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Wed, 31 Dec 1969 16:00:00 -0800

Come Party With Me: Potluck Thanksgiving - The Look

partysugar — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:50:03 -0800

When hosting any Thanksgiving dinner, be it a potluck or one where you do the majority of the cooking, it's a good idea to set the table a couple of days in advance.

Start with a seasonal tablecloth, then add the good china, polished flatware, and wine glasses. Serve the cocktails in tumblers and the turkey on a large platter.

Lots of candlelight creates a festive atmosphere, so place votives on the table and pillar candles around the dining room. Don't forget a bouquet or two of fresh flowers.

Consider the counter space; a lot of it might be in use during the hours before the meal, so a folding table where guests can place their contributions is crucial. If you are attending a potluck, make your dish in a vessel that has a cover or in a disposable pan that can be discarded at the end of the night.

Come Party With Me: Gossip Girl Premiere - Drinks

partysugar — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 12:50:55 -0700

No season premiere party is complete without a special drink, especially if the show in question is Gossip Girl, where the characters seem to be constantly guzzling cocktails. All the recipes I'm making next Monday night were created by acclaimed New York City chefs: Daniel Boulud, Mario Batali, Eric Ripert - Blair and Serena have surely dined at their respective restaurants.

Not to be forgotten is Jean-Georges Vongerichten. The Frenchman came up with this Champagne-based concoction, an elegant take on the classic bellini. Instead of peach nectar, Jean-Georges uses a combination of cherry puree and yuzu juice.

Don't worry if you can't get your hands on fresh yuzu; Vongerichten recommends a mixture of tangerine and lime juice instead. To look at the recipe, keep reading.

This is a blog post from someone testing Electric cars

Grandpa — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 13:58:29 -0700

At Witz' End: My night with range anxiety
by Gary Witzenburg on Apr 1st 2009 at 12:02PM

I left the dinner meeting around 9:00, with home roughly 60 miles away...no challenge for an engine-powered vehicle, even relatively low on fuel. You can always find an open station.

Not so on this 1997 night. I was driving an EV1 development vehicle freshly equipped with an experimental nickel-metal-hydride (NiMH) battery pack. We were developing NiMH - which was promising double the usable energy of our '97 advanced lead-acid (PbA) packs in about the same (nearly 1200-lb.) package - for the '99 model year.

As GM Advanced Technology Vehicles' test and development manager at the time, I routinely drove PbA EV1s home and back, re-charging overnight, during the summer. My 60-mile mid-Michigan commute was easily doable in warm, but not cold, temperatures.

When the mercury sank, so did range, due partly to reduced PbA performance but mostly to lost vehicle efficiency. Our 50-psi Michelin low-rolling-resistance tires became just average at low ambient temperatures. Cool seals, bearings and lubricants have more friction. The air flowing over and around our 0.19-Cd electric bullet got thicker and more viscous as temperatures fell. Then there are accessory loads: lights, heater and (in wet weather) wipers.

But this was a hot, dry summer night, my NiMH pack should have been good for 120 miles, and my after-work meeting was only 30 miles from work. Should have been a piece of cake to get home afterward, even with lights on at 70-80-mph freeway speeds. But it wasn't. (post continues after the jump)

I missed a turn at the first freeway split and wasted maybe eight miles driving to the next exit and back, but something else was not right. As the EV1's very accurate range gauge turned pessimistic, telling me I would not get home before running out of volts, I shut off the A/C and incrementally reduced speed. But I couldn't risk turning off the lights or going too slow on the freeway. I pondered how thrilled my wife would be come out to rescue me, and the risks of leaving the car on the shoulder overnight.

Shortly before my exit, the EV1 went into its limited-speed, "limp-home" low-range mode. I crept along the shoulder a couple more miles to my exit, then - ever more slowly - eight more to my garage. No fun, not safe, but it got me there. Whew!

My one-hour drive had taken more than two, elevated my heart rate and caused serious sweat production. And what if I'd had to make a stop, or pick someone up, on the way?

The problem was traced to a NiMH trait (at least at that early stage of development) of which we had been unaware: it lost energy capacity when hot. Because of this, our engineers added battery cooling ducts around the pack for '99, and the NiMH option was not offered in hot-weather Phoenix and Tucson.

This was the first time I experienced serious range anxiety. We've all had the experience of running low on fuel in conventional vehicles with no station in sight. And we've either found fuel in time or had to get out and walk to bring a can back to the car.

Unfortunately, we can't carry a can of volts. If an EV goes dead, you leave it. If you're really lucky, you might get close enough to a home or business whose owner will let you plug in, but what will you do for the next few hours while it slowly charges on house current? The other option is to retrieve it later with a tow truck or flatbed. And forget the rest of your trip.

In my opinion, range anxiety is the single biggest obstacle in the way of widespread consumer acceptance of battery electric vehicles. Every EV at any price can carry only a finite amount of energy and will consume it at a (highly variable) rate dependent on its size, weight, feature content, load, operating efficiency, weather and, yes, operator skill.

Our original EV1 carried 16 kilowatt-hours (kWH) of energy – roughly half-a-gallon of gasoline – in a large, 1170-lb. T-shaped pack of 27 PbA batteries that ran down the wide center console and behind its two bucket seats. Given that an electric propulsion system is about three times as efficient as a typical internal combustion engine (ICE) powertrain, you could think of that gasoline equivalent as more like 1.5 gal.

How far will your car go on 1.5 gallons? To achieve a reliable real-world range of even 60-70 miles, our EV1 was designed and built from the tire patches up to be the most energy efficient practical vehicle that ever rolled down the road. Some skilled drivers could feather-foot 90, or even 100, miles out of one on flat surface streets on a warm day. Our optional '99-model NiMH pack could virtually double that.

We know that today's li-ion batteries should pack nearly twice the energy of NiMH and quadruple that of PbA. But they are still fairly large, bulky and heavy and will likely be much more expensive. EV makers, as always, will face the decision of how much to carry on board -- how much cost, weight and packaging will be needed to achieve how much on-board energy?

Battery EV owners will have to fully understand how to operate within their vehicles' real-world range, which will vary with conditions, each day, and exactly where and when they can recharge. As the infrastructure grows (with heavy taxpayer, utility and maybe automaker investment), recharging at work should be possible for some, and large shopping and dining areas should offer public charging. But they won't drive them cross-country any time soon.

One well-proven (but expensive) way to eliminate range anxiety is to marry an ICE to the electric motor through a complex control and transmission system. This is the essence of Toyota's and Ford's parallel hybrid systems. Another is to add a smaller, lighter ICE for range-extending battery charging only. This is GM's (also expensive) series-hybrid Voltec (neé E-Flex) system everyone hopes will be available in the 2011 Chevy Volt and, in time, other GM cars.

GM says the Volt's li-ion pack will carry 16 kWH, exactly the same as our original '97 EV1's PbA pack, but will be much smaller and about a third the weight. And, because the Volt will be a practical four-seater, necessarily heavier and less efficient than the EV1, that energy will propel it only about 40 miles on a charge. Then that very efficient little ICE will crank up to help complete the trip, no matter how far.

