Calling all campsite cooks!

So we're getting really excited about the Rock The Grill: A Good Food Cookout we're hosting with Sustainable Table at Bonnaroo, but a bit overwhelmed with ideas for what to cook using a charcoal grill, foil, skewers, sticks and whathaveyou.
Whatcha got?
We will be making a trip to the Franklin Farmers Market on Saturday morning, so fresh HOMEGROWN ingredients will not be a problem. Are there any marinades or dipping sauces you have enjoyed under the stars? One pot dishes of heavenly goodness? Please send your ideas and recipes along - we'll be taking pictures of it all!

We're going to Bonnaroo - woo hoo!

We’ll have our own 10’ x 10’ plot of land in Planet Roo – where a select group of righteous groups will gather to share their good work. Naturally, some of us will be ducking out to see The Black Keys, Mastodon, Ozomatli and the mighty Metallica, but there will always be someone there to talk HOMEGROWN with folks.
If you’re going, stop by the HOMEGROWN booth, get some fun swag and sign up for a chance to be a part of the Bonnaroo Barbe-roo – the cookout that we are co-hosting with Sustainable Table. Our friends from Nashville Urban Harvest will be bringing locally-grown food for us to cook up – can’t wait!
Stay tuned for more news as it develops.

Over the last couple of weeks, I‘ve been sharing my tomato seedlings with my friends who are able to give them good homes. The starter cells are getting crowded with little guys fighting for sun and nutrients, so the call for caring tomato parents goes out!

Today around the Farm Aid kitchen table, Ted, Jen, Glenda and Anna all grabbed a few for their EarthBoxes and back yards. Wendy doesn’t know it yet, but she is the proud mamma of four heirloom (two red, two black) plants, too – come and get ‘em!

Fast forward a few months...I reap the rewards of my generosity. Mmmm...tomatoes...
**An update*** It is not advised that you plant the actual newspaper, as it does take a long time for the paper to biodegrade. Our friends at Homegrown Evolution also say that the newspaper tends to wick precious moisture away from your fledgling veggie plants.**

CSA Roulette

Now that we’re enjoying the first signs of spring after a long winter, the yearning for fresh local veggies is strong. I signed up for my first CSA share this summer with Revision House Urban Farm and I can’t wait!
While I know that the first box will be heavy on just a few ingredients (definitely not a problem), I’m looking forward to June’s more diverse boxes so we can play “CSA Roulette” (our friend Severine’s term) – essentially, make a fabulous and delicious meal out of a random grab from the box. A pretty obvious thing to do with a bunch of vegetables, but using a sexy casino term in concert with fresh vegetables might just get us to dress up for dinner!

Homegrown hero: We heart Jamie Oliver

UK dollface and chef activist Jamie Oliver is sparking a rash of gasps across the pond with his new FoodTV show. His methods for taking "know your food" to a whole new level are changing the way people think about how they eat... And that makes us love him even more.
In today's New York Times Food section: Looking Dinner In The Eye

Pollan: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

This is how the introduction to Michael Pollan’s “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” begins:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. That, more or less, is the short answer to the supposedly incredibly complicated and confusing question of what we humans should eat in order to be maximally healthy.”


Of course, he goes into exquisite detail about what constitutes real food, versus what Americans find on many grocery shelves today. And, of course, we couldn’t agree more: Eat food. Know where your food comes from and how it is grown.

Read the entire introduction to “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” here

Winners of Farm Aid's HOMEGROWN Thanksgiving Menu Contest

Congratulations to winners Hope Course, the Hileman Family, Matt Scheibe, and Melissa Miller! Check out their HOMEGROWN menus here





mmmmm....pie.

Humble kitchen love

I’ve been thinking about kitchens a lot lately. I scrutinize any appliance ad that features a gourmet kitchen – usually there is an elegantly dressed couple cooking together or entertaining their equally fabulous house guests. Sleek, long counter tops. Sparsely adorned with shiny orbs and glass vases – maybe a dramatic bouquet for color.

Sometimes the idea of having such a sleek and sexy kitchen is appealing, but for now I’ll stick with my humble apartment kitchen: pots hanging from the ceiling, shelves bursting with random food stuff, the 40-year-old gas stove, and the worn wooden top of an old dresser that serves as my only counter top – it may never grace the pages of Dwell or Gourmet, but it’s a well-loved space where I work well with what I’ve got.
What kind of kitchen do you cook in?

HOMEGROWN Chicken Soup

Its getting dark earlier, a change of season cold is settling into my head and my boyfriend is late for dinner. I am completely happy. I have a cutting board that is loaded with rainbowtastic veggies and herbs that are resting for a moment. Chicken thighs are browning in the pan – making stuffy state even headier with its foodie perfume. I’ve got an old album (Mike Doughty “Haughty Melodic”), newly rediscovered, blasting a little too loud. My kitchen is a wonderful oxymoron of chaos and peace. It’s a good night for chicken soup.

In this space, I am turning my treasure trove of locally grown vegetables (and sustainably raised chicken) into soul warming fuel. My veggies were picked yesterday and took two rinses to get the sand out. Standing at the sink, I try to consider the life of my food and how many lives it affected. The person who collected the seeds, put it in the ground, watered the seedlings; the time this particular plant spent in the soil; the chicken; the person that fed and slaughtered the chicken and the truck driver that drove the meat to my local yuppie mart. I love this food and I haven’t even tasted it yet.

Taking care to appreciate the bounty makes it impossible to throw together a careless meal. In fact, I make a point to summon summon memories of cooking with my mother and the smell of freshly baked bread whenever I cook. With this feeling of deep respect, enjoyment and love, I can pack those feelings back into this meal. It’s the last step that I need to take to maximize the potential of this food –regardless of the end product.

This is what HOMEGROWN is to me. Being able to feel a deep sense of respect for my food, its history, my history and being able to share it all in a bowl of chicken soup.

"I wrote a song about my girlfriend's pancakes"

I want to hang out with this guy. I can just picture him…Eyes that crinkle like soft leather when he laughs…a row of white, yet slightly crooked teeth...a guy who writes songs about his woman’s pancakes. He might play the guitar while sitting on his porch in – Chapel Hill? Bend, OR?, Brooklyn, maybe…
He didn’t just write a song about pancakes, he wrote a song about the blissful warmth that comes from a labor of love. He knows that it’s not just the fresh brown eggs and organic stone-ground flour that makes those pancakes so good. It’s the love and care of his girlfriend that makes them song-worthy.
I express my love through cooking – do you? My pilgrimage to the farmers market every week is my way of connecting to the earth and cooking connects me to those I love. At the market, I thoughtfully walk from tent to tent, composing a symphony of dishes. One thing I learned from my preacher mother (the best cook I know): Sometimes I don’t know how it will all come together, but I have faith that I’ll be guided by some divine culinary communique.

Corn salutations!

I look at all of the food talk out there: 30 minute meals, food summits, artisanal cooking, celebrity chefs, etc. and I think – I’m nowhere NEAR being an expert on food or cooking – I’m merely a devoted fan. If I were to draw a parallel, it would be a yoga one. I’ve been doing yoga for close to ten years and every day I practice – I don’t master. In the realm of cooking, an expert chef like Mario Batali is my yogi and I am his student.
I am an expert on eating corn on the cob, however. I have perfected the most efficient and fruitful method of eating it - across typewriter style until there is a strip too wide for one chomp, yet too small for its own typewriter row, then finish with rolling the cob forward and back. No sweet, tender kernel left behind. This wisdom has only come from years and years of practice (and a healthy obsession with efficiency).