Denver Magazine / July 2010 / everything but ... The Kitchen Sink

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everything but ... The Kitchen Sink

News and Notes from Our World to Yours

From Between Our Gardening Stakes ...

Heirloom Seeds

Growing your own produce is good for myriad reasons. Want a foodie’s true stamp of approval? Plant heirloom varietals. The practice preserves historic, often-endangered plant species — and their exceptional flavor, purity, and culinary tradition. Shanan Olson and her Boulder County–based Abbondanza Farms sells heirloom yellow Taxi tomato seeds, sure to turn up bright as the summer sun. Plant, grow, and enjoy these baseball-sized fruits sliced on a burger or cut into wedges for a colorful summer salad ($3 for a packet of seeds; eatabbo.org).

From Our Hot Dog Bun ...

Marczyk’s Market-Made Sausages

Not only is housemade sausage all the rage in the kitchens of some of the country’s most respected chefs and restaurateurs, it’s good for the environment, too — sausage makes use of scraps that are leftover after the well-known cuts are butchered. At Marczyk Fine Foods, butcher Jimmy Cross (the one with the cleavers tattooed on his forearms) grinds, preps, and stuffs with love, making handcrafted, fresh sausage from in-house recipes (sweet or hot Italian sausage, $6 per pound; marczykfinefoods.com).

From Our Liquor Cabinet …

Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey

The distillers at Stranahan’s may contribute to our morning-after regrets, but they wouldn’t dare harm the environment. This small-batch operation uses 100 percent Rocky Mountain barley, finishes with local Eldorado Springs water, and feeds the spent barley and yeast to Colorado livestock. Lead Distiller Jake Norris used to even ride a motorcycle that he ran off spirit heads — the alcohol produced in the distillation process that can’t be bottled ($50 per responsible 750 ml bottle; stranahans.com).

From Our Calendar ...

Urban Foraging at Denver Urban Homesteading

Denver Urban Homesteading, an indoor farmers market on Santa Fe Drive, offers classes to Front Range cooks in the flowering summer months. Planting is smart, but using what already grows in the wild is even better. Sign up for the July 10 Urban Foraging class to learn how to identify edible weeds for a surprisingly delicious salad plucked from your back alley ($25 per class; denverurbanhomesteading.com).

koŏk-print

From the Tips of Our Tongues ...

Cookprint

This green buzzword means our carbon footprint in the kitchen. From selecting locally and sustainably produced ingredients to working with energy-efficient appliances to using scraps and composting versus throwing away, “cookprint” is defined as the energy needed to prepare the food you eat. For inspiration, take notes from The Kitchen in Boulder, which packs leftovers in biodegradable containers made from sugarcane. The restaurant also uses wind power and sends wine corks to a company that turns them into low-impact tiles (thekitchencafe.com).

From Our Landlocked Waters …

Colorado Catch Hybrid Striped Bass

Though fish doesn’t often come to mind when Coloradans crave local foods, this growing season, hybrid striped bass from a company called Colorado Catch has us praising nearby waters. The fish — which is raised in artesian waters from south-central Colorado's San Luis Valley using geothermal resources and circular tank systems — has put this farm near Alamosa on the sustainable map. In Denver, try this homegrown catch at Jax Fish House in LoDo, where it may be served with asparagus and a red pepper romesco (entrée $25; jaxfishhousedenver.com).

From Our Concrete Jungle ...

Feed Denver’s Urban Markets

According to Feed Denver’s Lisa Rogers, less than 0.1 percent of the food Colorado needs is produced within the state, which is why she decided to start making over spaces such as abandoned concrete lots, replacing cars and clutter with seasonal sowing. “We’re growing in places people don’t think you can grow,” says Rogers. Check out her newly planted Globeville-Swansea Urban Agriculture Project in North Denver this summer (feeddenver.com).