Apple Trees

I am researching apple trees since I want a few at my house. I am keeping with heirloom varieties. I start my quest at Edible Landscaping in Afton, VA.

• Liberty - resistant to mildew, cedar apple rust and fire blight and immune to scab, zones 4-7, self-fertile, crisp apple kind of like a McIntosh


• Enterprise -


• Honey Crisp - (had these at Westmoreland Berry Farm and my kids thought nothing was better than these apples)

Oh but I want kiwis, persimmons, berries, grapes, blackberries, jujubas, shitake log, and much more!

Pickles

So this past wednesday I immersed myself in pickles. I prepared and canned 32 pints of pickles. That is way more than I have ever done before. I never even liked pickles until I made them myself last year. That's what happens when your friend offers you cucumber seconds and says make pickles!

Strawberry Jam

Yesterday morning I worked for about 4 hours on making strawberry jam. I was about up to the canning part when both kids woke up! We had already gone to a new farm (Homestead Farm in Faulkner, MD) to load up on berries for jam so I could start as soon as my eyes were open enough.

Hulling and chopping the berries comes first (along with washing if necessary). Then cooking the berries until soft. I decided I wanted a smooth consistency this time (instead of fruit chunks) so I used my blender on the whole batch. I sweetened with local honey, thickened with agar agar flakes, and popped it all in the canning jars. My recipe is not for a super sweet jam, I like the berry flavor to dominate over the sweetness. However my sweets-loving son said it was good. Here's the big-ass pot I used (thanks mom!) and the finished jars.



Here's the recipe:

Strawberry Jam
Ingredients:
8 quarts of fresh strawberries (which weighed a total of 10 lb 7 oz and measured out to be about 16 c)
1.5-2 c honey
8 T agar agar flakes (a seaweed)

Directions:
Cook strawberries until soft on medium heat (do not boil). Add honey to taste* (must cool berry mixture down for proper taste test) and stir well. Add 1/2 the agar flakes, stir, and continue on med heat for a few minutes. Do a consistency test**. Add 1 T flakes at a time until berry mixture is not quite solid enough for you. Stop there before you end up with a brick. Now get it in the jars and hide it until harvest season has passed!

Yield: about 2 cups

* The taste of hot things differs from cold things. The berries need to be cool for proper taste test. Here's how: use a small plate or bowl, chill it in the freezer for a few minutes, put a small dollop of mixture on plate, return to freezer until cool, then taste and adjust honey amount.

** Consistency Test: The agar flakes gel when they get cool/cold. Use the plate in the freezer trick again, but this time make sure the strawberry mixture really and truly gets cold. Always err on the side of not enough and too runny jam. Otherwise, you could add too much agar and end up with jam the consistency of a hockey puck.

Local Food For New Friends

Last night we acted as couchsurfing hosts for the first time. It was really fun. We hosted a family of four traveling from Florida to their home in Ottawa, Canada. They stayed just one night, but we all enjoyed each others' company - adults and kids alike. They were due to arrive after dinner, but we wanted to have a nice local dish for them to enjoy when they arrived. So we made our local dinner for us and then made dessert to share with our guests.

Dinner was pasta (not local), homemade tomato sauce which I canned from our 15 mile tomatoes and herbs, and separate local (10 mile) pork sausage. Simple but yummy. Dessert was homemade pies. The crust was made from butter (25 mile), home ground wheat, and salt. The pie filling was butternut squash (15 mile), local milk (15 mile), local eggs (5 mile), and spices from lots of places.

Being away for the holidays was really difficult on the local food front. We were guests in my mother-in-law's home and she really enjoys entertaining. That includes cooking for us - in her own style. So I had nothing to really post for my Dark Days Challenge ...

Dark Days Challenge Meal #3 or 4

I missed a week of blogging for the Dark Days Challenge. I was so obsessed with the whole car accident finding the ideal replacement car, that while we did eat locally the whole week, I did not even think of blogging about it.

But this week I am back! We enjoyed sausage from a local farmer (10 miles), roasted potatoes (15 miles) tossed with olive oil and salt, and a mix of (15 miles) veges including leeks, carrots, napa cabbage, vitamin green, and chickpeas (not local but delivered with my other natural coop food from Phili. We seasoned the veges with homemade gomasio (sesame seeds and salt) and a bit of dulse.



