Autumn, Jeri and last, but not least, Oprah

Photo: Blair Green

Our friend Autumn de Wilde holds up this month's Paper Magazine. She shot the cover and she shot this photo inside of Matt and I too because she is an editorial darling with a style that makes everyone feel comfortable and look effortlessly cool. She still uses film by the way, medium format, so she shoots with intention since she gets only 12 shots a roll. There's so much soul being in front of her lens, so much warmth. Here we are in her kitchen where she had freshly painted her cupboards with black chalkboard paint so Matt could draw on them with big fat chalk, and, man, he couldn't wait.

Our friend Jeri was there too. She had introduced us to Autumn who we didn't know that well back then, and so she came along for fun and I think to relax us as friends do. We ate together and drank some very special bottles of wine while listening to Louis Armstrong is how I remember it. 

We hadn't slept, Matt and I, not a wink. Two days before we had received a call from Oprah. Yes. Oprah. She had a last minute luncheon she was throwing and we were recommended to cook for it. We, every single person working at Heirloom (which was half the amount that work with us here now), gasped. She asked us to cook for one of the largest events we had done at that point, and with only 36 hours to prepare, when we had two others on the books already. Holy. Moly.

We rallied. We didn't sleep. We cooked our butts off. And it was friggin' awesome. She personally thanked us, grabbed the mike and announced to all of her associates at the launch of her O Network which is what the event was for that "Lasagna Cupcakes will change your life!" I may have cried. Pretty sure I did. It was thrilling. I mean... Oprah.

But we hadn't slept and Autumn had painted her cupboards so without the thought of showering because there was just no time, we stole away a quick trip home to at least grab some fresh (not stained) clothes and let our dogs out to take a speedy whizz, then raced over to Autumn's who calmed our frazzled adrenaline rush as if by black magic. That, folks, is just her gift, Autumn's. That's what she does. She somehow makes workaholics like us think of nothing else but the moment. She asked us to blink, as if she were asking us if we would like another glass of fine wine, and then there was the loud shutter and click and agile rewinding of a film camera with her graceful hands. It was the most enchanting evening. I look at these photos and it takes me back. I feel so proud of how far we've come since then and how much closer we are with Autumn and with Jeri and how I just don't care that I'm not wearing make-up and my hair's uncombed and my eyes are haggard and fatigued. We have built a business we feel constantly inspired by and excited about and we have made beautiful friendships because of it, and so my well seasoned vanity washes away when I see this lovely collection because it so perfectly captures our beginning.

Photos: Autumn de Wilde

Thank you our friend Autumn and thank you our friend Jeri. And if you should ever look upon our blog, thank you too, Oprah. You, all three of you, believed in us when we were only just getting started which is more powerful than sleep, it truly is.

Food Revolution Day

Photos: Tara Maxey

We love Jamie Oliver and his Food Revolution which is a movement that earnestly promotes eating local, fresh produce and works to teach kids how to cook healthy. In honor of Food Revolution Day, our Food Truck parked at The Gene Autry Farmer's Market today, and Matt showed a group of families how to make a salad dressing in less than three minutes... so why ever buy it in a bottle? Collect your fresh produce from your farmer's market, and then whip it up it! Here's how:

• PUT TOGETHER A BOWL OF GREENS

• PUT TOGETHER ANOTHER BOWL OF "GOODIES", here Matt used sliced apples, pitted cherries, cauliflower, cherry tomatoes, fresh peas, pumpkin seeds and herbs, but just use whatever you think is "good"!

• NOW FOR THE GARLIC MUSTARD DRESSING: 

In a small bowl, juice one lemon over one tablespoon dijon mustard 

Then "grate" 1/2 clove garlic on a microplane into the bowl or crush in a garlic press

Take a whisk to the small bowl and then slowly start to drizzle in about 2 oz Olive Oil as you whisk briskly (or you can just place it all in a jar and shake, shake, shake!) 

Add salt and pepper to taste, whisk or shake again 

• PLATE IT ALL TOGETHER:

Toss your delicious dressing with the Mixed Greens and also with the "Goodies", then plate Greens first, with the "Goodies" over it, making it high and pretty, like the shape of a pyramid. Add some cheese, here we added fresh Ricotta and ta-da! Done.

Sourcing Pork

After our visit to 5 Bar Beef, Frank Fitzpatrick recommended we take a trip up north to Paso Robles to visit a two acre pig ranch run by Jim Harris, formerly of Rancher's Alliance. It was a beautiful ride getting there with views of rolling hills and wineries. We even passed by a gigantic statue of James Dean memorializing the exact spot where he met his death on the two lane highway leading up to our destination. We checked our speed and slowed way down.

