Food for the Moment

2009-11-02T19:47:00.001-08:00

F:\Documents and Settings\nuuky13\Desktop\MENU for Nov.pdf

Interview with LaFuji Mama

2009-10-28T17:50:00.000-07:00

Last week I was flattered to be interviewed by one of my favorite blog moms, La Fuji Mama. It was a fun chat and I really enjoyed talking with her about my passion for good, local food and how it led me to my work at the Ballard Farmers Market.

Interview with La Fuji Mama.

This mama is a wonder... let me tell you. I have a hard time getting things done with my one toddler, and she has two kiddos under three yrs. Amazing! And she can bake. That in and of itself is awe-inspiring to me. My house is the place where bread comes to die. I hope that you can take the time to check out the interview and her other amazing posts. Enjoy!

BTW This is the cartoon I was refering to in the interview:

Plug for Farmers Market

I think it shows the choices quite nicely. ;)

Sweet Potato Stew

2009-10-27T17:49:00.000-07:00

I think this may be the simplest whole foods recipe I make. It is so good on a cold winter day. I reduced the cayenne pepper for this post. The original recipe I made up had 1 tea of cayenne. You may try this... but unless your kids are super human, the heat may be a bit much for them. It is one of those things that you want to try with a group of adults. Of course, all of these recipes you can easily adjust and make them perfect for your family.

Sweet Potato Stew

4 large sweet potatoes
Water to cover
2 Tbs sliced (or 1 Tbs grated) fresh ginger
1/4 tea cayenne pepper
1/2 tea cinnamon
1/2 c peanut butter (crunchy or creamy, really doesn't matter... just don't get the kind with added sugar)

Peel and slice sweet potatoes into small chunks. Put in a large pan and cover with water. Boil (with lid on so it doesn't reduce much) until potato pieces are falling apart into tiny chunks. Mash the sweet potatoes (without draining the water, leave the water in the pot) until you have a thick sauce like consistency. Add in all other ingredients, and salt to taste.

Serve topped with sour cream or whole milk yogurt (not flavored), with salted peanut pieces and chopped cilantro.

The end of summer

2009-10-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

It is official. The summer has come to a close. I pulled the tomatoes today. This is the last of them. It was warm as I was gathering. About 60 degrees... drizzling slightly. Just enough to put droplets on my glasses. I pulled and prodded to see if there were any left that would be worthy of a meal. As you can see I found quite a few.

The kittens were out there with me. Not really kittens anymore. Little Bo is still tiny for a cat, but she is almost 5 lbs. Samson is over 7 lbs and only looks small in comparison to Taio (our 20 lb main coon). They played around me as I worked, systematically pawing at things as they saw fit.

I love fall. I will miss the light however. Here in the Pacific NW, with the rain comes the clouds... and with the clouds comes the darkness. It is time to think about taking Vitamin D again. Time for tea and warm drinks and opening your curtains for every daylight hour you can. Soon we will have 6 hour days.

But then, comes Christmas crafting. ;)

Market Days

2009-10-13T17:47:00.000-07:00

This week was the first farm frost. Last of the tomatoes, last of the summer squashes, basil and other summer lovers all done.

My list is still impressive however. :)

Carrots, celery, curly kale, corn, Choggia beets (sweet) and golden beets, parsley, dill, cilantro, and mint, garlic, Rose Finn and Ozette potatoes, broccoli, parsnips, rutabagga, and a whole pound of chantrelle mushrooms. Traded for: bell peppers, raspberries, pears, chicken legs, chicken wings, and farm fresh eggs.

Menu for this week:

New template from here. Isn't it cute?

Preserving Food ~ Dried Apple Chips

2009-10-09T17:46:00.000-07:00

We still have some apples left over even though our pantry is now stuffed full with strawberry applesauce, so I thought that the food dehydrator needed some more work.

I remember apple chips fondly as a child. My mom would cut them up and put them in our oatmeal, rehydrate them for baking, or even just drop some in a bowl for an afternoon snack.

A corer/peeler/slicer is really kind of essential in making these easy. It took us about 10 minutes to get fill up two dehydrators and I was teaching the kids how to do it at the same time.

It made fast work of the hard parts.

You just cut one slit down the side of the sliced/cored apple, place them on the tray, and get ready to enjoy your chips!

I have read that you can dip them in water with two capsules of Vitamin C in it and they will retain their color better. I don't mind the mild brown they took on. I think the essential part was getting them to the dryer from the cutting quickly. With my little helpers, it took no time.

Dehydrate for 4 - 6 hours or until done to your liking. We like ours just past crispy.

Store in an airtight container and enjoy!

Preserving Food ~ Apple Peel Jelly

2009-10-05T17:45:00.000-07:00

I got this idea from Callista, who made what sounds like the best jelly ever! For our family though, I can not add that much sugar in jelly, so I decided to try out an old fashioned recipe from the Ball Complete Book Of Home Preserving instead, but use her apple peel juice method, and tweak the seasonings. It turned out so wonderful and I have to share:

Old Fashioned Apple Peel Jelly

Step 1: Make the juice

First, boil the apple peels. I had a 9 quart pot filled to the brim. I added enough water so when I pushed down on the peels I could see it, and boiled. I let that simmer on low for over 3 hours once it got to a boil. I just left it there all of nap time. Then I took a colander, and set it on top of an upturned cereal bowl in my largest bowl (HUGE metal mixing bowl that I keep for canning). I don't have any cheese cloth. I didn't think that the people at the store would want me bringing the plague to them, so I figured it could drip sufficiently while I made and ate dinner. I ended up with 10 cups of liquid.

Step 2: Recipe

I then used the juice for this recipe:

4 cups apple juice
2 Tbs lemon juice
3 cups granulated sugar

(I used raw, organic sugar and it worked just fine)

Prepare lids and jars. (Here for info on how to do that)

Bring juice and lemon juice to a boil and add in sugar, stirring until dissolved.

Step 3: Season the Jelly

For Apple Pie flavor add in: 1 tea cinnamon and 1/2 tea nutmeg

For Apple Cider flavor add in: 1 Tbs whole allspice, zest of one orange, 1/4 tea cinnamon, 1 tea whole cloves (strain out at the end)

Step 4: Cooking and canning

Boil hard, stirring frequently, until mixture begins to sheet from a metal spoon. (For me it took nearly an hour... and I didn't stir it much). You do not need any added pectin for this recipe. The pectin in the apple peels will work fine. I added a pectin box the first batch I made and it make it more like jello! LOL! It still tastes great though.

Pour into prepared jars leaving 1/4 inch head space.

Process jars for 5 minutes in rolling boil, then shut off heat, and leave for 5 minutes.

Remove jars, cool, label and store.

Preserving Food ~ Apple Pie Filling

2009-10-03T17:42:00.000-07:00

Today I am sick. This nasty cold has gone viciously through our family this last week, starting with Logan on Tuesday and all the way through Don and I these last two days. It is only a three day thing... but wow. It's a killer. We have spent many an evening all laying on my bed, watching movies, eating popcorn or pasta for dinner.

Getting sick really isn't a mother's prerogative. It seems as though it should be, but when I actually get sick, it is more like something I have to push through than 'recover from'. This week was no different. The worst day of my cold I was delivered 5 boxes of beautiful apples.

No stopping apples. So no stopping applesauce and apple pie filling. Being in Washington, I have honestly never bought apples for canning before. I have always had trees, or known people that have had trees. So this is the first time I have ever paid for boxes of apples and I wasn't about to let them go bad as I sat conversing with my tissues.

Sarah Jean's Apple Pie Filling

Granny Smith Apples

4 1/2 cups of sugar

2 Tbs cinnamon

1/2 tea nutmeg (I liked 1 tea)

1 tea salt

1 cup corn starch

10 cups water

Mix all ingredients, except corn starch. Mix the corn starch with a little water and then add it in. Boil all ingredients.

Being that this is the first time I bought apples, I forgot to ask if they were organic. Just to be on the safe side, I washed them all.

Peel and core a large bowl of apples, and cut them into halves or fourths (I like fourths, they are easier to stuff in the jars, but halves look better in the pie.)

I am saving aside the peels for Callista's Apple Pie Jelly. :)

The recipe calls for cramming as many apples in as you can up to the rim of the jar, but I found that if you fill the jar half full with apple slices, and then add a bit of the sour over those, then cram the jars with the slices it worked much better to get the sauce to the bottom of the jar.

Work bubbles out with a knife. Sauce will settle and you will want to add more in a few minutes. Add lids and submerge in hot water bath for 20 minutes.

Happy Canning!

Preserving Food ~ Canning Labels!

2009-09-30T17:11:00.000-07:00

Last week I was so frustrated by my pantry collapse that I had decided I wasn't going to can anymore for the year. That lasted for about two days... or until I got two boxes of apples from the market. And then bruised peaches for free, and then corn. Sigh. It really is part of the pioneer in me to put up food when it is abundant and put by as much as possible. I just can't refuse amazingly good, organic food.

So this week was dedicated to peaches, and then corn, and now applesauce. But it was also dedicated to falling in love with my pantry again. To being in love with the process of putting food by and stepping back just enough so that I could see the beauty in my pantry that everyone else saw.

This led me to look for pretty labels for the tops of my jars:

Inspired by Bitter Betty and her wonderful canning labels (which are on all of my green beans) I set out to make my own. The process turned out to be MUCH easier than I thought it was. Although to figure that out, took about 3 hours, a Word savvy best friend, and a very patient husband. ;)

Wide Mouth Jar Labels

What you need:

Microsoft Word

good photos of the food you are labeling

Full sheet shipping labels (can be found at any office supply store)

a good printer

scissors

2.5inch hole punch

I have made up a tutorial in pictures, and because it has quite a few pictures showing how I did this, I decided to make it a Flickr set with instructions:

How to make Canning Labels Tutorial

It is a simple process, and once you get the hang of it, it becomes quite addictive. All my jars have pretty labels now... even the ones for the applesauce currently simmering in my kitchen. My pantry love is back.

Market Days

2009-09-22T17:06:00.000-07:00

Sorry I am late on this this week. You can all imagine why. ;) The shell shock of the pantry fall out is still going on. We have to replace some moving boxes that got soaked in peach, tomato, and cherry juice, and we have to wash the jars, but the shelves are reinforced... so when I put the jars back up, it should not happen again. I still don't understand why it happened. Nothing shook the garage... there was no more weight on that shelf than any others. It just gave way. But 25 some odd jars later (I really don't know the number, but my guess is between 22 and 25 jars hit the ground) I am feeling much better about the whole thing. Thank you so much for all of the appropriate horror. It was wonderful to get such sweet responses and emails from you all. A lot of work hit the ground yesterday and at this point I am just really glad it wasn't worse.

This weeks list:

Artichokes, green beans, a flat and a half of blueberries for more jam, leeks, cilantro, parsley, dill, Rose Finn potatoes, Italian zucchini, romaine and oak leaf lettuce, golden beets, red Swiss chard, Sun Gold and plum tomatoes, garlic, blond cucumbers, celeriac, two bags of chicken wings, a dozen eggs, and a thing of chocolate goats milk as a treat for the kids. Plus this:

WE HAVE CORN!!! It is so very very good. I made it up that same night and it was so sweet and tender it didn't even need butter. I just dipped it in a little salted boiling water for about 2 minutes and it was plump and delicious. Fresh corn is something that is really only good in season. They can try to grow it far away and then ship it... but it isn't good. Not like this. Tomatoes and corn are two of the things that really only taste like they are supposed to when you get them in season, warm from the summer sun. This was like a little bite of sunshine. It was amazing!

This weeks menu reflects a little bit of the lack of desire to cook anything on my part. It is a less than creative week. But comfort food can be creative and I am all about comfort on these first few frustrating days of fall.

DISASTER!

2009-09-21T14:00:00.000-07:00

This afternoon I had finished my jam, it had cooled, and I had put it away. Then I went to get my kids ready to go to the library... and I heard this incredible crash! I ran outside to see if Logan and Cyan were ok, and it wasn't them......... and so I ran to the garage. Yep. The whole top shelf of my canning shelf had crashed to the ground. Peaches, tomato sauce, peach jelly, canned cherries... all on the floor covered in shards of broken glass. You would not believe the string of curse words that left my garage this afternoon with the broken jars that I had spent so many hours slaving over... but I am sure it was rather amazing. In fact, if someone had had a tape recorder right then, it was probably the stuff of future blackmail.

Most of you have not been reading me since the Domestic Goddess Disaster when my freezer broke and I had to find a way to use about 150lbs of frozen food in a day. But this was worse... by far. I took a picture of the floor carnage... but when I had the camera out I didn't know about the 'on top of the freezer' carnage or the 'behind the freezer' carnage or even the 'behind the canning shelf' carnage... so the pictures really don't do it justice. There were 14 more broken jars in other places. No... the picture does not do it justice at all. (Because, of course, it had to be the TOP two shelves that got taken out. Thanks Murphy.) As it was, it still took two shovels, an industrial shop vac (borrowed from neighbor), and a huge garbage can to clean up the mess. The mop will have to be applied a few times... the floor still sticks to my feet. But that will come tomorrow.

It is one of those things that I will keep finding until I move from this house in 30-odd years. I will find a piece of glass on the back of something clear across the garage and I will laugh and say "Oh! This must be from the year I had the shelf collapse with 25 jars of peaches on it!" and I will laugh.

Let me tell you... I am not laughing today.

I am, however, not freaking out anymore either. Found three more intact jars of peaches behind freezer. And another broken one... but for some reason, having the death count under 30 made me feel better.

Preserving Food ~ Freezing Pesto

2009-09-21T12:00:00.000-07:00

There is something uniquely 'summer' about fresh pesto. The green, the taste, even the smell can bring back warm days and the idea that another summer may just be around the corner. Store bought pesto has always seemed sort of lifeless to me. I love the ease of it, and really enjoy the extra flavor it can bring, but it just doesn't have the zing of freshly made pesto with basil strait from the farm or garden. With that in mind, I went about trying to store some of that summer flare for my families winter meals.

I froze 12 half pints of pesto last week after being gifted with a crazy amount of basil. Last year, when I froze it, I left the cheese in. This didn't freeze too well and so I decided this year that I would just leave the cheese out and add it when we made the dish instead.

Basic Pesto for Freezing

2 cups fresh basil leaves, packed
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
1/4 cup pine nuts or walnuts
2 - 3 garlic cloves, peeled
Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste

Put everything in a food processor and pulse until you get the consistency you want. Makes one half pint (I only have a 1 cup food processor. I am pretty sure the recipe can be doubled or more, but I wasn't able to test it. If someone does do this, would you leave me a comment letting me know how it turned out? Thanks!).

I packed mine in half pint mason jars that I left 1/2 inch head space then froze.

For this recipe, I pulled out my mini food processor. I only use the thing about once a month, but I do love having it as one of my very few kitchen gadgets.

We have already used this recipe for my Pesto Pasta Salad and it turned out great! So much better than store bought.

"The leaning tower of Pesto"

I had a bunch of basil left over, and asked my husband what I should do with it... and he said "give it away. I think 6 pints of pesto is enough." lol! I think he is probably right.

Preserving Food ~ Ginger Plum Sauce

2009-09-20T17:05:00.000-07:00

Every recipe for ginger plum sauce I saw had like 7 ingredients. I just wanted something to dip eggrolls in. So when I got these plums for free from a friend, I decided to make up my own recipe:

8 cups of plums (peeled and pitted)
4 cups of brown sugar
3 chunks of fresh ginger (pealed and sliced)
2 Tbs lemon Juice

Reduce plums on low for as long as possible (4 hours was what I did), I ran it through the food mill to get the consistency perfect and then added it back into the pot and added the ginger, lemon juice, and sugar. Simmer for at least another hour (I did two).

SO GOOD! We use it for dipping fresh rolls.

Preserving Food ~ Dishonest Blueberry Jam

2009-09-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

Dishonest Blueberry Jam

5 cups crushed blueberries (or 8 cups whole)

5 cups sugar

1 box pectin

4 teaspoons balsamic vinegar

1 Tbs dried lavender

Combine blueberries, vinegar, lavender and sugar in a large pot. Bring to boil and then turn down the heat and allow to simmer for about an hour, stirring frequently.

Run the whole thing through a food mill to get a super smooth consistency and remove the lavender pieces.

Add back into the pot, bring to a boil and add pectin (you do not want to add the pectin before the food mill or you will have less pectin in your jam).

Follow instructions in the Blue Ball Book of Food Preservation for instructions to can.

I have never been a peanut butter person. My whole family likes the stuff... but I can only choke down about a Tbs a year. lol... so for me, this jam was perfect. It was perfect for accompanying my protein fast food of choice, brie. Between the brie, some pepper crackers, and the blueberry jam, I was quite a happy snacker. :)

Farm Party

2009-09-18T17:07:00.000-07:00

Last week we had the annual barn stomp farm party! It was so wonderful. The music and the food far out did last years event, although I missed the games that we so enjoyed last year.

The beautiful, sunny fall weather quickly turned cold as the sun went down. But we had a great three hours of dancing, eating, and enjoying the beauty of the farm. My friend Dustin was the chef this year and omgoodness did he do an amazing job! He and his helpers set out an incredible feast that included an entire roasted pig (raised by another friend of mine), a bunch of coho salmon, and more veggies from the farm than you can imagine. It was amazing (not to mention DELICIOUS!)

Here is a slideshow of the highlights... what a fabulous evening!

In my kitchen, at 8:22am, Friday, Sept 18th, 2009

2009-09-18T08:45:00.000-07:00

Good Morning Sun!

This picture represents about 200lbs of food, made into goodness for the winter.

I am finished. It took 5 days, about 38 hours, and a good friend to get me through this week of preservation frenzy. But I am done. My yearly preservation list is almost checked off. I have a bunch more applesauce to do, and some apple pie filling... but I feel SO accomplished right now.

This is my ginger plum sauce. It is for dipping fresh rolls in. It is nothing but plums, brown sugar, and ginger. And it is so amazingly delicious. I can't imagine why the stores plum sauce has so many ingredients in it. This stuff is perfect, as is.

I had some major successes, and some that were not so great. Like the idea to put blueberries in my fruit cocktail instead of the formaldehyde filled Maraschino cherries. Yeah... that was not the best idea ever. lol! All of the jars of fruit cocktail are completely purple. Not bad, but they don't look great. I am thinking that a bunch of fruit cocktail cobbler is in my future. I am sure it tastes great though!

And here is the Blueberry Jam:

I made two varieties this year. When you have spent a full time job amount of time in your kitchen everyday for a week, you start getting 'inspired'. Well... the line between 'inspired' and 'bored' was very thin anyway.

On the right, we have the Honest Blueberry Jam from The Arugula Files. Great recipe. I also cut the sugar down to 5 cups and it worked great... 7 cups would have been WAY too much.

And then, to the left, we have my own newest creation, Dishonest Blueberry Jam. This jam was my 'inspired' moment. At first I was thinking that I would just add Balsamic Vinegar in place of the lemon juice... and then I was thinking, heck, why not really mix it up and add lavender to the pot as well. It is SO good... like give away for Christmas good. The flavor will knock your socks off. It has an almost blackberry richness, yet a subtle hint of tart and the lavender and blueberry are an excellent mix.

Recipes later. :)

Of course I can!!

2009-09-17T17:14:00.000-07:00

Must notice the frantic look:

Found this at a food blog and really felt her pain... and her conviction today. Thought I would share.

I found a couple new food blogs lately that I have been really enjoying:

The Arugula Files

Chiot's Run

I am currently making the "Honest Blueberry Jam" (with my own modifications) from The Arugula Files archives. Must get back to it. But wow... it's beautiful!

