Hatton Ferry, c. 1910. The last poled ferry in the United States, it's still in operation.

The recession has been tough on restaurants, especially the small ones. Scottsville, which doesn't have much of a draw outside of the historic Hatton Ferry and canoeing on the James River, had a pretty good barbecue joint, Pee Wee's Pit BBQ, but if you haven't been there in the last five years, you better get down there before the end of the month, because it's closing. They have tasty pulled pork sandwiches, fried chicken and fried pulled-pork-and-cabbage-balls they call pork puppies and serve with a sweet-savory sauce. The one thing they don't have is a pit; the pork's done in a slow cooker. It's open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

polyface pastured hens have amazing qualities that contribute to a succulent meat, crispy skin, and great flavor. served with sweet corn puree, roesti potato, baby squash blossoms filled with country ham mousse, stewed tomatoes, and soy bean succotash.

This headline was the main one on the cover of the Washington Post food section this week. It referred to watermelon (seedless mild ones vs. intensely flavored seeded ones), but it occurred to me that it could be the standard by which to judge all our food choices. Dietitians have been advocating intentional eating (along with 30 minutes of exercise a day) as necessary to keep a healthy weight. To paraphrase Michael Pollan: Eat food, not too much, and enjoy it more.

Preparation is a key to the enjoyment. If you keep that in mind, you've won half the battle our culture is fighting against. We rush, rush to get more done, cutting every corner we can find. The food industry has responded to this, preparing and processing our food so we can get in our mouths quickly. Yet while we are cutting the time it takes to put together our dinners, the industry is cutting corners as well to make a profit.

Good chefs fight against processed foods. No wonder we love to eat out at a good restaurant. The food is spectacularly attractive and tastes great.

And that's why books by chefs sell well. We've eaten it, we want to fix it. Unfortunately, most of the recipes in a chef's cookbook involve intense preparation. And why not? That's what the minimum-wage minions in the kitchen do (besides the dishes... which add up to a substantial number for many of these recipes). And on top of that, some just don't translate well to the home kitchen. I knew from experience that adapting family recipes to feed a hundred or more people takes a lot of tweaking, especially with the spices. And what I learned testing cookbooks over the years is that many chefs find great cookbook writers and testers to produce their works, but others rush to press without adequately testing whether the recipes, even when followed to the letter, will turn out well for their readers.

Good recipes don't need a lot of ingredients to taste great, but the simpler the recipe, the better your ingredients need to be. If you don't enjoy food prep, start with recipes that call for five ingredients or less. Work up from there. Pay attention to how fresh the pepper is as you cut into it to dice it (a good tipoff is the condition of the stem; if the tip is black and shriveled, it's been off the vine for some time), how little flavor the pithy parts contribute (cut them out and throw them into the compost pile),  how a smaller dice exposes more of the surface to flavor the dish. Don't enjoy cutting onions? Goggles work well, but chilling the onion or putting a slice of bread in your mouth before taking out your knife sometimes works as well. Does that garlic that keeps jumping out from under your knife need to be minced? Position the side of your chef knife on top of the clove and give it a good whack with your free fist. Then mince the crushed garlic.

Embrace the prep. If you think of it as the essential element of getting better food into your body, you will value it as much as you value your time. It's when you don't value it that it becomes mere scut work. Cultivate sacredness in your daily meal preparation, and your meals - and your body - will rejoice.