The dreaded Freshman 15

LaylaCams — Mon, 18 Sep 2006 08:57:48 -0700

Never heard of it? It's supposely 15 pounds that you gain as a freshman in college. Here is an article I found on it to help avoid it. (FoodFit.com)

Fighting the "Freshman 15"

Changes in eating habits and activity level are the twin culprits that cause college students to gain weight during their freshman year. Dorm dining halls offer meal plans with unlimited access to a variety of high calorie, high fat foods, and many students trade the after-school sports activities of their high school years for long, sedentary hours in the library.

Students can gain 15 pounds the first year simply by eating or drinking 210 calories extra per day. Dessert, soda and beer will quickly add pounds. For instance, a 12-ounce glass of soda has about 150 calories, as does a 12-ounce can of beer. A single teaspoon of butter or margarine can add 100 calories to a meal.

It's No Myth

"I have counseled enough students over the last few years to know that the Freshman 15 is not a myth," said Kate Cerulli, MS, RD, LD, the university dietitian at Salisbury University in Salisbury, MD. "Many students have told me that it really should be called the Freshman 25."

Cerulli encourages students to look at the menus ahead of time and build their meals around vegetables, chicken, fish and beans rather than fried foods, burgers and desserts. They should resist treating each meal as an "all-you-can-eat" experience, and watch portion sizes and calories from beverages.

Tami Best, RD, a nutrition specialist with University Health Systems of Eastern Carolina, estimated that up to 75 percent of college students will experience some weight gain their freshman year of college as they cope with a heavy academic load, a new social life and being away from home for the first time. A fully stocked cafeteria, alcohol consumption, numerous snacking opportunities, and decreased activity all contribute to weight gain, she said.
Several colleges are addressing the problem of freshman weight gain head-on by hiring nutritionists and dietitians to meet with students and help them make healthy food choices. For instance, Rutgers University's Healthy Dining Team suggests that students consider the following guidelines when selecting their meals:

* Choose baked, broiled or grilled meats or poultry.
* Avoid breaded items such as chicken nuggets or patties.
* Include high fiber foods in each meal such as whole-grain cereal or bread, legumes and vegetables. Fiber fills you up without adding extra calories or fat.
* Limit foods with cheese sauces, cream sauces, dressings or gravies because these contribute to extra pounds but not extra nutrients.
* Taste food before adding salt, as salt is usually added during the cooking process.
* Choose fruit as a snack or part of the meal.
* Limit high fat spreads such as mayonnaise, butter and cream cheese.
* Drink water or low fat milk instead of soda, juice and fruit drinks.
* Frozen yogurt may be a good low fat dessert choice, but candy and chocolate sauce add unnecessary calories.

The Midnight Munchies

Overeating in the dining hall isn't the only trouble spot for students. Snacking while studying, late night pizza parties and drinking alcohol all contribute to weight gain.

Maria Walls, RD, Manager of Program Development for Weight Watchers International, notes that when freshman arrive on campus, they're often not thinking about calories. They see pizza and beer as part of the college experience, not the first step toward unwanted weight gain.

"The key is to plan your meals and snacks," Walls said. "Instead of opening a bag of candy or chips or ordering pizza, students should stock up on single-serve packs of cookies, candy or cereal and have them on hand." Raisin boxes, fresh fruit, baby carrots and individual servings of canned fruit or applesauce also make good portion-controlled snacks.

Walls stressed that students should think about what they are going to eat rather than just helping themselves to the most attractive dish as they move through the cafeteria line. Cereal and milk, fruit, low fat yogurt with granola, or whole-wheat toast with low fat cream cheese are offered at virtually every breakfast, and are a good alternative to a cheese omelet with bacon. She allows that students can continue to enjoy the foods they love, but if they choose a high fat entrée at lunch, for instance, they should balance it with low fat choices at dinner.

Exercise is Key

Students should remember that although colleges offer all-you-can-eat, they also offer all-you-can-exercise. Classes such as aerobics, swimming and tennis are included in the course schedules at many schools, and most colleges have gyms, playing fields and tracks. Inline skating, biking or simply walking around on campus will help keep pounds off.

"Many freshmen don't make use of the gym facilities, but a lot of schools offer tennis and squash courts, swimming pools and yoga classes," Walls said. "Walking is the easiest exercise of all. Students should make a point of walking around campus and to classes whenever possible."

Susan Hurd, RD, a nutritionist with Wood Dining Services, holds programs in college dining halls during mealtimes to show students healthy dining hall options and encourage them to exercise more.

"The majority of students who gain weight in the first year tended to be more active in high school," Hurd observed. "Many do not play sports in college, and that, coupled with the freedom to pick whatever they want to eat, contributes to weight gain. Over the course of several months, their weight will go up."

Once they recognize that they are gaining weight, many students make an effort to lose it through a variety of strategies including changing their eating habits, exercising more, and even moving off campus in order to better control their menus. As a last resort, one woman reported taking a summer job as a counselor at a "lose weight" camp to combat her own freshman weight gain, noting that losing the weight was such hard work that she remained vigilant for the rest of her years at college.

"The dining hall offers a buffet style service for convenience, but research has shown that this type of service increases consumption of food and beverages," cautions the Rutgers University's Healthy Dining Team. "The responsibility to make wiser food choices is in your hands."

- Lisa R. Van Wagner

Our Patio Reclamation Project Is FINALLY Complete

haze — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:26:25 -0700

For the last 3 years I've been after my husband to clear out the patio behind our garage. Little by little he's been removing his acquired stuff and we are now deeply involved in getting it ship shape.

I'll be uploading to this album as we progress so, if you're interested, keep an eye out. Hopefully it will be [mostly] completed by sundown on Memorial Day. Wish me luck on this! The progress report follows. Please click the photos to read the captions and more on what's what.

05/24/2008
After meeting DC's sister for coffee, we took a trip to Loewes to pick up phosphoric acid to clean and etch the cement. We also picked up some floor paint for my next part of the project: Creatively painting the floor.

DC spent most of the day cleaning and stripping the cement. It was allowed to dry overnight as this is critical to prevent the paint from peeling.

He also moved out the rest of his "stuff" [aka: crap]. It's scheduled for relocation -- TODAY!

05/25/2008
DC started his day sanding the cabinet of the 1950s fridge. There was some outside wear and scratches to the original finish. This caused the exterior rusting. It's getting cleaned up now and prepped for paint.

But look how beautifully pristine the interior is! The seals are in perfect condition. This is very important because my linens and tableware will be stored in it. It's been loaded all winter with my collection of vintage goodies and there's not a wiff of mildew or a hint of mold. Yes! This is exciting.

DC also stripped and sanded our collection of vintage wrought iron shelving. It dates from the 1930's or 40's and is in excellent condition except for the rust.

I taped off and started painting the patio floor.

05/26/2008
DC started his day by priming the fridge while I painted the floor of the patio. The work on the floor went rather quick because the sun baked it dry within an hour.

Yes. It's a lot more work than we originally thought. But we don't want any rust [especially on the cabinet of the fridge] because it will cause problems down the road. Believe me when I tell you - You absolutely do not want to pay him by the hour - But, if you want a tedious job [like stripping paint and relieving a surface of rust] you want my husband to do it. He has a knack for being able to tough through these types of jobs without getting bored or sloppy.

