LoveLandLocal

Another Tragedy of the Commons

2011-11-04T16:20:00.000-07:00

The original phrase Tragedy of the Commons was based on a paper by Garrett Hardin. The idea is that when people use resources from a common area, there's nothing to keep each person from maximizing their own takings, until the resource and area are degraded and everyone loses. As humans, we don't seem to be able to manage resources in the long run without a rush to depletion.

As Garrett Hardin acknowledged later, we have historical knowledge of many well-managed commons that continued for many hundreds of years without depletion. But it takes a community, firm rules and penalties, and close attention. Shaming was pretty effective then. During the Middle Ages, commons were, well, "common", in such realms as woodlots, pasture for animals, and forests for collection of mushrooms and other wild foods and herbs. It was only when the aristocracy decided they could make more money selling the wood and using the resultant land for sheep rather than human needs that commons became "uncommon".

Commons appears now in a modern variant, the homeowners association, which may be well or poorly managed, but the principle is the same. The modern tragedy is the commons of the ocean, where factory ships are crashing one fish stock after another. We're eating lower and lower in the oceanic food chain, because we've nearly killed off all of our favorite fish. This is a particularly hard harvest to manage, because the only "owner" of the ocean is all of humanity, and it's hard to assess the status of fish populations. Shaming certainly doesn't work in this situation. The fishing regulations have no teeth and are generally ignored.

It is especially tragic in that once a fish species has been removed from its habitat, the habitat closes around it, with other species occupying its niche. Example: the codfish. Codfish will never recover. They were so thick 400 years ago that fishermen said you could almost walk on the codfish in the water. Now there's no way it can insert itself back into the North Atlantic.

The exception to fish species destruction that I know about is the wild salmon fishery in Alaska, very carefully managed and pretty much honored, since there still IS a wild salmon fishery in Alaska.

I read an excellent article recently about Wal-Mart's problems. Their same-store sales are flat to declining over the last eight quarters. Wal-Mart the Latest Victim of Global Labor Arbitrage. I got to thinking that this is an example of the Tragedy of the Commons.

The Unspoken Rules of Labor

American industry really got going in the 20th century. After WWII, the U.S. was the top manufacturing nation on the planet. How the mighty have fallen! Now almost all manufacturing jobs have been offshored to places with cheaper labor, much cheaper labor. During the heyday of U.S. manufacturing, there were two unspoken rules for labor.

1. If you did your job well and showed loyalty to your employer, you would have a job for life, barring unexpected catastrophes. Your employer showed loyalty to you.

2. If you worked hard in this economy, you would make enough money to support your family and buy the products of this economy. Note that up until the 1970s, this was generally ONE wage-earner per family. Henry Ford doubled the wages of his factory labor back in the 1920s, so that they would have enough money to buy the Model T they were assembling.

What goes around comes around, in other words. Manufacturers didn't try to abuse, lay off, and short-change their workers, since it was their workers as a population that kept the cash registers ringing with their purchases.

So how is this a commons? What is the resource of this commons? It's Purchasing Power. Manufacturers put purchasing power into the commons by paying living wages. Workers used the purchasing power to buy whatever they needed for themselves and their families.

Wal-Mart formed its business model with very cheap products and very low labor costs due to low wages and no benefits except for managers. This means, of course, that the government IS paying for health benefits for Wal-Mart employees, and often food stamps as well. So we're all subsidizing Wal-Mart's cheap labor.

And Wal-Mart violates both of the unspoken rules, but in particular the second rule. Almost all goods sold in Wal-Mart are imported, most from China. The purchasing power that you spend there goes only minimally back into the common pool of U.S. purchasing power, through the low wages of the employees. Most goes to foreign companies and into the pockets of workers and managers in China or Bangladesh.

This doesn't matter so much when manufacturing, jobs and wages are strong in the U.S. It's just a little bite, even if Wal-Mart is a huge entity. They get the free ride by short-cutting the system. But plenty of other companies noticed that they could also cut their labor costs significantly by off-shoring. This means laying off most of their U.S. workers.

There is very little manufacturing being done in the U.S. these days. I used to try to avoid items with "Made in China" on them. It has become impossible. The latest I saw was "Hecho in China", perhaps an attempt to hide the origin by using Spanish? The manufacturing jobs that were plentiful in the U.S. in the 1950s are gone now. Are those jobs coming back? Just think about it.

If you are a CEO, and you have no notion of the commons, and your outlook is no further than the next quarter's earnings, are you going to hire a $40k U.S. worker, or a $4k Chinese worker? Easy answer. It doesn't matter if corporate taxes are reduced; it doesn't matter if your personal taxes as CEO are reduced, it doesn't matter if your wages go up by 50% per year, you aren't going to hire U.S. workers when you can hire cheap foreign labor.

It doesn't matter if the President is Democrat, or Republican, or Tea Party, or Socialist, or Green. It doesn't matter who controls Congress.

U.S. companies have broken both employment rules. The very concept of loyalty to employees is antiquated, almost laughable. For a few years, the companies expected loyalty, but did not give it. Now they don't even expect it. But the worst fault is breaking the expectation that working wages will provide a living. Just who do they think will buy their goods? The workers they just laid off? The workers who they hired at half the wages of their previous workers? The workers in China? (no, they buy Chinese goods).

It is a Tragedy of the Commons. A few companies could get away with it, relying on the rest to keep pulling the load and filling up the Purchasing Power commons. When they are nearly all trying to cheat the system, the system stops working.

What Would It Take to Bring the Jobs Back?

How could we get meaningful jobs in the U.S. again? Here are some possibilities:

1. The cost of transportation goes so high due to peak oil that it overcomes the wage differential between U.S. and foreign workers. But if that happens, we're in a world of hurt in other ways.

2. Wages in the U.S. descend to par with third world countries. In other words, $4k per year per family, or perhaps $10k. All workers are below the poverty line, except for management. I don't think we're prepared to go through the pain of that.

3. Corporations finally see the light: oh, if nobody has a job, nobody is going to buy from us. That's a fantasy. Even a few cheaters with cheap foreign goods will put a stop to that, as their profit margin increases relative to the good citizens. Apparently the reward of doing the right thing is laughable compared to the reward of making a fortune.

4. Tax rules are changed, rewarding companies for using U.S. labor and punishing them for using foreign labor. Tariffs are a blunt instrument for accomplishing this, and generally cause reprisals from those tariffed-against. But taxation rules can accomplish this. And it is well within our power. We'll have to listen to the tantrums of the CEOs. But since the rules MUST MUST MUST apply to all companies equally, they'll decide at some point to live within the rules rather than scream about them.

The OTHER Problem--Automation

I've always felt uneasy reading the rah-rah "jobs of the future" articles, where everybody in the labor pool needs to learn to develop software and snazzy computer graphics and games. It's not going to happen. Not everybody has those kind of skills. And there are not very many of that kind of jobs even if by some miracle you created 60 million experts in that field. There is NOTHING WRONG with making things. Supervising a bunch of robots isn't much fun, and there aren't very many jobs left in a fully-automated factory. Actually making something with hands and tools is rewarding.

We've been focused on the wrong kind of efficiency. We've focused on saving labor, and saving money on labor, by off-shoring and automating. Now we have a huge oversupply of labor in the U.S. with nothing to do. The wheels of economic growth are grinding to a halt. The pool of purchasing power, the commons, gets smaller day by day.

We need less automation, and more actual work to do. We need more loggers and fewer logging machines, more factory workers and fewer robots, more customer service people and fewer automated
phone trees, more Americans answering the service calls and fewer Pakistanis. Our fields and orchards need more care from humans, and fewer herbicides, insecticides, and artificial fertilizers sprayed on from expensive equipment by a few bored operators.

So the next time you hear about restoring growth by short-term projects on roads or bridges, or American consumers putting themselves farther into debt to buy cheap foreign goods, just think. With two changes: reduced automation, on-shoring American jobs, we can bring back employment. Without those two changes, no amount of government spending and private debt will bring back the jobs.

Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 2

2011-08-29T16:51:00.000-07:00

I first brought up this subject in Part 1.

Stephen Guyenet at Whole Health Source has an 8-article series on food rewards and obesity. As he points out, and it is important to stress, food reward is not the ONLY cause of obesity. There are a number of lifestyle factors, such as stress, sleep status, and exercise. Plenty of genetic and epigenetic influences (the genes your folks gave you, and what you have done with them). And developmental factors such as your childhood nutrition, and your mother's nutritional status when you were in the womb. But food reward is one which has changed markedly in the last thirty years, over exactly the timeframe that food reward through restaurant food, fast food, and junk food has skyrocketed.

So what's wrong with something tasting good? As humans, we're hardwired to seek out sources of sugar/starch, salt, and fat, and consume them when available. Availability was pretty scarce in the olden times (really olden) when our ancestors hunted animals that were mostly lean, and collected foods that were very rarely sweet. Modern fruits are just bags of sugar compared to wild fruits: compare a sweet apple and a crab apple. Salt was rare unless you lived on the seacoast.

Now, we live in a caveman's dream: sugary, fatty, salty foods available at every turn, three meals and innumerable snacks per day. Very high reward factors here, lots of happy dopamine on offer. Modern foods are also engineered to have highly-rewarding textures and flavors. We like crunchy and melty, especially in combination. Grilled cheese sandwich? M&Ms? This highly-rewarding food doesn't need much chewing; just a few lovely bites and down it goes.

So what's wrong with something tasting good? When it tastes TOO good, it overcomes your body's natural tendency for homeostasis (your fat set-point). Your body has several mechanisms for keeping your weight stable over the decades of your life. Good thing you don't have to take care of this matter yourself: even 10 calories daily more than your body needs would put on the pounds over the years. Even using a gram scale and counting every step would not allow you to control your input to this exactitude.

Leptin is a very important player in this arena, although discovered only recently, and there are many things that researchers don't know yet about how it works. But as a practical matter, numerous studies have shown that you can fatten rats quickly by giving them supermarket food: cookies, crackers, chocolate, etc.

Think of the foods that you just can't leave alone. Oatmeal among them? That's plain oatmeal, no salt, no sugar, no funny flavors? I didn't think so. Make a list of the foods that are very hard for you to resist. Probably chocolate, ice cream, chips and crackers, pizza; maybe soda, maybe particular fast food sandwiches; maybe chips and salsa. Each person's list is a little different, but there are big commonalities: fat, sugar/starch, salt.

In fact, if you are concerned about your weight, make that list now. Try for a list of ten foods or food categories that give you the most trouble. Write it on a 3x5 card and stick it to your frig.

Although these foods are highly addictive to you, you always have an opportunity to say no to them. That's before you get into the argument with yourself: I deserve this, I've been working so hard. Once you start the argument, it's hard not to eat the food because that means saying that you do NOT deserve this, and nobody wants to hear that. Not having them in the house is a good first step. Control the source. Not going to the restaurant that layers sugar on fat on salt on sugar on fat and adds the big flavors.

I have a secret for you. If you can stay away from these foods for a few weeks, they will lose most of their power over you. Try sugar: really stay away, not even a teaspoon, no fruit juice (just flavored sugar), no soda, no sugar in your coffee or tea, no ice cream, cookies, etc. And if you are a really hard case, no artificial sweeteners which can keep that craving alive. Strangely, after a few weeks, you won't crave it. Other foods start to taste sweet to you. Your tastebuds recover from their sugar surfeit. So the pain of giving up these "rewarding" foods is limited to a few tough weeks.

If you want to try this, here are five steps to take (thanks to Stephen Guyenet). I wouldn't rush into Level 5. Start with Level 1. That will be enough challenge to start with. See how it goes. Then maybe Level 2.

Level 1: the low-hanging fruit. Avoid your addictive foods, sugar, candy, pizza, baked goods. Minimize calorie-containing beverages, such as soda, juice, and sweet alcoholic drinks (wine or milk is OK). And don't snack. Snacks are for children.

Level 1 will almost certainly stop your weight gain, and probably turn it around.

Level 2: In addition to Level 1, eliminate packaged processed foods. Minimize restaurant meals, and when you do eat out, choose simple foods (not the layered loaded sugar-fat-salt bombs). Avoid seed oils (corn, canola, soy, sunflower, and safflower). Olive oil is OK. Try to cook most of your foods at home, from simple ingredients.

If this is not enough to start you losing weight and losing cravings, take it to the next level.

Level 3: In addition to Levels 1 and 2, make your cooking even simpler. Don't add fat to your foods. If the food has fat, like meat, that's OK. Don't butter your vegetables. Reduce your grain consumption, especially foods made of flour such as bread. Potatoes and sweet potatoes are recommended instead, but don't use butter or sour cream. If you want fat, such as butter, eat it separately, away from meals (preferably unsalted).

I can see the eyes rolling on this one. "Why would I eat a baked potato if I didn't get to put butter, sour cream and salt on it?" Aha!

If you have successfully settled yourself at each of the above levels for a period of time, and want to go farther, here are the last two.

Level 4: (yes there's more) Eat single foods. The end of cuisine, right? No vegetable medleys. No herbs and spices on the food. Broccoli. Ground beef. Baked potato. There you go. Don't salt your food. Do have some salt separately, 1/2 tsp in a glass of water once a day. Salt is necessary for life. Cook food by gentle methods: no deep frying, no sauteeing in oil, no grilling. Roast at low temperatures, simmer or boil. Don't drink any calorie-containing beverages. Only eat foods that taste good when you are hungry; avoid foods you would snack on if you weren't hungry and they were available.

Level 5: Eat just three foods, simply cooked. One kind of meat or protein food, one kind of starch, one kind of green vegetable. NOTE: Don't do this longer than a couple of weeks. Get bored with them. You'll eat less, and only enough for your body's needs. Eat your three foods at each meal.

So there you go. Some things to try. Traditional diets (of local foods) generally have one staple starch, one or a few staple meats, seasonal vegetables in varying quantities. These simple diets sometimes have a staple condiment that they use to add flavor to their bland food. We'll talk about traditional and local foods in the next segment.

Taking Over the World

2011-08-23T11:20:00.000-07:00

No, not the Republicrats. The Cucumbers!

It's a great season for cucumbers in Colorado. I stopped at the store buying vinegar and a bunch of flowering dill, and the clerk said: "Got a lot of cucumbers?" Now, clerks at the store almost NEVER make a comment on what you buy, so this was noteworthy. Yes, I said. I suppose you have lots of customers with cucumbers this year, and he laughed and said Yes.

My single hill of golden zucchini is outdoing itself. But the cucumbers are a force of nature! I planted two hills, each with a cage to climb on. They climbed the cage, took over the neighboring bed, and started running across the lawn.

Cucumber fruits have an amazing ability to hide, in there with the leaves and stems. So some of them have gotten away from me. I planted Double Yield from Seed Savers Exchange. Nice for pickling when smaller, nice for salads even when quite large, with a mild flavor. But I've got some real honkers that have yellow coloring, far past salad or even pickle stage. I've got a recipe for that!

So here goes. Recipes for summer's bounty.

Easy Cucumber Salad

one moderate-sized cucumber per person, 5 or 6 per bowl for a potluck

Peel the cucumbers and cut off the stem end. Cut in half lengthwise and slice. Sprinkle with salt, to taste, 1/4 tsp or more per cuke. Cut up scallions, one per cuke, and add to bowl. If you have dried dill on hand, sprinkle some of that on too, maybe 1/4 tsp per cuke or more. Fresh dill is nice instead, if you have it.

Let sit for a few minutes, then stir in sour cream (the real stuff, not the fatfree imitation). I like Kalona sour cream, but Daisy is good too. For a small bowl, maybe 1/4 cup, for a large bowl maybe 1/2 cup. To your own taste. Stir some in, stir well to coat the cukes, then see if it needs more.

If you have only oldish tough cukes to use, remove the seeds before slicing. Tender young cukes are OK with their seeds.

Lactofermented Cucumbers

For more information on lactofermentation, see the paper I wrote listed on the side panel.

You'll want medium-sized young cukes for this. MUST be organic, preferably fresh from your garden. Have available dill flowers, garlic cloves, small onions, good quality sea salt or RealSalt. Also non-chlorinated water (lucky us, we have wonderful well water).

I do all my pickles in glass canning jars, quart or half-gallon. Easier than using a crock. It also allows you to put up a jar whenever the cucumbers make a few; you're not committed to having pounds and pounds available.

Cut the cucumbers into pieces, or if they're small and very young, you can leave them whole. Put into your jar, interspersing 1 small quartered onion per quart (or 2 per half-gallon) and a few dill flowers. Peel garlic cloves and add to the jar, maybe 2-3 per quart. For "kosher" dills, add one hot dried pepper per quart. Pack in the cuke pieces up to the neck of the jar.

Make your brine: for a quart jar, warm 2 cups non-chlorinated water with 1 tablespoon good sea salt, stir until salt dissolves. Let cool. For a half-gallon, use 4 cups water, 2 tablespoons salt. When brine is cool, pour over cukes. That should just about fill your jar. If you need more, prepare it in the proportion of 3/4 tsp salt per cup water.

Place two-piece lid on the jar, screw on but not too tight (gases have to escape). Place jar on a saucer, then put at the back of your counter away from the light. Let it sit and think to itself for about a week. Open the jar, and with a clean spoon sample the brine. It should have a nice sour taste to it. If it's not quite to your taste, let it go another day and sample again. If it turns funny colors, grows fur, or has a bad smell, toss it out untasted. (I've never had that happen to cucumber pickles.)

When it's done, put jar in your frig. It fills out its flavor in another few weeks of storage. The pickles will keep a good long time in the frig, kept from freezing, maybe until next season, if you can keep the family out of them.

Golden Zucchini Pickle

I just put this up today. Carefully cobbled together from a couple of recipes in the Ball Blue Book of Canning (a must-have). I sampled the small amount that wouldn't fit in my jars, and it was very good. Makes 9-10 half-pint jars. if you're unfamiliar with the process of waterbath canning, be sure to get the Blue Book and refer to it.

4 lbs yellow zucchini (you could use green instead), tender, fresh, small to moderate sized, no baseball-bat garden escapees, Wash, and cut into chunks 1/2 to 1" on a side. If they're very little, you can slice them into rounds. No need to peel.

2 cups peeled onions, cut into small wedges or chunks

The rest of the ingredients:
2 cups sugar
2 cups apple cider vinegar
1 tablespoon good salt (sea salt, or pickling salt)
2 teaspoons mustard seeds
1 teaspoon dried powdered ginger
1/2 teaspoon turmeric powder
dried chili peppers, medium-hot, torn into pieces (I used two small Catarina chiles) to taste (or omit)

Open 10 clean half-pint jars, put rings and jars in your waterbath canner in water to cover. Start it toward the boil. Put 10 new canning lids into a small saucepan, covered with water, and bring to a boil, then keep at a low simmer.

Now you have time to prepare your veggies.

Put the "rest of the ingredients" into a 4-quart pan, and bring to a boil. Put zucchini and onion in, stir occasionally, bring to boil. Cover, let cook for 10-12 minutes, until tender but not mushy.

Fish jars out of the hot water. Fill with veggies, distributing veggies and juice evenly between the jars. It's easier with a canning funnel. You may have a little left over. Each jar should be filled to about 1/2" of the top. Now use tongs or a magnetic tool to remove the lids from the hot water. Be sure the rim is clean, then put lid on, tighten the ring (not TOO tight). Using your dandy canning-jar tool (special rubber-coated tongs especially made for jars), place the jars into the hot water. The water should cover them by an inch or more.

Bring the water back to a full rolling boil, cover. Then set the timer for 10 minutes. If you live in Colorado, make it 12 minutes (higher elevation means lower boiling temperature). Set burner temperature enough to keep it boiling, but not so high the water jumps out of the pan.

When done, use the canning-jar tool and get the jars out of the water. Put on the counter and wait for the -ping- to tell you they are sealed. The lid will be slightly depressed. If an hour or two goes by and a jar hasn't sealed, put it in the frig and use fresh.

Golden Age Cucumber Dish

That's the Golden Age for cucumbers, the big honkers you didn't notice, that have a strong yellow cast to their tough skins. My friend's favorite dish with old cukes.

4 big old yellowing cucumbers, fresh. Peel. Cut in half and scoop out the seeds, then cut into half-moon slices

1 medium onion, peeled and sliced

1 pepper, bell pepper, Anaheim, or mild frying pepper, seeded and cut small

butter or olive oil

chicken broth or water

dried or fresh dill

salt and pepper to taste

sour cream

Melt butter or oil in the pan, saute the cucumber and onion pieces for a few minutes. Add a little broth or water, cover, and simmer until tender (won't take long). Add salt and pepper to taste, and dill. Garnish with dollops of sour cream.

You could add bits of leftover meat to this dish. Or you could thicken it with a little cornstarch or wheat flour mixed with water.

Local Food and Weight Loss, Part 1

2011-08-10T16:17:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for a long time, I know. I've been working on educating myself in the economics of what's happening in our country and the world. Although I have a fairly good understanding now, I don't think I can add much to the writings of some really brilliant people on this subject:

The Archdruid, John Michael Greer
Anything written by Richard Heinberg. Here is a selection.
Sharon Astyk's writings.
Professor Ugo Bardi. Here is a selection of his writings.

and others.

Now to the Local Food issue

On the food front, I've been more-or-less paleo or primal for a while, and carb-cycling. This doesn't work quite as well as it did. I've noticed that any diet you are on for a while seems to stop working as well; you figure out how to game the system, and your body figures out how to extract the most calories out of what you give it.

Vegetarian eating made me sickly and fat, and it was during a spell of low-fat vegetarian eating that I became overtly celiac (gluten intolerant). This was a life-changing event. Since then I don't do so well on any grains on a regular basis. This pushed me out of the Standard American Diet (SAD) and onto a whole new path.

However, replacing wheat-based cookies, breads, cakes, pies, etc. with their gluten-free equivalents is not conducive to weight loss. In fact, you can gain weight JUST as easily on GF goodies.

At times over the last three years, I've been very good at avoiding any processed (and certainly non-local) goodies. Our "real food", daily meals, are probably 80-90% local. But sometimes I've gotten into addictive eating of non-local snacks. Bad me!

I have discovered a fascinating new dietary concept that I want to share with you. Last year I read the book "The End of Overeating" by David Kessler. Look here for more information.

I recommend it highly. It is very well researched, with reports of numerous studies. The theme is the addictive nature of fat, sugar, and salt, and how food processors and restaurants make the most of it. Hyperpalatable food, such as snack cakes, chips, candy, etc., makes lab rats fat faster than any kind of rat chow. This is handy since the obese rat is an important research subject. Unfortunately, we're all lab rats now, with the ready availability of super-tasty, "loaded" foods.

The information I learned from the book about addictive foods was the breakthrough to my losing 45 lbs in 2010. Funny thing about addictive foods; if you can just stay away from them completely for a few weeks, they lose their hold on you. Sugar? Meh (provided you haven't had ANY for a few weeks).

This concept works perfectly with local foods. Very few of us live next to an Oreo factory. And even then, the ingredients of the cookies aren't grown near us. To the extent that you can remove packaged processed foods from your diet, and avoid eating at fast food establishments, you have a definite advantage in losing weight.

In my next post, I'll get into a little more detail. Stephen Guyenet on Whole Health Source has written an 8-section series on "Food Rewards, a dominant factor in obesity", if you can't wait that long. And I'll talk a bit about Seth Roberts and his theories about metabolic set-points.

Then I'll discuss some traditional cultures and their food choices, and how well it works in with both local food choices, and low-reward or simple eating.

We Don't Like It

2011-06-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

People who first started to get concerned about the climate made a fundamental mistake by calling this concern "global warming". It sounds so benign, to those of us who have cold winters. Warmer climates, less harsh winters, growing tomatoes in Canada, what's not to like? Maybe the Sahara would get even drier, if possible, but we're far away.

Next the term "climate change" became popular. Well, the climate changes some all the time, so it becomes ambiguous. The Earth has undergone numerous ice ages and hot, humid times. It begs the do-nothing response that says the climate changes by itself--nothing to do with me. Or, as seen recently in our local paper, Almighty God is in charge of the climate and it doesn't matter a hoot how many billion gallons of petroleum we burn.

From an on-the-ground, local perspective, events like cold winters, ice storms, floods, heat waves, droughts, and tornadoes are ambiguous if you are looking either for evidence of warming, or evidence that we're not warming. Ambiguity coupled with expense or change equals no action. As humans we don't do well with ambiguity, or with predicaments that require a perspective of decades or more, and we particularly do not do well with sudden change. We don't like it.

Average temperatures are rising in the oceans, and in the high latitudes (northern and southern) in particular. This is a scientific fact. Note that it does NOT mean that every little corner of the world is a degree or two hotter all the time. What it does mean is that there is more energy in the atmosphere (due to the increased heat), which causes more severe and unpredictable weather. So, more blizzards, more ice storms, more floods, more tornadoes, more hurricanes, more droughts. China is presently suffering from a severe drought AND severe flooding at the same time. After a decade-long drought in Australia, one large area was inundated with rains and flooding. We can give this process a name: Climate Instability. Instability--now that's something we don't like.

We've had about 10,000 years of friendly and stable climatic conditions, following the last ice age. It's been a really pleasant interglacial, one of the most climatically-stable periods in the last million years. It happened to coincide with the growth in human populations from maybe 100,000 to our present 7 billion.

Long-term climate changes are driven by numerous interlocking natural cycles. Some of these are known to science, and certainly some are not. We know that the greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, trap heat in the atmosphere. This is not "rocket science", as the saying goes. Without the natural carbon dioxide and methane produced by volcanism, the Earth would be uninhabitably cold. We don't know how much of our present-day climate instability is due to the emissions of our industrial age, and how much is due to natural cycles. But this is our planet, and our life, and the lives of our children that we're talking about. Wouldn't it be prudent to take some steps for their future, even if it means some sacrifices on our part. Maybe some delayed gratification, maybe some frugality. Oh, we don't like that.

Climate instability is only one of the factors that are extremely unsettling in today's world. The continued availability of cheap energy is very much in question. As Peak Oil has moved from the fringes into center stage, we're starting to ask questions. How will I get around if the price of gasoline continues to rise? Just how many of the material objects in our daily lives are based on petroleum? (And you'd be shocked at how many there are.) How can we continue to feed the human race without the petrochemical-based pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, and the tractors and the diesel to power them, and the factories, and the semitrailer trucks, and the supermarket? And how will I put bread on the table without the supermarket?

The supermarket model is in big trouble in the not-too-distant future. Tremendously long supply lines, bringing food from every corner of the world, some of it shipped by air, and all of it eventually by truck. Just-in-time distribution means that the stores have only a few days supply of food. Warehouse space and management is expensive, and profit margins are small. But this entire amazing complicated business depends on stability: weather stability, fuel availability at reasonable and predictable prices, consistent prices of raw materials and processed foods, ready availability of irrigation water to grow the food. And that's just what we won't have in our near future: stability.

It's stressful dealing with instability; much easier to a) blow it off, b) blame it on whichever political party we don't belong to, c) blame it on the corporations, or the liberals, or the illegal immigrants, or the rich, or the poor, d) tell ourselves sweet bedtime tales of how technology will save us, e) hope for the end of the world before it gets too bad. Instability: WDLI

We happen to be on the Earth at just the time that everything is happening: resources running short, water running short, population ever-rising, with ever-rising expectations. Technology changing faster and faster. Bubble after financial bubble (chances are the next one will involve food). Persistent and intractable unemployment. Debt in the form of financial derivatives worth thirty times the entire annual productive output of the Earth. This is not going to be pretty.

We're at the teetery top end of the "perpetual-growth" economy. We'll have to find a new way to live. We'll have to find ways to reduce complexity in our governments, in our economy, and in our daily lives. We'll have to find methods of farming and manufacture that use less petrochemical energy and more human energy (powered by food; food powered by the sun). We'll have to stop fooling ourselves that a magician in a laboratory, in a factory, in a bank, or in the White House, will be able to pull rabbits out of a hat and let us live on in the dream world.

Somehow we'll have to get our feet on the ground, stop wishful thinking, start planning. Somehow we'll have to prepare for sudden changes, unpredictable weather, kinds of work that we're not accustomed to. We'll have to gain some practical daily skills. Somehow we need to insulate ourselves as best we can from the madness of the present-day economy (hint: start by paying off your OWN debt). While everything is still working (more or less), we need to get a robust local food system. Wherever you live, you should start working on this.

You can learn a lot by just paying attention, and not fooling yourself. The signs are all around us. Now if we could just get our elected officials to stop fooling themselves and us....

Enough is Enough (or is it?)

2011-04-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Human society is based on the stories we tell ourselves. They don't have to be true, just true enough to keep us feeling confident that we have not lost our way. We are in a strange situation now. The stories we have been telling ourselves for a hundred years, three or four generations(!) are wrong. Not just wrong, but dangerous to the future of our civilization.

The story is spoken in a variety of ways: We can have perpetual economic growth; we need and can have ever-increasing amounts of energy; there are no limits; innovation will solve all our problems (and not cause any new ones); any resources we run short of we can substitute with other things; we really don't need other lifeforms on the planet except for those we like to eat; the planet has an endless capacity to handle our wastes.

Side stories: We need high-tech, high-fossil-fuel agricultural techniques in order to feed the ever-growing human population. We need increased population to help take care of the elderly. Consumption is the most important part of our economy.

Well, get a grip on yourself. Every single one of these statements is wrong. It's a hundred years of self-delusion based upon finding an incredible 500-million year legacy of sunshine, nicely distilled into portable fuels. We have now run through half of that legacy; 250 million years of sunshine energy in one huge orgy of consumption. (Peak Oil is an agreed-upon fact from all sides of the political spectrum; the only difference of opinion now is whether it was in 2005, or is a decade or two ahead of us.)

We can't have perpetual economic growth on a finite planet. If you seriously think about this for a little while, it will become perfectly obvious. There's only one Earth that we live on. It's big, but not infinite.

We can't have ever-increasing amounts of energy. And it doesn't matter if we **NEED** them or not, they just aren't there. It really doesn't matter if you draw a graph showing the world's need for energy heading up and to the right at an ever-increasing clip. Can't happen. Nohow.

Yes, there are limits. Everything we see in life shows us limits, down to how many pancakes we can eat; how many hours we can stay awake; how fast we can run. How many codfish we can catch. How many cattle can graze one field before the vegetation is gone.

Innovation will not solve all our problems. For every gift we get from innovation, we get a grab-bag of problems. Consider the automobile. Automobiles need fuel, they need roads, they spit out pollution, they run over people, they allow people to live far from their work or shopping. They need loads of money to support with purchase, fuel, repairs, etc.

We are running out of every physical resource. Uranium, coal, copper, rare earths, phosphorus, fresh water, and on and on. But the most basic of these is cheap energy. There's energy out there, but it isn't cheap any more. Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI) is the key concept to master. If it takes a gallon of petroleum to create a gallon of ethanol, what's the point? (Careful research shows that the actual rate of return from corn-based ethanol is only about 1.3:1, which is pretty much of a wash considering that ethanol has less energy per gallon than gasoline. It's just a way to make some people richer, and some other people hungry.)

We need a reasonably-intact ecosystem on this planet. We depend on the planet for every bite of food that we eat, either from the soil or the oceans. We depend on the planet for the air we breathe, for the water we need. We depend on the planet and myriad other lifeforms to soak up and detoxify the waste from our consumption. Yes, we can eat, breathe, drink water, have shelter and clothing, but we don't need closets bursting with cheap t-shirts.

Conventional agriculture is too wasteful to continue. Before long, conventional agriculture with its huge use of fossil fuels will be far too expensive. We'll have to go back to sane and rational farming techniques, with more people working the land, fewer chemicals, more skill, less debt, more local food, less food importations. Strawberries in winter? If you live in California, maybe....

We need fewer people on the planet, to make room for the rest of its inhabitants. In the kindest way, we need to gradually downsize the human population, which shot up on exactly the same trajectory as the use of fossil fuels. If we don't handle this in the kindest way, by having fewer children, the Four Horsemen will take care of this matter for us. Famine, War, Disease and Pestilence will do it, as they have so many times in the past.

Economic wealth does not come from spending. There's a reason why they call it "real estate". Land is real. Resources in the land or grown on the land are real. Value added by human skill and work is one level removed from real assets. Value added by financial manipulations...., oh wait, there is no value added by that.

We need to relearn the older stories. The important things of life: love, family, community, learning, wonder, strength of purpose, health, happiness. The beautiful planet. You can add to this list. We need to internalize the concept of Enough. The last hundred years have been about more, more, more, more, more. Strangely, if what you want is More, there is never Enough. Once you have the basics that you need, more money and more stuff does not make you happier.

I am planning a few more posts, talking more about Enough and what it might mean for our daily lives. It's really not that scary, once you get over that first big hurdle of finding that the economic story of More can't possibly be true.

Climate Politics and Pixie Dust

2011-03-23T10:52:00.000-07:00

I recently read the book The Climate Fix by Roger Pielke Jr. Although he makes some interesting points, I cannot recommend the book.

The interesting points first:

Climate is not the same thing as Weather. Weather changes, by definition. This year is not just like last year. We know how to predict the weather, and we have some understanding of how reliable those predictions are. Climate is a long-term concept, and knowledge about climate is riddled with uncertainty. It takes decades to figure out if the climate is changing, and that has almost nothing to do with whether we had a cold winter last year. We have no reliable way to predict the climate.

The reason we can't predict the climate is it's too complicated and we don't know enough. There are many more factors than just carbon dioxide. There are a multitude of other greenhouse gases, including plain old water vapor. The influence of aerosols such as carbon particles or dust is very poorly understood. The influence of human-caused changes in land use, such as irrigation, clear-cutting forests, cities and hard surfaces replacing land, are very poorly understood.

Nature has some feedback cycles both positive and negative that will play in the future climate, and we don't understand them either. Pielke doesn't really mention any of these, but some of them are the impact of permafrost melting releasing methane, clathrates in the oceans which have a tremendous potential to release methane if the ocean warms enough, and the loss of glaciers particularly in Asia leading to loss of irrigated agriculture. And there are larger cycles that we barely even have names for, such as the Bond cycle that apparently occurs on approximately 1500-year intervals (and yes, we are on the cusp of one).

Pielke believes that there is enough consensus in the public that we could do something about climate change, and gives as evidence that the Montreal protocol for protecting the ozone layer was passed with less public support than we have now for alleviating climate change. But the kicker for him is what he calls the Iron Law of Climate Policy: people are okay with working on the climate as long as it does not impede economic growth in any way.

Here is where his argument starts to go off the tracks. It's all very well to have an Iron Law that people won't support anything that impedes economic growth. But never in the entire book does he mention that perpetual economic growth on a finite planet just does not make the least sense. We have ample signs around us now that we are reaching the limits of the resources that the Earth can provide for us. It isn't just Peak Oil, it's peak phosphorus, peak rare earth elements, peak copper, peak coal (not that far down the road if coal use increases).

Another point from the book, which I think deserves a little independent verification, is that both sides in the climate change political wars are guilty of exaggerating their positions, using fear-mongering tactics, ad hominem attacks, egregiously misquoting published research, or just plain ignoring it. An example Pielke has been associated with is the claim that climate change is already causing far worse weather-related catastrophes, such as hurricanes, tornadoes, and floods. A careful study on his part showed that most if not all of the increased losses to weather catastrophes can be accounted for by increased population and increased development in vulnerable places. This I believe. We do not know if climate change will cause more violent weather in the future (remember that uncertainty?).

