Buy Fresh Buy Local Harvest Party

October 13, 2013 marked the Buy Fresh Buy Local-Iowa Chapter's 4th annual Harvest Party.  What a fantastic event!




Buy Fresh Buy Local is a campaign project of the Drake University Law Center that helps connect the community to local, farm-fresh food. Local farms, businesses and restaurants can become members to help support the project and connect with the public about getting easy access to local, fresh products.





The event is held at the Olmstead building at Drake University.  Drake University is home to the organization and there are lots of opportunities for students to get involved in the project.




The Harvest Party is Buy Fresh Buy Local's yearly fundraiser and what a party it is!  Supporting farms, restaurants and businesses donate local food items and time for preparation and serving. The public can buy tickets to the event to partake in lots of dishes prepared for them from all of these fresh, local ingredients.  There is a raffle with donated items from businesses as well, and all of the profits go to support this great organization. Tickets were $20 or $50 per family.






Part of the fun is getting to chat with farmers and business owners about their products and put a face with the person behind what you're eating.  It's so nice to know where your food is coming from and that it is the very best to be feeding yourself and your family.

Sponsors for the event include: The Des Moines Farmer's Market, Maytag Dairy Farms, Kitchen Collage, Campbell's Nutrition, Devour Des Moines, HoQ Restaurant, Drake University, Iowa Heartland Resource Conservation & Development, The Richard Deming Foundation and Sodexo.

Follow Buy Fresh Buy Local Greater Des Moines on Facebook for updates about upcoming events and about next year's Harvest Party, because you don't want to miss it!




Here is the wonderful menu for the evening (just click on it to view it larger).  Everything was fantastic!  About 200 people purchased tickets to the event and it has gotten bigger and better every year!  --------------->





Some of our favorite dishes of the evening included lamb meatballs and beet chocolate cake.  There are too many to mention, but we loved them all!




Eat, Play, Love Des Moines is hosting an event on November 7, 2013 at Confluence Brewing Company to benefit Buy Fresh Buy Local! This free, family-friendly event will offer local vendors and lots of fun and prizes Click here for more info!  Come out for dinner to support this awesome organization and eat some more great local food!

Gateway Market...and more!

So normally I stop into Gateway Market Cafe just off of the MLK exit off of 235 to eat a leisurely lunch of a panini and soup or lobster mac & cheese and salad or sometimes the pad thai, yum.  Just about everything in the cafe is awesome.  They also serve breakfast everyday which is fabulous because there aren't a ton of breakfast places on this side of town.

Anyway, this particular day the temperature outside was upwards of 104 degrees and I had some wonderful Cleverly Farms tomatoes and some goat cheese that I got at the Cheese Shop the night before and I was itching to make something yummy, but that was easy and didn't require much cooking on this already toasty day.

By the way, if you haven't taken a class at the Cheese Shop yet, you really must.  This particular evening, Larry from Cleverly Farms was showcasing his tomatoes and it was amazing.  All of the classes include wine and/or beer pairings and a cheese tray all about $30 or so, a steal!!  (See the top left photo for photos from the class).

So from Gateway I picked up some bread, Niman Ranch maple bacon, (yum), lettuce, and of course some Thelma's Treats Ice Cream sandwiches for dessert.  At 104 degrees, how can you not eat ice cream?!

Anyway, I'm sure you can guess, I made BLT panini's.  I fried assembled my bacon, cheese, lettuce and tomatoes and in the same pan heated my sandwiches on both sides. Heaven!

Super easy, super fresh and super amazing!  So there you go.  All of my favorite places for the week include Cleverly Farms for the amazing tomatoes (which I now a fan of even though for 30 years I've claimed to not like tomatoes), The Cheese Shop (My personal Disneyland) and Gateway market for providing me with a plethora of my favorite Farmer's Market ingredients that I can get anytime of day, everyday.  

Center Grove Orchard & Howell's Pumpkin Patch

I LOVE fall and everything about it from pumpkin spice lattes to cider donuts to apple pies....ok....I guess there is non-food stuff I like about it too, like visiting the pumpkin patch!



We are so lucky in Des Moines to live pretty close to some awesome farms that get decked out for the fall and provide some pretty great family fun.




My two favorite places to visit are Center Grove Orchard in Cambridge and Howell's Pumpkin Patch in Cumming.  Both are less than an hour from pretty much anywhere in the metro.  They both offer corn pools, tractor rides, duck races, hay rides, pumpkin patches, corn mazes, slides and much more!  Including apple slushes and cider donuts! YUM!



