THE CAROLINA FOOD PROJECT

August Garden Update & Honey Harvest

2010-08-16T07:52:00.004-04:00

Like every year, I neglect to blog during the busy summer months. This is partially due to our travel schedule this time of year, but also because the condition of the garden deteriorates the deeper we get into summer. I've come to the conclusion that for my purposes, we have two growing seasons, Spring which is mid-March to late June (although that might be pushing it); and Fall, which is early September to early December. The most of what remains are the doldrums for my vegetable crops, with a few noteworthy exceptions: okra, field peas, some peppers, and some eggplants.

The last time I posted I was composing the epitaph for my garden because of the monsoons we had had. Somehow, we were able to recover. For a period of time in late June, we were picking over a pound of tomatoes per day, as well as abundant carrots, cucumbers, muskmelons, an occasional watermelon, peppers, and leeks.

Then we stopped getting rain. And it got hotter. Together, these two whittled away at the garden's vitality. Plus, my summertime travel schedule kept me away from my weeding responsibilities. At this point, amidst the knee high weeds, we have a few strangling plants (tomato, pepper, eggplant, etc.), but it's about time to prepare for fall planting. I've already started kale and collard seeds indoors. I will post about fall planting later.

Overall, it was a tough Spring season, with June being a very difficult month. Monsoon rains in the first week, then record hot temperatures for the remainder of the month. We were able to somewhat bounce back from the rain, but the early heat didn't help.

Other exciting news, we harvested our first honey yesterday with the invaluable assistance of Leverne Newman (who graciously let us borrow his extractor and hot knife for an afternoon). Our hive has two boxes that are filled with honey, but we only harvested one of them. We don't need that much honey, and we figured we leave them some for the winter. Well, I'm glad we made that decision because we ended up with almost 2 gallons of honey. The process went pretty smooth, except that after we had removed the honey-filled frames from the hive, we left them out so that the few strangler bees could return to the hive. Well, the opposite happened. A bunch bees from the hive came over and started reclaiming their honey. We didn't know this was happening until we returned a few hours later and saw that some frames had a third less honey than before. The bees were literally stealing their honey back. Once we realized this, we put the frames on the screened porch and proceeded with extraction.

As you can see, our honey is very dark and strong flavored, almost like molasses.

Too Much Rain

2010-06-03T08:08:00.004-04:00

Well of course, after a few months of drought we are dumped on with a week of monsoon rain. In the past week Florence has received almost 5 inches of rain. The average for this time of year is .85 inches a week.

This poses a huge problem because our soil is very heavy and takes a long time to drain. So, we've basically had standing water in the garden at least since Sunday. One of the reason I've made so many raised beds this past year is to try and alleviate some of this problem, however, this remedy has its limitations. Yesterday I was forced to pull up a tomato plant that was dying of disease, and as soon as I did so the hole that was left promptly filled with water from the surrounding soil. The beans are dying from root rot, white mold and southern blight is on some of the tomatoes, there's intense cracking on several of the tomatoes, and water wilt. Not to mention the fact that any leaf from any plant that makes contact with the soil instantly turns yellow and dies, further exposing the plant to soil-borne diseases. Many of the plants are literally rotting in the ground.

Mold at base of tomato plant

Cracking on Cherokee Purples

Oh, and the good news is that there's rain in the forecast for today and tomorrow. If this keeps up we won't have any garden left. Maybe next year I should consider growing rice.

Newly planted corn rows

Garden Nemeses

2010-05-25T09:30:00.004-04:00

So far, everything has been growing relatively well. Fortunately, the tomatoes are doing much better than last year, thanks to the raised beds and drier weather. Peppers, eggplant, cukes, squash, melons, field peas, and kale are all doing very well also. So far we've harvested several crops of peas (which have recently been pulled up and their bed planted with corn/squash/beans), a couple pounds of potatoes (though most of them are still in the ground), a ton of basil, some amazing carrots and beets, a number of undersized onions, and some cabbage. We've also got okra seedlings from seeds we saved last year that are doing very well. Overall, a fairly successful spring.

Despite these successes, there have been some failures. Unfortunately the biggest of which has been beans. This is surprising considering how well they did last year. At present they are particularly suffering from two afflictions: 1) root rot, and 2) bean leaf beetles:

These little bastards chew countless holes in the bean leaves, eventually causing the plant to be stunted in growth and diminished in productivity. The only positive is that they don't actually chew on the developing beans. That pleasure is reserved for these asses:

Recent Pictures

2010-04-30T22:42:00.006-04:00

Tomatoes and Herbs

2010-03-29T09:09:00.003-04:00

Last year our tomatoes did horribly. The weather was incredibly wet which lead to a diseased downfall for nearly all of our twenty-five plants. The only ones that did anything were the San Marzanos and Sungolds.

This year, we're hedging our bets by planting sixty tomato plants. I figure if I can get one tomato per plant I'll be happy. We're also only planting them in raised beds, with 6-10 in containers. Also plan to provide better trellising than I did last year.

Another thing we're doing is starting virtually all our plants from seed. Over the winter we bought a florescent light that hangs in our spare closet under which we have been raising seedlings, initially kale, cabbage, spinach, and broccoli; and lately tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and basil.

I've been hardening off the tomato seedlings for the past few days and hope to put them into the ground later in the week when the high is supposed to be in the 80s.

The varieties we're doing this year:

Small-fruited: Sungold, Prize of the Trials
Paste: Amish Paste
Beefsteak: Italian Heirloom, Rose, Mortgage Lifter, German Pink (purchased 6 seedlings from SSE)
Non-Red Slicing: Green Zebra, Japanese Black Trifele, Cherokee Purple

We've also planted an herb garden in the front of the house which currently includes Greek oregano, Italian oregano, sage, dill, mint, lemon balm, cilantro, Italian parsley, German Thyme, onion chives, and Provence lavender.

Spring Planting

2010-03-11T08:58:00.005-05:00

We've started preparing and planting beds for the spring. There's still a lot more to do, but so far we've planted kale, cabbage, carrots, beets, onions, leeks, lettuce, spinach, collards, peas, potatoes, asparagus, and radishes. Plus, we've got garlic growing that was planted in the fall.

Garden overview

Potato beds

Root crop bed. We have such a hard time growing good carrots because our soil is so heavy. To fix this, I've built a extra-tall raised bed filled entirely with light soils. Its planted about 80% with carrots, 20% with beets. Hopefully this works, if not, I might give up on carrots.

Couple of rows planted, from right: leeks, brassicas, onions, brassicas, over-wintered kale.

Garlic that was planted in the fall. Plan to harvest in May or June.

Brassica bed: mostly cabbage, and some broccoli, interplanted with lettuce and spinach.

At this point, there's not a whole lot left to plant until the end of the month/early April when we start planting tomatoes, beans, peppers, etc. In the meantime, we're going to build some more raised beds.

Garden - Year 2

2010-03-03T09:14:00.006-05:00

We've started the garden back up for spring, despite the incredibly wet winter we've had, and we're going to try to get back into blogging about it. This is partly inspired by Brock's new blog, Dirty Fingernails.

First, here are various pictures from last year's growing season:

5/10/09

Potato flowers, 5/10/09

Hops. We made a great pale ale with them this past fall. 6/3/09

Harvest, 6/20/09

First cantaloupe, 6/24/09

Chickens, 7/11/09

First egg, 9/1/09

Planting the fall garden, 9/13/09

Fall garden, 11/20/09

Harvest, 11/20/09

Starting seedlings indoors for the spring, 1/24/10

Will post about spring planting shortly.

Locavore movement gains Pee Dee support | SCNow

2009-06-01T20:00:00.001-04:00

Locavore movement gains Pee Dee support | SCNow

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Chickens

2009-05-16T08:25:00.009-04:00

Emily and I have been planning to get chickens ever since we traveled up to Michigan and saw her parents' birds. Shortly after we moved, Emily's family was in town, and her dad and brother helped me construct a chicken coop. Although the design is simple, its original.

The folks who lived in our house before us had an old dog kennel behind the shed. I restrung parts of that fence, and then added chicken wire along the bottom. I haven't yet put netting over the top, but that is the plan.

We were having trouble finding good chicks. I was particularly interested in getting a good breed, possibly an heirloom. Most of what was available for us locally were commercial breeds, which I wasn't real excited about. Eventually we contacted our friend David, who raises free range chicken for a living, and he gave us the phone number for a guy not far from our house.

Well, I called him, and it turned out that he had chicks, at different ages, in two different breeds: Buckeye and Cornish. I don't really care for Cornishes, but I was intrigued by the Buckeyes. Apparently they're a critically endangered heirloom breed developed in the late 1890's in Ohio. They're the only American breed developed by a woman, Nettie Metcalf. Buckeyes are also on the Slow Food USA Ark of Taste for their endangered status. They were described to me as looking like athletic Rhode Island Reds. So I got four six-week old chicks. I wanted to get newborns, but the guy I got them from wasn't able to sex them at that age, and I really don't want a rooster. So, my only option if I wanted just hens was to get six week olds.

Also, the guy we got the chicks from is a member of the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy, a pretty cool organization that he told me is solely responsible for bringing Buckeyes back from extinction a few years ago. In addition to chickens, this guy also raises rare heirloom Guinea hogs, but I think we're a few years from getting a pig.

At first they were pretty timid, staying in or around the coop. But now, after two weeks, they've gotten pretty comfortable with their surroundings. Olive is also very intrigued by them. She'll sit for a long time just watching them. She doesn't bother them too much, but they've never met without a fence between them.

Pictures from our new garden

2009-04-13T20:15:00.012-04:00

As you may know, Emily and I recently moved outside of town and now have much more land at our disposal for planting a garden. Here are some pictures from what we have so far:

Garden from one end

Tomato patch, with more to come

Peppers with beans on the right

Corn

Chicken coop, built with the help of Alex and Terry Jackson

Compost bins

One of our many hop vines

Orange blossoms

Blueberries

Tiny peaches from one of our two peach trees

Tiny pears

Florence Morning News Article

2009-02-06T09:30:00.001-05:00

The Aftermath

2008-11-01T08:50:00.003-04:00

The week following the food project was probably the week that Mike and I fought the most about the project. At the time, neither of us really knew what the others' post-project plans were. We both knew that the experience had changed and educated us and that we were each going to continue eating local food to some degree....but that degree was unknown.

We should have had a formal debriefing on our exit strategy but we didn't; and our lives are busy, so that discussion fell off the to-do list pretty fast.

And so, on the first day after the project, I was craving an egg sandwich with tomatoes and orange juice for lunch so I went to Harris Teeter and just bought what I needed. Everything I needed was there...all in one store...already collected, prepared and packaged.

My thinking: I knew that we didn't have eggs at home, and that if I wanted local eggs I would have to 1) either wait until the weekend to go to the Ovis Hill farmers market or 2) drive out to the Lucas Street farmer's market where they may or may not have eggs, depending on who was there that day. And we didn't have bread for my sandwich, which I would have to make personally if I wanted local bread (the process takes 4-6 hours). I knew that we didn't have tomatoes at home either. And orange juice...no way.

So I indulged.

On the one hand, it was a very freeing experience; one that I had been looking forward to....just the simple experience of craving a particular food and having the freedom to walk into a store and buy the needed ingredients right then and there. It's the plague of convenience. We don't even realize how thankful we should be for that luxury. What you want, when you want it, no hassle.

