October Unprocessed? And One More Recipe

My niece just signed up for the October Unprocessed 2011 challenge, where she's pledged to eat no processed foods for the month of October. The organizer is defining unprocessed food as "any food that could be made by a person with reasonable skill in a home kitchen with readily available, whole-food ingredients." He doesn't require that you actually cook it yourself. Reminds me of one aspect of Michael Pollan's definition of food: "your grandmother would recognize all the ingredients."

I'm kind of tempted, but I also kind of want a break before doing this again. I'm looking forward to breaking out the breakfast cereal in the morning.

9/30 Menus:

• breakfast: flapjacks (Birkett Mills) with "mom's special syrup" (Kestrel Perch/Schoolyard Sugarbush)
• school lunch: a la jardinera with pasta (leftover), frozen grapes and raspberries (my garden), buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood)
• my lunch: a la jardinera with pasta (leftover)
• snack: apples
• dinner: puffballs and lion's mane mushrooms (gathered), fried with butter (Meadow Creek) and garlic (my garden); lima beans in tomato sauce (beans, tomatoes, onion, garlic, parsley (my garden), carrots (Sacred Seed), sunflower oil (Stolor Organics))
• dessert: melon/raspberry/red currant sorbet (my garden, Kestrel Perch, Greenstar bulk local honey)

The lima beans were super yummy; I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. My past experience of limas has been exclusively from cans, and I was not impressed. I've been thinking for awhile that I ought to try them fresh before writing them off entirely, and I finally did it this year. The variety is Limelight. They're white, and shaped like a flatter version of cannelinis. Very prone to premature sprouting, in this wet fall weather -- I used the ones that still looked fresh, tails and all, but composted the discolored ones. They reminded me of the "giant white beans" pictured in a cookbook from Greece, so I used one of the Greek recipes. Good choice....

I asked Sophia how she liked them. She said, "You ought to be able to figure it out without asking," as she dished up a third serving.

Fresh Lima Beans in Tomato Sauce
(Note: I didn't actually measure any of the ingredients. This seems to be another very forgiving recipe...)

• a couple cups of shelled fresh lima beans
• one medium onion, chopped
• one clove garlic
• one carrot, chopped
• oil (the Greeks use a vast amount of olive oil; I used a modest amount of sunflower oil)
• a cup or so of tomatoes, peeled and chopped
• finely chopped parsley
• salt and pepper to taste

Simmer beans in water until soft. Drain and set aside.

Saute onions, garlic, and carrots in oil until soft. Add tomatoes, parsley, and salt and pepper. Simmer 1/2 hour. Add beans, and simmer about 10 minutes more to heat through & blend flavors.

Reflections

I'm starting to reflect on our locavore experience, wondering what I want to carry forward from here. 

I would like to try it again in February: it's a whole different set of constraints that time of year.

One big benefit of the challenge is that it spurred me to learn how to work with some of the locally available grains: in particular, live oats, barley, and corn. We've been using a lot more corn flour this month -- we avoided corn for several years because Sophia used to react to corn, too. Apparently she's gotten over that allergy (or maybe, as she puts it, "I'm only allergic to corn syrup.")

We will almost certainly continue to use the oatmeal and barley cake recipes, and add corn bread to our standard list of quick breads. Our experiment with rye bread was less successful, though I think I will probably try again at some point (the bread was good, and we might have been reacting to something else.) And I still haven't gotten around to making a batch of granola (though I suppose it's possible that I might do that today...)

Breakfasts and school lunches were easier than I expected. Sure, we had our share of mornings when I was scrambling to figure it out. But I do that anyway, even when pre-sliced lunch meats are readily available. We've established a morning routine now that works pretty well, though granted it would be nice to sleep in a few more minutes.

We're using less almond milk with our breakfasts, which translates to less almond meal for quick breads, which translates to more variety in what I'm baking. Conversely, I've been running through a lot more honey. Both corn bread and barley cakes are sweetened, which is not true of the waffles and biscuits I usually make with almond meal. I'm using more maple syrup, too, largely as a result of self-sweetened breakfasts (waffles, flapjacks, cooked cereals) replacing prepared cereals that come with the sugar already added. I don't think our overall sugar intake has changed very much, but it's a lot more visible when I pour it on myself. And less processed.

