Posts Tagged ‘local foods’

OZU Restaurant Japanese Kosher Natural Food
566 Amsterdam Avenue
( Between 87th and 88th Streets )
New York, NY

This macrobiotic restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is a favorite for locals in the neighborhood who visit daily for the lunch special. The lunch specials start at are $13.00 and include a hearty bowl of soup, your choice of miso, carrot ginger or a daily bean soup medley and your choice of a main dish. Another crowd pleaser is the “Almost Perfect” which consists of a magnificent greens selection with tofu, seaweed and carrots. It comes in an adorable bento box and also includes your choice of soup and you can also choose two appetizers from the menu. The restaurant serves no dairy products, no meat, no refined sugar, no sushi, no shellfish, no soft drinks, and no hard booze. What they do, however, they do very, very well. Vegan entrées like Asian-oriented grains, noodles, and flavorful vegetables, such as shredded carrots inside a dumpling wrapper, are prefaced by spring rolls stuffed with basil, julienned cucumber, and soft tofu, with a peanut dipping sauce on the side. Cooked fish, like buttery sea bass or wild or farmed salmon, also makes the Ozu list. Kabocha, tender steamed Hokkaido pumpkin, fragrant with sesame seeds, is particularly simple and good. Another great find are coconut curries, Korean nabe pots—heated stone bowls filled with vegetables, rice, or soup—and, in a welcome twist, decidedly un-Asian pastas like kabocha gnocchi. All in all lunch at Ozu is always filling so go on an empty stomach and wear comfortable fitting pants: But to fill up here is not a guilty pleasure because all of the food is healthy, nutritious and most of all delicious!

Josie’s Restaurant has been a longtime favorite of mine for casual vegetarian dining, although their menu includes fish and poultry as well.  They have two locations, one on the upper west side of Manhattan and one in midtown.  I recommend the sushi appetizer, which is vegetarian, and absolutely scrumptious.  They offer free range meats and all organic produce from local vendors.  They also have a quite impressive juice bar selection and the freshness of their fruits is undeniable!  Both locations offer ambient, aesthetically pleasing  settings and the service is wonderful.  Josie’s is the perfect place to take a first date or a group of friends.  I have included a rave review from NY Magazine:

In these uncertain agricultural times, people question where their food comes from, and Louis Lanza, chef-owner of both Josie’s on the Upper West Side and its Murray Hill outpost, is full of reassuring answers, most of them printed right on the menu. The sleek design shatters every health-food-restaurant cliche. All appetizers and main dishes are dairy free but not necessarily meat free, so vegans can enjoy a veggie “meatloaf ” while meat eaters wolf down a natural, free-range meat dish. A mixed-eating-habit couple can put together a nice, inexpensive meal by ordering one entrée each and splitting an order of steamed dumplings in a creamy red pepper coulis or a side of mashed sweet potatoes with cranberries. — Rob Patronite and Robin Raisfeld

The New York Botanical Garden has an amazing Edible Garden exhibit where you’ll learn things like how to grow sustainable fruits and veggies and turn food scraps into nutrient-rich soil.  The lovely heirloom tomatoes pictured above were organically grown this summer in the fertile grounds at The Botanical Gardens in the Bronx.  Kids will enjoy the Pizza Garden for a hands-on look at planting basil, wheat, tomatoes, and oregano.  If you get hungry hit the 250-acre edible garden, where you can buy fresh produce from local farmers on Wednesdays and Sundays.  When you grow or buy organic produce, no toxic pesticides go into you, your family, or the environment.  Plus, locally grown food is safe to eat and you know exactly where it came from and how it was grown;  Help our planet and lower your carbon footprint buy local and grow your own food when possible, plus it  doesn’t require major CO2-spewing shipping.

Edible Gardens at New York Botanical Garden Southern Blvd., Bronx (718-817-8700). Tickets, $20/adults; $8/kids.

