Double Duty

As if from Harry Potter, Fergus Henderson's books have magical properties [ed. cannot resist those Potter analogies, huh?]. You find yourself wondering if you should salt some liver to see what Dried Salted Pig's Liver, Radishes and Boiled Eggs tastes like. Salted. Pigs. Liver. The spell wears off and you are at least enchanted with his fascination with radishes. He devotes two pages on how to eat them, and you eat not just the bulbs. Last night I doused the radish greens with balsamic vinegar to cut the bite, and we had a fine salad to finish a meal.

One of the great things about getting produce from farmers is that you get the whole thing. This week's box may have included only about five radishes, but the radish greens provided another dish (so to speak). All the time, us CSAers get double duty: turnips and turnip greens, beets and beet greens, parsley and parsley root; hell I've even made use of carrot leaves (tastes a lot like parsley). Double duty helps a lot at this time of year because a spring box is not vast.

The idea of spring vegetables springs from two related sources (I think). First, in California (evil California), things are growing away. The supermarkets have artichokes, asparagus, strawberries. Second, there's (I believe) a kinda idealized, what I would call, cookbook culture of spring because so many cookbooks base their words on French and Italian climates and cuisines where peas do come in April. In Chicagoland, peas come in late June. Those eating local know otherwise. We can, however, make due.

So, our Spring CSA from Farmer Vicki's Genesis Growers is a rump offering. Stuff that happens to be thriving now in her hoop houses, mostly odd(ish) greens like boc choy and napa cabbage. Lettuce makes it. We also got this week a few big turnips and beets that I think came from storage. The message is, while we can stretch some of the box, radish and salad, we cannot expect a box this week to be sufficient. It still takes storage, freezer, and as we do (often) a bit of eating out to stay local.

Eat Local...Ham!

A while back I wrote a post for the Eat Local Challenge blog on how my effort to eat local had skewed my palate. Like an observant Jew who would actually not like the taste of bacon, I found that all things local tasted that much better to me. One of the things I cited was locally made Iowa prosciutto from La Querica. So, it turns out it's not just me. Mike Sula's piece in the Reader mentions he got some of the ham at Whole Foods in Chicago; I've always purchased mine at Fox & Obel. Unfortunately, the demand (until now) appears a bit low, and sometimes the Querica ham at F&O is a bit dried up.

Vie

Seems like I'm not the only one waiting to write about a February meal at Vie. Eat Chicago covers all the main points about Vie: the tinker-tinker-tinker they do in the kitchen ("hey let's make some sausage guys"); the effort to source local instead of talking about sourcing local, and the kind of cooking you cannot do at home (even if you tinkered and sourced). There is no more restaurant (or restaurateur) that I like around here than Vie (and Chef Virant).

But do I love it? I kinda do. I will go endlessly back to see what's around, what they are doing. I want pickled grapes and house made tasso. Vie appeals to all my sensibilities. It does not always appeal to my senses. On our February visit we had the same scallop and black rice dish mentioned by Eat Chicago. Like EC, my wife and I found the dish cooked well but tasting eh. For ages (I love reading the Vie menu) I was salivating over a brisket and bean dish. When I finally tried it, last winter, it was another eh, especially compared with brisket I had recently had in Central Texas (score one for cheap eats). I still remember one of the first things I had at Vie, a salsa made with fresh oregano and other herbs. How do we say...oh yea, eh. Maybe it's refinement when I'm looking for a bit more oomph. Why I prefer the Rolling Stones to the Beatles.

I will say this. There are things that are always (seem) delicious at Vie. Seek anything fried. They are mastering of the fry. Although I did not favor the brisket, I tend to like things coming off the wood-burning grill. And fish, I hate the fact that the restaurant I love most for its local-ness does best, things that are not local. So, make sense, I love them for being local but love best what's not local. Right?

Buy Local - April 14 Buzz Cafe - Oak Park

Ann Fisher, of LTHForum posts to let people know they can buy local beef, pork, chicken, lamb and eggs from the Wettstein's this Saturday at the Buzz Cafe in Oak Park. See here for details.

I cannot resist an opportunity to support this farm. Taste the way food used to taste--last summer Slow Food Chicago organized a BBQ taste-off, having Honey 1 do batches with conventional pork and the Wettstein's pork; Robert Adams of Honey 1 commented that day how the Wettstein's pork reminded him of his grandfather's piggies. More importantly, support a true local farm, that is doing it all right.

