Los An-juiceless No More: Clover

My 5-year college reunion is coming up in a couple of months and, because one weekend of aggressive hand shaking and pretending to remember people’s names isn’t enough, there are a bunch of small-scale events happening at cities around the country leading up to reunion weekend.

Despite feeling nauseating slight social anxiety about the whole thing, I’ve seen enough romantic comedies to know that school reunions are full of people having crippling breakdowns and getting punched in the face by former rivals. Like I would miss that kind of drama!

So last week, I headed down to LA to visit my beautiful, financially stable friend Avery and hit up the Harvard Class of 2008 lead-up-to-the-actual-reunion event at the Churchill, a rather trendy (technically not in) West Hollywood bar. We spent the evening trying to be prettier than we had been in college and exchanging thinly veiled assertions that we had spent the past five years succeeding wildly at life and definitely not blogging for no money.

Actually, it was quite a good time, and after a few too many drinks, I was having enough fun to forget my credit card at the bar. That meant that the following morning before driving back up to Santa Barbara, I got to sit in LA traffic (which actually made me a bit nostalgic for my Venice Beach days) on my way to retrieve my credit card from the Churchill.

And that’s what brought me to Clover. When I called the manager of the Churchill to see about my card, he said to pick it up from him at the “little window” next door. Turns out, that “little window” was Clover, a brand new juice bar serving breakfast, lunch, “late-night” snacks, and Stumptown coffee, too.

Clover's window and charming seating area.

The folks at Clover source all their juice ingredients locally and change up their offerings according to the season. The food menu, which includes a lot of vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options, is whipped up by Churchill executive chef, Bruce Kalman; pastries and other sweets are created by Lauren Lobley of Charm City Cakes West.

The clover menu on the wall outside.

I was served my $8 breakfast sandwich by Kimberly, who told me that the Churchill’s co-owners, Cassandra and Andrew Walker and Beau Laughlin, are the ones behind Clover, too. Here’s what my breakfast sandwich looked like right before I devoured it in my car:

It was exactly what you would want in a breakfast sandwich: eggs, avocado, bacon, and a special tomato jam. But it was especially delicious because the ingredients were practically oozing freshness. It makes an incredible difference when food is made with local, fresh ingredients, no matter how simple the meal.

The first Clover location opened on La Brea in January, serving cold-pressed juices like Go Big (beet, kale, carrot, apple, wheatgrass, lemon, and ginger, $8) or the strangely translucent Clean Green (chlorophyll, peppermint oil, and H2O, $4).

If you can’t make it to either the La Brea or West Hollywood location, don’t lament - unless you don’t have an internet connection, either. Then you can go ahead and lament. How are you even reading this post? - because beginning this month, you’ll be able to order Clover juices online by the bottle or in “seasonal kits” of four different juices. You can even do a “cleanse” by ordering enough juice to subsist on for 1, 3, or 5 days ($70-350) depending on your level of insanity dedication.

Meghan Drinks Local: Juice Week!

Photo: faithfulprovisions.com

This week, Meghan Eats Local will become Meghan Drinks Local, as I focus on three awesome raw juice bars I’ve recently discovered. I make a lot of juice myself at home, but after finding myself in a bit of a recipe rut (a girl can only drink so much beet juice), I decided I needed some inspiration.

Since pressed raw juice is absolutely delicious, establishments dedicated to creating and selling it are popping up all around southern California. I am not sure why pressed raw juice is just becoming cool now. It seems like it should have been one of the very first cool things, when the first snarky cool kid demonstrated his worth to his community of hunter-gatherers by crushing the hell out of a mango.

But, like stand-up paddleboard yoga, some seemingly obvious things take a surprisingly long time to catch on (seriously, what could go wrong?). And hey, when you need a pick-me-up during the day, fresh juice is clearly a much better option than, say, a chocolate bar you found kind of melted into the lining at the bottom of your purse.

