Bobaganda

The Coop in 2012

2011-12-26T14:59:00.000-06:00

A new year is traditionally a time to take stock of how things are going and to think about new ideas for the coming year. The Oklahoma Food Coop is not immune to the lure of rethinking the way we do business. You may have landed here because you completed one of the surveys we launched to gauge the level of support for going to two delivery days/month. Thanks for your participation, and if you didn't land here after participating in one or more of those surveys, here are the links, please click on them and fill them out. Complete each survey that pertains to you, as a customer, producer, and/or volunteer for the Coop.

http://kwiksurveys.com?u=okcoopproducers

http://kwiksurveys.com?u=okcoopcustomers

http://kwiksurveys.com?u=okcoopvolunteers

We are considering some other possibilities.

We may field a food truck, featuring an all-Oklahoma (or mostly-Oklahoma) menu with products bought from our producers.
We have found a manufacturer of paper products here in Oklahoma, but they are too big to be interested in joining the coop (their minimum delivery to one address is one semi-truck full). But if we pick up they will sell in smaller lots to us at a wholesale price. We could then offer made-in-Oklahoma toilet paper to our members, with the profits supporting our core local food and non-food product activities.
We are considering kiosks and shelf space in stores offering our artisan body care products.

And of course, we continue to focus on our core competency of local food delivery. We are looking forward to the arrival of our new website sometime in the new year, which we think will be a great improvement over the present online shopping experience of the Oklahoma Food Coop. In addition --

We need additional pickup sites. In Oklahoma City, in particular we need a Village/Nichols Hills area pickup site, and a Luther/Jones/Arcadia pickup site. But we need pickup sites elsewhere in the state too.
We want to improve the pickup site experience and we need input as to how that can work better. We wonder how big a deal it is that people have to "hunt and peck" for their individual items, and how much of an improvement it would be if frozen and refrigerated items arrived sorted to their individual orders the way that dry goods are.
What else is on people's minds in this regard?

One thing that's important to remember -- all of us in the Coop are owners. That suggests both rights and responsibilities. Whatever resolutions we may make for the New Year, let's include one about becoming more active in the Oklahoma Food Cooperative! 2012 is the Year of the Cooperative, so let's make it a good one!

Ye Olde Bon Appetitin' Oklavore Gift Guide Part the Third -- the IN BETWEENS

2011-12-07T12:03:00.000-06:00

It's been an exciting two days at the Ye Olde Bon Appetitin' Oklavore Holiday Shopping Shop. We toured the Stocking Stufferings Department (the $5 and unders), and visited the Extravagants (the $50 and ups), now we turn our attention to the IN-BETWEENS -- gifts between $5.01 and $49.99. This is the largest section, and as I stand here at the front door, I am wondering how I can ever adequately describe the rich diversity of items available this month. Well, when in doubt, just dive in I say and start writing. You can always revise it later.

How about a live plant? That's a gift that keeps giving.

Crestview has certified organic rosemary plants in 6 inch pots for $10.50. Keep it in a sunny window this winter, plant it out in the spring or keep it as a house plant. They also have hanging baskets at $10 - $15.
Skyridge has really clever ivy topiaries at $15. A topiary is a plant trained/trimmed to a particular shape.
Renricks has pansies by the flat for $17. There are 18 in a flat and you can mix and match. Brighten up your yard during the winter and don't forget that pansy flowers are edible. So you can decorate your winter casseroles and root salads with pansy flowers. Taste and beauty!

The Men's Apparel Department is nicely stocked.

A Little Hippy Shop has Grill Daddy aprons, hemp wrist bands, a patriotic peace T-shirt, "Real Men Recycle" t-shirts made from recycled cotton in various designs,
Quentin at Crosstimbers is making paracord wrist bands in several colors for $7 (and the profits go towards his "Buy a Horse" fund).
Fluffy's Compleat Boutique has men's socks, in size 11-13, in your choice of colors, a tie-dyed long-sleeve t-shirt, a variety of short-sleeved tie-dyed t-shirts,

You can spend quite a bit of time shopping the Women's Apparel.

A Little Hippy Shop has hippy headbands for $8, bottle cap necklace and ear ring sets at $12.00, peace tees with rhinestones at $22, recycled cotton t-shirts at $18 (various designs),
Fluffy's Compleat Boutique has women's socks for $8, a tie-dyed Fairy Dress at $30, batik scarves at $18 - $21, a variety of styles and shapes of tie-dyed women's shirts from $15 to $25, tie-dyed t-shirts at $15,
The Chartreuse Lily has some really charming make-up bags at $8, zippered pouches (almost 9 inches long) at $9.95, wristlet clutches with beaded zippered pull that matches the fabric at $14.50, tissue pack covers at $5.50,
Quentin of Crosstimbers paracord wrist bands are for women too! In several colors at $7.
The Rowdy Stickhorse has cleverly designed crochet hooded scarves at $25. These will keep your head, neck, and ears warm and cozy without messing with the hair.
708 Cupcake Lane has totes made from upcycled t-shirts, at $7.
Honeysuckle Hollow has Toasty Toes Innersoles made from wool felt. They fit into your shoes under your socks and help keep your feet warm on these cold days.

The Art Department is another are with enormous variety --

Guided by the Light has matted prints starting at $25.
Happy Rabbit Acres/Main Street Photo-Video has matted prints at $20, and a dairy goat magnet set at $9.99.
Renricks has matted prints at $20. They can also turn any of their greeting cards into matted prints upon request.
Winning Photography Solutions has unique dried flower art, framed. Each item is original and unique and they dry the flowers themselves, the old fashioned way, between the pages of books. They also have prints at $10, with and without matts.
Joe de Dee is offering water-color portraits hand-drawn by her daughter Jessica. The portraits are drawn from photographs that you submit.
A Little Hippy Shop has photo prints in black plastic frames with glass for $30, and matted prints at $15.

Is there someone with a baby on your gift-giving list? We can help with that decision in the Baby Department!

Shady Oaks Family Farm has girls' car seat covers, at $25 and diaper cakes (decorated displays of diapers)
Rowdy Stickhorse has Little Britches herbal baths at $10.99,
Soy Candle Cottage has natural baby lotion at $10, and a Baby Shower Basket for $20 that contains a variety of products for baby.
A Little Hippy Shop has cute infant t-shirts for $12.
Fluffy's Compleat Boutique has very nice tie-dyed infant t-shirts at $13.
708 Cupcake Lane has elegant decorated diaper cakes at $45, whose decorations can be customized to your desires.

Bath and Beauty? We got what you want and need. Our artisanal body care and bath products are among our greatest values.

Clear Creek Lavender has lavender bath salts at $6, tins of lavender shea butter at $10,
Laughing Rabbit is offering their sea salt blend bath salts at $7, emu hand and body balm at $10.50 - 20,
Medicine Women Soap is offering several blends of bath salts made with Dead Sea salt from the Holy Lands blended with various essential oils, at $15.49.
Rowdy Stickhorse has herbal body polish at $12.99, bath salts and scrubs between $5.99 and $10.99, herbal deodorants at $5.99, lavender and rose waters at $5.99 - $10.99, foot butters and shoe treatments for $5.99 - $9.99, shampoo bars at $5.99, bath teas at $5.99, Buckaroo Balm at $5.99 - $10.99, Paulette's FAMOUS Cowgirls and Roses creme for $5.99 - $10.99, after shave lotion at $10, shaving soap bar $5.99, sunscreen at $7.99, face masks at $10.99, a variety of soaps at $5.99,
Soy Candle Cottage has a "Bag for Dads" for $19, which contains a nice selection of items for men, bottles of Fisherman's Soy Lotion for $10 and Golfers Soy Lotion at $8, soy hand lotion for men for $5.50 - $10, foot creams at $10 - $15, cuticle candles at $6, additional soy lotions at $10, face cremes at $15,
Earth Elements has Mint Toothpowder for $5.50,
Crosstimbers has various foot lotions for $5 - $10, body lotions at $10, goat's milk lotions at $10,
Honeysuckle Hollow has their hand-made "Foot Fishies", exfoliating stoneware.
Joi de Dee has cosmetics, yes, Oklahoma-made mineral make-up at $5 to $25.
Laughing Rabbit has a grab bag of miscellaneous soap items for $12.50.
Medicine Women Soaps has a variety of their soaps priced starting at $10.99.
Heaven Sent Food and Fiber has Felted Goats Milk Soap Bars at $8. These are bars of soap enclosed in alpaca wool felt, for an elegant bathing experience.

The Book Department is stocked with useful reading for your Oklavore Experience.

Aunt Purple's Cooking has five cookbooks featuring easy and tasty recipes for your family.
Lost Creek Mushroom Farms has a Shitaake Sampler Cookbook.
High Tides and Green Fields is offering their book Cattle Panel Hoop House Construction, includes source lists for materials, construction detail drawings and photos, suggested reading and website sources, suggested crops for winter production. The materials look at natural insulation, double covers, ventilation, watering, and the challenges of Oklahoma weather.
Prairie Rose Permaculture (that's me, folks) is offering copies of the permaculture design for my home, Gatewood Urban Homestead, which is a guide to home adaptation that meets the looming realities of peak oil, economic irrationality, and climate instability. Smart adaptations now will save you much money and inconvenience later. Offered as a CD or as a PDF by email.

The Children's Department is stocked with items for kids of all ages.

A Little Hippie Shop has children's and youth t-shirts, at $15,
Fluffy's Compleat Boutique has a variety of children's and teen tie dyed shirts, at $15/
The Chartreuse Lily has a variety of headbands at $8,
You can display your kid's art work on your refrigerator with Happy Rabbit Acres magnet sets from $9.99 to $25.

In our Department of Classes. . .

Shepherd's Cross is offering a variety of fabric arts classes for $15 - $30 each.
Once Upon a Silver Moon has an incense-making class at $25.

Fabric Arts:

Honeysuckle Hollow has a great gift for those who sew -- hand-felted pincushion orbs at $10.
Shepherd's Cross is offering drop spindles at $10 for spinning yarn, rovings and carded batts for $7 to $12 (alpaca/llama), skeins of yarn at $16.
Heaven Sent Food and Fiber has two sizes of drop spindles, from $15 to $19.50, hand-painted roving balls for $12.50, skeins of yarn for $15 to $30, featuring a variety of fibers,

Health Department

Rowdy Stickhorse has Melancholy Magic, an aromatherapy product to lift your spirits, at $5.99 - $10.99, tooth powder at $5.99, herbal dream pillows at $10.99, herbal heat pillow at $20.99, Mexican Mustang Liniment at $10.99, insect repellant at $5.99 - $10.99, and for $7 - $13,
Soy Candle Cottage has Gardener's Lotion at $10,

In the Holiday Gift Department --

Rowdy Stickhorse can put one of their appropriately priced items on crinkle paper in a cellophane bag with a bow and tag, priced from $7 to $13.
Guided by the Light has sets of Christmas cards from $10,
Happy Rabbit Acres has sets of Christmas cards from $12.50
Winning Photography Solutions has sets of Christmas cards from $10.
Country to Town Market has a holiday gift basket of their Homestyle Jam, at $18.
The Oscar Romero Catholic Worker House has CD's of piano improvisations on the music of Advent, Nativity and Epiphany, performed by Bob Waldrop, and recorded live on the Yamaha conservatory grand piano at Epiphany Church. Proceeds benefit our ministry of delivering food to low income people who don't have transportation. $15 each or $50 for 5 or $35 for 3.
Snider Farms has festive gift packs and tins of peanuts from $6.50 on up.
Rachel's Homestead Creations has home-made Candy wreaths, priced $20-25.
Bohemia has gift packs of their signature Miss Terri's Almond Dark Chocolate confection at $32.
A Little Hippy Shop has crocheted stockings for $16.

Home Care

Crosstimber Farms has Ethans Should-Be-Famous brooms, made by Ethan Lusby. These are hand-made functional brooms in traditional styles, use them as a broom -- or -- use them as a elegant colonial accent decoration. Priced from $14 to $20, made with broomcorn (Oklahoma was once a leading state for broomcorn production).
Rowdy Stickhorse has an anti-bacterial spray at $8, Country Clean concentrate at $20,
Shepherd's Cross has wool dusters at $12 - $17.
The Chartreuse Lily is making refills for the Swiffer duster products at $8, a variety of stoneware clay spoon rests for $8,
Honeysuckle Hollow is offering their handmade stoneware bread warmer stone for $6, a set of 3 reusable wool dryer balls for $15 -- these are an alternative to commercial dryer sheets,
Once Upon a Silver Moon has a set of 3 moth repelling sachets for $12,

I guess we'll have a part 4 on Thursday morning since I am out of time for today. Tomorrow we'll start with Jewelry and move on through Scented Home and Food Items.

Ye Olde Bon Appetitin' Oklavore Gift Guide -- Part 2 -- the EXTRAVAGANTS

2011-12-06T14:28:00.000-06:00

In Part 1 of Ye Olde Bon Appetitin Oklavore Gift Guide. . . we looked at the value priced Stocking Stufferings. In Part 2, we are going to look at the Extravagants, the gifts that are on the higher end of prices at the Coop ($50 and up).

Let's stop at the Pet Department first, where we find that Barker and Friends have large hand-made pet pillows, the tops are quilted using a durable fabric and are priced at $60 each. The exteriors are removable and washable.

In the Kitchen Department, a new producer -- Rambling Road Designs -- is offering hand crafted wooden cutting boards. They are 1-1/2 inches thick and both sides are usable. This particular design is made from Hard Maple, Purple Heart, Walnut, and Honduran Mahogany woods. All of the woods this producer uses are certified for sustainable harvest. This is a lifetime heirloom purchase that your great grandchildren will enjoy. Priced at $125.

These aren't quite $50 but they certainly qualify as extravagant. In the Jewelry Department, Beautiful Jewelry Items has turqoise and tiger eye necklaces and a coral, crystal, and cinnabar necklace, each at at $45. Buglight Faeries has a very handsome 20" Agate Slab Necklace, the chain is handmade with copper wire and glass beads, priced at $40, and Swirly Pendant necklace, made with copper wire and glass beads, at $45. All of these are one-of-a-kind works of art.

In the Home Decor department, we find a very extravagant gift offered by the Rambling Road Designs studio. Besides the wonderful wood work, Rambling Road Designs studio also does ceramic art. This month sculptor Jean Routman is offering original bas relief sculptures created uniquely for you. Her "Home Portraits" are an original bas-relief replica of your home or favorite place sculpted in terracotta clay, kiln fired and hand painted. Scale drawings are made from photographs of each subject. Clay is rolled into a slab and the scale drawing is transferred to the clay which is then carefully removed creating a three dimensional bas relief image. Details are added as the clay begins to dry. When dry, it is kiln fired and then hand painted. Each home comes in a personalized sculpted base ready for table display.Available in two sizes, priced between $225 and $275. Since each of this is an original work of art created to your order, they are ordered one month and then delivered the following delivery day.

And now. . . for the Fleece Department. No, I am not referring to the Tax Department, but to the Department of Gorgeous, Soft, and Useful Wool Fleeces. Not many stores have such a department. It's one of our little unique notes. But with all these lamb producers, there will be wool!

Shepherd's Cross has several felted wool pelts available made from 100% natural, flame resistant wool. The wool is produced and processed at Shepherd's Cross and are processed without chemicals using only 100% natural soap is used to wash the wool. Each pelt is unique since every wool fleece is different. They are soft, natural, durable & luxurious, making a wonderful cushioned seat or a great floor covering. The more they are used the more durable they become. The felted pelts are washable. Priced at the top end at $64 and then go down from there.

Anichini Moore Ranch and Farm also has fleece's this year, listed in Fiber Arts. They come in a natural black color and a natural creme color. These fleeces are for spinning into yarn and are priced at $80/lb and will weigh between 1.5 and 2.8 pounds.

Heaven Sent Food and Fiber has fleeces for spinning. They have one Merino fleece at $80, and one Sun Alpaca fleece at $60.00.

Shepherd's Cross has amazing sheepskins for sale, in white and dark brown colors, any of which would make a very luxurious seat cover. Priced between $85 and $225.

In the Fabric Arts Department, Kathy Tibbits at Fluffy's Compleat Boutique is extravagance personified this year, starting with a Steampunk quilt top, at $100. She is offering a set of twin fat quarters, 16 funky hand-died cotton quarters, you can specify whether you want funky or consonant colors. $48. She has a Cherokee syllabary quilt top or quilt. It is $100 for the quilt top, or she can finish it as a quilt for you and the price is $450.00. If you pay the full fare, you can pick the color (or pattern) on back, the thread colors, whether it is made puffy and deep like a comforter or stiff and strong like an old-fashioned quilt from days gone by. Also, you can decide if you like original artisan free hand machine quilting or patterned quilting such as a feather, shell or fan pattern like our grannies made. If you'd like to pay a little bit every month, email her before buying and she can list it for you that way.

Altogether, Kathy has 11 quilts or quilt tops available this month. This is one of the most amazing collections of quilts ever offered anywhere. Her quilts hang as works of arts and these are heirloom purchases that will be handed down and used by your grandchildren.

FYI. . . Kathy is one of the Mothers of the Oklahoma Food Coop, serving on the first board of directors of the Committee to Organize an Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Besides the quilts, she also has men's Cherokee shirts, in two styles, priced at $75 to $100.

In the Classroom. . .Turtle Rock Farm has a number of classes and events available including beekeeping, sustainable cooking, gardening and composting, and prairie dinner and fiddling concert, priced between $40 and $95.

In the Art Department, Luis Saenz Fine Art Photography is offering four matted art prints, at $100/each. Framing is available for $150 extra.

When it comes to our Food Departments, our producers have several extravagant options.

Greenwoods has pastured turkeys. They are huge -- 27 to 31 pounds! But they are seriously tasty. A pastured turkey would be a truly extravagant gift.

Wichita Buffalo has whole prime ribs and tenderloins of buffalo. These will run you $50 to a bit more than $100 depending on the size of the meat package. They also have bundles of 20 one pound packages of their pastured beef for $95.

When it comes to hams, you have several extravagant choices. Anichini Moore has "Large Black Pig" hams, which is an artisan breed. She offers them uncured so you can cure it yourself or cook it like a large roast.

Colpitts Pine Ridge Ranch has cured hams from their Berkshire pigs, cured, as large as ten pounds this year. He also has a special price on bundles of 10 one pound packages of his ground beef.

A particularly extravagant gift from American Heritage Family Farm would be their bundle of 100 one pound packages of ground beef, at $469, together with other small bundles in the $50 and up range of other cuts of meat

Cattle Tracks, our only organic beef producer, has an extravagant deal called the Half Herd, which is half a beef. It is priced based on the processed weight (that is, the actual weight of wrapped meat packages that go into your freezer). You get to tell the butcher how you want it cut and wrapped.

Clear Creek Monastery offers a bundle of 10 pounds of their Pinzgauer beef cuts at $65.

Sugarloaf Farms offers both half and whole beefs. You can dialogue with the butcher about how you want it cut and wrap. The price includes the processing charges.

The Lamb Department has quite a few extravagant food options.

American Heritage Family Farm has legs of lamb and assorted bundles of lamb cuts.

Last but not least of the $50 and up gifts. . . give a gift that keeps on giving in the form of the Gift Membership to the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. It's priced at $45.45 so that when the coop's 10% is added in, it rings up at $50. We can provide a suitable inscribed certified with the gift with a unique number that is entered when the giftee enters his or her name and address info in the online membership application.

Your Oklavore Holiday Gift-giving Guide - Part 1 -- the Stocking Stuffers

2011-12-04T22:48:00.004-06:00

Here's Santa's best advice:

Make this holiday season a gift to yourself and also to justice, sustainability, and the common good, by purchasing gifts from Oklahoma producers for family and friends this year. The Oklahoma Food Cooperative can help you do good and give you great value as you shop. Anybody can go to a big box store and buy cheap schlock made by big corporations that practice injustice towards their employees and pollute the earth with their business activities. Why not give unique gifts that keep our money at home and thus help promote prosperity for all Oklahomans?

So let's take a brisk walk down the street and open the door into the Oklahoma Food Cooperative's Holiday Store. Wow! This looks like something our grandmother would love. A display of dried flowers, boughs of fir and cedar, Indian corn, pumpkins, pine cones and a gorgeous tree trimmed with painted squash and gourds, draped with hand-made garlands, and home-crafted ornaments. The first place we're going to look at is a very festive holiday bargain boutique, where everything is priced at not more than $5.00. There is a festive painted sign over its entrance -- Ye Old Holidaye Stocking Stufferings!

Buy Quentin a Horse. First thing I noticed was a little sign, "Buy Quentin a Horse" on the Crosstimber's Farms table. I asked the jolly young elf whose name-tag read "Airman Eric" who was minding the store what that meant. He said, "Quentin Lusby wants a horse, and his mother said that if he wanted a horse, he would have to buy it. So he has taken up knot tying and is making paracord lanyards and bracelets/wristlets." The lanyards are value priced at less than five bucks each, so let's buy Quentin a horse for Christmas by buying some of these lanyards as stocking stuffers. I am using mine as a key chain and it is working great for that purpose and I'm getting some more for friends.

Moving along, we come to the Scented Home section and there is just an amazing complex scent about that corner of the store. Once Upon a Silver Moon has quite the selection of incense priced at $5. The scents are quite amazing. Skyridge Farms has some potpourri's priced just a bit above $5, and Soy Candle Cottage has linen sprays in the $5 range.

The Pet Department is very well stocked with value priced items. For those of you who like to feed birds, Rowdy Stickhorse Wild Acres has suet cups and Lasley Farm has bags of peanuts for bird feeders under $5. Cat's love wheatgrass, and High Tides and Green Fields has clamshells of it for less than $5. Honeysuckle Hollow has cute little kitty toys made from handspun yard. Proceeds help Leava feed her little colony of feral cats that she watches over. Atoka Lamb has lamb bone dog treats at less than $5 your dogs should adore. Barker and Friends is offering a great deal on its sampler of doggie treats for less than $5. Certified organic? Cattle Tracks has doggie bones and chews for less than $5. The busy crew of the Lusby family at Crosstimbers have several less-than-$5 gifts for your animals including shampoo bars and Hannah's dog treats. High Tides is offering their famous hand-made catnip mice for your favorite furry feline friends.

Coming now to the Paper Arts Department, well, the mind almost boggles at the selections, as in "there are hundreds of things to look at here". All of the following are $5 or less --

Guided by the light handcrafted cards,
Happy Rabbit Acres/Main Street Photo handcrafted cards
Renricks handcrafted cards
Skyridge Farms, handcrafted cards with handcrafted paper, some of which have wildflower seeds implanted.
A Little Hippy Shop has a cute collection of window stickers.

Escaping the Paper Arts Department with some checks left and positive balances on the credit cards . . . we run into the Kitchen Department. Every kitchen needs cute stuff, and there is a lot of it in the value aisle. We all know we need to ditch our paper towel habits, and Fluffy's Compleat Boutique has gorgeous tie-dyed kitchen towels in the $5 or less range. If you have a refrigerator, you have a need for kitchen magnets, and Main Street Photo/Happy Rabbit Acres has refrigerator magnets galore!

Next we check out the Jewelry Shop where we see that A Little Hippie Shop has great hemp bracelets and peace sign bottle cap necklaces. Once Upon a Silver Moon has fairy dust necklaces.

It's hard to leave the jewelry section, there is so much to look at. But we must move on and so we enter the Home Decor Department. They are doing it right. There's an elf in the corner picking Christmas carols on a guitar. He must be the famous Rednecked Elf that we've all heard so much about. His Santa hat has a bill that reads "Billy Ray's Used Sleighs".

First thing we see are some gorgeous beeswax candles from George's Apiary. Then we see Once Upon a Silver Moon as Arkansas quartz crystals by the ounce from Mt. Ida, as well as a selection of herbal pillows. Beautiful Jewelry Items has Good Deed Beads which are 10 beads attached to a wooden cross.

In the Fabric Arts department, we find some fine phat quarters I mean fat quarters for the quilters in your family. Seems to me like you could just put a hem around those and they would make great napkins so you could ditch your unsustainable paper napkin habit.

The Children's Department features two great bargains in the $5/or less Holidaye Stuffings area. G-J All Natural Beef has its Redneck Genius Game, and the Little Hippie Shop has a cute hippie flower hair clip.

The largest department in the Ye Old Holidaye Stocking Stufferings area is the Bath and Body Care Department. There is an almost dizzying array of artisanal products at value prices for your gift-giving pleasures. And don't forget the guys. Guys need great body care products. You'd be surprised at the number of manly men about this coop who have a stash of artisanal soaps for their regular enjoyment.

Joi de Dee -- bath salts, lip balms (big selection of flavors), foaming sugar scrubs, soaps, foaming liquid soaps,
Rowdy Stickhorse -- soaps "almost too numerous to list", mustache and eyebrow wax, natural cotton wash cloths, soaps,
Crosstimbers Farm, hand lotions, deodorant body powders, foot butters, shampoo bars, lip balms, face cream, hand and body lotions, crochet wash cloth, soaps, drawstring bags for soaps,
Clear Creek Lavender lip balm, soap sachets, soaps,
Soy Candle Cottage lip balm, Mom's candle, facial scrubs,
Laughing Rabbit Soap -- soap bars,
Medicine Woman Soap -- natural hand sanitizer,
Honeysuckle Hollow, shea butter soaps,
Once Upon a Silver Moon, soaps,
Heaven Sent Food and Fiber, soaps

Accessories? We got them, for men and for women.

Chartreuse Lily -- mirrors (various designs), coin pouches, key fobs, travel tissue packs,
Fluffy's Compleat Boutique -- scarves, dyed long shoe laces

That's quite a list, don't you think? BUT WE AREN'T DONE YET! You can give FOOD as a gift, in fact, people are known to ADORE gifts of Oklahoma foods. And there are LOTS of $5 or less food items that would make great gifts. So let's wander over to the HOLIDAY TREATS section of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Oh good, there's samples.

Earth Elements Market Bakery -- cookies by the dozen,breads, brownies, cookie doughs, muffins, jams
Snider Farms -- peanut butter cheese ball, peanut nugget candy, peanuts - various packages and flavors
Bohemia -- Chocolate/honey caramel love bars, Crownies, bars
Concina San Pasqual -- brownies, fudge, green chili salsa,
Renricks -- cheese spreads, dip mixes, glazes,
Peach Crest -- jams
Wildhorse Canyon Farms -- jams/jellies,
George's Apiary -- flavored honeys, spun honey,
Honey Hill Farm -- honey,
Lasley Family Farms -- peanuts, roasted and flavored

I hope this gives you some great ideas for what you can buy for five dollars or less through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Tomorrow, I will give a tour of the extravagant gifts -- those starting at $100 and going up from there!

I hope everyone is having fun eating their way through this bon appetitin' feastin' season! We certainly are at our house.

Green Bean Casserole -- with a Home-made Shiitake Mushroom Sauce and Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Rings

2011-11-24T18:39:00.002-06:00

Green beans, fresh or frozen, best if from your garden or a local organic producer
Fresh shiitake mushrooms (lots -- at least a half pound)
Fried onions rings (made with Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Ring Method, recipe below)
Cream (1 cup)
Beef stock (2 cups)
Flour (6 tablespoons)

If fresh, string and cut up the green beans however you like them and blanche in boiling water for about 5 minutes. Drain.

Place green beans in a casserole dish. Mix a handful (or two!) of the fried onion rings with the green beans.

Slice the shiitake into small pieces, saute in butter until cooked. Add the flour and make a "mushroom roux" (cook until the flour is light brown).

Add the stock, stir quickly, add the cream, stir quickly. After the cream is thoroughly mixed with the beef stock and roux, pour it into the casserole dish and gently stir so that everything is submerged in the sauce. Place a handful (or two!) of the fried onion rings on top of the casserole.

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-30 minutes, until it is "bubbly".

Yes, you can use canned green beans and canned mushrooms, and it will be a LOT better than the standard canned Cream of Mushroom soup variety. Maybe not quite as good as the home-grown green beans and shiitake mushroom version, but plenty better than the standard.

Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Ring Method

1 can beer
Large onions
3 eggs
flour (3 cups, makes a lot of onion rings)
Habanero Salsa
baking powder (1.5 tsp per cup of flour)
3 teaspoons cornstarch
Spices and Herbs to taste (salt, garlic powder, cayenne, whatever you like, experiment! or add nothing for the traditional simple onion ring taste)
oil for frying

Cut the onions into rings. Get the biggest onions you can find. Mix the dry ingredients to make the breading mixture. Beat the eggs with the beer and the habanero salsa but don’t mix with the dry ingredients. These rings are breaded, not battered. Dip the rings into the beer/egg mixture, then into the breading mixture so they are thoroughly covered with flour. Dip again in beer/egg and again in dry mixture. These rings are double dipped.

If you don’t have habanero salsa, use cayenne pepper in the dry ingredients. Or if you don't like spicy hot foods, just leave this out entirely. Fry in hot oil until done. If you are using some of these for green bean casserole, fry the onion rings for that dish a little more crispy than the others for just snackin’.

Fried Radishes and Eggs

2011-11-21T09:30:00.000-06:00

I started cleaning out the chest refrigerator this morning to make room for our 19+ lb pastured turkey to thaw and down in the bottom of the produce box was a bag of radishes from the October coop order. The radishes were just fine, the greens a bit. . . past due. So I dumped them in the sink, washed them, cut off the greens and roots, sliced them, into the pan with some local butter, onions I got in September from the coop, and some serrano peppers from this month's coop order. Garlic, salt and pepper, cooked well done (not burnt, but the onions should be well caramelized and in fact the radishes caramelize a bit too). This made a great low carb side dish to my scrambled pastured eggs and sausage from a free range pig, all of course bought through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Taste, food safety, nutrition. All there in about 15 minutes of work and some good bon appetitin' eatin.

I know that "fried radishes" sounds weird, since most of us only eat radishes raw, but try 'em, you'll like 'em. They sweeten up very nicely.

BEWARE of your Butter!

2011-11-18T09:12:00.000-06:00

As it turns out, conventional butter is loaded with 11 different pesticides, including --

3 known or probably carcinogens
8 suspected hormone disruptors
1 neurotoxin
2 developmental or reproductive toxins

More at Pesticide Action Network North America.

Organic butter is more expensive, but how expensive are the consequences of pesticide residues, such as cancer?

Ideas for a Local and Low Impact Holiday!

2011-11-16T22:34:00.000-06:00

★    Give food! Preferably local food, food that you've grown yourself, or something that you've made yourself or bought from a local producer – jams and jellies, pecans from your tree, pickles, breads, pies, cakes.

★    Give locally! Besides food, look for locally-made artisanal body care products like soaps and bath salts, clothing, arts and crafts.

★    Make gifts! Besides food, think of your own craft and artistic abilities.

★    Give with justice! If you do buy gifts, vote with your dollars. Avoid big box stores and shop at locally owned stores. Explore the after market for treasures that will make wonderful gifts such as antiques and vintage items. Buy imported gifts from fair trade groups that support global economic justice. Buy products made from recycled materials for gifts.

★    Re-gift! This is the giving away of something that was given to you. The hobbits started this in the Shire, so it must be a fine and sensible thing to do.

★    Give sustainability! The list here is very long. Miniature herb gardens. A solar small battery charger and rechargeable batteries. Potted plants either for growing inside or for transplanting outside later. Baskets of cloth napkins and kitchen towels to replace paper towels and napkins. Seeds for a spring garden together with a “Coupon Good For Four Hours Help Creating a Garden in the Spring.” Non-BPA lined reusable water bottle. Tuition for classes that teach a useful skill or art. Bundle clothes line and clothes pins in a fabric bag with a long handle (when hanging clothes on the line, put the pins in the bag, hang it around the neck, so they are conveniently available). And by all means, give the kids bicycles and tricycles – and give only “naturally-powered” gifts to children (or anyone else, for that matter.)

★    Give Global (or local) Justice! Make financial donations to groups working for local or global justice and sustainability in honor of friends and family for the holidays. This could be groups like World Neighbors, Greenpeace, Sierra Club, Heifer International, a local food bank, or a group associated with your faith tradition.

★    Give the arts! Tickets to local art galleries, concerts, museums, and don’t forget the zoo.

★    Give favors! Make booklets with your own hand drawn coupons that can be exchanged for events like – “Date Night with the Wife”, “Dinner with my Eldest Daughter”, “This Coupon good for One Major Honey-Do for My Loving Spouse”. “This coupon good for skipping one vegetable and getting extra dessert.” (Only include one of those.) “Stay Up Late.”

