This is a close up of the figs I bought at market yesterday. I look forward to these every year - they truly are the best figs in the universe. The difference is that the farmers leave them on the tree till their super ripe. They're really sweet and a little dehydrated, which condenses their figyness.

Lunch yesterday was leftover potatoes, tomato sauce, and the very last of the fontina cheese.

I attempted to make mozzarella again yesterday afternoon. Things went a little better - the curd separated from the whey enough that I could scoop out the curd and kneed it. I did it for a while, but I think I should have kneeded it more - it never got to the super stretchy phase that they describe in the directions. I ended up with two balls of cheese that tasted a lot more like cheese curds than mozzarella.

For dinner I cut up part of one of the cheese balls with a tomato and basil, and sprinkled salt and pepper on top.


We had this with grilled lamb chops and new potatoes. Yet another delicious dinner!

Yesterday evening we went to a bonfire at our friends' house in Mckinleyville and I picked up a dozen more duck and chicken eggs. We brought them a pint of apple-butter for payment. We heated up the rest pf the gallon of cider I bought in Fortuna last Saturday and drank it by the fire.

This morning I made yogurt and sour cream. I was just remarking to Johnny that at least I knew I wouldn't screw these simple things up, when I totally screwed the yogurt up. I mixed up the yogurt (mine from last week) in with the milk and all of a sudden the milk started to curdle. It happened really quickly! I put it in jars, hoping maybe it's not totally screwed up, but I think it is....the sour cream looked fine. I'm so sick of dealing with curds and whey!

I had a glass of milk, figs, and a pluot for breakfast. Lunch was leftover eggplant with tomato sauce and some of my cheese.

Then, just as I was finishing lunch, my wheat hookup called and told me to meet him in Fortuna at the apple orchard in 30 minutes! He had my wheat! I jumped in Johnny's station wagon and was off!!

Fortuna is about halfway between Redway (where the wheat was grown) and Arcata. It took me about 45 minutes to get there. By the time I did, the wheat farmer and the apple farmer were examining a few heads of wheat on the kitchen counter, trying to determine the best way to get the grain out. They were full of enthusiasm for my project and wished me well. The wheat farmer wouldn't let me pay - he said he was just happy I was drawing attention to wheat in Humboldt.

He gave me three sheaves - 2 are Sonora Wheat, which is the variety the Spanish brought here in the 1820s. I've forgotten what he said was the other variety - I'll have to call him and ask.

This what they looked like - each is about 3 feet high.

I stopped on my way home and bought a clean 32 gallon trash can. I unloaded the bundles into the back yard and the threshing began! I divided the sheaves into chunks and bashed them against the side of the trash can, letting the berries fall to the bottom. It worked pretty well, although I still ended up using my hands to break the berries off as well. Johnny came and helped with the second bundle, but it still took about 2 hours.
This is what we got out of the first bundle. The second was about the same.

The hardest part was separating the berries from the chaff. The best way we found was putting it in a metal bowl and blowing on it. Very low tech! The chaff is light and it blew away while the heavier berries remained.









Here the berries are in the bowl. They're not quite totally separated, but we decided to let the project rest till tomorrow.

I'm realizing how precious this wheat is going to be! I didn't get a whole lot from the first two bundles. They're both Sonora wheat, perhaps the other variety will yield a little more... it'll be really interesting to taste the difference between the two.

I'm probably exerting more calories procuring this wheat as I will gain from eating it. I'll savor this bread more than any other I've ever eaten that's for sure.

This is my Saturday market haul and produce I bought at the co-op on Friday. Pretty impressive, huh? It's amazing how hard people think this is, but really, look at everything I can eat. This is the work of 14 different farmers. It's awesome!

Breakfast yesterday was the usual, and lunch was leftover eggs and potatoes from the night before.

