I tried again today to get my wife to eat a summer apple. “I don’t want an apple. I want a peach. Or a nectarine. Give me some berries.” She means that she has plenty of time to eat apples. Still, between you and me, she’s not a huge apple lover. She has her macoun season, and she likes to make her Hoosier Mama taught apple pie recipe, but she’s not really wedded to apples. She does not thrive on them like the local kids. They eat their local apples now. They eat them in the fall, and they eat them from storage practically right up until those first strawberries release them to new fruit each year. They know that summer apples have their own charm. They eat local apples now.
I tried to explain that charm to my wife. See, you could eat apples all year long, but you could only eat these apples now. Two things make a summer apple. First, they possess bright, sharp, especially intense flavors, not really found in later ripening apples. These are the citrus crop of apples so to speak. Second, they are not built for lasting. You cannot find a cold spot and keep your lodi, your transparent, around. You need to eat them now. Need more? When ever we need apple info, we go to the Vintage Virginia apple site. They say this about the yellow transparent:
YELLOW TRANSPARENT has the synonyms Grand Sultan, White Transparent, Russian Transparent and Early Transparent. It originated in Russia or one of the Baltic States and was introduced into Europe in the early 1800s, and into the United States in 1870. Medium in size and round in shape, the smooth skin is a greenish-white that ripens to a pale-yellow with inconspicuous dots, russet or green in color. The white flesh is crisp and juicy with an acid flavor. Refreshing, well-flavored, soft, pale-cream flesh, whose acidity can make it too sharp for some tastes. Cooks to a cream puree, sweet, balanced, flavorsome. The medium-sized tree grows upright and vigorously and is exceptionally hardy, with short and crooked branches that are heavily spurred. The oval to ovate shaped leaves are medium to yellowish-green with dull serrations. Yellow Transparent is subject to both scab and fireblight. The fruit is easily bruised, and thinning is necessary to increase the size. It will store for only a few weeks, and ripens in late June and early July over a 3 to 4 week period.
Or not. Summer apples are classically made into apple sauce. They may be sauce apples because of how quickly they go soft, but they are also sauce apples because of their complex flavors stand up to saucing. Remember, you can freeze apple sauce as well as can it for a taste of summer, apple style. We should say buy local apples now.
Summer apples are one of those things you pretty much have to go to a farmer’s market to find, but you can find them around town now. Eat local apples all the time.
Let me start by getting something out of the way that I’ve been meaning to get out of the way (and I’ll have more on this in another post), but my wife is now selling for Tomato Mountain at four markets around town. I have not mentioned Tomato Mountain in any posts in a while, and when I had, it was just passing on word about their canned products being an off-season treat. Now, I will remind you that they’re a treat off-season or not! Needless to say, any future mentions of Tomato Mountain will be biased. I’ve always liked the company and hoped you support them, but now I actively want you to buy (especially from my wife). I will promise to never mention Tomato Mountain, however, without disclosing our affiliation.
Now, I’m glad to get that out of the way, but I wanted to also mention them for another reason. If I shopped often at farmer’s markets before, my wife’s affiliation allows me to shop (via her) even more at markets. We are never more than two days away from getting more food, and this situation has been especially helpful in keeping us awash in fresh breads. Still, it is not breads that I’m thinking about today. See as much as I like farmer’s markets, and as much as I like buying at farmer’s markets, I also like accessible and affordable local foods. This week’s packet of flyers in the Trib reminded me that have already entered the season of accessible and affordable. The season where you can find local foods at all sorts of places, and the season where you can make your dollar last longer.
I had inklings before this round of advertisements. Over a week ago, I found locally grown cauliflower at the Treasure Island in Old Town (and found one of the few stores that still has someone weighing your produce before checkout). At my Caputo’s in Elmwood Park, where I shop often, I found the first of the locally grown cabbage. These few sightings did not lead to a post though. It took the stuff noticed this week:
In the weeks to come, the accessible, affordable season will grow more bountiful. Don’t forsake your area farmer’s market. You will always find a greater variety of material there; you will find variety and rarities the big stores cannot touch, and you find farmer’s who’s growing practices make more sense. With all that, there’s a place for accessible and affordable. You still get so many advantages of buying local, including reduced food miles and community support. Most of all, it will taste better, much better. We believe in accessible and affordable local food. We hope you take advantage of the season.
Let us know what types of accessible and affordable local foods you are finding.
Moments away from hitting the publish button on Friday, I stopped blogging to watch the storm from my Western exposure office window. Moments after that, ComEd put blogging to rest for the day. Unlike those on the other side of my block, we had power by Saturday. By Saturday, though, my inchoate post talking about what I like, that is talking about upcoming meal preparations, had gone moot as I spent a good amount of time making said preparations. I made more local food yesterday, and my wife added some dishes too. Now, we find ourselves very well stocked.
