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.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Living Within Our Means
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.
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.
Sunday, November 30, 2008
The Costs of Local Foods
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.
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.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Connecting the Path: The Food Storage Year
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.
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.
Saturday, November 22, 2008
One Local Year: The Road Ahead
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.
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.
Sunday, November 16, 2008
One Local Year: Surprises
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.
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.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
One Local Year: Learnings
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.
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.
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