We're Baaaack!

I've signed up again!
Rebel Localvore that I am, I created my own category - 'Extreme lifestyle'. My plan is to eat local foods for every meal with the exception of a very few ingredients: salt, spices, tea,  baking powder & yeast. If possible I will try to create meals that forgo much of those as well.

Again, I will chronicle my journey through the amazing bounty of our area. It all starts September 1.
To learn more, click here.

Some of our local bounty

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.

Party Potluck

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

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

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


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

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

An Out of County Experience

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

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

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

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

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

Town again - and beyond...

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

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

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

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

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

Eggplant challenge

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

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

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

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

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

Fall is in the air...

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

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

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

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

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

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!