Archive for the 'Eat Locally' Category
August 20th, 2007 - Some local pick your places to check out next summer
Out on a Limb
Open mid-July to Thanksgiving. U-pick apples, cherries, plums, pears and raspberries. Bakery, country store, hayrides and petting zoo. Call 920-295-6730. 4 Miles East of Princeton, County J, Princeton, Green Lake County.
Truettners’ Berry Farm
Call 920-726-4766. Exit 144 on I-43. 3904 County Hwy C and LS, Manitowoc, Manitowoc County.
(Plus note to self: Michael and Ann Marie saw a raspberry sign on Knapp Road. Need to check on that next July.)
August 2nd, 2007 - Peaches update
Last Saturday, on the way back from The Red Radish, we stopped at a farm stand in Neenah for the advertised raspberries. Sadly, the season had ended, but the sign hadn’t been taken down. They did, however, have peaches from Michigan (which could be as little as 100 miles away, and close enough to local for us!). From the looks of them, I’d bet organic or nearly organic. And only $2/pound. Which I didn’t process quite right, so I only bought 10 pounds. At that price, I should have bought them all. Which I almost did, but then thought it was too expensive. But we’re only getting them at $1.89-1.99 at the store anyway.
Eric’s going back this Saturday to see if they have more.
I cut up about 30% for the freezer. I’ll probably dry some this weekend (Mom can help!) and maybe freeze some, too. That’s a lot of peaches for us to eat fresh.
July 28th, 2007 - One local summer (I have no idea what week it is)
Just had my local dinner tonight: local made summer sausage and veggie munster cheese along with a couple carrots from the garden. It was a yummy, easy to fix, cool meal for a summer night. And of course local milk to drink.
It’s a good thing I wandered a bit in the garden this morning. I found quite a few Thumbelina carrots were larger than they should have been, thnned some other carrots, discovered the first three lemon cucumbers, realized the rain did a wonderful job growing Yugoslavian finger fruit (they were tiny one week ago and huge today), and last but not least got my first zucchini before it became a boat.
I also picked more beans (still have preserved them–intend to free them in the morning) and dug the last of the garlic. Just heard about garlic soup this morning–will have to try that out when the weather cools off.
July 26th, 2007 - Presto Pesto!
Presto! is not the right word for my marathon pesto making session last night. From heading out to pick the basil to final cleanup, it took me about 3 hours. ::whew::
I made 4 double batches of pesto (recipe below). Maggie helped with the leaf stripping for a while. She loves being my helper. Unfortunately, it didn’t hold her interest for very long so she kept coming and going. And she got in trouble when she decided to try a basil leaf, then tried to spit it out into the bowl! You can try foods, just don’t spit them out into the clean food! LOL
I don’t think this is enough to last me all winter. If I figured correctly, this batch along with the double batch I made two weeks ago will give us one pesto meal a week until next July. That’s not much! And that’s if Maggie continues to use just one cube and I use 2. I actually prefer 3. (I freeze it in ice cube trays for the most part. And if you are thinking of canning it, as I did, it isn’t recommended since it’s an uncooked food.)
My recipe is adapted from one Dad sent me a few years ago:
2-3 cloves of garlic
2 cups basil
1/2 tsp salt
5 twists of a pepper grinder (1/4 tsp in original recipe)
1/2 c olive oil
1/2 c freshly shredded parmasan cheese
Put the garlic in the blender first. You may wish to chop it up a bit to help. I sometimes put in even more, as I like garlic. Then put in the basil. I pack it down a bit, because I love basil. Then put in the salt and pepper, and cover with the olive oil. Process on lo/grind (my blender has lo/hi plus about 8 speeds; grind is 3/4s up) for 5 seconds, stop, scrape down and around, process again, repeat about 5 times until the leaves get crushed up. You don’t want liquid, but you don’t want whole leaves. This part always drives me nuts because at first, nothing but the bottom inch or so gets ground up. But every single time, it eventually works! Mix in the cheese with spatula.
