Looking for a fresh option for lunch?

If you live in Lake Highlands, there's no doubt you know about Highlands Cafe, the popular, locally-owned restaurant now celebrating its 5th year in business.

What you may not know about is the special partnership that exists between the cafe and local community gardeners.

Tomorrow, beginning at 11:00 a.m., the restaurant will be preparing and serving a specialty salad made from freshly harvested organic produce provided by the plot holders of the LH Community Garden.

According to Anita Siegers, co-owner and managing partner of the cafe, it will be a unique salad because along with varietal lettuce, spinach, and arugula from the local garden, all other ingredients will come from producers within Texas.

“It will be perfectly fresh and will pair beautifully with our Friday Pork Tacos," she says.

Highlands Cafe has been partnering with the community garden by passing along their produce scraps every week to go into the four compost bins at the garden.

Not only does this partnership remove 50 to 100 pounds of waste that would otherwise end up in the landfill, but the rich compost it becomes is highly beneficial to the organic produce grown at the garden.

"Local gardeners, JJ Pair and Heather Rinaldi, first contacted me about cafe produce scraps going to the Texas Worm Ranch as food - rather than into our dumpster and the landfill," says Seigers.

"In our ingoing desire to be greener, we agreed to bucket up our scraps twice a week and send them to the compost piles at the garden."

Kent Binfield is president of Dallas is Gardening, Inc., (DIG) the group that manages the Lake Highlands Community Garden.

"The cafe has been a supporter of the garden from the time it was only a vague idea, and I hope that the community and gardeners will come to lunch on Friday and show their appreciation to Anita, Kathy and the Highlands Cafe staff," says Binfield.

"Also, they're being very generous in donating the accessory ingredients for the special Lake Highlands Community Garden Salad, which will also include other Texas, Dallas and Lake Highlands specifically sourced ingredients."

So head on over to Highlands Cafe tomorrow, Friday, April 2nd and enjoy a fresh, tasty salad in support of our local gardeners.

Donations will be suggested for this specialty salad, and Highlands Cafe will return the proceeds to the Lake Highlands Community Garden.

Highlands Cafe is located at 9661 Audelia Road in Suite 105, just a short walk from T. Hee Greetings and Gifts.

Hours of operation for the Friday event are 11:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.

Readers and gardeners alike can contact Lake Highlands community gardener, Heather Rinaldi, at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) for more information.