Archive for ‘Food Types’

Food Crafters – Enter the 2012 Good Food Awards !

By Susie, 6 July, 2011,

The Second Annual Good Food Awards is now accepting entries! Food producers may now enter their products on the Good Food Awards website under the categories of beer, charcuterie, cheese, chocolate, coffee, pickles and preserves, and (a brand new category) spirits.

Also new this year, the Good Food Awards will be recognizing a select group of winners with a Gold Seal. This award will honor producers who have reached the stage of full, certified organic status while also leading on taste and social responsibility. For more information click here to view the full press release.

The deadline for entries is September 1, 2011.

Third Coast Coffee Roasting Tour in Austin

By Susie, 13 June, 2011,

Ironically the photos of my Third Coast Coffee Roasters tour in Austin contain no coffee. While I’m definitely enjoying my morning cup, it was a few other aspects of the operation that delighted me enough to post this here virtual tour.

Third Coast Coffee is a member of Cooperative Coffees, “a green coffee importing cooperative, comprised of 22 community-based coffee roasters in the USA and Canada, who are committed to building and supporting fair and sustainable trade relationships for the benefit of farmers and their exporting cooperatives, families, and communities.” (Seems like a good life list goal is to visit all 22 members!)

The cupping room is designed white for sensory deprivation--making the coffee the main stimulant in the room.

A wall map pin points growers which members of Cooperative Coffees visit to directly purchase the green coffee.

Coffee grounds stay close to home, as compost for a vege garden behind the roastery.

And finally, a different rubber stamp for each coffee variety which they make in house. This thrilled me no end. They use a little oven to bake the rubber and, well, you'll have to ask them for the details.

If you’re in Austin and like to seek out coffee roasters, pop in. There’s no fancy cafe, just good coffee and good people. 4402 S. CONGRESS AVE #109 • AUSTIN TEXAS • 78745 • 512-444-7820

2011 Chocolate Salon: Conversations With Chocolatiers

By Susie, 20 April, 2011,

For me, walking through Taste TV’s International Chocolate Salon in San Francisco was culinary carnage and social bliss. First the carnage: As I diligently sampled chocolate after chocolate, I flashed back to a family-owned chocolate shop I called “my after school job” in high school. The day I started, I asked if I could taste. The owner said, tongue in cheek, it was mandatory. “You’ll get sick of it,” he added.

While others filled cups and napkins with samples, my chocolate chunks and passion fruit-filled bon bons disappeared like a snowman in global warming.

However despite my theobroma high, the bliss came from great conversations with old candy-making friends and interesting new food entrepreneurs I met at the show.

10 Things I Gleaned While Not Eating

The world wants more chocolate! Every year new companies pop up, and the crowd loves them. The thing is, companies go too. It’s exciting to feel the passion, and exhaustion, of a new candy company as I sample a peanut butter cup from Snake and Butterfly (who incidentally makes maple bacon caramels).
When accounting for costs, every minute counts. “It’s easy to calculate the time involved with making my chocolate but where I might lose sense of time – and money – is the packaging. Every ribbon tie, every piece of tape takes a few seconds and thus costs me. When making a large number of packages like for an event, my costs can skyrocket.” So when you rip open your box of chocolates, enjoy the full experience like you will the gooey centers.
Kitchen collaboration rules. I’d heard of at least 3 chocolatiers on the hunt for a large kitchen. It turns out one is working on starting a kitchen and has the line on others who may share. Collaboration is so much better than competition.
If at first a group dies out, start again. The desire to commune among local chocolatiers is strong and wonderful. Peer groups rock – for sharing resources, general support in victory and commiseration, and trading advice. For a couple of years a group of women – “The Sweet Mafia” – would meet periodically. A new chocolatier is reinvigorating the tradition, which led to various business collaborations in cooperatively buying bulk chocolate and production.
Fame can’t hurt. No one knew why William Dean‘s line was so long, about a 15 minute wait. Tasting the chocolates answered three questions: They’re good. He’s famous. Their tasting was a veritable flight with a highly personal touch. OK four: They were selling a lot. Was it his feature on the Home Shopping Network? Do tell.
Inspiration comes from the darndest places. The delightful I-li of Vice Chocolates debuted a chocolate inspired by “The Ring,” decorated with a ring and named after her favorite character.
Twists are fun especially where danger is involved. It’s fun when you can tell a story like Amano Chocolates with their bon bon made with “the most expensive honey in the world” from Yemen. I pictured kids in the middle of nowhere sticking their arms in buzzing hives to enable me to taste that chocolate in San Francisco coupled with the thought that the honey is probably unavailable at this time.
Wine and chocolate go together almost as well as vodka and chocolate. Two different vendors had twists on the ol’ Godiva chocolate liqueur. I had to go with the “local” one – made in Petaluma, despite the Motley umlaut in VÄD.
It’s hard to tell big companies from small. There is much contention in the world as to “artisan” being bandied about. I had no clue (except for a post-chocolate-coma-flashback) that Pure Dark was a Mars company. Yes that Mars. It is now tempting to say “not that there’s anything wrong with it” ala Seinfeld, because I’m an admitted fan of another Mars company, Ethel M. A few months ago the editor of Specialty Food Magazine posed the question of large companies using “artisan.” It’s a toughie.
Toffee and caramel are all the rage. Which is good, with sugar and butter being my two basic food groups. Cristina of Kika’s Treats is making caramels using palm sugar. Toffee Talk, a San Francisco company, uses red walnuts which lend an extra soft crunch to their English style toffee. Nicole Lee, ex-high techie of San Jose, sampled mini chocolate hearts filled with drippy passion fruit caramel as did Anni from Gateau et Ganache in Palo Alto.

