Lessons Learned

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Show-Off Meals

In my last post I discussed two different types of food themes at our house. I have already written about the "normal" themed foods. And then there are the "fancy" meals. The show-off-y meals we spend hours preparing and show-case a particular ingredient, or a particular wine or a particular event. We had just such a meal last weekend. I made bolognese sauce. Charlie made pasta (and here's a photo to prove it). It's hard to say which was the focus of our show-off meal.

I'm not too sure of the specifics on the pasta, as that was Charlie's realm and I was busy with the sauce. All I know is that it turned out better than it ever has. We've made pasta before and it has been, at best, a novel way to spend an afternoon and, at worst, a novel way to instigate a heated argument. This time I think Charlie had the process perfected. The fettuccine was perfectly thin, just the right length, and he made more pasta than we could possibly have eaten in two sittings. And it didn't take too long.

For the sauce, I used some Oregon buffalo, frozen tomatoes from last summer, onions from the farmers' market, some nutmeg still in the cupboard from pre-Lenten days, some of my dad's red wine vinegar, and some whole-milk yogurt (I took a chance that Luke wouldn't be bothered by the dairy when it was cooked). It simmered for a couple of hours before we indulged. It was fabulous if I do say so myself. We topped it all off with a nice glass of local vino. We're really lucky on that front. We don't have to sacrifice anything in terms of good drinkin' for this project. Oregon has so many good wines to choose from.

To be clear I should say that yes, I had a glass of wine with our meal and yes, I'm still breastfeeding. I've done it before and it doesn't seem to phase Luke in the least. The kid is a gassy fuss-monster after a glass of milk, but he doesn't bat an eye at a good pinot noir. A true native of the Willamette Valley, God bless him.

What We Eat

I want to up-date y'all on what were actually eating these days. No waxing poetical about the deeper meaning of things today. After all, it's all about the food, right? It's the food, stupid.

There are two different food themes here a the Mosier Tracy house. One theme is of gourmet, show-off-y origins, attempting to showcase the very best local food, sparing no expense. The other is much more banal, but what we face everyday and what makes us feel "normal." Trying to obtain all the foods that are part of our average daily existence. I'm not talking about subsistence here. I'm talking about the foods that make life feel normal. For us that's tortillas, bread, hot cereal in the morning, some sort of chili sauce, yogurt and cheese, pasta and a few other things.

Charlie has tried his hand at making tortillas. Not too terribly successful there but he thinks he has a plan for the next batch. He also made pasta last weekend. Fabulous, incredibly so. We're making bread once or twice a week with a bread-maker on loan from some friends. Remember that we found Oregon wheat from a farm in the Columbia River Gorge. We're grinding dried corn from the same farm, for our hot cereal in the morning and supplementing it with dried plums from our yard and walnuts from the farmer's market. We bought a grain mill for our mixer and it works very well. The dairy is easy. There are lots of local dairies around and Midway Farms (see the links above, to the left) has a dairy cow that provides fresh milk, though I'm off dairy entirely for the time-being. I'm drinking a lot of nut milk. And we're using buckets of honey each week.

That leaves the chili pepper sauce. We're still working off of what we had in the fridge but it won't last long. Looking at the ingredients it looks pretty simple. Vinegar, chilies, salt. So where to get the vinegar? My dad has made vinegar before and has given us some, but we need lots so we're making our own from the "mother of vinegar" he gave us. The Mother goes into some sort of alcohol to ferment. In our case, we're using a bottle of our plum wine which turned out to be incredibly high in alcohol. We have chilies dried from last summer's garden and they are sufficiently HOT so I think we're all set. Just the salt to worry about. We thought we had that figured out, but our salt supplier fell through. We're planning a trip to the coast next weekend to collect some sea water to see if we can't make some salt of our own. I'll certainly post
the results of the endeavor.

We're adjusting our thoughts on some other things that we once thought of as necessities (ketchup, mustard, olive oil, cinnamon, other spices, etc) and I'm not sure where we'll end up. Who knows, maybe some of these will fall off our radar permanently.

