The Great Wide Sky

One of the things I love best about Oregon are the gorgeous skies. California doesn't have them like we do here. Vast skies of clouds and blue and always moving, shifting, changing, and breathing. It makes my breath spread out farther and go slower. Especially when I'm on farmland and I can see so far all around me.

Picking fruit and vegetables is meditative. Rhythmic. I like doing it with friends but last summer I found that I liked doing it alone best of all. Alone in the tall bean rows with the sky talking to me above. I like to bring my headphones and listen to music. I let my thoughts do what they like to do best: live a life all their own. I have an obsessive mind. It can be a great weight on me at times playing the same tapes over and over and over until I want to rip them out of my skull. Often times, though, when I let my mind wander it's like my dreams. It says what it needs to say without filtering or trying to cover up its irrationality.

It usually runs through old unsatisfactory conversations or situations and comes up with new endings, better endings. A frequent activity in my head is letter writing. I don't write letters much anymore in actuality but I write them constantly in my head. I also have these great long monologues, stories that the universe keeps waiting for me to tell. Sometimes I speak so eloquently in my quiet reverie of picking fruit that I wonder who is really speaking and I know I'll never speak so eloquently when I race home and try to recall the perfect words.

Sometimes I want to sing along to the words in my music out loud. I wish I was the only person in the entire world. Because if I was then there would be no one to question me or wonder if I'm on enough medication.

I miss playing my favorite game. My favorite game is dress up as another version of myself- who I could have been, who I might become. My whole life has been one long dress up session in which everything I do becomes a separate life: when I was a costumer I was a poor dressmaker working 14 hour days to make beautiful clothes for rich patrons that I would never myself be able to wear. I had needle holes in my fingers from hand stitching corsets* and I imagined myself hunched over candle light in a bare stone walled room to stitch gold bullion trim to the hems of gowns.

I dressed the part and my life unfolded accordingly. When naked I want to crawl out of my own skin. I have never felt I belonged in a body at all but when I dress up I can do anything, be anyone, and shine. I didn't love my body or hate my body for its faults or virtues. I never really had body issues exactly. I mean, like any young person I would complain about my thighs or my sizable ass which even when I was at my thinnest never disappeared. But I did always appreciate that I could dress my body up well and become invincible.

It isn't an acting bug either. This is something else. I hate acting. Trying to get me to do some "fun" improvisational acting workshop is like trying to pull teeth from a giant agitated steaming buffalo. There is nothing I want less than to dress up to go on stage. I have never wanted to literally play roles. The enjoyment for me is that we all play roles in life anyway and I enjoy dressing the part for them. Making an occasion out of the ordinary. I have always appreciated the ambiance and the story one garment can tell. I am never not me when I dress up. I am always myself; a self amplified perhaps, but still the same self.

I have always enjoyed watching others to see if they see behind the curtain. If they see that today I am a poet of rare grace. I wonder if they see that today I am a spirit wandering the ragged moors of my imagination in a gown gathering moss and fragile fibers of earth behind me like reluctant ghosts. I wonder if they see that I am a baker in a small town with flour on my cheeks and skill in my hands, I wonder if they can smell the warm yeast and taste the crust in their own mouths as I walk by. Does anyone actually ever really see me?

Now there is nothing to see. I have become ridiculous. I have made a disaster of my body; breaking my bones and becoming too large for any dream but one of being the bearded** fat lady which holds no romance for me. No aura of interest and no hidden treasures wait there. I know there is a reason I have come to this point and until I figure it out I will not be able to exit this nightmare that my own shell is. I have made dressing up impossible. Which makes me feel lost.

In spite of these reflections I did feel answers stirring as my hands reached again and again for more berries. I commune with the plants and become like a branch myself. covered in fruit. I'm not sure sometimes if the trees and grasses can all hear me. I think they do.

*I really did, as a matter of fact.

**My "beard" consists of five chin hairs but I suspect that there are more waiting to sprout. I bet I'll get one new one each birth day until I look like a real treat.

Cheese
(and the importance of controlled rot)

I cleaned my kitchen just for you.

Curds and whey, the real thing.

Low technology food prep.

I had the presence of mind, in the middle of feeling droopy and pathetic, to make cheese. What better way to remember why I never killed myself than to awaken my inner food geek? If there's nothing else that can be said of life, I think that there are three things that make it really worth living: bread, cheese, and booze.* It is no coincidence that all three have one very important thing in common: they are made using a process of fermentation.

In other words: controlled rot.

Fermentation is the process by which we invite certain yeasts and bacterias to set up camp in our food, altering it's structure and taste, so that we can turn it into nutrition that will last long into hungry months. With dough we want yeast to eat the sugars in the grains (or the small amounts of sweeteners used to tantalize them such as honey or malt) and basically wait until they fart up a storm which adds air to the dough so that when it cooks it has a pleasing texture and loft. Some yeasts shack up with bacteria symbiotically to flavor bread distinctively, as they do in sourdough starters.

With beer the entire process is more complicated, but essentially the same. First grains are germinated and then dried in a kiln, sometimes roasted; a process that creates enzymes which will then be able to break down starches into sugar. There are a lot of steps to making beer, and each one is taken to convert grains into a nourishing liquid that will sustain humans and prevent their excess grain crops from going to waste. We don't generally think of beer as a nourishing drink (unless you're Irish and trying to convince Americans to drink Guinness) but people in the medieval times drank beer instead of water when water wasn't potable, and monks drank beer when fasting because it could give them a safe source of sustaining calories along with some vitamins. Some beer history sources claim that monks received daily rations of beer and that beer was used as payment.

