I thought my brother was strange when he started keeping chickens in the yard and reading a magazine called Backyard Poultry, not to mention the fact that the chickens are named Original Recipe and Extra Crispy. A friend once said, “I can tell you’re white trash because you have a chicken on the table and it’s not dead yet.”
Thank God the Eat Real festival is coming to town this weekend with a host of events including the Dare2DReam chicken farmers, who will present a workshop on tending “urban chickens” and instantly change my family from an oddity to being on the cutting edge of an actual food movement.
The Eat Real Festival, which will be held in and around the Helm’s Bakery building, is happening in Los Angeles for the first time and it’s totally free! The festival is all about regional foods, the people who grow it, and the people who make it. Classes slated for Saturday and Sunday include cheese-making, preserving, growing mushrooms, home brewing, preserving meats, bee-keeping, foraging, and the art of kimchi. Sign us up for Tomato sauce making with KCRW “Good Food’s” Evan Kleiman!
Other activities for you burgeoning chicken farmers and bee keepers are Beer and Wine Gardens featuring locally crafted brews, delicious street eats incorporating local and sustainable ingredients all priced at $5 or less, garden installations, music, food trucks, chef relay races, a cookbook swap, a marketplace, and a community oven for freshly baked bread (cough-cough-hippies!)· If you have always dreamed of taking home the blue ribbon for grandma’s prized chutney recipe, there will be the usual State Fair-style competitions, as well as — wait for it — butchery competitions! Yes!
A panel not to be missed if you wish you were writing for, oh, say, The Beat, is “The Future of Food Writing” moderated by OC Weekly’s Gustavo Arellano, with noted LA food writers Russ Parsons of Los Angeles Times, Amy Scattergood of LA Weekly’s “Squid Ink”, Hazel Quimpo from Yelp, plus raconteur and bon vivant Eddie Lin of Deep End Dining·
See you all at the first ever Flying Knives steer butchery contest!
Helms Bakery District in Culver City, CA 8800 Venice Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90034 MAP Saturday, July 16th from 10:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and Sunday, July 17th from 10:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Ride with the LA Bicycle Coalition.
