Dinner for one

Saturday, May 17, 2008

I think the main reason why the universe gave me a family for which I am responsible, is so that I stay in line. 

I have once again proven that, if left to my own devices, I surely would subsist strictly on a diet of red wine, peanut butter, salsa, crackers, refried beans and the internet.  Behold, my dinner:

This is what happens when I eat alone.  Having no responsibilities to feed my only son a nutritious dinner, nor to remind my boyfriend how lucky he is to have a partner who cooks fabulous meals, clearly means one thing to me:  LAZINESS.  I won’t let this deter me, however, for I have actually convinced myself that this meal was a good choice, not an irresponsible one. Readers of this site will be with me I know, once I point out that this meal is comprised almost completely of local ingredients.

Aw yeah, just what I need:  reinforcement by way of rationalization to continue with this ridiculousness.

The wine is Chaddsford Winery’s 2006 Pinot Noir 25th Vintage.  It’s said to be a “light, delicate red with a mouth-filling combination of fruit and earthiness,” and I must whole-heartedly agree.  At about $15 a bottle, it’s my favorite, stand-by local red wine.  And that adorable little jar is filled with a sweet and sassy Rosemary Rosé herb jelly from Little Isobel.  The texture was a bit more watery than I’m used to, but the flavor was absolutely refreshing.  The unique labels and little sprig of Overbook Farm-grown rosemary suspended in the jelly really makes this product a local gem.  The crackers are not local and not remarkable.  They simply served as a vehicle to get the jelly to my mouth, and to cleanse my delicate and sophisticated palate in between sips of wine.  Ahem.

I’m thinking of using this dinner-for-one theme during One Local Summer.  But first, I suppose I’ll have to get rid of that family.

Ethnic food and small farms

Monday, March 31, 2008

A draft of this entry has been sitting on my hard drive for…oh, at least a month.  I apologize that I didn’t post it in a more timely fashion after the PASA conference, but I still find myself thinking about this workshop session and referencing it in conversation, so I hope you’ll all still find this entry interesting.

So, in the middle of February I attended the PASA conference (Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture).  It was my first visit to the conference, and—besides suffering from work-induced exhaustion and cold-induced aches—I was overwhelmed by all the organizations’ tables and circulating farmers and activists.  Despite being intimidated, I still managed to learn a little about various subjects, but I won’t attempt to summarize everything.  For now, I’d just like to talk about the workshop/lecture I enjoyed the most!  It was the last one I attended, given by Sandra Miller of Painted Hand Farm near Carlisle, called ‘Feeding the World in Your Community: Capturing Ethnic Markets’.  The Powerpoint presentation for this workshop (as well as other articles) is actually on her farm’s website, for further explanation.

She started by explaining why ethnic groups are an excellent customer-match for small farms.  Recent immigrants understand seasonality, spend a higher percentage of their income on food than the average American, and are accustomed to shopping frequently for fresh food.  Through modern shipping routes and the internet, these immigrants can maintain some of their identity through their food, but they want a local source for some ingredients.  When they find a source, they are frequent and loyal customers who spread the word about a farm within their own community, which may rely heavily on word-of-mouth for places to source particular food varieties.

The presentation included various steps that farmers can take to research and prepare for these markets, which I won’t reiterate here.  I just enjoyed hearing her entrepeneurial but respectful attitude!  For instance, many of her customers have specific halal butchering requirements and want to slaughter the animal themselves.  Instead of being intimidated or annoyed by this, she thought to herself, ‘I don’t need to pay for a device to de-horn the goat (and run the risk of occasionally killing one during the process), or a device to castrate the goat (and again, might occasionally lose an animal)—and hey, I don’t even need to pay anything to a butcher, so I come out ahead!’  She also emphasized the value of talking about the food with the customers, to discover how the meat or vegetables are going to be prepared; she gave an example of some squash seeds given to her by a Sicilian who wanted to prepare the squash when it was young and tender, but once she brought to market an example of the squash when it was hard and fully grown (a huge tan squash shaped like a ram’s horn!) and someone from a *different* part of Italy came up and asked if the squash could be allowed to grow even more hard!

