One week later.....

I'm going to finish up a few thoughts about my month of local, and then move on to my new blog: The Good Food Muse (www.thegoodfoodmuse.blogspot.com.) I've found that I've become addicted to blogging about the food I eat. It'll be nice not to feel obligated to write every day, but I enjoy taking pictures and making some sort of record of the wonderful food I cook and eat every day. I've just started a little vegetable garden in my front yard, so I'll write about that to.

So what am I taking away from my month of local food?

• I feel so much better on a non-wheat, non sugar diet! The difference was really amazing. I managed to lose a little weight (something I haven't successfully done for years) and feel great all month. I don't think I realized how good I felt - when you're digestive system is working perfectly, you don't always stop to notice I guess. I definitely noticed a change when I went back on the non-local diet though. I don't want to go into too much detail about the inner workings of my digestive system, but things are generally more sluggish, and I feel heavier. Sugar is especially making me feel weird - shaky and light headed. I guess because my body got used to life without it, re-introducing it was that much harder. Also, I've realized how little my body likes wheat. I think the lack of wheat in my month of local food really contributed to how good I felt. Especially when you consider how much energy flour takes to produce (threshing, separating wheat from chaff, grinding, etc.) potatoes just make more sense anyway. Not that I think wheat is all bad - but I've really realized how much we lean on it unnecessarily.
  

• Eating local in September in Humboldt is not that hard. I really didn't suffer in the least. The hardest part was getting the energy and imagination to cook every night, but once I got over that it was easy. Leftovers are key, that's for sure. It looks like maybe the co-op will do a month long local challenge next summer - I can't wait to do it again and help others realize how easy this really is once you make the commitment.
  

• I really love having a connection to the farmers that grow the food I eat. This is almost a spiritual thing for me. I talk to a lot of the farmers daily through my work, so I'm especially lucky in this regard. I not only know many farmers pretty well, but I know their relationships with each other. I could have written a poem about each dish: who grew it, what the relationships between all the farmers who grew the food is, and what the relationship between all the flavors is. I really felt that I was collaborating with the farmers in some way by taking the food that they grow, blending it with the food of other farmers, and taking it that last step from raw ingredients to delicious meals. It was a sharing of food production rather than a one sided give and take. For me, I think the next step would be to only eat food frown by people I know.....

That's all I can think of now. I'm sure I'll write more about all of this in my new blog!

This is my first official day of non-local. I thought it would feel really great to have the freedom to eat whatever I want, but really I'm finding myself already missing the local diet.....

I'll backup and chronicle my last few days. I haven't been taking pictures - I hope if anyone is reading this that it's not too boring.

Sunday night we had my bread with butter and I made a veggie stew with a shallot, 2 zucchini, sugar snap peas, Shitake mushrooms, a Sweet Italian peppers, a green bell pepper, a spoonful of sour cream, and the rest of the tomato sauce I made about a week ago. It worked really well to just make the sauce and then keep it in the fridge for random uses - I'll have to remember that.

The bread is VERY dense. I think it did rise a little, but not much. Other than that it's quite good - with just a hint of sourness. I think maybe my cheff wasn't quite strong enough. My guess is that it didn't stay warm enough in our house for optimal growth... I did save some of the cheff to try it again next week. Now that I've made such a complicated bread, I'm excited to try some simpler recipes. There is definitely a great satisfaction in finally eating the bread that was a month in the making. I'm glad that I did without it for so long though - I proved that I could be quite well nourished and satisfied without wheat of any kind.

Monday morning I had the usual breakfast - a pear, yogurt, and honey. I cut open one of the passion fruit and mixed it in - it added an extra flavor dynamic that was quite good. Lunch was the usual boiled potatoes, with some of the stew from the night before mixed in, and a little more sour cream.