On the other hand, I felt guilty for abandoning the project so quickly. We had worked so hard and I knew that if I just waited until the weekend I could have a completely local egg sandwich with tomatoes (no OJ though). And that if I waited, I'd be supporting Charlie Caldwell and his family rather than some giant unknown, mono-culture, mega-farm that probably doesn't pay its workers a fair days wage.

But the project was over and I had been waiting for a damn year to exercise my freedom of convenience, so I did.

And I caught damn hell for it when I came home. Mike flipped out and we both said terrible things about the others eating habits. Taken out of context the argument would probably sound pretty ridiculous but for us it is and was very serious and real. I lost my appetite and went back to work absolutely livid.

The Aftermath: things are calm now. We have a good mixture of luxury and local. Mike has his coffee and beer. I have yogurt and wine. We still haven't really had the exit strategy talk but recent events have sort of eliminated that need for the time being. I was able to buy a ton of local produce at McBee's Farm recently and Mike, on a fishing trip in the mountains with Matt a couple weekends ago, came home with a bushel of vine ripened tomatoes that they picked. So we have been making/eating totally local minestrone soups, rattetouille, homemade tomato sauce, and a variety of stir-frys. Once all that runs out, then hopefully we'll revisit the issue...and I'll keep you posted.

WE MADE IT!

2008-10-07T20:20:00.001-04:00

Today is the one year anniversary of the start of the Carolina Food Project. Officially, we are through. We celebrated by going out for Mexican food. No trip to the grocery store yet though, I'm trying to put that off as long as possible. Stay tuned for more.

Mike

Two More Days to Go

2008-10-05T17:59:00.007-04:00

Just a couple more days of the food project are left. It feels pretty weird actually. It is going to be strange to readjust to shopping in grocery stores. But I'm not going to go into all the what-does-this-project-mean discussion right now. I just wanted to post a couple photos from our trip to Michigan this past September when we went for Dykehouse's wedding (which was beautiful I might add).

During our trip back home, Mike and I made dinner for my folks and in the spirit of the project we tried to make as much of it local as possible. So we went to the local farmers market, which was phenomenal, and did a little shopping.

Food Challenge Failure

2008-09-25T13:35:00.002-04:00

If anyone can remember back several months, and posts, ago I was talking a lot of shit about winning a local food challenge. Well, I didn't win....but it isn't my fault.

I actually kept meticulous notes of everything that I ate and made sure that I ate the localist of local, the organicist of organic, and the seasonalist of seasonal. I'm not sure what other point values other competitors were racking up, but I have to say that my point tally wasn't too shabby. Also...just want to mention here that this was all taking place several weeks pre-bar exam.

And then my computer crashed. Hard core crashed. And although this was a terrible defeat as far as the local food challenge, it was a crushing and devastating loss for my bar exam preparation. All my...everything was on that computer.

So, needless to say, I submitted nothing to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. And some other schmuck won...actually he/she is probably really awesome and well deserving but I'm bitter and miss my computer.

10 Week Review

2008-09-21T13:10:00.007-04:00

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 sauce

The other thing that we have been eating a great deal lately is apples. Labor Day weekend in Hendersonville, N.C., in western North Carolina, is Apple Festival. We were up there that weekend, and Emily, along with Jill and Alex, went to an orchard and picked a half bushel of Honey Crisp and Gala apples for us. For those that don't know, a half bushel is a little over 20 pounds of apples. So, for the past three weeks, we've been each eating at least one apple a day (there have been many days when I've eaten an apple with every meal). And amazingly, we're almost done with the bag . . . there's probably only about 15 or 20 left.

GARDEN:

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 garden

So 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.

A Challege!

2008-07-01T19:40:00.003-04:00

It recently came to my attention (thanks Jennie) that the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association is hosting a local eatting challenge as part of their initiative to promote local foods.

Basically the deal is: eat locally for one week. That's right folks. Our time to shine has come. This is what it all comes down to. The chips are on the table my friends and we are ready to play. Mike and I have been training for this challenge for eight months now and you know what...I think that we are ready to kick some serious local eating asses.

Look out seasonal peaches and corn because come July 7th you'll be in my belly!

Tomato Tasting

2008-07-01T15:28:00.004-04:00

Our spring garden has reached, if not passed, its summer peak and we are (Mike is) now beginning to think about a fall crop. Many of the veggies have already been harvested and the plants pulled up. We have eating most of the potatos and all of the peas. Our onions have all been pulled. The carrots and beets are still in the ground but don't seem to be getting much larger, which seems to be the case will all the plants that are still in the ground...they seem to have just given up.

The tomato plants, however, are looking glorious! They are totally the divas of the garden right now, it's awesome. Their bright fruits and tall plants showup everything else in the plot. All of them are significantly taller than me and some of the tomatos are so overextended that they are toppling down on eachother. They make the cucumbers and beans look pretty pathetic.

The other day we Mike and I did a taste test. The photo above pictures 6 of our 7 tomato varieties. Here are the results (going clockwise from the top):

Manitoba, hybrid:

Emily (A-) pretty basic tomato, good slicer
Mike (A-) sweet and tangy

Sungold, hybrid:

Emily (A++++) tangy, juicy, full bodies flavor, very summery, most delicous tomato ever
Mike (C) too tart

Amish Paste, heirloom:

Emily (A) meaty, well balanced
Mike (A-) sweet, meaty, good for cooking and slicing

Yellow Pear, heirloom:

Emily (C-) too sweet, flavorless
Mike (B+) sweet, mild flavor, very good

Cherokee Purple, heirloom:

Emily (B+) hearty, earthy, full bodied tomoto, good slicer
Mike (A-) delicious, hearty, there is some flavor in it that I can't put my damn finger on

Speckeled Roman, heirloom:

Emily (C-) absolutely beautiful fruit, lacks flavor, skin is crazy thick
Mike (B) might be good for cooking with, not many seeds, meaty, mild, thick skin

Our Brandywine, heirloom, tomato wasn't ripe yet when we did the testing. If it had though, it might have won for best flavor (but not over the sungold).

Back Home

2008-06-29T08:49:00.008-04:00

As Emily mentioned, I was away on vacation last week with my family in Montana and Washington state. It was a great trip, with beautiful weather and gorgeous scenery.

In the context of our local eating my trip out west provided two great benefits. If you will recall, the rules for the Carolina Food Project allow us, when we are traveling, to bring home local food from the place we are visiting. Two interesting things that I was able to bring back were Washington wine and Montana morel mushrooms.

I visited one of my old roommates from law school, Brock Howell, who grew up in Prosser, Washington, in the heart of Washington's wine country. I was only there for about a day and a half, but in that time we were able to go to over 16 different wineries and tasting rooms. It was great, the wine was delicious, and I came home with 20 bottles of wine (to the frustration of United Airlines).

(Brock at Bunnell Family Cellers - great Syrah)

After spending the weekend in Washington, I drove to Whitefish, Montana to spend the week with my family in Glacier National Park. That was great. But, what was really cool is that it was morel mushroom season. Morels thrive in areas that have been recently burned. Last year, the Flathead National Forest, which surrounds parts of Glacier, suffered massive forest fires. The silver lining for those fires is that much of that burned area is inundated with morel mushrooms. We just so happened to read an article about mushrooms and the burning and such, and also that spring is when they are in season. We learned that the forest service allows individuals to pick up to 5 gallons per person per day so long as they get a free permit. Well, we went and got permits and maps, drove out to one of the burned forests, and sure enough there were tons of morel mushrooms. We picked until we got bored and ended up with over a shoe box full.

After eating out almost every meal for over a week, I was eager to get back to home cooked local meals. So, needless to say, when I got back, Emily and I drank wine and ate morels for a full week. It was great.

Conundrum

2008-06-13T16:37:00.002-04:00

So....Mike is out of town for 9 days and I am really torn as to how to handle my eating plan. Do I try to stick to the local diet that we made a pledge to uphold at home? Or, do I go ahead and buy orange juice and avocados (no need to purchase Milano Cookies....a very generous woman recently donated some to the house)?

On the one hand, I know that the "right" thing to do is to eat locally and now that it is summer most vegetables are readily available I can probably cook up some pretty good meals. But on the other hand, Mike is on vacation for 9 days drinking great wines in Washington and hiking through Glacier Mountain Nation Park, and I am at home working and studying for the South Caorlina bar. The situation doesn't really make me want to relish in diet restrictions.

There is a happy medium here. I could make the effort to cook and shop for local food AND suppliment my meals with those items that I miss the most. But that still seems like cheating to me.

Any ideas?

Harvests from the Garden

2008-06-02T08:18:00.003-04:00

Lettuces, nasturtium, some string beans, a tiny radish, herbs, and a tomato.

Yukon Gold & fingerling potatoes with some tiny onions

Totally Local & Yogurt Facts

2008-05-27T21:11:00.002-04:00

Mike made a meal tonight that was completely local and most of it was grown right in our backyard. We has salad and some sort of tomato, potato, okra stuff. Very good.

On a somewhat unrelated note, Mike was out of town this weekend (Congrats Matt!) so I ate very non-locally. I guess it was cheating but I just like to think of those weekends (when he is out of town) as vacation weekends for me too. It was sort of bizarre to be back in a grocery store again and even weirder to shop without restrictions. I almost didn't know what to do. I'm so used to refraining from even looking at most things in Piggyly Wiggly, with the except of toilet paper, shampoo and dish soap.

And guess what I bought: yogurt, avocados, Red Stripe, orange juice, and Milano cookies. Apparently these are the things that I miss the most. They were so delicious too. I forgot that yogurt is made in all those crazy flavors, like ameretto cheesecake. I love those people at Yoplait. I wish they would move to South Carolina.

Yoplait if you are out there...we have beautiful beaches, low taxes and Dolly Paton even opened a variety show in Myrtle Beach. Please move here and make me some local yogurt.

Interesting factoid: Yoplait is originally a French company. In 1964, over 100,000 French farmers merged their regional dairy co-operatives in order to sell their product on a national level. In 1965, two of these co-ops, "Yola" and "Coplait," decided to merge, becoming "Yoplait." In the United States, General Mills is the main franchisee of Yoplait and their cup design is skunk friendly (look it up its true).

Grilled Pizza & Good Company

2008-05-11T11:38:00.005-04:00

Recently, Mike & I have had the opportunity to cook locally for both friends & family. Due to the recent abundance of fresh vegetables and beautiful weather, we have been able to make grilled, flatbread, pizzas and enjoy our meals in the backyard. The picture above is from April, when Alex & Jill came through Florence.

Although pizza has a strong family history for me, thanks to my father's insistence that I learn the family recipe before heading off to college, Mike has been the dough-master for these grilled pizzas. We basically just set out the toppings and everyone gets to create their own pie. When Jill & Alex were here, we had homemade tomato sauce, homemade mozzarella & ricotta cheese, caramelized onions, garlic, cilantro, asparagus, and various spices.

Even though everyone begins with the same ingredients, each pizza ends up tasting pretty different. I think that the one below was Alex's. He lost the competition for best pizza of the night, it was really unfortunate because he really wanted to win. I of course won, but he shouldn't feel too bad because I had the home court advantage.

Last night Debbie & Jim came over for dinner and we had a similar pizza making set-up. It was a great night to eat outside. In addition to the great pies, we were also able to serve a locally grown salad, with greens, onions, carrots and mulberries.

