From the garden: strawberries, sour cherries, lettuce, peas, and the first of the potatoes.
Local: eggs (Mom and Dad), honey, hazelnuts, beef, butter, and flour (Pacific Northwest wheat and ground locally). The pottery is pretty much local too.
The bread is Brioche dough that I fried. What a yummy way to use up eggs. I froze some of the dough so more can be made....
Ate some of the cherries on locally made ice cream.
I've been wanting to experiment with rose petals as a flavoring for food for quite some time and finally got a chance.
The roses used were from a heirloom cabbage rose. I've tried two different things.
My first experiment was to make a rose cream custard. I used a recipe from an old magazine I had. Probably any pudding type recipe would work. The rose petals were infused in the milk mixture, strained out, and then the rest of the ingredients added. All ingredients for this were local, except for some sugar.
The results? Well, it's a little rich to eat much of. That might be the results of the custard recipe (6 egg yolks). Rose flavored custard would be nice for a tea party.
Since I wasn't having a tea party, I did have to decide what to do with a couple servings. Here's where I got results that I really liked-the custard went into a smoothie. The one picture is actually a raspberry smoothie (last year's raspberries-cleaning out the freezer). For the rose custard smoothie I used 1 cup of plain yogurt, a cup of the custard and 1 strawberry. Very tasty. Especially the second smoothie made. After making the first smoothie, I froze the rest of the custard. Freezing the custard made a better texture.
My second rose petal experiment is steeping in the refrigerator. I'm making rose infused white wine. I'm going to use some of it in some type of recipe as a replacement for vanilla. I'll probably start with a butter cookie of some sort. It would probably have worked better if I had used vodka instead of white wine, but I wasn't going to make it to the store the night I got started on this project. More on this experiment later.
One of the most important things I think I've learned about eating local over the last year, is the importance of having food stored for the time of the year when there are less local foods to choose from.
As the season of having so many more food choices approaches, I'm thinking a lot about what I want to preserve, how much to save and how to preserve it. It's also shaped what food crops are being grown in the garden.
The apple muffins are a great example of something done right. For these muffins I used apples from my tree that I had dried last summer. To use them for baking I soaked the apples in boiling water, diced them and then added them (and some local walnuts) to my favorite muffin recipe. Very yummy. The spread is locally made goat cheese. I was told by the cheese maker that it freezes very well!
The apples have also been very tasty in oatmeal. I've been dicing them and then adding the apples at the beginning of the cooking time for the oats.
Drying more apples is definitely on the "To-do" list.
Yummy stuff! Starting to have a really good crop of rhubarb. Last weekend I made rhubarb-walnut bread. Local ingredients: milk, eggs (mom and dad's chickens), flour, walnuts and my rhubarb. I've been eating it for breakfast this week.
Other garden news:
The sweet potatoes arrived. I've planted them in 4 inch containers for now. It's still pretty cold at night so they are being moved in and out with the tomatoes.
The potatoes are growing like mad. I've had to hill them several times now. The ones in the garbage can are looking great.
The lettuce and spinach seedlings have their first true leaves. Probably will start harvesting in a week or so. A few will be transplanted from the cut-and-come again beds so that they can grow to full size. There are two small heads of lettuce that could be picked (bought as starts). Should plant more lettuce seed tomorrow.
Beans (shell varieties-decided to plant those first as they need a longer season) will probably pop tomorrow if the forecast for heat is right. They've pushed themselves up to the surface. This weekend the rest of the beans need to be planted.
A few volunteer squash of some sort are coming up outside. It's always a tough decision as to whether to leave them and see what comes, or to pull them out. The winter squash that were started inside are starting to germinate.
The tomatillios I planted aren't doing anything. Mom has beautiful starts, so I think I'll have to snag some of hers.
Now I just need to do something about the slugs and snails....
Saturday was the first farmer's market for my community. Not much in the way of vegetables: kale, onions, garlic, radishes and carrots. I got some cheese and kale. Rather than selling the leaves, one farm stand was selling the stems with the flower head. I sauted them in olive oil and sprinkled a little salt and pepper on it.
To finish off dinner I had a potato gatto- a lasagne of mashed potatoes with salami, cheese, peas and onions. The potatoes, onions, and one of the cheeses were local.
Yum! Yum! Yum!
Another new thing that was being sold at the farmer's market was "young" garlic. I started eating my garlic this way last year. As I thin the garlic, I eat it at whatever stage it's at.
Here's some of the garlic I've thinned. I had some rather large spots between some of the garlic where some didn't come up, so I planted some "spring mixed lettuce" plugs I bought. I bought just a few lettuce starts because I can never get lettuce going from seed as soon as the local nurseries do. These are organic too!
I also put a few more strawberries in and transplanted my tomatoes. The tomatoes went off with my parents. They have a hoop house that the tomatoes can stay in until they are ready to be planted outside.
Other garden news: first blossoms on the plum tree, peas are up to 1-2 inches
Next garden chores:
*Plant potatoes
*Plant radishes, more lettuce and some carrots in planters.
*Transplant baby cole crops into 4 inch containers, they aren't quite ready for the ground yet.
I found a squishy tangerine in the 'fridge. Citrus are one of my "special" foods that I allow myself while trying to eat local. Which made me very sad that one was found a little past peeling and eating.