Monday night I made omelets. For a filling I used leftover veggies with some fresh sugar snap peas and cheddar cheese. We've been using the same huge block of cheddar I got the second week of September - I'm amazed that it's not moldy! We made toast with my bread, and I had it with butter and apple butter. I also made a fruit salad with a Comice pear, an apple, figs from the market, a peach, yogurt, and honey. It was good, but not quite as good as the fruit salad I made earlier in the month.....

Tuesday was my official last day. I didn't really have time to go all out on anything - I ate pretty much the same things I had been all along. Breakfast was the last of my yogurt, honey, pear, and passion fruit. Lunch was boiled potatoes with the last of my sour cream and the few veggies that were left over from the stew and the omelets.

After work I went to a yoga class and didn't get home till 7. I had bought some "stew" beef on Monday after work - basically beef cut into chunks. I cooked that, set it aside and in the same pan cooked a shallot, an onion, two russet potatoes, two broccoli stems from long long ago, a Pimento Pepper, and the rest of the Shitake mushrooms. I added the beef, lots of red wine and and little water and cooked it till the potatoes were tender. I was aiming for a beef stew, but I didn't have any stock, so it wasn't as saucy as a stew should be. It was good anyway with wine, garlic butter, and bread. The beef was a bit tough, but definitely edible.

And that's it. The month is over. I feel kind of let down - I think I'm going to miss eating this way. I certainly don't feel any elation at being able to eat whatever I want..... I think what I realized more than anything this month was that eating locally is not a hardship at all (at least here in Humboldtin September.) It's just as tasty and fulfilling as eating exotic things, it just a little limited, so you have to have more imagination and time.

The rain this weekend wiped out many of our local tomatoes, and other things are winding down in a big way, so even if I wanted to I couldn't keep eating nothing but local....Preservation is something I haven't focused on at all, although it's probably not too late to can some spaghetti sauce or salsa...

I'll keep blogging here for the next few days as I think about these things more.....

This is a Prescott Fond Blanc Melon from France (well really from Blue Lake, but originally from France.) I bought it this week, and by the time I got around to eating it, it was a little funky.....melon season is practically over.

It's been a busy few days. Technically, today is my last day, but I ate all sorts of weird things on Friday and Saturday, and I've decided to extend my month by two days to make up for it. It's OK, I'm not really looking forward to eating tons of non-local things anyway.

Thursday I had the usual breakfast and lunch. Boiled potatoes are getting harder to eat every day....but they keep me going. For dinner Johnny and I had leftover chili. Just when we were done eating, my friends arrived from Sonoma County.

On Friday I think I probably ate food that originated from every continent except Antarctica. The first Rotary meeting was a breakfast meeting. There was French Toast with a pad of butter and imitation Mrs. Buttersworth syrup, bacon, organic nonfat blueberry yogurt, orange juice, and a bag of Orange Pekoe tea. I can't even really comprehend how many different places all of that came from. I found myself wondering where the flour in my French Toast was grown, and how it was ground.

It was raining and cold, so after breakfast the three of us went out for coffee. I really indulged! I got a Mexican Mocha - which was just a mocha with cinnamon I think - and a blueberry lemon poppy seed muffin. The mocha had Cinnamon from South East Asia, coffee from probably South America, and Chocolate probably from Africa. Oh, and of course don't forget the sugar from who knows where. At least probably the milk came from California.

We then went and walked out in the dunes on Samoa. Both of my friends are avid edible mushroom hunters, so their eyes were glued to the ground much of the time. We saw a few mushrooms, but nothing worth picking. We did find lots of huckleberries though. They're like little blueberries - and they'd just been washed by the rain - our tongues were purple by the time we walked back to the car!

Our second Rotary meeting was a luncheon. It was a lot better than breakfast: a green salad, a slaw like salad with raisin and broccoli, steamed mixed vegetables, and a pasta dish with penne, chicken, and cream sauce. There was also bread, dessert and coffee, but I skipped all that.

I wasn't feeling too well by the time we were done with all this! The sugar especially was a little hard to take. I forget what a weird tweaky feeling it gives me! The corn syrup for breakfast was especially hard to take!