★    Make decorations!   Use natural materials as much as possible. Save them from year to year as family heirlooms. Pass them between generations. Think fabric, wood, metal, yarn, string, rope, dried plants, flowers, leaves, and paint. Memorabilia – a child's first shoe, a grandmother's handkerchief – can make beautiful ornaments. You could also use consumables – popcorn is a traditional item to string on thread and hang on a tree. After the holiday, the birds will enjoy it! A tree can also be decorated with baked “cookie ornaments”. Be sure to poke a hole in the dough before baking so you can string it on the tree.

★    Recycle wrappings! Boxes of ribbons, bows, wrapping paper, and gift decorations carefully saved from previous years, belong in all houses. One way to honor the giver for the gift of a beautifully wrapped package is to save the wrapping and use it again.. Alternatively, wrap packages in cloth, such as towels or napkins. Even more alternatively, don't wrap the packages, instead, present them with some kind of joyous ceremony. Or hide them, and make a game out of the finding. Or do creative things like re-purpose useful items (socks, stocking caps, helmets, kitchen ware) as “wrapping” for gifts. A little ribbon and a bow, which is easily saved for use in another year, can make any item that can contain something else into a “gift package”.

★    Make a reusable fabric gift bag. Cut 2 pieces of exterior fabric and 2 pieces of lining fabric, all the same size. Put each liner piece on top of its exterior fabric, bend over and sew along the top, thus hemming the opening edge. Stack both pieces of fabric with the liner fabric on the outside. Sew the 3 sides that aren't hemmed ¼ inch from the edge. Turn inside out. Attach a nice ribbon long enough to tie the top when the bag has been filled with a gift, to one side of the bag with a few stitches at its center. Use any kind of fabrics, old sheets are great material for the lining, which can be plain. Use something more decorative for the outer fabrics.

★    Get energy-frugal LED lights! LED lights use 95% less energy than traditional lights and last up to 100,000 hours when used indoors. They use .04 kw per bulb – that's 100 times less than traditional bulbs and 10 times less than mini-bulbs.

★    Don't buy a fake tree made from plastic and polyvinyl chloride. Consider a living tree, in a pot. It could be a bonsai evergreen that would always live in its pot or a larger plant that you would plant in your yard or at a park or church or school.   Or. . . Buy a Christmas tree from a local grower farmer. All Christmas trees sold in the US are farmed. A single farmed Christmas tree absorbs more than 1 ton of carbon in its lifetime. For each tree cut for sale, one to three trees are planted. Recycle your Christmas tree as compost or through a community program (93% of farmed Christmas trees in the US are recycled.) Never cut a wild tree in a forest for a Christmas tree. Or. . . make yourself a Christmas tree as a craft. It can be something new each year, or if you make one that is particularly great, you can save it from year to year and maybe add to it a bit each year. Or. . . make a Christmas tree wall hanging from felt, decorate it, and place your presents in front of it. Or. . . decorate some other kind of large houseplant that you already have.

★    Buy Christmas cards from local artisans. Or. . . make your own paper for your cards. Or. . . buy paper from local artisans to make cards. Make cards that fold to become their own envelope. Send e-cards via the internet. Buy recycled cards. Send all the cards you receive (including birthday and other holiday cards) to St. Jude's Ranch for Children in Nevada, where they will be re-crafted into new cards and sold to support the organizations efforts to help children. Read more about this at http://www.stjudesranch.org/shop/recycled-card-program/ .

★    If you ship gifts, use crumpled newspaper, or popcorn, to cushion the gift in transit. If you pack in popcorn, include a note inviting the recipient to feed the popcorn to birds.

★    Make a commitment to distributive justice that lasts all year. By all means, be generous with a charity that provides food and other necessities to low income households at the seasonal holidays of the “feasting season”. But people are hungry and in need all year long. During the holiday season, give your entire family the gift of service, by joining together in a family (or household) commitment to participate in distributive justice every month of the year.

★    Teach your children why you are doing a low impact and local holiday. Involve them with the planning. Help them to ignore advertising.

Mushroom Gravy, Creme of Mushroom Soup, and Saurkraut

2011-11-08T23:30:00.003-06:00

Gravy, Creme of Mushroom Soup, Saurkraut.

Today we are all about recipes and let's talk about gravy.

First, always make extra gravy. You can use it as a sauce for a casserole the next day, or as part of your left-overs-from-dinner-lunch the next day.

Next, for a nice mushroom gravy, start with about 1/8 pound of fresh mushrooms. I personally am partial to shitake, but ordinary button mushrooms will do fine. If the Coop producers are out of stock, and you need mushrooms, and are in the OKC area, check Matt Burch and April Harrington's store Earth to Urban at 1235 SW 2nd (across from the Old Farmers Market building). I got some there today which I used for my mushroom gravy tonight.

Slice the mushrooms, and saute them in some nice butter that you bought directly from the dairy which has a pastured herd. You can add a little chopped onion and hot peppers, if you like a more savory gravy. Once the mushrooms are done, add some flour. How much, you ask? Well, that depends on how much gravy you want. The basic rule of thumb is two tablespoons flour and two tablespoons oil per cup of gravy. So if you want two cups of gravy, add 4 tablespoons of oil to the pan to saute the mushrooms, and then add four tablespoons of flour. Stir the flour until it browns a bit. Don't walk away and think you can do something else while the flour browns. That's a good way to burn the flour and waste the mushrooms. When it is nicely browned, add some stock -- beef, chicken, pork, whatever you have on hand. Plan ahead and cook a chicken in the oven a day or two previously, and you will have some nice stock leftover from that. The secret to a good gravy like this is an excellent stock and it is worth your time and effort to make your own. How to do that? Well I will review that tomorrow.

Add the stock all at once and stir vigorously until the gravy thickens. Voila, mushroom gravy. If you made two cups, you can use that for your own home-made Green Bean Casserole, about which I will write tomorrow.

Now let's talk about Creme of Mushroom Soup. You can also use this as the sauce for Green Bean Casserole (or any other casserole) or you can just eat it as a soup. I think the kids would say, "it's the bomb!"

This recipe makes 6 quarts, and can befrozen, thawed and reheated. You can make less, but I have nevermade this outside of a crockpot, so I don't know how it would go forexample if you tried to make only 1 or 2 quarts in a sauce pan on topof the stove. If you try it, let me know how it works and I canincorporate that info the next time I write about this recipe. Ifyou plan on using this in casseroles, in place of canned crème ofmushroom soup, package it in two cup containers.

4 cups cream

4 cups chicken stock (beef stock wouldbe fine)

1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

6 cups sliced mushrooms

1 cup chopped, cooked bacon

1 Tbsp dried parsley

1 tsp salt

1 tsp pepper

½ tsp thyme

1 onion, chopped in small bits

2 Tbsp bacon fat (butter would work,but bacon fat is better)

4 cloves garlic

Cook the garlic and onion in the baconfat or the butter for about a minute. Remove from the heat. Add thebutter/onion/garlic and all of the other ingredients to a large crockpot. Cook on low for four to six hours, until the soup is thick anda bit frothy. It will continue to get thicker as it cools. Don't cooktoo fast or too long

There is Napa Cabbage available this month on the coop, and Napa cabbage makes great saurkraut. Here is a recipe for naturally fermenting saurkraut that was given to me by a master fermenter, Lynnet Bannion, with whom I studied permaculture. Note that as with all such preservation methods, scrupulous cleanliness of everything is mandatory. Sterilize the jar with boiling water, make sure the knives, cutting boards, mandolins, stampers/thumpers that you are using -- and also your HANDS -- are clean.

Ursula’s Sauerkraut
For a half-gallon jar, you need 3.5 pounds cabbage, 1 teaspoon caraway seed, 1 tablespoon sea salt. You can add optional ingredients from the following list: peeled sliced garlic; washed, cored and sliced apples; peeled onions cut into eighths; dill seed; juniper berries; or other spices.

Wash cabbage and cut into thin shreds, with a kraut cutter, mandoline, food processor, or by hand with a knife. Mix cabbage shreds with the salt in a large bowl or small plastic bucket, and let stand for 15 minutes. Then press the cabbage with your fist or a wooden stamper until the juice is flowing well. It is important to crush the vegetables enough to create the juice.

Pack the juicy shreds into your jar in layers, interspersing the caraway and any other ingredients you are using. Pack tightly enough that all the air is pressed out. If you don’t have enough juice to come to the neck of the jar, you can add a little brine: 2 tsp salt to one quart water. Cover loosely, put the jar on a plate or pie tin, and keep in a dark corner of your kitchen for one week. Then cap and
keep in a cold place for another four weeks to mellow. Sauerkraut keeps many months under proper storage conditions (provided you keep out of it that long).

Bob's note: It's important that all of the cabbage be submerged in the brine. If it keeps coming up above the brine/cabbage juices, then put a cup of water in a ziplock back and put that in the neck of the jar to keep the shreds under the surface of the water. The fermentation process is carried on by lactobacillus bacteria. Use organic or all natural cabbage, trim off any spots or blemishes. If you mix up some brine to add, do not use chlorinated water. Don't use iodized salt, use pickling salt or sea salt without any additives. Don't reduce the amount of salt. This is a preservation process, the salt is necessary to the process. Check it often during the fermentation week, if some scum develops, carefully spoon it off. The volume of the cabbage will reduce, as the process develops, so you may need to add brine.

Tomorrow: Green Bean Casserole, Sean's Should Be Famous Fried Onion Ring Method, Stock Part the First

WOW! What a FEAST of FOOD for our FEASTIN SEASON!

2011-11-07T23:37:00.001-06:00

This order is our eighth year birthday. I dredged up some spreadsheets and it looks to me like we are approaching $4 million in total sales over that 8 years. . . $3,796,154 to be exact, so depending how this month and December finish out, we will likely cross the four million dollar sales threshold in January 2012.

What a lot of good-tasting and nutritious food and quality non-food items that dollar figure represents. BUT. . . more interesting than these figures from our past is what's happening RIGHT NOW.

Over the years I have received a lot of emails from people elsewhere who envy the local food selection we have available here in Oklahoma through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Some businesses may brag about having products from a half dozen local producers. This month, you can order from 98 different Oklahoma producers, and pick and choose among 4,789 products! That kind of access doesn't exist in very many areas of this country, so let's take advantage of what we've got, and -- as I've often said over the years -- follow the Oklavore principle and "eat what is available!

Speaking of gifts. . . which I wasn't. . . but I will segue that way anyway. . . This month the coop has a new product -- a gift membership -- that delivers an attractive certificate to you on delivery day stamped with a unique number that the recipient of your gift enters when he or she inputs their info on the coop's membership form and voila, they are members!

Since most of us will be dong a lot of shopping this holiday season, don't forget the little detail that you can shop for holiday gifts from the comfort and convenience of your own home, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Food makes a great gift. As do our body care products and other non-food items.

Regarding the Feastin' Foods of November. . . I just scrolled through the produce list and was really impressed at the amount of produce that has been listed since the day the order opened. If you typically only shop the coop on the first day of the order, you are missing out on good deals. Many times our vegetable (and egg) producers add a considerable amount of inventory as the order progress and the get a better handle on what they will have available for delivery day.

The fall produce looks glorious. First on the list is GREENS. Greens are a luxury food and are also affordable. Buy a LOT more than you are going to eat and freeze them in meal size portions for eating later. These crisp fall days are excellent for long slow cooking of big pots of food, so cook all your greens at once and freeze for eating later. Cooked greens are great in the freezer, just don't you forget to label and date them so you know what they are. I always think I will remember but then I don't and so I have learned the hard way to label and date. That way if you defrost something that you think is frozen apple slices, in anticipation of apple pie, and you get something else, you aren't disappointed.

I have written a lot about greens over the past eight years of the coop. One cup cooked greens typically contains: 20 calories, 1.2 g protein, 4.4 g carbohydrates, 3.5 g dietary fiber, 93% water, plus Vitamins A and C, folate, potassium, and calcium. "All this -- and TASTE TOO!" Anyway, here's something I wrote in November 2007-- "The feastin season is upon us." You really should try the Cream of Greens soup on that page, it is one of the best recipes I've ever posted. Even people who hate greens like this soup when made with Coop ingredients. BUT, don't freeze greens with cream sauces, freeze the plain cooked greens, THEN add cream sauces when you thaw them for eating later. Cream and cheese and eggs are GREAT with greens. If Wagon Creek has some cream left, by all means substitute that for some of the milk.

Unfortunately the links in that post to "What to do with 20 pounds of ground beef" and the similar one for ground pork are no longer active but the recipe ideas are listed in my post, so that gives you some ideas. As to what to do with 20 pounds of ground beef, that is.

The turkeys are going pretty fast, but as of this writing there remain a few. Greenwood is a new producer and they do on farm processing, so you have to pick up those turkeys directly from them in the parking lot of the operations center. If you've already opened a basket for another pickup site, and want to get one of their turkeys, don't forget to change your pickup site to OKC Central. You do that by opening your shopping cart, and you will see the place for your pickup site on the left side of the page.

There are lots of eggs right now, more than 100 dozen available. As I noted last week, and as one of the producers wrote in their producer notes Tuesday, it's easy to freeze eggs, and you can even dehydrate them yourself. Later this winter, when egg production falls off, you'll wish you had some frozen dozens of eggs stashed in your freezer, so order now and freeze for eating later.
http://nchfp.uga.edu/how/freeze/eggs.html

Of course, our meat producers continue to be strong suppliers of the local market. Our local meats offer a great return for the money -- not only do they taste great, buying local meats from our producers' free ranging flocks and herds provides direct support for animal husbandry methods and practices that heal the earth and do not destroy the biosphere. Every dollar spent for supermarket meats is a dollar invested in the environmental ruin of this region. So let's spend our money wisely and buy local meats from free ranging flocks and herds.

I almost forgot -- we have a plethora of pumpkins available this month at great prices. Actually, we have a plethora of plethoras of pumpkins available. So you can make your pumpkin pies this year directly from a pumpkin. Here's all the info you need from the site that taught me -- Pick Your Own!

We have lots of roots this month -- besides turnips, the sweet potatoes are here! And the radishes. Now's the time to stock up on both these excellent storage crops for winter. Sweet potatoes and turnips offer great nutrition and even better taste. Throw them in with a roast to slow cook on one of the upcoming cool days. For a change of pace with your radishes, slice them thinly, fry them, scramble some eggs with them. Voila, very tasty breakfast AND added vegetable nutrition in a meal that is usually light on veggies.

Don't forget to buy some soap. You can never really have too much artisanal soaps made by Oklahoma producers. All of our body care products make great gifts (and this is the HOLIDAY season, hint hint).

As does our many jams and jellies and if you think your life might get a bit busy this holiday season, don't forget a few prepared meals for the freezer.

Do you have flour for the rolls, breads, cakes, and pie crusts? Corn meal for the stuffing and breading? Onions and mushrooms and green beans for the traditional green bean casserole?

So it goes down at your corner Oklahoma Food Cooperative. This is the beginning of our "feastin' season". In the Northern Hemisphere, it is the time when the harvest has been gathered. In days of yore, our celebrations originated in the deep gratitude for the fact that there was a harvest, and the community would have food to eat during the looming winter. In the modern era, many of us have lost that intimate connection with our food, but here in the Coop, we have been working for eight years to resurrect and restore our intimate connections with the food. It has been a long trip, sometimes change, always fruitful and full of great tasting food adventures. We remain a ways from Europe in terms of developing our own unique regional tastes, but we are certainly on our way to that day right here in Oklahoma.

When we started the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, we said. . . "local food is the next big thing." And as it turns out, that came true. As a result, we are surrounded by a "faux locavorism" that uses glib words and fancy signs and artfully designed stores to substitute for reality. We certainly do not have the panache of some of the stores of the area, but we have the food that they don't. So come on down the cyberstreet to your Oklahoma Food Cooperative and let's start the feastin' of the season!

"This just in". . . the inbox carries news that up to 3/4 of the honey sold in major stores can no longer be considered honey due to the extreme processing it experiences. http://www.foodsafetynews.com/2011/11/tests-show-most-store-honey-isnt-honey/

If you are not a member, you can sign up at http://www.oklahomafood.coop/okfoodservice.php .

Carols for the Feastin' Season!

2011-11-04T20:14:00.000-05:00

Here are three Coop Carols to sing this Feastin' Season! --Tis the Season for the Feastin', the Autumn Carol, and the Get Ready for Winter Song.

TIS THE SEASON FOR THE FEASTIN'

Sing to the tune Deck the Halls

(1) Tis the season for the feastin',
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Taste nutrition can't be beaten,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Nurturing the land and people,
Farm and city joining hands.
Tis the season for the feastin',
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(2) Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Hope throughout the bio-region,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
From our farms onto our tables,
we will bless the way we eat!
Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(3) Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Wisdom, joy fulfilling duty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Eating with the changing seasons,
Chasing the CAFOs from our land!
Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(4) Social justice, sustainability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Economic viability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
These our values, govern always,
They will take us forward far!
Three in number the core values,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

The Autumn Carol

Tune: O Tannenbaum (O Christmas Tree)

(1) O Autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

The air is crisp, the moon shines long,

It's time to raise our voice in song

The squash and pumpkins, taters sweet,

Peppers, greens, and nuts we greet.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(2) The heat of summer is now past,

We wait the time of winter's blast.

The children are in school today,

The farmers work to reap the hay.

Peach preserves and apple butter,

Set our hearts to be aflutter.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(3) There is no kinder time of year,

Than Autumn bright without a fear,

The peaceful times upon the land,

Bring hope and health, a time so grand.

So raise a glass of Autumn cheer,

A cider strong, a mug of beer.

O autumn season, golden bright!

We hail the harvest welcome sight!

The Get Ready for Winter Song

Tune: "Santa Claus is Coming toTown". . .

OH! We better not wait, it's time tomake plans,

Compost, mulch, put away the fans,

Winter time is coming to town!

Squash and turnips and carrot plants,

Season extension for the cabbagetransplants,

Winter time is coming to town!

Let's insulate the attic!

Insulate the floors!

Insulate the walls so deep,

and don't forget the doors!

So! Make your list, and check it twice,

Solarize, weatherize, don't roll thedice,

Winter time is coming to town!

The Cooperative Difference -- 14 reasons to shop at the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

2011-10-10T09:42:00.001-05:00

This month's recipes: Ricotta Breakfast Pudding, Bacon beef rolls, Stuffed zucchini bake, Zucchini and Italian sausage quiche, Baked meatballs, Alice Springs chicken, Moonchild's Bacon Cheeseburger quiche..

What's the Cooperative Difference when it comes to the Oklahoma Food Cooperative?

Convenience -- Community -- Selection -- Trust -- Health -- Justice -- Sustainability!

When you buy food from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative --

1. You can shop any time during the day or night, from anywhere in the world with computer access, and get your food at 40+ pickup sites across the state -- Convenience!

2. You can choose from thousands of products -- Selection!

3, You get the best tasting food in the Oklahoma marketplace -- Selection!

4. You get the healthiest food in the Oklahoma marketplace – free ranging flocks and herds, organically managed pastures and fields -- Health!

5. You get the safest food in the Oklahoma marketplace – absolute knowledge as to where your food comes from, inspections by the USDA and ODA -- Trust!

6. You get relationships with the men and women who produce your food -- Community!

7. You become part of a the solution to our modern economic crisis, by helping to reweave the economic connections that once characterized rural and urban Oklahoma -- Community!

8. You help make the state more resilient in the face of major disasters, war, terrorism, economic collapse, and other negative black swan events -- Sustainability!

9. You have a say in how the cooperative is governed -- Community!

10. You meet interesting new people and participate in a new and more enjoyable and convenient way of shopping for groceries -- Community!

11. You stop supporting exploitation in agricultural labor markets -- Justice!

12. You stop taking food from the mouths of hungry children in third world countries -- Justice!

13. You stop degrading the earth and polluting the waters and air with your food purchases -- Sustainability!

14. You get full transparency regarding the production practices of your food -- Trust!

Join or shop now at http://www.oklahomafood.coop .

Here's this month's recipes for some of our great Oklahoma foods.

Ricotta Breakfast Pudding

This is a very nutritious breakfast that cooks quick and has a high comfort food quotient.

1/3 cup ricotta cheese
1 egg
3 tablespoons cream
1 tablespoon ground flax seed or pecan meal or almond meal
dash cinnamon
droplet of vanilla extract

Mix the ricotta cheese, egg, and cream. Cook over medium heat until it thickens. It will seem to not be doing anything, and then it will thicken very quickly, so don't turn the heat on, go away and do something else. Stir constantly while heating. Once it thickens add the flax seed meal or nut meal and let sit for a minute or so. Enjoy! You can add a dab of sweetener if you want, but it isn't really needed.

Nut meals, as well as flax seed meal, are somewhat expensive in stores and generally aren't available through the coop. you can buy pecans, however, through the coop and turn them into meal with a coffee grinder. If there are a few bits that don't grind finely, that's fine, just through them in. Flax seed also grinds well in a coffee grinder. This is one serving. It is very filling.

BACON BEEF ROLLS

2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup low carb ketchup
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 pounds ground beef
12 strips bacon

Combine everything except the bacon in a large bowl. Mix well then shape in two 6-inch long log shapes. On a large sheet of wax paper, lay 6 slices of the bacon side by side. Set one of the beef rolls crosswise at one end of the row of bacon strips; roll up, wrapping the meat with the bacon. Very carefully place the first roll in a 9x13" baking pan, lined with heavy foil, with the ends of the bacon under the meat roll. I recommend lifting it with a wide spatula so that it does't break. Repeat with the remaining bacon and meat roll. Bake at 375º 45-50 minutes or until the center of each roll reaches 160º. If the bacon doesn't look browned enough on top, put the beef rolls under the broiler for a minute or two. Makes 8 servings

STUFFED ZUCCHINI BAKE

4 medium zucchini
1 pound ground beef
1 clove garlic
1 small onion, diced, 2 1/2 ounces or about 1/2 cup
1/2 cup fresh mushrooms, diced, 2 large or about 3 ounces
Salt and pepper, to taste
2 ounces freshly grated parmesan cheese, 1/2 cup

Cut the zucchini in half lengthwise. Scoop out the pulp, leaving 1/4" of the flesh intact. Discard the pulp. You can use a teaspoon to dig out the pulp and seeds, then once most of the pulp has been removed, use the spoon to scrape out any remaining seeds. Place the zucchini shells on a greased, foil-lined rimmed baking sheet. Sprinkle the zucchini with salt and pepper. Brown the meat, garlic, onion, and mushrooms, seasoning to taste with salt and pepper; drain the fat. Fill the zucchini shells with the meat mixture. Cover with foil and bake at 350º 45 minutes or until the zucchini is tender. Uncover, top with cheese and bake to melt the cheese, about 10 minutes. Makes 8 servings

ZUCCHINI & ITALIAN SAUSAGE QUICHE
1 medium or 2 cups shredded zucchini
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pound Italian sausage, browned and drained
4 ounces Swiss cheese, shredded
1 ounce parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup
5 eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
Dash pepper

Sauté the zucchini in butter 5 minutes. Place in the bottom of a greased 10-inch pie plate and pat dry with paper towel. Top with the sausage and Swiss cheese. Beat the eggs, cream, parmesan and seasonings; pour over the sausage. Bake at 450º 15 minutes. Turn down the heat to 350º and bake 15-20 minutes longer or until browned and a knife inserted in center comes out clean. Check after 15 minutes because it will get quite brown. Let stand 10 minutes before serving. Makes 6 servings. Can be frozen (freeze it in slices and then reheat them for breakfast).
BAKED MEATBALLS
1 pound ground beef
1 pound bulk Italian sausage
2 teaspoons dry minced onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1/2 cup parmesan cheese, 2 ounces (I used the kind in a can)
2 eggs
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper

Mix all of the ingredients in a large bowl using your fingers. Mix until the meat no long feels slimy from the eggs. Shape in golf ball size meatballs and place on a large baking sheet with sides. Bake at 375º for 15-20 minutes until the meatballs are done all the way through. Rinse in a colander to remove any egg and cheese that has leaked out.
Makes about 20-30 meatballs. Can be frozen.

ALICE SPRINGS CHICKEN
4 boneless chicken breasts
8 pieces bacon, coarsely chopped
8 ounces fresh mushrooms, sliced
1 tablespoon butter
1 clove garlic, minced
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded

Season the chicken with the seasonings of your choice; grill until just done. Keep the chicken warm. Meanwhile, fry the bacon in a skillet until crisp; drain on paper towels. In the same skillet, sauté the mushrooms and garlic in butter, seasoning with salt to taste. Cook until the juices have evaporated. Place the chicken on a foil-lined baking sheet. Top each piece of chicken with 1/4 of the mushrooms and bacon, then with the shredded cheese. Broil until cheese is melted and bubbly. Makes 4 servings.

MOONCHILD'S BACON CHEESEBURGER QUICHE
1 pound ground beef
1 small onion, chopped, 2 1/2 ounces
4 slices bacon, chopped
3 eggs
1/2 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup heavy cream
8 ounces cheddar or Swiss cheese, shredded
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
Salt and pepper, to taste

Brown the hamburger with the onion and bacon; drain the fat. Season to taste. Spread in a greased pie plate. Whisk all of the remaining ingredients except the cheese. Mix about 1/3 of the cheese into the hamburger mixture and arrange the rest over the meat. Pour the egg mixture over the cheese. Bake at 350º for 35 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let stand 15 minutes before cutting. Makes 6-8 servings. Can be frozen

Recipes this month courtesy of Linda's Low Carb recipes, one of the great resources on the web of healthy comfort foods.

First worker coop meeting tonight!

2011-09-29T09:48:00.000-05:00

Tonight (Thursday, September 29) is the first meeting of the A Better Way to Go to Work fall tour. This is our Midwest City Presentation

We start at 7 PM, at the Midwest City Library 8143 E Reno. I am tonight's presenter.

Come and learn how worker owned cooperatives can --

help you create good jobs for yourself, your family, and your friends,
-- gain job security for the future,
-- Drive economic development for your community,
-- Protect your family from economic insecurity and calamities,
-- Increase your household financial resilience and sustainability,
-- Discover more fun, enjoyable, and profitable ways to work.
See http://www.okie.coop for more information.

Tonight's bon appetitin' casserole

2011-09-16T19:37:00.000-05:00

Tonight's casserole was certainly an example of eating what's on hand.

I fried hamburger in a cast iron skillet, with chopped onions and hot peppers, sliced zucchini and yellow squash, minced garlic, a dash of teriyaki sauce (actually 2 dashes). After everything was done, I stirred in a tablespoon of flour, stirred that around a bit, added half a cup of heavy cream, a cup of my own beef stock -- see my page at http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/4stock.htm if you haven't read my instructions on making your own stock -- some yogurt cheese, some shredded mozzarella cheese, and voila, top of the stove casserole. I suppose it could have gone into the oven at some point, but we were hungry. And this was done in less than 30 minutes, starting with a frozen pound of grassfed hamburger. Everything was from the coop.

We went to see the movie Contagion this afternoon, and I guess the scenes of looted/empty supermarkets and food riots and etc stimulated our appetites. That movie is one of the best arguments for food storage that I've seen lately.

Bob visits Sunflower "Farmers" Market and finds. . . Homeland!

2011-09-04T18:11:00.000-05:00

Yes folks, that's about it. Given all the hurrah about the new Sunflower "Farmers" Market, I decided I should go see it for myself, so I stopped by there on my way home from church today. Me and a lot of other people, because the parking lot was crowded and the store was packed.

We should have been outside with signs saying -- Real Food -- Real Farmers -- oklahomafood.coop , lol.

But when I went in, all I found was basically a Homeland Store, redecorated in the latest West Coast faux farmer style, maybe a slightly larger produce section. they had a nice selection of organic produce (from the US and Mexico), several of the same brands that you see at Homeland. The meat market was nothing to write home about. There were live butchers, but it is all mystery meat except for one tiny corner which had a farm "brand" grass-fed ground beef -- for $5.99/lb and it wasn't even certified organic. I forget the name of the farm, but I thought it was significant that it said "brand" which suggests a certain amount of aggregating behind the label.

They had a big sign on the wall showing off their label identifying "Oklahoma" products. I didn't see any Oklahoma meat, dairy, or produce, one of the brands of eggs had Oklahoma on it, but their certified organic eggs were more expensive than coop eggs.

I take the crowd though as evidence of hunger among Oklahomans for a more natural and more local diet however. But except for the expanded organic section, Sunflower has nothing that Homeland or Akins or the Health Food Center don't have. And the meat markets at Buy for Less, Crest, or the Crescent market are better than the Sunflower.

What Sunflower does have going for it is marketing.

We should maybe think about getting some of that.

September Bobaganda: More on caramelized onions, summer squash, and why food storage is important.

2011-09-01T14:21:00.005-05:00

In my Bobaganda of August 1, I discussed caramelizing an entire crock pot of onions and then freezing them in meal size portions, as one way to ensure that the summer abundance of onions can be enjoyed this winter. Oklahoma Food Coop member and producer Leslie Moyer posted this gorgeous picture of her crockpot of caramelized onions to her Facebook page. Imagine how tasty this crockpot of onions will be over the next few months. Talk about a convenience slow food! Anyway, there's still lots of onions available through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative this month. So now is the time to stock up and preserve this summer bounty for eating later.

Another common summer vegetable available through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative this month is summer squash. I went to a potluck dinner at Allison Blanchard's house last night (she who manages the produce section so efficiently on delivery day), and earlier this summer she bought a case of yellow squash through the coop. She cut off the ends, sliced them in half, boiled them for 3 minutes, then spread them out (one layer) on a cookie sheet and put the sheet in the freezer. When the squash (shouldn't the plural of squash be squish? ) was frozen, she put it in ziplock freezer bags. So if she needs one or two, she takes them out, cooks to perfection, and serves. By freezing them first on a tray, she avoids the problem of ending up with a large clump of frozen vegetables suitable only for a banquet not a meal ;).

I am seeing a bounty of sweet potato greens this month at the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and while I know this sounds almost weird, if you like cooked greens you will love sweet potato greens. A common staple in African cuisine, read about cooking sweet potato greens at --
http://theslowcook.blogspot.com/2008/09/sweet-potato-leaves.html
http://marcsala.blogspot.com/2006/06/unusual-greens-part-3.html
http://www.kadirecipes.com/2011/03/29/how-to-cook-sweet-potato-leaves-recette-guineenne-des-feuille-de-patate/

I'm ordering some this month and intend to try them southern style -- chopped finely, cooked with bacon, onions, hot peppers, a dab of vinegar, and some liquid smoke.

Here's an interesting twist on breading fish. Some of us have to watch our carb consumption due to problems with diabetes. So instead of breading some tilapia with cornmeal, I used pecan meal. I made my own pecan meal by pulsing the pecans in a coffee grinder. Probably a food processor or blender would be better, but I didn't have one handy. then I just dipped the fish filets in an egg wash, and in the pecan meal and then into the frying oil. Very Tasty. As soon as the weather cools off a bit so I start cooking inside again, I am going to try to make a pecan meal muffin. there are quite a few recipes in the online low carb communities for almond meal or almond flour muffins, and pecans are as low carb as almonds, or almost anyway. And pecans are an Oklahoma product available through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

Memo to producers: when are we going to see some Oklahoma-grown tilapia? I'm tired of buying Chinese tilapia.

Speaking of counting carbs, yogurt cheese is a great low carb product, maybe 5 grams of carbohydrate per cup (and a cup of yogurt cheese is a lot). Most of the carbs in yogurt are in the whey, and yogurt cheese is basically yogurt minus much of the whey. So if you are counting carbs for weight loss or diabetes issues, yogurt cheese should be on your Oklahoma Food Cooperative shopping list this month.

This is a good month for eating what's available, which is, after all, the most basic premise of the Oklavore movement. There is a tremendous amount of food available this month at the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and even our prepared foods are for the most part less expensive than eating out. So instead of spending seven to ten dollars buying an inferior lunch, stock up on prepared foods from our coop producers and take your lunch with you. You will certainly be healthier, and the food will be tastier. It's a mystery to me why some people won't hesitate to spend seven bucks at a fast food restaurant but hesitate to spend a similar amount for some good wholesome food that they could bring from home for their lunch.

