Eat My Florida

Hogs are running wild in 37 states. Florida is one of them, with the second largest population of wild porkers in the country. Why worry about a few feral pigs? They eat just about anything and can clear the ground of native plant and animal species at an alarming rate, wrecking the ecosystems of acres of protected land in a very short time. More development just means a higher density of hogs on undeveloped land. And they’re mean som’ bitches.

Check out these stats that show how Sarasota deals with its porcine problem. Yep, 2 trappers bag over 1,000 hogs every year, just in the SRQ. That might be a drop in the bucket of Florida’s pork population, but it sure is some tasty huntin’.

Chipotle – the fast-food burrito joint owned by McDonald’s — has been trying to push more local foods through its restaurants for the past few years. Part of it is marketing, like their high-profile agreement with Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms (immortalized in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma) to provide all the pork at Chipotle’s Charlottesville, VA locations.

Now, the restaurant chain is expanding their commitment, vowing to source at least 25% of at least one produce item from small and medium local farms at every one of Chipotle’s over 700 locations, at least when the veggies are in season. One item seems like a drop in the bucket, but with the massive volume fast food places go through it could mean big bucks for local farms.

From Justin Richards at CL Sarasota:

After researching my UrbEx story about Hydro Taste farms in Myakka, where they grow fruits and veggies in vertical stacks using minimal resources, I brought a harvest home to try for myself. I put the veggies in fajitas, and while they were juicy and full-flavored, it was hard to get a good taste under all the sour cream and taco spice.

But the peach I ate, my God. It was this warped and deformed peach, with a little tumor-baby growing out the side of it. The twin-peach had its own sad little pit, even. But it was so good. It’s like, the flavor of a normal peach was within the flavor of this peach, but this went so far beyond. Peach-flavor receptors, long dormant after generations of industrial farming, were awakened in my mouth.

They’re not paying us, I swear. I seriously doubt the head of the farm will even read this post. I have no reason to endorse this fruit. It was just damn good.

The killer Freakonomics blog at the NYT profiled the economics of growing your own food a few days ago. Blogger Stephen Dubner comes down against the locavore dream of backyard farms (largely, it seems, due to his own ill-fated experiment making sherbet), but his evidence is largely anecdotal. Until, that is, he quotes a study recently published in Environmental Science and Technology that researched the impact of food production and transportation.

Turns out that the production side of industrial farming consumes the lion’s share the environmental impact, 83 percent by their figuring. Transportation only contributes 11 percent to the total environmental bill. And, since red meat production is by far the most climatically damaging, the study’s authors conclude:

“Shifting less than one day per week’s worth of calories from red meat and dairy products to chicken, fish, eggs, or a vegetable-based diet achieves more GHG reduction than buying all locally sourced food.”

Huh. I still that growing your own can have a benefit, but maybe it’s more psychological than economic. Unless, of course, your blood pressure goes up every time you find rat bites in your heirloom tomatoes.

Wal-Mart and McDonald’s have pulled tomatoes from some of their stores in response to an FDA warning about 145 cases of salmonella. The feds have yet to pinpoint the source of the outbreak, but a lot of companies are getting proactive in the wake of problems like the Taco Bell lettuce incident of a few years ago.

Luckily, local tomatoes, especially heirlooms from places like King Farms in Myakka (available at the Brown Groves booth at Sarasota’s Downtown Market on Saturdays), are still in season. Buy local, save yourself from 24 hours of hugging the porcelain receptacle.

I put in calls to two local farms that either sell at or run their own markets to see what crops are coming to market this weekend. Break out the cookbooks and start planning next week’s menus based around the freshest local produce around, bought from the hands of the people who pulled it from the ground.

Worden Farm
(Based in Punta Gorda, this organic CSA sells extra produce at Sarasota’s Downtown Farmer’s Market from both their farm and other local farms)
According to Eva Worden, they’ll be bringing: onions, potatoes, cooking greens and lettuces, watermelon, squash, lots of herbs, sunflowers (”mother’s day this weekend, of course”), Florida peaches from a neighbor (”the white ones are the best, but they.re tender and bruise easily”), tomatoes, beautiful crop of asian eggplant, sungold tomatoes (sweet cherry tomatoes), grapefruit, cabbage, carrots, beets, radishes, leeks, scallions, green beans, maybe some of the purple beans, and maybe cantaloupe.

