The Beet goes on!

On the 4th of September & I woke up thinking about how good last night's dinner was! Obviously I had to redo it for breakfast. Preceded by my morning tea.

Beans in the solar oven

The Tuscan Beans, Polenta, tomatoes & pesto were just as heavenly as they were last night. If you have never made Tuscan Beans, it is the easiest recipe ever:

Tuscan Beans
2 c. Dry beans (Pinto, Yellow Eye, Cannellini, Calico...)
water
20 leaves fresh sage
lots of sliced garlic (to taste, but not less than 3 big cloves!)
Olive oil
salt & freshly ground pepper

Soak the beans overnite. Next day add garlic, about 1 Tblsp. Olive oil and the garlic and bring to boil. Simmer until just tender, then add salt & pepper. Cook another 1/2 hour or so. Serve drizzled with a bit more olive oil.

We cook them here in the solar oven.


The Beet & beet green gratin is another surprisingly delectable recipe. Chard can be substituted for beet greens.
Find the recipe here: Don't that Beet All...

With Cypress Grove, Loleta Cheese Company & Rumiano cheeses, countless amazing beers & wines, grass fed local beef, Humboldt Creamery, Clendenen's Cider, the Tofu Shop, Shakefork Farm and all the other amazing farmers of the local Farmers' Markets it's simple to eat locally produced food. Add to this wild Blackberries, one's own garden produce and eggs, homemade vinegar, yogurt and other condiments, and I find we eat very, very well.

Time flies in Harvest Season!

Holy Cow! It's September 12 already!
It's been so busy around here I just haven't found time to write. To catch up here's my  daily menu:

Tuesday 9/4 - Having to use up the local bacon is such a pain! I start the day with bacon and an egg, with slices of fresh tomato on the side. Tea of course, and water. Just assume I am having a cup of tea every morning whether I write it down or not!
Snacks these days are generally grazing on snap peas, cherry tomatoes, peaches or Asian Pears, depending if I'm in the garden or orchard.
For lunch a fried pepper, pesto, cucumber and Cypress Grove Fromage Blanc sandwich on the bread I baked from Shakefork flour. This is very good.
Dinner an oriental style stir fry incorporating chicken hearts from the meat birds we butchered earlier this year. Vagrant ingredients were peanut oil, soy sauce and ginger root. I have grown ginger root in the past, and you see it in town, mostly as an ornamental, but this one is an import from??? I'll have to find out.
I am mainly drinking water, but I do have some apple cider & apple cider / cranberry mix we put up and add in now and then. The apples are from our or our daughter's trees and the cranberries came from some folks who were at the Arcata farmer's market last fall.

Wed 9/5 - Breakfast was an Asian vegie scramble (i.e.- leftovers scrambled with eggs). with some homemade yogurt with blackberries and peaches. Eating hearty as I will be in town the rest of the day and going to a birthday pizza part likely to be full of non-local ingredients. Had a small bottle of Clendenen's wonderful cider, too, when I got to town.
Lunched at the Eureka Natural Foods Deli, spinach salad and chicken salad, both of which I was assured were made from mainly local ingredients (I have my doubts about the pine nuts & feta cheese!).
Pizza was at Tom's Sourdough in Fortuna. I know they house make their sourdough crust. Didn't get to ask as to the source of the ingredients, but - Hey! I'm the Grandma and I am not going to spoil the party. And the exquisitely delectable chocolate birthday cake from Ramone's bakery counts as local - doesn't it?!?

In the marinade

Thursday 9/6 - Did a brunch rerun of the rest of the leftover Tuscan Beans with grated Loleta cheddar. That held me nicely until an unbelievable tasty dinner of grilled vegetables: zuchinni, crookneck, eggplant, peppers and corn on the cob. I slice and marinate all but the corn in olive oil, chopped garlic, salt, pepper, a bit of oregano & basil and some of my homemade red wine vinegar for at least 1/2 hour, then grill them up. YUM! Topped this meal off with a nice glass of Coates vineyard Syrah. Yeah, this local food challenge is tough...!

