Our March Newsletter and New & Improved Recipe Section!

Welcome to the March newsletter from Sustainable Table and The Meatrix.

This issue is stuffed with recipes and cooking ideas, an important focus in our current economy and an excellent way to increase your sustainable food intake! We are featuring a delicious recipe from the new cookbook, Vegan Soul Kitchen, and two articles to inspire your cooking process and “beef” up your kitchen larder. If you have ideas or questions about this issue of our newsletter or upcoming issues, please contact us at bob@sustainabletable.org. Read on!

1. Our New and Improved Recipe Section!
2. Vegan Soul Kitchen – a New Cookbook from Bryant Terry
3. Recipe of the Month – Uncle Don’s Double Mustard Greens & Roasted Yam Soup
4. A Cook’s Larder – by our Guest Blogger, Marjorie Taylor
5. God Bless the Cook: Remembering the Pleasure of Cooking – from Civil Eats
6. Join a CSA Now
7. Time to Plan a Garden or Find a Garden – Hyperlocavore.com
8. Eat Well Everywhere Spring Break 09 Challenge
9. Join Sustainable Table on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter
10. Share Sustainable Table with your Friends
11. More Ways to Stay in Touch with Sustainable Table and The Meatrix!

Our New and Improved Recipe Section!
We are so excited about our new, easy-to-use recipe section. It is searchable, categorized, specialized, and full of great sustainable recipes for you to use. Every month we will highlight a “Recipe of the Month” featuring delicious sustainable ingredients. Check it out now and if you feel like sharing, please send us recipes for your favorite sustainable dishes!

Vegan Soul Kitchen – a New Cookbook from Bryant Terry
We just received a copy of this inspiring new cookbook – it’s healthy, tasty, and full of interesting stories and music. Here is a little about the book:

Vegan Soul Kitchen recipes use fresh, whole, best-quality, healthy ingredients and cooking techniques with an eye on local, seasonal, sustainably grown food. Reinterpreting popular dishes from African and Caribbean countries as well as his favorite childhood dishes, Terry reinvents African American and Southern cuisine-capitalizing on the complex flavors of the tradition, without the animal products.

About Bryant:
Bryant Terry is an Oakland-based eco chef, Food and Society Policy Fellow, and author of Vegan Soul Kitchen: Fresh, Healthy, and Creative African American Cuisine (Da Capo/Perseus). His work has been featured in Gourmet, Food and Wine, The San Francisco Chronicle, Domino, and many other publications. Called “ingenious” by The New York Times Magazine, Bryant’s first book, Grub: Ideas for an Urban Organic Kitchen (Tarcher/Penguin), is a winner of a 2007 Nautilus Book Award.

Recipe of the Month – Uncle Don’s Double Mustard Greens & Roasted Yam Soup – From Vegan Soul Kitchen
Soundtrack suggestion from Bryant Terry: “I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Ann Peebles from Brand New Classics

Every time I sit down for a meal I express gratitude for all the forces that helped bring the food to my plate: the natural elements, farmers, farmhands, transporters, chefs, kitchen assistants, and servers in many cases. Because I want to encourage others to do so as well, I asked my Uncle Don Bryant (my first name is my mother’s maiden name) if he would compose an original prayer-song to contribute. As you saw at the beginning of the book, he said yes!

Uncle Don was a well-known songwriter-singer in the 1970s. He was the staff songwriter at Hi Records, and he penned a slew of hits for that label’s artists (i.e., Al Green, Willie Mitchell, and Ann Peebles). His most celebrated songs were written for his wife, Ann Peebles. You know that song “I Can’t Stand the Rain”-which was covered by over 30 artists (including Cassandra Wilson, Michael Bolton, Tina Turner) and sampled by Missy Elliot for her first big hit? Well Uncle Don wrote it.

To show my gratitude, I created this soup in his honor.

1 large garnet yam (about 1 pound) peeled and cut into 1/2-inch chunks
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
Coarse sea salt
4 cups Simple Stock (from VSK)
1 large bunch mustard greens (about 1 pound), tough stems removed, chopped into bite-size piece, washed, and drained
1 teaspoon mustard seeds
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons apple cider vinegar
White pepper

• Preheat the oven to 425°F.
• In a large bowl, toss the yams with 1 tablespoon of the oil and 1/4 teaspoon of the salt. Transfer the yams to a parchment-lined baking dish and roast for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes, until they are starting to crisp on the edges.
• While the yams are roasting, bring the vegetable stock to a boil in a medium saucepan over high heat. Add the mustard greens and cook, uncovered for 4 to 6 minutes, until softened and the sulfur has been released from them. Remove the greens from the heat, drain the stock into a bowl, and set it aside.
• Over medium heat in the saucepan just used, warm 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Add the mustard seeds and cook, stirring occasionally, until they start to pop, 2-3 minutes. Next add the garlic and sauté until fragrant, about 1 1/2 minute. Then add the greens and 1/4 teaspoon salt. Sauté the greens, stirring occasionally, until most of the liquid has evaporated, about 3 minutes. Add the vegetable stock back to the saucepan and set aside.
• When the yams are done, transfer them to the saucepan. Bring to a boil, then lower the heat to medium and simmer for about 25 minutes, until the yams are fork tender. Add the apple cider vinegar and white pepper and additional salt to taste.

