Vegetarian Week Kicks Off with Red Hook Harvest Festival

Jessica Clegg | October 22, 2007

Fall is prime time for trying out new things, be it quitting your corporate job to pursue a potentially more lucrative career in dog-walking or simply adding a new show to the DVR. If you think vegetarianism may be your path to self-renewal, consider this week your orientation. October 21st-27th, As previously announced, Brooklyn Goes Veg! is holding seminars and a special restaurant week at meat-free venues throughout the borough.

I went to the first Brooklyn event on the calendar, a harvest festival at the Red Hook Community Farm run by Added Value, an organization which promotes sustainable development by supporting urban farms. I perused the local goodies from restaurants like Ici and the Good Fork, but decided to unload my cash on fresh local produce, which seemed in keeping with the event’s theme of living as close to nature as possible. After deciding against a lovely farm-grown pumpkin because of the hassle of toting it over the BQE overpass, the smell of fresh herbs drew me to a demonstration called ‘Cooking and Poetry’, under the main tent. Here, the ebullient ‘performance-art food educator’ Ludie Minaya showed us the simple, finger-sparing way to unlock a garlic’s cloves (tap it firmly on its ‘head’ with a long, flat knife) and created two literally green dishes: swiss chard sautéed with red pepper flakes and a local green salad tossed with agave-garlic vinaigrette. As advertised, Ludie gave us a poetic finale, giving a convincing case for eating organic in spoken-word form as we munched on peppery greens grown 20 feet from where we sat.

Walking out the gate crunching my organic apple, seasonal appropriate recipes in hand, I had a vision of my own greener future: my fridge becoming a forest of locally grown produce from which I will whip up delicious healthy salads and root-vegetable soups in reusable containers. As soon as I clear my freezer of all the Amy’s burritos stored therein, I should have the space to make my dream come true.

The Red Hook Community Farm, located on Columbia and Beard Streets, has a regular farmer’s market on Saturdays right up until the Saturday before Thanksgiving.