Archive for the ‘local farm’ Category
Iowa Source: Iowa’s Best Restaurants 2010
Sunday, March 7th, 2010BEST LOCAL FOOD
Devotay
Iowa City, (319) 354-1001
Our locavore readers are devoted to dining at Devotay. They love the fact that the “fresh, innovative, and soul-satisfying” food on their plate is supporting the farmers in their community. As one voter put it, “They not only talk the talk of eating locally grown, they walk the walk.” Even the farmers can’t say enough good things about this restaurant: “As a local producer, Devotay is very easy to work with.”
At Devotay in Iowa City, Sous Chef Dan Knowles (left) and Executive Chef Kevin Butler (right) search out the best local ingredients for their seasonal menu.
Other Comments
• “Slow food with a commitment to the locavore.”
• “My mouth is watering just thinking about it.”
“My favorite restaurant. Great food, local ingredients whenever possible.”
Finalists
Other restaurants that are walking the locavore walk include Café Dodici, where everything is made from “fresh, wholesome, organic ingredients . . . nothing out of the can here.” Eating at New Pioneer Co-op, in Iowa City and Coralville, is always, “healthy, local, ethical, and delicious.” At Revelations in Fairfield, eating local is easy and delicious with their local spring-greens salads and sandwiches made on locally baked bread, made from locally grown grains. In Iowa City local farms are well represented on the menu at Motley Cow Café, and at the Red Avocado, where local veggies and grains are highlighted regularly.
See all Devotay’s fellow winners in the other categories at Iowa’s Best Restaurants 2010.
Valentine’s Day
Thursday, January 21st, 2010It’s that time again, the time when we here at Devotay begin our annual betting pool on how many guys (and yes it’s only guys) will call the afternoon of Valentine’s Day looking for a table for 2 at 7pm. And every year we a e forced to turn away the poor young suitors because we’d been booked solid a couple of weeks in advance.
Valentine’s at Devotay has seen 6 wedding proposals accepted since we started doing our special dinner here each Feb. 14, and it’s easy to see why: Cozy, romantic, specal atmosphere combined with great food served by the best crew in town (and yes we suppose perhaps who is doing the proposing might make a difference too).
As in the past, we’ll serve our full regular menu as usual, but in addition, we’ll be featuring this special menu, available a la carte or pris fixe with special wine parings (TBA). reserve now @ 319.354.1001 so you don’t end up a hash mark in our betting pool. To help with that, we’ll also serve our special Valentine’s menu on Saturday the 13th, so there are twice as many chances to get a table.
Devotay Valentine’s Day Dinner
Sunday, 14 February 2010
Amuse Bouche: Oyster Kilpatrick, fennel mousse – 5
Tapa: Bocadillos of shrimp with piparade – 8
Soup: Roasted beet borscht, tarragon crème fraîche – 6.5
Salad: Sourdough bread, jicama, sun-dried tomatoes, sherry-thyme vinaigrette – 6.5
Entrée: Martini trout, artichokes, spinach, Champagne cous cous – 25
OR
Stuffed Gianini Farms pheasant breast, brie, walnuts, prosciutto, mushroom wild rice, broccolini -29
Dessert: Mascarpone cheesecake, brandied cherries – 8
A la Carte as priced or pris fixe $58, $72 with paired wines to be announced. Tax and gratuity in addition
Edible Iowa River Valley – Preserving and Revitalizing the Flavors of the Heartland – Home
Sunday, July 26th, 2009
We could hear the bellowing long before we could see the bovine perpetrator, a new mother cow who had somehow managed to get on the wrong side of the barbed wire fence from the herd – and therefore her calf. She was not pleased.
While I opened one gate (and hid behind it), Aaron Whealey, vice president and chief cowboy of Seed Savers Exchange in Decorah, opened the other and encouraged the wayward mom to pass through both gates and rejoin the herd and her calf. With one last bellow at me as she passed, the family was reunited. The erstwhile orphan was one of 50 new calves expected this season from the Seed Savers Exchange herd of Ancient White Park Cattle. A tiny number in a state that regularly sees herds of thousands in their feedlots, but this is no ordinary herd, nor ordinary cow.
The Ancient White Park, also sometimes called “White Forest,” “White Horned,” “Wild White,” or simply “Park,” has a recorded history that goes back more than 800 years. Their first literary mention
comes from a 13th century Irish epic called Táin Bó Cúalnge or The Cattle Raid of Cooley:
It was at that time that the Morrígan daughter of Ernmas
from the fairy-mounds came to destroy Cú Chulainn, for she
had vowed on the Foray of Regamain that she would come
and destroy Cú Chulainn when he was fighting with a
mighty warrior on the Foray of Cúailnge. So the Morrígan
came there in the guise of a white, red-eared heifer accompanied
by fifty heifers, each pair linked together with a chain of
white bronze.
