Being BOLD on a Budget!

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Although eating locally-grown, organic foods is great for your health, it’s often tough on your wallet. Organic foods can cost much more than the same foods grown using conventional farming practices. But, there’s no need to fear! Below is a list of our top five tips to help you and your family be BOLD on a budget!

·         Start Your Own Organic Garden! Even if you live in a small apartment and don’t have the space to start a large outdoor garden, you can still set aside a small area in your kitchen or on your patio for a small herb garden.

·         Use Coupons! Quite a few organic food producers offer coupons to help customers save money when buying their products. You just have to know where to find them! Web sites such as Earth Fare, Food for Life, and Whole Foods Market offer lots of coupons that can be printed or used online to purchase organic foods.

·         Shop In-Season! If you’re trying to be BOLD without going over your weekly grocery budget, buying organic tomatoes in the middle of winter may not be the smartest idea. Tomatoes, as well as many other crops, are not in-season in Maryland during the certain months. Because supermarkets cannot purchase their organic tomatoes from local farmers, they have to import them from other countries. Importing crops from other countries is expensive, and supermarkets do not hesitate to pass the extra cost along to their customers. Buying only those foods that are in-season and can be purchased from local farmers will save you a lot of money at the register.

·         Buy in Bulk! Can’t imagine going through the winter months without tomatoes? Buy them (as well as other organic fruits and vegetables) in bulk when they are in-season. At home, can, dry, and pickle them for later use during those months when they are not in-season. Never canned fruits and vegetables before? Not a problem! Visit the National Center for Home Food Preservation web site for tips to help you get started.

·         Join a CSA! Organic foods purchased through participation in a community supported agriculture (CSA) program are often much cheaper than when purchased at the supermarket. To learn more about CSAs and how they work, read our past blog post.

So, there you have it! Our top five tips to help you and your family be BOLD on a budget. We hope you find them as helpful as we do. If you have any personal tips or tricks that might help others be BOLD on a budget, please share them in the “Comments” field below. 

BOLD Recipe of the Week: Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

Image Courtesy of localfoods.about.com

Nothing makes you feel more warm and fuzzy on a cold winter day than a nice bowl of chicken noodle soup. But you don’t need to run out to grocery store and pick up that signature red and white Campbell’s can to enjoy this family favorite. You can make it right in your very own kitchen using fresh, locally-grown organic ingredients. Check out the recipe below, reprinted from localfoods.about.com, for chicken noodle soup prepared the BOLD way!

Ingredients:

·         8 cups chicken broth, divided

·         2 stalks celery, thinly sliced

·         1 leek, white and light green parts thinly sliced (NOTE: Clean leek thoroughly to avoid gritty soup)

·         1 carrot, diced

·         2 cups shredded chicken meat

·         8 ounces egg noodles

·         Salt to taste

Directions:

1.       In a large soup pot over medium-high heat, warm ¼ cup chicken broth. Add celery, leeks, and carrots. Cook, stirring occasionally, until vegetables are softened, about 5 minutes. Add remaining broth. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook, undisturbed, until vegetables are tender, about 10 minutes.

2.       Meanwhile, bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook noodles until tender to the bite. Drain and set aside.

3.       Add chicken to soup and cook until heated through, about 2 minutes. Add cooked noodles and cook until head through, about 1 minute. Add salt to taste. Serve hot.

According to the web site, this recipe will make six ample servings of homemade chicken noodle soup. You can find celery, leeks, and carrots at any winter farmers’ market in the area. In addition, you can purchase organic chicken to use in this dish from Ferguson Family Farm, a farm located in Baltimore County that sells organic meat products to local residents and was recently spotlighted on this blog.

Do you have any BOLD recipes you would like to share with us? Just drop us a note in the “Comments” field and let us know your thoughts. You might even see your recipe featured on the blog! Also, please be sure to check out more winter recipes on localfoods.about.com, which features recipes for many winter-themed soups, entrees, desserts, and snacks that use locally-grown, organic foods as part of their ingredients.

Delicious-ly BOLD!

