Happy Easter (a couple of days late)! I think I should make an entry here about what we've learned over the past 40 days. What we'll keep from this experience, what we'll ditch.
I had to start thinking about this a couple of days ago when I was starting my shopping list. I usually shop for the week on Sunday afternoon but over the past 40 days I've been doing the majority of my shopping on Saturdays because that's when the farmer's market is held. And I've done two weeks worth of produce shopping on Saturdays because in the winter the farmer's market only occurs every other weekend. But this weekend I knew that with the end of Lent, we didn't have to stick around for the market. We could get far-flung produce any day of the week. We took advantage of that to go up to the mountains to snowboard on Saturday. Ah, the freedom that global eating has afforded us...
But I still had to plan for meals for the week. So what goes on the list? I started listing the things we've missed: cinnamon, tortillas, soy milk, bran flakes, raisins...and then the list started to look just exactly like my shopping list before Lent and I became a little disappointed in myself. What's the point if we just go back to exactly the same habits and patterns we had before? After some discussion we decided to try to balance things a little better. Charlie said he could live without the bran flakes and raisins (local oats with frozen blueberries for breakfast) if we could get some commercially made tortillas. I thought I could keep with the oats too, and maybe use some cinnamon and brown sugar (which I've really missed). So we worked it out like that. Some of this from local sources, and a little of that from far away. And of the far away things, we're trying to get them as close to our house as possible. Some produce from California, tortillas made in Oregon, olive oil from Napa Valley instead of from Italy.
One of the most valuable things I've learned is that there are local sources (or local-ish sources) for many of the things we used to get from wherever. We can get walnuts and flax from a farm within 10 miles of our door instead of from California, and we can get spinach from California instead of from New Mexico, and we can get peanut butter from New Mexico instead of from Georgia. Stuff like that. So we'll do the best we can taking these things into account.
Thanks to those of you who have followed this blog. It's been an important part of our efforts. And many many thanks to those of you who have given food from freezers and cupboards and herb pots. This has truly been a community effort!
Love and good thoughts,
Kim, Charlie, and Luke
Monday, March 24, 2008
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Sick and Tired and Almost Done
We've been sick. I came down with a miserable cold last week and Charlie started to feel it this weekend. Luke has escaped it thus far. If there is anything to be thankful for, it's that.
As you all know, when you're sick you want comfort. A comfortable bed, a comfortable blanket, a comfortable temperature in the house. And of course it goes without saying that a person nursing off sickness wants comfort food. I did the best I could do within the confines of our diet. I came up with chicken noodle soup with the first carrots of the season, onions from last fall and some frozen chicken and stock. It seems like every meal lately spans the seasons; something from last fall combined with the first something of this spring.
We've been jonesin' for some baked goods. I've talked about what I'd miss most on the all local diet and I had hypothesized about what that might be. But if you ask me what I'm missing lately I'm likely to answer "chocolate cake" or "muffins" or "cookies." So in an attempt to make some true comfort food, I went on a quest for a cookie recipe that used no sugar. I found a fabulous oatmeal cookie recipe that calls for honey. Here it is:
1 c. honey
1 egg
3/4 c. butter
1 tsp vanilla
3 c. oats
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
Heat oven to 375 F; Beat butter, honey, egg, vanilla; add remaining combined ingredients; bake 12-15 minutes. I think these would be great with some cinnamon, maybe some raisins, maybe some walnuts. But that's for another time. The cookies turned out to be such a fabulous antidote to the physical malady, as well as the low mood that has started to plague our meals.
One week to go and we're feeling utterly deprived. I've made so much squash soup I can't imagine ever eating it again unless there's nothing else left on the planet. We hadn't been to the grocery store in weeks when we made a trip to WinCo a few days ago. We walked dazed through the aisles and both commented on the massive amount of food available to everyone but us. Self-imposed exile. We also commented on the sheer anonymity of the food. Who knows where it's been? Most of the vegetables in the frozen food section have seen more of the world than both of us put together.
