Going Local Week 2009

I've been on vacation half the week, so I'm late to the party, but it's Going Local Week 2009!

I kicked it off Sunday morning with a breakfast sandwich including eggs from a friends' farm and tomatoes from my backyard.



Over the weekend, I visited the Carmel cupcake shop Holy Cow Cupcakes that uses all local fruits in her cupcakes, as well as organic butter & milk.



Last night's dinner, though, was the Best Thing Ever: a Caprese salad with tomatoes & basil from my backyard, and homemade mozzarella cheese. This is what I've waited all summer for, seriously. I bought the cheese-making supplies in anticipation of it in early May.



What local foods have you enjoyed this week?

Harvest Dinner

My refrigerator is overrun with produce.

The cucumbers and green beans have taken over the produce drawer and a couple shelves. The broccoli is barely squeezed into a bag. The potatoes are being stored in the office, for lack of anywhere better. I'm out of space.

I admit, this isn't a bad problem to have.

I'm having to be creative to use up produce during dinners, and the other night, I hit on a particularly simple and tasty dish. To put it in perspective, I'm exceedingly critical of my own cooking - most nights, I discuss how the dish is marginal and could have been better- but I got halfway through this meal and said matter-of-factly, "This is really good!"  My husband agreed.

Green Beans, Potatoes, and Bacon

1/2 lb green beans, trimmed
5 small potatoes, cut into fourths or eighths (bite-sized)
4 pieces bacon

Boil water, and add beans and potatoes. Boil until potatoes are tender, about 10 minutes, and drain. In the meantime, cook the bacon until crispy. Chop bacon into small bits and toss bacon and 2 Tbsp drippings with the beans and potatoes. Serve warm.

This can be served as a main dish or as a side. The beans and potatoes were our main dish, and I served them with a side of corn on the cob. Although this is an almost-all-vegetable meal, it is surprisingly filling.

My favorite part? The only thing in this dinner not from our yard was the bacon. Garden WIN!

Quick link

Check out my recap of the "garden party" at my church last week, where we heard about and what an urban CSA is doing to support the local food movement, and I got to see all that is being grown for church members and local food pantries at my church.

Meeting our food

Lately, a lot of lip service has been paid to "knowing where our food comes from". Some of this trend stems from the food recalls on green beans, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, peanut butter, and seemingly everything in between. In theory, if we know where our food comes from- whether it's down the street or across the country- we're safer.

While that point is arguable, I think it is important to know where our food comes from for a different reason. The closer I am acquainted with my food, the more I will appreciate it. The closer I am acquainted with my food, the higher the chance I'm eating food from whole ingredients rather than processed ones. I'm more acquainted, for example, with the Alfredo sauce I'm going to make tonight for dinner from scratch than the powdered mix that comes in the Hamburger Helper box. Although many health-conscious people would be appalled at the butter and cream on my pasta, I'm more comfortable it because I know what's in it: butter, cream, and Parmesan. That's it. What's in Hamburger Helper? No idea. Are there chemicals, preservatives, and unpronounceable additives for color and flavor that I'd rather not ingest? Without a doubt. The further I am removed from my food, the less I know about it, and the higher the probability that it contains something undesirable.

The most closely I can become acquainted with my food is by growing it myself. In this way, I can not only know where it comes from, I can control what goes into it- and can make sure it is pesticide- and herbicide-free. In my mind, gardening organically in my backyard is WAY more enjoyable and less expensive than looking for those same products marked Organic in the grocery store.

The next best thing to getting growing my own is actually knowing who did grow my food. By shopping at a farmers markets or sharing produce with friends, I can meet the grower and be assured the food is safe. This weekend, I had a whole new experience with "getting acquainted" with my food- I looked my food in the eye!

Meet the Chickens:


These are meat chickens owned by my friends, just a month and a half old- still "peep"ing instead of clucking. They've had a very happy month-and-a-half though- starting in a warm safe house, then getting the chance to scratch at the ground and eat grass and bugs and just be chicken-y in general. They look pretty happy, no?

The egg chickens just a little ways away are the same age:

Note the serious size difference. There you have it- selective breeding at work! The full-grown egg-laying ladies are a year old and gorgeous, wandering around on their own because they know how to find their way back to the coop at night.


Back to those meat chickens.

