Dining and Opining

Slow Food Madison is throwing a wonderful event next week: A Food Swap! I unfortunately can't make it, but encourage local readers to attend. The ticket site indicates that there are only 22 tickets left. Reserve yours now! Loyal Dining and Opining followers will remember that a few friends and I threw our own food swap a couple of years ago, which I described in this post . It was a real success and I've been wanting to see something like it at a bigger scale for several years now. The details for the Slow Food event are as follows: What : A Food Swap is an event where members of the community come together to trade homemade, homegrown, and foraged food with each other. Attendees directly trade their goods with one another as a way to diversify the foods in their pantries and make connections with other members of the local food community. When : Monday, November 11th 6:00pm.  The event will probably last about 1.5-2 hours.  Where : Goodman Center 149 Waubesa Stree...

My new employer, and one of the hippest places in town, the Madison Children's Museum , just opened their newest exhibit: the " Urb Garden ." This new space is a small deck that overlooks the back parking lot, but it packs a big punch. One of goals of the exhibit is to display a variety of urban gardening techniques, to show what's possible in an urban space (the middle of a parking lot!) without a lot of square footage. Many of these ideas can be replicated in any backyard or even balcony. And they're fun for kids! Here's the whole deck, just off of North Hamilton St. on the Capitol Square in Madison (looking at the people on the left gives a sense of scale): Besides being visually striking, the deck is chock full of cool activities and awesome details that really make it come to life. There's the seating area with wooden stumps for chairs and window boxes (left photo), the solar oven and chalkboard and thermometer (middle photo), and the ve...

  Mark your calendars for this very exciting Madison food event: Madison Food Camp!  Saturday, April 13, 2013 from 9:00 AM to 4:30 PM   Sign Up, And See More Details Here This one day event will bring together people from the community to share knowledge on all thigns food.  Exciting topics like gardening, bee keeping, fermenting, canning, chicken wrangling, foraging, permaculture, raw food preparation, cheese making, brewing, composting, and more!  $10 gets you in for the whole day.  The organizers also welcome others who are interested in presenting. Sign Up

New Year's Eve saw us going bowling and to an all-night diner in Georgia, where we were visiting my parents. The diner was called Marietta Diner , and from the Yelp reviews , it seems to be real icon of this north Atlanta suburb. It was packed on New Year's Eve when we arrived, around 12:30 AM, with people in all their holiday finery. We were greeted at the front door by a cheerful, rotund man in a suit, and also by huge displays cases of cakes like these: Cakes upon cakes! We perused the huge menu, which touted Food Network's feature on the Marietta Diner, and which served foods from every spectrum: Greek food, breakfast food, seafood, American-style diner food, pasta--the whole gamut. And the place was so bright! All the lights and decorations and cheerful waiters kept us smiling and awake despite the late hour. After much debate (and because we'd already gotten loaded fries with cheese sauce and jalapenos at the bowling alley), we settled on jus...

I've been hearing about the revamped Madison Children's Museum since it re-opened its doors over a year ago. But I finally got the chance to go there a couple of weeks ago, with our nine-year-old neighbor. Our neighbor is a wonderful boy, who has made me hand-made beaded necklaces and earrings; who has made drawings of Eddie Vedder (our cat) as a super cat, complete with cape and fish-decorated socks; and who is our best backyard frisbee partner. The place is just beautiful--with all the exuberance of handmade objects and childhood fascination. It reminded me of my favorite indoor non-home location in the world: The St. Louis City Museum . One of the decorative elements of the Madison Children's Museum that I loved was it's use of inspiring quotes throughout the space, beginning with every letter of the alphabet. Here are a selection: But the reason I'm writing about the museum here on D&O is because of its heavy emphasis on  food and sustainability. I...

Since I don't watch a lot of TV, I sometimes miss cool programs that are worth a look. One such program I recently discovered is Wisconsin Foodie, an "Emmy nominated independent television series dedicated to discovering the stories behind the food we eat." It airs on Wisconsin Public Television, Thursdays at 7. If you're not in Wisconsin or, like me, don't have television, you can watch some of the episodes online here: http://wisconsinfoodie.com/episodes/ A few that I'm excited to see: Dane County Farmers Market Great Taste of the Midwest L'Etoile (very Madison-centric, I know--but there are episodes about all of Wisconsin!)

I know I've mentioned the Green Ow l, Madison's only vegetarian restaurant, on D&O before, but I figured it was about time for a good old-fashioned review. This last time we headed out there, it was a warm enough day that we were able to sit outside, in their nice outdoor patio, with bird-filled trees nearby. It was lovely, even though I do enjoy their modern and colorful interior decor, with bright green design-y walls, cool lampshades, and cute owl images galore. We began with an appetizer special, of potstickers in a spicy red sauce. The potstickers were only lightly fried, so they had a nice soft wrapping, with greens inside. These were tasty, but a little on the salty side. For our entrees, we shared two dishes: the BBQ jackfuit sandwich (that we had in slider form at a Global Food for Thought Meal last semester) and the empanadas picadillo. The former is described on the menu as "the young jackfruit stands in for pulled pork, simmered in our BBQ sauce. ...

Although I've mentioned it a time or two, as one of my favorite parts of Madison summers F. H. King's Harvest Handouts deserves its own post. I first discovered this joyous program in the summer of 2008, when I was hurriedly walking through the Library Mall on campus, on my way to teach a summer class, hungry and grumpy. But then, right there before my eyes, was a table full of beautiful vegetables with a sign that read "Free!" Free? I said. How could this be?  I didn't stop long to ask questions that time around, but grabbed a few carrots and cucumbers and went joyfully along my way, munching and chomping, happier than a bunny in springtime. image from admissions.wisc.edu Over the last few years, I've gotten to learn what this was all about, and to enjoy the fruits of F. H. King's labor every Friday, all summer long, from 1-3 (previously in Library Mall, this summer in East Campus Mall). The F. H. King Student Farm, named after a Wisconsin agricu...

In addition to mulberries and all that other good stuff, one of the staples of a Madison summer is the Concerts on the Square series that the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra puts on each year. It's a particular Madison scene, in which everyone--the families and college kids and elderly folks and babies and "colorful people" (as my Mom called them) alike--brings their picnic blankets and wine and food to the Capitol Square and spreads out on every inch of grass, enjoying the music a little, but the weather and atmosphere a whole lot. We added our own picnic blanket to the mix: We had a spread of fresh baked whole wheat yogurt bread, a curry tofu salad, watermelon, trail mix, plantain chips, sweet peas and cucumbers, and hummus: We drank it all down with some white wine from J&R's wedding , which served as the perfect potent potable with which to toast our good fortune and happiness. To getting to live in Madison! To enjoying a picnic with our friends and ...