(Posted by Himanee)
September comes to a close tomorrow. With it, the loca-vore challenge ends technically. Since I was out of state for the first 11 days of September and my husband was immersed in canning peaches and tomatoes, we decided that we would give ourselves two more weeks to try and meet the challenges we set. Nevertheless, with the month coming to a close, I wanted to offer a brief progress report on our efforts, to date.
One of the things that I learned this month is that being a full-on loca-vore is not as easy as it appears. My husband and I already do a lot to eat out of our backyard and to buy the bulk of what we eat from local farmers. But as the month went by I came to realize that there was a lot more that I could do.
I also realized that there were a lot of things about my lifestyle that didn't lend themselves easily to local eating.
For instance, my husband and I both trained this summer for the Adirondack Marathon, which we ran happily and successfully on Sunday, September 22. Happiness and success depended on being able to keep ourselves properly hydrated and fueled with quick energy over the course of the 26.2 mile route. For me, that meant sipping the Powerade (a Gatorade equivalent) beverage offered at the water stations every two miles in order to keep electrolyte levels in my body steady. It also meant downing a packaged "power gel" or "energy shot bloc" every four or five miles. I got the gels at the local EMS shop and they were, according to the package labeling, 90 percent organic and had brown rice syrup and natural fruit extracts as their primary ingredients. But they were manufactured (and I do mean manufactured; after all, they come in foil, vacuum sealed packages) by a national company that markets its product worldwide. I did investigate possible alternatives, but in the end decided that the tried and true sins of corporately-produced replenishers were a safer choice than the dizziness, dehydration, and nausea that I might experience if I ran without such aids.
Another blip in our goals toward goodness turned out to be chocolate. To put it mildly, both my husband and I love it, and see no harm in indulging ourselves with a post-dinner Hershey's Bar or Nestles Crunch. Chocolate can serve as a pain reliever for mild soreness and fatigue, so its consumption can be justified. But trying to find a locally-sourced chocolate bar that's not outrageously expensive can be quite challenging. I did find a somewhat happy resolution tonight, however, while shopping at a new store, Healthy Living, in Wilton, when I picked up a bag of semi-sweet chunks of Callebaut chocolate in the bulk food aisle. The chocolatier is Belgian, but a search of the company's website shows that they engage in fair-trade practices and buy the raw materials used to produce their chocolate from small growers in the regions where cocoa beans and other chocolate-making ingredients grow naturally.
A final "sin" was our binge two nights ago on late-night nachos. I had signed on to volunteer for the Adirondack Ragnar Relay's two-day event, and my shift was from 7 p.m. to about 11 p.m. at a transition point a little north of Lake George. In preparation, we made an early dinner of a mussel stew served with vegetables from our garden and our homemade bread. But by the time I was headed home I was ravenous, and could only think of one word: nachos! We had homemade salsa, and a hunk of cheddar cheese. At least the cheese was Cabot's New York Cheddar. But even if the package of tortilla chips that I picked up on my way home said "Stewart's" -- a local convenience store chain -- the chips themselves were most likely manufactured elsewhere.
On the success side, I discovered that stevia is a wonderful sugar substitute. I used dried stevia leaves to make a pear pie about a week ago and in a blueberry pancake recipe this morning. Both of the recipes called for sugar, which the stevia stood in for wonderfully. I look forward to growing more of it next year, and to getting used to seeing small flecks of green in dishes that require sweeteners.
We also learned that we could make our own butter in our Cuisinart with Battenkill Dairy's wonderful cream. I had made butter in the past with the famed jar-shaking method, but the Cuisinart whirs the cream to butter in about five minutes, and eases the process up considerably. I also learned that a pint of cream will yield more than two cups of butter (which is essentially the equivalent of a box of four sticks), and if I buy the cream directly from the Battenkills at the Saratoga Farmers Market, the price is about 50 cents cheaper.
With two weeks to go, we still have a lot on our list to conquer: building a root cellar (we've been so busy harvesting that we haven't had much of a chance to think of storage, beyond the ground itself which happily remains unfrozen); finding a source for local grain for making bread; and doing a community assessment on the strengths and challenges in our local food systems. We'll do our best to make a dent in these challenges as October approaches.
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Tuesday, September 24, 2013
Longer, slower, cheaper
(Posted by Himanee)
* tomato paste: 10 jars;
* tomato sauce: 26 jars;
* red salsa: 33 jars;
* green salsa: 4 jars;
* catsup: 22 jars;
* jam: 21 jars;
And there's more to come.
