Fertile Ground

It has been an interesting ten days for me. I feel very accomplished in getting the blog and website up. I was also interviewed for a national magazine that's doing an article on healthful budget conscious recipes for the holidays. I was one of the "experts" and it was fun to realize how much information about food and it's production that I've actually tucked away in my head over the last 14 years. All of which is a long way around to talking about some resources that I've run into over the last little bit. One of the things that we're trying to do at the restaurant is to make better use of local resources and to be better about how much energy we use. Our big coolers can really rack up the kilowatts and, since we've changed how we do business, there's financial as well as ecological reasons to be more conscious. Marty had long ago switched us to CFL's in all the light fixtures where it's appropriate. I did keep regular, but long life, bulbs in the front of the house so the dimmers would work. Marty has a big garden which is supplying 75% of the produce we're using at the restaurant this summer, but this is WI and that's not going to be an option during the winter. I'm looking for other producers that we can use that are not so tied to big industrial farms. Every week at least someone comments on how good the vegetables are at the dinners, and they want to know what I'm doing to them. The truth is that they were picked the morning that they were served, and it does make a difference. It also matters that the trimmings and such go back to the compost piles in the garden, along with the coffee grounds and the eggshells. I get more and more concerned about the lack of control we have over our food supply. The most recent scare about salmonella and tomatoes should be a red flag to all of us mostly because they don't have the first clue about where the source of the contamination is. So, I found an organization called http://www.localharvest.org/ . They work to support small family farms and to connect them with folks who can buy their goods. You can search by zipcode to find the producers in your area. I found two more CSA's that are local as well as someone who raises lamb and another farm that raises pork within 20 miles of where I am!! I also purchased dried lavendar buds from a farm in Washington State--that I am anxiously awaiting--and discovered that there are an amazing number of farm folks who sell hand spun and/or commercially spun yarns from small farm raised animals in a variety of fibers. (I am a closet fiber artist, but more about that another day). Another issue for us at the restaurant is the use of disposables. I saw Cindy Crawford on a talk show recently talking about how just the bottled water she drank contributed over 2000 plastic bottles to the landfill. She switched to aluminum refillable bottles. I always felt badly about how many plastic deli containers we used when we were running that part of our business,and it's still an issue for caterings. I've discovered this cool company http://www.worldcentric.org/ that sells plates, bowls, cups, deli containers, and utensils that are biocompostable. They are made from sugar cane or corn depending on the variety, they are very affordable, and you don't have to buy a case you can buy a tube of 50. I encourage you to check it out, particularly if you like to have a stash of disposables for summer picnics, or if, like me, you keep them around for when you're too lazy to do the dishes!