05/27/2008
Recapping what's left to do:
The fridge needs it's final coats of paint and the interior of the bottom needs to primed and painted.

Painting the shelving -- This task needs to be finished but it is being worked on as I type.

The 1950's lawn chairs, shown in the right corner of the 8th photo, will be painted a deepish shade of spruce green. This is my job.

The seats for the dining chairs need to be recovered. Again - this job belongs to me.

The legs on the wash tub, that will be used as an ice bucket, need to be sanded and painted and the wheels replaced. DC will take care of this.

The painting, that will serve as a privacy screen and mounted on legs, that will sunk into the ground, needs to be primed, sketched, and painted. This is another one of my jobs.

We also have to choose and hang the outdoor lighting and decide on additional decorative plants and flowers. I'm leaning towards pots of peppers and tomatoes. It's a little late so -- we'll see.

You'll see that there is a strong division of labor in our house: DC handles the heavy, tedious work and the more visually oriented work is left to me. DC considers the jobs of sanding and any chemical work to be his responsibility. If this seems sexist to you, please, relax. He knows that I am fully capable of it. He just prefers that my time and attention be put to work on the things that he rather not be bothered with - like painting the floor, choosing colors, etc. Believe me, I don't mind this at all.

05/28/2008
DC finished painting the shelving when he got home from the office. They were left to stand overnight to dry while we went off to Loewe's to pick up additional paint for the fridge, the washtub/ice bucket, and the chairs.

05/29/2008
I painted 1950's lawn chairs a deep spruce green and then over sprayed them lightly with a lighter, brighter green to make them pop. I gave the vintage Lincolnware waste can the same treatment. I love the effect but I realize that it's really difficult to see in the photos.

While I was up to my elbows in overspray I took care of the vintage record rack that will stand next to the grill. I like to remove the fire boxes from the grill before I clean and cover it. This stand will hold the fire boxes safely out of the way while they cool. I used high performance paint - like the kind used for engines - to make sure that it will with stand the heat. The flat top part of the rack will be perfect for holding platters and utensils during cooking and serving, etc.

We had a very nice clear day yesterday so the pieces dried quickly and I was able to put them in place well before sundown.

When DC got home from the office, armed with the 40% off coupon that I just received in the mail, we went up to JoAnn's Fabrics to select the covering for the dining chairs.

05/30/2008
I cleaned and covered the dining chairs. The remaining fabric is going to be cut and sewn into a table runner. The table runner will be reversible with a coordinating second fabric. That second fabric will also be used for placemats. I'd like to get this done today but we will have to wait and see on that.

Hopefully DC will get the fridge will finished over the weekend and he'll have a chance to deal with the washtub/ice bucket .

I have to prime and paint the privacy screen and deal with that dirty old planter. I really haven't decided on the details of either of those projects but this entire transformation is really exciting! My neighbor came over yesterday to have a peek at the progress and she was stunned and really impressed with how it is all coming together.

05/31/2008
We are attending a wedding this afternoon and it is rainy. Project resumes tomorrow. Same bat-time. Same bat-channel.

06/01/2008
DC went to a car show this morning while I worked on creating the coordinating linens for the dining table. They are all reversible to the coordinating fabric, except for the napkins, as you will see in the photos. It really looks fresh and I am really excited.

When DC got back from the show we took another trip to Loewe's and picked up small solar-powered patio lights for the perimeter, supplies for the privacy screen, Mr. Tomato Head, and plastic primer for the redo on the large planter that will serve as Mr. Tomato Head's home.

DC also finished the fridge and installed it in place. I must say that I feel like it's really starting to come together now! We still have a few things to work on.
- The washtub / ice bucket still needs to be refurbished.
- The privacy screen needs to be primed and the artwork painted.
- Mr. Tomato Head's extra large planter needs to be primed and painted.

In the meantime, please take a look and tell me what you think. I included as many detail shots as made sense because I am really growing quite fond of this space.

06/02/2008
Mr. Tomato Head is waiting patiently for his new home to be remodeled. It looks all nice and white in the photo but it's not. It's rather a dingy mess - old, scratched and stained. Oh...Well. Reclaim, reuse, recycle and I are working on it. The plastic primer is drying and then it will go down for the artwork. Mr. Tomato Head will just have to exercise a bit of patience.;)

06/04/2008
We're looking at rain today and questionable weather for the rest of the week so progress on the privacy screen and Mr. Tomato Head's permanent home has been slowed a bit. I'd also like to put a water seal on the floor to protect the artwork but, again, I am at the mercy of the weather.

For now, Mr. Tomato Head has made his home in a basic dark green planter. It's quite large and I'm sure he won't mind if I add decorative details while he is in residence.

The privacy screen, being 6 foot wide by 4 foot high, is going to be a while but I will keep you posted with the details on that particular aspect of the project. As it is now the space is very usable and we need to be content with it until we come to a few more days of clear weather. It's a bit of a job to get a 6 x 4 foot strectch of plywood up a flight of enclosed stairs. So I'm keeping this project to the out of doors.

I'm working on sketches and mock ups of the artwork for the privacy screen if you're interested and I am in the process of posting them to the Visual Arts Forge and Foundry. Kumbaya if you're so inclined and please feel free to offer up your opinions on the work. http://teamsugar.com/group/1585733/

06/06/2008
Mr. Tomato Head's intended home did not turn out as I had hoped. I used Valspar plastic primer and I'm really not happy with the result. Still I am hopeful. I am allowing the first coats of paint to cure before proceding with the design. In the meantime, Mr. Tomato Head has taken up residence in a plain green planter. He must be rather happy with his space, artful though it is not, because he has sprouted the tiniest of tomatoes. The first of the year.

While I am waiting for this awful, hot and humid weather to clear I also cleaned up an old urn that was lying about. I'm not sure what will be planted in it but I am nursing a total of 12 incidental tomato plants that have come up in our fallow garden plot. One of them may find a permanent home in it - if - they take hold.

06/07 - 08/2008
DC and I overturned the area of the lawn that was destroyed during completion of another project late last fall. We also shored up the slope that leads into the neighbor's yard and laid down grass seed. It's tough to start grass seed at this time of year so we are giving it daily care and keeping our fingers crossed that it will produce a fine and beautiful lawn.

We also discovered that the Design Director has 2 chicks in the nest up under the eaves of the garage. Really - they are not so little and they actually look like they may be ready to take flight any day. Because of this, we are hesitant to really clean the patio. I know some animals can be skittish if people are making too much ruckus around their babies and I don't want to spook her and have her abandon them. Thus we are taking a bit of care and trying to be relatively quiet while we work.

She did warn me off while I was transplanting some ornamental plants and ground cover into the area between the end of our patio and the wall that terraces our yard from the neighbor's. That was a little bit scary because she made a pass close over my head and then came back around close to where I was working before returning to her chicks. I was well warned by this and so we made sure to give her as much privacy as possible.

06/09/2008
Our weather is still unseasonably warm and quite humid so the privacy screen project is currently on hold. I do think the design director has taken off on family leave. Her nest is empty this afternoon with no sign of her or the chicks. I hope this means that they have taken flight and that nothing bad has happened. I will keep you updated if I see them or if they return.