The original recipe also included parsley and pine nuts. I don’t have any parsley in the garden (maybe next year) so don’t bother. Don’t grow pine nuts either and am not terribly impressed with them nor their price, so don’t bother either.
It will keep for a couple weeks in the fridge. Otherwise, freeze in small amounts. I use ice cube trays. Freeze for at least 24 hours, then pop out and put in freezer bags. Best to get out the day before you want to use them, but I usually don’t know. Will thaw in microwave in about 20 seconds for 3 cubes. Sometimes, they don’t pop out very easily and I end up with chunks. The trays are also VERY oily when done, but clean up nicely in the dishwasher.
Except for the salt and olive oil, I’m not particular about the measurements. Even on the olive oil, you needn’t be. One bottle ran out at 3/4c (double batch remember) so I just used that. Seemed fine. Another batch seemed a bit on the oily side with the full amount. Who knows? And garlic–I usually put in at least 5 regular or large cloves then one or two small ones, too.
Oh, yeah, the garlic came from the garden, too. Now, to make pasta this weekend?
July 16th, 2007 - One local summer, week ?
I meant to post this yesterday to count for last week, but forgot! Last night, weh ad the traditional Paulukonis family Sunday night dinner, popcorn, cheese, and apples. The popcorn was bought at the farmer’s market–and I checked to be sure she’d grown it herself! (And it was packaged in a recycles peanutbutter jar.) The cheese was also from the market, two different local companies, one an xtra sharp cheddar that’s so strong I eat it in small quanitities, the other a veggie cheddar that is oh so lovely I didn’t want to share it. And the “apples” was apple cider I made last fall from apples bought directly at the apple orchard.
The popcorn was a little disappointing. There were a lot of old maids and the pops were smaller than when I’m used to it. On the other hand, it was local! And tri-colored, which was neat. In addition, the old maids that had split but not popped were not too hard to eat, unlike store-bought popcorn were you can break a tooth eating them.
July 10th, 2007 - First (non) green bean!
I went out to the garden this morning to pick my first zuchini. To my disappointment, the little one I’d seen growing last week had shriveled up. But I glanced at the nearby Dragon beans-white with purple stripes-and found one ready to eat! It’s in my salad for lunch.
I forgot to mention before that I also have had sprouts in my local salads. I grow them off and on in the cupboard with varying degrees of success. I find it hard to use them in the winter since there isn’t much I eat that they go with, but I do try to remember them on soup and chili. Anyway, the local natural foods store (the one in Oshkosh, that is) doesn’t carry much variety in sprouting seeds, but had alfalfa, which I hadn’t tried. I LOVE it! It’s crunchier than the mixes I’ve tried with some sweetness. (I don’t care for bitter ones like radish.)
There won’t be many more salads. The spinach has bolted and everything else is getting tough. Perhaps one more this weekend to share with Michael and Ann Marie. Then, perhaps the beans will be coming in stronger and some zucchini will grow? The peas have just about had it with the heat; I thought they were gone last week, but found a good amount still growing yesterday. Maybe one more picking. The garlic is ready to dig up; wish I could do it tonight, but have to teach. Hopefully, it will rain today and will still be damp tomorrow to make it easy.
July 9th, 2007 - For all the eat local folks
New American Dream is having a challenge this month to eat locally.
If you sign up, and invite some friends, you have a chance at winning a $6000 yard makeover (and some other things, but I didn’t pay attention after that one. Wow! I’d love that!!!). Those in One Local Summer will probably already do this as part of that challenge, but perhaps you’d like to join in on NAD’s as well. Click on the image and you’ll be signed up as my friend.
July 9th, 2007 - Sadly, a non-local meal
I thought I was going to have a local meal last night. Until I read the ingredients list on the Great Harvest Bread. I think of them as a good, wholesome company baking bread daily that is much like homemade only in larger quantities. Hah! The bread included high fructose corn syrup for heaven’s sake! So what if it’s baked only 12 miles from my house. The ingredients are just as bad as store-bought bread.