Cheese is not very different in principle. Making cheese is a process by which you first separate the solid milk fats from the protein whey, then press as much of the whey out of the solids as possible to help the solids last longer. In addition to curdling agents, enzymes are used to add or alter the flavors of different cheeses. Enzymes break down proteins into smaller molecules which is a lot like digestion. We invite enzymes to predigest our food which is fairly gross if this is the first time you've given this thought.

The cheese I attempted to make is panir, a type of fresh farmer's cheese that doesn't melt but adds a very nice protein punch to Indian food such as Saag Paneer (or "Panir"). My attempts were foiled by three factors: a misunderstanding I had concerning my substitution of a citric acid solution for the more traditionally used lemon juice; my misunderstanding resulted in having to reheat my milk three times so that I could add more coagulants (that word almost gets you in the gut, doesn't it?) because I hadn't added the proper amount. So the curds got stirred much more than is appropriate; the final factor is that I hung my cheese to drain but didn't press it. Pressing helps the curds to adhere to each other in a solid mass and creates a firmer texture.

The result is that I have a nice tasting thick ricotta-like cheese, but not panir. So instead of making saag panir with this batch I will make lasagna. I can't complain about that at all! I am not daunted. I've made panir successfully before, it's one of the easiest cheeses to make. I have three gallons of whole milk in my fridge right now, so guess what I'll be doing today? I'm going to try a quick mozzarella, ricotta salata, and a farmer's cheese using Lipase, an enzyme used in making feta cheese in the hopes that I can create something similar to feta.

If you are interested in making cheese it's best to start with the simple cheeses such as panir, yogurt, ricotta salata, quark, or cream cheese. Feta, as you may have guessed, is an intermediate cheese which requires you to carefully monitor the temperature of the milk at different stages. I'm not ready for that kind of micromanagement in my kitchen. I plan to work my way up. Who else is going to make cheese this week?

Five tips on cheese making for beginners:

• Use only fresh milk. As with all preserving, the idea is to preserve your food at its peak of freshness, once food is in a decline it will only get worse.

• Use either unpasteurized milk if you can get it from some under-the-radar raw milk renegades, or use the next best thing which is regular pasteurized. Check carefully to be sure the label doesn't say "Ultra pasteurized" because it won't work.

• Choose an easy recipe to start with such as panir, cream cheese, or chevre.

• Use great instructions. The book I'm using right now that is really great is "Home Cheese Making" by Ricki Carroll. I have another book whose instructions are not very clear so I won't recommend it. I can't emphasize enough the importance of starting off with a really clear guide when learning new kitchen skills.

• Sanitation is very important because you want to invite very specific bacterias and enzymes to play around with your milk. But for crying out loud- don't let any chemical substance such as Lysol get near your food. Use soap and water, or if you have it (I guess) you can use a sanitizing solution such as brewers use. Was there Lysol available to people 8,000 years ago? Don't be a paranoid over-sanitizing freak.**

*In the very real world of Celiac's disease, lactose intolerance, and our national negative views on alcohol, I realize that there are some people who might deeply contest this opinion. I think it's interesting how many people have developed intolerances for wheat and milk since both have been consumed by humans for several thousand years (some evidence suggests that cheese has been around since sheep were first domesticated 8,000 years ago, but not everyone agrees on this).

**It really freaks me out that there are commercials in which parents are invited to wipe down their children with Clorox Bleach wipes all day long. On their skin. This is wrong, this is evil, this is abuse of the most insidious kind. SOAP AND WATER IS THE ONLY CLEANSER THAT SHOULD TOUCH YOUR CHILDREN'S SKIN, EVER.

Who Buys 18 Pounds Of Celery?

Me, that's who. In my desperate bid to blanch and freeze enough locally grown celery to get me through to the next celery season (which is when, by the way?) I bought the only celery I could find at the Hillsdale farmer's market. It's not difficult to process but never the less, it takes time, and of all the food processing projects I've done this year, this one is the most tedious. I'll be happy I did it though when in two months there is nary a celery stalk to be found.

I got it done though. In fact, I got a lot done yesterday. That's what happens when you rip the computer cords out of your veins and turn the screen off.

Have I ever mentioned how much my boy looks forward to his birthday every year? The excitement begins the day after his birthday with conversations like "You know what I want for my next birthday?" Then he checks with us every three weeks to see how soon his birthday will be. He likes parties. Big parties with lots of presents and excitement. I don't have to tell anyone here how much I love throwing parties, right? How much I look forward to inviting hundreds of shrieking children into my domicile to ransack the place. I mean, it's great. Super. A total thrill. Sydney Bristow's got nothing on me when it comes to thrills.

Normally I refuse to conduct games in my house. Party games especially. But Max doesn't have a lot of friends here in Oregon like he did in California. All I had to do down there was invite tons of children, feed them a constant stream of sugar and shove them outside to explode their energy away from my head, then feed all the parents beer and wine so that they wouldn't notice I'd just ruined their children with sugar. It worked out well. With very few kids to invite and it being probable that they won't all come, I figured I better step it up a little and provide something fun for them to do. Something memorable for Max.

So I'm throwing a treasure hunt. I'm not going to buy party favors, I'm going to make them. Little muslin bags with cookies and little notebooks they can decorate afterwards. Doesn't that sound precious? Doesn't it sound like it came right out of Martha Stewart magazine? And yet, I thought it up all by myself.