06/11/2008
A more seasonal character has returned to the weather and the privacy screen project has begun. I'd photograph it for you but I can't really see the point in showing you a 6 foot by 4 foot section of plywood with one coat of white primer propped up on horses. Really, there's not much to see today. Once I have both sides primed I will begin work on the painting - most likely tomorrow. Then I will have something to show you.

Not to worry about the design director either. Her babies have taken flight and seem to return to the nest each afternoon. I'm thinking she is putting them down for a nap because she returns to the roof of the garage in the early evening and calls for them and then they are off. I have witnessed this and all is well though I think it is fair to say that she has resigned from her position as overseer here.

06/14/2008
DC started working on the old/vintage washtub that will serve as an ice bucket while I worked on the artwork for the privacy screen. She's mostly color blocked now but the thunder is rumbling and it looks like rain. Needless to say, this is probably a good time to take a break. I'll get back to her if the rain passes us by but it's feels like we're in for a rather severe storm.

06/15/2008
Luck was with us on Saturday because the rain held off and we were able to put the privacy screen in place so I could finish her without worry of marring the finish. DC also finished painted and refurbishing the washtub that will serve as an ice bath for bottled drinks. Yes - I expect this to be another "controversial" accessory but it is period perfect and an original. Love it or hate it, it works in the space and supports the quirky eclectic look that we have going on here.

The grass has also started to come in quite nicely. It may be another month until that section of the yard is worthy but it will get there in its own sweet time.

In the meantime, we had our first meal on the patio last night and it was very enjoyable. The only thing lacking at this point is additional lighting in the space. I want to add a solar-powered spot light for the privacy screen and I'm thinking that I may have to give up my vintage float bowl for a period-specific candelabra - we'll see.

06/17-23/2008
We've moved on to working on the rest of our outdoor area behind the house and have dubbed it to be "The Slate Garden Gallery". Details are contained in this post if you care to take a look.

06/30 -07/02/2008
I completed to additional paintings for the patio space and hung them in place. Both are created with acrylic on plywood and are sealed with a clear acrylic top coat.

07/04-07/2008
This project is starting to feel like something that will just not be completed. DC and our neighbor spent a day and a half installing the privacy fence that we've been talling about for some time. The neighbor had already priced and picked out a standard issue, dog ear style of planked fencing that looks okay on his side but is less than okay on ours.

Frustrated and annoyed by the fact that our patio area, previously so well planned and artfully arranged, now had the look of an unfinished barn, DC and I were forced to consider what could be done to right this horribly wrong scenario. Finally, with a decision and vision in mind, we schlepped to Loewe's and picked up some 4' x 8' sheets of pressure treated latice, some long skinny pots, and some ivy plants.

We installed the latice work on 07/06/2008 and I finished potting the ivy this morning. My idea is that the ivy will climb and consume lattice over the course of the next 2 summers. I have my fingers crossed - believe me.

In the mean time I'm working on two additional pieces of artwork to finish off the space in The Slate Garden Gallery.

I want to thank everyone who has followed along and encouraged me in completing this project. Sometimes it's hard to continue to work on projects like this and to actually see them through to completion. You guys have all helped us to stay on track and I do appreciate it.

Much love to all of you Sugar Peeps,
- Haze

View Slideshow ›

Priciest U.S. Restaurants

justingirl1989 — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:30:38 -0800

Top Five Priciest Restaurants
Masa, New York City
Alinea, Chicago
Canlis, Seattle
Joel Robuchon at the Mansion, Las Vegas
Urasawa, Los Angeles

As the restaurant critic for The Seattle Times, Nancy Leson knows her way around the coastal city's restaurant scene. When it was time to treat her husband on his birthday, she took him to Canlis the city's most expensive a la carte restaurant.
For once, the meal was entirely on her dime “and it was worth every penny of it,” she says.

meal at Canlis, which opened nearly 60 years ago and is often credited for defining if not “birthing” Pacific Northwest cuisine, will set you back about $75 a person--without any of that great Willamette Valley wine.

That's pocket change in New York City where taking your spouse to the most expensive restaurant in town-- Masa at the Time Warner Center--will set you back at least $1000 (it's $400 a person right off the bat for the 30-course Omakase menu. And that doesn't include tax, tip or one of their superior sakes.)

According to the most recent Zagat Survey of America's Top Restaurants, New York City continues to lead the way as the most costly U.S. city in which to dine out, with an average tab of $39.46. By comparison, Zagat's national average is $33.29, while New Orleans ($26.18) and Austin ($25.30) are the least expensive cities. Of course, U.S. restaurants cost roughly half of what their peers do in cities such as London ($79.46), Paris ($74.24) and Tokyo ($69.58).

Succulent Spots
To compile a list of the country's top tables, we selected what are commonly thought to be the 10 most expensive restaurants in 10 "foodie" cities across the United States. We narrowed our selection by calculating what the minimum "price of admission" would be to dine at each, that is: how much it would cost to dine there if you were to order the least expensive item on the menu. Those with the highest tabs made the list.

Obviously, most people don't go to a fancy restaurant and order the least expensive item on the menu (Why go to Canlis and order the $28 polenta entrée when you can enjoy the Pacific Ahi Tuna pan seared with furikake, Thai cucumber salad and chive oil for $37?), so guest tabs would most likely be much higher than our math suggests. Some restaurants, like Masa and French Laundry have set prix-fixe menus. They were included if their prix-fixe was higher than the guest check average would be at a la carte restaurants in their region--and league.

What we found is that many of the country's most expensive restaurants are also some of the oldest, such as Canlis or Antoine's in New Orleans, which first opened its doors an astonishing 160 years ago. And, many on our list turn out fine French cuisine, as in the case of L'Espalier in Boston.

But old--and French--don't necessarily combine to mean stuffy. In fact, 20 years after Chef Frank McClelland took over L'Espalier in an 1880 Back Bay townhouse, his French cuisine with a New England twist, remains as fresh and innovative as ever. Last May, McClelland was named Best Chef Northeast at the James Beard Awards. And, next summer, L'Espalier, the “go to” restaurant for wedding proposals in Boston (they average about one a month) will be moving to spacious new modern digs at the Mandarin Oriental on Boylston Street. No worries: McClelland is taking his cutting-edge foie gras preparations with him, as well as the restaurant's signature iron gate.

People seem to like their luxury laid back these days, so it's no surprise that only three restaurants on the list require jackets-- Joel Robuchon at the Mansion in Las Vegas, The French Laundry and The French Room at the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. At least two of them, Masa and Urasawa, recommend more comfortable clothing as meals can stretch on for hours.

Antoine's, which serves French Creole cuisine in the heart of the French Quarter has stopped requiring a jacket and tie in its 15 lavish dining rooms. (That makes eating their alligator soup a lot easier). As legendary as this place is, only one entrée has crept into the $40-and-up territory, and the signature Oysters Rockefeller, which were invented there are still only $13.