We drove up to Trinidad to explore the beach, and on the way home stopped at a local fish smoke house that I'd never been to. There were all sorts of local fish that had been smoked by hand right there. Score! I got a package of smoked oysters, and my friends got a few large smoked scallops, and salmon. We stopped at a small market and got some crackers, cream cheese, beer, limes, and my friend bought a really nice bottle of tequila to remember the trip we took together to Mexico last May.

A good time was had by all. For dinner we went to my favorite little Italian restaurant. One reason I like it so much is that they use mostly local meats and vegetables. I had the potato gnocchi (made with local potatoes) with wild mushrooms and tomato cream sauce. I bet at least half the ingredients were locally grown.

On Friday we went out for breakfast to one of my favorite diners in town. They use decent ingredients, but I bet nothing about my Eggs Benedict with country fried potatoes was local. My friends and I walked to the farmers market before they left. I got:

• a basket of figs from Orleans
• 3 big Russet potatoes and 2 ears of corn from Arcata
• 5 peaches (yes, they have a late variety!) from Willow Creek
• a "Bursa de Turkey" melon from Willow Creek. This one has a great story that I'll tell later.)

After the market my friends headed home to Sonoma. they drove me as far South as Garberville so I could join Johnny at the Bluegrass festival that he was vending at. I was amazed at how bad the food there was! I got some apple pie and ice cream thinking that since there's so many local apples right now it must be made with local apples: but no, it was a total store bought plastic pie. Later in the day Johnny and I shared a plate with barbecued chicken, a bun, potato salad, baked beans, and apple crisp. It would have been OK, except the chicken probably lived a horrible life, and they put the apple crisp directly on top of the beans. Gross!

Our friends Chad and Erin were vending at the same festival, so Erin and I ended up driving home together. I dropped her off at her house and she gave me 7 eggs and 3 big King apples.
When I got home I tried to eat the Prescott melon, but it was no good, so I ate a fig and an apple and went to bed.

Today the big deal has been the bread. Before I went to bed last night - I started fermenting the Levaine. Basically you add more flour to the cheff and let it sit for 8-10 hours. It's supposed to be 75 degrees though, and it got cold, so it didn't rise too much.

I ended up letting to go more like 13 or 14 hours, and finally it started to rise a little. I measured out two cups of the mixture, and mixed it with flour and water to make the bread dough.

I kneaded it for about 20 minutes and then let it rise for 2 hours. After that I cut the dough into to balls and let them rise for 30 minutes. I shaped the balls into torpedo shapes and let them rise (or proof) for 2 more hours. Then we put them into the oven and they just got done baking.

I know it sounds like I know what I'm doing, but really I've been dubious of the whole process. It doesn't seem to be rising as much as it should, although it's definitely rising a little bit.

I drove into town while the dough was rising a bought a big square baking stone for the oven. The cookbook says that it's a necessity.

The book tells you to make an elaborate "couch" for your torpedo shaped loaves to rise in, but I just put a clean towel in a baking pan, and put the loaves in it with the towel bunched up between them so as to not stick together. It seemed to work, but the ends of the loaves are square rather than pointy like a torpedo.




Here they are going into the oven...








...and here's the finished product

I have a feeling they'll be good even if they're not totally light and airy. I ran out of my flour and had to use a few cups of non-local flour instead. It's probably at least 90% local flour.....

My bread is finally finished on what should be the last day of my local month. How fitting! I'm so glad I've decided to take it 2 extra days so that I can really appreciate it!

This is the tomato from Willow Creek that I used in dinner tonight. It was almost literally as big as my head! I never want these heirloom tomatoes to end, but unfortunately the end is definitely coming. We'll have them for a few more weeks at least.

Tuesday morning for breakfast I had a Comice pear with yogurt and honey. Lunch was 2 ears of corn and a few boiled potatoes. After work I brought home some blemished Pimento and Italian Sweet peppers that I got for free.