There is no doubt in his mind and in the mind of most thoughtful people that humans are having an effect on climate, both by land-use and by emissions. Human behavior is not the only factor that affects climate, another statement that most thoughtful people agree with. And finally, climate changes from whatever source are unlikely to make life on Earth better for humankind. We've really had it pretty good in the 10-12,000 years since the last Ice Age. Almost any change would make our lives more difficult.

The last chapter of the book is where the pixie dust comes in. Since according to his Iron Law people won't support climate change remedies that interfere in any way with growth, and it would be prudent to reduce the human-caused effects on climate, we would seem to be in a predicament. Pielke also points out that almost a quarter of the population of the world does not have electrical power, and that these people deserve ample energy as much as the rest of us. This leads him to conclude that energy is too expensive now, rather than too cheap, and we need a huge amount more energy now, and even more in the future. Nice, cheap, non-polluting energy that will make us wonder why we would even want to burn that old smelly, polluting, high-carbon petroleum any more. This is the answer to de-carbonizing the planet, right? Ample supplies of dirt-cheap and non-polluting energy. So cheap that we can use all we want; so clean that we can de-carbonize the atmosphere just by using it.

So, where do you get this marvelous energy? A few hundred billion dollars of research ought to do it, according to him. Just stop and think for a moment. Do you think if a vastly superior source of energy, far cheaper than petroleum, is out there just waiting for us, that the hundreds of billions of research money already spent would not have found it? Would Exxon keep going to the effort of pumping and piping and shipping petroleum if a few research projects would uncover this marvelous new and practically unlimited source? Can we repeal the laws of thermodynamics?

The author does not hazard a guess as to what this new source might be, just limitless faith in the ability of science to find it. I'm not an energy expert, researcher, or engineer. If you want more details on these things, there are numerous posts on The Oil Drum that can fill you in.

Concentrated sources of energy are very rare. We had our one-time legacy from 500 million years of sunshine falling on the Earth and we've run through roughly half of it now, in a little over a hundred years. Our current energy paycheck on the planet comes from sunlight, a wonderful but diffuse source. It takes a big front-load of resources to tap this energy, some in the form of rare earth elements that are becoming scarce (and are mostly in China, if you want to know). Solar panels do not last forever.

Fusion power is still a chimera; it's been "nearly ready" for more than thirty years. Nuclear power has many hazards and huge front-load costs, while uranium ores are rapidly declining in quality.

Corn-based ethanol is just a flim-flam. Energy return on energy invested for corn ethanol has been carefully estimated at about 1.34:1, barely more than break-even; some researchers believe you get less energy from ethanol than the petroleum energy that was put into growing the corn, transporting it, fermenting, distilling, and purifying it, then transporting it to the gas station. We can't keep our economy running with that kind of energy source. Cellulosic ethanol has the same problem of inadequate returns on energy invested. Used french-fry oil? Enough for a handful of eco-warriors, but not enough for all of us even if we quadrupled our french-fry consumption.

Coal is a very dirty fuel, and very costly if you wanted to clean it up, and the supply won't last long if we boost our usage tremendously. Natural gas? Yes, it's cleaner than other forms, and cheaper right now, but has the same limitations on supply going into the future. This can't be the marvelous energy source that is clean and practically unlimited. Do you have any ideas? Maybe we could tap all that dark energy that is supposed to be out there in the vast vacuums of outer space?

I think pixie dust is the only solution that fits the requirements. Wave a few hundred billion dollars of research money over the problem, and presto, it's solved.

NOTE: I've had more time to think about the book and the author, and I think I was much too easy on him. His book strained at gnats, elevating small quibbles to earth-shaking discoveries. Much of the climate-change-denier rhetoric is being directly funded by corporations that have a vested interest in business as usual, from the blinkered viewpoint of their next quarterly economic reports. We need a serious approach to this subject, not a series of nitpicking jibes followed by pixie-dust "solutions".

Of course, our author had painted himself very thoroughly into a corner toward the end of the book. He had admitted that human activities ARE involved in climate change. And his iron-clad rule of climate policy--nothing that interferes with economic growth--played the part of handcuffs in determining any realistic kind of solution. What's left? It has been extremely well documented that no kind of alternative energy can possibly fulfill even the present world energy demand (see almost anything written by Richard Heinberg for details; here's one: Searching for a Miracle.

I Love my Dutch Oven

2011-03-11T12:05:00.000-08:00

DH got me a beautiful red 3-qt Lodge Logic dutch oven for Valentine's Day. It goes from stovetop to oven (NOT THE MICROWAVE) perfectly happily. It is the greatest way to cook a plump local chicken. Here goes:

Oven Casserole Chicken
3-4 lb fryer or roaster chicken, preferably organic and free-range
salt and pepper to taste (1/2 to 1 tsp salt)
2 tbs olive oil or butter for browning
1 small onion, peeled and cut

Rub chicken with salt and pepper. Heat oil or butter on medium on stovetop. Put the chicken in breast-side down and brown for about 10 minutes. Remove from heat, turn chicken over in pan. Sprinkle onion around chicken. Put lid on pan and put into oven at 300 degrees. After 30 minutes, reduce heat to 275 degrees, and bake another 1 1/2 hours.

If you don't have a casserole or dutch oven that will go from burner to oven, brown the chicken in a skillet, then put in a oven-safe casserole dish with a tight-fitting lid, and proceed to bake it the same way.

Oven Chicken Repeat
Save all the bones from above, including the carcass and any pan juices that are left. Put it all in your dutch oven or casserole. Bring to boil about 1.5 to 2 quarts of water, pour over bones, and add another 1 tsp or so of salt. Clap the lid back on, put casserole back in oven at 300 degrees, and bake for 2 hours. You will get a wonderful flavorful broth (if you started with a good quality chicken). Remove bones, pick off any promising little bits of meat, and strain the broth.

___________________________________

Next, what to do with the broth? If you still have a butternut squash on hand, try this soup.

Passato di Zucca
Cut in half one 2-lb butternut squash. You can save the seeds and roast them. Turn squash cut-side down on a cookie sheet and bake at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. For the seeds, put in a pie pan with a little olive oil and salt and also roast them at 300 degrees for 45 minutes. These two can go alongside the dutch oven full of chicken bones and broth, conveniently.

In a 2-quart pan, melt 2 tbs butter and saute 1 largish onion chopped until soft. Scoop the cooked squash out of the shell and add. Now add 3 cups of your dandy chicken broth and cook about 5 minutes. Let cool a bit, turn into a blender and puree. Return to pan, check for salt, add a dash of nutmeg and pepper, and add more chicken broth if it is too thick. Garnish with sour cream or yogurt if desired.

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A bowl of the above soup was part of my lunch today.

My winter squash has kept beautifully this year. It was a long fall, and the squash got well matured out in the field before harvest. I keep them in a coolish room out of the sun, maybe in the 50s most winter days. I recently cooked my last pumpkin of the season (made pumpkin pudding--yum!). This soup took my last butternut squash. I have a couple of acorn squash left. Usually pumpkins aren't very happy after the first of the year.

Pikelets--such fun!

2011-03-05T12:57:00.000-08:00

Pikelets are fun pancakes, one-dish meals that are nutritious and quick to fix.

These recipes are gluten free, dairy free, and rice free

Basic recipe

1 egg
2 tbs tapioca starch
2 tbs split green pea flour
2 tbs coconut flour
dash salt

Beat well, adding enough water to make a medium pancake batter. Cook in a 10" skillet with at least 1 tsp butter or other fat. Pour into one big cake, cook at medium heat until the bottom is well set, then flip and cook more briefly on the other side, until the pancake feels resilient when you tap your finger on it. One serving.

To help you get a sense of how much liquid to add, if you do not have enough liquid the batter won't spread over the pan. If you have too much, it will just take significantly longer to cook.

Note: you can make your own split pea and blackeyed pea flour with a grain mill. You could also do yellow split pea. I would definitely NOT grind up more significant beans and cook them in a pancake like this. For example, kidney beans have a very bad lectin in them which is only neutralized by soaking and long cooking. You could grind up your own pintos and garbanzos, but you should be using them in baking or long-cooking dishes.

Common to all variations: 1 egg, 2 tbsp tapioca starch, dash salt

Variation 1: use blackeyed pea flour instead of green pea

Variation 2: use 4 tbs blackeyed pea flour and omit the coconut flour

Variation 3: chop one piece bacon, fry gently to drive out the fat, then pour the pancake over it. You could use this with any of the other variations.

Variation 4: saute a little sliced onion or scallions in skillet, either with the bacon, or by itself with butter or other fat, before pouring the batter over it.

Variation 5: instead of the coconut flour and water, use about 1/2 cup pureed pumpkin. If the batter is too thick, you can add a little water. You can add some spices to this one.

Variation 6: put a few pieces of kim chee into the batter, and use kim chee juice for part of the liquid. If it's homemade kim chee with lots of juice, just use that. Kim Chee pancake! delicious. I like this best with 2 tbs tapioca and 4 tbs black-eyed pea flour.

Variation 7: like #6, but use sauerkraut and its juice in place of the kim chee

Variation 8: egg foo young. Use 2 eggs, 2 tbs tapioca starch, 1 tsp tamari, enough water for a fairly runny batter. In your big skillet heat some oil or fat, saute a little sliced onion and sliced mushrooms until wilted. Then add 1 cup fresh bean sprouts, saute and stir until sprouts start to wilt. Pour the egg mixture over the veggies, tipping the pan to get the egg mixture to the edges. Cook at medium heat until the bottom is set, then flip and cook more briefly on the other side.

Variation 9: use garfava flour (commercial), either 2 tbs (with coconut and tapioca) or 4 tbs (with just tapioca). This would be nice with curry-type spices. Garfava flour is steam-cooked before grinding, so it is safe to use in a cake like this where the batter might not be well cooked.

Variation 10: use coconut flour and apple juice for the liquid. Heat 1 tbsp butter in skillet, add 1/2 to 1 apple cored and cut into 1/4" slices. Saute the apple briefly till it starts to get soft, then pour the batter over. You can add apple-pie type spices to this. This is more of a sweet cake than savory.

Variation 11: if you have several kinds of leftover veggies, chop them into small pieces, 1/2 to 1 cup. Saute briefly before pouring basic pancake batter over. Carrots, peas, mushrooms, cabbage, or cooked greens, whatever you have.

Variation 12: Use tapioca and blackeyed pea flours. Add 1/2 cup cooked corn and 2 Tbsp salsa or chopped green chiles. Add water as needed for a medium batter and cook.

Austerity fatigue?

2011-02-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

It seems that many people have gotten tired of cutting back, living within their means, paying off their debts. The word in the retail establishments was that it was a good Christmas. People get tired of doing without, whether they can afford it or not.

Let's think this one through.

IF you have a good secure job (you're absolutely positive that you will not be laid off)....

Whoa! Let's stop here. Is there anyone in this country that can say that about their job without fooling themselves? Even if you work for yourself, can you be that sure that next year your business will be humming along? Even if you're on Social Security, can you say for sure that you will not have your benefits cut? There are some legislators in Washington that are just dying to cut your benefits.

Start again:

IF you have a good secure income, and you have your debt well in control...

Whoa! Is your house paid off? If not, is it underwater (financially-speaking)? 41% of mortgaged homes in the Denver area are underwater. (Of course if it's actually under water, you've got other problems that we won't discuss here.)

Is your car (cars?) paid off?

Do you pay your credit card bill off every month? Is your income high enough to pay your credit card bill down every month? If not, you've got to be losing ground; your credit cards are in control, or you could say your spending is in control of you, rather than vice versa.

If you are a two-income household, could you pay all your bills if one of you lost their job? Could you pay off that car? Could you pay off your credit card bills? Would you have to walk away from your mortgage?

Start again:

IF you have a good secure income, and you truly do have your debts either paid off or well in control, and you are investing in your retirement.....

Whoa! What retirement? You have to work until you die because you can't afford to retire? There are precious few jobs that will let you work until you're elderly, significantly past 65. You may find that as you get older, you don't have quite the energy you did as a youngster. There are plenty of elderly people who do have lots of energy, excellent health, all their marbles, and valuable experience to bring to their employment, so I'm not down on the elderly. But are you sure you will be one of those super-energized, irresistible older workers who are immune to layoffs and ill health? Even then, plenty of older people will tell you how difficult it is to find any position at all, even entry-level, if you're over 55.

So maybe you should try to sock a little away if you are still employed. If you leave work anywhere near the usual age, your nest egg has to keep you fed and housed for at least an average 15-20 years, and possibly up to 30, 40 or more.

Start again:

IF you have a good secure job, your debts under control, and your retirement accounts in good order, are you prepared for economic hurricanes that could come down the pike at us? Another run-up in gas and diesel prices? (It'll probably happen this year. Look at what's happening in the Middle East!) Food costs going up when diesel goes up? A big unexpected medical bill? Utility costs rising significantly?

But you deserve that luxury... your child deserves that expensive toy she has her heart set on... You can't say no to her, or to your spouse, or to yourself? If not now, then when?

The future looks a little grim right now. Nobody's doing very well except the banks. They're sitting on piles of cash, carefully not loaning it. Unemployment is still stubbornly high and will probably remain so for five years at least. Real estate prices have farther to fall, until the huge backlog of repossessed property is cleared.

But spending is fun! spending is necessary! Think it through: what kind of spending?

There's spending for consumer trash, filling up your already-overfilled house. It's easy to buy too much cheap stuff from China and other countries. It just ends up to be a disposal problem when you get tired of it, it breaks, it goes out of style, it goes the way of all such trash. This doesn't look like a very good idea.

Then there's spending for useful stuff: Stocking up on food staples now, before the price goes up. Improving the insulation of your house to save on utility bills later. Paying off your debt so you'll be flexible in the future. Choosing your luxuries carefully: good value for the money, classic style, long-lasting or repairable, something you're thrilled to have that will make you happy to see it in three years or three decades. Educating yourself or family members; this includes classes in philosophy, tai chi, knitting, tennis, mathematics, great books, electronics repair, woodworking.... the list is endless.

Spending on good quality food, and learning to cook it properly. (Another opportunity for a class, right?) This will pay off in health and happiness and knowledge. Learning is one thing that never goes out of fashion. You can have a better life without spending more money and getting more stuff. You only have to get your head back from the advertisers, and take control again.

Vicki Robin and the 10-mile Diet

2010-09-25T13:14:00.000-07:00

I recently came across Vicki Robin's blog on her 10-Mile Diet. Her CSA farmer challenged her to eat for one month (September) on what she was getting from her share. Vicki decided to allow any other suppliers within the 10-mile radius, as well as foods from her own garden. She made exceptions for salt, oil, coffee/tea, spices, and lemons. (I made similar exceptions.)

It is fascinating reading.

Friends

Deciding to eat within such a small area means that she knows personally everyone who produces her food. A tomato, a beet, a bunch of greens, a wedge of goat cheese: everything has a name attached to it, a person she has talked to, oftentimes a friend or someone who quickly becomes a friend. Barter becomes an important part of acquiring a varied diet.

She knows that the food she is eating was not created in a factory somewhere, or shipped from China, or picked by underpaid and probably illegal farm workers. (By the way, people who complain about the high cost of fruits and vegetables should consider that most of the workers in these crops are Mexican nationals, poorly paid, ill-treated in many cases, working 14-hour days in the sun and dust. If immigration laws are strictly enforced due to public pressure, produce prices will skyrocket and availability will drop precipitously. So be careful what you wish for.)

Seasonality

A 10-mile diet means eating what grows in her area, in season. She lives on an island in Washington State, with a mild and fairly benevolent climate. The foods are fresh, often picked days or even hours before being eaten. They are at the peak of their flavor and nutrition.

Ingenuity is required to deal with a surfeit of zucchini or other vegetable. (The rule on zucchini: either too many or too few. I unwisely planted TWO hills of zucchini; one would have provided enough for us and the neighbors with some extras for the chickens.)

Intensive vs. Extensive Agriculture

Extensive agriculture is what we usually think of these days: vast monoculture fields, very few workers, a full load of herbicides, insecticides, GMO crops, artificial fertilizers, huge and expensive farm equipment, and loads of diesel to power it. And you can think of 100,000 cattle in a feedlot, eating the subsidized commodities that are making them sick (and us sick as well), turning fertilizer into a massive disposal problem. Extensive agriculture is highly capital-intensive: expensive equipment, expensive chemicals, expensive fuels.

Intensive farming is agriculture on a human scale: small farms, plots, even pocket gardens. It requires lots of work and attention from people, and is thereby labor-intensive. This is the way farming has been conducted for 10,000 years, up until the 20th century. Many small growers are organic: they get a higher return for their produce, in return for more attention and care for their crops and the soil. The yield, counted per acre or per dollar or per-anything-else except hours of labor, is much higher than for extensive farming.

In the U.S. these days, extensive agriculture produces dry beans, feedlot and CAFO meat, and grains and all the multitude of industrial food products created from them. If you are eating locally, especially hyperlocally like Vicki, these foods are pretty much out of the question. Your choices come from the intensively-farmed items: fruit, veg, backyard eggs and chickens, hobby honey, the occasional grassfed steer, someone's pet dairy cow.

Vicki found that she was losing weight (good), and that she was REALLY missing grains, crackers, breads, and such foods (painful).
If Jim and I had stayed strict on our 100-mile diet here in Colorado, we would have had to make the same choices as we ran out of stock on hand. As the first year elapsed, we had expanded our range for staples (grains, etc.) to the western U.S. I did enough meal planning inside the 100-mile circle to gain some new insights about how dependent the standard American diet is on cheap petroleum and other resources. We kept the rules in place for fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, and eggs (backyard eggs are the best!).

Gratitude

When everything on the table came from her neighborhood, grown or created by people she knows (or by herself), Vicki found that she gained a much greater appreciation for the work involved to put that food on her table. The goat cheese, the onions, the chard, were little treasures, their full costs appreciated. And the essential gift nature of food becomes visible again. We don't MAKE food; at best we make it possible for God/Mother Nature/the soil and all its denizens to give it to us.

Time for Conservatives to Conserve

2010-09-14T08:33:00.000-07:00

And it's time for Progressives to rethink what they mean by progress.

It is very interesting what has happened to the concept of Peak Oil recently. Just a few years ago, it was the abode of the doomers, tinfoil hat people, and the oh-so politically correct. The mainstream just said 'whatever', blithely assuming that if humanity needed something, anything, in whatever quantity, it would always be there for us.

Now, in the last year, by osmosis as far as I can tell, Peak Oil is just part of the daily background of our lives. It has gone from being ridiculed by most to being accepted by most. There are a few outliers who still believe that the interior of the earth is stuffed with oil which is constantly renewing itself for our benefit, but that theory is getting pretty hard to sustain by anything except blind faith.

The drumbeat of upcoming energy scarcity underlies much of what we think and do these days. It's the big player behind the economic woes, the frantic bitterness of political battles, and the quiet paying down of household debt. People are still buying and driving the SUVs and huge pickup trucks, but just as you can feel September's coolness foretelling winter, there is a sense that the summer of energy abundance can't last. Buy and drive now, while you still can.

Or, on the other side of the aisle so to speak, progressives push for CFL lightbulbs, wind turbines, hydrogen power, cellulosic ethanol, and some are even advocating nuclear power plants. But it's too little, too late. Every alternative power source requires big inputs of energy, initially and ongoing. This is the kind of energy that we thought we had in the 1970s, when Appropriate Technology had its heyday, but Good Morning America put an end to it.

Today, while the government is frantically trying to revive the growth bubble with debt, households are cutting down on their debt. This does "depress demand" in a badly-skewed economy where most economic activity is in borrowing money and buying stuff. How can you sustain an economy on little more than consumer purchases and service industries? An economy MUST be based on making things and growing things, thereby creating value. And that economy of making and growing MUST be based on the primary economy of the natural resource base.

Petroleum is called fossil fuel for a reason. It's based on the concentrated sunlight of 500 million years. Humans have burned through about half of this phenomenal legacy in 120 years. The carbon sequestered under the ground from a far hotter, wetter time is being restored to the atmosphere from our tailpipes and chimneys. We've been in a "growth" economy for so long that this highly-unusual situation seems normal to us.

Fossil fuel means we aren't getting any more of it. Fossil water (in the big aquifers) means that when we draw it down, it isn't coming back except in geological timeframes. Basing our agriculture on the use of petroleum and its products and aquifer-based irrigation is kind of dumb in the long run.

It's no use to say that we need conventional agriculture to feed the 7 billion humans today and the 9 billion humans predicted in a few years, when the petroleum feedstock upon which conventional agriculture depends will be running short soon. We'd better figure out other ways to grow food, and soon. An entire generation of farmers is reaching retirement age, replaced by tractor jockeys who are paid so little for their work that their spouses have to work in town to make ends meet.

Let's list just a few of the ways that conventional agriculture depends on petroleum.

fuel for the tractors

energy and resources to create the high-tech farm equipment

fuel for the Haber-Bosch process to produce synthetic fertilizers from atmospheric nitrogen (this process is a HUGE energy hog)

energy to find or create and ship phosphates and other agricultural chemicals

petroleum fractions and energy to create the herbicides and pesticides

fuel to ship the resulting products from vast monocultures to consumers all over the world

petroleum to create all that plastic packaging

and there are many more ...

Organic agriculture is one of the few success stories of sustainability from the second half of the 20th century. Of course before the 19th century, all agriculture was "organic" by today's standards. Intensive organic agriculture can feed people; it is highly efficient in terms of output per acre and output per dollar invested, and inefficient in output per hour of work (the only measure that modern economists are interested in).

The bottom line is that Progressives need to find a new definition of progress. The future is not bright for economic growth, full employment in highly-paid technological jobs, unlimited medical care for everyone, a college education for every student, and the other ingredients of the "good life" we have come to expect. We need to find our helping hands at the ends of our own arms.

The bottom line is that Conservatives need to stop relying on tax breaks, deregulation, and handouts to the major corporations to fuel growth, and stop trying to streamline government to meet the desires of the rich and powerful rather than the common man. We need to realize that smaller is better, that community matters in the long run, that your neighbors at your back are better than a bunker filled with rifles, ammo and spam.

I am hoping that we can make common cause, that the Progressive and the Conservative can meet over the back fence, trading zucchini and onions, honey and rabbits, knitting instructions and breadbaking lessons. We've all got too much to lose to keep up the pointless power battles that have been distracting us for so long.

What's been happening here

2010-08-30T15:41:00.000-07:00

It's been a long time since my last post. My focus has gone off local foods somewhat, and onto a dual quest: lose some weight, and make some difference in my fibromyalgia by dietary changes.

As has been happening since the first year, we're still eating local food, and it has become second nature. We buy the high-quality meat from local farmers and ranchers. We have our own eggs (you can't get more local than the front yard). I'm still running the food cooperative, and we get most of our other food there: organic staples from the western U.S., organic produce mainly from Colorado with a few items coming from the western U.S. And the garden has been producing a bounty: lettuce and snap peas in the early summer, now zucchini, cucumbers, and tomatoes, more than we can eat.

I relaxed the rules a bit during the Spring season: I bought lettuce and avocados from California, and a few other things. I have my CSA membership, and other than that I buy more from the cooperative than from all other stores put together.

So what were my results on the weight loss? Very good, actually. I have lost 37 pounds since January. It has really made a difference in my mobility and reduced my pain. I've given away a box full of too-large clothes. That feels good! My "diet" is mainly low-carb, with a couple of high-carb meals per week. I feel that I can maintain this way of eating the rest of my life. I don't count calories, fat grams, or carb grams, but follow some simple rules.

1. No fast food, no junk food, no added sweeteners including artificial sweeteners.
2. No grains other than rice, and that once or twice a month.
3. Moderate servings of high-quality meat at each meal (3-5 oz), accompanied with a half-serving of fruit and 1-3 servings of vegetables either raw or cooked. I don't avoid the higher-fat cuts, but I keep the serving moderate. I have eggs rarely, and eat small servings of dairy products occasionally, but neither is a staple of my diet.
4. No eating after supper, no snacking between meals, and only three meals per day.
5. We do eat out occasionally; for me it's usually salads. Once in a while a cut of meat with veggies in place of potato or other starch.

And the last part is the oxalates, which I'm fortunate to find out about. I discovered that some people with fibromyalgia react to oxalates in the diet. Their bodies don't dispose of oxalates nicely like other people. This is especially true for those with celiac disease (inability to digest gluten), which I have. Other sufferers from oxalate problems include those with kidney stones, interstitial cystitis, vulvodynia, and autism spectrum disorders. So there is a lot of energy behind the research on this topic, in particular from the parents of ASD children pressing hard to find solutions to their children's problems. There is a very active Yahoo group called Trying_Low_Oxalates which is worth following if you or a family member have any of these problems.

The lists of low, medium, and high oxalate foods are extensive, and compared to ten years ago are much better researched and more consistent. As a starter, potatoes, carrots and celery are out; spinach, most hardy greens, beets, rhubarb (the high-oxalate queen), chocolate (oh no), the small grains that I was using to substitute for gluten-containing grains (this includes millet, buckwheat and amaranth). Tree nuts (except chestnuts) and peanuts, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, all dried beans (except bean sprouts), sweet potatoes, rutabaga, tomato sauce, black tea, most berries, most dried fruits, all gone. Half at least of the recipes I've posted on this blog are out of bounds for me now. Half of my CSA basket I have to give to friends or leave at the farm.

But the payoff is very good. I've been able to start a program of morning walks, which I could never consider before due to the pain. My sleep is better, my weight loss is effortless, my mood is better, my energy is higher. My fingernails have stopped shredding; they grow out so I can cut them again.

Other group members are also dealing with fibromyalgia, which responds pretty well over a period of months or years. It's tougher to make headway on the ASD kids, but people are reporting significant improvements in their child's behavior and verbal abilities.

I feel very fortunate to be putting so many puzzle pieces together now. I take loads of supplements, as recommended to cope with the oxalates and fibromyalgia. The Yahoo group has lots of information on supplements. I sometimes wish I had put it together sooner, but at least with the oxalates, this information was not even known ten years ago. But it's no good regretting the past, and rueing the constant stream of candy, chips, and assorted junk that I ate years ago. I'm finally getting them off my hips!

Local food eating works pretty well with my restrictions. It keeps me honest on the junk and fast food, the chocolate, the nuts. It keeps high-quality fresh foods on our table. A meal of pastured beef (grazed about three miles from our home), lettuce and squash from the garden, and half a beautiful Colorado peach (the best there are): who could complain about that?

Just In TIme vs. Just In Case

2010-04-17T19:30:00.000-07:00

Just-in-time, often abbreviated JIT, was developed in Japan in the 1990s. Factories, instead of having a large warehouse of parts for their products, ordered just enough parts to keep up with the assembly on the floor. This saved money in two ways: less expensive warehouse space, and less money tied up in parts and supplies.

In the years after 2000, many retail houses and grocery stores followed suit. Wal-Mart is famous for ordering exactly what is bought, to fill the empty spot on the shelves as quickly as possible but little backstock. In groceries, as in factories, JIT means less warehouse space, and less money tied up in products, especially perishable products. The profit margin in supermarket chains is surprisingly small, and they will shave pennies wherever they can find them.

There's a problem with JIT. What if a supply disruption occurs? What if there is a strike, an epidemic, a blizzard or ice storm, a hurricane? A power outage? An oil embargo? Or, most topically today, a sky full of volcanic ash which prevents airliners from flying?

If you haven't seen the news, UK supermarkets are running out of stock on imported perishable produce and cut flowers. In the UK, the markets have been particularly avid for JIT. Most markets have less than three days supply of perishables.

Now, as we know, people in Great Britain won't starve if they can't get baby corn from Thailand, or roses from Kenya, or strawberries from Argentina. But with a relatively large population, and not that much arable land, and especially considering the season, the gaps on the supermarket shelves will be noticeable. Nobody knows how long the Icelandic volcano (I won't try to spell it) will spew out ash. There is the potential of real problems there.

There's an alternative to Just In Time, one which our forefathers and foremothers lived by, which is Just In Case. They understood that life is uncertain. They knew that "unforeseen" weather events are actually common. Emergencies happen at every scale from the individual to the nation.

It was part of the economy of the household to have a stock of foods on hand, to carry them through expected and unexpected challenges. If you didn't put up those apples and plums in the fall, you didn't have any until the next harvest. If you didn't have enough flour and coffee on hand when the snow fell, breakfast was pretty sparse.

With the advanced transportation network of today, we're overconfident, bordering on hubris. How many of us have even the paltry two weeks of food and water in our house that FEMA recommends for emergencies such as pandemics? A serious pandemic could have the stores closed for a couple of months. A truckers' strike could have the stores running out of food and supplies in a few days. A little desperation on the part of the shoppers could clear the shelves in a few hours.

You can apply Just In Time vs Just in Case to more than just food. Just In Time lives paycheck to paycheck. A bill is paid just when it is due. A furlough, a layoff, an illness, and you're behind. Just In Case has economized enough to have some savings stashed away, hopefully enough to carry the family through the emergency.

Just In Time leaves the home at the last possible moment to get to work or an appointment. Just In Case leaves time for traffic jams, a desperately needed stop at the gas station, or the cat dashing out into the street just as you leave the house.

Just In Time hopes that when retirement comes, planned or unplanned, a nice bull market will have made their scanty 401(k) sturdier. Just In Case has put away savings in more than one basket, and is prepared to forgo some luxuries today to avoid poverty tomorrow.

So, take a lesson from volcanic ash, from Snow-mageddon, from ice storms in Missouri, from week-long power outages in New England, from... (you can certainly add to this list from news items in the last couple of years). Be prepared. Just in case, have staple foods on hand, ones you know how to cook, ones the family likes (or tolerates at least). Just in case, have some extra blankets and sweaters. Just in case, have extra drinking water stored. Just in case, have a first-aid kit and know how to use it for common household emergencies. Just in case, have a few cans of chicken soup in the pantry. (If you are sick with a cold or flu, you won't want to run to the store to get it.) Just in case, have some way to cook if the electricity is off for a day or more. Just in case, have at least one phone that doesn't need to be plugged into an electrical outlet, and at least one radio that runs on batteries or by hand crank.

It's a good feeling to have food on hand, to have some simple emergency supplies, to know that you're prepared for the all-too-common unexpected event.

Bridging the Seasons with Lactofermentation

2010-03-06T13:33:00.000-08:00

This is the time of year that lactofermented vegetables really taste good to us. The only fresh local veggies are stored, and not too many different kinds: potatoes, onions, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, cabbage, garlic, beets, radishes. But we can have fresh cucumbers, green beans, zucchini, salsa, and many more from our lactofermentation jars. They're great on salads or as a side dish. And they have a lot of health benefits as probiotics.

I have posted an introductory paper I wrote on lactofermentation. Check under Blogs and Websites on the right side.

Lsctofermentation does not require high technology. I use half-gallon glass jars, but you could also use crocks. You need high quality veggies, herbs and spices, and salt. They keep for months, up to a year. If you didn't have refrigeration, they would keep well in a non-freezing but cool place, which should be readily available in temperate climates. Lactoferments go back thousands of years in human cultures.

Today I want to celebrate what we've been eating.

1. Lacto Cucumbers. Think pickle barrel dills. The juice is wonderful too, in salad dressings, deviled eggs, and anywhere you want a flavorful tartness.

2. Sauerkraut. Sauerkraut is great raw as a side dish, or baked as a bed under local pork sausage.

3. Dilly Beans. This year I used wax beans, which work just as well as green. They have a lovely gold color. We're on our second half-gallon.

4. Kim Chee. Yes, you can make your own, at a low cost relative to the very pricey bubbly jars you buy at the natural groceries. I just opened the first of our two jars. Wow! The ginger, garlic and chilis add a real wake-up note to bland winter meals.

5. Tomato salsa. It's great to have a real fresh salsa in the middle of the winter from August tomatoes, onions, peppers and cilantro.

That's what I made this year. Additionally, I get pint jars in my winter CSA shares. This year we got:

6. Pickled beets. Sweet and sour. Nice in chopped winter salads, or as a side dish.

7. Zucchini, onion, and Napa. Nice and tart.

8. Another Kim Chee: a little different flavor, also delicious.

9. Carrot and daikon, sliced.

10. Turnip, onion and chilis. Another Asian-flavored pickle.

That should pep up a tired palate.

You can still make some lactoferments if you have storage roots in good condition. Don't try to use dried-out, shriveled or moldy veggies; they should go into the compost.

And plan to put up some of summer's bounty of fresh beans, tomatoes, cucumbers, summer squash, and other delights, when the season comes.

Support Your Local Honeybee

2010-02-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

Most if not all of you have heard about the latest honeybee problem: Colony Collapse Disorder. One day the beekeeper goes out and the worker bees in their tens of thousands are gone, leaving the queen and the honey. One-quarter to one-half of hives are suffering this fate in the course of a year, sometimes even more.

Suggested culprits range from cell phones to Al Qaeda to an alphabet soup of new bee diseases, but the truth is not simple and the remedy is complex. The stakes are high: Almost all fruits and nuts, and most vegetables are bee-pollinated. Cattle forage in the form of alfalfa and legumes including soybeans are also at risk.

I recently read a book: A World Without Bees by Allison Benjamin and Brian McCallum. I highly recommend their careful research and conclusions.

So, what is the cause of CCD? Well, to start with, there are many causes, many factors that make beehives weak. Some are not surprises, but have been with us for decades if not longer. It is the total weight of the factors that brings a bee colony down.

1. Pesticides old and new. Growers spray for insect pests, and inevitably the bees get hit. The neonicotinoids, a new class of insecticides which are low-toxicity to mammals, are deadly to bees.
Even small exposures cause bees to become disoriented and unable to make their way back to the colony.

2. Varroa mites and their treatments. Varroa mites invaded this country from Asia. Asian bees cope with them, but Western bees do not. They are bloodsuckers and rapidly weaken the bees. And the miticides commonly used to control varroa are also weakening to the bees. After all, you're trying to kill a bug living on another bug.

3. Junk food. Bees are fed artificial pollen made from soybeans, and high-fructose corn syrup, instead of sugar which used to be a (poor) substitute for the nutrients found in honey. Junk food for people, junk food for bees. HFCS is cheap, though.

4. Lack of genetic diversity. Queen lines are very inbred now, because it's more efficient for the supplier. Bees are bred for pollination services, mainly, rather than for vigor, wintering capability or honey production. And many commercial queens have mated with one drone, rather than the 14 to 15 that she would couple with on an uncontrolled mating flight.

5. Loads of new bee diseases, mainly viruses that take advantage of the bees' weakened state. Old diseases and parasites are showing a resurgence, including the intestinal parasite nosema, chalkbrood and foulbrood.

6. Loss of habitat. Suburbs are taking over from wild meadows, vast monocultures from mixed farms and orchards, paved areas from wildflowers. Monocultures are pariclarly bad for bees, which benefit, like we do, from a balanced diet.

7. Genetically-modified crops, including crops with their own built-in insecticide expressed in pollen and nectar. Bees are very delicately balanced creatures. We don't know what effects GM crops might have on them.