Mulberries!

2008-05-07T13:37:00.005-04:00

Apparently the gods of local eating are smiling down upon us. Last weekend, we discovered that a tree in our backyard, which has a very prominent branch that intrudes into our deck, is a mulberry tree. We saw that the branches were completely covered with red raspberry-looking berries, and some had ripen to a deep purple. I looked it up in a tree book and saw that it was a mulberry (or I was at least 90% sure it was) and that it has edible berries. So, we took the plunge and tried one. It was delicious! The next day I picked about a pound of the sweet little berries. Since then, I 've been eating about three handfuls of them a day.

We did a little research and found out the Red Mulberries are native to the eastern U.S., whereas other varieties are from Asia. The tree is commonly called a blackberry tree for good reason.

We probably should do something worthwhile with the berries, like make wine or jam, but I suspect we'll just continue eating them by the handfuls until they're gone.

End of April Update

2008-04-29T21:37:00.003-04:00

Well, we're over half way done with the food project. We still are finally starting to eat a wider variety of ingredients, but until we get tomatoes and cucumbers I won't be happy. With that said, check out the garden:

As you can see, the garden has gotten a lot bigger. The potatoes in the top right corner and in the left center have gotten out of control. So far we've harvested a good amount of kale, spinach, and most of our radishes. You can also see the snap peas climbing in the back right.

Also, Emily wants me to post our garden guide:

Confession

2008-04-29T09:10:00.000-04:00

Mike was out of town this weekend...so I ate a Big Mac.

100% South Carolina Ravioli (or at least close enough)

2008-04-21T21:36:00.014-04:00

Emily and I made virtually all-local ravioli last week using: S.C. flour made from S.C. wheat; Florence County eggs; homemade ricotta cheese made from upstate milk; and tomato sauce made from all local ingredients, including S.C. tomatoes. See pictures below:

S.C. flour, from Adluh Mills in Columbia. We had a 25 pound bag of it, but its been gone for a while now.

Eggs from Timmonsville.

Homemade local sauce, with pasta roller. (Ignore the Krispy Kreme container in the background, we can explain . . . )

Add the flour and eggs, then blend until it forms a nice dough . . .

Knead the dough a little bit . . .
and then pass through the pasta roller, forming sheets . . .

then take the homemade ricotta . . .
and place on the sheets that have been put into the ravioli maker . . .

place a new sheet on top, and roll . . .

eventually the jagged edges of the press will seal the two sheets together. Cut away the excess dough and remove ravioli.

Thank God Its Spring

2008-04-16T19:04:00.011-04:00

We weren't regularly updating the blog because there had been so little to report. The winter pretty much sucked. Despite my realization that eating meat made local eating a lot easier, I still didn't eat much of it because it was such a hassle to cook separately from Mike. So it was pretty much collards, turnips and sweet potatoes; in addition to our frozen reserves, which are pretty much tapped now.

I wish that I had something else to report because I'd really like to promote local eating but I'm not going to lie, it is hard to do outside of the growing season. I think the key is buying local when you can. That is probably what we'll do after this thing is over.

But it is spring now and things are good. Our garden is growing beautifully. The farmers markets are almost in full swing and Mike and I eating really well again. And it is only going to get better. Once tomatoes are available locally we probably won't even notice that we are restricted to eating locally...except that everything will taste more delicious.

Ovis Hill carries asparagus and spinach now, which is fucking great. I was so excited when I saw all the asparagus that they had at the Saturday market I almost peed my pants. There was this lady standing next to me while I was drooling over all the perfect little green stalks thinking about how good they would be on some truffled egg toast. She was eyeing them too and I had this terrible internal dilemma...do I save her some? There were six bundles and I wanted them all. Plus, I knew that she could probably just pop by Piggly Wiggly and get some other damn asparagus if she really wanted it that bad. But I also didn't want to be a dick about it. Farmer's markets are about community, good will, peace on earth and all that shit.

So I saved her one bundle. Does that make me a bad person? I don't know? I probably could have been more generous. I know I could have. But hell, I'm hungry and I've been waiting for months to buy that asparagus. The worst thing is she thanked me for leaving one of the bunches. So she was abiding by the friendly farmers market code...and I wasn't. I'm sorry asparagus woman. I would probably make the same choice again if it came down to it but at least know that I feel guilt. Maybe when this fresh-vegetable-panic wears off I will be able to conduct myself in a more neighborly manner at the market.

In season local food: asparagus, spinach, onions, kale, beets, lettuce, strawberries, rape (type of green), radishes, cabbage, eggs (winter shortage has come to a halt).

End of March Update

2008-03-29T15:12:00.004-04:00

It's been a month since we've posted anything new. I guess its been busy around here. Emily is the predominant blogger of the house and she has been busy. In addition to the land trust she is also working on Stephen Wukela's mayoral campaign.

Despite our lack of communication, the Carolina Food Project is still underway. In a week from now, it'll be halfway over. I expect the next half to be a lot easier than the first half because the summer will bring fresh vegetables. Quite frankly, we are both sick of eating sweet potatoes, mushy canned squash, and turnips. Hell, I was sick of turnips after the first month.

The garden is going very well, and is probably the most exciting news that I've got to share. So far we've planted the following: Potatoes (fingerling & yukon gold), lettuce (green leaf & bibb), kale, radishes, carrots (Scarlet Nantes & Dragon, a red carrot), onions, garlic, beets, bell pepper, chives, cilantro, basil, nasturtiums, cucumbers, pinquito beans, string beans, snap peas, spinach, and tomatoes (yellow pear, cherokee purple, amish paste, speckled roman, and brandywine, with sungolds on the way). In addition, in containers we have, oregano, sage, strawberries, and okra (to be planted soon). See pictures below:

Kale with radishes in between, with onions to the right.

Spinach, with lettuce seedlings around it. Potatoes in the distant background.

Snap peas in lower right corner, with Pinquito beans behind them. Top left corner, in background, is garlic; and tomatoes in distant background. String beans have been planted in bare space to the left of the peas pinquitos.

Tomatoes

Strawberries.

Building a Raised Garden

2008-02-29T17:20:00.004-05:00

Last weekend, Feb. 23-24th, Mike and I built a garden in our backyard. The plan was to create a raised bed with about 16 square feet of space to grow vegetables and a few flower varieties. We are using Mel Bartholomew's "Square Foot Gardening" method, which is basically a system of planting and maintaining a productive garden efficiently within a small space. Mike bought supplies to enrich the soil, per Mr. Bartholomew's reccomendations, and a couple of seedlings to plant (kale, onions sets, spinach, and herbs) the day before so we had everything we needed.

It was a beautiful day, chilly but not too cold. Perfect for physcial labor. Olive was thrilled that we wanted to spent the morning outside with her and then she ignored us the entire time and hung out with her fence buddies. The photos below show our progress.

The site where we built the garden was covered by a pile of old bricks (you can see some of them off to the left in this picture) so we had to clear them before we could begin digging up the soil.

We (and I did actually help, Mike just didn't take many photos) dug about a foot down. The soil has a lot of sand in it and further down we ran into bright red and orange clay.

After digging out the soil, we used the conviniently abandoned bricks to create the border to our garden. You can see bags of soil enrichers in the background to the right.

To make our garden as productive as possible, we added soil "builders." In this photo Mike is pouring a 25 pound bag of vermiculite into th dirt. We also added peat moss, sand, cow-manure fertilizer and another type of organic fertilizer.

After mixing our soil so that its composition was fairly even, we created a grid of boxes, each one is about 2 square feet. We will grow varying amounts of vegetables in the squares depending on how much space each plant needs. The board in the middle of the garden is to walk on so that we don't compress the soil too much. Plants like light, loose soil.

These were the first vegetables to be planted. The box on the left contains white onions and the box onthe right contains kale. The box below the kale now contains spinach seedlings, lettuce seeds (several varieties) and there are radish seeds planted between the kale as well.

Four days after planting we experienced a little dip in temperatures in South Carolina. It got below freezing two nights in a row so Mike covered the plants with a blanket. Today it warmed up quite a bit and the weekend looks like it will be nice and hot so I think that we are going to plant a couple more things tomorrow, probably the herbs.

House Guest

2008-02-15T14:30:00.007-05:00

This past weekend Mike and I hosted our first house guest, my exceptionally handsome and talented brother, Alex. He drove down from Ashville, NC to stay with us in Florence and attend the Sierra Club Film Festival that I had been helping organize.

Before Alex arrived there was some debate about what exactly we were going to feed him when he came. Do we go out? Do we eat in? I figured we would probably go out to eat on Saturday night since the Film Festival would go until late and I would want to unwind and relax with a beer and let someone else deal with cooking up my dinner. And then eat at home for breakfast and showcase a couple of our favorite locavore menu items. But by the time the Festival got rolling and Alex arrived, Mike and I hadn't really decided what we were going to do.

Dinner ended up being easy because, like I had expected, we were all pretty tired and going out for nachos and beer was a simple decision. We even cracked a couple of our home-brews when we got back to the house and Alex shared a couple of delicious stout that he had made as well. It was good. Darts and beer. Even Olive was happy.

The problem arose when we got up in the morning. Thank god Alex is a sleeper because I was worried he would wake up and find Mike and I arguing about what to feed him...and then he'd feel like we were being put out by his presence...and then he'd feel bad...and leave thinking that we hadn't welcomed him...and it would be terrible...and maybe he would never come back. Or maybe I just worry too much and he wouldn't have cared.

Either way, Mike really wanted to go out for pancakes and I really wanted to cook breakfast. And Mike wasn't being irrational. We've had a lot of trouble getting eggs lately and we had just run out of bread at the time...both of which pretty much make up the bulk of our breakfast ingredients. And we only had one tea bag left. So the pickings were looking really slim. But I really wanted Alex to be be part of the project. He's totally into that sort of stuff, an avid environmentalist. Plus, what fun was out project if we couldn't share it. These were the sort of arguments that went back and forth between Mike and I that morning.

Well I won and breakfast was spectacular. We had cheesy grits, hoe-cakes with jam, pumpkin bread, bacon, and sausage fried up with onions and sweet potatoes. I'm making a terrible face in that photo. I have no idea why.

Also, Mike and I took this cute video of Olive today. She likes busting leaf piles. The video doesn't do her silly behavior justice but it is adorable just the same.

Tomato Woes

2008-02-10T08:48:00.000-05:00

Emily and I have been growing a tomato plant in our sunroom since early December. The plant was doing very well, with several small fruits and numerous flowers. However, starting in early January I noticed tiny whiteflies on the underside of the leaves. I did some research and learned that these pests suck on the leaves to extract the sap. They're not life threatening, but they do leave behind a secretion, referred to as honey dew, that has tendency to get moldy and harm the leaf, thereby affecting the entire plant. See below for a picture of these bugs.

(Whiteflies on a tomato leaf)

(Leaf damage at the hands of the whiteflies)

Around this same time, we were having a problem with mealy bugs on our lemon tree (a different story for another time). I called the orchard that we bought our tree from and they told me to spray it will a solution of 1/3 Dawn dish detergent and 2/3 water. He also mentioned that this solution would work on all of our plants in the battle against pests. So, I mixed some up and the sprayed the hell out the lemon tree and regrettably, my tomato plant. Well, less than a week went by before the tomato began showing signs of stress. The leaves were curling up and some were even dying. The damage I caused the plant was far worse than anything the whiteflies were doing.