Tom Fitzmorris, who has been hosting a daily three-hour radio show all about food in New Orleans for 20 years, says as food-obsessed as the culture is, restaurants there remain surprisingly inexpensive compared to other parts of the country.
Part of it is that many ingredients in French-Creole cuisine--rice, beans and andouille sausage--are inherently affordable. And much of the seafood is readily and locally available. But Fitzmorris says entrée prices are starting to climb as more and more local ingredients like shrimp and soft-shelled crabs get shipped to other parts of the country (particularly the Northeast), driving up prices locally.

But diners appear ready to pay premium prices for worthy ingredients. In the aforementioned Zagat Survey, 55% of diners polled said they'd happily pay more for a meal that was, in fact, sustainable and/or organic.

At The Inn at Little Washington which continues to serve the most expensive meal in the Washington D.C. area, Chef/Proprietor Patrick O'Connell prides himself on his "cuisine de terroir," or regional cooking. Using local ingredients whenever possible is virtuous, and makes economic sense.

O'Connell says the low value of the dollar against the euro is driving up the price of imported products from truffles to balsamic vinegar, cheese and sea salt. Case in point: Last year, white truffles were selling for $2,000 a pound. This year his kitchen paid $3,500. A year ago, the restaurant spent $8.50 a pound for its imported parmesan. Today, they're paying $11 a pound--to the tune of 200 pounds a week.

Even locally, purveyors are tacking on surcharges of 3% to 7% to compensate for soaring gas prices, says O'Connell. Rising oil prices also affect all petroleum-based products--like trash bags--which have almost doubled in price.

All this helps explain how a meal at the cozy Inn can start at $148 mid-week and jump to $168 on a Saturday.

Of course, a meal can easily be five times that should you decide to sleep at the stunning Inn after your meal.

The ability to roll right into a sumptuously dressed bed right after a decadent dinner? No price tag on that.

source: yahoo.com

The Farm at South Mountain (Phoenix, AZ)

Imabeliever — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 08:09:58 -0800

The Morning Glory Cafe at the Farm

In southern Phoenix there is a place called The Farm at South Mountain. It is an actual farm that grows vegetables and it is surrounded by pecan trees. You will feel a million miles away from the city!!

Hidden here is three restaurants. The Farm Kitchen, Morning Glory Cafe and Quiessence.

The Morning Glory Cafe has great breakfast dishes..

Quiessence is a very high end expensive dinner dining establishment(will blog about that another time.. believe me WOW).

But lets talk about The Farm Kitchen! They serve sandwiches, salads and baked goodies... all ingredients are so fresh(since it is a farm after all). And the best part is you can order your food and eat at one of the picnic tables or go and sit under a pecan tree and have a real picnic!

My personal favorites off the menu would be the:
Grilled Marinated Free-Range Flank Steak Sandwich which is grilled steak, baby arugula, and caramelized onions with creamy Gorgonzola spread on focaccia.

Or the Raspberry Goat Cheese Salad which is herb-crusted local goat cheese, candied pecans, fresh raspberries, mixed greens and jicama, served with raspberry vinaigrette.

They have more common items like a delicious albacore tuna salad sandwich and a pesto chicken sandwich.. but I am a freak that loves goat cheese!

Basically there is something for everyone there.. including a kids menu with PB and J sandwiches.. or pack what you want from home for the kids and buy something special for Mommy and Daddy. That's the best thing about picnic style dining!

It is only open during certain times of the year. It will close on rainy days. So always call ahead..

The Farm at South Mountain
6106 S. 32nd Street Phoenix, AZ 85042
(just south of southern on the west side of 32nd Street)
The Farm Kitchen
(602) 276-7288

Hours:
Tuesday thru Sunday
10 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Eating Better Than Organic

supermommie — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 13:51:39 -0700

Not long ago I had an apple problem. Wavering in the produce section of a Manhattan grocery store, I was unable to decide between an organic apple and a nonorganic apple (which was labeled conventional, since that sounds better than "sprayed with pesticides that might kill you"). It shouldn't have been a tough choice--who wants to eat pesticide residue?--but the organic apples had been grown in California. The conventional ones were from right here in New York State. I know I've been listening to too much npr because I started wondering: How much Middle Eastern oil did it take to get that California apple to me? Which farmer should I support--the one who rejected pesticides in California or the one who was, in some romantic sense, a neighbor? Most important, didn't the apple's taste suffer after the fruit was crated and refrigerated and jostled for thousands of miles?

In the end I bought both apples. (They were both good, although the California one had a mealy bit, possibly from its journey.) It's only recently that I had noticed more locally grown products in the supermarket, but when I got home I discovered that the organic-vs.-local debate has become one of the liveliest in the food world. Last year Wal-Mart began offering more organic products--those grown without pesticides, antibiotics, irradiation and so on--and the big company's expansion into a once alternative food culture has been a source of deep concern, and predictable backlash, among early organic adopters.

Nearly a quarter of American shoppers now buy organic products once a week, up from 17% in 2000. But for food purists, "local" is the new "organic," the new ideal that promises healthier bodies and a healthier planet. Many chefs, food writers and politically minded eaters are outraged that "Big Organic" firms now use the same industrial-size farming and long-distance-shipping methods as conventional agribusiness. "Should I assume that I have a God-given right to access the entire earth's bounty, however far away some of its produce is grown?" asks ethnobotanist Gary Paul Nabhan in his 2002 memoir, Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods. Nabhan predicted my apple problem when he vacillated over some organic pumpkin canned hundreds of miles from his Arizona home. "If you send it halfway around the world before it is eaten," he mused, "an organic food still may be 'good' for the consumer, but is it 'good' for the food system?"

I had never really thought about how my food purchases might affect "the food system." Even now I don't share the pessimism and asceticism of the local-eating set. In her 2001 memoir, This Organic Life, Columbia University nutritionist Joan Dye Gussow writes that her commitment to eating locally "is probably driven by three things. The first is the taste of live food; the second is my relation to frugality; the third is my deep concern about the state of the planet." I don't have much relation to frugality, and, perhaps foolishly, I'm more optimistic than Gussow about our ability to develop alternative energy sources.

But I care deeply about how my food tastes, and it makes sense that a snow pea grown by a local farmer and never refrigerated will retain more of its delicate leguminous flavor than one shipped in a frigid plane from Guatemala. And I realized that if more consumers didn't become part of the local-food market, it could disappear and all our peas would be those tasteless little pods from far away.

Still, the fact that not all locally grown products are organic had me worried. Even if most Americans wanted to buy locally grown organics, they wouldn't be able to find many. In a few not-too-dry, not-too-wet, not-too-warm regions--central California is one--it is possible to find abundant organic produce grown locally. But if you live in a humid climate, say, the moisture that encourages bacteria and fungi means that growing without pesticides is much more risky, expensive and rare. Consequently, in the Hudson Valley of New York, near me, it's very difficult to find fruit that hasn't been sprayed with chemicals at least once. In other regions, like the upper Midwest, most big farms don't grow any vegetables for local markets, conventional or organic. Instead, they produce commodity crops like corn and soybeans for sale to food processors. At a large Hugo's grocery store in Jamestown, N.D., last summer, I noticed only one local product: flour, which is milled in-state from local wheat. But there were organic apples and oranges from out of state.

