Restaurants in Ithaca, NY: A new google map features locations and videos

Looking for restaurants in Ithaca?  Check out this google map showing Ithaca area restaurant locations and a few videos.  It was created by 4UVIPs.

Announcement: Basic Tractor Maintenance for Women

An announcement from NOFA-NY:

Basic Tractor Maintenance for Women

Date: August 31, 2010
Location: Oechsner Farms, 1045 Trumbulls Corners Rd. Newfield (Tompkins County)
Time: 5:00pm-7:30pm

Thor Oechsner taught diesel and heavy equipment mechanics for seven years, operated his own repair shop and is now an organic field crop farmer in Newfield, NY. Join him, and a cohort of women in agriculture, to learn about the basics of preventative tractor maintenance. You will discuss different oils, oil change intervals and other maintenance that will keep your tractor running smoothly through the season. When you register, take a moment to tell us what you most want from this class, so Thor can tailor the instruction appropriately! Supported by the USDA Beginning Farmer and Rancher Project Grant Program.

From the Ithaca Journal: New website connects local farmers to bulk buyers

Today, the Ithaca Journal reports on Harvestation, the online farmers market for bulk buyers in Tompkins County and the Finger Lakes -- and a project I'm intimately involved with.

Visit the Harvestation website at harvestation.com

Monster zucchini? A couple ideas to tame the beast

When I returned home from running errands one day, I found a monster zucchini on my doorstep.  I hadn't grown any myself, and my neighbor asked if I'd like a huge one from her garden.  I said yes, not realizing that the thing would be the size of a... caveman club.

I accepted the challenge.  Here's what I made for dinner:

Stuffed Monster Zucchini
I cut the thing in half, then sliced it in half the long way and scooped out the seeds.  Then I made a filling: I mixed leftover sauteed ground beef and onions with a beaten egg, bread crumbs, corn cut off the cob, lots of parmesan cheese, and generous amounts of black pepper. I put the filling in the zuc and baked it all at 400F for about 40 minutes.  We served it with roasted potatoes.  Yum!

Zuke Feta Patties
I haven't tried this, but the folks at IthaCan (Tompkins County's home food preservers network) are getting together to make Zuke Feta Patties and freeze them for later use.  Sounds like a fantastic recipe and a great homemade convenience food.

Announcement: Country fair produce contest

Announcement: Country Fair Produce Contests

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

Contest Categories:

1. Most Beautiful Vegetable
2. Most Unusual Vegetable
3. Ugliest Vegetable
4. Largest Zucchini

Rules:
· Each entry must be clean, dry and free of anything that could add weight
· Stems must be trimmed to 1 inch
· Produce must have been grown by the exhibitor and not purchased in a store

General Contest Guidelines:
· All entries must be submitted between 10am and 12 noon on Sept. 11th to the Rhiner Fest produce contest booth, located on Inlet Island, old Taughannock Blvd, along with the exhibitor’s name, address, phone number and description of means used to grow the produce
· Judging will take place at 3pm
· Winners receive gift certificates to Agway and other prizes for runners up


Sponsored by the Ithaca Children’s Garden, New Roots Charter School, and Ithaca Agway
For more information, contact:
The History Center
607.273.8284
community@TheHistoryCenter.net
www.TheHistoryCenter.net

Chefs in the garden, gardeners in the kitchen: Kids cook at the Ithaca Children's Garden

Announcement:

Garden Chefs: Chinese Cooking
Sunday, August 15 from 1:00-2:30pm at Ithaca Children's Garden, Cass Park, Route 89

Garden Chefs: Chinese Cooking

Gardening, cooking, and culture combine in this innovative program in partnership with CERIS, the Cornell Educational Resource for International Studies. 6 international food plots will be grown in our Edible Garden and one or more will be highlighted during each session.

Join us in an exploration of Chinese vegetables growing at the Children's Garden. Learn how to make and then taste Chinese Cucumber Salad along with other hands-on activities.

Cost is $4 per child, $3 per child if from the same family. No need to register. For more information: lam26@cornell.edu, 272-2292 x186.

Garden Chefs meets every Sunday through mid-September, join us for more cooking fun at the Ithaca Children's Garden:

August 15: Chinese Cooking
August 22: Latin American Cooking
August 29: Southeast Asian Cooking
September 5: South Asian Cooking
September 12: European Cooking
September 19: Southeast Asian and African Cooking

Local Online Farmers Market Goes Live

A press release from Harvestation*

Harvestation, the new online farmers market, is now live and ready for area farmers to list products and buyers to make purchases. Register today!

Harvestation is designed specifically for customers looking to save money and time by buying in quantity from local farmers.

And, you can embed Harvestation into any website -- check out the badge styles available for your website.

*Note: Yours truly is the Outreach Coordinator.

Healthy Food For All gears up for 2010 Harvest Dinners

Harvest Dinners are gourmet events that feature local cuisine and raise money for subsidized CSA shares here in Ithaca and Tompkins County.  The subsidized CSA shares (community supported agriculture) provide weekly boxes of local veggies for families who cannot afford full-priced CSA memberships.

