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Teaser Tuesdays: Empires of Food

The Local Cook — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 11:49:43 +0000

“Cancerous is exactly the state of our twenty-first-century global food empire. Whither concentrated orange juice, thither the vast, unmeasured apparatus of commodities markets, shipping fleets, wholesale buyers, and shopping carts.” p. 124

Empires of Food: Feast, Famine, and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations, Evan D.G. Fraser and Andrew Rimas

Come back on Friday for a full review plus a chance to win a copy!

In the meantime, you can read my review of Edible: A Celebration of Local Food and enter to win.

Also, don’t forget about the Food & Faith Challenge! This week focuses on Local Farms.

Top 10 Kitchen Gadgets & Tools

The Local Cook — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 10:35:14 +0000

One of the things I love most about my CSA is the Yahoo Group where members post tips and ideas for using the vegetables we get in the share. Last week fellow member Kathy Simon share her list of kitchen “must haves.” She let me share it with you!

While new to the CSA, I’m a pretty decent cook. Last year I purchased an online subscription to Cook’s Illustrated, as much for the food & equipment reviews as the recipes (their videos are great too).

We were using some old and poorly functioning tools in our kitchen and cooking was not nearly as fun or fast as it could be. Using the reviews and then reader’s reviews on Amazon, I purchased a number of items I now consider “must-haves” in my kitchen. I love them so much I purchased 2 more of each of the items listed below and gave them to our adult daughters, who also like to cook, for Christmas along with a subscription to the Cook’s Illustrated magazine.

Here are our favorites, as in kitchen tools I don’t think we can live without anymore

1) Tovolo Silicone Spatula I had never cooked with heat using a spatula before, I thought they were just for scraping the cake batter out of a bowl. I was really missing out on a great tool for things like scrambled eggs and anything delicate in a non-stick skillet or sauce pan.

2) Microplane Grater/Zester I’ll never buy Parmesan cheese in a green can again. The microplane makes zesting limes/oranges/ lemons a privilege.

3) Messermeister Pro Touch Swivel Peeler From carrots to juicy ripe mangos, this peeler makes short work out of slivering away the the peels headed to the hens from the produce you’re going to eat.

4) Kuhn Rikon Easy-Squeeze Garlic Press I have significant osteoarthritis in my hands, but with this press I can squeeze several moderate sized cloves or a huge one cut in half, with just one hand. No more need for mincing garlic with this puppy. The pieces that come out are that uniform. I can press a dozen cloves and not have to stop to clean out the screen. A breeze to clean too.

5) Victorinox Fibrox 8-Inch Chef’s Knife Wow! I’ll never look back. Inexpensive and top rated not to mention finger shortening sharp.

6) Victorinox Cutlery 3-Piece Paring Knife Set, Black Poly Handles Ditto the chef’s knife. I was only looking for the basic paring knife, but this set was just a few $ more and we like all three. Caution – VERY sharp.

7) Cook’s Illustrated. For those of you not familiar with this magazine, it’s sort of like a Consumer Reports for cooking. You don’t ever get just a recipe and a pretty photo, but all the history, preparation tips & illustrations, reviews of one or more of the ingredients etc. A single recipe may have 3-4 pages of text and illustrations (photos and sketches) to go with it. I’ve found a wealth of cooking tips at their online site, and you can print them, which I’ve done, and make your own notebook of recipes, tips, product and food reviews.

Amazon Prime. One last tip, based on my own buying habits and experiences, regarding purchasing from Amazon. If you find yourself buying a book here, a peeler there, that model airplane for your daughter, fish sauce you can’t find anywhere else & don’t want to spend any more time or gas looking for or yet another book (you get the picture), you might want to sign up for the Amazon Prime program. It’s saved me a ton on shipping charges, especially when I’m buying a case of some food product I tend to check out books I think I may want from the library first, and if I decide it’s going to be a keeper I can buy it using the Amazon Prime and I don’t get nickle and dimed to death every time I order a single item or book.

