Local Pantry

This is how I know it's spring - I cleaned out the pantry. Okay, the pantry is the closet under the stairs but it has shelves in addition to a rack to hang our coats.

Two years ago the shelves were cluttered with organic canned foods; stewed tomatoes, pinto beans, Amy's chile. And non-organic canned foods; olives, tuna, chicken stock and butternut squash soup in boxes. There was an inedible selection of Indian simmering sauces and chutneys. All of which, well, almost all of which, were rotated through meals with expiration dates too far in the future to consider.

And then I decided to eat local to reduce our carbon bite.

The canned and boxed foods sat. I read their labels. Spaghetti sauce from New York. Soy milk from the east coast. Nearly nothing was from nearby. It was well traveled industrial food and I eventually gave it up and away before it expired. Which was good but it was also the reserves in the event of a long term emergency. Now what?

Should something happen we would be eating last years sweet pickles from Canvas Ranch or rose petal sugar from Allstar Organics. We might last a day on apricot jam from Happy Girl Kitchen and if not we could drink their ketchup (it's that good). The flageolet or yellow indian woman beans from Rancho Gordo would be good but it's difficult to keep a meaningful supply on hand. There's almond butter from Full Belly Farm but rarely more than half a jar.

With the shelves cleaned up I see there's emergency stocking to be done. But in a new way with locally grown foods. Which gives me pause.

What foods do you keep on hand for an emergency?

Dinner

This is my working-woman, traffic-was-backed-up-because-of-Halloween, it-was-already-dark-out, mid-week, I-stayed-up-too-late-last-night and I-want-to-read-the-new-Ecologist-magazine, dark days eat local challenge meal from our Canvas Ranch farm bag. It was delicious.

Kabocha Squash

This morning I nearly bought more squash. My favorite potato and dry farmed tomato farmer had a big display of orange kabocha and another farmer had a celadon ugly Hubbard that I was smitten with. They had my name on them but I couldn't leave them locked in the car all day and carrying them would have been over the edge for even me.

Instead I bought dry goods; cornmeal, popcorn, almonds and poppy seeds from Full Belly Farm. Poppy seeds! Can you believe it? What in the hell am I going to do with poppy seeds? But I felt so grown up buying them. Like a woman with a Viking Range I dropped them in my borrowed Puffins cereal bag and shoulders held high handed the man a twenty.

Maybe I could add them to the kabocha squash cake with brown sugar cream recipe that Deborah from Canvas Ranch sent in our CSA bag this week. It sounds good and what's a few seeds going to hurt? They will make the cake my own.

All joking aside eating local this week has been a breeze. We are back in the swing of putting a face to our food. I shopped at my first market in the rain on Tuesday. Hardly a real rain but a gentle introduction. If it were really raining I'm afraid I'd stay in the office. And starve.

The cute guy and I had butternut squash burritos with Rancho Gordo pebble beans one night. "Does food get any better?" I asked.

"Mhgmghmhgmghbmh," he answered. I took that as a no.

And we had a hearty not quite winter salad that was heavy on the chicken, cheese and pumpkin seeds pan roasted with minced jalapenos and sea salt. Not a shred of which was wasted.

But I'm in a quandary about how much squash we can eat this winter. It's not like stocking up the freezer where once it was full I was done. I have a hundred places to store squash. And that scares me.

Back To Our Roots

One of my favorite parts of our CSA farm bag from Canvas Ranch is the newsletter that Deborah adds each week. It makes me feel as if I've had a conversation with her like I do with the farmers at the markets. This week I wish that conversation weren't one dimensional because I would like to give her a big hug and say, "Thank you!"

Deborah's headline today was, 'Getting Bored with Summer Yet?'. She wrote about the beauty of eating seasonally and noticing that our bodies actually begin to crave the food of the season with the example that we may be sick of salad and wanting more comfort food such as soup. "Yes!" I said out loud. "Yes!"For the first time this summer I tossed left over salad. It was weird. I couldn't stomach the salad even enough to replate it for someone else. But I didn't understand why until now. The season is done.

Last weekend we ate potatoes three times and only stopped because, well, I don't know why we stopped. It felt like we should, like it was wrong. But now I realize it's just the internal tides making their shift and our hunger for roots is normal. There is no need to fight this, only to enjoy it.

Remnant Soup

Here I am three weeks into the eat local adventure and for the first time made a pot of soup.

