We are still working off the Thanksgiving Turkey round here. Many of our meals for the week have incorporated it in some fashion – but this soup, which I’ve made variations on before, always hits the spot. I had two big bunches of collards hanging out in the crisper from the West Seattle Farmers market the previous week. I combined them with some farmers market carrots, local yukon gold potatoes and leeks from the backyard.
I’ve gotten in the habit of using almost the entire leek lately, not just the lighter parts. The dark greens take a bit longer to cook but they are full of flavor and a shame to waste (or compost as the case may be). I diced everything finely and sauteed with a pat of butter in the bottom of a large stock pot. I threw in 3 quarts of homemade turkey stock and set it all to simmer for a while.
Meanwhile I grabbed a bunch of parsley from the garden and pulsed a combination of cornmeal, chilled butter, flour, pepper, baking soda and salt in the food processor until it all resembled coarse crumbs. I added the diced parsley in and moistened with a bit of milk until I could form small dumplings. When the soup was about done, I spooned the dumplings into the broth and simmered until they puffed up. A relatively simple meal – but damn tasty, mostly local, and excellent for a fall evening.
Local Ingredients – Collards, carrots, potatoes (West Seattle Farmers Market). Leeks and parsley (backyard). Stock (homemade with Bay leaves from the backyard). Butter. Flour (Wheat Montana, picked up on a trip to MT). Milk (Golden Glen Creamery).
Non-local Ingredients – Turkey (Diestel farms, a good farm but from Northern CA). Pepper. Cornmeal (unknown location)
Side Note:
My mom mentioned the other day that she had recently read one of my Dark Days posts and that it was something she hadn’t thought about before. Most likely this means I am not doing a good job of preaching what I practice. (4 years in Catholic School have left me very reluctant to preach to anyone). But it did get me thinking that I’ve assumed all readers of this little endeavor (this blog) already know the reasoning behind a focus on local foods. While that is probably the case for a good number of you (if this pertains to you, you can stop reading here), it also may not be the case for all. There are so many talented writers out there that have covered the local foods movement in much more eloquent ways than I can here. But I want to briefly outline my reasons for trying to eat locally.
By purchasing my food locally, I know where it comes from. I can research, and in many cases visit where my food is grown and give my monetary support to farmers who are being ecologically responsible in their farming practices and working towards a sustainable agricultural system.
By purchasing my meat locally I can ensure that the animals that end up on my table didn’t live brief and miserable lives in feedlots or factory farms. That they weren’t pumped full of antibiotics to ward off the disease that festers in those situations. That they played in the dirt, were fed a variety of foods appropriate to their species and were raised in a manner that takes the surrounding environment into account, not creating cesspools of manure that contaminate rivers, streams and groundwater.
By supporting local farmers I know that the money I spend is going directly to support a family, not a ConAgra, Tyson, or Kraft CEO. It is going towards paying those working on family farms a living wage. It is going towards preserving an occupation and lifestyle that is given little recognition or respect, and is frequently the subject of derision. We live in a country that affords more respect to celebrities than the people who nourish us and make our isolated urbane lives possible.
My local food dollars are going towards preserving open land ,and dollar by dollar, making it possible that suburban sprawl doesn’t swallow up every last available acre of surrounding land into a manicured green lawn for another mini-mansion or building block housing complex.
By supporting local farmers I am much closer to paying the real price of food. I have a greater awareness and appreciation for what I purchase and think harder about wasting food. I can’t buy a 10 pound bag of potatoes for $3 from a local farm. But I also don’t let any of the potatoes I do buy go to mold and waste away. And I know that the true cost of cheap food is much much more, either in underpaid human labor, fuel costs in transportation, a scorched earth monoculture, caustic fertilizer and pesticide/herbicde use or the greenhouse gases released in bringing me peaches from Chile.
By supporting local farmers I am contributing to this region’s food sovereignty. I’ve put my money toward ensuring that there is land left to grow crops near my town. I’ve made myself a little less subject to the whims of politics or nation-states when it comes to basic sustenance. If something were to happen, I know where my food comes from-and it is not the supermarket.
Eating local food connects me to where I am, makes me more aware of the changing seasons around me, makes me notice the outside world a bit more. It makes me aware of local food traditions and cycles.
And last, after all the politics, issues and moral dilemmas – eating local food tastes good! Absolutely fresh spinach, hot chiles, sweet salmon, cream top milk. The list goes on. Food that hasn’t been on a trip around the world before it lands on your table, is simply amazing in your mouth.
