Daily Blog

Daily is proud to have been a part of Bike to Work Day in 2013 and grateful to everyone who helped make it a success. Prince Avenue was just a little bit more cycling-focused for the day, raising the visibility profile of cycling in Athens. Making cycling to work practical and fun is one of the big ideas of Bike to Work Day. We look forward to participating in a bigger way in 2014. Until then!

This Friday is Bike to Work Day!  Bike to Daily on Friday morning (morning cause it’s while-supplies-last) and Daily will give you a FREE V’egg Salad Sammie.  Why are we doing this crazy thing?  Encouraging our customers to choose environmentally friendly and healthy alternatives are a part of our core principles — we want to be a part of the community that is good for the body, good for our planet and good for our economy.  So Daily is waving a cheering flag to our cycling commuters along with the rest of the nation on this nationally recognized day.  Since 1956, May has been recognized as National Bike Month. The third week in May is designated Bike to Work Week; and the third Friday of May is Bike to Work Day. In 2013 that day is this Friday, May 17^th .

There are numerous benefits to biking and for the cyclist as well as employer, not to mention the environment. According to the League of American Cyclists “Cyclists on average take 15 percent fewer days off from work for illness than non-cyclists, and  generally accomplish more work”. This makes sense when employees are experiencing lower stress, and greater feelings of freedom, relaxation and excitement than car commuters, according to a survey by the Transportation Research Board. Bike to Work is truly a mutualistic symbiosis!

While you’re here feel free to give your tires some extra air and a little checkup at our repair station and to celebrate your cycle commute on May 17^th (and beyond) why not grab a free and delicious V’egg Salad Sammie (available gluten free as well) to “fill up your tank”? The savings keep adding up when you cycle. It’s our way to say thanks for Biking Daily.

Daily Moms: Dana Damm, Mara Davis, Lisa Merva and Jane Link

How do we thank our mothers at Daily?  Breakfast in bed includes farm fresh eggs, tempeh bacon, organic juice, locally roasted coffee and a yummy Dondero’s  muffin.  Our new gourmet teas from Rishi are lovely and indulgent ways to say thank you.   Our moms-to-be endorse the Naturally You shea butter as a pampering tool.  For any and all moms, you really can’t miss with chocolate — organic, fair trade and delicious are all options we offer.

We asked our moms at Daily what they wanted for Mother’s Day this year and and here’s what we got:

• Yoga
• Gift certificate to music store to buy CDs
• Soothing smell-good lotions (lavender or floral)
• Talenti Sea Salt Caramel Gelato
• A farm

Hope we have given you a few helpful suggestions for saying I love you to that special lady.

When Mike Ely with Bike Athens came to Daily Groceries with the idea of a custom bike repair stand everyone knew it was a good idea. Shoppers and staff alike love to Bike Daily, so why not have a repair stand for those times when you need a wrench or tire iron for a flat? Daily has had bicycle parking for many years as well as a bicycle pump (newly repaired thanks to Bike Athens) but a bike repair stand is a way to go the extra mile. (The word from Bike Athens is Mike Ely was getting quite skilled and enthusiastic with the blow torch, so we knew saying yes would be a good thing for him too!) The go-ahead was given and a bright blue repair stand was born.

But the story hardly ends there. How would the stand be anchored? Who even approves putting a stand in front of a grocery store and would they say yes? ACC requested a scaled site plan and enter John Koons and Binh Dao with Koons Environmental Design to save the day, creating the plan and submitting it with full approval from the planning department (thanks guys!). As for the anchoring an SDS drill was loaned from Chris McDowell with UGA’s Material Reuse Program (they do great work too!) with 3/8” red-head self-anchoring bolts were acquired from Normal Hardware (keeping it local). A day was set (just in time for the Twilight Criterium), the repair stand schlepped from the Bike Athens warehouse, and concrete was broken as pilot holes were drilled, and the stand bolt-anchored into place. Whew!

A few days later Bike Athens staff Richard Shoemaker and Basil Campbell dropped by to show Daily’s staff a thing or two about helping cyclists help themselves. How to pry off a tire, how to use a presto and Schrader valve on the bike pump, and the names of the wrenches all in the repertoire of the repair stand were demonstrated for staff.