During that visit to the grocery we agreed that we need to start thinking about which parts of this diet we'll keep after Lent is over and which parts we'll ditch like a hot potato. I'll write more about it later on in the week, after I have put more thought into it.
As you all know, when you're sick you want comfort. A comfortable bed, a comfortable blanket, a comfortable temperature in the house. And of course it goes without saying that a person nursing off sickness wants comfort food. I did the best I could do within the confines of our diet. I came up with chicken noodle soup with the first carrots of the season, onions from last fall and some frozen chicken and stock. It seems like every meal lately spans the seasons; something from last fall combined with the first something of this spring.
We've been jonesin' for some baked goods. I've talked about what I'd miss most on the all local diet and I had hypothesized about what that might be. But if you ask me what I'm missing lately I'm likely to answer "chocolate cake" or "muffins" or "cookies." So in an attempt to make some true comfort food, I went on a quest for a cookie recipe that used no sugar. I found a fabulous oatmeal cookie recipe that calls for honey. Here it is:
1 c. honey
1 egg
3/4 c. butter
1 tsp vanilla
3 c. oats
1 1/2 c. flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
Heat oven to 375 F; Beat butter, honey, egg, vanilla; add remaining combined ingredients; bake 12-15 minutes. I think these would be great with some cinnamon, maybe some raisins, maybe some walnuts. But that's for another time. The cookies turned out to be such a fabulous antidote to the physical malady, as well as the low mood that has started to plague our meals.
One week to go and we're feeling utterly deprived. I've made so much squash soup I can't imagine ever eating it again unless there's nothing else left on the planet. We hadn't been to the grocery store in weeks when we made a trip to WinCo a few days ago. We walked dazed through the aisles and both commented on the massive amount of food available to everyone but us. Self-imposed exile. We also commented on the sheer anonymity of the food. Who knows where it's been? Most of the vegetables in the frozen food section have seen more of the world than both of us put together.
During that visit to the grocery we agreed that we need to start thinking about which parts of this diet we'll keep after Lent is over and which parts we'll ditch like a hot potato. I'll write more about it later on in the week, after I have put more thought into it.
Friday, March 14, 2008
Fed by our Friends
I should write about the responses we have received from those who hear about our local eats endeavor. The responses have been varied. From some folks who just stare blankly and don't know how to respond, as if to say "why in the world would you do something like that?" to others who wanted to argue the benefits of the global economy. But the most common response has been positive and enthusiastic.
And more than a few responses have come accompanied by offers of food. It's been amazing, really, to see how many friends and family have "put up" different things and even more more amazing is the fact that they have been willing to share with us. We have green tomato relish from my mom, vinegar from my dad, potatoes and onions from a family friend, blueberries, cilantro, sage, canned pears, canned applesauce, apple pie filling, and an offer of frozen strawberries from last spring, and frozen corn from last fall. Our guests last weekend came down from Washington state and brought us fresh apples and pears.
We have truly been fed by our community. More than I anticipated. This change in our eating habits has been received much differently than the change I made 15 years ago when I decided to stop eating meat. Telling someone you're vegetarian always comes off as an embarrassing confession or a half-hearted apology. I don't know why that is. The truth is that I am now a little embarrassed to tell my vegetarian friends that I am buying and eating animals. It's funny but food choices can really be a very public way for others to see our personal values.
And more than a few responses have come accompanied by offers of food. It's been amazing, really, to see how many friends and family have "put up" different things and even more more amazing is the fact that they have been willing to share with us. We have green tomato relish from my mom, vinegar from my dad, potatoes and onions from a family friend, blueberries, cilantro, sage, canned pears, canned applesauce, apple pie filling, and an offer of frozen strawberries from last spring, and frozen corn from last fall. Our guests last weekend came down from Washington state and brought us fresh apples and pears.
