Friday, August 3: Day 3—Why 100 miles?

Why not 200, or 250, or something less arbitrary, like using the borders of Wisconsin?

It all comes down to what you think is local. For us, a big part of it is to know who produced the food. Wisconsin is a medium-sized state, but it is possible to drive 6 hours and not cross out of it. That's a long way, and by no standard that we recognize does that constitute local, particularly when we can be in northern Illinois in just over an hour, which you have to consider much more "local" by comparison. We are buying most of our food from people who had a hand in growing it, and only under special circumstances could this happen for a producer that was hours and hours away by car. But this is why we made our exception for buying in person. We traveled to Door County, WI in July, which is an area famous for its cherries. We bought cherries at the orchard where they were grown, and we'll continue to enjoy them despite the fact that they come from "too far away". Likewise, Harmony Valley Farm is a mainstay at the Dane County Farmers' Market. As the crow flies they are about 92 miles from here, but I have no doubt that the odometer on their truck registers over 100 miles every Saturday. But when we buy from them we are buying directly from the producer. I think it meets the spirit of what we are trying to accomplish, which is to know where our food comes from and to spend our food dollars with people we know.

So what did we eat today? Well, we were all on separate tracks today. Jen was out working, so after a breakfast of wheat bran cereal, she packed a multi-stage lunch including cauliflower, cheese, popcorn, peanut butter, yellow-doll melon and a Caprese salad picked from our driveway garden.

Scott and Evie had a special treat for breakfast—brun-uusto from Brunkow Cheese. This is a Finnish cheese that is in a slab about 5/8" thick, and it is baked on both sides until it is golden brown. You bring it home and reheat it until it is soft inside. The flavor is insane—buttery and salty, it tastes like a whole grilled cheese sandwich (I consider it a bit Willy Wonka-ish, to be honest) and the texture is a little chewy, almost rubbery, with a bit of cheese curd squeak to it (I'm sure we'll post on sqeuaky cheese curds in the future for those who don't know), and a creamy finish in your mouth. Plus buttered toast, maple yogurt, and Evie finished the last of the apple cider. Oh, the yogurt. I know that the FDA or the USDA has a standard for what can be called Lowfat yogurt, but I swear those people at Sugar River Dairy must be cheating. Their yogurt is unbelievably creamy. A lot of national brands have additives in them to enhance the mouthfeel. Nothing sinister—pectin is a common one, and Stonyfield Farms uses some sort of natural dietary fiber (Inulin I believe it is called), but I'm here to tell you that there is nothing like the real thing, baby.

Lunch? Hot dogs (all beef from Pecatonica Valley Farms), potatoes (Driftless Organics), and broccoli . Couldn't find the homemade ketchup we made last year, so I ate everything straight up and have no complaints (do not normally use ketchup on broccoli, BTW).

For dinner we went out to Jen's parents house (1/2 hour away) and had bison burgers, salad from Harmony Valley Farm , pasta from RP's Pastas, and dessert of whipped cream and raspberries on graham crackers from Potter's Crackers. This was a meal that did not meet our criteria 100% (flour in pasta and crackers, for example) but we were thrilled that Jen's mother put so much thought into where everything came from. This, after all, is the whole point of the exercise. We're after mindfulness, not mindless allegiance. More on this topic to come.

On Saturday I have 2 markets to hit. I'm bringing a long list, a big appetite, and a wad of cash. . .

Thursday, August 2: Day 2

Scott here. One thing that has quickly become apparent is how reliant we become (or at least I have become) on my regular foods. I have to adjust my psychology for this project because I am feeling that if I can't get the foods I'm accustomed to that I am not getting enough to eat. When you figure that we're cooking just about everything in bacon grease it seems obvious that we're not going to starve, but when you are convinced you are hungry for X, it does not matter how much of Y you eat, you still crave X. Not sure how long it will take to break the old habits. For me, it's quality bread (I was getting close, but then I ran out of flour, more on the way Saturday), protein (yogurt is OK, but meat is really where it's at) and on these sizzling hot summer days, sweet drinks (lemonade is my favorite, but luckily I also love cider).

Our menu today:
Toast and cider for breakfast (pictured with the homemade peanut butter with the bacon grease—yum!).









Lunch was a hodge-podge of cauliflower, eggs (from friends), potatoes (Driftless Organics), Canadian Bacon (Pecatonica Valley Farm), melon (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens) and cucumbers (from our neighbors across the street).









Dinner was fabulous Italian sausages (again from Pec Valley Farm), a pile of sweet corn (Old Stage Vegetable Gardens), green beans (some home grown, some from JenEhr farm), and a bit of homemade toast.


We have an ongoing project to make cider vinegar. We let the cider go hard for a week or so, and today we introduced the Mother of Vinegar to turn the alcohol into acid. Not sure if it will work fast enough to be of use, but we'll see. We also allowed an exception—we have some spoiled red wine that comes from outside the radius, but we figured that the karma was better in putting spoiled food to use than just throwing it away, so that's going to be vinegar, too.(SCL)

Wednesday, August 1: Day 1

We went out with a bang last night at the annual REAP potluck. We brought a quiche with the most traveled ingredient came from about 30 miles away. We met Terese Allen who will be mentioning us in her column in the Isthmus later this month, learned about the work of REAP and made some wonderful new acquaintances.

