Archive for the ‘Eggs’ Category

A couple decades ago, some forward thinking individual(s) decided to put on a holistic management course within the agriculture community, and whoever you are/were, I thank you. The output of that re-think of industrialized ag can be seen in the successes and influence of Ron Hamilton (Ep. 4), Peter Lundgard (Ep. 47), and featured in this one [and long overdue at that], Don Ruzicka of Sunrise Farm.

I find myself lacking the adequate supply of positive adjectives to adequately describe Don and his approach to sharing his experience in the world of food production – but I’ll try a few: he’s passionate, gentle, kind, generous, and vastly underrated in terms of his profile in the broader food community. The foods folks like this produce should be the brands that matter in the food industry – in this case not just because of animal handling practices, but because of philosophy and approach to land stewardship in general. We’re partly on the way down that road of producer becoming rock star in Alberta, but I think there’s some consumer flushing out to do of what’s good marketing, and where best practices are being reinvented – a motivator for me personally to keep visiting farms and asking questions with a camera rolling. Don’s the real deal.

My highlight reel of ‘From Local Farms‘ videos was just chosen by Daniel and Mirra of The Perennial Plate as a top-four contender in their recent video competition. I’m honored to be on the list, to say the least. The very reason I started a video series at all was directly because of Daniel and Mirra’s earliest episodes – inspiring me to pick up a cheap Flip camera, introduce myself to some farmers, and press some record button. My life, quite literally, has not been the same since.

So a big thank you goes out today to Daniel, Mirra, all the passionate farmers, and especially to you for taking the time to watch what other folks have to say about our food world. You plugging into and supporting projects like The Perennial Plate matters – it creates cracks in a food culture needing to evolve.

Please click over here to like the video on facebook, and vote for it too while you’re at it. If the vid wins the day, it will replace the regular programming of The Perennial Plate next Monday, exposing it to a very large viewership of like minded folks across many borders. That would be very cool. Even if it doesn’t, big thanks to Daniel and Mirra for your support of what I’m up to and sharing your audience.

Although not a big TV watcher, I have to admit I really love ‘Jamie at Home’. I was  recently watching his winter squash episode, and he  very quickly whipped together butternut squash cupcakes with a very low-sugar icing. ‘Hm’, thought I, ‘I have a bunch of jack-o-lantern pumpkin in the freezer that needs to get eaten’. Then, thought I, “I also have lots of chevre from Smoky Valley Goat Cheese in my freezer”. Hm.

See, back when we did a cheese tasting for Holly the cheesemaker, one of the ideas for use of her chevre was cream cheese icing on carrot cake. Every time that idea crossed my mind, I thought it  was genius. It was time to give it a go.

We directly substituted pumpkin for butternut, and chevre for sour cream, and as unlikely as it is for me to get excited about cupcakes, these are really awesome. They will be a new staple in our home. The girls like them, mom and dad like them, and they’re heavy on winter squash and goat cheese, and relatively light on sugar. The chevre doesn’t need a lot of sugar to whip up into an icing – a few tablespoons of icing sugar per cup of chevre, and it’s really, really good as icing – only a slight tang of tartness reminding me it’s goat dairy and not cream cheese. Because of the light tang, go easy on the citrus, I think, if using Jamie’s recipe. We used no citrus.

So there you have it. Me, endorsing a cupcake. Never thought I’d see the day.

My time with Ron Hamilton of Sunworks Farm left me drowning in fascinating content – making this the most challenging edit to date. Ron and Sheila have been at this game longer than all the others I’ve covered so far, and have achieved a level of success in the organics business that places them as leaders in their industry. Being the biggest also makes you a target for criticism, and it seems like one of the emerging local ethics-of-food debates is whether one can get this big without compromising values. Ron addresses scale, growth, ethics, feed, conventional vs. organic practices both outdoors in the summer and in-barn in the winter, among many, many other topics.

I find feed interesting – and specifically the quest for farmers to achieve high-protein diets required to build meat without the use of soy. Ron says the roasted soy they use has 38-40% protein while the next best protein source, peas, has 20-22% if conventional, and  18-20% if organic. Problem is, much more than 15% peas in the ration doesn’t agree with the chickens’ tummies, and makes them sick. Another feed element that helps is alfalfa meal at 18% protein, also offering a greenness to the flavor of the meats. It currently comprises 12% of the ration. But the challenge remains: how to get birds to put on meat fast, with the use of local feed. I suppose I shouldn’t be shocked that Ron knew all this stuff off the top of his head, you might too if you had to feed 8000 lbs of it a day to your birds.

One of the many new frontiers for Sunworks Farm is a brand new value-add facility where they’ll capture current waste products [chicken livers, wing  tips, etc] into patés, stocks, and other prepared foods on a large scale. I love the idea – more locally produced organic products, they can reduce waste from the animals the already produce, and it creates a new revenue stream for them in the value-add game. They also have a new facility with giant drum composters to handle waste they generate, turning it into healthful-for-the-land compost, and continue to build innovative facilities as practicality requires. It’s an exciting time in the world of Sunworks Farm, and they’ll be a key player to watch as the regional, ethical, and artisan food industry moves forward.

It’s not news:  food does not need to be complicated. This morning at the market we stopped by Green Eggs & Ham to pick up some duck eggs. $4/half dozen that even this self proclaimed cheapass is fine paying, as duck eggs are sizable, going roughly twice as far as chicken eggs. And the verdict is that not only are they novel, the quality is superb.

Although I try not to be a snob if I can avoid it, I do curse when I crack open a paper-thin shell to have the watery-runny-white and pale-insipid-yolk spill in a splash into a bowl or pan. And generally speaking, I’d prefer not to have any of my raw foods, especially animal derived, in the distribution chain for as many weeks as I have toes. Fresh, please.

If you don’t believe me, I challenge you to an egg-off. Fry up or poach [particularly revealing of the white consistency disparity] a stored-forever-industrially-farmed egg next to a fresh-non-industrially-farmed egg. I dare you. You’ll be converted. You too will shamefully succumb to becoming an egg-snob. Fresh, sensibly raised eggs are quite simply: better.

There’s not much to say here. It’s a pizza, with bacon and egg. In this case, with some other veg stuff. The point is it’s really good, and despite seeing a lot of egg atop pizzas while traveling in Europe, I don’t do it much here. My bad. And well, bacon. Lardons are awesome on pizza. No shocker there. Brunch, anyone?

Asparagus is in season. Somewhere in the world, at least – certainly not in my garden that’s under 2-3 feet of snow still. But it’s half the normal price and it’s fresh, starting in Feb around here. I happen to hold asparagus at the top of my favorite-veg-list, and although I’ve been tempted to hold out for local asparagus season, I always buckle and pig out on the un-green-super-carbon-footprint variety.

This recipe was not born from my own inspiration. I have, however, made it a few times over the past few years and enjoy it tremendously every time. It’s what you see on the plate: some toasted home-made bread, some steamed in-season asparagus [dressed with butter, salt, pepper of course], a couple poached farm eggs, and a couple slices of home-made bacon. Got some delicate oozy creamy dancing with some crunchy, some chewy, some smoky, some green and fresh – lots of loveliness going on. Solid, simple, healthful food.