A lot of these new juiceries proudly serve “cold-pressed” juice. If you’re thinking to yourself, “I know what pressed juice is! That’s when I use my hands to squeeze the very last drops out of my Motts apple juice box during snack time,” just listen to yourself. Don’t be ridiculous. – Self

Pressing the juice out of produce (rather than grinding it) keeps vital nutrients, minerals, and enzymes from oxidizing. All the good stuff stays in the juice and when you drink it, your body can absorb it quickly. The raw fruits and vegetables are pulverized into a pulp, from which juice is then crushed. About three pounds of produce yields one bottle of cold-pressed juice!

The “cold” part just means the juice is “raw,” in that it hasn’t been heated above 105 degrees Fahrenheit. People who commit to a raw diet won’t consume anything that’s been cooked, and that can be difficult and limiting – so raw juice is a great option for those of us who don’t want to grow dreadlocks or figure out how to make our own pasta out of shredded zucchini.

I’ll be covering three juiceries that use fresh, raw, locally sourced ingredients. Reviews to come over the next week! This week, “drinking local” doesn’t mean getting tipsy on wine tastings.

Happy Easter! Chocolatey Nutella Meringue Berry "Nests"

Last week, I was wandering through World Market, procrastinating doing some necessary shopping, and stumbled upon Nutella. I hadn't really thought about Nutella since I invented my own vegan version last year, but it's one of those items (like Fluffernutter or this Easter egg beanie for a cat) that, when I come across it, I kind of have to buy it.

So buy it I did. I also picked up some meringue "nests" because they were on sale and I was getting in the crafty spirit of Easter (not long after the crafty spirit of Valentine's Day had worn off). I was going to invent an Easter treat involving Nutella and these ridiculous meringue "nests," but I didn't know how.

While perusing the farmers market this morning, it hit me: Nothing says "Happy Easter" like Chocolatey Nutella Meringue Berry Nests! ... Right?

So I picked up a basket of blueberries from the Chuy Berry Farms stand ($5) and two baskets of strawberries from Peter Desales at the Goleta Valley Farms stand.

Peter Desales runs his small, 10-acre farm in Goleta with his two brothers; it's been in their family for three generations, since 1950. He gave me a deal on my strawberries: 2 baskets for $4! I took my berries and hippity-hopped home to get to work.

Chocolatey Nutella Meringue Berry Nests

Here's what I started with:

Blueberries from Chuy's Berries in Arroyo Grande (distance from me: 79 miles)
Strawberries from Goleta Valley Farms in Goleta (distance from me: 9 miles) Meringue "Nests" from World Market
Nutella
Chocolate chips (melted in the microwave for 40 seconds)

You could also make your own meringues, if you're so inclined. Here's a recipe.

Once I had all the ingredients set, the creation of these little nests was pretty easy and went quickly. First, I coated the bottoms of the nests in the melted chocolate chips. I just plopped them into the bowl and slowly rotated them with my left hand, holding the spoon in my right hand to guide the melted chocolate around the bottom of the nest. Then I put them on a pan covered in parchment paper to dry:

The next step was to add a dollop (I love that word!) of Nutella in the center of each nest. I could have used Fluffernutter as a substitute - anything yummy and sticky for the fruit to sit on would work.

Finally, I added one quarter of a strawberry and three blueberries to each little nest. Adorable. This dessert is perfect because of its small size - each serving has about 100 calories.

It's also a great alternative to creme-filled chocolate Easter eggs, especially if they're delivered by THIS GUY:

I'm sorry. Happy Easter!

Delish & Nutrish (Is the "Ish!")

You might read my blog sometimes and think to yourself, "How nice for Meghan that she has the time and energy to go to farmers markets and experiment with ingredients to come up with healthy meals! But unlike some people, Self, you have a life, and also you don't care that much." Well, tell your Self not to worry - if you live in the Santa Barbara area, I've found a solution. You're welcome.

It's called Delish & Nutrish and, as they say in radio edits, it is the "ish." It's a meal delivery service owned and operated by Nina Tafarella, who uses local ingredients and strives to create healthy, fun meals, personalized to fit her clients' dietary needs. For instance, any meal can be vegan-ized, vegetarian-ized, low-sugar-ized, de-spicified (for me!), de-glutenized, etc. She even caters to raw foodists, who can participate in the Delish & Nutrish 7-day raw food cleanse every month.