Dinner was leftover pizza. I used the time I would have been cooking grinding the rest of the wheat. I got a little more than I got from the first batch - about 10 cups I think. It's still a little chaffy, but better than the first batch. I probably could have done a better job cleaning it, but my time was limited and I just wanted to get it ground and over with. I can sift out the little bit of chaff.

I added some of the freshly ground wheat and water to the chef and mixed it around vigorously. That's supposed to feed and get oxygen to the yeast. I'm happy to say that it's working! The dough is filled with bubbles and it has a vinegary smell and sour taste. Here's what it looked like tonight:
I really didn't expect it to work so well! I guess I shouldn't celebrate too much until I have bread made. I'll have to put the actual baking off till Sunday I think. One more day until the chef is ready, and then I can store it in the fridge for up to 3 days.

Breakfast today was the same: yogurt, pear, and honey. Lunch was boiled potatoes with sour cream. I'm really starting to get tired of boiled potatoes! I wish I could come up with another easy lunch solution.

After work I bought two heirloom tomatoes, a Prescott melon from Blue Lake, 4 Passion fruit from Arcata, a few Asian pears from Willow Creek, and a few more Comice pears from Orleans.

For dinner tonight I sauteed a yellow onion, a shallot, a head of garlic, 1 Poblano pepper, and 1 pimento pepper. To this I added the two diced heirloom tomatoes. Here's the back of the one at the beginning of the post. It was truly the most incredible heirloom I've seen this year.

I cooked that mixture for a while and then added the rest of the black beans from Sunday's dinner. As the chili was simmering, I cooked up some ground beef in the cast iron skillet and then added it to the mix. I added some wine and salt and it was ready to go. It was super good with a little sour cream and cheese.

Believe it or not, I've actually lost weight on this super buttery beefy diet! I weighed myself last night at the gym and I was 8 pounds lighter than I was a week and a half ago! I've been noticing my clothes feeling looser, but it was hard to imagine that I could be eating all this rich food and still losing weight. I guess it's kind of like the Atkins diet, except I've still been eating tons of potatoes. Probably the lack of sugar helps too.

I'm feeling kind of weird about ending this diet. This Friday I have to do several presentations at Rotary Club meetings, and I have some friends coming into town to present with me and stay the night. It'll really be a hassle to have to explain myself to a bunch of Rotarians, and I'd like to go out to a nice dinner with my friends, so I think I'm going to to go off the diet for a day. I'll do a day extra to make up for it, but I still don't really want to cheat, especially now that I've made it this far! I've enjoyed this diet a lot, and it'll be sad in a way to end it. I guess I'll have to really conscious keep aspects of it going......

Here's a few images from dinner on Saturday night. I simmered the dry black beans I'd bought at market for a few hours in the afternoon. At about 1 hour till dinner, I grilled a red and a green bell pepper, a Walla-Walla onion, and a Poblano pepper in the cast iron skillet.

I set that aside and grilled two flank steaks (sorry vegetarians!)

I combined the two and let the fajita mixture rest while I made chapatis - which are a type of Indian flatbread that my mom used to make back in her hippy days. I got the recipe from Laurel's Kitchen, one of her old cookbook from the 1970s. They're basically like tortillas - you mix flour, water, a little oil (I used softened butter) and salt; kneed the mixture for a while; shape it into balls; roll them out with a rolling pin; and cook them in the skillet. Here is the dough ball:
Here are the finished chapatis. I didn't do too good of a job making them round, but they still tasted great - especially after not eating any wheat for a month!

We made two "tacos" each, with beans, fajita veggies and meat, grated cheese, cilantro, sour cream, and fresh tomato. Delicious! The chapatis worked really well as tacos - they held together just as good as any flour tortilla.
Johnny was vending at the same fair the on Sunday, so again, breakfast was a little bit of a rush. I had yogurt, honey, and 2 small Bartlett pears. For lunch I had boiled potatoes, butter, salt, and pepper. I've never felt more Irish than this month - I've eaten potatoes pretty much every day!