In an effort save the plant, I carefully washed the detergent off of every leaf, and I pruned some of the larger leaves that were particularly damaged.

(Washing the leaves)

Fortunately, my efforts appeared to have saved our beloved tomato plant. But, the combination of being poisoned, plus losing a lot of key larger leaves, caused all growth t0 completely halt for at least a month. The fruits that had formed stayed the exact same size for weeks. We even had a number of small BB-sized tomatoes that refused to grow for a long period of time while the plant was recovering. But now, I am glad to announce that the wait is over. Within the past week the fruits have started growing again and the larger ones appear to be commencing the ripening process. At this point we have about 5 larger tomatoes, 11 in the blueberry-grape range, plus we even have some new buds. Believe me, this is very exciting.

(The fruit resumes development)

(New flowers)

In other plant news: 1) we have 5 new orange blossoms that hopefully will be pollinated and become fruit, joining the two little oranges we have that are very slowly developing; 2) our potato is doing great, we harvested our first new potato the other day and upon a little investigatory digging I discovered some others; and 3) we have seven or eight of the hottest jalapeños ever strung up and drying.

Ovis Hill Farmers Market

2008-02-08T12:05:00.001-05:00

Our main source of local food is the Saturday Farmers Market located just outside Naturally Outdoors on Palmetto Street. Ovis Hill Farms, Dickson Farms, Aroma Underground (coffee, not local), and a family of bakers (whose bread looks delicious but unfortunately uses Montana wheat) sets up from 10-12 every Saturday to sell their goods. A lot of the dairy you have to pre-order, particularly the eggs, but for the meat and veggies you just have to show up.

I've been buying the ground beef because it is the easiest to cook without making a big production, but they have all sorts of beef cuts, lamb and chicken for sale. Several weeks ago Charlie, Mr. Ovis Hill, had locally grown hydroponic tomatoes, which was really exciting for us. But last week Mike and I not only forgot to pre-order our eggs...but there were also no vegetables (except sweet potatoes) so we weren't able to bring any food home.

Mike and I try to make it out there every week and if we aren't able to go to the Farmers Market, sometimes we'll take a drive out to Ovis Hill's actual farm (pictured below) to buy eggs and watch the sheep. Last week Mike and I "herded" the sheep back to the farm with our car because they were all over the road. It was my first time as a herder and I have to say...I enjoyed it quite a bit. After bringing the sheep up the drive a couple lazy sheep dogs sort of moseyed over to the flock and I informed them that they could probably take it from there. It was really funny, for me mostly. Mike didn't find it very funny. But I assure you it was.

Apparently the week before that there had been a rash of baby lambs born so Mike and I got to watch them run around for a while. Unfortunately it was dark by the time we got out to the farm so the only photo that turned out was the one above, none of the lambs pictures were any good. Did you know that they sounds sort of like human babies? It's so weird.

New Family Member

2008-02-03T17:29:00.000-05:00

Yesterday (Saturday) Mike and I added a new member to our family. Her name is Olive. She's 10 weeks old and I am madly in love with her. Olive is a Spaniel / Labrador mix. We got her from a wonderful place in Florence called Home Away From Home that rescues dogs and puppies. Apparently Olive and her siblings were found on the side of the highway, abandoned. She’s really timid right now but slowly Olive is getting used to our house. There is a place in Darlington, Oaklyn Plantation, that makes dog food so after Olive is grown and doesn’t need to eat puppy food anymore, maybe she will be a Carolina Food Project participant too.

Meatloaf Changed My Life

2008-01-24T19:44:00.000-05:00

Being a Vegetarian-Locavore is really freaking hard. I really feel for Mike. There are so few options for local veggies that making an exciting meal is a special gift from heaven that comes very infrequently and usually it requires a bit of forced enthusiasm. I stuck it out, side-by-side with Mike, and didn't cook meat for quite a while. An occasional breakfast sausage here and there, but nothing to write home about. Then last week I made some rosemary-wine meatloaf with beef from Ovis Hill and I decided that a meaty life is the life for me.

I know that you are thinking that meatloaf is a pretty gross meal and probably not a very inspiring one either. But I happened to love meatloaf. And cold leftover meatloaf makes a mean sandwich. I tried to do a little meatloaf research to pull up some fun factoids about the dish, but all I came up with was information about how people used to add grains to it during the Great Depression to stretch the meat and that Wikipedia considers it an Italian dish (a close cousin to the meatball). Nothing groundbreaking, although I don't know how many Italians would claim a dish that is typically slathered in ketchup.

I did, however, learn a bunch of awesome stuff about the American, rock star Meat Loaf. For example, did you know that he stayed on the best-seller charts for over 9 years. And that when he was drafted during college he tried to fail the Army physical by gaining copious amounts of weight in a very short time span. Meat Loaf was also in the 1997 film Spice World as the Spice Girl's busdriver. His first band was called Meat Loaf Soul.

The most interesting tidbit that I found on Meat Loaf, however, was the fact that he used to be a vegetarian. I wonder if it was his namesake that brought him around too.

Side Note

2008-01-22T19:03:00.000-05:00

Even though this has nothing whatsoever to do with food, I just created a new website to post my art. Click here and check it out.

Cornbread Cuisine

2008-01-17T09:53:00.000-05:00

So my third attempt at making Pugliese bread was a flop again. I haven't thrown the dough out yet because I am still hoping that it will miraculously begin rising and become the bread that it was made to be. Plus, I've been babying the dough for three days now, as per the directions, and it just seems like a shame to let all that time go to waste. I've concluded that this bread's failure is not my fault and it never will be. Due to the restrictions of our local diet I have no durum flour, which is one of the key ingredients in this bread. I was substituting either white or spelt flour and apparently that just doesn't cut it.

This week has been a great eating week. Monday night Mike and I made a Tex-Mex casserole topped with cornbread, that was rightfully named "The Delicious Dish." The casserole was inspired and named by Gillian, who is an excellent vegetarian cook and an avid casserole maker. We even got to open a jar of our canned corn to add to the casserole filling, which was awesome...like a party in a jar. I never in my life thought that I'd get excited for canned corn...and I can't tell if it is a good thing or a bad thing. The leftover cornbread that was not used to top the casserole made excellent breakfast food as well.

Last night Mike made eggplant parmesan and spaghetti (with meat sauce for me). Unfortunately, the eggplant was not local. Mike and I were actually tricked into purchasing it by Earth Fare, who listed it as a local food item, when it was in fact from Pennsylvania (we googled the farm name when we got home).

The most exciting local food that we've had this week, in my opinion, has been tomatoes, thanks to Ovis Hill's hydroponic winter farming. I've been eating egg sandwiches with tomato for lunch every day and they are so damn delicious it almost hurts.

Meal Staples: Any Ideas?

2008-01-14T09:14:00.000-05:00

I am just now sitting down with my first cup of tea for the day. If you haven't tasted American Classic Tea from the Charleston Plantation yet then I highly recommend doing so. It is one of our nation's only working tea plantations (I think Oregon and Hawaii might grow tea as well) and our only source of morning caffeine. It might be hard to find outside of South Carolina, I don't know. I'd be curious to see how widely it is distributed. I know that several years ago the local owners were bought out by Biglow Tea and they are a pretty large company so maybe it is available nationwide now. Look out for it next time you're shopping. The picture above isn't exactly what the box looks like, they took the "only tea grown in America" bit out, but they are basically the same.

This morning I have two CFP tasks. The first is to pick out and start baking a couple loaves of bread. Now that we have a food processor I am going to go back to the Bread Bible recipe book that Mike got me for Christmas and try my hand at another hearth bread, the most difficult bread variety to make. The one on the cover is called a Pugliese and it is really freaking hard to make...and not very fun to fail at either. Just the dough starter (or "biga") alone takes 6 hours minimum to make properly. But today is a new day and I'm feeling pretty optomistic, maybe even a little dangerous so I might just try my hand at it again. I know...it's crazy...but you can't stop me.

My second task this morning is to come up with a "menu" of food options that Mike and I have so that when 5:30 rolls around we have a dinner plan. Lately it has been a lot of "what do you want to do for dinner........I don't know........what do we have........pumpkin soup and some collards....hmmm.....wanna go out for Vietnamese?" But the nights that we have a plan are usually pretty enjoyable. The problem is that we aren't as creative as we could/should be. So I wanted to document the staple dinner items that we can choose from and solicit ideas from our readers. My mom always used to map out a tentative meal plan for the week and I remember sitting down with her to help think up the list of family meal staples. So that is what I am going to do here.....

Our Winter Menu Consists Of The Following Options:

Winter Pot Pie
Garlic and Greens Frittata
Mashed Sweet Potatoes with a Pecan Topping
Collards (any style)
Brats (for me) and Beer
Egg Sandwiches (now with hydroponic tomatoes)
Pizza (on special occasions)
Pasta with Pecan Pesto and Winter Greens
Eggplant Parmesan (new item)
Sweet Potato Ravioli
Stir Fry or Fried Rice with Collards and Turnips
Soup (mostly pumpkin) and Artisan Bread

What are your family's dinner staples?

Winter Newsletter

2008-01-07T09:57:00.001-05:00

This past Sunday I didn't have a lot to do so I started fiddling around with a word program that has newsletter templates. Just for fun I started making a newsletter for the Carolina Food Project, which I actually sort of like now. So if anyone is interested, I'd be happy to send it to you if you provide me with your address (email me at jacks404@gmail.com). The newsletter has the recipe for the Winter Pot Pie, pictured below.

Post-Holiday

2008-01-04T15:35:00.000-05:00

It's been a really long time since I lasted posted and I've been getting pangs of blog guilt these past couple weeks. But, now that all the holiday hoopla has slowed down it's nice to have a moment to catch up on all the things that I have been neglecting, this blog being one of them. Plus, the clock just struck 4 and my happy hour has begun making this the perfect time to focus my attention on more fun things like food and cosmopolitans, instead of loan deferment and medicaid (thank god).

Christmas was both good and bad for the food project. It was good because both Mike and I (mostly me) received gifts of various food/drinks that we can't get locally, which was pretty exciting. I can say with certainty now that I never really gave soy sauce or cranberry juice the proper respect that they deserve. But I vow to do so in the future...for many things. Joni Mitchell doesn't lie.

Christmas was bad, however, because it was sort of hard to be the local eater of the family. As much as people think that this project is interesting and fun, they aren't really into making accommodations for locavores. And understandably so. Having a vegetarian in the family is a pain in the ass enough (I'm sure Mike could speak to this issue better than I can) but having someone with food requirements that extend far beyond cutting out just meat would be almost impossible. Honestly, that's why this is a project, it took us quite a while to locate the source of local food around here. Plus, Christmas, being in the dead of winter, isn't exactly a time of agricultural abundance, even in southern states. So, over my vacation I sort of internally struggled with the knee jerk reaction to refuse or get on my high horse about non-local food. In a way it was good though, be it made me appreciate how hard Mike and I are working and....it was also really fun to cook with all sorts of exotic ingredients (one night my dad and did indian/spanish tapas for the family...fucking amazing).

