You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2009.
Walking in the Woods by Steffe, on Flickr
I took a walk on Christmas Day. I haven’t walked outdoors much because my treadmill is much more joint-friendly than the pavement that surrounds my house. Mom’s house was nice, but a little too warm, and the sunny 45° day beckoned. My mom’s housing development has a “nature walk,” a paved route which winds up and down hills to a small lake. I imagine in summer it is leafy green and full of mosquitoes, but in winter it was easy to see squirrels and birds of all shapes and sizes among the bare branches. It had recently rained and I didn’t trust the Georgia clay to not be slippery any more than I’d trust it to not stain my dress if I took a fall, so I stuck to the pavement. Three of the girls joined me and I was very surprised that I held up as long as they did! We all slept well that night, I wasn’t awakened with pain in my legs. I wasn’t even sore the next day.
The guest bedroom where I stay when I visit Mom is upstairs. I got quite a kick out of going up and down those stairs like a “normal person” instead of one-footing it like an old lady. One time I even did the boxer-jog down the stairs, something I haven’t done since I was a teen.
Three days of dining from boxes, bags and mixes at my mom’s seemed to do much less damage than earlier in the year. This, combined with increased flexibility and stamina leads me to think that the changes I’ve made to my diet are more permanent than just a temporary alleviation of arthritis pain.
For those of you who are new here, I had an undiscovered birth defect which prevented the proper formation of my leg bones. My first knee dislocation occurred just weeks after my 6th birthday, and I underwent 13 surgeries (in the 1970s, well before the microsurgery available now) in 20 years on both knees. The doctors told me a knee replacement wouldn’t “take” because of the way my leg bones twist, so since my 30th birthday I’ve pretty much looked forward to increasing pain and decreasing mobility until I was wheelchair bound. I hope and pray that every person reading this entry never, ever takes a single step for granted: and that includes the newly mobile ME!
2010 Letterpress Calendar by Sarah Parrott, on Flickr
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle; See You in 100 Years; Not Buying It; No-Impact Man…I love reading about people who take big leaps. I’m an extremist at heart, I suppose, and extreme visions like these make entertaining reading.
Of course, from my overstuffed loveseat nestled in the cushy heart of suburbia, I can be entertained and challenged without being particularly inconvenienced. Sitting back and saying “Wow, I wouldn’t have done it that way!” is just so much armchair quarterbacking. And, as I’ve mentioned, big steps are easy to fall back from.
I’ve just spent a year of my life pursuing what many of my family members consider an “extreme leap.” I was reminded just how extreme during this most recent holiday visit to my Mom’s. It started out slowly enough: read a book, change one thing. But the more I learned, the more things got changed. And the more things I changed, the more this new knowledge changed me.
My diet, of course, has changed. My shopping habits, my menu, my recipe sources, my circle of friends to some degree, my reading list, blogging habits and schedule have all changed. I’ve changed physically as well. One change I experienced took me by complete surprise: my politics have changed! I won’t go into details here…
What does next year hold? Much will depend on my reading list for 2010, I imagine. I want to continue becoming less recipe-dependent. I want to become more active in the local food economy, but I’m not sure the form that will take. Near the top of my to-do list is brewing my own honey wine and perhaps small beer. I’d really like to expand my small garden now that I’m more physically capable. But I don’t want to plan too far ahead because the story is in the journey, not in the destination.
