Organic Roots in East Greenbush

Where was I the other day? Near the corner of nowhere and Route 4 in East Greenbush. It doesn't look like much, but trust me, if you're living in East Greenbush, this is going to be heaven because you can get good clean organic food for lunch here: at Organic Roots. Apparently the place has been around for a while (like a couple of years) but I only found out about it a couple of weeks ago thanks to one of my sources.

Organic Roots is a cozy café with sandwiches, a soup of the day, coffee, and assorted health-nut drinks. Service was quick and attentive. There were two women in there when I was there, and they also commented that it was surprising they hadn't heard of the place until recently, in spite of one of the women living right nearby. Organic Roots needs better advertising (like better signage for starts). It also needs desserts. When I was there, they didn't even have chocolate bars by the register. Isn't it some kind of law that all lunch places must have chocolate? [Edited to add: the owner has written to me and expressed that they usually *do* have dessert but happened to be out the day I visited. She wrote, "I went to school for pastry arts and the day you came we hade no cookies or muffins but if you were a regular you would have known we usually always have cookies or some kind of dessert." Thanks for the clarification. Also, she says there are chocolate bars on the retail shelf.]

Chocolate appeases the masses.

I had a lovely sandwich with avocado and veggies plus a cup of broccoli soup. It was tasty; there was some kind of flavorful sauce (I want to say aioli) on the bread, and everything was fresh. They gave me a cup of bean salad (I could have also gotten something else-- I think pasta salad) and some croutons. I felt so healthy! I was then ready for sinfulness with dessert. See, this is the real reason to eat healthy: then you can feel so virtuous you don't mind being a little sinful from time to time.

Organic Roots is at 91 Troy Road, at the intersection of Route 4 with Route 151, just West of I-90. It's a bit far for me to go there often, but it's nice to know it's there.

Harvest time!

September is well on its way and my garden is still giving forth tomatoes every day. I've also got eggplants, fennel, cabbage, squash (summer and winter this year! A banner year!), potatoes, carrots, chard, kale, and broccoli. Today I made a cold tomato soup--kind of a gazpacho with lime, cumin, and cinnamon. Tomorrow: what to do with the lovely tiny eggplants that squirrels keep taking little nips out of?

Above is a salad grown entirely from my garden this spring.

I don't believe that I can ever become self-sufficient. Unlike some writers who have argued for the locavore movement lately (I'm still really wanting to read Barbara Ehrenreich's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; and there was a really funny feature in New York Magazine by Manny Howard detailing his many failures trying to live off what his yard produced in Brooklyn), I don't think we will solve our many environmental problems by hunkering down by the campfire eating moldy but homegrown turnips through the long Northeastern winters. Every place has its own local food culture, and trading to mutual benefit is never a problem. It's not the 'where' as much as the 'what' and the 'how.' Do I really need to buy apples from Washington when I can get them from New York? No, but if I want pineapple, bananas, or green peppers in the winter, I'm going to have to get them from afar. Is this reasonable? Yes, but it's also reasonable to ask that these things be sustainably farmed and shipped with respect to the environment.

We are social creatures, and we need each other to survive. There is no such thing as truly self-sufficient. Still, my vegetable garden has become central to my life these past few years, changing the way I think about food, and I've gotten better at growing stuff. Mostly, I'm more organized than I was (my first year I had a tomato forest and total chaos! But it was beautiful) and better at spacing plants. I just never believe that such tiny seedlings will grow up into edible veggies. But look, a casserole of roasted garden veggies:



As a result of growing my own vegetables for a small portion of the year, I've come to realize how much sweat labor food takes. (Answer: lots.) From digging and composting to planting, weeding constantly, watering, and harvesting, it's pretty much non-stop work. It's one of the most pleasurable forms of work I know, however, and oh do those tomatoes taste sweet! Even at the farmer's market there aren't such juicy, flavorful tomatoes as I grow. My fav. varieties: Lillian's Yellow heirloom tomatoes, which really don't become ripe until September 1 or so, and Cherokee tomatoes, a dark winey tomato with dark green shoulders. Here is my little plot of earth.



The reason I called this blog "Dish and Dirt" is because I believe that what we 'dish' ultimately relies on the condition of our dirt. In plain terms, what we eat grows on this earth, and its quality depends on the soil. Despite a certain degree of cantankerousness (and the desire to keep eating imported chocolate), I do believe that we could all do a lot more local eating. I try to resist processed foods, foods that have traveled too far to get to me (except for chocolate), and especially foods that have been slapped together and shipped with no thought to quality, care, or health. So let's all get out and enjoy those farmer's markets, apple picking farms, and local honey while it's harvest season.

Food, not nutrients

Michael Pollan did it again in this past Sunday's New York Times Magazine. His in-depth essay shows the many ways our "food science" agribusiness-fueled industry has created a sick country with unhappy, food-obsessed, unhealthy people.

"Our personal health is inextricably bound up with the health of the entire food web," he writes. One cannot eat healthy, be healthy, in other words, without considering the health of the soil, the planet, the ecosystem.

And:

"Today, a mere four crops account for two-thirds of the calories humans eat. When you consider that humankind has historically consumed some 80,000 edible species, and that 3,000 of these have been in widespread use, this represents a radical simplification of the food web."

His recommendations? Eat real food, not polyhydrocarbonated high corn-fructose-crack. Eat more plants, less meat. Eat less food. And enjoy what you do eat.