Eat Local Mississippi Market!

GaGa for Goosefat!

2009-08-20T21:01:00.008-05:00

One of my favorite aspects of our local-centric summers is discovering (or rediscovering) gems of the edible world. Things that we don't think about all that carefully, if at all, when our senses aren't keyed up to an almost hunter-gatherer level in the search for local ingredients. "Can I eat that," becomes our mantra, or perhaps, "How many ways can I eat that?"

Last year, I was crushing hard on beets. Something I'd largely avoided or ignored became an exiting, versatile new treasure & go-to culinary component. I reacquainted myself with beets- not just their roots but their greens & even their stalks. I made a new friend & learned a few things about myself in the process. I kid thee not.

This year, I'd have to say my biggest surprise obsession (besides duck eggs, of course) would have to be goose fat. Frankly, I'd probably heard about the stuff but certainly had never thought of trying to get my hands on any. I mean, why bother? There were so many other shortening-type things out there that worked just fine... It was one of those things that tend to just pop up during the Challenge, & suddenly you're scheming to get more. & more.

It all started innocently enough. I was going to team up with a young lady (whom I've taken a shine to) in making a nice little three-course meal:

Micro greens & smoked trout salad with raspberry-dijon vinaigrette.

While I was fussing around, getting everything prepped (yes, I'm a fuss-er) my date said, "Hey, we've got some leftover goose fat in the fridge... Ever tried it?"

Beware! This is something akin to someone saying, "Hey, I've got some Crack lying around... Interested?" The first time is free, & then you find yourself cooking down a goose carcass for the third time, in a vain attempt to get the last drop of golden fat. Okay, I exaggerate. A little. In the sense that I haven't yet been forced to locate my own supply...

Pastured pork loin chops with Door County cherry sauce,
wilted mixed greens & pan-fried multi-color potatoes.

Please note the incredibly crispy exteriors of the pan-fried potatoes. This is the beauty of goose fat. Another plus is that the stuff doesn't seem to have a smoke point, to speak of. This allowed me to cook the 'taters for quite awhile, further aiding that amazing crusty effect, without any trace of a burned taste. In fact, goose fat has a mild, clean flavor with just a hint of poultry. You get something similar to the sheer goodness of bacon fat, without the somewhat overpowering, heavy flavor. Magic!

Potatoes aside, the rest of the meal was pretty killer in its own right. We finished things off with a very tasty rustic tart of apples, rhubarb & raisins, which while not being specifically local in origin certainly captured the feeling of a waning summer quite nicely.

Lodi apple "rustic tart" with local vanilla ice cream & cashew brittle.

As we cleaned up after dinner, I found myself wondering if this first encounter with the wonders of goose fat would be my last, or if I'd soon find myself drawn again into its seductive, golden embrace. Perhaps I should take a cautious approach. You know, be a casual "social" user of goose fat.

Sure enough, I was using it to cook breakfast the next morning...

- nano out.

Thanks & a hat-tipping are due to Nick, the Selby Market's produce manager, for first confirming my suspicions that cherries & pork do indeed play very nicely together.

Adventures In Local Eating.

2009-08-12T22:22:00.009-05:00

So, Eat Local continues on apace.

I noticed a stack of Challenge sign-up cards at work today. It was a pretty tall stack, & I must admit to feeling a moment of disappointment. Akin to that feeling of working all day on a dinner for friends & then having half of them cancel at the last minute. Was anyone doing the Challenge this year? Was last year's seemingly enthusiastic response just the peak of a dying trend? Perhaps the glacial pace of economic recovery had convinced many people that they didn't have the money or time to participate (I bet they do, though)...

With some trepidation, I asked our cheerful customer-service guy Luis if anyone had been signing up at all. "Oh, yeah," he said, "We had to make a whole new stack because so many people were interested!"

That is so totally rad, people. Rock on with your Local selves.

& now, a word or two on "adventure" as it relates to our exploration of the local food world. Despite my obvious (perhaps borderline corny) enthusiasm for all things Challenge, I think it's only honest to admit that at certain points along the journey, "adventure" hardly applies. In fact, we can often find ourselves in something of a rut. Whether this stems from developing a routine (not a bad thing in itself & actually quite necessary in terms of saving time & money), or from being timid about trying out new things, many of us will find ourselves saying, "Jeepers, not _____, again!" as we throw together the umpteenth meal using the same trusty ingredients. Personally, the vast bulk of my Eat Local meals are less about reductions, pairings or presentations as they are about simple functionality. Does the meal provide me with a good mix of nutrients, inoffensive taste combinations, & a minimum of expense/effort? Yes? Good:

Local andouille & red green onion on toasted petite pains,
with russet french fries & tomato.

"Good", yes. "Exciting"... Not so much.

There are several approaches to this problem. One might be to consciously "practice" Local eating, in the Eastern sense. By which I mean paying attention to (& respect for) the seemingly mundane details. In The Miracle of Mindfullness, Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh relates the following;

"There are two ways to wash the dishes. The first is to wash the dishes in order to have clean dishes & the second is to wash the dishes in order to wash the dishes."

Obviously, easier said than done, sometimes. Especially when speaking literally about dishes. But when we focus on something that has become chore-like with a renewed sense of attention, we are often surprised by beauty.

Another angle of attack on the doldrums could come from making a point of setting aside a given weekly meal, or even part of a day, dedicated to stretching horizons. Last year, I had the immense pleasure of taking a trip out to the boonies to eat farm-sourced pizza in the open air. On other occasions, I tried out ingredients & techniques that I'd never been "comfortable" with even after years spent in professional kitchens. More recently, someone guided me through the process of making pie crust. Certainly not an "adventure" to many, but to this practically baking-phobic cook, quite the thrill. I've also been big on picnics this summer. Earlier this week I attended the final "Movies & Music" in Loring park, which was a new thing for me in itself:

Local picnic of 1.) wilted collard greens, green beans & chorizo,
2.) tomato-fennel salad & 3.) sandwiches of sauteed zucchini,
carmelized onions & cottage bacon with basil aoli & 4.) nut brittle for dessert
(all not shown, due to being in the process of digestion).

Local beer was my date's, not mine. Pig-themed cutting board is absolutely mine.
& you can't have it.

As nice as it was to have a change of pace, however, perhaps the biggest "excitement" to be found in this situation was whether or not the home-made mayo in the sandwiches was going to keep during the hour-long bus ride...

Let the record show that in fact it did. Hooray for adventure!

- nano out.

Days 2-5

2009-08-05T22:21:00.000-05:00

I meant to blog about this challenge more often, really. Here's a couple of things I've made in the past 4 days, in no particular order:

Marinated zucchini salad. Hell yeah. This is ridiculously good. I like zucchini, but I don't usually LOVE it. This salad has thinly sliced zucchini, halved cherry tomatoes, sliced red spring onion, and fresh basil. The dressing is really simple: white wine vinegar, olive oil, a smidge of agave nectar to cut some of the sourness, salt and pepper. The co-op's demo coordinator made this when the farmers from Featherstone came to hand our samples from a recipe from their cookbook and I fell in love with it. I've made it twice in the past 3 days!

Pickles! I had a ton of cucumbers from the garden and up them up in some brine in the crock to ferment for a couple of weeks. I followed a recipe from the Joy of Pickling (big surprise, huh?) for "Lower East Side Full-Sour Dills". It's only been 3 days and they smell amazing already!

These are some beans I picked up at Seedsaver's Exchange a few weeks ago. They're an heirloom bean called Hutterite Soup bean. I pressure cooked them with a ton of last year's sundried tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic, balsamic vinegar, and a bit of maple syrup. Wow. These were rich!

This is what I've eaten for lunch every day this week: Beans with biscuits (Herbed Whole Wheat Drop Biscuits from Vegan Brunch) and some kind of salad.

This is just another picture of cucumbers that I like. I didn't take any pictures (darn!) of the tasty samosas I had this week filled with potatoes and locally grown peas. I made a soy yogurt raita for the side and filled it with hot chiles, cilantro and mint from the garden. Yum!

The challenge is going pretty smoothly so far. We'll see how I'm doing after trying to pack as much local food as possible for a 4-day camping trip!

Duck, Duck... Grey Duck?!?

2009-08-04T11:37:00.006-05:00

Over the past month or so, I've come to realize two important things. Firstly, that the children's game called "Duck, Duck, Goose" in all other sectors of the Known Universe is known in Minnesota as "Duck, Duck, Grey Duck". Whatever, freaks. Secondly, it has come to my attention that duck eggs are flippin' awesome.

Beautiful!

My only previous encounter with the mighty duck egg was a couple of years ago, during a very good dinner at a former employer's very good restaurant (Restaurant Tallent, Bloomington IN, for those keeping score at home). It was served atop an elk carpaccio dish, & I remember marveling at its beauty but being too absorbed by other flavors to pay it the individual attention it deserved. Flash forward to the present, & I find I've stumbled into a somewhat steady source of this prince among eggs. Also, due to something of a bumper crop situation, this source has provided them at the excellent price of free.

Shown in comparison to Schultz Organic eggs, to illustrate scale.

Duck eggs are varicolored, ranging from an slightly pink-ish off-white to an intensely mottled charcoal grey. The ones I've come across are considerably larger than what we think of as "large" chicken eggs. They are richly flavorful, & incredibly viscous. Think you've had a problem with "egg cement" on your breakfast plate, before? You could do minor masonry repairs with this stuff...

There is a dark side to these glorious orange yolks, however. Like so many things in life that could also be described as "flippin' awesome", over-consumption can come at a cost. In the case of duck eggs, this comes in the form of an almost dangerous sedative effect. My proof is anecdotal, but it appears to be borne out in conversations with other duck egg enthusiasts. I've had several instances in which I've had a couple of these eggs for breakfast & then felt absolutely compelled- against all reason- to crawl back into bed... For up to four hours at a stretch.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

I have no idea why this is. Perhaps it's just their sheer richness, their decadent, exaggerated egg-ness. Maybe the woman who raises them has hyperactive ducks & slips them heavy-duty anti-psychotics. Beats me. I do know that if I have plans for the day after a breakfast of duck eggs, I can pretty much forget about them.

Duck egg omelet with red potato, peppered bacon,
button mushrooms, 7-year cheddar & gruyere cheeses.

That said, I doubt I'll turn down another gifting of these marvelous eggs, should it happen to waddle my way. To my mind, this is yet another of innumerable (& fantastic tasting) examples of the sorts of wonderful surprises we find when we scratch the surface of localized, sustainable food sourcing.

- nano out.

Steak It To The Man!

2009-08-02T00:23:00.006-05:00

I blame it, to some degree, on degrees. Rather, the lack of high ones. Yes, the summer season has so far been outright chilly. Foods that would normally leave me feeling overheated, that would make much more sense in the fall or winter, seem perfectly logical. Foods like steak & root vegetables. I don't mean a grilled steak with a side of potato chips, I mean things like:

Grass-fed round-tip steak sauced with mushrooms & bacon
in a red wine reduction, with wilted mustard greens & parsnip-potato mash.

Or perhaps something a little more on the unassuming, but still unseasonable side:

Grass-fed round-tip steak frites with caramelized "candy" onion & sauteed dino kale.

But an unusually (delightfully) mild summer isn't the only factor pushing me towards the comfortable embrace of steak. Compared to last summer's Challenge period, my social calendar is much more full & my wallet considerably less so. The round-tip from Thousand Hills really fits the bill; inexpensive, flavorful, & sanely portioned. Finally, there's the fact that it's cryovac-sealed, meaning that one can purchase it & essentially forget about it until one needs it. It's a very lean, unmarbled cut, so care (above & beyond that normally shown towards grass-fed beef) should be taken when cooking it. Essentially, "rare" is equivalent to what we think of as "medium-rare" in the corn-fed steak world.

More than either temperature or tight finances, though, I think I've just been playing it safe. As Liz admits, I too have found myself off to a comparatively sluggish start. Last year saw me eating somewhere around 80-90% Local, starting in June. This year, I'm well above 60-70% since June, but perhaps because of the new structures at the Market (both literal & figurative) & changes in my personal life, I'm simply not approaching the Challenge with the same sheer intensity. Is my sense of adventure diminished? Where did the time & energy I had to braise things for hours & invent all-vegetable meals go? What's with all the comfort foods? This shouldn't be about comfort- it's The Challenge, for crying out loud!

It's a self-challenge, on the honor system, however. We are each encouraged to do the best we can. Some may observe me bemoaning my "meager" 60-something percentage & think, "Sheesh, this sounds impossible!" Please don't. Whether approached full-bore, or nibbled at the edges, eating locally has real benefits. & real positive ramifications for our health, our local economy, & our agricultural future.

No matter how one slices that, it's delicious.

- nano out.

Eat Local Challenge: Day 1

2009-08-01T17:10:00.000-05:00

I'm taking a slightly less obsessive approach to the Eat Local Challenge this year. Or at least I'm trying. Last year a few of us gave it 110% and ate predominately local from June 1-Sept. 15. Crazy!

Staring at the avocado, mango, and almond milk in my pantry right now, I'm astonished that I was able to do the challenge for so long. I think there are some normal stages a person goes through in the process of doing the Eat Local Challenge- And I'm starting right back at the beginning. There's the the excited, motivated stage. Then there's the grieving stage (Otherwise known as the "WTF! I though my favorite ___was local" stage). Then complacency. Then self-righteousness. Then a little boredom and the realization that it's not so hard to eat local. Or maybe it's just me that gets emotions all tangled up with my food choices...

Anyways, even though I knew that today was the first day of the challenge, I didn't really prepare. I ate leftover mashed potatoes for breakfast- the potatoes weren't local. And I finished off the last of my PB Chocolate Zigzag ice cream so I would have to make my own local ice cream later.

Luckily, my eating habits improved later in the day!

A Green Bean Meal

The toasted sunflower seeds give this dish extra protein and a nutty flavor that complements the bright vinegar. The seeds, beans, garlic, and herbs are all local. I used a lemongrass infused olive oil that I made last year, but regular olive oil would work well.

4 Tbsp. raw sunflower seeds

2 Tbsp. olive oil

1 pound fresh green beans (I used a wax, purple, and green mixture)

4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced

1 handful fresh dill, chopped

1 handful fresh basil, thinly sliced

Splash of white wine vinegar

salt and fresh black pepper to taste

In a dry cast iron skillet, toast the raw sunflower seeds until golden and fragrant. Set seeds aside. Heat oil in the same skillet over med/high heat. Add the green beans and stir frequently while cooking. It's nice if some of the beans get seared, but you just want to keep most of them crunchy. Add the garlic and cook just 1 minute longer. Remove pan from heat and add fresh herbs, sunflower seeds, and a splash of vinegar (maybe 1-2 Tbsp.). Finish with a generous dose of fresh cracked black pepper and a fine sea salt.

& So It Begins Again...

2009-06-15T20:13:00.006-05:00

I've got the blues. Allow me to elaborate...

Several months ago now, we experienced a tortilla chip crisis.

It's a rare breed of chip that is organic, locally-sourced & also delicious, yet the Whole Grain Milling Co. chips possess all of these qualities. In fact, these may be some of the best corn chips you will ever eat besides those you make fresh at home or find in a good Mexican restaurant. Better than the national brands, hands down. To suggest otherwise in certain circles risks choosing pistols or cutlasses at dawn, & by "certain circles" I mean me. They're that good.

Those who followed this blog last summer may be aware that the sacred coupling of chip & homemade salsa could be considered the backbone of our Eat Local diets. Fact is, eating local (even at the minimum level) requires quite a bit of cooking from scratch. I love to cook, but I often found myself at a lack for time or energy to whip up a meal. Local salsa fresca can be made in large batches & makes for a great, refreshing "filler" meal for those times when you're starving but can't be bothered to touch the stove. Or do any more damn dishes afterwards. I'm sure I'm not the only Challenger to have eaten salsa on a daily basis. Chips & Salsa are the bedrock, the staff of life, the trump card... & the inside joke.

So imagine the dismay when word came down the pike that Whole Grain Milling was discontinuing their fabulous chips! Besides the simple fact that they are awesome, their local status (although complicated by shipping to & from the chip factory) made them indispensable. I mean, we could learn how to make our own masa harina corn flour & produce our own local chips but that would pretty much negate the purpose. A vital convenience would become a massive inconvenience, & feast would become famine. Was all lost?

Our final shipment sold out in a matter of days. Shoppers & Staff were witnessed buying 3 or 4 bags at a time. I myself bought my last 2 bags of blues with the resolute intention of holding them back until the start of the Eat Local season... & ate them all within about a week- Suffice it to say that you do not want to be the other person in the lifeboat. Weeks of hand-wringing & hangdog expressions followed (Really. Seriously. Marketeers are indeed food dorks!) Letter writing & petition campaigns were considered. Dark times indeed.

Then, one day, the yellow chips returned to our shelves, like gifts from mysterious & capricious corn chip gods. I happen to much prefer the blue corn variety, but I was still happy that I'd at least have something to dip in my salsa. Soon afterwards, I was walking through the chip section & saw... the blue chips!

I let out a (manly) squeal. Literal tears of joy fogged my vision. I'm pretty sure I hugged somebody. The woman shopping next to me looked briefly alarmed & startled, but regained her Minnesotan composure. A ship on the horizon, a plane in the sky... Salvation!

