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...

Saying Grace

9/18 Menus:
 breakfast: flapjacks (Birkett Mills buckwheat) with chopped apples (Littletree) and maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush)
 lunch: barley cakes (Cayuga Pure barley, Greenstar bulk local honey and sunflower oil, raisins from Thornbush grapes), apples, sweet pepper (garden)
 dinner: pork chops (Kingbird) with sauerkraut (homemade from Blue Heron cabbage); baby potatoes (Greg's garden) with butter (Meadow Creek) and parsley (garden); maitake mushrooms (Kingbird) with butter, squash oil (Stony Brook), and cooking wine (homemade from arbor grapes)

I do most of the gardening work, but there are a couple foods Greg has taken on, and potatoes are one of them. He's worked for several hours over the past couple days digging up potatoes, cleaning them, and laying them out to cure. All in a day's work for me, but it's not the way Greg usually spends his manual labor budget. So I'm feeling a need to put Greg's name on it. Which makes me realize that I've been treating my own labor as generic ("garden" really means "my garden.") Oops. How feminine of me. Just for the record, I'm the cook, too. And the maker of most of the preserved foods. If the source listed is generic, it's me. Thank you, me. :^)

9/19 Menus (so far):
 breakfast: grits (Cayuga Pure) with chopped peaches (Black Diamond) and maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush)
 school lunch: sauerkraut with pork (leftover), barley cakes (leftover), apple (Littletree), cucumber (a friend's garden)

We still had some almond milk in the fridge, but when I went to get it for the grits this morning, I discovered it had gone bad. That wasn't a problem when we were eating cold cereal for breakfast every day. But we use a lot less milk with the hot cereals, plus I'm cooking other things more often because the difference in labor isn't as great. Oh well. Time to get going on that homemade granola.

While I'm on the topic of acknowledging people's labor, though, I want to say something about the almond milk. Every time I write it on the menu I feel funny describing its source as "exception." We have a family practice of listing the sources of the foods on our plate before we eat, and the almonds do have a known source, even if it's not local. I've thought about shortening my menu lists on the blog, leaving out the sources of foods we use every day, but that doesn't feel right either. For me, naming those sources is a way of saying grace: we're acknowledging the people and places that provide our sustenance. It also keeps us aware of which foods are anonymous -- we list those as "no idea," or "who knows where."

I direct order raw, unpasteurized organic Carmel almonds (I love the flavor of the Carmels) from Jim Bremner, who runs Bremner Farms in Chico, CA. Almond milk is made from sprouted almonds, and almonds have to be raw/unpasteurized in order to sprout. Direct ordering is the only way to get those now, so I have USDA regulations to thank for driving me to do business with a real person, instead of a plastic bin in the bulk section. I appreciate the opportunity, but I wouldn't have gone there without that little extra push (and Jim Bremner might not have gotten his web site set up for direct sales, either, without the looming prospect of bankruptcy when the new regulations destroyed his market.) I'm glad he hung in there, and I'm glad he got a direct sales exemption. And I'm glad I found his website. I think I will start listing him on my menus.

Autumn's Harvest

We went out for dinner last night!

We went to the Autumn's Harvest Benefit Dinner for Healthy Food For All, a program that raises money to subsidize CSA shares for low-income families. The food was donated by numerous area farmers and food producers, and cooked on a volunteer basis by chef Samantha Buyskes, whose fare is also available at Simply Red Bistro. We learned that the meat served at Simply Red comes almost entirely from Autumn's Harvest Farm (nice to know.) The wine selections were donated by Hosmer Winery, which is not one we've tried before. So we got to do a wine tasting along with the meal (they were all very good.) Thank goodness it was a long slow dinner, with modest portion sizes, or we would have been laid low by it all. As it was, the amounts were just about perfect.

I had expected to see a lot of wealthy-looking people at the dinner, because of the steep ticket price, but many of the folks we met were farmers. We talked about animal behavior and housing arrangements, methods of food storage, how your life changes when you work outdoors, and similar topics. In some ways, it seemed as much a networking opportunity for the farmers as a way to redistribute the community wealth. Autumn's Harvest Farm is a mile or so from Cayuga Lake, with a gradual downslope between, so we got to watch the pastel side of the sunset over the water as we dined (the sun was behind our backs, toward the farmhouse.) We could see our breath over the last couple courses, but the cold wasn't unpleasant until we walked away from the canopy tent, after it was over.

We thoroughly enjoyed the experience: food, wine, music, and company. Greg is talking about doing it as a monthly event. We could cover the price within our monthly eating-out budget, if we cut back enough on other outings. Of course, Greg's out of town for the next one, and I suspect it won't be that common to find a menu that's as easy on my diet as this one was, so I'm guessing our presence will only be intermittent. But it was well worth the cover charge.

9/17 Menus:

 breakfast: oatmeal (Cayuga Pure oats) with chopped apples (Littletree), maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush), and almond milk (exception, Bremner Farms)

 lunch: corn on the cob (Sabol's) with butter (Meadow Creek) and salt

 snack: apples

 dinner: Autumn's Harvest Farm Dinner

Barley Cakes and "Lemon" Butter

This morning I was feeling a little frantic -- not in the mood for cooked-grain-with-sweetener for breakfast, no leftovers for Sophia's lunch, and no breads or biscuits ready made. I had enough time to make a quick bread, but I was out of almond meal, which is one of my standard biscuit ingredients, and low on corn meal, which is another, and which also meant I couldn't make corn bread or muffins either. That left buckwheat, which I've never seen a baking recipe for, and barley, which I haven't used on its own before.