You can ride out to the pumpkin patch and pick your own pumpkins or pick from stashes ready to go.  At Center Grove you can pick your own apples too.  They both offer farm animal petting areas as well.





At Center Grove you can jump on the giant jumping pillow and sling shot apples.  Both have snack bars available.




Both locations are fun for any age and I would totally recommend making both stops this fall.  Howell's often has pony rides for kids.




Center Grove farm yard opens up on September 7th! Yay!  Pricing is $9.95 during the weekend and $7.95 on weekdays.  Kids 3 and under are free.




Howell's opens on September 21st and admission is $8.




Both locations actually offer birthday party packages!  How fun for a kid with a fall birthday.  And there are special discounts for school tours too.



There is also a farm in Ankeny called Williamson's Pumpkin Paradise that is FREE everyday.  We haven't been there yet, but it's on our to-do list for this fall!  They open on September 29th this year.




Wherever you visit you are sure to have a lot of fun.  Enjoy the Fall!

HoQ

We had an amazing dinner at HoQ restaurant last week.  The owners Suman and Cynthia Hoque are super nice and I just love the farm to table movement they support.  Just about every ingredient in every meal is sourced by local and/or organic farmers and most items are naturally gluten-free.  They also offer local beer and wine from the bar.

The restaurant is simple and contemporary and white linen table-clothes give it a fancy feel, perfect for a date-night or celebration.  Cynthia says don't hesitate to bring in kids though, Suman can fry up a mean grilled-cheese sandwich!

On this particular evening, my husband and I enjoyed Amuse-bouche of eggplant with tatziki sauce and pickled asparagus and cucumbers.  Very tasty and a lovely pre-cursor to our appetizer of "Pork Love".  A juicy piece of pork atop cauliflower au gratin.  It was very good and the cheesy au gratin was a perfect pair with the seasoned pork.

For main courses I ordered the braised beef with smashed potatoes and green beans.  The seasonings they use are out of this world.  Fresh chives were dominant in the potatoes and it was fantastic.  Josh ordered the short rib with forbidden rice and kimchee and couldn't believe how tender it was.  He enjoyed the "forbidden rice"accompaniment, but couldn't pinpoint the overwhelming flavor.  We asked after the meal what was in the forbidden rice and come to find the dark color comes from duck liver!  Who knew?  Amazing bold flavors in all of our dishes.

We ended the meal with Suman's homemade ice cream trio.  I was most excited about the salted caramel, but the chocolate and vanilla were equally as smooth, creamy and addictive as were the homemade shortbread cookies that came with.

They're open Monday thru Saturday at 11am and they also offer a Sunday brunch which I can't wait to try.  They offer vegetarian options daily and are very open to altering meals to taste or food allergies.  Love this place!

Iowa State Fair

The Fair is here!! The Iowa State Fair funs August 8th to 18th in 2013.  From cows made from butter to everything you ever wanted that you didn't know you'd ever want on-a-stick, it's fair time!

Some people like to avoid the craziness, but I like to dive right in.  Have you ever seen so many mullets in one place before?

Kids love it too.  There are the over-priced carnival-rides of course.  But, if you can keep your kid occupied with the plethora of animals, the free give-aways (mostly fake tattoos that they want to be covered with from head to toe) in the varied industries building from hundreds of vendors and the little hands on the farm exhibit which is one of our favorites, you can possibly avoid spending too long in line for a $4 ride that they may or may not puke on. The hands on the farm exhibit is where kids go through the motions of being a farmer and milking a (fake) cow to earn (fake) money to buy something in the store at the end.  I'd say kids at least up to age 9 or 10 would like this.

And then there is the food....ahhhh the glorious food.  Three things I never miss are 1. A pork chop on a stick.  That hard to find french cut of goodness smothered with BBQ sauce. 2. A frozen apple cider slush.  Overly sweet, yet tart and perfect for the hot days at the fair.  They sell them in the same building where you find the butter cow and get your egg on a stick.  3. those darn buckets of chocolate chips cookies that you can't resist.  Why are they so good!? With so many choices, why would we pick cookies?  Because they are that good!  We finally came to our senses that we don't have to eat the whole darn bucket in the few days following the fair, they actually freeze really well and pulling out a Ziploc bag of cookies 3 months after the fair and popping them in the microwave for 20 seconds is like re-living the fair all over again.  Do it I tell you.

Well, that's all you are going to get about the fair from me....I am far from a fair expert, but I know there are some of you out there with tried and true tips, like "make sure to come on Eat Side night" so, please share with the rest of us what YOUR favorite parts/foods of the fair are.  Thanks!