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Be BOLD Baltimore! loves reaching out to the community through Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and this blog. But, there’s an interesting little site that you might not have heard about that’s also helping us spread our message. It’s called delicious.com.

Started in 2003, Delicious is a popular social bookmarking web site. This means that campaigns like ours, as well as individual people like you, can create accounts and share fun, interesting links with followers. Basically, if you find a cool web site that you think other people should know about, you log into your Delicious account and post the link to that site on your page. People who are following you will see what you’ve posted and can check it out.

Also, if you share a lot of links about the same topic, like organic eating, you can pull those links together and create a “stack.” That way, if your followers are interested in a particular topic, they can see all of the links you have posted about that one topic in one place. The most interesting stacks are featured on the Delicious home page and shared with all of the site’s visitors.

Since we launched our campaign, Be BOLD Baltimore! has shared 28 links on Delicious. These links contain information about all things BOLD -- from the opening of local, organic eateries in the Baltimore area to how organic foods help promote weight loss.

We’ve also created three stacks, all of which have been featured on the Delicious home page. We have a stack about local organic markets and products, a stack about organic diets and weight loss, and a stack about Baltimore destinations and restaurants that offer foods prepared with locally-grown, organic ingredients.

So, if you want more information about what you can do to include more locally-grown, organic foods in your diet, check out our Delicious page.

Also, if you have a link you’d like to share, drop us a line in the “Comments” section. We’re more than happy to add your recommended links to our Delicious page.

The Dogwood Restaurant: A BOLD Fine Dining Choice

Image Courtesy of the Dogwood Restaurant

Last week, Be BOLD Baltimore! featured the Woodberry Kitchen on our blog as a BOLD dining opportunity for couples and families who want to keep their commitment to being BOLD, but also want to enjoy a nice evening out.

This week, we want to introduce you to the Dogwood Restaurant, a Hampden area restaurant that is proud to offer residents “sustainable American cuisine.” The Dogwood Restaurant uses natural ingredients in all of its meals and buys its ingredients from local farms whenever possible. It offers catering and private dining experiences, as well as a unique training program that up-and-coming local restaurant professionals should definitely look into.

The Dogwood Restaurant offers a wide range of locally-grown, organic dishes. During Baltimore Restaurant Week 2012, try a dinner featuring the daily soup selection and wild-caught Virginia catfish, and top it off with a slice of cranberry upside down cake for dessert. However, because the Dogwood Restaurant cooks only with foods that are in-season, its menu changes from time-to-time in order to make sure its customers are served nothing but the best, freshest foods the area has to offer. For the most up-to-date menu, visit the restaurant’s web site before you visit. 

Be BOLD Even When It’s Cold!

Many of you might be asking why the organizers of the Be BOLD Baltimore! campaign decided to start our campaign during the winter months – a time with few active farmers’ markets and few locally-grown foods available. However, as the video above shows, it is still possible to be BOLD during the coldest time of the year.

Produced by Watch Mojo, this two-minute video features an interview with the owner of the Green Panther, a restaurant that focuses on preparing meals with only locally-grown, organic ingredients. The video explains the benefits associated with eating locally-grown, organic foods and talks about the types of crops that thrive during the winter months.

So, what are you waiting for? Go pick-up some locally-grown, organic potatoes, squash, or leeks and make a BOLD and delicious meal your family won’t soon forget!

Community Supported Agriculture: The BOLD Way to Buy Food

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Although we’ve mentioned community supported agriculture (CSA) in previous posts, we haven’t actually talked about what CSAs really are or how they work. This post will give you some valuable information about these groups to help you determine if joining a CSA might be the right choice for you.

Becoming part of a community supported agriculture (CSA) group is one of the best investments you can make as part of your commitment to be BOLD. A CSA is formed when a group of people come together to pay a share of a farm’s expenses. In return, the farmer provides a box full of fruits, vegetables, and sometimes meat and dairy products to each individual every week. So, instead of paying for a certain number of pounds of fruits, vegetables, or beef, members of a CSA simply receive a weekly share of those crops that are in-season.

