While my husband was in photography school in Massachusetts, I worked at a quaint little insurance agency in a small town. You probably think it's odd to describe an insurance agency as quaint, but seriously, have you been to New England? It was a little three-room brick building with a basement, surrounded by evergreen trees. In the summer, from the bathroom window, you could see sheep grazing behind the building. The office didn't close for lunch, and all of us ate lunch together in the conference room-slash-my office most days.
I usually brought some sort of leftover from dinner the night before. At the time we weren't locavores, but I cooked at home almost every night. The couple who owned the agency (some of the friendliest, funniest, most charming people I've ever met, by the way) usually got take-out from a local restaurant: sandwiches mostly, but sometimes Chinese food, pizza, salad or something else. There was a 50-something agent there who was really trying to lose weight. His wife packed his lunch: an apple, an orange, popcorn and peanut butter. He'd cut up his apple and slather peanut butter on every single piece. He must have gone through a jar of peanut in less than two weeks. There was a fifty-something gal there who was also trying to lose weight. She seemed to like those Campbells soups that you drink from the cup. She also had a good supply of 100 calorie packs of cookies and light yogurt most days. Then there was this skinny, fifty-something gardener-type. She ate more kale salads than I would have thought possible. Sometimes she stirred up the routine and went with some kind of grain-based salad. She was very good at what she did and interesting to talk with, but most of her food wasn't tempting to me at all.
Six years later, I look at what I eat (Pumpkin-Pinto Bean Tacos for lunch today) I wonder if everybody thinks I'm a freak.
oOo
In my quest to determine whether or not we want to invest in this
local, raw milk herdsharing thing, Jason and I took the girls to
friend's house to taste the milk. The verdict: It tastes like milk.
We're going to go for it. And, I was mistaken: the $28 herdshare fee is an annual fee, not a monthly fee, so we're stretching our food budget, but not as far as I thought initially. For two gallons of milk each week, we'll be paying $76, not $105. Except that I've also signed up for a share of cream ($10 a pint). I don't think we'll buy that every week, just once in a while. We'll see how it
goes for a year. I'd rather invest in supporting local farms than spend that money
at the grocery store. If we determine that it's unaffordable in the
future, we'll deal with it then.
While we were there, we also tasted a fresh batch of kombucha. (If you follow that link, be warned: that really is what it looks like.) We
talked about going to a meeting of the local chapter of the Weston A
Price Foundation. I don't know much about the Weston A Price
Foundation, but my impression is that the organization is all about
real, local foods, with an emphasis on pastured animals and animal fats (cod liver oil, anyone?).
With all my talk about local foods and raw milk and whatnot, you
people probably think we eat pretty healthy at my house. I mean, even I
ask myself, "When did I become the girl who likes plain yogurt with granola for breakfast?"
For the record, these Pumpkin-Pinto Bean Tacos are wicked greasy and they have two kinds of (store-bought) cheese in them. And, for the record, yesterday I watched my two-year-old happily pour herself a bowl of Frosted Flakes. The locavore, whole foods side of me was a little bothered, but then I remembered that the day before I had sat her down in front of the TV with a bowl of Frosted Flakes to keep her occupied so that I could take a shower. My seven-year-old eats Frosted Flakes too. And school lunches. And she starts most days with a popsicle, a brightly-colored store-bought popsicle, not a homemade juice pop (though I think I should make those some time, don't you?). I only allow that because she consistently says she has a sore throat. And really, is that any worse for her than the cup of coffee most American adults rely on each morning? Of course, my own personal Ben & Jerry's fetish is no secret.
So just to set the record straight, we're "balanced."
oOo
Pumpkin-Pinto Bean Tacos
Because you can put anything in a crispy fried corn tortilla, and call it a taco, right?
Freshen up the leftovers from Fajita Night (beans, cheese, sauteed peppers, and salsa) with fried tortillas and sweet, earthy roasted pumpkin, or start from scratch:
1. Prepare pinto beans. Use more oregano, black pepper and salt than you think you need.
2. Toss half-inch cubes of Cinderella pumpkin flesh with olive oil or coconut oil and plenty of kosher salt. Roast in a 400 degree oven for 30 minutes, turning and stirring once.
