‘I Love u Lunch’ with local food in Pittsboro Feb. 14

By Carol Peppe Hewitt

Slow Food Triangle, The Abundance Foundation, and Loom (advocates of bringing culture and business to Chatham Mills) have teamed up with a plethora of sustainable farms, caterers, and a coop in Chatham County to host an I Love u Lunch, on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, from 1- 4 pm in the historic Chatham Mills in Pittsboro, NC. The gourmet three-course lunch will feature Greek chicken soup (with a vegetarian option), Sweet Potato Muffins, Roasted Tomato and Goat Cheese tarts, Winter Baby Salad Mix, Beet Chiffon Pie, and more! Tickets to the event are only $10 in advance and $15 at the door (children under 12 are $8) and can be purchased online. BYOB or purchase a $3 drink ticket for Benjamin Vineyards wine or Carolina Brewery beer.

For people who are passionate about sustainable grub, who like delicious food and good times, this is another chance to be in each others’ company, to be inspired by one another’s stories, and be nourished by not only the winter offerings of our local farms, but by the hope we hold out for a better world for ourselves and all those children I saw running about on New Year’s Day.

I had driven up to Golden Belt in Durham, NC, curious to see the renovation of this space that I had heard so much about, and to eat black-eyed peas and collards with the Slow Food Triangle folks at their annual New Year’s Day event. I knew they had sold out but was otherwise unsure what to expect. What I found was a massive room with long lines of tables strung together with table cloths and people of all ages, including an abundance of young families. I sat down across from a young woman doing a research project on an ambitious mill renovation in Star, North Carolina, then met Margaret who had just redone the CFSA website,then Josh who is pulling together a network/support group for artists and scientists. I saw old friends, and made new ones. What fun. There are over 1.5 million people in the Triangle area now, and when I am in a room like that I can forget that the sustainability crowd I hang with is actually fringe. Industrially farmed, genetically modified, flown in from other continents, tasteless food is what fills the local supermarkets, not these wonderful local collards. It was an uplifting afternoon, and an excellent article followed in the local press.

But it was the seed it germinated that matters here. We too, have a Mill in Chatham County that is undergoing adaptive reuse, and I wondered how to get these delightful people together with my Pittsboro locavore friends to enjoy a local food feast at our mill.

I was told to speak with Phoebe Lawless, queen of Slow Food Triangle and of pies. She was most encouraging and on the way home to Pittsboro I Love u Lunch took shape. A delicious lunch, midway through the doldrums of February, on February 14th, Valentine’s Day, which falls conveniently on a Sunday – why not? Find what grows in February, cook it up and invite a crowd. The first call was to Tom Roberts, owner of Chatham Mills. He was enthusiastic and eager to help host the event. More phone calls, meetings with Phoebe, Mary of Chatham Marketplace, Tami at the Abundance Foundation, and Sandi at Eastern Carolina Organics and we had a team. Several local farmers (Duck Run, Piedmont BioFarm, Screech’s Greenhouse, Celebrity Dairy, Edible Earthscapes, Scratch Baking) local caterers and chefs (Angelina’s Kitchen, General Store Café,) Scurlock’s Catering, Benjamin Vineyards Winery, and Carolina Brewery have all joined up as well.

Along with a growing cast of enthusiastic volunteers, we are well underway to a wonderful time! If we have half as much fun at the luncheon as we are having putting it together, it will be a blast!

The luncheon is also a fundraiser for Chatham Marketplace, the local coop also located at Chatham Mills, that offers a wide selection of local foods. Specifically the proceeds will help pay to solarize the new Chatham Marketplace sign being installed this spring.

Chatham Mills produced silk and woven labels from 1925 to 1996. Having produced a livelihood for so many for decades, the mill buildings and grounds are being renovated for adaptive reuse. Plays, concerts, conferences and events like this luncheon spur Chatham Mills’ evolution as an inviting, socially vibrant, community centerpiece. Attendees can join a 3:30-4pm a tour of the Mill if they wish. For more information about the event email me at iloveulunch@gmail.com, or call The Abundance Foundation at 533-5181.