I also want to continue to remind us all of the great value of our non-food items, especially the body and laundry care products available through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Many of these products from the big box stores create toxic stews in our water, and God only knows what they could be doing to your body. Many of them are tested on animals, who suffer greatly as a result. Our artisan body and laundry care products are better for the earth, never tested on animals, and in fact offer great value. Sure, the sticker price on some of them might be a bit higher than at the big box store, but when you figure the "price per wash" or "price per load of laundry", you are saving money. Quality always counts.

Don't forget to pick up the plants you need for this fall. Fall in Oklahoma is a great time to plant perennials and it looks like there are lots of plants available this month.

Any way you look at it, the prospects for the 2012 wheat crop are looking rather grim. This article from AgWeb -- Next drought victim: 2012 wheat crop? is "read and weep".

So how is your family's wheat storage program? Did you reply -- "what wheat storage program?" Well, here's the facts. The US government used to maintain a strategic reserve of wheat, but that was all sold off long ago and not replaced. So if you want to protect your family -- call it a "famine hedge" -- it's up to you to buy, store, and hold your own supply of wheat and other foods. Wheat has the virtue of staying good for 30 years and more when properly stored. I'll say more about storing wheat in my next post in a few days, but in the meantime, I want to say that those bags and buckets of wheat available on the September order at today's prices may look positively cheap and "value priced" if we don't get a wheat crop in 2012.

And we quite frankly might not get a wheat crop in 2012. I know that is an alarmist statement, but we have been running close to the edge on food and energy for a long time -- so close that it won't take a big mis-step to send us sliding over an edge. For years I have been writing to you and anyone else who would listen about the triple threats we face -- economic irrationality, climate instability, peak energy. Those are real threats, they are not boogermen that I dreamed up in order to liven up my rhetoric with scary stories.

I know that every single one of us is absolutely invulnerable and will never have an accident or lose our job or fall victim to one or all three of those triple threats, but that feeling of personal invulnerability is an artifact of cheap oil, a relatively stable climate, and personal feelings of economic security encouraged by politicians and advertising. It seems to me that stable climate, cheap oil, and economic security are in increasingly short supply these days. Just because we haven't slid over the abyss thus far does not mean it won't happen. The closer we get to the edge, the more likely the possibility of a "feeding frenzy" of numerous negative feedback loops reinforcing each other thus creating the risk of a dystopic downward spiral of devolution.

Note also that when it comes to food storage, meat is an important food to stock up on. With a good freezer, meat keeps very well. Manual freezers are much better than frost free refrigerators, and be sure to develop a back-up system in case the power fails. A simple backup is a marine battery, an inverter big enough to power your freeer, and jumper cables to recharge your battery once its depleted from your car or pickup. A better choice for recharging would be a small generator and a battery charger. I'll say more about this later. The long-term impact of drought will certainly drive an increase in the cost of meat.

There will be smaller herds, since many ranchers are selling off their herds due to the high cost of feed and the drought impact on their pastures, and
The costs of feed and other inputs are skyrocketing.

So now's a good time to stock up on all the meats. Once you get your stock built up, rotate it regularly. Buy extra now to get to where you need to be on your storage program, then go back to buying what you typically use in a month, and rotate your supplies so you always have (for example) six months or more of meats in your freezer.

So ask yourself again -- "how is my family food storage program" -- and if you don't like the answer, now is the time to convert some of your family's savings into food. Every household should keep some of its savings in the form of food.

If you think it is about time that you paid more attention to bracing for the on-coming storm, besides bulking up your food storage, I invite you to invest $10 in purchasing a copy of the permaculture design for my home, Gatewood Urban Homestead, available as a PDF delivered via email this and every month through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. My producer name is Prairie Rose Permaculture, and if you want it on a CD, you can get it that way too but it costs a bit more since I have to buy a CD and an envelope to deliver it in.

Finally, I would like to say a word about the Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network, which is my latest cooperative organizing effort. A worker cooperative is a business that is owned, controlled, and managed by its worker-owners. We are going on tour in late September and in the month of October, to present an introductory evening participatory workshop. We're calling our tour -- "A Better Way to Go to Work". There will be presentations in Stillwater, Shawnee, Norman, El Reno, Edmond, OKC NE, OKC SE, OKC NW, and OKC SW. See our Fall Tour page for the places and dates, all of the meetings will start at 7 PM. They are free, and we invite anyone who is interested in the concept of worker cooperatives and participating in an economy of solidarity to attend. In a sea of economic irrationality, worker owned cooperatives are islands of economic rationality and security.

If you think that you would be interested in starting a worker owned cooperative -- and in the field of growing and producing local foods, there are many entrepreneurial possibilities -- or if you would like to help jump start this concept in Oklahoma -- I invite you to join the Oklahoma Worker Cooperative Network, which is itself structured as a cooperative. A membership share is only $25.

Well, folks, I have written myself into a storm of hunger. So I am going to take my own advice and have some egg salad, made with coop eggs and April Harrington's Most Delicious dill-zucchini relish and coop onions (OK, the mayo and mustard came from Buy for Less, but I was out of yogurt cheese or I would have used that).

Y'all bon appetit, you hear?

PS. To join the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, click HERE.

On supporting your local producer community during really hard times.

2011-08-10T12:20:00.002-05:00

The hardest times we've experienced since the beginning of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative are certainly upon us now. The triple threats of peak energy, economic irrationality, and climate instability are sending three strikes on farm country. Feed prices are climbing through the roof, the drought and heat is destroying crops, and meanwhile, the see-saw economic craziness that is beyond our control continues to run riot over the globalized markets.

And its not just in farm country. Many of us in the cities are having to cut back on our expenses because of situations that are beyond our control.

What to do? Well, here is Bobby Max Waldrop's 4 point program for helping our growing local producer community to get through these hard times that will also help you increase the quality of life of your own household.

Part the First: Eat What's Available.

In the past, I have often said "Eat what's available." That remains good advice. I'm the first to notice the shortage of vegetables this summer, even though we have more vegetable producers than ever before. The climate is against us this year, my home garden is doing no better. I am barely keeping some container tomatoes and hot peppers alive, and getting only a couple handfuls of small tomatoes each week off of 6 plants. So I buy what I can, and get the rest at the store. But I continue to buy my meats from the coop, since they remain in good supply. If you can't afford to buy all your meats from the coop, then buy your ground meat, or some ground meat from the coop. Ground meat from the big box supermarkets is true mystery meat. Each pound may have meat from dozens of different animals from six different states. Isn't it worth $30/month to help these farmers get through these hard times?

Part the Second: Cut Your Local Food Budget Last.

If you have to cut your budget, cut your local food purchases last. Some years ago, as the coop develop, I got a little behind in my personal economy, looked critically at my budget, and dumped my monthly cell phone contract in favor of a cheap pay as you go phone that I use as little as possible. We shop a LOT in the after market -- thrift stores, flea markets, etc.

Part the Third: Buy Non-Food Items From Local Producers

What about your non-food purchases? Are you still buying bath and laundry soap at the grocery store? What about other body care products? The artisanal body care products offered by our coop's producers are true values. They may be priced a bit more than the supermarket, but they last longer -- "more wash per bar" should be the motto of all of our soap producers. Our producers' body care products are not tested on animals. Their production does not pollute the environment. The money spent for them does not go to giant soulless corporations but instead stays right here in our Oklahoma economy and supports our producers and their families. If you want to feel good physically -- and emotionally -- after you bathe, then use soap from our coop's producers.

Here's one anecdote about using non-food products. Early on, I bought some laundry detergent from Rowdy Stickhorse. It came with a tiny little scoop and said One Scoop Per Load. I looked at that and thought, "This can't be right" and kept on using my usual quarter cup scoop. When I told Paulette about that, she laughed and said she was fine with selling me all the soap I would be, but it really did only require one of those tiny little scoops per load. So I tried it, and she was right. I've used Rowdy Stickhorse and I've used Crosstimbers laundry soaps (the powders) and I like all of them and consider all of them to be great values. If you have never tried laundry detergent from the Oklahoma Food Coop, your clothes will thank you if you try it this month.

Part the Fourth: Keep the Faith.

Finally, the third point is simple -- keep the faith. Everything that we have said about local food for the last eight years remains true and important.

Our cities will only prosper as our rural areas prosper.
When farm country is hurting, everyone is hurting.
Developing local food systems is an important adaptation to the threats of peak energy, economy irrationality, and climate instability which are upon us in all of their crazed fury.
Local food is the best tasting food.
Local food is best for the environment.
Local food is best for you and your family and especially for your children.

In healing our environment and creating a more stable local economy, we can rank our decisions as good, better, and best. "Best" of course would be to buy most of your food and non-food items from local farmers and producers. But if you can't do that best choice, make a better choice, and buy a significant proportion of your household's needs from local producers. And if that isn't possible, make a good decision and buy something every month, say $30 to $40 worth, to keep faith with our local producers and help them get through these hard climate and economic times into a better future.

Each of us holds the future of our local food systems in our own hands. I hope you will join me this month, and each month to come, in supporting our local producers by purchasing something from them that your family can use.

http://www.oklahomafood.coop sign in and order today -- or if you aren't a member, sign up now! If you are one of those members who joined and has never ordered, while we appreciate the support of your membership share, it is equally important that our local producer community be supported on a regular basis with some of your grocery dollars. So take a chance, spend $30 or $40 and see what good food and non-food items we have.

It's TOO HOT to shop so I'm going to the COOP!

2011-08-01T15:43:00.000-05:00

Cucumbers in yogurt. . . green bean salad. . . ham salad. . . Santa Fe chicken salad. . . and thoughts on keeping cool in the extreme heat. . .

106 degrees today, 110 degrees tomorrow and the next day. . . IT IS TOO HOT TO SHOP! That's why I'm going to the online coop store for groceries this month. Yes, it's true, the August order of the Oklahoma Food Coop is open and I can sit here in my nice cool house and order away online. It sure beats driving to a big box supermarket, parking and hiking across 60 acres of blazing hot asphalt to the front door, and then repeating that process when I am done.

The vegetable aisle looks a little lean this month. But then, it is August, and this is the hottest and driest summer since modern record-keeping began in the last decades of the 19th century. We still have onions, and it looks like there are lots of potatoes available, so remember the first rule of local foods: Buy when in season and store for eating later. You will want some of those potatoes and onions in November and December for your Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners, so plan ahead. You could buy a whole year's worth of onions, and caramelize them by the pot-full in your crockpot, and then freeze them in recipe-size portions for eating later.

Remember also that it pays to shop the Coop often during the order period. Producers with both eggs and vegetables will often wait until later in the order window to post their products, since they may not be sure what will be available 3 weeks from now right this very day. But over the next week or so, it will become more evident to them and then we will see some inventories start to increase.

And then there is also the little detail that there is quite a bit of non-seasonal food available year from from the Coop. Buffalo, Beef, Pork, Lamb, Cheese, Yogurt, Grains, Flours and Meals. . . you can certainly make many meals out of these deals.

Don't forget your non-food items. Laundry soap? Check. Bath soap? Check. Yes it costs more but yes it is also a superior artisinal product so actually, these body care products cost less than their store-bought cousins, if we could just figure out how to give a figure for "cost per bath", lol. The hard part about buying our artisinal bath soaps and such is deciding which "flavors" you want. Which is fine, you could buy more than one you know.

So what are we going to cook this month?

Well, once thing I like is cucumbers and yogurt, both of which are available this month. Sometimes I shred the cucumber into the yogurt, and add a bit of fire like a chopped jalapeno or cayenne or powdered or crushed red pepper. Those who have been reading my recipes for a while are well aware of my deplorable habit of adding heat to everything, so go ahead, add more than you think you need since the dairy tends to cut the heat of hot peppers anyway.

Or. . . I peel the cuke and quarter it, and then slice it into thin quarter moons. Add this to some yogurt and then if you are making (for example) one cup, add about a half tablespoon of your favorite home-made or locally made jam or jelly. It adds just a bit fo sweetness and some fruit flavor, peach and strawberry both seem really nice for this, without adding a bunch of carbs and such.

Another summer favorite is green bean salad. so pull some of those green beans that you picked and canned earlier this year off the shelf, drain the liquid and dress them with vinegar and oil and just a hint of sweetness. You could use sugar or Splenda. . . or here again you add a hint of fruit to the complex of flavors by using some peach or strawberry or grape jam. Jam making is much easier than most people think, but you can also buy great jams from our coop's artisanal prepared food producers.

What's that you say? You didn't put up any green beans, in fact, you didn't grow any green beans at all. Well you are certainly missing out. Green beans are one of the best vegetables to grow in Oklahoma. You can raise them in the spring and in the fall. The more you pick them the more they produce, and you can pressure can them for eating later. But if you don't have any on hand, you'll want to store-bought cans, a quarter cup each of vinegar and oil (extra virgin olive, please!), and sugar, Splenda, or jam to taste.

What else sounds good. . . hmmmm. . . how about some Minced Ham Salad? Great hams are sold hereabout these parts, so get one and chop some of it very finely. Maybe about a half pound. Then mince some onion finely, and add some good relish. I highly recommend the varioius relishes available from our coop for this, including the zucchini relish, also for egg salad, deviled eggs, hot dogs, and anything else you would put relish on. Many people think relish can only be made from cukes, and while fine relishes are made from pickled cukes, it is rather pedestrian to limit our choice to just cucumber pickle relishes when there are so many other fine relishes out there, like zucchini. Then add some mayo and go ahead and get some organic celery from the store and put some of that in there too.

If you're starting with a half pound of ham chunks, you'll want a half cup of mayo, 1 celery stalk, 1/4 cup relish, 1/4 cup minced onion. If you can't get organic celery, don't add celery, as conventional celery is one of the worst veggies in the supermarket for pesticide residue. Celery is one vegetable that must always be bought organic, and it's not something that really will grow well around here. Lovage, on the other hand, has kind of a smoky celery flavor, and it will grow quite nicely hereabout these parts and is a perennial, which makes it a double value for the price of planting. I have used lovage in just about everything that I would use celery and it was fine.

Extra chicken? Well, substitute chicken for ham. Add some chili powder and a little heat and call it "Santa Fe Chicken Salad".

Let's say a quick final word about energy conservation. As folks know, we've done a lot of work to make our house more energy efficient. Because of the 9 inches of insulation in our walls and 14 inches in the attic, plus our R-20 interior insulated window shutters, we can cool our entire 1548 sq ft house with only 20K btus of AC equipment. that amount of AC equipment is designed to cool about 600 sq ft, and we rarely have all those btus going at the same time. So we're saving money every month on our electrical bill, and reducing our global warming emissions, and thus making out like a moderately fat rat during these hard times. It also helps that we planted extensive landscaping outside that shades the house. It hurt us a bit this summer when the city made us cut down five of our fruit trees due to their bogus claim of "view obstruction", but oh well, I forgive them for their sins just as O hope to be forgiven for mine, which are many.

So while the summer is brutal, never think that we are totally at the mercy of the elements. With smart work we can adapt our dwellings to meet the new extreme normals of this age of climate and economic and social chaos. But the thing is -- none of this happens on its own. We didn't wake up one morning and find our house adapted. We made a plan and we implemented it and now we get to harvest the fruits of those design decisions.

Don't know where to start? Caulk and weatherize. Caulk is cheap. Heat always moves towards cold, so in the summer, all those leaks around your doors and windows and other places are letting HEAT in to turn your nice interior coolness into hotness, and thus forcing your AC to work harder and harder. Next, shade your windows and doors, from the outside. Curtains are fine on the inside, but your goal should be to keep the heat from hitting your windows in the first place. Once the sun hits the glass or the frame, the heat gets inside by conduction, even if you have interior curtains.

So order up some tasty local foods, that do good as well as taste good, and start making your own household plan to adapt your own dwelling to meet the extremes of the future that is coming at us.

In 2005 I said that things were going to go from bad to worse, when we did our extreme green renovation, and I am sorry to say that I was write. That process is going to continue. The sooner we adapt our dwellings to the looming realities, the safer we will be -- and the less money we will spend on energy.

For more details, see my printable flyer on keeping cool during the extreme heat of summer at http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/summer2007.pdf .

Down to the wire on the July order.

2011-07-12T16:42:00.003-05:00

Nice rain today in Okie City, caught me with clothes hanging out on the line, lol. By the time I noticed it was raining, it was too late to dash to the line. Oh well, they just got an extra rinse with pure rainwater. It's been so long since it rained I had almost forgotten what it was like to see water falling from the sky.

We are down to the wire on the July order, which closes tomorrow evening at midnight.

I still see LOTS of onions available. Now is the time to remember one of the first principles of Oklavorism: buy when available and store for eating later. In other words, probably in January there won't be any onions for sale through the coop. But if you buy onions now, you could be eating local onions in January 2012. Of all the vegetables, onions are among the "best keepers". Onions are among the most healthy and nutritious of vegies, low in carbs and calories.

I also see potatoes, summer squash, and eggs and red and green tomatoes still available.

As to recipes for onions. . . check out our new online forum at http://www.oklahomafood.coop/smf . You can remember its location by noting that “smf” is an acronym for “Sell More Food”. (Hat tip to Lisa Weissenbuhler who told me that.) You have to register to post, but it's not hard. Add your favorite recipe in the recipe section. We often think of onions as an ingredient in various prepared dishes, and not about how the onion can be a star of the feast. But just google “onion pie”, and you will find about a million recipes, and then there is also French onion soup. Make that with some home-made stock using soup bones from the coop.

And the meat counter is well stocked, as is everything else, pretty much.

Don't forget to get some of our artisanal soaps. If you've never tried them, just buy one bar this month and check out this great luxury product at a working class price. You'll be surprised at superior quality of the product and also at how much "wash" you get out of one bar. If there was a way to compare bars of soap in terms of "number of washes", there is no doubt that our locally made artisanal soaps would win that battle hands down, which makes them a much better value than the cheap soaps that are loaded down with chemicals that are typically available in the big box stores. Don't delay, order today!

I hope people will take advantage of our new online forum for discussions. Besides recipes, there is a thread on the coop’s new strategic plan, which provides a place to make suggestions and discuss the plan.

It's STILL Summertime. . . .and the livin' is HOT.

2011-07-05T23:03:00.000-05:00

What can I say about a month like June. How many days on the wrong side of 100 degrees Farenheit? How extreme is the drought? How much problem is this for our producers?
Well the drought is extreme, officially so, over half the state, and getting worse everywhere else. The fact that we don't see giant dust clouds in the air is a testimony to what farmers have learned since the 1930s, but the problems that drought presents to rural producers and communities remain the same today as they were in the 1930s.
Right now the grass and hay crops should be growing, putting on height and weight. There should be plenty of grazing for cattle and other herd animals, the farm ponds should be full. But the pastures are not growing. They are turning brown and dry. As hay crops shrivel and die, those responsible for livestock look ahead to the winter months, estimate the dwindling supply of hay in their barns and sheds, wonder about what they will be able to cut this fall. . . and then they count their cattle and try to figure out how many head of cattle they can afford to take through this winter into an uncertain spring. Will the drought break this fall? This winter? Next spring? Or is this part of a multi-year drought cycle?

We in cities are not so far removed from our pastoral ancestry, where wealth was measured in cattle, or sheep, or goats, or horses, or some combination thereof. We are steeped in those stories in the Bible -- the Hebrew word for cattle appears 56 times in the book of Genesis! My father certainly measured his wealth in cattle -- the cattle count was a regular feature of our regular round of chores.

The number of mother cows a producer can maintain is determined by how much feed they can produce and/or buy. "Feed" includes pasture and hay crops (alfalfa, etc), it may include some grain and/or soybeans. Cattle also require water, and in the heat of the summer, that means more water, not less. All of this is true of other livestock -- sheep, goats, pigs, I habitually talk about cattle because that's what my family raised in southwest Oklahoma.

During drought years, the amount of feed produced on a given farmer's pastures and hay fields will be less than a good year with sufficient moisture, unless the producer has access to irrigation water, which is not the case for many Oklahoma farmers and ranchers. There's also less water in the farm ponds and prolonged drought can effect the underground water table that feeds wells. Less feed plus less water equals fewer mother cows and fewer mother cows mean fewer steers and fewer steers means less revenue for farmers and ranchers.

This problem adds up fast. Every mother cow sold into the marketplace is the destruction of productive wealth. That mother cow will produce no more mother cows or steers. The destruction of productive wealth is not good for farmers and ranchers and its not good for rural communities and its not good for our urban communities either. It's called "eating your capital" and it is a sign of desperation wherever it occurs.

What happens at your house when there's less money? What happens if it becomes a permanent decline because some of your productive effort is simply no longer there?

What can people in cities do about this?

First and foremost, we can buy food directly from our farmers. With less revenue in farm country, any money siphoned off to the giant corporate food aggregators like Cargill and Archers Daniels Midland is money taken out of rural Oklahoma to enrich giant corporations. There is little enough going around this year anyway (this drought also killed the Oklahoma wheat crop this year). Buying food from farmers strengthens rural economies and that is good for everyone.

Meats are among the most well supplied items in our local food online supermarket. Ground meats of all kinds, in particular, are competitively priced, high quality, and taste very good. All of us need to increase our purchase of these food items in order to support our farmers who are going through this climate crisis.

And not only meats. I'm encouraging everyone to look at what they bought from farmers a year ago, and then increase that this month and every month left this year. Could you increase your purchase by 10%? 20%? Don't forget the non-food items too, many of our producers are making excellent body care products and they are such great values that when compared straight on with supermarket products, the initial price might be a bit higher, but since they last so much longer than store-bought soap, the artisinal soaps of our coop producers are actually "cheaper per wash" than anything in the big box supermarket.

This is the month of the "aliums and potatoes" in the coop; and I hope that when the order ends, there isn't an onion or a potato left. Now is the time to buy onions for the rest of the year. They will keep just fine in most air conditioned homes these days, even without refrigeration. Localvorism requires "looking ahead" and buying when the harvest is upon us, for eating later once the harvest is past.

Everyone needs to work together to mitigate the on-rushing impact of climate change/weather weirding by reducing carbon footprints and fossil fuel usage. One easy and simple strategy is to cook outside this summer! Sure, you can afford to air condition your house, and cook inside, and just run your AC overtime to get rid of all that heat and humidity -- but can the Earth afford it? Look at the brown and dry pastures and fields throughout the state and tell yourself that what you do doesn't matter, except that you won't believe that because you know it isn't true. The truth of the modern dilemma is that EVERYTHING that we do matters -- for good, or for ill.

Cooking outside isn't the One Solution to climate change, but there isn't any such thing as the One Solution. Instead, there are ten thousand little things that need to be done, or done differently, and cooking outside is one of those. Do that, get good at it, and then move on and do something else, meanwhile, tell others about how they can save money and help the planet by cooking outside during the summer so they do the same and can move on to something else too.

Sometimes accepting this kind of responsibility is scary. It was sure scary when we decided to build new walls 5-1/2 inches inside of all of our exterior walls so we could 9 inches of insulation in our walls and 14 inches in the attic. But we have never regretted that work and that expense, not even once. It was, in fact, the best financial investment I have ever made. It is certainly a better investment than the money market account that presently holds my 403b retirement fund.

It was scary when the founders of this food coop came together and one day in the hot summer of 2003 decided, "OK, we are going to start this thing in November 2003." Is there anyone who regrets that decision? Not me, even though it has hardly been a smooth ride, indeed, it has often been a rough, bumpy, and contentious ride, but that's fine, because the cause is just and the food is tasty and those two things make it possible for us to persevere through times of difficulty.

And then there's the "invisible structures" which make it easy to do harm and hard to do good. We need fewer of the "easy to do harm" situations, and we need more structures which make it "easy to do good and hard to do bad." For example. . . The state of Oklahoma owns over 800 miles of railroad. Isn't it time we put that resource to work and thus reduce our fossil fuel dependence? Wouldn't it be nice if our producers could send their products to delivery day by train? What about passenger and freight rail service uniting our regional cities with Tulsa and Oklahoma City? There is much that could be done, but the squeaking wheel is the one that gets the grease.

So that's the story of the July Bobaganda. Everything that you do matters. For good, or for ill. There's very little neutrality these days. I'm hoping that more people will decide this month that they are part of the solution and buy some food from local farmers and then cook it outside to keep from working their AC so hard. No pressure folks, just a frank realization of our own personal responsibility for the consequences of our actions.

Joining the Oklahoma Food Coop, and buying some of your food from local producers,. is a HUGE part of the constellation of solutions we need today. So thank you for that, and know that this month, just like every other month, you can get from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative -- for an honest and reasonable price -- good food that tastes good and does good.

PS. If you pray, please pray for our farmers and ranchers and coop producers. Pray that they will receive the grace of fortitude to make it through these hard times. Pray for rain, and for protection for all life from the climate craziness that is even as we speak come upon us, for the drought is as hard on the wildlife and birds and bees as it is on the livestock. (I don't know about anyone else, but I have seen very few bees and other pollinators this year.)

While you're reading the news connecting ROUNDUP with BIRTH DEFECTS. . .

2011-06-08T19:48:00.000-05:00

While you are perusing the latest news about the suppressed research that connected Roundup with BIRTH DEFECTS IN CHILDREN. . .

http://www.scribd.com/doc/57277946/RoundupandBirthDefectsv5

. . . Look at this list of ROUND-UP FREE vegetables available from the Oklahoma Food Coop RIGHT NOW!

Buy extra! Preserve some now for winter eating. Cabbage? Think saurkraut. Greens? Think cooked greens, frozen in meal sized containers. (Wagon Creek dairy containers are great for recycling as frozen vegetable containers.) Radishes? OK, I can’t really think of a way to preserve them. . . well, it was only last month that I discovered that you could FRY them, so maybe fry them and then freeze them? WHY NOT? Yellow and zucchini? I have dehydrated a large pile of these veggies in the past and used them during the winter in soups, stews, and casseroles. Plus people in my house developed a liking for them as dehydrated munchies. (OK, you knew everyone at my house is sort of weird, so why are you surprised about this?)

It's times like this that give real meaning to the phrase -- "EAT WITH THE SEASON!" Eating the same food, 24/7/365 is BORING. As the season changes, so should our diets. The producers of the Oklahoma Food Coop are rolling out a bountiful feast of food. We are lucky that we have the Coop which provides us with such easy access to such great food. Let's make sure the Coop AND our producers stay sustainable for the long term by buying some local food every month. Like today!

beets
cabbage
microgreens
kale
bok choy
arugula
leeks
choi choi
swiss chard
lettuce
cabbage
celery
red onions
white onions
garlic
candy onions
elephant garlic
purple garlic
mushrooms (maitake, shitake, reishi, lion’s mane, oysters)
red radishes
green onions
shallots
turnips
baby beets
full size beets
green knob onions
watermelon radishes
yellow squash
zucchini squash
patty pan squash
tomatoes (red and green)

It's Summertime. . . and the livin' is easy and the eatin' is good.

2011-06-06T21:20:00.001-05:00

For some ambience, click on this link and put this music on (from Porgy and Bess, the iconic song -- Summertime, and the livin is easy, fish are jumpin' and the cotton is high.) http://youtu.be/vWFJLUBwpSY

Next, fix yourself your favorite cool summer beverage. While regular tea is not an Oklahoma product per se, the Coop's fine beverage producers have fine teas blended right here in Oklahoma. Or, make a quick trip through your "tea garden" and bring in a variety of mint leaves, some bee balm, crush them a bit and steep them in hot water. Pour over ice and relax. Don't have a tea garden? Put that on your list of things to do. Don't have land for a garden? That's fine, herb tea plants grow great in containers and typically will do fine in dappled shade or on a sunny windowsill.

Third. . . before we get to FOOD, let's talk just a bit about energy conservation. Here are my two bestest and most effective ideas for energy conservation:

Cook outside! Every BTU you cook with is a BTU that your air conditioner will have to remove, so you pay TWICE for the energy to cook inside: Once when you cook the food, and then again when your AC works overtime to remove the heat and humidity.
Shade the outside of your windows and doors. For that matter, shade ALL of the exterior envelope of your home, but if you can't do that, get some shade over your windows and doors. These are typically the worst insulated systems in your building envelope. Even an expensive double pane/argon filled/low E coated window is still only R-3 or 4 at the most, compared with R-19 of the typically insulated 2 x 4" frame exterior wall. (Or compared with R-33 of my 9 inch thick walls.) If nothing else is available, duct tape some auto sun shades together and hang over the exterior of the windows.

The reason for "exterior" shading is that once the sun hits the window or the door, even if you have curtains inside, the heat will get inside via conduction. Heat always moves to cold, and your nicely AC'd interior is surrounded by solar BTUs that are quite anxious to find their way inside your (hopefully) well-insulated building envelope.

The less money you spend on energy, the more money you can spend on local foods! And eating local foods is much better than making energy corporations rich, don't you think?

Now for some summer foods.

One of my favorite summer salads is cucumber, tomato, and onion salad. Well, the way I am, I also add some chopped jalapenos. Chop up the vegetables, mix equal parts oil and vinegar, add a dash of salt, and voila, great summer salad. As to amounts. . . I typically do two medium cucumbers (sliced as half moons), one medium onion (roughly chunked), and 4 tomatoes (use a serrated knife, slice in half, then slice each half in quarters. I would add 2 large jalapenos sliced in rings. For this much veggie, I would use 1/4 cup oil and 1/4 cup vinegar and 1 teaspoon salt. It's good freshly made, and it's really good the next day. And yes, you can use a chopped up walking onion from your garden instead of a regular bulb onion, or a handful of chopped fresh onion or garlic chives.

Since summer time is not much of a time to heat your oven, my favorite summer breads have always been skillet top breads. I would simply use my regular bread recipes, only instead of forming into loaves, I would pinch of a bit of dough about the size of a golf ball, roll it out, and then bake it on a cast iron skillet. I do this with AND without oil, getting subtle differences in the taste and surface texture. Sometimes I deep fry the dough to make a yeast-raised fry bread. That's "to die for" as they say these days. And if you want cornbread, just make your favorite cornbread batter and but cook it like a pancake batter.

One of the best summer foods is the simple hamburger. Make it from ground beef, ground buffalo, ground lamb, mix it half and half with ground pork or even sausage. You can be creative with the seasonings. I often mix finely chopped herbs with the ground meat before forming the burgers (sage, thyme, rosemary, crushed red pepper) and maybe add just a dash of teriyaki sauce. Form into balls and press out with your hands, or put a ball of ground meat on the back of a saucer and place another saucer over it and lightly press to form a patty.

Put it all together and throw it on the grill or into the skillet. For the classic "onion burger"... after you put the patty on the skillet, cover it with thinly sliced onions. When you flip it, the onions caramelize as they cook. Handle the meat as little as possible. Don't "massage" or "knead" it, mix it only enough to combine whatever you are adding to the ground meat or to mix the different kinds of ground meat. One of the interesting things about the ground meat bought from the coop is that it is typically very lean, so there isn't a lot of shrink during the cooking.

And please, make extra! You're getting the grill or the skillet hot, so why not cook twice the number of burgers that you need and refrigerate or freeze the others for eating later? A great lunch is simply a cooked hamburger patty, smeared with some mayo or mustard, layered with onion, pickle, cheese, and wrapped in a leaf of romaine or slid into a bun. Burgers with eggs for breakfast? WHY NOT? Burgers with eggs AND chili AND bacon for breakfast? WHY NOT? INVITE ME! If you're worried about your ability to eat such good food, I'll help.

I am really impressed with the amount of vegetables available this month through the cooperative. It is obvious that there has been tremendous growth in the capacity of the local food system between this year and last. I am writing this Monday evening, and you'll find LOTS of vegetables still available. Many vegetable producers add to their listings as the order progresses and they become more certain about what they will have available.

Right now you can find various kinds of greens, cabbage, onions (several kinds), radishes, tomatoes, beets, turnips, cucumbers, microgreens, leeks, celery (this is a FIRST), carrots, garlic, fresh herbs, mushrooms, potatoes, jalapenos, zucchini and yellow squash. Makes me hungry just to write about this. But extra, while the buying is good, and preserve for eating later! Your freezer is your friend when it comes to eating local. You will want some nice local veggies this winter, won't you? Well, buy now so you can eat later.

And speaking of extra. . . how is your food storage doing these days? We all know how I preach on this subject and in fact I can hardly write any bobaganda without reminding everyone that there are a hundred and one things that could happen tomorrow that would interfere to the point of ruination with the orderly working of our just-in-time food system. Troubles on that scale would likely impact the coop. If terrorists have hit the fuel supply, we wouldn't have fuel to run our delivery days just as the supermarkets wouldn't have for their supply trucks. So always remember this ancient wisdom. . . "Remember the time of hunger in the day of plenty." The world is consuming MORE GRAIN every year than it is producing, and that means that we are slowly drawing down our world food security grain stocks. This year's wheat harvest in Oklahoma was gravely harmed by the unstable weather we experienced (severe cold coupled with extensive drought), and there is no guarantee that this troubled weather cycle will not continue.

