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
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Oklahoman reports April's story.
Go here to read April's story in the business section of the Oklahoman today.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
ODOT starts to back-track on April Harrington situation
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 --
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.
Monday, July 12, 2010
A crime is being committed against April Harrington!
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.
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.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Menu Planning part 2: Food Storage
This is the 2nd part of an on-going series on menu planning. And you may be asking yourself, what does food storage have to do with menu planning?
The answer is that local food meal planning does not exist in isolation from other aspects of household and community food security. The local food system does not look like Wal Mart, it does not have all the convenience of a big box supermarket. The sooner you get your brain wrapped firmly around that concept, the better and easier your local food adventures will be. It is not easy to do this, since most of us have known nothing other than a big box supermarket all our lives. We expect everything to be available all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Here in the United States, we benefit from our position at the top of the world food chain to take food from hungry people around the world to load our tables with the delights of gluttony. I'm sure that sounds somewhat harsh, but it is the truth. When we buy out of season produce, chances are very goodr that we are taking food from the mouths of hungry children in countries around the world.
As the situation with peak oil develops around the world, the days of flying in grapes from Chile and lettuce from Israel will be numbered. Air freight in particular (which is the freight of choice for perishable produce) is vulnerable to the price and availability of fuel. We are never more than one terrorist or political incident away from having that fragile system of air freighted produce broken into a million pieces. And like Humpty Dumpty, once broken, it wiill be hard to put it back together again.
Here in North America, we are in the midst of the summer growing season. We are all thinking about the great meals we will have this summer from our gardens' production and from the local farmers' markets and local food coops -- but now is also the time to think about what we will eat in December, January, and February, when most of those farmer's markets are closed and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative has no produce for sale.
Which is to say -- now is the time to buy not only your summer food needs, but also start working on what you will need during the winter.
So it comes to pass that food storage is essential to feeding your household more local foods. Yes, you can also invest in cold frames and a greenhouse and maybe have some greens this summer, but most of us won't or can't do that.
To successfully store summer produce, you will need some equipment.
The easiest method of summer produce storage is the freezer. Most vegetables can be simply blanched (dipped in boiling water for a few minutes) and frozen. I typically freeze cooked vegetables (especially the summer greens like chard and collards).
A second method of preservation is dehydration, also easy. I dehydrate shredded summer squash and carrots and use them for winter soups and sauces.
A third method is canning. You can make pickles and chutneys and other high acid products using vinegar with a boiling water canner, but other low-acid veggies and meats will require a pressure canner. That's a bit more involved, but here again, there is a convenience factor as the pressure canning process cooks them so they are ready to heat and eat. Your local county extension department can provide you with complete information about home canning, and you can also take your pressure canner there for a pressure test to make sure it is working OK.
This also is a good time to talk a bit about longer-term food storage. Going forward into the years ahead, which will be characterized by the problems caused by peak oil, economic irrationality, and climate disruptions, all of us should keep some of our family's savings in the form of food. Buy now, eat later; store what you eat and eat what you store. I am of the opinion that every household should have a year's worth of basic foods on hand at all times -- beans, rice, grains, honey, etc. Not many of us could buy a whole year's worth of food at one time, but everyone could buy a little extra each month. By incorporating these basic foods into your diet, eating more beans for example, and grinding your own grain to make flour and baking your own bread, you can save money on your regular food bill and that would allow you to set aside some extra food each month. Wheat, for example, is available in large quantities right now, through the Oklahoma Food Coop you can get it already packaged in buckets for long-term storage, and it is certified organic wheat no less.
In recent years, we've had the energy crisis, and the financial crisis, and it may be that a food crisis lurks around the corner. Like the financial and energy crisis, when it comes upon us there won't be much warning and people will wonder, "how did this happen". As they say, the time to develop your family's food storage system is before the food shortages begin.
What does this have to do with menu planning? Food storage simplifies menu planning and helps you stick to your food plan even if you run out of time to go shopping. It increases the convenience of your local food system, since food storage is like having a mini-grocery store right there in your own house. It helps you develop frugal menu plans, since you are buying in larger quantities and thus probably saving some money.
Final notes on food storage:
+ Rotate your supplies. It really helps to write the date purchased on all items in your pantry.
+ Not all food storage items will come from local production, due to its present limitations. Dried beans, for example, are simply n ot available from local food production, yet they are an important component of a frugal meal plan. So some things must be bought from the regular food system, and I will talk a bit about that upcoming in future installments in this series.
