Brief CSA Notes

Tuesday, January 06, 2009

For those currently trying to decide which CSA to join, I can offer a quick eval of the two we belong to.

Charlestown Cooperative Farm - We’ve been members for three years now, and are very, very happy.  The shares are supposedly designed for two adults and two children, and they give us (two veggie loving adults) all our veggies from June - November and a substantial portion of the rest of the year (canned and frozen).  The share lasts from the first strawberries (Memorial Day ish) until Thanksgiving.  Like many other CSAs, there tends to be a surfeit of greens - we attempt to eat them all but usually some lettuce and bok choy end up in the compost.  We freeze a lot of kale and chard.  The share provides a bit of fruit (strawberries, raspberries, and melons) but is mainly veggie focused. There are also opportunities to buy meats, eggs, and other items at the farm.  They do not deliver - you have to go to Phoenixville to pick up the shares once a week (Tues and Thurs) - which I like for two reasons; one it’s fun to go to the farm, and two Saturdays are usually way to busy to fit in a trip to the farm every week - that would never work for us as we have several volunteer events which are on Saturdays. Unfortuntately (at least for those wanting a share), I believe their wait list is booked for two or three years.

North Star Orchard - We’ve been members of the fruit share for two years now. This year they are expanding and offering both a 12 week (historical) and 15 week share.  We’re going to try the 15 week as we ordered several extensions this year.  The fruit is a good variety and good quality.  It is only enough for regular eating though, not preserving. (At least for us - but we eat 2 - 4 pieces of fruit a day, or more). They deliver to several CSAs (including Charlestown) and local Farmers’ Markets. They also offer a veggie, share which we have not tried - but I have purchased their veggies from the Phoenixville Farmers’ Market and they are good. I’m just not sure of the size/variety of the actual share.

Garden Planning

Monday, January 05, 2009

There’s no more local food than that you grow in your own backyard, and now’s the time to start planning - which is my favorite part. I love planning and organizing things, looking through seed catalogs, and of course in the planning stage every garden is perfect - no mysteriously dead or dying plants, no diseases, no pests, no weeds, and not a whole lot of work .

I’m going to give a brief description of my planning process for 2009.  While reading, please keep in mind three things: 1) I have a relatively decent sized yard, considering, so if you have an apartment or smaller garden don’t feel the need to be as crazily organized as I am, 2) I’m a fairly experienced gardener and am trying for a 4 season garden this year (see The 4 Season Harvest at your local library) so my succession planting is overkill for a less experienced or less obsessed gardner, 3) I like planning, so if this looks crazy to you, you’re probably perfectly normal.

Step 1 List the seeds (and perennial plants) from previous years. I don’t know about you but even the smallest seed packets are usually too large for my needs so I pop them in the freezer (in ziplock bags inside a larger ziplock to prevent condensation from forming on the seeds).  During this step I evaluate how the seeds did last year and decide if I really want to try again. This list includes plant type (ex. swiss chard), variety (ex. bright lights), days (i.e. how long it takes from planting to harvest), plant time (permissible dates/conditions to plant), and any other notes.

Step 2 Heaven! Browse all those seed catalogs that keep piling up and circle all the ones I want to plant.  Apply some common sense and narrow this down to things I really want to plant and have a hope of keeping alive.  Then I make a list with the same info as in Step 1, along with source (i.e. where I’m going to buy it), cost, and amount (ex. 1 lb for potatoes).

Step 3 I lay out a diagram of my garden space. I use graph paper and break down each area in to 1 square foot sections. This makes it easy to place the plants later. This picture is roughly laid out like my actual garden area, but with the space between beds scrunched, and the flower beds mostly eliminated. I mostly use the Square Foot Gardening method and I really recommend it.

