Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate

Snow cones going artisanal with small batch syrups is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And Marion and I are asked to judge chocolate. Lots of it.

Snow cones are a primal summer pleasure. I remember staring at the spouted bottles of colorful syrup at the snow cone stand as a kid, agonizing over my flavor choice. If the stand allowed you two flavors (or sometimes even three! three!), the decision became exponentially harder.

Now a former Chicago restaurateur is making the decision a lot more interesting. Melissa Yen used to run one of our favorite weekend breakfast haunts, Vella Café. Frustrated by the limited choices in syrups for flavoring coffee for the café, she started experimenting with her own. Out of those caffeine-fueled adventures, Jo Snow Syrups was born. Continue reading “Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate” →

Purple Asparagus: Changing the way kids eat, one classroom at a time

Purple Asparagus, an organization that’s teaching kids to eat in ways that are healthier for the body and the planet, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

The numbers on obesity in America are staggering. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than a third of us are considered not just overweight, but obese. And while obesity rates have doubled for adults from 1980 to 2008, they’ve tripled for children. A frightening 17 percent of children aged 2 to 19 are now classified as obese.

Overweight kids tend to become overweight or obese adults, and that puts them at risk for associated adult health problems, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke and several kinds of cancer. In fact, some overweight and obese children are starting to show signs of cardiovascular problems formerly only seen in adults. Purple Asparagus is one of a number of organizations working to get kids—and communities—eating healthier. Continue reading “Purple Asparagus: Changing the way kids eat, one classroom at a time” →

Small Bites: A farm built by sheep, and craft beers team up with a food truck

The unexpected making of Mint Creek Farm is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And Half Acre Beer Company and Gaztro-Wagon team up for one delicious night.

We’ve been buying lamb (and on occasion, mutton and goat) from Mint Creek Farm for a couple of years now. Mostly, we pick it up at farmers markets here in Chicago and always seem to get into great conversations about the farm with whoever’s working the booth. Still, when I decided to write about their certified organic farm in downstate Illinois for the USA Character Approved Blog, I thought it would be worth checking in with someone at the farm to see what was new. As luck would have it, soon I was on the phone with Harry Carr. He and his wife Gwen started the farm almost 20 years ago, and Harry has a reputation for having a way with a story. Continue reading “Small Bites: A farm built by sheep, and craft beers team up with a food truck” →

Small Bites: Ice cream trucks, Seattle street food moves inside and how to cook like a Momofuku

Three recent posts on USA Network’s Character approved Blog cover a lot of ground—and flavors.

Ice cream trucks loom large in our collective summer memory bank. Who hasn’t urgently pleaded for ice cream money from whichever parent was the softer touch when the siren song of the Mister Softee truck or the Bomb Pop guy caught our ear?

A diminishing number of these old school trucks still prowl the streets of some neighborhoods, but a new breed of ice cream trucks is serving up artisanal ice creams in exotic flavors, made from carefully sourced ingredients. Continue reading “Small Bites: Ice cream trucks, Seattle street food moves inside and how to cook like a Momofuku” →

Brew with a view: Eataly opens a 15th floor rooftop brewery, Birreria

Birreria, Eataly’s new rooftop brewery and brew pub, is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post.

One thing I love about New York is how the city makes use of every square inch of outdoor public space. And how the city’s residents embrace this space. The recently expanded High Line, abandoned elevated railroad tracks turned into a park and immediately (and perhaps obsessively) loved by New Yorkers, is an obvious example. But so too are smaller, quieter spaces. On the Upper West Side, the Broadway Mall Association maintains gardenlike median strips with benches at each cross street. Those benches are almost always populated by people enjoying a morning coffee, a bit of sunshine or just being outside.