In my kitchen at 4:29pm on Tuesday, Sept. 15th, 2009

2009-09-15T17:02:00.000-07:00

I set up this table in the center of my kitchen when things get really crazy. You can see my whole set up here. Cutting board and knife in the center, big bowl or pan always to the right of me. Garbage bowl always to the left.

On the table is plums from a friends tree, a pot of apples about to be made into Strawberry Applesauce, a big bowl of bruised fruit to be made into fruit cocktail, and some little green apples from our little tree in the garden.

On the counter there are three half flats of blueberries for blueberry jam.

To the left side of the table is a laundry basket of apples for apple sauce.

Under the table is a box of beets for cake (it isn't full, thank goodness), and two lugs of tomatoes for sauce.

This is my view from where I stand at the other side of the table:

Here is where my littlest plays while I am doing my stuff. Sometimes I give him the less messy scraps to play with in his kitchen. Like the bean tops, or the little green tomato tops.

It is a pretty great set up... I am loving this house the more things I do in it. This kitchen isn't ideal for everyday... there is a lot of 'wasted' space. But for this type of endeavor, it is perfect. Just more proof that this house was meant for us... not just anyone... but for us.

And just as an aside, that table cloth was made from the sheets I posted about in this post. :) It fits both this table and my kitchen table perfectly... and I have enough for 8 napkins besides.

The Mother of all Onions

2009-09-15T17:01:00.000-07:00

The Walla Walla was developed by a Italian American who developed it for the early maturation of the crop (weeks before other onions in the season). It was soon known for not only being early, but also being sweet enough to eat like an apple!

This tradition continues with four generations of this same family dedicated to growing the same wonderful crop of onions year after year.

The farms onions were, of course, grown on the farm, but the small farm tradition and the reverence for the Walla Walla variety still live on.

This onion is fast on it's way to bring a bloomin' onion for a wonderful end of summer feast. :)

Here is a recipe for an onion flower and a bit of history of the onions from the farm:

Life is Sweet for the Walla Walla Onion

Market Days

2009-09-11T17:01:00.000-07:00

Val says "Get thee to a farmers market!"

Goodness my friends... there is SO much food out there this time of year. It is blowing me away. This is the time of year to shop at the farmers markets. You may get hooked, or you may be a seasonal shopper... but if there was any time to go, it would be right now. Everything is fit to bursting with incredible amounts of... well, everything! We have summer squash, right next to winter squash, we have carrots right next to our second planting of snow peas, we have tomatoes, and basil, right next to parsnips and rutabagas. We have everything!

My list for this week: ("Prepare to be amazed!" (a quote from a little friend)) Leeks, celery, sungold and plum tomatoes, red beets (for cake again), snow peas, carrots, cucumbers, cabbage, Anaheim and bell peppers, purple cabbage, Romaine lettuce, Italian zucchini, romaine and red Oak Leaf lettuce, red and yellow onions (one is the mother of all onions!), 2 1/2 lbs of basil, a flat of sauce tomatoes, and 4 half flats of blueberries. In the fridge I have rutabaga, parsnips, a dozen eggs, and a half lb of local Chanterelle mushrooms.

And then I have this:

Bruised fruit from the stand next door to make fruit cocktail.

Apples from a tree offered on freecycle (in WA we have plenty of apples to share).

Menu for this week:

List of food preservation for the week:

Applesauce

Fruit Cocktail

Roasted Tomato Sauce

Plum Jam

Plum and Ginger Sauce

Blueberry Jam

Pesto

Roasted Bell Peppers (in olive oil)

Chocolate Beet Cake (to freeze)

I am going to be a busy lady this week...

Rainy Market Monday and a Menu Too!

2009-09-09T19:27:00.001-07:00

I felt lucky to have new tents at the market this year. Last year, when we had a cold rainy day, slowly, ever so slowly, the tent would sag, and then all of a sudden DUMP water on us as we were working. Yesterday though, the new tents saved us from the horrid sudden waterfalls in most ways... by actually working and not sagging and such. So, that was good. What was not good was that we have two tents side by side... so between the two tents was this never ending stream of water pouring down between the two sides of the table. This was uncomfortable. Doubly so, considering that the 15 customers that did come to the market in the deluge asked for things from both sides of the tables... making us walk through the stream of water with every order. I was soaked to the skin (and standing in wet running shoes) the entire day. You really get to see the hard core local foodies when you work the market on a downpour day like yesterday. We thanked each and every person that came to our stand yesterday for coming out in that weather.

You prepare to be cold and wet in Nov... even Oct sometimes (at least you prepare for cold and wet in Seattle in Oct)... but Sept 6th? We were both in cotton layers, and the only reason we had coats is because we got up while it was still dark (ie; still cold). We were not as bad off as some (the lady behind us was in a running outfit and a apron. Poor thing was SO cold by noon that she was dancing around just to keep warm.) but still, a rather uncomfortable day, in which, once again, we made no money for the farm. Sigh.

Living locally in Sept is so easy. It is amazing the things you find this time of year. Anything and everything grows here.... except lemons (which we were asked for yesterday... weird.).

My list for this week: Bell peppers in all sorts of beautiful colors, celery, garlic, cherry tomatoes and Sun Gold tomatoes, red oak lettuce, romaine lettuce, curly parsley, leeks, Rose Finn potatoes, blond cucumbers, crookneck and Italian zucchini squash, purple cabbage, baby artichokes, fresh onions, Walla Walla onions, nectarines, white flesh peaches, a bag of beets for that cake recipe again (SO GOOD!), one dozen and 11 eggs (one broke, so she gave it to me), 12 chicken wings, a pizza and a huge brownie (which I ate there.) Oh, and I was given a 7 lbs (making it a $11) cabbage to make into soup (no one is going to spend $11 on one cabbage and we know it.)

After I got home and took a nice hot shower last night, The Man and I got to go out on a date. On the drive we saw these dahlias at a road side stand. Being local (out of someones front yard) I thought I would include them in the bounty for the week... isn't it beautiful?

Making a menu from this amazing bounty is only hard because there is so much to chose from. This week I chose these selections:

The "notes" section that is on this menu is really nice. I used it to add a couple snacks I want to be sure to make this week. The eggs are already boiled, and the beets are on the oven for a bunch of cupcakes right now. I'll save the smoothies for later in the week. (menu template found here) The Tiny Food Party is actually on Wed for Cyan and her girlfriends... I just forgot in the middle of writing, so I added it to Sunday so it had a place in the week. (Read the way I use my menu plans here.)

Happy Monday everyone!

Garden Photos

2009-09-06T19:28:00.000-07:00

As you can imagine... moving twice in a 7 months does not lend itself well to a fruitful garden... but we have gotten a few things.

My first crop of purple potatoes! :) It was very exciting. I think we even got enough for a dinner later this week.

Minutes after I took this picture, that basil went into pesto for the freezer for winter. That just has to be good for you! Those tomatoes were put on nachos later that night as well... Even Logan ate them. :D My little boy is growing up.

Apple Season by Joyce Sutphen

2009-09-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

The kitchen is sweet with the smell of apples, big yellow pie apples, light in the hand, their skins freckled, the stems knobby and thick with bark, as if the tree could not bear to let the apple go.
Baskets of apples circle the back door,
fill the porch, cover the kitchen table.

My mother and my grandmother are
running the apple brigade. My mother,
always better with machines, is standing at the apple peeler; my grandmother, more at home with a paring knife, faces her across the breadboard.
My mother takes an apple in her hand,

She pushes it neatly onto the sharp
prong and turns the handle that turns
the apple that swivels the blade pressed tight against the apple's side and peels the skin away in long curling strips that twist and fall to a bucket on the floor.
The apples, coming off the peeler,

Are winding staircases, little accordions, slinky toys, jack-in-the-box fruit, until my grandmother's paring knife goes slicing through the rings and they become apple pies, apple cakes, apple crisp. Soon they will be married to butter and live with cinnamon and sugar, happily ever after.

This was sent to me from my Aunt Pat. Her SIL sent this note along with it, I couldn't help but include the note here:

Hi: I loved the apple poem. Thanks. We had an apple tree in our back yard when we lived in Magnolia. It had three different apples - King, Golden Delicious and Winesap. It bore prodigiously. I made sauce, pies, tarts, and Waldorf salads. This was such a treat for a Florida Cracker, who usually had a singhle apple or two per year. I always approved the devil's choice in tempting Adam. An orange or a banana wouldn't have done the trick. love Dot

The Basics of Preserving/Canning

2009-09-01T19:29:00.000-07:00

The more you learn about canning the more you figure out that there are some basics that you just have to know... I thought that I would list out these basics. These are the ones I use year after year.

Basics of Canning

1. Get a canning book. The Ball Blue Book of Preserving is mine and I use it every single year. It has all of these rules and much much more... recipes, techniques, and even some of the science of canning. It is a sticky bible for my canning season that is constantly open each time a new fruit or veggie comes my way.

2. If you are just starting out, pick your jar lids ahead of time. For many, the small mouth makes them easier to pack the jars and get the right head space. For me, I like the wide mouths. They are easier to wash, and I use them for many storage options already. So I only purchase the wide mouth jars. I am kind of a snob about it really... but it helps SO much to know that I only have to buy one size of lid when I go to the store every year.

3. Measure your jars to 1/2 inch and 3/4 of an inch 'head space' with a ruler. Know what this looks like in the jars you choose. Then when you are filling, you don't have to wonder if you are filling them too full (which causes them not to seal) or not enough (which causes funny colors in your food.)

4. Everything has to be hot. Lids have to be hot. Jars have to be hot. Even when you are cold packing the fruit or veggies. I once thought that if I was cold packing the fruit, the jars could be cool (but clean of course) because the fruit could be cool. Not so. The jars break 10 times more often if you do it this way. (Ask me how I know.)

5. Low acid foods should be pressure canned whenever possible. Most veggies fall into this category. Most fruits do not. Tomatoes are always an iffy one... so check with your local extension office, or pressure tomatoes by default. (Your recipe has to have a lower acidity than 4.6 pH to can in a water bath canner.)

6. That brings me to another point USE YOUR LOCAL EXTENSION OFFICE! They are usually little old ladies that have been Master Food Preservers for years and years. They get additional training every year and they have wonderful resources at their disposal. They are also where you go to check if your pressure canner still works. Look in your local Yellow Pages for their number. (I have the numbers for all four counties extension offices around me taped inside my cupboard. It is a good idea to get more than one number. Esp when you need advice in the middle of canning and want to talk to a body.)

7. Pressure canners do not have to be scary! They are a useful tool and just like your average drill, they can hurt you if not used or maintained properly. BUT, just like your average drill, they can become one of the most useful tools in your food preservation arsenal.

8. There are things that it does not behoove you to can. Organic Strawberry preserves cost a LOT to process a home... I have always figured out that it is more expensive to make them than to buy them at Trader Joes. Not always because of the price of organic strawberries... but more for the price of organic sugar! I put my heart first into the stuff we eat all the time. Peaches, applesauce, blueberries, pasta sauce, green beans, etc. Some of those things, to get organic I was paying $4 more a package/jar than for the conventionally grown stuff. That is worth it to can my own. That way, I was putting all my money out at one time and spending less, instead of the prosducts slowly bleeding you via grocery bill each month. But things that only save me $.50 per jar I put low on my list. After all, my time has to be worth something... and if I calculate my time at $10 an hour (a low living wage) then I should be able to at least break even with the things I can. If I can't, then I only can those things if the opportunity falls into my lap (like I get free fruit or something) or I find that during the summer I am somehow bored and can't find something to do. (Jk... that doesn't happen.)

9. Keep a Food Preservation notebook. Write down the dates of what you ran out of and when. That way, you will not put up too much or too little for your family each year. My canning notebook is nothing more than a file at the back of my household notebook. When we run out of things too early, I list that. And I always list how many of something I put up. Like this:

Peaches: 8/28/09

5 boxes (20 - 25lbs)/ 64 quarts / 5 broke

Blueberries: 8/19/09

50 lbs / 18 gallon bags

Pesto: 9/1/09

1 1/2 lbs of basil / 10 half pints frozen

Then next to that I write the date when we run out and then average that 'per week' and figure out how much we need for the next year. Last year most of my calculations were off because Logan went from being a baby to a kid eater, and Alex... well Alex became a teen and food wasn't even safe around him. So we ran out of EVERYTHING early. This was good being that we moved twice and didn't want to move millions of jars of canned goods... but on the other hand, it compromised my local living standards a bit to run out of peaches in Jan. (This is also a good place to put down your favorite recipes... although I just put them in my Ball Blue Book of Preserving.)

It really does help to keep track. Then you know that what you are doing is worth it. Today I have done 10 more pints of tomato sauce, and 8 pints of peach butter. That has taken since 9am until 22 minutes from now when my timer goes off and I get the last batch out of the canner. That is a LOT of time! And that is only one day. I have done this now for three weeks. When I look at my notebook though, and remember that last year we ran out of peaches before Feb, I know that me doing all of this preserving is worth it and my kids will be happily eating peaches, frozen blueberries, garlic green beans, and homemade pizza sauce until next summer. And if they are not... I know to enlist them in the preservation process next year. ;)

Market Days

2009-08-30T18:39:00.001-07:00

My market days list for this week:

Three bunches of red beets, garlic, romaine lettuce, wonderful eggs (from happy chickens), shelling peas (we are the only ones that have them this time of year due to a second crop the farm puts out, so these are prized items), summer savory (which I am drying), cilantro, broccoli, green beans, celeriac, sun gold and cherry tomatoes, blueberries, peaches, and basil.

This week was a very fruitful week for me. Basically I didn't have to put out any money whatsoever for this amazing feast of bounty I have sitting on my table in this picture. Why? Because I asked when every one was packing up if they had excess or bruised fruits and veggies that they couldn't sell but were still sound. The peaches and blueberries would have been $.50/lb, but being a vendor myself, I traded our leftover veggies for that. So I didn't even have to pay for that. But even had I paid, it wouldn't have been much and the blueberries are just for eating, the peaches are for peach butter (recipe later), and that bag of goodness you see on the bottom right??? Yeah. That's basil. About 1 1/2 lbs of basil. *glee* Look for my pesto recipe later this week. :)

That jar of yummy that is sitting in the middle is a trade for my roasted tomato sauce from another vendor. Smoke jalapeno peppers. I can't wait to try them!

Preserving Food ~ Sugar-free Peach Canning Marathon 2009

2009-08-28T21:35:00.000-07:00

I'll be perfectly honest, I don't expect anyone to be as insane as I feel right this moment and take on 120lbs of peaches for the year. Yes, we use that many. And yes, it has become a yearly ritual for me to do a lot of peaches... but wow. Last year I did 4 boxes, and this year I did 5, and just after I did all of the tomato sauce. I am not sorry, but I am CRAZY tired. I have been running on nothing but coffee and junk food for days and I feel it. In the last two days, I have spent 18 hours canning, picking up stuff for canning, or preparing to can. That doesn't include eating the junk food I have bought, or cleaning up (which I haven't done yet). BUT, if you wanted to do a box or two of peaches (which would take you an afternoon and you would still be perfectly sane at the end) this is how I do it.

First, get your stuff together. You will need:

"Freestone" sweet canning peaches (Ask your farmer or market guy for freestone peaches... he will know what you are talking about.)
Jars (for each 20 - 25lb box, you will need about 12 jars)
New lids
Rings
Pineapple Juice (2 46oz cans per box)
Honey (3 cups per box)
Two huge bowls (or three if you are not using your sink for the cold water bath)
One small garbage bowl
a sharp paring knife
A water bath canner
Large pot for blanching peaches
Large pot for syrup

Step 1: Preparing the jars and lids

Your jars should be in your dishwasher on a hot light wash. Remember the heated dry. This should also be on. The jars HAVE to be hot when you fill them or they may break during processing. (To do this outside, my friends and I had success with pouring boiling water in the clean jars and then pouring it out right before we filled them. Even just filling them half way worked out well.)

Put the lids for your jars in a small bowl or pan, and pour boiling water over them to get the seals sticky.

Step 2: Making the syrup

Hannah's amazing sugar-free peach syrup:

1 cup honey to 4 cups pineapple juice

With these measurements I figured out that one 46oz can of pineapple juice needs 1 1/2 cups of honey added to it for the right ratio. I made two cans of juice per box of peaches. Put all this in a large pan and get to a good and hot simmer... boil before adding to jars.

Step 3: Skinning and slicing the peaches

Get the large pot of water boiling and drop the peaches in it for 2 mintues. Take them out and put them in a cold water bath. Could be a large bowl, I just use my sink:

This is to help remove the skin. It comes off so easily after the hot and cold dips that you can just take it off like this:

To cut up the peaches you will use your paring knife and slice them down to the pit slowly moving around the peach. This should also work very easily with the 'freestones' and they should literally fall into the bowl as you are cutting them.

Step 4: Filling the jars

Pull the hot jars from the dishwasher and add peaches.

When you have your jar filled with peaches, add the syrup. You should add it up to about a 1/2 inch below the top of the jar. Run a knife around the outside of the jar to remove any bubbles, and if you need to, add more syrup.

After the jars are full, place the hot lid on top and put the ring on 'finger tight'.

Step 6: Processing

Place jars carefully in a waterbath canner and process covered in water that is at a rolling boil for 20 minutes.

Pull the jars out with a jar grabber and place them on a towel on your counter with some breathing room around each one for at least two hours.

Most of my jars were sticky afterward, so I washed them off once they were cool and placed them in the garage on the shelf:

Enjoy peaches on oatmeal, peach cobbler, and everything peaches all winter long.

(My kids asked if they could have a jar this morning and I flat out told them "NO". Lol... maybe I am mean, but I need to look at this sight in my pantry for a week or two before I let them dig in.)

Preserving Food ~ Roasted Tomato Sauce

2009-08-26T22:46:00.001-07:00

This sauce is best made with a variety of tomatoes. I used the Champions from the garden, along with the sauce tomatoes and the Sun Gold Cherry tomatoes from the farm.

Ingredients:

Tomatoes (One flat of tomatoes makes about 8 - 10 pints of sauce)

Garlic

Balsamic

Olive Oil

Sea Salt

Pepper

Italian Seasoning

Equipment:

Roasting pans (I used my glass Pyrex baking dishes)

Knife

Large spoon

garlic crusher

water bath canner

clean and hot jars, lids and rings

First, cut all tomatoes at least in half. Even the cherries. If you don't do this, they 'pop' later in cooking and give your sauce a watery consistency. Fill a baking pan with the cut tomatoes about a layer and a half deep. Crush a head of garlic into each baking dish. Drizzle with olive oil, 2 Tbs or more of balsamic vinegar, sea salt, and pepper.

Mix well and put in a 400* oven for 40 minutes. About a half hour into the roasting you will smell the tomato sauce. :) When your timer goes off, your sauce should look like this:

Then, VERY CAREFULLY, put it into a blender or food processor and process on low speed with the lid held on (but not tight, only so it doesn't splatter and burn you.) Slowly turn the speed up on the blender until you have your sauce to the consistency you want (I like mine super pureed). During this step, add your Italian Seasoning and any salt and pepper you might need to your taste.

This is what mine looks like when I am done:

At this point, it is the perfect place to let the sauce cool, and put it into bags for the freezer if you so desire. Make sure it is cooled completely in a bowl or in the blender before adding it to the freezer bags. It will separate if you freeze it warm.

Put the jar lids in a bowl of boiling water. Then fill hot, clean jars with hot sauce, and put on the lids and rings (again *very* carefully! Everything is hot at this point!). Process in a water bath canner for 40 minutes:

This is our soup base for tomato soup, our pizza sauce, spaghetti sauce, and is dumped into our chili for that tomato flare.

