Tag: local food

Categories
Writing

Picking Up the Pace

Summer in Iowa
Summer in Iowa

LAKE MACBRIDE— Harvest season is accelerating, and there is more food available than we know what to do with. Through a complex system of work for food, gardening, barter and foraging, purchases at the grocery stores have averaged a ticket total of well under $20 consisting mainly of dairy, canned goods and sundries. It is down from an average closer to $100.

Last night we made a meal of a big salad that included lettuce, green peppers, kohlrabi, tomatoes and broccoli from our garden. The eggs came from bartering, the carrots from California, canned kidney beans from the grocery store, and everything else was part of my work for food deal at the CSA. That is, except for the dressing— balsamic vinegar of Modena (the less expensive stuff), first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and salt and pepper. It is pretty exciting to have a salad with home grown lettuce in August, which is a result of my first attempt at sequential planting.

At the CSA, I picked half a bushel of ripe apples yesterday. On the kitchen counter a large bowl of them waits to be peeled and cut into slices for apple crisp. The apple harvest is going to be incredibly abundant this year, and will involve a lot of processing work. I am already thinking about grading the harvest into apples for hand eating, apple sauce and apple butter, juicers and livestock feed.

Likewise, with my work for food project with a second CSA, there will be an abundance of tomatoes for canning. We’ve been eating fresh tomatoes for a few weeks, and there is an abundance on the vines. We’ll be in tomato city soon.

The point in writing about this is to organize my thoughts and priorities. Without organization, the summer will be a hodgepodge of inefficiency. Too, if there is a chance to be a food broker, and leverage some of the abundance for sales, now is the time, despite being very busy. Even if a lot of other producers are thinking the same thing.

There is something about the transition of summer from celebration of Independence Day until Labor Day that is at the center of life. With the milder weather this year, cooler and wetter, we’ve had close to ideal growing conditions for home gardening. Every bit of food we can or freeze, is money in the bank. Now is the time to get this work done.

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Cookbooks Galore

Books from the Library Sale
Books from the Library Sale

Will the Internet make cookbooks obsolete, except for nostalgia and sentimental attachment? I think it already has.

Late Sunday this email came in from Friends of the Solon Library: “There are four boxes of cookbooks leftover from the Friends Used Book Sale!   Stop by this week and bring home some new recipes!  They are located in the hallway on a small cart next to the regular used book cart.”

Comme d’habitude, I was an early bird for the sale, and had browsed through the much larger than usual cookbook selection. Not much of interest for me, as I have been collecting social group fundraising cookbooks for years, and have about all a person could wish for. Cookbooks from my home town, from my new home, from the hospital where I was born, and the one where our daughter was born, from the church where I was baptized, from area businesses, from the Stone Academy (a local one room school house), from the American Trucking Association, from where I worked, and a host of specialty and celebrity chef cookbooks. Adding more of the same seems so 20th century.

The truth is my focus when cooking has turned to what local food is fresh and available, and what techniques will be used to transform raw product into a meal. Occasionally I’ll search for a recipe, but it is usually on the Internet, making my point. The focus is on the food.

The attraction of browsing hundreds of cookbooks may serve some writing project, but it is not how we live now. It’s not how we cook. What matters more is producing local food, with fresh and local ingredients as an expression of character and personality, rather than that of the scion of a family kitchen disconnected from here and now.

Cookbooks will be around, and my collection seems unlikely to decrease in size. Clearly, from the email, if I add cook books to my downsizing, they won’t move at the used book sale. I can’t bear the thought of them languishing in the hallway with the other remainders.

Categories
Home Life

A Gift Basket for My Hosts

LAKE MACBRIDE— Hundreds of us are converging upon Chicago for the Climate Reality Leadership Corps training. To avoid the expense of the conference hotel, I will be staying with friends of a friend for the duration. I’m making up a gift basket of produce for them. It’s a showcase of the local, organic produce that is passing through our house this summer.

Included will be a pointed cabbage, green and yellow zucchini, blue lake green beans, market more cucumber, yellow squash, a box of cherry tomatoes,  kohlrabi, daikon radish, broccoli and a jar of home made apple butter. If there’s sunlight in the morning, I’ll add herbs: rosemary, basil, flat leaf parsley, sage and thyme.

To keep the veggies, I’m dumping the freezer’s ice in a cooler, topping it with a water barrier and the veggies. Hopefully it will survive the trip.

