Anyone Can Farm

Ran across this Web News piece from my Permaculture Google Alert Anyone Can Farm » Permaculture – Bakers Green Acres.

Bakers Green Acres based out of Marion, MI  is a farm which raises, produces and sells chicken, pork, beef, and eggs and also teaches classes for those who want to learn how to farm.

They also raised funds to build a learning center to help encourage and teach more folks about the importance of growing our own food, and not just meat and protein, but vegetables and carbohydrates as well.  Mark Baker describes in the video embedded below how important it is for our generation to learn how to raise and produce our own sustainable food sources.

Their Indiegogo ANYONE CAN FARM: America’s Farm to Fork Academy crowd sourcing project only raised $12,837 of the $75,000 goal. I am hoping that this effort does not die and they continue to offer their on-site courses which can be found on their calendar page. They are also working on some online courses for future offerings.

I myself would love to learn how to farm, and not just the vegetables and produce that I’ve been growing for years, but poultry, pork, and beef also.  This seems to be a growing trend especially with the explosion of farmers markets in recent years, the farm to table, and localvore  movement all makes more sense to me today than ever before.

Bon appetite!
CCR
=:~)

Saveur Classic New Orleans Dinner Menu

Several times a week I receive an email from Saveur featuring an exotic or special menu, and they range in themes including ethnic, holiday, and social occasions among others. Today I received the Saveur Menu: A Classic New Orleans Dinner.

The selected “Classic” menu includes the following items:

• Commander’s Palace Sazerac
• Oysters Rockefeller
• Shrimp and Tasso Henican
• Pompano en Papillote
• Sautéed Collard Greens
• New Orleans French Bread
• Bananas Foster

Here is my take on the Saveur Classic New Orleans Dinner menu.

Start your dinner experience right with a classic New Orleans cocktail! Indeed, and I have to agree with the Sazerac since it is one of the most popular New Orleans libations right up there with the Hurricane at Pat O’s and the Pimm’s Cup at The Napoleon House.

Oysters Rockefeller

Oysters Rockefeller, another great selection in the “classic” menu, were created at Antoine’s Restaurant  in 1899 by Jules Alciatore, son of the restaurant’s founder. Always a great first choice appetizer with any classic New Orleans menu, it can still be found in many restaurants in and around New Orleans, and in eateries across America for that matter, as the popularity of this famous dish has gained traction in recent years. I am wondering if the Katrina Migration has any influence on the growing popularity of Louisiana Cajun and Creole dishes outside of state lines?  I had unique opportunities to prepare this dish when I worked at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, the Columns Hotel, and several others.

Shrimp and Tasso Henican Recipe

Shrimp and Tasso Henican is a recipe that Jamie Shannon created during his tenure at Commander’s Palace and continues to be a popular appetizer sized plate, and while I have never had the opportunity to make or enjoy this dish, it is certainly up there as a contemporary classic.

Pompano en Papillote is another menu item that I had the pleasure of preparing when I was the saute cook and sous chef at the Columns Hotel in the mid to late 1980′s.  Another classic from Antoine’s Restaurant, it was created for a banquet honoring the Brazilian balloonist Alberto Santos-Dumont. Any classic New Orleans menu would be remiss if it did not include this inventive steam in the parchment paper creation.

New Orleans French Bread is a one of a kind unique bread experience. I still have yet to find any place outside of New Orleans that creates the same outer and thin hard shell crispy crust with the signature light and airy fluffy texture inside that makes the perfect Po’ boy sandwich. Many attempt to duplicate “French Bread” but I find most are knock offs that never come close, many due to the outside crust having no crunch at all, and the inside being a doughy dense mess of tightly bound tiny air pockets. The signature that differentiates true French Bread from all the others is the thin crispy crust and the light and airy fluffy inside, anything other that that is not true French Bread. The procedure for Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge: French Bread  by Pinch my Salt is the closest recipe to a true French Bread I have found.

Bananas Foster Sauce

Bananas Foster must have been a close contender with Bread Pudding, but there is no mistake here as Bananas Foster is a certain classic New Orleans dessert that will continue to please as long as there are bananas and ice cream. Of course variations on a theme, the sauce stays the same, but who said the only thing you could put Bananas Foster Sauce on was ice cream? The invention of my Chocolate Mocha Bavarian Crème filled Crêpes with Bananas Foster Sauce   is testament to the fact that you are only limited by your available ingredients and your creativity.

