Harvest Celebration

As you may know, Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo is a 501c3 non-profit organization that supports approximately fifty community gardens throughout the City of Buffalo. Most of the gardens are in low to moderate-income areas, primarily on the city’s East and West Sides. In a city with increasing amounts of open space due to demolition of vacant houses, these gardens are becoming increasingly important, due to their ability to create community, grow food and beautify the city.

There are many success stories that have sprung from our gardens, but the one that I would like to share with you is that of “Zeke’s Garden.” This community garden is named after our founder, Milton Zeckhauser, and is maintained by the Food Bank of Western New York. At this garden a diverse group of people receiving food aid—including many immigrant families, have the opportunity to grow ethnic and native food-producing plants of their choosing. It is truly a sight to see these different groups working together with their family members towards a common purpose. Zeke’s garden is an example of how community gardens empower the disenfranchised by enabling them to put food on the table through their own hard work.

Grassroots Gardens is working to build more gardens to give people in need the power to grow their own food and stay healthy. We are having our second annual fundraiser, the “Harvest Celebration” on Thursday October 16th from 5:30pm to 8:00pm at the Karpeles Manuscript Library Museum at 453 Porter Ave. There will be hors d’oeuvres, beverages and raffles. Admission is $25.00 for members and $30.00 for non-members.

Each new garden costs approximately $2,500 to implement, check out the Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo website for more information at http://www.grassrootsgardens.org/

September Resolutions

All of us at Buffalo Locavore have been a little light with our posting for the last few weeks because this happens to be the absolute busiest work time of the year for all five of us, even though we have a variety of different jobs. Posting should become more frequent in the next few weeks, and we will get back to more of our editorial goals including interviews with local farmers, restaurant reviews, and experimenting with new or different local foods. With the change in the seasons, the change in available foods should be interesting blog fodder as well.

For me, September has always been a month about new beginnings. This is possibly the product of 13 years of public school K-12 and 4 years of college, but even though I have not had to think about "back to school" in 10 years, whenever Labor Day hits it feels more to me like time to re-evaluate and set goals for the upcoming months. Perhaps part of this is that September begins colder nights and that first tickling feeling that we are about to embark on yet another winter's long hibernation. Let other people have their January 1 resolutions when the calendar changes, I am sticking with September.

In the spirit of this blog, I have made a handful of food resolutions that I plan to keep within the next six months. Hopefully, knowing that I have made this promise publicly and plan on reporting back to our faithful readers on my progress will really help me stick to it. I welcome all suggestions and tips, including referrals to local suppliers.

My food resolutions are :

1. to learn to make the following from scratch:

croissants
popovers
cannoli (even the shells)
marinara sauce (hopefully from our backyard tomatoes)
mozzarella cheese
clafoutis
tarte tatin
pumpkin pie (from our backyard pumpkins)
one Indian dish (exactly what is undecided)

2. to re-learn how to make:

pie crust
pasta
yeast bread
roast chicken

3. to try the following vegetables at least once:

rutabaga
parsnip
turnip
(Maybe all three at once using Whitney's root bake recipe from an earlier post?)
spaghetti squash

Keep checking in to see how far I get or if my resolutions fall by the wayside, as so many do. If you make any resolutions of your own, please share and we will cheer you on as you progress.

Happy September!

National Chicken Wing Festival

This weekend, as has happened every Labor Day weekend since 2002, Dunn Tire Park played host to the National Chicken Wing Festival. My husband and I have gone every year since 2002, and it is always a good time. I was skeptical about going the first year, because food-based fairs are usually a little weird. Maybe it is just me, but it is kind of weird to stand around watching thousands of other people walking around chewing.

It has been fun to watch the festival grow and adapt as ever-larger crowds (almost 80,000 this year) turn out to enjoy Buffalo's most identifiable local culinary delight. I think this year was the first where it seemed like most of the wing vendors were not actually Buffalo-based businesses. It would be great to see more Buffalo restaurants showing their stuff. My favorite wings almost every year are taco wings from Swings on Bailey, though this year they did not have quite the same taco kick. I usually get Danny's chicken wing soup, too, but there was no way I was eating soup in 85-degree heat.

