Meet Our Vendors: Farmstead Ferments

By on April 17, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

“What an exciting discovery it was to learn that all my favorite foods are fermented!” Dawn Story, the multi-talented owner of Farmstead Ferments and New Moon Naturals, tells me soon after she’s offered a pungent, but revitalizing, shot of juice from her garlicky greens kraut.

Dawn has long known the benefits of eating healthfully and living a balanced life: “I was in the weird family in the 70′s.  We lived in Virginia, but we were vegetarians and practiced yoga.  At the time I kind of resented it, but now I’m so grateful!”

Despite her family’s ahead-of-the-curve focus on healthy eating, it was Dawn’s interest in herbal medicine and natural remedies that deepened her awareness of optimally healthy foods and their central role in healing ailments and preserving health.  Seeking to help her clients improve their diets, Dawn began researching what she calls nutrient-dense, functional foods, or foods that pack a lot of palliative properties into every serving.

One of the first things she learned? “Sauerkraut, kimchee, yogurt, kefir — many of my favorite things to eat — are all incredibly good for you because of the benefits of fermentation.”  Not only that, but many of the gourmet items that we love and crave, like cheese, coffee, tea, chocolate, and of course wine and beer, are fermented.

Healthy History Lesson

Dawn notes that almost every culture has utilized some form of fermentation. For most traditional cultures, fermentation was a matter of survival. Almost any type of food humans produced through agriculture, whether vegetables or dairy, they needed a way to preserve that food and store it through winter.

So long before the days of HCFS and preservatives, humans harnessed the natural process of fermentation — Dawn calls it “controlled decomposition” — and transformed their foods to make them keep for a much longer period of time.   Unlike other methods of cooking, the process required no heat or energy inputs, just salt ant time.

While early man probably wasn’t consulting with a nutritionist, by harnessing the process of fermentation, he was also tapping into a powerful source of health and nutrition.  The healthy bacteria that are generated in the process of fermentation help to strengthen the digestive tract.  ”It’s really not you are what you eat – it’s much more accurate to say you are what you can assimilate, and having a good balance of healthy bacteria in your digestive system is key to that process.  You can eat all the kale you want, but if your digestive system can’t process it, you won’t be able to glean its benefits.”

In addition to healthy digestive bacteria, Dawn’s ferments include beneficial enzymes, electrolytes, and Vitamins B, C, and A. Even the celtic sea salt that Dawn uses in the process is a beneficial mineral.

How-to

According to Dawn, fermentation is really a simple process: “it’s cabbage, plus salt, plus time!” In a given week, Dawn shreds and chops 125 pounds of cabbage, plus other vegetables. During the growing season, she tries to source her vegetables locally, even foraging for wild greens and other seasonal bonuses.

After chopping vegetables, Dawn adds celtic sea salt, which draws the water out of the vegetables, and she allows the vegetables to marinate in the brine of their own juices and the salt. Nature does the rest and results in a kraut that is crisp and flavorful, nothing like the canned kraut you’ll find on a grocery store shelf.

For folks who want to get started but don’t know exactly how to use a whole jar, Dawn offers a few of her favorite uses (noting that kraut is the “party on the plate” of almost every meal she eats!):

  • right out of the jar
  • Local sausage plus kraut plus flatbread
  • Atop local salad greens (Dawn’s favorite are Planet Earth Diversified) instead of salad dressing
  • On top of rice or quinoa with steamed vegetables
  • Kraut quesadilla: a flour tortilla with beans, rice, cheese, and kraut
  • Bread + Peanut butter (or other nut butter) + kraut

For more on Dawn and the benefits of fermentation, check out this article in Edible Blue Ridge.

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Meet Our Vendors: Cara’s Kitchen

By on April 11, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

When Cara married her husband B.J., they both decided to make a conscious effort to look at labels and make healthy food choices. Cara had a lot to live up to — her husband was raised by Maureen, the healthy mastermind behind Richmond’s favorite whole grain baked goods.

While Maureen was an important influence on how Cara and B.J. view foods as a family, it was a class at VCU that sparked Cara’s passion for organic and GMO-free foods. After watching King Corn and Food, Inc. on a professor’s recommendation, Cara decided it was critical that her family eat food in its purest form, without any industrial modifications: “if Ian eats an apple, I want him to be eating an apple, not an apple plus 30 pesticides,” Cara explained to me.  ”Food for my baby should be pure and clean and free of extra stuff.”

