Banana Herds

Farmer's market

2008-06-25T14:23:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I strolled from booth to booth at the farmer's market, admiring shining baskets of cherries, early zucchini and cucumbers, and wondering briefly if I could fit pineapple sage in my herb garden. I stopped at a table of multicolored tomatoes and bought five. I bypassed the bratworst stand and came upon a woman setting out gooseberries and raspberries. I had tasted gooseberries for the first time last year and, remembering the pie I made, bought a small basket. I picked up a large cabbage at another stall, and spent my last two dollars on a basil plant.

At Sharp Shopper I found Virginia peanuts, local honey, and a new item from the farm that produces the popcorn that Ben eats in vast quantities: white corn. I bought a bag along with a bag of popcorn. I also made a non-local purchase of black beans. Our black beans in the garden have pods of a size which I would eat green if we weren't growing them to dry.

I sliced one of the tomatoes and sprinkled them with the pinched-off top of the basil plant. We had them for supper along with leftover garbanzos and greens over rice (for Ben) and cornmeal (for me).

I've been feeling that it's time to bring our baseline phase to a close. We haven't yet decided what we should try to phase out. I'm inclined to continue eating dry beans until ours are ready to harvest, then re-evaluate depending on the size of our harvest. Cheese is often at the top of my food guilt list: non-local, refrigerated, processed, high fat, possibly from confined cows causing polluted run-off. . . but do I want to live without cheese? Or learn the complex-sounding process of making my own? Or pay $14 a pound for cheese from Charlottesville? Then there are rice, oats, sunflower seeds, vinegar, lentils. . . I can eliminate any or all of these from our diet for a week or a month, but do we really want to long-term?

Local-ish chocolate cake

2008-06-23T20:01:00.004-04:00

This morning we had our oft-eaten breakfast of toast (local), eggs (100 foot), and tea (fair trade). Afterward I harvested our crop of garlic, planted last fall. We got some nice big heads as well as some small ones, probably 20-30. It's curing on our back deck.

Yesterday I cooked a chicken from a friend who butchered last summer. We rarely have chicken in the house (or any other meat) so I have been planning all my meals that involve chicken. For supper this evening I made a sesame chicken couscous salad (though I used quinoa instead of couscous) from the Simply in Season cookbook.
100 foot: Broccoli, snap peas, green onion
Local: Chicken, chicken broth
Non: Quinoa, soy sauce, lemon juice, olive oil, sesame oil, almonds

For dessert and breakfast tomorrow I made muffins and chocolate cake.
For the muffins:
100 foot: Black raspberries, eggs
Local: Butter, honey, flour
Non: Baking powder, salt

For the cake (of which Ben has just very kindly brought me a piece):
100 foot: Grated cucumber (frozen from last year)
Local: Butter, honey, flour, milk
Non: Cocoa powder (fair trade), salt, baking soda, vinegar, sunflower seeds, vanilla

The cake is a different recipe than what I usually use, and not as sweet. I think using local ingredients transforms chocolate cake into a healthy food, right? Perhaps I should have another piece.

Two meals from beets

2008-06-21T20:59:00.002-04:00

I've missed a few days of writing, partially due to a suddenly leaking well pump tank, necessatating late-night trips to big-box hardware stores and a take-out meal due to no water. Since that has been resolved meal highlights have included a nearly all-local leaf soup and local popcorn, butter, and honey, along with non-local cinnamon.

For breakfast this morning we had a family favorite: flat pancakes (also known as crepes).
100 foot: Eggs
Local: Wheat, buttermilk, strawberries in jam, milk, ghee
Non: Sugar in jam, salt, coffee

Lunch was late, but very tasty: Roasted vegetables from the garden, bean salad, and just-baked bread.
100 foot: New potatoes, beets, turnips, onions, lemon thyme, parley, green beans (canned)
Local: Garlic, onions, bread, corn (frozen), honey
Non: Olive oil, white beans, garbanzo beans, vinegar, salt, pepper

For supper we weren't very hungry, so I cooked some of the beet greens left over from lunch. Ben is eating popcorn and I'm eating granola for a snack.

A lot of the "groceries" I buy these days are not really food items: toothpaste, cat food, bird seed, etc. I've been thinking about ways to reduce those as well. A few days ago as I was thinking about sweeteners, I was thinking that I would only buy white sugar for the hummingbirds. Then I thought about planting a bird garden next year rather than putting up bird feeders. I could plant sweet peas, monarda, nasturtiums, and sweet william for the hummingbirds, and sunflowers, thistles, and grasses for the other birds.

We have lots of rabbits in our yard right now, but I have no intention of making my own cat food any time soon. If only I could convince Krikkit to live on pine voles. . .

Mulberries

2008-06-17T21:42:00.002-04:00

This afternoon I went over to our neighbor's yard to pick mulberries from his tree. It's a giant old spreading mulberry that's been dropping berries on the edge of the road for a couple of weeks now. As I picked two squirrels chased each other up and down the trunk. The berries were not the best I'd ever tasted, but they were plentiful. I picked almost half a gallon just from what I could reach from the ground, plus all those I ate. I washed and froze the berries when I was done. There is a mulberry cake recipe I want to try, or perhaps it's time for more pie. . .

Breakfast and lunch today were granola and leftovers, respectively, previously documented. Ben was at class this evening, so I had a rather miscellanious supper of peas and new potatoes, wheat cereal, and a bit of ice cream.

100 foot: Potatoes, peas, dill
Local: Butter, milk, wheat
Non: Sugar

I was excited to find fair trade organic sugar at Red Front today! Now I can buy local honey and maple syrup, and fair trade sugar. I'm still hunting for local molasses.

Sourdough bread

2008-06-16T20:11:00.003-04:00

This morning Ben got up early to pick the peas before getting ready for work. He also put our loaf of sourdough bread, which had been rising overnight, in the oven to bake, so when I got up 20 minutes later it was already starting to smell good. Here's our sourdough bread recipe:

Sponge:
1 cup (or so) sourdough starter
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup water
Mix in the morning and let stand until evening. Sponge should be bubbly and slightly risen.

sponge from above
2-4 T honey
1/2 t. diastatic malt
1-2 t. salt
2 T melted butter
4-6 cups whole wheat flour

Remove 1/2 cup sponge, mix with 1/2 cup water and 1/2 cup flour; store in refrigerator for next time. Mix honey, butter, malt, and salt with remaining sponge. Stir in flour until dough is stiff enough to knead. Add flour until dough is easy to handle but still slightly sticky. Too wet is better than too dry. Shape into loaf, place in greased loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap, leaving room for bread to rise. Let rise overnight. Place in oven, turn on to 375 degrees, and bake 35 minutes. Turn out of pan to cool.

Breakfast: Bread, honey, peanut butter, coffee, pie
Local: Bread, honey, PB, some pie ingredients, milk
Non: Coffee, some pie ingredients

Lunch was leftovers which I've catalogued in earlier posts.