The holidays also brought on a slew of health issues for both Mike and I. Actually, the day that I left for Michigan, Debbie had to drive me to the airport because Mike was holed up in our house with a wicked fever and a big bottle of newly prescribed antibiotics. Health wasn't exactly the first thing on my mind when we started this project. In fact, the few times that I did think about it I thought...man I'm going to be so healthy eating all this local food. Unfortunately, the winter has been about very few options and a lot of recipe creativity. The reality is that you don't get all the nutrient's your body normally does when your diet is restricted. I started getting debilitating headaches that lasted the entire day. At first weekly and then daily. Mike did some online research and one of the possible causes we came up with was anemia...so he took me out for shellfish (good guy). Although the jury is still out on my headaches, I think the fact that they stopped the day that I started taking a multivitamin is pretty telling. And in the end, even if balanced nutrition has nothing to do with it, I will still be a strong advocate for eating a bit of everything on the food pyramid (so kids EAT YOUR GREEN VEGGIES!).

Another development, a very wonderful development, that the New Year brought us is the blossoming and production of our indoor garden. Mike's beloved Manitoba Tomato plant has produced fruit and out orange tree is soon on its way.

Unfortunately Mike has also been battling pest infestations, which blows my mind since the plants are inside, but whatever. Our lemon tree got mealy bugs and the tomato was covered in white flies (pictured below), both of which are in the process of being destroyed (the bugs, not the plants) which is good. Mike's devotion to his plants is beautiful and sometimes ridiculous. He has gotten into the habit of inducing pollination for his tomato (with his electric toothbrush) during his lunch hour because it is the most productive sexual period of the plant's day.

I also got a food processor for Christmas from my folks, probably the most exciting to happen to anyone ever. I can almost say with certainly that no one got a present this year that they loved more than I love my food processor. My food processor (14 cup Cuisinart Power Prep Plus) has given me the power to make beautiful bread. I almost feel like a super hero (...I was just imagining what a super hero bread lady would look like and all I could imagine was myself covered in flour with a big fat ass, ha). Even Helicopter turned bright green when I showed him the artisan loaves that I made yesterday. It is a Christmas miracle. It really is.

Word of the Year: Locavore!

2007-12-18T09:22:00.000-05:00

The folks over at New Oxford American Dictionary recently announced that the 2007 Word of the Year is locavore!

The following commentary is taken from the Oxford University Press blog that announced the news on November 12th...

The past year saw the popularization of a trend in using locally grown ingredients, taking advantage of seasonally available foodstuffs that can be bought and prepared without the need for extra preservatives.

The “locavore” movement encourages consumers to buy from farmers’ markets or even to grow or pick their own food, arguing that fresh, local products are more nutritious and taste better. Locavores also shun supermarket offerings as an environmentally friendly measure, since shipping food over long distances often requires more fuel for transportation.

“The word ‘locavore’ shows how food-lovers can enjoy what they eat while still appreciating the impact they have on the environment,” said Ben Zimmer, editor for American dictionaries at Oxford University Press. “It’s significant in that it brings together eating and ecology in a new way.”

"Locavore"was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” However it’s spelled, it’s a word to watch.

Monotony

2007-12-12T16:20:00.000-05:00

Imagine having cabbage, turnips, pumpkins, onions, garlic, beans, rice, collards (and other winter greens), broccoli (sometimes), sweet potatoes, cheese, butter, eggs, milk, various types of meat, tea, flour, cornmeal, and pickled stuff in your kitchen.

Imagine what you might make for dinner one night with those ingredients.

Imagine trying to make a weeks worth of meals with only those ingredients.

Now imagine trying to do this for 3-4 months.

Fresh food is officially scarce in South Carolina. All the tomatoes are gone. Apples, onions, squash, lettuce, potatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, peppers, okra, and peaches are all done for the season (and most have been done for some time now). Plus, there are all the wonderful fruits and veggies that we couldn't eat under the rules of our project even if they were in season, like avocados, pineapples, asparagus, oranges....I don't really want to list anymore because it is making me hungry and frustrated.

Mike and I eat toast for breakfast, soup and eggs for lunch and desperately try to think of some exciting variation of our supplies for dinner. Cooking and eating have not been particularly exciting events for us these past few weeks. In fact, we've been going out to eat quite a bit more that we normally do...and Mike would never admit this...but I know that it is entirely due to the monotony of our diet. There is always an excuse though: too tired to cook, settled my first case, rats in the house, I really want a martini, we ran out of butter, whatever...it all works for me. I'm trying to be strong. I really am.

Bread Crisis is Over

2007-12-11T11:04:00.000-05:00

Finally!

Homemade Cheese

2007-12-11T10:35:00.000-05:00

Several weeks ago Mike got me a cheese-making kit and it wasn't until just this past weekend that we had the chance to try it out. The process was really easy and it took less than an hour from start to finish. We made mozzarella so the cheese was ready to eat immediately after it was made, which was pretty exciting. Mike and I even did a taste test with some Happy Cow Mozzarella (that is made from the same milk that we used) and both of us agreed that our cheese was superior (of course). I was a little disappointed in the amount of mozzarella that we got from an entire gallon of milk but it isn't anything that will stop me from making cheese again. In fact, now that I've seen how easy it is, I'd really like to try a more difficult cheese, something that has to age for a while, like cheddar.

Interesting Cheese Fact: Cheddar cheese is orange because it is dyed orange. Naturally cheddar is actually a white cheese that takes on the taste and sometimes the hue of the cow's diet. The reason cheddar has been traditionally dyed orange is because folks from Cheddar, England used to be famous for their orange-tinted cheese, which was slightly orange because the English cows had a diet high in beta-carotine. The color and unique taste of the cheese allowed local vendors to charge more for their product. Cheesemakers from other areas of England got wise and started dying their cheese orange and cashing in on the orange cheese market. The rest is history.

We documented our first cheese-making experience, below are the photos. Our first batch of mozzarella is already gone. This week we are going to make our second batch and use it exclusively for making pizza. Hopefully our cheese melts well too.

Cooking Photos

2007-12-02T15:01:00.000-05:00

The other day I was looking through the photos that I have on my computer and I noticed that there were very few taken of cooking. I found quite a few pictures of dinner tables set with elaborate meals and batches of cookies already baked, just none with the actual making of those foods.

It really sort of bummed me out because a great deal of my fondest memories take place in a kitchen with friends and family. Making pizza is sort of an event in my house but I couldn't find a single photograph of my dad rolling dough. My mom picks raspberries every summer and makes outrageously delicious jam but I don't have a single picture of the process. Our project has really gotten me into the habit of photographing food, but even then I usually just get the final product.

Making food is such a huge part of our lives. It is a way to share time, preserve generations of family recipes, learn about food, experiment. I'm going to post the photos that I did find...and make an effort to take more cooking pictures in the future.

Beer Making

2007-12-02T12:04:00.000-05:00

Emily has been trying to get me to blog about beer making for a while now, so here it is. We decided that beer we brewed ourselves would be acceptable under our rules despite the fact that the ingredients used are not from the Carolinas for three reasons: 1) the energy saved by reusing bottles, eliminating shipping and packaging would more than offset the harm caused by using non-local ingredients (of which we're only talking about mid-west barley and west coast hops); 2) we use almost entirely organic grains, which most local commercial brewers don't even use; and 3) we simply wanted a source of alcohol that wasn't North Carolina wine, because although we've found a couple of NC wines we like, most aren't that good.

So far we've made two batches of beer, an IPA named Rough Man's Choice (the name comes from a game of Scategories that Emily's family played a long time ago; also being that the beer is 7% abv, it seemed appropriate), and an American Wheat beer for Emily called Bitches' Brew. The IPA is done and we are drinking it now, but the Wheat still needs to be bottled. The IPA is very good, but certainly very hoppy and strong.

First we crushed the grains.

Then boiled the grains and the hops for about 90 minutes. After the flat, unfermented beer reaches room temperature we added the yeast (that we are actually culturing ourselves to optimize the localness of the beer). Once the yeast is added, or pitched, it is left to ferment for a week or two.

After the initial fermentation period, we transferred the beer to a secondary fermenter, a large glass carboy.

After is sits in there for another week or two, its time to bottle. At this point the beer is alcoholic, but flat. It carbonates in the bottle.

And then, after about 10 days in the bottle, it is finally ready to drink.

Bread Crisis - Please Help!

2007-11-29T17:05:00.000-05:00

For some reason I can't seem to bake a loaf of bread to save my life right now. I don't know what happened. Just weeks ago I was making beautiful bread, but yesterday I ruined two entire batches before getting one that was semi-edible. The only thing that changed was our running out of oil, but from what I've read online applesauce is a fine substitute. And now Mike is suggesting that he could maybe try his hand at bread making...and it is my damn job, not his...so please help me.

Michigan Goodies

2007-11-28T16:27:00.000-05:00

Being in Michigan with the family was brilliant. I always love going home, so much good food and company and lounging around. Both Mike and I got in our fair share of board game winning (and sore losing) as well, which made for a very…um…spirited holiday. It also reminded me of the numerous reasons why I avoid playing Risk like the plague. It snowed most of the time we were there which made everything very winter holidayish.

There were three food highlights of the trip...

The first and most exciting was my family’s new flock of chickens. My dad has been dying to get some sort of farm animal for years. At first he wanted alpacas. I don’t think that his desire for them ever stemmed from any craving for wool or whatever products alpacas might yield. It was just to have some silly looking creatures in the yard to spend time with. But just wanting alpacas because you want them was not a good enough reason, so that idea didn’t fly. Then several years ago he decided on chickens. I used to call home and my mom would give me updates on their chicken discussion. It went back and forth for a long time. She would raise concerns about bird flu. He would produce reports on chicken sanitation and disease control.

Well, this year they decided to take the plunge. In early spring they ordered a mixed package baby chicks and my dad completed construction on the coop. Their flock now consists of about 16 bubble butted, gossipy hens and one very ridiculous Polish rooster. About five of the hens are laying right now, the rest will follow shortly. We spent a lot of thanksgiving eating fresh eggs and trying to catch the chickens to pet them. Mike was absolutely smitten with the red hens. He is already planning our flock and hen house in his brain.

The second food highlight was the local sparkling wine. About an hour south of my hometown, there is an area that sits directly on Lake Michigan called the Leelanau Peninsula. Its climate and geography lend themselves favorably to growing grapes, so the hillsides just off the coast are striped with grape vines. The wines produced here are mediocre for the most part, a lot like North Carolina. But there is a producer named L. Mawby (and M. Lawrence) who makes sparkling wines there and some of them are delicious. We brought a couple bottles home with us (local purchases) and drank several while we were at my folk’s house.

The third exciting food event was buying cherry products to bring home to South Carolina with us. Northern Michigan is known for its cherries. There is a huge cherry festival every summer. The biggest cherry pie in the world was baked near Traverse City. American Spoon Foods, a local gourmet food store, sells gobs of high end cherry products for crap loads of money all across the country. I think that I’ve even been cherry picking a couple times with my family. Anyhow, you get the point, lots of delicious cherries. So Mike and I bought a healthy supply of cherry stuff home with us to enjoy during our Vitamin C barren winter, including cherry juice that mixes very well with our new bottle of Grand Traverse Vodka. My parents also gave us 9 pounds of their bees' honey to bring home.

