September 2009 Archives

For the second time I'm participating in the Eat Local Challenge

The traditional Eat Local Challenge is a basic concept: commit to eating only locally grown foods for a period of thirty days. Declare "exceptions" that you will not be eating locally, and try as hard as you can to have everything else come from your local foodshed. "Local" is traditionally a 150-mile distance from your home, but can really be defined as any area near you. Some locavores choose their county, state, or region.

You can read about my efforts last year, including my exceptions and lessons learned. Accordingly, I'm modifying my guidelines this year.

CRITERIA

I'm expanding my local area to a 200-mile radius around Mobile, AL. By doing this I'm hoping to get some regionally-grown grains, such as flour and rice, and possibly some additional produce options.

EXCEPTIONS

• cooking oils (primarily olive oil, then canola, and a small amount of sesame)
• spices, including salt
• leavening, including yeast, baking powder, and baking soda
• tea
• butter (I will try to use no more than 1lb of organic butter for the month)
• onions (in a pinch, though I will try to stick to the 3 gift onions I have)
• gifts
• dried beans*
• perishable items already on hand - we have some carrots, cauliflower, garlic, and eggs that need to be eaten
• ingredients we plan to buy locally but don't yet have on hand - in particular wheat flour and rice

*A note on the dried beans. This is a nod to economy, as one of the big changes in our diet in the last year has been the addition of more dried beans, which we now cook and use on a regular basis; I eat them for lunch several times a week. As documented by the folks at Eating Alabama, dried beans are not produced in Alabama.

Gifts we already have on hand include some Indiana-grown produce bought by my mother, and then brought down on a recent trip to visit us (so it was actually local to her when she bought it). There are the aforementioned three precious onions, a variety of apples, corn, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, and some handmade egg noodles.

I have put by a few things that will help us out: peaches, blueberries, garlic, and lime juice.

In the garden, the pole beans have started producing and there's a little arugula to harvest. Jalapenos are still producing from the summer. My sunflowers were stunted and attacked by borers, but I still hope to get a couple of small heads of seeds. I have a tomatillo that's blooming so I hope to see some fruit from that, though I don't know how it will react to the recent spate of cool nights.

I know many of you share my interest in Michael Pollan's perspective on food issues. He has an Op-Ed this week in The New York Times on Big Food vs. Big Insurance, arguing that we won't be able to solve the health care crisis in this country until we solve the health crisis in this country, which is related to our unhealthy eating habits. As he writes,

passing a health care reform bill, no matter how ambitious, is only the first step in solving our health care crisis. To keep from bankrupting ourselves, we will then have to get to work on improving our health — which means going to work on the American way of eating.

And he's hopeful, too:

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system — everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches — will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn’t really ever had before.

Culinate serves up a roundup of reactions on the web to Michael Pollan's latest New York Times Magazine piece, Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch, which meditates on the paradoxically simultaneous rise of the Food Network and decline of home cookery.

Although I can sympathize with some of the criticism (I agree that using food marketing specialist Harry Balzer as the sole prognosticator on the future of cooking in the US is pretty limited!), I found the article fascinating. I long ago recognized that neither I nor my family fit the profile of the "average" American, so I often feel alienated from descriptions of the norm. We home cook nearly every meal with fresh ingredients as the centerpiece, buy very little highly processed food with the exception of cereal and the occasional box of crackers or chips and salsa, and most of our bread is home baked by myself. We try to incorporate as many local foods as we can, and eat with the seasons in mind. This hardly fits the picture of the average home depicted in the article.

I wondered why and how we came to live this way, particularly since both my husband and I came from middle class families with two working parents, and whose mothers viewed the task of putting a nightly meal on the table with similar harried distaste. Their repertoires included many of the housewifely staples of the '70s: meatloaf, sloppy Joes, and bologna sandwiches. This despite the fact that my mother's parents ran a small town restaurant, and my husband's mother came from an Italian family with at least one excellent cook. I know my mom must have perceived cooking as labor from an early age, since her mother was gone at the restaurant most hours of the day, and her grandmother made pies at home as well. As far as I could tell as a child, my grandmother seemed to love cooking; she certainly did a lot of it and was good at it, too. She reveled in making my favorite dishes every time we visited: chicken and dumplings and chocolate meringue pie, and yearly she churned out batches of strawberry preserves. My mom, however, perhaps reacting to her childhood experience, did not share the love (except for baking; she still makes the best brownies, a family recipe).

