The 13th Annual ‘Hawk Festival & Green Bazaar’

October 1 & 2

11 AM – 5 PM

rain or shine

at Audubon Greenwich

613 Riversville Road, Greenwich, CT

This fun, green-themed, family-friendly event is a celebration of the amazing raptor migration which occurs in the skies above the Audubon Greenwich center each Fall. This special event features kids’ activities, games, food vendors, eco-friendly businesses, honey harvesting, and Audubon’s famous live birds of prey shows (1 & 3 pm). This is a great chance to visit Audubon’s Quaker Ridge Hawk counting site and have a great time with the family or a friend.

Among the many eco-friendly vendors at this event, you will find Mike’s Organic Delivery Service and Peace Tree Desserts, sustainable food businesses that have been profiled on our blog. Please stop by the CT NOFA table and join CT’s  largest and most influential organic farming, gardening and landcare organization. Their annual meeting in March kicks off with a nationally recognized keynote speaker, then moves to morning workshops, a potluck lunch (all the guests bring a dish), and extensive networking opportunities. Hope to see you there.

Support your local beekeeper! Two members of the CT Backyard Beekeeper’s Association, Bee Love and Honey Bee Farm, will also be among the vendors and exhibitors. Don’t forget to join the ‘Honey Harvest’ and help spin honey from the combs in the Red Barn.

The Front Yard Coop is a good vendor to visit if you’re considering raising laying hens. This coop is solar powered and self propelled so it “free ranges them across your yard and keeps the predators out.”

FOR DIRECTIONS TO THE FESTIVAL: Click here
Festival admission:
Audubon members: $5 for youth 3 years old & up / $7 for adults over 18 years
Non-members: $7 for youth 3 years old & up / $10 for adults over 18 years
Children under 3 years old can enter the HawkWatch Festival for free.

Phone: 203-869-5272.

FESTIVAL WEBSITE:

http://greenwich.audubon.org/Programs_SpecialEvents_AnnualFestivals-HawkWatch2011.html

Celebrate and learn to ‘Live Green’ at this two-day, fun-filled festival for all ages. Enjoy delicious food, live music, eco-friendly shopping, environmental speakers and exhibits!

See and experience businesses that are showcasing their green products and services that positively impact our lives and environment. Come away with tips and ideas that will save you money!

FREE ADMISSION! Let’s all Live Green Connecticut!

Festival Hours:

September 17, 2011
10:00am – 4:00pm

September 18, 2011
11:00am – 4:00pm C

Location:

Taylor Farm Park – 45 Calf Pasture Beach Road, Norwalk, CT 06855

Featured Green Food Exhibitors, Vendors and Guest Speakers:

Guest Speakers:

12 noon on Sunday, Sept. 18

Marina Marchese, author and founder of Red Bee Honey in Weston, will be a guest speaker in the Dolce Coffeehouse where she’ll discuss honeybees and beekeeping as a sustainable practice. Enjoy a honey tasting and book signing with CT’s honey connoisseur. Learn more about the speaker, her company, and book here.

Exhibitors:

Skinny Pines Brick Oven Caterer: Specializing in meals featuring local, seasonal ingredients!

Peace Tree Desserts: Eco-luxe bakery that sources exclusively local, organic, seasonal, and sustainable ingredients for their delicious baked goods!

Planet Fuel: Organic Beverages with Natural Spring Water!

The Farmer’s Cow: The Farmer’s Cow is your connection to farm fresh Connecticut products such as milk, eggs, cider and ice cream!

Lunch Vendors:

Skinny Pines Brick Oven Caterer: Specializing in meals featuring local, seasonal ingredients!

Click here for a full list of exhibitors and an event schedule.

Live Green Connecticut! is an IRS designated 501 (c) (3) public charity

On Saturday, September 17, from noon until 3 pm, over 30 restaurants and retailers in Saugatuck are opening their doors to the public to provide us with a Slice of Saugatuck. Bring the kids and pop in the places that interest you the most for free samples. Check out the festival map to pick your favorite destinations and plan your afternoon.

Among my top picks is Saugatuck Craft Butchery, where founder/owner Ryan Fibiger will be demonstrating how to butcher a pig just in front of his shop (which hasn’t opened yet) at 1:00 pm. Ryan has been holding private butchering demos in Fairfield County as he geared up to open his sustainable butcher shop in Saugatuck Center late this September, but this is the first public demonstration. All their products are expertly hand-butchered and sourced from small family farms in New York and Connecticut that employ sustainable farming practices. Saugatuck Craft Butchery will no doubt become a destination for anyone seeking out the highest quality beef, chicken, pork and lamb, for themselves and their pets. As a nose-to-tail, or whole animal butcher, no part of the animal is wasted, which means lots of premium scraps for fido. To learn more about Ryan and Saugatuck Craft Butchery, read our feature article, The New, Old-Fashioned Butcher.