+ Don't delay, act today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
The answer is that local food meal planning does not exist in isolation from other aspects of household and community food security. The local food system does not look like Wal Mart, it does not have all the convenience of a big box supermarket. The sooner you get your brain wrapped firmly around that concept, the better and easier your local food adventures will be. It is not easy to do this, since most of us have known nothing other than a big box supermarket all our lives. We expect everything to be available all the time, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. Here in the United States, we benefit from our position at the top of the world food chain to take food from hungry people around the world to load our tables with the delights of gluttony. I'm sure that sounds somewhat harsh, but it is the truth. When we buy out of season produce, chances are very goodr that we are taking food from the mouths of hungry children in countries around the world.
As the situation with peak oil develops around the world, the days of flying in grapes from Chile and lettuce from Israel will be numbered. Air freight in particular (which is the freight of choice for perishable produce) is vulnerable to the price and availability of fuel. We are never more than one terrorist or political incident away from having that fragile system of air freighted produce broken into a million pieces. And like Humpty Dumpty, once broken, it wiill be hard to put it back together again.
Here in North America, we are in the midst of the summer growing season. We are all thinking about the great meals we will have this summer from our gardens' production and from the local farmers' markets and local food coops -- but now is also the time to think about what we will eat in December, January, and February, when most of those farmer's markets are closed and the Oklahoma Food Cooperative has no produce for sale.
Which is to say -- now is the time to buy not only your summer food needs, but also start working on what you will need during the winter.
So it comes to pass that food storage is essential to feeding your household more local foods. Yes, you can also invest in cold frames and a greenhouse and maybe have some greens this summer, but most of us won't or can't do that.
To successfully store summer produce, you will need some equipment.
The easiest method of summer produce storage is the freezer. Most vegetables can be simply blanched (dipped in boiling water for a few minutes) and frozen. I typically freeze cooked vegetables (especially the summer greens like chard and collards).
A second method of preservation is dehydration, also easy. I dehydrate shredded summer squash and carrots and use them for winter soups and sauces.
A third method is canning. You can make pickles and chutneys and other high acid products using vinegar with a boiling water canner, but other low-acid veggies and meats will require a pressure canner. That's a bit more involved, but here again, there is a convenience factor as the pressure canning process cooks them so they are ready to heat and eat. Your local county extension department can provide you with complete information about home canning, and you can also take your pressure canner there for a pressure test to make sure it is working OK.
This also is a good time to talk a bit about longer-term food storage. Going forward into the years ahead, which will be characterized by the problems caused by peak oil, economic irrationality, and climate disruptions, all of us should keep some of our family's savings in the form of food. Buy now, eat later; store what you eat and eat what you store. I am of the opinion that every household should have a year's worth of basic foods on hand at all times -- beans, rice, grains, honey, etc. Not many of us could buy a whole year's worth of food at one time, but everyone could buy a little extra each month. By incorporating these basic foods into your diet, eating more beans for example, and grinding your own grain to make flour and baking your own bread, you can save money on your regular food bill and that would allow you to set aside some extra food each month. Wheat, for example, is available in large quantities right now, through the Oklahoma Food Coop you can get it already packaged in buckets for long-term storage, and it is certified organic wheat no less.
In recent years, we've had the energy crisis, and the financial crisis, and it may be that a food crisis lurks around the corner. Like the financial and energy crisis, when it comes upon us there won't be much warning and people will wonder, "how did this happen". As they say, the time to develop your family's food storage system is before the food shortages begin.
What does this have to do with menu planning? Food storage simplifies menu planning and helps you stick to your food plan even if you run out of time to go shopping. It increases the convenience of your local food system, since food storage is like having a mini-grocery store right there in your own house. It helps you develop frugal menu plans, since you are buying in larger quantities and thus probably saving some money.
Final notes on food storage:
+ Rotate your supplies. It really helps to write the date purchased on all items in your pantry.
+ Not all food storage items will come from local production, due to its present limitations. Dried beans, for example, are simply n ot available from local food production, yet they are an important component of a frugal meal plan. So some things must be bought from the regular food system, and I will talk a bit about that upcoming in future installments in this series.
+ Don't delay, act today. Procrastination is the thief of time.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Local Foods Menu Planning Part the First
Lately there has been some talk going around about menu planning and local foods, so this would be a good time to review some of the principles I use in menu planning.