Kathy Simon
Cascade Township

Thanks, Kathy! To make it an even 10, I’m going to suggest two additional items that every kitchen should have:

9) OXO Salad Spinner. I have the Pampered Chef version (I used to sell it), and it sure comes in handy when I’m rinsing the muck off the salad greens. It gets the water off, plus provides a nice place to store it in the refrigerator.

10)A husband to help with clean-up. I don’t think you can get one from Amazon, but I did get mine from the internet. We were a perfect “Match.”

Works for Me Wednesday @

Things I Love Thursday

How Does My Garden Grow? 6/14

The Local Cook — Sun, 13 Jun 2010 22:02:41 +0000

DH is such a sweetie! He put in a garden bed for me this weekend and also helped fence in the garden area to keep the bunnies out. The bunnies have eaten my beets and carrots but the peas survived. The bag garden is working well for them, but after the peas are finished we’ll take them out and put a more permanent bed in.

My herbs are doing well, except the cilantro which has decided to bolt. I’m not sure why that is, any expert gardeners have advice?

My square foot garden is two squares in one, and I planted 6 tomato plants of various varieties; three sweet peppers; a cucumber; okra; and cantalope. I have two squares left. We’ll have to see what I end up doing, if anything, with those.

Now I just have to get some tomato cages.

This post linked to Tackle it Tuesday

Gratituesday

Weekly Roundup and Winners 6/12

The Local Cook — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 14:17:53 +0000

School for Working Girls in Bangladesh

In 2004 I had the privilege of visiting Bangladesh. I had just started working for the international relief & development organization for which I still work. In high school I had gone on a youth group mission trip to Costa Rica, and in college I studied for a summer in London, but I had never experienced anything like the month I spent in India and Bangladesh. It was like my eyes were opened.

The girls in the photo here stole my heart. They all work — either for relatives as maids or in the garment factories. The organization for which I work is helping the parents in the area of microenterprise and financial literacy so that they can afford to eat without sending their children out to work. They also run classes like these for the girls who work. They are held in the evening, after their working hours. This is still a sacrifice because that means they are unable to help out in their own houses while they are at this school. Luckily the parents have realized the importance of education. So while these girls don’t get to go to regular school, at least they get some education.

I was shocked at how young these girls look. And yet they said their ages were anywhere from 8-12. Our field staff told me that they look young because of malnutrition, but at the same time they don’t really know how old they are so they just guess. I visited this area around my birthday and couldn’t imagine not knowing how old I was!

Every time I buy clothes, I think of these girls in Bangladesh. I have no idea if they have made it or not. I have no idea where to buy sweat-free clothes. I did sew my own for awhile but then I realized that they probably work in the textile mills too.

So why am I telling you this story? I was struck by how many commented in this week’s Food & Faith Challenge that they had never heard about Fair Trade, or where to get it. I hope that you will be inspired to dig more into this issue. While it is important to support our local farmers, it’s also important to think about those who make our things that aren’t local.

This Week’s Winners

The winner of this week’s Food & Faith Challenge was Jen, who blogs at The Big Binder. Ironically enough, I know her! We are part of a West Michigan blogging group. Random.org surprises me sometimes.

The winner of Women Food and God was Abby S. She said, “This book caught my eye in the bookstore – very catchy title! I’d love to win a copy, because I’m always interested in spiritual approaches to dealing with eating problems.”

Speaking of eating . . .

I was also struck by many of the comments in the Women Food and God giveaway. There are so many people out there just like me who struggle with weight and the reasons behind we eat. I’m going to try to explore this issue more in the future.

As always, thank you for reading and commenting. The issues are big. There are no easy answers. But I enjoy learning and sharing, and hope you do too!

First CSA Pickup of the Season!

The Local Cook — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 01:28:38 +0000

FINALLY! You can now expect lots more recipes. As I said before, it’s been pretty hot and chilis and stews were just not appealing. But now I have lots of glorious green to play with! So what was waiting for me when I arrived at pickup?

Scallions

Radishes

Spinach

Red Bok Choy

Greek Bok Choy

Frisee

Lettuce - we got to take 2 heads!

