Marmalade Popover with Meyer lemon and cardamom marmalade

Marmalade Popovers made in a muffin tin

Marmalade Popover Recipe

Labels: breakfast recipe, easy recipe, Marion Cunningham, marmalade popover recipe, popover recipe, popovers, quick recipe, Sacramento locavore, The Breakfast Book

Labels: Capitol farmers market, farmers' market Sacramento, Sacramento leads nation in farmers' markets, Sacramento locavore

Everyone knows The Firehouse Restaurant as a Sacramento icon for its picturesque court yard, abundant wine cellar, and historic charm. Yet, on a recent sit-down with Executive Chef Deneb Williams, I was delighted to learn that The Firehouse is also surprisingly alive and modern. From its menu to food-sourcing practices to a unionized kitchen staff, Firehouse is innovative and inspiring.
First, there’s the menu. Chef Williams has done some traveling in his day, and his global tastes are reflected in a new bill of fare that is bright and playful. The Mahi Mahi Tacos blend the flavors of honey, cumin, cilantro, mango, cucumber, and avocado, and are served as you might find them on the streets of Mexico, rustically wrapped in paper.

Classic Dungeness Crab Cakes come alive with the pop of plump corn, fresh cilantro, and a light, sweet pepper coulis. Another classic, the caprese salad, becomes a modern day display of creativity in Chef Williams’ Heirloom Tomato Napoleon, which appears in a rounded stack looking deceptively like a large, whole tomato.

In fact, most of Williams’ dishes are immaculately displayed, and even more studiously planned months in advance. Churning out three new seasonal menus each year, with the addition of nightly specials and formal occasion dinners, (like Valentine’s Day), Williams will run through 38 different menus and 50 tastings to test them, in a single year.

This is a guy who needs to be fully awake at the whisk! And he is.

Williams proceeds to rattle off several websites on sustainable fishing that I should be sure to read. When I ask him how he keeps up with all the information, he doesn’t hesitate, “I’m completely obsessed with what I do!”

He speaks passionately about the farms he has visited in pursuit of the perfect ingredients for The Firehouse menu. He describes his process for sourcing quality ingredients for a menu that must be planned 120 days in advance.

With the oddly cold start to our Sacramento summer, the tardy tomato season sent Williams to Southern California for heirloom tomatoes he would otherwise have purchased locally. This is a quandary that he clearly approaches thoughtfully.

“I have to react quickly,” he says. “I’ve got squash, basil, and onions coming in locally now. I’ll definitely run specials when our local tomatoes are finally ripe.”

Williams trains his chefs to respond quickly, too. He trains them to prepare every item on the menu to meet the dietary needs of Firehouse customers. “We can make anything on the menu vegetarian, vegan, etcetera,” he explains enthusiastically.

He speaks highly of the chefs he works with, all of whom are part of this union restaurant. “I’m only as good as my cooks,” he says with pride. “Most of my cooks could be executive chefs at other restaurants.”

This pride and passion aren’t immediately apparent when you step through the ancient doors of this historic, quiet, reserved restaurant. Yet, somewhere inside the kitchen, hidden from diners’ view, an explosion of creativity and zeal is taking place. If you eat there, rest assured, you will experience it: in your mouth.

Labels: Chef Deneb Williams, eating locally, restaurant review Sacramento, Sacramento locavore, Sacramento locavore chef, Sacramento restaurant, Sacramento vegetarian, The Firehouse Restaurant

Labels: 100 mile diet, book review, Farm City, Ghost Town, locavore, Novella Carpenter, Sacramento locavore, urban farmer

1 large grapefruit cut into 1/8ths
2 large stalks celery, cut into large chunks
2 large cloves garlic, cut in ½ crosswise
2 ½ large, red onions, quartered
2 Tablespoons each: mustard seed, coriander seed, peppercorns, mild paprika, torn lemongrass, salt
1 Tablespoon allspice
½ Tablespoon each cayenne pepper, rosemary, and fennel seed
4 bay leaves
1 ½ lbs purple potato cut in half
5 ears of corn, shucked and halved
4 small sweet potatoes, whole
2 lbs crawfish
4 carrots cut in large chunks
4 washcloths
Juice from half a lemon

Farmers' Market Fare: garlic, onion, purple potato, corn, sweet potato, crawfish, carrots, lemon
Fresh from My Garden (and my neighbor's tree): grapefruit, lemongrass, rosemary, bay leaves, cayenne pepper, fennel seed
Non-local Supermarket Ingredients: celery, mustard seed, coriander seed, peppercorns, paprika, salt, allspice

Fill your largest soup kettle ½-full of water. Add the grapefruit, celery, garlic, onion, and spices. Bring to a boil on your grill. Reduce heat, cover with a lid, and simmer for 10 minutes.