Farmers' markets often feature organic produce from nearby farms, but not everyone lives near a farmers' market--and most products at the markets aren't organic. "I've been to farmers' markets, and there's people hauling stuff from the truck that they got at a wholesaler," says Joseph Mendelson III, legal director of the Center for Food Safety, a liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards. Mendelson prefers the "gold standard" of locally grown organics, but he is rather frightening on the subject of nonorganic food, whatever its origin. When I asked him whether I should favor local products, he replied, "I don't know what local means. Do they use local pesticides? Does that mean the food is better because they produce local cancers?"

All of which further tangles my original question: The organic apple or the conventionally grown local one?

It turns out to be a frustratingly layered choice, one that implicates many other questions: What's the most efficient way to grow food for all? Should farms be big or small, family- or corporate-run? How do your choices affect the planet? What tastes better? And then there's that little matter of cancer.

Let's get that one out of the way at the start. If scientists could conclusively prove that agricultural chemicals are harmful, we would all go organic. But it's not clear, for instance, that the low levels of pesticide typically found on conventional produce cause cancer. The risks of long-term exposure to those residues are still undetermined.

Even if conventional foods don't turn out to be as dangerous as organic advocates claim, several recent studies have suggested that organic foods contain higher levels of vitamins than their conventionally grown counterparts. In a paper published in October in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, a team from the University of California, Davis, demonstrates that organically grown tomatoes have significantly more vitamin C than conventional tomatoes. Even so, the same study shows no significant differences between conventional and organic bell peppers.

"We're just beginning to understand these relationships," says U.C. Davis food chemist Alyson Mitchell, one of the paper's authors. "We understand, and have understood for a long time, that there is some relation between soil health and plant quality, but we still don't have a solid scientific database to link this to nutrition."

Organic adherents take it on faith that the way food is grown affects its nutritional quality. But advocates of local eating are now making another leap, saying what happens after harvest--how food is shipped and handled--is perhaps even more important than how it was grown. Locavores.com a site popular among local purists, asserts that "because locally grown produce is freshest, it is more nutritionally complete." But Mitchell says she knows of no studies that prove this.

In short, science can't tell you what to eat for dinner. Many of us end up relying on the government to keep food safe, or we just don't think about it. For those who do start to think--nervous new parents, say, or McDonald's burnouts--there are more alternative grocers than ever. There are online purveyors of gourmet health foods (pricey), the old food co-ops (too political for me), and of course those farmers' markets, which--in spite of basic limitations like not being open every day--have grown larger and more sophisticated. (According to Samuel Fromartz's valuable 2006 history Organic Inc.: Natural Foods and How They Grew, there were 3,706 U.S. farmers' markets in 2004, double the number there were a decade earlier.)

But for the past few years, the easiest answer for food-baffled Americans has been a single company: Whole Foods Market.

Whole Foods now has 190 locations from Tigard, Ore., to Notting Hill in London. In fiscal 2006 the chain's sales grew 19% (to $5.6 billion), a bit lower than 2005's 22% growth. Fretful about increasing competition from mainstream grocers who are offering more organic products, investors have punished Whole Foods in the past year; its stock price has fallen more than a third since February 2006.

Still, Whole Foods is expanding rapidly. It recently said it would acquire Wild Oats Markets Inc.; the merger would give Whole Foods an additional 112 locations in North America. Already, many Americans have come to see Whole Foods as the repository of both their dietary hopes and fears--the place we can buy not only organic arugula but a decadent chocolate bar too. I have shopped at Whole Foods off and on since 1990, when I had a summer job in Austin, Texas, where Whole Foods began in 1980. If I was going to decide whether to buy organic or buy local, I figured Whole Foods' ceo, John Mackey, could help me. After all, he is vegan, and his politics lean libertarian, so he thinks hard about different paths. And he has made a great fortune by joining two previously antagonistic alimentary impulses--health and excess.

When we spoke last fall, Mackey was at first diplomatic about the organic-local choice. He told me that when he can't get locally grown organics--and even he can't reliably get them--he decides on the basis of taste. "I would probably purchase a local nonorganic tomato before I would purchase an organic one that was shipped from California," he said. He called the two tomatoes "an environmental wash," since the California one had petroleum miles on it while the nonorganic one was grown with pesticides. "But the local tomato from outside Austin will be fresher, will just taste better," he said.

However, he also noted that products like hard squash that can last months in storage don't taste so different for being shipped. In that case, he said, "I might purchase the organic version from California." Mackey acknowledged that organic agriculture is "flawed"; he criticized organic-milk farms where cows are pumped with feed in factory settings just like conventional-milk cows. But he also bristled at criticism from local activists. He noted that just because a farm is near your home doesn't mean it practices sustainable farming. "There's an assumption that small is beautiful and big is industrial, and that's not necessarily the case," he said. Whole Foods could not keep growing without supplies from large international farms, which is one reason the organic-vs.-local debate is a delicate issue for Mackey.

At least at my Whole Foods--the one in Manhattan's Union Square, where I shop once or twice a month--most of the available produce comes from California or some other distant land, even during the local growing season. Like all other Whole Foods locations, the store began to push local products more aggressively last summer. A placard was posted above the escalator exhorting customers to BUY LOCAL, and all the cash registers were changed to show photos of area farmers.

These days, in the final weeks of winter, it would be unfair to ask Whole Foods to sell predominantly local produce at my store, because so little can be grown in the Northeast right now. But even during verdant summertime, the vast majority of products sold at my Whole Foods (fresh or otherwise) aren't from the Northeast. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that the packages in which most Whole Foods groceries are sold say nothing about the food's origin. For instance, in the freezer section you can find Whole Foods' Whole Kitchen brand Breaded Eggplant Slices with Italian Herbs. The box tells you a wealth of information about the eggplant slices--that they contain wheat, dextrose and annatto (a dye); that they can be fried, baked or microwaved; that they have no trans fat; that they are "flavorful" and "versatile." But you don't learn where the eggplant comes from.

A Whole Foods spokeswoman told me the eggplant was grown in Florida, which is too bad because eggplant grows easily in the Northeast. But in the company's defense, very few customers care whether their food is local. Most who do, shop at farmers' markets. Also, there's not even a standard definition of what local means. To Nabhan, who inspired many local activists with Coming Home to Eat, it means eating within a 250-mile radius of his Arizona home. Many who blog at a site called eatlocalchallenge.com aim for a stricter "100-mile diet."

My favorite definition of local comes from Columbia's Gussow, a reporter for Time in the 1950s who went on to become a local-eating pioneer. For 25 years, Gussow has lectured on the environmental (and culinary) disadvantages of relying on a global food supply. Her most oft-quoted statistic is that shipping a strawberry from California to New York requires 435 calories of fossil fuel but provides the eater with only 5 calories of nutrition. In her memoir, Gussow offers this rather poetic meaning of local: "Within a day's leisurely drive of our homes. [This] distance is entirely arbitrary. But then, so was the decision made by others long ago that we ought to have produce from all around the world."

