Green Your Plate

Green Your Plate has moved!

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 03:03:00 +0000

Green Your Plate has moved to a bigger, better home at http://greenyourplate.net! Mike at Tela was instrumental in helping with the transition from Blogger to a WordPress self-hosted site.

Come visit me at the new location and make sure to re-bookmark the page or re-subscribe to the new RSS feed so that you don't miss out on any future posts. See you over there!

Minnesota Food Bloggers in 2011

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:06:00 +0000

Photo credit: Joy Estelle Summers

Had you told me at this time last year that in 2011 I would:

-spend much of the year behind a camera snapping food photos,

-have the chance to meet local chefs and cookbook authors whom I admired,

-do a cooking demonstration at the Minneapolis Farmers Market,

-be recognized as a Blog of the Month by Jamie Oliver,

And most importantly,

-make dozens of new friends in 2011, super cool people who were as crazy about food as me,

Well...I'm not sure I would have believed it.

But that is exactly what happened this year. Many of these opportunities came about via a local networking group called Minnesota Food Bloggers, which was started by uber-talented blogger Stephanie Meyer.

I remember seeing a Twitter notice last December about an upcoming food blogger event in February and signing up with a bit of anxiety - would anyone talk to me? It felt intimidating.

Yet, from that first gathering, it was clear that this was a passionate group of welcoming folks who were supportive and collaborative. We all loved to eat food, cook food and talk about food. (Not to mention, photograph food!) This was my tribe.

The Facebook group started out with around 100 members and has since grown to over 300 members (!). There is now a Minnesota Food Bloggers website and Twitter account (@MNFoodBloggers). Other bloggers have taken the lead in creating off-shoots of the group - Girls Big Food Night for the ladies, Guys Big Food Night for the fellas, Big Veggie Night for the veggie lovers of the group and MN Food Dudes.

There were many official group events throughout the year, some of which I blogged about and some I did not (and sometimes I simply blogged about something connected with the event). There were other food events, that while not officially Minnesota Food Blogger gatherings, I considered to be blogger events because a blogger had organized them or so many of my food blogger friends were there. Hundreds of dollars were raised for charities at most of these events.

At each gathering, we ate delicious food prepared by the talented chefs in the Twin Cities.

FEBRUARY: 128 Cafe

MARCH: Corner Table

APRIL: The Local

MAY: Heidi's

MAY: Blogger Bake Sale fundraiser organized by Kate Selner

JUNE: Rainbow Chinese

JULY: California Olive Ranch event at Cafe Levain organized by Will Hsu

JULY: Eat Ramen Help Japan fundraiser organized by Stephanie Meyer

AUGUST: Fulton Beer, Sangria and Bars Bake-Off at Stephanie Meyer's house

AUGUST: Celebrity Chef Tour / Tour de Farm dinner

DECEMBER: Lady MN Food Bloggers + Adam Vickerman at Stephanie Meyer's house

But equal in importance to the food were the people.

We were there to celebrate each others' triumphs. Some bloggers won awards and cooking contests this year; some began freelancing in food writing, while others expanded the publications for which they create content; some started food-related businesses and others completely switched careers to work in food.

I've been excited to witness it all and cheer people on. It's inspiring to see individuals follow their passions.

I can't wait to meet more local bloggers from this group next year. Here's to more Minnesota Food Blogger adventures in 2012!

'Tis the season to be jolly

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

Happy holidays from my family to yours!

Just-in-time holiday cookies

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 15:42:00 +0000

This past weekend, a holiday-induced panic set in. I hadn't even started thinking about Christmas present ideas, let alone shopped for anything. Holiday card? Photo not selected, let alone printed. And baking? Normally by this point I've perused recipes and picked out a few new ones to add to my standard repertoire. But this year? Forget about it, I've been too busy.

Each year, I toy with the idea of not baking any holiday cookies. But I'm known for my cookies and I love to give platters to my kids teachers and daycare staff plus family and friends at Christmas time. And when your kids start coming home from school and daycare saying that the childcare workers are talking about your ginger cookies, well...you know you must report to oven duty.

It was seriously time to kick some holiday cookie ass.

The problem was, most of my evenings and weekend days between now and Christmas were booked with events. There was no big swath of time that I could set aside to dedicate to baking. And I'm a freak for cookie freshness - I don't like to freeze baked cookies or keep them on hand for more than a couple of days.

Originally I planned to bake them all last Sunday. But it took so long to run errands that afternoon that I ran out of time. That's when a light turned on in my head and I realized that I could stagger my cookie prep over the course of several weeknights, and bake smaller batches each night, then deliver fresh cookies to various people the next day.

I decided to stick with the same cookies that I baked last year so I wouldn't have to stumble through any new unpredictable recipes. What helped further -> three of the four recipes required a chill in the refrigerator prior to baking, so the dough could be made a day ahead.

I like to make memorable cookies that stand out from the typical Christmas platter lineup. No rolled dough or fancy frosting, just intense flavor and a chewy texture. Here's my 2011 cookie lineup:

Ginger spice cookies - I love this recipe because it's so flexible - if you're really on top of things, you can make a batch of dough ahead of time, shape into balls, freeze and bake as needed. Alternately, you can bake these cookies a couple of days ahead of when you need them and they will still stay fresh. Plus, the kids can get involved in mixing and creating the dough balls.

Macaroons with toasted coconut and macadamia nuts - there's a reason that I don't make these more often - they are a pain to make and the ingredients are expensive. Still, the final result is worth it - they're toasty and exotic.

Salted chocolate covered caramel cookies - this is a recipe from fellow Minnesota blogger Kathy Lewinski's A Good Appetite blog. Super chocolatey with chewy bits of caramel and a surprising salt kick, these cookies are a fun, unique addition to the holiday cookie platter.

Just be forewarned - with very little flour in the dough, it can be hard to scoop when chilled.

Chocolate peppermint cookies - these cookies are based on the same recipe as the Salted Caramel cookies, but substitute peppermint extract for the vanilla, semi-sweet chocolate chips for the caramel bits and are topped with broken bits of candy canes.

This is an ultra-chocolate alternate for those who don't go for the salted caramel cookie. Though the dough base is similar, the peppermint offers a refreshing twist that makes this cookie seem different. Plus, I like how the candy melts into psychedelic waves.

Throw some mini candy canes in the middle of the platter, and voila, you have a decadent mix that will get the teachers tweeting in appreciation.

Based on my experiences this week, I discovered that this staggered approach can be successful but the key is to be hyper-organized. For me, the biggest challenge was to have all ingredients on hand and the kitchen organized with the tools that you need at your fingertips.

Key tools are: mixing bowls, whisk, spatula, measuring cups, measuring spoons, a pastry brush, hand mixer or stand mixer, a Silpat if you have one or parchment paper, cookie sheets and a cooling rack. I also find that I go through numerous hand towels during cookie-making because I'm wiping my hands a lot.
Key dry ingredients for the recipes I made: flour, white sugar, light brown sugar, dark brown sugar, molasses (light / mild version), vegetable shortening, vegetable oil, baking soda, baking powder, table salt, sea salt flakes; cinnamon, ground ginger (a large jar), cloves, crystallized ginger; vanilla extract and peppermint extract; several bags of semi-sweet chocolate chips, bittersweet chocolate chips, sweetened flaked coconut, caramel bits and candy canes.
Key fresh ingredients: Eggs, butter.

(Oh, and the secret to successfully breaking up candy canes? Use the butt end of a wrench. Smashing candy canes is the perfect stress-reliever for the holiday season. :-))

What worked for me was to buy all ingredients over the weekend, then prep the dough for the ginger and chocolate cookies on one night and bake them the following night. The macaroons are an exception - I think it's best to prepare the entire recipe in one go, timed as close to possible to when you will give them away.

Some shopping notes: I like to buy the two most expensive ingredients - crystallized ginger and macadamia nuts - in bulk to save money. In the Twin Cities, I've found bulk crystallized ginger at Penzeys and area co-ops and bulk macadamia nuts at Rainbow Foods. I use Ghirardelli chocolate chips, and have found both the semi-sweet and bittersweet chip varieties at Super Target.

What's your favorite treat to bake for the holidays? Do you get your baking done in one marathon session, or do you spread the work out over the month?

Friday's Food for Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 13:23:00 +0000

Every week, I read tons of news, primarily related to local / seasonal / organic / natural foods, health, wellness and sustainability. On any given day, you'll find me sharing links to relevant news stories and recipes on Twitter and sometimes on Green Your Plate's Facebook page.

Here are some of the items that caught my eye in the Internet sphere this week:

Can organic food feed the world? Barry Estabrook argues, YES.

First, superweeds, now superinsects? Environmental journalist Tom Philpott details the EPA's recent rebuke of Monsanto.

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." Simple advice, so why is it so hard to implement?

Has Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign backed off from pushing for healthier food options for kids? NYU nutrition professor Marion Nestle thinks so, then the White House reacts.

Further evidence that beer is food: local beer Finnegan's contributes 100% of profits to local food shelves.

Various sites are posting their 2012 food trend predictions. Will the next hot food be...

... caneles? or blood? (James Beard Foundation)
...pretzels? or chicken skin? (Huffington Post)
...Peruvian food? (Food Channel)

Satsumas for all! Winter citrus has arrived on the scene.

Holiday gift ideas for foodies: An excellent list of food books authored by Minnesota writers.

When the weather turns icy outside, the hot oven beckons.

Gingerbread with cinnamon icing (Relishing It)
Cardamom bread (Eating the Minneapple)
Nutella pound cake (Kate in the Kitchen)
Plus, a multitude of ideas for gingerbread cookies (Food for My Family)

The blog fairy

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 21:38:00 +0000

What? It's December already??? Get outta here.

I guess that Lionel Richie wasn't quite enough to bring me back to blogging life. Every year, the fall schedule is a blog killer for me - between the start of a new school year, 4th quarter work deadlines, both kids birthdays, Halloween, Thanksgiving and all that jazz, I'm forced to drop out of the food blogging scene for a while.

During these past few months I missed the culmination of the local harvest and the final farmers market days of the season. Dinnertimes have been haphazard. Instead, I played UNO with the card shark above and took in my first meal at the Mall of America's American Girl Cafe with my own American birthday girl.

