local Eat Local potluck!

For anyone in central New York who might be interested - there will be an Eat Local potluck supper on Saturday, Sept. 29 at 6 p.m. in the University/Westcott area of Syracuse.

Some more info:

What: Eat Local Potluck
When: Saturday, Sept 29th at 6:00 PM
Where: University/Westcott Neighborhood

In the spirit of the Eat Local Challenge, please bring a dish that is made from food grown as local as possible. This will give everyone a chance to share some of their favorite local food sources. Also, if possible, bring copies of the recipe so we can recreate your delicious dish on our own. We'll have a chance to talk about the joys and challenges of eating locally in Syracuse and, perhaps, lay a foundation for an Eat Local Dinner Club.

Sound like fun? Wanna come? Please e-mail Jennifer for specific location and directions: JLBASKER [at] SYR [dot] edu. See you there!

A baby is born!

Please pardon my absence for the next couple of days as I help welcome home my grandson Damien, who was born this afternoon! Six pounds, 11 oz. and equipped with an excellent pair of lungs. Mom and Dad are doing just fine and go home with their new bundle of joy Thursday morning. Tomorrow night after work I'm headed to their house to make sure everything is tidy for their arrival, and Thursday after work I'll be stopping by to make sure they have everything they need. So I'll be back Friday!

Low-carbon footprints

It stopped raining long enough to take a look at my garden yesterday - and thankfully it wasn't too much of a disaster!

Three big, red tomatoes ... a handful of grape tomatoes (which came up from last year's crop: we didn't plant any this year because we don't care for the taste) and a random cherry tomato. A dozen itty-bitty shoots of broccoli ... some healthy basil, oregano, and rosemary. With the addition of some locally grown lettuces, radishes and scallion that I brought home from the market, I have a good start on a salad whose total carbon footprint might be less than my own.

That's one thing that bugs me: Commuting to my day job means burning two gallons of gas a day. I'm not thrilled about that, but there isn't much I can do about it until a job in my field opens up closer to home (not likely). The least I can do for our air quality, the environment and the climate is to do my best to buy foods that don't have to travel thousands of miles to get to me. Bonus if they're organic/sustainably grown in addition to being local.

Next thing I do is pick up some locally grown root vegetables at the market this Saturday and roast them in my oven with some fresh rosemary and extra-virgin olive oil! I wonder if the local bus service goes from my neighborhood to the market on Saturday mornings ...

Local food for seniors

A cold and rainy Saturday couldn't stop me from spending some time down at the Regional Market in Syracuse. What a delight to see the incredible produce! And at such fabulous prices. A bundle of scallions - crisp, dark green tapers at least a foot long - cost a mere $1. A dozen ears of fresh-picked butter and sugar corn for $2. Red bell peppers, each the size of my doubled fists, for 50 cents each.

My favorite yogurt producer, Wake Robin Farm, was there! I discovered they sell milk, too. I saw Sundance Farm, too, from Marcellus, which was nice - I like to see stuff from my roots. Their heirloom tomatoes were irresistable!

But the best thing I found at the market wasn't food. It was opportunity.

Inside one of the sheds was a little table at which sat three women with a boatload of pamphlets from the New York State Senior Farmers Market Program. What's this, I asked? Turns out it's a program for people age 60 and over whose income is a certain level (it may also be open to families in the WIC program). What happens is once a person is accepted into the program, they are given a certain number of checks in the amount of $2 each that can be used at certain farmers' stands at local regional markets up to Nov. 15. The checks can only be used to buy locally grown foods (not honey, flowers, ornamental pumpkins or gourds, etc.).

I was delighted to learn of this program because so often, older people just don't have the money to buy good, wholesome food. And even though the program's been around for some 10 years or so, not everyone knows about this program - I was pretty sure my mom didn't. So I grabbed a pamphlet for her and brought it home to share with her later.

Time to go to market!

It's Friday night, and guess what I'm doing tonight (other than writing)? I'm putting together my grocery list for a quick trip to the Regional Market tomorrow.

I won't have much time, only an hour and a half at best, but it'll be delightful to shuffle along with the crowds and gawk at the beautiful produce and products. It's been a few months since I was there last, thanks to a summer full of home improvement projects and just sheer busy-ness. I can't wait to see all the farmers from the central and northern regions with their fall offerings. And buying food from them supports the quality of life here.