Nina bought the company from Sunshine Wellness Meal Delivery three years ago - at that point, there were only 15 clients and she had to rent kitchen space to prepare the meals. Now she serves about 100 clients, using only word-of-mouth marketing, and owns a small industrial kitchen in downtown Santa Barbara. She says her clients are mostly busy people who want to eat healthy and/or lose weight but don't have the time or knowledge to prepare their own meals.

Nina works at the kitchen two full days and two half days a week. She has the help of two chefs, Justin Reed and Danny Kempton, and a high school intern through Partners in Education named Suzie. I stopped by last week on Sunday, one of their delivery days, and found Nina and Suzie making and packaging pear, gorgonzola, and edamame salad with balsamic dressing:

Nina gave me some delicious juice and orange slices to snack on while she told me about her dreams for Delish & Nutrish. She had originally wanted to open a cafe, but with two little children at home, it made more sense to stick to the food delivery service. She just got her first catering job and hopes to expand in that area, but she told me that her first priority is to help people. She cares more about doing a service to the community and maintaining a fun, positive work environment for her employees than about growing the business.

Nina drives to farms in the area to pick up cases of produce herself, rather than running around to farmers markets. John Givens Farm in Goleta is her go-to for most veggies, and she supplements meals with fruit from Lassen's, Lazy Acres Market, and Tri-County Produce. She gets all her from Kanaloa Seafood and the Santa Barbara Fish Market.

All this sounded awesome to me, so obviously I wanted to try out Delish & Nutrish for myself. I got to choose either the Healthy Weight Loss plan, which limits carbs and includes mostly proteins and non-starchy veggies, or the Balanced Lifestyle plan, which is just as much food as they can fit into each container. I thought about it for, oh, four seconds before choosing Balanced Lifestyle. Duh.

So I got five dinners delivered to my front door in two batches: three meals on Sunday and two meals the following Wednesday.

Here's what I got:

Organic mixed green dinner salad to start.

Thai peanut pasta with chicken and roasted leaks and sugar snap peas.

Salmon burger with a mint pea puree and carrots over quinoa

Grilled turkey breast with sweet potatoes and steamed broccoli

Pan-seared trout with coconut curry, lentils, and roasted bell peppers over brown rice.

There was one other meal - steak piccata with white wine caper sauce, pasta, and roasted snap peas - but David ate the whole thing before I got home. I was not pleased.

Because these meals were not only nutrish, they were... you guessed it (I hope)! Delish. The veggies and meats tasted fresh and flavorful. My favorite was the salmon burger - I've been trying to figure out how to make it myself, but I'm not sure I could pull it off.

David loved the chicken, and that's saying a lot, since he's kind of a chicken expert. Seriously, every time we go out to eat at a fancy restaurant, he'll turn down all kinds of house specialties for the simplest, most boring thing on the menu: chicken. He knows his chicken, needless to say, and he wouldn't stop praising the texture and taste of the Delish & Nutrish meal.

The cool thing about the Delish & Nutrish meal delivery system is that each week, you get a sheet of paper with a description of each meal and a little box next to it, where you can "grade your meal from A-F." Nina can then use that feedback to inform her sixteen rotating menus, which are posted on the website.

I'm in the middle of grading my undergraduate students' final exams from winter quarter, and let me tell you - I was pleased to be able to give somebody an A+, even if that somebody was a salmon burger. (Students, if you're reading this, I'm half just kidding - some of you did quite well.) (But some of you didn't.)

Since Nina uses only word-of-mouth marketing, here are some words from my very satisfied mouth: "Yum!" Also: "Delish!" (and "nutrish").

Here's the Scoop (or Double Scoop, or Triple Scoop)

The summer after my sophomore year of college, I participated in my first opera training program in Siena, Italy. Since I spent a good portion of my days there nearly getting hit by tiny cars as I waltzed through the narrow city streets for miles at a time, being lost exploring – and since most of my college days for the months leading up to that summer had been spent lazing around on the banks of the Charles River with assigned reading in one hand and a solo cup of beer in the other – I assumed I was burning some mad calories.