You have no idea how incredible this is!

Friday 9/7 - vegie scramble w/leftover grilled vegies for breakfast, fried pepper, tomato & cuke sandwich for lunch. I am a big fan of fried peppers & grow special Italian Frying Peppers every year just for this. Seed & split the pepper & fry in a dry pan until soft and w/ brown spots on both sides. Have to hold it down with the spatula in the beginning until the soften a bit. De-lish!
Back in town overnight at a friend's, I brought vegies Dinner was sauteed vegies & corn on the cob with bread and Cypress Grove cheeses on the side & some wonderful wine from Briceland winery

Sat. 9/8 - In town for the Natural Fiber Fair, Breakfasted on Loleta Bakery 9-grain Toast with local Zimmerman BlackRaspberry jam & a dollop of Organic valley cottage Cheese. Some of our local Humboldt dairys do send milk to Organic Valley so, hopefully, this wasn't to big of a stretch.
At the Fiber fair were the most wonderful catered delights in the kitchen. I had a lovely local salad & focaccia with caramalized onions.
Once home I supped on Loleta Cheese cheddar and toast with a lovely cup of tea.

Sunday 9/9 - Tea, a vegie/egg scramble to start the day
Another variation on my fried pepper sandwich with pesto, tomato and chevre  for lunch. These are all amazingly delicious! Even my visiting granddaughters think so.

Fresh tomato/zucchini sauce simmering

With the help of the girls we made spaghetti from scratch. Organic flour from Guisto's and our farm fresh eggs for the noodles. tomatoes, onion, garlic, zuchinni & fresh herbs for the sauce and also a bit of fresh basil pesto, made with almonds from near Chico. With a fresh cucumber and tomato salad on the side, dressed with oilve oil and my homemade red wine vinegar, it was a fabulous company feast.

Monday 9/10 - Tea! Lovely Shakefore hot cracked oat cereal with Humboldt creamery butter, honey from Carlotta, & sliced Asian Pear from our tree. Yum!
Lunch was our favorite blackberries with yogurt in a 1/2 cantaloupe bowl. The bowl, of course, is delicious!
Baked a new bread of Shakefork wheat, oat, rye and barley flours, and snacked on fresh bread and Cypress Grove chevre (plain, from a section of chevre log).
A very special dinner tonight of local salmon, steamed fresh green beans, crookneck squash and corn on the cob with a glass of the Coates Syrah. Ahhh local luxury indeed!

Beet Gratin

Tuesday 9/11 - Tea! A fried pepper and egg sandwich with a bit of Loleta cheddar for breakfast. Have I mentioned how much I love fried peppers?
A light lunch of toast and Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog
Dinner was a solar baked Beet Gratin. This amazing all local ingredient dish is easy to make:
On the side I had an artichoke our plant unseasonably produced, corn on the cob and leftover cucumber salad.

Wed. 9/12 - The Beet gratin makes a wonderful breakfast, too, with a slice of melon on the side.
Lunch was another variation on a fried pepper sandwich, with tomato, cucumber and chevre.
I was craving grilled vegies, so dinner was a heaping plate of marinated and grilled zucchini, onion, pepper and eggplant. A glass of the Coates Syrah and a dessert of grilled apple slices with a dash of Humboldt Creamery 1/2 and 1/2. Yeah!

We're really 'suffering' with all this local goodness - Oh my!

It has begun...

Humboldt Abundance

 And so it begins, a month of a strictly local foods based diet.
I consider this more of a celebration than a challenge. I can't imagine many places having a more diverse variety of good food grown and produced in such a small area.

Being right in the middle of our garden harvest season, we are surrounded by wonderful choices from fruit to squash, onions to herbs.
My plan this year is to make all the main foods be locally grown or produced, but allowing myself my tea (locally roasted coffee fits the bill, but no one produces black tea), salt spices & things like baking powder, yeast.