The process is time consuming... but oh so worth it! What an amazing taste this will be come January! If you want to try it... just make one batch to test and see if your family likes it as much as mine does. :)

Market Monday!

2009-08-24T22:45:00.000-07:00

Sorry I have been so absent. A bad burn on my left index finger has caused me to not really enjoy typing as much as usual. I got a hot glue gun (and the glue) somehow up under my finger nail and the resulting blister separated a small part of my nail from my finger... so you can imagine that the forming blister was rather painful. It took hours for it to stop throbbing. This was last Wed and just yesterday it started to feel a whole lot better. I am hoping the blister goes away soon, but for now, I am able to type. That is good.

MARKET! Market was crazy yesterday! Just nuts... but unfortunately we didn't make much money for the farm. We thought by the end of the day that the average order was about $6. We kind of got 'nickle and dimed' to death. Sigh. Hopefully we will have a better week next week.

My list:

Cabbage, Italian zucchini, cucumbers (blond and slicing), mint (for mint water, yum!), cilantro, dill, fresh Walla Walla onions, 6 heads of garlic (for tomato sauce), 3lbs of new crescent potatoes, and two heads of Lolla Rosa Lettuce:

It is the darkest, purplest lettuce ever... and it is tasty! I couldn't stop munching on it yesterday. I am excited to add this to the romaine and make the most beautiful salad ever!

But of course, my list doesn't stop there. It is food preservation season after all. I got 4 flats of tomatoes to make into sauce today. I say today because they were all getting ready to turn, and so we had them on special all day long and sold a lot... but these were still going back to the farm and wouldn't get used with the new ones coming out of the field. So I got them. :) The heads of garlic will be matched with them this afternoon to make the best sauce I have EVER had... and I am going to attempt to can it. If it works, I will be sure to post a recipe and instructions.

And peaches.

I picked up 12 boxes (that is 265lbs!!) of peaches yesterday. 5 boxes are for me and my family and then three other mamas got in on the good market deal with me and I picked up a few boxes for each of them. Peach canning marathon 2009 should be happening on Thursday night (they need to finish ripening). I have a special sugar free way to do peaches so I will be sure to post that too.

I don't stop moving in August. It just keeps going and going. I feel like an energizer bunny until about October. BUT, I love it... my freezers are full (with organic grass fed beef now too!) and my pantry is filling... it is an amazing yearly ritual that feeds us all winter. I have to admit to being really tired at the moment though. I think a day off this week will be in order where I do nothing but read good books, make lists, and watch movies. I may even throw in some junk food. LOL!

Market Monday

2009-08-17T22:44:00.000-07:00

I was so blissfully tired when I got home from market yesterday. It was a long day. I woke up way too early, and hadn't slept well the night before.... so I started off behind. I ended up getting a coke halfway through the day just so I could stop staring off into space. My sweet market partner was great through it all. She also, was not really prepared for the work of the day. 5 hours, over $2,000. Crazy busy. Food flying off the table, and us trying to juggle it all... with sleep deprived brains. We forgave each other a lot, teased each other a lot, and laughed a lot. Thank god for good friends.

My list for this week: Three pints of tomatoes (two sun golds, and one plum tomato), green onions, three bunches red beets (for this recipe), three bunches carrots, , three fresh Walla Walla Onions, Italian kale, romaine lettuce, salad bowl lettuce, 3 crookneck squash, a bunch of dill and 5 heads of wonderful Carpathian garlic. From market trades I got one dozen eggs, a full pizza for lunch, 4 large peaches, and 3 lbs doughnut peaches. Along with all that I got 10lbs of shelling peas that the kids and I are going to shell and freeze today, and 20 bunches of golden beets to preserve (like this).

Our garden is starting to produce tomatoes. *glee* We have gotten a few really ripe ones, but most of them are the orangy red of 'just before ready'. I gave Logan one of the cherry tomatoes because he asked for it... and what I knew would happen, happened:

My picky boy. He will get older, and he will love tomatoes. Just like his mama. Or he will hate them, just like his dad. Only time will tell.

Preserving Food ~ Drying Fruit

2009-08-17T22:43:00.000-07:00

I had some serious nostalgia of the little farm I grew up on while my daughter and I cut and dried fruit the other day. My mom and I would spend hours making dried bananas, apples, and cherries for our winter oatmeal. I really loved doing it with Cyan.

The cherries were first. Thank goodness for the Pampered Chef cherry pitter. Seriously, I am not a gadget person, but over the last two years, this little thing has really wormed it's way into my heart. (Pitting three pounds of cherries would have taken hours without it.)

Here is Cyan cutting the strawberries.

They dried for 10 hours and then I pulled all the ones that were done off the racks and left the others for another 5 hours.

I do need a bit of advice for drying though. How do you keep them sweet? I got them at the peek of season, I made them large pieces, and didn't over dry. And yet, every now and again, you get a REALLY bitter one. I know none of this fruit was bitter. Any ideas?

Preserving Food ~ Freexing Zucchini for bread

2009-08-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

I learned this trick a couple years ago from my best friend Sarah.

First you wash and dry the zucchini. Then grate it into a huge bowl like the one above.

Then you open your cookbook to your favorite zucchini bread recipe and put the exact amount into little baggies that go into a big baggie in the freezer. For me, that is a cup and a half for this recipe.

Then, in Feb, when warm zucchini bread sounds delicious, you grab bag, defrost and add it to your recipe. It's brilliant actually.

And while you are still overrun with zucchini, try Ratatouille!

Ratatouille

(inspired by Nessa at Family Soup)

¼ cup olive oil
1 lg onion
4 cloves garlic
2 med crookneck squash
2 med zucchini (this equals more than the crookneck)
Coarse salt and pepper
2 red bell peppers
5 small diced tomatoes
1 heaping Tbs fresh thyme, minced
½ cup (or more) chopped basil

Put olive oil in a pan and get it hot.
Add onion and garlic until starts to clear.
Stir in squash and peppers and season liberally with coarse salt and fresh ground pepper.
Add some water to it and let cook for about 5 minutes with lid off.
Add tomatoes and thyme.
Cook until squash and peppers are crisp tender, stirring occasionally.
Add the chopped basil JUST before serving.
Toss and serve.

Serves 4

Tom Vilsack as USDA head... WTH???

2009-08-15T22:42:00.000-07:00

I don't have tv... I say this because there is SO much crap out there that I want to keep clear of. But when I see things that I didn't know be used against me... like this. It makes me angry. Seriously? The president I voted for appointed a money grubbing poison toter as my head of Federal Food Regulations???? I am a bit taken aback right now. No, wait. A lot taken aback. I have a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that very soon they are going to start attacking the things I hold most dear. My friend Patti put it best here:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In the not-so-distant-future, there is a knock on my front door.
"Hello. May I help you?"

"Uh, Yes 'ma'am. We're here on behalf of the zoning commission. It's in regards to your garden."

"What about my garden?"

"We understand that it is an organic garden, is that correct?"

"Why, Yes it is."

"And you plan on feeding your family and perhaps a few friends and neighbors with this organic food; is that correct?"

"Yes, of course. Is that a problem? What is the meaning of this?"

"Ma'am, you are in direct violation of zoning code HR5467-33.463 and 1/2 which clearly states on page 345, paragraph 7, sentence 4 that 'no private citizen will produce, preserve, distribute or consume food without direct and decisive permission, authorization and regulation from thus mentioned board as well as the USDA, CIA, FBI, GMO Seeds, Inc. and, of course, da' man'. It's all right here, ma'am, in black and white.

"This is ridiculous! It's a garden, for Christ's sake!"

"Ma'am, you will have to come with us, ma'am..."

"Please! I'm sorry! I was just trying to grow cheap, healthy, real food for my family! There are only a few chickens! We just needed the eggs..."

"Chickens? Did you say you have chickens on these premises? Agent Terry, you had better call and get us back up..."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Frankly, I have a rock in my stomach... and I really really hope this doesn't go the way it seems to be. I don't know what else to say.

Frittata ~ It's whats for dinner

2009-08-13T22:41:00.001-07:00

We have had a thunder storm over us for the past two hours and so I figured that comfort food was on the agenda.

There is something truly divine about making something that turns out this perfectly. It speaks to a housewives soul. This one gives me a special thrill because the broccoli and onion were grown by the farm and the eggs I got from the vendor next door at the farmers market. So it is all local, except for the mushrooms. Makes my heart sing to give my children food like this.

A frittata is a crustless quiche. I enjoy it because it is quick and easy, and it has endless varieties... although we tend to come back to this one over and over again. Enjoy!!

Frittata

2 Tbs butter

6 extra large eggs

1/4 cup milk

1 cup grated cheddar cheese

1/2 red onion

1/2 c broccoli cut into tiny florets

5 mushrooms

salt and pepper

Put butter into oven safe frying pan. Saute onion, and broccoli, adding in mushrooms a bit later as they take a shorter amount of time to cook. Once all are tender, salt and pepper generously and turn off heat. Mix milk and eggs, and pour strait into the still hot frying pan over the veggies. Add cheese and mix gently. Put in a 400* oven for 20 minutes.

Delicious!

Preserving Food ~ Freezing Golden Beets

2009-08-13T22:41:00.000-07:00

I don't like 'red' beets. I think they taste too metallic for me. But a couple years ago at the farm they gave me some white beets... and I fell in love. Since then I have branched out to many kinds of beets... just not the red ones. These golden beets are sweet and yummy, but not overly sugary like the Chioggia or the Sugar Beets can be. They have a perfect level of sweetness for things like stir fry and fried rice. This is what we use them for all winter.

The process for beets is very similar to the process for beans. You cut off the tops and bottoms, and then cut into 1/2 inch chunks.

Then blanch them... actually, you almost cook them with how long you have to blanch beets. You want them almost tender when you freeze them so when you put them in a stir fry or drop them into veggies for fried rice they cook evenly with everything else. This takes almost 10 minutes.

When I am freezing them in a roasted root veggie mix I boil them much less.

These beets are SO beautiful!

After blanching, drop into very cold water or an ice bath to stop the cooking quickly. Then use a colander (or a salad spinner) and get as much of the water off as possible.

Put them into bags in one layer so they freeze evenly. This means that not much goes into a gallon Ziploc, so sometimes I combine bags after they are completely frozen. That is a good way to save bags.

Update on me: Getting a cold. I knew this would happen. But at least the food that had been waiting for me is now done. None will rot if I take it easy today. :) That's what I was waiting for.

Preserving Food ~ Big Batch Blueberry Freezing

2009-08-12T22:40:00.000-07:00

Awe blueberries. The season for blueberries feels so short to me. I love them so much. My kids and I wait and wait for local blueberries to be ripe and then it seems like our entire world revolves around them. This year I got 30 lbs and will be getting another 10lbs next week. Yes, we really eat that many. I had to look back on my pictures to see if I actually got that many last year, and I did. They have been gone for about a month now.

Blueberry freezing is really easy. The main thing you need is space and a really clean sink:

Fill the sink with cold water, and dump about 10lbs of blueberries in it. With the wonderful nature of blueberries, most of them will sink to the bottom. And on the top, you have all the stuff you wouldn't want in your blueberry bags:

With running water in the other sink, I just take my hands and carefully sift out all of those little flower heads, the few rotten berries (if you get them from close by you and in season, you will have way less of the rotting berries.), and the few leaves.

I am slow and meticulous at it. We mostly eat them strait out of the bags, so I feel the need to be really careful with what I let into the bags.

Then I put the blueberries, handful by handful into a large zip lock baggie. Once again, I keep my eye out for any dried flowers, or mushy berries that may have gotten past me when I was elbow deep in the water.

After I have half filled a bag, I pick it up and close it 90% of the way. Keeping that last little bit open, I pour the excess water back into the sink. I shuffle the berries around and pour again. As soon as no water comes out of the bag, I lay it flat, push all the air gently out of the bag (without squishing the berries) and close it the rest of the way.

Small batch preserving can be even easier than that!

If you have 10 lbs or less, drop a bunch of them into your salad spinner. Add water and follow the steps above, but in the spinner. Then use it as a colander and dump the water out of the spinner bowl. Spin for a few seconds to get off the rest of the water, and pour into bags. It's that simple!

And look what we got from our tomato experiment yesterday. Our very first ripe (not cherry) tomato!

In the land of purple fingers......

2009-08-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

About half a mile from my house there is a little patch of blackberries. I have been watching and waiting for them to ripen, but I think someone picks them (other than me, gasp!) and so I have missed the sweet ones every time. But then, two days ago, I saw another patch a little further up the road. It takes a two block walk up the street and there is no close parking. I figured today, after my foraging in the bald patch, that I would walk up there and see what I could find.

Oh I wish I had brought a camera!! There were only about 6 ft of berries... but they were COVERED! I was dropping berries on the ground for the ants to eat (so very not on purpose, although I was glad to see that ants were eating them) just trying to get into the berry goodness that was around me. I got honked at a couple times, and gaped at more (people really don't know that berries grow on bushes around here... it is amazing) but I got about 10 cups of blackberries from that one small patch.

My dad is getting married in two weeks, and his favorite berry is blackberries. I really wanted to make something for the potluck reception they are having with blackberries but I wasn't sure if I would get enough. But enough was certainly provided today. *glee*

I got home and Logan couldn't wait to taste one. :)

This basket below is about 1 1/2 ft across. And it is full to the brim. It was such a great forage!

And joy of all joys, look what I have going on in my own garden:

Very happy local foodie today. :)

Preserving Food ~ Blanching Beans, step by step

2009-08-05T22:37:00.000-07:00

Ever seen Anne of Green Gables? Where Marilla is sitting on the front porch topping beans, or shelling peas. One by one, they go into the bowl for canning. Only half of her mind was on her task, but she still sat there, topping beans... for hours at a time. Topping beans is like that... a meditation that you just get into rhythm and keep going until you are done. I spent about 4 hours doing this yesterday.

Preserving food for the winter, esp good, in season, local food... well it's like putting money in the bank and buying health care all at the same time. Food is what your body runs on. We use it every day and it should be the best and freshest we can possibly get.

I brought home 2 1/2 boxes of beans from the market the other day to put away. And this is how I do it. I tried at one point, to top them one by one... but this method works much better for me.

Gather the beans into a bunch with all of the stems on one side:

Hold firm and chop all at once. Haha! A handful done in 1/4 the time. I leave the other end on the bean. These beans are so tender and fresh that I don't have to cut it off. It isn't tough at all!

After this I drop them into a HUGE metal bowl that sits next to me... and once the bowl is full, I blanch them in large bunches in my pasta pot. I have to admit it works MUCH better for beans than for pasta. (Not enough water for pasta.)

I drop the beans into the boiling water, and wait 4-5 minutes or until they all turn bright green.

I strain them and then flash cool them in a sink of ice water (this did have ice in it, before I put the beans in.)

Then I put them in large Ziploc bags handfuls at a time. When the bag is full to my liking, I close it most of the way, and then tip the bag into the sink to get the last bits of water out of the bag. Then close up tight and put into a pile for a trip to the freezer.

This is about 2/3 of that box of beans done and ready for freezing. :)

This is all the garbage I ended up getting out of an entire 20lb box of Roma Beans. Fresh is the way to go! Not a moldy bean in sight all day.

And because copying is the most sincere form of flattery; here is Logan, topping beans and putting them into his tea pot (I used a teapot to put more boiling water on top of the beans, and so he thought I was making 'bean tea'. It was quite cute to watch him.)

Market Days

2009-08-03T22:34:00.000-07:00

My list for this week:

Green leaf lettuce, romaine lettuce, kale, celery, red cabbage, green cabbage, cucumbers, chives, parsley (curly and flat), cilantro, green beans, Roma beans, broccoli, paipan squash, baby Italian zucchini, carrots, the most delicious baby artichokes, cherries, nectarines, and a dozen fresh eggs.

Yesterday was hot. Really hot. Luckily we had the tent and were in the shade, but it still doesn't stop 93* from getting to you when you stand in it all day long. I was so tired by the time I got home that I fell asleep while my kids were still up. Then, being hungry, they woke me up and I made popcorn and sliced peaches for dinner, let them watch a movie, and then put everyone to bed early. Including me. I slept for 12 hours and am still a little worn out. It was a long day.

BUT... what beautiful produce comes out of this horridly hot weather!

Our stand... isn't it beautiful??

It's is harvest time again. Beans are ready for putting away, and therefore I have three boxes of them in my kitchen, awaiting topping, blanching and freezing. The cooler at the farm was so full that they can't fit anymore in... and that means more for me! ;)

Market Days

2009-07-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

I have found way too many things to post about lately! Sometimes I just have no idea what to write, but lately it has been a flood of fun stuff and pictures I love. I hope you all are baring with me. Although I haven't found the inspiration to do menu monday again. lol...

Yesterday was market. It was my last market for a couple weeks as I took the next two weekends off for the kids birthday parties! I brought home lots of great stuff again this week though, including: a 2lb bag of peas, and a bunch of fresh carrots, 2 small cabbages, a bunch of mint, dill, cilantro, parsley, and spinach, 1 lb fresh (FIRST!) tomatoes along with a big yellow one for slicing, 2 lbs cherries, and 1 lb peaches (also first!), 4 bunches of wonderful yellow beats, and 6 small zuchinni. Some of this was bought for the housewarming party we are having tomorrow, and some was bought for us to snack on. All looks AMAZING though! July and August are such fun months to live locally!

Hope everyone is having a great Monday!

Wild Berries are Ripe Again!

2009-07-06T22:32:00.000-07:00

There is nothing quite as nice as eatables that are found fresh and free. :) My kids love finding wild berries on paths we go on (this path was pictured in this post) and eating them. Sometimes it makes other people nervous, but I try to teach them what to eat and what not to eat, right along with how fun it is to find wild food! Really, how much more local can you get?

These pictured are wild Salmonberries. There are two different varieties in Logan's hand below. Remember that Rubus berries are NOT poisonous. None of them. So when you find berries that resemble blackberries or raspberries, you can pick and eat them. They don't have any poisonous varieties. Now this isn't true of other types of berries... so for my kids right now, I still advise all my kids (even Alex) to ask before he eats anything... and if I don't know it, we don't eat it. In fact, we deam it yucky, and say that no one should touch it ever ever ever (the drama is for the berry eating toddler... just in case).

Logan posing for me so I could take a picture of the berries we collected.

And then, instead of eating one by one... he decided to shove the whole handful in his mouth. True toddler style. :)

Happy berry hunting!

More pictures of my pantry shelves

2009-07-02T22:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, so now I really really love them. A lot. So funny how something you make, at first, all you can see are the things you did wrong. Is it too big for my space? Did I make it too wide? How do I support it without those ugly screws?

And then, after a couple days of using it and loving it, those things just go away. I don't even see them anymore.

I just see this:

"What in the world do I do with garlic scapes?"

2009-06-30T14:44:00.001-07:00

I heard that question about 700 times in the last two market weekends. It totally makes me cringe sitting here right now. lol... But it is a good question. Garlic scapes are one of those things that are at the market for about three weeks. In marketland, that is gone in a flash, and within those three weeks people naturally want to take advantage of the most local, most seasonal, freshest food available. For the last two weeks, garlic scapes have been it.

So what are they and what do you do with them?

Well, garlic scapes are the young flowers on the garlic stalk. If you leave them on the stalk, they will have seed garlic in them... which if you are wondering, takes two years to grow into a decent head of garlic. So most people don't plant garlic from the seed. They plant it from 1 year old cloves for a 9 month (instead of 2 year) harvest. So each season they will have the garlic flowers for harvest!