Step 4 Next I sort my seed lists into several categories: transplants (ones I start indoors), early spring plants, early summer plants, mid summer plants, and late summer plants. Then the hard work starts - I try to fit two or three plants in to one garden plot.  I make a time line with start and mid-month sections, and mark the last and first frost dates.  Then I plot on the time line when the plants will be planted, transplanted, ready to harvest, and done harvesting. Then I fit complementary plants together. Note, if you’d like to try this keep in mind that most plants are harvest-able for a few weeks (except for say, head lettuce) so you don’t want to schedule to plant the second plant as soon as the first one is ready to harvest. I also do a little summary line that shows when that plot will be planted or fallow and note if it will need to be covered in the winter. Invariably, a few of the plants on the wish list don’t fit in to this planning step and are sadly crossed off the list. (This step is on the right side of the picture below.)

Step 5 Once I’ve scheduled all of the plots, I then place them in my garden diagram, and decide how many square feet to devote to each set of plants. On the left side of the above picture is a filled in version of my garden diagram - each letter corresponds to a plant group. Most of the items written in are perennials (or a few annual herbs). I also add little icons to say which spots need trellises, cages, or protection from the cold.

Step 6I order the seeds and plants that I need from the sources on my list.

Step 7Lastly, I create a schedule of what to do when in the garden.  I break this down (like the time line in step 4) in to roughly bi-weekly periods (i.e Feb 1 - Feb 15, Feb 16 - Feb 28). This gives me leeway for doing stuff in the garden when the weather and my life permits without feeling like I’m behind. Basically for this step I go through the time lines from step 4 and list everything that needs to be done for each time period. Here’s an example:

April 15 - April 30th
Plant Red Samurai Carrots and Arugula in A plots
Plant Mizuna and Mesclun in E plots
Then I just look a the diagram and know exactly where to plant stuff.

Of course, I had to put all that hand drawn stuff onto the computer and I repeat the process for my herb and flower beds - but I’m sure you get the idea.  I’m very excited for my garden this year - especially the fairy tale pumpkins - my favorite kind of winter squash.  Speaking of winter squash, ...

Tough Decisons

I’m trying to decide on a CSA for this year. I’m torn between Red Earth Farm CSA which I’ve used and been happy with for the last two years and Lancaster Farm Fresh which is delivering in my neighborhood for the first time this year. As a family of four with two adults and two small children who eat a lot of fruit but only specific vegetables we’re only interested in a partial share. Here’s some info about the two CSAs. Some of the information is factual, some is opinion.

Red Earth Farm:

• One farm provides all the herbs and vegetables
  crops are limited to what’s grown on the farm (no corn, not a big variety of squash, the list of vegetables doesn’t really vary that much from week to week)
• I like the idea of supporting a single farm
• I love the weekly newsletters
• 26 week season.
• partial shares (6 items) come weekly
• boxes are packed for you
• you can pick your own veggies each week (don’t like turnips, don’t order them)
• fruit, herb, egg and yogurt shares are available
• you can join the buying club for supplemental items like veggies, yogurt, cheese and herbal tonics
• you don’t get any fruit in a regular share
• fruit isn’t available through the buying club
• I was unhappy with the fruit share the year we bought one
• a partial share is more expensive than LFF, but the season is slightly longer and I’m eligible for an 8% discount
• shares for the 2010 season are available at the current prices to finance a land purchase

Lancaster farm Fresh

• A cooperative of farms
• lots of variety in produce, though I’ve heard there’s entirely too much lettuce for a good part of the season
• I like the idea of supporting a cooperative of farms
• 25 week season
• partial shares (a full box) comes biweekly- that’s a lot of vegetables every other week
• items are chosen for you (if you don’t like turnips, you’re getting them anyway)
• fruit shares available
• special orders (meat, cheese, eggs and yogurt) available
• slightly less expensive than Red Earth Farm

I’d appreciate any input about Lancaster Farm Fresh to help me make my decision. I’m drawn to LFF because it’s the unknown and some fruit is included in addition to to the fruit share. But I’m worried about getting a ton of food all at once that I’ll immediately have to prep for storage, instead of getting a smaller amount of produce each week. I’m also worried about the amount of lettuce included in the shares. My kids won’t (and in the case of the baby can’t) eat it and we’re not huge salad eaters.I don’t want my compost bin overflowing with unused and unwanted produce. But the variety. Oh, the variety. I’m drawn to the idea of corn and heirloom tomatoes and melon and lots of different squashes.