Today we made crackers (turned out great), popcorn (in the microwave in a paper bag, no oil needed) and peanut butter. Turns out I was supposed to roast the peanuts in the shell but I ended up toasting the shelled peanuts in a dry skillet. I needed oil to smooth it all out in the food processor, the only fat we had besides butter was bacon grease, melted--it worked like a dream and OH MY GOODNESS is the peanut butter good!

Thanks to a tip from a reader Scott went out to meet another wheat farmer today who grinds with a stone mill. They only had a little available for experimentation but will have more this week--we are hopeful.

Finally:

Breakfast was wheat bran hot cereal with honey and Sugar River Dairy yogurt with strawberry sauce I had preserved last month.
Lunch was beets with hot peppers and onion, fresh corn and melon.
Dinner was fresh pasta with homegrown tomatoes and herbs, cheese and butter. We also had broccoli, tomatoes, lettuce and onions from market and cucumbers from our neighbors.

Day one down, all within 100 miles of home!

Soy Sauce

A number of readers contacted us about the Kikkoman plant in Walworth (thank you!) We emailed the company and received the following response:

"The all-purpose Kikkoman Soy Sauce is produced at Kikkoman Foods, Inc. in Walworth, Wisconsin but the soybeans and wheat are purchased throughout the USA and Canada."

Wheat and soybeans are some of the biggest commodity crops in the world, origin traceability would be remarkable from a company as big as Kikkoman, using solely local crops for a local plant is, I guess, out of the question.

Out of curiosity we looked into brewing our own--it would be ready by September of 2008. Maybe for next year!

Houston, we have a problem. . .

I won't say I wasn't warned, but I am feeling as though we may have sentenced ourselves to a month of truly dreadful bread. Wheat, it turns out, is very hard to come by. We managed to find some from Tom Brantmeier . Tom warned us that is not a great bread wheat, as did the folks at Cress Springs Bakery (who mill it for Tom), but what choice do we have? I suppose we could try to gut it out for a month without bread, but that is no choice at all. So on we go.

I do not go in for the 100% whole wheat loaf that I call "hippie bread". In my view, people's passion for whole grain goodness has overpowered their aesthetic sense and caused them to accept a doorstop as a food product. A bread should be leavened, for the love of Pete, or else you might as well eat tortillas (which is where we may end up if this does not work out).

In preparation for our month-long experiment, I made a test batch of bread—a couple of loaves of simple sourdough.

But I must start at the beginning, and the beginning of bread is wheat. I took delivery of 10 pounds of hard wheat from Tom Brantmieir. I brought it home and ground it in the NutriMill. It looked very branny, so I seived it through a medium seive, then through a fine seive. I can't quite believe how much bran I took out, but it was still pretty brown, and it has a fine sandy feel to it. I had done a small experiment with a third seive made of mosquito netting, but all this screening is a pain, so I decided to skip it.

I mixed up the dough, a simple sourdough (for you bread geeks out there, I gave it a 30 minute autolyse and hydrated it to about 75%). I mixed it in the KithenAid mixer for a few minutes, then turned it out for fermentation (or first rise, to all you home bakers). A long time passed, during which I did a bunch of bread-geek voodoo to it that is supposed to make for better loaves. Finally it was time to bake. Only when I turned the loaves out of their rising baskets to be put into the oven, the bottoms plopped out and the tops stayed in the baskets. The loaves tore in half—a total failure.

So what happened? In short, I have a gluten crisis on my hands. We've all heard of gluten, I expect. It's the protein that allows bread to rise by forming an elastic net that can trap gas bubbles. It is what makes bread dough stretchy. Without it you have nothing but starch. Compare bread dough to cornstarch paste and you begin to get the difference. Tom's wheat is not very rich in gluten (the growing conditions in this region are not right for those varieties), so I need to shift to techniques that will make the most of what little gluten is present. One problem is bran. The bran part of the wheat kernel shatters when you mill it, and it makes tiny particles with sharp edges and little spiky hairs on them that actually cut/tear the gluten mesh. So I will definitely be including the mosquito netting step next time. Also, acid has a detrimental effect on gluten, and the sourdough starters are very acidic, especially during the hot summer months. So I will have to go to a commercial yeast. Lucky for me that SAF yeast is in Milwaukee, a mere 75 miles away, and easily within our radius. I will also use a number of other dough handling techniques that are intended to increase the suppleness and handling quality of doughs made with marginal flours. No need to bore you with the details now, but if they work, I will definitely bore you with the details.

As part of my research, I looked at my home-ground flour under the microscope and compared it to a high-quality store-bought flour. This is what I saw (store-bought on top, home-grown on bottom):



Not sure what I was looking for, but no smoking gun here. The bran particles in the home-grown are bigger, but they are not really any more numerous than the ones in the store-bought. The granule size seems mostly comparable. One thing I will say is that the home-grown flour is much darker in color. This may be because it has more germ in it. Also, I understand that commercial flour is often aged, and that this lightens the color a bit. We'll see if ours changes over time.

I've got 20 more pounds of wheat coming this week. I hope it goes better the next time around. (SCL)

What we will miss

coffee
chocolate
lemon
vanilla
soy sauce
cooking oil
goldfish crackers
convenience

Practice

We try to incorporate local foods into our life regularly. It is easy to do. This experiment will stretch us to see can we get everything we need from within 100 miles. It is always fun to practice!