Local Basil

MUCH THANKS to Harrison Brook Farm
for growing delicious basil we're using to make pesto.

If you live in or around Basking Ridge, Liberty Corner or Bernardsville, definitely check them out.

For more info, click here.

LOCAL PEACHES GROWN IN
BASKING RIDGE, NJ.

PICK YOUR OWN!
SEVERAL VARIETIES.

TOMATOES, APPLES & PUMPKINS COMING SOON...

FOR DIRECTIONS, CLICK HERE.

Corned Beef

Have you been experiencing a hitherto unidentified excitement in your life? SPOILER ALERT: We're currently brining our very own corned beef!!!

It's a 14 day brine & despite lots of peeking - we're 6 days into the process. For all you non-math whiz people = we'll be ready to move to cook on August 27th.

Set your watches, mark your calendars & program the VCR...
COUNTDOWN TO CORNED BEEF HAS BEGUN.

Growing local-farm movement expanding to meat

FROM CNN.COM

ELBERTON, Georgia (CNN) -- In a parking lot in suburban Atlanta, customers mill in the summer heat, waiting for freezer bags full of beef, pork, chicken and other meats.

Tim Young raises cattle, pigs, chicken, turkeys and more on his "beyond organic" farm.

The draw that pulled them away from their grocery store and to the tailgate of a packed freezer truck? The meat is from animals raised naturally on a small family farm just two hours away.

"By supporting local farmers, we are essentially voting to support the local economy," said Anthony Chan, a member of a group that gets its meat monthly from Nature's Harmony Farm in Elberton, Georgia.

Nature's Harmony is a member of a growing local-food movement, often referred to as Community-Supported Agriculture. Watch video of Nature's Harmony »

The CSAs, as they're called, are a model in which consumers pay for their food in advance and receive it directly from the farmer. Working much like a magazine subscription, customers pay for a period of usually at least six months and receive packages either at the farm or at established delivery locations like the one in Lawrenceville, Georgia.

Although thousands of farms have sprung up over the past two decades selling fruits and vegetables using the system, experts say there are probably only a few dozen that, like the Georgia farm, offer meat.

Farmers Tim and Liz Young raise cattle, pigs, chickens, turkeys and lambs on their 76-acre farm in northeast Georgia, near the South Carolina state line.

The couple describes their farming technique as "beyond organic," saying they use no artificial fertilizers, growth hormones or antibiotics and don't keep their animals penned up.

Don't Miss

• Find a community-supported farm
• Nature's Harmony Farm

Life on their property -- where cattle and sheep graze in open fields and chickens follow along to clean up after them -- looks much like the classic image of a family farm. But the couple say they consider themselves healers to both their customers and, according to their Web site, a food system that "had become a machine with little regard for food safety, food taste and animal welfare."

"People are becoming very disconnected from the food system," Liz Young said. "Buying from a local CSA or just shopping at a local farm, you can see where it's coming from. You can talk to the farmers and figure out how the animals or the produce is raised."

The couple has 50 subscribers, plus a waiting list, and say 2,000 people receive a newsletter on the farm's activities.

Members of the nation's handful of meat CSAs, and the thousands of others, offer a list of reasons.

The food is healthier and tastes better, they say. They like supporting their local economy. Eliminating cross-country delivery is better for the environment, as are the sustainable farming techniques the farmers tend to use.

"Being part of a CSA means that I know the first names of the people who are raising the meat I eat," said Andrew Johnson of Kansas City, Missouri, a member of the Parker Farms meat CSA in Richmond, Missouri. "Whereas, with the meat I buy from the grocery store, I don't know where it came from or who raised it."

Others say they appreciate that animals from the usually small family farms don't spend their lives in processing plants, conditions that advocates call inhumane.

Because CSA members deal with the farmers directly, they are able to visit the farms and see exactly how their food is produced. The transparency, they say, creates an incentive for farmers to raise their animals as naturally as possible.

"If we have any questions about how it is being grown, we can simply visit the farm ourselves," said Kristen Johnson, Andrew's wife.

Robert P. King, a professor of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, said that although community-supported agriculture "provides a good opportunity for farms that want to use sustainable practices to actually do well in the marketplace," it's nowhere close to challenging conventional agriculture's domination of the food market.

King said geographic availability can be limiting to CSAs. Generally, they require a rural area suitable for farming near an urban area that provide enough customers to make it work.

And then, King said, there's the cost. Operating on a smaller scale and avoiding mega-farm practices designed to cut costs and improve yields almost always mean higher prices.

A six-month Nature's Harmony membership ranges from $360, or $40 a month, for a poultry-only delivery to $840, or $140 a month, for 20 pounds of a variety of meats.

