Palouse Locavore

The Silence of the Clams

2010-08-05T15:37:00.001-07:00

Sometimes in the summer we travel. This time it was to family on Puget Sound. But we ate local - really local! Attached are pictures of the clams we dug and then ate. I can't tell you where we dug them (it was a beautiful and remote sandy beach in south Puget Sound), and I don't know how to clean them - my brother in law did all that. But I can tell you that once the clams were clean and cut into pieces, they were incredibly delicious and tender when dipped in bread crumbs and fried for a very short couple of minutes in butter. Sprinkle liberally with lemon juice before eating. After my extended family gobbled these down for dinner, we sat around the fire, quiet, contemplating the bounty of the sea. We called it "The Silence of the Clams."

Summer in a Jar!

2010-07-20T11:13:00.001-07:00

We had a great time making blueberry jam and strawberry rhubarb jam at the Co-op's home food preservation workshop last Saturday, at the Backyard Harvest shed.

The next workshop will be in a couple weeks. If you're interested in signing up please email me at outreach@moscowfood.coop and I will send you information about the series.

Kenna's Taco Salad

2010-07-14T13:08:00.000-07:00

You'll just have to imagine the beauty of this taco salad that Kenna Eaton, the Moscow Food Co-op's general manager, told me about yesterday. This recipe will serve about 4 people, or two with leftovers.

First, brown a pound of local hamburger. Wash a bunch of local greens, and grate some local cheddar or hard cheese. Get a separate bowl for each person, and put a pile of greens in the bottom of the bowl, sprinkle grated cheese on top, and then put a handful of tortilla chips on top of the cheese. (We don't have local tortilla chips, but if you're really ambitious you could make your own flour tortillas from Shepherd's Grain flour and then cut them up and bake them into chips.) Next, spoon on the browned hamburger, and finally, top with some salsa. You can use your own homemade salsa, get some of Virginia's salsa at the Co-op, or use some of the imported stuff. Eat up!

Local Lunch

2010-07-13T14:50:00.001-07:00

This local lunch depends on you having several items on hand. But to borrow from the title of a really good book by Margaret Visser, much depends on lunch. (Her book is actually called Much Depends on Dinner.) If you can't eat this lunch now, prepare for it this year and you can enjoy it next year! Item one: a whole chicken from a local farm, roasted and in the fridge. Two: pickled beets. Beets are just coming into season now but I'm just finishing up last year's batch, so no worries. Three: pepper/onion relish, made last fall when onions and peppers were fresh and ripe at the farmer's market. Four: a fresh baguette from Panhandle.

I had to use bottled mayonnaise because I haven't taken the time to make any fresh. But I will remedy this situation soon. Mayonnaise just takes eggs, oil, and a little vinegar. I use my own eggs, but I have to buy the organic canola oil. I intend to learn how to make my own vinegar this fall. More on that later.

What Season is This??

2010-07-08T15:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, this is a photo of the ginger apple pumpkin soup that we had at our house the other night. Beautiful isn't it? It looks like fall but we were able to enjoy this on a cool summer evening because we made it last February with our winter squash and local apples, and then froze the leftovers. I just took it out of the freezer, warmed it gently with some cream.

Roughly chop onion, apple, a knob of ginger, and saute in butter or olive oil in a soup pot. Then add chunks of peeled squash, either pre-baked or not. Cover with chicken or vegetable stock. Cook at medium high until hot if the squash is precooked, cook until the squash is tender if it wasn't cooked before. Then carefully puree it in batches in a blender or food processor. Add some cream if desired, salt and pepper to taste. Heat gently after you've added cream to prevent it from curdling. If it curdles you can reblend it to get back the smooth texture. If you're going to freeze it, don't add the cream until you're ready to eat it.

Local Breakfast

2010-07-07T13:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a woman of habit, and one of them is eating bread and jam with a glass of milk for breakfast. This week I'm eating my local bread with fresh peach jam (unfortunately the sugar isn't local - but what can we do about that?) and fresh goat milk. This morning I varied my practice a bit and made myself an eggnog. Food safety experts will tell you that it is not safe to consume raw eggs due to the risk of salmonella, and indeed, I would NOT consume raw eggs from commercial sources nor recommend it to others. But these raw eggs are from my chickens that I know and love. I even know which one is the early riser and which one takes the longest to get going in the morning (that's Margaret, pictured above when she was a bit younger). So, I guzzle eggnog without fear.