I had a few hours free on Sunday afternoon, and it was a beautiful fall day, so I decided to thresh the rest of my wheat. I still had one bundle left. I discovered in the process of threshing this one that there were actually a lot of weeds mixed in that I think I accidentally threshed with the wheat in the last two bundles. I though the weeds were just another variety of wheat, but I think I was wrong. That's why I've had so much trouble with chaff - I've been trying to thresh weeds! This bunch was a lot easier and yielded me more than the last two combined. Here's what it looks like now, almost chaff free.
For dinner on Sunday, I made four more chapatis, while Johnny made the main course. We were going for Indian (or as Indian as food can get without using any spices.) He cooked the cubed lamb meat that I bought on Friday with butter, added a whole bunch of red chard, and let it cook down. I'm always amazed at how a big bundle of greens can become so little! He added some of the tomato sauce from last week, and a spoonfull of sour cream. The result was so good it was hard to believe that it didn't have any fancy spices in it! We ate the lamb mixture like stew with chapatis on the side.

As we were cooking dinner, I started a project that I've been meaning to do for a while - wild yeast hunting. This is an idea that I got from the Omnivore's Dilema: apparently you can capture the wild yeasts that live in the air and use them to make bread. The resulting bread is called Pain au Levain- levain is leven in French. The starter mixture is called the chef: You mix flour and water together and let them set uncovered outside for a while, cover them, and then feed the yeast more water and flour every day. In about three days it's supposed to be able to make a loaf of bread. I'm dubious, but I wanted to try. I let it sit out on the front porch for about a half hour. Hopefully we have nice wild yeasts in Humboldt County - apparently they're different from region to region. Here's what it looks like now:
Not too exciting.....

For breakfast this morning I had the usual yogurt with a half of an Anana melon and honey. For lunch Johnny and I shared the left over fajita fixings without chapatis. I made a ton of beans on Saturday, so we had plenty for lunch, with lots to spare. I'm sure I'll think of something to do with them sometime this week.

For dinner tonight I decided to try pizza dough with a yeast-less crust. I used the last of my first batch of flour to make basic chapati dough. Johnny shaped it into a perfect looking crust - He's worked in enough pizza joints that he's pretty good at rolling out the dough. Here it is in the pan:
I layered tomato sauce (I'm so glad I made that sauce when I did, it's really come in handy!) with basil, Fontina and Mozzarella cheese, and a zucchini. I sauteed a shallot and a head of garlic and put that on top of the zucchini. The shallots that I bought at the market on Saturday are beautiful. Strong too - the one I cut up made my eyes water worse than most onions.

Here's a picture of the finished pizza:
It turned out good - the crust could have been a little crispier, but I wasn't complaining. It's pretty amazing to eat wheat that I've threshed myself. It adds a whole new appreciation for wheat that I've never had before: It really takes a lot of energy to get it from the field to the pizza!

Lots to catch up on today. It's been a very busy week - I barely had time to cook, much less blog about it! This is the dahlia blooming in my garden. Usually we only get one blossom from it, but this year it looks like we'll get at least 6!

Breakfast on Wednesday was Crane Melon with yogurt and honey. The yogurt had sat out overnight, but it was still a bit runny and not too tangy, so I left it out when I went to work. I also turned on the tomato sauce again and let it cook on low for the rest of the day.

Lunch was two slices of leftover fried green tomatoes, a sliced red tomato, cheese, and basil. I could have used some carbs, but it tasted good.

After work I bought a whole bunch of garlic from the co-op. The local garlic was done, and I wanted to get as much of it as I could before it was all gone.

Dinner on Wednesday was left over potato casserole. It was even better the second day. As it was warming in the oven, I went out and picked a few apples from our tree and blackberries from a few places around our house. After dinner I made a simple batter from eggs, flour, butter, and honey. I cut the apples up and put them in a greased pan, topped them with the blackberries, and topped that with the batter. What resulted was a kind of cobbler type dessert. Still a tiny bit chaffy, but delicious with honey and a little sour cream on top. This was the first dessert I've made all month. It's totally amazing to me that I'm not really craving sugar too much!