Waste Not, Want Not

Happy Springtime! Okay, that may be premature considering it's the middle of February. But the weather around Corvallis is glorious today. I've been in Oregon long enough to know that today's unseasonable warmth and sun could be just a sneaky trick played on the multitude of fruit trees that make up the Willamette Valley. If we have much more of this sort of weather the poor trusting trees will begin to bud, just in time for a cold snap in early March. But for today it feels like spring and I'm so so thankful for it.

Speaking of fruit trees...we are pruning ours today. We have two apple, one pear, one plum and a neglected walnut tree. We're novice fruit tree owners and everything we know about them has been learned in the past three years. Mostly on-the-job training along with a couple of books. And we've done okay. Each year we get fruit. And each year we make cider, hard cider, from it. And believe me, local drinking is even better than local eating.

It's something we've done since we first met. We bought a huge cider press before we were even married. And the first fall that we knew each other we drove down nearly every dirt road in Baker County pilfering apples from neglected roadside trees. It seemed like every ditch-bank had at least one tree so heavy with fruit it could barely stand up straight.

We have continued the tradition over here in The Valley. And there is no shortage of free fruit over here in the late summer and fall. I'm always amazed to see how much goes to waste. Apples, pears, grapes, Asian pears, plums, cherries and (of course) blackberries all stain the sidewalks in our neighborhood from late August until the rain comes back to wash it all away. I don't want to sound all High-and-Mighty, but I imagine all of those fruit-wasting households stocking up on bananas from Mexico and starfruit from wherever starfruit are from, while perfectly good food rots in their front yards. Or worse yet, stocking up on fuji apples from New Zealand instead of eating the local ones that are dropping to the ground next door. So I guess I do sound all high-and-mighty and that's not what our Lenten experiment is all about, so I'll stop ranting. Back to our fruit trees...

From the trees in our back yard, we have plum wine and apple-pear cider to drink during Lent, completely guilt-free. We also have dried, frozen and canned plums (thanks to my mom). And Luke has frozen little ice cubes of pureed pears and plums (thanks to Charlie's mom). Total food miles: zero.

Valentine's Day

Yesterday was Valentine's Day and we don't usually make a big deal out of it. But we had an offer from our good friends, John-Paul and Diane, to stay with Luke for a couple of hours while we had a little time to ourselves.

As an aside...Charlie and I ascribe to the "attachment parenting" theory. Basically, we believe that "tough love" is best reserved for unruly teenagers, and that babies need gentle, calm, attentive love. To us that means when Luke cries we pick him up and try to figure out what's wrong. Every time he cries. Day or night. (I know there are nay-sayers out there, and it can be a controversial topic in new-parent circles, but I take the attitude that I know what's best for my little guy, and other parents know what's best for theirs, and we all just have to be okay with that. Very good people have very different parenting styles. To each his own...different strokes for different folks...etc.) John-Paul and Diane ascribe to the same parenting style, so we knew that Luke would be cared for in much the same way that we care for him. And we felt very thankful, even blessed, by the offer of a couple of hours out. So we took it...we nearly jumped at it...

We researched local restaurants for the most Oregon-friendly menu and we found one at Bombs Away Cafe. Charlie had a burrito with local pork, and I ordered lamb from a farm just one county away. Charlie loved his meal and I did too, but the lamb was a bit too "meaty" for me (a recent convert from vegetarianism), so I ordered a side of veggies and ate the mashed potato enchilada and refried beans that came with the lamb for a very nice dinner. The lamb came with Oregon truffle-butter (heavenly!) which I ate with the veggies.

It's interesting to note that the little chunks of tofu in the veggie side were the least traceable food on the table. We could account for nearly every other morsel, but the mainstay of many vegetarian diets is pretty anonymous.

It was a lovely evening out. Luke survived just fine, but was ready to have us home when we arrived. And we were able to say within the all-Oregon diet. Mostly.

