Local Christmas...

Try to work at least one local product into your holiday celebration. Maybe some Hartlezers Egg Nog, Ohio wine, or local Maple Syrup.

Here is my favorite dish for a Holiday Brunch, if you happen to have local corn meal you can use that, and if you belong to a herd share, it is a great dish to put some of that local cream on. Try this!

Cranberry Maple Pudding Cake

Who is Organic Food.

When you see organic food in the grocrey store do you think small farmers in the field or do you think Heinz or Kellog? You may need to think again. When you buy at a producres only farmers market or from your CSA you know who grew your food. The Cornucopia Institute has made this chart.

Check out this for a larger view...

Local food... or at least regional...

Yesterday we were at the grocery store. It is our habit to try to buy from as close to our home as we can. This is why we used to buy Michigan beet sugar instead of cane sugar (we no longer do this because most sugar beets are now GMO.)

So, like many of you, we carefully ready the labels. And, like some of you, we occasionally make mistakes. That bag of garlic which says "California" on the front says "Product of China" in tiny letters somewhere on the back. They just put it in the bag in California! US garlic can become a difficult thing to find mid winter when all of ours is gone!



Anyway, yesterday we saw these mushrooms. On one side they say Pennsylvania (logical since mushrooms are very perishable) on the other side they say "Product of Korea"! KOREA! For something like a mushroom, as perishable as a mushroom!

Look for mushrooms at your farmers market. And, as always, read labels carefully!

Sad News...

We have some sad news today.

After much deliberation we have decided that we think that this local food thing is just a fad. So we have decided to get out of farming. Don't worry, CSA members, we have you covered.

You may be asking yourself "WHY?!?!" Well, we have decided that it is better to eat imported conventionally grown food then that we grow. Fortune magazine this month said "According to a recent Oxfam International report called 'Fair Miles- re charting the food miles map,' a tomato trucked in from Spain to Britain may be more environmentally friendly then a tomato grown in a greenhouse in Britain because that process needs energy intense farming techniques." This proved their myth "Buying Local Food is Better for the Environment."

We have decided to re-purpose our hoophouse into a tanning salon, so we will be putting down a kiddie pool and a layer of sand. We will be offering large game hunting opportunities on our land (does anyone know where I can get an elephant?) And our barn we will be turning into a U-storage facility.

Now CSA members may be asking themselves "But I already have paid for more then half the season!" Don't worry. We will be offering you weekly shares of cupcakes, produced by a friend of ours who is starting a cupcake business this May, so no worries. And your kids will like them more anyway.

I hope to continue to blog here about our adventures in the new "FAIR MILE" world, with our dinners of Chicken Nuggets and imported asparagus. In fact, I will probably go out of my way to avoid local food, because (after all) I DO care.

My food day!

I figure I should blog, because I am watching Julie & Julia. And since I am watching a show about food blogging, sure I will blog about today's menu in our house. (Please note this is not a typical day.)

For breakfast/lunch today my loving hubby made me his best breakfast. I honestly don't know if it has an official name, but here is what he does. He takes a couple slices of good fresh bakery bread, cubes it and browns it in a pan with some butter. Then he adds some onions and diced potatoes (both ours). When they are browned as well we mix in some of our eggs (beaten) and serve like an omelet with a little ketchup and sarachi sauce. Yummy!

Yesterday we stopped at Costco and hubby tryed some of their lobster bisque which was OK, but a bit oily. They had some huge, beautiful lobster tails so we got one because I was going to try to make bisque. Well, a 1-1/2 pound Bahamian lobster tail is not what you need for that project. You need lots of shells (as it turns out when I looked up bisque recipes.) So instead I decided to make a lobster mac and cheese. I used Ina Garter;s recipe from Food Network and it came out pretty well. Actually, it was the best baked mac and cheese I have ever made, as it did not get oily which they often seem to! But the lobster, while good, was not as prominent as I would have liked with $20 of it in there! Still it was good.

Then came the words out of my hubby's mouth I hate hearing "Did you get anything for desert?" Well no, but today seems to be a cooking day so I will try something new. A Flan! I pulled out The Art of Simple Food and it looked easy enough so off I went. Well, let me say now, I should have known our stove would let me down (yet again, in the continuing saga of my stove) and it baked unevenly and had that bit of scrambled egg flavor that comes with a poorly cooked custard! That and I messed up the topping. The cookbook did not give me a temp, I thought I was at least at the soft ball phase, I guess not. So disappointing.

