We were psyched to find out that our great friend, Dr. Oolong, aka Jeffrey Lorien, was hosting an event as part of Eat Local Week. Dr. Oolong owns Zhi Tea along with his delightful partner, Candice Oneida. We ran a post about Dr. Oolong and his business this past summer. The man is the picture of passion when it comes to all things steeped, and he certainly gave us some fascinating tea insight when he visited us and served up flavors we had no idea existed.

Dr. Oolong and Candice threw a big, fat tea party at their rocking warehouse location on Bolm Road in East Austin. Not interested in being ferociously competitive with Austin’s other tea purveyors, the couple invited those folks to join them. As Candice put it, “We’re all here to raise the profile of tea to everybody.”

Inside the shop, attendees sat on floor cushions and enjoyed traditional Chinese Guzheng music played by a woman and a young boy. Watching and listening to them — especially seeing that little kid jam out on an old school instrument — was totally inspiring.

Meanwhile, outside, the tea was flowing and the tasty snacks were abundant. There were plenty of free samples, which we were not shy about testing out. Jesse Bloom, the chef/owner of Ecstatic Cuisine tempted us to not visit any of the other tables since he was handing out duck comfit with pomegranate syrup, hummus with sundried tomato pesto, mole chicken bites, and these gingerbread tea “sandwiches” topped with a dollop of — well, we’re not sure what it was but we are sure it was excellent. We grazed heavily and unabashedly before tearing ourselves away to check out the other booths.

Other tea and food folks offering up their own goods for our own good included the Formosa Art TeaHouse, Keria Teas, the Tea Embassy, Sesa Teas, Jade Leaves TeaHouse, The Barefoot Cook, SweetLeaf Tea, and the Steeping Room. There were countless gorgeous tea pots and other related tea goods and plenty of tea geeks on hand to enjoy all the offerings.

Dr. Oolong and Candice have decided they are going to be instrumental in transforming Austin into “a world-class tea destination.” They certainly took a nice big step in that direction Saturday.

See the Flickr Set for the Tea Party and our visit to Boggy Creek Farms

And even some of the attempts we do make don’t always pan out so well. For instance, I really wonder about all those reusable bags people are buying. Do they remember to actually bring them back to the store and reuse them? And when they do finally wear out, will they just get tossed out with everything else? Landfills of the future — packed to the gills with environmentally friendly bags!

Sometimes, when we’re lucky, green comes right to our doorstep, making the goal to be planet friendly a little more attainable. Case in point — those new blue recycle-just-about-everything monster rolling trashcans the City of Austin is distributing. I am SO in love with mine. Every time I get to recycle something else and just plop it in, without sorting it or trying to read the tiny number on the bottom of a plastic container, I’m like a little kid heading off to an ice cream party.

Well AlterNet is reporting another new, super-easy-to-access tool you can use to go greener. In Finding the Best, Local Food Near You Just Got Easier, Tara Lohan gives the scoop on the Eat Well Guide. Eat Well is a way you can, without even getting up from your beloved computer, tap directly into local food sources that offer smart, healthy food options that are good for you and the environment. They even provide maps to nearby locations.

I popped over to Eat Well, punched in my zip code (78722) and requested results within ten miles of my home. In seconds, a page came up indicating I had the following choices:

5 Bakers
1 Community Garden
7 Farmers
12 Stores
7 Caterers
8 Farmers’ Markets
2 Personal Chefs
1 Co-op
7 Restaurants

And there were some other options, too, like CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) and educational centers.

To check for accuracy, I drilled down a little. First, I clicked on co-op and, as I suspected, got a link to Wheatsville. One more click and I got a Google Map to the store. (Not necessary since I could find it in the dark, blindfolded, but still, handy for newcomers.)

The dozen stores listed as places to buy locally grown and produced food were all accurate, too, ranging from the PeoplesRx to Whole Foods and Central Market locations and even to the storefront of our beloved Austin Soup-er hero, The Soup Peddler aka David Ansel.

It’s a great site, easy to navigate, with fast, good results. Cool way to get green without having to install a worm farm in your backyard or rig some homemade solar panels because you can’t afford the real deal. And you have to eat, anyway, so might as well take the time to eat right and shop local while you’re at it.

Speaking of which — what are your favorite local green-friedly establishments?

What’s your score?

After our visit, I caught up with Jules, via email, for a little Q&A.

