Pop Culture: Casual Gamers and Locavores Unite!

When I'm not scavenging for local food suppliers and establishments that support them, I have to admit that I occasionally play what the industry calls casual games. The two hobbies (if casual gaming could be called a hobby) rarely have reason to come up in the same conversation, until now.

Enter DinerTown Tycoon. The DinerDash collection has come up with a great little game in the vein of the old school Lemonade Tycoon which sets their regular heroine, Flo, against an evil fast food empire. She must use interesting local and organic (and some conventional) ingredients to lure the diners of DinerTown into her restaurants. They are being enticed into Grub Burger by the noxious fumes of Ingredient X, but will be brought back to the light with the right combination of price, ingredients and advertising.

It's entirely possible that gamers will enjoy this strategy game without even pausing to contemplate the deeper issue, but at the very least, casual gamers may subliminally absorb the underlying concept and think of the world a little differently. Down with Grub Burger!

One Local Summer Week 2: Chorizo Bread Pudding

This week, I was hardly able to stop and think, let alone plan and prepare a complex meal for the challenge. So, it became a test of a well-stocked pantry. I made a Chorizo, Onion & Chevre Bread Pudding with some ingredients that have been stored well since my last trip to the farmers market. To complement it and give us some color, I marinated carrots and radishes for a crunchy side salad.

For the bread pudding, I picked up some natural dried chorizo from a local natural grocery. The chorizo was made in Pascoag, RI which is a bit farther than I usually source, but I could get there and back in a day if I needed to, and frankly, that night, I was desperate! The onions and bread were from the farmers market. The bread was organic multi-grain harvest bread from Bread Alone Bakery, a regular at the market. I ended up using about 2/3 of a loaf and probably could have used more.

Once the sausage and onions were sauteed and bread was cubed, I combined 4 local organic free-roaming Nature's Yolk eggs with 2 cups of milk (from Trader Joe's - a big fail, but fortunately I used it up, so I have to work harder next time), sea salt, cumin and paprika. I also crumbled in 6 ounces of Coach Farm Black Pepper Goat Cheese. The best part, in my opinion, was the addition of a medley of chopped rosemary, greek basil, sage and parsley all from my budding herb garden.

I combined the bread mixture and the egg mixture in a casserole and baked it for about 60 minutes at 350F until set and golden brown. The herbs grew nice and fragrant and the chorizo really permeated the custard. I debated doubling the chorizo because it's so good, but these proportions really worked to maximize flavors without anything stealing the show (1 cup chorizo, 1 1/2 cup chopped caramelized onion and about 3/4 cup chopped herbs).

To complete the experience, I opened a bottle of Benmarl Winery Zinfandel. Benmarl is a Hudson Valley winery that I discovered at the Hyde Park farmers market last weekend. They typically grow their own grapes, but since Zin isn't really native to the Hudson Valley, they do source these grapes from California. It's not 100% local, and I do have their Slate Hill White which is a blend of grapes that are sourced locally. The chorizo really called for a big fruit-forward wine, however, and the Zin was ready to play. This Zin has tons of purple fruit on the nose and in the mouth, with a jammy smooth mouth feel. There is a good amount of heat which could be off-putting, but it really complemented the creamy, spicy textures and flavors in the bread pudding.

Farmers Market: onions, bread, carrots, radishes
Homegrown: greek basil, rosemary, parsley, sage
Provisions: Daniele natural chorizo
FreshDirect: Coach Farm Black Pepper Chevre
Pantry Items: olive oil, sea salt
Fail: milk (organic, not local)

One Local Summer Week 1: Chard and Chevre Frittata

So, One Local Summer 2009 is finally here! Just to recap, the goal is to make at least one meal from all local ingredients (exceptions: oil, salt, pepper, spices) and write about it to share with the world over at Farmtophilly.com (collective posts go live tomorrow!) I am traveling and don't have access to my pictures, but I'll post them in the next day or two.

My menu consisted of:

• Farmers' market greenhouse tomatoes with caramelized-onion-infused oil and homegrown basil
  
• Chard and chevre frittata with caramelized onions
  
• Homegrown green salad with farmers market carrots, radishes, scallions and homegrown basil and mint
• Chateau Lafayette Reneau Seyval-Chardonnay NV from the Finger Lakes
  

For my meal, I utilized a couple of local options - mostly the farmers' market and winter CSA leftovers, but also FreshDirect which has a nice selection from a handful of local purveyors including a selection of NY state wines.