When I met my husband I had been really cooking - that is, to feed myself - about a year, from the time when I had moved into my first apartment. My husband, who had a year off before graduate school, probably had more experience in the kitchen at that point than me. Some of my memories of our first year as a couple include meals made at our respective apartments, like the Cuban style chicken with black beans and corn that I made for us to share one night. Over time - and we've now been together 17 years - we both developed our skills, expanded our repertoire, and have become complimentary partners in the kitchen. He cooks most of the meat and I cook most of the meatless dishes. He stir fries, while I make Asian noodle soups. Grilling is primarily his job. If there's dough and baking involved, I'm usually in charge. He takes care of the main dishes and I'll handle the sides. Some tasks, like soup making (with the aforementioned exception) fall to whomever feels like doing it at the time.

I like to think our home cooking stems partially from frugality, since we certainly can't afford to eat out on any kind of regular basis. However, we spend more on food for our family of three than most people do, and as Michael Pollan and others have documented elsewhere, the fresh ingredients we use often cost more than the processed foods the "average" family bases meals around. And even if we are saving money by cooking dried beans, rice, and cheap vegetables like carrots, that's offset by splurging on expensive ingredients like Kalamata olives, Parmigiano-Reggiano, and organic butter.

I've come to see our mutual appreciation of cooking and food as a pillar of our relationship; we share a similar goal (healthy and delicious meals), we can appreciate each other's skills, we have a frequent opportunity to enjoy ourselves together, and there is always something new to try. And because of this, the act of cooking has become more than merely putting food on the table; it's a way of sharing some of the most essential elements of life with my loved ones. Growing up feminist, I never thought I'd be spouting platitudes that sounded so close to the mid-century vision of the housewife that our moms were both emulating and trying to escape. But I would argue now that, rather than being the essence of woman-as-homemaker, cooking is, as Pollan writes, the essence of being human. What better reason to get off the couch?

Fairhope's Local Food Production Initiative has been granted 501 c 3 status, meaning that any contributions you make to the organization are now deductible from Federal income tax as a charitable contribution.

With the full-on media blitz about the recession, the renaissance of home canning has gotten some press, and while it's a bit late for us on the Gulf Coast to take advantage of summer's bounty, this could prove useful for fall's harvest or next year.

In the New York Times, Preserving Time in a Bottle takes a look at the values motivating home canning, thriftiness included.

Preserving food cannot be considered new and trendy, no matter how vigorously it’s rubbed with organic rosemary sprigs. But the recent revival of attention to it fits neatly into the modern renaissance of handcrafted food, heirloom agriculture, and using food in its season. Like baking bread or making a slow-cooked tomato sauce, preserving offers primal satisfactions and practical results. And in today’s swirl of food issues (local, seasonal, organic, industrial), home preserving can also be viewed as a quasi-political act. “Preserving is an extension of the values that made you shop in the farmers’ market in the first place,” Ms. Bone said.

The article contains references to other web sites and books, including a related article at the Times, Some Canning Dos and Don'ts, which includes a slideshow of Canning, Step by Step (the example is asparagus).

You can find similar information at epicurious, which provides a useful illustrated guide covering recipes, basics, equipment, and techniques.

This brief link roundup at Culinate offers some additional sites.

REFERENCES PROVIDED BY THE ABOVE PIECES:

Books

The Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving by Judy Kingry and Lauren Devine
The Complete Book of Year-Round Small-Batch Preserving by Ellie Topp
Preserving the Taste by Edon Waycott (out of print; search for this at your library)
Putting Food By by Janet Greene, Ruth Hertzberg and Beatrice Vaughan
Well-Preserved by Eugenia Bone
the books of Linda Ziedrich

Web Sites

Food in Jars, a blog about preserving food by Marissa McClellan, which includes a good resource page
How to Dry Food at Mother Earth News
The Jarden Company (maker of both Ball and Kerr jars)
The National Center for Home Food Preservation
Pick Your Own

I can remember my grandmother making endless jars of strawberry preserves when I was a child, but I never felt the need to try my own hand, partly because I've never had a garden that produced excess amounts of anything; what we grow, we eat. I'd had it in mind as a project for this year, but cancer treatment made me scale back on a lot of things, so we tried only quick cucumber pickles. I tried dill and sweet and sour - and it was been fun and rewarding. The last batch of dill (better than the earlier ones) was appreciated by all three of us, who are fans of the crisp refrigerated pickle spear.