To get in the spirit of things and prepare I baked a loaf of bread using grains from Shakefork Community farm in Carlotta. I now use a bread machine, as I only need one loaf at a time, and came up with a whole wheat, rye & buckwheat flour bread. Other ingredients are local honey, sea salt, yeast & gluten.

Yummy combo - mmmm...

After starting the challenge with a favorite breakfast of Shakefork cracked (not rolled) oat cereal with honey and some of the first fruit from our young Asian Pear tree, we devoted the whole Labor Day weekend to food, canning beans, pickles, tomatillos, & mixed vegetables with barley for soup.

We eat a lot of soup in the winter, and I love to have a lot in the pantry. It's a great way to put by food when you don't have a lot of any one thing & the best use of extra summer squash I know. Tossing a tablespoon of raw barley in the bottom of the jar before adding the vegetables & processing it adds a lot to the finished soup in flavor and texture.

Menu Sept 1 - Tea, Humboldt Creamery 1/2+1/2, Shakefork Cracked Oats with Humboldt butter, honey & our Asian Pear
Baked whole wheat/rye/buckwheat bread from Shakefork grain (recipe)
Dinner was fried pepper, cucumber & tomato sandwich, cucumber salad
treat - blackberries, peaches & cream

Menu Sept 2 - Tea, egg & mixed vegie scramble with Loleta Cheese's pepper jack
Snack - gravenstein apple, hard boiled egg
Dinner, steamed green beans & Crooknecks & fresh corn on the cob, toast with Humboldt Fog from Cypress Grove.

Menu Sept 3 - Tea, Local and locally cured bacon from Hatfield's Meats in Mad River, egg and toast.

Making fresh linguini!

Lunch was homemade pasta with fresh pesto and chopped heirloom tomatoes. The pasta was made with Lundberg flour from the central valley, I'm not sure if it's grown quite within our 250 mile radius, but it could be. But my daughter and granddaughter were here making pesto with me and there was no way we were NOT going to have some noodles to try it out!
Snacking on Asian Pears
Dinner - Oh my! Tuscan beans made with my favorite Yellow Eye beans from Warren Creek Farm in the Arcata Bottoms, soft polenta from Shakefork corn, with a dollop of fresh pesto and chopped fresh tomato. I cannot tell you how delicious this was. Hooray for leftovers!

I think we're off to a good start.

An Exciting Week... not just the food

Life goes on. To continue from last post, things were normal enough. I have been harvesting and canning the garden bounty as well as applesauce and drying some tomatoes. To learn more about food preservation and being a more hard-core localvore, do read our posts from 2009. But I digress! We begin here on Tuesday, September 20th, a work day in the Simmons Soap shop. Our local meal was Breakfast - fresh eggs and Loleta Bakery sourdough toast with our first ripe melon from our lower greenhouse.

9/21 - Lunch was my summer favorite sandwich - Cucumber, tomato and Loleta Pepper Jack on Loleta Bakery sourdough. I used our home made mayonnaise for this.

9/22 - Lunch - The amazing, ultimate salad! Not just lettuce & tomato & carrot & red cabbage from the garden, but sliced steamed beets and grated Loleta Cheddar and home canned local caught Albacore. Vinagarette of our herbed red wine vinegar. 

9/23 - this is the day things got exciting! I do volunteer Emergency Medical Dispatching. I'm usually on call one weekend a month. This was NOT my weekend. However, at around 1 in the afternoon a wildfire started up in Ruth and the dispatcher who was to be on call was evacuated!

I had planned to can Ancho peppers and had picked the peppers, which we grow in containers in a greenhouse. Anchos are fabulous big blocky peppers with an occasional bit of heat. We have been using them instead of Anaheim chilies for years. I can them for future chile rellenos - much like the canned Ortega Chilies you buy in the store (which are Anaheims). 