For the last ten years I have tried to eat organically as often as possible.  There were times when the financial expense of eating only organic foods was too much.  Now the problem is that my local supermarket doesn’t carry much in the way of organic produce and because I work full time I find myself limited when it comes to where I shop for food.  Organic.com is a great resource that I turn to for information on reasons to eat organically as well as a tool for finding local farmers markets.  Here are their top 10 reasons to eat organically:

1. Reduce The Toxic Load: Keep Chemicals Out of the Air, Water, Soil and our Bodies
Buying organic food promotes a less toxic environment for all living things. With only 0.5 percent of crop and pasture land in organic, according to USDA that leaves 99.5 percent of farm acres in the U.S. at risk of exposure to noxious agricultural chemicals.

Our bodies are the environment so supporting organic agriculture doesn’t just benefit your family, it helps all families live less toxically.

2. Reduce if Not Eliminate Off Farm Pollution
Industrial agriculture doesn’t singularly pollute farmland and farm workers; it also wreaks havoc on the environment downstream. Pesticide drift affects non-farm communities with odorless and invisible poisons. Synthetic fertilizer drifting downstream is the main culprit for dead zones in delicate ocean environments, such as the Gulf of Mexico, where its dead zone is now larger than 22,000 square kilometers, an area larger than New Jersey, according to Science magazine, August, 2002.

3. Protect Future Generations
Before a mother first nurses her newborn, the toxic risk from pesticides has already begun. Studies show that infants are exposed to hundreds of harmful chemicals in utero. In fact, our nation is now reaping the results of four generations of exposure to agricultural and industrial chemicals, whose safety was deemed on adult tolerance levels, not on children’s. According to the National Academy of Science, “neurologic and behavioral effects may result from low-level exposure to pesticides.” Numerous studies show that pesticides can adversely affect the nervous system, increase the risk of cancer, and decrease fertility.

4. Build Healthy Soil
Mono-cropping and chemical fertilizer dependency has taken a toll with a loss of top soil estimated at a cost of $40 billion per year in the U.S., according to David Pimental of Cornell University. Add to this an equally disturbing loss of micro nutrients and minerals in fruits and vegetables. Feeding the soil with organic matter instead of ammonia and other synthetic fertilizers has proven to increase nutrients in produce, with higher levels of vitamins and minerals found in organic food, according to the 2005 study, “Elevating Antioxidant levels in food through organic farming and food processing,” Organic Center State of Science Review (1.05)

5. Taste Better and Truer Flavor
Scientists now know what we eaters have known all along: organic food often tastes better. It makes sense that strawberries taste yummier when raised in harmony with nature, but researchers at Washington State University just proved this as fact in lab taste trials where the organic berries were consistently judged as sweeter. Plus, new research verifies that some organic produce is often lower in nitrates and higher in antioxidants than conventional food. Let the organic feasting begin!

6. Assist Family Farmers of all Sizes
According to Organic Farming Research Foundation, as of 2006 there are approximately 10,000 certified organic producers in the U.S. compared to 2500 to 3,000 tracked in 1994. Measured against the two million farms estimated in the U.S. today, organic is still tiny. Family farms that are certified organic farms have a double economic benefit: they are profitable and they farm in harmony with their surrounding environment. Whether the farm is a 4-acre orchard or a 4,000-acre wheat farm, organic is a beneficial practice that is genuinely family-friendly.

7. Avoid Hasty and Poor Science in Your Food
Cloned food. GMOs and rBGH. Oh my! Interesting how swiftly these food technologies were rushed to market, when organic fought for 13 years to become federal law. Eleven years ago, genetically modified food was not part of our food supply; today an astounding 30 percent of our cropland is planted in GMOs. Organic is the only de facto seal of reassurance against these and other modern, lab-produced additions to our food supply, and the only food term with built in inspections and federal regulatory teeth.

8. Eating with a Sense of Place
Whether it is local fruit, imported coffee or artisan cheese, organic can demonstrate a reverence for the land and its people. No matter the zip code, organic has proven to use less energy (on average, about 30 percent less), is beneficial to soil, water and local habitat, and is safer for the people who harvest our food. Eat more seasonably by supporting your local farmers market while also supporting a global organic economy year round. It will make your taste buds happy.

