Results tagged “organic”

After celebrating their grand opening in Santa Monica this weekend, Pizza Fusion also quietly opened their new Hollywood location on Tuesday. "The response we received at our soft opening on Tuesday was wonderful", owner Michele Orlando said. "Hollywood residents are really warming up to our organic and socially conscious approach to restaurant service."

Organic is not-so-secret code for expensive. (Even though LA organic is cheaper than other cities.) Expensive is code for not for Recession Obsession readers. That was until this author/adventurer stumbled upon Green Zone in San Gabriel.

When compared to New York City and Chicago, Angelenos score a cheaper price when buying organic, finds a study release by IBISWorld. "The study looked at three product categories: Private label or store brands, commercial brands, and organic items," explained Wallet Pop. The cost of groceries depends largely on what part of the country you live in. Chicagoans get a cheaper groceries than the next two bigger cities (but pay among the highest sales taxes), except for organic items. If you want to eat more naturally, you'll pay less in L.A. But organics in general will set you back more, about 18% more than branded products and 37.6 % more than store brands, according to the findings."

Check your fridges, citizens -- those eggs you fried up for breakfast might be toxic! Yep, it's another major salmonella recall, this time for Costco's Kirkland brand organic brand eggs. Information on the recall and plant codes can be found here. And while you're in there, you might want to toss the hamburgers and steaks as well: those of you who consume more than 4 ounces of red meat a day are at a 30% higher risk for cancer and heart disease, according to a new study of over 500,000 Americans. Now might be a good time to pick up a flexitarian diet.

If you know about lifecasting, then you probably know or even follow iJustine or the self promoting Julia Allison (if you read Wired Magazine, you'll remember that cover of her). And more than likely, you might know about Mary Rambin of Allison's lifecasting harem.

    

Okay, so this is not exactly new to the world--it's been around for over a year now--but for some reason Ralph's just made us notice this past weekend and we had to try the novelty that is the Organic Batter Blaster. It's pancake batter in a Easy Cheese-like spray can that is organic. Whole Foods had it on their shelves at one point, so it met their standards, but TreeHugger called it "UnTreeHugger." It's actually pretty tasty and would be convenient for camping, but once the fun wears off and you realize you're that guy, being that lazy, it's really not all that.

We're in the middle of apple season and all of the sudden, our late night snacking became healthy. What has come of us?

Naturewell will host their grand opening next week, but they're offering free samples this afternoon, they said earlier today as they prepped their signs and storefront.

Skratch is a new entry in that great thing that's happening in the middle of Culver City these days, with fresh, original food served up fast. Though a lot of restaurants LA are jumping on the organic bandwagon with mixed results. Culver City has a number of the better places on its roster.

      

The Los Angeles area's growing stock of eco-friendly businesses increased Saturday with the grand opening of O!burger in West Hollywood. The organic burger joint uses only certified organic ingredients in their grass fed beef burgers, free range turkey burgers, hot dogs, salads, French fries and shakes.

In Pasadena, Orean claims to be the first vegetarian fast-food drive-thru (fast it is not). And beginning Saturday, a new restaurant in West Hollywood will be taking claim to being Los Angeles’ first fast food burger house using only certified organic ingredients. O!burger will offer grass fed beef, free range turkey, hot dogs, salads, French fries and shakes. And yes, they have veggie burgers made from their own recipe based on spinach and corn.

You may remember a few years back when the workers of the South Central Farm, who maintained a grassy patch of garden just south of Downtown, were evicted from the land in a rather bitter eminent domain battle. Now, the collective has purchased land outside of Bakersfield, in a town named Buttonwillow (home to a speedway and not much else), in anticipation of rebuilding and replanting their farm. Thanks to a sizable donation from a non-profit group, the South Central farmers now have 85 acres upon which to begin reconstructing their organic farming dreams.

So maybe some of you kids have it easy when it comes to eating green: you're a vegetarian or vegan, you don't eat dairy, and you shop at your local farmer's market every week. You probably bike a lot and never talk on your cell phone while you're driving. Congratulations, you're our editor! But for the rest of us mortals, the recent explosion of articles and blog posts about "Sustainability!" "Grain Shortages!" "Carbon Footprints!" "OMG WTF BBQ Cow Farts!", etc, might leave you wondering: so what the hell am I SUPPOSED to eat?

Today is Day 2 of a 2-day visit for the Green Living Expo, taking up residency in the West Hall of the LA Convention Center.

The Blueberry Bonanza (blueberries, banana, nut milk & dates) and Green Lean (kale, mango, orange juice, cinnamon & banana) Smoothies | Photo by Zach Behrens/LAist

There's some great news for pizza fans coming from Pizza Fusion, an all-organic, environmentally friendly pizza franchise: they're setting out to expand throughout California this year, starting with an LEED-certified location in San Diego and moving up through Santa Monica and Thousand Oaks. Why is this cool? Well, the company is setting trends and blazing trails in the sustainability business:

Pizza Fusion, whose motto is 'Saving the Earth, One Pizza at a Time,' practices an eco-friendly approach to their entire existence, including their restaurants' buildout, service and overall operations. Through building only LEED certified restaurants, delivering their food in company owned hybrid vehicles, and offsetting 100% of their power consumption with the purchase of renewable energy certificates (among many other things), Pizza Fusion is setting the standard for sustainable restaurant practices as the most eco-friendly restaurant in America.

In the decadent tradition of hand-massaged, beer-fed Kobe beef, a new taste sensation is coming to California: La Quercia artisanal pork. These happy little piggies are raised on an organic farm in Iowa and fed a diet of acorns, just like the famed pigs of Spain's jamon iberico. EaterLA had the scoop yesterday:

These acorn-fed pigs are supposed to produce amazing meat, as they do in Italy and Spain. The company that's responsible for said pigs makes some of the best prosciutto in the country, found on only a few top menus in LA. But more importantly: There were only 45 pigs available, and only 10 SoCal chefs got to participate in the program, which means we'll start seeing this much ballyhooed pork on select local menus.

The goal of Sante La Brea is not to compromise taste over the absence of dairy and fat. And they do that extremely well, except for the falafel which is just ok because the taste got up and left. Sante is not a purely vegan joint, they serve dishes with chicken, turkey sausage, salmon, ahi tuna, sword fish and whatever the catch of the day may be. For meat eaters or veggies, the pizza...

I think we can all agree that food does much more for the body than fill it with nutrients; food can nourish the soul, thrill the senses, and sometimes transport us to faraway lands faster than a Concord jet. Koutoubia, a little Moroccan restaurant in West L.A., serves food that does just that. You could drive by this place for years, as I have, and never take much notice to the small, slightly embellished,...

It's not about clad (though haute food on the human body is quite beautiful). The Dressing Room is one of LA's newest sustainable produce restaurants. Owner Don Schaefer and his wife traveled to farm after farm in California to meet and greet with farmers, searching for those that fit the sustainable produce bill and also pay their workers a living wage, not minimum wage. Step one: check. Step two: open a restaurant. The Dressing...