Steak, Frittata, Jam

2010-07-05T14:16:00.001-07:00

The eat local season is upon us on the Palouse! This weekend we fired up the grill for grass-fed sirloin steaks from Maple K Highlands in Colfax. We've got an 1/8 in the freezer. I also used our own eggs, with kale from Affinity Farm that I got from the farmers market to make a big frittata to satisfy the vegetarian in our family. (It's not me!) Then, the local peaches arrived so after slurping a couple down I had to make jam. It was scrumptious for breakfast this morning on my Panhandle bread toast, made from our local Shepherd's Grain flour, and washed down with the raw goat milk I get from my goat share.

I encourage you to make jam frequently in small batches, which is much less intimidating and overwhelming. I made four 1/2 pints this morning in a couple of hours. It was about a dozen peaches, that's all! Use a Ball blue book for directions or the USDA's complete guide to canning, which is available for downloading on the web. Always make sure to follow recipes and canning instructions no more than 10 years old.

Kale and Caramelized Onion Frittata

1/2 white onion, diced
1 bunch kale, stemmed, chopped
1 dozen eggs, lightly beaten
knob of butter or couple tablespoons olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Saute the onion on medium low heat in an oven safe non-stick skillet until soft and sweet. Add the chopped kale and let it cook down until reduced considerably in volume but still bright green. Arrange onions and kale evenly in skillet - this is the last time you'll shift them before presenting the frittata on its platter. Pour the eggs over the kale and onions and let cook on low heat until firm throughout. Run a thin spatula around the edge to loosen frittata. If no uncooked eggs run into the gap, finish the frittata under the broiler. If there are still runny eggs inside, return to stove top, and try again in a few minutes. After browning the frittata under the broiler, use the spatula to carefully loosen the frittata from the pan and either slide or invert it onto a plate. Serves 8. Good hot or cold. Store leftovers in refrigerator in an airtight container; great for lunch or breakfast or a snack!

Moscow Food Co-op's Eat Local Challenge

2010-06-19T14:35:00.001-07:00

Wow, it's already mid-June 2010 and time for another Eat Local Challenge! This year not only is the Co-op doing the Eat Local Challenge, but the staff at the University of Idaho Sustainability Center is doing it too! Thanks Jeannie and Darin and all the team. Visit them at http://www.uidaho.edu/sustainability.

This year our family is off to a great start; we've got a garden that has expanded to fill our whole (small) front yard, we've got 5 year-old chickens who are laying eggs like crazy, and I have a source for raw goat milk from which I am making our own yogurt and fresh goat cheese.

At the Moscow Food Co-op we have more local stuff than ever before. Check out the Tuesday Growers Market page on Facebook, our Eat Local page on the website (www.moscowfood.coop), and of course, visit the store on Fridays to see what the FACT team has to offer for samples and recipes featuring local products. We'll also be offering a series of food preservation workshops starting in July. Check the newsletter and website for info about these.

At the moment, I'm on vacation in the Midwest, eating fresh asparagus, chard, and other goodies from my parents' garden. When we get back home to the Palouse the eating local challenge gets seriously underway. Stay tuned for more.

French-style local breakfast

2009-08-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-22T16:23:00.001-07:00

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

2009-08-22T16:21:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-22T16:19:00.000-07:00

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...

2009-08-09T16:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-16T13:09:00.000-07:00

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

2009-07-16T10:27:00.000-07:00

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!

Poultry Love - Is It Wrong?

2009-07-10T08:42:00.000-07:00

That's my son with one of our new chicks a few weeks ago. Local farmers, the Zakarisons, sold us some chicks that will become laying hens when they grow up. For us it was a momentous occasion, like birthing a baby, as it took about nine months to get the coop and fence ready (we started in the fall and halted construction during the winter), and their arrival was preceded by the mulling over of names, the gathering of equipment and bedding, lots of reading about care and feeding. The whole thing was very similar to pregnancy, without the sleeplessness and weird food cravings.

Except these babies put themselves to bed at night, eat almost whatever we throw out there for them, and are a little skittish about being held very much. I adore them, and find myself spending time cutting up our kitchen waste into tiny chicken beak sized pieces and then watching to see what they love and what they don’t love. So far the absolute favorites are the pie cherries from our neighbors’ tree, onion skins, and the prostrate knotweed that grows everywhere in our yard. They also love bread, bits of fruit, grass, slugs and bugs, and a shovelful of almost finished compost to scratch through.

Our girls are about half grown, little Nellie, Dorothy, Mabel, Cinnamon, Margaret, and Leonora. Two barred Plymouth Rocks, two Rhode Island reds, one speckled Sussex, and one blue Andalusian. The barred rocks and the blue Andalusian are downright friendly; the others a little more standoffish. But we’re making progress, and there’s nothing I like better than to sit down and have a little chicken time in the evening to relax after a hard day.

Eventually our girls will give us eggs; you’ll read about it here first!