So my wonderful hubby made it all right. He made me some crostini with some locally cured meat from Chef's Choice in Berea (products I really need to watch, as yummy as they are I think they may exacerbate my migraines.)

So that was my day in food. With 100 other things to do I probably should have done some of those things, but it was a pretty yummy day, all in all.

Now I can finish my movie with less blog induced guilt.

Some thoughts...

Maybe, the solution to helping Ohio family farms is not Issue 2 but rather for the consumer to realize that our food costs are some of the lowest in the world, and lower then really makes sense. In 1929 the average American spent 23.4% of their income on food. Today it is around 10% with nearly half of that being from eating out! Maybe, the solution is to realize that an egg should cost more than 15 cents each! And maybe price increases should go to the farmer.

Out of that 15 cents the farmer sees maybe 6 cents. And that has to feed, house, and care for that chicken for a day (1 egg a day on average is very good production.) That 6 cents also has to pay for buildings, new chickens, insurance, and pay the farmer's salery.

The reason a dozen organic eggs is $3.50 or $4.00 is because that is how much it costs to raise chickens in conditions which most people would consider “reasonable.” The reason true Pastured eggs cost even more is because that is how much it costs to raise chickens in more “optimal” conditions.

Most people would be shocked to realize that in most egg farms chickens are kept in battery cages. On average, each caged laying hen is afforded only 67 square inches of cage space—less space than a single sheet of letter-sized paper on which to live her entire life.

We don’t like to think that the amount of money we choose to spend on our food has a direct relation to how the animals are raised. The extra $2 a dozen for cage free eggs does not buy the farmer European vacations and expensive cars, it buys them the ability to treat their animals the way most farmers want to, in the most humane way possible.

U.S. consumers spend roughly 10 percent of their income on food compared with 22 percent in the United Kingdom, 26 percent in Japan, 28 percent in South Africa and 51 percent in India. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas reports that in 1919 the average American had to work 158 minutes to buy a three-pound chicken; nowadays, 15 minutes gets you the bird. Americans spend less than 6% of their after-tax income on groceries, a figure so low they can afford to spend another 4% eating out.

Add to that fact that today a much smaller percentage of the food dollar goes to the farmer then used to. Look at how even the price to farmers is compared with the price to marketers over the past 40 years.

From Envirovore: On average, farmers and ranchers only receive 20 cents of every dollar that consumers spend on food.
Lays Classic potato chips: $3.79 = .08
One head of iceburg lettuce: $1.99 = .37
One pound top sirloin steak: $7.99 = .92
Pound of bacon: $3.29 = .55
Loaf of sliced bread (one pound): $2.99 = .17
One gallon skim milk: $3.99 = 1.55
Five pounds of flour: $2.89 = .86

Add to this the fact that farmers costs from seed and fuel to fertilizer and land are steadily rising every year. It is really no wonder why large operations are so scared of additional regulation which will require them to give their animals ore space. They simply do not have the profit margin to do so. Many have little or no profit at all, even after long days and high risks.

Large farmers in Ohio are in a catch 22. If legislation passes in Ohio which limits confinement livestock operations what will happen? Probably most consumers will not even register the blip, grocery stores will just buy their product from states that do not have those regulations and hundreds or thousands of Ohio farms will go quietly out of business. And the funny thing is, many of the same voters who will vote AGAINST cruel confinement animal operations will be shocked that now their normal eggs have doubled in price, and will happily change to the cheaper out of state product.

Still, I feel the solution is not Issue 2, but rather for all of us to realize the true cost of the food we eat, and the way it is raised/grown, and vote with our dollars. Maybe eat out a couple fewer times a month or buy less processed food and use the diffrence to support farmers and farming techniques we agree with.

(I know, probably to much to hope for...)

Update on local family...

Many of you may remember a year ago I talked about the surprising (shocking) case of a local family, running an organic food co-op being raided by a SWAT team and held for 6 hours in their home while computers, food, and other personal items were taken.

Their case goes to trail this week. But it is not them who is on trail, it is the state and local officials who are on trial. World Net Daily Reports "The state and county are accused of 119 counts, including unlawful search and seizure, illegal use of state police power, taking of private property without compensation, failure to provide due process and equal protection and a multitude of constitutional rights violations, including the right to grow and eat one's own food and offer it to others."

Read about it here...

Organics not better?