Tomorrow I’ll post up the list from Sweetwater Organic in Tampa.

In today’s issue I dug into the World Food Crisis, ending with a prescription for a few little things we can do to limit our impact on the shortage of grains that’s causing hunger and poverty in dozens of countries. One suggestion was to limit your consumption of factory-farmed meat. Meat production has vast environmental impacts, isn’t good for the hapless animals and consumes about 40 percent of all the grain grown in the world. (For more on the Crisis, check out past blog posts.)

Can you avoid factory-meat without turning vegetarian? Sure, but it takes some effort. Buying locally-raised meat, preferably grass-fed, reduces the impact of large-scale production until it’s almost as eco- and hunger-friendly as giving up your steaks and chops. Plus, it tastes better and connects you with your food source.

Numerous local farmers and small ranchers have gotten into the act of providing the Gulf Coast with neighborhood meat. You usually have to buy in bulk — beef is often sold as whole, half or quarter cow — so you’ll need room in the freezer, or an extra cold box in the garage, and you may want to get together with family or friends to split up a big buy.

Here are a few places to try out. I’ll add more as I find them, but f you know of others, drop me a line.

Rosas Farms, 13450 N. Hwy. 301, Citra, FL, 32912, 888-353-9912 or rosasfarms.com — 100% grass-fed beef, boar, buffalo and a lot more, raised on an organic farm jsut south of Gainesville.

Amazin’ Grazin’ Beef, 941-745-5630 — This new operation in Bradenton sells 100% grass-fed beef raised by real-life cowboy Lee Sly. There will also be wild tilapia and acorn finished pork.

Plan It Earth, 15433 County Rd. 39 S., Lithia, 813-784-2727 — Grass-fed, grain finished beef.

1. Greens - April and May mark the end of the growing season for salad greens in the area, which suffer heavily as temps gear up for the summer. Kale is good for you!
2. Strawberries - It’s almost the end for on of our area’s biggest crops and some local farms will be opening their fields for personal picking, now that most of the big harvesting is done. This time of year, strawberries are usually super-ripe and exceptionally sweet, perfect for jams and jellies, or you can add a little sugar and freeze them in their own syrup for later use.
3. Cucumbers - These guys are just coming into their own this time of year and you can usually find low-seed pickling varieties at farmer’s markets and bigger ones at the supermarket.
4. Sweet corn – We don’t grow a lot of this around here, but if you can find it the ears will be ready to go. Here’re some tips for cooking.
5. Rhubarb -I love to eat these sweet-tart stalks of pseudo celery straight out of the fridge, but you can also make a mean pie with some late-season strawberries.
6. Grapefruit - Some varieties keep coming in through the summer, but April is the end of the season for most. Buy a bunch an juice them for a better than orange breakfast treat.
7. Valencias - These (often) seedless wonders are just hitting the market and great for juicing.
8. Potatoes – Yet again, we don’t grow a lot of these around here, but those we have will be sweeter than the supermarket selections. I’ve seen some at several local farmer’s markets.
9. Tomatoes - This is prime time for Ruskin’s finest. Get ‘em while they’re bright and fresh.
10. Blueberries - They’re ripe and ready. You can make a crumble, but I like ‘em in muffins, or just tossed in with my morning Cheerios.

• “April 12th’s Saturday Night Live featured three clips of Ashton Kutcher dressed up as a giant chocolate bar with a killer instinct, cute mime clown face and all.” (Thanks Serious Eats)

• “What was supposed to be a temporary financial safety net for imperiled family farmers has become a huge boondoggle for a fraction of wealthy farmers, including landowners who’ve never gotten close enough to a barn to slip on the manure.” (Thanks PBS.org)

• “A simulated outbreak of the disease — part of an earlier U.S. government exercise called “Crimson Sky” — ended with fictional riots in the streets after the simulation’s National Guardsmen were ordered to kill tens of millions of farm animals, so many that troops ran out of bullets.” (Thanks AP)

• “Planners couldn’t come up with enough organic or sustainably grown food from Georgia to nourish just 600 people over two days.” Hmm, maybe I’ll have to start giving back to my alma mater. (Thanks AJC)