That is a lot of specific factors. But let's take a step back now, and look at the linchpins of the disorder: globalization and the almond harvest. Yes, almonds!

A few decades ago, U.S. beekeepers ran into deadly competition with honey producers in Argentina and China. The price of honey was undercut so badly that commercial beekeepers could not make a living no matter how hard they worked. Customers would not buy a $6 jar of honey from a local beekeeper when they could buy a $1.50 jar of honey from China. What to do?

This problem coincided with the tremendous growth in California almond orchards. Almonds are a huge cash crop for export. California produces about 80% of the almonds in the world. Almonds are bee-pollinated, and bloom very early. The bees' normal lifecycle includes a winter rest eating stored honey to keep warm. Then in the spring the colony builds up gradually to be ready for the peak blooming season. This won't work for almond growers, of course. They need strong colonies early in the spring. And they need LOTS of them to service the 600,000 acres of almonds.

So 65% of the bee colonies in the U.S. are pulled out of their winter snooze, built up with artificial foods, and loaded on a truck for California. The orchards are packed tight with beehives, two per acre, to make sure every almond blossom is visited. Bees work hard but are malnourished due to overcrowding and only one source of food. Then they are trucked all over the country for other crops, a few weeks here, a few weeks there, until they finally end up at home wherever that is, and the cycle starts again.

Pollination pays: up to $150 per hive. Enough to make ends meet for the beekeeper. But at what cost?

Bees are not little cash cows; they are not industrial machines. If you streamline production with too much traveling, mass-produced genetically-narrow queens, junk food, monocultures, and distorting the natural cycle, bees do not just shrug off the insults and keep chugging. They get tired, they get sick; you could say they get discouraged.

Pesticides are certainly part of the mix, but farmers and chemical companies have been notoriously resistant to ban known bee poisons. The profit motive--let's say the short-term profit motive--rules.

What can we do to save these marvelous creatures? To start with, vote with your wallet. Seek out local beekeepers in your area who do NOT send their bees on pollination tours. Buy their honey, at a fair price for the work involved.

If you have the space, habitat and inclination, get your own beehive. A good friend of mine has a hive in his backyard, with a swarm-captured colony. I have bought my hive and ordered my bees: Minnesota Hygienics, bred to groom themselves carefully and keep pests out of the hive. Should be fun.

The fruits and vegetables that you buy locally (unless you live in the California valleys) support agriculture on a more sustainable scale. In general, do what you can to support habitat preservation, non-GMO cropping, organic gardening and orchards, less pesticide spraying. The future of your food depends on it.

Northern Colorado citizens can contact the Northern Colorado Beekeepers Association for honey, to join, etc.
http://www.fortnet.org/NCBA/

Readers in other parts of the country can surely find similar local groups. This work is available to all of us. If enough dedicated people work at saving the honeybee, we can do it.

Making Your Own

2010-01-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

I have recently made tahini (sesame butter) from organic brown sesame seeds from Texas, and it's so delicious I thought I'd write a post of some things you can make for yourself, better and cheaper than what you can buy.

Homemade Sesame Tahini

2 cups organic brown (unhulled) sesame seeds
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil

Heat oven to 350 degrees and spread the seeds smoothly on a pizza pan or cookie sheet with sides. Toast for 8-10 minutes in oven.
Remove and let cool 20 minutes or more. Place seeds in a food processor and add the oil. Run for 2-3 minutes, then stop and push the stray seeds down into the slurry, and run for another 2-3 minutes. Makes a little less than a pint. Keep in frig. Does not separate.

This is Delicious! I find myself eating it with a spoon. You could also spread it on bread or crackers, or put a spoonful in chicken soup. I haven't added it to hummus yet, but I'm sure that would work well too.

Rice Cream

You can buy "rice cream", which is a quick-cooking brown rice hot cereal, for some bucks, but making your own is a cinch. I started with organic brown basmati rice (Lundbergs from California). I ran it through my grain mill, set for a coarse flour. If you grind more than a small quantity, keep it in the frig or freezer.

To cook, mix 1 cup water and 1/3 cup coarse rice flour, and salt to taste. Bring to a boil, stirring, and continue to stir as it thickens. Then turn heat very low and put a lid on for a few minutes to finish cooking.

You could lightly toast the raw rice before grinding. You could also try the same trick with wild rice (I plan to do that soon), for a particularly luxurious breakfast cereal.

Homemade Mayonnaise

This is so good I haven't bought commercial mayonnaise for years.

1 organic fresh high-quality egg
1 cup extra-virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon mustard powder

Preferably make this in a small food processor with a hole in the lid. The blender is OK but it is hard to get it scraped out when done.

Put egg in bowl of processor, and add the lemon juice, salt, and mustard powder. Have oil measured and ready. Start processor. While running, dribble in the olive oil. As it runs, the mayo starts to thicken, and when you are done, it is nice and thick. Scrape out into a widemouth jar and keep in frig. This does not keep FOREVER like commercial mayo; plan to use in a couple of weeks. It is a lovely pale greenish-gold color and has loads of flavor.

Easy Home-ground Flours

Even with an underpowered grain grinder, millet and buckwheat flour are very easy to make. Millet flour turns rancid rather easily, while the grain itself keeps very well, so it makes sense to grind only a couple of weeks of supply at a time.

My favorite quick gluten-free pancake uses equal parts homeground buckwheat and millet flour. For one person, beat one egg, stir in 1/3 cup each of buckwheat and millet flour, 1/4 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp baking powder, and milk, buttermilk or yogurt to make the batter thickness that you like. Cook in hot skillet or griddle, with melted butter or home-rendered lard or olive oil to keep it from sticking. (I stopped using Teflon pans two years ago; the smoke is toxic, and eventually bits start coming off in the food.)

I like these pancakes plain or with a little fruit jam, though I suppose you could use maple syrup. Just don't use the cheap high-fructose corn sweetener version of syrup. That stuff is not good for you, promoting insulin resistance.

Applesauce

Make these with backyard apples, farmer's market apples, or good store apples that are unwaxed, if you can find them. Leaving the skins on (for red or reddish apples) makes the sauce a yummy pinkish color instead of gray. Once you've made your own applesauce, commercial doesn't taste that good.

Wash apples, cut into quarters, and core. Cut out any bad parts or bruises. Put in your pan, and add 1/4 to 1/2 cup water (depending on size of pan). Bring to boil and simmer gently for 30 minutes, stirring occasionally to lift bottom slices to the top. Let cool a few minutes, then put through a food mill. This is a wonderful non-electric gadget you can get at a kitchen or hardware store. It catches all the skins and seeds.

Depending on how sweet or tart your apples are, and your taste, you could sweeten a little with honey or sugar. You can add a little orange zest, or a little cinnamon or nutmeg.

Applesauce can be frozen in wide-mouth pints, or if you make a big batch you can water-bath can the jars for 15 minutes (see the Ball Blue Book of Canning for details). If you have a fruit dryer that has "fruit leather" trays, two cups of sauce make a nice rollup.

You could make this with some apricot or peach slices too, or your favorite berry, like the commercially-available sauce. I haven't done this, but it's worth the experiment.

Home-Rendered Lard

First, don't use commercial lard which has so many preservatives in it that it keeps out of refrigeration for months.

Start with fat scraps from high-quality pastured pork, preferably organic. Locally, I get mine from Rocky Plains store in Loveland.

Cut fat into small cubes. Place in a kettle, and heat slowly, stirring occasionally. As the fat melts out more and more, slowly turn down the heat. The first few times you go through the process, check the temperature with a kitchen thermometer. You don't want it to get above 220 degrees (230 at a lower elevation).

Eventually there will be loads of very tiny bubbles coming to the top. With a slotted spoon press the scraps against the side of the kettle, to press out more fat and liquid. (Your whole purpose is to drive off the liquid, so that you end up with just the fat which will keep very well.) You'll be done when those little bubbles get fewer, and the temperature gets up. After doing it a few times, you'll get a feel for it.

Pour through a metal sieve into a bowl, then pour that into pint jars. What's left in the sieve are your cracklings. They are Delicious! You can put them in cornbread or bread, decorate scrambled eggs with some bits, or eat them with a spoon (oooh, decadent!). Not a low-fat delicacy, for sure. Keep the cracklings in the frig or freezer. Once the lard cools, put it in the freezer.

You can keep a jar on the counter for weeks with no sign of rancidity or off-taste. It is a good high-temperature cooking oil, and makes wonderful pastry. A well-fed pastured pig's fat is mostly mono-saturated, with a lipid profile pretty close to olive oil. Lard will keep far better than polyunsaturated oils such as sunflower, soy, or corn, which can get rancid shortly after opening the bottle.

Don't do this with industrial pork fat, ugggh! You won't like the taste anyway. As is true for many other foods, when you start with the best-quality ingredients, you get excellent taste and nutrition.

Green in the Winter

2010-01-11T11:12:00.000-08:00

I have not been keeping up with the incoming cabbage from our CSA. It's about the only locally-produced green thing around, so I need to do something about that. Green is compelling in the winter, surrounded as we are by white (lots of snow this winter in our region) and the browns of winter vegetation. Fortunately, cabbage pretty much waits patiently for me to get around to it.

How local is the following for us? Pretty local, actually.

Cabbage--CSA

Onion--CSA

Green pepper--CSA, home-dried

Lard--home-rendered from pastured Colorado pork

Tomato sauce--home-canned from local tomatoes

Vinegar--made by a friend from our own apples

Salt and pepper--salt from Utah, pepper from somewhere else

Romanian Braised Cabbage

1 head (about one pound) green cabbage, slivered (use a knife or a kraut cutter if you have one)
1 good-sized onion, chopped
2 Tbs olive oil or home-rendered lard
1 green pepper slivered, or use 1/2 cup dried green pepper slices
2 Tbs tomato paste, or 1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt and pepper to taste
1-2 Tbs cider vinegar

Bring a pan of water to the boil, add cabbage, and boil gently for 5 minutes. Drain. In a skillet, saute the onion and green pepper pieces in the oil or lard for 5 minutes. Stir in the drained cabbage. Continue to saute, stirring, for 5 more minutes. Mix tomato with 1/2 cup water, stir in, cover and simmer 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper, then stir in the vinegar.

I used the cabbage as part of a dish I "invented" last night, roughly based on 1. what we had on hand, 2. the popular 7-layer Mexican-food appetizer.

Tex-Mex Concentric Platter

Each person gets a plate of their own.

Meat: choose from a wide variety: leftover turkey or chicken, stewed lamb, browned ground beef, browned sausage, ???. The first time we used turkey, the second time beef. Season the beef, if you use it, with a little salt and chili powder.

Beans: here you need to be prepared: sort and soak 1 cup pinto beans overnight, then bring to boil in fresh water and cook 2-3 hours until nice and tender. We always try to keep a dish of cooked beans on hand in the frig. Refry your cooked beans in a little oil or lard, with a little added salt, crushing the beans into a nice slurry. Stir and cook until somewhere between runny and stiff--just thick enough.

Greens: Here is one good thing to do with that Braised Cabbage above. It really adds to the dish. Or you could have finely sliced lettuce or escarole, or mild sauerkraut. I'd suggest the cabbage, especially for winter.

Condiments: Your choice; you could use a wide variety. I used lactofermented salsa I made last summer from local tomatoes, onions, peppers, and cilantro. You could use other chunky salsa if you like. Also a little grated cheese. Other possibilities: guacamole or avocado slices, sour cream, sliced olives, sliced jalapenos (some like it hot), finely sliced onions or scallions.

Assembly: Have everything ready, refried beans, meat, etc. Make a ring of refried beans on the plate, leaving room at the center for the meat, and at the edges for the greens. About 2" wide, roughly. Then spoon meat into the central well, and lightly spoon some cabbage or other greens into a thin ring outside the beans. Sprinkle with cheese if desired, then some salsa, and other condiments as you like.

Other Ways
We're eating low-carb much of the time, and this is a lovely, nourishing low-carb meal. You could dip sturdy corn chips into it, or tear off pieces of flour tortilla, or load up soft warm corn tortillas with the contents of the ring. You could make the beans ring a little narrower and put another ring of cooked brown rice. You could serve it as a dinner (as we did), or put it out for appetizers with appropriate dipping material.

How local is this dish for us? Colorado pintos, beef raised 3 miles away, CSA tomatoes, onions, peppers, cabbage (fixed as above), local turkey or chicken, pork from the neighboring county.

Dessert for this meal was home-canned peaches from last summer.

Here are a couple of other cabbage dishes, from India. Spices, of course, are not local, but have been traded by human societies for millenia. Serve as a substantial dish beside meat, or dal (lentils) for vegetarians.

Cabbage and Potatoes
1 lb cabbage, shredded
1/2 cup finely chopped onion
1/2 tsp minced fresh ginger
1/2 pound potatoes, peeled and diced
3 Tbs cooking oil or ghee
1/2 tsp black mustard seed
1/4 tsp each cayenne pepper, ground cumin and ground coriander
1/2 tsp turmeric
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp tamarind concentrate, or 1 tbs fresh lemon juice

Heat oil in large skillet, add mustard seeds and heat until they start to pop, then add onion and saute a few minutes. Add the potato pieces, and cook stirring for 5 minutes. Then add the cabbage and the rest of the spices and salt, stir well to mix, and cook uncovered for 25 minutes, stirring occasionally. Check seasonings; soften the tamarind concentrate in a little hot water, and pour over.

Variation on a theme:

Cabbage with Yogurt

1 3/4 lbs cabbage, cored and sliced 1/4" thick
1/4 cup vegetable oil or ghee
3 tbs black mustard seeds
2 tsp ground coriander
1 small dried hot pepper, seeded and torn into small pieces
1 medium onion, peeled, halved and sliced 1/4" thick
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup freshly grated coconut
1 cup plain yogurt, gently warmed but NOT brought to boil

Heat oil, add mustard seeds until they pop, add pepper, coriander, cabbage and onion. Stir well, then add salt. Cover and cook over low heat 6-8 minutes. Then stir in grated coconut. Pile the cabbage into a bowl, stir in the warmed yogurt and serve.

Winter Keepers

2009-11-14T13:32:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to follow my own advice, and use produce I have on hand before it gets away from me. This includes apples from our trees. We have several boxes in the garage. I need to go through them every week or 10 days, to pull out any that are starting to get soft spots or show bruises. So, what do you do with a box of "immediate" apples? I put up seven pints by waterbath canning, for future desserts, and made a big pan of Apple Pandowdy:

Apple Pandowdy

Amounts for a 12x8 baking pan

4 1/2 cups washed, cored, sliced apples (I don't bother to peel, and they're fine)
3/4 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/4-1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
5 Tbs butter
1/3 cup sugar, succanat or brown sugar
2 small or 1 large egg
3/4 cup brown rice flour plus 6 Tbs millet flour (or use 1 cup plus 2 Tbs unbleached or whole wheat flour)
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup milk

Heat oven to 350 degrees. Arrange apples in bottom of pan, sprinkle with spices and sugar, bake 30 minutes. Meanwhile, cream butter and sugar together, stirring in egg(s), then add flours, salt, and baking powder and milk, stirring to mix. Remove apples from oven, spread batter over apples, sealing to sides as possible. Return to oven for another 30 minutes baking.

This will remind you of a baked pancake. Lots of fruit for the amount of cake. Very nice with ice cream; we just had it plain and it was yummy. A traditional American dish.

Wild West Beans

2 cups dry navy beans, picked over and soaked overnight
1/4 lb sliced bacon or rinsed salt pork, diced
1 Tbs cumin seed
1/2 cup chopped onion
6 juniper berries
1/2-1 tsp chipotle chile powder (to taste)
4 sliced cloves garlic
1 tsp dry oregano
1/4 cup tomato sauce
salt to taste

Drain beans and cook in fresh water until about tender. In another pan, cook bacon or salt pork until fat starts to flow, then add cumin and onion, saute 5 minutes. If there is still a lot of water on the beans, pour most of it off, leaving water to just cover; or if necessary, add water to just cover. Stir in bacon and seasonings including the fat, juniper, chipotle powder, garlic, and oregano. Simmer 1 1/2 hours, covered. Make sure it doesn't go dry. Then add tomato sauce and salt to taste, and cook another 15 minutes.

Finally, what do you do with those black radishes? ("I thought radishes were red?") If you aren't lucky enough to have black radish, you can use daikon in a similar way.

Black Radish Slaw
2-3 black radishes, or 1 lb daikon, peeled and grated
3 cups finely cut cabbage
1 cup coarsely grated carrots
1/2 cup sliced green onions, or slivered shallot or leek
2 tablespoons lemon juice or good cider vinegar
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp sugar or honey
2 tablespoons fresh herbs, if available--could be parsley, mint, marjoram, cilantro, or you could use 2 tsp dried herbs of your choice
freshly-ground black pepper to taste

Put veggies in a big bowl. Put lemon juice, oil, and sugar in a little jar and shake well, then pour over veggies. Sprinkle on herbs and black pepper, toss well. Taste and add salt, more lemon juice, more pepper, or whatever you think you'd like.

The Hierarchy of Food Waste

2009-11-07T11:26:00.000-08:00

To do your part to reduce food waste, you need to do some planning. First, make plans of what you would do with extra food of various types rather than landfill it. This is particularly important for perishable food such as meat, dairy products, vegetables, and fruits.

Plan A: Do what you can to preserve the food for your family: freeze meat before it turns, or cook into soups, stews, casseroles, etc., and freeze them (be SURE to use wide-mouth freezer-safe jars or plastic tubs). Can soups with a pressure canner. Mildly freezer-burned meats can be cooked in stews or braised; you'll probably never know the difference.

Vegetables can be canned, lactofermented, frozen, or dried. BE SURE to do this while they're still fresh, before they get wilted, discolored, or slimey. Fruits can be cooked into desserts, dried in pieces or as rollups, frozen, made into jams and jellies... well, you get the picture. Milk can be made into fresh cheese; fresh cheese can be frozen successfully. (Look for a post on this subject soon.) Same for cream or half-n-half, if you ever have such things left over. Or you can use milk or cream in soups, casseroles, puddings, etc.

If your storage is full, your freezer is full, you know you'll never use the food if you stored it (frozen and canned foods don't keep forever), no one in your family likes the food (buying mistake), or you feel that you have enough, then go to...

Plan B: Give the food to other humans. This includes family members, friends, neighbors, the less fortunate, food banks, food drives, and other charities. The best use of human food is for humans. Food banks probably won't take fresh meat and dairy products, unless truly fresh and unopened, for obvious reasons. Check first. But in general they are happy to take surplus vegetables and fruits, including fruits from your yard that are in excess of your ability to use them. Be sure to do this while the produce is still attractive and useful.

Sometimes, however, food items just get away from us; we turn our backs and they wilt, go sour, turn brown, etc. Not fit for human consumption. Now you can go for...

Plan C: Give the food to animals. If you have chickens, they're perfect! I give my chickens anything except chicken; they're omnivores like us, and will happily eat meat that is starting to turn, old dairy products, mushy fruits, etc. (Actually, chickens would eat chicken perfectly happily, but it's evil to feed animals their own kind.)

Perhaps you have friends with chickens, or even pigs. Don't feed pigs raw meat of any kind, to break the cycle of disease. But the meat could be cooked. Meat slightly past its prime or freezer-burned could also be given to dogs or cats, in modest quantities. Tired old casseroles, freezer burned vegetables, it all looks good to a pig.

Perhaps you don't know anyone with chickens or pigs. And that food is definitely over the hill. Next step:

Plan D: Compost it! If you have land, or even a neighborhood garden spot, get a compost heap going. Non-meat food scraps, outside leaves of cabbage, rotting apples, you get the idea, mixed with fallen leaves, grass clippings, and similar stuff. You can find numerous books with information on composting. Put it in, then let it work. Next year, add it to your gardens or flower beds. It is suggested not to put meat-based foods into compost unless the bins are secure, to keep down problems with skunks, bears, raccoons, the neighborhood dog, etc.

Plan E: The last useful stop on the food waste bandwagon is biogas generation. I don't know of any around here, but in Britain they have loads of them, using all kinds of food waste from "post-consumer" to factory wastes. Methane (natural gas) is generated--very useful stuff. The residue is a good soil amendment. The challenge is getting the icky stuff to the biogas plant, but the British are figuring it out.

Plan F (for failure): The worst thing to do with your food waste is to send it to the landfill. There it rots underground along with the rest of the stuff, producing methane and other greenhouse gases which make their way to the surface and into the atmosphere. Many communities are having problems with overly-full dumps and landfills.

This is waste of the worst sort--human labor and fossil fuels used to grow the food, which is now not of any use to any living thing, and increases the greenhouse gas and waste disposal problems.

BTW have you thought about the term "fossil fuels"? Fossil fuels were laid down under the ground along with the fossils. The natural cycles which make these things take millions of years. But we're burning through it as if there is no tomorrow....

Oh, another thing, "tomorrow", as in the next few decades, is going to be different from the last 50 years. Hate to break the news to you. The excesses that we're accustomed to are going to disappear. Somewhere between a technological paradise on the one hand, and apocalypse on the other hand, is where we're headed. If you want to read some really well-reasoned articles on these and related subjects, try the Archdruid Report.

Food Waste--A Global Tragedy

2009-11-02T08:38:00.000-08:00

I have recently finished reading Waste: Uncovering the Global Food Scandal, by British author Tristram Stuart. His analysis features the UK food distribution system, with significant contributions about the U.S. system and other European countries. The facts are scandalous, as he says. This book is well worth the reading. Here are a few highlights.

Food waste starts right at the farm, particularly with contract growers for supermarkets. Supermarket chains order x pounds of something, like carrots, to be delivered by y date, but they can reduce their order if by that time, demand is down, they already have too many, or for any other reason.

If the grower does NOT deliver x pounds of carrots at that time, he/she is liable to lose their contract for the next year. Weather or crop failure is not an excuse, so the grower who wants to keep their contract will plant more rows of carrots than needed.

If the supermarket chain reduces its order arbitrarily, the grower is left with excess carrots. Or if there is a bumper crop, probably the other growers have one too. The residual value of all those extra carrots is probably not worth the trouble of packaging, shipping and marketing, so they are often plowed under.

Next, a tremendous amount of food waste is caused by "aesthetic" considerations. Carrots must be perfectly straight, so they all fit neatly into those bags. Non-straight carrots are dumped or sold for animal feed, or in the U.S. are sent to be milled into "baby carrots". Potatoes that are too big: out they go. Apples that are too small: out they go. Any produce item with a little mark on it, a slightly funny color, etc., out they go. In some cases they go for animal food, in some cases particularly in Britain, they are used as feedstock for methane generation. But often they are just composted or plowed under.

It gets worse.

Sell-by dates are the culprit in much meat and dairy-related waste. These are very conservatively set; most foods are good for another several days or even a week or more. This factor combines with the desire of stores to be fully stocked with every possible item, even perishable, regardless of level of sales.

Between the overstocking and the pessimistic Sell-by dates, packaged entrees, sandwiches, salads, and similar foods are usually just dumped. Stuart says that in the U.K., the dumpsters are generally locked to prevent the poor from getting their hands on the food. If not that, the foods are emptied from their packaging and stirred all together with non-food waste to make them unusable. Due to landfill fees in the U.K., more of this waste is going to methane generation, generating pennies on the dollar of their worth as food for humans.

The loss to human food by dairy and meat waste is multiplied by the tremendous amount of human food (corn, soy, wheat, etc.) fed to conventional livestock.

Other sources of food waste include eating too much (waistline as waste), general dislike of organ meats (though some of this goes into pet food), the packaging of perishable food in amounts that are too large for singles or couples to use before they go bad, and the tendency of many children to take a bite of something and throw it away. And the waste of by-catch for seafood runs up to 90% for some items such as wild-caught shrimp. Waste of seafood is particularly tragic since many species are drastically overfished.

Another cause is poor household planning: buying what's on sale instead of what the family will eat; forgetting what you have in stock; getting busy or tired and eating out instead of eating what's on hand.

Stuart has done a great deal of research, and finds that counting waste sources from farm to garbage can, approximately 50% of food production is wasted in the sense that it is does not meet its destiny as human food. The U.S. has more than four times the amount of food required by the nutritional needs of the population (some is fed to livestock). The production of surplus food is a huge contributor to greenhouse gas emissions; the planting of trees on land used for wasted food would offset half to all of man-made emissions.

The good news is that enough food is produced now to give everyone in the world enough to eat. The bad news, of course, is that we do not do that. U.S. households spend about 9% of their income on food, half of what was spent a few decades ago. Food is SO CHEAP for most people that they do not value it. Convenience trumps instrinsic value. It must be especially galling for the hungry, especially in our wealthy nation, to know that tons of perfectly edible food end up in landfills. And it is not showing respect to the animals, the farmers, the land, the Earth, when we treat these resources as unimportant.

So what can we as individuals do? I welcome you to join me in trying to reduce the food waste in your own household. And I welcome suggestions from readers for specific and general ideas.

After all, it isn't just food, it's lives. Lives of food animals, lives of farmers, lives of wild animals whose habitat has been taken away for more soybeans or oil palm or whatever. It's past time for us to consider the Earth and its dwellers as precious.

* Be a better manager. Be aware of your stocks. Use or preserve items before they go bad. Buy only what you will use. There are a multitude of ways to use or preserve food items, and I'll discuss a few in upcoming posts.

* Buy direct from farmers, through CSAs, or through farmers markets or cooperatives. This will eliminate much of the "aesthetic" waste from the supermarkets. The crooked carrot and knobbly potato are perfectly good food.

* Buy grass-fed or pastured meat, dairy and eggs when you can. This will free up more food for humans, and will reduce the need for intensive monocultures.

* Teach your children to respect food. One way is to let them have a garden. The carrot they grew is more precious than the carrot from the supermarket. Or take them to a small farm or CSA, so they can see the plants and animals. Model respect for food in your own behavior.

* If you have fruit trees or shrubs in your yard, work at putting that harvest to good use, not just letting it fall on the sidewalk or be swept into the garbage.

I'll talk about some of the ways to reduce food waste on the community level soon.

Starting our Third Year

2009-10-31T14:14:00.000-07:00

Jim and I started our local eating journey with the 100-mile diet on Oct. 31, 2007. Oct 31 is the Celtic New Year, which starts at the beginning of winter. The Celtic day starts at night at the setting of the sun. That's one reason why Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, and Halloween are so important in our calendar. The Celts believed that at the turn of the year, the veils that separate our world from the spirit world became very thin. They of course considered it to be a holy time.

Two years ago we started "making the road by walking" with local food. We're not quite as strict as when we started, but local eating is working better and better. During this year we started getting more foods from the "100-foot diet"--eggs from our chickens (and chicken from a few of them), vegetables from our front-yard garden, and our selection of fruits.

This year the apple trees bore heavily, but no crop from the peach trees. So we have boxes of apples in the garage and applesauce in jars. But we don't have dried peaches. The greengage plums had a modest showing. They are SO Sweet I don't like eating them fresh very much. I cooked them down to a plum butter, which didn't need any sugar, and is very tasty.

Our food circles: 100-foot circle (from our yard)--chicken, eggs, fruit, some vegetables; 15-mile circle--CSA, most meat, some other vegetables, some dairy products; State of Colorado circle (square)--some staples, Western Slope fruit, pastured poultry; Western U.S. circle (not exactly round)--the rest of the staples, nuts and dried fruits, olive oil and olives, a little Alaska wild-caught salmon; the World--tea black and green, a few cans of artichoke hearts, spices, a little coffee, a little chocolate.

Our seasons: When you eat local food, you pretty much eat seasonally. This year I put less food up for out-of-season eating. I'm feeling more comfortable each season with what the season brings.

I enjoy the lactofermented foods in winter and spring, but not in summer. We have tomato juice and sauce put up, and some nectarines and peaches, bread and butter pickles, tart cherries in the freezer, apples in the garage. Today I got a bag of pumpkins from our CSA: enough for pies, soups, and casseroles.

Local food is just what we eat. Some evenings I look at the plates of food I have fixed, with high-quality local meat, vegetables, beans, cheese and other dairy, and fruit for dessert. What a sheer delight of freshness and flavor! How fortunate we are.

I have spoken to other members of our food cooperative. They also feel that their food choices and meals have changed to be so much more supportive of good health and enjoyment. And we can feel glad to support local farmers and ranchers in hard times. They need help from all of us. They are dedicating their lives to bringing good food to the tables of their neighbors. We're happy to bridge the gap between the growers and the eaters.

Happy New Year to all of you! May the coming year bring happy times and good meals to you and your families.

Three for the Season

2009-10-23T13:06:00.000-07:00

We're at the turn of the seasons now--the summer bounty is fading fast, the fall fruits and vegetables come into their own. If you haven't put up enough tomatoes to last the winter, it's probably too late. This was a tough year for tomatoes here; they grew slowly in the cool summer, and just didn't want to ripen. Boxes of field tomatoes for preserving showed up late, for just a few weeks.

We're ripening three trays of small tomatoes from the garden, yellow gooseberry and red pear. They're very tasty; as they turn their appropriate colors we snag them as snacks. The juicy cooling salads of summer are morphing into salads of sturdier greens, trimmed with carrot and daikon and the last few tomatoes.

Here are some turn-of-the-season recipes.

Last of Summer Pasta Dish

3 frying peppers (mild light green), seeded and chopped
2 cloves garlic
1/2 medium onion, peeled and chopped, or one leek sliced
2 stalks celery
oops too late for the zucchini--omit
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium head broccoli, cut into small flowerets
3 or 4 good-sized tomatoes with a few soft spots
4 oz tomato sauce (optional)
Fresh or dried herbs as available
salt and pepper to taste

Grated parmesan cheese
Freshly cooked pasta, regular or gluten-free

Heat the oil, add the chopped onion, garlic, peppers, and broccoli. Saute over medium heat for 5 minutes or more. Chop the tomatoes, cutting out the spots; don't bother to peel. Add tomatoes to skillet, and tomato sauce if using. Add herbs--maybe 2 tsp mixed fresh herbs such as thyme, oregano, marjoram, or 1 tsp dried, and if you have a little parsley, chop that and throw it in too. Add salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer covered until the tomatoes start to disintegrate and the vegetables are done.

Have the hot pasta drained. Place in bowls, top with sauce, and sprinkle with cheese. Yum.

-----------------

Beans and Greens Soup

I'm always careful to soak all beans very well before cooking, even these little guys. Be sure to pick over your beans well, removing bits of dirt or rock, and broken or discolored beans. Then rinse and soak. Don't use salt when cooking dried beans; it toughens them. You can salt them after they are tender.

1 cup navy beans
a little ham or small piece of ham shank, if desired
1/2 medium onion, peeled and chopped fine
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
time......
2 cups chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water
1 lb hardy greens as available: kale, chard, tatsoi (a dark green spoon-shaped green), mustard greens, turnip greens, etc., washed and chopped
8 oz tomato juice or 4 oz tomato sauce
1 large tomato chopped
1 tsp Thai curry paste of your favorite type, or 1 tsp chili flakes
salt and pepper

This is where the time comes in:
Day before, pick over, rinse and soak the beans in water to cover. Next day, drain, add fresh water to cover by 1 inch, ham if you're using it, and chopped onion. NO SALT at this point. Simmer 2 hours or more until beans are tender. Add water as needed to keep it from going dry.

While preparing dinner, heat the beans, add the broth and the chopped greens of your choice, and the tomatoes. Stir in the curry paste, chili paste, or chili flakes to the hotness desired, and salt to taste. If you like, you can throw in some small pasta such as Orzo or alphabets (always fun). Simmer 10 minutes or more, until everything is suitably tender.

-----------------------------------------

Rhubarb Crisp

We recently got some fall rhubarb, and I made this decadent dessert. It was totally wrong of us to eat the whole pan that night, but we did.

2 1/2 cups chopped rhubarb (frozen is OK too)
1/2 cup sugar, or to taste (you could use Succanat or honey)
1 1/4 cups brown rice flour
1 cup gluten-free oatmeal
8 tbs butter (1/4 lb stick)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup brown sugar (or 1/2 c Succanat and 1 tbs molasses)
1/2 cup slivered almonds

Put the rhubarb in a small pan with water to just cover, and the sugar. Stew gently until it becomes soft.

Mix flour, oats, sugar and salt in bowl. Work in butter with your fingers, until like crumbs. Reserve half of the mixture. Spread the other half in a 8x12 baking dish. Then spread the rhubarb mixture over it as uniformly as possible. Mix the almonds into the reserved crumbs and sprinkle evenly on the top.

Bake at 375 degrees 30-35 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit a few minutes before dishing up. You don't need to top with cream or ice cream, but if you do, I won't tell.

Guesswork

2009-10-05T12:45:00.001-07:00

An important part of local eating in a temperate-zone area is putting up food for the winter. We're doing our best to eat fruits and vegetables from Colorado, and when winter arrives, they will no longer be available. So it's up to me to put them into jars, dry them, or freeze them.

The guesswork comes in: how MANY jars? what kinds of food? Besides that, every harvest season is different. It's a lot of expense and work to put up things that nobody wants to eat. And you really would like to finish off 2008's jars or freezer items before you start putting 2009 crops away.

What you should NOT guess at is when you preserved something. Every every jar gets its own label: what it is, month and year. I was pretty much amazed in the winter, as we went through jar after jar marked 8/09, 9/09, 10/09.... I must have been in a food-preserving frenzy last fall.

I put the dried goods into jars too, labeled with item and date. I mark the freezer bags with dates too. Rotating stock is SO important.

RESULTS:
--The green beans and snap peas I froze last year must have been blanched too long, because they came out kind of mushy. We weren't very interested in eating them, and they are mostly still in the freezer. Too bad.

--The nectarines and peaches in light honey syrup were WONDERFUL. I did a load of them, and then another load. Box after box. We enjoyed them all winter long, and I still have 16 pints left. Overshot just a little, but we'll eat the 2008s first. I did a few plums too, which were nice.

--The tomatoes were fabulous. I made stewed tomatoes, tomato juice, chopped tomatoes, and tomato sauce. We used them as pizza topping, in soups and casseroles, and tomato juice for drinking. I'm down to one quart juice, and 1 half-pint sauce. Turned out just about right, since the tomato crop is VERY late this year. I've got tomato sauce simmering on the stove right now. I'd like to find another box of tomatoes to put up, while they're still available.

--I still have some dried fruit left. I haven't dried any more this year, since we have so much. I'm drying more herbs this year: basil and dill from my CSA, mint from the garden, celery leaves from a head of celery I found at the Farmer's Market. This is not prime celery-growing territory, and I was happy to see it.

--We polished off all the lactofermented (pickled) cucumbers (6 half-gallons), in short order. They were followed by the (3 jars) lactofermented green beans, and we got through most of the (2 jars) of lactofermented salsa. I still have a few jars of mixed lactofermented veggies; I seem to lose interest in them in the summer. For this year, I've made three jars of wax beans, and one jar of cukes finished, with another three sitting on the counter now. And I've just put 2 jars of kim chee in to ferment.

I'd like to do a jar of salsa if I can get the tomatoes. And a jar of sauerkraut. Lactofermented pickles stay happily in your frig for months, sometimes even into the second year, if you don't eat them in time. Overshot just a bit on the lactofermented veggies. Or, perhaps we're not eating enough of them?