I witnessed not just one, but two teeth lost - not only from my daughter's mouth, but from the scene entirely. Imagine trying to explain that one to the tooth fairy. Twice. The first time it happened:

The second time a tooth went missing within the span of the same week, I said to my daughter, "how are you going to explain it to the fairy this time?" She penned:

Maybe I need to write a note to the blog fairy.

IN SEASON: Pears

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 01:43:00 +0000

Before this season, I could count on one hand the number of times I've bought fresh pears in the last ten years. But lately they have been entrancing me. Pears, where have you been all my life?

Pears are at their prime right now, with a season that lasts until around December. Like apples, pears are labelled with their varietal name. Unlike apples, there are much fewer varieties sold commercially - some of the main varieties are Bartlett, Bosc, Starkrimson and Forelle (pictured below), and Comice (the green one pictured above).

Depending on the pear variety, the flavor ranges from sweet to spicy and texture varies from buttery smooth to faintly gritty. Some varieties like the Comice and Starkrimson are best eaten raw, while others such as the Bartlett and Anjou are suitable for both eating raw and cooking. Bosc pears (the brown skinned variety) hold their shape well, so they're perfect to poach for an elegant dessert.

Pears have perplexed me in the past - namely, how do you know when they're ripe? I'm not alone in this. Someone quoted a statistic on Twitter recently that something like 84% of Americans don't know how to tell when a pear is ripe.

Pears are finicky fruits - they are picked hard and must have time to ripen, which may take from a few days to over a week. (I must admit, this tests my attention span and patience. If I can't use a fruit or vegetable right away and need to let it sit out to ripen, I often forget about it and it gets over-ripe.) They also bruise easily, which can mar their beauty.

Unlike many other fruits, pears ripen from the inside out. If you squeeze the pear and the outside feels soft, chances are that the pear is over-ripe.

At the grocery store earlier this fall, I asked a produce guy to coach me on determining ripeness. He said that for Bartletts, the skin color will start to look more golden and if you gently squeeze the pear and the skin feels a bit rubbery, it's ripe. For other varieties such as Anjou and Bosc, the skin doesn't change color when ripe. To check for ripeness, press a little on the stem end - if it feels slightly softened and the skin around the stem looks a little withered, it's ready to eat.

This past month or so, my work and home live has been so busy that I've only managed to make one actual recipe with pears - a Tuscan sweet rosemary-pear pizza from Lynne Rosetto Kasper's cookbook, The Italian Country Table.

While the fruit and herb mixture tasted unusual and fabulous - not only does the recipe call for rosemary, but also fresh basil, lemon juice, orange zest, cinnamon, and black pepper - I burnt the hell out of the crust based on the instructions to place the pizza pan on the bottom rack in a 500 degree oven. So, I wouldn't 100% recommend the recipe.

I keep buying red pears with a grand plan to make a beautiful fall pear salad with pungent Italian gorgonzola, toasted walnuts, mixed bitter greens and a red wine vinaigrette, but somehow I can't get it together to toast the walnuts or make the vinaigrette.

Instead, I end up eating the pears straight up. They're awesome paired with blue cheese and nuts.

Maybe I'm only meant to eat pears raw?

Here are some other intriguing-sounding recipes that call for pears; maybe you will get further into your pear cooking endeavors than me? I hope to try at least some of these recipes yet this fall.

Pear, gorgonzola and walnut salad (Inn Cuisine)
Crostini with Camembert and glazed pears (Kate in the Kitchen)
Pear and Gruyere strata (Cooking Light)
Linguine with pears, prosciutto and blue cheese (A Good Appetite)
Crockpot pear and ginger applesauce (Cookin' Canuck)
Pear butter (Simply Recipes)
Pears with cacao ganache and cinnamon (Rawmazing)
Vanilla poached pears (Alton Brown)
Pears poached in red wine (La Tartine Gourmande)
Apple and pear galette (Fresh Tart)
Pear, cranberry and gingersnap crumble (Smitten Kitchen)
Pear and sour cherry brown betty with brandy hard sauce (Melissa Clark for NY Times)

Which pear variety is your favorite, and what do you like to make with pears?

Fall playbook

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 21:07:00 +0000

Hello? Is it me you're looking for?

I've been AWOL lately from this blog, consumed in September and October by work deadlines, swim lessons, a wedding anniversary, illness, visits from the tooth fairy, flu shots, field trips, kids' birthdays - in other words, daily life. Cooking, writing and photographing all take time, a commodity in short supply around our house these days.

But we still have to eat. Like switching out clothes, when the seasons change I switch out meals in our dinner rotation. When the weather turns cooler, my mind turns to slow cooking, roasting, braising and baking; and warming comfort foods with lots of spices.

I like soups, stews and chilis in particular because they can be made in advance on the weekend and reheated throughout the week for work lunches and easy weeknight dinners or frozen for future meals. They're the perfect food for a hectic time of year.

Here's my fall soup, stew and chili playbook:

Curried butternut squash soup (vegetarian)

Black bean soup (slow cooker, meatless version)

Black bean soup with pork and mojo (slow cooker, meat version)

Chicken wild rice soup (slow cooker)

Chicken, pasta and chickpea stew

Snowy winter lentil stew (vegetarian)

Quick chicken noodle soup (30-minute recipe)

Chili (30-minute recipe) - quite possibly the world's easiest chili recipe, this is super quick to pull together on a weeknight

Plus, don't forget dessert!

Ginger spice cookies

What are your "go-to" soup, stew and chili recipes during the fall?

Applefest

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 02:39:00 +0000

At a recent food photography seminar that I attended, I told the L.A.-based photographer that I envied the strawberry figs that grew in her backyard. She replied, "Yeah, but you have apples...".

She had a point. Fresh, delicious local apples are all around us here in Minnesota right now.

It's easy to take for granted the plethora of apple options we have available. There are about 7,000 apple varieties grown globally; 2,000 are grown in U.S., with about 100 varieties grown commercially. Domestically, Washington state dominates apple production.

For a long time, Red and Golden Delicious apples dominated the market. They were grown for their appearance, shipping and storage characteristics, not necessarily for flavor. Gradually, some international apple varieties were added to the mix at stores, including Fuji, which originated in Japan, Gala from New Zealand, and Pink Lady from Australia. But some of the biggest splashes in the apple world have come from Minnesota.

One recent standout is the Honeycrisp, an extra crisp, juicy and sweet apple which caught on like wildfire after the University of Minnesota introduced this new variety in 1991. Though it originated in Minnesota, the apple proved to be so popular and in demand by consumers that it's now being grown all over the country. Honeycrisp is notoriously fickle to grow, however, and many believe that the best quality Honeycrisps still come from cold-climate states like Minnesota.

Another locally-developed apple is the SweeTango, introduced in 2009. A hybrid of the Honeycrisp and another U of M developed variety, Zestar, the SweeTango is an apple that's been shrouded in controversy. Even though I like this variety - it's as crisp as the Honeycrisp but with a more tart flavor - the lawsuits have affected my view of this apple and I choose other varieties unless I'm purchasing them at a farmers market or my co-op.

The length of growing season and general climate conditions dictate the apple's unique characteristics, so offerings vary by region. For example, Haralson is a cold climate apple that you typically won't find outside the Midwestern region, and our short growing season means you won't see locally grown Pink Lady or Gala apples here. What's cool is that different varieties mature at different points of the season, so you can eat several different apples throughout the fall season.

Locally grown produce at major supermarkets

Like I've mentioned previously, in addition to farmers markets, I tend to shop for groceries at a variety of stores - co-ops, small and large supermarket chains. I try to seek out local produce at these places if at all possible.

Re: shopping for apples in particular, farmers markets tend to have the largest selection of unique heirloom varieties; co-ops are the places to find local organic apples; and general supermarkets can be hit or miss in offering local apples at all. It's a shame, really, because there are some great apples being grown here in Minnesota.

When Cub Foods invited me to an Applefest event last week to talk about their locally grown apples plus a new proprietary Cub apple that will be launched next year, I was intrigued.

I'd recently read an article about issues surrounding locally grown produce for larger supermarket chains, and the Cub produce managers with whom I spoke at the apple event echoed several of the concerns.

There are a number of challenges for larger grocery store chains to stock locally grown produce - consistent availability, sufficient volume, appearance and uniformity are all big challenges. Grocery shoppers are accustomed to produce that's perfectly uniform in size and pristine in appearance, and many times locally grown food doesn't conform. Food safety certification and trackability can also be issues for smaller growers, as often produce goes through a distributor and is not directly farm-to-store.

Ultimately, customers must want to buy locally-grown produce and be willing to pay a premium for it for it to make sense for large-scale grocers to carry it. If enough customers request them, stores may consider carrying local foods.

At the Cub Applefest event, I learned that Cub's apple department focuses on Regional-Seasonal-Local offerings during September-October-November, then Domestic (mainly from Washington) from November-April, then Southern hemisphere apples (mainly from Chile) in April-May.

I was pleased to hear that Cub carries several varieties of local apples at the height of the growing season here, sourced from a consortium of 20 growers in the Mississippi River Valley.

The varieties are more limited than what you can find at a farmers market - Cub's current local offerings include McIntosh, Cortland, Honeycrisp and Haralson - but there are times that you just can't make it to a farmers market and it's nice to know that you can still support local when you are shopping at some of these larger stores. (Note that if buying local organic apples is important to you, Cub doesn't currently carry them; your best best is to shop at area co-ops. )

A quick cheat sheet on these varieties:
McIntosh - soft texture, tart but sweet, complex flavor; good for baking, sauces and eating
Cortland - mild, balance of sweet and tart; best for baking
Honeycrisp - ultra-crisp, firm and juicy, sweet; best for eating fresh
Haralson - very tart and firm; good for baking, sauces and eating

The new apple from Cub Foods
Cub has its own apple breeding program, with three unique varieties under development. The first Cub-branded apple to be launched next year is a hybrid of Honeycrisp and another unknown variety. This new apple will be available at Cub Foods stores from mid-August to mid-September (roughly until Honeycrisp is available) and will be primarily targeted at the Midwest region.

What does the new apple taste like? I had the opportunity to try it.

Like the Honeycrisp, it's exceptionally crisp and juicy but I think that this apple has greater depth of flavor than the Honeycrisp. I reckon that it will give the SweetTango a run for its money when it's introduced next year.

Cub is sponsoring a contest this month to name the new apple. If you live in Minnesota, you can pick up an entry form at area stores; entries must be postmarked by Saturday October 22nd.

