Thursday, August 30—Day 30

Day 30? Can that be? Well, we knew that the month was nearing its end when we were presented with the following gifts:



Yep, we're right back where we started: coffee and chocolate. Many thanks to Laurie, who correctly discerned all of our preferences (dark roast for Jen, dark chocolate for Scott, and milk chocolate for Evie). We are starting to get questions from people about what we're going to eat on Saturday. Tune in and find out. . .

Our menu today:

Breakfast: Pancakes with butter and maple syrup, plus bacon and cider.

Lunch: The normal mid-day miscellany, a combo of Jen's tortilla creations featuring whatever vegetables she could find, plus salsa and cheese, hot dogs, and cut up fruits and veggies (finally finished that watermelon).

Dinner: Cheese pizza. We polished off the last of the 100 mile flour. Homemade tomato sauce with garlic (Harmony Valley Farm) and basil (grown in a bucket in our driveway). Topped with Farmer John's Provonello, which is a wonderful cheese that melts smoothly like mozzarella but has a little bit more assertive flavor. We've all agreed that we've fallen in love with his cheeses all over again.

I predict tomorrow will be an anticlimax--as a practical matter we will be ending the project early because there is a cookout to celebrate the end of Evie's logrolling class. As usual for a Friday, we'll all be in different places for lunch, which will be the last real meal of the experiment. We'll all try to have some deep thoughts for tomorrow.

—SCL

Wednesday, August 29: Day 29

Who is on your team?

Your doctor? Your accountant? Your lawyer? Your kids’ teachers? Maybe even your mechanic? Your team is those people who understand your needs and take them into account when they provide services to you. You trust your team to look out for you.

Are your food producers on your team? I think they should be. Food producers are the only people whose service you use every single day—the rest of your team you see when something goes wrong (sickness, audit, cracked radiator) or for preventative maintenance.

Throughout this project, we’ve campaigned for people to ask questions of their food suppliers. We've come to accept that we should ask questions of our doctors, to be active participants rather than passive consumers of health care. Are we willing to educate ourselves and become active participants in our food procurement system?

Fine, you say, but what questions do you ask?

It depends what you care about. I'll throw out what I see as some of the issues I have heard people express, just to stir the pot, and I'll also add some questions that have come up in discussions about this with consumers and with producers.

What are the issues? Everybody has their own, but here are some common ones:

1. Chemicals/Toxicity in food
2. Ecosystems and wildlife
3. Genetic diversity/heritage breeds/genetically modified organisms
4. Food miles (distance traveled) and other energy inputs (fertilizer, etc).
5. Small business versus agribusiness
6. Food safety and security
7. Humane treatment of animals
8. Human rights/treatment of workers/immigration

Without trying to create a list of questions specific to each point (because there are certain to be more that I have not thought of), here are some ideas for questions. And I should add that I recommend asking relatively open-ended questions both to avoid suggesting the answer you want to hear, and also to give the farmer the chance to demonstrate how much thought he/she has put into the process.

How do you choose what varieties to grow?

How do you promote soil fertility? (fertilizer, cover crops, rotation, etc).

What are your major pest/disease challenges and how do you deal with them?

Do you participate in any certification programs, such as Certified Organic or Integrated Pest Management?

If products contain other ingredients (such as sausages, jelly, or cheese, for example), what are they and where do they come from? Are any ingredients required by law to be in the product?

Who does the work of harvesting?

Where is your operation located?

Here are a few that are more specific to animals, and these are a bit less open-ended:

Are your animals able to move outdoors? Do they have access to shade and shelter in case of bad weather?

What type of bedding/nesting material do they have?

Are antibiotics or hormones routinely added to feed? If so, for what purpose?

What are the animals fed? Does the feed contain any animal by-products? Where does the feed come from?

How far must the animals travel for slaughter?

Kay Jensen of JenEhr Farm offered me the following recommendation: Write it down. There is bound to be more information than you can remember, and even if you can, you may not know what it all means. So go home and look it up.

On a busy market day, a farmer may be busy and have a hard time getting into specifics with you—please respect that. Maybe you can come at a different time next week, or perhaps you can email your questions (check web sites, many such questions are already answered there). But also realize that if you feel farmers are less than forthcoming with you or are being evasive, you can always find someone else who will shoot straight with you. I recommend finding team members who have sound reasons for doing what they do, and who don't mind telling you about it because they are proud of the work they do. And well they should be—they have chosen to use their work to nourish us, which is the greatest give we could ask of them. And to the farmers out there, my deepest apologies if you are bombarded by a zillion questions as a result of this!