As it turned out, I was gaining weight. That’s because, without fail, my excursions around the city included at least one stop for gelato. Per day. Frankly, I blame it on the Italian stallion who worked the counter at the gelateria on my block. He shouted all sorts of romantic things at me as I passed by, beckoning me in with calls of, “Ciao, Bella!” and other incredibly personal salutations. I mean, how could I resist?

I’ve since kicked my gelato habit, simply due to lack of supply. But while my family was visiting me here, I discovered a little gem hidden downstairs in a Montecito courtyard. It’s not just a gelateria, it’s a sorbeteria – that’s not a thing, is it? Well, they serve gelato and sorbet.

Here’s the scoop on Here’s the Scoop (see what I did there?). Ellie, who owns and operates the shop with her husband, Bob, was working the counter. She didn’t shout “Ciao, Bella!” at me, which was disappointing, but I went in anyway.

So many flavors!

Ellie was delighted to tell me how she and Bob opened Here’s the Scoop nine years ago after working at fast-paced, high-paying jobs. They wanted to stay in town for their daughter Alex’s sake and they both really liked fancy ice cream alternatives, so they went for it and opened their own gelato/sorbet parlor. The sorbet is totally dairy-free: it’s just local fruit, sugar, and water. The gelato is, of course, quite dairy-dependent, made with certified organic milk and cream.

Ellie let us sample all the gelato we wanted, and we wanted a lot of samples. We’re talking Thin Mint made with girl scout cookies, lemon chiffon, and honey almond pistachio, just to name a few. I was transported back to that summer in Siena spent stuffing my face with every flavor imaginable (but mostly stracciatella, which is like vanilla chocolate chip if the vanilla was crack and the chocolate chips were also crack).

So it wasn’t surprising to learn that Ellie and Bob had traveled to Italy to do their gelato research and to buy a huge gelato-making machine, which they now use on the premises. After an embarrassing number of samples, I finally settled on strawberry sorbet in a chocolate waffle cone (which was also made by hand, in-house):

The best part about Here’s the Scoop is that Ellie makes all the sorbet with fruit from Shepherd Farms in Carpinteria. Almost all her fruit flavors change depending on what’s in season. Next month, she and Tom Shepherd are debuting a new flavor: carrot cake gelato, made with Shepherd’s Farms carrots.

I felt a little bad bringing my family to Here’s the Scoop. It seemed a bit like I was rubbing it in their gelato-and-sorbet-stuffed faces (faces that are currently wrapped to the eyes in wool scarves as they brave another Boston blizzard) that here in Santa Barbara, we have fresh local fruit all year round. And wonderful people like Ellie and Bob to turn it into sorbet.

I’m glad Here’s the Scoop is doing so well, and I’m also glad it’s all the way down in Montecito. Otherwise I’d fall right back into my old habits, grabbing a two-scoop cone to start my day and wandering through the streets of Santa Barbara, singing opera to myself like a crazy person, stopping every measure or so to eat a bite of gelato.

Stimulant Fix: Good Land Organics Grows Local Coffee

Chalk board labels and mason jars are almost as addictive as coffee.

About four years ago, I tried to quit drinking coffee. I was working in an office in Los Angeles and had gotten into the habit of drinking two 20-oz. cups every morning. The office I worked in had a particularly extensive coffee bar, which, along with Ice Cream Fridays, was largely responsible for getting me through the work week.

One day, a friend someone who wanted to scar me for life forwarded me a terrifying news article about a murderous meth addict who lived in (surprise!) Bakersfield, CA. Meth addicts in Bakersfield are obviously not news to anyone – nor are murderous ones, for that matter – but this story was particularly gruesome and compelled me to examine my own addiction to coffee. I mean, we’ve all seen Breaking Bad, haven’t we?** After all, coffee is also a stimulant, albeit an immeasurably more socially acceptable one.

