100% Local Grocery Haul
Eat Local Challenge: day 25

100% local grocery store haul. What's even better is that it only cost me $15.00 for one loaf of bread, one half gallon milk, two Danish squashes, one cabbage, two stalks of Brussels sprouts and one sugar pie pumpkin.

Note: I just talked to Casey and Katie from Oakhill Organics and they said that they can fill my requested order for produce-which means I'm going to have to cook a whole bunch in the next week because my fridge will not fit so much and a lot of them will wilt if left out. Their CSA is currently full but if you let them know what you want they may be able to sell you some produce if they have enough after filling their CSA orders.

This is the best pot pie in the whole world.*

I have homemade pot pie on the brain right now and while pulling one out of the microwave yesterday, this is the thought that jumped into my head:

Stick a hampster in a pie!

It is early morning here at the Williamson ranch. I've been up since 5:30 am which is when I stepped in some Chick vomit after feeding her and the mean kitty beast. I sat with her a while making soothing noises and after cleaning up the disturbing mess I just couldn't go back to sleep. It has been my dream for many years to be able to get up at 5:30 am to write. Before the kid is up, before the world is up. I love this time. Unfortunately, my childish resistance to going to bed early-ish makes it very challenging to get up before 7:30am.

I have chocolate burps. I'll bet you didn't expect me to say that, huh? I stayed up too late last night watching ER episodes and "needed" a midnight snack. I had been eating lots of Cheetos for late night snacks before I started my eat local challenge. I don't actually like Cheetos, I think they taste like greasy orange salt, but that's just what the mouth wants in the evening hours-crunchy convenient vessels for salt. Anyway, I have been a good girl and nary a Cheeto has crossed my lips since October first. So if I can't eat Max's snacks, then there isn't much to nosh on. I don't stock snack foods for myself. All I had that was quick and tasty and on my exceptions list was chocolate. Chocolate chips to be exact.

I'm not actually a huge chocolate fan. That didn't stop me from eating a big little bowl of them. My body is making its objections known. chocolate burps are more pleasant than green pepper burps though.

Just as my fridge was getting dangerously low on vegetables, as in: I have two carrots left, my local health food store came through with a few great locally grown items. The best of which are these great sticks of brussels sprouts-still on their stems. There's something rather silly about them, and charming. They are unwieldy and won't fit in anyone's fridge. At two stems for $5.00 it was also pretty inexpensive. The bonus for me is that the stems will make wonderful scraps for the hens who LOVE cruciferous snacks.

They also have some gigantic cabbages. I found a moderately sized one. I'm not sure what to do with it yet. I don't eat a lot of cabbage, though I like it. I'm thinking a Russian cabbage pie is in order.

Finding locally grown grains is proving problematic. Although I have decided to buy flour and grains from Bob's Red Mill, and I stand by that decision, I feel like it isn't in keeping with the spirit of the challenge to partake in all of their products when so many of them aren't even grown nearby. They have Teff, and Frikeh, and buckwheat, for example, none of which are grown in this region. I had decided that barley is alright because they get it from Washington (though they won't say where in the state) and I would like to find a grain that I can eat steamed vegetables with instead of with cous-cous which is not made anywhere locally. I grew up eating buckwheat and really like it...but if I allow buckwheat I'm beginning to get too far out of the parameters I set for myself.

So I have put in considerable hours of research for locally grown grains and, surprisingly, I found two sources of locally grown wild rice: Oregon Jewel, and Oregon Wild Rice. I have to admit here that I don't actually like wild rice. I'm not a huge rice fan to begin with (which amongst my acquaintances has always been a HUGE FOOD CRIME). I especially don't like rice that remains densely chewy even after cooking. Wild rice is the ultimate in toughly chewy grains. It's good for you though. So I am going to buy some for grain variety and dammit-I'm going to learn to like it!!

So here's what I have so far: flour from local mills, barley, and wild rice.

A big question mark hanging in the air right now is whether or not any corn meal is made locally. I can say with 100% confidence that a lot of corn is grown locally. But is any of it for drying and making into meal for humans? This bloodhound wants to know!

Researching local grains has got me thinking a lot about what people used to eat when they didn't have their fingertips glued to a keyboard with the whole world virtually at their feet for the price of credit card debt. What were Oregonians using for bread back when they were first settling it? Were they, in fact, growing hard white or red wheat? Is it easy to grow it on a small scale? Or did Oregonians not eat much bread? If they weren't eating a lot of wheat, what grains were they eating and growing? Barley? Were they importing it from traveling salesmen even back then?

What would my diet be like if I could only get soft wheat and barley and a little bit of wild rice? What if I didn't have access to pressed oils? I know that people used to use a lot of animal fat for frying and cooking, which I'll never do. Why? BECAUSE IT'S UNBELIEVABLY DISGUSTING AND I'M A VEGETARIAN. However, not being vegan, I suppose I would be eating a lot more butter than I am now. I would not be eating a lot of risen breads because soft wheat isn't good for that, so I would probably be eating a lot of pancakes, flat breads, and pies. Surely Oregonians were planting corn for both fresh eating, feeding their livestock, and for drying and grinding into flour for themselves, right?

This is just making me think about the pot pies I just made. I have been on a pot pie quest for years now. When I was a kid, one of the few convenience foods that made it into our house were frozen pot pies. These were only pulled out on nights when my parents were going out and we had a babysitter. They didn't have any vegetarian options so we would pick out the chunks of "chicken" and eat the rest. I loved them. I loved the gravy covered vegetables all mixing in with golden crust. Recipes for vegetarian versions of these pot pies are pretty thin on the ground. Most of them are highly unsatisfactory.

