Another Year Without Groceries

February Cheese Challenge - Working with Rennet

2012-01-31T08:00:00.000-08:00

Last month we used simple ingredients that were readily available to just about anyone. We made cheese using acid, which generally lends itself to drier cheeses that don't readily melt. This month we're going to work with acid and rennet. This month we'll be making 30-minute mozzarella. This is a fun cheese to make and it really does only take 30 minutes.With the whey we'll then make some whey ricotta.

Rennet is made up of enzymes that coagulate the milk proteins. Before the laboratories of today, cheesemakers would slaughter a calf or kid, salt and dry the stomach and then would break off a bit of it when it was needed. They would soak this bit of stomach in some water and then add the water to their milk. I've heard one story that cheese was first discovered when a nomad carried milk in a calf stomach which coagulated milk.

The ancient Romans used an extract from the fig tree to coagulate milk. Several other plants contain the enzymes needed for curdling milk including stinging nettle, our lady's bedstraw, thistle flowers, and butterwort. Vegetable rennet is currently available for use if you don't want to use animal rennet, however aging a cheese made with vegetable rennet can become bitter.

Don't worry if the rennet tablet doesn't completely dissolve

Junket rennet is a popular type of rennet and is more readily found in grocery stores. Unfortunately Junket is much too weak to use for cheesemaking. The rennet used for making cheese is four to five times stronger than the Junket rennet.

So you can find animal and vegetable rennet. You can also find it in liquid and tablet form. Either form you will need to dilute before adding it to the milk so as to get a consistent curdle. When diluting the rennet you must use unchlorinated water. Chlorine, which is a very common additive in tap water, destroys the ability of the rennet to curdle milk. Use bottled or distilled water.

The milk has set correctly if you can cut it with a knife

Rennet needs an acid to work. For most cheeses a culture is added to the milk to sour it. We won't be working with cultures yet, so instead we'll be using citric acid. Citric acid is made from corn so if you don't want to use a GMO product make sure you use an organic citric acid or one that is labeled Non-GMO. The citric acid sold at the New England Cheesemaking Company is Non-GMO. You can also purchase their 30-minute mozzarella kit which has enough ingredients to make thirty 1lb batches of mozzarella.

You can use just about any type of milk for this EXCEPT Ultra-Pasteurized. The high temps used when ultra-pasteurizing milk destroys the proteins and you'll end up with ricotta instead of mozzarella.

With a long knife, cut the curd

In addition to the three ingredients you will need some equipment. You'll need two large pots, a bowl of ice water, a thermometer, rubber gloves, two small bowls to dissolve the citric acid and the rennet in the non-chlorinated water, a colander and cheese cloth.

Now that you've got your rennet, citric acid and milk together and you have all your equipment let's make some cheese!

1. Dissolve 1-1/2 tsp citric acid in a 1/4 cup unchlorinated water.
2. Dissolve 1/4 tablet of rennet or 4 drops of liquid rennet in 1/4 cup unchlorinated water.

Draining the whey from the curds

3. Add the citric acid to 1 gallon of milk while stirring. Slowly heat the milk to 90 deg. F. Once there quickly stir in the rennet solution. Don't stir too much or the resulting curd will be grainy. Just a quick couple of stirs. Cover and let sit for 5 minutes.
4. After 5 minutes check to see if the curd easily separates. If it doesn't wait a few more minutes.
5. Cut the curd into 1" squares.
6. Slowly heat the curds up to 105 deg F while gently stirring them.
7. Once they've come up to temperature ladle the curds into a colander lined with cheesecloth and allow the curds to drain. Save the whey though! We want to make ricotta from it.
8. Transfer curds into a microwave safe bowl and heat in the microwave for 1 minute. Drain the whey off. You'll want to wear gloves now because the curds will be really hot.
9. Add and knead in 1 tsp salt or herbs to taste and microwave for another 30 seconds.
10. Now comes the fun part of stretching the mozzarella. Stretch it and stretch it some more. Kind of like taffy.
11. The more you stretch it the firmer the final product will be. I like to stretch it for quite awhile so that it is easier to slice when it's cooled off.
12. Once you're happy with the consistency you want to make it into a ball (or several if you wish) and immediately drop them into a bowl of ice water to cool the cheese off as quickly as possible. A slow cooling will leave you with a grainy texture so this step is a must if you want a nice smooth mozzarella.
13. Of course, now that it's cooled you'll want to slice a bit off to taste! Go ahead and enjoy it. Let us know what you end up doing with it.

We ended up using ours to top a lasagna and also a potato casserole I made later in the week. For the lasagna I also needed ricotta cheese. So this is how I made that.

Now that you have all the leftover whey heat it up until it's simmering on the stove. You'll notice that the appearance of the whey changes and there are little white things floating around the yellow liquid. This is your ricotta!

Turn the heat off and simply strain through butter muslin (or sometimes I like to use coffee filters). I usually have to strain the ricotta overnight to get the desired consistency that I like. Once it's done straining add salt to taste and you're all done! You now have two cheeses from one gallon of milk!

Getting a Head Start on Summer with Limoncello

2012-01-29T09:01:00.000-08:00

There isn't quite anything like sipping on ice cold limoncello after dinner with good friends on a hot summer night. It does take time to make so you'll need to start now to have a good batch of it ready to go for those summer nights.Limoncello used to be hard to find but is gaining in popularity, however the good stuff is never cheap. You can easily make it at home and it tastes so much better. It's great to start now when you are probably drowning in extra lemons that you don't know what to do with. I prefer to use Lisbon or Eureka lemons over Meyer lemons. The Meyer's just don't offer the real lemony taste that I feel this drink calls for. Plus you would need about double the amount of Meyer's as they tend to be much smaller.The longer you let the mixture sit, the flavor will intensify but the alcoholic "zing" will mellow. I like to go about 20 days on each rest period to allow it to mellow while also having some intensity.

Ingredients

18 Lisbon or Eureka lemons, washed and dried
2 750mL bottles of 100 proof vodka (I prefer Stolichnaya)
5 cups of water
4 1/2 cups raw sugar

Instructions
1. Avoiding the pith (white part of the peel) remove the lemon zest with a sharp knife or zester into a large glass or ceramic pitcher.
2. Pour one 750mL bottle of vodka over the zest, cover tightly and store in a cool dark place for 15-30 days.
3. In a saucepan combine water and sugar and heat until sugar is completely dissolved. Allow to cool.
4. Add syrup and remaining vodka to the lemon zest and vodka mixture. Cover and let sit again in a cool dark place for 14-30 days.
5. Strain mixture into glass bottles and store in a cool dark place or give away as gifts.
6. Refrigerate before serving or pour over ice. A little goes a long way so I recommend serving it in cordial glasses.

Tom's Spicy Tomato Sauce

2012-01-22T19:37:00.000-08:00

Tom and I's first date he made me dinner at his apartment. It was a simple yet tasty dinner but I was most impressed that not only that he could cook but also that he enjoyed it. One of his best dishes was spaghetti sauce from scratch. Everyone who ever tries it raves about it.

Over time his recipe has improved. Fresh herbs and homemade sauce from our garden replaced the commercial sauce and dried herbs. The season really depends on all that we put in it. During the winter we don't have peppers, zucchini, or eggplant available. So instead we just add more onions and mushrooms.

The secret ingredients in this sauce are the hot sauce and the sugar. Tom didn't really want me to share, but then why would you make this recipe if it was just so-so? The hot sauce adds some heat along with some extra acid. We generally like to use Tapatio. I think Tabasco would be too vinegary for this sauce though.

4 c tomato sauce
1 c tomato paste
1/4 c red wine
1 c water
1lb sausage, removed from casings or ground meat
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 zucchini, cut in half and sliced
8 oz mushrooms, sliced
1 small eggplant roughly chopped
1 bell pepper chopped
2 Tbs Olive Oil
2 Tbs Hot Sauce
2 Tbs chopped fresh basil
1 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
1 Tbs chopped fresh Thyme
1 Tbs chopped fresh Oregano
1 Tbs sugar
Salt and Pepper to taste

1. In a hot dutch oven over medium high heat add oil and then sausage. Break up sausage while it cooks. Add garlic, herbs and hot sauce and continue cooking until sausage is browned.
2. Deglaze with the red wine.
3. Add the remaining ingredients and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until vegetable are tender and the sauce has thickened.
4. Serve over fresh pasta or add to a lasagna (I've been known to eat it on it's own).

Update on our Second Year

2012-01-19T09:18:00.000-08:00

We're well into our second year without grocery stores. Things are going pretty well, so well in fact that I still have absolutely no desire to step foot again in a grocery store. Being able to go to restaurants once a month is definitely helps though. It gives us a little bit of a break from having to cook all the time.

For the garden we've decided to switch things up a bit. We don't have much growing right now so we've decided to split the garden in half to maximize our fall harvest. One half will be for Spring crops and then the second half will be Summer crops. Then the side that was for Spring crops will become Fall crops. Next year the Summer crop area will be Spring crops and the Fall area will then become Summer crops. It does mean we'll have less to harvest during the Summer, but definitely will provide us with more food in the fall and winter. All of our seeds for the coming year so far have cost us about $120. I'm sure I'll be ordering more - I always do because we always end up with some failure that I have to replace.

Another thing I've noticed is that we're still spending a lot less money on our food. Even less than we were during the first year. Now that we're in the swing of things I'm finding we're only really going to the farmers' market and I'm not ordering from the buying club every month. I'm also going to be cancelling our CSA due to some issues I'm having with their billing practices. We were mostly just getting dairy items from them.With the goats producing 1-2 quarts a day of milk there are just a few things we need like cream and butter and that's not that often. I have another non-grocery store source where I can get those so I'm just going to cancel the CSA.

Right now we're probably only spending an average of $50/week on food, which is pretty minimal, especially considering our garden isn't really giving us anything. I'm feeling really good where we're at so on we will continue.

Lemon Souffle Revisited- with Limes

2012-01-15T16:47:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago I posted a Lemon Souffle recipe on my other blog that I thought at the time was pretty good. But everything around here is constantly evolving, even my go-to recipes.When I was a kid my mom used to make lemon souffle as a very special treat. We didn't get it very often, but I always remember it being one of my favorite dishes. It was sweet and extra tangy. She used to make it in one big casserole dish rather than in ramekins, but that was OK with me!

This recipe can work for either but you'll have to adjust the time for large dishes.I'm famous in my family for my lemon meringue pie. I'm pretty secretive about my recipe (even my recipe card just has the ingredients on it and none of the instructions) but I'll tell you that some of my secrets to it are super fresh, backyard eggs and Lisbon or Eureka lemons. Meyer lemons just don't work because they are too sweet. I started with my lemon meringue pie recipe and adapted it to become a lemon souffle since I never did get my mom's recipe for her souffle.For this recipe you can use either lemons or limes. Since I don't have any lemons on hand yet this year, I made it with limes instead. Of course, you can also do oranges or other citrus, you'll just need to adjust the water and sugar to your taste.

Lemon/Lime Souffle
4 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar plus extra
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup lemon and/or lime juice
2 Tbs corn starch
1 Tbs whole milk (we use goat's milk)
1/8 tsp cream of tartar
Butter

1. Preheat oven to 400 deg F.
2. Using the butter, grease 4 ramekins and then coat with sugar.
3. Begin beating egg whites and add cream of tartar. Beat until stiff.
4. Mix remaining ingredients together, beating until smooth.
5. Fold in egg whites and pour into ramekins.
6. Bake for 15 min. or until the tops are puffy and golden brown.
7. Serve immediately.

Pumpkin Maple Scones

2012-01-02T08:57:00.000-08:00

Most mornings involve a cup of home-roasted coffeewith a bit of sugar and some goat milk and a steaming hot bowl of oatmeal that's been cooked in goat milk. It's creamy and doesn't need much brown sugar. A touch of cinnamon makes it even better. On the weekends we always do at least one morning differently. While I love the oatmeal, it does get repetitive after awhile and I do like a change.

Those mornings we sometimes make pancakes or waffles. When I'm feeling extra industrious I'll make bagels or English muffins for eggs benedict. If we have bacon or sausage in the fridge we make biscuits and gravy. Sometimes I don't have as much time or energy though so I go with something a bit easier. Scones fit this bill. Unlike bagels and English muffins, they don't have to rise.

Scones traditionally have a lot of butter, which is a treasured commodity for us so I didn't really want to give up a stick for one breakfast. Cooked pumpkin, or winter squash is a good substitute for oils like butter. It's also a good way to make a substitute if you want to eat a bit healthier. We have plenty of winter squash that we really need to use up so I went out to our storage area and grabbed a small one to bake. I simply cut the squash in half and scooped out the seeds. I put the squash cut face down in a baking dish and put a thin layer of water on the bottom. I put it in a 400 deg F oven until the squash was fork tender. The time will vary depending on the size and type of the squash.

Preheat oven to 425 deg. F

Sift together:

2 1/2 cups flour

2 1/4 tsp baking powder

1/2 tsp salt

1 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground allspice

pinch of ground cloves

Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients and add:

1 Tbs maple syrup plus more

1/2 cup cooked pumpkin

2 eggs

1/4 cup milk

In a circular motion blend the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients with a fork. If it gets too tough to mix you can use your hands to combine. The dough should be pliable. I use medium eggs so if you're using large eggs you'll end up with a wetter dough. Add a bit more flour if the dough is sticky.I decided to make small scones so I divided the dough in half. Pat the dough into a ball and then on a well floured surface roll it out to 3/4" thick. You'll want it to be circular to make it easier to cut evenly shaped scones. One disc should make 8 scones. Place them on a parchment lined cookie sheet and brush them with maple syrup. Bake for 15 minutes or until lightly browned.

These won't have the crumbly texture or be as dense as you're used to scones having probably because of the lack of butter. They are chewy and filling though and taste great plain or with just a bit of butter.

January Cheese Challenge - Nothing but Curdled Milk

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

It's our very first cheese challenge! Are you ready? This won't be too difficult to do. We're going to start with a simple cheese that only uses ingredients that you can find easily or may already have in your kitchen. There are several different types of cheese you can make here. I'll show how I make one of them but you can choose to make that one, one of the others or all of them if you want. Feel free to get creative by adding herbs and spices.

All of these cheeses use an acid to curdle the milk. There is no need to add cultures to make these cheeses.

Paneer is a traditional Indian cheese made with whole milk, lemon juice or vinegar.

Ricotta, which is traditionally made from the whey left over from making hard cheeses, can also be made with whole milk. Again, you use vinegar or lemon juice to curdle the milk.

Yogurt Cheese is simply that - cheese made from yogurt. It's also called Lebanah and is common in the Middle East and Greece. You simply strain plain yogurt until you create a cheese from it. The resulting whey I suspect you can make traditional ricotta from because the yogurt is cultured. By making traditional ricotta simply heat up the whey to near boiling. You'll see tiny specks develop which is the albumin protein separating out. This is what makes up the ricotta. Simply strain the whey again and you'll have a small amount of ricotta.

Buttermilk cheese can be made with whole milk, some cultured buttermilk and salt.

The recipe I've decided to take on is Queso Blanco, a spanish unaged white cheese that is traditionally made with cow milk. I don't have any cow milk, so goat milk it will be.

For this recipe I'll be using 1 gallon of raw goat milk, distilled white vinegar and kosher salt. This recipe doesn't require the milk to be raw because I will be heating it to a high temperature, which will basically pasteurize it anyways.

I started by heating up the milk to 185 deg F.You can bring it to boiling, but this imparts a cooked flavor to the milk which I would prefer to avoid.

Once it reaches 185 deg F I took it off the heat and stirred in 1/4 cup of vinegar (you can add an additional 1/4 cup slowly if you don't have curds yet). I slowly stirred until curds began to form. They are white masses and the whey that separates out will have a yellow color to it. I then allowed it to sit for 5 minutes to allow them to develop more and settle a bit.

I then strained the curds and whey through a cheesecloth lined colander over another pot. We save the whey and freeze it in ice cube trays to add to smoothies. I allowed the cheese to drain for 10 minutes. I then put the curds in a bowl and mixed in 1 Tbs of kosher salt. I took the cheesecloth, lined a cheese basket (mine came with the hard cheese kit I previously purchased from here) and put the curds in it. I gently pressed out a bit more whey and then put it in the fridge to chill. Once chilled I gently pulled it out and put the cheese on a plate.

We used some of this cheese our our pizza. This type of cheese doesn't melt. Also, it doesn't improve with age so it must be eaten fresh. If you can't eat it all fresh, you can freeze it, but the texture may change a bit.

So, your challenge is to choose one of the cheeses above to make. Feel free to build on the recipe by adding herbs and spices. Try new milks if you can find them, like sheep or goat. Then tell us what you did and how you used it.

I look forward to hearing how it goes!

Cajun Spiced Crab Cakes

2011-12-26T19:44:00.000-08:00

Every Christmas Eve we have a crab feed at my house. This year was a bit different because Tom and Junior actually went out and caught the crab for the dinner table. They had great luck catching 6 rock crabs and 6 large Dungeness crabs. More than enough for 5 people, one of which wasn't interested in eating any crab. Eventually we'll get Junior to enjoy it.

Every year, even when we buy crab, we always have some left over. This year was no exception. My mom always made crab cakes the next day with what was leftover, but of course she's in Ohio so it was my turn to try my hand at them. Having never made them before I was a bit nervous. But in the end I was really happy with them. So here's how you can do it too.

1 lb Dungeness Crab meat
1 Egg
2 tsp Cajun Seasoning
1/2 cup Mayonnaise
1 tsp Hot Pepper Sauce
1/4 cup Oats
1 Tbs Lemon Juice
3 Tbs Safflower Oil

Remove all the crab meat from the shell. Grind the oats up. I like to use a coffee grinder as it gets them fairly fine. Add everything except the oil in a bowl.

I made the mayonnaise from scratch. I find that the commercial stuff is a bit too strong when I add it to stuff. I'm not sure what the strong flavor is, but I don't much care for it. The homemade mayo is much milder and what is left you can use to make an accompanying aioli. Also feel free to add more hot sauce if you wish. A teaspoon doesn't add much heat at all but rather just builds on the flavor profile.

I was surprised when I mixed this all together just how runny the batter was. Because it had egg in it though it should be able to bind well.

In a hot skillet add the oil over medium high heat and drop spoonfuls of the "batter." Flatten them with the back of the spoon and then cook until browned. Gently flip and continue to cook until the other side is browned.

Pull the crab cakes out and place on paper towels to allow to drain. Keep them in a warm oven while you cook the rest of the cakes. Serve the crab cakes with any sauce that you would prefer. We like to eat ours with more hot sauce.

Makin' Yogurt

2011-12-18T09:06:00.000-08:00

I love yogurt. I try to eat it every day. The problem is, if you buy it, it can get pricey. So I did some online research and found a great way to get my daily yogurt for a fraction of the price.