Storage and preparation
Apples can be stored for long periods - up to 6-9 months, so the local apples that you see in stores and at farmers markets are at their freshest now. Though apples can successfully be stored for long periods, the longer any produce is stored, the more the nutrients degrade.

Apples prefer cold temperatures and it's best to store them in the refrigerator rather than on the countertop. (The Cub produce guy said that an apple deteriorates 10 times faster at room temperature than when refrigerated.) Refrigerators dry out foods, so that's why it's recommended that you keep apples in perforated or open plastic bags to retain moisture, and you should really consume apples within 14 days.

Most conventional apples that you buy in grocery stores are coated with a food-grade wax, for appearance and to retain moisture in the apple. It's safe to consume this but if you prefer not to, make sure to wash your apples with warm water prior to eating / cooking.

Apples begin to brown as soon as you cut into them, so if you have to cut them up in advance, you can store them in water with a squirt of lemon juice to slow the browning.

What's your favorite apple to eat, and your favorite apple recipe to cook? Any other apple tips to share?

Read about cheese, gaze at leaves

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:33:00 +0000

Who is the reader who will read about Wisconsin cheese, you ask? Why, it's Carmen O.

Please email me directly at aimwold at gmail (dot) com and share your mailing address so that I can send The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin to you.

As for the rest of you, you get to gaze at leaves.

There's no denying it. We're on the glorious leap into fall, or downward slide into winter, depending on how you look at it.

It's simultaneously exhilarating and depressing to see the trees disrobing, sneezing their leaves off the branches high and low.

Aaaaaaa-choo!

With a certain wistfulness, I spied the local heirloom tomatoes on display at my neighborhood co-op yesterday, knowing that their days are numbered. Time for the last BLT hurrah of the season.

My husband's secret trick to toasting the bread is to brush the slices with bacon grease and brown them directly in the frying pan. Then comes the precarious job of constructing a structurally unsound tower of ingredients - ultra-juicy ripe heirloom tomatoes, smoky bacon, crisp romaine, creamy mayo, tangy sourdough - that begs to be eaten immediately lest they all slide apart.

Assembled together, it makes for a savory, sloppy mess of a sandwich, that, now that I look at it, blends in perfectly to autumn, with hues that mimic the colors of the changing leaves.

It is sandwich as camouflage.

Yes, I'm going to miss you, BLT. Goodbye summer, hello fall.

A Wisconsin cheese dream + a giveaway

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 12:15:00 +0000

After my local beer and cheese spree during the Eat Local Challenge in August, I had to have a cooling-down period. But when I received an invitation from the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board to an event at Cooks of Crocus Hill in St. Paul, The Wisconsin Cheese Course, which included cheese sampling and a presentation about cheese trends, well...I couldn't resist.

Before I tell you about that, though, let me first share some background about Wisconsin cheeses that I learned from reading The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin, co-authored by locals James Norton and Becca Dilley from the Midwestern food website Heavy Table.

There's a long tradition of cheese-making in Wisconsin, going back to various European immigrants settling down in the state and bringing cheese traditions with them from their home countries - Germany, Holland, Denmark, Switzerland, Italy, etc. Wisconsin's terrain was well-suited for dairy farming, and the cheeses produced in the state were based on European traditions but different because the milk produced here is unique to the land.

At one time, there were numerous small cheese plants all over the state, but with the advent of improved transportation and refrigeration methods, the industry began to consolidate. Many plants closed or were bought out by larger companies. Cheese was increasingly commodified and other states, California in particular, threatened Wisconsin's cheese domination.

The Wisconsin cheese industry began to realize that the state's generations-long tradition of cheese-making was a unique asset that could be further cultivated by encouraging the development of new artisan techniques and recognizing extensive cheese-making knowledge through its Wisconsin Master Cheesemaker Program.

Cheese-making is both a science and an art. Though all cheeses begin with milk, many, many factors throughout the cheese-making process impact their final appearance and flavor profile: whether the cows are pastured, what types of grasses they eat and the time of year they eat; which milks are used; which starter bacteria and microbes are introduced; how it's exposed (or not exposed) to heat, moisture, salt and physical manipulation; which finishing techniques are employed; and how long the cheese is aged.

While there are some Wisconsin cheeses that incorporate goat or sheep milk, the vast majority of cheeses created in the state are made from cow's milk. It's amazing to me that so many different varieties of cheese can be made from a single type of milk.

***
Upon arrival at the Wisconsin Cheese Course event, we were greeted with glasses of Surly Furious or Negronis made with Death's Door gin from Madison. If I had thought sampling 10 cheeses in one week during August was a steep order, that turned out to be mere training for this sampling, which included 15 cheeses over the course of the 1 1/2 hour seminar.

Clearly, I was in a Wisconsin cheese dream.

The cheeses were presented in groupings based on current trends.

Trend 1: Quality ingredients and new flavors - incorporating rubs, soaks and flavor additions like herbs and smoke. Examples: Marieke Foenegreek Gouda (Holland's Family Cheese), Espresso BellaVitano (Sartori Foods) and Marieke Smoked Gouda

Tasting notes:
The foenegreek Gouda tasted nutty and maple-y and caused me to fondly recall my experiment topping French toast with this Gouda and maple syrup back in August. The BellaVitano had an espresso-rubbed exterior and a nutty, creamy interior with a bit of crystalline crunch. The smoked Gouda was permeated by subtle smokiness that was not overpowering like some other smoked cheeses.

***
Trend 2: New twists on Wisconsin cheddar - including cave aging, bandaged cheddars, blue cheddars, and high-quality spreads. Examples: Dunbarton Blue (Roelli Cheese), Bandaged Cheddar (Bleu Mont Dairy), Brick Cheese & Cheddar Spread (Widmer's Cheese Cellars)

Tasting notes:
Similar to when I last tried Dunbarton Blue, I found it to be a mild blue with firm cheddar texture and a pleasant saltiness. The bandaged cheddar was earthy and funky from its aging. I rarely buy cheese spreads because I tend to think "Cheez Whiz", so I was surprised when I tasted the Widmer spread and found it strikingly flavorful; it was also wonderful paired with Surly Furious.

***
Trend 3: Farm and estate-branded artisan butters - hand-rolled, with different flavors depending on the time of year. Examples: Hand-rolled butter (Rochdale Farms), Summer Butter (Nordic Creamery), Pasture Butter (Organic Valley)

Tasting notes:
At this point, I think that my taste buds were getting a bit saturated and I couldn't discern huge differences between the butters. One thing that I could taste was how fresh, rich and creamy they were. The color varied from butter to butter and we were told that it changes depending on time of year and which grasses the cows eat.

We also learned that often butters are made and frozen for later sale. A presenter from Rochdale Farms said that their butters are only made when there is demand for them and not frozen. The butter that we sampled was probably only a couple of weeks old. It makes you wonder just how old are most of the butters available in supermarkets?

***
Trend 4: Rise on home entertaining, coupled with a desire for simple yet sophisticated cheese pairings
Examples: Les Freres (Crave Brothers) paired with marinated mushrooms
Caso Bolo Mellage (Carr Valley Cheese) paired with canteloupe jam
Trio of Wisconsin blues paired with honey, cashew crunch, and crystallized ginger:
Buttermilk Blue Affinee (Emmi Roth USA), Tilston Point (Hook's Cheese Co.), Ader Kase Reserve (Seymour Dairy Products)

Tasting notes:
There were so many things going on in this plate; the photo above doesn't even include the Les Freres (a soft rind cheese I'd tried in August) or Caso Bolo Mellange (a mixed milk cheese made with cow, sheep and goat milk) and their accompaniments. What was striking was how well some of these non-traditional items paired with the cheeses.

Out of all of the cheeses I tried during the evening, the only cheese that I notedly disliked was the Tilston Point. There was a strange flavor and gritty texture to it, reminding me of peanut butter and not cheese.

***
Bonus round: Tasting of Marieke Goudas at various ages
Examples: 4 months, 6-9 months and 1.5 - 2 years; garnished with Stonewall Kitchen Spiced Rum Butterscotch Sauce. (I thought that this sauce overpowered the cheeses so I wouldn't recommend this pairing in the future.)

Ultimately, the best way to learn more about cheeses is to try a wide variety. It's fun tasting multiple cheeses at once, because then you quickly learn what you like best.

Since I had tried Les Freres, Dunbarton Blue and most of the Marieke cheeses before, the cheeses that made the biggest impressions on me during this cheese tasting were the Bleu Mont bandaged cheddar; the Casa Bolo Mellage; the Buttermilk Blue Affinee; and the Brick Cheese and Cheddar Spread, mainly because they were unique. But I would happily recommend any of the other cheeses too (except for the Tilston Point).

The Wisconsin Cheese Course event was yet another reminder that Wisconsin cheeses are truly special and can hold their own against any of the world's great cheeses.

***
I received a copy of The Master Cheesemakers of Wisconsin at the event, but since I already own this book, I'm giving it away to one of you. In addition to sharing details about the cheese-making process, the book profiles 43 Master Cheesemakers from across the state who are churning out stellar cheeses year after year. If you're into cheeses like me, you'll undoubtedly find it a fascinating read.

To enter this book giveaway, leave a comment below about your favorite cheese. If you log in as "Anonymous", please be sure to include your first name and last initial or some other unique identifier in your comment so I can call you out. I'll do a random drawing and announce the winner on this blog on Friday September 30th; check back to see if you've won.

May you have some Wisconsin cheese dreams of your own tonight!

Chicken ambition

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:19:00 +0000

These pep talks I've been giving about home cooking are just as much directed at myself as anyone else. The cooking force in me ebbs and flows, and right now, it's at low tide. I have to make up little challenges to keep myself engaged.

With the goal of streamlining cooking and planning out meals for this week, I decided to roast two chickens at once on Sunday and use the meat for several dinners and lunches throughout the week.

Sunday's dinner was roast chicken and potatoes. Per Barbara Kafka, I stuffed the cavities with garlic, lemon and butter, sprinkled both birds generously with salt and pepper, and roasted them in a 500 degree oven for close to an hour. Because the two chickens took up all the space in the pan, I tossed red new potatoes with pan drippings and roasted them separately with rosemary and garlic.

***

Monday night was soup night - my chicken ambition led me to attempt a Quick Chicken Noodle Soup using traditional ingredients for the kids...

...plus a Spicy Asian Chicken and Noodle Soup flavored with ginger, red curry paste, Sriracha sauce and rice noodles for the adults.