You may think I'm being hyperbolic, inflating a mundane experience to pad a blog entry. But this is how deeply meaningful eating locally has come to be for me. It's almost scary. I hope that newcomers to the Challenge can experience the same excitement as they become more interwoven with the local food fabric. Minus the grocery aisle freakouts. No, I honestly hope you have those, too.

Basic Local Salsa
(hydroponic tomato, green garlic, fresh cayenne pepper & cilantro)
served with Blue Corn Chips

So, yeah. Long story short, I made my first batch of local salsa, tonight. Having the blues never felt so good.

Strawberries!

2009-06-08T21:08:00.003-05:00

What were once little flowers...

are now berries!
We picked about a quart tonight and there should be plenty more on the way once we get back to warmer weather. Sometimes I have to plan for what I'll do with a bunch of berries after we pick, but not with these. I predict they'll be gone before the night is over.

Cider!

2008-09-10T21:36:00.003-05:00

Is anyone else as incredibly excited as I am that the first Hoch Orchards apple cider came in today?! It's the first batch, so it's a little tart...but it's incredible as always.

I keep pouring myself a little jelly jar of it (you know, so I don't drink it all tonight). But then I keep refilling my little jar. So far I've had 3 and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.

Yum!!!!

The home stretch

2008-09-07T21:15:00.002-05:00

So we're down to the last week.

I don't know about anyone else, but I'm losing a little bit of steam on my local challenge. I'm not necessarily eating less locally, but I'm just not blogging about it as much because I'm not thinking about it as much.

I really had no clue that I'd be able to eat so local for so long without feeling deprived. When we started this back in June I thought I'd fall way off the wagon by the time the official local challenge started. And I've certainly not eaten 80% local the entire 3 months, but it's been pretty close. And all in all, it's not as hard as I thought it would be. I mean, sure, I miss avocados and bananas. But I'll eat all the apples and raspberries I can while they're local.

I think I'm worried that if the challenge is not in the forefront of my mind (like it was for the first few months) then I won't stick with it. It's sort of like when I first became a vegetarian back in 6th grade and used to have nightmares about eating hamburgers because I my dream I'd forget that I was a vegetarian. But just like I rarely think about not eating meat now, I'm thinking less and less about eating local...even while I do it.

Like today I barely cooked anything. I grabbed a few berries from the backyard this morning before heading off to meet some friends. I had leftover roasted baby red potatoes (from WI) with homemade hummus (MN chickpeas) for lunch. Then I snacked on some homemade salsa and chips in the middles of the day and stopped at the Wedge while in Minneapolis for my dinner (Their deli's collard greens are awesome!). Not too shabby.

So I think local might be a long-term partner of mine now. We've passed the lusty obsessive phase and have seen each other with ratty hair and morning breath...and we're still together.

Anyone Else Feeling A Little Fractured These Days?

2008-09-04T22:03:00.004-05:00

I've got to admit, the turmoil of our normally pleasant city this week has really distracted me from eating locally.

Not that I'm not eating locally, but I haven't found myself focusing on it with my usual gourmet gusto. Trying to keep groceries on the shelf at work (apparently, a fair amount of "anarchists" are omnivores) & spending my free time watching live feeds of citizen journalists being stomped & regular citizens terrified (not to mention a fair amount of internal conflict as to why I wasn't out getting stomped) has kind of... dampened my enthusiasm. It's hard to eat when you are angry.

So it's been a lot of local hot dogs & salsa, of late.

I did find time to wrap up the beef stock saga with a tasty soup made with leftovers & bulk staples, however:

Local beef broth & pastured lamb, with kale & barley.

The broth & bits of tender lamb were leftovers, the onion & kale were from my last allotment of farm goodies, & the barley is just one of many local items in our bulk bins at the Market (& a very useful thing to have around the house).

It has certainly been a wild, & often disturbing, week. But at least soup is non-partisan & good for you!

-nano out.

Cheese &... Dog Biscuits, Anyone?

2008-08-27T21:47:00.004-05:00

As some of you are aware, I've been talking some smack about baking my own crackers from scratch. Crackers are important to me. I love crackers & cheese. We sell an awesome array of cheeses at the store, many of them local in origin. & as we know, eating locally often requires us to make our own convenience foods for those times we just need a simple snack. & as far as I know (someone please, please correct me), we don't have any local crackers to go with our nifty cheeses.

So I took it upon myself to make manifest my own cracker destiny.

& I failed miserably.

Witness the results of my hubris:

What are those, cat turds?

These misshapen spawn of lofty good intentions are my first-ever attempt at the fine art of cracker manufacturing. I was hoping to use local buckwheat flour alone, in order to make my crackers gluten-free-friendly (although the chilled butter kept them from Vegan status). Boy, did that not work!

Perhaps the dearth of buckwheat cracker recipes to be found online should have clued me in.
But the real blame rests solely on yours truly. Despite roughly a decade spent in professional kitchens, I have practically no baking skills, whatsoever. Too much math, too much precision measuring, & too much faith in chemistry & temperature. I simply don't feel comfortable when I can't meddle in the process after it's started.

But one of the main benefits I think we can all recognize from our various Challenge adventures is that even when we stretch farther than we can reach, we learn valuable things about our relationship with our food.

So, I'll lick my wounds, eat my leaden, soggy crackers (they go particularly well with the Pastureland herbed gouda, thankfully), & survive to bake another day.

-nano out.

Good-Natured Ribbing.

2008-08-26T11:40:00.008-05:00

If you are of the omnivore persuasion, perhaps you've noticed that the Market has Shepherd Song Farm (WI) pastured lamb loin & rib chops on sale during the Eat Local period.

Being as I'm the meat buyer for the store, I thought I might take a moment to highlight the rib chops, as well as show one of the possible end uses for a stock such as the one I've been blathering about recently.

I'm a big fan of braising, a cooking technique closely related to stewing, but with a bit more class. Both methods produce intensely flavored & richly sauced dishes, often utilizing tougher & cheaper cuts of meat. But braising allows for the use of the whole cut in the final dish, whereas stewing requires cutting it into pieces. Additionally, any bones can be left intact, enhancing the flavor & final presentation.

The first step is to brown the meat in the pot (or deep pan) that you'll be braising in. The object here is to color & flavor the outside of the cut, not cook it all the way through:

Once the meat is nicely browned, it is removed & kept warm while the vegetables (in this case, onions, carrots, roasted garlic & the rest of my homemade tomato paste) are caramelized in the same pan. Vinegar or wine can be used to deglaze the pot, & aid in the eventual softening of the meat's tissues. The cooking liquid is added to the veggies & brought to a low simmer. A stock made from the same animal, or one complimentary to it, is the best bet. Obviously, having devoted my free time over the last 24 hours to making beef stock, that's what I went with.

The resting meat is then added back into the mix:

I upgraded my cell phone in May, in part so I could take nicer pictures
of things like food. Now I need to find one that takes pictures of smells...

After about 30-45 minutes of low, low covered simmering, the lid can be removed & the cuts of meat turned every 10 minutes or so, to help build a glaze on their surfaces. This should continue for at least 30 more minutes, until the meat slides right off of a fork when pierced. Meanwhile, any side dishes can be completed. When the cuts have finished braising, they are removed & kept warm, along with some moistening cooking liquid. The liquid remaining in the pot can be skimmed of any fat & strained of vegetables. I reduced mine a bit further to concentrate the flavor, making a partial demi-glace, & then thickened it just slightly with a little roux.

Local pastured lamb rib chops with demi-glace,
gruyere mashed potatoes, & wilted red mustard greens.

A word of warning; Beware the power of the red mustard greens! Seriously, they don't mess around. They certainly served their purpose as contrasts to the intense flavor of the beef stock-based demi-glace, but if I were to use them again, I'd probably seek to mellow them out somehow...

Overall, though, this was a great meal & well worth the wait. I've still got plenty of stock left over for other projects, as well.

It never ceases to amaze me how much better food is when we are deeply involved in its production. It looks better, smells better & tastes better. Is it a placebo effect brought on by the feeling of "I did that"? Is there some sort of actual metaphysical cause?

Does it matter?

-nano out.

When life gives you squash...

2008-08-26T08:57:00.000-05:00

What the heck do you make?

I am the lucky recipient of a whole case of locally grown, organic yellow summer squash. I need to preserve it somehow. I've read that summer squash and zucchini are best preserved in the freezer, but I just don't believe that they won't turn to mush. And I don't want to can just plain ole squash in water/lemon. I'm not sure I'd ever use it. So what should I make?

Last night I used about 1/4 of the squash to make 5 quarts of summer squash soup. It's just a simple soup of onions, garlic, squash, and veg. broth. It's light and summery- I think it'll be perfect for a quick meal this winter.

But summer squash preserving recipes are few and far between. And making sweet jam with them doesn't appeal to me (plus, I have a lot of jam!)
I'm thinking about a corn/summer squash salsa because you can never have too much salsa.

Is It Over, Yet? [stock, post 2]

2008-08-22T23:06:00.005-05:00

Well, it sure looks pretty.

For those of you new to making your own stocks, I'd love to give a play by play, but I don't think it would fit in a normal blog post. I can try &, um... boil it down, though. Basically, if you are making a meat stock, you first brown the cleaned & dried bones in the oven for roughly 40 minutes. After browning, the bones are submerged in water in a stockpot & simmering is commenced. Meanwhile, a simple mixture of onions, carrots & celery (or celery equivalent) are essentially caramelized in a sturdy pan, & as they're turning a rich brown color, the tomato paste is added. This is then cooked along with the vegetables, caramelizing somewhat itself. The pan is deglazed with a bit of the simmering bone-water & set aside. The bones continue their simmering...

Then, you might want to take a 7-odd minute break to put together a simple meal, in order to keep from going crazy with impatience &/or dying of starvation. In this case, I whipped up a toasted local sandwich with gruyere, 1-year cheddar, Schultz chicken andouille sausage (new in the Market- Try 'em!), tomatoes & some micro greens. While you can't exactly leave your house, or go to sleep (sadly), making stock is pretty low-impact from here on out, & you can wander around doing other tasks.

After several hours of simmering, the vegetable-tomato mixture can be added in, along with classic seasonings such as garlic, cracked black pepper, thyme, & bay leaves. The simmering continues...

After at least another hour of this (probably long past your bedtime, if you have a meat department to open the next morning, say), sea salt can be added to taste & the whole thing skimmed, drained, & cooled.

If all goes reasonably well, the next day finds you with a richly flavored stock for use in soups & sauce. I'll be reducing a portion of mine to make a demi-glace for use in braising some local lamb rib chops (ON SPECIAL THROUGH SEPTEMBER 15TH!). The rest I'll probably freeze for later adventures...

-nano (really) out.

* Please consult your favorite cookbook for detailed stock-making instructions. Techniques & results may vary from those described in this post. Not responsible for lost or damaged time, ego, or sanity.

I'm Such An Idiot.

2008-08-22T20:42:00.004-05:00

No pretty pictures for this post. I'm in the middle of the beginning of making some beef stock. Roasting the bones in the oven as I type, actually.

Like the clever fellow that I am, I decided to start this 5-odd hour process at around 8 pm.

This is what my uber-expensive tomato paste is destined for. One could very well ask what might be wrong with a handsome young single fellow, to make him stay home on a beautiful summer evening (& late into it, no less) making a reduction of animal & vegetable juices. Well? I guess it's just something that holds a deep, basically spiritual power for me.

Plus, a guy's gotta eat.

& when one is eating locally, & one desires a beef-based stock to complement a meal (or several), one simply must make the stock.

Although, come to think of it, there actually is a pretty decent, locally-made all-natural (& MSG-free, for those concerned) line of stock bases. We use it regularly in deli at the Mississippi Market. I used it to some degree practically every shift I had making soup there for the last two flippin' years. Oh, for crying out loud.

I'm such an idiot.

-nano out.

Gazpacho!

2008-08-21T22:27:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I finally got around to it.

Perhaps it's more accurate to say that nature finally got around to it. I've been waiting for some time for the magical conjunction of ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, onion, & peppers that means gazpacho season.

Let us not forget garlic!

As fond as I've become of my new willing & adaptable friend, green garlic, I am so happy to see local clove garlics coming onto the scene.

The tomatoes are just the usual locally grown hydroponic variety. I'm pretty fancy, but I'm not yet ready to spring for heirlooms until they are really "there", to my taste. Anyway, the vine-ripe ones are, if not squish-ably ripe at the time of purchase, then easily ready after a day or so in a paper bag.

Of course, those of you with gardens don't have to worry about this economy of tomatoes; you'll be desperate to implement them all, I suppose. I certainly found myself envying you as I reduced the world's most expensive tomato paste, this evening. At $4.99/lb, I spent about eight bucks making roughly one cup of paste, simply to spread on beef bones for a stock. Not my most economically brilliant moment, although that money will be spread back out by the volume & utility of the end product. Score one for Mr. Gourmet McShowoff, right?

For bell peppers, I went with one of those neat-looking purple ones. I found it to be somewhere between a biting green & a sweeter red, which was just what I wanted. Also included was a gift pepper from fellow Challenge participant, e__ly, given to me quite some time ago. Yes, I am starting to wonder about the magical properties of my refrigerator. Although it doesn't even seem to be on when I open the door, it keeps food for bizarrely long periods of time.

The picture was taken on the night I made it, & I do suppose a picture of gazpacho should have been posed on a sun-dappled patio, but I tend to get around to cooking rather late in the day. Eating it that first night, I wasn't overwhelmed, but the thing with soups is to, whenever possible, allow them a day or two of rest before consumption. I find this to be especially true for gazpacho. & tonight, after some four or five days of juicy mingling, the final bowl was fantastic.

So simple, so pure, so encapsulating of the idea of summer. There are few things better.

-nano out.

Steak for Two

2008-08-17T20:10:00.003-05:00

We made this last week and it was so good, but I forgot to mention it. I had a hankering for steak. I wanted a cut that was high quality, and settled on a sirloin. It was from 1000 Hills Beef Company and it was pricy, as in $10, but I figured that steak dinner for two at a restuarant would have been 2-3 times as much for a lesser steak.

I started the coals and ran back inside to cut potatoes. I tossed some local reds with some local rosemary and garlic in some olive oil with salt and pepper. I wrapped it up in tin foil and when the coals were white hot I put the potato package right over the heat.

I sliced a large onion into a pan and sauteed them over low heat in canola oil. It took almost 25 minutes for them to carmelize! I added balsamic vinegar to the pan (not at all local)and a sprig of rosemary and I left it to reduce. In a medium pan I brought some water to a boil and added these tri-color string beans that I found really cheap at the farmers market.

The steak was simple. I let it rest at room temperature for an hour, sprinkled both sides with salt and pepper, and put it on the grill -right over the coals- for about 3 minutes per side. I brought it in an let it rest for 5 minutes. I added the juices that collected to the pan with the balsamic vinegar.

Somehow it all came about pretty well. By the time the steak was done resting, the potates were cooked through and a minute or two later the sauce was nice and thick. It was a great accompanyment for the steak- sweet and savory. I cut the steak in two and plated both with the balsamic onions on top. The potatoes were a great side. Unfortunately the beans were a little bit over-cooked, but I ate them all anyway.

Here's my cost breakdown for a summer steak dinner for two:

Sirloin $10
Onion $0.50
Potatoes $2
Rosemary $1
Beans $1
Garlic, Salt, Pepper, oil, vinegar- maybe $1

That's a $15.50 dinner for two, and worth every bit.

Cheers!

A Whole Slew of Localness

2008-08-16T19:51:00.002-05:00

Here's what's been going on in our kitchen lately:

When we bottle up soda, the kitten likes to try to attack the brew as it bubbles through the tubing!

This latest soda is Maple Rhubarb. It uses 1/2 maple syrup and 1/2 sugar to sweeten it and rhubarb to give it some tartness. As you can see, it has some serious carbonation after 36 hours! (The leaves are some mint and lavender I had in my glass- not part of the original recipe).

I was delighted to see these blue/purple potatoes are the cheapest potatoes at the Selby store right now. They're local, organic, and crazily colored- You really can't beat that. I used some yogurt/mayo mix and last year's sweet pickles to whip up a potato salad. It was super good today after it had marinated overnight.
Today was the Sustainable Farming Association's Garlic Fest out at the Wright County Fairgrounds. Sure, I added some food miles onto this garlic by driving out there all by myself, but it was great talking to the folks that grew the garlic! I picked up the following:

2 heads Chesnok Red and 2 heads German Extra Hardy from Sunfresh Foods in Preston, MN. These guys are certified organic.
2 heads Chesnok Red and 1 head Russian Red from Coffman Garlic in West Concord, MN
2 heads Merrifield Rocambole and 2 heads Northern White from Hawk's Brain Garlic in Red Wing, MN
2 heads Armenian and 4 heads Music from Living Song Gardens in Crow River, MN
2 heads Polish Jenn and 1 head Polish White from StoneHouse Farm in Miltona, MN
Garlic powder from Girardin Gourmet Gardens in Cannon Falls

I also scored a great deal on some little potatoes from Earthstar Farm in Hickston, WI. They're not yet certified organic, but working toward it.

Then on my way home I saw Apple Jack Orchards and decided to see if they had any apples yet. Sure enough, they had some early crop apples for super cheap. And they're Midwest Food Alliance Certified!

I can't wait to try all the different varieties!

For better or for worse, in local or global..

