Early Bird Ranch is a small local chicken ranch in Pescadero. The chickens are raised outdoors in low-density groups, and are fed a pasture-based diet.

The most important part of our operation is the mobility of these pasture shelters. As the chickens grow their waste can become a serious liability. Keeping them in one place becomes too taxing on the land and on the immune system of the animals. In order to keep our chickens healthy and fertilize our farm’s pastures at the same time, the pasture shelters are moved onto completely fresh grass twice every day at sunrise and a couple hours before sunset. This continuous movement away from waste and onto pasture keeps the chickens healthy and maximizes their ingestion of nutritious clover, wild grasses, and bugs, which in turn create a more flavorful and nutritionally-dense product.

Excerpt from: Early Bird Ranch

They’ve recently relocated to a new property and will start selling their fresh chicken starting in early August. Contact them now to pre-order!

Sorry, I think this only works for local folks here in the San Francisco area – but I’d love to hear about your local farms!

Ran across this great short-cut to great food. This time it’s Carolina-style Pulled Pork. Mmmmm. Check it out:

Before tackling a major BBQ project, here’s a much easier way to get really tender, juicy, smoky pulled pork with an old-timey Eastern North Carolina vinegar sauce. The method: rub it, smoke it, braise it and pull it — that’s it. And, if the rubbing & smoking are done the first day, then braising and pulling it the next; not only do the tasks seem more manageable, but, the rub & smoke more fully permeate the meat.

[From Convivial.org: Easy Pulled Pork Sandwich]

I love traditional recipes and all the attention to detail, but I also like finding those easier methods and shortcuts that still produce real food.

If you get around to trying this recipe before I do, let me know how it goes!

Our local CSA is owned by Ned and Ryan, a couple great guys who has been involved in sustainable agriculture for years. This is our third season in their program. For $25 per week, 25-week season pre-paid, you get a box stuffed with farm fresh organic veggies. We pick up ours at their farm in Pescadero, but they also have pick-up locations in Menlo Park, Palo Alto, Kings Mountain, La Honda, and Half Moon Bay. Check their website for details and subscription availability – they are filling up fast!

http://www.bluehousefarm.org/

The quality from any CSA should be excellent. It’s rare to find farm-fresh produce even in the best stores. But what I like best about belonging to a CSA is the surprises. What the heck do you do with fennel root? What are these weird spears… oh, garlic scapes, huh? A lot of experimenting in the kitchen has been driven by these fun new discoveries, and it’s resulted in some great new recipes. Some of these things, like the garlic scapes, I’ve never seen in stores, and others I’ve been walking past for years.

Like with music, when you’re cooking it’s easy to just go straight for what you know. Regular grocery stores make it easy to stick to what you know by never presenting you much different. CSAs, farm stands and ethnic grocers can really help you expand your palette.

Got a favorite CSA? Ethnic market? Farm stand? I’d love to hear about it!

Of course, I highly recommend this book. Pollan’s simple prescription:

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants.

To many of us, this is an elegantly phrased version of what we already believe. The real magic is that Pollan does such a brilliant job of making it all sensible and understandable to people confused by labels and all the marketing claims – which is most of us. We’ll all be healthier if we follow his simple rules, but we’ll also be eating better, tastier meals that we enjoy more.If you haven’t read it yet, then get a copy and start. Consider getting a few copies for friends and family.

“In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” (Michael Pollan)

Cooking (and eating, my wife reminds me) should be a joyful experience! So why not fill the kitchen with the ones who really know about fun! I love the idea, and just found out about Junior Kitchen, a blog about cooking with kids…

http://juniorkitchen.com/

There are some fun recipes and cute photos. Check it out and let me know what you think!

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My wife and I really love cooking and eating fresh local food. But in our busy lives, it’s just not always practical, but we do try to find ways to eat well even when we don’t have a lot of time.