What you will need:

1 gallon of milk (any type of milk you want to use)
1 cup of yogurt with live and active cultures – later you can use the yogurt you’ve made as a starter
1 cup dry nonfat milk (optional – makes yogurt creamier)
Thick bottomed pot (large enough for 1 gallon of milk)
Candy thermometer
Sterile canning jars
Ice chest

Heat milk in pan to 120 deg F stirring constantly and add the dry milk
Combine some of the heated milk with the yogurt and mix until smooth. Add mixture into the hot milk.
Put mixture into sterile jars and seal lids. Place the sealed jars into an ice chest filled with hot water that is between 110-120 deg F.
Leave overnight in ice chest or until gelled. Place jars in the refrigerator.

That’s it.
The texture will be different than what you buy at the store because it doesn’t contain gelatin, modified corn starch or other added gelling agents. If you want a thicker, Greek style yogurt you can strain it. Place a large coffee filter in a colander, put the yogurt in the filter, place colander over a bowl and place in fridge. Leave overnight.

You can add fruit to the bottom of the jars or mix in sugar and vanilla extract for flavoring.

The Cheese Challenge Part 3

2011-12-16T17:14:00.000-08:00

I've been getting some questions about what books and supplies you'll need for the first challenge.

For the book I recommend Home Cheese Making by Ricki Carroll. We'll be utilizing that for a lot of the recipes.

Our first month we'll be making fresh, soft cheeses that don't require any cultures. On January 1st I'll provide a list of the types of cheeses you can start with. Get creative. Add herbs and spices if you want. You won't need a press yet but you'll want to get some good cheesecloth or butter muslin.

More on the Cheesemaking Challenge

2011-12-12T14:55:00.000-08:00

First and foremost, we need a name. I'm drawing a blank so if anyone has one to offer share it!

The challenges will start out easy, making some type of cheese that can be made with common items you might find in your kitchen. They will be generalized so that you can make a cheese of your choosing with they type of milk you want.

I highly recommend purchasing a cheesemaking book. Fortunately the web is also filled with lots of recipes so it won't be absolutely required but it would be more helpful.

As the challenges move forward you'll need to get more specialized equipment and ingredients/starter cultures/etc. Of course, for items like a cheese press I will show you how we made ours at home for less than $50.

Part of cheesemaking requires somewhere that is cool (50 deg F is standard) and humid to age your cheese. Basements can work well. We use a wine fridge so if you're going to take on cheesemaking start looking on Craigslist for them. You can sometimes find good deals on them because a lot of people are getting rid of them. A mini fridge with a thermostat controller can also work.

Feel free to start with a cheesemaking kit as well. They have everything you need for at least some of the cheeses all together.

At the end of each month I want to see links to posts about your cheesemaking! Leave them on our FB page. I'll include a list on the blog of the bloggers that are taking part. If you're participating send me an email and I'll get your blog and/or name on the list!

I'm excited. Are you?

Making Peanut Butter

2011-12-11T15:51:00.001-08:00

Have you ever thought something was crazy hard to make and easier and cheaper to just buy? And then did you realize it's the exact opposite? That happened to me with flour tortillas (not to mention they taste soooo much better homemade) and now with peanut butter. When we decided to give peanut butter a go, I could not believe how simple it really was. Of course, this can happen with most nuts, which can greatly reduce the cost. The only tool you really need to make peanut butter is a food processor.

A good rule of thumb is 1 cup of nuts will become 1/2 cup of nut butter. I start with salted dry roasted peanuts.

Basically just turn on the processor.

As the oils in the nuts get released the peanuts will start to look like butter. It will form a large mass but it's not done. At this point it's difficult to spread.

The lump will break apart and the peanut butter will become smoother and more easily spread. You can add more salt if you want, or just leave it as is.

That's really all there is to making peanut butter.

Blessed are the Cheesemakers

2011-12-06T12:33:00.001-08:00

I am new to making cheese, but I love doing it! Once you have the tools you need it can be quite fun, though sometimes time consuming. But the resulting product is nothing short of amazing. There's something to be said about processing your own food.

So I'm taking a page from Mrs. Wheelbarrow and The Yummy Mummy with their Charcutepalooza: A Year of Meat. What better accouterments to go with cured meat than some cheese?

Starting January 1st I will post a new cheesemaking challenge. Join me in learning how to make cheese, talk about it, write about, take lots of photos. I'll post more about it in the upcoming weeks, but for now, consider this your warning.

Mmmmmm....Crockpot Chili

2011-12-04T07:02:00.001-08:00

It's been awhile since I've done a non-canning recipe so I figured I was overdue.

With this cold weather it's nice to sit with a bowl of comfort food. I love chili but I really don't make it enough. We have a ton of dry beans that we've grown so there really is no excuse for not making it. Yes, I put beans in my chili, which I know some of you would consider blasphemous. I've done it this way since I learned how to cook. My mom has done it this was for as long as I can remember. And I will probably always add beans to my chili.

I don't like to heavily rely on meat to make my chili, well, meaty, so beans are added. Of course, it does take some planning ahead because you'll need to soak the beans overnight. You could skip the soaking, but it will have to be cooked on the stovetop at a higher temperature for quite awhile.

As for the meat, we've got a freezer of goat and it seemed like some goat ribs would be a fantastic addition to this chili. Goat can be difficult to find so feel free to substitute it with lamb.

The night before in a large bowl cover 2 cups of dry beans with water. Add enough water so that there is at least an inch of water over the beans.

The next morning in your crockpot combine:

2 cups chicken broth
1 large onion, chopped
4 cups tomato sauce
1 Tbs cumin
2 Tbs chili powder
1 tsp salt
12 oz roasted green chilies, chopped
1 lb goat ribs

Turn your crockpot on high and leave it until dinner. The meat should be falling apart. Most chili powders are mild so it won't really be a spicy chili. If you want it to have some kick add some hot sauce. Serve with fresh chopped onion and sour cream.

Green Tomato Lemon Marmalade

2011-11-27T07:35:00.001-08:00

Cook down halved or quartered tomatoes

We were given a slew of green tomatoes. Last week I picked out the ripe ones and made pizza sauce.Now what to do with all the green ones? We did make some fried green tomatoes, but that didn't even make a dent in them. At first I wanted to make a chutney but a friend of ours gave us some lemons (and some canned items) for helping her cull an injured chicken she had. I love to make marmalade, but it wasn't quite enough lemons to do that so I came up with the idea to do a green tomato lemon marmalade.

Mill the tomatoes to remove seeds and skins

OK, so I have to be honest, I don't like this marmalade. You do have to take that with a grain of salt though because I don't like tomatoes very much. For the most part it does actually taste good, but for me I get this really strong zinc taste from it. That same taste you get when sucking on a zinc lozenge when your sick. No one else that's tried it can taste zinc though. They all really like it, so I'm posting this because you can't take my word on it.

Zest the lemons

You will need a couple of specialized tools to help speed things up. First, you'll need a food mill. Otherwise you can seed and skin the tomatoes the old fashioned way. Also, I highly recommend getting a zester for the lemons. This really helps making long, thin strands of zest for the marmalade. Otherwise you'll need to carefully cut the zest away from the white pith and then slice it really thin. You don't want to include the white pithy part of the peel because that is what will make the marmalade bitter. Oh, and now that I've got myself a candy thermometer I can't believe I went so long without it. So get one if you plan to make a lot of preserves.

Supreme the lemons

So what you need:
6lbs of Green tomatoes
1 1/2 lbs lemons
3/4 cup of sugar per 1 cup of liquid

1. Half or quarter the tomatoes and throw them into a pot. Bring them to a boil and let the tomatoes cook down. Once they are soft run them through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins.
2. While it's cooking down, zest your lemons, cut off the white pith and outer membrane, and remove the pulp from the membrane (supreme).
3. Add everything together and then measure out how much you have. Add the sugar.
4. Cook down until your preserve has reached the gelling point at 220 deg F.
5. Ladle into sterile jars and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Pizza Sauce

2011-11-20T06:58:00.001-08:00

I have to apologize for not posting much this past week. We've been crazy busy and I just haven't had time to write. Hopefully this coming week will be a bit calmer.

Halved tomatoes

If we can save time it's a bonus for us. Yes, I freely admit that I sometimes use a bread machine to save time, but I also know how to make bread by hand and sometimes I do. We're so busy all of the time with the animals, garden, events, friends and family that half the time I don't know how we have the time to do anything else.

Cooked down tomatoes, skins, seeds and all

Friday nights are pizza nights around here. Other than making the crust, the sauce is what can take the most time. It also seems a waste to open a quart of tomato sauce to make a cup of sauce so this year we decided to go ahead and can sauce. We put the sauce in 8 oz jars which end up being the perfect amount for one large pizza. It cuts our kitchen time in half by having these little jars.

Adding cooked tomatoes to the food mill to remove skins and seeds

I nearly wasn't going to be able to post this recipe because we no longer had any tomatoes but Tom's boss gave him two buckets of green tomatoes (green tomato recipe coming up next week). In that bucket there were quite a few red ones, actually more than I expected so I was able to make 12 more jars of it and finally make a post.

It doesn't really matter how many tomatoes you have to do this because it can be multiplied or divided how you like.

If you process a lot of tomatoes I highly recommend investing on a food mill. It doesn't need to be fancy, it just needs to do it's job. Using a food mill really saves us a lot of time while making the sauce (Yay! more times saved!). You don't need to skin and seed the tomatoes first. Just simply half or quarter the tomatoes and throw them into a pot. Bring them to a boil and let the tomatoes cook down. Once they are soft run them through the mill to remove the seeds and skins. This also makes the sauce smooth. If you don't have a mill go ahead and skin and seed them first. Put them in a pot and boil them down. In batches, blend the tomatoes until smooth or use an immersion blender.

For ever 4 cups of tomato juice add:

1 Tbs salt
1 Tbs choped basil
1 Tbs chopped oregano
1 tsp chopped thyme
1 tsp chopped rosemary
2 cloves of garlic, minced

Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Simmer down the sauce and herbs until it reaches the desired consistency. This, of course, is a personal preference but can take over an hour depending on how much sauce you have. While it's simmering prepare your jars and to each 8 oz jar add 1.5 tsp lemon juice. Ladle sauce into jars and then process in a water bath canner for 35 minutes.

California Scapegoat

2011-11-16T14:25:00.001-08:00

Today my friend alerted me to a recall of raw milk here in California. Five children in Contra Costa, Kings, San Diego and Sacramento counties got sick from E. coli O157:H7 between August and October. Three of them suffered from the highly dangerous hemolytic uremic syndrome.

The finger was being pointed at Organic Pastures, a fully licensed and legal raw milk dairy. When I heard that I immediately had to look it up. When I read the news article on it my bullshit alarm went off. The CDFA (California Department of Food and Agriculture) claims that raw milk was the only common food consumed by the children and since such a small population actually drinks raw milk that must be the cause. Never mind, of course, that none of the milk, including the actual milk the children supposedly got sick from, actually tested positive for E. coli O157:H7. It's also important to note that the State tests Organic Pastures' milk monthly and that the milk is also tested several times a week by an independent lab. All tests have been negative for E. coli.

This is actually the second time the state has pointed a finger at Organic Pastures for contamination. The first time, coincidentally also didn't show their milk was contaminated and they were allowed to resume business. With California's renewed interest in shutting down any and all avenues to raw milk, including herdshares (where you own and board a goat at a farm and the farmer milks it for you), I find this all very suspicious. It's a great way for CDFA to get raw milk in the news with E. coli in the same sentence. The damage is now done and they hope to see more people avoid raw milk and call for an outright ban of it.

The victims here are the children but I find it does them and our society as a whole a great disservice to point the finger at the wrong company. If the actual milk that the children drank isn't contaminated that cannot be the source, even if it's a common food they all consumed.

This all goes back to my post last week about your right to eat the food you want to.

The Best Turkey You'll Ever Eat!

2011-11-13T19:31:00.001-08:00

Since Thanksgiving is coming up quickly I thought I'd repost my recipe for the most succulent Turkey you'll ever taste!

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

I have finally perfected our Turkey Recipe! It takes some preparation, but in the end it was more than worth the effort!

This recipe will work for a 16-25lb turkey. Make sure the bird is completely thawed the day before you plan to cook it because brining it requires at least 12 hours.

Ingredients:

For Brine:
1 gallon unsweetened apple juice
3/4 cup salt
3/4 cup granulated sugar
6-8 slices of ginger
2 Tbs peppercorns
2 Tbs allspice berries
2 Tbs whole cloves
2 bay leaves

Combine all ingredients in a large sauce pan. Stir in salt and sugar. Bring to a boil for 3 minutes and then allow to cool completely.

We use a large orange "water cooler" that we have designated just for brining similar to this one:
Unwrap the thawed turkey, remove the giblets and place neck end down into clean cooler. Pour cooled brine over the bird. Add water until the bird is completely submerged. Add a bunch of ice on top to keep cool. Put lid on cooler and leave undisturbed for at least 12 hours.

For Roasting:

1/4 lb butter (1 stick) cut into pats
2 Tbs chopped fresh rosemary
2 Tbs chopped fresh Thyme
2 Tbs chopped fresh Oregano
2 cups chicken broth
Olive Oil

1. Remove bird from brine and let brine drain out of cavity. Don't rinse bird.
2. Coat roasting pan with olive oil and place bird breast side up in it.
3. Using your hands separate skin from breast and legs. Rub the chopped herbs onto the meat.
4. Place the cut pats of butter under the skin in various locations, including the legs. Pour chicken broth over bird.
5. Cover bird with lid of pan or foil and place in a preheated oven at 350 deg.
6. Roast for two hours basting every hour. Remove foil and allow bird to brown, basting every 20 min.
7. Continue to roast bird until interior temp reaches 165 deg. Can range from 1-2 additional hours depending on whether the bird is stuffed. Make sure when taking the temp that the thermometer is through the thickest part of the breast and is not touching bone.

This recipe will give you an incredibly moist flavorful bird that is amazingly tender.

You Do Not Have the Fundamental Right....

2011-11-10T08:38:00.001-08:00

This is a cross post from my Dog Island Farm blog but I think it's important to post it here as well since some of you don't follow the other blog. While I wrote this, I do want to give credit to Evren Seven, a lawyer, who provided some information for this post.

“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to own and use a dairy cow or a dairy herd;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to consume the milk from their own cow;”
“no, Plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of their choice”
source

These are the words of Wisconsin Judge Patrick J. Fiedler in his clarification of his ruling against the Zinnikers who were running a herdshare and ordered to stop because the state claimed it violated law.

Do you think you have the fundamental right to produce and consume the foods of your own choice? This isn't the first time this has been said. The FDA said almost the exact same thing not that long ago.

"There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food." [p. 25]

"Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish." [p. 26]

Unfortunately they are right. Technically the Constitution doesn't say that you have a fundamental right to eat what you want. However, the FDA doesn't care much about the Constitution when they stated "(observing that “it is within HHS’s [United States Department of Health and Human Services] authority . . . to institute an intrastate ban as well”)." thus trampling over the 10th amendment.
This doesn't affect just those of us that choose to drink raw milk. It can have a much further reach than that so it's important that even if you don't drink raw milk that we take a stand against the outright ban of it.

Have you ever heard of Wickard v. Filburn? Chances are you haven't, but it has the potential of affecting all of us that grow and raise our own food.

The quick and dirty story is that in 1938 the Federal government set quotas on the amount of wheat put into interstate commerce to try and stabilize the price. Roscoe Filburn, a farmer, grew wheat for commercial and also for personal use. Unfortunately, combined the amount was over the quota so he was fined. He refused to pay the fine and was taken to court, eventually ending up in the Supreme Court. The ruling, based on the Commerce Clause*, stated that the Federal government, can indeed, regulate what is grown for personal use and not put into commerce and it it can also regulate intrastate commerce because it can indirectly effect interstate commerce. It is important to note, however, that Wickard never dealt with whether or not growing food for your own consumption (or being able to obtain whatever food you see fit) is a "fundamental right," since the statute wasn't a total ban but rather a maximum production limit that far exceeded what a family might require. Should the Supreme Court decide that growing one's own food is a "fundamental right," it becomes extremely difficult for a state to regulate it. Once you get "fundamental right" status, Congress or a state legislature would have to show that it is "necessary to achieve a compelling government interest" to regulate raw milk production for one's own use (or purchasing), and that's never happened.** Given today's business friendly SCOTUS, it's essentially guaranteed that such a case, should it get there, would not get that protected status.

Personal use affects interstate commerce because if you can produce it you don't buy it, thus reducing the demand. One person doing it is trivial, but when a lot of us are producing our own food it can have a huge impact on interstate commerce.

We better be careful because us vegetable gardeners may be the next ones with targets on our backs.

*The Commerce Clause was also used against California's Medical Marijuana legalization because it said that making it legal in California effected the prices in other states. Nevermind that it's illegal in other states though.

**OK it happened once regarding Japanese internment but the Court later admitted it was wrong.

Got Apple Cores and Peels? Make Jelly!

2011-11-06T16:50:00.001-08:00

I spent all day today processing apples from our trees. After I finished peeling and coring them I ended up with a pretty substantial pile of apple bits. It would be a shame to just throw them out so I decided to use them for all they were worth. I was originally thinking of making them into apple cider vinegar but I didn't really have a container I could use for that. Instead I decided that I'd make jelly out of them. Since you generally just throw out the fruit when you make jelly it kind of seemed appropriate to use the unusable parts of the fruit to start with.

What you will need:
Apple peels and cores
Water
Sugar
1 Tbs lemon juice for every 2 cups of liquid

1. Put the peels and cores in a large pot. Add water until you can see it just under the top layer of fruit. Bring to a boil.
2. Boil fruit, uncovered, until it is soft. Strain liquid into a new pot.
3. For each cup of liquid add 3/4 cup of sugar. Add lemon juice and bring to a boil. Watch it carefully so that it doesn't boil over.
4. To check consistency: put some ice in a bowl. Scoop up a small amount of liquid with a spoon and place the spoon on the ice to get it to cool quickly. Turn spoon sideways. If the liquid has jelled onto the spoon and doesn't appear syrupy then it is done and ready to can. If you have a candy thermometer, you want the temperature to be 220 deg F.
5. Ladle hot jelly into sterilized jars. Put on sterile lids and process in a water bath canner for 10 minutes.

Not-So-Green Chili Stew

2011-10-30T09:27:00.000-07:00

Remember the Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce? Here's what you do with it.

I posted a recipe on our other blog a few weeks ago for a Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce recipe. I promised to post this recipe but I just kept forgetting to. Well, here it is finally.

My mom taught me how to make the first version of this back when I was in college. It became a staple for me because it was tasty and easy to make. It was originally made with canned enchilada sauce, canned green chilies, pork, onions and potatoes.

Over time the recipe obviously evolved substantially. It made it's largest change when we wanted to make it one day and didn't have any enchilada sauce but plenty of tomatillos - which we simply threw in the food processor. For that recipe you just replace the sauce with 2 1/2 lbs of tomatillos, 4 tsp chili powder and 4 tsp cumin.

Even though we've eliminated all of the commercially canned ingredients, this is still a surprisingly easy recipe to make.