I was going to have a spy party but realized that some of the children who are invited aren't encouraged to play with toy guns and to wreak destruction on villains. So I thought a treasure hunt couldn't possibly be objectionable to the younger set. What kid doesn't like a treasure hunt?

Well, I didn't when I was a kid, but you can't judge normal kid behavior by me.

So anyway, I made Max's invitations yesterday and actually sent them out. Now I only have to sit around and worry that no one will be able to come.

Which I don't have time for actually. I have to get going now because I'm submitting an article to an online craft blog and must do the writing today. The last time I submitted things to other publications it didn't go anywhere, but you can't stop trying to do what you were meant to do just because some people out there don't see it. I submitted something for that apron book and got accepted...so it's time to put myself out there again. If I don't get accepted, I will publish it here.

Wish me luck and I'll see you tomorrow!

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?

The Local Food Challenge Report
(Day 4)

Not full enough yet. I have freezer food greed.

So the first thing Philip did on October first was buy some beer from Washington. Oops. It isn't as easy as you would think to remember to always be looking at the label of origin on the things you are buying. You say you're going to only buy local and only eat seasonal "next month" but when next month finally arrives, after tons of careful and scientific research, (obviously) you go to the store and it looks like a great big woolly universe of forbidden road-traveled treats.

I went shopping yesterday at Winco, our local bargain shopping store and had a fun time scouting out what is local and what isn't. Most of the produce personnel look prepubescent and I was worried that their information about the origin of their produce might be less than accurate so I devised a way to get the answer myself. I was the lady pulling and prodding at the tightly packed produce boxes to uncover the information which is usually printed on the box the produce comes in. In this way (with not just a couple of suspicious stares from others) I was able to find three kinds of onions from Hermiston (a local farm) and potatoes from both Hermiston and Sherwood. But best of all? I discovered, to my great surprise, that the cilantro at Winco comes from Aurora Farms. What a choice piece of luck!!

I may have already mentioned that I have about 125 lbs of dried beans in my pantry (most of them grown locally- from Azure Standard's farm) and there is nothing I love more than a black bean stew with jalapenos, diced tomatoes, tons of cilantro, and lime juice.

Sadly, I will have to do without lime. Extra sad because my friend Angeleen, a farm chick over at Lucky Seven Cat Ranch, suggested that lime juice might be a better liquid in which to freeze cilantro than oil, which is what I was thinking of doing. My mouth is watering at the thought and my mind keeps whispering "one more thing on the list of acceptable non-local foods isn't going to hurt...just one more...who will notice?" It's a slippery slope though. I have already been trying to convince myself that perhaps I should allow yams, and garlic, and why the hell not add peanut butter chips too? And coconut milk...

That's the whole point of this exercise though, isn't it? To actually go without those things and discover what I can do with local fare. Yes, my diet will change a little. Yes my cooking will have to adjust. The whole point is to remember how to do that, like people have done for hundreds of years without gasoline. No one is going to say that it's ideal to only eat salt pork all winter, or fermented fish, but there's no need to be so extreme.

So, I was buying up more fresh (local!) basil at Harvest Fresh, the best most beautiful basil I have ever seen and tasted, to make more pesto for freezing. I asked the cashier if she could find out for me what state the bulk pine nuts came from. I explained that I was taking on a local/seasonal food challenge for a year and was going to run out of pine nuts soon. She asked me what state I wanted them to be from.

That's not the kind of question you want asked...are they going to tell me what I want to hear? I told her anyway. I figure no one in Oregon produces pine nuts. She told me that no one in Oregon, to her knowledge produces pine nuts. Then she did what all people do because I'm not wearing a sign on my forehead that says "I HATE HAZELNUTS" and suggested I use hazelnuts in my pesto. As everyone around here knows, it is like state treason not to like hazelnuts. You have to like them because they are covering the Oregon tilth like a disease.

I have decided that when the dire moment comes that I run out of pine nuts I will use walnuts instead. Pesto with walnuts isn't bad. Not as good as it is with pine nuts, but these are exactly the kind of adjustments that must be made in order to slow the world's trucking miles down.

The cashier went on to let me know that it was pretty DIRE to go the whole winter eating only seasonal food. "You won't be able to eat anything fresh for months. What about vitamin C? You can't eat oranges. What will you do? You'll have to take vitamins."

Nice optimism.

This is a question deserving an answer. What will I do about vitamin C? I'm used to questions like this because my mom raised three kids as vegetarians and she thought out all the nutrition factors and fed us accordingly and so I have never really had to examine how the hell I will get enough protein. (A major concern amongst non-vegetarians.) The beauty in a diet that includes a wide variety of grains, fruits, vegetables, as well as dairy and eggs is that it's actually quite hard to develop a deficiency in protein. We ate beans, grains, tofu, cheese, and eggs which are all high in protein. In addition to this we ate bread which most Americans don't think of as having protein, but it does. So do bananas and avocados. If you eat a lot of all of these things you will never waste away.