Last night we had a wonderful and very quick and easy dinner. Ravioli is a simple tomato sauce. This little sauce experiment turned out so nice, I thought I’d share it:

• Simmer coarsely chopped garlic & slivered shallots in olive oil
  • I use several cloves and a couple medium shallots
  • don’t brown it… turn that heat down!
• add some sage, oregano, and marjoram
• Add 1 can of diced tomatoes (we like Muir Glenn Organic)
• simmer for 10 minutes,
• add black pepper and herbs to taste and simmer 5 more minutes

If you’re quick with a knife, this is dinner on the table in under 20 minutes. which is about how long it takes to boil the water and cook the ravioli. While the ravioli and sauce is cooking, you can fry up some greens or make a nice green salad.

Our raviolis come (fresh or frozen) from Lucca Deli in San Francisco. We like trying out whatever is made locally by small companies and have had great luck.

If you like your sauce thicker, add a small can of tomato paste.

Yes, brand does make a difference in canned food… but that’s a post for another day.

The Amateur Gourmet is one of my favorite food blogs, and this list of their Best of 2007 is full of great stuff. Don’t miss all the fun in the comments!

[From The Amateur Gourmet - The Best of 2007]

I’ve just started reading “What to Eat”, by Marion Nestle. I’ve seen this book for a while and just sort of skipped by it, expecting that it’s interesting, but mostly a lot of stuff that I already know…

Then I heard Marion Nestle on an NPR show. She was being interviewed with Michael Pollan (of Omnivore’s Dilemma) and they were just brilliant together.

Marion is a nutritionist, and admits that even with her background the research for “What to Eat” was daunting. In this book, Marion takes us on a tour of the american grocery store. As she puts it, “There are precise reasons why the milk is in the back of the store and the center aisles are so long. You are forced to go past thousands of products to get to what you need.”

more later, when I’ve read further…

Most of my food is fresh and flavorful. We live in a part of California that is famous for farmer’s markets and for produce stands on the side of the road. We get fresh fish from the shop on the coast. This year, we might join a Community Supported Agriculture program that will get us a big basket of fresh product every week.

But I’m also very busy, and I just don’t always have time to make my own chicken stock or stew my own fresh tomatoes. So I try things, I experiment and I find products that I really like. I’ll be writIng a lot about this subject – both the “finds” that I make and the frustrations of finding just the right thai curry paste or chocolate sauce.

I hope everyone will chime in with their own favorites, too. And tell me what you think of mine. And ask about something you need…

You’ll find these under the Ingredients category. Related posts about fresh food, health and additives will also turn up under Philosophy.

Around our house, just about everything edible is eaten. We love meat and cheese, fresh bread, fresh vegetables, and salads. We love desert, including vanilla Ice cream with chocolate sauce. We don’t diet, but just try to eat sensibly – and for us that means there are a few things we try to avoid.

What we don’t eat (when possible)

There are only a couple things that we try very hard to avoid. It’s a pretty simple list: diet sweeteners, high fructose corn syrup, and hydrogenated oils. This is not always easy, and we’re not perfectly complete in our avoidance of these ingredients. For one thing, it’s nearly impossible to avoid them. But we try.

High Fructose Corn Syrup

This stuff is in just about everything. It’s almost impossible to avoid completely. It’s even in most of the bread, including “healthy” brands. But we do try. This means we buy Bays English Muffins, not Thomas’s. When we get a coke to go with our burrito, we pay a little extra for the imported mexican Coca-Cola with real cane sugar.

Hydrogenated Oils

This stuff was sold to our parents and grandparents as a healthy alternative to butter and lard. it’s easier to avoid this than the high fructose corn syrup, but you do have to read ingredients to be sure because this, too, turns up in the oddest places.

Diet Sweeteners

We joke that if it tastes like food, but has 0 calories, it ain’t. I have no idea whether these sweeteners have any serious risks, but why bother? If you’re worried about calories, stop drinking the soda! Of course, calorie-counting is a whole other subject…

I’ll write more about these additives in future posts. Often it’ll just creep in as we’re talking about recipes o ingredients, but I’ve also got a Philosophy category just for those what we eat and why topics.

In the mean time, is there something else you avoid?