Lighted Window

Two-Face Pizza

[Note to self: must find better lighting in the kitchen]

The stats:

• Homemade pizza dough, using whey instead of water
• Pesto with local basil and garlic, "furraway" pine nuts and olive oil and Parmesan, thinned with whey
• Homemade mozzarella!!!
• Commercial sauce (bought it for camping, honest -- normally I make all of ours)
• Commercial sausages from the freezer

Yummmmmmmmmmmm.

The pesto recipe is in Simply In Season, just your everyday pesto. There are two blobs of it in the freezer for future delight.

Mozzarella question: when you buy fresh mozzarella, it's much softer, almost spongy. Is it soaked in something special? I put ours in cold water overnight, but it was pretty stiff after 24 hours. Is it something to do with the heating process instead?

Thursday night we had burritos made with local beef, probably-local onion-pepper sofrito, hoophouse tomatoes, local cilantro, probably New England pepper jack, and nonlocal rice. Probably the best burritos we have ever had. I finally got the meat seasoning right -- browning it before stewing is regrettably, deliciously essential. Three and a half pound roast, stewed in about 2 c beef broth, 2 Tbsp chili powder, and 1 Tbsp cumin. When the meat was shreddable, I threw in a big handful of dried mild green chili bits and a small pinch of habanero powder, and let the liquid cook down. The ultimate compliment was that Tim didn't spice his up further. It was so good (and so late in the evening, what with the slow stewing), the camera never had a chance.

Oh, and the Zucchini Chocolate Chip cookies are pretty darn good. I took 40 into work and they disappeared in a flash.

One Local Supper: Not Omelettes

The farm stand we visited all of last summer really doesn't have much going in the way of dinner ingredients yet. I was getting a little desperate, but then I remembered the big farm stands in Concord and Lexington. Wow. One of them even had a coupon for a free pint of strawberries, so that's where I headed after work on Wednesday. (Sorry, 5:30 am work schedules and 11 pm hockey games kind of get in the way of posting. This supper was actually served on Wednesday, not tonight.)

Before we get started, this is what the thermometer read when I took it out of the kitchen drawer:

That should explain the sultry lighting. We actually had a glorious thunderstorm during all of this. "This" being the making of yogurt, strawberry jam, and then supper.

First, the farm stand finds!

Milk: Shaw Farm, Dracut, MA
Garlic herbed goat cheese: Westfield Farm, Hubbardston, MA
Spinach, broccoli, golden zucchini, two cousa squash, and Romanesco zucchini: Verrill Farm, Concord, MA
Tomatoes: a hoophouse somewhere in MA
French bread (not pictured): Nashoba Brook Bakery, Concord, MA

Strawberries (for snacking): Verrill Farm

This had to be a quick and easy and light dinner, because (1) I'd been up since 4:45 am, (2) did I mention it was 100 degrees F in the kitchen drawers? (3) we had a hockey game at 11 pm and didn't want to be ill. So I pretty much grabbed whatever looked delicious and wouldn't heat up the kitchen. We had goat cheese on toast:

Tim grilled the squash after I brushed them with a little olive oil and black pepper (neither local). I liked the Romanesco the best -- it had an almost nutty flavor. I'll definitely be making zucchini bread with it.

We also had a simple salad of spinach and tomato, with Italian dressing (Good Seasons, definitely not local). (It seemed best to use the one in the fridge before buying anew.) And of course, there were strawberries!

The yogurt I made from MA milk, but not the Shaw Farm stuff. I wanted to use up the milk we had. The first time I made the yogurt it was very runny -- this time I tried 3 tbsp of starter instead of 2. We'll see how it is tomorrow morning; just haven't had a chance to try it yet.

The strawberry jam is more like strawberries preserved in syrup, as I only had 4 cups of sugar and knew there wouldn't be time to get to the store before the strawberries spoiled. It went in the freezer just the same and will be delicious with yogurt all winter long.

