Archive for the ‘Going Green’ Category

We have started to harvest some of our Fall/Winter veggies and we are pretty pleased with our results.  I particularly love our heirloom carrots, they colors are just amazing, though not as amazing as the story of why we eat orange carrots.  While I prefer just to roast my carrots with a little salt and pepper, here are some great ideas on how to use to tops to cut down on waste and try something new.

In keeping with our progressive environmental initiatives, we are proud to announce that we are now encouraging our event staff to join Capital Bikeshare by subsidizing 50% of the annual bike share membership fee for our Susan Gage Caterers staff members and independent contractors. By joining Capital Bikeshare, our event staff is now able to access 1,100 bicycles at 110 stations across Washington, D.C. and Arlington, Virginia, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. We think the benefits of our staff joining Capital Bikeshare are enormous. Not only is our staff now spared the hassle and expense of urban parking, but Susan Gage Caterers has done its part in reducing carbon emissions and the consumption of petroleum by getting cars off area roads. Our staff now show up to events invigorated by their bike ride. So the next time you see someone riding one of those famous Washington, D.C. red bikes, it just might be one of our waiters.

As caterers deeply vested in offering our clients the freshest, most local ingredients, we are often faced with the dilemma of seasonal availability of these ingredients. Event menus are crafted well before our events are scheduled to take place, up to a year in advance in some cases, and often without knowing which fruits, vegetables, or meat products will be in peak-season, peak-quality or available in the quantities required for our events.

To remedy this dilemma, Susan Gage Caterers has partnered with D.C. area farmer Georgia Ravitz of East Lynn and Fair Oaks Farms to design our event menus in conjunction with Georgia’s year-round harvesting schedule so that we might offer our clients truly local ingredients at the moment of optimal freshness and availability. We believe this collaborative effort with Georgia in planning our menus around the production/harvest cycle of Georgia’s farms will allow us to bring local, farm-to-table ingredients to event menus with more seasonal regularity. While will continue to source as much of our local ingredients as possible, we feel by taking this more holistic approach to planning menus and planting/harvesting schedules in conjunction will not only allow us to become a much greener company, but to greatly improve the quality level of our food as well.

If you have questions regarding our season offerings, or what’s growing on Georgia’s farm in any given season, please feel free to contact a company Account Executive.

We are now getting 30-40 dozen fresh local eggs a week from Fair Oaks Farms. I recently spoke with the farm owner Georgia about the important role the chickens play at her farm. Georgia currently has about 60 chickens at her farm in Aldie, Virginia and when she says they are free-range, they are really free-range since during the day they have complete run of the farm. Chickens tend not to roam to far from their roost (they also return at night at which point they are ‘locked up’ to protect them from predators), but they do roam the fields eating most anything they can find, particularly around the livestock where they eat bugs and other pests that can be a health problem for the goats, lamb and cattle that she keeps on the same property. By allowing her chickens to take care of all the pests, Georgia does not need to spray for any pests allowing her maintain an organic environment for her animals. The end result of all of Georgia’s efforts are really happy chickens and really beautiful eggs.



All of us have gotten very used to having nearly all of our favorite vegetables available to us nearly all the time. Strawberries in February, why not! The recent extreme weather throughout the country however have put this to a test. As you can see in the attached pictures, there is going to be a shortage in many of the fresh fruits and vegetables that we have grown used to. This is one more reason to try to eat local seasonal foods throughout the year. Many locally grown vegetables are able to store well throughout the winter months, so make sure to include, apples, potatoes, rutabagas and other ‘winter vegetables’ on your menus, they will taste great and save you some dough. There is also a great variety of locally preserved fruits as well as pickles and chutneys to add some summer flavor to your winter meals.