It is often assumed that “organic” equals “expensive.” This is not always the case. Take for example the Ardales wines of Bodegas Arúspide. They make a red from Tempranillo and a white from Airén that are certified organic and retail for about $12 a bottle; $130 a case. Not bad considering it has to be shipped across an ocean.
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Bodegas Arúspide is in Valdepeñas, in the southern part of the massive wine region known as Castilla La Mancha, home of the legendary knight Hidalgo Don Quixote. It is 120 miles due south of Madrid, at about the halfway point between the capital city and the Mediterranean port of Málaga.

All their wines are fermented using a method called carbonic maceration. Unlike the conventional methods, familiar to most through old “I Love Lucy” reruns, the grapes are not crushed before fermentation but rather are stored in a cool, carbon dioxide-rich environment where the juice ferments inside the grape without using added yeasts as a catalyst. The result is fruit-forward, friendly, approachable wines that are best drunk young. The most familiar wine that utilizes this method is the oft-overhyped Beaujolais Nouveau.

Read the whole post at Press-Citizen.com

Tags: Uncategorized by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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All across the country this past Labor Day, folks gathered for picnics. That’s no surprise, of course. After all, it was a holiday, and the weather was grand across nearly the whole continent. But there was something unique about one group of picnics; 307 of them to be exact, in all 50 states. They were dubbed “Eat-Ins” (modeled on the sit-ins of the ‘60s), and they were a call to action by Slow Food USA

At those picnics, including one right here in Iowa City, more than 20,000 people gathered around tables in parks and farms and school grounds to tell Congress to fix the School Lunch Program. Most of the discussions at these events and in the press afterwards centered on improving the food itself through increased Federal spending and local food initiatives. But there was another topic directly relevant to Labor Day: the call to create green jobs with a “School Lunch Corps.”

via Nationwide “eat-ins” show way to a revived National School Lunch Program | Grist.

Tags: Articles, Events, Grist.org, Health Reform, Iowa, School Lunch, Slow Food, food, food politics, recipe, time for lunch by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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Next up in our occasional series on lesser-known grapes we have Macabeo.

Like many of the others we've discussed in this space, this one has about 14 other names. I'll spare you most of them to avoid unnecessary confusion, but you should know that it also is commonly called Viura.

While it is grown in some parts of southern France, notably in Languedoc where it is primarily a blending grape, its primary home stretches from Barcelona, west by northwest through Cariñena and onward into Rioja.

via Macabeo makes soft, fresh wine | press-citizen.com | Iowa City Press Citizen.

Tags: Table Wine, wine by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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Consider the egg

Iowa is the number-one producer of eggs in the country, with more than twice the number of laying hens than Ohio, the number two state. There are nearly 20 times as many hens here than there are people, producing a shade over 14 billion eggs a year. As one might expect, their living conditions are less than ideal.

A cursory glance at the website of the Iowa Egg Council does not reveal any of the images of the way the laying hens are treated, but rather concerns itself with recipes, coloring books for the kids, and “Eggbert’s” somewhat rosy history of egg production in Iowa. A search of their site for the term “battery cage” yields a goose egg. But battery cages are one of the major reasons why Iowa out-produces everyone else – we have lots of them.

Across the US there are about 280 million hens in battery cages at any given time, cages that so severely restrict their movements that they cannot even spread their wings. They can’t nest, bathe in the dust, perch or forage, all instinctive chicken behaviors. Completely depleted of calcium in a few short weeks, their bones break and they are shipped off, dead and dying, to soup plants and pet food factories.

via The cruelty of industrial egg-riculture—plus a tasty recipe for your local pastured eggs | Grist.

Tags: Animal Cruelty, Articles, Grist.org, Iowa, food, food politics, recipe by Chef Kurt Michael Friese
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