I sauteed one large bunch of green swiss chard with caramelized onions that I had made earlier in the week. When I caramelize onions, I cook them up with olive oil, salt, pepper and a good shake of ground cayenne pepper. I then put the onions, oil and all, in a jar in the fridge. I kept aside some of the oil to use as dressing for my tomatoes (which really didn't need dressing at all!) I put these aside while I beat 8 local organic free-roaming eggs and got them started in the same pan where I'd tossed the greens. Once the eggs started to set, I added the chard mixture and dotted the whole pan with about 2 ounces of chevre (I could have easily used all 4 ounces though...next time!) and finished the frittata in the oven.

The sweet caramelized onions with the tangy chevre and the earthy greens made for a wonderful combination of flavors. The tomato salad served as a bridge into summer which was an interesting contrast to the green salad which held the last bastions of our spring haul. I think the lettuces are just about to be done for the season which is sad because we got them in late and they are already on the tough side.

The one aspect that I didn't love was the wine. I selected it chiefly because it was very inexpensive and fit the bill for local. For the price, it was fine, but I thought it was rather thin with a lot of crisp apple flavors and oak competing with each other at first taste and then just disappearing rather abruptly. I will definitely explore the local vino options more as this challenge goes on.

Farmers' market: greenhouse tomatoes, carrots, radishes, scallions
CSA: yellow onions (which I had caramelized earlier in the week)
Homegrown: red and green leaf lettuces, basil, mint
FreshDirect: Nature's Yolk eggs, Coach Farm chevre, Chateau Lafayette Reneau Seyval-Chardonnay NV
Pantry Exceptions: Olive oil from Provisions, sea salt, black pepper, ground cayenne
Non-local: balsamic vinegar

Musings: Defining Local for Me

In choosing to make local food more of a centerpiece in my lifestyle, I've been faced with deciding what local actually means for me. Certain things get the local stamp without much thought - farmers market produce which generally (at mine) gets vetted by someone else, for instance. And what's good enough for them is good enough for me - generally NY and NJ vendors with the occasional VT cheese vendor (Bufala di Vermont is one that I haven't tried but pops up once in awhile).

Local absolutely consists of the lettuces, herbs, tomatoes and jalapenos we have growing on the deck even though a couple of the plants (chives, mint) were transplanted from a family garden in Vermont.

Furthermore, I've decided that local can be whatever is local while I am traveling. We spend a fair amount of time in Vermont, giving us access to great cheeses, meat and additional produce at their farmers markets and local stores. Naturally, the products must be local to VT to count.

The last layer of local that I've considered is the sort of local that is small business in support of some local vendors and some national. I frequent a store called Provisions in Manhattan which has great olive oils and some local products. The local items are not many, but there are RI, VT, NY and NJ foods available and the store is the base for year-round CSA pickups.

For the purposes of an eat-local challenge, I can't in good faith say that anything bought there regardless of origin is local. However, in the big picture of my personal food values, supporting this store is supporting the kind of "local" that I'd like to see in NYC neighborhoods - independent small grocery stores that have relationships with small local producers, all of whom care deeply about quality, freshness, connection to people and land, and community.

So, is the sea salt from WA sold at the local natural grocery local? Not literally. But maybe, in order to create the world we want to see, we need to make sure the definition is flexible enough to support our small businesses who support some local vendors and find us some interesting national or less local vendors who are marketing great products.

Farmers Market Week in Review

In my walks by the farmers market the past week or week and a half, I have noticed new colors and smells, but couldn't stop in to partake. Yesterday, I hauled home an incredible late spring, early summer bounty full of strawberries, greenhouse tomatoes, asparagus, onions, carrots, beautiful green swiss chard, bok choi and a great loaf of harvest grain bread.

I am thinking that this year there is less on offer at my downtown Brooklyn farmers market, or maybe I'm just going more regularly so that the changes are less dramatic for me. I do think there is at least one or two less fruit and vegetable vendors. The sheep's milk ricotta vendor that last summer made me want to throw over family members in order to get one more tub isn't around (although the new cheese guy has some nice wares...just haven't tasted yet).

Between the above realization and the fact that I'm really making a much bigger effort to eat local, I'm embarking on some new adventures in the farmers market world. This week I'm going to check out at the Fulton Street Seaport market which just opened about a week ago. I'll try and check out the Bowling Green farmers market if I can. I know they are not in Brooklyn and so it does slightly violate the whole "Brooklyn Forager" thing, but they are both very much in my immediate foraging area. And I don't have a Saturday for a couple of weeks until I get to try out the Grand Army Plaza market. I have a feeling that one will enter more regularly into my rotation since it's the biggest in Brooklyn and has more meats and grains and varied vendors.

Don't get me wrong, I love my farmers market. But if I'm going to really make a go of this, I'm going to have to broaden my Brooklyn (and neighboring) horizons.