Mountain Biking: Rubber side down- And Now, Back to Your Local News…Since the weather’s getting better, I’m sure we’re all totally jonesing to get onto the trails, but in general, they’re a mess. It’s a bummer to see nice singletracks get trashed and widened, so like all of you, I’m grinding my teeth in annoyance while I try to be patient. The good news is that you [...] […]
- Downieville, Take ThreeOkay, well, things went pretty haywire in race promotion after the registration debacle. The organizer received so many hateful emails and comments about the mishap that it made him wonder if he should even bother putting the race on. I can’t blame him, really. In his shoes I might do the same thing. It sounds [...] […]
- And Now, Back to Your Local News…
- Edgy Veggie
How to start seeds
Carol O’Meara gives you a shopping list for seedlings that you can get started very soon in your own home. What to buy for starting seeds:
Here’s Carol’s shopping list: Read more
The urban farming challenge — why New York can’t be all that green
There are plenty of reasons why I love urban culture. For one, I can close my eyes and do the same thing that urban planners do — imagine a really wonderfully efficient world in which I live, work and play within about a two- or three-mile radius. In fact, this is mostly accurate in my own life right now, but I’m guilty of things (like occasional travel by air) that negate the heck out of that.
There’s also the idea of urban farming. I love green roofs. I love the perseverance of people doing things like cultivating potatoes on their porches or bees in Brooklyn. I love it.
But I have a hard time when someone goes out of their way to write a whole book and make the claim that the greenest place you can live is a city like New York. Read more
Sunflower Farmers Market to open in old Lafayette Albertsons location
Sunflower Farmers Market will bring their crunchy-feel-good groceries to an additional location soon. The Lafayette City Council approved an incentive package to allow a Sunflower Farmers Market to open in a vacant Albertsons building.
City administrators hope this new addition will be the first of many in the partially abandoned area on South Boulder Road.
A Sunflower Farmers Market is opening in Lafayette. | Camera File Photo
Sunflower Farmers Market, a Boulder-based discount natural grocer, will open in the vacant Albertsons building sometime this year under a deal approved by city officials Tuesday night. Read more
Homely fruit for cheap!
It’s another installment in the “Save Money, Save Planet” series, with second-string fruit. But this is no secret — Boulder’s all over it. At the Boulder County Farmer’s Market, people line up to buy ever leftover not-so-pretty peach on offer. Why? Well, because it’d be a waste not to and because it’s cheap!
Heather Burtness gives a customer a look at a box of seconds peaches at the Morton's Orchards booth at the Boulder County Farmer's Market last Wednesday. Photo by Paul Aiken
Salad and pre-carpentry
Today the biggest part of my salad saga was not the salad I ate — Colorado pears, local greens, blue cheese with a Dijon-white wine vinaigrette. Rather, it was acquiring lumber to make three cold frames in the backyard. My summer procrastination meant that I didn’t get these built in time to plant some greens in July for winter-long eating. The stuff I’ll be putting outside now will mean that I’ll get a few leaves in the fall, but more in the very early spring. Although I like to believe that living in the moment is the best thing — so very intentional and all — I’m already wishing myself into the future to eat those greens. In the meantime, I’ll also be attempting to raise spring mix inside under the flourescent lights I generally use to start seeds of warm weather vegetables. Read more
I have seen the future, and it is salad
I believe in the power of salad.
This week, I had lunch with my sixth-grader at Broomfield Heights Middle School.
As I dished up my own lunch of fresh, local greens, peppers, celery and carrots, middle schoolers were lining up at the salad bar, piling salad in paper bowls and grabbing apples and peaches. The creamy, garlicky dressing I chose was cleverly packaged in a squeeze bottle with a small opening, making it impossible to get ladles full of dressing without spending a couple of precious lunch period minutes squeezing.
My husband and I sat down with our son and three other sixth-grade boys, all of whom had side salads and all of whom were eating them. A glance around the lunchroom revealed that sixth-graders eating salad is now the norm at this Boulder Valley school.
The norm.
Parents, need I say this is something of an earth-shattering development? Those of you who have been donating to Boulder’s new school lunch program and seeing your tax dollars pay for a portion of it, should take some time to appreciate what a big shift it is to have fresh food in a school lunch every day.