Quitting didn’t go well. After a week of forgotten phone messages, misplaced documents, and general absentmindedness, I decided that everyone in my office would be better off if I maintained my addiction. I’ve never been a believer in the “slippery slope” theory, anyway, and drinking absurd amounts of coffee is a far cry from meth-driven murder.

Since that failed attempt, I’ve never considered quitting coffee again. I’ve also sought out studies that suggest drinking coffee is a healthy practice that everyone ought to take up, adds years to your life, improves brain function, etc. and I delight in citing this research when anyone questions whether I ought to be drinking my second Venti at 5:30pm.

Unfortunately, my coffee habit has never fit in with my predilection for local food. Like quinoa, coffee is one of those products that just isn’t easily grown in North America. Of course, Fair Trade coffee is everywhere these days, so it’s easy to make purchases with limited negative ramifications. But last year, I tasted an even better solution: locally grown coffee from right here in Santa Barbara County.

Working with University of California Farm Extension Service advisor Mark Gaskell, Jay Ruskey of Good Land Organics processes and roasts coffee on-site at his farm in Goleta (distance from me: 9 miles). They started the project in 2002 with Arabica Cattura and Arabica Typica seeds from El Salvador and have since expanded to many more varieties. Ruskey uses the Kona coffee model, named for the expensive coffee grown on the Big Island in Hawaii. It involves growing, processing, post-harvesting, roasting, and selling coffee on the farm, as well as giving farm tours ($40 for a 3-hour tour, including coffee samples and snacks).

Good Land Organics coffee is unique because of the high mountain climate here: a 600-foot elevation, two miles from the ocean. The difference is that the bean matures on the tree for between ten months to a year, in contrast to lower lands, where the bean matures quickly.

The purpose of keeping it local, as Ruskey explained in a 2011 interview with Joshua Lurie of Food GPS, is that: “We want people to know where the coffee’s from, how it’s done, maybe even the varieties, because we have different varieties of beans. There’s this whole nomenclature and knowledge of how it’s roasted, how it’s processed, what time of year it was harvested, and that’s what we’re hoping to make: a new, feasible crop for area farmers.”

It seems to be working – a few years ago, David Karp wrote about Good Land Organics Coffee in the LATimes, and since then interest has been growing. Most recently, Good Land was the cover feature of the February, 2013 issue of Fresh Cup Magazine.

I bought a bag of what I thought were Good Land Organics whole beans for myself at Santa Cruz Market. I was pleasantly surprised to find it on the shelf at this small, inexpensive, locally owned Latino grocery store – I’d expect it to be carried by chichi markets, but apparently, Santa Cruz had gotten in on the action. 

I’ve been getting my fix from the Good Land Organics coffee for the past few days, with a dash of San Marcos Farms sage honey and Organic Pastures raw milk. It is absolutely delicious. You’d think that by this time, I’d have developed a discerning coffee palate – but the truth is, I’m just as likely to chug burnt diner coffee as I am to daintily sip handcrafted hipster coffee (much to the chagrin of the folks over at Intelligentsia).

That said, I do recognize solid coffee when I taste it, and Good Land Organics has, in my opinion, achieved it. Fortunately, my opinion is backed up by experts, who have given the coffee a Q rating of between 83-87. See ya later, Giant Folgers Tub From Costco.

Drinking Good Land Organics coffee somewhat diminishes my guilt about being addicted to a stimulant. At the risk of sounding like a snob (a risk with which I am demonstrably comfortable), I think it’s safe to say that sipping local coffee with local sage honey and local, raw milk is about as far as you can get from strapping a bomb to an elderly ex-drug lord’s wheelchair in order to blow up the leader of your own meth cartel.**

**If you don’t get this reference, my advice to you is to play hooky from work and watch all five seasons of Breaking Bad.

Update: Unfortunately for me, my original suspicions were right. The people at Good Land Organics informed me that another roaster in town, Santa Barbara Coffee Roasters, sells a type of coffee called "Good Land Coffee." So Number 1 on my To-Do list is to get my hands on some actual Good Land Organics coffee! Further update to come.

Rock (Crab) Lobstah!