Local Food Fest

Last Saturday Charlie, Luke and I met up with our friends Rachel, Tony and Helen and we cooked. Man, oh man, did we cook. It was Rachel's idea to have a day of bulk cookin' in order to fill her freezer and feed her family while she's in Ghana for a conference for 10 days. We're not headed to Ghana, but I love the idea of having meals on hand for fast fixing in the mid-week when the evenings seem to go so fast.

The Mosier Tracy family committed to bringing two chickens and a few veggies. The Faber Machacha's brought huge bunches of greens and some root vegetables to the table.

A note about the chickens: I had no idea that chicken sales were seasonal. As I called around to local farms that claimed on websites to sell chicken, I was told that the "last slaughter" is typically in the fall and unless there are frozen birds left, we're not likely to see local chicken until spring. I asked our friend Liv, who actually gets paid to work in the local food arena, if she knew of anyone with a frozen chicken for sale. She gave me the name of a chicken guy and, sure enough, he still had some birds left from the fall. The Chicken Guy (aka Tyler Jones) is an unexpected farmer. Mostly because he is surprisingly young and hip-looking. This helped to break down a stereo-type that I didn't realize I ascribed to: that farmers are in their mid-to-late 50's (or older), wear dirty overalls, and live quaintly simple lives...sun up to sun down. Or maybe some are ex-hippy-types who live quaintly simple lives...sun up to sun down. But I hadn't considered that some folks in my own demographic might be raising or growing animals and vegetables for my consumption. Interesting.

So at the end of the day each family took away 4 quarts of soup (roasted root vegetable and potato leek), most of a roasted chicken plus a carcass for stock, and some sauted greens. And that's after we had a fine meal together. Charlie and I shared some of the plum wine we made about a year and a half ago, and some hard apple cider from last summer. Local food fest success!

When "Local" Isn't Local

I want to give apt credit to the food co-operative that's just down the street from our house. It has been consistently putting the issue of local eating in its monthly newsletter. And the staff has, for the most part, been patient with all of my questions about where specific items originate. And it labels products from within the 6 surrounding counties with a sticker that says "Local 6." However, I've found that I can't just take that sticker at face-value. Let me explain...

I've seen the sticker on hazelnuts (definitely Oregon), and turnips (also very likely local), and trail mix (possibly local, but keep reading). When I look at the content of the mix, I see that it's made up of peanuts and other mixed nuts, raisins, coconut, and some other stuff. I haven't seen many coconut groves here in the state of liquid sunshine. There are a few palm-looking trees, scraggly things plunked down in the middle of some residential yards, undoubtedly planted by some SoCal transplant nostalgic for the landscape of Orange County. But I don't think those are producing any fruit. And what about the raisins? And the peanuts?

Bravo to First Alt Co-op for supporting Oregon businesses, even if the products are from far-flung places. I point it out here just to be of assistance to others who might be considering an all-local diet experiment. I suggest you become accustomed to asking lots of questions. I have. I'm the annoying woman with the squacking child who is clogging the line at the customer service kiosk. Say hello next time you see us.

For those of you who are waiting to read about the local food cooking extravaganza that we participated in last weekend with our friends Rachel and Tony (and little Helen), you'll have to keep waiting. I'll write about it when I figure out how to upload the photos and I haven't had time to do that. Sickness has befallen our house and my time in front of the computer has been limited to 10 or 15 minute intervals.

Taste of The Good Life

I was asked what I would miss most while on our all-Oregon diet. It's sort of a cop-out question. Too obvious. There are many more interesting questions to ask about this endeavor. Like "What does this method of eating do to one's body?" or "Aren't there some benefits to the global economy?" or "Is this truly a sustainable way of eating?" But I was asked the question of what I'd miss. So I'll answer it:

Rice, cinnamon, olive oil, canola oil, olives, chocolate, peanut butter, peanuts, lemons, limes, oranges, mangos (!), pineapple, tea, coffee, brown sugar, lattes, tofu, tempe, bananas, pasta, raisins...and, and, and...