I tackled 9 wings total, and all were good. I prefer barbecue-sauced wings to anything very spicy while my husband is more of a wing purist, and the festival always has decent variety for both of us. We overheard a number of people talking about coconut wings, but that just sounded too strange to both of us. Arooga's Almost Everything wings were my favorite this year. Arooga's is a grille and bar located in Harrisburg, PA.

You can visit the festival's official website here.

Beets and homemade sauce

First of all, my thanks to Whitney for the beet recipe she suggested. I haven't tried it yet, but I definitely will. The lovely dish of beets seen in the picture is an appetizer I shared with a good friend at Lolita, an awesome restaurant in Cleveland owned by Iron Chef himself Michael Symon. http://www.lolabistro.com/ And yes, we are total nerds for taking pictures of our food, but I don't care. The guys behind us were taking pics of their steaks, so there.

This dish was sooo good - honey, beets, mint, orange zest, ricotta cheese and almonds. I was so inspired, I tried to replicate at home with my CSA beets. Yeah, that didn't go so good but if you can cook beets correctly (I obviously can't) then I would recommend this dish.

Last week was all you can pick tomatoes and my neighbor/co-share owner went all out. I made tomato sauce from scratch this weekend and it turned out great!! Used a bit for a zucchini and eggplant lasagna we made tonight. Cooking Light comes through again!

Local Favorites

So far, we have mostly discussed local foods in terms of produce grown locally and used in homemade dishes. This is, of course, at the core of the local food movement. However, I think it is also important to highlight food businesses that are locally owned. So, here are a list of some of my favorite Buffalo-centric food outlets (minus restaurants):

Spar's Sausages (If you have never been to this delightful little shop on Amherst St, near Grant, you are seriously missing out. They have a great selection of Hungarian delicacies in the grocery part of the store, and a wonderful variety of homemade sausages.)

Fowlers Chocolates (I know there is a big debate about the best of the local chocolatiers, and we do have great selection between Parkside Candies, Watsons, Choco-Logo, Niagara Candy, etc but I think Fowlers just tastes creamier and richer somehow).

Costanzo's Rolls (How on earth they make these taste so good is beyond me, but roast beef just isn't right without them.)

Federal Meats (Great customer service. Wish they had more free-range and grass-finished products.)

Sweet Tooth (My vote for the best desserts in town.)

and it wouldn't be Easter without a butter lamb from the Broadway Market (and I am not even Polish).

What are some of YOUR favorite local spots to bring home treats for your table?

Peachy

With my last cooking experiment going so well (see my post about the caramelized tomatoes), I decided to cook up a special dessert using some local peaches. It was delicious, and very easy. The peaches were incredibly flavorful and fragrant, particularly compared with the usual well-traveled supermarket variety. Here is my recipe for baked peaches (serves 2, but can easily be altered for however many servings you need):

Ingredients
2 ripe, firm peaches
4 teaspoons maple syrup
1/3 cup plain Greek yogurt (thicker and creamier than usual yogurt--Fage brand is available in the natural foods section at Wegmans)
Pecans to taste (optional)
Cut the peaches in half.

1. Remove the peach stones.


2. Drizzle one teaspoon of maple syrup over each peach half.


3. Bake at 350 degrees until peaches are warm and slightly soft, about 10 minutes.


4. When peaches are done baking, top each half with a dollop of Greek yogurt.


5. Sprinkle with pecans.


6. Enjoy!

Does anyone else have any recipes for light, summer desserts using local fruits that they would like to share?

Ann's Intro

Hi,
I'm Ann M, this blog's very delinquent contributor. This is my first time blogging (ever) so bear with me, please. My job is to write about the CSA I belong to in the southtowns and suburban markets. I belong to the Thorpe's Family Farm CSA in East Aurora, 655.4486 (no site).