There will be work involved as we re-engineer our foodshed, but it can also be good fun. On February 14th come take time to relax, sit back, and enjoy a delightful afternoon in Pittsboro with fellow like-minded local food, slow food, sustainability types, eating some of that fine sustainable grub!

Time to sign up with CSA farmers

While we’re snowed in here in the Triangle, its fun to daydream about the real-food cornucopia we’ll enjoy soon as the growing season warms up. (My lettuce, chard and basil seeds are already sprouting!). It’s also a good time to enroll in a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) farm, to ensure that you have a reliable source of healthy, local food throughout the growing season.

Here’s the deal: You pay up front in one or two installments for a season of fresh food each week. Your enrollment helps finance crop production costs and ensures the farm has a good customer base. In return you get to know the farmer who grows your food, you get outstanding fresh ingredients and the satisfaction of supporting your local economy.

We’re fortunate to be surrounded by a range of sustainable farms in this area. But if you want to partner with one of them, you have to act quickly, because demand exceeds supply and many of the local CSAs fill up fast.

Debbie Roos, our super sustainable ag agent, has a handy web page guiding you to CSAs throughout North Carolina. Here’s what I know about some of our local ones:

Baker + Farmer: Keenan McDonald (Duck Run Farm) recently moved to the edge of Pittsboro. She’s one of the new generation of sustainable growers who have flocked to this region. What’s most unusual about her CSA is that it provides one-stop shopping for locavores: Vegetables, fruits, breads and pastries (Chicken Bridge Bakery, Rob and Monica Segovia-Welch), duck and chicken eggs, artisanal cheeses (Small Potatoes Farm) , pasture-raised poultry, pork and beef (Cohen Farm) — even locally roasted organic coffee beans (Johnny’s in Carrboro) — or any combination of these. You can pick-up your weekly stash on the farm and at several locations in the Triangle.

Dutch Buffalo Farm: Emily Lancaster and Farrell Moose have a special place in my heart because their CSA is adjacent to the land where I lived in Hickory Mt. township during the early 1980s — when I was about their age — along what I consider one of the most beautiful roads in Chatham county. They offer a 24-week season of exquisite vegetables and fruits. What’s unique is that they break it up in three eight-week sessions,you can sign up for one, two or all three — a great way to dip in and find out if this if for you.

Edible Earthscapes: Jason and Haruka Oatis had been farming in Japan when they decided it was time to migrate to the U.S. They considered moving to the left coast until a Pittsboro f riend told them that Chatham was one of the best places in the country to be a sustainable farmer. Soon after they arrived here, Piedmont Biofuels guru Lyle Estill offered them a place to get started — the land that Doug Jones had cultivated until he moved over to the Biofuels eco-industrial complex in Pittsboro (see below). It’s worked out really well for Haruka and Jason — fertile land, a green house and cistern — a great place to start their CSA. Now in their second season, they offer a 24-week season with a range of fresh vegetables (including Asian varieties such as daikon, bok choy, mizuna), and they’ve even been experimenting with rice. What appealed to me when we joined them last year was the possibility of a small share — perfect for our two-person household. I also liked the idea of supporting this incubator farm; after they have saved enough money to move to their own place nearby, other farmers will take their place at the incubator, helping to expand our local foodshed.

Harland’s Creek: Judy Lessler is a retired scientist who started one of the earliest, and now one of the most successful, CSAs in Chatham, based at her historic farm west of Pittsboro. Her seven-month CSA season involves partnerships with some of the most experienced sustainable farms in the area, including Ayrshire (Bill Dow), Celebrity Dairy, Cohen Farms, Pine Knot (Stanley Hughes), Wiseacre (Laurie Heise), Fickle Creek Farms, Chapel Hill Creamery and Clayton Orchard. You can sign up for produce and herbs, meat and chicken, eggs and cheese, fruit, flowers, or any combination. Weekly boxes can be picked up on the farm, at Chatham Marketplace in Pittsboro, at the Durham Farmer’s Market and even at some workplaces. Judy also provides recipes for using the contents of each weekly supply.

