Tuesday, June 03, 2008

Farm Dinner at "Grateful Growers Farm" in Denver, NC.

So, Cassie, a good friend of mine, recently asked me to help out with her latest farm dinner she held at her farm in Denver, NC. She raises hormone free chickens and pigs. I've had both and ,lemme tell you, they're doing something great there! I've NEVER tasted anything quite like it in my life. Her animals are treated right and you can tell when you eat them! I was able to take a tour of their farm to check out the animals, they live pretty good, if you ask me!

Any who, a few fellow chefs and I did some awesome food to raise money and awareness for the local farming community as well as help the edible school yard project that is going under way at a local public school. You can feel the energy and excitement as we prepared and serve this unbelievable food from local farmers. A good bit of it came directly from Grateful Growers, but there were tons of other things that came from other farmers as well. Sorry, but I dont know the names as of yet. Enjoy the pics and BUY LOCAL!

By the way, all these pics were taken with my phone, believe it or not! I forgot my SD card that day for the nice camera I usually use, but luckily, these pics came out awesome.

Scored local duck breast ready for rendering!


Couple hottys makin' bread! Man, everything they made was incredible!


Dessert from JWU. They did stuff with goat cheese and goats milk, awesome. Those little shot glasses with straws coming out of them were smoothies made with local goats milk, YUM!


Chef Mike from Carmel cookin' up something delicious.


We were plating the first course, a local spring mix salad with berry vinaigrette. This is a storage shed at the farm, no A/C. It was hot a pretty miserable. I took this pic cuz she reminded me of one of those poor people you see on the C.A.R.E. commercials squatting in one of their make shift huts. This hut, however, is full of SALAD!!


Li'l chicks! They were so cute chirping away under the heat lamps, lol.


The best pork, hangin' out in the sun, joy.


Chickens, doing the same, chillin' in their condo, lol


An app course with fresh picked arugula and baby golden beets (picked literally moments before this pic was taken by yours truly ;) ) topped with some of the best smoked turkey Ive ever had!


I kinda had something for this one, she was such a sexy honey! (Yes, I'm married and love my wife dearly, but I'm sorry, she was HOT!) I don't even have ill feelings towards her because she works for the enemy, lol.


Organic cooking at its BEST, lol


Saute'ed local root veggies.


Lookit all the people! There were over 200 people to be fed!


Behind the scenes in one of the cooking areas.


Behind the scenes in one of the cooking areas.