It is a by-product of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle that my enthusiasm for my vegetable and herb garden has grown by leaps and bounds. I have a small raised bed garden that is only about 68 sq feet. But I have so much packed into a small space. Peas, onions, 3 kinds of basil, 10 types of hot peppers, 9 tomato plants, tomatillos, 3 types of eggplant, leeks, cilantro, parsley, lemongrass, spinach, arugula, lettuce, dill, tarragon, rosemary, as well as a proliferation of oregano, mint, sage, and thyme.
This morning, I pulled out my green onions (mainly because I had to make room for other things). They smelled so fresh and lovely. I also harvested enough arugula to make my first batch of arugula walnut pesto which I froze for a rainy day when I will pull it out and drizzle it all over some warm cheesy polenta. My mouth is watering to think about it.
My daughter has been studying organic food choices in her school book club. We are planning some local and organic meals, and this summer we will take field trips to fruit stands. (We are not purists by any stretch, but we are exploring our world of food.) We plan on asking if all the produce comes from the farm or if it is shipped in. We are also going to ask if the produce are organic. I went to Landis Valley Herb Fair yesterday and bought some pepper and eggplant plants from a place called Happy Cat Organics. Besides plants, they also sell produce. I can't wait to take Maren on a field trip to visit them.
If that wasn't enough, I am taking a workshop on cheese making. I did get some cheesemaking supplies for my birthday, so I am all set. I can see it now--herbed goat cheese and some sort of hot pepper cheese. My husband Mark's birthday is this month and he has asked for a kit to make sourdough bread.
Bread, cheese, vegetables, fruits, herbs. Can life get any better?
Showing posts with label Animal Vegetable Miracle. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animal Vegetable Miracle. Show all posts
Saturday, May 10, 2008
Sunday, December 9, 2007
Disclosure
I wanted to say that while I was reading Animal Vegetable Miracle, I was simultaneously reading my new cookbook: Bobby Flay's Mesa Grill Cookbook. (I had the good fortune of eating at the Mesa Grill in Vegas for my 37th birthday.) This book is at cross purposes with the Kingsolver plan. Recipes include ingredients of a tropical nature such as mangoes, hot peppers, plantains, etc. Bobby includes ideas for seasonal menus which may or may not include some hard-to-get ingredients for the season. And I will undoubtedly make some of these dishes. I am not a holier-than-thou foodie, just one that is trying.
Animal Vegetable Miracle, Part II
I've finished the book, and while I am not going to go out and order my own flock of chickens who are known to lay eggs through the winter months, the book has influenced me to change some of my ways. I am never going to be a purist, but I do think I can work on ways to give my family and me a more intimate relationship with the food we eat and the area where we live.
1. I do want to join Slow Food organization. The money has kept me from doing it in the past, and will probably keep me from joining in any month surrounding the holidays, but the impetus is there, and I will work toward that goal.
2. I will become cognizant of where my grocery store produce hails, and make local choices, when I have the option.
3. I will visit the farmers' stand BEFORE I go grocery shopping. I know they get some food shipped to them, so I will make sure to ask which products are grown on their property. No excuses. This particular stand is one mile from my house.
4. I will give cheesemaking a try. I admit that this is mainly a curiosity, and I would check it out even if it weren't connected to a cause.
5. I will be a more conscious gardener. I'm not saying I'll be bigger or better, but I will put more thought into it and try to engage my kids more in the act of raising food.
6. I will plan more of our meals around seasonal food. I do this to some extent now, but I will be aware of how often I do this and when I veer. I do have a pretty good idea what foods come into season and when, so that is a start.
7. I will look into buying local eggs, meats, poultry, and flour. Not knowing what my choices are, I don't want to promise that I will always buy local, organic, free range, but I am on the lookout.
8. I will look for fair trade coffee. I am looking to cut down my coffee to 1 cup a day and to eliminate the diet soda (who wants all those chemicals) anyway. This is as good an excuse as any.
Some things won't happen. I don't anticipate giving up citrus, fish, or cheese from other countries. I do can and freeze some of my own foods, but I don't know that I'll step up production. These steps aren't mandates, but goals I have for myself. I think they fall within the realm of what is practical for me and my family at this time, yet uncomfortable enough to stretch us out of our comfort zone. Isn't growth-- of animals, plants, and the human spirit--what this is all about?
