Farm to Fork Family

Apparently I’ve outgrown this blog. I’m being warned that I’m running out of space and that it’s time to upgrade. But, to be truthful I’ve also outgrown the subject matter. While we still eat healthy and there’s always room for improvement, we”ve settled into a way of eating that works for us. The new blog, Farm to Fork Family, is more about the kind of food we eat – fresh, local, seasonal (and still healthy) food. While I may still post in this blog from time to time, I hope you’ll subscribe to the new one. I’m no star blogger and though I’m envious of those fancy blogs, this is a hobby. I have learned a few things though and would like to think that the new one will be slightly improved. Hope to see you over at the new blog.

Here’s the link to the new blog: Farm to Fork Family

 

Southern Cookbook and Good Home Cooking

Now that school’s out and I have all three girls home with me all day, every day, my time is even more valuable, especially to them. Apparently, along with all my other roles, I’m also their personal chef, activities director and event planner for the summer. They don’t know how good they have it. I try to remember this when they try to lay on the guilt with: “I’m hungry. I’m bored. Can we go somewhere?” HELL NO! I’m trying to write in my blog. Of course I didn’t actually say that.

One place we love to go is the library. It’s good, free entertainment and we get to bring home books to occupy them later. I owe my sanity to the public library (which is why I made a nice little donation when I heard my branch might shut down due to underfunding). That’s not the only reason I love it. I could spend hours in non-fiction, browsing the shelves in section 641. Food and drink. I’m a big supporter of borrowing books rather than spending money on new ones. Especially cookbooks, since I really only use them for inspiration. But every now and then, I find one I don’t want to return. I renew it until I can’t anymore. Art Smith’s Back to the Family, is one such book. The pictures are amazing and the food is good and simple. I’ve made bread pudding (twice), fennel coleslaw and a brunch dish that coincidentally called for a cheese I’d just picked up at Trader Joe’s that I’d never used before (manchego). As usual, I made a few changes to suit our taste and food choices and sometimes just to use what we had on hand. If you like southern food, I recommend this book.

I’ve made several recipes already. My favorite is the bread pudding. I strongly recommend drowning the raisins in spiced rum first. I let them marinate for about an hour in hot rum. And I served it with ice cream as suggested (homemade vanilla). It’s so easy to make, it’s scary.  Scary because it so damn good.

One night I was looking for a way to use some cabbage that I’d had in the refrigerator for a week and a half, which by the way was still crisp and quite fresh since it was freshly picked when I’d bought it from Matthews Farmers’ Market (best in the Charlotte area, hands down). Raw veggies and apple cider vinegar have great health benefits. The recipe is for Fennel Coleslaw. I substituted half the fennel with my cabbage and added a red bell pepper.  I love fennel and it has its own benefits, but I don’t think my family would love a coleslaw made entirely of fennel.

Late one morning, I was looking through the book and came across a recipe for Asparagus with Manchego Cheese. I had a smoothie very early that morning and was getting hungry. This recipe looked easy and tasty. The tomatoes, now in season and delicious, and of course the manchego caught my eye. Similar to the bread pudding recipe, it calls for bread cubes and eggs. I substituted the French bread with a very dense whole wheat sandwich bread and the asparagus with broccoli, because that’s what I had on hand. When I was a less experienced and less confident cook, I would pass on recipes unless I had (and liked) the ingredients called for, which was a big mistake. It turned out wonderfully, but I can’t wait to try it with asparagus (and a few other veggies, now that I think of it).

I encourage less confident cooks to take a chance and make changes to suit your taste or use what you already have. (America spends a lot of money and resources on wasted food.) My mom has this simple and awesome fried rice recipe that’s comforting and makes me feel like a kid again. It’s not like the fried rice you’d find in a Chinese restaurant. There is no soy sauce or eggs and aside from the Korean sticky rice she uses, it’s more like an Americanized version of fried rice. She uses rice, carrots, onions, celery, ground beef, salt and pepper (and probably some minced garlic). I made this recipe with sausage instead, again because it’s what I had on hand. The smell of the sausage with those ingredients reminded me of another one of her recipes for dirty rice, so I meshed the two and added curry powder and a little extra turmeric (because it has some great health benefits and to give it a beautiful yellow color). Don’t get me wrong, my mom’s recipes are already good and very special to me. They are my comfort foods, along with the rest of her home cooking. (Where do you think my interest in food and gardening comes from?) However, I’ll be making this mash-up of the two again and again.