December 2008
10% of diet from conventionally grown fresh fruits and vegetables
“Seasonal foods” means whatever is in the grocery store is in season for me
All meat from industrial CAFOs, purchased at lowest possible price from megastore
Personal soda consumption in excess of 2L a day
6-12 meals eaten out per week
70% of groceries purchased highly processed*
Canola, corn oil and hydrogenated vegetable oil for cooking
Totally unaware of what a GMO was
8-10 prescription pain pills per week
Able to walk less than 1/4 mile before pain became unbearable
Walked slowly with a cane (on good days), considering a walker
The grocery store clerk was the face of my food
Could not imagine taking cod liver oil
Restricted dairy, took enzymes to help digest it when I couldn’t avoid it
Frequently took antacids for heartburn
Spent 12% of total income on food and 30% on medical costs
December 2009
30% of diet locally grown organic fresh fruit and vegetables
Seasonal foods almost exclusively
All meats local and grassfed, bought from farmer I know personally
Personal soda consumption less than six ounces a week
1 meal eaten out per week
80% of groceries unprocessed*
Coconut and olive oil for cooking
On my way to becoming an anti-GMO crusader
0 pain pills (that’s zero, folks) in seven months
Able to walk more than a mile with no pain
No cane, no walker, no nothin’
I know my farmers and their methods
Wouldn’t give up my CLO if you paid me
Drink raw dairy freely and without stomach problems
Frequently eat and drink fermented foods, no heartburn
Spend 33% of income on food and 0% on medical costs
*My definitions of “highly processed” vs “unprocessed” groceries: Unprocessed foods are foods to which 2 steps of processing or fewer has occurred. So, cutting and threshing wheat is two steps. Milling the wheat, separating it from its bran and germ, bleaching it, adding it to other ingredients, boxing it and calling it Bisquick are all additional processing steps. The further down the line, the more “highly processed.” I suppose the ultimate “unprocessed” food is a cow: for raw milk, for meat on the hoof, etc. But there are limits to what my longsuffering husband will permit, and for that, this extremist is very, very grateful.
Hm, a coffin-shaped beach towel that says, “Over-exposure to the sun causes skin cancer killing 20 people every day. Protect yourself.”
But, over at the Safe Patient Project, one state reported 8 deaths or serious disabilities caused by medication error in a year (see Indiana analysis), and that was only for patients inside hospitals. Multiply that by the number of people taking drugs who are not hospitalized and again by the number of states in the Union. I think we can safely say the number will certainly be more than 20. Indeed, Safe Patient Project estimates 1.5 million medication errors per year. That’s more than 4000 errors per day. What percent of those are deadly? To beat skin cancer’s number, it needs to be just one half of one percent or more.
But, since there’s no flashy beach towel, no smooth coconut-smelling lotion to apply for protection, no sexy model to sell the idea, it’s unlikely any ad agency will take up the plight of the wrongly medicated in the United States.
What color ribbon shall we wear on our lapels to mourn the state of our broken health care system? What bumper sticker shall we plaster on our vehicles to warn our fellow citizens that “medical care for all” is only a small part of the problem: a very small part. Until the medical care system itself is reformed, until the powerful drug companies’ hold over doctors and legislators is broken, until our elected officials represent us instead of the deep-pocket corporations which contributed to their election coffers, there can be no true health care reform.
Protect yourself, indeed.
chicken factory by Joe Dunckley, on Flickr
Here‘s a fascinating look into the life of a cage-free laying hen.
First, notice the buildings, not yards. Then down the page a little further, how tightly jammed the chickens are against each other.
From the text:
Here, in long plywood-sided barns with metal roosts hanging from wires and pine shavings on the floor, the Hy-Line breed of chicks spend their first 15 weeks of life scurrying around and eating a blend of corn, soybeans, canola oil, flax seed, limestone, calcium and more.
When you take the bird out of the sunshine, they stop making vitamin D for themselves and their eggs. Their production of Omega-3 oils drops and it must be added back in via their feed. So, roll out the genetically modified corn, soy and canola!
The 330-foot-long structures can be loud with an undulating chorus of clucks and coos, and hens occupy nearly every sliver of space, standing on perches, jerking their way around on the floor, drinking water and flapping their wings and tucking their beaks into their chests and sleeping.
That’s a football field long, hens occupying “nearly every sliver of space.” Do they ever get to open their wings and stretch? What are they breathing?