--I dried some green beans last year, forgot about them most of the winter, then discovered them in time to add to winter soups. They really come out well. I also have dried bell and banana peppers; I used some but not enough.

Some vegetables have gone to waste this year, because I have not gotten to them either in cooking or in putting up. You shouldn't try to put up old stale, wilting veggies, but plan ahead and put those veggies up when they're fresh.

--This year we have apples, loads of them. We haven't had a crop for the last two years. I'll be doing applesauce and apple rollups, so I don't think I need any more peaches and nectarines this year. We'll pick through the apples, choose the nicest ones and store them in boxes in the garage for the winter. These apples keep pretty well until March in a cold place. The rest will go into the kettle for applesauce.

--This winter I plan to do more sprouting. The fresh foods taste so good in the middle of winter. It's easy to do in a jar on your counter.

So, in general, my guesswork of last year worked out pretty well. I'm fine-tuning this year: what do we need more of, what less? What worked, what didn't? Where do I need to work harder at finding recipes and using the foods that we have?

To sum up, the rules of thumb for food storage are:
****Label Everything, with the date.
****Store what you eat, eat what you store.
****If you have a bounty of something, put it up while it is still fresh.

Year of the Garden: Update

2009-10-05T12:18:00.000-07:00

The baby lettuces you see in my previous post grew up into an astonishing array of variety in colors and shapes, nice medium-sized heads. I picked them all before the freeze last week. The kale, chard and chicory breeze right through mild freezes near 30 degrees. This was my most successful garden bed. Planted in mid-July, the greens had time to get good sized before frost. We had many servings of delicious thinnings along the way too.

I picked a big bowl of little tomatoes before the frost. My varieties this year were Austin's Red Pear and Hartmann's Yellow Gooseberry. Both small and very flavorful. We picked only a dozen ripe ones, with hundreds on the bushes. I covered the plants, but the foliage got zapped anyway. However, the remaining green tomatoes survived, and I picked the rest of them the next day. I have 5 trays of the little guys waiting to ripen up (or give up).

The pumpkin vines did fine, making ten pumpkins. The watermelon and cantaloupe didn't ripen. The beans were a total disaster this year--I think my problem was rabbits or voles eating all the new shoots.

The flowers and herbs in their cement-block pots did wonderfully. They were easy to water. The mint stayed within bounds. And they were so pretty. Hopefully the perennial herbs will overwinter.

I'm now in apple harvest. We have three mature apple trees, variety Delicious, as Delicious used to be: sweet and flavorful. Great keeper in the garage over the winter. Sweet enough to not need any sugar to make applesauce and apple butter. They're also a good cider apple, mixed with bitter-sharp cider apples.

These are Delicious as they were before the plant breeders got to work trying to make them more red. The watery, pithy, flavorless Red Delicious in the stores, mostly from China, are so cheap that U.S. growers have been grubbing out their Red Delicious trees. There is no U.S. market any more.

Delicious need to be allowed to ripen on the tree to get their full flavor. Mine were finally ready to go this week. I've been sampling the last couple of weeks, to make sure they have come into their full flavor. We'll put aside the best into storage boxes, and I'll make applesauce out of the ones with worm damage.

A friend of mine offered to bring a troop of Girl Scouts to help pick. I figured maybe 5 or 6 girls, very much appreciated. Wow! Thirty girls showed up with at least 10 parents. They were scampering around, climbing up in the trees, filling up boxes. In less than an hour they had the trees pretty much picked, and they are big trees, full of apples. The energy of the young is astounding! And the power of community.

Picking apples has been close to an ordeal in previous years, when my DH and I did all the work. It is still fun to pack those beauties away in boxes and give them to friends and neighbors, but it's a lot of work. Now I have the boxes packed, and the girls had fun and took apples home with them. The chickens are enjoying the windfalls.

I didn't get to the wild plums the way I wanted to. I checked when they were not ripe (and VERY sour). Then time got away from me, and they ripened and mostly fell off before I got them picked. They are tasty when very ripe, a lovely dark pink color. Since we're not big jelly eaters, we just eat them fresh, or I freeze a few.

I picked the Greengage plums about a month ago, just as they were dead ripe. I made jam out of them; they are hard to dry, being so sweet. The jam was sweet, spicy and flavorful with just the plums--no sugar required. They're really almost too sweet to eat out of the hand.

The Year of the Garden

2009-08-27T08:20:00.000-07:00

Last year was the year of Eating Locally. There was so much buzz about it; I was asked to speak to a number of groups. Books were printed, blogs were started. This year even the supermarkets have "Buy Local" stickers on some things. This is good, of course, though the few marked produce items are more of a token than a movement.

For us, Local Food has just become the way we eat. I've loosened our restrictions, but we're still eating probably 85% to 90% local food, more than last year when we had non-local food on hand that I was using. We've become accustomed to beautiful fresh fruits and vegetables, non-feedlot beef, chicken and pork from animals that had a good life scratching and rooting in the open air. The prospect of going back to commodity-based industrial food would be unspeakably dreary.

Someone recently asked me why I supported local foods. I told him that my purposes had enlarged somewhat over the past year. At first, it was mainly the somewhat abstract (though still important) issues of climate change and peak oil. After having eaten this way for a while, I'd have to say the most important issues are:

Supporting local farmers and growers, and local small food processors, helping to create a robust local foodshed;

Enjoying the best quality food we have ever eaten, at no more cost than industrial commodity and imported food;

Eating a far healthier diet: cooking from ingredients rather than eating junk food and fast food; eating more fruits and vegetables and less grain; avoiding pesticides, herbicides, unpronounceable additives, MSG and high-fructose corn sweetener.

Back to my theme: if last year was the year of Eating Locally, this year is the Year of the Garden. People who haven't had a garden in years put one in this year (myself included). You see many more gardens in front yards than ever before. Seed companies are reporting phenomenal sales growth.

In our local food cooperative, produce sales are down somewhat, although we have more selection, and more direct-from-farm offerings this year. Our local CSAs are having more trouble selling their shares. Some is due to the economy, but much is due to people growing their own. When you have a couple of hills of zucchini (or even a couple of plants!) you've GOT zucchini.

It hasn't been an easy year for gardens in northern Colorado. June was unseasonably cold and wet; numerous hailstorms pounded young plants into the dirt, and pounded the replanted gardens two weeks later. On the other hand, we haven't had to water all that much. Tomatoes are slow to get ripe with cool days and cooler nights.

Let me tell you about My Garden. We live a few miles outside town, so the front yard/back yard what-will-the-neighbors-think problem does not bother us. With all the trees and shrubs on our acre, however, the only truly sunny spot was in the front yard. The front yard, nominally in grass lawn, is pretty well filled with clover and heavy pasture grasses, and our soil is clay that turns to brick in the summer sun. And I've got some physical problems that make it difficult for me to do heavy garden work. So I thought all last year about what I would do, and all this spring, and finally, a little late for this season, decided on a plan.

Rototilling the heavy grass (mostly Johnson grass) would make a new plant come up for every little fragment of cut root, so that was out. And I won't use herbicides. I tried raised beds a few years ago, with treated wood (uh-oh, arsenic). The other problem was that the dirt pulled away from the wood, and water just rolled off the soil, down the boards, and away. I'm sure expert gardeners out there are just rolling their eyes now.... But remember, if a solution requires a huge amount of physical labor, it's out for me, no matter how worthy it is.

Ingredients: Last year I made a compost pile using four straw bales for the sides, and filling the center with alternating grass clippings, kitchen scraps, leaves, etc. Then it stewed over the winter. This spring the straw was breaking down too, as it would.
We also had loads of cardboard and heavy paper bags from the food coop distributions. We had some wood chips left over from a previous landscaping effort. And I ordered a pile of mixed dirt and compost from a local landscape service. (I can detect eye-rolling again, but sometimes you have to work with what you can...)

We got cement blocks for the border. We laid out a double layer of cardboard and heavy paper bags, right on the grass (mowed short). The area was about 20 by 22 feet. Then we set the cement blocks, cavity side up, around on the edges of the cardboard (don't want the Johnson grass to come up in the cement blocks either). The north and south sides of the bed were blocks all the way, but on the east and west side I left matching openings (one block wide) to form three paths that you could run a wheelbarrow all the way through. The layout was to have four beds, four feet wide each, with wood-chipped paths between them running from east to west.

A kind friend came and helped us, and the three of us wheelbarrowed the compost and old straw and spread a four-inch layer over the cardboard. We sprinkled on some old dry chicken manure (saved from the chicks I raised last year). Next, we put two inches of soil, to keep the whole thing from blowing away, and I watered it all well. In further sessions, DH wheelbarrowed up loads of dirt, we built up the four beds another four inches, and I filled in all the little cavities in the cement blocks. Then we spread the wood chips into the paths.

We need to get some more chips, but what we have prevents muddy shoes at least. The beds themselves are nice and fluffy, because you don't need to step on them for any reason. The beds are just four feet wide and you can reach in from both sides.

I got bedding plants: flowers and herbs, some perennial, some annual, whatever I could find in mid-June. Loads of mint, marigold, zinnia, oregano, marjoram, snapdragons, nasturtium, sage, thyme, petunias, basil, carnations, nicotiana, and more. So late in the season, the flowers were on sale at $1/flat of four. I planted them into the cavities, alternating flowers and herbs.

I had started tomatoes, peppers, and eggplant, by then somewhat potbound. The day before the garden was ready, our local packrats found the plants hardening off on the back patio and nipped off ALL the little peppers and all but one of the eggplants. Tomatoes don't taste good, so they were safe. I picked the best five tomato seedlings and the slightly chewed eggplant and planted them in one bed. What fun! It's been years since I had the joy of having a garden.

In the second bed I planted one hill each of early watermelon, pattypan squash, Lady Godiva pumpkin (grown for the plentiful soft-shelled seeds), and cucumber. They have plenty of room to ramble.

In the third bed, my failure. I planted green and wax beans, two rows down the entire 20-foot length. Once they got up, some little nibblers came every night and nibbled off all the new shoots (could be rabbits, could be packrats or voles). Finally the plants just gave up under the constant attack and died. Oh well. Next year, maybe some cages or other protective gear...

In mid-July I planted the fourth bed to fall greens: mixed lettuce, upland cress, rainbow chard, Russian kale, and mixed chicories. I covered it all with Reemay cloth (or similar), a non-woven light cloth that shades the worst of the sun, keeps the soil moist, and keeps out the four and six-footed eaters pretty much. You water right through it. By the end of the season it's shredded. I've been thinning the rows, and using the thinnings as mixed salad. We've had three meals off of it so far. The upland cress is very spicy; I've never grown it before.

My very-late-started tomatoes are setting fruit. The pattypan squash has several nice-looking fruits almost ready for harvest. The pumpkin is running uproariously along the bed, setting fruit. The lemon cucumber is setting its first fruit too.

I'm thinking that as the weather gets cold, I can cover the tomatoes (which are on the south end) including the cement blocks, which will help hold the heat through the night. The same for the greens bed, which is on the north end with its own row of blocks.

I water with the hose most days that we don't get a good rain, especially the block cavities which dry out quickly, but it takes only 5-10 minutes. Another five minutes daily to pull out the seedling weeds. I've never had such a trouble-free garden. The flowers and herbs around the bed make it particularly beautiful.

We only used up 2/3rds of the dirt I ordered, and we've got another half-load of cardboard built up, so I am planning to make another smaller bed, with more straw and leaves in it, this fall. Ideally a layered bed like this should be made in the fall, so it can create soil over the winter. I didn't want to wait; I Really wanted a garden this year, so I chose plants that don't need to root deeply.

Next year all that stuff in the middle will be well broken down, and I could even plant potatoes or carrots if I wanted. To keep this garden up, I need to be diligent about pulling weeds, never step on the beds, and be sure to build up the soil over the winter with more organic material. I should never need to rototill. The money invested in setting up the garden will pay back in future years of produce.

Compromises all the way around: money spent, dirt hauled in, cement blocks used (not eco-friendly). On the other hand, I used what I had: sunny area, cardboard and paper, compost, straw and old manure. I avoided problems: aggravating our fussy clay soil, encouraging the Johnson grass and clover, planting in tree-root or shaded areas. And I've got an informal setup for season extension, with the blocks next to the beds.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

2009-07-25T09:04:00.000-07:00

We just got back from a trip to Utah, with the focal point the Shakespearean festival in Cedar City, Utah. Cedar City is in southwestern Utah, not far from Bryce and Zion. We have been there several times during the years. It's fun to hike around and see the red rocks in the daytime, and see an excellent play at night. One of our very favorite places.

It was HOT! July is not the best time of year to go, but that's when the plays are shown. The roads and national and state parks were filled with tourists, many from Europe. I heard German, French, Italian, Spanish (from Spain), Russian, and Japanese spoken. I visited with a very nice woman from Holland (Dutch sounds kinda like German but not quite, so I asked her where she was from), there with her family at Goblin Valley State Park in middle Utah.

In a Hanksville, Utah, restaurant, a waitress said more than 70% of their customers were from Europe. And at Ruby's Inn outside Bryce, where the line of customers for their excellent dining room was half a block long as we were leaving, the cashier said that their business was down this year. We were lucky at Ruby's Inn, by eating "unfashionably early" at 6:00 p.m.; she said the Europeans tend to eat later. Even American tourists often show up after the sun goes down and they have taken the last possible shot of the gorgeous rocks.

We finagled our brief stay at the Grand Canyon to avoid the worst of the crowds. We came in at Desert View in the early evening, and I turned into the first view point. Not too crowded at that time of day. There was a bagpiper on an overlook, in a kilt, playing a serenade to the canyon. He was not associated with the park, just some guy. I can just imagine him planning this tribute; he played excellently, and got a warm round of applause by the approximately 30 people listening. Then we sat on a little hill and watched the sun go down over the buttes with people from many nations.

We drove in the dark to our motel just south of the main entrance. We rousted ourselves out of bed before 7:00 a.m. and shot out to the rim and the overlooks. Hardly anybody there at all. The air was cool. The canyon was its phenomenally-gorgeous self. The ravens were having fun. We stopped at four overlooks and took pictures, including one of a 10-foot-tall bloom spike on a century plant, with a swallowtail butterfly getting its breakfast. We left the rim by 10:00 a.m. to see bumper-to-bumper traffic coming into the park. Whew! Just in time. We ate breakfast, checked out, and started driving north and east.

On the way back we took Road 12 from just south of Panguitch, across some of the most amazing scenery in the world. You come over the edge of a high plateau, into a wonderland of rocks and cliffs. There are excellent hiking trails along the road, but I'm not up to that now, so we drove on. Between Escalante and Boulder, Road 12 goes up and over the Hogsback, with 500 foot cliffs on one side (no guardrails), and at the narrowest point, on both sides. I'll talk more about Boulder later. Between Boulder and Capitol Reef National Park, we drove over the Aquarius Plateau, covered in aspen and conifers, with lovely grassy meadows. We saw a marmot by the road. It's the highest land around. From the top you get a 360 degree view of red rock areas, Bryce and Zion from the back, Arches, etc.

Then Capitol Reef for half a day, and Arches for half a day, and a miserable stop-and-go trip from Eisenhower Tunnel to Denver on I-70. Note to self: DO NOT plan a trip to come into Denver on I-70 on Sunday afternoon! What's more, our car was losing first gear by that time. But we got home, much later on Sunday than we expected, but safe and sound.

Now for the food part. At Cedar City we had kitchen facilities. I went to the store to try to buy sausage. Every package I picked up had high-fructose corn sweetener and MSG in it. Finally I found a brand that only had some sugar. Gasp! It was that way with everything. We have our local sources of excellent quality food here at home; on the road we were pretty much reduced to the Standard American Diet (also termed SAD). And sad it was. It was pretty shocking how out of touch we had become.

We ate at some decent restaurants, and some mediocre restaurants. Nothing really awful, but DH was gobbling Tums after each meal. We both put on some weight. I took some high-quality gluten-free wraps which lasted us for a while, and most of our lunches were cold cuts, cheese, lettuce, and these wraps. After they were gone, it was pretty slim pickings.

But in the midst of this desolation, we happened upon paradise at Boulder, Utah. A little town of about 180 population, with one truly fine lodge and restaurant. It was early evening, so we booked a room (lucky to do this without a reservation) at Boulder Mountain Lodge. Gorgeous large room, well appointed, in a peaceful and beautiful area. You could see the cliffs of the Hogsback road across the road. They had an 11-acre bird sanctuary next to our building. There were flower gardens everywhere.

If you're interested, look them up on the internet: Boulder Mountain Lodge. Associated with the lodge was a restaurant, the Hells Backbone Grill. Again, since we were eating early, we managed to slip in without a reservation. They seated us on the deck, next to the flower gardens, with hummingbirds coming to a feeder, and plied us with endless glasses of iced green tea.

I realized I had found a "local-food" restaurant. They got their meats from local ranchers, grass-fed. They got their vegetables mostly from their own gardens, and their herbs and edible flowers from the very beds we were sitting next to. Every dish was trimmed with fresh herbs and edible flowers. They change their menu every week as the available vegetables and fruits change.

The whole place just breathed love and caring. The food was fabulous. Not elaborate, just beautifully cooked from fresh ingredients, and immensely satisfying. Just to whet your appetite: Dessert was a scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream, topped with warm fudge-pinon nut sauce, and then trimmed with plenty of freshly-whipped real cream.

One of the owners came around talking to the customers, and stopped at our table. I told her I really appreciated what she was doing here, and we had a very nice talk about local food--both what she was doing and what I was doing in Loveland. She mentioned the "Marco Polo" effect, in that she bought coffee, tea, and chocolate that weren't produced in Utah, and didn't feel bad about it.

The restaurant has done a great job of integrating itself into the community which is mainly Mormon ranch families, on the basis of mutual respect and caring. Local sons and daughters work in the restaurant. They have wine tastings for the non-Mormon staff, and wine sniffings for the Mormon staff. They were able to get a liquor license for wine and beer, selling Utah beer and wine from Oregon and Washington state to their customers, many from Europe, who consider a meal without wine or beer seriously lacking.

I learned more about the restaurant from reading their book: With a Measure of Grace, a truly lovely book, out of print but available used. In addition to profiles of the owners and staff, and their experiences, it includes many yummy reasonal recipes that they serve at the restaurant. It is very inspiring to a local-food enthusiast to find other people doing the same thing, in their localities, and with such a degree of success.

So I'm relaxed, recharged, finally caught up with the threads of my life at home, and newly inspired by Blake Spalding and her friends at Hells Backbone Grill. And we both have a greater appreciation for how far we've come from SAD, and for our home-cooked, fresh, locally grown foods.

The Green Leaves of Summer

2009-07-05T17:14:00.000-07:00

What a treat to be able to eat the fresh greens of summer. The field lettuce has come in, in a wide range of colors and shapes. It tastes so good after a winter and spring mostly on stored foods. And the "braising greens" are also ready to go.

We all know what to do with lettuce, but I had to hunt for a few new recipes for Greens. Braising greens are more robust than salad greens, and need some cooking to be at their best. Lettuce is not generally included; although you can cook lettuce, I've never had the heart to do so.

Braising greens can include endive, escarole, radicchio, bok choy, mizuna, chard in green, red, or rainbow colors, larger spinach, kale in their variety, collards, turnip greens, beet greens, and more. Even radish greens, if very fresh, can also be in the mix.

Kale is the most robust of them, and if your kale leaves are fairly good sized, slice them thin so that they cook along with the others. If you are using chard in a quick-cooking greens recipe, cut the ribs out and slice them thin, then chop the leaves. That'll give the ribs a chance to catch up on getting tender.

Chock-full of vitamins and minerals, greens are a great addition to your family table.

Braised Greens with Butter and Ginger

1 lb whatever braising greens you have on hand
4 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons tamari
1 finely sliced garlic scape (curly flowering top) or one
garlic clove minced
1 tablespoon peeled minced ginger root
1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped

Bring a kettle of water to boil, meanwhile cutting up your washed greens in 1" lengths. Drop greens into boiling water, cook for about three minutes. Meanwhile, in another large skillet, have the butter melted with tamari, garlic, and ginger. Don't let it cook down. Drain the greens, then put in the skillet with the seasonings. Cook and stir a few minutes until mixed. Stir in
the chopped cilantro and serve. Unless your kids are really allergic to greens, they should like this one.

Summer greens with tomato and spring onion

1 lb washed and chopped greens
3 tablespoons olive oil
1 medium sized spring onion (small bulb with its greens) sliced (or you may use about 4 scallions sliced)
3 slices dried lemon (optional)
3/4 cup stewed tomatoes
1/2 teaspoon Thai-style curry paste, or more to taste
salt to taste

In a large skillet, heat oil and simmer onion till soft. Stir in the washed drained greens, and cook over medium heat until they start to soften and braise. Tear up and add the lemon slices if you have them. Stir in the stewed tomatoes and the curry paste. Reduce heat, put a lid on, and let simmer for 5-10 minutes until greens are tender.

Spiced White Beans

1 cup small white beans, such as navy or Great Northern, soaked overnight
2 teaspoons curry powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/4 teaspoon garlic granules or powder
1 teaspoon mild to medium chili powder (to your taste)
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

Drain the beans, then add fresh water and cook for 2 hours or until tender. (You should always soak and cook beans well to avoid digestive upsets.) When beans are done, drain and reserve most of the remaining liquid. Add the curry powder, the cumin and chili powder, salt and pepper to taste, and the olive oil. Simmer 10 to 15 minutes to get the flavors to meld. If they get dry, add a little of the reserved liquid.

This makes a nice side dish. For a double treat, serve with one of the above greens recipes. For a vegetarian, that's a meal. For meat-eaters, accompany with freshly-cooked sausage or on-hand cooked chicken pieces.

And enjoy the green leaves of summer!

PS: FINALLY I put labels on the Recipes posts, so you can find them more easily.

Just Say No

2009-06-27T13:15:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted for quite a while, due to a number of issues that took some time to deal with. And we were pretty much finishing the Food Storage year. Now that the CSA has started, I plan to post more recipes to use that wonderful produce.

But today, I just want to discuss getting our power back.

1. I read recently that the airlines have reconfigured their planes to give you even LESS legroom than before. There are no meals, except that you can pay money for a little tray of junk food. You pay for checking luggage, which must be causing even more problems with oversize carry-ons. Many flights are being cancelled so that the remaining flights are even more crowded, if possible.

The answer: Just Say No. Don't fly, unless it is an absolute necessity. Don't play their game. Wait until they price their flights fairly to cover their costs and don't try to nickel-and-dime you to death. Wait until they treat you like honored customers instead of suckers.

2. I've stopped donating to many of the nationally-known nature and wildlife organizations. I've gotten terminally tired of getting unsolicited calendars, greeting cards, address labels, keychains, postcards, etc. etc. etc. The first calendar is OK. The 7th one is just a disposal problem. Just think of the forests that are cut down, and the petroleum wasted to get this unsolicited stuff mailed to you in order to pry some more money out of you.... Certainly at the costs of mailings, and the pounds of it I receive, they have spent five times my donation just asking me for more money.

The answer: Just Say No. I have stopped donating to these organizations. I save my donations for the few that don't continually dun me for more money. I donate to smaller groups, local groups, our food bank, Spikenard Farms to help save the honeybee, and similar organizations.

I wouldn't mind donating to the larger well-known organizations if they had a class of membership where they would ask you once a year for a donation, and tell you what they did with last year's donations, and leave you alone the rest of the time. I could feel good that my hard-earned donations are actually going to help the egret or the sea turtle or what-have-you, instead of wasting resources.

3. Credit cards. Congress can't seem to pass meaningful credit legislation that takes effect this year when people need it. The financial industry lobbyists are pretty powerful. Even the weak bill that did get passed, to take effect in 2010, caused tremendous threats and fulminations from credit card companies.

Now they're threatening to add yearly or monthly fees to every card, to punish those who pay their balances each month. Do you know what they call people who pay their balance every month? Deadbeats. I'm proud to be a deadbeat!

The answer: Just Say No. Put your credit card in your dresser drawer. Keep one or maybe two going by charging a few small items each month. Pay off the rest and let them go. You can get along with cash or checks for practically everything you buy. Vacations can be a problem booking airfares (Just Say No) or rental cars, I know, but for daily life you really don't need a credit card. I'd like to see the credit card throughput in the U.S. drop to about 1/4 or less of what it is now. Perhaps then we would be regarded as valued customers instead of suckers. We have the power; let's use it.

4. The statement: If you save and don't spend, you're contributing to the recession. I get highly annoyed at these claims that you encounter every day in the news. "We could get over the recession if only the consumers would open their pocketbook." This is worse than idiocy. It is self-serving commercialism plain and simple. Media needs to sell advertising. Advertisers need to sell products. So if they can guilt-trip you into buying more stuff you don't need and going further into debt, it'll help THEIR bottom line. Not yours, obviously.

The answer: Just Say No. I'm gratified to see that savings is way up in this country. It shows that we can take back our power. When unemployment is high and looks to get higher, saving is the only sensible thing to do. If you save enough, by not buying useless consumerist schlock, then you may be able to weather a spell of unemployment or, the latest, furloughs.

I'll tell you a secret. Money that you put into banks and safe investments (there are a few) actually goes to work in the system. Deposited money will eventually go out in loans to those that can use them. That's why banks were invented.

I recommend locally-owned and financially-stable credit unions. They tend to lend in your local community, benefiting your neighbors and your local merchants. Just Say No to those national bank conglomerates. They're too big already. They don't need your money, either as a depositor or a taxpayer. If a financial organization is too big to fail, it's too much of a danger to the country. So, help them get smaller by removing your money.

Burden Is On You?

2009-05-15T10:58:00.000-07:00

I just read an online article about the safety of industrial frozen food: With frozen food, the burden of safety is on you.

The problem gained public awareness with contamination of frozen pot pies in 2007. Investigators never figured out which of the more than 25 ingredients was contaminated with salmonella. The company (ConAgra) more or less threw up their hands. They said if they cooked the vegetables enough for safety, they turned to mush. So they put directions on the label to cook until internal temperatures were 165 degrees, nearly impossible to do in a microwave. Oh well....

And the article went on to say that these problems would become more serious, due to aggressive cost control. This involves sourcing of ingredients such as dough from a multitude of smaller suppliers, and importing vegetables and other ingredients from other countries with no testing procedure for pathogens. Manufacturers say the costs of testing and tracebacks are too high. Too high for what? Profit? How much is too high for thousands of people who get sick, and dozens who could die?

Oh What to do? What to do? (this is a trick question)

Locals know: start cooking fresh food for yourself. Avoid anonymous-ingredient packaged processed food. Not even the manufacturers of these foods know where the ingredients are coming from, or how they have been treated along the way.

This means learning how to cook, for those who are weak on that skill. But just think of what you'll gain! Really fresh, tasty food, from ingredients that you are sure of, saving money, and enjoying the creativity of turning high-quality ingredients into tasty dishes. And think of what you'll lose: high-fructose corn sweetener (almost ubiquitous in processed foods), cheap fats, too much sodium, artificial flavors, colors, and preservatives. And a little time.

The most surprising thing for DH and me when we started cooking and eating local food is how great the flavors are. Food that really tastes like something. Beans that cook quickly with lots of flavor. Really fresh vegetables. Fruits with a perfumed sweetness rather than a pithy cardboard consistency. Pizza that sits lightly on the stomach and the waistline, but is fully satisfying.

Don't consider that cooking is necessarily the job of the "wife" or "mother" of the family. The art of cookery is something for everyone in the family to know, including responsible children and teens. Teaching your kids to cook will have lifelong benefits to them in terms of improved health and decreased food budgets.

But the worriers will say: what if my ingredients are contaminated? To start with, if you source local foods as much as possible, it's much less likely. Wash your veggies well, and peel such foods as carrots. Spices won't be local, but you use such a small amount. Buy staples from a high-quality supplier. The food (such as a meat pie) doesn't sit around for months in warehouse freezers, possibly thawing and refreezing several times and allowing bacterial growth before you eat it. You prepare it, pop in the oven, and eat it. So pathogens from minute quantities of ingredients don't get a chance to grow.

I really see nothing on the horizon that will make industrial processed foods safer for us. The manufacturing chains are too long, and too inadequately policed. If they were adequately policed, the costs would be too high to make these low-end foods economical.

It is up to us to figure out how to source and fix good healthy food for our families. The burden IS on us, but we can also get the benefits of changing our food buying and preparation habits in terms of flavor, nutrition, and enjoyment.

Bon Appetit!

Spring! Ahhhhh!

2009-05-03T13:32:00.000-07:00

Spring again today, after yet another spell of cold, rainy weather. Everything is green, except for the daffodils (yellow) and apple trees (pink). And the wild plum is a mass of white blossoms.

I went to the first Farmer's Market of the season. As last year: bedding plants, gourmet dog biscuits, baked goods, pasta, kettle corn, more bedding plants. No greens yet. But the lovely Honeyacre hydroponic tomatoes and English cucumbers were there again. I bought some of each. We've been eating the tomatoes I put up last year, steadily through the winter, and enjoying them greatly. But fresh will be really wonderful.

Compared to last year, I don't have the "empty" feeling I did. We're still eating nectarines and peaches in light honey syrup I put up last fall. We're still eating green beans and snap peas from the freezer (though they are somewhat mushy). The last few Winesap apples have gotten totally mealy and are about to be compost, but they held out a good 6 months, which is a great track record for unwaxed home-stored fruit. We still have dried home peaches and prunes, apples, and fruit rollups, in case we run out of fruit before late summer.

The apple trees are covered with blooms. I'm glad we have a warm day today, since it's been too cold for the bees to fly. Sprinkling of blossoms on the cherry trees. No sign from the peach trees--it may have been too dry over the winter. Two front-yard euonymus shrubs look *really* bad--poor things. I should have winter-watered them. I'm just hoping they'll pull through. Everything else looks OK.

I've been buying the occasional head of celery or broccoli--not local, but U.S. grown. We're mostly through the lactofermented veggies: still some carrots, some sauerkraut, half a 1/2 gallon jar of salsa. Note to self: make more pickled green beans and more salsa next year.

We still have some onions from our CSA, but everything else is gone. I managed to cook up all the pumpkins before they got soft.

I tried to grow Lady Godiva pumpkins last year (they're grown for the seeds, which are "naked" without a hard shell). The ones I planted did very poorly; too shady. But I had a volunteer "something" which made a large orange and green striped fruit. I thought it was a hybrid of something, picked it before frost, and left it alone. Looking through a seed catalog, there was a picture of exactly my squash, and it was, ta-da, Lady Godiva. It has a hard shell compared to most pumpkins, which is why it kept so well. You don't eat the flesh, which is thin and stringy. It was filled with beautiful green seeds in a very light transparent coating. I saved and dried some for next season and roasted the rest. They were Delicious! I'll definitely try that one again. We do love home-roasted pumpkin seeds.

I've been getting sprouts in the store (hatched in Denver), and they taste SOOoo good in the spring. If I was better organized, I could sprout my own. I've still got a load of black oil sunflower seeds in the shell, which are what is used for sunflower sprouts.

If I can get a garden going, and a season extender (cold frame, hoop, or such like), we can have fresh greens probably from March on, and in the fall up through mid-December. Eliot Coleman's book "Four Seasons Gardening" is a good resource.

I went to a nice class at the Larimer County extension for pressure canning. In some ways it was encouraging. I got my pressure gauge tested and it is nearly correct. In other ways, not. The vegetables need to be cooked for a really long time, and then you're supposed to cook them some more before eating them. By that time, there wouldn't be much left. I may look into canning meat or poultry, to have quick meals that don't require electricity to store, carefully following the USDA rules. But for vegetables, I think I'd rather lactoferment them: beans, carrots, etc. They will keep 9 months to a year in the frig, and don't require cooking. You can put up a jar of them in 10-15 minutes, instead of the all-day siege of pressure canning.

I haven't been posting recipes lately. Our food choices are fairly simple these days, using stored food and a little fresh, so I haven't discovered anything particularly new and exciting. Once the CSA starts up in June, I'll be sharing some more ideas.

Worry and Hope: Two Sides of the Same Coin

2009-04-06T17:23:00.000-07:00

I have been doing a lot of reading recently, trying to wrap my mind around the economic meltdown and its connection with exponential growth. A post to come soon on this subject. It's not "cooked" yet.

Meanwhile, I want to spend a little time on "worry" and "hope". In our mythologies, worry is supposed to be "bad", and hope is supposed to be "good". But aren't they the same thing?

I have recently seen worry described as "a way to avoid admitting powerlessness over something, since worry feels like we are doing something" (Gavin DeBecker, The Gift of Fear, quoted by Jill Fredston in Rowing to Latitude, a truly fine book).

And hope has been defined as the wish for an outcome that we cannot directly control. (If we could control it, we would do so, and not have to rely on hope to do it for us.)

The two meanings are not too much different, actually, except that in the former case we are focused on the glass half-empty, and in the latter case we are focused on the glass half-full. But it's the same glass, and the same water.

So I can say I "worry" about the future, for example regarding peak oil. I worry that the lights will go out, and we'll be cold, and it'll be dark, and we won't be able to get to town. (And I do worry about these things sometimes.) Or I can say that I "hope" that we'll quickly implement alternate and sustainable energy sources, or that we'll convince a meaningful percentage of our citizens to really take steps to conserve, postponing and moderating the inevitable downward slope. But in each case, I am putting my energy into wishful thinking rather than something practical.

And because these wishful feelings do nothing but cause a stress reaction in me, and perhaps wear out the patience of those who are obliged to listen to me, neither worry nor hope do any good for me, my family, my friends, my community, or the world.

What is the alternative to worry? There are at least two: practical action, and fearlessness. Fearlessness frees us for action. What is the alternative to hope? Again, practical action, and hopelessness. Hopelessness frees us for action.

Why is that?

Because hope shackles us to inaction. We feel that somebody else, some organization, or some governmental entity will solve it all for us, and keep us from having to make the hard decisions and do the hard work. We feel that we are owed security in our lives, and we give up our time and some of our freedom for it. But the unavoidable fact is that the our lives are insecure. No government, no promises, can change that.

Pema Chodron, in When Things Fall Apart, says, "Hope and fear come from feeling that we lack something; they come from a sense of poverty." She suggests that we put "Abandon Hope" on our refrigerator door. She says, "Abandoning hope is an affirmation, the beginning of the beginning."

I have a long way to go before understanding and internalizing this wisdom. From a practical standpoint, I know that action is an antidote to useless worry. That is one reason why we started eating local food, started the LoveLandLocal food cooperative, got an energy audit, changed our lightbulbs, drive a high-effiency car. That is why I talk to groups about local food and our experiences, and post on this blog.

Making the internal changes to stop worrying, to stop my idle hopes that we can wriggle out of the problems that our generation and several before us have caused, is not as easy. To the extent that we rely on hope for the future, we are not facing the truth. And when we do not face the truth, see it clearly, and learn to deal with it, we set ourselves up for a lifetime of suffering. Facing the truth is painful and disconcerting, but not nearly as painful as trying in every way to evade the truth until it slaps us in the face so hard that we can no longer ignore it.

