Jacob's Kitchen

Just discovered two amazing sites of the same name!

The first Jacob's Kitchen is located in Oregon, and I have never seen more beautiful food photography! This guy says part of his dream is to be a food designer, and you can tell, even though he also claims that his photography is amateur. Amazing recipes for back-to-basics, down-to-earth food from homemade ricotta to fried risotto, with a delicious emphasis on baking! He even sells scones, muffins, biscotti, and other pastries on his blog.

I just had to steal one of his photos to give you an idea of how gorgeous this food is, but you really have to see the site for yourself. It's as good as eating all those delectable goodies!

The second Jacob's Kitchen is right here in Charleston! (Serves me right for never going into I'on.) With their claim to sustainable, hormone-free meat, poultry, and fish, I have been remiss in omitting them from my Local Eating in Charleston series. The Post & Courier seems pretty impressed with them as well.

It's hard to choose off a menu of such fantastic choices of "New South Cooking," but the Kobe Beef Burger for $10 stands out, as does the pickled shrimp cocktail and the Split Creek Farm goat cheese, chive, and preserved lemon ravioli. Um, YUM! They serve lunch, dinner, and brunch; I know where I'm going to be this Sunday!

Diet for a Hot Planet

Thirty-nine years ago, Frances Moore Lappe published Diet for a Small Planet (I still have my grandmother's copy). Now her daughter, and co-founder of the Small Planet Institute, Anna Lappe, has published Diet for a Hot Planet, updating the world on the need to make sustainable food choices.

I highly recommend reading the book, but some of the things we can all do are to eat less meat and to make sustainable meat choices. Yes, grass-fed, local beef may be more expensive, but if you have to pay more and therefore eat less, you kind of get a diet at the same time--and you get higher quality meat that hasn't been feed antibiotics, even to healthy animals as Katie Couric explains on CBS, and also contains the right omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, which is crucial for brain health among other functions like reducing depression.

And here's the kicker: whole, healthy food like this satisfies you. Wouldn't you agree that you'd rather have a filet than a flank steak? Well, eating grass-fed beef is like getting filet all the time--and when you look at it that way, it's cheap.

The best grocery store in Charleston to buy local, quality meat is Earth Fare. Healthy Home Foods also offers customized meat service with local and organic meats and seafood. Restaurants like Cypress (and its sister restaurants Blossom and Magnolia), McCrady's, Hominy Grill, and High Cotton (and all Maverick Southern Kitchen restaurants) frequently if not exclusively purchase local beef, pork, chicken, and seafood, and Guerilla Cuisine, Charleston's underground dining experience, makes its focus local and sustainable food, whether meat or vegetables.

The other part of this "involuntary" diet is to cut back on junk food, which "may prove even more destructive than S.U.Vs." But we'll talk about that later.