Every year, all of us at fire gear up for the weekend when we make Dr Katz’s Pickles. My dad has made these pickles since I was 7 or 8 and always included me and my family in the process. At times, my mom was not interested in dealing with the mess, but the results were always savored and used.

This year, my dad trusted me and my crew to do it without him. The process begins about 2 months before, when we order all of the jars and lids. As we ran out last year with 600 jars, we decided to up it to 720 this year. Wow, is that a lot of jars.

After we get the jars, we need distilled water, local pickles, local hot peppers including finger hots and Hungarian hots – and the most important ingredient of all- flowering dill. This is where the problems occur, as you never quite know when it will be flowering. We usually find out a week before and have to line up the rest of the local product within that time. We also have to find the staff to help pack the pickles carefully, with passion and scientific exactness. One slight alteration to the recipe and the pickles may become compost.

This year, the hardest part was finding local pickles that were small enough to fit in the jars. We like big pickles, but we have to get at least 5 in a jar. This year, we received 1 delivery that had to be returned and by the second try – got the right size pickles.

It is always a great day for me as I remember packing pickles over the years with my family. I am able to show my crew the importance of teamwork and care with this family recipe. Every employee has tasted the pickles and loves them, so it is fun for them to see the process. We work diligently for 9-10 hours, measuring salt, pickling spice and garlic. We squeeze the pickles in the jars and cut really spicy peppers, occasionally getting heat rashes from our spiced fingers and hands. Even after washing hands and many hours later, the heat is still around, so we don’t forget the daylong process. I smell the peppers until I am fast asleep.

Once the picles are packed, we top the jars with the aromatic dill flowers and seal the jars. They get shaken a few times and then we wait, and wait. In 6 weeks we will get to experience the local harvest, when we open our first of the 720 jars.

Hopefully we will make it through the year with what we have made. We top our burgers with the pickles, we sell sides of pickles, we sell them as gifts and we have some die hard customers that come in every other week – to get their fix.

It is a special ritual that we look forward to all year, and luckily, we are able to speak about almost everyday.

Doug Katz, owner and chef, www.firefoodanddrink.com

It’s such a simple idea.  We know the chefs around Cleveland who use local products have the best tasting food and most interesting menus.  So why not seek out the locavore chefs when you travel?  It is, by default, what we do when we travel abroad, because “national” or “regional” foods are, in fact, local foods or at least based on local ingredients.  This may be the most exciting opportunity in the “travel close to home” trend that has yet to be recognized.  The enthusiasm for local foods that has been fueled by the explosion of farmers’ markets across the county makes it easier than even to find restaurants that offer the taste of the place.

Last summer I went with my sister-in-law to the open farm tour at Polyface Farm in Virginia.  The lunch served that day was so local it had been alive or in the ground on the farm just days before!  But for dinner the next night we decided to find a restaurant Staunton, where we were staying, that featured farmers on the menu.  The Staunton Grocery was just what we were looking for–everything was fresh, seasonal, and prepared with skill and affection.  Our next time together we were in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, and the local food passion took us to the Route 7 Grill–another farm to table success.

It has become my guiding principle when I travel.  Find the restaurant that features farmers on the menu and you are certain to have a delicious and memorable meal.  I was recently in Washington D.C., where I met Dean Zimmerman of Dino’s whose enthusiam for local farm products is so intense that he regularly sends email blasts to his customers about what he bought at the farmers’ market or from local farms that will be on the menu this week.  My three course fixed prix ($35) dinner started with white peaches from Heyser’s Farm wrapped in procuitto!  As we were leaving, he collared us to talk about the wild blackberries that were ripening in the backyards of a Maryland housing development, where foragers go each summer to pick and resell the sweet bounty.  He could hardly wait for the flats of berries they would bring him.

Cleveland is extraordinarily blessed with chefs who are sourcing as much as they can from local farmers.  For years, Parker Bosley was the lone champion of local foods and his efforts consistently put Cleveland on the Gourmet Magazine list of top 50 restaurants in the U.S.  But now, for a number of reasons, Northeast Ohio has an ever growing number of chefs who are connecting with local farmers to create some of the tastiest meals anywhere. 

Parker, of course, trained many of these new chefs.  Others, thanks to the Northern Ohio chapter of Slow Food, have experienced Terra Madre (see the link) and sampled “local” foods from around the world at the Salone del Gusto.  Some grew up with families that raised fruits and vegetables, canned, jammed, baked, and otherwise consumed the local harvest.  And many more are learning from farmers and producers as farmers’ markets spring up across the region.

I have invited these chefs to tell their own stories in this category.  Come back and visit often to learn more about what these folks are cooking up for us from the bounty of the western reserve!

Mary