About Brian Halweil
The publisher of Edible Manhattan and the editor of Edible East End, Brian Halweil has been at the forefront of the growing "eat local" movement. As a student at Stanford University, Brian worked with California farmers interested in reducing their pesticide use, and set up a two-acre student-run organic farm on the Stanford campus. In 1997, he joined Worldwatch Institute as a Senior Researcher and John Gardner Public Service Fellow. At the Institute, Brian writes on the social and ecological impacts of how we grow food, focusing recently on organic farming, biotechnology, hunger and rural communities. He describes the evolving local food movement in his recent book Eat Here: Reclaiming Homegrown Pleasures in a Global Supermarket. Brian's work has also been featured in the international press, and he has testified before the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations on the role of biotechnology in combating poverty and hunger in the developing world. He has traveled throughout Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, and East Africa learning indigenous farming techniques and promoting sustainable food production. He works on Edible East End and other Edible publications from his home in Sag Harbor, New York, where he and his wife tend a home garden and orchard.
For this Long Island boy Brooklyn sometimes seems endless. Like when you can exit the Bedford Avenue L station in Williamsburg, as we did last week, and head half a mile south on Wythe Avenue and come upon a whole neighborhood of little food shops and new and renovated condos that didn’t seem to exist a few years go. Perhaps its this vast newness–realtors citywide, we’re told, are now pushing the part of Williamsburg called the Southside–that was part of the inspiration for Isa on South Second Street.
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On Wednesday night, at Guastavino’s under the 59th Street Bridge, we tasted the new face of Italian food in New York, like salumi from Cesare Casella of Salumeria Rosi. What tied all these dishes together wasn’t just their Old World inspiration, but their locavore sensibility: They were all made from mostly New York grown ingredients: In fact this batch of sopressatta was Casella’s first made with Empire State meat.
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On Wednesday night at our Edible Escape at the Angel Orensanz Center there will be wine, spirits, cheeses and veggies from across the state. ILOVENY will be bringing some swanky farmers market totes and t-shirts to give away. And, to sweeten the pot, we will be giving away prizes to attendees. We’ve already told you about the mixed case of New York State wines, and some other lucky ticket holder will get two gallons of Organic Valley New York Fresh milk. In other words, something for the evening and something for the morning.
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As a teaser for all you ticket holders to Edible Escape–our mouth-watering, border-crossing food and drink party next Wednesday, we’ve been leaking selected menu items over the past weeks. But now we’d like to tell you about some giveaways that a few lucky attendees will receive. (Yes, tickets are still available here. Our first prize is a mixed case of wines and the Cape Wine Braai Masters recipe book, courtesy of our friends at Wines of South Africa. We have two of these to give away, and we’ll be choosing winners at random from our ticket holders.
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Honest Man, the restaurant group that comprises Nick & Toni’s in East Hampton, Nick & Toni’s Café on the Upper West Side in Manhattan, Rowdy Hall in East Hampton, La Fondita in Amagansett and Townline BBQ in Sagaponack, will cook dinner on Tuesday, Oct. 4 at 7 p.m. at the James Beard House in New York. This “Hamptons Classic” dinner will feature tastes from all five restaurants in a six-course meal of Long Island ingredients–Montauk lobster, Iacono chickens, North Fork peaches, Balsam Farms strawberries–paired with Long Island wines.
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I’ve been a fan of Mark Bittman’s cooking and eating advice since I first saw his quirky, easy-to-follow “Minimalist” recipe videos. But he really knocked it out of the park with his latest column in the Sunday Times where he argues decisively, with nifty infographics, that good, healthy food can in fact be cheaper than the fast food alternative.
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SAG HARBOR–Earlier today, in a dash of Hurricane-driven provisioning that has struck the region from Manhattan to Montauk, my wife, who is always thinking ahead in a way that makes me love her, went to town for batteries, candles, bread and other essentials, including two pounds of already-ground coffee from our local roaster, Java Nation. We usually buy whole beans, but if electricity goes out, we won’t be able to use our grinder, of course.
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I take back everything I said about needing to involve kids in garden and kitchen chores. Well, not everything. But involving kids can sometimes be frustratingly counter-productive and downright messy, even when it yields a few pints of very good mixed…
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