I'm seeing way too much wishful thinking ("hope") in the corridors of power these days. No matter how much money the Feds print, it cannot reinflate the bubble caused by criminally negligent speculation. We cannot "hope" that things will go back to how they were, because the truth is they never were that way; it was speculation, gambling, a delusion that we were running too fast to see, a vast Ponzi scheme. And it came to the same end as all Ponzi schemes; a few rich people get even richer, and the rest of the participants get poorer.

What I want to hear is the truth, and people courageous enough to tell us: this is the way it is. It's not the end of the world, it's the end of a dreamworld. Life will be different. It'll be worse if you define the quality of life by the quantity of goods you have and the amount of energy you can waste. It can be rich in the intangible ways, the ways that matter, in love, caring, community; in meaningful work; in responsibility and integrity.

Stovies

2009-03-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

The Sausage and Vegetables recipe in the Rutabaga post is rapidly turning into one of my favorites. It is actually a Stovie, a Scottish dish resembling a casserole, but cooked on the stovetop. Stovies come in all kinds of flavors, but usually involve leftover meat and potatoes. From there on, the sky's the limit!

Making a Stovie

Choose some form of meat. Possibilities include:

Leftover roast beef, pork or lamb, cut into smallish pieces
Leftover roast poultry
Thick-sliced or chunk bacon, cut into pieces
Uncooked mild-flavored link sausage
NOT hamburger or ground meat; that would change the dish totally

Some form of appropriate cooking fat, a tablespoon or two. Consider:

olive oil, always a favorite
bacon fat or drippings (traditional Scottish), especially those from the roast you are using for the meat
chicken fat (if it's roast chicken you are using)
home-rendered lard, if you have it (commercial lard is nasty)
butter, especially with chicken

Onion--a necessity. Peel and chop.

Root vegetables. Your choice of:

Potatoes--traditional. Almost all stovies have potatoes; some have only potatoes. If you're Irish, you want "floury" potatoes. I've been using fingerlings. Some people like baking types, some people like boiling types. Wash, then peel or not as you see fit. Cut into chunks. Don't use already-cooked potatoes for this dish.
Rutabagas. Peel and cut into chunks.
Carrots. Peel and cut into chunks. Use less carrot than the other roots, so its sweet flavor does not overpower the dish.
Turnips, celery root, parsnips (a light hand on the parsnips), if you have them. Don't use beets because it'll turn a strange color of pink.

Herbs and spices. You don't want strong flavors here, which would overwhelm the flavor of the meat and roots. Some ideas:

dried or fresh parsley, a good handful.
other dried or fresh herbs, with a light hand.
ground allspice
garlic cloves, peeled and sliced, with a light hand.
ground cumin or coriander
nutmeg

Salt and pepper to taste.

A little broth or water.

Proportions
Here you have a good deal of latitude. More meat? Less meat? Use about one onion per 1/2 lb of meat, and amounts of vegetables to suit yourself and what you have on hand.

Putting It Together
Peel and chop your onions. Wash, (peel), and chop your vegetables. Have the meat of your choice ready. Cut link sausages in half, cut bacon into chunks, cut leftover meats into pieces.

If you are using bacon, fry the bacon lightly to let it release some fat. Otherwise heat the oil or drippings. Stir in the onions and saute for about 5 minutes. If you are using sausage, add it now and stir for another 5 minutes. Then add the vegetables, stir a few minutes. Add the herbs, spices, salt and pepper and a little broth or water, appropriate to the amount of other ingredients. At least 1/2 cup liquid. You don't want to continue to fry the ingredients, but you aren't making stew either. After adding the water, stir in any leftover meats that you are using.

Cover the pan, let it simmer on the stove 20-30 minutes, until roots are tender. Voila!

My Favorite Stovie
This makes a generous one-dish serving for one, or enough for two people with some other dishes on the table.

1 tbs CA olive oil
1 medium CSA onion, peeled and diced
6 oz local pork sausage, raw, cut into 4 pieces
1/2 lb CO fingerling potatoes, cut in slices
1/4-1/2 lb CSA rutabaga, peeled and cut in chunks
1/4 lb CSA carrot, peeled and cut into chunks
2 tbs dried CO parsley
1/2 tsp allspice
1/2 tsp salt, some grinds of pepper

Saute the onion in the oil for a few minutes, then brown the sausages lightly. Stir in the vegetables and spices, add 1/2 cup water, cover and simmer 25 minutes.

Late Winter Update

2009-03-08T14:44:00.001-07:00

We're into March now, into the "hungry time" of the old days, when the winter stores are getting low and the new spring growth isn't out yet.

It's been very enjoyable to have a nice stock of fruits and vegetables put up from last summer and fall. So far we haven't run out of anything, but there are some things I just haven't used, or used fast enough. Here's a run-down of our stores:

1. Tomato sauce, juice, stewed tomatoes. We have really been enjoying the home-canned tomato sauce I made in large quantities last year. The flavor is superlative. I put a little tomato sauce into a pan, add a little olive oil and Italian herbs, and simmer it for 10 minutes to thicken up a bit, as pizza sauce. I also take a pint jar of tomato sauce, add bits of sausage or ground beef, herbs, and olive oil, and serve over pasta, GF pasta, or spaghetti squash. We may have enough to last until next summer's tomato season.

2. Nectarines. Still just to die for, the nectarines canned in a light honey syrup. This is a special treat for us, which we have about once a week for dessert. I put up over 40 jars, and the supply is holding out well. It might make it until the next harvest.

3. Frozen snap peas. I haven't served these much; they turned out a little mushy even when frozen in vacuum-sealed bags. But they're tasting better and better to me, as it's been many months since we had fresh.

4. Frozen green beans. Again, somewhat mushy. DH wants me to make more lactofermented green beans next year, and less frozen.

5. Fresh apples. Stored in our garage, the November Winesaps from the Western slope. I bought a whole case, which was packed in dimpled trays to keep the apples from touching each other. They are still holding out marvelously. One has rotted, out of a box of 40 lbs. We're still enjoying them tremendously. Fruit makes up our dessert for all but holiday meals. We have about 15 pounds left. The Winesaps are tremendous keepers. The Macintoshes that I had earlier, with their delicate skins, become wrinkled quickly.

6. Bread and butter pickles. I made 7 pints (water-bath canned), and have opened up and used one. They're OK, but just don't taste as good as my mother's bread and butter pickles did when I was a child.

7. Fresh pumpkins. Yes, I still have three pumpkins from my CSA awaiting me. It's amazing that they have kept this well. I need to get busy and not tempt fate. We have been enjoying the spicy pumpkin soup I posted in a previous article; we've had some pumpkin pies over the holidays; and I've used chunks in stews and chili. We've really enjoyed the toasted seeds too.

8. Frozen pesto. Somehow, I just haven't remembered to use the pesto. I have a number of small jars in the freezer; it's just a matter of getting them out. Pesto is good on pizza in place of tomato sauce, it's good on roasted or braised chicken, it's good on boiled potatoes, pasta, rice, etc.

9. Spaghetti squash. Finally got busy and cooked the spaghetti squash. The seeds are good toasted, like pumpkin seeds. You really can have it under pasta sauce, and hardly notice the difference. Spaghetti squash keeps amazingly well, often well into March, with their hard shells.

10. Onions and potatoes. Although I've been using them and enjoying them, I haven't been able to keep up with the supply of potatoes from our CSA. The potatoes have figured out spring is well on the way, and are all sprouting. BTW, you can use sprouted potatoes, as long as they are not green. Green potatoes should just be tossed, as they are somewhat poisonous. Our onions are holding out fine in the garage (which is cold but never freezes). I store onions and potatoes (separately) in paper bags on the ledge by the stairs into the garage, with the top of the bag folded over to prevent light from getting in. Onions and potatoes should not be kept in the same bag, as they do not get along and cause each other to spoil faster.

11. Lactofermented veggies. I outdid myself with lactofermentation last summer and fall. We've been through 5 jars of cucumber pickles (DH really loves them), 2 1/2 jars of green beans, one jar of tomato salsa, half a jar of sauerkraut, and half a jar of vegetable medley (tomatoes, onions, green pepper, ruby chard stems, cabbage, and dandelion greens). I haven't yet tried the bok choy kim chee or the collards, and we have one jar of cucumbers and one of salsa left. I also get lactofermented veggies from the CSA, including carrot and Napa, and delicious daikon and Napa kim chee, so we're not running out.

12. Dried vegetables: zucchini, green beans, green peppers. I've used the green peppers from time to time, though there are still some left. I don't seem to get into green beans and zucchini.

13. Dried herbs: parsley, thyme, marjoram, oregano. I've been using the parsley, though I still have plenty after making a miscalculation in ordering for the food coop which meant I bought and dried 15 bunches for home use. It doesn't really take that large a quantity of dried herbs to have enough for daily cooking.

14. Frozen broccoli: I froze extra from our CSA share, and we've used it all up. It turned out very nice.

15. Dried apples: not really using, since we still have fresh ones to eat. But when the fresh are gone, we'll enjoy them.

16. Canned plums and spiced peaches. These are both fine; I canned a smaller quantity of them than the nectarines, but I'm sure we'll use and enjoy them.

17. Carrots from our CSA. Carrots keep a really long time in the frig. Our CSA was bursting with carrots for the winter share. I put them into salads or soups, pureed with parsnips or turnips, or just peeled and cut for fresh eating. They're part of nearly every day's food. I have a multitude of carrot recipes waiting for some time and initiative on my part, too.

18. Dried plums, prunes, apricots and peaches. I bought Colorado plums (Santa Rosa variety), prune plums and apricots from the coop. We have Siberian peaches in the yard which had a nice crop last year. I dried all of these; the fruit dryer was busy seven days a week last August and September. I've been using them as snacks, but we still have plenty left. I dried them very carefully this year, picking through the partially dried trays to pull out the ones that were dry enough, continuing to dry the others. This means that the early ones were not OVERdried, hard and flavorless. It's a bit more work but the quality of the product is much better.

I put the dried fruit in quart jars this year, so if any got moldy I wouldn't lose a whole half-gallon jar of them (which is just TOO depressing). So far they have been holding out fine, and will probably make it through to the table.

If I made more desserts, we'd use more of the dried fruits. But both of us are watching our weight, and we don't need the carbohydrate-rich calories of sweet desserts. Dried fruit is sweet enough for me.

19. Staple legumes. I've started serving legumes with most dinners, cooking up black-eyed peas, baby dry limas, or other beans to have as a side dish. Another alternative is bean soups or split pea soup. They are particularly nice in winter and early spring. I'm planning to do more with the lentils that I have on hand. Lentils make good European-flavored dishes (like soups and stews), as well as Indian curry-style dishes, and spicy Mediterranean dishes.

20. EXCEPTIONS--This year I loosened the reins a bit for the winter season, and have been occasionally buying celery, escarole, and swiss chard. The cooked chard tastes really wonderful this time of year. I make salads from the escarole, a nice lightly-bitter winter green. (You can also make soup from it.) And celery is such a nice touch in salads, soups, etc., that I decided a modest quantity of California organic celery wouldn't be a bad thing to have.

This year the local eating is going much more easily than last year. This is my reward from the many hours of canning, lactofermenting, freezing and drying that I did last summer and fall. It's a pleasure to put together a meal from our stores. And my recipe research has turned up a number of favorite dishes that we enjoy, many of which I've shared with you.

Ruta... Ruta.... Ruta.... Swede!

2009-03-08T13:38:00.000-07:00

Actually the name is rutabaga (baggy root in Swedish), formerly called Swedish turnip (though it's not a turnip), thus Swede.
Rutabagas look like a big rough turnip, with a yellowish cast. But they are in the Brassica napus family, with Siberian kale and rapeseed, rather than
Brassica rapa with turnips. The ins and outs of the multitudinous Brassica clan are still being worked out by the botanists.

Rutabaga's flavor is milder and sweeter than the bite-y turnip, and it lends itself to many of the uses of potatoes as well as those of turnips. Here are some. Enjoy!

Mashed rutabaga--like mashed potatoes. Peel and cut up, cook in boiling water until tender, drain and mash with milk and butter, seasoning with salt and pepper. Or you can use half potatoes and half rutabagas.

Oven-fried rutabaga--like oven french fries. Peel 3 lbs rutabaga and cut lengthwise into french-fry shaped pieces. Mix 1/3 cup finely grated Parmesan cheese, 1 teaspoon paprika, and 1 teaspoon garlic salt. Toss rutabaga with 1 tbs olive oil, then sprinkle the seasonings over them as evenly as possible. Bake in oven at 425 degrees for 20 minutes, until tender inside and crisp outside.

Baked rutabaga--like baked potatoes. Don't choose the huge honker rutabagas for this, but more modest sized ones. Scrub very well and bake in oven until fork-tender. Cut open, add a dollop of butter or sour cream, and enjoy.

In vegetable soups--like turnips and/or potatoes. Peel and cut into suitable-sized pieces in mixed vegetable soups. It will cook right along with other roots.

In roasted root vegetables--alongside turnips, potatoes, carrots, parsnip, onion, and/or leeks. Whatever you have on hand. Peel and cut all vegetables into equal-sized chunks; cut leeks into 1" lengths. Toss with some olive oil, sprinkle with herbs such as rosemary or thyme, and salt and pepper to taste. Bake at 350 to 400 degrees (very forgiving) when you are baking something else. Turn occasionally. They will take 45 to 60 minutes, depending on the temperature and how big your chunks are.

In pot roast--with carrots, other vegetables. Brown a roast of beef in a little oil, add one or two chopped onions, liquid to half-cover (liquid can include up to 1 cup tomato juice or wine), salt and pepper to taste. Simmer meat slowly for 3-4 hours till tender. Peel and cut up rutabaga, carrot, potato, celery root, etc., any roots that you have except for beet. Arrange around the roast in the kettle, put the lid on again, and simmer another 30 minutes until tender. Taste for seasoning; add salt and pepper if needed. You could also add a little oregano or marjoram at the beginning of the cooking process, or other herbs to your taste. You can thicken with roux if you like: work equal parts of butter and flour together, form into small balls and stir into liquid. Use about 1 tbs flour for each cup of liquid you want to thicken. This works just as well with rice flour for the gluten-intolerant.

Stovetop sausage and root vegetables--In kettle, heat 1 tbs oil, add 1 lb mild pork link sausages cut in half, and brown lightly. Add 2 large chopped onions, stir and brown another 5 minutes, then add 1 pound each of peeled cubed rutabaga and potato, and 1/2 pound peeled cut carrot. Add 2 tbs dried or 1/4 cup fresh parsley. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Add 1/3 cup stock or water, cover, and simmer about 30 minutes, until tender.

Cornish pasties. Rutabagas are traditional in Cornish pasties. Make your favorite double-crust pie crust recipe, chill while making filling. Mix together 3/4 lb round steak cut into 3/4" cubes; 2 medium baking potatoes, peeled and sliced; 1 medium onion chopped; 1 medium carrot peeled and sliced;
1/2 lb of rutabaga peeled and chopped; salt and pepper to taste. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Divide dough into four parts and roll each out into a 6" circle. Place 1/4 of filling on one side of each circle, dot each with 1 tbs butter, fold over the other half and crimp closed. Gently place on baking sheet, and bake one hour.
I would not advise a gluten-free crust for Cornish pasties; it just wouldn't hold together.

This should help you get through your winter stock of rutabagas, or allow you to be on speaking terms with a new vegetable friend. Happy eating!

The Wisdom of the American People

2009-02-10T09:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I read an article on five things missing from the stimulus plan. The Stimulus Plan: 5 Missing Pieces. No. 5 was: please tell us whether it is better for the country for us to save or to spend? (The rest of the "missing pieces" are well worth the read as well.)

Actually, the wisdom of the American people has answered this question. The household savings rate went from -2% sometime last year to +6% now. A nation full of households has decided that living well beyond our means is no longer a smart thing to do. The strange compulsion so many people had, to spend and spend and spend as if we were rich, as if the stock market would go up for ever, as if real estate price would climb into the stratosphere, is suddenly broken. Now we're suffering the hangover from years of excess. But who could ever believe double-digit growth for ever, in the sober light of morning....

The good we do by controlling our spending and paying off debt:
* With every payment we make, we reassure the banks and credit unions that they will not be left holding the bag.
* With every payment we make, we free up some capital for the banks and credit unions to lend to responsible people and businesses.
* With every payment we make, we reduce our household financial risk in case of unemployment, wage cuts, hourly cuts, health problems, and life's other unexpected financial challenges.

This is better for the country in the long run than for us to continue to run up debt supporting the "Retail Space Bubble" that has grown in the last few years. Based on truly unsustainable spending by the American "consumer" (a word I hate), chains opened up way too many new stores, and too many people started up new retail businesses.

It's sad when stores close and retail salespeople lost their McJobs. It's even sadder when someone has invested their life savings in starting a new business, well-thought-out or not, and has to close their doors. Running the gauntlet of the new frugality will mean that the best stores will survive--the ones that sell 1. quality items 2. we need at 3. reasonable prices. And the stores with a poor business model, or too much competition, will fail. This is the real world. The pie doesn't keep getting bigger forever.

Another example. A month or more ago, I was reading articles about what it would take to save the Big Three automakers. One class of article were interviews with leading economists and commentators. Most of them were not employees of the companies in question. They said, in general, that the Big Three need to push wages down, shed workers, and slip out of legacy commitments for health care and pensions, and that was all that would save them. The second class of article talked to individual people, the wise Americans. They said, "They need to start making cars that people want to buy." Bingo! You get the prize.

If the Big Three paid way less people way less money, cut out their pensions and medical insurance, and made cars people aren't interested in buying, they would still go belly-up. Joe Six-pack at the gas station knows that the price of gasoline will go back up. He is not very interested in buying a big gas-hog unless it is a necessity for his business or his large family. But the talking heads and the CEOs and CFOs still don't get it.

Now a little blast at the word "Consumer". A consumer is somebody that uses up resources. It is the opposite of producer, somebody who makes something, improves something, or saves something. If you start a bonfire and throw dollar bills onto it, or $200 athletic shoes, you are a consumer. Are we rightly called the Consumer Society? I hope not. At the end of World War II, with much of the world in shambles, the U.S. was the biggest producer of goods in the world. We could call ourselves a Producer Society then.

Let's just retire the word Consumer as applied to U.S. citizens. To a store you should be a Customer, not a Consumer. To an arts organization, you are a Patron (Matron?). We hope that more of us will have the chance to become Producers again; people need jobs, and the U.S. needs to produce things to restore balance to the world economy.

What can we do?
* Keep paying off debt.
* When you buy something, try to buy American-made. I keep harping on this. Let the stores you patronize know that you are interested in buying American-made goods and giving jobs to American workers.
* Buy local foods and support your local farmers and ranchers.
* Buy locally-made foods and suppport local small business (and encourage them to buy local ingredients).

The dollars we spend are small. But the dollars we all spend are a huge force in our country and the world, for good or ill. Put your dollars where your own best interests lie.

Recipes next time.....

Parsnips--A Winter Favorite

2009-02-06T09:07:00.000-08:00

Here as promised is the amazing Parsnip Spice Cake recipe, and some other ideas. Parsnips are a great winter food. Their flavor improves after they are touched by frost. Then they last, if kept cool, until well into the spring. They have a flavor which contributes well to other winter foods.

Parsnip Spice Cake
You can fix this either wheat-based or gluten-free.

2 eggs
1/2 cup sunflower, canola, or olive oil
2/3 cup sugar or succanat, or 1/2 cup honey
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp ground cloves
1/4 tsp ground allspice
2 cups grated parsnip
1/3 cup raisins
1/2 cup chopped pecans, walnuts, or hazelnuts
1 cup Golden Buffalo wheat flour
OR 1 cup unbleached white flour
OR 1 cup brown rice flour

Grease a 9" springform pan. Mix eggs, oil, sugar, baking soda, salt, and spices. Stir in parsnips, raisins and nuts and mix well. Then stir in your choice of flour and mix. You're right, there is no milk or water added, but the recipe works.

Spread the thick batter evenly in the cake pan and smooth the top. Bake at 350 degrees about 45 minutes, until done. Let cool 10 minutes, then remove the springform and put on a plate for serving.

You could bake this in a 9" cake pan, well greased, and invert it onto a rack for cooling, if you don't have a springform pan.

You could change the spicing to your own taste, or use dried cranberries or other dried fruit in place of the raisins. After it is baked, you could sprinkle it with powdered sugar, or frost with a cream cheese frosting, but I think that would be over the top. It makes a fine moist cake or coffee cake as is. It's fun to tell people it's parsnip cake and watch their looks of incredulity (even disgust), until they taste it. You don't have to apologize for this nutritious treat.

Irish Parsnip Puree
1 lb parsnips, peeled and sliced
1 largish carrot, peeled and sliced
1 large potato, peeled and sliced
1 apple, peeled and cut up (optional)
1 cup broth
1/2 tsp allspice
2 tbs butter

Put vegetables and apple in kettle, add broth. Simmer until tender. Drain, reserving liquid. Run through blender, using reserved liquid as necessary for consistency. Return to kettle, add allspice and butter, salt and pepper to taste.

Parsnip Go-With

* You can add peeled and cut-up parsnip to many kinds of soups. It is particularly good in black-eyed pea soup or split pea soup. Try it where you would add turnip, or use them both.

* Add to oven-roasted vegetable mixtures along with carrots, turnips, potatoes, onions, leeks, rutabagas, or what-have-you. They will cook perfectly well along with other roots cut up similarly. (Oven-roasted vegetables take 45 minutes to an hour in a 350-degree oven, or an hour at 325, or less time at 400. You can generally fit them alongside other things you are baking. Toss vegetables in a little olive oil, sprinkle on your choice of herbs and a little salt and pepper.)

* Saute peeled cut-up parsnips in butter in a skillet, then add a little liquid and herbs of your choice and braise until tender (maybe 20 minutes, more or less, depending on the size of the pieces). You may top with sour cream, yogurt, or sharp cheese, and/or finely chopped walnuts.

* In a little water or stock, cook equal amounts of cut-up carrot and parsnips (maybe 25-30 minutes). Puree in blender, adding a little cream or milk, and salt and pepper to taste. You can do the same with with parsnip and turnip. Decorate with chopped parsley and a pat of butter.

* You can use grated parsnip in place of carrot in any baked good such as cakes, cookies or quick loaves, or use half and half grated parsnip and carrot.

Have fun with them. If you get them in your CSA share, don't let them sit in the frig until they are really past it (which will take a while). Parsnips are a valuable addition to the cornucopia of winter foods.

Natural Limits

2009-01-30T14:59:00.000-08:00

It's time to think about natural limits. This can be a bit frightening to those of us brought up to believe that the sky's the limit, there will always be more of everything, our children will always have it better than we did, the Dow Jones will always go up, well, you put in your favorite pipe dream here....

Overshoot is a fact of life on a finite planet. In the web of life, some life forms follow a slow and cautious path, having evolved ways of not overrunning their subsistence. Other life forms go for growth, growth, growth, inevitably followed by crash. Even a slight knowledge of the growth cycles of forms of life on this planet corroborates this fact. Lemming populations follow a bubble of growth, outrunning food supplies, then a crash. Their predators follow a similar pattern.

The motto of the cancer cell is growth at all costs, even at the cost of the life form it inhabits. This bears a startling similarity to the raison d'etre of the corporation: growth at all costs. Corporations are a very simple form of life. And the less supervision they have, the more they will adhere to their simple goals of more growth and profit for themselves, and externalizing the costs of their decisions.

There are some qualities that we have which are infinite. A teacher once told me that "the treasure which we have, which is Attention, is infinite". Yes. We can always pay better attention to ourselves, our bodies, our families, our earth, our behavior. And, most spiritual traditions believe in an infinite spirit, a universal soul or God. Most people believe that there is an infinite place of delight for us after death.

But there is no way that there is an infinite amount of physical "stuff" for every person on Earth; there is not an infinite amount of energy available to the ever-growing population of Earth. There is not an infinite amount of food, or an infinite number of acres of land on which to grow it. If we can't bring ourselves to live within our means on this planet, there are four predators which will do it for us: Famine, Pestilence, Plague and War.

Let's look at some practical, near-at-hand examples of limits.

1. Residential real estate cannot continue to rise in value far faster than the average take-home pay of the people who buy the homes. The real-estate bubble started about 2000. Take-home pay (adjusted for inflation) has been flat for decades. The real estate meltdown will stop when the relationship of home prices and take-home pay reaches historic norms again. You can't trick this process, or have the government bail it out by maintaining irrationally high real-estate values. If take-home pay sinks, as it looks likely, the real estate will need to sink to match.

2. The stock market cannot rise in a stable way any faster than the basic value-creating abilities of our society. This includes what we make, what we grow, what we dig out of the ground. Anything more than that is speculation and leverage. Leverage by its very nature cannot continue forever; it is a Ponzi scheme. Unfortunately, the news is even worse on this front. At the end of World War II, the U.S. had the largest manufacturing sector of any nation on the planet. Now, our claim to fame is that we have the largest retail sector, and the largest imbalance of trade. Well, you just can't make money selling "BUYING". Not in the long run, anyway.

What needs to happen? First, we need to start making things again. We need to restore the manufacturing industry in this country. We're smart enough to do this. Second, we need to stop buying cheap stuff from other countries, much of it worthless, some of it toxic. Third, we need to put some controls on the rampant leverage some organizations and traders are using to cheat the system and pull the nation's long-term value into their own short-term pockets.

3. We need less retail space. This is painful, I know, especially when it is a small business started by someone using their life savings. It is absolutely impossible for the people in the U.S. to continue the buying spree they have been on for the last decade. Can't be done. No more residential ATM. So, most unfortunately, small and large retail businesses have ramped up as if not just the spending, but the growth in spending, was going to last forever.

What we can do to help: support small businesses, local businesses. Keep the money in our community. Support local families with the dollars that you do spend. It is not our job to support people in China, Singapore, Sri Lanka, the Barbados, etc., by taking out debt that we cannot afford.

4. There is a natural limit to the energy available on the planet; almost all of it is nuclear energy--from our sun. The Earth has a sun budget coming in every day in the form of direct heating, ocean waves, wind, and hydroelectric. (How do you suppose that water got up into the sky in the first place?) The other basic source is Earth's natural radioactivity, which came from the dust of dead stars. We can tap that with geothermal energy installations. And Earth-based nuclear power plants, though there are lots of unsolved problems involved in that. (Peak uranium, anyone?)

We've been living way beyond our means on fossil fuels. They're called fossil fuels because it takes geologic time to make any more. The readily-obtainable fossil fuels are half gone, the easier half too I might add. Getting oil out of shale and tar sands is tremendously expensive in fuel and water, and it's uncertain that the world can afford it long term. Like somebody who has been poor for a long time and suddenly gets a big windfall, we've been drunk on the wonderful nearly-free energy we found. So much of it was wasted, and is still being wasted now.

The fossil fuels had a role to play in the planet's thermostat too. When the fossil fuels were laid down, the Earth was very hot, and the carbon dioxide level was very high. This carbon was sequestered under the ground, even under the oceans, where it couldn't do any harm. Like children, we found the wonderful treasure trove of carbon, dug and pumped it up, and are busy burning it, putting that dangerous carbon dioxide back into the air. Not much surprise that the Earth is heading toward a hot future.

5. There is a natural limit to the ability of Earth's natural systems to detoxify all the waste we're putting into it. When the population of the Earth was 50 million, with low technology, there was no problem. There was always clean air and water over the next mountain. No more. We have filled the planet, and now are filling the air and oceans with our waste. This is pretty serious, since we would like to have a human-friendly Earth in thirty years, in one hundred years, in a thousand years. Sure, all of us living now will be gone. But I don't want to think that my actions are leaving a toxic waste dump for my great-great-grandchildren.

This post has gotten into some serious long-term issues. Panic is not called for, and won't help us. In future posts, I want to consider a simple question: what would it take to have food on the table 100 years from now? 100 years is not that much time. The children of children living now could be alive then. Your grandchildren, perhaps, or their children. What actions can we take now to save something for them? to build something for them? to restore something for them? It is a matter of simple integrity in our lives to leave the world better than we found it, not worse. Starting from the goal of food within 100 miles, which is still a valuable goal, let's begin to look at "food for 100 years".

We will probably find that the two have a lot in common.

January: What We're Eating

2009-01-24T16:12:00.000-08:00

We're pretty much on winter rations now; it takes a little time to adjust from eating fresh food in harvest and putting it up, to admitting the harvest is over and eating the stored foods.

Fresh-----
We're still eating fresh apples, the late fall Winesaps from the Western Slope, that have been keeping wonderfully fresh and crisp in our cool garage. Winesaps are marvelous storage apples, good for fresh eating or pies.

We have four different kinds of potatoes: Yukons from our CSA, blue potatoes, red thumb fingerlings, and Russian banana fingerlings from White Mountain Farms in southern Colorado. They're holding out well in the cool garage in paper bags, protected from light.

We're just finishing up the Colorado red onions I bought in the fall from the cooperative, and have plenty of yellow onions from our CSA.

We still have pumpkins from our CSA; they're holding out remarkably well in a fairly cool and dry room. I need to push myself to use them, while they are still good. I used the other squash I had. The spicy pumpkin soup is a big favorite of ours. And cubed pumpkin goes nicely in stews or chile.

I fixed Parsnip Spice Cake recently; I'll post the recipe next time. Kind of like carrot cake; very moist and good. I used brown rice flour (CA), raisins (CA), and pecans (OK). It doesn't need frosting; I amazed our hosts by taking it to a potluck. Parsnip cake?

We're getting loads of carrots from our CSA; there is never a problem finding good uses for carrots. We're also getting a steady supply of daikon, potatoes, onions, leeks, beets and turnips, as well as several kinds of cabbage.

Frozen----
We've been eating the broccoli, green beans, and snap peas I froze last summer. I think I will cut down on the blanching time next season, since all of them are a little softer than I'd like.

Dried----
I've been throwing some dried bell peppers into soups and stews; they are very nice and I think I'll make more of them next season. I've also been munching on dried peaches, both homegrown and Colorado organic, prunes and apricots. We don't fix many desserts since we both have to watch our weight, so we usually have our fruit as its own sweet self.

I've been using home-dried herbs in cooking, particularly parsley. I ended up getting way too much parsley at the coop, and dried several jars full, but it's coming in handy now.

Canned----
We're really enjoying the nectarines I put up in light honey syrup. I loved the fresh Colorado nectarines so much, I got carried away preserving them, with 40 pint jars put up. Oh well; we can have one a week until the next harvest. I've also opened up several jars of spiced peaches, which make a wonderful ice cream topping. We've also had several jars of the Santa Rosa plums.

All the tomato products I use now are from tomatoes I preserved last summer and fall: tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and juice. I love the flavor. I find that homemade tomato sauce is not as thick as commercial, so for pizza topping I just cook it down a little more with herbs and olive oil.

Lactofermented----
We have really been enjoying the cucumbers and green beans I put up last summer. We've polished off four jars of cukes and two of green beans. The green beans get cut up for salads, or served as a side dish. I have one jar of cukes and one jar of green beans left. Next year: more pickled green beans, fewer frozen.

I also made several kinds of sauerkraut which are good, and lactofermented salsa which turned out really well. I haven't bought salsa in over a year.

Staples----
I've been cooking blackeyed peas and dry baby lima beans, having one or the other on hand most of the time as a side dish. We've also been having some pinto beans. I haven't yet cooked the black beans we got at the coop in January, though I had a very nice dish of them at a friend's house. I've got Colorado garbanzos soaking now.

DH gets his weekly homemade pizza, made with Golden Buffalo flour (NE), homemade tomato sauce, Rocky Plains sausage (Kersey CO), mushrooms (Hazel Dell, Windsor), fresh mozzarella (Windsor Dairy), and sometimes black olives (CA), and a little non-local trim in the form of artichoke hearts.

I've been enjoying the gluten-free oats (WY), or Colorado millet for breakfast. Local eggs are hard to find this time of year; sometimes we have to settle for "store" eggs. Maybe this summer we can get our own chickens again.

I've been cooking the Colorado quinoa, mainly in the form of Quinoa Cooked Like Pasta. Use lots of boiling salted water, add a cup of quinoa, and let cook for about 15 minutes, then drain. This is nice with (homemade) basil pesto, or other sauce.

Meat, etc.----
Most of our meat comes from Rocky Plains in the form of Colorado-raised buffalo, pork and lamb. We've been enjoying the pastured poultry available through Eastern Plains. One chicken makes several nice meals, and then the broth and meat from the carcass makes several more in the form of soups and casseroles. So although the chickens are expensive by the pound, they have a tremendous amount of flavor which is very satisfying and make a lot of nutritious servings.

Seafood is a miniscule part of our diet; once every few months, a meal of Alaskan wild-caught salmon.

Exceptions----
Compared to last year, I've eased up a little on the restrictions. I've bought balsamic vinegar, mustard, occasionally artichoke hearts, and regular and gluten-free pasta for infrequent meals. And for New Year's Eve, a carton of ice cream as a treat. Try butter pecan ice cream, home-canned spiced peaches, and a little Bailey's Irish Cream liqueur poured over. Yum!

Although I've loosened the restrictions, we're still using way more local foods than last year, when I was using the on-hand foods we still had. Central to our diet this winter are the fruits and vegetables I've stored in various ways, and the staples acquired through the cooperative.

I'm keeping track of how much I stored, and how much I'm using, so I can calibrate my efforts for next summer and fall.

Comment----
I'm enthusing over these foods that we have, and sometimes I say we eat like "kings and queens", but really, these are simple ordinary foods, not expensive. And we're eating not like kings and queens, but like ordinary people did 100 years ago, foods from diversified farms and gardens. The foods are fresh and flavorful, and satisfying.

By getting vegetables through our CSA, and bulk foods through the coop, we can get high quality for very reasonable prices. Cooking and putting up is essential for this kind of eating. You can't buy nectarines in light honey syrup no matter how much you have to spend, but for a modest cost you can make your own.

Like lots of things in life, it's the attention that you pay that makes the difference. Take time to find local foods; take time to cook; take time to preserve them for the winter. Cook and eat them with appreciation and respect. And give thanks for the bounty.

Pumpkin--More than Pie Timber

2009-01-11T15:50:00.000-08:00

We still have several nice-looking pumpkins from our CSA, and one from my garden. They keep fairly well at cool room temperatures, but it's time to use them. If you have pumpkins stored in your house, look them over every week or so, and be sure to immediately cut up and use any that are starting to get soft spots.

I have a pumpkin article from last year too: A Pumpkin of Your Own.

Fresh Pumpkin Pie
For this recipe you will need about 2 cups of homemade pureed pumpkin, just a little more than a pint jar if you have canned or frozen pumpkin. Commercial pumpkin is great, but it's mixed with squash and has some water squeezed out of it, so it is a little thicker. However, in a pinch you could use it in this recipe, just increase the milk by 1/4 cup. For your own pumpkin, be sure to start with pie pumpkins, not jack-o-lantern types.

2 cups pureed pumpkin (local)
2/3 cup honey (local)
1/2 tsp salt
3 to 4 teaspoons spices, chosen in your favorite combination from ginger, cinnamon, cloves (less), allspice, mace, nutmeg, or cardamon powder
1 cup milk or light cream
4 beaten eggs (for extra-large, use 3)
1 9" uncooked piecrust, preferably homemade

Heat oven to 450 degrees while you mix up pumpkin, honey, salt, spices, milk and beaten eggs. You can use a whisk or a mixer. Pour into pie shell, bake at 450 degrees for 10 minutes, then reduce heat and bake at 350 until done, about 45-50 minutes. You can test it with a table knife, inserted into the filling about half-way out from the center. If the knife comes out clean, the filling is done. Good with whipped cream.

