On Friday afternoon, I met with a meet-up group (ever heard of meetup.com? It’s a great way to meet people with similar interests) to tour a farm in Ojai and then eat dinner at the farm’s restaurant. It ended up being such a wonderful experience! It was the first time I’ve ever done anything like it. The farmer, Steve, was very laid back and very knowledgeable about organic farming – he’s been farming, organically, since the 70’s!
He took us around his farm, showing us the various vegetables, picking them, dusting them off, and giving them to us to taste. There’s nothing quite like picking veggies right off the plant and eating, without having to worry about chemicals. It was almost magical. His wife (“the cook”) was also there, picking and talking about their whole process. Check out the photos of their awesome farm.
Peppers…
Steve was so nice. If he saw you looked interested in a certain plant, he would pick off a bunch and just hand it to you! 
The veggies tasted so good. I could have eaten a whole plate-full!
We spotted a little frog!
I loved listening to Steve talk about farming. You can tell he absolutely loves it. I’m happy there are successful, small organic farms…it gives me hope for the future.
After the fantastic tour, we went over to the restaurant to eat! The Farmer and the Cook is a mostly vegetarian, fresh fresh fresh restaurant, market, and CSA. I wish I lived in Ojai so I could take part in their CSA (and shop at the market), but Kev and I are looking into the Ventura CSA. The atmosphere was so laid back and personal. Kevin and I heard rave reviews of the veggie burger, so we tried that, along with the “Vegano” (vegan) pizza with cashew cheese. HOLY SMOKES the food was amazing. The veggie burger had the biggest, sweetest slice of tomato on it that really made it amazing. And the cashew cheese was crumbly and yummy on the fantastic pizza dough. Couldn’t have asked for anything more.
We will definitely be back for more! I can’t believe we haven’t been there yet.
If you’re interested, both the farmer AND the cook have blogs! I checked them out briefly. The cook’s blog features different recipes (yumm!) and the farmer’s blog discusses issues in organic farming. Here are the links:
Now that I’m caught up with the big events of last weekend, I’ll hopefully be blogging my daily eats and workouts, starting tomorrow!
I’m starting a challenge for myself – no sugar for 30 days. I’ll explain it tomorrow! Bonne soiree!
Ok, that is what I want in my life! It gives me hope too, and I think their food looks heavenly.I have been thinking a lot about the food that I loved until college and how repulsed I am by most of it now. I am grateful for all of this new and delicious and healthy food. And I am trying to figure out how to help people I know transition to a kinder diet, but their taste buds and brains are already programmed to like mainstream flavors. So I am wondering how it happened for us? Why and how did we make the switch? What inspired the change?