It’s warm in the egg houses, and pungent with the smell of chicken manure…
“Pungent” indeed.
Visitors must wear specially designed jumpsuits, and cover their shoes with plastic bags, to prevent them from bringing disease into the barns.
What does this say about the chickens’ immune system? Are they so frail that they would become ill being exposed to the healthy bacteria a foraging chicken would consume as they scratch for bugs on the ground? If their systems are so weak, would their chicks also exhibit this weakness? Is it a trait passed on through their genes, and therefore present in their eggs? When we consume these “weak” eggs, what impact will that have on us?
The birds don’t go outside, but they do sometimes walk down long, metal ramps to the “scratch area,” a long room with sand on the floor. All of the birds are free to descend into the scratch room, where they “dust” — lie on their sides and kick up sand. Chickens dust to coat their feathers in dirt and sand, which helps rid them of parasites.
Only a few hundred chickens tend to hang out in the scratch area, where they have the run of the place, compared with the barn above, where thousands of chickens congregate.
Only a few hundred take advantage of the extra room to move, the dusting that keeps their feathers and skin healthy, and the decreased stench. Why is that?
Hatcher said most stay upstairs because of proximity to food and water.
Or, perhaps it is because the first several weeks of life are spent in this house and the birds never “find” the scratching area once they are adults.
The scratch area, the perches, the absence of cages, the nests — all of it helps Morning Fresh Farms achieve certification from American Humane, a Denver organization that inspects, evaluates and certifies farm operations that treat their animals humanely.
It also allows them to sell their eggs as “cage-free.”
And here, I’ll bet you thought “cage-free” meant happy, healthy chickens in the sun and fresh air, scratching for insects and fed healthy grains.
Most of the Morning Fresh Farms eggs are sold under the Eggland’s Best brand, but other companies, too, buy the eggs and brand them with their own labels.
Packed into flats and cartons, slapped with labels, stored in refrigerated rooms, the eggs have 30 days before they must be sold.
Wow. 30 days. That’s one old egg.
So, let’s sum up:
- Cage-free means no cage, but also no sunlight
- Cage-free means GMO feed, “enhanced” by probably rancid Omega-3 oils to make up for the loss of healthful oils the chicken would make for itself given proper care
- Cage-free means eggs stored for up to 30 days before sale
- Cage-free means you pay more for the label and the Omega-3 enhancement
- Cage-free means you are voting for more of the same with your food dollar
I can find a dozen pastured chicken eggs for $3 at my Farmer’s Market. There really is no comparison in looks or taste to old, grocery store eggs. If you haven’t tried real eggs yet, why not go search some out for your holiday baking? Be sure you scramble, fry or boil a couple to taste, too. I think you’ll be pleased. I know the chickens will be!
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays, hosted by Food Renegade.
We just watched Food Inc. on Netflix streaming with the kids. Even though the film only runs a few minutes past an hour and half, we took almost three hours to watch it. We’d pause to discuss topics as they came up, and I’d frequently add information that has come to light since the movie was made. Watching and discussing was a school assignment for my high school freshman, but I didn’t figure the younger ones would watch.
I couldn’t tear them away. Rose, now 9 and Christy, now 12 were glued to the TV, and asked for frequent note-taking breaks. They understood a lot more than I thought they would. But the real impact was felt by Kate, my animal lover. She was horrified, angered, frustrated, flustered and moved to tears several times throughout the film. I’ve offered all three girls space on this blog should they decide to vent some of their feelings in writing.
My oldest child still at home wasn’t with us for the viewing, but tonight at dinner she sure got an earful! I see that Kate has also put a note on her Facebook page: “Wow. It is not a pretty movie, but it is important. I have learned so much from this and what is going on that we don’t know about, just… wow.”
I was worried that she would be very, very upset by what she saw, so I checked in with her one-on-one. She said no, she was so glad she saw it, because as hard as it was to watch, now she knows why I’ve been making some of the strange decisions I’ve made lately. She has already sent notes around to her friends recommending they see it.