A couple weeks ago I discovered this ancient Roman recipe for barley cakes, and this seemed like a good time to try it. So I looked it up again. Of course, it would be denominated in metric -- those darned Romans. It's simple enough to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit using an online converter, but grams to measuring cups is not so straightforward. And, oh dear, I was running out of honey too. I decided to make a smaller recipe, throw in some raisins for extra sweetness, wing it on the amounts, and hope for the best. After all, the real ancient Roman recipe probably went something like, "bake barley with honey." It most certainly did not include a ten minute residency in the fridge.

Half an hour later, I gave Sophia a small bite to sample, to verify that she was willing to have it as part of her lunch. Next thing I knew, she had half a barley cake in her hand and the other half in her mouth, and was reaching for another. So I chased her out of the kitchen, hoarding the four remaining cakes (they were pretty small) so I'd have enough to pack for her.

After she left I did a Greenstar run for more honey, and made a second batch for my own lunch, measuring things more carefully. Here's what I came up with:

Barley Cakes (a not-so-ancient Ithacan recipe)

3 T honey (or to taste)

2 T sunflower oil

1/3 cup water

1 1/2 cups barley flour

1/4 t salt

raisins (to taste -- optional)

Set oven to 400 F. Mix honey & oil into 1/2 cup flour. (The honey tends to glop up in the water otherwise.) Mix in water, salt, and raisins, then mix in the rest of the flour a bit at a time. Let stand for 10 minutes in the fridge (or on the counter -- I'm not sure it matters, since it's a liquid oil.) Add flour as needed to keep it from sticking as you remove it from the bowl, shape it into a ball, and roll it out thinly (I stopped rolling when the raisins started to stick out.) Cut with a cookie cutter or thin-edged glass and place on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake 10-15 minutes, to taste (they don't seem to brown much, but they gradually change from chewy to crunchy as they bake longer. Thinner ones get more crunchy.)

The Result

Kind of like a cross between a biscuit, a cookie, and a soft cracker. Noticeably sweet, but not sugary. All gone again, though. Sophia wants me to make a third batch.

9/16 Menus:

breakfast for Sophia: grits (Cayuga Pure) with raisins (arbor), maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush), and almond milk (exception)

breakfast for us: omelets (eggs from back yard chickens) with broccoli (West Haven), scallion (garden) and sweet pepper (garden)

school lunch: buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood Farms); barley cakes (barley (Cayuga Pure), honey and sunflower oil (Greenstar bulk local), raisins(arbor grapes)); red sweet pepper (garden); frozen blueberries (Farmer's Choice u-pick)

my lunch: barley cakes; ants on a log (celery (garden), peanut butter (exception), raisins (Thornbush Farms)); raspberries (garden)

snack: barley cakes. and apples. lots of apples (Littletree)

dinner: green and wax beans with sorrel butter (garden, Meadow Creek); Japanese Steak House style veggies (onion, summer squash (garden) and baby bok choy (Sacred Seed) with salt, cider vinegar (Littletree apples), and cooking wine (arbor grapes))

When we got back from apple picking, I wanted something simple for dinner, and I did not want to put tomatoes in it. I had a vast number of green and wax beans (oops, I ignored them for a few days too long) and I was in the mood for steamed beans with lemon butter. But I've been resisting using lemon juice, even though it probably technically qualifies as a seasoning.

While I was pondering what to do, I overheard my roommate suggesting to her daughter that they add curly dock to a dish they were planning. She described the flavor as "lemony." Voila! I didn't want to use curly dock, because its flavor could also be described as "bitter," and its texture could be described as "slimy." (I'm picky about my wild foods, what can I say?) But I have french sorrel growing in my garden, which I rarely use because I'm not sure how to cook with it. This, however, was easy:

Local "Lemon" Butter

1-2 T butter

3-4 french sorrel leaves, sliced very thin

salt to taste

Melt butter, add sorrel, stir until it "melts" into a greenish sauce. Salt to taste. (This could probably be made with wild sorrel as well -- you know, the clover-like garden weed with heart-shaped leaves and little yellow flowers and a lemony flavor.)

Can't get much simpler than that. Makes me happy.

Halfway Through!

I've been having some fast-food cravings the past couple days. Not McDonalds -- I'm not that depraved -- but convenience has been calling louder than usual. Two days in a row I was out long after lunchtime, driving around hungry, and it took some self-discipline not to stop along the way and pick something up. I lasted until I got home by thinking about how I'm almost to the halfway point, and I'm perfectly capable of surviving feeling hungry for a few more minutes.

The cool thing is that I haven't used rice yet! I was also wanting pasta last night; it would have been really good with the sauce I made for dinner. But I wanted to go one more day -- a full half month -- without resorting to imported grains.

There have definitely been nutritional changes to my diet as a result of this challenge, not least of which is that I am, for the first time in my life, eating 100% whole grains, with no refined flour (or sugar) at all. So okay, the first few days we still had some Greenstar GF bread to use up, and there was Sophia's birthday party, and I have been indulging in a bite of chocolate here and there (up to a maximum of 10 grams chocolate, which contains 3 grams sugar, per day.) But compared to the universal presence of refined carbs in every processed food on the market, that's a pretty significant shift. Even though I use mostly whole grains and sugars in my home cooking, refined carbs still leak in every time I succumb to convenience, which under normal circumstances is a lot. (I generally consider packaged crackers and boxed cereals to fall in the "refined" category even when they're made from whole grains, because the high-heat crisping and puffing and flaking they go through destroys most of the nutrients.)