The first dinner of the 2010 season takes place at Early Morning Farm in Genoa on August 29 at 5pm.  The cost is $75 per person.  Chef Sean O'Brien, former owner of Willow Restaurant, will prepare the meal and pair the food with wine from Bet the Farm.

For a full schedule of the 2010 dinners and to purchase tickets, see the website.

Tops Friendly Markets must sell two Ithaca stores, says FTC

The Federal Trade Commission has ruled that Tops Markets to sell two stores in Ithaca in order to "protect consumers from the potential anticompetitive effects of Tops’ recent acquisition of the bankrupt Penn Traffic Company supermarket chain," known locally as P&C Foods, according to a press release. The Ithaca stores expected to be affected are at East Hill Plaza and Triphammer Road.

However, the decision is open to public comment until September 7, 2010, after which the Commission will decide whether to make it final. Comments should be sent to: FTC, Office of the Secretary, 600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20580. To submit a comment electronically, use this address: https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/penntraffic/.

According to the press release:

In November 2009, Penn Traffic filed for bankruptcy and, subsequently, Tops bought all of Penn Traffic’s 79 supermarkets in the northeast for approximately $85 million. The acquisition raised competition issues in several areas of New York and Pennsylvania.

"Through its investigation, the FTC staff found five local areas where competition was an issue: Bath, Cortland, Ithaca, and Lockport, New York; and Sayre, Pennsylvania. In these markets, absent a remedy, staff found that Tops’ acquisition of Penn Traffic would be anticompetitive and likely would lead to higher grocery prices for consumers. In each market there are no more than three supermarkets within a 10- to 15-mile area. Consistent with past investigations, staff concluded that other chains such as Aldi’s, buying clubs, and other food stores would not constrain prices after the merger was completed.

"Further, in many of these geographic areas, staff found that new competitors were unlikely to enter the market quickly enough to prevent the acquisition’s anticompetitive effects. And, in those markets where entry might occur in the future, staff found that despite the new competition, the markets would still be highly concentrated and the transaction, therefore, anticompetitive.

"The settlement order announced today requires Tops to sell seven Penn Traffic supermarkets to an FTC-approved buyer within three months." (in Bath, Cortland, Ithaca (two stores), and Lockport, New York; and Sayre, Pennsylvania (two stores)

Too busy to cook? Local chefs cook and deliver some tasty dishes

No need to turn to a tired take-out menu if you're too busy to cook.  Two local businesses offer easy dinner solutions.

A new business, Nourish Me Now, delivers home cooked meals on ice ready to heat up. Chicken and biscuits, moroccan chickpea and lamb stew, arugula salad, and sesame-vanilla cake are just a few of the offerings.  Delivery is available to Ithaca on Tuesday afternoon-early evening, Aurora on Wednesday afternoon, and Lansing deliveries on Tuesdays. The business was started by Jen Destefano, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America and the Cornell University School of Agriculture & Life Sciences, and she is joined by Karen Van-Stewart, formerly of Hope's Way Cafe.

Rose's Home Dish offers dinners like chicken and shrimp satay or tofu risotto delivered to addresses in Ithaca on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. Chef Rose Arena trained at the Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon and worked at several restaurants before coming to Ithaca. For more info, check out the Ithaca Times article about the business.

Cooking with Eggs on Sunday

This week, local food blogger Amy from Eggs on Sunday offers up a fantastic corn, bacon, and basil pizza recipe that features seasonal ingredients.

Ithaca's Crop Mob Descends on Sweetland Farm

A guest post from Rachel Firak, moderator of Ithaca's Crop Mob, a group of volunteers that helps out at local farms:

July's oppressive heat and humidity came to a cool, breezy end last Saturday morning. The 70-degree temperatures, along with mostly sunny skies and a cool breeze, welcomed 15 crop mobbers to Sweet Land Farm in Trumansburg at 9 a.m. for some midsummer crop maintenance fun!

Paul, one of Sweet Land's farmers, began by giving us a tour of their CSA distribution site and a quick description of their farm. Paul Martin and Evangeline Sarat and their two children take care of 34 acres on Route 96, just outside of downtown Trumansburg. Their CSA-only farm currently has 400 members for its summer CSA; Sweet Land also has a winter CSA during the colder months. A third of their tillable acreage is devoted to growing a great diversity of annual vegetables, and they also have strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, and flowers, which, along with some vegetables, are available as U-Pick options for their members. Sweet Land adheres to the NOFA-NY Farmers Pledge, a document that advocates principles of moral integrity and environmental and social sustainability.

For our first task, we headed out to the strawberry beds, and in passing met Sweet Land's chickens, which were clucking and pecking around in their large pen (Sweetland also distributes egg shares). Strawberry season was in June, but strawberries are perennials, and will continue to grow and produce for a couple of years before being pulled up to allow newer plants to take their place. Splitting up two to a bed, we got through about seven beds before "Good enough!" was called and we moved on to weed leeks. 