Piedmont Biofarm: Run by the legendary Doug Jones, recently named Farmer of the Year by Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, and a crew of young interns. With nearly 40 years of experience in organic farming, Doug is famous for using season extension techniques for year-found growing, for innovative seed saving and breeding (he created the Pittsboro Pepper), and for mentoring and teaching new farmers. This CSA has two unique features: 1) If you pick up your vegetables on the farm you get to choose from among those available, taking more of what you like and none of what you don’t like, and 2) there are three 15-week seasons, spanning almost an entire year. You can sign up for one, two or all three. The farm is located at the famous Piedmont Biodiesel eco-industrial complex on the east edge of Pittsboro.

Seeds of change

So what can you do when it feels like the world is growing dim? When Ted Kennedy’s seat is lost to a GOP pin-up boy in a pick-up truck. And the Supremes decide that corporations have the same rights as people and can spend without limit to influence political campaigns. (So does this mean we can prosecute them for crimes against nature and lock them up for life?). The unemployment rate and the price of gas keep going up. And, dammit, it’s still winter.

When dark clouds hover, there’s only one solution: Plant some seeds. I’ve been obsessing over my modest garden plans for weeks when I suddeny realized, it may still be January in North Carolina but I can start some stuff growing inside right now. Then I can plant outside in a couple of weeks under some low plastic tunnels, and be back in the dirt before you can say ”arugula.” Yes!

So I snap up some new seeds for Ruby Red Swiss Chard (couldn’t find no Rainbow) and Genovese Basil, and some old seeds for Red Leaf Lettuce and Green Leaf Lettuce. I carefully set them in some little peat-moss plugs, sprinkle them with water and tuck them, lovingly, under a transparent table-top plastic lid that the garden store promotes as a “greenhouse.”

Now’s the hard part. I always feel like a little kid when I’m waiting for seeds to germinate, then to get stronger, then to be ready to plant in the garden. And once I transplant them I go out in the garden several times a day, get down on my knees and just stare.  Is anything happening? Is everybody okay down there?

It’s the miracle of recycled life recycling in front of my eyes. My dead leaves and dinner scraps have turned into compost, my compost into a garden bed, my garden bed into a food incubator.

 My favorite part comes when all of a sudden, they are no longer little seedlings or transplants, but real, live, actual, vegetables, ready for the table and the tummy. I can almost taste them right now. 

Guess we’ll have to wait a bit for that. But soon I can get some more seeds started, and before you know it, it will be time to plant pea seeds directly in the garden bed.  By then my transplanted rosemary and oregano should be taking hold…Oops, getting ahead of myself again.

I feel better already. I wonder if Michelle ever takes the POTUS by the hand and drags him out to the White House garden for a peek at the produce? They’ve got life growing under those low plastic tunnels right now, I saw the video, so there should be plenty of little miracles for inspiration. He should take a quick look, before the State of the Union on Wednesday, just to put it all in perspective.

Meanwhile, you’ll have to excuse me;  it’s time to check under the plastic seed-starter cover in the dining room to see how it’s going…. just one more time.

Raj Patel: Food is key to sustainability

Raj Patel’s latest book is The Value of Nothing, a critique of so-called free-market capitalism. The title comes from an Oscar Wilde quote: “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.” Here is an excerpt from an excellent interview with Patel by Paula Crossfield at the blog Civil Eats. in which Patel concludes that food is moving closer to sustainability than any other sector of the U.S. economy, thanks to growing awareness about fossil fuel scarcity, climate change and concerns about obesity and other health consequences. A ray of hope:

“If you live with the consequences of your actions, then you learn from your actions in the future and modify them to make your actions sustainable. At the moment our food system is entirely unsustainable, and we do need to be living within our means. And I think the food movement is kind of heading that way much faster than any other sector of the economy….

“For me food is about life. Food brings together everything that everyone should care about. It is about giving life, it is about what we need to survive on this planet, it is about our interaction with the planet, and about the way that we replenish or don’t replenish the earth that we live on.