Not-So-Green Chili Stew
1 quart of Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce
1/2 lb pork loin, cut into 1/2" cubes
1 c nixtamel or hominy
1/2 lb roasted green chilis, remove skins and seeds and chop
1 lb potatoes, cut into 1/2" cubes
1 onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 c chicken broth
2 Tbs oil
Hot sauce to taste
Sour cream and/or cheddar cheese

1. Heat a dutch oven over medium high heat and add oil and then pork and garlic. Cook until pork is browned.
2. Deglaze dutch oven with chicken broth.
3. Add remaining ingredients except sour cream/cheese and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer until potatoes are very tender.
4. Serve topped with sour cream and/or cheese.

The Costs

2011-10-27T13:42:00.000-07:00

When we took on our year we gave quite a few reasons as to why we decided to do it. We wanted to eat healthier. We wanted to know what was on and in our food. We wanted to make sure farmers were paid fairly for their hard work. One reason, though, I never really touched on, but in actuality was one of the biggest reasons we did it.

We needed to save money.

In September of 2010 I was facing another possible pay cut at work. After spending over 2 1/2 years at part time and not being able to find a second part time job even after sending out dozens of resumes and applications every week (told time and again that I was overqualified) we had to make cuts, and unfortunately food was going to have to be one of them (cell phones, cable, and commercial beauty products also got the ax).

When I used to shop at the large chain supermarket I could easily spend $250 a week on groceries. Usually it was nothing but crap processed food but we did buy a lot of produce. I then started to make the switch to only shopping at Trader Joe's and the farmers market. Once a week I'd go to Trader Joe's and spend between $80 and $140 a week. It was usually higher in the Winter because we had less produce growing in our garden. Every Saturday we would spend $40 at the farmers' market. So every week we spent between $120-180 every week on food. Less than what we were spending compared to the large chain supermarket, but we still needed to cut it.

But, this also didn't include what we spent eating out. I can't really say how much that was, but we went out at least once a week, but usually more like twice a week. On average we'd probably spend about $30 per meal out. It added up quickly.

One of the first things I'm asked by a lot of people is how expensive it is to eat like this. There's an assumption that now that we buy all of our food from the farmers' market and from shops that specialize in local and organic food that we're actually spending more on food. It didn't turn out that way.

I kept track of all of our expenditures on food over the year. We ended up averaging $84/week. So if you included two meals out in a week totaling $60/week plus the grocery store bill we were saving $96-156 a week. Even without including eating out we still saved $56-96 a week.

The biggest change, and what saved us the most amount of money, was processing all of our own food. Bread is a prime example. A loaf of plain white bread costs between $2.50 and $4.50 at the grocery store. Making a loaf of bread at home costs less than $0.50. If we make 1 loaf per week, we save over $100 per year just on bread. Of course store bought, basic white bread doesn't compare to homemade bread so in reality the savings was greater.

Buying in bulk was also key. We have a very small house - only 750 sq ft. Organization is key for us and buying in bulk can prove difficult because of our size limitations. But we make it work. We have a chest freezer because we buy whole or partial animals. The cost of an organically raised pig that we bought live and had slaughtered and butchered came to $2/lb.

I won't lie. It takes a lot more planning and definitely more work, but we decided that we needed to save the money and eat better and so this is what we had to do.

Recipes

2011-10-26T19:58:00.000-07:00

I've been asked quite a few times here and over on the FB page about our recipes. I only have a few on this blog, but on our other blog, Dog Island Farm, I post a recipe every Sunday. What I can do is post the recipes both over there an over here on Sunday so everyone gets to enjoy them. For now though, I'll post my go-to bread recipe (though I don't have any photos right now to share).

This basic bread recipe we use for just about anything - loaves, rolls and pizza crust.

In a large mixing bowl mix together:
3 cups flour (we use Giusto's Peak Performance flour, but any bread flour should work fine. If you use whole wheat you'll need to allow it more time to rise)
1 Tbs kosher salt
2 Tbs sugar
2 1/2 tsp yeast

Add to the dry ingredients:
1 cup warm water
2 Tbs oil

Mix ingredients until combined. Knead for at least 10 minutes. You'll notice that when the gluten develops and the dough, when pulled, will stretch rather than tear. Put a light coating of oil over the dough and allow to rise in a warm dark spot. I like to keep it in my oven to rise.

Once it's doubled in size punch it down and flatten it into a rectangle with one edge as long as your loaf pan. Taking one edge, roll the dough so that you end up with a log.

Grease a loaf pan with butter and then dust it with flour. Add dough roll to loaf pan and allow it to double in size again.

Bake at 450 deg. F for 25 minutes or until nicely browned.

Wal-Mart Produce

2011-10-17T11:34:00.001-07:00

My friend Lisa recently sent me a link to a reddit post about Walmart and farmers. I found it intriguing so I decided to look into it further. The post is as follows:

As a former employee of a vegetable farm, let me give you an explanation of how selling vegetables to Wal-Mart works. First you make an agreement with Wal-Mart to sell them X bushels of produce at Y price/bushel. You spend the entire week ramping up production, bringing in more pickers and hiring more packers to ensure you get your X bushels of product. You are especially picky about the quality of your product, because Wal-Mart's business represents a dynamic increase in sales and you want to impress them. You have everything picked, packed and prepped for Wal-Mart's pick-up (they always want to make the pick-up, rather than pay you to deliver) on Friday.

Now the fun begins. The Wal-Mart inspector starts going through the produce that you picked and prepped for a Friday pick-up, at 6:30pm Tuesday. He/she immediately begins marking crates as below agreed upon quality, assuring you that you will be compensated full-price for these crates, and that he/she is just marking them so that the produce that is below grade is sent to Mexico or something. Finally, the inspector allows the fruit to be packed into Wal-Mart's non-refrigerated truck at about 8 o'clock. Again, you're paying your employees to wait to do this the whole time. They close up the truck, and tell you that you should receive your payment in a few weeks, and have you sign a receipt.

This is where it gets fun. The truck doesn't take the fruit to the nearest refrigerated Wal-Mart Distribution Center. Instead, it goes another day out of its way, to unload. When it gets there, the unrefrigerated fruit is inspected again. It's now been 5 or 6 days since it was supposed to be delivered to the refrigerated distributorship and there's been about a 30% loss of product. You're contacted by Wal-Mart and told that the product was not in the agreed upon condition and that they will be deducting a loss-penalty of 50% to your agreed upon price and will not be paying for the 30% of lost product. However, they will keep that lost product and use it in some sort of paste or juice or other form of private label Great Value product that can use the product. You protest Wal-Mart's unilateral negotiation and they tell you that they can refuse delivery of the product and have it shipped back to you, but you'll pay for the shipping (Pay Wal-Mart's trucks, not yours). You threaten to sue, and they remind you that they have a 100millon dollar retainer with the very best lawyers money can buy, and that while you will probably win the case, you'll be in litigation for at least 10 years (because Wal-Mart's already paying these guys anyways) and at best you'll get your agreed upon price, while paying your own lawyers $400/hour for 10 years to sue them for what amounts to $50,000.

So you swallow your pride, you take your 75% loss on the signed contract and then they ask you if you'll be able to make your next shipment, as per your contract, Wal-Mart has the ability to extend, however, because China is selling them Lead contaminated produce at 10% what you're selling, they're renegotiating the prices for "market value"

And thats when you send them the stuff you throw out when you sell to Krogers.

EDIT: bluegender is correct

TL;DR - Wal-Mart screws their suppliers, laughs at lawsuits, and then demands you uphold your end of the contract, all in the name of saving you money.

Michael Pollan comments on this for the New York Times.
Wal-Mart’s big-foot entry into the organic market is bad news for small organic farmers, that seems obvious enough. But it may also spell trouble for the big growers they’ll favor. Wal-Mart has a reputation for driving down prices by squeezing its suppliers, especially after the suppliers have invested in expanding production to feed the Wal-Mart maw. Once you’ve boosted your production to supply Wal-Mart, you’re at the company’s mercy when it decides it no longer wants to give you a price that will cover the cost of production, let alone enable you to make a profit. When that happens, the notion of responsibly priced food will be sacrificed to the need to survive, and the pressure to cut corners will become irresistible."

Unfortunately, probably afraid of lawsuits from Wal-Mart there doesn't appear to be more info out there. There was a response to this post from someone whose family was in agriculture saying that this was a typical scenario for Wal-Mart.

Welcome!

2011-10-13T07:02:00.000-07:00

We've got a ton of new faces around here which is awesome! Thanks for following us!

Even though our year is over, we're continuing on and I'll still be posting regularly here. We are more than happy to answer any questions you have and if you need any advice just let us know. We totally understand that it can be really daunting if you don't know where to start.

In the meantime, here's a silly picture of our dog, Squeak, playing in the sprinkler.

Setting it Straight

2011-10-05T07:58:00.000-07:00

We've been getting quite a bit of press lately, which is cool, but some of the spin that the media has put on what we're doing is just flat out wrong and sensational so I want to get the record straight here on the blog. Most of you that follow us are probably well aware that what has been said is sometimes completely false, but there are also quite a few new people reading this so I just want to clarify some things.

So here are the top falsehoods that have been said:

We're doing this because of the recent food outbreaks
False. While it's a bonus that we don't have to worry about food recalls it's not something we think about that much.

We have lived exclusively off of our 1/4 acre for a year
That's false too. Just read the rules and you'll see that for the first 9 months we were going to the farmers' market, bought our staples from a buying club that sources local organic food, and shopped at local merchants that sourced local meat, dairy, and other products. The last 3 months we didn't buy any food but we still used stuff that we had on hand that we didn't necessarily grow.

You have to have a garden and livestock to eliminate the grocery store.
Completely false. This bothered me a great deal because the reason we were doing this was to help show people that even if they live in an apartment they can reduce their dependence on grocery stores. From October 1st to late June our garden was barely productive so we couldn't rely on it for all of our food. But it showed us that you don't need to grow and raise your own food to be grocery-store free.

They've saved X amount of money
This seems to be a moving target. Some of the reporters want to include the money saved on groceries *with* the money we've saved by gardening. I try to keep the two independent because we gardened a lot before we took on our year without groceries. So you'll see numbers ranging from $4,000 to $9,000 depending on what they want to share.

And then there were some things that we did say during the interviews that were "conveniently" left out for the sake of journalism:

Why we're really doing this
I've developed a pretty severe intolerance to soy and canola, which are in nearly everything. I was getting tired of wading through all the product additives that were made from soy but didn't actually say "soy" in the name. The best option I had was to eliminate processed foods from our diet.

We then learned that most farmers don't get very much money for the food that they grow (Walmart is one of the worst) and that most food at the grocery store isn't even from California or the U.S for that matter. We decided that it was really important that the money we spend on food goes almost entirely to the farmer. Buying directly from farmers not only helped support small family farms, but it also helps keep money in our community.

Don't take it all on at once
I'm a huge believer that raising livestock and growing produce isn't for everyone. There are other things you can do to change the way you eat without going as far as we have. We've also been doing this for over 6 years, steadily building up to where we are now.

Our neighbors actually enjoy what we're doing
They like to come over and visit with the animals, they enjoy the produce and eggs we bring them and we create an open dialogue with them to address any concerns they may have. We make sure the noise and smell are at a minimum (many of the reporters have commented about the lack of smell) and that everyone is happy, from our neighbors to the animals.

Hopefully that's cleared up some of the misconceptions to those that are new to the blog. I'm more than happy to answer anyone's questions as well.

How Safeway Creates Food Deserts

2011-10-03T07:58:00.000-07:00

I live in a community that has a lot of poverty. When we attended the Healthy Eating Active Living Cities Workshop a few months ago, we learned the locations of all the food deserts in our city.

An area is considered a food desert when there is no grocery store within a certain radius.

One of the largest ones is downtown. Standing right next to downtown is a church that occupies an old Safeway building. What I never understood was why that building couldn't be used as a grocery store again. In some of the other food deserts there are also buildings that once housed grocery stores but now house other businesses like furniture stores. Safeway has since moved out to bigger and better properties in other areas of the city.

So why haven't new grocery stores been able to come in to those areas? Because they were once owned by supermarket giant, Safeway, and now Safeway has put deed restrictions on those sites barring any future grocery store from using the property. In some instances, due to site limitations and availability these are the only places a grocery store could feasibly be located. So in the name of profits, Safeway has decided to create food deserts in my city. They put their profits above the health of our community, about the health of children.

This just drives home my commitment to no longer buy food from grocery stores.

Our Last Week

2011-09-30T21:55:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Frittata with rabbit sausage, onions, zucchni and peppers from the garden.

Monday
Rabbit braised in Red Roasted Tomatillo Sauce with carrots, onions, peppers and zucchini from the garden.

Tuesday
Another Frittata with rabbit sausage, onions and peppers from the garden.

Wednesday
We were at the East Bay Urban Ag Alliance's meeting so Jeanette made us some spaghetti.

Thursday
Tom had scrambled eggs with veggies. I just had some brown rice because I wasn't very hungry.

Friday - The Last Day
We roasted a duck on the barbecue with quince and rose hips along with zucchini from the garden and brown rice.

Reflections
I can't believe the year is done. It seemed to go by so fast. I'm a little sad that it's over but I'm really excited to get back to the farmers' market. We got asked a lot what we were going to first go out and buy at the grocery store when were were done with our year. Nothing. We're not going to buy anything at the grocery store. The reasons for why we were doing this are still there, so we're going to continue being grocery store free. If you've noticed, the name of the blog has changed to "Another Year Without Groceries." Let's see how long this goes on. For now though I'm going to no longer be doing a run down of our menu. However, I am going to focus more on the food issues our nation faces. I'm going to still do reflections as well. And if you haven't joined our Facebook page, please do so. The link is on the left.

I kind of feel like I'm saying goodbye, but I'm not. We're not going anywhere and we'll still be here to discuss living without a grocery store.

Week 51 - Less than a week left!

2011-09-25T21:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Pork chops with sauteed zucchini, onions, carrots and parsnips from the garden.

Monday
Chicken stew with red roasted tomatillo sauce, carrots, onions and zucchini from the garden (see a theme here?).

Tuesday
Frittata with rabbit sausage, onions and bell peppers from the garden with a cucumber and onion salad from the garden.

Wednesday
Homemade spaghetti sauce over brown rice because we didn't have time to make pasta. Served with a cucumber and onion salad from the garden.

Thursday
Poacher's pie with rabbit

Friday
Leftover poacher's pie with a cucumber and onion salad from the garden

Saturday
Veggie stir fry with zucchini, carrots, onions, eggplant, and peppers from the garden. Served with brown rice.

Reflections
Wow, I can't believe how fast this year had gone by. We only have 5 more days! We've learned a lot about our food system and most of it is horrifying. So with that, we're going to be continuing our year without groceries. So now we'll be 2 years without groceries! I don't think we'll try going three months without buying any food again unless we absolutely have to.

Week 50 - The Trip

2011-09-18T18:16:00.001-07:00

We just got back from Ohio where we were vising my mom. We did pretty good with not buying any food except for the trip out there and two other instances where we had a once in a lifetime opportunity to try meat from Polyface Farms and then we went to the farmers' market to purchase food for our flight back (which ended up taking 24 hours instead of the slated 8 hours as planned) I didn't feel bad though about that purchase because we bought the meat directly from the farmer.

I'm not really going to go over the menu this week though because we didn't really cook anything other than the meat from Polyface and the sides for that meal. I did make some Green Pesto Bruschetta for my mom's BBQ on Sunday, but other than that my mom, thankfully took care of all of our food.

I did a lot of soul searching while we were in Ohio. Ohio is prime farm land, which unfortunately, is used for soy and corn almost exclusively. My mom's next door neighbors, though, run an organic farm. My mom's garden was awesome even though their growing season is so much shorter than our own. The difference is they get more heat than we do.

I want to farm. I want to be a farmer. But California pretty much bars us from doing that because of the cost of the land. So here I am wondering if I could move out of California. I love living here but at the same time I want to live a certain lifestyle. I want a farmhouse that's older than my grandparents. I want rich topsoil to bury my hands in. The Midwest offers that affordably. But here we've got family and friends (some which are also family). It's a tough thing to have to work through. I think if our city allowed us to sell the produce we grow my feelings would definitely change, but right now I'm torn.

Week 49 - Holy Crap! Just 3 more weeks!

2011-09-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Sunday
We went to a block party. We brought a cucumber and dry farmed tomato salad.

Monday
Roasted chicken with fried potatoes and sauteed zucchini with LOTS of garlic

Tuesday
Spicy gazpacho with homemade herb tortillas.

Wednesday
Pork stir fry with corn, peppers, onions, eggplant, and zucchini from the garden.

Thursday
Frittata with rabbit sausage, peppers and onions from the garden.

Friday
We went to our friends' home for dinner where we had rabbit, kale and cornbread. We brought Spice Honey Pear sorbet for dessert.

Saturday
See "Reflections" below.

Reflections
We had to get on a plane on Saturday. It was a day of complete riduculousness. First off, it was going to be an all day trip. It actually ended up being even longer than we anticipated thanks to mechanical problems on both planes. 8am-11:30pm. It was a really long day. It also meant we were in a bind in regards to food. Canned goods were obviously out of the question. Nothing with liquid was allowed either. And of course no way to keep anything cold. Well, stupid me thought that we could just get away with eating what they served on the flight. It just so happens the airline changed all of their food service right before our trip and they no longer served any food on any flight for free. Not even peanuts. What a freaking racket they've got going on. When we got our tickets we were allowed one checked bag per person for free. That also changed. So we ended up having to buy food. Crappy food at that.

We were supposed to get to our destination in plenty of time to eat dinner. It didn't happen so we ended up having to buy a couple of salads for dinner.

The whole situation pissed me off. We should have planned our travel day better. But we ran out of time and had to compromise ourselves.

Facebook Page

2011-09-08T19:04:00.000-07:00

I've gotten requests to have a facebook page for our year without groceries. Like us! You know you want to!

Getting a Little Bit of Media Coverage

2011-09-06T14:35:00.000-07:00

We were featured in the San Francisco Chronicle because of our Year Without Groceries. They dedicated their Food & Wine section of the Sunday paper to people like us who are making super local food choices. You can read about it and see some awesome photos here.

Also in that issue is an article about Sunset Magazine's One Block Feast and one of the finalist groups called Found Fruit. My friend Kitty Sharkey, of Havenscourt Homestead, is one of the members. You can read about some of the awesome things they've done to create a truly local feast.

And then back in March we spent 2 days in the rain with a film crew from Whole Foods. The film just went up today and I'm excited to share it.

Week 48 - I'm So Over Not Buying Food

2011-09-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Had leftovers from Saturday.

Monday
We fended for ourselves. Tom had more leftovers and I had french toast.

Tuesday
We went to our friends' house for dinner where we had chicken fajitas.

Wednesday
Pork stir fry with carrots, onions, beets, eggplant, green beans, corn and garlic from the garden. Served with brown rice.