Spike Gillespie: How’d you decide to work with chickens?
Jules Assata: We were looking to raise food in a sustainable fashion, to use the  land in ways that are healthy for the land, for the food being grown and for us. Our land is pretty small, with lots of trees. We wanted to keep most of the trees in place, so we knew we were  limited in the type of plants we could grow with so much shade. Sue works for Coyote Creek Farm and Organic Feed Mill; through her work we became aware of the option to raise chickens. There was locally produced organic feed available for the first time and we believed that our trees would provide a shady, more pleasant environment for chickens. We decided to give it a try.

Spike: You’re doing eggs and broilers, right? Tell me a little about that.
Jules: In November of 2007 we started a practice flock of 25 broiler chicks, or at least we were told they were meat birds. We built a little brooder and a trial pasture pen, figured out watering and feed systems and had a fine time with what ended up being 25 chickens of unknown purpose and 3 rescued pullets that would grow to lay eggs. The chickens were not meaty, yet we were just sure that we had an approach that would work, and gosh, it was fun to watch them grow up and run around and be chickens!

So in February of 2008 we received our first flock of 200 Cornish Cross chicks, which we ensconced in our brand new brooder building, designed to address all the trials we experienced with our first one and which has turned out to work beautifully — score one for the chicks raising chix!

We think our chickens have a great life, as good as we can make it. We found ways to provide a decent humane death as well. After the first flock, we switched to a breed that won’t die in two months from burst hearts, birds that can take their weight on their legs, peck the ground and actually take advantage of the pastures and the life we give them. It feels right the way we raise them and, in truth, the meat tastes amazing!

Spike: Business-wise, is it difficult to be a small producer?
Jules: We would love to keep raising and selling (and eating!) chickens on our farm. However, with the cost of feed, transportation and processing that meets Texas sales requirements, we’re not making enough money; we will have to hike up the price per pound and we have yet to see if folks will buy them.

That brings me to eggs, which seems to offer much more return for investment and may give us enough income to meet my share of the household needs. We’re also exploring growing herbs and diversifying some more, in terms of types of poultry or fowl we raise. We’ve got a practice flock of ducklings known for egg production; we’ll see what happens with them. We’re hoping for a few contracts for eggs, and perhaps meat, so that we can count on the income and not have to sell every single carton or carcass at the farmers’ market (hope that’s not too crass, with the cartons and the carcasses; it’s life and death and work on the farm, where the business of raising the animals has proven to be much more enjoyable than that of selling our ‘wares’).

Spike: How many birds do you currently have?
Jules: 160 broiler chicks almost a month old; 300 layer pullets almost 2  weeks old; 160 broiler chicks almost one week old… and the 16 Khaki Campbell ducklings.

Spike: What’s the plan — when will you start selling?
Jules: We are selling our chickens at the 1832 Bastrop Farmers’ Market on Fridays and Saturdays currently, although we may run out before the next flocks are old enough to process. We’ll start processing again in early November and continue through mid-December. Fresh-frozen chicken is still very good even after six or more months of constant freezing, so we will offer them until our spring  flocks are processed, or we run out, whichever comes first (likely the latter). Our layers will start producing eggs in mid-February and we hope to be lined up with contracts to sell most of them, leaving a few dozen to sell at market and of course, our own to eat. Both Sue and I are lovers of eggs and these are tasty and nutrient dense.

Spike: How are your eggs/chickens different from what I’m buying at the store?
Jules: There’s a good Mother Earth News article about pastured eggs vs. caged, which explains the nutritional difference better than I can, especially at this point in time, when my mind is mush and there’s chicks to feed and let out at dawn.

We start all our birds from babies, brood them ourselves and feed them organic their whole lives so we know what has gone into them, which is feed and pasture grasses and bugs and nothing else. Well, I have used a little Rescue Remedy ointment on sore bottoms now and then, and on a couple small owies along the way. They’re pure and clean, healthy and happy. My daughter told me there was no way I could raise up chickens from babies and then kill and eat them. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to kill and process them myself, but I do know that I am grateful for their lives spent with us, grateful for their sacrifice, and grateful for the incredible meat they give
us… grateful, appreciative and enjoying every last nibble!

