ecoyear

October is such a great month to eat locally, it is the month highlighted and celebrated by the Eat Local Challenge website. All month, there will be articles of interest to local eaters, food activists and wannabes. Themes covered will include where the movement is going, what sustainable eating might look like, how we can infect our loved ones with our fervor for local ingredients and how we can make it the new trend at potlucks, parties, and even, school lunches.

Look forwards to posts here on these topics, and join the:

Oh my!  I just missed a month - not too bad considering that I've read just about every post and every comment on The Oil Drum lately, as well as The Automatic Earth (when I need ammunition for my discussions among friends of WHY exactly the stock market is headed nowhere but down for the next few months, anyway).

I did, however, empty my chest freezer and make a list of what I managed to preserve for winter.  Then I tried a sample of a month's worth of menus, combining frozen (by me) food, contents of the Abbondanza winter share, and a few (mostly processed) non-local foods.  The non-local foods, by and large, could be local if I made them myself, except I don't.  This includes pasta, mozzarella cheese, and pizza dough.  I did not end up with local grains, partly again because of not starting a local dry goods co-op.  In other words, possible, cheaper even, just inconvenient.

These are dinner menus.  Breakfasts consist of local smoothies, half-local baked goods, or non-local cereal, yogurt with granola or oatmeal.  I eat apples and local cheese, personally, and a hard-boiled egg, many times, but I am immune to the problem of disliking repetitive food, unlike other people I know.

Lunch is similarly not so local.  The kids eat at school.  Yecchh!  Just a statement of my laziness, and my decision to pick dinner as my battleground.  I am afraid though, that tater tots are gaining in popularity faster than homemade soups.  I'm not quitting yet.  Again, I eat leftovers, so I manage to stay local.

Dinner, then, is planned as follows:

1. Broccoli quiche with acorn squash

2. Turnip soup, eggs, corn

3. Pasta with basil or parsley pesto

4. Pizza with tomato sauce, green peppers, goat feta cheese

5. Tabbouleh (I still have a few fresh tomatoes in the fridge...)

6. Stir-fry with cabbage and snow peas

7. Roasted chicken with potatoes and greens - note: I always make chicken stock with the leftovers, and then look for a soup recipe that involves a fair bit of stock to use it up rather than freeze it.

8. Carrot soup, bread and eggplant salad, roasted shallots

9. Broccoli cheese soup

10. Pizza with tomato sauce, mushrooms, mozzarella

11. Roasted brussel sprouts, delicata squash, onions, peppers, garlic, whatever (this was my chance to try two roots that were completely new: scorzonera and salsify - grown by Red Wagon Organic Farm - thanks!)

12. Pulled turkey and corn with greens - this is made by Eastern Plains Food Co-op.  By the way their heritage chickens, including the Standard New Hampshire are delicious.  I haven't quite found a good way to cook the Cornish Game Fowl.  We have heritage Blue Slate turkey planned for Thanksgiving - will be reporting on that.

13. Pasta with tomato sauce

14. Butternut squash soup

15. Ratatouille (previously made and frozen; fast food!!)

16. Pizza with perso, mushrooms and goat cheese

17. Beet soup

18. Mushroom cobbler

19. Tomato soup made from frozen sauce

20. Mom's laziness special: poached egg on whole grain toast

21. Goat cheese souffle with bok choy

22. Leftover chicken with potato gratin

23. Wheat berries with onion, carrots, peppers, leftover chicken

24. Potato leek soup

25. greens with eggs - I have to report on the kale from Abbondanza 2 weeks ago: outrageously good!!

26. Turkey and trimmings

27. Post-thanksgiving fast

28. Face the leftovers turkey soup

29. Annie's Macaroni and Cheese (what really goes on in locavore households after dark...)

30. Don't you have friends? Won't anyone feed you if you begged?

OK, I'm falling down on the job here - no photos of Cure Farm's vegie share, no recipes, no menu plans for the week... The schedule has changed, so we get back late on CSA pickup day, too late to arrange the vegies on the table on my deck and take a photo of them. Instead they get put away in the tiny spots left in one of the two refrigerators I have - I unplugged one in early summer, but it is full now!!