Sandra Miller primarily raises meat goats, and the primary group of customers she mentioned were recent immigrants or visitors from Southeast Asia and Africa, many of them Muslims looking for goats for holiday meals—or just ethnic groups for whom goat meat is a staple part of their diet.  One of the reasons to explore ethnic markets, that she mentioned repeatedly and that I found most exciting, is that these are people who may be relocating to or visiting in the States (e.g., families of academics teaching/studying at various educational institutions, like the American War College near her in Carlisle) who for *months* haven’t been able to find food (like goat meat) that they’re accustomed to consuming all the time—and they’re *so* happy to find a source for this food; she said interactions with these customers, overjoyed to find these staples, are very satisfying.  She said she’s had adult Muslim men come to her farm and weep with joy that they can now enjoy a goat at a celebration, like the birth of a child or whatever.  It made me want to have a goat farm! 

One other perspective of ethnic groups that I found especially compelling was the truly sustainable approach to consuming food.  Between the variety of ethnic groups that buy food from her, everything is used—right down to the turkey feet a Chinese co-worker wanted from her during one year when she was sourcing Thanksgiving turkeys for coworkers.  This co-worker wanted the feet for soup broth, a fundamental part of the holiday celebration in the co-worker’s family, and paid her $50 for a part of the animal that would’ve otherwise gone to waste.  That’s so cool!

wintry, local food

Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Obviously, eating local food in the winter takes a little more perseverance and planning than in the summer.  The frequency and geographical locations of farmers’ markets may not be as profuse, but Philadelphia is certainly fortunate that there is still a diversity of local food available amid the winter cold.  I’m still working for some of these local-food organizations, and I’ve done some investigation into other sources, so here are my thoughts!

Let me talk about Winter Harvest first, partly because I work for Farm to City but also because I’m posting this entry today primarily to remind everyone that it’s the last day to place your orders for February.  Winter Harvest is a winter buying club run by Farm to City, and I’ve already described the way it works.  (The ordering window closes TODAY at 5 pm, and if you don’t have an account already you can use PayPal to deposit some initial money.)  There are literally hundreds of items—herbs and bread and coffee, almost any kind of meat cut desired, goat dairy products, and even some vegetables like potatoes (of course) and baby greens.  And I’m sure you can make your weekly Thursday pick-up at one of our dropsites that’s convenient for you!

(Photo from Farm to City.)

Then, there are still two farmers’ markets that continue year-round in Philadelphia; both are on Saturdays, 10-2.  The larger of the two is in West Philly at Clark Park, 43rd & Baltimore— and it is a superb farmers’ market anyway, in a wonderful neighborhood!  (Not that I am at all biased by living within a couple blocks.)  I know the market manager, and I asked him recently about what farmers are still coming during the winter.  There is an Amish farmer with baked goods and noodles and eggs and such, Keystone Farm with apples and meat, Landisdale Farms with a variety of beautiful certified-organic vegetables and beef, Slow Rise Bakery, Margerum’s with the previously-discussed dried beans and a large selection of herbs & spices, Maury Sheetz with vegetables, Rineer Family Farms with roots and salad greens and (new!) beef, and Betty’s Tasty Buttons fudge.  Every other week, there is also a farmer there with chickens…  So, as Naomi has described before, clearly there’s still plenty of local food to enjoy these days!  The other market is at Fitler Square, 23rd & Pine, which I think has two farms.  I think one is called Highland Orchards—can anyone confirm this?  They grow a variety of crops in greenhouses, but also may buy some vegetables to supplement their variety.  Rineer Family Farms is also there over the winter, before moving back to Rittenhouse Square when it opens!