Bon appetite!
CCR
=:~)

Tujague’s Restaurant

Once the news of Steven Ladder’s passing hit the streets of New Orleans, in particular the French Quarter,  the future and fate of Tujague’s Restaurant (pronounced TOO-jacks) starting flying around like sparks out of a Mississippi Levee bonfire on Christmas Eve. Except for the fact that Ladder, the then owner of the restaurant passed away in his sleep on February 18, 2013, and this is not the giving season! So what would become of the coveted gem of a restaurant that has stood for over 150 years as a beacon of culinary refuge holding up some of the best old school New Orleans traditional recipes and menus on the corner at 823 Decatur Street in the French Quarter?

Turns out John Besh is making an effort to claim a stake in buying the property from Steven’s brother Stanford who currently owns the property that the restaurant resides. The rumor mill has expectations of Stanford selling the location to a local T-shirt shop merchant Mike Motwani who runs several of the apparel shops in the French Quarter. As if the area needs another T-Shirt shop!!! The other fly in the ointment is other brother Mark Latter owns the restaurant business, while Stanford owns the building.

Reservations and inquiry at the restaurant are at an all time high since news of it’s possible closure, many New Orleanians are making possibly their last efforts to get plates of Shrimp Remoulade,  Beef Brisket with Creole Sauce, or the ubiquitous Sazerac Cocktail from the bar.

One thing is certain, should Tujague’s shutter and not survive into the next generation of the family business,  it will be a sad day for New Orleans and a sadder day for those who cherish one of the places that has made New Orleans what it is today.

Get the recipe for Tujague’s Famous Boiled Beef Brisket.

The pepper plants included:

• 4 Sweet Bell Peppers
• 6 Jalapeno
• 4 Ancho Chili
• 4 Hungarian Wax
• 2 Cayenne
• 2 Anaheim

The harvested peppers filled up 17 gallons full from three 5-gallon buckets and a little over half of a 3-gallon bucket. Once the peppers were washed we started the sorting process, as you can see many of them in the three large stainless steel bowls on our kitchen prep table.

Picked peppers Sorted on the prep table

These peppers all started out from seeds in March and then transplanted the seedlings to the raised bed plot back around June.

Pepper plot spring 2012

You might ask, what are we going to do with all these peppers? Good question!

I’ve already made a batch of Chipotle peppers with the red jalapeno peppers, and will soon post a recipe on that process!

I am in the process of making a Chili Ristra with all the red chili peppers, another post on that as soon as the Ristra is completed.

Bon appetite!

=:-)

CCR

Created with 107 photos including a Christmas Dinner, a trip to Atlantic Beach, NC, and holiday we spent in the western North Carolina mountains snow!

Sauteed Rainbow Trout with Artichoke Beurre Blanc!

Celebrating our 18th year of marriage with my sweet wife Monique!

Tuna Sashimi Plated

We enjoy viewing food television shows and have ardently kept up with the Master Chef (US Season 3) series this past season which completed the finale on September 10, 2012 with Christine Ha The Blind Cook winning with her unbridled passion for cooking.

On episode 17 which aired on Tuesday, August 21, 2012, the Elimination Challenge 8 dish was selected by contestant Josh who won the advantage from the previous Mystery Box Challenge on the same segment, Josh chose Obama’s Sashimi, one of Chef Graham Elliot’s famous dishes. This dish looked wonderful on television, and both Monique and I got excited to try out this exquisitely plated dish.

I found the “Obama’s Sashimi” recipe on the Master Chef web site, the full recipe was available at the time I searched several weeks ago, but now I find they are only offering the first ingredient and first preparation step, trying to get you to purchase their book, “Master Chef: The Ultimate Cookbook”. This is Fox’s polite marketing ploy to get you to spend more of your money for all the recipes from the show. Amazon has a better price for the print or Kindle edition.

A little research…

For those who wish to recreate the dish, I have found several variations on the Internet, some with a passion fruit sorbet, some with cilantro sprouts, and some that call the avocado preparation a puree, whip, or mousse as in the original recipe from the Fox recipe web site.

Here are a few of the search results that intrigued my interest:

RECIPES: Graham Elliot’s Chef Bowles – Escolar with Whipped Avocado, Crispy Plantain and Passion Fruit Sorbet – You will note that this recipe is listed as “Escolar”, and lists sashimi grade Escolar as its main ingredient. Upon further research there seems to be a mislabeling dilemma and controversy with many restaurants and fish purveyors as Medellitin – A food blog dedicated to modernist cuisine (molecular gastronomy), sous vide, and the food industry. Less cooking and more thinking, has explained in this post White Tuna Explained (Escolar vs. Albacore).

WATCH: Blind MasterChef-testant Perfectly Replicates A Graham Elliot Dish – The Braiser provides a review of the segment along with an embedded video of Christine presenting her recreation of Chef Graham Elliot’s dish. Gordon Ramsey to Christine, “Am I being punked?”