I’m from Boston, so no one should be surprised that I love lobster (lobstah, I suppose). Some of my fondest childhood memories involve picking out live lobster from the tanks of our favorite seafood vendors, watching my parents boil them at home, then cracking them apart with my bare hands and savoring their meat with absurd amounts of buttah dribbling down my chin.

Sometimes my siblings and I would have our lobsters “race” across the kitchen floor before removing the rubber bands from their claws – this practice now strikes me as a rather cruel kind of lobster-gladiator competition before inevitable death by boiling water. But that doesn’t diminish my nostalgia for the whole experience.

Of course, there are lobsters living in the Pacific Ocean, and some people catch them and eat them. But their lack of claw meat makes them pretty much useless to me. Luckily, David is a good listener and has picked up on my desperate longing fondness for northeastern lobster. He also realizes that Meghan Eats Local usually, but not All The Time.

So on Valentine’s Day, I was pleasantly surprised to find two live lobsters in a crate with seaweed and cold packs waiting for me on the kitchen table, straight from Maine.

We tried to make the lobsters race across the kitchen floor, but they were clearly in shock from the cold box and their trip across the country – I know, the whole racing thing seems even crueler now – so they didn’t move much at all. Oh, well! Straight into the pot.

We boiled them for about 15 minutes, until their shells were bright red. Then we transferred them to a colander and poured ice cold water over them until they cooled down. This is a crucial step – soaking them in an ice bath works, too – that prevents them from continuing to cook inside their shells.

We had read that it’s better to undercook them than to overcook them (which results in tough, yucky meat), so we erred on the side of undercooking. As it turned out, we had erred a bit too far on that side; the claw meat was a bit translucent rather than fully white, indicating that they could have cooked a little longer. That was a problem easily solved: we popped each lobster in the microwave for 60 seconds, which did the trick.

Ta-da! I demolished that lobstah, thoroughly soaking each piece of meat in buttah, of course. Happy Valentine’s Day to me! (But not to David, who was a bit grossed out by the whole breaking-a-creature-apart-white-staring-it-straight-in-the-face thing, nearly gave up on cracking the claws, and flat out refused to suck the meat out of the legs.)

Non-local shellfish for Valentine's Day

Obviously, shipping lobster from Maine to Santa Barbara is pretty much the opposite of eating local. I felt an urge to reconcile this transgression by indulging in some local shellfish (don’t question my logic).

Since moving to Santa Barbara, I haven’t really enjoyed much local shellfish beyond shrimp. That all changed last night at Arch Rock Fish. My parents and sister are in town visiting for a week, and last night we all went out to eat with David and his mom, Joan.

Arch Rock Fish is one of my favorite local seafood restaurants any day of the week, but particularly on Monday and Tuesday when they feature a special “Crab Feast.” Joan and I decided to split the “Crab Feast,” since neither of us was feeling particularly ravenous. It was a good thing we split it, because this was one beast of a feast:

Oh, hello! I am your feast!

We got a 2-pound local Rock Crab, which was arranged in a way that suggested it was attempting to escape from its pail, with corn on the cob and roasted potatoes. On top of that, we got a pound of Alaskan King Crab legs and a bottle of chardonnay from Santa Barbara county.

As Joan struggled with the claws and legs, it became increasingly clear where David got his dismal shell-cracking skills. I felt silly after I made fun of her, though, since I was soon frustrated by the claws myself: a Rock Crab shell is, apparently, significantly thicker and harder than that of an Alaskan King Crab, which snaps easily.

Unfortunately, the legs were more trouble than they were worth; there was very little meat to be scraped from inside them. The claw meat, on the other hand, came out in one big chunk. Unlike a lobster claw, the Rock Crab claw included a thin layer of cartilage right in the middle of the meat, upon which I very nearly choked.

By the end of the feast, we might have had some crab meat in our hair and laps, but we were happy and stuffed. The claw meat of the Rock Crab was delicious and was easily scraped from the cartilage; it tasted like a light, flaky, white fish. Well, like a light, flaky, white fish soaked in buttah.