9. Promote Biodiversity
Visit an organic farm and you’ll notice something: a buzz of animal, bird and insect activity. These organic oases are thriving, diverse habitats. Native plants, birds and hawks return usually after the first season of organic practices; beneficial insects allow for a greater balance, and indigenous animals find these farms a safe haven. As best said by Aldo Leopold, “A good farm must be one where the native flora and fauna have lost acreage without losing their existence.” An organic farm is the equivalent of reforestation. Industrial farms are the equivalent of clear cutting of native habitat with a focus on high farm yields.

10. Celebrate the Culture of Agriculture
Food is a ‘language’ spoken in every culture. Making this language organic allows for an important cultural revolution whereby diversity and biodiversity are embraced and chemical toxins and environmental harm are radically reduced, if not eliminated. The simple act of saving one heirloom seed from extinction, for example, is an act of biological and cultural conservation. Organic is not necessarily the most efficient farming system in the short run. It is slower, harder, more complex and more labor-intensive. But for the sake of culture everywhere, from permaculture to human culture, organic should be celebrated at every table.

The most common sense way of stating this principle is:

The shorter the distance that food travels from farm to table, the better.

Simply consider the distance between you and your food sources (and we’re not talking supermarkets here—they’re vendors, not sources), and choose the closest producers in order to live a greener lifestyle. Get your eggs from a farm in your town rather than from a farm in the far reaches of your state, and vegetables from farms in your state rather than from farms two states over. If you live on the East Coast, Florida citrus is better than California citrus. If you live in the state of Washington, California is closer than Florida, but Florida is closer than Brazil, and so forth.

Eating locally doesn’t mean doing without. You don’t have to give up coffee and tea, for example, which are popular the world over, though grown only in certain regions. But it does mean making choices when possible in favor of those foods produced nearest to where you live. Every time you purchase from the closest farmer, you strengthen the network of growers and businesses seeking to build and maintain a “foodshed” that is diverse, nutritious, sustainable, and secure.

HOW TO BUY LOCAL IN WINTER
Out-of-season produce is an extravagance because it is so energy-intensive to transport it to your kitchen. It’s not just your drive to bring it home from the grocery store—think of all the traveling that produce has done to get to the store from whatever field or orchard it was grown in. But you still want to eat plenty of fruit and vegetables, so in the winter, we should all try to eat frozen, dried, and bisphenol A (BPA)–free canned food, and food stored in local root cellars.

Eating frozen fruit and vegetables, especially from local producers and local root cellars, is your very best option during the winter months. Frozen foods retain much of their nutritional content, in addition to cutting energy costs in transportation. It takes much less energy to keep food frozen than it takes to ship food hundreds, even thousands, of miles and keep it fresh along the way. Dried and canned foods can also be nutritious options.

From the new National Geographic book, True Food

I’ll let the headline of this article do all the talking: 10 Killer DIY Garden Hacks found at Green Upgrader. Without further ado, here they are!

1. DIY Vertical Garden with Reclaimed Gutters

When Suzanne Forsling moved to Juneau Alaska from Iowa, she found that it was a little bit harder to get her garden to grow. Frustrated by cold soil, scarce sunlight, hungry slugs, root maggots, porcupines, cats, bears and ravens she got resourceful. She got her crops off the cold ground and into the light by afixing gutters to the wood siding of her house on the sunny side and using them as planters.

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2. Used Tired Raised Garden & Tree Ring

If you have some old tires laying around that you don’t know what to do with, you could burn them… if you hate the environment, or you could put them to work as cool looking raised garden beds. Now this is pretty self-explanetory, but I highly recommend you read the tutorial first becsause if you don’t know what you are doing you can get yourself into trouble trying to cut up a steel belted tire.

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3. DIY Earth Box

An Earth Box is more than just a box with soil. It’s a self-contained system that regulates irrigations, facilitates the delivery of nutrients and does all of this in the most efficient way. These are great for people who don’t have the room for an in ground garden. You can buy an Earth Box or there a ton of resources to help you go McGuyver Green.

Check out this post on Crafster.org that will show you how it’s done (via Crafting a Greener World).