What could be better than preparing two 20-minute dinner recipes and making all the eaters at the table happy?

Well, it turned out to be a bit challenging following two separate recipes at once, and the prepping was more complicated than I anticipated because the recipes called for completely different ingredients. It was my first time preparing the Asian soup and I discovered after cooking the recommended amount of rice noodles (3 oz.) that it seemed nowhere near enough for two people and I had to make more. My kids requested no carrots, celery or parsley in their bowls so I ended up picking all of the tiny vegetable pieces out of each bowl.

By dinnertime, I was super crabby.

So crabby that I didn't even snap a photo of the traditional chicken noodle soup, so this old one I have will have to do. It's much prettier than the one I actually served, which was a monochromatic blah without the carrots, celery and parsley.

The worst thing was my kids hardly ate any of the soup (though my daughter did take it to school for lunch the next day). It's a wonder that they continue to grow with the limited range of foods they take in.

As for the adult soup, even though this Asian soup broth tasted complex and interesting, I was too beaten down by the dinner process to enjoy it. If I make this again, I'll increase the noodle amount and wait to throw in the slivered snow peas until shortly before serving.

***

The remainder of the chicken was used for work lunches.

First, a romaine lettuce salad that I'd seen in the latest issue of America's Test Kitchen 30-Minute Meals with shredded chicken, crumbled blue cheese, toasted walnuts, and sliced grapes, all dressed with a sherry vinaigrette.

To make the vinaigrette, whisk together 3 tablespoons of Dijon mustard and 3 tablespoons of sherry vinegar, then slowly drizzle in 1/4 cup olive oil as you continue whisking. Add salt and pepper to taste.

What an amazing flavor combination! I loved this salad.

Finally, my favorite chicken salad recipe - Rosemary Chicken Salad with Smoked Almonds, served in a whole wheat pita pocket with lettuce and chopped cherry tomatoes.

It's safe to say that I've satisfied my chicken fix, and then some.

What do you like to make with leftover roasted chicken?

Priorities

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:11:00 +0000

Market researcher that I am, a study about home cooking snagged my attention the other day. Findings from a survey of American households conducted by Bosch, a kitchen appliance manufacturer, highlighted many reasons why people don't cook: 28% of respondents don't know how, 25% didn't want to clean up the mess, 21% said they didn't have the time. Two-thirds indicated that grocery shopping takes the most time out of all household tasks. (I could have told you that!)

After I posted this study link on Twitter, I tweeted: As a working parent, I can understand these reasons for not cooking. Still, I try. It's cheaper, healthier + better quality at home

One of my friends replied: If I have a clean kitchen, all the ingredients & the time; I love to cook. If any of the 3 are missing, not so much.

My response: Yeah, I agree, but how often do you get all 3? Sometimes 2 of 3 will have to do. Most of time during wk it's 2/3 or 1/3 for us.

Then:

No wonder I'm crabby so often during meal prep, LOL.

You may have noticed that I've been quiet lately, on this blog, Twitter and Facebook. With the start of the school year, a new work schedule, and my kids' fall activities resuming, each day has been filled to the brim. The number of hours in a day are finite - by choosing to do one thing, other things have to give. Lately, I've been trying to focus more on the here and now - my family, my job, my home. It's a full life, even without much blogging.

Another thing that I've consciously made top priority again is cooking, for the reasons I mentioned in my tweet.

In the past couple of weeks I've been trying to get back into the rhythm of cooking dinners. For me, it takes a lot of advance planning to have the dinners figured out and all of the ingredients on hand for each night's meals. Several times over the past couple of weeks, I've gone to prepare a recipe and found that we were missing ingredients. Or the kitchen was a disaster and it felt overwhelming to clean it up, then cook, then clean it up again. Or I was simply tired.

I get why people may choose not to cook. But that doesn't mean you should stop trying.

So, I keep slogging along in my attempts to reclaim dinner. While I'm at it, why not try to reclaim lunches too? Like I mentioned in my previous post, not cooking dinners in August meant that I didn't have home-cooked foods for work lunches either and I ended up eating out often (expensive!) or eating frozen entrees (the opposite of exciting).

Mark Bittman's whole-grain salad recipes in Cooking Light's September issue looked like worthy, sturdy lunch options. I'd wanted to start dabbling in whole grains, and here was my chance.

First off, Chicken Tabbouleh with Tahini Drizzle. It was a bit of a challenge finding plain bulgur at the grocery stores where I shop; most of the time I could only find it in prepackaged boxes of tabbouleh mix, not the grain by itself. In the end, I found it in the bulk bins at my local co-op.

When I cooked it according to the directions, it ended up looking like this.

Since it's my first time cooking bulgur, I wasn't sure if this was how it was supposed to be. It certainly didn't look like the grain in the magazine's photograph of the dish. Bulgur veterans out there, does this look right?

Using ripe heirloom tomatoes plus fresh parsley and mint from the farmers market really made this dish.

For some reason, it's hard for me to get my head around using just a half pound of protein for a recipe for four people, as so many of Mark Bittman's recipes recommend. But after eating this, I'd say that eight ounces was enough to give the dish some extra satiating power which, combined with the hearty bulgur, made a filling lunch. It stored well too.

***

The second recipe, Waldorf Salad with Steel-Cut Oats, called for steel-cut oats as the grain base for the dish, intriguing since I tend to think of oats for breakfast only.

The cooked oats initially stuck together in clumps and I wondered if it was wise to use the McCann steel-cut oatmeal for this - is there only one kind of steel-cut oats or would I have found whole oats in the bulk bin at the co-op? In the recipe headnotes, Bittman said that the clumpiness would disperse once all of the ingredients were mixed together. (This did turn out to be the case.)

Then, the skeptic in me fretted about toasting the walnuts in a pan with honey drizzled over them (won't they stick to the pan and stay gooey?); but in the end they dried and crisped up, and the cayenne pepper kicked them up a notch.

When I first took a bite of the salad immediately after making it, the vinegar was overpowering. There was so much happening in the final dish - chewy oats, juicy grapes, toasty sweet and spicy walnuts, crisp tart apples, bitter radicchio, pungent blue cheese and acidic sherry vinegar - that my mouth struggled to make sense of it all. I wasn't so sure about this salad.

But this vegetarian salad was a sleeper - the flavors benefitted from the time to co-mingle, and as I ate it for lunch for the next couple of days, it grew on me. The ingredients held up for several days, aside from the radicchio going a little limp. As others suggested, I kept the blue cheese and walnuts separate and added them to the salad right before serving. The salad was filling and satisfying, so much better than a frozen lunch entree.

And with that, my interest in cooking with whole grains is ignited. Sometimes you have to try new things to get back into the game.

Be one of the 72% who cook. Your health and well-being are important. Make the time. Just do it.

Do you make your own lunches? What do you like to prepare?

Bitter balls, bitter me

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Wed, 14 Sep 2011 16:30:00 +0000

[This post originally ran in September 2009, but I continue to get comments on it two years after it was published. Since bitter balls are available at local farmers markets now, I'm running it again.

When I first wrote this post, I was mystified about how to use bitter balls but since then readers have chimed in on the ingredient's origin and how to cook it properly - check out the Comments section for ideas. If you try it yourself, let me know what you think.]

First of all, what the heck is this vegetable, and, second, how can someone eat a whole bin of these things??

When I was interviewed on the Minneapolis Farmers Market's Fresh and Local radio show on September 19, host Susan Berkson challenged me to find a recipe for preparing bitter balls. (Get your mind out of the gutter, people, this is a type of tiny eggplant. I think.)

This is a pretty esoteric ingredient for most people, which of course intrigued me. I had to try this out.

***

The first leg of my bitter ball journey began with some Internet research on this vegetable.

My understanding was that they are a variety of eggplant named pea eggplant, with a bitter flavor. I wanted to know more, so I did some Internet sleuthing. Instead of clarifying things, my search raised more questions.

When I did a search on Wikipedia for pea eggplant, it re-directed me to information about Solanum Torvum.

Solanum torvum (Turkey Berry), is a bushy, erect and spiny perennial plant used horticulturally as a rootstock for eggplant. Grafted plants are very vigorous and tolerate diseases affecting the root system, thus allowing the crop to continue for a second year. It is also known as Devil's Fig, Prickly Nightshade, Shoo-shoo Bush, Wild Eggplant, Pea Eggplant, susumba, boo, terongan, tekokak, berenjena cimarrona, berenjena de gallina, berenjena silvestre, tabacón, pendejera, tomatillo, bâtard balengène, zamorette, friega-platos, sundaikkai (Tamil: சுண்டைக்கா), makhua phuang (Thai: มะเขือพวง), and many other names.

The fruits are berries that grow in clusters of tiny green spheres (ca. 1 cm in diameter) that look like green peas. They become yellow when fully ripe. They are thin-fleshed and contain numerous flat, round, brown seeds.

The green fresh fruits are edible and used in Thai cuisine, being one of the essential elements of the Thai green curry. They are also used in Lao cuisine. The fruits are incorporated into soups and sauces in the Ivory Coast.

In a bulletin board discussion on Cooks Illustrated, What is a "bitter ball", one reader referenced A Cook's Thesaurus, which has photos about various types of eggplant, including pea eggplant.

Another Thai foods website, Thai Table, had a photo of Thai pea eggplant, and it looked like a miniature version of the regular Thai eggplant, with white coloring and green markings.

I recalled that local food site Heavy Table did an article a while back about foods at the Minneapolis Farmers Market and included a photo of bitter balls. They looked a bit different than the Thai Table photo.

Hmmm.

I also searched for recipes online, but found very few. This was going to be a tough challenge.

***

The second hoop jumped through was trying to find them at the Minneapolis Farmers Market. The last time I was there a month ago, they were everywhere. This time, it was difficult to find them.

When I started asking around for Thai pea eggplant, the vendors had no idea what I was talking about. One vendor said they they were only available when the eggplant was very young (were the ones that I had seen before just baby Thai eggplant??).

When I asked for bitter balls, though, a grower directed me to the bin of tiny orbs shown in the photo at the beginning of my post. There was no way that I was going to buy a whole bucket of these things, so instead I asked if I could just get a small container.

A complicated discussion about my request commenced between the English speaking young woman and another older woman. They were obviously not used to a request like mine.

I asked the vendor how she prepared this vegetable and she said that she put it into stir fries. With what else?, I pressed. She gestured weakly to the other items at their stand - eggplant, potatoes and the like.