Links

Blog 3.0 needs some links. I've added two (with more to come). Jen Maiser monitored and marshaled various localvores into one place, Eatlocalchallenge.com, which has become an outstanding resource. Read how people many people attempt to eat local, including many who are showing it's possible to be penny-wise and still eat local. More importantly, behind the scenes, Jen has served as a real hub for the whole Eat Local movement, answering e-mails, schmoozing the press, spreading new challenges. Her blog barely scratches the surface of all she does, but it is a great read anyways, with outstanding pictures to boot.

What Me Blog

Well, yeah, there's so much I shoulda coulda woulda blogged about; not the least, from November 2006 until April 2007, we bought not a single "baby" carrot. And cow, soon there will be a whole half cow in the freezer. We are buying 1/4 of Farmer Vicki's current heard.

So because I was eating local all this time, because it's time to encourage others to eat local, because the first box from Farmer Vicki came last week, because I need a place to post a couple of pics I like of the Sonoran desert, because I cannot continue to spend so much time playing computer poker; it's time to blog again.

To help spread the vital information, I've re-introduced a bit of classic blog (design). Enjoy the ease of reading. Also, as you may note, the links and resources are gone. A lot of that stuff was dated or useless anyways. I'll update with the rest of the renewed blogging.

Eat Local Quandry Solved

I checked in on the Eat Local Challenge--the quest to eat as much as possible in our house from food grown with the states that roughly comprise the Big Ten Conference (and I mean in our house, we fail miserably to stick to the Challenge when eating out)--last week. As it turns out, after ridding ourselves of the mess, as well as some key buys from insider Eat Local sources, we are pretty well stocked. We are not digging into the freezer. Instead, we have fresh carrots, turnips, kohlrabi, lettuce, and tons of potatoes. Yet there was one big problem.

Garlic, we were about out of our stash of locally grown garlic. Spices are an Eat Local problem, fer sure. Garlic is not an Eat Local problem. Many growers around here have garlic. We bought a lot through October, but it turns out not enough. In our house, we really need garlic to cook. So much so that we had to give in and buy a head at a supermarket, probably from China, geez. Luckily, we spent Saturday in Milwaukee, visiting our beloved Public Market. The Milwaukee Public Market is a real treasure for Eat Local fans. Lakeside Meats sells "Yuppie Hill" chickens; the cheese people have all manner of (local) artisinal cheeses. And produce; frankly in the past, I have thought the produce vendors did not sell enough local produce. There's still too much foreign produce for me, but I'm a 1/2 full kinda guy. I loved the fact that they were selling local garlic. I bought all they had out, enough for a good time.

Other local produce for sale on Saturday were apples, potatoes, spinach (very expensive!), and beets. The Challenge gets easier this year.

Food and Wine Hearts Local

From Jen (via the Eat Local grapevine), here's links to two bits in the current issue of Food and Wine about eating local.

Localvore Inspirations - A few links to help Eat Local

How to Eat Like a Localvore - Like it sounds

Winter Mess

Much apologies for the lack of Eat Local Posts. There was that Thanksgiving road trip, holiday shopping, kidz vacation, the passing of good ol' dog (I know, enough, let's not make the blog morbid), and then with the kidz off the week after New Years, a seemingly extra week off. It's time to get back to things.

Like Eat Local. From the end of the Oak Park Farmer's Market in October to mid-November, we got a Fall CSA box from Farmer Vicki's Genesis Growers. Vicki farmed a second Fall CSA. With a bit of experience and the milder weather, she succeeded brilliantly. Of course one has to like turnips...but also cabbage, brussel sprouts, fat carrots, beets, greens, fall fields supplied (and this on top of plenty of storage apples, potatoes, onions and squash). A typical box looked like:

So, what happens come January? The challenge to the Eat Local challenge remains, how. Or what. What stays. What lasts. What to eat in the leaner periods. During the summer, we froze produce, especially peas, red peppers, asparagus, corn. We have not dipped into that stash. We put about 20 squash into our cold "canning" room where they joined potatoes and onions. Last year we learned that this room was not cold enough for root vegetables like beets and turnips. This year all of that went into our downstairs extra fridge.