“There is something both primal and industrial and very high-capitalist about food. And it is the area where, if we are interested in life, if we’re interested in the ways that we can live on this planet sustainably, then we really do need to start with questions about food.

“[The food movement] is to me the most vibrant area of social change certainly in the United States but also elsewhere. In the 90s, the food movement in the United States was a laughing stock and now it’s really cutting edge, and people look to the United States for information on how things should change. I think that’s tremendous. I think that what food sovereignty offers is both a democratic way for us to take very seriously issues around rights, particularly around gender, but also ways in which we can think about the environment, about distribution, and poverty in ways that are sustainable.

“It brings it all together in ways that, if we’re concerned with social justice, whether its education, the way our institutions behave, ecology, poverty, environment, whatever it is, you’ll find it in food, and you’ll find something very exciting in the organizing around food that gives me hope in ways that very few things do these days.”

Dine out for Haiti

Here’s a good time to enjoy a great meal including locally produced food, support our local farmers and eateries AND help Haiti. Thanks to Amy Tornquist (Watts Grocery, Durham), here’s a convenient way to find out where you can eat tomorrow Jan. 24 in the Triangle and know that 10 percent of the proceeds will support worthwhile relief organizations working in Haiti.

I plan to do brunch at the Saxapahaw General Store. Most of the others on the list are offering dinner. Bon appetit.

http://dineoutforhaititriangle.wordpress.com/

Back to school

Whether you want to become a sustainable farmer, enhance your farm or food business, or just take your backyard herbs and veggies up a notch, Central Carolina Community College in Pittsboro has a range of courses to suit your needs. All are offered in the evenings. You can register in person (Monday-Thursday 8 am to 8 pm, Friday 8:30 am to 12 noon) or by phone with credit card (542-6495 x 223).

CCCC’s Sustainable and Green Spring 2010 curriculum offers:

• Permaculture Fundamentals (Thursdays Feb. 4 – March 27, 5:30-9:30 pm):  How to design sustainable human habitats integrating forests, fields, gardens, water, animals, buildings, economics and society. Includes two week-end field trips.
• Growing Organic Vegetables (Wednesdays March 3 – April 21, 6-9 pm): Fundamentals and hands-on training covering growing, harvesting, irrigation installations and season extension techniques.
• Healing Herbs (Tuesdays Feb. 9-April 13, 6-8 pm) and Foods That Heal (Thursdays Feb. 11-April 15, 6-8 pm): How to recognize therapeutic properties in herbs and other foods, then combine them in tasty, healthy meals.
• Introduction to Eco Tourism (Tuesdays Feb. 23-April 27, 6-8 pm): Definitions, practices and principles for non-profit and commercial enterprises.
• Introduction to Sustainable Communities (Wednesdays Feb. 3-April 14): Knowledge and tools for living more sustainably, lowering your carbon footprint, and applying policies and practices to businesses large and small.

Carolina offers local, organic grub

UNC took a giant leap forward in providing “local, sustainable, organic” food for students, faculty and staff last week. It opened its “1.5.0″ station in the Main Street food court in Lenoir Dining Hall at the heart of campus. The name signifies that much of the food will come from farms within 150 miles of campus, and all of it will be healthy, organic or local.

I sampled some of the local fare today, including the “Grass-Fed Beef Chili” with meat straight from Cane Creek-Braeburn Farms in Snow Camp. It was great to be able to patronize the campus eatery and know where my food came from, which is the way it should be at the nation’s first state university. It was tasty and affordable, too ($3.99).  Other choices included short ribs and several organic bean salad plates.  Sometimes they have Indian dahl. The only problem now will be trying to resist eating sweet potato fries with local honey butter every day when it’s only minutes from my office. 

Business was brisk as students lined up for local healthy food. Mike Freeman, director of auxiliary services, told the Daily Tar Heel he was aiming to just break even, but after only a week, the locavore eatery was exceeding his projections. The new 1.5.0 averaged $1,320  in daily sales — about one fourth of what Chick-Fil-A takes in at its Main Street concession, still the most popular one netting about 30% of food court sales.