The first is -- if you want a menu plan, then you must plan your meals. I know many people don't plan meals more than a day or two in advance, and for those locked into the supermarket culture, that's fine. But households that want to move in the direction of eating more local foods have to be a bit more pro-active. Yes, this takes a bit of time up front, but over the trajectory of a year, you will develop various seasonal meal plans that will speed things up in the future.
And then there's the learning curve. The first time you do anything, it takes longer than the tenth time. I bet it took 30 minutes for me to figure out how to bake my first pan of biscuits, but now I can turn out home-made biscuits as fast as opening a can of store-bought biscuits and putting them in the pan (faster, if you factor in the time required to go to the store and buy the biscuits). It may take a while to get into the groove on menu planning, but the effort is worth it.
SO. . . you have something to look forward to.
The second principle is -- eat with the season. Eat what's available. We are going into high summer, and the food coop and farmers' markets (not to mention your home gardens) are yielding glorious produce. Now is the time to use that produce to great effect in your meal plans, and to put aside produce for future use in the winter. Food preservation and processing will be discussed in much greater detail later, but one way to approach this is to buy two or three times the veggies you will eat each week and store the excess for eating later. Perhaps the easiest way to store many vegetables is to go ahead and cook them, and then freeze them. This has the added benefit of adding convenience, in that all you have to do for a meal is take something out of the freezer and reheat it.
Perennial shortages in veggies available locally include potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage, which of course are the most commonly eaten vegetables. When they are available, it is usually in very small quantities. They are, however, usually available from sources like the Health Food Center on SW 74 and Atkins at NW 63 and May, organic. Buy for Less usually has 5 lb bags of organic carrots for about $5, and generally the Health Food Center is close to that price. Organic cabbage runs $5/head, organic celery $2-3/bunch. Organic onions I usually don't buy, since the pesticide/herbicide count on commercial onions is the least of all the veggies, whereas celery is #1 on the list of pesticide load and non-organic celery should never ever be bought at a grocery store and consumed. See the Environmental Work Group's list of veggies and their pesticide loads for a guide as to what veggies should be only consumed in their organic form. These aren't local, but they are organic, and until our local vegetable production gets up to speed on these key items, unless you intend to forgo these staple foods entirely, this is what your choices are.
Besides vegetables, generally speaking the local food scene in central Oklahoma is well stocked with ground meats, roasts, chicken, organ meats (liver mostly), soup bones, wheat and whole wheat flours, various herbs (which your home garden should also be well stocked with), cheese, and yogurt. We have minimal potatoes, no rice, little corn (and zero corn meal), no rolled oats. And of course, corn meal, potatoes, rice, and rolled oats are generally on everyone's shopping list.
There are no locally available cooking oils, but there is a small amount of lard available, also pork fat so you can render your own lard. Not sure why none of our beef producers sell any of the beef fat, as that can be used to make tallow which is another natural cooking fat.
Eggs are in moderate availability, depending on the time of year. You should always plan to buy extra eggs in the summer and freeze them for use in thew inter when they are scarce.
One rule of thumb is that about half the plate should be devoted to vegetables, 1/4 to meat, and 1/4 to something whole grain. And generally, most dinner plates are too big, so choose dinner plates slightly smaller than the typical dinner plate.
This of course is the exact opposite of what most people end up with for a meal. 3/4 of the plate will be meat and carbs, and only 1/4 vegetables and/or fruit.
Anyway, I digress.
Start by making a list of the meals your family presently enjoys. List everything -- meat or other main dish, carbs (potatoes, rice, pasta, etc), vegetables, desserts, and of course, DO NOT FORGET the snacks. Also, list all the times you eat out and what you eat when you eat out. The reason for this is that you may want to reduce the number of times you eat out, so you will need to think about menus for brown bagging your lunch. Never forget that the price of a pound of hamburger -- when purchased in the form of hamburgers -- is about twelve to fifteen bucks a pound.
If you never (or rarely) plan meals, start small -- try a 3 day meal plan.
Then, look at this plan and see what you can do with local foods. For example, the most common meat eaten at our house is ground beef -- locally sourced, grass fed, free-ranging, through the coop. I buy steaks maybe twice a year. We eat roast about once a month, and not every month. This is what we can afford. Because I can't afford locally-sourced steaks and roast every week, I don't eat them very week (that is, I don't go to the supermarket and buy mystery meat steaks and roast because I can't afford locally sourced steaks and roast every week). I buy one chicken a month, that is what I can afford. When it was just Sean and I, we got about 3 meals out of that chicken. Now that our household has increased to 5, we get one meal and some extra broth out of that chicken. The old saw about chicken having less fat and cholesterol than red meat is only true for supermarket chickens and supermarket red meats. Meats from grass fed, free ranging cattle and bison are as low in cholesterol and fat as chicken, so there is no health reason in the local foods kitchen for preferring chicken over ground beef.
