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Visit from Alice Niman
Ranch teams up with FarmToTable.org New
York Wine and Grassfed Meats November
Green Roof Symposium Planting
for Autumn
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Workspace
Walkthrough Workspace, the Earth Pledge office, was a popular destination on the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's recent Green Buildings tour. Farm
to Table Series Kicks Off with a Bang Best
Fed Worms in New York Celebrating
Rachel Carson |
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It
was an honor and a pleasure to host Alice Waters, celebrated chef and
owner of Chez Panisse in Berkeley, CA, and 15 French Culinary Institute
students at Earth Pledge. After an introduction to our programs and a
tour of our green roof organic kitchen garden, Alice prepared a delicious
herbal tisane while leading the group through a spirited discussion about
seasonal produce, grassfed meats, local food systems, farmers markets,
the detriments of fast food America, and the efforts being made nationwide
to keep the sustainable cuisine movement alive and thriving. |
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Niman Ranch teams up with Earth Pledge’s FarmToTable.org Order
delicious meats (Rib roasts, Pork Loin, Slab Bacon, Lamb Chops, and much
more) from Niman Ranch and support FarmToTable.org, your connection to
local, sustainable farmers and THE online spot for food news, educational
information, and tasty seasonal recipes. Every time you order from the Niman Ranch online market, Niman Ranch will donate 15% of each order to Earth Pledge. Just enter ep15 in the promotion code box at checkout. What better way to prepare for the holidays, give a useful gift or impress a special friend AND help promote local farmers. Niman Ranch meats are free-range, hormone and antibiotic-free, grown by independent family farmers, tender and truly yummy. Niman livestock is fed all-natural feed with no animal by-products. That's why you'll find Niman meats at great restaurants and shops from coast to coast, like The French Laundry, Chez Panisse, Lucques, Chez Fon Fon, Zingerman's, Magnolia Grill, Equinox, Olives, Gramercy Tavern, and Whole Foods Market. Both www.farmtotable.org and www.nimanranch.com offer great recipe ideas for lamb, beef, and pork. Enjoy!
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| New York Wine and Grassfed Meats Our classes sold out quickly but we still have a few spaces left in our upcoming lectures. The first, on November 12th at 6:30pm, is a New York wine course where we’ll be tasting 12 wines from the Hudson Valley, Fingerlakes and North and South Forks of Long Island while learning about how these local cool climate regions compare with their viticultural counterparts in Burgundy, Champagne and Germany. Jim Trezise of the New York Wine and Grape Foundation, Bob Ransom, of Vintage NY, and Jane Baxter Lynn of the Long Island Wine Council will lead us through this lively and informative tasting event. Delicious snacks will be served to compliment the wine. Right on the heels of our wine course is our Grassfed Meats lecture and tasting with Blue Hill’s chef Dan Barber and Skate Creek Farm’s Amy Kenyon. How and why are grassfed livestock different from those in feedlots? Is this meat tastier and healthier than it’s conventional counterpart? What’s the best way to cook grassfed meats? Why is the chef/farmer or consumer/farmer relationship compelling and exciting? We’ll answer all these questions and more on November 18th at 6:30pm. We’ll also talk about shopping and cooking local, seasonal foods, and how chef/farmer and consumer/farmer relationships are formed and maintained. Come sample Skate Creek Farm meats prepared by Blue Hill. This lecture includes take-home recipes from Skate Creek Farm and Blue Hill. Lectures take place at the Carriage House, 149 East 38th St. (Lex/3rd). Proceeds will support Earth Pledge's FarmToTable.org and our efforts to promote local, seasonal, sustainable agriculture and cuisine. Classes and lectures sell out fast, call 212-725-6611, x225 for more information and to sign up.