I strongly believe that the most difficult aspect of eating local is the cooking local. Cooking takes time. Cooking local takes more time as beets need to be peeled or kohlrabi leaves de-stemmed. Many (nay most) of us do not have the luxury to spend hours cooking each day. Therefore, it makes sense to work in spurts stocking up. Here’s what’s around now.
Beets part 1 – From the Eli’s Cheesecake Market last Thursday, I bought two big bunches of beets, greens included. Beet greens taste and cook pretty much like spinach or chard. The only caveat to taking advantage of your beet gift is that beet greens go bad quick. Also, there are almost always gritty, so wash well. Like chard, the stems are perfectly edible, but like chard, separate the stems to give them a few more minutes of cooking. I braised the beet greens with some sliced Spring onions. I took all the greens out, leaving some of the onions behind. I frizzed the rest of the onions as a topping.
Beets part 2 – Roasted and dressed with olive oil, salt and pepper for skordalia (see below).
Carrots – Peeled and cooked about five carrots, with a shallot clove (also peeled) and a segment of habanero (from freezer) in boiling water until soft. Mashed and added cumin and coriander seeds and a bit of Aleppo pepper. Finished with olive oil, parsley.
Kohlrabi greens – Originally I planned on making the greens dish above with the beets and the kohlrabi. The beets gave up so much greens that I figure why use the kohlrabi now. They’ll last and the cabbage family flavor of the kohlrabi tastes a bit different anyways. Still, they are washed and stemmed.
Skordalia – To match the beets, my wife made skordalia or garlic puree from old Yukon gold potatoes and young garlic.
Grilled asparagus – With a spicy tahini dressing
Wheatberries – Truth be told, anytime my wife enters the kitchen, the Local Family leaves well stocked. Last week’s wheatberry pilaf morphed into this week’s wheatberry salad with preserved lemon.
Lamb liver – Oddly enough no one but I touched the grilled, chopped lamb’s liver served at room temperature with lemon and parsley.
Leg of lamb steak, goat medallions, goat spareribs – Is it odd that the goat spareribs all went at our Father’s Day repasse. The lamb steak got eaten too, but a few goat medallions remain.
Hamburger, roast chicken – This were made for those we feared would fear the goat and lamb. Instead, we have much left.
Lettuces – As my mother noted, the lettuces heads are huge this year, and we have huge heads of romaine and butter. We expect to have big salad with the leftover roast chicken.
Pasta w/bacon and peas – This should have been last week’s spaghetti pie, but this and that limited our options.
It should be a good week of eating for the Local Family, with most of the work done.
This Local Family’s quest to eat asparagus after asparagus hardly captured the imagination as say, one man’s quest to eat just pizza. Perhaps, the Forest Gumpian plethora of asparagus options lessened the wow factor. Raw and cooked. Butter or oil. Thick sauce or thin with thin spears or thick spears. There might not be many vegetables besides asparagus to eat in the Spring, but there are a lot of ways to eat your asparagus in the Spring. The Local Family went twenty plus days with an asparagus dish in da house. Granted, not every member ate ever asparagus plate. Then it ended. It ended with asparagus in the bin. It ended, I think with some asparagus leftover on a shelf. Mom, who probably carried the biggest aspara-load, taking more than a few cartons of leftover asparagus to work for lunch, showed the most resistance to more asparagus. She who decreed the Eat Local Asparagus Challenge in the first place, said uncle. Could we complain. The day after ending the Challenge, we had asparagus on the grill.
We had asparagus last night too. Asparagus risotto, a repeat of Day 7. We still find plenty of asparagus in the market,so it is going to be a component of our local meals. We do find other vegetables now. When my wife whips up a June risotto, it includes asparagus and peas (and a couple of garlic scapes too). We are not throwing away asparagus, but we are not committed to it either. The day before, our pasta had no asparagus, only peas.
We are not committed to a CSA this season either. Which means that each week we get to make our own kitchen choices. No more stir fry on the menu because there was too much baby bok choi. Yet, maybe it was some form of guilt towards Farmer Vicki. At the Oak Park Farmer’s Market last Saturday, what did we buy. Kohlrabi. I was not sure anyone ever willingly purchased kohlrabi, but I answered my own question. It was not, after all, asparagus. And not too expensive, and a better bargain ’cause the bulbs (not roots, but enlarged stems) as well as the leaves are edible. And storable. As noted the other day, there is nothing you can do better with a kohlrabi than save it for a later day. When the time comes, we might roast it. Mash it. Grate it. Don’t ignore your kohlrabi.