The Boathouse at Saugatuck can be found inside the Saugatuck Rowing Club and offers beautiful and relaxing views of the Saugatuck River that earned it a “Best View in Connecticut” accolade from Zagat. Chef John Holzwarth is a true farm-to-table chef, giving elegant treatment to seasonal vegetables and artisan food products. Like other fine area restaurants dedicated to serving local and sustainable food, Boathouse serves Westport Aquaculture’s oysters and other seafood. To learn more about the chef and restaurant, read a recent review by Elizabeth Keyser.

Celebrity chef, restauranteur, and author Mario Batali and partners opened Tarry Lodge Enoteca Pizzeria this July after achieving success with their Port Chester location. The restaurant is a “casual reinterpretation of the Tarry Lodge” in Port Chester and sports a wood-fired pizza oven and grill according to partner and general manager Nancy Selzer. Each property in the restaurant group is either already green certified or on target to do so with the help of full-time Green Initiative staff member Elizabeth Meltz. In accordance with the restaurant group’s commitment to source locally as much as possible, Chef Andy Nesser will initially rely on Westchester-based farms that currently supply the Port Chester location, but plans to shop the Westport Farmers’ Market and forge new farm relationships through the CT Dept. of Agriculture’s Farm-to-Chef Program.

Collyer Catering, a regular lunch vendor at the Westport farmers’ market, will be serving samples of a fall soup and guest vendor Planet Fuel will sampling their organic kids’ juices.

Please refer to the festival map for restaurant locations. See you there!

By Eileen Weber

Here’s the scoop on peaches this summer: You can eat them recently picked and pesticide-free without belonging to a CSA or hitting the farmer’s market. How? Stop by Whole Foods Market. Their northeast regional stores are running a campaign in conjunction with Red Tomato, the Massachusetts-based non-profit organization that brings fairly traded, sustainably grown produce to your grocery store.

The initiative works because they have employed the eager help of such local Connecticut farms as Lyman Orchards in Middlefield, Rogers Orchards in Southington, and Blue Hills Orchard in Wallingford. The peaches run about $1.99 per pound, or approximately $6 per basket. The promotion will run as long as the peaches do.

“Our new Eco Peach program, like our successful Eco Apples, is a groundbreaking collaboration between our region’s finest family farmers and scientists,” said Michael Rozyne, Red Tomato Director, in a company press release. “Together they have developed truly sustainable methods for growing delicious wholesale fruit.”

But here’s the catch: Whole Foods is only stocking them in their West Hartford and Glastonbury stores. Unfortunately, the locations in Milford, Fairfield, Westport, Darien, and Greenwich will not be carrying them.  That may be, in part, because those stores in the northern region of the state are closest to the growers. Red Tomato’s main goal was to promote the shortest span between picking and consumption

“We pick and pack the peach at its optimal level to get the best flavor and color,” said John Lyman of Lyman Orchards. “We leave it on the vine as long as possible. With an Eco Peach, you know it’s going to be the tightest time to the consumer.

Laura Edwards-Orr, the Communications and Marketing Manager for Red Tomato, said they couldn’t get this project off the ground without the farmers. “Our growers have worked hard to grow peaches in the most natural and healthy way,” she said. “They are always challenging themselves to be better growers.”

Edwards-Orr said they put a lot of effort into building successful relationships with their farmers, and many of those relationships stem from word-of-mouth. Reiterating what Rozyne said in an earlier statement, she explained that the Eco Peach project is an offshoot of their popular Eco-Apple project, which launched in 2005 and has to date grossed over $1.4 million in revenue. (In Connecticut, they originally started the Eco Apple project with John Lyman.) When the Project gained momentum and it became clear they needed to add another grower, they asked him for a recommendation. He brought on John Rogers of Rogers Orchards. Rogers and Lyman then suggested Eric Henry of Blue Hills Orchards, and the rest is history.

But the key for Red Tomato, said Edwards-Orr, is working with mid-level family-run farms. They don’t want to work with farms that are too small to handle wholesale growing. But they are also uninterested in working with farms so big as to be labeled “mega-farms,” tipping them into the agribusiness category. (Each of the Connecticut farms the company works with has been family-owned for several generations dating back hundreds of years.)