(I asked around about this at the market and couldn't glean any specific recipes for preparing this beyond "put it in a soup or a stir fry". I guess I should have learned Hmong in school rather than French, it would have been more useful.)

***

Part three of my bitter ball odyssey involved cooking the little buggers. Oh boy, another culinary challenge...

I'd found a recipe online for Chicken Curry with Potatoes and Thai Pea Eggplant and thought that would be the perfect vehicle. I mean, it had coconut milk, Thai curry paste, red peppers - some of my favorite things. When I've had a vegetable in the past that I haven't liked, it's helped to pair it with ingredients I do like.

I started to have misgivings about the recipes as I prepped the ingredients. The quantity of ingredients seemed like WAY too much relative to the amount of coconut milk. The cooking instructions were also pretty vague - simply "cook until done". Was this going to take 15 minutes? 30 minutes?

And wouldn't you know it, when I threw all of the ingredients into the wok, there was too much for the amount of liquid. I had to quickly improvise by adding in more coconut milk, curry paste and chili paste. Then, the potatoes were nowhere near done at 15 minutes, or 20 minutes.

As it cooked...and cooked...and cooked, I grew more and more exasperated. I began to feel bitter about the whole enterprise, so I flounced onto the couch and in a petulant tone told my husband I wasn't going to do any more work; he would have to finish the meal. Which, like a trooper, he did. What a husband!

Finally, the potatoes were done enough to eat. The finished dish didn't look half-bad. Maybe it wouldn't be as bad as I thought?

I sampled one of the bitter balls. The flavor was horribly, horribly bitter, one of the worst things that I have eaten in a long time, perhaps ever. I actually spit it out into the garbage.

My husband could like them more than me, though...

His reactions? "This tastes FOUL!!!" and "It's like something you would serve in a prison camp." He didn't even want the bitter balls to remain on his plate, and piled them up on the place mat instead.

So I've finally met a vegetable that I do not like and will not even try to like. Put this one on top of the I Hate This Vegetable and Will Never, Ever Eat It Again list. Me and bitter balls, we're bitter enemies.

I'm left to wonder,
Were these really bitter balls that we tried?
Are bitter balls and Thai pea eggplant the same thing??
And who in their right mind really enjoys eating this stuff???

Reclaiming dinner

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Wed, 07 Sep 2011 01:49:00 +0000

Back to school, back to work, back to the basics. For me, Labor Day is a natural time to pause and reflect on what's working and not working, re-calibrate and re-focus. The beginning of fall feels like a fresh start.

I'm one of those people who wants to do everything and cram it all in when the weather is warm and the daylight is long. But all of the rushing around this summer had a ripple effect.

Being busy meant fewer trips to the gym and more grabbing food on the go. Being away from home for evening events meant cooking fewer meals. Fewer home-cooked meals meant no leftovers to bring to the office and more frozen entrees or eating out for lunch. Being tired from it all meant eating more processed convenience foods and snacks to pick myself up.

Fortunately I'm back to my normal work schedule now which means that I get home earlier. Though fall is also busy with school in session, kids homework, sports activities and church, I'm determined to focus on what's important - eating well - and not let dinner fall by the wayside again.

A trip to the farmers market this weekend reminded me that summer produce is peaking now and fall produce is right around the corner. With only a few scant months left of fresh local food from the farmers markets before the snow flies, this is the time to relish cooking.

One of my ongoing goals is to find healthy recipes that incorporate seasonal ingredients, offer variety and are doable in 45 minutes or less. We've found that it's essential to come up with a game plan for the week, otherwise each night we fumble through the dinner hour.

In times like this when I need meal inspiration, I turn to cooking magazines. Pre-kids, I used to love perusing Bon Appetit, Gourmet and other similar cooking magazines. Now that I have kids and my cooking time is more compressed, I need recipes that are quicker to make, don't require driving all over the place to find quirky ingredients but still offer complex flavor.

My favorite magazine lately is Cooking Light - besides its focus on healthy ingredients and cooking methods, I appreciate that the recipes offer complex, often global flavors; they're pretty reliable; and most importantly, the majority of recipes are doable on a weeknight. I subscribe to the print magazine, and My Recipes is the first place I turn when I look for recipes online.

Just like last year, the September issue of Cooking Light inspired me to cook again. This past week, I made three of the featured dinners.

Buffalo chicken thighs, buttermilk-blue cheese smashed potatoes and steamed green beans

This menu caught my eye not only due to the classic flavor combination of buffalo sauce + blue cheese (HELLO, yum!) but because it was billed as a budget meal. Chicken thighs are cheaper than breasts, and I think they have better flavor. The original recipe called for bone-in thighs, but I missed that detail and used boneless instead.

The entire meal was super easy to make. I loved how the potato side dish required no peeling or chopping and I was surprised that the buffalo sauce was so simple to pull together - just hot sauce and melted butter.

This meal was a winner - we'll definitely make it again.

***

Shrimp fettucine alfredo

I was intrigued how the recipe called for half and half plus 1/3 less fat cream cheese along with grated Parmigiano-Reggiano as the base for the cream sauce rather than heavy cream and butter; would this taste anything like the real thing?

After making this dish, I have to say that while the flavor was OK, the sauce was a little too thick and sticky for my taste and our overall impression of the dish was a "meh". Most of the reviewers on MyRecipes have given this dish a five star rating, though, so maybe it's just me?

***

Baja pork stir-fry

The Cooking Light September issue features tons of ideas for cooking pork tenderloin. This particular recipe jumped out at me because of the peppers in the dish; peppers are peaking now at the farmers market, so it seemed like a good dish to try.

Though the ingredients list was long and it required a bit of chopping, this recipe was still very easy to make and very flavorful. I loved how it had so many vegetables in it. Next time, I might even cut back on the amount of meat and boost the vegetables further.

***

Well, 2 out of 3 ain't bad. I think my cooking mojo has returned, and I'm back in the saddle. Yeehaw!

Are you a meal planner too or do you take a more spontaneous approach at dinnertime?

Savor Minnesota wines

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Thu, 01 Sep 2011 13:25:00 +0000

As a local foodie, I hear a lot about microbrewery beers from Minnesota and Wisconsin but very little about local wine. What's the deal with that?

Back in April, I headed to the Savor Minnesota event sponsored by the Minnesota Farm Winery Association and the Minnesota Department of Agriculture's Minnesota Grown program to learn more about Minnesota wines and have a chance to try several in one sitting.

Though the event ticket said "The Best of Minnesota Wine, Food & Beer", this event was really all about Minnesota wines.

There were about 15-20 Minnesota wineries pouring their selections, with a few selected food producers like the Caves of Faribault (cheeses) Thousand Hills Cattle Company (sampling hamburgers and cured meats), Prairie Pride Farms (sampling meat snack sticks) and New French Bakery (breads), some restaurants like Rainbow Chinese plus one lone Minnesota brewery, Summit.

I walked around this event as a bit of a clueless Minnesota wine neophyte. Though I love to drink wine, I knew very little about the wine industry here or what to expect. My wine tastes tend towards drier styles and I'm more of a red wine drinker than whites, so I was really looking around for Minnesota table wines that one could drink with meals or as a stand-alone bottle.

I quickly learned that because of the shortened growing season here in Minnesota, it is a challenge to balance acidity, and the dominant styles tend more towards Riesling and dessert-type wines.

The good thing about acidity is that typically those types of wines - think Riesling and Sangiovese - are very food-friendly.

Where I've had most trouble with Minnesota wines is recognizing the grape varietals and understanding how to peg them against wine varieties that are more commonly available and with which I'm more familiar. A couple of the wineries that I sampled did a good job of explaining the wines to me, like Saint Croix Vineyards and and Cannon River Winery.

Are there uniquely Minnesotan grape varieties?

It turns out there are. The University of Minnesota's Agricultural Services area has been informally breeding grapes for over a century and began a formal program in 1978.

The brochure that the U of M had on hand at the Savor Minnesota event indicated that the program has 12 acres of research vineyards with about 12,000 experimental vines. Right now, over 100 advanced U of M selections plus 400 cultivars and selections from other programs are being tested for cold-hardiness, disease resistance and flavor quality.

In recent years, the U of M has introduced four cold-hardy grape varieties ideal for our northern climate - Frontenac (introduced in 1996), Frontenac Gris (introduced in 2003), La Crescent (introduced in 2002) and Marquette (introduced in 2006).

Winemakers are excited about the promise of the Marquette grape in particular, as it is based on Frontenac and pinot noir, with a lovely flavor complexity.

Wines have been developed with these single-varietals, and these grapes have been incorporated into blends as well. So you may see wines with one of these grape varieties mixed in with grapes from other parts of the country, like this wine from Warehouse Winery, with Minnesota-grown Marquette grapes blended with Sangiovese, Primitivo, and Cabernet-Franc grapes from northern California.

Warehouse Winery is based in the Minneapolis suburb of St. Louis Park. These wines are now offered at Target Field, the Minnesota Twins baseball stadium in downtown Minneapolis.

To answer my question that I posed at the beginning - why don't we hear more about local wines - I think the reasons are lack of knowledge/familiarity about these grape varieties, disbelief that our cold climate could produce quality wines, and limited availability of these wines at stores and restaurants.

For myself, many of the wines seemed a bit sweet, which I personally don't prefer. I also don't buy dessert wines much. However, the Marquette variety in particular stood out to me as a solid, drinkable table wine. I also liked the La Crescent for a white wine, it was lively and refreshing, like a Riesling or Pinot Grigio. I'll be seeking these out at stores in the future.

Given that these cold-hardy grape varieties have been so recently introduced, the volume is low and there is only one chance to get each harvest's wine right, my guess is that it will take quite some time and experimentation before you will see single-variety Minnesota wines widely available in stores or at restaurants.

But who knows, maybe a local Marquette wine will win a national wine tasting award in the future? In fact, it has. The StarTribune noted that at the recent International Cold Climate Wine Competition, a Marquette varietal wine produced by a Vermont winery won top honors. Wines based on Frontenac, La Crescent and Frontenac Gris and produced by Minnesota vineyards also won awards at this same competition.

Interested in learning more about which Minnesota wines are worth trying? Check out Heavy Table's recent article also covering the competition; the author discusses the various cold climate grapes grown here and recommends specific local wines. Or you can peruse local wine blog Cold Climate Wine Enthusiast.