I noticed how, once I started using rice pasta, it immediately lodged itself into our diet and wouldn't let go. I think I may have burned out my baking-from-scratch energy a little too early in the month. (e.g. I could have come up with an alternative to pasta for the jardinera, if I'd been feeling a bit more creative.)

I also noticed how much more meat we ate this month. It's not that beans were unavailable; we had several varieties to choose from. But most of my warm-weather bean recipes are based on garbanzos and lentils, and I had limited interest in the heartier stews that northern beans are so good in. I could have done a bean salad, but Sophia doesn't like them, and I didn't have the energy (on top of the extra cooking I was already doing) to fix separate dishes for the two of us.

Another change that's huge (though it might have happened anyway) is that I've taken the leap of self-confidence I needed to start harvesting my own wild mushrooms. I've been buying them for several years now (in small amounts, as a luxury food), and it's mind-boggling how much money I'm saving by gathering them myself (or, alternatively, how much more luxury I'm experiencing...) Black trumpets, for example, run $8/pint at the Farmer's Market. I expect I've gathered at least $50 worth of mushrooms in the past couple weeks, possibly a good deal more.

It often seems that a switch to local foods produces an increase in luxury: for example, raspberries. We've been using almost a pint of raspberries a day this month. I would never dream of doing that if I had to pay supermarket prices for them. Or even U-pick prices, which is an intermediate stage I went through before my own garden patch filled in.

I appreciate my little luxuries...

Menus 9/28 (cont):

• my lunch: chuletas a la jardinera with pasta (leftover)
• dinner: butternut squash (my garden; alas not quite ripe after all) with butter (Meadow Creek) and honey (Greenstar bulk local); rainbow chard (my garden) with honey and cider vinegar (Littletree cider); mixture of ground buffalo (Glenwood), shallots, celery (my garden), puffballs and maitake (gathered), with salt, pepper, butter and cooking wine (from arbor grapes))

Sophia says, "I like the ones that explode in your mouth," and starts searching through her dinner to find more puffballs. Seems to me "melt" would be a more accurate description.

Menus 9/29:

• breakfast: butternut squash "pancakes" (Cayuga Pure/back yard chickens/my garden) with jelly (Kestrel Perch/Greenstar bulk local); honeydew melon (my garden)
• school lunch: rainbow chard and buffalo/mushroom mixture (leftovers); frozen blueberries (Locust Woods); squash pancakes with jelly (leftover from breakfast)
• my lunch: raspberries (my garden), squash pancakes with jelly (leftover from breakfast)
• snack: apple (Littletree), ants on a log (my garden, Thornbush, peanut butter exception)
• dinner for Sophia: a la jardinera (leftover veggies, as a soup)
• dinner for me: what dinner? I didn't have time for no stinkin' dinner...didn't have much of a lunch either...
• bedtime snack: melon (my garden)

Last night was one of those nights...

Chuletas a la Jardinera

Sophia requested last week that I make "that vegetable dish with the big pieces of meat in it." Hmm...I wonder what that might be? After asking a few questions, I determined that the pieces of meat she was referring to were pork chops, and the dish is one of my old standards, that I've made so many times I no longer measure any of the ingredients.

I first encountered this recipe a looong time ago, in a Pritikin Diet Book owned by one of my pre-college roommates. The "garden" in the original recipe came out of a can, and I suspect if I looked it up now I would barely recognize it. It's morphed over the years into a perfect seasonal dish: all the ingredients are in season at the same time. (We're getting to the end of zucchini season now, but I needed to use them up, and you don't want to know what my tomato backlog looked like: I canned 11 pints Monday, and used the leftovers for this dish. And the second round of green beans is still going.) The amounts listed are guesses, and I'm sure they vary; the recipe is pretty forgiving.

