We had an interesting talk last night, an "introduction to the 100-mile diet", so named  because my diet is such a "work-in-progress".  One of the questions was whether my family accepts this sort of diet easily.  The answer is no, as readers of this blog already suspect.

So for reality check, in parentheses, I have included what I actually expect the kids to eat...

Meals for this week (kale, carrots, beans, potatoes, garlic, tomatoes are from Cure Farm CSA; onions, broccoli, eggplant and basil are from the market, Cure farmstand and Jay Hill farm):

- buffalo burgers and broccoli (the broccoli works for 2 kids out of 3)

- onion tart with kale (um, no... sounds like a macaroni and cheese night for the kids...)

- tomato salad, green beans with hard boiled eggs and skillet potatoes (they had eggs mostly, some tomatoes)

- roasted potatoes, carrots, eggplant (2 will eat this, 1 will have probably a peanut butter sandwich instead)

- pesto with pasta (I do have to omit the pesto for my 6 year old; but a few months ago I had to omit it for everyone, so this represents progress)

From Cure Farm, we had another exciting box of vegetables. The potatoes and fennel, along with some carrots, broccoli and a little garlic, were served roasted with poached egg. The three heads of lettuce are outrageously good. That dark-leafed one has these incredible buttery inner leaves which are simply the best I have ever had.

I have to mention the fruit share, as well, which is turning out to be kind of like Christmas every Wednesday. This week we had the last of the strawberries, as well as lots of cherries and the first of the apricots. These apricots were simply amazing, and within a day, interestingly, they became a little mealy, kind of like what you get at the store. Still good (my husband ate half a dozen), but not like they were on day 1. Would have been amazing in a crisp... oh well, next time.

OK, on with the vegetables. Lettuce is becoming a daily habit. The beets, I have finally had enough of. I can eat more beet greens, but I am not sure how to keep up with the beets themselves. I may try some raw recipes. I will be blanching and freezing the snow peas, as we have had enough of those too. The kids never really took to them, but they will be good in some winter stir-fry. I'll be exploring further Saturday at the market.

So it's carrots (maybe glazed with mint?), snow peas (here's a hint: all the recipes on epicurious recommend boiling them first, for either 30 or 60 seconds, then stir frying them, maybe in sesame oil). There were two kinds of kale, and I might just steam or stir fry the kale, then dress with lemon and oil (geez, it is time to find some local sunflower oil!!), and fennel.

OK, fennel you may not be familiar with. Actually you can do anything you like with it. Eat it raw in salads (slice it very thin, mix in parsley, radishes, a little fennel top, and dress with oil and vinegar; roast it; saute or braise it; or make a gratin. There is a recipe at epicurious, that is generally well-rated. I am making Alice Waters' from "The Art of Simple Cooking" - it blanches the fennel first, for 5 minutes in salted water, then adds a thin white sauce made with butter and flour, and equal proportions of milk and fennel blanching liquid. Then of course, a bunch of grated parmesan cheese.

Other new produce available as of last Saturday at the farmer's market include new potatoes, collard greens and garlic. The garlic from Jay Hill Farm was unusually smooth roasted, with an incredible flavor - look for them next Wednesday at the market, or order directly.

The Western Slope cherries are worth their weight in gold - for a recipe that will cause your family to worship the ground you walk on, try a cherry-almond crisp. My version of that is as follows:

CHERRY-ALMOND CRISP
Fruit
7 cups sweet cherries, pitted 

½ cup sugar
(or more to taste)
1 to 1 ½ tablespoon cornstarch

1 teaspoon kirsch (clear cherry brandy) or brandy
Topping
1/3 cup whole almonds, chopped – or somewhat fewer

½ cup flour

1/3 cup (packed) golden brown sugar

1/3 cup old-fashioned oats

1/8 teaspoon salt

¼ cup (1/2 stick) chilled unsalted butter, diced
Vanilla ice cream

For Fruit:
Preheat oven to 375°F. Generously butter 13×9x2-inch glass baking dish. Combine all ingredients in large bowl. Transfer to prepared dish. Bake until fruit is tender and juices bubble thickly, about 50 minutes. Cool in dish. (Can be made 4 hours ahead. Let stand at room temperature.)

For Topping

Preheat oven to 375°F.
Place almonds in medium bowl. Add flour, brown sugar, oats and salt.
Mix together. Add butter and rub in with fingertips until mixture resembles coarse meal. Sprinkle topping over fruit.
Bake until fruit is heated through and topping is golden brown and firm to touch, about 25 minutes. Serve crisp warm with ice cream.