I was there on Saturday, "Harvesting Day." I started out on babysitting duty, and ended up on "tear the guts out of the chickens" duty. Awesome, huh? The other assembly (disassembly?) line stations included "kill the chicken" and "pluck the chicken". By the time the bird got to me, it looked much more like what I'd buy in the grocery store, and for that I was grateful.

I'll spare the gory details, but do want to highlight this cool invention, the Homemade Chicken Plucker:

Our friend's dad built the contraption off of plans he found on a blog (can't find the link right now. The drum with the rubber fingers spins around and beats the dead chicken until most all the feathers come off. By all of the guys' accounts who did the chicken processing last year, plucking by hand was the absolute worst part. This device made the whole process go MUCH quicker. Unfortunately, my part of the assembly line was still a very manual, very slimy process.

So, I came face-to-face with my food. Will I think differently about it now? I think I'm just glad to know that the chickens sacrificed for our meals were very happy, very healthy chickens that, as Joe Salatin would say, "only had one bad day" in their short life. I think more when I eat meat, knowing it had to come from somewhere. As my friend said, "Every carnivore should experience this once." McNuggets are too far removed from Real Food for me to remember where they start.

Becoming acquainted with our food matters.

For Earth Day

Think about where your food comes from.
What it's doing to your body.
What it's doing to the place you live- Earth.
And what you vote for with your grocery dollars.





Right now, I don't see this coming to a theater near me, but I'm going to keep my eye out.
Where our food comes from matters.

One Local Summer: Missed it again

So, a week ago, we were on vacation, and didn't eat a local meal. That was my excuse.

This week, however, I had no such excuse. Well, besides the fact that we had practically no local food in the house and went over on our Vacation budget the week before, so I didn't do any grocery shopping for the week. It was a "pantry and freezer" kind of week.

So, the most local thing we ate for the last two weeks was the corn we had for dinner one night, and the zucchini that went into the chocolate zucchini cake, neither of which constitute a "meal". Alas, I failed again. But the cake was pretty, and delicious!

On the upside, we do now have concrete plans to have a proper garden for next year (in a house! with a yard!), which will make local food even closer than the once-a-week farmers market- it'll be in our backyard! Can't wait for that! And my late-planted pole beans in planters on my balcony that I didn't have high hopes for got flowers and the beginnings of beans a couple days ago, so all hope is not lost. Perhaps we will have really-local food again this year.

One local Summer, week 7: Corn fritters & Pasta

I had been seeing quite a few recipes lately for Corn Fritters, so I decided to try it out. As a side, I whipped up some whole wheat pasta, with a tomato and garlic sauce. This was a very low-key meal, hence the paper plates and bad picture.

Because neither I nor my husband had eaten corn fritters before, we didn't know what to expect (or what they were supposed to look like!) They turned out just so-so- I think I'd need to see/eat one from someone who actually knows how to cook them, to get a better idea of what they're actually supposed to taste like.

The pasta & sauce, however, got rave reviews. My husband tasted it and let out a surprised "Mmm!". That is always a good sign. I'm always proud to use food from my garden with goo results!

Here's the local breakdown:
Local: Corn, tomatoes, basil, garlic, pasta
Not local: everything besides the corn in the corn fritters :-/ Yeah. I know. I coulda done better.

It wasn't the most local meal I've done this summer, but it was what I came up with this week. Next week, I'll be camping Tuesday through Thursday and will not be back home until Sunday, so the week's local meal is up in the air. Anyone have good local-food ideas for northwest Pennsylvania?

Fair Food

I apologize to my regular readers, as I have been seriously slacking on the recipe-posting front. I actually have a few lined up, but haven't bothered to type them up, which is my primary problem. So I keep posting non-recipe posts and pictures, in hopes that it will make up for it.

Last night, my husband and I were impulsive, and we took off as early as possible and headed to the Indiana State Fair. I love the fair. I love the sights, the sounds, the smells (except in the pig barn) and everything surrounding the excitement. The whole event is seemingly centered around food- the fair vendors, the baking contests, the produce... and I suppose there's the livestock, but what's their fate? Food. That's right. :)

While at the fair, totally surrounded by local food, I did insist on buying dinner from one of the local meat producer booths, rather than the typical vendors. I went to the poultry tent, and the menu included a half-chicken, a turkey leg (huge!), and quarter-duck, and duck bratwurst. I stuck with the predictable "chicken breast sandwich". I know, I'm boring. As it was, the meat was good, smoked rather than grilled. This won't count as my "local meal" this week, because I don't know that the Lay's potato chips or applesauce served with the sandwich were local. Good food, though.

