Below are the 9 most recent journal entries recorded in epicure_atl's LiveJournal:

Monday, September 24th, 2007
9:41 am	You can tell Honey was gone this weekend... Cause I've got two, count 'em two, new entries. Go (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 25th, 2007
3:09 pm	Normally, I'd just link, but this is reasonably important Chipotle, FarmAid, and FoodRoutes Honey and I went to Chipotle for lunch today. I've liked Chipotle since I first read in a trade magazine that, though owned by McDonald's Chipotle uses humanely raised meats, supports worthy causes, and is all-around a responsible corporate citizen. After reading the article, which took the view that fast food was about to become more healthy for people, communities, and the economies in which they and their workers operated--a bit optimistic, in hindsight--I went to Chipotle and was appropriately blown away. I go about once a month now, and the barbacoa and carnitas are my favorites. August, however, will be a two-burrito month, because I saw a sign in our local Chipotle that all proceeds from meat-burrito sales THIS WEDNESDAY will go to FarmAid, an organization that seeks to preserve family farming in America. For the unfamiliar, the alternative is industrialized farming, which has given us such greatest hits as E. Coli in our spinach, "Blue Baby" alerts1 in those unfortunate towns downstream of major corn farming centers in the Midwest, and the pink baseballs masquerading as tomatoes in January2. FarmAid also maintains FoodRoutes, an incredibly helpful tool for finding local food without spending more time than most PhD candidates do on their dissertations. I had a conversation with my Chef the other night about the possibility of finding local food for a large party in February and was assured that although farmers' markets are shut down in the winter and CSAs don't usually start till March or April, there is plenty of bounty here in the exceedingly warm South. So now that I can't go to the East Atlanta Farmer's market, and never seem to make it out of bed for the Saturday markets, I'm getting ready to look into local food sources that are more flexible. I even found an apiary (bee farm) nearby. How cool is that? I know that most people won't donate directly, so I'll reiterate: GET THEE TO CHIPOTLE WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 29TH, and order a meat burrito. Then go to the websites below, and find a nearby farm, farmer's market or apiary to patronize. The food you eat will be far more unique and flavorful than what you'll get at your local supermarket, and you won't have to deal with long lines after work, surly or incompetent cashiers, or the vague sense that you're just one more cog in the machine. You may lose track of which celebrities are having plastic surgery, babies, or breakdowns, so look up a good gossip site while you're at it. GO HERE: FarmAid FoodRoutes What in the heck is: 1."Blue Baby" alerts: As explained in The Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan, Blue Baby Alerts are issued in the spring in corn farming states. Every spring farmers who farm monocultures like commodity corn fertilize their fields, and in many cases, desperate for even the chance of a productivity boost, overfertilize. When the spring rains come, they wash the fertilizers, composed of synthetic nitrogen into drainage ditches, and then into the rivers. The nitrates in the water bind to hemoglobin and prevent the blood from delivering oxygen to the brain, an effect that can be fatal for small creatures, like infants. 2. January tomatoes: Honey has informed me that not everyone is aware of the phenomena represented by the January tomato, so a quick explanation: I use January tomatoes as an example of food that is available to use wildly out of season. Usually the quality of the food is compromised; tomatoes aren't meant to grow in January, so in order to make them grow in January, you have to breed them for traits other than flavor, or ship them from far away, and tomatoes are not a food that, at their best, ship well. They're fragile, prone to over-ripening and fermenting at room temperature, and cease ripening altogether the moment they're refrigerated. When you see tomatoes in winter, fragile greens like arugula in the heat of summer, cherries in November, etc. you can rest assured that whatever you're being sold, it doesn't taste like the real thing, and probably traveled far, burning fossil fuels all the way, to get to you. (Comment on this)
Monday, August 20th, 2007
2:23 pm	"What's 'Hell' in Spanish?" Go here for full post. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 10th, 2007
