FINALLY new produce

April 13, 2011

I was starting to get a little worried about this eating local thing. I knew that I would have limited things to work with here at the beginning of spring....I had visions of me eating salad, herbs, eggs, cheese, and more salad...but things are looking up!

This has been a challenge so far, and I'm only eating 80% local! I did have some good pasta the other day, with a nice homemade marinara sauce (local home canned tomato & basil) and south Georgia grass-fed beef; and that was a nice change.

I joined a local farm's CSA program, which stands for Community-Supported Agriculture. This means that I pay a fee, almost like buying a "share" in the farmer's crop, and then I get the produce at harvest time. The farmer takes the money in advance to buy seeds and finance the farming, and then pays his "investors" back in produce and product.

Farming is always a risk, especially lately as it has been getting into the upper 30s at night, even along the coast. Part of the fun and gamble of being a member of a CSA is that you are relying on the farmer's skill and mother nature........you don't know which crops will make it or not!

I will routinely post my baskets as they come in!

The First CSA basket from Rest Park Farm!

This week's basket: Radishes, bok choy, mesclun salad mix, romaine lettuce, sweet potatoes (harvested in the fall and stored), and strawberries from Dempsey's farm.

Holy cow! That's a LOT of veggies for one person! I did give 2 heads of romaine and 2 heads of bok choi to my neighbor in thanks for her taking care of my chickens when I'm out of town.

I plan on blanching any bok choi I have left at the weekend and freezing it for stews. I have used it in minestrone soup and spicy thai soups.

Tonight: The last of the leftover grilled tempeh, and sauteed bok choi in cayenne, garlic, cilantro, and baby Vidalia onion. I used the last of my hickory smoked Maine sea salt, and it is a delicious addition!

I promise I will add some good meat recipes here soon, despite all the vegetarian/vegan recipes I've posted recently. I am, after all, still a member of PETA (People Eating Tasty Animals). :)

Next time......Beef, sweet potato poutine, and soft shell crab season!

Tempeh

April 10, 2011

Grilled Tempeh Burgers

mmmm.....very good for a vegetarian dish! Could be made vegan if you omit the cheese.

Tempeh is a block of fermented soy product that originated in Indonesia. Tempeh has a nice meaty texture and plenty of protein. It is also gluten-free for those that are sensitive, as most are soy and rice based.

It takes on the flavor of whatever its marinated or cooked in. I think that it takes on flavors better than tofu!

1- 8oz package of Tempeh (I like the Flax tempeh best, but plain is just fine)

Marinade:

2 cloves garlic, finely minced

2 tablespoons mirin (Japanese cooking wine)

2 tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce

1 tablespoon sesame oil

2 tablespoons honey

1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice

Cut the tempeh into slices, about 1/2 inch thick.

Combine all ingredients and marinate the tempeh for 30 minutes to overnight.

Grill the tempeh until golden brown on each side.

Put the tempeh onto a bun or piece of homemade flatbread with the cheese of your choice. I like the Sweetgrass Dairy Thomasville Tomme sliced thin.

I also added fresh cilantro and mixed baby greens from my garden for a fresh crunch!

Last summer, I canned some red and orange bell peppers that I picked on St. Helena Island, SC. I opened my last bottle tonight and added some sweet red peppers to my sandwich. It gave not only a sweetness to it, but also a nice vinegar twang! Adding pickles or pickled Vidalia onions to this sandwich is also very tasty!

Warsaw to Warsaw

April 8, 2011

Sneak peek: Warsaw to Warsaw

This next year, I am planning on blogging my way through our adventure in Poland. I will call my blog "Warsaw to Warsaw" since my mother's family has lived near Warsaw, Georgia (now John's Creek, Gwinnett County, Georgia) since the early 1800s. Funny enough, my mother's family is not Polish! They're German! Close enough!

I found a wonderful Polish peasant's recipe that I have made with local ingredients here in South Carolina!

I had this tonight with some Carolina Plantation Brown rice, and the cabbage, onion were from John's Island, SC. I substituted the Polish sausage with spicy Italian sausage from Thompson Farms. The bacon was also from Thompson Farms. Give it a try with your favorite local ingredients! I grew the garlic myself! :)

Chłopski Posiłek (Peasants' Bacon and Cabbage)

Chlopski is the Polish word for peasant, and literally translated this dish is called 'Peasants' Meal'. It's a dish which is most popular in the provinces like Lubuskie, in the far west of Poland.