When I start to list them I see that a lot of what we consume every day comes from hundreds or thousands of miles away. Some of these things I love (LOVE!) but do I have any business demanding this exotic stuff be brought to my door step? I feel like the consumer who has paid for a higher standard of living, all on credit. Now that we've tasted The Good Life, can we ever go back again?

Love and Evolution

I need to address the issue of my history as a mostly-vegetarian because on the all-Oregon diet, I will eat animals. Anyone who has known me for any length of time knows that over the past 15 years or so I've eaten very little meat. And for some of those 15 years I ate no meat at all, and very little dairy. But in the most recent of those 15 years I have been making more and more forays out of the vegetarian diet, and into a truly omnivorian diet. My food values have been evolving.

I remember the meal that marked a major shift in my thinking. Charlie and I had just started dating. We were living in Baker City in the northeastern corner of Oregon. The town is nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges, the Elk Horns and the Blues. And in the hills that surround the valley lives a certain bird called a chuckar. Charlie, my new guy, was going chuckar hunting with his friend Ned and Charlie wanted to know if I'd have dinner with him after. Dinner of chuckar. I had to think for a while before calling him back with an answer. My reasons for shunning meat were based mostly in the problems inherent in big agri-business. Poor (or down-right wretched) living conditions, hormones pumped in, antibotics administered, over-crowded pens. Generally the fact that animals are treated as crops to be manipulated and harvested without regard to the life of the thing. With Charlie's chuckars none of this was at issue. So I said that I would have dinner with him. And I surprised myself when I volunteered to cook.

I wasn't sure if I could actually do it. I spent a fair amount of time devoted to finding recipes for chuckar (I had little to no experience cooking meat). I even bought new cookware. I was pre-occupied all day with thoughts of the meal and what it meant. Was I giving up an important part of myself for a guy? If so, how counter-feministic is that?

When Charlie arrived home, seven hours after he had left, he had two small birds in a canvas bag. As he recounted the day's adventure I realized that I most certainly could participate in this meal. He told me about the steep, steep climbs where the birds make their homes and the miles and miles that they had hiked in order to reach those places. It had snowed on them at that altitude. He spoke of the beauty of the birds as they flew against the grey sky and the quiet and solitude of the place where the birds live. The experience reminded him of his childhood, bird hunting with his dad, grandfather, and uncles in the Midwest. He cleaned the birds himself, removing the feathers and preparing the animals for me to cook. There was such respect and gratitude for the life of the birds. He was even thankful for the opportunity to get out into the inclement weather to retrieve them.

I prepared them with wild mushrooms that had been gathered by some friends, local onions, potatoes, some really really good wine. So simple. We gave thanks before beginning. And we ate and enjoyed. It's no wonder that we fell in love.

A Hitch in Our Plans

I should have written an entry here yesterday, what with that being the beginning of Lent, Ash Wednesday. I had intended to start things off with a big bang with a big extravagant meal filled with all the best that Oregon has to offer. But the truth is that yesterday's Local Lenten meals were more like a dull thump than a big bang.

We're noticing that Luke has a big belly ache when I've consumed too much dairy, and that belly ache is disrupting his sleep and, consequently, our sleep. I have suspected as much for the past few of weeks, but I've been in denial. Some very popular parenting books say that it's bunk, that breast-feeding babies aren't effected by what moms eat. But we're seeing a pattern and it's worth trying a non-dairy diet if it means that Luke is more comfortable and we all get more sleep.

This new non-dairy development is putting a hitch in our local eating plans. I'm realizing that dairy was going to play a starring role in the whole thing. We were going to trade our usual soy milk for local cow milk. We were excited about all of the fabulous local cheeses available. And don't forget about all of the energy put into finding a way to make local ice cream. Dairy was going to be my go-to protien source. This is going to change things. And I haven't put any mental energy into how to make this happen without dairy.

