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!

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.

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.