So, although my cheese was local, I ate a nectarine with it instead of my local cherries.
I have an idea for next week: At the market was some popcorn. I didn’t buy it as I just recently bought some popcorn and Maggie and I haven’t had any anyway. (Too much fresh food around.) But we could have a LOVELY local dinner with popcorn and cheese. Perhaps next Sunday with Michael and Ann Marie. If I get to the market and they still have some jars of it.
July 7th, 2007 - Local meal tonight
I know, this is one boring as well, the usual salad. But it’s the best local meal these days. Actually, I didn’t even use any greens from the garden, since I still have leftovers from two weeks ago. Aack! Can’t believe the lettuce is still good. But in the salad, I also had a few tiny carrots from the garden–I did a little thinning earlier in the week. I love waiting until they are big enough for a bite or two. Also had some chicken–yup, it’s still good, too. (We have an awesome fridge I guess.) And bleu cheese. A bit of basil from the garden as well. That was yummy!
Oh, and the best part: A squash blossom. I’ve never had these before, but I’ve read of fried squash blossoms, so I figured I could eat them raw, too. (Thinking about it now, that is NOT a good idea. There are some flowers that you can only eat cooked. I think lilies are included in that. I should have checked before eating it. I haven’t died yet.) It added a delicious taste to the salad I can’t describe.
I finished off the meal with yellow cherries bought at the farmer’s market this morning. Wish I’d bought two baskets, but they were $2 each, so I hesitated. Maybe next summer I will have my own!
I wonder if I can find some locally made pasta, or make my own this week. I have some fresh pesto that would make a lovely local meal. (I borrowed a pasta maker from the neighbors that I’ve not yet tried out. I should.) Don’t know where I’d find local pasta. Trying not to go up to the Red Radish, nor even farther to the Free Market in Appleton. Maybe one of their farmer’s markets would carry something like this, too. But I don’t think a 10-20 mile (one-way) trip is a good idea just to get one local ingredient. (However, the Appleton farmer’s market did have carrots today. I was hoping for them at ours, but no such luck.)
June 27th, 2007 - One local summer
I’ve had a number of local meals over the past couple weeks that I forgot to write about. Mostly, salads with greens and other veggies (peas, onions, radishes) from the garden and the farmer’s market. This week, I’ve also added bleu cheese which is oh so yummy.
Lunch today is chicken salad (like tuna salad), with the local organic chicken I cooked this weekend. Indeed, there’s no lemon flavor to it, but it is nice and moist. I would definitely buy another one.
June 25th, 2007 - Biking to local food
Saturday morning, the family biked over to the farmer’s market. It’s the longest bike ride we’ve done together, and one of my longest ever rides. Basically, I ride the mile to the grocery store and that’s been it. This was probably 2 miles away. I know, realllly far. It was a nice ride; going along with Eric made me feel more comfortable on some busier streets and intersections and I’d be willing to do this alone, and even go farther! We bought greens, bleu cheese, more greens since we always run out, fresh strawberries (they are gone already), and egg rolls. We love the fresh made Hmong egg rolls, but they are an expensive meal: $10/12 rolls which is only one meal for us three.
I forgot all week (due to being so very busy and not getting home till 5 or later) about the local organic chicken I bought there the prior week. Luckily, since our fridge is so cold, there was still ice on it when I pulled it out Saturday. I cooked it in the crockpot, seasoned just with salt and pepper and one lemon (squeezed the juice out then put it into the cavity). Cooked it for about 7 hours till it was 180 inside the breast. It was falling off the bones when done! Got 1 cup of stock (concentrated), bones for more stock, 4c of little pieces to turn into chicken salad (or to put on top of green salads), and 4 larger pieces of breast meat for eating larger portions.
If we can afford it in the grocery budget, I’ll see if we can buy a dozen to have one a month. They are a bit heavy for carrying home on the bike trailer; may have to bring my basket or backpack.