1		medium green cabbage, coarsely chopped
6		slices bacon, diced
1		medium onion, chopped
1/4		cup water
2		cloves garlic, chopped
1		lb. Polish sausage cut into 1 inch pieces
1/2		teaspoons salt and pepper

Cook bacon in a large skillet until crisp; remove bacon, reserving drippings in skillet. Crumble bacon, and set aside. Add all other ingredients except sausage to dripping; cover and cook 10 minutes over medium heat, turning cabbage once. Add sausage; cover and cook 5 minutes or until sausage is heated. Transfer to serving dish with a slotted spoon; sprinkle with bacon.
Makes 4 servings.

More creations

April 3, 2011......don't worry, I'm not going to post every single meal this month :)

These creations are not so exciting, but I'm getting warmed up! I am going to have to get creative with the things I have so I don't get bored, or branch out more for different ingredients!

As the spring turns to summer, I'll get more variety, especially with the veggies.

Sunday morning is a good time to sip some "Governor Gray" hot tea with milk and honey, nosh on some fresh strawberries I picked yesterday, and collect eggs for a hearty breakfast.

Breakfast:

(2) SBC egg omelette with chive and parsley

Fresh strawberries

Greenhill cheese

Mixed baby green salad

Skim milk from Bush River Jerseys in Newberry, SC!

-Bush River Jerseys own several Berry-bred cows and are very proud of their genetics!

Listed as favorites in their herd are Berry's Brook Sapphire Thrice and Berry's Lester Diamond!

What a small world!

Dinner:

Curried tofu sweet potato patty with fresh herbs

Fresh strawberries

Homemade chive roasted garlic aioli

Homemade wholegrain flatbread (Anson Mills SC flour)

Mixed baby greens

30 Day Challenge!

Friday, April 1, 2011

I have decided to challenge my culinary skills in the next 30 days in cooking with local products. I know this is beginning to sound like previous blogs about local this and eco-friendly that, but this is going to be a little more intensive.

It's not going to be a cold-turkey kind of challenge, as I am not into self-torture or such a limited diet. I, however, am blessed to live in South Carolina, and many things I love and "need" come from right here in my own backyard!

The 100 Mile Challenge, which was a Food Network Canada reality show filmed outside Vancouver, is my inspiration. On the show, families in the village decided to eat 50% local, 80% local, or 100% local. The focus was on the families that chose to eat 100% local. Everything that was not farmed, sourced, or processed withing 100 miles of the town was off-limits for 100 days. A very tough challenge in our age of fast foods and food addictions from all over the globe (such as chocolate and coffee.)

On a day to day basis I try to buy as much locally as I can, as I have discussed previously on this blog. This time, I am going to attempt 80% local for the month of April!

The rules that I have set for myself include: main ingredients for a meal (veggies, meat, dairy, cheese, carbohydrates) must be sourced from

South Carolina, or a state bordering her. I have chosen to include my aunt's citrus in Florida, since where she lives is only 150 miles away by road.

Spices will be allowed in my cooking, and ONLY California olive oil. I have a feeling that there will be some pork fat in my cooking this month! :)

Follow me along in my adventure, if you'd like! This is really going to test my creativity and food knowledge!

Tonight starts Day 1!

Dinner:

From my yard: baby salad greens (cos, oak leaf, bibb, spinach, arugala), herbs (chive, parsley, cilantro).

From Georgia: pecans, Asher blue cheese, hickory smoked bacon

From South Carolina: dried strawberries, the last from 2010

From Fernandina Beach, FL: meyer lemon juice

The finished product: Baby green salad with chive bacon dressing, toasted pecans and dried strawberries. Dressing made with lemon juice, olive oil, chives, cilantro, black pepper.

Drink: Charleston Tea Plantation Green tea, sweetened with local honey, chilled of course.

Dessert: baked Greenhill cheese, local honey, toasted pecans and dried strawberries

The Salad

When life gives you lemons....

............giant, Mother of All Lemons......you make Limoncello!

Deborah and the Giant Lemon!

Next to a Valencia orange for scale:

"That's as big as my head!" ~Danger

Many thanks to my aunt and uncle, Susan and Don Taylor of Fernandina Beach, FL.

They picked this mutant Meyer lemon this weekend for me out of their backyard. ONE Mega lemon has enough zest to make a liter of limoncello! There is enough juice in one of these to make a pitcher of lemonade!

Here is the recipe I like to use for Limoncello, thanks to Giada De Laurentiis

I do, however, make it as "Florida" as possible. I am not aware of any vodka being made in Florida, so I usually use Stolichnaya.

I'm going to make another batch this weekend with Firefly Straight Vodka, from Wadamalaw Island, SC. This delight from Capri is going to be as Southern as it can be!