I think we may also be eating fewer grains overall, since turning them into food requires extra work that I don't necessarily have extra time for. The place I notice this most is that I'm not routinely adding toast & butter to my plate when I make eggs (which is one of my quick-fix foods when I'm feeling rushed.)

And, speaking of eating less of, the other big nutrititional shift I've noticed is what I eat when I snack. On my normal diet, "snack" most often means "nuts" or "processed grains," since those are often the most convenient foods available. Now, the most convenient foods are either fruits & veggies or leftover home-baked biscuits, waffles, etc.

There appear to be fewer calories in this diet, and there are most certainly fewer fat calories. And I think I'm losing weight, though it's not dramatic enough to brag about. 'Course, I've always been suspicious of those "lose 10 pounds in one week" (and gain them back in the next) diets anyway. The best weight-loss diet, in my opinion, is one you don't notice you're on until your clothes get looser. Which this one might just qualify for.

9/15 Menus:

breakfast: waffles with raspberries (same as yesterday)

school lunch: chili (leftover), sweet peppers (garden) and cucumber slices (a friend's garden), peach (Black Diamond) and raspberries (garden)

my lunch: leftover waffles, grits (Cayuga Pure) and refritos (leftover) with sweet pepper (garden) and lettuce (Blue Heron), red plum (Black Diamond)

dinner: chicken sausage (Bilinski's) au jardinera (with the garden -- summer squash, onion, red pepper, in tomato sauce with marjoram, tarragon, thai basil, garlic, and a sprinkling of parsley on top)

evening: hot grape juice (mix of wild, arbor, and Thornbush Farms grapes) with cider (Littletree) and honey

Local Bread Part 2

I baked the other half of my batch of experimental wheat-free 100% local multigrain bread Monday. Thought about adding more yeast, but decided it was too much bother at that late stage.

The Process:

Last week: Created the half batch of dough (using this process) and put it in the fridge.

Sun 8 p.m.: Took it out of the fridge. It was quite bubbly, with a nice sour/yeast aroma. Added enough rye flour to start kneading. Kneaded with corn flour (which means this loaf has less rye and more corn than the first loaf), and left the dough a bit softer. Left in a warmish place to rise overnight (covered by the recommended triple layer of muslin, with the middle layer damp.)

Mon 7 a.m.: Kneaded in a little more corn flour, shaped and scored loaf lengthwise, left in a warmish place to rise. (Dampened the middle layer again.)

Mon 5 p.m.: Heated oven to 425 degrees (it's a convection oven, so I often reduce the recommended temp by 25 degrees) and baked 35 minutes (5 minutes longer than the first time.)

The Result

This loaf is less dense than the first, with a color that shows more yellow & less gray. The corn flavor is detectable behind the rye/sourdough flavor. The lengthwise scoring worked better than the crosswise scoring that I did the first time (the first loaf cracked on both sides, so it was mushroom-shaped in cross-section, and the sticky-outy pieces tended to break off when I was cutting it.) I'm noticing that it has a similar texture to eastern european breads that are typically cut very thin, so I'm cutting my slices very thin too. It holds together nicely.

Overall, I like this version better.

Big disappointment afterward, though. Sophia and I both had stuffy noses after eating the second loaf. There are several possible explanations. One is that we're having a delayed reaction to the rye (these breads are the first time I've tried the local rye flour.) We've eaten imported rye crackers in the past with impunity, though, as well as cracked rye bread made from whole grain rye, so this seems relatively unlikely. A second is that the new batch of flour (which we picked up Saturday and used in the second loaf) might have wheat in it. That's a fairly common problem, when an alternative flour is ground in the same facility as wheat flour. A third possibility, which also seems unlikely due to the lack of other symptoms, is that we might be coming down with something. Or, we could both be reacting to a new pollen source or some other environmental allergy. We ate outdoors that night, so there might have been something on the breeze.

I wish these things were simple to diagnose, but they're not. For the time being, we're going to lay off the rye flour; maybe we'll experiment again once our symptoms clear up.

Fruit Drinks

I forgot to list some really yummy drinks that we've had the past couple days. The first was Seaberry (Daring Drake) juice, sweetened with honey (Greenstar bulk local.) We ran the berries through the juicer then mixed the juice 1:3 with water and added honey to taste. It was surprisingly good; very distinctive flavor. The other was hot grape juice: a mixture of wild (from the community garden deer fence) and Concord (from the arbor over the sandbox) grapes, simmered in water to release the juice, then strained. I don't think we added any sweetener to this one.

9/13 Menus:

breakfast: sprouted steel-cut oatmeal with homemade raisins, with honey (Greenstar bulk local) and almond milk (exception)

school lunch: multigrain bread (Cayuga Pure grains) with jelly (Kestrel Perch berries, honey) and honey, buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood Farms), grapes (arbor, Thornbush Farms), sweet pepper (garden)

my lunch: multigrain bread with peanut butter and jelly, raspberries (garden), sweet pepper

snack: plums (Sabol's Farm, Black Diamond)

dinner: chili (kidney beans (Cayuga Pure), lamburger (Northlands), veggies (garden, Early Morning)); multigrain bread (new loaf)

bedtime snack: corn fritters (corn (Sabol's Farm), flour mix (Cayuga Pure and Birkett Mills), eggs (Sabol's), almond milk (exception)) with maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush)

Sophia didn't like the corn fritters :^( but Greg and I thought they were yummy. The chili is one of our standard winter staples; sometimes I make it vegetarian and sometimes I add in whatever kind of meat we happen to have handy. It's good either way.