I turn to the good ol' trusted Baby Book, by Dr. Sears and his wife Martha. I love these people. For the past six months they have been the calm, level-headed voices that have guided me through a myriad of Luke-related concerns. And today they have some dairy-free advice for me. They have a recipe for almond milk, to be used in just this sort of circumstance. Of course, I don't know of any local almond sources but I do know that the First Alternative Food Co-Op has local hazelnuts right now, so I substitute the local nut for the almonds and...WaaaLaaa...I have a milk substitute that I actually like. (1/2 c. nuts in a blender with 1 c. water. Blend for about 5 minutes. Add about 1 c. more water to reach desired consistency. Add a little salt and a little honey.) I've had it cold and also warmed with a little extra honey and it's good both ways.

I'm hoping that just cutting out liquid milk and high-fat dairy will be enough (we had our worst night of sleep ever after a big bowl of homemade ice cream). I'm hoping that non-fat yogurt is still okay. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

Shrove Tuesday (Lenten Eve)

It's Shrove Tuesday. The day before Ash Wednesday which begins Lent. Essentially it's "go time." So there are some local eating decisions that need to be firmed up.

So we discuss the issue of salt again. The tone is decidedly somber; the tone usually reserved for discussing global warming, the Iraq war, or sub-prime lending. Charlie is considering changing his one exemption from ice cream to salt (remember that each family member gets one exemption out of the Oregon-only eating plan). This tells me that the salt crisis is big business to him. I was willing to just ration out our remaining quarter-cup of course kosher salt over the next 40 days. But Charlie takes his ice cream very seriously and if he's willing to give it up in order to be able to use salt in his making of other staples (like hot sauce, and tortillas, and so many other things that he eats daily), we need to do a little more research.

After a couple of fruitless (and saltless) hours in front of the computer, I turn my research to ice cream recipes, just in case we need to start making it in-house. The recipe has to use honey instead of sugar because I've failed to come up with an Oregon sugar source. I find several beautiful recipes for honey ice cream that use surprisingly few ingredients, and most of them can be found within 50 miles of our house. Here's my favorite:

• 2 c. milk, 1/2 c. honey, 5 egg yolks, 1 c. heavy cream, 1 tsp vanilla (more on the local-ness of vanillia below)
• Put the milk on to boil (but slowly); in a separate bowl whisk the honey and yolks; when the milk boils, turn the heat down to simmer and make sure it returns to simmer before adding the yolks and honey (make sure to continue to whisk while adding in order to avoid scrambling the eggs); cook until it becomes thick, whisking all the while (about 10-15 minutes at a simmer); strain the hot mix and add the heavy cream and vanilla. Put it all in an ice cream maker to freeze.
  

About the vanilla: we brought it back from Mexico when we were there. We've decided that it's perfectly legit to use products that are local in relation to wherever we are when travelling. And it's also legit to bring that stuff back with us. So the vanilla is a-okay on two counts: 1.) it was local to our vacationing location, and 2.) it's grandfathered in because we have it on-hand (see our list of exceptions in the first post).

It's that first a-okay reason that may save us on the salt front, too. We have some good friends who just returned from a lovely mid-winter romp in Hawaii. They just happen to have some extra Hawaiian sea salt. It's a bit of a stretch, but I think it counts. We'll probably still count salt as an "exception", and make our ice cream at home for the next 40 days. But it's sort of local and we've committed to be as local as possible, even when making exceptions. Remember, we can only do what we can do.

Tonight is the annual, traditional, Episcopal, Shrove Tuesday pancake supper. And tomorrow is Ash Wednesday, and thus begins Lent. I don't feel prepared for our local eating adventure to start. I feel like I've failed to find local options for a lot of basic staples and it may be a painful beginning (and middle and end). But it's Lent and we're supposed to use this time to challenge ourselves, right? We can only do what we can do, and maybe we'll surprise ourselves with what we can do.

Major Props to Azure Farms!