The end of Thanksgiving had us hauling home a giant (29 lbs!!) Diestel Farms Turkey carcass from my relatives who were just going to throw it away, as they were headed out of town the next day. The following day I picked almost a gallon bag worth of meat off the bones before throwing them in a stock pot with some onion, carrot, bay and peppercorns to simmer all day for stock. I had also purchased a Northwest Naturals Turkey in the days preceding Thanksgiving so that we could have some for ourselves (we almost never have left over turkey on Thanksgiving, go figure). I broke down the whole turkey, portioned out the breasts and leg/thighs and packed them up separately for the freezer. I threw in the second carcass to the stock pot and set the giblets aside for gravy.
The next day I made up several recipes of pie crust (see my green tomato pie recipe for the proportions). Diced up a few Yukon gold potatoes, carrots and onions and coarsley chopped the turkey meat salvaged from the carcass. I simmered the giblets and added them to a gravy based off the stock from the day before. I canned all but a half gallon of the remaining turkey stock, 7 quarts). Combined everything and placed in a pie crust, then rolled out the top crust. I made two 9 inch pies with plenty of turkey and gravy left over. The pies went into the freezer.
Yes, that is a gallon of frozen whey in the background. I can’t bear to throw it away after making ricotta. It is great for soups, baking and the chickens really like it too. And yes, the freezer really needs to be defrosted despite doing it less than 6 months ago. Sometimes you really do pay for a free freezer. I have dreams of a newer, more efficient freezer someday – but they go for a pretty penny that I am not willing to pony up quite yet.
So now there are two meals waiting for a day when I can’t be bothered to cook. I still need to wrap them in foil so they don’t freezer burn. But either way these are guaranteed to be better than those microwavable packaged pot pies.
The above photo is a bit of a cheat. We haven’t eaten one of the turkey pies yet. This is a chicken pot pie I made a few months ago and intended to post about, but didn’t.
This week was a flurry of inactivity for the most part. So I have no real excuse for the lack of pictures for the highlighted meal. Gary’s Dad has been in town visiting and we had friends over for dinner on Tuesday night to welcome him. The perfect time to pull out the camera, right? I am just not so good at reaching for the camera when it comes to people – but give me a hummingbird in mid flight and I am there.
Garlic Sage Sausage, Sauerkraut, Sweetmeat Squash, Braised Leeks and Greens.
I tried my hand at making sausage for the first time! For my birthday my parents bought me the grinder and sausage stuffer attachments to the Kitchen AId that Gary got me (let’s hear it for collusion!). I had a goodly portion of a pork shoulder in the freezer left over from a get together earlier in the summer and decided to give it a shot. After grinding the pork I mixed in a good bit of sage from the garden, garlic from the farmers market, salt and pepper. Then I left it to mingle in the fridge overnight. The next day I fried up a bit for a taste, adjusted the spices and then headed out in search of sausage casing.
I found the casing at a local butcher in Columbia City, Bob’s Quality Meats. With a tub of salted lamb intestine tucked safely away I made my way home to begin the sausage process. I will spare you the details of flying sausage and the intestinal learning curve. Ultimately it all worked out and we were the proud owners of a half-shoulder worth of sausages.
For our dinner I cooked the sausages in about an inch of water until they were cooked through, then browned in the pan. I harvested 5 leeks from the garden and braised (both the greens and the whites) in a good splash of homemade chicken stock. The sausage was served over a bed of braised leeks, Sweetmeat Squash mash on the side and a big bowl of sauerkraut. The sauerkraut was my first attempt at lactic fermentation, and came from a large head of cabbage we picked up at Carpinito Brothers farm in Kent. Gotta say that this sauerkraut is miles above any canned or bagged variety I have had in the past. A simple greens salad rounded it out and we were all happily burping garlic for the rest of the night.
Local Ingredients: Sweetmeat Squash – Columbia City Farmers Market (I can’t remember the vendor). Leeks – our backyard. Chicken Stock – homemade. Sage – our backyard. Garlic – West Seattle Farmers Mkt. Cabbage – Kent, 7 miles. Greens – West Seattle Farmers Mkt. Sausage Casings – Bob’s Quality Meats.
Non Local Ingredients: I cannot remember where the pork came from, but I would bet that it is unfortunately not local. . A bit of olive oil. Salt. Pepper.
Other local foods for the week included braised shortribs with clove and cinnamon and Roasted Chicken with smashed Rose Finn Fingerlings and parsley. Winter is treating us well.