Once in the quaint little town near his ranch, we called Jim to come down and meet us, as there was no marker on his plot of land for us to identify where to enter for our visit. Once there, we followed Jim's lead, climbed the wood fence and essentially sat down in the dry grass (we did not get much rain this year in California) and observed these sizable beasts. I was struck by how calm they were with the 4 of us strangers just crashing their party, but Jim explained that they had never been mistreated or stressed in any way so they had no reason to be wary of us and no reason to be aggressive unless you messed with one of their babes. 

Noticeably absent was any stench whatsoever. These Duroc Pigs rolled around in mud to stay cool so they were covered in it but the aroma of mud is pleasant in an environment such as this. Jim explained that they foraged for acorns, grass and alfalfa, and the only feed these guys received was local, organic steam-rolled barley, so their waste isn't smelly at all. Also, these pigs have plenty of room to roam around, they are not overcrowded, so they are not standing in their own excrement for extended periods of time attracting insects and infection. Instead their waste is used to complete the circle and fertilize the grass that they eat. 

Parasites and worms are not a problem here and antibiotics are rarely, if ever, needed. These pigs have a healthy, natural diet and are not confined so they are naturally able to stave off diseases and infection that are rampant in the commercial pork industry. As Jim said, raising pigs "is not that complicated,(the commercial pork industry) makes it complicated."

Our country's biggest manufactures of pork rip piglets away from nursing at just a few weeks, their teeth clipped in half and their ears mutilated (all without any pain relief) because they are to be crammed into pens with many other piglets becoming intensely stressed from this confinement and are prone to fight (wouldn't you be?). They are never allowed to exercise and as a result to the hormones they are administered to grow faster, factory farmed pigs often develop arthritis and other severely painful joint problems.

Unlike corporate agriculture, Jim does not use hormones to expedite the growth of his pigs, and they are encouraged to nurse with their very protective mamas for several months. It takes about 8-12 months to come to market size, compared to 6 months when hormones are utilized. Not only will this younger age affect the development of flavor of the pork, but the hormones administered to the commercial pigs transfers to the food it yields.

I spent a good couple hours with my camera and these pigs. They were just as curious about me as I was about them and equally as nonthreatening. This gave me pause. We had bought one Jim's pigs after all and were on our way to pick it up at the slaughterhouse. I'm sorry that we eat you, I found myself saying to them over and over as I clicked away. Their eyes were so... soulful, honestly they were, and their intelligence is well documented. At least at this ranch and also for others like it, the pigs get 8 months or more to live really well, but this type of humane ranching can not fill the demand of our country's colossal pork cravings. So the solution to me is to eat less of it, much less of it. 

To the vegetarians who voiced their dismay on our Instagram Feed at my posting photos of "cute" pigs from this ranch that would "be killed" and then stopped following us: We are a catering company. It is unreasonable to think that omnivores we serve will ever be persuaded to stop eating meat, and furthermore, they are not the demons here, the shockingly cruel and massively polluting legal practices of factory farming is. If you have the time and energy to criticize those who eat meat, please be more productive and protest horrific practices in the food industry that most consumers are unaware of like our country's egregious and widespread use of gestation crates in commercial pork production (see video describing gestation crates here). 

Photos: Tara Maxey

It is exciting that we all have the power to make change by who we support when we purchase food. Eat less meat. Seek out restaurants and catering companies and farmer's markets that are conscience of where they source from and be prepared to pay more, humane ranching is more expensive. If you can't find any where you live, speak out. Your demand will spur the wheels to make change in our very broken food policy system.

Fremont Diner

When the owner of Hudson Ranch recommended that the three of us, Matt, Autumn and myself, spend our one lunch in Napa Valley at a diner, we were flummoxed. This was the land of upscale wineries and 5-Star restaurants and we wanted to live up our 24 hours there.... a diner, really? Yes, Lee Hudson affirmed in his commanding voice and well-worn cowboy boots. We had just watched him slaughter one of his piglets for us with a single knife jab and then completely gut it so we were not about to argue with the guy.  

Off we went to somewhere in between Napa and Sonoma just off a lonely highway where we found ourselves at Fremont Diner, and at first sight we fully anticipated James Dean to exit and barrel into the old pick-up parked out front leaving us to kick up dust and watch him go. This did not happen, but we were beginning to feel a little dreamy at this point and it felt like it could have. Once inside, vintage decor and smells of homey food all made from scratch surrounded us as a couple locals called out for the waitress by name, sweetly asking for a coffee refill. The graphic menu even listed "Local Purveyors and Friends" where the kitchen sourced their dairy and produce and meats from. 

We proceeded to order everything.