It is somewhat ironic that while I am with Al Gore, one of the leaders in the use of technology, and a board member of Apple, I’ll be leaving my laptop at home. I’ll be off the Internet, except to communicate through my mobile device. Regular posting will resume over the weekend, so stay tuned.

Categories
Home Life Kitchen Garden

Garden Update July 2013

Brussels Sprouts
Brussels Sprouts

LAKE MACBRIDE— The summer weather has been as good as it gets, a reminder of what it was like as a child, with endless days to play in the sunlight, safe and without worry. This summer has been unforgettable. Besides the weather, it has been a different and somewhat tribal life after turning to those with whom we live out our lives in the neighborhood.

A quick garden update. Removing the green caterpillars with a medical grade forceps did the trick of removing the pest, and the new leaves are growing bug free. The white butterflies are around, so there may be more, and I lost one plant, but the new growth looks great.

Cucumber Seedlings
Cucumber Seedlings

Today, I harvested the rest of the green beans, composted the plants, and planted a row of cucumbers from seedlings. I planted the seed in pots on July 13, so they are two weeks from seed to seedling. The benefit of growing them this way is with the wet root ball, they can tolerate diverse conditions better to get off to a good start in the ground. They bring their own moisture with them to the initial planting. I watered them well and mulched. With my newly developed pickle addiction, I may plant more before summer is gone. There were some seedlings leftover from planting a row, so maybe next weekend.

Three Rows of Lettuce
Three Rows of Lettuce

The current crop of lettuce is suffering. Not from the heat, or lack of water, but from disappearing. There used to be three full rows here, and some plants are missing. Not sure what is the pest, but it seems doubtful deer are jumping the fence as there are no deer footprints inside. Perhaps a rabbit, or something else. Whatever is left, will be enjoyed by the humans. The leaves are big enough to pick, so when I return from my trip, we’ll bring some in for a tasting.

Green Tomatoes
Green Tomatoes

Finally, the tomatoes are maturing and three varieties have begun to ripen: two cherry tomatoes and Roma. Tomatoes have been the continuous crop in our garden, since the first duplex where we lived after our wedding ceremony. Perhaps there was a gap in Cedar Rapids, but not much of one. This year’s crop was the first I planted as seeds, and based on the results, I’ll do that next year as well.

Roma Tomatoes
Roma Tomatoes

The primary concern this year is to finish processing tomatoes before the apples come in. There are a lot of apples. I know what I want from the tomatoes: 12 quarts and 12 pints of tomato sauce, the leftover juice, 24 pints of diced tomatoes, and maybe a dozen pints of hot sauce using the cayenne and jalapeno peppers. Knowing how to approach it is half the battle.

Tonight for dinner, I made a pizza. Thin, wheat crust with tomato sauce I canned in 2011 mixed with fresh basil and salt. Toppings were half an onion from the CSA, thinly sliced zucchini, diced green peppers, sliced green olives with pimiento, halved cherry tomatoes and 6 ounces of mozzarella cheese. It is out of the oven, so I had better go sample.

Categories
Writing

Tomato Sandwiches on RAGBRAI

Fresh Tomato Sandwiches
Fresh Tomato Sandwich

BUSSEY– Trish Nelson is enjoying RAGBRAI and sent a brief note with a couple of photos. Trish wrote on her mobile device, “another shot of the tomato sandwiches being made. Very Iowa. Selling like hotcakes at 2 bucks apiece as fast as they could make them. I haven’t experienced a more flavorful red juicy tomato like that since I was a kid.”

What else to say, but it is Iowa summer.

Making Tomato Sandwiches
Making Tomato Sandwiches

~ Written for Blog for Iowa

Categories
Kitchen Garden

Loading the Truck

Pickup at the Farm
Pickup at the Farm

BIG GROVE TOWNSHIP— Shares are ready at our community supported agriculture farm late Monday afternoon. When making my pickup, I also help load the truck for the Cedar Rapids distribution. It’s a half hour job and my work for food arrangement continues for another ten weeks or so. Loading coolers and crates full of cucumbers, squash, kale, potatoes, onions, basil, tomatoes and other vegetables is not physically demanding, but it is a two person job. It takes a community to get everything done at a CSA farm.

It rained last night, leaving wet spots on the driveway. When the sun rises we’ll see how much fell. This morning’s clear sky, bright with stars and moonlight was memorable for its predawn tranquility.