There’s so much to do in Central Virginia (and online) this September!  Looking at just the first half of the month, here are some options for you, your family and friends to endeavor in before fall is officially here:
Monday, September 6th (10:00am-4:00pm): MEET YER EATS!
This 2010 Farm Tour, hosted by Market Central and largely sponsored by Whole Foods Market, will take those who want to be introduced to the farmers (and farms, of course) behind their food to a series of self-selected locations in the state.  Tickets are available here.  Or, save a bit and gain some experience by volunteering for the event instead.  More information is available through Market Central online.
Thursday, September 9th (2:00pm): Building a Business in Specialty Foods Webinar Series
This day marks the beginning of a webinar series (three-months in all) that focuses upon businesses that centered on the production and sales of specialty foods.  Participation is gratis; you can simply follow this link immediately before each session to sign in.  Join in as a guest, type in your name, and “walk” into the “room.”  That’s it!  Listen, learn, speak, and enjoy!
Friday, September 10th (7:00pm): “Climate Change, Peak Oil, and the Economic Crisis: Why You Should Think About Them (Though We’d All Rather Not)”
Bring your children, if you have one or some, to this talk at Thomas Jefferson Memorial Church.  Childcare will be available, so way not take advantage of the opportunity to hear more about the issue from Sharon Astyk, author of three published works?  Read more about her here.
Saturday, September 11th (10:00am-4:00pm): HERITAGE HARVEST FESTIVAL
The website welcoming interested individuals to this year’s Heritage Harvest Festival starts off strong.  “Experience the genius of Thomas Jefferson while celebrating one of his great passions – the garden. Join us for the annual Heritage Harvest Festival, a celebration of gardening, sustainable agriculture and local food, held at Monticello, the mountaintop home of our third president,” it says.  And, with an enticing description like that, which Virginian wouldn’t want to attend??  Don’t forget to stop by the Blue Ridge Network Permaculture table while you’re there.  The team is truly dedicated (and very, very knowledgeable) on the subject of sustainable gardening!  This event is pre-fall must, if I may say so myself.
-Serena

Oatmeal is good for you, whole-grain goodness in a bowl. But hot cereal isn't all that appealing until the temperatures go down. In the meantime, you can get the same benefit from energy bars that list oats as their primary ingredient, but at a dollar or more per bar, the costs can add up. And even if oats is listed first, are you really getting a full serving of the grain, or are the other ingredients cutting into that?

You can make your own at home, using the microwave. To form them, use a sheet of aluminum foil sprayed or brushed with olive oil, or if you have a silicon cookie sheet liner, use that to be even more green.

Lori K's energy bar

Ingredients
1/3 cup of oats (5-minute rolled oats work best)
2 tablespoons chopped peanuts, pecans or walnuts, or raisins or chopped dried fruits, or a combination of these
2 tablespoons honey
Salt to taste (optional)
1 tablespoon of powdered sugar

Instructions
Put the oats, nuts and/or fruit in a microwave-safe bowl. Drizzle with honey. Put in the microwave and cook for 1 minute. Take out and stir with a metal spoon (plastic will melt). Put back in the microwave for 20 seconds. (If you see smoke, remove immediately.) Turn out on a sheet of aluminum foil coated with olive oil, or a silicone cookie sheet liner; do not touch the mixture as it will burn your fingers. Let cool for a minute or two, then fold the sheet over the mixture, and compress it into a roll. Pretend like the mixture is tobacco and the sheet is rolling papers; you want the mixture to be nice and tight. Unroll, push in the ends, then fold the sheet over again and compress as tightly as possible. Cool, then unwrap. Sprinkle on the powdered sugar and roll to coat.

Makes one bar.

This bar is low fat and high in whole grains. If you want more of a protein bar, try this one.

It’s Tuesday morning.  The chances are good that you are sitting at your computer reading this with a cup of coffee nearby.  Since Recycla is still feeling the post-weekend blues — yes it’s Tuesday, but she’s still unhappy that summer is over and the kids are back in school, plus their homework last night was insane — and will be a bit lethargic until her caffeine of choice hits her bloodstream, she’s going to talk to you today about coffee.

Did you know that even your daily choice of coffee can have an impact on Planet Earth?

Here are three EASY suggestions to help you make a difference, one cup at a time.

• Look for Fair Trade Certification. When you buy coffee that is fair-trade certified, you are guaranteeing that the farmers who grew the beans are paid a fair price, are provided much-needed credit and given technical assistance, such as help in making the transition to organic growing.