On his blog, Whole Foods' Mackey has used a radius of 200 miles to mean local. Measuring from my home, that includes not only much of New York State, New Jersey and Connecticut but also parts of seven other Northeastern states. Such a large food shed produces a great variety of fruits and vegetables, and Whole Foods has said it wants to increase its percentage of local produce. (Of the roughly $1 billion in produce the company sold last year, 16.4% came from local sources, up from 14.9% in 2005.) Last year Mackey announced a $10 million loan program for local farmers.

But Mackey also knows that most Americans will never eat a purely local diet. "One of the challenges of being a retailer is you don't want to offend people," Mackey told me. "Some customers want to eat apples year-round, and they're willing to pay more for a New Zealand apple." Finally, he offered a defense of the global food economy: "When I was a little boy--I'm 53 years old--being able to get oranges from Florida or produce from another state was a very big deal because the local-produce availability where I lived in Houston wasn't great. People back then didn't have nearly as diverse a diet as we do now, and you might also point out their life spans weren't as long."

That made me wonder if purely local eating was even possible--or healthy. Could I get everything I needed from the Northeast? What would I have to give up? For gustatory reasons, I long ago stopped eating out of season--I have no interest in those hard Canadian tomatoes my Whole Foods was selling in February. But would I have to forgo coffee? What would replace my breakfast cereal? How much would all this cost? I wasn't sure. So like everyone else, I went to Google.

I mean, I literally went to Google, to the company's Mountain View, Calif., campus.

I had read that one of Google's new cafeterias, Café 150, served only food originating within a 150-mile radius of Mountain View. I knew this radius included a glorious fund of farms, ranches and fisheries, the Salinas Valley food shed that Steinbeck made famous in East of Eden. I also knew that as one of the most successful companies of the era, Google could afford not only to pursue such a whimsical culinary ideal as total locality but also to do so in the form of a fine-dining restaurant. (Café 150 is one of 11 employee eateries on the Google campus, all of which famously charge nothing.)

Still, I wanted to see how Café 150's founding chef, Nate Keller, managed to serve more than 400 purely local meals a day. Most chefs simply place orders with suppliers. Good cooks understand that quality and origin are related because of the toll extracted by transportation, but in the end, if Emeril Lagasse wants to serve wild salmon one night, he can just order it from Alaska. Keller, who recently became the chef at another Google restaurant, couldn't do that. Although just a freckly 30-year-old, he had to plan his menus the way preindustrial cooks did, according to whatever local vendors offered that day.

"These guys have to be so flexible with their menus, it's unreal," said Café 150's fishmonger, Tim Zamborelli of Today's Catch in San Jose, Calif. "We have to find out what's coming in on that particular day and let them know so they can change." Café 150, which opened a year ago, can serve no shrimp or scallops, since they can't be found in the area, and tuna was available only from August through October, when currents brought bluefins into the radius. The day I visited, Keller hadn't learned what vegetable he would be serving until the night before. (He got baby red chard.)

It's a radically new way of thinking about cooking because it's so very old. But I was surprised to learn that Café 150 was the brainchild not of some anticorporate artisan but of John Dickman, 51, Google's food-service manager. Dickman not only worked for 14 years at the food giant Marriott--he even trained flight attendants to cook plane food. I was curious how he had created such a radical restaurant.

Dickman says he was inspired by chef Ann Cooper, whose 2000 book, Bitter Harvest, is well described by its subtitle: A Chef's Perspective on the Hidden Dangers in the Foods We Eat and What You Can Do About It. Cooper, who now runs the acclaimed meal program of the Berkeley, Calif., public schools, writes passionately against industrialized farms that "inhabit a flattened landscape dotted not with trees, farmhouses [and] animals ... but with huge motorized vehicles." After meeting her, Dickman began to go to farmers' markets.

When Dickman arrived at Google in 2004, he says, "organic was the cool thing," and the company's chefs were buying organic whenever they could--even if that meant flying in Chilean nectarines. Dickman worked with the team to write new standards that place local before organic for all Google eateries. "You're using X amount of jet fuel to get it here, and that doesn't make sense," he says. "So forget the nectarines. Buy something local. Get some plums." Of course, this doesn't work in, say, Dublin, where Dickman also helped set up a Google café. ("Everything is flown in there," he said.) When I asked if he thought a restaurant as strictly local as Café 150 would be possible anywhere outside central California, he answered, glumly, "Probably not."

But others are trying. Restaurants from Cinque Terre in Portland, Maine, to Mozza in Los Angeles are run by cooks who strive always to find local products first. Some chefs are not only buying locally but actually growing the food. The two Blue Hill restaurants in New York--one in Manhattan and the other in Pocantico Hills--buy less than 20% of their ingredients from outside the New York region, according to chef Dan Barber. Much of both restaurants' food (including all the chicken and pork) is raised on about 20 acres next to the Pocantico Hills location. In the 31/2 years since the farm was launched, Barber has become one of the nation's most eloquent pro-local spokesmen, not least because he makes local eating profitable (and delicious--his restaurants win raves). But his commitment to locality means that Barber can't always serve beef, since the quality and availability of steers in the Northeast are uneven.

Café 150 has access to local beef from Bassian Farms in San Jose, Calif., but the restaurant can't obtain everything it needs from the valley. Take salt. "There are salt flats a quarter-mile that way," said Keller, pointing to the horizon, "but they're for industrial purposes." So he buys salt "off the truck," from a food-service deliverer.

Still, apart from such staples, Café 150 is living up to its name. It never serves tropical fruits, and it has planted lemon and lime trees just outside to ensure local citrus. The restaurant grows many of its own herbs and makes its own ketchup. And last fall Café 150 jarred tomatoes and fruit so that even though it's March, Googlers can get a taste of the local harvest every day. Imagine that: a company as ostentatiously hip as Google canning fruit in its kitchens.

Could I do this? Could I operate my own "kitchen 150"?

Following Café 150's lead, I decided to keep basic dry goods like coffee, chocolate and spices. But since I have no interest in gardening (and no yard, for that matter--I live in an apartment), I needed a source of produce. I find farmers' markets inconvenient, if only because you have to pay each farmer separately for items, which can mean a lot of waiting in the cold. Then I heard about the farm shares run by Community Supported Agriculture (csa) programs.

They sounded a little lefty to me at first, but it turns out csas are a wonderfully market-driven idea: you join with others in your community to invest in a local farm. At the beginning of the season, members pay the farmer a lump sum. Each week, or perhaps once a month in the winter, the farm delivers fresh vegetables (and, for more money, items like fruit, eggs and flowers) to a central location. Prices vary widely depending on where you live. The csa in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx costs just $220 for five months for those with a low income (food stamps accepted). The csa run by Angelic Organics in Caledonia, Ill., starts at $600 for 20 weeks of vegetables and goes north of $1,000 when you add fruit.

There are some lefty aspects: You don't choose what the farmer grows. He does. You might get lettuce one week and then--if, say, a hailstorm hits the lettuce patch--none for several weeks after. Also, you're locked into a fixed amount of food each week, so if you don't feel like cooking for a couple nights in a row, you feel guilty. A farmer sweated over these beautiful ears of corn, and I'm going to throw them out so I can pick up riblets at Applebee's?