We have truly been fed by our community. More than I anticipated. This change in our eating habits has been received much differently than the change I made 15 years ago when I decided to stop eating meat. Telling someone you're vegetarian always comes off as an embarrassing confession or a half-hearted apology. I don't know why that is. The truth is that I am now a little embarrassed to tell my vegetarian friends that I am buying and eating animals. It's funny but food choices can really be a very public way for others to see our personal values.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Local Entertainment
We did a little local entertaining this weekend. My friends Kristin and Brooks and their son Soren have just relocated to the Pacific Northwest from Texas. They've actually re-relocated. We all lived in Portland in another life. My pre-baby life. A life that seems like a thousand light-years away from here. A life that seems like it must have belonged to someone else. But that's a different subject for a different blog. I'm here to talk about feeding guests on an all-local feeding plan.
About a week prior to the visit I started to think about what to feed these dear people. I began with what I already know about them. I know that Kristin is a health-conscious person. We ran the Portland Marathon together a couple of years ago. But I decided that she would probably be willing to accept some butter-laden meals and her heart health wouldn't suffer too much. I also know that the family is vegetarian and has been for many many years. I certainly wasn't prepared to ask them to compromise on that front. And I know that they have been following this blog. So I wanted to go all Oregon, nothing from the cupboard from our pre-Lenten days. Only local stuff. I surmised that I needed three or four vegetarian meals that are fairly healthy. And fairly tasty. After all, I like these people and I want them to come back.
I went to Gathering Together Farms to assess my options. This farm has a fabulous cafe attached to their farm stand which serves some amazing food made with ingredients primarily from local farms and their own fields. The farm stand just re-opened a couple of weeks ago (they had closed for the winter) and I thought this would be my best bet. I pulled into the muddy parking area all full of hope. Hope that was squashed down into the mucky mud by a quick glance at the available produce. The stand was filled with California. Carrots, spinach, beets, parsnips, lemons, blood oranges. And they had no squash. I repeat, no squash. The woman behind the counter said that all their remaining squash was tossed into the compost. I didn't realize that squash could go bad. I bought leeks, shallots, onions, rutabaga and greens. I found some hard goat cheese and some wildflower honey as well.
I resigned myself to the fact that the meals I would serve my friends would be regular, not fancy. The menu shaped up to be something like this: dinner of frittata with goat cheese, roasted root vegetables, and greens; breakfast of oatmeal, blueberries and yogurt with honey; lunch was potato/leek soup. I made an extra loaf of bread for snacking. No one went hungry and they kindly complimented my efforts. I had a grand time visiting with them and meeting 15-month-old Soren. This weekend was not about the food. It was about the friends.
About a week prior to the visit I started to think about what to feed these dear people. I began with what I already know about them. I know that Kristin is a health-conscious person. We ran the Portland Marathon together a couple of years ago. But I decided that she would probably be willing to accept some butter-laden meals and her heart health wouldn't suffer too much. I also know that the family is vegetarian and has been for many many years. I certainly wasn't prepared to ask them to compromise on that front. And I know that they have been following this blog. So I wanted to go all Oregon, nothing from the cupboard from our pre-Lenten days. Only local stuff. I surmised that I needed three or four vegetarian meals that are fairly healthy. And fairly tasty. After all, I like these people and I want them to come back.
I went to Gathering Together Farms to assess my options. This farm has a fabulous cafe attached to their farm stand which serves some amazing food made with ingredients primarily from local farms and their own fields. The farm stand just re-opened a couple of weeks ago (they had closed for the winter) and I thought this would be my best bet. I pulled into the muddy parking area all full of hope. Hope that was squashed down into the mucky mud by a quick glance at the available produce. The stand was filled with California. Carrots, spinach, beets, parsnips, lemons, blood oranges. And they had no squash. I repeat, no squash. The woman behind the counter said that all their remaining squash was tossed into the compost. I didn't realize that squash could go bad. I bought leeks, shallots, onions, rutabaga and greens. I found some hard goat cheese and some wildflower honey as well.
