Day 8 - The Grocery Store

I am proud to say that I made it through the first week having spent under $5 at the grocery store. I had no choice but to go today because ELS isn't open again until Wednesday, we were out of several staples and I needed the ingredients for the dessert dishes I'm serving at our book club meeting tomorrow night. I had plenty of time to shop so I really paid attention to the products in the store and where they came from. It didn't take me long to come across my first big shock. I was in the second or third row of the produce section when I came across two side-by-side baskets, each divided in two. In that 3x3 foot space were New Zealand kiwi, Thai lychee, Mexican avocado and Chilean bosc pears. If I had purchased just one of each of those items I figured together they'd have travelled over 25,000kms. That's 25,000 kms as the crow flies, and we all know nothing travels in a tidy straight line. I think we'd all be horrified to see the actual number. I looked around and I also saw the lemons, limes, oranges, bananas, mangoes, pineapple, apples and worst of all, the $2.49 pint of strawberries from California. Who buys 12 Californian strawberries in June for $2.49 when you can drive down the road and pick a 4 litre basket worth of fruit, right off the plant, for $8.50? Who decided shipping fruit all over the world was a good idea? How much fuel is used, and how much pollution is created by shipping this fruit all over the world? Why do we think this is acceptable? I remember my Dad telling me they used to get a box of oranges at Christmas time, I believe it was from a family friend who travelled there, and what a huge deal it was to have citrus once a year....and he didn't die of scurvy! When I went to the Dominican Republic with my Mom and Sister I ate a banana that had actually ripened on a tree and I couldn't believe it was the same fruit. Everyone knows how hard and bland California strawberries are in the middle of winter, yet we buy them. I came away with more strength for this project and I'll be sure to put even more time in to canning, freezing and dehydrating the berries, cherries, peaches, pears and apples that grow in my Province! 


Tonight's dinner was a simple local pork roast seasoned with herbs from my garden, mashed potatoes from one of the nearby farms and peas from the CSA. Yum!


Shannon A.

Day 7 - Getting Serious

I cracked the whip on myself and decided to do better today. We had nothing going on, so I had no excuse NOT to cook. I started off the day looking after some of the beautiful strawberries I picked this week and turned them in to freezer jam. I think I have enough left to add to the rhubarb in my fridge to make real jam some time tomorrow. I'm hoping to get back to the field for at least 4 more baskets this week. We had 6 baskets last year and still ran out of jam months ago, and had just enough frozen to get us through.

In the afternoon I made pasta. I LOVE making and eating homemade pasta. My most prized kitchen tool is the beautiful green Kitchen-Aid mixer we received as a wedding present and I've since added most of the attachments that work in the hub at the front of the machine, including the pasta roller to make flat sheets, fettucini and spaghetti and last year I added the extruder to make macaroni, and several other shapes. There is something incredibly hypnotic and relaxing about the sound and action of feeding the chunks of dough through the rollers and working them in to silky, smooth strands of deliciousness. My Dad even gave me this really cool looking pasta tree for Christmas that makes drying my noodles incredibly easy. I had yet to try out the local unbleached flour in a pasta recipe, and I have to admit I was concerned, because this stuff doesn't always behave the same as regular store bought flour. It looks more like whole wheat flour than the bleached white flour we are used to, it contains no preservatives and it's ground between granite stone, so basically...it's still alive. What I love so much about it though is that it actually has flavour! Imagine that! I took out all my equipment and got started...and boy, was I impressed. It turned out beautifully!!

Basic Egg Pasta

4 large eggs (7/8 cup...this is important because the eggs I get aren't graded so they come in all shapes and sizes!)

1 tbsp water

3 1/2 cups sifted (again...very important!) flour

1/2 tsp salt

If you don't get the liquid to flour ratio right your pasta is either too sticky or too dry. It's a lot easier to work in more flour than trying to add more liquid, so it's just quicker and easier to get it right the first time. That said, the humidity of the flour can make a difference...it never turns out the same way twice! I don't care though...real food should be a bit temperamental. Dead things don't have an attitude.

