Now that it's over

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

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!

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?

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

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.

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

A change of pace

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

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.