Christine’s plate as shown on the show:

I’ve embedded the same video here:

Ingredient: Passion Fruit

Passion Fruit

Passion Fruit Cut

Serves 4

Tuna Sashimi

Tuna Sashimi Plated

Bon appétit!

CCR

=:~)

©2012 CCR

Today I ran a Google search for “permaculture NC State” and found the link to the entire lecture series provided by the NC State Distance Education series, this one is tagged as HS 432 HS 590.

So I viewed (attended) a recording of the introductory lecture and found it quite interesting, this is what I have been looking for with respect to modeling our landscape into a sustainable environment.

So excited to learn more as I progress through the educational series, in fact one of the assignments is to view the video on YouTube featuring the founder of the permaculture movement and methods, Australian Bill Mollison, in the film entitled “In Grave Danger of Falling Food”, where he describes the effort taken to reclaim the land and turn landscapes back into living environments, including lawns and cities. Narrated by James Dibble, and edited by Amanda Robson, this sometimes campy and fun film even has a rap song to boot, I’ve embedded the video here for your viewing pleasure. Total viewing time is just under 56 minutes.

Fun!

Thinking of a site redesign and this might be the start for inspiration going with a vintage retro look and feel!

Just say No to GMO’s in your shopping cart

GMO labeling is a hot issue these days, especially in California, and did you know that the food industry giants like Monsanto, DuPont, Bayer Crop Science, Dow Agrosciences, BASF, Pepsico, Coca Cola, Kellogg’s, and General Mills are just a few of the corporations that contributed over $25 million dollars to fund ads against the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act (also known as Prop 37) on the November ballot in California.

This data is taken from an article Why the Food Industry Is Spending $25 Million To Keep You in the Dark

Not surprisingly, the biggest donors represent packaged-food manufacturers and the companies that manufacture GM seeds:

• Monsanto: $4,208,000 
Monsanto is the world’s largest seed company, responsible for hazardous pesticides such as DDT and Agent Orange. The company is now lobbying for approval for a new variety of corn that resists 2,4-D, one of two defoliants that comprised Agent Orange.

• DuPont: $4,025,200 
DuPont rakes in about $19 million every year from sales related to its genetically modified seeds, pesticides, and food-processing chemicals.

• Bayer CropScience: $1,618,400

• Dow Agrosciences: $1,184,800

• BASF: $1,642,300
The world’s largest chemical company, BASF recently abandoned its attempts at marketing GMO crops in Europe, where consumer rejection of GMOs has kept them largely out of the food system, and relocated its plant-science division from Germany to Raleigh, North Carolina. There, the company is working with Monsanto to develop a drought-resistant corn and a strain of genetically modified wheat.

• Syngenta: $821,300

• Council for Biotechnology Information: $375,000; Biotechnology Industry Organization: $250,000
Both of these are trade groups that represent DuPont, Monsanto, Dow, and other companies that manufacture pesticides and the genetically modified seeds designed to withstand them.

• Grocery Manufacturers Association: $375,000
This is a trade group representing packaged-food manufacturers. In a recent speech to the American Soybean Association, the group’s president stated that defeating this ballot initiative was “the single highest priority for GMA this year.” This same group actively lobbied to defeat an amendment in the Food Safety and Modernization Act of 2011 that would have banned the hormone-disrupting chemical bisphenol A from canned foods.

Now for the food companies (ironically, many of these same companies have purchased organic brands in the past few decades, so in essence they’re supporting organic food and keeping customers in the dark about their conventional products):

• Pepsico: $1,716,300

• Nestlé: $1,169,400
Owns Tribe Mediterranean Foods, which has a line of certified-organic hummus

• Coca Cola: $1,164,400
Owns Odwalla, which manufacturers a line of certified-organic smoothies and juices

• ConAgra Foods: $1,076,700

• Kellogg’s: $632,500
Owns Morningstar Farms veggie burgers and Kashi, its cereal and granola brand that recently caught flack from customers for using GMO ingredients in products advertised as “natural”; Kashi does make some certified-organic cereals and Kellogg’s is even working to certify all Kashi products under the Non-GMO Project Verified label—even as it tries to defeat GM labeling.

• General Mills: $519,401.17
Owns the Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen organic brands

• Hershey: $395,100

• J.M. Smucker: $388,000
Sells two types of certified-organic peanut butter

• Hormel Foods: $374,300

• Ocean Spray: $301,553.21

• Dean Foods: $253,950
Even though it didn’t spend as much as other companies to defeat the bill, Dean Foods owns the nation’s two largest certified-organic dairy operations, Horizon Organic and Alta Dena.

• Cargill: $202,229.36
A number of other big food companies have made smaller donations, including Del Monte, Sara Lee, Sunny Delight, Land O’ Lakes, and McCormick spices.