|
What's new
Planting season is here?
The unseasonable warmth of the past few weeks has our planting fingers itching. A new crop of vegetable seeds has appeared at Bay Hay and Bainbridge Gardens. And there are a couple of classes coming up at Bainbridge Gardens: "Growing Your Own Food" on March 7 at 1 pm with Leda Langley and garden author Lorene Edwards-Forkner. There's also a class about Mason Bees on March 13 at 1 pm, and "Unusual Edibles for your Landscape" (think goji berries and tea camillias) on March 20. Check out the Bainbridge Gardens website for details. There is also a special day of workshops on Permaculture with Michael Pilarski on February 21 in Spokane. Click here for more info.
What we're reading
Eat Where You Live by Lou Bendrick
 Finally--a fresh, funny and positive approach to eating locally!
By now you know that everyone is eating locally and sustainable and maybe you want to do it too--to reduce your carbon footprint or just to ensure the freshest, healthiest food for yourself and your family.
Whatever the case may be, this easy-to-read, hilarious and informative national guidebook will help you find it, cook it, and enjoy it.
Archive of "What we're reading"
Highlighted events
"Island to Island" benefit for Haiti January 31
On Sunday, January 31, there will be an "Island to Island" fundraiser for Haiti at the Bainbridge High School Commons, from 6 pm to 8:30 pm. Local chefs and businesses are donating a Caribbean-themed selection of desserts and finger-foods. Live Latin American music with Grupo Meridianal will be featured, and Jay Inslee will be joined by Former World Vision president Dean Hirsch to give an update on the Haitian Relief effort. Suggested donation is $10 per person, or $25 per family.
|
Book Review: Bringing it to the Table: On Farming and Food, by Wendell Berry |
|
Written by Jon Quitslund
|
|
Thursday, 28 January 2010 11:57 |
|
Wendell Berry is a national treasure. For the growing number of people who care about sustainable agriculture, local food, and a sense of community that is both old -fashioned and forward-looking, Wendell Berry is a mentor and an inspiration. He richly deserves to be more widely known than Michael Pollan - and he may be already. (In his graceful introduction to the book under review, Pollan pays tribute to Berry's great influence on his understanding of agriculture, our economy, and the best and worst in the systems that supply our food.)
If you aren't already familiar with Wendell Berry's essays and his fiction, Bringing It to the Table is an excellent introduction, and if you're already an admirer, wanting to spread the word to people on your holiday gift list, this book is a fine addition to Berry's recent publications. (Eagle Harbor Books had a few copies on the Green Living shelves when I asked recently, and they're always ready to order more.)
Born in 1934, Berry has been publishing poetry, fiction in long and short forms, and essays since the 1960s; he has been working a farm in Kentucky for about as many years. In an essay from 2006 he recalls, "In 1964 my wife Tanya and I bought a rough and neglected little farm on which we intended to grow as much of our own food as we could."
Although he came from a farming background, he asked for advice from an organic gardener who was his editor at the time, and seeking out the source of that man's principles, he discovered The Soil and Health, by the British agricultural scientist Sir Alfred Howard. Berry says of Howard, "I have been aware of his influence in virtually everything I have done, and I don't expect to graduate from it. That is because his way of dealing with the subject of agriculture is also a way of dealing with the subject of life in this world."
Berry's influence on his readers has been similarly broad and long-lasting: Betsey Wittick, for example, was introduced to his essays on agriculture as an undergraduate at Rutgers, and they made her the kind of farmer that she has been for the last twenty years at Laughing Crow Farm on Day Road. And Rebecca Slattery, at Persephone |
|
Read more...
|
|
|
Dropstone Farm takes the Dark Days Challenge |
|
Written by Carolyn Goodwin
|
|
Thursday, 28 January 2010 00:02 |
|
Three years ago, a Puget Sound food blogger named Laura McRae (Urban Hennery), came up with an idea. What if she could enlist fellow foodies to join in a  challenge to cook locally at least once a week during the dark days of winter, and share their discoveries with the rest of the online community?
Her concept took root, and now almost 100 cooks from all over the country join her every winter to take the "Dark Days Challenge." The idea is that participants will cook one meal each week using local, organic ingredients and then write about it on their blog. Laura offers themes throughout the winter to keep everyone's creative juices flowing. And then she posts summaries of the results each week, by region. This year's recaps can be found here.
The result? A stream of culinary inspiration from talented cooks. It is a fresh source of recipes for cooking locally at a time of year when freshness is hard to come by.
Two of the participants are Garth and Lauren from Dropstone Farms on Bainbridge Island. Reading through their weekly forays into local cooking is like reading a who's who of Kitsap farming combined with a Nancy Drew search for the right recipe. Lauren offers great ideas for what to cook, wonderful stories about food and the farmers, and links to local food sources I hadn't heard of.
She tells a story (Dark Days Week 6) about one of their hen turkeys who meets an untimely death, but then becomes a source of inspiration that results in Coq (err, Turkey) au nin using homegrown carrots, tomatoes, and herbs, along with home-cured bacon, Laughing Crow garlic and Bainbridge Island wine.
You can read all about Lauren and Garth’s Dark Days adventures on their blog. And then check into Dark Days Central at (not so) Urban Hennery to find out what about 40 other bloggers from the Pacific Northwest, along with another 50 or so from the rest of the country are cooking this week.
|
|
|
|