10:45 pm	To Market, To market To market, to market... I've left the CSA fold. What happened? Last year I said that I was about to become a street preacher on the fineness of the CSA, but the short version of the story is that picking up the box and splitting it was inconvenient, I wasn't cooking enough, and Honey and the couple we were splitting were baffled by some of the produce, so lots of great vegetables went to rot. More than that, though, I decided not to sign up for year three because someone in Atlanta was finally smart enough to organize a farmer's market on a weekday evening; I've been attending the East Atlanta Village farmer's market for almost all of my produce for the past three weeks. I like the farmer's market. I get to choose what I buy, and how much. I can cruise the produce from multiple farms, so I get access to more variety. I also get to talk to farmers and farm managers about what they're growing and why. Plus, unlike the CSA, I have access to meat and eggs every week. That's a big plus, as I'd never had farm-raised eggs before. Now if only I could find cow shares in Georgia. For those in the Atlanta area interested in buying local and organic, the EAV farmer's market is convenient, approachable, and affordable; Food for two adults for one week (4-5 dinners per week) costs me about $25 for vegetables, eggs, and sometimes cheese. The week that I bought meat, bread and cheese, I paid $34. To help first-timers navigate the market comfortably, I've put together some pointers. Browse first: The first thing that you'll notice is that at any given time, most of the farmers are selling the same types of vegetables. In the summer, for example, most stalls will have tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, corn, and beans. Before you rush to buy, look around at each stall. Which squash look the best? Do you want smaller specimens, like cherry tomatoes, tiny plums, and baby squash, or will you eat slicing tomatoes on sandwiches and larger squash for grilling more quickly? Think about what you like to eat, what you'll take the time to prepare, and what will go well with the food you've bought or have at home. Most importantly, think about what you need, and what you use; I've discovered that now that I'm out of school, I go through 2 heads of garlic a week, as opposed to half a head previously. Don't be afraid to eschew the corn from one stand only to go to the next and buy their corn either. You're at a farmer's market to buy the best, freshest ingredients, and it's perfectly reasonable for one farm to be a week behind another when it comes to ripeness. Feel free to compare prices as well, which leads to the next point: Talk to your farmers: And not just about prices, either. Ask if they grow the food in front of you, or sell it for other farmers. Compliment the exceptional-looking tomatoes, and learn as much as you can about the food you want to buy. What is the variety? Does it have a unique flavor profile or an amazing shelf life? When was it picked? Be especially aware of unfamiliar items, and ask about them. Since you'll often find heirloom, rare, or highly regional fruits and vegetables at the farmer's market, a certain lack of familiarity is expected. And some farmers will let you taste a sample, particularly if they're in the midst of the peak season and have a bumper crop to unload. Also ask about items you don't see, like meat, cheese, and eggs, all of which will be kept in coolers if the farmers carry them. Don't get intimidated by unfamiliar items: Recently, the Moore Farms booth at the East Atlanta Village farmers' market had what looked like very small tomatillos. Upon inquiry, Collins Davis, the farm manager, lit up. "They're ground cherries. Do you want to try one?" The flavor is reminiscent of a pina colada, and On Food and Cooking, the bible of all things culinary, explains that they're relatives of tomatoes and tomatillos, possess "caramelly" flavors, and are often made into pies and preserves. Eating them out of hand, like any berry, is fine too. When you come across something unfamiliar, learn what you can about it, and when you cook and eat it, approach it generally. You won't think of many uses for that black-skinned Russian radish if that's how you think of it. But if you see a large root vegetable, you'll realize it's made to be roasted, and when you do, you'll find a surprising sweetness and mild mustard kick. Imagine what would have happened if, paralyzed by ignorance and a sense of certain doom, you'd just passed it over. Bring a cooler: This is a good rule for any food shopping that you do. A cooler with some ice (not enough for a deep freeze, just to keep things crisp) gives you the flexibility to search obsessively for wine to complement your grilled Berkshire pork chops with fresh tomato-corn salsa, stop and chat with friends, run other errands, or just avoid traffic for an hour or so. The only caveat is to layer your food, keeping egg cartons, meat, cheese, and cold-tolerant produce like onions and cucumbers on the bottom with the ice, and fragile and heat tolerant items like herbs, tomatoes and lettuce on top. Bring your own bags: Most of us have the bag of bags of bags in the kitchen or laundry room; the more advanced have those oh-so-attractive bag sausages that make the obscene quantity of single-use bags easier to ignore. Go ahead and bring them to reuse at the farmers market. Most farmers don't provide bags, and the ones that do could surely use the money elsewhere. Many farmers also prefer to keep and reuse their pint containers and baskets, so be prepared, and do everything you can to help them out. They aren't getting rich selling organic produce, and would probably rather invest their container money in their farms. It's also wasteful to use such durable products only once. By reusing bags and cartons, you're reducing demand for products that are produced in factories that pollute and where workers are poorly paid for unskilled labor. The truly advanced among us will invest in reusable cloth bags, but for the immediate future, reusing your old plastic bags until they give out is a responsible option. Finally, a crop calendar. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, March 20th, 2007