As an experiment. . . do an inventory of all the food in your house, and then realistically ask yourself how long you could feed your household with that amount of food. Would it be a radically different diet from what you're used to? If so, that's a danger sign, since a time of trouble is typically not a good time to start a new way of eating.

Store what you eat, and eat what you store. If you eat hamburger, then store hamburger. And make sure you have a backup way to keep your freezer cold. I have a marine battery, an inverter, and a small generator, spent about $300 total.

Summertime, the living is easy, enjoy it while it lasts! Don't delay, the June order closes this coming Thursday! Log in right now and get some of this good Oklahoma eatin' for your own household. Y'all bon appetit, you hear?

Radish Home Fries

2011-05-20T11:35:00.000-05:00

Radishes were in abundance on the May Oklahoma Food Coop order, and most people just slice them and put them in salads or nibble on them raw. Weelllll. . . that's just the beginning of the possibilities.
Why not try cooking them?

Radish Home Fries: a LOW CARB treat

1 pound radishes, washed, trimmed
1 small onion diced (or as I used this AM, one Walking Onion from my garden, the white onion at the bottom plus the scapes at the top, chopped)
2 tablespoons butter (From Wagon Creek, of course)
1 tablespoon EVOO (extra virgin olive oil)
Salt, pepper, crushed red pepper, and/or cayenne pepper, to taste and preferred heat, which in my case was a LOT, if I had had a jalapeno, it would have gone in there too!

Quarter and slice the radishes, put everything in the pan, fry 5 to 10 minutes until nicely browned on both sides. Serve in place of hash browns. Found online at one my favorite recipe sites, http://www.genaw.com/lowcarb/radish_home_fries.html

Structural Issues for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

2011-05-02T21:37:00.000-05:00

The board of directors and management of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative are working through a visioning process to develop some ideas for strategic direction and development of our operations going forward. One of the issues that has emerged from that discussion is the thought that we have some structural issues.

In 2003, we incorporated using the legislation that was available, a cooperative organization statute originally enacted in 1919. It did not allow for much flexibility in organizational structure and has a particular limitation on indebtedness as we go forward. Under our statute of incorporation, we can't borrow an amount greater than our paid-in capital. This means that when we have 4,000 members, the most we could borrow would be $200,000, unless the value of our shares increased, at which time the limit would be 4,000 times the new value. Since the value of our membership share, according to our Articles of Incorporation, must have some reference to the value of the cooperative, the board can't just arbitrarily increase the value of a share to say $500 thus allowing us to borrow a lot more money.

The reason this is a problem is in the context of buying a location for our operations center, which is one of the alternatives we have when our lease expires in a couple of years. We wouldn't be able to buy much of a warehouse if the most we could borrow was $200,000.

In 2009, a new cooperative statute was adopted by the legislature, the Limited Cooperative Act of 2009, which provides for a more flexible organizational structure for cooperatives. Before I get to a discussion of the opportunities that it offers us, I want to spend some time on some details of our present incorporations that are in my opinion essential for our future going forward.

Incorporated to provide a benefit to the membership.
Cooperatives exist to provide benefits to their members. In our case, the direct benefit we provide is a marketplace, a space where willing buyers and producers can meet and make exchanges. Our present articles of incorporation say:

The purpose of this cooperative is to provide retail marketplaces that sell Oklahoma grown and/or Oklahoma processed foods and non-food items, for the mutual benefit of its producer and customer members.

Acting as the agent of producer members, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative will publicize to its members the products that its producer members have for sale, receive orders from customer members, provide a way for products to be delivered to other members of the cooperative, collect payment from the customers and forward the payments to the producers. Acting as the agent for customer members, we will provide them a catalog of available local food products that includes information about how and where the product was grown or processed. We receive their orders and notify the appropriate producers, arrange for the food to be delivered, receive and process their payments. For both producer and customer members, we will provide a basic screening of products and producers based on our published parameters, and education and training regarding the use and the advantages of local foods. The essential business of the cooperative is to provide a marketplace where our members who are willing buyers and sellers can meet.

One member, one share, one vote.
This is the most basic aspect of the cooperative form of business organization. A cooperative is an organization that is democratically controlled by its members. While the cooperative may at some point issue additional classes of stock for the purpose of raising capital, those shares are non-voting. Our articles of incorporation say:

This association shall be operated on a cooperative basis for the mutual benefit of its members as patrons and owners of the cooperative.

The connection of share value with the value of the cooperative.
The cooperative, as a business entity, has a value. This is described on the financial reports of the cooperative, in particular, the balance sheet. Our articles of incorporation provide that the value of a share is related to the value of the cooperative, with a minimum par value, as required by Oklahoma law, which is set by our Articles of Incorporation as $50. The March 2011 balance sheet shows that the total assets of the cooperative are $211,220. The membership of the cooperative is about 4,000 people so the actual value of a share (assets divided by membership) is about $52.80. This ratio has fluctuated quite a bit over the years, in the beginning it was way low. It is a sign of our historic strength that the value of a share has now risen above the par value. If this continues, the board will need to recognize this and adjust the value of a share accordingly. Like the stock market, a slow but steady increase in the value of a share is an indication of the growing strength of the coop, just as a declining share price would be a sign of problems. This mandatory ratio is important for the long-term health of the cooperative.

The Articles of Incorporation say:

The purpose of this article is to ensure that all of the value of the cooperative is owned equally by the members, and that the value of a share reflects the member's ownership in the cooperative, thus dividing the ownership of the cooperative equitably among all its customer and producer members.

Core values.
In one of the earliest meetings of the Committee to Organize an Oklahoma Food Cooperative, we found unanimous agreement on a set of core values: social justice, economic viability, and environmental sustainability.

The activities of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative are governed by its Core Values of social justice, environmental stewardship, and economic sustainability. The cooperative shall educate members, and the general public, regarding cooperative principles, the local food movement, its core values, and the practical implementation of these principles.

Going forward, there are a lot of ideas and thoughts going around. Three of them are structural issues, at least in part and I'd like to talk a bit about them here.

The struggle for operations revenues.
The cooperative struggles to have enough operations revenue to pay for what needs to be done. Most regular food cooperatives operate on a margin of 35% - 40%, whereas we make do with 20%. We are able to do this because of the sweat equity our members invest. But that has become in itself an on-going issue. First, we are expecting more and more work from a relatively small group of very committed people, and we periodically burn people out and they drop out. Second, a volunteer work force means things like --

people are not required to show up,
people are not required to stay until a certain time,
people don't always do what they are asked to do.

Our operating revenues, from the beginning, have been closely connected with our operations. This was by design of the founders. We discussed annual fees early on, and learned that our particular form of cooperative incorporation didn't really permit that. And in any event, we felt that as a matter of organizational discipline, our operating revenues should derive from our operations. This would ensure that we would never lose our focus on the production and sale of local farm products. If we need operating revenue, the primary revenue stream has always been the commissions we levy on our sales.

Our sales have increased every year of our operation, and my hope has always been that our sales would catch up with our need for operations revenue, but that's just not happening at the present time. As sales revenues have increased, so have operations expenses. When we sell more meat, we need more dry ice and ice chests. When we sell more food, we need more people to sort it and move it around. We desperately need some systems analysis of our work, but funds to pay for that kind of professional evaluation are scarce. We are trying to do something -- operate on a 20% margin -- that no other food cooperative in the United States has succeeded in doing. A couple of years ago I calculated that to replace our volunteer work force with paid staff would increase our budget by about $250,000. Or in other words, the value of our sweat equity two years ago was $250,000/year. It is probably more than that now. And we could pay that by the simple expedient of increasing our margin to 35%, which would be a coop charge of 17% for producers and 17% for customers, not quite a doubling, but pretty close.

Or, we could double our sales without doubling our costs.

Or, we could find some additional sources of revenue. That's why we're doing the classified ads. Sure, we think they will be a good service to our members, but they also bring in money.

One of the ideas for additional revenue would be to invest some of our cooperative cash into products that are not produced by local producers in Oklahoma and will never be produced by local producers in Oklahoma, and make them available to our members. This could be things like toilet paper, tropical spices, Texas citrus, Arkansas or Louisiana rice, Caribbean bananas. The coop would buy those items wholesale and add a regular retail mark-up.

This has always been my favorite way of increasing coop revenues, but some people really don't like the idea. I am obviously all for the development of a local food system, but I don't get all of my household's foods from local sources. We buy orange juice and bananas and toilet paper. And even though we generally shop at independent stores, that money pretty much vanishes quickly and doesn't do the local economy that much good. We would much rather buy our citrus and bananas and toilet paper from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and have that money support the system that makes it possible for us to buy hamburger from the Semkin family and eggs from Calvan Parker. And I'd that the profits from the sale of toilet paper and citrus and rice and bananas go towards keeping those products from the Crains and the Rinks and the Lusbys affordable.

Yes, it would increase our costs, but these products would also make it easier for us to pay employees.

This is a structural issue insofar as it would take a serious debate and action by the board to do this.

So the search is on for additional sources of revenue to complement our sales revenue. Raising the amount of the cooperative's commission charged to producers and customers is always an option, but in my opinion it should be a real last ditch thing, since that raises the costs. Of course, the price of everything else that we buy is going up and the cooperative may not be able to insulate itself from the impacts of inflation forever.

Required Patronage. One structure issue that might be resolved by changing our method of incorporation would be to add a requirement of patronage. That is, to be a member in good standing, you would have to buy X amount of product from the cooperative each year, and/or pay an annual fee or assessment, and/or volunteer X number of hours either on delivery day or on back-office work. The board could invite members to pay a voluntary fee now, but to make a mandatory rule regarding patronage would require re-incorporation under the Limited Cooperative Association Act of 2009.

As always, there are some devils in these details. We don't necessarily have an absolute shortage of volunteers. What we have is a shortage of people willing to show up at a definite date and time, work as instructed, be accountable for their results -- AND a shortage of cash to properly compensate them for their work. This of course sounds a lot like employees, and unless we are going to have actual employees, we have to be careful what we demand in this regard lest a government agency decide we are evading our legal responsibilities somehow.

Governance issues. In the beginning, all we had was the board of directors, so the board was governance and management altogether. Now we are way beyond that, but we still have some problems determining what is governance and what is management and the end result is an on-going problem with board involvement with management issues. We are getting better at making those distinctions, but we still have a ways to go. And part of our problem may be our governance structure. If I had the opportunity to go back and change one thing in our original incorporation paperwork, it would be to drop the election of a president, two vice presidents, a secretary, and the board appointment of a CIO and treasurer, in favor of electing all members of the board at large, and then the board would elect its own presiding structure and make provision for legal and financial records. The general manager would be unambiguously in charge of operations and the board in charge of governance. But we didn't know then what we know now and hindsight is of course always 20-20.

Conclusion
This is a brief outline of some of the issues going forward. Everyone in the cooperative need to be thinking about these things since they will be on the agenda going forward. The earliest that any juridical change could occur would be the 2012 Annual Meeting, but if we decide on structural changes those details will be hammered out in advance of that. Thus, we need an on-going discussion in our cooperative discussion groups about structural issues.

Request for public comment about a possible change in the Oklahoma Food Coop's product standards.

2011-02-04T22:21:00.000-06:00

In 2010, at the request of several producers, the Standards Committee began studying the issue of co-packing in our product standards.

"Co-packing" is where a producer hires another business to produce a prepared or processed food product for him or her.

Our present product standards do not explicitly address co-packing. We permitted it to date because (a) a prepared/processed food producer can buy regular wholesale ingredients for their product(s), (b) a producer can hire employees to produce his or her prepared food products, (c) therefore, a producer can hire a co-packer to produce a prepared food product and in accordance with our present prepared/processed food standards, buy wholesale ingredients for their product, and not personally produce any of the product or do any of the work.

Because of differences of opinion, both within the committee in and in comments we have received, we are presenting two versions for public comment. As a result of comments received, we may select one of the two to forward to the board as our recommendation, or we may send them both to the board. As a result of comments from customer and producer members, the wording may change.

Version 1.0 takes care of a primary concern of the board about our first proposal submitted to them after public comment last year, which was to require that the contract with the co-packer specify the use of local production for meat or poultry or eggs if those were ingredients and that the contract be inspected to ensure that this was there. It requires that at least one ingredient in the product must be either grown by the producer or sourced from an Oklahoma source.

Version 1.1 is a response to committee, member, and board comments about the need to require either some work or production from the producer for a product to be legitimate in our system. Since using a co-packer does not use the producer's labor to make the product, Version 1.1 takes the process a step further and requires that one or more of the "primary definitive ingredients" of the product be produced by the producer hiring the co-packer. So a producer could hire a co-packer to make strawberry jam, as long as he or she provided the strawberries. They could not buy strawberries from the regular wholesale system, or from another local producer, and then hire a co-packer to make the jam.

While a regular prepared/processed food producer could produce a food item for sale that includes nothing that was actually grown by the producer, the producer and his/her family and/or employees are "producing" their work as an essential "ingredient" of the finished product. This proposal would close our system to those with simply a good idea, a tasty recipe, and capital to hire a local co-packer and buy ingredients.

The argument against that is that even a product produced by a co-packer that includes no local ingredients does strengthen the local food system, since co-packers are an essential aspect of a local food system and it would be better for our members to e.g. buy a "small Oklahoma brand" ketchup than to go to the supermarket and buy a national brand produced in California or somewhere else.

Some of the producers however feel very strongly that a producer should either be providing the work or some of the ingredients for it to qualify for sale through us, since our hypothetical locally co-packed/ingredients sourced wholesale product could get into supermarkets and have a market there.

This does not impact in any way prepared or processed food producers who do their own labor, or hire employees to help make their products.

I am at this time not sure if this would negatively impact any of our existing producers. I expect that to come out during public comment period.

So as you can see, there is, a kind of a fundamental "existential" issue for the coop that must be addressed here that should not/cannot be resolved by the Standards Committee by itself.

This public comment period will run until Wednesday, February 9.

Those who subscribe to the public discussion group can comment by sending email to okfoodret@yahoogroups.com or post at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/okfoodret/ . Those who subscribe to okproducers@yahoogroups.com can send email to okproducers@yahoogroups.com . Comments may be sent privately to me at bwaldrop@cox.net and they will be forwarded to the committee and included in our report to the board, which will be in the minutes for the meeting. We expect to send this to the board and that it will be voted on at the meeting on February 13th. If people want to speak to the board about this, they can do so at that time. Do not send email to members@oklahomafood.coop or producers@oklahomafood.coop as it will be automatically deleted by the system since only those with the password can post to those listservs.

Thanks for your assistance in this aspect of the governance of the coop.

Bob Waldrop, chair, Standards Committee

Co-packed Products, version 1.0

1. In order to sell a prepared or processed food product, where the
production is carried out by a co-packer, a coop member must apply for
and be approved as a Food Producer Using a Co-packer, using the
application published at the coop's website. No producer may use a
co-packer to prepare foods for sale through the Oklahoma Food
Cooperative without applying for and being approved as a Food Producer
Using a Co-packer.

2. Existing producers of prepared foods using co-packers are
grandfathered in as Food Producers Using a Co-packer, but they must
complete the application form and send it to the Compliance Committee,
and their co-packed products must meet these standards. Any co-packed
products that they sell, that do not meet these standards, must be
brought into compliance within six months or removed from their list of
products sold through the cooperative.

a. If a producer rents a facility to make a prepared food product, and
the labor is done by the producer, his or her household, and/or
employees, this is not considered co-packing under these standards.

3. Definitions. For the purposes of this co-packing standard, these
are the definitions of prepared and processed foods.

a. A co-packed product is a product that is produced by a business
separate from the producer, his or her household, and/or employees,
based on a contract or agreement with a coop producer. For the purposes
of this standard, cured meats, sausages, luncheon meats and other
charcuterie, offered by producers, prepared by a processor that is licensed by the USDA or the state of Oklahoma, on
behalf of a coop food producer, are not considered to be "co-packed".
This copacking standard is not intended to cover any primary food
products like raw meat, raw whole vegetables, unmilled grain, etc.
Grain may be cleaned, and meat may be cut and packaged, by third parties
and not be considered co-packing.

b. A Prepared Food Product is any food that has been prepared in a
manner which changes the food from its original state, but which does
not require a Processing Authority Letter from an agency that
issues processing authority letters.

c. A Processed Food Product is a prepared food that requires a
Processing Authority Letter issued by an agency that issues processing
authority letters to be legal for sale,

4. All co-packed prepared and processed food products, as defined
herein, sold through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative must comply with all
applicable laws and
government regulations, and the producer warrants to the Coop that the
prepared and/or processed products to be sold by the producer comply
with the relevant laws and regulations.

5. Ingredients. The requirements for ingredients of prepared and
processed food products in the existing standards of the Oklahoma Food
Cooperative apply to all co-packed products. Any meat or eggs must be
sourced from non-CAFO Oklahoma sources, and at least one ingredient in the
recipe must be sourced from Oklahoma sources or raised
by the producer himself/herself. If the product contains meat or eggs, the
contract with the co-packed must specify the use of non-CAFO Oklahoma
production, and the coop's inspector must verify that the contract contains
a clause to that effect. Proprietary information about recipes may be
blacked out in the copy of the contract that is inspection.

6. The co-packer must be located in the state of Oklahoma.

7. Producers using a co-packer must include the name and location of
their co-packer in the description of their products, and identify which
ingredient(s) are sourced from Oklahoma or raised by the producer
himself/herself, for example:

Strawberry jam. Ingredients: sugar, strawberries, pectin. Co-packed by
the Desirable Foods Company, Bug Tussle, Oklahoma, using Oklahoma
strawberries.

Or,

Zucchini-Cheese-Hamburger Casserole. Ingredients: zucchini, cheese,
noodles, hamburger, basil, herbs. Made with hamburger and zucchini from
my farm. Co-packed by the Desirable Foods Company, Bug Tussle, Oklahoma.

6. All applications for co-packed products must include a copy of the
contract(s) with the co-packer. However, any proprietary information
included in such contracts may be inked out to avoid disclosure of such
proprietary information.

+++++++++++++++++++++++=

Co-packed Products, Version 1.1

1. In order to sell a prepared or processed food product, where the
production is carried out by a co-packer, a coop member must apply for
and be approved as a Food Producer Using a Co-packer, using the
application published at the coop's website. No producer may use a
co-packer to prepare foods for sale through the Oklahoma Food
Cooperative without applying for and being approved as a Food Producer
Using a Co-packer.

2. Existing producers of prepared foods using co-packers are
grandfathered in as Food Producers Using a Co-packer, but they must
complete the application form and send it to the Compliance Committee,
and their co-packed products must meet these standards. Any co-packed
products that they sell, that do not meet these standards, must be
brought into compliance within 1 year or removed from their list of
products sold through the cooperative.

a. If a producer rents a facility to make a prepared food product, and
the labor is done by the producer, his or her household, and/or
employees, this is not considered co-packing under these standards.

3. Definitions. For the purposes of this co-packing standard, these
are the definitions shall be used.

a. A co-packed product is a product that is produced by a business
separate from the producer, his or her household, and/or employees,
based on a contract or agreement with a coop producer. For the purposes
of this standard, cured or dried meats, jerkeys, sausages, luncheon meats
and other
charcuterie, offered by producers, prepared by
a processor that is licensed by the USDA or the state of Oklahoma, on
behalf of a coop food producer, are not considered to be "co-packed".
This copacking standard is not intended to cover any primary food
products like raw meat, raw whole vegetables, unmilled grain, etc.
Grain may be cleaned, and meat may be cut and packaged, by third parties
and not be considered co-packing.

b. A Prepared Food Product is any food that has been prepared in a
manner which changes the food from its original state, but which does
not require a Processing Authority Letter from an agency that
issues processing authority letters.

c. A Processed Food Product is a prepared food that requires a
Processing Authority Letter issued by an agency that issues processing
authority letters to be legal for sale.

d. Primary definitive ingredient. A primary definitive ingredient is an
ingredient that gives a food product its nature or character as a food
product. A product may have more than one primary definitive ingredient.

Examples:
+ The primary definitive ingredient of a jam or jelly is the fruit or
vegetable that provides its identity. For strawberry jam, the primary
definitive ingredient is strawberries. For apple-peach jam, the primary
definitive ingredients are apples and peaces.

+ The primary definitive ingredient of a hamburger casserole is the
hamburger. The primary definitive ingredients of a hamburger-cheese
casserole are the hamburger and the cheese. The primary definitive
ingredients of a hamburger-zucchini-cheese casseroles are the hamburger,
cheese, and zucchini.

4. All co-packed prepared and processed food products, as defined
herein, sold through the Oklahoma Food Cooperative must comply with all
applicable laws and
government regulations, and the producer warrants to the Coop that the
prepared and/or processed products to be sold by the producer comply
with the relevant laws and regulations.

5. Ingredients. The requirements for ingredients of prepared and
processed food products in the existing standards of the Oklahoma Food
Cooperative apply to all co-packed products, except as provided below.

(a) Any meat or eggs must be sourced from non-CAFO Oklahoma sources, and

(b) at least one of the primary definitive ingredients must be raised by
the producer himself/herself.

(c) If the product contains meat or eggs, the contract with the co-packed
must specify the use of non-CAFO Oklahoma production, and the coop's
inspector must verify that the contract contains a clause to that effect.
The contract must specify the use of the producer's production of the
identified primary definitive ingredient(s) and forbid substituting
additional amounts of said definitive ingredient not grown by the producer.
Proprietary information about recipes may be blacked out in the copy of the
contract that is inspected

6. The co-packer must be located in the state of Oklahoma.

7. Producers using a co-packer must include the name and location of
their co-packer in the description of their products, and identify which
ingredient(s) are sourced from Oklahoma or raised by the producer
himself/herself, for example:

Strawberry jam. Ingredients: sugar, strawberries, pectin. Co-packed by
the Desirable Foods Company, Bug Tussle, Oklahoma, using strawberries raised
on my farm.

Or,

Zucchini-Cheese-Hamburger Casserole. Ingredients: zucchini, cheese,
noodles, hamburger, basil, herbs. Made with zucchini from
my farm and hamburger from Oklahoma sources. Co-packed by the Desirable
Foods Company, Bug Tussle, Oklahoma.

6. All applications for co-packed products must include a copy of the
contract(s) with the co-packer. However, any proprietary information
included in such contracts may be inked out to avoid disclosure of such
proprietary information.

My welcome speech to today's Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Coop

2011-01-29T21:52:00.000-06:00

Below is the text I wrote for my welcome speech this morning at the Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Well, I suppose I departed from the text a few times but pretty much everything is there that I said, although I also rearranged it a bit as I presented it. I mention reading some Wendell Berry poetry to prepare the speech, and one poem I read, which I didn't use, is this little ditty. . . and while as far as I know he has never even heard of me, he might as well have been writing about me, as those who know me well may attest ;)))).

A Warning to my Readers, by Wendell Berry
Do not think me gentle
because I speak in praise
of gentleness, or elegant
because I honor the grace
that keeps this world. I am
a man crude as any,
gross of speech, intolerant,
stubborn, angry, full
of fits and furies. That I
may have spoken well
at times, is not natural.
A wonder is what it is.

WELCOME to this 7th Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

So how's the food? Some of this is the speech I had intended to give last year, which plans were somewhat derailed by a little problem caused by decades of eating a conventional diet out of grocery stores. I stayed up late last night reading Wendell Berry poetry, to find just the right words to begin my welcome speech. And I found them.

The Apple Tree

by Wendell Berry

In the essential prose

of things, the apple tree

stands up, emphatic

among the accidents

of the afternoon, solvent,

not to be denied.

The grass has been cut

down, carefully

to leave the orange

poppies still in bloom;

the tree stands up

in the odor of the grass

drying. The forked

trunk and branches are

also a kind of necessary

prose—shingled with leaves,

pigment and song

imposed on the blunt

lineaments of fact, a foliage

of small birds among them.

The tree lifts itself up

in the garden, the

clutter of its green

leaves halving the light,

stating the unalterable

congruity and form

of its casual growth;

the crimson finches appear

and disappear, singing

among the design.

I could certainly stand up here and talk for hours about the many adventures of the amazing portable Oklahoma Food Cooperative, the apple tree in the growing garden of local food security here upon our beloved land. I think this poem describes us, in some detail. We are certainly nothing if not emphatic among the accidents of the afternoon, and the morning too for that matter. Who could have predicted that this day would come, when I would stand here and welcome you to our seventh annual meeting, and tell you that between December 2003 and December 2010, we facilitated the marketing of $3,122,357.01 in locally produced food and non-food products?

The apple tree is a very diverse eco-system in and of itself, and so are we. There are branches and leaves and flowers and fruits and of course birds flitting among the leaves and occasionally taking a little bite out of one of our apples, and how can we begrudge them that? I just cut off those spots and make apple butter. And we have producers and customers and volunteers and management and officers and committees and route drivers and site managers and administrative assistants and many others who could be mentioned.

And like the apple tree, we are solvent. We did about $840,000 in product sales this year, and that was an increase of 21% over 2009. In 2009, our sales increased about 7% over 2008. And as we all know, the economy has not been kind the past couple of years. Like the apple tree, we are growing, more people are buying more local foods. So we must be doing something right.

Growing of course is not always a linear process, but if we do as well in 2011 as we did in 2010, we will edge right up to the one million dollars in sales in one year mark.

From the beginning, we have had to constantly run to keep up at least even with circumstance. No one had ever done anything quite like this, so we didn't have much in the way of models to copy. But we managed to survive our mistakes thus far, and make it to another annual meeting, and have good news in our financial statements, about which more will be said later in the meeting.

And our good news is good news all around. It's good for the land, good for farmers in rural areas, good for everyone everywhere who eats. And I know we all need some good news, because there is an abundance of bad news out there. But I'm not here to tell scary stories today, this is a day of celebration, a gathering where we come together and put our heads together and try to figure out how best to send ourselves into the coming year, to take what we have received and hand it on, learning from our mistakes, going forward, doing better.

In permaculture, we talk about invisible structures. These are human cultural artificats – governments, systems, processes, economies, from the smallest to those that are worldwide in their scope. Invisible structures are often like icebergs, there is a little bit that you can see up top, but there is a lot that you don't see. The coop is an invisible structure, and while we see some of what we do, there is no way that we can see, much less verbally describe, all that is going on around here.

This structure is founded on personal responsibility. Anyone can go along to get along, that's a no brainer. That's in part why the world and usn's within it are in the situation we are in. But throughout history, those who have made a difference for the cause of goodness, beauty, truth, and wisdom have been people willing to take personal responsibility for goodness, beauty, truth, and wisdom and to incorporate those invisible structures into their own lives, thus giving a visible sign for all to see. So if you want more wisdom and beauty and goodness in the world, your job first and foremost is to live wisdom, beauty, and goodness in your own life. And pardon me if folks think this is hubris, but with all of our faults and bumbling, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is a structure of beauty, wisdom, and goodness, and your active participation in it helps heal the world.

This better world that we can see so vividly, is a time and place of hope and promise. Even hosts of genetically modified evil descend to destroy, out of sight and thus out of mind, hope creeps slowly and carefully along a way that leads to a better world. The promise of tomorrow is not a genetically modified nightmare of soylent green. The hope we carry is not the death of our species in an orgy of trans fats, corn syrup solids, pink slime, and mechanically separated chicken parts. We can see the true hope and promise of tomorrow because right now we are busy creating that tomorrow of sustainability and justice, beauty and wisdom, truth and authenticity. I know it seems like that the reign of the genetically modified orc is rampant, but what is actually going on is the tumultuous birth of promise and hope. That doesn't mean that this is an easy time, ask any woman who has given birth about that, or a farmer who has had to pull a calf. It does mean that the tumult and the suffering – as well as our work for goodness, beauty, truth, and wisdom – has meaning and is not purposeless. This purpose that we read into these events is, of course, itself another invisible structure that we brought into being, but that does not make it any the less real. Self-fulfilling prophecies are the best kind of prophecies, because they always come true. We just have to be careful about which prophecies we choose to self-fulfill. We should be able to see clearly and without ambiguity where we want to go. As our vision develops, our journey towards it will become more clear, more sure, and more direct. And all along the way, as my grandmother Opal Cassidy, born on a farm outside of Davidson, Oklahoma in the year 1904 used to say, we will “get the right eats”.

The Man Born to Farming by Wendell Berry

The Grower of Trees, the gardener, the man born to farming,

whose hands reach into the ground and sprout

to him the soil is a divine drug. He enters into death

yearly, and comes back rejoicing. He has seen the light lie down

in the dung heap, and rise again in the corn.

His thought passes along the row ends like a mole.

What miraculous seed has he swallowed

That the unending sentence of his love flows out of his mouth

Like a vine clinging in the sunlight, and like water

Descending in the dark?

I welcome all y'all to this seventh annual meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, and the best advice that I can give you as we start this business meeting is, Y'all bon appetit, you hear?

Endorsers of Chelsey Simpson for President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

2011-01-24T22:10:00.006-06:00

This page will be continually updated as new names are sent in.

Bob Waldrop, first president and general manager, member #4
Martha Kendall Holmes, member of the Standards Committee, member #349
Aaron Killough, Moore-OKC SW site manager, candidate for Secretary of the Coop, member #1971
Shelley Smith, member of the Standards Committee
Deedra Hovey, member of the Board, OKC-Zoo site manager
Matt Burch, Urban Agrarian
Tricia Dameron http://www.oklavore.com
Jonalu Johnstone member of the first Board of the Coop, Financial team volunteer
Walter Kelley, member of the first Board of the Coop, Secretary of the Coop (2 terms)

(organizations/affiliations given for identification only)

Why I support Chelsey Simpson for President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

2011-01-24T19:41:00.000-06:00

The Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is this coming Saturday, and one of the items on the agenda is the election of a new president for the cooperative. At the time of my resignation, the board decided to elect a "caretaker" president, Dawn Mahiya, who would not be a candidate at the annual meeting, and let the membership decide who should be the next president. That time is now upon us.

As far as I know, the only candidate for this office is Chelsey Simpson, but since candidates can be nominated from the floor of the convention, I would like to explain why I think she is the best choice to be our next president.

Chelsey "gets it" when it comes to the importance of local food to both customers and producers. Like me, she hails from rural Oklahoma, southwest Oklahoma in fact. She understands the importance of reweaving the connections between rural producers and urban customers, and knows that this is a two-way street. "Everything always works both ways" is a permaculture tenet, and that is certainly true for the relationship of farmer and customer. She also has knowledge of the importance of local food to ecology, and its role in repairing some of the damage that has happened to the planet at our hands. She is firmly committed to our product standards, and their associated principles of locality, personal production, and transparency.

Chelsey has paid her dues as a volunteer. She has been responsible for the Edmond pick-up site for about as long as she has been involved in the coop. She brought a professionalism to our outreach efforts. She has an understanding of the complex interplay of events, needs, wants, responsibilities, and personalities within our cooperative structure.

Chelsey has been an effective member of the Board of Directors as an officer. Her job as VP for Customers is to represent the needs and interests of the customer members of the cooperative, and she has done that very great clarity, vision, and understanding. In our meetings, where the conversation has been known to get a bit excited and robust on occasion, she has always been a calming and steadying influence. This is more important than it may appear at first glance, since being able to navigate among a variety of personalities is a critical leadership skill in the coop.

She has great ideas. She has been brainstorming and working on ways to make it easier for customers to find out what they need to know about products they buy in the coop, and the web version of the product transparency system she designed is being tested and should be rolled out soon. I am confident that this will empower both our customers and our producers, so that customers can do a better job in finding and buying products that they want, and producers can understand better what they customers want, and thus be able to do a better job of producing for the local marketplace.

She has great public presence and writes well.. She works professionally in media, and understands that process in depth. She will be a positive public face for the coop -- with our members, the media, and government and regulatory officials.

She knows a lot about our systems. Having served at all levels of the coop, for quite some time, she has institutional knowledge and experience that is critical for our presiding officer.

She is committed to our governance plan of separating management and the board.