Good morning! This is a Monday worth celebrating. Not only because our dear little Luke allowed us the best night's sleep that we've had in weeks (thanks, pal), but also because our Oregon wheat should arrive today via UPS. That's right, we've located some local wheat from an Oregon farm that isn't afraid to sell to Oregonians. Azure Farms, in Dufur, Oregon, has been a dry-land wheat and cattle ranch for decades. According to their website (www.azurestandard.com) in 1971, this Eastern Oregon farm family decided to stop using synthetic fertilizers and chemical herbicides and pesticides. And they stopped "cold turkey." According to the website, their soil has recovered beautifully since that decision. The folks at Azure Standard have branched out to become a distributor of sorts for other natural and organic products. They'll ship stuff to individuals for a small fee, but they'd rather put your order of $40 or more on a truck that drops orders at a variety of locations around Oregon. I asked to have my wheat shipped via UPS in order to get it here in time for our Ash Wednesday kick-off meal, but in the future I'll certainly make use of the free delivery service.

I ordered hard red winter wheat flour (10 lbs), and some hard white wheat berries (5 lbs) so we can try out our new grain mill. The Azure folks say that the gluten content differs between the red and the white wheat and that hard vs. soft makes no difference. This doesn't quite match up with what I've been told by others in the weird, wild, grain industry. But whatever. Hard/soft/hi-gluten/lo-gluten, I say give me the grains and I'll figure out how to make it work.

MidWay Farm Visit

The weather here in the Willamette Valley has been absolutely, predictably, horrible for the past 10 days and it promises to continue for a while. Rain, of course, and sleet and snow and slush and ice and wind, wind, wind. But today it didn't stop us from getting out to visit a local farm. The MidWay Farm website (www.midwayfarmsoregon.com) claims that their farm stand is open "7 a.m. to 7 p.m., 7 days a week, all year round" and we decided to put it to the test. We bundled Luke up in his blue snow suit and headed out the door.

Sure enough, when we arrived we saw a sign that said, "OPEN. Stand manned by camera." So we squeezed between the sheets of plastic that were hung over the stand's door and looked around. There was lots of mid-winter farm fare to choose from. We bought 6 pounds of Yukon Golds, 3 storage onions, several apples, baby bok choy, beets with greens and some thyme. I was thrilled to see some herbs available. With salt a questionable commodity, herbs will be crucial in the coming weeks.

There was another sign that read "Please leave cash in the jar. We're out milking." I absolutely believe that they truly were "out milking" considering the fact that there were jars of white stuff labled "fresh milk," and "heavy cream" in a cooler along one wall. Tempting but I hesitated. Maybe overly cautious but with Luke's nutritional needs being met almost exclusively by my own milk-producing body, I'm taking great care to ensure that it remains healthy. Before I just grab a jug of fresh milk from an unmanned roadside farm stand, I want to talk to the farmer.

As I'm processing the wisdom of a milk purchase, a father/son team arrive, saying "good afternoon" and reaching into the cooler to grab a jug from a shelf marked "pre-paid." "You buy here often?" (Charlie's farmstand pick-up line.) "Every week," is the reply and they hopped back in the minivan that brought them. Maybe next week we'll try it. This week we'll settle for the stuff from Lochmead Dairy already in our fridge.

There's an oft-quoted statistic that says that the average food item on the average American plate travels anywhere from 1500 to 2500 miles before finally consumed. Today's haul will travel about 15 miles before being eaten on our dinner table. That's a lot of fossil fuel not used, and my fifteen bucks stay right here in my community. I feel good about that.

Lent starts next Wednesday, so tonight I'll combine our very local produce with some far-flung ingredients for a dinner of pad thai. Stir-frying the bok choy, onion, local frozen broccoli, an egg, and some Oregon bay shrimp. We'll use up the rest of our pad thai sauce and put it all over some rice noodles. I'll make some peanut sauce to go with. 1/4 c. peanut butter (I'm really going to miss peanut butter), 1 clove crushed garlic, 1/4 c. hot water, red pepper flakes, 1 Tbs soy sauce, 2 Tbs vinegar, 1 Tbs honey. Combine the stuff in the order listed, stirring well after adding the water. Man, oh man, will I miss peanut butter.