2008-08-12T20:00:00.004-05:00

Today my partner said he's thinking about doing the Eat Local Challenge. I can't even convey in words how excited I am that he might take the challenge. While I love all of my local-eating coworkers and they are super supportive, I would really like to have someone at home join me in this challenge- because honestly, it's when I'm home that I'm tempted to eat chocolate bars, basmati rice, and all those cans of pre-cooked beans for dinner.

What my partner might not realize is that he's been eating pretty darn local since June. As the primary grocery shopper, I've just stopped buying non-local produce, grains, beans, soymilk, etc. So while we still buy gluten-free pasta and sugar for our mostly-local cookies, our staples are very close to home. So he doesn't have very far to go to be at least 80% local.

Like tonight:

The first of our tomatillos were ripe, so I cooked up some salsa to go on some fabulous local nachos. There were no complaints from the kids!

Included: Whole grain milling chips, homemade local black beans that I canned a week ago, Gardens of Eagan sweet corn, homegrown tomatillo salsa (green onions, garlic, poblano chile, jalapeno chile, tomatillos, vinegar, salt, cilantro), Follow Your Heart Vegan Gourmet cheeze (not local), and my pickled jalapenos from last year.

On nights like these eating local is quick and convenient, and no one even missed the guacamole.

But there are nights when my partner comes home with Cascadian Farm Spud Puppies and Banana Fudge Rice Divine ice cream. And it's mighty hard not to grab a spoon and dig in. (Or I'd imagine it's hard. So far I've not resisted.) When the whole family is eating a non-local meal, I usually just eat a small portion and make myself something else later if needed. But it feels wrong to not enjoy the food the rest of the family is eating. I've tried not to be preachy about eating local or to talk everyone into going along...but it sure would make it easier on me!

Is anyone out there eating locally while your partner is eating globally? Do you have any tips?

[in which nano has a] Slack Week.

2008-08-11T20:19:00.009-05:00

The above photo is probably my Eat Local highlight, this week. It's a local apple that my coworker in the meat department, Tim, picked for me on his way to work. It was fairly sour, but not the crabapple that some asserted that it was. Just not ripe quite yet.

Please note the spot of Local Bird Poop, located on one of the leaves. I'm afraid this might throw off the percentage of this particular meal's locality. After all, who knows where that bird has been...?

Yeah, it's been something of a slack week for me on the local front. My usual overall 80%+ has probably dipped into the 60's. I have no fancy meals to crow about. Hell, a few nights ago, I had Amy's Deluxe boxed mac'n'cheese. Sure, I cut up local Thousand Hills ballpark-style hot dogs & threw them in there, but still. Last night, I had local veggies... Tossed with not-local capellini. Let there be no doubt- I'm still in the game, but I guess I needed to take a little breather & eat some flippin' pasta, already! It's been months!

Here's something fun & kinda junky one can do when one isn't feeling like making a fuss about eating locally. It's a recipe my paternal grandmother used to make for me as a kid, probably in order to gradually trick me into eating eggs with a properly runny consistency. It worked. My Grams was both classy & crafty.

First, one cuts a hole in the center of a piece of bread (buttered on both sides). Then one side of the slice is toasted in a frying pan. After flipping the bread over to toast (well, fry, honestly) the other side, one breaks an egg into the hole. One then cooks the egg somewhat & flips the whole mess back over to cook a little longer. At this time, some good cheese (in this case, Grand Cru gruyere) can be grated on top. For this version, Pastures A'plenty Canadian bacon was also applied. The end result should be a nicely browned piece of fried/toasted bread with a pleasantly gooey egg in the middle, which can be handily mopped up by the bread as one eats it.

Another relatively lazy thing I whipped up in the last few days consisted of some more 100% grass-fed hot dogs, & spicy tempura-breaded zucchini & squash from the farm I keep mentioning in passing (but not posting about).

Well, at least there was something green in that last example. It turned out pretty good, considering that I don't remember ever making tempura before, & the recipe I found in my battered (yet unearned) CIA textbook was intended to serve ten full meals & needed to be rapidly, randomly reduced to serve just one. Just goes to show you that the Culinary Institute makes a damn good cookbook, I guess.

Really, I have no clear idea why I felt so unmotivated towards anything but carbs, protein & fat in the past week. My hypothesis is that, having shed some 8-10 pounds simply by eating locally (primarily through quitting my 6 cans-a-day energy drink habit, & eating many more vegetables than usual), my body was concerned that I might accidentally starve it to death.

-nano out.

Adventures in Local Shopping

2008-08-05T20:43:00.003-05:00

My car is on its last leg, or wheel, or whatever. I took it to the doctor and the prognosis was that it had somewhere in between one to two months before it became a danger to me and those I share the road with. Eventually I will have to take my plastic blue beast out back ol-yeller-style. For now I am in denial.

While the car was at the doctor I decided to play at being super-green. On Saturday Morning I rode my bike down one side of the bluffs and up the other. I tied my bike to a parking meter (are there really no bike racks at the Saint Paul Farmers Market?) and went about shopping for a weeks worth of produce. I had $22 dollars and this is what I was able to get.

1 Big bag of Potatoes
3 Heads of Lettuce
4 Heads of Garlic
1 Bunch of Radishes
1/2 Dozen Ears of Sweet Corn
6 Tomatoes
1 Bunch of Scallions
1 Big bag of Mixed Beans (yellow, green and purple!)
1 Big bag of Bacon (Otis Farms- the best bacon we've found yet)

Not Too Shabby.

I stuffed it all in my backpack and pedaled very slowly back across the bridge to the West Side. I decided I had to stop by Burrito Mercado since I was a handful of cilantro and one jalapeno away from some local Pico de Gallo.

At Burrito Mercado I was happy to discover that my herb and pepper were locally grown by a group of kids at a nearby community garden. Well, that's what my half-assed spanish told me anyway. I acknowledge that the sign I was reading may very well have said something different but I was feeling like a good green consumer so that's what I took away from it. I found La Perla Flour Tortillas (complete with local hydrogenated oil, I'm sure) and a 6 pack of chicken tamales that I've been having for lunch ever since. That was another 15 Dollars.

Then I had to pedal with a huge, heavy backpack and a plastic bag dangling from one hand up Cesar Chavez Blvd. When I finally got to the top of the hill I considered throwing up and throwing my food and bike over the bridge and crawling home. I decided that just for that day Mother Earth owed me one.

Tonight I made BLTs and I consider us even. A haiku:

Bacon sweet Bacon
Crispiest Love of my Life
Be mine Forever

The fine line between canning and...

2008-08-05T08:10:00.002-05:00

I'm wondering if I've crossed some sort of line between cooking from scratch and... crazy.
I was standing over my new 18 quart pressure canner, carefully adjusting the heat between 11 and 12 pounds of pressure when my mother in law asked, "Why are you canning your own beans?"

I have to admit I was a little stumped. Of course I was canning my own beans. Why not? These Whole Grain Milling Co. black beans are good and I can now safely precook and preserve them for years at room temperature! Do I need more of a reason than that to spend 5 hours in the steaming hot kitchen on my day off?

Then my partner pointed out that organic beans are cheap and are often on sale for less than the cost of the canning jars, not to mention the cost of the fuel used to cook them.

Darn! If I don't can to save money, then what's my excuse? Because I'm preparing for holing up in my basement for a month and being perfectly well-fed on wholesome locally grown foods during the apocalypse? Because I'm bored? Because I've been reading too much about urban homesteading? Because I'm paranoid about BPA lining aluminum cans?

You know, a few decades ago I wouldn't need an excuse. Everyone would be too busy canning to ask.

slugs and green beans

2008-08-04T11:04:00.003-05:00

I've been out of town for a few days, so here's a quick recap of the past week in my challenge.

One of my favorite local authors (and my former girl scout troop leader, randomly enough) just wrote a book called The Compassionate Carnivore. It's a great book for many reasons, but for me it was especially exciting because it tackles the subjects that we've been having discussions about here - about awareness and choices and connecting communities with food sources. It resonates for me partly because she's from where I'm from and she's talking about people and places that I know and love. But that sense of dialogue, engaging each other and growing both individually and in our capacity to create change, that's what it's about for me.

On Thursday, I spotted a ripe tomato. Now, we're not talking a cute little cherry tomato, that's old news already in my garden. We're talking fist-sized, bright yellow, can-smell-it-from-here tomato, heirloom, the kind you'd be paying $6.50 for at the co-op. I about fell over with excitement. This tomato was on a plant in the farthest corner of my garden, so it had gone unnoticed as it ripened, and then one day there it was. So I wade through the overgrown potato plants and back to that corner tomato. I pick it. It's perfect to the touch. But that's just the half that I can see. The bottom half of this gem looks like the compost does when you forget to take it out for a few days. My heart sank. I asked the father-in-law, and his answer was simple: slugs. My squash got sick too, so instead of having more squash than we know what to do with come September, we get nothing. But the beans! The beans are perfect, five inches of crispy freshness.

I had a few other points, but I think I'll leave you with this for now: I just finished munching on 3rd St. toast with strawberry jam (which mysteriously appeared in my box at work, confirming my belief in the jam fairy) and some local goat cheese just for kicks. Quite nice.

[I'm not going to make any puns about] Beets! Beets! Beets!

2008-08-03T21:56:00.013-05:00

I can't claim to have been a big fan of beets, growing up. There was something about their deep, sweet, earthiness that my young palate found... unsettling.

Years later, I'm finding them to be a highlight of my Eat Local Summer, both for their flavor & the intense color they bring to dishes.

Local 100% grass-fed round tip steak with tarragon compound butter,
green beans, & golden beet-purple potato medley.

Seriously, I've been going crazy with these things. A few days ago, I came back from my day volunteering down on the farm (which really deserves its own post, or two) with a paper bag full of onions, carrots (finally!) & beet-parts.

While I was stripping & reserving the tender, mild greens for later use, I started nibbling a stalk on a whim. This led to a very interesting discovery; I noted a fairly strong taste of naturally occurring nitrates & a crisply fibrous texture... like celery! Could it be, the long sought local substitute for celery? I tried it out in a stock, along with some imported celery, & it seemed to work just fine. I haven't died yet, anyway, & there was no unpleasant taste. Beets may be a completely perfect vegetable.

I'll get to the main (meaty) course in a second, but first some hot veg-on-veg action:

Local double-roasted beets & "Japanese" eggplant with mascarpone
& farmstead feta, on a bed of wilted beet greens & shaved garlic.

This tasted absolutely sublime. I roasted the beets with the skin on, to intensify their natural sweetness, then rubbed the skin off & sliced them to roast again (briefly) with the eggplant. We may have reached the end of the green garlic season, so I found myself forced to buy "Spice Island (TM)" conventional garlic cloves at the last minute... from the convenience store. Not my proudest Eat Local moment, but I'll admit that it was nice to taste normal garlic again (even though it was in terrible condition). Anyway, I almost forgot about cooking the rest of my dinner after eating this. It was that good, & a lot easier than it might appear, as well.

I'm well known back home for my obsession with our humble friend, the green bean casserole. I always make my mushroom soup from scratch, use fresh beans, & fry up my own Durkee's-style crispy onions (usually shallots). Yes, this takes forever, but it's worth every second. Not that I have any problem at all eating the all-from-a-can variety when someone else makes it, mind you. Don't get it twisted.

Local pastured pork "sirloin chop" with wilted beet greens,
maple-glazed young carrots, & green bean casserole.

Obviously, this is really a "green & wax bean" casserole, but my clever little menu listing was running on a bit. The maple syrup was given to me by the woman who oversees the farm program I keep mentioning, & is made by a member of the Fond Du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Pretty good stuff. Sometime soon I'll have to do an official taste test to compare this one to the Wild Country I've normally been using. I certainly never would have predicted that one day I would have two different high-grade maple syrups in my fridge simultaneously. My life is so hard, right?

Along with my current infatuation with beets, I think it's fair to say that the local food stock is really picking up steam. It feels like forever ago that we started this Challenge back around June-ish, with little more than salsa-makings available. Now the bounty is almost paralyzing. & it's just getting started.

All I know is that I'm thoroughly hooked & head-over-heels. What a great experience.

-nano out.

PS: For dessert, I boiled off some beet sugar & made my own homemade cotton candy... No, I'm lying. I totally didn't do that.

How To Eat Local

2008-07-31T14:56:00.002-05:00

So by now we're all pro's at eating local, right?
I'm looking for some folks to help out with our "Surviving the Eat Local Challenge" class on August 14 from 6-7:30pm. (Anyone who wants to take the class can sign up by calling 651-310-9499. The class is free, but you'll need to register in advance).

So comment or tell me in person if you want to help out!

The Great Crepe-tastic Disaster!

2008-07-30T21:27:00.012-05:00

Well, I've been yakking on about crepes for long enough & I suppose it's time to share the actual fruits of my labors. Honestly, it's been a mixed bag. I had forgotten just how frustrating the process of making crepes can sometimes be, especially since it has been years since I actually made any.

The first attempt was a cinch. I simply thinned out the dregs of a batch of local buckwheat pancake batter (using plain old milk & water) until it was about the consistency of heavy cream, then cooked them up on my recently acquired cast-iron griddle pan. Easy as pie (well, actually, considerably easier). Then I made up two different savory fillings, rolled them up in the crepes, & dug in. The only real shortcoming of this particular attempt was that I sort of forgot to make any kind of sauce to compliment either of the fillings, which while not exactly required for a crepe dish, certainly would have made them more memorable. & moist.

Anyway, not too shabby. The crepes lent their typical light sweetness to contrast with the salty, meaty & cheesy flavors of the fillings. My first memory of a savory crepe was one I had at a restaurant attached to the Indianapolis Museum of Art, as a kid. It was filled with a simple (canned) tuna salad & drizzled with hollandaise sauce. Totally awesome, & something I've replicated many times in various restaurants, with a fair amount of success. Due to locality issues, of course, tuna was out, so I grabbed a few things I had lying around instead; some grass-fed beef (MN), farmstead feta (WI), cherry tomatoes (MN), & spinach grown on the farm I've been volunteering at (MN), among others.

Here was the result:

Local buckwheat crepes filled with 100% grass-fed beaf, cherry tomatoes,
fresh basil, & a touch of balsamic vinegar (foreground) & spinach, feta & bacon (background).

A number of days after this relative triumph, & flush with cocky confidence, I decided to get serious. As soon as the Door County Cherries made their first appearance in the store, I snagged a little cardboard crate of them & got to work.

The scene of the crime...

Big fancy cook that I am, I somehow have gone throughout life without a cherry-pitter. I regret this, now. I also regret that I ate a cherry for every two I pitted for the sauce. Not that they weren't insanely good, but it made the process take forever. After pitting, I reduced the fruit & their juice with nothing but a couple of pinches of salt. No added sugar was needed, at all (although it could be included for a sweeter sauce).

So far, so good.

The same night, I made up a new batch of batter, this time being all scientific & following the directions precisely (this is why I don't gravitate towards baking). The first batch of crepes had come out pretty good, by gut instinct, but I wanted these to be perfect. They had to support the best cherries in the known universe, after all. I let the batter sit overnight & got up early the next morning to make sure I had time to make breakfast. This is where things started to go badly awry.

I'm not sure what was to blame. Perhaps the condition of my griddle, which although relatively unfamiliar to me, I had thought I'd been taking pains to treat properly. Or maybe my meticulously assembled batter was off just a pinch of something. But the damn crepes just burned to the pan, leaving the top surface raw. I scraped the first attempt into the trash, scrubbed the pan, & started again. No luck. Now dangerously close to being late for work, & not wanting to ruin my day before it even began (I do not take well to kitchen disappointments), I shelved the project & bitterly scarfed down some toast.

I tried again that night, with similarly annoying results. Finally admitting that this particular batter & this particular cooking surface simply weren't going to cooperate this time around, I eventually just used a non-stick pan. It was still a struggle (leading me to put the ultimate blame on my batter), but I managed to make two more crepes:

Local buckwheat crepes with mascarpone cheese & Door County cherry sauce.

Unfortunately, a friend called just as I was plating this for the picture. He responded to my explanation as to why I couldn't talk just then by saying, "What, crepes again? Man, you're such a foodie!" I tried to make it clear that, while I understood he was trying to pay me a compliment, the term "foodie" is considered to be something of an insult in the professional cooking world. He insisted on not understanding me, & fueled perhaps by my sneaking suspicion that I had no idea why I was posing as anything (considering my recent string of failures), I lost my cool. As a direct result, the plating was sloppy as hell. & I had to call him back later & apologize.

But it tasted fantastic.

Not that I have any intention of trying this again, anytime soon.

-nano out.

Drinking Local

2008-07-28T08:32:00.003-05:00

Just about everytime an Eat Local Challenge comes up in public conversation, someone mentions upping their percentage of local beer or vodka to meet the challenge guidelines. It's true- we have a decent number of small breweries and even some hard liquor made nearby, I'm told. But I'd be hard pressed to name a single local alcoholic beverage.

The only alcohol in our house is a 2 oz. mini-bottle of tequila I use for making margarita cupcakes and some vanilla extract- neither of which are local. My partner is straight edge, so no alcohol for him. And me- I come from a long line of alcoholics (recovering, thank God) and keep my drinks to about one per year. So I won't be kicking back with a cold local brew anytime soon.

