Ok, I think I know what my winter project is…starting an indoor citrus orchard!
http://simple-green-frugal-co-op.blogspot.com/2009/11/grow-your-own-citrus-meyer-lemons.html
Señor Porkus hates me
October 26, 2009 at 12:56 pm (local food)
Well, that was odd. Something about the sausage from this pig makes my heart race! It’s only got pork, black pepper, sage, salt, and brown sugar. Huh. The plain pork is great (and the bacon is out-of-this-world), but the sausage isn’t doing it for me.
Luckily, I have friends who like sausage, especially cheap happy sausage, so hopefully I can convert this into a variety of spicy pig that doesn’t send my heart galloping for the door…
Welcome, Señor Porcus!
October 21, 2009 at 1:34 pm (Cooking, Food origins, Food preservation, Food security, local food)
Naming our food is a long tradition in my family, starting with Boris the Bull, who I believed would cause my parents’ divorce (do YOU really understand how large a whole steer is? Yeah, us neither…). Last year we bought half a hog and named it Eric. This year’s participant has been dubbed Señor Porcus. No absent referent here!
We picked up our 1/2 hog from Old Pine Farm on Oct. 17th. They have a very nice farm – hogs are pastured with some supplemental feed, not confined to a muddy sty. They are slaughtered on-farm and then sent to the butcher, so there’s no travel stress for the pigs. I feel extremely grateful that we have such a farm near us, and that we can afford to buy our food from them.
Looks like we ended up with about 85 lb of meat (for $300, including cutting and smoking, so somewhere around $3.50/lb). Old Pine Farm is unusual in that they charge a flat price for your hog, no matter what size, and they do not charge extra for cutting and smoking. You get to pick how you’d like your meat cut up. Here’s what we got – showing our strong preference for sausage and pulled pork in this house! My only complaint so far is that the meat is wrapped in Saran Wrap, which I find hard to remove from the meat. Hopefully it will fend off freezer burn – since there’s no air inside the wrapping, it should do that. So long as the wrap is thick enough. We’ll see.
- Loin roast: 10lb in 3 large packages. Wonder if we should have gotten this sliced into chops?
- Shoulder roast: 20+lb in about 10 packages (will become pulled pork)
- Bulk Sausage: 18 one-pound packages
- Smoked kielbasa: 10 – two to four links per pkg
- Ground pork: 6 – 1.5 lb packs
- Bacon: 5 lb in one-pound blocks
- Smoked hocks: 8lb in 2 hocks
- Ribs, pork butt, other misc: 8lb
- Plus about 5 pounds of soup bones and 5 lb of fat for lard
- The tail, the bladder, and possibly the squeal for the Cooking with Laura Project, which I will get to in a few weeks
This filled 2 large coolers and a paper grocery bag; it takes up about 2/3 of our tiny 7cu ft chest freezer and close to half the space above the fridge.
I think this was a steal for $300. I think prices are going up for next year, and they will be worth it.
Wish list
August 28, 2009 at 10:26 am (Community, Musings, local food)
Dear Universe,
Please find a way to bring this:
and this:
together and create an iPhone app that shows me the happy-food establishments from the Local Harvest database nearest to my location – and give me directions from my current location to the nearest place to get local, free-range, and organic food.
Will help facilitate with love, cookies, and possibly even money.
Thanks,
Emily
Goat’s milk?
August 11, 2009 at 1:53 pm (Food origins)
Does anyone know where I can get about 1 gallon a month of goat’s milk (pasteurized or raw) in the Ann Arbor area? The goat shares I’ve found are too far away and give too much milk.
Amazing food work in Ann Arbor: Food Gatherers and Growing Hope
June 12, 2009 at 12:51 pm (Community, Food security, local food)
I dropped off my first produce donation to Food Gatherers of the summer (19 lbs of turnips and greens) and got caught up in conversation with Dan, the head gardener for Food Gatherers. We chatted on the edge of a huge garden – or small field – of proto-produce: spinach, peas, 300 tomato plants, with room for hundreds of square feet of winter squash. If the plot was less than an acre, it wasn’t by much. In addition, there’s another plot out back with collards, cauliflower, and other brassicas. They call this the Gathering Farm.