For a 10" pie pan, increase the recipe by half (3 cups pumpkin, etc).

Making pie crust at home is really not hard, and your results are bound to be better than commercial crusts, since you are using better ingredients. Here are recipes for "normal" wheat-based piecrust, and gluten-free piecrust.

Homemade wheat pie crust
1 1/3 cup white flour, Golden Buffalo flour, or whole wheat pastry flour
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbs homemade lard (for pete sake don't use shortening or commercial lard, but you can use butter)
1 tbs vinegar
a little cold water

Mix flour and salt, then rub in the lard by hand until particles are small. Add the vinegar, then a couple of tablespoons cold water, and knead the dough together. Add more cold water until the dough hangs together. Roll out on floured surface, transfer to pan. Fill and bake.

Homemade gluten-free pie crust
1/2 cup millet flour
1/2 cup brown rice flour
1/3 cup sweet rice flour
1 tsp xanthan gum
1/2 tsp salt
6 tbs homemade lard or butter
1 tbs vinegar
a little cold water

Mix flours and salt. Rub in lard or butter. Then add vinegar and a couple of tablespoons cold water, kneading until it holds together, adding a little more water as needed.

Now, instead of driving yourself crazy trying to roll out this delicate dough, pat it into the pie pan with your fingers. Take some time to get it even on the bottom and up the sides. Fill and bake.

Cubed Pumpkin--Ingredient
Start with a pumpkin, cut in two on the equator, scoop out the seeds, separate them from the strings but do not rinse, and roast the seeds in the oven at 325 degrees with a teaspoon of oil and a little salt, until they are nice and roasted. With the remaining flesh, cut in narrow strips, cut off the remaining strings and the shell, and cut the meat into small pieces. If you do a good-size pumpkin you will have enough for several recipes. It keeps for several days in your frig.

Pumpkin Soup
2 1/2 cups peeled cubed pumpkin
1 goodsize carrot, peeled and cut into small chunks
1 medium onion, peeled and diced
1 garlic clove, minced
2 1/2 cups chicken broth or water
salt and pepper to taste
1/3 cup heavy cream, or 1/2 cup half and half
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped, or 2 tablespoons dried
1/2 to 1 tsp chipotle chili powder (ground smoked jalapenos)
1 tsp soy sauce
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp allspice

Put into kettle pumpkin, onion, garlic, carrot, broth or water, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil, simmer 30-40 minutes, until tender. Let cool a few minutes, then blend the soup in a blender and return to the pan. Add olive oil, cream, and spices. Add more water or broth if it is too thick. Simmer ten minutes, then taste for seasoning. You can add more chipotle, cinnamon, allspice, salt or pepper as you like.

Millet Pilaf
This recipe combines two of my favorite foods. Millet has a natural bitter coating like quinoa, which needs to be removed by toasting or by pouring boiling water over and soaking overnight. This recipe uses toasting.

1 cup hulled millet
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 medium or 1 large chopped onion
1 to 1 1/2 cups peeled cubed pumpkin
one quart chicken broth, vegetable broth, or water
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
optional: one cup sour cream
optional: one cup sliced fresh mushrooms

Toast the millet in a dry cast iron or other heavy skillet until it starts to brown. Remove. Add oil to skillet, saute the onions, then add back the millet, the pumpkin, salt and pepper. Transfer to casserole dish, and pour the broth or water over it. Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 1 1/2 hours. Keep a lookout and add more broth if it gets too dry. When done, stir in the sour cream if you like. You can also add the sliced mushrooms to the saute, before the baking step. Garlic could also be a nice addition at this point.

Save Some for the Kids

2008-12-30T12:01:00.001-08:00

Ten or twenty years ago, I often saw bumper stickers on the backs of huge motorhomes on the highway: "We're Spending our Children's Inheritance". This, I think, was supposed to be cute. Now the $90,000 motorhomes are sitting forlornly with For Sale signs, worth a small fraction of their purchase price. The former vacationers? Who knows? Some of them have run completely through their children's inheritance, and are wondering how they can make payments on their own house. The formerly-cute statement is somewhat chilling.

But in a larger sense, that is what we are doing as a community, as a nation, and even as a world. We were gifted with a finite but huge inheritance from Mother Earth in the form of petroleum. In a little over a hundred years, we have squandered about half of it. (That's what Peak Oil means: half of it is gone--the easier half.)
The other half of that petroleum we leave for not just our heirs, but all succeeding generations of humans. And we're not showing significant signs of slowing down our consumption for the purposes of saving some for future generations.

At the beginning of the 20th century, we had a world endowed with ice caps and glaciers, pure air, an Aral Sea. Nature had put a lot of the carbon away safely in the petroleum, in the coal, in the limestone, in the permafrost, in the frozen clathrates in the ocean, in the forests that covered a significant portion of the globe. In the process of claiming our inheritance and that of our descendants, we're cranking that carbon back into the atmosphere in the form of carbon dioxide.

Two hundred years ago the oceans were packed full of beautiful lifeforms, in a highly complex web of life based on plankton. We found that many of these lifeforms were tasty or otherwise useful. The incredible bounty of the oceans made it seem that we could keep pulling out fish and shellfish forever, as much as we wanted, and not even have an effect. Unfortunately, the 20th century factory ships depleted most of the fish stocks, and pollution from land-based activities is causing major dead zones in most estuaries. Plankton is said to be down by 70% over levels earlier in the last century. Another inheritance taken from our kids, and their kids, for generations.

Bringing it closer to home, here in Larimer County we're busily engaged in paving over good farmland, putting up yet more retail space, or developing yet more subdivisions far from the city centers. The only thing that has slowed this process down is the real estate meltdown, not any consideration for preserving the land so that future generations can have food. Our priorities are cock-eyed. Do we need more McMansions, or do we need food? Your choice. As petroleum gets more expensive, importing food from every other country in the world becomes more expensive, and industrial-style farming becomes less cost-effective.

In the economy, we're rolling up a Mt Everest of debt for succeeding generations to cope with, or not, as the case may be. Greed doesn't look so "good" these days as it did in the 90s. The U.S. has been living so far beyond their means, drawing down the inflated equity of their homes, spending their way into their own mountains of debt, that the rest of the world which has been selling us all this stuff is sinking too, now that we're tapped out.

I don't have the answers to these enormous problems. This is too big for one person to have the answers. We all need to be thinking about ways to preserve the wealth and bounty of the natural world for our grandkids, their grandkids, and on into the future. One of the best compliments you can give for someone who died is that he or she made the world a better place than they found it. The generations now on the Earth (us) need to be thinking about how we can make the world a better place, individually and in communities.

We know that the future won't look like the 20th century, and we know that it certainly won't look like the breathless extrapolations common in 20th century science fiction: everybody with their own little copter to get around, colonies on Mars, endless supplies of everything, endless wealth for every inhabitant of the planet.

It's a shock to realize that the supply of everything on Earth is NOT infinite. As you spend some time thinking about it, you go down through layers and levels of thinking. Petroleum scarce? plastics scarce. Then you can think about how our lives are surrounded and supported by plastics. Petroleum scarce? we're not going to be buzzing off to Europe or Australia every year on vacation; maybe we won't be able to see far-flung family members very often, or ever. Natural gas scarce? How do we heat our homes? How do we generate electricity? That opens up another thousand questions. But putting our heads firmly in the sand won't solve the problems, and leaving it for "future generations", i.e. our grandkids, to solve shows a total lack of character and integrity on our part.

So I'm sending this question out into the community: What can we do to "save some for our kids"? What I'd like to save for my grandchildren's children:

* A HEALTHY OCEAN. Let's clean up the plastic waste now, and take steps to ensure that no new plastic waste goes into the ocean. Let's stop overfishing NOW, not in decades to come when the fish are gone. And I don't believe you can have a healthy ocean without the humans controlling their greenhouse gas emissions.
A FEW THINGS YOU CAN DO: Stop buying fish! Cut down on your plastic consumption. Work hard to prevent pollution from entering the rivers and the oceans.

* HEALTHY SMALL FARMS. This means healthy topsoil and lots of small working farms, and lots of farmers; farms in every locality growing food for their neighbors. We have overshot with the principle that "efficiency" means less human labor and more use of fossil energy, fossil water (aquifers) and agricultural poisons. The most productive farmland in the world is in the form of individual small plots, carefully tended. We have land to do that, in our own backyards, in our public areas, on our schoolgrounds. We just need the will to do it.
A FEW THINGS YOU CAN DO: Plant a Victory Garden. Support local farms by buying their produce. Work with government entities to protect and expand small farms, and get farms in the hands of young people who want to farm.

* AN INDUSTRIAL BASE in the U.S. This means jobs, where people actually make things and add value. Retail sales and services are the branches and leaves of the tree of the economy. We've cut our tree down at the roots (by outsourcing practically all real manufacturing), and it's just taking a little time for all those unsupported branches and leaves to fall, but fall they will. Have you tried to buy a kitchen brush lately? All from China. Not some but all; every one. Trying to buy American-made goods is an exercise in frustration.
A FEW THINGS YOU CAN DO: Look for American-made goods, and complain to your store if none are available. Support re-skilling, both personal and industrial; this means that you learn some skills such as knitting, sewing, cooking, gardening, home repair, etc., and support for vocational training for young people (and older, too, for that matter).

* A SOLVENT NATION, STATE, CITY, AND FAMILY. When I think about this subject, the Oxygen Mask analogy comes to mind: Put on your own mask before you help others with theirs. The first thing we all need to do is balance our own household budgets, and live within our means. The CEO of 3M Co., George Buckley, said recently: "...the first responsibility we have as the leaders of companies is to make sure that we ensure the health and survival of our own companies first, not necessarily other people's companies, or, for that matter, the whole U.S. economy." When households, and companies, live within their means, they have a chance of accumulating some assets which can be put to work building factories, making jobs, and improving the community. When our nation stops trying to be a world empire, and becomes a fiscally conservative and responsible world citizen, all the countries in the world will benefit, including ourselves. But the transition will be painful, and we have to expect that.
A FEW THINGS YOU CAN DO: Live within your means! Buy less, pay down debt, bring your material expectations back in line with reality. Choose frugality instead of excess. Choose sensible investments (which can be many things besides stocks or mutual funds) that pay back long-term in reduced energy use, and increased benefits to our communities. Help your local governmental entities in finding ways to balance their budgets too. Let your congressmen/women know how you feel.

I get discouraged sometimes, but I have not lost hope. I think our kids and grandkids can have a good life. It won't look like what we imagined, and it will be worse in some ways, but it can also be better in some ways. I can foresee them getting off the rat race that we're on at the beginning of the 21st century, figuring out what's important in their lives (besides material goods), and having the pleasure of making things that are real, useful, and beautiful.

Happy New Year!

Some Winter Recipes

2008-12-22T15:33:00.000-08:00

I'm making a determined effort to use my stored foods. It's really not a problem with the tomato sauce, and the delicious nectarines in light honey syrup. We're also using the jars of lactofermented sauerkraut, green beans, and cucumbers I made last summer. I think I'll need to make more of them next year. The beans taste especially nice in winter salads, cut small.

Winter Salad

Make a bed of cut-up or torn winter greens. Escarole is particularly nice in the winter, with that little touch of bitterness. You can use a little slivered radicchio for color. Napa cabbage, sliced fine, is also good. And we get sugarhat chicory from our CSA, though you probably won't find it in a store, another lovely slightly-bitter winter green.

Decorate with some sliced carrots, and ripe olives. If you have them on hand, add chopped lactofermented green beans or cucumbers. Or some lactofermented beets. Regular pickles can be used too, as long as they are not too sweet.

To make a chef salad, cut up roast turkey breast and cooked local sausage into small pieces, and sprinkle across the top. A few small pieces of local cheese add a nice touch.

Make a simple salad dressing of olive or sunflower oil, and vinegar or lactofermented pickle juice. Shake and pour over. Ratio: about 2/3 oil to 1/3 vinegar for flavor.

Put Up Or Shut Up Stew
The following makes about 4 servings, and makes a quick hearty meal.
Feel free to substitute.

1 pound local grassfed ground beef
a little cooking oil or lard
one medium local onion, peeled and chopped
1 pint home-canned tomato sauce
1/2 cup home-dried green beans, or 1 cup home-frozen green beans
1/2 cup home-dried bell peppers, or 1 cup fresh chopped peppers
1 cup peeled winter squash such as butternut, in smallish pieces
1 tablespoon good-quality chili powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
salt and pepper to taste

Brown the ground beef in the oil with the onion. Then add the remaining ingredients, and bring to simmer. Cover and cook for 20-30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the squash cubes are tender.

Serving suggestions:
--Top with lactofermented salsa (or other salsa).
--For low-carb meal: serve as is in a bowl.
--Serve on a bed of something you have prepared: rice, millet, quinoa, pasta, ??
--Roll up in a wrap.
--Sprinkle with grated cheese if desired.

Risotto with Pumpkin and Radicchio
Something to do with pumpkin besides pie (not that there's anything wrong with pie....)

1 cup peeled pumpkin, seeds removed (and toasted separately) and cut small
1/2 cup chopped radicchio
1 cup short-grain white rice (arborio is best, but sushi rice will also do the job; I'm not a risotto snob)
1 smallish onion, peeled and diced fine
2 tbs olive oil
3 tbs butter
3 cups chicken broth, kept hot
salt and pepper to taste
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese

Head the olive oil and 2 tbs butter in a pan, add onion and saute until soft. Add pumpkin cubes and 1/2 cup broth, simmer 5 minutes. Add rice, salt and pepper, stir for a few minutes. As the rice absorbs the broth, keep stirring and adding another 1/4 cup of broth. After about 10 minutes, add the radicchio. Continue stirring and adding broth. When all the broth is added, stir in the remaining tbs of butter and the parmesan. Continue to stir for another 2 minutes or so.

Living Within Our Means

2008-12-07T12:43:00.000-08:00

Slightly off-topic for local foods, but too important to let slide. This is a distressing time in this country. The problems we as a nation have gotten ourselves into, from decades of overspending, waste and greed, are not going to vanish quickly.

I get the sense that many Americans are finally waking up from a fantasy: that there would always be MORE MORE MORE. More spending, based on more borrowing. The piper would never have to be paid. The important thing was getting the McMansion, the new cars, closetsful of clothes to put in all those double walk-in closets, and all the latest consumer electronics. So many of us have been living far beyond our means, floating on a pink cloud of credit that is evaporating and raining down pink slips all over the country.

Well, the fact is that in the long run, you must live within your means. This is true for individuals, families, cities, states, and the nation. When you've loaded up on credit and owe a lot of money, living within your means becomes even more painful. Not only do you have to cut your "standard of living" (whatever that means), but you have to cut down even further to pay off the debt you loaded up on.

We can't expect the government to bail everybody out, and we can't expect the government to take the lead on bringing us back to fiscal good sense--what used to be called "conservative" fiscal management before "conservative" came to mean tax cuts and huge increases in debt and a pointless and expensive war. I'm holding out for the original meaning of conservative as someone who conserves, something we can be proud to count among our personal qualities. If we want the government to change, we need to model that change in our own lives. We need to lead, and they will follow.

This fall, we've already seen major changes indicating that people are waking up from the fantasy and watching their spending. Some people have stopped using credit cards, which make it just too easy to buy. You have to think about your spending when you fork over dollars or write a check.

Here are some other ideas for living within our means.

1. (and only too obvious) Just stop buying the frills; no more retail therapy. Spending more than you can afford is not really fun in the long run. Spending more than you can afford on your kids is not doing them a favor. They need a stable home, with electricity and heat, and food on the table. They need these things way more than they "need" the latest gadget or toy, or the latest style in clothes.

2. (Another obvious one) Pay off your credit card balances, especially the high-interest balances. You do have to balance this with your other needs, such as the mortgage.

3. Put something aside. This means money in an insured savings account, even if it is a small amount. If your credit is toast, your cards are full, and your house isn't functioning as an ATM any more, you have all the more need for emergency money. It's up to your individual circumstance whether you pay off credit or put money in savings or both, but I suggest both. It's also wise to start storing some food, foods that your family will eat, healthy foods. It's easier to face uncertain times with a full pantry and a full belly.

4. Stop watching commercial TV. You and your kids are exposed to dozens or hundreds of very skillfully crafted advertisements every day. People with advanced degrees in psychology and sociology are hard at work designing ads that are just too good to resist. It's all part of the process of separating you from your money. For TV addicts, this will not be easy. For harried parents tired of the endless nagging for junk food and the latest toys, it may be a relief.

5. Have a talk with your partner. You and your partner need to be on the same page with the budget. If you are in the habit of managing all the finances yourself, you need to share the information and power with your wife or husband. If you have kids, the kids need to know something about what's happening. Don't scare them to death, and don't expect them to follow advanced economic theories, but kids need to know the situation. You will probably be surprised at the support you will receive, once the initial screaming is over.

6. Make a budget, and keep track of your spending. (I'm sure some of you already do this--more power to you!) If you are doing your first budget, you won't necessarily get it right the first time. Keep track of how the spending lines up with your predictions, and learn how to make it work. Everything counts--the big expenses and the nickel-and-dimers.

7. Reasonable places to spend your money--if you have some, have some savings, and have paid off your credit card balances.
* Food storage, and well-chosen household items that will enhance your ability to store food and cook for your family.
* Home improvements that will save on your utility bills in the future. This includes such high-return items as better insulation, weatherstripping, and insulating shades; fireplace inserts, perhaps skylights that bring more light into your home and provide ventilation in hot weather.
* Good quality American-made goods. Just say no to useless plastic junk made overseas. Don't squander your money, but there are times you need to buy something. Buy something that will last. Buy something made locally if you can--support your neighbors and your community. Failing that, try to buy American. I realize only too well that is not always possible. Wherever it is made, be sure to buy something that will serve you well and last a while.

8. Patronize locally-owned stores and restaurants. Stay out of the big box stores as much as you can; their profit runs off to other states or countries, and doesn't stay around here helping our community.

9. Learn to do things for yourselves. This is called "Re-Skilling". Our grandparents and their grandparents knew how to do things: Cook. Bake bread. Make yogurt, cheese, butter. Preserve food. Brew beer. Make liqueurs, wines, jellies, jams, sauces. Sew. Mend clothes. Mend shoes. Tend a vegetable garden and orchard. Knit, crochet, embroider, weave. Make simple furniture. Make music: play piano or other instruments, sing. Make baskets, candles, lamps. Render lard. Raise chickens, rabbits, or other animals. Make herbal teas and medicines. Treat simple health problems at home.

The more skills you have in your family, the less you need to pay other people to do these simple things for you. You can become more resilient to hard times by being able to fend for yourselves.
This is especially true if one family member loses his or her job. He or she can make the most out of the situation by learning new skills, and spending time supporting the work of the home. Yes, men can cook and clean, and women can fix a wobbly chair or mow the lawn, so don't be too hung up on gender roles. In hard times, we need everybody to do what they can.

10. Build community. This means your neighbors, your next-door neighbors, your street, your neighborhood, your community. I have read many blogs and articles recently saying that times are going to be tough, and the American people are self-indulgent and helpless and will just roll in a heap if they can't get their big-screen TVs and lattes. I don't believe it.

We haven't stepped up to these challenges because.... We Haven't Been Asked. When our president told us that the most important thing we could do for the country was to keep spending, too many of us believed him. And here we are in 2008, a debtor nation, the biggest in the world.

When columnists say that 70% of the national economy is retail purchases, it makes me feel queasy. That's a sign of how long the road is ahead of us. What organization or family can keep going for long when 70% of their effort is spent just SPENDING? A nation's wealth is based on raw materials and on the things that its citizens make. What are these columnists thinking? If only we can continue to spend money we don't have and can't borrow, that we can avoid recession?

We have a lot of resources in this country, and I mean more than oil, gas, minerals, and good farmland. We have the diverse, resilient, industrious, generous American people. Some of us are a little rusty, some have lost their way, but I have faith that as a community, and a nation of communities, we can tackle these problems and come out of them stronger.

The Costs of Local Foods

2008-11-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

Last April I gave several talks on local eating. One person asked a question that I did not really answer at that time: how has local eating affected our food budget?

It's a complicated question, and to answer it you have to take a larger view than just what you spend at the store, farm, etc.

Organic vs Conventional
Organic food costs more, in dollar terms, at the grocery stores. It costs less, of course, if you were to take ALL costs into consideration, such as damage to the environment from genetically modified foods, herbicides, pesticides, and the loss of birds and beneficial insects. And as the long-term trend of petroleum prices is undeniably up (regardless of the little reprieve we have had), "conventional" will eventually cost more even in dollar terms.

Organic foods have more flavor and nutrition than conventional foods, and less (or no) pesticide residues. So for your extra dollars, you are giving your family better food, and helping to improve their health. Is it worth it? You have to answer.

Organic vs Local
Here is a good question: if you can't get organic AND local, which do you choose: Local, or Organic? There are points for either choice. For myself, if it is a choice between Local or imported Organic, I would choose Local every time. We don't have any way of knowing which foreign growers are truly organic; some may be, but certainly some are not, just co-opting the organic label to make a little more margin. If it is a choice between a local grower that I know or know about, I'd choose that over mega-organic from California. In addition to supporting the health of the environment, and our own personal health, we also need to support the economic health of our community by buying from local growers and ranchers.

Fresh vs Shipped/Stored
This particularly applies to fruits and vegetables. You get more nutrition and flavor from vegetables picked today or yesterday and put on your table tonight, than from "organic" vegetables picked days or weeks ago long before ripeness, coated with wax or other chemicals, and ripened by chemical means. So, what you grow in your yard is the best of all.

When I had a big garden (and the physical ability to keep it up), I would go out in the afternoon and collect a basketful of fresh vegetables and make dinner. My children grew up liking most vegetables, because they had eaten them at their best. So Fresh trumps Shipped/Stored every time. Fresh means your yard, your CSA, your farmer's market, your local growers. I'd pay more for Fresh, but often you don't have to. Your organic CSA vegetables, paid for at the beginning of the season, are almost certainly cheaper than organic vegetables bought at the grocery.

Seasonal vs Perpetual
Here is where you get some money back by buying local foods. Local foods are seasonal. What you can buy is what is harvested now. In summer, lettuce, cucumbers, green beans; in fall, tomatoes, and Colorado's second season of greens; in winter stored foods like winter squash and root veggies; in spring asparagus, peas, and tender greens. Foods in season are cheaper than foods out of season, whether hothouse-grown or shipped from another continent. Foods that ripen at particular times of year are just the kinds of foods we should be eating then. For the hot days of summer, juicy cooling raw foods and salads; for the cold days of winter, warming stews made from potatoes, onions, and other root vegetables. Eating large raw salads all year around is not good for your health, in my opinion.

We've come to have a bizarre notion: the Perpetual Summer supermarket. You can get strawberries in January (they're from Peru or somewhere). You can get apples all the year around (waxed and kept in a low-oxygen environment, tasteless and watery). You can get asparagus in the fall (from Argentina). As a nation, we've lost touch with the seasons. Food comes from the supermarket; it doesn't come from farmers; it isn't grown in the dirt somewhere; it comes in shrink-wrap film or coated with preservatives. Milk comes from a cardboard box. Meat comes shrink-wrapped from the meat department (don't even think about how it was raised or slaughtered, or how many million pounds of hamburger came in that batch).

Of course in our temperate climate, there are months that there IS no local harvest. We supplement our diet with home-preserved foods: frozen vegetables, lactofermented pickles, fruits dried or in jars. How is this different from buying cucumbers from Mexico in the winter? My cucumbers come from my CSA. One day or less from field into the brine means they're at the tip of freshness. I know exactly how my CSA grows those cucumbers; what chemicals they don't use, the compost they do use. They've traveled 15 miles to get to my house, not 2000 miles. They're a product of our local community.

Home-Cooked vs Prepared
Here is where you REALLY start to save money, and get better quality. By definition, junk food and fast food aren't local, they're anonymous. Many of them are made of the cheapest-possible ingredients, tricked out with high-fructose corn syrup and trans-fats, loaded with preservatives, artificial flavors, and MSG. Almost all are made with genetically-modified ingredients such as corn and soy, though you can find "organic" junk food too: organic toaster treats, chips, and cookies with dozens of ingredients in print too small to read.

Many commercial meats are shot full of a solution containing MSG and other salts, in order to weigh more at point of sale. When you cook them, that extra water evaporates out, but the salts and artificial flavorings that were in it stay in the meat. What sense does that make for you?

Restaurant food has to cost more for the same quality; they have overhead, salaries for cooks, waitstaff, management, etc., and advertising. They may buy in bulk, but that won't save that much money. So, if the quality is high, the costs are high. If the costs are low, the quality MUST be low. Restaurant personnel are not magicians; they're just running a business.

We do enjoy eating restaurant meals on occasion. We noticed that when we started eating local, fresh, freshly cooked foods, the food at some restaurants no longer sits well with us. It seems somewhat flavorless and indigestible. We have a small list of restaurants that are still a pleasure for us.

And when you eat at restaurants frequently, or get carryout or prepared foods at the store, you are almost certainly getting too much sodium, too much cheap fat, too much high-fructose corn syrup, too much MSG, and servings that are too large.

You don't have to spend a lot of time cooking. I put most dinners on the table in 15 minutes or less. They are generally simple meals: some kind of meat, two vegetables fresh or cooked, fruit for dessert. You don't have to have an elaborate production every time. Sometimes I'll cook up a pot of stew or soup, which takes a couple of hours of supervision though only a few minutes of work, and feeds us for several days. Not hard.

If you don't know how to cook, there are a raft of good beginner's cookbooks out there. You can start at the public library and browse for some that look good to you. Start by following recipes until you feel that you know what you are doing, then improvise. The more you cook, the more you'll learn.

Bulk Buying vs Small Packages
Here's another way to save money on foods that are staples for you: buy in bulk. You can get higher quality for less money, for instance organic in a large bag for less than conventional in a small package. See if you can find (or start) a local food buying cooperative. The power of numbers means that you can still get the good prices without buying a 50-lb bag or 30-lb box of whatever it is. That of course leads to techniques for storing food, and incorporating those foods into your daily menu. Well-stored staple foods keep a long time: whole grains for 10-30 years, dry beans and lentils for several years, nuts for a year in the freezer. Or you can buy boxes of tomatoes, green beans, peaches, etc., and put them up.

I was buying organic tomatoes last summer at the farmer's market for $13 for 18 pounds, and canning my own tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes for a fraction of the cost of store tomatoes. Now we're using them, and they taste really fresh and flavorful as I open the jars for pizza, spaghetti, or soups.

Bought vs Bartered/Gathered
Here's another way to save money on your food. Most CSAs have barter shares, where you trade your work at the farm for some or all the cost of your vegetables. That's what I do at my CSA, so I get 36 weeks worth of vegetables in return for work I do for the farm.

If you're looking for free local fruit, keep your eyes open in your neighborhood for neglected fruit trees. When the fruit is ripe and starts falling on the sidewalk, stop and politely ask the owners if you can harvest some of it. Give them some if they're interested, as a thank-you. Or make them a jar of plum jam, grape jelly, peach roll-ups, or whatever. With some appreciation, you can probably harvest that tree year after year.

If you can, keep chickens. They'll eat your scraps, weeds, and bugs, and some chicken feed, and provide you with eggs or meat. If you can, keep bees for honey. Learn to know the local weeds and wild plants, and collect greens, chokecherries, wild plums, wild grapes, or other foods. At least half of the weeds in your garden are edible; in fact, some are as good as the vegetables they are crowding out. Get a good book, or take a class, so that you know what you are doing.

More could be said about these subjects, and other subjects as well, but let's stop for now and get to the bottom line. Will you save money by eating local foods? Wrong question, actually. Can you eat local foods and stick to your budget? Probably yes, unless your budget is very strict. Are there ways to save money eating local foods? Absolutely.

What I found was that I'm paying a little more for local meats, with much higher quality. Most of my vegetables are bartered, so there is not much change there. I either get fruits from my yard, or in bulk buying, so I save money there. I save money by buying few or no prepared foods, junk food, or fast food. We're eating out less, thus saving money. My purchases of staples are much cheaper, and of much higher quality than I was getting previously.
And we find our meals to be more satisfying, so we're actually eating less and gradually losing excess weight.

I also find that my expenditures are more seasonal. I spent extra in August, September and October building up stores for the winter. Now that we're starting to use this food, our grocery bills are dropping significantly.

So yes, you can eat locally on a budget, and there are many ways to get high quality local fresh foods for less money than you're paying now.

Connecting the Path: The Food Storage Year

2008-11-26T06:48:00.000-08:00

I'm engaged in rediscovering the skills that our foremothers knew: how to store food for the winter and spring until the next harvest, and using stored food to feed their families. Very interesting. When you don't think in terms of driving to the nearest grocery store and buying foods shipped from all over the world, it requires a little more advance planning.

I've been busy "puttin up" since last summer; snap peas, English peas, green beans frozen in June; July and August lactofermented vegetables: green beans, cucumbers, various kinds of coleslaw. Then in August started the fruit: apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums, prunes; canned in light honey syrup, dried in pieces or as rollups. Our early apples, very small crop, went into jars as sauce or dried. Then in September, the tomatoes! Sauce, juice, chopped, stewed. Apples and herbs dried; broccoli frozen.

And I've been gradually putting staples into half-gallon Mason jars. California brown rice in the garage (to stay cool). Beans, lentils, split peas from western U.S. growers. Wheat flour in the freezer. Wonderful Colorado millet and quinoa, buckwheat and kasha and popcorn from western U.S. A box of apples in the garage, separated by a reasonable distance from paper bags of potatoes; a case of mixed winter squash in a cool room.

Now comes the second challenge: Eat what you store. That's the food storage year:
* Store what you eat
* Eat what you store

In some ways, it's easier for me to just store and store, pack-ratting away foods that we like, feeling a sense of accomplishment looking in the freezer and into the boxes of gleaming jars. But... it's food! Precious indeed, but perishable. Whole grains keep a good long time, but beans get tired after a few years of storage. Frozen food gets freezer-burned. Canned fruit loses some of its flavor. The apples and squash and potatoes are fresh foods, good keepers, yes, but not forever.

So, now's the time to stop stocking up, and start using what I have stored. I've already gotten into the frozen snap peas; they turned out well using the vacuum bags. And I've started using the tomato sauce for pasta and pizza; very nice flavor. Muir Glen canned organic tomatoes are fine, and I've certainly used cases of them through the years, but my home-preserved sauce from Colorado tomatoes is especially good.

We've been eating the millet (me), the buckwheat, the gluten-free oats, the whole-grain wheat flour (DH), steadily. I just finished eating my way through the 50 lbs of Colorado organic millet I bought last February. Now I'm starting on the 25 lbs I bought through the coop in April. I love it, and generally eat it once a day; could be breakfast, lunch, or supper.

One secret to the successful food storage year is good record-keeping. I'm making an inventory of what I've stored, along with the date of storage. I'll make it a point to use the oldest first. (Blush: I found seven jars of applesauce from 2007; they'll go first). As I use something, I'll check it off the list. If I run out, and have to buy something before the next harvest, I'll note it.

By next summer, I'll have a much better idea of how much, and what kinds of foods we need to get through the year.

I also need to get into my cookbooks and find recipes that fit the foods we have. Oftentimes we have simple meals: meat, two veg, fruit for dessert. Now that winter is nearly here, I need to start making more soups and stews: good winter warming foods. I need to start cooking more beans. I need to motivate myself for winter squash. It's not really my favorite food; I always think it sounds good, but then just don't follow through with actually cooking and eating it. Maybe I just need better recipes. Maybe we need to eat more Pumpkin Pie!

Putting the cart before the horse, I've been discussing the hows of food storage, but not the whys. Reason 1. If you're going to eat mostly local food, you need to store for half the year, so you have something to eat the other half. Reason 2. Stored food also gives you some security in very uncertain times. Even if a family member loses their job or gets their pay cut, with a good pantry of stored foods you know that everyone will eat. As Sharon Astyk says, two important questions in hard economic times are: "Is there dinner? Do I get any?"

Long-term storage for hard times has some different aspects from seasonal storage, since you don't want to be running out of food in the summer either. I'll write some posts on this subject in the near future. Meanwhile, check out Sharon's food storage group for loads of information and experiences from real people in every part of the country. You can even see my name there once in a while.

I'll keep you posted from time to time on our experiences with our stored food: what we wish we had more of, what we had too much of, and recipes using the foods.

One Local Year: The Road Ahead

2008-11-22T13:53:00.000-08:00

A year ago, I wrote a post about making the road by walking. We walked, and made a little footpath. When I started the local food buying cooperative, a few others joined us on this path. And of course there are others making similar paths in every part of the country, though other matters have come to the forefront of public consciousness now.

We plan to continue eating locally, but cutting ourselves a bit more slack. If we're going to keep this up the rest of our lives (which we plan to do), we need to pace ourselves a bit. I will buy a few little niceties, very small amounts: mustard, artichoke hearts for DH's weekly homemade pizza (about one heart per pizza), vinegar, lemon juice. I

I plan to keep narrowing the circle as possible. Can I find California artichoke hearts, instead of Peru? Can I get more Front Range fruit in place of the Western Slope fruit? Can I figure out how to put in a garden at our home that I can actually keep up? (With aging and physical problems, gardening is hard for me.) Can I keep chickens without losing them all to predators? The most-local food you can get is what you grow and raise, after all.

And that brings up another vitally important point. We, and several hundred others in Larimer and Weld counties, are eating a large percentage of local food. We buy local meats, patronize local dairies, belong to local CSAs. But there are about 287,000 people in Larimer County, and about 243,000 in Weld County. That's more than a half-million people. Although agriculture still has a significant presence, particularly in Weld County which is the highest-ranking agricultural county in the state, we're far from having enough growers and ranchers in the two counties to feed the population with diverse foods. Many of the farms are extremely large, growing government-subsidized commodity corn and soybeans which are mainly fed to cattle.

We need to think seriously about what we as a community can do to encourage more small farms, more vegetable growing, more bean growing, more pastured livestock. The soil is fertile, the climate fairly mild though dry, and much of the land is irrigated from mountain water. But farmers, especially small farmers, face tremendous challenges. The cost of their inputs keeps rising faster than the prices they can get for their produce. Loans are becoming more and more difficult to get. Some of the better land is being eaten up by country subdivisions and outlet malls at a tremendous rate.

Speaking as someone who wants to eat food in the future, I believe it is essential for us to do two things: encourage and protect small and diverse farms; and start planting our suburban lots to vegetables and fruits, with perhaps beehives and small animals where possible. This will take money and work, of course, but in particular it will take a strong commitment for us as a community to build a resilient and productive local foodshed. There is a place for everyone in this vitally important work, whatever your skills and interests. Give some thought to where you might want to help in this effort.

One Local Year: Surprises

2008-11-16T13:13:00.000-08:00

We had some real surprises during the 100-mile diet year (Nov 2007 through Oct 2008).