Spike: What are some of your big challenges?
Jules: Getting all the work done mostly by myself can be exhausting, so when something goes wrong, like a watering system, the day or even week can be shot and I will be reduced to tears several times. We also wish for a processor closer to home, or better yet, for Texas regulations to acknowledge that every farm doesn’t need a processing facility on it, just as every household doesn’t need a lawn mower. Sure do wish someone was breeding our broilers closer to home as well — we’d like to get as close as possible to the highest standards of humane treatment, as well as healthy, food production. The biggest challenge is selling our produce for enough to sustain us, which requires an educated consumer who understands the value of  food produced in this manner… nutritionally, karmicly, and to sustain our planet into the future.

Spike: Triumphs?
Jules: Still here, still raising happy healthy chickens and still growing in scope and ability. Still having fun and enjoying our farm and our life. Still living and learning and what more can you ask?

Spike: You live in a tiny house — how is that?
Jules: We have our moments of wishing we could stay up… or go to sleep… and the other do her own thing. For the most part, though, our house is small under 300 square feet. We’re tiny by choice and it works for us. I’d do lots of things differently if we did it over again, like have a complete layout plan before building and have the electric and plumbing done before moving in, and use many more recycled materials. But we did the best we could, have learned along the way, and actually like our home.

Now, we’re sure we want coleslaw on the menu, so that’s not the issue. But we have yet to come up with a winning recipe, one we all agree on. And believe me, we’ve tried a lot of possibilities. I’m dreaming of something that’s close to the Salt Lick BBQ’s slaw, which features (if my taste buds serve correctly) toasted sesame seeds. And it’s got a light dressing. Me? I’m in favor of a light slaw, one more on the vinegar side, hold the mayo, thank you very much.

Though Michael is with me in the ix-nay on the ayo-may, not all of my peers agree. Tina likes Nayonaisse, a vegan version of mayonaisse. Spike loves good old-fashioned high fat egg rich mayo. Actually, Spike is pretty sure her mom’s recipe combines pickle juice and mayo and she keeps threatening to make a batch and bring it over. Instead of sesame seeds, she says celery seeds are the way to go. We’ll see about that.

This all gets me thinking about Secret Family Recipes. You hear that and, if you’re not in search-for-recipe mode, it doesn’t mean much. Like, come on — what’s such a big deal that you have to keep it a secret? But get to a place where you really do want to know what’s in something and you can’t find out? Leaves you somewhere between vexed and intrigued.

For now, we’re taking all slaw recipe suggestions, so please send them in. We’re not calling it a contest so don’t plan on winning a Cadillac or pile of cash or anything like that. But if we pick yours, you will be duly credited, perhaps with the slaw being named in your honor, or maybe an impromptu pet parade downtown with all the animals wearing t-shirts with your image emblazoned across the front.

And if you will, let us know why you love your slaw recipe so much — is it more than the taste? Does it remind you of summer visits to Aunt Dot’s back in the day? A particularly notable family reunion? Do tell.

Oh, and two requests:

1. Please make sure your recipe is vegetarian (dairy/mayo okay)
2. And NO KETCHUP!

Thanks.

photo by plakboek

I spent a week in the Pacific Northwest not long ago and had the good fortune of eating at Café Flora, where local food practices are in heavy rotation. Our waitress explained that the restaurant, which has been around since 1991, only recently started making a profit because from its inception they have stuck to their guns re: serving local food. (They were able to stay in business because the owners are independently wealthy and wanted to serve food less as a business endeavor and more as a Buddhist-motivated endeavor.) The café is connected to many local farms, buying up good portions of their harvests, simultaneously supporting the farms and ensuring restaurant clientele that they aren’t just eating good, they’re doing good.

The food was fantastic — I had the Yakima Valley Polenta with Dykstra Farm bing cherries soaked in port sauce with local snap peas and Walla Walla onions. One of my dinner companions had the daily market special: Alm Hill Garden Heirloom tomatoes and Sweet Corn Risotto featuring locally grown rainbow chard, butter turnips and arugula. It was so beautiful I insisted on a pre-eat photo shoot. Inspired and motivated, I bought the café’s cookbook and made one of those vacation vows: from now on I will only use whole foods grown within ten miles of my house, preferably picked from my own garden.

Okay, okay, so that’s unrealistic. But I appreciated the nudge I got from my eating experience, a reminder that, you know, we really can do better, all of us, in choosing foods that are better for us and, in their growth and delivery, better for the planet.