Thursday
Jeanette bought us some Mexican food.

Friday
Pizza with rabbit sausage, onion, bell pepper and homemade tomato sauce made with herbs from the garden.

Saturday
Jeanette had a hankering for seafood so she bought some shellfish from a local oyster farm at the farmers' market to share. I accompanied it with pasta and a cream sauce.

Reflections
You're probably wondering who Jeanette is. She's one of my best friends and is currently staying in our water tower. Since we cook dinner for her most nights (obviously we're not going to exclude her) she's wanted to chip in her share since she's not on this journey with us and when we started it we didn't factor in feeding 4 people, only 3 - Tom, Junior (my stepson) and myself.

I have come to the realization that not buying any food for 3 months is a complete pain in the ass. I hate it. Completely. I never want to have to do this again unless we absolutely have to. It's much harder work than I ever expected. Honestly, I didn't think it would be that much different than going without groceries but it is. You're so limited on what you can prepare and you have to get SO MUCH MORE creative.

We only have a month left, which I am sooooo grateful for. It's definitely a challenge and I find myself daydreaming about saying screw it and buying some food.

Tom says he likes it though. He looks at it as a bigger picture and is proud of what we're accomplishing, though he's frustrated about the lack of fruit and sometimes he just wants something different to eat.

Week 47 - The New Challenge

2011-08-29T07:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Fend for yourself day.

Monday
Rabbit Sausage Vegetable Brown Rice Soup with kale, carrots, corn, and onions from our garden. The stock was made from duck and rabbit carcasses.

Tuesday
Homemade spaghetti with fresh tomato sauce.

Wednesday
I had French toast and Tom and pickle and tomato sandwich since we were headed to our EBUAA meeting.

Thursday
Frittata with peppers and onions.

Friday
Pizza with homemade crust, goat milk garlic cream sauce, peppers, zucchini and onions from our garden.

Saturday
Homemade hummus (from garbanzo beans we grew last year, sundried tomatoes, basil and garlic from the garden) served with homemade tortillas, BBQ'd rabbit with a jerk seasoning, green beans, BBQ'd corn with flourless chocolate cake for dessert.

Reflections
We've got some big news! We've decided on what our challenge will be next year.While we're going to continue living the no groceries lifestyle (and yes, I'm keeping the blog going) we're going to add a twist. I've always loved ethnic food but I've always been too intimidated to try cooking much of it. Well next year we're going to change all of that! Every month we're going to pick a new cuisine and for a month we're going to make one meal a week from that cuisine. The meal is going to be as traditional as possible. We'll be making the meals on Sunday so we have the weekend to source all of the ingredients we will need. We will be allowing ourselves, however, to go to ethnic markets to pick up ingredients. However, if our October is, say, Indian food, we can only hit up the Indian market in October. If there isn't an ethnic market for it, we have to make do with what we can do. So for now the cuisines we're going to do are Indian, Japanese, Thai, Cajun, Spanish, Mexican, Italian, Moroccan, Ethiopian, Greek, German, and Russian. Twelve cuisines for twelve months.

Week 46 - Goat Milk Ice Cream

2011-08-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Bean and cucumber salad.

Monday
Frittata with peppers, corn, and onions with homemade ricotta on top. Served with shoestring french fries.

Tuesday
Vegetable stirfry with carrots, eggplant, green beans, peppers, and onions from the garden. Served with rice.

Wednesday
Nada really. We fended for ourselves. Tom had some sauteed veggies and I had scrambled eggs with some bacon sausage.

Thursday
Tomato based soup similar to our spaghetti sauce with corn, onions, peppers, eggplant,herbs and garlic from our garden.

Friday
Bacon, pepper and onion pizza.

Saturday
Lasagna with homemade rabbit sausage, homemade pasta, sauce made from our garden, homemade cheese, served with garden green beans and homemade bread. Dessert was apple crisp made from apples we traded pickles for.

Reflections
Busy busy busy. The garden has taken over our lives, and yet we don't have much to show for it other than tomatoes, peppers, beans, corn...wait. We are having an issue with powdery mildew this year thanks to the late heavy rains. Our bees are doing REALLY well and in about 2 weeks we'll have two full honey supers to harvest. I'm hoping to transition from sugar to honey in everything from canning to baking. One thing I'm super excited about is ice cream! I spent 5 months skimming the cream from our goat milk and we finally had enough to make some ice cream. I decided to make some mint chocolate ice cream. I'm used to the "mint" ice cream that you get commercially. This one, however, is made with spearmint and chocolate mint. It has an incredibly earthy flavor to it. It's real and delicate with a very subtle green flavor.

Week 45 - Bartering

2011-08-14T07:03:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Frittata with zucchini and onions from our garden.

Monday
Pizza! Peppers, onions and zucchini from our garden with homemade sauce.

Tuesday
Green bean and cucumber salad with a thai peanut dressing made from honey from our garden.

Wednesday
Not-so-green chili stew with tomatillos, potatoes, onions, hominy, and chilies from the garden.

Thursday
Jeanette brought us deli sandwiches.

Friday
Pizza with bacon sausage, peppers, onions, and zucchini with a goat milk based white sauce and homemade ricotta.

Saturday
BBQ rabbit with a Jerk marinade with BBQ'd corn and green beans.

Reflections
Bartering has been treating us well. We've traded a breeding rabbit for rice, burlap bags for fruit and powdered sugar and a chest freezer for maple syrup, peanuts, baking chocolate and more fruit. I really enjoy bartering because you trade items someone else needs for items we need. It also helps reduce waste. Instead of the burlap bags and freezer going into a landfill someone who could use them got them. Actually, the burlap bags - leftover waste from coffee roasters - were picked up at the local waste facility because I know a lot of people that could use them. We traded rice for Scooter, one of our American Blue bucks. We had two bucks and only one doe and it just turns out that Scooter is the littermate of our doe so we couldn't breed him. He's an awesome rabbit so our friend, who is going to start raising rabbits took him to add to her new breeding program.

Week 44 - Only 8 weeks Left

2011-08-07T19:29:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Vegetable stir fry with zucchini, green beans, carrots and onions from the garden. Served with rice.

Monday
Vegetable soup with stock made from duck carcass. Zucchini, onions, parsnips and carrots from the garden.

Tuesday
Pork stir fry with green beans, peppers carrots, zucchini and onions from the garden. Served with rice.

Wednesday
Bacon sausage (yum!) on homemade bread on my way out the door to a meeting. Tom had a vegetable stirfry.

Thursday
Roasted duck in a tomato sauce with parsnips, zucchini, and onions from the garden.

Friday
No dinner. Jeanette and I went to the movies and she was in charge of snacks. Um, yeah, I can't do candy anymore....

Saturday
We went to a friend's house after a day on the river. We had her wonderful tortilla soup and fajitas.

Reflections
So the consensus is to keep the blog. Now I just need help with a name change. So help me out!

I can't believe how fast this year went by. Only 8 weeks left and I'm sure it will be over in no time. The canning season is starting. I canned 16 quarts - 4 gallons - of pickles today. I also have some lacto fermenting.

Our milk supply has been reduced thanks to a spider. Long story short, Daisy, one of our does, got bit by a spider and is now on antibiotics which has a 4 week withdrawal on it. So no milk from Daisy for awhile. It also is forcing us to wait 2 months before we can slaughter the kids. So no goat meat for this last bit of our journey.

Weel 43 - 9 weeks left with a question

2011-08-01T09:44:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Raviolis stuffed with brie, zucchini, sun dried tomatoes and basil with sauteed green beans.

Monday
Pork stirfry with onions from the neighbor, green beans and zucchini from our gardnen.

Tuesday
Sauteed green beans and zucchini from the garden with onions from the neighbor simmered in a tomato base.

Wednesday
BLT sandwiches on our way to the EBUAA meeting.

Thursday
Roast duck with potatoes, celery and parsnips from the garden.

Friday
Pizza with leftover duck, bell peppers, zucchini and onions from our garden.

Saturday
My mom was in town and took us out for sushi!

Reflections
It's time to think about this blog and where it's going after our year is up. Right now I have two options. The first one is that I change the name of it since it's no longer a year without groceries, but really living grocery store free. The other option is to no longer keep going with it and transfer everything over to our Dog Island Farm Blog. Do you have any thoughts?

Week 42 - Just 10 more left

2011-07-25T07:04:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Curried Parsnip Soup with parsnips from our garden and onions from the neighbor.

Monday
Veggie stir fry with green beans, peppers, squash, and celery from the garden, onions from our neighbor and rice.

Tuesday
Pork with fried potatoes and corn on the cob. I don't think I've enjoyed a meal as much as I did this one.
Wednesday

Thursday
BBQ chicken with BBQ corn.

Friday
Pizza with zucchini, onions, bacon and homemade goats' milk jack cheese.

Saturday
My mom was in town and she took us out for dinner.

Reflections
I'm seriously DONE with cucumbers and green beans. For most of the week, it's what my diet primarily consisted of with a bit of zucchini, beets, parsnips and onions mixed in for good measure. I was surpised with how crappy I began to feel in the beginning of the week. I needed starches, fat and protein badly. It was why such a simple meal of pork, potatoes and corn - something we eat pretty regularly - was so thoroughly enjoyed on Tuesday.

Week 41 - The Losing

2011-07-17T18:56:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Green bean and cucumber salad with a thai peanut/almond dressing

Monday
Spaghetti with homemade pasta. Watch out for the upcoming sauce recipe.

Tuesday
Not-so-green chili stew. Tomatillos, onions, and hominy from our garden. Green chilies that my mom gave us when she moved. Potatoes that Jeanette gave us in exchange for dog sitting and pork.

Wednesday
Green bean and cucumber salad with a thai peanut/almond dressing again so I could write down the recipe.

Thursday
Roasted chicken with braised celery and leftover green bean and cucumber salad.

Friday
Pizza with zucchini and bell peppers from the garden, tomato sauce made with homemade canned sauce and herbs from our garden, homemade Monterey jack cheese from our goats' milk and onions that our neighbor gave us. This was our best pizza so far. I chalk it up to the fact that we finally got a pizza stone.

Saturday
We didn't have to cook! We went to a friend's birthday BBQ. I was so happy to not have to make anything.

Reflections
Our second week of not buying any food went pretty well. We've been eating a lot of vegetables. Especially cucumbers and green beans. I'm actually feeling really good and I've dropped 3 lbs this week (I've dropped about 20lbs since starting the year without groceries now). And that's without watching anything I'm eating and not eating any of those horrible "diet" foods. Just eating more vegetables and fruits (actually mostly vegetables) seems to be the trick.

Week 40 - Harvest Beginnings

2011-07-11T07:18:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Chili with pork, beans, homemade tomato sauce, onions from the farmers' market, hatch green chilies that my mom gave us, and hominy made from our flour corn that we grew last year and the year before.

Monday
We had some local friends over for dinner. We had barbequed rabbit and chicken with a jerk seasoning, homemade pasta salad. Our friends brought over a salad (romaine with avocados, corn, tomatoes, etc) with a cilantro tahini dressing and a beet salad with bleu cheese and pickled onions. Yum!

Tuesday
Leftover BBQ chicken with marinated and grilled eggplant and zucchini with rice cooked with chicken broth and mushrooms.

Wednesday
Vegetable curry stirfry. Kale, carrots, beets, celery, green beans, zucchini, and garlic from our garden. Onions, eggplant and mushrooms from the farmers' market.

Thursday
Vegetable and rabbit sausage soup. Kale, carrots, potatoes, green beans, zucchini, and garlic all from our garden. Topped with homemade goat's milk sour cream.

Friday
Leftover chili with a cucumber salad

Saturday
We went to a friend's house for dinner. We brought a homemade pasta salad with green beans and carrots from our garden, sun dried tomatoes from last year's garden and our last farmers' market onion. It's a good thing our onions are getting close to ready.

Reflections
And so we finish our first week of not buying any food at all. Our garden somehow, miraculously started pumping out the vegetables on July 1st - beans, cucumbers, and zucchini. And we've already got some tomatoes ripening. I don't know how I timed that so well, to be honest. We bartered some weekend dog sitting for some fruit, corn and potatoes from Jeanette. And our young pullets just started laying so our egg counts went up. It's almost like it was meant to be.

Some Other Changes as Well

2011-07-07T08:12:00.000-07:00

The no groceries for a year project has definitely led us to making changes other than just our food choices. For one thing - we've gotten pretty good at gardening as well as being resilient gardeners.

But other things have changed as well. Personal care items have made a pretty major shift. I phased out nearly all commercial shower products and have stopped dying my hair <GASP>. That was a hard one as I was dying it black - which I dearly loved. So now I have brown and gray roots. The chemicals in hair dye are just so harsh and many of them are carcinogenic. I'd rather just go without. There's alternative dyes, but most of them require too much of my time to do so I'm just going cold turkey.

Instead of shampoo and conditioner I'm now using baking soda and vinegar. My hair has never been happier. I now use homemade cold-process soap instead of body wash.

I recently changed my face care regimen as well. I'm one of those poor souls blessed with wrinkles and acne together. The wrinkles I'm OK with. I'm committed to aging gracefully (along with the gray hair). The acne on the other hand has got to go. What am I? 15 again? I'm trying out Delta Moon Soapworks Red Clover Tea Goat's Milk soap and then I use coconut oil that has some oatmeal and coffee steeped in it as a moisturizer. I just started this, but so far so good. I love how my skin feels right now. If this works out I'll post my moisturizer recipe.

But it's not just skin and body care that's changed. We've also just made some behavior changes as well. The first change actually led to the second change.

Our house is small. We don't have a formal dining room but rather a breakfast nook that's just big enough for a table slammed up against one wall. It seats four people. During the colder months we just can't have people over for dinner. We do have a giant patio though, which allows us to do quite a bit of entertaining during the summer.

We've decided to now eat dinner at the table every day instead of in the living room - where we usually eat. Since we eat so late it was really the only time that we watched TV. So that helped push us to make another major change. We canceled our TV service last night.

Week 39 - The Beginning

2011-07-03T08:39:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Salad with sliced beets from the garden, mushrooms, zucchini and onions.

Monday
Snacked on our way out to the EBUAA meeting.

Tuesday
It was Tom's birthday. I made fried potatoes with sauteed oyster mushrooms, rabbit sausage, yorkshire pudding and gravy.

Wednesday
Salad with sliced beets from the garden, mushrooms, zucchini and onions.

Thursday
Our last beef for three months. Grilled tritip with mashed potatoes from the farmers' market and peas from our garden.

Friday
Pizza with bacon and mushrooms, zucchini, and onions from the farmers' market. Sauce made with sauce made from last year's tomatoes and fresh herbs from the garden. Salad with fresh thinly sliced beets from the garden.

Saturday
Homemade pasta with green beans, pickled jalapenos and sundried tomatoes from our backyard (green beans were fresh picked the others were preserved last year), mushrooms, zucchini and onions from our last farmers' market trip. Peach balsamic dressing with fresh basil and dill from our garden.

Reflections
I think vegetables are going to be the big stars for us these next coming months. Yesterday the first flower appeared on our 8' corn stalks. Lots of nutritious pollen for our bees. Our fruit trees are a bust this year - at least our non-pome fruits. It looks like we'll be good on apples and quince, but those won't be ready for a few months. The squirrels stole all of our almonds. Boooo. We harvested a handful of not-quite-ripe split apricots. We'll see how the coming months go.

Shirred Eggs

2011-07-02T08:34:00.000-07:00

This is my new favorite way of eating eggs. It's rich and salty and flavorful. Can you ask for anything more?

1/4 tsp butter
2 Tbs Cream (I skim the fresh cream off of our goats' milk)
2 eggs
Salt and Pepper
Chives

1. Preheat oven to 375 deg F
2. With the butter, grease a ramekin
3. Put the cream in the ramekin and then break the eggs into the cream. Gently move the yolks toward the center.
4. Top with salt, pepper and chives. You can also add cheese if you'd like as well.
5. Bake for 12 minutes. You want the center still a bit jiggly while the edges can be pulled away from the side of the ramekin.

Viola! You've got shirred eggs.

And So It Begins

2011-07-01T06:53:00.000-07:00

This is our fridge on the day we start not buying any food for three months. To be honest, it freaks me out a little. As you can probably tell, we didn't really stock up on fresh food beforehand. What's the point? It doesn't usually keep much longer than a week or two so we're just going to have to wing it.

For those that are new to the blog, we've been going without buying food from grocery stores, convenience stores, box stores and restaurants since October 1st, 2010. We've only been buying food from farmers' markets, direct from the farmer, through real butchers that only sell local, sustainably and humanely raised meat, real fish mongers, spice merchants, produce stands, a CSA that delivers locally produced, organic dairy, and a buying club/co-op for our dry goods. Besides that, we've been subsisting off of our quarter acre urban farm.

When we reached our 6 month mark we were cruisin'. It was pretty easy so we decided two things. The first thing was that we were going to continue with our project indefinitely with one caveat - we get one restaurant visit per month. I just don't want to give up sushi for the rest of my life and homemade sushi just isn't the same.

The second thing we decided was that we were going to attempt to go without buying food for the final three months - July 1st through October 1st. We wanted to force ourselves to try and live off of what we produce and raise. We also wanted to see how successfully prepared we are in terms of emergencies. How much food do we really need in case of an emergency? We live in earthquake territory, and while it's unlikely we'll ever need to go 3 months without any services if there is an earthquake, we do face uncertain economic times. If one of us loses our jobs, can we reduce our spending on food?

Our garden isn't as far along as we'd like, but it's starting to ramp up. We'll have to limit our fresh produce for a bit. However, I expect to get zucchini, cucumbers and beans this coming week or two.

Fruit is going to be the hardest thing for us. The weather really didn't cooperate this year. While our stone fruit trees were blooming it rained and rained and rained. The bees couldn't get to them. We got a very small amount of fruit only to be ruined by very late rains (completely abnormal here) causing all of it to split before it ripened. We'll have to salvage what we can, but I fear it won't be much.

We will be bartering - trading eggs, bread, labor and knowledge - for food we need. Unfortunately, most of our friends in the area have the same problem with their fruit trees. We'll have to figure something out, but for now we'll just have to go with the flow.

Week 38 - Heat!

2011-06-27T21:33:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Homemade fish and chips

Monday
Salad with chicken

Tuesday
BBQ chicken with salad and roasted zucchini and eggplant from the farmers' market

Wednesday
Stir fry with leftover chicken and zucchini, mushrooms, onions from the farmers' market and carrots and kale from our garden. Served with rice.

Thursday
Not-so-green chili stew with tomatillos, potatoes, and hominy from our garden, onions from the farmers market, foraged mushrooms, and Hatch green chilies direct from the farm in New Mexico.

Friday
Whole wheat pizza with homemade/homegrown sauce, onions, mushrooms, zucchini and bacon

Saturday
Pork chops with baked potato and Brussels sprouts.