Yesterday, I made pea soup from my garden. For full disclosure, the English, or shelling peas I grow bear no resemblance to what you can find at Whole Foods. The recipe I used for the soup, from Alice Waters "The Art of Simple Cooking", called for water (not broth) and onions, and "very fresh" peas boiled for just five minutes (after you've softened the onions in butter for a while and added water). Maybe you can discuss this with a farmer when shelling peas appear at the market. The Longmont peas at the store just are not that sweet. Not awful, we enjoyed them, but mine ("canoe peas" from Territorial Seeds) are better. I don't know yet how long they will produce - they look suspiciously shorter than my garden neighbor's pea plants - or how well they will do with the 90 degree temperatures, but they are worth it for the taste.

To round out yesterday's meal, I boiled some beets and made a salad with greens, feta cheese and California ingredients (oranges and pecans). This is a salad we used to eat every week in winter when I was with a CSA near San Francisco. It is so my favorite way to eat beets I could not resist the non-local touches. The salad would be fine also with strawberries and local nuts, I'm sure. The dressing consists of one part tamari sauce, to two parts olive oil, to three parts balsamic vinegar. The nuts get toasted and then doused with tamari and maple syrup. I promise I'll tinker with it to make it local, since I think the beets will keep coming a good part of the year.

In case you think my kids are saints for putting up with this, so far they mainly have been eating peanut butter sandwiches, breaded chicken cutlets (maybe a step up from the nuggets...), and omelets. However, 2 out of three were happy with the roasted vegetables, and all have been snacking on peas of all sorts and strawberries from the garden. So it continues to be a (not entirely hopeless) work in progress.

Tonight, I would like to make pasta with beet greens, since we have so many. Tomorrow, I will visit the market for more food. We'll still have onions, beets, braising greens and snap peas from the CSA, but some carrots, turnips perhaps, cheese of course, and cherries I hope will round out our local eating week.

We made parsley and garlic scape pesto last night, with store-bought pasta because I had run out of eggs, and strawberries from the fruit share.

Other meals for the week will include:
- onion tart and salad
- carrot soup and salad
- duck with broccoli (Eastern Plains Food Co-op delivery this week)
- turkey burgers with chard (the turkey is from wherever - an experiment to see how we will live without ruminant animal meat)
- a stir-fry involving snap peas

I ran into a mom from my kids' school who was at the market picking up her CSA share. She was saying two things that struck me:
1. Her farm announced earlier in the year that high fuel prices would cause them to provide less produce than usual (they apparently gave folks a chance to get their money back...)
2. My friend had been told by someone else that the CSA is not really a way to get a major part of your produce, but that we should think of it more as a gesture we make that supports our local farms.

I had several thoughts in response to this:
- In a lean year, such as this is, if only for the cost of fuel, the point of the CSA is to share in the farmer's problems. So maybe we'll have a bumper crop and get our "money's worth", but it is quite correct that we otherwise get less produce for the same money.
- I disagree that CSA is mainly a way to support the farm. I think CSA farmers put a lot of thought, planning and work providing a variety of produce and trying to actually feed us. The "large" share, which is supposed to keep two vegetarians satisfied, costs only $30/week, and predictably, only begins to provide food for two adults who cook every day. I understand that these numbers may be in response to what the average Boulderite will commit to, especially as most of us have a conniption at the thought of needing to cook every single day to keep up with a box of produce.

However $30/week of food does not go far, on the farm or at the grocery store. I may be changing my tune in the summer and fall, but for now, I supplement with other local food sources. Coastalfields, interestingly, has tried to factor in what a person would truly eat, includes eggs and maybe grains in their boxes, goes year round, and otherwise goes out on a limb to actually support life as an example for a re-localized food supply. Their estimate is that two adults who cook all their meals would spend $2915 per year, or $56 per week, or they offer a $75 box pre-planned to feed two for a week, complete with recipes. They also are devoted to environmental consciousness, and won't grow strawberries because they use too much water. Enter chokecherries and prickly pear. That sort of effort will be crucial if/when oil really fails and the food supply re-localizes in earnest.

Recipes that worked:
- a soup using spinach, sorrel and lettuce allowed me to make a serious dent in my pound of lettuce and diversify that salad a bit
- stir-fried leeks, with turnip and beet greens continues to be a reliable way to enjoy the dark leafy greens I always used to put off cooking
- the turnips are best raw!
- roasting vegetables also turns out to be a fast reliable way to proceed. You can also sprinkle hard-boiled egg over everything to make it more filling
- I thought the bok choi was good stir-fried, but not that good roasted
- some useful dinners for nights I don't want to try yet another new recipe I have to talk everyone into include omelet, pasta Alfredo (shockingly easy to make if you don't mind the calories), or just a big salad with sprinkled nuts and goat cheese.
- dried beans are another useful food to have around - I've added it to soups and salads to help stave off the hunger that comes from being used to more filling food.

So it's week 2 and we're keeping up with the boxes so far. I realize they are going to get bigger... I think I'm ready!

