Lentil tacos from Dave du Jour food truck in San Diego
While editing and picking favorite honeymoon pictures, I also caught up on my blog reading (adult onset ADD). Lots of things to make me happy are going on in the world, and I wanted to share a few with you. Who knows what bright ideas might spark the next step in our dream of abundant healthy food?
“Urban edges” can be small-scale farms for city dwellers! Outside of San Francisco, nonprofit Sustainable Agriculture Education, directed by Sibella Kraus, has partnered with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission to create an 18-acre Agricultural Park where several small-scale farmers lease land and farm – feeding their own small communities or selling food back to markets. The site also serves as an educational center where school children can visit and learn more about where healthy food comes from. Kraus is working on developing such sites in other cities. I would love to see UDC’s new Urban Sustainability program try something like this! What would you grow, if you could run your own small farm?
One of my favorite sustainable food writers, Katherine Gustufson, writes that craft beer is ideologically merging with the sustainable food movement. Craft brewers (defined by the Brewer’s Association as those who brew fewer than 2 million barrels per year) are transforming the American beer landscape. I already knew microbrewers were fighting a battle against archaic distribution laws that favor the mass producers like Budwiser and Michelob – and have been mulling over a post on that subject for a while now, particularly since the Monkey and I have started playing around with simple home brewing lately. Brewers are taking the sustainable food link a step farther by including a Farm-to-Table pavilion alongside the Craft Brewing pavilion at the September 2010 Great American Beer Festival (let’s add that I now know where I want to take vacation next year). It makes sense: craft brewing is, like sustainable farming, an attempt to bring authenticity, quality and community back to the table. Do you love any microbrews? Watch for a post from me soon on my personal craft beer addictions.
Food trucks are becoming a fun link in the chain of replacing cookie-cutter, artery-clogging, earth-burning fast food with real food made by people who care about the food they serve. DC is getting its share with the Fojol Brothers, Sauca, and Curbside Cupcakes (reviews of DC area food trucks on Yelp, for interested locals). While in San Diego, my life was saved by a well-timed food truck outside the Ballast Point Brewery Tasting Room, and I ate two amazing lentil tacos. This Grist.org article highlights food trucks across the country, notably those deliberately serving up grass-fed/organic/local/seasonal goodies. I’d love to see food trucks put Micky D’s outta business! Do you have a local food truck that you love?
You’ve probably already seen/heard of it, but there’s a documentary called “Beer Wars” that goes into the craft brewing industry’s struggle with the big beer companies. It’d be great watching for your dinner/documentary group.
“Beer Wars” was great – and the reason I went from drinking craft beers to caring about drinking craft beers. The Dogfish Head Brewery guy featured in that doc lives not too far from here – the brewery is in Delaware, I believe. We drink a lot of his beer now (and most of it is amazing!)
Great article on a pizza food truck that purchases the day’s ingredients from the farmer’s market, then serves up pizza to the market customers!
http://food.change.org/blog/view/mobile_farmers_market_pizza_oven_reinvents_junk_food
Another article on Food Trucks, from Change.org:
http://food.change.org/blog/view/food_trucks_the_next_frontier_in_local_eating