Once Ian was born and she began exploring baby food options, Cara realized that even the most “natural” of the available options weren’t satisfactory: “I believe that baby food should be in its purest form. That means it should look like that food it came from. If you open a few jars of commercial baby food, you’ll notice that it all looks the same… orange slime, green slime, yellow slime, and so on.” She wanted to make something that resembled the whole foods she ate herself, baby food that would still look like the foods it was made from, even the thinnest puree.

So Cara began preparing baby foods from scratch in her own kitchen, squeezing in most of a day every few weeks between her baking business and classes at VCU to lovingly cook, puree, and freeze an assortment of whole foods that Ian loved.

“Early on, Ian noticed a difference. It’s such a beautiful thing that he knows the difference between foods with pure, real ingredients and processed junk. He loves to eat broccoli, blueberries, and chicken most of all — if that can be what he loves to eat, it’s really exciting for us as parents.”  When Cara and B.J. gave Ian a cupcake on his first birthday, “we expected him to face-plant gleefully into the treat like most toddlers, but he wasn’t even very interested.” These days, by continuing to introduce new foods to Ian, Cara’s even managed to get him to enjoy vegetables she herself doesn’t like.

While Cara enjoyed making Ian’s food, she soon realized that many of her friends simply didn’t have the time or enthusiasm to do the same.  ”I’d tell them about making all Ian’s food and they’d kind of grimace wistfully — like they’d love to do the same thing if they had the time or energy.  And for me, it would still have been really useful to have an option to buy something like what I was making on really hectic weeks.”   After hearing a number of friends express interest in local, organic baby food, Cara decided to take the baking business she was already running in a new direction: pure and simple baby foods, just like she made for Ian.

Cara’s Kitchen: Practices

Cara’s primary promise to other mothers is to apply the same exacting standards she has for feeding Ian to all the food she makes for Cara’s Kitchen — “If I wouldn’t feed it to my son, I wouldn’t sell it to them or feed it to their baby.”  Ian acts as the taste-tester for all the foods Cara prepares, and she’s excited to be able to offer foods that Ian still loves to other families (like her squash-apple mash).

Cara is careful not to include foods that are common allergens in her line of baby food, and she also makes sure that no food is inadvertently introduced by cross-exposure during the preparation process.

Cara starts with the freshest, unblemished raw produce (right now, she buys direct from Whole Foods). Her ingredients are noted on every label: they’re all GMO-free, and they’re almost all organic (a few items, like butternut and acorn squash, aren’t available in organic form). Cara would like to eventually transition to sourcing organic produce from local farms where possible.

After peeling, Cara bakes or steams the produce (or in some cases, like bananas, she uses the produce raw). She does not use boiled produce or other harsh cooking methods that tend to leach important nutrients.

Cara then purees the foods together. For Stage 1 foods, she purees the food thoroughly to a smooth, thin consistency. For Stage 2, the purees are thicker, with more of a mashed consistency. She also begins to introduce mild spices for a developing baby’s palate.

Cara immediately freezes the foods in square trays to ensure freshness.  Cara puts cubes of frozen food into plastic baggies and then inside conveniently-labeled plastic containers for easy storage and to avoid freezer burn.

 

Cara’s Kitchen Baby and Toddler Foods are now available exclusively through Relay in Richmond and Charlottesville!

 

 

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Meet Our Vendors: Wild Oats Farm

By on March 27, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

When I asked Susan, the farmer and owner of Wild Oats Farm, if I could interview her for the Relay blog, she was welcoming but sent a warning: “things are really busy down here in springtime. You can come visit, but you will probably get roped into helping me feed the lambs.”

Twist my arm.

Route 20 South from Charlottesville towards Susan’s spot in Scottsville winds between lush, rolling green farmscapes and blossoming redbuds in this year’s early Spring. Pulling up to the gate, I was greeted by a large, blond sheepdog and bleating, curious lambs who trotted along the fence line as I pulled towards Susan’s rambling white farmhouse.

When I arrived, Susan was washing out coolers in preparation for a trip to T&E Meats in Harrisonburg (a specialty meat processor that allows small local farmers like Susan to stay in business) and ultimately to be prepared for the farmers’ markets where she’ll be present this Spring and Summer.