Here's some food related pictures I captured yesterday from the fair. Click on them for a bigger view:

One Local Summer, week 6: Whole Wheat Pasta & Cherry Tomatoes

This week's local meal:
- Locally-made pasta from the farmers market
- Cherry tomatoes from my balcony garden
- Basil & parsley from my balcony garden
- (non-local) oil

Cooked the pasta, and made sure not to over-cook it this time! Tossed with oil, tomatoes, and herbs. It was a perfect light dinner for the hot summer day!

In other local-food news, this pasta dish was good, but wasn't my favorite local food o' the week. Saturday morning, we took a rushed trip to the farmers market, and bought some sweet corn to pack for camping Saturday night. This corn was the hit of the trip- we had it for dinner Saturday night and everyone raved about it the rest of our time. I've never had corn so fresh and sweet- and it was so easy to cook!

Remove any visible corn silks from the corn, but leave the corn in its husks. Put the corn on the built-in grate over the fire pit at the campsite. Position the fire such that it is heating the corn but not catching the husks on fire. Turn the cobs periodically until the entire husk is dried out (and maybe partially blackened). We quit cooking when a couple of the husks curled back and began to expose the corn.

Without any extra water (soaking or boiling the corn), the cobs were perfect. The corn was soft and really sweet, and even the cob itself was rubbery from being steamed. And the whole thing was so easy- just throw the corn, husks & all, into the car to pack for camping- no extra ingredients or equipment needed! It was great!

One Local Summer, week 5: Roast Chicken & Steamed Green Beans with Tomatoes

I had my first harvest of roma tomatoes this week, and none of the tomatoes I have picked have lasted long on the counter. This week's local meal was chicken from the farmers market, green beans from the farmers market, and my first tomatoes I've ever harvested. All was delicious.

One Local Summer, week 4: Roast Chicken & Potatoes

I didn't drop the ball this week, I made it to not one but TWO farmers markets this weekend, and I tried a new experiment in cooking: roasting a whole chicken. I've never bought a whole chicken before, except for a pre-packaged roasted whole chicken at Aldi, which was much easier to handle, and, well, already cooked. I expect the chicken will be a part of next week's local meal as well, as we have plenty of leftovers. It was quite an adventure figuring out how to cook & carve the thing as well. I kept the cooking as simple as possible, and the carving, well, I tried.

This week's farmers market finds include green beans, tomatoes, and red potatoes, in addition to the chicken.

Our local meal this week consisted of roasted chicken with roasted red potatoes:


In other local-food news, I've mentioned before that I have tomatoes growing in pots on my somewhat-shady balcony. I wasn't sure if I'd get any sort of harvest, and then the plump green balls started appearing on the 2 roma- and 3 cherry-tomato plants. Well today was it! I harvested my first tomato, ever. it was a roma tomato, not terribly big, but I was proud nonetheless. I can't wait until the plants full of cherry tomatoes start to turn red- though I've heard its hard to keep up with them when they do.

And, the newly-harvested tomato was not part of our local meal because I couldn't contain myself and ate it before it could be included in anything.

Wild blueberries

We found a huge wild blueberry patch near our campsite this weekend. These are the few that weren't immediately devoured:

Enjoying the harvest:

One Local Summer, week 3: Dropped the ball

This week, as I have mentioned before, was crazy (and didn't get much better beyond Tuesday). I didn't go shopping for local food this week, and didn't have enough in the house to constitute a meal... so I missed out on this week of the challenge. I'm bummed, really. I was having fun. Hopefully I'll be back & cooking next week, though, due to traveling (camping) this weekend, I won't make it to the local farmers market Saturday morning. Again, bummed. Even though I'm out of the running, check out what everyone else is making. Perhaps I'll need to check it for inspiration next week.

On the upside, we are packing local brats & sausages to grill while camping, though there will be other non-local food involved. The exciting part will be the non-local friends as well (including one flying from the West Coast and others driving from the South!). I'm cooking breakfast for 14 sleepy campers tomorrow morning- wish me luck!
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EDIT: Not only did we cook local (to home) brats for lunch Saturday, behind our campsite was a huge wild blueberry patch, and the berries became dessert. Can't get mch more local than about 10 feet from where we were sleeping!