This I can say - my life is still full of food.  Yesterday was the last Wednesday Farmer's Market.  It was hopping and bursting with produce.  Please plan to go on Saturdays and plan to spend!  I don't know what the farmers are going to do with all the extra produce given that fall has been so warm!  Even in my community garden, neglected and dejected as it is, there was basil, parsley, lovage, borage, broccoli, zucchini, corn, tomatoes, green beans and carrots to be had.  I finally picked the single slowly ripening butternut squash, and the aroma from the grapevine was just overwhelming.  I discovered whole new spinach plants (either that or a weed I am completely unfamiliar with) spontaneously sprouting from something I must have scattered 5 months ago - or volunteering from something I let go to seed last fall???

So winter will be here soon enough, but the season for locavores to plan ahead is far from over.

Oh!  Don't miss October peaches - by far the most flavorful of the season so far.  And Honeycrisp apples and red Bartlett pears from First Fruits.  Look for San Marzano tomatoes, they make great sauce - $2 per pound from Cure Farm.  If you haven't had tomatillo salsa, drop by Jay Hill Farm - you don't want to miss it.  There's lots of parsley available, and it is a nice change from basil in pesto.  I am using basil pesto as salad dressing by the way, as well as sandwich condiment.  It's also great a tablespoon or two at a time in soup, so it's a great item to stockpile right now and freeze, either in half-pint jars or in ice cube trays.

Menus this week:

Butternut squash or delicata squash soup - there's a recipe that involves stir-frying three perfectly ripe pears first - I promise to look it up when I have an extra minute.

Leek and potato soup - leeks at the market were availalble from a single vendor - a couple of stalls down from Morton's Orchards.

Corn soup - I am really tired of corn, but the soup freezes well. That will be a good use for the small ears I got from my "late" Silver Queen corn planting, which I abused by hesitating too long to thin the plants - not to mention forgetting (as usual) to fertilize.

Green beans, of course,  Omelets with zucchini from my garden and fresh eggs from Cure Farm.  No the kids won't touch this, but they eat omelets, and our four 4 year old has grown to love what he calls "big egg", which is hard-boiled egg...  On Wednesdays when I am scheduled to get another dozen from Cure Farm, I boil whatever is left from the previous week and keep them for fast food or short order cook item in the door of the fridge.

Pepper casserole with sour cream and melted cheese on top.

Roasted garlic.  We Bee Farms made a brief appearance at the market a couple of weeks ago, as the owner was on sabbatical this year.  I bought their variety bag of garlic, and it has been enormous fun preparing different varieties and discovering the range of tastes available - they have great names too!

My tomato sauce collection is pretty nice, but not up to the goal I had set just yet.  To my surprise, tomatoes continue to appear in my life, now at a reduced price.  The recipe I use most commonly is from Alice Waters and involves a quarter cup of oil and 5 cloves of garlic for each 2 lbs (5 cups) of tomatoes.  She recommends cooking tomatoes for no more than 25-30 minutes. Most of the work is in peeling and seeding them.  I've been playing around with the tomatoes I can find and now have yellow sauce, orange sauce, and red too - I might look for Green Zebras at the market Saturday!!

Another fun thing to do with tomatoes is to freeze them first, which makes them easier to peel, and makes their liquid separate - the result is a very thick tomato sauce.  I might try my hand at ketchup again.  The kids dismissed my last attempt, but my husband liked it...

In summary, this is a great time for the food obsessed!  However, the election is around the corner.  So I say freeze it all for later processing.  Volunteer for the campaign instead!!  There'll be plenty of time to make tomato sauce a month from now.