In the springtime, Susan — who takes care of all the farm on her own — must be on the move all the time to keep up with the various tasks that pop up. New lambs are born and may need to be fed by hand up to three times a day; other farm animals — pigs, cows, and farm dogs — need to be fed and taken care of; meats need to be picked up from the processor in Harrisonburg.

After our introductions, Susan took me inside to assemble bottles for the baby lambs we’d be feeding. She explained that these were true babies — some as young as a couple weeks old — who were having difficulty making it in the pasture with the others, mostly because they hadn’t yet figured out the delicate art of feeding from their mothers. She moved these babies inside to a warm, hay-lined spot where they’d be safe from the still-cold spring evenings until they’d had the opportunity to put on a little more body weight through being bottle-fed.

As we walked over to the bottle-fed lambs’ enclosure, Susan explained a little about her motivations for starting a farm. Prior to starting Wild Oats, she worked with a conservation group in Florida that helped farmers make their practices more sustainable. After deciding a little more than a decade ago that she wanted to put good farming methods into practice herself, she began to look around for a suitable spot. She has family ties in the Scottsville area going back centuries — you can find her ancestors in the county record-books — so when she came across the piece of land that she now raises her sheep, cows, and pigs on, it seemed like a great choice.

Susan’s goal has always been to raise her animals on grass in a stress-free, natural environment, following sustainable practices. The lush green pastures, bottle-fed baby lambs, and the obvious affection that Susan has for each of her farm animals indicate that keeping the animals stress-free remains a top priority.

To bottle-feed the lambs, at first Susan let them out of their enclosure into another gated enclosure one-by-one, so that each could get a chance at the bottle on his or her own. They sucked heartily to get at the nutrition, but I could see what Susan meant by still learning. Some of the lambs ended up with milk on their faces when their eagerness meant the bottle’s nipple came out of their mouths.

Eventually, though, all the lambs were released into the outer pen, and they flocked around Susan for another turn at the bottle.

I noticed that the sheep’s coats were, unlike the curly wool I’d imagined, smooth and soft. Susan explained that she raises St. Croix hair sheep. As she describes on her website, these are “an attractive, hardy, medium-sized, polled (hornless), hair sheep…” She selected hair sheep because their traits help keep them stress-free (by never needing to have horns cropped off or coats sheared) and easier to manage. If Mary’s little lamb wasn’t one of these adorable pets, she was missing a bet.

You can find Susan’s meats on Relay in Charlottesville and Richmond. All that TLC makes for a can’t-miss product!

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Meet Our Vendors: Brigit True Organics

By on March 13, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

Credit: C'ville Arts

Who doesn’t want to heal their wounds and soothe their skin with an ancient remedy used by knights gallant of the Middle Ages?

While we’re all glad that antibiotics exist for the truly serious wounds, the wisdom of natural and herbal remedies needn’t be forgotten. But with all the attention we Americans have started to pay to eating seasonal, pesticide-free, nutritious foods — putting good things into our bodies — it’s still easy to overlook the effects of the chemicals we’re putting directly on our bodies.

For Brigitte Rau, who grew up in Germany but came to the US when her husband started at UVA’s Darden School 12 years ago, the void of healthy herbal-based skincare products in the United States was shocking. “I realized I had come from paradise,” she laughs.  ”In Germany, we had all sorts of skincare products available that were natural, healthy, and fun to use.”

After spending several months looking for a skincare product she would feel comfortable using, Brigitte decided to draw on her own knowledge of herbal remedies to begin making healing balms and ointments for personal use.

“Initially, my husband was skeptical about the healing properties of my ointments — he has a much more scientific approach to the world — but once he’d tried the magic balm on one of his own small injuries, he was convinced.  He started encouraging me to start a business selling my skincare products.”

So in 2001, Brigitte got started at Charlottesville’s farmer’s market, selling her first few skincare products, like gift soaps and her magic healing balm.

Early Beginnings

While it took moving to the United States to get her started in business, Brigitte acquired an interest in herbs and plants from an early age.  Her grandmother was always experimenting with growing a variety of plants and herbs in, and Brigitte loved to work at her grandmother’s side in the garden.

As a young adult, Brigitte’s early interest in gardening grew into an interest in plants’ healing properties.  She sought out an organization that offered training for herbalists.  As a group, she and her fellow students trained in the “old way,” working to become experts at identifying different plant species in nature and at mixing them to maximize their healing properties.

