The Green Kitchen

The Gourmet documentary series Diary of a Foodie has an interesting installment called “The Green Kitchen.” Admittedly, it does at times play like a video you might have been shown in school when your teacher was hungover, it nonetheless features some really interesting farms and some great high-end food.

The most important thing that this episode highlights is that farmers and restaurants need each other! There is far too much disconnect between food growers, food preparers and food consumers. Although “local foods” is becoming a fad in some restaurants, I feel as though it’s often either a token gesture or an excuse to charge more for an otherwise unremarkable dish. But a truly symbiotic relationship between growers and restaurants can be incredibly beneficial for both parties – and, of course, it can result in more nutritious whole foods being served to the diner.

Watch “The Green Kitchen” here on Hulu.

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Kombucha scoby arrived!

At long last, my kombucha scoby (“symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast,” yeah I’m not making that shit up) arrived in the mail today! Hurrah! I’m pretty excited to brew my own kombucha for several reasons, not least of which is because it costs an arm and a leg in the supermarket and it’s essentially just a lot of tea fermented with probiotics. My friend Laura got me hooked on the stuff a few years ago, and I’ve been meaning to get on the stick about actually brewing it myself. Now I just need to get myself to Target and get a big ol’ glass jar to brew it in! I’ll let you know how it turns out…

Apprehension

I will admit to a certain amount of apprehension at the prospect of seeing the new documentary “Food, Inc.” A large part of this is to do with the fact that I am a meat eater, and I know that probably shouldn’t be. Everything that I have read and watched regarding the state of the meat industry has been both horrifying and disgusting. But, like buying clothes made in a sweatshop, it is simply so easy and so familiar that I find that I don’t change my ways.

And, to be honest, I enjoy meat. There is nothing like a perfectly cooked steak. Plus, there’s the whole bacon thing (um, hello, yeah, bacon. awesome.).  For now I’m content to limit consumption of meat to a few times a month, treating it as an occasional indulgence. But more and more it’s becoming harder to justify my consumption at all. Ethically sourced meat has been difficult for me to come by here in Tucson (especially now that my favorite farmer’s market has shut down). I’m thinking that the one-two punch of seeing “Food, Inc.” and reading The Face on Your Plate might be enough to finally put me over the edge into vegetarian territory. We’ll see….

Welcome

Hello, and welcome to the Ethical Epicure.

I began this blog as a means to both share ideas, resources and recipes for healthy, fresh, delicious food, as well as to help sort out my own tangled thoughts regarding food politics. More often than not, I find myself caught between two extremes – the foodie world, in which it can be very difficult to find sophisticated vegetarian and vegan food, and the ethical food movement, in which it can be difficult to find food that will truly appeal to a refined palate (my husband and I call this “hippie food” – the dreaded pot of unseasoned lentils and undercooked quinoa I frequently choked down during college).

Full disclosure: This is not a strictly vegetarian blog. I eat meat. At this point I consider myself mostly vegetarian, although I realize that to many people that’s like being a little pregnant. What can I say, I’m working on it. I am a cookbook collector, which is beginning to become an issue in my increasingly cramped kitchen. I try my best to eat organic, I’m not so great at eating local, I have no real good reason for eating meat other than inertia. This is to say, I am not perfect when it comes to the food issues I feel passionately about, and if you’re also working towards a greater level of awareness (better health, less meat consumption, more local foods, etc) I hope you’ll feel at home here.