This morning, we woke up to 32 degrees, our third night since September 16 of experiencing overnight frosts. Figuring that the end was near, I harvested the remaining tomatoes from our vines and Jim spent the afternoon transforming the red ones into barbecue sauce. The green ones will become salsa verde (or green salsa), one of our favorite additions to Mexican style pork, chicken, and bean dishes.
As I picked tomatoes, I rejoiced at the sight of geese honking as they flew overhead, our backyard chickens creating a cacophony of clucks as they laid one egg after another, and the glimpse I got this morning of the pear tree in our backyard bearing fruit for the first time since we bought this house in 2011. I felt as if this -- the crisp cold air, the sunny skies, and the "free food" stretching all around me -- was what sustainability meant. It was hard work, with tangible rewards.
The tomatoes are a special pride and joy. For the first time since we started gardening as a way to create our own food, all 160 plants were our own, started from seeds. We sowed three packets of seeds: a hybrid, an heirloom, and a cherry tomato variety. We expected to lose at least half the plants we started to wind, drought, insects and other yard pests. We lost virtually none.
And so we'll eat well through the winter, as the practice of "puttin' up" stretches our harvest through next year.
In the realm of the loca-vore challenge, I experimented tonight with stevia in place of sugar. I picked up a stevia plant at the farmers market this summer, and on the night before our first frost hit, clipped off several of its leafy branches and left them in a sunny spot in my mudroom to dry. To my surprise, the leaves dried fairly and crumbled in my hands this evening as I picked them up. I dropped the crumples into a bowl full of sliced pears and mixed them in well to create a filling for a pear pie. No other sweetening was necessary, though I did replace the requisite cinnamon and nutmeg with a pinch of the garam masala made by my uncle, following my father's family's village recipe.
I also have been making my own butter, and managed to turn the residual buttermilk -- which my father's family referred to as "chaach" -- into a batch of biscuits that also included leftover butternut squash. The biscuits started out as hamburger buns two nights before our marathon, and were breakfast the next day. Today, they formed part of a biscuits and gravy breakfast, and the last few probably will be breakfast tomorrow. Just as the vista of food-producing land seems to connote a sense of sustainability so does my growing ability to make one round of cooking stretch into three or four meals.
Last night we had chicken, slow-cooked in a crockpot. Tonight, we had a rest of the chicken quick-grilled as fajitas. As I made tortillas and the pear pie, I simmered the chicken bones in water. The resulting broth will serve as a base for a seafood paella tomorrow. Because it's very difficult to buy a mixture of seafood for just two people, Jim and I have planned the next three days of meals as a sort of fish fest. Tomorrow, paella's on the menu and will likely feature wild shrimp, mussels, clams, and some sort of locally sourced cod fish (most likely hake) mixed into the rice. The remaining clams will then become a chowder for Thursday, and the mussels a spicy mussel soup on Friday.
Before this year, I thought I would go crazy eating the same food more than one day in a row. I always tried to use up leftovers but often in the crazy pace of life, the leftovers would end up in the trash or compost bin because I hadn't gotten around -- three days later -- to doing chicken dish #2. The easier solution -- and a fresher one, it seems -- is to start with a "big game" meal -- a roasted chicken or a pot roast -- and work down to the small: roast to stir-fry to broth; or slow-cooker dinner to fajitas to broth. The meat stays fresher longer and meals become easier to plan and execute. And, perhaps best of all, the weekly shopping trips to the farmers market end up being less expensive, allowing one to sustain sustainable habits a little longer.
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
"Local" eating
(Posted by Himanee)
Ten days of September's Loca-Vore Challenge have elapsed, and I have not had the opportunity to eat "local." I have been on the road since August 28, traveling with my parents. I flew to Chicago and traveled from O'Hare to the western suburbs, where I spent the next four days attending my cousin's wedding. Every meal, except for the complimentary breakfast buffets at the hotel where we stayed, featured fully vegetarian yet highly rich and extremely spicy foods. From Chicago, my parents and I drove to Iowa City and Cedar Falls, where we spent the first few days of September traversing the paths they crossed in 1961 as new immigrants to America. We then traveled to their home in Muncie, Indiana, where I've been for the past week. Every meal, except for our Papa Johns Pizza indulgence and our Sunday breakfast at the local IHOP, has featured fully vegetarian, somewhat rich and spicy fare. The past two nights' dinners have been festive, as the season of honoring deities around the fall harvests that culminates with Diwali has begun.
But in this non-local experience, many thoughts about what it means to be sustainable have arisen. One of the great assets of being a part of an immigrant/diaspora community is a sense of understanding about protocol. Meals -- especially during the festive seasons -- are in honor of God, and, as such, are prepared with the freshest, cleanest foods available, which for the members of the predominantly Hindu Indian community in Muncie (as well as the Indian community in Chicago with which my cousin's family interacts) is code for vegetarian. The blend of spices, vegetables, yogurt, ghee, and fresh chilis within each dish often overwhelms my palate, which has grown accustomed to single ingredient dishes in recent years. However, the flavor mingle pleasantly even as my body sweats, and I end the meals feeling full and refreshed.