I will, however, be kicking back with a cold Mulberry Root Beer, though!

We started making our own root beer a few years ago. It's not hard to do and the supplies are pretty cheap. Northern Brewing on Grand Ave. has everything you'll need as far as equipment goes and the roots/herbs can be procured at your local co-op. There's a gazillion combinations you can use, but we thought it'd be fun to use up some mulberries in this one.

Mulberry Root Beer
1 quart mulberries, washed (sub any berry)
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
1 1/2 cups cane sugar
1/4 cup date syrup (sub 1/4 cup raisins if you don't have this)
2 cinnamon sticks
2 Tbsp. sarsparilla
1 vanilla bean, scraped and the remaining pod
2 Tbsp. licorice root
2 star anise
1 Tbsp. juniper berries
2 gallons filtered water
1/4 tsp granulated ale yeast or champagne yeast

Stir together all fruits/herbs and 1 gallon of the filtered water in a large stockpot. Bring to a simmer and boil for 30 minutes. Then remove from heat and allow to cool to room temperature. Prepare a strainer over another larger pot, carboy, or empty bulk peanut butter bucket. Strain the mulberry-spice liquid, gently pressing the mulberries to get the juice out. Discard strained solids. Add the remaining gallon of water to the jug and stir. Make sure the temperature is lukewarm- no hotter. Then stir the yeast with 1/4 cup of water in a little cup. Add to the jug and stir vigorously. Your brew is now ready to bottle.

It takes some strong bottles to package this up as the carbonation can get pretty fierce. I really recommend only using bail-top bottles designed for this purpose. These should be sterilized with hot water and soap before bottling. We use a spigot rigged up on an old 5 gallon bucket and put a plastic hose over the nozzle that attaches to a bottling wand. But you can get creative about how to get the soda into the bottle- just keep it sterile.

The soda needs to stay in a warmish place (no problem in summer) for a few days. Usually they take about 48 hours for the carbonation to build, but we check after 24 just in case. You might want to open them outside as they can be lots of fun to open- like champagne that's been shaken up.

Once you know they're at the right fizzy consistency, bring them into the basement or a refrigerator to stop the yeast and get those brews ready for drinking!

PS- I can't really guarantee how this brew will taste when finished because it's still sitting on the kitchen floor growing bubbles. But my temperature-test taste was rockin good- kindof like a spiced cherry vanilla soda.

Strawberry Jam Forever

2008-07-25T08:27:00.000-05:00

So while I shouldn't have been excited (actually, thrilled) over the 16 quarts of slightly mushy, overripe local strawberries sitting in the buddy (free) bin on Wednesday, I was.

I snagged all those strawberries in a heartbeat and promised I'd bring people jam the next day. I decided to use a "Basic Strawberry Jam" recipe from a book called something like "The busy person's guide to canning" (I'm just busy because I'm canning, so I don't know if this book is for me).

I thought it was odd that the recipe didn't call for pectin, but it called for astronomical quantities of sugar, so I figured that would help it set up once it reached the jelly point (220F). So I purchased 36 cups of fair trade, organic cane sugar, 3 more cases of canning jars (I had one) and high-tailed it home. At this point it was 6pm. Probably a little late to start a quadruple batch of jam, but nevermind that.

The jam went according to plan until I had it all sealed up and processed. It had passed the "does it run off a cold spoon in single drops or sheets" test decently. It was a little thinner than usual, but I figured it would just be a softer set kind of jam. Wrong. More like a not-set-at-all type of jam.

So my 42 jars of strawberry jam were delayed until last night. I opened each jar, resterilized the jars, reboiled the jam, and added plenty of pectin this time. Bingo! Forget any risky low acid fruit jams without pectin for this girl. I'm sticking with the sure thing.

As I was eating the jam straight-up out of a spoon last night, I realized that I'd never had homemade strawberry jam. Usually I'll try something before I make 42 jars of it. But, really, who wouldn't like homemade strawberry jam?

2008-07-24T22:24:00.000-05:00

I will play devil’s advocate here on what I think some perceive is a touchy subject, but which I find to be a natural and refreshing.

In my humble opinion, there is nothing wrong with being a food snob or even a food “elitist”. I guarantee you that the best tomato you will eat is the one that you grow from seed and wait through all of May, June, and July to be able to eat. If you are willing to share it with me, and if you can put up with the half-assed one I grow next year when my wife and I break ground on our new garden, then I say you have every right to be elitist about your tomato. I think that your passion/geekiness/snobbery regarding your food (or music or comics or politics or baseball or books) makes you interesting. (BTW, I’m totally up for a Local Blogger Dinner)

I want the farmers who grow my food to feel the same way. I shop at the farmer’s market because I get to meet them and hear them tell me just how good it is. If I had a CSA this year I would want the farmer to feel like they were doing me a favor by letting me pay for my share of premium produce. I love that the Door County Cherry grower that Nick works with at our Co-op pushed his delivery to the market back a week. After driving 90 miles he turned his truck around because he wasn’t proud of his product. I proudly state that the best Corn Tortilla Chip comes from Whole Grain Milling and I’m proud to buy it. I think that the Castle Rock Ice Cream I ate today was some of the best Ice Cream I’ve ever had, and totally worth the $4.99/pint that I paid for it.

Here’s the catch: I work very hard not to let my elitism turn into exclusivity, and I’m way over judging someone for their foods. Why, do you ask? Because I eat Hot Dogs. Not the co-op’s all natural grass fed humanely -raised hot dogs (though I’m sure they’re good). Nope, these were those Vienna beef red-hots, complete with casings and sin. I have broken my eat-local diet for Chicago-style Hot Dogs (complete with neon green relish) and Tater Tots. My excursion to the dog house wasn’t the slightest bit local, but it was damn good. Who am I to judge?

I’ve gone to Dairy Queen twice since I started my challenge. The Butterfinger Blizzard wasn’t the quality product that the Peach Ice Cream was, but it sure did taste good. BTW, I will argue for the legitimacy of Dairy Queen as a local company. It is Minnesota owned, probably franchised locally, and I know that it employs the neighborhood kids. Most importantly I will say that part of eating local for me is about building a community around food. Waiting in line at the neighborhood Dairy Queen on a hot July night with a dozen other people is as “local” an experience as buying parsnips at the Farmer’s Market.

this omnivore's dilemma

2008-07-23T14:59:00.004-05:00

Don't worry, this post is going to be much lighter than my last one (but not necessarily shorter...)

I'm planning on borrowing my roommate's camera and taking some pictures of the garden so you all will finally be able to see what I've been talking about this whole time... so get excited.

Today, Ms. N and I went out to eat. Now, we're trying to maintain a small vacation fund, and in the past would spend a lot going out to eat, so when we decided to start saving some money, that was one of the first things to go. Alas, today I was tricked into running errands and we ended up at Midori's Floating World, which is right near our house. I just wanted to give them a quick plug, because it was so good and simple and (in my opinion) exactly what food should be. Every bite was savored and we sat there lingering over it for a good hour. So yay for local businesses!

My latest exercise in food awareness has been to ponder the amount of processing that things undergo before they end up in my kitchen. I've been focusing lately on eating "real food" instead of processed things, which is turning out to be a bit more economical, in addition to being quite tasty. It also makes me wonder if there's a lot of energy spent producing tasty, faux-meat morsels at, say, a big Boca factory. Liz, you might know more about that sort of thing. Here's where this thinking has lead me, though:

Is eating meat better or worse than eating fake meat?

I'm considering these things-

1) processing- I happen to love Morningstar's veggie nuggets, but
there's not really all that much veggie involved...
2) cost per ounce- I'm going to do some digging on this one and I'll
get back to you
3) ethical arguments pro or con- I can respect that some people don't
want to eat something that has a face
4) carbon footprint/food miles- which I know you're considering anyways

And finally, I wanted to bring up the idea of having a blogger gathering of some sort. I have a pretty accommodating back yard, complete with fire pit and picnic table, so if y'all are interested let me know. If I may suggest a couple of potential dates... August 8th or 22nd (both Fridays) would be ideal for me, or we could plan it for the end of the official challenge sometime in September... I bet with all of us contributing we could have a pretty fantastic 80% or better pot luck! Comment here or catch me at the market.

Not all that glamourous

2008-07-22T17:45:00.000-05:00

I usually post my really pretty meals and leave the more homely ones for the eyes of my family only. But really, that makes it look like I spend way to much time cooking each day (okay, I do). Here's a perfect example of a breakfast I would usually never dream of posting. This is a desperate attempt to find something local to eat in the morning.
This is a La Perle (MN) tortilla, leftover marinated & baked Wildwood tofu, french fries from Shish, and Silver Springs (WI) mustard. It's not the prettiest dish, the tastiest, or the most nutritious, but it held me over until lunch.

And this proves that you can prepare pretty local breakfast in under a minute.

It's Gettin' Hot In the [proverbial] Kitchen!

2008-07-22T09:22:00.008-05:00

It's great to see an increase in involvement in this blog from various Challengers, especially (as Liz points out) because it brings different perspectives & approaches into the conversation. I'm also grateful that the exchange has, so far, been respectful & honest.

Putting on my thoughtful face...

In particular, well put, e__ly. I'm referring to your post immediately before this one, in which you succinctly outline many of the challenges, perceived & real, posed when considering a more locally-based diet. Indeed, it can be argued that those of us posting here are to some degree living in a bubble. It's also unlikely that our efforts this summer will sway anyone towards local food sourcing who wasn't already considering it.

With this in mind, I'd like to direct everyone's attention to this NYT article from earlier this morning. I would be very interested to hear other Challenge participant's opinions on the issues it raises, especially in regards to how we, as natural food store employees, fit into the picture. &, for that matter, how said "picture" is being framed by national media such as the NYT.

I can really only speak to the "elitism" problem from my own experience. Although I've long had an interest in quality food, if you had suggested just a few years ago that I would be working at a co-op (& enjoying it), I would have either laughed at you, or taken offense. See, I looked at people who did all their shopping (or working) at natural food stores as being pretty silly. Sure, I understood their reasoning, & I often picked up the odd item at my local co-op, myself. But shopping there exclusively, let alone only for local foods? Preposterous! I considered myself to be a pragmatist about this. Yeah, you could find some good things at the co-op, but anyone who shopped there for the bulk of their food simply had more money than common sense. I certainly didn't think that I, as a service-industry wage-slave, could have ever afforded to do so.

I press the fast-forward button & find myself working, completely by chance, at the Market (a newcomer to the Cities, it happened to be the first place that I applied to & the first to offer me a job). I find that I really care about the products I'm selling & that many of the customers do, as well. Further, I find that someone making at least a "living wage" can indeed afford to shop there almost exclusively (but that, yes, it would be daunting to attempt it at, say "minimum wage"). The fact is, none of us is independently wealthy. We make a "fair" but very modest living, & our wiggle-room is as tight as most other Americans. We all have differing amounts of time to devote to this project & differing outside expenses. In my particular case, I do have a fair amount of time to spend playing around in my kitchen, but the fact is that I would make that time a priority, regardless. & yes, e__ly, I did literally tear up a bit over my pork. I'm a big geek.

I hope we can keep digging into these issues surrounding the local/sustainable food question. It's great to put up handsome pictures of the food we've cooked or grown, but these sorts of discussions are the real "meat & potatoes", if you will (or "TVP & potatoes", if you won't).

Ready for yet another trip...

-nano out.

I wasn't tired when I started writing...

2008-07-21T23:26:00.003-05:00

Nano, my friend, I don't know you very well, but it's pretty clear from your recent post that cooking like this gives you joy (I really want to know if you actually cried over pork). You cook for the sake of cooking, and you do it with style. You have the time and energy to do so, and you would probably be eating pretty similar meals without this challenge, so stick that nose up in the air and be proud of your justifiably beautiful creations.

Now, on to the heavy stuff.
I think the perceived link between elitism and sustainable living (including eating and shopping locally) stems from our consumer culture. It's easy for us to think of ourselves as simple, reasonable folks making decisions that jive with our views of the world, but the knowledge and abilities we have aren't necessarily common or even "common sense" to many in today's world. There is a huge amount of knowledge relating to food that the average person doesn't know (or care to know) and doesn't have to know because other people are happy to grow food for you (for a small fee). To invest time and energy to gain specific skills, like gardening, aren't necessary or possible for many folks, especially in the city where productive green spaces are somewhat scarce. To invest time and energy to make a beautiful meal from scratch using fresh, local ingredients isn't reasonable or economical for many folks either.

So: bridging the gap between our happy little co-op world where eating the way we do is possible because we make it work in our own ways and the world where people choose foods based on their wallets, not based on their impact on their bodies or other people or the environment. Is it possible? Yes, I think. Is it going to happen because we do this challenge? Not 100%, but primarily because there will always be people who don't want to know, who want the most bang for their buck, who don't find value in the things we find value in. And that's ok. I watched a friend eat an Arby's sandwich the other day, and I wished I could unknow what I know for just a minute and eat one too. But really, I'm glad I can't.

I'll leave you with a few non-fast food meals that have crossed my plate in the past week:

Risotto with mushrooms (not local) with freshly shelled peas and young onions (backyard local) = 25% (not my best work, but extra credit for weeding)

"Coleslaw" which started out as shredded broccoli stems (the tops went into stir fry) and kohlrabi (both backyard local) plus carrots and onions (not local) and quickly accumulated buddy beans from the deli (quasi-local, mostly just free) and walnuts (from Bergin) and the remainder of that feta cheese from Wisconsin from a few recipes back and topped off with some apple cider vinegar and olive oil (not local) = 90% due primarily to the absurd quantity of kohlrabi we grew accidentally because the seedlings look just like broccoli...

The Cycle of... Soup?

2008-07-21T22:40:00.005-05:00

Oh, dear. I feel a soup coming on...

As I've mentioned, one of the things I've been honing as I eat my way through the Challenge is my ability to utilize various leftovers. I have a tendency to buy food for meals without much (or at least without enough) thought given to what I might do with the remainders. As a result, I've historically wasted ungodly amounts of food. But without the option of cheap Chinese take-out, or pizza, when I realize that the bits & pieces in my 'fridge are past saving, I've had to really start thinking more long-term. Not to mention that, while I'm finding that eating locally is fairly affordable (at least for fairly minimal me, on a fairly minimal budget), it isn't exactly free. How can I stretch the ol' dollar?

One result, as I've displayed over & over again, is omelets, omelets, omelets. Another is soup.

Barley, potato & tomato soup, with Canadian bacon,
green garlic & mushrooms

Those who know & work with me are probably aware that soup is my so-called thing. It's probably, hands-down, my favorite thing to cook. This one is the offspring of my delicious pork country rib, turnip & tomato experiment. I had to make a stock to braise the pork & complete the tomato-flavored sauce, so I figured, "Why make a little stock, when I can make a lot of stock?" With this in mind, I made sure to obtain some bulk barley & extra potatoes for a later recycling into soup. I happened to have some white mushrooms that were teetering on the edge of slimesville, so into the soup they went, as well. Also on hand (& nearing the end of their useful life) were some scraps of Canadian bacon. All told, I managed to efficiently re-use the varied components of something like 4 separate meals, all in one dish. Locally made A Toast to Bread "petit petit pains" (aka "small, small breads"?) completed the picture. Gotta sop the soup, after all.

A later visit to pork-land left me with a goodly amount of mashed parsnips & potatoes. I was simultaneously sitting on a piece or two of rapidly "aging" cheese, & some milk that needed a home, sooner than later. My direction seemed clear. Or, rather, creamy:

Cream of parsnip & potato soup, with crispy bacon,
cheddar & gruyere cheese, & purple onion

This was a pretty tasty result, as well, especially with the addition of those gorgeous purple-tinged green onions that have started making the rounds. Just throwing a few slivers on top as a garnish took the soup to a higher plane.

I know, I know, there's a whole lot of bacon being thrown around here, & neither of these examples are exactly ideally suited to the dog-days of summer. The point is, soup is by nature virtually limitless in its possibilities, economical, & amazingly simple. Why, one could almost define it as a "free lunch".

& having recently spotted local cucumbers in the produce section, I know it's only a short while before we're all guzzling that highlight of summertime... Gazpacho!

-nano out.

Mid-July and the eatin' is good

2008-07-21T18:34:00.001-05:00

Strange how my fervor for eating local has suddenly kicked into overdrive. I figured it was time to get serious...and not to mention more local produce is in season! I'll admit that there are times when I'm so ravenous and broke that I really can't discriminate between local and non-local, but as Liz pointed out I'm more conscious of what I eat now and where it comes from.Since last fall I have been waiting for berries to be in season so that I could participate in an activity that I had not in my 23 (and 11/12ths) years ever participated in: large scale strawberry picking. I say "large scale" because I have gathered berries from my community gardens little patch, but that was just a had full. Never before had I picked 8 pounds of strawberries! A friend of mine went with and with our two boxes lined up the backseat of the car looked simply delicious!

While picking the berries was fun, it doesn't compare how great it is to make tasty treats with them. The same night I made strawberry daiquiris with the fruits of my labor. I cut up about this much:

(Looks like about 2 cups)

I blended the fresh berries with 1-2 cups of lemonade, a certain amount of vodka, and a couple of cups of ice. You could of course make this virgin for all the kiddos or teetotalers out there.