Fruit crisps to remember

2009-07-05T15:29:00.001-07:00

Fruit crisps used to seem painful – all that topping to mix up – but now that I know that a recipe is not required, fruit crisps are my favorite dessert to make.

Topping: a couple cups of rolled oats, a stick of butter, a generous measure of brown sugar, a few teaspoons of cinnamon, and a handful of flour. Mix it up with your hands until the butter is broken down into little pebbles and rubbed into the oats. Add some chopped nuts if you like them. Try something besides cinnamon if you prefer. Maybe cardamom or allspice. I made a cherry crisp this morning that used almonds in the topping and a bit of almond extract mixed with the fruit. Delicious.

Fruit: Grease your baking dish and fill with sliced fruit. Apples, apricots, peaches, pitted cherries, diced rhubarb and strawberries, whatever. Sprinkle sugar on the fruit, more if it’s rhubarb, less if it’s peaches, none of it's Bing cherries, or use your own plum or cherry jam left from last year instead of sugar. That’s what I use for sweetener, and the extra fruit flavor gives it extra depth. Slather the oat topping on top, nice and thick, and bake in a 350 degree oven until the topping it toasty brown and the fruit cooked through, about 45 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream… in a big bowl. Don’t be shy – you’re only going to eat this a couple times each summer, and the memories of it will last all winter long.

Palouse Potato Salad

2009-07-05T15:26:00.000-07:00

Potato salad comes in many forms but I like mine with red potatoes (unpeeled), hard boiled eggs, a bit of dill, something crunchy like celery or cucumber, bacon bits, onion or shallots, a little mayo, and lots of olive oil and lemon juice, plus salt and pepper. If I can get away with a little sweet pickle relish I will, although too much and the rest of my family will complain. The trick is to put the olive oil and lemon juice on the potatoes as soon as they’re drained, and still hot. Mmm.

The potatoes are from Washington, the eggs from here, the cucumber and shallots from the Yakima Valley, and the bacon from a Washington company, Hemplers. Don't know where the pigs grow up; need to find that out.

The opposite of deprivation

2009-07-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

We started our locavore diet a few days ago. We’re not militant about it; I’m aiming for 40 percent local (within 200 miles) and 40 percent regional (Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and western Montana.) I have a long list of exceptions such as Inka, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, steak sauce, olives, goat milk (maybe there’s someone nearby selling it I haven’t discovered yet?), peanuts, almonds, cashews, etc. and the occasional pint of store bought ice cream, among other things. My definition of local doesn’t quite mesh with the Co-op’s definition of local; maybe I can lobby the Co-op to change theirs, since I’m not going to change mine!

Saturday morning was the first farmer’s market of our diet and I rode my bike and took two canvas bags, expecting to get a lot of salad greens and some carrots and chard, forgetting that in the river valleys that bound the Palouse they’ve already got apricots, cherries, green beans, beets, and more. And our local growers had cucumbers, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, peas, arugula, baby yellow squash, mizuna…

Thinking, “I’ve got another week before I get this chance again” I just kept buying and buying, finishing up with two loaves of bread from Panhandle Artisan Bread (they get their flour from Shepherd’s Grain Cooperative in Spokane, from wheat grown right here!) and a glass of iced horchata made this morning by Patty’s Mexican Kitchen. I’ve got to get a recipe for that stuff. I know it’s rice, sugar, water, and cinnamon – not local at all, but who cares, it’s so good. Maybe I just can just figure it out. Anyway, hauling the bags of stuff back to my bike (I had to use plastic bags offered by vendors so next time I’ll take more canvas) and then figuring out how to pack the load home was a good logistical challenge for 9 am on a Saturday.
The Palouse is particularly well-placed from a locavore’s perspective, or at least it would be if there were still salmon to be had nearby. But for fruits and vegetables and meat, the locavore must be prepared for the sheer bounty of summertime. Eating local in July is the exact opposite of deprivation.

On the menu in the next few days are stir-fry, chard frittata, borscht, and pizza. This morning after the market I made potato salad, green beans w/ balsamic vinaigrette w/ shallots and bacon, and cherry-rhubarb crisp. The satisfaction of cooking and eating such delicious fresh food cheered me up. It had been such a long hard wet winter and I had begun to lose my appetite while still gaining weight (all those lemon cream scones at the Co-op, yikes), a sure sign of trouble.

What's local at the Moscow Food Co-op?

2009-06-19T09:40:00.000-07:00

It's early in the growing season but there is some delicious produce available right now. Try fresh radishes sliced very thinly, served on a sliced baguette with a generous smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt. Yum! And see my previous post on bok choy for a recipe idea.

