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.