Sunday, August 23, 2009

Awakening Birthday Dinner


For my birthday dinner, I decided to put my recent awakening into action by making some changes with my grocery shopping habits.

The ingredients were composed from last minute shopping at Venice Wholefoods Market. I was so thrilled to take the steps to make changes by selecting “local” first then “organic”. I picked a free ranged duck and some organic green figs both from local farms, some domestic prosciutto instead of the imported one I usually get, and some local organic raspberries with mouthwatering fragrance. Since it is impossible to buy products without the conventional packaging, I decided to start with the breakfast cereal. I was so excited to find all the crunchy and tasty cereals at the grain section and got a few different mix instead of my all time favorite, Dorset Cereal. Dorset Cereal is so yummy and hard to give up, however, it does come all the way from Dorset, England, with a few boxes a week, there are quite a bit of packaging materials wasted and it does increase carbon footprints. By selecting local producers in loose bins seems to make better sense here. It was a positive process as I stock up my shopping cart.

I am fortunate to have choices and I can made conscious choices, not just to pay less for more, but making choices to support local farmers so they can be more productive with more natural products, to reduce carbon emissions, and to eat ingredients that are more natural, free of antibiotics, supplemental growth hormones, animal byproducts feed, long-lasting chemical pesticides and fertilizers.

To select a bottle of wine to pair was challenging. I don’t care for wine produced in southern Californian. Since it is my birthday, I decided to make one exception picked up a bottle of Schnaitmann Rosé from my favorite wine region, Württenberg, it has lots of fruit, dry, well balanced, and absolutely delicious!

Menu

Crispy prosciutto and calimyrna figs with caramelized balsamic vinegar



Duck breast with fresh raspberry coolie


Lime tart

1 comment:

Jeff said...

Prosciutto is so delicious. Never tried it with figs. Looks like a fabulous Birthday Meal