Grass fed Ribeye, kabocha squash puree with parsley pesto and green beans
I threw my name in to take part in (not so) Urban Hennery’s Dark Days challenge this year. Details in full can be found here. Essentially it will be an attempt to once a week catalog our attempt to eat locally when there ain’t nuthin growing by highlighting one of our meals. This appealed to me because it represents the challenge of trying to walk the talk when we aren’t in the full flush of summer’s bounty. For my purposes I am going to define my food shed area as 150 miles. I will strive to cut that down even more.
So our first meal for the kickoff of the Dark Days challenge is a relatively simple one. But sometimes simple is where it is at. I mentioned in previous posts that my father had brought us some beef that he got from friends of his down in Montesano that raise a small herd of grass-fed cattle. I defrosted two steaks from that beef for our first dinner. I also baked a whole kabocha squash that we had picked up back in October in our pumpkin hunting adventure. The easiest part of the meal was the green beans, canned during the summer and sourced directly from our garden.
There was no laborious preparation for this meal. The squash, after baking was mashed with a little butter and topped with a quick pumpkin seed and parsley pesto. The green beans quickly reheated on the stove. The steaks I brought to room temperature, seasoned with salt and pepper and seared them on my cast iron griddle. The steaks were HUGE, very lean and tasty. I adore squash and would have a hard time finding a way that I didn’t like it prepared. And the green beans, ummm – sure nuff – they were canned green beans. They didn’t have the tinny taste of store bought canned green beans, but the pressure canning does tend to destroy texture.
Last night we tried the first of the salt preserved green beans I mentioned in a previous post, to mixed reviews. I much preferred them over the canned green beans as they retained all of their crunchy fresh texture and color, but Gary thought that they suffered in the flavor department. More scientific analyses will be conducted.
Local Ingredients: Rib steaks – Montesano WA, 95 miles. Kabocha Squash – Kent WA, 7 miles. Pumpkin Seeds – Kent WA, 7 miles. Parsley – Our backyard, 0 miles. Green Beans – our backyard, 0 miles.
Non Local Ingredients: Olive oil, parmesan, salt, pepper (too many miles).
We just got back from driving up to Mt. Vernon to pick up the 1/4 beef we ordered from Prairie Springs Ranch. I weighed and counted everything both for my own edification and for anyone else who is considering ordering directly from a farm. In my travels round the blogosphere I have always appreciated when others take the time to go in to detail and cost on things, be it building their own home like Annie and Ron or something as small as this. So here is my meager attempt at repaying that debt.
This year is the first year we purchased beef directly from a ranch. Last year we bought a whole lamb from Bradrick Family Farms in Montesano and it served us well through the winter. We now only have 1 leg of lamb left in the freezer. The lamb was great, but it was not enough to last us through the year. And I would really like to be in a position where we know that all of our meat has been pastured, treated humanely and is supporting local farmers/ranchers. This year we should come pretty close. This beef in addition to the half-pig we will be getting from Whistling Train should keep us in protein quite well.
Now for the numbers
The total hanging weight of our 1/4 beef was 191lbs. After cutting and wrapping that worked out to approximately 134 pounds of beef (approximate because I was using the bathroom scale to calculate, so no ounces included). The breakdown of the meat (cutting and wrapping) represented a 57lb loss (or 29%), which is about normal from what I have read. Below is a breakdown of what we got for that 134lbs.
Pot Roast 22 lbs
Ground Beef 63 lbs
Sirloin Tip Roast 3 lbs
Rib Steak (ribeye) 4 lbs
T Bone Steak 6 lbs
Short Ribs 6 lbs
Rump Roast 4 lbs
Top Round 5 lbs
Cube Steak 2.5 lbs
Stew Meat 6 lbs
Bones 8 lbs
We paid $2.99 per pound hanging weight which came out to a total of $571.09. This works out to about $4.28 per pound of beef. Not bad when you consider the going retail rate for naturally raised grass-fed beef But sending out a big check like that all at once still gets me in the gut, ugh. Perhaps we could have gotten an equivalent amount of beef for cheaper by shopping the sales at Safeway religiously. But cheap and deliciously fatty steaks tend to sour a bit when I consider feedlots and their moral, ecological, social and political implications.
Of course the verdict on taste has yet to be delivered. So I suppose this makes this an five hundred and some dollar gamble. The beef was frozen solid so the soonest we will sample any of it is tomorrow. I took out a package of short ribs to thaw, perhaps this will be our featured Dark Days meal for the week. I anticipate some kitchen experimentation to figure out the best way to cook these leaner cuts, but that’s what winter is for, right?