As far as Lyman is concerned, what makes this project work is how food-conscious consumers have become. “People are suddenly paying attention to what growers are doing,” he said. “The local food movement has been growing in the last few years.

It is true that consumers are increasingly opting for organic foods. Statistics from the Organic Trade Association indicate that sales of organic food and beverages soared from $1 billion in 1990 to $26.7 billion in 2010. Mass-market retailers, including supermarkets, sold 54% of organic food last year. And last year’s total U.S. sales of food and non-food organic products brought in a little over $28 billion in revenue.

But each of the farms wants to make it clear that they are not certified organic. In some cases, it was just not economically feasible. But while they do practice natural and, what they call, responsible farming, they follow stringent guidelines in Integrated Pest Management, or IPM. All of the fruit they grow is organophosphate-free.

Why is this important? Organophosphates have a higher toxicity level, which not only affect insects but humans as well. The material blocks an enzyme related to nerve function and can be absorbed through the skin or into the lungs when ingesting food contaminated with it. Even at low levels, it has been shown to affect the brain development of fetuses and small children. The EPA banned residential use in 2001, but it still used on agricultural crops.

“When farmers grow according to Red Tomato’s Eco guidelines, they reduce the use of high toxicity pesticides, contribute to a bountiful supply of top quality local foods, and improve farm worker safety, soil and water resources, wildlife habitat and biodiversity,” explained Lorraine Los, the Fruit Crops Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Coordinator in the Plant Science Department at the University of Connecticut and key collaborator on the development of Red Tomato’s Eco Peach growers protocol.
Eric Henry of Blue Hills Orchards explained that the farms use an IPM “scouting” technique to determine whether they have an infestation before it becomes a problem. He also said that one of the reasons to eradicate the use of organophosphates is the effect it has on the insect population. It not only gets rid of the bad bugs; it gets rid of the good ones, too.

“We want to be good stewards of the land to pass on to future generations and make as little impact on the environment as possible,” said John Rogers of Rogers Orchards. “That’s why we believe in Red Tomato.”

For more information about the Eco Peach or Eco Apple initiative, check out the Red Tomato web site. And the next time you’re in the West Hartford area, why not pick up a basket of peaches to try? If you think they’re as special as the growers think they are, you may want to pester your produce man at your local Whole Foods Market into stocking them as well.

Fairfield Green Food Guide readers are officially invited take the pledge to go meatless one day a week by joining Meatless Monday, a growing national movement to eat meat-free meals one day a week.  Each week we’ll post a seasonal recipe to support you in your efforts to eat a little greener (and healthier too!). We pledge not to compromise on flavor and to inspire you with new and exciting flavors. Area chefs are invited to submit favorite recipes too and right now we’re requesting veggie burger and cold summer soup ideas.

The Environmental Working Group has just released The Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health, a handy online guide to improving your health and the health of the environment through sustainable meat choices. It includes a recommendation to practice Meatless Mondays, citing this quote from real food activist and author Michael Pollan.

“The single most important thing any of us can do to shrink the environmental footprint of our eating is to cut back on our meat eating — doing so has a bigger impact than eating local or organic.” -Michael Pollan, Author and food activist

When you do eat meat, avoid factory farmed beef, poultry, pork and dairy; choose grass-fed, pasture-raised, and organic meat and dairy instead. Approximately 99 percent of the meat sold in restaurants and grocers if from factory farms (CAFOs) where animals are raised in close confinement, fed an unnatural diet of genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and are routinely treated with antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. Raising animals in this manner might produce cheap meat for the consumer, but what’s rung up at the register doesn’t factor in the true cost to the environment and human health. Don’t fall victim to the illusion of cheap food. The real cost of producing and eating food from the industrial food chain will have to be paid for by generations to come.

Where to find green meat for the rest of the week, while still eating less meat overall:

Many Connecticut farmers raise livestock and poultry on pasture and sell beef, pork, lamb, turkey, chicken  and dairy products at farmers’ markets throughout the state and through CT Farm Fresh Express, an online ordering and home delivery service of exclusively CT Grown products.

Some farms offer meat CSAs that deliver to area communities, including Laurel Ridge Farm. Saugatuck Craft Butchery, a full-service sustainable butcher shop, will be opening in Westport in September.

Don’t forget to register your pledge with Meatless Monday and visit Fairfield Green Food Guide weekly for new recipes. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter @GreenFoodGal and subscribe to our newsletter so you don’t miss a recipe. When we reach 1,000 Facebook fans (only 25 to go!), we’ll announce a sweepstakes for a free vegetarian cooking class with a local chef.