Reflections
It was a HOT HOT HOT week! Well, at least the beginning of it was. Unfortunately it made it too uncomfortable to cook inside. On the bright side, the heat really kicked the garden into gear. The corn is now 7' tall - no tassels yet though. We have squash blossoms, tomatoes on the vines, flowers on the cucumbers, tomatillos eggplants and beans. I'm not so worried now about this coming Friday when we GIVE UP BUYING ALL FOOD. We've also struck a couple of bartering deals with a couple of farmers at the farmers' market. Fruit is going to be a problem for us. We just don't have any yet though we're trying to connect with people who would be willing to barter. Anyone out there in our area want to barter eggs or bread for fruit? :D

We Heart Movies

2011-06-22T07:20:00.000-07:00

We are particularly fond of documentaries - our favorites being documentaries about food, fuel, and living green. There are some important documentaries that I feel everyone should see, especially in regards to food. Here are some we recommend:

Farmageddon - Movie Trailer from Kristin Canty on Vimeo.

Week 37 - It's Warming Up.

2011-06-19T18:53:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Tomato braised rabbit with a salad.

Monday
Salad.

Tuesday
Salad.

Wednesday
Kale, onion and bacon frititta.

Thursday
Roasted root vegetables - turnips, parsnips, and beets from our garden along with sweet potatoes, onions, carrots and potatoes from the farmers market.

Friday
Pizza with a whole wheat crust, Parmesan cheese, homemade/grown sauce, mushrooms, onions and bacon.

Saturday
Pork butt roast with potatoes, carrots and onions.

Reflections:
The days are starting to warm up and I'm not looking forward to canning, let along cooking, in this heat. Our house is small so the oven and stove can really do a number on the indoor temperatures. We do have an outdoor kitchen in our plans so hopefully sooner, rather than later, it won't be an issue anymore.

10 Tips on Giving up the Grocery Store

2011-06-19T18:43:00.000-07:00

I get questions all the time about our year without groceries and people are always saying how inspired they are. I want to share some tips with everyone on how you can also be groceries free.

So if you're feeling adventurous I've got a few tips on how you can give up the Big G too.

Make sure you have a game plan but if you don't you can still wing it. Now is the perfect time to start because farmers' markets and CSAs are in full swing. Planning is easy when the resources are out there. We visit our farmers' market every weekend to stock up on produce our garden isn't producing. Check out Local Harvest to find farmers' markets, independent farmers and CSAs near you. Once you're started and in the groove of things it will give you time to find food sources and stock up for the winter.
For those conscientious carnivores out there, you can now find meat, egg and dairy CSAs. Check out Eat Wild for farmers near you. If you've got room for a chest freezer buy a whole, half or quarter animal. If you don't have that much room, find some friends or family to go in on a large order and then take what you can fit in your freezer. The more of the animal you buy the cheaper it is. We got a whole organically raised hog for $2/lb.
Start small. Nothing says you have to eliminate everything all at once. Maybe focus on buying all of your produce at the farmers' market right now. Or sign up for a CSA. Or eliminate processed food. Try finding something each month that you can eliminate buying from the grocery store and learn how to make it yourself or find from an alternative source.
Even your cheesemonger needs some love. Don't be afraid of specialty shops. Real butchers are making a comeback. You don't have to give up buying food from all retailers - the main point of giving up the Big G is to get closer to the source of your food. If there's a fantastic cheesemonger that makes their own cheese, or a butcher that breaks down whole animals that have been raised sustainably and they are willing to talk to you about where they source from then there's no reason you shouldn't buy from them. Plus you're helping to support your local economy and a larger portion of the money you pay is going to to the farmer.
Learn how to can. Again, right now is the perfect time to stock up on produce at the farmers' market and preserve it at home for the winter months. A pressure canner is a worthy investment if you don't want to pickle everything.
You don't have to be a chef or even that good of a cook, all you need are some good cookbooks and a willingness to experiment. You will fail sometimes, but don't let it bother you. We all had to start somewhere and as long as you keep at it you'll get better until it's second nature. I was terrible at making bread at first - always ending up as a brick - but over time I've been able to perfect it.
Find a buying club or local cooperative or start one. I found an organic, local buying club that a woman runs out of her garage. We place a monthly order for bulk staples like flour, rice and sugar and pick it up from her house the following week. I found mine by Googling "food co-op in __________."
It does take time, but not as much as you think it does. We no longer have to go to the grocery store. We go to the farmers' market once a week and pick up our order once a month. Running an urban farm is a total time suck, but preparing our own food independently of that is a drop in the bucket. My husband and I work together which helps save a ton of time. He'll make the spaghetti sauce while I make the pasta. Leftovers are eaten the following day for lunch.
Have the right tools. It can sometimes require an initial investment but in the long run it will save you time and money. I picked up a brand new bread machine for $5 at the flea market. When I don't have time to make bread by hand, I can add ingredients to the machine before bed, set the timer and wake up to the smell of fresh baked bread for less than $0.50 a loaf. My stand mixer is indispensible. I don't know what I ever did without a mandoline for slicing soon-to-be pickles or a food mill for removing tomato skins and seeds while making sauce.
Be prepared to eat seasonally and locally. When we gave up the grocery store it also means giving up tomatoes in the winter, citrus in the summer and pretty much all tropical fruits like bananas. In exchange for giving up out of season produce you get fresher foods with more flavor.

Be prepared to fall in love with being free from the grocery store. When we hit our 6 month mark we realized that we really enjoyed eating this way and decided to keep doing it when our year was up.

Adventures in Sausage - My Husband Doesn't like Stinky Cheese

2011-06-14T21:19:00.000-07:00

Mmmmm, rabbit

We've got so much rabbit and so very little freezer space right now, with more rabbits on the way. We needed to do something with all this rabbit and let's face it, I'm getting a little tired of just braising it.

Rabbit's a very lean meat and can be quite tough if it's not cooked right, which usually means either cooked very quickly or cooked for a very long time at a low heat. Since Tom is rather squeamish about rare or even medium rare meat, we have to go with the long cook time.

Grinding is a great way to deal with tough meats

However, there is another way you can prepare tough meat. Tough cuts from any animal whether it's beef, pork or rabbit lend themselves very well to grinding.

Not really wanting to make rabbit burgers and being that the current Charcutepalooza challenge is stuffed sausages I decided that rabbit would be the meat of choice for this challenge.

Pork fatback

But of course it wouldn't just be rabbit. Because sausage needs 25-30% fat I needed to add pork fatback. But I didn't stop there. My goal was a very flavorful sausage so it had to have asiago cheese and porcini mushrooms. But wait! It needed something more! Garlic! Yes garlic.

Unfortunately, Tom proclaimed that it smelled like a foot. He said the cheese smelled like a foot. The mushrooms smelled like a foot and now the fridge smells like a foot. Tom does NOT like stinky cheese, which, in my opinion, is quite a shame. I'm hoping this recipe works for him.

Unfortunately we're out of fresh garlic, but we have some really good dried garlic. So here's my recipe:

Rabbit Sausage with Porcinis, Asiago and Garlic

2 Whole Rabbits (3-3 1/2 lbs each), deboned and cut into 1/2" chunks
1 1/4 lb pork fatback, cut into chunks
1/2 lb Asiago cheese, cut into chunks
1.5 oz dried porcini mushrooms
3 Tbs dried minced garlic
3 Tbs Kosher salt
10+ feet of pork casings (optional)

1. Rehydrate mushrooms in 2 cups hot (not boiling) water. Put mushrooms in water into fridge overnight to chill.

2. Drain mushrooms reserving 1 cup of liquid. Return liquid to fridge.

3. Combine everything but the liquid in a large bowl and put in freezer until very cold, just short of freezing solid. Also freeze the detachable parts of meat grinder that will be coming into contact with the meat.

4. Reassemble meat grinder and run meat mixture through and into a bowl set in ice (I use the bowl to our stand mixer). I use the smallest die that came with the grinder.

5. Using my stand mixer (mine is the smaller Kitchen Aid mixer so I have to do this in batches), I quickly mix half of the ground meat adding 1/2 fo the reserved mushroom liquid to evenly distribute the spices. I repeat with the second half and then combine it all in one large bowl. Don't overmix or you'll end up with an emulsified sausage - mix just enough to distribute everything evenly.

6. Cook a small patty to check and adjust seasonings as needed. Return to the freezer to chill again.

7. You can choose to stop here and use it to make breakfast sausage or you can stuff it into casings.

I have to admit, or more like my husband has to admit, smelling like a foot can sometimes be a very good thing. The porcinis I feel are a bit overpowered by the garlic and asiago though, so I think next time I'll save my money and omit them.

So what did we do with the sausages? We've added them to spaghetti sauce and lasagna. We've eaten them on homemade rolls with homemade sauerkraut and eaten them as snacks when out and about. I even add them to soup. Sometimes you don't need a special recipe to use them because they are the special recipe.

Week 36

2011-06-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Tom made some chicken soup because I wasn't feeling so great.

Monday
Rabbit sausages with asiago cheese, garlic and porcini mushrooms (upcoming recipe) on a homemade bun and a salad.

Tuesday
Fritatta with onions and kale with a salad.

Wednesday
Vegetable Stir Fry with asparagus, mushrooms, onions.

Thursday
Stuffed winter squash from last year's garden. Stuffed with rice, squash, peas (from our garden), onions and mushrooms from the farmers' market.

Friday
Spaghetti with rabbit sausage sauce.

Saturday
Pork ribs with garlic mashed potatoes and kale from our garden.

Reflections:
June is a third over and my sense of panic is setting in for our 3 months with buying no food. I think we're set in the staples other than rice. Plenty of oil, flour, sugar (brown and white), yeast, and salt. Unfortunately I forgot to order a bag of rice so I'm trying to find a source for local rice. You wouldn't think it was that hard considering they grow tons of it in the next county over. That said, it's the vegetables I'm getting worried about. The garden is languishing in our bizarre cold and wet weather. One caveat though is that some of the garlic was done so I was able to harvest it.

Week 34 & 35 - Frittata-tastic

2011-06-05T17:02:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Sausage lasagna with a salad made from lettuce from our garden.

Monday
Sausage soup.

Tuesday
Frittata with ham and mushrooms with a side of artichokes and homemade aioli.

Wednesday
Elk Burgers with sweet potato mash and a salad.

Thursday
A spin off of beef stroganoff with peas from our garden, mushrooms, onions and potatoes from the farmers' market.

Friday
A beef curry with kale, snap peas, turnips and potatoes all from our garden.

Saturday
We were at a family friend's house for dinner - baked chicken, asparagus, salad and corn pudding (I think that's what it was called). We brought homemade bread.

Sunday
Pork stirfry with veggies from the farmers' market served with rice.

Monday
Frittata with mushrooms and onions and potatoes.

Tuesday
Roasted chicken (we helped teach a couple how to process chickens and in exchange they gave us one of them) with potatoes and artichokes.

Wednesday
Frittata with mushrooms, onions and kale with rabbit sausage.

Thursday
Vegetable soup - veggies from the farmers' market.

Friday
Pork chops with roasted root vegetables (parsnips, turnips, rutabagas, and golden beets) all from our garden. Salad with lettuce from our garden.

Saturday
We got home fairly late and I wasn't feeling well so we just fended for ourselves.

Reflections
I don't have much to share this week. We've been doing a lot of events lately and yesterday was actually our last big event that we had planned. My allergies have been really bad and Friday it began to morph into a cold, so now I'm sick and I have allergies. Joy. Hopefully next week I can write more when I have more energy.

Week 33 - We got to eat out! Twice!

2011-05-23T07:22:00.000-07:00

Sunday
The BEST grilled cheese sandwich I've ever had. Homemade French bread with organic cheddar cheese and then instead of butter on the bread I used homemade spicy garlic mayonnaise. So good!

Monday
I taught a raising rabbit class for 18 Reasons which included dinner, so I had rabbit stew for dinner.

Tuesday
Sausage & Rice soup with turkey broth made from the turkey Tom had hunted.

Wednesday
Asian influenced lemon pork with rice. It had broccoli, onions, asparagus, and mushrooms.

Thursday
Pork chops with salad and a parsnip/potato mash. We harvested our first two parsnips of the year. The greens for our salad came from our garden.

Friday
My mom is visiting from out of town so she took us out to have Thai food. Oh Thai food, how I have missed thee.

Saturday
We had Mexican food!

Reflections
Life is finally starting to slow down a bit, which I'm very thankful for. OK, now on to the big news. June is fast approaching. It will be our last month of being able to buy food. I'm completely freaked out! Our garden is so far behind. I'm going to be planting some fast producing things this week like lettuce, kale, chard and spinach just so we have something, SOMETHING, on hand to eat right away. I made the comment this morning to Tom as we're walking to the goat barn for the early morning milking that we can no longer depend on our normal weather patterns. Here it is, almost June and they're calling for more rain, more cold weather. It was very cold this morning - not normal at all. The rains should have been over by mid-April but I don't think that's going to be the case. Last year it rained in July and didn't get over 80 degrees until late September. I wonder if this year will be the same?

Week 32- The Mistake

2011-05-16T13:20:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Bacon and Eggs with potatoes

Monday
Green chili stew with tomatillos and roasted chilis from our garden (frozen from previous summer). Potatoes from the farmers' market.

Tuesday
Leftover green chili stew.

Wednesday
French Toast. We then went to a meeting where I had a slice of pizza: The Mistake.

Thursday
Pork chops with a green salad and artichokes from our garden.

Friday
Homemade fresh sausage with homemade rolls and sauerkraut and sauteed onions with a side of sauteed kale from our garden.

Saturday
Pork roast with roasted potatoes from the farmers' market and turnips from our garden and peas from our garden.

Reflections:
The Mistake. OK, so staying gluten free didn't last all that long. I found that my asthma wasn't improving so I threw in the towel. It's tough avoiding gluten when no one else in the house is. Anyways, Wednesday we went to a meeting and they were serving pizza so I decided to have a slice. It's been so long since I've had commercially made pizza that I decided to splurge. I really wish I hadn't. Late Wednesday night/early Thursday morning I woke up with the worst stomach cramping. I got up and took some pepto bismal and tried to unsuccessfully go back to sleep. It didn't get better. By Friday afternoon I decided to call Kaiser's advice nurse. Apparently I just have some serious indigestion. Thanks Pizza.

Going Whole Hog - Fresh Sausage

2011-05-14T07:35:00.000-07:00

May's Charcutepalooza challenge was fresh sausage. When we got our pig we specified that we didn't want any of it made into sausage, bacon or ham because we wanted to do it ourselves.

OK, I do have to share something about these challenges. To us they really, truly are a challenge. We can't just go to the grocery store and buy whatever we want to make something truly inspiring and creative. We have to stick to the basics and what we have here or can get from specialty markets - which, quite honestly, isn't very much. Sometimes it's very basic. When July 1st comes we may even be forced to skip challenges depending on what they are since we won't be buying any food at all. We'll be at the mercy of what we have in our pantry.

Our chest freezer is packed with large cuts of meat such as pork shoulder, which is perfect for making sausage as it has the perfect ratio of muscle to fat - 25-30% fat is the target. Unfortunately the piece we pulled out to defrost wasn't a full 5lbs which was called for in the recipe. It also was bone in, which I had to remove. I did have some pork trim that I had pulled out though which could make up the difference in weight.

I diced the pork shoulder and added my spices. I was tempted to go with a hot Italian sausage but decided to go with our favorite spice mix - Cajun Seasoning from Whole Spice Company. I mixed it 40 grams of kosher salt and 2 heaping tablespoons of the Cajun Seasoning.

The most important aspect of making sausage is to keep it extremely cold - almost freezing. After seasoning the meat I stuck it in our chest freezer for a couple of hours, checking on it periodically to make sure it wasn't freezing solid. I also put the metal parts of the grinder in the freezer to get them ice cold.

We luckily had a meat grinder - a really good one that can grind a whole chicken, bones and all - which made this process pretty easy. We ground the spiced meat into our stand mixer's bowl which was placed in ice water to help keep the meat cold.

Once all the ground meat was in the bowl we mixed the sausage with the stand mixer, adding 1 cup of ice cold water. We mixed the ground meat until it became tacky. We made a small patty so we could check the seasonings. They were ok, but we thought we needed something else. We added 2 tablespoons of fennel seed and then stuck it back into the freezer to get cold again.

After soaking hog casings (the inner membrane of a hog's intestine) we stuffed the sausage. Definitely could use some more practice with making the sausage more even. Not bad for the first time though.

So what to do with our first meal of fresh homemade sausage? Put them on a bun of course!

I made some buns which were done rising right before we ground the meat.

We browned up the sausage nicely. Tom added some water to the pan to deglaze it and then cooked up some kale from our garden in it. It came out incredibly tasty.

Our sausage on a bun. Actually the buns were huge so we put two sausages on one bun. We then added some homemade sauerkraut, grilled onions and homemade ketchup. We served it up with the sausage basted kale. A very nice, homey meal. We still have 23 more sausages. We'll see how long they last....

Weeks 30 & 31 - When Artichokes Take Over the World

2011-05-08T06:16:00.000-07:00

I've been so busy I haven't really kept up with our meals, so I missed a few days of Week 30. But I do know we ate artichokes every day.

Sunday
We went to Tom's grandmother's house for Easter. We brought chard from our garden and a blackberry crumble with an oatmeal topping from blackberries we had foraged and then froze.

Monday
Garlic flavored almonds. Oh and some water. We didn't get a chance to eat because we had to rush our 6 wk old goat to UC Davis.

Tuesday
Frittata with spinach from our garden, bacon, onions and mushrooms. Artichokes with homemade aioli.

Friday
Rabbit tacos, homemade tortillas, spanish rice and artichokes!

Saturday
Potluck! We had a great potluck at our house. Of course I was so busy socialized I didn't get to eat anything, but it was worth it.

Sunday
Snacked on food leftover from the potluck.

Monday
Pork chops with roasted potatoes and artichokes.

Tuesday
Cream of Artichoke Soup

Wednesday
Rabbit braised in tomato sauce and artichokes

Thursday
Pizza with spinach, homemade chevre, mushrooms and onions. And artichokes

Friday
Venison burgers with homemade baked beans....and artichokes.

Saturday
Artichokes. We went to an event earlier that day and didn't really feel like having a full meal.

Reflections
Our artichokes started producing. Heavily. I love artichokes but we have to keep up with them. So far we've harvested over 23lbs of them. I'm sure by the end of the season we'll be thoroughly sick of them, just like last year.
We've also been incredibly busy lately. We had a sick doeling that unfortunately, didn't make it. We had a big potluck to get ready for. We taught some people how to slaughter rabbits. It was stressful and I'm glad it's all over. Now we can get back to our normally scheduled programming.

My Husband & I Have an Eating Disorder

2011-04-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

Apparently if you don't eat processed foods you have an eating disorder.
Orthorexia (not to be confused with Orthorexia nervosa):
Those affected may start by eliminating processed foods, anything with artificial colorings or flavorings as well as foods that have come into contact with pesticides. Beyond that, orthorexics may also shun caffeine, alcohol, sugar, salt, wheat and dairy foods. Some limit themselves to raw foods.