As Bollier says:

I am convinced that local food is going to become a steady, long-term growth market. For its taste, cost and eco-friendliness, local food has already become a symbol of social virtue. People are starting to realize that it is not so good for the planet to haul meat from New Zealand, wheat from South Dakota and fruit from Caifornia. Social demand and sheer economics are starting to buoy local growers, and supermarkets are looking for new ways to call attention to their local produce. The trend lines are clear.

The spending of local money for local produce is surely a virtuous cycle for local economies. It is also likely to promote greater personal connections among people locally, stronger commitments to one’s local community, and a more stable and diverse local economy.

I heartily concur. And I think further proof that a lot of us want to do better lies in the fact that books by Michael Pollan — who tells us all about our food sources, sometimes revealing what we’d rather not hear — are selling like (organic) hotcakes. Barbara Kingsolver also made a splash in her book, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life, detailing how she and her family vowed to spend a year eating only food that either they had grown or that was grown in their community.

There will continue to be challenges moving in the greener direction. In Julie’s post, It’s Not Easy Being Green, she mentioned how it’s hard to deal with lots of little vendors. And it’s also hard, sometimes, getting customers on board with prices that might be a little higher and a menu that changes due to the seasonal nature of what is available. But we’re going to keep pushing in the direction of good, green practices. And I’m going to keep using this as an excuse — you know, research — to hit up awesome restaurants that have been down the path before us.

The video opens with a beautiful montage of the lush forest where the coffee is grown: shots of shiny red coffee beans still on the trees, children of the coop members playing soccer, and roasted beans so visually rich you can practically smell them.

To frame the story, we get a glimpse into the life of Dinia Santamaria. Dinia lives with her father — coop member Edwin Santamaria — and her best friend Silvia, who joined the family when Dinia’s mother died. The girls work on the farm and Dinia is writing a paper for school about the meaning of fair trade coffee and all the benefits associated with it.

Edwin, a resourceful jack-of-all-trades, is farmer, cook and carpenter, making furniture from the coffee wood. The latter is focused on to emphasize the coop’s use of all of the coffee plant to minimize waste and maximize output. For example, waste is composted with the help of worms. And after the beans are peeled, the hulls are used to make paper products including the bags that hold the roasted coffee. As with the farming, the papermaking is done without harmful chemicals.

Dinia learns from the adults in the coop about short term and long-term benefits of organic, sustainable farming. Foregoing agrichemicals can mean a smaller, more expensive crop. But over time, the preservation of the environment is, of course, better for the planters and for the planet. Also, though the market for their organic product is a relatively small piece of the overall coffee pie, organic product demand in general is growing. As long as they can keep the coop going and maintain a steady price, then they can also maintain a realistic hope for security and a stable market in the future.

The benefits for the workers are multiple. Nicaraguan workers travel to Costa Rica to pick the coffee, generating employment for families that desperately need work. The money they earn helps improve their lives not just through providing a means for food, shelter and transportation, but also through scholarships for their children. A future goal for the coop is to have all proceeds directed toward education.

It’s a great little documentary. People talk a lot about wanting to know the source of their food. They voice a desire to feel connected to the folks who produce it. In thirty short minutes, Café Monteverde: Hacia un Comercio Justo offers a tremendous reminder of the importance of fair trade and how, in return for paying a premium, we aren’t just getting an organic, high quality product, we’re actually helping others earn a fair living and survive.

Coffeemaker manufacturer Nespresso, in addition to having an auto-play, vaguely porno soundtrack on their home page, came up with a gimmick for the recent IFA 2008 conference. (There should be a sentence here telling you what IFA is, but for the life of me I can’t find the acronym defined on their site anywhere — if you know, please leave a comment.)

Offering attendees a chance to set complimentary coffee down upon an interactive table, the company demonstrated just how goofy high tech can get. Coffee cups, rigged with bottom pads that could be read by cameras mounted under the table, triggered pop-up info panels that appear right there on the table which doubles as a screen. These revealed facts about the product. But riddle us this — if you haven’t finished the cup of coffee that’s bringing up the data, are you really awake to follow the message?

Update: Mystery solved: IFA stands for the International Franchise Association. Thanks to @axonmetrix via Twitter. (@bookeriv says it’s the Independent Frycooks Army. I’m skeptical.)

Interaction with a Clover!

What the hell is a Clover? It’s an $11,000 coffee machine that allegedly makes the perfect cup, a feat accomplished cup by cup, bean by bean, degree by degree. Bean X, is roasted to level Y, and sent through the machine at temperature Z will make a cup totally different from the same bean, same roast level, sent through at a temperature just a few degrees different. What sounds like a new spin on six degrees of separation, a silly splitting of hairs, is actually big business to some self-appointed coffee aficionados who don’t seem to mind shelling out up to $7 per cup.