Related Articles:

While You Were Eating

A Dozen Ways to Eat Green

Nose-to-Tail Craft Butcher to Open at Saugatuck Center

The New, Old-Fashioned Butcher

By Analiese Paik

The following is a transcript of A Dozen Ways to Eat Green, a talk I was to deliver today at the Gathering of the Vibes as a guest speaker on the Green Vibes Stage at 1:30. Unfortunately, due to the heat advisory, I won’t be presenting today. A Dozen Ways to Eat Green is perfect for any eater – those just learning how unsustainable our food system is and are looking for ways to reduce their “foodprint” and those already making sustainable choices, yet are looking to do more. The choices we make three times a day have a profound impact on our health and the environment, so eat smart and eat green!

• Reduce your food waste.
  

By some estimates 40 percent of the food grown in the country is wasted. That figure includes everything from food left to rot in farmers’ fields, to imperfect food throw out by stores and restaurants, to the leftovers you scrape into your garbage pail after dinner. Here are three ways to cut down on your food waste:

1. Buy less to avoid buying more than you need.
2. Make “Use it or Freeze It” your mantra and use your freezer to save food for another day.
3. Declare “Clean Out the Refrigerator Night” once a week to eat all the leftovers before they go bad.

• Compost your raw food waste.

Start a compost pile right in your backyard. When you throw food waste into the garbage, it winds up in a landfill where it cannot decompose. Instead, it emits methane gas, a greenhouse gas, which contributes to climate change. Collect your egg shells, coffee grinds, vegetable peels, corn cobs and husks in a kitchen composting pail and toss them in the compost pile with grass clippings and leaves. Over a few months’ time, they’ll decompose with the help of worms and turn into compost – gardener’s gold. You won’t need to buy compost when you start your organic garden! Visit Rodale’s web site for some expert composting advice.

• Eat less meat.

Practice Meatless Mondays by eating no meat one day a week. The Environmental Working Group has just released The Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health, a handy online guide to improving your health and the health of the environment through sustainable meat choices. It includes a recommendation to practice Meatless Mondays, citing this quote from real food activist and author Michael Pollan.

“The single most important thing any of us can do to shrink the environmental footprint of our eating is to cut back on our meat eating — doing so has a bigger impact than eating local or organic.” -Michael Pollan, Author and food activist

When you do eat meat, avoid factory farmed beef, poultry, pork and dairy; choose grass-fed, pasture-raised, and organic meat and dairy instead. Approximately 99 percent of the meat sold in restaurants and grocers if from factory farms (CAFOs) where animals are raised in close confinement, fed an unnatural diet of genetically modified (GM) corn and soy, and are routinely treated with antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. Raising animals in this manner might produce cheap meat for the consumer, but what’s rung up at the register doesn’t factor in the true cost to the environment and human health. Don’t fall victim to the illusion of cheap food. The real cost of producing and eating food from the industrial food chain will have to be paid for by generations to come.

Many Connecticut farmers raise livestock on pasture and sell it at farmers’ markets throughout the state, plus a sustainable butcher shop will be opening in Westport soon.

Learn more by about the impact of factory farming on the climate and human health from EWG’s The Meat Eater’s Guide to Climate Change and Health.

• Choose organic food over conventionally grown.

Choose organic whenever possible to protect the environment and human health. Organic foods and wines are cultivated without the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides so they do not deplete the soil, damage the environment or pose threats to human health. CSAs (Community Supported Agriculture) programs are the most economical way to buy fresh, local, organic produce. CSA programs offer consumers a seasonal share in a single farm’s harvest for a fixed price. Each season I publish a guide to CSAs offered by local farms, and each year the list grows.

Processed foods, even those labeled “natural”, commonly contain ingredients made from the “Big Four” genetically-modified (GM) food crops: soybeans, corn, canola and cottonseed, yet they carry no labels declaring “contains GMOs.” The bottle of canola oil innocently sitting in your pantry is likely GM, since eighty percent of the canola grown in the US is genetically modified. Many well-respected members of the sustainable food, agriculture, and science communities believe that GMOs pose threats to human and animal health, the environment, and biodiversity. Choose organic or Non-GMO Project Verified processed foods to avoid GMOs. To learn more about GMOs, please read While You Were Eating on this blog.

• Eat locally with the seasons.

