In the Garden of Eatin’

By Warren Rojas

Photography by Warren Rojas

Attention would-be NoVA farmers: The road to sound food production runs just due north of Warrenton.

That’s where you’ll find Local Food Project director Pablo Elliott coaxing about 60 seasonal crops out of a modest two acre farm (including the recently erected passive solar hoophouse) built on the Airlie Foundation campus just over a decade ago.

But the LFP doesn’t just grow food. It helps spawn more local farmers.

“It’s kind of an empowerment model of food production,” Elliott asserts.

According to an LFP aide, the garden supplies the Airlie Center kitchen with 100 to 125 pounds of produce—including: mixed lettuces, heirloom tomatoes, Swiss chard, strawberries, bok choy, lavender, lovage and an array of edible flowers—per week from May to late October.

“It’s all about having a really efficient system that churns out good food,” he insists.

Elliott fosters sustainable agriculture by hosting monthly workshops and annual farming conferences that draw hundreds of attendees. He estimates that they hosted nearly 1,000 participants in 2008, laying out a lofty goal of forcing 4,000 Airlie conferees out into the sunshine for a garden tour this year.

During a January 2009 workshop, one grizzled farmer voiced concerns that all his peers seem to be dying out for fear of modernization. “Sometimes I feel like an anachronism,” he stated woefully. A green roofing designer shared that she was hoping to flesh out ideas for weaving urban gardens into our high-traffic areas.
Another Airlie regular was totally enamored with idea of raising her own food—even if it’s only a very limited capacity.

“I’m just a backyard, not-very-good farmer,” she admitted. “But I like to dream about it.”

Airlie Foundation and Conference Center: 6809 Airlie Road, Warrenton; 540-347-1300. To learn more about the Local Food Project, please visit: www.airlie.org/activities/foodproject.htm.

Wise Acres
Sage advice from local fieldhands Plagued by groundhogs?
“You need Jack Russell terriers.”

Got rabbits?
“I recommend you grow garlic.”

Feeling sluggish in winter?
“Join a gym.”

Bad back?
“If you can’t lift it, don’t grow it.”

(April 2009)

Tags: Airlie Foundation, Chew on this, crops, farm, garden, Local Food Project, sustainable agriculture

Recipes Found, Faith Restored

By Warren Rojas

“Cooking Up a Storm: Recipes Lost and Found from The Times-Picayune of New Orleans.” Edited by Marcelle Bienvenu and Judy Walker. Chronicle Books, 400 pgs., $24.95

Hurricane Katrina didn’t just upend buildings and flood streets across the Crescent City. It swept away generations of culinary tradition by permanently displacing scores of lifelong residents, shuttered historic restaurants (Commander’s Palace, Galatoire’s; both have since reopened) and destabilized the fragile economy by scaring tourists away for months after.

The food desk of The Times-Picayune reached out to evacuees who returned to their ravaged homeland, working to rebuild a society short on basic necessities and starved for a taste of normalcy.

“Cooking Up a Storm” was born of this shared frustration, chronicling a battered people’s attempt to fill in the gaps of their communal cooking memory one misplaced recipe at a time (“In New Orleans, food is culture. Food is family. Food is life”).

Rather than focus on any one style of cooking or specific ingredients, the commemorative cookbook tracks the dishes T-P readers hungrily sought out. Noteworthy contributions include: homemade cheddar and Creole mayonnaise spread, a pre-Civil War specialty known as calas (rice fritters), crawfish braid, Natchitoches meat pies, muffaletta pasta and, of course, all manner of gumbo creations.

View from the Bayou
Most Louisiana natives seem to cherish memories of meals past. We asked some now-locals to share a few of theirs.

David Guas
Pastry chef/N’awlins native
• What single dish most reminds you of home? Beignets.
• Do you still celebrate Mardi Gras? If so, what are some of the festive plates you can’t live without? King cake (of course), doberge cake (half chocolate, half lemon). The day before Mardi Gras, I always make red beans and rice with smoked sausage.
• What local restaurants do you visit to get your fill of Cajun and/or Creole cooking? If I had to go outside of my own kitchen, I would go to Acadiana (which I helped open in Sept. 2005) and order the gumbo, a po’boy, the duck, a muffaletta and a frosty frozen mug of Abita root beer!