If asparagus was the dinner of choice, the lunch of choice for the local kids for the last several weeks of school was early season radishes. If radishes appear in the lunches now, they do not dominate as we got our first sugar snaps of the year this week. We also got our first carrots of the year, although we have not touched them yet. My wife is threatening stock.
The veg choices expand. The fruit section is just getting going. Man, there was a period where we struggled with fruit. Asparagus have nothing on all the local apples we ate. Our seasonal exception of citrus also ran its course. We made good use of the earliest rhubarb, except a glop of compote did not go so well in the school lunches. We are not bored with our strawberries, finding especially good ones this year from Walt Skibbes at Oak Park. We found especially good, the first cherries last week from Hardin Farms at Oak Park.
We’ll have to get a few more asparagus spears under our belt. Summer starts next week.
After months of eating from a root cellar in the sky, we had the opportunity to gorge on something new and green, asparagus. In honor of this movement in eating habits, the Cookbook Addict declared that we shall eat asparagus until we could not eat asparagus. The Eat Local Asparagus Challenge of 2010. As noted on these pages, the Challenge has not been much of a challenge; thanks however, from some favorable rulings. We benefit from two caveats. First, we can eat the same asparagus more than once, leftovers count. Second, only one member of the Local Family needs to have an asparagus dish a day, we have joint and several ownership over this Challenge.
We made good use of our exceptions this week. Until this evening, the Local Family will not dine together en total. Thus, various family members had to carry the load each day. To enable the continued success of the Challenge the Cookbook Addict turned to one of her favorites, Home by David Page and Barbara Shinn. There she found an asparagus, rice and lemon dish. With some crumbled feta one time and local yogurt another, it made an interesting and filling dish. Something Mom had for lunch and Dad and Kids had for dinner. The other big batch of asparagus the Addict cooked up, soup. The kids settled for that one night. And if that was not enough, at least two days this week, the Kids at asparagus vinaigrette in their lunches.
That’s 16 days of eating asparagus.
This Local Family has made it through its second weekend of asparagus eating. While walking the dog last night, my older daughter and I discussed the reasons for such Challenge, which mostly came down to our lives were not quite nuts enough already. Believe me, with Molly the Eat Local Dog; she of the crashed window, the packing away of a Rubik’s cube sized block of feta, the chewed shoes, the daily attack on the mail; who’s lives needed more craze. Still, we proceed. As we round the bend on to week two, needed yet another ruling. Before that ruling, let’s cover Days 9, 10 and 11.
Risotto has been high on my wife’s list of asparagus recipes. One of the most useful tricks she picked up from her long Mado apprenticeship was her risotto methodology, right down to the can of rice. “Rob uses this one.” Not only do I appreciate the outcome, I totally appreciate the inherent thrift of asparagus risotto, as the stock comes from the water used to cook the spears. Day 9.
We had plans for dinner on Day 10, so had to ensure asparagus in a Saturday brunch. As my wife is to risotto, I am to omelets. Day 10.
Day 11’s asparagus went towards a brunch like creation even if we ate it for dinner. On Friday my wife made salmon patties, finding use not only for some spare canned salmon but use for aged sunchokes and celery root. She came up with this idea for leftovers: a riff on egg’s Benedict. The leftover patty went on a toast, topped with a poached egg (another Mado born skill), doused with Hollandaise and garnished with asparagus spears.
Hitting a new week, we ran into a major problem. Not asparagus fatigue in the least. Our problem, we had plans for every night through Friday. There was simply no opportunity for asparagus come dinner time. So, here’s what the Judge’s deemed. As long as some member of the Local Family had asparagus each day, the Challenge would continue. On Day 12, the Challenge was met by Mom eating leftover risotto for lunch as well as one daughter having cold asparagus in her school lunch. Day 13 is covered because both daughters have asparagus vinaigrette in their lunches. The kids should keep things handled until Friday.
The Any Family, Any Asparagus a Day ruling is the third needed ruling in this Challenge. First, they ruled on Leftovers then we had to rule on asparagus nomenclature. Perhaps we like the quibbling as much as the vegetable.
We like asparagus.
We like it raw and we like it cooked.
If most people call Milanese, with an egg, we like that, but if famed cookbook author Sheila Lukins has her own version of Milanese, we like that too.
We have enjoyed asparagus with rice, with quinoa but not yet with pasta.
Nor have we yet to have asparagus soup, asparagus pesto, or with hot butter or hot of the grill. We have stuffed the asparagus into won ton wrappers, with ricotta cheese.