Yesterday I thawed out some of the berries I froze (about 2 cups) and made a delicious local shake with Cedar Summit Farm's vanilla ice cream (1-2 cups) and milk (~3/4 cup). It made enough to fill two tall glasses with a delicious dairy beverage for two thirsty ladies.

I still have berries left but oh how that stash is dwindling. It hurts to see it disappear but I know the berries will be back next year (and their seasonality only serves to make them more scrumptious and desirable the next time around).

The past couple of weekends I've made it a mission to go down to the local farmer's market to scout out the haps on fresh produce. This weekend I hit the local produce jackpot.
I gobbled one tomato down all by itself and I relished for the first time this summer that delicious fresh picked tomato flavor which cannot be packaged or preserved. Then I took a bit (or most) of the other veggies and chopped them up; tossed them with olive oil (unfortunately not local, but you could use local butter as a substitute), salt, pepper, and thyme (wasn't local, but can be procured locally via my garden or the farmer's market). Then we spread them on a pan and baked them at 375 for 40 (or so) minutes.We had the veggies with fish but they could easily be paired with a local meat product, wild rice or on their own. Mmm!

That's all I have for now, but I plan to be bringing in more pictures and stories soon. My tomato plants have lovely tomatoes that are growing ever bigger by the day and as soon as they've turned red I'll post pictures of them (and perhaps me ravenously consuming them, with juice splattered all over my face and all!).

Eat Local Newbies Enter the Race!

2008-07-20T21:55:00.004-05:00

The TaterTot Lovers have made it through their first week of a mostly local diet, and so far so good! Breakfasts have been hard for us. I get up REALLY early most days, so fast and convenient is my norm. My wife gets up a couple hours later but doesn’t generally leave herself a lot of time for breakfast. Even if I did have time my options are limited because I don’t eat eggs. My breakfasts have been mostly Nature’s Hand Granola.
My lunches are comprised of leftovers from dinner the night before or sun-butter sandwiches. Ho Hum but okay.
For dinners we’ve gotten quite lucky. I make a wicked Cauliflower Bacon Salad. Since we didn’t have local cauliflower last week I doubled the broccoli, changed out parsnips for carrots, and used that thick Farm on Wheels Bacon. It wasn’t the same, but we ate it all.
We’ve had a lot of salads, courtesy of the fresh greens at the farmers market. Kohlrabi sliced thin is an excellent addition to a salad. The Salad Girl dressings are quite nice too, but my wife is skeptical of flavors like “blueberry maple” and “pomegranate pear”.
I prepared a bunch of local chicken and shredded it. We’ve used it on the salads, but one night I grabbed sautéed a couple handfuls with green garlic and spring onions, and then added a half cup of Salsa Lisa. Once it all cooked down a little it made for great tacos.
Our big success was Pizza on the Grill. We might just have Pizza every night of this challenge. We used Swany White Flour and Ames Farm Honey in the dough and I made enough for 4 pizzas. In the humid heat the dough doubled in 20 minutes.

We started the coals and when they were white we moved them to one side of the grill. Inside we rolled out the flour in cornmeal. We did it by hand and our pizza came out rectangular. We oiled it up (If local olive oil was available we would have used it) and put it on the side of the grill opposite the coals. We put the lid on for 4 minutes, rotated the crust 180 degrees, and cooked it for another 3 minutes. We then took it inside and flipped it over so the grilled side was up.

We added more oil, yellow hydroponic tomatoes, fresh basil, green garlic, and local mozzarella cheese. It only needed 4 or 5 minutes longer on the grill to become golden and delicious.

Hardcore local

2008-07-20T19:18:00.005-05:00

Read Nano's previous post to find out where I'm coming from with this one. After he brought up the idea of elitist local eating, I just had to share what I've been thinking about lately. I think it's connected...or maybe just a scary glimpse into my psyche.

I've had to take a lesson from my yoga teacher and try to let go of my attachment to this Eat Local Challenge. It's easy to get down on myself when I feast on pistachios, boxed crackers, and Washington cherries while at a music festival (yesterday), but the point of all this isn't to feel guilty- It's to eat amazing food and think about where it comes from. It's to make changes in your life where you can and accept where you can't (can you tell my whole family goes to AA?).

I've found myself watching someone eating an avocado and thinking, "Jeez, doesn't that person know how far that traveled?", like I wouldn't be slathering it over my toast if I weren't doing this challenge. I tend to do this when I'm trying to make a change in my life- I get all snobby about it in my head. I think it's a protective mechanism of sorts, like a way to cheer myself on. "You wouldn't eat an avocado or drink those imported sodas, either, Liz. You would have grown your own raspberries and drunk filtered tap water," the voice in my head says. This method doesn't work so hot, though. Instead, I end up too proud when I eat local and too guilty when I don't. And years of therapy have taught me nothing if not to avoid attaching your self-worth to what you eat.

So I'm trying to let loose a little (this doesn't come naturally to me) and be more forgiving. So what if I was eating out of a cooler yesterday and ate cherries from far away? I did drink Pepin Heights sparkling apple cider, made in Lake City, MN. And I brought along some Holy Land hummus and Whole Grain Milling Co. chips, too. Not 100% local, but not too shabby for a quickly thrown-together picnic.

And today's another day of eating and another chance to work as much local food as possible. It might be 50% or it might be 90%, but I think the point of this challenge is that we're all trying. Our intention is in the right place and we're gaining insight into how we eat, our expectations about food availability, and how challenging it can be to change our habits. So whether it's a fancy-schmancy gourmet meal or a bag of chips, we're doing awesome.

Having everyone's different experiences on this blog is super important and makes it so much more interesting. So don't forget to post, everyone.

E__ly- this means you! We want to see those onions!

Lofty-Minded Local (I Just Can't Help It).

2008-07-19T20:07:00.012-05:00

As I was leaving work today, I got into a local-blog conversation with fellow Challenge-taker e__ly, who was excitedly telling me about pulling & eating her first onions from her garden. Midway through her description, however, she stopped & said something to the effect of, "...but that's probably not very interesting to someone as hardcore as you..." I protested, & we laughed it off, but this exchange is still bothering me somewhat. Are people getting the wrong impression, here? Am I coming off as some sort of haughty purist who doesn't have time to listen to apparently pedestrian stories of the simple joys of the garden? True, I'm consistently eating above 80%, without too much bother, & I'm loving it quite vocally. But isn't it also true that I wish I'd thought ahead (let alone really desired) to plant my own garden? Isn't it possible that I sometimes regret that my adventures in eating locally are almost entirely of the consumer, rather than producer, variety?

So, in order to reestablish my street cred as a simple, salt-of-the-earth kinda guy, I will now show you a bunch of pretty pictures of totally awesome high-end gourmet meals that I've made recently, like it was no big thing:

Local braised pastured pork country rib with turnip-potato mash,
wilted turnip greens, & tomato veloute

Making & eating this meal was almost enough to make me cry. The flavors were so pure & well-matched that I had to reassure myself that I'd actually made it. It's entirely possible that in my 10-odd years of restaurant work, I rarely came close to creating a plate like this, even with entire walk-ins full of ingredients to play with. Like any pioneer of Electro or Hip Hop music could tell you, sometimes the magic is in the minimalism.

I wasn't sure at first how to work out the percentages on this one, since for the stock I had to use imported celery & carrot (CA), plus Beeler's smoked ham shanks (IA), which fell close to the limit of my personal distance guidelines. But with the revelation that Iowa falls within the Market's definition, combined with the fact that only a fraction of the plated meal actually uses said stock, I'm going to put it at a solid 75%. See, guys? I'm no stick-in-the-mud! Best of all, the leftover stock was very useful in making some great soup, which I'll post on soon.

Local grass-fed beef with mushroom compound butter,
3 cheese potato gratin, & micro greens

Yep, just some down-home steak & potatoes. I didn't grow up eating my steak on the rarer side of medium rare... Well, actually I didn't grow up eating steak at all (well-meaning mothers of the world, take heed). But because I was using the cheapest (& most sensibly small) cut that Thousand Hills offers (Round Tip), it was necessary. Grass-fed beef is so much leaner than conventional that eating it closer to raw than most people deem normal is no big deal. It doesn't have that same bloody, rust-tinged taste that we associate with rare beef, & it makes for a pleasantly tender steak. Due to the fact that after the picture was taken, I chose to drizzle some non-local Cardini's Italian dressing on the greens, I will score this one as 90% local.

Local pan-seared pastured pork loin chop with maple-thyme glaze,
parsnip-potato mash, & red kale with caramelized cippolini onion

I hesitate to claim that this dish was completely incredible, as I was slightly unimpressed with the way the kale behaved while I was preparing it. Apparently, the red-veined variety of kale does not turn vibrantly green & crimson when blanched. At least, not when I blanched it. It still tasted pretty wicked, though. I'm not sure how I'm going to deploy the leftovers from my parsnip mash, but I'm leaning towards making some kind of savory crepe, as I've hypothesized in the past. By the way, if we don't count the vinegar, sea salt & pepper, this one was 100% local.

Removing my tongue from my cheek, & granting that my nose may still appear to be high in the air, I do hope that people understand that I don't want to come off as having any better of a grasp on this Challenge thing than anyone else. Like all of us (when I'm not gleefully showing off, that is), I'm highly likely to be snacking on local chips & homemade salsa in order to put off doing the dishes, or trying futilely to make an 80% local bowl of cereal magically appear through a careful combination of Rice Chex & locally-made granola, in order to avoid getting greasy before work. & by all means, friends, please tell me about your garden escapades; I may not show it, but inside I'm wildly jealous.

Well, not of the weeding, anyway.

-nano out.

Mulberry Madness!

2008-07-14T16:00:00.002-05:00

Every summer our family turns purple. The color stains our hands, clothing, hair, teeth, and the stepping stones in our berry patch. The color remains in the cracks in our cuticles for days and never really comes out of our clothing, but we've come to accept the purple spots as the one drawback to having a very productive mulberry tree.

Before moving to this house, none of us had eaten mulberries before. All we saw was a little tree shading the overgrown area we planned to turn into a berry patch. After clearing the land, mulching, and planting blackberries, strawberries, and raspberries, we left the little tree for another project. We planned to take it down.

Imagine our surprise when that little tree seemed to sprout fat, juicy berries overnight! From that day on, we've been mulberry harvesters, mulberry jam-makers, mulberry-juice-drinkers, and mulberry-pie-bakers. It's true that the little pseudo-berries don't have a ton of flavor on their own. They do, however, have plenty of sweetness and juiciness.

They pair well with tart rhubarb in a pie and are so colorful when juiced & paired with maple syrup to sweeten lemonade. Lately, I've been baking with mulberries and oats for hardy treats. This week it was Sunny Mulberry Oat muffins and Mulberry Oat bars.

Mulberry Oat Bars

*Modified from Colleen Patrick-Goudreau's Raspberry Oatmeal Bars from The Joy of Vegan Baking to be wheat free, use of lots of mulberries, and not need pre-made jam.

3 cups mulberries, freshly picked
1/4 cup maple syrup
1/4 cup water
2 Tbsp. cornstarch
1/2 cup brown sugar
1 cup oat flour
1 cup rolled oats
1 tsp. xanthan gum
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/8 tsp. salt
1/3 cup Earth Balance or butter

Wash the mulberries. There's no need to remove the stems. In a small saucepan, heat the mulberries and maple syrup until simmering (the juice will be released from the mulberries). Using a potato masher or fork, mash the berries until there are no whole berries remaining, but the mixture is still chunky. In a separate bowl, mix the water and cornstarch to form a slurry. Stir the cornstarch slurry into the mulberries and stir to combine. Turn heat to low and stir frequently for about 5-10 minutes, or until thickened to a jam-like consistency. Remove from heat.

Preheat oven to 350F. Grease a 8"X8" square glass baking dish. In a mixing bowl, combine sugar, flour, oats, xanthan gum, baking soda, and salt. Add the Earth Balance or butter and rub the mixture together until it forms a crumbly consistency. Press 2/3 of the mixture into the bottom of the baking dish. Spread the mulberry jam over the oat crust. Top with remaining oat crumbles and bake for 30-35 minutes. The bars will cut best if you allow them to fully cool first.
*Note: If you don't have oat flour, you could also use rice flour. Or you could use a food processor to whiz rolled oats into oat flour. Or you could use wheat flour instead of oat flour, and omit the xanthan gum. I'd like to try it with cornmeal!

By the way, I still sing the little nursery rhyme:

All around the mulberry bush
The monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey thought 'twas all in fun.
Pop! goes the weasel.

in my head when I pick mulberries.

I'll have the "tuna" melt

2008-07-13T21:25:00.003-05:00

These are the kind of meals that are meant to be eaten outside in the shade on a beautiful sunny day. I just don't think they'd be the same indoors.

First up is a Chickpea Melt. You can make this exactly as you would a tuna melt, only soak, cook, chill, and mash some chickpeas to use instead of tuna. The chickpeas are locally grown, you see, and tuna is not. So even if you're not usually a veg-type person, this is a great substitute. This chickpea salad has chopped pickles (sweet & spicy freezer pickles I made with last year's harvest), grated baby onions, and fresh dill. Non-local ingredients include lemon juice, kelp powder (for iodine and that "fishy" taste), and Veganaise. If you're down with eggs, though, you should make Nano's mayo.

I used 3rd Street Bakery bread, Living Waters hydroponic tomatoes, and non-local Vegan Gourmet cheese in the assembly of these open-faced sandwiches. The best part is that I could broil these in my toaster oven, so the house stayed nice and cool!

The house did not stay nice and cool when I made these, but it was SO worth it.

These are Sunflower Sage rolls, recipe taken and modified from the Moosewood New Classics recipe for Three Seed Whole Wheat Rolls. I chopped 7 or 8 sage leaves from the herb garden into these babies and the flavor really came through. The sunflower seeds give them a great crunch. But really nothing beats the chewy whole wheat insides.

I paired my lunch roll (as opposed to my after-lunch roll and before dinner roll...) with a homegrown salad. I just got my first cucumber and little broccoli head from the garden, so I paired them with my lettuce that is quickly growing bitter, more hydroponic tomatoes, and leftover Chickpea Salad. And I topped it with ranch dressing, of course.

Back on the Brunch Shift, Or, A Pancake With Promise.

2008-07-13T13:28:00.010-05:00

Back when I was a full-time professional kitchen monkey, I worked many a brunch shift. Unless one is being hired in at the top of the kitchen hierarchy, it's common for an employer to try a new employee out by giving them brunch duty. It's a good way to size the new hire up, check out their speed & precision, & determine their dependability. After all, if the new guy can consistently make it into work early Sunday morning, ready to go, after being out all Saturday night partying...

Somehow, I was able to do this alarmingly well (probably because I just kept partying, with maybe a brief nap, right up until it was time to get to work), & I often found myself in danger of being stuck making gussied-up home-fries & omelets indefinitely.

That lifestyle is now well behind me, but I still find myself cooking & eating breakfast at all times of the day. As I've mentioned in a previous post, brunch-type dishes are great ways to use up leftovers from other local-eating endeavors. Part of this stems from the brunch concept itself; the ability to use ingredients in a breakfast dish that usually would be used for meals later in the day, but another reason is that it allows the cook a more leisurely pace to work at & prepare more time-consuming components.

Take this, for example:

Local chorizo & potato omelet, with Widmer one-year cheddar, Miereke's gouda, & two-tone salsa.

I don't know about you, but I would never be able to make time for this sort of meal, while simultaneously trying to get out the door to work. It's straight-up day off fare, my friends.

Something considerably quicker is local buckwheat pancakes, provided that the batter is made the night before (which is, in fact, recommended by the pancake experts). The beauty of these pancakes is that they can serve in their normal capacity as a solid, energy-packed breakfast food, but by thinning the batter they can be made as crepes. This allows them to accommodate any number of garnishes & additions & be served 24 hours a day.

Local buckwheat-mulberry pancakes, with maple syrup.

I unfortunately used up all my batter gorging myself on regular pancakes, so I'll have to wait for my next batch to play around with crepe combinations. I kind of forgot to get buttermilk, too, so these pancakes were a little less fluffy than they could have been, but I was already expecting a heartier version based on memories of childhood buckwheat 'cakes. Another neat thing about this general recipe is that it can be adjusted to be gluten-free, for those with an adverse reaction.

Okay, it's early in the afternoon on a Sunday, & I'm starving. Time to get to work...

-nano out.

A tip o' the nano-hat to Nora & her next-door neighbor (who, knowingly or unknowingly, provided the delicious mulberries).

Just A Little Sumpthin' for the Veg-heads...

2008-07-12T23:50:00.004-05:00

Often, when I'm arguing with anonymous people on internet forums about the concept of sustainable, non-industrial meat production, I like to key in on the idea that Americans do indeed eat too much meat. It's true, we are a meat-happy country. People from other cultures are often appalled by how much (& how often) meat is consumed in a typical American's day. As part of my defense of the sort of small, humane producers I do business with, I'll often stress that a key part of reforming (or even eventually eliminating) the undeniably awful large-scale meat industry is for people to eat less meat in general. We need to reduce meat from the center of nearly every meal, I'll say. It needs to be used more often as a flavoring agent or condiment, & less often as the main attraction, I'll stress, aping Pollan. If we all make an effort to do this, I'll opine, then a patchwork of smaller, more ecologically & humanely operated farms can supply a greater portion of our nation's meat fix.

