The Red, White, and Green

When your Meatless Monday meals start to get a bit predictable, there’s no better place to spark kitchen creativity than your local farmers market. Of course, with nearly 100 certified farmers markets in Los Angeles County every week, I’m never short on inspiration. Check out the Meatless Monday lunch I put together during a recent trip to the grandaddy of all farmers markets, the Hollywood Farmers Market (there’s nothing you can’t find there: heirloom green zebra tomatoes, organic quail eggs, raw milk butter from grass-fed cows, fresh-shucked oysters — yum!).

[Watch video on Vimeo]

Farmers Market Frisée Salad

Serves 2

One small head frisée lettuce, washed and torn into large pieces
2 eggs
½ tablespoon butter
¼ cup candied walnuts
¼ cup goat cheese, crumbled
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar
kosher salt and fresh ground black pepper, to taste

Place frisée in a large bowl. In a small bowl, whisk together olive oil, vinegar, salt, and pepper until dressing is emulsified. Toss lettuce gently with dressing and divide between two plates. Sprinkle equal amounts of goat cheese and candied walnuts onto each salad.

In the meantime, heat butter in skillet over medium-high heat. When pan is hot, crack both eggs in pan and fry until yolk is just firm but not hard. Place one egg on the center of each salad and serve immediately.

Enjoy!

–Jennifer Grayson

Do this now: For more recipe ideas, check out this Monday’s menu on the Meatless Monday website.

More Meatless Monday posts:
5 tips for sticking with Meatless Mondays
Take the Meatless Monday New Year’s pledge!

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I’m often asked by people who want to go green but don’t know where to start what I think is the most important and effective change a person can make. Should I buy a Prius? Eat only organic? Get solar panels for my home? All of those choices are fabulous if you have the resources to make them, but I truly believe that joining the Meatless Monday movement is No. 1. Why? Because it’s a small, subtle change that is eminently doable. And isn’t doable what you want for your New Year’s resolution?

[Watch video on Vimeo]

I took the Meatless Monday pledge in May, and even though the week-to-week change has been barely noticeable, it’s seriously opened my eyes to how profoundly our food choices impact the world around us (even for me, a longtime environmentalist). As Michael Pollan says, eating is a political act.

–Jennifer Grayson

Do this now: What else? Make Meatless Monday your New Year’s resolution. Happy New Year!

More Meatless Monday posts:
Meatless Monday: Your holiday reading list

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[Watch video on Vimeo]

Wolfgang Puck and Ferrari drivers, take note: The Los Angeles you know and love is changing.

A serious foodie culture (I’m talking Kogi, not Kobe) has exploded in the five years since I moved to LA. I credit the LA Weekly’s Pulitzer Prize-winning food columnist Jonathan Gold, the proliferation of food blogs, and a diversely ethnic population’s scrumptious cooking that the city’s gringos are finally beginning to notice, thanks in part to the former two. A serious biking culture has also sprung up, owing to the expanding green movement and a dismal economy forcing people to reconsider the bicycle as a method of everyday transportation. So what do you get when you combine these two emerging counter-cultures?

Pure marketing genius, says Josef Bray-Ali, co-owner of the Flying Pigeon bike shop in the Highland Park district of LA. Last year, he and his brother Adam started hosting group bike rides to various Chinese dumpling houses in the area as a way to showcase the shop’s Chinese (and Dutch) commuter bikes. The Get Some Dim Sum ride, as it’s now called, has since taken off like fried rice cakes — as many as 50 people now show up for the gastronomical excursions, which take place on the third Sunday of every month.

Josef is quick to point out that the rides are more than a marketing ploy, however. He’s passionate about sustainability, and envisions commuter biking as a serious component of LA’s green future. “If [the city of LA] were to just focus on our streets, and move a greater percentage of people by rail and by bike — not by mandate, but because they want to, because it’s a comfortable, fun, nice thing to do, because the street is oriented for it — we could massively reduce the needs we have for all kinds of resources,” he says.

Comfortable and fun it is. The brothers were kind enough to let me test out one of their cruisers when I joined them on the dim sum ride, and I’ve got to say, this model was a welcome improvement over the converted mountain bike I use for errands around town. It’s sturdy, you can sit upright (no hunching over the handlebars with these), and the seat is cushy — heck, you could even wear a dress on one of these! I also managed to work up quite an appetite on the 10-mile ride, despite the leisurely pace.

Want to join Flying Pigeon on the next Get Some Dim Sum ride? All you need is a helmet, a bike (or call a few days in advance to reserve a rental for $10), and $15 per person to pay for the food. All ages and athletic abilities are welcome.

–Jennifer Grayson

Do this now: Biking is great for the planet, not so great for you if you get hit by a car. Click here to learn how to ride safely and defensively.

Related post:
Eco-friendly road-trip: Just Follow Nathan

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Since reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about where our food comes from, and this has led me to now question nearly every food purchase I make, from produce to eggs. It’s no longer enough for me to buy organic; as anyone who’s ever seen Chilean-grown organic asparagus at Whole Foods in the dead of winter can attest, sometimes organic food comes with as high a carbon footprint as its conventional cousin. Bottom line: If you want to lessen your environmental impact and eat the freshest — and thereby most nutritious — fare, buy local.

