ST December and Holiday Newsletter!

Welcome to the December newsletter from Sustainable Table & The Meatrix!

Please, please comment below, we would love some feedback and/or ideas for future newsletters. Happy MOO Year!

Check out these exciting holiday features:

• Send The Meatrix Animated Holiday E-card to your Friends
• Holiday Feature Article – Eggnog
• Recipe of the Month – Sticky Toffee Pudding
• Coming Soon – Sustainable Table Presentation Kits
• Sustainable Table Podcasts
• Become a Sustainable Table Facebook Fan!
• Send Sustainability to Friends
• Stay in Touch with Sustainable Table

The Meatrix Animated Holiday E-card

Did you forget to send out holiday cards? Have you been too busy? Moopheus comes to the rescue with this entertaining and educational online holiday card. Type in your family and friends’ email addresses and with one click send a “Happy Moo Year” greeting their way. You can also download and print the card for a more traditional approach.

Feature Article – EggNog

Ever wondered what eggnog is? Where did it come from? Why do we only drink it during the holidays? Can it be local and sustainable? Read on to find out.

From our feature article this month:

Of the many foods associated with the holidays, few are as tied to the season as eggnog. Other traditional staples like lamb, turkey, goose, and ham are eaten year-round or at least they can be. Granted, one can always make homemade eggnog in July, but for the most part, eggnog is rarely produced commercially outside of the final two months of the year. The thick, milky beverage materializes around mid-November, hangs around until New Years, and then ducks away as quickly as it came, not to be whipped up and sprinkled with nutmeg again for at least another ten months.

Eggnog belongs to the winter, or at least its onset. Rich and heavy with froth, foam, cream, and – depending on the recipe – spirits, the beverage is a soft insulator against the cold. Appropriately enough, it seems that eggnog’s ancestors were concocted to serve that very purpose and so offset the arrival of winter and its attendant weather-related infirmities.

Read the rest of the eggnog story in our featured article section on the Sustainable Table website.

Recipe of the Month – Sticky Toffee Pudding from Kurt Michael Friese’s “A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland”

Kurt Friese’s expedition explores and explains the Slow Food movement throughout the American Midwest. If you haven’t heard of the Slow Food movement, this book will be an eye-opener for you. If you are aware of Slow Food you will be amazed and pleased to learn of the remarkable food diversity that this region of the country offers. The book can be purchased nationwide at independent booksellers, as well as at larger stores and many food co-ops. Find additional information about the book at www.icecubepress.com.

This Sticky Toffee Pudding recipe is from the Schlafly Bottleworks and Taproom in St. Louis, where you can order this dessert. Besides brewing seasonal beer and six staples, they focus their menus on locally raised ingredients whenever they can. They even turned half of their parking lot into an organic community garden – how cool!

For the Pudding:
1 pound pitted dates, chopped fine
2 cups hot water
2 teaspoons baking soda
5 ounces butter, unsalted
1 pound sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
5 large eggs
1 pound white, unbleached flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 pinch salt

For the Caramel:
1 pound dark brown sugar
1 pound butter
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup heavy cream

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease 19″ x 13″ pan (or equivalent) with butter and coat lightly with flour, shake out excess flour. In conventional restaurant parlance, a stainless steel baking pan this size is referred to as a “hotel pan,” and is usually 2 inches deep unless otherwise noted. If you scale the recipe in half, obviously use a smaller pan. Combine dates with hot water in a 3-quart saucepan and bring to a boil. Remove the pan from heat and add the baking soda. Set aside to cool.

In a mixing bowl cream butter, sugar and vanilla on high speed for 3 minutes. With mixer on low speed, add eggs one at a time until fully incorporated. Add flour, baking powder, salt. When fully mixed fold in the dates and their liquid. Place batter into greased pan and bake in preheated oven until a skewer inserted comes out clean (30-45 minutes). Cool on a baking rack before removing from the pan.

For the Caramel:
Stir together first three ingredients on low heat until blended and brown sugar has melted. Whisk heavy cream into the mixture.

To Serve:
Spoon warm caramel sauce over one serving portion of Sticky Toffee Pudding. Top with a dollop of freshly whipped cream and a mint sprig, if you like.

Coming Soon: Sustainable Table Presentation Kits

We have been working hard to bring you an exciting new feature on the Sustainable Table website – Presentation Kits. These kits will make it easy for you to educate others about sustainable food and factory farming. You will be able to download speeches, handouts, and presentation materials to share at your next PTA meeting, church group or community gathering. Teachers and students will find these materials very helpful for a last minute lecture or as tool for a semester long class on sustainability. Please check back to the site; we plan on releasing the first version in the next few months. If you have any suggestions for these kits, please contact Dawn Brighid at dawn (at) sustainabletable.org.

Sustainable Table Podcasts

Check out our podcasts on Gabcast or iTunes (search “sustainable table”)! We have been reading posts from our blog, The Daily Table. The most recent episode is written by Dawn Brighid and read by our very own Patrick Chang of Sustainable Table – “Pesticides linked to Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.”

Become our Fan on Facebook and Share Sustainable Table with your Friends

We are spreading the news about sustainable food and you can join us on Facebook! Write on our wall to let us know what sustainable efforts you are making or to tell others about sustainable events in your area. Maybe one of your comments will make it into our Daily Table blog!

Send Sustainability to Friends!

Help us spread the word about sustainable food and what we’re doing here at Sustainable Table and The Meatrix. Please pass this newsletter to your friends and encourage them to get involved on our site. The only way we’re going to save family farms and be able to provide local, sustainable food for everyone is if we all join in and work together.

Stay in Touch with Sustainable Table and The Meatrix!

Keep up-to-date on our blog, The Daily Table!
Ask questions in our forum, The Parlour
Listen to our podcasts on Gabcast
MySpace – Moopheus and Sustainable Table
Sustainable Table fan page on Facebook
See great sustainable food and farming pictures on our Flickr account!

We’ll be back next month with even more information on sustainable food and what we’ve been doing.

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Thanks for supporting us and for helping to save small family farms!