I live along a very busy four-lane highway that 20 years ago was a tree-lined bucolic state route. Active farms graced its length: pumpkins, cabbages, sweet corn, you name it. But now they are (almost) completely gone. Instead, we now have townhouses, hotels, restaurants, a car dealership, food clubs and shopping plazas. (Let's not even get into the traffic congestion!)

Did the farms vanish because of high taxes? The farmer passed away with no one to keep the farm in production? Not enough income? A developer came along and made an offer that couldn't be refused?

The answer is probably a bit of all of the above and more. But I can't help but wonder if more local folks had stopped by the farms and bought those pumpkins, that corn, whether more of the farms would still be around today.

I'm here for the long haul, and I believe our farmers want to be, too. So I'm going to do my tiny part in keeping what remains of local agriculture alive and well.

Mom's pasta e fagioli

I tend not to cook anything unless I have a recipe, but there are exceptions, such as my mom's pasta e fagioli and linguine with clam sauce. These I can make from memory, drawn from 30 years of experience wielding a paring knife and mincing cloves of garlic into microscopic cubes. The fragrance of garlic gently simmering in a pan coated with olive oil ... that's home.

The family recipe for pasta e fagioli is blatantly simple. It's great comfort food and quick to put together. And it's a warm, friendly foil for a big salad and some hot garlic bread. Only thing is, I can't give you exact amounts because everything is relative: how many are you feeding? How much garlic do you have on hand? Etc.

But here goes:

Mom's Pasta e Fagioli (serves 1 or 2)

Half a box of small shell pasta
2 tablespoons Olive oil
2 or 3 big cloves garlic, minced
1 can cannellini beans, undrained (I tried using dried, but the results were less than stellar)
1/4 cup (est'd) fresh parsley, chopped
Dash of ground cayenne pepper
Salt and pepper (optional)


Cover pasta with water in large sauce pot; bring to a boil and cook according to the directions on the box, or to your preference.

Meanwhile, Heat just enough olive oil to coat the bottom of a large pan gently on medium-low. Add garlic and stir frequently until garlic softens and turns a light gold color - don't let it brown. Your kitchen should smell heavenly.

Add the beans and the liquid from the can. Stir and heat through. Sprinkle on the parsley and cayenne pepper, and salt and pepper if using.

Drain the cooked pasta and return to the pot. Add bean mixture to the pasta and combine. Enjoy!

Eating locally

The night before we left for Vermont, my sister's house guest whipped up some homemade guacamole while I assembled a ... well, an enchilada of sorts I suppose: raw cheese grated onto a tortilla and covered with bits of locally raised free-range chicken, some organic local lettuce and probably unlawful quantities of that guacamole. It was wonderful, if a bit odd.

I'm having a tough time with the Eat Local Challenge so far, although I was pleased to be able to eat local even while on vacation. I haven't bought any groceries yet this month and for me, that's the clincher for success. I'll be making a grocery list tomorrow, however; and with the help of the local food source lists over at Cookin' in the 'Cuse I expect to be able to limp along until the Regional Market on Saturday morning.

One thing I know I can do is pick up a tub of non-homogenized yogurt from Wake Robin Farm and some locally produced granola for breakfast ... and eat it out of a bowl thrown by a local potter. I have some local honey for a sweetener, should sweetening be needed. So that's breakfast; what about lunch and dinner?

At the moment, the best I can think of within my budget is locally grown produce for the mother of all salads. Pick a tomato from the garden, toss in some fresh basil and oregano, and stop by some roadside stands in the neighborhood or visit the Wegmans down the street. I'm still working on this one though :)

Local food and farm stays

While my DH and I were in Grand Isle, a lovely island on the Vermont side of Lake Champlain, we stopped at an inviting farmstand shop called Hackett's Orchard. We fell in love with the apple cider doughnuts, made fresh every morning, and the amazing variety of tomatoes! They also had fresh sweet corn, squashes, Vermont cheeses (including Neighborly Farms, producers of organic farmstead cheeses) and a very pretty black cat.

It was at Hackett's that I learned of the Vermont Farms! Association, which exists to "provide educational opportunities about agriculture to the public," according to its Web site. One thing that appealed to me was the opportunity for "farm stays," which offer guests at farm bed and breakfasts the opportunity to help out with some of the farm's chores during their stay.