We didn’t have much time with the Clover we tried out, and none of us had an experience memorable enough to be, well, memorable.

Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks, had a different experience when he tried his first cup of Clover brew. According to an article in the August issue of Wired by Mathew Honan, Schultz declared it “the best cup of brewed coffee I have ever tasted.” (Such an opening for a joke about how, clearly, he must’ve only been drinking Starbucks prior to the Clover to feel this way.)

So Schultz did what folks like Schultz and Gates and Dell can do when they find a toy they like. He bought the entire company. Yes, that’s right, Coffee Equipment Company, which introduced the Clover in 2006, is already a big sell out. And Clover designer Nander Nosler isn’t making any excuses or apologies for selling out, saying he’s fine with moving on, seeing as he’s a designer first and foremost.

The Wired article is impressive — just the fact Honan, an admitted “coffee achiever,” managed to squeeze four compelling pages out of the topic is something. And it’s pretty wild to learn about Starbucks’ plan — [they are] “willing to share custody…of the 250 machines already out there, plus maintain and repair them, but it won’t sell any more Clovers to independent cafes.” This, not surprisingly, has not set well with Clover’s early adopters.  At least one has sold his machines in protest.

SPOILER ALERT: Honan closes his piece with a stroll into a Starbucks that is equipped with a Clover. He orders a cup. He watches the barista prepare it all wrong. He tastes it and can’t differentiate it from a regular cup. And he concludes: “I finally pick it out: This coffee tastes a little bit like hype.”

Soraiya and Azim have got The Kitchen Space, on Austin’s East side, near 12th Street, a commercial kitchen that small local food businesses can rent by the hour with no long term commitment. Does that sound familiar? I about started clapping my hands when I found out there is a food variation of coworking right under my nose.

Inside of The Kitchen Space, Soraiya runs Luxe Sweets, which will soon supply LaunchPad Coworking with lots of excellent baked goods — we’re even talking about an exclusive LaunchPad Coworking delicacy. We’ll be in good company — Luxe Sweets already supplies lots of local places with scones, muffins, cookies, brownies and loaf breads. So if, say, you’re in a hurry to try out their stuff before we open, you can pop into one of the following: Halcyon, the Triannon in West Lake, Little City, Hot Mama’s, Café Mundi, or Jo’s Coffee.

Soraiya is only 28, but she’s been in the business for a couple of years after partaking in a local Cordon Bleu Program that is part of the Texas Culinary Academy. And she’s actually known, since she was very little, that the sweet life is one she would pursue.

“My mom tells the story of how we went to France when I was 8 or 9. I came home from the pastry shops and said, ‘Mom, that’s what I want to do with my life.’”

But before pursuing fulltime kitchen chemistry, Soraiya went a different route for a little while. She procured a degree in chemical engineering, which — no kidding — landed her a gig at a bowling ball manufacturer in San Antonio. After three years of that, she was ready to resume the path to fulfill her childhood dream.

Her first clue that things were going to work out, even before she officially opened her business, came one holiday season when her friends beseeched her to make this or that specialty. “I tried to just give it to them, but they wanted ten of each, and they wanted to pay.”

Even when the business opened, it went through numerous iterations, starting out with a focus on customized gift baskets and leading up to the current commercial kitchen/sweets business combo. Still, Soraiya isn’t ready to settle in totally. Ultimately, she hopes to have a classic French café, and she calls Luxe the precursor to that. (I encouraged her to please open that space in my neighborhood.)

During my visit, I took a tour of the place. Cooks from a local company — typically a dozen or so regular food businesses rent space weekly — were in the big kitchen, preparing savory entrees, which Soraiya loves smelling since she gets a little tired of inhaling sweets all the time.

There’s a smaller prep kitchen, too, and a bakers’ kitchen. Clients also have access to a small business office and are allowed to store cold and
dry ingredients so they don’t have to lug in all their supplies each time they use the space.

Things are working out well. Besides the steady renters, Soraiya has reached the point of production where she’s hired others to help her with some of the baking. This means no more midnight shifts — something she once did regularly in addition to keeping day hours. She’s still at The Kitchen Space more hours than she can count but now she can go home at night and dream of her future café.