Which is to say -- another principle of local food menu planning is temperance in your choices.
My advice is to start your meal planning with foods you already eat and like, and then over time introduce local foods and substitutions for items you have to buy at a regular supermarket. People are very conservative in their food choices, and a radical change in diet is rarely welcome at the dinner table.
One interesting factor about local foods is that they are so good, that you can serve the same thing basically for several days in a row and not get bored. We eat ground meat -- in different forms -- nearly every day. There are about a gazillion ways to cook ground meats (beef, bison, lamb, pork) and the reason for that is that the majority of the meat from a steer ends up as ground meat. Only about 10-15% goes to steak, which is why they are so expensive.
Some common substitutions at our house include --
The first is -- if you want a menu plan, then you must plan your meals. I know many people don't plan meals more than a day or two in advance, and for those locked into the supermarket culture, that's fine. But households that want to move in the direction of eating more local foods have to be a bit more pro-active. Yes, this takes a bit of time up front, but over the trajectory of a year, you will develop various seasonal meal plans that will speed things up in the future.
And then there's the learning curve. The first time you do anything, it takes longer than the tenth time. I bet it took 30 minutes for me to figure out how to bake my first pan of biscuits, but now I can turn out home-made biscuits as fast as opening a can of store-bought biscuits and putting them in the pan (faster, if you factor in the time required to go to the store and buy the biscuits). It may take a while to get into the groove on menu planning, but the effort is worth it.
SO. . . you have something to look forward to.
The second principle is -- eat with the season. Eat what's available. We are going into high summer, and the food coop and farmers' markets (not to mention your home gardens) are yielding glorious produce. Now is the time to use that produce to great effect in your meal plans, and to put aside produce for future use in the winter. Food preservation and processing will be discussed in much greater detail later, but one way to approach this is to buy two or three times the veggies you will eat each week and store the excess for eating later. Perhaps the easiest way to store many vegetables is to go ahead and cook them, and then freeze them. This has the added benefit of adding convenience, in that all you have to do for a meal is take something out of the freezer and reheat it.
Perennial shortages in veggies available locally include potatoes, onions, carrots, and cabbage, which of course are the most commonly eaten vegetables. When they are available, it is usually in very small quantities. They are, however, usually available from sources like the Health Food Center on SW 74 and Atkins at NW 63 and May, organic. Buy for Less usually has 5 lb bags of organic carrots for about $5, and generally the Health Food Center is close to that price. Organic cabbage runs $5/head, organic celery $2-3/bunch. Organic onions I usually don't buy, since the pesticide/herbicide count on commercial onions is the least of all the veggies, whereas celery is #1 on the list of pesticide load and non-organic celery should never ever be bought at a grocery store and consumed. See the Environmental Work Group's list of veggies and their pesticide loads for a guide as to what veggies should be only consumed in their organic form. These aren't local, but they are organic, and until our local vegetable production gets up to speed on these key items, unless you intend to forgo these staple foods entirely, this is what your choices are.
Besides vegetables, generally speaking the local food scene in central Oklahoma is well stocked with ground meats, roasts, chicken, organ meats (liver mostly), soup bones, wheat and whole wheat flours, various herbs (which your home garden should also be well stocked with), cheese, and yogurt. We have minimal potatoes, no rice, little corn (and zero corn meal), no rolled oats. And of course, corn meal, potatoes, rice, and rolled oats are generally on everyone's shopping list.
There are no locally available cooking oils, but there is a small amount of lard available, also pork fat so you can render your own lard. Not sure why none of our beef producers sell any of the beef fat, as that can be used to make tallow which is another natural cooking fat.
Eggs are in moderate availability, depending on the time of year. You should always plan to buy extra eggs in the summer and freeze them for use in thew inter when they are scarce.
One rule of thumb is that about half the plate should be devoted to vegetables, 1/4 to meat, and 1/4 to something whole grain. And generally, most dinner plates are too big, so choose dinner plates slightly smaller than the typical dinner plate.
This of course is the exact opposite of what most people end up with for a meal. 3/4 of the plate will be meat and carbs, and only 1/4 vegetables and/or fruit.
Anyway, I digress.