All told we flew back with: 3 bottles of wine, 3 bottles of sparkling wine, 1 bottle of Michigan vodka, 9 pounds of honey, 4 pounds of spelt flour, 1/2 gallon cherry juice, 2 pints of jam, 3 jars of cherries, 3 packages of dried blueberries, a jar a mustard, a jar of cherry butter, a jar of cherry preserves, a jar of pickled asparagus, and a package of pasta made from navy beans. We are pleased to announce that nothing broke on the flight home, although we did have to bring an additional bag back with us.

To the Great White North

2007-11-19T14:21:00.000-05:00

Tomorrow Mike and I are heading up to Michigan to celebrate thanksgiving (and my birthday, yah!) with my family. It will be the first time that we've left the house under Helicopter's supervision for more than 2 days. I think he can sense that we are leaving him because today when I was making paneer he kept staring out at me with his lonely little eyeballs, which is such a crock of shit because I tried giving him some fish buddies and he picked on them so badly that I had to take them back to the pet store. He's totally a loner, he won't miss us. Besides, he'll have Debbie checking in on him over the holiday's so he'll be just fine.

In preparation for our trip to the great white north, Mike and I have been trying to dedicate our meals to those items that might not make it through the holidays, namely: Nintendo turnips, milk, tomatoes, cabbage, apples, and leftovers. I made fried paneer this afternoon, which was actually pretty fun. I have never made cheese before, let alone fried cheese (very healthy stuff). Mike got me a cheese making kit for my birthday so this was good practice for when we attempt our first batch of mozzarella. I also made a batch of salsa and some more cabbage apple soup.

Last night I cooked up a batch of Nintendo Turnip Gratin (pictured left) in an attempt to use up one of the fifty nauseating turnips that we have sitting around our house. I look really happy in that photo because I hadn't tasted the pot of crap that I was holding yet. Mike didn't even like it...and he'll eat just about anything without complaint as long as its local. So I'm not going to post the recipe for that one. I do want to say, however, for the record that I do like turnips, the little sweet ones, just not the giant, bitter, Super Mario ones that we have a plethora of. We still have to figure out what we are going to do with them all. So...if anyone wants some turnips...

There are a couple of really good recipes that I recently discovered and would like to share. The first is a pumpkin pie recipe (pictured above) and the second is an improvised version of a Margarita, which Mike actually made up when we ran out of tequila (also pictured above).

Pumpkin Pie From Scratch

2 Cups of Pumpkin Puree***
1/4 Cup Milk
1 Cup Brown Sugar
1 Egg Yolk
1 Tbs Melted Butter
Vanilla & Cinnamon to Taste
1 and 1/2 Cup of Flour (crust)
1/4 tsp Salt (crust)
1/2 Cup Cold Butter (crust)
3-5 Tbs Cold Water (crust)

Pumpkin puree instructions are in a previous post.*** Preheat oven to 350. Mix all pie filling ingredients in a bowl and set aside. To make dough: mash butter, salt and flour together until clumpy. Then slowly add water until dough is workable. Roll out and set in pie tin. Fill crust with pumpkin mixture. Bake for about 40 min (mine baked for over an hour). Let cool the eat.

Bourbarita (aka Bourbon Margarita)

1 part Bourbon
1 part Margarita Mix
Cointreau to Taste

Make just like you would any other mixed drink. Serve nice and cold.

Cabbage Apple Soup

2007-11-13T10:18:00.000-05:00

This is a great fall recipe and its really easy to make. I'd serve it with spinach/walnut salad and a slice of crusty sourdough bread.

4 Cloves of garlic, chopped
Big chunk of butter (olive oil is a fine substitute if you’ve got it)
2-3 Plump Kielbasa, sliced (Mike's a veggie so I didn't do this, but you should)
½ Head of cabbage, chopped
4 Green apples, cored and sliced
1 ½ Quarts vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste

Sautee garlic in butter over med-high heat to bring out flavor, don’t burn the garlic or it will become bitter. Add in sausages and cook until browned. Lower heat to medium and add cabbage and apples, mix well. Let everything cook down for a while, stir often. Add stock once apples have substantially softened up and cabbage is very wilty. Let simmer for about 30 min. In a blender or food processor, puree soup mixture until smooth. Eat.

Seasonal Eating

2007-11-10T13:01:00.000-05:00

I am undeniably the weaker link in this project chain. I tend to dwell on those things that we cannot eat more than Mike does, if he does at all. Possibly I am more impatient. Maybe it is a matter of discipline. I don’t know. But if there is anyone in this household that is daydreaming of chocolate cake (Mike’s grandmother was kind enough to give one to us the other day) or French wine (Mike’s parents were also generous enough to bring one over to the house recently), it is going to be me. Although it is worth mentioning that Mike has eaten that chocolate cake for breakfast everyday this week since its arrival.

Despite my daydreaming, however, eating locally has focused my attention on those foods that are available. Local eating is seasonal eating, so what we consume on a day to day basis is entirely dependent upon the agricultural calendar. Eating food when it is in season is always something that I’ve…been aware of. Grocers carry more pumpkins in the fall and strawberries in the summer. I knew that. But I’ve never made more than a fleeting attempt to eat what was in season. It was always, “huh…look at all these delicious peaches, maybe they are in season, and they are on sale, I’ll buy some.” The groceries that I bought were usually dictated by the recipes that I wanted to make, regardless of what time of year it was.

Right now I’m reading Barbra Kingsolver’s book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, and in one of the first chapters she writes about seasonal eating. Apparently, the idea of eating out-of-season was cooked up in the early twentieth by a few very wealthy entrepreneurs who were throwing a party and thought it would be cool to serve dinner guests lettuce and artichokes. Shortly thereafter the market took hold and now food in our local grocery stores comes from places as far away as Peru or New Zealand. And that is currently the norm. Did you know that every food item in a typical U.S. mean has traveled an average of 1,500 miles to get to your plate?

Now, I am not writing this to be preachy by any means (remember I’m the one with the chocolate and wine cravings). I’m simply pointing it out because it means two things: 1) the road savvy produce that we purchase has been especially bred for indestructibility, not taste, so that it can travel long distances in boxcar without looking banged-up and 2) because of its long journey, that weary, yet perky looking, produce is no longer fresh, another flavor killer. So if eating local doesn’t appeal to your sense of adventure, then know that it will appeal to your sense of taste.

Seasonal Meal: Grilled eggplant over sauted greens and pasta with homemade tomato sauce and baked sweet turnips.

Nintendo Turnips

2007-11-08T09:27:00.000-05:00

Mike has been driving over to Hartsville to sit in on various trials this entire week and yesterday when he got home he brought goodies back with him, and in our tiny universe of food…these goodies are like roller coaster caliber excitement.

Apparently there is a little roadside farmstand somewhere between Florence and Hartsville that is going gangbusters with cabbage, turnips and broccoli and they will sell them to you straight from the dirt. Mike got to pick out the greens he brought home right from the garden. How is that for fresh!

And even thought that is all well and good, it is not even the best damn part. The turnips that Mike bought are straight out of Super Mario Brothers. The picture below really doesn’t do them justice. Even though I know Mike bought them from a farmstand, I can’t help but picture him running through a digital forest, punching question-mark boxes that float in the air, and growing larger every time he collects a giant white turnip.

Last night I made a cabbage and turnip soup (with garlic, tomatoes and red wine) that is delicious. We ate it for lunch today…and now I feel ready to battle Bowser and all his minions.

Baking Bread

2007-11-05T09:52:00.000-05:00

2 cups of warm water, 2 packets of yeast, 1/3 cup of honey & 3 cups of barley flour.

Mix in about 4-5 cups of white flour and knead dough until soft and elastic. Let rise for about 45 min in loaf pans.

Bake at 350 until done (about 25-30 min).

Eat with homemade jam and peanut butter.

Making Saag

2007-11-05T08:30:00.000-05:00

Steam greens until wilted. Any type of hearty green will work, including: kale, mustard greens, collards, spinach, or swiss chard.

Chop up greens in a blender until they are a thick paste. We also added a jalapeno pepper to the mixutre.

Sautee garlic and onions over medium high heat. Add a couple teaspoons of curry powder and chili powder (to taste). Mix in greens paste and some chopped tomatoes (3-4). Let simmer. Then eat.

Slow Food & New Toys

2007-11-02T15:00:00.001-04:00

In the past couple weeks Mike and I have really set into the routine of cooking slow food. Since there is really no pre-made or pre-packaged food that fits the criteria of our project, we’ve been baking all our own bread, creating our own sauces, making our pasta from scratch, brewing our own beer, and pretty much taking the extra time to create everything in our diet that we used to be able to simply buy at the grocery store.

There are, however, certain culinary gadgets that have make cooking slow food a hell of a lot easier and less time consuming. When I started baking all our bread, I got myself a couple really nice loaf pans, mixing bowls and a cooling rack, which have made bread-making a much more pleasant experience. Mike has been the pasta maker of the household so for his birthday I got him a pasta roller and cutter. Before he had the roller, it would take him a good 45 min to get the pasta dough rolled flat enough and by the time he was done rolling he’d be all sweaty and tired. So the roller has been great.

Our Imperia pasta roller

We’ve also learned how to get the most out of everything that we have. For example, Mike and I have become excellent at recycling food. We use all of our vegetable scraps to make stock, which has come in really handy when cooking soup. We dried out and ground up the spent barley that we used for making beer and turned it into crackers and bread, both of which were delicious. We haven’t started composing yet, but hopefully that will come soon.

From beer barley to homemade crackers

If anyone has more ideas for recycling food, please pass on your knowledge....

P.S. We also found local, organic, elephant garlic (pictured below). And yesterday our 25 lb bag of Carolina flour arrived in the mail.

Mushrooms

2007-10-31T08:15:00.000-04:00

In our quest for variety, Emily and I decided to try growing culinary mushrooms at home. We ordered two mushroom logs from http://www.gmushrooms.com/, one Shiitake and one Oyster. The logs arrived and we "started" them as per the directions. Lo and behold, less than a week later we had little baby oyster mushrooms. It was quite exciting. The oysters were harvested after about a week, and the shiitake after about two weeks. The night we harvested the shiitakes we were so excited that's all we had for dinner: sauteed shiitakes over rice. After harvesting you let the logs sit out and dry for a week, then you soak them in water and the whole process starts over. The directions say that you should get at least two more additional harvests, or "flushes."

Oyster Mushroom

Shiitake Mushrooms

The Secret to Soup

2007-10-29T15:35:00.000-04:00

One of the ways that Mike and I have been preserving our food is by making soups. And through this soup making process I’ve learned 3 very important things 1) Soup is very easy to make, 2) Soup is a good way to explore your culinary genius, and 3) Soup is damn delicious.

My personal favorite thing about making soup (this falls into discovery #2) is that it is the perfect thing to make if you are pretending that you’re on a cooking show (which I do frequently), because it involves actions that make for good television: chopping, organizing, stirring, and tasting.

Plus, soup is really flexible (discovery #1 & #2). It is basically vegetable stock, whatever vegetable(s) you have sitting around to use, and spices. And because it is so malleable, you can make your soup to fit your mood (a little foodie trick that would also make good television). Say you are feeling spicy and hot: just add cayenne, cumin, and crushed red pepper. Say you are feeling exotic: just add curry powder or garam masala. Or light and fresh: basil and garlic. Or maybe warm and cozy: add rosemary and red wine.

