Winter garden

Thought I'd check in with an update of sorts.
It has frozen completely several times here now. The garden is mostly empty and planted with a cover crop of legumes for green manure in the spring. Only the blackened, drooping tomato vines have not been pulled and the few winter crops.

We harvested the last mature cauliflower (see photo), as they do not do well in the rain. There are still abundant broccoli, swiss chard, kale, parsley and overwintering carrots.
We find we cannot grow lettuce until early spring, even in a greenhouse. I make sprouts in mid-winter for sandwich greens.

But we did just pick peppers, both hot and sweet, from the upper greenhouse. The lower greenhouse, with more sensitive squash, melons, and cucumbers died a month ago. The cellar is full of peppers (they keep a long time in baskets), apples and, soon, potatoes from Ferndale.

The pantry is stocked with canned and dried goods, the freezer with meat and berries and pesto. There is still a lug of tomatoes, picked green, ripening.

We are very fortunate here in our benevolent temperate climate.

What the challenge has been...

When I started on this culinary journey I admit I thought it would be simple. After all, I have devoted most of my adult life here in Humboldt County living as close to the land as possible.

We came to the area as part of the 1960's Back-to-the-land movement and have worked toward a self-suppporting, sustainable lifestyle ever since. From the time our children were small and we raised dairy goats, rabbits, sheep and pigs, as well as the gardens, orchard and poultry we still have, we have gone from producing about 85% of our own food to about 70%. Given this advantage and all the fine food available in the large agricultural, multi-climate bio-region the Challenge allowed, it looked like an easy task. Nonetheless, there were many distinct changes we had to make.

September is a month of abundance in the garden, lots of food and lots of variety. Usually we eat Asian style stir fry with rice several times a week. But now we had no ginger root, no soy sauce, white pepper, fish sauce, peanut oil or other Asian seasoning. And no curries.

In fact, the greatest challenge of all was the lack of salt, pepper, spices (cumin especially!) and flavorings (vanilla), followed by butter (too lazy to make), flour, and other whole grains. I now know why people were ready to risk sailing off the edge of the earth looking for a shorter route to the Spice Islands!

Even with my salt "exception" I was reluctant to use it. I added no salt to food after cooking and, in fact, only used salt at all about 4 or 5 times the entire month. I experimented using only herbs and various homemade blends and condiments for seasoning. But no Spike, no pepper... this really was a challenge. I discovered that in our locale we have the ingredients to mainly eat Mediterranean cuisine. Some Mexican, but cumin was definitely lacking.

It would be wonderful if we had a local chicken producer. We ate our one meat bird (the rest perished en route from the hatchery) in August, not knowing we were going to take the challenge. A month without chicken is - well, different. We ended up eating much more beef than usual and, due to the Asian Stir-fry issue, less vegetarian meals as well!

On the other hand, we made many discoveries. From great local wine, meats, condiments, restaurants and new producers. Find this information is in my earlier posts.
We discovered that waitresses at restaurants, and sometimes the cooks, do not know where their food comes from, even if it IS local. It would be interesting to find out how much of the food trucked in is actually from farms in our bio region.

While I was glad to be a "Loophole Localvore", with the leeway to eat both locally harvested and locally produced foods, I found myself feeling guilty using foods with non-local ingredients. We ate less bread, less tortillas as the month wore on.

Now, back to "normal", we find we still eat mostly local food. Last night was stuffed bell peppers and cucumber salad, with only the butter, salt, and pepper being non-local ingredients.

I am probably going to continue to make sour cream and mayonnaise, newly inspired by how easy and delicious they are. We will definitely be more aware of who local producers are and which restaurants serve their fare as well.

All in all, there is a wealth of wonderful food available within our garden, our county and our seven county bio-region. We are truly blessed with abundance here.

Last Day

Hard to believe September has come to an end. Indeed, it is a frosty morning. Down to 30 degrees last night, so far it does not look as though it killed anything.

As I will be in town tomorrow we are shipping orders today. I start with a breakfast of left over leftover chili (that recipe really made a lot!) with egg and cheese. Melon and cider to round it out. Book group tonight, I will see what local fare the gals bring. I am taking a bottle of Briceland "Champagne" to celebrate.

A busy day - no lunch. Grazed a bit on apples (they are close enough - we will be borrowing a neighbor's cider press this weekend), peppers, tomatoes.

Only food harvest work was picking dinner ingredients and adding some trays of tomatoes to the dehydrator.

Made a ratatouille to take. There is a recipe in the Localvore handout, but I used another. I cannot believe I did not make this all along! The perfect harvest season fare - with zukes, onion, eggplant, peppers - a garden medley of the best kind. That, Champagne & a bottle of the Elk Prairie in hand I joined my friends in a chat 'n chew around books about Julia Child.

How apropos!

There was local salad, a chili relleno casserole with local peppers, Orzo salad with local vegetables, homemade pickles, pasta with homemade sauce. It was tough, but I stuck to these and the ratatouille, with the rather large loophole of the other ingredients involved. I did not eat cornbread and several other delectables with only out of area ingredients... but waived mightily on the carrot cake. They could have been local carrots... not!

I stuck to the Elk Prairie - and we never did get around to the champagne.

I'll write a summation of what I learned later in the week. It really has been an interesting journey, with much the same and some new. I was, perhaps, more lax that I should have been, but I know I will be having many more localvore meals every day.

Tweaked Tuesday

The rain did not arrive last night as predicted - but the cold did. 40 degrees this morning. Sun & mixed clouds and a prediction for frost the next couple of nights. Ah well - the seasons do change.

Our young hens have started laying, the occasional small "beginner" egg has been showing up. But today there was a very special one - a blue egg from one of the 2 Auracana hens. Having these young hens starting now will assure us eggs in the winter months when the older hens take a break.

From the get go, this day was full of interruptions. Late to get tea - was lucky to get in a brunch of egg and fried pepper and Loleta cheddar sandwich with cider. Snacked on cherry tomatoes and little sweet peppers.

Frost predicted tonight, and I don't need the weatherman... quite cool all day and in the 40's before 9pm. After work we picked all the soon-to-be-ripening tomatoes, summer squash, good looking zinnias and the rest of the corn. Then we put a hoop and plastic cold frame arrangement over the summer and winter squash and crossed our fingers over the tomatoes.

Lastly, we closed the ends of the greenhouses that house our peppers, basil, eggplant and melons as well a few extra tomatoes. This could be the end of fresh summer vegetable abundance. We will see. And even if... there is chard and winter cole coming on and lots of already harvested food in the house both fresh & preserved.

We were wrapping this up right up until I had to leave for Tai Chi class. The end result was a very late dinner of leftover Localvore Chili con Carne that I had put in the freezer to keep. On the side we had the solar Spanish Rice cooked yesterday and the last of the sweet corn. Cider was the beverage of choice. Slices of honeydew melon for dessert.

I end the day trying to print shipping labels (Grrrr - the USPS website is being uncooperative) and admiring the many vases of zinnias! I may have overdone it, but Zinnias do not handle frost well - and it is only 38 degrees out now.

Tomorrow is the last day of the Challenge. I have been thinking about what has been different, what I have learned. I look forward to writing a summary of the experience. But now, *YAWN*, I must go sleep on it.

