Pickled Beets – Preserving the Winter Garden Bounty

Evelyn, Jonathan Dye, and I have eaten many pickled beets made with this recipe. They’ve been added to cheese plates, paired with gravlax and other preserved fish, and also served simply with some dark rye bread, some fresh dill, and a dollop of crème fraiche (maybe a squeeze of fresh lemon too?). Evelyn’s winter garden has been a bountiful one. She has bushels of beets and needs a way to preserve them. Pickling is the perfect treatment for a homegrown beet. Here’s what I think Evelyn should do with her winter beet bounty!

Free Seed Saving Class at Yorba Linda Public Library – 5.14.14

Join OurLocaltopia’s Farmer and Biologist Jonathan Duffy Davis, this Wednesday (5.14.14) at 7pm for a class on seed saving! Held at the Yorba Linda Public Library, this free class will give you the tools needed to effectively gather, save, store and share seeds from your backyard garden or farm.

Free Class on Wednesday 4.30 at YLPL: It’s About Thyme

This Wednesday (April 30th), OurLocaltopia is back at the Yorba Linda Public Library for a free class on cooking with fresh herbs! Join us in the downstairs community room at 7pm and enjoy an evening of culinary eduction and demonstration taught by Jonathan Dye and Jonathan Duffy Davis. Samples of the food prepared will be available for tasting and copies of the recipes will be passed out. Come one, come all!

Seaside Supper: A Curated Dinner & Demo in Ventura County

OurLocaltopia headed to Ventura County to cook for an ocean front retreat!

This week, OurLocaltopia was invited to a seaside vacation home in Ventura county to curate a meal for the Sew n’ Sews, a group of avid quilters who take this yearly retreat to work on projects and bond with their friends. We were thrilled to be cooking in a gorgeous kitchen that  had panoramic coastal and ocean views. The menu for the night featured a variety of locally sourced produce, including delicious Ventura County strawberries and included a demonstration of the prep and execution of Fritto Misto. Below is our recap of the evening, including photos and recipes. If you are interested in having a similar event at your next getaway, party or gathering, don’t hesitate to contact us!

Late Winter Gardening for the Southern California “Homestead”

The Southern Californian winter garden is a delicious one. Cabbage, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, and kale, carrots, beets, and radishes, onions and leeks, and an astounding array of lettuces can all be pulled from your garden’s soil. The winter is starting to come to a close but there remain plenty of options for the winter gardener. The time for tomatoes, peppers, squash and cucumber is just around the corner. A post on the summer vegetable garden is soon to come. But today’s late-winter gardener should focus on crops that grow quickly (to make room for soon-to-be-planted summer crops) and on planting fruit trees.

Panna Cotta – A Deceptively Simple Dessert for Valentine’s Day

My Valentine loves Panna Cotta with a drizzle of bright raspberry coulis and a dusting of quality cocoa powder – I make this all the time. “Such a lucky girl” you might say. “Yes, I agree” would be my immediate and confident response but this is only partially true. I have been playing up the complexity of the recipe for some time (she’s no fool, she just couldn’t care less about cooking). “The cream has to be warmed to a very precise temperature…. Infusing cream with quality vanilla beans is a process that requires painstaking observation…” But panna cotta is in fact extremely simple to make.

Tonight, 1/29: Free Healthy Lunches Class at Yorba Linda Public Library

Pack it pretty, pack it healthy! Free cooking class tonight 1/29/14 in Yorba Linda! (Lunch box borrowed from the collection of RC Miller.)

Don’t forget, folks! Tonight, at 7pm OurLocaltopia will be hosting a FREE community cooking class on creating healthy, packable lunches for adults and teens. Class will be held DOWNSTAIRS, at the Yorba Linda Public Library and will last about an hour to an hour & a half.  Recipe packets and free samples will be available to all who come! See ya there…

Thanksgiving Tips, Dry-Brined Turkey Tutorial, Roasted Harvest Vegetables & Recipe Round-Up

Brussels sprouts, nicely browned.

Acorn squash, ready for the table!

Thanksgiving is essentially the ultimate celebration of food. This holiday combines the notions of seasonality, tradition, family and (let’s face it) excess into a single meal the represents all for which we are thankful. Here at OurLocaltopia we have spent the past few months gearing up for Thanksgiving through a series of recipe and technique focused posts that run the gamut from traditional to nouveau. As the big day approaches, we of course have even more of these recipes and techniques to share! In this post, Jonathan Dye reveals a variety of his own hints for taking some of the stress and work out of Thanksgiving dinner prep, including his suggestion for quicker cooking, spatchcocked turkey prep. Jonathan Duffy Davis takes us through a step-by-step tutorial on dry-brining and whole roasting your turkey, and shares his recipes for perfectly roasted harvest vegetables. Finally, we recap the various recipes we have explored this fall so they can be used on your own holiday table!

Jonathan Duffy Davis’ Pickled Green Beans: Recipe and Method

Most vegetables are takers but bean give back. Along with the rest of the legumes beans have formed an amazing symbiosis with nitrogen-fixing bacteria (Rhizobium). These bacteria that call the roots of legumes home are capable of taking the inert nitrogen gas (n²) that constitutes almost 80% of every breath that we take and turning it into a form of nitrogen that plants can use. Nitrogen is the most limiting nutrient to plant growth in the garden. The more nitrogen your soil contains, the better your garden will grow. Thus, beans nourish not only the gardener but the garden as well.

Stick To The Recipe! A Primer on Canning Pickled Vegetables, Jams & Jellies

Autumn is a perfect time to learn how to can in Southern California. The bounty of summer is quickly fading but there is still time to pick up the end of the stone-fruit and warm-season vegetable harvest and preserve the last of that summer sunshine. Learning how to can now will also enable you to make all of the fantastic pickles that are possible with winter vegetables.