The farmer will either deliver these boxes directly to each group member’s home, or arrange a location at which each group member can pick-up his or her box. Most CSAs begin around April or May and last until September or October. Being supported by a CSA allows the farmer not to worry about profits, and instead focus on the quality of his or her crops and animals, as well as on excellent customer service.

CSAs began in Germany, Switzerland, and Japan in the early 1960s. People living in these countries were concerned about the increased development of land that had previously been used only for farming. They were worried that the increased development would cause the food they purchased in local supermarkets to be unsafe to eat. Groups of consumers and farmers came together to form partnerships in which the consumers would pay to fund local farms that were in danger of losing their land to development in exchange for a share of the farm’s crops each season. The idea of CSAs was brought to the North America in 1984 by Jan VanderTuin. 

So, there you have it. As a member of a CSA, you help support local farmers and improve the health of both you and your family with the continued purchase of delicious locally-grown, organic foods. For a list of Maryland farms that participate in CSAs, you can visit the Maryland Agriculture web site.

Local Farm Spotlight: Ferguson Family Farm

Image Courtesy of Ferguson Family Farm

Because finding organic meat products raised on local farms is likely the biggest challenge you will face in your quest to be BOLD, you will definitely want to check out Ferguson Family Farm. Owned and operated by Lynne Ferguson and her family, Ferguson Family Farm is located a short 30 minutes from Baltimore City in Parkton, Maryland.

Ferguson Family Farm is surrounded by the Pretty Boy Watershed and sells organic eggs, chicken, turkey, duck, Berkshire pork, and beef to local residents at area farmers’ markets. Lynne and her family are proud to offer these organic meat products raised free of growth hormones, antibiotics, and appetite stimulants.

Ferguson Family Farm is also part of a CSA. Through the farm’s CSA, a family can pay for a share of the farm’s products, and Lynne will deliver a certain amount of produce to the family every other week throughout the season. For more information about the farm, visit the Ferguson Family Farms web site, where you will find a brief history of the farm, current prices for meat products, cooking tips, and more.

BOLD Dining at the Woodberry Kitchen

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Many people think that including meals prepared with locally-grown, organic ingredients in their diets will mean an end to eating at their favorite restaurants. Goodbye Cheesecake Factory! Goodbye Outback Steakhouse! But that doesn’t have to be the case.

There are a number of restaurants in the Baltimore area that are committed to preparing all of their meals with locally-grown, organic ingredients. One restaurant that we at Be BOLD Baltimore! like to visit is the Woodberry Kitchen.

Unlike many restaurants that use frozen beef patties or vegetables loaded with preservatives, the Woodberry Kitchen features seasonal food choices from local farmers. All of the meat used in their meals is organic and the restaurant itself is committed to sustainable agriculture.

Their menu includes snacks, salads, soups, entrees, and desserts that everyone in your family will love. Try the warm skillet cornbread with the Springfield farm chicken and biscuit topped off with some apple pie for dessert. Not a fan of cornbread, chicken, or apple pie? Don’t worry! The Woodberry Kitchen’s menu has something for everyone. Check out the full menu on the Woodberry Kitchen web site.

The restaurant is located at 2010 Clipper Park Road, No, 126 in Baltimore, MD. Stop in one day and treat you and your family to a delicious locally-grown, organic meal (one you don’t even have to lift a finger to cook!).

BOLD Recipe of the Week: Chef Jamie Oliver's Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top

Image Courtesy of the Food Network

Preparing a meal using locally-grown, organic ingredients is not as tough as it may seem. To prove this, we at Be BOLD Baltimore! will be canvasing the Internet each week in search of the best recipes that feature locally-grown, organic ingredients and are also quick and easy to prepare. The recipe selected as the "BOLD Recipe of the Week" will be featured on this blog.

This week's "BOLD Recipe of the Week" is Butternut Squash Muffins with a Frosty Top and comes from Chef Jamie Oliver of the Food Network. The recipe was originally published in Chef Oliver's book Jamie at Home. It is reprinted below, as well as on the Food Network web site.