28 down, 2 to go

Monday, work day, paperwork, phone and orders.
I start with Brio toast with a thin slice of Loleta cheddar cheese,a fine butter substitute, to accompany my tea.

We want to make the most of this decidedly cooler (some 30 degrees cooler than yesterday!)  but sunny day. Throw some tarps over things, put others away... batten down the hatches for impending change in the weather.

Break time means a Monday brunch. We make omelets filled with chopped crookneck squash, onion, bell pepper, parsley, burger, & Loleta jack cheese. I season mine with our "Thaibasco" sauce. There is cider to drink and honeydew melon on the side.  The honeydew is perfectly ripe - a sign of more to come. We grow these melons in containers in a greenhouse.
 Before going back to work I put together a dish of solar Spanish Rice (see recipe here) while we still have sun. To make it more local based, I leave out the cumin or Mexican seasoning and add some of my ground chilis (sparingly) and chopped cilantro. This way I'll have a ready made rice dish for some busy evening, rain or shine.
While it cooks I go back to work.
Finally done (work & rice both), we get out to harvest, put away, and cover up anything that needs to stay dry. If the change in temperature wasn't enough to remind us of the season we hear a distant clamor... First Geese! The migration is in progress - two large "V's" high in the sky heading SE. Very cool.

Day done. We dine on local line-caught rock cod, cooked in olive oil with my fish seasoning. With it a pile of steamed crookneck squash and sliced beets w/sour cream. We love beets. I will pull up a bunch of them and steam them ( these were steamed yesterday) and put them in the fridge to use on salads or whenever. This dish, usually made with butter and salt & pepper, was just fine with the beets heated in a tiny bit of olive oil and then steamed with about a Tablespoon of water. Just before serving I stirred in the last of our homemade sour cream. A perfectly local dinner. Except for the olive oil all from Humboldt county - again!
I have my evening tea and put the dried pears into jars to seal. We begin to refill the dehydrator with more tomatoes. It is during weather changes that the dehydrator is most valuable. Might be no more placing the trays outside for a while.

Back on the computer I find a message in my e mail - Arcata did not make the Top 20 Best Farmer's Markets in the US!! As good as that market is, and as computer savvy as Arcatans are, I really thought they might get out the vote.
Sponsored by  American Farmland Trust , "...committed to protecting the nation's best farm and ranch land and improving the economic viability of agriculture." They held an online contest to find the most liked farmer's markets in 3 size categories.
Maybe next year...

The Last Weekend

Wow, the month is coming to a close. It has been an interesting culinary journey.

After a tea, pear and melon breakfast a leisurely Saturday begins.
We are having a heat wave. 100+ yesterday, definitely today is headed there as well. We watered and did some harvesting earlier and are staying in the cooler house.

I checked the dehydrator and all but 1 tray's worth of the pears are done. We pack these in canning jars and vacuum pack them, using the seal a meal (FoodSaver) jar attachment. This is one of the neater gizmos we have ever bought. I use it to vacuum pack jars of dried fruit, dried tomatoes, almonds, tea, coffee, even bulk vegetable oil. We initially got the machine for packing meat to freeze, but make much more use of it for glass jars of dry goods.
At any rate, I core and slice the remaining pears to dry - leaving only 7 pears to eat. The end of the Bartlett pears! This makes me very happy. Our winter pears won't be ripe for a few more weeks.

Yesterday I baked bread for the first time this month. Ordinarily we bake most of our bread. We have a bread machine - as I am generally lazy to knead and do all the work for only one loaf of bread. Since there has only been the two of us at home we have gotten a bread machine which lets me control the ingredients without doing the work. But we did not go to town last week and what bread we did not eat became chicken food due to dehydration or mold.
At any rate, the bread allows us to have our favorite carnivorous sandwich - a mock Reuben. With Premiere Meats pastrami, Loleta Cheese Monterey Jack, home made mayonnaise, Fred's Horseradish mustard and our home canned sauerkraut (last year's, the new batch is not ready yet) a local delectable deli style lunch. This with the last of the now lightly alcoholic cider and last of the exploded melon.

We have our oldest daughter, 2 granddaughter's, and a friend coming for the weekend and will probably be breaking the Challenge temporarily for dinner. We are attending a spaghetti dinner benefit for the Two Rivers Community Care Group, a wonderful organization which got a write up in Thursdays Times Standard. The importance of supporting Lauri Rose and the other volunteers' efforts in our community trumps the Eat Local Challenge for this one meal.
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(As it turns out, several of the sauces and a side dish of mixed garden vegetables and bowl of cherry tomatoes are completely local.)
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Sunday is a family girl's day on the farm (Dennis stays in the background). We share local food all day, on the plate, in the canner and to take home.
Our daughter brought up another (cold!) gallon of Clendenen's cider, a couple loaves of Brio bread and Humboldt Creamery 1/2 & 1/2 (hooray!), some Loleta Cheddar as well as potatoes and cauliflower from a friend's farm in Ferndale. We packed it all away last night.

We start the day with a Sunday brunch of poached farm fresh eggs (the little girls LOVE getting the eggs) on our home baked bread with grated Loleta cheese. A poor man's Eggs Benedict. On the side we have the cider and the first of our intact melons. A Galia honeydew/muskmelon cross - yum!

Amber brings Lila over to spend the day with her cousins (and get a break) and we big girls can a vegetable medley of onions, garlic, summer squash, peppers, green beans, cabbage, herbs and tomatoes for soup. Vegetable medleys are a handy way to put away small amounts of several varieties of vegies at once. Requiring pressure canning, you process for  the longest time of the individual vegetables included. In this case, summer squash. I always throw in some of my herbed vinegar to bring up the acidity (and flavor) as well.

We snacked on pears, peaches, plums and peppers as well as the leftover rice pudding.
An early dinner so the gang can drive home to the coast - an all-American localvore burger on Brio bread with Loleta Cheese, homemade mayo and catsup, lettuce and tomato from the garden. With corn on the cob and potato salad made with homemade mayo, farm eggs, onion, parsley, homemade sweet pickles and vinegar and apple cider on the side it is the perfect end of the warm weather feast.
We send the girls back home with summer squash and tomatoes as well as jars of vegetables for the pantry.

And we mean end of the warm weather. Although in the 100's today, we hear a cold snap will be here in the next couple of days - time to put out the cold frame over the winter squash and batten down the hatches.

Ah well. So I end this day with a glass of Riverbend Cellars Cabernet downloading tomorrow's orders and updating this blog. And toast to the last few days of the challenge.

Working it through the week

Thursday and Friday - trying to balance work and harvest. It is beginning to feel like over-abundance!

Thursday begins with pears & tea and off to work. Today Dennis makes soap while I ship orders. We have a late lunch of vegie boogaloo with sausage, with fizzy apple cider. Our gift of Clendenen's cider was unrefrigerated the day before we got it, all it takes to accelerate the fermentation process!
I break to water the greenhouses and pick the few peaches in the top of our cling peach tree... A surprise! Hidden in the leaves were a whole basket of lovely ripe peaches! Wahoo!! Fruit that is SO not pears!
We celebrate later with a snack of a peach strawberry smoothie using the yogurt I made and the handful of berries that was in the strawberry bed. Bliss.