Anyhoo...place the eggs, flour and salt in the mixer bowl. Mix for about 30 seconds with the flat paddle, then change to the dough hook and knead for 2 minutes. Remove the dough and knead by hand for another couple minutes. Let it rest for 20 minutes then have at her with a pasta roller!

For the sauce I decided to make a white sauce and throw in the last of the lobster.

White Sauce

 I didn't really measure anything but my guess is I melted about 1/4 butter (Farquar's) in a sauce pan and then added 1/4 flour (Terza - aka The Flour Mill) and cooked it for a couple minutes. I should of added some garlic but didn't think of it. I then slowly added chicken broth (I though I had some left in my freezer, but I didn't, so I to use grocery store stuff. Boo!) and whisk it in 'til it was saucy. Then I poured in about 1 cup of heavy cream (haven't found a local source for that yet!) and added a couple sage leaves from my garden, and some salt and pepper. I heated it til it boiled a bit and thickened up. Then I added about half a cup of grated Asiago cheese (Thornloe Cheese) and the rest of our lobster. When it was all hot and bubble I poured it over our beautifully cooked pasta. Heaven!

The kids weren't crazy about it, but they ate it. I thought it was delicious.

I just realized we skimped out on veggies today, which I don't let happen very often. Oops!

In other news...Mrs. Duguay called to tell me she got a lead on some locally made wieners today! Wouldn't that be wonderful? I'm impressed with what we are finding when we go looking.  There is certainly a growing trend in the community to go back to the way it was not so long ago, where your food came from someone in your town, not from a packaging plant! I guess it seems fitting that I am one of the early ones to jump in to this as I've often identified more with my Grandparent's generation than my parent's or my own. I wanted to be a Stay-At-Home-Mom, and not only did I choose to have a midwife, I chose to birth my youngest at home. I knit, I quilt, I sew, I garden, I can. In many ways I'm more like my Grandmother than my Mother...although my Mom is an incredibly talented, crafty woman and even Memere thought I was crazy to have a baby at home!! Why would I choose to have a baby at home, when there were perfectly good hospitals? LOL My Grandparent's entire backyard is a garden, my Grandmother is an expert canner, baker and cook...I seriously doubt there has ever been a loaf of store bought bread in their house.. and they live in a farming community, so eating local is just the way it's done. My parent's generation is the one that whole heartedly embraced everything that came from Kraft, Mr. Christie, Lipton and Heinz and now here's my generation, or at least some of mine,  realizing that what they eat/ate when visiting their Grandparent's is/was a lot better than what they grew up on! 

Anyhoo, I'm rambling now and there work to do. I will post some pictures of dinner when I find my USB cable. I may be old fashioned in a lot of ways, but I do love my Mac and my digital camera!!


Shannon A.

Day 7- Serious Improvement

    The trip to the market and Eat Local Store (ELS) has turned this thing around for me terrifically.  This morning I used the Whole Spelt Flour purchased at ELS to make crepes. The recipe I use is a variation from one I found in the Moosewood Cookbook by Mollie Katzen (pg 142)- purchased at least 15 years ago and still in regular use. I never liked the density of pancakes. My aunt Cathy makes a thin pancake and over the years I have written down her recipe at least seven times on lined notepad paper. Inevitably the copy gets lost in my purse, recipe books, drawers, wherever- so I have relied upon the Moosewood recipe because that book is very large and difficult to lose, an important note for cookbook publishers, you're welcome.


The recipe I use is a blend of my aunts and the Moosewood:


1 large egg 
(I used my last egg, which was not local. Finding local eggs is trickier than I had anticipated) 
1 1/4 cups milk (thank you Farquar's)
1 cup Whole Spelt Flour (ELS)
here's where I get creative:
1/2 cup yoghurt (use less, or instead, of milk) or 1/4 cup sugar or 1/2 cup sour cream


Mix ingredients together in a large bowl. Pour into a hot frying pan, use butter for the pan. Make as thin or as thick as you like. I like mine paper thin, so  I tilt the pan on an angle so the pancake batter will spread easily and thinly across the pan. I watch carefully for bubbles to form on the surface. Once I feel confident that my pancake will hold its shape, I butter the tip of my spatula so it will slip easily between the pan and pancake and flip it. After only a few seconds (10-30 depending on heat) the pancake is ready to transfer to a plate and enjoy!


