bee creative

dark days: fish for dinner

 

Local halibut with chives and thyme from the garden.  I did add a bit of salt and pepper.  Pickles for a vegetable.  I had red potatoes as well but was too hungry to wait for them to cook, so they'll wait for another meal. Maybe breakfast...

 

unwrapping "learn"

So much to learn...

When will we have our last snow this year?  Was it today?  Last year it was the first week of April. 

How long will the indigo vat last at 60 degrees Fahrenheit?  This is day three.

How fast can I make a local, sustainable, organic dinner for the Dark Days Challenge?  20 minutes

This is hash browns, scrambled eggs, pear and sorrel from the garden. 

Curiosity can drive creativity...

I'm dyeing roving in the indigo vat for the sky scarf.  Tomorrow I'll plant indigo seed.  Maybe this fall I'll have local organic indigo to dye with? 

 

 

details

It may be cold, wet, and windy; snow may be in the forecast...

But spring is coming.  Yesterday I had two eggs on the same day for the first time since Jitterbug started molting in the fall.  More of the crocus are popping up in the garden too.  And the rhubarb is up to four inches. 

Maybe it will be t-shirt weather soon?  I'm going to be ready.  Today I tried out another pattern.  This one is destined for the dye pot. 

The next one will have a few more inches added to the bottom and the neckline adjusted just a bit.  Patterns are like recipes...the details are adjustable. 

No recipe involved here. 

I've been craving a cheese sandwich but didn't really want to make bread and then have a lot of it that I would end up eating, so I bought a small loaf of locally made sourdough.  Added a little local cheese and a saute of cabbage, apples and hazelnuts and I had this week's Dark Days meal. 

Hmm...maybe French toast for breakfast? 

 

comfort

Some days I like to walk home in the rain and the wind.

Today I could have made a better choice about footwear though.

It made me wish I still had some of the tomato soup I had for dinner last night.

This is my dark days meal for the week.  I made it with tomatoes from the freezer, an onion, herbs, and just a tiny bit of olive oil and salt.  The olive oil and salt were not local.  All ingredients were roasted in the oven for about an hour.  And then I tossed everything into the blender. 

Since the oven was on, I decided to bake the last of the potatoes from the farmer's market.  I'll still be able to get local potatoes from the co-op, something that makes me very happy. 

And then a small project that also brings comfort:

I made this scarf a year or two ago with a skein of locally spun/dyed yarn.  I love this yarn, but it slides of my neck very easily.  Rather annoying.  So tonight I spun just a bit of yarn and crocheted the two edges together to make it into a cowl.  Much better. 

dark days: meals and garden

I actually could harvest something to eat from the garden right now:

A few warm days and I'm going to have a nice crop of Swiss chard and kale so I'll wait.  I could also raid the lettuce that reseeded from last year and the chickweed I suppose.  There is another weed in that mix as well, not sure what it is. 

Spent a couple hours in the garden today, mostly pruning the large apple tree but also doing a bit of weeding.  I decided to be brave and planted a few peas and some spinach in my little hoop house. 

Dark Days Meal:

Some of my Dark Days meal for the week did come from the garden.  I picked a handful of parsley, a bit of sage and a branch of rosemary.  This is a spin on a recipe from The Italian Country Table by Lynne Rossetto Kasper.  The recipe I based it on is "Farro Risotto."  I left out the olive oil, garbanzo beans, orange zest, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and added some butter, cauliflower, diced apple and local cheese instead.  I should have added some hazelnuts too.   99.9% local, just used a bit of salt. 

 

 

being local: food, seeds, and yarn

Food:

For the next Dark Days post there is a challenge, to make desert!  What a great reason to do a little playing in the kitchen...

Coeur a la Creme, raspberry sauce, and cookies.  It was a bit of work, but I'd do it again.  

First I started with making cream cheese.  Cream cheese is really easy to make, it just takes a little time.  I used directions from Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll.  It wasn't until I was washing the dishes that I realized one tiny little non-local thing had made it into the mix, the culture for the cream cheese.  Oh well!  Cultures probably aren't something I'd ever give up as I explore sustainability as a life style. 