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4. Self-Watering Garden

Instructable user AskJerry discovered that his central air conditioning system disposed of approximately 350 gallons of water down the drain each year. To put this water to better use he built this great Self-watering garden that reclaims the AC waste water and evenly distributes it to his vegtables in this quaint garden box. Now if you don’t have central air, you can still use this tutorial (with a few mods) with a rainbarrel, or greywater system. Check out the tutorial at Instructables.

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5. Upside Down Herb Planters

I wrote about these space saving DIY hanging planters from Urban Organic Gardener a few weeks ago. Limited to a tiny fire escape platform to do all his gardening, Mike Lieberman has been forced to be creative in order to satisfy his herbivore urges. He uses reclaimed 2 liter bottles to create hanging upside down planters to make the most of his limited space. Check out his how-to.

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6. DIY Vertical Shoe Organizer Herb Garden

Confounded by vegetable digging cats and toiling in the vegetable patch, Instructables member pippa5 came up with this cool DIY vertical garden solution. In case you don’t recognize it, she used an old closet shoe organizer. Meant to keep your shoes off the floor and save you some space, this new use saves some space by getting your veggies or herbs off the ground. Check out the DIY at Instructables.

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7. Self-Watering Insulated Tiny Greenhouse

I’m not sure when you would need such a small and complex greenhouse system but this sure is an innovative way to reuse cups and bottles. I guess the benefit of this is that the seedling is portable, in case you need to move it freequently between your window sill, your deck… bring it to the office? Check out the tutorial at Instructables.

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8. Grow 100 lbs. Of Potatoes In 4 Sq. Feet

Here’s a great space saver for you potatoe lovers! Instead of growing your pototoes in horizonal rows in your garden, grow them up in a 4×4 ft vertical potatoe garden box. Basically you start out like the picture to the right with one layer. Once the plates are about a foot above the soil you add more boards and add more soil, and keep movin on up (like the Jeffersons!). via The Seatle Times.

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9. DIY Mini-Greenhouse

If you live in a cooler climate like me you need to get creative to extend your growing season. By using some scrap lumber and an old window you can build yourself a small seedling box that will protect your seedlings from the weather and help keep them warm in the cool early spring months. Check out the tutorial at Instructables.

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10. Protect Your Garden with Beer!

There are many, many uses for beer, as Wise Bread points out, but seeing as this post is about gardening we’ll focus on it’s slug fighting power. While worms are a gardener’s best friend, slugs are their nemesis. Don’t fret, these little pests are easily defeated by a little juice of the barely. Simply pour a little into some empty jars and place them in the soil, with the rims of the jars at ground level. The beer loving slugs will drop in for a drink, which will be their last because they can’t get back out.

Salad of Heirloom Beets, Strawberries, Sheep’s Cheese and Pickled Red Onion

(Adam Cooke, The Barn at Blackberry Farm, Walland, Tennessee)

• 1 lb mixed baby beets, trimmed; reserve tender greens for salad (organic if possible)
• 1/2 lb ripe strawberries (organic if possible)
• 1/2 lb fresh sheep’s cheese or chevre
• 1 medium red onion
• 1 cup white wine vinegar
• 1 cup red wine vinegar
• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 cup sugar (organic if possible)
• 1/8 tsp each of dried chili flakes, black peppercorns, allspice, cinnamon, clove

Trim the beets and toss them in olive oil and kosher salt, wrap them in aluminum foil and roast until tender, about 45 min depending on the size of the beets. When tender, remove beets from the oven and peel. The skins should slide right off. Chill beets in fridge.

Julienne red onion and place in a bowl. Combine both vinegars, water, spices, sugar and bring to a boil. Boil 5 minutes and then strain liquid over onion. Reserve.

To plate:
Quarter beets and halve the strawberries and arrange across a plate. Toss beet greens, or other lettuces if beet greens are too tough, in a dressing made of the pickling liquid, good olive oil, salt and fresh black pepper. Crumble the cheese and sprinkle pickled onions over the top.