Before leaving the landscape illuminated by moonlight, I reached out to touch the sky with its shiny orbs twinkling through the atmosphere. Reaching is one thing, touching quite another. The airy vapors of predawn dew wetted my feet through the clogs, and captured my attention, leaving the moon forsaken. Grounded in this reality, I returned to the house to get on with a life on the Iowa prairie.

Categories
Writing

Zucchini Madness… Again

Zucchini
Zucchini

LAKE MACBRIDE— More has been written here about zucchini than any vegetable of late. In an effort to figure out more ways to prepare and preserve it, I posted a note on Facebook. It proved to be beneficial.

Not only did I receive good suggestions on how to prepare the vegetable, several ways to dispose of excess were identified. This is an inherent part of a local food system— social networking to resolve issues like an abundance of zucchini.

It’s not that I have been short of recipes, I haven’t. So far, I have prepared crudites, toppings for salads, soup, zucchini fries, baked zucchini, a squash casserole, zucchini lasagna, mandolin sliced zucchini pasta, and as soon as there is eggplant, the classic zucchini dish— ratatouille.

There were new ideas for cooking. A friend wrote, “Oh and re. Zucchini— they’re never to big to stuff!  That’s what we do.  Cut in half length wise, core out the seeds.  In the depression add your favorite things  For us that’s lots of walnuts, mushrooms, celery, rice? and what ever else you have laying around— almost anything can make for a fine stuffing. Use favorite spices.  Melt Cheese on Top.   Enjoy again, and again.”

Here are other preparation suggestions:

“Sausage stuffed zucchini boats & zucchini fries.”

“A friend had a pretty good recipe for “mock apple pie” that was made with zucchini and a lot of cinnamon.”

“Sliced in half with some olive oil and garlic salt, then grilled. We’re also big fans of zucchini bread.”

“I just shared a thing about oven baked zucchini chips. never heard of them done that way before myself, but could be worth a try.”

What else to do with excess? There were people that wanted some to eat. Also here are some comments:

“Chop them up and feed it to the chickens. They love zucchini.”

“right to the compost”

“Sounds like you have the basis for a cottage industry… upgrade the packaging and sell frozen zucchini for those of us who aren’t in a position to have any in our own freezers!”

“Contact the veterans shelter house in Cedar Rapids, … they have storage and will distribute green grocery items to their homeless veterans.”

…and there is my favorite, trade zucchini as chicken feed for farmer’s eggs.

As we savor the most recent pick of zucchini, we’re far from exhausting the possibilities. And thanks to social networking, we’re better together.

Categories
Social Commentary

Town Festival Weekend

President of Cattlemen's Association
Cattlemen’s Assn.

SOLON— Almost every small town or city has an annual festival and ours is going on this weekend. Solon Beef Days began in 1971 when the fire department, Optimists Club, Jaycees and American Legion got together to re-enact what they referred to as an “Old Time Celebration.” The Johnson County Cattlemen’s Association came in to cook steaks and this local meat product provided a name for the event. Later, the Pork Producers Association got involved and pork burgers are now served: steak dinner is $10; steak sandwich is $5, and pork burger is $3. A bargain for carnivores. Octogenarians walk to the festival to purchase the cheap food and carry it home on trays brought from their kitchens.

Pork Burger Assembly
Pork Burger Assembly

As a vegetarian and flexitarian household, the association with beef was a turn-off for us when we moved to the area. Nonetheless, we participated by taking our daughter to try the carnival rides when she was young. Later, I got involved in helping the public library serve sandwiches to festival goers. As time passed I came to enjoy being a small part of the festival.

For some, Solon Beef Days is the time of year to let loose, have a few beers in the beer tent and designate a driver to get them home. This year there was a booth to arrange for a ride home for the intoxicated. It wasn’t used much.

Sandwich Booth
Sandwich Booth

The town re-built the bandstand in the center of the old part of town, and there is live music both nights. The hay bale toss on Friday is popular, and the parade on Saturday attracts civic groups and winds its way through town. The parade crosses Highway One to go past the care center where wheel chairs with residents are lined up on the south side of the building. This was a later addition to the route to include everyone in town.

The legion has a food tent, bingo is called on Main Street, there is a street dance, and something for everyone. Whatever money is left after paying the bills is donated to community groups by the Beef Days Committee. I’ve never eaten the steak or pork at the festival, but enjoy socializing with friends, neighbors and people I don’t know on a warm summer evening. In the end, who wouldn’t?