I think that being president of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative was one of the most important things that I have done in my life. I have a very high level of confidence in Chelsey's ability to continue to move us upwards and onwards to bigger and better things. In the first seven years of the coop's existence, we sold a little more than $3 million in products. This year, our product sales were right at $840,000 (I haven't seen the final financial report for 2010 so this is a ballpark figure). It could very well be that 2011 will be the year we top one million in annual sales in one year. I believe that Chelsey Simpson has the knowledge, the experience, the understanding, and the drive to bring us to that goal and take us even further in the coming years.

I encourage all members of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative to come to the annual meeting this Saturday and vote for Chelsey Simpson for President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

Of course, this means that I will have to revise my standard laugh line about not trusting a skinny president of a food coop, but that is a minor rhetorical sacrifice given the importance of her candidacy for president of the cooperative.

If you would like to join me in endorsing Chelsey for election as our president, please contact me at bwaldrop@cox.net and I will add you to my list!

My Bon Appetitin' Happy New Year Bobaganda

2010-12-31T02:01:00.002-06:00

WHAT TO DO WITH 30 POUNDS OF GROUND MEAT!

Bonus: A month of healthy quick breakfasts from local foods. . . Not To Mention . . . New Years Resolutions. . . Census of Oklahoma Agriculture. . . On Eating What's Available. . . Bread and Beer: the basis of civilizations. . . Soap and Body Care Items. . . RECIPES and COOKING PLANS. . .

NEW YEARS RESOLUTIONS

We are at the beginning of a new year, and one of the customary traditions – besides of course the importance of eating black-eyed peas and greens on New Years Day – is the making of resolutions. I hope that all of us will be making a resolution to “Eat More Local Food” this coming year – taste, nutrition, and food security are three good reasons to do this.

CENSUS OF OKLAHOMA AGRICULTURE

A lot has changed regarding local foods in Oklahoma over the last few years. Every five years, the government does a census of agriculture, the more recent was in 2007. In the five years 2002-2007. . . direct sales from farmers to individuals rose from $3,735,000 to $11,534,000, an increase of 209%! In 2002, 1,920 farms sold something direct to the public; in 2007, the number had risen to 3,194, an increase of 66%. Sales of organic grown in the state totaled $3,543,000 in 2007. Oklahoma has 22,888 certified organic acres used for food production, with another 16,538 in transition to organic production. 12,823 of the organic acres are pasture lands. This is tremendous progress in a short time, but as is obvious, much more needs to be done. Read more at -- http://www.agcensus.usda.gov/Publications/2007/Full_Report/Volume_1,_Chapter_1_State_Level/Oklahoma/st40_1_002_002.pdf

ON EATING WHAT'S AVAILABLE.

Over the years I have written frequently about the basic principles of local food systems, and this month, going into the new year of 2011, I want to revisit the concept – “Eat what's available.” The Oklahoma Food Coop is not able to pick up the phone and contact a food broker and order in an infinite variety of mystery groceries from the four corners of the earth. Seven years into our adventure, the local food systems of Oklahoma are still not all that they need to be. But that doesn't mean that anybody needs to go hungry. So this month I want to focus on four products – ground meat, grains, prepared foods, and soap and our non-food lines in general.

In terms of distinct ecological regions, Oklahoma is one of the most diverse states. We are a land of transition, the mountains and forests of the east give way to the savannahs and scattered groves of cedar, oak, and elm of the “Cross Timbers Transition” in the central area. Continuing west, we arrive at the Central Great Plains. Places where ecological regions meet and transition are typically highly productive. I've often mused about the wisdom of our pioneer ancestors in selecting the particular site for Oklahoma City, right at the edge, in the transition zone between the east and its savannahs and woodlands and the west of the plains, along the banks of a river. In the past, prairie grasses covered much of this land, grazed by magnificent herds of bison. Today, we are known for our abundant harvests of grain and the high quality of our livestock, the prairie grasses and livestock of our era and ecology. Did you know there are more cattle in the state than there are people? By the standards of pastoral indigenous peoples, who counted cattle as wealth, we have wealth beyond measure in our herds of mother cows and their associated bulls, who primarily live on forages all of their lives in the pastures and grasslands of the state.

So if we are going to eat what's available from local farmers, meat ought to be high on the list (except of course for vegans and vegetarians). And of all the meats, ground meats are in best supply, price, and variety. Pork (sausages and ground pork), beef, bison, lamb, all are available in great quantity. Many folks say that they can't afford to buy all their food from local farmers, and that's fine, but most of us could afford to buy some ground meat. Keep reading for an answer to the question – “What can I do with 30 pounds of ground meat?” More answers perhaps than you thought possible.

BREAD AND BEER

As already noted, a large part of Oklahoma was grasslands, and the cultivated equivalent of the native grasses is wheat, a/k/a the staff of life, source of bread and beer, which (as some say) were the basis of the first civilizations. The historical evidence is that wheat was the first source ingredient for beer; the popularity of barley is a fairly recent innovation, only a few hundred years old. To make your own wheat beer, you'll need to malt the wheat, which is a process of sprouting and drying the wheat, which is then ground to a powder. Here's a short article on the process of malting wheat – http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/6567/make-your-own-diastatic-malt . See also http://www.ehow.com/how_4620081_sprouted-wheat-flour-diastatic-malt.html , and http://www.bodensatz.com/upage/index.php?page=kiwibrewer_malting . Many more brewing links at http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/compendium.htm .

I've sent links many times on baking bread – for folks new to the coop, check out the Artisan Bread in Five Minutes method as described at http://www.motherearthnews.com/Real-Food/Artisan-Bread-In-Five-Minutes-A-Day.aspx , http://www.breadtopia.com , and my own bread page at http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/bread.htm .

SOAP AND NON-FOOD ITEMS

Soap is like ground meat in the coop; we have lots of it for sale, from a variety of producers, each with a little different take on the subject of artisan soaps and body care products. Yes, the price is higher than supermarket soaps, but artisan soap is one of the “more startling” products in terms of the difference in quality. Even though they are slightly higher than supermarket soaps, they last so much longer, that in the short and the long runs, they are the best value for your soap and body care dollars.

The same quality and care goes into the many other non-food products available in plenty through the coop. So before you go to a big box store, browse the departments and shelves of the non-food sections of the Oklahoma Food Coop. Your body – especially your hair and your skin – will be very grateful for your choice of locally made, artisan body care products.

And now for the Question of the Hour. . .

WHAT TO DO WITH 30 POUNDS OF GROUND MEAT

So we have a problem – people are busy, families are over-scheduled, and incorporating local foods into your household's diet means cooking meals from basic ingredients. There's no way to get around that. Sometimes people think it is just easier to go out to eat, even though the price is high and getting higher all the time. Think about the cost of a quarter pound, four ounces, of ground meat when bought as a fast food burger – it will run you $12/pound, double the price of the most expensive ground meat in the coop. And the fast food burger no doubt includes some of the infamous ammonia-laced “pink slime” product about which I have written previously at http://bobaganda.blogspot.com/2010/08/summertime-bobagandistic-thoughts-about.html (scroll down about half-way into the blog entry).

“But Bob, you just don't understand how busy I am.” Actually, I do understand, because my own life is full of busy-ness and I am all the time finding a new iron to put into my fire. So, here's my public confession. I don't cook a meal from basic locally-sourced ingredients every night, not to mention breakfast and lunch. Sometimes I take just take something out of the freezer and put it in the microwave or the oven. But it's not a conventional product from the supermarket. It's something I've made myself and frozen for eating later. When I cook greens, I cook a lot, and freeze most of it for later in meal-sized portions. When I cook beans, I cook a lot, and freeze most of it for eating later in meal-sized portions. When I make stock, I make a lot, and freeze most of it for eating later in meal-sized portions. If I am warming up the oven or crockpot to make a roast, I will always make more than I need for that meal so I have leftovers for eating later in the week. Every so often, I make a large batch of something – such as roux for gravy, or cooked ground meat, so I have some ingredients that are usually time-consuming in their preparation already made and in the freezer, waiting to be combined with other ingredients for a quick but tasty meal.

I've written a lot before about once-a-month cooking, where people take a full day and cook a month's worth of meals, putting them in the freezer for eating later. A sub-specialty in that genre is bulk cooking, where you cook a large amount of one major ingredient (like chicken, or ground meat) and freeze it for cooking with later.

This kind of cooking takes some time to plan, but it is time well-invested since you save so much time down the road. I think the easiest way to get into this is to think about something like cooking 20 or 30 pounds of ground meat and freezing it in meal-sized portions for later meal prep. So think about giving this a try in the New Year. When the order comes around, order 20 or 30 pounds of ground meats – get a variety, pork, beef, bison, lamb – and go ahead and prep it for using later in the month as you make meals for your family. Obviously, you can adjust these amounts for the size of your household, when writing about 20 or 30 pounds of ground meat, I am thinking of a household of three or four.

The first step is to make a list of all of the ground meat recipes that your family likes to eat. Once you have your list, then you can take a calendar and plan a month's worth of menus, or if your household is smaller, maybe two or three months of meals involving ground meats. It's likely that you won't plan to eat ground meat every night, you may want an occasional roast, a ham, or a fried chicken, but for many of us, ground meats will be the basis of our menus. Don't expect people to get bored, however, because first of all, the taste of locally produced ground meats from pastured herds is superior to store-bought mystery meat. And second, there are about a gazillion different ways to prepare ground meat.

My list for 30 pounds of ground meat, for my household of five (3 adults, 1 teenager, 1 child age 4), would look something like this:

meat/tomato sauce – 4 lbs

taco/burrito – 3 lbs

patties – 8 lbs

fried ground meat – 12 lbs

meatballs – 1 lbs

meatloaf – 2 lbs

This would be enough ground meat (beef, bison, lamb, and pork) to make the following meals:

2 Meat tomato sauce for spaghetti

2 Meat tomato sauce for lasagna

2 Shepherds pies

3 taco/burrito meat

2 meatloaf

2 salisbury steaks

3 hamburgers

3 patty melts

1 burger noodle

1 Swedish meatballs

1 sloppy joes

1 Cabbage casserole

1 Cornbread meatloaf

1 cheeseburger pie

2 pocket pies

3 burger gravy

Most of these recipes are online at http://www.bettertimesinfo.org/2004index.htm . Looking at my recipes, I need to make:

1 lb of meatballs

2 lbs of meatloaf

8 lbs of hamburger patties

19 lbs of fried ground meat – 3 lbs of which is seasoned “south of the border”, 6 lbs seasoned Italian, and the rest is “plain”.

If I was going to do all of this at one time. . . this would be my plan. Not listed, but very important, is constant attention to food safety with the handling of this large amount of ground raw meats. Keep a sink full of hot sudsy water handy, wash implements and pots as you go (nobody wants to end an adventure like this faced with a pile of dirty pots and cooking utensils). Have a sanitizing solution handy to wipe down counters frequently. Wash your hands after every time that you handle the raw meat. Never touch anything else after you have handled raw meat until you have washed your hands (plunge them into the hot soapy water in your sink, then rinse.)

Cook the plain ground meat in a crockpot. Instructions are here: Cooking ground beef in a crockpot – http://onceamonthmom.com/oamc-trick-browning-ground-beef/ – she prepared 9 pounds in a 6 qt crock. Or you can fry it in skillets. . . or you can boil it.
Cook the “south of the border” and the Italian seasoned ground beef in skillets on the top of the stove.
Make and fry the hamburger patties.
Make the ground meat mixture for the meatballs and meatloafs (same mixture for both recipes).
Make and cook the meatballs.
Make the meatloafs (but freeze them uncooked).

While you're at it, you could figure out how many sliced and sauteed onions you will need for these recipes (if you're like me and put onions into a lot of recipes), and saute them while you are at it – freeze in recipe-appropriate portions and date and label.

Package the cooked meats in meal sized portions. You'll want to collect a variety of freezer containers. The trick to avoiding freezer burn is – (1) Don't buy or use an automatic defrost freezer, as the constant thawing and refreezing lowers the quality of the food, and (2) Package carefully in airtight containers designed and made for use in the freezer and LABEL AND DATE each container. When foods freeze, they look different than they do when just cooked. Don't worry your memory with keeping track of what's in your freezer in your brain. Label and date each container and keep a written inventory in the kitchen so you know what you have on hand. If you do have an automatic defrost freezer, try to use everything within a month.

For my household, I always figure 1 pound of ground meat per meal. One pound of raw ground hamburger makes about 1-1/2 cups of cooked ground beef, although your mileage may vary slightly. So what I do usually is just keep track of how much I am cooking at any given time and divide it accordingly when I am packaging for the freezer. If I am frying 3 pounds of Italian-seasoned burger, I will simply divide it three ways by site before I put it in the freezer. For the burger patties, I make 8 per pound and just count them out. The number of meatballs per pound varies based on how big or small you make them, I tend to make more smaller ones instead of a few large ones.

BONUS FEATURE: HEALTHY AND QUICK MAKE AHEAD LOCAL FOODS BREAKFASTS

One thing all of the following have in common is that they can be prepared with many local food ingredients. All the breakfast meats are in good supply through the coop, as is wheat and flour for making the pancakes, biscuits, breads, etc. Eggs are always in short supply, but the inventory is gradually increasing. Anyway, you can make them ahead and freeze them for convenient and fast breakfasts later.

Sausage Biscuits

http://www.bigoven.com/recipe/160330/Sausage-Cheese-Biscuits . . . and sausage-stuffed cheese biscuits http://busycooks.about.com/od/quickbreads/r/sausagebiscuits.htm Or, just make your favorite recipe for biscuits, fry the sausage patties, slice the biscuits, insert the sausage, flash freeze (directions below), package in air tight container. If you are making a LOT of sausage patties, they cook very well in the oven at 325 degrees. Length depends on the size and thickness of the patties. This was the method I used for an Oklahoma Food breakfast we prepared in our first year of existence for a breakfast we present for a civic group.

Bacon Hash Brown Roll-ups

http://busycooks.about.com/od/porkentreerecipes/r/baconhashroll.htmp

Breakfast burritos

http://busycooks.about.com/od/breakfastmaindishes/r/freezerburrito.htm

Pancakes

Make your favorite recipe for pancakes, cool and flash freeze as described below, package securely for freezing, put a piece of wax paper between pancakes to separate them. Heat in microwave or toaster.

Breakfast casserole

Make your favorite egg/milk or cream/cheese/breakfast meat casserole, freeze, thaw overnight and rewarm in the morning.

Waffles

Make your favorite recipe for waffles, flash freeze, package as described in pancakes above.

Breakfast Sandwiches

http://busycooks.about.com/od/breakfastmaindishes/r/breakfastpizza.htm

Breakfast Quiche

http://makeaheadmeals.blogspot.com/2008/01/4-quiche.html

A great recipe for freezer biscuits.

http://makeaheadmeals.blogspot.com/2008/03/39-freezer-buttermilk-biscuits.html

How to freeze prepared foods.

At the top are a myriad of recipes that freeze well, towards the bottom are many links about how to freeze foods. http://www.kitchenlink.com/rcpmenus.html

Feed the Freezer Cooking Guide

http://organizedhome.com/freezer-cooking/guide-once-a-month-cooking

Flash freezing – best method for items like burritos, pancakes, etc that are not packaged as a whole entree or casserole. http://onceamonthmom.com/flash-freezing/

BONUS BONUS: More links on Once and Month and Bulk Cooking

http://www.cookofthemonth.com/ -- site with online planner that allows you to select and enter meals into a

planning program for a cooking session; it then automatically produces a shopping list and a procedure list for preparing the food in one or two sessions. you have to buy 2 books to get the recipes, but both are reasonably priced and worth the money. Or you can buy only one of the books and use only its recipes, which would be about half of the total recipes available, but it includes all the important ones like meatloaf and other common ground meat recipes.

Frugal mom's guide to OAMC (recipes for meal planner) http://www.frugalmom.net/cookbook/index.htm?hop=gpprobst01

Bulk cooking plans -- http://www.menus4moms.com/bulk/index.php

Bulk cooking differs from Once A Month Cooking in that instead of using several different main ingredients, it concentrates on one., so a series of bulk cooking days would give you a variety of meals in the freezer.

Ham, Cheese, Potato Pockets, from http://onceamonthmom.com/

2 frozen bread loaves, thawed (or, two recipes of your own home-made bread dough, or you can buy frozen bread dough from a coop producer)

1 pound sliced ham

8 ounces Mozzarella cheese

1 medium onion, sliced

20 ounces sliced cooked potatoes (or frozen diced/sliced hashbrowns)

1/2 teaspoons garlic powder

2 cups Ranch dressing

1 egg

If using frozen hash brown potatoes, place in microwaveable safe bowl and defrost for approximately 6 minutes. Skip if using refrigerated sliced potatoes. In a large skillet, cook onions and hash brown potatoes in butter until warmed and slightly browned. Add garlic powder. Roll out thawed bread dough onto a floured surface (see pictures below). Cut into fourths using a pizza cutter. You should have 8 squares total using 2 bread loaves. On each square, layer the following: 2-3 slices ham, 1 T Ranch Dressing, Potatoes/Onion Mix, 1T Ranch, Swiss cheese. Fold over dough and seal with a fork. In a small bowl, beat egg and brush a bit of egg mixture over each pocket. Place in 350 degree oven for 15-18 minutes or until lightly browned.

Freezing Directions: Let cool and then flash freeze (or in sandwich bags) and place in a gallon size freezer bag. Freeze. To serve: Place in microwave for 2-4 minutes OR in oven for 10-15 minutes until heated through.

Pizza Rolls, from http://familymeals101.blogspot.com/2010/01/pizza-rolls.html

Adapted to coop ingredients by yours truly, my suggestions in (parenthesis).

Ingredients

For the bread:
* 1 2/3 cups warm water (70 to 80 degrees F)

* 2 tablespoons nonfat dry milk powder (2 tablespoons of cream)

* 2 tablespoons sugar (2 tablespoons honey)

* 2 tablespoons shortening (2 tablespoons butter or lard)

* 1 1/4 teaspoons salt

* 4 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (whole wheat flour, add 1 tablespoon of vinegar to the liquid ingredients)

* 2 1/4 teaspoons active dry yeast (or use your own favorite recipe for bread dough).

For the filling:

* 1/2 cup chopped onion

* 1/2 cup sliced fresh mushrooms (shitaakes from the coop would be great)

* 1/2 cup chopped green pepper

* 1/2 cup chopped sweet red pepper

* 1 tablespoon olive oil

* 1/3 cup pizza sauce

* 1/2 cup diced pepperoni (Arkansas bacon, or Italian sausage would substitute nicely here)

* 1 cup shredded pizza cheese blend (shredded local cheese)

* 1/4 cup chopped ripe olives

* 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

- Mix the first six ingredients on dough setting in the bread maker. Once it was kneaded, I let it rise until doubled. You could also use frozen bread dough - thaw and rise.

- Saute the peppers, onions, mushrooms in the oil until tender. Cool.

- Divide dough into two balls. Turn dough onto a floured surface. Let rest 5 mins. Roll into a 10x16 in. rectangle.

-Top with sauce, veggies, pepperoni, and cheese. Add any extra topping you like.

-From the long side of the rectangle, roll up. (Like cinnamon rolls.) Pinch seam. Cut each roll into 12 pieces. Place 12 rolls in each 9x13 pan. (An easy way to cut these nicely is to use thread, loop the thread around the dough, cross over the top, and pull each strand of thread, voila, cleanly cut dough and filling).

-Sprinkle with Parmesan, cover and let rise until doubled. Bake 18-22 mins. at 375.

-Serve with extra pizza sauce for dipping.

HARRINGTON BEATS ODOT! YEEHAW TIME AT EARTH ELEMENTS MARKET BAKERY!

2010-12-07T18:36:00.000-06:00

I got a call this afternoon from April Harrington. I'm always glad to hear from her, but I was a little worried since she has had such bad news with the move by ODOT to take her property for its road-widening project. Well, this was a good news call. She said she had just agreed to a settlement with ODOT that gives her pretty much everything she wants, so she will be able to pay off her existing mortgage AND have money left over to re-start her business at another location, a business which is an essential aspect of the local food scene here in central Oklahoma.

So thanks to everyone who contacted their politicians about this, thanks to her lawyer Justin Hershey for doing such a good job on her behalf, and don't forget to order a calzone from her this month to celebrate this great victory!

Brainstorming ideas for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

2010-11-27T20:37:00.000-06:00

Over the last few weeks, I have been encouraging a brainstorming process among the Board and the membership in three major issues: Improving Customer Satisfaction, Spending Money, Making Money. I chose to divide the issue these ways, because it seemed to me that these were the areas that needed attention.

For a long time, we have substituted volunteer labor for money. That has been, and will remain, an important aspect of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative experience, but our history also suggests that there is a hidden cost to that in the form of over-burdening key people who all to often have ended up “burning out”. There is an increasing feeling among the leaders of the coop that it is not acceptable for the coop to go on “sacrificing” people in this way, so the issue of “spending money” is definitely on the table.

To spend money, however, we must make money. So we also need to think about ways to increase the cooperative’s revenues.

And customer satisfaction has a very direct relationship to whether or not people decide to shop the coop for all or part of their households’ groceries.

This document summarizes the results of the brain storming suggestions, from both the Board and the membership. The outline below was not pre-determined, but was formed after looking at all of the suggestions and sorting them. Some of them could easily be in more than one location, but this is a good place to start.

In this summary, I have combined similar suggestions and listed their proposers and tried to organize them by topic. I did some rewording to take them from the form of casual conversation to ideas for discussion. If I distorted anyone's idea, or if your idea got lost in the conversation, let me know.

By posting this discussion – to the members of the Board, to the coop’s general discussion group okfoodret@yahoogroups.com, and to my website bobaganda.blogspot.com, I hope to generate even more discussion and conversation and ideas about re-organizing the way we do things. I will continue to act as “secretary” for the discussions and add new ideas as they are developed to this outlined, which will be posted from time to time to the various discussion listservs and at http://bobaganda.blogspot.com/ .

I would caution everyone that this has been a brainstorming process, it is not a document indicating management decisions that have already been made. While discussion about the merits or demerits of each of these proposals is perfectly fine, I would like to remind all that this discussion should be civil and devoid of angry outbursts of rage if you see something you don’t like. Everyone participating in this process is deeply committed to the coop and its success and so the good intentions of everyone can and should be appreciated.

NB: Due to the limitations of the blogspot.com software, much of the formatting has disappeared from this document, in particular, the indents. A pdf of the original, with all the formating, can be downloaded from the files section of the Coop's general discussion group, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/okfoodret/ .
BRAINSTORMING OUTLINE

1.0 Improving Customer Satisfaction
1.1 Website Changes (7 topics)
1.2 Member Issues (3 topics)
1.3 Producer/product Issues (9 topics)
1.4 Marketing/promotion (2 topics)
1.5 Customer Education (1 topics)
1.6 Big Picture Items (1 topics)
1.7 Delivery Day Sorting (4 topics)
1.8 Pickup Sites (5 topics)

2.0 Making Money

2.1 Sales (8 topics)
2.2 Marketing/promotion (5 topics)
2.3 Member Issues (3 topics)
2.4 Miscellaneous Revenue Sources (6 topics)
2.5 Miscellaneous Issues (1 topic)

3.0 Spending Money

3.1 Promotions/marketing (1 topic)
3.2 Employees (11 topics).

1.0 IMPROVING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION

1.1 WEBSITE CHANGES

1.1.1 A button to click on the home page: First Time to the Website. This would explain the basics in two or three paragraphs: cost to join, order cycle and pick-up, a few of our vip standards in brief. (Ann Boulton)

1.1.2 Improve the website more so it functions more like a normal e-commerce website. (Chelsey Simpson)

(a) Make products easier to sort. (Chelsey Simpson, Shauna Struby)

(b) Offer more product sorting options for the list like other websites have (sort by most popular, recently added, most and least expensive, organic, all natural...) Chelsey Simpson, Karen Cline, Shelley Smith, Shauna Struby,

(c) Make the lists more visually appealing/ not as long to scroll through. (Chelsey Simpson)

(d) Auto-generate an email the day the order closes so that everyone with items in their cart receives a reminder to check it for accuracy and add more items if they want. (Chelsey Simpson)

1.1.3 Automate product display, so that if a product has zero inventory, it does not display. If members take items out of their shopping carts so the inventory is restored, the item would automatically re-appear without producer or coop admin action. Bob Waldrop, Kathy Tibbits. Shelley Smith

(a) Enable a user option to “hide items without inventory”. Karen Cline.

1.1.4 Product search. Laura (member).

1.1.5 If the coop runs on Linux, switch to htdig. Julia Christensen

1.1.6 Eliminate duplicate product categories/departments/shelves. Karen Cline, Shelley Smith

1.1.7 Use an icon to identify at a glance that a product is either organic, naturally grown/raised without synthetic pesticides or fertilizers, or conventionally grown.

1.2 MEMBER ISSUES

1.2.1 Customer Complaints

(a) Improve our response time to customer complaints/questions. (Ann Boulton)

(b) Organize communications so that six people don't think they need to respond. (Ann Boulton)

(c) Eliminate/resolve non-functioning customer service issues like the delays in returning messages left on the answering machine at the op center. Four possible solutions:

(i) Change the message to say call Ann Boulton, here's the number.

(ii) Ask people to leave an email address.

(iii) Hire an answering service.

(iv) Use a flow chart that shows where customer complaint emails go. Ann Boulton

1.2.2 Besides subscribing all members to members@oklahomafood.coop , also subscribe them to okfoodret@yahoogroups.com to encourage feedback and discussion. Dev Valencourt.

1.2.3 Host a bulletin board that allows anonymous posting at the website. Dev Valencourt

1.3 PRODUCER/PRODUCT ISSUES

1.3.1 Eliminate random weight items. (Chelsey Simpson)

1.3.2 Develop a producer help desk/volunteer that would work with producers who do not have computer access to list their products, print their product lists and labels, etc. Charge something for this service. Kathy Tibbits, Kathy Moore, Lauren Brandeberry, Bob Waldrop Waldrop, Shauna Struby, Dev Valencourt, Karen Cline,

1.3.3 Eliminate missing item fee if due to pests, freeze, etc. Kathy Moore

1.3.4 Enforce the requirement that producers declare their use of conventional pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers. Shelley Smith

1.3.5 Standardize the way that produce is listed. Patty Loofbourrow

1.3.6 Include allergen requirements as part of producer orientation. Patty Loofbourrow

1.3.7 Develop a method/structure for members to request products and for this info to make it to producers. Dev Valencourt. Linda Zoldoske

1.3.8 Combine the store idea with a certified kitchen available for rent; put April Harrington in charge of it. Kathy Tibbits, John Herndon, Dev Valencourt,

1.3.9 Implement an E-bay-type feedback system for producers. Bob Waldrop

1.4 MARKETING/PROMOTION

1.4.1 Promote the coop in Fayetteville, Arkansas, at the U of Ark. (Ann Boulton)

1.4.2 Address the issue that the coop is only for upscale urban people. Patty Loofborow

1.5 CUSTOMER EDUCATION

1.5.1 Offer more cooking classes. (Chelsey Simpson)

(a) Develop recipes using only coop ingredients (except maybe salt and pepper) maybe make it a competition, possibly cause it to pop up when someone orders one ingredient. (Ann Boulton)

1.6 BIG PICTURE ITEMS

1.6.1 Regionalize the coop for an additional monthly delivery.

(a) 3 regions – OKC, Tulsa, Muskogee Tahlequah.

(b) One monthly order would be like our present statewide delivery.

(c) A second monthly order would be regionalized. Members in the Tulsa area would order from Tulsa producers; members in the Tahlequah-Muskogee area would order from Tahlequah producers; members in the OKC area would order from OKC area producers.

(d) Producers could have the option of participating in more than one regional order, as long as they could get their products to that region’s delivery day.

(e) Submitted by Bob Waldrop.

1.7 DELIVERY DAY SORTING

1.7.1 Sort frozen and refrigerated items to individual customers like we do dry goods. (Bob Waldrop)

1.7.2 Improve the presentation of frozen and refrigerated item by packing them in boxes for individual customers. (Bob Waldrop)

1.7.3 Number the coolers in sequence for pickup sites. (Ann Boulton, reporting suggestion of member)

1.7.4 “Head of Security” for the op site. Kathy Tibbits

1.8 PICKUP SITES

1.8.1 Train our pick-up site volunteers to act like real customer service people. (Chelsey Simpson)

1.8.2 Write cooler numbers on invoices so that customers don't have to consult the sheets. (Chelsey Simpson)

1.8.3 Improve training, support for, and compensation for route/pickup site managers. Candace Lockett

(a) Have a route/pickup site managers appreciation day, or an nual bonus or gift for them.

(b) Suggest to producers that they send free samples to route managers, who have direct interaction with customers and can act as salespeople.

(c) Ensure that every route/pick-up site manager has a number to call on delivery day, well into the evening, and the next day, that will be answered by a live person capable to answering questions, resolving problems, or finding the person who can handle a particular situation.

(d) Candace’s ideas for support for route/pick-up site managers were “seconded” by Karen Cline, Pam Ferry, Shauna Struby, Bob Waldrop, all of whom have been route or pick-up site managers.

1.8.4 Dedicated coop transportation for routes, either by purchase or lease, together with training for the drivers. Julie Gahn

1.8.5 Offer free samples of food at pickup sites. (Ann Boulton)

2.0 MAKING MONEY

2.1 SALES

2.1.1 Go to twice a month orders. (Ann Boulton)

2.1.2 Start a Coop farmers market. Order online, pickup at a coop farmers market. Greg Parker.

2.1.3 Encourage out of town customers to network in order to pick up orders for them at a coop farmers market. . Walter Kelley

2.1.4 Bob Waldrop’s Variation on the Coop farmers market: Develop a Coop Mobile Market (CMM) that would wander about on a schedule in areas with a strong cooperative membership base.

(a) People could order online for delivery at the Coop Mobile Market

(b) CMM would also have stock from producers offered on consignment. This preserves one of the advantages of the coop for the producers in that they wouldn't have to be personally present for the event.

(c) CMM could be a different place every day for 3 weeks of the month (perhaps repeating in some locations), operating on Saturday in areas where there aren't a farmer's market.

(d) Start with one CMM in the OKC area to test the concept, and then if viable add one for the Tulsa area.

(e) Producers could drop off consignment product on delivery day when they are bringing their other stuff, they wouldn't get paid until we sold the items, but when sold they would get paid promptly (weekly check).

(f) Finesse any software issues in the short term by installing our software on multiple domains, e.g. www.week1.oklahomafood.coop, www.week2.oklahomafood.coop, and www.week4.oklahomafood.coop , so that people could order online for 3 weekly deliveries at a coop mobile market stop, while keeping www.oklahomafood.coop for the regular monthly order.

(g) The mobile market would be a trailer pulled by a pickup, carrying food and tables and etc and setting up at a location like we do at present for a pick-up site.

(h) Kathy Tibbit’s variation of Bob’s variation on the coop farmers market suggestion: Put the coop mobile market on a bus.

2.1.5 Open a store. Dawn Mahiya, Shauna Struby. Kathy Tibbits.

(a) Locate the store next door to the Red Cup location in the 73106 zip code, OKC. (Dawn Mahiya)

2.1.6 Coop-operated CSA: Instead of ordering exact items, customers would choose from one of a couple CSA boxes that would contain items from different producers. Sell the boxes outside of the regular monthly delivery as a testing ground for a second monthly delivery. Farmers' markets could be distribution points for the CSA-type system (Chelsey Simpson)

2.1.7 Make coop meal packs – everything (or most things) necessary to make a particular meal for a certain number of people. (Kathy Tibbits)

2.1.8 Additional pick-up possibilities not on the third Thursday, such as picking up on the Saturday after delivery day to accommodate members that can’t meet our current pickup. Jennifer David.

2.2 MARKETING/PROMOTION

2.2.1 Have a farm tour and charge money like they do for house and garden tours. Do it annually and select a different region of the state each year (close to metro areas if possible). Ann Boulton

2.2.2 Promote the coop in North Texas. Ann Boulton

(a) And also other border areas.