So, anyway, I noticed a few interesting things about the super-local, super-fresh produce. First of all, both the strawberries and the tomatoes had thinner skins than what we get at Stop n Shop. We've been eating Backyard Beauties for the last couple of months, but the hoophouse ones were more flavorful. When I hulled the strawberries, I didn't have to dig, and the flesh was much sweeter (not that I mind tartness). That being said, they didn't take long to get mushy, even in the fridge.

Oh, and I also picked up some Shaw Farm ice cream! We'll have to try that tonight. It's been an extremely long week, the jury's still out on the field test results (the reason I got no sleep), and we're about to go on vacation with my parents and sister for a few days. Ice cream will really ease the slide into the weekend!

Moo!

Here are a few things I've learned about locally available milk:

• My officemate tipped me off to Crescent Ridge Dairy, which buys milk from Vermont farmers and delivers it. To your house. (How decadent! How sensible!) I'm still struggling with the price, though. Butter (brand name, available at Stop n Shop) is $6 a pound, the milk is $6 a gallon, and there's a delivery fee on top of that. Mama raised me to be thrifty.
• Garelick Farms (one of the big brand names) gets its milk from New England and New York dairy farms.
• Stop n Shop brand milk (what we've been drinking) is also from Garelick. (Funny what you learn in the Agricultural and Resource Economics Review) So, we've been drinking relatively local milk. This actually makes sense, as shipping fluid milk is more expensive (vs. product price) than shipping cream, butter, cheese, etc.
• I'm also trying to find out whether the Garelick milk comes from cows that are locked in a barn vs. pastured. No luck yet.
• There used to be a dairy right here in Bedford, the Blue Ribbon Dairy. Now there's a brand-new plaza with Quiznos, Starbucks, a bank, etc. on the same spot. The dairy was long gone (they tore down some derelict houses and a gas station to build the Blue Ribbon Plaza), but a shame just the same...
• Also been tipped off to http://realmilk.com and their milk list. I'm not actually that interested in raw milk at this point (baby steps...)

Now, I think we may have a winner: Shaw Farm in Dracut, MA. They were linked off the Verrill Farm website, and there are several other dairies not listed in the LocalFoods and FoodRoutes databases. So if you're looking for something in your area, it might be easier to find by networking locally!

My favorite part of the Shaw Farm website is their motto: "If they say it's homemade, ask to see their cows!"

It doesn't hurt that their prices are somewhat lower than others, and that cream is available (I can make our butter). But I'm really won over by their attitude. Go check out the site, and if you live near enough, the dairy!

How Big Is Your Foodshed?

I've just finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma -- extremely thought-provoking, to say the least. I usually give several copies of the most memorable book from each year as Christmas gifts, and this is probably going to be the 2007 "winner". Maybe bundled with Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, which I have yet to read, but which promises to be equally good.

Liz at Pocket Farm is hosting the second year of a project-challenge-community-thingy, maybe likened to a knit-along, except that the challenge is to eat more locally. People all over the world are participating -- I really admire the intrepid family in the southern hemisphere, who will be cooking with what's available in winter while the rest of us enjoy summer's bounty. But I've been worrying (a lot) about what to cook in our house, and how local is local enough?

I think that at least for starters, we will be including foods grown and/or prepared within a half day's drive of our town. That includes all of New England and the eastern edge of New York State. If something is available closer, so much the better. There are two reasons for drawing the circle thus: first, there are more options, and so we can ease into this; second, I believe there's some merit to arrangements like CSAs and buyers' clubs (milk, not Costco) bringing food into a metropolitan area.

As soon as I'm done with work today, it's off to the farm stands! We have two fairly large ones not listed in the FoodRoutes or LocalHarvest databases. There's Verrill Farm in Concord, MA, and Wilson Farm in Lexington, MA. We should be able to put together a very large salad, at least! And though it's extremely hot and sticky, I'll see about making some strawberry jam, too.