I resigned myself to the fact that the meals I would serve my friends would be regular, not fancy. The menu shaped up to be something like this: dinner of frittata with goat cheese, roasted root vegetables, and greens; breakfast of oatmeal, blueberries and yogurt with honey; lunch was potato/leek soup. I made an extra loaf of bread for snacking. No one went hungry and they kindly complimented my efforts. I had a grand time visiting with them and meeting 15-month-old Soren. This weekend was not about the food. It was about the friends.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
A Trek Across the State
I promised to relive my trip to Eastern Oregon, so here goes.
It all started at 4 am on Thursday morning. Had to catch a 7:30 am flight from Portland and with an hour and a half of driving before hitting the airport, we needed an early-morning wake up call. Normally, this would have meant an early-morning drive-thru for coffee and a muffin or scone or, in a desperate moment, a Jack-in-the-Box breakfast sandwich that would leave us feeling sick and jittery all morning. And even though we have an exception for travel, I knew we could do better if we could wait until arriving at the airport. And we did do better. PDX has a number of home-grown shops and restaurants, including Good Dog/Bad Dog where I had a veggie breakfast burrito. Not local food, but at least it's a local business.
Luke slept on the way to Portland and then thoroughly enjoyed the flight. Perfect little traveler.
My mom met us at the Boise airport and then shuttled us directly to the Boise Co-Op for a little local Idaho shopping. My family has never been a "farm family," always living right in the middle of the Eastern Oregon town of Ontario. However, every summer we had a huge garden and I was raised to have a great respect for a garden-grown tomato. So even though my parents have become increasingly dependent on foreign produce like the rest of us, they still recognize and appreciate good food. This trip to the Co-Op was as much for their benefit as it was for ours.
We purchased ingredients for our dinner that night. Free-range chicken and hand-made sausages for the grill, green salad, rutabaga roasted with potatoes and onions from a farmer friend of the family. We had some Bird Dog White and Retriever Red from Idaho's Hell's Canyon Winery. For dessert we had some sweet bread made from my mom's sourdough starter. (I could tell that she'd had the starter for awhile and was trying to find new and creative ways to use it. That stuff always sounds like a good idea and then quickly becomes an albatross, a huge multiplying albatross.)
I can't pretend that each day of the trip, four days in all, was as virtuous or tasty as that first one. We had some coffee, a couple of bananas; Charlie had a Snickers bar and I had a poppyseed muffin. We tried to patronize local businesses rather than fast food chains. (Check out the new links for Eastern Oregon eateries, above.) But I must say that the first meal with my family was the culinary highlight
It all started at 4 am on Thursday morning. Had to catch a 7:30 am flight from Portland and with an hour and a half of driving before hitting the airport, we needed an early-morning wake up call. Normally, this would have meant an early-morning drive-thru for coffee and a muffin or scone or, in a desperate moment, a Jack-in-the-Box breakfast sandwich that would leave us feeling sick and jittery all morning. And even though we have an exception for travel, I knew we could do better if we could wait until arriving at the airport. And we did do better. PDX has a number of home-grown shops and restaurants, including Good Dog/Bad Dog where I had a veggie breakfast burrito. Not local food, but at least it's a local business.
Luke slept on the way to Portland and then thoroughly enjoyed the flight. Perfect little traveler.
My mom met us at the Boise airport and then shuttled us directly to the Boise Co-Op for a little local Idaho shopping. My family has never been a "farm family," always living right in the middle of the Eastern Oregon town of Ontario. However, every summer we had a huge garden and I was raised to have a great respect for a garden-grown tomato. So even though my parents have become increasingly dependent on foreign produce like the rest of us, they still recognize and appreciate good food. This trip to the Co-Op was as much for their benefit as it was for ours.
We purchased ingredients for our dinner that night. Free-range chicken and hand-made sausages for the grill, green salad, rutabaga roasted with potatoes and onions from a farmer friend of the family. We had some Bird Dog White and Retriever Red from Idaho's Hell's Canyon Winery. For dessert we had some sweet bread made from my mom's sourdough starter. (I could tell that she'd had the starter for awhile and was trying to find new and creative ways to use it. That stuff always sounds like a good idea and then quickly becomes an albatross, a huge multiplying albatross.)
