It’s my fault the long-promised photo essay about the Thai pork candy has yet to appear. I can’t seem to function properly with this borrowed computer. Soon. Very soon.

In the meantime, enjoy this article from today’s Washington Post Home section about the rising popularity of chickens in the DC area. Home instead of Food, you ask? Indeed, for today’s article explains how you can keep chickens in the DC area (and talks about how you can’t if you’re in DC).

In “Hot Chicks - Legal or Not, Chickens Are the Chic New Backyard Addition,” Adrian Higgins writes:

“Chickens are America’s cool new pet,” said Dave Belanger, publisher of the magazine Backyard Poultry. When he launched it three years ago, “we were thinking 15 to 20 thousand” subscriptions, he said. The print run for the bimonthly is now 100,000.

Belanger’s magazine is published in Wisconsin, where five years ago chicken activists in Madison succeeded in getting the city council to reverse a ban on chicken coops. Madison’s ordinance is typical of other cities’. You can raise chickens for eggs, not meat; they must be enclosed in a coop or run; and it’s strictly a hen party: Roosters who crow day and night are prohibited.

I’ve wanted to get more chickens for years, but in Alexandria we’re just too close to our neighbors houses for it to be legal. The article captures the silliness of life with chickens quite well. Adrian Higgins writes, “So what’s it like to keep chickens? From what I gather, they are exasperating, dumb, funny, beautiful and so hopelessly ill-equipped to survive on their own that you have to love them.”

In high school one of my chores was to try to find where Greta laid her morning egg before one of the horses did. She had an affinity for the feedboxes and some of the horses really loved a bit of scrambled egg with their breakfast. And who wouldn’t? Fresh eggs are fantastic.

Now we buy our eggs from the farmer’s market - either the Del Ray Farmer’s market (sorry, can’t remember the farmer’s name - have to check this week) or from the nice EcoFriendly Foods folks at the Arlington Farmer’s Market. Buy good eggs. Seriously, you won’t regret it.

• The Atlantic Food blog answers the immortal question you never knew you should ask,“What Do Fresh Turkey Eggs Taste Like?” #

Powered by Twitter Tools.

It’s almost time to sign up for a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share. The Washington Post Food section will have a list of CSAs in the DC area on February 6th.

So what’s a CSA? Local Harvest has an extensive section explaining CSAs, but I’ve pulled out a couple paragraphs that sum things up:

Community members sign up and purchase their shares, either in one lump sum before the seeds are sown in early spring, or in several installments through-out the growing season. Production expenses are thereby guaranteed and the farmer or grower starts receiving income as soon as work begins.

In return for their investment, CSA members receive a bag of fresh, locally-grown, typically organic produce once a week from late spring through early fall, and occasionally throughout the winter in northern climates and year-round in milder zones. Members prefer a wide variety of vegetables and herbs, which encourages integrated cropping and companion planting. These practices help reduce risk factors and give multiple benefits to the soil. Crops are planted in succession in order to provide a continuous weekly supply of mixed vegetables. As crops rotate throughout the season, weekly shares vary by size and types of produce, reflecting local growing seasons and conditions.

You should go read the entire page, it’s very thorough.

Local Harvest is a website that enables you to to find farmers’ markets, family farms, and other sources of sustainably grown food in your area, where you can buy produce, grass-fed meats, and many other goodies.” You can get a head-start on your CSA research there, which is important because many CSAs sell out the day that they open registration, or very soon after. You’ll have to decide whether to make the commitment ahead of time or you run the risk of missing out altogether - kinda like we did this past year because we forgot what day registration opened. Fortunately, we have a great selection of farmer’s markets in our area so it wasn’t a great tragedy.

When you’re choosing a CSA, you don’t have to just pick one out of a hat and hope they’re a good fit for you or your family. Individual farms should supply you with detailed information about what they grow, what their policies are, how you pick up your produce, what their prices are, and any other relevant information. If a farm doesn’t have a drop-off spot or day that works with your schedule, for instance, you really shouldn’t chose it. I particularly like Potomac Vegetable Farms because they don’t grow strawberries (allergies!), and also offer egg and fresh flower shares. Also, they have a drop off location that’s incredibly convenient. Now, we just have to remember to sign up this year…

I recently received the lovely gift of bacon and egg bandages, which are even cuter than the plain old bacon bandages we posted about previously. (Plus, they came with a little plastic pig in the tin). As Atkins Babe has noted, these bandages lack airholes and so will potentially turn your wound into something gross, but they’re still darned cute!

Now, where are all the recipe posts you people have been promising? There’s no meat in our meatblog!