Pictured above: Ok, we haven’t had a chance to eat these yet, but I have a little theme going here from last week’s post. Aren’t they amazing? They are indeed purple, with pink spots - scarlet runner beans. They’re about 1” long, 1/2” thick - for a sense of scale, I included a pinto bean beside it. I learned that these can be good dried beans, so I no longer feel bad not picking them yet - we’ve had a bit of a bean glut. (The trouble with never gardening before!) I’m sure we’ll have a tasty soup out of them in the next couple of weeks.
Recap.
Two weeks ago we made ourselves some rules for Urban Hennery’s Dark Days Eat Local challenge. Please see the original post for details. Essentially they are: Eat 90% Local, 50-100% from the garden, 6 days a week (exceptions: coffee, peanut butter, & wheat products). One night a week we have to eat 90% from our garden (no exceptions).
On a positive note.
I’d say we’re doing better than 90% local. Many of our meals are 100% local, 75% from the garden. We’re phasing out peanut butter, so coffee and wheat are really the only thing we’re not finding locally. Well, olive oil, too - it is made locally but we’re on a tight budget, and local olive oil is at least twice as expensive. Scary to think about why that might be, but we’re ignoring it for a while.
This week’s tough issues.
Breakfast. If only we had a cow, goat, duck, and/or chicken in our garden... Generally we eat eggs, toast with homemade cheese (though Matt has been working a lot so that has been rare for the past couple months), yoghurt, or bread and peanut butter. For this challenge, we’ve pretty much knocked off the latter, since peanut butter isn’t local. We’re at nearly 100% local, but our rules say 50% of our food should come from the garden - it’s tough for breakfast, because beets don’t seem to cut it in the morning...
Here’s what we had for breakfast:
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FRIDAY
Above: Local eggs, zebra striped tomatoes from the garden, local bread, local jam, and organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee.
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SATURDAY
Above: Pancakes made from (mostly) local flour, with dried ground cherries in them (from our garden), and musk melon from our garden. What’s that, a wine glass stem, you ask? Actually, I’ll admit it: we had pancakes for dinner!
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SUNDAY
Above: Local eggs, zucchini and 3 types of tomatoes from the garden, local onions, a bit of local cheddar, and organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee.
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MONDAY
Above: Ok, here I got experimental. I have been trying to figure out what the heck to do with beetberries. They look awesome (see above pic), but the berries don’t have a lot of taste. At last - I found something! I sauteed them in some butter, with some of the ground cherries. I added a little sugar water toward the end (sugar was organic, fair trade). It turned almost black and probably doesn’t look so great, but it was incredible over plain local yoghurt. And, of course, with organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee.
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TUESDAY
Above: I got a bit lazy this morning: plain local yoghurt with sliced ground cherries from the garden, local bread and butter, and organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee.
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WEDNESDAY
Above: Yep, we’re human. Cold (but homemade) pizza from the night before. Mostly local flour, local mozzarella, sauce from our garden tomatoes, basil from the garden; and organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee. Mmmm.
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THURSDAY
Above: Inspired by last week’s amazing dessert: sauteed ground cherries from the garden over plain local yoghurt, and organic fair-trade shade-grown coffee. Just as good as it was for dessert!
How did we fare?
Despite our best efforts, I think we fell short on reaching 50% from our garden. However, I’m wondering if our dinners help even that out, as they’re usually more than 50% from our garden...
A sampling of our dinners:
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FRIDAY
Above: Harvest: 5 lbs various tomatoes, 1 french breakfast radish, 2 scallions, 1 chantenay & 2 yellow carrots, one bowl of various salad greens. Below: Tasty salad from the garden, pasta sauce made with very ripe tomatoes from the garden and local garlic, and organic whole wheat pasta (not local), local wine.
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MONDAY
Above: Harvest: 5 lbs various tomatoes, 2 french breakfast radishes, 3 scallions, 4 carrots, one large bowl of various salad greens. Below: Tasty salad from the garden, pasta sauce made with every type of tomatoes we have (zebra stripe, San Marzano, cherry, yellow cherry, early girl), and organic whole wheat pasta (not local), local wine.
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TUESDAY
Above: Harvest: 2 large chioggia beets (the roots weighed 3.5 lbs!), 3 yellow carrots, 2 purple dragon carrots, 2 chantenay carrots, 6 scallions. Below: Roasted carrots, beets, and scallions from the garden, beet greens from the garden sauteed with shallots, local couscous. So good!!
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WEDNESDAY
Above: Harvest: 7.25 lbs tomatoes, 4 purple dragon carrots, 7 scallions, big bowl of salad greens, one zucchini, 3 butternut squash, one small bunch of basil. Below: Yes, salad again, and homemade pizza: mostly local flour, local mozzarella, sauce from our garden tomatoes, basil from the garden.
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THURSDAY
Above: Harvest against a beautiful sunset: 3 purple carrots, one chantenay carrot, 2 radishes, 5 scallions, large bowl of salad greens, one blue ballet squash, and my first parsley! Below: Salad from the garden, baked butternut and blue ballet squashes, orzo with sauteed shredded zucchini and parsley, baked squash seeds, and local wine. We also learned that you can eat the carrot tops, so we added them to the salad - not bad - feels good not to waste them, too.
How did we fare?
Except for the pasta and a little oil, it’s all local, and most of it is from the garden. I think we’re doing pretty well, but I ordered some winter wheat and rye seed today so we can try our hand at growing what we can’t get locally.
A note on repetition.
Pasta with tomato sauce is a common theme in our meals lately - what’s interesting is that, just like wine, each pasta sauce has a different flavor as the exterior temperatures fluctuate, the size of the tomatoes ebb and flow, and the types we include in the sauce varies. The same goes for our salads: we have probably ten varieties of greens, and I pick whatever looks like it needs to be picked, so it’s totally different every time. So while we don’t really have a lot of gourmet meals, and we eat a lot of similar food, each meal is remarkably different, and we are proud to be eating seasonally. I suspect come winter time, we’ll be eating a lot of soups and... more squash!
Long entry this week, but I wanted to prove (to ourselves mostly) that it can be done. We did alright this week.
