Eat Local First Week: Learn, Eat, Celebrate Local Food

Borderstan welcomes Ashley Lusk to our team of writers. She is an active member of D.C.’s food community and writes for her own blog Metropoetrylis. She does digital marketing and social media for a youth development organization by day, but you can find her eating her way around The District at night and interpreting the movement of the city populous. You can find her on Twitter at @arlusk.

Knowledge of District institutions like Kramer’s Bookstore, Busboys and Poets and Ben’s Chili Bowl may make you a regular, but knowledge of the best place to get a ripe tomato or a good cut of beef make you local.

Now through July 16, celebrate D.C.’s vendors who support local sourcing at the Eat Local First Week. The week kicked off last Saturday with a live pig roast at Local 16, featuring pork from Highview Farm in Berryville, Virginia.

Eat Local First Week closes Saturday, July 16, with a Farm-to-Street Party on the 1300 block of V Street NW. The party will include roast lamb, and is scheduled from noon to 5 p.m. Tickets are $15.

In addition to the farm tours and “local-preneurs,” select restaurants will also be participating in the eat local movement this week; Logan Tavern, Cowgirl Creamery and Commissary will all be offering featured menus that highlight the best of their local products. For a full list of participating restaurants and events and their costs, visit www.eatlocalfirstdc.com.

Last, if you really want to get down and dirty with the locals this week, check out the Backroad Foraging Tour with the Roadside Food Project. The task in the “foraging tour” is to hunt the District for local berries and herbs to bring to The Gibson, where the bartender will pour unlimited drinks made from the hand-picked collected city fare.

I’ve included below a cocktail to whet your appetite, courtesy of Nick Wiseman at the Roadside Food Project team.

The Cloverleaf

Ingredients

• 2 oz gin
• Foraged wine berries (similar to tart raspberries)
• ½ oz lemon juice
• Wild mint
• 1 local farm egg (separated)
• Ice

Instructions

1. Begin by muddling the wine berries and crushing them lightly to get their juices.
2. Add the berries, ice and the egg white to a cocktail shaker.
3. Cover, shake, strain, pour.
4. Rub mint leaf around the top of the martini glass, garnished with mint leaf.