both. Right now, we are experiencing a tremendous period of growth.

Will you expand into other artisanal flours? Can we expect chickpea flour or chestnut flour?

We have local chestnuts, and could do chestnut flour but it would be very expensive. I don’t think we want to set a vision. We want to work with people. We want to work with producers and manufacturers. We want to work with eaters. We want to create sustainable jobs. The way to create sustainable food businesses and jobs in New York is by focusing on adding value. Find a way that you can add value within the local food chain. You can be a producer or a processor, make the raw material into something else. Be a baker, or sell fine flour.

Do you do prepared foods at Cayuga?

No, but we have a very active sampling program. We make soup every week in the winter and have created the black bean brownie. The samples give people an idea about how to use our product and then they are hooked. They taste those beans and are blown away.

What is your most popular item generally?

I would say the polenta. It is very popular right now.

How has Cayuga Pure Organics grown?

Well, there are many growers now. We are much bigger then the original Cayuga Pure Organics farm. Greenmarket NYC contacted Cayuga in September ’08, and we set up on a freezing cold day in February ‘09. What has happened in the last year is crazy. We got the flour going in May. Now other farmers are getting excited about what we are doing and want to work with us selling beans and flours. It is intense. Everybody thinks that its easy and there’s money in it, but don’t understand marketing, or business. If we grow too fast everybody is going to get screwed. Pricing will get jacked up and then go way down and all the hard work will be destroyed.

You are going to have to study commodities trading…

Yeah exactly. I know what I would do if I wanted to try to be capitalistic in this situation. I would control seed, like Monsanto. I would clean and treat seed. I do think that needs to happen, I just do not want to be in control. We need to find a way of doing this that reflects our values with respect to the social and environmental challenges that are looming in front of us and considers what we are leaving future generations.

So in keeping with the idea of not supporting Monsanto, when can people visit Cayuga Organics and get some of these sustainably produced and processed beans and grains?

Union Square, Wednesdays, 8-5

McCarren Park, Saturdays, 8-3

Grand Army Plaza, Saturdays, 8-5

Cayuga Pure Organics has flours for your Valentine. Stop buy this week. Buy some flours (and beans, which are known to be good for the heart) and support this quickly growing local and organic whole foods business.

And on the web:

http://cporganics.com/live/

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Farmers Markets Thrive Nationwide and Year Round

Posted on 01/26/2010 by Ariel


The smell of hot cider drifts from the doorway of an old hotel. I am excited and it is obvious I am not alone. This group of early risers walks toward the aroma, aware that beyond the door a taste of nature’s bounty waits. I was visiting a winter farmers market held in the very quaint Elmendorph Hotel in Red Hook, New York. Organized by the Hearty Roots Community Farm, the Red Hook Winters Farmers Market is one of many winter markets looking to provide local food to customers year round.

The winter markets are a great cure for cabin fever and the old stagecoach-style hotel was crowded with shoppers seeking out fresh produce, meat, dairy, and baked goods. It is clear that for both farmers and shoppers this market was also an opportunity to get out of the house and check in on the community.

The Red Hook Winter market is one recent development among many, as keeping markets open year round catches on from Maine to Hawaii. In New York State nearly 50 markets are responding to consumer demands and staying open thru winter. While the Council on the Environment of New York City, (CENYC) has long held winter markets as part of their Greenmarket program, only now is the community noticeably taking advantage.

Diane Eggert, Executive Director of the Farmers’ Market Federation of New York, said, “Farmers’ markets have experienced a growth in consumer interest over the last few years as more consumers search for sources of fresh, locally grown foods. Demand does not end when the typical growing season ends in the fall. Farmers are able to extend their seasons with a variety of products with both storage crops and fresh harvested crops throughout the winter. It was a natural evolution that farmers’ markets would begin to find ways to satisfy their customers’ needs for fresh, local foods all year long.“

What do they sell?