Then there’s Red Earth Farm. It’s treated me well, and aside from the fruit share which was not worth my while, it’s been fantastic.

Isn’t it nice to have choices?

Dark Days: The Leftover Life

Sunday, January 04, 2009

This week’s Dark Days challenge update includes lots and lots of leftovers.  The black-eyed pea and mushroom ragout with polenta made excellent lunches! 

From the leftover lamb from the roasted leg of lamb I made lamb pot pie.  I think it does qualify for the Dark Days challenge, even though I cheated and used store-bought pie dough.  The lamb was, of course, local - but so was the carrot (Lancaster Farm Fresh), onion (Landisdale Farm), parsnips (Lancaster Farm Fresh), beef stock, lamb demiglace, garlic (my garden), flour, and stout beer used for filling and gravy.  And that also made tremendously good leftovers all week!  Seriously, I could eat pot pie every day of the week during the Winter.  There’s something incredibly comforting and warming about it.  I also froze the lamb leg bone for making stock.

With all those leftovers, I really didn’t have to cook much this week.

Today, though, I did head into the kitchen.  I’ve been craving frittata lately.  I have a zillion pounds of sweet potatoes hibernating on the back porch - toward the end of the CSA season with Landisdale Farm, we ended up with many, many sweet potatoes.  I like sweet potatoes just fine, but I don’t really know very many ways to use them.  But this morning it occured to me that maybe I could use them in place of regular potatoes for frittata...plus, I had a few duck eggs left that I really needed to use double quick.

In our cast iron skillet, I melted some butter that I made from local cream (over medium high heat) and sauted chopped onion (Landisdale Farm) and garlic (my garden), along with some sausage (Country Time Farm) removed from its casing.  I threw in some salt and pepper, and a teaspoon of dried, rubbed sage (my garden).  And then I added in spinach (Rineer Family Farms) and fresh cranberries (Paradise Hill Farm), and sauted that for another few minutes until the spinach was just wilted.  I scooped all of that out and layered sliced white sweet potato (I used a mandoline to get the potatoes sliced thinly) into the skillet in concentric circles.  After the first layer, I spooned in some of the sausage/spinach mix, and then just kept layering potatoes and then sausage/spinach mix.

When I got everything layered into the skillet, I let it all cook on the stove for 15 minutes.  While that was cooking, I whisked together the last six duck eggs with a cup of milk (Natural by Nature) and then dumped it into the skillet.  The skillet went into the oven (preheated to 350 degrees) for 40 minutes.  After it was out, I shredded some raw milk cheddar (Green Meadow Farm) over top.

It was better than I imagined.  The cranberries were perfect against the sausage, and the sweet potatoes were great!  And it looks like I’ll have enough to eat for leftovers this coming week!  I guess I know what will be in my report for next week!

One More Lazy Morning

No matter if you are a complete improviser or a strict adherent to recipes, you can not be afraid of failure in the kitchen.  The small frustrations - not to mention the immense disasters - are part of becoming a better cook.  You might even say that if you can say you’ve never failed in the kitchen, then you’ve never succeeded either.  Nevertheless, there are some things that I do not attempt, knowing that they would be too trying for my limited patience.  Crepes are a perfect example.  My batter is never the right consistency, and my pan is never the right temperature.  Because I love crepes, you can imagine this creates quite a problem.  So when my wife offered to make some for breakfast today, I eagerly agreed. 

Thus, in celebration of our final lazy morning before returning to school, she put together this local breakfast: buttermilk buckwheat crepes with egg, farmer’s cheese and caramelized onions and bacon.  The buckwheat and white spelt flours are from the Fair Food Farmstand, as is the Farmer’s cheese we grated into the crepes.  The eggs and bacon are from Meadow Run Farm.  The buttermilk and onions from Winter Harvest. 

