Saving the Earth, a bite at a time

Recipe: Roots and shoots, a seasonal salad

Sylvia Carter |
A La Carter

May 14, 2008

My Trader Joe reusable grocery bags, with their festive Hawaiian designs, used to be my favorite. My trusty old Parisian-style string bags have never gone out of style, either.

Now, a new shopping bag has moved to the top of my hit parade. It is sturdy organic-cotton canvas, roomy and rather plain. There's a list printed on it, five little things to remember to help combat global warming:

Eat organic.

Reduce meat and dairy consumption.

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Avoid processed foods.

Buy locally grown foods.

Say no to packaging.

Pledge to do these things as best you can, and you can be part of the Cool Foods Campaign, which was introduced to journalists last month at lunch at Blue Hill in Greenwich Village in Manhattan. (It is a joint project of the Center for Food Safety and the CornerStone Campaign.)

The lunch featured little beet "burgers" with fluffy ricotta cheese on tiny brioche buns, a first course of more beets with yogurt, hazelnuts and mache (sometimes called corn salad), and meltingly tender Berkshire pork with cracked wheat, spring parsnips and the first ramps of the season. Most ingredients came from the greenhouses, fields and dairy at Blue Hill at Stone Barns. The meat was produced without pesticides and herbicides.

Yet we felt anything but deprived.

We learned that more than 20 percent of all transportation emissions in the U.S. come from transporting agricultural and food products, according to a study on sustainability at the University of Michigan. In winter, couldn't we eat more root vegetables raised nearby? I, for one, can. We also found out that it takes seven to 10 times more energy to produce the food we eat than the energy contained in the food itself. That doesn't seem right.

Lunch speakers included Dan Barber, Blue Hill's chef, Peter Hoffman, whose restaurants are Savoy and Back Forty, both in Manhattan, and Anna Lappe, who with her mother, Anna Moore Lappe, founded the Small Planet Institute.

"Do I need to have asparagus from Argentina?" when it's not available locally, Hoffman asked. He's been an early supporter of organic and local, and he even pedals his bike to the Union Square Greenmarket. Back Forty, Hoffman's new restaurant in the East Village, follows through with a locally driven, seasonal menu.

No, Hoffman has decided, he does not need Argentine asparagus.

To take the pledge (free), go to cool foodscampaign.org or look for kiosks at Whole Foods. A shopping bag comes with a membership in the campaign, $35, and soon they will be available separately.

RECIPE

Roots and Shoots

Peter Hoffman, whose Manhattan restaurants are Savoy and Back Forty, admits that early spring in our climate is a challenging time for would-be seasonal cooks. Now is the time, he said, to focus on "shoots, stems and leaves," perhaps combined with a few vegetables from the root cellar, such as the beets in this salad. The dressing uses tender first-growth parsley and coriander.

1 pound beets

1 bunch scallions or young leeks