For many people farmers markets in general are a novelty. In a society increasingly removed from food production and distribution, it comes as no surprise that farmer’s markets open in February confuse people. “Where do they get the food,” one may wonder. Bob Lewis, a state agriculture official and a co-founder of Greenmarket in 1976 said “When we started, it was almost entirely fresh produce and maybe a little apple cider,” Mr. Lewis said. “It was maybe 100 items. Now it’s 1,000 items.”

Products such as the potatoes, apples, and the ubiquitous root vegetables are harvested before the winter months and held in cold storage cellars. Greenhouses provide a warm, controlled environment for other crops, making delicate products available all year long. Protected from the elements by greenhouses, freshly harvested salad green mix, pea shoots, and several varieties of fresh radishes are increasingly available. Other year round staples include eggs, cheese, grass-fed and pastured meats or milk, local honey, canned and pickled products, jams and juices.

What’s is so great about local produce?

Market support is stronger then it has been in years and locally grown produce has substantial appeal today. CENYC’s top ten reasons to buy local food include taste, personal health, and community, but also cites more pressing concerns such as food safety, genetic diversity, and responsibility for the environment and wildlife. With recent E. coli and salmonella scares and food costs for conventional products on the rise, the farmers market becomes increasingly attractive. Some products are organic and chemical-free. These days, however, emphasis is placed on products that are grown, raised, and finally processed from within a small radius surrounding the market. NYC Greenmarkets and Community Markets, a farmer’s market management company running out of Ossining, New York, enforce rigorous grow-your-own standards. Both require all vendors to sell only what they produce, ensuring that all foods sold at market originate on small farms located within a half-day’s drive from New York City and that your big apple did in fact come from within the New York State growing region.

Experience your local winter farmers market.

On a recent crisp Saturday morning, the sun was out with the chill and the Grand Army Plaza market in Brooklyn was buzzing with activity. A real sense of camaraderie develops as patrons come and go, voting with their wallets, choosing to support local farmers as well as satisfying their more self-serving desires – because the grass-fed milk from Milk Thistle Farm is the best milk they’ve ever had. For some, buying food from a farm only three hours north is an added incentive, for others it is the main point. Even on the coldest days, people are willing to shop outdoors for the opportunity.

Ask any vendor about winter markets and they will tell you what a difference (in temperature) a winter’s day can make. Cold temperatures and long work days can be challenging for farmer and shopper alike. Weather is the main reason market season has traditionally run from Mother’s day to Thanksgiving, though as demand increases, finding indoor locations for year-round markets, using local vendors, becomes a priority. Brooklyn Flea, which is known more for crafts but also sells delicious, small batch, artisanal food items has moved their Saturday market indoors to One Hanson in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. On Sundays, Community Markets and the Makers Market showcase food and craft inside the Old Can Factory in Park Slope, Brooklyn.  Greenmarket NYC  and other vendors still set up outside, braving cold winds, setting up tents and tables displaying goods to you and the elements, citywide.

Winter weather not withstanding, according to a report by the Farmers Market Coalition, a New York-based, not-for-profit organization, it seems America is interested. The number of Farmers markets has more than doubled across the country since 2004.  Winter is a good time for hibernating introspection and reevaluation, but it does not have to be a time for subsisting on what you have in the freezer and cupboards. Check out your local winters farmers market this weekend and remember fresh locally grown and produced foods are available in winter too.



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Welcome to Stay Local Food News

Posted on 01/24/2010 by Ariel

Welcome to Stay Local Food News

Stay Local Newsletter will focus on sustainable food, what it is and what it is not, and how to get some on your plate. My goal here and (in life, it seems) is to attract people to and inform them of the specifics associated with creating and sustaining a local food system   – one that was once the status quo and is now far from our daily reality – in their home, restaurant, business. This blog will analyze national food related headlines, report on contemporary food thought, politics, and opinion and highlight individuals who run farms, restaurants, and other businesses or organizations that work to support a localized alternative to the industrial agricultural complex. Through policy change and personal actions a sustainable food future has a chance at viability. I want to provide you with all the tools I have that will help make your pantry fridge and plate represent your communities gardens, farms, farmers, bakers, ranchers and butchers alike. Lets feed the alternative market system together and take action while eating.

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