After work I did my weekly co-op shopping. I bought:

• 1 1/2 lb ground beef
• 2 large lamb loins (it turns out we have Humboldt County Lamb!)
• 1lb of butter
  
• 1 big kabocha winter squash, 2 poblano peppers, and 2 1/2lb of Flavor Queen Pluots from Willow Creek - this is the very last of these pluots!
  
• 2 red onions, 1 Walla-Walla and 1 bunch of cilantro from Blue Lake
  
• Spring Mix from Bayside
• 3 Comice Pears, 1 Bunch of basil, two big green bell peppers, 2 eggplant, 6lb of tomatoes, and 4 big zucchini from Orleans

Dinner was a bit of a disaster - two nights in a row - I hope I don't make a pattern of it! Right when I got home I diced the tomatoes and started them cooking for sauce. They cooked for an hour or so, and then I started on the challenge of the evening: mozzarella cheese.

The cheese kit I got was recommended by Barbara Kingsolver in Animal Vegetable Mineral. It's supposed to be really easy - you heat a gallon of milk, add a little dissolved citric acid, and then take it off the heat and add a tiny bit of dissolved renit. The kit came with the citric acid and the renit. It's supposed to sit for 6-8 minutes and separate the curds and whey. They you drain off the whey, and shape the curd into a ball. While keeping the whey hot by periodically dipping it into hot water, you kneed it like bread until it's the right consistency. Sounds difficult, but doable....Unfortunately the curd just didn't get firm enough to separate from the whey, and so we ended up dumping it all down the sink. What a waste of a gallon of milk! I'm determined to try it again!

In the midst of the cheese making I had sliced up two big eggplant, spread a tiny bit of butter on each slice, and baked them. By the time the cheese experiment was done, the eggplant had cooked nicely. I also chopped garlic, basil, an onion, and a red bell pepper and added it to the cooking sauce. So in the end we had baked eggplant with chunky tomato sauce and we grated the rest of the Fontina cheese on top. It was quite good - like an eggplant stew. At least even when I screw things up, they generally taste good!

This morning I was all set to drive to the Ferndale farmers market to pick up my wheat. The farmer had warned me to call his cell first to make sure he hadn't forgotten to bring it, and lo and behold, he did forget! Arghgh! He said he'd still get it to me either today or tomorrow, I hope he comes though! I feel like he's my dealer!

So I ate my usual breakfast and went to the Arcata farmers market. I bought:

• 4 green tomatoes from Willow Creek (I didn't actually buy these, I know the farmer, and he gave them to me as a sample)
• 2 bunches of spearmint (they were out of peppermint) and 1 lb of the most delicious Black Mission Figs in the world from Orleans.
  
• 1 bunch of basil
• A 5lb bag of mixed potatoes, about 5lb of Yellow Finn potatoes, and 2 ears of bicolor corn from Arcata. (The corn was also a sample.)
• About 1/2 lb of shitake mushrooms from Arcata

I also stopped at the co-op for 2 gallons of milk and a pint of cream. One gallon is for the second mozzarella try, one is for yogurt, and the cream is for sour cream. This sure does keep me busy!

I'm really sensing the seasons changing. There's no more Willow Creek peaches, and the plums are at their end - pears, figs and winter squash are starting to take over.... There were lots of beautiful pumpkins starting to show up at market. I really do love this time of year, almost more than summer!

A farmer friend from Hoopa gave me a few of his Asian pears today. I ate one and this is the other. They're huge! The one I ate was more russeted and had a real butterscotch flavor - Delicious!

Breakfast was the usual yogurt, peach and honey. Lunch was boiled purple potatoes with sour cream and cheese. I feel like I'm really getting in touch with my Irish half eating so many potatoes!

I had my yoga class until 7:00 this evening and afterwards I was so tired and relaxed that more than anything I just wanted to go out to eat. But I got a hold of myself and decided to cook a frittata. I've never made one, so I looked up a recipe in the old faithful cookbook: The Joy of Cooking. It said to flip the frittata (eggs and vegetables) between two pans to cook both sides. Sounded interesting.......

