Month 6: 'April is the cruelest month'

'April is the cruelest month' is a quote from T.S. Eliot. April was the month I was worrying about back in November when we started this way of eating. Stored vegetables gone, this year's vegetables won't show up until June or later. What to eat?

And in fact, our meals did become somewhat repetitious. I allowed the ninth Exception to be canned US organic tomatoes, just to give us some variety. This will be retired in summer when we get good Colorado tomatoes. And the tenth: peas, fresh, frozen, split peas for soup. .....We knew lettuce was coming.....

And so it did. We bought fresh Colorado-grown organic butter lettuce in our LoveLandLocal Food Buying Cooperative distributions. I bought three heads which we just finished. It's a luxury to have fresh local lettuce in a salad. You can also get Osage Gardens lettuce at the Whole Foods. We hope to have fresh Grants Farm spinach soon.

I am hoping to put in some season extenders in the yard: a cold frame, a small hoop house, or something like that. You can pick your own fresh greens nearly year round, with protection from the cold nights. Eliot Coleman's book "Four Season Gardening" has a lot of good advice on this.

So what were we eating in the "cruelest month"? Cincinnati chili on the beautiful tasty Colorado organic pinto beans, and occasionally on the last of the on-hand pasta. Gypsy soup with Colorado garbanzos and sausage, the last Hubbard squash, canned tomatoes (Exception). The traditional homemade pizza on Saturday nights, except I stopped having mine (gluten-free) because I ran out of pesto. Green peas in soups and as a side dish. Split pea soup with local non-cured ham shank. Spaghetti made with canned tomatoes (Exception), local sausage, and peas (Exception).

Very nice organic potatoes, sproutless in our distribution, which I'm eating up quickly since they're starting to sprout. A nice beef rump roast from the freezer, cooked with local onion and chili powder. Good with the potatoes. I'm still loving the millet. I will do another post just on millet (for those who aren't tired of hearing me praise it).

We still have our own fruit for desserts: applesauce, dried apples, dried peaches. And one splendid hubbard squash pie made with local eggs, honey and dairy, on-hand spices. Yum! I have
a few jars of farm pumpkin puree in the freezer too, in case we need another pie or two.

As always, getting good local meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy products is not a problem. And now we have our Colorado staples of millet, quinoa, pintos, garbanzos, anasazis, and whole wheat flour. So, life is good, even in April. And our yard is filled with blooming fruit trees and shrubs, in white and shades of pink, so beautiful! A promise of fruit to come. Happy spring!

Growing Your Own

I came across a really wonderful article this morning by Michael Pollan, the author of the "Omnivore's Dilemma" and loads of other excellent books.

Read it here: Why bother?

The “cheap-energy mind,” as Wendell Berry called it, is the mind that asks, “Why bother?” because it is helpless to imagine — much less attempt — a different sort of life, one less divided, less reliant.

His point is that instead of sitting helpless, watching the TV as food prices go up and up, in world markets over which we apparently have no control, we can actually get out there in the dirt and grow some for ourselves.

And here's an article from Sharon Astyk's blog on the same subject:

Victory Gardens

A book I'm going to have to get:
Food Not Lawns (not that you HAVE to get it at Amazon, but at least you can read about it there.)

There's no food so local as that you grow yourself. We've spent the last six months on a 100-foot diet for fruit. We're still eating applesauce and dried apples and peaches from our yard. The cherry, plum and peach trees are in full bloom. The Nanking cherry shrubs just finished. The apple blossoms are standing in the wings.

I've got seed potatoes in the house, ready to plant out when I get
a little time to make some holes in the ground. Potatoes.... now that's an EASY crop to grow. Make a hole, drop potato piece in, fill in. Water once in a while. As the potato bushes get growing they choke out the weeds. Dig up, wash, and eat. What could be simpler? Of course you can get better yields by taking a bit more care.

You can also get a old plastic garbage can, make a few holes in the bottom for drainage, half-fill with some dirt and mulch/straw/etc. Now the potato pieces. Fill in gradually as they grow. Water occasionally. When you harvest, tip the thing over, pull the potatoes out. Done!

Someone I know put potato pieces on the ground (she had softer ground than we do), covered them carefully with straw mulch, didn't have to water because she lives in upstate New York, and got a good crop.

It probably won't work to use those ghost potatoes you might have left in the pantry. The ones with the long pale sprouts. Although I'm always tempted by things that want to grow. You can get seed potatoes at all the nurseries, grown virus-free, ready to grow, which will do better for you. I like to order my seed potatoes from Ronnigers, who have dozens and dozens of different varieties.