3. Saute sliced onions and sweet peppers in cooking oil. Set aside. Fry corn tortillas in your favorite cooking oil until crisp. Sprinkle hot tortillas with salt.
4. Assembly: Top each tortilla with beans and pumpkin. Top with peppers and onions. Garnish with your favorite cheese. For some spice add salsa or serve with jalapeno carrots on the side.
October 31, 2011
October 28, 2011
Are local foods worth the cost?
I don't want to be a fanatic. I really don't.
We buy are vast majority of our fruits, veggies and eggs at the farmers market. Certainly, we grow some in our garden, and infrequently, we'll buy something--a carton of eggs, or a bag onions or some mushrooms--at a grocery store, but the vast majority of our produce comes from local farmers. I do this primarily because I believe in the value of having a local food shed. We believe it's also better for the environment to shop locally, safer for us as consumers to know from whence our food comes, and we think it tastes better. I don't even think about the cost any more, but my guess is that it's actually cheaper than buying organic food at the grocery store (but probably more expensive than buying conventional food at a discount grocer).
We haven't purchased meat at the farmer's market for the last few years because of the cost. Chico Meat Locker is our butcher of choice lately. The meat is not necessarily local, but it is a local business and the quality is better than that at a conventional grocery store.
Most often we buy organic milk at Trader Joe's. I prefer it to other organic grocery store milks because it's not ultra-pasteurized. I don't like ultra-pasteurized, because I think it kills enzymes that might be good for us. Sometimes, when money is tight, we buy conventional milk, but I always make sure it says that it is "not from cows with growth hormones." And sometimes, when money is not so tight, we buy organic milk from the natural food store.
Anyhow, I recently found a source of local, raw milk. I know a lot of people are freaked out about raw milk. I'm not going to go into the arguments for and against it here. At least not right now. Suffice it to say that I'm open to the idea of raw milk from happy grass-fed cows. And locally produced milk would be preferrable to conventional stuff (or conventional organic stuff) from who-knows-where.
The thing is that this new source of local, raw milk is a herdsharing program, meaning there's a set monthly fee, kind of like a membership fee. Currently this fee is $28 per herdshare (approximately one gallon of milk per week), but additional shares can be purchased (until October 1st, 2011) for $1 more. On top of the herdshare fee, each gallon costs $7, and there's a weekly delivery fee of $5.
Oh, and each consumer provides their own containers. In fact, if we wanted two gallons of milk per week in half-gallon containers (for easy pouring), we would need to provide eight half gallon jars (approximately $10 for canning jars at a hardware store). And we need to provide a soft-sided cooler and ice packs ($ ??).
You see, the process is this: We drop off our clean, empty containers in a cooler at the drop off point in Chico on Monday morning. At 9:00am the delivery van picks up the containers and drives them to the farm. It takes about three hours for four people to fill the containers and pack them back into the van. They are driven back and dropped off at the drop off point in Chico. After work I can pick up my cooler full of farm fresh milk.
Some people might see all those fees as price gouging, but that's not so. This dairy recently cancelled their contract with Land O'Lakes because the big company wanted all their milk or none of it. Now this small dairy is trying to stay afloat selling directly to consumers. The herdsharing fee is income they can count on year round. The $7 a gallon is only about a dollar more than a gallon of organic milk at Trader Joe's, and no one that I am aware of has been able to verify whether the cows that produce Trader Joe's milk are "happy." And by happy I mean farmed-responsibly, with enough acreage to support them,eating grass in a pasture, not "feed" in a lot. The delivery fee covers the cost of the couple who drive their van from Oroville to Chico to Redding and back each Monday to delivery the milk. When you break it down all those amounts seem reasonable.
The trouble is the total. Based on these numbers if I wanted to purchase two gallons of milk a week (assuming four weeks in a month) through the herdshare, the monthly cost comes out to $105. (That's $29 for the herdshare, $7 times 8 gallons, plus 4 weeks of $5 delivery.) If I purchased two $6 gallons of organic milk per week from a grocery store, the monthly cost comes out to $48. If we decide to go for this raw milk thing, we'll have to more than double our milk budget.