Enter scapes. Garlic scapes taste... well, they taste like green garlic. lol... They have that same spicy garlic flavor, but somehow they taste fresher... greener. If that makes any sense.

What do you do with them? Anything that you would do with garlic! Saute them with stir fry, saute them with butter and olive oil and eat them crunchy, chop them up tiny and put them on top of salad, bake them slathered with cheese, add them to roasted root veggies.... or puree them for a wonderful pesto like I did last night.

A little bit about this recipe: It took two tries to get it right. I underestimated how spicy these suckers were! They are not just mild little garlic flavored flowers... they are just as hot as the garlic that you use in cooking... about 4 flowers makes for 1 clove of garlic. The first time I made this recipe I have 18 or so scapes in the processor... that was not good. Burnt every ones mouth and the kids couldn't even eat it at all. Best to tone down the garlic if you are worried about heat.

Garlic Scape Pesto

5 - 10 garlic scapes

1 oz (small handful) basil

1/2 cup olive oil

1/4 Parmesan cheese

1/3 cup slivered almonds

sea salt

Cut up the scapes really well and add them to a food processor or blender with some of the olive oil. Process for about 2 minutes (I know... it's loud, you can stop if you like more chunky pesto. I like mine super smooth.). Add in the basil, cheese (get the good stuff if you can, but the freeze dried stuff works too), and almonds and process for another 2 minutes. Stop and taste. Add salt if you need and toss a generous spoonful with a plate of pasta. I topped with tomatoes. :)

I also found that it has a wonderfully sweet garlic flavor that makes AMAZING guacamole!

Here is the recipe I used today:

Guacamole with Garlic Scapes

4 large avocados
6 garlic scapes
2 small tomatoes
handful cilantro leaves
2 Tbs lime juice
3 slices large sweet onion

Add all but avocados in food processor or blender and process for about 1 minute. Mash avocados in a bowl and pour in the puree. Mix well and salt to taste. It was amazingly delicious. I may make some scape puree to save for other guacamole days.

Local Living Days

2009-06-29T21:33:00.000-07:00

Since my big market days are Sundays, I have an overabundance of good food come Monday morning. I came home with two bunches of carrots, a bag of summer squash and baby turnips, two heads of beautiful lettuce, a bunch of spinach, cilantro, parsley, 1 lb of garlic scapes (see pic at bottom), and 1 pound each Rainer and Bing cherries. And of course this:

I got STRAWBERRIES! After a long market day yesterday, my husband and I sat in front of a movie and topped, washed, and bagged 3 full flats of tiny, sweet, organic strawberries. I sigh with happiness just thinking about it. So good! There are a smaller variety that they grow at the farm I work for... they are more flavorful than any other strawberry I have ever tasted. They are sweet too... not like those ones you buy from the store (You know... the ones that taste like strawberry flavored cardboard). Those cold winter days where all I need is a taste of summer... they will be so much sweeter with these babies packed away.

A good first market day

2009-06-22T21:34:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked me lately why I work on Sundays at the market. I figured it may be a relevant question to answer on the blog. :)

First off: I love it. Working with a great friend for a place that I trust, love, and believe in... I don't know that there can be a better reason to have a job (when you don't need to have one, that is).

Second: I love the connection and the 'me' time. I get to be without the kids. I am a homeschooler with a husband who has a crazy (and heavy) schedule, who doesn't really have hobbies outside of the home. Even when I am working out at the gym I usually have one of the kids with me. So this is a great opportunity for me to get out and talk to adults like adults. lol... and that is very rare in my world.

Third: A connection to local food and seeing people that have similar life beliefs that I do. This is a big deal for me. It has been hard moving so much and not knowing where my niches were in the community I am in. I am not sure how to describe this one. But I just don't know where my place is in this community yet. I am not talking about friends.... but finding stores I share values with, seeing farms that I trust and love... well I am just not there yet where we are. And that has been harder than I care to admit. We are a bit outside the norm in our beliefs. (As I believe really everyone is.) Even in my house, I have to stand hard for the things I believe are right to get them into action. (My dh is less than crunchy.) A melding is required and sometimes that take inspiration and a bit of a reminder that I am not crazy.

Fourth: Well, the haul is nice. lol! Yesterday I came home with what is in the picture above:

From the organic farm I work for: Dill, cilantro, 2# shelling peas, 1# sugar snap peas, 2 bunches Tatsoi (an Asian green similar to spinach mixed with bok choy),1 bunch spinach, 2 bunches Asian broccoli, 4 heads various lettuces, and a pint of the best strawberries EVER.

From other vendors (which I traded leftover veggies from the farm): 1 dozen free range organic eggs (and really free range, not store bought free range... think; happy chickens.), a huge loaf of Turkish Lavash bread (think huge croissant), a pint of raspberries, a bunch of carrots.

And I spent actual money on 4 succulent plants that we had already put outside in this picture.

Just think of an opportunity to get all of the above for $10 out of a paycheck you make doing what you love? Yes... that is why I do this job.

Fast Food For Foodies

2009-06-17T21:35:00.000-07:00

So lately, I have been talking a lot about the move. Of course. lol... it is my world. And the house is turning out to be more wonderful than I could possibly imagine. But along with doing all of these things to the house, I have had to make food. Lots of food, as fast as possible, because you will not believe how you loose track of time when I am painting, or putting up pictures, or planning shelves. Hours can be lost in what feels like minutes when one is so absorbed in something like this.

Enter Fast Food For Foodies. I love food. Well, I love good food. Real fast food (the 'real' being completely subjective) makes me sick. And most of the time I am glad, but sometimes I wish I could survive on Whoppers... No I don't. Never mind. YUCK! But you know what I mean. The drive through convinces can't be beat when you are harried for time. Luckily for me, it is summer. And that makes finding decent good and fresh food relatively easy.

My main staples for quick and easy meals are as follows:

Fruit salad. Fruit salad is easy to make (esp if you have a melon baller) and I keep some in the fridge right now at all times. We don't have local melons yet, but a watermelon added to some local strawberries and some frozen blueberries from last year make a great salad and keeps for about two days in the fridge.

Crackers and cheese. Oh how I love thee... but I usually have a spin on it. Like the dish above. Brie, crackers, and cherry tomatoes from the store, and basil from my garden (*glee*). A wonderful spin on the old stand by for a quick meal that will please just about anybody (except my toddler, who spits it out and makes horrid faces that make it seem like eating brie is torture).

For toddler fast food (which means every one including the toddler love it) around here we have;

~ Frozen blueberries - right out of the bag. We used to have frozen strawberries too, but Logan is allergic.

~ Frozen grapes. Organic grapes are EXPENSIVE! I paid up to $9 for a bag of them before I stopped buying them altogether. So when these babies go on sale, I want them to last a while. Enter my freezer. Who knew? Frozen grapes are delicious. I actually like green grapes this way and I am a die hard red grape fan. ;)

~ Frozen organic yogurt squeezes and organic apple sauces squeezes. Ever wanted an healthy alternative to Otter Pops? Here they are! Find them on sale and buy a bunch! Frozen they keep for months and months.

~ Baked potatoes - Any potatoes... yams esp. Our local farm right here in town always has yams and small red potatoes. And all locally grown. Butter and salt is all he eats on yams. Regular potatoes and he will have a whole meal with cheese, sometimes sauteed onions, sometimes bacon, and usually chives from my garden (MY garden!!!).

~ Cold rice - I make up a big pot of fried rice or comfort rice and usually don't even have to heat it up... just add spoon.

There has never been a better time to get into a good food habit than now. I'll be frank... avoiding fast food takes more work. It just does. There is no if, and, or but about it. Packing food, remembering to bring food, keeping it cold and stored well... it adds up to a bit more work. And if you want to go organic, it takes a bit more money too. But you can find coupons for these things pretty easily, and as the market starts to expand, it will get even easier. The benefits far outweigh the pitfalls. Consider it health insurance for your children. It is more than worth it.

How to make the perfect iced tea

2009-06-05T09:42:00.000-07:00

When I found myself wishing that they made Kool-aid without food dye I realised that it was Summer. Our Winter was long, and our Spring short, but Summer is here, and along with it 90* days and the desire to sip on a nice cool drink all day long. My kids were asking for juice... but I can't drink it... So I thought I would make up a big batch of iced tea. (Cheaper anyhow.)

Contrary to the picture, only the cup came from Starbucks. It is my new favorite thing. I didn't buy those water bottles... I bought a reusable cup from Starbucks. It has a straw. Oh goodness, I wish I could tell you how much I love my reusable straw! I have drank more water than I have in years because of this beautiful over sized straw. It makes drinking for me a joy. I don't know why... maybe I am crazy, but I figure as long as I keep good stuff in my cup, like water or tea, then I am doing my body good.... and I can continue to use my straw in contentment. Unfortunately for Starbucks, that means that once again, they have lost me as a customer. I guess they can consider the $14 I spent on the cup my final farewell gift. :)

So to start; basically, you are making tea concentrate. First bring out two heat resistant measuring cups (everybody has these, right?). Put 4 tea bags in the larger of the two and then 1/4 cup to 1/2 cup honey or sugar in the other. Add at least two cups of boiling water to the ones with the tea bags, and then add enough to get to 1 cup of liquid in the one with the sweetener. Let them sit for 10 minutes.

While that is steeping, fill your pitcher half full with cold water. As cold as you can get it.

Remove the tea bags (this is important) and add the sweetener into the tea mixture. Mix well. Add the whole thing to the pitcher of cold water, mixing again to make sure there are no bland spots.

Pour over ice to serve. Can keep without getting bitter in the fridge for 4 days.

Menu Monday

2009-05-25T09:40:00.000-07:00

Let's face it, organic chicken is spendy. The easiest way to get your moneys worth is to buy whole chickens and have a two day chicken meal. I usually make a whole chicken for my family about once a week. I stick a whole organic chicken in the crock pot, cover it with chicken broth, and drop an onion (skin and all) in there with it. After 3 hours we have a perfectly cooked chicken for dinner.

The next day I have tons of tiny pieces of chicken that are not quite enough for a meal for the 5 of us... but perfect for adding to another set of ingredients to make a good meal base. Our stand by is of course, chicken soup. Adding the chicken back into the crock pot with all the juices, some celery, carrots, sliced onion, and a couple bay leaves. Sometimes I add some Summer Savory and broth concentrate (low salt bullion substitute) to make the flavors pop.

Lately I have been trying to mix it up a bit. The kids are kinda sick of roast chicken and soup and it is getting on summer weather out here, so I have been making chicken casserole and chicken/spinach quesadillas instead. And the change has been good. ;)

Leftover Chicken Casserole

Leftover chicken pieces (no bones)

1 box chicken broth (28oz)

2 pouches reduced chicken broth (or 1 cube bullion)

4 lg stalks celery

4 lg carrots

1/2 summer savory

2 bay leaves

1 lb package of small shell noodles

salt and pepper to taste

Add it all back into the crock pot and cook on high for 1 hour. That is enough time for the chicken to heat through and start to fall apart, the noodles to take on the broth and make a yummy thick casserole, and for the veggies to be tender but not quite mushy... and it is SO good!

Leftover Chicken and Spinach Quesadillas

Leftover chicken

1/2 lb Monterey jack cheese

pepper jack for the older people in the family

raw baby (or cut up) spinach

tortillas

Chop up the chicken into small slices. Grate cheeses. Place the tortilla on a hot pan or griddle and put some cheese on half of the tortilla. Then add the chicken, spinach, and then a bit more cheese, folding over and flipping when the cheese is melted.

Dip for quesadillas

1/2 cup sour cream
2 Tbs hot salsa
1/2 can black beans
chopped cilantro leaves

Add all of this into a small food processor and process until chopped but still slightly chunky.

So good!

This weeks menu:

Manu Monday

2009-05-18T21:39:00.000-07:00

Today we had a really great morning making peanut butter and applesauce.

Then the kids saw pasta salad on the menu and wanted that for dinner. I figured, why not??

Pasta Salad Recipe

A while ago I started to add Newman's Own balsamic vinaigrette dressing into this pasta salad (about 2 Tbs) and it just took it to a whole new level of goodness! Everyone in the family loves it. Add in some fresh corn from OR (the first I have seen at the market) and you have a darn good dinner.

Shrimp and Sour Salad

2009-05-12T21:39:00.000-07:00

Shrimp and Sour Salad

1 bag baby spinach

1 lb shrimp (25-30 or bigger)

Sea salt

black pepper

cinnamon

sugar

1 red onion

Wash and dry (spinning is best) the baby spinach and set aside. Clean and de-shell shrimp, and place them on skewers for broiling or BBQ'ing. Sprinkle sea salt, black pepper, and cinnamon liberally and the sugar sparsely onto the shrimp and cook for 4 minutes on each side on high heat or until they are pink throughout. Cut onion into slivers and place in a pan with a bit of olive oil. Saute until caramelized adding salt to bring out the flavor.

Dressing:

2 Tbs olive oil

1 Tbs apple cider vinegar

4 Tbs Asian sweet and sour sauce (like to dip egg rolls in)

Place onions and shrimp on the bed of clean baby spinach, and drizzle the dressing over the top.

I served with artichokes (in season this time of year) with curry/mayo dip. YUM!

Menu Monday (and a little something extra)

2009-05-11T09:38:00.000-07:00

I want to make menu Monday more interesting. So I have decided to include budget recipes every week I have one. This week I was lucky... there were two!

Veggie Fried Rice

4 cups cooked brown/wild/red/mixed rice
Olive oil for cooking
One large onion
2 cloves garlic
2 handfuls of each frozen golden beets and frozen green beans
1 1/2 Tbs Bragg's Amino Acid or 1 Tbs soy sauce
2 Tbs mayonnaise

Chop onion into slivers, and mince garlic. In a large skillet, saute' over med high heat with oil until onion starts to clear. Add in beets and green beans and agitate constantly until they are cooked through. Add in the rice and mix until warm. Remove from heat and add the Bragg's and mayo. Toss and serve, warm or cold.

Mexi Comfort Rice

4 cups cooked brown/wild/red/mixed rice
Olive oil or butter for cooking
1 can or 1 1/2 cup frozen corn
1 red bell pepper
1 can or 1 1/2 cup cooked black beans
3 Tbs salsa
1/2 cup chopped cilantro leaves
1/2 cup chopped olives

Dice the bell pepper and saute in oil or butter until soft. Add in the beans and corn. When hot, pour into a large bowl and add in the rice and toss with salsa, cilantro leaves, and chopped olives (saving some of the cilantro and olives back for garnish if you wish). Add salt if needed (ours didn't need it... but it depends on the salsa.)

Either of these recipes could be converted to vegan, and both serve 5 - 6 people for under $5. I just love rice!

Our foods are anemic

2009-05-02T21:37:00.000-07:00

I once thought that you could get all of your nutrition from foods. I was VERY opposed to supplements and what they were supposed to give you. The bio-availability of supplemental vitamins and minerals couldn't possibly be better than telling someone to eat a whole food that contained that vitamin... right?

Unfortunately, this isn't true.

Due to the intensive growing practices and overuse of the soil, not to mention the dedication of our society to the massive over production of food, we have created a food chain that is limited in variety and lacking in nutrients. Frankly, our foods are deficient. Even the organic movement that sets itself so much higher than conventional foods (and rightly so) still is lacking in variety and they still breed their plants for higher yields, larger plants, and more consistency in size and color... instead of health benefits of the varieties that are less desirable in the fields, but better for our bodies.

A very simple example of nutrients and health of food is mold. Yes, MOLD. One of my teachers in high-school had a Twinkie sitting on her shelf. When the year was coming to a close I finally asked her why she had a Twinkie on her shelf... she said that she was waiting for it to mold. It was her own personal experiment. And it hadn't just been sitting there for one year, it had been sitting there for seven. Seven YEARS and not a spot of rot. That is more than 2500 days at room temperature. That is scary. Now think about it this way: If microbes that make up mold (which don't have brains) don't want to eat that, why the heck should we? The microbes want exactly what we want. They want nutrients to grow big and strong and fight disease and reproduce. It sounds strange, but if it won't rot, we shouldn't eat it!

It all comes back to eating locally and eating small for me. Small local growers can use the varieties that you wouldn't be able to grow by machine, because their veggies are grown by hand and only shipped short distances. They can give you more variety and better quality... giving you more nutrients for your dollar. Seattlites buying apples from Argentina when you can get them from Yakima (100 miles from here) just doesn't make sense to me. How do you think those nutrients are being stored? What did they have to do to the food to make it last that long on a plane or a ship? They truth is, they chose varieties that didn't have many nutrients in the first place. When the way we choose our varieties to grow is based on how far they can travel before they go bad, well, something is lost. And it ends up being the nutrients.

Other reading on this subject:

The Downside Of Modern Agriculture

Farm Fresh, a growing trend

The Living Soil

Vandana Shiva interview on Cooking Up A Story

2009-05-01T08:03:00.000-07:00

This woman is amazing! Just thinking about all the information she gave in these interviews makes my heart sing:

http://cookingupastory.com/show/vandana-shiva-the-future-of-food-part-1/

http://cookingupastory.com/show/vandana-shiva-the-future-of-food-part-2/

http://cookingupastory.com/show/vandana-shiva-the-future-of-food-part3/

I think the third is my favorite. The idea that food is life, and money is money. So novel! But so true. A favorite saying of mine came from a frugal online friend "Financial freedom does not come from having money, it comes from not needing it." And when it comes down to it, she was right. You don't need money if you have your own source of food. You don't need money if you can make your own clothes (for the most part). You don't need money if you live frugally and don't depend on gadgets that will break. Money is money. Food is life.

Plastic Bags, an article from my friend Kristena

2009-05-01T07:44:00.000-07:00

Original here

5 great reasons NOT to use plastic

1. The U.S uses 380 BILLION plastic bags, sacks and wraps every year. 100 billion of those are shopping bags.

If you have ever walked past a public garage can, you can see how many hamburger wrappers, sandwich wrappers, plastic cups and things of this nature are thrown away.

There have been times I have imagined every garbage can in my town and am overwhelmed with the fact that just one little town can create such waste in one day.

Thinking ahead to 10 years with this same situation, is pretty disheartening.

2 Plastic bags are made from petroleum and 12 MILLION barrels of oil are required to make the bags consumed by the U.S. alone.

3.Only about 1% of plastic bags are recycled. the rest end up in the landfills, on trees,in rivers and oceans which brings us to the next point.

4.Hundreds of thousands of marine mammals, birds, and land animals die every year from eating or being entangled in discarded plastic bags. When swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines leading to an agonizing death.

Also, things like straws are picked up by birds, and causing them the same fate.
To reference the marine issue, also called the plastic soup, you can see this link

5.Plastic bags take up to 1000 years to degrade. The process is called photo-degradation where plastic pieces get smaller and smaller, becoming toxic, contaminating soil and waterways, entering our food chain.

So what can be done? Well one VERY EASY way to cut down on plastic consumption is to bring your own tote bags to the store with you.

We keep about 4 in our vehicle and I have a Chico bag in my purse as well.

This is really really simple, it just takes some practice in getting accustomed to grabbing your totes when you enter any store.

Another great way to cut down is to get Eco Bags for your produce and bulk items. Or if you can sew, make your own with really cool fabric.

We keep these in our totes so we can avoid using the plastic bulk food or produce bags.
These are washable,so each time we wash them, we take them back out to the vehicle on our next trip out to it, and put it in our totes.
Again, with practice, it happens easily.

These are really great and I need to thank Emily and Stacey for hooking me up this year with some.