It could have been juiced and added to a salad dressing, or to a tomato sauce (supper yummy, add it at the last minute), but it was early morning and I wanted to use it while I was thinking about it. So I sliced it up and added it to my tap water.
Very, very tasty!
Just finished reading Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's convinced me even more that eating local, or even better growing my own, is the best option for feeding myself.
Also been looking at Path to Freedom's challenge to eat what is home grown. It's another call to plant a Victory Garden.
What's really been on my mind as I think about what I've been reading, is how I can eat local this time of year. I went to get local carrots at the co-op on Saturday and they were all gone for the year.... I'm down to being able to buy apples, pears, mushrooms, turnips and potatoes. And what I've preserved.
This year has given me a really good sense of how much I need to preserve if I want to be able to eat local year round. I need to be able to pull from what I've stored for choices in January, February, and probably the beginning of March. I'm making plans to can more applesauce and to dry more corn and cherries. I'm thinking about what crops to plant more of so that I can preserve the excess. I probably could have used a few more tomatoes-since my canned supply will need to get me to July.
Here's my breakfast of applesauce (apples from my tree), locally made bread with locally ground flour, honey, and butter I made with local cream. No compromises here- it's all organic too. The next thing I'm reading is In Defense of Food by Pollan. It's another very interesting book.
Something that comes up a lot when I'm reading about cooking on other blogs (such as Crunchy Chicken yesterday) is how to cook for one or two people, to be able to eat a variety of foods, and still make healthy choices. This is something I've been doing for about 17 years (that was scary to figure out)! And this got me to thinking.... I'm going to start posting my weekly menu (I drift in and out of doing menus), my shopping list, plus a few notes on a weekly basis. It might be helpful for someone? It will also help keep me on the straight and narrow for eating what I have in my pantry and not letting it go to waste (excellent suggestions at Crunchy's blog).
So here it goes!
One of the best techniques for me is to make one or two main dishes and to prepare basic ingredients on Saturday or Sunday, and then mix them up throughout the week or to freeze portions that I can use later in the month. Each week becomes a mixture of using up things from the pantry and adding new things .
This week I bought: oranges, a pummelo, hazelnuts, sugar, flour, milk, cream, peanuts, bacon, pasta and pears (everything bulk or local except for the citrus -one of the cheat items I allow myself and the pasta).
From my pantry I'm adding: dried beans, bread cubes from the freezer, cooked chicken, red peppers in olive oil (from freezer), eggs, cheese, tortillas, chicken broth (frozen), carrots, onions, frozen fruit, and pear/ginger preserves.
The prep: cook beans in the crock pot, make yogurt, make butter, make soda bread with buttermilk from making the butter, make bread pudding to use up bread in freezer (ginger bread), make risotto to use up chicken broth, and freeze yogurt left over from last week to make yogurt cake next week. I make my own yogurt and butter to cut back on plastic and to have it be local. I'll save two portions of beans and then freeze the rest. Beans freeze very well. I'll eat risotto tonight, save one portion and then freeze the rest.
Menu
Dinner:
Sunday-Risotto
Monday-White beans sauteed in olive oil with sage. Citrus salad.
Tuesday-Rice cakes (add onions and carrots)
Wednesday- Chicken and bean wraps.
Thursday- Pasta with red peppers and bacon
Friday-Wild card day (an omelet, hash, whatever sounds good/needs to be used up when I look in the fridge)
Breakfast: Bread pudding or smoothies (frozen fruit and yogurt)
Lunch: My lunch is provided for me at work but I usually take an assortment of fruits, vegetables, nuts, cheese, or bread for snacks in case I don't like what's on the work menu.
Notes: The bread pudding turned out supper yummy! I tweaked a recipe from Pasta & Co. By Request by Marcella Rosene. I live in a small city that has several really good local bakeries and I've been baking my own too. Unfortunately, it's hard for one or two people to eat a whole loaf of bread before it dries out. One of my challenges has been to come up with recipes that use bread that is a little past it's prime. Mostly I use the last bit of a loaf for bread crumbs or for bread salad. Lately I've been trying to find the just right bread pudding recipe. I think I've got it! Rosen's recipe calls for half and half. I substituted whole milk and cut the whole recipe in half. I also changed the type of bread and the type of preserves...hmm, maybe this qualifies as my own recipe now?
Today was the last day for my local farmer's market until March. Not a whole lot of vegetables left, mostly crafts. Some squash, carrots, potatoes, apples, and beets. And bread, honey and smoked salmon. That's about what is available at the co-op too. One of our local farms is going to keep a stand open. It will be interesting to see what they continue to have over the next 3 months. Eating local is going to get challenging.
Yesterday I took a walk down by the bay. This is an area that was formally industrial and is now a park. There is a lot of bricks and concrete mixed in with the rock. The tide was really high. It was easy to start thinking about cycles: the tides, the moon, the seasons. It seems strange to me that winter is the season when the light returns. Winter is often thought of as cold and stormy (and can be), but it's also when the light comes back. It's when buds on some of the trees will start to open....
Finally had a chance to try making quince paste. I found a recipe last year in Cooking at Home, On Rue Tatin by Susan Herrmann Loomis.
And then, thanks to my grandmother and aunt and uncle, I had quince. Two things I learned today:
1. Quince paste is yummy stuff.
2. Cats that sit on keyboards are a pain in the neck (that's another story...).