A Cook’s Larder – by our Guest Blogger, Marjorie Taylor
Marjorie Taylor is the proprietor of The Cook’s Atelier. She cooks and writes about food from her tiny home in Burgundy, France. You can see more of her writing on her blog, www.thecooksatelier.com.

What is a larder? A place where cooks go to find the staple ingredients for a meal, such as last season’s preserved items from the garden, dried beans, lentils, rice, assorted pastas, garlands of dried aromatics, and staples such as extra-virgin olive oil, vinegars, salts and baking supplies. In addition to my dry storage, I always keep a supply of homemade chicken stock and real butter in the freezer and a large hunk of Parmesan in the refrigerator.

A larder doesn’t have to be a separate room, as long as the area you choose is a relatively cool, dry place, that’s all you need. Simple solutions could include a vintage armoire that you find at a flea market, an extra closet or designated spot in your basement. The idea really is to keep staples on hand that allow you to prepare a meal without the need to run to the grocery store every time you cook. If you stock your larder with the basic staples that your family enjoys, you can easily prepare a meal using the ingredients from your larder along with the fresh, seasonal ingredients from your local farmers’ market or garden.

Read her full post on our blog.

God Bless the Cook: Remembering the Pleasure of Cooking – By Andrea King Collier
I had been feeling a certain sense of resentment that I had become a utilitarian cook. After 30 years of preparing meals for my family almost every day, I was feeling a bit like a short order meal machine. The people in my house had no idea how close they were to total anarchy, every time they asked “what are we eating.” What used to be a total joy and an artistic release for me, had become a chore, like cleaning grout or waxing floors. I was experiencing a cooking meltdown that would bring me to tears many days. Then one day I saw a plaque at a gift shop that said simply, “love to cook; cook to love.”

I bought it. It reminded me, like God was whispering in my ear, that my love of pulling together ingredients was a gift, and a legacy. Gifts should never be taken lightly. It made me smile instantly.

Read the whole article here.

This article comes from Civil Eats blog. Civil Eats promotes critical thought about sustainable agriculture and food systems as part of building economically and socially just communities.

Join a CSA Now
What is a CSA? Community Supported Agriculture, and now is the time to get in. CSA provides a direct link between local farmers and you. When you become a member, you purchase a share of a farmer’s crop before it’s planted. This allows the farmer to pay for seed, water, equipment, etc, upfront, so s/he is less reliant on banks and loans. Each week, usually from June through October, the farmer delivers great tasting, healthy food to pre-determined spots. Look for a CSA near you (www.eatwellguide.org or www.localharvest.org) and try to sign up soon. There are limited shares and they go quickly!

Time to Plan a Garden or Find a Garden – Hyperlocavore.com
Spring is almost here and it’s time to plan your garden. While some of us have the perfect spot for a garden in a back or front yard, others of us look longingly to the yards of our neighbors. But now is the time to change that. Log on to Hyperlocavore to find out about “yardsharing!”

Yardsharing is a way to connect people who love to garden, people who love healthy fresh food and people who have yards! Often people who have yards have little time for a vegetable garden. And sometimes gardeners have trouble finding soil to garden in! Yardshares are a win for everyone. They allow you to grow food as locally as possible (which would explain the term, Hyperlocavore). The group can be friends, family or neighbors (or any combination!).

Eat Well Everywhere Spring Break 09 Challenge

The Eat Well Guide is challenging you to find good food on the road, wherever your travels take you this spring break! We’re offering PRIZES to spring breakers who plan the most creative, local food oriented trips. First place gets your group a $100 gift certificate to the Eat Well Guide location of your choice!

As you’re plotting your adventure – be it road tripping, beach bumming or backpacking – use our handy, FREE, Eat Well Everywhere (EWE) mapping tool. With EWE, you can map out your trip and find over 15,000 listings of farms, markets, restaurants and other places offering locally grown, sustainably produced foods throughout the US and Canada. Then create a customized downloadable travel guide of the places you’ve found, complete with directions and a seasonal food guide to the region. For more information or to take on the Challenge, visit www.eatwellguide.org, or join our facebook event, “Eat Well Everywhere: Spring Break ‘09 Contest”.

Join Sustainable Table on Facebook, Myspace and Twitter
We are spreading the news about sustainable food and you can join us on Facebook, Myspace (Moopheus and Sustainable Table, and Twitter. Write on our wall, share your events, reply to our tweets! Maybe one of your comments will make it into our Daily Table blog!

Share Sustainable Table with your Friends
Help us get the word out about sustainable food and what we’re doing here at Sustainable Table and The Meatrix. Please forward 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.

More Ways to Stay in Touch with Sustainable Table and The Meatrix!

1. Keep up-to-date on our blog, The Daily Table!
2. Ask questions and share your ideas on our forum, The Parlour
3. Listen to our podcasts on Gabcast
4. 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!