A Sustainable Summer with Local, Organic Food & Wine for Dinner!

Posted on August 2, 2011 by

What happens when you put a chef, the Slushies and a fashion photographer together? This is what we ventured to discover last Sunday when we got together with The Refined Chef Seth Fera-Schanes, and fashion photographer Meghan McGarry. As it turns out you get a spectacular meal with great company and wine!

Starting our journey at the 77th Street Green Market we wandered down the two block market located on Columbus Ave, just west of the Natural History Museum. Tables teeming with fresh produce and vegetables, lavender, and homemade rugala all provoked many stops, photos and purchases. On the shopping list:  leeks, tomatoes, asparagus, cream, butter, muscles, fresh bread, lemons and parsley. We even found a nice dry Reisling from Treleaven Winery, Cayuga Lake in Upstate New

York. The best part about the local green markets in NYC,(other than supporting local, sustainable food), is the tactile and engaging experience you get from shopping. You talk to the farmers, learn something, taste a strawberry, that is it proper size, and become more engaged and connected to where your food comes from.

After the market we strolled up Columbus to the rather suburban area between 96th and 100th streets. Urbanites may complain about having  places like TJ Maxx and Home Goods invade New York City, (making it more closely resemble the dreaded suburbs), but few argue about having access to fresh, healthy food from the likes of Whole Foods. This extends for the average S-lushie to having access to good, environmentally friendly wine and beer! The Whole Foods Wine Store doesn’t disappoint and neither does their resident wine maven Melanie Mann. Melanie was on hand to be our wine sherpa for the menu, which included steamed muscles in wine and butter and asparagus soup.  She suggested we go with three excellent selections, of the honest variety.

Interesting among her favorites were wines with no formal certifications, some didn’t even tout their sustainability credentials on their labels.  See an interesting argument on certification of organic and biodynamic wine here.  However, relying on her relationships with the winery owners, and first hand tours of the facilities she was able to pull from the vast array on the shelves, wines like Sauvignon Saint Bris from Clotide Davenne, Winner of the Médaille d’Argent Concours des Grands Vins de France MACON 2008 and the Burgundia d’Or 2007.  The Saint Bris paired perfectly with the muscles, parsley and lemon. This wine is particularly unique because it’s the only Burgundy produced from Savingon 100%.

Also on her list- Biohoff Pratch 2010 Grüner Veltliner- a great summer white with citrus fruit undertones and a nice tang.  Biohoff wines are made in Austria, by a young Stephan Pratsch  who is deeply devoted to the making the healthiest grape. Mr. Pratsch makes his enthusiasm readily apparent on his website, which google happily translated from Austrian to English for us, and thankfully because Mr. Pratsch says it best himself; “An organically-farmed soil is alive. It is the basis for the functioning ecosystem in the vineyard. Like any species at any location or floor has its own flavor. It takes years to develop and leaves the wine with something  unaltered by chemicals.”   

Having gathered the necessary supplies we went to The Refined Chefs’ kitchen to whip it all into a delicious meal, at this point we were very ready to eat!  We let Seth do the cooking, while we did the tough work of popping corks!

Thanks to Seths’ expertise in the kitchen and Meghans’ photography the meal not only looked good but tasted great also! The wine provided the perfect back drop to glorious scenery and we hope you are inspired to create your own partnerships and concoct some amazing, and memorable meals.

Check out your local CSA (Community Supported Agriculture), where you can buy a “share” of vegetables from a regional farmer. Weekly your farmer will deliver the goods  to a convenient drop-off spot your neighborhood. Looking to make friends with chickens, sheep, and a vegetable patch? Check out the Stone Barn Farm, only 30 mins. outside of the city. If you are interested in volunteering at an NYC Green Market, or just get more involved, visit the Grow NYC site.

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Getting Creative and Leading the Way in Sustainable Alcohol: Anheuser Busch & Yellow+Blue.