My parents buy some of their produce at Wal-Mart, despite my admonitions, and because they are my parents and I am a polite person, I eat what they serve me without sermonizing on the corporate giant's exploitative practices. My parents also grow their own tomatoes and chili peppers, and share their bounty with other Indians who in turn provide them with fresh karela (bitter melon), eggplants, and squashes grown in their backyard gardens. Among the seasonings that my mother uses is a blend of garam masala made by my father's family in India. My uncle, who is 84, shared the secret formula with my parents when they last traveled to India in 2009, and my mother three days ago shared it with me. If I can manage to grow some of the spices it contains, I will do so. Otherwise, I feel content knowing that I can carry on a family practice of making garam masala in the village way.
As we ate -- with our fingers, mostly, blending "wet" curries with rice and scooping dry vegetable dishes up with roti -- my parents asked me many questions about the backyard farming that my husband and I have undertaken. Frequently, the topic of milk came up, with my mother asking me if we would ever have any interest in raising a cow. It's fortunate that my husband wasn't with me on this trip because he might have procured a loan from his doting mother-in-law for such an investment. He is trying to convince me that we can raise a cow; I feel that we need more land -- and more of a financial safety net than we have currently -- before we can take such a plunge. (Goat milk, by the way, is not an option for me, for reasons that are too complex to delve into here.)
The topic of milk triggered my father's memories of his family's cow. He was born in 1932 in a village in northern India, between Rajasthan and New Delhi. The family was a large one, and initially quite poor though grew prosperous over time. They kept a cow, which was milked at dawn. The milk was boiled, then consumed at a midday meal and used in cooking throughout the day. My father recalled my grandmother churning some of the milk for butter, which would be stored in a pot, and heating whatever milk was left at the end of the day with a little water. The water would steam and evaporate, leaving a thick cream-top that the family called malai in its wake. That would be the bedtime treat. The residue from that process would be used to make yogurt, and whatever liquid was skimmed off would be given to poorer families in the village as buttermilk. I laughed as I thought about how prized real buttermilk has become today.
What struck me in this discussion was how nothing went to waste. And, tonight, while attending a puja (or worship) at a younger Indian immigrant family's home, it seemed to resonate with how we prayed and prepared to eat. The gathering was multi-generational, with participants ranging from about age 6 to 86. Despite the dressy Indian attire that we donned, the atmosphere was informal. The puja -- which was the stated reason for the gathering -- lasted about 15 minutes. Dinner immediately followed and continued for about an hour. A delivery truck showed up with pizza for the younger kids. As for the adults, some of the main dishes were ordered in from an Indian restaurant that has opened up in Muncie, something that wouldn't have been possible in my children when one could count the total number of Indians and South Asians residing in Muncie on two hands. The sweets, however, were homemade, which surprised and delighted me because so many companies these days offer them via mail order and Indian groceries stock the delicacies, as well. We ate on paper plates, and wiped the curry stains and oils accumulating on our fingers on paper napkins. As we left, it became clear that none of the food was going to waste. Individual-sized zip-lock bags appeared and were filled with channa, kofta kari, aloo sabzi, and the homemade sweets. A single meal fed a community at least two times over.
I place this experience against the context of how I think of being a "loca-vore" when I'm home in New York. It's great to grow your own produce, to can your own tomatoes (as my husband has done diligently these past two weeks), and to feast on eggs your own chickens laid. But against that sense of "own-er-ship" is a price: the work behind growing your own food is clean and honest, but it is labor-intensive. Feeding a community is challenging when a crop goes awry or when ethics about eating in particular ways for certain reasons are not communally understood.
I look forward to coming home tomorrow, and eating fresh from my garden. But as I resume my loca-voring, I would like to continue to consider what it really means to be sustainable.
Ten days of September's Loca-Vore Challenge have elapsed, and I have not had the opportunity to eat "local." I have been on the road since August 28, traveling with my parents. I flew to Chicago and traveled from O'Hare to the western suburbs, where I spent the next four days attending my cousin's wedding. Every meal, except for the complimentary breakfast buffets at the hotel where we stayed, featured fully vegetarian yet highly rich and extremely spicy foods. From Chicago, my parents and I drove to Iowa City and Cedar Falls, where we spent the first few days of September traversing the paths they crossed in 1961 as new immigrants to America. We then traveled to their home in Muncie, Indiana, where I've been for the past week. Every meal, except for our Papa Johns Pizza indulgence and our Sunday breakfast at the local IHOP, has featured fully vegetarian, somewhat rich and spicy fare. The past two nights' dinners have been festive, as the season of honoring deities around the fall harvests that culminates with Diwali has begun.