I can't pretend that each day of the trip, four days in all, was as virtuous or tasty as that first one. We had some coffee, a couple of bananas; Charlie had a Snickers bar and I had a poppyseed muffin. We tried to patronize local businesses rather than fast food chains. (Check out the new links for Eastern Oregon eateries, above.) But I must say that the first meal with my family was the culinary highlight
Monday, March 3, 2008
Worth My Salt, Part II
Sorry for the week of silence. We were out of town visiting family and friends. I'll write more about that experience later in the week. Today I need to fill you in on our salt-making endeavor.
You may remember from many weeks ago that we thought we had a lead on some local-ish salt. Salt brought back from Hawaii (fancy Hawaiian salt) in the vacation luggage of some friends. Well that fell through. Salt was lost in transit somewhere. Easy come, easy go I guess. So we've been rationing the 1/4 cup of Kosher salt with which we started. It was going fast. Really fast with all of the baking and cooking. Prepared foods have plenty of salt to make them tasty, even the "healthy" all-organic foods (think soups, bread, crackers, tortillas, condiments). But since we've been eating almost exclusively from our own kitchen even when we were trying to conserve it has gone incredibly fast. The dwindling reserve has been the topic of some tense moments between Charlie and me, at least one tense moment that I might even call an argument. The weekend before last we decided that the time was ripe for some out-of-the-box thinking.
We decided to make salt. We planned a trip to Newport, about 45 minutes away. We timed it to coincide with the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival, hoping to score some good local eats and drinks on the way. Sounds great right? Well we were turned away at the door because Charlie had a very conspicuous 20 lb minor on his back. Luke wasn't welcome so we had to look elsewhere for our local lunch. We found it at a great spot called Local Ocean which serves fish from the docks across the street from it's front door. Fabulous food, local wine and beer and we purchases some line caught tuna brought in from those same docks.
Then we got down to business. Time for the salt harvest. We went to a nearby beach and Charlie waded out into the surf to retrieve 5 gallons of sea water. We had no idea how much salt that would produce so it was just a guess. He took one for the team by getting incredibly wet in the Pacific Ocean in mid-February. Cold, cold, cold...Here's a little video clip of our Newport experience: http://www.vimeo.com/732803
We boiled the heck out of one gallon that night, just as an experiment. I should mention that I first poured the water through some cheese cloth to filter out the sand and any bits of ocean-faring matter that may have been captured. It made an impressive amount of salt. About 3/4 cup. It took about 3 hours, boiling at a low simmer. And it tastes great. A surprisingly easy solution to our salt problem.
You may remember from many weeks ago that we thought we had a lead on some local-ish salt. Salt brought back from Hawaii (fancy Hawaiian salt) in the vacation luggage of some friends. Well that fell through. Salt was lost in transit somewhere. Easy come, easy go I guess. So we've been rationing the 1/4 cup of Kosher salt with which we started. It was going fast. Really fast with all of the baking and cooking. Prepared foods have plenty of salt to make them tasty, even the "healthy" all-organic foods (think soups, bread, crackers, tortillas, condiments). But since we've been eating almost exclusively from our own kitchen even when we were trying to conserve it has gone incredibly fast. The dwindling reserve has been the topic of some tense moments between Charlie and me, at least one tense moment that I might even call an argument. The weekend before last we decided that the time was ripe for some out-of-the-box thinking.
We decided to make salt. We planned a trip to Newport, about 45 minutes away. We timed it to coincide with the Newport Seafood and Wine Festival, hoping to score some good local eats and drinks on the way. Sounds great right? Well we were turned away at the door because Charlie had a very conspicuous 20 lb minor on his back. Luke wasn't welcome so we had to look elsewhere for our local lunch. We found it at a great spot called Local Ocean which serves fish from the docks across the street from it's front door. Fabulous food, local wine and beer and we purchases some line caught tuna brought in from those same docks.