Supper: Omelet, toast
100 foot: Swiss chard, eggs, parsley
Local: Onion, butter, honey, bread

The most exciting food is to be eaten shortly: Homemade strawberry ice cream!
100 foot: Eggs
Local: Milk, cream, strawberries, honey
Non: Vanilla extract

Invented meals and picky hens

2008-06-15T20:58:00.002-04:00

Yesterday we got home late after a trip to Staunton where we saw A Merchant of Venice at the Blackfriar's Playhouse--excellent theater as always. We also ate supper at the Baja Bean Co., all non-local most likely.

Breakfast yesterday: Cornmeal pancakes
100 foot: Egg
Local: Cornmeal, butter, milk, yogurt whey
Non: Syrup, corn masa, coffee, salt

Lunch: Salad, bread, yogurt, strawberries
100 foot: Chard, lettuce, borage, egg, strawberries, mint tea
Local: Bread, bacon, honey, yogurt
Non: Vinegar, olive oil

Snack: Pie and milk again. . . (one piece left now!)

This morning's breakfast was scrambled eggs and toast. Our hens are laying 2-3 eggs per day these days, so we eat eggs frequently to keep up. Pastured eggs (which ours are) have something like five times the omega-3 of factory farmed eggs, half the collesterol, more vitamin B, and so on. My project this evening was trying to convince the hens that they would like to eat the broccoli worms that are attacking our crucifers. One hen, Zia, would eat a few of the smaller ones. The other two were skeptical. I'll keep trying; I had to convince them to try japanese beetles at first. Now there are few things they like better.
100 foot: Eggs
Local: Bread, honey, strawberries in jam, bacon fat
Non: Coffee, sugar in jam

Lunch was one of our favorite curry recipes which Ben discovered and we have since modified to use whatever we have.
100 foot: Peas
Local: Onions, ghee
Non: Rice, red lentils, garlic, spices, chutney

Supper was an invention of mine: one of those inspired by wanting to use whatever's in the fridge with a minimum of time and effort. I ended up making creamed turnip greens on toast with Swiss cheese. It was pretty good, though Ben would have preferred a base other than toast.
100 foot: Turnip greens
Local: Flour, butter, milk, toast, garlic flower buds
Non: Swiss cheese, dry mustard

I'll add here a perpetual item that I should have been including at the end of each day:
Snack for Ben: Popcorn
Local: Popcorn
Non: Olive oil, salt

Shelves vs. dirt

2008-06-13T19:08:00.004-04:00

This morning I was on the east end of town for a meeting, so I stopped in to a new chain grocery store. Several people had told me that they enjoyed the layout and the wide selection of natural foods. While I wasn't sure if this meant local foods, I had some hopes. Not surprisingly, they turned out to be unfounded. I followed the directory toward the bulk foods aisle with hopes of finding brown basmati rice, but it seemed to consist largely of nuts, dried fruits, and candies. In the "natural foods" section nearby, I did find organic white rice for twice the price of my usual grocery store, Red Front. There was a large selection of what appeared to be organic junk food. I eventually selected cat food, non-scented shampoo, and vitamins and walked to the checkout past an employee unloading boxes of cherries from Washington state.

Now, there's really nothing wrong with this store. As chain groceries go, it's probably very nice. I am realizing more and more, however, that I don't want food that comes from stores. It sounds odd to say this. Cat food, shampoo, fine, but I'll eat the cherries that came from Ben's co-worker's tree. (Said cherries await my pitting in the refrigerator right now.) There is increasingly less and less food on the shelves of stores that I feel good about buying.

So, the meals for today:

Breakfast: Granola, milk, coffee, pie
Local: Milk, peanuts, honey, wheat bran, some pie ingredients (see yesterday)
Non local: Oats, sunflower seeds, flaxseed, molasses, coffee, some pie ingredients

Lunch: Turnips, sandwich
100 foot: Turnips, chard
Local: Bread (except salt), onion, PB, honey, yogurt

Snack: Pickled beets
100 foot: Beets
Non: Vinegar, sugar

Supper: Tamale pie, mint tea
100 foot: Cilantro, tomatillo salsa (partially), sweet and hot peppers (frozen), mint, stevia, egg
Local: Cornmeal, onion, buttermilk, yogurt whey, fat, honey, corn (frozen)
Non: Pinto beans, baking soda, salt

We have a 25lb bag of non-local rolled oats that go into our perpetual supply of granola, and I'm not sure what I could do without buying dry beans, BUT! Our bean plants, which I am growing to dry, are beginning to flower! I need to get out to the garden to pick the peas and strawberries before dark, so I shall close here.

Baseline

2008-06-12T20:36:00.002-04:00

Ben had an idea: What if, for a period of time, we would track what we eat now, see what's local and what's not, then work to replace as many non-local items as we can?

As I am always up for food-related projects, I liked the idea. I had also wanted to get back to writing this weblog on a regular basis, and this seemed like a good motivation. I had also considered participating in the 100 foot diet challenge and this sounded like it would work well as a first step toward that goal as well.

So without further ado, an inventory of our eating today:
Breakfast: Pancakes, homemade syrup, honey, jam, strawberries, yogurt, peanut butter, coffee, milk
100 foot ingredients: Egg, strawberries
Other local ingredients: Wheat, milk, butter, buttermilk, yogurt, honey, strawberries in jam, peanuts in peanut butter
Non local: Buckwheat, flaxseed, salt, baking powder, sugar, maple flavoring, coffee
Notes: With the syrup (homemade) and the jam, this meal probably contained more sugar than most that we eat. The sugar or the coffee probably traveled the farthest. The coffee was actually roasted locally and is organic and fair trade, so I don't feel as bad about that as the bought-in-a-bag-from-who-knows-where refined charcoal filtered white sugar.

Lunch: Mexican-style rice and beans
100 foot: Swiss chard, cilantro, canned tomatillo salsa (partially)
Local: Onions, bacon/chicken fat
Non local: Rice, pinto beans, cumin, cheese, salt

Snack: Pie, milk
Local: Cherries, wheat, butter, milk
Non local: Sugar, almond flavoring, tapioca, salt

Supper: Omlet, turnips, bread
100 foot: Eggs, turnips and greens
Local: Onions, garlic, milk, bacon/chicken fat
Non local: Soy sauce, bread, black pepper
Notes: The bread was an impulse buy from the farmer's market--locally made, but (probably) not local ingredients.

Snack: Pie, milk
100 foot: Rhubarb, strawberries
Local: Wheat, butter, milk
Non: Sugar, corn starch
Notes: I know, I know--two kinds of pie in one day. My sister visited on Monday and we spent the day picking and cooking.

Today is looking like a lot of sugar for the dominant non-local food. This is kind of surprising to me because I don't think I eat that much sugar. I think the pies are an anomaly.

Now that it's over

2007-11-02T15:29:00.000-04:00

Wednesday was the last day of our month-long eat local challenge. We had a tasty supper of hamburgers with the rest of our Polyface Farms ground beef, and made french fries with some of our potatoes.

