Posts from ‘September, 2007’

It turns out that there’s already a locavore phrase for those foods that don’t grow locally: the Marco Polo exception. Bill McKibben coined the phrase: And I made what might be called the Marco Polo exception—I considered fair game anything your average 13th centuryexplorer might have brought back from distant lands.So: pepper, and turmeric, and [...]

I forgot to mention, we picked our own apples at Blue Jay Orchards. The Macouns were running! Macouns (to me) are the perfect apple: crisp and juicy. It turns out they were invented in New York (like me) by the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station (not like me). They are a cross between a [...]

Making granola is one of the easiest things to prepare and it may even qualify as baking. Wonderful smells emanate from the kitchen. And it’s versatile: you can eat it right out of the bag, you can eat it like cereal, you can sprinkle it on yogurt or anything else that needs a crunch; the [...]

My partner has been sprouting seeds on the kitchen counter. We have an alfalfa, radish sprout mix and a chick pea, pea, lentil mix going. The sprouts are delicious and nutritious. I read that sprouts contain an enormous amount of vitamins and nutrients and that you could give up taking vitamin pills if you eat [...]

Deciding to eat locally and sustainably does not (for me) preclude meat. I am an omnivore and make no apologies about it. Meat gets a bad rap in the organic food community because of the methods used in raising animals and bringing them to market. For example, to quickly fatten cows (and increase profitability), conventional [...]

In a previous post, I expressed envy that a particular supermarket has a delivery service. You order groceries from their Web site and they bring it to your door. That’s one of the perqs of living in the 21st century. Oh that local, sustainably-grown foods came with the same convenience. As it happens, there are [...]

Our second (deliberate) adventure in foraging brought us to New Morning Natural and Organic Store in Woodbury, CT., about 10 miles away. It’s a fairly large store (as natural foods stores go), but they carry so many items, the place seems small. This is a good thing since they are building a new store with [...]

The first local pumpkins of the season appeared on the scene. I found mine at Mason’s Farm Market. (They don’t have a Web site, but they’re on Route 25 in Monroe, Ct. at the Bradford Drive intersection. Map here.) It turns out that pumpkins are quite nutritious; they’re rich in beta carotene, potassium, Vitamin C, [...]

Last Saturday (9/8) , we ventured out on a foraging trip to a local Farmer’s Market. Finding a convenient Farmer’s Market is not as easy as you’d think. This is how the supermarkets suck you in-they’re ubiquitous and nearly always open. One even lets you shop online and delivers the food to your door. But [...]

With all due respect to Henry David Thoreau, I wish to eat more deliberately so that at the end of my days I would not realize that I hadn’t eaten food at all. Like I said, Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle awakened something in me and lit a match under my butt. Corporate food favors [...]