Philosophy

Brigit True Organics is skincare that works for everyone. For people with allergies, Brigitte maintains an allergen-free facility: no soy, no gluten, no tree nuts or peanuts. The products are wholesome, without extraneous ingredients like dyes and perfumes. She sources all certified organic herbs and makes all of her products on-site.

For Brigitte, while ensuring that the health properties of her products are spot-on, an equally important consideration is the pleasure of the product. She points out that when trying to be healthy, we’ll often eat food or use products just because of their perceived benefits, without regard for the pleasures of the experience. Yet, she points out, “If you just eat or use a product because it’s healthy, you’re not nourishing your soul!”

The process for making these traditional skincare products might qualify this as “slow skincare,” akin to slow food. When Brigitte receives the herbs for any of her products, they must be pressed to extract their beneficial oils for up to four weeks. Brigitte must also remain aware of changes in product over the course of the seasons, as the recipe might need to shift slightly according to the seasonal properties of the beeswax or herbs in the products.

Magic Skin Balm

Now about those knights gallant. Brigitte’s signature product for all seasons is her Magic Skin Balm. The balm is based on swordbalm, an old healing recipe going back to the Middle Ages. In the days before antibiotics, this combination of herbs was packed into really deep wounds (get it? sword-balm!).

In Brigitte’s recipe, potently healing herbs are delivered in a medium of olive oil and beeswax — nothing else — to heal everything from itching to burns to scars.

Brigitte gave me a sample to try out (the “magic stick”), and it’s worked wonders on everything from old scars to bruised and bloodied scraped knees. The balm both immediately soothes itching, stinging, and burning and works toward long-term healing. It becomes a staple for everyday skincare, especially during the winter months that tend to dry out one’s skin.

Magic Balm, 1 oz.

Lip Balm, Red, 0.15 oz.

Protecting Hand Cream, Tuscan Rose, 2 oz.
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Meet Our Vendors: Carpe Donut

By on February 28, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

There’s not much to see behind the scenes at Carpe Donut‘s small kitchen and storefront in Charlottesville, and that’s by design.

When he decided in 2007 to open a food-based business, Carpe Donut Founder Matt Rohdie started by examining the decisions he makes when compiling a grocery list or choosing what to cook for his family. The vision for the business, he decided, should embody the same values he uses to cook at home.

He developed a few basic criteria:

  • use simple tools so the family could do the labor themselves,
  • use real, local and/or organic ingredients and cook them from scratch,
  • make a startlingly delicious product.

Having a background in restaurant management and the catering business, Matt quickly realized that the realities of sourcing good organic ingredients at a reasonable price would leave him with only a few options, including doughnuts and french fries.

Doughnuts sounded like the more appealing choice, so after a bit of background research, Matt dove into six months of experimentation with dough recipes.  Almost any doughnut sold in stores is made from a commercially-produced doughnut paste, so finding a homemade recipe that would reliably make a great doughnut in large batches took some doing.

In the end, a great recipe combined with an old-fashioned (circa-1950) “Donut Robot” started churning out a reliably delicious apple cider doughnut.

Fast forward five years, and you’ve got a foodie business near and dear to Charlottesville. These days, Matt sells his donuts through Relay, at catered events and weddings, and through Carpe Donut’s ever-iconic red Donut Wagon.

 

Behind the Scenes at Carpe Donut

Q. How do you make a Carpe Donut?
  1. Start with the finest real food ingredients: Organic flour and lots of organic real cane sugar (a donut is a donut), local and organic eggs, local or organic apple cider (depending on the season), organic spices, conventional vanilla and baking powder, and non-hydrogenated soybean oil for frying.
  2. Make a batter and plop into the Donut Robot.
  3. Watch the donuts crisp to a golden hue.
  4. Dip in sugary spice and let cool.
  5. Enjoy!

Q. Organic food is often thought of as “health food.” Where does Carpe Donut fit?

Matt’s belief that food helps us express our humanity by bringing us together in social experiences, playing a part in rituals, or supporting our values helps explain why an “organic comfort food” — like the Carpe Donut — is not an oxymoron.

Sure, Matt says, we should try to eat healthy foods. His family members don’t eat 10 Carpe Donuts a day. But on any occasion when we’re eating, we have the opportunity to reclaim what we choose to put into our bodies and support the values that make for a better, healthier local foodshed.  Even if that food is a doughnut.