I’m betting that when more local food is available this spring, 1.5.0 will get even more attention and sales. The food is healthy, tasty and affordable, a triple bottom line for students, faculty and staff. Why didn’t they have this on the menu when I was in college back in the day?

The new eatery is just one of several initiatives at Carolina to encourage local, healthy diets.  University employees have launched a community garden on the edge of campus where students and staff will be welcome to grow their own plots (see Employee Forum Newsletter, page 2). There are at least three other community gardens sponsored by students on campus and in Chapel Hill, including one designed to provide farm training and jobs for the homeless.  The School of Public Health is studying our local farm economy, the transition from tobacco and the connections between food, health and the environment. And UNC Hospitals sponsor a weekly farmer’s market with fresh local produce during the growing season.

Students also learn about food in courses across the curriculum, including American studies, anthropology, bio-chemistry, English, folklore, nutrition, environmental studies and land-use planning. Last year the Institute for the Environment co-sponsored a six-part seminar series on sustainable food systems with Duke’s Nicholas School of the Environment and student groups at both campuses.

The FLO Food student organization (Fair, Local, Organic) is behind much of this energy. FLO is hosting a major southeast regional student food activist conference at UNC in February Feb. 5-7.

Next, we’ll take a look at what’s happening at Duke and N.C. State to see which campus has the best local food in the Triangle ACC.

Can’t get over the Rainbow

I’ve explored all kinds of veggies this past year through my CSA, my weekly jaunts to the farmer’s markets, and my modest backyard garden. But my favorite green leafy thing for flavor, diversity, flexibility, nutrition, beauty, and, best of all, fool-proof hardiness, is one that caught me my surprise.

I’ve fallen in love with Rainbow Chard.

Swiss Chard of course is that lettuce-like plant, actually a root, whose leaves look like they fell off a very large oak tree. Chard isn’t from Switzerland at all, but it was named by a Swiss botanist in the 19th century. It originated in the Mediterranean and has thrived for hundreds of years. Aristotle wrote about it in the 4th century B.C.

Rainbow is Swiss chard on psychedelics: its leaves can be yellow, orange, red, green, even plum colored; its stem is beet red, purple or orange. I can’t take my eyes off it in the garden, and sometimes I have had to interrupt my walk around the community college farm lab to admire my Rainbow neighbors when they are in full living color.

Most of all I love that chard can be grown and harvested all year around, through the most atrocious weather. It’s the only leafy green I know that can be sown and reaped through hot, humid months like we have here in spring and summer AND cold frigid temperatures , like our fall and winter. You can’t say that about lettuce, spinach or kale, as nice as they are.

Chard just won’t give up. When lettuce and broccoli bolt in late spring, and cauliflower never quite makes it, chard just keeps on keeping on. When the squash has succumbed to bugs and worms, and the tomatoes have finally given out, chard is still there for you. And when just about everything else in the fall garden has been put to bed for the winter, chard is still growing strong and colorful (looking good!).

It’s almost scary, the creature from beneath the soil. Bella Lugosi? No, it’s Beta Vulgaris. For real.

Farmer Doug and Agent Debbie say that chard can be planted here from direct seed Feb 15 through April 1, harvested April 15- July 1 or so, and planted by seed again, or transplanted Aug. 15-Sept. 15 for a second harvest Oct. 1-Dec. 15. You can use season extension tricks (row covers, etc.) to stretch the sowing and reaping boundaries even further, and if you winter it over, it will be ready for havest again in March, overlapping your early spring plantings nicely. Talk about true-blue loyalty and longevity.

Chard can be nibbled when it’s young and tender or savored long after “maturity,” when the leaves are fatter, tougher and, yes, a bit more wrinkled. It can be used raw in salads or even as a wrap. Sorry, Popeye, but anything spinach can do, chard can do better and longer. It can be boiled, steamed or sauteed and added to lasagna, omelets, frittata, pasta, risotto, burritos, quesadillas, stir-frys, soups, chili and even pizza.

Despite sub-freezing temperatures, I found fresh Rainbow chard from Edible Earthscape in Chatham Marketplace recently, enjoyed it in my salad for several days and as the main ingredient in a tasty quiche.