We had 4 duck eggs and 1 chicken egg left from the dozen I got last Friday. The duck eggs were huge, so I figured it would be plenty. They came from two different ducks, and you can really see a difference in their color. It's pretty cool to have met the ducks and chickens who laid my eggs!

I cut the rest of our potatoes (can't have a meal without potatoes you know!) into thin fry wedges, put them in a roasting pan, dotted them with butter, and roasted them in the oven while I was cooking the frittata.

I sauteed red onion, broccoli, an Italian sweet pepper, and spinach and then added the beaten eggs. Here's what it looked like in the pan:

The idea is to put another greased pan over top of that one and then flip them over so the frittata cooks on the other side in the other pan. I got Johnny to help with the flipping, but alas, it didn't work! The egg was too stuck to the bottom of the first pan and wouldn't flip into the other pan. We managed to make a horrible eggy mess and the perfect frittata was ruined. We salvaged it by just scrambling it as best we could. It tasted delicious even if it didn't look perfect! I guess I shouldn't have attempted something so fancy on a Thursday night...

Eating like this is almost like exercising a muscle I didn't know existed. More than anything tonight I wanted to just give up and go out to eat - it reminded me of working out and pushing myself beyond my comfortable limits. It always feels good in the long run if you can push yourself the extra mile!

Days 11 and 12

It's been two busy days at work - I haven't had too much time or energy to cook, but I've done pretty well. I feel like I'm really getting the routine of eating locally - I don't have to think about it as much as I did at first.

Tuesday morning I had a peach, yogurt, and honey for breakfast, and left-over stuffed Delicata squash for lunch.

We had an old friend over for dinner, so I decided to make Shepherd's Pie. After work, I bought a red onion and 2lb of hamburger. I sauteed the onion, a zucchini, and an Italian Sweet Pepper (pictured above.) When veggies were well cooked, I set them aside, browned some hamburger, and then mixed the veggies back in. I also added the rest of the butter pesto mixture I made the night before. No, this was not a low fat meal!

I boiled some red potatoes and Johnny mashed them with a little butter and milk. (Did I mention this is not a low fat recipe?) I scooped the hamburger/vegetable mixture into the bottom of a pan, coated it with the potato, and baked the whole thing for about 15 or 20 minutes. The result was an incredibly delicious dish that was way too buttery for any one's good. We had it with salad and wine enjoyed ourselves thoroughly.

Breakfast this morning was the same old thing - yogurt with honey and a peach. I heated up some apple cider instead of tea. It was good, but I think I drank too much - I could feel it sloshing around in my belly for an hour! For lunch I had two fried eggs and left over potatoes from Monday's dinner.

For dinner tonight we had left over shepherd's pie and I steamed the rest of the giant bag of pea-shoots that my farmer friend gave me. They were delicious! It felt good to eat a whole mess of greens!

I think I'm getting the rhythm of this. I'm a little sick of potatoes, but other than that, I feel pretty good. I'm definitely enjoying my food! I should probably try to eat less butter and cream, but I just don't have any other options for oils. I haven't gained any weight in the past two weeks, but I haven't lost any either. I'll be interested to see how it changes in the next two weeks.

Day 10

This is a fruit bowl I set up on the dining room table. Mostly stuff from the Saturday market. The bananas are Johnny's of course!

For dinner last night we had our first winter squash of the season. It was perfect: cloudy, dark, damp..... Humboldt County weather for sure. It's funny though, when it gets foggy and cloudy here on the coast it's generally hot inland. Sure enough, it was 100 degrees in Willow Creek today. I don't think we topped 65 here!

I filled baked Delicata squash with the rest of the cranberry beans from Thursday's dinner, topped it all with melted Fontina cheese, and baked it for about 20 minutes. That and a big green salad was plenty of food. For dressing, I cut up a few tomatoes and added them to the remains of the salsa from Thursday night. I've discovered that a fresh super-juicy tomato and salt is really the best salad dressing available. Way better than that roasted pepper thing I attempted last week! Simple is good.