Dinner is local tortellini I got at Eureka Co-op. The label does not give the origin, but it is the fresh pasta you see at both co-ops. There was a sign by it saying it was locally made, but I did not write down the producer. At any rate it is delicious with the pesto we made, a cucumber & tomato salad with basil and Tehama olive oil & our homemade red wine vinegar dressing, and a glass of the Elk Prairie Pinot. As a very special treat I heat some peach slices with honey until soft and hot and we drizzle some Humboldt Creamery cream over it for dessert. Now, THAT is delicious.

My last effort of the day is to fill our dehydrator with pear slices to dry. This leaves only a very full single layer in a lug box. The end of the pears is in sight at last.

Friday this time of year is a minimal business and maximum food preservation day. Really, when the harvest season is full on, if I am not putting away food one way or the other every day it will rot, explode into zillions of fruit flies - and I will miss the opportunity.
This Friday is salsa and corn. My favorite canning partners, Amber and Lila are coming over to can this morning.
We start the day with tea and pear and grazing on cherry tomatoes and peppers and some melon (our first this year) from a honeydew that actually exploded open. I guess that one's ripe!
When the girls get here we go out and harvest ingredients for salsa before the day gets too hot. After, I play with Lila while Amber preps to make Zesty Salsa (Blue Book again). After which she and Lila lay down for a nap.
I lunch on a vegie scramble and some melon, then pick the remainder of our 3rd batch of corn (we plant corn to ripen at 65, 75, 85 and 100 days to extend our season). By then the girls are up and had their lunch. Amber resumes the salsa making and Lila and I husk corn.
There are quite a few corn earworms this year and Lila is very excited about this. She took this picture of a green worm all by herself!

Speaking about excited. I am still very excited about the peaches. During this Challenge I have been wanting to make an egg custard - eggs and milk being two great local products and eggs in abundance right now. But the flavoring aspect, sans vanilla, was baffling me. But I can see that peaches could be the perfect sweet-tart note to add, with some sort of base.
Using the Lundberg Rice loophole and some solar cooked rice from the other day I made a peach rice pudding with 1 c. milk, 2 eggs, about 1/3 c. honey beaten together mixed with a few chopped peaches and maybe 3 c. cooked rice. This cooked up lovely in the solar oven.

Salsa done, and after eating some grapes from a friend in Trinity county, Lila and her mom went home.
Time to can the corn...
I wanted a more serious beverage to end a long, busy day, but felt guilty about my gin & tonic last Monday. So as an apertif, while cutting the kernels off the ears of corn, I had a cocktail of a dash of homemade Limoncello and a shot of sour cherry liqueur over ice - with several of the cherries in it.
A friend in Arcata make the Limoncello, a lemon flavored liqueur. I make the cherry. When our sour (pie) cherry tree has been robbed by the birds, leaving too few cherries for pie, I layer the cherries with organic sugar in a glass jar about 2/3 full and fill the jar with vodka. Wait at least 3 months, stirring occasionally, and the cherries turn pale and the liquid rose and the flavor - quite nice. A dessert, really. Not bad over fruit, ice cream or, in this case, ice. Be warned - the vodka soaked cherries are potent!
While the pints of corn were in the pressure canner, Dennis and I dined on grilled local beef steak, corn on the cob, and a salad with lettuce, cabbage, radishes, and steamed beets from the garden. Our condiments included Fred's Horseradish with our home made sour cream and the buttermilk salad dressing. Of course some Elk Prairie Pinot to accompany this. No salt, no pepper and no butter - but all good. And made all the more locally wonderful by our peachy rice pudding dessert!

Wednesday - only one week left...

We are now full on into the harvest. It's mid- food season here. A great time for the Challenge, but if I do not preserve some type of food every day I get hopelessly behind. Firewood to stack as well. Getting ready for winter.

We start the day with vegie scramble with some of the Premiere Chicken Apple sausage. We have to finish it soon - as it will not keep much longer.
Computer work, paperwork - but a fairly open day and we manage to stack a couple loads of wood somehow as well.

Lunch is salad with home canned local tuna, and a quesadilla made with Loleta jack cheese, fried pepper and Rita's whole wheat tortillas.
After lunch I can some Italian vegetables. This recipe is from a Co-op handout I picked up in 1983 (? or 85?). I generally do several vegetable medleys. They are a quick, delicious soup come colder weather. It takes a pressure canner, and the rule of thumb is use the canning time for the vegetable with the longer processing time. The Blue Book has a chart.

Italian Style Vegetables
9 c. eggplant, peeled & cubed
6 c. small head cabbage, shredded
3 c. tomatoes, peeled, seeded, cubed
1 lb summer squash, cubed
2 c. large onions chopped
2 c. med bell peppers, chopped
2 c. water
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 Tblsp. salt
1/2 tsp. black pepper

In large pot combine all ingredients, cover and bring to boil. Boil 5 to 7 min. stirring once.
Pack hot vegetables into clean hot jars leaving 1/2 inch headspace. If needed, add hot liquid to cover vegetables. Wipe rims, seal, and process in process in pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure 40 minutes for pints (50 minutes for quarts).

We actually made more - based on the amount of eggplant I had. We made a batch & 1/2, for 4 quarts and 8 pints.
Dinner was a Salisbury steak (bunless burger), corn, cucumber, pepper, & tomato salad and some of Henry's olives on the side. Oil and my red wine vinegar or the buttermilk Dressing.
Tomorrow we ship orders again and I am off to bed...

The Equinox - Happy Fall

And the continuing harvest season...
Today we do the work the pears superceded on Monday - in a bit of a sleep deprived stupor.
Breakfast is yogurt with pears and home made jam.
Lunch is  a sandwich of egg, pepper Loleta pepper jack cheese, the last of the Brio & our home made mayo.
Early dinner of local line caught Rock cod pan fried in olive oil with a spice rub I make,  steamed crookneck sq, and green salad with the buttermilk dressing.

Autumn is here with beautiful days and a heat wave to boot!
Shameless self promo: To celebrate we are having a Sale! 5% off any Simmons 4oz bar soap through September 30. Use coupon code SEP22 at checkout.
(I told you it was a business day!)

Monday - not! the pear alarm went off!

Well, theoretically Monday is a business shipping day. Usually we are working in the office all day.
Not this Monday - it's now or never to do the pears.
To fortify ourselves we had a giant vegie scramble with grated Loleta Cheddar on top, Clendenen's cider a friend brought us from town and a pear, just to get us in the mood.

We are canning Bartlett pears. We have 5 lugs of them as our pear trees went wild this year. We have been eating the delectable Red Bartletts fresh, the green ones can better.
The process is pretty straightforward, if time consuming. Peel pears. Cut in 1/2 and core. We use a 1/2 teaspoon measure to scoop out the core and pull the stringy part that leads up to the stem. The peels and cores get fed to the chickens.
We put the prepared pear halves into a solution of water and several crushed vitamin C pills. You can use vinegar and salt or lemon juice instead of vitamin C - it just keeps the pears from oxidizing and turning brown.
I raw pack the pears. You will see the Ball Blue book only recommends hot packing pears, but some of my old books have both methods. I have only ever done them raw (35+ years of canning experience), and it works fine. I put 1/2 of a vitamin C in the bottom of each jar after it has been scalded and before I put in the pears, and add around a Tablespoon of honey (local Barbata's clover honey this time) to each jar. I have never made syrup for canning fruit. Too sweet!
Top this off with boiling water and wipe rims, seal, and process in a hot water bath, 35 minutes for quarts.
Somewhere in the middle of all this we managed a boiled egg sandwich with homemade mayo & lettuce on the last of our Co-op Bakery bread. Another thing we have LOTS of right now - eggs! Our young hens have started laying too.