My recipe for Coeur a la Creme called for cream cheese, sugar, cream, egg white and kirsch.  I substituted honey for the sugar and left out the kirsch. 

The raspberry sauce was made with frozen raspberries, water and honey.  I cooked the berries until they were syrupy. 

The cookie recipe came from here.  I used butter, honey, local flour, and hazelnuts.  If anyone decides to try this recipe, watch the cooking time.  I almost burnt my cookies.  I want to explore this site more as I switch to baking with honey rather than sugar.  

All that cooking inspired me to clean the fridge:

I store my bulk items in canning jars.  I have rice, flours, nuts and seeds here.  Plus pickles and jams.  And cream cheese! 

 

Seeds:

I've been considering a lot how eating local depends a lot on planning ahead.  Last week I found quinoa seed.  I've never grown it before, so it will be a bit of an experiment. 

Yarn:

My latest bus project.  I've lost count of how many socks I've knit now.  The yarns used in these socks are "leftovers" and the green in these socks is a local yarn.  

 

 

dark days: knitting and eating and thinking

Somehow my mind has started connecting my sky scarf and the Dark Days challenge.  I think because I am knitting with local yarn (mostly!) and there is so much gray right now...

The sky scarf, month number five: 

 I've been wondering, once the scarf is finished, will someone look at it and think, "Hmm...that reminds me of the sky?"  Will they look closer and see the fat white stripe, and wonder if that was our snow storm?  Will they see the orange stripe and wonder if that was the morning after the lunar eclipse? 

Yesterday as I was knitting, it became very real to me that a story can be told without images or words.  That a color could hold a story...

 

As for food...

I didn't really join the Dark Days Challenge to explore eating locally, I already knew I could.  I mostly wanted to check in with myself to see if I was eating as locally as I thought I was.  To push myself a little further. 

The ingredients that I find myself considering the most as I plan these meals are fats for cooking, sweeteners, salt, baking soda/powder,  and spices.    This is where I am at currently as I consider these ingredients:

Fats:  I am using butter, hazelnut oil (very sparingly as it's expensive), or cooking with water instead of my usual olive oil for the most part.  I have also used some bacon fat and might at some point consider rendering fat (don't look if you are vegetarian!).  I don't eat much meat though.   Today I experimented with making ghee. 

Sweeteners:  Honey or fruit (apple cider works great for some things).  This really changes baking.  Found a web site this morning that I want to explore more.  But really, the bottom line here is that I need to bake less. 

Salt:  I am going to try making my own.  Found this blog post for a resource.   Just have to decide which beach seems best to collect from....

Baking soda/powder:  Well, back to that baking issue.  Sour dough anyone? 

Spices and cultures:  Certainly we could adjust to cooking without spices.  Many wonderful herbs can be grown locally.   I could either give up foods that made with a culture (some of the cheeses I want to make for example) or be really wild and see what cultures are hanging around (that could be dangerous I'm thinking).  But that seems to be taking things a bit far.  I'm pretty sure the shipping of cinnamon is more sustainable than apples from New Zealand to Washington. 

 

 

The other thing that I am looking at is that I've given myself a bit of a break by allowing foods that are bulk to be exceptions to the local rule.  This is the area that I can get better at.  I think I can establish the same rule for bulk that I have for vegetables and fruits.  If I can find it or grow it locally, I have to buy it locally first.  If it's not available in Washington, then it needs to come from the west coast. 

 

This week's Dark Days meal was an experiment in making pasta with whole wheat flour.   This is one of the flour choices that is available to me locally. 

I made a topping by sauteing onions in butter, adding a handful of cabbage and then sprinkling in a bit of rosemary.  Tasted great, looks... well... And I cheated a bit.  Used salt. 

 

let it snow!

Hello snow... I've been waiting for you. 

We don't have much snow yet...but enough to enchant my walk.  Enough to distract me for several hours today.

Enough that soup was the perfect meal for lunch.  It also happens to be my "Dark days" meal for the week.  I added some dehydrated corn and peppers for some extra flavor.  The last potato from my garden and a handful of parsley that I picked today went into the pot too.

Parsley is hardy stuff, but we're supposed to have a pretty long stretch of cold so I pretty much picked everything.  I'll make a "pesto" with most of it. 