Posted on June 16, 2011 by

It’s no secret that big names in the alcoholic beverage industry are moving towards more sustainable methodologies. Approaching the change from many angles, companies are finding innovative ways to reduce their carbon foot prints, use less energy & water, and use innovative materials and resources.
Take Anheuser-Busch InBev for instance; they tackled their water use and are saving lots of it! Last year the beer maker reported using 4.04 hectoliters of water for every hectoliter of production—otherwise known as the equivalent of 16,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools. They’re aiming to save even more next year.  How did they do it? By making engineering improvements, fostering awareness in operations and making behavioral changes – optimizing efficiency in all their plants. They are also saving energy, aiming for a 10% reduction in carbon footprint by 2012 and a 99% recycle rate by eliminating material losses, packaging improvements and alternative uses for raw materials and byproducts.
Some wine companies are also addressing a big environmental issue: transportation. Just ask Dr. Vino, Tyler Colman, resident wine guru, (yes he does have a PHD). The Doctor conducted extensive research about transportation and making sustainable wine, he then developed a way to calculate a wines carbon footprint, check out his calculations! Kudus to any eco-nerds, (we count ourselves among you), if you want the whole report download it here.
Speaking of transportation Yellow+Blue wines, not only come in a tetra pak, they also transport their wine in bulk! They buy it before it’s bottled and ship it in steel tanks to North America, doing so has a 46% smaller carbon footprint than the traditional method. Way to think outside and in the box all at the same time! With a wide selection of reds and whites Yellow+Blue is always a good go-to choice for a S-Lushie.

Happy Imbibing!

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Factoring in the Fun, Extra Credit for These Eco-Booze Brands.

Posted on June 2, 2011 by

The theme of this year’s Sustainable Brands conference is “Play On” – and the inspiration for this weeks post. Of course, given the subject matter, fun falls naturally into the equation.  It should also fall into the bigger picture of a sustainable lifestyle. Being green should be fun, because let’s face it – the lofty goal of “saving the planet” can be a bit overwhelming, grim and, as Al Gore puts it, inconvenient. Often choosing green is associated with making sacrifices, for a less satisfying product, that costs more.

So let’s get more serious about being less serious when it comes to a sustainable lifestyle.  Thankfully, there are plenty of sustainable brands out there challenging the “green is hard” stigma. Here are some companies who take it to the next level of enjoyment while promoting people, planet and profit.

Their beer tastes great and they’re doing a number of things to enhance their sustainable operations, but that’s not all- New Belgium Brewery is having a blast doing it! Take for instance the Tour de Fat; these guys are even more obsessed with biking than we are!  It’s deeply ingrained in the New Belgium culture. The tour is just the beginning… check out the Bike In Cinema, and Share Your Joy Ride for a chance to win a new bike!  And hey, if you want to trade in your car (for at least a year) they will give you one sweet ride in exchange. Or join Team Wonderbike!  Their motto is “Follow Your Folly”, which we interpret as follow your human powered, better for you and your carbon footprint fun. If biking isn’t exactly your style there’s always posing naked in a river. If you ask us, this entertaining campaign may be the best way to get people to help save the Poudre River in CO.

VEEV spirits also adds value to your delicious martini by donating a tree for everyTREEtini you order! This added on top of their renewable energy use, low impact 4 column distilling, local ingredients and giving back to the community making it a pleasure in every way to imbibe. For something a little more artistically fun, check out The Cork Dorks fun uses for all those wine corks you’ve been saving.

We will bid you adieu, with this final fun idea, how about making it more fun to do the right thing, like recycle. That was the question The Fun Theory, a brain child of Volkswagen, answered with their Bottle Bank Arcade.

Clink and Cheers to that!

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The Fountain of Youth May Be One Drink A Day… Forget Those Apples

Posted on May 27, 2011 by

A balanced life is the goal for most of us, sometimes hovering off in the horizon.   The Work  / Life balance often comes with a drink to unwind at the end of the day, to celebrate an achievement or mourn a disappointment.

And it’s no surprise to S-LUSHIES that a drink or two may actually help us maintain balance. But it’s a good reminder of exactly how much and (we think) what you consume. Making the case for consuming the most organic and sustainably made booze available.

Relieving stress, moderate alcohol enjoyment makes your heart happy  by decreasing your risk of developing heart disease and heart attacks. That’s important because cardiovascular disease is the number one cause of death in the US, yikes!  Healthy hearts help us achieve personal sustainability – long life!  Further making the case for moderation, about three-quarters of the teaching hospitals in the US serve alcoholic beverages to their patients – cheers to that medicine.

Besides feeling the buzz, what’s so great about alcohol in our bodies?  For starters, it increases on good cholesterol, decreases bad cholesterol, decreases blood clotting or thrombosis, reduces coronary artery spasm triggered by stress, increases coronary blood flows, reduces blood pressure and blood insulin levels and increases estrogen.  Wow!  A drink or two can also reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s, dementia, arthritis, enlarged prostate, osteoporosis, gallbladder disease and even cancer!  Double wow!  Not convinced?  Read more here.

According do Harvard’s Healthy Eating Pyramid, moderate is defined as one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men.  A fishbowl and a shot glass are very different, so follow these guidelines for size: 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine and 1-1/2 ounces of hard liquor.  Indulging?  Sip a glass of Bloomberg’s finest tap or your local variety after each drink to slow alcohol consumption.