Chuletas a la jardinera (Pork Chops with the Garden)
     (For a vegan variation, Garbanzos a la jardinera is very good. I haven't tried it with any of the local beans, but I would be inclined to go with black or kidney.)

• 3-4 pork chops (if you're following the Pritikin Diet, cut the fat off)
• seasoning:
• garlic (1-2 cloves)
• oregano (1-2 tsp dried, or 1-2 T fresh)
• salt (1 tsp)
• black pepper (1/4-1/2 tsp)
• oil (enough to form a paste) (officially olive oil; I used the local sunflower oil this time)
• tomatoes, peeled and chopped (about a quart)
• bay leaf
• onion, coarsely chopped (1 large spanish, or 2 medium)
• green and/or wax beans, snapped and broken into bite size pieces (2 cups)
• zucchini and/or other summer squash, cut in bite size pieces (2 cups)
• (optional) corn
• (optional) red or green sweet pepper (I used 3/4 cup red pepper this time)
• additional seasoning to taste (same ingredients as above)

Make seasoning paste, rub on both sides of pork chops and brown. Add tomatoes, onions, and bay leaf, bring to a boil, and simmer approximately 15 minutes. Add beans and simmer another 15 minutes. Add squash and simmer another 10-15 minutes. (note: some summer squashes cook faster than zucchini, so if you want perfection you can add the zucchini first then wait 5-10 minutes before adding the summer squash.) Add (optional) corn and pepper and correct seasoning; simmer another 10 minutes or so. Dish is ready when beans are tender and squash starts to look translucent. Serve over pasta (I usually use corkscrews) or rice.

Menus 9/27:

• breakfast: oatmeal with raisins, peaches, maple syrup, and almond milk (Cayuga Pure, Thornbush, Black Diamond, Schoolyard Sugarbush, Bremner/CA)
• school lunch: peanut butter (exception) and jelly sandwich, carrots, sweet pepper, apples (Greenstar bakery and bulk local, Kestrel Perch, Sacred Seed, Littletree, my garden)
• my lunch: what lunch? I must have eaten something...
• snack: apples, raspberries, sweet pepper
• dinner: pork chops a la jardinera (Kingbird, my garden), rice pasta (exception), hedgehog mushrooms (gathered) with butter (Meadow Creek) and chives (my garden)
• dessert: the end of the apple pie (Littletree, Greenstar bulk local, Cayuga Pure, Meadow Creek, Bremner/CA)

Menus 9/28 (so far):

• breakfast: flapjacks with berry and maple syrup (Birkett Mills, Kestrel Perch, Schoolyard Sugarbush)
• school lunch: pork a la jardinera (leftover), apple, flapjack "sandwiches" with jelly

More Menus

Guess we're moving into the home stretch here. I haven't been feeling well the past couple days, and I was very much missing my convenience foods. I am on the one hand really looking forward to October first, and on the other hand thinking I'm going to miss the discipline of eating entirely locally. It will be interesting to see how many of the new eating patterns stick once the month is over.

Menus 9/24:

• breakfast: "green eggs and ham" (eggs from back yard chickens, spinach from Blue Heron, bacon from Kingbird, garlic from my garden); toast (Greenstar GF) with butter (Meadow Creek)
• lunch: stone soup (veggies from my garden and Sacred Seed, bouillon and rice noodles (exception)); sorbet (homemade from melon (my garden), peaches (Black Diamond), black raspberries and red currants (Kestrel Perch), and honey (Greenstar bulk local))
• dinner: stuffed cabbage rolls (cabbage (West Haven), ground buffalo (Glenwood), barley (Cayuga Pure), rice (exception), veggies (my garden and Sacred Seed)); wild mushrooms (gathered) sauteed in butter and white wine (Cecil's Chardonnay); barley cakes (barley (Cayuga Pure), honey, sunflower oil (Stolor Organics), raisins (Thornbush))

Menus 9/25:

