Save It For a Rainy Day

The summer is at it's peak here in Eureka and it seems as if my life is revolving around food - fruit, vegetables, herbs, canning, drying, freezing...food in it's freshest forms. Our farm share boxes are full these days - each week's box load packed with something old and something new but everything much fresher than what I've been getting at Winco. I swore I would post pictures of each and every box to encourage more people to consider supporting the local farms but I've been so busy with saving my stuff, I lose track of time. If I don't want anything to go to waste, I have to be diligent about sorting through and making plans. The purple beans have been lovely but we can only eat so many but trimming and tossing in the freezer means we'll have some for later in the year. I'm not a fan of [roly poly] peas but shelling them into a tub for the freezer will force me to eat something I normally avoid by throwing a handful into pots of pasta e fromage or tuna and noodles. I've had my dehydrator running pretty much constantly for the past few weeks with trimmings from my rosemary, oregano, sage and parsley, alternating with the bountiful herbs from the farm box. Little nosegays of basil one week, a huge bunch the next - most of which went into the freezer but a tray or two were dried for the spice rack. This week, we're back to just a few stalks of basil but enough dill to consider another attempt at pickles. Potatoes, tomatoes, zucchini have been constant and this week, the beets are back. Mark's mom will benefit from the extras.

A week or so ago, Glo and I headed up to Wolfsen's to pick blueberries. The little buggers are pricey but good. As of yet, I haven't been privey to anyone's wild blueberry stash so, if we want to pick, we pay. We were a little more careful and only picked about five pounds to avoid the sticker shock of last year's ten pound berry orgy. Back home to rinse and trim and lay them out on trays to be frozen then stored in a tub to use for muffins and pancakes or added to pies and jam when blackberries are ripe.
On Sunday, we bought our first albacore of the season off a boat at Woodley Island. Paying the boat hands to clean it is worth any price they ask so I take home only a bag of dressed out fish including the red meat to be canned for the cats...I hadn't intended to can yet but after taking out enough for dinner from a 12 pound fish, the rest was loaded into jars so the canner was put to work for the first time this season.

I've managed my first load of blackberry jam for the season and hope to do a few more batches before the season ends. I'm way too lazy to be this productive. I would NEVER have made it out on a Little House On The Prairie.

Ch Ch Ch Changes

Like a lot of people, I find myself constantly fighting the battle of environment vs. economy. In an effort to support conscious production of my food as well as the local economy, I make the tough decision to buy, for example, $2/pound organic zucchini at the Farmer's Market rather than the much more economical standard squash at the grocery store. I have to admit that I am not as concerned about the eating as much as the process of organics. After all, we survived our childhoods fraught with copious amounts of lead and lawn sprays, not to mention the lack of seatbelts and bicycle helmets. It's more the process of genetically modifying crops to suit our schedules and spraying chemicals over the farm crews as if they were dispensable that disturbs me. That said, I wanted to share this week's farm box and hopefully, each week's bounty in order to encourage more of you to support local farms - pricey but I think it will save us much in the long run. This week, another kohlrabi (that's the funny purple spaceship), a bit of lettuce and a small chunk of broccoli. those went into a pasta pot into which I added some home-canned tuna and scads of garlic. The garlic was in there, too, along with some new potatoes, a few onions, summer squash (which, in hindsight, would have been better with the tuna), some basil and parsley, both of which also added to the dinner. It's still only our second box so the pickin's are slim but really very nice. The box will get fuller as the weeks go by. The letter enclosed assures us that tomatoes are on their way. My most recent adjustment has been my milk purchases. As pleased as I've been with a gallon of milk finally costing less than two bucks at Winco, neither of the brands they carry are California produced....what about our Happy Cows? They do carry Humboldt Creamery milk in half gallons but it's much more expensive. What's a girl to do when, as a Surfrider member, she supports the Rise Above Plastics but the gallon jugs of milk are SO much less expensive. Argh! have discovered Walgreen's carries Humboldt Creamery milk, often just a bit above the $2 mark so I've been making a stop there to buy my milk and decided this week to spend more (about 75¢/gallon) to switch to half-gallon cartons that I can burn. When you buy three or four gallons of milk a week, it can add up but it's a price I'm willing to pay to keep money local and avoid the use of plastic. It has totally changed the look of my frig, though.

PURPLE HAZE

I have been remiss reporting on the booty that is the contents of my weekly veggie box from the CR farm. The first few boxes are always a crap shoot -- sometimes Davy Jones' locker, which includes early tomatoes, basil and zucchini, while others are like Pandora's Box, beets and more potatoes than we can eat. I HAVE actually been eating the beets (though I've pulverized some and put them in the freezer to make homemade bread pink and even healthier) and some of the potatoes, though I've been sharing these early spuds since they won't store well.
This week's box was stunning. Along with yet another bonanza of chard, some peas and basil, and yet another BUNCH of beets, there were these aubergine treasures. No Photoshopping here...honest. There was purple cauliflower, purple beans and one purple pepper. The apples were in there as well so I added them to this shot just for contrast. They're crisp and tasty with chunks of cheese.

If you're a veggie-eater, the farm box is a great way to get your veggies. If you're not a veggie eater.... listen to your mother and EAT YOUR VEGGIES! Every week I look forward to collecting my box of treasure to see what we'll be eating for the next seven days. It forces me to vary my produce selection beyond what I would normally buy and, because I'm a tightwad and hate to waste, we eat most all of it.....occasionally we get overloaded and the hens benefit when things spoil, but not very often. I know more of the Farmer's Market regulars are beginning to offer shares but I'm partial to supporting the CR farm.

