Rescued Soup

I burned the sausage, but cut off the worst of the singed area and pressed on. Even the kids liked this, which is unusual, since they don't like soup.

I cubed four potatoes I got from the store as the locals aren't in yet and boiled them for about 20 minutes until they were good and soft. I drained them, but saved the boiling water. I tossed in some butter from local grassfed cows and mashed them smooth. In went the boiling water, some cooked and cut up cheddar bratwurst and the last of our locally grown kale. This simmered along for about 20 minutes until the kale was cooked down. I liked it without the brats, but the kids insisted on the meat. Very good.

100-yard challenge

I'd heard about the 100-mile challenge: eat only what grows within 100 miles of where you eat it. But I'd never heard of the 100-yard challenge until today. Our Homeowner's Association prevents us from putting in a full backyard garden like I've always dreamed of doing, and my physical state would not allow me much participation in its upkeep, but I think the idea of a Victory Garden is worthy of consideration. The challenge is not a commitment to eat three meals a day, seven days a week from one's own garden, only one meal a week. I could eat fresh tomatoes and tea made from the mint on my patio for lunch one day a week, easily.

One of my greatest challenges in life is moderation. I am a very black-and-white, all-or-nothing kind of thinker. I don't want a small patio garden, I want to plant my whole backyard in edibles. I don't want to agree to one meal once a week, I want to go all out. I don't want to "just" grind my own wheat and bake bread at home, I want to build my own house and get off the grid.

That is just SO not happening.

And I realize it. But I have to maintain my attitude that every bite of local food on my table improves my overall health, the health of my family, the economics of my city, the ecosystem, the farmer that grew it, and the world in general. I have limitations (and a man's got to know those, per Clint) of time, finances, pain and endurance, which dictate much of my life. I'd love to embark on a utopian dream of self-sustainability, but the inevitable setbacks and failure would dash my hopes and embitter my heart. The phrase "start small" has little meaning to me, but I'm working on it!

Last night's dinner was yummy.

That's locally grown broccoli, steamed just past raw. I love the leaves, they are richer in nutrients than the florets and don't make a mess between my teeth. The stems were so tender that they didn't even need peeling. This local variety was very delicately flavored, without the strong sulfuric flavor and odor of grocery store broccoli. Hm. I wonder if the sulfuric odor comes from travel and increased storage time.

The entree was storebought black beans and corn, cilantro from my patio garden, locally grown red bell pepper and green onions mixed in with storebought couscous. I made a bit of dressing with olive oil, lime, red wine vinegar and cumin, but what really boosted the taste was the spoonful of salsa on top. It was so good I had some more for breakfast!

I have an ice cream maker that has been run daily for the last couple weeks. It's not the old fashioned crank with ice and salt kind I used as a kid, but the kind with the tub that lives in the freezer until it hooks up to the electric base on the counter. I love it. Not only have we made fresh fruit sorbets, but we used it to quick-chill some lemonade when unexpected guests dropped by.

Last night, though, I used it to make the most wonderful ice cream. I got a vanilla custard going on the stove with local half and half and local whipping cream while I beat the yolks of some local eggs with sugar. I whisked it all together and warmed it until it got thick like a thin pudding, then refrigerated it until late afternoon. Before I started dinner, I put the custard cream into the frozen tub and started the motor. Rose chopped some local cherries (where did the cherry pitter go?) and I located some organic chocolate chips that we added when the ice cream was soft-serve consistency. I could NOT wait for the ice cream to harden in the freezer, so we ate it soft and creamy after dinner. It was marvelous. It was so rich and full of flavor that four tiny ounces really was a full serving! (I always laugh at the serving sizes on cartons of Ben and Jerry's. Yeah, like I'm really going to stop after four ounces.) Next time, I need to either find some miniature chips or give them a chop before adding them. They were just about twice as large as they needed to be.

Our Tropical Feast

We had a very yummy dinner last night. Some (but not all) of it was local, but I have to admit I imported for this meal and it was delicious.

We had pork tenderloin, rubbed with cinnamon, cumin, chili powder and pepper, seared in a hot skillet, then rubbed with brown sugar and baked until done. I served it on top of a salad of Napa cabbage mixed with baby spinach and tossed with red bell peppers. I made a dressing in the blender for the salad of one zested and three juiced limes, dijon, curry powder and a mango. That's sliced carambola (starfruit) and orange for garnish. Dessert was so simple - I cut up and blended a pineapple, threw in the juice of one lemon and a handful of brown sugar. I put it in the ice cream maker to freeze while I cooked everything else. While setting the table, Christy was inspired by our tropical theme and added mint stems and sliced lemons to the water and mint stems to the sorbet.

