Celebrate Earth Day!

Among the many things to embrace about Earth Day, here is a good one — it is international. What began in the United States in 1970 as a plea among worried people to treat the world with more care has blossomed into a movement in 192 countries, making it the largest secular holiday in the world. More than a billion people celebrate the planet’s special day.

That includes all of us here at Fresh Thymes Eatery World Headquarters, of course. In fact, we try hard to mark Eath Day every day, through how we run our restaurant.

It is not always simple. From Boulder to Buenos Aires to Bangkok, the restaurant business is notoriously wasteful. At most restaurants, an awful lot of what ends up on a plate is packaged up and shipped from far away. Scraps — so very many scraps — get tossed, destined for landfills. Recycling does not happen. The celery in the soup sprouted from a poison-drenched field, and the bacon in the burger came from a pig pumped with antibiotics and other drugs, and confined in appallingly tight quarters.

None of this is exactly earth-friendly.

How do we run a restaurant while toiling to honor Mother Earth?

There are the scraps — or the lack thereof. We use every part of every vegetable. What doesn’t become part of a salad, or a slaw, or a burger garnish gets used to make vegetable stock. Carrot ends become ingredients in pot pies. Bones? They are treasure! We break-down whole chickens, and reserve the backs for bone broth. You won’t find us tossing bones into trash cans. Anything that just can’t become part of a dish is turned into compost. Scraps at Fresh Thymes? Not so much.

We recycle everything that can be recycled, and only use napkins and take-out containers, among other things, that can be recycled. We even recycle our customer's drinking water, using 5 gallon buckets. When they are full, we water the plants around our Steelyards neighborhood. On average, we are recycling 8 gallons of water a day!

We look beyond our neighborhood, too. We think pesticide-driven agriculture is unfortunate, and in addition to broadcasting far too many poisons into soil and water, contributes to waste. So we strive for organic produce — most of what we sell is organic. And we shrink from the sprawl of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) across America, animal-raising businesses that harm animals by holding them in extremely close, and unsanitary, conditions, as well as using antibiotics and other drugs to sustain them through the inhumane conditions. We are picky about our meat. All of it comes from small farms in Colorado.

In addition, precious little that we cook and serve is shipped from beyond the state borders. Yes, our lemons and our olive oil, our caraway and black pepper and mangoes grow in places far from Colorado. But most of what you eat — the lamb, lettuce, chile pepper, peach and so on — comes from our breathtaking state.

We are always hunting for ways to lighten our footprint upon this glorious, miraculous planet. If you have ideas to help us along, please speak up! Your comments are gifts.

Happy Earth Day!

For the love of Honey

We fully embrace both health and taste at Fresh Thymes, and so we view honey as the ideal sweetener. It provides complex flavors rooted in different places and seasons, while simultaneously delivering a host of health benefits. The gift from precious bees is enormous — honey is anti-inflammatory, anti-bacterial and anti-fungal. Over time, it helps our bodies wrestle with seasonal allergies. It does not spoil, due in part to the scarcity of water in its make-up — the bees flap their wings to dry the nectar (thank you, bees!) — as well as its high level of acidity.

And humans have been eating it for a long time — stains found in 5,500-year-old jars in the Republic of Georgia are from honey.

Our affection for honey hinges on more than flavor and human health, though. As the world’s principal pollinators, honey bees give us our almonds and our onions, our grapes and peaches and raspberries, our cardamom, squash, cucumber, fennel, coffee, buckwheat, coconut and chili pepper. The list goes on and on. It is possible for humans to pollinate plants, but entirely impractical and exceedingly expensive. Without the bees, much of what we take for granted today for our meals would simply vanish.

And with colony collapse — that is, bee colonies dying en masse — occurring with disturbing frequency during the past decade, we need to work hard to make sure our bees are thriving. One solution, according to recent scientific reports, might rest with how we take care of our gardens and farms. A group of pesticides called neonicotinoids might be one factor contributing to colony collapse. Since the findings were published last year, more and more nurseries have committed to raising plants without neonicotinoids. Let's hope the trend continues through our vast agricultural system.

How much do we adore honey at Fresh Thymes? Six-gallons-a-week worth of passion, that’s how much. We use it in all of our desserts, and honey provides balance in many of our savory preparations, too. The only other sweetener we use, sparingly, is coconut sugar.

Andre on the farm

We have such a crush on bees that we are throwing a big party for the little guys, on Saturday, April 25. Come to Fresh Thymes all day for honey-happy events. Andre, a bee enthusiast from Jacob Springs Farm, will be on hand from 12-2pm to talk about home beekeeping, local bee-related projects and a global project with which he is involved. He will bring along an Open Source Beehive hive, and we will discuss Fresh Thymes' involvement with Open Source Beehive, an innovative Colorado nonprofit that helps spread beehives the way the bees themselves distribute pollen — with much hard work and success!

