Keep On Keepin' On

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.