Finally done - 21 quarts & 19 pints of pears later. The photo is a bit blurry - but so were we by this time! *Yawn* I cheated and had a gin & tonic that was in no way local, but was an antidote to a very long pear peeling session! Our dinner of leftovers (chili & stew) was at 11pm - finally got to bed at 1am - And still 1 more lug of pears we put back in the cellar. Whew!

The Last Weekend of Summer

The weather is heating up as the season ends. I am missing the North Country Fair in Arcata for the first time in many years as I am on call. It really was the only weekend I could do it.
Ah well, it is nice to be home for a change.

Saturday I start the day with tea and a pear. The pears are all smelling delicious and ripe - uh-oh! I have to get to them pronto. This holds me until our official late Saturday breakfast accompanied by "Wait, Wait - Don't Tell Me" on KHSU.
We have a Premier chicken apple sausage enhanced vegie boogaloo. I should re-clarify - "Boogaloo" is whatever we have mixed with leftover rice and scrambled eggs.  A vegie scramble is more or less the same - without the rice. Right now vegies consist of any of the following: Summer squash (zukes, patty pan or crookneck), onions, cabbage, tomatoes, chard, kale, cukes, green beans, garlic, corn, lettuce, radishes, carrots, broccoli (side shoots), beets. This is what is available right now in our garden. Only things we are still waiting for is melons, of which there are several not quite ripe, and winter squash.

Lunch is a simple green salad with a sliced boiled egg.
Yesterday I cooked some Warren Creek dry beans in our solar oven and today we solar cooked the Chili con Carne recipe in the Eat Local Resources Packet. With some alterations, that is. I tamper with everything. My changes were olive oil rather than butter, a couple roasted ancho peppers leftover from canning last week along with various bell and jalapeno peppers. In addition to oregano I added some dried basil and mixed ground (well, more like pepper flakes, really) chili peppers I made last year.
This came out really hot! Hmmmmm... I wonder what chiles I put in that dried pepper mix? I know the jalapenos are not that hot. SO now we have a LOT of HOT Chili con Carne.
To temper it we serve it with grated Loleta Cheddar and the homemade sour cream. Now that is truly delicious. Corn on the cob on the side and pears for dessert. Water to put out any residual fire from the chili.

On Sunday we repeat the Huevos Rancheros using the chili instead of refritos. Good this way, too, if a tad warmer. We are not adding and salsa to this meal!
Much of the afternoon is taken up by a STAR call, but we manage a berry peach smoothie made with our fruit and the home made yogurt for lunch. Luckily I had put dinner in the solar oven before the call came in and we have a Solar Buffalo Stew using some of the meat we got in Lake County. It had onions, garlic, carrots and some chopped zucchini in it and the last of our Warren Creek potaoes on the side.

The only project that got done was drying some more cherry and Principe Borghese tomatoes. I learned about the Principe Borghese reading "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral" by Barbara Kingsolver. They are like tiny paste tomatoes and dry marvelously. We do not buy tomatoes at the store. Ever. So we dry and can tomatoes for winter and spring use and only get to eat fresh tomatoes now. The result of this is we almost never cook them fresh. For many meals we have a bowl of chopped or sliced fresh tomatoes on the table to add to our food.
Being on call meant we never got around to canning pears. Uh-oh. We will see if they are stiull good to can or if all 5 lugs are overripe by the time I get to them.

Food, Glorious Food...

Today, Friday, I have set aside to work with food all day! My daughter and granddaughter will be coming over to make pesto, using up the copious amount of basil we have growing in our greenhouse. This is 2 year old Lila helping to "cut" basil.

I start early, with yogurt & berries and pear for breakfast. I picked some "exploding" cabbage yesterday evening and want to get them taken care of before the girls get here. Once the heads have cracked several layers deep they won't keep, so I am making sauerkraut. This first step is relatively quick and easy. Then it sits and ferments for several weeks before I have to can it.
This requires bowls, a crock, a cabbage shredder or mandolin (not the musical kind) and knife. I think some people use a food processor, but I have never had one, so don't know.
I trim the outer leaves off the cabbage. The chickens will enjoy these - and the bugs that come with them.Here is the process:

Shred the cabbage fine. The trick to sauerkraut is fairly uniform size pieces, so everything will ferment uniformly as well. I take any larger chunks and cut them smaller with a knife.
Weigh the cabbage. To every 5 pounds of shredded cabbage, mix in 3 Tblsp. salt. I use sea salt. I am probably one of the few people who buys salt in 50 lb. bags. It keeps forever and takes me several years to use up.

Now press the salted, shredded cabbage into the clean crock as firmly as possible. I scald the crock with boiling water right before I do this.
Press it as hard as you can. I use my fists with my entire weight behind it. It will begin to get juicy almost immediately. Add more cabbage in layers until you are done (up to within 3 or 4 inches of top of crock maximum), pressing until the liquid covers the surface. Cover the top with a layer of cheesecloth and weigh it down. This time I am using a plate over the cheesecloth with a gallon jar of water as a weight. The point is to keep the cabbage submerged. You can use a plastic bag filled with water (placed inside another bag) to be a weight that also entirely seals the surface preventing contact with air, yeasts or molds.

Now you let it set for 5 to 6 weeks, until it is the desired "sourness". You can add a bit of water if the liquid evaporates below the level of the cabbage. When done you skim off the top layer, which may be soft. Place the kraut in a stock pot and heat to a simmer. Pack hot into hot clean jars, cover with the hot juice to within 1/2 inch of top, seal and process in a boiling water bath, 15 minutes for pints and 20 minutes for quarts.

There are also recipes that let you make sauerkraut directly into wide mouth quart jars. This has never worked for me, but I have friends who have great success with it.

This done, we lunch on a egg and vegie scramble with some of the Premiere Meats chicken apple sausage chopped into it.
By now Amber and Lila are here and we go pick 3 big baskets of basil. I have a lot of sweet basil (Genoa, Ruffled, Mammoth, and Globe), plus purple and Thai basil that we will be using. We set some aside on the stems to hand to dry, and pick the leaves off of the stems of the rest, keeping the different type separate. We then peel a lot of garlic. The prep takes all the time. Once that is done and we line up all the other ingredients it goes very quickly.

Basil Pesto:
olive oil
nuts (pine nuts, walnuts, or almonds)
garlic
basil
In a blender, to each 1 c. olive oil, add 1/4 c. garlic cloves and 1/2 c. nuts. Blend thoroughly. Now add basil until you cannot convince the mixture to take any more. Pack into 1/2 pint jars or those plastic deli containers you could not bring yourself to throw away (who, me?), label and date and freeze. I used to put parmesean cheese in the pesto when I made it, but now just add it to the food at the time we eat it.
We make a couple special pestos - one with the purple basil (more black when done) and 2 with the Thai basil, one the same as regular, and one a sort of Asian paste with peanut oil, Thai chili, garlic and the basil. That will be interesting, I bet!
In the middle of this we go off to a short but sweet surprise baby shower for a friend. Snacks there include piles of Sungold Cherry tomatoes and sliced garden vegies with a homemade yogurt dip. Apple cake and carrot cake and tofu filled empanadas. I think I will cheat and drink some pomegranate Italian soda - but I manage to spill it all over myself instead! It is my subconscious protecting me from this non-local, non-tea beverage!!
Most of this time we have been drinking only water, but that is our main beverage here anyway. We have a very good spring and our tap water is delicious.