But in this non-local experience, many thoughts about what it means to be sustainable have arisen. One of the great assets of being a part of an immigrant/diaspora community is a sense of understanding about protocol. Meals -- especially during the festive seasons -- are in honor of God, and, as such, are prepared with the freshest, cleanest foods available, which for the members of the predominantly Hindu Indian community in Muncie (as well as the Indian community in Chicago with which my cousin's family interacts) is code for vegetarian. The blend of spices, vegetables, yogurt, ghee, and fresh chilis within each dish often overwhelms my palate, which has grown accustomed to single ingredient dishes in recent years. However, the flavor mingle pleasantly even as my body sweats, and I end the meals feeling full and refreshed.
My parents buy some of their produce at Wal-Mart, despite my admonitions, and because they are my parents and I am a polite person, I eat what they serve me without sermonizing on the corporate giant's exploitative practices. My parents also grow their own tomatoes and chili peppers, and share their bounty with other Indians who in turn provide them with fresh karela (bitter melon), eggplants, and squashes grown in their backyard gardens. Among the seasonings that my mother uses is a blend of garam masala made by my father's family in India. My uncle, who is 84, shared the secret formula with my parents when they last traveled to India in 2009, and my mother three days ago shared it with me. If I can manage to grow some of the spices it contains, I will do so. Otherwise, I feel content knowing that I can carry on a family practice of making garam masala in the village way.
As we ate -- with our fingers, mostly, blending "wet" curries with rice and scooping dry vegetable dishes up with roti -- my parents asked me many questions about the backyard farming that my husband and I have undertaken. Frequently, the topic of milk came up, with my mother asking me if we would ever have any interest in raising a cow. It's fortunate that my husband wasn't with me on this trip because he might have procured a loan from his doting mother-in-law for such an investment. He is trying to convince me that we can raise a cow; I feel that we need more land -- and more of a financial safety net than we have currently -- before we can take such a plunge. (Goat milk, by the way, is not an option for me, for reasons that are too complex to delve into here.)
The topic of milk triggered my father's memories of his family's cow. He was born in 1932 in a village in northern India, between Rajasthan and New Delhi. The family was a large one, and initially quite poor though grew prosperous over time. They kept a cow, which was milked at dawn. The milk was boiled, then consumed at a midday meal and used in cooking throughout the day. My father recalled my grandmother churning some of the milk for butter, which would be stored in a pot, and heating whatever milk was left at the end of the day with a little water. The water would steam and evaporate, leaving a thick cream-top that the family called malai in its wake. That would be the bedtime treat. The residue from that process would be used to make yogurt, and whatever liquid was skimmed off would be given to poorer families in the village as buttermilk. I laughed as I thought about how prized real buttermilk has become today.
What struck me in this discussion was how nothing went to waste. And, tonight, while attending a puja (or worship) at a younger Indian immigrant family's home, it seemed to resonate with how we prayed and prepared to eat. The gathering was multi-generational, with participants ranging from about age 6 to 86. Despite the dressy Indian attire that we donned, the atmosphere was informal. The puja -- which was the stated reason for the gathering -- lasted about 15 minutes. Dinner immediately followed and continued for about an hour. A delivery truck showed up with pizza for the younger kids. As for the adults, some of the main dishes were ordered in from an Indian restaurant that has opened up in Muncie, something that wouldn't have been possible in my children when one could count the total number of Indians and South Asians residing in Muncie on two hands. The sweets, however, were homemade, which surprised and delighted me because so many companies these days offer them via mail order and Indian groceries stock the delicacies, as well. We ate on paper plates, and wiped the curry stains and oils accumulating on our fingers on paper napkins. As we left, it became clear that none of the food was going to waste. Individual-sized zip-lock bags appeared and were filled with channa, kofta kari, aloo sabzi, and the homemade sweets. A single meal fed a community at least two times over.
I place this experience against the context of how I think of being a "loca-vore" when I'm home in New York. It's great to grow your own produce, to can your own tomatoes (as my husband has done diligently these past two weeks), and to feast on eggs your own chickens laid. But against that sense of "own-er-ship" is a price: the work behind growing your own food is clean and honest, but it is labor-intensive. Feeding a community is challenging when a crop goes awry or when ethics about eating in particular ways for certain reasons are not communally understood.
I look forward to coming home tomorrow, and eating fresh from my garden. But as I resume my loca-voring, I would like to continue to consider what it really means to be sustainable.
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