Archive for June 30, 2008

30 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 30: Strategies to Eat Well on a Budget

It is so easy to be a locavore in summer – it’s possible to do it almost without having to think about it – and to be almost totally locavore. Vegetable are abundant, fruits are in season.

A handful of summer berriesFrom the garden I am harvesting the last of the radishes and the peas, the first of the carrots (harvested young and small) and the beets, kales, Swiss chard, mustard greens, the first of the big tomatoes and peppers. My neighbor gives me zucchini, as the first planting I made (late anyway) did not germinate and the second planting (even later) is still small. Berries (blueberries, raspberries, black raspberries, strawberries) are plentiful too – although my plants are still young. I don’t get a lot at once, about get a pint of mixed berries every other day at the moment, since the strawberries have slowed down, and the blackberries have not yet started. But mixed together (with or without a very light dusting of sugar) they make a very refreshing dessert, especially when served with yogurt sweeten with honey (both of which I can also source locally)

There is similar abundance at the farmer’s market, and chances are there is a farmer’s market no far from you. The culminate web site has a neat tool which gives you the farmers markets for your zip code. Try it at the Culinate web site.

I have heard the comment that such fresh full of flavor and full of goodness food is somehow reserved for the financial “elites”. That’s wrong – and that’s sad.

First anybody can grow a few things as long as they have a sunny balcony or a sunny patch. Just a few herbs will incredibly enliven your meals. Of course, the money you hand over to the farmer at the farmer’s market – or the farm stand – is often - but not always – more than at the grocery store for “conventional” fresh food. In another post, I will go over why that is so and the true cost of “conventional” food. I think when feeding one’s family on a budget, one may have to rethink some shopping strategies.

I have adopted several strategies that allow me to eat well, in season and of food that taste good, is good for me and has not wrecked our land and water because it was grown “gently”. Some of them may work for you. Read more

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26 Jun 2008
Cookery • Desserts • fruit • Fruit recipe • herb • Kitchen Garden

Of Strawberries and Sorbet

Perfectly ripe Strawberries

Most people who grow strawberries - or who pick-them at pick-your-own operations or even frequent Farmers’ market – are familiar with the so-called June strawberries. They bear over a few weeks from mid/late May to mid/late June here in the Northern Piedmont depending on the cultivar. For the kitchen gardener, that’s good only if you have time to process lots of strawberries then. I don’t know about you, but in May and June, I am always so behind with planting and new garden projects that should have been done 3 months earlier (and really can’t wait any longer) that I really don’t want to deal with 40 quarts of strawberries.

So last year, I got ‘Tristar’, a day-neutral strawberry developed at the University of Maryland. While the June strawberry flowering (and therefore fruiting) is trigged by a certain amount of day light, day neutral strawberries don’t give a fig and flowers as long as there is no frost. I get fruit from early June until frost. Last year, I threw agricultural fabric over the bed, and I actually got a few strawberries for Thanksgiving. I can’t say they were very tasty but it was a victory of sorts… Best of all, you can harvest the year you plant. You have to pinch the flowers through June after which you let the plant flower. Unlike the June bearer, the crop is spread over many months. From 25 plants, last year I got over quart a week. This year, I got a quart or two every other day for about 3 weeks. Then there was a lull for a couple of weeks, and I can see I’ll be able to start picking again in few days.

I love freshly picked really ripe strawberries, eaten plain, tossed with a little sugar and lemon, frozen for smoothie, but one of my favorite recipe – not the least reason for it is that there is very little heat used (something to think about in the hot muggy summers of Virginia) – is Strawberry Sorbet. Here is the recipe I use: Read more

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25 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 25