One Local Summer, week 2: Pasta with spicy tomato sauce

Our Fourth-of-July meal was local (local brats, sausages, & sweet corn, grilled at the family party), but I thought that was a cop-out answer, since I posted about local brats last week.
So... I made a really quick trip to the farmers market Saturday and picked up, among other things, locally-made fresh pasta and local tomatoes. I used the tomatoes along with parsley and basil from my garden, and locally-made hot Italian sausage to make a tomato sauce similar to one I made a couple weeks ago. The difference: there was no canned tomatoes, just fresh tomatoes, in the sauce. While this made a great sauce, the hot Italian sausage was less 'watered down' because I had less tomatoes & tomato sauce. This made for a VERY SPICY sauce. I don't usually like spicy things, but, with this, I was glad for the flavor- it worked out. I also had never had fresh pasta before, and it was good as well.

The challenge of making an entirely local meal is new to me, but it has been eye-opening. I've loved having fresh, seasonal vegetables in the house. We've found a butcher shop that has local meat, and are appreciating the quality. I had thought eating locally would be cost-prohibitive, especially because we can't grow much ourselves right now, but it hasn't been. None of our local meals have been elaborate yet, but I know I'm still learning. As I've been told by others, the transition to eating locally is a gradual process, not something all done at once. I'm getting there. I appreciate this summer challenge- it motivates me to keep trying.

One Local Summer, week 1: Beer Brats and Beans

What if I had an alliteration title for my local meal every week? That would be awesome.

This week, I walked to and from the farmers market- about 25 minutes each way. It was a great way to start a Saturday morning. Among other things (that I will get to later), I bought two sunflowers at a flower stand at the market, and the two big yellow flowers poking their faces out of my tote bag made everyone I passed on the way home smile and say hello. How can you not smile when faced with a sunflower? Sigh. I'm such a sucker for sunflowers.

On a more practical level, I bought eggs and green beans and broccoli and locally-made pasta*. Later Saturday, in the midst of a rainstorm, we went to Joe's Butcher Shop and bought local meat- sausages and bratwurst and tenderloins. Last time we bought bratwursts there, they were delicious, but my husband really wanted to cook them right- and every recipe he has found says to boil the brats in beer before grilling them, to maintain their flavor better. We don't drink, so don't keep beer in the house, but we picked up a local beer to try to 'properly' cook these for dinner.

The brats were boiled in the Upland Brewing Company beer for a while- I didn't keep track, because my husband was taking pride in cooking us dinner. Contrary to the name, the Upland Brewing Company is not based in Upland, Indiana, but in Bloomington. Although there are colleges based in both towns, I suppose they have more customers in Bloomington :)

While the brats were cooking, I made the green beans as a side. there is something therapeutic about the repetitive motion of snapping snap beans. Perhaps it is the memories I have of huddling over a bowl with my mother and grandmother as a child, going through the same motion. I steamed the beans then tossed with dill from my balcony garden.

All in all, a delicious meal. And local!

* I asked the pasta chef if there was such thing as locally-produced flour, figuring he would know. He said no, there's not local flour, or "none produced in a usable quantity". What's a One Local Summer girl to do? Not worry about it, I suppose. I might make my own bread some this summer, or try to go low carb... we shall see.

My Summer Challenge

I've mentioned the farmer's market a few times so far. This week, we rode our bikes there Saturday morning and I bought tomatoes and onions. Next week I will need to get some more eggs. We also ventured to Joe's Butcher Shop, a local meat market in the trendy part of town that has local meat, dairy, cheese, and pasta. We bought some brats and sausages, and plan on going back for more food in the future.

Why all this talk about local food? I've been reading up on it some, and it's a good idea. The food is fresher- it doesn't have to travel as far, so the harvest-to-dinner-table time is less. Because it's not traveling as far, less energy is being used to transport it, which is good for the environment. Buying locally also supports the local economy, and often the local farmers are also the smaller family farms. There's lots of other good reasons- what have you heard/experienced with local food?