I sliced strawberries and served with the last of our fake table syrup. 


My son, Jonah, 5, was apprehensive at first, I usually make the pancakes with white flour. He ate his way through half and then complained "Mom, there's something hard in my pancakes." I explained that the flour was whole grain and was less smooth than the other flour, but much healthier for us. Unconvinced he mumbled, "I think you left the egg shell in."  


Lunch was grilled cheese using Thornloe's Finest with some leftover brown bread. And dinner was leftovers. 


This transition period, using products form before the challenge, does make it easier. Not only because the products are accessible (in the pantry) but also because I know what to buy next week. I am so much more mindful of the food we are eating, and what we will need to have ready for tomorrow. Which reminds me, I must take the chicken out to thaw before bed.


The very best part of my day, was getting a potential lead on local hot dogs.  I'll let you know how that pans out tomorrow.


Mrs Duguay

Day 6 - Damn pink tubes of unknown content

Who would have thought the lowly wiener would be our Achilles Heel?


As easy as I thought this was all going to be on Wednesday night, I forgot that even if food is available it isn't going to prepare itself. I do like to cook, don't get me wrong, I've been making pasta, bread and other goodies long before I even knew what a "locavore" was. What I don't like however, is when I cook and no one is there to appreciate my hard work, nor do I particularly enjoying cleaning up after I've cooked, because I tend to trash the kitchen when I'm working. Keith and I have an agreement that he/she who cooks, get's to put their feet up after dinner (ie - do homework/bath the kids/get them ready for bed) while the other cleans up the kitchen. Well that's all well and good until he's at work...which is for 4 to 5 days in a row! My kids are pretty good eaters. Sydney certainly has a fairly sophisticated palate for a 7 year old, but she is equally content to have a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of cereal, or chicken fingers when Daddy is working, as any proper meal that we make for her. Cameron would probably prefer them. I on the other hand prefer a decent meal, but most of the time I'm just too darn lazy or too darn busy when I'm alone with the kids! Who wouldn't be?


And so, the reality of a local supper snuck up on me once again, at 4:30, with nothing planned, tired and hungry, from having worked outside in the garden all afternoon. I pulled out the burgers from ELS but realized I didn't have buns...neither homemade nor purchased. Damn. No local bread, peanut butter or cheese whiz (hahaha!), no local cereal, out of local milk, already eaten too many eggs this week. Shit. What are we going to eat? Then I had a bright idea....the chip stand!! The entire Valley is surrounded by potato fields, surely Bee Bop's uses local 'taters! So off we went. There was no way we were going to leave once we got there, so I decided not to ask, to assume they did, and ordered up a poutine for me (the likely hood of the cheese curds not being from Thornloe were on the low side...again don't ask), fries for the kids and then little Cameron asked for a Pogo. A Pogo? Come on! It's a wiener dipped in batter and deep fried on a stick! Sure this does not qualify as local....it hardly qualifies as food! 

Ugh! I said yes. Why? Because I was hot and tired and hungry and so were the kids and tonight, it was easier than saying no.  Failing grade tonight for Mrs. Allen.


Note to self: get on the meal plan wagon, take out supper while you are waiting for your coffee to brew, and do better this week!  


Shannon A.

Days 3-7: Onward and Upward

It would be fair to say that Week One was a total bust in this house, but that is all behind us now, onward and upward! 