And of course there’s the Fair Food Farmstand, still conveniently open Tuesday-Sunday at the usual Reading Terminal hours.  There are lots of apples and potatoes, mushrooms, citrus sourced through a PA co-op from family farms in Florida, a full selection of grass-fed meats and dairy, and treats like maple sugar and fudge and biscotti. 

Farm to Philly Fiber

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Spinners, knitters, crocheters, there’s a fiber CSA worth mentioning here: Martha’s Vineyard Fiber Farm. (Where the sheep and goats go to the beach!) Just like with fruits and veg, you buy a share of the shearing. It’s a one-time dealio, and you can choose the format of your share: roving (for spinning) or yarn. I haven’t seen or handled it, but I am in love enough with the idea that I almost don’t care. (And besides, their herd is full of promosing stuff: Cormo, angora, Corriedale, etc.) Although an ideal situation would be a mid-Atlantic fiber CSA, until the idea catches on, this one will have to do.

Tunis wool roving

Monday, December 31, 2007

In addition to cooking, my primary leisure activities are knitting and spinning yarn, so, when I heard a few weeks ago that Farm to City had started listing Tunis wool roving from a local farm, I was quite curious.  Farm to City contacted me, and we arranged for them to deliver a sample for me to try.  It took me a couple of weeks to get to it, what with the holidays and all, but I sat down at my spinning wheel this weekend to play with local wool.  First of all, it’s very soft.  It’s wool from the first shearing of these lambs, and the roving is nowhere near as compacted as most commercial rovings.  It does contain more vegetable matter than I’m used to seeing, but it’s astonishingly soft for bits of grass.  Upon spinning it, I noticed that it’s a bit neppy (there are shorter fibers left in that will tend to form round inclusions in the yarn), but it would probably be great for felting with and was a good reminder to try to make the yarn fluffier.  It’s not ideal for my preferred spinning (tightly spun laceweight), but it’s great to see more local fibers available, and it is quite soft.

The roving is from Lindenhof Farm, in Kirkwood, PA, processed at Ohio Valley Natural Fibers, and it’s available in 8-oz batches.

Mushrooms a-gogo

Sunday, December 30, 2007

One thing that never seems to be out of season around Philadelphia is mushrooms.  Granted, if you’re foraging for mushrooms in the wild, that’s a different story.  Spring and Fall are the usual times for that (although certainly, there are Winter and Summer mushrooms).  But cultivated mushrooms can be grown both indoors and outdoors.  And sometimes even underground, in the case of Creekside Mushrooms Ltd..  Mushrooms are Pennsylvania’s largest cash crop, and a quarter of all the mushrooms grown in the U.S. come from the Kennett Square area.

The chances are good that if you go into any grocery store, the mushrooms you find there will have been grown locally.  They won’t be organic, however.  Considering how easily mushrooms absorb water, it might be worth it to go out of your way to find organically grown mushrooms.  There are several local farms who use sustainable farming methods and raise mushrooms organically.  The two that I normally run into are Mother Earth Organic Mushrooms and Oley Valley Mushrooms.

Even now at the end of December, it’s not difficult to find locally grown and organic white button, cremini, yellow and gray oyster, shiitake, portobello, even trumpet mushrooms.

On a related note, I’m still trying to track down a local mycologist or mushroom-hunting tour.  The idea of foraging for mushrooms is appealing to me, but I don’t relish the idea of getting sick or dying because I misidentified a mushroom.

(Photo taken yesterday morning at the Fair Food Farmstand, Reading Terminal Market)

Soy Bonanza

Sunday, December 23, 2007

I was asked some time back how M and I make soy milk.  Like a magician’s audience, you may be disappointed by the mundane truth.  Here it is, (don’t say I didn’t warn you): we went online and bought a Soya Power soy milk maker.  I know.  Dullsville. 