Yesterday I went to the grocery store, intending stock up on all the things we'd been missing during the last month. During October my trips to the store were very straightforward: check the produce section for anything local (I rarely found anything), ignore the bulk foods, cereals, and dairy aisle, pick up cat food, toothpaste, toilet paper and other inedibles, and check out. This time, there was suddenly a dilemma: What now should I buy?

The bulk food section was pretty easy: no-brand corn chips, lentils, organic brown rice, almonds and walnuts. I felt fine about buying those; non-refrigerated, dry, nutrient dense foods (okay, maybe not the chips). I moved on to the produce section. Here, we still had a good supply of most of the foods we eat. I briefly admired the oranges, decided to check the farmer's market one more time for onions, and picked out a bag of organic carrots, grown in California and no doubt shipped cross-country in refrigerated trucks. I justified a browning bunch of bananas on the reduced price rack because surely they'd be thrown out the next day and just go to waste.

Now I was through the bakery and on to the dairy aisle. I knew we still had some cheese we'd frozen before the last month, and we wouldn't be buying milk or butter anytime soon because of a happy occurance earlier that day: I had finally gotten off the waiting list for a cowshare! At a farmhouse just outside of Harrisonburg I had signed papers, paid fees, and walked to my car with two half-gallon glass jars of milk while the cows grazed nearby along with chickens and frolicking goats. Nearly the top quarter of each jar was risen cream.

Back in the grocery store, I pondered the frozen vegetables. I had discovered earlier in the week that we had no frozen peas left from our garden. Which ones to buy? The cheap store brand? Look for something organic? Pull out packages and try to divine where the peas were grown? In the end I decided we'd just eat our own green beans instead.

Though our month was over, I left the store with a single bag of groceries, rather than the three or four that were standard prior to October. Yet we have plenty of food. Today and yesterday I've eaten barley, lentils, sugar, raisins, bananas, carrots, nutmeg, black pepper, dried italian seasoning mix, baking soda, cheese, cocoa powder, and bagels. I'll probably continue to eat those things. But I likely won't be buying other non-local produce (unless we can't find those onions!), pasta, milk, butter, yogurt, or flour. I want to try buying rice and oats in 50lb bags. I still buy fairly traded coffee, tea, and chocolate. Maybe someday I'll be ambitious enough to make mozzerella cheese.

Now, if I could get that greenhouse built and plant my orange tree. . .

Pepper harvest

2007-10-29T21:18:00.001-04:00

Last night we had our first frost. We hadn't checked the weather until late afternoon, so we spent last evening hurrying to get everything picked and inside before dark, mainly peppers and pole beans. All the houseplants came inside as well, and I dug some of the herbs--we'll see if they'll grow inside in pots.

We have many peppers to freeze. How many? Here's an illustration:

On my way home from work today I stopped at a produce stand near our house. I had gotten sweet corn there last year, but hadn't stopped this year. The man running it told me their last day this year is the 31st. I got some Granny Smith apples as a change from our mystery Red Delicious cross, sweet onions, and a free watermelon (last one of the season).

I decided to use my finds along with our abundance of peppers for supper, so I made sweet and sour chicken. I cheated slightly by using vinegar from some of our pickled hot peppers. Here's the recipe, heavily adapted from More-With-Less.

Apple Chicken

1-1 1/2 cups chicken breast and other meat, cut into pieces
1 large onion, cut in wedges
1 red pepper, cut in pieces
1 tart apple, thinly sliced

Saute chicken, onion, and pepper in a large frying pan. Once chicken is cooked reduce heat and add apple. Fry a minute longer.

Make a sauce with:
3/4 cup apple cider
2 Tablespoons vinegar
2 Tablespoons flour
2 teaspoons salt

Add to frying pan, stirring until sauce thickens. Serve over noodles.

Chili!

2007-10-27T21:20:00.000-04:00

Tonight was our church's annual chili cook-off. As such, it fell under our free food and social exemptions. In addition, we were on the committee that coordinated the event so we invoked a seldom-used ox-threshing-grain exemption.

With three simultaneous exemptions working for us we ate a lot of chili. Sarah says she gained five pounds since this afternoon--she claims our bathroom scale proves this. I don't have such definitive proof but I certainly feel as though I've gained weight.

By our count, there were twenty-two different types of chili at the event. Sarah systematically tasted each one; I was less deliberate but--I think--equally thorough. We also served fruit, vegetables, cornbread and iced pumkin bars but with that much chili to choose from who needs anything else?

2007-10-26T19:23:00.001-04:00

Yesterday was a busy day, so in lieu of cooking a local supper we patronized a great local restaurant, the Little Grill Collective. They serve local meats and eggs and make an effort to buy local produce. So I felt I could semi-justify a meal there during our month of eating locally.

Unfortunately, last night left us with no leftovers for today. My in-a-hurry lunch packing effort yielded a midmorning snack of a sweetpotato, and lunch of radishes, baked potatoes, yogurt and cider. Not quite what my ideal would have been, but filling.

For supper this evening I made hamburger stew and spoonbread. I think it was the first time I had cooked ground beef since living at home before college. This ground beef was from Polyface Farms
(courtesy of a natural food store in Harrisonburg). I remember ground beef as being slighly greyish and greasy. This was completely red before cooking, and when I tried to drain off the fat, as the recipe instructed, there was none to drain. I've been semi-vegetarian for a long time since I don't particularly enjoy most meat, it's expensive, factory farming is an abomination, etc. This discovery of local meats may change things. It'll probably still be a rare thing (because now it's really expensive), but I can think of some very tasty recipes which may need more than the other half of this ground beef pound.

Clam Chowder

2007-10-24T20:33:00.000-04:00

The way Sarah tells it, she asked the folks at Kroger if they had any local food and after much thought they suggested Chesapeake Bay clams--the bay just falls within our hundred-mile line. She happily purchased them and created a delicious clam chowder with local potatoes and milk, and cuttings from our herb garden. Since I'm not much for seafood Sarah was even kind enough to make clamless chowder for me. It was delicious too.

To accompany our chowders I opened a jar of homemade white grape* juice. It was the perfect complement: sweet and pungent to set off the creamy, earthy flavors of the soup. I tend to take a utilitarian approach to food but this was a meal worth savoring.

* In the past we've waited months for these grapes to ripen to concord purple. This year we were smarter.

A change of pace

2007-10-23T19:09:00.000-04:00

This afternoon at work, after eating a non-local lunch (thanks Ben!) I was trying to come up with a supper plan for tonight. I visited the farmers' market this morning, and though I didn't find carrots or onions, I did buy eggs (we were down to one from our hens), beets, and radishes. That combination didn't inspire any supper ideas, however. I jotted down a few ideas, but none of them really struck my fancy.

When I got home, I remembered that I had marked a few recipes in the More-With-Less cookbook a couple days before that I thought I could make with all local ingredients. I decided on a breakfast-for-supper theme and made a modified version of High-Protein Pancakes or Waffles (waffles, in this case). Ben made decaf coffee (our exemption), and I blended some of our peanuts for peanut butter, thawed a few strawberries, and got out the honey and maple syrup.

