Results tagged “localvore”

One aspect of the farm-to-table movement lacking from the Local Beet's coverage of all things localvore is a roundup of restaurants, grocers, bakeries and caterers. The Local Beet is more policy and example-driven, which is great for the home cook and farmers market enthusiast. For the localvore who's looking for a restaurant, however, there really isn't a one-stop guide.

         

Yesterday Kevin and I went to St. Anne, IL in Kankakee County (where AT&T's 3G service fears to tread, apparently) to attend the Local Beet's inaugural farm dinner at Genesis Growers. It was my third official farm dinner of the year and it was interesting to look back at how the growing season has progressed since that first City Provisions farm dinner at River Valley and the Outstanding in the Field dinner at Kinnikinnick Farm. Back in August it looked like Kinnikinnick's tomatoes would never ripen. Now we're trying to can as many tomatoes as possible and get ready for peppers, gourds and fall root vegetables.

Walmart will be hosting a “Fresh Farmer’s Market” Saturday at the site of their proposed store in Chatham, at 83rd and Stewart. Press releases were sent to local news outlets, and the Tribune’s story on the market remained on their site’s front page all day yesterday. Could it be true? Could Walmart actually be getting involved with the community and promoting products grown here, rather than in China or Mexico? Or is this just another shot in the ongoing battle between Walmart and the City Council? (Ed. Note: A Sun-Times op-ed today weighs in favor of a Walmart in Chatham. — CS)

     

Surrounded by dirt, trellises, plants and happy gardeners; you would think we had wandered into a fairy tale about sustainable agriculture. Which, in a way, we had … except this storybook was set in a magical land 20 feet above the ground. On Saturday, Uncommon Ground opened America’s first organically certified rooftop garden at their Devon Avenue location, and they invited Mayor Daley to join in the revelry.

We snuck a tiny blurb into last week's "BotW" post about City Provisions's Saturday farm dinner (we're including the entire schedule here, in PDF format).

  

Our Saturday visit to Green City Market resulted in a pirate's booty of fresh produce, planters, milk and meats. The highlight of our visit was the purchase of French breakfast radishes and white carrots from Green Acres Farm in North Judson, IN. June is when radishes just begin to make their way to farmers markets and Green Acres's French breakfast radishes have a crispness when you bite into them and taste best raw with a little bit of butter and salt. Wanting to use all of the purchase, we made a pesto from the radish greens. (Incidentally, radishes will be the subject of a future "Ingredient in Focus" post.) The white carrots were a revelation, with a taste to their greens similar to cilantro. We dehydrated some and used them on tacos last night.

Mike Gebert took a road trip to Iowa recently to film some behind-the-scenes footage at La Quercia in Norwalk, IA. La Quercia owners Herb and Kathy Eckhouse make some of the best dry-cured artisan salumi available, particularly prosciutto and guanciale. Jeffrey Steingarten called La Quercia's prosciutto "the best American or imported prosciutto [he's] ever tasted," while Bon Appetit once named La Quercia "Food Artisans of the Year."

Chicago Community Ventures recently awarded City Provisions Catering and Eventsand Irv & Shelly's Fresh Picks as part of its Sustain Illinois competition. Irv & Shelly's, as readers know, delivers local organic and seasonal produce, meats, dairy and breads to its subscribers and is one of the more popular CSA programs in the area.

          

As promised, we got up very very early to hit the Daley Plaza Farmer's Market as soon as it opened on Thursday morning. In future entries, we'll be visiting a varieties of farmer's markets around the city, but for the first day of the season, we returned to our old standby.

We're all for hopping on the localvore train, but is raising farm animals on your back porch taking things a bit too far? Not according to some city residents, who have taken to raising chickens outside their urban households, a practice which is perfectly legal in Chicago.

The farmers markets are heading indoors with the coming of winter. The Family Farmed EXPO 2008, held this weekend at the Cultural Center, is an annual event featuring an indoor farmers market, seminars on the food to table movement, exhibitions and cooking demonstrations.

Joining a Community Supported Agriculture program is a great way to cut out the middleman and get just a little bit closer to your food supply.

This has been making the rounds at other blogs, but we still wanted to share it with you. Mike Gebert at Sky Full of Bacon followed around localvore hero Rob Gardner as Gardner acquired a pig's head from the Oak Park Farmer's Market, then took it to Mado, where chef/co-owner Rob Levitt promptly made testa (aka "head cheese") out of it. This video is not for vegans or the queasy, nor should it be.

Growing up in a family with Southern roots, we were always exposed to freshly butchered meat. Mom bought poultry on a regular basis from Ciales on Armitage or Western Meat Market, by Clemente High School. Our stepfather's family ran a livestock abbatoir/market in Mississippi. One of our first summer jobs was at a catfish farm in Tennessee. We were paid by the dressed pound, which might have seemed like an urchin's wage. But that job paid for our first trip to Mexico. Our brother-in-law traps raccoons in Wisconsin every winter to sell the fur and cook the meat, and we've hunted for deer, boar and the wily squirrel. It forces one to come to terms in his approach towards eating meat. It's not taken lightly in our family, believe that.

I think the title of this post says it all, don't you?

Tomorrow is the start of the annual Green City Market Localvore Challenge, where market regulars who partake in the challenge must commit to eating only locally produced food.

Lots of festivals, tastings and food-related events this week, people.

A couple of localvore items of note to start:

• White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen will be at the Binny's South Loop superstore (1132 S. Jefferson) from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. today for a meet-and-greet. Cost is $10 per person and the proceeds from the event will go to support the University of Chicago Comer Children's Hospital. We're pretty sure that Guillen will swear at you for free if you offer unsolicited advice on tweaking the White Sox lineup.
• Saturday morning at Kendall College (900 N. North Branch), LTHForum founding member Robert "VItal Information" Gardner will give a lecture on the localvore movement. "Be a Localvore, Put More Food On Your Table" will focus on what to look for at farmers markets and beyond into the dark days of winter. the 10 a.m. lecture costs $2.
• Father's Day at Café Matou (1846 N. Milwaukee) will feature a two-entrée grill menu for $24 from 5-9 p.m.

A couple of weeks ago we had the chance to stop by Mado, a new Wicker Park dining spot. Just off the main Milwaukee Street business district, Mado is tucked away in a cute little spot with exposed brick, chalkboards on the walls and pretty, understated décor. We’d heard a lot of good things, and went in with high expectations.

Slow Food Chicago and Uncommon Ground are joining forces for what appears to be, on paper, to be one hell of a dinner.

North Pond Restaurant, overlooking Lincoln Park’s North Pond, has become one of our absolute favorite restaurants in Chicago. We’ve dined there three times in the past six months, and have never had anything less than a perfect dining experience.

The Gawker-affiliated travel site Gridskipper took a look at the local dining scene yesterday. Laura pointed out to us - and after reading the post we concur - that the tone of the post strikes the balance between "yeah, that's about right" and "this is why people in New York shouldn't write about Chicago." Seriously, they consider moto to be overrated, when we found it to be the most fun we've had in a restaurant in years. And Violet Hour is so six months ago, according to them.

As every committed localvore knows, the best way to get fresh local produce (aside from a farmer’s market) is to join a CSA. A CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) is a farm that has decided to sell directly to the public. By investing several hundred dollars in the spring, you can receive deliveries of fresh produce throughout the summer and fall. However, some of us aren’t ready to commit several hundred dollars up front to the cause of fresh produce, or we might not be around in the summers. But we still want to help out local farms, and we cringe a little every time we pick up shallots shipped all the way from Uruguay at Whole Foods.