Start by making a list of the meals your family presently enjoys. List everything -- meat or other main dish, carbs (potatoes, rice, pasta, etc), vegetables, desserts, and of course, DO NOT FORGET the snacks. Also, list all the times you eat out and what you eat when you eat out. The reason for this is that you may want to reduce the number of times you eat out, so you will need to think about menus for brown bagging your lunch. Never forget that the price of a pound of hamburger -- when purchased in the form of hamburgers -- is about twelve to fifteen bucks a pound.
If you never (or rarely) plan meals, start small -- try a 3 day meal plan.
Then, look at this plan and see what you can do with local foods. For example, the most common meat eaten at our house is ground beef -- locally sourced, grass fed, free-ranging, through the coop. I buy steaks maybe twice a year. We eat roast about once a month, and not every month. This is what we can afford. Because I can't afford locally-sourced steaks and roast every week, I don't eat them very week (that is, I don't go to the supermarket and buy mystery meat steaks and roast because I can't afford locally sourced steaks and roast every week). I buy one chicken a month, that is what I can afford. When it was just Sean and I, we got about 3 meals out of that chicken. Now that our household has increased to 5, we get one meal and some extra broth out of that chicken. The old saw about chicken having less fat and cholesterol than red meat is only true for supermarket chickens and supermarket red meats. Meats from grass fed, free ranging cattle and bison are as low in cholesterol and fat as chicken, so there is no health reason in the local foods kitchen for preferring chicken over ground beef.
Which is to say -- another principle of local food menu planning is temperance in your choices.
My advice is to start your meal planning with foods you already eat and like, and then over time introduce local foods and substitutions for items you have to buy at a regular supermarket. People are very conservative in their food choices, and a radical change in diet is rarely welcome at the dinner table.
One interesting factor about local foods is that they are so good, that you can serve the same thing basically for several days in a row and not get bored. We eat ground meat -- in different forms -- nearly every day. There are about a gazillion ways to cook ground meats (beef, bison, lamb, pork) and the reason for that is that the majority of the meat from a steer ends up as ground meat. Only about 10-15% goes to steak, which is why they are so expensive.
Some common substitutions at our house include --
- Yogurt cheese instead of mayo or miracle whip or sour cream.
- Home made bulgar instead of rice or potatoes (see How to Make Bulgar for my recipe, I used to make and sell it through the coop, but the realities of the processing and sale system were that I had to price it high in order to make enough money to make it worth my time and effort, this is really an item that should be made in the home, and it is dirt cheap when you do it that way in say monthly batches of a few pounds of wheat).
- Walking onions from my garden instead of regular store bought onions.
- "Cream of bulgar" instead of oatmeal (after you grind the bulgar, sift it, and cook the fine bulgar flour like Cream of Wheat).
- Home-made gravy instead of cream of whatever soups for casserolles and "galopie".
- Whole wheat pancakes made from scratch instead of white flour pancake mix.
- Home-made breads instead of store bought (during the summer, I make stove-top flat-breads using regular whole wheat bread dough).
- Bread dough in bowl in the refrigerator for daily home-made bread (stove top or oven baked).
- Frozen home-made stock.
- Frozen cooked veggies.
- Frozen cooked hamburger (freeze in meal size portions).
Saturday, June 12, 2010
The Visit of the Mayors
The Mayors have come to Okie City. Unfortunately, they are meeting at our government owned convention facilities. That means they will have to go elsewhere for a good meal.
I attended a convention at one of our government meeting centers downtown a while back and went to the banquet. It was perhaps the worst banquet meal I have ever eaten, and given the well-deserved bad reputation of convention fodder, that's saying something. The meal consisted of half of a baked chicken (so seriously under-cooked I did not eat it, bright red inside a chicken is not appetizing), "encrusted" with slices of slightly warm/mostly raw potatoes and sprinkled with maybe 3 or 4 flecks of herbs, 4 small pieces of vegetable, some rice-out-of-a-box, also undercooked, a salad and a roll. The roll was good, the salad was acceptable, and I did eat my four small pieces of indifferently cooked veggies, but I refused to touch the chicken and its coating of nearly raw potatoes.
And yes, I did file a complaint with the health department, and ended up in a three way phone converation between someone from the health department and two people from the convention center and that mostly consisted of them assuring me that nobody ever complains about our convention centers' food, and they could not imagine what happened for my chicken to be so undercooked. Why, according to them, that was almost impossible. Maybe I imagined the rivers of blood streaming from my undercooked chicken, but as I hadn't had anything to drink, I don't think so.