Then we got down to business. Time for the salt harvest. We went to a nearby beach and Charlie waded out into the surf to retrieve 5 gallons of sea water. We had no idea how much salt that would produce so it was just a guess. He took one for the team by getting incredibly wet in the Pacific Ocean in mid-February. Cold, cold, cold...Here's a little video clip of our Newport experience: http://www.vimeo.com/732803
We boiled the heck out of one gallon that night, just as an experiment. I should mention that I first poured the water through some cheese cloth to filter out the sand and any bits of ocean-faring matter that may have been captured. It made an impressive amount of salt. About 3/4 cup. It took about 3 hours, boiling at a low simmer. And it tastes great. A surprisingly easy solution to our salt problem.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
I'm Hungry
I'm hungry. I've tried to be very positive about this experience up to this point. Focus on the positive effects of eating local. The community. The environment. The farmers. Right now it sounds like a lesson from Charlie Brown's teacher, "Wah, wah. Wah-wah, wah, wah-wah..." Luke has been growing, growing which means he's been eating, eating, which means I've been feeding, feeding this growing little boy. My body wants food all the time. And I'm craving the craziest food. The most non-local food. To quote a fellow breast-feeding friend of mine, "If I had a chocolate cake at home right now I'd eat it. All."
But of course chocolate is off-limits. So are most of my eat-it-fast-because-I'm-so-starving foods. Rice cakes with peanut butter. Bran flakes with cold cold milk. Granola bars and energy bars. Muffins. Between the local eating project and the no-dairy project imposed by Luke, some days I'm desperate to find something to eat. It's not because there is no food, it's because I'm used to being able to grab food without making any effort. I'm not in the habit of thinking ahead. There's plenty of food in the house. Squash, turnips, beets, and a rutabaga the size of a large softball. Frozen blueberries and plums, canned pears. Flour could be made into bread, crackers, pie crust. Oatmeal and cornmeal could be made into lots of other things. But all that stuff requires me to think far enough in advance to anticipate that I will be hungry and make something to eat in that moment. It shouldn't be too hard to anticipate that I will be hungry. It happens at least two or three times throughout the course of nearly every day. More often lately. But I'm used to buying and having on hand all sorts of prepared foods so I don't have to think when the moment strikes. The result is that I'm hungry a lot lately.
Having made this realization, I am trying to cook and bake in advance. Always be prepared. Like a good boyscout earning her local food badge. I've made granola and I have it in a zip lock bag. I've baked some bread. And I've roasted some squash and put it in the fridge for future snacking. Hopefully having these things on hand will prevent me from gnawing on the crusty old tootsie rolls left over from Halloween...that's right, I've been desperate.
But of course chocolate is off-limits. So are most of my eat-it-fast-because-I'm-so-starving foods. Rice cakes with peanut butter. Bran flakes with cold cold milk. Granola bars and energy bars. Muffins. Between the local eating project and the no-dairy project imposed by Luke, some days I'm desperate to find something to eat. It's not because there is no food, it's because I'm used to being able to grab food without making any effort. I'm not in the habit of thinking ahead. There's plenty of food in the house. Squash, turnips, beets, and a rutabaga the size of a large softball. Frozen blueberries and plums, canned pears. Flour could be made into bread, crackers, pie crust. Oatmeal and cornmeal could be made into lots of other things. But all that stuff requires me to think far enough in advance to anticipate that I will be hungry and make something to eat in that moment. It shouldn't be too hard to anticipate that I will be hungry. It happens at least two or three times throughout the course of nearly every day. More often lately. But I'm used to buying and having on hand all sorts of prepared foods so I don't have to think when the moment strikes. The result is that I'm hungry a lot lately.
Having made this realization, I am trying to cook and bake in advance. Always be prepared. Like a good boyscout earning her local food badge. I've made granola and I have it in a zip lock bag. I've baked some bread. And I've roasted some squash and put it in the fridge for future snacking. Hopefully having these things on hand will prevent me from gnawing on the crusty old tootsie rolls left over from Halloween...that's right, I've been desperate.
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