The same is true for vitamin C. While it is certainly much easier to get a huge hit of vitamin C from eating an orange, and this is desirable for anyone who doesn't eat anything else with vitamin C in it, there is vitamin C in a lot of fruits and vegetables in smaller amounts. Potatoes have it, tomatoes have it (even after canning), and gooseberries (which grow very well here, by the way) all have significant amounts of it. But listen to this: 1 cup of cooked cauliflower has 69 mgs vitamin C, 1 cup of cooked Kale has 100 mgs of vitamin C, 1 raw sweet green pepper has 94 mgs of it, and best of all... 1 medium stalk of broccoli has 160 mgs of vitamin C.*

1 medium orange has 85 mgs of vitamin C in it.

That's all?

The recommended daily allowance of vitamin C is 75 for women, and 90 for men.

Suddenly I have a hankering to eat some fresh broccoli which I just saw, (and didn't buy), at the farmer's market. I'm also kind of thinking I better start thinking of putting some up in the freezer. So now I understand why every one's always pushing broccoli around as this uber-healthy vegetable. Turns out it kind of kicks dark leafy greens in the butt.

Has all this talk made you realize what a serious and scientific experiment I am conducting on myself? I think you should be very impressed by now.

To tell you the truth, I had no doubts that I would be able to get the nutrition needed through the fall and winter, even with my SUPER STRICT** challenge. My mom knew all this stuff when I was growing up and she took it seriously enough to teach me how to eat well. It's just too bad I learned to love cheese so much, but that's not her fault. I don't have exact nutritional values constantly floating through my head. So if you suddenly said:

"Quick! Angelina-tell me how much vitamin A is in a cup of butternut squash?!"

I would look at you with that distantly pleasant stare that a moose has while chewing cud. And I'd probably say:

"Uh, dunno. Maybe 1,000 IUs?"***

I would be wrong by 12,000.

But the point is that I only need to take in about 700 IUs of vitamin A a day. My mama already taught me that eating a helping of winter squash with butter is really good for me. When you grow up knowing this stuff you don't know the precise numbers, but you can look at what you've been eating lately and have a pretty good idea if you are going to get scurvy or not.

And seriously, everyone should be concerned about landing themselves in scurvyville.

So the verdict for today is that eating locally and seasonally, even if that means consuming lots of home canned and frozen goods****, is not automatically going to make you wither up like a dried apple, which is literally every one's worst nightmare, is it not?






*All of this nutritional information has been taken from Laurel's Kitchen (the 1978 copyright), the hippie cookbook that helped people understand how to be healthy vegetarians. They got all of their information through Standford and Berkeley. I have never once made one of their recipes but their nutrition charts for all basic fruits, vegetables, grains, and dairy have been thoroughly thumbed by me over the course of the last ten years. It is an invaluable guide.

**That is not laughter you hear in the background.

***Vitamin A is measured in IUs which I am too lazy to look up and explain. You should consume 700 if you're female and 900 if you're male. Check the USDA charts for yourself. These charts are more current than the Laurel's Kitchen RDA charts are. The USDA has since decided we need more vitamins and minerals in our diets.

****The USDA says that home canning and freezing is likely to retain more nutrients than commercially canned goods because the produce is usually put up when at it's peak and eaten sooner than commercially canned goods usually are. There really is a difference.

At The Starting Gate...
Day one of my local/seasonal eating challenge.

Pink Banana Squash from the garden.

This is the first day of my year of eating seasonally and locally. There have been some more discoveries in the last couple of days which have seemingly complicated my challenge. While there is a plethora of dairy activity here in Oregon, most of the stores around here sell milk that comes from Washington. ??? Philip tells me I will have to go to Safeway or Harvest Fresh to find the one company he knows of that makes milk locally. Which I know is going to be expensive because both those stores have inflated prices. It's kind of funny because we have, less than a half a mile from our house, a huge creamery. They make butter. So a ton of cream goes through there but you can't buy milk from them.

I have a tremendous urge to make some roasted tomato soup. Tomatoes are almost finished here because of the rains and cold weather which causes tomatoes to split and then rot. I am trying to convince Lisa K. to take me to Bernards farm today for one last bucket of tomatoes. I'm trying to lure her because she desperately wants me to make some delicious eggplant sandwiches for her but I've explained that the only local source for eggplant is at Bernards. I feel like I might wither and die if I can't have (and freeze) some tomato soup. OK, that's a bit dramatic, I admit. Lisa K. feels that being dragged to one farm on her vacation is quite enough. I told her that if she wants to avoid farms, she needs to plan her visits to me between November and May. How can anyone not love visiting farms????????

Alright, alright...I know. It would be the same as if she took me to a boating convention. Or a scuba diving club. I get that we're all different. Lots of people don't find farm visiting all that exciting and can't for the life of them understand why I would. Takes all types.

I'll have to provide a very strong lure. I can't take my scooter out there in this stormy weather. I do ride it in the rain, but I won't take it on a fast highway in these conditions. Tomato soup...tomato soup...can't you feel the warm sunshine of it in your body just thinking about it?

So, about citrus. I can live without oranges or tangerines for one year. But lemons? This is not something I have thought a lot about. I'm thinking about it now because I don't think there's a local source for them. Growing lemons here is possible, but most people don't because they require serious winter protection. What I realized is that all the teas I make in the winter to help stave off colds or to soothe myself when I've already got them require lemon. I don't think they would be quite as effective without the lemon. If I can find a local source then I need to get a GIANT bag of lemons and freeze them in ice cube trays. This is what I'll do. So if anyone around here knows of a local source for lemons...please speak up.

All day yesterday I was thinking about a drink my mom used to make us sometimes as kids. I have to admit that she made us fast once a week and this was supposed to sustain us. She used to heat up lemonade and sprinkle cayenne pepper into it. Very warming. I mean, this can kick the pants off of a cold. All day yesterday I was kind of wishing I had some.