Coined by Steven Bratman, MD, he readily admits he's not a nutrition specialist. Weird.

Week 29 - No Gluten

2011-04-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

Sunday-
Artichokes and more artichokes. Oh, and a baked potato

Monday-
Eggs and fried potatoes.

Tuesday-
Pork stirfry with rice.

Wednesday-
Cracked crab with a cabbage salad and artichokes.

Thursday-
Venison burgers with a cabbage salad and artichokes.

Friday-
Pork chops with mashed potatoes and chard from our garden.

Saturday-
Smoked duck, kohlrabi, mushroom, and onion stir fry with an orange sauce and rice.

Reflections -
Since the cold I had several weeks ago my asthma has been bothering me pretty badly. Usually it manifests itself as a dry, hacking cough. On Thursday my friend, Michele, posted an article on a link between gluten and asthma. I'd been kind of thinking about going sans gluten but this kind of pushed me over the edge. That day I noticed that when I eat bread my coughing got worse so I'm going to see if my asthmatic cough will go away faster if I remove gluten from my diet. So far, even after just two days, I've noticed a marked difference. I'm not hacking before bed, which to me is huge because it means I (and Tom) can fall asleep faster. So we'll see if this works. As for Tom, he's still eating bread and other foods with gluten in them.

Do You Eat Meat and Drink Milk?

2011-04-20T20:38:00.000-07:00

I'm not a vegan and probably never will be. I eat meat, dairy and eggs pretty regularly, though admittedly less than the average American. I should probably eat more eggs since we get so many, but I digress....

It's incredibly important that people know what they are eating. What goes into the food they eat and how it's produced. Most of you that follow this blog are more than aware of the atrocities committed against animals and humans alike in our industrialized food system. This post is for those that don't know, so I please ask you to share this with who you can because I believe everyone needs to see it regardless of how difficult it is. Change cannot come until people are angry enough to do something about it. And apparently there just aren't enough of us pissed off yet to see any big changes.

But we are getting heard. Iowa and Florida are both trying to silence us by passing legislation making it illegal to film or photograph animal abuse and health violations on farms. Hopefully these bills don't pass because they would take away a huge amount of leverage we have to correct the system.

An article came out today on Grist about treatment of animals on these factory farms and how that treatment poses major health risks to us. The article includes a very disturbing video that I've included. This is a farm that raises dairy cows - calves in particular. Not meat animals, but dairy animals. This isn't the only video I've seen involving cruelty on dairy farms, but it is one of the worst I've seen. One has to wonder what makes people so violent and uncaring. It shows that for factory farms, animals are simply objects that can be disposed of with any means.

But you have options to fight this. Michael Pollan touts voting with your fork. I highly recommend doing this. But what can you do? Well, going vegan is the obvious option, though it's not the only one. Knowing you're farmers is the best option if you decide to continue to eat animals products. Don't just rely on labels. "Organic" doesn't always equal "humane." There are organic dairies out there though that are humane. There are small producers and large producers that do care. Here in the SF Bay Area we have several, including Straus Creamery, Organic Pastures, and Clover Stornetta (I've actually toured one of their organic farms and they are the only dairy in the U.S. to be certified by the American Humane Association). Visit the Animal Welfare Approved site and locate local farms that are certified with them.

To ignore this and continue buying factory farmed animal products is to support these actions.

Week 28

2011-04-17T16:39:00.000-07:00

Roasted brined wild turkey

Sunday
Frittata with ham mushrooms and onions.

Monday
Eggs and ham

Tuesday
Vegetable stirfry

Wednesday
Beans and a cabbage salad from our garden.

Thursday
Roasted brined turkey that Tom hunted with mashed potatoes and asparagus from the garden.

Friday
Turkey tacos with homemade guacamole, spanish rice, leftover beans and a cabbage salad.

Saturday
Tom had pork chops. I was out celebrating my friends' birthday.

Reflections:
I think the most notable thing this week was Tom started hunting. On his first trip he successfully got an 18lb turkey. It dressed out to 13.5lbs. While it was a bit tough, we brined it and it was still quite tasty. We stripped the carcass and boiled it down for broth with carrots and onions. We'll use that broth for soups and stew later.

Going Whole Hog - The 27lb Ham

2011-04-12T21:02:00.000-07:00

Back in early September we had bought 1/8 of a steer. It equaled about 40 lbs of beef. We finally finished it off at the end of February. This time we decided to go a bit bigger but with a meat that we prefer over beef - pig. The bonus of doing pig is that we can also utilize it for Charcutepalooza.

We were originally going to raise our own hogs on someone's rural property but when that didn't seem to pan out we decided to just buy a live hog from someone that had already raised it to market weight. We were lucky to find an organic dairy farmer that just so happened to raise 4 hogs as a side project. The hogs were fed all organic feed. The hogs were large, but we weren't prepared for the actual weight. We were thinking the one we picked was maybe 250lbs live weight. Turns out it was closer to 450lbs. Yeah, we were just a bit off. The hanging weight on the hog was 287lbs.

I was definitely looking forward to curing the 25lbs of pork belly into bacon and pancetta. We have the head so I can make giancale or even head cheese. The butcher left us the shoulders whole so we can make sausage.

But this month's challenge for Charcutepalooza was a hot smoke. The example used for hot smoking was Canadian bacon. Our butcher, unfortunately cut the tenderloins into chops so we couldn't make Canadian bacon. So we decided to go with a whole ham. The hams weighed 27lbs. Go big or go home right?

Removing the aitch bone

We cut the hock off of the ham, removed the aitch bone and then brined it. After removing the hock and aitch bone we got it down to 25lbs. We brined it for 14 days. The directions said half a day of brining per pound for an American Style Holiday glazed ham. Unfortunately, even with the extra day and half of brining and doubling the brine recipe, when all was said and done, this wasn't long enough. The interior of the ham didn't get cured. Oh well, it's still very tasty.

Cat is eyeing the ham

We have a lot of applewood stacked in our yard from a friend's tree. We decided to use that for the smoking. The ham barely fit in our smoker. After 2 hours I glazed it. To reach the required 155 deg internal temperature it took 13 hours to hot smoke. Poor Tom, after hunting all day on Saturday had to get up at 3am on Sunday to pull it out of the smoker and do the final glaze. But it came out amazing! It's smokey with a subtle salty sweetness. I'd never had real ham - only the highly processed stuff that people serve on the holidays. This is how ham is supposed to taste like.

We did a very simple meal. We fried up some slices and served it up with some fresh fried eggs from our hens for a Sunday morning breakfast. The weather was lovely so we could eat outside. Sometimes the simple meals are the best tasting.

Weeks 26 & 27

2011-04-09T19:23:00.000-07:00

OK, I have to admit, life has been a bit hectic with the baby goats and being sick so I totally forgot to post week 26. Not only that, I forgot to even keep tabs on it, so I don't have all my meals from that week. So I'll just skip on ahead to what I do remember eating.

Sunday
We hosted a dinner at our house and served pork chops with pasta, bread, and swiss chard. Friends brough dishes as well.

Monday
I was home sick so that morning I started boiling down a duck and chicken carcass and made vegetable rice soup that evening.

Saturday
BBQ chicken with tortillas, spanish rice and guacamole.

Sunday
Pork shoulder braised in tomato sauce with potatoes and carrots.

Monday
Spaghetti! I got lazy and bought some local artisan pasta from the Fatted Calf when I picked up the sausage.

Tuesday
Meatloaf with grassfed beef, onions, mushrooms served with sweet potatoes

Wednesday
Pizza with squash, onions, mushrooms and bacon.

Thursday
Bacon and Eggs

Friday
Pork chops with asparagus from our garden and mashed potatoes

Saturday
Biscuits and gravy with broccoli and Baconator ice cream for dessert

Reflections
We've got so much going on here and with that we're so behind. I'm starting to feel worried about having enough food in the garden for our 3 months without buying food. That said, we've decided what we're going to do when the year is up. We're going to continue doing this crazy project with one small change. We're going to allow ourselves one restaurant meal per month. I think this will definitely make us feel less deprived while also making that restaurant visit somewhere special. We're not going to waste our one month visit on crappy food.

Milk! We've Got It!

2011-04-05T20:04:00.000-07:00

If you've been following our other blog you would have read about our goats kidding. Now that Bella's kids are 3 weeks old we've been milking her for a week. Since they aren't really a dairy breed they aren't high producers. They also aren't at peak production - which they will reach around day 70. That said we're getting just over a cup per milking from her. We'll probably get less from Daisy since this is her first freshening, but I'll be happy if we get two cups of milk a day. Just enough for us for right now.

The milk is phenomenal. It's rich and sweet. It's not goaty at all. On the second day the cream rises, which is unusual for goat milk which is generally naturally homogenized. But pygmy goat milk is a bit different from dairy goat milk. It has a higher fat content which helps keep it from tasting goaty. It also makes it separate easier.

The other bonus is that we finally can drink raw milk. Raw cow's milk in California is nearly impossible to find and when you can find it, it's prohibitively expensive. I did buy a pint of raw cow's milk once as a treat, but it wasn't something I could buy regularly. Raw goats milk is not available in California at all except for pet consumption. Btu now we have a regular source and we know the condition of the animal it's coming from. This will make live a lot easier when eliminate the buying of all food.

By the way, I haven't forgotten about the cooking challenges. I'll just have to mob post about them when I write them.

6 Months!

2011-04-01T21:13:00.000-07:00

It's April 1st which means we have officially been on this crazy journey for 6 months now. 6 months! It's crazy! Halfway through this thing. I've been thinking about how this is a finite journey and will eventually have to end. It's kind of a bummer. I actually enjoy doing this.

But being at the 6 month mark also means that we only have 3 months before giving up buying food completely. I'm really nervous about that now that we're about a month behind on our garden.

So now I'm wondering what we should do once our year is up? I'd like to continue the no-groceries thing but lighten up on the going out part. Some days it's just more convenient to pick up a sandwich or something than cook dinner. Like tonight when we have to spend most of our time watching our goat who is threatening labor.

What do you think we should do after our year is up?

You Are What You Eat.

2011-03-29T11:14:00.000-07:00

Without really delving into it, I have some experience with ADHD (not my own ADHD). An article came out last week on Civil Eats that really supports our views on food, how it affects the body, specifically with ADHD in children. I think there is definitely something they are on to. If you think about it, when we were kids ADHD wasn't a term I had ever heard. Our diets were also based on whole foods rather than the crap that kids get today, especially in school, where it should be the most important.

I have a feeling Big Pharma will now try to discredit the study as soon as possible so they can continue to sell drugs to families. Big Pharma won't be the only lobby. The Food Industrial Complex will be on it as well. Here's a woman that has taken on the food industry after watching her child develop an allergic reaction to commonly fed foods today. Definitely worth watching.

Week 25 - Pork!

2011-03-27T06:20:00.000-07:00

Monday -
Pork chops with mashed potatoes and sauteed cabbage from the garden.

Tuesday -
Pork tacos with guacamole, salsa that we found in our freezer that we had made last summer, onions and homemade tortillas. Served with Spanish Rice.

Wednesday-
Frittata from our hens' eggs, home cured bacon, Swiss chard from our garden and mushrooms.

Thursday-
Pork stirfry with mushrooms, carrots, and onions from the farmers' market and cabbage from our garden.

Friday-
Grassfed london broil with Swiss Chard from our garden and rice.

Saturday-
We ate a late lunch so didn't really eat anything for dinner.

Reflections-
Obviously we're going to be eating a lot of pork for awhile. I've also taken on the enormous challenge of curing lots of it. The hams are almost 30lbs each. So far we've got one in the brine for 13 days and then we'll smoke it for a couple of days. I'm thinking of making proscuitto with the other ham but need to come up with a place to cure it at. I could use our wine fridge but then I'd lose the use of that for cheese because the ham would take up the whole thing. I also started curing half of the pork belly which weighs 12lbs. I think we'll be OK with bacon for awhile.

Week 23 and 24

2011-03-21T12:34:00.000-07:00

Sunday
Beans from our storage with a smoked ham hock from the Fatted Calf.

Monday
Leftovers

Tuesday
Grass fed carne asada with homemade guacamole (avocados from the farmers' market), homemade tortillas, refried beans from Sunday and Spanish Rice

Wednesday
Stir fry with cabbage from our garden, grassfed beef, and various vegetables that were either given to us or from the farmers' market.

Thursday
Maple Cured Applewood Smoked Bacon, eggs from our girls and potatoes from the farmers' market.

Friday
Soup made with cabbage, potatoes, onions, carrots and....bacon!

Saturday
Grassfed tri tip with mashed sweet potatoes and swiss chard.

Sunday
Grassfed ground beef burgers with fried potatoes

Monday
Swiss chard, bacon, cheddar, mushroom fritatta.

Tuesday
Leftovers.

Wednesday
Chayote Pizza.

Thursday
Vegetable stirfry with rice.

Friday
Never got around to eating dinner.

Saturday
Pork roast with sweet potatoes, potatoes, turnips, carrots and Swiss chard.

Sunday
We had spaghetti over at Tom's mom's house for his brother's birthday.

Reflections:
These last two weeks have been a bit crazy. One of our goats gave birth (the first time I've helped with a kidding) so by next weekend we should be able to provide at least some of our own dairy. Our other doe is due April 2nd so that will make it a lot easier for us in the milk department.

A big issue we're having right now is water. The overabundance of it. We're about a month behind on planting, which I'm concerned about for our last three months of not buying any food. It's also been keeping us busy trying to keep our animals dry. We currently have 19 chicks and 2 baby goats and the barn flooded this weekend. This past Friday we were so busy with trying to keep everyone dry we never got around to eating dinner.

Earlier on Friday we went and picked up the whole pig we bought and had butchered. It was butchered and nicely wrapped. We promptly unwrapped it so we could vacuum seal it. We had asked for the skin, liver, heart, lungs and kidneys. Unfortunately we only got one kidney and the head. So no chicharrones. :( But I can make head cheese.

The craziness should be continuing as we approach the 6 month mark!

March Challenge - Chayote Pizza

2011-03-20T12:23:00.000-07:00

Oh yeah, you heard that right! Pizza with Chayote on it! And what a tasty pizza it was. It didn't hurt that it had whole slices of bacon on it and that the chayote was first fried in bacon fat. I figured it was an interesting way to have chayote. Oh, and we also had fried potato slices on it as well. It was all and all a very unique pizza.

Chayote, Bacon and Potato Pizza

1 chayote peeled, seed removed and thinly sliced
1/2 lb new potatoes thinly sliced
6 slices bacon cooked until crisp reserving bacon fat
1 lb pizza dough shaped into a crust on a cookie sheet or pizza stone
Pizza sauce (we make this from scratch with home canned sauce and fresh herbs simmered until very thick).
1 c shredded cheese (we used a mixture of sharp cheddar and parmesan)

Preheat oven to 375 deg F
1. In a hot skillet fry chayote and potato slices in bacon fat.
2. Spread sauce on dough and arrange bacon, fried chayote and potato slices on pizza.
3. Sprinkle pizza with cheese and bake for 20 minutes or until crust is golden and cheese is bubbly. Serve.

Food Prices

2011-03-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

Every morning while getting ready for work we watch the news. This morning wasn't any different. As we were about to turn the TV off a story came on about food prices. Just last month the cost of food soared 3.9% which is the highest gain since 1974. What's even crazier is this is due to the cost of vegetables going up almost 50%. Economists say it's just temporary because of the freezes in the southern states. Regardless it still effects people, especially those that need access to healthy foods the most - the poor. This increase makes healthy foods even more unattainable. It's sad that a person can afford soda for their family but not apples. It's really clear that our government would rather see people unhealthy by subsidizing and making affordable only the least healthy of foods.

This is why I think it's important for people to do what they can to grow food. Even if it's just one tomato plant on a balcony. Take control over your food before it gets too expensive that you can't afford it anymore.

March Challenge - Chayote

2011-03-15T20:37:00.000-07:00

The farmer was back! So I stocked up on Chayote so I can continue with March's challenge. I'll have to play catch up though because I missed last week.

It's raining and cold - perfect soup weather. I haven't had a simple vegetable soup lately so tonight it was a Vegetable Soup with Chayote. It was tasty. The chayote, though wasn't particularly flavorful - much like zucchini. The texture was perfect though. This soup is simple and you can really add just about any vegetable that suits you.

In this recipe I chose not to skin the chayote. You can do that if you want, but I don't mind the skin as it's really thin so I just left it on.

Vegetable Soup with Chayote

2 Chayote cut in half
3 Carrots, sliced
1 Onion, chopped
1 1/2 lbs potatoes, cut in 1/2" chunks
10 oz mushrooms
8 cups chicken broth
1 Tbs Harissa Spice Mix
1 tsp salt
Tapatio to taste

1. In a large stockpot add chicken broth and bring to a boil. Add Chayote halves and boil for 15-20 minutes or until seed can be scooped out. Chop chayote.
2. Add everything to hot stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and cook until potatoes are tender - about 30 minutes.
3. Serve with fresh bread.

When Perfection is Improved

2011-03-06T10:06:00.000-08:00

Corned Beef. That vacuum packed brisket held in some sort of liquid with spices. Usually you can only make out the mustard seed and crumbled bay leaves. I never really thought about what went into corned beef but I knew the history behind the name. The "corned" refers to the salt the size of corn kernels used to cure it. The salt wasn't named after corn though. Corn was named after the salt, as corn's traditional name is "maize." The word "corn" is actually Germanic in origin. When maize made it's way to Europe they called it corn because the kernels resembled the salt used to cure corned beef.

Today corned beef is brined and then boiled instead of corned with dry salt. But growing up I didn't care how it was made. I just loved it. It was by far one of my favorite foods. Always served on St. Patrick's Day with cabbage, potatoes and carrots. One of the things that made it so special was that this was the only time of year we got to eat it. My family does that. We take one meal and only serve it one time of year. Every Christmas eve we would have a crab feed. The only time of year we'd eat crab. It made it a tradition. Something special. Corned beef is just as special.

When the March Challenge for Charcutepalooza was announced I was excited! I would learn how to make this nostalgic hunk of meat. I've brined before. Actually, every year we brine a whole turkey for Thanksgiving. You can find my recipe here. I HIGHLY recommend you try the next time you serve a whole turkey, whether it's for Thanksgiving or for any other meal. You will not be disappointed. Since I have experience brining, it meant that I could do the Charcuterie Challenge rather than the Apprentice Challenge.

Making the corned beef looked ridiculously easy. Because it's so easy, the instructions were to make your own pickling spice. Seemed fair enough. Well, as it turns out, while I was writing down the list of spices and herbs to get, I wrote "ginger" twice and forgot to write down "cloves." I didn't realize this until I was dumping spices into the bowl to create the pickling spice. Doh! We were out of whole cloves so instead I made the decision to go with ground cloves. Ground cloves are ridiculously strong compared to their whole counterparts. This was definitely a gamble, but it was a bet I was willing to make.

