Gadgets

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

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

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

(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

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

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

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.
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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!