Worth My Salt

Charlie looked at me from across the dinner table last night with a furrowed brow, "We're almost out of salt." As Shrove Tuesday fast approaches we are both accutely aware of what's stocked in the pantry. And more importantly, what is not stocked. We have been using a big box of coarse kosher salt for more than a year, and now each time I pick it up I notice a conspicuous lack of heft to it. The goods rattle in the bottom and I'm wondering how long it will last. Most certainly not until Easter.

Getting some salt from Oregon should be easy. There's a big vast ocean filled with it, just about 40 minutes away from my doorstep. I called the Seaside Museum yesterday. Seaside, Oregon is the fabled place where Lewis & Clark set up their "salt works" to restock their supplies before heading Back East. I
had seen on the museum website that they sell Seaside sea salt and I was calling to ask if I could buy some over the phone. The very kind woman who answered the phone gently told me "Oh honey, this isn't cooking salt. It's not edible. This salt is just for show. They make it here at the museum to show how Lewis & Clark did it, but it's full of sand and grit and stuff." ...Dang. This was my one source for Oregon sea salt. And it was going to be so satisfying to get it from the very location where the most famous westward trailblazers had also gotten it. Salt was going to be the easy part. I anticipated some difficulty with flour, but salt...and what was that she said about the salt being "just for show?" Sounds like the little rose-shaped soaps that used to sit by the sink at my grandmother's house. "Don't use those, they're just for show." Anything produced "just for show" is really dumb.

Amber Waves of Grain

I'm hot on the trail of some local wheat. It seems that Oregon grows plenty of the stuff. I've seen fields and fields of the amber waves of grain growing up in rural Eastern Oregon. But, as it turns out, what Oregon grows most is called "soft white wheat" and it's high in gluten and best used for noodles and such. So most of it (maybe all of it?) is shipped to Asian countries. And then we import the hard stuff from China. The global economy can be so stupid sometimes. I've heard a rumor that Bob's Red Mill (an Oregon-based mill) actually uses Oregon grains in their various flours. I've e-mailed Bob, but haven't heard back so I think I'll have to call...

OK, so I called and Bob didn't have anything good to tell me. Apparently the only flour that has any Oregon grains is their pastry flour and it's just a little bit. The rest comes from Montana and Washington. Oregon's wheat, Bob explained, is just too darn soft for Western tastes. Shoot.

So I called the Grain Mill, Inc., located in Eugene, Oregon to see if maybe those folks might be able to point me in the right direction. A very nice woman informed me that no, they do not have any products that are exclusively made of Oregon wheat. Most of Oregon's wheat is too soft (as I've heard), but they do get some of the hard red spring wheat from Oregon growers, just not enough to fill their quotas, so they purchase from Washington and Canada. Never from China, she said with pride. There was no way to guarantee that the wheat in any one product was from Oregon, because they dump it all together. She did say that if I were to purchase from them (in a quantity of at least 25 to 50 lbs) I should go with the commercially grown wheat, rather than the organic to ensure that most of it was grown in Oregon. Interestingly, she says, organic wheat crops rely on at least 2 months of freezing temperatures to kill off bugs, rather than using pesticides. Only a few wheat farmers in Oregon can do that because of our temperate winters. In any given year, she says, over half of their grains are from Oregon, and more than that if we buy commercial.

This is a decent option. Canada and Washington wheat would still cut our food miles by quite a bit, but I don't want to compromise just yet.

I visited the local extension office. Not helpful in the least. Again with the softness and the gluten and the Asian exports. They kept telling me that the Willamette Valley just won't grow wheat, so I need to look to Eastern Oregon. They didn't understand that I've looked East, and it looks bleak.

I'm starting to get discouraged. We're already giving up rice, right out of the gate (I haven't seen any rice fields in Oregon. Have you?). 40 days without bread or tortillas or cereal or pita or crackers or, or, or...it's like 40 days in the wilderness.

I've put a call into the brewer supply shop downtown. And there's a feed store in town...but I think I see a lot of potatoes in our future.