A TIME TO REAP

The start of harvest has begun at the CR Farm and we on the subscribers list have received our first box of farm-fresh veggies. The first few boxes are seldom exciting but lucky for me, I like my greens.

I grew up in a household where both parents worked at packing plants and would bring home fresh veggies regularly. I'm a firm believer that most kids don't like vegetables simply because they've only eaten the canned variety. I love vegetables. OK, I don't much like green peas (the roly-poly kind) but even I have been known to throw a handful in soup or tuna/noodles if they come in a farm box. I kinda wish the CR kids would go a little lighter on the beets but I always try their recipes so found borscht to be an interesting use of them, especially with a sprinkle of dill and a dollop of Daisy. If nothing else, they can be pureed and "snuck" into other foods. They make real pretty bread. My cousin was shocked at my dislike of beets and told me she just cooks hers in butter. I will have to try that because this week, we have beets…. little baby, radish-sized beets but beets nonetheless. We also have kohlrabi, new potatoes, baby spinach and a few summer squash. Oh yeah, a bag of cilantro.

What to do when I need to cook dinner and I have this entire box that needs to be dealt with? sigh... I cleaned the spinach (these veggies are fresh from the field and DO NOT come prewashed like the ones at the grocery store) and tossed it in my pasta y fromage…mine was homemade but I’m sure it would improve even the boxed kind of mac `n cheese. Later in the season, I look forward to bushels of tomatoes and clumps of basil (it freezes well so gets me through the winter) and cilantro to make pasta sauce and salsa. A few years back there were figs. Oh, man, I LOVE figs! We’ll have lots of peppers and carrots, some cucumbers. I love fresh veggie season. My intention is to share with you the contents of each week's box to encourage you to subscribe to one of the local farms. Supporting our local farms is a good thing.

BUY LOCAL = BUY FRESH

You call it summer….I call it Farmer’s Market season. Thank goodness for the availability of fresh picked, local produce. Although many people frequent the farmers markets for organic fruits and veggies, for me the draw is FRESH. Often, the fruits and vegetables are picked the same day they are sold at market and you couldn’t get much fresher than that unless you have a veggie patch of your own. Honestly, though, I’ve been a hit or miss visitor to the Saturday market in Arcata. My two sides pull at me – my healthy, cook-from-scratch side is thrilled with the options, especially when Japanese eggplant and lilac bell peppers arrive. However, my thrifty side winces at the cost of a $6 bag of wax beans I bought for a bean salad. You can blow $20 with no effort at all.

This year, that all changes. I’ve had an epiphany of sorts. I shop happily at Winco every week. I love their variety and just shopping there is an adventure. At certain points in the month, it CAN be overwhelming -- families with unruly kids in tow doing their month’s shopping -- and I’ve learned that if I shop with my iPod in my ears, the infernal squawking of the store intercom isn’t half as annoying. The prices on produce have always been reasonable but I’ve found the quality has become marginal of late. Bananas bought green ripen into inedible bruised fruit; the same with cantaloupes and nectarines. The last straw was two “clamshells” of strawberries purchased on Thursday night that were a mass of black fuzz by Saturday morning when I hoped to make a fruit salad. Those went to my hens along with two of the four “on the vine” tomatoes. When you factor in waste, the low prices are not so low.

I decided I would start hitting the farmer’s market more regularly to supplement my CSA farm share box I get each week from the College of the Redwoods farm. The produce there is a little more expensive but SO tasty. Fresh greens for salad along with lemon cucumbers. Little baskets of sweet cherry tomatoes in a variety of colors. None of it will go to waste. I wish I didn’t have to go all the way to Arcata for the big market but the one in Henderson Center is over before I get off work.

The upshot of this is a new word added to my vocabulary – locavore. It’s a word coined to identify those who choose to eat food grown or made in their area. eatlocalchallenge I’ve always supported local businesses -- the fact that our local breweries produce an awesome product makes THAT particular decision pretty easy and there’s something very cool about buying fish directly from the docks and the people that caught it. Soon I'll be picking fresh berries on the roadside to make jam. Choosing locally grown vegetables and fruit assure that my family is eating a food that was picked within days if not hours of sale. It wasn’t picked green somewhere before being shipped vast distances. I’m sure that the intension is that green pit-fruit and tomatoes will be tough enough to withstand the violent bouncing they will receive in transit but they still bruise and the damage isn’t seen until AFTER it ripens which is generally also AFTER I’ve paid good money for it. I've already stopped buying apples in the stores choosing, instead, to limit my apple purchases to local apples during apple season. That may mean a trip to the orchards of Wrigley, Clendenen or Arrington or maybe to Myrtle Avenue Market where I can count on them to have local apples but no longer to I buy autumn apples in the off-season only to be faced with a handful of mealy, flavorless, OLD apple.

My CSA farm share boxes have just started…greens and kohl crops mostly but a little basil thrown in to give me the promise of pesto season. Before long, the boxes will be overflowing with tomatoes and peppers, melons and squash. Maybe a few too many beets for my taste though but, thanks to included recipes, I’ve learned that borscht is not so bad. My fingers are crossed for figs that we were tantalized with two years ago. So here’s to a season of flavor and getting my moneys worth.