With the decline of family farms, farm stays are an incredible opportunity to really get that much closer to the origin of food: the labor and care required to actually produce something to put on your dinner plate. Milking a cow, feeding goats and collecting eggs from chickens connects one to one's food and may even reinforce the fact that food doesn't magically appear in a plastic wrapper or Styrofoam carton. I'm hoping to do a farm stay vacation next year, myself.

Coming home

I took a break toward the end of last week, cycling with my husband on one of Vermont's islands in Lake Champlain and camping in the Adirondacks. I'll get back into the swing of things soon as I finish unpacking and acclimate myself to the regular world again!

Take the red pill and I'll show you the truth (about farming)

While Stumbling around this morning, I came upon The Meatrix - a delightful, well-produced and informative parody of the incredible "Matrix" movies. I couldn't resist the spot-on monologue by Moopheus as he led Leo to the truth of factory farming.


Many people don't know and don't care about how their meat and poultry come to the grocery shelf. But as the media carry more and more stories about superstrains of drug-resistant bacteria, massive manure spills into local rivers and aquifers, and other results of factory-farm techniques, a growing group of consumers has chosen to do something about it: support sustainable agriculture and small, local farmers.

As I understand it, the thinking goes like this: Small-scale farmers can provide consumers with meat and dairy products from animals that have been allowed to live a more natural life, including free-range as opposed to crated existences, without the systematic use of artificial growth hormones and antibiotics to make up for the unnatural living conditions found in factory farms. Animals that live relatively natural, stress-free lives will require far less medicating and will therefore produce higher-quality foods.

While a sizable number of people who are concerned about where their food comes from choose to become vegetarians or vegan, others choose to continue consuming animal products - and for them, sustainable agriculture may be the answer.

For example, my sister conscientiously selects organic foods whenever the options exists and buys her meats and cheeses from local producers. By buying foods from local farmers, she knows how her food was produced and can see for herself the conditions under which the animals were raised. Not only that, but she's contributed to the local economy, ensuring that her dollars are circulating within the community and benefiting her neighbors - not some faceless corporation with unseen, unknown farming practices.

For anyone thinking of exploring the world of sustainable and/or local agriculture, several routes are available to you. Try finding a food co-op or buying club near you. Support your local supermarket chain (preferably one whose home base is in the same city or at least the same state) that places a priority on foods from local farmers. If there's a regional farmers market in your area, go and visit with the people who grow your food and see how your grocery choices affect your community.

I'm open to ideas: can anyone add to my short list here?

The Eat Local Challenge

Over at the Eat Local Challenge is an incredible resource, a gathering 'round the table if you will, of people from all walks of life who have committed themselves to eating mainly local foods during the month of September. The month in which the Eat Local Challenge falls varies from year to year; 2007 just happened to get September, a wonderful time of year for local food in my area.

I can tell you that my garden is loaded with beefsteak, heirloom, cherry and grape tomatoes; broccoli; rosemary, basil and oregano; bell peppers; and even the occasional cucumber. I observed the ELC the other night at my sister's house, where everyone gathered for a late-summer feast of boiled locally grown corn on the cob, grilled locally raised free-range chicken and a salad consisting of organic veggies - including produce from my garden, picked (or plucked) within an hour of dinner. Even with a dollop of chunky bleu cheese dressing, the signature tang of fresh oregano and basil asserted themselves and made their presence known. Such is the beauty, the power, of fresh herbs!

On a related note: I heard of a local movement earlier this summer to collect five-gallon plastic buckets for use as microgardens, in which urban residents could grow their own tomato (or any other, really) plants as an alternative to a traditional garden. What a great idea! Instead of throwing them out, buckets can be used to help inner city dwellers learn the joys of growing and enjoying their own food. Folks who otherwise wouldn't have the space for a big garden can fill their buckets with earth, buy a couple of seedlings and plant them. Just as my garden helps me relax while easing my weekly grocery bills, a bucket garden can do the same for people with little space. And you don't get much more local than a bucket out on the fire escape or patio.