Ingredients:

• Muffins
• 14 ounces butternut squash, skin on, deseeded and roughly chopped
• 2-1/4 cups light soft brown sugar
• 4 large free-range or organic eggs
• Sea salt
• 2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour, unsifted
• 2 heaping teaspoons baking powder
• Handful of walnuts, chopped
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil
• Frosted Cream Topping
• 1 clementine, zested
• 1 lemon, zested
• 1/2 lemon, juiced
• 1/2 cup sour cream
• 2 heaping tablespoons icing sugar, sifted
• 1 vanilla bean, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out
• Lavender flowers or rose petals, optional

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line your muffin tins with paper cups.
2. Whiz the squash in a food processor until finely chopped. Add the sugar, and crack in the eggs. Add a pinch of salt, the flour, baking powder, walnuts, cinnamon and olive oil and whiz together until well beaten. you may need to pause the machine at some point to scrape the mix down the sides with a rubber spatula. Try not to overdo it with the mixing -- you want to just combine everything and no more.
3. Fill the paper cups with the muffin mixture. Bake in the preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes. Check to see whether they are cooked properly by sticking a wooden skewer or a knife right into one of the muffins -- if it comes out clean, they're done. If it's a bit sticky, pop them back into the oven for a little longer. Remove from the oven and leave the muffins to cool on a wire rack.
4. As soon as the muffins are in the oven, make your runny frosted topping. Place most of the clementine zest, all of the lemon zest and the lemon juice in a bowl. Add the sour cream, icing sugar and vanilla seeds and mix well. Taste and have a think about it -- adjust the amount of lemon juice or icing sugar to balance the sweet and sour. Put into the fridge until your muffins have cooled.down, then spoon the topping onto the muffins.
5. Serve on a lovely plate (on a cake stand if you're feeling elegant, or on a rustic slab if you're more of a hunter-gatherer type!), with the rest of the clementine zest sprinkled over. For an interesting flavor and look, a few dried lavender flowers or rose petals are fantastic. 

So, there you have it, our first "BOLD Recipe of the Week!" Many of the ingredients listed above, including the squash, eggs, and walnuts, can be purchased in-season at your local farmers' market. For those ingredients that cannot be purchased at the farmers' market, your local grocery store should carry an organic version.

Do you have any BOLD recipes you would like to share with us? Just drop us a note in the "Comments" field and let us know your thoughts. You might even see your recipe featured on the blog! Also, please be sure to check out the Food Network web site for many more delicious recipes, many of which can be prepared using locally-grown, organic versions of the ingredients listed.

Local Harvest: Your One-Stop-Shop for Locally-Grown, Organic Goods!

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Not sure where to begin when looking for the yummiest locally-grown, organic food in town? Check out Local Harvest. This web site provides information on farms, restaurants, grocery stores, and other food producers throughout the country that are committed to growing and selling organic food. Just type in your zip code to find the listings closest to you!

Local Harvest also features information about Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), a simple way for people to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. We’ll talk more about CSAs in another post, but feel free to check out the Local Harvest web site in the meantime for more information or to sign-up for a CSA.

Fast (and Healthy) Food!

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No matter how busy you are, it's easy to be BOLD! If you don't have time to prepare a meal using locally-grown, organic foods at home, there are a few fast food restaurants from which you can choose and still continue your commitment to being BOLD and eating at least one locally-grown, organic meal each day. Some of the restaurants that we at Be BOLD Baltimore! have relied on for the past few years are listed below:

• Panera Bread: Offers many healthy menu options, including organic chicken.
• Jason’s Deli: All meals are prepared using organic ingredients. 
• Au Bon Pain: Offers low calories soups, salads, and sandwiches made with whole grains and organic chicken.

Do you have any favorite fast (and healthy) food restaurants you would like to add to our list? Drop us a note in the "Comments" section.

The Official "Organic"

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Maryland Department of Agriculture

"Organic" has become somewhat of a buzz word today. A lot of people use the term, but very few know what it means. Although we briefly talked about what it means to be organic in a previous post, we thought all of our readers could benefit from a little more information.