Fresh, local food is delicious, nutritious and in abundant supply at farm stands, farmers’ markets and through CSAs. Buy locally grown food in season to reduce the “food miles” your food has to travel to reach your plate and cut down on food packaging. Fewer food miles translate into reduced use of fossil fuels and lower greenhouse gas emissions. Less packaging means you create less waste. You’ll also be providing a living wage to our farmers, ensuring farmland preservation and our ability to feed ourselves, and encouraging the cultivation of a diversity of species, including heritage and heirloom varietals. Eating locally with the seasons is an investment in the future of our local foodshed.

• Grow some of your own food.

Seeds are very inexpensive, and if you make your own compost, you’ll likely wind up saving money by growing your own. A fantastic source of inspiration and advice for home gardeners is Kitchen Gardeners International, the group behind the campaign to replant a kitchen garden at the White House. Look for gardening workshops and classes, includes those we post, to help you get started. Comstock Ferre & Co., a 200-year-old seed company in Wethersfield, CT, offers a wide variety of heirloom seeds via their catalog, online store, an retail location. Read more about Comstock here.

• Choose organic, Fair Trade coffee, tea, chocolate and sugar.

Fair Trade means farmers are compensated fairly for their work, no child labor is used, and farms employ sustainable growing practices. Organic farming practices don’t rely on synthetic fertilizer and never use synthetic pesticides, herbicides and insecticides. When we choose organic, Fair Trade products, we are rewarding farmers for treating their workers fairly and using sustainable growing practices. These products may cost a little more, but the payoff is priceless.

• Choose sustainable seafood.

Choose sustainable seafood. Download the Sustainable Seafood Guide or iphone app from Seafood Watch and consult it at the fish counter or when ordering in a restaurant. Commit to limiting your consumption to sustainable seafood choices under the Best Choices and Good Alternatives categories. Whenever you eat a sustainable seafood meal, enter it into the app to share your resources with other users.  Whole Foods Markets stores have started using a seafood labeling system for their wild caught products based on Seafood Watch’s ratings to help the consumer at point of purchase. You can learn all about sustainable seafood in an interactive exhibit called Go Fish! at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk.  It’s perfect for adults and children.

• Stop buying disposable bottled water.

Disposable bottled water is one or the most unsustainable beverage choices you can make. Plastic water bottles are made from petroleum and are designed to be used once, resulting in a product that is thousands of times more expensive than tap water and no safer, according to a report by Food & Water Watch. Most of these bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills and our oceans where they  leach harmful chemicals into the ground and water. There is a floating garbage patch twice the size of Texas in the North Atlantic that is poisoning sea life. Please carry a thermos filled with filtered tap water instead.

• Learn to cook!

Cooking is becoming a lost art. Take some cooking classes and buy a cookbook that teaches you how to cook with the seasons including Deborah Madison’s Local Flavors: Cooking and Eating from America’s Farmers’ Markets, Emily Brooks’ Connecticut Farmer & Feast, Michel Nischan’s Sustainably Delicious: Making the World a Better Place One Recipe at a Time, and Harvest to Heat: Cooking with America’s Best Farmers, Chefs and Artisans by Darryl Estrine and Kelly Kochendorfer.

• Start or volunteer at a school or community garden.

School and community gardens are thriving across the country including urban, rooftop, vertical, aquaponic, and hydroponic varieties. Public gardens are revitalizing urban communities and providing food deserts with a source of fresh local food. Creating community while helping to feed yourself and others more sustainably, especially children, is rewarding and laying the groundwork for a more sustainable food future.

• Don’t wait for someone else to fix it.

The food choices you make all day, every day, have small but important impacts. Eat Smart, Eat Green.

Recommended Reading:

• Tomatoland
• Eating Animals
• Righteous Pork Chop
• Diet for a Hot Planet
• Animal, Vegetable, Miracle
• Omnivore’s Dilemma (and young reader’s version)

Movies:

• Food, Inc.
• FRESH
• Nourish
  
• The Future of Food
• The World According to Monsanto

Bonus Green Food Tips:

• Bring your own bags wherever you shop. Try keeping a soft, collapsible bag in your pocketbook so you always have one handy.

• Reuse grocery store vegetable bags as liners for your kitchen compost pail. You’ll save money on composting supplies and give the bags and second life.

• Use recycled products. Choose from post-consumer recycled aluminum foil and paper products (napkins & paper towels), phosphate-free dish-washing liquid and dishwasher soap, and biodegradable garbage bags.

• Recycle #5 containers and cork at Whole Foods Markets instead of throwing them in the garbage. Whole Foods collects #5s and cork for recycling (feel free to pop in just to drop off your recycling). Recycling costs you nothing but is a huge gift to the environment.