Oh there were light and flakey buttermilk biscuits with sausage and gravy, and there were crispy oysters and pickles and cornbread with honey butter, yes and a fried green tomato sandwich with bacon on sourdough and a too die for tortilla soup and brisket sandwich.... oh my! Oh! My! The deep-fried apple hand pie with house churned ice cream ransacked each of our polite demeanors as we all scampered for the last bite. This was the kind of place that made their own bread seven days a week, nothing fancy, nothing precious, just comforting and tremendously good. It made us feel like we were visiting our southern Grandmother who knew how to cook and loved every minute of it.  

Photos: Autumn de Wilde

With all due respect, don't cry (like we initially did), if you can't get a reservation at The French Laundry on the fly when taking a trip to Wine Country. Freemont Diner, with it's perfectly humble cooking, merits being on your destination dining radar. Our only regret is that we didn't get to go back for their brunch which we heard was even more memorable than the lunch we experienced. We're just going to have to make a trip back.

Choose 100% Grass-Fed Beef

As I have stressed before here, cattle fed an all grass and foraged diet for their entire life yields beef that has substantial health benefits. Even Dr Martha Grogen M.D. of the Mayo Clinic attests that grass fed beef, like the 100% Grass Fed Skirt Steak with Sunchokes and Green Garbanzos above, offers increased health benefits like:

• Less total fat
• More heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids 
• More conjugated linoleic acid, a type of fat that's thought to reduce heart disease and cancer risks
• More antioxidant vitamins, such as vitamin E 

In fact, the fat of grass fed beef is where the high levels of omega-3s are and that is why leading nutritionists recommend making it a regular part of your diet.

So why isn't everyone eating 100% grass-fed beef? Well, it's much more expensive, about 2-4 times the price of corn and grain fed beef. It's so much faster to plump up a cow with hormones and feed that has high sugar levels. A very disturbing fact is that the cheapest feed has fillers in it like bone meal, gross, rendering it very susceptible to disease which is combatted with lots of antibiotics that is ultimately transferred to the final product on your plate. 

The bottom line: you get what you pay for.

Cows foraging for their own food on pasture are much more lean so their beef lacks the marbling that characterizes cows raised on high sugar diets. It also lacks the cholesterol.

As a result of being more lean, cooking times for searing grass-fed beef must be shorter to avoid toughness so it is most delicious to serve rare as with this cap steak above that was simply coated in olive oil, salt and pepper and placed in a very hot, dry pan to give a beautiful crust on all sides. Due to cooking it so fast, it's tenderness remained intact.

Photos: Tara Maxey

We used a different method for this grass-fed rump roast. We kept all the healthy trimmings from the cow we got from 5 Bar Beef and sous vide it, low and slow, for 36 hours with the roast, then it was flash cooked in the oven at 500 F to get that utterly divine caramelization on the outside. 

Grass-fed beef gets a bad rap because it doesn't have the same flavor and richness as beef raised on a high sugar diet, but that's just because it's being cooked without taking into account how lean it is. The beef our kitchen prepared above tasted like butter, all of it. I'm not alone in loving it because it's been selling out on our Food Truck. 

Stop listening to me and come by Everson Royce tonight (and every Tuesday from 5-8) where we will be serving Beef Brisket so you can taste for yourself 100% grass-fed beef and nourish your body with omega-3s! I think you are going to be converted.

Support School Gardens

A couple of months ago we were approached to team up on a fundraiser for a high school garden. A high school what? Oh, I needed to hear more, so much more. It turns out that this school in Pasadena, John Muir High, not only educated David Lee Roth (class of '72) and Rodney King (Class of '87) but it currently has an operating edible garden that supports it's lunch program and a CSA. Get this, kids work the land here, creating a local food system and receive credit for PE. What?! I LOVE it, all of it! We scheduled a site visit and were blown away by how expansive the garden was so we knew we needed to go big and bring our Food Truck and invite as many people as possible to help raise money for this important program.

We brought in our most esteemed captain, Duane, to direct students who were assigned the task of serving guests during dinner service. They were all so excited and took a lot of pride in what they were doing. 

One of the kids, Malik, had a lot of fun helping Matt and Migs cook the dinner's 5 courses off our truck. All these students loved vegetables, a testament of what the experience of working in an urban garden has given them.

Photos: Tara Maxey

Wouldn't it be wonderful if more schools adopted a program like this? I think so too, but with fundamental aspects of our public school system being aggressively slashed, money for an urban garden is not going to emerge from our government. Programs like this depend on volunteers and the charitable donations of the community. The future of our food system relies on our youth valuing where it inherently comes from and understanding why organic farming is so critical to the health of our land. When you are asked to support a program like this, please do, not just for the kid who is asking but for our entire society as a whole.

S'more Cake Everybody

Photo: Monica Wang

Ahhh, so this is what's called a S'more Cake folks. I first made it here just for fun, and I got so many requests for it afterwards that we put it on our menu. It starts off with house made graham cookies that takes the place of some of the pastry flour. There's 4 layers of it sandwiched between tangy Valhrona ganache and then finished with toasted marshmallow cream. I yearn to make it inside out just because it would be so visually dramatic but I think everyone would miss the marshmallow cream (I know I would). Maybe next time I can serve it on the side in some way.....