The grocery store provided the pork, sugar, and spices, Napa cabbage and spinach, carambola and mango and pineapple. The lemons, limes, orange, and bell peppers were locally grown and the mint was from my own patio garden. The water was local, from our tap with a good filtering system. :D

The kids loved this meal, most of them even ate the salad. I had one complaint about the sorbet from the child who dislikes pineapple, and John dumped the green "stuff" out of his water very dramatically.

Local joys and sorrows

Eating locally means revelling in the joys of the season. From the first bunch of spring kale to the first winter squash, each flavor speaks of its own diet of sun and rain. A tomato grown in the hot humidity of the south will taste and look different than one grown in the short-lived, intense dry heat of a higher altitude.

As an herbalist, I learned that native plants address native concerns. A mullein plant produces leaves that are a powerful expectorant in the season when nasty summer colds are at their worst. More recently I learned that even meats are seasonal, with the heavier beef and pork being suited to autumn and winter slaughter, while chicken is more suited to summer slaughter. Springtime? That's reserved for the new, tender greens like dandelion that cleanse the liver from all that heavy meat over the winter! It all works together in a beautifully choreographed dance.

But sometimes it doesn't work perfectly. 2007 was a year of profound drought in our state. Many farms closed for the season, others switched crops after suffering economically-disastrous crop failure early in the year. Eating locally was challenging as well, with more weeks of less water-intensive heat-tolerant crops, and fewer strawberries and tomatoes. That's part of the deal. What grows is what you eat. Sure, you could run to the store and buy some over-priced non-local strawberries. But the price you pay includes dependence on foreign oil for the packaging and the transport, pollution spewed out by the trucks or trains bringing the food to market, pesticides and fertilizers seeping into the groundwater, not to mention the practically tasteless product that has taken up to ten days getting to you. Now that's one expensive strawberry!

So, while we suffered through a strawberryless year in 2007, it makes this year's strawberries all the more precious. We have eaten each gem whole and raw, savoring every bite. I've been tempted to make a shortcake or preserve, but can't bring myself to. Seeing strawberries in my CSA box is an invitation to praise the Lord who caused the vine to flower and sent the rain to nourish each one. And that's one valuable strawberry!

Buttery Melty Goodness

I'm one of those strange birds that wants to taste what they're eating. Weird, huh? So, I don't use salt when I'm cooking (unless, like for baking, it's necessary for some required chemical reaction), but leave the salt shaker on the table for everyone to use as they see fit. Another example: I despise cooking oil in my baked goods. Even if it is flavorless, even if it is yummy, it adds calories to a product that just doesn't need it!

This morning's breakfast was coffee cake. I used just the plain old basic recipe, flour, baking powder and soda, salt, an egg, some honey, a little buttermilk, cinnamon, all the usual suspects. I left out the 1/2 cup of oil they wanted me to add (blech) and put used applesauce instead (yes, ALL applesauce.) But then when I got the batter in the pan, I thought about what it would taste like and my reaction to reach for the butter dish for that hefty sensation and rich flavor that would be missing. Instead, I heeded the call of the Amish and cut up a couple tablespoons of butter into tiny little chunks and pushed it into the batter before baking it. The cake baked, the butter created tiny craters of buttery melty goodness, and the cake was just right. And to me, a couple small chunks of butter is better than 1/2 cup of tasteless oil any day of the week.

Is coffee cake a local, seasonal food? Not this one. But the wheat was freshly ground from wheat berries purchased at Whole Foods, if that counts. The buttermilk came from the grocery store, but from a dairy in my state. The butter, well, there's nothing local about Land O'Lakes. But I did ask my CSA dairy agent if they could bring me a pound of raw local butter to their next drop. I can't wait!

Meat on a Stick

What is it about the combination of kids and summer that screams for simple food that you can eat in motion? My kids will eat something on a stick that they wouldn't touch on a plate. Here's an example:
This is what we had for dinner last night. I took some bamboo skewers and soaked them in water while I marinated a pound of (deeply discounted, thank you) rib eye steak that I'd cut into one-inch pieces in some vinegar. About a half hour later I cut up mushrooms, zucchini, red bell pepper and kale. I put some water on to boil while I assembled the kabobs, then put the orzo in to boil. I brushed the kabobs with a little olive oil and broiled them about five minutes, turned them once, then another five. The kids kept theirs on the stick, pushing the food up and biting it off one bite at a time. It was so much fun they even suffered through that "leafy green stuff" to get to the chunks of veggies they much prefer. We adults pushed the goodies off on top of the orzo, as is pictured above (on the Christmas plates, Christmas in July? Didn't think about that.)