Spring Diet Secret: Splurge on Good Food

By Susie, 13 April, 2011,

Life has been overwhelmingly busy with fabulous food things, much news to come. However as I put together a quick salad, with each ingredient I added, the idea of writing about it overtook me. Why? Because I realized how having incredible ingredients in the kitchen which are low calorie, very flavorful, and provide an experience in using them makes it easier to eat well. If you’re dieting logically you should be consuming less (logically anyway) so you have more to spend on what might otherwise seem attainable.

Here’s what made this salad so exciting:

12 year Saporoso Aged Balsamic Vinegar from House of Balsamic – Not the kind you get at TJs. This is that syrupy, condensed vinegar you can drizzle on your finger to lick.
Extra Virgin California Olive Oil from Owen’s Creek, rich and accessible with great olive flavor, the kind you can drizzle on a piece of bread with salt and go to heaven.
Truffle Salt from Susan Rice Truffles, shake and taste.
An organic apple from the farmer’s market
Organic spring greens
Nearly moldy parmesan (Have you read this far? I am of the waste not want not school.

In 5 minutes I had a $10 salad at a fraction of the cost, full of flavor, without a lot of heavy or artificial dressing.

May this inspire you to eat well and stock your cupboard with the best artisan ingredients! And may this inspire food companies to make more simple good ingredients for us simple gourmands.

yummy salad

Starting a Successful CSA – Tips from the California Small Farm Conference

By Susie, 19 March, 2011,

The California Small Farm Conference brought together growers, farmers market managers, and government entities to share behind the scenes insight from several successful small farms who have run CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs. The main goal of a CSA is to get farm-fresh products to people – vs. the people going to the market – with minimal time and energy on everyone’s part.

You can download the conference presentations.

CSA Tips from California Farms

Tom Broz from Live Earth Farm (Watsonville, CA) said goodbye to city life ala Green Acres, went through UCSC’s eco farming program, and found some land 16 years ago with a goal of raising his family in the country and growing healthy food. After starting with 2 farmer’s markets and the CSA, today Life Earth Farm has 60 acres and 800 CSA customers.

As his customer base grew, Life Earth gave up pen and paper for tracking and adopted Farmigo software, developed specifically for managing CSAs. The software gives customers choices about what to include in boxes and set vacation schedules etc, as well as make it easy to comply with governmental rules surrounding CSAs.

TIP: Produce as much as you can yourself, such as compost, to be more efficient and reduce costs.

Fellow recovering city slicker Shawn Seufert of Terra Bella Farm (Pleasanton, CA) had only recently heard of chard and kale when he started his farm. The CSA began old school style on a shoestring: He traveled door to door, introducing himself. Now 300 families buy their produce, farmed on 7 acres.

TIP: Small upgrades in customer experience make a big difference: They invested in nice wood rustic stands at the farm store, which boosted sales.

Thomas Nelson of Capay Valley Farm Shop (Guinda, CA) started a farm shop in 2008, with the idea of an artisan marketplace on Hwy 80. The store lasted less than a year but in the meantime they’d put together the infrastructure for farms to work together cooperatively.

They had been approached by the product design company Ideo who wanted to get closer to farmers (or for the farmers to get closer to them). The idea was for Capay to stop at farms, pick up product, and end up in Palo Alto where they’d set up a private farmer’s market with a CSA. The city of Palo Alto took notice and loved the idea so much, they set up outside of city hall for employees. This led to a model for targeting institutions with mini-farmers’ markets. (Learn more.)

TIPS:

1) Band together numerous farms to enable a wider variety of products – fruits, veges, eggs, olive oil, honey, meat products, grains, beans – year round.

2) For efficiency they now pack the farm shares centrally.

MY TIP: Involve subscribers in setting drop off points. In Palo Alto a CSA subscriber allows the farm to drop off boxes on her porch, for neighbors to come pick up. No muss, no cost, and gives locals an excuse to commune.

Other Interesting Ideas for Farms from the Conference

Charitable co-packing: In the Bay Area, the Pacific Farmer’s Markets are working on a plan to train disadvantaged people (through a local nonprofit) how to process fresh fruits and veggies from the farmer’s market into canned foods that can then be sold by the farmers. Talk about a virtuous cycle!
Funding from the FDA for Farm Grants to create value-added products: Download the presentations from the event for details on licensing, processing regulations, and other rules for farms creating products. It is truly a quagmire of exceptions and guidelines (such as, it’s a different registration if you store the product separately from where you make it.)Additionally the grants, which are project-based, can be expensive, requiring accounting oversight. Still totally worth it to get a major initiative off the ground.
Finding rural commercial kitchens: Becky from Frog Hollow (Brentwood, CA) had a great idea for farmers to tap into restaurants in their communities who may have kitchen time to spare. The farms could hire the restaurants to make products using their produce or the farm could rent the space. (Everyone in the room had a huge chuckle when one grower said they “heard” it was OK to process farm food at home. Talk about California dreamin’! We all wish.)
Approaching new stores to sell your produce: Jim Cochran of Swanton Berry Farm advised: “Never call someone and ask if they’d like to buy strawberries. Bring the box into the store unannounced and you get your reaction. If the first word is ‘How much do they cost?’ you’re not going to make a lot of progress. If they first say ‘Wow these are beautiful!’ that’s going to be a good customer. Also, it’s hard to give credit to a store when they ordered too much; but it’s to his advantage to give the store credit so they have fresh berries on hand.

Overall this conference bringing together farms, experts, vendors, and advocates likely planted the seed (how could I help that) for future collaborations and farming success.