See this cake on 100 Layer Cakelet here and on Emily Henderson's blog here.

100 % Grass Fed Beef

The first thing this here city slicker learned upon visiting 5 Bar Beef was that you never, I repeat, never, refer to a "ranch" as a "farm".  A farm grows produce, a ranch raises livestock, duh! I grew up eating Spam, everybody, I just had no idea.

Once that fact was established, I had the task of winning over the rancher who I had called a farmer, Frank Fitzpatrick, who was none too pleased by this reference but I proceeded anyway to ask him as many questions as I possibly could about his grass-fed cows before we had to high tail it back to the kitchen for about a zillion events we had going on that evening.

Like many people concerned with nutrition (I don't eat Spam anymore, thank you), I've heard the buzz word "grass-fed beef", I've seen the USDA "process verified" grass-fed labels at Whole Foods, read Dr Mercola say it was a safer way to consume Omega-3s than Mercury laden fish, but I didn't know much at all about the regulation of it. According to Frank, many ranches (not farms!) start their cattle on pasture and then "finish" them at feed lots where they eat, well, feed, and are fattened much faster and cheaper than if they are left to forage on pasture, their native diet. Grass-fed expert Jo Robinson says here that meat can qualify for a USDA grass-fed seal "even if animals are confined to a pen and fed hay for months out of the year. Also they can be given hormones and a steady diet of antibiotics." Hmmmm, very deceptive, don't you think? So essentially most "grass-fed" beef labeled as such really isn't if we are all being honest here because it lacks the substantial nutritional value associated with 100% grass-fed beef as well as the humane conditions that careful consumers typically accociate with that description.

So how do you really know if the beef you are getting is 100% grass-fed, antibiotic and hormone free? Well we decided to go to the sources ourselves. We want to learn and we want to support producers whose practices we respect. 5 Bar Beef was the first ranch we visited. After we got past the initial rancher/farmer thing, Frank proceeded to take us on an extensive tour of his rolling hill property and answered my probing questions with highly quotable answers like "My cows have only one bad day in their life." He also pointed out the pecking order of a group we were observing, how whenever there were cows laying, there would be others encircling them, standing as look outs for predators. Of course this instinctual behavior is obstructed in commercial farming where the mobility of livestock is severely inhibited or denied completely and stressful behavior ensues in it's place, you know, like prison. We must ask ourselves why do we as a society support such practices by purchasing meat raised in commercial/corportate farms.

What can we all do to make a difference? Ask questions! Make a demand at markets you frequent and the industry will listen. Support businesses who support small ranchers, trust me we will all talk about it because it is so much more expensive to buy meat raised humanely and we need to explain our price points. Understand that we can not feed our population by raising livestock humanely, it requires much land that we just don't have access to because we are overpopulated so eat less meat! Start off slow, one day a week, then two, and choose your meat with intelligence. We have purchasing power to make change in our very broken food policy system so please join us and start now.

Photos:  Tara Maxey

Yup, We Got Ourselves a Liquor License

COURSE 1

Grapefruit + Clementine Salad with Homegrown Smokey Passionfruit Vinaigrette, Sweet Peas, Miners Lettuce, + Shaved Fennel Dandelion Greens

COURSE 2

Chopped Charred Rapini + Buratta Raviolis with Fried Sage, Lemon Ash, Shaved Parmesan Cheese + Grated Lily's Farms Egg Yolks, Blended with Rapini Broth

COURSE 3, MAY 9

Smoked Domestic Lamb Leg Roast with Mc Grath Farms Beet Juice Ricotta Cavatelli, Saffron Liason, Smokey Jus, + Homegrown Braised Cabbage, Broccoli Leaves + Kale

Vegetarian Option Available

COURSE 3, MAY 10

White Chester Duo of Pork featuring House Cured Coppa + Shoulder Pastrami + Sous Vide Pork Leg Porchetta with Crispy Chiccaron served with Braised Green Agro Dolce, Cavolo Nero, +  Smashed Weiser Farms Potato Puree

Vegetarian Option Available

COURSE 4

White Chocolate Cake, Strawberry Sorbet, Pistachio Crumble, + Rhubarb Compote

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Welcome Back, Spring

Oh how delightful it is when spring rolls around and we get in fruits and vegetables that drastically change up the scenery and flavors from what winter had given us. Salads become juicier and more vibrant with cherries and baby tomatoes that burst in your mouth. 

And squash blossoms present themselves as we reimagine them fried, stuffed and served on their own or as a garnish to risotto with sweet peas from Mc Grath Farms. Oh bring it on, spring, we are ready to have some fun!