• Select organic coffee. It is worth the small cost premium to use organic coffee beans, too, which eliminate your exposure, and that of the environment, to hazardous pesticides that are commonly applied to conventional crops.

• Look for shade-grown beans. Coffee was originally a shade-loving plant, and was traditionally cultivated underneath existing trees in a process that protected the native forest. Today, many farmers continue to raise coffee beneath shade trees, and the plants provide sanctuary to important migratory birds, many of which are now threatened. These are many of the same birds that fill American yards with song during the warm months.

That’s it.  Just three easy things to remember the next time you stock up on java or dash into your favorite coffee shop for a cup to go.

Tell the Eco Women:  What’s your caffeine of choice in the morning?

Filed under: food

Enviro Girl has long bought milk from Lamers, a local dairy, because she supports a family farm locally owned and operated.  The milk is rGBH free, which means her children aren’t sipping bovine growth hormones.  She buys this milk in returnable glass bottles to significantly decrease the amount of plastic in her household.  Every week Enviro Girl hauls her crate of empty bottles to the customer service counter at her local Piggly Wiggly and collects her deposit before she starts grocery shopping.  Every week she reminds the person bagging her groceries to load the crate in the shopping cart so they don’t have to lift it twice–glass bottles of milk are heavy.  But Enviro Girl’s committed to the environment and local businesses, so she shrugs off the little inconveniences of clanging glass and bottle deposits.

Last week she stopped in front of a cooler in the dairy section to pick up her family’s five bottles of milk for the week.  A sign alerted her to a new promotion: Lamer’s Dairy Organic Milk.  Organic milk!  Enviro Girl had never bought such a thing–it hadn’t been available from a local source before that day.  She picked up a bottle and glanced at the price.  $4.87 for a quart!  It was almost twice the price of regular rGBH-free milk!

Enviro Girl had a small moment of crisis beside the dairy coolers while holding the cold, heavy glass bottle of organic 2%.  On the one hand, organic milk is puported to have greater health benefits.  Enviro Girl knows that organic milk comes from pasture-grazed cows, which is healthier for the animals.  She also knows organic milk comes from cows fed organic feed–this harkens back to soil, water and air quality issues close to Enviro Girl’s heart.  The “trickle-down” effects of organic milk means fewer chemicals involved in the production process.  It means better care for the cows.  A demand for organic milk means a demand for organic feed, which means fields of grain and hay grown without pesticides or herbicides.

But $4.87 a quart!

Enviro Girl weighed the bottle in her left hand and the environmental economics in her right brain.  Her family has the means to pay for expensive organic milk.  She could cut costs elsewhere if pressed, paying nearly double for her family’s milk every week wouldn’t destroy their food budget.  But more importantly, Enviro Girl recognizes her family’s place in the system of environmental economics.   Demand increases supply and increased supply decreases cost as a general economic rule.  Her family can afford the organic milk now, and by choosing to buy it, they’re choosing to support the production of organic milk.  Their support (and demand) will increase the volume sold by Enviro Girl’s local Piggly Wiggly.  Enviro Girl’s weekly purchase could help increase accessibility and decrease the cost, making organic milk a viable option for more families.

At $4.87 a quart Enviro Girl paid for more than just milk.  She paid an endorsement to the farmer’s efforts, to support the production of organic milk.  Her $4.87 a quart paid for pasture-grazed cows and chemical-free fields of feed.  Enviro Girl paid that money today in the hope that a year from now the milk costs less, allowing more families the ability to enjoy it.

Tell the Eco Women:  have you bought organic milk?  Do you pay more to support locally produced or environmentally responsible products?

Filed under: food, issues Tagged: buy from locally owned and operated businesses, enivornmentally responsible food, locally produced, organic milk, pasture-grazed cows healthier, rGBH-free milk, why pay more for organic milk

some of my favorite summer flavors. tomatoes with bacon. basil. crab. our badass homemade ciabatta. aioli. mmhmmmm. boy am i going to miss summer.