Here's the slightly modified recipe:

1 cup yogurt
3/4 cup whole wheat flour
4 eggs
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup melted butter

Whirl in blender until well mixed and foamy. Bake in waffle iron.

The taste and texture reminded me of cheesecake. I suppose we didn't get our serving of vegetables for the evening, but it was a nice change.

A confession

2007-10-22T20:53:00.000-04:00

I need to make a confession: I ate lunch at a Thai restaurant. In my defense, it was a business meeting and my colleagues don't always pack lunches. I carefully saved half the meal and brought it home to Sarah. She assumed I was being thoughtful and was very appreciative; she doesn't realize I was sharing the forbidden fruit.

Gadgets

2007-10-21T20:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we bought a pasta maker at a kitchenwares store in Dayton. When we got home Ben set to work grinding wheat, setting up the machine on the edge of the counter, and eventually feeding out sheets of thinly rolled whole wheat pasta dough. He made spaghetti while I foraged in the refrigerator, basement, and garden for ingredients for spaghetti sauce. We didn't let the pasta dry before cooking it, which may be why it came out a little gluey, but all in all it was pretty good. Much preferable to my previous mashing out of stiff dough on the counter with the rolling pin.

Ben also was inspired to try using the pasta machine to roll out today tortillas, so I made the dough this afternoon and for supper we had tortillas with scrambled eggs and swiss chard topped with some of our canned tomatillo salsa. Again, the pasta maker made it easy to get things nice and thin.

I also found local maple syrup on our shopping trip (inspiring me to make french toast for breakfast this morning) as well as cheaper local peanuts. These are still in the shell, but at $1.49 a pound, versus $4.99, I'll shell my own. I still haven't made peanut butter. I'm not sure how our blender would handle it, and I'm reluctant to gum up our grain mill. Hmm, maybe we need a peanut butter grinder. . .

The other gadget of the day was the apple sauce strainer. We made another 5 quarts of sauce this afternoon. I currently have the leftover sauce in the oven on a cookie sheet, attempting to make apple leather. I've never done it before--I hope it's done before bedtime.

Where food really comes from

2007-10-18T20:32:00.000-04:00

Recently I've been listening to a lecture series by Prof. Brian Fagan about human prehistory. An entire section of the series is devoted to the domestication of wild plants and animals by our early human ancestors. Access to these reliable food sources, in turn, changed the nature of humans' interactions with each other--the whole hunter-gatherer versus farmer-herder dynamic--and allowed humans to create colonies in otherwise inhospitable parts of the planet.

One fascinating side-light of Dr. Fagan's conversations about domestication is the information he gives about where foods were originally domesticated--at least to the extent that archeology can tell us. It turns out that some of the foods we've been eating have--forgive the dreadful pun--deeper roots in the area than others. Wheat, for example, was domesticated in south-west Asia. Chickens, according to Wikipedia, are descended from south-east Asian wildfowl. Corn, potatoes and tomatoes are American crops and have probably been grown in this area for millenia. Beans are found the world over but, again referencing Wikipedia, it's likely the varieties we're eating fresh are American in orgin.

None of this directly relates to our local eating challenge--we're concerned with food that's been grown locally in the past year or so, not the past ten-thousand years--but I find it interesting to think about none-the-less.

Chickens and chicken

2007-10-15T20:01:00.001-04:00

This afternoon when I got home from work I was greeted by three of our hens who had decided to escape and explore the front lawn. This is not a usual occurance--especially three at once!--and they seemed to know when I got out of the car that this was not where they should be. They took off for the portable fence we have set up under the grape arbor where I let them graze when I'm home (since it's not secure from preditors.) I figured since they were out anyway I might as well get the other two, so all the hens had a happy afternoon of eating blades of grass and dustbathing.

When Ben put them in this evening he found a brown egg in the coop. We think it might be from one of our two Delaware hens that are due to start laying in November or so. Our Buff Orpington also lays brown eggs, but she's quit while she's molting, and this one was quite small. Egg production has tapered off in the last few weeks to about one per day, so maybe it'll start picking up again.

For supper this evening I cooked some of the chicken a friend has donated to our local eating effort, from broilers that they had butchered earlier in the year. I'm not always a huge fan of chicken, but this meat is delicious. I made some stovetop stuffing with some of our sourdough bread, got some corn out of the freezer and made gravy to go with leftover mashed potatoes. It was a meal that needed almost no adaptation to be completely local. I think I would have used black pepper normally, but that's the only change I would have made.

My stuffing recipe:
2 green onions
2 stalks celery
1 T. butter

Chop onions and celery and saute in butter. Meanwhile, mix in bowl
4 slices bread, crumbled
2 eggs
1/4 to 1/2 cup chicken broth
salt to taste

Add to pan with onions and celery. Lower heat, cover, and cook 10-15 minutes or until eggs are cooked through.

Smells Like Soup

2007-10-13T21:38:00.001-04:00

(Apologies at the outset to anyone who now has the John McCutcheon song running through their head. I certainly do. Oh, and full credit to Mr. McCutcheon for the wording, too.)

Today has been a soup day at our house. After a week's beginning that had more in common with July than October the weather has finally settled into a fall groove: highs in the sixties and lows around forty degrees. We were debating whether to start a fire in the fireplace this evening. That means it's time to make some soups.

Soups are one of Sarah's kitchen specialties. I scour our cupboards and conclude that there's nothing there that could ever become food; Sarah glances at their contents and begins assembling a culinary masterpiece.

Tonight's supper was a staid potato corn chowder. Lunch, though, was something different. I'll let Sarah share the full recipe if she likes. All I know is that sweet potatoes, peppers and peanuts went into a pot and half an hour later we were eating a delicious, spicy, filling soup. I think it's magic.

P.S. Eliza, thanks for the tip. I'm trying to work myself up for hot breakfasts; a different texture for the cereal just might help.

The good, the bad, the best

2007-10-11T20:50:00.000-04:00

As I drink my local cider and Ben eats his local popcorn this evening, I've thought about what I've missed and what I haven't thus far into the month. As we've said before, this has been much easier than the week in April when it felt like we were surviving on onions, flat bread, and eggs.

What I've missed: Spices have been a big one. I want cinnamon in my cider, black pepper on my potato soup, cumin for my chicken. Of course, we do have many herbs available: cilantro, corriander, basil, oregano, parsley, mint. . . I have fantasies of finding wild ginger in our woods, but since I have no idea what it looks like that doesn't seem very likely.

I've also wished for rice, olive oil, and cow cheese (as opposed to goat cheese). The first two are out of the question, but I still hold out hope of finding at least local mozzerella.

What I haven't missed: Sugar. Okay, not much. I would like to pick up some maple syrup as a change from honey. Lemons, lentils, baking powder--all things I normally use weekly--I haven't given that much thought. Sorrel, lima beans, and . . . well, flatter pancakes have taken their place.