Her next film assignment will be FRESH, because I very much want her to see the positive that can be done once we know what we are up against, a message FRESH delivers very well.
Because of the kill floor scenes and the discussion with the mother who lost a son to e. Coli, I don’t generally recommend this movie for children or pre-teens. But, it’s important to know your child and make those decisions the best you can. And no matter what age child is viewing, discussion at each of the section breaks is something that can break down the larger issues into more understandable chunks. I also found some wonderful talking points at the Food Inc. site’s Educational Materials section.
But do watch and discuss this movie with your older kids. All that youthful exuberance is looking for an outlet: a cause on which to hang their hat. What a great thing to be motivated about!
Enjoy your holiday cookies, but be sure you are alarmed about the health risks of doing it!
I read this article when it first appeared on newswires: Study Finds That “Sustainable” Food Isn’t So Sustainable.
For the most part, it had some interesting information and was great fodder for discussion among my family. It certainly challenged our critical thinking skills. There were a few “results” of the study that stuck in my brain like splinters, though.
Supposedly, these researchers didn’t just study food miles, or ocean acidity, but “everything.” Remember that old test-taking strategy: “Qualifiers like ‘never, always, and every’ mean that the statement must be true all of the time. Usually these type of qualifiers lead to a false answer.” That seems to be a safe assumption here as well.
Let’s start here:
Reducing the amount of animal-derived inputs to feeds (e.g. fish meals and oils along with livestock derived meals) in favor of plant-based feed inputs can markedly reduce environmental impacts.
Sounds reasonable, but let’s think about it for a minute. Because we don’t know (no one does, not even experts) the long-term damage to the environment (or our own bodies) resulting from GMO plant production, plant-based feed inputs would almost certainly increase environmental impacts. More GMO corn and soy means more monocropping, more glyphosate in the environment, more pesticide-resistant weeds, and more genetic pollution. I find it hard to fathom how plant inputs could be in any way considered sustainable.
At the point that fish are removed from their natural surroundings and fed man-made “inputs” rather than food, the animals’ body begins to work differently, less efficiently and perhaps dangerously (think: fish CAFO).
Soymeal-fed salmon is already in the markets. You’ll notice a little “color added” notation to the price sticker. That’s because farmed salmon which are fed soy meal don’t produce the pink color you would normally expect in salmon meat. The pink has to be added back in to make the fish “look” right. Does that make it right? Does it contain the same chemical and nutrient composition as salmon that makes its own “pink?”
I’m not saying the feed should be animal-based, I’m saying it should be what is natural for them in their environment. Feeding fish GM soy and corn (the cheapest, subsidized and therefore most likely suspects) would significantly alter their body functions, perhaps making them less suitable for human consumption. This alteration could have long-term effects on their environment as well, something we cannot predict or plan for.
But that’s nitpicking compared to my beef with this statement:
Driving to the store alone and then cooking alone at home has a big environmental impact. Going out to dinner more, or just eating more frequently with friends and family at home, has huge benefit.
Whoa. Did I read that right? Dining out is a more sustainable food model than cooking or dining at home?
This is the kind of message that has taught our children that Sugar Bombs cereal is “part of this complete, balanced breakfast.” Restaurants are wonderful, but do we really need to eat out more than we already do for the sake of “sustainability?” Is it sustainable to have others prepare your food, control your portions, mix sustainable seafood with unsustainable and unhealthful canola oil and irradiated seasonings and MSG, charge you twice what it would cost you to prepare it at home and create increased food waste by their preparation and disposal methods?
I realize the authors intended point was that an oven turned on for fourteen minutes at 350° to cook one serving of fish uses the same amount of energy as an oven turned on for fourteen minutes at 350° to cook eight servings of fish, and is therefore eight times less efficient. I have no argument with the “dining with friends and family” part of the scenario. Shared meals have a long, rich tradition in human history, and far better for society, health and environment to share a meal slowly than to eat in front of the TV or in the car on your way from point A to point B.