October 20th, 2006 - One local Autumn
Wednesday night, Maggie and I ate locally, without even intending too. I had an idea of having roasted potatoes and decided to add in carrots and dragon beans as well. As I gathered the spices, I discovered that (except for slt and pepper), the ones I had were all from my garden! There was one more, but I didn’t have it in the cupboard at all. I was thrilled to realize I had a fall VERY local meal!
Eric enjoyed the veggies as well (but he had another main meal). We all agreed that we’d spice it differently. I don’t think I like the oregano I planted, and in general, the spices could have been stronger.
October 17th, 2006 - Bison: Another reason to eat at local restaurants
I believe I’ve mentioned before that while not a vegetarian, I will only eat organic meat which pretty much means I’m a vegetarian in practice especially when eating out. When my parents were visiting, they took us out to eat. Eric hoped for The Red Robin, a new chain in town that has fantastic burgers. Every one is offered with a Gardenburger or a Boca burger, too (for an additional charge). My parents have one in their neck of the woods and weren’t really interested. So I suggested a local restaurant that they’ve taken us to a couple times, which also has good burgers.
To my delight, they also offer a bison burger from a local farm!!! I’m not sure if it’s the one I see on the highway, but generally speaking, bison have to be raised on a pasture so I felt comfortable eating this one. I wish I could remember the farm name so I could look it up and see if it is organic or not. But at least it was *local* meat.
October 2nd, 2006 - Apples!
On Thursday, Mom, Dad, Maggie, and I bought apples at Spranger’s orchard outside Appleton. We bought a LOT of apples–a bushel each of Mollies, Firesides, and Spartans. Plus, I selected 20 pounds of seconds to use for apple cider/sauce (when cooked in the steam juicer, I get sauce after the cider drains off). We also picked up a bag each of pears and of plums. Mom and Dad took home half of each (except the seconds). I turned on the basement fridge to store the apples. I’ve never had so many apples in my house! They should keep me in fruit most of the winter. The Mollies don’t keep well, but they are at the beginning of the harvest so should have better luck. They were my favorite taste-wise and I just have to be sure to eat one a day until they are gone! Since I usually take an apple to work, that shouldn’t be hard.
Maggie liked the Mollie–when Gramma fed it to her in the car. She rarely eats apples off her plate at meal time. She also shared an apple with me on the sofa over the weekend. I have to remember this for the future–snacks are fine when they are good for you foods like apples! Who cares if she eats it in the living room instead of at the dining room table?
The apples cost $.60/pound when bought by the bushel (seconds were $.40). I never buy them for that price at the store, and I usually buy apples all year ’round since I like them so much. So, although a large outlay, and probably a $5/mo increase in electricity, it should be worth it. (The basement fridge is probably 20-30 years old so terribly inefficient. But I’m also using it to store, in the freezer, the 25# of oatmeal I bought through the food coop. So it is serving multiple purposes!) Plus, of course, most of the year, the apples found in the store are not local, so even if with electricity costs it’s a little more than what I’d find on sale at the store, it works out for me overall since it’s supporting a local farm.
…Which reminds me that I need to eat the plums I brought for an afternoon snack.
September 15th, 2006 - One local summer: last meal
I haven’t had this meal yet, but wanted to be sure to write it up before the challenge ended! Tonight, Bryony (our houseguest) and I will be making soup including homemade vegetable stock 100% from the garden plus bay leaves from work (<1m from home) and vegetables from the garden including all the usuals (tomatoes, onions, beans, carrots, potatoes).
I love the idea of homemade stock so much that I want to buy a bunch of thigns at the farmer’s market to make more. Is it worth it? Or should I just buy stock in the winter if we keep up with eating soup? I don’t know…. I’d rather have homemade, but is it worth the extra veggie cost right now? I’m worried about making too much and not actually eating it. Fresh veggies will decrease soon and I’ll be using dried and frozen ones instead. Will they make as good soup? I’ll probably start making bean soups then, so will probably still be a nice addition.