Persimmon cake was our dessert. I made it yesterday as a birthday cake for my new (actually used) replacement car. The persimmons were deliciously sweet and from my favorite farm 15 miles away. I ground the wheat and spelt which came from Pittsburgh, PA (well beyond my 25 miles goal). Local honey sweetened the cake. Do those pesky baking ingredients count? You know - the baking powder and baking soda? Anyway, it was yummy...



Here's the persimmon cake recipe although as usual I modified it ...

Big Green Purse - Chapter 5

Chapter 5 of the Big Green Purse is all about coffee, tea, cocoa, and chocolate. I did not find much I could improve on here. We don't drink coffee, but I already purchase fair trade, shade grown, organic coffee (Cafe Altura) to offer guests. When we make coffee, we use unbleached coffee filters with our little 4 cup coffee pot and have a large french press pot. All our tea is currently from Celestial Seasonings. I purchase fair trade hot cocoa mix from Equal Exchange. As for chocolate, we love Endangered Species bars (ethically traded, shade grown, and sometimes organic) and the organic Earth Balls put out by Sunspire.

So what can I do better?

I use a fair amount of green decaf tea to make kombucha and herbal teas. I can make sure to purchase fair trade tea as loose tea leaves. Also, on Page 138, the author mentions that you easily decaffeinate your own loose tea leaves - so I will try that (pour boiling water over loose leaves, let steep for 30 sec, pour water off, pour more boiling water on leaves and brew). I think that I will also experiment more with growing herbs that can be made into tea (like peppermint).

Today I got a container of Dagoba cocoa to try (fair trade, shade grown, organic). I'd love to have more local stores which sell fair trade, shade grown, organic chocolate yummies for the kids to enjoy. Which companies should I start writing to... :)

Dark Days Challenge Meal #2

I was going to blog about our sunday meal as my 90% local meal but then I realized it was not very different from last week's meal. How yummy but boring! So instead, two days ago we had a simple chicken salad, homemade pita bread, and a salad. The chicken salad contained: leftover roasted chicken (5 miles), apples (about 8 miles, lacinato kale (15 miles), carrots (8 miles), and raisins (California) with a dressing of mayo (Hain brand but from far away) and mustard (Annie's brand but from far away). The homemade pita bread used wheat from Pittsburgh that I ground myself, salt, honey (25 miles), yeast (in a jar but from where?). If I had made this with the whey leftover from cheesemaking, it would have been even yummier! The salad had a mesclun mix base (15 miles), homemade mozzarella cheese (using 25 mile milk), oil and ume plum vinegar dressing, and more of those far away raisins. Sorry no picture today!

Meat and Politics

Over the weekend, Son and I watched Fast Food Nation. I have already read The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan. Today, I read this article. http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gif about fast food joint burgers and chicken being primarily made of corn (from a chemical analysis). It is all scary and are the exact reasons that I don't choose to eat at fast food places or eat meat from the grocery store. My dilemma is that Husband, Son, and sometimes Daughter like to eat meat. So what to do? Buy local, pastured meat from farmers that I know and trust.

Are you wondering why we watched Fast Food Nation to begin with? Son went into the library to get some movies for the predicted rainy cold days we had a few days ago. He came out with Fahrenheit 9/11, Fast Food Nation, and the Hoax. He is 10 and curious about all sorts of things. So we watched all the movies. Watching Fahrenheit 9/11 a week after Obama was just elected was a bit strange. He just kept asking "did that really happen?" and "why?".

He is obviously still processing both movies. Occasional questions come up. It will be interesting to watch how and if he changes after seeing these movies. If you haven't watched them yet - go ahead and do that on the next rainy cold day at your house :-)

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

This year I am participating in the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge put on by (not so) Urban Hennery. I really enjoyed reading about everyone's food last year and wanted to play this year. Plus I get a lot more of my food locally now, so this should be doable for me. It runs from Nov 15 through March 15 and I am to blog every week, so there will be lots of food related posts coming up.

The Dark Days Challenge is to create, eat, and blog about one meal a week which is made from 90% local ingredients. What is local? We define it for ourselves. My local food is grown within 25 miles of my house.

Today's meal(s) looks like this...


