And So It Begins...

Today, I went to the garden and dug my first garlic of the season.  I love nothing better than pulling these first delicate slips. It means spring really is here and the growing season is upon us.

Last fall, I buried many individual cloves and covered them heavily with straw. Since then, these  little beauties have been sleeping away the winter.  The first hint of light and warmth brings their shoots up above the ground.

When I dig them, the clove is wet and withered. I peel off that layer, and inside there is a thin shoot, looking much like scallion.

This first garlic is sweet and mild enough to put raw in salads.  Tonight, we're making Miniera, a Brazilian dish that marries thinly sliced collard greens with bacon (yes, greens and bacon - a match made in heaven). A few slices of this sprightly spring garlic serves as a perfect mild flavor maid of honor.

Collard Greens Miniera

1/2 # collard greens, halved lengthwise and stems and center ribs discarded
2 slices of bacon, finely chopped

Stack the collard leaf halves and roill cross-wise into a cigar shape. Cut crosswise into very thin slices (1/8"). Cook bacon til crisp. Add collards, tossing to coat and cook until just bright green (about 1 minute. Season with salt and serve.

Gourmet Magazine January 2001

Why Organic?

For us, the transition to almost all organic food was gradual. We added more locally grown, organic veggies early on in our lives because we could access that easily in our garden and at farmer's markets. Fruit was more difficult since very little was available that way. So we bought conventionally grown fruit until I saw a grocery store worker stocking a fruit bin with latex gloves. It really came home to me at that moment how much pesticide was on that fruit.

Of course we had been reading -alot - on eating in a healthy way; the state of corporate food production and control of seed; GMOs and more for years.  Our natural health practitioner also encouraged us to go organic. We had been using the Environmental Working Groups Clean 15 and Dirty Dozen lists to help us navigate.  We looked at each other,  did some math on whether we thought we could afford organic fruit as opposed to consuming unneeded pesticides and the decision was made.

We had been working towards more organic meat for years before that. Each time we moved to a different city, I  stopped making my homemade broth because I needed to source organic chicken and beef. The whole point of a slow broth making is to extract flavor not just from the meat but from the bone - a good broth gels. As I mentioned in my post on making chicken broth, the thought of extracting antibiotics from the bones as well was like an anathema. This recent article in Mother Jones is a telling on the use of antibiotics in animals in the food industry.

We don't eat organic to live forever. We eat it because it is healthier for our bodies. It is supportive of our small family farms that raise food they want to eat straight from the fields and humanely raise their animals (yup, we visit the farms we buy from). It often means that we buy locally and in a direct eye-to-eye-contact way that lets the growers know how much their sweat and effort means to us.

And the money we spend on organic? It's not always as expensive as people think. I like this comparison our Viroqua Food Co-op published last year. And if we do pay more, it's where we prioritize our household expenses. We think it's worth it!

Ten Ways to Cut Your Grocery Bill While Eating Healthy

I like the common sense approach taken in this post from Food Tank, a "food think tank" webpage. These are all tips we have used to eat economically. Small things can make a difference...especially getting off the corporate food chain.

Image: 'the curse of eleven eleven'  http://www.flickr.com/photos/15732690@N00/3670097230
Found on flickrcc.net

The John and Yoko of Carrots

I'm not sure any carrots could get better than these two found in our bag of carrots from our CSA. They remind me of the iconic Rolling Stone cover photo by Annie Leibovitz.

I love the real variety and trueness of produce like this that would never make it through the corporate food chain to a grocery store.  True food love brought to us by our farmers Cate and Mat from Ridgeland Harvest CSA!

Seeds and Gardens

Growing our own food has almost always been part of my life. My parents had a big garden in our city backyard for our big nine-member family. I loved planting. My dad and I would go to the hardware store where they had jars of seeds, the littlest bags in the world and an old fashioned scale. I was his helper as he went down the list and picked and weighed out the seeds we needed.

Then home to plant. Dad had a hoe with measurements marked off on the wooden shaft. He would lay it out and put a stake with string in the ground. One of us kids would unroll the string to the other end of of the about-to-be-hoed row and he would guide us - "a little to the right"; "more to the left" to the spot to plunge it into the ready soil for a straight row. He hoed, we sowed. And then all those seeds and plants? Why, they growed! Weeding, picking and garden chores were an all-family affair.

Lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, green and wax beans were all part of "going out to the garden" to get some of the food for supper. Snacks during harvest season were crunchy, juicy beans or warm tomatoes picked right that second. I missed that as a young apartment-dwelling adult. When we bought our first house in spring, making a garden was our first order of business and has remained so at every place we've lived.

We have grown this, that and the next thing over the years. Once we started regular CSA shares, we still planted. Our garden now features whatever I can't get enough of in our CSAs or what I want on hand as much as I can.  Spring/summer garlic, onions, fresh herbs, cucumbers, tomatoes, chard, sorrel.  The winter seed catalogs have me dreaming of what tasty treat we will try this year.

Each time I plant a seed or bulb or plant in the warmed earth of spring or the cooling soil of fall, I feel like a maker. It speaks of ancient rhythms that tie me to nature and her cycles. Growing even a small part of the food we eat brings an amazing satisfaction.

I am so happy and excited to see a growing passion again for growing food. Our library is beginning a seed saving library in partnership with Seed Savers and planning workshops to teach and reach out to people on sustainability and gardening. I can hardly wait!

Beets - A Loved Root Vegetable

Of all the root vegetables, my favorite for most of my life has been beets. From the piquant pickled beets of my childhood, to the robust sauteed beet greens and the delicate sweetness of lightly cooked baby beets of my adulthood, beets have held me in their thrall. It doesn't matter if they are the dark ruby ones or chiogga or golden beets. Each is tasty and each is carefully kept long after the season is over to be put into our meals for many winter days.

A favorite way to make beets is to turn them into bright little chips with any supper. Crank up the oven to 400F; cut the beets in 1/4" slices and spread them in a pan on parchment paper. Lightly oil and salt and pepper them. Bake for 10 minutes;  flip them and bake another 10 minutes. Slightly crisp, a little smoky and deeply sweet and roasted, they are finger-licking good.

Another favorite way to cook them is from an old recipe (so old I've lost the origin), Roasted Beets and French Lentil Salad.  Our friend Francoise (an amazing cook) would make the most astounding lentils with the simplest ingredients on New Year's Day. I think of her when I make this recipe because the tastiness of the lentils echoes hers in some small way. It always calls to me at the turn of each new year as well.

Beets finished roasting

• 3 medium beets, oiled, wrapped tightly in aluminum foil and roasted in a 400F oven for one hour; then peeled and diced
• 1/4 c. minced flat leaf parsley
• mixed baby salad greens
• 3 oz of goat cheese

Combine in a saucepan & cover by 2" with cold water:

• 1 cup French or green lentils
• 1 sprig of rosemary
• 1 bay leaf
• 2 large cloves of garlic peeled and smashed
• 1/2 onion studded with whole clove
• 1/2 teaspoon of kosher salt

Bring to a boil and simmer uncovered until lentils are tender (about 25 minutes). Strain lentils and discard herbs, garlic and onions.Put lentils in a large bowl.

For dressing:

• 1 1/2 T sherry wine or balsamic vinegar
• 1 T. whole grain mustard
• 1/2 t. salt
• freshly ground black pepper
• 2 3/4 T olive oil
• 1 shallot minced

Mix a little more than half the dressing into the lentils, add the diced beets and parsley and mix.  Use the rest of the dressing on baby salad greens. Top the greens with the lentil mixture and add dots of goat cheese on top.

This makes enough for 4 main dish salads. Um, I'd show you a picture of the finished salad...but we ate it too quickly! Num!

Getting Fresh - Winter Salads

Pomegranates & shaved radishes

We love fresh greens in the dark days of winter. Although we enjoy eating local and seasonal, this is the hardest to achieve with salad greens during January and February. Most farms, even ones with greenhouses, can barely afford the fuel for heat and grow lights in this darkest of seasons to grow the delicate beauties. Few achieve it near us.  But we crave a fresh bite, so off to the co-op we go.

For some odd reason, we get more crazy inventive with our salads than we do in spring and early summer with abundant salad greens at our fingertips.  We top our winter salad greens with pomegranates and oranges; pears and citrus; avocados and nuts; shaved radishes and cabbage . We play with vinegars as we make our dressings and noodle around with bits of this and that for more crunch. Cheeses in little dollops for the soft ones and thin shaved pieces for the hard ones lend an interesting depth to the proceedings.

It's like a little party everyday. We're not sure what'll appear in our salads but that makes it all the more fun!