To illustrate his point, Matt spoke about the choices he’s made about the eggs he uses in Carpe Donut dough. Initially, he used organic eggs. Then, as further reading led him to see that simply choosing “organic” — if it meant from further away, or if the eggs were organic in name only — was not always superior, he started buying local eggs from free-range chickens.

These days, as more and more local consumers in the market desire local and organic eggs, and farmers respond to that demand, Matt is thrilled to be able to find local and organic eggs to use in his doughnuts.

Q. Is it possible to make a Carpe Donut better?

They’re altogether fantastic as-is, and almost nothing beats a Carpe Donut hot off the presses accompanied by a good cup of coffee. But a few innovations around town are noteworthy: Calvino Cafe makes a ham and cheese with a Carpe Donut. Bread pudding made out of Carpe Donuts is rumored to be a real treat.

And on one occasion, when Matt was called upon to cater a wedding, the bride and groom wanted to go non-traditional creative with their cake — the result? Wedding cake made from Carpe Donuts!

Q. What can we expect in the future from Carpe Donut?

Don’t tell where we heard the news, but we’ve heard there’s one more reason to look forward to summer… The Carpe Ice Cream Sandwich.

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Meet Our Vendors: Mad Hatter Super-Condiment

By on February 21, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

When you think of this decade’s growing phenomenon of small-scale food entrepreneurs, you probably think of former lawyers turned stay-at-home cupcake bakers. Or idealistic college grads turned farmers.

Nathan and Cailen, Charlottesville’s resident Mad (Hatter) Men, though, break the mold. Nathan’s a drummer, they both ride motorcycles, and they’re aiming to revolutionize a seldom-considered niche: the common table condiment.

When these guys met more than six years ago, they discovered a mutual passion for slightly offbeat, always spicy, kitchen experimentation. Cailen grew up in New Mexico and had loved sweating through a smorgasbord of spicy peppers since birth, while Nathan’s upbringing on bland fare inspired a heat-infused rebellion. Through many enjoyable evenings of kitchen collaboration and informal tastings with friends, they invented hundreds of spicy toppings.

When a fortuitous blend yielded a sauce that friends hailed as irresistible, Cailen’s notes revealed an already-selected name: Mad Hatter.

Flash forward through several years of sourcing fresh ingredients, adjusting to levels of spice tolerable for the general public, and experimenting on nearly every food imaginable (including straight shots of Mad Hatter), and our two heroes have bottled, labelled, and begun selling their super-condiment – even internationally. Just a few weeks ago, they shipped an order to a friend’s army buddy in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Rather like their logo — a formal top hat turned slightly rakish and daring — Mad Hatter’s ethos is classy yet zany. Thanks to the folks at Shebeen, our discussion was an enlightening food-tasting/food-fight unlike any other.

Q + A with Mad Hatter

Q. How would you describe Mad Hatter?

A. Mad Hatter is a healthy lifestyle with an edge. It’s a super-condiment that doesn’t discriminate — it belongs on your filet mignon. It belongs on your hamburger. It belongs on your PB + J. It’s an alternative to your standard, HCFS- or sugar-filled table condiment. It adds kick and amazing flavor without the junk.

Q. Sounds like Mad Hatter can be used in some unexpected ways. What are typical ways you’ve seen it used? How about the weirdest?

A. Mad Hatter is great as a marinade. We slather it over shrimp, chicken, meat before tossing them on the grill. A grill caramelizes it and it’s just amazing. Our particular favorite is probably Hatter on rice or pasta. Really, though, it’s a necessity on pretty much anything we eat these days. You’d think we’d be tired of it… but we’re not.

Plus, we like seeing Hatter on other local food. We try to pass it out to restaurants, and we think it’s fantastic on NoBull Burgers.

As for the weirdest, we’ve heard that Hatter on really good vanilla ice cream is excellent. And a friend of ours tried it on SpudNuts the other day with great results.

Also, Kailen likes to take shots of Hatter.

Q. Tell me about the ingredients you use.

A. Actually, we’re pretty obsessed with good ingredients.  We don’t use anything fake. Everything we use is real, fresh food: habañero peppers, extra virgin olive oil, onions, pineapple, limes, salt, pepper, and secret spices.

Hatter is white because — why add food coloring? We thought about changing the color, but realized our look is distinctive and shows our commitment to natural ingredients.