They offer both veggie and fruit shares. While convincing my husband it was a good idea to spend a lot of money up front for a weekly veggie share neither of us were sure we would eat, I invited our neighbors to split a large share with us. This not only cuts down on the cost but we also take turns with the weekly pick ups.

I'll be upfront and admit that we don't always eat what we get. Most weeks are better than others, but I feel just as bad throwing away uneaten food, no matter where I got it (am working on building a compost bin right now - that's a whole other blog!). However, what we do eat is....beautiful, delightful, satisfying...just looking at my bowl of veggies on the counter makes me happy. But it is work - or at least, I look at it that way and that could just be me being anal. The share gets picked up every Tuesday and I immediately start to process it: stuff gets sorted in appropriate places (fridge or counter); lettuce gets cut, washed and stored in a bin loosely covered by a dishcloth (this seems to work better than keeping it in my salad spinner container); then I figure out what to do with it.

This is where the fun stuff starts. The cookbooks and most importantly (and I wouldn't be able to live without these -seriously) are my cut out Cooking Light recipes. They have saved my veggie lovin' behind many a time. Interestingly, I was a vegetarian for about 10 years (still eat mainly veg) but am using my veg cookbooks more now than I did when I was meatless. The key to my CSA sanity is organization (if you couldn't tell) and I make my weekly dinner menus based on what I got in that week's share. The Thorpes are good people - they email you every Monday to tell you what to expect in that week's share and give you recipes, too!!

Tonight, I grilled orange, yellow, and green peppers and corn from the CSA, threw in a CSA tomato, some mushrooms, goat cheese, and salsa and grilled me up a mean quesadilla. While I follow recipes pretty religiously, the CSA gives good opportunity to be creative. I love to cook, I love to eat, and I love to support locally-owned family farms. Next week, I'll share more recipes and pics!

Introductions

Hello everyone and welcome to my first post. I'd like to start things off by saying simply, I LOVE FOOD!!!! My name is Brian and I will be bringing you tips on do it yourself projects and restaurant reviews/interviews. I guess I should give everyone a little background information on myself. I'm a fairly new addition to Buffalo, and so far I love it here! I'm originally from Portsmouth, VA, which is sandwiched between Norfolk and Virginia Beach. Until recently, I spent most of the last 10 years working in restaurants both as a bartender and a server. I've worked in all different kinds of places from seafood restaurants to bakeries to fine dining. Since moving to Buffalo, I've worked at Le Metro on Elmwood (before it became Mode) and the Buffalo Chophouse. Because of this background, I've chosen to bring you the local restaurant reviews. I plan on keeping my focus on all the great places to eat that are locally owned in the city. There are just SOOOO MANY great places here--plus it gives me an excuse to go out and eat at a bunch of new places. In addition to this I will be bringing you updates from my first try at a garden, and other do it yourself projects as they get going. This is going to be a lot of fun on my end!!! If anyone has a particular restaurant that want to learn about or a special project they might need help with, please let me know in the comments of my articles or just shoot me an email. Well, I look forward to bringing you all as much info. as I can so have fun, and eat great local food.

Out of the Fire and Into the Frying Pan

Ahh, tomato time. Ripe, red, fresh tomates are dropping from vines all over Western New York, ready to be eaten fresh with a bit of salt, sliced on sandwiches, chopped up into salsa, or cooked into sauce.

As I have mentioned before, I am not a frequent cook. I think the last meal I cooked was possibly Thanksgiving dinner. Maybe Christmas. Anyway, it's been awhile. This is mostly because I married a fantastic and enthusiastic cook, but partly because I tend to work long hours and don't always have the energy to make an effort to pull something together when I get home.