If that ain’t enough, Chard is jam packed with vitamins. A healthy serving includes seven times the recommended daily dose of vitamin K (for bone strength), 110% of the daily value of vitamin A, and half the daily value for vitamin C . It’s also an excellent source of magnesium and calcium (both for bone strength), potassium (for the heart), iron (for energy) and vitamin E (for anti-inflammatory), copper, vitamins B1, B2, B6, B5, zinc and folate, and it provides 15% of the daily value needed for dietary fiber.

All that and it’ll only cost you 35 calories.

Come to think of it, Rainbow chard is a lot like our local sustainable farm movement: colorful, diverse, hard-working, zesty, persistent, good for the local economy, good for the planet and good for us. An amazing community asset growing right under our noses, all year round. Just waiting to be harvested

Taking sustainability to the next level

If you want to learn how to take sustainable living to the next level, Central Carolina Community College has an evening course for you in Pittsboro beginning Feb. 3 called “Introduction to Sustainable Communities.” Taught by sustainable policy advisor Jeffrey Starkweather, the course runs for 11 Wednesdays from 6 to 9 p.m.

Is your community economically, environmentally and socially sustainable? What about your business? Your lifestyle? Why do politicians and citizens disagree about climate change? What exactly is a sustainable community or sustainability? How can you implement sustainability strategies in your local community or business? These are the type of questions you will be challenged to critically explore in both breadth and detail over 11 Wednesday evenings.

You will learn how to take the “long view” in exploring these and other fundamental and practical questions on the following topics: water quantity and quality, sustainable values, land use and smart growth, transportation, climate control and air quality, affordable housing, sustainable agriculture, waste reduction and recycling, sewer, energy efficiency and alternative energy, economic development, citizen engagement, and environmental justice.

There will also be an opportunity for a hands-on experience working on one of these topics in your community.

The course is taught by an experienced sustainable community public policy advisor, advocate, and community organizer Jeffrey Starkweather. Jeffrey is a retired attorney and award-winning former community newspaper editor. He is Co-Chair of the Chatham Green Economy Task Force and on the County Economic Development Corporation board. He also serves on the sustainable agriculture and arts/tourism industrial cluster committees, the Housing Advisory Board, and the Triangle South Work Force Development Board, and is the legal/policy advisor to the Green Building Task Force (soon to be converted to the Green Building and Sustainable Energy Advisory Board).

If you have questions about the class, contact Jeffrey at 919-417-0969 or jeffreystarkweather@earthlink.net.

To register see details below:

Course #: C-1931; Start • End Date: 02/03/10 • 04/14/10; Day: W Time: 6:00P – 9:00P Cost: $120.00; Course Location: CCCC Pittsboro Campus, Building 1, Room 229. Registration: In person at the Pittsboro campus or call-in registration to 919-542-6495, ext. 223, which requires payment with VISA or MasterCard. Students should be registered by 5 p.m. Feb. 3.

‘Uber’ local supper

By Carol Peppe Hewitt

Sustainable grub doesn’t get any better than the food served at 3CUPS in Chapel Hill last week-end.

Farmer-Chef Doug, Rachel, Lyle and Tami

The Pittsboro -based PiedmontBioFarm and the Abundance Foundation created a three-course meal, and 3 CUPS provided the wine pairings from organic family-owned and-operated small vineyards located in the Italian Piedmont, our “sister” region, for an “Uber Local,” utterly delicious Sunday Supper.

The evening began with Piedmont BioFarm’s own roasted peanuts, grown right in Pittsboro, and “shelled by ‘with child’ labor,” according to the menu. That would have been Rachel Burton, a founder of Piedmont Biofuels, and a few months pregnant, who spent Sunday afternoon shelling peanuts. Nearby the Piedmont Biofarm interns and Abundance cooking team had a riotous time chopping veggies, baking tarts, washing greens, laughing and chatting as they all created a feast in the Eco Industrial Park kitchen.