This is last week's "Dark Days" meal that I never got around to posting.  It turned into a comfort meal of sorts.  The last of the sugar pie pumpkin I grew topped with hazelnuts, a boiled egg and apple slices. 

It was good. 

 

creating shelter

It's wet and windy, a very stormy day.  The kind of day would have us all looking for shelter (my word for 2012) sooner or later. 

Shelter has a relatively simple definition, a place of refugee or protection.  More than anything, as I think about shelter this year, I want to document how I create shelter, what kind of home maker am I, how I feather my nest...

Today's mending:

What if it is enough to know what is underneath something? 

The silk/hemp fabric that I used for some of the squares on my "made of stars" blanket has frayed very badly.  The fabric was a gift from my mother and I want to be be able to keep it where I can see it, but it's just not standing up to the wash and wear that I put this blanket through.  And so I am layering fabric over the top of this fabric.  The red in the background is the first piece that I have used to cover one of the silk/hemp squares. 

What if we broaden our definition of a garden? Green onions anyone? 

 

And my Dark Day's Meal for this week: 

What if I make my own fruit/nut bars...make them just what I want them to be?   They make a yummy breakfast with a bowl of local yogurt. 

one step back

As a focus word for the year, "one" was a good word for me.  It helped me keep in mind that one act, one stitch, just one thing is a way to move forward.

My sky scarf is a good example of that.  Just a little bit each day.  Even if it's just a word, capturing the moment. 

Today I took one step back to my focus word for 2010, "direction."

I've been wanting to paint a compass rose on my floor for quite awhile.   With a little supervision from the dogs, I got busy and did it.  That's Madi up in the corner, one of my brother's dogs and sister to Lola. 

It made me think about how sometimes having something that is worn and tired gives permission to take risks.  Would I have painted this on a new floor?  Maybe not. 

I thought about the difference between reaching for perfection and reaching for improvement.  Two different things. 

This weekend I hope to stencil N, E, S, W and a rose on the compass.  A good direction. 

My "Dark Days" meal for the week: 

One more step backwards brought me to my word for 2009, "intersection."  I like thinking of intersections as a meeting place.  There is something about joining a challenge that seems a bit like creating an intersection...

in season: last farmer's market + a little crafting

 

A few years ago I bought a set of glow in the dark stars for a project that I was doing for some children.  

A couple weeks ago I brought one of them home and set it on a counter.  I was a bit surprised to see it glowing one night when I turned out the light.  The shadowed part of the star is where it didn't absorb as much light due to a dish that was sitting next to it.

 

We are certainly entering the darkest part of the year.  This morning dawn was at 7:58 and sunset will be at 4:14.  That's just a little more than 8 hours of day light. 

I've recently realized that one of the things I appreciate about this time of year is the ability to see the stars and the moon more often when the skies are clear...but I'm really looking forward to the days getting longer again too. 

Saturday was the last Farmer's market for the year.  I bought a few vegetables and fruits to eat this week, cheese, and dried beans and a few more potatoes to add to the winter supply.

It's time to see if I can make it through the winter without buying fruits and vegetables that aren't local; the exceptions being citrus and avocados (if I can find them) from California. 

My Dark days sole meal seemed too easy... potatoes, pickles I made this summer and creme fraiche.    This is a combination I found in a cookbook named Plenty by Diana Henry.  At first it seemed a little strange but then I realized that it really is a warm potato salad.  Henry suggests salmon as a possible addition to this meal.  That would be good.  I'm going to try it that way next time.

One of the things I've realized recently is how lucky I am that the area I live in can grow such a variety of food. 

Back to present making... 

dark days + local color

The "sole food:"

One of the things I've realized lately is that although most of my food is locally sourced, I do depend on a few basics that are not:  olive oil, spices, and salt.  For the Dark Days sole meal  I've decided I need to make no exceptions. 

Today's Breakfast:  a local cereal that I noticed at the co-op and hadn't gotten around to trying yet, apple from Mom and Dad's, and hazelnuts.  Yum.

No salt and no spices; not even some local honey as I'm trying to get my sweet tooth under control.

