French-style local breakfast

This could be a picture taken in France, but notice the milk from Spokane Family Farms! Local milk!

I made the peach jam myself from peaches I bought at the market a few weeks ago, from the Columbia Valley. I'll be teaching a class on how to make jam, in September. If you want to come please register through Moscow Parks and Rec department.

And the bread, is multigrain, from Moscow's own Panhandle Artisan Bread. They use Shepherd's Grain flour, grown and processed right here in the Inland Northwest. I'm addicted - two loaves a week, without fail.

The Inka that's lurking in my cup, pretending to be coffee, came from Eastern Europe. It's one of the exceptions to my local diet, because I just can't do without Inka. Luckily it weighs very little, so the shipping is fairly carbon-light.

Gazpacho week at our house

Tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, shallots, cucumber, olive oil, vinegar, salt. Chop the veggies up into a very fine dice, mix in a bowl, add a good splash of oil, a smaller splash of vinegar, and a dash of salt. Stir it up, chill it well, and serve cold, with big hunks of crusty baguette. It's the perfect summer lunch and god is it good. Don't ruin it by using your food processor. Enjoy the process of dicing, and you'll be rewarded by an explosion of taste and crunch.

Feel free to keep tomato seeds in there, but you might want to leave out the bell pepper seeds. Keep the cuke peel if it's organic, otherwise toss it.

I bought all the veggies this morning at the Moscow Farmer's Market, every Saturday from 8 to noon, downtown in Friendship Square. Most came from Affinity Farm, others from Elizabeth Taylor.

Easy way to fix green beans

So if you've got a big mess of lovely tender fresh green beans, the first thing to do with them is to snap off their little stem ends. But do leave the cute little tails - they're delicious. While you're topping the beans, bring a pan of water to boil on the stove; salt it well. When it's at a rolling boil - that is, boiling madly - put all the beans in at once. Let them cook for about 5 minutes and then immediately pour off the hot water and run cold water over the beans until they're cool.

Then you can do two things. You can put them in the fridge in a covered dish to eat later, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a little bit of diced shallot or onion and a pinch of salt, or you can eat them immediately with those same ingredients. A bit of cooked bacon is delicious too.

The French would eat these as part of a nice dinner by reheating them quickly on the stove in a saute' pan with melted butter. YUM!

Got these beans from Elizabeth Taylor. She's at the far end of the first row of the Moscow Farmer's Market, on the left.

Mexican Chocolate Zucchini Cake

This is our favorite summer cake and a really decadent way to use all that zucchini that your friends are forcing on you this time of year. Perfect with vanilla ice cream and a lovely snack or breakfast all by itself.

Mexican Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Makes one 8 x 5 inch loaf pan

1 ¼ cup flour
1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder (plus more for dusting pan)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter, softened
2 medium eggs
¼ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon orange extract
1 cup grated zucchini (unpeeled if organic, peeled if not)
½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan with butter and lightly dust it with cocoa powder.

Combine all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, stir with a whisk and put aside.

Mix butter and sugar together in a small mixing bowl until well combined; add eggs, milk, and vanilla and orange extracts and mix well but do not overbeat.

Gently mix the butter mixture into the dry ingredients. Add zucchini (and nuts if using) and combine gently. Spread into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes in pan before tipping cake out of pan onto a cooling rack.

Between the Teeth...

I've been flossing a lot more often lately and that can only mean two things. Sweet corn, and blackberries!

I've just returned to the Palouse from a trip to the Midwest, where the sweet corn was abundant. The farmer next door to my parents' invited my dad to come pick sweet corn and Dad brought home a feed sack full, so we ate it for many a meal. Remember, the trick to good sweet corn is not to over cook it. FIVE MINUTES in boiling water is enough!!

Then, we arrived home Friday evening, just in time for me to hit the farmer's market at 8 am sharp Saturday morning, where I found sweet corn as well. Even better, the blueberries and blackberries are in, too. I bought a flat of blueberries for $24 which all went straight into the freezer in freezer bags, to use throughout the winter. I bought 2 pints of blackberries that I baked into a pie this morning. The juice overflowed into my oven, making a mess, as usual, but it just added to the mess from the last pie I baked that overflowed. There is no way around it I think.

Company for Saturday lunch and the sheer bounty of it all inspired some other purchases: new potatoes, green beans, lettuce, heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, parsley, carrots, and of course, two loaves of Panhandle Artisan multigrain bread. It's my new favorite and I think I'll be going through several loaves of that each week. Affinity Farm provided most of my veggies as usual. Our lunch menu (vegetarian and gluten free for our guests) included a vegetable gratin, green beans with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and shallots, a quinoa salad with grapes and pecans, and for dessert, Cowgirl Chocolates mild chocolate truffles. We loved all of them but my favorite was the double dark chocolate in the aqua wrapper. Second favorite was the one that tastes like Creamsicles. YUM!

Dinner later was sweet corn with salad and roasted chicken. No dessert - just a tiny glass of Kahlua w/ cream. Not local but oh so delicious. :)

I've been doing a LOT of reading this summer about local vs. organic, organic vs. conventional, sustainability and so on, and what I've learned is that it's too complex to think I know what's right and what's wrong. There are no pat answers. No one can just say, this thing is always better than that thing, or everyone should eat like this, or farmers ought all to do this. It's all very dependent upon the particular conditions in a particular place. I encourage anyone who is interested in food and farming and eating well to keep an open mind and most of all to seek out what is the best food for you in your place, and to enjoy it fully, with friends and family.