9/14 Menus:

breakfast: waffles (Cayuga Pure grains, almond meal (exception), eggs (back yard chickens)); red currant/maple syrup (Kestrel Perch/Schoolyard Sugarbush), raspberries (garden)

school lunch: chili (leftover), raspberries (garden), cucumber slices (a friend's garden)

my lunch: chili, plums, cucumber

snack: grapes (Thornbush Farms)

dinner: lamburgers (Northlands), roasted beets (garden), rainbow chard (garden), creamed spinach (Blue Heron, with Meadow Creek butter, Cayuga Pure barley flour, and almond milk)

snack: peanuts (exception), dried watermelon (garden)

Locavore Book Discussion

I'm hosting a book discussion for the Locavore Challenge. Here are the details:

NOFA-NY Locavore Challenge Book Discussion

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

Two Mondays, September 19th and 26th, 7-9 p.m.

SoNG Common House Sitting Room, Ecovillage at Ithaca

Hope to see you there!

Local Raisins

We thought about using one of our exceptions for raisins or currants, because we use them so often in hot cereals and baked goodies, but we decided instead to try making our own. The first batch came out of the dehydrator a couple days ago. They took *forever* to dry, compared to other fruits I've tried, because of the impermeable skin (it helps to blanch or freeze them first -- I froze these ones -- but it still took three times as long as dried apples.) The thicker northern skins probably exacerbated that problem. I was concerned that they might make the raisins overly chewy, too, but it's not noticeable, at least on this batch. And it's definitely a win, flavor-wise!

So today I bought a big sampler bag of grape varieties at Greenstar (from Thornbush Farms, in Aurora), cleaned them, and stuck them in the freezer. They'll move from there to the dehydrator either tomorrow or Wednesday. Four distinct seedless flavors, which I'm going to try to keep separate at least through the drying process -- "strawberry" (Einset), "melon" (Reliance), muscat (black muscat) and "mild and sweet" (they're green, but I forget the variety name.)

So now I can have raisins in my granola, too. :^)

9/11 Menu:

breakfast: granola (Greenstar bulk) with almond milk (homemade/exception), scrambled eggs (Sabol's Farm) with spinach (Blue Heron), and multigrain bread (Cayuga Pure grains)

lunch: Greenstar deli soup for Sophia, multigrain bread with honey (Greenstar bulk), raspberries (garden), tiny plums (West Haven Farm)

dinner: refritos (leftover) with corn tortillas (Cayuga Pure flour), lettuce (Blue Heron) and sweet peppers (garden)

9/12 Menu:

breakfast: flapjacks (Birkett Mills buckwheat) with red currant/maple syrup (Kestrel Perch/Schoolyard Sugarbush), red plum (Black Diamond)

school lunch: lamb & potato stew (leftover), multigrain bread (Cayuga Pure grains) with honey (Greenstar bulk local), carrots (Early Morning), buffalo snack stick (Glenwood Farms), watermelon (garden)

my lunch: dried pears (front yard) and peaches (farm stand), eggs (back yard), multigrain bread with red currant/raspberry jelly (Kestrel Perch berries, Greenstar bulk local honey)

snack: corn on the cob (Sabol's), watermelon for me, red plum for Sophia

dinner: refritos again (leftovers), melon and raspberry salad (garden)

Clean Oats!

I went to soak some of my new batch of live oats (Cayuga Pure) last night, that I bought yesterday, and Guess What!! they were a whole lot cleaner than what I was working with before. I had a quart of live oats at the beginning of the month that I'd bought several months ago, and hadn't gotten around to using because it looked like it was going to be too much work. But these oats are good enough to run through the roller or grind up into flour without having to clean them first! I was so happy I went back today and bought two more jars full. I'm gonna make some granola...

I made up a big fancy dinner last night, five whole courses, partly because it was market day and partly because Greg just got back from a business trip. But the funny thing is, the only part of the meal that I actually bought yesterday was the black trumpets. I needed to free up some space in the fridge, and I kind of went overboard...

9/10 Dinner Menu:

- buffalo (Glenwood Farms) eye of round steak, cubed, browned, and braised in broth (bouillon)

- blue potatoes (garden) roasted in chicken drippings (leftover from last week's chicken)

- rainbow chard (garden) cooked in cider and cider vinegar (Littletree/homemade)

- black trumpet mushrooms (Kingbird) and french gray shallots (garden) sauteed in butter (Meadow Creek) and red wine (Lucas Vineyards Dry Dock, leftover from last week)

- multigrain bread (see The Great Bread Experiment)

- the rest of the red wine for us (half a glass each), and cider (Littletree) for Sophia

Market Day

Two big market runs today: the Ithaca Farmer's Market and Greenstar. I have to be careful this time of year; it's hard not to overbuy. I still have half a head of lettuce and a bunch of baby bok choy left over from last week, plus vast quantities of tomatoes and peppers and celery and rainbow chard and a backlog of summer squash from the garden.