Totes are showing up everywhere and often for free. Take advantage of them and use them. It is so wonderful to know you are doing something to keep all those shopping bags from flying through the air, littering your neighborhood or ending up as the huge problems I have mentioned.

Another way to cut back on plastic consumption is to use glass or ceramic containers with lids to store your foods.

We use Frigoverre by Bormioli Rocco. These bowls next inside each other and really save space in our tiny kitchen. I love them so much for all my food storage. You can see through it, since it is glass, and know exactly what is where, which seems to cut back on food waste. They look nice and can also be used when taking foods to gatherings. I love them!

A huge thanks to the town of Jackson and the efforts they put into keeping things green. The statistics mentioned about was given to students in schools along with a free Bag 2 Differ bag.

Soy estrogen, and Boys

2009-04-24T03:22:00.000-07:00

A few people have asked me lately about soy estrogen and boys. A couple years back, the estrogen in soy was all the rage and it was said that boys were not really supposed to eat soy at all. This scare came right around the same time that they came out with the chickenless nugget, and the whole super-processed soy craze started. The truth is, yes, there is estrogen in soy. If your family eats obscene amounts of soy products and happen to have a little boy it could effect his growth and development. But frankly, if your family eats obscene amounts of anything it could effect a child's development.

When I was 9 months old, I decided (on my own) that I wanted to eat nothing but mashed carrots and sweet potatoes. My mom says she could occasionally push some oatmeal with molasses down me, but for the most part, I ate mashed sweet potatoes and carrots breakfast, lunch and dinner. About 3 weeks later, she noticed that I was a little bit yellow around my lips and nose. Then, she noticed it in my fingertips and eyelids. She was alarmed of course, because discoloration of that kind is a sure warning sign for Jaundice. So, she took me to the Dr. and after careful and close examination the Dr asked her, point blank, "What the hell are you feeding this kid?" When she explained my new found love of sweet potatoes and carrots it all came clear. I wasn't turning yellow... I was turning ORANGE.

Soy is just the same. If your diet consists of a large range of things, but you happen to have tofu 3 nights a week for dinner... this most likely will not effect your boys development. In fact, I will go so far as to say that it will be healthier than the hormone fed chicken or beef you could be giving him instead. On the other hand, if he has a big glass of soy milk in the morning, soy milk in his cereal, chickenless nuggets with french fries fried in soybean oil for lunch, and Boca burger on a white bread bun for dinner... well, yes. Your child may have a problem. You may flood his system with soy and it may start to effect his development. No one was made to eat one plant that much.

In our society, you can get anything you want... anything... made from corn or soy. In fact, your entire diet could be based on corn and soy and unless you are paying attention, you wouldn't even know it! Most fast food eaters do not understand that nearly everything they are eating is corn. Every bit of it. The corn fed beef and chicken, the french fries cooked in corn oil and made with modified corn starch to hold them together, the high fructose corn syrup that makes up more than three quarters of their 36 oz soft drink. All of it. Corn.

Our bodies were not meant to eat anything this way.

But back to soy. It is important to not demonise a food for the way people use it. Soy beans are legumes. They are a wonderful source of amino acids that make up proteins just as the average pinto bean or black bean is. Eaten with rice, they make a complex protein that is usually very important for the vegan or vegetarian diet. It isn't a food to ignore or avoid unless it has been tampered with beyond recognition by humans.

A moment for GMO's. GMO stands for Genetically Modified Organism. They are flooding our food chains right now. To the GMO corn to feed the cattle (that, FYI, are not supposed to eat corn in the first place) to the GMO soybean oil to fry our potato chips and french fries in. I wish that I could say that they genetically modify these foods to make them more nutritious... to make them better for you... but they don't. They modify these foods to make them resistant to poison. So they can pour copious amounts of whatever poison they want on the fields in which our food is grown, killing everything else living and leave perfectly 'healthy' soy and corn plants behind. Scary? You bet! If this is something you would like to avoid, here is a handy shopping list to help you. *Shopping list*

When you are buying your soy foods, these three questions will help you determine if it is safe or not:

Does it have label saying "no GMO's" or "Organic" (which by Federal law can not have GMO's)?
Are you eating many other foods with your soy products that are not made from soy?
Is it a food that is unique to soy, like miso or tofu? (Just a tip, soy beans do not have mammary glands).

If the answers are 'yes', 'yes', and 'yes', then honestly, you are probably fine to feed this to your family without fear or side effects.

Apple Cinnamon Bunt Cake

2009-04-22T17:26:00.000-07:00

Can I spend some time making your mouth water? This cake was SO good! I hadn't ever done it this way before... I adjusted the recipe for my own tastes. The first time I made it, I used a 9X13 cake pan, and I followed the recipe exactly (which included quite a bit of white flour), but this time I changed the recipe and it was (personally) SO much better! (The recipe called for a bunt pan, but I didn't have one until this week. :) ) The apples from around here are starting to get grainy and pithy. Don't buy from Argentina! Turn them into a cake!

Apple Cinnamon Bunt Cake

Dry:

2 cups spelt flour

1 Tbs cinnamon

2 tea baking powder

1 tea salt

1/2 tea baking soda

Wet:

4 eggs

2 melted sticks of butter (1 cup)

1 1/2 cups brown sugar (buy the good stuff)

Toss in:

6 granny smith apples (or more if they are small)
Pealed and sliced.

Preheat oven to 350*

Mix dry together and wet together in seperate bowls. Pour wet into dry and mix well. Toss with sliced apples (which can be tossed with lemon juice beforehand, but is optional) and add the whole thing to a greased bunt pan.

Cook for 50 - 60 minutes or a stick comes out clean.

COOL COMPLETELY before taking out of the pan. Top with 2 cups powdered sugar, and 1 - 2 Tbs apple juice to make a frosting/glaze.

This is an AMAZING cake, and I didn't have a problem with the kids eating generous servings of it either. It's mostly apples... there are big chunks of apple throughout that practically melt in your mouth. YUM!

I am going to feed you friend dandelions for dinner!

2009-04-14T23:24:00.000-07:00

Sounds like a threat doesn't it? lol! Well today, thanks to this post (I made up my own recipe), that threat came true!

Dandelion Batter

1 cup spelt flour
2 eggs
1 tea sea salt
1 1/2 tea Spike seasoning
2/3 cup of milk or enough to make the batter kind of runny.

Mix it all together in a large bowl.
Wash and spin dry the dandelion flowers.

Dip in the batter, and fry in hot oil (we used coconut oil)

Allow to cool on paper towels, and eat away.

The kids absolutely loved them! They didn't last until dinner. Weeds... who would've thunk?

Variety and the Seasonal Eater

2009-04-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Every nutritionist will tell you that variety is an important part of a healthy diet. You are born with an urge to try out new tastes. One of the first reflexes you have puts new things strait into your mouth. It seems from the outside that a healthy diet is harder if you are a local/seasonal eater in most places... and to a point, it's true. I don't have a whole lot of fresh fruits and veggies in February when around here, the ground is frozen solid. However, there are a few things I do to counter that February slump that have helped keep our diets optimal and our variety up.

Storage: The trick for me has always been storage. Eating what you have stored, however, is a acquired habit. It doesn't happen overnight. Nor does storing enough food for the entire season. Each part is a process.

This year we actually ran out of a few things! This last summer, the amount of food that we consume jumped much more than I assumed it would. At the start of the summer with my family (my kids then 16 mos, almost 7 yrs, and almost 12 yrs) I was feeding 2 adults, and 2 children. By the end of the summer I was feeding 3 fully adult sized portions, and 2 fully kid sized portions (because, of course, Logan didn't stay a baby forever). So my storage for this winter was off. It isn't an exact science... but if you calculate it out before you look for produce to buy in August or September, it will be much easier to adjust to what your family personally needs.

On page 10 of the Ball Blue Book it has a chart for planning how much food to grow and/or preserve for your family. It lists how many servings you would have per week, and then times that by 52, and you have how many quarts you need for the year. For example, we can peaches each year. This last year we ate 3 quarts of peaches each week until they were gone. (The year before that it was 1 or 2... that is how much it changed this last summer. Teenagers really throw the food prep for a loop!) So for this next year I am planning to can 70 quarts, or 5 boxes of peaches. I do the same calculation for green beans, blueberries, tomato sauce, beets, snow peas, dried herbs, etc.

The Ball Blue Book only lists the things you preserve by canning, but I have modified the planning to everything I need... freezing, drying, and canning. As the time gets closer, I will have more details about the food preservation, low sugar canning, and other tips for keeping your local harvest beautiful and yummy all through the winter. Basically planning ahead allows us to have variety in the winter months so we are not buying blueberries from Chili, or strawberries from Mexico in January.

Variety and how important it is... or not. The truth is, you don't have to eat a thousand different kinds of foods every day to stay healthy. For thousands of years our bodies were adjusted to eating what was around our local area. Our bodies crave things that are in season. When the sun is out, our bodies naturally want lighter, more sweet foods... and when the winter cold closes in, our bodies turn to heavy meals that usually have quite a bit of protein in them to keep us warm. It is important to keep those seasonal feelings alive in our bodies.

Even a hundred years ago, beef was rarely a summertime meal, and chicken was never found in January. Cows were slaughtered in the late fall to boost the winter months with a high protein source, and chickens were culled in the summer when people found out just how many roosters they had. Egg layers took the months of Dec -Feb off and started up again in March and a huge celebration took place to honor them. Cows had babies in the spring and by April had enough milk to feed the neighborhood, but were never over taxed and so therefore, to keep the cow healthy, no one had tons of milk in the winter when the cows were pregnant. Everything has a season. Even meats, milk, and eggs. A letter to Sally Fallon (the author of Nourishing Traditions) says:

"Traditional diets didn't rely on refrigeration or long distance transport. As advocates of Weston Price's work, we need to pay more attention to the seasonality of food; even milk, meat, and eggs.

Left to her own devices, a dairy cow will breed so that she calves in the spring. This way both she and the calf will have plenty of high quality feed to rebuild and grow with so they both will go into the following winter with plenty of vigor and stored nutrients with which to meet its harsh temperature and poorer quality feed. (Similarly, a hen will not lay eggs in the middle of winter unless subjected to artificial lighting.) Our modern eating habits push a farmer to breed her cows so they'll calve in the fall. When children go back to school, we expect milk for our breakfasts and milk sales go up. This is completely backwards!" ---Read the rest of the letter here.---

I am not saying, by any means, to stop eating chicken just because it is winter... but to be conscience of the natural cycles of the plants and animals from which we get our foods. And the cycles in which we have our cravings as well.

Cooking up a Story ~ Eric Schlosser

2009-04-14T14:47:00.000-07:00

Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation, has this 34 minute interview video that was posted last week on Cooking up a Story. I thought it was a wonderful illustration of how information can change our whole food system. Definitely worth watching.

Eric Schlosser interview

Living Locally tip #2 ~ Menu Planning for Locavores

2009-04-13T10:42:00.000-07:00

I have seen many menu plans, but none worked for my family. Most were very ridged and with Don's schedule being ever-changing, and the kids and I with alternative schedules due to homeschooling and electives and such... well, having a ridged menu schedule just never worked for us. We would stick with it for a week, and then get frustrated and give up. No matter how much time, effort, and planning I put into making it, or how good of an idea we thought it was, it just didn't ever work out.

I also am a local/seasonal eater as much as possible... It is hard to guess what will be ready for harvest week to week, much less month to month. So a rotating menu was out as well.

With all of these adjustments in mind, I set about to figure out how a locavore mama with a completely crazy schedule would be able to take some of the guesswork out of making dinner. And at the start of this year, I put together a plan. It has worked really great so far, so I thought I would share. Please forgive my handwriting and stuff... these pictures are our actual menu for this week and the list that goes along with it. It isn't beautiful like many other plans... but it is easy once you get the hang of it, and it is real.

Making a menu takes very little time at this point. One day a week I spend about half an hour going through my pantry, freezer, and fridge and setting up a tentative menu plan. My menu includes all three meals per day and a little room for snacks/dessert column on the side. My goal is to have it written by Monday.

My menu is made for a shopping list. Not for a schedule. It could just as easily be put into 7 different boxes with no dates on them, but I found this from Organized Home and I use it because they have made all the boxes for me... and it's cute.

When I have my menu made, I set up my shopping list. This means I need to know what is in each meal so I can make sure I have each and every thing I will need. When you add Roasted Root Veggies to the menu, there are the obvious ingredients (potatoes, beets, yams, etc) and then the not so obvious (olive oil, sea salt, etc). I have to make sure I have all the ingredients that we need, and when we don't, I have to add those into the shopping list. I have started to check these basic ingredients when I check the pantry and freezer and that has made it less time consuming. After all that, I can make an accurate list of what we need for the weeks meals.

Then comes the shopping. I go first to the local farm store in our area (first part of the list, top left). Terry's Berries. What a slice of heaven it is! This is where I get eggs and most of our produce. Finding a local farm store can be difficult... I found myself very lucky to have known people in this area that told me about Terry's. Finding a farmers market though, is usually easy. Local Harvest is a listing of the farmers markets in the US and an amazing resource for budding locavores. If I had not found Terry's, I would have gotten directions to the closest farmers market from there. Many of them run year round, and the ones that don't, usually start up in April, so right now is the perfect time to start looking for your own farmers market.

After the farm store is Trader Joe's (bottom left). Many of Trader Joe's products travel great distances before they reach their stores. If I can get it from the farm that grows everything locally, I will... if not, Trader Joe's has pretty high standards and I accept that the people in their chain of food growers and producers have a decent wage and decent working conditions. Trader Joe's is also the place where I get my convenience foods. For us, that means (all organic) one ingredient pasta, pasta sauce, boxed tomato soup, canned beans, and ready made breads. Those things that help you pull together a decent meal in 15 minutes on a busy night. I stock up on those when I get low in the pantry.

My third stop is Fred Meyers (right side of list). I shop almost exclusively in their bulk and natural foods section. They carry Organic Valley brands and also Tillamook products. These are two companies that are large scale and mainstream... but are also local, and have no hormones in their dairy products. Fred Meyers is where I buy my cheese, milk, and also dry bulk goods. I have gallon jars I fill with the dry bulk goods when ever they get low. Because they are in the pantry, I can tell which ones are low at a glance... and it is easy to add them to the shopping list.

Implementing the menu at this point is pretty easy. But I had to get the whole family on board. In the beginning, I had explained it to the kids, but not to my husband (who is gone at dinnertime at least 4 days a week). He would use an item for a lunch to take to work, and I wouldn't have it the next day for a dinner I had planned and shopped for. Now that the kinks are worked out though, it runs pretty smoothly. But I did have to post the menu in a VERY obvious place to get everyone in the family to check it regularly. (On the fridge.)

One thing about our menu implementing is how our menu is used. Notice that two things are already crossed off the list? Those are the things we ate today before I decided to write this. Once the menu is made and up on the fridge, who ever is cooking can pick whatever is on the menu for that meal and make it... then they cross it off the list. If we have tomato soup set on the menu for Thursday and the kids want it on Monday, we cross it off the list and make it on Monday. Because I always know the ingredients for the meal are available, I don't have to worry about making the meal on a specific day. It doesn't always work that way... there are perishables that have to be taken into account and so of course, when you have potatoes that are starting to get eyes, or celery that is going limp, you will want to use that. And others take planning... like pinto beans have to soak and you cook them all day in a crock pot... so you do have to plan a little bit. But with a plan like this, it gives you a lot more control of the days when you spend an hour in the kitchen, and the days you come home to a hot meal in the crock pot.

King Corn

2009-04-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

For a movie that started out silly and fun, this was packed full of useful information. Another documentary that passes the good information without the drama.

Basically, it is the story of an acre of corn. These two men find that they have similar backgrounds in their family tree, and decide to go back to the place where their grandfathers lived and plant an acre of corn in Iowa. It follows them through 9 months of growing, harvesting, selling, processing and finding out where the products go. They even make High Fructose Corn Syrup... and then taste it. Blech!

Inspired by Michael Pollan's work, The Omnivores Dilemma, they are armed with all the right questions and the answers will make you laugh and cry at the way food is used in this country. Definitely gets my thumbs up.

An extract from the book Seasonal Food by Paul Waddington

2009-04-10T22:14:00.000-07:00

Introduction

Life in Britain was once intimately entwined with the seasons. Our survival depended on a wealth of skills we developed to take advantage of the growing seasons and to deal with the barren winter. We learned when to plant and harvest to ensure fresh food was available for as long as possible. We knew exactly when wild foods were ready for the taking. And we learned to dry, salt, smoke, preserve and store food to keep us going through the lean times, or to take advantage of abundance. Our year turned to a cycle that was driven by the seasons, with the last autumn harvests heralding the end of the old year and the beginning of the new.

For many of us today, technology has reduced the seasons to little more than an aesthetic distraction. Heating and air-conditioning keep us comfortable all year round. Refrigeration, high-technology storage and a globalized food market mean that we can eat whatever we want, whenever we want. The year follows very different rhythms: the school year, the tax year, the financial year.

As a result, what awareness we have of food's seasons is diminishing rapidly. It has arguably been on the wane for hundreds of years, since a series of land enclosures starting in the 1500s began to reduce the amount of common land on which small farmers and labourers could grow food and raise livestock for themselves. By the late eighteenth century, when enclosures accelerated, many were forced off the land and into towns and cities, where, according to food historian Colin Spencer: "...under the slavery of long hours and pittance wages, their diet declined to bread, jam, tea and sugar." While we might think that junk food, far removed from nature's cycles, is a relatively recent phenomenon, it has in fact been a part of British life for hundreds of years.

As the first people to industrialize, Britons were the first to lose our connection with the land and the seasons. We regained it -- albeit briefly, and under duress -- in the Second World War, when the 'dig for victory' campaign had the whole nation growing its own food and in better health than at any other time in the twentieth century. After the war, though, the combination of agricultural subsidy and chemical farming severed this connection anew, and brought us to where we are today: a world of cheap, year-round abundance.

So should we care about the relationship between food and the seasons when it is no longer a matter of life and death; when we (in Britain at least) can eat what we want, when we want?

I believe we should. For a start, there's the simple fact that food tastes better in season. From spring lamb to asparagus, from apples to wild salmon, fresh, local produce is better to eat than food that has been raised artificially, or that has travelled halfway around the world in a controlled-atmosphere container. There are straightforward reasons for this. Take tomatoes. They like to grow in rich, well-composted soil and need good strong sun to ripen properly. The flavour of a good tomato is a result of the subtle interplay between nutritious soil and sunlight. So it should come as no surprise that 'fresh' tomatoes, planted in an artificial substrate and grown out of season in an air-conditioned greenhouse, taste of nothing much at all. Or take intensively farmed salmon, also available all year round. Fooled into growing by artificial light, drenched in chemicals, drugged up to the eyeballs and crammed into pens at densities of up to 20 kg per cubic metre, they are not in good shape when they reach the supermarket. Wild fish, on the other hand, caught in season, have reached a prime condition that results from a natural life cycle and are an infinitely superior product.

Of course we can get many foods all year round. But it's a treat and a privilege to eat them in season, because for much of the year, many foods are far from being at their best.

Then there's the question of how sustainable our approach to food production and consumption is. Our 'year-round abundance' has carried a heavy price. The problems of industrial agriculture -- from unhappy salmon to battery hens to pesticide-soaked vegetables -- are well documented and have provoked a surge in the sales of organic produce. This is to the good, because apart from giving us foods free from agrochemicals whose deleterious effects are thought to range from poorer child health to male infertility, organic production has many benefits. It promotes biodiversity and soil quality; it reduces the pollution of waterways and land. And most of the time it gives us food that is healthier, richer in nutrients and tastier.