In the past I have also made pesto with lemon basil and dried tomatoes and other variations.

Once all is done, kitchen cleaned up, and Amber and Lila headed for home with containers of pesto, garden produce and eggs, we settle in for dinner. Pesto, of course - with local raviolis, garden green salad with the buttermilk dressing (recipe in the "Take the Challenge" handout from the Co-op), garlic bread (Brio with olive oil, garlic, chopped basil and parmesan cheese).

A good food day, all in all.

Thursday - my "Friday"- night

I do volunteer Emergency Medical Dispatching for Southern Trinity Area Rescue (S.T.A.R.) one weekend a month and will be on call starting tomorrow at 5pm. So we tend to make pre-call Thursday our "Friday" night for R&R.
The day starts with the now common tea, pears, and Brio toast with chevre. I am jealous of you coffee drinkers as I have no loophole, only an exception, that lets me have my morning brew!

It's a work day, of course, but we get the orders out and shop work done by 1pm. So we get to work outdoors after trying out the Premiere chicken apple sausage for lunch, split and fried and in a sandwich w/ fried pepper Casa Lindah mustard. Yum.

We water and harvest and do remedial repair (literally baling twine and duct tape) on the broken branches of an apple tree. Hopefully the fruit will ripen, then we can prune the branches as properly needs to be done. Too many apples and too much wind is a bad combination for a young tree.
I also whip up another batch of mayonnaise. I am still amazed how quick that is! I may never go back to buying it.

Dinner is a local (Hydesville) lamb chop that we got from Eureka natural Foods. We grill it and serve it with w/ peach salsa made with a slightly under ripe peach from one of our trees, grilled vegies (see photo) and Brio bread. We toast to life with Elk Prairie Pinot.

Grilled vegetables are another of our favorites of summer. We serve them in big slices, as we did tonight, or cubed on skewers over rice or couscous. I marinate them sliced, in oil and vinegar (our home made red wine vinegar), minced garlic and rosemary, basil and oregano. Usually I add salt & black pepper, but I am still trying to stay away from non-local salt as much as possible, and black pepper altogether, for the month. There is nothing as wonderful as grilled eggplant. Absolutely the best way to eat it.

The peach salsa was peach, onion, garlic and green pepper, chopped small. To this I added 1 minced jalapeno, chopped parsley and a splash of my vinegar (where I would have used lime juice). Came out just fine.

Even without restricting it intentionally, most of what we have been eating has come from within Humboldt County only. We are blessed with a rich variety of local foodstuffs.

How time flies - a week goes by like lightning!

So much for keeping up... But I am keeping track, some days harder than others. I am loathe to bake with my non-local flour, despite it being my norm, so we are eating local bakery products more than ever. Strangely, the result is to actually eat more bread than usual! Here's the rundown:
Sunday 9/13
Some of our fresh yogurt w/ apricot jam I made a year ago.
A pear or two for snacks
Lunch is a fried pepper & egg sandwich with some Loleta Cheese ( I have never eaten so many sandwiches!).
Dinner is the Warren creek beans we cooked in the solar oven yesterday. Good thing as it rained today! We made them into refritos burritos w/ sour cream, fresh salsa, Loleta cheese & leftover cole slaw from the potluck.  A glass of Vinatura Heyseus to top it off.

Its a Monday... And work day.
We start with my "exception" Tea and Pear. The pears are about perfect, it won't last long.
Lunch is the best yet. We make amazing Huevos Rancheros. Eggs poached in some of my canned Zesty Salsa (see the Ball Blue Book again. All ingredients from our garden except the salt). We put some of the leftover warmed refritos on a Bien Padre corn tortilla, topped with the egg/salsa mix, grated Loleta cheese, fresh salsa, & some of the homemade sour cream. WOW! This was fabulous.
pear snack (a must!)
Late dinner of leftover beans & beef roast mixed together as burrito filling. Long day - we're bushed!

Tuesday - Boy the days are changing. This time of year it gets darker noticably earlier each night! I have Tai Chi class Tuesday evenings, so less time to cook.
it gts light so much earlier now. It really seems like it changes fast at this point.
Breakfast is yet another pear, brio toast w/ chevre & tea. We are using a chevre log as cream cheese.
We make solar rice while working so we will have brown rice on hand, and lunch is a
vegie-rice-egg boogaloo with grated Loleta cheese and fresh salsa. We are not keeping up with tomatoes, pears OR summer squash at this point. Hmmm...
A treat - dinner of local ling cod seasoned with my fish herb blend, rice w/ vegies, and corn on the cob.

Town again?!? Yup, Wednesday has become town day every week lately. Too many appointments.
We breakfast on vegie-rice- egg boogaloo & finish the Co-op Bakery apple berry pie our guests brought last Sunday.
We meet our son for lunch at Kyoto. OK, I'm NOT going to pass this up. They note right on their menu that they use local products whenever possible, so I am not worried about the chard or cabbage or at least some of the unbelievably delicious Sushi ingredients.
We pick up a few items at the co-op - notably Pastrami and chicken Apple sausage from Premiere Meats of Shasta. My husband, the carnivore, is very pleased.
I notice the Arcata Co-op meat Dept. has a sign listing many local restaurants that serve local Eel Valley beef (see below). I haven't even heard of some of these restaurants!
On the way home we stop at Eureka Natural Foods for a couple things (though I forgot the Coates wine I wanted). At the deli I am told that they use local greens when available, so we get a spinach salad & grilled tofu. Once home we have our daily pear. Loooong Day!

Restaurants that serve Eel Valley Grass-fed Beef:
Cutten Inn, Catch Cafe. Three Foods Cafe, Abruzzi, Jambalaya, Big Pete's, Big Blue Cafe, Golden Harvest, La Trattoria, Brio Cafe, Arcata Pizza Deli, Lost Coast Brew, Humboldt Brew, Angelo's, Las Casuelas, The Peg House, Gallagher's, Japhy's Soup Kitchen, Live From New York, & Amelia's.
What a great list.

Party Potluck

Today we went to an anniversary party for some friends. It was held at Pamplin Grove County Park, truly one of the gems of the county in the Redwoods along Highway 36. A potluck - I was interested to see what I could find there that fit my Loophole Localvore parameters. But that was not until late afternoon - so more on that later.

"To everything there is a season" and for us in is now the season of Pears. They are getting riper daily and need eating now. So the breakfast of choice is, or includes, pears. Today pears with my cup of tea was all I needed.