I’ve written before about the versatility of buttermilk (here and here), but it continues to amaze me.  In this case, it gave the savory buckwheat crepes an extra, acidic tang.  The recipe comes from Mark Bittman’s modestly-titled The Best Recipes in The World.

Buttermilk Buckwheat Crepes

1/4 c. white spelt flour
1 c. buckwheat flour
2 eggs
1/2 c. buttermilk
1 c. water
butter or “neutral” oil (for frying)

1.  Combine first five ingredients in a bowl and wisk until smooth.  Let sit for one hour.  (Note: Due to the thickness of the buttermilk, you may need additional water to thin batter.  The consistency should be something like runny pancake batter.)
2.  Heat a eight- or ten-inch nonstick skillet over high heat for approximately two minutes.  Add a teaspoon or two of butter or oil, coat the pan, then drain most of the oil (reuse for the next crepe).  There should only be a trace of oil or butter in the pan. 
3.  Pour in 1/4 cup of the batter and swirl around the pan, completely coating the bottom.  Pour any excess back into the remaining batter.  Turn in one to two minutes and cook the other side for approximately 30 seconds.  (Note:  You may need to adjust the heat.) Repeat with the remaining batter, adding more butter or oil to the pan as necessary. 

Catching up

Friday, January 02, 2009

Phillyist has posted their 2009 resolutions - eating locally grown produce and gardening has made the cut.  They’ll also be talking about how to join a CSA program.  I’m wondering who they’ll recommend.

There are a few CSA programs that I can think of that deliver within Philadelphia city limits (and probably a bunch more that I don’t know of or haven’t thought of)....

Landisdale Farm - Clark Park
Dancing Hen Farm - TBD
Emerson Farm - 6th & Lehigh
Greensgrow Farm - Kensington
Lancaster Farm Fresh - Reading Terminal & just about everywhere else in the city

And there are dozens more that have pick up and drop off locations in the burbs.  Just take a trip to Local Harvest, plug in your zip code, and you’ll find more than you know what to do with.

Finding a CSA join isn’t too difficult, but I’ve always wondered if there was an easy way to find community gardens in Philadelphia.  Years ago I used to live right down the street from a large garden, but aside from stalking the gardeners and asking for information I didn’t have a clue how to join.  The Philadelphia Lands Trust does have an online map of their community garden locations, although it doesn’t tell you how to become part of their gardens.  The site does contain valuable information, though - how to start your own community garden.  There is also a list of Philadelphia area garden associations at the at the American Community Gardening Association.  Rough Terrain is also a good online resource for community gardens. 

Still, none of them really talk about how to become a member of a particular garden.  I know from talking to people involved in community garden plots that there are sign ups and waiting lists and all sorts of things.  It would be a useful resource to have online - it’s where most people start their searches.

Hello!

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

I’m Eileen, the newest Farm to Philly contributor. I’ve been following the site for about 9 months and have been involved with local food in Philly since shortly after I moved here 3 years ago. If you can spare a few minutes I’d like to introduce myself.

When I was thinking about this post, I tried to come up with the start of my interest and involvement in local food.  I was surprised to realize that I’ve been involved in growing, storing, eating and enjoying local food my entire life - it was just not something I thought about until fairly recently.

While I was growing up in Western New York, my grandparents owned a farm. It’s been in the family at least three generations, it’s where my mother grew up, and it was about a mile from my house. My grandparents were never able to make a living on the farm - my grandfather was a postman - but it was a vital part of their livelihood as it allowed them to afford to raise nine children and get them all through college.  Some of my fondest childhood memories are from the farm - digging potatoes with my grandfather and cousins; drinking milk right from the cow; playing outside while my mother and aunts sliced corn off the cob to freeze, and picking blueberries and raspberries (funny-ish aside: my grandparents had almost all black raspberries and just a few red - up until college my generic image of raspberries was of the black ones - I was totally confused as to why I couldn’t find any at all in the grocery store - only the ‘specialty’ red ones.).