Lenten Practices

So this local eating experiment is part of our Lenten practice. You know, Lent is the time when some Christian faiths encourage the faithful to give up something, take on something, or generally clean up some part of their lives for the 40 days preceding Easter. This is supposed to symbolize the 40 days that Jesus wandered and fasted and prayed in the wilderness before being crucified. (NOTE: I'm no theology student, so cut me some slack if I've gotten that only partially right. We are, after all, Episcopalians and we take these things seriously in a very laid-back kind of way...but I digress).

So this is part of our Lenten practice. And the proposed practice was nearly diverted last week before we even started when Charlie realized that this would mean 40 days without his favorite Louisiana-style hot sauce. He joked, "Can't I have two exceptions, one for ice cream and one for hot sauce?" I asked him if
he thought that Jesus had prayed while out in the wilderness "Dear Heavenly Father, this would all be a lot easier if I only had some hot sauce." Charlie conceded, of course, but I think I could see him rolling his eyes as he turned his back. I can get pretty dramatic when I'm excited about something, and I'm excited about this. It will undoubtedly be part of Charlie's Lenten practice to try to be patient with me until the end of Lent. May God be with him...

As a sort of practice for the practice, we went to the winter farmer's market last Saturday and were encouraged by what we found.

• Squash, of course, including spaghetti which will help fill the pasta void
• walnuts
• frozen blueberries ($6 for a pound and a half, yikes!)
• golden flax (yeah!)
• beets
• potatoes
• onions
• leeks
• garlic
• eggs

I should have grabbed some apples and some greens but I didn't. All this stuff available and it's still the middle of winter! As a practice meal we ate local on Saturday night. I made a frittata of beet greens, onions, garlic, eggs and some hard goat cheese from the First Alternative Co-Op down the street. I used real butter to saute the greens, onions and garlic which is a change from our usual heart-healthy vegetable/olive oil. The flavor (and smell) were distinctively different. Richer, deeper. We may actually be able to make this happen...does it count as a Lenten practice if we enjoy it?

Inaugural Post

Do I really want to "blog" our Lenten experiment of local eating? No, not really.For a couple of reasons. Not the least of which is the fact that I would have to use the word "blog" on a regular basis. A word that isn't a word, but a short-cut, compromise-of-a-word, a lazy way of avoiding having to utter two syllables when our busy, busy, cyber-lives can only afford to spend the time on one. And the sound of the pseudo-word is so plainly, stupidly, bluntly, American. Blog.

A second reason to skip out on the documenting of our all-Oregon eating plan is to avoid the inevitable nay-sayer, the critic who will point out all the hypocracies in our attempt. "You said no outside food. So what are you doing with your grubby little mitts wrapped around that so-called-local beer? Where did you get that yeast?" The truth is that we're going to make some compromises. The truth is that we can only do what we can do. It's that way with any challenge that we take on. If we were to wait until we can do it perfectly, we'd never get anything done. Isn't it the Amish who say "Only God is perfect. It's our duty as humans to embrace imperfections and muddle forward." If it wasn't the Amish, it was someone else who was just trying to get something done. So here is our attempt to get something done in our own small, imperfect way.

Our "rules":
-Purchase food stuffs exclusively from Oregon, and as locally as possible.
Our "exceptions":
-Use up what's on hand (almost out of salt, compeletely out of sugar, and about 2 cups of flour stored up. It's going to go fast).
-Invitations from family/friends (we'll be hospitable and eat what's offered, but if asked to bring a dish it must be local)
-Travel meals (except if buying groceries on the go, then local, local, local)
-Yeast (for bread, beer, wine)
-One exception per family-member (Charlie: the superfulous ingredients in the ice cream from the local dairy; Kim: flax oil from Washington state; Luke: rice cereal, a boy's gotta eat).

With the intent to keep us accountable, and in part to validate the idea that we're trying to make a difference, I'll make some comments now and then. No promises that it will be daily, but I'll try to keep things posted on at least a weekly basis.