Jay at 3 CUPS had chosen 3 fabulous wines. The first came with the soup course, a 2007 Icardi Cortese L’Aurora. The Tobago Black Bean Soup with Bradshaw and Violetta sweet potatoes and mixed sweet peppers was Doug Jones’ creation, the new CFSA Farmer of the Year who owns and runs Piedmont BioFarm. Doug is a farmer’s farmer. If you want to talk selective seed saving, soils, plant breeding, growing conditions, and more, Doug is your point man. He planted dozens of different pepper varieties last year. One of his lines of Asian collards is now available through Fedco, and it appears one of his peppers will be available at Seeds of Change. The flavor of the Tobago peppers was new to me and gave the soup a wonderful smokiness.

Next came “Willette’s Pink Big Tart.” The beet and goat cheese tart was Willette’s idea and was full of Early Wonder Beets, mixed heirloom carrots, local goat cheese, crushed pecans, parsley, local eggs, and the option of “Neville the pig” bacon from Pickard’s Mountain. Tami had started the tart crust at home, under the watchful eye of the family pie-dough king, Arlo.

Back in the Eco Park kitchen, Lyle had scrubbed six bunches of beautiful baby beets (imagine, picking beets in January!) and I had roasted them along with the peanuts. Patty, Willette and Jenny, interns extraordinaire, had loaded the filling into Tami’s tart crusts and baked them. Curtiss P Martin, (photo credit well-deserved) shot the prep and dinner.

Once at 3 CUPS the team morphed into wait staff, plating and serving their creations to nearly 30 eager guests. Alongside the tart was a Mixed Green Salad and what a mixture! Creasy greens, chickweed, baby lettuce and spinach leaves and young mustard greens, were topped with crunchy Jerusalem artichokes tossed in a light dressing Willette had also invented. Really puts those sorry bagged greens mixtures that come from CA to shame.

Each table had a plate with two breads, Braided Polenta Bread and Honey Wheat Bread made with Lindley Mills stone-ground flour, local eggs, milk, and honey and baked by Lynette, a talented local baker. Our second wine was another fabulous Piedmont red, a 2007 G.D. Vajra Langhe Rosso, served by the gracious 3 CUPS staff, Mimi and Kate.

Last came Mrs. Scurlock’s Sweet Potato Pie. Doug had provided his ginseng sweet potatoes, the butter was from Homeland Creamery, and on the surface was a sprinkling of shiny slightly crystallized sugar. It occurred to me that maybe we might have asked her to use less of this imported ingredient, and then I tasted it. This was what wars had been fought over, and I’m glad we won. It was exquisite, and the crust was perfect. With the dessert we drank another red wine, 2005 Chionetti Dolcetto di Dogliani San Luigi. Again the flavor worked perfectly with sweet potato.

Even the centerpieces were uber local. Local pottery dessert bowls held a few sprigs of Doug’s beautiful purple kale, a couple of shiny bright orange togabo peppers, and a handful of the multi-colored corn kernels that had been ground down to produce the cornmeal for the cornbread that had been served with the soup course. Baked in piping hot cast iron pans of bacon grease from the Pickard Mt bacon in the tarts, the classic Southern cornbread was crispy, greasy and fabulous!

So how were the reviews? As Christine had pushed her last bite of Willette’s Pink Big Tart around her plate I heard her lament, “I don’t want it to end” to her friend Deverre, who nailed the dessert. “I just want to dive into the sweet potato pie and live there.“

And she was not alone. Cathy and Joseph said it was the most local meal they’d been to yet. Kelly Stack, had heard of Piedmont BioFarm through her “food justice” work. That ’s a new term for me, and I like it. She thought Mrs. Scurlock’s Sweet Potato Pie was the best she’s ever had. “Everything was so good!”

Don and Pam, long-time 3 CUPS customers and new of Doug’s CSA, said they didn’t know their favorite farmer was also a chef! That’s ok, neither did most of the rest of us. They thought the best thing about the evening was Doug ’s apron!

I’m ready to do it all again.

Great food, wonderful wines, and interesting company.

It just doesn’t get much better than that.

Chopping beets.