Speaking of potatoes, since this was for soup, I dug up one of the Yukon Gold plants. (Putting cool-colored blue potatoes in soup kind of defeats the coolness factor.) The potatoes are softball sized! And shaped! I’ve never seen such potatoes! Neither has Bryony nor Eric (nor Maggie for that matter but how many has she seen?). They are at least 2x as big as the potatoes we dug up last summer. I think I have a new process for planting these (if I save any): I planted leftover potatoes that had been forgotten all winter. I didn’t cut them up and they started with foot-long eye roots. I hope the second plant is just as big! And then I will have to decide whether to eat them all (8 potatoes probably) or save a couple for next year. I hadn’t planned to save any but a handful of Blues…but it would be really cool to have giant potatoes next fall again.
September 7th, 2006 - Roasted veggies
The other day when I made a roasted veggies stock, I also roasted veggies for eating. I’ve never done this before and it turned out quite nice. The one mistake I made was including tomatoes w/o coring/seeding them. It made everything quite wet and so took longer to roast. I included peppers, potatoes, onions, carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes. Over it went some lemon juice, salt?, garlic, pepper, basil, and olive oil (recipe from BH&G cookbook). I’d like to find a more flavorful marinade to use next time.
I ate a few of them cold but the best has been wraps. My workplace makes a great roasted veggies wrap, but I’m not sure of the ingredients. That was my inspiration and my version has been lunch or dinner most of the week. I’m using whole grain tortillas (not local, but healthier than the local ones), a bit of homemade tzazki sauce (homemade yogurt, garden cukes, and dill from the farmer’s market), layered veggies, Muenster cheese, and sometimes lettuce. It’s been just delightful and something I will look forward to making next summer now.
September 1st, 2006 - One local summer: week 10 I think
Last night, I made a lovely, delicious, beautiful vegetable soup! The only non-local ingredient was the starting broth. I’ve had very bad luck with broths so have thrown out all that I made over the last year. Found another good sounding recipe in my crockpot recipe book, so I’m going to try that tomorrow. If it works, I’ll have another soup that night with 100% ingredients locally!
My soup included, all from my garden unless noted:
* dragon carrots
* dragon beans
* purple potatoes
* orange pepper
* tomatoes (unsure of the varieties)
* zucchini
* corn
* onions (bunching green onions we never ate which have grown into nice pearl onions; Eric loved them!)
* basil
* bay leaf (not from my garden, but from a plant in a colleague’s office at work. I’m inspired to plant my own now. It was so much cooler to use one like that!)
Maggie and I also had bread with our soup, homemade of course! All three of us enjoyed the soup, which is a rarity. I’ve made some pretty awful soups over the last couple years. I made sure to write down the ingredients and process so that I can duplicate it! I used another recipe but modified it quite a bit so that I was using the veggies from my garden. I also skipped the pasta (not local) and I boiled the potatoes before adding the other veggies. They were larger pieces and I worried they wouldn’t fully cook.
August 28th, 2006 - What *was* that meal?
Liz emailed me wondering what exactly my local meals had been lately, since I just posted a list of vegetables. Well, I probably eat a little strangely–my meals actually were just the veggies. I adore fresh raw veggies! I simply ate them either with some cheese (pesto Gouda, local of course, which was just fantastic!) or some salad dressing (not local, but I was inspired yesterday with some recipes in The Tightwad Gazette and plan to make some this week or next with my dried veggies from last summer). The taste of raw veggies straight from the garden (or the next day, or the day after) is so fantastic that if you haven’t ever tried them you are really missing something. I think my husband, who hates raw tomatoes, hates them because as a kid (and an adult) he was never offered anything other than a tomato from the store which pales greatly in comparison. I can’t eat them that way anymore! (I never ate many–I tried them occasionally during grad school and didn’t understand why they weren’t very good. Now I understand!)
I am trying to find a vegetarian vegetable soup to make this week to make something different…. None of my cookbooks have recipes using fresh summer vegetables in vegetarian soups.