I finally put the yogurt in the fridge after dinner. It worked really well - the perfect texture and tangyness. I also bottled the tomato sauce that had been simmering all day. It was super thick and rich. I got a quart plus a pint total. I'm not sure what I'll do with all of it, but I'm sure it'll get used.

Breakfast of Thursday was yogurt, honey, and the rest of the Crane melon. For lunch I heated up some leftover potatoes with sour cream and chives from the porch.

After work I picked up a bag of spring mix and a tomato for salad.

For dinner we baked the Kabocha squash that had been sitting on the table all week. It was huge and super dense - I had to have Johnny help me cut it. While the squash started baking I sauteed half an onion, a zucchini, and a bunch of shitake mushrooms in butter. When the veggies were relatively cooked, I pulled the squash out of the oven and stuffed the veggie mixture into the two halves. I topped it all with grated Mozzarella cheese and put it back in the oven. In about 40 minutes it was done, and we ate it with salad. It was good - the squash was amazingly creamy for being so dense - dry, but not too dry. I especially enjoyed the mushrooms. I haven't had anything mushroomy for a while!

On Friday I had to work at 6am, so I brought the rest of the apple blueberry cobbler in to work with me and heated it up in the microwave for breakfast. I went home at about 11 for a lunch of scrambled eggs with Corno di Toro peppers and cheese.

After work, I did my last weekly local co-op shopping trip. I got:

• 1 quart of milk and 1 block of Mozzarella from Ferndale
  
• 1 bottle of Merlot from Orleans (at $20.00/bottle, this was a bit of a splurge, but it's one of my favorite vineyards)
• 1 big Butternut squash, 1 small Ha-Ogen melon, and 1 small Annana melon from Willow Creek
• 1 little square of truffle goat cheese from Arcata - this was also a bit of a splurge, but I've heard really good things about this particular cheese, and I wanted to give it a try.
• 2 Humboldt Grassfed inside flank steaks
• 2lb of lamb stew meat (boneless chunks)
  
• 1 red onion and three yellow onions from Arcata
• 1 block of Fontina cheese from Lolita
  
• 3 Comice pears, 4 Bartletts, and three tomatoes from Orleans
  

We had a few errands to run in Eureka on Friday evening, and we didn't get back till around 8. We heated up the second half of the Kabocha squash and ate it simply by itself. How wonderful leftovers are!!

We had a busy day today - Johnny is vending at a local festival (if you haven't, you should check out his website www.picksandstones.com) and I was helping him set up. Breakfast was hurried - yogurt honey and the Ha-Ogen melon.

The festival was on the Arcata town square, right by the farmers market, so after our booth was set up I walked to the market and did my weekly shopping. I bought:

• 1 5lb bag of mixed potatoes from Arcata
  
• About 3 or 4 lb each of dry black beans and dry white soup beans from Arcata (this is the first time I've seen these at market - they just harvested them this week!)
• A few pounds of sugar snap peas from Blue Lake. The weather is cooled off enough now that peas are starting to show back up at market.
• 4 nice sized red shallots
• 1 big bunch of red chard
• about 1lb of shitake mushrooms

I walked home with all of this - it was heavy, but I made it. At home, I put started soaking the black beans for dinner and made myself an early lunch of boiled potatoes and sour cream. The sour cream turned out really good and thick this time. Probably because I let it culture for almost a full 48 hours. After eating, I headed back downtown to help Johnny for the afternoon.

It was hard to be at the fair and not eat any of the delicious food - There were so many kinds to choose from: African, Lao, Egyptian, Mexican.....you name it, it was there. The smells were hard to take, but I survived. It made me want to open a restaurant or food cart with nothing but local......at least there was a booth selling local wine from Petrolia!