The first is that eating high-quality home-cooked local food really ruined our taste buds for fast food, junk food, and cheap restaurants. Ugggh! I used to eat That? This used to taste good, now it upsets my stomach. Home-cooked foods are made from ingredients, in other words, real foods. No fillers, no artificial colors or flavors, no hidden MSG; no high-fructose corn sweeteners, no transfats, no preservatives, no modified food starch. We also tried to buy organic as much as possible, which has better flavor and nutritional value.

The second surprise is that I lost interest in buying standard grocery-store produce, so pretty looking, so tasteless. The Western Slope fruits are so far superior to the fruits shipped in from California or Washington state. I'm sure fruits bought ripe locally IN California or Washington for local consumption are perfectly fine. It's the whole industrial food system, picking chemicalized and water-bloated produce way ahead of ripeness, shipping it across the country, then "ripening" it with chemicals. Have you wondered how you have U.S. apples year round? Or consider the long path for produce from China, Argentina, New Zealand? How far before ripening must they have been picked?

Now I am a bit of an enthusiast for Western Slope fruits, actually, since I think the best Colorado pear or peach, apple or nectarine, is better than the best California peach, or the best Washington apple, but my comparison is unfair, since I've never eaten a tree-ripe California peach.

The next surprise was how much I did not know about harvest times in Colorado. I realized that fresh produce would be pretty much unavailable in March and April, but it was still unavailable in May, and only in June did a significant harvest of fresh vegetables show up in the farmers' markets. We had the early season vegetables: peas, beans, spinach, early lettuce. Then everything took the month of July off, pretty much. The lettuce and spinach bolted, the peas burned up, and it was slim pickings until August. August through October is the cornucopia time in Colorado. We were up to our ears in a wide variety of vegetables and fruits. Inventorying my stocks, I was a very busy person during those three months, canning, drying, and freezing the produce. (I dated all the containers--always a good idea with home-preserved foods.)

The fourth surprise was that home fruit trees and home gardens, especially with season extenders, can provide a great many items that are practically unavailable commercially in the area. Commercial Colorado fruit is from the Western Slope (and wonderful stuff it is), but our yards are full of apples, pie cherries, plums, peaches, and even pears; also raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, elderberries, Nanking cherries, serviceberries, and chokecherries. Anyone with a small garden in Colorado can grow strawberries, but they are commercially unavailable from this state. If you have a yard, plant some fruit trees and shrubs, some strawberries.

I've grown celery at home, muskmelon and watermelon, and garlic. You can even grow okra and small sweet potatoes here. Some of the CSAs in the area grow melons very successfully, which are distributed to members and sold at farmers' markets. You never see Northern Colorado melons in the stores.

What's more, with a hoop house, small greenhouse, or even coldframes, you can keep hardy greens and carrots living and ready for harvest all winter long. Our winters are not as harsh as they were 50 years ago, so the rules of thumb we learned as children, or from older gardeners, are no longer entirely valid. Our plant hardiness zone has moved from 4 bordering on 5, to 5 bordering on 6. This makes season extenders even more practical. Eliot Coleman's book "Four Season Harvest" is a useful resource. Anyway, the upshot is that if you keep your own garden, you can extend that three months of Colorado bounty to at least nine months, and you can get a lot of fruits from your yard or your neighborhood.

Another surprise was that I lost weight slowly and effortlessly, just by not eating junk. And my diet was not that bad to start with. I did not go hungry, and did not feel deprived. Real foods, cooked at home, are just more satisfying. I wouldn't mind losing some more weight, and perhaps that will happen over the coming year. My husband has been on a moderately low-carb diet for the last six months, which we were able to work out with the local foods, and has lost a lot of weight.

A surprise for me was the things I did not miss. I have not had citrus fruits except for a small amount of lemon juice in a year, or a banana or mango or other tropical fruit, and I really don't miss them. I don't miss sweet potatoes. Tapioca, especially tapioca flour, was a little harder to give up, since it's very useful in gluten-free baking. I didn't miss out-of-season foods like strawberries in January, apples in March, asparagus in winter. I'm willing to wait for them to be in season.

It was interesting learning the things that we really didn't want to do without. When I planned the 100-mile diet, I planned in ten exceptions, five to be chosen by each of us. My first was salt. No way I'm doing without salt. The next three were beverages: coffee, black/green tea, and herbal teas. The herbal teas can mostly be grown here, with a little advance planning (maybe next year!). I was not prepared to cook without olives and olive oil, but I was able to find them from California. I made an exception for the tropical spices that really are impossible to find in a temperate climate: pepper, cinnamon, etc.

Our only seafood has been Alaskan wild-caught salmon, and very little of that. My sons each said, "Mom, you could get a fishing license..." and I could have, and added Colorado trout to my diet, but I didn't do it. For years I have been gradually reducing the seafood content of our diet, due to concerns about overfishing and environmental effects of farmed seafood. So it was not too much of a stretch to just stop everything except the sustainably harvested salmon.

It didn't take DH long to put raw nuts on his list, which we restricted to U.S.-grown. Walnuts, almonds, pecans, hazelnuts, and pistachios are on the list.

Finally, we used two vegetable exceptions to make it through the winter limitations: California canned tomato products, and U.S.-grown peas, frozen, fresh or dried. When the crops came in, we dropped them.

Now, looking back on the year, there were a few other things we missed. Basically they fall into the category of "condiments"--mustard (DH Loves Mustard), vinegar, lemon juice, coconut milk, herbs and spices, all in small amounts (except for mustard). Also, I had lots of herbs and spices on hand, but when they're gone, I'll either grow or buy some more. Maybe some day I'll figure out how to make local mustard, but for now, mustard in a jar is the way to go.

In the next post, I will talk about the future: the second year of local eating. We will be continuing local eating; it's pretty hard to conceive of NOT doing so, but we will allow a few more little niceties in our diet.

One Local Year: Learnings

2008-11-08T06:49:00.001-08:00

We've been on our local eating plan for one year now, and it's time to look back on our successes, failures, learnings, ideas, and impressions.

Q. Is it possible to eat a 100-mile diet in Northern Colorado
Yes, allowing a few exceptions, but there are significant difficulties. You certainly won't starve. What helps: having a CSA, having your own garden, cooking, belonging to a food buying cooperative, preserving food yourself.

Difficulty 1: If you plan to buy all your food at the grocery stores, you will last just long enough to run out of the food you have on hand. Even at Whole Foods, states of origin are marked only on fresh produce. In other food stores, information is practically unavailable. How to cope: The secret is to find local sources and/or grow your own. There are a number of local dairies, local farmers producing meat, and CSAs.

Difficulty 2: Colorado fruits and vegetables are only available from roughly June through November. If you have a garden, you can stretch the season a little by using cold frames, hoop house or other season extender. Going to the farmers market in May looking for fresh produce just didn't work. How to cope: Go back to what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did as a matter of course: put up food. During the summer and fall bounty, they canned and dried, pickled and fermented, made jellies, jams, and conserves. They stored food for the winter in unheated areas such as cellars. (We now have the option of freezing produce also.) They went into winter with shelves groaning with a rainbow collection of jars of fruits and vegetables.

Difficulty 3: Some of the small items that we enjoy in our daily life are just not available within 100 miles. This includes coffee and tea, spices and some herbs, olives and olive oil. For example: We just couldn't find mustard that was truly local. Some is made in Northern Colorado, but not from local ingredients. A friend made some vinegar and gave me some, but unless you want to start a project, vinegar is not local. Coping technique 1: call them exceptions and use them. Coping technique 2: Find local alternatives, change your tastes, grow your own in some cases.

Techniques on exceptions: Pick a few that are important to you and your family, and try to get them as close as possible. For example, olives and olive oil are available from California. Nuts are available from the west coast. Just say no to food items from China, except possibly green or black tea. Items like tea and spices don't weigh much for the amount of flavor and enjoyment they bring. Barbara Kingsolver just didn't sweat the small stuff: herbs and spices didn't count in her local eating plan.

Techniques on finding alternatives: Depending on the item, you may be able to grow it (like herbal tea), make your own (like vinegar), use pioneer techniques (coffee from roasted roots like chicory), or just substitute what you do have (local honey for non-local sugar). It's interesting to read through old cookbooks and pioneer diaries to see what they ate, what they made, the substitutions they used, and finally, what they bought, usually at high expense. You can also read about what the Indians living in this region ate, pretty much strictly local except that trade routes brought sea salt well into the interior of the country.

Q. Didn't you have a restricted diet?
No, not at all. Most of the things we couldn't get we didn't miss: tropical fruits for one example. We ate high-quality local beef, pork, buffalo, lamb, chicken, turkey, and eggs. We used high-quality local dairy products. Given a good effort at putting up fruits and vegetables, from year to year, there is no lack of excellent organic fruits and vegetables. You do need to get salt; the closest is RealSalt from Utah, but I didn't worry that much about it; it's a necessity of life, and we don't live near the ocean.

The staple foods were what turned our 100-mile diet in what's termed a bullseye diet. I was able to find 100-mile pinto and anasazi beans, whole wheat flour, and millet. That's pretty restrictive unless you are eating a paleo diet (no grains, no beans). So we stretched our limits, first to the rest of Colorado, picking up quinoa and the Western Slope fruits, and more beans from the San Luis Valley area. Then, as I started the food cooperative, we stretched the limit for grains, beans, and nuts to the western U.S. I'm relying mainly on millet and pintos, and wheat flour for my husband (I can't eat it), but I have a variety of staples now, all organic, all from the western U.S.

I mentioned the Bullseye diet in posts nearly a year ago. First, you get as much as you can from your own yard (the inner circle); next you move out to your neighborhood, such as community gardens, neglected fruit trees that can be gleaned. Next is the community and surrounding farms. This is where most of our food comes from: CSAs, farmers markets, local livestock producers and dairies, local eggs. There is no reason why grains and beans couldn't be grown that close to us, it just hasn't happened yet. Here is where we need to make the market, and suppliers will arise to fill it.

The things you can't get from your community, you reach out to your state and region. Colorado has a wonderful diversity of agricultural possibilities; as farms become smaller and more local (as petroleum becomes more expensive), we can expect to find nearly all our needs within the state. For now, and for some things in particular such as nuts and olives, we need to consider the western U.S., a breadbasket of lentils, split peas, grains of nearly every kind.

Finally there are a few things unavailable in the U.S., like some spices, pepper, black and green tea, and coffee. We try to buy organic and fair-trade as much as possible, and don't use a lot of these items. They are dry and light and easy to ship. Yes, if we really ran out of petroleum and they couldn't be shipped to us, we'd learn to live without them.

So, that was our journey. As we got to the scarce days of late winter and early spring, we expanded our horizons a little, and with due thought used some foods from outside the 100-mile circle. If you lived in Vancouver, San Francisco, or other areas with more year-round agriculture, it would be easier to confine yourself to 100 miles. Here, it is possible, with a lot of work and planning, but certainly not easy.

Next: the benefits we noticed.

Month 12: October--Opportunities Taken and Missed

2008-11-02T16:02:00.000-08:00

An essential part of local eating in our climate is storing the bounty of summer and fall, so you have foods to get you through winter and spring. We were still swimming in the fall bounty in October, with apples and pears from the Western slope, winter squash coming in, the last of the tomatoes, lettuce, spinach, and hardy greens.

I carried home groaning bags from my CSA pickup. I ordered boxes of fruit through the food cooperative. I bought more boxes of canning jars, and ran loads of stuff through the fruit dryer. The trays on my rather ancient fruit dryer are beginning to develop some cracks, from overuse.

But I just couldn't get to everything. We couldn't eat it fast enough. I couldn't fill the dryer trays fast enough. I filled up more cases of jars, with the last of the nectarines, and some pears. The pears got away from me, and I had to throw a few away. The last of the green beans wilted; we ate them earlier in the summer until we were both tired of them. I should have frozen or canned them when they were fresh, but they sat in the produce drawer unnoticed.

Eating local fruits and vegetables is a big change from shopping at the supermarket every week. First, the quality of the local fresh produce is absolutely superlative; we are thoroughly spoiled now and don't even want the tasteless stuff shipped from all over the world and ripened artificially.

Second, when produce comes into season, we eat it and eat it, until we can get tired of it. Then you feel, oh no, more (fill in the blank). And DH says, not again. And the reality is, that we won't get any more green beans until next June. We'll get over being tired of them long before that.

Third, by eating locally you really get in touch with the seasons of harvest in our area. Plums show up--better move quickly or they're gone. We have good lettuce in June, and great lettuce in August and September after a hot July with no lettuce at all. So, eating seasonally is great, during the seasons. But nothing is really available from December through May, so local eaters need to put food up when it's available. Not so that we can eat the same year around, but so that we can have a variety of healthy foods through the winter.

In order to make use of the bounty and provide for the winter, I need new habits. I'm part of the way there. I put up tomatoes, lots of them, but maybe not enough. I put up apricots, nectarines, peaches, plums, pears, apples. I froze snap peas, snow peas, English peas, and green beans. I pickled cabbage, green beans, cucumbers, and salsa. I dried apples, pears, plums, peppers, and zucchini. But I also threw some things away. It's got to become second nature to me; I need to learn to look at the week's incoming bounty, and decide what we might eat, and what I need to plan to freeze, dry, can, etc., while they are at the peak of their quality.

This is what our grandmothers and great-grandmothers did. They had gardens, they bought or bartered from their neighbors, they picked fruit wherever they could, and put it away for the long weeks of winter and spring when little else was available.

We've sampled the first of our stored foods: some tomato sauce (fabulous), some delicious fruit canned in light honey syrup. I heated some snap peas I froze in vacuum bags, and they were just great, flavorful and with a good texture. But it's a long way till June (when we can get some more).

I'm planning to take an inventory of what I have, and keep track week by week of what we use, what we want more of, and what we don't really like. This will help me next summer and fall as I make choices of what, and how, and how much to store away.

It's also time to switch from summer-fall foods--salads, raw veggies, veggies cooked as themselves--to fall-winter foods: soups, stews, cooked vegetable medleys of various kinds.

So, October went well, and we have finished out our year of eating locally. My next post or two will be a summation of what we learned, and how our diet changed to fit the local circumstances.

Keep On Keepin' On

2008-10-05T13:29:00.000-07:00

The three-ring circus we're being treated to these days can be very upsetting and distracting. We're not sure that any amount of (deficit or imaginary) taxpayer money will be enough to save the big Wall Street firms that made big bets on leverage and sold them in every country in the world. Our IRAs and investments whipsaw up and down, but more down than up. It's a tough time, and nobody knows what it will be like next year. It's easy to get into a tight loop, waking up early in the morning and worrying about the future. If you have a reset ARM mortgage or your home is "under water", of course, you've got even more to worry about. And practically nobody's job is that secure.

I'm not the best example of someone who can just go on about doing the things that need to be done, and not waste my time and energy worrying about stuff that I can't do anything about. But really, friends, that's what we need to do.

Important Financial Moves
First: pay down your debt, as fast as you can. Especially credit card debt, or any high-interest loan. Paying ahead on your mortgage is good, but should be prioritized with the next two items, depending on your situation. Having a paid-off house IS very reassuring, however.

Second: do home improvements to make your home more energy efficient, and prepare for utility outages, etc. So many of us are totally dependent on electricity: to cook our food; run our lights, computers, and refrigeration; to run the fan and thermostat on the furnace; and if you have a well, to pump water out of the ground.

Having some non-electric ways to heat, cook, and cool is a wise thing to do, regardless of whether we get a financial meltdown. A winter blizzard could take out electricity, or if you live near the coast a hurricane, or here in Colorado a tornado. Having some extra blankets and sweaters and heavy socks is also good. Store some water, at least 1 gallon per day per family member for 2 weeks, just to be sure.

Make sure you have enough insulation; insulated blinds or other window coverings are good. If you are ready to replace a furnace or refrigerator or other appliance, get a high-efficiency one.

Third: start storing food. Again, you don't need to wait for a financial meltdown for this to make sense. If you lost your job, and couldn't find another for a while, or ended up in a low-wage job, having 6 to 12 months of food stored would be very handy. If money is tight, just buy a small amount of staple goods each week when you shop. You will build up your stock over time. If you can buy staple goods (like rice, beans, flour, etc.) in 25 lb bags, you'll find that they are much cheaper that way. (And learn how to cook with those stored foods, fixing foods your family will eat.)

The very best online resource I can give you is Sharon Astyk's blog: Depletion and Abundance. She talks about the hard issues (the problems coming), but mostly about the important issues: how to feed your family and keep them warm, what foods to store and how, and how to build the community around your family that will help us all weather the coming storms. It's worth it to look back through her posts for at least the last year, if not further. Goodies include lists of useful books and tools. It's nice to know we're not facing this alone. She keeps a can-do spirit, tackling the challenges that we could all face with grace and courage.

Anyway, the way to go forward is not to get paralyzed with worry, but to put one foot in front of the other, doing the daily ordinary activities to prepare for the unexpected; learning the mundane skills of cooking, sewing, fixing things, gardening, etc.; thinking about low-energy, low-cost alternatives to take care of ourselves and our families.

Month 11: September and the perfect Nectarine

2008-10-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

I see I haven't posted since the Month 10 report. I've been distracted (perhaps one could say "driven to distraction") by the Wall Street bailout, and other financial and political stuff. I've also been busy putting up fruits and vegetables, and working (I have a job that shows up once or twice a year for 3-4 weeks).

The perfect Nectarine: picked on Colorado's western slope, just about three days short of ripe. As soon as the nectarines get a little soft to the touch (anything but hard), they are ready. Wow! I think I like them better than peaches. It's been so many years since I had a good nectarine. We've been eating a bunch and I've also canned several batches for the winter.

Canning Nectarines
Canning nectarines is like peaches but easier. I didn't bother to take the skins off, though I do with peaches. For the full story on canning, you should get the Ball Blue Book of canning (also has info on freezing, drying, etc.).

But here's the simple story, for waterbath canning. Put clean pint jars into your canning kettle, and rings, and cover with water. Bring to boil. Jars should boil 10 minutes, but more doesn't hurt. Meanwhile, for nectarines, wash and cut each into 8-10 slices. A pint jar holds about 3 med nectarines. Also, bring to a boil 4 cups water and 1 cup Colorado honey, and in another (small) saucepan, simmer the lids for your jars for 10 minutes and leave them in the hot water. This is 3 burners worth that you've got going.

Now, put a couple of handfuls of nectarine slices into the boiling syrup, bring back to boil, set timer for 2 minutes. Fish out with a slotted spoon and put into jars that you have taken out of the waterbath. Use a canning funnel to keep from spilling. They will settle a bit, so you will have to keep putting a couple more into each jar until they are pretty close to the rim. When all are cooked in syrup and put into jars, pour syrup into the jars right up to the rim (shoulder) (not up to the top). Should be about 1" of head space. Get the lids out of the hot water with tongs, then screw on the rings tight but not too tight. Place the jars back into the canning kettle (the water should still be boiling). You may have to scoop a little water out of the kettle, since you are putting full jars in, in place of the empty ones. Bring back to boil (don't be fooled by the air bubbling out of the lids), and set your timer for 20 minutes. Then pull jars out of the water, put on counter, and wait for the ping!

There is a gadget you must have to get jars in and out of the canner, special tongs that grasp the jar on each side and allow you to lift it without tipping. Another little set of tongs for the lids, and the canning funnel, are really all the equipment you need.
Always use fresh lids each time. You can save the used ones for use with jars of dried foods, beans, etc., just don't can with them again.

If you are doing peaches, it is somewhat more involved. Bring a saucepot of water to boil, put peaches in for 30 seconds to 1 minute (depends on ripeness), and then into a bowl of cold water. The skins just peel off. Now slice into a big bowl, and proceed as for nectarines. You can peel and slice all the peaches, then bring the syrup to boil and simmer them; otherwise you'll look like one of those Hindu goddesses with eight arms.

If you have syrup left after topping off the jars, lucky you! It makes a wonderful refreshing drink, diluted 4:1 or even 8:1 in cold water. The flavor is honey + fruit; delicious!

After your jars cool off all the way, check to be sure that each lid is down, by pressing gently in the middle. If a jar didn't seal, or if it pings when you touch it (which means it didn't seal properly), put it into the frig and use soon. Otherwise, they're good for a year or more.

Colorado's fall bounty
September brings us the last of the peach and nectarine harvest, with pears and apples coming soon. The fall Colorado lettuce is superior to the spring lettuce, in my opinion. The heads are bigger and the flavor is better; also they keep very well. We can also get fall spinach, again superior to spring, and arugula. The cooler days and nights are good for the quality. The braising greens keep improving: chard, kale, etc.

We're still getting sweet corn, tomatoes, and all kinds of peppers, until the first freeze. I'm still putting up tomatoes, and my last two jars of lactofermented cucumber pickles.

Next come the winter squashes and pumpkins, just starting to show up now. They'll keep at a cool room temperature, as themselves, through the winter to early spring. Keep them out of the sun, and at 50 to 60 degrees. Look through your stash every so often, to see if any are getting soft spots, and use them right away.

September is Wild
September brings a frantic activity to take care of the harvest and store it for winter. Even if you don't put up food, you will probably feel it, as a general angst that winter is coming, hard times are coming, and we need to be prepared if we're going to eat next winter. Eating as a Locavore brings this anxiety to the front, as you work to fill up those jars while the fruits and vegetables are available. You can't substitute peaches from Argentina in the winter (not that they're worth eating anyway).

I think of what kind of meals I can prepare next January, and what I need to have on hand. It seems there can never be enough tomatoes. I have put up tomato sauce, stewed tomatoes, tomato juice, and chopped tomatoes. I will be making a lactofermented salsa today, with tomatoes, peppers and onions from Cresset Farm. That will keep under refrigeration for months. I've made jars and jars of pesto for the freezer, and dried many batches of fresh basil and other herbs.

I've been filling up my staples jars for the past 5 months, and I'm fairly well set there. The local meat, dairy and eggs are available year round (though eggs can be a little hard to find in the winter). We live in a beautiful and bountiful state, never more bountiful than in September. And it's hard to say which is more beautiful: the cool, bright days of September or the days of April when the trees are in blossom. Happy Autumn to you all!

Month 10--August--Nature's Bounty

2008-09-13T17:17:00.000-07:00

August is an easy month to eat locally. We are picking grapes, and our own Siberian peaches and tiny greengage plums. The potatoes are ready, under the ground. Due to general neglect on my part, each hill has a fairly small number of potatoes, but they are delicious.

The fruit from the Colorado's Western slope is simply superlative.
The Colorado fruits are coming in: apricots, plums, early peaches. Now, in mid-September, peaches are still running strong. I was able to snag a box of Colorado organic nectarines this week. To look forward to: buttery Colorado bartlett pears, and a variety of apples. It has been years since I bought a supermarket nectarine. They have all come from California or even farther, tasteless and mealy. I have high hopes for the Colorado nectarines.

The CSAs are all in full swing, as are the farmers' markets. LoveLandLocal food cooperative is selling more produce than staples now. We buy only Colorado organic produce, and we've been feasting on corn, cucumbers, red spring onions, zucchini and yellow squash, green beans, and more. There was still some late spinach. The fall lettuce is just starting to come in. (Lettuce in Colorado does not do very well in the hot dry weather of July.)

Our meals often are very simple: some form of meat such as chicken, sausage, bison burger, pork chop, etc., and a selection of fresh cooked or raw vegetables. Examples are sweet corn, fresh tomato, green beans; green pepper slices, radishes, snap peas; sauteed green tomatoes, corn again. Then for dessert, whatever Colorado or homegrown fruit we have on hand.

I've also been very busy "puttin up". Today it was quarts of red plums, and greengage plum butter. Lessons learned: for red plums, leave a lot of headspace in the jar. As I took them out of the water bath, purple juice came up and out of the jar. I used the raw pack method, pricking the plums, packing them into hot quart jars, and covering with a light (Colorado) honey syrup.

The greengages have been sitting on the back table for a couple of weeks, starting to dry. They are small but sweet. I finally just dumped them into a saucepan and covered with water. After an hour or two, they were soft. I pressed the pulp through a colander, taking out the pits. Then I took the sieved pulp and simmered it in the saucepan until it was somewhat thicker. I seasoned it with ground cinnamon, ginger, and cloves. It had the perfect sweet/sour flavor without adding any sugar or honey. I packed it into hot half-pint jars and processed it in the waterbath.

I'm running the Siberian peaches through the fruit dryer, pitting, cutting into slices, but not bothering to peel. I dried a great load of green bell peppers last week, also some Anaheims and yellow gypsy peppers, for winter soups. Peppers keep beautifully when dried.

It's really a race when I get a box, or pick a bunch of something. When will they get ripe? When will they spoil? There's a window--wide for green peppers and tomatoes, narrow for apricots (every one ripens at the same instant).

Eating locally has really made me conscious of harvest times in our state. Cherries are done, apricots are done, plums are at the end, peaches only have a couple more weeks to run. Asparagus is a spring thing. Peas are a joy of early summer. We'll have fall lettuce until the first freeze, then the hardier greens. Enjoy it while you can! It won't be back until next year.

Some fruits and vegetables can be put up for the winter, and I've been doing it this year. I remember my mother putting up fruit and vegetables. She did green beans, peaches, sweet corn, bread-and-butter pickles, and watermelon pickles. Watermelon pickles were certainly not a favorite of mine, but the bread-and-butter pickles were great. We enjoyed them all winter. Nothing you can buy in the store beats them.

Bread-and-butter pickles
Makes 7 pint jars

4 pounds of small, very fresh organic pickling cucumbers
2 pounds of red spring onions, bulbs only
1/3 cup flaked sea salt
some ice
2 cups sugar
3 cups apple cider vinegar
2 tablespoons mustard seed
2 teaspoons turmeric
2 teaspoons celery seed
1 teaspoon dried ginger
1 teaspoon peppercorns

Slice the cucumbers 1/4" thick, and the onions similarly. If the onions are large, cut into quarters before slicing. In a very large bowl (or 2 large ones) mix with salt, cover with ice cubes. Let stand 1 1/2 hours. Meanwhile, put your jars and rings into the waterbath canning kettle and bring to a boil. Put the lids in a small pan covered with water, and bring to a simmer.

Pick ice off top of vegetables, drain them, rinse, and drain well.
Mix vinegar, sugar, and spices in a large kettle and bring to boiling. Dump the cucumbers and onions into the kettle, and bring all to a boil. Pack vegetables into hot jars, leaving 1/4" headspace. Wipe off the rims, then place the lids and rings on.
Put jars back into water bath, bring back to boil, and process 10 minutes. Then lift out onto the counter and wait for the ping!

Their flavor is said to develop further in the first few weeks of storage, but the samples I ate that just wouldn't fit into that last pint jar were delicious.

They are very pretty with the red onions; white are usually used. You can do the same thing with small zucchini, adding 2 smallish sliced green peppers or sweet frying peppers. A friend was planning to make the zucchini pickles with the zucchini we got at the food cooperative. Surprise: the zucchini turned out to be a beautiful bright yellow. And the onions were red. But she decided to make them anyway. The yellow zucchini looked so sunny and bursting with health.

Don't bother to make pickles with wilted, tired cukes. They should be crisp and fresh. If you don't have fresh spring onions, regular onions will do. If you haven't seen spring onions, they are full-grown with green tops, pulled fresh out of the field in midsummer; they are NOT scallions. We've been getting them in the cooperative; they are really wonderful. If you refrigerate them, you can use the tops like scallions in the first few days; the bulbs last a long time.

Another summer's bounty recipe:

Quinoa tabbouleh

1 cup Colorado quinoa (if you can find it, or other source)
4 cups boiling salted water
1 large bunch flat-leaf parsley, chopped fine
1 large red ripe tomato, chopped fine
chopped leaves from a large sprig of fresh mint
1/4 cup lemon juice, or to taste
1/4 cup olive oil, or to taste
salt and pepper as desired

Put quinoa in boiling water, boil 10 minutes, then drain. (This is quinoa cooked like pasta.) Put in a bowl, mix with parsley, tomato and mint. Add lemon juice and olive oil, then taste. Need more zing? add lemon juice. Need more salt? add some.

Summer Bounty recipes

2008-08-22T13:09:00.000-07:00

Here are three summertime recipes we've been eating recently.

Schav
A cold soup; a Jewish specialty often made with sorrel. Makes 4 servings.

1 smallish potato, sliced thin, peeled if skin is heavy
3 cups water
3/4 tsp salt
1 pound finely chopped washed greens
2 beaten eggs
1/4 cup lemon juice
2 sliced scallions or equivalent in fresh onion tops or chives
salt and pepper to taste

Cook the potato in the water with salt until tender. Wash your greens. You can use all spinach, half spinach and half dandelion greens (I used the big farmed ones), half dandelion greens and half chard (not using the stems), or your choice, but they should be soft greens that cook quickly. If you have sorrel for part or all of the greens, you'll need less lemon juice. Since the eggs are only lightly cooked with the hot water, use the best quality fresh eggs you can.

Chop the greens finely. Put in skillet with just the water they still have on them, and stir over medium heat for about 5 minutes until the color brightens. Beat the eggs in a bowl with a whisk, then beat in the hot potato water. Add the potato bits, the hot cooked greens, and the scallions. Mix well. Finally add 1/4 cup lemon juice. Add salt to taste and freshly ground pepper. Chill the soup for several hours. It is served cold.

Summer's Bounty Stew
You COULD use
ingredients from somewhere else, especially if you live in another state. Quickly cooked summer meal. This amount serves 2 adults.

1 tbs sunflower or olive oil, or home-rendered lard
1 Colorado fresh spring onion, red or white, green part sliced, bulb chopped
1 Colorado garlic clove, peeled and sliced
1/2 lb Colorado ground bison
1 Colorado yellow crookneck squash
1 1/2 large or 2 medium Colorado tomatoes, stem end cut out and chopped but not peeled
1/2 cup chopped Colorado flat-leaf parsley
1/2 teaspoon dried Italian herbs, or use your choice of fresh herbs
3/4 cup fresh or frozen peas, or chopped fresh Colorado snap peas
freshly ground pepper, salt to taste

Spring onions are fresh medium-sized onions with their tops; only available in midsummer, fresh and delicious. Must be stored in frig.

Saute garlic and chopped onion in the cooking oil, then add the ground bison and stir to brown. After it loses its red color, add the squash, parsley, and herbs, stir a few more minutes, then stir in the chopped tomatoes. Allow to simmer covered a few minutes, then add the peas (if you use fresh shelled peas, add WITH the tomatoes). Let simmer a few more minutes, covered, until the peas are done. Sprinkle with pepper and salt to taste. Serve. You could put it over pasta if you like, but we like it plain as a stew.

Pasta with Fresh Tomato Sauce
"Tastes like Italy", my husband said. The Italians insist upon fresh food, freshly cooked, letting the quality of the ingredients make the flavor of the dish.

3 large local tomatoes, stem end removed, chopped smallish
2 tbs olive oil
2 cloves peeled sliced garlic
fresh herbs to your taste: thyme, marjoram, oregano, flat-leaf parsley, rosemary, basil, etc.
salt and pepper to taste
Spaghetti, regular or gluten-free
Fresh mozzarella cheese (ours is from Windsor Dairy)

Start boiling water for pasta.
In 1 tbs olive oil, saute one of the chopped tomatoes for 5-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Put into blender and quickly puree.

Start the pasta cooking.
Wipe out skillet, start again with another tbs olive oil, the other two tomatoes, and the fresh herbs. Saute over medium heat as the pasta cooks. The tomatoes should not lose their essential character. After they have sauteed for 5 minutes or so, stir in the puree. Check the seasoning.

Pour sauce over freshly cooked pasta, decorate with small thin slices of fresh mozzarella. Ciao!

My Chokecherry Adventure

2008-08-18T20:44:00.001-07:00

This has not been a good fruit year for Northern Colorado, and for our yard in particular. Last year we were up to our ears in Siberian peaches, plums of several kinds, and apples. My fruit dryer was busy for weeks putting away all that harvest. We gave away over 1000 pounds of apples from our three trees.

But this year, we have just a few apples, just a few peaches, just a few plums. So my attention turned to... ta-da.... chokecherries. Since we live in the valley of the Big Thompson river, chokecherries grow wild here, along with wild plums. Chokecherries seem impervious to heat, cold, drought, downpours, insects, and hail, always producing a crop. And they make enough for the birds, the bears, the rodents, and the occasional jelly-making human.

Problem is, I just don't like jelly. DH doesn't either. Since I have gluten intolerance, we don't have much bread around, and wouldn't put jelly on it anyway. It's easy to make jelly from chokecherries, and it is excellent jelly. Just collect, simmer 15 minutes, and let drip in a muslin bag for the juice. Sugar and a little pectin, and you have it. (Obviously this is not a recipe, but recipes for chokecherry jelly are readily available.)

So, I think, what about chokecherry leather? I have trays with my fruit dryer that make leather, and I've made apple and pumpkin leather in the past. I picked about 2 quarts of berries, removed the stems and the bird-pecked ones, and put in a saucepan with a little water. Then I simmered them for about 15 minutes, until soft. (You need to cook chokecherries, as the pits are slightly poisonous.)

Next, I tried to put them through the food mill. Bad idea. The pits are large compared to the size of the berry, and the food mill really did not like the pits. In fact, some of the pits broke into little sharp pieces.

Food mill didn't work very well, so I tried rubbing them through a sieve. It was very difficult to remove the pulp from the pit by this means, so I gave it up as a lost cause.

The original food mill approach did give me about 6 cups of juice and pulp. So I decided to sweeten it just a little, using healthful local honey...... wrong. Honey is hygroscopic, meaning that it doesn't dry, and in fact can absorb moisture from the air. So after hours of drying, I had a thin and very sticky paste stuck to the trays. On the good side, it was absolutely delicious, although it had a few little sharp bits from the pits.

As I discovered, cooked chokecherry juice and pulp is plenty sweet enough for leather without adding any sweetener, but if you must sweeten it, be sure to use non-local non-healthy sugar :-(

My original inspiration was an American Indian recipe I came across. They would collect the berries, and pound them very thoroughly, breaking up the shell of the pit, and freeing the kernel inside. Then they would pat it into thin cakes and dry in the sun. This seems to be enough heat to remove any slightly poisonous problems with the pits. The little cakes were considered a treat, although you had to spit out the numerous small sharp fragments of the shell. The pits are highly nutritious with protein and oil, so the little cakes were good wintertime food.

After having made my attempts at doing something besides jelly and little dried cakes, I looked on the internet to see if I was just nuts, or if somebody else had some ideas. And this is what I found: Chokecherry.

The author is a real fan of the chokecherry and has a number of ideas for using them, in addition to information on growth habits and identification. Not only does he make chokecherry leather, he LOVES it.

As he mentions, you can also just make juice and can it (by boiling-water process), without adding the sugar and making jelly. I can imagine that the juice would be good with applesauce. Or you could make a light syrup (honey WOULD work for this) for pancakes, or for refreshing summer drinks or desserts. A little creativity, and chokecherries are a tasty and free addition to the food supply.

From previous years, I know that the wild plums, when allowed to get fully ripe, are absolutely delicious. They are small, and turn a pretty pink when ripe, though there is some color variation between one shrub and another. They should be soft, and nearly falling off the bush.