Here's a picture of the finished product. It was quite good. I was struck by the fact that the squash, the beans, and the tomato are all indigenous American plants.....

Before bed I put the yogurt in the fridge. It turned out great this time! Smooth, with the perfect amount of tang. The sour cream was not yet congealed, so I left it overnight in the oven. I turned it on for about 30 seconds right before bed to make it a little warm. We turned the apple butter off and left in on the stove overnight.

Breakfast this morning was yogurt with raspberries and honey. I payed almost $5.00 for the raspberries at the market, and I don't think it was worth it. They tasted fine, but there's so many wild blackberries right now that it just seems silly to spend that much money on any kind of berry.

For lunch I heated up the last of the veggie pockets from Saturday night and fried two eggs. I tried one of the duck eggs - it had a huge yolk, but tasted good. I sneaked a peek at the sour cream and lo and behold - it had turned into sour cream! Really creamy and delicious sour cream!! How exciting!!

Check out this bunch of basil! It's the biggest I've ever seen - and I bought it for only $2.00 at the market this Saturday! The farmer definitely undercharged!

For dinner I made a sauce with about half the basil, butter, and sour cream. I was trying for a pesto substitute, but it just didn't work in the blender, so instead I heated the mixture up on the stove. I was really afraid I'd ruined it, but it worked! I added the rest of the salsa from last Thursday to make a really buttery basil tomato sauce.

We had the sauce over baked cod and boiled potatoes and carrots. A farmer friend of mine gave me a really big bag (about a pound I think) of pea-shoots, and about a half a pound of watercress, so we added a little to the salad mix for a really good spicy salad. I'm going to have to think of more ways to eat watercress and pea shoots!

After dinner Johnny got out the food processor to finish the apple butter. Here's some pictures of what it looked like before and after processing:


And here it is all done in jars:
Johnny added cinnamon and sugar to his. Mine is the dark one in the middle, with only apples and a little honey.

We don't sterilize the jars. Johnny eats apple butter and cashew butter sandwiches every morning for breakfast, so we put them in the fridge and he uses them up before they go bad.

That's all there is to report today. It looks like I'm going to get my sheaves of wheat on Saturday. The farmer will drive them up to a farmer's market in Fortuna, and I'll go down and pick them up. I''m so excited! I also got a Motzerella cheese making kit in the mail today. You're supposed to be able to make Motzerella in a half hour! So stay tuned for more exciting adventures in food!

Days 7 through 9

During work on Friday I went to visit a farm on West End Road between Arcata and Blue Lake. I took this picture of onions curing in the field - these are the red onions that we'll be selling at the co-op soon!

There's a lot to catch up here...get ready for a long post.

Friday morning I had yogurt with honey and my last peach from last Saturday's farmer's market. I've been having mint lemon-balm tea every morning as well. I even brought a little baggy of it to work. I get some weird looks, but it's definitely worth it!

For lunch I sauteed some broccoli and zucchini with some left over re-fried beans and salsa from the night before. Satisfying for sure! The salsa is pretty strong - I had garlic breath all afternoon at work.

After I was done with work, Johnny and I did a big co-op shopping trip. I got:

• 1 gallon of milk, 4 sticks of butter, and 1/2 pint of cream from Ferndale
• 1 1/2 pounds of ground beef
• 2 big Cod Fillets from Crescent City (Yes, I know this is Del Norte County, but I'm sure the fish swam in Humboldt Co. waters!)
• 1 bottle of red wine from Petrolia
  
• A really big block of cheddar cheese and a smaller block of Fontina from Lolita
  
• About 10 Dapple Dandy pluots and 3 big heirloom tomatoes from Willow Creek
• 2 eggplants and 4 regular tomatoes from Orleans
• 1 big walla-walla onion from Blue Lake (from the same farm as the picture at the beginning of the post)

I've been eating those Dapple Dandy pluots like crazy. They're such a great sugary snack! I've been appreciating fruit in a whole new way this week. It's really the easiest snack- just as good as a cookie when you get used to it.