• Use reusable bags instead of single use plastic lunch and snack bags. There are many on the market and they have become so mainstream that they are now available at Linens ‘n Things. Lunch Skins are eco-chic, reusable lunch and snack bags that are cute enough to give as a gift.
  

• Choose organic and biodynamic wines. These so called “natural” wines rely on low impact methods for solving common problems that plague vineyards. For instance, birds of prey are brought in to control for varmints. Organic wines are cultivated without the use of synthetic fertilizers, herbicides or pesticides so they do not deplete the soil, damage the environment or pose threats to human health.

Head over to the Westport farmers’ market early tomorrow, July 14, for two frozen treats which could very well be first-time taste sensations for you (they will be for me too).  Chef Tim Lablant from Schoolhouse at Cannondale is tomorrow’s featured chef and will be offering tastings of his herbal snow cone. I have very fond memories of making snow cones as a kid and am convinced this gourmet treat will bear absolutely no resemblance to them! After you’ve cooled off, enjoy the second tasting - a salad of market greens with fresh cherries, mint and Beltane Farm goat cheese.

Chef Robyn Eads of Peace Tree Desserts, now a regular weekly vendor at the market, is selling an Ice Cream Parfait made with lemon-basil goat’s milk ice cream, local blueberries, and lemon cajeta caramel made with Beltane Farm’s goat’s milk. Since ice cream won’t travel in this heat, I recommend Lemon Blueberry Meringue Cupcakes to bring home to the kids.

Upcoming guest chef appearances:

July 14  Schoolhouse at Cannondale

July 21  Blue Lemon

July 28  leFarm

Aug  4  Main Course Catering

Aug 11 Collyer Catering

Aug 18  Dressing Room

Aug 25  Barcelona

Sept 1   Blue Lemon

Sept 8  TIme To Eat

Sept 15 Barcelona

Sept 22  Dressing Room

Sept 29 leFarm

Oct  6   Sugar & Olives

Oct 13  Bloodroot Restaurant

Oct 20 Phoebe Cole

Oct 27 Match

Nov 3 Staples High School Advanced Culinary Students

Looking for a little something special to do this 4th of July? I recommend a s’mores party, local food style of course, with some help from Peace Tree Desserts. It’s  a fun dessert  for a crowd after a barbecue. Roast the marshmallows until golden, place them on graham crackers, add chocolate, top with a second graham cracker, let it melt a bit, and you’ve got quite a treat.

Each Peace Tree Desserts S’mores kit (serves 6) includes housemade graham crackers featuring Red Bee honey and Wild Hive Farm’s organic whole wheat flour, strawberry marshmallows made with local strawberries, and Taza’s organic stone-ground vanilla bean chocolate.

How to Order:

Simply place your order online from Peace Tree’s web store, and then email Robyn Eads of Peace Tree Desserts at peacetreedesserts@gmail.com letting her know that you will be picking up your order. Pick up is available 10am-5pm, Friday-Saturday of this week at Collyer Catering, 37 Saugatuck Avenue in Westport. All 4th of July orders must be placed by Thursday, June 30th.

All other online orders (those without an email designating an in-store pick up request) will be shipped via Fedex ground.

Where to Buy:

Available at retail exclusively at the Double L Farm Market, Post Road, Westport on Friday, July 1 through Monday, July 4. The Double L Farm Market is located at 730 Post Road E., Westport and is open 7 days a week from 10-6. 203-984-9165.

Peace Tree Desserts will also have their line of Cajeta Caramel sauces  available for sale at the Double L Farm Market and Collyer Catering. In the second half of the s’mores party video below, guests also enjoyed dipping apples into cajeta fondue fireside. Strawberries and blueberries would make an excellent choice this 4th of July, giving you a red white and blue dessert!

Peace Tree Desserts S’mores Party Video. Get inspired!

Mike Geller is the founder and owner of Mike’s Organic Delivery, a farm-to-home delivery service which serves Greenwich, Stamford and Darien, CT and parts of Westchester County. Mike took a few minutes off from picking up and delivering farm-fresh food to answer a few questions about his business. Thanks Mike!

Mike’s Organic Delivery. Farm Fresh. Local. Delivered.

Q. How did you arrive at the business concept of direct online sales and delivery of fresh food from local farms to Greenwich consumers’ doors?