Between my grandparents, my own parents’ big garden, and the local farm stands (it was a very farm-centric town), I would say that at least 50 - 75% of our produce growing up was local. It didn’t mean much to me because it was totally normal. It was also no big deal that the local grocery store stocked locally grown produce all summer (with prominent signage).  I also didn’t realize that we ate a lot more produce than most Americans - when one aunt-in-law remarked at a family party that she’d never seen people who ate so many veggies, I just thought she was from a weird family.

It really started to dawn on me when I went away to college in the Midwest.  I started going to Whole Foods because the produce in the ‘regular’ grocery store was awful. I don’t mean the taste - I was never able to find anything that even looked worthy of purchasing. It was routine for the pepper to be wrinkly and the carrots bendy. When people said, “Whole Foods is too expensive,” I thought – “Compared to what? They basically have a monopoly on edible produce.” I also went to my then-boyfriend’s house for dinner several times, to find the only vegetables on the table potatoes and iceberg lettuce. I requested “a green vegetable” for one Easter dinner (a solicited request) and was served green beans with bacon. (I love my in-laws, they’re wonderful people - but they’re definitely the ‘food = meat, cheese, carbs‘ type, though they are getting better.)

After graduation, I moved to the Philly area, and soon read an article on CSAs. (I have no idea how I ran across the article, or where it came from, or what it was about.) I did a google search and found that Charlestown Cooperative Farm was really close and convinced my husband we should sign up. One of my best decisions ever (and very fortunate timing, I was able to become a member right away, now there’s a three year waiting list). With Charlestown, we pick up our shares at the farm - which I love! It reminds me of going to my grandparents.  There are also several Upick items in the share - which I also love! Again it reminds me of my childhood, plus it makes picking up the shares more entertainment than a chore.  It pretty much snowballed from there

Right now we get 100% of our produce locally in the summer and about 75% in the winter (Jan - Mar). Besides Charlestown, we have a fruit CSA with Northstar Orchard, do U Pick at Linvilla Orchards, go to the Phoenixville Farmers’ Market, and frequently shop at Kimberton Whole Foods which stocks lots of local items.  We eat 100% local meat (from the farmers’ market and our CSA), and eat some local dairy.  That’s been something difficult for us. I do eat 100% local yogurt (Seven Stars), but we don’t drink animal milk - we do use cream and butter but I’ve been having a difficult time integrating sources for those into our regular routine.  90% local eggs. Dry goods are semi-local. We buy enough for a year’s supply at once. The supplier we use is located in western PA and sources most of their flours, grains, and beans from PA and OH, but some are from other parts of the US.  They do mill all the flours onsite in PA, at least. We do tons of canning and drying - with mostly local ingredients (only non local ingredients are onions in the salsa, salt, sugar, pectin in the jams, and the cranberries we dried), and some root cellaring (apples and squash and squash and squash and …). We also have a fairly substantial garden.

Well, I’m sure that more than you wanted to know about me so I’ll end with the fact that I’m thrilled to be a contributor to Farm to Philly and can’t wait to really get started.

Anatomical produce - true food porn!

Over Thanksgiving at the Fair Food Farmstand, we noticed two carrots that had grown wrapped around each other.  It was sort of sweet, in a weird way.  Vegetable weirdness is everywhere, though.  Lisa Kerschner from North Star Orchards recently emailed me these two photos [click the photo for a bigger look]:

She says: “We picked “Mr. and Mrs. Carrot” (on the same day from the same planting ‘bed’), and also a ‘rude pear’.
Farming is a lot of hard work....finding treasures like these really is a joy!”

Oh, by the way, if you’re interested in North Star Orchard’s CSA program (both fruit and veggies), sign ups will begin in February.