Minnesota grapes, represent!

***

Have you tried any Minnesota wines? Which would you recommend to others?

Drink local: Saison season

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 20:27:00 +0000

"If I were forced to choose one style to drink with every meal for the rest of my life, saison would have to be it." - Garrett Oliver, The Brewmaster's Table

When you read something like this, from someone who is a highly respected brewmaster and considered an authority on pairing beer with food, your ears can't help but perk up. And knowing that the traditional season for saison beer is summer, the time to try these beers is now, before the weather turns cooler and the Octoberfest beers fully take the stage.

For those of you unfamiliar with saison beer, it's a Belgian-style farmhouse ale which historically was brewed in spring for farmhands to drink through the growing season. It's a beer that is at turns light, spicy, earthy, citrusy, peppery, refreshing and complex.

There are several local brands of saison beer available - Lift Bridge Farm Girl, Harriet Brewing Saison Nourrice, Surly CynicAle and Summit's latest beer in the Unchained series, Honeymoon Saison.

I did a couple of saison tastings earlier this month, first with the Harriet, Summit and Lift Bridge versions during my vacation in early August.

After returning, I found out that Surly's CynicAle was also considered a saison, so I had to try that as well, and tasted it against Summit and Lift Bridge.

Each of these beers had unique characteristics, varying in appearance, bitterness and overall flavor.

APPEARANCE - Harriet's version was the darkest, Summit and Surly looked very similar and Lift Bridge was notably lighter in color.

BITTERNESS - The level of bitterness varied noticeably, with the Harriet version very mild and the Summit version moderately hoppy. This is one time I paid attention to the International Bittering Units (IBU) number.

FLAVOR - If I had to choose one word to characterize each, I'd describe them as:

Harriet - spicy

Lift Bridge - citrusy

Summit - hoppy

Surly - balanced

Some more details about the individual beers:

Harriet Saison Nourrice - 6.7% alcohol, 25 IBU

Availability: Seasonal. Only available in growlers at brewery or on tap at selected restaurants.
Flavor notes: Mild, soft spiciness, rounder flavor than the other saisons.

Lift Bridge Farm Girl - 6% alcohol, 30 IBU

Availability: Year-round, though recently Lift Bridge stopped bottling their beers due to brewery issues so the bottles may be difficult to find in stores.

Flavor notes: Fruity, citrus notes, brighter in color and on palate

Surly CynicAle - 6.6% alcohol, 33 IBU

Availability: Available year-round. Sold in a can.

Flavor notes: Balanced, easy drinking beer with some spiciness

Summit Honeymoon Saison - 5.3% alcohol, 40 IBU
Availability: As part of the Unchained series, this is a one-time limited release, so pick it up while you can.
Flavor notes: Most assertively flavored of all of the saisons. Hoppy, zippy.

But don't take my word for it. If you're in the Twin Cities, try out these beers for yourself before saison season ceases.

Fresh local food for all

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sun, 28 Aug 2011 22:33:00 +0000

Don't all people deserve the chance to eat fresh local food?

In my latest Eat Local America post, I talk about several initiatives underway in the Twin Cities area that seek to make locally grown, fresh foods available and affordable for more people. A couple of weeks back, I volunteered for one of these programs - Second Harvest Heartland's food collection effort at the Minneapolis Farmers Market.

Second Harvest Heartland, a hunger relief organization, has three separate gleaning operations through its Giving Green initiative to gather fresh foods that may otherwise go to waste and distribute them to food shelves throughout Minnesota and parts of western Wisconsin. Their Food Rescue program collects foods from 215 retail grocers that may otherwise go to waste; each week during the growing season, they collect thousands of pounds of food at the Minneapolis Farmers Market; and during late summer and fall, they collect apples from area orchards through its Apple Gleaning program, which has gathered over 170 tons of fresh apples for area food shelves in the past three years of operation.

I had been involved in the Giving Green initiative at Minneapolis Farmers Market the year that it launched back in 2009 and wanted to help out again, since I think it's such a cool program.

Each Sunday during the growing season, Second Harvest collects fresh produce donations at the farmers market, brings it all back to their massive warehouse, then turns around and delivers this food to area food shelves all across Minnesota and western Wisconsin on Monday and Tuesday.

On a sunny August Sunday, I hauled box after box after box of fresh cucumbers, corn, greens and other local foods donated by market vendors over to the staging area where the Second Harvest Heartland truck awaited. Some vendors donated one box of produce; others donated several.

Market shoppers can also donate food or money for this program. When money is collected at the market, the volunteers turn around and spend the cash on food purchases from the market vendors to add to the stockpile. It was pretty fun for me to go around to the market stalls and purchase even more food for donation.

By the end of that Sunday I volunteered, the donations had added up to over 4,000 pounds of fresh food, which equated to over 3,000 meals for hungry families.

If you wish to get involved in this yourself, visit the Fellowship of the Fresh site and see how you can help. Many volunteers are required each Sunday to make this collection effort happen.

If you're not able to volunteer, you can still help out by publicizing this program via social media. The Mosaic Company has committed to donating dollars each time that someone likes Second Harvest Heartland on Facebook, comments on any post on the Second Harvest Facebook page, or tweets about the program on Twitter using the hashtag #getfreshforthehungry. It's that easy.

Eating local & sustainable at the Celebrity Chef Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 12:20:00 +0000

The foodie in me has always wanted to attend one of those fancy dinner events held on-site at a local farm like Outstanding in the Field (OITF), intended to reconnect diners with the sources of their food and experience where it comes from, but the frugal part of me found it difficult in the past to swallow the ticket price.

Having seen a price breakout a while back for another similar farm dinner series, I understand that it's very expensive to field events such as these, where the organizers must bring in not only the food and staff for the event, but all kitchen equipment, tables & chairs, linens, tableware, even portable bathrooms and hand washing facilities. In effect, a virtual restaurant is created on a rural site for a single evening.

What has troubled me is the thought that only a certain segment of the population can afford the high cost of such events, and as such I feel that these events may foster the perception of local food as "elitist". Does that mean they shouldn't happen? Of course not. It was just that I personally had mixed feelings about the concept, seeing it as super cool on one hand and out of reach for many people on the other hand.

The local version of OITF, Scott Pampuch's Tour de Farm dinner series, has been more affordable and the lineup has included some less formal, less expensive options, like a breakfast event and picnics. Still, somehow I hadn't made it to any of them.

But when I heard about the August Tour de Farm event, which:

-was a joint effort between Tour de Farm, the Celebrity Chef Tour and the James Beard Foundation...

-would be held on-site at Star Prairie Trout Farm, a place known for its very high quality, sustainably farmed fish...

-would feature top national and local chefs and food celebrities including Barton Seaver, a Washington, D.C. chef turned cookbook author and highly-regarded sustainable seafood advocate; one of my favorite local chefs, Tim McKee from the exceptional Minneapolis restaurant, La Belle Vie; local chef and Tour de Farm founder Scott Pampuch; one of my favorite food writers, Dara Moskovitz Grumdahl of Minnesota Monthly, acting as sommelier, plus Andrew Zimmern from the Travel Channel's Bizarre Foods show...

....well, wow. Just, wow. The foodie geek in me could not resist any further. Despite the steep ticket price, I knew that I had to attend; I would do whatever budget contortions would be needed to make it happen.

***

I had high hopes for this event, and I'm happy to report, I wasn't disappointed. The event lived up to the hype.

It was a perfectly sunny, sparkling day when we arrived at the farm, an hour's drive northeast of the Twin Cities. Upon arrival, guests were greeted with a selection of wines and beers and assorted charcuterie from local pork guru Mike Phillips of Green Ox Meat.

Some members of the Star Prairie staff took us around on a tour of the fish ponds and hatchery, explaining that the fish ponds are fed by natural spring water, eventually discharged into the nearby Apple River. Commercial trout-raising operations have existed here since 1856.

After some brief introductory remarks from Scott, Barton and others, we were seated at the communal table, which was nestled among trees on a narrow strip of land between two trout ponds, with the chef station set up along the riverbanks. It was a stunning backdrop for dinner.

Guests pored over their dinner menus, while wine was poured for them.

Crusty bread and creamy butter were served to the tables on long wooden planks.

Then, it was show time! The dinner was a collaborative effort, with different chefs preparing each course.

First up to bat was local chef Tim McKee, who served a unique rendition of grilled trout topped with roe plus warm baby beets, yogurt and dill served alongside. The course was paired with 2008 Domaine Serene "Etoile" Chardonnay.

Next up was Barton Seaver, who offered a smoked trout salad composed of shaved carrots, radishes, greens and herbs; this was paired with 2010 Frog's Leap Sauvignon Blanc.

Andrew Zimmern introduced the next course, grilled duck confit with braised radish, wood sorrel and a honey-juniper gastrique, giving Tim McKee credit for most of this dish, with assists from the other chefs on site, including Mike DeCamp of La Belle Vie, Jamie Malone of Sea Change and others. This course was accompanied by 2007 Domaine Serene "Evenstad Reserve" Pinot Noir.

The last three courses were prepared by Tour de Farm founder and local chef Scott Pampuch.

Grilled bison flank steak with sweet corn panna cotta, charred corn relish and summer tomatoes, accented by 2006 Domaine Serene Rockblock Syrah.

Love Tree Farm Big Holmes sheep milk cheese, apple mostarda and grilled wild pear, paired with Segura Viudas Brut Rose sparkling wine.

And finally, the most unusual, unique dessert I've ever tasted - chanterelle mushroom ice cream with black trumpet caramel and lobster mushroom brittle, accompanied by Chateau Saint Michelle "Ethos" Late Harvest Riesling.

***

All in all, this Celebrity Chef Tour dinner event was an amazing, unforgettable experience.

What made this meal even more remarkable was that most of the ingredients were sourced from local farms: fresh trout and smoked trout (Star Prairie Trout Farm, Star Prairie, MN), duck (Wild Acres Game Farm, Pequot Lakes, MN), bison (Eichten's Bison Ranch, Center City, MN), pork (Pork and Plants, Altura, MN), sheep milk cheese (Love Tree Farm, Grantsburg, WI), cream (Autumnwood Farm, Forest Lake, MN), butter (Hope Creamery, Hope, MN), bread (Patisserie 46, Minneapolis, MN), corn (Untiedt's Vegetable Farm, Waverly, MN), microgreens (Dragsmith Farms, Barron, WI), assorted produce from PuraVida Farm (Minnetonka, MN) and the St. Paul Farmers Market. The mushrooms and wood sorrel were foraged from surrounding areas by forager Kathy Yerich, and the wild pears were sourced from trees on the Star Prairie grounds.