Sometime ago I'd gotten a wild hair to make and freeze vegetable broth with the beet greens that were heading south and the first of the zucchini deliveries. I have no idea what else got tangled in there but tonight I hauled out a bag from the brew and proceeded to empty the veggie drawers to the kitchen floor.

I felt a guilty pleasure succumbing to vegetable soup so early in the year. After all, we are still eating Frog Hollow Farm peaches! But even the cute guy liked it, after he ran it through the blender; although he was more than ready for veggies after his foray with a Safeway birthday cake yesterday.

We finally used the shell beans that came in a Canvas Ranch farm bag and threw in typical soup fare, cabbage, carrots, potatoes. I used a couple of cubes of long hot red and yellow peppers I'd slow roasted, pureed and froze. The soup was festive as a result and in spite of the pieces of skin that weren't as soft as when I'd sauteed instead of slow roasted the peppers.

I pinched purple leaves of left over basil, diced a tiny yellow scalloped squash and added a slow roasted tomato that refused to be bullied onto the cookie sheet in the freezer with the others. Lastly, there was the eye of a newt, a palm sized cauliflower head I'd bought because it was cute.

Half an hour later we had soup. Unsalted because I'm nearly out of my mermaid salt that I've been tossing around like fairy dust for weeks now and I don't want to share a crystal of it. But we topped our bowls with Springhill Cheese Co. butter made at the ranch and it was magic.

Local Stories and Lists

I love stories as much as I love lists. One of the good things about stories is I can make them up but even better is getting to read or hear other people's. I found a half dozen vignettes on Barbara Kingsolvers website for Animal Vegetable Miracle from people who are eating local. The stories are succinct and sincere. Maybe there's one woman who is a little over enthusiastic - but in a good way.

And because I love lists here's one of those too from the kids who wrote Plenty.

Here's my half story, half list for today. The cute guy and I are leaving town Friday and picked up our farm bag tonight which had me wild as a hurricane in the kitchen so nothing would go bad over the weekend. I cooked and froze tomatillas with jalapenos and garlic. I froze the remainder of last nights applesauce so we could eat the Canvas Ranch it-really-tastes-like-a nectarine, nectarines.

The new zucchinis are going with me to work. The new apples have gone into cold storage in the kitchen towel drawer.

For dinner I cooked eggplant with ladles of tomatilla juice, onions, garlic, infant yellow squash and a few green beans. I put Bodega Bay goat cheese on top and diced tomatoes mixed with backyard basil and the mermaid's salt over that. We are eating local!

The half of the farm bag tomatoes we didn't eat are slow roasting in the oven along with all the peppers, quartered and deseeded. My plan is to put the roasted peppers into a jar with olive oil and keep them in the fridge to use for pizza nights. Stay tuned.

And eat well.

The next day -- The peppers were a success.

Zucchini

The last three weeks we've received a variety of zucchini in our Canvas Ranch farm bag that have taken up long term residency in the bottom of the fridge. I rearrange them with each new addition; curly bunches of lettuce, pink radishes. I move them from one drawer to the other, stacking them one time, making a floor of them the next for red carrots, cilantro, bite sized brussell sprouts, a gift of jalapenos. I threw a bruised one away and secretly felt relief.

Not that I don't like zucchini; I do. But I like new zucchini, picked with the flower still on. And these zucchini are too big. Get over it, I tell myself; but I'm not. I'm stalling.

I took this weeks subscription of squash to work. I heard a squeach across the office, "Who brought these in?"

I walked to my office door. A co-worker held up a bocce ball sized zucchini as if it were Bond's latest home run. She was moving fast to the center of the office. "Who brought this in?"

I raised my hand.

"Can I have it?" She squeached again.

I shook my head.

"I've never seen anything like it. This is so cool," she continued still holding it high, looking up. The Olympics came to mind. The other person in the office peered above a cubicle wall. I saw her sit down again, quietly.

"Enjoy it," I said.

The next morning she told me her son loved it too. "We set it on the tv as an ornament. He said, we can never eat it."

Smart kid, I thought.

I rearranged the zucchini again today looking for ornaments. There weren't any. I'm back to stalling.



Post script - Rearranging the vegetable drawers again today I found the heart tattoed zucchini above. I will never eat it! In fact I'm going to take it to work to show it off. Thank you, Canvas Ranch.