Jaclyn Einis | Healthy Recipes and Sustainable FoodHealthy Recipes and Sustainable Food

Morning Toast: New Year’s Brunch Cocktail

What kind of toast goes best with brunch on New Year’s Day? Whichever one you didn’t drink the night before. (Ba-dum dum.)

Actually, we think the best spirit to bring to the first day of the year could be a seasonal one you mix at home. So we turned to “The Liquid Muse,” Natalie Bovis, to shake things up and away from the usual mimosas and Bloody Marys. An LA-based mixologist and author, Bovis is also the creator of OM, the world’s first USDA-certified organic prepared cocktails. For Clean Plates, Bovis infused invigorating seasonal flavor into her Lavender Gin Sour. (Psst…for more great recipes, check out The Clean Plates Cookbook.)

Lavender Rosemary Gin Sour

¾ oz. Lavender Rosemary Syrup (see instructions below)
¾ oz. fresh lemon juice
1 ¾ oz. dry gin
Garnish: lavender sugar rim (lavender and sugar ground finely in a coffee grinder)

Rim a cocktail glass with lavender sugar. Pour all ingredients into a mixing glass. Add ice, shake vigorously and gently strain into rimmed cocktail glass.

Lavender Rosemary Syrup

1 c. brewed lavender tea
1 c. white granulated sugar*
25 rosemary leaves, plucked from sprig

*Clean Plates tip: Substitute coconut palm sugar for cane sugar.

Add eggs, potatoes, and toast…to a delicious new year.

Lavender image courtesy of PHOTO/arts Magazine.

Recipes excerpted from Edible Cocktails: Garden To Glass by Natalie Bovis, The Liquid Muse, 2012. Used with permission.

Tree to Bar: The Grenada Chocolate Company

Some people play golf; others build model trains, bake cupcakes or brew craft beer. “I was kind of a cocoa hobbyist,” says Mott Green, founder of Grenada Chocolate Company, of the ten years he split between a small home in Grenada’s rainforest and as a vagabond.

Green dropped out of university in 1988 to pursue the life of a wandering activist. Enchanted by Grenada early in his travels, he built a bamboo hut in the forest two miles away from where his chocolate factory stands today. Continue reading →

Talking Turkey with the Godfather of American Poultry

Frank Reese knows his poultry. After sixty years in the bird biz, he’s known as the Godfather of American poultry. The fourth generation turkey farmer runs the Good Shepherd Poultry Ranch alongside his 90-year-old father. With a poultry farm training program in the works and a decorated career that’s far from over, Reese is proof that some people really do have a calling. (Some just cluck louder than most.)

Reese found a few feather-free minutes to discuss the importance of heritage breed turkeys, sustainability and Thanksgiving shopping tips. Continue reading →

Waste-Free Groceries: in.gredients

Even if you’re the type to tote your bottle the extra block to find a recycling bin (or in some cities all the way home), and to carry that cloth bag when it’s time to buy groceries, it’s hard not to be wasteful. Those plastic containers, the ones that hold even the most organic of berries, don’t go in recycling bins reserved for rigid plastics (jugs and bottles). And those granola bars may be Fair Trade and sugar-free, but they’ve been wrapped in plastic and boxed, processed and then flown and driven hundreds or thousands of miles to get to your kitchen.

In an effort to reduce the energy expended and waste generated by food, a new Austin grocery store is shunning recycling in favor of “precycling,” the practice of avoiding recycling altogether by not creating packaging in the first place. Continue reading →

GrubKit: The Box that Beat Take Out

If you’ve taken a cooking class, you may have experienced this pattern: inspiration, realization and resignation. The inspiration of working with interesting ingredients to learn a novel dish — your repertoire goes beyond smoothies and stir-fries! But at home, eager to show off the newfound skills, you realize the pantry has no palm sugar or ground white pepper, let alone tamarind concentrate. With that, you’re resigned to reaching (again) for the number of the Thai place.

Finally there’s a solution: Put down the take out menu and get in and out of the kitchen in a flash with GrubKit. Each box provides the hard-to-find ingredients, often organic and always pre-measured; only fresh ingredients need to be purchased, like tomatoes, onions or chicken, which offers the cook real quality control. The instructions are like a cooking class in a box, whether you’re serving up a Moroccan tagine with saffron couscous or chickpea curry with mango powder.