Our Soup Collection (discovery #3):
Potato Leek
Spicy Curry Pumpkin
Yellow Squash, Jalapeño & Cilantro Soup
Swiss Chard Supreme
Roasted Eggplant & Tomato Soup

Wines

2007-10-29T14:46:00.000-04:00

Sunday morning, on our way home from Ashville, Mike and I went on a little adventure in search of new Carolina wines. Of the bottles that we can get in Florence, there are, unfortunately, only a few that we’ve actually liked. And of the bottles that we did not like, about four were almost undrinkable. I don’t know if people are familiar with scuppernong grapes, but they don’t make particularly tasty liquors because they are so sweet. So rather than spending $13 (they aren’t cheap) on a bottle of wine and hoping that it is palatable, we figured we’d go to a winery and taste their wares before we wasted too much more money.

Luckily, Ashville is really close to several wineries, so making a quick pit stop on our drive back to Florence at the Rock House Winery was really convenient. Rock House is a beautiful 10-20 acre vineyard in Tryon, North Carolina, which is surrounded by horse and pony (yes pony) farms. The detour through Tryon was worth taking just for the ponies in my opinion. They were so damn funny looking. Anyhow, the vineyard is set on an old cotton farm and the winery is named for the rock house that they are currently using to make and store the wines in.

There was a pretty sizable crowd in the tasting room when we got there so Mike and I sort of hung back and quietly tasted the wines. There was one wine, a Meritage, that we both liked, but that was about it. When the crowd cleared out though the winemaker brought out a special 2004 Chardonnay that Rock House makes with native yeast, rather than commercially purchased yeast, and it was delicious. I don’t even like Chardonnay that much, but this one was good. So we ended up taking home three bottles of it. Unfortunately, again, they each cost about $20 a piece, so we won’t really be drinking them sans an occasion.

Before I post this I want to let everyone know that I know nothing about wine. Mike really should have written this blog because he is pretty knowledgeable. The little information that I do have I got from Wine For Dummies and John Cleese’s Wine for the Confused video. But, what I do know is that I love to drink it and by god one of these days we will fine a cheap, decent local wine that I can drink on a daily basis.

Other NC Wines We Have Liked:
Shelton Vineyards Madison Lee Red
Biltmore Estates Sparkling Wine
Childress (aka NASCAR) Barrel Select Chardonnay

Pumpkin Seed Recipe Request

2007-10-28T22:31:00.000-04:00

Take pumpkin seeds from pumpkin. Try to get all the slimy stuff off of them. Spread seeds out on a cookie sheet and sprinkle parmesan cheese over them. Bake in oven at 350. I usually bake them until they are crispy, some people like them chewier though. Eat. This is my favorite way to eat pumpkin seeds, but you can also just sprinkle salt over them and bake at 350.

Bumps in the Road

2007-10-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

Throughout the course of this project Mike and I have had several disagreements about the limitations of our eating habits. Naturally, both of us believe that we are absolutely right about the stance that we choose to take. However, the reality of our situation requires that we find happy mediums that will allow us to eat and live in harmony. This morning was the third such disagreement (not that I’m counting) and it has inspired me to share.

Rather than delving into this mornings’ dispute (wounds are still fresh), I thought that going back to the beginning would be more appropriate. Now…obviously I am bias so anything I say will be tainted with my point of view, but I’ll try to give a fair and accurate account of both sides.

When setting the ground rules for our project Mike and I carved out certain exceptions (see blog entitled Decisions). We made a social exception so that we could still live as normal functioning members of society that enjoy occasional dinner parties without annoyingly asking where all the food came from and refusing to eat anything that is non-local. That exception was easy to agree on. We made a partial alcohol exception that allows us to brew beer from non-local ingredients, a decision that we believe still falls in line with the spirit of our project. We made an exception for all the non-local food that had already been purchased before starting the project, so as not to be wasteful. And last but certainly not least, we made a spices exception, that (and I quote from Mike’s blog) “will encompass near every sort of seasoning.”

Before I go into the details of how the argument arose, I think that I should explain a little bit about how both Mike and I view this project. I can safely say that we both agree on the basic social and environmental reasons for eating locally (preserves biodiversity, supports local economy, reduces carbon footprint, etc). But when it comes to personal motivation for making such a drastic lifestyle change, Mike and I differ. I wanted to do it for fun. Mike wanted to do it for the challenge. With that said, here is what happened:

Last week I was getting ready to make a batch of pumpkin bread when I realized we had no more cinnamon. Mike was at his parent’s house getting beer making supplies so I called him and asked if he would pick me up some cinnamon before he came home. Without hesitation, Mike told me that he would not buy any cinnamon because we couldn’t purchase any more spices than we already had in our cabinet, particularly “non-essential” spices like cinnamon. This then lead to a squabble over what was considered an essential spice and the limits of our project exceptions, etc, etc.

Well, I got the cinnamon. But if you look back at the recipe for the pumpkin bread I baked, there is no cinnamon in it (it is Vanilla Pumpkin Bread) because I was being a pain in the ass.

Ultimately, I think that the difference in opinions regarding cinnamon goes back to our divergent motivations for the project. Mike wants the challenge of strictly eating local. It forces us to explore what we have here in the Carolinas and use those ingredients to their fullest. Many of the ingredients that we are used to using, like sugar, have perfectly good local substitutes, like honey. And there is a question about how much a spice, like cinnamon, really adds to the food you are making. Pumpkin tastes delicious without cinnamon; so what is the point of frivolously using the exception?

I, on the other hand, don’t feel this way. Spices were never something that I wanted to restrict or give up. I love good food and good food has flavor, lots of it (some who eat my cooking might argue too much, but that is beside the point). And although there are plenty of phenomenal flavors that you can get directly from your veggies, grains and meats, they are not nearly as exotic or powerful as those that come from your spice rack. A life without curry, cayenne pepper, or rosemary does not really appeal to me, and thus is no fun. Plus, spices are light-weight, compact goods that are worth a fairly high price relative to their weight, making their transport well worth the journey. Not to mention the fact that at the beginning of our project we (Mike actually) carved out a special exception for spices.

Currently, I think that we are allowed to purchase new spices (per our original plan), but I imagine that Mike and I will have to have a little pow-wow before doing so, just to make sure that we are on the same page. This whole issue does raise an interesting question though, one that I think everyone has an opinion on: What do you consider an essential spice?

Regional Cuisine

2007-10-23T10:51:00.000-04:00

One of the effects that this project has had on our daily lives is that it has coaxed us into eating more traditional southern foods. We only have certain ingredients available to us (cornmeal, sweet potatoes, collards, etc) so we have to work with what we’ve got.

So far this has had both benefits and drawbacks to this. It has been great exploring all these new tastes. I’ve never lived in the south until now…and before moving down here I had only really spent a grand total of about 6 days below the Mason-Dixon Line. So grits and okra are pretty fresh experiences for me. I did take a cooking class in Charleston last July but we just cooked a pork loin and made cookies, something that us mid-westerners are already pretty familiar with. Playing with new ingredients has been pretty exciting. Both Mike and I love to cook so this has been a great way to learn new tricks in the kitchen.

One of the drawbacks to eating more southern is that through this process of discovering new tastes…I have come to learn that I don’t like southern food very much. I should actually clarify that: I don’t like cornmeal or grits very much, ingredients that we have an abundance of. Mike has been making hoe cakes, which are essentially just fried patties of cornmeal and water, and eating them pretty regularly. I can get them down if they are covered with eggs, tomatoes, salt, pepper, basil, and maybe some hot sauce. Mike will just eat them with cane sugar for breakfast. I wish that I loved them, especially since their name sounds so silly, but I don’t.

Fact: They are called hoe cakes in the south because they were sometimes baked on the end of a hoe by slaves.

Fortunately, South Carolina does have something that I don’t think I have ever shown enough respect for: rice. If I had my way Mike and I would be eating Indian and Thai food every night. Since we are still allowed spices, a luxury that I fought tooth and nail for, I might be able to figure out a couple curry recipes from scratch and experiment with them. In the meantime, fried rice with beans and kale has been a pretty standard meal here. That and tomato sandwiches with boiled peanuts, washed down with spicy ginger ale that is made right here in Florence County.

Inspirado

2007-10-19T19:36:00.000-04:00

One of our inspirations for this project was a couple, Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, that chose to only purchase food and drink from within 100 miles of their apartment in Vancouver, British Columbia. They recorded their experience in a book entitled The 100 Mile Diet (in the U.S. it is called Plenty). Their book became a best-seller and their incredible journey still continues today.

(When we started our project Mike submitted a short blurb about what we were doing to their website and this week our story was published. Everyone should go check it out. Our story is the second one listed on the page. We're famous. Yahh!)

Another inspiration for our project was Barbra Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. I saw her speak in Vermont at VLS this past summer (a welcomed break from bar study) about her family's experience growing all their own food on their farm in Virginia. She was fascinating and her experience with home grown food was something that planted the seeds of local eating in my mind, so to speak.

I think that the speakers at our past Sierra Club meeting were probably the final spark that lit the fire though. Sean and Vaughn from the Clemson Extension came to Florence and gave a talk about 1) carbon footprints and 2) edible landscapes. When we got home from the meeting Mike was just glowing. We started our project about a week later.

Note: For dinner tonight Mike made sweet potato ravioli in brown butter sauce with pecans and carmelized onions.

Plants

2007-10-18T08:16:00.000-04:00

A great deal of our concern over this project has to do with the possibility of running out of food over the winter, and thus being stuck eating local rice and dry beans until fresh produce is available. Quite frankly, I feel like that is part of the challenge. If we have adequately prepared, then we won't run out of food, and if we aren't prepared, then we must deal with the consequences. That is why we have been frantically canning, freezing, and otherwise preserving all local produce that we can find. Emily's previous post has pictures of what our pantry and freezer are beginning to look like, and we still have a long way to go.

In addition to preserving food that is available now, a big part of our project involves growing food that hopefully will be ready for consumption throughout the winter, or at least deep enough into that we don't have to exhaust our reserves. In this endeavor, we are fortunate in two ways: 1) South Carolina has a fairly mild and short winter which will allow certain vegetables to grow outside (namely greens and fall broccoli/cauliflower); and 2) we have an east-facing sun room that gets a pretty good amount of sunlight in the morning and early afternoon, thus allowing us to grow plants indoors with a decent amount of success (at least so far).

Below are some pictures of the various plants that we are growing that hopefully will enable us to eat fresh food at least occasionally over the fall and winter. Keep in mind that many of the plants are still only seedlings, which hopefully means that they will be maturing during the winter, exactly when we'll need them the most.

Broccoli - all told we have six plants going. We got a special variety that does well in the cool of early fall and that matures in only 45 days. Hopefully our first crop will be ready next month. This batch looks a little crowded.

Cauliflower - we only have two of these (that small third plant in the corner is more broccoli). They should also be ready sometime next month.

Mixed Greens - we have many seedlings of these, in a couple different pots. Lettuces mature very quickly, especially if you intend on harvesting them when they are still "baby."

Rosemary - lucky for us, this was already growing at our house when we moved in.

Dwarf Lemon Tree - these Dwarf Myer's Lemons are specifically designed to grow in pots and since Emily is concerned that we're going to get scurvy eating rice and beans all winter, it seemed like a good idea. We also have a dwarf Washington Navel Orange tree, but it is a lot smaller at this point, more of a shrub than a tree.

