SUSTAINABILITY: WASTE REDUCTION

AN INTERVIEW WITH JASON AND LAUREN GREENE, OWNERS

Owned and operated by Jason and Lauren Greene, The Grove is a breakfast, brunch, and lunch café serving the finest local food in a fun, casual atmosphere. With a team of more than thirty hospitality professionals, The Grove has grown through its seventeen years into a local food landmark in Albuquerque.

The Grove believes in supporting local farmers and sustainable agriculture. Their food is sourced from growers and producers from New Mexico and the greater Southwest. Local and organic products are served whenever possible, and the highest quality ingredients are sourced and served daily.

When brunching at The Grove, you will find a classic menu with cult favorites like their Grove Pancakes and the Farmers Salad. The growing team of talented chefs in The Grove’s kitchen work closely together to create new menu items and seasonal specials that focus on local agriculture and bringing the community together.

The Grove opened in 2006 and has been sourcing from local growers ever since. Can you talk about your relationships with farmers and how you learned to balance consistency with seasonality and local availability?

For us, it’s all about quality, consistency of product, and understanding what we need as a high-volume restaurant. We have farmer partners that understand our delivery time constraints—their communication of available product is super consistent and they are very communicative about how long the product will be available and how much we can get. There has to be a professional relationship there so that everybody wins.

When you talk about community, how do you define yours?

Our community at The Grove starts with our team, how we treat one another under our roof, and what we each bring to the table every day. From there, your vibe attracts your tribe . . . that’s actually in our handbook! We feel we have a community of food-loving, quality-seeking guests and team members that understand what we do and why we do it. The Grove is really a gathering place that brings so many different people together for so many different reasons. It’s like home. This award is for The Grove’s efforts to reduce waste—something that restaurants stand accused of producing a lot of. That includes something like 20 percent of the nation’s food waste, along with plastic and other packaging waste, which surged early in the pandemic. When did The Grove start paying attention to waste, and what are some of the restaurant’s strategies for making less of it?

Using sustainable food, practices, and products was a value of ours since day one. Over the years, it has become easier as the city and private companies have begun offering services such as compost pickup and recycling. In the early years, we had incentive programs for our team members to encourage recycling and composting—things like gift cards and cash bonuses for those who would do a run to the compost or recycling facility. Today our composting program and recycling programs are just our way of life at The Grove. We continue to use ingredients, farmers, and companies that choose sustainable practices and quality above all else.

Describe the perfect date-night dinner.

We love a date night. We love doing dine-arounds, where we hit up to three spots in one night. We will start somewhere for a drink and a small bite, then head off to another place where we cozy in a bit more. We like to share everything and order multiple small plates rather than large entrées. The opportunity to sit together over food (and, hopefully, candlelight) and talk about fun things rather than work and life things is just the best.

How do you work on reducing waste at home?

We do our best and are always learning to do better. We do not use plastic-bottle beverages, we limit paper towel use, we recycle, we use reusable snack bags instead of single-use plastic baggies, and so on. We also garden to help cut down on our produce and flower purchases. What (or who, or where) have been three of your greatest influences?

Lauren: My dad. Not only his love for people and business, but his advice on the big and the small things, remain constant inspirations in my life.

Lauren and Jason: Italy.

Jason: My wife.

Who’s your favorite food authority, local or otherwise?

Edible New Mexico for sure is our local authority. Since we can remember, we grab each new issue and read it from front to back. Good Food Foundation is an authority based out of San Francisco that highlights companies making sustainable food and beverage products without hormones, pesticides, or artificial or genetically modified ingredients.

What’s something most people don’t know about you?

Jason: I dream of leaving it all to live on the beach in the Caribbean making simple, delicious food from only what is local.

Lauren: I have an unusual love for taking walks on snowy trails in very cold conditions. It’s exhilarating to be in the elements. Anything else you’d like to share with edible readers?

We would be amiss if we didn’t say how grateful we are for edible, the team and the readers, for being our voice for good food, farming, and drink in New Mexico. Thank you, all, for the years of support. We love you!

600 Central SE, Ste A, Albuquerque, 505-248-9800, thegrovecafemarket.com

They Taste As Good As They Look

Words and Photos by Ellen Zachos

New Mexicans are lucky for many reasons, not the least of which is that our state flower is both beautiful and very tasty. In 1927, when the legislature made the yucca our state flower, they didn’t specify a species, so all of the plants in the genus Yucca are ours to celebrate. The USDA currently lists eleven species as native to various parts of New Mexico, with some having multiple varieties.