When the meal is finished, submerge clean washcloths in a bowl of very warm water. Add the lemon juice. Squeeze the excess water from each washcloth and place them in a metal bowl with a lid to trap the heat. Hand one to each guest. Their hands will be messy, and they will thank you for this lovely gesture!

Serves 4.

Labels: Cajun, cajun recipe, crawfish, crawfish boil, crawfish boil spice recipe, farmers' market recipe, John Besh, Kelly's Crawfish, My New Orleans, Sacramento locavore, seasonal recipe

When I picture farmland in Illinois, I imagine the farms of my youth with their high, green rows of corn that stretch as far as the eye can see. These are precise, square plots; the kind that look like building blocks if you were peering down from an airplane. The rows are tidy, the colors uniform.
These are the farms of industrialized agriculture with its mono-crops of corn and soy brought to life through the heavy use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

My childhood vision of the typical Illinois farm was shattered on Sunday when I visited Epiphany Farms, an organic farm in Downs, Illinois (population 760). Run by three guys in their mid-twenties, the farm looks like the creative doodles of a preschool drawing—not the clean design of an architect. This is farming as the earth intended.

In the front of the property, sloping into the south-facing sun leans a greenhouse constructed of curving wood. Next to that are three cold frames built entirely from recycled window panes. These stand not far from a pig pen. Around the bend is a field planted topsy-turvy by hand with slanting rows of beans, lettuces, and broccoli, and decorated by weeds. Adjacent are more pigs, most of them babies suckling on their mother. Farther a-field are cattle and chickens. Around the corner are bee hives and fruit trees.

The life on this farm teams with diversity, leaving no square outline to be seen from the air above. Instead, it winds with the hills and the forest tree line.

This is Epiphany Farms, the brainchild of Ken Myszka. He’s actually not a farmer, though he’s learning to become one. He’s a trained chef by trade, having worked for some of Vegas’s finest restaurants. But the more he has learned about cooking great food, the more he has wanted to be responsible for every step of the cooking process—including growing his own groceries.

So one year ago, Myszka packed up and moved back to his childhood home, conveniently located on 72 acres of farmable land in central Illinois. He brought along two buddies and fellow culinary geniuses Mike Mustard and Stu Hummel, who were also cooking in Vegas at the time.

Mustard is a native of Sacramento, California, while Hummel’s roots are from Clearfield, Pennsylvania. Like Myszka, the two wanted to be responsible for the production of the food they serve their customers.

Together, the three spent their first year as farmers studying and learning as much as they could about the craft. This year, they’ll see how successful they can be at harvesting bounty from their fields. And by next March 2011, they hope they can finally pull their vision together to start feeding the good folks of Bloomington, Illinois from their farm-to-fork restaurant. Vegetables and farm-fresh produce will be the stars of their menu, while protein (including their own grass-fed beef) will simply run support on the plate.

After touring their farm this past weekend, the chefs-turned-farmers offer me and a group of about 20 interested patrons a sampling of their cooking. This is no ordinary farm BBQ. Instead of hotdogs and chips, we are served a gourmet lunch of garden herb-seasoned potato salad (the lightest, freshest potato salad I’ve ever enjoyed), Asian noodle salad studded with grated carrots and radish (bright and flavorful), giant burgers made from Epiphany cattle and topped with both homemade mayonnaise made with their farm eggs and caramelized onions. For dessert: alpine strawberry muffins and coriander custard topped with powdered oats. Divine.

We dined as we looked out at cows chewing grass, chickens pecking, and vegetable plants blowing in the breeze.

