Eat a Local Breakfast

It's the start of a new week and a new day and as I do every day, I chugged down a glass of GoodBelly Plus, a probiotic multi-vitamin infused juice drink.

I'm continuing on from last week's theme and featuring local food vendors who sell their product at Whole Foods Market.

There's over 100 local vendors at WFs Boulder, so there's plenty more reasons to stay-tuned and explore with me the foods produced by this area's food entrepreneurs.

In the effort to be prepared for today's post I popped into my local WFs, which is about a mile down the road, where I perused the shelves looking for the sign saying, "I'm local."

It was about 9.30 a.m. when I began my research and I hadn't had breakfast. One of the tips I've offered for staying on budget grocery shopping is don't grocery shop hungry; you're more likely to avoid impulse purchases if you're not thinking about your stomach (instead of your budget) while surrounded by food.

Of course my intention was to just pop into WFs, take a few pics of local food items for this week's posts, and get out, but I ended up doing a little impulse shopping because I was hungry!

As I mentioned above, I'd already had a chug of GoodBelly, the first product produced by the company NextFoods which was founded by Steve Demos, natural foods entrepreneur. Read here about how Steve came to create GoodBelly.

I can't say enough good things about GoodBelly. Over the years I've bought probiotics in pill form at great expense only to be told by my health-care practicioner that I wasn't getting the "billions of live bacteria" that I apparently needed.

Then about a year ago, I saw GoodBelly in the dairy section of the market. I read the label on the Good Belly Plus packet, and noted that it contained 20-billion clinically tested live cultures per 2.7 oz container, plus multi-vitamins, and it's dairy and wheat-free. It sounded like just what the doctor ordered.

For anyone who has traveled to a developing country and eaten bacteria-laden food or water, or who has taken antibiotics, re-populating the gut with billions of live, good bacteria is a must. And that's why GoodBelly is just what the doctor ordered; it contains all the good stuff that a belly needs to be healthy.

I'm not much of a fruit-juice drinker, but GoodBelly is more than a juice and it's not as expensive as many 100% juice products. GoodBelly products are so often on sale at WFs, that I rarely pay full price. Additionally, there are 50c off coupons inside the GoodBelly Plus packets, and the company has buy one get one free coupons available on their website.

After I took the pic of the GoodBelly quart container (above), I found myself in the bulk section of WFs, pointing my iphone at a container of "I'm Local" granola.

I poured some local granola into a bag, tagged it and then realized it was Fiona's Cinnamon and Almond Granola.

Last week I featured Fiona's granola and made the comment that I hadn't tried it because my preference is to buy grains, cereals etc. in bulk, not in packets since you always pay more for packets.

So this morning I tried Fiona's granola because I was able to pick and pay for only what I wanted.

At $6.99 lb, my few ounces cost a couple of dollars, which is no less than paying almost $5 for one of her 12 oz boxes. However, buying in bulk meant I spent $2 on impulse rather than $5.

Since my focus today is breakfast, I was pleased to see the "I'm local" sign underneath Madhava Mountain Gold Clover Honey.

Not that Fiona's granola needs the addition of honey, since it's already sweetened with agave nectar, which by the way Madhava also produces, but honey is one of those condiments to have on hand for brekkie, lunch and dinner, and for snacks in between.

Because the price of Madhava honey is competitive with other honey on the shelf at WFs, I've been buying it happily for years. It's an easy choice because it's local and because I love the heavy, syrupy texture of the Wildflower honey, and the golden color and delicate flavor of their Clover honey.

Having mentioned Boulder's, Steve Demos, and his former company WhiteWave, I might add that if you do decide to have a local breakfast of GoodBelly, followed by Fiona's granola, topped with a drizzle of Madhava honey, why not wet the lot with some local WhiteWave Soy milk or yoghurt.

Haystack Mountain Goat Cheese

I've been featuring "buy local" this week.

So far, I've featured a couple of my favorites, Boulder Ice Cream and Justin's Nut Butter, both of which were recipients of Whole Foods Local Producer Loan Program.

Today's featured product, Haystack Mountain Goat Cheese, was also a recipient of WFs loan program. You can read here about owner, Jim Schott's plans to expand his herd of goats, and his dairy with the loan.

I noticed as I perused Boulder's, Broadway Whole Foods sale items online, that Great Ocean Road, Australian Cheddar Cheese is on sale. Down from $7.99 to $4.99 lb, a savings of $3 lb is a great deal!

As much as I'd like to encourage you to dash out and buy cheese from my home country, while writing about the virtues of buying local I can't; I'd be a hypocrite if I did.

Warnambool Cheese and Butter, which makes the Australian cheddar listed above, has a reputation in the same way that Gippsland Butter and Cheese had when I was growing up in the heart of the rural dairy industry in South Gippsland.

Many of my school friends lived on dairy farms and the milk from their family farms went to the butter factory in my small town of Korumburra. The butter factory was the main industry in Korumburra. So when the factory closed down, Korumburra struggled economically for some time. Eventually, tourism rebuilt the local economy, thankfully.