I think it is so important to do something that you are passionate about, believe in, and can completely commit to. Having spent my whole life in the lower Fairfield County area, and having worked on farms, been a lifelong gardener, outdoorsman, cook, event planner etc., I saw a way to combine what I loved with what was in demand……fresh, clean, local food. There are many farms around, but with the frenetic pace of life, school pick ups, work, and everything else, people have a hard time getting access to all of this great food. My business takes all of the leg work out of putting great local food on your table.

Q. What foods are included in your basket and what is the minimum order size?

The contents of the basket change dramatically over the course of the year. Every week I include anywhere from 8-14 different fruits and vegetables, depending upon what is in season. Throughout the summer you get everything from apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, cherries and more to 100 kinds of tomatoes, 60 kinds of peppers, leeks, eggplant, corn, and probably 100 other things. The variety of what we can grow in this part of the country is incredible!

The minimum order for the site is $50.

Q. What are some of the seasonal fruits and vegetables now available from the farms you source your produce from?

This past week we had Empire apples, strawberries, heirloom lettuces, garlic scapes (AMAZING), cilantro, mint, English peas, Magda/yellow/ Bush Baby zucchini, spinach, curly leaf kale and basil.

Q. Please name a few of the farms whose products you carry:

I carry vegetables and fruits from Hepworth Farms in Marlboro, NY, eggs and honey from Pine Hill Farm in Sharon, CT, chicken from Gray Horse Farm in Clinton Corners, grass-fed beef from Stuart Family Farm in Bridgewater, CT, and cheese from Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie, NY. I work with about 10 farms and they all have their specialties, whether it’s raising free range heritage pastured pigs, or growing incredible Certified Organic veggies. Farmers are like artists, some are great…..some are Picasso.

Every farm I work with is within 75 Miles of Greenwich, as local as you can get!

Q. Which communities do you serve?

In Connecticut I deliver to  Greenwich, Stamford and Darien. In New York I deliver to Rye, Harrison, Rye Brook, Port Chester, Byram, Scarsdale, Bedford, Chappaqua and Armonk. People call all the time from other towns and I always do my best to work it out for them….everyone deserves great food!

Heirloom tomatoes waiting to be packed in customers' orders. Photo c/o Mike's Organic Delivery

Q. Do you source exclusively from organic or sustainable local farms?

All of the farms I work with are either Certified Organic or best practice/sustainable. I do not work with any conventional farms. Animals are raised without hormones, antibiotics or confinement, fruits and veggies are not sprayed with carcinogenic sprays. It is good food grown the right way, period.

Q. What is the procedure for ordering and how often do you make deliveries? Does someone need to be home to accept the delivery?

Ordering is as easy as organic apple pie! You just go to my website, www.mikesorganicdelivery.com, and add items to your cart like on Amazon or any other site. You check out, enter your info, pay with a credit card on our secure system, and you’re done. Orders are taken all week and have to be in by Friday PM for a delivery the following week (usually Tues, Wed or Thurs). The site is open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

Deliveries are made once a week and a delivery window is emailed to you the Sunday before you get your delivery. I encourage people to be home for their deliveries so we can talk about all the awesome produce and I can give them little cooking tips, but if they aren’t they can just leave a cooler with an ice pack by the door and I load all of the veggies in there for them……Convenience is the name of the game.

Q. What types of customers do you attract and what are some of your top sellers?

I would say that 95% of my clients are moms, many of them young moms with their first children. They want something that is healthy for them and their kids, takes some of the burden off of them as far as shopping, sitting in the car, check out lines, and brings the freshest produce around right to their door!

The best part of my job is getting to watch in awe as a 3-year-old snacks down for the first time on English peas and cherry tomatoes. It’s amazing how many more fruits and veggies children will eat when they actually taste like something. I have about 100 moms who can attest to that!
The Veggie/Fruit Basket is the most popular item; everyone loves it. Behind that I would say: grass-fed rib eye steaks, raw cow’s milk  blue cheese (aged 60 days), raw local honey, farm-fresh blue Aracauna eggs (INCREDIBLE) and Italian sausages – people love them!

Q. Do you have institutional clients too?

I work with several companies in Greenwich and deliver cases of fruit to them for their employees to eat at work. It’s an awesome thing to do for their workers and it supports small, local farms in the process, a win all around! I have a few companies who have ordered every week for the last 10 months!

Q. What value added do you provide to the consumer?

There are loads of things I do to make the Mike’s Organic Delivery experience one that is positive and enduring. From little things like removing my sneakers before I set foot in the house to deliver, to customizing a list of recipes every week for what people have in their baskets, speaking at seminars and being available at any time for my clients.