Leeks, a mild member of the allium family, require hilling (moving soil up around the plants) to produce a longer white spear. These leeks had been hilled, their long stems underground and their leaves poking out from their neat mounds. Evangeline explained that they had already been dust mulched, a process where light cultivation around crops prevents the top layer of soil from caking. This disturbs capillary action to the surface, conserving water in the deeper layers of soil and preventing germination of weed seeds. The weeds that remained were few and far between. "This is the true power of the crop mob!" Paul laughed as 17 pairs of hands made quick work of the leek beds, each of us pulling 6 or 7 tall amaranth plants or grasses before the task was done.

Next we headed to the back fields, the site of this summer's garlic harvest. The garlic had all been harvested by now, but what remained were a few tall seed-bearing weeds. Our goal: get these plants out before they went to seed, thus minimizing weeding the next time around. Carrying big buckets made out of cut-open 50-gallon barrels with handles at either end, we picked up 3- and 4-feet tall lambsquarters and ladysthumb smartweed (both edible) and deposited them at the end of the dirt roadside for later collection. Some of us also found long-lost heads of garlic! From there, we quickly visited the celeriac beds, which were mulched with biodegradable corn-based black plastic, and pulled the occasional weed that had made its way up through the mulch, then we tackled another bed of leeks. Our final task was thinning golden beets (with the occasional elusive white beet thrown in). Beets are direct-seeded, which often leaves the rows too crowded for proper growth. Thinning- reducing their numbers and giving them space to grow- would give Sweet Land a bigger, healthier beet crop. Some of us took home beet greens and baby beets.

After all was weeded, we sat down to an amazing buffet of Sweetland vegetables, prepared by Katie Church of the Full Plate Farm Collective (Ithaca Crop Mob's farmer organizer)! The menu: vegetable rolls, marinated kale salad, taboulleh, cucumber-yogurt salad, beets with truffle oil, and brownies. Sweet Land also provided an omnivore's salad with local beef from High Point Farms. Thanks to Katie, Paul and Evangeline for this delicious lunch!

Saturday's lovely success wouldn't have been possible without all of the volunteers! Many many thanks to our Crop Mob for the energy, enthusiasm and great conversation. We also want to thank Paul and Evangeline of Sweet Land for being wonderful hosts and great educators.

Our previously planned August Crop Mob at On Warren Pond Farm was cancelled, as Jill Swenson is selling her farm. However, we are looking into other options, and should be able to have another August Crop Mob at a different farm. Details soon to come!

Thanks again, and hope to see you next time!

Rachel

Moderator, Ithaca Crop Mob

Farm and food news recap

Food and Farm news from the Ithaca Journal:

Farm City Day this Saturday

Farmers Market Coupons offered for senior citizens

Chemung County Fair begins today

The Ithaca Farm Project connects students and farms

Cayuga Wine Trail Wine and Herb, Grow and Show Events

Event: Equipment for Small-Scale Vegetable Operations

An announcement from Organic at Cornell and NOFA-NY:

Equipment for Small-Scale Vegetable Operations

Getting maximum efficiency and increasing yields with practical tools for organic and small-scale growers

Thursday, Aug. 5, 2010--- RAIN or SHINE

4-7 PM in Freeville, NY (Tompkins Co.)

Organic vegetable research at Cornell means lots of equipment in one place!  Come and see demonstrations of specialized equipment appropriate for small scale production.  Some equipment is available for growers to borrow and experiment with on their own farms (contact info provided at the field day).

Please join us for these demonstrations:

·         Weed management and ridge-till systems

·         Plant breeding, selection and seed saving

·         Potato variety trials and harvest equipment

·         Reduced tillage and mulch moving systems

This event is FREE and open to the public

Refreshments provided

Contact Melissa Madden at (607) 351 3313 or email mam233@cornell.edu

Address and directions:  Homer C. Thompson Vegetable Research Farm,

133 Fall Creek Rd., Freeville, NY 13068.

• From the Cornell campus-Ithaca, follow Rt. 366 to Freeville and go straight through the 4-way stop to the farm about 1 mile beyond Freeville.  Turn left at Ed Hill Road and take a right onto the farm lane out to the organic research farm (signs provided). 
• From Syracuse: follow 81 South for 28 miles and exit onto Main Street. Turn left at 281 South/west. Turn right at County Rd. 34B/McLean Rd. Continue on County Rd. 105/McLean Rd for 5.5 miles, and turn right on Ed Hill Rd.  Take the right onto the farm lane to go out to the organic research farm (signs provided).
• From Binghamton: follow 81 North and take Exit 9. Turn left at NY 221 S, and then an immediate right onto US 11 N. Turn left at NY 392, and turn right at North St. Take the third left onto NY 38/Freeville Rd. Continue on Herman Rd. Turn right at 105/Fall Creek Rd., and turn right on Ed Hill Rd.  Take the right onto the farm lane to go out to the organic research farm (signs provided).
  
  Check us out at http://www.cuaes.cornell.edu/cals/cuaes/ag-operations/freeville-farm/