• breakfast: granola (Silver Spoon) and popped barley (Cayuga Pure) with almond milk
• lunch: cabbage rolls (leftover), apples (Littletree), barley cakes (leftover)
• dinner: chicken sausages (Bilinski's), kale (my garden) with honey and cider vinegar (Littletree apples), fingerling potatoes (Greg's garden)
• dessert: apple pie (Littletree apples, Cayuga Pure grains, Bremner Farms almond meal, honey, Meadow Creek butter) with sorbet (homemade: melon from my garden, Black Diamond peaches, Kestrel Perch berries, honey)

Menus 9/26:

• breakfast: grits (Cayuga Pure) with raisins (Thornbush grapes), raspberries (my garden), maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush) and almond milk
• school lunch: buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood), toast (Greenstar GF) with butter, carrot sticks (Sacred Seed), raspberries
• my lunch: cabbage rolls (leftover), sweet pepper (my garden), apple (Littletree)
• snack: apple pie (leftover)
• dinner: chicken sausage (Bilinski's), green delicata squash rings (squash from my garden, Stony Brook oil), black trumpet mushrooms (gathered) with shallots (my garden), butter and hard cider (homemade from Littletree apples and cider)
• dessert: more apple pie

Mushroom Extravaganza!

We had some big excitement Wednesday. I went out mushrooming with friends Jules & Steven, and not only did we find another flush of cinnabar chanterelles in the same patch we picked from last month, but we also found a few baby hedgehog mushrooms and a huge patch of black trumpets (super yum!) We also found some boletes which are probably edible, but identifying those accurately is more complicated -- it's a big family with both edible and poisonous members -- so I'm basically just taking measurements and spore prints and poring over descriptions in books.

Then yesterday we went mushroom hunting again, with the Cornell Mushroom Club, and came home with half of a ginormous head of maitake (two generous meals' worth.) I neglected to bring the bolete samples for identification, but Carl Whittaker's opinion from a verbal description was that it was most likely Boletus variipes, a close relative of the King Bolete (Boletus edulis). The textbook description matches pretty closely except for the tube length: the book says 1-3 cm, but my samples are about 1/2 to 3/4 cm. I don't know how critical that difference is. (I found a badly aged specimen of Boletus edulis on the mushroom walk, and it was definitely king-sized: no question on that one, even though it fell apart when I looked at it.)

This is the first year I've tried mushroom hunting without an expert guide, and I'm having a lot of fun (but also a lot of confusion) trying to figure them all out. I've had lots of practice with herbaceous plants, but the defining features of mushrooms are quite different, they're variable in unexpected ways, and the distinctions are not straightforward (is that spore print chocolate brown, purple brown, or cinnamon brown? Or perhaps rusty brown? I'm not sure, and the difference determines the family affiliation....) So I understand why this activity is not for the faint of heart. Thank goodness there are a few things out there that are easy to identify!

9/21 Menus (cont):

• school lunch: scrambled eggs (Sabol's) with bacon (Kingbird), toast (Greenstar GF) with butter (Meadow Creek), cucumber (a friend's garden), sweet red pepper (my garden), red plum (Black Diamond)
• my lunch: apple (Littletree), ants on a log (celery (my garden), peanut butter (exception), raisins (Thornbush Farms))
• snack: red plum and prune plums (Black Diamond)
• dinner: fennel soup (fennel, leeks, & garlic (my garden), potatoes (Greg's garden), chicken stock (Kingbird chicken)); corn bread (corn flour (Cayuga Pure), buckwheat flour (Birkett Mills), eggs (back yard chickens), almond milk (Bremner Farms, CA), butter); black trumpet mushrooms (gathered) with shallots (my garden), butter, and wine (Arrowhead)

9/22 Menus:

• breakfast: waffles (Cayuga Pure and Birkett Mills grains, almond meal, eggs, sunflower oil (Greenstar bulk local)) with raspberries (my garden) and maple syrup
• school lunch: fennel soup (leftover), corn bread (leftover), apple (Littletree), cucumber (a friend's garden), buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood)
• my lunch: same, minus the cucumber
• snack: apple (Littletree)
• dinner: stir-fry with maitake (gathered), cabbage (West Haven), shallots & zucchini (my garden)
• bedtime snack: toast (Greenstar GF) with jelly (Kestrel Perch berries/Greenstar bulk local honey)