• “Smart owners, of course, have always carefully watched their costs, but when every bill comes with a “gasoline-price surcharge” and fewer people are walking through the door, it’s hocus-pocus time.” (Thanks WP)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “Cropland is suddenly in heavy demand, a situation that is fraying old alliances, inspiring new ones and putting pressure on the Agriculture Department, which is being lobbied directly by all sides without managing to satisfy any of them.” (Thanks NYT)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “When millions of people are going hungry, it’s a crime against humanity that food should be diverted to biofuels,” said India’s finance minister, Palaniappan Chidambaram, in an interview.” (Thanks WSJ)

• WORLD FOOD CRISIS UPDATE: “As we know in the past, sometimes those questions lead to war,” he said. “We now need to devote 100 percent of our time to these questions.” (Thanks NYT)

I’ll a steaming hot cup of corrections, with a soy shout out and a side of apology:

1. I mistakenly gave a wrong address for Kahwa Roaster’s new shop in last week’s paper. It’s on 2nd AVE. N, not 2nd St. N. My specific apologies go out to an irate woman who spent some pedal power trying to find the place on her bike. My bad.
2. That piece also prompted a letter from Anne Vela, owner of Cafe Hey. Here’s what she said:
   “Just to re-emphasize something I’m sure you know, an accepted localvore practice is to allow items that have been traded over the centuries from far distances, such as olive oil, some grains and also coffee. So Kahwa who yes trades its beans internationally, gets the seal of local approval.
   As a plug for my own shop, Cafe Hey (through which I go through much effort to purchase locally traded and produced items as well as organic and fairtrade foods whenever I can) serves Sweetwater Coffee roasted in Gainesville, FL. Being that they are located within 200 miles of Tampa, it also counts as locally produced! Sweetwater Roasters is also currently certified USDA Organic by QCS and Florida Organic Growers, certified FairTrade by Transfair USA, Rainforest Alliance Certified, a participant in the Eco Q system, is Smithsonian Bird Friendly AND lastly is certified by Utz Kapeh!!!
   They also roast some pretty damn fine coffee. Hope you’ll try it sometime.”
   I will, Anne.
   
3. Finally, in CL’s Urban Explorer issue a few weeks ago, I wrote the section on downtown St. Pete and referred to the Globe Coffee Shop as a “bohemian cafe.” Accurate, sure, but it’s also a tad inconsiderate to a little place a few blocks away called Cafe Bohemia (937 Central Ave., 727-895-4495). That shop also has an urban bohemian crowd, with good coffee, good beer and live music or DJs most weekend nights. Check it out and tell them I sent you to apologize for me.

Joey Redner (no relation), local beer columnist for the St. Pete Times, just hired a head brewer for his new craft brewery.

According to Beer Advocate, Wayne Wambles will be brewing Cigar City Brewing’s first batches of beer, slated to be released in September of this year. Wambles recently worked for Foothill’s Brewing in  North Carolina.  According to the press release, Wambles makes a mean  strong scotch ale and is a fan of Belgians, while Redner loves him some stout and porter, so look for those to be in Cigar City’s early line-up. If they can find some hops.

Since he’s a writer as much as a beer entrepeneur, Redner has a blog chronicling his path towards craft brew success. You may also want to check out last year’s CL Beer Issue for the rags to brews success story of Bob Sylvester and Saint Somewhere.

The government is not in the business of making it easier for you to find and purchase local foods. Just look at the draconian regulations that govern slaughterhouses, the USDA requirements (separate bathroom for the inspector?) so arduous and expensive that they all but eliminate boutique companies or local slaughterhouses from being able to slaughter meat meant for sale. By 2000, over 80% of the cows in the United States were processed by just four companies. That’s why you may want to own your own cow.

Or look at the rise in raw milk sales, despite the fact that unpasteurized milk is illegal for human consumption. Or farm fresh eggs that have to be sold as “pet food” to get around egg and dairy regs.

A NY Times op-ed describes how one Minnesota farmer discovered another problem when he tried to lease land from a neighbor to meet the rising demand for local fruits and vegetables in his community. Not only does the USDA frown on converting land from the cultivation of the big four commodity crops (rice, soybeans, corn and cotton) they actually penalize the farms that try it. Way to support the move from unsustainable monoculture crops to local, low-impact food farming, USDA.