I have been wanting yogurt and saw my opportunity this morning to get some started. We enjoy watching the show "Good Eats" on the Food Network, and just recently saw one on... making yogurt! The technique was almost the same as mine, with the addition of honey and using a heating pad to incubate the yogurt until firm.
I incubated the yogurt in a recycled styrofoam container used to ship perishable medicine. I lined it with aluminum foil and set it aside. I could fit 2 wide mouth quart canning jars into the container, so I decided to make 1/2 gallon of yogurt, recipe as follows:
7 cups 2% milk
1 cup plain organic yogurt with live cultures (Nancy's)
1 cup organic powdered milk (Organic Valley)
2 Tblsp local clover honey
First I set a teakettle of water on to boil.
In a stainless steel pan I heated the milk gently, so as not to scorch or scald, to 120 degrees.
While it was heating I blended in the powdered milk and honey with a whisk.
After removing the milk from the heat, I scalded the 2 clean glass canning jars and their lids with the boiling water and set them aside. I filled a third jar with boiling water and placed it in my styrofoam incubator to preheat it, covering it to keep the heat in.
I put the 1 cup of yogurt into a 2 c. measuring cup and stirred in about 1/2 cup of the hot milk. I then stirred the thinned yogurt back into the rest of the milk with it all ending up at 115 degrees. Once blended together, I poured the milk into the 2 jars, put on the lids and seals and, removing the water jar, placed them in the box folding the foil over the top and putting the lid on. The show noted that incubating your yogurt for 6 hours gives you soft yogurt, 9 hours for firm. We wanted firm, so would wait to take it out until after we get home in the evening.
Lunch was a vegie scramble. Sauteed vegetables from the garden with fresh eggs addes and some Loleta cheddar cheese and fresh salsa on top.


For the party I decided to take a big basket of fresh ripe red Bartlett pears and bowl of coleslaw made with the last of the mayonnaise. We also took along a bottle of the Vinatura Heyseus, just in case...
One there we had a fabulous time surrounded with generations of friends - and a park table over laden with food. I realized it was impossible to determine who made each dish and ask them the source of the ingredients (they probably already think I'm a fanatic!), so I decide to eat what definitely looks like garden stuff - tomato basil salad, vegie dish w/zucchini, deviled egg, plus my cole slaw.  All those beautiful dishes are like forbidden fruit - foreign delights, but I manage to resist them. And all the wine is from out of our bio region, so I am glad to have my Vinatura. I have a glass and leave the rest for everyone to share. There is fine local beer, but I am not a beer drinker. Dennis holds down that job.

Later that evening, when we have been home a spell, it is time to take the yogurt out. It looks great. Surprisingly firm for home made - at least in my experience. It had a different texture than I'm used to - rather like honey! Maybe I will leave that out next time.

Friday: Home Sweet Home

Nice to be home where the food is mostly garden fresh and we know where it is all coming from.
A work day - we have to get the orders out and a lot of shop work done. We start the day walking the puppy and dine on a pear breakfast.

Lunch is that summer favorite again, a tomato, cuke & pepper sandwich on Brio Bakery Olive Bread with some of our home made mayo.

I have defrosted a small beef roast for dinner and brown it using Tehama Gold olive oil seasoned with some of my Meat Treat herb mix. I saute and add onions, garlic, carrots, chopped summer squash and some of the Vinatura Table Red to the Dutch oven and cook it in the solar oven. I love the solar oven for this. Like a non-electric crock pot, it slow cooks our dinner while we work elsewhere.

When we are done working I steam some potatoes and corn on the cob to round out the meal, with a glass of the red wine on the side.

We are eating much more red meat than we usually do, during this challenge. Comes of having a freezer with a lot of local beef in it, which comes of having rancher neighbors from whom we can buy a quarter of an organic, range-fed beef. We can get local fish of several varieties, but locally grown chicken is not readily available. We ordered meat birds when we got chicks this spring, but due to a shipping mishap all but one perished en route. Very sad. And we ate the lone meat bird last month, before we decided to take the challenge. A 7 pound bird, it lasted several meals! I miss it now. Ah well.

An Out of County Experience

Morning in Ukiah. We are glad to have our leftover eggplant, pears, and cider from home. After heating the leftovers in the microwave we have a fine local breakfast. I should note that we keep our care stocked with a few travel items, from our stainless steel insulated travel mugs to a kit with a tiny cutting board, knife, utensils, cloth napkins and corkscrew. We also have a bag with tea bags, paper plates and misc. napkins, chopsticks and such. Many has been the time when, while unexpected, these things proved invaluble.

Business done we took a brief side trip to Upper Lake to try to connect with an old friend. We passed vinyards and lots of walnut orchards on the way. We also passed a buffalo ranch and stopped and got some buffalo to have later in the month. Now, that's an unexpected local product.

In Upper Lake we had a locally roasted latte and visited a fruit stand and small natural foods store in the hope of finding some local walnuts. There were lovely fruit (more pears!) and vegetables and even local honey and goat cheeses at the fruit stand, but no walnuts. The store folks noted it was very difficult for them even to get local produce regularly.

On the way home we we're starved by the time we got to Willits. The restaurant I suspected would have local ingredients in their food, The Purple Thistle, was closed so we went to Adell's which is good and feels like there is a possibility of them knowing where their food comes from - but this is not the case. Same problem as I have had elsewhere. Again I choose something that COULD be all local - a grilled zuchinni, pepper, onion and goat cheese panini sandwich. WOW! That was good. I will have to try making that one at home.

We finally pull in rather late. It is dark and we are bushed by the time we get the car unloaded and things put away. We have a quick dinner of the last Casa Lindra burrito, pears, and lots of steamed crookneck squash. Water on the side. Nice to be home where we know our food.

Town again - and beyond...

I can barely believe this challenge has occurred in a month where we are away from home so often.  It definitely makes this more of a challenge. I am getting knowing "oh it's one of those" looks when I start asking about the ingredients in everything - and not meaning "one of those folks taking the Co-op's Eat Local Challenge". Oh well.

The morning dawns clear and warm. I walk the puppy, have my tea and breakfast on one of our lovely red pears. It is wonderful these pears are so delicious, as we must eat a lot of them for a while!
Today we have a bit of business and an appointment on the coast, then off to another bit of work in Mendocino and Lake counties. Thankfully they are both in our bio-region. It is a two day excursion and I pack pears, cider, coleslaw and leftover eggplant to take along.

Off to town, where we go to lunch at the Eureka Golden Harvest on Broadway. I feel like they will have some local fare, but not so. They figure the produce, etc. they get comes from Redding - and I realize that the key here will be to contact the distributor/trucking company and find out where the produce the carry comes from. It very well could originate within our region, but often the restaurant folk do not have any idea. And I need to learn to ask if they know "where it comes from" rather than if it is "local". No one knows the definition of that term -: Humboldt County? Eureka? California? Explaining the bio-region is a tad to complicated in a busy restaurant.
I decide to get something which easily COULD come from our region and end up with a vegie sandwich.

These complications in mind, we do some shopping at Eureka Natural Foods before heading out of town in the afternoon. I find some wonderful food to take with us. There are local ready-made burritos from both Casa Lindra and Rita's. I an assortment of three of those, a bottle of Orleans Coates Zin (on sale ($9.99), fresh salsa from Oxaca Grill in Eureka and local pistacio delmonicos for a treat. OK, pistachios are a stretch, but it is a local bakery. I tossed the label before I wrote it down. So I cannot recommend them directly, but just say they were delicious.