2.2.3 Promote the coop to more medical people; Ann Boulton

2.2.4 Have a specialized “Sale” web-flyer each month. Justine Foster.

2.2.5 Highlight sales in existing producer notes. (?)

2.3 MEMBER ISSUES

2.3.1 Make new members accounts active immediately so that they can order right away. Ann Boulton

2.3.2 Charge an annual fee of $20 that can be waived by donating an hour of your time or attending a board meeting. (Chelsey Simpson)

2.3.3 Increase the coop producer and customer charges.(Bob Waldrop)

2.4 MISCELLANEOUS REVENUE SOURCES

2.4.1 Invest some of the coop's working capital in items that are not and never will be produced by Oklahoma producers, which the coop would buy at wholesale and sell at retail to our customers, such as Texas citrus, Arkansas and Texas rice, paper goods (something like 7th generation toilet paper etc). (Bob Waldrop)

2.4.2 Implement the program to sell classified ads at the website to members only, that has already been approved by the Board. (Bob Waldrop)

2.4.3 Sell display ads on the website. (Bob Waldrop)

2.4.4 Sell booths at the annual meeting. (Bob Waldrop)

2.4.5 Operate a catering truck offering Oklahoma foods at fairs/events. Bob Waldrop

2.4.6 Have more Oklahoma food dinners but charge enough so we actually make a profit. ?

2.5 MISCELLANEOUS ISSUES

2.5.1 Study other retail coops for ideas for us. Shauna Struby

3.0 SPENDING MONEY

3.1 PROMOTIONS/MARKETING

3.1.1 Spend some money on advertising. Walter Kelley

3.2 EMPLOYEES

3.2.1 Hire a finance manager. Walter Kelley, Kara McKee, Bob Waldrop, Greg Parker, April Harrington

3.2.2 Hire a PR/outreach manager. Ann Boulton, Chelsey Simpson, Bob Waldrop

3.2.3 Make changes to the GOM job duties so that the position is an actual GM. Chelsey Simpson

3.2.4 Institute a pay raise/work credit increase across the board for "middle managers" or other people who do not have a full time or even part-time work load but who we depend on greatly and who hold responsibility. Chelsey Simpson

3.2.5 Hire a routes manager. Kara McKee

3.2.6 Hire a software assistant to do routine website tasks and handle the routine software/customer web-related questions. Kara McKee

3.2.7 Raise for GOM. Bob Waldrop

3.2.8 Hire a producer manager. (Bob Waldrop)

3.2.9 Spend more money on hiring employees to do work presently done by over-worked volunteers, target critical functions, especially communication functions. Justine Foster.

3.2.10 We should fill other management holes with employees, such as producer communications and maybe even route coordination. Chelsey Simpson

3.2.11 General increase in the work credit program for volunteers. Bob Waldrop

The Feastin' Season Begins! November Bobagandistic Thoughts for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

2010-11-09T21:19:00.000-06:00

OK this is not only the feastin' season, it also opens up the singin' season. So here is the "official" Oklahoma Food Coop holiday song (well, one of them anyway, next month we have the 12 Days of the Coop's Christmas. . . which includes a Very Pesky Pastured Chicken in a Stratford Peach Tree!)
TIS THE SEASON FOR THE FEASTIN'
Tune: Deck the halls with boughs of holly

(1) Tis the season for the feastin',
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Taste nutrition can't be beaten,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Nurturing the land and people,
Farm and city joining hands.
Tis the season for the feastin',
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(2) Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Hope throughout the bio-region,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
From our farms onto our tables,
we will bless the way we eat!
Care for people and creation,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(3) Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Wisdom, joy fulfilling duty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Eating with the changing seasons,
Chasing the CAFOs from our land!
Healing nature with earth's beauty,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

(4) Social justice, sustainability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
Economic viability,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!
These our values, govern always,
They will take us forward far!
Three in number the core values,
Oklahoma Foods are good to eat!

This is what we are about, good food for good people. Social justice, environmental sustainability, economic viability -- good food that does good, or as we shall say in December, "Peace on Earth, Good meals for all!"

It gets very busy around here. We don't always achieve our goals. But seven years into this crazy experiment, we are still here, making a difference on farm and in the city.

EATIN' WITH THE SEASON
This is one of the important principles of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. So this is the month for the cool season greens and squash and pumpkins. Looking at the order inventories, I still see a lot of greens available. Greens are so tasty and nutritious. Folks should buy lots, cook 'em and eat 'em now, and freeze some for eating later. Cooked greens freeze very well, I do it all the time.

I also see lots of pumpkins, and if you're making your pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving out of canned pumpkin, well, you are missing one of the great taste treats. At our very first activity -- the Oklahoma Food dinner of November 2003 -- we served pumpkin pie made from real pumpkins. None of us had actually ever done that before, but we looked up the recipe on the internet (Google is the friend of local food), and it was certainly the best pumpkin pie I've ever et. Combine that with some whipped cream from pastured cows, and you have very fine food for your feastin' table.

Turkeys sold out really quick -- memo to producers, WE NEED MORE TURKEYS NEXT YEAR. That's been true every year of the coop's existence. But that doesn't mean that we lack for fine centerpiece meats for your holiday tables. I see wonderful tenderloins of beef and pork and buffalo. Whole prime ribs of buffalo. Legs of lamb. Roasts. Pastured chickens. Very nice foods for your feastin' season.

And details? We have pecans for your pecan pie or pecan tarts, or to scatter across your baked sweet potatoes. Lard and suet for pie crusts. Peanuts and roastin' and eatin'. Wonderful whole wheat flour for rolls, breads, and cakes, and yes, whole wheat flour makes a very fine cake. Use buttermilk or yogurt instead of milk and it will be a light and tasty cake, so much so that people will hardly believe it was made with whole wheat flour. Jams and jellies for your rolls. Bread and hot roll dough if you're too busy to make your own. Nice prepared casseroles for potlucks and when you are just too busy to cook.

Now is also a good time for your holiday gift shopping, and you name it, our fine coop artisan producers have them for sale. I hadn't realized how easy the food coop would make my Christmas shopping. Friends and family receive jellies and jams and artisan soaps and pecans and crafts from me instead of mass-produced junk made by wage slaves and sold in big box stores.

RECIPES FOR GREENS

There are many ways to cook greens. The most traditional, southern way is to simmer them slowly with ham hocks or bacon. Arkansas bacon is particularly good for this I think, or a meaty bone from a ham. As the cooking proceeds, a rich vitamin-filled broth results, this is what is called “pot liquor” or “pot likker”. Serve with freshly baked corn bread. Other additions include onions, garlic, hot peppers (or hot pepper sauce), liquid smoke.

1 cup cooked turnip greens contains: 20 calories, 1.2 g protein, 4.4 g carbohydrates, 3.5 g dietary fiber, 93% water, 550 RE vitamin A, 27 mg vitamin C, 118 mcg folate, 203 mg potassium and 137 mg calcium.

Traditional method: Use about 1/4 lb of bacon or ham hocks per five pounds or so of greens. Fry bacon until crisp. Bring water to boil, add salt and crushed red pepper. Crumble bacon over greens and add to the liquid. Simmer until done (at least 1 hour, if using ham hocks, simmer until the ham hocks are completely done and falling apart, which would be 3-4 hours. Many people add sliced or diced turnips to the greens for cooking. Turnip greens in particular need to be cooked longer than some of the more tender greens like spinach or mustard.

Cooked greens freeze just fine. While they are available, buy lots, cook and freeze for eating later!

Cream of Greens Soup
1 lb ham slice, with bone
8 cups water
1 large bunch of greens, washed and finely chopped
1 cup chopped onion
2 cups chopped celery
2 cups chopped green onions
1/4 and 1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
5 cups milk

Place the water and ham in a pot, cover, and simmer for 3 hours. Remove ham, add the chopped greens, simmer for 1 hour. (If you are making this with turnip greens, add them at the beginning of the cooking. Melt 1/4 cup butter in a skillet, and the chopped onion, celery, and green onions, cook until tender. Put the cooked onion mixture in a blender or food processor, and process until smooth, mix with the greens. Melt 1/3 cup butter in a cooking pot, gradually add the flour and stir to make a roux. Gradually add the milk, stirring constantly, until it thickens. Then add the greens and onion mixture, a dash of salt and hot sauce. Add the ham cut into chunks. Cook until thoroughly heated, do not boil. Makes about 10 cups.

Coop Cooking Note: We have ham, greens, flour, butter, and cream for sale this month. Instead of five cups of milk, try a mixture of cream and water or stock. Use whole wheat flour to make a roux (I generally sift whole wheat flour before I use it to make a roux). When I make this, I will certainly some jalapenos and maybe half a habanero or Scotch bonnet pepper to the onion mixture.

PUMPKIN MOUSSE
Cook the pumpkin, mash it, whip it with whipped cream or yogurt and honey. Chill & serve with a cookie from your favorite coop baker or other local bakery. Also good with cinnamon, nutmeg,
shaved chocolate sprinkled on top. (From Shauna Struby).

PUMPKIN PIE THAT STARTS WITH THE PUMPKIN
To turn a pumpkin into pumpkin pie. . . first you get your pumpkin, wash it, scoop out the seeds (save them, wash them, toast them in the oven, eat them!), and then slice the pumpkin into strips. Place these strips on a cookie sheet or other flat pan, and bake in the oven at 350 degrees until they are soft. The skin may caramelize, but that�s fine, it just adds to the robust flavors. When they are soft, peel off the rind (it should come off very easy, with a butter knife), and mash the pulp with a potato masher or a big fork or a food processor, and voila, pumpkin puree which is then used just like canned pumpkin in your favorite pumpkin pie recipe.

If you feel like you need more instructions, visit http://www.pickyourown.org/pumpkinpie.php which has pictures of 3 different ways to cook the pumpkin. There's a lot more pumpkin recipes at the site, including a recipe for a pumpkin pie with a pecan topping that I am trying this year, for sure, also a pumpkin pie made with NO sugar. Note that their recipe for pumpkin pie uses evaporated milk, which is an industrial food way of getting something sort of like cream. I use real cream in my pumpkin pies. If the recipe calls for 1 cup sugar, you can substitute 3/4 cup honey.

I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, surrounded by friends and family and good food, good cheer, good times. We all live busy lives, but we can enhance our holidays with "slow and local" food, providing "good meals for all". If you have any questions about recipes or anything about your holiday meals, post them to okfoodret@yahoogroups.com and you'll get answers!

Y'all bon appetit, you hear!
Bob Waldrop, bobagandist in chief

Down to the wire for April Harrington.

2010-11-04T10:10:00.001-05:00

We are down to the wire to help April Harrington survive the vicious attack by the ODOT bureaucracy on her business. In a typical misallocation of resources, as we are heading into the peak oil era, ODOT is widening a road and will destroy her market-bakery building, one of the "greenest" buildings in the state. This impacts her business -- which in turn impacts her employees and the other local producers who rent her bakery to make their products in a health-dept-certified kitchen. Times are bad all over, and what is ODOT doing? Destroying jobs in rural Oklahoma.

Anyway, she is trying to raise $25,000 to put a smaller, cheaper building on part of her property that will not be taken by ODOT. These are not good times for local food entrepreneurs to be going to banks, and thus April embarked on a non-traditional fundraising campaign using the "Kickstart" program, which invites people to fund ventures like April's that also have broad social and environmental impacts with gifts of capital that can make a difference between success and failure.

This is a time-limited campaign, and we are down to the wire. As of 10 AM on Thursday, November 4th, we have 32 hours left for people to commit to help April. We are only about one-third of the way towards the goal, so there is a lot to be done.

If you have not made a commitment, please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/320205243/earth-elements-local-food-community-kitchen and make a pledge right now.
Tell your friends!

April has worked hard and does not deserve what the State of Oklahoma is doing to her in our name. Let's vote against the craziness of ODOT and help April in this time of grave need. Make a pledge today! Tomorrow will be too late.

A special bobaganda just for producers!

2010-10-26T22:15:00.000-05:00

In this bobaganda:
Eggs. . . Loofas. . . Dried beans. . . Corn Meal. . . Chicken feed. . . Fish. . . The 10 most popular vegetables. . . Some vegetables that have never graced our pages. . . Vegetables available in such small quantities as to be practically unavailable on our pages. . . Not a vegetable but still not available. . . What about pork rinds? . . . What customers want to see. . . Getting more sustainable and resilient . . . Now is the time to break our fossil fuel addiction before it kills us. . . Rainwater harvesting . . . Keeping your shelves neat and tidy. . . Business is up!. . . But we shouldn't take anything for granted. . . We should all be thinking about . . .

I used to occasionally send a bobaganda to the producers' listserv, and thought it was about time I did something similar on my blog.

The summer and fall production season is beginning to wind down, and most producers will begin a process of deciding what to grow and plant for next year. I have a few suggestions for your consideration, and intend to start a discussion at okfoodret@yahoogroups.com about what customers would like to buy that isn't presently available through the coop. If you don't subscribe to okfoodret@yahoogroups.com, participating in that on-going conversation is a way to raise your visibility to customer members.   The subscriber base of that listserv is around 350, so it obviously doesn't include all of our members, but it does include many of our more active members, including those customers who buy a lot of groceries and non-food items from the coop every month.

I have long recommended that a diverse set of products is the best goal for anyone selling food direct to the public. So in that spirit, here are some ideas for 2011.

EGGS
High on the list of demand items in the coop is eggs. When I was receiving the complaint emails, one of the more common requests was for "more eggs". Eggs make a great addition to any producer's product line. They are also a great project for young people. One of our larger egg producers is a teenager in high school, Calvin Parker, son of Jerri and Greg Parker (GJ All Natural Beef). Besides earning money (and what teenager doesn't need more money?), he is learning invaluable lessons incorporating responsibility, the value and productivity of work, and how to make a profit in business.

As with all the other product lines in the coop, I have always felt that a variety of producers is the best way to ensure product availability and sustainability, so one thing I'd like to see in the coming year is more of our existing producers deciding to add eggs to their product line-up.

LOOFAS
The loofa sponge is a natural sponge that grows on a vine and is perfectly suitable for cultivation in Oklahoma. Grow them along fence rows, on a trellis, or let them sprawl on the ground if you got the room. They produce gorgeous yellow flowers. Customers like them because they substitute for an industrial product made with petro-chemicals -- that is to say, the store-bought sponge. Let them dry on the vine, pick them, and sell them "as is", or invest a little more labor in them and pick the dried skin off and empty the seeds out and charge more. We've had a few luffas for sale in the past, and they've all sold well, but I didn't notice any this year. When you order them off the internet, they can be quite pricey. This is a product without a lot of labor requirements (unless you decide to sell them without their skin), that is cheap to produce, that can add value to your bottom line.

DRIED BEANS
The Kerr Center has done variety trials for raising dried beans and peas in Oklahoma, and you can get all the info you need from them. This is a product that would do well for someone who could devote maybe 5 or more acres. As far as I know, no one is growing and selling dried beans in quantity (one producer has had a few dried black-eyed peas this year) in Oklahoma, which opens up a lot of possibilities for sales to restaurants, other farmers markets, and the growing number of specialty stores with locally grown products. Let them dry on the vine, combine them, clean them, package and sell them in 5 to 25 lb bags. You'd need access to a combine and cleaning equipment, look around and see what's available in your area.

CORN MEAL
This is another product that customers like but hasn't been available for a long time. We had it for the first year of our existence, but then the producer went on to other things. It was a great product, there was nothing else like it for sale in any regular grocery store. Besides corn meal, I think there would be a brisk business selling 25 and 50 lb bags of dried corn to our many members who have back-yard flocks.

CHICKEN FEED
Speaking of those backyard flocks, I've heard of members driving all the way into Texas to buy organic or all-natural chicken feed for their flocks. If you have access to a mill, this could be another money-maker, as well as contributing greatly to our developing local food system.

FISH
Another product we haven't seen since the first year of the coop is fish. Fish can be raised on the farm in tanks and barrels. If you need to learn how, just contact the Bruce Edwards at the Urban Harvest program of the Regional Food Bank in Oklahoma City. He has an integrated greenhouse aquaculture system that also raises salad greens using the water the fish swim in. You can sell frozen whole fish without any particular trouble from the ODA or the local health department. If you filet them or remove the heads etc, that work must be done in a certified kitchen, but you can harvest them and freeze them and sell them without further regulatory interference. And besides the fish, you get seriously nutrient laden water, which can be used to irrigate gardens or to grow greens in (aquaponics) as they are doing at the Regional Food Bank. http://www.regionalfoodbank.org/Programs/Urban-Harvest

THE TEN MOST POPULAR VEGGIES . . .
. . . according to USDA consumption data, are Potatoes, Iceberg Lettuce, Tomatoes, Onions, Carrots, Celery, Corn, Broccoli, Green Cabbage and Cucumbers

SOME VEGETABLES THAT HAVE NEVER GRACED OUR PAGES. . .
Cauliflower, parsnips, cabbage, iceberg lettuce.

VEGETABLES AVAILABLE IN SUCH SMALL QUANTITIES AS TO BE PRACTICALLY NOT AVAILABLE ON OUR SHELVES.
Sweet corn, potatoes, onions, carrots. Note that carrots store well. When I spoke at the opening banquet of the Nebraska Food Coop (February 2004, I think), we had a great dish of carrots which were harvested the previous October and stored in a root cellar. So they are an exception to the typically fragile-must-sell-quickly-after-harvest problem with vegetables and the Oklahoma Food Coop. Small scale equipment is available that takes a lot of the hand labor if you are growing at the acre level, and someone should. Someone also should grow potatoes at the multi-acre level, or someone should recruit one of their neighbors who is already growing potatoes at the multi-acre level to sell some through us. Onions are another keeper, as are most winter squashes.

NOT A VEGETABLE BUT STILL NOT AVAILABLE. . .
Fish, sunflower seeds, vegetable oils, peanut oil, corn meal, any flour other than wheat (barley, rye, oats etc), edible soybeans.

Edible soybeans, both fresh (known as "edamame") and dried in 5 to 25 lb bags would be hugely popular. We have a lot of vegetarians in the coop and many of them make their own soymilk and soy cheeses and they are definitely interested in a local supply of edible soybeans. I think this is a different variety than that grown for animal feed, but I am not sure on that. If you grow enough of them, the local tofu makers in Oklahoma City's Asian district might be interested. Again, this is something that should be grown at the multi-acre level.

WHAT ABOUT PORK RINDS?
What happens with the skin of all these pigs that our producers are converting to tasty pork products like sausage, ham, and pork loin? Well, the skin is every bit as edible as anything else on that pig. My grandmother Dovie Bagwell Waldrop said, as I have told you often before, that when they butchered a pig, they used every bit of it except the squeal. That should be your goal. In the meantime, I am paying $1.66 for a bag of about 3 ounces of pork rinds, and I would much rather buy pork skin from producers and fry my own at home. No, I don't know how to do that yet, but lack-of-knowledge has never stopped me from any culinary adventury. Google is my friend. But before I can make my own pork rinds, I need some pork skin.

And then there's chicken feet. A cancer-curing broth can be made from the feet, and even if it doesn't cure cancer, it reputedly is the finest tasting chicken broth you can get. Buy For Less in Okie City at NW 23 and Penn occasionally has "mega-packs" of chicken feet.

WHAT CUSTOMERS WANT TO SEE
One thing that our customers want to see is evidence of the producer's care of Creation, his or her commitment to a more sustainable way of farming and a more humane approach to lifestock management. So the more you integrate "green" practices into your production, the more the customers will like your products -- as long as you tell them what you are doing. I know you've heard me talk about "telling your story" so often you're probably bored with it, but we don't just sell food, we sell food with a story. Your food, without your story, will not stand out and be as attractive as your food will be WITH your story. I get a couple of newsletters from producers, but not as many as I would like to receive. A couple of producers always put some kind of note in with their products, thanking me for my business, but not many. I get a few emails from a few of the people I buy from, occasionally recipes, but not very many. I tend to think that many of us need to work on our story telling. Your narrative is an essential aspect of your bread and butter in the Oklahoma Food Coop, so do as good a job on that as you do your products and you will do better.

And then there's the myriad of possibilities opened up by video. Video cameras are cheap these days, you probably know someone who has one, yet I think only one producer has actually put up videos of his production, Wes Downing, who gets kudos from me for that. Take your video around your farm and put it on the internet, and a link to it on your producer info page at our website. If you need help doing that, why not suggest to the VP of Producers, Paulette Rink, that we have a workshop at the upcoming annual meeting in January 2011 on how to use video to sell your products?

I can even imagine WEBCAMS, showing your happy frolicking chickens or your plants growing in greenhouses or fields -- YES, it's TRUE, some of us LIKE TO WATCH plants grow. I do it all the time in my own garden, I just sit there and watch things grow. It's a wonderfully peaceful antidote to the busy-ness of modern urban life.

GETTING MORE SUSTAINABLE AND RESILIENT
So catch rainwater and use it for irrigation. Work on growing and producing your own feeds, either on your own or in conjunction with neighbors. (The need for feed is one of the biggest holes in our local food system and that subject needs attention.) Try bio-diesel -- Matt Burch, the Urban Agrarian, can tell you everything you need to know about bio-diesel and he is also a potential market for your products. He runs all over the place buying locally produced foods and selling them at farmers markets and to restaurants and stores. Contact him at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Urban-Agrarian/173779793816?v=info .

Now is the time to break our fossil fuel addiction before it kills us.
Biodiesel (or farm-made alcohol) is not just a quirky thing that sustainability advocates are interested in. It is an important step towards energy independence for our country. If you are dependent upon gasoline or diesel for your production activities, then your livelihood is dependent upon the good will of fanatics and terrorists. Good luck with that, you'll need it.

The fact that Oklahoma is an energy producing state often blinds us to the reality of oil in the modern world.  The world oil pool is one big tank. If there is an interruption in Middle Eastern oil, or if a hurricane shuts down the Gulf oil production, or if any one of a thousand other things that could cut the flow of oil happens, the folks in Chicago and New York have more money than we do, and Oklahoma's oil will be sucked right out of the state and "No Gas" signs will be everywhere, and we'll be paying the world price for gasoline and diesel and it won't be cheap. What would six dollar/gallon gasoline and diesel do to your farming operation?

Well, the time to break free of fossil fuel addiction is BEFORE the terrorists blow the oil pipelines of the Middle East to smithereens.

And then there's methane. . . and wood gas (also known as producer gas). . . and etc. Check out the energy sections of my Compendium of Useful Information at http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/compendium.htm for all the info you need.

And then there's the risk of peak oil, which many of your customers are intensely concerned about. They are worried about future energy supplies, and as a producer, you should be too.   Oil is presently hovering around $80/barrel, there's a general expectation of $100/barrel early next year, and then if it goes much higher, we are a big risk for another round of financial crises. It shouldn't escape anyone's notice that it was only a couple of months after oil reached its higher price in history (July 2008) that the nation's financial system crept right to the edge of the abyss of financial collapse.

So becoming less dependent on the international energy system is important for the on-going sustainability and resilience of your own production systems. And it really is true. The time to develop an alternative energy system is BEFORE the really serious energy crisis hits.

Do you ever wonder how many crises the Powers That Be can manage at any one time? It looks to me like they are starting to have management problems. Despite the happy talk in the mainstream media, there is plenty of economic turmoil going on. Another run-up in energy prices, plus another financial crisis, plus a foreign policy crisis, plus a little domestic turmoil here at home, and well, it wouldn't be happy days are here again.

The more dependent we are on these big international systems, the more danger we are in. That's one of the big reasons I started working on local foods back in 2001-2002. The time to grow a local food system is before the famines start. As you know better than anyone, agriculture does not turn on a dime. If we wait for a food crisis to get a local food system, it's too late. An unsustainable system cannot continue on indefinitely. It will either become more sustainable or it will collapse. Our present system is unsustainable in every way that can be counted, and if we want to protect ourselves and those we love from what is coming at us, now is the time to be very busy.

And on a more positive note. . . trust me, your customers would love to read about your adventures with biodiesel, ethanol, wood gas, methane, or even animal traction. Producers who decide to add alternative energy to their suite of production practices will be rewarded with the business of customers who really want to support that kind of commitment to sustainability and local resilience in the face of what may become overwhelming challenges.

Rainwater Harvesting.
The same schtick is true for rainwater harvesting. The techniques for capturing and using rainwater are endless, ranging from terracing and swales and irrigation ponds to gutters and ferrocement tanks. As my own urban system matures, I will have a rainwater harvesting system that feeds into fish tanks, whose water then grows greens in my greenhouse and irrigates my outdoor gardens and container plants. I have a total of 2298 sq ft of buildings on my property (1548 in the main house and 750 in the storage house that is becoming the greenhouse). In the driest year for the last 100 years in central Oklahoma, where the rainfall was 16 inches, 23,000 gallons of water fell on those roofs. In a more typical year, with 36 inches of rain, the potential rain harvest from my roofs is about 52,000 gallons. So you could pay for electricity to pump that water, or buy it from the water district or town/city, or you could put a system together yourself with cheap parts from the local Home Despot or hardware/building supply store or garage sale, and use that free water.

To calculate your potential water harvest -- add the square feet of your buildings, multiply times your typical annual rainfall in FEET (not inches), that gives you the cubic feet of water falling on your roofs in a year. Multiply that figure times 7.48 and that tells you how many gallons fall on your roofs in a year (because there are 7.48 gallons in a cubic foot of water). Size your storage based on the monthly rainfall patterns and your monthly needs for water.

KEEP YOUR SHELVES NEAT AND TIDY.
And finally, a little note on housekeeping with your online presence at http://www.oklahomafood.coop/ . If you are out of a particular product, and won't have any for sale this month, toggle the "do not display" button so it doesn't clutter up the shelves of our online store. As any retailer can tell you, empty shelves are dispiriting to customers, they won't even walk in the store, they'll stay away. Month after month, I see products displayed for sale with zero inventory, I know they won't have any this month, the products haven't been available for months, but still there they sit, cluttering up our shelves, turning off customers who log in and find zero inventory everywhere they go.

This isn't a minor matter. Anything that turns off our customers is bad for our business. We shouldn't do things that are bad for our business, we should do things that are good for our business. Not keeping your product shelves "clean and tidy" sends a message that you aren't a very effective producer. You don't care about the fact that you are wasting the customer's time and the coop's bandwidth by cluttering up our online store pages with products that are not for sale this month, and will never be for sale this month.

OK, that's harsh, I don't really believe that any of our producers have this intention. But the consequences of not keeping your product shelves clean and tidy are exactly as I have described here --

you waste the customer's time,
you consume bandwidth (especially if you have product pictures) and that slows down the loading of pages,
you create the online equivalent of a dirty, cluttered, poorly stocked retail establishment

-- and all that can turn off our customers and may have something to do with our problems with member participation.

We have more than 3500 members, yet typically only 800 or so order in any given month (although I will say the last time I ran the data, it looked to me like half of our customers order at least once each quarter, but that is year-old data). Everyone needs to look at what they are doing to make sure they are not doing anything that is turning off customers, and one small part of that is having pride in your public product display and only displaying those items which you actually have for sale each month.

BUSINESS IS UP!
It looks to me like business is up quite a bit this year over last year. Our product sales increased last year by their smallest amount to date, about 8% IIRC. This year it looks more like we are up 20% or so. One area which seems to be struggling is prepared foods, and I'm betting that that's a consequence of the on-going economic troubles, since every prepared food I've bought through the coop has been an incredible adventure of taste and nutrition. One suggestion I have for prepared food producers is to think about convenience items that customers can use to create their own meals at home.

BUT WE SHOULDN'T TAKE ANYTHING FOR GRANTED. . .
Now is not the time to rest on any laurels. Retail can be quite pitiless, satisfying customer needs often means dealing with fickle, changing moods and fashions. It always pays to be a bit ahead of the curve, and we are positioned to make major advances going forward. But meeting these on-coming challenges means paying attention to issues of sustainability and resilience and inventory that I have been talking about in this bobaganda. We aren't like Wal-Mart, where a store manager can just use his computer to order in whatever he or she needs. We don't have anyone to call up producers and say "OK, you need to grow X number of bushels of corn this next year." So we have a situation that is kind of anarchistic/spontaneous order, and we hope that going forward the variety and supply of all of our Oklahoma foods increases.

WE SHOULD ALL BE THINKING ABOUT . . .
And finally (I know, I've already said this once), we all need to be thinking about alternative economic arrangements for financing. I'm thinking that eventually we need some kind of a local food credit union, where depositors could pool their funds for loan to local food enterprises. Or some kind of an investment fund that provides capital for local food production. I don't have anything more than that right now, but its something we should think about and talk about and see what happens over the next year.

THANKS!
Keep on providing more supplies for our bon appetitin' Oklahoma foods feastin seasons!

Bob Waldrop, one of the founders of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

This is disappointing.

2010-10-21T13:34:00.002-05:00

With only 15 days left, the kickstart.com campaign to Save the Market Bakery is only 20% towards fulfillment, and has hardly moved for a week. Thousands of people interested in local food in Oklahoma, but we are having a hard time coming up with $25K to ensure the survival of an important spoke in the local food wheel. No one needs to bet the farm, one thousand $20 contributions would do it. And if that's too much, how about a dollar or two or five? Would that be so impossible?

Often we think that somebody else will step forward, and that I won't have to do anything. Many many people have that attitude. It's an attitude that will stop our progressing local food system, cold in its tracks. We can remain in our lethargy if that makes us comfortable, but the price of that is losing something important to our growing local food system.

I encourage everyone to make a pledge to help save the Market Bakery. Just click on the link in the sidebar to this post.

AND -- please tell your friends. Twitter, Facebook, groups, email listservs. Spread the word and Save the Market Bakery!

October Bobagandistic Thoughts

2010-10-10T14:06:00.001-05:00

In this bobagandistic episode. . . The Get Ready for Winter Song. . . The Goose and the Cow. . . 10-10-10 . . . Eggs. . . Save the Market Bakery. . . Reminders. . .

Fall foods: cheese sauce for vegetables. . . Scalloped Turnips with Caramelized Onions. . . Bacon Beef Roll. . . Tomato Mushroom Cheeseburger Skillet

The Get Ready for Winter Song

My goodness, if the weather was like this all the time, everyone would want to live in Oklahoma. Fortunately we have August so that's not likely to become a problem going forward. And winter is certainly on its way. So let's all sing the Get Ready for Winter Song, to start this month's bobaganda episode.

The Get Ready for Winter Song

Tune: "Santa Claus is Coming to Town". . .

OH! We better not wait, it's time to make plans,
Compost, mulch, put away the fans,
Winter time is coming to town!
Squash and turnips and carrot plants,
Season extension for the cabbage transplants,
Winter time is coming to town!

Let's insulate the attic!
Insulate the floors!
Insulate the walls so deep,
and don't forget the doors!

So! Make your list, and check it twice,
Solarize, weatherize, don't roll the dice,
Winter time is coming to town!

The Goose and the Cow.
And now for a joke. MCDONALDS FOOD! No, that's not the joke, although I guess it is a joke. . . It seems that there was a convent, whose elderly Mother Superior, who had served the convent for decades, was on her deathbed. All of the nuns gathered in a vigil, hoping for some final words of wisdom. Concerned about her, one sister went to get some milk. On a sudden inspiration, she mixed some Irish whiskey with the milk, and took it to the weak Mother Superior, who took a sip, and immediately sat up and said, "That was tasty." One of the sisters asked her, "Give us some wisdom before your journey." The Mother Superior was silent for a time, and then she said, "don't kill the cow."

Yes indeed. That joke in its own way is a re-telling of the "Goose who laid the golden egg" fable. This fable, attributed to Aesop, who perhaps lived in the 5th century BC, in one form or another is found across the globe, including several Asian cultures, where instead of a goose laying golden eggs it is typically a swan shedding golden feathers. The fable literary form itself goes even further back in history, to the beginnings of the city states of Mesopotamia in the 22nd-24th centuries BC.

Don't kill the cow. Don't kill the goose the lays the golden egg. Someone should have reminded the USDA about this traditional wisdom when they first got the bright idea -- "Get big or get out" -- and thus began the process of killing the cow with the tasty milk, and destroying the goose that laid the golden eggs. So it comes ot pass fifty years after that fateful utterance by a federal bureaucrat, we have our present, just-in-time, homogenized, dumbed-down food system, drenched in listeria and salmonella, and served with a side of transgenic mechanically-separated pink ooze infused with a whiff of ammonia. Yum. Makes you want to go on a forty day fast, right?

This system is not an accident. It is the forseeable result of deliberate actions by governments and corporations.

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative, on the other hand, is about saving the goose and keeping the cow that gives the tasty milk. We have no great political power, but we have an idea -- and a system to implement that idea -- and the best tasting food in the state of Oklahoma. We have sons and daughters elsewhere, doing the same thing. We've just received word of a new local food cooperative on the other side of the world, Down Under in the great land of Australia. I had a report this week from the Northwest Cooperative Development Council in Washington (state), which has been studying Idaho's Bounty, one of our daughter coops, and reports that they are growing. The plan to replicate our common success throughout their four state region (Washington, Portland, Alaska, Hawaii).