A Few Facts About the Obesity Epidemic

First let me say that I strongly recommend the HBO documentary series The Weight of the Nation.  The series inspired this post. Click here to watch the series for free.

(Click on the links highlighted in blue for more information.)

• Two thirds of Americans are overweight and half of those (one-third) are obese.
• The rate at which obesity is climbing is scary and there is no sign that it’s slowing down. It’s predicted that soon nearly one-half of Americans will be obese (42% by 2030 according to the CDC).
• The rate of childhood obesity has tripled since 1980. WE are over feeding them and THEY are suffering, and some are DYING from adult related diseases – preventable diseases that can be avoided just by maintaining a healthy weight.
• Children today have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
• Obesity is killing us. Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable diseases. (Smoking is the first.) Four of the ten leading causes of death in America (heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer) are directly related to obesity.
• And if money, healthcare or the economy is your thing then you should know that obesity is costing America about $270 billion a year. (That’s $270,000,000,000.00!) Many people believe eating real food is costly, but the hidden costs of eating junk food is exponentially more. Here’s just one example:

“Obese men rack up an additional $1,152 a year in medical spending, especially for hospitalizations and prescription drugs, Cawley and Chad Meyerhoefer of Lehigh University reported in January in the Journal of HealthEconomics. Obese women account for an extra $3,613 a year. Using data from 9,852 men (average BMI: 28) and 13,837 women (average BMI: 27) ages 20 to 64, among whom 28 percent were obese, the researchers found even higher costs among the uninsured: annual medical spending for an obese person was $3,271 compared with $512 for the non-obese.”

• There are other costs associated with obesity as well. Some of which include increased fuel, increased food costs, increased costs to accommodate the obese (i.e. bigger seats, toilets, beds, equipment, clothes, etc.), increasing insurance premiums and lost productivity, just to name a few.

Catching Up

It’s been awhile. Long enough that I’ve been wondering what I will write about when I finally get around to it? Should I? Who knows. But here I am. I’ve been spending a lot of time growing food. Yard work and gardening barely feel like work at all most days. I mean I sweat. Sometimes I ache. Some days I’m thoroughly exhausted. But still, it feels good to get my hands dirty and provide good, clean, fresh food for my family. It clears my head. And the payoff – food we’ve grown ourselves, without chemicals, in our own back yard - is as local and organic as it gets.

I extended the garden to reach out for more sunlight. A third of my garden is in the shade and growing food in that area is difficult. I’m adding some pretty plants to attract beneficial insects instead.  I have about a dozen tomato plants, a dozen okra plants, eight or so sweet pea plants, a few pepper varieties (more to come), lots of fennel, and maybe ten or so onions have survived (but I don’t know if they’re going to make it) in this garden. The pots contain the Brussel sprouts and broccoli that I had in the garden since last fall. They didn’t thrive, but were still alive so I threw them in some pots to see what happens and what do you know… they’re growing. But I may be wasting time with them. I have lots of other herbs, garlic, strawberries, blue berries, black berries and carrots in other places and containers around the yard.

London is my garden buddy. Usually, I let her try to help, even when I know it’s beyond her strength or skill level because she is determined. She doesn’t believe me when I tell her she probably won’t be able to help with certain things. I don’t want to discourage this determination. I nearly lost my nose to a shovel last weekend because of it.