And that's assuming that two gallons would be enough for our family. When I talked to the delivery man on the phone and said I thought we'd want two gallons a week, he laughed good-naturedly and informed me that his family of three goes through five or six gallons a week! They make their own cheese, yogurt and butter. That sounds crazy to some of you, but loyal readers know that that's the kind of stuff I am into.
So is it worth it? What do you think?
We buy are vast majority of our fruits, veggies and eggs at the farmers market. Certainly, we grow some in our garden, and infrequently, we'll buy something--a carton of eggs, or a bag onions or some mushrooms--at a grocery store, but the vast majority of our produce comes from local farmers. I do this primarily because I believe in the value of having a local food shed. We believe it's also better for the environment to shop locally, safer for us as consumers to know from whence our food comes, and we think it tastes better. I don't even think about the cost any more, but my guess is that it's actually cheaper than buying organic food at the grocery store (but probably more expensive than buying conventional food at a discount grocer).
We haven't purchased meat at the farmer's market for the last few years because of the cost. Chico Meat Locker is our butcher of choice lately. The meat is not necessarily local, but it is a local business and the quality is better than that at a conventional grocery store.
Most often we buy organic milk at Trader Joe's. I prefer it to other organic grocery store milks because it's not ultra-pasteurized. I don't like ultra-pasteurized, because I think it kills enzymes that might be good for us. Sometimes, when money is tight, we buy conventional milk, but I always make sure it says that it is "not from cows with growth hormones." And sometimes, when money is not so tight, we buy organic milk from the natural food store.
Anyhow, I recently found a source of local, raw milk. I know a lot of people are freaked out about raw milk. I'm not going to go into the arguments for and against it here. At least not right now. Suffice it to say that I'm open to the idea of raw milk from happy grass-fed cows. And locally produced milk would be preferrable to conventional stuff (or conventional organic stuff) from who-knows-where.
The thing is that this new source of local, raw milk is a herdsharing program, meaning there's a set monthly fee, kind of like a membership fee. Currently this fee is $28 per herdshare (approximately one gallon of milk per week), but additional shares can be purchased (until October 1st, 2011) for $1 more. On top of the herdshare fee, each gallon costs $7, and there's a weekly delivery fee of $5.
Oh, and each consumer provides their own containers. In fact, if we wanted two gallons of milk per week in half-gallon containers (for easy pouring), we would need to provide eight half gallon jars (approximately $10 for canning jars at a hardware store). And we need to provide a soft-sided cooler and ice packs ($ ??).
You see, the process is this: We drop off our clean, empty containers in a cooler at the drop off point in Chico on Monday morning. At 9:00am the delivery van picks up the containers and drives them to the farm. It takes about three hours for four people to fill the containers and pack them back into the van. They are driven back and dropped off at the drop off point in Chico. After work I can pick up my cooler full of farm fresh milk.
Some people might see all those fees as price gouging, but that's not so. This dairy recently cancelled their contract with Land O'Lakes because the big company wanted all their milk or none of it. Now this small dairy is trying to stay afloat selling directly to consumers. The herdsharing fee is income they can count on year round. The $7 a gallon is only about a dollar more than a gallon of organic milk at Trader Joe's, and no one that I am aware of has been able to verify whether the cows that produce Trader Joe's milk are "happy." And by happy I mean farmed-responsibly, with enough acreage to support them,eating grass in a pasture, not "feed" in a lot. The delivery fee covers the cost of the couple who drive their van from Oroville to Chico to Redding and back each Monday to delivery the milk. When you break it down all those amounts seem reasonable.
The trouble is the total. Based on these numbers if I wanted to purchase two gallons of milk a week (assuming four weeks in a month) through the herdshare, the monthly cost comes out to $105. (That's $29 for the herdshare, $7 times 8 gallons, plus 4 weeks of $5 delivery.) If I purchased two $6 gallons of organic milk per week from a grocery store, the monthly cost comes out to $48. If we decide to go for this raw milk thing, we'll have to more than double our milk budget.
And that's assuming that two gallons would be enough for our family. When I talked to the delivery man on the phone and said I thought we'd want two gallons a week, he laughed good-naturedly and informed me that his family of three goes through five or six gallons a week! They make their own cheese, yogurt and butter. That sounds crazy to some of you, but loyal readers know that that's the kind of stuff I am into.