Our success is founded, one bite at a time, one food decision at a time.

10-10-10
I am writing and publishing this on October 10, 2010 a/k/a "10-10-10". I have been working overtime to try to find some interesting symbolism in that which could be related to local food (thus illustrating the depths a writer will occasionally descend to), and finally had an inspiration this morning. 10 times 10 times 10 equals 1000, and that is an illusive goal we have hovered just below for some time in terms of monthly orders. This morning we had 719 baskets opened, 615 of which actually had products in them.

Isn't it about time we had a thousand orders in one month? So I'd like to encourage everyone who hasn't opened a basket this month to do, and to buy something. Maybe five pounds of hamburger (or ground pork, or ground bison, or ground lamb) and 2 bars of soap? Those are two of our products that are in super quantity, with a wide variety of choices. I made some spaghetti sauce this week with Italian sausage made with ground lamb and it was mighty tasty.

The power of the cooperative can be found in the multiplying impact of small choices. Someone told me that they usually didn't buy from the coop because they couldn't afford to buy all of their food from the coop. I asked, "Well, could you afford to spend $40/month for local food? They said "yes". So I encouraged them to go ahead and buy $40/month in local food. Every dollar spent with a local producer is a dollar vote for the future of local agriculture and the security of the food systems of our community. The world is a risky place these days, it is not prudent for us to put all our eggs in the just-in-time corporate food system basket. Let's all buy some good food for our families, and support our local farmers.

EGGS!
Many people tell me, "I would buy more eggs from the coop if they were available." I checked at the opening of the October order (8 AM, October 1), and there were 280 dozen eggs available. They were gone within an hour. Vegetable listings were also a bit thin. Now, that isn't necessarily the end of the October egg and vegetable story. Often, producers wait to list their eggs and vegetables until closer to the end of the order, as they become more certain of what they will have available on delivery day. So it pays to "shop often" and check the egg and vegetable departments for late-listing products.

And for producers, this is a Market Signal -- produce more eggs? Yes, hens don't like the change in seasons, and every time the season changes, production will go down. but even allowing for seasonal variation, it's clear that we don't have enough eggs available.

SAVE THE MARKET BAKERY! And the calzones. And the brownies. And the cookies.
We're making decent progress towards saving the Market Bakery. Nearly $5,000 has been pledged by 34 individuals, but we have only 26 days left to get pledges to cover the remaining $20K to build a new Market Bakery and save this important cog in the local food system wheel from the clutches of a corrupt and unresponsive and uncaring Oklahoma Department of Transportation. Please make a generous pledge today at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/320205243/earth-elements-local-food-community-kitchen .

REMINDERS!

How's your food storage going? We're headed for ice storm weather. Anything could happen. Can you feed your family through a prolonged winter storm? What if there are problems with the food system? The time to stock your pantry is before the food crisis hits.
The current financial reports for the coop are online at http://www.oklahomafood.coop/finance.php .
I hope to see many of you at the coop's birthday party at the Operations Center in Oklahoma City, coming up on Saturday afternoon and evening, November 6th!

FALL FOODS
The annual great cycle of the seasons continues to turn. Now we are in the golden daze of fall. Here are some great recipes to titillate your fall appetites.

Cheese sauce for vegetables.
This is a very easy cheese sauce for any veggie that likes cheese.

4 tablespoons cream
4 tablespoons yogurt cheese (or cream cheese)
4 oz shredded cheddar or other yellow cheese

Mix all together, and zap in the microwave (or heat over low heat) until the yellow cheese is melted. Combine with your already-cooked and hot vegetables. If you use cream cheese instead of sour cream, briefly zap in the microwave before adding the other ingredients in order to soften it.

Scalloped Turnips with Caramelized Onions
This recipe is, as they say, "to die for".

4 large turnips; peeled and cleaned, sliced into thin slices and boiled for 6 minutes in water with 3T cream added; drain well
2-3 slices bacon
1T butter
1 large onion sliced into paper thin rings
1/2 cup cream
1 cup shredded white cheese (I used mozzarella)
Additional 1/2 cup cheese for top(optional)
3T butter
1/2tsp salt
1/4tsp pepper
1/8tsp nutmeg

Preheat oven to 350. Use a 2 quart casserole, grease well with butter or oil. Dice bacon and fry until crisp. Remove with a slotted spoon, leaving drippings in pan. Add 1 T. butter, nutmeg and onions. Saute onions over low heat until nicely browned. Add the bacon back in. Set aside.

Melt the 3 T. butter and then add cream and cheese. Stir to melt, heating in the microwave for 20 second intervals as needed. Place 1/2 the turnips in the bottom of the casserole dish; then salt and pepper the turnips, followed by 1/2 the onion mix and 1/2 the cheese sauce. Repeat layers then top with additional cheese if using. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Uncover and bake 15-20 minutes or until top browns and it's all bubbly and tender.

NB: The first time I made this, I didn't boil the turnips long enough and they weren't quite done at the end of the cooking time, so I had to cook the casserole longer. So boil the turnips until they are "done" in the water/cream.

Bacon Beef Roll

2 eggs, beaten
1/4 cup ketchup
2 tablespoons Worcestershire sauce
4 ounces cheddar cheese, shredded
1/4 cup onion, chopped fine
2 tablespoons parmesan cheese
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
2 pounds ground beef
12 strips bacon

Combine everything except the bacon in a large bowl. Mix well then shape in two 6-inch long log shapes. On a large sheet of wax paper, lay 6 slices of the bacon side by side. Set one of the beef rolls crosswise at one end of the row of bacon strips; roll up, wrapping the meat with the bacon. Very carefully place the first roll in a 9x13" baking pan, lined with heavy foil, with the ends of the bacon under the meat roll. Lift it with a wide spatula so that it doesn't break. Repeat with the remaining bacon and meat roll. Bake at 375º 45-50 minutes or until the center of each roll reaches 160º. If the bacon doesn't look browned enough on top, put the beef rolls under the broiler for a minute or two. Serves 8.

Tomato Mushroom Cheeseburger Skillet
2 pounds ground beef

1 small onion, chopped, 2 1/2 ounces
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 pound fresh shitaake mushrooms, sliced
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1 teaspoon pepper
8 ounce can tomato sauce
16 ounces cabbage, finely shredded, about 1/2 a medium cabbage
8 ounces cheddar cheese, diced small

In a very large skillet or Dutch oven, brown the ground beef with the onion, garlic and mushrooms. Season with salt and pepper; drain the fat. Add the tomato sauce and cabbage; toss to coat the cabbage with the sauce. Simmer, uncovered, about 10 minutes or until the cabbage is tender, stirring occasionally. Add the cheese and stir in; heat on low until melted then stir in well. Adjust the seasonings, if necessary. Feeds six to eight.

SAVE THE MARKET BAKERY!

2010-10-04T11:28:00.001-05:00

I met April Harrington in 2003 at one of the first meetings to explore the possibilities that led to the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Later, when we were in critical need of a treasurer to get our dis-organized finances into shape, April stepped forward and literally saved our bacon, and our hamburger, and our produce, and our non-food items, and our. . . well, you get the idea. Without her timely and expert intervention, I am not at all sure that we would have survived to the present time.

As the fortunes of time, politics, and government bureaucracy have turned, April’s innovative Market Bakery business – an enterpreneurial effort that is an essential aspect of the growing local food systems here in Oklahoma – is at risk of going away forever. No business can survive without capital and assets, and the State is about to take April’s productive assets – her bakery – to widen a road and leave her with almost nothing to go forward.

This whole travesty is monstrously unfair and unjust and it would be nice if things were otherwise, but they are not. That’s the way of the world these days.

One of the critical needs for local food systems in Oklahoma is a system of finance for local food producers. Frankly, we need our own credit union or some other kind of investment/venture capital system, but it is going to take time to get something like that going, and April’s need is now, not a year or two in the future. In her own determined and creative way, however, she has found some options to run with, and I invite us all to run with her towards a more just, sustainable, and economically viable future for all of us, united together as a mutual system of support and assistance.

I intend to make a generous pledge of my own funds for April’s http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/320205243/earth-elements-local-food-community-kitchen campaign (see April's message below for more details about this), so she can rebuild her bakery. The amount the state is offering for her property won't even pay off the mortgage, much less build a new bakery, and it doesn't even match the appraised value. This is an injustice done by the state in our name, and I invite everyone to reject this injustice by supporting April in her time of need. Please join with me in making a pledge to save the Market-Bakery. I know times are tough right now, and people have many demands on their generosity, but this one is important, it is critically important. No one need bet the farm on this, but small donations from many people will save the bakery. Please tell your friends!

Thank you for your generosity. It may be a cliche, but it is certainly true to say that united we will stand, divided we will fall.

Bob Waldrop, one of the founders of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

A MESSAGE FROM APRIL HARRINGTON and the EARTH ELEMENTS MARKET-BAKERY.
Since announcing our controversy with the Oklahoma Department of Transportation, we have been overwhelmed by the many expressions of concern and support that we have received. We are very grateful for this out-pouring of love and help.

I wish I had good news to announce about our relocation problem, but I don’t. ODOT continues to make low-ball offers that would not even be enough to pay off the mortgage on the existing building, much less build a new one. That’s the system, that’s the way it works. While my attorneys continue to fight on behalf of the Earth Elements Market Bakery community – which includes not only myself, but also my employees, the other food entrepreneurs which use this building for their own economic activities, the farmers and ranchers whose wondrous food products I use, and my many customers who enjoy the foods we produce – I have decided that I must seek other options to keep this enterprise going. I have fought too hard to get where I am now to let the State kick me into bankruptcy for the sake of a road-widening project.
I have found two innovative options going forward. The first is a long-shot, the second is more likely to produce results.

The Pepsi Refresh Campaign gives money for projects based on votes received online. A new campaign begins October 1st, and people can help me win $50,000 to rebuild the bakery by simply voting online. Each person can vote every day, and voting is free. The website is http://www.refresheverything.com/oklahomacommunitykitchen. Please go to the website every day in October 1st and vote for Earth Elements throughout the campaign, and tell your friends.

Kickstarter.com is an innovative web site that helps entrepreneurs and musicians and innovative people of all kinds to raise money for their projects. People can pledge a donation to a specific project, which is due when the project is fully funded. Donations at various levels (starting at $20) will receive rewards from the Market-Bakery. My project goal is $25,000, although I hope it will be over-funded and reach $30,000.

This will be enough to build a new Market-Bakery on my land next to the present site.
Each donation to the Earth Elements Market Bakery fund through the kickstarter.com website should be considered an investment in the food security of everyone in this state. Please go to http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/320205243/earth-elements-local-food-community-kitchen and make a pledge today, to help me Save the Market-Bakery.

April Harrington

FEAR -- FIRE -- FOES -- AWAKE! S 510 could destroy local agriculture

2010-09-27T21:13:00.002-05:00

Senate bill 510 continues to be a threat to local agriculture in the United States. A version has passed the US House of Representatives, and it is now before the US Senate. Fortunately, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma has placed a hold on the legislation for now, but that could go away at any moment. NOW is the time to contact your US Senators and ask them to oppose this legislation.

It would also be helpful, if you are a member of any farm organizations, for you to contact their legislative people and ask them to lobby against the bill. Here in Oklahoma, contact Lori Peterson of the Oklahoma Farm Bureau, at Lori.Peterson@okfb.org or the Oklahoma Farmers Union (now American Farmers and Ranchers) at legislation@afrmic.com .

Below is a version of a letter I have been sending out on this legislation. Besides the info below, I added info about the Oklahoma Food Coop. Adapt it for your own circumstances. The 12 points I cribbed from 12 reasons why the food safety bill from hell could be very dangerous for the US economy. I suggest you use these 12 points in your own letter, I tweaked them just a bit.

Begin sample letter. . .

Senate Bill 510 is pending in the Senate; a version has passed the US House of Representatives. While it is ostensibly about "food safety", in actuality it amounts to a major federal power grab over agriculture.

I am strongly against this bill for these reasons:

#1 All food production facilities in the United States will be required to register with the U.S. government. No food will be allowed to be grown, distributed or sold outside this bureaucratic framework unless the FDA allows it.

#2 Any food that is distributed or sold outside of U.S. government control will be considered illegal smuggling.

#3 The FDA will hire an army of new inspectors to enforce all of the new provisions in the bill.

#4 The FDA will be mandated to conduct much more frequent inspections of food processing facilities.

#5 The fees and paperwork requirements will be ruinously expensive for small food producers.

#6 S. 510 would place all U.S. food and all U.S. farms under the Department of Homeland Security in the event of a major "contamination" or an "emergency". What exactly would constitute a "contamination" or an "emergency" is anyone's guess.

#7 S. 510 mandates that the FDA facilitate harmonization of American food laws with Codex Alimentarius, which impinges on US sovereignity.

#8 S. 510 imposes an annual registration fee on any facility that holds, processes, or manufactures food. It also includes draconian fines for paperwork infractions of up to $500,000 for a single offense. Just one penalty like that would drive a small food producer out of business.

#9 S. 510 would give the FDA tremendous discretion to regulate how crops are grown and how food is produced in the United States. Basically, farmers will now be forced to farm exactly how the federal government tells them to. This could be a particular problem for small farmers selling direct to the public, many of whom are organic farmers because that is what their market wants to buy. It is feared that the U.S. government would soon declare that many organic farming methods are "unsafe" and would outlaw them.

#10 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to impose a quarantine on a specific geographic area. Basically the FDA would have the power to stop the movement of all food in an area where a "contamination" has been identified. This would be very close to being able to declare martial law.

#11 S. 510 will give the FDA the power to conduct warrantless searches of the business records of small food producers and organic farmers, even if there has been no evidence at all that a law has been broken.

#12 Many farmers are concerned that S. 510 would eliminate the right to clean and store seed. Saving and using your own seed is a traditional frugal practice of many farmers.

There's been some talk that the bill has been amended to make it more acceptable to small farmers, but I assure you that I am in contact with hundreds of Oklahoma farmers, many of whom are "small farmers", and they are united in their opposition. Many are afraid it could put them out of business I hope you would agree that any legislation that has the potential of reducing the number of farmers is bad legislation.

Please vote against this bill in the US Senate.

Bob Waldrop

How much food is a year's supply for a family of four?

2010-09-12T20:38:00.000-05:00

When starting a food storage program for your family, the most critical thing is to know how much food your family eats in a year. If you are going to store what you eat, and eat what you store, the first step is observation of your own kitchen.

But to give an idea as to what this could involve. . . I went to the governments My Pyramid site which describes their recommended daily consumptions of the various food groups (vegetables, fruits, oils, dairy, protein, grains). They have different recommendations for men and women, boys and girls of various ages. The plan below is based on a family of four -- a mother and father, a teenage boy age 14-18, and a young child age 4-8.

I don't know that anyone actually eats to the government recommendations, or even if that is a good idea, since government diet recommendations are heavily influenced by politics. So I caution folks against following these amounts without doing research into what your family actually eats.

With those caveats, however. . . here it is. . .

Veggies 2,084 15 oz cans
Grains 593 lbs
Fruits 1,564 15 oz cans
oils 12 gallons
dairy 251 gallons
peanut butter 13 quarts
nuts 13 lbs
beans 268 lbs
eggs 67 doz eggs
meat/poultry/fish 226 lbs

Using Oklahoma City supermarket prices, except for the meat which I priced at the levels prevailing in the Oklahoma Food cooperative. . . the price if bought all at once would be $5,453 plus sales tax, or $454/month. The dairy I priced as bulk powdered milk.

For those who do their own canning, 1,564 commercial cans of fruit equals 683 quarts, and 2,084 cans of veggies would be 910 quarts.

Not many of us could run out tomorrow and buy this much food. But once you have developed your plan, you could start extending your household margins. If you could finesse your budget so that you could spend an extra $100/month, in 4-1/2 months you would have an extra month's groceries on hand, maybe more, depending on the prices prevailing when you shop.

And then there is the contribution that your own gardening efforts can make to your plan. Grow more, preserve more, and thus you will save more.

Why Bob is freaking out about food.

2010-09-10T21:45:00.001-05:00

In a comment on my post of Sept 9 -- We are just one bad year on the farm away from horrific famine -- LizBeth asks me what I am seeing as I look ahead to write so strongly on the subject.

There isn't any one thing that I see, but rather, a constellation of events coming together that could very well create a quick-moving dysergistic spiral ("dysergistic" is the opposite of "synergistic") that could impact food security even here in these obese united States.

Folks should also remember that some people, right here in these united States, are already in a food crisis. About three hundred people call me every month for a delivery of supplemental groceries to help them get through the month. We typically deliver bags that contain 4-6 misc cans (usually 1 or 2 each green beans, corn, tomato sauce, fruit, and some kind of canned beans), packages of rice, dried beans, and pasta, 2-3 misc boxes (mac and cheese, hamburger helper, etc), peanut butter, sometimes canned or boxed milk, and cereal. There may be an additional one or two "lottery" items (i.e. items we don't have enough to give everybody, but added together, everyone will get 1 or 2 misc somethings. We occasionally have bags of frozen carrots, cauliflower, and boxes of frozen sugar pea pods. We occasionally (2-3 times/year) have meat that I buy from Oklahoma farmers. I save up the donations so that when we do have it, we have enough for everyone. We occasionally get odd things, like a huge amount of ice cream cones (without the ice cream, just the cones). For a while last year we were getting bags of frozen blueberries.

We used to always have powdered milk to give away, but that went away 2 years ago and we rarely see it. Occasionally there is some of the boxed shelf-stable milk, but that goes to families of 5 or more as we never have enough for everyone to have a box. Once a year we usually get dried figs.

Most of this food comes from the Regional Food Bank, and is the surplus of the conventional agribizness food system. And that is a very tenuous supply line. Just before the authorization of the last ag bill, which in part funds the programs that move surplus foods to the nation's food charities, we were down to maybe only 8 food items per bag, which is about half a conventional paper bag of groceries. If that charitable/surplus lifeline stopped, and I had to go to the grocery store and buy all this, I could spend $3500/month and not have much to give each family.

I deliver quite a bit of this myself, via a U-haul truck that I take to six public housing developments the third Saturday of each month (with some helpers, of course), and so I see the people. For many of the people we deliver to, this is not a matter of a one or two time thing, it is every month, over a period of years. They are elderly, sick, disabled. Often the elderly are raising the grand children and/or great-grandchildren. Not everybody gets food stamps, people fall through the cracks all the time. We're delivering increasingly often to the growing number of motels in the area that rent rooms by the week. Their kichens consist of hot plates, crockpots, electric skillets, and maybe if they are lucky a micro-wave oven.

That's my micro situation every month, and it is one of the things that keeps me focused in a very real way on food.

Then there's the macro situation, and there isn't anything there to calm me down.

In eight of the last ten years, the world has consumed more grain that it produced. The giant grain stockpiles of the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s are gone.
We had a major food crisis world wide in 2007-2008, which saw many Asian countries banning the export of rice, and there were riots throughout the third world. This coincided with an energy crisis and the beginning of our present financial crisis.
The world's big financial players have discovered food. Hedge funds, insurance companies, and big banks are speculating in food and driving the price up for consumers, while the farmers often get little if any of the price gains.
The world's climate is seriously impacting food production. Australia had a ten year drought that ravaged their food production capacities. Russia banned the export of grain through the end of next year and they were the world's third largest grain exporter.
Sovereign wealth funds and wealthy corporations are buying millions of acres of farmland in poor countries to produce food for export. They aren't doing this because they think food will be plentiful and cheap in coming years.
The evidence seems to be that conventional agriculture has about reached its maximum food production capacity on the land presently under cultivation. And the land area of world food production is declining, due to urban sprawl, desertification, drought, and other grim happenings.

Besides these bullet points, I continue to be increasingly alarmed by the on-going devolution of our financial and economic systems.

And then there's peak oil and climate instability.

Any one of these issues would be a big deal by itself, but coming on us all at once, the situation could get terrifying very rapidly -- much quicker than most people think would be possible. The reason there's been so much doom and gloom over the past two years is because "something wicked this way comes" -- there is a lot to be doomed and gloomed about. The one economic site where I read every post is The Automatic Earth, and they recently posted an interview with one of their principles -- http://theautomaticearth.blogspot.com/2010/09/september-4-2010-jim-puplava-interviews.html . The folks at Automatic Earth are considering the interaction of peak oil, climate instability, and economic irrationality. I sent the link to my runningonempty2@yahoogroups.com group, which has 7400 or so members and has been discussing peak oil since 2001, as a "special notice" with the note -- if you don't read anything else this week, read this.

And I recently read an excerpt from an interesting book, The Coming Famine, that was published in the NY Times. The author does a good job of pulling together many of these threads.

In the 20th century, most famines were caused by politics and finance, not by absolute shortages of food. Going forward, we still have the potential problem of famine caused by politics and finance, but we are also increasingly at risk of famine due to absolute shortages of food.

Like the energy and the financial crises, a food security crisis would come upon us quickly and without much warning. There won't be time to rush out and buy a large amount of food, because it might not be available and if available, would you have the money? In the best of times, few households could afford to go and buy a year's worth of food in one big shopping excursion. Sure, mobbing a Wal-Mart in the throes of a major food panic might be an interesting if dangerous adrenaline rush, but I suggest safer methods of getting your excitement fix if that's what you crave.

The time to stock up on food is before the food crises hit.

That's why I have temporarily stopped putting money from my payheck into my savings account each month and started buying more food. And I've also ramped up my home food production for the fall season.

Few of us would sleep well at night if we didn't have fire insurance on our houses. We don't buy insurance because we want to have a fire, but because we are concerned about the consequences if we do. Yet tens -- hundreds! -- of millions of people go to bed every night with hardly anything in the way of food storage in their kitchens. They go to the store four or five times/week to buy food or eat out or get take out. I am unlikely to reach hundreds of millions of people through this little bobaganda blog, but I feel a responsibility to those who do read my stuff to lay things out as clearly and as urgently as I can. A grocery store only has a 3 day supply of food on its shelves, it stays full thanks to a constant stream of trucks on long supply chains kept moving by a busy processing industry. But at any given time, there are probably only a couple months of food working their way through the various parts of that system, thanks to just-in-time inventory systems. There are a hundred things that could happen in a heart-beat to stop the smooth workings of that system, and where will people be if that happens? Between the proverbial rock and a hard place, that's where.

Store what you eat, eat what you store, sleep well at night.

Procrastination is the thief of time and could be a harbinger of hunger.

We are just one bad year on the farm away from horrific famine.

2010-09-09T10:40:00.000-05:00

Got food storage? Got household food production? Got a local food system?

The recent news that Russia has extended its embargo on grain exports for another 12 months is a reminder that the world teeters on the edge of massive food shortages. It is not an exaggeration to say that we are just one bad year on the farm away from horrific famine.

This makes household food storage and production, and local food economies, all the more important. Don't wait for the food crisis to erupt to start storing food, increasing your household food production, and supporting your local food economy. It will be too late at that point. The time to grow our local food sustainability is BEFORE the food crises hit.

And those food crises will come upon us, just as certainly as the energy crises and economic crises are upon us. Indeed, the energy and economic crises, coupled with increasing climate instability are toxic politics, will drive the coming world crises.

Here's an article that gives more details about the coming food crises. (Note that I am using the plural for crisis, since what we will see are multiple food crises erupting around the world.

Horrific famine coming?

Few people would have the money to seriously stock up overnight. But most of us can set aside some extra food every month. One 25 pound bucket of grain/month over a year's time is 300 pounds of wheat, and that's a lot of flour and biscuits and breads.

Here are some links that talk about the annual and seasonal sales cycles in conventional supermarkets.

The Annual Grocery Price/Sale Cycle
Guide to Grocery Sale Cycle
How to understand your store's sales cycles

For local food shoppers, best prices and availabilities will be strictly seasonal. No farmers market will have a great price on tomatoes in January in the northern hemisphere. Meat prices often will vary depending on demand and inventory. If a producer has animals coming on to processing, but he or she still has quite a bit of inventory, then that's the time to notice sales. It always helps to cultivate relationships with specific farmers so that you can find out such information, since local food producers rarely have advertising budgets.

As with anything else, you will need to develop a plan and implement. Decide on a monthly budget for food storage and increase your family's food storage each month. Use your calendar to develop your local food production. And always try to support your developing local food system with some of your grocery dollars. I have always believed that one day our local food systems will be all that stands between us and hunger, and everything we can do now to support and expand that system may make a critical difference later.

Homeless kitties need a good home.

2010-09-07T17:59:00.001-05:00

So a few weeks ago, a beautiful long-haired tortoise-shell cat started hanging around the house. She wasn't feral, likes to be picked up and petted and etc. One day I noticed, "she's getting fat". Then I thought, "No, I bet she's pregnant." The next day, I opened the door and she ran in quick like a flash and disappeared. We couldn't find her anywhere, although admittedly my house has a lot of places where a cat could hide. I had about decided that she had gone out side, when a few hours later I heard the cry of a kitten. Then another, and another, and another, and so it came to pass that we acquired a litter of 5 adorable kittens and her mother. After about a week, she moved them outside through an open window. We are keeping two of the kittens, as our two cats are fairly elderly. So we have 3 extra kitties who are at their Most Cute stage, that need a home, and we'd like to find ahome for the Momma too. My existing cats seem to tolerate the kittens fine, but they don't like Momma.

The kittens are not feral either. We've been playing with them and petting them and feeding them. They are weaned although they still grab some of Momma's milk whenever they can, she is however cutting them off pretty quick these days.

The black kitty is female, one of the greys is male, the other female. Both of the greys have a bit of the tortoise-shell pattern/colors.

Anyway, here are their pictures. If you would like to give one (or all!) of these adorable kitties a good home, let me know at bwaldrop@cox.net .

Kitty the Mother

Kitty the First

Kitty the Second

Kitty the Third

Highlights of the September food coop board meeting

2010-09-07T09:08:00.000-05:00

Since it takes a while for the minutes to circulate around and be approved and thus published at http://www.oklahomafood.coop/minutes.php , I thought I would send a few unofficial highlights of the September board meeting on Sunday.

(1) Consent docket -- approved (see below).

(2) Producer transparency procedure -- tweaked a bit and approved, it remains voluntary.

(3) Increase share price -- deferred to early next year

(4) Financial report -- lost about $2K in July, mostly due to increased expenses for painting/repair at op center. July sales were $64,245, up 16.7% over July 2009; Unofficial August sales were $72.261, an increase of about 12% over July 2010.

(5) Management boundaries tweaked a bit, Delivery Day floor manager changed to Delivery Day manager and elevated to senior management, reporting directly to the board.

(6) On farm processed poultry; pending a revision of the standards, producers are allowed to sell on farm processed through the coop provided they contact each member who orders from them before the order closes to explain the alternative delivery arrangements (i.e., such products will not be delivered via the regular coop system).

The consent docket for this meeting consisted of:

(1) accepting new members and issuing stock for them.
(2) Authorizing funds for website redesign.
(3) approval of the minutes of the previous meeting.
(4) Authorize the activation of the Audit Committe, which means the president would appoint members of an Audit Committee to start the process of getting us ready for an audit.) Call for 5 volunteers.
(5) Authorize signing up for officers and directors/errors and omissions insurance for the coop.
(6) Appoint a committee consisting of Dawn Mahiya (Pres), Chelsey Simpson (VP for Customers), Leah Aufil (member of the board) and Bob Waldrop (member of the Board) to review the 6 month performance of the General Operations Manager.

Compendium of Useful Information

2010-09-04T14:37:00.002-05:00

As the situation spirals down, we’re all going to need to learn new skills and remember old knowledge in order to successfully adapt to the realities of a future with less fossil fuel energy, more climate instability, less money, more war and violence and continued economic irrationality and toxic corrupt politics.

Thus, I have compiled the Compendium of Useful Information, whose links lead to more than 2 gigabytes of, as the name implies, useful information for a troubled future.

Visit it online and learn, save, print, copy, preserve.

http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/compendium.htm

And don’t forget to tell your friends.

The September Bobaganda

2010-09-03T09:56:00.001-05:00

OK folks, I am ready for fall. For my money, fall is the best time of year in Oklahoma. So let’s all join together and sing our way into the changing of the season. It may not be officially “crisp weather” just yet, but it’s not far away and after the heat of August I am ready for a change. So, all together now, follow the bouncing ball. . . let’s sing my Autumn Carol, to the traditional tune O Tannenbaum (O Christmas Tree).

(1) O Autumn season, golden bright!
We hail the harvest welcome sight!
The air is crisp, the moon shines long,
It's time to raise our voice in song
The squash and pumpkins, taters sweet,
Peppers, greens, and nuts we greet.

O autumn season, golden bright!
We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(2) The heat of summer is now past,
We wait the time of winter's blast.
The children are in school today,
The farmers work to reap the hay.

Peach preserves and apple butter,
Set our hearts to be aflutter.

O autumn season, golden bright!
We hail the harvest welcome sight!

(3) There is no kinder time of year,
Than Autumn bright without a fear,
The peaceful times upon the land,
Bring hope and health, a time so grand.

So raise a glass of Autumn cheer,
A cider strong, a mug of beer.

O autumn season, golden bright!
We hail the harvest welcome sight!

WHERE ARE THE EGGS?
One question I’m hearing a lot these days is “where are the eggs?” You wouldn’t know this from the supermarket, but egg production varies with the weather. In the deep cold of winter, and the stifling heat of summer, chickens do not want to work so hard. So they don’t, they take a break. And so it comes to pass that there aren’t so many eggs for sale this month, which comes on the heels of the August heat and the ladies haven’t gotten over their summer slump and started in on their fall production. It’s always a good idea to check the website regularly, as some producers may list eggs towards the end of the order cycle as they become more certain about how many eggs they will have on hand. And of course, demand for locally and humanely produced eggs has soared through the roof on the heels of the gigantic egg recalls and the vivid television pictures of the deplorable conditions in the commercial egg factories.

ON PUTTING FOOD BY . . .
The present egg situation leads me to the next fall topic, which is “On putting food by.” There are times of the year when egg production is really heavy. Indeed, we have actually had orders in the past year where there were still eggs for sale at the closing of the order.

One of the most basic principles of a local food system is that customers must “put food by” when it is plentiful, so they will have something to eat when food production is not so plentiful. So as egg production ramps up, buy extra eggs and freeze them for use later. In other words, buy the eggs for your Thanksgiving and Christmas baking and cooking in October. Here is everything you need to know about freezing eggs --http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze/eggs.html – and be sure to read this before you freeze eggs as you don’t just pop them into the freezer in their shells.

The same is true with veggies. Last month I bought a large bag of pickling cucumbers, and they are now becoming refrigerator pickles. Shortly after delivery day, we finished off a gallon jar of pickles I bought at the store. So being in a hurry, I simply sliced up the cukes, and added them to the now empty pickle jar (which was half full of pickling juice), together with a couple of habaneros (since we like everything hot), and topped off the jar with apple cider vinegar. Then into the refrigerator it went, and in about another week they should be ready to go. They will probably last about hmmm 1 week, given the way we eat pickles around here. This is probably the easiest method of making refrigerator pickles.

Pickling and fermentation are two very healthy ways to preserve summer produce for winter eating. At the end of this bobaganda is a list of links on pickling and fermentation. Buy extra this month and start putting food by for your family.

Freezing, canning, and dehydrating are also readily accessible ways to preserve the summer’s bounty. I have dehydrated zucchini, yellow squash, pumpkin, carrots – typically as shreds, which I then use in winter soups, stews, and casseroles. In my freezer I have frozen hot peppers and tomatoes, and quite a bit of cooked greens (mostly Swiss chard). And yes, it has good local meats in it too, and I have a back-up for the electricity in the form of a marine battery and an inverter.

There was a time when hardly anyone would want to go into winter without enough food to feed their family until the next summer’s harvest. Food these days is abundant and readily available, but we often forget how rare this has been in history, and how fragile the system is that brings us sort-of-fresh strawberries in January, flown 6,000 miles from the southern hemisphere.

So now’s the time to buy. There won’t be any cucumbers or okra available through the food coop in January. Get what you will need in January in September and October, and put some by for eatin’ later in the winter. (If the coop producers are sold out, be sure to check your local farmers' market and any roadside stands in your area.)

Don’t forget long term storage items either, like buckets and bags of wheat. Beer and bread made civilization possible.
MEANWHILE, AT THE MEAT MARKET. . .