My mother was an avid supporter of local industry so even after the butter factory closed, and Gippsland cheese and butter was being produced at other factories, our fridge was always stocked with product made from the milk of the local dairy farmers.

In fact, when I left home and began to develop a taste for European cheeses, my mother was horrified for two reasons: "Why buy imported when there's nothing wrong with our cheese," she'd say. And after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, "Don't buy European cheese; all that radioactive fallout eaten by the cows will have infected their milk!"

Both were valid reasons for not eating imported cheese. Eventually I stopped eating cows milk cheese altogether -- that horrified my mother too, but at that point I was living in the U.S. As a result of being so far away, I was able to spare her the horror of witnessing directly my different dietary choices.

When soft white goat cheese came to Boulder, and I think Haystack was one of the first to appear on the shelves of Whole Foods, I was curious to try it, so I did, and I loved it.

I'm a bit of a purist, so my preference is Haystack's plainest or their cheese sans flavorings and herbs. With that in mind, their plain Chevre, Feta, Gouda, are my top picks.

If I want to add flavor to the Chevre, I can do it myself. In fact, it's creamy texture and mild flavor means Chevre lends itself to the addition of fresh cut herbs, which I've sprinkled on the top or mashed into the cheese with a fork. And it can also be sweetened with honey or fruit conserves, which again, I've either served to the side or mashed into the cheese.

Haystack feta I buy in chunks and use in all my Mediterranean style cooking, or to give cooked meals a Greek-style flavor. And I eat it plain, with crackers, chips, olives etc. The Gouda is a real treat, and I snatch it up whenever it's on sale, or for that matter any of the Haystack cheeses I prefer.

The selection of Haystack cheeses has grown over the years, from the early days of plain Chevre to more recent additions like their award-winning aged, Red Cloud.

You'll find Haystack cheese a little on the pricey side, but then cheese is kind of spendy these days anyway. Fortunately, Whole Foods often has great deals on Haystack so I'm always on the lookout

And to be sure, I always buy Boulder-made Haystack cheese over imported goat cheese, and not just because this would make my mother happy, but because it's the best!

Buying Local

"Buy local" (food) is the new mantra. And for many good reasons.

Whole Foods' website lists the following benefits to buying local produce:

1. Supporting local farm production puts a "face" behind the foods we consume and keeps us connected to the seasons, as well as the unique flavor and diversity of local crops.
2. Buying produce from local growers reduces the environmental impact and costs of transporting product.
3. Small local farms are a valuable component of a community's character, helping maintain agricultural heritage, preserve land use diversity, and moderate development.
4. Many farmers producing for a local market choose to diversify, growing a variety of crops instead of just one. This is a boon for biodiversity and your palate, since local crops are harvested at their peak of freshness and flavor.
5. Minimizing handling and transportation costs gives farmers maximum return on their investment. And most of the money spent on local production stays in the community, "greening up" the local economy.

However, farm-fresh fruit and vegetables are not the only local product available at Whole Foods.

From cheese to nut butter, granola to chocolate, this week I'm going to explore a handful of these local vendors and discuss why their product is (or not) worth buying over competitive product shipped in from outside the Rocky Mountain region.

You may recall from my last post that my Sweetmeat Platter contained chunks of Chocolove Chocolate manufactured right here in Colorado.

The chocolate is actually from Belgian, and for his Chocolatour,Vintage Line the cocoa beans are sourced globally. But Timothy Moley's factory, where he fashions the imported Belgian chocolate into his selection of milk, dark, organic dark and vintage bars, is in Boulder.

I enjoy Chocolove bars because of the smooth richness of Belgian chocolate, and I also love the simplicity and also the strength of Timothy's flavors: Orange Peel in 55% dark, Crystallized Ginger in 65% dark, Hazelnuts in 33% milk and so on.

When I say "strength" I mean you can taste the orange, the ginger, the hazelnuts within the varying cocoa percentage, and thankfully, there is just the right amount of sugar --not too much, not too little--to enhance the flavor of each bar rather than overwhelm it with sweetness.

I'm actually not a big fan of really dark chocolate whereas Timothy Moley is a connoisseur. Perhaps my aversion is in part due to scoffing my mother's less-than-quality dark, cooking chocolate when I was kid. I hated it then, but egged on by my sister, we ate it anyway and I've never had the palate for it since.

However, Timothy thinks of his line of dark, vintage bars in the same way a Sommelier thinks of wine -- that is, in terms of the terroir or the geography out of which the grape grew, or in this case, the agricultural site and its characteristics out of which the cocoa tree grew.

I know he knows what he's doing, tasting, creating --the man obviously intimately understands cocoa flavor in its varying strength because his 2004 and 2005 line of vintage bars sold out!

Obviously his vintage bar fans appreciate his sophisticated palate too.

If you live in Boulder, do buy and try Mr. Chocolove's bars, after all, they're locally made and they're rich and deliciously smooth. Priced at under $3 for just over 3 ounces, Chocolove Chocolate is also very reasonable -- compared to other gourmet, imported and American-made chocolate bars.

And the real surprise: a beautiful love poem on the inside of every colorful, tastefully designed wrapper!