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...

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.

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?