When you start with the best seasonal ingredients, it makes cooking a great deal more efficient as dishes sing in harmony of what nature has to offer.
We seek out small family farms who grow for flavor rather than for shelf life or overt profiteering. Most of our favorite farmers are not certified organic, but they utilize beyond organic practices. Instead of paying all the money and pushing all the paperwork for that certification, they are spending their time feeling out the land to understand their soil, our ever-changing climate, and how that all relates to water and natural fertilizer. We trust visiting and talking with farmers over any kind of label.
I mean wow, right? This is a crostini station from the summer which was featured on Design Love Fest. Did you know that grapes have very short seasons as summer rolls through? Different varieties come and go and we make sure to taste at farmers markets each week to find who has the best offerings at a given time. The result is a sheer explosion of color and flavor, but it also means we are not going to have corn year round or watermelon, eggplant, or even salmon. When they are in season, at their peak, that’s when you will see them on plates we serve.
This exercise has made some clients upset, but it has made others informed. Purchasing ingredients you find year-round in big box markets is not sustainable to our planet. Eating seasonally requires less water and fertilizer, and produces amplified flavors. We are a very busy catering company and therefore we have serious buying power that we use to support small farmers who rotate their crops, let their soil rest, and respect the slow and natural process of our eco-system. This may very well mean that the snap peas you were promised at your tasting are replaced with green beans because it is what Sarah found to be the most superior crop at a given time. Our dishes are dictated by mother earth, let’s all trust what she is offering us.
For the most current information on what we are purchasing and from where, follow our @Ingredients4HeirloomLA feed on Instagram here. The intention is for you to be able to shop like we do, and make purchases that support sustainability of our planet and of small farmers.
This design is steller! You most certainly know how to keep a reader entertained.
Between your wit and your videos, I was almost moved
to start my own blog (well, almost…HaHa!) Excellent job. I really enjoyed what you had to say, and more than that,
how you presented it. Too cool!
Thank you so much!!