Farms, Food, and Friends: A Fine Green Dining Experience

by Mary Jo, January 29, 2009 at 4:00pm

I have become the guinea pig of my own experiment. As a New Year’s resolution I decided to go cold turkey and quit corn syrup. Cooking at home has been pretty easy because generally the foods I make for myself and my partner are cooked from scratch; I know what goes into them. Problems arise when I’m out to eat. Since now I have to read label at the grocery store, I know to avoid corn syrup I need stay away from dressings, sauces, beverages, and some baked goods. Some places I frequent, sad to say, serve deliciously saucy spicy chicken wings and condiment-laden sandwiches on store-bought bread. My compromise is to dine out less.

The great part about that is, I save some money and can go to classier joints! Inspired by the birthday dinner my partner treated me to a few months ago at America’s first certified organic restaurant, my crew took our ecologically-minded friend to Founding Farmers here in Washington, D.C. for her birthday. The same values that my friends and I try to live by, were set in motion all over this beautiful green restaurant.

Just like us, they source a lot of their seasonal food from regional family farmers with whom they have personal relationships (the birthday girl joined a CSA this year and volunteered at the farm), the food was from scratch (the kitchen assured us that even the dressing on our fried green tomatoes contained no corn syrup)and reflected local traditions, and they do their best to conserve energy and resources (you should have seen the cool “Airblade” hand dryer in the bathroom, not to mention the other nifty green building features).

In the end, I didn’t have to compromise on my resolution and the birthday party was a success!