Tomatoes are a big favorite. If you have nothing more than a sunny deck, you can grow tomatoes in 5-gallon tubs. You will have to water them a lot to keep them happy. Or you can get self-watering pots, or make them. The book: Incredible Vegetables from Self-Watering Containers.

If you think about it, we have spent the last hundred years in this country turning prime farmland into suburbs and shopping malls and roads. The land under the shopping malls is pretty much lost to us while the shopping malls are there, but we do have these lovely bits of land around our houses. Currently most of them are in chemicalized lawns, taking huge amounts of time, energy, and water, but they DON'T HAVE TO BE. Small plots are by far the most productive farms in the world, everywhere in the world including here. You don't need to leave wide lanes for the tractor. You are right there on the ground, paying attention, putting in a little outdoor exercise every day, bringing in baskets of fresh food to your kitchen. Even a 20x20 garden, well kept, will produce an amazing amount of food for you.

Some closing thoughts from Michael Pollan:
But the act I want to talk about is growing some — even just a little — of your own food. Rip out your lawn, if you have one, and if you don’t — if you live in a high-rise, or have a yard shrouded in shade — look into getting a plot in a community garden. Measured against the Problem We Face, planting a garden sounds pretty benign, I know, but in fact it’s one of the most powerful things an individual can do — to reduce your carbon footprint, sure, but more important, to reduce your sense of dependence and dividedness: to change the cheap-energy mind.

The First Farmer's Market and Dandelions

I went to the Drake Road Farmer's Market on April 19, the first week. You could buy Colorado honey, Colorado-made pasta in a rainbow of varieties, bedding plants, Colorado-baked breads, and some crafts. One booth had a few vegetables: tomatoes and onions. I bought three onions. We've been out of onions for awhile. No fresh greens. Kind of a disappointment. Not speaking anything against the bakery people, the pasta maker, or anybody else there, but I'm hungry for spring greens.

Myrto tells me there is a boatload of fresh spring greens in Boulder, but my conscience (and my budget) won't let me drive that far to get a bag of salad mix. Whole Foods has lettuce from Osage Gardens, a Colorado hothouse grower who also has a large selection of fresh herbs. I bought that, and we have enjoyed it greatly.

The LoveLandLocal Food Buying Cooperative is getting a case of Osage Gardens butter lettuce coming in Thursday, and I've signed up for several heads. We're looking forward to that, as I'm sure our other members are.

The dandelions in my yard are at their peak of springtime goodness, so I think it's time to go CUT some fresh greens. Dandelions are a time-honored spring green. Get them young and early, before they get tough and bitter. (Of course, don't cut and eat them if you have sprayed them with noxious chemicals.)

Dandelions are a treasure of nature. Fresh nutrition-laden spring greens, medicinal roots (or you can roast them as a coffee substitute), important spring bee forage, work like a vegetable crowbar to break up hard soil and bring nutrients up for the grass. And pretty yellow flowers (as my grandmother once said).
You can even make dandelion wine from the flowers (though my one attempt failed).

I'm sure the British settlers who brought them from the old country had no idea that they would cover the country and inspire megatons of herbicide being applied to lawns. To them, it was a pantry and apothecary plant, essential for living.

Declare Peace with dandelions! Happy harbinger of spring.

Beautiful Soups Span the Seasons

I know I haven't posted recipes for a while. Our food choices have been somewhat limited at the end of winter and beginning of spring. But I have come across a couple of excellent soup recipes. Enjoy!

Gypsy Soup (inspired by Mollie Katzen)

3 tbs olive oil
1 large onion, chopped (or 1/2 cup home-dried local onion)
3/4 cup chopped sweet peppers (or 1/4 cup home-dried local peppers)
1 1/2 cups cooked chickpeas (local Colorado)
1 1/2 cups peeled chopped winter squash (local)
1 cup chopped canned tomatoes (home-canned local)
1 cup green peas (fresh, frozen or canned)
6 oz. sausage (local)
2 teaspoons mild chili powder (Native Seeds, NM)
1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon marjoram
3/4 teaspoon cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1 tablespoon tamari
1 bay leaf (picked from your own house plant, if it can stand it)
salt to taste

Soak the chickpeas overnight, then cook till tender (takes a while). Put in kettle: olive oil, onion, peppers, tomatoes, peas, winter squash, drained chickpeas, crumbled sausage, spices except
tamari, salt, and 3-4 cups water. Simmer 25 minutes, until squash is done. (You really want to have your chickpeas tender before putting them in the soup, since they don't get much more cooking.)