We have purchased asparagus from Wisconsin, Illinois and Michigan. Purple and green. Some really thick ones, but never a batch of pencil thin ones.
We only look ahead on our Eat Local Asparagus Challenge.
Share with us how you are challenging yourself to eat this valued Spring crop.
I appreciate all of the encouragements to my lax locavorism of late. I will certainly take advantage of the Hat’s generous offer. Still, nothing gets me back in the mood like a farmer’s market. OK, I do not even need a farmer’s market. I need Chad Nichol’s showing up for a Mother’s Day special at Eli’s Cheesecake with huge bags of spinach, radishes (to another customer, “it’s safe to eat one now, it’s a French breakfast radish”), and plenty of needed asparagus. If that whetted our whistle, the early start of Evanston’s Farmer’s Market set us up for the a while.
Flush with that first of the season asparagus from Chad, my wife decreed that we shall henceforth eat such food daily until we can no longer eat such food. The Eat Local Asparagus Challenge of 2010 began. On Friday, she made two savory tart crusts. She filled the first with an asparagus quiche. The next day, she made a Wisconsin cheddar pie with ramps and lamb’s quarters. Still, as much as I loved that new foods, you know what made me happiest with these dishes. She made use out of some very old leeks too. We have much to enjoy in the days ahead with recent purchases and old favorites. After all, we do have to finish the sunchokes.
Our current inventory is below. I have listed the inventory two ways. The remaining larder is still listed by storage medium. The new stuff is listed by farmer/market.
NEW PRODUCE
Nichol’s Farm – Eli’s Cheesecake – Spinach, radishes, asparagus, rhubarb, watercress
Henry’s Farm – Evanston Farmer’s Market – Thyme, tarragon, parsley. lamb’s quarters, nettles
Nichol’s Farm – Evanston – Basil, cippolini onions
Kinnikinnick Farm – Evanston – Green garlic
Larry and Marilyn Wettstein – Evanston – 2 doz. eggs
Stovers – Evanston – Asparagus
Trader’s Point Creamer – Evanston – Creme fraiche
Whole Foods – Chicago – Ramps
Kolatek’s Bakery – Chicago – Michigan apples
OLD FOOD
Basement Storage
Basement Fridge
Basement Freezer
Kitchen Fridge
Kitchen
Root Cellar in the Sky – No Food in the Attic
I once wrote a whole Chowhound post (back when people wrote whole Chowhound posts) lamenting the lack of local deli’s, filled nearly entirely with ‘L’ alliterations. I’ll forsake that device here beyond saying my I’ve been a lax locavore lately. Some of it’s not my fault; I started birthday burgers for my daughter with local meat (avoiding telling her one packet was venison), but had to swap out to not so local from my corner store to get a suitable dinner after frying up a smelly batch. And it’s not like I’ve given up. I find Michigan apples at Jewel to eat now instead of California strawberries this time of year. Still, I’ve seen to have spent an inordinate amount of time lately in those conventional supermarkets, and something seems to be rubbing off on me.
Last semester, my older daughter took psychology in high school. The class seemed more about organizing a boycott over bottled water and less the syndrome I needed her to describe now. See, I believe there is something scientific to the seven year itch. I am sure of it. It has a name. We really do get bored with stuff at about seven years. We are roughly at seven years in our eat local ways, and with my AAD tendencies, starting early on the itch makes perfect sense. Growing weary is in our nature.
Surely none of the reasons to eat local wear thin on me. If anything, the reasons to eat local motivate me more. As I noted a few weeks ago, we have resisted the opportunities to save dollars here and there on conventional milk and eggs even as we decided to get by without the CSA. One of my kids suggested that any ennui would vanish as soon as we dug into fresh farmer’s market fare. Of course she is right, as I know how much more delicious local food is. I remain an advocate for local foods. I support our community. I support farmers.
It’s the work. It’s the schlep. What can we eat now, local. We have plenty of sunchokes. We have a bit of celery root. Beets remain. Yet, when it is 5 PM and I am picking my wife up from her new job, I am not thinking of coming home to peel the Jerusalem artichokes. The Monday fried chicken special at Jewel temps too much. Then, I walk those aisles. It’s like a casino right. They make it that way. Temptation is a science to these people. As I am revolted by packaged croutons and salad dressings–I cannot remember the last time we purchased a bottle of dressing–I am put right at home, at ease. Is it simply memories of childhood comfort, riding the rails, an open box of animal crackers in hand, that works on my psyche?
