Thursday, June 3, 2010

City Dirt: Adventures in Urban Gardening

I forget how I got turned onto the City Dirt email newsletter ("The Bay Area Weekly Garden Newsletter for Foodies, Foragers, Tree-Huggers and Beauty Lovers"), but however it happened I'm glad we did. Every week's newsletter includes interesting looks at different aspects of sustainable food, such as pieces on a local chef foraging for mushrooms, an edible gardens landscaping business, a book by a local urban homesteader in Oakland (Farm City), and an upcoming class on Sat, 6/12 in SF on how to grow your own shiitake mushroom log at home (I wish we could go!).

Maria Finn maintains the City Dirt website and has written her own book, a little piece of earth: how to grow your own food in small spaces. So inspiring to read about all the cool stuff that people are doing around sustainable food.

Finding Sustainable Food While Traveling

I was pleasantly surprised to find a touch of sustainable food on our recent visit to Las Vegas of all places. We visited 2 restaurants in particular, Enoteca San Marco (Mario Batali owned restaurant in the Venetian) and Bradley Ogden in Caesar's (who also owns Parcel 104 in Santa Clara), that highlighted sustainable, locally grown food on their menus. Since we're just visitors, we will likely never have the opportunity to know the farmers or visit the local farms where these restaurants get their food. But just to read their names on the menu, know that they were supplying some of the food that I was eating, and that the restaurants were making an effort to make that connection for me was satisfying enough.

Although there is definitely a PR grab that factors into this, reading the various articles (here and here) about Mario Batali raising the profile of a farmers' markets and local farms in Las Vegas is still interesting nonetheless.