God help me, I bought a supermarket chicken. It was only five dollars. Hey, we’re all entitled to moments of craziness and weakness. I certainly got what I paid for. The first thing I noticed was that more than half of it disappeared when I defrosted it, lots of water in that bird and as we all know, water is heavy. Somehow, that had never happened with any of the chickens I have bought through the coop. Then there were the big globs of yellow fat. The meat had a greasy taste to it (I roasted it). So as it turned out, I paid almost as much as the price of a coop chicken for not-very-good chicken (factoring in all the water the processor injected that bird with in order to drive up the weight and create the illusion of a cheap chicken).

One thing that became obvious very early in our history is that the Coop’s meat market is very diverse. While we have a lot of producers selling beef, you’ll notice that they all have a bit different take on beef production – from breeds to pastures to feeds.

But we don’t stop at beef. There’s lamb, and goat, and bison, and pork. I count 18 different ideas from various producers on pork sausage. Italian, mild Italian, hot Italian, chorizo, hot breakfast, mild breakfast, medium breakfast, English bangers and etc. Not to mention the beef, bison, and lamb sausages. Don’t like any of them? Well, buy some ground pork or ground beef or ground bison or ground lamb and make your own (you’ll find links at the end of this bobaganda on making your own sausage). Buy a cured ham, or buy a roast and make your own.

Is your budget tight? Well, mine is. So we eat a lot of ground meat. I can fix ground meat every night of the week and folks don’t get tired of it because (a) the ground meat is so tasty, and (b) there are about ten gazillion different ways to prepare ground meats. No time to make a meatloaf? That’s fine, instead of making it into a loaf, make it into patties and pan fry. Need something to take for lunch? Make your own pizza pockets. Make your own dough, or buy dough through the coop, pinch off a golf-ball sized piece, roll it flat and then in a circle. Place a spoonful or two of your favorite savory ground meat and sauce or gravy mixture and some shredded cheese or ricotta cheese in the middle, moisten the edge of the dough with water, fold over and pinch the seams shut. Bake until golden brown, freeze or refrigerate for eating later. Zap in the microwave or warm in the oven. Voila, your own convenience food at a fraction of the cost of store-bought “Hot Pockets”.

CONTENTED COWS. . .
You want contented cows, our dairy people have contented cows. And the taste of the resulting dairy products proves the point.
Start with our famous yogurt cheese. This, btw, is a low carb delight, which means its good for folks with issues with their blood sugar. Most of the carbs in yogurt are in the whey and yogurt cheese is made by straining whey out of the yogurt. So besides being very tasty, yogurt cheese is the best choice for folks who are watching their weight and trying to stabilize their blood sugar. You want a tasty, quick treat? Mix equal parts of yogurt cheese and ricotta, add some cocoa, a drop or two of vanilla, and a bit of sweetener. Voila, almost instant tasty dessert and low in carbs (depending on how much and what type of sweetener you use). Or use some mashed berries or peaches instead of the cocoa and add no sweetener. You can run it through a blender or just mix it with a spoon – a blender will make it “more smooth”, spoon mixing will produce a little more chunky result, but either way the taste is perfect.

Note that the carb counts of yogurt in general are less than whole milk – assuming of course it is real yogurt with real live cultures and it hasn’t been junked up with high fructose corn syrup. If you read labels carefully, you might find something in the supermarket, but a better choice is to buy through the coop.

EATING OUT AT THE LOCAL FOOD DINER. . .

I wish we had some good local food diners with take-out. I’d get the blue plate special with great regularity. But wait, we do have local food diners AND we have all kinds of take-out!. Most of us like to cook, but everyone has those days on occasion where you either just don’t feel like cooking or simply don’t have the time. Sure, you can make all kinds of goodies to heat and stash them in your freezer, but not everybody is up to that kind of quantity cooking. Comes now the wonderful chefs and bakers of the Oklahoma Food Coop. Together, they constitute one of the most incredible restaurants of all time. I have tried many of the prepared foods available from the coop, and they would not be out of place on the tables of the finest and most expensive restaurants in town. There’s nothing wrong with take-out, but do yourself, your family, your health, and your local economy a favor and get your take-out from the coop.

DON’T FORGET YOUR NON-FOOD ITEMS. . .

From body care to gardening, and on to the fabric arts, cook books, toys, games, and most points in between, the Coop’s “Mercantile” producers have a wide variety of artisan products for your shopping pleasure. It is, after only, only FOUR COOP DELIVERY DAYS until Christmas. Don’t wait until the last minute for your family’s holiday shopping. That’s a good way to stress your budget. Spread your holiday shopping out over several delivery days – shopping is always fun, so you might as well have some every month! Take some time to browse the departments and shelves in the non-food floor of our Cooperative Cyber Food and Mercantile Store, and find perfect gifts for all you love. Beat the rush! Make your list and check it twice. Figure out who’s been naughty and nice. Coop gifts are coming their way.

SIGNS OF THESE TIMES

With times being what they are, supporting our local economies is more critical than ever. With the health care system being what it is, taking control of our health destinies are more important than ever. One of the most prevalent emotions running through the population these days is a feeling of helplessness, that things have somehow gotten out of control, and we are powerless before these great changes that are going on all around us.

Well, I will tell you the truth: that is a damnable lie of the devil and don’t you for a minute believe that its true. We the people are not powerless, we are not at the mercy of tremendous impersonal forces beyond our control. Or at least, we don’t have to be.

Two months ago, my blood sugar was running out of control. My fasting blood sugar was in the 200-220 range, and had spiked to over 240. Now its running 110-120, and hardly ever spiking over 140. And this improvement has been achieved without any medication, but instead by controlling my diet (counting those carbs!), and losing weight.

Five years ago, my utility bills were out of control. A lot of hard work later, I am no longer at the mercy of giant utility companies that see me as simply a bottomless bank account for their personal enrichment.

That’s because I have a plan for how I and my household will adapt in the coming years.

Everyone needs a plan to make it through the future. Now is the time to talk with your family, to read up on the issues, to research the alternatives, to create a lifestyle that will protect the quality of your life as we go into this age of peak energy and its decline, economic irrationality, and climate instability.

As we walk this journey together, the Oklahoma Food Cooperative is an essential aspect of our mutual adaptation to the realities of the future. We offer our own version of the convenience of the big box supermarket. You can turn in your order at a time convenient to you. You can have some of the best access available anywhere in the nation to locally and sustainably produced artisan food and non-food items. You can be confident in the safety of the food you feed your family. You can do your part to increase the security and well-being of your family while also creating a strong and resilient local economy that will help us continue to meet our needs no matter what those “giant impersonal forces” throw at us in the future.

All this, and tasty nutritious food too, is a bargain.

So let’s keep those bon appetitin’ good times rollin’, you hear?

Bob Waldrop, bobagandist

HELPFUL LINKS

PICKLING AND FERMENTING

Saurkraut
http://extension.psu.edu/food-safety/food-preservation/food-preservation-methods/lets-preserve/sauerkraut.pdf/view

Kefir
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/publications/nchfp/factsheets/kefir.html

Olives
http://anrcatalog.ucdavis.edu/pdf/8267.pdf

USDA on Fermentation
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can6a_ferment.html and 8 pages linked on page

Pickles
http://extension.psu.edu/food-safety/food-preservation/food-preservation-methods/lets-preserve/pickles.pdf/view

USDA info on pickling
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can6b_pickle.html and 67 urls linked on this page

DEHYDRATION

Storing dehydrated foods
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/dry/pack_store.html

Solar dehydrator
http://echonet.org/repositories#150:d:Solar Dehydrator.08

Dehydrating and curing
http://www.cd3wd.com/cd3wd_40/vita/frtprsv2/en/frtprsv2.htm

Solar food drying
http://solarcooking.wikia.com/wiki/Solar_food_dryers

Food dehydration options
http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/PDF/dehydrate.pdf

Drying Chillis
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=87

How to make the Dry-it semi-continuous tray dryer
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=259

How to use the Dry-if semi-continuous tray dryer
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=258

Engineering drawings for small tray dryer
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=440

Tray Dryers
http://practicalaction.org/practicalanswers/product_info.php?products_id=179

USDA info on dehydration
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/dry.html And all pages linked on this page

FREEZING

Freezing convenience foods you make at home
http://extension.oregonstate.edu/catalog/pdf/pnw/pnw296.pdf

USDA info on freezing foods
http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/freeze.html and all urls linked on page

CHARCUTERIE

How to make salami
http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/page0001.htm
http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/page0002.htm
http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm

bacon http://lpoli.50webs.com/Sausage%20recipes.htm
jowl bacon http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Bacon-Jowl.pdf
honey cured bacon http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Bacon-Jowl.pdf
corned beef http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Corned_Beef.pdf
boiled ham http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Boiled%20Ham.pdf
smoked ham http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Smoked%20Ham.pdf
pastrami http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Pastrami.pdf
beef sausage http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/beef-all.pdf
Jimmy Dean sausage http://lpoli.50webs.com/index_files/Link-JDean.pdf
sausage making tips http://lpoli.50webs.com/Tips.htm

Sausage making
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/foods/he176w.htm

Meat smoking and curing faqs
http://www.bbqguide.com/meatsmoking.php

meat smoking chart
http://www.bbqguide.com/images/smoking.pdf

download more pages here http://home.pacbell.net/lpoli/page0004.htm

USDA standards on percent of salt and ntirates to be added to cured meats

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/get-cfr.cgi?TITLE=9&PART=318&SECTION=10&TYPE=TEXT

These links are from my new online Compendium of Useful Information, access to 2 gigabytes of information on sustainable and resilient living.

http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/compendium.htm

Summertime bobagandistic thoughts about the August Oklahoma Food Coop order

2010-08-05T18:10:00.001-05:00

Summertime. . . and the living is HOT!

It’s August in Oklahoma, and as we all have no doubt noticed, it is HOT. It was 91 degrees at 11 PM last night on our outside thermometer. Today Oklahoma City seems to be getting a bit of a break, thanks to that cold front that moved through early this AM. We won’t break 100 today, yee haw. It will “only” be 95 degrees or so.

I remember August in the 1960s in southwest Oklahoma where I grew up. One of the jobs I did on the farm was “chopping cotton”. . . although we weren’t actually chopping cotton, we were chopping the weeds out of the cotton. My dad paid me 25 cents an hour, and the rows were a half mile long. The “chopping cotton” terminology came from previous generations. With less data about seed viability, farmers planted their cotton really thick to make sure they got a good stand. Then, during the summer, the cotton would be thinned at the same time the weeds were chopped out. Thus, “chopping cotton”. Early on, we’d use a “go devil” cultivator to clean the weeds out of the young cotton, but later in the summer it was the old-fashioned way. We started early in the AM, and quit about 3 PM, as it just got too hot. Required equipment included a large straw hat, and big coolers of water with a small amount of apple cider vinegar added.

All of which is a rather round-a-bout way to getting to the point of expressing appreciation for our farmers and producers who don’t have the luxury of staying inside with the AC during this critical season on the farm. Just as they brave the freezing winds and ice storms of the winter, our farmers and ranchers continue to keep faith with their land and their animals and their production during the heat of the summer.

That’s why this month, and every month, we are able to buy and cook great tasting and super-nutritious Oklahoma foods for our families and all those we love. When you look at the products offered this month, it’s not always apparent what has gone into the availability of this product. So let’s all take just a moment and give a bit of reflection to the hard work that brings us our daily bread and say a word of “thanks” for all those involved in the production and distribution of our food..

I took some vacation days recently, and was personally avoiding the heat by watching some mindless TV while surfing the internet. The show on the tube was Las Vegas, which is kind of a cross between a soap opera and a crime drama. I was actually kind of drowsy and thinking about a nap, when suddenly I was jerked to awareness by the dialogue on the show. The manager of one of the restaurants at the casino was talking about going with “local and organic foods” for her restaurant! I thought, “Well, I guess we have finally arrived at the mainstream of the American conversation, if the soaps are talking about local foods.”

And there is a reason for this new popular awareness.

My breakfast today was the last of my eggs from last month’s coop order, scrambled, with some chopped walking onions from my garden, a sliced red jalapeno from my garden, and a sprinkling of dried garlic chives harvested earlier in the spring from my garden, some sausage from the coop, and sliced tomatoes on the side from my garden. I was cooking on the porch (we always cook outside all summer long, to minimize the heat build-up inside the house), and I reflected on the fact that there wasn’t a single restaurant in town that could serve me a breakfast like this today. Sure, some restaurants have a few local items on their menu, but this is the basic American breakfast – eggs and sausage – and the quality of this breakfast can only be found in my own home, and in the homes of other members of the coop or folks who shop at the farmers’ markets.

The high days of summer bring us the traditional summer veggies. I’m seeing cantaloupes, cucumbers, purple hulled peas, okra micro-greens, lambs quarters, garlic (including elephant garlic, a rare treat), mushrooms, hot peppers, sweet peppers, summer squash, tomatoes. It looks to me like peppers are in particularly plentiful supply, and well they should be, because I think that hot peppers (well, all the peppers) are one of God’s true gifts to the human race. They are high in nutrition, and are very versatile in cooking. You can add peppers to almost anything, including desserts like pies and cakes and breads. Now is the time to buy them in order to preserve them for eating later. You’ll find recipes below for my hot pepper salsa/sauce, and info about pickled peppers. Note that peppers can be frozen without any prep. I typically just pinch off the stem, and put them into a freezer container; they do not need to be blanched.

Another item in really good supply this month is cucumbers, and here again, now is the time to buy so you can pickle them for later, recipes are below, and remember, as long as the electricity grid is working (lol), you can make refrigerator pickles which are about as easy as can be. My problem with refrigerator pickles, however, is that they have to be in the refrigerator, I can’t hide them in closets and etc., so they get eaten REALLY quickly as my roommates see them and just eat them out of hand like a snack chip. Certainly they are better nutrition and more better bon appetitin’ tasting than any snack chip in the store, lol.

Nutritionists tell us that about half of your plate should be vegetables.

There are a lot of creative ways to use summer vegetables. One of my favorites is to saute sliced summer squash, chopped onions, and sliced peppers (hot and or sweet). I sprinkle this while cooking with some chopped fresh oregano and some chopped fresh parsley from the garden. I can (and have) eaten this five days in a row when summer squash are in season. I might throw a peeled and chopped peach in too just for variety during the peach season.

Turning to the meat and poultry departments of the coop, well, here again, we are blessed with an abundance. I’ve been in the meat aisles of stores like Whole Foods in other cities, and looked at price lists for free ranging meats elsewhere, and we don’t know just how good we have it here in Oklahoma thanks to the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Yes, I know, it’s not the big box supermarket price. But it’s not mystery meat either. And our prices are typically better than they are elsewhere for free range meats and poultry.

Another day time crime drama I watched on my vacation day featured this line – “That hamburger may have DNA from a hundred different animals in it” – and that is what you get when you buy hamburger from the big box tores. Not to mention the little detail that the big box supermarkets get their meats from giant processing plants, and we’ve all heard the news about the various meat recalls. Contrast this with meats from our producers, processed at facilities inspected by the Oklahoma Dept of Agriculture. Did you know that no customer has ever gotten sick from a product processed at a state inspected plant in Oklahoma?

The key to managing your food budget and incorporating local meats is portion control. I’m feeding five these days, one of whom is 4 years old, and I take 1 pound of hamburger and make 8 patties out of it. Two 1/8 pound patties seem like more than one 1/4 pound patty. This, plus a mound of squash/peppers/onions, and some sliced tomatoes, and whole wheat bread, maybe some gravy, make a very fine and filling meal.

I take a pound of hamburger, and a pound of ground pork, plus some cooked bulgar, 1 egg, a good dash of ketchup, a quarter cup of peanut butter, and make a very fine meatloaf that ends up providing two meals for five – carefully portioned slices of meat loaf for one meal, with meatloaf left over for sandwiches the next day. It’s just a little more than $1/person/meal, which is the amount figured per person/meal on the food stamp program.

When it comes to pork chops and pork steaks, sure, I could sit down and eat six pork chops and couple of pork steaks, lol, but I find I am full with one pork chop, plus some dressing or rice, gravy, vegetables and sliced tomatoes.

Don’t forget the organ meats, liver in particular. Some people complain about the bland taste of liver, but not at my house. I marinate liver in a mixture of teriyaki sauce, hot peppers, onions, black pepper, and garlic. When I cook the liver, I put the peppers, garlic, and onion from the marinade into the skillet too. Here again, you can stretch your meat dollar by chopping the liver into smaller pieces after its cooked and mixing with cooked rice or bulgar, for the traditional New Orleans “Dirty Rice” dish.

Nutritionists tell us that about 1/4 of our plate should be the meat or protein.

We are, of course, socialized by the conventional food system to be gluttons – to favor quantity over quality, to ignore the externalized costs of our food choices, and to just do as the advertisements tell us to do. The local food market, however, opens a different way of thinking about our food choices. Better foods means that we care less about quantity and more about quality and taste. Not coincidentally, this means that we make healthier food choices. Healthier food choices mean we spend less at the doctor’s office.

And speaking of healthier food choices, we come to the final quarter of our plate – high quality, whole grains. You will find these choices in abundant supply each and every month from the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. You can buy flour, you can buy grain and grind it or “bulgarize” it yourself, or you can buy fine baked goods – breads, flat breads, rolls – or convenience mixes and frozen doughs. Fiber is essential for good nutrition, and whole grain products offer great nutrition and taste. I assure you – it is not too hot to bake. I use an electric roaster oven on my front porch. Alternatively, I make stove top breads, traditionally called “naan” in the Indian subcontinent. But even these are made on my front porch. . .

Don’t forget the importance of wheat to your family’s food storage program. Every household should store at least 200 pounds of grain per family member as an emergency reserve. That’s admittedly hard to think about buying in one large purchase, but one 25 lb bucket of grain/month slowly and steadily moves you towards more household food security. There are a hundred and one things that could happen in a heartbeat that would stop the flow of groceries through the agribizness food system. Don’t wait for a food crisis, which is surely coming, to stock up on food. Stock up now, while food is plentiful, so you have something to eat later, when maybe it won’t be so plentiful. (And buy a grain grinder while you’re at it.) 200 pounds sounds like a lot, but that is only a half loaf of bread/person/day for a year. Grain prices are rising, the Russians are experiencing a drought and they may not export any wheat this year.

If you think a global food crisis is unlikely, read “Will global warming, overpopulation, floods, droughts, and food riots make this man rich?” by McKenzie Phillips, in Rolling Stone Magazine, about the world-wide land rush to get control of millions of acres of land in poor and troubled countries –

In the past 2 years alone, 50 million acres (the equivalent of all the farmland of France or 10% of farmland in Africa), has changed hands, and it’s not being bought by poor or middle class farmers. It’s sovereign wealth funds from China (19 million acres in Phillippines, Kazakstan, Russia, Cameroon, Australia, Mozambique, Sudan, Canada), India (2 million acres in Ethiopia, Madagascar, Tanzania, Paraguay, Uruguay, Argentina, Indonesia), Saudi Aradia (6 million acres in Indonesia, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Egypt, Sudan), South Korea (6 million acres in Madagascar, Sudan, Mongolia, Russia, Argentina, Phillippines), plus Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

“He who controls the land controls the food,” as they say, which makes our work of building a viable local food system founded upon independently owned family farms all the more critical.

Dairy is also an important part of a balanced, nutritious diet, and while California needs a multi-million dollar ad campaign to convince folks that their cows are “contented”, the Oklahoma dairy products from our Oklahoma producers in fact come from truly contented animals. NO ad campaign is needed to make this point, you can visit the farms if you’ve a mind to. Cheese and yogurt add a lot of quality for their price to your diet. No “pasteurized processed cheese-like food wrapped in cellophane” here.

Most of us eat out on occasion, some of us “more than on occasion”. We work, and often it is easier to go out for lunch than to bring something from home. The problem with that is finding nutritious food when eating out is a real challenge. Most of the major fast food restaurants incorporate “pink slime” (a beef by-product manufactured by large beef processors using ammonia as one of the ingredients) into their burger meat because that saves them a nickle or so a pound on their costs. See Safety of beef processing method is questioned in the NY Times for details on that if you need some incentive to avoid chain fast food hamburgers. Besides making your own lunch, the coop’s many prepared food producers make delicious foods that are certainly competitive with restaurant food prices, that you can take to work for your lunch. Calzones, burritos, there are many choices. This way you know your food, you know what you are eating, there is no pink slime on the ingredient list, and the food is nutritious. In this day and age, that’s a precious commodity, and we are lucky to have such easy access to these foods.

NB: the term pink slime was coined by a USDA microbiologist, who said (as quoted in the NY Times article referenced above) – “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

What else is on our menu this month?

Nuts – nut butters, pecans, peanuts. These are all high in protein and very beneficial oils, and you can know the source and the production practices.

Herbs and condiments? You can serve ground beef seven days a week, without anyone getting bored, with the creative use of herbs and condiments.

Jams and jellies? Brighten your rolls with a spoonful of jam, add it to your oatmeal, use it to flavor a sauce for pork.

The food coop is also your number one source for natural non-food items. I am a low maintenance guy, but whenever I travel, I take soap with me. Once you get used to the many fine hand-crafted soaps from our artisan producers, you will never want to go back to commercial soaps which always seem to leave a scum on your skin afterwards, and whose commercial fragrances are over-powering and often irritating. The delicately scented products of our artisan producers are superior in every way – and when considering how long they last, they are actually cheaper than store bought soaps. Commercial soap just melts, artisan soaps offer great value.

Cleaning products? Laundry detergent? Garden helpers? Live plants? Jewelry, crafts, gifts? We’ve got ‘em, in abundance. Besides their high quality, as with all of the products from the coop, your money stays here at home and helps build a strong local economy that will carry us through the troubled times ahead.

August is a great month for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative. Don’t forget to order!

Bob's Summer Kitchen:

electric roaster oven, electric skillet, 2 burner propane camp stove, rolling table. I do the prep inside, load things onto the rolling table, and then its off to the front porch for the cooking. My front porch is on the north side of the house, and it is well shade not only by its roof but also by copious vegetation. For more ideas about reducing energy expense and increasing comfort in the summer, see my flyer http://www.energyconservationinfo.org/summer2007.pdf .

And now, for some recipes. . .

Bob’s Hot Pepper Sauce

I don’t know if this is a sauce or a salsa, it doesn’t have tomatoes in it, so I don’t know where it actually fits, but I know we like it. I usually make this with a mixture of habaneros, jalapenos, and cayenne, which makes a “super fiercely hot” sauce, but it could be made with milder peppers. The mix is never quite the same, it depends on what I produce in my garden, so each year the taste is just a bit different.

Ingredients:

Peppers (hot or otherwise)
Apple cider vinegar
Garlic

Take the stems off the peppers and process them in a blender or food processor until they are finely ground. Meanwhile, put vinegar in a pan and add several cloves of peeled and mashed garlic. Heat the vinegar to a boil and simmer it for 4 minutes. Strain to remove the garlic. Wash and sterilize your jars (I usually use half-pint jars), and pack them loosely with the processed peppers, leaving 3/4 inch headspace. Bring the vinegar back to a boil, and pour into the jars, leaving 1/4 inch headspace. Wipe the rims, put the lids on, screw the rings on, and process in a boiling water bath for 20 minutes. When the processing time is up, use jar lifters to remove the jars, let cool on the counter. Store for 3 weeks before using. When I make this with mostly Scotch bonnet and habanero peppers, 1 teaspoon will make a whole pot of rice firery hot. NB: the water should be boiling in your canner before you put the jars in, have another pot of already rapidly boiling water on hand and after you add your jars, if necessary add more boiling water so it starts up boiling right away. Do not start the time until the water is at a rapid boil.

Pickling

First, here is a page of information and recipes about pickling from the National Center for Home Food Preservation – http://www.uga.edu/nchfp/how/can6b_pickle.html . Some useful, actually necessary, equipment items include a jar lifter, jar funnel, boiling water canner (if you are doing hot processed pickles that can be stored at room temperature), plus jars, lids, and screw bands.

It takes three or four cucumbers (about 4-5 inches long) to fill a pint jar. For both refrigerator and hot pack pickles, you slice the ends off and then slice them into spears. Or you can slice them cross-wise for pickle slices such as are served on hamburgers.

Boil the jars for ten minutes to sterilize them. Leave them in the hot water until you are ready to fill them, they should be submerged in the water. Remove them from the hot water with jar lifters.

When preparing hot peppers, always wear gloves to protect your hands. DO NOT rub your eyes while wearing those gloves or if you forget and don’t wear them! Wash your hands thoroughly after prepping hot peppers.

Refrigerator Pickles

About 12, 3-4 inch long pickling cucumbers
3-3/4 cups white or apple cider vinegar
1 1/2 cups chopped fresh dill weed
1/2 cup sugar or honey
8 cloves garlic, chopped
1 1/2 tablespoons coarse salt
1 tablespoon pickling spice
1 1/2 teaspoons dill seed
1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes, or to taste or two or three red jalapenos or a habanero
4 pint jars, lids, and rings

Put all the ingredients except the cucumbers, fresh dill weed and the fresh hot peppers into a pan and bring to a boil. It’s best to used a lined pot of some sort as the vinegar can interact with metal to make the solution cloudy. Bring to a simmer, and cook for about 4 minutes. Put fresh dill in the bottom of the jars, and pack them with the cucumber spears and hot peppers. Pour the hot liquid into the jars, filling them to within 1/4 inch of the rim (called headspace). Wipe the rims, put the lids on, screw the rings on. Let sit on the counter until they cool, then refrigerate. It’s best to let them sit in the refrigerator for at least a week. If kept refrigerated, they will keep for several months in the fridge, but they are so tasty they are unlikely to last that long. If you don’t like hotness, don’t include the hot peppers or crushed red pepper.

If you want these to be pickles stored at room temperature, once you fill and seal the jars, put them immediately in a boiling water canner for 15 minutes processing time (pint jars).

Any recipe for pickles can be used for refrigerator pickles. Instead of processing them in boiling water, simply put them in the refrigerator after the jars cool.

Y'all bon appetit, you hear?

Bob Waldrop
bobagandist in chief

Oklahoman reports April's story.

2010-07-15T15:55:00.000-05:00

Go here to read April's story in the business section of the Oklahoman today.

ODOT starts to back-track on April Harrington situation

2010-07-14T10:56:00.001-05:00

The story we broke to the public yesterday about ODOT's treatment of April Harrington was the lead story last night on Channel 4 Television. Amazingly, ODOT is now saying "maybe we can re-engineer the highway so we don't have to take April's property." Keep making those calls to state reps and senators and the governor's office, now is the time to keep the pressure on.

View the KFOR story here .

Some more background info --

Earth Elements has 8 - 14 employees depending on the season
They buy betwen 5,000 - 6,000 pounds of produce yearly from local farmers
They use 44% local food in their line of 300+ products
A yearly average of 7 local food entrepreneurs depend on her certified kitchen to process their products for higher resale value

April is asking for:

"Fair compensation for the building and the work having to be done for ODOT to settle this matter, also fair time allowance to rebuild or at least compensation for the time we are shut down."

FYI - April is this year's winner of an Oklahoma Sustainability Network (OSN) award for her work to grow and support the local food movement!

Here is a way to find your State Senator and Rep: http://www.capitolconnect.com/demoassoc1/legislatorsearch.aspx.

Hat tip to Christine Patton/Transition OKC for the additional talking points.

A crime is being committed against April Harrington!

2010-07-12T13:37:00.000-05:00

The growing of a local system is a complex endeavor. In many ways, it mimics nature itself. There are many different structures and systems that are involved, that grow and inter-act with each other.

The Oklahoma Food Cooperative is such a structure; so are the various producers that are marketing into the local economy.

And so are businesses such as April Harrington's Market-Bakery.

She fills a unique and irreplaceable role in the local food system. She buys excess produce from local farmers in season, preserves it, and produces delicious food products which are bought year-round by customers. In addition, several other local entrepreneurs rent her facilities or contract with her to produce their products which they sell to their customers.

Unfortunately for April, her customers, her employees, the other food businesses who use her bakery, and the farmers whose produce she buys, the Oklahoma Department of Transportation is doing its best to put her out of business.

The state wants to widen the highway that runs by her bakery, and so her building – and thus her business – will be taken by the state for the highway project. ODOT is talking low-ball money offers and a drop dead date of January 1, 2011 for her to get out of her building. That isn’t enough time to replace the facilities elsewhere and relocate her business, and I don’t think they are offering her enough money either. AFAIK, they are offering nothing to help with business relocation, nor compensation for the down-time of her business while she relocates. They will do nothing for her employees, for the other entrepreneurs who rent her facilities, nor for the farmers who are dependent upon her as a market for their excess and #2 produce.

What’s happening to April Harrington is a terrible crime of social and economic injustice.

A business like April’s just doesn’t happen over night. She has worked smart and hard to create a unique business that fills an important niche in the developing local food scene in Oklahoma. Times are hard enough these days without the State coming in and destroying jobs and businesses for no good reason in rural areas.

This is a political issue, and this is an election year.

Folks, it's time to swarm the barricades in defense of April Harrington, her employees, the entrepreneurs who rent her bakery, her customers, and the farmers whose produce she buys.

I urge everyone to contact their representatives and senators in the state legislature and the governor to demand justice for April Harrington – and her customers, employees, the entrepreneurs who rent her bakery, and the farmers whose produce she buys.

Bobaganda

The Coop in 2012

Ye Olde Bon Appetitin' Oklavore Gift Guide Part the Third -- the IN BETWEENS

Ye Olde Bon Appetitin' Oklavore Gift Guide -- Part 2 -- the EXTRAVAGANTS

Your Oklavore Holiday Gift-giving Guide - Part 1 -- the Stocking Stuffers

Green Bean Casserole -- with a Home-made Shiitake Mushroom Sauce and Sean's Should Be Famous Onion Rings

Fried Radishes and Eggs

BEWARE of your Butter!

Ideas for a Local and Low Impact Holiday!

Mushroom Gravy, Creme of Mushroom Soup, and Saurkraut

WOW! What a FEAST of FOOD for our FEASTIN SEASON!

Carols for the Feastin' Season!

The Cooperative Difference -- 14 reasons to shop at the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

First worker coop meeting tonight!

Tonight (Thursday, September 29) is the first meeting of the A Better Way to Go to Work fall tour. This is our Midwest City Presentation

We start at 7 PM, at the Midwest City Library 8143 E Reno. I am tonight's presenter.

Come and learn how worker owned cooperatives can --

help you create good jobs for yourself, your family, and your friends,

-- gain job security for the future,

-- Drive economic development for your community,

-- Protect your family from economic insecurity and calamities,

-- Increase your household financial resilience and sustainability,

-- Discover more fun, enjoyable, and profitable ways to work.

See http://www.okie.coop for more information.

Tonight's bon appetitin' casserole

Bob visits Sunflower "Farmers" Market and finds. . . Homeland!

September Bobaganda: More on caramelized onions, summer squash, and why food storage is important.

On supporting your local producer community during really hard times.

It's TOO HOT to shop so I'm going to the COOP!

Down to the wire on the July order.

It's STILL Summertime. . . .and the livin' is HOT.

While you're reading the news connecting ROUNDUP with BIRTH DEFECTS. . .

It's Summertime. . . and the livin' is easy and the eatin' is good.

Radish Home Fries

Structural Issues for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

Request for public comment about a possible change in the Oklahoma Food Coop's product standards.

My welcome speech to today's Annual Meeting of the Oklahoma Food Coop

Endorsers of Chelsey Simpson for President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

Why I support Chelsey Simpson for President of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

My Bon Appetitin' Happy New Year Bobaganda

HARRINGTON BEATS ODOT! YEEHAW TIME AT EARTH ELEMENTS MARKET BAKERY!

Brainstorming ideas for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative.

The Feastin' Season Begins! November Bobagandistic Thoughts for the Oklahoma Food Cooperative

Down to the wire for April Harrington.

A special bobaganda just for producers!

This is disappointing.

October Bobagandistic Thoughts

SAVE THE MARKET BAKERY!

FEAR -- FIRE -- FOES -- AWAKE! S 510 could destroy local agriculture

How much food is a year's supply for a family of four?

Why Bob is freaking out about food.

We are just one bad year on the farm away from horrific famine.

Homeless kitties need a good home.

Highlights of the September food coop board meeting

Compendium of Useful Information

The September Bobaganda

Summertime bobagandistic thoughts about the August Oklahoma Food Coop order

Oklahoman reports April's story.

ODOT starts to back-track on April Harrington situation

A crime is being committed against April Harrington!