We pulled in fairly late to our room in Ukiah and taking advantage of the microwave, heated our burrito dinner. With the salsa, coleslaw and the wine to drink, we were set for the evening. I can see we will have to always pack road food for the duration of the challenge. Without knowledge of what is available in a given area and not enough time to really explore it, one's ability to determine what is local is very difficult.

Eggplant challenge

One week behind us, not perfect, but not so bad either. Today I will have some time after work for an eggplant experiment.

Breakfast - one of our StarkCrimson Red Bartlett pears. They are slightly under ripe at this point, which makes them apple-crunchy. Still delicious, in fact I rather like them this way. They have a day or two of heavenly perfection between under and over ripe. I prefer under ripe to over, and with so many on hand we have to start eating them now! These are the pears for salad and fresh eating. The green Bartletts are the ones I prefer to can. Good thing, as I have many more of those.

Lunch - We go crazy with a pepper tuna melt. Leftover tuna salad (local canned tuna, homemade mayo, pickles & garden onion and parsley), a fried garden pepper with melted Loleta cheddar on Co-op Bakery sandwich bread. Wholly decadent. A bit of the left over coleslaw on the side and water and lunch is beyond perfection.

Dinner - time for my 'experiment'.
I have 2 'small side of medium' eggplant and the Rumiano Parmesan cheese as my inspiration. First I make a sauce, sauteing chopped garlic and onion in some Tehama Gold olive oil. To this I add chopped bell pepper, yet somehow refrain from adding any summer squash. I sprinkle this with some of my Italian Herb cooking blend (see my blog: All Mixed Up) and cook until soft and onions are translucent, then I add copious amounts of chopped tomatoes. All this is from our garden. A few stirs and I turn it to simmer and leave it to cook while I prepare the eggplant.
I still want the effect of breaded eggplant, but without flour or breadcrumbs. First I sliced the eggplant into 1/4" slices. I beat an egg with about 1/4c. milk in a small bowl and grated a bunch of the Parmesan into another bowl. Then I dipped the eggplant slices into the egg mixture followed by the cheese, with limited success. The cheese did not always want to stick. My answer was to put the cheesiest side down in the pan and sprinkle a bit more on top.
I layered these as I "breaded" them in an 8" square pan, overlapping slightly. When it covered the bottom of the pan I spooned a small amount of sauce over, followed by another layer of the dipped eggplant and sauce, etc., until the eggplant was gone. I got a robust 3 layers! Much more than I expected given the size of the eggplant. Over the top I spread the remaining sauce and sprinkled with more Parmesan cheese. Really more like making a lasagna using eggplant for noodles!
I covered the whole with foil and baked it at 350 for 35 minutes, until the eggplant was tender. I am happy to say it was delicious, even without salt.
Served with a cucumber salad (sliced cucumber, onion, chopped tomato and basil, with homemade vinegar/olive oil dressing) and the last of the Elk Prairie Pinot we would call it a success all around.

No sacrifice at all today... Town the next two days. We will see what that brings.

Fall is in the air...

Boy, you can definitely feel the seasons changing. Suddenly leaves are turning, not just drying up, there is a chill in the occasional breeze that is not just the fog sitting over the ridge. I'm chilly this 40º morning and I want Hot Cereal!
I see a problem here. No local oats, I haven't found local wheat or cornmeal. I could grind rice and toast it and make rice cereal... Naw. We will just have a brunch boogaloo full of rice, onions, summer squash, and eggs. Chopped tomato and Loleta Jalapeno Jack cheese on top, seasoned with herbs and "Ha-basco" Clendenen's cider on the side. However, I am getting tired of eggs & vegies. I will have to find time to make some yogurt soon. I'll pencil it in - Hah!

We are glad it is the Labor Day holiday,' we're moving rather slow and want to play catch - up today. Watering, tending critters, and checking messages, mail and garden. We stack more wood in the woodshed and then pick pears.
The ravens have been knocking our Red Bartletts out of the tree, and the green Bartletts are starting to fall on their own. Closer inspection shows them ready to pick and there are lots of them. And how!
After harvesting, sharing, eating, and throwing raven punctured pears to the chickens, we still have 4 lugs and 3 baskets of pears. Soon to be on the menu, I think!

All afternoon there's been stew cooking in the solar oven. When work is done, so is dinner! I pick a few ears of corn and some blackberries and we have an early supper of local range-fed beef, carrot, onion, pepper, garlic & summer squash stew, with a slice of Brio olive bread and corn on the cob. I use no butter or salt on any of this. Olive oil and herbs are the seasoning components, my Meat Treat blend in particular, as well as a shot of the red table wine as the liquid. To drink we have water and some of the Elk Prairie Pinot. Not bad.

And the blackberries? I take the last of our crop of small but delicious peaches, slice them, and cook them slightly with the blackberries and a bit of local honey to make a fine dessert with a bit of Humboldt Creamery cream or 1/2 & 1/2.

Delectable end to the day. Now I have to start thinking about pear recipes. Hmmmmmmmm...

Second Day on The Bay

Today dawned clear and dry, just perfect for the second day of Blues By The Bay. 

We rested rather than rushing off to make the first performer, I had brought fresh eggs with us from home so we were able to share a local breakfast at our friend's where we stayed overnight. We had toasted Brio multi grain bread with homemade blackberry jam (YUM!), eggs and fresh melon from the Farmer's Market. Water to drink.

The festival was well attended for this fine Sunday line up, with a flotilla of boats and kayaks with folks watching and listening from the water. We found a spot to sit & enjoy the show. Of course, we spent as much time standing and dancing and wandering.  A snack of Ramones iced Latte (it was so good yesterday!) and pastry kept me fortified. When lunchtime rolled around I was delighted to discover Pachanga's booth had a tofu taco with our local Tofu Shop's tofu. Pachanga restaurant is known to use local produce when available and also to make their own tortillas, so I felt fairly confident this was a mostly local taco, even though they were too busy to ask all the questions at the time.

By the time the show was almost over we were bushed. Between sun, great music, dance, and going back to the car to give the puppy a play break (she was in her crate where we parked in the shade of the Samoa Bridge), the 1 1/2 hour drive home was looking pretty daunting. We decided to eat and head out and listen to the last set over the radio so we could get home & unpacked before dark. We finished the festival with one last Humboldt Hot Dog, local to the core, and headed out.

Now I am wondering about which local restaurants serve locally harvested and produced food. I know a lot of them do. We have local foods to be proud of! But I would like to see a list. 

Pachanga comes to mind, as does Oberon and Los Bagels, but I'm not well versed in restaurants and would love to hear some other suggestions.

Blues By The Bay - Day 1

With some trepidation we prepare to leave for Eureka and Blues By The Bay. Not just because of my concern that finding something local to eat will be difficult, but because as the morning dawns it does so with precipitation. Hmmm... If it is showers inland, what will be happening on the coast?

We cover the things we forgot the previous eve (car windows?! How did we forget that?) and eat a hearty breakfast of a garden vegie scramble with eggs (cooked in olive oil) and Clendenen's apple slices. Thus fortified we head out, somewhat late, but on the road at last, umbrellas & rain gear in tow.

As we go down the hill we listen to the great performers we are missing on KHUM's live broadcast. Hey! The skies are clearing and things are drying out.