If not? Well, this is one of those things experiments like this teach us, right? Taking on a challenge like this helps us really understand just how much we've come to depend on oil to fulfill our every desire. What I try to think of is how it was for people back when only things that could really travel dusty bumpy roads well, for months at a time, would be available from outside your area. Spices, for example. We often think that our quality of life depends on being able to get our hands on absolutely everything from everywhere. Modern shipping did improve our lives quite a bit, especially for areas with extremely short growing seasons. But I think many of us, myself included, have failed to recognize that the overall price for this kind of global grocery store is much greater than any of us thought it could be, and the consequences are pretty dire.

Oil spills from ocean liners, pollution from airplanes which carry much of our exotic produce to us in the winter, pollution from trucks, and decreased quality of goods due to picking them unripe, or growing varieties strictly for their traveling abilities... all of this means that every one's quality of life is actually deteriorating. Not enough clean air and water are very serious problems. So, if I look at it like this, and turn my appetite to the things that grow well here, where I am, I think I will be able to adjust to a more locally focused life.

I think I should mention here, though, that I fully intend to plant lemon trees in my yard this year. I don't have room in my house to bring them inside in the winter, but I think they should be alright if I make really large coverings for them for the coldest parts of the season. I've seen such coverings in Northern California where it does actually get as cold as it does here, sometimes, killing off unprotected citrus plants.

A couple of nights ago I finally watched "Babette's Feast" which many MANY people have told me I would love. It's foreign so I did have my reservations. Foreign films are often quite depressing, except for British films. I have to say that everyone who recommended it was right. I loved it. I loved the bleak landscape* in it (I told Philip that I would like to take a little retreat to that pretend village, for a little alone time) but in spite of a bleak landscape it wasn't at all depressing. I loved the food preparations in it. It was marvelous. I will admit that it really made me wish I was knitting again so I can knit myself some cozy shawls. However, we all have to draw the line somewhere. Maybe in another year or two I can take it up again. Oh, but I can make myself a wool cape!! I want to wear puritan style clothes from the eighteen hundreds. Yes I do. Watching that film made me realize that I need to get a new pair of boots.

Boot love.

Portland is such a lovely city. It was raining most of the time we were there and I thought it was such an inviting place to be in such weather. It did make me think of you Violette Crumble! I was thinking about how the grey rainy weather gets to you and I was thinking about how you are in a better overall climate for your spirit now. Still, I was thinking about how you lived there for quite a while and I wished I could have met up with you.

I need to go get dressed so I can package up all of the orders that need to ship out today. Then I need to go and pluck all the winter squashes from my yard that are laying around in mud now. Then I will bend my mind to the job of convincing Lisa K. that it's in her best interests to take me to the farm.

An Update: My Back Went Out. Shit.
!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*Part of the reason it is so difficult to figure out what films I would like is that what depresses me is not easy to know. A bleak landscape actually makes me feel scoured clean, it makes me feel weirdly happy. Like rocky cold beaches or rugged unfriendly looking hills. What depresses me most are bad relationships between people. Or people who are small minded and mean. Or people who have lost all hope. I find relationships difficult to watch. But give me a cold grey windy rainy landscape and I come alive. Oh it feels so good!

The Seasonal/Local Challenge

(still setting the parameters)

I interviewed the produce manager at my local health food store to find out when the seasonal local vegetables trickle down to nothing. It's grim, folks. Basically, all local sources for produce dry up within the next two weeks. Then there may still be something available from within the state for another couple of weeks, then it's pretty much all from California and Washington. I have to say that I have been counting on being able to get at least some local swiss chard through out the winter. Swiss chard can be put in a great many dishes to add an impressive array of nutrients.

So I now need to make some choices, before it's too late. I think I'll need to plant my own large bed of swiss chard. I don't think it's too late for that. I would need to build a kind of cold frame to protect it from the snow and the more serious frost. Chard is pretty winter hardy, but it still will probably require some protection. I'm now wishing I had planted my fall garden as I had hoped to do, with leeks, spinach, fava beans, garlic (not too late for garlic, but it wouldn't be ready for harvest until next summer anyway), and lettuce. Lettuce there should still be time for, but it would definitely need a cold frame.

The main question is: should I shift some of my few staples to my non-local list? Carrots won't be available here once the farmer's market is over in two weeks. Same with beets. Celery is never local anyway. Is this a cop out though? See, I think it's not all that crazy to get through the winter with potatoes, carrots, onions, garlic, chard, celery, and beets. You can do a lot with those items. There's plenty of nutrients available to stay healthy and not get scurvy*. Especially when eaten with plenty of winter squash which is generally available from local sources all winter due to it's storability. But if I nix all those things I actually don't know what I would do.

I plan to go to the farm that Vespabelle mentioned and see about buying a bunch of potatoes and onions and storing them in my pantry. That means I can still stick with local sources for those, especially if I can buy a bunch in bulk and find out how to store them for a couple of months. Good. But what about the other items? Opinions, please.

The other option is to stick with the plan as I laid it out and do a shit-load more of preserving for the next two weeks. I can pickle cauliflower. I can do some pressure canning of carrots, beans, corn, and maybe even celery. I could make a bunch of meals ahead of time to cover a couple of months worth of no local produce. I think the first asparagus really doesn't show up until March or April though. That's a long time. That really makes it a four month stretch of all canned and frozen goods.