The federal WIC (Women, Infant and Children) Program has provided food assistance targeted at “low income pregnant, breastfeeding, non-breastfeeding postpartum women, infants and children up to five years of age who are at nutritional risk” since the 1970s. Recently, WIC has been criticized for the lack of fresh food options that it allows participants to purchase, relying on milk, eggs, cheese and breakfast cereal to feed America’s youth. Until last month, the only fruits and veggies permitted were carrots for breastfeeding mothers. I wonder what Michael Pollan would think of WIC’s reliance on “scientific nutrition rationale.”

In December, the USDA changed its mind. Next month, states will implement an addition to the program that provides a whopping $8 to each WIC recipient for the purchase of fruits and vegetables. Not much, to be sure, but most WIC participants also get benefits from other programs, like Food Stamps.

Around these parts, that $8 will have to spent at the supermarket.

You see, there is already a WIC program in place — the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program — that provides money to moms and kids to be used at farmers’ markets for the purchase of locally grown fruits and vegetables, but Florida isn’t pushing participation. In 2007 we received less federal money for the program than 22 other states and districts, including places like Washington, D.C. and Iowa. The FMNP coupons Florida does distribute are only authorized for use in 17 out of 67 Florida counties. Hillsborough, Pinellas, Sarasota and Manatee are not on the list.

All of this comes on the heels of a UCLA study that followed two groups of WIC participants — one given an extra $10 in coupons for local farmers’ markets and one given $10 for fruits and vegetables at the supermarket. After 6 months, the farmers markets group consumed almost twice as many extra daily servings of fruits and vegetables than the supermarket group.

Now that’s an efficient way to promote nutrition.

Appearing later this week in lieu of the weekly restaurant review:

This space is usually devoted to appraising the kinds of food that we eat pretty much every day, served by people who devote their lives and livelihoods to its preparation. Rarely do I delve into the nitty-gritty of America’s relationship with food. It’s a complex subject, easy to ignore in the face of so many damn fine things to eat.

In some ways, 2006’s Omnivore’s Dilemma — arguably the best food book of the decade — changed all of that, at least for me. In Omnivore, author Michael Pollan broadly set the scene for dietary self-examination, detailing the history of our unhealthy relationship with corn and soy and lamenting the distance (both physical and psychological) between our plates and the sources of our food. In the process, he fleetingly raises a couple of troublesome questions: Why do we eat what we eat? And, perhaps more important: What should we eat?

In Defense of Food, Pollan’s latest book, is his answer.

(more…)

Many of my friends have told me that one of their food resolutions for the new year is to try and source more local food. Heading to the farm stands and farmer’s markets (or paying close attention to supermarket labels) is an admirable goal, but taking it the next step can be tough. Next week, I’ll be debuting a new weekly column in CL that should help. It’s not always convenient, cheap or simple to maximize the local food on your table, but hopefully Eating Local can help out.

Here’s your first taste of the column, appearing in the paper on January 16:

USDA regulations make finding locally raised meat difficult at best. Commercial meat has to be slaughtered at special slaughterhouses, none of which are in our vicinity, and few people have the opportunity to raise their own. Luckily, Rick McHan will do it for you.

McHan’s Plan It Earth (15433 County Rd. 39 S., Lithia, 813-784-2727) farm in Lithia will raise a cow just for you, from calf to slaughter in about 18 months. Technically, the lumbering bovine belongs to you the whole time, which skirts the USDA regs and allows local slaughterhouses (meant for personal meat consumption) to process your beef. All within an hour’s drive of the Bay area.

Having your own cow is an investment, so it’s best to enlist some other families to help with the expenses and share the bounty. According to McHan, a good calf costs around $400 and he charges $100 a month to raise it on grass and hay, with grain-fed fattening during the last six weeks. The slaughterhouse charges around $.30 per pound of edible meat, neatly butchered, shrink-wrapped and flash frozen for your convenience. Fully grown cows weigh in at about 1200 pounds, so you’ll pay approximately $2400 for 600 pounds of meat, or $4 a pound. Make sure you have room in your freezer.

Afraid of becoming attached to the walking steak? McHan will take care of every step in the process, freeing you from confronting your future meal. Wimp.