It’s a very rare meal in my house that requires a trip to the grocery store for a single ingredient. The drive to the store and back most often is a single weekly trip, carrying food for no less than 20 meals. How does that stack up next to the driving associated with a trip to and from a restaurant for a single meal?
When reading studies and articles by “experts,” I think it is vitally important to understand that we don’t know everything. We can’t possibly take every scenario into account: that’s the law of unintended consequences. It’s also good to bring a healthy dose of skepticism and not check your brain at the door.
This post is part of Prevention Not Prescriptions and Real Food Wednesday.
In a previous post, I mentioned that I had NO idea how to combine flavors. Marcy suggested The Flavor Bible which I was able to find at the library. I was amazed. This is exactly the part of my culinary education that has been missing.
The first part of the book covers the language of food, from aroma, mouth feel, taste and what they call the “X Factor”: what is going on in your other senses including memory, heart and spirit. Of course, we all have those foods that taste like home or vacation, and this is part of that equation.
I learned, for the first time, about balancing flavors. Of course I knew that some dishes are just too salty, but never knew that adding sourness would help bring that saltiness down. I’ve never learned why creamy guacamole is so good with crunchy chips, it just is. Now I know that it is because crunchy and creamy are complementary in the same way that in painting, placing complementary colors next to each other brightens both (think of a red apple on a green tree.)
The chefs interviewed for the book are unanimous in their insistence on seeking local, seasonal food for the best results. This, too, is something I’m growing into for the first time in my life. Of course, in a home kitchen, I don’t have access to a nearly unlimited variety of seasonings and oils to bring out this flavor or that, but having a reference to tell me that a seasoning I do have will accomplish a similar result to the one I don’t have is very valuable.
Reading through the affinities listings woke something up in me. As I read the list of foods that pair well with apples, for instance, I dreamed up combinations that would have never come to me otherwise. So, our breakfast custard this week will have a touch of apple cider, fresh apples and cheddar cheese instead of just apples in cream and egg. I know, it’s a common pairing and not anything earth-shattering, but for someone who has relied on written recipes for each and every meal for decades, imagining a food pairing well enough to taste it in my mind is revelatory.
The affinities listings in The Flavor Bible contain other information as well, like a listing of foods associated with a certain regional and international cuisines, seasons of the year, foods that are warming or cooling, etc. Some ingredients have menu items in which they are used from the interviewed chefs’ restaurants. It is from one of those that I put together tonight’s dinner: Braised Short Ribs on Mashed Potatoes with Green Beans. You will need to adjust to your size family and meat-eating preferences, of course. We don’t eat a lot of meat in one sitting, so one rib per person was enough for us.
Braised Short Ribs
8 short ribs
2 tablespoons tallow
12 ounces double chocolate stout beer
4 ounces chopped onion
2 ounces each chopped carrot and celery
2 tablespoons butter
Start by making the mirepoix: saute the chopped onion, carrots and celery in butter in oven-proof roasting pan. Remove from pan, add tallow and turn up heat. Sear ribs on all sides. Add beer and mirepoix back to pan, cover and cook in a slow oven (300°) for three and a half hours. You really want the meat falling off the bones.
While the meat was in the oven, I also baked some potatoes until they were soft. I added whole cream and butter, salt and white pepper to the potatoes and whipped them to a fare-thee-well. I used the potatoes as a “base” to hold a rib with a little of the braised veggies and juice on top. I tend to use olive oil only in salad dressings, but it was a strongly suggested pairing with green beans. So, when it came time to make the green beans, I steamed them until just tender, then sprinkled them with some roasted onion and drizzled olive oil over the top.