Taste for seasonings. Add tamari to taste. Add more spices if you like. Add fresh-ground pepper if you like. This is a beautiful colorful and yummy soup, very satisfying.

Thursday Pea Soup
This is a traditional Swedish recipe.

1 to 1 1/2 lb ham shank or meaty ham bone (local, non-cured)
1 large onion, peeled and chopped fine (Colorado)
1 cup yellow split peas, picked over and rinsed
1 large turnip, peeled and diced (local)
1/2 teaspoon marjoram
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/4 teaspoon ground white pepper

Put ham shank into kettle, cover with water (maybe 6-8 cups). Add split peas, onion, turnip, seasonings and salt to taste. Simmer for a good long while, till meat is tender and coming off the bone.
(It was about 2 1/2 hours for me.) Fish out bone and meat. Cut meat into small pieces and return to soup. Check for seasonings.
If it is too thick, add a little water. If too thin, simmer uncovered for a little while to evaporate.

Variations:
If you have a carrot on hand, you can peel and dice it, adding it with the turnip. If you have rutabaga instead of turnip, that works too, peeled and diced. If you have green split peas instead of yellow, feel free to use them. (Yellow IS traditional, however.)

Soon, soon, we'll be up to our ears in salad materials, but for now, soups are the ticket.

Out with the Old--In with the New

Well, out with the old, anyway. I just made applesauce out of the remaining apples from last fall, saving a few good apples for fresh eating. Amazing that they hold on that long, in our cool garage. We've just finished the applesauce I canned last year, and we're starting in on this year's supply.

The last of the potatoes are hopeless: wilted, with long sprouts heading off in all directions. Compost! I did see Colorado potatoes at Whole Foods lately, so maybe I can get some late season potatoes. It's really about time to plant potatoes here.
I'm relying more on the Colorado organic millet and quinoa that I have, and the terrific Colorado organic pinto beans.

I have one hard-shell Hubbard squash waiting for me. Squash is not really my favorite food, and it's hard for me to find a way I really like to eat it. Maybe I can make a soup with the garbanzos I have, squash, spices, and canned tomatoes that we have on hand.

In the frig: two daikon (a little pithy now), a little Napa which makes both salads and cooked dishes. And one and a half leeks. We're down to the bottom of the barrel on fresh vegetables.

But--hope is on the way. As Myrto pointed out (thanks!), in Boulder you can buy fresh spring greens already. And they're not far away here. Drake Road farmers market in Fort Collins is reputed to be opening April 19!

Our brand-new LoveLandLocal food buying cooperative is going to be buying a case of fresh Colorado-grown organic butter lettuce. I've signed up for six heads myself.

If I could get organized with a cold frame, I could be PICKING fresh greens for myself, right outside our back door. I hope to be putting that together this summer. Eliot Coleman has a great book: "Four Seasons Gardening", if you want to learn more about it. In our temperate climate we should be able to eat fresh greens from our yard at least 11 months out of each year.

For those that might be worrying about us, I am allowing Exceptions of canned organic U.S. tomato products, and (just for early spring) peas both frozen and fresh snap. These are just to tide us over until the summer crops are in. I'm being careful that we do not suffer malnutrition. This summer, I'm going to put up a lot of local tomatoes, and peas if I can find them, so we don't run so short next April.

Our apricot trees are blooming now; bees are visiting them. I have hopes for apricots this year, my first crop from these trees. Last year the little darlings bloomed mid-March! My nanking cherry shrubs are also in bloom. They make cute little cherries with cute little pits, ripe in June, the first fruits on our property. It would be a lot of work to make a pie, but they're great fresh eating.

Happy Spring!

Month 5: March-ing Toward Spring

We finished our fifth month on the 100-mile diet. I haven't been posting vegetable recipes, since our selections are getting pretty small--Daikon, a few roots, Napa Napa Napa (wonderful stuff), potatoes, lactofermented (pickled) vegetables, leeks, canned tomatoes (Exception until summer). We still have some local fruit: dried apples, applesauce, dried plums and peaches.

It's been harder in March, and April will be the same. I'm trying to put a balanced diet on the table, with the fewer selections, but it means we eat a lot of the same things week to week. That's one reason for adding the canned tomatoes to our selection. This summer I will be canning a lot of local tomatoes.

We sometimes have salads with slivered Napa, lactofermented carrots, canned tomatoes, olive oil (Exception) and pickle juice as dressing. They really taste pretty good, but I'm lusting after Lettuce! Going without lettuce for six months is one sure way to make you appreciate the stuff!