There were several cuts that were conspicuously absent from our packages. I am pretty sure that this has to do with us only ordering 1/4. Cuts have to be uniform enough so that the beef can be readily split between two or more parties. But I in particular I had hoped to get at least one of the flatiron steak, hanger steak, or flank steaks. Most of these cuts are either 1 per side or 1 per cow, but who got them? Also missing was the oxtail, or more appropriately cow tail. My only other gripe is the generic labeling on the roasts. There is no indication of what is a chuck roast, bottom round roast, etc. And really the only way to even come close to figuring it out is to defrost and unwrap a 3-4 pound piece of meat, that in the end may not be what you wanted.
The butcher did a great job packaging everything, and it was a nice little family run joint. Good to see they still exist. Ultimately I think that I could finagle better labeling/specialized cuts if we were to order at least a half or whole. So, is there anyone in the area who would consider splitting an cow next year?
Katie, over at GardenPunks posted this and after writing a (mini-rant) comment on her post I figured I might as well memorialize it here and pass on the link. This is one of the more eloquent responses to Prop 8 that I have seen from the media/pundits,despite the fact that Oberman and all other tv personalities of his genre generally drive me batty. I am still amazed that this county can manage to take a step forward and a step backwards at the same time. How a nation and some of it’s citizens can be so preoccupied with taking away the rights of others, instead of preserving the rights we have left – is baffling.
I can legally marry. I choose not to because I believe the government has no place in the romantic/personal relationships between people. Marriage, as a government regulated institution, is exposed as a social contract for the production of a labor force. Nothing more and nothing less. Why else would there be such an issue over two people of the same sex wanting to marry? For a professedly secular nation to even have such spirited debate and disagreement over basic issues of equality like this is just embarrassing. Marriage is something that should be in the jurisdiction of one’s community, be it a church or other social circles.
I understand that the government has a vested interest in dealing with issues of inheritance and child guardianship. And the government could feasibly regulate that by requiring property owners and parents to establish inheritance and guardianship plans at the time that they purchase property or have a child. But for the government to be deciding who can and can’t enter into a personal commitment is ludicrious. And even more ludicrious is the fact that we allow fellow citizens to take away others rights by a simple vote. I don’t fundamentally belive in the institution of marraige, but if I have the right to marry in this country, so should all of it’s citizens.
Saturday we took advantage of a brief break in the rain and packed up Hux to go down to Dead Horse Canyon, a trail loop at the bottom of our hill and just north of us. We once lived about 10 blocks further north from where we do now and would find ourselves taking this twisty turny road down the hill every once in a while. At the tightest hairpin turn on this road is a small turnoff for parking. I’d been meaning to check it out for years. It is formally called Lakeridge park by Seattle Parks and Recreation. But the story goes that it was originally named Dead Horse Canyon after a feral horse (that was a friend to pioneer children) was found deceased in the area. And everyone who lives around here calls it that to this day. Romantic, no?
This is not really a park in the city sense of the word, despite the official name. It is a park only in the sense that it is a public space, there are no playgrounds or see saws. There is, however, a great little trail that takes you up the canyon along Taylor creek. The trail slowly climbs the hillside and has several bridges that cross back and forth high over the creek.
Fall was in full swing here, with big leaf maples and vine maples both shedding their leaves. There was a moment when we were crossing a bridge and a big wind came through. It was eerily silent in the ravine and thousands of orange, yellow and gold leaves were spinning in the air around us on their way to the forest floor. It was pretty spectacular. we tried to catch it on the video clip feature of my camera, but missed most of the big action once we figured out how to use the camera.
This was a great spot so close to the city and our house. In addition to the deciduous trees there were Western Red Cedars, Pacific Yew, Douglas Fir and even a few rhodies!
The epiphytic licorice fern was growing everywhere in the more established trees. The trail is short, I would have liked it to be longer and we had some disagreement about fording a stream (someone didn’t want to get his feet wet, and it wasn’t the dog). But I will definitely return to see If I can find an outlet here at the top of the hill. It would make a great trail if it could eventually lead back to our house.
As the weather turns and the air takes on a definite chill, I find my self wanting to write more about food than the garden. I suppose it has much to do with the lack of any exciting new going on out there. My spinach I planted toward the end of summer seems to have been ravaged by the slugs and I am doubtful we will get any. The broccoli and cauliflower are trucking along, but also suffering from serious bug damage.