When in season, you eat it – whatever “it” is – until you are almost tired of it, and then you are ready and happy to move on to the next thing that’s fresh and in-season. But that’s assumed you are either growing an awful lot of “it” – or buying and awful lot of “it”. I am pleased to say I have not reached that stage yet – maybe a sign that I really need to up the garden production… Flavor and freshness are still winners! Freshness unless you are eating venison from this past fall that has been frozen. Maybe it’s not “fresh”, but it certainly is local, coming right from the hills behind us. So venison steak for dinner tonight with sautéed onions, cherry tomatoes and peppers from the garden; very refreshing dessert of tart green apple sorbet (the so-called “June” apples, in effect large thinnings) from Roy’s Orchard in Sperryville, VA with mint from the garden. Lunch was a cold no-cook herbal soup (PA Yogurt, zucchini from Waterpenny in Sperryville, VA, sorrel, parsley & celery leaf – a celery grown for its leaves with insignificant stems – from the garden); country sausage & chayote shoot quiche (sausage from Belle Meade; eggs from a friend; dairy from Trickling Springs Creamery, PA, and chayote shoots from the garden – the first of what promises to be an abundant harvest) with fresh currant and bird cherry compote. Sour cherries might be over, but it is still cherry time!

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23 Jun 2008
Cookery • fruit • Fruit recipe • Kitchen Garden

The Easiest Jelly in the World

red currants

I have said my goodbye to fresh sour cherries for this year. I have frozen and made jam with a bucket of them – and of course enjoyed quite a few in cobblers and eaten them “au naturel”. But for the cook with a liking for vermilion sweet/tart fruits, red currants provide even more of a flavor burst. In my Northern Piedmont garden, red currants mature right after the sour cherries – sometimes overlapping them slightly. A red currant bush bears faster than a cherry tree– one can have a nice little harvest three years after rooting cuttings (very easy to do to!), although it’ll start to be respectable in year 4; they are more manageable in a kitchen garden than a cherry tree which takes a bit of room and is more appropriate for the orchard. Surprisingly, the birds seem to leave them alone, and at least for now, the bear also ignores them – unlike the cherries for which he makes special trips down the hill, devouring other things (like bluebird eggs) on his way to his feast.

Currants need a cold dormancy period and don’t enjoy too muggy a summer, so I give them shade in the afternoon. Besides watering well the first year to ensure good root establishment, and pruning the oldest branches (4+ years) occasionally, they are pretty care free. Also self-fertile, but that’s a moot point because one currant bush is simply not enough. Besides, delicious when eaten out of hands, or tossed with a little sugar and let to rest for 1 hour to draw out the juice, currants makes a famously delicious jelly – and a fabulously easy one. Read more for the “Fabulously Easy Red Currant Jelly” recipe. Read more

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22 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 22

It’s now solar summer, and while the days are just about to start diminishing again – albeit imperceptibly at first, we are getting into the time when we have an profusion of fresh beautiful and wonderfully tasty produce. Production is really stepping up in the garden – even though I did not plant a number of things until late. Berries, especially, are luscious and abundant and start showing up at every meal. Read more

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21 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 21

Nothing special in the locavore log – same salad style lunch yesterday and home-made pizza (again!) last night. My baker always makes a double batch of dough…

Lunch today was a lot of fun, though. I was holding a workshop “Growing and Cooking with Herbs”. The class started at 10:00 and we spent about 1 ½ hour in the garden, talking about common culinary herbs – and some not so common; their different cultivars; how to plant, propagate and grow them; how to harvest and use them. We had plants samples so we could touch, smell and nibble on a leaf to compare flavors. Then I handed out the menu, and each student was given a basket, a pair of scissors and a list of herbs to harvest. We moved back to the house where I demonstrated the preparation of 2 kinds of no-cook chilled soups, roasted herbal chicken, sorrel potatoes, pesto, herbal vinegar (students picked the herbs they wanted to use as they were taking their vinegar home), minty green apple sorbet and lemon verbena poached peaches with kaffir lime. At 1:15 we were ready to eat. Students took those recipes – and a few additional ones we did not have time to prepare – home. Supplies for the meal was my own garden, Waterpenny Farm for some of the herbs & vegetables, Roy’s Orchard in Sperryville for the dairy products (from Pennsylvania – less than 100 miles, so I’ll call that “regional-local”), the peaches (from Georgia – more than 100 miles, so not local… I know I know…) and the green apples (theirs). The chicken were raised in Culpeper County and bought at Food for Thought. I hope that my students left with the sense that one can make uncomplicated (and easy to prepare) food that taste delicious when one is using fresh herbs and fresh seasonal produce.

