Our Philosophy
The short synopsis of what we do here at The
Love Apple is all about the simple, old tenant:
You really are what you eat (philosophically
speaking, how you choose to eat). We want you
to be great, to feel energized and engaged and
happy and assured that you are eating the highest
quality food available, made with a very honest
intention, and be comfortable and surrounded
with beauty while being who you are in the act
of eating. So there.
What does that mean for us? In the kitchen it
means looking in the pantry (like in anyone’s
kitchen really…). What are the buying decisions
that we are making? What ingredients are we
working with? Where did they come from? It’s
pretty hard to make food that will make you feel
great, energized, engaged, happy and assured with
marginal ingredients from unknown sources,
filled with pesticides, shipped across the world or
otherwise unidentifiable, we think.
And so, when you look in our pantry (which you
are always welcome to do incidentally!), you will
find two freezers stocked with exclusively local
meat, specifically from Rick, Antonio and John,
our beef, lamb and bison ranchers respectively.
When you look in our non-walk-in, you may first
think, “Wow, that’s small.” (it’s about the size of
3 home refrigerators). Yes, it is, but it keeps our
fresh stock rotating maddeningly quickly and
insures that we do not throw away food. Inside
you’ll find an assortment of New Mexico and
Colorado cheeses, all Organic Valley (farmer-
owned) dairy, the best butter we can get, local
and/or organic eggs, chickens raised in
Albuquerque and a plethora of produce and fresh
herbs from our local farms. We receive produce
directly from farmers every day of the week in the
peak of the season, and purchase from the farmers
market devoutly. Just around the corner from the
fridge you’ll see a small space with containers
stacked with our organic raw ingredients: dried
beans, rice, quinoa, and nuts.
The rest of our small kitchen is stocked with organic
olive oil, agave nectar and local honey (our primary
sweeteners, in addition to the organic cane sugar
we use for baking), vinegars, whole spices which we
toast and grind fresh, locally milled flour and organic
cornmeal for our cornbread. That’s all.
What you will not find in our pantry is, as Michael
Pollan says, ‘the stuff from the middle of the grocery
store.’ We don’t have pre-made anything; no
corporate brand name logos, no ingredients with
15 letters that we’ve never heard of, no high fructose
corn syrup, really, no food that we don’t know where
it comes from, and generally who grows it.
Why do we do this? (It’s so much harder this way!)
We do it because it’s meaningful to be able to
provide you with something that we feel sure of. It’s challenging and fun to work within parameters of
integrity. It supports the environment that we all
call home and want to care for. It supports our local
economy and community by helping our friends
and family and neighbors and customers stay in
business and be able to have a life here. It provides
those same people with a place to gather and be
nourished, it provides a creative opportunity to
know, and to know how to prepare for you, our
local foods, our native and heritage foods, and
foods from our regional food shed.
support independent agriculture and food artisans
because we believe that they provide the best quality
and that it’s important to maintain these food
traditions. And, we believe that we need to support
a viable choice beyond the industrial food system.
We like making and sharing a quality food experience,
because really, we just want to feel good too.