After a week in the fridge soaking in brine I pulled out the brisket. I was dismayed to see it come out looking gray and unappetizing. I didn't even take a picture of it. But I wasn't going to give up. It was ready before we could cook it for the required 3 hours, so I dumped the brine and recovered the brisket with some fresh, cool water until the weekend when we could cook it. That coming Saturday morning we stuffed it into our slow cooker and covered it with some of the water it had been soaking in. We set the slow cooker on high for 2 hours and then on low for the next several hours. Around 4pm I pulled it out and put it in a dutch oven with the remaining liquid, some more water, potatoes, cabbage and carrots. We of course had to have a traditional meal with part of it. The rest of it when into the fridge for Monday's dinner.

I pulled the brisket out and cut it. It was that lovely red color I was hoping for. No longer was it gray. The flavor? Perfection perfected. The cloves gamble was well worth it. You could taste the cloves, but they weren't overpowering. It was by far the best tasting corned beef I had ever tasted.

The following Monday evening we decided to make sandwiches, another common way to eat corned beef. But we didn't just go for regular corned beef, swiss cheese, and sauerkraut on rye. Oh no. We first started by making homemade garlic mayonnaise with green grapeseed oil.

We fried up slices of corned beef in bacon grease and then fried up an egg from our hens in the remaining grease.

We slathered the mayonnaise on some toasted Amber Ale Bread that we had picked up at Model Bakery, added the corned beef, egg, and topped it off with a sliced lacto-fermented pickle I made this past summer. We served this amazing tasting sandwich with fried potatoes and kale chips we made earlier in the week.

March Challenge - Still Unknown

2011-03-06T09:11:00.001-08:00

So my original idea was to do Chayote for the March challenge. I found them at the farmers' market and since I had never tried them before I figured that this was the perfect item.

For years I've seen this odd looking food around. Is it a fruit? Is it a vegetable? I have no idea. I do know that it's a squash - so botanically it's a fruit, but legally I have no idea. Why do I say "legally?" Well, the USDA likes to have stuff in their own neat little boxes. And they determine what is a fruit or a vegetable. Sometimes their rulings don't match up with the botanic definition. Tomatoes are the perfect example. Botanically they are fruit. Legally they are vegetables. Weird.

A spiny Chayote

OK, so back to the chayote. It's a squash that likes to grow in the winter. They come in a smooth and a spiny form. I have never tried it before though, so when I found them at the farmers' market I immediately knew what March's challenge was going to be. I bought two from a farmer only knowing what he told me. That they were sweet and should be boiled or sauteed. With this recipe I decided to do both.

I made this dish for that challenge only to be disappointed this past weekend when I went to the farmers' market and the farmer that I had bought them from the week before wasn't there. No Chayote. I will keep looking for them this week to continue this challenge. As a backup, however, we'll move on to mustard greens since we've got a very nice patch of them in our backyard ready to pick.

Sausage and Mushroom Stuffed Chayote

2 Chayote cut in half lengthwise
2 Sausages removed from casings
1 Tbs oil
1 medium onion, chopped
10 mushrooms sliced
3 oz shredded sharp cheddar cheese
3 oz cream cheese
3 Tbs Cilantro, chopped
Hot Sauce to taste

1. In boiling, salted water, cook the chayote halves for 30 minutes.
2. Remove chayote from water and allow to cool until you can handle them. Scoop out seed and discard. Scoop flesh out of the skin, creating a shell.
3. In a large skillet over medium-high heat add oil and brown sausage, breaking it up as it cooks. Once browned add onions and mushrooms and cook until onions become translucent.
4. Turn down heat to low and add chayote flesh, cheeses, cilantro and hot sauce. Stir until ingredients are well mixed.
5. On a cookie sheet place scooped out chayote "shells" and fill shells with sausage mixture.
6. Bake in a 350 deg F oven for 30 minutes.
7. Serve.

They chayote tasted like a sweet zucchini. I was pleasantly surprised. So much so, that we will hopefully be adding them to our garden next year. Everyone I had talked to said to remove the skin. One of them definitely had tougher skin, but it's paper thin, similar to the skin on a bell pepper. The other chayote had more tender skin so we just ate the entire thing.

Weeks 21 & 22

2011-03-06T08:28:00.000-08:00

Sunday-
Marmalade smothered roast duck with fennel

Monday -
Fend for yourself today. I had a grilled cheese sandwich with homemade bread and cheese that Jeanette left at our house.

Tuesday -
Breakfast for dinner. Eggs and fried potatoes.
Wednesday -
Green Chili Stew

Thursday -
Portobella mushrooms, sausage, onions, cheddar, cream cheese and hot sauce saute.

Friday -
We spent the evening running errands, so leftovers it was - Green Chili Stew.

Saturday -
Corned Beef, cabbage, carrots and potatoes.

Sunday -
Sausage and mushoom stuffed chayote

Monday-
Corned beef breakfast sandwiches.

Tuesday -
Eggs and bacon. I love breakfast for dinner.

Wednesday -
Pizza with homemade mozzarella and sausage from the Fatted Calf

Thursday -
Carrot Cauliflower Soup with bacon. Cauliflower was from the farmers' market and the carrots and onions were given to us.

Friday -
Carrot Cauliflower Soup

Saturday-
Lasagna with homemade pasta and cheese and sauce from tomatoes we canned last summer. Sausage from the fatted calf.

Reflections -
This has been a rough week. Squeek, our super mutt, developed a tumor next to her nose. We'll know later this coming week what the exact diagnosis is. We've also had some other major issues that I won't bore you with. But in the midst of all the stress, our meals have been pretty good.

Other Changes Caused by Not Going to the Grocery Store

2011-03-01T13:04:00.000-08:00

Obviously because we aren't buying food at the grocery store, we're not going there very often. Actually, I can't really remember the last time I was there. I think it was to buy some parchment paper. Anyways, because of this I'm noticing other changes too. Our personal care items are changing.

I'm not using shampoo and conditioner anymore. I can get baking soda and apple cider vinegar through our co-op/buying club. My friend Maya, from Soul Flower Farm, Jeanette and I made cold process soap together, which I'm now using as hand and body soap. I'm also using it to make homemade laundry detergent.

We're not ones for using chemical cleaners. We generally just use good ol' elbow grease to clean with. Counters we use hot water and dish soap. We don't use antibacterial anything except for cleaning beer making stuff - but then it's biodegradable, food grade sanitizers. I do like my Comet though for cleaning the toilet and bathroom sink, but that's about it.

It's interesting how this wasn't our primary goal and yet our lives are changing so much.

Fennel Challenge: Marmalade Smothered Roast Duck with Fennel and Potatoes

2011-02-26T09:44:00.000-08:00

So here's the last Recipe Challenge for February. Number 4. It's a simple, but tasty one. It's good comfort food. I have no idea what next months ingredient will be. We'll have to see what the Farmers' market brings us.

Since Jessa posted her marmalade recipe on my other blog, Dog Island Farm, I've been on a marmalade makin' kick. Our last batch was a Lemon Huckleberry Marmalade. A coworker of mine had given me a giant basket full of Meyer lemons. We had foraged a bunch of huckleberries last fall and they were sitting in the freezer. So I chose to go with this marmalade for this recipe. I've also roasted duck with a cranberry orange marmalade. Both work well, so I'm pretty sure any high quality marmalade will work well with this. I'd love to try it with a ginger lime marmalade as well.

Recipe:
1 whole duck
1 c marmalade
2 sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1" chunks
3 large "thin skinned" potatoes such as yukon gold cut into 1" chunks
1 fennel bulb trimmed and sliced into 1" slices, saving branches
oil

Preheat oven to 375 deg F
1. Drizzle oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.
2. Rub marmalade all over duck and place breast side down in pan.
3. Place sweet potatoes and potatoes around duck. Cover duck with fennel slices.
4. Cover and roast in oven for 1 hr. Increase temperature to 400 deg F, uncover and bake until leg joint reaches 180 deg F.
5. Serve warm with potatoes and any side vegetable.

What Every Rancher Needs

2011-02-23T09:07:00.000-08:00

The USDA recently deregulated Roundup Ready Alfalfa, created and patented by Monsanto. Lynda over at The Wisdom of the Radish wrote a great post about why there is absolutely no need for RR Alfalfa other than pure, unadulterated greed.

The USDA has once again bowed down to corporations and began allowing something that hasn't been thoroughly studied for safety.

A couple of years ago I had heard that ranchers in the midwest had been complaining that their cattle and hogs were having issues with fertility. The issues hadn't started until they started feeding their livestock GMO feed. Then a Russian biologist did a study on hamster and possibly found a link to infertility from ingesting GMO feed.

It just came out this week that scientists have found a previously unknown microorganism that could be responsible for the infertility and spontaneous abortions that ranchers were concerned about. And this microorganism is in a much higher concentration on crops that have been sprayed with Roundup compared to those that haven't.

So this begs the question: What are GM crops doing to us? After all, nearly all non-organic processed food products are made from one or more GM crops - corn, soy, cotton, canola, peanuts, sugar beets, Hawaiian papaya, sugar cane, rice, zucchini and sweet peppers.

Vote with your fork. Only buy organic food. If you can't afford it then buy whole foods that haven't yet been genetically modified and process your own.

Fennel Challenge - Coulibiac

2011-02-21T12:34:00.000-08:00

There was slight panic this weekend when the organic farmer I get my fennel from didn't have any this week. It's been raining heavily off and on all week and they couldn't get out to the fields to pick any. So I decided that I'd just have to move on to something else. Kale? Sure. So I bought some kale from the other organic farmer that we buy produce from.

We then trekked over to the Oxbow Public Market because I needed to get some kosher salt from the spice merchant. Lo and behold, there was fennel waving to me from the produce stand. I excitedly bought two bulbs. OK, so now what do I do with them? We headed over to the Fatted Calf (also at the public market). Hmmm, pork? Chicken? Lamb? No, duck. A whole duck. Hmmm, with citrus. Then Jeanette said "Oh! I have a great recipe with fennel that you can do that involves salmon. Sounds promising and since I need to do two fennel recipes this week (started a week late on this challenge) we'll do both duck and salmon. She explains the dish to me. It's a traditional Scottish savory pastry with salmon, fennel, onions, mushrooms rice and eggs. We run over to Kanaloa Seafood Market and buy a pound and half of salmon. The salmon just so happened to be sustainably farm raised Scottish Salmon. Perfect!

Now the hard part. The puff pastry. I obviously can't go out and buy some premade puff pastry, so I was going to have to make it. We were low on butter. I only had enough to do half the recipe. So I made do. But unfortunately, we didn't have enough butter to make the hollandaise sauce that traditionally goes with this recipe, so we served it with sour cream. In my opinion though it was very tasty and didn't have to have the hollandaise.

Recipe:

1.5 lb Salmon Fillet, cut in half and skinned
2 12"x12" puff pastry sheets
1 cup cooked white rice
1 med. onion, chopped
2 hard boiled eggs, sliced
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
1 fennel bulb, chopped finely
1/2 tsp Hungarian Paprika
Salt and Pepper to taste
Dried Marjoram
Dried Rosemary
Sour cream

Preheat oven to 375 deg F
1. Season salmon fillets with salt, pepper a dash of dried marjoram and rosemary. Saute onions and mushrooms with paprika until onions are translucent. Add fennel at end to soften.
2. Layout one sheet of puff pastry on cookie sheet lined with parchment paper.
3. Put layer of 1/3 of the rice then layer of 1/3 onion mixture, 1/2 of the salmon and 1/2 sliced hard boiled egg. Repeat one more time and then put the rest of rice and onion mixture on top.
4. Cover stack with 2nd puff pastry. Seal edges.
5. Bake for 1-.5 hours.
6. Serve with sour cream.

Week 20 - A Bit Preoccupied

2011-02-20T18:09:00.000-08:00

Sunday -
Bacon wrapped braised rabbit with fennel, sweet potato mash and swiss chard from our garden.

Monday -
Fended for ourselves.

Tuesday -
BBQ chicken (we finally had to get rid of Escape Chicken) with cauliflower puree

Wednesday -
Puree of Squash soup with bacon from squash we grew.

Thursday -
Eggs, sauteed potatoes and mushrooms from the farmers' market, and Sausage from Angelo's Smokehouse

Friday -
We went to an Urban Farmer get-together to discuss the goings-ons this Spring.

Saturday -
Grassfed London Broil with rice.

Reflections -
Wow! What a whirlwind week this has been! It all started on Wednesday when the Dervaes Family (look them up if you don't know them because I refuse to link to them now) posted a letter on their website. At first I thought it was a joke. When I realized it wasn't I was livid. And disappointed. The following days didn't make me calmer. The more I thought about it angrier I got, which resulted in a post that was more snark than anything. Definitely not typical for me. Don't get me wrong, I can be snarkier than most, but I try to at least have some level of professionalism on my blog. Because I realize what the Dervaes' don't - the Internet is FOREVER.

In other news though, we went whole hog and bought a 250+ lb hog. Next week it will be slaughtered and butchered. Just think of all the sausage I'll be able to make! I'm currently curing some Maple cured smoked bacon and brining a brisket for corned beef.

Fennel Challenge: Bacon Wrapped Braised Rabbit with Fennel

2011-02-14T18:30:00.000-08:00

Just the first challenge of Charcutepalooza and I'm finding myself inspired. Inspired to take chances with cooking. It also inspired me to take on my own challenge. Each month I will take a new ingredient - one I'm not familiar with but is readily available at our farmers' market or in our garden (yes, I'm growing things that I've never even tasted before - such as salsify) and create one dish a week with it. They will be completely my own. I will take inspiration from other places - be it online or in cookbooks - but they will not be the same. Some may be spectacular and some might be total flops. But I will post them here. I will take chances and no longer be intimidated by foods I'm not familiar with.

This month I chose Fennel - by accident really. It had always intimidated me - which makes the challenge that much more interesting. To be honest, I had only eaten Fennel twice and both times it was marinated (great recipe by my friend Leslie that I would love to get from her sometime). While last week's recipe included the bacon I had cured, I wanted something that incorporated more bacon! We also had a fresh rabbit in the fridge waiting to be eaten.

So I set out to combine fennel, bacon and rabbit. In my opinion, the dish was simply ok. Nothing spectacular. Tom, however, practically licked his plate clean. I guess, for me, the problem was the bacon <gasp>. I've never been one to like to eat animal fat. I always trim it off of meat. I only like my bacon cooked until extra crispy. So with this dish, the bacon is not crispy, so I didn't really get to enjoy it as fully as someone that likes to "chew the fat" so to speak. However, if you like your bacon anyway you can get it, then you may actually enjoy this dish, like Tom did. I do have to say that the rabbit came out great and the fennel added a subtle touch of acidity. The bacon fat did help it quite a bit, since it is such a lean meat. We served this recipe with mashed sweet potatoes and sauteed Swiss Chard with garlic.

Ingredients

1 dressed rabbit - 3 to 3 1/2 lbs
1 c flour
1 Tbs Marjoram
1 Tbs Garlic Salt
1 tsp fresh ground black pepper
3 Tbs oil (we used bacon fat)
12 slices of bacon
2 fennel bulbs, thinly sliced
1 Tbs Herbs de Provence
1 c chicken stock
1 c white wine

1. Preheat oven to 350 deg. F. Butcher the rabbit into 6 pieces.
2. Add oil to a dutch oven over medium heat. Combine the flour, marjoram, garlic salt and pepper. Dredge rabbit pieces in flour mixture and sear in dutch oven, placing done pieces on a paper towel lined plate until all pieces are seared.
3. Place as many pieces of rabbit on the bottom of dutch oven as possible. Cover each piece with 2 slices of bacon and then half the sliced fennel. Repeat with second layer of rabbit.
4. Sprinkle Herbs de Provence over fennel and then pour over chicken broth and wine. Cover and place in oven. Cook for 1 hr 30 min.
5. Let rest for 5 min. then serve.

On Being Critical of Others

2011-02-13T09:38:00.000-08:00

I recently started following the blog of a family here in the SF Bay Area that is living the Zero Waste lifestyle. Recently they had a news segment done on them and it apparently led to a lot of criticism. They had debated about getting publicity because they weren't sure they wanted to deal with said criticism. This is something we've thought about too.

But then you lose spreading your message and possibly inspiring others to do the same. I've gotten some criticism myself, but I don't regret sharing our story.

Someone commented on Zero Waste's blog and I thought it was interesting. It basically said that people think their lifestyle is too stifling, restrictive and unfair to children (of course it was anonymous, which makes me crazy). They also said that it is hypocritical that they own a car and that living in a rich area "does not help" their message. They also stated that those of us that disagree with those that criticize are just as lame. Hmmm, interesting thought.

Everyone has limits. Many would find it too stifling and restrictive to live in a 750 sf home. Some would say that not buying fast food for my stepson when he wanted it would be "unfair." That doesn't make either of us right. It makes us different. We make different choices for our families. But to be critical of someone that chooses to be more "restrictive" than you do does not give you a right to try and make the feel bad for their choices. Instead people should celebrate our differences.

The other thing that got to me was how people thought the Zero Waste home should give up their cars, which aren't part of their goal even though they've greatly reduced their use and that they should live like paupers. Just because you can afford to live comfortably doesn't lessen your message. I think it strengthens it in some aspects because it shows that someone that can afford to buy whatever they want and do what they like is willing to reduce their waste so drastically and make that commitment and sacrifice. They've stated that it saves them money, which anyone regardless of income, can benefit from.

I'll be the first to admit that where we live allows us great opportunity to go without grocery stores. And while we live in a very economically depressed area we have cars so we're able to travel (generally short distances from our work or home, but further than people without cars can go) to find our food. We aren't reliant on food stamps so we can shop for food outside of grocery stores. We have land to grow and raise much of our food. We live in an area where fresh food is always available due to a mild climate. The purpose of what we're doing is to educate people and let them know that they can make a difference no matter how small it is. It's to educate people to make better choices when they do go to the grocery store.

I guess my point is that I don't want our message to be lessened just because of where we live.

Week 18 & 19 - A New Feature!

2011-02-12T19:41:00.000-08:00

Sunday -
We just kind of snacked because we went to the Twain's feast.

Monday -
Pizza with sausage from Angelo's meats, sauteed onions and peppers, homemade mozzarella and mushrooms from the farmers' market.

Tuesday -
Frittata with our hens' eggs, spinach from the garden and mushrooms from the farmers' market. Oatmeal cookies for dessert.

Wednesday -
Lasagna with grassfed ground beef, foraged mushrooms, homemade mozzarella and homemade pasta. And sauteed cabbage from our garden.

Thursday -
Fried pheasant breasts and legs with rice and peas from the garden.

Friday -
Pastured pork roast with potatoes and carrots.

Saturday -
Impromptu dinner party with homemade spaghetti, sauce, salad and garlic bread. Lemon meringue pie for dessert.

Sunday -
Snacky day because we were so busy running around and doing an interview.

Monday -
Carne asada from the last of our of grass fed steer. Sad day. Homemade tortillas and grilled onions from the farmers' market and spanish rice.