I battle. I agreed to see a movie last Saturday in Logan Square, like I really needed the depressing Greenberg in my state, to be close to the Dill Pickle Coop. I expected some Spring produce but found pretty much none. I should have dropped an order with Irv and Shelly. I also have a decent supply of ramps from Whole Foods in the Bungalow, free as the cashier that night lost her patience trying to find the sku for my harbingers, but have only used a few stalks so far. On the other hand, to go with taco night, I open a can of La Preferada beans. Argh. $3+ for the frioles refrito when we have tons of beans in the basement that cost less than 2 bits a pound. Yet, temptation, supermarket temptation. Open can. And the ingredients in the “authentic” version would be at home in a Haagen Dazs container; three: beans, salt, lard. Tasted good too. Do you know my wife had to talk me down from buying a packet of McCormick’s taco spice mix. So, I opened a can of beans but crushed my own cumin and coriander seeds. I forgot to grill the ramps though.
Come on guys. Motivate me. Inspire me. Support me. The itch can pass. I may be a lax locavore lately, but I do not want to be a lacking locavore, In fact, keep me from a lamenting local eating alliteration liking post.
It’s been a long time since this Local Family went the locavore route. We followed the path to outstanding tasting food; food with meaning and food that positively effects all around the road. Since the fortiest passing of Earth Day, I hope more and more of you are taking the local way. Not only can you easily eat local like my family, you can be better locavores than us. And no, please, I am not asking you to be more strict; to eat within a 100 mile barrier, to forsake olive oil for lard (not that a we are against lard) and make sandwiches from slices of turnip when the supplies of local wheat wanes. Be prudent in your approach. Wake up and smell the coffee. Still, there are all kinds of ways you can do better than me, and maybe, by next Earth Day, I’ll have done better too.
Offer up more ways you will out local the Local Family this year.
It’s been a long time since this Local Family decided to get the majority of its food from area farmers, a foodshed we call the Big Ten Conference. Has there ever been a time when we did not struggle to achieve this goal?
Eating local means working your schedule around farmer’s markets. It means that even as you reduce the majority of food miles, you often have to travel around to meet your dietary needs. It means spending time in the summer canning and setting aside for dark days, maintaining a root cellar in the sky. Food comes nearly always in its rawest state, meaning plenty of struggle to peel and clean and deal with all of those carrot tops that should be a lot more edible than they are. There are a lot of struggles involved in eating local.
Do we feel deprived. Restricted. Our struggles have never been about boundaries or limitations. We have no line in the map that demarcates where we can and cannot get our food. About the craziest thing we do is eat endless supplies of apples, as they are the one local fruit around from January until at least some time in May. Of course we also eat citrus, some bananas, even bought mango’s this week. We eat those fruits when they are in season during the winter and spring. Sure, sometimes it seems like a struggle to eat rutabagas, kohlrabi, they hyper-intense version that is local celery, but we find it rewarding to have such variety in our diets. Celery aside, these things all end up tasting good. We do not struggle with what we can eat when we eat local.
I admitted recently that we are struggling with the costs of eating local. We did not get a CSA this spring to save money. As I noted yesterday, we are making sure we use up every last bit of usable food in the Bungalow. We benefit from actions taken when times were better. Our freezer contains parts from sides of beef, lamb and hog already purchased, and over the winter we got a bunch of meats from a CSA from Mint Creek Farm. Still, as tight as times can be, we continue to use the good milk from local companies like Farmer’s All Natural Creamery or Organic Valley. We get Amish Farm eggs at our neighborhood Polish market. The few dollars more per we spend here, we just make up in some other way.
We have not let any of these struggles stop us. We eat local because the food tastes so much better. We eat local because we know it helps the environment. We eat local to build our economy and community. We find purpose in eating local. On Earth Day, many of you are thinking of ways to make a difference in the year to come. To reduce greenhouse gases, to cut back on solid wastes, to get awful chemicals out of our waters; compost, change your light bulbs, bring your own bag to the store, scrap bottled water, ride your bike. You can make all sorts of meaningful changes this Earth Day. We hope and trust that one your changes is changing how you get your food. That you have started eating more local this Earth Day. We can promise you that you will struggle many a-times. Don’t let the struggles stop you. It has not stopped this Local Family
My Local Beet co-founder, Michael Morowitz used to answer people’s root vegetable questions by saying you could roast anything. I’d add, you could always grate ‘em for a salad. This year it seems that all our roots got mashed, and we can chalk the passing of the storage veg season by the implement used (needed) to mash. Back in the day, when the roots had a whiff of dirt to them still, they could be done with a masher. As time went by and the vegetables aged gracefully in the attic, it required the muscle of our ricer to get it done. Later still, the added leverage of a food mill worked. Finally, yesterday, in probably the last mash of the season, it took a food processor. So, it was not the smoothest of the season, but with plenty butter it tasted plenty good. You know people always complain about endless root vegetables for the Winter, but come Spring, much of the first harvests are roots again including the over-wintered parsnips now on sale at Irv and Shelly’s Fresh Picks. Maybe the mash cycle will start again for the Local Family.