In northern New Mexico, banana yucca (Yucca baccata) and narrowleaf yucca (Y. glauca) are the two most common species. Both grow to be two to three feet tall, with sharply pointed evergreen leaves forming a rosette. Banana yucca leaves are approximately two inches wide, while those of narrowleaf yucca are less than an inch wide. Both produce a central stalk covered with large, graceful white flowers followed by green fruit.

Soaptree yucca (Y. elata) is most common in the southern part of the state, although it’s native as far north as Bernalillo County. It’s

New Mexico’s largest yucca, and may grow to be more than twenty feet tall, with a treelike growth habit and several branches. Its common name points to its saponin-rich roots and crown, which were traditionally used as soap (and can be found in some commercial soaps and shampoos, including at the Diné-owned Nizhoni Soaps).

Yucca leaves are highly fibrous, and have long been integral to the textile arts of the Indigenous peoples of the Southwest. Archaeological evidence shows yucca cordage has been used for centuries to make belts, ladders, sandals, fishnets, and baskets. Traditional basket makers still use narrowleaf yucca today. To make cordage, the leaves are soaked, then pounded to extract the fibers, which are twisted into string or rope.

Yuccas also have several edible parts. The immature flower stalk can be cooked and eaten, but you’ll sacrifice the blooms and fruit. Yucca fruit may be dry or fleshy at maturity, depending on the species. The

Environmentally Packaged Fresh and Nutritious Food fruit of banana yucca is fleshy and delicious. It makes an excellent pie filling or a naturally sweet side dish, but you’ll have to deal with the yucca moth larvae if they haven’t already left the fruit to pupate underground. If that thought doesn’t make you too queasy to continue, store the ripe fruit in the freezer for a few days. You’ll find the frozen larvae at the bottom of the freezer bag. Feed them to your chickens.

Once you’ve rid your fruit of its larvae, thaw the fruit, then slice it in half and scoop out the seeds. Bake the yucca fruit at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until the flesh is soft, which should take 20 to 30 minutes, depending on how large the fruit are. Scoop out the baked yucca flesh and taste it. You may want to sweeten it just a little if you’re making pie filling, but for a side dish the natural sweetness is perfect. A few caramelized onions on top would take it to the next level.

Yucca flowers bloom from April to June, depending on where you are in New Mexico. They are plentiful and tasty, and any insects inside the flowers can be dislodged easily by rinsing or simply giving the flowers a good shake. Some people experience an itchy throat when eating raw flowers, but cooking alleviates this and also improves the flavor. Yucca flowers should either be used fresh or quickly blanched and frozen for storage. Frozen yucca flowers can be used in egg dishes, sautés, soups, and stews, but will not have the correct texture for stuffing.

Yucca Moths

Almost all yuccas have mutualistic relationships with moths. Flowers open at night, when the moths are active. As the moths pollinate the flowers, they also lay their eggs within the bloom. Both organisms benefit from the relationship: the plants are pollinated and the larvae have a guaranteed food source as they develop. Unfortunately for human foragers, this makes it difficult to find fruit that doesn’t come with a generous side order of protein . . . i.e., yucca moth larvae.

Stuffed Yucca Flowers

This recipe can be reduced or increased proportionately. To separate the petals from the pistils and stamens, grasp them at the base where they join the flower and give a quick twist.

25 rinsed yucca flowers, pistils and stamens removed and reserved

1/4 cup onion, chopped

Olive oil

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground sumac

2 tablespoons green chile, chopped

1/2 cup cream cheese, room temperature

1 egg, beaten

All-purpose flour

Chop the yucca pistils and stamens and the onion into small pieces (approximately 1/4–1/2 inch) and sauté in olive oil until the onions are translucent. Add the salt, sumac powder, and chopped green chile, and stir to combine. Remove from the heat.

Place the cream cheese in a bowl and fold in the warmed ingredients to distribute them evenly.

Fill each yucca flower with a teaspoon of the cream cheese mixture and gently press the flowers closed. Dip each one in the beaten egg, then dredge in the flour and set aside.

Fry the stuffed blossoms in oil until they are a crispy golden brown, and serve warm.