Categories
Writing

Zucchini Days

Zucchini from the Ice Box
Zucchini from the Ice Box

LAKE MACBRIDE— Yesterday zucchini came in from the garden, a lot of them. Knowing the CSA share would include more, I called a friend who manages the local food bank and arranged to donate freshly picked vegetables. Posting on Facebook, I encouraged others to do likewise,

Just donated ten pounds of organic zucchini and yellow squash to the local food bank. They really need our help. If you have garden extras, I hope you will pick up the phone and call the nearest food bank to see if they could use it. Willing to bet they will.

A commenter on this blog wrote,

It is the only time of the year you have to lock your doors when you go to the local drug store, grocery store or funeral parlor in a small town so you won’t receive the “bounty” of someones inexperience of planting way to many summer squash! If you aren’t cautious, they will hunt you down and fill your back seat in a New York minute!

It may be possible to have too much of a good thing, although I won’t admit it. Even though ten pounds was donated to the food bank, there is an abundance in the ice box and plenty more growing in the garden. Soon the recipe for zucchini chocolate cake will come out of the arsenal to be deployed in a last ditch effort to deal with the proliferation. Maybe I need to deescalate.

This is the first year zucchini growing has been an unmitigated success in my garden. It is attributable to working at the farm and seeing how professionals do it. In past years, I planted squash in mounds with a number of seeds in close proximity to each other. They grew in a tangled mess and never produced very well. This year was different.

Using some plastic trays provided by a friend, I planted the seeds in individual soil blocks. They germinated and grew well, and when the plot was ready, I transplanted them in tight rows next to a big patch of radishes. Once the radishes were harvested, the squash vines had room to grow. It may seem simple, but the results were dramatic.

As long as we repeat the same behavior, change is unlikely. More than anything else, a gardener should be a tinkerer with cultivation. Trying different tilling methods, considering shade that falls on the garden when planting, seed variety selection, row arrangement, and adjusting every possible variable in the garden. Most importantly, a gardener should let the seed genetics do their work after creating a suitable environment. If we sometimes hit the zucchini jackpot, then we learn from that and adjust next year.

With a bit of thoughtful work, it is much more likely to succeed in gardening than in winning the lottery of a random life.

Categories
Environment

Anaheim Peppers and the Cucumber Plants

Lake Macbride
Lake Macbride

LAKE MACBRIDE— The advantage of a kitchen garden is when a cook needs something, it is a short walk to the food supply… and it’s ultra-fresh. While making red beans and rice for lunch, I remembered there were large Anaheim peppers in the garden so I went to pick a couple to dice and add to the dish. While there, the cucumber plants were droopy, meaning they wanted water in the hot sun. My policy is watering cucumbers and squash twice a day is all I’m willing to do. If they can’t make it here on that— well tough toenails.

Perhaps it’s a little harsh, but drought is an ever-present reality in Iowa. The pattern of average annual rainfall makes it possible to grow crops in abundance without extensive irrigation like they have on Nebraska’s Ogallala Aquifer. It’s part of what makes Iowa Iowa, but that may be changing.

While early summer has been as good as it gets, we need rain now. The few extra gallons I may sprinkle on squash and cucumber plants will not deplete the Silurian aquifer, yet frugal dispensation of water is one way I am adapting to climate change. The county actually studied the aquifer and found there is plenty of water to meet current and future needs.

There have been and will be plenty of cucumbers. I started my third fermentation of dill pickles this morning, and yesterday planted new cucumber seeds in trays for the fall harvest. Schedule permitting, I’ll plant a couple more rows directly in the garden as July wanes. These actions, with a supply from the CSA, and there is no need to preserve the current cucumber plants by abnormal watering. In any case, they still might make it.

Black Raspberries
Black Raspberries

It has been a busy day in the kitchen. In addition to dill pickles and red beans and rice, half of the black raspberries were made into a thick dark syrup to use on biscuits, toast, pancakes and other applications. If I had pectin on hand, I would have made jelly. The syrup is so good and can be used in other applications, so the pectin was not missed.

One other item for my wheat-free friends. We had a pint of pasta sauce on hand, and instead of pasta, I got out the mandolin, purchased for a buck at a household auction, and using the finest blade, cut a long yellow squash and zucchini into “noodles.” I brought a pot of water up to a boil, cooked them four minutes and served like pasta. Very tasty and gluten free. Also one more thing to do with the abundance of squash.

Now off to the kitchen for the perpetual cleaning up.