Our garbageman comes on Monday. Time to assess. Beets horrible, shriveled and quite moldy. Turnips with some shrivel but salvagable. Big giant rhutabaga from October (!) holding on. Carrots too, show little wear. Cabbage in the fridge looks passable, just shed the outer leaves. In the cold room, most of the squash failed--Vicki warned us that her squash were too soft--we did not take heed. The oldest, summer potatoes sprout, star shaped neo-potatoe. They need to go. Bigger ones are fine, as are the sweets. We keep plenty of onions. And apples, we only stored a bit because Michigan apples are easy to get. Some of the apples mooshed; most survived. Two went into the kidz lunch today.

The challenge continues.

A Poem

Written By Sophia

Shatzi

Oh Shatzi, oh Shatzi my sweet, sweet dog

How I miss you with your hot dog like body and your brown-black eyes.

Why did you go, I'll miss you so, when you would bring me a ball or bring me a stick.

I loved you so much, oh Shatzi, my sweet, sweet dog, why did you leave me?

R.I.P.

A Very Good Dog

100 Mile Thanksgiving Meet the Washington Post

Very nice article here, in the Washington Post, featuring (and inspired by) Eatlocalchallenge.com's Sara Irani. Congragulations to Sarah! Hope she inspires you to eat local this Thanksgiving.

Update

Sarah has written more here.

100 Mile Thanksgiving

As I posted on a few weeks ago, several groups, including the Eatlocalchallenge.com blog, which I am affiliated, are encouraging people to eat local this Thanksgiving. For those in the Chicago area, it's really not too hard.

It's easy to find a locally produced turkey. Hoka's are natural and delicious (see the web site for places to buy).

Hopefully, your larder contains squashes, onions, beets, potatoes (sweet or white) to make what you need. Me, I have plenty of these things in my basement (not the least, 50 lbs of Wisconsin potatoes recently purchased for the grand price of $9.49). You might also have some pie pumpkins. Listen, if you have not put any of this stuff down, don't fear. The Green City Market is open this Wednesday and next Wednesday. All of this produce will be there. I bet you can find some of this at Whole Foods too. What's more, farmer's like my friend Vicki, are still yanking things from the ground. Beets, greens, turnips, carrots, broccoli; is there anything we still need? In case anyone wondered, plenty of cranberries grow in Wisconsin for the sauce. You could have purchased local flour for your dressing/stuffing, but I won't care if you at least stuff with locally baked bread.

Dessert, well, are you sick of apples yet. Shouldn't be. You have many more months of eatin' em. Apple pie, brown betty, crisp, crumble, shlump, slices, pudding, how many desserts do you need? More, this is the time to uncork those Michigan sour cherries so expertly individually quick froze, or maybe you have some papples left. Slice some papples, combine with Upland's award winning Pleasant Ridge Reserve cheese, some black walnuts, and you have another dish.

The only problem, obviously, is to drink. There are wines coming from Illinois, Michigan, but I cannot speak of them. So, go ahead, drink a good California chardonnay, snobs be damned, it's good. Still, if I was around for Thanksgiving (I'll be on the road), I'd at least try to accent with some local drinks, maybe some hard cider. I would, for sure, offer up some of the rhubarb wine purchased this summer in Amanna, Iowa.

Seems to me that it's pretty hard NOT to have a local Thanksgiving.

The Fame of the Papple Lady Grows

At the gala Seventh Generation Ahead dinner the other night, I shared a few words with Oriana Kruszewski, the papple lady. I told her how much my kidz loved her fruit. She failed to mention the nice write-up she got the is week in the Reader.

Eat Local - Brandy's (Home of the Gyro)

First Look

One of the nice things about (the ease of) blogging, is the ability to write about things that matter to, well not many. In this case, a hyper-localized look at the new fast food restaurant that opened up about across the street from me. Otherwise, there was nothing local, sustainable or organic about this place.

I was surprised and not surprised about Brandy's; not the food, I hardly found anything surprising with Brandy's food. I was surprised by the capital invested. I guess from their materials this is the third Brandy's, and they also seem connected to something called Chiggy's Gyro's. They seem to be plowing some profits into the new operation. It's a brightly lit, high ceiling-ed space, panted reds and yellow, two flat panel TVs, neon; and big, not Portillo's big, but bigger than the average hot dog stand.