It cost $120 and came with a little recipe book and some “magic” cleaning stuff that we’ve replicated since its demise with a little soap, water, and elbow grease.  We bought it for two reasons, both of which have proved satisfying.  First, I was reading about how difficult it is to recycle those three-ply, aluminum insides boxes of store-bought soy milk.  We take them to Pottstown’s recycling center once in awhile, but we wanted to go a step further, and not use the things at all.  The second reason was because using one ingredient (soy beans) that was not local seemed simpler than using several ingredients coming from everywhere to some processing plant and then coming to us.

We’ve really liked the soy milk it makes, and if you add a little salt and a little sweetener (could be local maple syrup, though we usually use brown rice syrup), it tastes the same as the store stuff.  There are a couple of drawbacks—(a) you have to soak the soy beans/rice/barley/almonds (whatever kind of milk you want) a day ahead, which we sometimes forget (we keep a supply of store-bought just in case); (b) with or without the “magic” (that’s what they call it) cleaner, it’s a bit of a pain to clean.  The cup that holds the beans has mesh that really has to be clear of gunk before the next use because it clogs up otherwise and doesn’t produce as creamy a milk.

You fill the pitcher with water.  The beans go in the shute at the top to slide down to the cup, and are tamped down if necessary.  Then the whole thing gets plugged in and left.  It takes about 15 or 20 minutes.  At the end you have a steaming hot pitcher of soy milk, and, as an extra treat, a cup filled with okara—basically the beans without the juice.  M eats this okara as a cream of wheat-like breakfast for a couple of days and loves it.  I’ve also put it in muffins.

I have never been much of a straight-up milk fan, even when I wasn’t lactose-intolerant, so I will quote M here on the joys of fresh soy milk: “The best is right after it’s done, and there’s all this foam.”  She drinks “a hot mug of nice, foamy soy milk,” says M. “It’s like a latte.”

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

Monday, November 26, 2007

I love this time of year - it means chestnuts.  And there is nothing better than roasted chestnuts.  At the same time, it makes me a little sad - the blight of American Chestnut trees is an incredibly sad story.  But there’s still hope - there are many organizations in the U.S. trying to save the American Chestnut by replanting with the goal of reintroducing the American Chestnut to American forests in Eastern North America.

Here in Pennsylvania, there are approximately 37 American Chestnut orchards, several of them local.  I don’t think you can purchase edible chestnuts from these orchards, but you absolutely can get edible chestnuts of other varieties from local trees.  Just this past weekend, a farmer from Lancaster County had a couple tables set up in Reading Terminal Market (I have no idea who this farmer is - he’s not there all the time, but it’s sort of the middle of the seating area in the middle of the RTM) and was selling half pints of chestnuts grown on his farm.  I believe they are an Asian variety.

My preferred method of cooking chestnuts it to roast them in the oven.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Cut an X into the flat side of each chestnut (I like to use the really awesome chestnut knife in the photo - my husband bought one for me last year after I nearly skewered myself cutting chestnuts with a regular paring knife), lay them X-side up on a baking sheet, and roast for 15-25 minutes.  You’ll know the chestnuts are done when the X starts to peel up and the chestnuts are easy to peel. 

New to the Neighborhood

Saturday, October 27, 2007

I’ve lived in the Philadelphia area for just over a year.  Starting to write for Farm to Philly seemed like a good time to take an inventory of the local food discoveries I’ve made in the past year.  I live in the northwest suburbs and work in Center City, so I’m able to take advantage of the local food offerings in both places.  In other words, I really have no excuse not to make more local foods part of my regular diet…

My favorite local food finds of the past year:

Dairy:

Milk from Penn View Dairy (Perkasie) – Gotta love the reusable glass bottles.  There’s something so wholesome and charming about them!  I’m good about getting two bottles a week from The Old Dutch Cupboard on Rte. 113 in Harleysville.  With a milk-guzzling toddler, this is a reliable local foods purchase for our family.  If I don’t make it to Dutch Cupboard, I sometimes stop at two other local dairy farms on my way home from work:  Merrymead Farm (Lansdale) or Freddy Hill Farm (Lansdale).