In the bulk department there are a few options; lentils and split peas! We are on the Palouse after all. But there is also wild rice from St. Maries. And don't forget the big selection of mixes from MaryJanesFarm, right here in Moscow! I'll do some recipes in the coming days that use lentils and split peas.

In the meat department there is lamb, beef, and yak, local and regional, and don't forget about our local Eaton beef, located in the freezer case.

We have local eggs in the fridge case, and a selection of cheeses from the region. Nothing like an omelette, a salad, and a glass of local wine for an easy summer dinner!

What to do with bok choy?

2009-06-19T09:32:00.001-07:00

How to make bok choy - abundantly available in Moscow, Idaho right now - into a meal for the family?

I looked at a few recipes that use cabbage and here is what I came up with.

Ingredients: lamb sausage, onion, bok choy, dried cranberries, salt and pepper, log of herbed goat cheese

Two lamb sausage links (from Eastern Oregon) cut into small chunks, sauteed with 1/2 a diced onion (Washington) and finely diced bok choy ribs (Moscow, ID). I used the whole, large bok choy head. When sausage, onion, and bok choy ribs are done, add a sprinkle of dried cranberries (not local), the finely sliced bok choy leaves, and salt and pepper to taste (not local). Put immediately onto plates or shallow bowls, and top with a generous chunk of herbed goat cheese (from Idaho). Stir the melted goat cheese into the mixture and eat while it's hot!

This served 3 of us with no leftovers; we accompanied it with lots of crusty bread to soak up the juice in the bottom of the bowl.

Rhubarb for my birthday

2009-05-28T12:16:00.001-07:00

My rhubarb grows in a sheltered spot on the east side of my house, where it gets morning sun and afternoon shade and no wind. On my birthday last week I decided to spend the morning doing whatever I wanted instead of going to work and what I felt like doing the most was harvesting something from my yard and baking something with it. Time was limited so I made rhubarb-strawberry crisp.

I gave up using recipes for crisp once I realized that for the topping you really only need oats and butter and sugar, and for the fruit you just need sugar and/or a jar of homemade jam. I just measure a few cups of oats and rub in a stick of butter and about a half cup of brown sugar with a bit of whatever spice I'm in the mood for; last week it was cinnamon. In the buttered baking dish I put the rhubarb and strawberries, cut into bite sized pieces, and then dusted sugar over the whole thing, and then poured over it a couple cups of plum jam left from last year. The oat topping goes all over the top and into the oven it goes at 350 degrees, until the topping is all brown and the fruit is bubbling and tender. MMM!

This week the rhubarb will be made into a pie, since my family loves it even more than crisp. The principle is the same: fruit mixed with some sugar and jam. But for the crust, well, I make pie crust with flour, butter, an egg, and some vinegar or lemon juice. I found this recipe in one of my mom's old cookbooks and it works for me better than anything I've ever tried. For a single crust, it works out to about a cup of flour with 6 tablespoons of butter, 1 egg, and a tablespoon of vinegar, mixed up in the food processor and then dumped onto a sheet of wax paper to roll out. I usually use a bit of flour under and over the pie dough to keep it from sticking to the paper or the rolling pin, and I use the wax paper so that I can lift the whole shebang and flip it over into the pie pan before filling it with fruit and then again on the top of the pie.

I think the appearance of rhubarb satisfies some deep inner need for tart, crisp, fresh food, that signals the end of our starchy and boring potatoes and carrot winter diet and the beginning of summer's wonderful juiciness. Every house ought to have its own little rhubarb patch.

Once I get over the need for crisp and pie I'll start using it for other things, like as a substitute for apples with cooked pork, or as an ingredient in cake. Rhubarb salsa or relish might be another possibility; I'll keep you posted.

BTW the chicken coop is almost done and our chickens will arrive in a few weeks! And the beehives are literally humming with activity. More on that next time.

Moscow Sourdough

2009-01-29T10:43:00.000-08:00

After learning recently about the yeasts that live all around us and how that makes sourdough bread from one place different than sourdough from another place, I decided it was finally time to make my own sourdough starter. That is, flour and water with a little pineapple juice, left at room temperature to ferment. I did cheat somewhat by adding a single grain of commercial mono-culture yeast, but that was only because it has been so cold here I worried that nothing would happen and I would end up with a horrible mess. Well, I started with equal amounts of rye flour and water and a splash of pineapple juice, which is acidic but also sweet, perfect for creating the right fermenting environment. I stirred it every day and added fresh flour sometimes and fresh water sometimes, and finally last Sunday I took half of the fabulously beery-smelling concoction and turned it into bread by adding fresh flour and water, salt, and some oil, and kneading it as usual. It rose quite slowly but baked well and tastes wonderful.