The benefit is that the food is affordable--for $40 a month at my csa, I get (to take February as an example) four bunches of winter greens, a head of red cabbage, 5 lbs. of apples, and about 2 lbs. each of beets, onions, carrots, turnips and Yukon Gold potatoes. The stuff is phenomenally fresh. I once discovered a nine-day-old head of lettuce from my CSA farm at the back of the refrigerator. Because it had come to me just 24 hours after being picked, it was still crisp.

But how local was my CSA farm? And was it organic?

Windflower Farm is in Valley Falls, N.Y., 185 miles northeast of my apartment. Mapquest calls it a 3 1/2-hr. drive, but if you leave on a weekday at 5:30 p.m., as Windflower's Ted Blomgren and I did, it can take closer to five hours. That meets Gussow's definition of local--"within a day's leisurely drive"--although our drive through Manhattan wasn't leisurely.

Blomgren runs Windflower with his wife Jan. He is 46, and on the day we rode to the farm, he wore sandals and glasses. Ted, who has a degree from Cornell, is balding and studious, and might pass for a professor if he didn't have so much dirt under his toenails. Ted and Jan--who has lovely bright blue eyes perpetually fixed in a startled expression--have operated Windflower for eight years with their sons Nathaniel, 14, and Jacob, 11. On the day I visited last summer, I watched a barefoot Nathaniel walk to the henhouse to collect eggs in an old white bucket, as he did every day. I had been eating those eggs most days--that's how I had replaced cereal. Seeing Nate carry that bucket into the smelly humidity of the chicken coop, I realized I had never before felt so connected to my food. I had not only seen the chickens that produced my eggs but had also met the person who gathered them.

That's a core goal of CSAS--to remind you that your food originates in some place other than a grocery store. There are now some 1,200 csa farms in the U.S., according to the Robyn Van En Center at Wilson College in Pennsylvania. Van En helped start the first American csa at her Massachusetts farm in 1985 after hearing about the idea of farm shares from a Swiss friend. (You can find a csa near you at sites like localharvest.org.

So I was finally eating local, and it tasted great. Ted's yellow wax beans last year were so crisp and oniony sweet you could eat them directly from the field. During the winter months, Ted has delivered sturdy vegetables from his cold storage that look as good as anything at Whole Foods and seem to taste better, if only because they remind me of a warm day on the farm. And yet I do worry that the Blomgrens aren't certified by the Federal Government as organic growers. They say they don't use synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, and Ted's policy is that any csa member can come to his farm to check his growing practices. "I couldn't show up at my local Agway and buy a jug of herbicide without it getting told to everybody," he said. Like many small farmers I met, Ted felt that organic certification would be too costly and time consuming.

Having met Ted, Jan and their sons--and having spent the night in their barn--I trust they don't use chemicals. But the Blomgrens don't grow fruit for the CSA. They buy it from other local growers, and most of them use sprays because of the humidity. Ted's hens were free-range--they strutted around eating the grass behind his house. But pastured chickens still require some grain feed, and the grain Ted bought was mostly conventionally grown, industrially processed corn.

I was deflated to hear that I had ingested chemicals with my fruit and eggs. But at this point I threw up my hands. If I wanted total purity, the only option was to grow my own food. Forget it. Farming is dirt-under-the-toenails hard work, and the Blomgrens are by no means making a vast fortune.

But I had arrived at an answer to my question: I prefer local to organic, even with the concessions local farmers must make. I realize there's something romantic about the desire to know exactly where your food is from. Among true agrarians, that desire carries a reactionary strain, a suspicion of modernity. "Instead of relying on the accumulated wisdom of a cuisine, or even on the wisdom of our senses, we rely on expert opinion," journalist Michael Pollan wrote in last year's acclaimed book The Omnivore's Dilemma. "We place our faith in science to sort out what culture once did." But science should trump culture on matters of nutrition. The problem is that science offers no clear guidelines yet on how beneficial organic food is.

When asked years ago whether she preferred butter or margarine, Gussow famously remarked, "I trust cows more than chemists." For my part, I do not. I will still go to Whole Foods to buy the mass-produced Organic Food Bars I eat for breakfast when I don't have time for eggs. I am happy that food scientists are finding ways to produce everyday products like cereal with organic ingredients. (How about organic Froot Loops? I have a weakness for Froot Loops late at night.) But when it comes to my basic ingredients--literally, my "whole" foods rather than my convenience foods--I would still rather know the person who collects my eggs or grows my lettuce or picks my apples than buy 100% organic eggs or lettuce or apples from an anonymous megafarm at the supermarket. Choosing local when I can makes me feel more rooted, and (in part because of that feeling, no doubt) local food tastes better.

Eating locally also seems safer. Ted's neighbors and customers can see how he farms. That transparency doesn't exist with, say, spinach bagged by a distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me fed--and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp organic on a package thousands of miles from my home. I'm not a purist about these choices--I ate a Filet-O-Fish at McDonald's on the way to Ted's farm. But in general, I have decided that you are where you eat.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1595245-1,00.html

Fire-Roasted Wild Salmon With Stir-Fried Brown Rice

justingirl1989 — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 05:25:32 -0700

This is a light-but-not-skimpy dish at Miraval, a health resort where guests dine for healthy dishes like the one above.

Prep: 15 min; Cook: 30 min

Ingredients:

2 tsp canola oil
1 16-20 oz wild salmon fillet, skinned
2 Tbsp chopped red bell pepper
2 Tbsp chopped celery
2 Tbsp thinly sliced scallions
2 tsp chopped cilantro
2 c cooked brown rice
4 c vegetable broth
4 bunches baby bok choy, sliced in half
1/2 c pineapple sauce Pineapple sauce
1/2 tsp chopped shallots
1/2 red bell pepper, chopped
1/4 fresh pineapple, cored and chopped
1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
2 Tbsp brown sugar
2 c pineapple juice
1 Tbsp rice-wine vinegar
Directions:

Heat grill and preheat oven to 350ºF. Brush 1 teaspoon oil on salmon and season with salt and pepper to taste. Grill for 3 to 4 minutes per side.
Transfer fish into an ovenproof dish and bake until flesh is just opaque, about 9 minutes. Set aside and keep warm.
To make stir-fried rice, heat a skillet over medium and add remaining oil. Add red pepper, celery, 1 tablespoon scallion, and cilantro to pan and sauté until crisp-tender. Add rice to pan and stir. Add vegetable broth, season with salt and pepper to taste. Let mixture cook until all vegetable stock is absorbed into rice, stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, cover, and set aside.
Fill a medium pot with water and bring to a boil. Meanwhile, place sauce ingredients in blender and process until smooth. (Makes about 2 cups.)
Blanch baby bok choy in boiling water until just tender but still bright green, 2 to 3 minutes.
To serve, place rice mixture in the bottom of a shallow serving bowl. Place salmon atop rice. Arrange baby bok choy around salmon and drizzle sauce around dish. Garnish with remaining scallion. Makes 4 servings.
Nutrition Facts:

Per serving: 352 cal, 10 g fat (1.5 g sat), 253 mg sodium, 36 g carbs, 5 g fiber, 27 g protein

http://fitceleb.imnotobsessed.com/2008/07/22/fire-roasted-wild-salmon-wi...