After we shopped, we drove to McKinleyville to our friends Erin and Chad's house for some fresh eggs. They have a small flock of chickens and ducks - Erin usually has extra that she gives to their two dogs, but instead she saved them for me. I got a dozen total, two or three duck eggs and nine chicken eggs. The duck eggs are huge!

We didn't know beforehand, but Erin and Chad have a bunch of apple trees on the property that they're renting and they're ripe! There's a Pink Pearl, which is a small heirloom apple with pink flesh, and a bunch of Jonagold type trees. The trees were loaded with way more than Erin and Chad were going to use, so Johnny filled the front of his shirt twice like a bag.

We went home briefly and then drove to Eureka to run some errands. We were in a bit of a hurry to get to stores before they closed, so we didn't eat dinner beforehand. By the time we got home it was 8:30 and I was starving! Johnny made himself some nachos, and I boiled some blue potatoes and made mashed potatoes with butter and Fontina cheese. Comfort food if I've ever had it!

I got a call on Friday night from the farmer in Southern Humboldt who was featured in the Redwood Times article about wheat. He's willing to sell me a couple "sheaves" of wheat that I can thresh, clean, and mill myself for flour! The sheave is the actual bundle of wheat right out of the field. Threshing is the process of getting the wheat berries to separate from the rest of the plant. He recommended doing it in a 50 gallon garbage can. I had no idea what a project I was getting myself it to - but I'm excited about it! He had to call his farming partner to make sure it was OK, and then he'll call me back to work out the details.

Saturday morning the farmer's market was my first priority. I had some Prune plums with yogurt and honey and drove down the hill to market. Here's a picture of my haul:

• 5 big peaches from Willow Creek
• 1 HUGE bunch of basil from Blue Lake (once again, from the same farm I had visited on Friday)
• 2 Delicata squash and a package of Raspberries from Willow Creek
• 1 bunch of Peppermint and one of Spearmint from Orleans
• 4 ears of white corn, a big bag of red potatoes and a big bag of Devina potatoes from Arcata

Once again, I stretched the capacity of my shopping bag. If the North Coast Grower's Association are really serious about people shopping at markets, they really should get some shopping carts!

Saturday afternoon my friend Alisha and I drove down to an old apple orchard in Fortuna. The orchard is on the outskirts of town, and the man who owns it was born and raised in the house that's right next-door. He has a little farm store there where he sells fresh cider (It's legal for it to be non-pasturized since he grows and produces it on site.) and other local produce and foods. It's a great little store! Since we know the owner, he took us into the orchard to see the trees and his cider press. Alisha picked a big Mutzu apple - it was so huge that we shared it and could still barely finish it!

I also bought a gallon of cider, an "ice cream melon" (a watermelon that's light green on the outside) from Southern Humboldt, a pint of strawberries, and a pint of "mountain wildflower" honey from Willow Creek. It's the reddest honey I've ever seen! I'm not sure why - I guess the blackberry blossoms and other wildflowers around Willow Creek produce that tint. On the car ride back I ate the strawberries and we split the Mutzu apple. That, plus Ice Cream Melon when we got home, was all I had for lunch.

We had Alisha and a friend of Johnny's for dinner. Alisha and I did the cooking. It was nice to cook with another woman - and she's a great cook! You can really learn a lot cooking with someone else - new techniques that you might not think of on your own.

We started the grill and then made "veggie pockets:" little packets of chopped potatoes, onion, zucchini, garlic, and butter wrapped in aluminun foil. We put those on the grill and then patted out the hamburger patties. Alisha mixed some garlic and chopped onion with the groud beef beforehand - a delicious touch! We cooked the hamburgers and the corn on the grill and dinner was served. The veggies in the aluminum foil cooked to perfection- mushy, but in a good way. The corn was awesome as well. I couldn't have a hamburger bun, so I wrapped the burger with tomato and cheese in a big leaf of lettuce and ate it like a taco. It was quite good, and not as messy as I'd feared!