The idea is twofold: They’ll distribute some of the goodies directly to clients and to the non-profits Food Gatherers serves. But they’ll also send large shipments of produce to the DeLonis Center, where Food Gatherers runs a kitchen skills training program. The participants there will process the tomatoes and such into tomato sauce and other heat-and-eat foods and freeze them. These products will then be distributed to shelters through the winter, when fresh produce is scarce
They’re also partnering this year with Growing Hope to establish community gardens in Ypsilanti, called the Faith and Food project. The basic idea is that Growing Hope helps churches and other neighborhood institutions with the logistics of turning city lots into vegetable gardens. The gardens are tended by the neighborhood and congregation, and food is shared out among them. But a bunch of that food is also earmarked for Food Gatherers, to be distributed to people who don’t have a garden in their neighborhood.
Man, I’m proud to live in this area. And inspired, too. I’ve been thinking that now that Preserving Traditions is up and running pretty well as far as monthly workshops go (I’m set for topics and presenters through 2009), I will focus more on the community-building side. Specifically, getting the community kitchen up and running. I want folks to come to view the kitchen as an extension of their own kitchen, where they can come and do larger food prep/preservation projects that they may not have the space or equipment for at home.
Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club – Preserving Traditions Benefit!
May 27, 2009 at 10:13 am (Community, Preserving Traditions, local food)
Tammy Coxen of Tammy’s Tastings is Ann Arbor’s guru of ganache and doyenne of delights both sweet and savory. In addition to creating some of the best handmade truffles I’ve ever eaten – flavors like fresh garden mint, rosemary-lemon, and salt caramel – she’s a fabulous chef of dinner-type foods as well.
Tammy’s begun a new venture for the summer months when it’s too warm for chocolate: Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club. The idea is that she will peruse the market for the freshest seasonal foods and combine them into a tasting menu for a private dinner for up to eight people. With food that fresh, she won’t be posting menus in advance, but she lists the following sample menu on her web site:
Wild Mushroom Tartlette
Seared Scallop with Tarragon Leek Sauce
Salad of Baby Greens with Hazelnut Vinaigrette
Lake Perch with Beurre Blanc and Roasted Asparagus
Roasted Quail with Yellow Oyster Mushrooms, Pea Shoots and White Grits
Cheese Plate with Garnishes
Rhubarb Galette and Vanilla Ice Cream
Petit Fours
Dinners will also benefit local food groups, and she’s chosen Preserving Traditions as the first recipient! I will be helping her cook and serve the meal, and will probably say a few words about the group, but don’t worry – I won’t talk your ear off. This is really about the food, and experiencing Tammy’s creative style and exquisite execution.
Please see Tammy’s blog entry Tammy’s Tastings Supper Club for more information and to reserve a spot at the table June 6th.
Gardening and menus
February 10, 2009 at 7:52 pm (Cooking, Greenhouse, Musings, local food)
I am so excited I can hardly express myself. It is February 10th, and I came home from work today and planted seeds. The soil in the greenhouse has thawed, so I think it’s time to give it a shot! I planted kohlrabi, Winter Density lettuce, Pentland Brig kale, and New York onions.
I also cooked dinner, which has been happening far too seldom lately. I drew up a monthly menu last weekend, finally. We’d kind of fallen off the wagon with that. It’s funny; I keep all the menus I type up, and while I have summer menus going back two or three years, in that time there are only 2 menus for winter and early spring months.
This should help with the not-cooking thing; the worst part about cooking after a long day of work (for us, at least) is not cooking; it’s answering “what are we having for dinner.” Favorite restaurant foods come to mind easily, and then you get a taste for it, and it’s hard for us to not feed that taste. Pre-seeding the palate with this week’s options helps us fight the urge to just let someone else cook.
That being said, we had a very nice dinner out last night. I started off asking, as usual, “Anything local on the menu tonight?” and that started a lovely long conversation with our waitress, who said their new chef is really into local food and is rewriting the menu to feature many local and sustainable items! My favorite restaurant in town just got favorite-er!
The RSVP for March’s Preserving Traditions event (wheat and home grain milling, March 8th at 2pm) will be posted in a day or two.
