Haiku Friday

Pancakes for dinner;
Three nights in a row with eggs.
Beets rotting away.

Saturday Night Fresh Salsa

I've committed my salsa recipe to paper, at least the essence of the salsa recipe as the amounts vary and it's rarely the same twice. It's best when I let the natural fiesta of bright colors have their way with me and then add more spicy pepper, ginger, salt or lime at the end to perfect it. This time of the year, while tomatoes are still local, the salsa is a sure thing as the freshness will wrap its lovin arms around you and you won't want it to let go.

Makes about 5 cups

1 medium purple onion finely chopped
6-8 diced tomatoes - tomatoes you would like to french kiss
1 inch nub of ginger root peeled and finely minced
1 fragrant Gravenstein or Sierra Gold apple chopped
1-2 serrano or jalapeno peppers minced
1-2 limes juiced
sea salt

Optional

1 basket halved yellow sunburst or cherry tomatoes
1 bunch chopped fragrant cilantro
5-6 leaves minced mint

Place the finely chopped onions in a generous mixing bowl. Dice the tomatoes with a serrated knife, transferring them to the mixing bowl with a pan spatula to maintain the integrity of the fruit.

Add one half of the minced ginger, all the chopped apple and one half of the minced peppers (keeping your hands away from your eyes after handling the peppers). Include lime juice and sea salt.

Top with one or all of the optional ingredients as available or desired.

With a slotted spoon, turn over the contents of the bowl lightly until all ingredients are well distributed.

Taste for desired heat, adding more peppers if you dare, the remaining ginger, lime and additional salt to taste.

Turn over the ingredients lightly after each addition and taste liberally to confirm you have a lush balance of sweet, salt and spice.

Pour salsa gently to a serving bowl and garnish with lime, cilantro or mint as available.

Serve at room temperature, pucker up and enjoy.

The Earth Knows My Name

I read the following excerpt about commercial tomato growers on St. Helena Island, South Carolina in The Earth Knows My Name by Patricia Klindienst and as the cute guy isn't home for me to read it to, I'm posting it.

To prepare their fields, they cut down all the trees, then scrape off the topsoil and sell it off-island. What's left serves as a mere substrate for the production of a chemically dependent crop watered with millions of gallons drawn from the local aquifer, for which the commercial growers pay nothing.

The Mexican migrant farm workers who harvest the tomatoes are paid between forty and forty-five cents per thirty-two-pound bucket. They have to pick two tons of tomatoes to make fifty dollars in a day. Out of that, they have to pay rent and buy food. They receive no benefits of any kind.

After reading the above two paragraphs I thought, this must be an old book. The book was published in 2006.

Haiku Friday

A Day Without Local Food

Edith blew after
Round Table pizza for lunch;
Sailing on the Bay.

100 Mile Diet

I've had people recently ask in response to learning I ate within 100 miles as part of the September Eat Local Challenge, "So, what did you eat? It cost more, right?" And then say, "It must have taken a lot of time. That would be really hard." Or, "Oh, you get everything at the farmer's market." End of subject.

I stumble around for a way to be succinct because eating local is not a subject to dive into. I say things like, "Well, you know, rice, maybe, not really, I'm outside a lot," and "Yeah." And then I change the subject. Or at least think I should change the subject and dive in anyway.

I start with what I didn't eat, which was anything made with yeast, baking soda, baking powder, flour or sugar. I missed tortillas the most.

I ate a lot of brown rice. The cute guy and I always eat a lot of brown rice. We are not gourmet people. We are generally stressed out, stand at the counter with an egg and a salt grinder kind of people.

We ate a lot of salads. We had sausages from Marin Sun Farms. Spicy as shit and we loved them. There was some soup. We ate yogurt, some cheese, mostly on salads. Neither of us left the house without fruit. Almonds, almond butter and walnuts were a saving grace as were rice cakes.

For the first time in fifteen years I ate Rocky Range and Rosie chickens, which I'm mixed about. They are local but the free range labeling is misleading. The price of truly free range organic chickens exceeds my comfort zone however and the cute guy needs protien. And, if it's in the house I'll eat it.

We ate beans but missed chips to have with salsa. We had a little fish, which is another mine field in terms of knowing which are fished sustainably and not farmed, etc.

We ate honey and applesauce, figs and cheese, strawberries and cream. Mashed potatoes with fresh churned butter, brussel sprouts with home made mayonnaise. I don't remember feeling denied at all and my pants are a stitch looser if anything.

I'm still weighing the cost factor.

Time and effort are easier to talk about. Eating local, whole, seasonal foods took time for me but it's also an act of art and entertaining as a result. Some nights it was a pain to make sure there was food for work the next day but it mostly got easier.

Shopping for locally grown foods was the best part. My office is in the heart of the financial district with two farmer's markets within walking distance on different days. With our CSA farm bag in between and a weekend farmer's market thrown in for fun, the only problem with getting food was not getting too much of it.

Now that the challenge month is over nothing much has changed except I savored a home made cinnamon roll (thank you, Emily!) and we have tortillas in the fridge we bought with the card at the grocery store. It was weird.

They're in the fridge but we haven't touched them.

Even weirder.

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

There are days when words become a mess of mumbo jumbo and all I want to do is listen to a good story and look at the pictures. Today is one of those days.

Here's a link to some pictures and the NPR audio program with the authors of Hungry Planet: What the World Eats.

I wonder what a week's worth of groceries would look like on my kitchen table!

More Preservation

He was so brilliant I didn't want to kill him, nor was I going to unleash him in the backyard so I dunked him in the garbage with a first grade, farewell little worm song. Then I chopped off the top of the ear, sliced off the sweet corn, bagged and froze it. Worm 2, Human 8.

The two cookie trays of tomatoes I slow roasted next didn't come with hidden friends but were purchased from an elderly man at the Petaluma farmers market who picked them the night before. He bagged each tomato one at a time as if sorry to see them depart. My heart bent imagining eating them but they smelled of sunshine, each one prettier than the next.

Instead of bagging the tomatoes whole as before, I pureed them skin and all and laid the liquidy bags efficiently flat in the freezer, which spurred the idea to make waterbeds for the girls Barbie dolls.

The last item headed for the freezer was veggie stock, also pureed and laid flat. It started with beet greens, a nosegay of sage, rosemary and thyme from the yard and nettles from my trip last week to Berkeley (thinking only good thoughts as I handled it). Garlic roasted with the tomatoes went in whole with previously abandoned but forgiving ginger and fine pencils of green onions. Carrots, cabbage and summer squash finished the pot.

The cute guy tasted it. "You can add beets if you puree it." He was licking his lips.

"Okay."

"Really, it would be okay."

"Okay."

And then I couldn't resist. "Sweetie?" He innocently turned towards me. "Did you like it?"

"Yeah. It was good." He nodded his head.

"It has beets in it."

"Ack! Ugh. Ahhhh." He spit on his sleeve, wiped his mouth wildly with his arm. "How could you do that to me? I hate beets! You know I hate beets. Agh."

I continued stirring the pot until he was done.