Brandon Eats

Green Tonic!

Lewis Ginter Botanical Garden's Green Tonic symposium is on August 4th & 5th. Learn all about " Urban Gardening for Health and Wholeness."

It's an event for neighborhood organizers and community leaders, urban planners, architects and designers, public officials, health advocates, local food activists, students, master gardeners, and more.

In other words, everyone will love this event.

I'm looking forward to the "Gem on the James" guided bus tour of green spaces in Richmond, as well as the Food Security, Access, Nutrition, and Health workshop.

Space is limited, so hurry up and register already!

Ukrop's for Sale

Ukrop's is up for sale: Food World, a Maryland-based grocery-industry publication, reports that Ukrop’s has issued a prospectus, opening itself up to potential buyers. Click on this link to Richmond Magazine for more information.

It looks like we're about to see the transformation of a Richmond institution.

Belle Oysters

Originally published in Belle:

Out of Their Shells

Oysters are the hot babes of the seafood world.  With a rock-solid reputation as a guaranteed aphrodisiac, science can’t seem to dislodge the popular notion that if you could just convince your sweetheart to eat a few, sexual nirvana will follow.

I’m not going to take sides. Half of sex (or is it three-quarters?) is all in our heads anyway, and if you believe that one little oyster might help the process, who am I to argue? Plus, I’m a true believer that the sensuality of great food leads us all down the path to a deeper appreciation of sensuality in general.

At the very least, good food puts me into a good mood.

Unfortunately, oysters have had a hard time for the last hundred years or so. In the Chesapeake Bay, a trifecta of pollution, over-harvesting, and disease has wiped out the wild oyster population. Most of the tall reefs where oysters like to live have been destroyed, and now, farming is the last gasp of hope for Virginia oysters.

Small aquaculture farmers like the Croxtons of Rappahannock River Oysters might be the solution. Recipient of the 2005 Food & Wine Magazine’s Tastemaker’s Award, the company supplies restaurants like Le Bernadin in New York, Vidalia in DC, and locally, Six Burner, 1 North Belmont, and Comfort, among other high-end restaurants here and throughout the country.   

Years ago, Ryan Croxton’s grandfather warned Ryan’s father not to become a waterman.  The work was just too hard and the oyster population was dwindling as the bay was decimated by disease and unchecked pollution.  But Ryan and his cousin Travis weren’t worried about that.  They both had jobs in Richmond and reviving the oyster company their family started in 1899 was going to be a winter weekend hobby.

Instead of dredging the bay for oysters like the their great-grandfather did, which destroys the bay’s fragile ecosystem, today the younger Croxtons string together a series of elevated cages where native oysters can be monitored for shape, size, and health.

Just across the river from the Croxton’s oyster beds, William and Mary’s Institute of Marine Science incubates genetically sturdier rootstock and seed oysters in long, bubbling tanks inside the Kauffman Aquaculture Center.  If other watermen can be redirected into the oyster farming business, depleted populations like the blue crab will have a chance to increase their numbers, while the added oysters, like little aquatic vacuum cleaners, can sieve out the algae and sediment clogging the waterways.