Favorites to rejoice in: Cherry tomatoes straight from the vine, my favorite right-after-work snack. Peanuts! Local peanuts! Pricey, but a very nice addition to lunches. And sweet potatoes in the raised beds, waiting for me to dig my fingers in and pull them out. The one I ate today was about the sweetest I'd ever tasted--perfect just as it was with nothing on it.

Locavore's breakfast

2007-10-10T20:35:00.000-04:00

Last night we were invited to eat with friends and invoked our good guests exemption. Supper was pasta with pesto and white sauce, oven-roasted asparagus, and a green salad with choice of dressings. Desert was locally made (but probably not locally sourced) Kline's ice cream. Very little of the supper was from within our 100-mile limit. All of the supper was delicious.

For supper tonight Sarah made 'buttons,' a tasty Swiss dish. This morning, however, was a challenge. A neighbor's dog kept us up last night and we slept later than we intended. Normally when this happens we scarf cold cereal and skip off to work. This morning that wasn't an option. Wheat kernels, even after they've been boiled then roasted, just aren't the same as Wheaties, even early in the morning before the caffeine's kicked in. They're somewhere between puffed wheat and unpopped popcorn kernels: flavorless and hard enough to chip dental enamel. I had to settle for homemade toast with honey--not a bad breakfast, really--before bolting out the door.

Recipe time

2007-10-08T20:52:00.000-04:00

Stir-fry with Noodles - serves 4

Noodles:
3 cups flour
1 teaspoon salt
2 eggs

Mix eggs into flour and salt and add a few teaspoons of water to form a stiff dough. Roll out as thin as possible; cut into thin strips with a pizza wheel. Bring salted water to a boil in a large pot. Add noodles, boil 5 minutes. Drain.

Stir-fry:
1 small cabbage, chopped
2 green onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
handful sorrel and arugula leaves, chopped
1 hot pepper, minced

Heat a large non-stick frying pan over medium-high heat. Briefly stir-fry each ingredient until just tender; set aside.

Sauce:
1/4 cup honey
1/4 cup chicken broth
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 Tablespoon flour

Briefly heat honey and chicken broth together in frying pan. Whisk in flour and salt and bring to a boil. Immediately pour over stir-fried vegetables. Serve over noodles.
--

I wasn't sure it would be possible to make a decent stir-fry without far-flung ingredients like soy sauce, ginger, and sesame seeds, but this one (our supper) was pretty good. The combination of the sorrel and honey gave it a nice sweet-sour flavor, and the egg noodles added some protein.

Tomorrow: a fellow locavore has passed on a lead on local peanuts! The joy of peanut butter and jelly will soon be mine!

Spilling family secrets

2007-10-07T20:08:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we processed apples into applesauce, today it was the tomatillos' turn. A few hours' work (counting cooking and canning time) sufficed to turn a large bowl of tomatillos into four pints of tomatillo sauce. We were handicapped by our shared desire to work and be entertained so one of us read aloud while the other worked. It made the job take longer but we advanced five or six chapters through The War of the Flowers.

In the early evening, after we were finished with the tomatillos and both our voices were tired, Sarah made corn chips while I assembled a quick garden salsa. Most of the salsa components were ordinary enough--and we used tomatoes not tomatillos!--but in place of non-local vinegar or lemon juice we used sorrel from our herb garden. We both agreed that the result was indistinguishable from salsa made with the more traditional additives--a pleasant surprise.

A note in closing regarding mashed potatoes and applesauce: if you haven't tried it you really should. The combination of starchy, slightly salty potatoes and sweet, fruity applesauce is marvelous. My family has enjoyed the blend for years. It's a family secret too good to keep.

Ten apples up on top

2007-10-06T19:48:00.000-04:00

We declared an exception to our month of eating local foods for the MCC Relief Sale this morning. Since the funds from the sale go to feed hungry people around the world, among other things, I felt that a higher cause was being served by attending than by skipping it this year. I suppose I could have just donated money instead of buying a donut and plate of Laotion food, but I'm not that high-minded. We did come away with five gallons of local cider, which I managed to wedge into our freezer between the sweet corn and swiss chard.

This afternoon we began making applesauce with our many apples from our tree. This apparently will be a time-consuming project--we have seven pints finishing in the canner right now, plus five we did before taking a supper break. It barely made a dent in the containers in the picture here.

For supper Ben made delicious mashed potatoes from our crop dug earlier this year, to which I added dill, chives, and yogurt, and he added applesauce(!) We also tried some of the edamame--green soybeans--which we bought last week at the farmers' market. They taste similar to lima beans and were quite good.

I couldn't bear to throw away the apple skins left from the sauce, so we may be trying apple skin pie or some other similar concoction in the coming week.

Our Daily Bread

2007-10-05T20:41:00.000-04:00

Tonight Sarah and I agreed that, while we spend less money eating locally, we spend more time preparing and preserving food. I'm probably exaggerating but it seems that every minute I've not spent at work or working or studying has been occupied by food. I'm not complaining--not exactly--but at this moment the biggest allure of non-local, commercial, processed food is its casual simplicity. There's a part of me that wants to grab a bag of peanuts off the shelf and chow down, without worry about where they came from or spending hours preparing them.

I know all the reasons why we're not eating this way, of course. I know that convenience for the end consumer is purchased at every other stage of the production chain. I know that some of those purchase costs are represented in the supermarket price tag but many of them--environmental, economic, health, even spiritual costs--are not. I know all this but when I'm tired from a week at work I find it a little hard to care.

When she spoke at EMU last week Mary Beth Lind, one of the authors of our favorite Simply in Season cookbook, encouraged us to think of activity surrounding food--its consumption, yes, but also its preparation, preservation, even planting--as a spiritual exercise. When I keep that in mind I'm grateful that Sarah and I are spending more time on our daily bread. It nourishes more than our bodies.

Green bounty

2007-10-04T21:35:00.000-04:00

Today I got to share the joy of local eating: I brought our grain mill to school and the kids ground corn and wheat, shook cream into butter, and baked cornbread in the toaster oven. They all ate it and liked it too.

When I got home I canned tomatillo sauce--like tomato sauce, only green. Though our tomatoes did poorly this year, we've had a huge abundance of tomatillos. We've had green spaghetti, salsa verde, green pizza. . . and after much fruitless searching on the internet and finally one quick phone call to the county cooperative extension, a recipe for canned tomatillo sauce.

Since Ben had class this evening I didn't bother to cook supper, just had some garlic bread and some of the sauce as it was cooking down. Mmmm, local garlic!

Oh, the conversations we have...

2007-10-03T20:54:00.001-04:00

To celebrate our third day of eating local I'll recount for you a bit of our dinner table conversation.

Me: Dr. Brian Fagan, professor of anthropology and well regarded lecturer on human prehistory, says that says that far-flung trading networks were a hallmark of early civilizations. Ten thousand years ago those networks already spanned continents. If humans could do all that back then I think I should be able to put pepper on my vegetables.

Sarah: Mmm.