Heather Kenney
A Louisiana transplant so enamored with the Big Easy, she named her daughter Nola
• What single dish most reminds you of home? A roast beef po’boy on good French bread with lots of gravy—which is next to impossible to find outside of the Pelican State.
• Do you still celebrate Mardi Gras? If so, what are some of the festive plates you can’t live without? Cream cheese-filled king cake and Abita beer.
• What local restaurants do you visit to get your fill of Cajun and/or Creole cooking? RT’s in Del Ray is my favorite and most like my mom’s home cooking. I’d rather go there or to Popeye’s than go to Acadiana in D.C.

(March 2009)

Tags: Chew on this, cookbook, Louisiana, New Orleans, recipe

Charm Offensive

By Warren Rojas

Photography by Hana Jung

If epicurean bling is your thing, Inedible Jewelry can most likely cook up just what you’ve been craving.

Sisters Jessica and Susan Partain turned their childhood passion for fake foodstuffs into a full-time business in 2006.

Susan said ladies seem to favor cupcakes, lollipops and avocado accessories while gents fancy T-bone steak and sushi cuff links.

The strangest request to date has probably been taiyaki (fish-shaped, Japanese waffles), though Susan said they’ll try anything. “We love special requests,” she stated.

Meanwhile, the Partains’ debut food charm “cookbook” is set for release this fall.

To add some tantalizing trinkets to your collection, visit: www.inediblejewelry.com.

(February 2009)

Tags: accessories, Chew on this, inedible jewelry, relish

Getting Up to Speed

By Warren Rojas

Given our geographical predisposition for immediate gratification (omnipresent WiFi, Olympic-pace text messaging) and comfort (drive-through everything, from coffee shops to upholstery cleaning), it is no wonder some NoVA residents have lost sight of what’s really important: great food.

Slow Food DC co-leaders Alexandra Greeley and Kati Gimes want to help everyone find their way.

The dynamic dining duo have been championing sustainable living and sensible eating for going on a decade in this area, fostering a cadre of a band of perhaps 30 like-minded omnivores that have blossomed into force of approximately 800 floating members (those with email accounts, anyway) and close to 400 active participants. That makes the D.C. chapter, according to Greeley, the fifth-largest convivium in the U.S.

Greeley suggests that members tend to be “middle-class, well-educated people who care about what they are eating.” She says she knows of at least one Great Falls couple that has remained active since the beginning, and notes that a subset of about 20 chapter members regularly get together for private slow food dinner parties.

But Greeley is hoping the current wave of interest in green living and locally sourced cuisine will help them recruit the next generation of Slow Food members. To that end, Greeley is kicking around plans to set up a schoolyard garden at an area school to help teach students about sustainable agriculture and healthful eating.

Meanwhile, the group is lining up a variety of activities for 2009, including: a cook-off between the chef at the Latvian embassy (a chapter member) and Clyde’s Penn Quarter staff, an open-air dinner a la last summer’s Slow Food Nation event in San Francisco and their annual farm dinner (to be hosted again this year at Clyde’s Willow Creek Farm in Ashburn). Local farm tours and charity events are also in the works.

New members must pay a $60 annual fee to join, plus the cost of individual events (which Greeley said are usually capped at around $50).

For the global perspective on slow food, visit: www.slowfood.com
To join the D.C.-Metro chapter, visit: www.slowfooddc.org

(February 2009)

Tags: Chew on this, green living, healthful eating, slow food, sustainable agriculture

Dish Delicious

By Abby Horowitz

“Casserole Crazy: Hot Stuff for Your Oven.” Emily Farris. Penguin Books, 208 pgs., $15.95

Better start washing the dust off those old Pyrex dishes. The age of the casserole is back … with a vengeance.

But never fear.

“Casserole Crazy,” the debut cookbook—and oftentimes autobiography—from New York City editor/blogger Emily Farris will ensure your condensed soup days are a thing of the past.

Farris’ cookbook, bursting with original recipes (along with a handful from cooking greats like Bobby Flay and Donatella Arpaia), aims to brings an air of sophistication back to the one-dish meal.

“A casserole is no more than the sum of your favorite ingredients baked together in one dish,” Farris said. “Do you like lasagna? Kugel? Baked ziti? Enchiladas? If the answer is yes to any of those, my work is done.”

Still not convinced?