Frozen commercial vegetarian pot pies are always so disappointing to me that I am nearly driven to tears. Tofu is an unacceptable ingredient. So I have been on a quest. I have arrived at greatness, and you are all the first to know it. I had a similar success a few years ago but didn't know if I could repeat it. Oh yes.

Oh yes I can. The two key ingredients are: mushrooms and thyme. I only make food in enormous quantities so it's hard to come up with a recipe that feeds less than ten people. I am going to freeze some pot pies, and then I'm going to make them again, trying for a smaller batch that I can then write down for posterity's sake, and also for you, and my dear friend Sid who is a vegetarian on a similar quest.

Pot pies are the ultimate in comfort food (aside from macaroni and cheese, obviously) and perfect for making when the weather turns chilly and you are only allowed to buy local vegetables and are left with potatoes, carrots, and broccoli.



*Well, I'm not modest, am I?

Hard Wheat, Soft Wheat

Eat Local Challenge, Day 14

On my list of food exceptions for my eat local challenge you will notice that I have not included flour. When I made the decision to do this challenge I have to admit that I was smugly pleased that there are two local mills and I was pretty sure they grew most of their own grains.

Note to self: nothing will make you wrong faster than a little smugness.

Part of the point of this challenge is to become knowledgeable about what grows and is produced in my own region. Most people don't know what the farmers in their areas are growing commercially unless they go rooting around for information. Most of us don't ever bother. Why should we when we can get anything we want from the grocery store without having to damage any brain cells in the process?

I'm not trying to bust any one's balls here. Okay, maybe just a little. My own in particular. Not that I have balls. Just because I have five chin hairs doesn't mean.... oh, sorry about that. Back to the regular programming...

I'm not taking this challenge to point my finger at anyone else. I am taking it to point it at myself and to learn to make very conscious choices when I shop. I realized that I ought to find out definitively if the local mills grow their own grains. I didn't really want to know because then I would be forced to make some potentially hard decisions. I sent out a rash of e-mails and made some phone calls and now know that the only wheat grown in Oregon is soft wheat. Soft wheat is really only used for whole wheat pastry flour because it has a lower protein content than hard wheat it isn't used for bread baking. Most of the soft wheat Oregon farmers grow is exported.

I found out more than that. I found out that some of the best places to grow hard wheat is Montana and the Dakotas. I found out that Bob's Red Mill (my favorite mill for years now) buys other grains (besides wheat) mostly from Washington and Idaho but the lady who talked to me on the phone couldn't tell me where in Washington their grains come from. If I want to know if their barley fits within my challenge, I will have to dig a lot deeper. Here's what I had to ask myself: what is the most important aspect of eating local?

There are three predominant reasons that all of us should pay more attention to this issue:

1.) Eating local means that you will automatically be eating more seasonally which is a more natural and healthy way to eat. When you eat summer vegetables in winter they are not as nutritious due to the fact that they are either grown in a green house or have traveled a long distance to get to you and were most likely not ripe when they were picked.

2.) Eating locally grown food means a lot less fossil fuel is needed to get it to your table. It doesn't matter if we are about to run out of fossil fuel tomorrow or in another hundred years. If you want to keep driving a car, we all need to reduce our use of oil because the only way to keep having oil is to use as little of it as we can. The more we all eat locally grown and produced food the less pollution we are contributing to the planet through trucking and flying.

3.) Eating locally means that you are putting your money right back into your own community. You give it to people in your own community you are helping it become less dependent on the world economy, you are helping your own region become and/or remain a viable place to live. Every dollar you send overseas is a dollar someone in your own town, or yourself, will not be able to use to pay for mortgages and rents. When our local industries fail due to competition with industries across the country or across the world, unemployment rises. Towns empty out as opportunities become scarce.

Those are pretty powerful things to consider. Philip and I weighed the importance of each of those factors and decided, in the end, that it is more important to us to buy grains from Bob's Red Mill and Azure Standard who employ lots of local people, are both conscientious companies supporting many organic farms, and who put out products of exceptional quality. They may get their hard wheat from the Midwest, but they are milling it here on my home turf so their flour is fresher than anything I could buy from King Arthur or Pillsbury. While some of the dollars I spend with them go towards a grain that has to travel here from hundreds of miles away, a good portion of my dollars are going into my own local economy.

Considering that I will have to be looking for full time employment in the next couple of months this is something I should really care about. Well, actually, I should care about it whether I have a job or not. A lot of families are already jobless thanks to outsourcing. What the hell will happen to our little town if the Steel Mill ever has to close?

I could, of course, just give up all purpose flour like the couple who started the concept of the 100 mile diet did. But I'm not trying to prove anything or be extreme. I want to learn how I can alter my diet to include the maximum number of locally grown foods and products but in a way that I can continue to do when my challenge is over. I'm not going to give up all purpose flour for the rest of my life.

However, I'm not going to stop looking for a local source of hard wheat. Because if I could find it, I would choose it. I like ferreting out all this obscure information.

I'm not sure it reflects well on me to compare myself to mean little beasties who resemble furry snakes, but you can't worry too much about these things when you're a woman with chin hairs.

Next up: the search for locally made hard cheeses. I hear there's no such thing. We shall see, I am on the hunt...