Chives

Mixed Greens - 0.9 pounds

When I got it home, it looked like this all over my counter.

When I got home, I diced the onions and scallions; removed the radishes from the greens; put all the greens in one plastic bag (except for those I was going to use for dinner); the bok choy in another; and the lettuce in a spinner for easy access. So in the end it looked like this:

Much easier to fit in the refrigerator this way!

This post linked to Tuesday Twister!

Please Share Your Time Saving Tips

The Local Cook — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 08:20:23 +0000

Is it just me, or are there TONS of resources out there for saving money? *Cough cough* Real Food on a Real Budget ad on your right. Frugal blogs galore. And, there are lots of “how to cook” e-courses floating around. Yet my biggest stumbling block is TIME. I’m not alone. When I was on an Alice Waters webinar a few months ago, they polled the audience to find out what the biggest obstacle to cooking at home is and the winner by a long shot was lack of time.

But Wendy, you’re probably saying, you have no kids. You should have oodles and oodles of time. Maybe, but after working 8-5 and then going to exercise class or meeting up with friends for various clubs or driving out to pick up my milk, there are days I just don’t feel like waiting to eat dinner until 8 PM. I normally try to do my baking and dairying on the weekend, but there’s also cleaning and gardening and yardwork to do. If we go to the camper for the weekend none of the above get done.

Meal planning has really helped, when I carve out the time to do it. (I LOVE Living Cookbook Recipe Management Software for that). But if the recipe I’ve planned takes an hour and something comes up after work, that sort of throws a monkey wrench into the whole business.
Prepping as soon as I get home from the CSA pickup or farmer’s market also helps. Not so much last night, as I picked up my share on the way home from work and we had to rush to the American Brew Trail taping, but usually.
Enlisting DH to pick up things on the way home from work (whether it be Thai food takeout or ingredients for last minute dinners ha ha)

So, dear readers and fellow Fight Back Friday participants. Please share your time saving tips.

This Is Just To Say

The Local Cook — Tue, 08 Jun 2010 23:13:38 +0000


I have eaten
the berries
that I bought
at the market

with which
I was going to
make you
a nice pie

Forgive me
they were so fragrant
so sweet
and divine

~ Inspired by William Carlos Williams

This post linked to Things I Love Thursday

Top 10 Things I Love about Spring

Weekly Roundup and Winners 6/5

The Local Cook — Sat, 05 Jun 2010 14:33:21 +0000

L to R: Jolon of http://savvychicsavings.com, me, and Megan of http://whatmegansmaking.com

You might have noticed I’ve been a bit lax in the recipe department this week. I’m just waiting for my CSA to start this coming week (woo hoo!) so I can dig into the spring recipes. I do have a few recipes from the “winter” and “anytime” sections of Simply in Season, but seriously, who wants to make Vegetarian Chili or Winter Borscht when it’s 90 degrees out? I did hear a rumor that strawberries are ready so I may go hunting for them this weekend.

On Thursday of this past week I had the opportunity to go to Ladies Night at a new D&W at Knapp & the East Beltline. A blogging friend of mine won tickets and invited me. It sure was an eye opener! I realized how much my thinking about food has changed over the past year or two and I hadn’t even noticed. We had to get stamps from five different areas on a little card that went into a drawing, so I’ll explain what I was thinking at each station.

1. Seafood.

At the first station we got a sample of sugar rubbed salmon. It was so tasty! I do remember wondering if it was wild caught.

2. Wine

We sampled some sparkling juice from St. Julian since they didn’t have a license to sample actual wine. They did have some representatives from Sandhill Crane Vineyards, though, and they mentioned that they take pride in sourcing their grapes within Michigan. How cool is that?

3. Dairy

No samples there, but they had a little table with yogurt, a plastic jug of milk, and a container of soy milk. I remember thinking how long it’s been since I bought milk from the store. And if I do buy yogurt, it’s plain Stonyfield. They did have a dietician doing little presentations at each station, and I missed that particular one, but Megan mentioned to me that I would probably have taken issue with the fact that the dietician recommended that people stay away from real butter. Ugh! Good thing I wasn’t there.