If you are a jelly lover, they make excellent jelly and jam (no pit worries on these; the pits are big enough to not cause problems). I like to eat them fresh. I have pitted and frozen them. I have also pitted and dried them; they don't take too long because they are small. In the winter, you can stew up the dried wild plums with some water and honey for an hour or so and make Compote (a delicious dish of stewed dried fruit, decorated with heavy cream). Or I can visualize the cooked pulp in ice cream or with other fruits in a cobbler or crisp.

You will know if they are not ripe enough; they are hard and unbelievably tart. I have wondered if one could make umeboshi plums by salting our wild plums, but I haven't tried it.

At any rate, it's fun to see what can be made of our prolific and hardy native fruits. They are the taste of the foothills of Northern Colorado, long before the settlers brought their fruit trees and vegetables. Happy gathering!

Month 9: July--A Bounty of Vegetables

2008-08-18T11:18:00.000-07:00

I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. I've been busy DOING, I guess--putting up food, and working on the LoveLandLocal food buying cooperative.

It's easy to eat locally in Colorado in July. All the farmers markets have vegetables and fruits on offer; the CSAs have all started delivering. If you have a garden, you are probably up to your ears in fresh produce. We're having fresh salads every day, fresh cooked and raw vegetables, and delicious fresh fruits.

This is a good time of year to start your own Locavore diet, because now is the time you need to start puting up that Colorado bounty for the winter. So far I have picked and eaten gooseberries, Nanking cherries, pie cherries, and black currants from our yard. I've also harvested radishes and wild arugula, and dug the first new potatoes from my small overgrown garden.

I've put up tomato sauce by waterbath canning, using a little vinegar in each jar as the experts recommend. And I plan to can lots and lots more tomatoes, as sauce, salsa, chopped tomatoes, maybe tomato juice.

I have made three half-gallon jars of lactofermented green beans, one of sauerkraut, and three of cucumber pickles. These pickles are very easy to make, and don't require vinegar or water-bath canning. You just need refrigerator space for the finished pickles until you eat them all. I have written a little paper on lactofermentation; you can find it under "Blogs and websites" to the right.

I bought a vacuum sealer and put up a boatload of Colorado snap peas for the freezer, as well as many packages of green beans and a few of snow peas.

My fruit dryer has been busy with drying fresh herbs, MORE green beans, some sweet corn, a box of apricots, and a box of peaches. These are safely stowed in glass jars. I prefer to dry fruit since you don't need sugar, and unlike freezing they can be stored without any further input of energy. See my next post for the chokecherry adventure...

The Colorado cherries and apricots are done for the season. We just ate the delicious fresh sweet cherries and I didn't put up any.
As the weeks pass, some foods come into harvest in Colorado, and others go out.

Plans for the coming month:

bread and butter pickles (whwnever I can find small pickling cukes)--these are water-bath canned. My mom used to make the best bread and butter pickles.

Canning lots and lots more tomatoes, as sauce and whole tomatoes, and maybe salsa.

Drying boxes of peaches and plums.

Might try drying melon slices; I'm finding delicious melons from Monroe Farms at the farmers market. I've heard they're great dried.

All kinds of summer squash can be dried, sliced thinly. They make nice crunchy snacks, and can be put into wintertime soups too.

Other foods that dry well: bell peppers, anaheim peppers, and mature onions. I plan to do them all. For chili peppers, just string them and hang them; no need for electricity.

The refrigerator is groaning, filled to the gills with lactofermented pickles and fresh veggies. And the freezer is packed with frozen vegetables, and a couple of bags of whole grain flour staying fresh.

My DH complimented me on the fresh tomato sauce I served on pasta recently. He said, "this tastes like Italy". When we vacationed in Italy in 2005, the foods were so fresh and flavorful. The tomatoes were grown right outside the city, and trucked in fresh in the morning. Most of the sauces were fresh, the vegetables were crisp; everything tasted like itself, like it should.

You don't have to go to Italy to get food this good though--just buy local organic Colorado produce, freshly picked and into your kitchen in a day or two. Warning: It does ruin your taste buds for stale, chemicalized, overprocessed food shipped from all over the world and kept in warehouses for weeks or months, or manufactured in a factory somewhere from ingredients you can't pronounce. No more strawberries tasting like sweet cardboard; no more flavorless melons; no more green beans already three weeks past their prime; no more peaches that go directly from hard to rotting without ever
stopping at ripe.

We've mainly been eating simple meals of meat, vegetables and fruits, but I have a few recipes to share with you in the next post.

Month 8: Out of the Woods at Last

2008-07-15T15:27:00.000-07:00

In June we finally started getting the fresh Colorado vegetables in quantity and variety. We have been enjoying daily large salads with lettuce, cukes, tomatoes, and fresh herbs. We've been eating Colorado snap peas and snow peas. Snow peas are great with Hazel Dell mushrooms in a quick stir-fry. Snap peas are wonderful however you eat them. I've also frozen about 15 pounds for later in the year, since they won't stay in season here for long. And I won't buy the ones imported from Argentina or elsewhere.

The Farmers Markets finally started getting some fresh vegetables in several booths, as well as the first of the Colorado fruit: bing cherries. I'd like to find pie cherries too, but they are more elusive. The Loveland area used to have many large cherry orchards; in fact our house was built on a former cherry orchard west of town.

We're both on a diet, and both losing weight. It's mainly meat (local organic, including chicken) and vegetables either cooked or raw, with a little fruit. And a couple of times a week, a high-carb meal with bread, potatoes, or grains. This diet would have been impossible in April, with no fresh vegetables available, without breaking our local food promise.

Looking back over the eight months since November 1st, the 100-mile diet has morphed into more of a Bullseye diet. Meats, eggs, dairy products are from a 25-30 mile circle. Now that our CSA is starting (Yippee!) our vegetables will be mostly within a 15-mile circle; this spring I allowed the entire state of Colorado because there just was NOTHING in the way of fresh vegetables locally.

I'm considering building a small hoop house in our back yard. There is no reason why we can't have season extenders here; it's just that nobody is doing it as a business now. A hoop house could give us homegrown fresh vegetables from March through December.

With staples, there was really very little that I could find within a 100-mile circle, especially organic. Whole wheat flour from Kersey helped make my husband's weekly pizza, but I am gluten-intolerant, so it's done nothing for me.

Staples are grown in Larimer and Weld counties, but generally not organic, and generally sold directly into the commodity food chain. I hope we can remedy that problem. If we can build a market for local grains, beans and flours, I'm sure our local farmers can grow them for us. A side benefit for them is that they would get a much better price, with fewer middlemen between the farm and the customer.

I have bought Colorado staples: millet, quinoa, pintos, anasazis; and some staples from neighboring states: Utah, Kansas, Nebraska.
It's nice to have some food put aside. I have glass jars filled with grains and beans, and flour in the freezer to last us for a while.

I plan to put up green beans (lactofermented and frozen, maybe canned, maybe dried), and tomatoes tomatoes tomatoes, as sauce, paste, chopped, and whole. I plan to dry more herbs, make more pesto, and dry Colorado peaches, pears, and plums. Some of that will be from our yard, though our fruit crop is way below last year. Must have been too dry in the spring to set a lot of fruit.
I plan to freeze English peas, dry zucchini (I hear they're very good that way), and dry onions. It would be easier to make it through spring with more preserved foods on hand. And it makes a person feel a little more secure, knowing that there is GOOD FOOD in the house.

A great site on preserving foods is Preserve. I especially like the
apron she is wearing: "Put Up or Shut Up". I'd like to have one
of those! And here's another site with loads of info on food storage: Food Storage FAQ. And there's a load of information of all kinds on Backwoods Home Magazine.

A quick May and early June recipe, that got us through the desert of fresh food. Honeyacre is located in Wiggins, CO, and grows hothouse vegetables for the Farmers markets (and stores too, I think). Very tasty for hothouse vegetables; so much better because they are local and fresh picked.

Honeyacre Salad

1/2 Honeyacre hothouse cucumber, peeled and chopped
1 large Honeyacre hothouse tomato, chopped
1 Honeyacre hothouse sweet pepper, your choice of color (or whatever she has), chopped

Mix all together. Drizzle on 1 tablespoon olive oil (California) and 1/2 tablespoon vinegar, pickle juice or lemon juice. Sprinkle with fresh or dried herbs. Voila! Serves two hungry people.

And something that is good either with the last of the stored potatoes, or the new potatoes which are available, with the new Colorado scallions; an Irish recipe.

Champ

Peel and cut up 2 pounds potatoes, preferably Russet. Cook in salted water until tender. Drain. In another pan, heat 1/2 cup milk, 3 tablespoons butter, and 2 bunches scallions, trimmed and chopped fine. Simmer for a few minutes until the onions are soft. Then mash the potato chunks into the milk and scallion mixture. I like it a bit chunky. Serve with a few pats of butter melting into it, just to make it beautiful. This should serve four people as a side dish.

If you want a smoother-textured dish, mash the potatoes separately until smooth, then stir into the milk and scallions.

The Tragedy of the Tomato

2008-07-11T17:12:00.000-07:00

The three-month long crisis with salmonella on tomatoes, or is it peppers? or is it scallions? or what is it anyway? sheds a very bright light on why local food is better.

Some people have gotten sick from salsa, and some never eat salsa so that couldn't be the source. Apparently the infected tomatoes are contagious enough that slicing one in a restaurant kitchen and then cutting some other food could contaminate the other food.

In a recent article I read, apparently the FDA was surprised to learn that tomatoes are commonly "repacked", together with tomatoes of the same size and appearance, from other areas. Sometimes U.S. grown tomatoes are mixed with tomatoes from Mexico or other countries, and sold as a product of the U.S. The FDA investigators have had an incredibly hard time tracing tomatoes to their farms of origin. Tomatoes are often held in warehouses for months before sale. They have become the perfect anonymous vegetable. Nobody can tell where they were grown, or when, or how. Therefore there can be no traceability, and no responsibility when something goes wrong.

One of the tragedies is that many large tomato growers have had to plow under their crop, worth sometimes $100,000 or more, because people are afraid to buy tomatoes. This is true even for growers whose tomatoes have tested perfectly clean with no trace of salmonella saintpaul. An entire industry is on the ropes right now.

Approximately 1,000 people have been sickened by the present time, though very few have died, and there's no end in sight. There is little or no progress in the investigation, except to widen it still further, due to the anonymity of the modern tomato. If warehouses are contaminated, many other vegetables could now be affected.

The E coli spinach of 2006 was much easier to trace, because bunches of spinach are held together with twist-tie labels from the company that produced them, which happened to be Earthbound. Painful at the time, but the cause was easy to find--overflow from the feedlot down the road--and easy to fix. With tomatoes there's no end in sight.

Yes, in case you wondered, your home garden tomatoes (once they get ripe) are perfectly safe. Our CSA tomatoes and locally-grown tomatoes, kept out of the commodity stream, are safe. One of the reasons to eat local food is the "face behind the food", farmers who know their product, and know that it is safe.

A few words about despair

2008-06-14T16:36:00.000-07:00

Yes, sometimes I despair. Don't we all? Oil going up. Food prices going up. Foreclosures going up, with a mountain of credit card debt hanging over people. Crop failures all over the world due to unpredictable weather events.

I read a good article on Fake Plastic Fish blog this morning, worth sharing. . It's worth while
to read the very thoughtful comments on this article too.

I hope Rosa does not mind me quoting her comment. It has a lot to say to me, and hopefully to you too.

---------------
"One thing about about this movement is that there is a place for everyone in it.

"If you're a homemaker, you can do the Riot 4 Austerity thing. If you're a commuter, you can bike or find transit or carpool options. If you are a researchy, internet-y person, you can have a blog and share that talent. If you like to be in-your-face with people, you can go sing with Reverend Billy (we did that a few years ago at the Mall of America, and it was a blast.) If you are secretly a mad scientist, you can build bike-powered things.

"Everything needs doing, so anything you love to do, you can do it as a way to change the world. Because it all needs doing, you can choose to do the parts that feed you and keep you going."
---------------

That's why my DH and I started the 100-mile diet, and why I started the LoveLandLocal Food Buying Cooperative. This is the "part that feeds me", and the marvelous thing is that it feeds a lot of other people too. We have over 70 families in the cooperative now, ordering over a thousand dollars worth of organic food every month: produce from Colorado, and staples from the western U.S.

Without the food cooperative, April and May would have been too difficult for us on the 100-mile diet. Not that we would have starved, but two months without fresh vegetables is pretty hard to face. We couldn't get through a case of butter lettuce by ourselves, but with help from other members, together we can polish off two cases easily (that's 48 heads of lettuce). Ambrosia!

The Colorado vegetables are coming in. Many CSAs have started already. We can buy spinach, three kinds of lettuce, parsley, fresh herbs, snap peas (!) from our organic suppliers. And I'm finding radishes, and hothouse tomatoes, cukes and peppers at the Farmer's Markets. Our CSA starts next month.

I'm going to stop criticizing the Farmer's Markets. It is very time-consuming for produce farmers to wash up their stuff, drive it into town, and sit there for three hours not making very much money. And the non-produce stuff there IS really very good. Solutions for late-spring veggie lack include 1. bulk buying, 2. season extenders (so I can grow my own), 3. putting up more stuff when it's in season (which I also plan to do).

Or, 4. for the larger solution:
As a community, I'd like to see us foster a business with orchards and greenhouses like Jerome Osentowski's in the Carbondale area. His greenhouses pump hot air deep into the soil from the daytime sunshine, and reverse and pump it back out at night. The fans are solar-powered. Almost no supplemental heating is required, even on the hills above Basalt where he lives.

A Strong Food Infrastructure for Carbondale; how about here?

2008-06-10T11:08:00.000-07:00

I received a flyer recently about the CSA Farm School in Carbondale proposal. You can read about it in the Aspen Daily News. From the flyer:

Short Version of what we plan to do

"Build a network of CSAs and farms to help make this valley independent from national and international food supply chains, starting with a working CSA and market farm in Carbondale, Ute City Farms in Woody Creek, and including the already established Peach Valley Farm CSA in Silt."

"These farms will serve as the campuses for a CSA farm school, which will supply the valley and greater area with farmers, farm workers, and knowledgeable citizen gardeners."

"The nursery, located on site, will also provide the area with fruit trees and edible landscaping plants to help people start growing in their own backyards."

Why this needs to happen now

"Through a perfect storm of energy cost increases, global food and fertilizer shortages, and a growing global population... we are at a crucial juncture in human history, especially as regards food. The creation of a strong food infrastructure that does not rely entirely on outside sources of supply is the best step we as a community can take to ensure our safety, security, and survival..."

They plan to have 10 acres in vegetables, and 5 acres for orchard, plant nursery, and greenhouses. They have a number of partner organizations, and significant seed money to make this happen. I'm impressed!!

I see no reason why we can't do something similar in Weld and Larimer Counties. We already have a nucleus of wonderful CSAs, dairies, and livestock growers. If the Carbondale people can keep orchards in the mountains near Aspen, we can certainly keep orchards here. In fact, Loveland used to be a big cherry growing area, and with climate change, we have gained a whole zone in plant hardiness (previously 4/5 to 5/6 now).

What would it take to bring Larimer and Weld people together for a local and sustainable food system? With the costs of transportation skyrocketing, food from other continents will become more and more expensive. If we want food security in the future, we need to build a partnership of interested farmers and community organizations, with the clear intention of becoming 80% food-sustainable (and working toward 95%).

Please, if you read this post, respond with some ideas for putting something like this together. If Carbondale can do it, we can do it!

Month 7: May, not out of the woods yet

2008-06-10T10:40:00.000-07:00

This will be a short post, since I've already discussed May problems recently. We broke down and got outside our circle, even
for fresh produce. We've been practically living off the organic butter lettuce (from Newcastle CO) and spinach (CO growers), and
Honeyacre hothouse tomatoes, cukes and peppers from Wiggins. I'd have been forced into the Safeway for the anonymous greens (California if not farther away), if I hadn't started the LoveLandLocal food buying cooperative.

As always, high quality meat, eggs, and dairy products are not a problem to find locally.

Finding staples also required going outside the circle; some are available from Colorado: quinoa, millet, several kinds of beans, hard red winter wheat and flour, but others are coming from the Rocky Mountain West.

Myrto Ashe tells me that Boulder is bursting with fresh local produce, at the farmers markets, and Jay Hill farm which will put together an order for you. Unfortunately Weld and Larimer County growers haven't got their late-spring act together yet. It's a chicken and egg problem: they won't go to the trouble of bringing in the early-season vegetables, because it's a lot of work and we won't buy them. Many people don't go to the farmers markets because the vegetable-to-other stuff ratio is so low. How can we turn this into a "virtuous cycle" instead of a "vicious cycle"?
Ideas? (see next post too)

May Is Still Tough

2008-05-26T09:26:00.000-07:00

I think I'd better see about extended season gardening in our yard. The pickings at the farmer's markets around here are pretty slim in May. Mostly popcorn, pasta, bread, snocones, bedding plants, and dog biscuits. Bless Honeyacre for showing up with their beautiful hothouse tomatoes, cucumbers, and sweet peppers. For hothouse tomatoes, they are remarkably tasty, and hold their own in salads and as sliced fresh tomatoes. Yum!

One other booth was selling produce last week, at some pretty strange prices: a tiny bunch of miniature radishes for $3.00; no thanks. I love radishes, but not that much. We'll just wait.
Maybe it's time for me to struggle out to the weed patch and plant a few radish seeds. Radishes make a quick crop; one that's especially fun for kids, since they can see results so quickly.

True story I once heard; little kid planting in the garden for the first time, put some radish seeds carefully into the ground. A couple of days later, after the boy was in bed, his grandfather transplanted some full grown radishes into the row. In the morning, the kid's eyes got as big as saucers! Wow, grandpa, they already grew!

It takes a little longer than that for us adults, but radishes are still quick and easy.

Our local food buying coop missed out on the lettuce we had ordered: the word was "aphids". Osage Gardens, the supplier of the wonderful butter lettuce we've been enjoying, had an aphid infestation that wiped out all of one crop. Since they're organic, they can't bring in the big guns and kill every bug in sight. We hear the next crop is coming on, and hope to get our hands on it in a few weeks. We have been enjoying the Colorado spinach.

As the price of petroleum goes up and up, the price of everything we buy goes up. The more transportation cost embedded in the production of a food item, the higher the price must go. There is no alternative, except to foster local producers, and to grow our own. How can we foster local producers?

Buy a membership in a local CSA, but buy it early; most are sold out by April

Dig up your grass and plant food; the "100-foot diet". Hopefully you haven't been dousing the grass with weed-n-feed and Roundup.

Encourage more local produce farmers..... but how?

Some of the problems local produce farmers face, both the hothouse and the field farmers: cold winters, hail, tornadoes, cost of irrigation water, cost of diesel to run the pumps to irrigate and to run the tractors, and most of all, unbelievably high costs for farmland near cities and towns. We're talking $20,000 to $40,000 an acre for some of this land. The only crop that can profitably be grown on land that expensive is shopping malls and houses.

Aside: Tell me, do we really NEED more retail space near Loveland and Fort Collins? Where is the money coming from to buy goods in all those stores? Where are the new good-paying jobs to support all that spending?

Back to the problems of local farmers--The list goes on: diseases caused by monocropping spreading into their fields. USDA subsidies for corn, wheat, and soy, most of which go to large corporations, but no help for produce farmers. Infection of non-GMO crops by pollen from neighboring GMO fields, and subsequent lawsuits from GMO producers for so-called "theft" of genetic material the farmer didn't want in the first place.

More: Pollinator decline, especially honeybees, due to diseases and pests of many kinds, and management which is often focused far more on profit than on honeybee health. (To read more about the problems of the honeybees, and some solutions, see Gunther Hauk's website: Spikenard Farm.)

And More: Water is being sold out from under farmland across the West to support municipal growth. Once the water is gone, the farmland reverts to prairie permanently, if not desert. So, tell me, do we need more suburban sprawl around here, or do we need food?

The campaign--one might almost call it a crusade--begun in the 1950s by Sec. of Agriculture Earl Butz to dismantle the small family farms in favor of mega-agri-bizness is in its final stages, and we are all the poorer for it (well, almost all; a few in this country have profited enormously from this change). What can we do to turn this around? How can we start, as communities, as individuals, to value local farming and farmers, and protect them. How can we encourage young people who desperately want to farm, but are unable to afford the "development" cost of land? How can we change our community's priorities?

I don't have the answers. These are not rhetorical questions, they are real questions, and the answers we find as individuals and as communities will determine what kind of food we have for our families now and in the future.

Two posts well worth the read

2008-05-21T06:48:00.000-07:00

Sharon Astyk, one of my favorite bloggers, has another wonderful post on Peak Oil and how it will affect food production. There is little doubt that we're at or near peak oil. Denial is not an option, at least it's not a sensible option, if you have a family to care for, or even care about yourself.

Peak Energy and an Overview of its Implications for Food.

Then I was looking at her co-author's website, and came across this post:
Confessions of an Outlaw Chickener. It's a fun read, as well as a practical one. He mentions one of my hot buttons: the U.S. Farm Bill.....

Anyone who looks at the food industry up close in this country will undoubtedly come away angry. Sure we've given up our control over what we eat. That is, we were on watch over the years as multinational corporations came to dictate what we eat. But take a spin through the US Farm bill and I can't imagine you won't come away completely pissed off. It's corporate welfare straight from the mouths of a government that seems not to concern itself with the fact that more than 35 million American live food insecure in this country. 72% of the billions of dollars Doled out in the farm bill go to the 10% largest companies growing 5 crops: corn, wheat, soybean, rice and cotton- in virtual lockstep with the processed food industry.

I'd say the first thing we need to fix in this country is the cozy corporate welfare embedded in the farm bill, but that's not easy to do. We don't have flocks of highly-paid lobbyists swarming over Congress. Maybe what we need is flocks of low-paid chickens in our yards, small flocks, eating bugs and laying eggs for our breakfast. And we need to take back our food supply from these companies (you know the names). The ones getting billions of taxpayer's money, YOUR money. So--grow local, raise local, buy local, eat local.

Terroir: the taste of where you live

2008-05-20T16:19:00.000-07:00

Terroir is a French term, commonly used to describe the special characteristics of fine wines. Terroir in its narrowest sense encompasses what we might call "microclimate"; the special characteristics of the soil on one side of a hill, the way the sun shines on the grapevines at each time of the year, the minerals in the water, the breezes or winds that affect the vines. These particular differences, in addition to the skills of the viniculturist and vintner, are what makes a wine from one small estate noticeably different from a wine from a neighboring small estate.

You need not go as far as distinguishing the really fine, and really expensive, wines from the cheaper. One reasonably priced and carefully created wine from a small vineyard is just as good, and noticeably different, from another. Terroir ties the wine that we drink to the place it was grown.

Winemaking in Colorado is off to a good start, particularly on the Western Slope, but I am not a wine expert, so let's look at this term from a wider perspective. What grows in Colorado that is especially fine? Are we familiar with a certain region where the peaches, or the beans, or the onions, have their own special flavor, the taste of home?

We can start with Western Slope peaches, so much better than California peaches that you would think they were another fruit altogether. And the same goes for the beautiful buttery yellow Colorado bartlett pears, available for only a few weeks in the early fall. It is more than just freshness, though freshness counts for some of it. The flavors are sweeter and more complex, because the fruit had to work harder.

It's too "easy" in California. Mild temperatures year round, plenty of water, massive orchards all treated the same, massive farms with spinach as far as the eye can see, all the same. Not the same as Grants Farm spinach, grown in the harsh climate north of Wellington.

Going back to fruit, a good Western slope apple's flavor wins out over a Washington State pampered well-watered apple. My husband tells me the upstate New York apples are absolutely tops, too, tart and crisp in the fall. I haven't had the pleasure of eating a good New York State apple.

On the other hand, it's hard to grow a hot chili pepper in New York. Too cool, too rich a soil, too much water, water, water. Chili peppers need to suffer: make it hot, make it dry, make the days scorching and the nights cold; I want to live in the desert. Northern New Mexico chilis have their own terroirs, and chili experts can tell you that the chilis from one valley are better than the chilis from another valley. And maybe these chilis are not "better" but different from those chilis.

Beans from Dove Creek in southern Colorado, in the San Luis Valley, are really the best I have ever tasted. The higher altitudes, the dry but slightly cooler days, maybe something special in the soil, makes for especially flavorful beans. LoveLandLocals, myself included, have really been enjoying the wonderful pinto beans.

As a society, we have pretty much lost our sense of these differences, since most of the supermarket food is anonymous, thrown together from every part of the globe, sold by price and cosmetic appearance rather than by taste and locality.

Once the food hits the industrial processing plants, any hint of terroir, of the special flavor of any ingredient, is lost in the background noise of high fructose corn sweetener, MSG in all its hundreds of manifestations, cottonseed oil (one of many on the label: count on the manufacturer to use the cheapest one), and multisyllabic words describing chemicals you have never heard of.

Gary Paul Nabhan wrote the first of the "locavore" books: Coming Home to Eat. He was hunting out the special foods of his region, Tucson and the Mojave desert. It's an arid region, and many of the traditional foods have been forgotten by the inhabitants. It was an adventure for him, hunting out the unknown treasures.

You don't have to eat a lot of imported foods to be a gourmet; the French and Italians don't. They know what is best in their neighborhood, in their home territory, and that's what they eat. They eat the sausages made by their cousin Luigi or Antoine, sold in the same shop by their grandparents before them. They eat the lettuces grown right outside the city, and trucked in fresh every morning. We've been to Italy, seen the farmlands outside Rome, eaten the perfectly fresh lettuce at a little hole-in-the-wall luncheonette.

There is nothing difficult here; nothing we can't do. We just need to have our eyes opened, or perhaps our tastes. Open your tastes to the special foods of Colorado. Appreciate the foods grown and raised by your neighbors. We need a Colorado cuisine that doesn't depend on California produce. We can do it. It's time to "come home to eat".

Millet: the forgotten grain

2008-05-11T06:23:00.000-07:00

I started my exploration of millet when I bought my first bag of organic millet grown in Sterling Colorado. I quickly learned the basic method of cooking, which I have mentioned in another post but will repeat below. Once you have cooked millet on hand, it can be used in a number of ways.

One big surprise to me is that millet was the original polenta in Italy, before corn came from the New World. I'm making millet polenta frequently now; I use it in meals and also as a nice quick snack, just cut out of the pan (kind of like a cookie or fudge, but not sweet).

Millet is also one of the grains used to make injera, the Ethiopian universal bread and eating utensil. The traditional Ethiopian dinner has a stack of big pancakes, made of millet or teff which was lightly fermented. You take a spoonful of a meat or vegetable dish (usually spicy), tear off a little piece of pancake, and pop the whole thing in your mouth. Delicious. No forks required.

Millet was the staple grain in northern China, before the shipment of rice from the south became common. So it fits well under stir-fries and sauced Chinese dishes, including spicy ones.

And millet is an obvious substitute for couscous, which is a pasta-type product made from wheat. Since I have celiac disease, wheat is out for me, but millet fits the bill perfectly as a substitute.

Millet is inexpensive too. You will want hulled millet (unhulled millet is good as birdseed). Bought in a 25-lb bag, I worked out that my millet is 18 cents a cup, therefore 6 cents a serving. It is a highly digestible grain, with a mild pleasant flavor.

Time for some recipes.

Basic Millet
Put one cup millet in saucepan. Cover with boiling water. Allow to soak one hour or more, or overnight. In the morning, rinse the grain twice; the water will look a little cloudy. There is a slight natural bitter coating on millet that you want to remove (just like quinoa). I don't bother with a colander, just carefully pour the water off the grain. Now add a little over one cup of fresh water, and salt to taste (I use about 1/2 tsp). Bring to boil and simmer 20 minutes. If you drain in a colander, you will need just a little more water. Cook until water is absorbed, and you see those little holes (just like cooked rice).

Using Cooked Millet

When fresh cooked, add a little butter or olive oil, and enjoy.

Or you can fry a couple of eggs and put over a dish of hot millet for a very tasty and easy breakfast

You can use it as a base for spaghetti sauce, chili, ragout, ratatouille, etc. etc. etc.

You can use it as a base for stir-fries and Asian type dishes

You can fix tabbouli with millet in place of the bulgur wheat: with chopped tomatoes, loads of chopped parsley, lemon juice and olive oil.

Ukrainian Millet Dish
You can modify ingredients to suit yourself on this, following the same basic cooking technique. I often eat it for breakfast.

Have cooked millet on hand.
Choose one or more of the following:

sliced non-cured cruelty-free bacon (locals can buy it at Rocky Plains or Windsor Dairy)

chopped onion or leek (from your local CSA, farmers market or garden)

chopped mushrooms (Portabellos are good, from Hazel Dell)

If you don't use the bacon, use olive oil or butter in the pan. Saute your basic ingredients till done to your taste. Pour a bit of water into the pan, then stir in the (already cooked) millet. Add a bit of salt if needed. Let the millet steam with the other ingredients for a minute or two, then stir and serve.

Millet Polenta
Start the same as for the Basic Cooked Millet, but after draining, add a little over 2 cups of water, and cook for 30 minutes. It gets very soft by then. Grease an 8x8 pan with olive oil, turn the millet into it, and smooth with a spoon until uniform in thickness. After it cools for 30 minutes or so, you should be able to cut it with a spatula, like brownies. After a few hours of settling, you can take those squares and brown them in a little butter or olive oil, just like polenta, and serve as a side dish or with a pasta sauce. Keeps well on the kitchen counter, loosely covered, for several days, if you can stay away from it that long.

You could add grated parmesan cheese at the end of cooking, or herbs either fresh or dried, for a different flavor. Finely diced dried tomatoes would be good too.

Millet Flour
For this you need millet flour, of course. Millet is easy to grind in a grain mill, or you could grind it in a blender or food mill. You don't want to grind millet too far ahead unless you refrigerate it, since the flour gets stale-tasting in a few weeks. Millet flour is available commercially, but I haven't tried it since I have many pounds of millet at home. I think fresh is best for this grain.

You can use millet flour in pancakes or biscuits, popovers, pizza crust, anything you'd like a little crunch in. I have used it alone in pancakes, but for most baking you would want to mix it with at least one more flour.

Those who can eat wheat, can mix it with wheat flour in baked goods. For gluten-free baking, mixing half millet flour and half buckwheat flour makes a wonderful pancake. I haven't tried popovers, but I think they'd be good with 1/2 millet, 1/4 potato starch and 1/4 tapioca flour. For pizza dough, mix with 1/3 garfava flour and 1/3 oat flour. Experiment!

My Favorite Millet Pancakes
For 1 serving. Double as needed.
1 egg beaten
1/3 cup millet flour
1/3 cup buckwheat flour
salt to taste
1/2 tsp baking powder
enough water to make your batter (something around 1/2 cup) or you could use milk or other liquid
1 tbs melted lard (HOMEMADE only) or your choice of oil or butter

Mix well. Pour batter into greased skillet or griddle, to make cakes 4-5" wide. When bubbles cover the top, turn and cook for a couple of minutes on the other side. Serving for one makes about 3 cakes.

I like them plain or with pepper jelly. I'm not a syrup enthusiast. Apple butter would be good too, or a savory curry paste or thick salsa. You can use them like injera, tearing off bits like impromptu edible spoons or mini-wraps, with savory meat or vegetables dishes or seasoned cottage cheese inside.

(Side note on lard: if you get really fine quality pork scraps, from free-range pastured pigs, you can make your own lard. Cut into small pieces and cook slowly in a kettle. Keep the temperature just high enough to keep it bubbling, as the water is driven off. Lower temperature as it gets closer to done. When it is almost done bubbling, strain out the crackling and pour the lard into freezer jars. The cracklings are delicious! You can use them in top of cornbread, or eat with a spoon, or sprinkle on top of mashed potatoes, etc. I keep my rendered lard in the freezer until I'm ready to use it. Then you can keep it in the frig or on the counter for a few weeks. DO NOT buy commercial chemicalized deodorized icky white lard. That stuff is not good for your health. Lard from healthy pigs has a different lipid profile, and has more unsaturated fat than saturated. You can tell because it is still soft in the frig.)

Overnight Millet, Buckwheat and Coconut Waffles

1 cup millet, lightly toasted in dry skillet and rinsed
1 cup buckwheat, lightly toasted in dry skillet
2 1/2 cups liquid: milk, soy milk, or water
1 large egg
1/4 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
2 tablespoons cooking oil or butter
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/4 teaspoon ground coriander
salt to taste

Prepare millet and buckwheat, put in blender with liquid. Let soak in frig overnight. Heat waffle iron (or you can make pancakes). Now add remaining ingredients into blender jar. Blend to make a batter. Bake waffles on your waffle iron as usual. Or make pancakes on a lightly greased griddle or skillet. Serves 4.

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Millet is also fermented to make a sour porridge, or to make beer. Ethiopian injera is often fermented before baking too; I haven't tried that so can't tell you exactly how to do it. Injera is also made with teff flour or with combinations of grains.

Experiment! Write in your recipes for millet, if I have gotten you enthused about the possibilities.

Month 6: 'April is the cruelest month'

2008-05-05T16:17:00.000-07:00

'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

2008-04-28T06:15:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-22T08:11:00.001-07:00

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

2008-04-22T07:46:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-14T11:45:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-28T11:10:00.000-07:00

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".

"Just like the Pioneers" -- Food Storage

2008-03-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

I was telling a friend about what we're eating; nearly out of stored winter vegetables, spring vegetables not in yet, and he said, "just like the pioneers". Of course, not quite. If we get too hungry, I CAN go to the store, we CAN go to restaurants. We're really not "hungry", we have plenty of food, it just takes a lot of ingenuity to keep presenting the same vegetables and fruits in new ways.

I have certainly learned the lesson that I need to put up food in the summer and fall, to have enough to last over the winter. The pioneers did that, of course, in a variety of ways before the advent of canning: by root cellaring, by drying, by smoking, by pickling and salting. They harvested their animals in the late fall, and counted on the winter cold to keep the meat from spoiling.

Next summer: I'm putting up tomatoes and tomato sauce; green beans, peas. I'm drying peppers, tomatoes, herbs, onions.
I'll be making some more lactofermented pickles; we just ran out
of cucumber pickles, darn it! Three 1/2-gallon jars at least, next summer. And some wonderful lacto salsa with the fresh tomatoes and peppers. I have a bit from last summer, still good in the frig after all this time. It's truly amazing how well the lacto pickles store in the frig, when carefully prepared.

As local eaters, we're looking at methods of food preservation that many of our mothers and grandmothers used, to save the local bounty of fruits and vegetables for winter. I have been taking a Food Storage online class from Sharon Astyk. She has made a lot of her information public on the internet to everyone. So I'm sharing it with you.

Food Storage 101 Part I
Putting Up Your Own
Growing or Buying Fresh Food for Root Cellaring
What Food Storage Can and Can't Do
and for a few chuckles:
Screwing It Up - A Manual for the New Home Preserver

And there are more, if you're interested: just go to her site and click on "Categories: Food Storage".

It's not a bad idea to have some food stored "just in case", aside from supporting local eating. Just in case you lose your job; just in case you are snowed in; just in case they announce a flu epidemic and ask everybody to stay home. It's nice to look in your pantry and know that you have enough to feed your family for a few months, or a year. We hope we don't see Hard Times, but it's good to be prepared.