I Love Pot Roast

I don’t cook much from recipes, so consider the photo and this little bit of commentary to be a reminder that pot roast exists and, if you’re an omnivore, that you should make it once in a while. The meat is a slab of london broil from Meadow Run Farms that I got through their buying club—grass fed, pasture raised, they take great care of their animals, and you can taste the difference. The vegetables (carrots, brown mushrooms, onions, and potatoes) came from Highland Orchards (DE)—some left from the fall CSA and the rest from Fitler Square Farmers Market. Thyme from my garden, parsley also Highland Orchards. I tossed in some wine (Chile) and capers (provenance unknown) with mashed up tomatoes from summer. Good stuff for a winter supper. 

Garden Porn: the 2009 gardening season beckons

Monday, December 29, 2008

I was at a holiday gathering recently with my friends Buzz and Pat, first-time participants in the 2008 One Local Summer challenge and first-time gardeners.  We were chatting about this past year’s harvest (they had tremendous luck with potatoes and pepper, I had great luck with various greens, garlic, and turnips), and it reminded me that it’s time to start fantasizing about next season’s garden.

My first 2009 seed catalog arrived the other day, as fate would have it, giving me ample garden porn to pour over.

Really, my 2009 garden is already started - I planted garlic a few months ago.  Normally, my gardening goals revolve around planting stuff I don’t think I’ll get through the CSA.  However, unless I can find a CSA program that plans to deliver to Head House Square it’s not looking like we’ll be part of a CSA next year...so that sort of frees me up to plant what I want.  That said, I still intend to plant things that perhaps are not as readily available at the farmer’s markets.

But I also want to be smart about things.  As much as I would love to grow these very awesome pointy cabbages, I don’t really love cabbage.  So I not only want to grow things I can’t find everywhere, but also things that I will have no problem finding ways to eat.

Sadly, the lesson I have learned over the last several years is that I am better off buying tomatoes rather than growing them.  The squirrels conspire against me every year, making off with my tomatoes.  I’ve tried everything short of hiring a sharp shooter to guard my garden.  So I concede defeat.  Luckily, great-tasting heirloom tomatoes are easy to find here, and I won’t go wanting for tomatoes.

So what am I thinking about for 2009?  Well...I may give zucchini another try.  I may be the only person on the planet who has super bad luck with zucchini.  I think it’s a pollination issue, so I’m going to try to plant some bee-attracting flowers right up next to the zucchini plants this year and see if it makes a difference.  And I’ll also try hand pollinating.

As I said, I really want to grow things you generally just can’t find at the farmer’s market.  I chose some possibilities with that in mind.  The Bush Baby from Johnny’s looks interesting - little stripey zucchinis meant to be picked small.  Or possibly the Kamo Kamo squash or Lemon Squash from Baker Creek.  I like the idea of the Kamo Kamo - it’s an heirloom pumpkin, meant to be a Winter squash but the young fruits can be eaten like zucchini.  And the Lemon Squash are just unique-looking.

More to come on the 2009 garden!

Dark Days: peas as far as the eye can see

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Blame it on my head cold or blame it on the holiday and being at home more than usual, but I managed three meals this week that qualify for the Dark Days challenge.

Two meals centered around the pound of dried black eyed peas from Margerum’s that have been hiding out in my cabinet.  One was the Black-Eyed Pea and Potato Curry I posted about a few days ago, and the other is Mushroom and Black-Eyed Pea Ragu served over polenta (lunch today).  As with the curry, the ragout was almost entirely local - the exceptions were the wine, tomato paste, and olive oil. 

I feel very lucky to be living so close to Kennett Square, the center of the universe when it comes to mushrooms.  Pretty much all year round, we never have to worry about being without mushrooms.  Sure, I sometimes wish citrus and avocadoes grew in Southeast Pennsylvania, but the mushrooms make up for it!

Today I’m just starting to feel a little better, but I don’t think I was ready to stand over a pot of polenta for half an hour.  It was totally exhausting!  I used the great toasted cornmeal sold at the Fair Food Farmstand for the polenta.  Good stuff!  I even have a little left over to serve with the ginormous amount of leftovers from the ragout.  Seriously, I could have fed an army from that recipe.