"Is it as cheap as the lowest-price chicken in the grocery store? Absolutely not," Tim Young said. "But with our prices and the prices of any sustainable farmer, you've got everything baked in: the cost to the environment, the cost to the health care system, the cost of producing that animal [in a humane way]."

Johnson said that any difference in prices at the Missouri farm, which charges a $1,150 annual fee, are worth it.

"I don't think it is significant, but if it does end up costing a bit more, it is still important to us to make this a priority," he said. "There are other expenses I am willing to give up rather than give up a safe, trusted food source."

The Youngs hope more people will get the chance to choose.

"There's a big, burgeoning demand out there for local meat, for local food, for organic foods and we'd like to see more famers step up to fill that demand," Tim Young said. "We're trying to do that but we can never meet the demand that's out there.

"We'd love to see more farmers try to do what we're doing."

Summer Grilling

Ok, so you've got a backyard full of friends and family,
the grill is hot & they're hungry.

Wanna grill like a champ but don't know your flank from your shank?
We offer up some universal grilling truths
from the masters to help you obtain grilling zen.

Gas vs. Charcoal? HOW DO I KNOW WHEN IT'S DONE???
How hot is too hot? & Secrets to Perfectly Grilled Corn.


Bobby Flay from SeriousEats.com

Flay on Gas vs. Charcoal: "I am on record many times as saying that I prefer the ease and consistency of gas grills. However, that doesn't mean that I don't use charcoal grills myself from time to time. Charcoal burns hotter than gas, allowing for a better sear and more flavor from the smoke; but I have never had a problem getting a really good sear on the gas grill and I also like to add flavor to my food when it's grilling (with spice rubs and glazes) and after it comes off the heat (with vinaigrettes or salsas)—so for me, it's a wash."

Testing for Doneness: "I prefer the touch test, which is really easy and makes total sense. As meat cooks, it becomes firmer and firmer to the touch. Rare meat feels spongy, medium meat feels springy, and well-done feels taut. This is true for pork, poultry, and steak-like fish such as tuna, salmon, and swordfish, too."

DETERMINING GRILL TEMP from HOWSTUFFWORKS.COM

How Hot Is It?
Your recipe says to heat the charcoal grill to 375°F. Like most cooks, you probably guess and then hope for the best. But there is a pretty reliable way to gauge the temperature of the coals without resorting to ripping the thermometer off the deck railing.

A quick and easy way to estimate the temperature of the coals is to hold the palm of your hand about four inches above the coals. Count the seconds you can hold your hand there before the heat forces you to pull it away. Then use the handy chart below to determine the temperature.­

Seconds	Coal Temperature
2	375°F or more
3	350° to 375°
4	300° to 350°
5	200° to 300°

GRILLING YOURSELF SOME CORN.
Grilling corn is easy. The trick is to not let it burn so don't walk away from the grill once you start, at least not for too long. Here is a great way you might want to try at home.

FROM RELUCTANTGOURMET.COM

Fresh Salmon

Happy to announce we're serving sustainably harvested wild Columbia River Salmon.
Get yours now or regret it for the rest of your life. Totally up to you.

Cherry Grove Farms BBQ

Freshniks:
In our ongoing efforts to bring you all things local and foodie friendly,
here's some info from our good friend Mikey Azara on an upcoming
BBQ at Cherry Grove Farms.

Sustainable Lawrence and Cherry Grove Farm present…

BBQ & Brew

A Post-Memorial Day Celebration of Sustainable Food!

Enjoy an amazing BBQ menu featuring Cherry's Grove Farm's sustainable meats, cheeses, and eggs... and beer tastings from Flying Fish Brewery! Live acoustic music too!

Where: Cherry Grove Farm

(3200 Lawrenceville Road, Lawrenceville, NJ)

When: Friday, May 29

Time: 5:30 - 8:00pm

Cost: $20* (with half the proceeds benefiting Sustainable Lawrence )

Charter Day redux

THANKS to ALL who made Charter Day such a success.

Unfortunately we did not win The Battle of the Bands - big time bummer.
Turns out you have to enter with a band to be considered.

Charter Day

Come join us this Saturday at Charter Day in Basking Ridge.
We'll be grillin' & Chillin. Stop by & have some Fresh. street food.
What are we serving? Great question.

We'll be serving:
Sausage sandwiches and chef lou's texican chix sandwich.

Q: What's Charter Day?
a: Charter Day commemorates the anniversary of the May 24, 1760 granting of a Charter by King George II of England, establishing Bernardston Township.

Local Food Event t his Friday

Wine & Cheese Event

at

Cherry Grove Farm

Friday April 24^th 7-9pm

Wine from

Hopewell Valley Vineyards

Bread and Live Music from

The Village Bakery

Appetizers made from

Cherry Grove Farm Products!