So I was a little surprised that it took New York, perhaps the most vertical city in the world, so long to discover its rooftops. Continue reading “Brew with a view: Eataly opens a 15th floor rooftop brewery, Birreria” →

For The Greenhouse Tavern, green isn’t just on the plate, it’s in the building

For chefs and restaurateurs, green continues to be the new black. Organically raised, locally sourced ingredients grace plates, menus and servers’ nightly recitals of specials. Nose-to-tail cooking ensures that little of any humanely raised animal is wasted. When Jonathon Sawyer and his wife Amelia returned to Cleveland to open a restaurant, Sawyer decided to take green a step further. The Greenhouse Tavern is Ohio’s first nationally certified green restaurant.

Sustainable food is one part of green restaurant certification, but only one. Sustainable furnishings and building materials, waste reduction and recycling, water and energy efficiency and pollution reduction all are measured. And all represented big challenges. Continue reading “For The Greenhouse Tavern, green isn’t just on the plate, it’s in the building” →

Small Bites: Women invade the butcher shop and I was a Top Chef: The Tour judge

L.A.’s woman-owned Lindy & Grundy butcher shop is just the latest example of women breaking into this macho field. And yes, I was a guest judge when Top Chef: The Tour breezed through Chicago.

For some time now, butchers have been sharing the food rock star status first bestowed upon chefs and later on farmers. When one of our favorite chefs, Rob Levitt, hung up his toque (which in his case was a Yankees cap) to open his own butcher shop, The Butcher & Larder, the local press proclaimed that Chicago finally had a rock star butcher of its own. (And truth be told, Rob still wears the Yankees cap.)

Increasingly, though, women have been invading this former boys club, turning up in butchery classes and behind the counters of butcher shops from Brooklyn to San Francisco. Amelia Posada and Erika Nakamura have taken the trend a step further, opening their own shop. Continue reading “Small Bites: Women invade the butcher shop and I was a Top Chef: The Tour judge” →

Small bites: Organic farming on a Chicago roof and wild-caught fish from the wilds of Minnesota

The nation’s first certified organic rooftop farm and a sustainable fishing success story are subjects of a pair of recent USA Character Approved Blog posts.

The last two weekends have found us at garden centers. We don’t do a lot of gardening (and by we, I of course mean Marion—I mostly just carry the occasional bag of cow manure), but garden centers are always inspiring. They instill hope for the spring that continues to merely flirt with us. Standing in the checkout line with our half dozen tomato plants and about as many herbs got me thinking about the resurgence of urban farming in the last few years. One of the most exciting places urban farming is happening right now is on the roof of a Chicago restaurant. Continue reading “Small bites: Organic farming on a Chicago roof and wild-caught fish from the wilds of Minnesota” →

Small bites: Professional foragers for the home cook and great food for a good cause

A new USA Character Approved Blog post and women chefs raise money for the Greater Chicago Food Depository at the 15th annual Girl Food Dinner.

We occasionally pick up mushrooms at our local farmers market. Often when we do, we learn that they had been growing somewhere in the woods until earlier that very morning. Welcome to the world of professional foraging. As chefs and restaurants get more locavore and more adventurous, ingredients gathered from forests and meadows are turning up on more and more menus. And a whole new job title is springing up on resumes—professional forager.

Well, not so new for some. Connie Green (pictured above), founder of Wine Forest Wild Foods, started gathering wild chanterelles for leading San Francisco Bay Area restaurants back in 1979. And recently, she’s started offering home cooks access to some of her wild bounty. Continue reading “Small bites: Professional foragers for the home cook and great food for a good cause” →

Small Bites: Passover-inspired ice creams, sustainable dining for Earth Day and a discount for Blue Kitchen readers

Okay, when we think sweets and Passover, we think Marion’s Matzoh Crack. It’s as addictive as the name implies. But Ronnie Fisher and her daughters Meredith Fisher and Isabelle Krishana came up with a pretty inspired idea one June night in 2010 as they sat around the kitchen table eating homemade rugelach straight from the freezer (a charmingly confessional fact divulged on the home page of their website). What if they could take the flavors of the traditional Jewish treats they’d grown up with and turn them into ice cream? Continue reading “Small Bites: Passover-inspired ice creams, sustainable dining for Earth Day and a discount for Blue Kitchen readers” →