The Importance of Green Local Eating

Trucking, shipping and flying in food from around the country and the globe takes a toll on the environment and on public health. Take grapes, for example. Every year, nearly 270 million pounds of grapes arrive in California, most of them shipped from Chile to the Port of Los Angeles. Their 5,900 mile journey in cargo ships and trucks releases 7,000 tons of global warming pollution each year, and enough air pollution to cause dozens of asthma attacks and hundreds of missed school days in California.

The way we eat has an enormous impact on the health of the planet. By choosing to eat lower on the food chain, and focusing on local and organic produce, we can curb global warming and air pollution, avoid toxic pesticides, support local farmers and enjoy fresh, tasty food.

A large part of green living, and helping our planet, is where we eat, what we buy, and where it all comes from. I have gone back and forth from being vegetarian to omnivore and I always have tried to eat organic and free range meats. So I wanted more information on the source of what the real definition of this term is and the actual qualifications that need to be met for something to be called free range. It turns out the the term “free range” can be rather loosely applied in some countries. The birds may still be de-beaked and while not in cages, only have a very limited area to move around in. They may be crammed into sheds in the thousands and although the birds have access to the outside, it’s only the chickens close to the door that can get out. This close quarters living can cause all sorts of health problems for the chickens. I remember a colleague from years ago who worked on one of these farms telling me his first job of the day was to wander through the barn, picking up all the dead birds, of which there were quite a few, and parts of birds – wings or legs that had fallen off. On some farms, even if the birds do have external access, it’s often to enclosures that are covered in gravel with no plant material or worse still, just mudbaths mixed with old droppings. For free range egg laying birds, they are often still subject to malnutrition to increase profitability and live in eternal daylight in order to stimulate egg formation. The massive amounts of calcium needed to produce eggs can cause bone weaknesses in these birds. Before you pay out extra money for your free range chicken and eggs, learn more about the farm they come from. You may be in for a bit of a shock. Criteria that your free range chicken and eggs should meet: • Clean housing and shelter from the elements • Protection from predators • No antibiotic use • No growth hormones • Natural foods + addition of vitamins and minerals only as required • The land must have shade, shelter and palatable, sustainable vegetation • No mutilation of beaks and claws Section fom www.greenlivingtips.com found in the food tips section on free range chicken.

To feed your body nutritionally is by far the best way to live a healthy and active life. However, many people say it’s too difficult for them to pay attention to getting proper nutrition because their lives are too busy and they have too much going on. If you’re ready to make a lifestyle change and have better health, take the time to consider all of your options for diets and exercise. Having the best nutrition doesn’t have to be as hard as people make it out to be. You just need to find healthy alternatives, learn about portion control, and make a decision to do whatever it takes to make the best choices possible. If you want to eat correctly then find a diet that is based on common sense. If the diet sounds extreme — no carbs, no fat, etc — then run! When examining any diet, stop and take a minute to ask yourself: Is this an eating plan that I could follow for the rest of my life? Go for moderation. You don’t have to pay a lot of money to experts for diet books and information.

One way to get better nutritionand live a greener lifestyle is to adhere to a vegetarian or semi-vegetarian diet. Because a vegetarian diet consists most of plant-based foods, like fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts and seeds, it usually has less fat and cholesterol, and often has more fiber. To get started you’ll need to understand the types of vegetarian diets available. They typically fall into several groups defined by the types of animal foods they eat:

Vegans eat only plant-based foods. Nothing they ingest comes from animals. This means no meat, poultry, fish, milk, eggs or cheese. Lacto-vegetarians still eat milk and other milk products in addition to fruits and veggies. They do not eat eggs, meat, fish or poultry. Lacto-ovo vegetarians eat everything that lacto-vegetarians eat with the addition of eggs. They forego red meat, fish and poultry. If you decide to try any form of vegetarianism, you may find that you need to cook at home more, at least in the beginning. When you do go out to a restaurant, skip the fast food where most of the non-meat items will be fried. Many restaurants offer a selection of vegetarian options. Those that don’t can easily leave the meat out of any item on the menu. Unless you go vegan – the strictest form of vegetarian – eating out will become much easier with a little practice. It’s worth the effort to find ways to eat nutritious food and follow a sensible eating plan. Having the best nutrition is the foundation to living a healthier happier life.