Eating Integrity

Eating Integrity
by Kelly Kingsland, Moscow Food Co-op newsletter volunteer

The other day while I was pushing my gas powered lawn mower around (and around) my large lawn I contemplated my local diet. In light of the blaring noise, and puff of smoke emitting from the mower, my actions seem pretty futile. Especially for someone like me who eats something like an 80 percent local diet year round, the net gain in reduced imports is fairly insignificant.

So as I continued circling my machine towards my ultimate goal- a strangely satisfying shortly mown expanse that I consider my yard, I asked myself why I had taken the Local Challenge. Was it hope? Did I think I could change the world through my actions? Was it sacrifice? Was I giving up eating imported foods as some sort of offering- paying for my own or others' carbon spewing transgressions? Was I just following a national fad- locavorism is reaching a fever pitch in some circles across the country. What was motivating me anyway?

I ruled out hope right away. I am a pessimist, and through that lens think that with our current global population and consumptive addictions, pure inertia ought to easily propel us deeply and irreversibly into climate crisis- seemingly during my lifetime if you listen to some scientists. In a non biblical way, I actually believe that we are approaching the “end times” and certainly I don't see my local diet as any method of changing that course.

What about sacrifice? Am I giving up things that I love to eat in order to somehow justify my periodic airplane flights to see family, or my more frequent drives to wilderness to backpack? Am I running some internal form of carbon trade, exchanging this summer’s resisted chocolate bars for next winter’s flight to see family in Florida? I do have a deep desire to walk lightly on this planet. And I carry a bit of guilt at being American-a member of a great consuming culture that will go down in history (if there is history) as the most destructive ever. But I'm not a martyr and don't think I can right the world by forfeiting pleasure.

What about fad? Am I just doing this because everyone else is? Generally I am not very faddish, but a fad that is about NOT buying something does have its appeal. But no, while it does feel good to share convictions with the likes of Barbra Kingsolver, Gary Paul Nabhan and Michael Pollan, I have been on this kick for many years, and have come to my own conclusions about what side of the fence I want to stand on.

Having ruled out hope, sacrifice and fad, I realized that I am eating a local diet because it feels good. In addition to feeling really great physically when I quit eating sugar, chips, chocolate, and dairy products, the local diet fills me with a sense of integrity. Not righteousness, integrity. It feels good to step away from the constant and dire implications of our consumptive habits. Rather than approaching meals with a sense of guilt and acquiescence I see mindful action at work. As I fill my body with vegetables, meat and fruit that have been produced locally I feel as if I am not only nourishing my body, but also my relationship to the earth and other living beings that live here with me. Whether it reduces my carbon footprint, or buys me a trip to the wilderness or not, I like eating integrity.

One of Kelly Kingsland's current favorite local meals is steamed Artichokes with garlic aioli, Pickle Flat Farm grass fed beef burger with homemade catsup, and braised cabbage and beets. We're not missing much at all.

Hooray for Local Milk

Hooray For Local Milk!
By Peg Kingery, Chill and Frozen Buyer, Moscow Food Co-op

Summer is a good time for road trips. What better excuse to hit the highway than to visit a small, family-owned dairy whose milk I yearn to make available to the Co-op’s customers? So with Co-op store manager Steve Kobs riding shot gun and my furry companion Toby wagging in the backseat (because he likes adventures too) we headed north to Spokane to check out the operations at Spokane Family Farms.

I’d read about Spokane Family Farms in two local newspapers and was both excited and skeptical. I love supporting local businesses, but am REAL picky about quality. This dairy is not organic, so I had to see for myself if they were at least following organic, humane and sustainable practices. I’m also quite fond of cows and was hoping to see animal care that rivaled . . . well, the care I give to Toby.

I was totally impressed.

Mike and Trish Vieira began their 30-cow milking operation in April of this year. Mike previously worked as a dairyman near Othello, Washington. He grew tired of seeing his high quality milk being dumped in the same tank with milk from other dairies and sought a market that would support an “old fashioned” dairy that produced and bottled its own milk. Lucky for us he chose the Spokane area.

Along the way we picked up Jennifer Hall, a key player in Spokane’s soon-to-open Main Market Co-op, who kindly arranged the visit for us. We arrived just as Mike was putting hay in the cows’ feeding bunk. I admit to being concerned when I saw the cows were on dry lot, not pasture. Mike explained that he’d hoped to have the cows on the pasture he planted to oats by now, but lack of rain had prevented the crop from maturing quickly enough. All his feed comes from local, no spray producers in the Spokane area. He plans to plant one of his other pastures to grass and legumes this fall.

While Mike prepared to milk the cows, Trish gave us a tour of the facilities and answered our questions. The milking/bottling barn was spotless. Within the barn there is also a lab where the Vieiras quality test and formulate the cows’ diets and monitor bacteria counts in the milk (which is always way lower than average). They bottle the milk every other day after pasteurizing it at 145o for 30 minutes. Their milk is not homogenized, meaning the cream rises to the top of the jug.

The Vieiras DO care for their cows with the same concern I have for Toby. They all have names (even nicknames!), receive grain mixtures according to their individual needs and those needing extra TLC got plenty of it. They range in age from 2 to 8 years and average 80-100 lbs of milk per day per cow (which works out to about 9 gallons of milk per cow per day).

At the time of our visit the Vieiras were finalizing arrangements to have Spokane Produce deliver their milk to the 18 stores they provide milk to in the Spokane area. That’s good news for our Co-op because Spokane Produce brings us veggies and fruit twice a week. Idaho regulations differ a bit from Washington regulations and the Vieiras were in the process of doing what they needed to to comply with them. So here’s the good news – now that I’ve seen the operation, we’ll be stocking Spokane Family Farms milk as soon as we are able to!