This is my wheat right before I ground it in to flour yesterday

Sunday night for dinner we had potato pancakes and fruit salad. I grated a few big Yellow Finn Potatoes and added 4 eggs, salt and pepper. I scooped them out of the bowl into a hot frying pan and cooked them like pancakes. They were a little runny (you're supposed to use flour for thickening) but the held together pretty well and tasted great with apple butter and sour cream.

I also made a fruit salad with yogurt, a Comice pear, a few pluots, the rest of the figs, and a bit of honey. Even Johnny, who doesn't usually like fruit salad loved it.

Before bed I checked the yogurt and gave up completely on it ever being edible. Bummer. It was just totally curdled and gross. The sour cream looked good, and I left it in the cooler for the night.

Breakfast on Monday was the last of the yogurt with 2 pluots. Breakfast is harder now that there's no peaches! For lunch I heated up left over potatoes from Saturday night with tomato sauce and my cheese.

Directly after work I started working on the wheat again. I sat on the front porch for about 45 minutes picking the wheat from the chaff. I did the best job I could, but I still wasn't too happy with the results. Some of the wheat berries were just too stuck in their hulls. I finally decided to call it good enough to grind.

It took me a while to figure out the flour mill attachment for the Champion Juicer. This is what it looked like when I finally got it all assembled. It took forever to grind - about 1 cup every 5 minutes. I got about 8 cups total, so it was on for a while.

I was immediately disappointed with the flour. There was a lot of chaff still in it, and it didn't grind up! Little bits of inedible cellulose mixed in with the flour. I decided the only thing to get it out would be a flour sifter. We don't have one, so again the project was put on hold till the next day. I did sift about a half a cup with a sieve. It took a while, but it worked.







For dinner Johnny made hamburgers and I made fried green tomatoes. I had tomato and grilled onion on my burgers and wrapped them in lettuce leaves instead of buns. Definitely a low carb burger! I sliced the green tomatoes and dipped them in egg and then flour and fried them in butter. They had a wonderful tang - almost like catchup. How cool to finally eat a little of my flour!

After dinner I attempted yogurt again, with a store bought starter. I was totally demoralized when it curdled like the last batch. I was almost ready to just give up.

Breakfast today was a Comice pear, a pluot, honey and sour cream since I had no yogurt. It tasted delicious, although I couldn't really justify eating sour cream every morning for breakfast. Lunch was 2 left over fried green tomatoes, a fresh red tomato, basil, and the remainder of the cheese I made this weekend.

After work today I bought a flour sifter. I also bought a Crane melon from Willow Creek and a block of Mozzarella cheese from Ferndale - I didn't realize there was a local mozzarella! I also scored a large bag of super ripe heirloom tomatoes, an Italian Sweet Pepper, and 4 or 5 yellow Corno di Toro peppers.

I started the tomatoes cooking right when I got home. This is a picture of one of them - an Annanas Noir. I sauteed a Walla-Walla onion, the Italian Sweet pepper, two of the Corno di Toros, basil and a head of garlic and added half to the sauce. The other half I set aside while I was cooking the rest of the ground beef. I added the veggies back in with the beef and then the remainder of the left over tomato sauce from three nights ago. I layered this thick tomato meat sauce with sliced potatoes and mozzarella cheese and baked it for about an hour. Most of the tomatoes I got today were still simmering on the stove. I think I'll let them cook overnight into a super thick sauce.

While it was baking I sifted my flour. It worked like a charm! I got about 7 1/2 cups when all was said and done. It's nice looking flour! Now I just have to figure out what to use it for - there's not too much, so I don't want to waste it!

I still had time while dinner was baking, so I started my final yogurt attempt. I decided that my problem was that I didn't let it cool down enough before I added the starter culture. I heated it up and then forgot about it while we ate dinner. After dinner I deemed it cool enough and added the culture. It worked I think! At least it didn't curdle. I put it in jars in the cooler to let me culture over night.

That's it. I am finding myself looking forward to the end of the month. This is so much work! I haven't had any time to sit down today until right now - boy will it be nice to just come home from work and go out to eat if I'm tired!

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!