Today's Farmer's Market purchases:

sweet corn (Sabol's Farm)

3 kinds of plums (Sabol's Farm, Black Diamond)

peaches (ahh! and I thought we were done for the season) (Black Diamond)

spinach (Blue Heron)

carrots (Early Morning)

broccoli (West Haven)

black trumpets (yum!) (Kingbird)

I like to shop around at the market, and get a little bit here & a little bit there. Though I do have specific foods that I consistently buy at the same place. I had intended to pick up something meaty as well, but we were in a hurry.

Today's Greenstar purchases:

live oats, barley, rye flour, corn flour, grits (Cayuga Pure)

salt, flax seed, mustard (seasonings - exception)

a sampling of local table grapes (Reliance and Einset varieties) (I forgot to look at the farm name)

local organic apples to snack on (ditto)

I ran out of almost all my alternative grains over the past couple days, so it was definitely Time.

9/9 Menu:

breakfast: grits (Cayuga Pure) with raspberries (garden), almond milk (exception), and honey (Greenstar bulk local); bacon (Kingbird)

school lunch: tomato soup (leftover), biscuit bombs (leftover) with honey (GS bulk), peach (farm stand) and raspberries (garden), buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood Farms)

my lunch: same, only w/o the buffalo sticks

snack: watermelon (garden)

dinner: lamb (Northlands) and potato (garden) stew; amaranth (garden) with bacon (Kingbird) cider (Littletree) and vinegar (homemade)

dessert: raspberry sorbet (Purity)

9/10 Menu (so far):

breakfast: steel-cut oatmeal (from Cayuga Pure oats) with melons (garden + Daring Drake) and honey (GS bulk local), eggs (Sabol's Farm)

snack: apples (GS local) and a sampling of plums (Sabol's Farm, Black Diamond)

lunch:

Japanese Steak House Style bok choy (Sacred Seed) and summer squash (garden), seasoned with salt, cooking wine (homemade), cider vinegar (Littletree - first sampling of the new batch!), and sesame seeds

green salad -- lettuce (Blue Heron), cucumber (George), red pepper and scallion (garden), purslane pickles (garden weed + cider vinegar & spices), and local salad dressing (homemade)

flapjacks (Birkett Mills buckwheat) with red currant/maple syrup (Kestrel Perch/Schoolyard Sugarbush)

I figured out what happened to my eternal excess of cider vinegar. Purslane pickles. Duh. I made a quart and a half of them a couple months ago after weeding my sweet potato patch. No wonder I ran out!

Local Salad Dressing (Vinaigrette)

butternut squash seed oil (Stony Brook)

apple cider (Littletree)

cider vinegar (homemade)

cooking wine (homemade)

salt & pepper

herbs & spices (to taste)

The flavor of the squash seed oil was quite distinctive. It reminded me of black sesame seeds.

The Great Bread Experiment

I did a wheat-free local-grain-only multigrain bread experiment this week.

It's based on an online recipe I found for a flexible-grain bread. It's intended for gluten grains, so yay! I got to knead the dough! I haven't kneaded dough in ages; mostly I've just been buying GF store bread, and the rice breads I've made recently are more like batter than dough. My baking process was pretty chaotic, as follows:

The Process

• Tue p.m. - cleaned and soaked 1 cup live oats
• Wed a.m. - rinsed & drained live oats
• Wed p.m. - live oats looking sprouty; blended into flour with 1 cup water & 1/2 tsp. salt. Added 1 cup rye flour and covered.
• Thu p.m. - sponge looking spongy; not entirely pleased with aroma, so I added 1/2 packet bread yeast, activated in 1/2 cup warm water and 1 T rye flour.
• an hour later - remembered I needed to go out for the evening; put yeast-sponge in fridge to slow it down.
• an hour later - evening event cancelled due to flooding; took yeast-sponge back out of fridge & placed in a warmish oven.
• bedtime - realized I hadn't done anything with yeast-sponge yet. put it back in fridge.
• Fri a.m. - took yeast-sponge out of fridge, added 3/4 cup leftover grits, placed in a warmish oven for an hour, then moved it to room temp.
• Fri p.m. - ah! finally! time available to work on the bread. looked up recipe & scaled it down to a half recipe. added remaining ingredients (oil, honey, almond milk, flour.) Discovered I had too much sponge to scale it down to a half recipe. Added remaining ingredients for a full recipe, except the flour, and divided the batch in two. Put half in the fridge. Added enough flour to knead the other half, and set it in a warmish oven to rise.
• Fri bedtime - it's risen enough to hold a depression, but hasn't quite doubled yet. Kneaded it briefly then put it back to rise overnight.
• Sat a.m. - kneaded and shaped a single oblong loaf, covered and set to rise.
• Sat 5 p.m. - baked.

Is this process repeatable? Ha! I don't think so...

Flour mix in one half recipe (approx.):

1/2 cup live oats, sprouted and blended

1 cup rye flour

3/4 cup barley flour

1/2 cup corn flour

3/8 cup leftover grits

Additional rye flour as needed for kneading (not measured; might have been 1/2 cup or so.)

The Result

A finely textured dense bread; mild rye and sourdough flavors. Holds together well; slices readily, though the crust is a little tough to get through at the bottom. Seems to be a hit with the family, though we got into a discussion about what one might do if one wanted a lighter texture. I will probably double the yeast next time; it ought to rise more quickly if nothing else. I should also start an ongoing sourdough sponge; it both tastes and works better if it's had time to mature.

Biscuit Bombs and Corn Tortillas

Second day of school, and it's cancelled for flooding. Oh well, so much for the planned itinerary for the day...