Cailen’s really a connoisseur of olive oil, and we’ve started using the finest Lebanese extra virgin olive oil in our product. A recent book called Extra Virginity is really enlightening about the importance of knowing where your olive oil comes from.

Q. Where else might we have encountered Mad Hatter?

A. You might not know it, but many of your favorite restaurants around town probably have Mad Hatter stashed behind the counter or in the kitchen. You’ve just got to ask for it. We strongly encourage a Mad Hatter Scavenger Hunt at all your favorite C’ville spots.

We’ve got to give a special shout-out to Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie though. He’s carried Hatter since the very beginning.

How do you ‘Hatter?

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Relay (And Friends) Recipes: Isabel’s Spicy Collards + Rice

By on February 16, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors, Recipes

When I had the opportunity to visit Tricycle Gardens earlier this month, Isabel, my guide, promised to share one of her delicious recipes for all our Relayers to test out. Since Relay isn’t yet selling Tricycle’s daikon radishes, Isabel sent an equally-appealing preparation of Tricycle collard greens.

See the original Meet Our Vendors: Tricycle Gardens post.

Spicy Collards and Rice:

  • 2 1/2 cups cooked brown rice
  • 1 large bunch of collard greens- thinly sliced
  • 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
  • juice of 1/2 a lemon
  • 2 tablespoons toasted pine nuts
  • 2 tablespoons raisins
  • 3/4 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/2 teaspoon coriander
  • 1/4 teaspoon ginger
  • 1/4 teaspoon turmeric
  • salt & pepper to taste
  1. Heat olive oil in a large skillet over medium-high heat.
  2. Add sliced collard greens, season with salt & pepper and saute until cooked down slightly. Add lemon juice and continue cooking until just softened, about 5-7 minutes.
  3. While collards are cooking, combine remaining ingredients in a large bowl.
  4. Add collards once done cooking and toss to combine.
  5. Season with salt & pepper to taste.
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Relay Insider: Employees’ Favorite Cookbooks and Food Blogs

By on February 15, 2012 in Blog, Team

Even though they don’t have to cook on the job, most Relayers are passionate cooks in their free time. We’ve got vegans, Southern-fare enthusiasts, global cuisine chefs, and everything in between.

I polled a few of our foodie employees to get their cooking resource recommendations:

Jen (Richmond)

  • The Organic Seasonal Cookbook: It’s broken down into four chapters by season and has appetizers, entrees and desserts made from ingredients that are naturally found for those times of year. My favorite recipe is the Fall Veggie Bake.
  • More-With-Less Cookbook: My grandma bought this one back in the 70s, and passed copies down to my mom and them myself. It’s a classic — its focus is cooking in a way that not only saves money, but limits our impact on the world’s resources. It is published by the Mennonite community with the mantra of “live simple so others can simply live.”
  • The only food blog I really follow is NPR’s The Salt, which is food news. I also recently found 100 Days of Real Food, which looks like a great resource.

Graham (Richmond)

Wild Fermentation and Nourishing Traditions for me! Amazing for creating a healthy person!

Grace (Charlottesville)

Brandon (Charlottesville)

High blood pressure runs in my family, so I’m always looking for ways to keep it in check. A few years ago, I found the DASH diet, promoted by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

It’s all about more veggies and whole grains and limiting the quantity of sodium and red meat in one’s diet. You can download a list of recipes here.

What are your go-to cooking and food resources?

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Meet Our Vendors: Tricycle Gardens (Richmond)

By on February 14, 2012 in Blog, Meet our Vendors, Meet our Vendors

Turn right at the McDonalds, drive a few hundred yards. When you step out of the car and onto the once-vacant lot now carefully tended by Tricycle Gardens and their volunteers, you’ll feel worlds away from anyplace someone might say “Big-Mac-Would-You-Like-Fries-With-That.”

Founded in 2002 to help communities establish thriving community gardens throughout Richmond, Tricycle Gardens has developed workshops, learning gardens, and other programs to foster hands-on experience with urban agriculture in a diverse set of neighborhoods. Their mission also includes offering workforce development skills to those who truly need a little leg-up.

Through its activities, Tricycle Gardens seeks to empower Richmonders to make their lives more beautiful, sustainable, healthy, and delicious.