In France this would be called "levain" and it is the way our WWOOF hosts, Renee-Jo and Andre, made their country bread every week for market. Who knows how old their starter was? I'll find out and let you know.

I wanted to see if I could make bread without following a recipe and in this sense the experiment was very successful. I just happened to learn what I would have learned from my grandmother who would have learned it from her grandmother from a group of people on a food-related listserv, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, who love to talk about this kind of stuff. And I've been assured, good naturedly, that there is a special prison reserved just for yeast-cheaters like me. Thanks everyone! Here's a photo of the bread.

Grass into Garden

2008-11-22T09:56:00.000-08:00

I recently read Joan Dye Gussow's book This Organic Life, a wonderful book that gave us the push and the info we needed to finally turn our grassy front yard into garden space. The problem has been how to kill the grass without spraying it to death, and then turn it into lovely garden dirt without renting a rototiller? The answer came from Joan: cover up the lawn with something that will kill the grass and top it off with piles of compost. This preserves the structure of the soil and enriches it to boot. We decided that instead of using old carpet - Joan's method - we'd just use corrugated cardboard which wouldn't need to be removed later.

So yesterday I reminded Walt he could get some cardboard from the recycling bins at Moscow Recycling, and so he did, feeling unaccountably guilty for taking cardboard for reuse that was meant for recycling, and then realized hey, it's a great day to do this project. So he went home, spread the cardboard out over the front lawn, called the building supply for a truckload of compost, and then gathered all our neighbor's maple leaves and spread them over the cardboard just in time for the huge pile of steaming compost to be delivered.

By nightfall Walt and Reed had gotten the entire pile spread out, so the whole right side of our lawn looked like a garden just waiting to be planted. I love imagining the weedy grass underneath slowly dying and being turned into soil by the hordes of worms that we know are there. And now I get to spend the winter figuring out what to plant and where. Maybe we can do the other side of the lawn next weekend...

Zucchini Bread

2008-10-17T10:45:00.001-07:00

What could be more satisfying than turning a vegetable that you're not particularly fond of in any cooked form into a delicious snack or dessert? Making zucchini bread always gives me such a charge cause none of us really eat it otherwise, but hey, in a cinnamony bread we eat great quantities of the stuff. Not as healthy of course, but I figure that eating it in any form is better than none at all. As desserts go it's a pretty good alternative to cake. And it is a great way to use up zucchinis that have grown too huge to use for any other purpose.

Zucchini won't keep for very long after you've picked it. But you can grate it and put it in containers or bags in the freezer, premeasured for your favorite zucchini bread recipe, and make bread all winter long. When you thaw the grated zucchini out, it will be very watery. Don't dump away all the water or your bread will be too dry. On the other hand, if you use it all, it might be too wet. When you make it regularly, you'll learn what consistency of batter to shoot for, and you can adjust accordingly.

Here's a recipe to try, but don't be afraid to experiment. I like to cut back on the sugar and I always use raw sugar instead of white. Or try Sucanat instead. Try a teaspoon of walnut extract along with a teaspoon of vanilla. Also feel free to substitute some whole wheat flour for some of the white flour. Or even try subbing in some unsweetened cocoa for some of the flour! Or sub chocolate chips for the walnuts...Another nice touch is to sprinkle sesame seeds on top of the batter just before you put the filled pans in the oven to bake.

3 eggs
1 cup vegetable oil
2 cups white sugar
2 cups grated zucchini
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F ( 165 degrees C). Grease and flour two 8x4 inch loaf pans.
In a large bowl, beat eggs until light and frothy. Mix in oil and sugar. Stir in zucchini and vanilla. Combine flour, cinnamon, soda, baking powder, salt and nuts; stir into the egg mixture. Divide batter into prepared pans.
Bake for 60 to 70 minutes, or until done.

We know beans...

2008-10-07T12:16:00.000-07:00

I just read an entire book about beans and was inspired to cook split pea soup this weekend, since these lovely little green babies hail from here on the Palouse. For some reason in our house we refer to this by its color – “green soup” – probably because when Reed was little he was in an anti-pea phase and I thought the words split pea would put him off– and it is generally a favorite, probably due to the generous amount of bacon in which I saute’ the diced onion and carrots before adding the water and the dried split peas and bay leaves. The only other ingredients are salt and pepper, although I have been known to make this with chicken stock in the past. This time I didn’t yet have chicken stock so used plain water, without using a bouillon cube or anything, and surprisingly I found I liked the lighter, less salty flavor of it; it was cleaner and fresher on my tongue. So I might stick with water for green soup in the future.

