Happy Holidays

FARM2FORK Festival

Rodale’s Organic Life, the handbook for living naturally in the modern world published by Rodale Inc., today announced its first signature event. The Farm2Fork Festival, sponsored by Subaru (I happily drive a Forester!), will take place in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on Saturday, October 24 and Sunday, October 25^th, with three unique food-focused experiences celebrating the harvest season and its best ingredients.

The festival will kick off on Saturday morning with Bites of Brooklyn, featuring tastings from Brooklyn restaurants passionate about sustainable, local, farm-to-table dining, including Allswell, Bar Bolinas, Delaware and Hudson, Egg, The Finch, Greenpoint Fish & Lobster, Ted & Honey, The Pines, and Willow; a cooking stage with celebrated local chefs Adam Geringer-Dunn, Evan Hanczor, Patti Jackson, and John Poiarkoff; and interactive demonstrations on  everything from canning to windowsill gardening, led by experts from the Rodale Institute, JustFood.org, and the International Culinary Center (ICC).

Saturday evening’s intimate Slow Down Dinner, in partnership with Slow Food NYC, will celebrate one of the founding fathers of Brooklyn farm-to-table dining, restaurateur Andrew Tarlow. Guests will enjoy a family-style meal of urban farm fare inspired by the menus of his taste-making restaurants including Diner, Marlow & Sons, Roman’s, and Reynard. A portion of the proceeds will benefit Slow Food NYC’s program, Urban Harvest in the Schools, which provides financial and organizational support for 16 public schools throughout the city, helping to initiate, maintain and expand garden and food education programs.

Sunday’s Farm Feast Brunch will premiere the documentary film, “Food For Thought, Food For Life,” an exploration of today’s supersized agribusiness and its impact on the food system and the environment, with insights and solutions from some of today’s most forward thinking environmentalists, farmers, and chefs. A brief Q&A will follow, hosted by Organic Life Editor-in-Chief, James Oseland, with the filmmaker, Susan Rockefeller, and Dan Barber, the James-Beard award-winning Chef of Blue Hill and Blue Hill at Stone Barns who is featured prominently in the film. Guests will then sit down to a farmer’s feast of the season’s bounty, inspired by Barber’s new book, The Third Plate.

The Farm2Fork Festival is presented by Subaru and co-hosted by Lundberg Family Farms. Other participating and supporting sponsors include Bonterra Organic Vineyards, Klean Kanteen, Larabar, OurHarvest, PassionRoses, Pete and Gerry’s Organic Eggs, Organic Valley, Sixpoint Brewery, and Yogi Tea.

Organic Life has graciously provided a special code MEDIA when signing up on the registration page for a 40% discount for you to attend any of the three events. 

I will be there for Bites of Brooklyn and The Farm Feast Brunch so come say hello!

Vinegar Hill House / Kings County Distillery Picnic Dinner

 All Photos © Valery Rizzo

One of the last dinners of the season in the Whiskey Garden at Kings County Distillery was a picnic dinner with Brooklyn's Vinegar Hill House paired with cocktails and wine. On the menu were deviled eggs, bourbon cured lox, moonshine, cucumber & dill cocktail, watermelon salad, smoked pork wattle pork shoulder, cucumber & cabbage slaw and heirloom tomatoes with a selection of rose and white wines along with a dessert of sweet corn flan paired with a bourbon blueberry cobbler cocktail. The garden was glorious. This was the whiskey garden's last year as the space will become part of the new Wegmans supermarket being built in the Yard, but I am sure it won't be the end of other special events at the distillery.

Kings County Distillery Whiskey Garden

All photos © Valery Rizzo

For the summer Kings County Distillery is hosting a "Whiskey in the Garden" extension of their tasting room every Friday and Saturday night with a rotating cast of food partners. Mint Julips, Moonshine Punch, whiskey flights and other specialty cocktails together with food from local chefs and restaurants. For more information and hours see www.kingscountydistillery.com/tastingroom

Bundle Dyeing with The Dogwood Dyer / Brooklyn Grange

All images © Valery Rizzo

Last week Brooklyn Grange Rooftop Farm had a Natural Dye workshop hosted by Liz Spencer of The Dogwood Dyer. It was a class focused on Bundle Dyeing on silk using natural locally grown and foraged dye plants, most of which are dual purpose edibles and have herbal/medicinal properties as well. The farm has also started a Dye Garden where all the plants used for natural dyeing can grow and be sourced from. 

Brooklyn Grange Events

The Dogwood Dyer

Table on Ten / The Weekender

All Photos © Valery Rizzo

Last year I had the pleasure of photographing Table on Ten, a beautiful Farm to Table Inn and cafe owned by Inez Valk-Kempthorne and husband Justus Kempthorne. The couple relocated from Williamsburg, Brooklyn and offer many Brooklyn staples, such as Four & Twenty Blackbirds pie and other items that remind them of the city. 

This was a different kind of assignment for me as it was all shot on an iphone using the Hipstamatic app as part of a larger story about the Catskills for the Food Issue of Snap Magazine (published by Hisptamatic). The Weekender, a gorgeous lifestyle magazine from Germany printed this more focused story about Inez and Table on Ten in their current Summer Issue. I also included here other photos from that shoot.