Try the following cheeses:

Asiago

Toma Primavera

Herdsman

Gouda

Shippetaukin Blue

Cherry Grove Farm

3200 Lawrenceville Rd

Lawrenceville, NJ 08648

(609)219-0053

Website:www.cherrygrovefarm.com

e-mail:cherrygrovefarm@verizon.net

Thanks to ALL the Freshniks that helped
make us #1 in Basking Ridge on UrbanSpoon.

Haven't voted yet? It's all good. Still plenty of
room on the Fresh bandwagon. Vote here.

Fresh 2009 Ice Cream Menu.
Dear loyal readers, you read it here first!

Feel free to use your exclusive knowledge of our new menu
in lieu of bon mots during witty drawing room repartee.

Sundaes.
Banana split - bananas, hot fudge, caramel and walnuts over vanilla and chocolate ice cream

Fruit cobbler - fresh baked cobbler topped with soft serve or frogurt

S'more - hot fudge, marshmallow and graham cracker pieces

Hot mess - brownie, hot fudge, caramel and walnuts

Frankenstein - create your own monster

Hand spun shakes.
Vanilla
Chocolate
Strawberry

Grasshopper - homemade mint syrup, hot fudge, oreo pieces and vanilla soft serve

Peaches & cream - homemade peach preserves and vanilla soft serve

Dirty monkey - hot fuge, bananas and vanilla soft serve

Blueberry pomegranate - fresh blueberries, pomegranate syrup and frogrut

Berries & cream - house made jam with your choice of soft serve or frogurt

Nutella - nutella and chocolate soft serve

Mocha - house blend coffee, chocolate syrup and soft serve

MYO - make your own

Mix ins.
Hot fudge
Caramel
Rainbow sprinkles
Seasonal fresh fruit
Granola
Bananas
Vahlrona chocolate chips
Walnuts
House jam
Oreo pieces
Peanut butter cups
Carob chips
Gummy bears

Al Freshco Dining

Q: I've heard on both Larry King Live and The Rachel Ray show that Fresh is going to have an outdoor cafe. Is that true? If so, when? Please say yes.

A: Dear Freshniks; as Oprah, The BBC and The Associated Press have all reported we will be opening our very own outdoor cafe here in The Hills. Outdoor seating begins April 2nd and runs through the fall.

Q:What do a Dirty Monkey, Frankenstein and an Egg Cream all have in common???
a: they're all on our new ice cream menu.

What's a Dirty Monkey? How did they get themselves a Frankenstein?
Where do they keep him?
What does he EAT???

All in good time, my dear Freshniks. All in good time.
Stay tuned. Or better still, come on in and let us show you.

Zone 7

Mikey Azzara, Friend of the Farmer & Friend of Fresh.

Linking Farms & Restaurants

by Kathleen McGinn Spring

Five years ago Mikey Azzara, then director of the Northeast Organic Farming Association and now owner of Zone 7, began holding meetings to bring organic farmers and chefs from fine dining restaurants together.. “There was a lot of networking,” says Azzara. “We did something like speed dating. Each farmer would have two minutes with each chef.”

The two groups are interdependent, especially as diners increasingly scrutinize menus in search of fresh, locally grown ingredients. The chefs know that they need the farmers, and vice versa. But Azzara found that the connection was not always being made.
Read more here

Roving Biker Gangs

Apparently we're the new biker hangout.
Take that Hogs n' Heifers.

Taste of the Chamber

Big thanks to everyone who came out to show us some love at the Taste of the Chamber!
Lots of fun seeing so many familiar faces and converting new Freshniks.

Missed us last night??? No sweat. We'll be at Healthy Kids' Day in Pleasant Valley Park on Saturday April 18th and Charter Day in Downtown Basking Ridge on May 16th. After that we're off to do Lollapalooza.

Team Fresh?!?!? Coming to a baseball diamond near you.
Fresh is a proud sponsor of our very own Basking Ridge Little League Team.

After finishing Spring Training they're barnstorming north playing
in the Coastal Prison League before a season debut in mid April.

Look for us in the Fresh Corporate Box.

Six Rules For Eating Wisely
and More...
Many of you are familiar with Michael Pollan,
Omnivore's Dilemma, and In Defense of Food.

What many of you may not know is that he's written
lots of other good articles - all of which are free to read on his site.

Definitely check them out here.

Visit Fresh. @ Healthy Kids Day


Healthy Kids Day 2009

Saturday, April 18th, from 1-4 p.m.
Pleasant Valley Park in Basking Ridge

Event is free and open to all.