But how to do this in an urban area like Los Angeles? Sure, we’re blessed with year-round farmers markets in every corner of the county, but a lot of Angelenos are wondering why we’re not growing more produce and raising food-producing animals ourselves. Unlike inhabitants of other more densely populated metropolises, we’ve got the land right here in our own neighborhoods — and near perfect weather, year round — to grow and raise much of the food we could ever need. Yet somehow, we’re content to keep wasting precious water supplies on these useless patches of green lawns and spend our hard-earned dollars at the grocery store.

Thanks to the Obamas, who planted the first edible garden at the White House since FDR, there’s been a lot of media coverage about the resurgence of the victory garden. But as the newly-formed Los Angeles Urban Chicken Enthusiasts and its 137 (and growing) members will assert, local and sustainable agriculture doesn’t have to be just about growing fruits and vegetables.

Thanks to Lora Hall and the other LA Urban Chicken Enthusiasts for welcoming me to their meeting.

–Jennifer Grayson

Do this now: Want to learn more about starting your own backyard coop? Check out My Pet Chicken.

Related posts:
CSA concerns?
Portland’s Urban Farm Store: One-stop shopping for backyard chickens

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Yesterday, I met with Josh Tickell and Rebecca Harrell of The Veggie Van Organization as they raced to get ready for their nationwide tour to promote their film Fuel (which, by the way, won the Best Documentary Audience Award at Sundance 2008 — this film is going to be huge). While I was there, they gave me and The Huffington Post a first glimpse of the Algaeus, the world’s first algae-fueled, 150 mpg, plug-in hybrid electric vehicle.

There’s been a lot of buzz about algae fuel, which is actually a synthetic gasoline (albeit one that’s completely biodegradable — even drinkable!), not biodiesel, as Harrell relayed yesterday. Stay tuned for an in-depth look at this fuel of the future.

Click here for the full story on today’s HuffPost.

–Jennifer Grayson

Do this now: One of the goal’s of The Veggie Van Organization is to make available a free 35-minute educational cut of the film to every classroom in America. Visit the website to make a donation.

Related posts:
Uh-oh: BP discovers deep-water oil
USGS reveals top ‘dead zone’ polluting watersheds
New corn ethanol study: No land-use impact doesn’t mean no impact

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Santa Clara University’s entry to the US Department of Energy’s 2009 Solar Decathlon competition has been two years in the making, and tomorrow at long last, Refract House will be revealed to the public. The showcase will be brief, however; the team will have to disassemble the 800-square-foot solar-powered home in its entirety before transporting it across the country to the October competition in Washington, DC. (Not very eco-friendly, we know, but it’s for the greater green good.)

Those who tuned in last week know that I took a trip up to the university to watch Team California in action, where construction leader Dan Ruffoni was kind enough to give me a tour.

Check out the Refract House website in the next couple days for photos of the finished product. Best of luck, Team California!

–Jennifer Grayson

Related post:
Refract House: Student-built, sun-powered

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When I read “La Vida Loba” in the April issue of Elle magazine — writer Sara Corbett’s personal narrative about her trek to a remote area of New Mexico to visit the home of her friend Loba, who had long since abandoned modern civilization to live a more primal existence — the part of the article that stuck with me the most was the description of the food that Loba prepared during the visit.

And then we ate. We ate the stuffed grape leaves. We ate steaming bowls of lentil soup and a thick slice of rye bread she’d made on the skillet. We had warm cups of brewed dandelion root topped off with capfuls of Kahlúa. Every once in a while I would blurt out some bit of small talk and Loba would silence it with one uttered word—“Yum!”—meant, I realized finally, to redirect us all to the simple, undistracted pleasure of tasting our food.

It’s always been a dream of mine to be able to grow my own food and savor it as simply and wonderfully as described above. Maybe it’s a reaction to the urban existence of my entire adult life (Philadelphia, Boston, New York City, and now Los Angeles) that has found me with nary a square of green land to call my own, but I became determined to grow something edible.

With no porch or patio in our current apartment, and a lone sunny spot in our kitchen, I decided to make use of a beautiful copper planter I had found and grow an organic indoor herb garden. It’s not a crop of vegetables, but it’s a start. And at $1.99 for each seedling I purchased from the nursery, it’s a heck of a lot more economical than spending $2.99 at Whole Foods for organic basil every time I want to make tomatoes and mozzarella.

–Jennifer Grayson

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Here in Southern California, we’re blessed with sunny, mild weather and close proximity to the farms that produce more than half of the nation’s fruits and vegetables — hence the more than 500 certified farmers markets in California, many of which are open year-round. Taking a trip to your local farmers market is the best way to shop for the freshest produce, but all those stands can sometimes seem overwhelming. How do you know which fruits and veggies are really organic? How do you get the best bang for your buck? And what do you actually do with all those sprouts?

Take a trip with us to the West Hollywood Monday Farmers Market as we talk to some vendors (and actual farmers), taste some delicious samples, and share our shopping tips with you.

Many thanks to our vblog director Jane Steinberg.

–Jennifer Grayson

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If the last presidential election taught us anything, it’s that change at the grassroots level is a powerful force. In that spirit, RWG is launching a new video blog series, The Red, White, and Green Scene, where we’ll reach out to our community — local folks, organizations, and businesses — to see how they’re going green. First stop, Los Angeles; next stop, Planet Earth!

Many thanks to the lovely and talented Jane Steinberg for directing our vblog premiere.

–Jennifer Grayson

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