One of the difficulties I'm finding with local, seasonal eating is the lack of variety. We have been very spoiled by the grocery store: I can serve asparagus in November as easily as May. But in June, where I live, it's kale, kale, kale, kale and collards, collards, collards, collards. Coming up with ways to eat the same old thing in a new way has been a real challenge for me. Kale is not as bad, I have steamed it, braised it and boiled it, all with success. But this kabob thing was wonderful! The kale came out almost as substantial on the tongue as a meringue, and crispy like a chip! I'm going to try broiling some large leaves today: flat and sprayed with a fine mist of olive oil. Sprinkled with a little salt it should make a really yummy afternoon snack!

We have been notified by the CSA that today is our last shipment of collards, and just in time. I finally found a single recipe that doesn't involve hocks, garlic and lemon juice, and I will be making that tonight. I hope it will be as successful as the kabobs.

One more little chunk of history before moving on...

In my previous post about my trip toward local whole foods, I omitted one gigantic factor in my life: my disability.

I was born with hip dysplasia. It was too tiny to be noticed as a baby, and it fixed itself enough that by the time I was ready to learn to walk, my bones could handle the stress. But as I reached my preteen years and the sudden physical and hormonal growth that accompany it, the bones in my legs began to bow. From the hip to the knee, the bone now bows outward, and from the knee to the ankle the bones bow inward, giving my legs an "S" shape.

I dislocated my knee for the first time at age 9. The other knee went soon after that. Back in the 1970's there were few options for fixing recurring knee issues like mine. Microsurgery hadn't been invented yet, the now-common arthroscopy was not even a glint in the orthopedist's eye. So, they did what they knew to do: rebuilt tendons, cinched ligaments, moved muscles. Thirteen surgeries later, I cried "UNCLE!" The surgeries were not helping, and now I was battling arthritis from the constant assault of the joints.

All this has very little to do with my eating proclivities save a few points. One, that during the years of surgical intervention, I actually ate very little food and drank a great deal of water. Hospital food was never a big hit with me, nor was the take-out Mom would call and ask Dad to bring home for dinner. The pain meds left me constantly nauseated and masked any hunger I would have felt. But I was constantly thirsty. I kept a clean gallon milk jug full of delicious Rocky Mountain water next to my bed. It would go empty twice a day. That's a lot of water for a hundred pound kid! So you could say that one of my good habits was instilled early. To this day, I drink about a gallon of water each day as a baseline.

During pregnancy, the hormones circulating in my bloodstream made me positively "high" and giddy. The pain in my legs all but stopped, I could move very comfortably and felt great. But within a week of giving birth, the hormones changed and my joints stiffened, became swollen and hot to the point I couldn't walk for several weeks. I really didn't mind, after all, I had this new person to get to know! But the lack of exercise made my pregnancy weight cling to me. Each subsequent child added 20 pounds to my frame. When the child would wean and I could get back on strong pain and anti-inflammatory drugs, I generally lost about half of that weight again, as a result of nausea, lack of appetite and just being able to move.

Then the two C-sections that gutted me like a fish, ruining the rock-hard abs I had worked so hard to develop as a young woman, knowing that a strong core would help my knees. Weight began to pile onto my middle, a very bad place for fat to sit: balancing where my already precarious knees would have to adjust to it.

Now in midlife, I have good, bad and in-between days. A good day means I can stand and walk for nearly 30 minutes with minimal pain. A bad day finds me in a recliner or bed on pain meds. This leaves me with several mealtime options. 1) Eat out. Sink the budget and our health, this option is by far the easiest in the short term. 2) Eat extensively pre-processed food because it requires less prep time for me standing at the sink and stove. We're talking frozen entrees and nutritionless breakfast cereals here, make no mistake. 3) Eat food that is processed slightly less, do a little more of the cooking and thereafter, hurting. 4) Eat whole, local and mostly raw foods, paying more and working more for each meal; hoping that the short term cost in dollars and pain is balanced by a long term gain in health.

But, lucky for me, these options can vary from week to week, day to day and even meal to meal. I don't have to choose one to stick to forever. Lucky for me because I'd choose the course of least resistance: the extensively pre-processed road known as the Standard American Diet.

In My Day, Little One...

A very brief history before I launch into my locavore life.

I was always a chubby kid, my sister was jealous because I was "shapely" and I was jealous because she was thin. I went on my first diet at age 8. One banana and 4 ounces of milk every two hours, if I remember correctly.