Bike Athens has been instrumental in creating and maintaining the culture of Bike Daily at Daily. As a token of our appreciation we have made a small donation, including some of our purple-est brand new sunny aprons for their bike repair shop. We appreciate all the people who made the project a success, and look forward to seeing you inflating, patching and tightening your bike at Daily.

Here at Daily, we try our best to bring you the finest that our area has to offer – from local produce to Athens-made artisan soaps, to Georgia grits and local dairy products.

As far as yogurt goes, it’s hard to get more local than Atlanta Fresh and Dreaming Cow (unless you make it yourself). Both companies use fresh Georgia milk to produce their little cups of culinary bliss.

Atlanta Fresh makes Greek yogurt, a concoction rich and creamy enough to serve as breakfast food or dessert. They use milk that comes from the grass fed cows on Southern Swiss Farms – which you can also find here at Daily. Ron Marks and his partners are always working to come up with new flavors, like the two they recently released -Bananas Foster and Strawberry, Basil & Balsamic.

My favorite is the Tropical Sweet Heat, one of the few products on the market that delivers on its promise to bring the spice. The heat is provided by Georgia grown Habaneros. Another staff favorite is Karma Java – our cashier/supervisor extraordinaire Joe Watkins eats so much of this coffee flavored yogurt that I have to order double just to keep him supplied.

If you’re looking for a slightly less rich yogurt while still staying local, Dreaming Cow Creamery makes a New Zealand style cream top yogurt. They learned their craft from a yogurt artisan in the South Isle of New Zealand, and use milk from the grass-fed cows at their own Jumping Gully Dairy in Pavo, Georgia. Their Honey Pear flavor (using Savannah Bee Company honey) is like nothing I’ve ever tasted – refreshing and lightly sweet, it makes my favorite breakfast treat.

I haven’t had the opportunity to visit their farm, but their website is a great source of information about and images of their humanely treated, non-confined cows. Take a look – http://www.dreamingcow.com/grassdairying.html

These two local yogurt makers do things the right way. We’re proud to offer you the opportunity to support them and to make your mouth happy by carrying an extensive selection of their fine products here at Daily.

Now that we’re into Spring the time is ripe for cycling, running, gardening — and lots and lots of local veggies coming into Daily! But what can you do with all of those tasty delights? To help our customers answer this question we decided a cooking class was in order.

Critical to the plan were the talent and the space.  Hobby vegan baker Emilie Lemoine graciously accepted our invitation to teach (as a volunteer) and the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Athens generously offered their kitchen space at no charge.  Cooking 101 with Daily was hatched. The plan? Focus on the basics: selecting your produce, washing, picking your knife, sharpening and cutting and of course making something delicious!

Our class participants demonstrated a shared interest in cooking fundamentals and a desire to perhaps learn a little bit of the flare they have seen on TV. Emilie demonstrated knife sharpening using a honing steel (her preference) and on a whetstone, choosing the material of your utensils, pots and pans, and more. We learned the dangers of the mandolin and what’s the difference between dicing and julienning? You’d have to be there to know! (You can look it up of course – but totally not the same as being there.)
Then the real fun began and we made good use of our knowledge by chopping onion (more efficiently than most of us ever had before), garlic (likewise), zucchini and tomato. Throw in some bulk olive oil, parmesan cheese and crushed red pepper flakes and you have fresh delicious zucchini bake! We enjoyed the fruit of our labors, to be sure. Not a single scrap was wasted as they were all safely delivered to Matthew’s home compost pile.

What’s next? It’s the community’s class and so the answer is to-be-determined.  We want to stick to seasonal and local produce, but beyond that the sky is the limit.  If you have an idea we want to hear it!  Contact Matthew at Daily if you want to share an idea, also if you’d like a copy of the notes Emilie prepared for the class. These classes belong to a long co-operative history since the Rochdale Pioneers who helped their members learn to cook with unadulterated brown flour (not mixed with plaster as they were used to!), and embodied in the Co-operative Fifth Principle: Education, Training and Information.

Daily would like to thank Emilie for teaching (and wearing her bright pink apron!), UUFA for hosting, and our first round of participants. We hope you’ll break out the apron and join us in the kitchen in May.