My daughter and I found a butterfly in our yard today that I had never seen before. It was pristine, as if freshly emerged, and dramatically beautiful. It sat quietly on a blade of grass with its wings closed, showing rich black wings marked with bits of bright blue, and a bright orange, fuzzy abdomen. The most unusual feature was the hindwings, which had long, thin tails and tabs at a right angle to the wing. The butterfly rubbed its wings together as it sat on the grass, giving the impression of another insect that was waving its antennae, perhaps a wasp or something else threatening.

I called my mom, who has a butterfly guide, and she helped identify it as a Great Purple Hairstreak, a southern butterfly whose caterpillars feed on mistletoe, frequently found on live oaks. I found a lot of photos online, including these lovely ones taken by Jeffrey Pippin in North Carolina (he shot the photo used above). If you scroll down the page you can see some great shots of the unusual tails.

One site I found said that "Great Purple Hairstreaks are renowned for being tame. If you stick your finger under one, it may climb on!" and that was in fact the case - it climbed onto both my and my daughter's fingers.

I'm always so in awe of butterflies - how is it possible that something so delicate and beautiful can survive at all? I'd like to learn more, and certainly need to buy my own guide.

Speaking of backyard wildlife, Friday night I heard our Great Horned Owl calling.

Do you have any favorite backyard wildlife stories from the summer that you'd like to share?

ADDITION 3 Feb 10: I have to add this quote from the guide Butterflies Through Binoculars "The origin of the name is hazy. When this tropically-oriented beauty kisses the sky with its brilliant iridescent blue topside, you will soar as high as Jimi Hendrix's music." Ouch!

For anyone like me who's ever thought about joining Slow Food USA but balked at the membership fee, heads up on this limited-time offer: "through the end of September, Slow Food USA is scrapping the $60 donation requirement, and offering membership with a donation in any amount." Read the post at the Slow Food USA blog if you'd like to find out more, or go directly to the membership page.

As development director Kate Krauss explains, "Particularly now, as we wade into the world of national food policy, we need to build a movement that is full of passionate people willing to fight for change - whatever they can afford to give."

For those of you who don't want to buy a side of beef or can't make it to the farmers' market (or, as now, the market isn't open), a few retailers have begun carrying locally-raised meat.

You can find Hastings Farm grass-fed beef and lamb at Virginia's Health Foods in Mobile and Ever'man Natural Foods Coop in Pensacola, FL. Their Local Harvest listing also indicates you can find it at Marley's Global Eats in Fairhope and StageCoach Cafe in Stockton AL. I was at Virginia's today and there was stew beef, ground beef, steak, soup bones, and other cuts, and several cuts of lamb.

You can buy beef from Irvington Cattle Company at the Bakery Cafe Market in Mobile. Their cattle is pastured on grass and supplemented with grain, and the beef is dry-aged for 21 days. We've had several pieces this year and the flavor is excellent.

With fall (or in our case, late summer!) comes the beginning of school, and for moms everywhere that means the beginning of another year of packed lunches. Even though I've only been doing it a year, it's always an effort to find creative, healthy combinations of food that a preschooler will actually eat.

Since my daughter only eats fruit (rarely will a vegetable pass her lips), spring and summer are the best opportunities to slip some local food into her lunch - dewberries (blackberries), peaches, and blueberries are favorites. Sandwiches I usually send on my homemade whole wheat bread.

I bought her a Laptop Lunchbox, which is basically a brightly-colored plastic bento system (that's reminiscent of a laptop and case). Although it was pricier than what you'd buy at a big box retailer, I didn't mind paying. It's easier for me to prep lunch with the Laptop Lunchbox because the containers are the perfect serving size, and the grid layout invites the user both to remember to provide a balanced meal and to arrange it attractively. The bright colors are fun for kids, and while the box is made of plastic it is of the "safer" variety and contains no phthalates, bisophenol A, or lead. The containers are made in California. The company publishes a guide to healthy lunches (much of that information is available online here) and touts the environmental benefits of packing lunch in reusable containers. They also maintain a menu library which you can subscribe to by RSS. There's even a Flickr group where people publish photos of their lunches. It's not just me who loves the Laptop Lunchbox!

The only downsides we've had are that it was difficult for my daughter (at age 3) to learn to open the outer case, and the water bottle top is a bit tricky. If kids chew on the valve (which many preschoolers might be inclined to do) it can leak, and if the valve is not closed all the way it can leak. We did have to order a replacement cap, but I think we've only had the not-closed problem once or twice.