The author’s name is lost to history, and this noble breed nearly was too. In fact even today the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy lists the White Park as “critical,” a term that means that there are “Fewer than 200 annual registrations in the United States and estimated global population less than 2,000.” So the pair we had just helped reunite were important indeed. The 50 new calves at Seed Savers could be counted among the 500 expected at ranches in Virginia, Nebraska, and Montana. If they all get registered, they just might help the White Park move up a notch on the ALBC list of parameters from critical to the not-exactly-reassuring “threatened.” But nothing is sure when it comes to farming.
via Edible Iowa River Valley – Preserving and Revitalizing the Flavors of the Heartland – Home.
Benefits to shopping at farmers markets | DesMoinesRegister.com | The Des Moines Register
Sunday, July 5th, 2009Chef Kurt Michael Friese, author of “Slow Food in the Heartland” and owner of Devotay in Iowa City is another fan of buying locally. In the introduction to his book, he writes, “When I shake the hand that raised the food, I know the farmer cares about the food and the land. When I can still feel the field heat radiating from the tomato as I slice into it on a hot August afternoon, then I know I have something truly special to share with my guests.”
via Benefits to shopping at farmers markets | DesMoinesRegister.com | The Des Moines Register.
In the lush dirt of Iowa, community grows alongside veggies | Grist
Friday, May 8th, 2009I had the pleasure the other day of visiting ZJ Farms, the anchor of Local Harvest CSA, which is one of the biggest in the area. Farmer (and pillar of the local food scene hereabouts) Susan Jutz has been running this organic farm for all the years I’ve been buying food around here. A walk on her farm gives you an understanding of the paintings of Grant Wood.
In case you’re unfamiliar, CSA means community-supported agriculture—a new name for what family-scale farming used to be. These days it works very much like a magazine subscription. You pay up front, usually in the late winter when the farmer really needs it, and in return you share in the bounty throughout the season. In these parts the season lasts roughly 20 weeks, so for each of those weeks we’ll receive a box full of all the fresh goodness that’s in season right then, usually picked that same morning.
via In the lush dirt of Iowa, community grows alongside veggies | Grist.
Locavores are ruining food and free range pork will kill us | Grist
Monday, April 13th, 2009In a recent op-ed, in The New York Times gravely informed its readers that free-range pork is deadly stuff.
Despite evidence that incidence of trichinosis is very rare in the US—about 40 cases a year, and mostly caused by eating wild game (usually bear)-James E. McWilliams says that pork laced with the deadly parasite is just one example of how locavores are “endangering the future of food.” Mr. McWilliams, a history professor at Texas State University also wrote in the Times 2 years back that measuring food miles was bunk and that they were not an accurate measure of a food’s carbon footprint (again despite proof to the contrary, see this pdf from Rich Pirog at the Leopold Center, and these LTE responses). In addition, he likes to scare us with titles like this one from Slate: “Rusted Roots: Is organic agriculture polluting our food with heavy metals?”
via Locavores are ruining food and free range pork will kill us | Grist.
Welcome to the official site of One Million Gardens
Thursday, April 9th, 2009Victory for a Local Small Farm
Thursday, March 19th, 2009What follows is an announcement from Susan Jutz of ZJ Farms in Solon who, with help from many of you, was able to win on appeal against a Planning & Zoning ruling that would have shut down her on-farm activities. My deepest thanks to all of you who called and wrote. This is also an especially great victory for Laura Dowd and the great folks at Local Foods Connection, who helped drive the public outcry. -kmf
“Actually, when I read that phrase, that ‘Susan believes that everything she does on her farm is ag-related,’ I thought about that for a minute and I was just thinking, well, that can’t possibly be true. But the more I thought about it, I think it really is true – that if any of the side effects of anything she does serves to get the word out and reach any of her customers or potential customers, that’s good enough for me. It’s ag-related.”
Dave Parsons, Johnson County Board of Adjustment
The vote is in!
We are thrilled to announce that on March 18, 2009, in front of a standing room only crowd, the Johnson County Board of Adjustment voted in favor of Susan Jutz, granting her appeal by a vote of five to none. We need to extend a hearty thank you to the overwhelming number of people who took the time to talk to colleagues, write letters, attend the public hearing, and share their heartfelt stories with the Board. We were overwhelmed by the turnout. We received more than 80 letters of support including letters from Bill Northey, Secretary of Ag, Ray Hansen, ISU Value Added Program Director, the Johnson County Farm Bureau Board, Chris Petersen, Iowa Farmers Union and Joel Morton, Farm Aid. Your voices matter, you helped tell our story and clearly had an impact on the Board of Adjustment.
This ruling overturns Johnson County Planning and Zoning’s determination that Susan would need to apply for a Conditional Use Permit “for any, and all farm tours, and your harvest activities party… It appears that you have moved beyond normal agricultural uses into providing some kind of education on site, tourist tours, […] and special events.” Susan appealed to the County Board of Adjustment on the grounds that Planning and Zoning’s decision was a misinterpretation of the code – that ZJ Farm’s field days, farm tours, and other activities, including the annual harvest event, are consistent with the agricultural uses and activities protected in the Johnson County Unified Development Ordinance. The County Board of Adjustment voted in favor of that appeal.
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