Lunch is butternut and leek soup, homemade mozzarella cheese, mesclun mix salad,
apple (10 miles), and roasted potatoes (15 miles). The soup is made with homemade chicken broth (chicken came from 5 miles away) and local butter (25 miles) along with leeks and butternut squash (15 miles). I made the mozzarella using milk from about 25 miles away. The salad greens (15 miles) and apple (10 miles) What was not local? I used salt, cumin, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, a bit of olive oil for the potatoes, and salad dressing that were not local. There is a piece of homemade bread on my plate described in the dinner picture, but I didn't actually eat it at lunchtime.


Dinner is roasted chicken (5 miles), baked sweet potato (15 miles) with local butter (25 miles), swiss chard (15 miles), persimmon (15 miles), and homemade honey (25 miles) bread with local butter (25 miles). The wheat for the bread was grown in Pittsburgh, so that was not local and neither was the yeast :-) The chard had our magic sauce which is not local (ume plum vinegar, olive oil, agave nectar, and soy sauce).

Ok, so I am learning and will be using even less non-local ingredients in my next Dark Days Challenge Meal.

A New Farm

Yeah, we discovered a new farm recently - Fresh Start Farm - in White Plains. It is only a few miles away and we can ride there on our bikes if we choose. We visited the farm and liked what we saw. They have organic fed, pastured egg laying hens of various breeds. They are growing meat chickens as well but we have not tried those yet. We love our eggs and other stuff from Good Fortune Farm. We love to support local farmers, especially those as local as we get. I am considering starting a CSA type of program to make it easier for families to get their food locally.

Shopping with Mother In Law

My basement pantry is finished! I'll try and get a picture up tomorrow. I cut and added the last shelf today and am very happy with it. The top shelf is all for empty canning jars. Right now, the second shelf has last years applesauce and the 8 jars of tomato sauce I have so far. I will be making pickles tuesday or wednesday and will add them to the shelf as well. I am trying to figure out what else I can make that we will appreciate and that can be canned using a water canner. I was reading Danielle's blog a few days ago and was inspired by her usage of her new pressure canner.

The guys came back from cub scout camp and things turned out pretty well. Son had a lot of fun and so it was worth the trouble and The Calls from Last Sunday. Oh, and my mother-in-law is visiting us now. Daughter and I picked her up yesterday from the airport. We had a nice field trip to the airport (lots of process questions were answered). I made a big mistake already. I agreed to go shopping for Daughter's birthday present with her. I hate to shop. She loves it. She bought way more for Daughter than I would have preferred. At one point she asked me what Daughter would like from the toy section. I said not much. Daughter had not expressed nterest in anything from Target's toy section but she had said she needed some new toys. I let the two of them browse together and now Daughter will be getting toy horses and accompanying stuff and a croquet set. I hope she uses them and enjoys them after she gets them of course! I am getting better at releasing control over my kids. I can see that when I watch my MIL interact with them. She is very authoritarian. We shall see what she thinks of our unschooling life! Did I mention she works for the NY State Department of Education?

Beach and Bike

Well, remember that go-kart part replacement from last time? The part worked just fine. After another spin in the go-kart, DS decided that it was really not what he wanted. It jiggled his body around too much, he couldn't start it himself (pull start from the back with driver pushing gas pedal down), and who knows what other reasons. So now, he wants to sell it. Hmm.

Yesterday we went to pick blackberries at a new farm with friends that we see rarely (but the Dads are officemates). Monsieur Louis' farm to be exact - in VA. Blackberries for $1/lb that are fabulous. Monsieur Louis apparently came to the US from France to be the Queen's master gardener somewhere and then never left. He has all sorts of yummies and beautiful flowers. We then went to Colonial Beach to play in the water. It was so nice to sit with a friend, have good conversation, and have all 5 kids be happily playing with each other. We decided that we really did not live too far to see each other more often. We made a pledge to see each other every other week or more. We can't wait. Our ice cream on the way home was yummy and refreshing.

Today, we got everyone up, left the house at 8, and went on a 15 mile bike ride with our bike club (Oxon Hill Bike Club). It was at a member's horse farm with a family picnic afterwards. We exercised, saw the countryside, ate with friends, petted horses, jump started my car (boy did that take a long time - it was totally out of juice from leaving my XM radio plugged intot he power outlet and the headlights on!), and headed home in the middle of the afternoon.