We caught up with GrubKit co-founder Max Gabath to chat about the benefits (and fun) of making take out favorites at home. Continue reading →

Natural Born Grillers Use Coconut Charcoal

It’s BBQ season; what matters isn’t just what you cook, but how you cook it. We found a cleaner, more natural alternative to traditional charcoal: 100% natural carbonized coconut shells, with no petroleum, fossil fuels, nitrates or any other chemicals — and it burns 50% more efficiently. Cue Afire, here to help sustain the party and the environment while ensuring no one misses out on a smoky steak or grilled zucchini. Continue reading →

One Fish, Two Fish: Choose Sustainable Fish with the Blue Ocean Institute

As you learned in our recent story, many Clean Plates-approved chefs have found purveyors of sustainably sourced seafood, but what about individuals? How can you ensure the fish you buy or dine on is sustainable and safe? Kate McLaughlin, Seafood Program Director at Blue Ocean Institute, is here to help.

How do you define “ocean-friendly” seafood?
Ocean-friendly seafood can be wild-caught or farmed. If wild-caught, it should come from a healthy population and be caught with minimal impact on other populations and the marine habitat. If farmed, it should be raised using methods that cause little damage to the environment and have minimal impact on wild populations. Few of the farmed fish should be able to escape, and they shouldn’t be fed large quantities of wild fish. Continue reading →

Sea to Table: Sustainable Seafood Delivered to Chefs’ Doors

How do Clean Plates’ favorite chefs get their hands on fresh, sustainably sourced seafood? Many turn to Sea to Table, a service that delivers seafood directly from sustainable, wild fisheries to chefs nationwide.

Sea to Table grew out of Tobago Wild, an operation founded by the Dimin family in 2004 to connect fishermen using sustainable practices in Tobago to New York chefs. I spoke with Sea to Table co-owner Sean Dimin to learn how this clever company is helping to build a healthier – and tastier – relationship between dock and diner. Continue reading →

Clean Spirits: Five Organic Vodkas

A vodka a day may not keep the doctor away, but drinking organic could help. By choosing spirits free of pesticides, herbicides and additives, you’ll reduce the amount of toxins and other chemicals throwing punches at your liver — not to mention, the planet. Considering that organic produce packs more flavor than its conventional counterpart, organic vodka tastes better, too. But don’t take out word for it — try one of these small-batch vodkas and decide for yourself.

TRU: Greenbar Collective makes their organic spirits, vodka included, in Southern California, using American wheat, purified water and whole, hand-processed ingredients. Take your TRU straight, or try their lemon vodka — 800 pounds of hand-zested, organic, locally grown lemons go into each batch. (Put that in your Lemon Drop and sip it!)

Square One: Distilled in Northern California, Square One is truly eco-conscious from grain to glass. Crafted with organic rye and Teton Mountain water, Square One vodka is labeled with paper made from sustainably grown bamboo, bagasse and cotton. The label peels away easily to ready the bottle for reuse and recycling, and the spirit’s rye byproduct becomes organic dairy farm feed. Sample their botanical vodka, infused with rose, pear, chamomile, rosemary, coriander, lemon verbana and citrus peel. For purists, classic vodka is also available, along with basil and cucumber varieties.

Rain: Produced by the New Orleans-based Sazerac Company, Rain is made from organic white corn sourced from a 1,000 acre farm in Illinois. Distilled seven times, the vodka is available plain or with natural flavors cucumber lime, honey mango melon, red grape hibiscus and lavender lemonade.

Vodka 14: Produced by a family-run company at the foot of the Teton range in Boulder, Colorado, Vodka 14 is the product of five generations of distilling, a nifty continuous distillation system and, of course, organic grains and the Rockies’ pure spring water.

Crop Harvest Earth: Though owned by New York-based Chatham Imports, the self-proclaimed “Cleanest Vodka” is born, raised and bottled in Minnesota. The company uses organic grain that’s grown and distilled so no charcoal filtering or carbon treatment is needed. Stick to Crop Artisanal Vodka or shake things up with Organic Tomato or Organic Cucumber.

What’s your favorite organic vodka? Have one to add to our list?

Martini photo courtesy of iStockphoto, other photos courtesy of the featured producers.

The Greenhorns: Young Farmers Unite

“The Greenhorns are a posse of young people who care a lot about the future of agriculture.” – Severine von Tscharner Fleming

The young, agrarian and eco-conscious are gaining numbers and momentum, thanks in part to the efforts of The Greenhorns, a grassroots non-profit organization that aims to recruit, promote and support young farmers in America. This trailer for their documentary, also called The Greenhorns, gives you a good sense of what they’re all about:

The group employs a variety of media to meet its mission, including films, a weekly Heritage Radio show, a book of essays by young farmers and a wiki-based resource guide; they also host social and educational events nationwide. On the horizon: an almanac covering everything from agricultural history to wildlife rescue, apron design, farm hack case studies and brownfield restoration.

I recently spoke with the group’s director, Severine von Tscharner Fleming, a Hudson Valley-based farmer, activist and organizer. Continue reading →

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