1. I do want to join Slow Food organization. The money has kept me from doing it in the past, and will probably keep me from joining in any month surrounding the holidays, but the impetus is there, and I will work toward that goal.
2. I will become cognizant of where my grocery store produce hails, and make local choices, when I have the option.
3. I will visit the farmers' stand BEFORE I go grocery shopping. I know they get some food shipped to them, so I will make sure to ask which products are grown on their property. No excuses. This particular stand is one mile from my house.
4. I will give cheesemaking a try. I admit that this is mainly a curiosity, and I would check it out even if it weren't connected to a cause.
5. I will be a more conscious gardener. I'm not saying I'll be bigger or better, but I will put more thought into it and try to engage my kids more in the act of raising food.
6. I will plan more of our meals around seasonal food. I do this to some extent now, but I will be aware of how often I do this and when I veer. I do have a pretty good idea what foods come into season and when, so that is a start.
7. I will look into buying local eggs, meats, poultry, and flour. Not knowing what my choices are, I don't want to promise that I will always buy local, organic, free range, but I am on the lookout.
8. I will look for fair trade coffee. I am looking to cut down my coffee to 1 cup a day and to eliminate the diet soda (who wants all those chemicals) anyway. This is as good an excuse as any.
Some things won't happen. I don't anticipate giving up citrus, fish, or cheese from other countries. I do can and freeze some of my own foods, but I don't know that I'll step up production. These steps aren't mandates, but goals I have for myself. I think they fall within the realm of what is practical for me and my family at this time, yet uncomfortable enough to stretch us out of our comfort zone. Isn't growth-- of animals, plants, and the human spirit--what this is all about?
Thursday, December 6, 2007
Animal Vegetable Miracle, Part I
I am reading the newest nonfiction book by Barbara Kingsolver (one of my favorite novelists) called Animal Vegetable Miracle. It is about the quest of her family to eat locally for one year. I highly recommend this book to anyone who eats. (I realize this includes everyone on this planet.) This subject is intense and may lead me to more than one blog entry, but I'll start here with a bit of my foodie background.
When I was young, my mother had a HUGE garden. She canned jellies and froze corn and green beans. We had a small orchard on our property that usually gave up enough fruit for pies. And we had the great zucchini harvest like anyone else with a garden. My mom liked gardening. And she was frugal. I always imagined that it was these two things combined with a heritage of gardeners that drove her to garden, more than a love of food. (My mother is one of those people who could be satisfied living off air, I think.)
Fast-forward to my first house and plot of land. It was small and in-town, so I carved out a garden with 6 4'x4' raised beds in which I planted by a method called square foot gardening. I did not garden because I loved the work. Tight hamstrings aren't conducive to bending over. And I'll take paint over dirt under my fingernails any day. I have, however, inherited some of my mother's frugality, but by my calculations and on the scale I was working the land, I am not too sure that I didn't spend more than I got back in the harvest. Unlike my mother, I do have a love of food--the more experimental--the better. My whole reason for gardening was to grow things that had yet come into vogue in the markets in my area. I was after the unusual. Fresh herbs (at the time, stores only sold dried herbs and fresh curly parsley), yellow tomatoes, kohlrabi, tomatillos, hot peppers (All colors and range of hotness), endive, Japanese Eggplant, arugula. If it was an exotic, I was growing it.
Slowly, the area grocery stores started catching up to my tastes. Even if the produce was on the pricey side--it spared my hamstrings. I continued to garden though. In our newer house with a bigger back yard, I still managed 3 small beds with tomatoes and peppers mostly. One year, I tried growing all purple vegetables just for the quirkiness of it. You'd be amazed how many varieties of vegetables come in purple besides eggplant. There are tomatoes, peppers (hot and sweet), beans, peas, cauliflower, sage, basil, and lettuce.
The way I gardened is the way I shopped. I sought out the strangest ingredients so I could lift the cover off my culinary creations with a big TA-DA. The best supermarkets were the ones who carried chutney, ginger, avocado, fresh herbs, frisee, an array of worldly cheeses --from sheep and goat's milk as well as cow's milk, blood oranges, mangos, escargot, lamb, crawfish, ground veal, turkey sausage in many flavors, proscuitto, quinoa, Meyer lemon infused oil. You get the picture. I still travel 35 minutes to shop at a grocery store that best fits my needs.