Well, last week I picked up half a dozen slightly underripe, local tomatoes and decided to try a new dish from scratch. The recipe I chose was Baked Pasta with Caramelized Tomatoes from Susan Herrmann Loomis's French Farmhouse Cookbook. It is a great cookbook if you like simple, homey foods and interesting anecdotes and background on each dish and the regions they come from. I should point out that nowhere in the recipe is the pasta actually baked in the oven--this is all made on the cooktop. This makes it great for a summer night when you don't want to heat the house by turning on the oven. Here is the recipe:

Ingredients

6 good sized, slightly underripe tomatoes, cored.

1/4 cup olive oil

3 cloves garlic, peeled, halved and green germ removed

1 cup loosely packed flat leaf parsley leaves

sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

10 ounces dried pasta, such as fettucine

1/2 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese

Directions

1. Cut the tomatoes in half horizontally.

2. Place the oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat. When it is hot but not smoking (when small ripples move over its surface), add the tomatoes, cut side up. Cook, shifting tehm slightly in the pan to avoid scorching, until this skin is slightly bubbled on the bottom and has a golden spot on it, about 4 minutes. Turn the tomatoes and continue cooking until the cut side is golden, about 6 minutes. Shake the pan two or three times to move the tomatoes around so they don't burn.

3. While the tomatoes are cooking, finely mince the garlic and parsely together.

4. Turn the tomatoes again, so the cut side is up. Working around teh tomatoes, scrape up any browned bits from the bottom of the skillet. Sprinkle the tomatoes with the garlic and parsley, and season them genrously with salt and pepper. Reduce the heat to medium and cover the skillet. Cook the tomatoes until they are tender through and the garlic is tender, about 10 minutes, shaking the pan occasionally to prevent the tomatoes from sticking. The juice from the tomatoes will turn a deep caramel color but shouldn't burn.

5. While the tomatoes finish cooking, fill a large pot 2/3 full with salted water and bring it to a boil. Add the pasta, stir, and cook until it is al dente, about 10 minutes. Drain, reserving 1 cup of the pasta cooking liquid. Return the pasta to the pot, pour half the reserved cooking liquid over it, and toss so the pasta is thoroughly moistened.


6. Arrange the tomatoes around the edges of a large warmed platter. Deglaze the skillet with the remaining pasta cooking liquid, scraping up any browned bits, and pour that over the pasta as well. Toss so the liquid is well blended with the pasta. Transfer the pasta to the center of the serving platter, so it is surrounded with the tomatoes. Serve immediately, with the Parmesan cheese alongside.

Serves 4-6.



From start to finish, dinner took me just about an hour. I served the tomatoes along with a roasted pork tenderloin with the Wegman's balsamic vinegar marinade. A delicious and fairly simple fresh feast.

Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo

Tomorrow night is a very exciting evening for Grassroots Gardens of Buffalo which is a local community gardening organization that provides support for over 40 community gardens primarily on Buffalo's East and West Sides. Tomorrow night is Weenie Wednesday in the Gardens at Ms. Triggs' garden at 595 Sycamore. It is going to be an awesome time with free food and beverages. (people are encouraged to bring a dish to pass as well)

Here's the Details:

Grassroots Gardens Weenie Wednesday in the Gardens

Ms. Triggs' Garden 595 Sycamore

Starting around 6pm

Food and Beverages provided

This is a great event and it brings together gardeners from across Buffalo. I looke forward to seeing everyone there tomorrow evening!

Must read: Wednesday's "Dining In" serves up some news on Wegmans

I try to pick up the New York Times on Wednesdays because it is on those days that the "Dining In" section is published. I like "Dining In" because it covers food-related stories from a variety of perspectives: profiles on chefs and farmers, reports from New York's Greenmarket and other markets throughout the country, local and national food trends, and, of course, a fair share of recipes.

Last week's offerings (I know, I'm late) included an article on how Supermarkets are adapting to demands for locally grown food. It seems like the increase in gas prices and the growing awareness of "local food politics" have created a perfect storm for local growers, many of whom sell directly to supermarket chains.

