If you’ve made your way here from today’s New York Times piece A Vibrant Culture of Food Blogging, I want to say welcome and thank you for checking out South Jersey Locavore. Stay a while. Read a few posts. If you like what you see, say hello in the comments and please add the site to your RSS feeder and follow me on Twitter. Just look to the top right of the page under Get Free Updates, and you’ll find easy links to both.
The Sixth Annual Brewers Plate to benefit Fair Food is March 14th at Penn Museum. The event will feature food and beer from local, independent restaurants and breweries.- Did you know there was Jersey Grown certified birdseed? Philly.com reports that the Nature Center in Cape May is now selling local sunflower seeds.
- I don’t know if I can go a week without mentioning Chef Mark Smith and one of his restaurants. His Tortilla Press Cantina in Pennsauken has made a commitment to eco-friendly and local wines and beers. You can read all about it, including a special tasting night on March 11, on the latest What’s Up at The Tortilla Press post.
This Friday night’s “What’s for Dinner” at the Auburn Road Vineyard and Winery is sold out, but the menus for the rest of the month look delicious. This is one place that I’ve been wanting to check out for a while now, and I’m making a commitment right now to get there before the first day of summer this year. Dinner is provided by a local chef or caterer, there’s live music, and it’s only $17.50. Beverages are additional. My favorites are their White Bottle and their Classico.- If you’re watching the Oscars this weekend (I’m such a gown critic!) make sure to root for Food, Inc. for best documentary. If it wins, that means that many more people, not just sustainable food advocates, will be seeing it. If you’re unsure what it’s all about, we covered it thoroughly on MNN.
- Slow Food of Northern NJ will be holding a St. Patrick’s Day Chocolate Event – Join us to taste delicious hand-made chocolates prepared on an Irish theme by Diane Pinder of Donna Toscana, who has earned a reputation as the artisan chocolatier of New Jersey. Be prepared to be amazed! and Diane will bring along a few other delicious surprises for St Patrick’s Day.
The Irish-themed chocolates will be preceded by a selection of local cheeses & breads and quiches from Terra Tea Salon & Fair Trade Market. This is a little far for me to travel, but for those that are further up north, I wanted to let you know about it. - Speaking of St. Patrick’s Day, Irish cookbook author Donal Skehan suggested a real Irish feast for my readers on MNN –Irish stew, brown bread and colcannon. Check it out.
That’s it for this week. It’s going to be sunny and 50 degrees this weekend. Get outside and start planning your garden!
I’m not trying to push you away from this blog, but I give you permission to branch out a bit and check out some other locavore blogs that are out there. I’ve tried to find other locavore blogs/websites from New Jersey, and I haven’t found any that are up to date. But all across the country, locavores are writing about their local foods. I thought I’d point you to a few good sites today.
La Vida Locavore – La Vida Locavore is the blog for anyone whose crazy life includes planting, growing, weeding, fertilizing, raising, picking, harvesting, processing, cooking, baking, making, serving, buying, selling, distributing, transporting, composting, organizing around, lobbying about, writing about, thinking about, talking about, playing with, and eating food!
The site’s tagline is “Come for the food. Stay for the politics.” You’ll get a lot of good information about what’s going on in D.C. that could affect our local food systems on this blog.
Farm to Philly – Support a local farmer, crave the freshest produce, worry about what’s in or on your food – whatever your reason for eating locally grown and produced food in the Philadelphia area, Farm to Philly is probably writing about it. Farm to Philly is the site that sponsors the One Local Summer challenge that gets people cooking a totally local meal once a week.
Cook Local - A Seattle blog by a husband and wife team. Always great recipes.
Sustainable Food – The food blog from Change.org is a daily read for me. Not strictly locavore, but every couple of days there is a good locavore piece.
The Green Fork Blog – Another blog not strictly about local foods, but all about sustainable foods. Another one I read daily.