In my mind, this is the best way (outside of the unlikely event of mass Vegan conversion) to solve the obscenity that we call industrial meat.

The only problem with my argument is that I do a fairly crappy job of actually practicing it.

I eat meat at least once a day, although perhaps not in the same proportions as many Americans do. & I more often than not make my meat the focus of the meal, as anyone can observe just from reading my posts on this blog. & if there's anything in this world that consistently gets me heated... it's hypocrisy.

The other night, my unwillingness to truly practice what I preach was really getting to me, so I whipped up a relatively rare vegetarian dinner with some leftovers;

Local zucchini & yellow squash cakes, served with a tomato, thyme & white mushroom ragout.

Honestly, this recipe needs some tweaking. I was pressed for time & short on ingredients, so the cakes didn't turn out quite as I imagined them. Despite expressing what I thought was the bulk of the water in the shredded vegetables, the cakes were still pretty wet when they hit the skillet & they needed more breadcrumbs than I was able to toast up, so they didn't cook up as pleasantly browned & firm as I'd hoped. The ragout was awesome though. Through the magic of food science, it almost had the taste of the wine I would have added, had I been in the habit of keeping wine in the house. & disregarding my disappointment with the texture of the cakes, all the flavors worked together very nicely. The dish wasn't suitable for Vegans (as it contained eggs, milk & a little butter), but it was a great change of pace for me. Not to mention that it was virtually 100% local.

I doubt I'll change my omnivorous ways as a result of taking the Challenge, but I hope to do more of this meat-free cooking in the months to come. The meat case I preside over at work is a great place to find local foods & it will continue to provide me with many meals & ideas for meals. That's not even a question for me. But if I can alter the ratio of meat-based meals in favor of meat-accented or meat-free meals, I'll be just fine with that.

-nano out.

"Would You Like Your Receipt?"

2008-07-11T21:39:00.008-05:00

...Um, yes. Yes, I would like my receipt, actually.

It's been a bit of an adjustment for me to remember to keep my receipts, let alone keep track of them. A little over a month ago I promised I'd keep the intrawebs appraised of my eating-local costs. I did my best to compile my receipts, so while this summary won't include such nebulous items as time & energy, it will at least be a fairly accurate snapshot of a poor-ish, young-ish single guy (with somewhat expensive tastes) trying to eat 80% local in the month of June, 2008. Obviously, someone with a family to feed, or more skill at buying in bulk, or better farm connections is going to have a different cost-to-benefit ratio. & again, it would be great if someone with a more complex living situation or buying approach would tackle this topic too. I doubt I'm really representative of the average natural-foods consumer.

Here is what I spent on local food & local food related items in June at the Market:

$236.87

If I wasn't the happy recipient of an employee discount (-$59.39), my total would have been more like $266.57, for a co-op member, & $296.26 for a non-member.

It should be noted that I didn't eat out at all, besides the Magical Mystery Pizza-Farm Excursion & the occasional morsel that someone else treated me to. In other words, the above total is essentially the cost of nearly every bite of food I've had in a month. Also, while this estimate includes various non-food items (such as a pitcher to steep larger quantities of my coffee/energy-drink replacement) purchased through the Market, it doesn't include other Challenge-related purchases (such as a cast-iron griddle, or a large set of plastic storage containers) made at other stores. Further, I tried to avoid free stuff from work (& no, I didn't cut myself any special deals on meat, either), other than a couple of loaves of locally-made bread. Well, I must cop to snacking on a few leftover Deli scraps, from time to time. I mean, seriously, they're just sitting right there! Overall, though, I've been pretty strict with myself in that area.

Other things aren't being factored in here, either. Things like the large tub of mulberries that a certain thoughtful Health & Beauty Counter-person kindly picked for me, or various bits I cleaned out of my freezer. My overall goal in the first phase of the Eat Local Challenge has been to get an idea of what the costs of eating local without having my own garden or having a lot of free/barter connections in place would be. As time goes on & the growing season continues, I'll be taking more advantage of such money-saving & community-building options, I assure you.

Yes, that is a hint to those of you who do have gardens.

All things considered, I find myself to be fairly pleased with my first official 80% local month, both cost-wise & otherwise. I've been learning a lot, stretching myself in the kitchen somewhat, & finding ways to economize. Not bad for a guy who generally buys food on a French-style "what do I want to eat tonight?" sort of basis!

-nano out

Finally!!

2008-07-11T16:06:00.002-05:00

It seems I have done it.

Last night for dinner I cooked up some beans that had been hanging out in my cupboard for a while and I'm pretty sure everything I added was local (with the exception of a splash of olive oil and a dash of salt...)

Starting with our bulk department's 10-bean blend, I added Holy Land cucumber sauce (local business, but probably not locally sourced, eh?), feta cheese and tomatoes from Wisconsin, and fresh broccoli and kale from my garden. Served cold with butter lettuce (also from my garden) it turned out to be a simple, fresh tasting meal. Dessert was a handful of raspberries, bravely collected by Ms. N from the bushes in the backyard. Plus, I made enough to last for a few meals, so I can take my time scheming about what to make next! Now I just need to track down a bottle of good local wine...

Back on track

2008-07-10T19:38:00.005-05:00

I feel like I've been off track from my local challenge for the last few days. Sure, I've been able to pull off a local lunch everyday (I can always count on salad!), but breakfast and dinner have been tougher than usual- Probably just because we've been busy and I haven't planned ahead as much.

It started with a bite of chocolate here and a handful of almonds there. Then my sweetie knew I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday and knew that I wanted some Banana Fudge Rice Divine ice cream more than anything, but I wouldn't buy it for myself. So he bought me some and I thoroughly enjoyed it. But I felt some local guilt, too, because I've done really good with avoiding tropical fruits (even if I've splurged on other very not local items).

Anyways, tonight is my evening to myself- no family, no classes, just whatever I want to do. So I cooked a great comfort-food meal for myself.

I had barbecue tofu, my mom's yellow squash recipe, and some awesome green beans.
The green beans are super easy to make and the flavors don't overpower the sweetness of the beans. These green beans are local because they're from my garden, but I hear the local green beans should be at the co-op very soon! I included red pepper in these because when I was out at The River Market Co-op in Stillwater today I found Wisconsin hothouse-grown red peppers. But you could leave it out and they'd still be awesome.

Seared Green Beans

2 Tbsp. olive oil
about a pound of green beans, trimmed
1 red pepper, deseeded and sliced thinly
1 head of green garlic, minced
1 Tbsp. balsamic vinegar
1 Tbsp. maple syrup
sprinkle of salt and pepper

Heat a heavy skillet (cast iron is my fave) over high heat for a few minutes. Add olive oil and swirl to coat the bottom of the pan. Toss in the green beans and stir frequently. They'll only need to cook until they are bright green and browned on a few edges- just a few minutes. Just before they are done, add the red peppers and minced green garlic, tossing to coat. Before the garlic browns, remove from heat and drizzle with vinegar and maple syrup and stir to coat. Last, sprinkle with salt and pepper and serve immediately.

By the way, the local raspberries from Hoch Orchard are AWESOME right now. I've been eating them over plain soy yogurt with a drizzle of maple syrup.

Not the coolest place in the world...

2008-07-05T21:19:00.003-05:00

Where do I like to spend a hot Saturday night? In the kitchen, of course.
How ironic that canning or preserving needs to take place during the hottest summer months, when the garden is overflowing with food. This task, while enjoyable, heats my kitchen far beyond lasagna-baking or soup simmering temperatures. It is nearly unbearable.

So today, while making mulberry-honey jam and jalapeño jam (that's two kinds, not mulberry-jalapeño...although that might be good), I took breaks in the kiddie pool in the backyard and sipped ice water.

And then, after heating up the kitchen to unbearable levels, I figured, "Hey, why not make some pasta?" Nano and I have lamented over the lack of very local pasta here in MN. I rely on the Dakota Grower's pasta from North Dakota when I need a quick pasta fix, but there's nothing like homemade pasta.

Tonight I decided to make a tortelloni pasta with 1/2 my dough and some fettuccine with the other half.

The pasta itself is pretty darn local, with flour and water being 99% of the ingredients in this recipe. The filling is as follows:

Herbed Sunflower Seed Pasta Filling

1/2 cup raw sunflower seeds, toasted in a dry skillet (MN)
1/4 cup water (MN)
2 Tbsp. nutritional yeast
10 stems from cremini mushrooms (WI)
1/2 tsp. salt
1 tsp. fresh thyme (backyard)

After toasting the sunflower seeds until beginning to brown, add 1/4 cup of water and let them soak for about an hour. Go do some yoga in the meantime. Then whizz around the sunflower seeds, soaking water, and remaining ingredients in a food processor until finely minced, but not quite smooth. Use about 1/2 tsp. per 2" round of pasta dough. This would also be super good as a spread on crackers, inside a tortilla, or just off a spoon.

The sauce for this pasta is a white sauce made with Earth Balance, flour, Org. Valley soymilk (WI), salt, green onions (MN), cremini mushroom caps (WI), parsley (backyard) and blanched snap peas (backyard). I didn't measure anything for this recipe, sorry.

Even though it was 9pm before I got to eat dinner, it was damn good. And the best part is, I have fettuccine in the freezer for another day!

My Thoughts on the Burning Questions, Or "HOW Many Miles Did You Say?!?"

2008-07-02T18:45:00.008-05:00

Silly me, I've been trying as hard as I can to stay within roughly 100!

Ruminating on Liz's post about our varying concepts of & approaches to the subject of "locality", it seems obvious to me that we really need to clarify our guidelines for this project. Of course, we'd have about as much luck in trying to come up with a unified stance on our position regarding our construct of God, or Goddess (or Nothing, for that matter). Perhaps the best way to tackle this is to clearly state, on the record, our individual guidelines & how we formulated them.

Here's more or less exactly how I'm doing the challenge:

I'm eating locally (80% or more of a given meal), more than 80% of the time. Well more, as far as I can tell. Almost all of my food is currently coming from the shelves of our own store, with the exception of a few side adventures to other locales. I have a couple of "tiers" that I use to determine the (sometimes fuzzy) percentage of my meals, as well as a couple of allowable "cheats" that I'll get to later.

The first tier, which makes up the bulk of my food choices, I'm calling "Real Local". This means that the food was grown & processed within approximately 100 miles of the Twin Cities, as far as I'm reasonably able to determine. I know with some certainty that if I buy something with a local label from my meat cooler, then it comes from somewhere within a (roughly) 100 mile radius. I fully realize that there are hidden miles in many of these items (from the farmer to the processor, perhaps to a warehouse, & then to the store), so sometimes that 100 miles is really 150, or even more. My absolute outside boundary in defining "local" could be considered something like 250 miles.

Honestly, we're all flying partially blind, here. We are involved in a system of trust, between us & our suppliers, & between us & our customers. None of us has the time to individually Googlemap every single one of our ingredients before we make our purchases, although kudos are due to Liz for trying. We have to take it on faith that the "Local" sticker on the product actually means that said product is reasonably local. Quite frankly, I'm dismayed that something with an 800-odd mile itinerary was even up for debate in the first place.

The second tier consists of foods that are processed within 100-300 miles, using at least a healthy portion of actual local ingredients. I'm guessing that Whole Grain Milling products & Salsa Lisa might fall under this category. Various locally baked breads would be included here, too. Because these sorts of items fulfill at least some of the requirements for inclusion in the first tier, while still supporting local small businesses, I'm likely to shift them towards the local group when figuring out percentages for individual meals.

Only slightly beneath is the third tier, which I define as basically any meal component I make myself (like Liz's tortilla example, or possibly my mayo recipe), with a mix of local & less-local ingredients. If I don't feel comfortable with the subjective mix, I'll be honest & shift it towards the non-local percentage.

As for seasonings, if we're talking fresh herbs & they're not in tier one, I'm not making that dish. Basics like salt, pepper & vinegar (or oils) aren't being counted any longer, because to do so would drive a man insane.

Cheats include certain specific things that I simply "can't" live without, things that if our civilization crumbled tomorrow, I'd be willing to trade dearly for (one example might be the occasional scraping of Parmigiano-Reggiano). Or if someone offers me a piece of their birthday cake. Another acceptable cheat is yerba mate, since I gave up energy-drinks & coffee for the challenge & I still have to make it to work in the morning (I use the St. Paul brand, Nativa, for what it's worth). Oh, & cigarettes.

So, that's the basics of my "how". As to the "why", the more experiential & philosophical aspects of the Challenge (as I see them), I'll post on that soon enough, as well as provide an update on my first month's costs.

-nano out

The question burning a hole in my mind

2008-07-02T16:37:00.004-05:00

So here's the dilemma I've been wrestling with the past few days:

I realized that I have held off on making some of my favorite homemade treats because the ingredients are not locally produced- For example, our co-op's masa harina is not local and I use it for tamales and corn tortillas. In lieu of making my own, I've purchased corn tortillas that are made at a local business.

Now, is it really all that different to buy from a business that gets the corn shipped from somewhere else in the country and makes the tortillas in MN than to buy my own corn shipped from elsewhere and make them myself?

The answer I've come up with is that it depends on why you want to eat local.

If it's about supporting local businesses, it's great to buy the local business's tortillas from the neighborhood co-op (double local business points) rather than just buying the corn from the co-op.

If I'm eating local to reduce carbon emissions and conserve resources, I'd have to know exactly how far away their corn was grown and how far away my corn was grown and what form of transportation each used to arrive in Minnesota. Plus, I'd have to know how each type of corn was grown and what kind of petroleum input that took (pesticides, chemical fertilizers, etc.).

If it's about freshness and taste, I'd much prefer to make my own tortillas and eat them hot off the skillet with Earth Balance and salt dripping down my face. I'm a spoiled Texas girl who likes her tortillas fresh. As far as I'm concerned, they're practically ruined after being refrigerated.

So, basically, there's no easy answer.

I think this dilemma is one that has been at the back of my mind for a while and it's rooted in the debate of how we should define local. While it makes our Eat Local Challenge more accessible to folks and supports local businesses (undoubtedly a great thing), it just doesn't sit well with me to count locally made goods as equal to locally grown/produced goods.

One thing I loved in Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle is that she ate locally without using processed, packaged goods (mostly). So she didn't just find salsa that was made at a factory the next state over, she actually grew (or met the person who grew) the tomatoes, peppers, onions, etc. While her experience is definitely outside the realm of what most people can achieve while working full time and having hobbies other than canning, I like the simplicity of it and the purity of her definition of local. It feels authentic and trustworthy.

There's something just a little weird about my Sunbutter (which I love dearly, mind you) counting as local when it comes from the processing plant in North Dakota to the distribution warehouse in Iowa and then to our co-op in Minnesota on big trucks. Dave and I have been wrestling with this in our conversations lately and I think we agree that this one is pushing the limits, despite the fact that all the stops on this 841 mile journey (yes, I tracked the path on google maps) are within the 5 state area. Keep in mind that this doesn't actually include the miles from where it was grown to the processing plant. I'm not sure of that information.

So what's a girl to do?

I think my focus on this challenge needs to be using products grown as close to home as possible, with locally made foods filling in the gaps or helping me out when I'm short on time. When I look at my food values, I feel most passionate about eating sustainably grown, organic, minimally processed and vegan foods. Coming in at a close second are eating locally grown and homemade foods. While it might not be popular (considering I'm writing this on an Eat Local Blog), eating locally at the expense of sustainable/organic production just doesn't jive well with me. In the same way, supporting a local business doesn't win out over homemade food for me. But I think I'll hold off on making the corn tortillas and just be happy with the flour ones that ARE from locally grown flour!

One thing I love about this challenge (that Emily pointed out already) is that I'm forced to stop and become more aware of my food. Despite what you might think, I wouldn't normally get this introspective about my food at 5pm on a Wednesday night. Thanks to the local challenge, I'm sitting at this computer, thinking about where my food comes from and trying to figure out how I'm going to prepare those garden snap peas tonight.

Em's Zen Garden

2008-07-01T12:34:00.002-05:00

The time and energy this challenge takes is crazy. I've been doing... well, not so hot. I'd guess that I'm averaging about 50%. The one thing that is going well is that my garden is coming along splendidly. My lettuce looks... well, pretty much just like Jess's lettuce. I was harvesting a bunch yesterday and a couple things really struck me. First, I saw a tick and got really freaked out and I had to take some deep breaths. Then I saw a little tiny worm in among the harvest and lost my appetite. Suddenly, the clouds parted and all those Michael Pollan books I've read clicked into place. Food doesn't spontaneously generate in those big UNFI trucks. Food comes from dirt. Food was once part of a habitat, and in some places (like my garden) food still is habitat. Just ask my cat, she hangs out in the broccoli.
So my point today is that even though I'm not meeting my percentage goals for this challenge (yet), I have managed to make some progress on that other goal: awareness.
PS: I have tiny tiny tomatoes.

Local: Not just for humans

2008-06-29T14:10:00.002-05:00

Billie Cat is no newcomer to eating local. He's been chasing local ants and enjoying free-range basement mice for years. But Billie's favorite local delicacy is catnip. Three years ago I planted some catnip in the corner of our garden for Billie. As soon as he discovered it, he rubbed his [large] body over the plant until it was dead. The next year it came back and he did the same thing. This year I planted a ton of catnip so that he would have plenty and it has taken over the chard's space. So what does Billie do when I weed out his catnip?
He rubs himself all over the ground.