Tim from Highland Honey!

In addition, Tim from Highland Honey and Mead Master Mark from Medovina will swing by Fresh Thymes between 3 and 4 to sample honey and mead, which is honey wine (and which is spectacular).

Never been inside of a hive? Come to Fresh Thymes on April 25 and live the dream — between the home bee-keeping enthusiasts, the professionals and the lovers of all-things-honey, it’s going to be awfully buzzy!

Stay tuned for our full line-up of honey loving professionals!

Vegan Wine?

Have you heard of Vegan Wine?  I hadn't and when I did I was immediately interested!  Wasn't all wine "vegan" - it's just grapes right?


Well, not entirely.
Most all wines will get clarified, and or filtered or “fined” before bottling.  It is this fining agent that very strict vegans take exception with.  Most commonly used fining agents are casein (milk protein), albumin (egg protein), gelatin (from sad bones), isinglass (fish bladders)… So as those items are not technically “added” to the wine, it isn’t considered an ingredient and for the most part it isn't labeled. It’s easy to see how a strict vegan would take exception to this.

For us at Fresh Thymes, it's important for another population of people to know about this process common to most wines and that is our allergen/ingredient sensitive customer. As these conventional fining agents also happen to be among the most common allergens, we think it's important to know not just where our food comes from but also how it is produced.  As our body recognizes every ingredient on a molecular level, it makes sense that molecules of these agents could be left behind after the fining and clarification process. I say that as a highly ingredient sensitive eater (and lover of wine) myself!

The good news is many organic or biodynamic wineries do not use animal products to fine, they use charcoal, clay and other plant based substances. There are many excellent wines out there that also happen to be vegan, more wineries are starting to disclose fining agents and there are emerging websites dedicated to sourcing "vegan wine".  

At Fresh Thymes, we are so excited to be carrying an awesome vegan Cabernet and Chardonnay from The Vegan Vine !

Come in for a taste! 

Have you caught Broth Fever?

We have fielded numerous requests to start a blog and finally succumbed! Enjoy reading our first post!

Broth done right - the old school way.  At Fresh Thymes we don’t cut any corners to bring a proper broth to our customers. But what does old school mean exactly?  

There has been plenty of good press about broth as beverage and it’s health benefits.

If you have gotten the broth fever, here are a few of my old school secrets to making a proper broth yourself…

1. Have a very big soup pot or stock pot - if you take the time to make broth, you should make plenty.
2. Have good bones! - organic, pastured, grass finished are all indications you have good bones.  Seek them from your favorite farm store or stand. Also make sure to have a good ratio of gelatinous bones (wings, backs, trotter, necks, knuckles) to boney bones  (marrow, femur, should blade)
3. Roast!  Roasting the bones help deepen and enrich the flavor of the broth - no need to be fussy - dump the bones on a sheet pan, spread out and pop in a hot oven until golden brown.
4. Cold filtered water!  Yes, once you roast and place all the bones in your pot, fill with cold water.  Low and slow is the way to start coaxing the minerals from the bone.  More impurities and scum will rise to the surface if you start your bones in cold water.
5. Acid! Fancy chef’s will use wine in their broth, but what’s really needed is just acid.  Raw apple cider vinegar is best for nourishment.  The role of an acidic medium is to help pull the minerals from the bones, the whole reason you are making broth! To say nothing of the fact that raw apple cider vinegar is actually alkalinizing to your body. Just a big glug of high quality raw apple cider vinegar - and no, your broth won’t taste like vinegar.
6. Skim!  Once the broth has come to a boil, skim the surface scum and reduce the heat to the barest of simmer. If you don’t skim, all the brown and white foam will be in your broth! You don’t want that.
7. Don’t Boil, Don’t Stir - Broth doesn’t like that - it leads to a breakdown of collagen and impurities get reabsorbed by the broth leading to off flavors.
8. Don’t be afraid to leave your stove on!  Find a back burner on your stove and park that broth there for up to 3 or 4 days depending on the broth - remember you have that pot on the barest of simmers, it will be fine.
9. Don’t cover!  The flavor intensifies when the top is off and the water evaporates.  You can add more cold water if it gets too low (you want the bones below the broth instead of above).
10. Resist the urge to throw out the fat!  Drain the broth and pour into mason jars. A little fat cap on the broth helps extend it’s life by creating a seal.

From here, the broth is your blank canvas for awesomeness!  If you wish to create an even more nourishing and healing beverage, you can also add kombu (more minerals, soothing, emollient) burdock root (detoxifying) potatoes (potassium) asian mushroom (immune building) and cruciferous vegetable (cancer fighting)

Any animal bones are fair game for a good broth! Have you started to make broth?  

Good luck and tell me how it goes!