So now is the time that we settle in and find other activities to occupy our free time. For me this means a lot of cooking and experimenting. We are still awaiting our meat orders for this year so meals in the interim have been veggie based for the most part, with an odd piece of fish or slice of bacon thrown in. My father dropped off several packages of grass-fed beef with us last week to tide us over until our order comes in. We made mushroom and Swiss burgers with one package of ground, and oh my god was it good. I haven’t had ground beef that flavorful in a long time.
I’ve also been experiencing a hankering to do something creative. There was a time when I made all sorts of things, leather work, jewelry and clothing. Between working, school and home remodel it seems I got away from that and I am starting to feel the twinges of that loss. But the trick is to find something that doesn’t 1) create useless (albeit pretty) things that clutter us up more than we already are and 2) doesn’t require some sort of capital outlay for supplies, materials and tools.
Gary’s mother gifted me with her old sewing machine when she upgraded and I would like to pull that out and try my had at sewing again. But I am having a hard time coming up with something to make. I honestly don’t need anymore clothes (aside from a sturdy pair of workpants, and those I will order). We have drapes for all the windows, no need for pillows, etc. What a charmed life it is to not want for any basics much less frivolities like throw pillows and drapes, eh? I am lucky – and in realizing that and not wanting to have things just for the sake of having them, I am unable to come up with an outlet for this energy.
I should work on welding a bit this winter. We need to run power out to the shed but I could definitely make use of some larger trellises and perhaps get a little ornate with a gate for the chicken pen. Perhaps that is where the energy will go. I still need to get a better face shield and some raw steel stock to experiment with. Hmmm.
In other news, the kraut is coming along swimmingly. We cracked a jar the other night for a test sniff. Smells very Krauty! It is exciting, all of these little beasties making food for us. I am fascinated by fermentation and bacterial action. I started two half gallons of kombucha yesterday, with another half gallon of tea left over in the fridge. WHEW! I am not used to sweet tea, there is a lot of sugar in there for the beasties to eat.
No pictures for this post as we are getting ready to go out to a movie. I’ve decided that I can go see the new Oliver Stone movie W. For the past 8 years I’ve hit the mute button, turned off the radio, or rushed away from the tv anytime our village idiot came on with a presidential address. But now, with the election over and an end to his reign in site, I may just be able to go watch a movie and laugh about it for an hour or two before returning to the very real mess outside the theatre.
Well the sog is upon us now. There are flood warnings for 7 counties in the state today, including our own. The weatherman reports that the equivalent of one months worth of rain has fallen within the past two days. We are ok, high up on the hill but certainly not dry. The backyard is a mud bowl. Our hill is gifted with a fine hardpan of clay soil about 6-8 inches below the topsoil. It doesn’t take much to saturate the topsoil and we are left with pools of standing water in the grass. We have been trying hard to eliminate the grass and build the soil up with organic material as much as possible to increase the water retention but our efforts are no match for this kind of rain.
The chicken pen is a slip and slide. I have no doubt that one of us will end up on our butts in the morning and evening pilgrimage to let them out or close them in. I already had a close call this morning. Nothing like a mud crusted backside before you have even had your morning coffee. I had high hopes of leaf wrangling this weekend. The crimson maple in the front yard has started to drop its leaves and I want to store some of them for mulching the garden next summer. In light of our straw eating chicken I figure using the leaves as mulch instead is worth a shot. Usually we run all the leaves through the chipper/shredder and spread them over the permanent beds in the front to decompose. But all of that will have to wait until it dries up a bit, wet leaf wrangling is no fun at all.
I picked up a giant bone for Hux yesterday when I went to restock on dog food. He has been lying on his bed in the living room, guarding it and occasionally licking it since about 2pm yesterday. He will do this for several days before he actually starts to work on whittling it down. You’d think that he wouldn’t make a dent in bone this size, but once he gets started he can clear off half a foot in one evening. I’m glad those jaw muscles are on my side.
I guess we don’t have to pack up and move to Costa Rica after all. I never thought I’d see it and am beside myself right now. America, you were as close to angelic as I’ve ever seen you yesterday. Thank You.
I added the diced parsley in and moistened with a bit of milk until I could form small dumplings. When the soup was about done, I spooned the dumplings into the broth and simmered until they puffed up. A relatively simple meal – but damn tasty, mostly local, and excellent for a fall evening.