The rest of the day was spent resting, eating, and packing so that DH and DS can leave in the am for cub scout camp. They will be gone Sun-Sat. Yeah for them and yeah for DD and I :-)

New Energy

I have been a few times to the farmer's market at Dupont Circle in NW Washington DC. It is fabulous. I wish it was more convenient, but alas. I went just this past weekend with Daughter and had a great time. We took Metro up there. We ate freshly baked gingersnap cookies and apples purchased from market. We came home with ground beef, sausage, and thinly sliced ham - all from local, antibiotic free, humanely raised farms. The grass-fed beef is from Eco-Friendly Foods. We got yummy goat cheese from Firefly Farm and raw cow's milk cheese from Keswick Creamery. Apples from Toigo Orchards and Black Rock Orchard. The cookies and 3 loaves of fresh bread came from Atwater's Bakery. Yes, we had to cart it all back on the Metro, but it was well worth it for the environment and our collective tummies.

Now that we have all this fabulous food, I want to cook a lot more. I am enjoying cooking and eating yummy foods. I guess you could say I have found new energy for cooking. I think being away from home for a week while visiting relatives helped a bit too. You know, absence (of cooking) makes the heart grow fonder...

Yeah a Local Meal again

I have not been able to make a mostly local meal for a while. Not sure why. Tonight we had an oven-roasted local chicken (a heafty 8.6 pounder), roasted local organic potatoes, a salad made from local organic kale. The salad included a homemade dressing (olive oil and umeboshi plum vinegar with some dill), my very last fresh local organic red pepper, organic pumpkin seeds (maybe I'll try and save a bunch of seeds next year), and organic dried cranberries. Yummy and lots of left overs. Tonight the large crockpot is brewing some chicken stock which I store in my freezer for future uses.

I am finding a lot of inspiration from my newest read: Omnivore's Dilemma. I made it through the corn/conventional agribusiness section and am into the second section. Now I really have to think about anything purchased from the Safeway. I mean I really don't buy all that much, but I still have to think about better options. For example today I went to the store and purchased bread (yes I make tons of bread but my spouse wants soft bread for sandwiches at work), hot dog buns, multigrain organic cereal, organic avacado (request from daughter), organic bananas (I know they come from Costa Rica, but we really love them), lunchmeat for those sandwiches, and organic cheese for the same. I am ok with the avacados and bananas right now because we are not able to get much in the way of local fruit being winter and all and the limits placed by the Feingold diet. The sandwich stuff - well dear spouse really wants meat in his lunch and this satisfies him., Its not about me. But the hot dog buns bug me. There must be a yummy alternative out there somewhere.

Thanksgiving Recovery

It has been surprisingly hard to get back into focussing on local food after travelling for the Thanksgiving holiday. Our holiday host did have a local Thanksgiving turkey, but might have been all. When we returned home, we ordered our staple foods from Neshaminy Valley Natural Food Distributer. We also went again to Good Fortune Farm to get our local, free range turkey - all 39 pounds of him! Thank goodness it is cut up into small pieces and frozen; it is our meat supply for many months. Today I made pizzettes using some of the last sprig of fresh basil. I ordered organic citrus already from Hickory Tree Grove. No organic grapefruits for us this year though (sold out already). I know, the citrus is not local, but I am supporting a small family-owned farm and it is way better than buying from the grocery store.

Local Food Research

I spent time today researching local farms - getting names and a list of places to visit or call. I used
(a) the Southern Maryland Harvest Farm Directory put out by the Southern Maryland Agricultural Development Commission - a 2002/3 copy though
(b) Southern Maryland, So Good Farm Guide 2007/8
and I made a list of places on this blog. Check it out! I only got through Charles County today.

Regular Wednesday Dinner

Our wednesday dinner for a while has been Bionature pasta with tomato sauce (organic ground beef added) and a salad (carrots for kids). The salad normally is made from organic mesclun mix from our friends at Next Step Produce, pumpkin seeds, and raisins or dried cranberries. To make it more local, we are now using our homemade tomato sauce (made from a mix of heirloom, roma, and regular tomaotes - all organic). Sometimes we will also have homemade bread with some olive oil and spices for dipping. Simple but yummy!

Local Poultry and Dairy

Today Son and I visited our old friend - Good Fortune Farm. We went intending to pick up 4 frozen local, pasture-fed, chemical-free chickens. We came home with a bounty! Besides those 4 chickens, we got 3 dozen organic, free-range, chemical-free eggs, fresh homemade butter and buttermilk. The butter on warm homemade sourdough bread was just fabulous with our dinner.