Salad is the norm. Read more
Local Colorado hops, local Colorado beer, happy Colorado locals
If you’ve ever had a wet-hop beer, you know why it’s exciting that some of Colorado’s homebrew enthusiasts and microbreweries are experimenting with locally-grown hops.
Hops on a vine | deege@fermentarium.com
Hops are the little flowers/cones/mystery pods that give beer some of its most distinct flavors. They’re typically dried out before the brewing process, so most folks don’t know about the wild and woolly world of wet-hopped beer. The first time I ever had a beer brewed with hops grown by someone whose face I’d seen, it was in Brooklyn, N.Y., at a beer store situated dangerously close to where I lived.
Now it looks like I need to get up to Longmont for some of what Left Hand is cookin’:
Left Hand Brewing in Longmont last week brewed a wet-hopped IPA called Warrior. While the brewery generally make a wet-hopped beer at harvest time, this was the first time it used Colorado hops in its brew. When the hops were ready for harvest, Lefthand employees drove over the Divide to Paonia to fetch a couple of vans full of hops.
Chris Lennert, vice president of operations at Left Hand, says the brewery used about 500 pounds of hops for its five batches with about 25 pounds of hops from its own brewery property in Longmont.
Lennert say he loves the flavor of wet-hopped beer.
“It’s an amazing floral citrus aroma … from the wet hops,” he says. Lennert uses fresh basil vs. dried to compare the difference between fresh and dried hops.
Yow. Who’s driving? Read more about Colorado hops at the Camera.
“Here We Grow” by Boulder filmmaker hits Whole Foods this week
Craig King, left, and his son Elijah King, 12, pick tomatoes for dinner in their garden in North Boulder. ( Mara Auster/Camera )
Craig King has a vision of a better way to eat. The former personal chef from Boulder has made a film, “Here We Grow,” that plows fertile ground with its indictment of America’s industrial food supply. But, refreshingly, he wants to more than just preach to the locavores of the world. He hopes to use proceeds from he movie to put together a pilot project to bring healthy foods to people who can’t get them easily.
“As a chef who’s enthused about nourishing people, I saw there was a huge gap in the underserved community,” King says. “Even if (residents) walked miles, there’s no clean, healthy food.”
See the film at Whole Foods on a demo table on Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday this week in Boulder or buy it from the store.
Read more about “Here We Grow” at the Camera.
Buffalo tacos and lamb skewers: CU vs. CSU locavore tailgating
As you know (or as you will find out at about 4 p.m. Sunday if you live in Boulder), the CU vs. CSU football game is coming right up, which means there’s some tailgating to do. But lay off the Frito-Lay and Natty Ice, because there are tons of good, local food and drink options available to make your tailgating party the most delicious locavore pre-gaming you’ve ever been a part of.
Camera food editor Cindy Sutter serves up some great choices for carnivorous and vegiforous* tailgaters :
Such a local game deserves a local menu. How fortunate for us that the obvious menu choices for Buffalo vs. Ram are two foods that have long Colorado associations, not to mention extreme tailgating well-suitedness: bison (a.k.a. buffalo) and lamb.
If you’re into something a little more decadent, there’s always the bison hot dog, served Mexican style. What’s that, you might ask? It should be wrapped in bacon (Longs Farm, please) and served with cheese, and roasted jalapenos or green chiles. Now that’s a tailgating mouthful.
For those of you who like to stick with the basics, go for a bison burger. Just offer plenty of fixings. Several cheeses, jalapenos, caramelized onions, mushrooms. All local, and all delicious.
You may never party the same way again once you’ve checked out Cindy’s buffalo tacos, lamb skewers and grilled eggplant recipes. And don’t forget to have some local brews — plenty of choices there, too!
*No, this is not a real word.
Tomato troubleshooting — and the NatureSweet Homegrown Tomato challenge
Saturday, Saturday, Saturday!
Hide your children and tighten your chinstraps because in just under a week it’s time for the NatureSweet Homegrown Tomato challenge!
Colorado tomatoes | flickr user StacyK
The event, whose Colorado portion takes place at a King Soopers in Arvada, pits home gardeners against one another to see who grows the best tomatoes (or “love apples” — why? Well, the Internet says “Probably translation of French pomme d’amour from the former belief in the tomato’s aphrodisiacal powers,” but we still think it sounds funny).
And in case you’re not fully confident in the aphrodisiacal powers of your own love apples, might we suggest gardening columnist Carol O’Meara’s tomato-growing tips? Read more