Dark Days meal #3 was dinner last night - slow-roasted leg of lamb with rosemary, garlic, and fingerling potatoes with a side of broccoli.  Again, all very locally sourced.  And economical, I might add.  I managed to get the leg of lamb at a half price sale, and it’s big enough that I have leftovers to make a lamb pot pie (which will be dinner tonight).

My sort-of New Year’s resolution for 2009 is to declutter the house...so I’ve been looking through my twelve tons of food mags and transferring the recipes I want to keep to We Gotta Eat (and then getting rid of the magazines - woohoo!).  The good news is that I’m finding all sorts of recipes that will work great for the produce that’s available around here right now.  Is there bad news?  Well, maybe - in that I may end up gaining 20 pounds due to the very awesome dessert recipes I’m also finding!

Guess who carved the roast beast?

Continuing my week of easy meals to feed my cold, last night for dinner I made a recipe from one of my new cookbooks, Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes: Slow-Roasted Leg of Lamb with Rosemary, Garlic, and Fingerling Potatoes.  I love to make meals that sounds really complicated but aren’t, and this one definitely fits the bill!

The leg of lamb was from Bixler’s Country Meats, via the Fair Food Farmstand.  It roasted merrily away for three hours while I alternated between blowing my nose and laying down on the couch.  And I was rewarded for my laziness with a really great meal - a nice juicy roast, tender fingerling potatoes, and a side of broccoli.  With the exception of olive oil and sweet vermouth, everything was local, too.

Shockingly, I still have rosemary growing in the garden - tons of it!  And the tons of garlic this recipe called for also came from my garden, although my earlier in the season.  It’s times like these that I’m so glad I grow insane amounts of garlic every year - having it through the Winter months is awfully nice. 

The beef stock came from my pantry, having been made from beef bones and canned a few months ago.  The broccoli came from Landisdale Farms earlier in the season (it was frozen).  The fingerling potatoes were from Lancaster Farm Fresh.

Cold Comfort Curry

Saturday, December 27, 2008

I’ve had a bad cold all week.  Well, you know what they say: feed a cold and starve a fever.  I’ve been really hungry!  Luckily, there are lots of great recipes that don’t require a lot of preparation.

I mentioned earlier in the week that I broke out a bag of black-eyed peas that I’d been hoarding.  I’m planning to use more of them today, but my first meal with the peas was a curry.  Thankfully, it was ridiculously easy to make - and aside from the spices, it was entirely made from locally grown ingredients!

The tomatoes I canned this Summer came in handy for this recipe, although with each jar I use I cringe a little - the lesson I learned this year is that I need to can more chopped tomatoes next year.  I use them a lot, and get cranky as I see my supply diminishing!  Because I couldn’t be bothered with being too fussy thanks to being sick, I didn’t peel the potatoes and I sliced rather than chopped the onion.  I think it made the dish better.  I also did not use fresh ginger or cilantro.

The sauce made from puree peas was really good.  The dish was just slightly spicy, and even my husband liked it.  It’s definitely a good dish for the mid-Winter - very hearty, and easy to make with a little help from my stash!

Books for the Cook

Friday, December 26, 2008

Like most people who really dig food, I like cookbooks.  My husband gave me a few new ones yesterday - cookbooks that are all about the use of seasonal ingredients!

Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes by Jeanne Kelley is true food porn - the photography is just gorgeous.  Kelley begins by discussing how to start a kitchen garden, and ends with a tutorial on how to start keeping chickens.  Sandwiched in between are 150+ recipes, all of which focus on locally grown foods.  Now true, what’s local in California is not the same as what is locally available here in Philly.  That said, I can probably make at least three-quarters of the recipes in the book using almost entirely locally grown ingredients.  In fact, as I write this I’ve got a leg of lamb with rosemary and garlic and fingerling potatoes in the oven right now - a recipe from the book.

