Local Steel-Cut Oatmeal

Yesterday I cleaned and soaked a cup of live oats, intending to try it out in a bread recipe. Then this morning Sophia wanted oatmeal for breakfast. Being her birthday, I decided to give it a try. I rinsed and drained the oats, then buzzed them briefly in the blender with 1 cup of water, until I couldn't see any more whole kernels. Added another 1 1/2 cups water in the cooking pot, plus a bit of salt and honey. They cooked fairly quickly; I didn't time it, but it was closer to rolled oats speed than the typical steel-cut oats from a can.

The result? Wow! Flavor! I normally think of oatmeal as being pretty bland, but this stuff was tasty enough to sell me on the whole live oats idea, even with the need to clean it & soak it ahead of time.

Speaking of "ahead of time", there seems to be a close relationship between local food (at least the way I do it) and slow food. I've been noticing the increase this month in the number of things I need to start ahead of time. The lead time on the food I eat may be only a few minutes, but it can range from overnight to months ahead of time. I soak beans (and now oats) the night before. I grind flour in batches, which hopefully last a week or two. Yeast breads take a day, sourdoughs may take two or more. Sauerkraut takes several weeks, and keeps for several months.

And then there's the garden, and the cycle of u-pick farms. I send off my annual seed order in January, and plant and tend starting in February, which leads to an abundance of local food through summer and fall. I harvest and process -- can, freeze, dehydrate, cure -- starting in June, which gives me local summer and fall foods in the dead of winter. Much of the variety I'm eating now (and without paying top dollar) is a result of months of preparation time, and of an

activity

pattern that's tied to the change of seasons and based on an intimate knowledge of when to plant, when to harvest, how to preserve and how to cook, who grows what, and how much my family eats in a year.

I didn't figure this all out overnight, either -- it's happened gradually over a period of several years. So this food is slow in many different ways.

9/5 Menu:

breakfast: steel-cut oatmeal (Cayuga Pure) with peaches (farm stand), almond milk, and honey or maple syrup.

lunch: buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood Farms), the rest of the corn bread, party food.

local party food: veggie platter -- sweet pepper (garden), cucumber (friend), carrot (farmer's market), tiny plums (Black Diamond), popcorn (Finger Lakes), ice cream and sorbet (Purity).

non-local party food (exception): GF cake w/frosting, coconut milk ice cream, piñata candies.

dinner: chicken sandwiches (leftover chicken (Kingbird), bread (Greenstar), lettuce (Blue Heron), mustard (exception - seasoning)), melon (garden), leftover party veggies.