In my day, little one, Mc Donald's was just starting to find its way into the larger towns of our country. I was 12 before I ate my first meal at a McD's. There were no Quarter Pounders then, just hamburgers, cheeseburgers and small bags of fries. The drinks were served in 12-ounce cups and no one ever asked for a refill. Before that first fateful take-out, we ate at home, almost always.

In my teens, my mom took off for a year or so to take care of an ailing relative and left me alone with my dad. Dad worked long hours and had personal issues to boot, and I was not interested in cooking in the least. I didn't want to be home with him much either, so I ended up eating more of my meals with friends than at home. I was exposed to all manner of strange foods: Mexican, Chinese, Kosher.

In high school, I fell in with the music department clique. They went every Friday morning to IHOP for breakfast. It was so cool to be counted among a group, and I loved being the quirky kid who always sprinkled pepper in her buttermilk and had a side of hash browns.

In early marriage, both hubby and I worked. Sunday morning omelettes at Hof's Hut was a real treat. That first child was born with a load of food sensitivities, though, and I had to learn how to cook for real. Told I couldn't breastfeed by well-meaning but mistaken nurses, I embarked on bottle feeding only to watch my son not gain. At three months of age, he had not gained but one pound over his birth weight. I got myself to a La Leche League meeting and learned how to breastfeed. After a few more months, my son was gaining and growing normally. It was during my dad's one and only visit to see his grandchild that I learned about whole, fresh foods, brown rice, live cultured yogurt and tofu. My dad, the alcoholic wanna-be truck driver, had discovered macrobiotics in the last years of his life. What a baffling day that was!

The babies stopped for about 10 years before resuming, one after another, in rapid succession. During my pregnancies, I learned and read about nutrition, both for me and the babies. I learned how to shop for and cook with whole foods, how to plan a nutritious well-balanced diet and kept a careful eye on my children's health. We didn't eat out except for the rare special occasion, and when we did, it was not fast food.

But, after six children, the non-fast variety of dining out became too expensive and cumbersome and our eating out devolved into trips to the drive-through or pizza delivery. The last baby had numerous allergies and food sensitivities and my attention to nutrition was aroused once again. I began growing food, canning, buying from a natural food co-op and learning all I could about herbal medicine. I even took an herbal medicine course, and am currently about three hours and a final exam short of being an herbal practitioner.

But the more I studied, the more I discovered the flaw in herbal medicine: it's still treating what goes wrong. What if there was a way to prevent things from going wrong, to walk daily in health?

The tomatoes, the silence, the new venture

My cherry tomato plants outgrew the Aerogarden this week and I couldn't bare to prune them as much as they would need to be to keep the tiny, compact size needed to fit in the machine. So, I transplanted them (or Blair did, under my instruction) into the Earthbox outside. She used twine to tie them to the fence for a little support, and they are doing quite well. I expect the first harvest in a week or so. I do intend to prune them as vigorously as needed, when they get to about two feet in height. But one foot tall just seemed a bit soon. They'll have loads of room in the Earthbox to grow and augment my salads to their hearts' content.



Haven't been posting much. Haven't been doing much at all. My knees have gotten to a point where if I bend at the waist I hurt myself. Imagine being a mom and not being able to bend at the waist. No picking up stuff off the floor, and cooking and laundry folding must be done from a sitting position. I did the grocery shopping today and every step was daggers in my knee. It didn't help that my sciatica on the other side was acting up, or that the bulging disk in my neck was sending a nerve headache to my head. I don't do pain well, which is a shame since I seem to have a lot of it. My wimpy little Darvocet didn't touch it this morning, either, which means a dose of much stronger Vicodin tonight. All these factors conspire to deepen the darkening clouds of my recurring depression that began gathering yet again at the beginning of June.

But, much to my protestations otherwise, all this sitting has had one benefit: I read a book! It was, of course, non-fiction, and on a topic I hold dear. It was The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. It's a title being bandied about on blogs I read and I was piqued. It was very, very good. I had a teensy bit of overlooking to do (a little language, a lot of "old earth" theology, and some just plain silliness) but there was enough ammunition to fuel another battle in my "eating well locally" war I wage with my family. (Not against my family—I try ever so hard to not fight against them! Side by side we fight, in the style of Minutemen soldiers.) So, I've decided I'm going to begin blogging about my locavorous journey. Fear not, the posts (other than this introduction) will be separated from the other stuff of my life, so you can easily tiptoe around them. Won't bother me a bit. Like most of what I blog, what I write is more for the clarification of my own thoughts than the enlightenment of others, anyway! Not that I don't appreciate you, reader(s). And you know who you are.