In any case, it doesn't matter what you use, as long as you're putting lunch in reusable containers you're keeping trash out of the landfill, and probably eating healthier into the bargain. Reusable Bags has a good selection of lunch bags, as well as carrying my all-time favorite shopping bag, the Acme Workhorse Original, which folds down into a 2" × 1" pouch that I carry in my shoulder bag at all times.

Our venerable rice cooker, a hard-working appliance nearly 40 years old, finally had to be retired. The wiring in the plug/connection to the base had gotten faulty.

I remember when my dad brought it home from a trip to Louisiana, where one of his clients had given it to him as a gift. He was excited because he loved rice, and the man had told him that the rice cooker would make cooking perfect rice incredibly easy. The problem was that my father could never quite figure out the right amount of rice to make using the Japanese measuring cup (180 mL, or about 3/4 of a cup), and he gave up.

The appliance sat in their closet for close to two decades, until it got a second life when my husband and I set up house. We used it for over 15 years, often making rice several times a week. It did make consistently good rice, as long as the right proportion of water was used, which varied depending on the type of rice. The only downside was that rice inevitably stuck to the bottom of the pan, which had to be soaked and then scrubbed out, a rather tedious process.

Although I'm not a fan of the single-use appliance, I make an exception to the rice cooker. We eat a lot of rice, and we do a lot of cooking, so having the cooker frees up both a pan and a burner, which at times is pretty key. And while making rice in a pot is not difficult, with the cooker all you have to do is put the ingredients in and press the switch. (I should say, too, that typically rice cookers are not single-use appliances, since they have a steamer insert which can be used for steaming vegetables [for us only an occasional use] or dumplings [perfect for frozen gyoza or shumai] or even warming up cold rice. It's just that we used it predominantly for rice.)

That's why we immediately bought a replacement, the Sanyo ECJ-N55F/W. It is remarkably similar, technologically, to our previous model, and was both the top-rated and least expensive cooker in a recent Cook's Illustrated equipment test. It also has the advantage of a non-stick pot. Usually I avoid non-stick cookware, but with care the surface can be preserved and after 15 years of rice stuck to the bottom of the pot I'm willing to make a concession. We inaugurated it tonight with some rice, and it performs well.

So what's the relation to local food? Not much, I suppose, but I'm hoping to expand my range a bit this year in the hopes of including rice in our October diet.

I was out working in the garden today, wondering skeptically whether the little plants will amount to anything worth eating by October. Things never seem to grow like I expect them to in this climate. Some crops do reasonably well, but we've never had a bumper harvest of anything. Lettuce, arugula, snow peas, and potatoes have all done well in our plot. Pole beans sometimes do well, but it seems to depend on the variety. Garlic has varied, from good to mediocre. Tomatoes have done reasonably well when I planted a nematode-resistant variety. Jalapenos are reliably good producers. Other crops fail entirely. I've never been able to get a single squash out of our garden, yet our immediate neighbor had more than she could eat. Forget root vegetables of any kind, since they never develop. Spinach won't grow, either.

We've had our garden here for nearly three years. We started with bagged compost and soil, and over time have mixed in our own compost, leaves, manure, cottonseed meal, cover crops, and organic fertilizer. I've had the soil tested. You'd think by now I'd have it worked out, but I'm still struggling for the right balance that will get our raised beds producing like they should be. I know nematodes are certainly a factor, and many crops are vulnerable to them, so that could be contributing. Over time, adding organic matter to the soil is supposed to help control them, but we certainly haven't gotten there yet. But that's the thing about gardening - it's an experiment in progress.

I'm planning on doing the Eat Local Challenge again this year, wherein participants eat food only from a reasonable local radius throughout the month of October. Last year was my first attempt, and while challenging it was not without its rewards, so throughout this year I've been planning with an eye towards October. And what better way to get a jump start back into this blog, for the fall market and garden season?

There's not as much as I'd like in my freezer, but I do have peaches, blueberries, garlic, and lime juice stowed away. I'm nervous about the garden, but it has some pole beans, arugula, sunflowers, and tomatillos. My lettuce didn't start so I'm going to have to replant that. I have some jalapenos that I'll chop up and freeze, since I don't know if the plants will last until October. This is awesomely mild weather we've been having for this time of year, so I hope that will help the plants out.