Local Food

Good Morning -

I feel like I was just blogging. Actually, I was, since I blogged yesterday's post in the evening before bed and now it's the morning and I'm blogging today's post before work.

And what do we have going on with our Virgen this morning? It's a postcard we got in our bill at dinner last night, advertising the Denver Independent Network of Restaurants (DINR - clever). Below that is a card from the particular restaurant in the network where we ate our dinner last night - Steuben's.

Denver is growing, growing, growing, so it's extra good that they've set this up as a support for restaurants that aren't chains (which love to move in when a place is growing). As you can see from the Steuben's card, local doesn't mean "historical" (they opened in 2006), but it does mean that the dollars spent stay (mostly) here and support our general area rather than going to headquarters somewhere.

The food and atmosphere at Steuben's was great - it's where I had the aforementioned fish and chips last night. Casual atmosphere, solid ingredients, and a nice range of foods from homemade mac 'n' cheese with breadcrumbs on top to a gold and red beet salad dressed in balsamic on a bed of roasted mushrooms with a local (Haystack) goat cheese crumbled on top.

I love food and think it's so powerful and important. I talked some with my new boss about this the other morning as we planned a meeting with some people and decided what foods to order. She said that she likes to go buffet so that there is more likely a chance to meet everyone's diverse eating needs. I concurred, saying that food creates community so one shouldn't offer food unless one can make sure that everyone can partake in the eating.

There's some good local food things going on here and I'm excited about getting involved as we get more settled. There's a slow food group that is doing edible gardens with local elementary school kids, some great local producers (see goat cheese mentioned above), and a decent commitment to supporting those local producers.

We'll see where I go with that.

For now, it's time to go to my local kitchen and scrounge around for some breakfast because it's about time to get myself on to work. I got my email set up yesterday, so today is all about contact and communication.

Here's to that. Here's to contact, here's to communication. Here's to local and here's to delicious.