Although other farmers and chefs will tell you that Epiphany Farms is breaking the mold, Myszka will tell you, “I’m not inventing anything. I’m not trying to be the first.” Instead, his goal is practical, “When I research about eating locally and eating healthy, and then I try to educate others, where can I tell them to go?”

For decades, there wouldn’t have been many answers to that question in rural Illinois. Today, there’s Epiphany Farms.

Labels: Bloomington Illinois, Epiphany Farms, farm to fork, Illinios farm, Illinois locavore, Ken Myszka, Mike Mustard, organic farm, Sacramento locavore, Stu Hummel, vegas chefs take on farming Illinois

I enter a darkened house on a run-down street. There are youth wearing black concert t-shirts, combat boots, and Chuck Taylors seated around the undecorated room rapidly ingesting the contents of their foil packets. Well-worn copies of the Sacramento News & Review scatter the floor.

I exchange money and wait while the dealer goes into another room. He returns with my own foil packets, the contents of which I have waited for all day. I’m fidgeting back and forth, anxious to get my hands on the product.

My secret stash: Vietnamese Sandwich on Baguette. The lethally delicious contents include fried tofu, shredded cabbage and carrots, scallions, cucumber, basil, cilantro, red bell pepper, jalapenos, plum sauce, cilantro-garlic vegennaise, and chili-garlic sauce.

Some folks travel to the grocery store for dinner. I prefer more heightened adventures. I hunt in the sandwich underground. Much like my clandestine pie buying, news of this Vietnamese baguette first came to me through a covert email forwarded from one foodie “in the know” to the next. It pays to know friends who eat well.

When the email arrived in my mailbox, it contained instructions to obtain this underground delight. There was an address, a name, and a narrow window of time in which to make the exchange.

Unlike the other anxious diners, I muster up some patience and drive my baguettes home to share with the hubby. With one crack of the foil seal, the heavy scent of chili-garlic sauce warms my nose. As I peel the foil further, chunks of ripe veggie topple out. This is a serious sandwich!

As I rush to the table to take a bite, I hesitate, grab an ice cold beer, and then settle in. My first bite sends a dance of flavor across the mouth. Crunchy bite of vegetables stand firm against a backdrop of soft, chewy baguette. There’s a burn of chili-garlic subdued by the clean and crisp combination of cilantro and mint. My lips burn. I take a swig of beer. Refreshed, I go in for another bite, and another, and before I realize it, my sandwich is gone. All that remains is the flame on my lips and that lustful longing when you’ve just tasted a good thing—and there’s nothing left.

Now, I sit anxiously at my computer, hitting the refresh key to my mailbox again and again. Surely, there must be word of another pick up. When it comes, I'll be ready! 

Labels: food adventure, food story, foodie, in the know, Sacramento foodie, Sacramento locavore, Sacramento News and Review, Sacramento vegetarian, sandwich, sandwich underground, Vietnamese baguette

Last July, I wrote a review for a documentary that has been sweeping America: Food, Inc. The movie has even enjoyed its moment in the limelight on Oprah. Food, Inc. is required viewing if you buy or eat food. Yep. That’s pretty much everybody. So, tune in. Trust me. You want to know what’s going on with our food system. And Food, Inc. leaves no question unanswered.
Thanks to our local PBS station, KVIE, you won’t even have to pay the $9 ticket price to see it. Just turn your TV dial from the comfort of your home. It airs twice this week: Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 10:00 P.M. and again on Sunday at 3:00 P.M.

I recommend hosting a gathering of friends to celebrate Earth Day and watch Food, Inc. together. This is the kind of movie that generates conversation, so make sure you have people around you to converse. You’ll all be ready to take action when the movie ends, so plan for that, too. For starters, you can use my handy guide to the farmers’ market. I have a feeling you’ll be shopping there more often.

You’ll probably come up with other great ideas to improve the way you eat. Write me. Comment on my blog. Share your views with all the locavores who gather here. We want to hear from you!

This incredible film moved my meat-eating husband to start ordering veggie burgers at our local brew pub. I can’t wait to hear how it inspires you.

Labels: documentary, Earth Day, farmers' market, Food Inc., food system, KVIE, locavore, PBS, Sacramento locavore