So, what exactly is "organic"? The word often means a lot of things to a lot of people, but a quick trip to the Maryland Department of Agriculture web site provides us with a nice, official description of the word.

"Organic" is actually a legal term. Its standards are defined and governed by the United States Department of Agriculture. Organic food is produced by farmers who use of renewable resources and conserve soil and water to enhance the quality of the environment for future generations. 

Organic meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products come from animals that are given no antibiotics or growth hormones. Organic fruits and vegetables are produced without the use of conventional pesticides, man-made fertilizers or sewage sludge, bioengineering (including the GMOs we mentioned in a previous post), or ionizing radiation.

Before a product can be labeled "organic," a Government-approved certifier must inspect the farm where the food is grown to make sure the farmer is following all of the rules necessary to meet USDA organic standards. Companies that handle or process organic food before it arrives in your local supermarket or restaurant must be certified too. Organic certification is not a guarantee of quality or purity of the product. It is evidence of the farmer, producer, or manufacturer's adherence to an established system of agriculture and food production.

The Maryland Organic Certification Program is designed to provide assurance to consumers who purchase organic products that those products were grown according to the national organic standards. The Maryland Department of Agriculture is accredited by the USDA for compliance with the National Organic Program.

Being BOLD for Beginners!

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Did you know that farmers in the United States use more than 700 million pounds of pesticides on their crops each year? Did you know that many of these pesticides are unsafe for humans and can cause respiratory problems, neurological problems, and reproductive problems? Did you know that pesticides affect millions of peoples’ drinking water in the Chesapeake Bay region – OUR HOME! -- alone?

So, how can you help fight against the use of pesticides and improve your health, as well as the health of the local environment? Be BOLD!

Let’s start with the basics. What does it mean to eat locally-grown, organic food? If a food is labeled organic, does that mean it was grown on a local farm? If a food is locally grown, does that mean it’s also organic? Well, not necessarily.

In order for food to be certified organic, it must be processed according to some very strict standards set up by the United States’ government. If the food is a fruit or vegetable, this means that farmers cannot spray it with any man-made chemicals (including dangerous pesticides, fungicides, or insecticides). Farmers also cannot use seeds that contain genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to help protect against certain pests. In the same sense, for a meat or diary product to be certified organic, farmers cannot feed antibiotics or artificial growth hormones to the animals from which those products are produced.

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So, how do you know which foods have been certified organic and are free of all of those nasty chemicals? That’s simple. Just look for the official USDA Organic label (pictured here) on the foods you want to buy. If the label isn’t there, that food has not been certified organic by the government and the standards under which it was produced may be questionable.

But, just because that apple you’re eating had a USDA Organic label on its skin doesn’t mean that it was grown in a Baltimore County, Carroll County, or even a Frederick County orchard. Many people assume that eating organic food is the same thing as eating locally-grown food. It’s not. That organic apple could have come from an orchard in Europe, South America, or Asia! Where that apple was grown has nothing to do with the way it was grown.

Eating food grown on local farms not only helps decrease the amount of gas (and pollution) needed to get your food from the farm to your plate, but also increases the quality of the food you eat. You’ll notice meals prepared with ingredients bought at local farmers’ markets taste better and fresher than meals prepared with the same ingredients bought at the grocery store.

Now you have the basics and know what you need to do, go ahead and be BOLD! Prepare at least one of your meals each day using locally-grown, organic ingredients. Your body (and the environment) will thank you!

Welcome to Our Campaign!

 

Thank you for visiting the "Be BOLD Baltimore!" blog, where BOLD represents "Baltimoreans for Organic and Local Diets." We're just getting started, but stay tuned for many more interesting updates in the future. We'll be posting information about the benefits associated with eating locally-grown organic foods, organic recipes, and much more as part of our efforts to encourage Baltimore City residents to eat more locally-grown organic foods.

In the meantime, please check out our Facebook, Twitter, and social bookmarking web pages to learn more about our campaign and keep up-to-date with the latest news and events.