So is it worth it? What do you think?
October 25, 2011
Rustic Apple Galette
I am no expert on pie crust, so I won't pretend to be. I usually pull out my trusty old Betty Crocker for that; every once in a while I'll use a refrigerator pie crust from a grocery store.
There's something about making a pie that is a bit intimidating to me. I don't know what exactly. Maybe it's the pressure to get the crust right. Or all the time it takes to peel enough apples or pit enough cherries for a pie. Speaking of cherry pie, once I made a cherry pie with frozen cherries that I neglected to thaw. Well, of course, they thawed in the oven inside of the pie. All the liquid they released ruined the bottom crust leaving me with a beautiful lattice-topped mushy disaster. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I haven't made pie in years.
Or come to think of it: the last time I made a pie my grandma was at my house. I'd recently unearthed the KitchenAid mixer she'd given me as a wedding gift and I'd been looking through the enclosed cookbook, where I found instructions for making pie crust. So, to show her that I was using and appreciating her gift, I followed the instructions and started measuring ingredients into the bowl of my mixer. When she saw this, she scoffed and rolled her eyes and told me I was failing at pie dough. As she pulled the half-mixed dough out of the mixing bowl and onto a wooden board she said, "Not to worry, all it takes is practice." Then she determined that I haven't made enough dough and asked for shortening. Shortening? I mean I know that people still use the stuff, but I'm more of a butter or oil cook. Luckily, I did have some shortening, because I do use shortening in my Granny's favorite chocolate chip cookies, but...
oOo
But sometimes I get a hankering for something apple-pie-like. And this is what I turn to:
On a non-insulated cookie sheet: a single recipe of pie crust, rolled out a little more thinly than one would for a traditional pie, with one or two apples (cored but not peeled), sliced thinly and tossed with cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg, fanned out in the center of the crust. Fold the edges of the crust up onto the apples leaving most of the apples exposed. (If you want to get fancy, brush the crust with egg wash.) Bake at 400 until the crust is golden brown and delicious, about 20 minutes.
You could certainly serve this as dessert with a scoop of ice cream, but I prefer it just slightly warmed as a coffee break snack.
There's something about making a pie that is a bit intimidating to me. I don't know what exactly. Maybe it's the pressure to get the crust right. Or all the time it takes to peel enough apples or pit enough cherries for a pie. Speaking of cherry pie, once I made a cherry pie with frozen cherries that I neglected to thaw. Well, of course, they thawed in the oven inside of the pie. All the liquid they released ruined the bottom crust leaving me with a beautiful lattice-topped mushy disaster. Maybe that's it. Maybe that's why I haven't made pie in years.
Or come to think of it: the last time I made a pie my grandma was at my house. I'd recently unearthed the KitchenAid mixer she'd given me as a wedding gift and I'd been looking through the enclosed cookbook, where I found instructions for making pie crust. So, to show her that I was using and appreciating her gift, I followed the instructions and started measuring ingredients into the bowl of my mixer. When she saw this, she scoffed and rolled her eyes and told me I was failing at pie dough. As she pulled the half-mixed dough out of the mixing bowl and onto a wooden board she said, "Not to worry, all it takes is practice." Then she determined that I haven't made enough dough and asked for shortening. Shortening? I mean I know that people still use the stuff, but I'm more of a butter or oil cook. Luckily, I did have some shortening, because I do use shortening in my Granny's favorite chocolate chip cookies, but...
oOo
But sometimes I get a hankering for something apple-pie-like. And this is what I turn to:
On a non-insulated cookie sheet: a single recipe of pie crust, rolled out a little more thinly than one would for a traditional pie, with one or two apples (cored but not peeled), sliced thinly and tossed with cinnamon, sugar and nutmeg, fanned out in the center of the crust. Fold the edges of the crust up onto the apples leaving most of the apples exposed. (If you want to get fancy, brush the crust with egg wash.) Bake at 400 until the crust is golden brown and delicious, about 20 minutes.
You could certainly serve this as dessert with a scoop of ice cream, but I prefer it just slightly warmed as a coffee break snack.
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