But adherence to organic standards alone is not necessarily a sustainable way for us to consume food; nor does it guarantee a superior product. Flying in organic spring onions from Mexico and collecting them by car from a supermarket create 300 times more CO2 emissions than if they were grown locally and delivered by an organic box scheme. And they don't taste as good, either.
In a world where man-made climate change is becoming an urgent issue, what we eat is more than just a matter of taste. Buying in season encourages us to buy locally, whether from the farmers' market in town or the specialist sheep farmer who sells direct. Supermarkets may pride themselves on an ever-growing range of organic produce, but if a kilo of apples has made the flight from New Zealand in March, are they really going to taste as good as a well-stored late British variety? And if you accept that human activity contributes to climate change, is this worth the kilo of CO2 they will produce, compared to the 50g if the same kilo were bought locally? Despite the fact that we can grow perhaps the best apples in the world, Britain has lost 60 per cent of its apple orchards since 1970, thanks in part to bureaucratic madness that paid growers to dig them up. Buying locally and in season encourages local producers, who are building a more sustainable food industry, contributing to a renaissance in British produce and cuisine and creating a better environment.

Most of all, though, eating with the seasons brings a rich variety into our lives. Where's the fun in eating the same things all year round? By being closely aware of what's in season, you get twelve months' worth of gastronomic treats, and satisfying answers to the perpetual question of what to buy and cook for yourself, family and friends. Today, the nearest thing to a seasonal gastronomic event in Britain is the annual consumption of an oversized fowl, accompanied by miniature cabbages, about both of whose qualities many have, at best, ambivalent feelings.

The seasons have much more to offer than this. British produce gives us a huge range of reasons to celebrate throughout the year. From the autumnal abundance of fruit, game and vegetables to the spring treats of lamb, fresh greens and mackerel, there is (almost) always something good, fresh and locally produced for us to enjoy

However, unless we are enthusiasts, farmers, or live close to rural tradition, many of us have only a vestigial awareness of what's in season when. Regaining this knowledge is not easy. Chefs and food professionals tend to keep it to themselves, occasionally giving away tempting titbits in their recipes: 'And now, of course, is the perfect time to eat lobster!' Why? How do they know this? How do we get to know this?

The purpose of this book is to put comprehensive knowledge of food's seasons back in the hands of people who buy food. It's not a recipe book -- there are plenty of those already. Seasonal Food is a guidebook to what's in season when and why in Britain so you can eat produce at its best, contribute to a renaissance in local production, and simply revel in the variety of the seasons.

-------- © Paul Waddington 2004

For his book and a bit more about it, his website is here.

Tofu Red Curry with Mixed Braising Greens

2009-04-10T10:07:00.000-07:00

The roasted root veggie toss was super simple. I just cut up a bunch of root veggies (in this case rutabaga, garnet yam, white baby potatoes, and chioggia beets) tossed them with olive oil, salt and pepper, covered them in a glass baking dish and baked at 350* for an hour.

Tofu Red Curry with Mixed Braised Greens

1 lg onion

1 Tbs grated ginger

1 pkg Extra- firm Tofu

6 oz braising greens (this was a mix from my local farm)

10 oz jar of red curry sauce from Trader Joe's

half a can of coconut milk

olive oil

salt and pepper

First, I sliced the tofu to the size that I wanted it. Then I pressed the tofu to get all the water out. It is best to do this for about 20 minutes, but in a pinch, you can do it for less. You take two layers of paper towels or cloth napkins and put the tofu on the towels on a baking sheet. Then place another layer of towels over the top and place another baking sheet on top... then weigh it down with whatever you have on hand. I used my blender. lol...

Get the oil nice and hot in your biggest saute pan. Place the pressed tofu in there and turn down to med heat. This will spatter because of the water in the tofu. You will want a spatter guard if you have it. Cook for about 5 minutes on either side. This makes the tofu nice and crisp, but chewy in the middle.

Take the tofu out of the pan and place it on a paper towel on a plate to drain the oil off.

Add the onion and ginger to the pan with the oil still in it from the tofu. When the onion starts to go clear, add in the braising greens. Spinach works well too, but will take a shorter time to cook so if you are using a mix, put the spinach in last. When all greens are limp, add in the whole jar of red curry sauce and the coconut milk.

Bring to a boil, and add back in the drained tofu. Mix until sauce covers all and is hot and yummy.

Option: If you want to spice it up, add a teaspoon of crushed red peppers in with the onions.

Local Living Tip #1

2009-04-10T09:06:00.000-07:00

I am not claiming to be perfect at this... but I do have a few tips up my sleeve. :) In April, I have to say, it is close to the hardest time of year to live locally. Around here right now, the apples and pears are grainy and hard to eat when not cooked, the root veggies are starting to be questionable, and all other foods haven't quite grown to harvestable yet. We ARE getting some great salad mixes and braising mixes from the local farms, but for the most part, everything we are eating is from last year... or from far away.

The amazing thing about this time of year though is how fast things start coming to market. One week someone will have braising mix of really tough kale, tiny spinach, and mustard greens... and then the next week they have fresh salad mix, fresh herbs, and snow peas. The trick is to be there when that happens.

My routine is to go to the family farm store first. I actually go on Tuesday, when my menu is made and I have a fresh shopping list in my hand for the week. Before I go, I 'shop' from my own freezer and get the best of last years harvest into our meals as much as possible. Then comes the farm. I get everything I can from them. Currently, I am getting onions, shallots, red, white and even russet potatoes, apples, pears, leeks, yams, mixed braising greens, rutabaga, parsnips, beets, and fresh eggs. Last week they added cilantro, salad greens, and spinach. This added some great stuff to the menu! When I pay attention, I can make most of my meals from what they have, with a few exceptions for varieties sake, just by knowing what they have and what is coming into season. This gets even easier as the year goes on... but it isn't hard now. It just takes planning.

My next stop is Trader Joe's. Something akin to Whole Foods Market. Decent food, with decent ethics, sold by people who are paid a decent wage. Not all of it is organic... but I stick to the organics... and the sauces. This time of year, a good sauce can mean the difference between a bland and boring menu, and a culinary delight that your kids ask for over and over. This is also where I currently get my meat. I have lost the last of my contacts for local meats when we moved. Trader Joe's has 'no feedlot' beef and organic, free range chicken. They are large scale, which I would love to do without... but for now, I feel good about the meat we eat coming from there.

The last stop on my trip is Fred Meyers. I can, of course, drive to the co-op if I am feeling especially green... but even then, I think that the cost of the 30 miles of petrol probably off-sets whatever I am burning buying through a chain store. So Fred Meyers it is (it is about a mile from my house). It is surprising how much local produce is sold through chain stores. But because I get my local stuff through the farm, the main reason I go to Freddies is for organic dry goods. They have brown rice, organic whole wheat and spelt flours, unsulfered apricots and raisins, and many other things that I buy in bulk and fill my gallon jars when they need it.

The strategy of living locally first is one that I think would save a lot of our environmental grief. I don't personally believe that trade between states or countries is bad. I mean really, we have been trading grains for centuries. The spice trade dates back thousands of years. We were not damaging our planet by trading... what is damaging our planet is that many of us are unknowingly buying foods from 2000 miles away... foods that we could get from our own backyards.

For tonight's menu...

Roasted rutabaga, garnet yam, white baby potatoes, and chioggia beets (pic above)

fried tofu over braised winter greens and onions

slathered all over with red curry sauce and coconut milk

Gardening book

2009-03-20T12:42:00.000-07:00

Fresh from the Garden Cookbook

This is a book my best friend and I have been looking for for quite a while. We both absolutely LOVED Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbra Kingsolver, but we also were frustrated that although all of her ideas were great, most were for the area she was in... which is far from here. Makes perfect sense as she was writing about local living. lol... But makes it difficult to implement for the beautiful Pacific NW. Well, this author, Ann Lovejoy, writes just for the Pacific NW... in fact, she lives up on an island about an hour from here and the area is her muse. Recipes, stories, different little tips on how to grow year round... and all for right here in my area. This is a book I will have to own.

I keep wanting to know if she is related to Sharon Lovejoy, my favorite children's garden author.

McLibel

2009-03-16T13:01:00.000-07:00

This movie is all about a real legal battle between two people and a HUGE corporation. It was interesting, but definitely a documentary. This law suit, however, changed the legal system in the UK and started the recession of the largest food chain in the world, so personally I thought it very worth watching and I enjoyed it very much.

Alex watched it with me and was appalled at the portion that talked about McDonald's animal cruelty... He has decided never to eat there again. Not even if someone takes him there. I don't know if that will stand the test of time or not, but since I was vegetarian by my own right my entire childhood (until 23)... It could happen.

I recommend this movie for those of us who want to know the ins and outs of the food industry, but it isn't light watching. I wouldn't even say it was light, like Super Size Me was 'light'. It was one of those courtroom dramas, that sometimes is better read in a short summery than watching an 1.5 hr documentary about.

Speaking of which... the short summery is here:

McSpotlight

In the video cometary there is a interview scattered throughout from Eric Slosser (author of Fast Food Nation) that brings up lots of interesting facts and support. I found that these scattered interviews (there were many more people who supported them as well, he was just the one I knew the best) were very helpful at understanding all the legal jargon.

Super Size Me

2009-03-16T13:00:00.000-07:00

What did I do all day? I cleaned my house and watched anti fast food propaganda. lol!

This is the third time I have seen this film, but I watched it twice in close secession when it first came out and then now (which is 5 years later). It is amazing what time has done to this movement... and I still find it amazing what happened to a really healthy guy in just a month of that crap. If there was ever a boost to the slow food movement it has been the two films I watched today. They are SCARY.

This is a must see... I wouldn't just say for adults either. Although Alex is more interested in the disgusting animal treatment going on to produce fast food, it wasn't lost on him at all that it is terrible for you... and for the environment. In fact, after watching McLibel he kept asking me "Then why is there STILL McDonald's like EVERYWHERE!?!"

The other impact that I hadn't put together before was the commercialism of the food industry. I have to admit that not having cable has made me sort of oblivious to the commercial industry. In Alex's lifetime, we have had cable television for less than a year total. But that doesn't make me insusceptible to their little ploys. Until half way through the Super Size Me movie, I was craving junk food. I got up, got myself two homemade WW Sugar Cookies and a tiny bowl of veggie chili I made the other day. After I wasn't hungry at all, the effects were nill... which was helped by Morgan throwing up McD's all over the side of his car half way through the movie. But when I was hungry, fast food was all I could think about. Sad sad sad the way these commercials effect you... even when they are part of a educational parody!

BTW, both of these movies are available on direct watch from Netflix. No mail necessary.

The Future of Food

2009-03-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

This movie is an eye opener. I know a LOT about food. But this movie was talking about something I had never even really thought of... What would happen if some company patented all the seeds for our food? It is scary stuff, let me tell you.

Basically the video takes you through the last 35 years of seed science. It talks about how seeds are germinated and the beginning of Genetically Modified seeds. It shows you actually farmers that were saving their seeds and using them to grow the next years crops all over the world. Mexico, Canada, and the United States especially. Then it explains about how GM seeds work, and how you can track GM seeds through their genes to find which farmer uses which brand and what pesticides that each selection is going to be able to withstand to make herbicide use very easy on farmers. Then it goes on to talk about how Monsanto has started suing the farmers that are close to areas where Monsanto seeds have been used because their crops have the Monsanto gene... but they never used Monsanto seed... their crops just happened to be pollinated by bees that flew in from Monsanto crop areas. Then they go on to interview everyone they can get their hands on that would have an opinion.

Fascinating stuff, I tell you... scary and fascinating.

What was the answer? Buy local, buy organic, grow your own when you can, save seeds, support people who grow their own and save seeds, support organic and local. Don said when the movie was over "Val, you like watching things that tell you you are doing it right." I had no idea that Don would be right, however. I honestly didn't really know what this movie was about except it concentrated on big agribusiness and Monsanto Seed Co and how they were evil and bad for the whole world.

I think the worst of it, is you can't even see Monsanto on anything you buy in the store. They don't market under that name, they have a hundred different companies that market and package for them. It makes it that much more important to know where our seeds come from, to know where our food comes from, and to develop a real relationship with the people who grow it. As much as I love CA for the oranges and the tomatoes I am currently eating to stay healthy in the winter, I will be very happy to switch back to my local growers when the season changes.

http://www.thefutureoffood.com/

Hot Cocoa from Scratch

2009-03-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

I was thinking today was a good day for cocoa... being March and it snowing and all. So I pulled down my baking supplies because we were out of the crazy spendy Organic Hot Chocolate we usually buy, and I decided to make up a recipe for hot cocoa from bakers chocolate.

Bakers Hot Cocoa

4 cups whole milk

2 squares simisweet bakers chocolate (I am sure you can use chocolate chips as well for this bit... just use 1/3 cup)

2 Tbs sugar

1/2 tea vanilla

1/2 tea cinnamon

Put all ingredients into a small sauce pan and heat, but do not boil. As it cools there will be some chocolate 'scum' as my daughter calls it on the top of your cocoa cup, but it is just chocolate and it tasted wonderful as well. The joy of the lack of soy emusifiers.

It turned out VERY good!

A lesson in Orange

2009-02-15T09:08:00.000-08:00

Three weeks ago I started a winter organics produce subscription. The Farmers Markets are closed until April around here, and we have been seriously lacking in fruits and veggies. I have frozen tons from our harvest season, but fresh fruit is something that you crave in this cold, wet, dreary climate. I subscribe to two boxes from these folks: Terra Organics Every other week I get a box of Pacific NW only produce... all grown here in Washington or Oregon state... and then every other week I get a box of fruit.

The fruit has been our favorite so far. The Pacific NW box is convenient... but there is nothing like having fresh organic strawberries from CA on Valentine's day, or 4 lbs of oranges and tangerines to make OJ out of the day after. The fruit box is not necessarily local, but they do keep even winter produce to the west coast and that is about as good as I can do shopping for myself in the store.

I feel really grateful for California this time of year. I am a local girl... but goodness... that OJ tasted GOOD!

Cold market day... hot root vegetables.

2008-12-14T09:09:00.000-08:00

There was a day, back in late September, that while I was working, it started pouring down rain. It doesn't take long, while moving lots of leafy vegetables around to get soaking wet, and of course, it was September... who wears a waterproof warm coat in September?

I got very wet. I got very cold. I soon after got pretty sick. It was a long and sucky day, and I felt like I hadn't even done my job well because I was miserable enough to have it effect everything I did... even count money. lol...

Yesterday was so much worse it knocked that day right off the radar.

Yesterday, as it started to get light outside I realised that it was going to be a cold and windy day. The bank on the corner said "27*". But it was still dark... surely it would warm up... I had packed warm clothes, tons of layers, and thought I was prepared. Little did I know that it would never get above freezing and I would be standing in the wind.

My right glove got wet about an hour into the market day (11am), and froze to my hand, giving me frost burns. The table cloths froze to the tables. The little droplets that were water back at the farm were ice crystals that never melted as we were putting out the kale, chard and mizuna. And it just got colder.

My brother picked me up at 4:30 and it was 26* outside. I was frozen to the bone. I spent the better part of the day finding excuses to go into stores and defrost... which of course just made the cold worse when I went back out. I can't even imagine how my market partner was standing it, but she disappeared half the amount of times I did. It was crazy.

But beauty out of that crazy ice:

The last of the years veggies have arrived. This miserable cold spell has taken all the life that was left in the ground and frozen it solid. Ok, that is a bit dramatic, but that is what it has done. The ground is frozen, so that means so are most of the things that don't mind the more mild colds of our climate. This was the last week for local cilantro, lettuce, chard, mizuna, broccoli, cabbage, most herbs, and onions. It may be the last time we have leeks, kale, beets, and potatoes... depending on how long this cold spell lasts. The season is finally over. *sigh*

And another will start again in a few months.

As much as I hate to say it. Thank you California. Thank you for making it so we don't have to stop and think about this season being over today and we can just go on living our lifestyles as we choose. I am not thinking about whether we have enough food to last the winter. Or whether my root cellar is deep enough so my potatoes, apples, beets, onions, garlic, etc doesn't freeze. California makes most of this possible to be something you pick up from the store on a weekly basis. You don't have to think about where or who it came from... because in the land of green pastures, far far away, there will always be garlic and potatoes growing on abundant grassy fields.

Oh wait...