9/23 Menus:

• breakfast: steel-cut oatmeal (Cayuga Pure grains) with raisins (Thornbush grapes), maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush), and almond milk (Bremner Farms, CA)
• school lunch: fennel soup (leftover), toast (Greenstar GF) with butter (Meadow Creek), red plum (Black Diamond), and sweet pepper (my garden)
• my lunch: raspberries, corn bread (Cayuga Pure corn, eggs, honey, sunflower oil) with jelly, buffalo snack sticks
• snack: chopped peaches (Black Diamond), melon (my garden)
• snack for Sophia to take to pyjama party: fruit salad with apples, grapes, and melon
• dinner: fennel soup (leftover), barley cakes (Cayuga Pure grain, honey, sunflower oil, raisins)

Popped Barley for Breakfast

We were hankering after breakfast cereal this morning. I've been thinking about ways to turn the available local grains into a breakfast cereal, and have been working on putting together a granola recipe. So we decided to do a taste test on one of my intended granola ingredients: popped barley.

One of the standard industrial ways to prepare grain for breakfast cereals is to puff it. Puffing requires high temperatures and pressures, and it's dangerous to try at home. But, I read on a website somewhere, it's possible to pop other grains the same way you make popcorn. Okay, I thought. I have an air popper.

I decided to try barley. I couldn't tell whether it was popping or not, so after a little while I added a few grains of popcorn, so I would know when to stop. When the popcorn stopped popping, I pulled the plug and poured it out into a bowl.

The barley was popped! It didn't turn inside out the way corn does, but it had approximately doubled in bulk, and was tasty and soft enough to chew.

So, how did the popped barley perform in a bowl of milk? Well, it was a bit chewier than my ideal breakfast cereal, and it needed some sweetening, but it was perfectly palatable once I got used to it. Better, I think, than those Arrowhead Mills puffed grains, which have always tasted like styrofoam to me. Sophia's comment: "I think it needs a flavor."

I think I'll try a honey glaze, and see how it tastes after that.

9/19 Menus (cont.):

• my lunch: griddle cakes made from leftover grits (Cayuga Pure), eggs (back yard chickens), and corn and barley flour (Cayuga Pure); with blackberry/maple syrup (Littletree/Schoolyard Sugarbush)
• dinner: rice pasta (exception) with tomato-veggie sauce (my garden)
• bedtime snack: raspberries (my garden), popcorn (Finger Lakes Popcorn)

So, I finally used the rice pasta exception. We had a pretty rushed mealtime last night. I appreciated the convenience of only having to cook one thing from scratch.

9/20 Menus:

• breakfast: oatmeal (Cayuga Pure oats) with chopped peach (Black Diamond), raspberries, and raisins (Thornbush grapes); maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush); and almond milk (Bremner Farms, CA)
• school lunch: pasta with tomato-veggie sauce (leftover), red plum (Black Diamond), cucumber (a friend's garden), and buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood)
• my lunch: pasta with tomato-veggie sauce, apple (Littletree), raisins
• my snack: crackers (Cracker Man of Etna), apple (Black Diamond)
• Sophia's snack: non-local (provided by her yoga teacher)
• dinner: beet tops (my garden) with cider vinegar (Littletree apples), honey (Greenstar bulk local) and bacon (Kingbird); fingerling potatoes (Greg's garden) with butter (Meadow Creek) and chives (my garden); golden honeydew melon (my garden)

9/21 Menus (so far):

• breakfast: popped barley (Cayuga Pure grain) with honey and almond milk

Not local after all :^(

We stopped by Purity's Ice Cream today to get some more sorbet, and this time I noticed the fine print on the wall menu: "Dreyer's Sorbet."

They don't make their own sorbet.

Dreyer's is a subsidiary of Nestle's.

Bleah.

Guess I can put it in cold storage until October...