2008-06-24T21:00:00.003-05:00

Well, I haven't been tracking my local consumption very religiously but I'm fairly sure that I've been eating more local things. My dinners have consisted mainly of local or free things, with a sprinkling of non-local/bought things.

I had a mini-discussion with Liz about non-local/questionable things that are free. We both agree that it's okay to include free things in with the eating local thing. We also coined a term for it: FROCAL (free and local, duh).

So if you see that term in my blogs in the future, you'll know what that means.

Also, yesterday I made an 80% local salad, with the main components of the salad being the first harvests of my lettuce crop and strawberries from the community garden patch.

When I have a 100% local salad I'll take a picture.

Local Pops

2008-06-23T22:47:00.005-05:00

Nothing is better than a popsicle on a warm summer day. Especially when it's a pretty darn local popsicle!
These pops are made with some unsweetened soy yogurt (I used Wildwood brand), strawberries from the backyard, and maple syrup from Wisconsin. Sure, they got a little more ice-crystally than commercial popsicles, but no store-bought popsicle can beat homegrown strawberry flavor. The kids (and I) gobbled these up in no time. Next I promised them some decidedly non-local peanut butter popsicles...but who knows what it'll be after that! I can't wait to make some Door County cherry popsicles!

Mayo Clinic

2008-06-22T23:48:00.003-05:00

I said I was going to start making my own mayonnaise, & I'm a man of my word:

Please note the absurdly yellow color. It isn't from the smidgen of mustard, my friends. That's the hue of Larry Schultz's awesome organic eggs, in all their Technicolor glory.

I thought it might be nice to describe the process, in case anyone else wanted to add (somewhat) local mayo to their arsenal. I don't tend to write down what I'm doing as I cook, but here's a basic recipe that can be tweaked to suit one's individual taste:

Basic Fresh Mayonnaise:

3 Schultz organic egg yolks (that's the local part)
1/2 teaspoon white vinegar, or to taste
1/2 teaspoon whole grain mustard, or to taste
1 teaspoon Kosher or sea salt, or to taste
1 teaspoon white pepper, or to taste
Extra Virgin olive oil, or preferred high-quality oil (I'm not sure how much I ended up using, honestly)

Makes about 1/2 cup.

Naturally, many different ingredients can be used to make the mayonnaise more uniquely suited to it's intended use, from capers to chipotle peppers.

After separating the yolks from the whites, place them in a small food processor bowl, along with all the ingredients except the olive oil. Of course the truly hardcore are welcome to whisk this up by hand, I suppose, & if handled properly, a good blender would also do the trick. Pulse the processor blade in short bursts until the ingredients are smoothly combined. Then, pulsing in longer bursts at full speed (if possible- mine doesn't allow this function), add the oil in the thinnest possible trickle. Whenever the blades are stopped, the oil should not be added further until motion is resumed.

Something to watch out for while doing all this is that some food processors accumulate heat either from the friction of the blades in the bowl or from the motor. This can sometimes actually cook the egg yolks, causing them to clump up & ruin the mayo. This is the reason I suggest pulsing the blades instead of running them full-out the whole time.

After a short time, the emulsion will start thickening & smacking wetly against the side of the bowl. Continue running the processor & adding more oil until the desired thickness is reached.

After the mayonnaise is done, use whatever you can, right away. This isn't the store bought pasteurized stuff, after all, & even though it will keep for a reasonable amount of time if it's well covered & refrigerated, homemade mayo is basically just raw egg yolks & oil.

Yeah, at the end of the day I know it's not much more local than any other mayonnaise, but it makes me feel better. Also, it's just gorgeous to look at.

-nano out.

Local Leftovers: An Omelet Solution

2008-06-22T22:46:00.003-05:00

One of the problems I run into as a single person who, Local Challenge or not, cooks the majority of my own meals from scratch (& tends not to plan ahead), is that of leftovers. Scraps of bacon, the odd half an onion forgotten in the back of the Fridge, slowly mummifying mushrooms, all these unused remainders of former meals weigh on my mind. They also take up valuable storage space, better used for the fresh ingredients of my next few local meals.

One excellent solution is soup (which I'll post on sometime soon). Another is the versatile omelet.

Omelets are good at any time of day, but they naturally shine at breakfast or brunch. They make it much easier to eat locally in the morning because it's assured that the ingredients are really local (after all, one picks them out oneself for that purpose), unlike trying to determine the locality of "local" granola (somehow I doubt that the coconut is from around these parts). Further, they make eating local more affordable.

This specimen features Schultz's organic eggs (MN), Pastures uncured bacon (MN), organic white mushrooms (MN), organic green garlic (WI), & Grand Cru Gruyere (WI). The English muffins, while definitely not local (but definitely leftover), are spread with Hope Creamery butter (MN) & Red Lake Nation chokeberry jelly (MN).

Here's a more substantial example, with the addition of local hydroponic tomatoes (red & yellow, MN) & not-really-Fancy Brand sharp cheddar, as well as the last heel of the local bread I picked up during the pizza farm excursion:

Both of these omelets took around 30 minutes to prepare, what with all the chopping & grating, but the time could be reduced if the leftover ingredients were dealt with at the time of being left over, or otherwise prepared in advance. Even so, I reserve my omelet eating for my days off, as it's so tempting to just lie around contentedly afterwards.

-nano out.

I Went to the Magical Pizza Farm! Nyah Nyah!

2008-06-20T21:41:00.009-05:00

This past Tuesday, a friend let me in on a little secret. There's this farm in Wisconsin that serves pizza featuring their own home-grown ingredients. It's not exactly a real secret (clues can be found online), but the operation is basically word-of-mouth, with no advertising.

After more than an hour's drive through hilly country, with the final stretch consisting of graveled rural roads, we came to the farm itself. The below-the-radar policy was understandable; cars belonging to hardcore fans filled both sides of the road for some distance. Depending on the time of year, the farm serves pizzas to about 200 people, once a week, in the course of just a few hours.

After consulting the menu board, we placed our orders. Not all of the options were 100% local (my pizza had olives, which unless I'm mistaken are rarely found in this part of the Midwest), but certainly enough of them came straight from the farm to make this a local meal. The proprietors make their own meats, including a pretty good sausage & a very tasty pepperoni, & it looked like the fresh mozzarella was made on site as well. Many vegetable toppings were canned from the previous season. The homemade pies are baked in two wood-fired ovens, as they should be.

After a roughly 20 minute wait, we got our pizzas & dug in. Please note the fully decorated table, complete with freshly dry-cleaned tablecloth & candelabra, in the background. Some people take this place very seriously.

Many people we spoke to had been coming here for years, passing the tradition to trusted friends one at a time. Along with families of all ages, there were not one, but two separate groups of "Red Hat Ladies" (& if you are unfamiliar with this subculture, I really can't explain it in the context of this post). Sadly, no rumble ensued between the factions. Perhaps the pizza acted as a pacifying influence.

Ah, yes, the pizza. Not bad at all, although, if removed from it's setting, I might have found it about average. I think part of the enjoyment of the pizza stems from the difficulty of obtaining the pizza in the first place, as well as the knowledge of the year-round hard work spent in creating it. Sort of like how the meal at the end of the first day of a hiking trip is the best damn meal in the world, despite (& perhaps because of) the sand & bark mixed in. No grit in the pizzas, mind you, but there were quite a few farm-cats who really, really wanted to be our friends.

All told, a truly awesome, magical & unique local eating experience. Even better, there was enough leftover pizza to snack on for days (still working on it). The farm also sells actual local bread featuring the following ingredients; "Stockholm wheat flour, fresh ground corn, sea salt". That's it, other than (one assumes) starter, & everything but the salt grown on the farm. Sweet!

-nano out.

Casual localvore

2008-06-17T23:18:00.004-05:00

My entrance into this challenge has been a bit of a slow meander (in comparison to Liz's full sprint). There is an ever constant prompting in the back of my mind to buy/eat local. I'm finding that my motivation is a bit off--especially considering the lack of local produce to choose from at this time of year.

So far I am regularly buying (when I actually buy food) local cheeses and eggs. I also bought local corn tortillas when I made tostadas a week or so ago. And if we are considering buddies (or other free food stuff) as local, then I'm not doing too bad in the produce department either. I have also purchased asparagus from the farmer's market for two weekends in a row and it has been delicious.

So my experience so far has been gradual but good. Any local produce I've had has been spectacular (especially the strawberries from the patch at my community garden!). There's nothing quite like knowing that the fruits or veggies you are about to consume or have just consumed were still growing just a few hours ago. As the summer progresses this challenge is going to be easy as pie. Now for figuring out what to do in the interim.

I've been growing a garden too! I anxiously await the time when I can have my own fresh tomatoes and peppers. Right now my herbs, especially my cilantro, is out of control. So much so that I picked a nice bunch today:There will be no shortage of flavor in my dishes this season!
The rest of the garden is coming along nicely. I should be able to harvest some lettuce in the next couple of weeks and one of my hot banana pepper plants is flowering. I'm impatient right now but I know good things with come to those who wait.

In the meantime, I'll keep chugging along with the challenge. I think I can, I think I can...

My salad is better than your salad, and other snobby thoughts

2008-06-17T21:58:00.003-05:00

Is it possible that I've become more of a food snob than ever? I've long been a label-reader, a shunner of artificial additives, and a turner-down of conventional produce. But now, with the local requirement on top of my existing litany of requirements... my snobbiness is larger than ever.

These last few days I've been attending a Sustainability Summit put on by the Food Marketing Institute. Now you'd think there would be some awesome sustainable food at this event (I certainly had my hopes up), but alas, there have been Fritos, Pepsi, and cinnamon buns at nearly every meal. Today I was pleasantly surprised to have a vegan salad (they added cheese to others) and hummus with pita bread. While these options are probably not organic and of questionable quality, I would normally load up my plate because at least the ingredients are relatively simple and visible for these foods. But no...

I unpacked my backpack filled with containers of greens, radishes, and strawberries from my garden, baked tofu, and homemade salad dressing. I'm quite confident that my salad tasted better than the mass-produced one and was undoubtedly fresher and more nutritious. I know exactly how it was grown and I'm sure my salad's carbon footprint was more like a thumbprint.
But I couldn't help but feel a bit snobby as my table-mates watched me pass up one salad for another.

Has anyone else felt a little weird about passing up non-local food, especially when dining with others?

Holy Buckets, That's A Good Burger.

2008-06-16T22:04:00.008-05:00

I am a huge fan of Thousand Hills Cattle Co. The concept of 100% grass-fed beef was unknown to me until I started selling meat for a living, but now I honestly have a certain amount of trouble eating any beef I know to have been finished on grains (especially conventional corn-fed). I have to psych myself up, & even then the "normal" taste seems "off" to my adjusted taste-buds. What really clinched the deal for me was attending a tour of their operation a couple of years ago. There's much to praise about the grass-feeding system of cattle raising, touching on issues ranging from animal well-being to environmental benefits. But right now, I want to talk about hamburgers.

Look at that. Oh gawd. I guess I'll take a moment to apologize to my fellow challenge participants who are of the Vegan/Lacto-Veg contingent. I'm not trying to be a jerk, but just look at those beautiful hamburgers. Seriously, I want to go back in time & eat them all over again.

This meal took about an hour to prepare. I used MN-grown red potatoes for the fries (non-local canola oil for the frying). The buns are from Saint Agnes Baking Company, which while not my favorite local bread (Rustica & A Toast To top my list), do seem to contain the highest percentage of local ingredients.* They also happen to be perfectly acceptable hamburger buns.

Here are the all the eventual hamburger parts, previous to assembly. The local buns (MN) spread with local Hope Creamery (MN) butter for browning, the local Pastures Aplenty (MN) uncured bacon, a tuft of Dragsmith Farms (WI) micro-greens, & peeking out from under some paper towel, that titan among local cheeses, Roth Kase Grand Cru Surchoix Gruyere (WI). Oh, & crazy ripe hydro tomatoes (MN). The patties include Thousand Hills ground beef (MN), some kosher salt & cracked pepper, & the ubiquitous green garlic. Some hamburger purists might scoff at these patty additives, but I'm not listening.

Grass-fed beef is very lean, so when gently pan-searing them, one has to lubricate the pan with some sort of shortening agent. I knew I was going to use up most of my non-local allowance with the frying oil, so I was forced to use some leftover bacon drippings. Oh, shucks, right?

I must cop to also spreading both a little mayo (I hope to make my own with local eggs, when I have the spare time), & a dab of mustard on the buns. By volume, I'd say this meal weighed in at well above 80% local, though. One thing I found interesting was the effect of the micro-greens on the flavor of the burgers. Because of the random mixture of greens, each bite was unique. Pretty neat.

-nano out.

* According to the research done by Liz (& Dave?), who should consider making a post out of the findings (hint, hint).

Unintended Side-Effects!

2008-06-16T19:01:00.006-05:00

When I began the process of more consciously eating locally, I imagined that there would be several hurdles to overcome. I had considered the potential difficulty & frustration surrounding finding the right ingredients, or their analogues. I had realized that I wouldn't be able to snack much at work (free leftovers make up an alarming ratio of my daily food consumption). As I've mentioned, I prepared to spend more on my food in general. Actually cooking the food wasn't such a big deal; I'd been a long-time professional cook, previous to working at the Market, & I already cooked about 75% of my own meals at home, mostly from scratch.

However, there's a big difference between 75% & 99%. By cutting out prepared items almost entirely, & without the option to just order in when I don't feel like cooking, I found myself face to face with an old enemy...

I really, really get tired of washing dishes. My first serious kitchen job was as a dishwasher at an Irish-themed pub. I'd get into work in the afternoon to find corned beef encrusted hotel pans stacked 6-7 feet high, & keep going until 2 in the morning. When I'd get home, I'd refuse to do my own dirty dishes, on principle. Sometimes, disgusted friends would wash them for me. More often, they'd just sit & fester, smelling increasingly sinisterly sweet as various molds formed & tiny civilizations rose & fell, until I couldn't take it anymore & furiously washed them. Quite regularly, I'd just throw a bunch of them out.

So, here I am years later, staring at piles of bewitched dishes that reappear as soon as I wash them. Breakfast means a pile of dishes. Lunch, an addition to that pile. Dinner means washing the previous dishes & then dirtying at least half of them before they're even dry.

If there is one thing that derails my attempts to eat locally this Summer, it probably won't be the virtual ban on pasta, nor the allure of a late night meximelt (tm). It will be the tedium of washing all these damn dishes.

-nano out.

I'm Noticing A Trend...

2008-06-12T23:13:00.005-05:00

Salsa. I made salsa, too.

We are so screwed.

For my first official local meal, I went with the chorizo sausage nachos. &... salsa.

I've tried a few local chorizo, & so far my favorite is from Beaver Creek Ranch (WI). I would imagine that my recipe for the salsa isn't going to blow any minds; hydro yellow & red vine tomatoes, that green garlic as a substitute for imported onions & garlic (sliced paper thin to cut some of the fibrousness), plentiful amounts of cilantro, with kosher salt, fresh cracked black pepper & habanero pepper, to taste. Other than the last 3, all the ingredients are from either MN or WI.

The blue corn chips are everybody's favorite, Whole Grain Milling Co. (who get grain contributions from Beaver Creek's fields, as well), & the cheese is Fancy Brand sharp cheddar. I wanted to look further into the cheeses for something a little, well, fancier than Fancy Brand, but I was starving. Maybe I'll try it with Eichten's Gouda, or something else a little less sharp next time.

The whole process took about 40 minutes, & made enough for about 3 solid servings. I think I have mentioned that I was really hungry, but I still have some makings left for another day. I found I could go easy on the non-local salt, because when combined with the pleasantly salty chips, fairly salty chorizo & surprisingly salty tomatoes (a byproduct of hydroponics?), there was just enough. All told, when including the 3 non-local ingredients, plus seasonings in the sausage, I'd put this meal at about 90-95% local.

There are still some uncooked sausages, leftover salsa, local Schultz (MN) organic eggs (deserving of their own post, or twelve), cheese, & Hope Creamery unsalted butter (MN), so I think I know what I'll be having for breakfast soon. I'll have to cheat a little & use up some regular-old english muffins.

In the interest of looking at costs, here's what I paid for my food today:

Org. Eggs $1.56
Green Garlic $1.29
Blue Chips $3.49
Cheese $3.98
Org. Cilantro $1.69
Habanero $.10
Tomato $7.49
Butter $3.79
Chorizo $6.49
TOTAL: $24.94

As a co-op employee, I saved $4.92. If I had been a member, I would have saved approximately $2.46. Had I received no discount, my total would have been $29.96. Not cheap, exactly, but not too bad, for enough food to stretch over at least 6 reasonably sized meals (providing one has other basics already in stock, & providing there's no one else in one's family).

I'll be back soon with something that is not in any way related to salsa.

-nano out.

Lazy Local

2008-06-12T22:15:00.003-05:00

It's hard to eat locally when you feel lazy and under the weather. Today I ate hunks of Rustica bread (from Minneapolis) while camping out on the couch with a pounding headache. I didn't really mean to eat the entire loaf, but I was hungry and not in the mood to cook.

So as soon as I started to feel better, though, I knew it was time to actually cook something or else I'd resort to eating the rest of that pint of Oatscreme sitting in my freezer for dinner.

This meal was super simple and really good. And it even looks kinda fancy.