The depth of the flavors was a surprise to me. The potatoes were more potato-y than those I’ve made from boiled potatoes. The green beans were much more savory drizzled with olive oil and onion than tossed with butter, which makes them sweeter. The amazing thing was in the combining. The ribs alone were good, the potatoes were good, the beans were good. But piled on a fork together created something new and amazing, savory, rich and wonderful.
You’ll have to forgive me, not only am I only learning to cook, but learning to write about food as well! The Flavor Bible just moved to the top of my Christmas list. But until December 25, don’t bother looking for a copy in the Nashville Public Library system because I’ve renewed my loan!
College Inn Culinary Broth by urbanbohemian on Flickr
Another food recall, this time for MSG-Free Chicken Stock that isn’t MSG-Free. For people sensitive to MSG, this is so frustrating. I was around in the 1970′s and 80′s when labelling laws were prompted many heated discussions. Citizens asked their government to standardize labels so that the information on them would be readable, comparable and trustworthy. Here we are 25 years later and we are still battling with food providers to put the food in the can that is listed on the label and to put the words on the label that accurately describe what’s in the can.
Here’s a better option. Buy a whole pastured chicken, a few stalks of celery, a couple onions and carrots and make your own. It takes a couple minutes and is superior to the mass-produced stuff available that you’ll never go back.
Put the chicken in the pot. Whole. Skin, bones, the whole shebang. If your chicken came with a liver, heart or other pieces and you don’t want to save those for other uses, toss them in there too. Cover the chicken with water and toss in a tablespoon of vinegar. Cover the pot and cook for 2 days on low. I use my oven set to 170°, but you can use a crockpot if yours is large enough. On day three, add celery, carrots and onion. Cook another 20 hours or so. Toss in a few stems of parsley for the last hour. Drain stock and freeze in quart (or pint, depending on your family size) glass jars.
You can use the meat for cooking, but check out the bones before you toss them. The connective tissue at the top of the legs, for example, should be gone. It’s dissolved in the broth, held in suspension waiting to be consumed. It will be used by your body to create new connective tissue for you. You don’t need collagen injections, just this collagen-rich broth! Get off the glucosamine pills and get yours in your diet!
Use your broth to replace water when cooking rice, making soups and sauces, or even just a cup in the afternoon instead of coffee. Delicious, health-promoting and MSG-Free, for real!
In this repost from early last spring, I share a photo recipe for making sprouts. The model is my then eight-year-old Rose.
Sprouting is easy enough for children. There is much to be learned about seeds and sprouts. Here is a great vocabulary sheet to use for the proper terminology.
Sprouts are full of enzymes that aid your digestion, making them a valuable addition to meals. There are frequent recalls of grocery store sprouts, but they are so easy to make at home you don’t need to rely on storebought. And with numerous varieties of grains and legumes to sprout, the flavors vary from sweet to mildly peppery.
You might not have access to locally grown, organic greens in winter, but sprouts can fill that hole in your diet quite nicely. And if Rose can do it, so can you!
This post is part of Prevention Not Prescriptions and Real Food Wednesday blog carnivals.
I’ve been making Thanksgiving dinner for a lot of years, but this year was really, really different. I didn’t open cans, jars (other than foods I’d jarred myself) or boxes. Nothing came from the freezer. Very few things came from the store. Most of the foods I prepared came from farmers and the farmer’s market. It wasn’t any harder than previous holiday meals, but the methods were very different. And the flavor? No comparison.
When did the kids get so TALL?
First, the turkey: I pre-ordered a “medium” pastured turkey from West Wind Farms, my local meat provider, a couple months ago. It was about 14 pounds, more than enough for our family, with enough meat for Thanksgiving and at least 3 meals of leftovers. I was a tad nervous about roasting it, since I know grassfed and pastured meats cook very differently from conventional meats. I’ve wet-brined turkeys before and thought about perhaps a dry brine, but, this being my first pastured bird, wanted to keep it very simple this year. The cooking process was very easy: a quick coconut oil rub before 30 minutes at 450° then 20 minutes per pound, or until internal temp hit 180°, covered for all but the last 35 minutes. During its 20 minute “resting” period, the meat reached 190°, perfect.