Great food day
January 11, 2009 at 8:18 pm (Musings, local food)
Actually, it was just a great day, period!
Slept in and woke up refreshed and had soup for breakfast. Got a few things done (balancing checkbooks and the like), then headed out with my sweetie for what turned out to be a very pleasant series of adventures.
First, lunch at my favorite restaurant in town. I asked the waiter, “So what’s local? Andy grass-fed beef?” and he said that their new chef is now sourcing the daily features locally. Now, two of the things on the list were mahi mahi and salmon, and I think the mahi mahi catch in Lake Erie was pretty bad this year, so I’m taking it with a grain of salt. However, it was a quick, easy conversation to have. There was no grass-fed meat on the menu, and we reiterated that we would be happy to pay and extra dollar on a burger if it were grass-fed.
I ended up getting the Cubano sandwich I’d been craving. I don’t get it often, because it’s from unhappy pigs, but when I deprive myself of my favorites for too long, I get depressed and unmotivated about the whole local-sustainable-free range thing. So I got the sandwich, and it was really lovely. They’re slicing the roast pork much thicker, so it’s jucier. There was also proportionately less ham this time, which is great – far less salty. And eating plain ol’ french fries was just a treat. Thus, lunch.
Then we headed out to get groceries. We haven’t done more than “pick up a few things” in…wow, ages, it seems, and we took the time to really browse the store and let the bounty inspire us. Among other things, we got the best commercial tortillas in this part of the world, the first kale I’ve had to buy since June, whole cream-top milk so my love could make yogurt, and sushi rice. And it was just nice to be out with my guy, shopping and chatting. He also spotted a really awesome set of holiday lights on our quick trip into the store next to the grocery; they combine white LED lights and silver spheres, strung together like beads on a string. They are the perfect scale for the Christmas Hibiscus, and they were 50% off. 
Thus, shopping.
We then headed across town to drop off a pie and clementines to a friend, but the household was at the funeral and I’d forgotten the cooler. I was afraid to leave the pie to the tender mercies of neighborhood critters, so we ended up not leaving the food.
Then we stopped to get my love The Best Latte In The City, and I browsed the selection of imported salamis. A super-helpful clerk came by and we talked about types of salami, with lots of samples, for quite a while. I ended up buying a quarter pound of shaved mustard seed salami. It seemed so decadent, but the whole experience cost $3.75 and left both of us smiling and our tongues tingling. It might become a Sunday tradition with us; wander over to Morgan and York, sample our way through a small section of the deli, and buy something lovely for lunch or dinner. (We’re going to have the salami with fresh bread and cheese tomorrow after yoga class.) Thus, more shopping.
Finally, we came home and made our own sushi. That was a whole other fabulous experience, and worthy of its own post. Stay tuned!
The best thing about the day, I would say, was the attention we were able to give everything. We were both rested, not worried about tons of other stuff, and happy to be out together. The food was worth paying attention to. I wasn’t sweating every last food mile or feeling guilty about my choices. Just…enjoying, in a way that moved from a simple pleasure to something beautiful and gratifying.
Make-and-take dinner prep
December 18, 2008 at 2:10 pm (Cooking, Food preservation, local food, recipes)
My mom (hi, Mom!) had a great idea that one of the Grange food activities we could do is a make-and-take entree prep night. I’d put together a menu of three more or less complete meals, using complimentary ingredients, and do the shopping. People would sign up for the number of servings they’d like. We’d prep all the food together and assemble finished meals into our own containers, then take them home for use that week or to freeze.
It’s similar to what they do at Main Dish and other “build-an-entree” places, only we’d focus on using local, natural ingredients instead of ingredients like this.
I’ve worked up three sample “suites” of foods. They each work out to about $2/serving. What do you think of the idea? These menus? The price? Would you want more vegetarian options? Would you do this on a Sunday night in February?
Menu 1:
- Roast chicken w/mashed potatoes
- Chicken enchilada bake
- Lentil-veggie “pie” topped with mashed potatoes
Menu 2:
- Pork and veggie stir fry w/rice
- Saag dal over rice
- Coconut curry (with rice, or prep rice noodles at home)
Menu 3:
- Meatballs
- Kale balls
- Kale, bean, and meatball soup
- Lasagna
