DAY 36_LOCAL FOOD RESTAURANTS-GALACTIC PIZZA

19 September 2010

There are TONS of restaurants in Minneapolis which offer local foods.  However, the definition of 'local' is slightly different at each, and it varies quite a bit how local the restaurants go.  For example, many 'local foods' restaurants simply give preference to local foods while they are in season. Some offer local foods in almost all dishes, but the entire dish isn't local (all ingredients).   I have yet to find a restaurant that is ENTIRELY LOCAL all the time, or one that uses sunflower oil instead of olive oil.  This would require the restaurants to freeze, dry, can and preserve foods in a way which is often less desirable their patrons.  People would rather eat fresh especially when eating out, and I would assume that restaurants would shy away from preserving foods simply to give themselves a 'year-round-local' title.  Here is a list I have so far of restaurants in Minneapolis that offer local foods (at least part of the year, in SOME of their dishes)

_Local D'Lish (localdlish.com‎)
_Crema Cafe (cremacafeminneapolis.com‎)

_Red Stage Supperclub (redstagsupperclub.com‎)

_Common Roots Cafe (commonrootscafe.com‎)
_Birchwood Cafe (birchwoodcafe.com‎)
_Galactic Pizza (http://www.galacticpizza.com/)
_Spoonriver (spoonriver.com‎)
_Alma (restaurantalma.com‎)
_Brasa Premium Rotisserie (brasa.us‎)
_Lucia's Restaurant (lucias.com‎)
_Craftsman Restaurant (www.craftsmanrestaurant.com)
_Heartland (www.heartlandrestaurant.com)

This list is by no means exhaustive, and I would appreciate any other suggestions of places I should check out!

In order to figure out which restaurants offer the most 'local' food for the longest period of the year I am trying to visit many of the Minneapolis restaurants claiming to be 'local'.  Today, we ended up at Galactic Pizza, the self-proclaimed "Planet Saving Pizza" of Uptown, Minneapolis.  This is their vision:

"At Galactic Pizza we have a positive vision of the future on our planet. We see a world that lacks the greed and self centeredness that has led use into the chaotic state that we see today. We see a world full of cooperation, sustainability, and harmony with our surroundings.
In order to help achieve this positive vision, we strive to be the perfect example of what is called a values led company. This means that we realize that we have a responsibility to the people and community that make our existence possible. In order to fulfill this responsibility, we seek to maximize our impact by integrating as many socially beneficial actions into our day to day operations as possible. By incorporating a concern for the community--local, national, and global--our restaurant can make positive impact on the world in which it operates."

This place is 3 blocks away from me, and is pizza, so that's good. They have all kinds of sustainability-minded initiatives going;
_deliveries in 100% electric vehicles,
_all power purchased to run the restaurant in wind energy,
_many organic options,
_use packaging that is either made from recycled materials or is 100% biodegradable (compostable), you can return your pizza boxes to them to be composted!,
_when in season purchase all of the produce from local Minnesota farms, composting food waste

So that is great, in general, without oil these guys would be pretty well off since the entire infrastructure of their business is more or less oil free; renewable energy, electric cars, composting waste and reusable/compostable packaging, local foods. 

We had the Paul Bunyan Pizza, according to the menu: "This is a very special pizza. The first of its kind. All of the toppings have been selected based on the fact that they are native to the Minnesota ecosystem, giving it a unique flavor that is truly Minnesotan. It starts with our homemade tomato sauce, topped with mozzarella cheese, morel mushrooms, wild rice, and free range bison sausage."

They also offer a few other all-local pizza's, CSA pizza which changes weekly as they get different produce in their CSA box...

They also dress up like super heros. yes.