There was a wealth of vegetables in this week's Cure Farm selection.  The photo can hardly do justice to the variety and quantity we received.  I can plan a week's worth of dinners, certainly, with potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, green beans, bell peppers, hot peppers, basil, eggplant and lettuce.  Let's see, we had tomato sauce on pasta last night, there is red bell pepper soup with potato salad tonight.  Then I will make moussaka (the kids will eat eggs...), and ratatouille.  Then there are the green beansl, and maybe a cucumber salad with yogurt and mint? 

I did attack the tomatoes first, making a bacon-tomato sauce last night.  I found the bacon a little heavy and would recommend something lighter.  The tomatoes are so delicious on their own, it is hardly worth doing anything at all to the sauce.  Then I got started roasting eggplant slices for moussaka - one of these days.  I also made corn soup from leftover corn (last Saturday' s market) and the red bell pepper soup.  Then I found out with utmost surprise that I have run out of onions.  I guess I have been cooking a fair bunch! 

I finally made a wheat berry salad with Farmer John's wheat.  I simmered the berries for 2 hours, and added sauteed onion, and raw carrots and bell peppers.  I seasoned the salad with vinegar and a touch of honey.  It was satisfying and delicious, and I will be eating more of this.  Maybe about once a month.  It is still unfamiliar...

Finally, at the market, I bought edamame, okra and muskmelons.  The okra are presently sunning, sprinkled with salt and vinegar.  It is a way to make them a little tougher so they don't split open while cooking.  This allows them to become soft without becoming slimy I think.  The recipe also insists I don't stir the pot during the hour or two of cooking.  The okra must remain intact!

I hope you are enjoying the season of abundance and buying extra to freeze, can or dehydrate for the winter months ahead!

Once again many delicious foods - I have been loving the edamame (I boil them for 5 minutes and sprinkle salt on them).  We roasted the potatoes, with carrots and peppers.  The cucumbers are awesome with yogurt-mint sauce.   I took a cue from The Kitchen and rubbed goat cheese all over our corn - it disappeared in minutes!  I made pesto with the basil and parsley (parsley pesto is surprisingly delicious - just parsley instead of basil or mixed up with it).

I would definitely be wasting food if I was not preserving it.  I froze cut up peppers and tomatoes.  Along with what I grew in my garden, I have a large bunch of carrots I want to cut up and freeze for soups.  I would like to put some in cold storage as well, but I am not sure how to do the bucket of sand system, and what part of my house will actually be cold enough for the next two months.  I would rather store carrots from October there and freeze the sweet smaller ones that are available now.

Before it gets too cold, I want to make vichyssoise - a cold smooth potato soup.  I also would love to try this tomato bisque - it sound very nice! 

Sorry no photo - the vegies were cooked and eaten before I had a chance to think about it.  My new thing is opening the fridge door wide and putting everything out on the kitchen counter, then deciding on three or four dishes to make (and freeze), then chopping and cooking madly until it's time to pick up the kids.  In the evening, I might re-heat anything I was planning to can and boil the jars after the kids have gone to bed.  Otherwise I tend to burn something as I get distracted by needy children (don't you love the first couple of weeks of school!).

I do suspect I have nowhere near enough preserved for winter.  I'm getting corn again at the market tomorrow, and more eggplant, and waiting on the tomatoes to come at a better deal since I am aiming for 24 quarts of tomato sauce (!).  By the way, I bought a box of imperfect peaches from Ela Family Farms ($20 for 20 lbs) Saturday and the peaches were outstanding.  Most went into peach crisp, peach sorbet (6 peaches and some mint simple syrup) and puree (5 peaches with 1/2 cup of grape juice - sorry not local) to make popsicles next summer.  I know most things officially last 6 months in the freezer but I am hoping this will go for 9 months.

Needless to say I have cut back on bread baking and I am still putting off learning to make yogurt while this deluge of produce continues to occupy my life.  Next I will have to devote my attention to the kids' homework...