We roasted that carrot, along with more carrots and new potatoes and green garlic - all fresh from my favorite farmers market - with olive oil, salt and pepper. I served it with fish (cod I think), zucchini “fries” and sorrel sauce. That sauce was a big hit. Sorrel is a new herb I picked up this year. It’s really pretty and easy to grow. It has a tart, lemony flavor. It had grown quite a bit and I needed to find a way to use a bunch. I found this easy sauce recipe and made a few substitutions:

Sorrel Sauce

• 1 large shallot, minced (could substitute with any mild, sweet onions)
• 1 Tbs butter
• 1/4 cup white wine
• 1 cup heavy cream
• 1 bunch of sorrel, chopped (about 20 leaves)
• salt and pepper

DIRECTIONS

In small saucepan over medium-low heat melt the 1 Tbs butter. Toss in the shallots and cook until soft, but not browned. Add the sorrel and stir, cooking gently, until the sorrel “melts” then add the wine and reduce it down by about 1/4. Without allowing the sauce to boil, add the cream and cook gently for a few minutes until the sauce thickens enough to coat the back of a spoon. Salt and pepper to taste.

The sauce is versatile. I made it again this week and served it with scallops. I’ll be pouring some leftover sauce on a couple of eggs in the morning. The zucchini “fries” also got good reviews from the family. I cut some zucchini into sticks, shook them in a bag with some seasoned flour and then spread them in a single layer onto an oiled baking pan. I sprayed them with olive oil and roasted them at 450 degrees until they started to brown. I would suggest spraying them very generously with oil. Otherwise, they come out looking like they were dusted with flour (see my picture). Tastes fine, but not very pretty.

My newest hobby is turning trash into treasure. I could spend hours in thrift stores. I still have several projects that I need to complete. One of the kids broke this urn. I may have cursed – and was just about to toss it into to the trash when I realized… I kinda like it better now. Ha! What do you think?

The old blue chair (unsafe for actual sitting), the watering can and the rooster bucket all came from a thrift store. A trip I made with my mom. We had quite a few laughs about the junk I was picking out. The uglier and more worn out it was, the more I liked it. However, I do draw the line at filthy, dirty, human hazards. No old, discolored and stained upholstered chairs!

I’ve mentioned before how being conscious about the food we eat led us to being more conscious about other things as well, like harmful cleaning and health and beauty products. One thing leads to another thing, leads to another thing… food, growing food, sustainable gardening, sustainable landscaping and next thing you know I’m obsessed with woodland plants, especially native ones. During a recent trip to the mountains I realized I never wanted to leave. Since that wasn’t a possibility I brought some of my dreamland home with me. We have  wooded areas on our lot that I thought these transplants would like. I’m pretty excited about what I think might be native yarrow - plus a few ferns, violets, rhodendron and several other native plants I can’t remember names for. Most of them seem pretty happy. I also took a free class at the Reedy Creek Nature Center to learn about landscaping with native plants. I learned a lot, but there’s so much more to learn. (I’m going to have fun with this!) I asked for some advice on how to maintain a nice lawn without the use of chemicals. The advice was simple. More natural areas, less grass. Doh! Why didn’t I think of that? Less grass, less lawn to maintain! Oh and corn meal gluten, twice a year, to prevent weeds from emerging AND provide nitrogen to soil.

Spring – Time to Grow!

The weather has been unbelievable. I think we skipped the harsh winter months and got a head start on spring. And now it’s like early summer around here. I’ve found myself still too warm in a tank, shorts and flops more than once this week. The garden is growing and I’m adding more plants each week. The tomatoes I planted a week and a half ago - are already flowering.

I’m planting mostly food, but some flowers too. We have a small lot and last year I had decided there was only enough room for edibles. Unfortunately, it occured to me later in the summer that a few more flowers would’ve attracted more beneficial insects. (I had to hand pollinate my zuchininis and pumpkins.) And pretty flowers are nice to look at.