While I often roast them over a charcoal fire, we did it on the gas grill this time. Slower, but just as efficient. The aroma of the roasting chiles is amazing, and we got them all done with visions of a dinner of Chile rellenos dancing in our head - and that's when the phone rang!

For the next 6 hours I pretty much was on the phone helping coordinate information for the fire. From Sheriffs to Red Cross, Forest Service, Cal Fire, Volunteer Fire Departments, EMS personnel, road closures, evacuation centers and more, the beginning of a wildfire in an inhabited area is a mass of organization and controlled chaos!
Did we have dinner? I don't remember. I did have a breakfast of eggs and toast, so that was covered...
I somehow managed to get my peppers peeled and in the refrigerator to finish processing manana!
9/24 - Well, tonight is a benefit dinner and the official Ruth Fire USFS meeting. No rellenos tonight, but we got the peppers into jars, setting some aside for tomorrow's dinner. Our Localvore meal was Lunch - Quesadillas with Bien Padre tortillas, Loleta Pepper jack, chopped peppers and fresh tomato salsa from the garden.
9/25 - Yippee! Dinner - Chile Rellenos! A very special treat. 
Stuff the roasted, peeled, seeded Ancho peppers with a piece of Loleta jack cheese and dredge in flour. I used some Shakefork Farm barley flour to keep it local. Then I separate eggs (I used 3) and beat the whites until stiff. Now I mix a little salt (exception alert!) in the flour & fold the flour into the egg whites. Lastly I fold the egg yolks into the beaten whites.
I use a small 6" cast iron frying pan and put (exception alert!) about 3/4 inch vegetable oil in it (I'm using safflower)(I know they grow safflower as close as Davis, Ca.). I heat it until a drop of the egg mix sizzles immediately and browns fairly quickly. Then, carefully, dip the floured, stuffed chiles in the egg mix and add to the hot oil. 2 fit nicely in the pan. turn as soon as they brown on one side. When brown on both sides remove from oil onto a cooling rack over paper over a plate or pan. I use newspaper. It's just to catch the drips. Adjust the heat as needed to keep the rellenos cooking quickly, but not too fast. You'll get the hang of it in short order.
We had these with fresh tomato salsa and our homemade hot sauce, corn on the cob, and watermelon grown by a friend in nearby Larabee Valley. FEAST!
9/26 - I neglected to photograph the dinner before we ate it (sorry) but Breakfast - leftover relleno (heated in a microwave) with watermelon and scrambled eggs with some leftver corn cut from the cob & stirred in. Fresh salsa and hot sauce on top and Oh Boy! This is livin'.
9/27 - Poached egg on toast for breakfast with another melon, Honeydew, from the garden.
9/28 - Last Wed. of the month and our local Book Group chat & chew. I brought the delicious Zuchinni Curry and Cucumber Raita. There were local apples and grilled eggplant and tomato on ciabatta and many more delectable treats including a wine made by a group of folks who get together to make wine in Hayfork (Trinity County).
9/29 - Breakfast was scrambled egg with chopped garden vegetables: onion, bell pepper, summer squash... topped with fresh chopped tomato.
Tomorrow is the last day of the Eat Local Challenge and I have been saving for another special treat. I will be making the Eggplant Parmesan I came up with in 2009, last time we took the Challenge

2011 - Officially Localvorious again!

Well, we thought we'd sign up 'Officially' to the NorthCoast Co-op's Eat Local Challenge again this year.
 We eat local origin food as much as possible anyway, especially during the end of summer harvest, when dinner often is what came out of the garden that day. On top of this our freezer has a supply of local beef from a neighbor, chicken from birds we raised here, and locally caught fish, as well as canned local tuna in the pantry.