August 24th, 2006 - One Local Summer Weeks 6-8?
I did not post my meals two weeks ago due to the sprained ankle taking me out of work and thus away from the computer I most often use. Then we were on vacation. But, I have been eating locally!
Week 6: garden veggies, particularly my cherry tomatoes, are coming in. I had a lovely meal of tomatoes and cheese.
Week 7: I brought garden veggies to the lake house but forgot to eat them! But I did have some once we got home, plus a Black Krum (I think) tomato. I was unable to buy anything local while we were there. Had I been feeling better, I would have–we passed a driveway with a sign for produce. I would have gone back out on my own….they even had berries which I would have loved to have!
Week 8: Meals have included fresh cucumbers (heirloom True Lemons which I don’t actually like), cherry tomatoes, Dragon Tongue beans (cream with purple stripes), Thumbelina carrots, ivory pepper, and zucchini. I tried to pull a dragon carrot (purple), but the ground was too dry and the tops just broke off. Need to go back out tonight (it rained off and on yesterday and through the night) and try again. Or get out my garden fork.
My peppers are starting to turn colors and I think I’ll be able to pick some red ones tonight. Turns out one of my unknonwn squashes is actually a Yugoslavian finger fruit woohoo!!! They look so cool that I was disappointed when I thought I only had zukes and pumpkins. I’ve picked two but haven’t eaten either yet. One was too big so will be grated and dried for zuke bread. One pumpkin grew and is already orange. Since almost all of of the squash plants have powdery mildew, I suspect this will be my entire take for the year.
Oh, and my corn! Some of it is over NINE feet tall. I can’t recall corn in our garden back in SD ever being that large. Oh my goodness! I need to harvest on Friday and freeze it on Saturday. I just wish my foot didn’t hurt so that this was all easier. I would prefer to do a batch or two each night, but I’m so tired after work that I just veg in front of the TV once Maggie goes to bed. Maybe I’ll feel better tonight and will at least get some beans frozen.
August 3rd, 2006 - One Local Summer Week 5
From Sun-Wed, I was at a business conference in Guelph, Ontario. In advance, I decided that I would try to eat local on Tuesday when we had dinner on our own. I thought the easiest thing to find would be a bakery for bread and a grocery store for cheese. At the grocery store, I first found a Canadian Spartan apple (I think EVERYTHING else was from the US or tropical countries!) that was fantastic. One of the best tasting apples I’ve ever had! Then I found a rather small selection of domestic cheeses; I chose a Royal Canadian sharp cheddar. I thought the name quite fitting for this project. Finally, I spent quite a bit of time finding the local bakery, after which I passed it another 4 or 5 times trying to find other places LOL. The bread, although lovely looking, I realized was far too much for me to finish in one or two meals. Instead, I purchased a package of oatcakes, which I thought was nicely non-American as well.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t found the park I was seeking to have a nice lunch outside. It was probably too hot and humid anyway. The cheese and apple were fantastic together, and easy to eat as I attempted to find the butterfly place. (Fittingly for my ability to find and get places on time, I ended up at the donkey sanctuary instead, and spent about 1.25 hours going less than 20 miles from where I started. Not counting the hour to find the bakery which was only 2 miles away….) I had enough leftover cheese and oatcakesto bring home. I look forward to having them for lunch tomorrow.
The meal was definitely more fun than simply going to the store and picking up some American, familiar items. I probably would have done that–or bought the store bakery bread which was actually trucked in. It was a lot more fun looking around the store to see if I could find Canadian/Ontario-produced items. Which is much harder than it might seem–mostly, the store could have been in the US and you wouldn’t have noticed a difference in the brands.
PS, While away, my brother told me that the comments field isn’t working. He didn’t say if he fixed it yet, so probably not. My apologies to anyone who has tried to comment. Although, on the positive side, my spam count has been quite down! It has to do with the new theme we installed. I’ll let you know when it works again!