As noted a few weeks ago, this Spring we are going CSA-less. Going for all those last edible roots is a bit more important this year. Still, the root-potato mash went well with something else old, round steaks. Way (way) before we accumulated root vegetables for the winter, we accumulated a side of cow from our friend, Farmer Vicki. After a few years, we have finished most of the meat, even if Mom seems able to find a package of burger forever. We had not, however, touched the round steaks. You’d think maybe we’d had jumped on them sooner. Surely, the least elegant part of the cow, but the one most associated (I think), with Midwest farm cooking. Ma and Pa Kettle sent all those sirloins and fillets to the big city, making endless Swiss steaks and cubed steaks for the farmhands. How else to show connection to the land than to eat a round steak. We just never did.
We may be in preserve mode, but why buy new local meat when we still have very full freezers. Use some round steak. How ’bout bread and fry. If we made gravy it could be chicken fried steak. With some of the rocket in the house it could be milanesa. We bought a white loaf to make coating crumbs. Then, one thing led to another, not the least, Mom made a ton of tomato sauce. And when life gives your round steaks red gravy, what makes the most sense. Make braciole. Not a complicated dish if one requiring some time. Pound the round steaks, using that spiked hammer stuffed in some drawer. Most braciole recipes call for a slice of prosciutto inside, but I though why not get the extra lubrication from pancetta instead. I hydrated some porcini mushrooms. I wanted the broth more than the mushrooms, but why not include them inside too. The rest of the stuffing consisted of bread crumbs, grated cheese, an egg, anchovy, and enough milk to moisten. Rolled and tied, I browned them first and then braised them for about an hour in the red sauce. Went well with mashed veg.
The turnips and rutabagas not mashed yesterday went to the composter. There are still potatoes, sunchokes and other foods in our stores. Angela Caputo’s in Elmwood Park has run out of Michigan apples, but we now get them from the Polish store across the street. As we finish what we have, it is time to start buying.
Our current inventory is below.
Basement Storage
Basement Fridge
Basement Freezer
Kitchen Fridge
Kitchen
Root Cellar in the Sky – No Food in the Attic
Along the shelf with Illinois’s Challenging Ski Slopes and An Authentic Tour of Jerusalem’s Pit BBQ comes this one: Eating Local in the Chicago Springtime, thin guidebooks. The Local Beet is all about practical approaches. We want to show you how to eat local. When days turned darker, we were there for you with pointers toward winter eating. The thing is, we had some good solid advice for the cold weather locavore. You could build your own root cellar, find winter markets, enjoy rutabagas. Know what our advice is for this time of year. Kvetch.
What do we say more than anything around here. We say, the reasons to eat local do not end when the weather turns cold. We showed your how this could be done by storing and preserving as well as shopping the winter markets. We say then that the reasons to eat local do not end when the weather turns warm. Yet, we have less to show you how to do it. In fact, we know more than a few restaurants knee deep in the local ethos that turn to distant products to shore up their menus this time of year. Not good cheats either, like maybe some first run salmon; no we are talking peas and strawberries and other classic veg of the season. For many, seasonality trumps local.
Many things hamper Spring eating. Foremost, obviously, our tricky weather means a late start for our area farmers. While some farmers have been out in their fields cutting their first crops, our farmers are just a-plantin’. So those peas and such are several weeks away. Now, if we look all around us, we see green and growing: nettles, ramps, garlic mustard, watercress, dandelions for pete sake. That’s what that ate once upon a time when we all ate local. We could write a thick book on foraging, but for the average consumer, our advice in getting these items is thin. As we noted this week in the Local Calendar, there are few markets around now, and the people selling now are not selling these things.
Maybe we should advice patience. In the best of circumstances, is there a lot to Spring eating. What’s your first fruit of the season, well a vegetable, right, rhubarb. Are you sticking sticks of rhubarb in your kid’s lunch. No, you rely on stored apples. Hell, even the citrus this time of year is coming from storage. We go crazy eating asparagus, but are we just doing that because asparagus is all there is. The thin guide of Spring eating could counsel limited expectations. We do have sorrel.
