January: What Are We Eating?

We're having a lot of soups now. Seems like I've always got at least two to choose from in the frig.

Borscht is a big favorite. Made with Cresset Farm beets, cabbage, onion, garlic, and carrot, and local bacon or sausage. Topped off with homemade yogurt from Windsor Dairy milk, this is a totally local meal. (recipe #1 under Nothing Beets Borscht post)

Caldo verde is another. Made with Cresset Farm kale, onions, and garlic, local potatoes, and sausage. I still have some local Anaheim chiles (a couple fresh in the frig, believe it or not, and some roasted in the freezer), so I add them too. And sometimes I add some soaked dried beans (currently using up my stock from Native Seeds/SEARCH, but looking for local sources).

Chicken soup from Northern Colo. Poultry chicken (Nunn), Cresset leeks, local potatoes (sometimes Cresset, sometimes from LaSalle). Potatoes, leeks and chicken go together so well.

Cole slaw of various types; the fresh food tastes great this time of year. I make slaw from green cabbage or from Napa (both from Cresset). Napa makes a great slaw. I've been adding a little radicchio (Cresset) and sometimes carrot slivers (Cresset). And once a hothouse Loveland-grown tomato. I also add pickled cuke slices (lactofermented by me from Cresset cucumbers). Dressing can be kefir/buttermilk (Windsor Dairy milk) with dill weed (Cresset) and celery seed (on hand), or olive oil (exception) and pickle juice or vinegar (on hand).

The last three weeks I have been fixing pizza for Saturday night dinner. Jim's has WheatLand Farms wheat flour, mine is from my dwindling stock of gluten-free flours. I've been using pesto (made last summer from Cresset basil and garlic) as a sauce, and Jim's is from the nearly vanished stock of tomato paste/sauce. Uh-oh! Then local sausage (Rocky Plains), local mushrooms (Hazel Dell), olives (California, exception), and Windsor Dairy's delicious fresh mozzarella. Yum. (Next summer I'm going to put up TOMATO PASTE! and tomato sauce, etc. etc., so we don't run out.)

We're enjoying our stored apples from our trees. I often have a chopped apples with homemade yogurt (Windsor Dairy milk) for breakfast; I fix spiced apples with cream for dessert often (like an apple pie without the crust, and without extra sugar). Spices are on hand; like Barbara Kingsolver I declared "spices" an exception. Spices have been traded by humans for millenia. My chosen spices are cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, mace, allspice, black pepper, cardamon and vanilla, none of which we can grow here. When I run out of stock, I will get them fair-trade and organic.

Another apple dish I plan to make soon is red cabbage cooked with apples and onions. Red cabbage is a little too resistant to make good slaw (except for a few bits for color), so cooking is the way to use it. It keeps nearly forever in a cool place.

Winter squash: Delicata stuffed with Hazel Dell mushrooms, a little rice (dwindling stock), and fresh mozzarella, with fresh herbs (cut from my sunny-window herbs). By the time my rice is gone, I hope to be able to find quinoa locally. I also plan to make some winter-squash soups, and will post recipes as I try them.
Those who can eat wheat could use whole-wheat (WheatLand) bread crumbs instead of rice to stuff squash, and make this dish perfectly local.

You could also use Haystack Mountain goat cheese instead of the mozzarella, or in addition to it. They are west of Niwot, and have a lot of wonderful varieties. You can go to the dairy to buy their cheeses, if you're close; Whole Foods carries lots of the chevre, and generally a few other varieties. For Christmas, I sent my daughter-in-law's parents a package of Haystack Mountain goat cheese (her mother is a gourmet cook) and she was impressed.

Roasted winter vegetables: turnip, parsnip, carrot, and leek, olive oil (exception), and fresh herbs from my sunny window.

Another favorite is buffalo burger (Rocky Plains) patties with melted mozzarella cheese (Windsor Dairy). A common simple meal is a sausage link or two (Rocky Plains), with a cooked vegetable and cole slaw.

We rely so much on our Cresset CSA vegetables, on Windsor Dairy, on Northern Colo Poultry for eggs and chicken. There are many CSAs in our area, a number of small local dairies, a number of small ranchers raising meat and poultry, so you can pick some near you. If you are reading this from another part of the country, you can do a search on the Local Harvest web site. It's really amazing how many small local producers there are, in every corner of the country.

So, we're eating like kings and queens here; still a lot in the freezer, pantry, and garage (cool room); on-hand non-local food is dwindling (necessity is the mother of invention; I'm figuring out these things as I go along). I'm gradually losing a little weight, not for lack of food, but because the local home-cooked food is more satisfying.