I roasted the potato wedges and seasoned them with salt and pepper. While they were cooking, I wilted the spinach and dressed it in a simple salsa: MN hydroponic tomatoes, green garlic, jalapeños from last year's garden, and vinegar. The potatoes surprised me by being so sweet- but they were a great compliment to the bright sourness of the salsa.

The spinach and salsa were so quick and easy that I still had time to lounge on the couch while the potatoes finished cooking. Too bad there aren't any leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

Here goes nothin'

2008-06-11T12:37:00.002-05:00

So, this little project of ours has been on a back burner for me as I try to eat through the food that currently resides in my kitchen. I've decided that if it's food that otherwise would go to waste, I'll eat it even if it isn't local (buddies, food prepared for me by others) and like someone else already mentioned, I am also considering locally produced foods as local but trying to limit those if there's an acceptable, affordable local substitute. That way I can still have Bergin walnuts and Peace coffee and such.

The produce in my garden isn't quite up yet, but we have been eating some spinach and other green leafy things. Here are some things I'm looking forward to eating straight from my yard: broccoli, tomatoes, peas, beans, carrots, beets, radishes, peppers, potatoes, squash, and a variety of herbs.

I also have the benefit of living blocks from Seward Cafe, where you have to work to get food that isn't 80% local, and also that dreaded competitor of ours, Seward Co-op. This way, I can eat local without using fossil fuels (bus or car) since I'm not quite a real biker like some of our comrades. I also haven't been to my neighborhood's farmer's market yet, but I've heard the Midtown farmer's market is quite wonderful.

I think, for me, this will be an exercise in awareness. Rather than choosing the cheapest option or whatever I'm craving, I hope to come out of this project with an appreciation for where my food comes from, and also an increased ability to make the most of the food I have through planning and creativity.

Some favorite local foods in my kitchen at this very moment: Thousand Hills Grass-fed beef hot dogs (I don't normally eat much meat, but they called out to me), Montchevre goat cheese from Wisconsin, and cute little yellow tomatoes, also from Wisconsin.

Oh, Wait- We've Started?

2008-06-10T14:40:00.002-05:00

When I found out about the Eat Local Challenge, & my chance to participate in an online fashion, I was very excited. As I have become more immersed in the world of local, small scale food, I've developed a nasty habit of arguing with people in online forums regarding the concept.

Unfortunately, I really had very little idea what I was talking about.

While a lack of concrete knowledge isn't really an impediment to "successful" intraweb debate, my gaps in understanding (not to mention experience) made me feel like something of a fraud. So, I couldn't wait to get down to the actual challenge & start learning more about my local sources of food. Except, I didn't get down to the actual challenge right away, & now I'm behind.

Be that as it may...

One question I wanted to answer to my own satisfaction was, is eating local really affordable? I've certainly had no qualms about saying it is, & assuming one lives in an area with a farmers market & one or two natural food stores, it certainly should be. But what if one doesn't have a reliable source of transportation to get to the food (like me)? How much extra time & money would that mean expending just on acquiring the food? I can't just zip down down to the farmers market or out to the farm after work, nor can I stock up on large amounts of bulk staples at once. Further, how much do I rely on my employee discount when shopping at work? Not that I'll be forgoing it, but I'll be keeping an eye on the savings I get & comparing them to what a co-op member or non-member might expect. &, of course, I'm just a single guy, living on a modest income, so I can't determine how feasible such a diet would be for a full-sized family. Hopefully, some of the family-having posters can speak to that.

I personally feel that answering this question is key to the successful promotion of even a moderately local diet, as so many people begin to feel the squeeze from all sides. Whether paying real costs at the gas pump, or real costs for our food, people are feeling torn between making ends meet & "doing the right thing" in ways we haven't been forced to examine before. It will be all too tempting for many who supported local foods when living was cheaper to abandon them for lower prices & convenience.

Anyway, please bear with me as I get up to speed. As I get my bearings in the world of all-local, all-the-time, I'll probably be operating on some sort of hybrid plan. My natural inclination is to get all hard-core about something & then get frustrated, so I'm hoping a more measured approach will work better. &, unless the infrastructure completely collapses, most people who adopt a local-friendly mindset will likely do so for some items & not for others, anyway. Let's be realistic (I'm already in a panic about how to phase out my beloved conventional-corn-syrup-loaded energy drinks). Well, off to research my options...

-nano out.

A few of my favorite things

2008-06-06T20:26:00.002-05:00

If you've spent more than an hour talking to me, you probably know that condiments are some of my favorite things. Barbecue sauce, vinegar, mustard, salts, spices, hot sauce...I love them all.

But finding local condiments can be challenging. I had mostly given up on local condiments until I found these guys.
From left to right: Silver Spring Organic Dill Mustard from Eau Claire, WI; Zalta Green Garlic Infused Sea Salt from Spring Green, WI; White Wine Vinegar with Thyme from the East Side Garden Corps in Saint Paul, and Renaissance Farm Lemon Basil Infused Olive Oil from Spring Green, WI. I found these at Lakewinds Co-op- except for the vinegar. The vinegar came directly from the Garden Corps (651-228-7073).

My favorite has to be the green garlic sea salt. I know the sea salt isn't really local, but at least it's a local business!

Tonight I made some pizzas for the family. We used the Gluten Free Cooking School's pizza crust recipe with locally grown brown rice flour. Instead of tomato sauce, I used some pesto still in the freezer after last year's basil and garlic harvest. Toppings include green garlic from MN, cherry tomatoes from MN, and cremini mushrooms from WI. I used non-local Vegan Gourmet cheese, but dairy-eaters could easily find a local cheese to use.

The salad is just local lettuce with some ranch dressing. The dressing is made with some homemade soy yogurt (from Organic Valley soymilk- more on the yogurt later) and herbs from the garden. Yum!

A change of perspective

2008-06-05T21:12:00.002-05:00

I think the reason I love taking food challenges is because it provides a change of perspective. Most days I eat whatever I crave. If I want tacos and don't have the ingredients at home, I'll just go buy some tortillas, avocados, and salsa and make it happen. I just expect that whatever I want to eat will be available to me.

But when I place rules on what I am "allowed" to eat, I'm forced to rethink my food. And I stop taking it for granted. In only 5 days of eating locally, my thoughts about what to eat have changed. Instead of asking myself, "What do I want to eat", I think "What is there to eat".

While voluntarily taking an Eat Local challenge and choosing to be picky about our foods might be a very privileged action, I think it provides an opportunity to experience how those with less food choices live. Plenty of people in this world don't have choices about what they eat- they eat what is available. Whether taking an Eat Local Challenge or a Food Stamp Challenge, learning to make do with what is available is valuable lesson to learn.

But even with some serious restrictions on what I "can" eat, there are plenty of food choices and privilege in my diet right now.

For lunch I had some great leftover MN-style Sweet and Sour Tofu and this lovely sprout and cucumber salad with homemade hummus. Normally if I wanted a salad I'd pick out some favorite greens and some carrots maybe. I wouldn't usually choose to have a sprout, cucumber, and raw sunflower seed salad- but that's what's local, so I'm very thankful for these veggies (even if they aren't my favorites). For dinner I made a creamy green garlic, cremini mushroom, and yukon gold potato soup.
Creamy Potato and Mushroom Soup

2 Tbsp. olive oil (CA)
3 stalks of green garlic (MN), thinly sliced
2 yukon gold potatoes (WI), diced
1 1/2 cups cremini mushrooms, thickly sliced (WI)
3-4 cups unsweetened Organic Valley soymilk (Midwest region/WI)
salt and pepper to taste

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Add the green garlic and saute until beginning to soften, about 2-3 minutes. Add potatoes and mushrooms and stir to combine. Lower heat to low and add the soymilk, just enough to cover. Simmer about 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender and the mushrooms have released their liquid. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serves 2.

They don't call it a challenge for nothing...

2008-06-05T16:14:00.002-05:00

This challenge will be a bit of a--well, challenge because I live on a very tight budget. Perhaps because of that I'll be able to provide some interesting and perhaps useful insights.

Right now my challenge is in the planning stages. I've been trying to decide whether to do the 80% or start off slow with the 50%. I think I'm leaning towards the latter. Most of the produce that I eat currently is the bruised and broken produce that won't be sold and that I don't have to pay for. It cuts down on my personal costs but I'll have to make some sacrifices in this challeng in order to cut down on environmental costs.

My first question in this challenge was how should I measure the 80% or 4 out of 5 things that are local. Should it be by weight, volume, item? I initially thought item for item but that's not practical since a dash of cinnamon is not exactly equal to a head of lettuce. In the end I'm going to use volume to measure my 4 out of 5 (or 1 out of 2) things. That way I can still have a latte: espresso (obviously not local) counts for about 1/4 of the volume of the latte, milk takes up the rest of the space and the milk used at the juice bar, where I work, is local.

I've also put a lot of thought into what is considered local and not local. Must the item be locally grown or just locally processed/produced? I think if I really want to be true to the ideal of eating local, then I'm going to strive to eat locally grown and produced things. That basically eliminated coffee, chocolate, tropical fruits and most spices and teas. It puts into question honey (although, I don't think I'll be a stickler on that), locally produced bread and chips, oils, and some grains and beans.

I can, however, find local eggs, cheese, corn tortillas (is the corn used locally grown, though?), various meats (although, I don't eat red meat), in-season veggies, and wild rice. That's all I have written down so far. I think this list will grown once I actually take my first shopping trip as a local-vore.

While this will be a challenge, I'm up for it. Especially since this year I will be growing some of my own veggies and herbs at my local community garden! I'm excited to share my experience with everyone on this blog too! It should be a fun ride :)

Jess

How to do it???

2008-06-04T20:23:00.002-05:00

I always tend to make fun of these things and be a bit of a nay-sayer when it comes to "foodie" passing fads, but I have decided to take the Local Challenge because I truly believe in the importance of keeping it as Local as possible! I think it is better for not only the environment, but for workers, producers, and consumers, too....So, with that I begin my attempt at rising to the Local Challenge 2008!

Well, luckily, I have always been a "localvore" when it comes to my beers, so, no problems there! The challenge for me will be adjusting my standard lunch diet of 'grab-n-go' fare such as sandwiches, wraps, chips, etc....Man, I love me some Kettle chips, but they are off the menu! Today was a pretty easy....Cheese from 'Sconni, some locally made chili w/1000 Hills Grass Fed beef, my coffee was imported by my friends at Peace Coffee....not bad, for me! The only slip was a bag of buddy Newman's Pretzel sticks with the cheese....

The Local Challenge and the idea of putting my money where my big mouth is also prompted me (along with my wife and our neighbors) to join a CSA for the first time ever! The Women's Environmental Institute will be, god willing, keeping me in local produce for the season and forcing me into new ideas about my food....Hopefully a farm visit will be in order, too!

Was this a good idea?

2008-06-04T17:19:00.004-05:00

So, I made my first shopping trip yesterday to get some local foods. This might be harder than I thought to execute! When I started looking at local foods, I began to realize that even though a product may be locally owned, that doesn't mean that the ingredients are all local.

For example, I can't imagine living life without Salsa Lisa, which is a local company. Just because it's made in the Twin Cities though doesn't mean that the tomatoes or peppers are locally grown--or any ingredient for that matter. So--what to do? I decided that for the purposes of MY Eat Local Challenge, I would allow for locally produced products in my diet. Maybe as I get more adventurous, I will start to cut these things out also.

I also decided that I am going to have to beef up my kitchen appliance collection unless I wanted to spend all my free time cooking. A pressure cooker is the next thing I need. No one wants to spend 3 hours cooking beans when they could be done in 30 minutes with a pressure cooker. Could a yogurt maker or soymilk maker be next? I think I will just see how Liz does with her homemade tofu first before I buy any of these items.

The end result of my shopping trip was this: Whole Grain Milling corn chips, a jar of Salsa Lisa, some Organic Valley Soymilk, Fancy Brand Shredded Cheddar Cheese, Labore Farms lettuce, local mushrooms, Naked Carrot Juice (not local as far as I know anymore), and some HolyLand Hummus. Next time I will dive into the grains in the Bulk aisle, but for now I am happy with my local junk food.

The secret to success?

2008-06-04T00:10:00.004-05:00

I think the key to success in this challenge might just be planning ahead. I know there's enough locally grown food available for me to eat very well...but not when I have 30 minutes to pull together a local meal for 4 people and get to a baseball game!

Today's menu started off strongly local and declined into global:

Toast from 3rd St. Bakery (Duluth, MN) with leftover potato salad (WI, MN, IA, backyard)
Leftover roasted parsnips, beets, and ramps (WI & MN)
Leftover beet greens and cremini mushrooms (MN & WI)
Leftover barley salad (MN)
Country Choice cookies (MN owned)
New French Bakery roll (MN owned) and leftover beans with pesto (backyard pesto)
Tofu tacos (IA grown soybeans, far away lettuce, taco shells, salsa, onions)
Spud puppies (WA)

Here's my lunch box for today filled with leftover barley salad, beet greens, and roasted beets and parsnips. Yum! When I plan ahead, it's easy to eat local!

The first few days

2008-06-02T18:52:00.003-05:00

The first few days of this challenge have been...well, challenging. I started off this month with forgetting that it was June and eating a ton of organic grapes for breakfast- Definitely not local! But then I snacked on some homemade chicken-style seitan (a.k.a. wheat meat or mock duck) made from locally grown wheat gluten to kick off my local menu.

I think the hardest part of this local challenge is going to be finding enough variety at this time of year to keep the whole family happy- It will be much easier in August! We've come to expect strawberries in Spring (even if they're usually not ready in MN until Summer) and carrots year round (but we don't have root cellars!).

This Sunday was our dog Hannah's 3rd birthday and the kids really wanted to have a party for her. So the boys helped me bake a little "canine cake" for her (recipe is in My Sweet Vegan by Hannah Kaminsky) out of locally grown flour. For dinner I wanted to make something that the whole family would love and would meet my local criteria. We had some Wisconsin red potatoes, local ramps (wild leeks), chives from the garden, Gedney pickles from right here in Minnesota and Wildwood plain soy yogurt that is made from Iowa grown soybeans that became a potato salad. I pressure cooked some barley from Whole Grain Milling Co. in Welcome, Minnesota and mixed it with some cherry tomatoes and basil both from Living Waters hydroponic farm in Minnesota. A little umeboshi plum vinegar and flax oil made a great dressing for a cold barley salad.

{I should insert here that I can find no vegan fats that are locally produced except sunflower seeds, so I'll continue to use flax and olive oils. Little condiments like salt, pepper, and spices will stay, too, because I can't imagine they make up too much of a percentage of my diet by weight. When possible I'll use fresh local herbs, though.}

I thought that my cannellini beans were local, so I cooked those up in the pressure cooker with some homemade garden pesto left in the freezer from last year...but alas, those beans are not locally grown. The black beans, chickpeas, split peas, soybeans, and many others are, though.

Here's a picture of the potato salad and barley salad:

Everyone ended up loving it! And Hannah loved her cake, of course. We had enough of these salads left over for me to have them for lunch today.

So here was my menu for today:

Steel cut oats (Welcome, MN) with SunButter sunflower seed butter (Fargo, ND) and maple syrup (Cumberland, WI)
Leftover potato salad (WI, MN, IA, backyard)
Leftover barley salad (MN)
Leftover cannellini beans with pesto (far away beans, with backyard pesto)
Corn chips (MN)
Roasted parsnips, beets, and ramps (WI & MN)
Sauteed beet greens with crimini mushrooms (MN & WI)

Not bad!

Training

2008-05-27T22:30:00.002-05:00

I sort of feel like I'm training for a marathon. Or what I imagine it's like training for a marathon, because I never have and probably never will run more than a few miles.

I know that in 5 days I'll begin the Eat Local Challenge- so I've started training (mentally mostly). I know I can eat 80% locally because I completed the challenge last year without any tropical fruit crises, chocolate withdrawal meltdowns, or strained muscles. But last year I took the challenge at peak harvest season when my garden was just begging me to harvest some more kale. At the beginning of June my garden gives me radishes, lettuce, rhubarb, and plenty of herbs- but nothing too substantial. I'll be depending on the Co-op for more of my food during this early edition challenge.

Luckily, I'll have no problem getting local grains or beans from Whole Grain Milling. And Wildwood tofu and soyogurt is made from Iowa soybeans. The local produce has already started coming in and will only be more plentiful during the month. I'll miss my almond milk, though!

You see, our family has the 365 day challenge of eating vegan and wheat-free (mostly gluten-free). We are vegan by choice, for ethical, environmental, and health reasons; But we are wheat-free because my partner is allergic to wheat. I still use wheat bread sometime and our 2 boys eat have wheat bread sandwiches in their lunches, but any family meals need to be edible by everyone. Generally it's easy as (gluten-free) pie to eat vegan and wheat-free- We don't stress out about it and certainly aren't lacking any food! But when you throw a local challenge into the mix, it does make things more complicated. While I'll be participating wholeheartedly in the challenge, the whole family won't necessarily be 80% local (I'm no Barbara Kingsolver). But I'll keep track of what I eat and blog my little heart out.

It might be wrong, but I'm planning on eating some pineapple, avocado, and grapes this week- just because I know I won't buy them next week. I won't eat enough to negate my efforts during June, though. It's just part of my rigorous training regimen.