Farris forked over her personal recommendations for every occasion, from church potlucks (cauliflower and potato gratin) and the kids’ pre-soccer practice rush (beefy mac) to Sunday morning breakfast (French toast casserole) or romantic dinners with that special someone (a pasta dish she calls “Seduction”). With a wide range of vegetarian and good-for-you recipes, plus easy tips for personalizing each dish, this collection ensures that no matter the situation, casseroles have got you covered.

(February 2009)

Tags: book, casserole, Chew on this, cookbook, recipe central

The Trouble with Dairy

By Warren Rojas

“Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages.” Anne Mendelson. Knopf, 352 pgs., $29.95

Food scribe Anne Mendelson’s “Milk”—a loving account of the life-sustaining merits of unadulterated dairy products—elevates her to the next generation of ethnohistorian, one indirectly focused on human societies via the microscopic cultures that first passed through early man’s lips.

“Many thousands of years ago, somebody saw an animal nursing her young and had the eccentric, not to say dangerous, idea of getting in on the act,” she posits before diving headlong into a wholesale exploration of milch sources and human development.

Mendelson traces our affinity for all things dairy back to the mythical “Yogurtistan” (the early Eurasian adopters of milk as a dining staple), highlights the importance of animal husbandry to our socio-economic expansion (“Domesticated cattle were the plowers that literally broke the ground for the diffusion of grain farming”) and discusses the scientific principles behind what we taste—or should taste, as the case may be—in a each glass of fresh milk (“Its flavor is not so much flavor as a sensation of freshness on the palate that scarcely translates into words”).

Not content with merely proselytizing, she invites others to experience daring dairy, including: Chinese “fried milk,” hoppelpoppel (tea-spiked German eggnog), Turkish eggs in yogurt sauce, chlodnik (Polish buttermilk soup), fried bananas with crema, syrniki (Russian cheese fritters) and Philadelphia-style vanilla ice cream (a carefully plotted marriage of light and heavy cream).

(February 2009)

Tags: book, Chew on this, dairy, milk

Bellying Up to the Bar

By Warren Rojas

“Preggatinis: Mixology for the Mom-to-Be.” Natalie Bovis-Nelsen. Globe Pequot Press, 150 pgs., $16.95

Worried that a baby bump means kicking Cosmo night to the curb?

Our own Natalie Bovis-Nelsen aims to sate your cocktail cravings with “Preggatinis,” a compendium of preggers-friendly drinks designed to make your nine-month trek a walk on the wild side.

The maternally minded book is peppered with tongue-in-cheek quotes from today’s cocktail intelligentsia (“Drinking just to get drunk is like having sex just to get pregnant”), historical tidbits about tippling (imbibing beer was once believed to aide breastfeeding) and pro-pregnancy pointers (immortalize your pregnant belly with a glamorous photo shoot; book a massage therapist for any baby shower/preggatini party).

Bovis-Nelsen puts forward over six dozen drink recipes (broken up by trimester) including low-calorie beverages and nearly a dozen holiday libations (including the Sparkling Citrus Easter pleaser). There are also a few party food suggestions, including a zesty tomato dip and gruyere-chip pairing provided by celebrity chef Michel Richard.

Curious concoctions include: Clean Liver (a purgative brew of milk thistle and mint), Pants on Fire (chili-passion fruit mixer), Apricot Gingerini (a ginger-clove punch designed to short circuit morning sickness), Salty Puppy (curbed cocktail of just grapefruit and tonic), MILFshake (basically a peach-apricot-ice cream smoothie) and the odd craving-quenching Funky Monkey (peanut butter-chocolate job garnished with pickles).

Bovis-Nelsen also weaves in “de-virginizing” tips for spinning any preggatini into an adult beverage: “An ounce or two of vodka will not change the taste of the drink too much and is a safe bet when you want to add a spirited kick; substitute champagne for club soda.”­

(January 2009)

Tags: book, Chew on this, cocktail, drinks, preggatini

Jonesing for Java

Don’t let the chilly service at corporate coffee chains leave you out in the cold. This winter, these friendly little java joints are the hottest places around.