Seven Stars Farm Yogurt (Phoenixville) – I usually buy the scrumptious maple yogurt at the Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal to keep at work for snacking during the day.  I also buy the plain yogurt for my older daughter (the Bean), but I’ve also gotten it at Whole Foods and Willow Creek Orchards.  Steven Stars is a 350-acre bio-dynamic farm, and they also buy milk from a few other local dairy farms.

Eggs from Deep Springs Farm (Harleysville) – This farm is within walking distance from my house.  It’s even more convenient because the eggs are kept in a fridge outside so you can pull up (or, heaven forbid in the suburbs, walk up) anytime, grab a dozen eggs and stick your $2.50 in a box inside the refrigerator.

Meat:

I’m a vegetarian, but my husband and the Bean eat meat occasionally if it’s from a responsible source.  Our two favorite spots to get local meats:

Bolton’s Farm (Silverdale) – Fresh turkey (order now for Thanksgiving!) and frozen turkey burgers are favorites.  They also usually have chicken.

Blooming Glen Pork (Blooming Glen)– My husband is in love with all of the pork products at Blooming Glen, from the tenderloin to the sausage.

Produce:

We have a big garden, so we try to get as many fruits and veggies out of it as possible. (Our hope is to sell some of what we grow this year…we just need to figure out some logistics.)  I also frequent The Fair Food Farmstand and Willow Creek Orchards. 

Now that I have some of the basic of local foods shopping in Philly down, it’s time for me to expand. I’ve been sampling some cheese, wine and branching out in search of other local foods and restaurants supporting small farms in the area.  I’m looking forward to sharing my journey with you.

Exploring the perimeter

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Having participated in One Local Summer and other challenges, where the perimeter definition of ‘local’ is 100 miles, and being a frequent visitor of the 100 Mile Diet site, I naturally consider my own local eating perimeter at 100 miles.  I’m not sure what other contributors to FTP consider local [feel free to jump in here, guys].  But the 100 mile perimeter surrounding Philadelphia is what makes eating locally grown food so easy here.

Directly to the West, we have Lancaster County and all of the awesome farms out that way, not to mention the various Amish products.  Directly to the East is New Jersey.  Make all the jokes you want about Jersey, but the Summer produce is killer and it’s practically the cranberry capital of the States.  And let’s not forget the seafood.  We have access to scallops, monkfish, tuna, ocean quahogs and surf clams, fluke, crabs, squid, lobster, mackerel, and a host of other things.  Then there’s Kennett Square out in the PA burbs, which supplies 51% of the nation’s mushrooms.

I often forget, though, that just about all of Delaware and part of Maryland fall within the perimeter.  It’s exciting to think of all the Delaware and Maryland products that I just haven’t discovered yet.  I’m excited to say that Rachel, a Baltimore resident, has offered to clue us all in on all good, local things in the Baltimore area every now and then.  Hooray!

By no means do I insist on eating locally grown food every day at every meal.  I don’t berate people for eating pineapples or lemons.  But for myself, it feels like a challenge to eat locally grown foods as often as possible.  And it makes me happy knowing that I’m supporting local farmers.  And there’s that whole issue of trusting your food sources.  It’s great to live in a place with such a wide variety of choices.

Seasonal fare

Friday, October 19, 2007

Many of us FTP have spent some time putting food up for the Winter - be it canning, drying, or freezing.  Even though corn isn’t in season in the February here in the Philadelphia region…well, it doesn’t mean I can’t eat locally grown corn!

I think we all understand the variety of fruits and vegetables that are season in the Spring and Summer.  But going into Fall and Winter, does anyone really truly know we might consider seasonal throughout the colder months?

Beth at the Sustainable Food Blog has laid out a handy (though partial) list:

Apples Pumpkins & winter squash Potatoes Carrots Onions Garlic Cabbage Turnips Celeriac Milk Butter Cheese Eggs Meat

And let’s not forget my favorite: brussels sprouts!