Once settled in, I toured the tempting crafts & started scanning the food booths around the edges of the Festival area. There were actually a few local offerings but one in particular stood out. More on that later.
This is a great area for microbrew. Someday I may learn to enjoy beer, but this was fine news for Dennis. Samurai, no longer a restaurant, has a food booth serving BBQ oysters and sushi, I don't know about the sushi, but I bet the oysters are local. There is an assortment of Mexican, Polish dogs, a local to Nevada burger booth with everything from buffalo to elk to ostrich burgers from a ranch in Wyoming, & more. There are several crafts booths with clothes, jewelry, local to Forks of the Salmon herb & spice blends (of Localvore interest), soap, pottery and misc.

We settled in to enjoy the music after getting an iced Latte from the Ramones booth, which also had local pastries.

The day was great, the music & entertainment pretty darn fabulous. I love our mountain community musicians, but it is sweet to hear these professional performers that are so clean and tight and talented. No to mention we love the Blues.

But the day is long, ultimately it was time to eat. What did I do? I had a hot dog!
My first hot dog in quite a while, this was a hot dog like no other! It was a Humboldt Hot Dog! Eel River organic grass-fed beef made into hot dog form in Shasta Co., on a whole wheat North Coast Co-op Bakery bun!!! I love it!
I did cheat a bit - with non-local mustard and about 2 tablespoons of sauerkraut, but this was as local a food booth as you can get. It shows I don't live in Arcata, where this Hot Dog stand makes a regular
appearance on the Plaza. Now I know.

We spent Saturday night in town. Dinner was at Plaza Grill. The wine was decidedly within our region, a Husch Chardonnay from Mendocino, bread was locally baked. But my salad and Snapper with rice & vegies? The fish is wild caught from the Pacific ocean, which I will stretch into a local context (Hey - isn't that the Pacific right there?) even though not from local fishermen. I was told that Plaza Grill gets organic and local produce whenever possible and, while the broccoli was known to be local & the waitress could have kept bothering the cooks as to the origin of each item, I do have a limit to what kind of pest I am willing to be when someone is busy working.

Back at our friend's where we spent the night we enjoyed some wonderful Elk Prairie Pinot Noir. Not only delectable, not only local to Humboldt County, but the grapes were grown on Fruitland Ridge in the area where Dennis and I first met long, long ago. A sweet celebration.

We look forward to another day of music and sun.

Friday - Food Madness

Since Friday can be a work optional day for us, we took the day to work on the farm as we'll be gone for the weekend at Blues By The Bay in Eureka.

After a start of what we call "boogaloo" (leftover rice, eggs, and whatever's on hand. In this case summer squash and onions from our garden) along with the rest of our Orleans-grown melon, we spent much of the day working in the garden. Before we began, I quartered and cooked the lug of Clendenen's Gravenstein apples, so they were cooling to be made into applesauce later. This project had been deferred a few days, so HAD to be done.

Along with the usual weeding, watering, & miscellaneous chores, there was much to harvest. Yet again, giant Zuchinni for the chickens (how do they get so big so FAST?), other summer squash, cukes, cole, peppers, greens & herbs. But today we also had a lot of tomatoes.

Realizing that if these lovely red-ripe babies sat all weekend while we were in town we would come home to a gazillion fruit flies, I decided to make them into a quick and easy salsa, the kind you use to dip tortilla chips in. We use the "Zesty Salsa" recipe from the Ball Blue Book.
If you want to learn to can, or want new canning recipes and don't have this book - this is THE book to have. Sort of like having the Joy of Cooking for general cooking. It is generally found in places where you get canning supplies, like hardware stores! Of course, they have it on Amazon.
I use a food/meat grinder for this type of salsa. It gives it a nice texture and is much faster than chopping by hand. I simply cut the ingredients into quarters as needed, and run them through.

That done, we had a late lunch of tuna salad made from local albacore I canned last year (Ball Blue Book again) using the mayonnaise we made the other day, onions, home canned sweet pickles (NOT Ball Blue Book - I'll add the recipe when I get home), etc. served with Brio bread and Clendenen's cider.


Finally time for the applesauce. We ran the cooled soft apples through the Victorio to remove the peels and seeds and make them into sauce. This can be done by pressing them through a sieve or Foley Food Mill, but the Victorio is really the tool for the job. It was one of those things advertised as "You CAN'T do without it!", which always aggravates me - but indeed, I can't.
By the time the applesauce was made, heated, and canned it was 9pm and I was bushed.
We a sort of dinner Boogaloo of rice, vegies, some leftover local burger from making hamburgers last night, Humboldt Creamery milk and Loleta cheese. Astoundingly it was quite good topped with the extra zesty salsa that did not make a full jar.

I can a lot. I have done it for years. You get a lot for what may seem daunting, but really is not so hard.
---
Addendum: The Sweet Pickle Recipe.
This is worth every bit of what goes into it, chopped, these pickles are the secret ingredient in potato salad, tuna salad, and such. I only make them about once every 3 years. Some people can eat them whole, but they are much too sweet for us. It is a 4 day process!

SWEET GHERKINS
5 qts. baby cukes, 1 1/2 - 3 inches long
1/2 c. pure granulated salt
8 c. sugar (sorry, honey will not do)
6 c. white vinegar
3/4 tsp. Tumeric
2 tsp. celery seed
2 tsp. whole mixed pickling spice
8 1-inch pieces cinnamon stick
(1/2 tsp fennel seed - optional. I rarely have this on hand)
2 tsp. vanilla extract

1st Day: Wash cukes, scrub with vegie brush leaving stem ends on if desired. Drain and place in large container and cover with boiling water.
6 to 8 hours later drain. Cover with fresh boiling water.

2nd day: Drain, cover with fresh boiling water.
6 to 8 hours later drain, add salt, cover with fresh boiling water.

3rd day: Drain. Prick cukes in several places with a fork. This is impoortant or they will be rubbery instead of crisp! Make syrup of 3 cups each of the sugar & vinegar. Add the Tumeric, celery seed, pickling spice & cinnamon. Heat to boiling and pour over cukes (they will only be partially covered).
6 to 8 hours later drain syrup into pan, add 2 cups each sugar & vinegar and bring to boil. Pour over cukes.

4th day: Drain syrup into pan. add 2 cups sugar and 1 cup vinegar, bring to boil and pour over cukes.
6 to 8 hours later drain syrup into pan, add remaining 1 cup sugar and the vanilla extract. bring to boil.
Pack pickles into clean, hot pint jars and cover with boiling syrup to within 1 inch of top (this is called headroom). Wipe rime and secure the jar lids. Process for 5 minutes in a boiling water bath. Voila!

Origins

I know we have a completely different take on this experiment, living in the rural part of the county, with a big garden, hens, home canned local food, and rancher neighbors. Sometimes I think we may have an advantage - but then I think of all that is grown at lower elevations such as Willow Creek and Orleans, Shively and other coastal areas, that comes to the Farmer's markets and I think, perhaps, those in town have the advantage.

I do have a passion for growing, preserving, and making our basic foodstuffs. From applesauce to vinegar, I love to experiment with food in a way that this challenge allows me to indulge.

The original Humboldt Localvore challenger was Megan Blodgett.
She challenged herself in a much stricter way than I am, with my "Loophole" level.

Read the excellent BLOG of her 2007 challenge eating only Humboldt county foods: My Month of Local Food.