A posting today on the Epi-Log today referencing an article which is a Case against Organic Foods.

It comes down to these, my quick response to each is below...

1.Organic foods won't solve the hunger problem.

• World hunger is primarily a political and economic problem not an agricultural issue. Big ag as commoditized enough of the world food supply we have removed the food self sufficiency from many countries. Organic food may not solve it, but conventional ag almost surly made it worse!

2. It's questionable whether organic foods are healthier for you.

• It is questionable whether conventional food is as healthy as organics.

3. It's questionable whether organic foods are safer.

• It is questionable whether conventional food is as safe as organics.

4. Organic farming may not help the environment.

• Conventional farming defiantly will not help the environment. Organic monoculture has similar issues, organic poly culture is better. Organics may be nothing more then a step in the right direction!

5. You're not sticking it to the man by buying organic.

• You may not be sticking it to the man, but you probably are supporting a small family farm, at least you can if you avoid big organic. Buy from a farmer you know and you will be supporting not only natural production but your regional economy and a friend.

6. Organic food doesn't necessarily taste better.

• Kobe beef does not necessarily taste better then McDonald's. Freshness, preparation, and skill are everything. But you are more likely to get a great tasting meal from one than the other...

Just my thoughts, for what they are worth.

Protecting us from dangerous criminals...

On December first a swat team entered a private home in rural north east Ohio and held the occupants of the home (adults and children) at gun point for nine hours. During this time they executed a search warrant and tore apart the family's house looking for contra ban. At the end of the day they left with about $10,000 worth of "evidence."

The Lorain county swat team assisted the State department of agriculture in this raid. Department of AGRICULTURE!?!?! Yes.

The search was not for drugs or guns or even counterfeit purses. No it was for food. The Manna Storehouse a local co-op in LaGrange, Ohio. The charge, as near as any seems to be able to figure out has to do with some meat that was found in a freezer at Oberlin college which was not properly labeled (meaning it did not come through a USDA licenced facility.) Although they are not charged it seems likely they will be with operating a retail establishment without a licence, a third degree misdemeanor. For that a Swat team?

I would point you to the following link for more information. The Bovine. Be sure to click on the links at the bottom for more information, there are four posts on this and links to other blogs.

In the end, I fear that this may be a case of the government protecting us from non-industrialized food. And that scares me. Our right to decide what we eat is under attack. Already raw milk, unpasteurized cider, farm processed meat. What is next? Veggies?

I will keep on top of this for everyone and post updates. Things like this send shivers up my farmer's spine.

Why confess...

I thought I would post my Thanksgiving diary because there is an important point to be made. While many ingredients we used were not local, at least they were bought and used with awarness of where they came from. When given a choice in the grocery store we picked Pennsylvania potatoes over those from Idaho and Michigan beet sugar over cane from South America. We did have some items where we did not know where things came from, a couple of them important, but for the most part we know what we ate for our Thanksgiving meal. And that at least is a step.

As I was going through our meal I realized it was a little more local then I had thought, but we are coming into a time of year when eating locally becomes a challenge. So take this challenge this winter, even if you cannot eat from within 100 miles of your home, eat with awareness of that distance. Every year we can get a little more local, with each other's help.

Know the map of your food.

Kind of Local Thanksgiving... Part 1

OK! I thought I would come clean on the origins of my Thanksgiving dinner. I would love to be able to tell you how we enjoyed a totally local meal only stepping outside for the rare item covered by the "Marco Polo Rule" for things like ginger and cloves. But that would be lieing, so instead I will give you the whole truth!

The first truth was that Thanksgiving this year was not planned. Yeah, we knew we were having it, but we really did not think about it much until the day before! It was only going to be five people and we did not expect to go through much food, so we were refusing to stress. (Maybe a little more preplanning would have been good!)

We woke up Thanksgiving morning and hubby said "You don't have to get up yet, I am just going to do the chickens." *make sure their food and water are good*

But I looked at the clock and it was 7:30 and I figured I should start the pies. Now, I GOOD Farmer wife would have done the pie the day before or the weekend before, or AT LEAST made the crust the night before, or AT LEAST picked the recipe...

So I go down stairs, grab the "New Best Recipe Cookbook" which is our standby cookbook and look at the pumpkin pie recipe... Quick math - make crust - refrigerate - blind bake - make filling - bake.... 11:00... SHIT!!! How long was that turkey supposed to bake? OK - dinner is at 2:30 instead of 1:30!