9/8 Menu:

breakfast: local granola (GS bulk section) with almond milk

lunch: cream of tomato soup (tomatoes, onion, garlic, parsley, basil (garden); butter (Meadow Creek); honey (GS); almond milk (homemade, exception); salt/pepper/rosemary); biscuit bombs; melon & raspberry fruit salad (garden + Daring Drake)

Made biscuits with a barley/corn/almond flour. The dough was very dry, but I decided to go with it instead of adding water. It's kind of nice to be able to shape them without the dough sticking all over everything. They came out extremely dense -- didn't rise at all, so far as I could tell. Nice flavor, though, and reasonably soft (no teeth-breaking issues.) Maybe at some point I'll come up with a recipe that's good enough to share...

Conversation with Sophia over lunch:

M: "How do you like the biscuits? I notice you aren't filling your plate with them."

S: "I'm getting pretty full. I think I will have one more, though, with honey. I love honey."

(Biscuit with honey vanishes. She helps herself to another bowl of soup.)

M: "Whoa, wait a minute. I thought you said you were full!"

S: "But it's so goood."

M: "It'll still be good tomorrow, if you don't eat it all first."

(She eats two spoonfuls.)

S: "Mom, do you want the rest?"

. . .

The soup recipe is also local, from the Enchanted Broccoli Forest (Variations on a Cream of Tomato, variation 1.) The recipe calls for sherry, and I was planning to substitute homemade wine, but I forgot, so today's version is sans alcohol.

9/8 Menu (cont.):

snack: biscuit bombs with jelly

dinner: corn tortillas (corn flour (Cayuga Pure), water, butter (Meadow Creek), salt) with refritos (pintos (Cayuga Pure), onion/garlic/bell pepper/jalapeño (garden), bacon grease (strained off Kingbird bacon), seasonings); sweet pepper (garden) and lettuce (Blue Heron)

Conversation with Sophia over dinner:

(She comes in the kitchen and sees what we're having.)

S: "Ooooo...can I have one now?"

(I turn around and see a tortilla with refritos already in her hand.)

M: "Okay, but get a plate. Do you want peppers with it?"

S: "Sure."

(She gets out plates, I slice up a pepper, we sit down to eat.)

(Two tortillas later:)

S: "I'm getting really full. How many have you had?"

M: "Two. I'm pretty full too."

(She counts the two remaining tortillas.)

S: "Let's go and do something else for ten minutes, then come back and finish them."

Sometimes I just love being a mom.

The refritos recipe is local, from the original Moosewood Cookbook, and the tortilla recipe is modified from a sweet little compilation of Native American recipes called "Going Native", that I picked up at a historical exhibit out in Seattle a looong time ago now.

Corn Tortillas (makes 12 small tortillas)

1 1/2 cups (or more) corn flour (traditionally masa harina)

2 t. salt

2 t. butter

1 1/4 cup boiling water

Mix 1 1/2 cups corn flour with salt, add butter and boiling water and mix well. Add more flour as necessary to make a pasty dough (the corn flour doesn't seem to absorb water as well as masa harina does.) Let stand for 10 minutes (dough will thicken as it stands.) If dough is still sticky, add more flour until it's workable. Dough should be smooth & elastic, but still fairly soft.

Heat and grease a griddle.

Dampen a 6" or larger square of muslin, and lay flat on a clean counter or cutting board. Divide dough into 12 equal-sized balls. Place one on the muslin, cover with another piece of damp muslin, and squash flat with a cutting board (this step takes some muscle.) "The tortillas should be almost paper-thin," says the recipe. Paperboard-thin is more realistic (like a cereal box.) Peel off muslin, and brown on the griddle for 1/2 minute or so each side. (I didn't see much browning, but it does say "brown"...) Repeat until done. Keep warm until ready to serve.

Barley Gruel, a.k.a. Witch's Brew

Yesterday I tried making a rolled barley cereal, similar to oatmeal. The rolled barley behaved pretty much like rolled oats, but the resulting cereal was...well...kind of gray. It looked like something that might have been served in a 19th century orphanage, and referred to as "gruel."

Not very appetizing.

We had the idea of adding food coloring to improve its complexion, and Sophia suggested green, "because green is the only color we know where it is." I'm pretty sure the other colors

are up in the high cupboard, with the cookie cutters, but green is what we went with. I left Sophia to add color, a drop at a time, until she was satisfied. The result was...well...kind of green. I guess that was predictable.

It looked a little better once we'd decked it out with raspberries and almond milk. And it tasted fine, aside from a faint chemical tang from the food coloring. Sophia asked for it again at dinnertime, but I refused. Once a day is quite enough.

End of the First Week

I've been thinking more about what I wrote in my last post about "slow food", and the reputation local/organic food has for being expensive. It's reminding me of something I heard in a previous lifetime, back when I was working for Corporate America. The mnemonic is a triangle, with three edges labeled "fast", "cheap", and "good". Each of those traits is desirable when designing a new product, but corporate wisdom says you can only achieve two of the three.

If you want fast and cheap -- which many Americans do when it comes to food -- then you can't get good quality. If you want your food to be good (which I do) then you either have to pay more or put more time into it, or both. I've chosen to devote time, to reduce my need for money.

If you have neither to spare, then the only way to improve the quality of your food is to eat less of it.