There is another option, which is to allow myself to buy canned or frozen produce that's made within my state. What this essentially means is that I will still be sticking to my local and seasonal goals, but I just won't have been the sole provider of my preserved goods. This perhaps makes the most sense. I have to admit though, that I really love preserving food and there's pride in filling your freezer and your pantry with your own hard work and to buy from a company what you can make better for yourself feels a little annoying.

I am thinking out loud as I go here. I did just think of a way to not buy celery for four months. I primarily use it in soups. I am counting on making two soups a week for the four months of winter, if I made a soup base (not a stock) where I cooked onions and celery together with just a small amount of stock I could freeze it in portions. I would only need sixteen portions. That's not too bad. I could include carrots in the base too, bought locally, that would at least account for quite a lot of my carrot use. I almost never makes soups without carrots.

What would you do if you were going to take on a challenge like this? How best to maintain the integrity of the challenge while accommodating the need to eat a nutritionally sound diet? The main thing is to find out what it's like to eat locally and seasonally for a year. That is obviously going to impose a more limited diet. The point is that I'm not going to have very many options, and I know that. Yet, even within the parameters I've already set out there are so many minute decisions to be made.

By the way, in case any one still doesn't know it, I'm a vegetarian. (Not a vegan.) I don't eat fish, chicken, or any kind of flesh. I do eat dairy and eggs. There are all kinds of fancy words for different kinds of vegetarians now, but growing up as a vegetarian there was really only one. If you were a vegetarian you didn't eat flesh. I don't eat flesh.

My version of a flank steak is a great big baked potato with butter and cheddar cheese. Or an omelet. I could live off of potatoes. Oh, wait, I actually did for quite a while when Philip and I were first married. It's not a bad life, actually. I'm lucky there's so much dairy here. No problem getting butter and cheese from Oregon. I can always live off of baked potatoes I suppose. Which would be so wonderful...I don't let myself eat them very often anymore because of the whole fattening issue.

I want to hear from you all. Remember: the spirit of the challenge is to eat as locally and seasonally as possible for one year. The biggest challenge being to get through the winter without scurvy. What concessions can I make without defeating the experiment? Speak up, I need help here designing my plan. Whatever you do, don't make suggestions based on how to prevent me from having to work too hard, if you think I should do a bunch more preserving, say so. I'll decide for myself if I can do it or not. Don't be shy, I need your help!



*What every American is secretly worried about, right? That's why every one's eating at McDonald's.

Saying Goodbye To Many Miles Of Road

The guidelines for my year of eating both locally and seasonally.

Over the past few days I have been looking at labels of origin and compiling lists of things that might not fit into my local/seasonal challenge. I have also been considering which list of things will still be acceptable in spite of being made far away. Some things aren't that hard to say goodbye to for a year. Other things, however, feel more painful. One of those things is yogurt. I love yogurt, but only one kind: "Nancy's" which I was sure was made in California. I hate yogurt that has a congealed texture, or that is too loose, or that is too rich. Nancy's is the perfect yogurt. I love that it's tart and firm. (Oh dear, that sounded a little different than I meant it to). Last night I checked the label and guess what?

It's made in Eugene Oregon!!!!

I never thought I would feel such joy and excitement over such a small detail. I actually plan to make some of my own yogurt using a very cool early 1970's yogurt maker that Lisa B. has lent me, but the culture I plan to borrow is from Nancy's. It's also such a relief to know that if I don't like my home made results or if I am unable to make it at times, I can buy Nancy's and be within my challenge limits. Ahhh....the simple pleasures.

On the other hand, here are a few things I will no longer allow myself to buy as of October 1st:

• Sierra Nevada beer (although Oregon makes many fine beers, Sierra is my all time favorite and it's hard to imagine not drinking it for a whole year.)

• Feta cheese. I will have to learn to make it for myself (I've been wanting to anyway). All the feta cheese that's affordable (such as that found at Trader Joe's) is not local. All the local feta is too expensive to eat considering my capacious appetite for this, my favorite cheese on earth.

• Parmesan. Same with this staple in my diet. I don't think there's a single local source for it. This will be hard. When I'm trying to lose weight, Parmesan digs me out of the no-cheese blues. It can spruce up any meal without adding unbearable mountains of calories to it. So much flavor in one tablespoon of it. I don't believe they make any in Oregon. If they do, I suppose this may end up being one of those spendy splurges.

• Kalamata olives. My diet is heavy in these but as I'm already allowing myself to continue to buy imported olive oil from Trader Joe's, I felt that these should not be allowed.

• Coconut milk. I don't cook a lot of Asian style food, but there is one winter squash soup I love to make that calls for it and I'll have to come up with a satisfying alternative.

• Dried pasta. This could be tricky. Finding local sources for pasta. One of my favorite types of pasta is angel hair and I've never seen an artisan angel hair pasta. I can, however, make my own ravioli, spaghetti, and fettuccine. I have a great pasta attachment for my Kitchenaide mixer and I've used it a lot. So I'll just have to rely on myself more for this.

• Pine nuts. Well, this sucks. I've really come to enjoy them, not only in pesto (yes, I know you can substitute walnuts for the pine nuts, but I don't prefer to) but I also love them in salad and there's a great casserole that calls for them. I will look for local sources, but I have a feeling Oregon doesn't produce them.