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21 Jun 2008
Garden • Kitchen Garden

Out numbered, out composted

I really thought I was a pretty serious composter. I have two large (at least 5 x 5 x 4) bins going at once, often three – mmmhhh… “piles” would probably be a better word than “bin”, although I do try to corral my compost … some. All kitchen vegetal scraps, garden debris, weeding, grass clippings, raked leaves, old potting soil, mulch etc go in there. And a few truckloads of horse manure when I can get my hands on it (actually if my garden facilitator can get it for me). A few months later, tada! Magic has worked and I have black crumbly deliciously earthy-smelling compost. I actually thought I might be good enough to earn recognition in Organic Gardening magazine if I ever wanted to send a photo of my compost piles for that special last page. Some visitors to the garden are clearly surprised by the compost zeal – then really ask questions when they start looking around at what’s growing. Anyway, I thought I was pretty good. That is, until I visited the garden of Tobey & Jennifer Wheelock a few days ago. Read more

sylvie | 2 comments
19 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 19

Last night dinner was an appetizer of sage leaf tempura (sage from the garden), sautéed golden pork chops (locally raised) with 2 onions (yellow & shallots, not local), and garlicky braised kale (from the garden). Pickled chilies (from last year’s harvest). No dessert.

I buy the pork in bulk from Belle Meade in Sperryville, VA, and store it in the freezer. Cheaper, tastier and THERE. I don’t have to run to the store for meat and it makes menu planning – which tends to be a lot less extensive than when I was working a corporate job – much easier. Grab a few things at the beginning of the week and let them thaw in the freezer. See what’s good in the garden veggies wise, and – voila – dinner’s ready. I am not the only one to this – i.e. buy meat in bulk: yesterday’s Washington Post had an article about buying meat in bulk “I can’t believe I Bought the Whole Thing” (Alan Zuschlag drew my attention to it) and featured farmers who sell in bulk (Alan is one of them) an d consumers who buy in bulk (they did not interview me, though….). Obviously there seem to be a hunger from a growing number of people to take control of what it is exactly we put in our mouth and to re-establish connections with the farmers people who grow or raise our food. Read more

sylvie | 3 comments
18 Jun 2008
locavore log

Locavore June 18

Beverly Hunter was interested in seeing what people ate that was locally grown or raised in or around Rappahannock County, Virginia – as well as bought locally through our small non-chain stores such as Roy’s in Sperryville, E-cow in Amissville, The Corner Store in Sperryville, Food for Thought in Griffinsburg. She inquired on Rappnet, an on-line discussion board for those interested or living in Rappahannock County. Some people took up the challenge for a few days, but me thinks ablog might be an easier way to do this. So here I am starting and will chronicle my locavority (or lack of, sometimes).

- Dinner Monday: quick-fry venison from the hills behind us, courtesy of one of my neighbors sauteed with garlic and onions bought locally and canned tomatoes from the garden (last year’s harvest). Seasoned with definitively not local spices (roasted curry powder brought back by a friend from Sri Lanka) and olive oil. Served with couscous and Swiss Chard (from the garden) . Two square of locally bought chocolate. Read more

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18 Jun 2008
Garden • Garden Technique • Kitchen Garden • Seed Saving • Seed Starting • vegetable

The Scent of Swiss Chard

I had no idea that Swiss Chard flowers smelled so good.

The flowers themselves are small and inconspicuous – albeit on top of rather incongruously awkward stems that flop onto their neighbors – and, unfortunately onto the cowslip primroses. The scent is powdery sweet, not cloying. How I got to revel in the scent of Swiss Chard is a (not that) long story. Read more

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