Pasta E Fagioli

2008-10-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

I got the idea from the pasta soup at Olive Garden. But very honestly, mine is better. :p We love it and I make it pretty consistently throughout the year here in WA. It is quick, VERY good, and not terrible for you. I do use some canned items, but I think the ease of this soup outweighs the need to soak your own cup of kidney beans and butter beans. If you want to, then by all means, you can... I just usually don't. Last time I used fresh herbs from my garden and from the farm. Rosemary, oregano, thyme, and tarragon were the ones that I chopped and put in this beautiful soup.

~~~~

Pasta E Fagioli Ala Val

1 lb mild Italian sausage
1 28oz can of stewed tomato with basil (Mur Glen has the perfect ones)
1 can of white butter beans
1 can of dark kidney beans
1 HEAD of garlic, skins off and chopped fine
1/2 lg onion, diced
1/2 green pepper, diced
28oz water (just fill the tomato can)
1 Tbs oregano
1 tsp marjoram
1 tsp tarragon
2 Tbs basil

Brown Italian sausage. Add diced onion, green pepper, and garlic and saute until onion starts to clear. Add can of tomatoes and water. Bring to a boil. Add beans, and all spices. Stir for 1 minute. Put a lid on the pan and let boil on Med for about 10 minutes or when the spices are not all sitting on top of the soup.

As you are making the soup, boil 1 cup of small shells (or any small pasta) until al dente making sure to salt your pasta water. Add them into the soup at the last moment, and mix well.

Serve with good bread and salad. It is the best soup I have ever tasted.

PUMPKIN PIE!

2008-10-27T12:21:00.000-07:00

Our pumpkin patch field trip was Friday. Now my kids are FULLY in the spirit of the season. We don't do the freaky Halloween stuff. No decapitated heads hanging from our doorway, or dead people coming up from a patch of soil in the front yard. No sir. I hate that part of Halloween, and frankly, don't understand it. There is enough terror and nasty war going on in this world to create a time to romanticize it. But I do love Halloween. Black cats, spider webs covered with dew, turning leaves, jack-o-lanterns, candle light, dark evenings, being something that you are not normally for a day. I just love the season.

In that spirit, the kids and I made today: "Fall Foods From Scratch Day". lol! Cyan made a pumpkin pie, and Alex made cheesy zucchini bread (I will post recipe and picture later).

It is surprisingly easy to make a pie from a real pumpkin. And also surprising how often I don't get around to doing it.

Before pie:

1 pie or cheese pumpkin

Cut pumpkin in half and take out the seeds. Bake for one hour in a 400* oven or until a fork can go through skin easily. Let cool for a couple hours and peel. Then chop up the inside and scoop it into a blender. Blend until very smooth.

From Pumpkin to Pie Recipe

1 1/2 cups pumpkin puree

3/4 cups sugar

1/2 tea salt

1/4 tea ground ginger

1 tea ground cinnamon

1 tea flour

1/4 tea nutmeg

2 eggs, lightly beaten

1 cup evaporated milk

2 Tbs water

1/2 tea vanilla extract

1 9-inch pie crust (homemade or otherwise)

Combine pumpkin, sugar, salt, spices, and flour in a medium mixing bowl. Add eggs; mix well. Add evaporated milk, water, and vanilla; mix well. Pour into pastry crust (in pie pan). Bake at 400* for 15 minutes, and then turn the oven down to 350* and bake for 35 - 55 minutes or until pie is set in the center. Allow to cool at least 1 hour before cutting. (recipe adapted from For the Love of Pumpkins)

Serve with good dose of whipping cream and enjoy!

Leek and Sausage Pasta

2008-10-13T12:25:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I go out. I know... shocking. But it is true. Sometimes I get to leave my house and go be with people that are not my family. lol... But even when that happens, I am the cook in the house. I have taken that roll so completely, that I end up cooking for my family even when I am going out to dinner with friends. Don is branching out and starting to cook... but habit is habit. Which means that last Tuesday, when I was going out to Thai with my friend Sarah, I cooked this meal for my family before I left. It turned out so well that I had to add it in here. :)

Chicken Sausage and Pasta

1 pkg rotini pasta

2 leeks

1 lb chicken sausage (we used sundried tomato and provalone)

3 ripe tomatoes

2 red bell peppers

Provalone cheese

olive oil

salt and pepper to taste

First, I made the pasta, and Don cooked the sauages until they were hot and plump. Then I cut the sausage into slices and put it aside. I put some olive oil in my large saute' pan and saute'd the leeks, cut into little rounds. When they were nice and tender, I added in the tomatoes and peppers, diced, until the leeks were seperated and almost clear and the peppers were cooked through.

I tossed the sasuages back into this mix and tossed until everything was good and hot. Then tossed with pasta and added in the provalone cheese, cut into small chunks.

It was really really good. I served it with small carrots, pealed, and green beans, both saute'd in butter and tossed with a little bit of summer savory and salt.

I made these with Cyan Saturday morning. They are this recipe, with WW flour instead of Spelt this time and put into muffin tins. Notice they are on sweet little red flower plates that I found for $.40 a peice at Goodwill. They don't totally match my bowls, but I really liked the compliment... so they are here to stay. And even if they were not, the whole set cost me less than a Pumpkin Spice Latte. Gotta love buying used.

Vegan Lunchbox

2008-10-11T12:50:00.000-07:00

What a great book. Whether you are vegan, or going in that direction, or a total carnivore, this book is a great one to have on hand. Great recipes, good ideas, all sorts of good.

I personally recommend the Quick Peanut Sauce and the Black Rice Pudding.

One thing that I didn't like about the book. There was a lot of fake foods. For me, healthy eating isn't cutting out meat and dairy to add in soy meat, soy milk, and soy dairy. Those foods are just as processed as Kraft Dinner... and often just as bad for you. She doesn't put them in every meal. There were many recipes that I couldn't wait to try. And of course, these foods were included to make the child's meal more 'normal'. I totally understand the motivation. I, of course, don't send my children to school at all... so it is easy for me to say that it shouldn't matter while the children in my 'lunch room' all eat the exact same stuff and don't have to worry about fitting in at school. But the fact remains, I would rather find a humane way of eating chicken nuggets than getting nugget type foods made from soy products.

My favorite section was in the front where they had she put down several menus for all different types of lunch packers. That was brilliant. There is a bit for those of us who pack lunches the night before, a section for those of us who are early risers, and a section of quick and easy for those of us who like to have things on hand and don't think about it till morning. Great idea! I think more cookbooks should learn from her organizational ways.

I can't wait to try her Savory Autumn Leaf Pies. They sounds so good...

Inspiration

2008-10-03T08:12:00.000-07:00

For the next 54 days, I am going to follow Michael Pollans philosophy of food.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

I am doing this because I am inspired. Inspired by this woman's blog:

Unhappy Meals

She has a wonderful idea... but a limited palette. Hopefully we can banter back and forth good ideas and recipes that both of our great grandmothers would recognise. ;)

__________________________

Today so far, I have had a Delicata Squash, cooked in it's skin with the seeds in, in some salt and topped with brown sugar. Baked at 400* last night for 45minutes. The skin is eaten, the seeds are not.

Oh and I scored a tomtato out of my garden basket of saucing tomatoes.

Market Work

2008-09-15T09:10:00.000-07:00

Working the market has been interesting. People in Seattle are dedicated enough to eating organic that they just don’t think about the price… but wow. Our stuff is SPENDY. $2.50/lb for potatoes (damned good potatoes which are COMPLETELY worth it, but until you spend the money to try them, who would know?) $1.50/lb for the biggest cauliflower you have ever seen (and they are pretty and delicious too) but that means spending $6 for a cauliflower that is three times bigger than you really wanted, and then of course, $4/lb for the best green beans and peas you have ever tasted. What it means to be beyond organic is pretty amazing. The industrial organics can sell the ¼ of their stock (which are probably the ones that don’t quite fit into the mainstream idea of what the veggie is supposed to look like….) And they sell them to soup companies that want to claim ‘organic’ and still have plenty for every single whole sale order they have. We don’t have that luxury. We have to sell the 5lbers, right along with the 2lbers that we know everyone will buy.

Anyway… it has been interesting.

Yesterday I came home with a big box of food from the farm. I had one huge cauliflower, a 2lb bag of green sugar snap peas, 5 cukes, two bunches leeks, 5 onions, 4lbs potatoes, a bunch of carrots, a bunch of red chard, two tiny romenesca, two bunches cilantro, one bunch dill, one bunch mint, and a half lb wild Chantalle mushrooms. At the end of the day, the guy next door to us at the market traded for two half pints of fresh local ice cream, (one of which will be gracing my kids bellies after lunch), another neighbor traded for some bone broth for me and some fresh cows cream cheese which Hannah took home. And yet another neighbor traded for pastries for a snack. And on top of all of that, I got sent home with an entire case of sunflowers that we had left over, and wouldn't last until the Tuesday Market, which Cyan graced all of our neighbors with bouquets before we ate dinner.

This is an abnormal weekend. I normally get about half this much... but even so... I got paid on top of that (considering the time I spend and how long it takes to get there, my wages work out to under $7 an hour), but when you count all of the trades/veggies from the farm on top of it, well, it is a really good deal. I feel strange when people complain about jobs like this. I feel as though I have a special advantage as I can get as much as I want for my family for a week… and I guess when you are a single gal, the appeal of a weeks worth of veggies isn’t that high because you don’t need near as many of them. The veggies and trades I got were worth quite a bit more than I got paid in cash. I work my menu for the week around what we have at the market. This means that we have had potato-leek soup twice in the last two weeks and I am going to make it again this week. It means that I have peas the entire season, and by now, my kids are sick of them and I am forced to freeze whatever we are bringing home. But it also means that nothing has ever sat anywhere (no truck, fridge, box or shelf) for more than a day. I don't know... maybe I am weird... but that just has to be good for you.

Local Living can be easy

2008-09-13T09:11:00.000-07:00

It isn't always. But in September, local living is easy. Farmers markets are packed to the brim with ways to get everything you need, from fish, veggies and fruits for dinner, to toys for Christmas, and flowers for your dining room table, along with other necessities like soap and fresh baked bread. The amount of local bounty I see go past my stand every Sunday just amazes me! I got a lot of my things local before. But I had no idea how much was out there, processed or grown within 200 miles of my house is everything I need from home baked pies to fresh peanuts from just over the mountains.

The omelet above? Eggs from my chickens (of course) with Pico De Gallo made from tomatoes from my garden, onions, garlic, and cilantro from the farm, and a token jalapeno pepper from the neighbors farm stand at the market.

The above is not 100% local. The organic, single ingredient pasta that I have come to depend on for my husbands dietary 'needs' comes from Italy... and the balsamic vinaigrette came from California, but the rest? The goat cheese, the tomatoes (my gardens only real produce this year), and the beautiful golden beets from the farm are all amazingly from within 40 miles of my house.

Sweet and Tangy Pasta Salad

1/4 lb golden beets (red beets will do, but I don't like the way they stain everything pink)

1 lb tomatoes (plum or cherry work best)

2/3 cup balsamic vinaigrette dressing (I use Paul Newman's)

4 oz soft goat cheese

1 lb rotini pasta (WW would work well here)

Directions:

Cook pasta until al dente. Drain and douse with cold water reduce sticking.

Steam beets until fork tender. Slice tomatoes into bite sizes.

Add in the cheese and dressing, saving veggies for last. Toss with veggies (feel free to add others too! Baby spinach would be good tossed in, as would a host of other greens).

Eat cold.

Serves 4

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A surprise in the garden! You remember that volunteer pumpkin that I was ranting about a few months ago? Well, it looks like we may actually get two jack-o-lantern pumpkins out of it!

Gardening is always a journey.

In Defence of Food by Micheal Pollan

2008-09-10T12:47:00.000-07:00

I am becoming a die hard Michael Pollan fan. He is a wonderful writer (as most journalists are), but the information he gives answers SO many questions!

In the book "In Defense of Food" he attaches on to something he only touched on in "The Omnivore's Dilemma"... What to actually eat.

Oh yes, you can look at a food pyramid or an FDA guideline, based on sketchy facts, and supported by the industrial food industry. But when you know enough not to trust that 100%... where do you look to know what to eat?

This is the question he tackles. The rules he gives are not based on scientific evidence, but by the thousands of years that people have survived without the current eating disorders of the 'Western Diet' and the diseases that go along with it.

The 'rules' are fairly simple, once you understand what is meant by them:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

By "eat food", he means 'eat food that your great-great-grandmother would recognise'. There are not many industrial food products that would pass that test. Oatmeal? Corn meal? Yes. High fructose corn syrup? Go-gurt? Not so much.

"Not too much" is pretty self explanatory.

"Mostly plants" is the rule that is backed up by literally hundreds of years of meat being a side dish, or condiment instead of the main course and how our health has deteriorated from meat pushing the veggies right off our plates. This part also talks about the way our food chain has moved from 'leaves to seeds' and how this has effected every bit of that food chain, from the health of our meat cattle, to the health of our hearts.

Notice how he didn't go into vitamins, or 'nutrients' in his rules? In fact, in the book, he goes into those scientific specifics in great detail.... but not to the expense of the rules. You don't need to know how much more vitamin C is in your gardens romaine lettuce than the lettuce shipped from a thousand miles away to benefit from eating it. Taking food rules out of mom's kitchen and into the laboratory did more harm than good.

All in all, it is a light, if a bit scientific, read that has answered all sorts of questions I had about our culture and what the years of scientific nutrition study have done to our food habits. And, as with most of his books, In Defense of Food brings to the forefront a need to think about food differently. Bringing it from a place for overindulgence and nutrient specifics, to a cultural artery, so to speak.... to a place where eating is a relationship that will last a healthy lifetime.

Chili Rellenos

2008-08-27T12:26:00.000-07:00

Recipe

Tutorage

One of the guys from the farmers market gave me a bunch of Anaheim Peppers on Sunday. My plan was to make taco salad tonight out of the lettuce, cilantro, and organic beef from the farm and then tomatoes from my own garden. I thought the Rellenos would make a wonderful addition to my local, but completely delicious meal with my chickens egg and cheeses from Oregon.

My process:

Broiling.

Charred pepper ready to peel.

While I was peeling the peppers, I whipped the egg whites.

Peeled peppers.

Egg yolks, whipped.

Sliced and deseeded peppers.

Stuffing with cheese.

And a token bad pic of me, but I look happy. So I will leave it in the line.

I used a toothpick to keep the peppers together after stuffing.

Floured and ready to be battered.

Mixed fluffy egg whites and beaten egg yolks.

Dipped in the batter and placed in a 1/4 inch of olive oil (I know that olive oil isn't really authentic, but it was in lieu of lard or canola oil).

Results:

Oh, and it was really really good.

The big food budget debate

2008-08-25T12:27:00.000-07:00

Once again, our budget was overrun by the food budget. We spend WAY too much on food. It is insane considering that we get half our food for free and I make enough that we really honestly shouldn't EVER be eating on Don's paycheck at all. But yet, we did. YIKES!

So in comes the budgeting, and the recipe filing, and the planning with ways to save in that area.

I have gotten some really wonderful ideas from these two ladies.

Delicious Wisdom

This is a whole foods website that does about 4 recipes a week. Each and every one is whole foods. Many are dairy free and vegan as well. She does a great job posting the shopping list for the following week at the start so you don't have to wonder whether or not you have enough Agave Nectar to make all four recipes this week. Many recipes are "out there", but I find myself very compelled to try them out. It is a wonderful format and I can't wait to search through her recipes and find new favorites, which I am sure to with beauties like Walnut Banana Muffins.

Life Ventures

This lady is very special in my life. Not only is she constant inspiration for me in many ways, but she also happens to be my best friend. :) She and our other dear friend Heather came up with this amazing binder idea for food recipes. I think it is brilliant! I haven't yet tried to figure out how to do this on a local diet, but it is worth a try as it would make meal planning SO much easier!

I also just got the book "In Defense of Food" by Micheal Pollan (the author of "The Omnivore's Dilemma") from the library and I can't wait to dig in and get back into food on the intellectual level as well. The first line makes a great start for a good conversation:

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

Yep.

Pasta with bell peppers, bacon, and kale

2008-07-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

1 pkg bacon

1 cup heavy cream

4 tomatoes

4 cloves garlic

1 bunch kale

1 red bell pepper

1 cup grated Parmesan

2 red onions

2 pkg linguine

In a very large saute pan cook the bacon (chopped before into small peices) until crispy.

Reserve 3 Tbs of the bacon fat to saute the kale and onion in and put the bacon aside.

Slice the onion in very thin slivers, and add the garlic cloves sliced thin. Place in the same saute pan as the bacon was cooked in. Saute in a bit of the bacon fat (it is best if uncured ham is used) until clear. Toss kale in and if things start to stick to the bottom of the pan, add a bit of the pasta water. Toss the bacon back into the saute pan and add the pepper (also sliced thin).

Once everything is crisp-soft, add the heavy cream, tomatoes (chopped small), and parmesean and mix well. Toss with the linguine and add salt and pepper to taste.

This would be a great dish to substitute the fresh tomatoes with sundried tomatoes.

It was so very good... It would easily serve 8 as a main dish with these proportions, but for us, we ate it tonight and I will keep it for lunches later this week for Don at work. Lucky bugger. ;)

Lemon Tahini Dressing

2008-06-29T12:29:00.000-07:00

My favorite local eatery, which also has a fair trade market attached to it, has this amazing salad. They serve it heaped with brown rice, on top of a bed of romaine lettuce and then tomato slices and cucumber to top it all off, and usually next to this amazing panini sandwich made with roast tomatoes and tons of provalone cheese! Yum!! The dressing they use, they gave me the recipe for years ago... but to make a gallon. lol... so I rarely bother figure it out. And because I make so much at one time, I never have written it down in smaller quantities.

I have been reading about food again. Seriously, it is beginning to be a real, full-on, life long, obsession. I have also been following my diet very closely, and documenting what is working for me and what is not with the nips and twitches that my picky body puts out. The book I am currently in is Sally Falon's Nourishing Traditions. Amazing book. Brings to life everything I have ever believed about food. Partially I love it because it backs up much of my instinct and knowledge, and partly I love it because the recipes are GOOD! And all real food, made with real fat, real ingredients, and really 'from scratch'. Many are even easy. She doesn't shun things like food processors, or crock pots, she just uses them as our ancestors would have... to make 'real' food. I found a recipe in it for a half quart of Tahini Salad Dressing, that reminds me so of the dressing from that eatery I love so much I am nearly sure that is where they got the idea. Theirs has more salt, and a bit more lemon juice and celery than she calls for... but adjusting for taste, it is the same thing. So here it is... This yummy dressing is great over cucumbers right out of the garden for those of you a few months ahead of us (my cuke plants are 2 inches tall) or even as a dip for cuke slices. It is also great as a dressing inside a wrap loaded with yummy veggies and perhaps some light cheese as well. Use your imagination... it could go with anything crisp and satisfying these dog days of summer.

Lemon Tahini Dressing

1 small onion

1 stalk celery

2 T soy sauce

fresh juice of 2 lemons

1/2 c Tahini

4 T olive oil

1/8 cup water

Chop onion and celery coarsely, and put in a food processor or blender until finely chopped. Add remaining ingredients and process until well blended. Thin with a little water to achieve desired consistency.

Oh, and I still adore my bowls. I love getting them out of the cupboard and using them, I love planning things to put in the serving bowl. All of it. I know, I am a dork, but I really really love them. :)

Books to look into

2008-05-15T19:45:00.000-07:00

I have a few book recommendations:

Emergency Food Storage and Survival Handbook by Peggy Dianne Layton

Encyclopedia for Country Living by the late Carla Emery

The Complete Tightwad Gazette by Amy Dycyzen. (Her last name sounds like 'decision')

These are three books that will really spell it out for you in very easy terms how to live as frugally as possible. Which is usually the best for the planet as well. :)

Farewell, My Subaru

2008-04-16T12:48:00.000-07:00

This book was much needed in my life right now. A mix of wonderful writing, humor, and information that I found completely delightful. I read it in three days (and you all know I am a busy woman) and enjoyed 95% of it. The rest, I didn't understand... lol. His quips and comparisons (like naming his local coyote "Dick Cheney") were a highlight for sure. But the trials he went through were also very informative. I learned things I had never understood before. Including information about converting a huge diesel truck (he calls the ROAT or Ridiculously Oversized American Truck) to biofuel, the oily dog situations that ensue on one's property, and the complications that can arise from your ROAT always smelling like KFC, to the intricate measures one has to take to feed livestock newly bought during a devastating flood, his life on Funky Butte Ranch was enlightening, and highly entertaining.

Chapter Eleven "Modern Snake Charming" was particularly entertaining. If I say much more, I could ruin it... but if you know any New Mexican metaphysical types... you will laugh until you pee your pants.

It was a nice break to the doomsday thinking that sometimes engulfs people who have been studying sustainable living and climate change a bit too much. Like the author, Doug Fine, I believe that we are going to make it as a race. And I sure as hell would rather try than give up. So bring on the information about 'goat pimping', garden fence reinforcement that rivals most jails, rattle snake farming, and oily dogs. I am ready for this type of informative optimism.

Low carb becoming mandatory?

2008-04-14T15:06:00.000-07:00

For the last two months, people who make bread and pizza have been constantly concerned with the price of wheat going up. For some of them, it is making their prices sky rocket to the point they are loosing business.

http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2008/feb/29/0229_wheat/

http://www.barternews.com/pdf/WheatShortage.pdf

Aside from people complaining about price, there is a real issue going on with a virus effecting the production of wheat.

Some say the 'shortage' is a myth, talking about the fact that it is really the falling American dollar that is causing the high price. This may be partially true. But with the wheat disease effecting millions in Asia and the Middle East, I think they are wrong. It isn't long before many people with be on mandatory low carbohydrate diets. And some may very well die from the lack.

Even my own local bakery, which we visited yesterday, had a sign up saying "Due to the rising wheat costs, some of our prices may have gone up. We are sorry for the inconveniences this may cause." Before long, bread could be the most expensive item we pick up at the grocery.

Find it hard to find coupons for organics?

2008-04-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

Yes... me too. But this organic couponing guide article tells you how to get coupons to your favorites or be able to try new ones with out the bust to your pocket book. I have a friend (and fellow blogger) who has been very successful by writing to these companies and they have been sending her coupons for weeks now. :) What a fun, new way to see new organics, and be able to try new things!

I just sent off for a couple coupon books. I'll let you know how it goes.

To answer another question...

2008-04-01T12:49:00.001-07:00

I need some more information on these 'Grassy Green Health Food Drinks'.

Is it this? Or this?

Reviewing the nutrition facts on the label, it seems that it is just ground up things that everyone should be eating anyway. lol... Minus some for some people, and minus others for other people. But honestly, every one should have at least one large serving of green leafy veggies... Organic wheat grass, organic barley grass, organic alfalfa, organic spirulina, organic spinach, organic broccoli, organic chlorella are the ones ground up and added into this "super" powder. Then they added ground up dried veggies that contain large amounts of antioxidants... Organic acai, organic maca, organic carrot, organic beet, raspberry, organic rose hips, pineapple, green tea, acerola cherry. Many of these also double as huge Vit C boosters. There are a few things I don't recognise in this blend. 'Maca' for example. Don't know what it is... so I will look it up. But from the over view of ingredients... it seems like just taking veggies, in powder form. Making them more concentrated. Which may not be the best way to get them, but it can't be the worst. ;)

I myself use a protein powder and some tablets of vit D in the winter time dosed into my smoothies in the morning (which have frozen organic bananas, strawberries or blueberries I picked last summer, maple syrup (you saw my undying love of that stuff), apple juice (the real stuff), and brewers yeast. It helps me keep through the long, cold, wet winters of the Pacific NW without modifying my low meat diet much... so I am not one to jump on the haters bandwagon. But at the same time, I am guessing that drinking these drinks does not substitute eating broccoli, or spinach in it's real and raw (and right out of your neighbors farm Field or your home garden) form. But then again... it is better than not eating them at all.

The main trouble with these super foods is usually in the pocket book, not the body.

Did you know?

2008-03-27T20:53:00.000-07:00

... tha maple syrup has more calcium than milk by volume and more potassium than bananas by weight? About 21 mg per tbsp of calcium! It is also terribly high in potassium (35 mg/tbsp).

This is where money outweighs facts when it comes to food marketing. They say that milk does your body good, but in truth, over consumption of milk causes all sorts of problems, and many shouldn't drink the stuff after the age of 4 years old at all! (Between 30 and 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant.)

Amazing what the media can put into our heads that make us put things into our bodies.

Country Capitan Chicken

2008-03-24T12:30:00.000-07:00

This is a recipe that we loved from Kitchen Muse. It is a southern flare dish, with a bit of curry in it that brings out the flavor of everything. It is very nice over brown rice, or couscous. I always side it with a green salad, but you can honestly side it with any veggie dish, or make it a one pot meal by adding in 1 1/2 cups of couscous right into the pot! (We have done this too... it was a hit, but Don likes to pour his sauce over his starch).

Country Capitan Chicken

(with happy Val modifications)

4 Tbs butter
1/2 diced onion
1 diced carrot
1 diced bell pepper (color doesn't matter, but green works best)
6 cloves garlic (minced)