This year I have decided that I’ll have a few more flowers and I want a little more than food from my gardens. I want them to add a little natural beauty to my yard. I’ve found quite a bit of inspiration for neat ways to label plants using old stuff like wire hangers, wood scraps and small bamboo stakes. I’ve just been too busy planting the last couple of weeks. I just can’t seem to pry myself from tending to the gardens. My farmers’ market trips aren’t solely about buying food  ready to eat. I look forward to see what transplants are available each week. I’ve got a total of seven tomato plants so far. Fennel seeds are sown. There are carrots, countless herbs, garlic, spring onions, garlic chives, lettuces, beets, peas, kale, spinach, blueberries and raspberries and a few surprises (some kind of squash, pumpkins or maybe melons). Volunteer seedlings are popping up anywhere I mix in my compost. I’ll let a few of them go to see what grows. I hope we don’t have a late cold snap!

I do already feel the effects of the mild winter. Critters are everywhere. Literally. I come inside and have to inspect myself for hitch-hiking pests. I usually find at least one of these:

And my plants are all under attack. I found this huge snail in my garden. He looked like he could do some damage, so I had to relocate him – probably permanently. So sorry little guy. I have to admit that the small act of killing critters foraging for food sheerly for their own survival, does make me think twice before killing even the tiniest insects. Laugh if you must. I wish there was enough food in my garden to go around, but a seedling is no match for a slug or a snail or catepillar. My beet seedlings get devoured by something the day they emerge. If I could just get them to wait a little while… they’ll be enough for them too. Me and the snail hung out for a bit while I decided what to do. I couldn’t bring myself to kill it, so I put him in the trash bin. There is plenty of food in there. If he makes it out, well then kudos for him.

Last year I sowed only five pea plants. All but two of them were hacked by cutworms. We never had enough to make a side dish and usually opened the pods and ate them straight from the garden. This year I planted twelve. One of my food discoveries in this journey is that I don’t hate peas after all. I just don’t like the stinky ones you get in a can at the grocery store. Frozen or fresh peas are a staple now. I’m excited and hopeful about fresh peas! I may try and grow fava beans too, if cutworms thin out my peas again this year.

I’m looking forward to long, warm lazy days.  I’ve made a kind of bucket list for the spring and summer.

I hope I get to take a nap in a hammock (have to get one first).

I’m looking forward to outdoor dinners with amazing food, amazing people and laughter and smiles and candles and pretty table settings.

I hope I don’t get too caught up in the day to day details and I find time to do all the d-i-y art and garden projects I have planned.

I want to eat a meal made almost entirely with ingredients from my own back yard.

I want to swap and share homegrown and homemade food.

I want to can tomatoes, at least enough to last through the winter. I’ve planted seven tomato plants so far, and plan to get three more varieties.

I want to freeze some homegrown veggies, like peas and squash and peppers, so that I can have a taste of homegrown veggies in the dead of winter, when I’m craving springtime.

And those are just a few things I can think of at the moment.

Is It Spring?

Normally, I’m a red wine kind of gal, but National Margarita Day and unseasonably warm, spring-like weather has me craving cocktails and mixed drinks. I had set out to make a margarita one evening, but ended up making my favorite mojito instead. They are relatively low calorie and low carb. Not too much sugar and I use fresh ingredients. I have a weak spot for a well made mojito.

Muddle 1/4 lime wedges and 8 to 10 mint leaves in a glass.

Add 1 to 2 teaspoons of mint infused simple syrup,

1 to 1 and 1/2 shots of white rum and

a few dashes of Angostura Bitters (optional).

Fill glass 3/4 full with ice.

Top off with seltzer; then shake or stir well.

I’ve been experimenting with vanilla vodka. I bought some vanilla beans a few months ago to make my own vanilla extract and still have plenty leftover. I’ve been hearing a lot about vanilla vodka lately and thought I’d make my own. It’s the same method I use to make vanilla extract, only it takes a lot less vanilla and time. After a week to ten days it was ready for drinks, but two weeks later it was even better.

I have a long list of drinks I want to make with my vanilla vodka. I’m unsure about a few of them. I tried it with lightly sweetened tea. Not good. I rarely drink soda, but I have found a few small, local soda makers that use better ingredients. I mixed a shot of vanilla vodka with half a bottle of Uncle Scott’s Natural Root Beer (made in Mooresville, NC). Tasted like a root beer float and took me back to my first job at an ice cream shop in Eastland Mall. I also tried it with some old fashioned ginger ale (Blenheim, made in South Carolina, and Boylan made in NJ). Hello cream soda. Mmmmm… But because it’s so sugary, this drink is dessert. It’s a treat I won’t indulge in frequently.