Today, with list in hand, I went to the Farmer's Market and to the Eat Local Sudbury shop, where I found several things that will make this project so much simpler.   Truthfully, I felt quite nervous about being at the Market. I have never made a habit of attending the Farmer's Market to buy food, I felt sort of ridiculous driving up in my car, walking around with those re-usable grocery bags hanging off my arm, wandering past tables of produce and crafts. I felt awkward, like a kid on their first day at a new school, afraid to say the wrong thing, ask a stupid question or get hopelessly lost.

Luckily for me, I ran into a friend, who had a coffee with me and explained that the Eat Local produce was at the market but the dairy and meat were at the store, which was located a few blocks away. I managed to get all the basics- milk, cheese, pork chops, flour, and cheddar smokies.  At the market, I shared some butter tarts with my kids and bought a basket of strawberries. YUMMY.

The greatest surprise was POPCORN!!!! Seriously, at the Eat Local shop, I found popcorn seeds.  What a relief. I love salty, buttery popcorn. It had not occurred to me that I may not be able to find it here, I scooped up the 1kg bag of seeds feeling as if I had fixed a dam before it broke.  I can only imagine my panic next Tuesday, arriving in the kitchen to make popcorn and feeling guilty about ANOTHER cheat. As it is, I will enjoy my locally grown popcorn with local butter while watching TV.  Bliss. 

But I need eggs. I felt sure I'd find eggs today, but alas there were none to be had. So, Sunday morning, over easy eggs will be replaced with buttery toast and strawberries in yoghurt.

I could not bring myself to buy things to replace items I still have in the fridge. I saw local sour cream but I still have a tub from last week and I can't just toss it. Whenever I see kitchen purges on tv, where the family dramatically tosses all offending foods into trash bags and haul it out to the garbage grossly irresponsible. I bought it, I'll eat it and when I need to replace it, I'll buy local.

                                                                                

Shannon D.

Day 4 & Day 5 - Giving myself permission to bend the rules already.

Day 4 brought up an interesting predicament....is it still considered eating local if the food travelled with you from another destination? My husband Keith was on a work trip to Bathurst, New Brunswick, which is located in the Baies des Chaleaurs, an arm of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and well know for it's lobster and scallops. He brought home 4 massive lobsters and 3 pounds of scallops. If he'd eaten them while in New Brunswick, his dinner would have certainly qualified and since they travelled home with him as luggage, and didn't make a special trip all on their own, we think they still qualify. Either way, we weren't going to refuse to eat the lobster because of our self imposed project! They sure were tasty and we had a lot left for dinners to come! We also had a salad which included lettuce from the farm, pea sprouts from a distributor at Eat Local Sudbury, green onions, basil and chives from my garden, the scallops, and a vinaigrette made from a blueberry-basil vinegar I canned last summer with wild blueberries and my own basil, olive oil and local maple syrup.  For dessert I made strawberry shortcake with strawberries I picked that afternoon down the road and local flour, butter and milk. Haven't found local cream yet so I had to buy it at the grocery store.  I will post these recipes later.


Tonight is Day 5 and I think I'm going to cop out. It's Friday, the last day of school, Keith is on night shift, I spent most of the day cleaning out Cameron's room and the toy room and I really don't feel like cooking. We are going to help ourselves to one of the frozen pizzas we bought before the project started. We won't be buying anymore for the summer though, so if we want more, we'll have to make it. Note to self: find local pepperoni!


I wonder how Mrs. Duguay is doing collecting food for next week?


Shannon A.

Day 3 - Things got a whole lot easier

It's Wednesday and that means CSA pickup night! The kids and I went in early so we could check out Eat Local Sudbury to see what was available. I am now confident that this is going to be a breeze! I found bison, beef, elk, deer, fish, lamb, perogies, cabbage rolls, tourtieres, ice cream, milk, butter, cheese, beans...and the list goes on and on. I even found milk in old school bottles! Sadly for Mrs Duguay, I did not spot any hot dogs though. ;-) I did however notice several products with their food miles marked on their signs, which I found incredibly satisfying. The reminder that what I am eating has travelled significantly less from field to table than most grocery store item go from distributor to shelf...let alone from field to processing, from processing to distributor and then from the store to my house...is what is going to keep my going. Tonight I left with Thornloe cheeses, bison sausage patties, hamburger patties, milk and butter, pea sprouts and goat cheese and a lot of excitement.This store will definitely be a weekly stop.