I didn't get the pepper. Then again, the vegetables didn't really need it.

Day 2

2007-10-02T20:09:00.000-04:00

This morning got off to a tasty start with pancakes and grape jam. I had purchased a 50lb bag of wheat from Heartland Harvest Farm in Augusta County last week, and we ground some for the pancakes. Along with an egg from our hens, butter and milk from Homestead Creamery, and a bit of non-local salt, it made very tasty, if flat, pancakes. They were sort of like small crepes. The jam was from a batch we canned a few weeks ago, a recipe that used just grapes (from our vines) and honey (from Singer's Glen). It turned out more like syrup anyway so it was perfect for the pancakes.

Lunch was leftovers from the weekend, using our "don't let it spoil" exemption. For supper we made a recipe from Simply in Season for spinach squares, using sorrel and swiss chard instead of spinach. We have an abundance of apples from our tree this year, so we made an apple pie with honey for dessert. We debated adding cinnamon--dried spices in tiny amounts can't use that much fossil fuel to ship, right?--but I ended up forgetting to put it in and it was delicious as it was.

We still don't know what kind of apple tree we have. The apples look a lot like red delicious, but they sure don't taste like it. And they held together in the pie fine, which I've heard red delicious don't. So it's still a mystery.

A new month, a new challenge

2007-10-01T20:18:00.000-04:00

Though we've been eating more local food since our week-long stint in April, we've decided to try another intentional challenge--this one for the entire month of October. Though we didn't go hungry this spring we're better prepared now. Our pantry shelves are full of canned goods, the garden abounds in produce and--wonder of wonders--I found locally grown popcorn.

We've also decided to be a bit more flexible this time. Since they won't keep for a month, we're eating our (non-local) leftovers which makes for a gentler transition in to locavoraciousness. Further, we've decided that we can eat locally and eat socially too: we have no objection to offers of meals or church potlucks. On the other hand, fishing for invitations to get around the local diet restrictions is very bad form. In addition, we're maintaining our list of exemptions from last April: coffee, tea and salt are permissible.

To kick off our month of local food Sarah made a delicious soup made from garden produce and served with sourdough bread made from locally-grown, home-ground wheat. Thank goodness we've been able to find local butter.

The numbers

2007-05-02T16:58:00.000-04:00

Here are the foods we purchased and ate during our Eat Local week:

Whole wheat flour, 9 lbs: $6.48
Apples, 10 lbs: $9.90
Fair Trade tea, 22 bags: $3.20
Fair Trade coffee, 4 oz: $2.67
Milk, 5.5 gallons: $8.54
Butter, about half a pound(?): $7.45
Honey, 1 pint: $5.50
Spinach, 1 bag: $3.00
Apple cider, 1 gallon: $4.00
Blueberry wine, 1 bottle: $11.99
Sales tax: $1.69
Total: $64.42

All the other foods we ate either came from our garden/hens or were a gift (the maple syrup and chestnuts). I didn't include salt because I couldn't find the price and I think what we consumed would have been a few pennies' worth in any case.

Our expenses for the week came in well under the $121 that the typical American family of our size/income spends on food per week. For comparison, I averaged our food expenses for 10 weeks earlier in the year. Including restaurants and wine, our average food expenditure per week is $59.69. Eating all local food for a week cost less than $5.00 extra. Ben pointed out as well that certainly don't buy wine every week--we just happened to buy it during this week, which put our expenses up. So I think all things considered we came out about the same. Not bad for a first try!

Last day

2007-04-29T20:44:00.000-04:00

We are nearing the end of the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge week. I've been figuring out what our costs have been, which I'll post later. (As near as I can figure at this point, we came in well under the $121 allotted for the week.)

Breakfast this morning was the apple crisp from last night. It was pretty good--we added a little more honey after tasting it--but not as filling as it could have been. By the end of church we were both pretty hungry. Ben had put a loaf of sourdough in to rise before we left, so when we got home we baked it. I fried some onions and tofu and made a barbecue-esque sauce: tomato juice, honey, sauerkraut juice, salt, and a bit of flour to thicken it. We ate it with the bread and some of our canned sauerkraut. We also drank mint tea that I made from our small chocolate mint patch.

For supper I made something I'd been wanting to try all week: pizza. Or a varient of pizza, anyway. I had finally finished another small batch of cheese--it came out sort of like ricotta this time--and we had some bread left from lunch. I boiled down some of our canned tomato juice, added a bit of honey and salt, and spread it on slices of bread. I topped that with green onions, fresh oregano, frozen basil and peppers, and the cheese. After it was baked it looked like something out of a gourmet magazine, if I do say so myself. (The peppers were yellow, orange and red, the basil and onions were green, and the cheese was in little white lumps on top.) It tasted pretty good too. We had it with some of the salad from yesterday and cider.

At supper Ben and I were discussing what we liked about this week, what we had missed most, etc. I have missed peanut butter, beans, and some of those more filling foods I usually eat. Eggs fill that role, but I do get tired of them after a while. I also missed being able to cook with the spices I normally use (curry powder, cinnamon, black pepper), but what I missed most, surprisingly, was vinegar. Throughout the week I experimented with strawberry, tomato, and sauerkraut juice, cider, sorrel, even the leftover whey from cheese making. Nothing had that truly sour flavor I wanted for my salad dressing. The thing is, we live within walking distance of an apple orchard--there has to be a way to get local vinegar. We didn't find any, but if we do this again I'm going to make it a priority.

We also discussed what we would like to continue. Both of us would like to keep experimenting with the sourdough. Each of our attempts has improved, but it's still not quite where we'd like it to be. We do like baking with it though. We also discussed expanding the produce we grow. We could grow soybeans and other dry beans. That would have given us a lot more food options this week, and we'd like to try it.

Ben has been threatening to convert to Judaism for the evening so that he can end the day at sundown and eat his popcorn, so I'm going to go check on local snack possibilities to forestall this.

Trading local

2007-04-28T20:38:00.000-04:00

Well, brunch this morning in Richmond was delicious: Fair Trade coffee with local milk, crepes with (last year's) cherries from my sister's tree (best cherries ever!), maple syrup and honey, and quiche which we had brought from Harrisonburg.

Before we left, my sister and I did a little trading of local foods. She gave me a pound or so of tofu from Twin Oaks, a community near Charlottesville (their soybeans are Virginia grown too), and a container of her frozen cherries(!). I gave her 5 eggs from our hens and the leftover quiche. I have a scheme to try some kind of tofu-barbeque sandwiches for lunch tomorrow, if our sourdough sponge will cooperate. Ben has been carefully nurturing it, but it's very slow rising.

On the way home from Richmond we stopped at the grocery store and bought more local apples. Back at home we did our first major picking of greens from our garden--spinach, arugula, lettuce, as well as some radishes--and made a big salad for late lunch/early supper. Ben made a dressing from tomato juice, cider, onion, and a bit of Virginia wine we purchased earlier in the week.