The high caliber of chef talent involved, the quality of the ingredients including where / how they were sourced, how they were prepared and artfully presented, the lovely venue, the seamless service, the communal dining set-up with lively conversation and all of the little extras of the event added up to an experience that was worth every penny to me. It was truly a magical meal.

It's nights like this that you think, you only live once, seize these opportunities while you can.

Have you attended an Outstanding in the Field, Tour de Farm, Celebrity Chef Tour or other sort of farm dinner event yourself? If so, what did you think about the experience, and would you recommend it to others?

Local cheese-mania, parts 2 & 3

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 14:28:00 +0000

More local cheese? Hell, ya.

Part 2 of the local cheese party appears over on the Eat Local America website, where I talk about five more cheeses - Crave Brothers Les Freres & fresh mozzarella (Waterloo, WI), Alemar Bent River camembert-style cheese (Mankato, MN), Carr Valley Mobay (La Valle, WI) and Uplands Pleasant Ridge Reserve (Dodgeville, WI), plus some local crackers we tried, Potter's Crackers (Madison, WI). We tried all of these cheeses during our vacation up north earlier in the month.

I had said earlier that we had brought 11 cheeses with us to the cabin but only got through 10 before I declared cheese fatigue. The tenth cheese we tried, not pictured in Parts 1 and 2, was a Marieke Gouda with foenegreek from Holland's Family Cheese (Thorp, WI) that I'd purchased at Kowalski's.

Marieke's website notes that foenegreek is "a seed native to Holland and has a nutty, maple like flavor." This particular cheese has won numerous awards at cheese competitions ever since it was introduced.

Maybe my taste buds were blown from cheese, beer and gin that vacation, but the foenegreek seemed pretty subtle.

The Kowalski's cheese lady had also described the foenegreek as having a bit of maple flavor and said that she liked to shave thin slices of this cheese to top French toast with maple syrup (!). Frankly, I was skeptical of this idea, but I tried it out myself on some brioche French toast.

For me, this combination was a "meh". The Sapsucker Farms maple syrup was a much more dominant flavor. I love Marieke's Goudas, though - their aged and smoked versions are crave-worthy - so I'll definitely try this cheese on its own again sometime in the future.

***
After a couple of weeks to rest from my cheese escapades, I finally tucked in to the 11th cheese last night, Montchevre Bucheron, an aged goat cheese from Belmont, WI.

The Bucheron's outer edge was oozy like brie, while the inner section was more dry and crumbly. It helped to leave the cheese on the kitchen counter for a bit to warm up, then it was more spreadable for crackers. This cheese was mildly tangy and delicious.

Dude, between the local cheeses I've been eating and the local beers I've been drinking this month, I really need to get to the gym...

Seasonal eating, with dessert thrown in

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:33:00 +0000

It's ironic that the time when local foods are at their peak here in Minnesota, August and September, is also one of the busiest times on the calendar. This year, there's seemed to be a million events in August - vacations, special events, end-of-summer picnics for my kids' programs, the State Fair and getting ready for back to school.

All I can seem to make lately are BLTs on toasted sourdough bread with corn on the cob as a side.

My go-to dish for picnics is Texas caviar, served with tortilla chips from Whole Grain Milling Co.

***
While I've been obsessing about local beers and cheeses and attending events, many of my Minnesota food blogger friends have actually been cooking with seasonal produce. The ladies from A Good Appetite, Relishing It, Eating for England, Kate in the Kitchen, Fresh Tart and Food for My Family all shop regularly at farmers markets or cook from their gardens and this seasonal way of eating is reflected in their blogs. Zoe Bakes and A Farmgirl's Dabbles are two local blogs which often feature baking recipes based on seasonal ingredients. These are all good people to follow if you are interested in cooking or baking seasonally.

In case you'd like some inspiration before you head to the farmers market this weekend, here's a list of some local food bloggers' recent recipes for seasonal ingredients at their peak now.

Tomatoes

Baked tomatoes with baguette (Eating for England)
Pizza with charred cherry tomatoes and balsamic mushrooms (Kate in the Kitchen)
Heirloom tomato galette (Relishing It)
Tomato jam (Fresh Tart, for Dara & Co., a recipe from Molly Herrmann of Tastebud Tart)
Gazpacho (Relishing It)

Sweet corn

Sweet corn gazpacho (A Good Appetite)

Herbed sweet corn and tomato salad (Kate in the Kitchen)
Grilled corn salsa (Eating for England)
Sweet corn and bacon pizza (A Good Appetite)

Zucchini
Ratatouille gratin with zucchini, tomatoes and eggplant (Kate in the Kitchen)
Zucchini fritters (Minnesota Locavore)
Chocolate zucchini cake (Zoe Bakes)

Blueberries
Blueberry galette (Relishing It)
Blueberry kuchen, a gluten-free version (Fresh Tart)
Mom's blueberry tea cake (A Farmgirl's Dabbles)
Crepes with warm blueberry sauce (Fresh Tart, for Dara & Co.)
Blueberry cheesecake ice cream (A Farmgirl's Dabbles)
Canning fresh blueberries (Zoe Bakes)
Blueberry jam with mint (A Farmgirl's Dabbles)

Plus,
Peaches
Upside-down peach and cardamom cake (Relishing It)

Cherries
Cherry clafoutis (Relishing It)
Honey sweetened cherry ginger fruit butter (Healthy Life, Happy Cook)

Watermelon
Watermelon lime sorbet (Food for My Family)

***
Need dessert ideas for some of those end of the summer picnics? At the most recent Minnesota Food Bloggers event, there was a bars bake-off, with 17 bloggers providing bars.

Here are some of the fabulous recipes that people made:

Rosemary apricot bars (I Had a Delicious Time) - this won the contest!
Salty coconut caramel brownies (Dinner Time)
Key lime cheesecake bars with gingersnap crust (The Realistic Housewife)
Drunken chocolate almond bars (Amy on the Prairie)
Lemon thyme meringue bars (EatDrinkLifeLove)
Raspberry frangipane bars (The Catalyst: Cupcakes)
Rogue chocolate stout brownies with Bailey's buttercream frosting (The Wholehearted Life)
Minnesota meets Paris salty caramel bars (Jen and Co.)

There are loads of talented food bloggers here in Minnesota, no doubt!

Drink local: Fulton Beer

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 13:36:00 +0000

All of the local micro-breweries must be rejoicing lately at the stream of good news about city ordinances being changed to allow microbreweries to sell pints and bottles on-site at their facilities. Stemming from the Surly bill, St. Paul moved first to pass their taproom measure and now Minneapolis seems poised to do so as well.

Just in the nick of time for Fulton Beer, Minneapolis' other fledgling craft brewer.

Fulton Beer was formed by four college friends who were passionately into home-brewing. Similar to Harriet Brewing, they started out brewing in one of the guys' basements, then moved up to the garage. They soon expanded to a larger garage, then outgrew that and began contract brewing at the Sand Creek brewery in Wisconsin.

Earlier in the year, Fulton announced that they would be building their brewery in the Warehouse district mere blocks from the Twins baseball stadium, Target Field. Barring any major roadblocks, they plan to open in October. Each time I go to the Minneapolis Farmers Market, when I cut through downtown Minneapolis to get home I drive by this location.

I'd drank pints of Fulton's Sweet Child of Vine IPA at Psycho Suzi's in northeast Minneapolis and Village Pub in St. Anthony, but whenever I checked local stores to see if they carried the brand, I could never find it. I just found out recently that Fulton beers are only available on tap at local bars and restaurants, and will not be sold in bottles or growlers until their downtown brewery opens for business.

One other place that you may find Fulton beers on tap is at special events like charity fundraisers and beer festivals. At the recent Eat Ramen Help Japan fundraiser in Minneapolis, Fulton served their Lonely Blonde ale specially infused two different ways - with habanero peppers and fresh grapefruit.

I couldn't help but exclaim about this beer on Twitter, a tweet which I happened to catch scrolling across a flat screen monitor at the event. There, captured for all Internet eternity, was my spelling error. Apparently I don't know how to correctly spell habanero, at least not while I'm drinking.

Regardless, the general sentiment was correct - that habanero beer had a definite kick to it!

Just when I was thinking I'd have to troll around to different bars in order to try out Fulton's lineup, I attended the latest Minnesota Food Bloggers gathering and found that the Fulton guys were pouring several beers from their lineup: The Lonely Blonde, Sweet Child of Vine and Worthy Adversary, plus two additional infused versions of the Lonely Blonde - habanero, and pineapple with fresh hops. (The 4th beer in their standard lineup- The Libertine, a red ale - was not served).

It was my lucky night.

On to the tasting...

The Lonely Blonde is an American-style blond ale. It's light and crisp with a zing on the finish, enjoyable on its own, the kind of beer that's perfect to drink icy cold on a hot summer day.

...and also the perfect vehicle for infusion with other flavors. In addition to the habanero and pineapple versions, I saw on Fulton's Facebook page that Grumpy's Northeast served the Blonde poured through a randall filled with basil, rosemary and red peppers (?!).

The foodie in me is intrigued by these infusions - I applaud the experimentation incorporating food flavors into the beer.

***

Sweet Child of Vine is an IPA. Hoppier and darker in color than the Lonely Blonde with a copper hue, it has a full flavor with a nice bitter bite.

Personally I've found that IPAs take some getting used to, with their more assertive hoppiness and bitter edge. They do wake up your tastebuds though! I really liked this one and think it's probably my favorite of the three. This is also the Fulton beer that seems to be most widely available at bars and restaurants.

***

The Worthy Adversary is a Russian imperial stout, dark as a moonless night in the middle of nowhere, with coffee and dark chocolate notes from the roasted malt and a full body. It goes down smooth, but watch out! This is a boozy one, with 9.2% alcohol content.

Typically, I don't gravitate to porters or stouts. I'm not a coffee drinker, and these types of beers seem too heavy and filling for my tastes. But this one, it was very drinkable. It was especially good paired with some homemade chocolate-hazelnut truffles that my friend Kate brought to the event.