Or it could say loud and clear, kvetch. Get your expectations in order. Know that April is probably the hardest month to eat local, but do not settle for out of state peas because it’s that time of year. Raise your voice for markets opening now. The Dane County Farmer’s Market in Madison goes outdoors in April, filling the Capital Square in Madison on their first try. We know because we have been there. Not only do we need markets but we need our farmers to harvest their weeds for us. Surely, they can find much to sell. Again, they are doing it up there.
Kvetch this Spring about the lack of options. Then, let’s do something. Implore your local market to open earlier. Let your favorite grower know you will be there buying her foraged food. Shower those few farmers growing now with love. Buy all of Vera’s green garlic. Grab all of Vicki’s turnips. Go to Evanston for what Henry’s bringing. Be irked now about limited Spring offerings, but be a pain for next year’s season. Demand it and it will be there. Climate matters only so much in how we eat local in the Spring. What matters most is our ability to find local food this time of year. Let’s all do what we can to move the Local Beet’s Guide to Spring Eating to a new shelf next year.
Please share with us your frustrations in finding Spring food. Kvetch away! Also, share with us your ideas and suggestions for improving the state of seasonal eating this time of year in Chicagoland. And as thin as our advice is, we still have the resources to eat local now. The reasons to eat local do not end just because the weather warms.
It could not have been easier. I could have walked this year to the CSA pick up location, now closer than ever to the Bungalow. I could have picked up my first red radishes of the season, some hoophouse grown bok choi, spring carrots, plus local apples kept well. Listen, I can tell you all day why to buy into community supported agriculture. I can tell you about my many years subscribing, but this year, I will tell you that I dropped the box. The first CSA boxes showed up yesterday for many local families. It did not show up for this Local Family.
Like many things in life, it came down to money. Like a lot of local families, this Local Family has had to tighten its belt lately. Certain financial decisions we would have taken for granted, had to be re-considered. One of them happened to be the CSA. Instead of paying for new food, we can continue to eat the food on hand. Cue up the sunchoke recipes please. Our cupboards are not bare. We have squash, onions, green garlic, some rocket as well as lot of other foods in our various stores. We could shop around. We plan on hitting the last Winter Farmer’s Market of the year in Beverly. If we missed CSA radishes, could not we get market radishes–Vera thought she’d have some this week. Like I say, I can argue left and right the reasons to go CSA. This year it did not fit for us.
You know, dropping the CSA box has not been the only time economics played a part in our food choices. About six weeks ago, in a period of extreme penny pinching, I made the decision to buy the conventional eggs on sale at Caputo’s at only 99 cents. That savings helped that week. Not a few days after the eggs, I finally watched the complete edition of Food Inc. (saving money also meant staying in that Saturday night and watching a comped DVD). We showed up the next day at the Logan Square Farmer’s Market. We could use eggs. It would cost $4 more to buy eggs than at Caputo’s. With certain Food Inc. scenes fresh on my mind, I decided to lay out the dollars for the eggs.
I used to justify the added costs I paid for local foods by calling it my hobby. I believe I once equated it to skiing. Or put it this way: you scrapbook. I buy five dollar eggs. A movement cannot be built by hobbyists, and I realized we were doing this more than as an alternative to Elvis stamps. Eat local I believed. I argued that good food did not need to cost more. Eliminate meals out. Buy less snack foods. Do not spend more. Spend better. That’s what happen when you go local. Except when you are in too deep. Can you skip the milk, butter and eggs. No, so you shop around. Sadly, really sadly, you find huge cost differences between the good stuff and the other stuff. Then, you watch Food, Inc.
Fast food drives our food systems. The drive to keep the dollar meal drives our food system. A McDonald’s double cheeseburger still costs that dollar. Food Inc. does an excellent job of showing what happens to keep that double cheeseburger the modest choice. And it is these activities that make me, require me, to spend more than I want to in these hard times. Take those cheap eggs. They come from tenement hens, birds of squalor, popping out their daily biological imperative with little quality of life, let alone the things that will make it taste right. They do no peck. Hell, they can barely move. The more we can shove in, the more dollar meals we can sell. Hell yes, it costs more to have the right foods. Sure, we know about the added costs, the health costs, the burdens borne by cheap foods, but at the check-out lane, it costs more.
Who among us can spend their money wholly as they want. Who amongst us is spending a bit differently right now. I heard from a friend the other day on his tenth month of unemployment. He used to be a Vice President of a public company. He was a confident guy when he approached job search. A Vice President, and if you know my friend, you would know that your company can do no worse in hiring. He’s a very dedicated worker. Now, his spirit wavers. He might not be a CSA guy this year either (although to be honest, he’s out East and I have no idea his local eating habits, it’s not the kind of thing we talk about these days). There’s struggle out there.