While most of its community gardens are developed with the goal of handing them over to neighborhood stewards, in 2010 Tricycle established its own Urban Farm (this is the site near McDonald’s). On the one hand, the layout and features of the farm make clear its educational ends: clearly-labeled compost and vermiculture containers help volunteers understand the process that takes local restaurants’ food scraps from plate to soil-nourishing compost. A small apiary, well-marked rows of vegetables, cisterns for drip irrigation, and the beautifully-constructed greenhouses all lend an air of the ideal demonstration project to the farm.

At the organization’s headquarters on Church Hill, the cement apron of an old gas station has been radically transformed into a productive garden through plantings on top of hay bales, miniature greenhouse-style boxes abundantly full of lettuces even in this season, and other creative urban growing methods.

Still, make no mistake: while demonstration and surprising techniques are key elements of their strategy, Tricycle Gardens’ Urban Farm is a productive farm. Even in the dead of winter, this incredibly small plot seems to be one of the city’s only sources for truly local, fresh, and amazingly aesthetic produce. Isabel, my guide on the farm tour, plucked two carrots from the greenhouse for me to sample fresh, and their sweet crunch was absolutely delightful.

The organization’s weekly Farm Stand in Church Hill regularly sells out and they also do brisk sales from their storefront on Relay.

Any proceeds from the farm go back into the organization, to help further develop its mission.

Josh, Tricycle’s farmer-in-chief, handles the planning and has final responsibility for being sure the vegetables are well-tended, but volunteers are also able to be directly involved with much of the work that goes into the farm. Those who volunteer on a regular basis can take on greater responsibility.

How do they choose which vegetables to grow? Isabel, a highly-involved intern with Tricycle, laughed — “we choose things we like! And of course, we try to grow vegetables that people will like but may not be as familiar with. Over time, we hope to provide resources like recipe cards to help community members know how to use some of our favorite vegetables.”

Want to get involved? Contact Tricycle Gardens to be kept up-to-date about their upcoming events, workshops, and volunteer opportunities.  Or just try some of their veggies from Relay.  You won’t be disappointed!

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Relay (and Friends) Recipes: “Engagement Tofu”

By on February 10, 2012 in Blog, Recipes, Team

One of the great things about the cities that Relay calls home is that we’re not alone in our love of great food and recipes. As demonstrated by the gourmet Super Bowl recipes from Richmond blogger Tim Vidra that we featured in our weekly e-mail, there are plenty of Richmonders sharing their culinary creativity in exciting ways.

This week, Lauren of the veg:ology blog (and a recent celebrity on Richmond.com) was generous enough to share her Engagement Tofu recipe with us just in time for Valentine’s Day.

“Engagement Tofu?” you ask. You may have heard of “Engagement Chicken” — a dish first reported in Glamour magazine as a sure means of getting one’s significant other to “put a ring on it.” While the chicken sounds delicious too, we love vegetarian Lauren’s lighthearted adaptation — and her obvious success! Congrats, Lauren!

Whether you’re long-married or hopeful this Valentine’s Day, show your significant other you care about his (or her) heart and health!

Lauren’s Engagement Tofu

recipe and photo credit: Lauren of veg:ology

Ingredients:

1- 14 oz. package of firm tofu, drained
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons dijon mustard
1 teaspoon granulated sugar
1 teaspoon chopped fresh basil
1 teaspoon chopped fresh thyme
salt and pepper to taste

Preparation:
  1. Wrap block of tofu in towels and place on cutting board or in large colander. Press the tofu by placing a second cutting board or a very flat plate on top of the block, and then place two cans or a bottle of wine on top. Let stand for 15 minutes, then squeeze water out of the tofu and through the towels.
  2. While the tofu is being pressed, make the marinade. Combine soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, dijon mustard, sugar, basil and thyme in a small bowl and stir to mix.
  3. Unwrap tofu and pat dry. Slice the pressed tofu into eight 1/2-inch thick slices.
  4. Place the tofu slices in a baking dish and pour the marinade over top. Let the tofu marinate for one hour, turning the slices over halfway through.
  5. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F.
  6. Remove tofu from marinade and place on a baking sheet lightly sprayed with olive oil. Sprinkle the tofu with salt and pepper to taste and then spoon the remaining marinade over each piece.
  7. Bake in preheated oven for 10-15 minutes, then turn each piece over and bake for another 10-15 minutes, until the tofu is lightly browned.

What’s your go-to “way to his heart is through his stomach” recipe?

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