Photo by Guy Hand

After a long, lingering winter, Spring has finally sprung here in southern Idaho.  To celebrate, NPR’s Edible Idaho is trying something new:

A weekly radio show called The Market & Garden Report.

Every Friday morning beginning April 30th during Morning Edition on Boise State Radio (KBSX 91.5), producer Guy Hand will bring you the news on what’s fresh and interesting at the area’s farmers’ markets. We’ll also gather timely tips on how to plant your own garden and grow you’re own food.

Photo by Guy Hand

One week The Market & Garden Report will explore Boise’s Capital City Public Market.  We’ll talk to vendors about their best, most unique products (often focusing on those mystery vegies that most of us haven’t tried or know how to cook). We’ll get recipes from area chefs, let you know when your favorite berries are in season and alert you to upcoming events at farmers’ markets all around the Treasure Valley.

Photo by Guy Hand

The following week — for those of you who’d like to get your hands dirty — we’ll head out to Peaceful Belly Farms. There Clay and Josie Erskine will let us sneak into their very popular gardening class. They’ll teach us about heirloom tomatoes, compost piles and what to do about all those pesky bugs.

So, one week the Market, the next week the Garden. From Springtime to Fall harvest. That’s what Edible Idaho’s Market & Garden Report is all about.  Whether you grow your own food or pick it at the area’s farmers’ markets, the show will help you make the most of this bright new growing season.

Listen every Friday morning on Boise State Radio (KBSX 91.5) from April 30th all the way to the frosty end of October.

And stay tuned to the regular Edible Idaho program the first Monday of every month.  As it has for the last four years, Edible Idaho will continue to explore in-depth issues about Idaho food and agriculture on Boise State Radio.

Of course,  Edible Idaho and  the new Market & Garden Report will be available on-line, anytime, right here on Northwest Food News.

Josie Erskine of Peaceful Belly Farms — all photos by Guy Hand

Farm to Fork dinners are served on the very farms where the evening’s food is grown. They’re a national phenomenon. But ultra-fresh fare isn’t all these events offer.  In this episode of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand goes to dinner at Boise’s Peaceful Belly Farms and finds there’s more on the menu than a good meal.

To watch an AUDIO SLIDESHOW of this story, click here

Josie Erskine: “These meals are really interesting because they showcase vegetables. It’s really fun to see vegetables used so creatively and be at the forefront of the plate.

Chef Abby Carlson: “People have no idea what they’re getting.  They sign up for this dinner and they’re at my mercy.  I love it because I can do whatever I want; I can try out any recipe I want.  And they’re kind of amazed at what they like. And that’s one of the things about the dinners, people see food in a whole new light.”

The traditional restaurant review reviews, well, restaurants. Yet to confine the search for good food to four walls is to miss one of the most exciting trends in food today: the profusion of outdoor, farm-to-table dinners that have sprouted up across the country like morels after wildfire.

Photo by Guy Hand

An offshoot of the local food movement, these harvest-season dinners shorten the farm-to-table distance from the thousand-mile-plus average of most commercially grown foodstuffs to something more intimate – and appetizing. Some dinners eliminate that distance altogether. Peaceful Belly Farm and Boise Urban Garden School (BUGS) set tables over the very ground where your meal grew. You may, for instance, find dessert hanging from the fruit tree that shades your head. Now that’s local.

The annual City Harvest Wine Dinners are set not on farm dirt but on the brickwork of The Grove Plaza in Downtown Boise. Still, the food and drink is locally grown and showcases the labors of about 20 area farmers, ranchers and winemakers -from Rice Family Farms in Meridian to Bitner Vineyard in Sunnyslope to Cloverleaf Creamery in Buhl.

Accompanying the food and wine are live music, guest speakers, and auctions to support Boise’s farmers market and other local causes.

Last year’s City Harvest Dinner, as well as one at Peaceful Belly Farm that same fall, were two of the most memorable meals I’ve had in Boise ever, restaurant or otherwise. The food at both was superb, pressed firmly into memory by the subtle shift in emphasis from chef to less-celebrated farmer.

For full story go to: http://www.idahostatesman.com/204/story/500549.html

Detail at Snake River Grill © 2009 Guy Hand

Idaho chef Kirt Martin is committed to cooking with local ingredients. But what does a cook do in December, long after the garden has frozen over? In this installment of Edible Idaho, correspondent Guy Hand finds out how one Idaho Chef keeps it local during the dead of winter.

Chef Kirt Martin © 2009 Guy Hand

The Snake River Grill, Hagerman, Idaho © 2009 Guy Hand

The Snake River Grill

Capital City Farmer's Market, Boise © 2009 Guy Hand

Shortening the distance from farmer to plate is what the local food movement is all about. Chef Andrae Bopp cuts that distance to a mere half a block.

Listen as Bopp walks a cooking class from his restaurant, Andraes, to Boise’s Capital City Farmers’ Market; collects spring ingredients; and then heads back to the kitchen to make a very tasty—and very local—lunch.

Andrae's Restaurant © 2009 Guy Hand