Our own local giant was featured in the write up and, for those of us keeping track of this sort of thing, comes across as a leader of the pack:

Wegmans Food Markets, a 71-store chain based in New York with locations in
Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, has been buying from local farmers for the last 20 years. Today it has 800 farmers and has also experienced
a 20 percent increase in sales of local produce over the past year. “There’s a
real emotional connection with local,” said Dave Corsi, vice president for
produce.

Mr. Corsi said that in order to buy from local farms, the chain had
to stop acting like a chain. “We don’t control these relationships centrally —
the produce manager in each store does this directly,” he said. “We only guide
the stores.”

I didn't know much about Wegmans' local food practices beyond the fact that they do a good job of carrying it. I was pleased to learn that the relationship between grower and buyer seems to remain as human as possible (you can learn a bit more about the Buffalo-area farmers on Wegmans' website) and I'd like to know more about the effect this sales increase will have on their non-local produce sales. It wasn't clear if Wegmans cut--or will cut--the amount of non-local produce it buys in light of these new figures.

Also mentioned in the Times article is Wal-Mart's recent steps towards buying local food. This development sort of makes my head spin since the corporate culture runs opposite to what I appreciate about eating (and buying) local but hey, I guess it's a good development?

Anyway, check it out and cheer for the last line of the piece: "'It’s going to be a way of life,' said Matt Seeley, vice president for marketing of the Nunes Company, which sells Foxy brand vegetables. 'I don’t think there is any turning back.'"

PS: Give Hawthorne Valley Farm a high-five for milling their own flour. Dante Hesse, also mentioned in the same piece, is a HVF alum.

Pushing for More Local Farms

The Buffalo News has a great editorial in today's paper about growing local farms. You can find it here. I am pleased to say that fromw hat I have heard from various members of the community I get to work with regularly, I think we are about to see a significant increase in lcoal food opportunities. The prospect is very exciting, and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish by planning and working together.

A Cookout, Not a Rainout

I had the opportunity to briefly stop by the Massachusetts Avenue Project's local foods cookout tonight at their Growing Green project site on (naturally) Massachusetts Avenue. As I was pulling up. thunderclouds were rumbling ominously and the wind was starting to kick up, but there were numerous tents covering people, and everyone enjoying the delicious looking food seemed undeterred by the threat of rain. Then it started to pour. To use a Midwestern colloquialism, it was a real gullywasher. And no one left. The diverse and lively crowd was too busy munching ears of buttery corn, laughing, and enjoying each other's company. It reminded me of what I love about Buffalo--our toughness in the face of adversity, and our real sense of neighborliness and conviviality. The only downside was that I didn't get to stay long enough to sample anything.

Eating Local in Normandy

I recently finished reading On Rue Tatin by Susan Hermann Loomis, and I want to recommend it to anyone looking for an entertaining memoir. Loomis writes about her experiences transplanting her husband, toddler, and herself to Normandy, France to renovate an old convent. Loomis is a cook and a food writer, so much of the book talks about her experiences of eating local in Normandy. A nice perspective from another country, and good recipes, too. Her descriptions of the local farmer's market shows the universal appeal of reaching out and making those connections between grower and consumer.

Be Vocal Eat Local Week

It is Be Vocal, Eat Local Week through August 8. There are a few special events to highlight this week to raise awareness and give you a taste of what is out there.

Buffalo First and the Massachusetts Avenue Project (MAP) are hosting a party on Tuesday, August 5 featuring all local food and drink. The event will be held at Flying Bison Brewery. Tickets are $10, and include all of the food you can sample. The Growing Green program will have fun activities for kids, so bring the whole family.

MAP is also hosting a cookout on August 7 from 6-9pm at their Growing Green garden, located at 389 Massachusetts Avenue. You can tour their urban farm and meet the young adults who are cultivating the gardens through the Growing Green program.

You can also get a list of restaurants participating in Be Vocal Eat Local Week at http://www.buffalofirst.org.