It seems kind of silly to be extolling the virtues of an agrarian lifestyle as if it were a novelty, when it's the way most people have lived throughout most of history. Especially here in Ithaca, where so many people know so much more about it than I do. But, city girl that I am, it still seems strange and wondrous to me to have all this food coming out of nowhere in my own back yard. Unlike money, food *does* grow on trees. And bushes, and canes, and vines... And, hard as it is for us wealth-obsessed Americans to wrap our heads around the idea, food is the more important of the two.

9/6 Menu:

breakfast: grits with raspberries, maple syrup, and almond milk

lunch: chicken sandwiches (same as yesterday), raspberries, sweet peppers

dinner: corn/barley bread; french onion soup (onions (garden), roasted chicken stock (from Sunday's roasted chicken) with carrot & celery greens and herbs (garden))

9/7 Menu:

breakfast: rolled barley (Cayuga Pure) cereal with raspberries (garden)

lunch: leftovers from last night plus raspberries (garden)

dinner: buffalo snack sticks (Glenwood Farms), the rest of the corn/barley bread w/jelly, sweet peppers, mulled cider (Littletree)

Tonight is one of those nights when I just don't feel like cooking. Thank goodness there was still bread left from yesterday! I've got a bag full of paste tomatoes to process, and I already spent a chunk of time today decanting wine and cutting up tomatoes to dry. I'm dreading school lunch tomorrow, since I won't have any leftovers to pack. I can give her more snack sticks again, I suppose, but I'm going to need more bread. And oh man, I forgot about jars. I don't have enough canning jars. Sophia started school today, you would think I'd have had *more* free time, but it's been one of those rushing-from-one-thing-to-the-next-all-day-long days.

On the bright side, we've made it through the first week and I haven't resorted to using rice yet. Won't be much longer, tho, with all these tomatoes and no local pasta. And not enough canning jars.

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.

Snack Foods and Menus

I just found a couple more containers of non-local food on the floor next to my comfy chair. Both are convenience/snack foods. I've been noticing that we're eating fewer snacks -- and more fruits & veggies when we do snack -- now that most of our easy off-the-shelf options are now off limits. We're also getting fewer calories with our snacks.

Here's what we've been eating the past three days:

9/2 Menu

breakfast: buckwheat (Birkett Mills) flapjacks, topped with black currant/blackcap/maple syrup, prune plums (farm stand), and frozen blueberries (u-pick from Farmer's Choice)

lunch: sweet pepper (garden), celery (garden) with peanut butter (exception) and frozen grapes (arbor), biscuits (leftover) with honey (Greenstar bulk) and red currant/raspberry jelly (homemade from Kestrel Perch berries and honey), prune plums (farm stand)

snack: celery, biscuits, dried melons (garden)

dinner: leftover baked beans, rainbow chard (garden), red wine (Lucas Vineyards) for us and ginger beer (*sigh*) for Sophia.

dessert: bicolor corn bread with raspberries (garden) and applesauce (canned last year from Littletree u-pick)

9/3 Menu

breakfast: bacon (Kingbird) and eggs (back yard) with leftover corn bread and melon (garden)

lunch: green salad (Blue Heron lettuce, a friend's surplus cucumbers, peppers & scallions from the garden); fruit salad (raspberries, melon, prune plums), more corn bread

dinner: chicken sausage (Bilinski's), in a tomato sauce with summer squash, scallions, and herbs (all from the garden); shallots (garden) with shiitake (garden) and purple laccaria (Kingbird) mushrooms, sauteed in butter with red wine; red wine for us and cider (Littletree) for Sophia.

snack: Finger Lakes popcorn.

9/4 Menu

breakfast: waffles (flour mix: 1/3 barley, 1/3 corn, 1/3 almond-flax meal) with leftover fruit salad, frozen blueberries, and red currant/maple syrup (currants from Kestrel Perch); cider

lunch: cucumbers, celery w/peanut butter & frozen grapes, melons, corn bread

snack: more melon, last of the biscuits with jelly

dinner: roast chicken (Kingbird) with garlic & herbs (garden), roasted beets and onions (garden), fried green delicata (garden) with squash oil (Stony Brook) and salt.

Waffles are one of our standard weekend breakfasts; our usual flour mix is oat/millet/almond. I was pleased to learn that barley/corn/almond works just as well. The corn gives the waffles a distinctive flavor and texture, and the batter still behaves properly in the waffle iron.

Hopi Red Dye Cornbread

Yesterday's local grain experiment was inspired by the Hopi Red Dye Amaranth that I bought seed for this past year. I've primarily been using it as a braising green (though granted it's more purple than green.) But it was traditionally used as a food coloring, to make a ceremonial red corn bread. I was unable to find instructions for how to extract the dye, or how much to use, but I did find online sources that said to use the flowers, not the leaves.

So, yesterday was my birthday, and I wanted a cake, and some of the spring-planted Amaranth had survived my haphazard harvest and started to bloom. I found this Bi-Color Hopi Corn Bread recipe online, which calls for "red corn meal", and adapted it with reference to the corn bread recipes in my Joy of Cooking. The result was dense and fine-textured, reminiscent of a pound cake (only without the pound of butter...) It's very popular with the family, though you have to be careful to keep the slices small (I had to lie down and groan for awhile after I foolishly took seconds.) The surface color came out a bright raspberry-red, but the interior faded to a brownish hue that was much less noticeable.

Hopi Red Dye Cornbread

Baking Temp: somewhere between 350 & 425 (one recipe called for the lower temp, the other called for a higher one, and I'm not sure which would work better. My oven temp was on the low side, since I opened it several times to check for doneness.)