My bin from the farm included several other goodies including snow peas, shelling peas, lettuces, arugula and bok choi. (There may be more...I haven't gone through the entire thing yet.) I also got another dozen eggs. By the time we got home it was getting pretty late, so I decided to cook up the bison sausage, scramble some eggs and dig in to the fresh peas. Cameron isn't feeling well, so he only ate half his eggs and went to bed. Sydney and I were quite pleased with our dinner.

This is fun!

Shannon A.

Day Two- Less Smug, Slightly Panicked

June 22-  Not much progress made on the table today, but great strides made in my thinking.Mrs A and I had agreed from the start that living in beautiful Northern Ontario would limit us from going local entirely; coffee, sugar, baking soda, spices, chocolate, for the love of God chocolate... but that we would make an effort to do our best overall and most especially for supper. Supper should be local. During our conversations it all seemed so doable. 
           
                Honestly, I sort of thought it would be easy. I keep a garden in the backyard and buy chickens from my neighbour's farm. Those two actions had given me a smug satisfaction that I was in fact eating local. I hadn't given it any critical thought until today, when I was humbled by the contents of my fridge. YIKES! Now I am even more motivated, I hadn't realized how blindly I was buying- which leads me to the next little perk in this project- having to eat local means that I will have to find the local sellers and order my food, which will require planning for meals.


          I know, I know I am a mother of two, with a husband who works peculiar shifts, I should have meal planning together by now, and I have been meaning to get better at it but, well you know how it goes... This project forces me to think ahead, no running out to get a loaf of bread, or a head of lettuce. This panics me a little and excites me too- two projects all rolled into one.


        So I have no recipes to share today. The only thing local to hit my palate today was a mosquito I swallowed when I went for a ride on my bike. I am making orders and meal plans- and won't be at the supermarket until I'm good and ready.  


Shannon D.

Day One- Is it local if I by it from a street vendor?

      Shortly after five o'clock, June 21st, 2010. I remembered that I was supposed to start my Eat Local Summer with the amazing and talented Shannon A (Mrs A).  The shameful realization that I had forgot came as I was turning eight all beef hot dogs I'd purchased from the local grocery store on the grill. This is ironic really because, when the idea of an eat local summer first presented itself my first reactions was, "Where can I get a local hotdog?" I realize that there are very few foods more offensive than hot dogs, there are no redeeming qualities about the mysterious pink tubes, but I love 'em.
       
      You see, I am blessed not to have to work in the summer, so for two months of every year I feel like I am seven, and when I was seven NOTHING tasted better than a hotdog on a squishy white bun in the sunshine.  Feeling flushed with guilt at such a poor start, I called Mrs. A to confess that I had not prepared and was at the table with my children eating hotdogs. My shame was twofold, first at such a pathetic showing for the first day, but far worse having to admit that I was not only eating hotdogs but also feeding them to my precious children. Double Shame.
      
      Late, but still on board, I am doing the research, sourcing out food and promise to be better in the coming days.  My only question now is, if I buy a hotdog from a street vendor, does that make it local?


Shannon D.

Day 2

I was no better prepared today, but I was more creative! Supper tonight was Pink Pancakes with Stewed Rhubarb and Strawberries.

Pink Pancakes

In the food processor:

1 cup of unbleached flour (Terza Farm)

1 cup of oats (Loonsong Garden)

2 tbsp sugar

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt (Windsor Salt...hey, it's mined in Ontario!)

Then whir in:

1  to 1-1/2 cups buttermilk (first amount if you use the beets, second amount if your don't)

2 tsp vanilla

1/4 vegetable oil

2 eggs (Dalew Farms)

1/4- 1/2 cup pureed canned beets (I canned them last summer from my farm share)

Then cook 'em like you would any pancake!! The original recipe didn't have beets in them,and I forgot to back off on the buttermilk so my batter was a bit too runny and the pancake weren't very thick. They sure were good though!