TEN REASONS TO EAT LOCAL FOOD (http://fogcity.blogs.com/jen/2005/08/10_reasons_to_e.html)

DAY 35_PASSIVE HOUSE IN THE WOODS

18 September 2010

http://www.passivehouseinthewoods.com/

We went to tour the Passive House In The Woods today, which is located in Hudson, Wisconsin.  Yes, I had to drive there :/  First time in a car in 35 days.  But don't worry, we carpooled.  The house is a 3-bedroom, 3 level 1,940 square foot house with a rooftop terrace and many walk out balconies facing into the woods.  It is located on the edge of a cookie-cutter suburban neighborhood.  While the view from the house shows the St. Croix river valley, you have to look past all the rest of the suburban development first, which makes for an interesting contrast of building types.  We thought it should have been called Passive House in the Suburbs ;).  It was designed by a design team at TE Studio. 

According to their website, "The project is designed to the Passive House Building energy standard, which currently represents the tightest energy standard in the world. Passive House in the Woods actually exceeds space-conditioning requirements for Passive House by 25%.  Currently, there are a little over one dozen certified Passive House™ buildings in the U.S. The Passive House in the Woods is slated to become the first certified Passive House™ in Wisconsin, and one of only a few net energy positive and carbon-neutral buildings in the country."

The main idea for this kind of Passive House  (capital P)  is its high performance building envelope.  By super insulating with 12" of Polystyrene and 11" of Insulated Concrete Forms, the entire building envelope can dramatically reduce the amount of energy used to condition a building.  The walls have an insulation value of R-60 and the roof R-95.  The mechanical system in the house is heat-recovery ventilation, which pre-heats and pre-cools the incoming air.  Because the house has such ridiculously high insulation values, hardly any heat is allowed to escape once introduced into the space.  Electric in-floor heating mats take care of the rest of the heating, no boiler, no furnace.  While not required by the Passive House standards, the Passive House in the Woods also has two solar arrays which cover the entire electricity need and make the house net-energy positive (sells money back to the grid).  It is a 4.7 kW array which (with 4.6 hrs of peak sun in MN) I'm guessing produces about 21 kWh/day (643.6 kWh/month).  For comparison, the electric bill for my 3 bedroom house is around 180 kWh/month  (granted, the Passive House is 3 levels).  There is also a 40 square foot solar hot water collector on the roof.

It was interesting to walk through the house with my roommate Abby who designed and built a passive house (lower case p) for her parents in Alberta.  The philosophies behind the house she built and the Passive House standards(http://www.passivehouse.us/passiveHouse/PHIUSHome.html), demonstrate quite different approaches to sustainable and 'passive' building.  She designed her parent's house to have a long east-west axis with the south face oriented to the sun.  The entire south side has large expanses of windows which capture the solar energy which is stored as heat as it hits the massive concrete slab floor inside.  The BACKUP system is a geothermal radiant floor system.  It's a beautiful house which is more or less symmetrically divided to have two wings, one for her parents and one for her aging grandparents who recently moved in. 

While the Passive House in the Woods has south exposure, it seemed a bit misleading to claim that was a 'passive' feature of the house because there was no thermal mass to capture any of this solar heat/light.   The primary heating source was in-floor heating mats, and the heat recovery ventilation.  The super insulation part could definitely qualify as a "passive" system, but the rest of the systems were what I understand as "active" systems (mechanical additions to the space in the form of the Heat Recovery Ventilation, heating mats, and solar array).  In the same way, we could criticize Abby's house as not being entirely passive because it had the geothermal radiant heat.  However, Abby's house had active systems only as a backup, with the primary heating system being the passive solar energy gained through the south facing windows and stored in the concrete floor.  I'm not sure 'passive' is the right term for the method of building demonstrated in the Passive House in the Woods. 

Another thing to note is that Polystyrene is a petroleum product.  While there are many other options for insulation in buildings, how will super insulation occur without this product? What other products could be used in a post-cheap oil world to carry on this type of building? 

I'm not sure, but its seems that if a truly 'passive' system could be achieved (designing a home to capture and take advantage of the free energy resource of the sun-THAT would be a better goal than relying on the efficiency of building materials such as polystyrene super insulation + mechanical systems.