Working on your own balance?  S-LUSHIES like these great tips and cheers to your health!

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Why isn’t there more organic beer?

Posted on May 21, 2011 by

We were inspired this week by a Triple Pundit article on the organic beer market. The article got us thinking, why isn’t there more organic beer out there to choose from?

The article states U.S. organic beer sales jumped from $9 million in 2003 to $41 million in 2009. This is still only a small fraction of the craft beer market, but its progress. (Read more)

However, it remains challenging to come by a good selection of organic brews in your local bar or liquor store. Here may be some reasons why:

1. Organic beer may not be as profitable to produce as conventional brews. The shortage of organic ingredients infers a higher cost for raw materials for organic brewers. Suppliers seem to be aware of the fact that organic brewers will pay the higher costs in order to maintain their organic label. Meanwhile, most organic beer is competitively priced with its non-organic craft counterparts. Higher cost of production + similar price point = slimmer profit margins for organic brewing companies.

Some brewers like Sierra Nevada are overcoming this hurdle by growing their own ingredients on company owned property to brew small batches of organic beer.

2. It’s hard! Not only do organic brewers need to figure out a way to source organic ingredients in a short supply, and remain profitable, there’s red tape too. Obtaining and maintaining a USDA Organic Certification is a resource intensive task that non-organic brewers wouldn’t dream of taking on.

To make matters worse, in another recent Triple Pundit article, sources reveal that until a new law kicks in (in 2013), brewers can use conventional hops in their organic-labeled beer. In the meantime, mega-brewers are taking advantage of the organic labeling without providing a technically organic product. Not only does this seem unfair to true organic brewers who pay the full price, it’s also deceiving to consumers who are led to believe that their beer is pesticide-free. (Read more)

3. Is there demand? Well, is there?! How many people insist that their beer be organic? With rising skepticism of organic labeling in the U.S., is it even meaningful to select delicious organic ale? We do believe demand for organic beer is rising and that’s only the beginning.. However, if certified organic labeling doesn’t do its job, its bound to loose consumer confidence not only for labeled beer, but in the entire market of organically-labeled products…unless the beer industry finds another standard with more integrity to rely on.

Despite the struggles of this rapidly-growing market, a number of organic brewers have been paving the path. So cheers to 100 bottles of organic beer on the wall, and committed companies like Peak Brewing and Bison Brewing, among others.

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Brew Your Own: An Interview with Shin Kamei

Posted on May 12, 2011 by

This week S-LUSH sat down with a delicious bottle of our good friend Shin Kamei’s homebrew to learn all about making beer.  Making your own is definitely the most sustainable way to keep the good stuff flowin’. There is also something truly gratifying about making your own.  A home cooked meal will always have a different taste than one at a restaurant, and that goes for homebrew too!

S-LUSH: So, Shin how did you get involved in this crazy beer making world? We think it’s because you’re from Boulder, CO, what we consider the Beer capital of America … ok we’re a little partial.

Shin:  Boulder is fantastic for beer but that’s not why we got started.  It started when my friend Stephan got it in his head to brew ginger beer – he started the first batch thinking he had some idea of how do it. Next thing I hear- he’s in underwear in his kitchen when one of the bottles explodes, covering him and the entire kitchen with ginger beer! After that we wanted to try sake. It just seemed like a natural progression. (S-LUSH: And maybe safer with less carbonation.) Shin: Making sake was interesting, but I would only do it once. It requires a refined way of processing that we aren’t set up for, yet. Our sake was drinkable but I think it was pretty weak in alcohol content, so we moved on. The next step was beer… my first batch was done by myself with the “extensive” knowledge of reading 20 pages from a homebrew book. It came out pretty good!

S-LUSH: Nice! Can you walk us through the process? Can we make beer in an afternoon? What supplies do you need? Yeast?  Water?  A giant cauldron?

Shin: In my experience, you can brew five gallons from start to finish in four hours. First you need your basic ingredients and equipment. We got our start at the Brooklyn Brew Shop, which has everything you need to start.

Equipment:

3-5 Gallon kettle or “The Big Pot”

5 Gallon Carboy

1 siphon

Thermometer

Sanitation Fluid

The Ingredients:

Water

Grain

Malt Extract

Hops

Yeast

These are the very basic things you need. The first thing that everybody will tell you is that you need to sanitize everything that the beer touches. If you don’t do a good job on sanitizing, the yeast will die and the fermentation will stop, bacteria will set in, which we don’t want. You won’t die if you drink it, but it may taste like the tarmac of LaGuardia Airport.  So, that being said, here is the run down:

1. Steep the grain like tea for an hour in 3-4 gallons of water in your big pot.

2. Take the grain out and boil water, add the malt extract and hops. This is what is called a “wert” (prounced wort).

3. Let it boil for an hour.

4. Cool the wert to about 70 degrees Fahrenheit. This is so that the yeast can live and eat up the malt extract and make alcohol. If it’s too hot the yeast will die.  You want to do this as fast as you can. They have special tools for this but a sink full of ice will do if that’s what you got.