Brandy's has a vast menu. Missing only an olive burger and a Monte Cristo and it would be a typical "Local Greek" diner. The menu spans at least three countries worth of fast food, Italian (beefs, pasta), Greek (including something over $14 called My Big Fat Greek Plate), and Mexican (tacos, nachos, carne asada). A treat for all, there is a whole display case of jello.

Although this is the home of the gyro, I chickened out. I saw they were cutting from the cone and then griddling, one of my pet peeves. I tried instead a burger. It was one of those charred things, well cooked, with a hint of the natural gas, but neither completely broiled to death, nor too propane tasting. The roll was one of those corn dusted fluffy things. Fries, fake skin on, but don't worry Brandy's, Thomas Keller uses the same trick. These fries were mildly crispy and a bit starchy. The sliced pickles on the burger were deli style and good. I saw a few gyros go out the hatch, and griddled be damn, they at least looked worth a try.

What was most interesting (I guess) about Brandy's, was how many people were there for lunch. I never realized there was such a latent demand for fast food around the 6500 block of North Avenue. Perhaps some of that capital also went into market research. On first pass, a decent enough place to have in the 'hood.

Brandy's
6518 W. North
Chicago, IL
773.237.4455

The Bears

Pick Your Shots

A week ago, the Bears killed Buffalo. It was very satisfying because Dick Jauron's Bills played a lot like Dick Jauron's Bears. Timid. The announcers mentioned during the Bills game that Jauron had said something to the extent of, "I do not mind punting." That's Dick. Any play can turn out bad; let's just avoid them. If we can punt, punt. At the end of nearly every quarter, Jauron's team always let the clock run out. I mean, one less play is one less chance for...

Lovie Smith does a lot of things not that different from Dick Jauron. Except. He plays to win. He is not afraid. What a different message that sends to his team. Which is why his team is winning.

Which is oddly enough, something I think he did wrong last night. Down two touchdowns in the 4th Quarter, on 4th down, within field goal range, with the unstoppable Robbie good as Gould, he went for it. A winning mentality. Go down giving it our best shot (Jauron would have put some points on the board and hoped). Yet, yesterday, Sexxy Rexxy, gosh he sucked. I knew the defense had a better chance of scoring. The perverse way the Bears played and the game went yesterday, those three points really could have mattered. On any other day, that 4th and call was right. Not last night.

Eat Local - This Thanksgiving

More here

Does Jim Hendry Eat Local?

I hope so.

Maybe he'd find his way to this little blog, and he would read my advice, as a very (very) long time suffering Cubs fan--emphasis on the suffering.

Don't Hire Lou Pinella

Lou's probably a great manager. He would be a very good choice if Joe Torre did not return to the Yankees. He is the wrong choice for the Cubs. He is Dusty re-visited. Really.

Remember how good a choice Dusty seemed. I loved it. And maybe Dusty is a good manager despite all that has happened. I give him credit for the run in 2003, and I especially remember how he finagled a Shawn Estes [ed. is that how it's spelled?] win in the stretch. I also realize no manager could have won with the cast of pitchers he had this year. Still, Dusty was not a good manager for the Cubs. These Cubs. Neither will Lou.

Could Lou get any performance out of the Tampa Bay Devil thingees? Hardly. Dusty and Lou are both managers for mature, complacent teams. The Cubs need to be anything but complacent. They are surely not mature. In fact, what the Cubs need to do is live with a bit of immaturity. Stop these cockeyed win-now, plug-in, attempts. Instead, build a team. Hire the manager that can build. That's Joe, Joe Girardi.

And Jim, to celebrate the hiring, I'm sure you'd love dinner at Vie in Western Springs. I hear Chicago Magazine upped their rating by another star.

What's Local this Week at Costco (Oak Brook)

Costco?

Of tiny hydroponic bell peppers and triple washed (but washed enough?) lettuce, Costco? While I pledge (or hope) that a deformed "baby" carrot never again touches the tender lips of my precious offspring, I still find plenty of reasons to shop at Costco. After all, it's a leading Blue company. And you never know what you might find.