Linsey had a request last week. She wanted barbecue and that was just fine with me. I couldn’t make it to the farmers market for our usual Grateful Growers pork shoulder, so I tried it with free range, organic chicken breasts from Trader Joe’s instead. I cooked it slow and low in lime juice, a little pomegranate juice, basil infused rum, garlic, salt and pepper. Then when it was fully cooked, I turned the heat up to let most of the liquid reduce down. The meat gets browned and caramelized and chewy on the outside. But after I used two forks to shred it, I knew it was too dry. Pork has lots more fat, and that’s why it makes such good barbecue. So I added several tablespoons of the pastured bacon lard, which I always have on hand and let it cook, low and covered for another fifteen minutes. The chicken was moist and tender, the way barbecue ought to be. It had a subtly different flavor which we all enjoyed. It was a nice change and a good experiment. I served it with roasted potatoes and cauliflower and my favorite sweet and sour slaw with fennel, onion, red peppers and cabbage.

Spring and warm weather makes me want to slow down. We’re not even into spring quite yet, and already I’m looking forward to long summer vacation days with no schedule to keep. The kids were out of school for two days a couple weeks ago. We spent one lazy evening making pasta, from scratch. Haleigh was bored and sulking because she’s grounded and couldn’t go with her sister and her father to run a few errands. Being a parent sucks sometimes. Even though the punishment was deserved, my heart hurt for her. So I let her roll out the pasta. I’ll admit that I didn’t think she’d have much success with this temperamental machine, but she cranked it out. She had fun. She got the hang of it quickly and had every right to be proud of that. And I was free to prepare the other ingredients. We enjoyed each others company. Cooking, talking and laughing with her in the kitchen like that was exactly how I envisioned it. There will be lots more meals prepared this way now that the girls are growing up.

This weekend time changes and the clocks spring forward. We’ll have another hour of sunlight in the evenings. It takes some getting used to. We’ll probably spend a lot of that time outdoors on sunny days, and we’ll inevitably lose track of time. I welcome those days.

Stress Is Natural, Seasonal Affective Disorder Might Be Too

Oops! If you subscribe to my blog you probably got some weird email that I have this new post titled something slightly different than this, with nothing actually written. That’s because before I’d written a single word, while I was still working on the title, the screen changed to let me know I had just posted. Great. Obviously I hit a key I shouldn’t have or clicked something inadvertently. Seems like stressful situations are piling up on me lately, which coincidentally is what this post is all about, so it’s almost no surprise that something went wrong here too. But it’s fine, because I’m laughing at stress today. And now I’ve just noticed that the “excerpt” from this post in the email just reads “Pinterest”. It doesn’t end. Stress gets the last laugh.

My ‘to do’ list is in the double digits and ironically completing the ‘to do’ list is also on the list. I need to take a breath. I’m always seeing headlines about how too much stress is bad for our health. How we should find ways to cut it back. Maybe. But stress is part of the yin and yang of life. It drives us. And sometimes it comes in big waves. Sometimes it’s like the tide. Sometimes we just feel it more, even when the stress really isn’t that bad. It’s not going away. More important than cutting stress back, I think, is learning to deal with it.

In my experience, everything about life seems to have an ebb and flow that coincides with the rest of the natural world. Human life is no exception. In the winter everything in me feels more internal. I do a lot of soul searching and contemplating. I read more. My spirit is more subdued and I spend a lot of time in my own head. I have a feeling I’m not alone. Sometimes my head is so busy by this time each year, that I’m yearning for the relief of spring time. If I tune in to the natural world, I realize that even if the first day of spring is a month away, my being already knows winter is on it’s way out. If I can silence my thoughts, I can feel spring creeping in. In the spring I’m more external. I put the internal growth of winter into action. I think being aware of this can help me shake the winter blues.