The other legumes we grow here are chickpeas/garbanzos and lentils. This next weekend our church (Community Congregational United Church of Christ) in Pullman is doing a Habitat for Humanity fundraiser. I’m planning the food and using chickpeas as my starting point I’ve planned a Mediterranean-style menu: pitas, hummus, couscous, tabbouleh, vegetable and lamb stew, cucumber salad, etc. Lots of tomatoes, eggplant, onions, olive oil, and lemon juice. Of course, lemons and olives don’t grow here, but being strictly local is not the point of this fundraiser – thinking about the rest of humanity is the point, and I think olive oil is a great place to start doing that.

Grape Harvest in Kamiah

2008-09-29T11:41:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went to Pat and Kathy's house in Kamiah, where they are blessed with Concord grapes and another variety that is sweeter and seedless and delicious for eating out of hand, and harvested some 40 gallons of Concords which we processed into grape juice. The climate is just slightly warmer there than in Moscow, as they are down on the Clearwater River instead of up on the plateau like us.

Pat and Kathy (pictured above on the ladder and at the sink) supplied the grapes and a whole bunch of bonhomie, and we brought a lot of jars and another dose of good cheer and between us we ended up with a very large supply of frozen grape juice. To get it you cook the grapes until they've softened down into juice, seeds, and empty peels, then filter it through a colander and again through a jelly sock. That's it! It is slightly concentrated, too, so each jar goes pretty far. I think we brought home about 15 quarts and about the same number of pints. Pat and Kathy kept a good supply too, hopefully enough to last for a while. Hopefully the purple stains will come off the counter, too. Kathy swears Clorox does the trick.

We brought home some vine cuttings to try to establish our own grapes in Moscow; we'll see if that works out. Next project for our group: our chicken coop!

I made plum jam sometime in the last two weeks, fitting it in where I could, using the entire 5 gallon bucket in two separate sessions. It made beautiful, ruby-colored jam, that needed no sugar at all. So we'll eat it liberally on our toast and cereal this winter and not feel guilty, ever.

Processing Pears

2008-09-29T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'll never can fruit by myself again. With Walt and Reed's help, me peeling and him slicing and Reed putting the fruit in the jars, we knocked through a couple of flats of pears in just over an hour, not counting cooking time. If I had done it myself it would have taken three times that long. Walt had picked them last week and let them ripen on a big cushy tarp in the garage. We found that they were perfect just as they had taken on a yellowish tinge, but not gotten all the way yellow. This batch resulted in 9 quarts, which we added to the previous batch that was about the same size, and now we are well-set for canned pears for the winter. The apples are still waiting, and there are a few pears still on the tree in our front yard; I think I'll set those aside for crisp.

Zakarison's Chickens

2008-09-29T11:27:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago we spent a good portion of Saturday morning at the Zakarison farm north of Pullman, processing chickens for the freezer. Eric - that's him in the photo with his hand inside a bird - raises them on pasture, with movable chicken "trucks," a la Joel Salatin (Pastured Poultry Profits, is the name of his book, I think), so they were fat and happy and healthy birds. Also, Eric has an excellent setup for the processing day, which is outdoors, painless for the birds, hygienic, and considering the task, with as little yuck-factor as possible. This was the third time we've killed and processed our own chickens with Eric's help and Walt and I have found it to be a satisfying day of work. At the end of the day, with 20 chickens in the freezer, we feel like we've accomplished quite a lot!

This chicken tastes fabulous, by the way. I had to learn how to cut apart a whole chicken - not a skill one picks up automatically these days - but once I learned that, it was pretty easy to never buy industrial/factory raised chicken again. Eric's chickens are indeed more expensive, but we don't need to eat chicken every day, do we?

Finding Time for Fruit

2008-09-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

I picked a 5 gallon bucket of Italian plums last Friday before we left for the weekend; I haven't forgotten how a few years ago we left them, almost ripe, on the tree while we went camping for the weekend, and when we returned, the tree was completely bare - squirrels!! Sure enough, I took a break on Friday and when I came back a squirrel was trying to get what he could before I came back. So I left him a couple and took the rest. They're sitting in the bucket in the basement for later this week when I have time to make jam.

I also bottled up the cherry liqueur on Friday before we left for the weekend. Turns out that with a quart of cherries soaking in vodka, after you filter the cherries out and then filter it through a cloth (a coffee filter won't work, the gooey stuff keeps the liquid from filtering through), add in the 5 oz. of simple syrup, and top it off with water, you'll end up with about 26 ounces of liqueur, or, if you like it a little less strong, about a quart (32 oz.) of liqueur. We taste tested it right away and thought it was pretty delicious all by itself. In a few weeks we'll try it again and see if it has changed any.