By Abby Horowitz

Misha’s
In a Nutshell: Combination coffee shop and roaster with a funky side.
Must-Try: Route 66 Blend—a dark, house-roasted brew.
Price Range: $1.69-$3.65
Extra Perks: The aroma of roasting coffee, stacks of Scrabble boards and free Wi-Fi invite you to stay a while.
Steer Here: 102 S. Patrick St., Alexandria; 703-548-4089
Hours: 6:30 a.m.-8 p.m. daily

Gusto di Vita
In a Nutshell: Family-owned and -operated drive-through kiosk with lots of variety.
Must-Try: Mocha Divine—three secret mocha recipe comes topped with lots of whipped cream.
Price Range: $1.50-$5.00
Extra Perks: The knowledgeable staff is bursting with great recommendations.
Steer Here: Warrenton Village Center (off Route 17); 540-270-6543; www.gustodivita.com
Hours: 6 a.m.-6 p.m. Monday-Friday, 7 a.m.-2 p.m. Saturday

The Java Shack
In a Nutshell: Intellectual yet unpretentious, a great place to meet up with friends.
Must-Try: Any of the signature lattes.
Price Range: $1.80-$4.25
Extra Perks: The Java Shack supports fair trade and goes the extra mile to be environmentally friendly.
Steer Here: 2507 N. Franklin Road; 703-527-9556; www.javashack.com
Hours: 7 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 8 a.m.-8 p.m. Sunday

Raven’s Nest Coffee House
In a Nutshell: So warm and welcoming, you’ll think you’re at Grandma’s house.
Must-Try: Homemade Chai tea.
Price Range: $1.65-$3.95
Extra Perks: Free Wi-Fi, windows that let in lots of sunshine and plentiful seating make this the quintessential workspace or reading nook.
Steer Here: 254 E. Davis St., Culpeper; 540-827-4185
Hours: 7 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 7 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Sunday

Mello Out
In a Nutshell: An inventive menu with some great non-coffee options (think apple cider and mint hot chocolate).
Must-Try: Mello Mocha—a blend of Italian hot chocolate, espresso and steamed milk.
Price Range: $1.55-$4.09
Extra Perks: Impressive homemade marshmallows and even better panini (try the Plescow!).
Steer Here: 2 E. Federal St., Middleburg; 540-687-8635; www.marshmellos.com
Hours: 7:30 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday

(January 2009)

Tags: Chew on this, coffee, coffee shop, java

Quaint Space, Tremendous Tastes

By Warren Rojas

Photography by Hana Jung

Leesburg’s Lorraine “Lola” Hooper has won the hearts (and bellies) of neighbors with her award-winning baked goods.

And while her signature ginger-chocolate cookies certainly turn heads (piquant dough, gooey center), we dig the rotating cupcake selection.

One zest-filled number is slathered in lemony-sweet frosting (tartacular). Milk chocolate serves as base (crumbly, mocha-like bedding), middle (ravishing ganache adorns multiple creations) and accent (white-chocolate shavings imbue creaminess) extraordinaire. Meanwhile, seasonal gems (carrot cake, almond joy) split time with evergreen favorites (coconut).

Lola Cookies & Treats: 109 S. King St., Leesburg; 703-669-6970; www.lolacookies.com

(December 2008)

Tags: baked goods, Bakery, Chew on this, cookies, cupcake, relish

Full Flavor, No Apologies

By Warren Rojas

Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes

According to award-winning food scribe Jennifer McLagan, annual butter consumption in North America has dropped 13-and-a-half pounds per capita over the last 100 years—and she’s none too happy about it.

“To share and pass on the knowledge of food means being active participants … It requires understanding where our food comes from, respecting the animals we kill, and being able to cook them—all of them, including the fat,” she argues in “Fat,” her ode to nature’s most mouthwatering of lubricants.

McLagan makes her case for pleasurable yet salutary dining throughout, attacking what she perceives as an unhealthy obsession with preternatural thinness (“Few of us are designed to be fashion models”) and the widening sociological disconnect between why we eat what we eat (“I am not talking about being up with the latest food trends, but the ability to cook a simple meal from scratch”).

No mere fanatic, McLagan argues for becoming reacquainted with animal extracts above our manmade substitutes (margarine, hydrogenated vegetable oils) through scientific and anecdotal evidence alike. She plots the burning points, saturated/monounsaturated/polyunsaturated fat content and nutritional value of each flavor enhancer chronicled, and the book is peppered with etymological snippets of butter speak through the ages.

Noteworthy recipes include: larded-up Portuguese peas, pumpkin-bacon soup, duck-fat biscuits with cracklings, miso-orange roast pork belly and rhubarb King cake.

“Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes.” Jennifer McLagan. Ten Speed Press, 240 pgs., $32.50

(December 2008)

Tags: Chew on this, recipe central