5:34 pm	New Posts New posts on the James Beard Foundation Awards, and my attempt to find a job over spring break here (Comment on this)
Wednesday, August 23rd, 2006
5:25 pm	On Produce Just a reminder: I'm lazy, so if you want pictures and links (there a link that goes with this), go to the blogger URL. My last table yesterday wanted a caprese salad. Not surprising; the dish is iconic Italian: tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, olive oil and balsamic. And in Georgia, August is the high holy season for the Tomato, patron saint of summer. What I pulled from the pantry window five minutes lately made me ashamed to serve. The tomatoes were only slightly darker than my nail beds, and the mozzarella I recognized as the opposite of "not soggy, not vulcanized, not tasteless" good mozzarella, as described by a local editor. I grabbed the sous chef, and jerked my hand in the direction of the offensive plate "What the hell is this? We're in Georgia. In August." My chef was kind enough to feed me the line from the Big Corporate Produce Distributor That You Probably Didn't Know is Owned by a Company That Makes Food for Chili's. The heat is ruining our tomatoes. I'll give you a minute to straighten up, wipe the tears from your eyes, and repeat that little joke to whoever's around. Because to Southerners that's a great joke. The heat. Is ruining our tomatoes. Whew. It gets me going here, in a lab, 24 hours later. Anyone who has grown tomatoes in the South can tell you that, water being sufficient, heat will not hurt your tomatoes. But here's the rub: these aren't Southern tomatoes. These are California tomatoes. And while California grows lots of great produce, when you take something fragile like a tomato and tell me that it came to Georgia from California, that tells me that the tomato is a product of highly industrialized agriculture. What's wrong with that? We need food, the more the better right? No. We need food. We do not need a system that selects plants based on their ability to produce lots of fruit that can be transferred from truck to truck on a cross-country trip, at the expense of flavor, texture, aroma, and all of those other hard-to-perfect variables. It's worth noting that flavor, aroma, and texture are why we eat tomatoes instead of potatoes (which, not to be nasty to the potato, store and ship beautifully). Certain products grow better in certain regions. Tomato plants in general like heat, humidity, and for reasons most other plants can't fathom, clay-based soil. But the tomatoes grown in California were selected for California, where there's less heat, humidity, and heavy soil. Thus, when heat shows up, it throws off the development of these already-compromised plants, and I hypothesize that the fruit ripens before it darkens, making tomatoes in August look like tomatoes in January. When we allow this: when I served that salad, when my customers ate it and paid for it, and when I frequent establishments that don't hold that gargantuan produce distributor to its promise of quality (better to boycott them altogether, but that takes a huge amount of work for a restaurant), when we pay inflated rates at market for high-season produce that isn't high-season quality, we're sending a message: keep shipping my produce from farther than a day's travel away. Keep telling farmers to plant species that produce quantity over quality. And please, keep us ignorant about what we eat. If you've never tasted a good tomato, you won't understand the heresy that is a bad one. You won't get pissed at the machines with tables that insult your intelligence and your palate with some of the absolute merde we're asked to accept as food. You'll be a perfect consumer, and your enthusiasm toward food will vary about as much as what you eat, which is to say, not much at all. (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 13th, 2006
5:06 pm	Hooray for parallel posting I've written more than this since February. If you want to see it, go to the link in the first post. Culinary Milestone Last night, I had foie gras for the first time. It was seared, Hudson Valley, on a buttermilk biscuit that smelled and tasted like it was baked to order. There was also some bacon and some apple compote, but I was just stealing a bite from someone else, so I focused on the foie gras and the biscuit. The world didn't quite stop spinning, but it was the best riff on sausage and biscuits that I could possibly imagine. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, February 8th, 2006
12:43 am	Oops Forgot to mention this earlier. If you go to the food blog, and know my name, please don't include it in any posts. The theory is that at some point I'll be making enough money and have enough time to review restaurants, and I don't want to be "made" as they say, so I'd like to eliminate even the remotest of possibilities. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
11:09 am	inaugural post Some people requested that I get a livejournal account. I won't really be posting, but check out the food blog at http://epicure-se.blogspot.com. Thanks! (Comment on this)