What we ate:

Breakfast: "the usual", toast with butter (running out of peanut butter, yikes!), maple yogurt, cider.

Lunch: Jen had tortillas with Farmer John's cheese and homemade taco sauce and sauteed red onions. Evie and I had hot dogs. We shared watermelon and red pepper.

Dinner: We were invited over to enjoy a 100 mile meal at the home of friends: Summer vegetable ragout, sauteed Jordandal Farm pork, and yummy whole wheat rolls with Brantmeier Farm wheat flour. For dessert, homemade yogurt with Gentle Breeze honey.

Those of you who saw the newspaper article about our project will recall that we said that if we went to a birthday party we would have a piece of cake. Well, happy birthday, Maddie!

—SCL

Tuesday, August 28: Day 28

Lots of activity today. The biggest thing is probably that the Wisconsin State Journal ran a front page article about our experiment. They came to the house to chat about what we've learned and to take some pictures of us working in the kitchen. The article includes many of the resources that inspired or informed us, and we're hoping some more people will give this a try in whatever way makes sense for them.

Jen made tortillas this morning. In a very uncharacteristic move, she read the instructions carefully, and it was well worth it--by far the best tortillas we've made so far. I am officially fired as tortilla maker. Here she rinses the corn after it has soaked overnight in the lye bath to dissolve the seed coats and soften the kernels.

Later in the morning we went raspberry picking at Blue Skies Berry Farm. We learned from the owner that, "if you take care of your soil, your soil will take care of you." What she meant was that thanks to the many improvements they have made to the quality of their soil and their drainage, they were able to withstand 16 inches of rain in 2 weeks and lose nothing more than a few rows of beets and carrots.
We got a mix of orange and red berries. We're drying some, eating some fresh, and putting up some puree to fight off scurvy in the dark of winter.

In the afternoon, Jen and Evie, along with some neighborhood friends, stomped the grapes we gleaned from the neighborhood. Jen then made them into delicious grape jelly—for consumption after the experiment due to its refined sugar content.


Today's menu:

Breakfast: Toast and cider.

Lunch: Tortillas with cheese and a red chile sauce I threw together with tomato, jalapeno, onion, garlic, herbs, and vinegar.

Dinner: Gnocchi with italian sausuage and swiss chard. The gnocchi were a bit dense due to the fact that I have not found any starchy potatoes yet--mostly still seeing waxy boiling/roasting potatoes. And the whole wheat flour probably contributed, too. But we did have real-live sheep's milk ricotta to make them with. Dessert was (what else?) raspberries and whipped cream.

We made a great new friend while berry picking at Blue Skies:

Frogs are considered excellent indicators of toxicity in the environment because they absorb everything through their skins. This guy was perched way up near the top of the foliage in a shady spot—I can't imagine how he got all the way up those prickly canes without getting cut to ribbons. But I will take him to be a sign of good things happening at Blue Skies. We nestled into the rows along with so many honeybees and bumblebees that the buzzing was constant (and soothing). With happy wildlife, robust and resilient soil, and a plentiful and delicious crop, I'd say they are onto something.

—SCL

Monday, August 27: Day 27

Today the blueberries were finished drying so the poblano peppers went in. We boiled more corn for masa and are letting it soak overnight. I plucked the grapes off the stems in preparation for stomping tomorrow, sewed a jelly bag and made peanut butter. NOTE: The jelly will require non-100 mile sugar so it won't be eaten until after Sept. 1 but I am preparing some things for winter.

Breakfast was toasted baguette with peanut butter and cider. Lunch was a variation on my usual tortilla lunch. This time it was cheese curds, hot hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, jalapenos and onions. We were invited to dinner at the home of friends, they were excited to try cooking a local meal. We had wonderful chicken from Ken Ruegsegger courtesy of the Paoli Local Foods shop. We also had potatoes, corn and bread with yummy chevre cheese. We had local wine from Weggy Winery and watermelon for dessert. We also had whole milk and black raspberry smoothie from Blue Marble Micro Dairy . It was a wonderful evening and we so appreciate those who have invited us over and taken the time to think about food and buy it locally.