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Encouraged by the enormous success of our Green Roof Initiative, including recent coverage in the New York Times and the initiation of several partnerships to develop green roof projects, Earth Pledge is holding Greening Gotham's Rooftops, a two-day event devoted to creating a green roof plan for New York City. On November 22nd and 23rd, New York City and State officials will examine the rationale for rooftop greening of New York City and explore options for government support of green roofs. Come hear about some of the most innovative green roof projects currently being developed in North America, including some right here in New York City. Presenters will include Tom Liptan, Environmental Specialist with the City of Portland, Oregon; Jennifer Ward, Director of Planning at the Queens Botanical Gardens; Eric Shriner, a landscape architect for an "eco-roof" atop a slaughterhouse renovation project in Nashville, TN; and Don Russell of Ford Motor Company's Environmental Quality Office who will discuss the 10.4-acre living roof at Ford's River Rouge Center in Dearborn, Michigan. Highlighting
creative partnerships between public and private interests, the speakers
will be able to provide first hand accounts of the process of developing
green roof projects. The event will culminate in a panel discussion of
how to implement a green roof program in New York as part of a larger
vision of making it a more sustainable city. Join us as we explore new
possibilities for a greener New York. For more information, contact Colin Cheney, Green Roof Initiative Coordinator, at ccheney@earthpledge.org. To purchase tickets, call Christine at 212-725-6611, x225
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As fall comes, our roof plantings transition from red tomatoes, yellow peppers and purple eggplants to greens. We’ve planted a whole new crop of hearty, intensely flavorful autumn vegetables. Our garden now includes kale, broccoli rabe, mizuna, tatsoy, and dandelions. By adding new crops to our roof garden, we are extending the growing season on the roof and continuing to test the productivity of a variety of crops to find the right assortment for our garden. E. R. & Son Farm, a nearby New Jersey organic farm, provided us with our new fall vegetables. Many thanks to Ed Lidzbarski for his support. Ed’s certified organic produce, including delicious broccoli rabe, Jersey tomatoes, kale, melons, and baby bok choy is available at Whole Foods stores in Millburn, Ridgewood and Montclair, NJ, and at Whole Foods Chelsea, in New York. Call E. R. & Son Farm at (732) 521-2591 for further information.
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On Saturday, October 5, Earth Pledge opened its doors to the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association’s (NESEA) 2002 Green Buildings Open House. NESEA, a chapter of the American Solar Energy Association, is a regional membership organization focused on promoting and developing energy conserving and non-polluting renewable energy technologies. Over the course of the day, over a hundred people came to visit Workspace, our state-of-the-art, Murray Hill eco-office. Our offices feature many energy saving technologies including fiber optic, LED and solar powered lighting, full spectrum fluorescents, and eco-smart features like our green roof kitchen garden, recycled glass tabletops, VOC-free paint, and Energy Star appliances. We are proud to play a part in the demystification of green building, showing that a sustainable home or office can be beautiful, modern, and functional. Visit the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association at www.nesea.org
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| Farm to Table Series Kicks Off with a Bang Our Farm to Table cooking class and lecture series began with a delicious heap of easy fried chicken (Murray's free-roaming, drug-free chicken, of course) with autumn collard greens. Julia Lee, Saveur magazine’s test kitchen director, led students through a seasonal three-course American meal that celebrated autumn’s bounty with corn soufflé, roasted beets and their greens with homemade aioli, and apple cobbler. While preparing this feast, Julia kept an eye toward the theme of our series—sustainable cuisine—working with ingredients from the greenmarket and using everything to make something. Chicken bones were turned into stock. Beet greens were blanched and served with aioli. Whatever we couldn’t eat, we composted, including apple cores, eggshells, lemon rinds, and tough stems from collard greens. One of Julia’s standout dishes was Saveur’s apple cobbler. Pick up some apples at the Greenmarket and try it at home. |
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Oh, to be an Earth Pledge worm! The red wrigglers in our vermicomposting bins are enjoying food scraps from some of the best chefs in New York. Cooking class chefs Julia Lee (Saveur magazine), Sara Jenkins (Patio Dining), Rémy Fünfrock (Café Boulud), Karen DeMasco (Craft), and Mark Ladner (Lupa) are providing these lucky wrigglers with delicious morsels. In turn, we are provided with castings to use as fertilizer for our organic green roof kitchen garden. Castings are a great compliment to the cold processed, enyzmatically digested fish emulsion (called Organic Gem) that serves as our main fertilizer. In addition to 4-star snacks, all of our garden weedings, prunings, and daily kitchen waste are composted or vermicomposted. This closed loop system provides us with a unique way to demonstrate the symbiotic relationship between sustainable architecture and sustainable cuisine. |
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This September marked the 40th anniversary of the publication of Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, the seminal book that inspired the environmental movement of the 1960s and galvanized a generation. Silent Spring was one of the first calls for public awareness and action around dangerous and often under-researched chemicals that had been used without regard for their potential harm to wildlife, water, soil, and humans. The book was also a major factor in a number of policy changes including the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the eventual banning of the pesticide DDT in 1972, eight years after Carson’s death. Carson asks us to live responsibly and harmoniously in our natural world. Her meticulous research and clear, poetic prose makes the book powerful and essential.
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