Make two batches of the following (mix dry ingredients separately, then add wet ingredients):

3/4 cup corn meal (Cayuga Pure)

1/4 cup buckwheat flour (Birkett Mills)

1/4 cup barley flour (CP, home ground)

2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

3 T sunflower oil (Greenstar bulk local)

1/4 cup maple syrup (or to taste -- I couldn't stomach the thought of 2 cups of maple syrup in one batch of bread...)

1 egg (back yard chickens)

For one batch, add 1 cup almond milk (or regular milk.)

For the other batch, add 1 cup almond milk blended with a handful of Hopi Red Dye Amaranth flowers. (I tried boiling & steeping them first, which released enough dye to make a pretty pink, then I put the lot in the blender to deepen the color. I'm not sure whether the heat was needed to release the dye.)

Use a greased 9x9 pan (I used an 8x8, which is what I had on hand, but I think the larger size would have been an improvement.) Pour in the red layer first, then carefully pour the yellow layer on top of it. Use a spoon to swirl the colors together. Bake 20-25 minutes for the higher temp, or 30-35 for the lower, or as long as you need to get a toothpick to come out clean (I think mine was in for about 40-45, but it was thicker due to the smaller pan.)

Serving suggestion: top with warm cinnamon-spiced applesauce and fresh raspberries.

Progress Report I

So, I did my first "live oats" baking experiment today. I put 1 cup of oats to soak yesterday, to see if sprouting them would loosen the husks (I'm not sure of the terminology here -- is it a husk, or a hull, or chaff, or something else? I'm referring to the straw-like stuff that the seed is wrapped in -- it's not attached to the seed, but it doesn't just wash off.) Soaking didn't help much with that, but I did discover that when I added the water most of the seeds that had husks on floated to the top, so I was able to skim them off without too much trouble. So I think the husky bits are just going to become chicken feed. (see update: Clean Oats!)

This morning I rinsed and drained them, and by mid afternoon they were looking sprouty. I tried putting them through the oat roller damp, but it was a disaster (it instantly gunked up and stopped feeding.) I didn't even try the flour grinder, after seeing what the roller did -- I just went straight to the blender. I had to add about 1/2 cup of water to get it to grind effectively, but the result was thick enough to make a biscuit dough by mixing it with cornmeal & buckwheat flour. All in all, I think it was a successful experiment.

Today's Menu

breakfast: grits with honey and almond milk

lunch: roasted summer squash, Oasis GF bread w/spiced apple butter (made by a friend)

dinner: baked black beans, biscuits with honey & currant/raspberry jelly, amaranth greens

dessert: peaches with black currant/blackcap/maple syrup

(berries from Kestrel Perch, 1/4 mile)

Finger Lakes Baked Beans

1 1/2 cups black beans, soaked and cooked

1/3 package bacon ends (Kingbird Farms, Berkshire, 22 miles), chopped

2 medium or 1 large onion (back yard)

finely chopped hot pepper to taste (back yard -- or Kingbird or Daring Drake)

1 t salt

1/2 t pepper

1/4 t cumin

dash of cloves

1/4 c maple syrup

splash of cooking wine (or cider vinegar, if I had any left)

Fry onions & bacon ends, add seasonings, combine with hot beans & enough bean water to reach the surface, and bake until done. (baking time and temp are pretty flexible -- I cut it short tonight b/c we were hungry, but I think it would have benefited from an hour or more.)

The Pantry Purge

I stayed up late last night emptying the pantry of non-local traife. It was quite a task, since we normally keep several months' supply of bulk goods on hand. There's a lot of empty shelf space now, but there's also a surprising number of foods that passed muster. The oil section is stocked with sunflower oil (bulk local from Greenstar) and Stony Brook squash oil (Geneva, 45 miles). There's a homemade cooking wine (front arbor, 8 feet) from our first winemaking experiment two years ago, and honey (bulk local from Greenstar) and maple syrup (Schoolyard Sugarbush, Moravia, 22 miles). I discovered, to my chagrin, that our previously bottomless supply of cider vinegar has run out -- it seems we've gotten more efficient at using up the cider (Littletree, Newfield, 8 miles) before it gets too fizzy.

I'm pleased by the variety of beans & grains that we have in stock, thanks to the folks at Cayuga Pure Organics (Brooktondale, 6 miles.) We also have one granola (bulk local from Greenstar,) though most of the local granolas we've located so far either contain wheat or are priced as a luxury food, not a staple. So we're still working on that one.

The Exceptions

The funny thing is, I'm still not sure just what our five exceptions are going to be. It's also hard to know where to place the boundaries when I'm counting them, e.g. If I wanted, I could construe "rice" to include processed rice products, and I could list "nuts" instead of breaking it out into individual species. But since the goal is to minimize our non-local foods, there's no point. At first I was thinking it would be hard to narrow it down to 5, but at this point it seems like most of the foods we were considering are nonessential.

Here are the ones we're sure of:

1. rice & rice pasta
2. almonds (for almond milk)
3. peanut butter

Here are some others we're considering:

• pink lentils (as an alternate flour)
• kombucha (or, more accurately, sugar & tea for making kombucha; I don't need them for anything else, but if I let the mama go for too long I'll lose it)
• chocolate (because it's hard to justify calling this local, even if it is locally produced)

We also have some possible exceptions that only apply to Sophia:

• margarine (in case her sinuses blow up on butter)
• birthday party food (she's adamant about having her coconut ice cream, and cake from a mix)