When I read books by Frances Mayes, in which she hailed the slow food movement, I felt I was doing my part: cooking daily, foods to be eaten with relish around a table. Not some prepackaged mix that you added a pound of your own ground beef. I may not have been Alice Waters, visiting the the farmers everyday to select the best of what was growing in the fields, but most of my meals came from the actual produce section, not some can or box. And I did cook recipes from magazines that boasted the current month's date. How's that for seasonal?
Then along comes Barbara Kingsolver, and she blows me out of the grocery store. She and the slow food movement expect more of me. Most generally their mandates are the following: buy local produce (to spur local economies and conserve fuel of transporting crops from distant lands). Buy seasonal produce. (Cucumbers don't grow here in the winter, so if I am going to be local, I have to be seasonal). Buy meat from animals which were humanely raised. Produce more of your own food, so you can place yourself directly in the food chain and have more reverence for your food and the land. (I especially like the part where she makes her own cheese!) I am still reading this book, so I will have to see what kind of changes will come into to my cooking and eating. But the first, step--questioning the way I do things--has already begun.
When I was young, my mother had a HUGE garden. She canned jellies and froze corn and green beans. We had a small orchard on our property that usually gave up enough fruit for pies. And we had the great zucchini harvest like anyone else with a garden. My mom liked gardening. And she was frugal. I always imagined that it was these two things combined with a heritage of gardeners that drove her to garden, more than a love of food. (My mother is one of those people who could be satisfied living off air, I think.)
Fast-forward to my first house and plot of land. It was small and in-town, so I carved out a garden with 6 4'x4' raised beds in which I planted by a method called square foot gardening. I did not garden because I loved the work. Tight hamstrings aren't conducive to bending over. And I'll take paint over dirt under my fingernails any day. I have, however, inherited some of my mother's frugality, but by my calculations and on the scale I was working the land, I am not too sure that I didn't spend more than I got back in the harvest. Unlike my mother, I do have a love of food--the more experimental--the better. My whole reason for gardening was to grow things that had yet come into vogue in the markets in my area. I was after the unusual. Fresh herbs (at the time, stores only sold dried herbs and fresh curly parsley), yellow tomatoes, kohlrabi, tomatillos, hot peppers (All colors and range of hotness), endive, Japanese Eggplant, arugula. If it was an exotic, I was growing it.
Slowly, the area grocery stores started catching up to my tastes. Even if the produce was on the pricey side--it spared my hamstrings. I continued to garden though. In our newer house with a bigger back yard, I still managed 3 small beds with tomatoes and peppers mostly. One year, I tried growing all purple vegetables just for the quirkiness of it. You'd be amazed how many varieties of vegetables come in purple besides eggplant. There are tomatoes, peppers (hot and sweet), beans, peas, cauliflower, sage, basil, and lettuce.
The way I gardened is the way I shopped. I sought out the strangest ingredients so I could lift the cover off my culinary creations with a big TA-DA. The best supermarkets were the ones who carried chutney, ginger, avocado, fresh herbs, frisee, an array of worldly cheeses --from sheep and goat's milk as well as cow's milk, blood oranges, mangos, escargot, lamb, crawfish, ground veal, turkey sausage in many flavors, proscuitto, quinoa, Meyer lemon infused oil. You get the picture. I still travel 35 minutes to shop at a grocery store that best fits my needs.
When I read books by Frances Mayes, in which she hailed the slow food movement, I felt I was doing my part: cooking daily, foods to be eaten with relish around a table. Not some prepackaged mix that you added a pound of your own ground beef. I may not have been Alice Waters, visiting the the farmers everyday to select the best of what was growing in the fields, but most of my meals came from the actual produce section, not some can or box. And I did cook recipes from magazines that boasted the current month's date. How's that for seasonal?
Then along comes Barbara Kingsolver, and she blows me out of the grocery store. She and the slow food movement expect more of me. Most generally their mandates are the following: buy local produce (to spur local economies and conserve fuel of transporting crops from distant lands). Buy seasonal produce. (Cucumbers don't grow here in the winter, so if I am going to be local, I have to be seasonal). Buy meat from animals which were humanely raised. Produce more of your own food, so you can place yourself directly in the food chain and have more reverence for your food and the land. (I especially like the part where she makes her own cheese!) I am still reading this book, so I will have to see what kind of changes will come into to my cooking and eating. But the first, step--questioning the way I do things--has already begun.
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