***

All in all, I found these beers to be eminently drinkable (perhaps too easy? :-) ), unlike some other craft brews that are so strongly flavored that it seems you need to cultivate a taste for them.

Fulton indicates that growlers will be available for purchase onsite once the brewery opens and in bottles in November. Until the brewery opens and bottles become available in stores, look for Fulton beer in bars and restaurants. Fulton's website has a map of places where their beer is served.

If you'd like to learn more about this brewery, check out Heavy Table's in-depth interview with them from 2010. Here's a brief video from Fulton's website with the guys talking about their beginnings.

Have you tried any of Fulton's beers? Which is your favorite?

IATP's Bike and Bite event

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:21:00 +0000

I used to love to go on biking excursions, along with traveling and other explorations. Since I became a parent with young kids, though, those sorts of experiences have become much fewer and farther between. So, the Bike and Bite event staged this past Saturday by the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) as part of its 25th anniversary celebration represented a chance for a little urban adventure.

I hadn't arranged to meet up with anyone else for the event; I'm rarely ever alone these days and, I must admit, the thought of doing it by myself was kind of liberating. Not to mention that good local, sustainable food from area food purveyors would be served.

But first I had to get there with my bike. I'd never brought my bike onto a city bus before.

After disembarking from the bus and successfully removing my bike while the bus driver shouted instructions at me through the windshield for how to put away the rack (the rack handle is by your knee, BY YOUR KNEE!), I arrived at the IATP's offices and studied the map for this self-guided bike tour.

Was it possible to hit all of the stops in the next three hours? Having never done this sort of thing before, I had no idea, but I was game to try to hit them all. (Well, most of the stops; I nixed the Redeemer Center for Life community garden because I didn't think I could fit it in. Sorry, Redeemer Center.) The rest of the stops seemed sort of clustered together, how long could it really take to reach them?

I decided to go west first, then loop back to the eastern stops, timed to coincide with the opening of Harriet Brewing's tasting room at 1:00 pm so I could pick up a growler for a family event on Sunday.

The first couple of stops at the Wedge Community Co-op and Common Roots Cafe were low-hanging fruit, as they were right by the IATP's offices.

Appropriately enough, the Wedge's food offering was slices of watermelon from Gardens of Eagan. We were lucky to get our hands on this local watermelon, as we were told that coyotes have been stealing watermelons from the farm lately. Those crazy coyotes.

Over at Common Roots Cafe, there was a cool infographic on display depicting details about the number of pounds composted, local eggs and pints of beer served by the restaurant in 2010, among other things. It noted that last year, 86 percent of their purchases were local, organic and/or fair trade.

The restaurant's website states: "For us, "local" is not just a buzzword. It means that we are doing business by keeping dollars in our communities, lessening our environmental impact and making food that tastes great."

Well, I can attest that the "bite" they served, a house-made chewy granola bar, tasted great. It was just what I needed to fuel my bike ride.

Fortified by the granola bar, I hopped onto the Midtown Greenway and biked over to the lakes. First Lake Calhoun and Lake of the Isles...

...then on to Lake Harriet for the next stop at Bread and Pickle, a seasonal food service located in the lakeside pavilion.

Bread and Pickle is operated by the same people who own Bryant Lake Bowl, Cafe Barbette, and Red Stag Supper Club. Their website notes, "we strive to offer local, sustainably grown or harvested ingredients in a zero waste environment."

The bite included a choice of lemonade or hibiscus punch plus a ginger scone or a blueberry muffin. The beverages were served in fully compostable cups made from corn.

By this point it was past 11:30 and I was behind schedule, having missed the turnoff for Lake Calhoun, which necessitated a shortcut through the Rustica parking lot, then a dicey dash across the zig-zaggy intersection, Frogger-style.

Back on the bike after the Bread and Pickle pit stop, I discovered that I'm not so good at figuring out maps with limited detail, as I somehow never managed to find the next bike path indicated on the map. Whatever. There are many routes to the same destination.

I forgot all about my directional woes upon arriving at Crema Cafe, where I found that the "bite" on offer was a scoop of any flavor of ice cream or sorbet I wanted. I felt like a kid in a candy store, only I was an adult in an ice cream shop.

Crema offers a unique assortment of ice creams and sorbets inspired by seasonal ingredients. They aim to use local and/or organic ingredients when possible.

Then, I re-joined the Midtown Greenway for the trek east across the city. The Midtown Greenway is a 5.5-mile stretch of beautiful paved bike trails nestled in a former railroad corridor which bisects the city, stretching from the lakes to the Mississippi river.

The ride offered a peek at a part of the city that I'd never noticed before. Along the route I passed by urban gardens, upscale condos, kids playing in soccer tournaments and a bicycling event with some people camping along the greenway. There's even a bike shop situated directly on the greenway, Freewheel Midtown Bike Center, behind the Midtown Global Market.

Try as I might, I could only go so fast on my mountain bike. It seemed to take me forever to traverse the distance between Crema Cafe and the Midtown Farmers Market. Unfortunately I'd not be able to make it to the Park Avenue Farmers Market, one of the IATP-sponsored mini-markets in the city; nor Peace Coffee, a purveyor of fair-trade coffees; or the Birchwood Cafe, another restaurant focused on local, sustainable foods. Oh well, sometimes you have to be the turtle.

Crumpled map in hand, I reached the Midtown Farmers Market shortly before 1 pm and was able to snag one of the last bruschetta on offer, made with bread, vegetables and fresh cheese curds from the market.

After this pit stop plus a detour to Harriet Brewing to grab my growler, it was time to burn rubber back to the IATP's offices for the closing celebration. On the way back, I rode over the Hiawatha Bridge. I'd driven under it on many occasions, but this was my first time experiencing it firsthand on a bike. What an exuberant sweep of a bridge!

I salute all of the riders that made it to all nine stops; in the end, I only made it to 5 of the 9 stops. But, it's the journey that's important.

The Bike and Bite event refreshed my memory about the freedom and exhilaration in riding a bicycle. In addition to being an environmentally-friendly way of getting around, biking offers a completely different perspective of your surroundings and the perfect opportunity to live in the moment.

The ride also reminded me once again of some of the reasons why I love my hometown city- so many wonderful restaurants, fabulous farmers markets, lovely lakes and beautiful bike trails! I feel truly blessed to live here.

Did any of you participate in the Bike and Bite event? Tell us about your experiences.

Eat Local Challenge meal ideas

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Sat, 13 Aug 2011 12:14:00 +0000

Looking for some meal ideas to use during the Eat Local Challenge?

Check out my latest post over on Eat Local America, which suggests five dinners sourced from local ingredients. The brands listed are what's available here in the Twin Cities; if you live somewhere else, check with your local co-op on the brands nearest to you.

Another local blogger, Amy Sippl of Minnesota Locavore, is publishing a new recipe each day during the Eat Local Challenge, with local ingredients identified. Very inspiring!

Local cheese-mania, part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Amy P.) — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:16:00 +0000

After I read Minnesota Monthly's recent feature about local foods, I was pumped to explore more local cheeses that I hadn't tried during this Eat Local Challenge month.

Once I started picking out cheeses, first at Mississippi Market, then Kowalski's, then St. Paul Cheese Shop, I couldn't stop myself, and I ended up buying eleven (!) different local cheeses to try during our vacation up north.

From my previous beer and cheese tastings during the Eat Local Challenge last August, then my spring beer and cheese fling, I've learned that it's best to limit the number of beers and cheeses tried during a single sitting, otherwise it all becomes a blur. I think the ideal number is 2-4 cheeses, and one or two beers.

We ended up doing two tastings with 4 cheeses each, then tasted two other cheeses on separate occasions. I couldn't bring myself to taste the 11th cheese; I guess that my cheese limit is ten in one week. After many visits to the gym to atone, hopefully I'll get back into the cheese saddle later this month.

The first tasting we did was cheeses to accompany Harriet Brewing's West Side Belgian-Style IPA. I chose the following cheeses because they offered fuller flavor to complement this balanced IPA.

Pastureland Millville Cheddar (Goodhue, MN) - made with 100% grass-fed organic milk, aged at least 12 months

Milk type: Cow
Where purchased: Mississippi Market, St. Paul
Tasting notes: Creamy mouth feel, melts and spreads on your tongue, rich cheddar-y flavor. Good everyday cheese.

Hook's 10-Year Sharp Cheddar (Mineral Point, WI) - Hook's website notes that they won an American Cheese Society 1st place award for this cheese in 2006, the only cheddar to win this award

Milk type: Cow

Where purchased: St. Paul Cheese Shop, St. Paul

Tasting notes: Drier than the Pastureland cheese, more crumbly, with some crystalline bits. Older-tasting and full-flavored.

Shepherd's Way Big Woods Blue (Northfield, MN) - the farm's website notes that this cheese has finished top in its class twice at the American Cheese Society awards; it won 2nd place at this year's awards. More details about this farm can be found here.

Milk type: Sheep
Where purchased: Kowalski's, St. Paul
Tasting notes: Big, bold, in-your-face blue cheese flavor; creamy, pungent, spicy and salty. This is a big dog cheese!

Roelli Cheese Haus Dunbarton Blue (Shullsburg, WI) - this cheese is unusual because it's a blue cheese that is pressed like a cheddar, causing a dense texture. See this article for further details on how the cheese is made.

Milk type: Cow; raw milk is used during the months when the cows are on pasture, milk is pasteurized at other times of the year
Where purchased: St. Paul Cheese Shop, St. Paul
Tasting notes: Pressed cheddar texture, salty with some blue cheese flavor notes, much more subtle than the Big Woods Blue. Fascinating.

***

I enjoyed eating all of these cheeses. Among these, my favorite was the Dunbarton Blue, just because it was so unique and special.

For some reason, I'm not a big cheddar person; when I buy cheeses, I don't typically seek them out. That being said, I enjoyed eating both cheddars, particularly the young Pastureland Millville cheddar. Ultra-aged cheddars like the Hook's 10-year cheddar are typically only found at specialty cheese shops and can be pretty pricy (this one was $40/lb); for myself, I think I'd rather spend this sort of money on cheese varieties other than cheddar. I did like the flavor, but it wasn't "special" enough to me to warrant the price.

The Big Woods Blue was a robustly flavored cheese, which I appreciated. It would be fun to try this one side by side with two other excellent local blue cheeses, Northern Lights Blue and St. Pete's Select, to see how they compare.

Have you tried any of these cheeses? If so, what did you think of them?