Restaurants accumulate anywhere between 250 and 500 pounds of organic kitchen scraps each week, according to Green Restaurant Alliance of Sacramento co-founder David S. Baker. These hundreds of pounds of scraps, instead of filling landfills, can be used for compost to fertilize the very soil that will produce the next crop of fruits and vegetables. Since March 2010, GRAS, in partnership with Atlas Disposal, has worked toward creating a more sustainable food industry in the city through the use of a “closed-loop” system. “These are valuable resources that would be just going straight to a landfill and serving no use,” Baker said. GRAS is made up of Hot Italian, Mulvaney's B&L, Selland’s

  Local chefs Kurt Spataro, Michael Tuohy and others joined forces to create an 1850s-inspired four-course meal for “A Taste of History” at Sutter’s Fort. The fundraiser will benefit Friends of Sutter’s Fort, a group that continues to keep the historic monument open to the public. The menu, taken from John Sutter’s era, has been adapted using local ingredients. Honey and olive oil samples will be served as well as beverages from local wineries and breweries. Lisa Mealoy, event coordinator with Friends of Sutter’s Fort, said the dinner is meant to “emulate the community-oriented” traits of Sutter, who established Sutter’s Fort in 1839. She said he was a hospitable, generous man who trea

Sunday, approximately 75 hungry guests took over Grange Restaurant for Slow Food Sacramento's Celebration of Summer event. The luncheon was organized around a fruit whose flavors reach a peak in the summer season: the tomato. Event organizer and member of Slow Food Sacramento chapter member Jim Mills told the group that "a tomato is not always a tomato," and that the fruit should really only be enjoyed fresh during its season, which ranges from about June 15 through the end of October. Grange Restaurant's head chef Michael Tuohy reinforced that tomatoes are best consumed during those four and a half months. "You'll see tomatoes in the stores in January," Tuohy said, "and it's like 'Why