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.

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.

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!

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!

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.

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.

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.
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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!

Day 2 -town trip

Today was educational. I did the long trip to town to deliver soap. I took our Australian Shepard puppy, Kumalie, for a vet weigh-in and to check her ears for burrs and foxtails - the bane of summer.
Vet is in Fortuna, farthest store in Arcata, we live about one hour inland from Fortuna. It makes for a long day.

Figuring it might be harder to eat local while out and about I had my tea and a good breakfast of the leftover tofu with chopped patty pan squash and bell pepper from the garden added. Then loaded soap and dog and, list in hand, we headed out.

Once at the vet we discovered Kumalie had weed seeds lodged right up against both eardrums, so she was left behind and our schedule sped up so we could be back before the vet closed.

First stop, Clendenen's Cider Works in Fortuna. Aside from the Farmer's Market I don't think there are many places to get a variety of local food items in Fortuna. Brio bread at Rays, Bien Padre, some cheeses and Humboldt Creamery milk at Safeway. Maybe more at Ray's, I haven't checked lately. But there are a lot of items at Clendenen's, not including the apples. They had local melons, squash, tomatoes and other vegies as well as honey, jam and dried fruit. They were pressing cider and the aroma was incredible! I picked up a gallon of fresh cider for home and a pint to drink.

My method is to go to the furthest place and then work my way home, so it was off to Arcata. I delivered at Wildberries and Arcata Co-op. Both have plenty of local fare, but I did my shopping at the Co-op.

Following my list I bought plenty of Humboldt creamery milk, buttermilk, and cream to make yogurt and sour cream. a few bottles of Vinatura wine, table red and Heyseus, and one of the Elk Prairie Pinot. Some of Henry's olives (THANK YOU, Henry!), Cypress Grove Chevre log for cream cheese and some Midnight Moon to try as a Parmesan substitute.
As I never did bake yesterday I brought home some Brio Fococcia, olive bread, and a Co-op Bakery sandwich loaf. Another package of Bien Padre tortillas, whole wheat this time. From the bulk dept. I filled a bottle with Tehama Gold olive oil. Karl noted there was one other olive oil from our Bio-region, but I forget the brand now.
Lastly, I hit the fish counter to check out the catch of the day. WOW! There was lots of local seafood to choose from. I left with some ling cod and, our favorite, salmon steak, but there was local rock cod and astoundingly some local shrimp! I wish I had my camera as the seafood display was incredible, with a large whole salmon and colorful Butterfish(?).

Back in Eureka I delivered to Humboldt Herbals and the Eureka Co-op. By this time I was getting rather hungry and so I perused the deli to find something suitable to eat. Uh-oh... I suppose it may have classified as locally produced, but the items I looked at I could not guarantee all the ingredients were of local origin. If I had waited I could have found out, but who I talked to knew the distributor - but not the actual source of the onions, peppers, etc. in the dishes I was looking at. I ended up with a Co-op Bakery Sun Bun. Delicious, but not really what I had in mind.
I would suggest that the Co-op delis have more items during the Challenge that they know are made with local ingredients.

Last soap delivery was Loleta Cheese Factory (for their gift shop). Now we're talking! I could taste my way through their display guilt-free. They have a large block of cooking sharp cheddar on sale right now (not organic, but definitely local), Pepper Jack, Roasted Garlic Jack (my favorite) and some Rumiano Parmesan. It turns out that, while labeled Willows, Ca., this cheese is actually made in Crescent City. I see eggplant Parmesan in our future...

Back to Clendenen's where I picked up a box of Gravenstein apples to make applesauce, got my definitely no-longer-sedated pup and headed back up the mountain.

Once home and unpacked we dined on salmon, fresh from the garden salad, and fresh Brio Fococcia dipped in oilve oil with garlic and fresh chopped basil. All toasted with a glass of the Vinatura Table Red (OK, but not as good as my beloved Menage a Trois from Folie a Deux of Napa), washed down with good ol' H2O.

My experience in town has me concerned for this weekend when we will be at Blues on the Bay. I better pack my own lunch!

P.S. photo is from local food in the S. F. Bay area at a dinner last fall

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.