~~~~
3 lbs chicken peices (I like theighs)
2 Tbs olive oil
1/2 c flour
salt and pepper to taste

~~~~
2 cups diced tomatoes
2 cups chicken broth
3 tea curry powder
1/4 c slivered almonds
1/4 cup golden raisins

Melt butter in a large skillet. The skillet should be large ebough to cook the chicken in one layer. Add the onion, carrot, pepper, and garlic and cook until tender. Transfer to a bowl.

Mix flour and salt and pepper in a large bowl. Roll chicken peices in the flour mixture. Put oil into the skillet you just pulled the veggies from, and add the chicken, in one layer, turning until well brown on both sides.

Add veggies back in, along with tomatoes, stock and curry, mixing well. Stir in raisins and almonds. Simmer for about 10 minutes or until all chicken is cook through well.

Serve over couscous or brown rice.

It is very good!

Notice the new bowl plates. :) I love them. I am trying to get a eclectic set, but this set will be my salad plate/bowls, and my cereal bowls. The plates will come from somewhere else, and I don't need mugs (just ask my husband). I have been waiting for new dishes for about two years, and have been sitting on the money to get them for two months. I was ready for the perfect set to fall in my lap. And they did... while I was looking for Easter basket stuff for the kids.

Wonderful Interviews

2008-03-23T20:58:00.001-07:00

I really have to admit, I love this guy. He speaks everything I have thought for years, and has the studies and backings behind it to explain why...

http://cookingupastory.com/food-news-michael-pollan-in-defense-of-food/

There are at least 4 interviews here. One is from a farmer from Portland OR with a egg coop that I found yesterday, and it is here as well, and then the interview with Micheal Pollen that is just fasinating. Enjoy!

Big Farms vs Small Farms

2008-03-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

Big Farming VS Little Farming

There are a LOT of ideas in these areas coming to light lately. In Omnivore's Dilemma, Micheal Pollen talks about this a bunch. His stance is that big farms are pretty necessary. We wouldn't have populated places where there isn't farm land without them. Think; people who live in Phoenix, AZ. The plant and animal bio-diversity there is severely limited by the lack of water and the lack of soil. People there are constantly shipping in foods just to survive. Without the large farms, people couldn't live in parts of our country that are heavily populated... but what about the impact?

The biggest impact of huge farms is Mono Cropping. Mono Cropping, in a nutshell, is planting the same thing, on the same land, over and over and over again. Thus having to put in nutrients that the soil lacks each year by artificial means to keep the crop that has depleted the soil of those same nutrients, growing there. 90% of the time, they do this with chemicals. Many of these chemicals are leached into the water table beneath these huge farms because the soil is barren and dry for the part of the year that the crops are NOT producing there. There is no reason to plant cover crops (which would replace some of these nutrients) with the chemicals so readily available, and there is no reason to crop rotate if you know that whatever your soil is lacking, you can just add chemical #1 from this box, and chemical #2 from this box and call it good. It is cheaper, faster, and takes MUCH less work.

The largest mono crops in this country are soybeans and corn. Usually not even grown for human consumption, but for cattle and livestock feed. But that is another post all together.

Every single gardening book I have (not just the ones that are for 'organic' or 'beyond organic' gardening) recommends crop rotation and cover crops if you have a large part of unused land. These things are vital to keeping the soil healthy. They bring back nutrients, and if you are careful, can even yield you another full crop! Yet, many (I dare say 'most') large farms have stopped doing this. Trucking in manure and planting legumes to overwinter seems out of the question on a large scale... but for the back yard gardener it is essential.

Big Organics VS Big "Conventional"

Using the word "conventional" here annoys me. The conventional way of growing has only been 'conventional' for less than 75 years. When talking about the history of farming, that doesn't seem to be long enough to set it as the "conventional" methods. But I digress....

Big organics are forced (and most willingly) to be more sustainable than their conventional counterparts. They use animal manure (usually organic as well) to supply the nutrients that their crops have used up. Some even still use cover crops for their needs as well, making them as efficient as many smaller organic farms (where it is the norm to do both of these things). So when asked if big organic is better than big conventional, the answer is a resounding YES! The more big organic companies are supported, the few chemicals are put into our soil and the more soil is used sustainably. But I say that with a bit of hesitation because big organic still is monocropping. Many large organic companies have one or two crops. This inhibits the biodiversity of an area, and that, as much as we can see now, is not the best for the environment.

Here is something I picked up from Wikipedia on the topic:

Proponents of organic farming say that "conventional" farming is unsustainable, because it relies on artificial inputs (synthetic fertilizers and other chemicals, machinery, etc.) that ultimately requires energy in the form of fossil fuels, and because the land is degraded through soil erosion, salinization, and other processes that eventually render the soil infertile. Many claim that without cheap fossil fuels and government subsidies, conventional agriculture would not be possible, and that despite technological advancements, there will eventually be an agricultural crisis as a result of depleted soil. The cultivation of monocultures, many acres planted with the same crop year after year, increases susceptibility to pests and diseases and depletes the soil, while eliminating most native flora and fauna.

In contrast, organic farming often utilizes intercropping, crop rotation, fallow periods, and integrated pest management to promote biodiversity and preserve the health of the soil while minimizing the risk of diseases. The main goal of organic farming is sustainability, so organic farms seek to minimize dependence on outside resources and be self-sufficient.

Small Farms

You would not make it on a small farm with only one crop. Not unless you had a full time job to go with it. Being small, you are forced to find a niche in the food market so you don't get bumped out by the companies that can do things twice as cheap as you (and are usually 20 times as big). This is why most small farms you see now are certified (or becoming certified) organic. That is their niche. They can charge what they need, the supply line is shorter so the shipping doesn't cost quite as much (some customers will even come to you!), and they can raise a huge variety of crops, ensuring that when you stop by a farm stand, there will be something that catches you eye, and you will spend some money. Plus, if they loose one crop, it isn't their whole years livelihood. The small farms I have been to and worked with, all have been organic, so I couldn't tell you much about the small conventional farms. I have never seen one that was successful.

A few things have been true in all of the smaller farms I have seen. First off, they are organic. Like stated above. Secondly, they are family based. They have a few seasonal hands that come in here and there for planting and for larger harvests, but mostly, it is a couple, or a couple with extended family that is doing most of the work. Thirdly, their crops are very diverse. Peas to harvest in May, corn and new potatoes to harvest in July, and pumpkins to harvest in October. And lastly, they are working mainly for the local market. I have heard of being part of a cooperative of farms, such as Organic Valley farms is for dairy products, which get their products shipped all over the country, but for the most part, if you are a small farm, you do most of your work (planting, to harvest, to marketing, shipping, and sales) by yourself. So you don't tend to travel as far.

For me these factors mean two things. I like the idea of supporting families. Individuals. Not the guys at the very top of a big business organic food chain, but the actual people growing my food. I like that idea. Also, I appreciate that the food was picked maybe days before. Not weeks, but days. It stands to reason that they are picked much closer to peak ripeness as their conventional, big business counterparts because they don't have to be shipped from 2000 miles away to get to me. This could (I am not sure on the subject and there are many arguments for and against) mean that my food has been able to extract more nutrients from the soil in which it stayed for the entire period of time Mother Nature intended... making it far more nutritious than the ones that were picked weeks ahead of that natural schedule meant to be shipped from farther away than I go on my average vacation.

Good article about nutrition, taste, local, and organics

2008-03-17T18:22:00.000-07:00

This article brings up and helps clarify some really wonderful questions about local foods, farmers markets, and organics 'at all cost'.

Eating Better Than Organic

I bet you, that man from the "liberal Washington group that supports strong organic standards" is currently living less than an hour from me. I should look him up.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

2008-03-13T12:49:00.000-07:00

I loved reading this book. Basically a fundamental story of one families story of local living. Kingsolver's plucky humor and realism was wonderful. She and her family had a go-getter attitude that I believe fueled many of their well planned dreams come reality. Again, it took years worth of planning to create this dream of local living. But she says many times, it is the small things that count. The asking questions that no one else asks, doing tasks like making your own cheese, and selling your extra eggs to neighbors... the caring about things that others dare not care about. And in the end, she writes about a very satisfying life, with no level of deprivation, on a mostly local diet. And in the process, she becomes part of a tight knit community as well.

It was a wonderfully inspiring read, and, aside from the intimate interludes into turkey sex, it had wonderfully digestible and easily do-able information.

Reviews, recipes, and many more joyous pictures can be found at their website:

http://www.animalvegetablemiracle.com/

Books on families or individuals going local are popping up for all over the globe and I hope they continue. It is wonderful to be able to read all of these books and glean what I can pull into my own personal life. Setting goals for a more local existence and getting off 'the oil' is a huge part of the environmentalist movement now-a-days and being able to take a bit from Pollan, a bit from Kingsolver, a bit from Cockburn, and a bit from Fine... well, I have a working plan in my head that evolves each time I crack a page in one of these library borrowed legacies into local living.

Chocolate chip pumpkin bread

2008-03-11T12:31:00.000-07:00

My whole family is in love with pumpkin bread. This is a great recipe, being a bit more dense, and a bit less sweet than most, so the mini simi sweet chips really stand out and give it an amazing flavor. The recipe came about when I had less of some ingredients than I needed for a pumpkin cupcake recipe and went ahead anyway. I am so very glad I did.

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

"wet"

1 cup pumpkin puree (or cooked pumpkin mashed with a fork)
1/2 c vegetable oil

2 eggs
1/4 c water
1 c sugar (raw works fine)

1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp all spice

"dry"

1 c all-purpose flour

1 c spelt flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt

Mix 'wet' list together in a large mixing bowl. Beat together until well blended and smooth.

Mix dry together by sifting into another bowl, stir and then add to wet mixture. When well blended, mix in 1/2 c of mini simisweet chocolate chips.

Add batter to a well oiled baking dish (or 24 muffin tins with paper cups), and place in a 375* oven for 45 - 60 minutes.

As with all quick breads, these are done when tooth pick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Cool at least half way before you dig in.... I have gotten a couple burns that way.

I wish I had a picture of Logan tonight... covered in pumpkin bread and chocolate smudges here and there, standing next to the counter with his little hand reaching for the bread oh-so-cutely.

Sigh... the pictures that are only in my mind.

Sustainable Living For Dummies

2008-03-01T12:51:00.000-08:00

Lots of good information, too much for me to finish actually, but I got some wonderful ideas about how to build cloches and a few other great gardening tips, and over and over again it had off articles and tables and stats about how the world is changing and what we can do to help.

It is based in Australia (at least the one I got was) and I would love to see an American version of this, as it would be a much bigger help to me with all the resources lists and graphic tables. But it was easy to see that this type of book is going to help a lot of people get on a more sustainable path. It would have been great to have when I started this journey. I am no where near the where I want to be on a sustainable living path, but I had found most of the information in this book somewhere else first.

HFCS

2008-02-28T10:15:00.000-08:00

High fructose corn syrup is no longer a food. It has been reduced and refined to drug form. Quite literally. This is becoming common knowledge, and I am thrilled with that! But it still is very much a part of our every day diets as Americans.

From Wikipedia:

High-fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is any of a group of corn syrups which have undergone enzymatic processing in order to increase their fructose content and are then mixed with pure corn syrup (100% glucose) to reach their final form. The typical types of HFCS are: HFCS 90 (used almost exclusively in the production of HFCS 55) which is approximately 90% fructose and 10% glucose; HFCS 55 (most commonly used in soft drinks) which is approximately 55% fructose and 45% glucose; and HFCS 42 (used in other a variety of other foods, including baked goods) which is approximately 42% fructose and 58% glucose.[1]

The process by which HFCS is produced was first developed by Richard O. Marshall and Earl R. Kooi in 1957[2] and refined by Japanese researchers in the 1970s. HFCS was rapidly introduced in many processed foods and soft drinks in the US over the period of about 1975–1985.

Does this sound like a food? It isn't something that has been reduced to a concentrate... it is something that has been reduced beyond that. Well beyond that, and added with other highly processed corn sugar products to make something as potent as sugar, but at a 200th of the cost.

It wouldn't exsist in nature.

First post

2008-02-28T10:04:00.001-08:00

I have thought and thought about this. I have researched nutrition for years. I minored in it when I was in college. Throughout the years I have used my knowledge for various people to help them gather new ideas and information. Now that I am rekindling my interest, I am finding that my research is becoming pigeonholed to the local movement. Which is fine for me and my family, but it makes my research bias, and not as easily shared.

So I am creating this blog for people to ask questions so I have more to research. Of course, there will be things I already know... but there will also be things that stump me, and spawn a new off shoot of interest in other nutrition venues so that I can broaden my knowledge base again.

You are all welcome to pose questions to me regarding nutritional ideas, fads, personal nutrition issues, cravings and anything else that fits in or around those categories. The more the merrier, as it will keep my research refreshed and new, and I will appreciate that. I look forward to chatting with you all. :)

Living The Good Life

2008-01-14T12:53:00.000-08:00

Yet another book about the ethics of food, (and this one also goes into the ethics of energy, water, and even waste disposal).

In this book, well it is really a diary of a families choice (mama, papa, and one spunky 6 year old boy) to go "money free" for 6 months.

They live in Australia, and so much of the culture, and even some of the language was different than something I would normally run into. Esp being from the wettest part of North America myself, drought often has no reach here. But there, it is becoming an every year problem. In the book you follow this family through their 6 self sustainable months through everything, from eating pumpkin (which they call all squash, from what I gathered... I would hate to think they were eating actual pumpkin all that time) every day for a while to what to feed Possum, their noisy and demanding milk goat.

The book was well written, although some of the language was clearly Aussie, and terribly interesting.

One of my complaints about the book is that I wish that she had gone in more depth about how they did their daily self sustainable things. She talks often about the 5000 kilo tanks she has outside, but does not ever show a picture of them, or where they are on her property. She talks at length about the composting toilet, but again, no picture, or how they put it in, etc. Some of those things would be helpful if they ever were to print a second addition to the book... to help others get used to the idea of that path.

It was nice to read that it took her three years to get ready to do the 6 month project (and in some cases much much longer prep was employed. Trev, her husband, built his own log cabin in the bush and it took 15 years.) So they had some tools. And it was nice to know that not just "everybody" could do it, but that this goal, of getting off the world oil tit, was a long term one... one that even the most prepared had to work at for a while before they could really employ.

Living The Good Life Website

The Omnivore's Dilemma

2008-01-14T12:51:00.000-08:00

http://www.michaelpollan.com/omnivore.php

I have just finished the Omnivore's Dilemma. It is an intense book. It is one of those that you really want to read with a highlighter and a pen to write in the margins. lol... I am interested in reading whatever else Micheal Pollan puts out.

Man, the book is SO interesting. Really good information, put out in a way that is matter of fact, and not alarming in the slightest (unless of course, the content is alarming... I think I meant not "alarmist" in the sense that he doesn't go "This is TERRIBLE, look what THEY do....." KWIM?) He goes through four different meals, from as industrial as you can get to as 'natural' as you can get. McDonald's of course, came first. Then Whole Foods industrial organics. Then PolyFace Farms (a sustainable grass/meat farm). Then a meal he hunts, kills, grows or gathers himself.

He follows each one back to the very start of the food chain on which they were formed.

For McDonald's it was industrial grown corn to feed the chickens and the beef (cows are not made to eat corn). It is pretty amazing how much of the fast food is made from corn. You'd never know from eating it, but really, it is all corn fed meat, fried in corn oil, battered in corn starch, corn fats, and salts from corn, with a side of High Fructose Corn Syrup soda. I had some idea, but I just didn't realize how true his most famous quote is: "So that's us; processed corn, walking."

He follows that up with a nice stint on an industrial organic farm. Then moves on to PolyFace, then on to his own hunting/mushroom hunting/gardening experiences.

Fascinating. Just really really interesting stuff.

He makes a point of staying very objective through out the entire book, and sharing his opinions in a language that it is clear he is owning each and every one of them. He doesn't expect you to think the way he does... he just says what HE thinks. It is a nice refresher for those of us who have read "fad" diet books where there is only ONE way to do things (and here is why - and here is the science behind it is on page 452 - and here is why everything else is wrong on page 597... lol.).

The other two books I have right now promise to be lighter, and I am ready. Don said to me the other day that I really need to find something that I can read for pleasure. Something that doesn't give me more to work on and worry about at the end of the day. I said that is what NetFlix is for. lol... he wasn't convinced.

Wise Traditions

2007-10-31T13:02:00.000-07:00

by Sally Fallon author of Nourishing Traditions

http://www.westonaprice.org/modernfood/dirty-secrets.html

This article challanges the way we eat food today. Challanging that when 'they' say that half our diet should be made up of grains it doesn't mean processed grains, and that processed grains can actually be killing us and making our children more suseptable to disease.

I have never thought that cold cereal is good for you. But the main thing that has always held me back in buying it is price. Not nutrition. So when I read this, I was shocked to not only believe what she says, but understand that gut reaction that has told me that cereal isn't good for you. She doesn't use scare tactics... she uses plain facts. Some of which have been covered up by the billion dollar food market that keeps telling us these things are good for us.

Another thing that startled me was the way they put the fat back into milk. Now I am wondering if there is a way to get small farm milk from around here.

And orange juice... just make it yourself. Really.