Sunday, August 26: Day 26

Lots of delicious happenings here today. With our neighbors' permission we gleaned both apples and grapes from our neighborhood today. We may have an old fashioned grape stomp here tomorrow! I am drying blueberries (thank you Ruth!), when those are done the poblano peppers will go in. There are peanuts waiting to be shelled and smashed. Evie came up with a brilliant way of collecting the seeds off of some dill plants given to us by friends. I think some sauerkraut is in our future! I heard geese honking this morning in that "south flying" sort of way, I have made my list of foods I still need to preserve--it is long and this week will involve canning and freezing to be sure.

Breakfast was fresh wheat bran muffins with raspberries and whipped cream on the side (it is Sunday after all). For lunch I baked some of our older corn tortillas in a 375 degree oven for 15 minutes (having already cut them into wedges) and we made nachos! Delicious! For dinner we have the answer to "what do I do with all this summer squash?" It is a Japanese dish that was introduced to us by friends many years ago amidst another zucchini tidal wave. Okonomiyaki means, basically, "things you like, cooked the way you like." Or the way our friends used to explain it, "things you like, fried!" Tonight our okonomiyaki has red onions, zucchini, summer squash, eggplant, bacon and cheese, bound together with egg and flour and fried up with bacon fat. Lovely green beans on the side.

Saturday, August 25: Day 25

The markets were a bit subdued today as farmers figure out how much has been lost to the floods. Several of the usual folks were not there, maybe that was on their schedule, maybe not. Richard de Wilde of Harmony Valley Farm looked haggard and sad, other farmers were expressing their relief that their crops and animals were okay.

I found out today that our wonderful peanuts are being grown by Silvan and Avis Disch THANK YOU!!!!

We purchased a wonderful array of things today, the apples are really starting to come in while corn is beginning to wane. Fall raspberries are showing up, we are hoping to go pick at our favorite raspberry farm on Monday.




Breakfast was the last of our bread (Scott comes home tomorrow, thank goodness) with cider and milk. Lunch was eggs with cheese curds, salsa, carrots and the first of the season's pears. Dinner was a thrown together number by me that was fabulous! I made a cheesy flatbread with some leftover dough and then I made broccoli romanesco. The crazy crucifer is delicious raw but tonight I sauteed it in butter, garlic, chicken stock and salt. Evie kept exclaiming, "MMMMM! This bite was even better than the last one!!" She and I both dearly love anything from the cruciferous family. The whole meal took maybe 15 minutes to make (having preheated the oven) that's a keeper!

Last day of remote posts from Massachusetts. . .

. . . and it was a good one. As is the case in so many places, Saturday means Farmers' Market in Maynard, MA. There is no question that by our usual standards it is tiny—just a few vendors. But those who do show up can have so much impact on what you eat. Here is an overview:

We were there more for research than to shop, but we did get a few things. Balance Rock Farm has a wide selection of meat and dairy: beef, pork, chicken, milk, cheese (cow's milk and goat), plus eggs and butter. A real find! We bought some bacon, sausage, and eggs. We also visited Applefield Farm for some veggies and fruit: tomatoes, melon, and onion. They have a great selection of produce, including these:

I was thrilled that the Maynard Farmers' market, small though it is, could provide so much. And it is interesting to note that both of the vendors we bought from employ organic methods but don't feel they can justify the cost of organic certification.

We brought that goodness back home and made up some pizzas. Here are two:


The foreground is a pizza caprese: olive oil (not local, of course) with heirloom tomatoes, mozzerella, and basil. The background is local potatoes, local caramelized onions, local rosemary, and imported proscuitto (it was left over from something else) and parmesan cheese. Not shown was a tomato and cheese pie with the local sausage we bought at the market.

So as my trip comes to an end, I am in a position to draw some conclusions. Local food is available, even here in the east-coast suburbs. Maybe not quite as many things as we've been accustomed to in the bountiful midwest, but if you want to, you really can buy a considerable portion of your food from local producers, which is pretty cool. Most of the farms in these areas are being coveted by real estate developers and are potentially worth millions of dollars as building lots. So if you like looking at farms near where you live, find out what you can buy to help support them and keep those farmers on the land. Otherwise you may find that beautiful pasture will someday soon contain a crop of McMansions.

Fresco Restaurant Farm Dinner Benefit

Click on the image to read the details or check out Fresco's website. Then go eat!