Modifications to the recipe for a superior product:

I use organic Florida Crystals granulated sugar, and I use 1/2 the water, and 1/2 the sugar that this recipe calls for. The final product is sharper, tangy and just sweet enough.

I also zest the lemon with a microplane instead of peeling it.

I find I get a better final product when I let the lemon zest steep in the vodka at room temperature for 3-5 days instead of overnight. The alcohol has more time to extract the delicious essential oils of the lemon, according to another recipe.

Don't let this stuff sit at room temperature for too long once the simple syrup is mixed in, otherwise bacteria and fungi will move in!

You can use regular lemon zest for this too, in case you don't have access to home-grown Chernobyl lemons!

Chill the final product for at least overnight before serving. It is so refreshing on a warm summer day! (If it lasts that long)

Getting ready for spring....Compost!

Did you know that 40% of the fruits and vegetables produced in the USA is thrown away un-used and un-digested in American kitchens? A lot of these foodstuffs are "kitchen scraps", while others are items that we buy and have intentions of eating...but they go bad first.

So what do you do with all of this waste that ends up needlessly in the landfill?

COMPOST!

A lot of people think that compost is.....yucky. After all, it is decomposing organic matter. But it really does not smell that bad, and is easy enough to do even in an apartment.

Many cities in the US, like Seattle, provide commercial composting opportunities, alongside traditional trash and recycling services. It was exciting and inspiring to go to a small "taco stand" near the University of Washington (the "Dub") that requires it's patrons to separate compost-ables from recycling and regular waste. It was easy! Scrape your food waste and paper napkin into one bin, put your glass beer bottle in the recycling, and put the plate/flatware in the stack to be washed and used again. Minimal waste!

Compost is also good, inexpensive organic fertilizer. The commercial composting in Seattle provides organic gardeners and farmers with a product that makes good economic and environmental sense.

If you don't live in a town like Seattle that provides curbside compost pick-up, do not fear! You can do it EASILY at home, never smell it, and it won't drive your neighbors crazy. It also helps prevent you from having to buy that expensive Miracle-Gro stuff for your flower beds.

Please take a look at my photos below of my backyard composting operation. Doug and I have a 3-bin system in our home. One for compostables, one for landfill trash, and one for recycling. Yes, you have to buy two more trash cans, and its a little more work, but its worth it! We empty our compost bin in the kitchen every 2 days or so....and we keep the lid on! :)

We want to prevent contamination of E. coli and Salmonella in our compost, so we only compost vegetables, fruits, paper products and egg shells. NO MEAT, NO FISH, NO CHEESE

The commercial composters do allow ALL waste, including meats. But their methods allow the compost to reach temperatures that help to "sterilize" the compost

(think Black Kow manure compost).

So......our process of making beautiful, useful compost! The final picture below is the finished product, ready to go on the garden. It is a 50-gallon trash can full of about 8 months of composting: shredded junk mail, paper napkins, egg shells, and fruits/veggie waste. I also added in some chicken fecal matter from our yard chickens and their used wheat straw bedding.

Our chickens are very healthy and do not live in cramped conditions, so I trust their feces more than I trust the surface of raw commercial meat products.

First photo: "young" compost, made up of shredded paper, soiled chicken bedding.

Second photo: "young" compost, made up of kitchen waste.

Third photo: these two combined into 50-gallon composter #1, where it is turned, and soil from my backyard is added for 3-4 months. It is then transferred to "mature" in the second 50-gallon composter.

Fourth photo: The final product. Once the stuff at the bottom of the "young" compost starts to look like dirt, its ready to be in the "finisher" composting bin. I then let it continue to "mature" and I turn it once a month.

It's really not that hard. Two 50-gallon trash cans, with lids, with holes drilled in the sides for air flow. Turn the "young" compost once a month, and excavate the stuff on the very bottom once a month and put it in to the "mature" compost bin. It is a WORKOUT to do it this way. I work up a sweat with the shovel every time.

Please try composting the way my Mother does it:

There are larger commercially available composters from Rubbermaid, like the one my mother has. It makes things MUCH easier; one bin, and you take out the "mature" stuff from the bottom every few months. The "new" stuff is put into the top, and you turn it with a shovel or pitchfork every month or so. Someday....I will have one!

Composters can be made very easily with old trash cans, wooden boxes, etc. If you live in an apartment, you can have a worm-box that you can put kitchen waste into. The worms really love coffee grounds and tea leaves!

Next blog.......getting the garden ready for planting, I'm planting everything this week now that the compost is all put out! I did have to buy some extra Black Kow compost since my little kitchen didn't produce enough to cover the whole garden. I do what I can!