 

after playing with sous-vide pork for several months now, and enjoying every minute of it, i decided to go back to a more traditional method of preparing our super awesome pork chops from polyface farms… thick cut pork rib chop, pan-roasted and basted with butter and bacon fat, my first chef, master chef robert greault, would refer to this as “poele”. i’d almost forgotten how amazing and succulent this meat tastes when properly caramelized and crisped. there is simply no better way to do it.

yep, can’t live through summer without overdoing it on some of these… watermelon, barrel-aged greek feta & basil. jumbo lump crabmeat salad, peaches, avocado, & tomato. stewed tomatoes & crabmeat. it’s hard to think about how soon fall will be here, need to get my fill before it’s too late!

Yesterday Recycla wrote about how it can be a challenge to “green” the people you live with.  They agree in theory that doing better for the environment is a good thing, but in practice they still toss their recyclables into the trash and leave TV sets on throughout the house.   Enviro Girl lives with this kind of person and it has taken patience to change them.

One such matter took place over a year ago when Enviro Girl suggested that, while she loves being a carnivore and a steak grilled over charcoal briquettes is a culinary masterpiece, perhaps the Grill Master should ditch the lighter fluid.  Lighter fluid is basically gas–petroleum–packaged in a petroleum-based plastic bottle.  It’s not a healthy choice for the environment and at $9.00 for a 64 oz. bottle, it’s expensive.  Liquid lighter fluid also gives off emissions, half of which are purely due to evaporation before you even set a match to those briquettes, according to a 1990 EPA report.

Enviro Girl and her Grill Master watch the Food Network and saw many of the chefs using a chimney starter. Enviro Girl asked her Grill Master if that wouldn’t be a preferable way to grill–the professionals use them, why shouldn’t he?  But the Grill Master adheres to the BLTC philosophy (Better Living Through Chemicals), and besides, he has always grilled using lighter fluid.

Disregarding his protest, Enviro Girl ordered the Grill Master a chimney starter for his birthday.  For $15.00 (about the cost of two bottles of lighter fluid) she purchased a heavy-duty metal chimney starter with a wooden handle.  The chimney starter is a cinch to work–you simply crumple up some old newspaper and place it in the bottom of the chimney, then place your coals on top.   Openings at the bottom of the tube allow you to set a match to the newspaper and the Laws of Physics then go into play, setting fire to the charcoal briquettes.  Once the briquettes are ready (a couple of minutes later), you grab the handle and pull the chimney up, allowing the briquettes to fall into a neat pile in the bottom of your back yard Weber.

The Grill Master was miffed by the gift and snubbed it.  But Enviro Girl didn’t buy lighter fluid ever again and eventually he ran out and necessity forced his hand.  Reader, two days ago the Grill Master confessed that he loves his chimney starter–loves how it’s easy to use, it works quickly (no restarting the flame, no adding more lighter fluid and lighting another match).  The chimney starter costs nothing to use and it doesn’t smell like lighter fluid.  It’s mess-free and uncomplicated.  The Grill Master became convert to the chimney starter.

Make your back yard charcoal grill more environmentally friendly by using a chimney starter instead of lighter fluid.  Make your family more environmentally friendly by gifting them the right “green” tools.   Trust the Eco Women–it really works.

Tell us, reader.  Do you grill with charcoal?  Do you use a chimney starter?

Filed under: 3 Rs, food, living green on a budget Tagged: a greener grill, chimney starters a "green" tool, chimney starters make grilling environmentally friendly, grilling without lighter fluid, lighter fluid and emissions

So, as part of the celebration, I am doing a giveaway of one of my popular prints ('Blown A Wish,' pictured above), there is a clearance sale (with Viewfinder prints as little as $8.50) and *free shipping* with any purchase for Life in Sugar Hollow followers (put lishfollower in the message to seller).

To be eligible for the giveaway, please leave a comment by Friday, August 27th at midnight (and make sure to include your email!).

The winner is Erin!