So I start the crust... Anyone who has tried to eat all local for any time has come up against FLOUR! This most ubiquitous and yet most difficult to find locally product. Well, not totally, we do have locally grown and milled spelt flour from the co-op we belong to, but I wanted a TRADITIONAL pie and was not about to try something crazy like a spelt crust for Thanksgiving... WHAT IF THE PIE DID NOT TURN OUT!?! So I improvised...

• King Aurthur Organic All Purpose Flour


• Butter - Amish Roll butter - I have no clue if this is really local


• Lard - Purchased from Duma Meats - local


• Sugar - Michigan Beet sugar - not organic

The filling was more embarrassing for a localvore farmer! You would think I would have thought of this meal in the spring and planted for it! But our squash did very badly this year. At least I could have thought of it at the farmers market and bought a squash to use... Yeah --- No... So the filling went...

• Libby canned pumpkin - BPA and all - who knows where it comes from!


• Brown Sugar - regular Domino from who knows where?


• Spices - Marco Polo Rule - always


• Eggs - Local and free range - but frustratingly not our own


• Milk - Hartzler's - Local and pretty natural


• Cream - Conventional and not local

Eventually the pies went in! They took a while to cook, I think I used a deeper then normal pie pan, but they came out great!

Kind of Local Thanksgiving... Part 2

So now we come to the star of the show! Mr. Turkey... I would love to say to you "I fist meet Mr. Turkey in April at a local farm where he was just a little poult! As the summer went along he wandered fields and enjoyed being outside, as his heritage breed should be." But alas, I cannot. A couple years ago we did have a heritage bird and it was fantastic, but for the crowd we were cooking for it was just not worth it, and the cost not justifiable for the little turkey people would be eating.

Every year my Sister in Law's company gives every one a turkey, so that is the one we used. A 11 pound conventional bird from...? We stuck it in our Romertopf clay roaster and did not touch it for the next two hours!


Then comes my favorite part of thanksgiving - THE STUFFING... Yum! We did a bit better on this although we could not find dried "stuffing" bread at the three local bakeries we tried so we started with...

• Stuffing mix - again not local, not organic, just peppridge farms from Giant Eagle


• Bread from Great Lakes Baking Company - but the flour... ?


• lots of butter - again the Amish roll type


• Onions - our garden's only contribution to this meal


• Celery - we picked up at the farmer's market


• Spices - Marco Polo rule again
  

The mashed potatoes were about the same, and while I would love to say we used all our own potatoes, the few we kept for this meal did not store well for us. I would love to say that we bought some other local farmers potatoes, but that would require thinking ahead! So we went to the Kreigers and did our best with...

• Potatoes - from somewhere in Pennsylvania


• lots of butter - again the Amish roll type


• Cream - again conventional and not local
  

The cranberry sauce was equally embarrassing to someone trying to eat local...

• Cranberries - from Maine (some day I hope to have our own!)


• Sugar - Michigan Beet


• Oranges - Florida
  

The corn came from a can with a Green Giant on the front. And we had no other veggies. Why spoil an otherwise perfectly unhealthy meal with green stuff?

The biscuits --- Lets not talk to much about them except to say they came more from a big yellow box than from anywhere else!

And that was my Thanksgiving meal...

I feel like I'm at an AA Meeting -

Hello my name is CSA Farmer Girl and I am not a locavore.

Local Sunday!

The rain is good for many things. Yesterday morning when I was catching up on my magi zines and it was raining outside (meaning no Sunday morning field work) and hubby made waffles for me. Using local spelt flour, our own eggs, last years honey, Amish butter, and milk from our herd share. The only thing not local was the powdered sugar he dusted on top (next time maple syrup!)

Around noon the sun had come out so we went out and picked and weeded. We discovered enough carrots to include them in the week's share! Then we washed everything up, bundled and set up. Unfortunately, the first 3 members came right on time (I was late they were not early) and I had neither washed the mud off my arms, changed out of my dirty picking shirt, or brushed my hair. I looked a sight! So after they left I left hubby in the sorting shed while I ran to the house and made myself a little more presentable.

After we talked about next year and late season plans a little hubby then went out to do some more weeding (have I ever mentioned how much we covet a cultivating tractor?) And I waited for the rest of our members. Sunday pickups are nice because they are a little slower paced then Wednesday's. Same number of people but more time for them to come.