Simply Organic: A Cookbook for Sustainable, Seasonal, and Local Ingredients by Jesse Ziff Cool is an update on Cool’s Your Organic Kitchen, now out of print.  The book contains 150 recipes that are grouped by season.  This is my second or third cookbook that groups recipes this way, and I find it very helpful.  I wish more cookbooks were organized that way.  The book also contains profiles on farmers.  There are some absolutely stellar-sounding recipes in the book, and I can’t wait to try a few!  The recipes in Simply Organic are a little simpler than in the other cookbook, for instance the recipes for Roasted Rutabaga and Lamb Sausage.

I would dearly love to see a cookbook developed that showcases the Philadelphia area’s farmers.  We have so many great producers and markets, and so much fantastic food available to us.  Until that happens, though, we’ll just have to live vicariously through these other cookbooks!

A localvore’s wishlist for Obama

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Yesterday the New York Times ran a column about how federal food policy may change in an Obama White House.  Many point out that since Obama is taking office during a time of economic recession and crises for the financial and auto industries, recent attacks on women’s health care and human rights, as well as those two wars we’ve got going on and the energy/environmental cluster&%#@...well, maybe the food policy might not be right up there on his list of things to overhaul.  And Obama’s choice of Tom Vilsack doesn’t exactly speak to his interest in small scale farms.

Still, it doesn’t stop many of us from fantasizing what this could mean.  The column writer speculates that Obama is more of a ‘foodie’ than the current occupant of the White House (something tells me that wouldn’t take much - I envision private moments in the White House as such: the President in his boxers sitting around in a lounge chair, one hand in his waistband, the other clutching a Bud Light, a plate of Triscuits with Easy Cheese at his side), and Michele Obama has put it out there that she buys organic produce whenever possible.  The new Chief of Staff belongs to a synagogue that runs a CSA program.  The local foods movement is not entirely foreign to these folks.

My gut tells me that of all the things people would like to see happen, the one that may have a chance of getting tackled is the issue of school lunch programs.  If you have a kid who regularly buys lunch at school, you know that the lunches are generally not the highest quality (who can forget the ”catsup is a vegetable!‘ fiasco during the Reagan years?).  As an alumni of the reduced cost and free school lunch welfare program (we were fairly po’ growing up), I vividly remember school lunches of dismal, grey mystery meat “salisbury steak” and fake mashed potatoes. 

There are a million studies that have looked at alternative school lunch programs where the cafeterias focus on healthy meals, fresh produce, and even sourcing locally grown foods - all say the same thing: kids who eat better have better focus and do better in school (not to mention it helps combat the growing obesity epidemic).  Considering how badly U.S. school students lag behind other countries in math, science, etc., and given President-Elect Obama’s commitment to education, overhauling the federal school lunch program might be a possibility.

An overhaul could not come at a better time for Philadelphia.  In October of 2008, the USDA decided to terminate Philadelphia’s Universal Feeding Program.  The UFP is a model that many other cities around the country were looking to adopt - it basically eliminated the paperwork needed to opt into the school lunch program.  In a school system in which at least 75% of families qualify, it seems like a good idea.  It saved the school district a lot of money in paperwork processing fees and the stigma of getting a free lunch was reduced.  The new schools superintendent also began a program to offer breakfast that depended on the continuation of the UFP.

Now granted, the Philadelphia program was by no means a healthy program.  Like all school programs, it relies on giant quantities of frozen and prefab foods that aren’t exactly super quality (and the Philadelphia school district never has the kind of money they need to provide quality education to its students, let alone quality nutrition).  With our wealth of local farmers and the many organizations in the area devoted to sustainable agriculture, my guess is that it wouldn’t be all that hard to put together a more healthful program focused on fresh and locally sourced foods - if the federal government were backing such an initiative.  And taking Philadelphia’s dismal high school graduation rates into consideration, this kind of an overhaul could help at least a little bit.

[graphic is from the NYT column]