Eat. Drink. Better.

Like this post? Subscribe to our RSS feed and stay up to date.

Landi Simone the ‘Bee Lady’ of Gooserock Farm in Montville, New Jersey goes all out every year to help raise awareness about honey bees and their importance to our agriculture and eco-systems.

Landi, pictured here in her ‘bee bikini’, got together with fellow, bee buddy, Joe Treimel to show off their live bee apparel and accessories. Joe sported a bee beard. This all took place last weekend at the Essex County Environmental Center.

Read more about Landi and what is happening to honey bees in one of my earlier posts. Here’s a crazy story I saw yesterday morning on CNN.com about 12 MILLION honey bees that swarmed a Canadian highway after a truck carrying them flipped over!

My favorite honey & herb sauce . . . Read the rest of this entry »

I chose this stock image of an odd-shaped pizza among the thousands available for 3 reasons, 1) I didn’t have my act together to take a digital photo of my own; 2) the actual title of this one is Organic Rustic Pizza; 3) I love that it is an odd shape, which represents just how creative you can get with homemade pizza!

While we cook almost everything on the grill during the summer months (and quite often the rest of the year), we have a few rainy-day summer meals we like to fall back on. It was an extremely stormy Sunday this past weekend, so we had a pizza night, which is why you are getting the pizza post.

You don’t have to have all the home pizza making bells and whistles, but they do help. We have a wonderful wooden pizza ‘peel’, which is the giant wooden spatula thing that helps get the pizza in and out of the oven. We also have a pizza stone, which is a great cooking element that you put in the oven rather than putting the pizza directly on the rack. Pizza peels and stones aren’t very expensive.

Easy Crust

Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, I was walking through our farm gardens, when all of a sudden I turned around, and there stood a hungry tiger, licking his chomps. “Hmmm, that’s a peculiar non-native species to roam the Wisconsin countryside,” I said to myself, and then ran like hell across the field.

All of a sudden, I came to the edge of a cliff, staring down into the deep canyon below. ‘Hmmm, this canyon wasn’t here yesterday,” I noted, as the tiger quickly caught up to me. As I looked down, at the bottom of the canyon stood a second tiger, ready for dinner. I saw a small branch growing out of the edge of the cliff, and I quickly jumped and grabbed the branch, dangling precipitously over the cliff drop off, but hey, I figured I’m still alive.

I look up to see not only tiger number one snarling down at me, but two voracious mice, chewing away on my branch. But as the branch started to crack and my life flashed before me, my eye catches a strawberry, dangling from its vine. Not just any strawberry, but a perfectly ruby red ripe beauty, moist with morning dew. And I reach out, picked it and ate that strawberry. Read the rest of this entry »

The fresh berry season seems so short to me. I really try to eat more seasonally and regionally, but I must admit that I buy frozen organic berries to use mostly in fruit smoothies (see below) during the sad non-berry season.

Growing fresh berries may be the most exciting - especially if you have a local bear that becomes familiar with your crop! Until our current house, I’ve always had some berry bushes and enjoyed the picked-off-the-bush freshness of berries for breakfast AND dessert! I tried container strawberries on the deck in the last couple of years, but it was such an unbelievable chore to keep them from the critters, that I gave up, surrendered my succulent beauties to some very happy chipmunks and whoever else was enjoying them.

I love to buy fresh local berries or even pick them myself from some of the U-Pick farms in my area (Northern New Jersey). Knowing that berries often get the worst kind of pesticides sprayed on them, I’m kind of careful of how they’ve been grown. I almost never buy them non-organic out of season in the grocery store as they often come from South America, where they are allowed to use more pesticides. (not sure about current trade laws, but it used to be that we (US) weren’t allowed to use DDT on our own crops, but we still produced the stuff, sent it down to Mexico and S. America, where THEY used it on various crops, and turned around and sent it back to us - this may not be the case any more, but it is so emblazoned in my little mind, that it is very difficult for me to buy any berries from the supermarket that are NOT organic).

Wow. There’s a berry rant for you! Click on to see my favorite ways to eat berries!