Celebration dinner tonight included roasted asparagus from Jay Hill Farm with hard boiled egg, green salad with raw turnips and feta cheese (Haystack's), and glazed carrots (the ones that made it home as we ate a bunch at the farm). Then we had homemade strawberry ice cream... I was stuffed an hour ago, but it has not lasted... I don't know what those diet books mean when they say that eating lots of vegetables causes you to feel full - I'm ready for some steak now (just kidding...)

For the rest of the week, I am planning more experiments with the braising greens (I don't have the right touch with those just yet, and traded mine in for some bok choy at the farm today), a bok choy stir fry, roasted bok choy, something based on turnip and radish greens, and perhaps that caramelized onion pizza I never got to last week.

I'm also just now getting to soaking those beans I planned to cook last week. I am following a recipe in "Nourishing Traditions", as the author Sally Fallon is quite focused on digestibility, and adding dried epazote, which is supposed to help with the problematic aspects of beans. I am told that fresh epazote would be better, but I don't have a source.

The fruit share involves more strawberries (hence the strawberry ice cream) which are on the ripe to over-ripe side, so my tentative plan is to make my first strawberry-rhubarb jam tomorrow and hot water bath can it on Friday. I haven't canned in a decade, so wish me luck.

Oh and local-wise, beet sugar may be a better bet than honey for sweetening preserves, as per a previous comment on this blog.

OK, so those of you who have hesitated to get a CSA share can now smirk, and the rest of us will have to wait just a little longer to jump for joy over those thin tender carrots and those sweet incredible peas.

The menu for this week looks like this:
Wednesday - bok choi with quinoa and strawberry shortcake
Thursday - Red beet soup (includes beet greens), beans with epazote (an experiment...) and broccoli if Jay Hill farm still has some
Friday - Turnips with ginger (from Farmer John's cookbook), possibly asparagus from Jay Hill farm, strawberry-rhubarb pie
Saturday - Braising mix with peanuts and chicken legs (those won't be local in this case... but we miss them bitterly around here...) The peanuts are an exception for our household
Sunday - turnip greens with sausage and semolina pasta
Monday - pizza with caramelized Walla-Walla onions and cheese
Tuesday - leftovers, eggs, whatever

I'm expecting this week's grocery shopping to include ginger root (plus some to try to grow), peanuts, chicken legs, anise seeds, milk and leeks (apparently a basic ingredient of the beet soup I'll make a temporary exception for), and strawberries I haven't been able to resist all along, especially with Lucky's selling organic berries for $2/lb...

This week I followed a few recipes I saved several weeks ago:

1. Savory Goat Cheese Tart with Leeks - This is a recipe from Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors. The tart shell she recommends is not low-fat, by any means, but the whole dish is delicious with a salad.

2. Butternut squash soup with Apple and smoked cheddar - from Food and Wine, recipe here.

3. pizza - made the shell myself easily with the bread machine, layered it with olive oil, stir-fried green garlic (from my garden), green onion and kale (from Jay Hill Farm), and smoked cheddar (well, that's not local).

4. I've been having fun with a book called "The Pleasure of Whole-Grain Breads" by Beth Hensperger. I made Buckwheat Bread with Cinnamon, and Anadama Bread (with cornmeal), as well as Buckwheat-Millet Bread. I bought a variety of "exotic" flours, and though much more expensive than wheat flour, you only use about a cup or so per recipe. My only complaint would be that the breads are usually based on unbleached white flour, not whole-wheat. However, I am enjoying the chance to learn how to use millet, wild rice, amaranth seeds, sunflower seeds, and to read about the history of each grain profiled in the book. There are many more recipes I look forward to trying.

5. Sharon Astyk has been running a food preservation and storage class. So far we have focused on storage, which of course is the first step - as you want to know how to store what you grow, buy in season and preserve. It certainly gave me pause to think that FEMA does recommend all households be equipped with two weeks of water (one gallon per person per day) in order to be prepared for a local crisis. Of course we have non-perishable food around, but nothing planned to keep us fed for a week - and that we can eat without using natural gas or electricity. Whether one does believe that apocalypse is nigh (what with oil prices skyrocketing, and the banking system in a pickle), it still makes sense to be prepared for a tornado, say, or an ice storm. Besides most of what I stored experimentally last fall did medium poor - sweet potatoes, squash, leeks, carrots, celery in the fridge. I could use better storage techniques (canning, dehydrating, freezing).

Monday - leftovers
Tueasday - frittata with roasted red bell peppers; mache salad
Wednesday - pasta with onion confit I never got to last week...
Thursday - Spanakopita with frozen spinach (see comments on epicurious recipe)
Friday - boneless leg of lamb
Saturday and Sunday - leftovers

I'm ambitious enough to think I will try to make my own phyllo dough. My mother (who is Greek) spoke highly of one she had once tasted, but though she was a good cook, she never tried to make phyllo dough herself. I'm excited to report my experience to her!! I found a recipe on about.com

Myrto