Jalapeño Peppers - we bought this bush at the local farmer's market. When we got it it already had about 10 ripe peppers, plus a number of buds and flowers. So, we kind of cheated with this one. We were growing jalapeños by seed, but in speaking to the woman at the farmer's market, we learned it would be April before we would get any peppers. So, we decided to just get a mature plant.

Radishes - Emily doesn't really like radishes, but their quick maturing time (only 3 weeks from sprouting) made them irresistible. Besides, I like them.

Tomato - as with the jalapeños we are growing by seed, it may be spring before we can actually eat any tomatoes from this seedling, but we both are going to really want fresh tomatoes, so we figured that we'd give it a try. We got a special Manitoba variety of tomato that apparently tastes good, but is better suited to the shorter days of winter.

Basil - this is a pretty easy thing to grow and it is very useful. We have two of these plants.

Cilantro - same idea as the basil. We have this plant, as well as four vibrant seedlings.

In addition to the above plants, we also have a small fig tree that gave us about a dozen figs these past couple of months. I would post a picture, but its not very photogenic. Emily and I are also growing Sonoma Brown Oyster and Shiitake Mushrooms. I'm sure we'll post some pictures of those once they start progressing.

Storage and Society

2007-10-17T10:26:00.000-04:00

Slowly but surely our cabinets are filling up with jars, bottles and sacks of canned and dried goods. Our fridge is filled to the brim with frozen vegetables and soup; and two cheesy delicious Tombstone pizzas (purchased pre-project) that I am saving for a rainy day. Our meals are becoming more and more local as we slowly run out of pre-project food, which is both wonderful and scary.

It is exciting to sit down for a meal and know that you are eating things that your local farmers have produced. Plus eating regional food makes you feel…for lack of a better term…more connected to your community, both socially and naturally.

For example, since starting this project Mike and I have become frequent customers of a small farm stand near our office. We buy locally grown boiled peanuts, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and pumpkins there. And unlike buying vegetables at a grocery store, the people who sell produce at this farm stand love to chat, the woman in particular. We talk about the growing season, the weather, pumpkin painting, types of kale…issues of the day. Mike and I learned the last week that you can actually clean your greens in the washing machine (that sort of rhymes) if you have enough of them.

This sort of simple interaction is something that seems to be missing or being phased out of many aspects of society. Now…rather than getting into a hypocritical soap box about self-checkout lines and online shopping (both conveniences that I frequently use) I just want to close by saying that it is nice to make that small extra connection and I’m happy that this project has been the catalyst to help us do so. Note: There is a book, which I have not read yet, called Bowling Alone by Robert D. Putnam that is about this phenomenon of increasing social disconnection.

Pumpkin Recipes

2007-10-15T16:25:00.000-04:00

Spicy Pumpkin Soup

4 Tbsp Butter
2 Onions, chopped
2 Garlic Cloves
1/2 tsp Crushed Red Pepper
2 tsp Curry Powder
1/2 tsp Ground Coriander
Pinch Ground Cayenne Pepper
6 cups of Roasted Pumpkin Mush*
5 cups of Vegetable Broth

Melt butter in a 4-quart saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onions and garlic and cook, stirring often, until softened. Add spices and stir for a minute more. Add pumpkin and 5 cups of chicken broth; blend well. Bring to a boil and reduce heat, simmer for 10 to 15 minutes. Transfer soup, in batches, to a blender or food processor. Cover tightly and blend until smooth. Add salt to taste. Eat.

Vanilla Pumpkin Bread

1 ½ Cups Flour
½ tsp Salt
1 Cup Honey
1 tsp Baking Soda
1 Cup Roasted Pumpkin Mush*
1 tsp vanilla
½ Cup Oil

Preheat oven to 350. Take pumpkin mush and puree them in a blender with vanilla. Combine dry ingredients in one bowl. Combine wet ingredients in another bowl. Combine all ingredients in one bowl and mix, but not too much. Pour into a well buttered loaf pan and bake for about an hour, maybe more. My loaf was in for an hour or so and didn’t cook all the way through so make sure that you bake it long enough.

*To make Roasted Pumpkin Mush, cut pumpkin in half, scoop out seeds and stringy stuff, life face down on a foil lined baking sheets with sides. Bake at 350 until soft all over, about 45 min to an hour. Cool, scoop flesh.

Both recipes are delicious. In fact, Mike, a former pumpkin hater, is slowing crossing over to the “gourd” side. A little squash humor for you all. Oh my god what has happened to me, hopefully no one is reading this. Anyhow, be careful about baking the bread long enough. Ours was sort puddingish, very tasty, but mushy.

Potato / Pumpkin Day

2007-10-13T18:37:00.000-04:00

Today was really productive, which is good because earlier this week I was not into this project at all. I think that it started with the leftovers running out on Tuesday and then got worse with the hoe cakes on Thursday (I don’t like cornmeal). Then on Friday, to top it all off, we found out that the “local” cheese we bought, the cheese I was endlessly devoted to, might have been made in Wisconsin.

But today we got a whole new load of veggies and I made a batch of soup that is going to be my best friend come January. So my motivation is revived. Somehow Mike is unwavering. He is actually excited about the idea of eating only rice and beans when we start to run out of food in late winter. In fact, when we were in Vermont (before I knew him) he purposefully only ate rice and beans for two weeks just for shits and giggles.

Right now I have a sugar pumpkin cooking in the oven so that I can puree it later and make pumpkin soup and bread tomorrow. Mike has been the tomato-master the past couple days. I think that we’ve gone through about 25 pounds of tomatoes already and we have about 15 more to go. He’s canning the sauce and salsa he made. The sauce is delicious. It’s amazing how many damn tomatoes it takes to make just a cup of sauce though.

Our kitchen is hot as shit with all the boiling water and soup and sauce, plus the oven is on. Our poor little fish, Helicopter, is probably dying of heat. His tank is right next to the stove. Maybe it’ll mello him out a little, which would be good for him.

Leek and Potato Soup

6 tbs butter
8 medium leeks
10 small red skin potatoes
9 cups of vegetable stock
Salt to taste
Pepper to taste

Halve leeks lengthwise then thinly slice. Peel and dice potatoes. Melt butter in large pot over medium heat. Add leeks and cook until tender, stirring often. Add potatoes, cover and cook until potatoes begin to soften. Add vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, let simmer until vegetables are very tender. Puree soup in batches until smooth. Eat.

Canning & Growing

2007-10-12T08:15:00.000-04:00

We Found Cheese!

2007-10-11T15:24:00.000-04:00

Of all the food items that I have been worried about not being able to eat, cheese was on the top of my list. I honestly don’t think that I would have been able to continue this experiment if we had no access to dairy. No cheese would mean no pizza, no grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, no paneer, no mac n’ cheese, no nachos, no just eating cheese for the hell of it because cheese is fucking delicious.

Fortunately the Happy Cow Creamery in Pelzer, South Carolina is raising grass-fed cows and making tons of delicious cheeses. And although our local grocery stores (Harris Teeter and Piggly Wiggly) don’t carry Happy Cow products, Ovis Hill Farms in Timmonsville (about 10 miles from Florence) does. AND not only does Ovis Hill sell diary products, they also sell juicy cuts of lamb and beef that is raised on their farm. It is pretty much like paradise out there. Meaty, cheesy, buttery paradise.

Fresh Baked Bread

2007-10-09T09:21:00.000-04:00

The bread turned out great. I sort of cheated because we still had butter in the fridge and wheat flour in the cupboard to bake with...but once those are gone we'll have to either find a local producer or experiment with substitutes. I did sub honey for sugar since we ran out of sugar a couple days ago. Mike and I are going to have to invest in mixing bowls pretty soon because mixing batter in the wok is sort of difficult. Anyhow, the bread is edible and I'm pretty stoked about it. I'm posting the recipes so that in case I lose them I can always come back here and look them up.

Molasses Cake

2 Cups Molasses
1 tsp Baking Soda
½ Cup Butter
½ Cup Honey
2 Eggs
3 Cups Flour
Pinch Salt
¼ Cup Creamer or Milk

Preheat Oven to 350. Grease pan well. Combine molasses and baking soda, set aside. In another bowl, cream butter and honey. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add molasses mixture to butter/sugar mixture and mix until combined. Add flour, salt and milk and mix until smooth. Transfer to greased pan. Bake until done. Let cool.

Honey Wheat Bread

2 Cups Warm Water
1 Packet of Yeast
1/3 Cup of Honey
4 Cups Wheat Flour
1-2 Cups White Flour
1/3 Cup Oil
1 tsp Salt

Preheat oven to 375. Dissolve yeast in warm water. Add honey and stir well. Mix in whole wheat flour, salt and oil. Work in white flour gradually. Knead dough over floured surface. When dough is elastic place in well oiled pan and cover with a damp cloth. Let rise for about an hour in a warm place then bake for 25-30 min.

...waiting for loaves of bread to bake

2007-10-08T23:54:00.000-04:00

I feel sort of like a pilgrim right now (except I don't get to hang out in that sweet outfit). We are preserving all this food for the winter and I just baked a couple loafs of bread that should last us through the week. Mike and I talk about pickling in our spare time; sometimes we discuss planting schedules for our lettuce garden. After we got home from work today our evening was pretty much consumed with shucking peas and canning okra.

It is a really strange transition…thinking about food in this way. Putting this much thought and effort into eating is not a natural feeling. It also means that I can’t just eat a go-gurt when I want to. Unless someone sends me some go-gurts….

Decisions

2007-10-08T21:58:00.000-04:00

The following are decisions that we have made, lines that we have drawn, in order to give ourselves some rules in undertaking this project:
1. Alcohol - there is very little alcohol that is 100% born and bred in the Carolinas. There are a lot of breweries, but they get all their ingredients from around the world. So, we decided that we would only drink wine from the Carolinas (see picture), Bourbon (because Tennessee and Kentucky are close enough), and homebrew. Although our homebrew will include ingredients from outside the Carolinas, we figured that in light of all of the resources and energy we are saving by reusing bottles and packaging, that an exception could be made.

2. Spices - Neither Emily or myself wants to eat rice and beans all winter long with no salt or spices. So, we have decided to create a "spices" exception, that will encompass near every sort of seasoning. However, we have decided not to use sugar, except for preservation purposes (i.e. jams). All other uses of sweeteners (such as tea and baking) will use local honey.
3. Food of Others - We have decided that we will still accept the food from others despite its origin. This includes: gifts, eating at another's house, and going out to eat. But, we have also agreed to not allow dining out to be a backdoor for our project.

Day One

2007-10-07T18:41:00.000-04:00

Produce purchased: apples, tomatoes, peanuts, field beans, string beans, eggplants, cabbages, yams, green peppers, rice, cowpeas, hot peppers, yellow corn, spagetti squash, pickling cucumbers, yellow squash, okra, butternut squash, tea, eggs, blue cheese. (Total: $200)

Supplies purchased: 24 quart jars, 12 pint jars, pressure canner, freezer bags. (Total $100)

Problems encountered: 1) No one in North or South Carolina produces salt or sugar so we are going to have to just go with the closest American producers and 2) We realized that we'll have to drink muscadine wine for the rest of the year, which pretty much sucks ass.

Friends made: Farmer's Market Steve (pictured above) tried to make us steal various pieces of fruit from the growers stands at the Columbia market today. He also loved shaking Mike's hand, which is always fun.