Labor Day eats

Ironic, isn't it, that Labor Day in the United States typically involves very little actual labor? Unless, of course, you consider the labor involved in putting together the ultimate backyard barbecue. As the last unofficial day of summer, families gather for one last outdoor get-together and seemingly endless platters of the ubiquitous burgers and hot dogs, macaroni salad and fresh-picked corn on the cob.

Barbecue menus vary widely from region to region. Here in upstate New York, "must-have" food traditions differ from city to city. In the Syracuse area, it's just not a cookout without the salt potatoes and coneys! Syracuse is the Salt City thanks to its early industry, the harvesting of salt from brine pools that once dotted the shores of nearby Onondaga Lake. In the 19th century, laborers looking for a quick, inexpensive meal found it by boiling tiny potatoes in heavily salted water and dipping the tender, salt-encrusted pieces into melted butter. It's a classic vegetarian summertime treat. Today, the standard is a big bag of small (maybe 2 inches in diameter) round white potatoes - not the more creamy red potato, nor fingerlings - boiled up in the kitchen while the pit boss heats up the grill for the coneys.

And what are coneys? The most popular brand in town makes 'em: white hot dogs made primarily of pork and veal inside a natural casing. When grilled, they turn a most delectable crispy brown and they split right down the middle - perfect for applying some spicy brown mustard (or ketchup, if you must!). Some say it "cooney" but I've never actually heard anyone pronounce it that way; to me, it's a "coney" with a long O.

Go an hour or so south of Syracuse and you'll find yourself in Binghamton, home of the spiedie. You take cubes of meat (could be chicken, beef ... you name it) and marinate them in a special spiedie sauce for at least overnight. Using wooden skewers, you grill the marinated pieces (I prefer them grilled over a charcoal fire) until perfectly tender, then drop them, skewer and all, into a hot dog-style bun. Pull the skewer out while holding on to the bun, and you have yourself a spiedie sandwich. Nothin' like it.

I lived in Rochester (an hour west of Syracuse) for a year and a half while attending the University of Rochester, and the one thing I could discern to be truly, uniquely Rochester was the garbage plate at Nick Tahou's. It's mostly indescribable except, perhaps, by its very name. You choose the basic elements and Nick does the rest. My buddies advised me to simply mix together everything on my plate, which was antithetical to my usual dining habits; however, after gingerly tasting the macaroni salad and other items separately, I saw the wisdom in combining everything into a massive pile and digging in. Unforgettable.

Over in Buffalo is the home of the world-famous Buffalo wings, fried chicken wings and legs and whatnot smothered in a red, spicy sauce tempered with a side of bleu cheese dressing and, if you're lucky, a crisp stalk of celery. But Buffalo is known for another local treat: beef on kimmelweck (or "beef on weck," for short). Order one, and you'll be handed sliced roast beef with horseradish sauce inside a bun topped with caraway seeds and pretzel salt. There's no escaping beef on weck in Buffalo.

With the variety of food traditions in just upstate New York (and I didn't even go NEAR New York City!), other states must have unique personalities that shine in their local menus. What are the classic foods found in your area?

welcome to the hungry foodie

So yes, this is my first post here. I'm going to challenge myself to develop a blog dedicated to one of my passions - food and healthful cooking. After all, everyone needs to eat; and with so many diet-related disorders out there, who doesn't want to know how to make delicious, easy meals that go easy on the wallet as well as the waistline?

I'm probably typical in that I have a few (okay, a bit more than a few) pounds to shed, money is tight and I don't have a lot of time to engage in extensive food prep work. I marvel at the wealth of ingredients that are available to so many people nowadays and delight in the possibilities each one presents the creative cook. If that sounds like you, come along with me and let's explore the world of gastronomic delights!

A note: I'm far from a dietitian, medical doctor or anything of the sort. I'm a lover of food who enjoys those times when I can rattle my pots and pans and create a culinary delight out of what would otherwise appear to be everyday household stock items. I cannot eat high-fat foods, due to a gallbladder that seems to have gone on strike, so by default my cooking is low-fat and rich in vegetables, lean meats (or vegan protein) and whole-grain goodness.

If this sounds like fun, come along with me! Our voyage will take us to the vegetarian, vegan and carnivorous worlds of India, the Middle East, China and Japan. Be prepared for featured spices and ingredients (I do have my favorites), experiments with unfamiliar ingredients and the occasional product endorsement (unpaid ... but donations are always welcome, of course!).