• Goulden's Mustard. I don't eat a lot of mustard, but ever since I stopped buying bottled salad dressing and started making my own a few years ago I have come to love the zing that this mustard adds to it. I'm addicted. It's the perfect mustard. I don't care for Dijon types because they have a horse-radishy essence that I don't care for. So, what to do? Make my own? Seems like I just might have to. I've been wanting to make mustard for a while now, this offers the perfect excuse.

• Avocados. I could eat two avocados a day. I love them that much. My mother always said about them that they are one of nature's most perfect foods. Most Americans only know them as one of the most fattening luxury foods. But they are packed with potassium, protein, healthy oils for the skin, and other nutrients. I haven't eaten them in a couple of months just because they have been expensive and then I stopped shopping at Safeway, the only place to get an occasional deal on them. It's hurt me to be without them. Sometimes I cry myself to sleep at night.

• Bananas. The other perfect food. I love bananas too. All my life I have consumed large quantities of bananas. I haven't been eating as many of them as usual lately, but I think this may prove challenging, to go an entire year without this fine life sustaining fruit.

There are others, obviously, but after these items it becomes much harder to spot the long miles in my pantry that I'm going to miss.

Here is my official list of exceptions to the local rule:

1. Oils: olive and canola

2. Coffee

3. Spices

4. chocolate

5. baking soda/powder

6. vinegar

Here is a list of acceptable out of season produce that I will buy whenever needed due to their status as prime candidates for a root cellar which is still in keeping with a more environmentally sound way of eating:

potatoes

onions

garlic

carrots

beets

celery*

However, all of these things must be procured locally. That may be more challenging. My year of eating locally and seasonally will begin October 1st. So some things I need to find out are whether anyone around here sells local onions and garlic, and if so, how long into the season are they available? I know there are potatoes grown locally, but they aren't organic. With potatoes being such a staple in my diet (I make very few soups without them, for example) I am going to have to make a tough choice. Do I drop my dedication to only buying organic potatoes, or do I not buy any for a year if I can't find local organic sources? If Harvest Fresh carries local garlic but only for a finite period of time, I need to buy a ton of it, chop it up, mix it with olive oil, and freeze it in cubes so that I can use it throughout the year.

Perhaps many of you are thinking that this is an extreme experiment and don't know why anyone need go to so much trouble. I think it's important that you all know that I'm excited to do this. I love a good bit of experimentation, provided it isn't sexual in nature (I'm so conventional like that...so disappointing, I know). I love to get in the mix and find things out for myself. I don't think the parameters I've set for myself are particularly strict either. I am defining local as being made or grown within my state (Oregon). That's still quite a bit of scope and road for my food to travel.

The reason I'm doing this is to go through a deep learning experience with food, to find out what eating locally and seasonally really means to me personally, what it feels like, and to flush out all the foods that I indulge in without giving any thought to where they come from, how far they've traveled and how old they must be. The purpose is to make myself aware of absolutely everything I put in my mouth for a year. It's like a corporate and crude-oil dependent food detox. The point will be to educate myself, to learn to make much more conscious decisions about what I put on my table. I seriously doubt I could commit to a lifetime of no avocados or kalamata olives, and that's not the point. I don't think any of us need to strictly dedicate ourselves to local and seasonal foods.

However, if we all made more conscious choices, I think we'd find ourselves naturally choosing fresher food with less road burn.

Doing this isn't meant to make anyone else feel defensive about their own habits. This is about my own personal choices and how they might be shaped if I set my food dials a little differently. This is all about how I am a serious food geek and I want to know for myself how it would feel to have these limitations imposed on me. In some measure it will teach me how it used to feel to set the table when you didn't have a million international food choices available to you. It will give me (I believe) a greater understanding of how my forbears ate and shopped. I love connecting with the past that way. It gives the present so much more heft and meaningful context.

Now, for a couple of off topic bits...It's now been 11 days since Max's second nose cauterization and I'm happy to say that he still has not had a nose bleed. This is definitely cause for celebration! Last night he displayed some serious temper in which he engaged in his favorite trick of tensing his whole body up to show us how mad he is, it makes all the blood rush to his face, which in the past often resulted in a very dramatic bloody nose. This time he just reminded me of the Ben Stiller character in the movie "The Mystery Men". The guy whose super power is to get really mad.

On a final note: I finally cracked open one of my jars of Silvan Berry jam and I have got to report that it is SO GOOD I MIGHT NOT SHARE ANY. No, I will. But one thing I know for sure, if I can't find any sources for them next year (this year's source was selling off the Silvan Berry acres and planning to ditch the berries) then I am going to have to find a way to purchase some canes for my own yard. I will need more of these wonderful berries. Oh yes. I'd give you a piece of toast generously slathered in it if I could. Oh boy, that's what I'm going to go eat right now.


*Again, this is an exception. Both not seasonal and not local, I really don't see how I can cook a season of winter soups without it.

A Seasonal Year

I'm kind of sad to be winding down with the canning. My back will be happy. I have a hard time winding down because my squirrel instincts say to bury nuts as long as there are nuts to bury. There's still tomatoes out there. Some late season corn, some green beans, zucchini, and more peppers. I should keep going...keep picking...keep storing things in my cheeks... Eventually you must pack up the picking bags, the canning salt, the ever present canner, and move on to other endeavors.

