The Tin Angel Cafe is right across from Pioneer Park at 365 West 400 South. (Addresses in Salt Lake City and in much of the rest of Utah, after some initial confusion, are incredibly helpful — an address actually provides directions to the location.) The funky ambiance manages to avoid both kitsch and preciousness, not a mean feat. The outdoor patio is a fun space overlooking the park across the street, but temperatures were in the 90s at 8:30 on a mid-June evening, and we opted to sit inside.

Read more of this story »

Wait, what was that last one again?

Well, here in this corner of Northwest Florida I call home (and they don’t call it the “Redneck Riviera” for nothing), that’s a discussion that’s been raging this week. Seems a family from Jay, an inland (i.e., far from the touristy beaches) community, recently caught a 100-pound alligator snapping turtle … and decided to eat it.

Read more of this story »

Fresh Peach Spritzers

6 fresh peaches, quartered (I leave the peels on, but peel them if you prefer)
2 Tbsp honey, or to taste (I like raw honey)
1 bottle inexpensive white wine, chilled
1 liter sparkling water, chilled
Sprigs of fresh mint and peach slices for garnish

Combine honey and peaches in a blender or food processor and puree well (or use a juicer, if you have one.) Pour through a sieve into a large pitcher and chill thoroughly. Add wine and stir to combine. Add sparkling water to fill pitcher and stir gently.

To serve: Pour into tall glasses (over ice if desired) or large wine glasses and garnish with a slice of peach and a sprig of mint. Serves six.

More summery drinks:

• Summer is the Season for Sangria
• Drink Local: Keeping Cool With Rhubarb Cocktails
• Think Pink

Image credit: Cary Bass via a Creative Commons license

But often there’s a way around it: A herdshare program. Drinking raw milk from a cow you own is not illegal. When a milk drinker joins a herdshare, he’s buying a part of a cow — usually 1/25th of a cow — and paying each month a fee for that partial-cow’s board and care.

I own 3/25ths of a cow (a Jersey named Cinnamon), which I purchased from a local dairy farmer for $50 per share. (If I ever decide to sell my shares, the farmer will buy them back from me for the same price I paid.) Each month, I pay my farmer $22 per share for my portion of the costs of Cinnamon’s care, and each week I drive out to the farm (in Ohio, it’s illegal for my farmer to deliver my milk to me) and pick up 3 gallons of beautiful whole unpasteurized milk. It works out to $5.08 per gallon, which just a few months ago might have seemed like a lot to pay for milk. It was worth it to me because I wanted to buy my milk from a local farmer raising cows on pasture without rBGH — cows living the way cows are supposed to live — and in my area that means raw milk. It’s worth it to others because they want raw milk in particular.

Read more of this story »

Unfortunately I’m seeing a large number of unsafe canning recipes posted on various food, recipe, and local eating blogs, and we aren’t talking about just the kind of unsafe canning that gives you a few days of gastrointestinal misery. We’re talking serious neurotoxins, botulism, paralysis, and death.

Here are a few key bits of knowledge, useful whether you’re canning yourself or are the recipient of a home-canned gift.

Read more of this story »

Our very first stop forced me to rethink that assumption. Boy, did I underestimate the potential of the National Parks food service. The food was often very good, and several stops were a traveling locavore’s dream. Yellowstone was a standout.

Read more of this story »

Plenty: One Man, One Woman, and a Raucous Year of Eating Locally

Still, Smith and MacKinnon, a 30-something couple from Vancouver, relate their year-long local eating adventure with such warmth and humor, it’s hard not to wholeheartedly root for their success as you read through the book. In alternating written-by-him/written-by-her chapters, the authors describe in near-confessional detail the highs, lows, little successes, huge aggravations, cravings and, yes, great satisfactions they discover in cobbling together a healthful, sustainable diet from sources no farther than a few hours’ drive away.

It all starts with lots and lots of potatoes.

Smith and MacKinnon make the unfortunate decision to start their experiment in a big city … in Canada … in March:

"(A)s one week turned into two and three on our 100-mile diet, I began to wonder how long I would have to go without tossed salad," Smith writes. "Where were the fresh green shoots? Our local farmers’ markets wouldn’t open until May. I looked despairingly at the rows of days left on the calendar. Even the local beets were gone from store shelves now. I wondered if we had done it single-handedly. Who else eats that much borscht?"

The ensuing months, though, bring a bounty of local foods found mostly beyond the grocery store: pickles and cheese curds from the farmers’ market, strawberries from a u-pick farm, pumpkin honey from an apiary, cod from a fish market, eggs from a free-range chicken farm, even — miraculously, after more than eight months without bread — flour from a rare wheat farmer on Vancouver Island.

Plenty is more than a "what-we-ate-for-breakfast-lunch-and-dinner" diary, though. Smith and MacKinnon also delve into the hows and whys of today’s "normal" food system: the decline of family farms, the ever-growing distance food travels from farm to plate, the apparent wealth of food proffered to us at a steep cost: our near-complete loss of connection with where real food comes from and how real food tastes.

"I had expected the 100-mile experiment to be a platform to think about many things, among them a long list of bummers from climate change to the failure of whole generations to learn how to recognize edible mushrooms," MacKinnon writes toward the end of the book. "What I could see around the table now was a less tangible consideration: a sense of adventure. We are at a point in world history where bad news about the state of the Earth is just as jaded and timeworn as the idea that there is nowhere left to go, nothing new to explore. Put those two statements side by side, however, and something hidden is revealed. Of course there are new things to do, and no shortage of them. We need to find new ways to live into the future. We can start anytime; we can live them here and now."

Throughout Plenty, Smith and MacKinnon tackle their subject with such refreshing affability, you find you don’t want to let them go at the end. Fortunately, readers who enjoy the book don’t have to: the couple continue to write about their local eating experiment at their website: "The 100-Mile Diet: Local Eating for Global Change."

Balsamic Asparagus

• 1 lb fresh asparagus spears, washed and ends trimmed
• 1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar
• salt and pepper to taste

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.

2. On baking sheet or in baking dish, drizzle asparagus with olive oil, then toss with salt and pepper to taste.

3. Roast in oven for ten minutes, then drizzle with vinegar. Return to oven, roast 2-3 more minutes, until spears are bright green and "popping" in the oven. Spears should still have crunch.

Tip: Asparagus will tell you where the ends should be trimmed. Just bend in half gently–wherever the spear snaps is where you should trim. Compost the ends or add them to a veggie stock.