The skin was crispy, and the whole bird was very flavorful, but the big difference my family noticed was how moist the meat was. For all it’s injected flavor enhancement, conventional turkey couldn’t compare. Personally, I noticed the flavor was drastically different than a conventional bird. I don’t know what it is that gives conventional turkeys that chemical aftertaste, but to me it tastes the way preserved lab specimens smell. This turkey had not a bit of that, even cold and rewarmed the next day. The moistness was achieved without brine and without basting (I did baste once when I took the cover off to brown the skin, but that was it.) Amazing. Some chicken broth I’d made earlier this month rounded out the pan drippings for lots and lots of gravy.
I made a fermented cranberry relish this year from cranberries I purchased through West Wind Farms as well. On Monday I washed the cranberries and chopped them roughly. I put them in a quart canning jar with a scrubbed, quartered organic lemon, a couple tablespoons of whey, a tablespoon of sea salt and filtered water to cover. By Thursday, the fermented “zing” was most pronounced, so I dumped the contents of the jar into the blender and added a little drizzle of local honey. Delicious!
Delvin Farm‘s potatoes got the traditional mashing with some Hatcher’s Dairy cream and butter I’d made from skimming my raw West Wind Farms milk. I was thankful hubby was available to mash when the time came. He’s such a pro! It was hard to eat these potatoes without crying thankful tears that Hank Delvin is at home with his family for Thanksgiving after his brush with death earlier this year.
I made dressing from Twin Forks Artisan Expedition Bread. I’ve posted a photo recipe for this because I’ve never made anything but open-the-bag-dump-in-the-soup type of dressing. I’m glad I didn’t make more because although a one-day feast is a blessing, having leftovers around that taste that good for too many days might quickly become a curse!
I caught a good bit of flak from one of the kids for my decision to skip the Martinelli’s sparkling apple cider this year. I understand that tradition is important, but I wanted to keep this meal close to home, and as near as I could tell, Martinelli’s comes from California and that’s just not local enough. I started a batch of plain water kefir on Monday. Wednesday night I juiced a couple pounds of local fruits and added the juice to the kefir after the grains had been removed. By Thursday afternoon, the kefir was sparkly and delicious, a light sparkling apple juice with probiotic benefits! I made three bottles with apple, three with grape and one with pomegranate (boy, those seeds really don’t put out much juice, do they?)
Bottle of white, Bottle of red, perhaps a bottle of pomegranate instead...
After all that, we needed a couple hours to breathe before digging into the apple and pumpkin pies. I’ve never been a pie crust maker, but this recipe worked just great! More local apples from Rainbow Hill Farm (or as Rose calls him “The Apple Guy”) and a couple small pie pumpkins from the farmer’s market filled the crusts most beautifully. The dark orange egg yolks from Three Meadows Farm‘s chickens made a delicious custard, indeed! The flour wasn’t local, but I ground it in my own kitchen, so that’s local enough for me. Also not local were the cinnamon and allspice used in the pies. (Haven’t figured out local spices yet.) More West Wind Farms cream became whipped cream, and topped my very welcome cup of dessert coffee as well as the pie. Those beautiful beeswax candles were handcrafted by a bee farmer who frequents our market and they smelled wonderful as their glow lit our table.
I’m thankful for the warm sun, nourishing rain, living soil, sleeping seed and the farmers who know how to work their alchemy on these to coax food from them to bring to market. I’m grateful for my year of Real Food, the newfound knowledge of local providers and the fellowship of friends, neighbors and family. I’m thankful, too, for the electronic media of blogging that permits me to wax philosophical about those things that make me laugh, cry, and fume. Life is good.
This post is part of Fight Back Fridays hosted by Food Renegade.