4. Pharmacy

They were sampling Burt’s Bees. I remember thinking hmmm, I really need to do more research in this area. I have switched to paraben free shampoo and conditioner and soap, but have not had much luck with eco friendly deodorant. And I don’t want to be a dirty stinky hippie, no matter how much my views might coincide with them.

5. Produce

Standing in the produce section, I was amazed at how colorful and . . . well, plastic the fruits and vegetables looked. The blueberries were so tempting. And yet . . . it’s not blueberry season. It struck me that I’m used to getting fruits and vegetables from farmer’s markets now, with only the occasional item from the grocery store, and when they’re not from the grocery store they don’t have that waxy perfect glow about them.

I did manage to catch the presentation, and afterwards someone asked if it was true that vegetables don’t have as many nutrients as they once did. The dietician said it is true, and that to help with that you should buy fruits and vegetables either in season or frozen. Someone else asked how you know if something is in season, and if they could just freeze their own fruits and vegetables if they are not in season. Somehow she missed the whole point. Freezing after the fact isn’t going to put the nutrients back in somehow. I also noticed that the store had a fairly large organic section, so that was a good thing.

At first I wanted to sneer internally at the questions, but then I realized that it was only recently that I knew what was in season! It’s just not something we grow up knowing unless we’re intentional about it. And I grew up in a farming community! It struck me that there is so much education to be done. While I can celebrate how much I’ve learned, I also realized there is so much more I need to learn yet.

Garden Update

Well, the bunnies ate my carrots. For some reason they didn’t like the beets or peas so at least those are still growing in my bag garden. Since I am building a small fence anyway to keep the bunnies out I decided to enlarge the garden area a bit and try my hand at a square foot garden; only one or two blocks, since we DO get most of our vegetables from the CSA. There are just a couple of things we could use extras of. DH is about ready to kill me, because I’ve also been thinking it would be nice to expand our flower beds in the front yard, since we need to give them a good cleaning and some fresh mulch (we’ve been putting it off way too long), oh and there are some areas in our backyard underneath the huge shade trees where the grass doesn’t grow so I was thinking about maybe adding some ground cover plants. He swears I have adult onset ADD. I call it just being creative and visionary. First priority is the garden and cleaning out the flower beds, then we’ll see.

Winners

In case you’re wondering how winners are chosen . . . What I do is copy and paste all the comments into an Excel file, delete everything except the names (I’m not computer savvy enough to figure out how to export just the names) and put one name on each line. Your name goes on two lines if you told me that you are a subscriber. That way they are all numbered automatically. I used to do this in Word and type out the numbers next to each name but then I was like “duh,” Excel has numbered lines already! Then I go to random.org, type in the number of entries, and it automatically chooses a number at random! I then look to the corresponding line, and voila! The winner!

This week, Kelly who blogs at Some-things Cookin’ won The Town That Food Saved: How One Community Found Vitality in Local Food

She wrote, “I’d like to win this book because I believe local agriculture is the way out of this economic mess we’re in! My small town doesn’t offer much yet, but I see a growing number of families growing their own food and selling the surplus and I’d love to be part of helping to organize a movement to become more ag!”

Go Kelly!

And, the winner of the Real Food on a Real Budget ebook is Cindy who blogs at FarmGirlCyn . I’m so happy for her, ‘cause she has been SO helpful to me as we’ve gotten to know each other in bloggy land and in real life.

As part of her entry she wrote “I belong to a local CSA, which, tho expensive at first glance, really works out to be a very smart investment. I buy local, when I can. Just purchased local, 100% grass-fed beef, and shop the farmers market at least every other week for odds and ends not available thru our CSA. I am a firm believer in making do, or doing without, and have learned some new skills in the process. Homemade yogurt, sourdough breads, cream cheese…all items that I used to purchase at the grocers are now being made by me. And if I can learn something new at age nearly 58, then anybody can!”

Hence we conclude this week’s wrap up. Thank you for reading and commenting! I learn so much from you.