Read the rest of this entry »

Since I will not have the ability to do a serious vegetable garden or have chickens and/or goats and cows at my suburban New Jersey home . . . YET . . . I am very committed to finding locally produced food. For so many reasons I’m a local foodie. Here are a couple of them:

 - the lower carbon impact of supporting food that isn’t ‘big Ag’ produced and shipped across the country

 - I personally enjoy meeting the farmers (whenever possible) and supporting their efforts

 - the food is so much fresher and tastes better to me

 - I simply get great satisfaction in knowing that I’m helping to move towards a more sustainable agriculture system by eating/buying locally

The following list of various ways to find and buy local food is an excerpt from a story we did last May/June in Relevant Times, by Tamara Jean Scully, who is a freelance writer, specializing in agricultural issues. She is a local foods advocate, working with the Foodshed Alliance to support local, sustainable family farming. Tammy is also a part-time farmer, growing perennials, raspberries and minor fruits. tamarajeanscully.com

Read the rest of this entry »

A great resource on the food crisis is Raj Patel’s site, Stuffed and Starved. He is the author of a book by the same name, which was published in 2007. The book is an insightful read that gives a very thorough background on the food crisis causes and deeper issues with trade and the global food economy which is dominated by a handful of large corporations. Topics include farmer suicides, the impact of trade agreements, how hunger and obesity are related, and ag- and biotechnology and your food.

The book description reads, “From seed to store to plate, Stuffed and Starved explains the steps to regain control of the global food economy, stop the exploitation of farmers and consumers, and rebalance global sustenance.” Read the rest of this entry »

Someone once asked Sister Caroline Sullivan the question: “Do you treat an onion the same way you treat a soul?” She quickly, enthusiastically, replied with a resounding “yes.” Sullivan is on a
passionate mission to assist people in seeing eating as spiritual, resulting in a greater reverence for all of life.

“I believe if we could reverence food and animals with respect, we would start treating people differently,” explains Caroline. “I truly believe this act can bring about peace and change the tides of global warming. It’s all about balance and giving more than you take.”

Caroline, a Dominican Sister of Sinsinawa, brings these values to the plate through her work at The Bridge-Between Retreat Center located south east of Green Bay, Wisconsin, a restored turn of the century farm and educational center she founded that stimulates people of all faiths and backgrounds to reflect on their connection to our food system and all of creation.

How can we, in our 24/7 caffeine-pulsating world, get back to the simple basics of eating with intent? How do we rekindle an appreciation for the abundance in our lives? Caroline offers some
tips you can serve up at dinner tonight: Read the rest of this entry »

We come from the earth, we return to the earth, and in between we garden.
Anonymous

Since we moved into our current home, we haven’t developed a serious vegetable garden. We’ve missed it, and every winter for the last 4 years, we have dreamed, planned, fantasized and even drawn pictures complete with fences (which are critical since we have a seriously hungry deer and critter population), vines, flowers and rows and rows of burgeoning edible vegetation.

The subsequent Springs have found these dreams beyond our capacity what with start up multi-media companies and other silliness occurring. However, we have managed to keep our perennial beds going and since I seem to have a flower addiction, these seem to expand a little every year.

For the last 3 years, we’ve been doing potted veggies and herbs on the deck, where our big scary guard dog (not), woody the wonder boy, our goofy golden retriever, keeps the critters from taking the entire harvest. We don’t mind sharing with the wildlife, but they tend to get greedy around here.

Read the rest of this entry »

This week’s market fare is a short one, must be the busy start of summer! I am definitely with Joy in celebrating the fact that fresh berries are now in season. Really looking forward to a trip to the U-pick farm and the arrival of blueberries and blackberries as well. It’s a favorite time of year around this kitchen.

Posts follow the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

Call it a chick thing. Call it too many episodes of “Little House on the Prairie” growing up. Call it a quest for crafting a livelihood around our inner female pioneer, wanting to create businesses around our passions for food, the land and leaving this world a better place. While the number of farms in the U.S. continues to decline overall, the number of farms purchased and run by women under 55 is on an upswing. With most of these new female farm ventures embracing sustainable agriculture principles — and many moving into farming after careers in other industries entirely — these chicks add a significant positive ripple into our food system, one organic, heirloom tomato at a time.

“Women farmers today are reinventing the face of organic agriculture,” explains Denise O’Brien, executive director of the Women in Food and Agriculture Network. “They’re focused on raising healthy food for their community and often sell their products through farmers’ markets or community supported agriculture initiatives.” Young women, such as Zoë Bradbury in Oregon, are ditching traditional career paths early on to go for their dreams of being a farmer and contributing to creating a local, healthy food system. Or these women may run diversified farm-based businesses, such as Marguerite Ramlow who runs Artha Sustainable Living Center from her farm in Wisconsin, conducting organic gardening, yoga, renewable energy and sustainable living workshops on-site.

Why this trend of women launching farm and food based businesses? Read the rest of this entry »