Of the levels available, I inadvertently chose 'Lifestyle Localvore' -

Lifestyle Localvore
For at least one meal per day, eat only locally grown,
raised, and/or produced foods with a few exceptions.
Exceptions may include: non-local spices, cooking
oils, vinegar, and spirits.

part of our 'garden salad bar'

I generally choose a more rigid level, but the type was small and the evening late and the link finicky. Ah well.
But I am content with my choice. If 2011 has been as intense for you as it has been for us, you will appreciate my accepting a lesser challenge.

Part of our inspiration was finally making it to the top of the wait list for ShakeFork Farm's grain share CSA (Community Supported Agriculture - learn more). We have always admired and wanted to support the CSAs in our area, but we give away flowers, herbs, & vegetables, not buy them... But the chance to get locally produced oats, wheat, barley, & more was perfect for our needs.

To accommodate the challenge, I need to make some yogurt, sour cream, and mayonnaise. Other than that, we're good to go, I think. Stay tuned!

So, let us begin.
One meal a day up to now:
Sept. 1: Breakfast - eggs from our hens, poached, on Loleta Bakery Sourdough with Loleta Cheese Pepper Jack

Sept. 2: Dinner at a friend's in town - Local wild caught Salmon, Brio Bakery bread, Arcata Farmers Market broccoli

Sept. 3: Breakfast ( at friend's. In town for Blues on the Bay) - Our eggs, Brio Bakery multi grain bread (Yum)

Sept. 4: Breakfast - same. We're sorry Humboldt Hot Dogs were not at Blue on the Bay this year

Sept. 5: Home again! Picked up some local Cod Cheeks at Eureka Natural Foods on the way home. Wonderful dinner of sauteed Cod Cheeks with my Fish Herb Blend (for which we grow lemon Basil & Lemon Thyme), garden salad & Brio Bakery Bread

Sept. 6: Lunch was a garden salad (literally) with home-canned local albacore tuna and dressing made from Napa olive oil (an exception) and my home made herbed red wine vinegar (see below).

Sept. 7: Just canned our favorite "Zesty Salsa" recipe from the Ball Blue Book, and used the leftovers for Breakfast - Huevos Rancheros of our eggs poached in Fiesta Salsa, over Loleta Pepper Jack on a Bien Padre corn tortilla. YUM!!!

Got Cukes?

Sept. 8: Lunch - Garden classic: Tomato & Cucumber sandwich on Loleta Bakery Sourdough. My all time summer favorite (when I don't have frying peppers).

Sept. 9: Brunch - cleaning out the fridge salad with canned tuna. Loleta Bakery bread on the side (end of loaf )

So far, so good. I should note that we generally drink water with meals. I do have tea in the morning, but not wioth breakfast and always with Humboldt Creamery 1/2 & 1/2 :^) Snacks here often consist of raw peppers or cucumbers or tomatoes, at least THIS time of year.
---

Herbs & Garlic drying on the back porch

We have made red wine vinegar for many years. Nothing to it. Pour a bottle of inexpensive red wine into a clean glass jar. I use a gallon or 1/2 gallon jar, depending on what's brewing at the time. Add 1/4 c. Mother of red wine vinegar, cover the jar with a fine mesh cloth so it can breathe, but not big enough to let the fruit (vinegar) flies in. Keep in a warm, dark place. Occasionally add leftover red wine. In about 6 weeks you have rustic wine vinegar. I am happy to share Mother of vinegar (e mail me via Simmons Natural Bodycare), but you can use 1/2 cup of raw cider vinegar instead. Shake well before measuring or, better yet, just use the dregs in the bottom of the bottle. Bragg raw cider vinegar is perfect. For more information on making your own wine vinegar, see the 'Gang of Pour'.

We have many herbal vinegar blends that we make for cooking. I thought I'd pass one along here - a favorite base for salad dressing. We even made a gallon of this to use at the reception dinner for our daughter's wedding.
Again, the important thing is to use enough herbs when you are making the flavored vinegar - 1/2 cup dried mixed herbs to 2 cups of vinegar.