We've been eating Cincinnati chili, putting it on local pintos or the last of the On Hand pasta. It's good on boiled potatoes too.

I cooked a local Eastern Plains heritage turkey (from the freezer) for Easter Sunday; we've had delicious leftovers on that, and I made soup from the carcass. We have one more batch of broth and meat for soup.

End-of-Winter Turkey Soup

Break up a turkey carcass (the remains of a small bird) into a large pan or kettle, cover with water, add salt, and herbs or pepper as you like. Simmer 2-3 hours. Fish out the bones, pick the meat off them. Strain the broth and save it--you could have 2 to 4 quarts.
(Works best with an organic turkey, because the broth is so much more flavorful.)

Soup: Heat one quart broth in saucepan, add 1/2 to 1 cup chopped turkey meat, 1 cup or more sliced Hazel Dell portabellos, and 3/4 cup of wild rice or quinoa (whatever you have on hand; brown rice would work too). Simmer until the grain is tender. Check for salt, add fresh ground pepper if you like.

You could add some vegetables to this, if you have on hand: sliced carrots, sliced leeks, chopped celery, sliced scallions, or peas, or some combination. (We don't have any left.) The soup is good with some cole slaw on the side, for green and crunch. Applesauce for (our) dessert.

On another subject:
The LoveLandLocal bulk food buying cooperative is putting together our first order. We can get free delivery from the Denver distributors to Loveland for $300 worth of food, which we are sure to have from the orders we already have. If you live in the Northern Colorado area and want to be a part of it, let me know. All of the foods are organic, many from Colorado, and the rest from the western U.S.

Support your local CSA

It's spring, early spring here in Colorado, with the buds swelling on the trees. My apricot trees, which bloomed on March 15 last year (and promptly froze), haven't quite popped yet. Every day I tell them: "Wait...Wait...".

But it IS time to pop for your CSA share. CSAs are really the most convenient way to assure yourself of a bounty of fresh local vegetables all season. You may not need one if you keep a large garden with a wide selection of veggies. Or you can choose to grow those vegetables you Really love and which produce the best for you, and let the CSA provide the rest of them.

For readers in the Fort Collins/Loveland area, Happy Heart and Monroe (Greeley) have already sold out. Cresset Farm still has shares, though they're moving quickly. I've been volunteering with Cresset for years now, and enjoying their wonderful biodynamically grown vegetables.

Other nearby CSAs I know of that still have shares are Abbondanza (near Longmont) and Grants Farm (near Wellington).

For everyone: you can find a CSA near you by searching in Local Harvest. Local Harvest is a wonderful resource for finding all kinds of local foods, no matter where in the U.S. you live.

Warning: getting a CSA membership may cause you to improve the quality of your diet. You may find yourself eating more vegetables, more salads, and more soups. You may need to go to your cookbooks to find recipes for that bounty of cucumbers, or green beans, or kohlrabi (what?).

There's something marvelous about paying once at the beginning of the season, and getting "free" vegetables each week. The check has cleared, and it feels kinda like those boxes or bags each week are a gift, which of course they are: a gift for you from the bounteous Earth.

It's a different experience than going to the Farmer's Market and paying for every pound or item that you buy. You can say, oh well I really don't need that head of lettuce; maybe I won't use it. When it's in your CSA bag, you'll use it, or lose it. Or give it away, or feed it to your chickens. And that'll be good for you, or your friend, or your chickens. It's a little extra push to eat those health-giving fresh vegetables.

For small families or single people, you can get a half-share from some CSAs (though it may still be big), or you can split the share with a friend, neighbor, or relative. That has the additional benefit of providing someone else to pick up your share if you're out of town.

Many CSAs offer barter shares, where you work in exchange for your vegetable shares. Cresset Farm offers barter shares at the equivalent rate of 4 hours work per weekly pickup, and many others do something similar. People who do barter shares generally enjoy the experience, working with other like-minded people, harvesting or weeding, or a variety of other jobs, some of them desk jobs like mine (I do the bookkeeping for the veggie shares for Cresset.)
If you have a skill that the farmers would benefit from, you can offer it. Artist, carpenter, massage therapist, baker, landscaper, small engine repair, bookkeeper, etc. etc.

Anyway, it's time to get that CSA share booked. Over the last few years, CSAs are selling out earlier each year, due to the overwhelming interest in local, fresh, organic food. So don't be one of those people I have to tell sadly, "we're sold out this year".