Top 10 Tips for Eating Local Food on a Budget

The Local Cook — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:05:22 +0000

(the following tips are my own and not from the book pictured above)

1. Participate in a CSA. And use ALL of it.

Many people balk at the sight of the up-front costs, but we’ve found it is a deal if you can eat all of it. It does take some preparation and planning (I’ll be posting about how we do it this CSA season starting when our CSA starts next week). Also, take advantage of any U-pick opportunities, and if you notice people at pick-up not taking their full share (some people don’t like kale, for example), ask if you can have their unwanted vegetables. Some CSAs also offer working shares, where you receive a discount for working on the farm. Sometimes it’s not just field work, either – they might need marketing help, accounting, etc. Never hurts to ask, especially if you have more time than money.

2. Get a herdshare and learn to make home dairy.

Again, raw milk might seem more expensive per gallon, but once you calculate everything you can make from it (cream, butter, yogurt, the list is endless) the price doesn’t seem so bad. Now that our milk share quantity is at its peak season, I’ll be posting some how-tos over the next few weeks.

3. Find a source for whole grains and other bulk items.

This might take some research. For me, I discovered that our local health food store has the best prices. There are a few local mills I want to check into, too, but for now the convenience can’t be beat.

4. Find someone who has their own chickens.

Eggs are a great source of protein, and inexpensive when compared to meat. For the best deal on free range organic eggs, find someone who has their own chickens and is looking for a way to get rid of some of their eggs. They might be willing to give you a deal or barter in exchange for services.

5. Try not to eat anything you can’t get from the above sources.

Funny thing, when I go to a regular grocery store I always end up with things not on my list. Planning my meals around the vegetables, eggs, milk, I get from the above sources and avoiding the store as much as possible really helps with that.

6. Buy in season.

Usually the first few asparagus and strawberries command a premium price at the farmer’s market. If you can be patient, the prices will fall as everyone else begins to get inundated at peak harvest time.

7. Learn how to preserve food.

That way, you can buy when prices are lowest and stock up. Preserving doesn’t always mean canning, either – there are many fruits and vegetables that you can freeze, and as long as you have the freezer space it’s super fast and easy.

8. Grow your own.

Easier said than done, I know. At least try some potted herbs and container plants. I’m trying bag gardening for the first time this year. I’ll let you know how it goes.

9. Share with others.

This rule applies for lots of things. No pressure canner? Food dehydrator? Ask around, I’m sure someone will be willing to let you borrow theirs. Also if you can find people to “go in” with you on large bulk purchases you can often get a discount. Share a cow, for example.

10. Buy the book Real Food on a Real Budget

Weekly Roundup and Winners 5/31

The Local Cook — Mon, 31 May 2010 18:36:23 +0000

Happy Memorial Day!

This weekend was one of mixed emotions. On Saturday we met some of our friends in Traverse City who ran the Bayshore Marathon and went wine tasting on Old Mission Peninsula. We stayed at my father in law’s property, which is an RV on 40 acres which used to be his family’s homestead. It was very beautiful and peaceful.

On Sunday we received news that a couple that my husband knows from his running group were in a boating accident with another friend and their two young children. The father died, the mom is in critical condition, and the two children were released from the hospital. It’s sort of shocking to think in the blink of an eye that something like this can happen. Our prayers go out to the family.

One of the nice things about staying in the RV this weekend is that two of our friends and their children stayed in their RV right next to ours. Most of our meals were shared together, and I was struck again how nice it is to share meals with others. The main dishes were from Simply in Season (I bet you saw that coming!) and I’ll be posting them tomorrow once I get a chance to type them up.

In garden news, I was disappointed the other day to find that the little carrot top sprouts were gone. Where did they go? The beets are doing fine and the peas too. DH suspects a rabbit got to them. So I guess I had better get a little fence up.

This week’s winner of Organic Manifesto was Chanelle who blogs at http://simplyrealfood.blogspot.com/. Don’t forget to participate in this week’s challenge–you can win a copy of Real Food on a Real Budget. The other giveaway going on right now is for The Town that Food Saved.

Good luck!