Around 4:30 hubby stopped by the sorting shed again and showed me an amazing red onion he had pulled from our garden. Our onions are bulbing up and this one was 3 inches in diameter and beautiful. I am so excited to have nice onions! While I finished up with pickup, the last couple members came, and I cleaned up the shed, hubby went in to make a pizza for supper.

We had made dough with whole wheat flour from our co-op, the cheese I had made from our herd-share milk, the veggies were all from our garden (except for a couple mushrooms from PA), the sausage was from local pork, and we cracked one of our eggs on top. I do have to admit that hubby put a little imported Italian salami on top, but wow did that add something to it... All in all it was one of the best pizza I have eaten in a long time.

We finished off the evening by doing nothing productive. We read a little, surfed the Internet a little, and watched the Tour 'd France and Next Food Network Star (which is a post in itself!)

All and all it was a good day. We got stuff done, our members got good food, we got good food, and had some time to breath... If only there were more days like that.

More leeks and the first hotdogs...

All I can say is WOW, are there a lot of leeks in a case! A case is 32 bunches, and a bunch is supposed to have 60 leeks, however, many have many more, even after I thinned out all the really thin ones!

Last night hubby repaired my car (my oil sender went bad - whatever that is!) and I was late getting home. So it was about 6:30 before we were ready to go to the field.

It looked like the sky would open up at any moment and it was occasionally spitting as hubby laid under my car in the driveway. (Hoophouse pieces are taking up our garage!)
The sky was so dark and the wind was picking up.

But as we went into the field it cleared and we got 8 more bunches of leeks in (which were not all our leeks, but all those that had been thinned.) So I sat down by the field and started thinning more leek bunches when hubby went up to the house to get some water and something for us to eat.

I got 4 more bunches done before he got back, bearing hot dogs... I wanted to laugh, hot dogs seem to be our standard "can't stop now!" and "gotta get more done" meal for dinner time in the field. For lunch it is fruit and a wrap with hummus and lettuce... But this was the first time last year for hot dogs in the field, but defiantly not the last!

He said it was after 8, we marveled at the beautiful evening, ate our dinner and then put in the 4 bunches I'd sorted... We were inside by 8:40 or so...

And we are not done with our leeks yet! we still have 6 more bunches if you can believe it!

Let me say that it does make it seem like a pretty long day when you work 9.5 hours and then come home and don't stop until almost bedtime, but it is so worth it and honestly, does not feel like "work." If you did not love farming and enjoy being outside there is no way you could do it!

(This photo is not ours, I just wanted to show everyone what a leek start looks like! Thinning them before not only gets rid of the small ones, but lets you pull the roots apart and separate the plants when you are not bent over in the field!)

Lake Erie Creamery...

I just started a new page on our website: Ohio Locals. This page will be dedicated to posting information about people who provide local food with local sourcing of ingredients within 100 mile radius of my house, which is about halfway between Akron and Cleveland, so the list should be good for most of North east Ohio. If you have any suggestions please email us! I hope the list will grow over time to be helpful for those like us who are trying to source local food!

My first entry is Lake Erie Creamery. If anyone has their website please post it in comments.

I found them first at Peninsula Farmers Market. I was instantly impressed with the sample they gave. And I am not typically a big fan of goat cheeses. Since then they have become one of my favorite local cheeses. They make their cheese on Fulton Ave and source their milk from Portage County (Cherry Lane Farm.)

My stand by appetizer of choice for last minute events where we need to bring something is to take a jar of PeppaDews (not local I know! I am going to play with growing peppers and making something similar this year) and an 8 oz container of their Chèvre. Let the cheese soften a little, put it in a piping bag and pipe a couple teaspoons of cheese into each pepper. So nice!

I found this article about them...

Remember if you like this type of post and want ones like it to continue, and the page on the website to expand, then email me suggestions!

Happy Easter...

I wish I could blog today about our wonderful local Easter meal. However, it is not to be. The items we are serving are sustainably grown, but with the exception of some local flour, local cream cheese, local milk, local butter, and potatoes from Michigan (not 100 miles by any chance.) We kind of got what we could get...

Easter is probably the holiday you need to plan for most deliberately for local items... I was going to serve a butternut squash soup, with the last of the butternuts from our garden last year. But alas when I cut into it it was not to be. We did not do well growing carrots last year, so we had none left in the ground to dig up for our carrot cake. We also ran out of beets and turnips long ago, so our roasted root crops will be organic, but not local...

Year by year we will get better at this eating local thing...