Oh, and I'll be talking about it all summer, and trying to make at least one "local meal" a week, thanks to the challenge put forth by Liz at Pocket Farm. The One Local Summer Challenge is in its second year, and the bloggers participating will post once a week about their local meal, to encourage each other and give each other ideas. I need all the ideas I can get. I haven't figured out yet where to get local grains like flour, bread, and pasta, for example. I'm also not used to basing a meal choice for the week on what's in season- though I know this is better for us. I've got a lot to learn, and I'm willing to try. I also need to learn how to do this local-food shopping within our grocery budget. Any tips anyone has for how to go about this- while in a suburban apartment where I'm unable to stockpile large amounts of anything, or grow much of my own - would be greatly appreciated.

Oh, and thanks to El at Fast Grow the Weeds for being the Midwest round-up person. I'll find lots of good ideas from those bloggers in similar areas.

The challenge doesn't start for a week, but I gave local cooking a try this weekend, making salsa from the tomatoes and onions from the farmer's market and cilantro from my balcony garden. I did use a couple chilies and a lime from the grocery store, so I don't totally have this local-food thing down. If I can't even make this snack from local ingredients, will I be able to make an entire meal? We shall wait and see... Keep on the lookout for my attempt next week.

Farmers market finds

The Carmel farmers market opened this weekend with much fanfare- free doughnuts! Because we had our two nephews in tow, we didn't get there in time for the doughnuts, but there was still plenty of fanfare.


Our nephews loved watching a band play (and were less interested in the food stands) Apparently they weren't the only kids that preferred the music:


I shopped quick while my husband was keeping the kids, and decided to try some eggs, peas, and broccoli from a couple different stands. Last night, I got the eggs out to try as part of our pancakes, sausage, and eggs dinner. While I'd expect I maybe might be able to get scrambled eggs of the same perfect fluffiness out of storebought eggs, these farmers-market eggs were excellent (or eggs-ellent?) with no effort. They are the freshest eggs I've ever tasted, and the first brown eggs I've had. I'm a fan.

Next up: the peas and broccoli also obtained Saturday at the market.

Find your local farmers market!

Eating Local while Traveling

A couple weeks ago, I took a trip to Wisconsin for a funeral. Because cookies always bring comfort, I brought the aforementioned Cowboy Cookies to share at the family get-togethers while up there. The real food news, however, wasn't what I cooked, but the food I found while up there. I mentioned odd foods I've seen while visiting there before- this time, there were odd foods, but I noticed the local foods all over the place!

The traditional lunch place for Wisconsin visits for our family is a locally-owned restaurant (truck stop, really) called Hobo's. Hobo's serves a special cultural food seasonally, and the whole area looks forward to its arrival- a sausge called mustripen. This is a really local food- when you Google it, all the results are about the small town of Belgium, Wisconsin and the surrounding area, which is where Hobo's is. The current residents of the area (my husband's family included) are descendants of immigrants from Luxembourg, the apparent source of this sausage. This 'mustripen' (or 'Musz-Treipen' or 'Mousträipen', all pronounced "moose-try-pen") is a sausage made with blood and cabbage. It's a good thing I looked at the recipe AFTER trying a bite of the stuff- I'm not sure I would have tried some had I known how it was made. I'll be honest though- it wasn't bad. It was much softer than the typical sausage (probably due to the cabbage), and much more moist (probably due to the blood- but I don't want to think about that.) but had a good flavor. Other sites call similar dishes "black pudding- and that's about right. It had the consistency of pudding. Recently, one of teh older men who makes this ethnic delicacy died when his car fell through the ice of a frozen lake. He planned to share his recipe with friends just days after his death. Hopefully the (messy?) art of making this food won't be lost in a generation.

From Wisconsin May 07

More local food! It didn't end with the cabbage blood sausage! We were in Wisconsin after all... what more local to Wisconsin than cheese? Places to get local dairy products were all over, but we chose to stop and shop at the Mars Cheese Castle. I couldn't resist. The name was just too good. Anyway, we got inside, and I was amazed, not only at the large variety of types and shapes of cheese, but at all the other products. Everything in the place was local- the cheese, the sausage, the crackers, the soup & bread mixes, the baked goods, the wines, the syrups, the spices- everything was made in and around the area. When we stopped at our traditional meal-on-the-road place, Apple Holler, the same was true.

I wonder where local food places like this are in Indiana, besides farmer's markets? I wonder if they exist? I doubt they have names as outrageous as these :)