I have also spoken to over 500 children at 5 different schools in the Greenwich area about the importance of local, sustainable farming. Kids really seem to understand how important this movement is and I have fielded some unbelievably insightful questions from 9 years olds. Then they get free apples from “Farmer Mike”.

It is important to me that we all do what we can to help move the local food movement forward and I believe I am a good ambassador for the wonderful farmers whose food so many people now get to enjoy through my service.

Q. Fuel costs certainly consume a large part of your budget when gas prices rise. Are you passing these costs along to your consumers?

A. I have not raised my delivery prices since I started the business one year ago. It has remained a flat $10 no matter how much you order. It works for me and people like that it is simple and straight forward.

Q. Are you open all year?

12 months a year! I only close the business for a total of 3 weeks the entire year and you can still place your orders while we are closed, the site is open 365 days per year!

To learn more about Mike’s Organic Delivery, please visit their website, www.mikesorganicdelivery.com.

By Eileen Weber

Whether you’re a yoga mom having a Zen moment, a businessman just off the train from New York, or a 60-something retiree looking to change years of bad eating habits, one shop on Water Street in Norwalk has got you covered. The Stand Juice Company, run by Mike Hvizdo and Carissa Dellicicchi, is a funky little spot that boasts a loaded juice bar and all the organic vegan food you could stuff into a wrap.

Dellicicchi and Hvizdo, who opened the shop in 2006, source as much produce and fruit as they can locally. The majority of the ingredients in their smoothies, sandwiches, and other menu items come from New York, New Jersey, Maryland, and other parts of the New England area. They get all of their sprouts and wheatgrass from Farming Turtles, Inc. in Rhode Island. Knowing their farmers personally is important to them.

“We have a four year relationship and their products are perfection,” Dellicicchi said of Farming Turtles. “They are more eager to please than anyone I’ve ever met and jump through hoops to solve problems.”

It’s that kind of green mindset and attention to detail that has customers coming back for more. “One unifying factor in our clientele,” said Dellicicchi, “is that everyone wants to be healthier than they are.”

While they started out with 30-something moms who just wanted to stay trim, they said their demographic has changed. As far as their concerned, that’s proof positive that this style of healthy eating works. They still get slammed just before bikini season, however.

Much of that has to do with the 5-day juice cleanses they offer. Although, they make it a point to say that juice cleanses are not for everyone. They try to determine why a customer wants to cleanse before they administer it.

“We don’t promote it as a weight-loss program,” said Dellicicchi. “Some people are looking for a lifestyle change, some for illnesses, and some for a sugar addiction or a food allergy. We discourage making an immediate decision on cleansing.”

It was Hvizdo’s initial desire to change his diet that led them on this path of vegan and organic foods and juice cleanses. Mike suffers from a rare blood disease that he keeps in check with diet and exercise. “Dealing with things holistically guarantees you’re going to be better off that you are now,” he said.

But that wasn’t the only reason. Before they even opened their shop, Hvizdo’s mother had cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy. As a way to keep her strong and healthy, they started organic juicing. Soon, others at his mother’s cancer support group wanted juice. Before they knew it, they were making enough for 50 people out of their tiny Southport home. One thing led to another and the rest is history.

Now, the recently engaged couple is planning for another store here in Fairfield. This summer, they plan to open their new location at the Sportsplex on Mill Plain Road. It will soon be a 1,700 square foot space serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week, with shortened hours on Sundays. This new location will have a similar menu, adding child-friendly finger foods as well.

While Catch a Healthy Habit has been a lynchpin in the organic juice and raw food market here in Fairfield, Hvizdo and Dellicicchi think they offer something a little different. They source almost everything locally with only the avocados and almonds imported from California. But, what makes them stand out from their competition is their flexible attitude about healthy eating. They insist that while eating raw food is good for you, making your diet solely based on it is impractical.

Dellicicchi stressed that, while having raw food in your diet is essential to healthy eating and can be appropriate as a means for healing your body from an illness, it shouldn’t be a one-size-fits all diet regimen.

“I don’t believe in 100% raw food for the masses,” she said. “I’m not one to say one diet’s better than the other. I was 30 pounds heavier when I lived in Miami and followed a raw food diet. I guess I was eating the wrong raw foods. It’s just too much of a constraint.”

The Stand Juice Company has a full menu of juices, smoothies, salads, and sandwiches. Their baked goods, soups and juice specialties change weekly. For more information, visit their web site at www.thestandjuice.com or contact them at 203-956-5670.