5. Put the wert into your carbody which is where the fermentation will take place. Add the yeast, let sit for about a week.

6. Once the fermentation has stopped, bottle it!

7. This is the basic run down. There are many yeasts, grains, malt extracts, and other ingredients that make each beer unique.

S-LUSH: WOW, that’s a great run-down! How does one get the beer in the bottles?

Shin:  After the beer is done fermenting, which for most homebrew batches takes about a week.  We add a little sugar to reactivate the yeast so it creates the fizz in beer. Sanitizing beer bottles can take a while and I’ve spent more time in the bathroom doing that than anything else in the process. You will need a little over 50 12oz bottles for five gallons. Take a sanitized siphon and get your bottles lined up and you siphon the beer out of your carboy into your bottles.

S-LUSH: Ah ha! Where do you get your bottles? You recycle old ones right?

Shin:  You can use any beer bottles that don’t have the screw top. Wine and champagne bottles are fine too. For our first batch we went to our buildings recycling and got every bottle we could find. My friend got smart and gave $20 to one of the ladies around our neighborhood that collects cans and bottles for recycling money. We got over 150 bottles that way! There are some many creative ways to get beer bottles in the city.

S-LUSH: Is there instant gratification? Like when we make cookies, we can taste the batter and bite into a warm cookie, how long until we can get S-lushed?

Shin: Of course, I like to taste the beer at bottling time. Beer making is just like making a soup in my opinion. Taste the ingredients. Barley grain, extract, hops all have different flavors and you can see piece by piece how beer will taste. You get a feel for what it will taste like, just don’t double dip! The time from when you start boiling the water for your wert to enjoying your final product is about three to four weeks. Some take longer but this is the general time and well worth the wait!

S-LUSH: What are you drinking these days? Where do you see the future of craft beer going?

Shin:   I like to drink other people’s homebrew. You really appreciate what goes into beer when you know what’s behind it, but you can’t go wrong with a nice IPA. I try a new beer every time I go to the bar, but my favorite beer at the moment is a beer from the Smuttynose Brewing Company called “Really Old Brown Dog Ale”.  I haven’t had a beer since that matched that one!

S-LUSH: Ha ha- we can imagine a distinctive taste with a name like that.  So…how about an S-lush private label?!

Shin:  Absolutely!  We will dedicate a S-Lush batch for you guys this summer! How about a grapefruit beer?

S-LUSH: Wow, grapefruit beer is definitely something we would try! Thank you to Shin for a great interview. We loved learning more about the process, but we’ll just let you do the brewing and we’ll do the drinking!

Shin is an audio engineer by trade. He grew up in the mountains of Boulder, CO with Mariah, they were each others’ first friends, (well he was mine, so I hope he feels the same way). When he isn’t rocking to the beat of his own drum in the band Angela Jane, you can find him swiftly cycling through Williamsburg.  Personally, he is one of our favorite people to eat and drink with!  Especially when he tells stories about men in underwear doused in ginger beer.


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Brunch Cocktails For A Conscious S-LUSHIE

Posted on May 5, 2011 by

From coast to coast brunch is one meal that should be enjoyed slowly with great conversation, savory to sweet eats, and preferably a late morning drink to ease into the day.  Just like our favorite happy hour drinks we’ve decided give a sustainability makeover to some classic brunch cocktails.

How about a Mimosa or Bellini?  As reported by the New York Times, Champagne makers in France are re-engineering the champagne bottle, making it slightly slimmer, and thus lighter.  The purpose being to cut 200,000 metric tons of CO2 emitted every year in transporting billions of bubbly around the world.  For a more local option, check out Sonoma’s Gloria Ferrer Caves & Vineyards who brought us the first sparkling wines in California.  Gloria Ferrer was also the first to implement the Code of Sustainable Winegrowing Practices.  These practices and other stamps of approval such as Ecocert (France) and CCOF (California) can give you the warm and fuzzy while enjoying your bubbles with organic local juices of course.

Die-hard Bloody Mary fan?  Ask for an organic vodka like 360, Square One, Rain, or Crop Vodka and choose a brunch spot serving organic mixers to complete the package.  Hosting brunch?  Give this vegan recipe a spin, which calls for all organic ingredients – yum!

Cheers to brunch! Bon appétit!

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