This morning I had the last of the yogurt from a week ago with some plums. Right away I started a new batch of yogurt and sour cream. Hopefully it goes better this time. My Mom recommended culturing them in a cooler, so that's what I did. I heated the milk and the cream to 180 degrees and then cooled it to 120, added yogurt starter to the milk and sour cream to the cream, poured them into jars, wrapped them up in dish towels, and put them in the cooler.
Hopefully that will keep them warm all day. We'll see!

We also started some apple butter with the apples we had gotten from Erin and Chad and some from the tree by our front door. Here's a picture of the Pink Peal:
They sure are pink - and boy are they tart! I'm glad we have the other varieties to balance their tartness. I cut up all the apples and started them cooking on low with just a little water. Here's a few pictures of the cooking process today:

Obviously, it's not apple butter yet, more like apple sauce, but it'll get there.

This morning I separated the rose hips that had been drying since last Saturday from their seeds and left them out to dry as well. They remind me of citrus peel. Here's a picture:

For lunch I had 3 of Erin's smallest eggs over easy with my left over potatoes from Friday night mixed with a little of the left over veggie pockets from last night. They are wonderful eggs! Way more substantial than what I got at the farmer's market last week. The yolks seemed especially perky.

Whew! Hopefully I won't miss two days in a row again. That was a lot!

Day 6

This is a picture of the fresh salsa I made for dinner tonight, but more on that later......

Breakfast this morning was yogurt and a peach. I opened the second quart of yogurt that I made on Saturday and - oh joy! - it was actually the right consistency! None of the grittiness that was in the other jar..... The only difference that I can think of was that one accidentally got more starter yogurt than the other. They both got pretty hot in the oven - too hot I think. It was pretty mild yogurt - not a lot of tang, but it sure was nice to have smooth yogurt for a change!

For lunch I scrambled my remaining 3 eggs with the rest of the cooked vegetables from last night and some goat cheese. It would have been great if I hadn't accidentally used way too much salt!

After work I bought:

• 1 really big red bell pepper and 2 jalapenos from Orleans
  
• 1 poblano from Willow Creek
  
• 1 walla-walla onion from Blue Lake
• 2 thin carne asada steaks
• 1 big Klamath Gold heirloom tomato from Orleans
• 1 bunch of cilantro from Blue Lake
• A few more Italian prune plums from Shively
• 1 Anana melon and a few more dapple dandy and flavor queen pluots from Willow Creek
  

I had a yoga class from 5:30 - 7pm, so I had to divide my cooking time. when I got home from work at 4:30 I chopped up the 5 super ripe red tomatoes from yesterday along with the heirloom tomato, the jalapenos, the cilantro, a whole head of garlic, and salt. That's the picture at the beginning of this post. It's delicious, but I'm afraid I made way too much. I had started the beans soaking at lunch time, and now I turned them on and went to yoga.

Before I got home, Johnny got the grill going. It was a beautiful day - perfect from grilling outside. He took care of grilling the meat while I chopped up the onion and the poblano and red bell peppers and skewered them. Grilling the veggies took a while, but we were eating by 8pm. We had grilled peppers and onions, steak, and beans topped with cheese and lots of salsa. Basically a burrito without the tortilla. Johnny added sour cream, lime juice, avocado, and hot sauce to his, but I didn't miss them too much.

This diet isn't nearly as hard as I expected it to be. I've tried dieting to lose weight before, and I just haven't had enough will-power. This is totally different. I think it's the positive thinking of "I'm going to eat something" compared to the negative when you're dieting: "I can't eat something." It definitely takes a lot more planning than I'm used to, but it's not really that hard - at least for the first six days. We'll see what I have to say in a month!