Yesterday was the second time I've run into a Wisconsin cheese extravaganza at Costco. As I noted on my last post on the Eat Local Challenge Blog, I've come to find that the very fact that something is local makes it taste especially good for me. Some times I wonder if my love for local cheeses is delusional. Plenty of foodies seem more interested in Red Hawk this or Vermont that. Me, I'm plenty satisfied with what I find around me--and at sale at Costco in Oak Brook, Illinois this week.

How much am I brainwashed on local, well, what got us to the Wisconsin cheese display in the first place were samples of pepper jack. A very typical, cheap, commercial type Wisconsin cheese. Yet, like 97% of cheese spreads and cheddar shaped like footballs, it tasted darn good. We took. It was not just cheesy cheeses. For instance Costco was also offering a Carr Valley, Cocoa Cardona, for a reasonable price of $12/lb. We got pretty much all of the varieties on sale yesterday, about five types of Wisconsin cheese.

Not just cheese, Costco was also selling big ol' Wisconsin smoked hams that ran about $50 per. If I was having a Christmas party, I'd surely buy one.

Local is where you find it. In a world where some version of mozzarella can go with some version of tomato every day of the year, it's nice to know that there is also something unique, regional, even there at your Costco. Seek this out. Your brain might turn as mushy as mine.

My Chowhound

Mr. Peabody Set the Wayback Machine to Las Vegas - The Venetian

After recently finding that my pizza primer post got lost in the move to Chowhhound ver 2.0, I've decided to re-post anything I find/need here or on LTHForum.com. I will be citing this post later today.

Sadly, the place written of below is no longer in business. A real shame.

There is a layer of Las Vegas that exists between the strip and the modern suburban "locals" city. Not the convention abled chain spots on and off paradise road, but off-strip and on the road to downtown. It fascinates me, not the least because it also contains Lotus of Siam. Here strip shows, the pawn shops, the taverns, the marriage parlors, a real Algren/Bukowski created world. Within this world is the very original Venetian Italian. When you make the U-Turn to Venetian, you just miss Lucky Massage and could go straight into Shifty's bar and vido poker emporium if not paying attention.

The moment that summed up Venetian came after dinner. When we were waiting for our goodbye cab and learning about the hostesse's tatoo, a frocked man looking very uncomfortable entered. His well endowed date soon showed up and they took a seat. We glanced at the hostess, she said, way too loud, yes that was a minister and a hooker. Well, it's that kind of place, the Venetian. And I mean that as a strong complement.

The waiter has an overly solitious manner that fit well in this place. Here, everyone is Tony Soprano. He warned us so many times that the osso buco would melt in our mouths that I thought he'd chew it for us.

We began our meal with a series of appetizers and strong drinks. Fried calamari, served generously, proscuitto wrapped mozzeralla, a bit small, sauteed mushrooms and garlic bread that made you remember how good garlic bread could be. We should have held off a bit, but everything made its mark.

But first, we had to have salad or soup (he pushed the soup heavily). I stuck with the salad which had as much dressing on one salad as a resturant in Venice would have on all their salads, but it was a good dressing. A friend ordered a ceasar salad. I made the mistake of finishing the huge plate for him. It was too good, enough garlic that I was lucky Ms. VI was 2000 miles away and also heavily dusted in parmagian. I barely was not ready.

On a menu loaded with old fashioned treats, I picked the most old fashioned of them all, veal parmagian. Two decent pounded scallops drenched in melted cheese. Like classic tex-mex, nothing bad about too much cheese and a good sauce. The spaghetti in a sauce cooked to butteery mildness, also fought for a spot in my radidly shrinking gullet.

It's not like I sampled all the rest of the orders, but I can tell you that the osso bucco was denture friendly. The veal chop, charred well, looked worth the price, same with the pasta with seafood.

Someone else on [Chowhound] commented that the Venetian was great for the scene, but the food was an afterthought. I do not know. I totally appreciated the total lack of irony in the kitchen, the fact that this was the type of red sauce cusine that made us fall in love with Italian food. I strongly reconmend the Venetian Italian on Sahara about 1/2 mile north of the strip.

The Venetian is open around the clock. During our friday dinner, the place was oddly sparse. It made it easy to pick up a group chattering away in Italian. Of course, this helped the atmosphere. I'd like to visit again, early in the morning, when the late crew is noshing.