Walt helped me process the few pears that were ripe on Friday, we just peeled and quartered and cored them, and put them into a light syrup in a glass jar, which I put in the microwave for a few minutes and then put in the fridge. So they are like canned pears, but not actually canned. We like the flavor and consistency of the canned pears so thought I'd replicate it without all the major work. But now all the pears sitting on a blanket on the floor of the garage are ripe all at once, so we'll have to do the real canning process, and very soon. Probably tomorrow! Thank goodness the apples will wait a little longer.

We got our freezer lamb from SkyLines last week, and this coming weekend is chicken processing at Zakarison's. We're getting 20 birds for the freezer. Eric says he has a new defeathering machine, even faster than the old defeathering machine, that will make it possible for us to do 20 birds in just over 2 hours. Wow. That many used to take us 1/2 a day. I'll report in afterwards. Combined with a sale on Country Natural beef from Oregon that's going on at the Co-op this week, the freezer is rapidly filling up, and that feels great.

Pears, Plums, and Apples Oh My

2008-09-07T07:51:00.001-07:00

The plums, the pears, the apples, they’re all waiting for me now, falling off the trees in anticipation of being turned into jam, into sauce, into slightly sweetened preserved fruit with essence of vanilla, just enough to make you breathe deep when you open the bottle, aah.

Walt picked a bushel of each.

The cherry liqueur is ready for bottling. I need to get some pretty corked bottles for it, and then we’ll tuck them away until November or so.

The lamb we ordered from Melissa Lines at SkyLines Farm will be ready for us later this week. I’m really looking forward to having that in the freezer. In anticipation I made my own version of seven-hour leg of lamb today with some I’d gotten from a friend a couple weeks ago; I browned it in olive oil and put it in the crock pot with about ½ an inch of water. I sautéed in the same pan a diced onion, two diced carrots, and a diced tomato, with some rosemary and mint, and added the browned veggies to the crock pot, and put on the lid. I left it on low from 7 am until 5 pm and then turned it down to keep warm. It was fabulously tender and delicious, absolutely the best lamb I’ve ever done. Alongside garlic parsley mashed potatoes made from new potatoes, and a salad, it was one of the more successful meals we’ve had in a while.

Our nephew Steve came to dinner to get a change from UI dorm food and he was gratifyingly grateful for the home-cooked meal. We topped it off with some European cheeses, a Dutch cheese with nettles, a semi-soft cow’s milk cheese from the Pyrenees with peppercorns in it, some domestic blue, and some Morbier from France, with the layer of ash in the middle – but next time in keeping with the locavore theme I’ll try some just from the Pacific Northwest. I bought a Ste Chapelle wine that was cheap, a “soft red”, thinking it’d be just the thing, but I didn’t realize that “soft” means “sweet.” Next time I’ll go with the pinot noir from Oregon or the Okanagan...

Lentil Festival and Blueberries

2008-08-25T15:15:00.000-07:00

After a cool and rainy week on the Palouse, the weather was perfect for Lentil Festival weekend in Pullman, and for the farmer’s market in Moscow, which didn’t appear to suffer any loss of customers to the Lentil Festival. The huge bowl of lentil chili is always an awesome sight, especially the guy up on top stirring it with a canoe paddle; I love the way they fill up pitchers of the stuff from the faucet at the bottom of the pot and then serve it into paper cups for the hordes.

We went to the farmer’s market this morning with our friends Pat and Kathy who were visiting from Kamiah, and came home with two flats of Oregon blueberries (24 generous pints), 10 ears of corn, and a flat of peaches. Also I got some fresh tomatoes from Kate Jaeckel at Orchard Farm, who was so proud to have harvested some 100 lbs. of them this week, thanks to her crop being protected during the early season by a hoop house. With snow on June 10 and frost in early July, it’s a wonder we can get tomatoes at all. We promptly turned them into BLT’s for lunch, accompanied by the boiled sweet corn that Reed and Pat shucked and silked for us.

I put one pint of berries in the fridge and poured the rest straight into Ziploc bags and stuck them – all 18 pounds of them - into the freezer. At a cost of $53 for the two flats, I got 18 lbs. of fresh blueberries for just under $3/lb. Considering that they cost at least twice that in the freezer section of the grocery store I’m feeling great, and that’s before I even pop any into my mouth, which is simply unadulterated pleasure. And for only $3/lb.!!