Having no bread thwarted some of my other food ideas, so we snacked this evening--I ate the rest of the homemade cheese and crackers, Ben scrambled an egg with a bit of the tofu, and we both had some pumpkin bread. I also made some apple crisp for breakfast tomorrow, using wheat flour instead of oats. Hope it'll be good.

Friday's food

2007-04-28T08:39:00.000-04:00

Yesterday brought a new test to our Eat Local week: food while traveling.

We began the day with french toast: sourdough bread, eggs, milk, butter, maple syrup, and honey. Lunch was the quiche from last night (quite tasty) and canned sauerkraut from last fall. I don't know what we would do without our hens. I've eaten more eggs this week in various forms than ever before.

After work today Ben and I drove to Richmond, VA to visit my sister and brother-in-law. Time was tight and I hadn't planned what we would eat for supper on the way there. I brought the chapatis and some pumpkin bread, which we ate in the car, and a cooler of other food for breakfast today. (My sister was interested in the Eat Local week, but had her senior dance concert this weekend and understandably didn't have a lot of time for cooking, so we offered to provide breakfast today.)

The chapatis and pumpkin bread didn't seem like quite a sufficient supper, and we debated making an exception and stopping somewhere. We ended up going out for (non-local) ice cream after the dance concert. It was very good (thanks Jay!), but as I was eating I thought about what foods I have been missing the most this week. Peanut butter is high on the list, as are rice and beans. (I could buy Virginia peanuts and make my own, but I refuse to pay $12.99 for the 32 oz box of peanuts in the shell--the only local ones I could find.)

I'm going to go see if we can start breakfast. My sister tells me she has frozen cherries from their cherry tree that we can put on our crepes!

Quiche and chapatis

2007-04-26T20:50:00.000-04:00

As I write today's post on our local eating, I am enjoying a strawberry milkshake: frozen strawberries from last year's garden, local milk and honey, blended in the blender. One of the positives of this eat local challenge is that it gives me a good excuse to eat some of the preserved garden food that we usually hoard and ration! (Ben has chosen to raid our sauerkraut supply for his bedtime snack. The challenge also leads to some rather creative menu options.)

For breakfast this morning we had sourdough bread toast and fried eggs from our hens, as well as some local apple cider. Lunch was leftovers from last night's supper, as usual.

Ben was at class this evening, so I made supper just for myself: some of the larger pieces of wheat that I had sifted out our our bag of flour, cooked with milk and a bit of honey. It was pretty good--if I make it again I'll try toasting the wheat first.

It's been interesting to me how many different things one can cook out of varying amounts of flour, butter, water/milk, and a bit of salt and/or honey. Thus far we've had sourdough bread, chapatis, dumplings (though I guess those included eggs), wheat crackers, grape nuts, soufflé crust, and the cooked cereal I had tonight. I'm planning to make crepes over the weekend as well.

My evening baking tonight was more chapatis and two quiches. We'll eat some of the quiche for lunch tomorrow, and the other later in the weekend. We will be traveling tomorrow over supper, and I don't yet know what we'll eat. The chapatis will likely be part of it; they'll be easy to eat in the car. I'm hoping inspiration will strike before tomorrow afternoon.

Here's my invented quiche recipe. I'm hoping it will be good despite the lack of cheese.

Crusts (enough for 2):
2/3 cup butter
2 cups whole wheat flour
water

Cut butter into flour. Add water, a few drops at a time, while stirring, until crust begins to clump together. Press into two pie pans.

Filling:
1 tablespoon butter
2 cups chopped green onions
4 cups chopped spinach
6 eggs
1 1/2 cups milk
2 teaspoons salt

Saute onions in butter until soft, about 5 minutes. Add spinach and stir until wilted. Divide between crusts in pie pans. Beat eggs, milk and salt together (I used a blender). Pour half into each pie pan over spinach. Bake in preheated oven at 425° for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350° and bake 30 minutes more or until center is set.

Local food plug

2007-04-25T20:24:00.000-04:00

For those in the Harrisonburg area this Saturday afternoon, the Friendly City Food Co-op (FC2) will have a table downtown on Court Square. FC2 is a group of people working to open a food co-op in Harrisonburg which will feature local foods. They need more members in order to open and have asked me to help spread the word. If you'd like to have more options to buy locally, become a member and help support the cause!

Onion-vegetable soup

2007-04-25T19:21:00.000-04:00

Today was a bit easier as far as cooking goes. For breakfast we ate pumpkin bread (baked last night) with our "exception" tea. Lunch was leftover salad, crackers, and a bit of the cheese from yesterday. I also ate a few of the chestnuts for a snack.

For supper we had sourdough bread (baked this morning in the bread machine), butter, honey and soup. Here is my soup recipe:

4 cups green onions, chopped
2 tablespoons butter
1 cup frozen green beans
2 cups frozen pumpkin
1 quart tomato juice
1 tablespoon fresh oregano
1 teaspoon fresh lemon thyme
1 tablespoon frozen basil, chopped
2 teaspoons salt
1 hot pepper, chopped

Sauté onions in butter until soft. Add green beans and stir. In blender, purée pumpkin, oregano, and lemon thyme with half the tomato juice. Add to soup with remainder of tomato juice. Add water if desired. Heat until hot. Add basil, salt, and hot pepper. Stir and serve.

Our sourdough bread had a better flavor this time (I made a test batch last week), but it's still very dense and heavy. (Ben and I refer to it as "dwarf bread", which may amuse those familiar with Terry Pratchett's books.)

Cooking and more cooking

2007-04-24T21:09:00.000-04:00

The preparation for today's meals began yesterday, just like Monday. I am finding that cooking/preparing to cook is taking a great deal more time than usual. I always considered myself a "slow food" cook--I don't buy canned soups or vegetables, we never have prepackaged meals; we rarely even just make sandwiches. But this is a whole different level.

For breakfast this morning I had grape nuts that we made last night. It's a pretty simple recipe, which I adapted for our ingredients: whole wheat flour, milk, cider (the original calls for buttermilk), a bit of salt and maple syrup. This dough is spread on a cookie sheet and baked until crisp, then broken/chopped into pieces. This turned out to be the challenging part: while Ben was valiently pounding at it with the rolling pin, one of the bowls he had already filled fell off the counter and straight into the trash can. Ben very kindly gave me the remaining bowl and ate leftover soufflé. The grape nuts were more bite size than the traditional ones, but very crunchy and tasty. (I'm currently resisting the urge to eat the rest of them.)

Before work I also saw that the milk I had left out had thickened, so I set in an old pillowcase in a strainer to separate for cheese.

For lunch we took leftover buttons from last night (see Monday's post), apples, and I also took a few chestnuts which we had had in the freezer from last year.

I made a stop at the farmer's market this morning and picked up a bag of spinach, and after work bought more milk and butter.

For supper Ben and I made a salad with some of the spinach, dandelions, chives, arugula from the garden, and hardboiled eggs. I made a dressing out of strawberry juice, honey, salt, and lemon thyme from our herb bed. It wasn't as sour as I would have liked, but not bad. We also ate some of the wheat thins we made last night with cheese that I started this morning. I mixed the separated curd with salt, basil, and chives. I loved it--Ben wasn't so sure, but he generally doesn't like soft cheese.