The problem with convention food is the monopolies wielded by contractors to these facilities. If you are allowed to bring in someone else, there is usually a stiff tax to be paid to the concessionaire, so high it is obviously designed to keep people from using outside caterers.
Since convention people are here one day and gone the next, and since we are dealing with a government enterprise, and since nearly universally across the country, the food at government convention centers is only marginally edible, there's no financial incentive to do anything other than feed convention people the lowest quality food at the cheapest possible price.
The Oklahoma Sustainability Network faces a similar problem with its annual meetings. The food concessionaire at the University of Central Oklahoma is pretty bad. The last meeting I went to there I had a sandwich on stale bread, lol.
There's no reason that convention food has to be bad. When I went to the Slow Food event (Terra Madre 2004) in Turin, Italy, they fed 5,000 people at a time and the food was wonderful! Well cooked, hot foods were served hot, cold foods were served cold (instead of the typically room temperature of both hot and cold foods at goobermint convention facilities). All it takes is competence in execution, imagination in menu planning, and access to good quality foods.
Alas, Oklahoma's government facilities lack all three.
Despite our growing 21st century reputation as one of the go-to locations for local foods in the United States, our convention center caterers are stuck in a 20th century industrial food model that considers food as nothing more than fodder, the cheaper the better.
My advice to the mayors coming to town is "bring a lunch" or at least avoid the noxious foods of our convention center and explore some of the restaurants in the area.
My advice to Okies who are tired of being embarassed by our government facilities' so-called "food" is somewhat radical. Maybe we should have a FREE MARKET for the food at our government facilities, including the convention centers, the State Fair grounds (don't get me started on those people and the harm they do to local foods by their catering policies), and even (shudder, gasp, horrors) our college food services.
I attended a convention at one of our government meeting centers downtown a while back and went to the banquet. It was perhaps the worst banquet meal I have ever eaten, and given the well-deserved bad reputation of convention fodder, that's saying something. The meal consisted of half of a baked chicken (so seriously under-cooked I did not eat it, bright red inside a chicken is not appetizing), "encrusted" with slices of slightly warm/mostly raw potatoes and sprinkled with maybe 3 or 4 flecks of herbs, 4 small pieces of vegetable, some rice-out-of-a-box, also undercooked, a salad and a roll. The roll was good, the salad was acceptable, and I did eat my four small pieces of indifferently cooked veggies, but I refused to touch the chicken and its coating of nearly raw potatoes.
And yes, I did file a complaint with the health department, and ended up in a three way phone converation between someone from the health department and two people from the convention center and that mostly consisted of them assuring me that nobody ever complains about our convention centers' food, and they could not imagine what happened for my chicken to be so undercooked. Why, according to them, that was almost impossible. Maybe I imagined the rivers of blood streaming from my undercooked chicken, but as I hadn't had anything to drink, I don't think so.
The problem with convention food is the monopolies wielded by contractors to these facilities. If you are allowed to bring in someone else, there is usually a stiff tax to be paid to the concessionaire, so high it is obviously designed to keep people from using outside caterers.
Since convention people are here one day and gone the next, and since we are dealing with a government enterprise, and since nearly universally across the country, the food at government convention centers is only marginally edible, there's no financial incentive to do anything other than feed convention people the lowest quality food at the cheapest possible price.
The Oklahoma Sustainability Network faces a similar problem with its annual meetings. The food concessionaire at the University of Central Oklahoma is pretty bad. The last meeting I went to there I had a sandwich on stale bread, lol.
There's no reason that convention food has to be bad. When I went to the Slow Food event (Terra Madre 2004) in Turin, Italy, they fed 5,000 people at a time and the food was wonderful! Well cooked, hot foods were served hot, cold foods were served cold (instead of the typically room temperature of both hot and cold foods at goobermint convention facilities). All it takes is competence in execution, imagination in menu planning, and access to good quality foods.
Alas, Oklahoma's government facilities lack all three.
Despite our growing 21st century reputation as one of the go-to locations for local foods in the United States, our convention center caterers are stuck in a 20th century industrial food model that considers food as nothing more than fodder, the cheaper the better.
My advice to the mayors coming to town is "bring a lunch" or at least avoid the noxious foods of our convention center and explore some of the restaurants in the area.
My advice to Okies who are tired of being embarassed by our government facilities' so-called "food" is somewhat radical. Maybe we should have a FREE MARKET for the food at our government facilities, including the convention centers, the State Fair grounds (don't get me started on those people and the harm they do to local foods by their catering policies), and even (shudder, gasp, horrors) our college food services.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