One of the things I'm going to be doing is looking for a local e-bay consignment facility to liquidate all my store stock that isn't stuff I made. I'm paring back and simplifying Dustpan Alley. This is going to take some time and tedious sorting. The great thing is that I am quite clear now on what I need to be doing, what I ought to have been doing all along. Once I've revamped my website and blog (they will be combined in the near future so that they are in one location) I will probably have to still go get work. Part time hopefully. Whatever Dustpan Alley is able to become, it will take time. So the goal is to clean it up, and also clean up my own house so that I can manage both much more easily even if I have to work outside the home. I'm taking the pressure off of my business to help us out of our dark financial times.

In the meantime, I'll be learning to do cool homestead-y things like using the tomato liquids from my canning to cook beans in. Isn't that totally depression era style thinking? I'm ridiculously proud of having done this. I have another big bowl of watery tomato juice today so the beans I made yesterday will go in my FREEZER! (See how useful my freezer is?) I will make another batch today. It worked very well.

The beans cooked up into a rich smelling thick plain stew. I never use a crock pot to cook meals in because I have had nothing but poor results from them. Lisa B. mentioned using a crock pot to cook beans in though and I've been wanting to try it for a few months. I got rid of my crock pot years ago but Philip bought this one so we could serve hot cider in the store, but his ulterior motive was to then make real gesso in it using rabbit skin powder. Isn't that disgusting? I think he will have to get himself another crock pot for that purpose. This one is for cooking beans in now.

I need help with something I have on my mind. I am thinking about challenging myself to eat seasonally for one year. Coming up with the parameters for such a challenge is not so easy though. You can't rely on grocery stores to guide you in what's seasonal because even health food stores are importing things from around the world; what isn't seasonal for us right here right now is in season somewhere else. I want to eat more locally too, but I think to restrict myself to only truly local as well as seasonal might be too much to do all at once. On the other hand, why not? How about I define local as within my own state? That's still fairly broad. Can you help me devise a plan?

Here's what I have so far:

• I was thinking that I would not buy any commercially canned goods for a year. That's my starting point. When we put things by ourselves it's very nearly always from local sources or from things you've grown yourself.
  

• I was also thinking I would not buy any commercially frozen vegetables for a year. Though I will say that I hardly ever buy frozen vegetables anyway.
  

• Anything Max eats is not a part of this challenge because he eats so few things anyway, I'm not messing with him. The challenge is for me and Philip who has agreed to participate.

• We will only eat seasonal produce. But this is hard to figure out, as I said. I haven't had a fall garden here yet so how do I know when to stop buying cabbage, broccoli, and cauliflower?

• During the winter I will include the following staples on my list because most of them I could have conceivably grown myself and stored in a root cellar for most of the winter. If I had a farm, that is. So I will allow myself: potatoes, celery*, onions, garlic, beets, winter squash, and carrots.

• I think I'm going to scramble my bahookie into gear and get a bed of lettuce, spinach, and chard growing in my own garden. At some point, probably right around Christmas, I think the only thing that will be "in season" are hardy winter greens like kale and chard. Greens that can withstand some frost.

I would like this to be a local challenge as well. One year. The idea is to find out what it feels like to eat in such a way that is more connected to the natural cycles of the earth, that uses a lot less energy to create (less oil to transport being one way in which eating locally saves energy) and in accordance with the spirit of urban homesteading, which to me is living life in as self sustaining a way as possible in a more urban or suburban context. We don't all have farms but we can use the local farms to supplement our food stores, we can grow some things in our own gardens, we can do a lot for ourselves, even in a concrete jungle, than most people push themselves to do.

Obviously I need to stop re-watching Firefly episodes and start reading more books for inspiration such as Barbara Kingsolver's "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle".

What will I be missing out on in such a challenge? Imported foods for one. No kalamata olives for a year? What about Parmesan? How far do I take it? No bananas for the rest of my life? No avocados? Should there be a short list of acceptable foreign products? I think that would spoil the spirit of the whole thing.

If I did the local challenge that means I'll have to make my own feta cheese because although there are some amazing cheese artisans around here, I won't be able to afford to eat their products. We are lucky though that Oregon has so much produce, dairy, and other agricultural products available. One of my favorite flour mills is less than fifty miles from here. Most or all of the bulk beans I bought were grown less than fifty miles from here too.

Spices will have to be excluded though. There is no way I'm going to find salt made here in Oregon. Though I can get (and have been using) a salt that is made in Utah which is a state over from us. That's not too bad. (That's the really expensive salt that i love because it's kind of pinkish in color.)

I don't want to do this to torture myself or make my modern life more complicated, in some ways I think it will simplify things. I very much doubt I can face a lifetime of no avocados or kalamata olives, but one year seems doable. A year in which to shift the way I shop, preserve, garden, and cook. A year in which to really appreciate what life was like before trucking took over. Before cargo planes made it possible to ship produce.

Perhaps I could talk to the produce manager at Harvest Fresh to find out what local produce is available at different times of the fall and winter and when those sources dry up. They do try to buy local produce all year round. So I might get a clearer picture from that.

Oh yes, and I am not going to throw out any foods in my pantry that don't match this challenge, that would be a total waste and I can't afford to do it. I have a few jars of kalamatas for example, which I intend to eat. But I won't buy any more of them.

Well, it's eleven am and I have a bunch of food to finish up processing. I'm not even out of my jammies yet. Off I go....


*celery being the one that isn't storable for the winter. But I'm not sure I can cook without it. Maybe I should take it off the list and just learn? It's certainly a cool weather vegetable. But when does it stop being in season?