Well, if you've visited the blog anytime in the past ten weeks, you know that we have been absentee bloggers. But, be advised that the food project is still alive and well. Its actually been so relatively easy going for us this summer, that it hasn't seemed like a challenge, and thus not worth writing about. Also, we are both working full time now and have been traveling a lot lately, so blogging has been put on a far back burner. But with the end of our year project in sight, I feel its worth while to resume blogging, even if all of our readers have given up us (which I completely understand).
Okra Flower
LOCAL FOOD:
After the winter and spring, we experienced a bounty of freshness and variety of which we had been very much deprived. Tomatoes, okra, corn, beans, watermelons, squash, leeks, lettuce, peas, peppers, cucumbers, beets, strawberries, blueberries, peaches, and figs. I can't tell you how nice it was to be eating fresh vegetables again. One can only live so long in contentment consuming mushy canned food and frozen soup. And for your reference, don't can either yellow squash or sweet potatoes, they're both pretty gross.
Another really nice thing about this summer is that it wasn't difficult finding local food. That was a big challenge in the fall and winter, just locating local products. But this summer, local food was everywhere, whether it be roadside stands, state farmer's market, Charlie Coldwell's farmer's market, Dickson's organics, and even the grocery stores had a good amount of local produce, particularly Piggly Wiggly (who even now has local squash, cucumbers, greens, and okra).
I think the foods that we ate the most this summer would be tomatoes and okra. We prepared and ate tomatoes in every sort of way imaginable including large batches of gazpacho, tomato-egg sandwiches, tomat0 and cucumber salad, tomato sauce, and stewed tomatoes, but the our predominant way of eating them was sliced with a little bit of salt.
The other vegetable we ate a great deal of okra. Not only is it plentiful but its very cheap, plus we have been growing it. At first Emily didn't take too well to okra, as it has a tendency to get mushy and slimy. But I learned that the less its cooked, the less slimy it is. So, at the beginning of the summer we would slice the okra thinly, bread it, and then saute it briefly. That was our favorite method of preparation, until we starting steaming the okra whole. We found that if its just slightly steamed while whole, it has a very nice flavor and is not mushy or slimy at all. I think its fair to say that there wasn't a day that went by this summer without us eating tomatoes or okra, often eating both.
Milling tomatoes to make tomato sauceGARDEN:
The garden was doing quite well the last time we blogged, in early July. We were getting nice harvests of tomatoes, snap peas, kale, potatoes, and onions. Unfortunately, sometime in the middle of July we had a real bad storm, and a damn tree fell onto the garden, or at least my favorite part, the tomato plants. All of our staking and trellising fell, causing nearly all of our tomato plants to bend and break. In the end, after the tree was cut out (with no help from our landlord, I'll add) we could only salvage one of the plants, the Brandywine, which all summer had been the least productive (because we later found out that it does better in slightly cooler weather, and thus didn't like our heat).
Treefall on gardenSo we took the opportunity to replant the whole garden, but I've learned that a second planting in S.C. doesn't work that great because pests are at their peak from July to August. So, we've been fighting hornworms, flea beetles, and whiteflies all summer long, and to be honest, they're putting up a pretty good fight. Also, it did help that the tomato we were able to salvage went gangbusters after having all of the crowding neighboring plants taken out, so its been shading out all of our new tomato plants.
In the past several weeks, the garden has rebounded pretty well. The Brandywine is producing more than it ever has, we've got some very promising Cherokee Purple cuttings and Sungold plants (and the existing Sungold has been doing very well), the okra has been doing tremendous (it's as tall as I am and producing very prolifically), we've gotten more bell peppers in the past few weeks than we ever have, the jalapeños are doing very well, we've got some promising leeks and lettuce plants as well as many good looking radish seedlings. The only crop that hasn't done well this time around is our potatoes. I don't know if its my planting time, the fact that the seed potatoes we were using we from the spring, or that I put two seeds in a hole, but whatever the reason, they did poorly. Very spindly plants that we completely ravished by some pest that defoliated most of them. I think some sort of caterpillar was getting to them because I never saw an infamous Colorado Potato Beetle.
WHAT NOW:
Our yearlong project ends October 7, 2008, which I believe is only a little over two weeks away. Nevertheless, I have been canning a good deal. We've done several cans of corn, tomatoes, and pinquito beans (of which my folks sent me several pounds on their trip to the Central Coast of CA) and field peas. We've also got in the freezer many pounds of whole frozen okra, tupperware of vegetarian gumbo and assorted dishes, and many containers of homemade tomato sauce.
Although the strictures of our project end soon, I am still very committed to the spirit of our project and I intend to eat locally as much as possible, or as much as is reasonably convenient. For example, I fully intend to continue buying local food products such as S.C. flour, local eggs and butter, local grits, rice, and field peas.
We've even found a Florence County company, Margaret Holmes that sells cans of beans, tomatoes, and other southern vegetables that are mostly grown locally, and supplemented by other farms in the southeast.Check back in a couple of weeks for the conclusion of the Carolina Food Project posts.
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