A Farm-to-Fork Dinner at Profound Microfarms Was a Delicious Escape From a Hellish Week
Joel Orsini s six-course feast was sublime.
By Kathy Wise
Published in
FrontBurner
February 22, 2021
11:50 am
Feeling cooped up and claustrophobic, I had naively signed up a couple of weeks ago for Profound Foods’ Valentine’s Day dinner in their greenhouse in Lucas. Due to Snowpocalypse 2021, the event was delayed until Saturday, when the sun emerged and the thaw began.
Jeff Bednar and his wife, Lee, founded Profound Microfarms as a hydroponic and aquaponic farm in 2014, where they grew rare culinary herbs, edible flowers, and microgreens for chefs in North Texas. A few years later, they started collaborating with other local farms, such as Cartermere Farms in Celina and Chubby Dog Farm in Crockett, to coordinate deliveries and reduce costs, and Profound Foods was born.
Petra and the Beast Sous Chef Gets Funky With Fermentation
Jessica Alonzo s Native Ferments is part pickling school, part pantry shop, and entirely for nerdy aficionados and funk newbies alike.
By Eve Hill-Agnus
Published in
Food & Drink
February 4, 2021
1:32 pm
Sous chef at Petra and the Beast, Jessica Alonzo is the fermentation queen, and she’s going out on her own with Native Ferments, which will allow her to venture solo into a whole new realm of virtual workshops and purchasable jarred goods. From her, you can learn how to make striated beet pickles or half sours you can throw into your sandwiches. Become versed in the craft of kimchi making that will up your dinner game. If that’s all a bit too hands on, Native Ferments will also showcase jars of Alonzo’s own pickles.
And in that new state, there’s a lot to miss.
For this writer, it’s feeling comfortable in an elevator of a downtown building, walking down Main Street to the Joule, getting an Americano from Weekend and sitting down in the beautiful lobby area to work and people-watch. That Americano can still happen, but watching interesting fashion choices isn’t worth the risk involved with loitering these days.
“Being able to go into any restaurant, without concern about how crowded it is or how close together the tables are. Do they have a patio? Is the weather nice enough for a patio? Is my favorite local spot still open?” Amanda Scott
Image zoom Credit: Getty / Patcharanan Worrapatchareeroj
If you haven t given hydroponic gardening a try, now is the perfect time to start. Ideal for urban gardeners and apartment dwellers, hydroponic gardens allow you to grow vegetables indoors when you don t have access to outdoor space. Hydroponics is a method of growing plants without soil, and instead using water with added nutrients, explains Jeff Bednar of Profound Microfarms.
Bednar says growing vegetables hydroponically, with nutrient-rich water and artificial light, often yields better results doing so outdoors. By controlling their environment, you can give the plants exactly what they need to thrive, he explains. Vegetables grown in hydroponic gardens grow faster and healthier, and in some cases, can be ready to harvest a week after seeding. Not sure whether or not to start your own hydroponic garden at home? We asked Bednar to break do