Tuesday -
Cream of Roasted Fennel Soup with Bacon!

Wednesday -
Eggs overeasy with a baked sweet potato and bacon (I love breakfast for dinner!).

Thurdsay -
Sausage cabbage soup that was so effing good!

Friday -
Pot roast with potatoes and carrots.

Saturday -
Split pea soup with bacon! I sure love bacon. Ha ha.

Reflections -
I totally forgot to post the previous week's menu so it's added to this one. I must have been too busy with bacon! I've never eaten so much bacon in my life. I put it in everything and everything has been amazing!

Actually on a more serious note, I think I've finally taken my cooking to a whole new level - and not just because of bacon. My meals have gotten a lot tastier. Especially my soups. The Sausage Cabbage soup was very humble in ingredients but a powerhouse of flavor. And no, it didn't have any bacon in it. After the Cream of Roasted Fennel Soup with bacon I really felt inspired to explore different ingredients in the kitchen. I had never cooked with Fennel. I'm thinking of trying a new ingredient, whether it is a fruit, vegetable, grain, meat or spice each month. So February will be the month of Fennel. Each week I'll come up with a new recipe for that ingredient and share it here.

Fennel Challenge: Cream of Roasted Fennel Soup with Bacon!

2011-02-08T20:17:00.000-08:00

So what to make with that bacon? Honestly, we could just fry up slices and eat it straight. But Charcutepalooza is inspiring me to come up with interesting recipes.

A friend of ours accidentally left some fennel bulbs from the farmers' market in our fridge. Not knowing when we'll see each other next she said to go ahead and use them. Hmmm. I've never cooked with fennel before. Well, here goes nothing!

Ingredients:

2 fennel bulbs, bottom trimmed and stalks cut off reserving leafy tops
1 onion, coursely chopped
olive oil
salt
1/4 lb bacon slices
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp caraway seeds
4 cups chicken broth
2 large yukon gold potatoes
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup half and half

Instructions:
1. Preheat oven to 375 deg F.
2. Cut fennel bulbs in 1/2" slices. Put fennel and chopped onion on a cookie sheet. Drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with salt. Roast for 25 minutes or until tender and slightly browned.

3. Divide the bacon in half. Leave one half in slices and cut other half in 1/4" chunks. In a dutch oven cook slices until crispy. Remove slices from heat and put on paper towel to cool. Cook bacon bits in a fry pan until crispy. Put slices on paper towel to cool.
4. In dutch oven with bacon grease from slices add cumin and caraway seeds. Cook until fragrant - about a minute.
5. Add chicken broth, potatoes, fennel and onions to dutch oven. Bring to a boil and reduce to a simmer. Cook on medium high until potatoes are tender. Add bacon chunks, milk and half and half and use an immersion blender or food processor to make soup smooth.
6. Serve with a garnish of bacon slices and fennel leaves.

Remember the Bacon

2011-02-08T19:49:00.000-08:00

Tasty tasty bacon. Saturday morning I finished the bacon. I pull out the pork belly. It had changed texture and color slightly. The belly was definitely firmer and the color redder. I rinsed off the spiced, herbs and residual salt. I then put the belly on a cookie sheet and put it in the oven. The instructions said to slow roast it at 200 deg F. Unfortunately the lowest setting for our oven is 260 deg F. It still took 90 minutes for the internal temp to reach 150 deg F.

Holding myself back, I put the bacon in the fridge to cool. By lunch time it was ready. I cut a slice for everyone to try. Cooked it up crisp. Yum! Something I will definitely be making again. Next time I plan to smoke it.

Kentucky Fried Test Tube Meat

2011-02-01T19:18:00.000-08:00

Sounds delicious doesn't it? Vegans are rejoicing. A meat that doesn't cause the death of animals. I get that premise, but something about it just skeazes me out. I just don't trust humans to create food in labs. We were the ones that came up with margarine. That was just so fantastic for us. Then we came up with high fructose corn syrup. Even better! Genetically engineered crops are an abomination. I can honestly say that when test tube meat comes on the market I will not be eating it.

Week 17 - Putting a Face on Our Food

2011-01-30T18:57:00.000-08:00

One of the 3 Wyandottes that we had

Sunday -
Grassfed beef hamburgers on homemade buns. Sauteed onions from the farmers' market, homemade ketchup, homemade mayo, homemade pickles and jalapenos. And cauliflower from our garden.

Monday -
Roasted winter squash from our garden with falafel on homemade tortillas and tzatziki.

Tuesday -
Coq au vin from our last Silver Laced Wyandotte that was at the end of her egg laying days.

Wednesday -
Fend for yourself night

Thursday -
Spaghetti with homemade pasta.

Friday -
No one seemed hungry so we didn't prepare anything.

Saturday -
Pork rib roast with potatoes from the farmers' market and sauteed cabbage from our garden.

Reflections -
I'm finding that we eat dinner a lot less than we did when we went to the grocery store. We get home from work and we're just too tired to prepare anything or we're not all that hungry so we just don't eat. It's fine by me. I'm also finding that places I once loved I no longer want. I used to love Panda Express. Their orange chicken was my favorite. Now, just thinking about it makes me a little sick to my stomach.

Bacon Day 1

2011-01-28T19:39:00.000-08:00

I guess you can say I just jumped right in head first. After deciding to be part of Charcutepalooza's February Challenge I immediately went to the Fatted Calf and bought 5 lbs of pork belly. I then ran over to the Oxbow public market to the spice merchant, World Spice. I bought curing salt, kosher salt and juniper berries. I knew we had everything else that I would need to make this bacon.

I walked into the Fatted Calf in Napa. It's usually pretty busy when I go in but they helped me right away. I ordered the pasture-fed heritage pork belly. What I like about getting meat is that I know the animals were treated humanely - one of the rules, as it turns out of the Charcutepalooza. I go to the Fatted Calf at least once a week and we've chatted with the butchers there, so I'm a bit surprised that they don't recognize me yet. I didn't get to view the beauty of the pork belly until I got home. I opened up the butcher's paper and angels sung. It was beautiful.

I then mixed up the spice mix. I followed the above recipe but I also added a bit of cajun seasoning to kick it up a bit. I'm a bit worried about the juniper berries though because whenever I drink gin I puff up a bit. I don't regularly eat juniper berries, so honestly I could be totally fine.

Clockwise from the top we have juniper berries, crushed garlic cloves, curing salt (it's pink to let you know not to eat it), kosher salt, ground nutmeg, pepper with fresh thyme and bay leaves, brown sugar with a dusting of cajun spices.

I then mixed all of the spices and salts and rubbed the pork until it started to become moist. I then covered it with some plastic wrap in a pyrex baking dish. It will sit for a week getting massaged occasionally until day 7 when I roast it. I'm looking forward to having fresh bacon next weekend for breakfast!

I Think My Head Exploded (In a Good Way)

2011-01-28T09:29:00.000-08:00

I keep hearing about it. It's everywhere I look. But I didn't know the details. I'm talking about Charcutepalooza of course! A year of preserving meat. February's challenge is Bacon for the apprentice (which I undoubtedly am). Oh yeah! I'm going to try my hand at making bacon!

Torturing Ourselves

2011-01-25T17:22:00.000-08:00

Because avoiding grocery stores wasn't enough. Tom and I have thrown down our gauntlets. Maybe it's because we just feel like going without a grocery store has become too easy. So we came up with a crazy idea to make this challenge even more difficult. The last three months of our year - July, August and September - we will not spend any money on food. We will rely solely on our garden, foraging, our food storage, and bartering. THIS I'm nervous about. Fortunately it's when our garden will be producing the most.

Week 16 - 4 Months In

2011-01-22T18:53:00.000-08:00

Sunday -
Stuffed portobello mushrooms with sausage.

Monday -
Pizza with bacon, spinach, grilled onions and mushrooms.

Tuesday -
Beef stroganoff with grassfed beef and handmade noodles.

Wednesday -
We had to eat and run so I just had a homemade peanut butter and honey sandwich on homemade bread.

Thursday -
Grassfed beef shanks with mashed potatoes from the farmers' market, broccoli from the farmers' market and cauliflower from our garden.

Friday -
Another eat and run night because we were off to see Joel Salatin talk. We had sandwiches with bread from the Model Bakery and meat from the Fatted Calf.

Saturday -
Mashed sweet potatoes with pastured pork porterhouse steaks and steamed cauliflower from our garden.

Reflections -
The co-op order can't come soon enough! And when we do make it, it's going to be pretty big because we're so low on so many things. Vegetable oil, flour, sugar, corn starch, all things we're low on. Spring is coming quick which also means we'll be planting a lot! I'm excited about this because I'm hoping to up production in the garden. My goal is one ton of food this year. I think it's doable with the right planning. We learned a lot this past year about what our garden can do.

Next weekend is the Twain's feast. It's a potluck dinner based off of Mark Twain's list of 80 "American" foods that he missed when he was in Europe. To attend all you have to do is bring a dish from off that list. We're going to be bringing squash pie. It will also be a book signing and discussion of Andrew Beahrs' Twain's Feast. I'm really looking forward to this event! Now off to go find a tradtional 1870's squash pie recipe.

Those Blueberries in Your Muffins...Not What You Think

2011-01-19T15:18:00.000-08:00

It's Not a Matter of "If" but "When"

2011-01-18T12:17:00.000-08:00

It's going to hurt. It's going to hurt more than when the housing bubble burst in 2007. It's going to hurt us more than we can ever imagine. The food bubble is going to burst soon. We've ramped up food production but there comes a point when we will not be able to produce anymore food. And yet population growth isn't slowing down.

I don't like to be a conspiracy theorist. I really don't consider myself one. But I remember back in 2005 telling a coworker that the housing bubble was going to burst. At the time though I wasn't quite aware of what that meant. Now I do. And it wasn't not pretty. But take food. We all need food to survive. Without it people will become desperate. It's an entirely different ballgame.

Monsanto tells us they can help. They tell farmers to use their genetically modified seeds because they will increase yields. And yet the don't. They don't produce anymore more than conventional crops. In fact it's been found that they produce 10% less than conventional crops. But let's forget that all. We've reached peak oil. Even conventional crops which rely heavily on petroleum for their production (fertilizers, pesticides, equipment, transportation, etc.) are now going to raise in price. GM crops also rely heavily on petroleum.

But that's not where it stops. We've also greatly depleted our topsoil and water resources, which plants must have to grow. Through heavy cultivation and poor management we have lost one third of our topsoil. Industrial agriculture is running our aquifers dry because there isn't enough rain to water crops. With climate change comes unpredictable weather that can easily destroy crops.

Food prices are set to rise for 2011. According to the USDA "For all food, prices are expected to rise two to three percent, which is double the levels of 2010. Meat prices are expected to rise up to 3.5 percent, and dairy 5.5 percent." - CNBC

So what can we do about it? It's time to seriously start thinking about growing your own food. Grow it wherever you are. Get window farms if you have to. Become a guerrilla gardener and grow food on empty lots. Join a CSA. Shop at the farmers' market. Join a community garden. Join a yardshare. Just don't rely on industrial agriculture to save us.

Week 15 - Where is the Time Going?

2011-01-16T10:37:00.000-08:00

Sunday -
Squash soup with squash from our yard, peas from our yard, carrots, onions and mushrooms from the farmers market and leftover duck.

Monday -
Fend for yourself day. I don't even remember what I ate.

Tuesday -
Grassfed grilled tritip with sweet potato mash and cabbage from the farmers' market.

Wednesday -
Grassfed ground beef pot pie. Carrots, potatoes, onions and mushrooms from the farmers' market. Peas from our garden. Sauteed cauliflower from our garden.

Thursday -
Frittatas with spinach from our garden. Our hens are starting to lay again!

Friday -
Sloppy Joes with homemade buns.

Saturday -
Roasted tritip with turnips, potatoes and carrots from the farmers' market.

Reflections-
Time seems to be flying by. With that, so does the food. Because of not going to the grocery store we go through our basic supplies a lot faster - esp. sugar and flour. I need to make sure to order those staples with our next co-op order.

My Food Activism Just Went International

2011-01-13T21:20:00.000-08:00

But there is something I can do here and I urge anyone that's at all interested in our world to take part. I just finished watching The Cove. It's a documentary about the wholesale slaughter of dolphins in Japan. 23,000 dolphins a year to be exact.

Dolphins are at the same level as us in the marine food change. Because of this they are incredibly toxic. In Japan the government puts a limit on Mercury at 0.4 ppm. Dolphin meat is around 2,000 ppm. So why do people eat it? Most don't know it as it's purposely mislabeled as other types of whale meat that is generally considered safer. And they were considering feeding this mercury laden meat to those that are the most susceptible - children through their school lunches. So why even catch dolphins if they are so toxic?

It all starts because of the lucrative business of brokering dolphins to aquariums such as Sea World. A single dolphin can fetch $150,000.

After rounding up hundreds of dolphins trainers come out and pick out the ones they want to sell to training facilities. The rest are inhumanely slaughtered out of the view of everyone. The filmmakers - including Ric O'Barry who earned his fame through the TV show Flipper and has now renounced keeping Cetaceans in captivity - risked everything to put up cameras around the cove where this happens.

I will no longer visit amusement parks that offer dolphin and killer whale shows. I no longer want to support this industry. Not only does it lead to the deaths of tens of thousands of animals that are possibly smarter than us, but the mere act of keeping dolphins in captivity is cruel and incredibly stressful on the animals - much like battery cages for hens. The stress of captivity alone kills them regularly.

Sorry Six Flags Discovery Kingdom, I won't be taking my family there anymore. You were too expensive anyways.

I Gotta Stop

2011-01-11T18:15:00.000-08:00

I am bummed out that I'm going to have to stop drinking coffee. It won't be cold turkey but I'm going to have to wean myself off. Why would I ever do such a thing? Because it's making me feel ill more often. In the past if I had too much coffee it would make me feel jittery and sick to my stomach all day long. Literally ALL DAY. But now it's making me feel ill more often. It's not every day but it's almost once a week and it's the same amount I normally drink. So to me that's a sign that I need to stop. <sadface>

Week 14 - The Menu

2011-01-09T09:33:00.000-08:00

Monday-
Grassfed meatloaf with potatoes and brussels sprouts from the farmers' market.

Tuesday -
On our own. It's getting more difficult to fend for yourself when you don't feel like cooking. I think I had some bread with peanut butter and honey. Speaking of peanut butter, did you know that you can make it by putting a bunch of salted, roasted peanuts in the food processor and processing it until it forms a ball? Oh yeah!

Wednesday -
Roasted chicken with potatoes and onions and a cabbage salad (all from the farmers' market). We slaughtered the chicken on Monday. The chickens are putting weight on nicely. She had a lot of fat on her too. After eating chicken that tastes like, well, chicken I don't think I can ever go back to eating commercial chicken.

Thursday -
Beef & buffalo broccoli with curry sauce. Kind of an Indian dish. I know, I know, Indians don't eat beef but it was tasty...

Friday -
Roasted duck with orange cranberry marmalade glaze with mashed parsnips (from the CSA) and potatoes (from our garden). This was the first time I've ever cooked and eaten duck. I figured I should probably do it before we start raising them. And the conclusion? We are DEFINITELY raising ducks!

Saturday -
Homemade spaghetti pasta with sauce from our canned tomatoes and veggies from the farmers' market and grassfed ground beef.

Reflections -
This week was really tough. The third week of not having a farmer's market. We were definitely out of produce and had resorted to eating unripe oranges off of our tree. Really, it was like eating lemons. It was also a week of people bringing in chocolate to the office. I quickly realized that life is too short for shitty chocolate. Yes, I'm talking to you Hershey's, M&M Mars and every other major candy brand out there.

Week 13 - Officially 1/4 the way through.

2011-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00

Monday -
Grilled london broil with rice and roasted squash from our garden.

Tuesday-
Turkey Soup with homemade broth and foraged mushrooms.

Wednesday -
Grassfed beef Tri tip with brussels sprouts and mashed potatoes from the farmers' market.

Thursday -
Honey mushroom pierogis with swiss chard from our garden. Um, yeah, honey mushrooms aren't my friends. They like Tom. Not me. Or Jeanette.

Friday -
Grassfed beef ribs with mashed potatoes from the farmers' market and spinach from our garden.

Saturday -
Homemade chili with pastured pork. Blackberry pie from blackberries we foraged for dessert.

Sunday -
Homemade sushi! As good as it was it wasn't anything close to getting it at the restaurant.

Reflections -
This coming week is going to be a tough one. We're running out of produce, esp. onions, which we use with almost every meal. Saturday can't come fast enough. Fortunately we are harvesting spinach, swiss chard, peas and oranges regularly. We've got asparagus, cauliflower and cabbage about ready to harvest as well.

Your Gotta Have it Kitchen Gadgets

2011-01-02T08:25:00.000-08:00

Every once in awhile I buy a kitchen gadget and then quickly realize "How did I ever do this without this thing?" Yesterday I bought pastry fabric for the first time. Why in the world was I ever just using a cutting board to roll out dough? Seriously. Food mill, immersion blender, mandoline - they all are indispensable in our kitchen now. So I ask you, my readers, what are your favorite kitchen tools?

Extreme Coupons

2010-12-30T07:50:00.000-08:00

Tom and I were watching some show last night. Well, in all honesty Tom was kind of watching it off and on and I was in the kitchen cooking dinner simply listening to it. I'm not even sure what the name of the show was but they were talking about these super crazy shoppers who use coupons to the extreme. Seriously, this guy bought like $5,000 worth of items at the grocery store and only paid $200 for it. Pure craziness.

A woman on there that does the extreme coupon shopping said something that perked my interest. She was talking about being able to eat healthier while going with these coupons. She even said to "call the company and tell them you want to eat healthier and ask for coupons." I thinks she ended up buying about $250 worth of food and only paying $6 for it.

Now hold on here. As far as I know coupons are really only available for processed food. Sure stores will have in-store deals on whole foods like produce and meat, but that's not coupons. She was talking about coupons.

I find it sad that Americans have been taught over the years (by the food companies, mind you) that processed food is "healthy" food. Lean Cuisine, Healthy Choice, South Beach Diet products being the more obvious culprits. They trick people into thinking they are healthy, when in fact they are not all they're cracked up to be.

Trust the Cow Not the Man

2010-12-28T16:00:00.000-08:00

I've been saying this for awhile and finally people are talking about it!

I will not eat margarine or "vegetable spread." Even the transfat-free stuff. Nope. Not going to do it. Heidi from Itty Bitty Farm in the City posted two great articles recently on this very idea.

The first article is about a study by the Harvard School of Public Health that found that people with a specific fatty acid found in cheese and other dairy products in their blood were 60% less likely to develop diabetes. Oh yeah! Go Cow!

The second article is actually a scary look at what exactly is in some popular food items out there that try to imitate the real thing. Well, the meat doesn't try, but it's pretty disgusting. The article also points out that the real thing whether it's real bacon vs. turkey bacon and bacon bits or regular peanut butter vs. the low-fat version is actually healthier than it's fake counterpart.