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.