Maybe you’ve heard of seasonal depression, Seasonal Affective Disorder aka “SAD”. (That acronym just makes it sound even more dreadful.) I’m skeptical that it’s actually a “disorder” at all, but if a person is severely depressed, then that is a real problem. Here are some signs of Seasonal Affective Disorder from PubMed Health:

• Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more common with other forms of depression)
• Increased sleep and daytime sleepiness (too little sleep is more common with other forms of depression)
• Less energy and ability to concentrate in the afternoon
• Loss of interest in work or other activities
• Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement
• Social withdrawal
• Unhappiness and irritability

According to the link above, some of the factors that cause “SAD” are the lack of sunlight,  cold temperatures, barometric pressure. Here’s an interesting excerpt from Wikipedia about it’s origin:

Origin

In many species, activity is diminished during the winter months in response to the reduction in available food and the difficulties of surviving in cold weather. Hibernation is an extreme example, but even species that do not hibernate often exhibit changes in behavior during the winter. It has been argued that SAD is an evolved adaptation in humans that is a variant or remnant of a hibernation response in some remote ancestor.^[23] Presumably, food was scarce during most of human prehistory, and a tendency toward low mood during the winter months would have been adaptive by reducing the need for calorie intake. The preponderance of women with SAD suggests that the response may also somehow regulate reproduction.^[23]

Neither article mentions this, but I’ve read somewhere that SAD may cause an increase in carb cravings specifically. But maybe the increased carb consumption and cravings in winter is natural too, especially if you are eating seasonally as we are. There is less variety in fresh foods during the cold winter months. Most root veggies and winter squash that store well contain more carbs than other vegetables. Flour and sugar are cheap, common staples available year round. We eat more sweets during the holidays. All of this could feed our carb addiction. (Many believe sugar is highly addictive.) Increased carb intake alone could cause the symptoms associated with seasonal depression. Simple carbs like sugar and white flour in candy, cookies and cakes can cause a spike in blood glucose, resulting in a sugar rush – a temporary and subtle “high” which, along with the sweet yummy taste, you begin to crave. But after that brief “high”, blood glucose levels drop quickly, which could cause lack of energy, unhappiness, irritability, mood swings, anxiety and possibly headaches and even more cravings.

Whether it’s from lack of sunlight or an increase in carb consumption or a combination of both, I think seasonal mood changes are natural for most living organisms – less noticeable for some and excruciatingly obvious for others. But knowing that this state is probably just a natural, temporary, seasonal condition, can help us cope whether our symptoms are mild or severe. Lowering simple carb intake will likely help to reduce symptoms.

Just to confirm my suspicion that my mood is affected by the seasons, I found a few posts from this time last year (one of the many benefits of journaling/blogging). In this one in particular I say “I’m in a bit of a funk.” And I remember feeling withdrawn and highly irritable that day. It’s also interesting see that my posts around this time last year involve reflection and revelations about minimalism and toxins in other things besides food (i.e. beauty products and cleaners). I was contemplating making changes. Maybe this internal growth during winter is a lesser form of human hibernation. Maybe it’s just natural. And in the posts from March and April,  I talk about the actions that came from that internal growth. We purged stuff. I deleted everything on my DVR and cancelled future recordings. There are pictures of a newly planted garden. We go on trips.

This winter, I’m still building on all of that and I’ve been growing spiritually. I’ve contemplated religion, atheism and our natural world a lot this winter. I’ve been planning and learning about gardens, back yard design and DIY projects. I have found inspiration (largely thanks to Pinterest) and re-awakened my love for art and crafting. Maybe this internal growth during winter is just a natural cycle of human life. Now it’s time to take action. Make some changes. Go to bed earlier. Cut back on carbs. (Not surprisingly, this time last year we had the same problem with carbs.) Clean out the DVR. Start purging (my room is the first target). Plant stuff and just get outside. Spend time with family and friends and reach out to people who share my nonconformist views and hobbies. Just thinking about all that growth and future plans makes me feel alive again. Spring, ready or not, here I come.