Recipe: For this blend use red wine vinegar with the addition of basil, oregano, garlic and black peppercorns. We use about 12 peppercorns and 6 cloves of garlic per 2 cups of vinegar. Let the mixture steep in a dark place and shake occasionally to mix. Taste after a week and, if it is not strong enough, let sit another 2 or 3 weeks. When it tastes right, strain and store in clean, tightly capped bottles.
To make the salad dressing, mix 1/3 herb vinegar with 2/3 good olive oil or a mix of olive and other salad oil, as you prefer. Enjoy!

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.

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!)

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.
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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!

Breakfast...

Today is the first day of our month long "Eat Local Challenge", sponsored by the North Coast Co-ops (Eureka and Arcata, California).
They have made it as easy as possible with 7 levels, from the "Hardcore Localvore" (only locally harvested products for every meal & snack - no exceptions) to the "Toe in the Water Localvore"(at least one local ingredient in each meal). In addition to this you can choose from foods from anywhere in the Klamath/North Coast Bioregion, which includes 7 counties (Siskiyou, Del Norte, Humboldt, Trinity, Shasta, Mendocino, Tehama, Lake, Glenn, & Colusa) and a diverse set of climates from sea to central valley.

I have taken on the level of "Loophole Localvore". This means locally harvested & produced products for every meal or snack - no vinegar, mayonnaise, etc., unless I make them or get them from someone who does. Local beer, wine, bakery products and locally roasted coffee, etc. are permissible in this category. Fortunately you are allowed a few exceptions - I would have a hard time without my morning cup of hot tea and may not be able to forgo salt to use in cooking.

My partner has taken on "Lifestyle Localvore" Planning on 100% local harvested/produced food for at least one meal a day. He is in charge of eating all the non-local stuff in the refrigerator before it goes bad!

I must confess, I felt this would be an easy challenge for us, as we produce much of our own food right here and have access to a broad range of foodstuffs in this bioregion. But the more I thought about it, the more challenge I can potentially see. Being an hour and some from town and the stores which carry much of what I want may turn out to be an issue. Then again, we have on our homestead much which town folks don't, right at hand.

As an example - we are starting our challenge with eggs fresh from the hencoop. Scrambled with peppers and onions from our garden, using olive oil from Napa (I'm getting some from more local Tehama Country tomorrow). They will share the table with tortillas made in Eureka at Bien Padre and Loleta cheese. We have some apple cider from last year's pressing should we want more than water. To spice it all up we have a variety of home canned salsas, should I not make some fresh, as well as "Thai-basco" and "Ha-basco" made from our own peppers. As well as the notorious "Diablo Sauce" (or sauce of death - a sort of Tapa Tio made with Habasco peppers in a bottle with a too big mouth. What was I thinking!).

I will be baking bread today (I was told I can be my own bakery). We will see what lunch brings. I am happy always with my summer favorite: tomato; cucumber & fried pepper sandwiches. I haven't made mayonnaise in a long time... looks like I will be now.

Our freezer is stocked with local grass-fed beef and I will find something there to defrost for dinner. Looks like things are lining up OK so far.

Tomorrow I have to go to town and deliver soap (what we do for a living - Simmons Natural Bodycare), and I will be picking up a lot of local Humboldt Creamery milk and cream. There will be yogurt and sour cream to make. Hmmmmmmm... I better go work on that list.

Coming up with meals is always creative enough - this challenge will make it even more intriguing.

Taking the Challenge

We have signed up to offically participate in our "local" (out on the coast. - 1 1/2 - 2 hours away) Northcoast Co-op's annual September Eat Local challenge.

For the entire month we will strive to eat only those foods produced in our northern California bioregion. Fortunately this is a large and varied agricultural area.

This new blog is to chronicle this culinary adventure, recipes and pitfalls alike. Stay tuned!