My last cooking project for the day was pumpkin bread for snacks and breakfast tomorrow. I used frozen pumpkin, eggs, honey, butter, salt and flour. It didn't rise, since it didn't have any baking powder, but Ben says it's good anyway.

I just realized I have one more cooking project to do--put sourdough in the bread machine to rise overnight. So here I will end my writing for today.

Buttons to the rescue

2007-04-23T19:45:00.000-04:00

Well, we're almost through our first day of local eating. I have spent a great deal more time preparing food than I normally do, as well as much more time spent planning, but we've had delicious meals!

I actually started the cooking last night, preparing food for lunch today. (Ben and I both pack lunches for work and generally take leftovers.) I made chappatis (a flat, fried bread) with some of our whole wheat from the local mill, butter from a local dairy that sells to supermarkets, and water. I would normally make a curry to go with these, but since none of the spices are local I made a vegetable sauce (curry without the curry, as I told a friend at work). I fried onions from our garden with hot peppers from the freezer, then added a puree of frozen pumpkin, canned tomato juice, and a bit of apple cider from a local orchard. I also added a few frozen green beans. We each took this, along with an apple (Virginia grown, from the grocery store), for our lunches today. It was quite tasty, though I missed the salt somewhat.

For breakfast I tried a new recipe: Strawberry Soufflé from the Simply in Season cookbook. I used more whole wheat, eggs from our hens, milk, butter and a bit of maple syrup. After it was baked we topped it with frozen strawberries from last season. We also had one of our exceptions to the local rules: tea.

Supper took some hard thinking and searching through cookbooks. Several of my planned meals for the week involved cheese, which I was planning to get from the farmer's market but have not been able to find. Maybe it's too early for the goats to be milking yet. I have started some milk to sour to make some soft cheese, but it's not ready yet. So without cheese several of my planned meals (pizza, quiche) were not to be. My sourdough starter also didn't look ready, so no bread.

At last I decided on a meal my mother and grandmother used to make. The English translation of the Low German(?) is "buttons." (I won't attempt to spell the Low German here.) [Note: I found out later from my mother that this is actually a Swiss meal.] It's a dumpling made of flour, eggs and milk, boiled and then served with stewed tomatoes. I had all the ingredients for the buttons, so I made them, fried some more green onions in butter, added a can of tomatoes from our supply, and just a bit of honey. I also made applesauce from some of the apples.

I've been pleased with the meals so far, though they definitely take more work at this point. And, somewhat to my dismay, we have decided to declare an exemption for salt. It's in the local butter we bought, it's in our home-canned tomatoes, and, well, some things just really don't taste good without it!

This evening we're going to make some homemade grape nuts for breakfast tomorrow and some wheat crackers for snacks. The farmer's market is also open tomorrow morning, so I plan to stop by before work and see what's available.

Our Exceptions

2007-04-22T15:14:00.000-04:00

The impossibles: These are things that can't be grown, found or produced locally. Many of them were very costly just a few centuries ago, before the advent of global sea trade. We now understand why.

coffee: We buy fair trade, organic, shade grown beans. And no, we can't live without them.
tea: As above, we buy fairly traded, organic teas.
chocolate: Specifically, about an ounce of dark Lindt chocolate offered me by a coworker. I have the self control of a chicken.

The unbelievables: We're convinced we should be able to find these locally but haven't been able to yet. If you know of a local source please contact us.

salt: We're told that the first salt produced in the New World came from the Chesapeake Bay but don't know of a source that sells it today. There are also salt mines in West Virginia but their product is used for industrial purposes not human consumption. As she said earlier, Sarah conceded only because the butter we've found locally has salt.

Local food research

2007-04-21T17:01:00.000-04:00

Over the past few weeks I have been researching local foods in preparation for our participation in the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge. I've inventoried our stores of canned and frozen local produce, bought a 25 lb. bag of whole wheat flour from a local mill, started sourdough for the first time so we can make bread (can't buy yeast), and asked at local stores about the origins of several foods.

I've been surprised in several ways during this process. First, I was pleased to find how much food we actually grow and store ourselves. If we had to, we could eat fairly well solely from our own garden and stores of food. Our three hens are laying 2-3 eggs per day, we have onions and greens growing in the garden (and yard), and have home-canned or frozen pumpkin, pickles, tomato sauce and juice, salsa, jam, peaches, and berries, not to mention enough frozen hot peppers to last a lifetime!

However, this inventory process brought up a second surprise that presents a difficulty. Certainly not all, but many of our home-preserved foods contain sugar, salt or spices that are not local. To truly eat all local food, we should not eat our jam, pickles, sauerkraut, salsa, or peaches. I also encountered this problem when trying to purchase local products. Should we consider the goat cheese at the farmers market local if it contains salt?

Next, looking for local products that we do not grow has been difficult. Many foods that I normally buy are labeled with the location of the parent company of the brand, with no way of knowing where the food actually came from without extensive research. Others appear to be locally produced, but on closer inspection come from much farther away. For example, in my search for local salt I found a company located on the Chesapeake Bay (just barely within our 100 miles) that sells seasonings, including sea salt. I emailed them to ask whether their salt was actually harvested from the bay. A representative replied that sadly, it was not, and it was her understanding that no salt is harvested in Virginia. Another example occurred when I visited a mill advertising locally milled grain. Though they sell a wide variety of flours and grains that they grind, only their wheat is actually grown locally.

Finally, though perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised by this, local people have been a better source of information than my Internet research. Many local food producers are by nature small and have a limited or nonexistent web presence. I have found by talking to friends or driving to local stores where to get butter and maple syrup, what's likely to be at the farmers market, offers of beef, and rumors of a cow owner who sells cow shares for milk.

With two days to go, the search continues...

Introduction

2007-04-21T14:58:00.000-04:00

Ben and I have decided to participate in the April 2007 Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge. During the week of April 23-29 we will be attempting to eat all local foods and comparing the costs to our usual food budget. Here are the details of what we will be doing:

Our definition of "local" for this challenge is within a 100-mile radius of our home. The exemptions we will be claiming are for coffee and tea, which are impossible to buy locally. A few other items, such as salt and olive oil, are still up for debate.

The average American food budget for our family size and income level is $121 per week. We don't spend nearly that much--it's closer to half that. However, we do grow a lot of the produce we eat and have laying hens. Our goal for the week is to stay under the American average, and to see how close we come to our own average.

When we buy items in bulk, we will calculate the cost for the portion of the item we use during the week. Food that we grow or produce ourselves we will consider "free" and not include in our week's costs. We are also only eating "one-generation local": we will consider milk, eggs, and meat to be local if the animal was raised locally, whether or not the animal feed was locally produced.

We expect the week to be challenging and educational. If you have questions drop us a comment or email--we'd love to hear your thoughts.