 

This would be more of a making the pantry more local update:

In my effort to replace some of the foods I've been counting as "exceptions," I decided to make some hazelnut butter as a replacement for peanut butter.  I used the directions in Stocking Up  by Carol Hupping, which gives the option of using water to start the clumping of the nuts from a flour (which is really what the nuts are at one point of grinding) to a spread. 

I do have some ground nuts set aside to try as a flour as well.  I've already done this with almonds successfully so the hazelnuts should work. 

And then for local color:

My version of Jude's rings.  I'm going to call it an egg ring or a seed ring.  I used a local red cabbage for the dye bath. 

 

dark days challenge: preparing for the week ahead

So I am thinking I will aim for a bit of a schedule with Dark Days posts.  Every Sunday and Wednesday I will probably post about food.  I think more than anything, joining this challenge is about posting on a regular basis about food.  It's an important part of how I express myself creatively.  I also think it sometimes takes some creativity to eat sustainably, organically, locally, and ethically, especially during the "off" season.  It would be lovely if it didn't, but that's not the world we live in yet. 

Because weekday meals have to be quicker to prepare and easy, I often spend a good part of the weekend trying special food projects or preparing basics that I will eat for the week.  For example,  I love this recipe for homemade Bouillon.  I often add it to beans, grains, pasta dishes or salad dressing during the week.  This weekend I decided to make a dehydrated version. 

I noticed some of the onions I had bought for storage were sprouting (probably not dry enough when they were harvested) so I dehydrated a handful of onions, carrots  some celery leaves and parsley.  

I placed it all in the blender with some salt and made a seasoned salt.  Or a bouillon? 

I tested it out in soup that I made with winter squash from my garden, apple from Mom and Dad's, celery and onion from the farmer's market.  Topped with a pickled crab apple; one of my other experiments this weekend. 

I pickled both crab apples and seckle pears.  They are supposed to sit for a month before eating, but I just couldn't wait to try a few.  Oh so good!  

Some of the squash  was also used in a salad.  I sauteed it with raisins, hazelnuts and spices and then put it on top of a green salad with cheese. 

There are two more pieces of squash in the fridge that I will eat this week.  Not sure how yet. 

And then there is the project I am waiting on right now:

I am making feta.  This is my second attempt (lesson learned from first batch, less salt), but the first time with cow's milk (might have a little less tangy-ness).   I'll try to have more info on this up on Wednesday. 

__________________________

The break down for  2 meals plus 3 prepared foods

Local and organic:  onion, carrot, parsley, celery, squash, apple, vinegar, ginger (yep, isn't that cool!), lettuce, raisins, and hazelnuts.

Local but not organic: milk, butter (I made it from local cream), and cheese.  Local but not organic is something I need to look a bit closer at.  The milk and cream come in glass bottles.  I have chosen to go that route over local and organic and in plastic. 

Organic but not local:  Pepper, pears, cinnamon, sugar,  and olive oil.  The only one there that I should have used would be the pepper and cinnamon; the rest I could have found substitutes for.  For the pears, I could have sliced larger local pears.  For the sugar in the pickled fruit, honey of course!  Instead of olive oil, I could have used hazelnut oil or left it out. 

Not organic or probably organic but I don't remember for sure: spices used with the squash, the salt, vegetable rennet, and culture for the cheese. 

Ethical and sustainable?  I believe so! 

 

 

Dark Days Challenge: eating from local food sources

This year I've decided to participate in the Dark Days of winter eat local Challenge . The goal is to eat a meal once a week sourced only from sustainable, organic, local, ethical sources and to blog at least once a week about our efforts.

For the past three years or so I've made sure that most of my food is either local or purchased bulk all year long,  so I know I can do a couple meals each week.    We have some great resources in this area and I've figured out pretty well how much I need to preserve to get me through the winter. 

The big challenge for me is to make sure I don't cut back on the amount of fruits and vegetable I should eat, just to maintain eating locally.  To balance eating a healthy diet with being local, even through the hardest month, March.... 

Also, in addition to at least the one sustainable, organic, local, ethical meal per week, I want to work on is replacing some of the foods that I buy bulk with local options.  Hazelnut butter rather than peanut butter.  Honey rather than sugar (which I've been changing over to for several months now).  That kind of thing.

I can be a little more creative with the food choices I think.