Spoiled for Choice

2008-08-17T15:44:00.000-07:00

Cherries macerating in vodka
Saturday - I went to the Moscow Farmer’s Market this morning on my bike, arriving just a few minutes after the opening bell at 8 a.m. I thought I would beat the crowds as in days of yore but wow, the crowds were out in full force, purposefully carrying away flats of blueberries, peaches, tomatoes, sweet corn, cumbersome melons, bags of green beans, new potatoes… just about anything you want vegetable wise is available on the Palouse in mid-August. It’s been hot this week so the tomatoes are finally ready, and we’re fortunate to have the Lewiston/Clarkston valley just an hour away, where the temperature along the Snake River is about 10 degrees warmer than the Palouse all year round. Also, Tonnemaker’s from further west in Washington have milder weather than us, giving them an advantage in the stone fruits and warm weather vegetables.

Way more people at the market than there were a year ago, before we left on our sabbatical. I thought maybe Moscow’s “groovy quotient” had risen but Walt and I both observed that people were really serious about the food – and so perhaps it’s less about what’s groovy and more about what’s economical and even better, what tastes good.

All I had room to carry on my bike were potatoes, onions, peaches, tomatoes, apples, eggs, basil, and blueberries, which I got from 3 different stands in order to spread the wealth around. Simple economics forced me to forgo the $15/qt. huckleberries, much as we love them.

When I got home I made a breakfast of blueberries and peaches with yogurt and granola; for lunch we made a tomato salad with finely diced fresh red onion, fresh basil, salt and pepper, and balsamic vinegar and olive oil; which we ate alongside homemade bread (made with Montana flour) spread with my son Reed’s special garlic/basil cream cheese, and some scrambled organic eggs from Avon Farm in Deary, Idaho, where the chickens are “living good like chickens should.”

We’re debating the location of our backyard chicken run, but we’ll have to decide soon, as we’re due to get our four hens from Zakarison’s outside Pullman WA in a few weeks.

Cherry Update: My fingers are still blackened from slicing and pitting 6 quarts of sweet cherries for my batch of cherry liqueur. I used almost the whole large bottle of 100 proof vodka for that many cherries, but there’s a little left over for vodka tonics. I didn’t use the Idaho vodka, though, since it was only 80 proof. Only!

Cherry Carnage

2008-08-13T14:36:00.001-07:00

The kitchen looked like I murdered a small animal but in reality all I'd been doing was pitting cherries that my husband picked from our neighbor Kate's tree. Normally we harvest cherries in July on the Palouse but it was a long winter so they were waiting for us when we arrived home from our European sabbatical last week. Walt doesn't actually love cherries that much - too bad since his birthday is in July - but he admitted they are "fun to pick," because you can grab them in bunches, which is very satisfying. They are huge, sweet, and almost black, and when I pit them on my homemade nail-on-a-board pitter, the best ones burst open with a geyser-like squirt of blood-red juice. My glasses, my face, the cupboards, the counter: everything is blessed with syrupy spatters.

First we ate some fresh for dessert. Then I froze several gallons of plain cherries for making cherry crisp this winter. Then, I made cherry jam, or, if it doesn't quite set up, cherry compote. Either way is fine, because the intended use is as a topping for breakfast oatmeal, or on yogurt or ice cream for dessert. The next bucket that Walt picks for me will be dedicated to cherry liqueur. Served on its own as a dessert drink or in white wine or sparkling white wine as a kir or kir royale aperitif, I predict it will be the essence of summer in a glass. Everyone we stayed with in France last year had a well-stocked cupboard of homemade liqueurs, and I intend to follow their example.

If you want to find cherries to pick in your area try the website www.pickyourown.org. Normally the Tukey Orchard at WSU in Pullman has U-pick cherries in July but I believe that most of them were used for research this year - ain't that the pits!

Here is the recipe I'll use for cherry liqueur. I don't know why the quantities are so funky - when I figure out more normal sounding measurements I'll replace this recipe with my own.

2½ c., (591 ml.) sweet cherries (Bing)
12.7 oz., (376 ml.) 100° proof Vodka (non-flavored)
5 oz., (148 ml.) simple syrup (two parts sugar dissolved in one part water)
2-6 drops lemon extract

• Into a quart jar, add cherries that have been cut in half and pitted. Add alcohol and water to cover cherries. Macerate—tightly covered 2 to 3 weeks at room temperature, shaking daily. Filter through cheesecloth and then through a coffee filter; add simple syrup and lemon extract (optional). Next add (top with) water to bring the total volume up to 25.4 ounces. The liqueur is very good at this point; it will become smoother if it is aged for a few weeks or more.

Note: You can also make this recipe using 80° vodka, 16 oz. (476 ml.).
24% Alc. by Vol. (48°). Makes 750 ml.

Eating Local on the Palouse

2008-05-08T06:07:00.000-07:00

This new blog will get underway in August 2008. Watch this space!