I am not forsaking local eating. I am not buying bad eggs. I’m just not doing it with a CSA. I am not sure how it will affect my outlays over the year. I am avoiding a lump sum payment now, but will I spend more without the CSA. I know I am saving money now because I do not yet need a full box of new foods. As I already noted, we have food in the house still to eat. I also know that we go through eggs all the time. Each carton of eggs, if I keep Food, Inc. on my mind, will be more, about fifty cents more. How much will that add up? And what will happen when we need all of the stuff normally in the box. My expectation is that item to item, it would cost us more, but I am also thinking that without the CSA, we will eat a bit differently. There will be a little less baby bok choi on the Local Family table this year. Is no (or less) bok choi this year a bad thing? We will see because this week, none showed up.
In helping on the Local Kids get material for our Passover Seder, I got the somewhat unexpected surprise, we had no apples. OK, not totally true, we had the remains of apples. There were various bad apples pulled away from their comrades so as to not spoil the whole bunch. We have compost apples. Getting to the end of the root cellar in the sky season with only compost apples is a very good thing. A bullseye. We lasted another local winter. We did an excellent job this year, if I say so myself, of balancing the need to have local foods on hand with the need to have too much local food on hand. We did not waste.
We do own stored food still, which we moved last week away from the heating up attic to the now cooler basement or the always cool, basement fridge. We do need to finish a fair amount of potatoes. We need to use the remaining rutabagas even sooner. We also have beets and carrots to finish and a few small squash too. As we work to wrap up winter, we begin on Spring. We have purchased our first outdoor crops watercress and green garlic. With warming hoophouses, we no longer need to look at lettuces as a luxury. We will expect soon the earliest radishes and the over-sized, over-wintered carrots and parsnips. Yet, we do not tire of the roots. We took advantage of being in Wisconsin this weekend to pickup two more celery root! (Plus a green cabbage.) We will also root out the remaining Michigan apples that can be found around town. This Local Family lasted the Winter and looks forward to the Spring.
Our current inventory is below.
Basement Storage
Basement Fridge
Basement Freezer
Kitchen Fridge
Kitchen
Root Cellar in the Sky – No Food in the Attic
We don’t find much in the way of Spring produce in the Chicago area. Such so-called Spring crops like peas won’t hit our shores until the near end of Spring, like June. The newest new potatoes done come around until the Local Calendar really says summer. Even local asparagus is several weeks away. There is, however, one crop already thriving in the grounds around us, watercress.
It’s called water–cress for a reason. It sprouts up by all the creeks and ponds and tiny rivers that help make the land around us so fertile. It’s one of those plants getting signals from Mother Nature to spring up as soon as the days turn a bit longer, an edible daffodil if you may. You can sometimes find watercress growing through melting snow. She don’t mind. Some area farmer’s grow watercress; perhaps to feed the needs of French bistros used to putting a sprig or two on every plate of roast chicken. Still, there is much cress for the taking. As I say, any farm with a little old body of water nearby (and most seem to have this), will likely find watercress for the taking. The big problem for you local eaters, who will supply the Spring cress.
Seriously, that’s a problem. While we have more than a few markets running this time of year, we do not have many farmers with a habit of picking off their wild cress. Please, prove me wrong. Show up at Green City or Logan Square or Portage Park this weekend and find some wild watercress. If you do, great. If you don’t challenge the farmer. Why not make some money harvesting what God put at the back of your property. Maybe with a little urging we can get some watercress out there.
Do we need watercress in our diets? Do we need to eat it just because we can, because something grows when it is this cold. To some that’s a good enough reason isn’t it, a little relief from those root crops. I’d also tell you to eat watercress because it tastes so good. Maybe a slightly acquired taste. Wild watercress (especially) can be hot on the tongue, like dabbing some Chinese mustard. There’s also a strong vegetal taste, the result of all that plant energy driving it forward so soon. So, take advantage of its strength. Those French knew something. Its bite offers relief from heavy, plainly cooked meats. It contrasts expertly against eggs, and an eggsalad sandwich on a really good whole grain bread, with a sprig of watercress is one food’s great marriages. You can forgo cress as an accessory. Make yourself a cress salad, but use an assertive dressing like a home-made green goddess. I mean if you do get some watercress, get yourself some fresh eggs too. You’ll need to make the egg salad, and you will need to whip up a batch of good mayo.
We may not have much truly in season yet. We have watercress. We have farm eggs. We can eat local with great pleasure. As long as we can find it. (As noted the other day, this Local Family got its first of the year watercress at the farmer’s market in Madison. It’s always a locavore pleasure to go there.)
