Souper Bowl Sunday

posted by James Steele

Sunday is another Super Bowl, and with it comes the tailgating and parties and FOOD!

It's not hard to prepare plenty of healthy snacks and drinks... St. Pauli Girl Dark is a food group isn't it? Well it looks like mother nature is blowing some cool air our way and you can make this super bowl Sunday into a Souper Bowl Sunday serving something warm and nutritous like soup! Stefanie Hamblen of Hogtown Homegrown suggests a favorite recipe Zen Pumkin Soup to warm you up. Sounds like comfort food to me! You can not only find this recipe but so many more on her website, but you will also find instructions and photos on preparing the pumkin on her blog Ktichen Crumbs. If you enjoy cooking and eating, I am sure you will return to these two websites and try many more of her recipes.

Here is a short slideshow you might enjoy that suggests some additional healthy snacks to add to the Souper Bowl table. Enjoy your Sunday, stay warm, eat well and enjoy the game!

PS. Even Peyton Mannng is getting involved with healthy eating and child obesity...sounds like a winner to me.

The Dark Side of Nitrogen

by Stephanie Ogburn via Grist

While many of us know the importance of eating healthy food and are quite aware of our carbon 'foodprint', we may not understand the basics of soil chemistry, fertilizers and what is involved in growing the food we eat. As a grower for 40 years now, the interaction between soil, fertilizer and water has always held my interest and I often spend extra time in my class on Growing Herbs in Florida, going over this relationship.

Nitrogen, one of the 'big 3' in fertilzers, as in 10-10-10 ( N-P-K ), is a key element in the growth of our food crops, however, as agriculture has changed since WW II, natural forms of nitrogen have been replaced with synthetic nitrogen. This doesn't come without a price.

This series on nitrogen will open up the secrets of what is behind the use of synthetic nitrogen and the true price we pay for that use. A link to these articles will remain in the right sidebar under 'Fertile Ground' until the series finishes. Thanks to Ed Brown, a GFF contributor for sending this article my way.

Read Opening Article...

Greens Eats of Gainesville

On Saturday, Michael Amish of INDIGOGreen hosted a panel discussion Green Eats of Gainesville. Discussing the motivations and challenges of owning and managing local green restaurants were:

• Satchel Raye of Satchel's Pizza
• Dave Piasecki of Rolls n' Bowls
• Maya Garner of The Jones Eastside
• Ludivine Kail of Luca's Pasta

Covering a diversity of topics to include fair wages for employees, to recycling,  the panelists offered quite a bit of information on the challenges of being an environmentally responsible restaurant.  Joining the discussion were Val Leitner of The Kitchen Incubator, Gretchen McIntyre of Citizen's Co-op, James Steele of Gainesville Farm Fresh and several others.  The discussion included how we can make a better connection between farmers and restaurants.  This was very interesting and informative and I want to thank Michael Amish for hosting this event and for those who came by to be a part of this panel.