Stewed Rhubarb and Strawberry Sauce

I was pressed for time so I pulled out all the thinnest rhubarb stalks I had in my fridge. I cut them in to 1/2" pieces and tossed them in a sauce pan. I should have measured, but I would guess I added about 1/2 cup of maple syrup and then enough water to cover the rhubarb. I brought it to a boil, turned it down and let it go for 15 minutes or so til the rhubarb was soft. I added a big handful of frozen strawberries, brought it back up to a boil and then let it cook til the berries were broken down, the rhubarb was stringy and the sauce had thickened up a bit. Poured it over our pancakes and chowed down.

The kids ate their weight worth.

So, as you can see I'm not eliminating everything from my kitchen. There's just no way around baking ingredients like baking powder, baking soda, salt and oil although I'm doing my best to find stuff made as close to home as possible. Vanilla, well....it doesn't grow anywhere near hear, there is no substitute, but I'll try to use it as little as possible...same goes for spices. We are in Northern Ontario after all! I need to get on to sourcing more of the foods we eat frequently. My biggest goal this week is to find local dairy items...mainly milk, cream and butter. I know where I can find cheeses, I can make my own yogourt and I know we have a local milk, I'm just not sure where it's sold right now!


Shannon A.

P.S. I almost forgot. As I mentioned, Keith is away on a business trip. He is in Bathurst, New Brunswick and he sent a picture of his Eat Local dinner to my cell phone....

J-E-A-L-O-U-S!!

Day 1

So, this is it. Today is the summer solstice, June 21st, and the day we decided we would start our Eat Local Challenge...and I wasn't ready!! I was staring in the fridge at 5:30pm thinking to myself, "What the heck am I going to make with lettuce?". We've just come off a busy weekend, my husband Keith is away on a business trip, the kids were hungry and I had nothing local to feed them. I'd taken a moose steak out of the freezer the night before and put it in the fridge, but then forgot to put it on the counter to thaw completely. No BBQ'd steak for us. The only veggies we received from our CSA delivery last week were snow peas, lettuce, green onions and baby swiss chard...nothing terribly exciting or worthy of a 4 year old's palate. I almost gave up and made PB and J sandwiches, but then reminded myself that if I wasn't committed on the first day, how did I expect to make it til the fall? So, I rolled up my sleeves and got creative.


Upon inspection I discovered the moose was thawed just enough to make it easy to slice into little strips. I pulled down my wok, threw it on the stove and turned it on. I stir fried the meat, added a couple tablespoons of last years homemade salsa, salt and pepper and at the very end tossed in some snow peas and chopped up green onion. I made a quick vinaigrette using olive oil, rice vinegar and maple syrup and drizzled a bit on the mixed baby greens from the farm and voila...dinner! The kids turned their noses up at first, but Sydney had a change of heart and polished off the stir fry and asked for seconds and ate about half her salad. Cameron was in a mood so he didn't each much, but he at least gave it a try and ate about half....his tune changed when he saw that we were having frozen yogourt and strawberries for dessert. Dessert is magic like that.

Mrs. Duguay happened to call while we were at the table....she confessed she was having hot dogs!! Gasp! She told me she needed another week to get her plan together, and I'll give her that since she doesn't have the stock of local meat and CSA delivered veggies that I do.  Next week though...I'm cracking the whip!


So, I guess I pulled it off. It wasn't spectacular but it was edible. A friend who had a more successful year hunting than we did, gave us the meat. The onions, snow peas and lettuce are from our CSA. The maple syrup was purchased through our CSA from a local sugar shack, we made the salsa and I hand picked the strawberries last summer just down the highway. I was going to use balsamic vinegar but since it came from Italy and the rice vinegar was at least made in Canada (although likely with imported ingredients), I put it back on the shelf and used the second choice. The frozen yogourt was my only real fail, but I thought I kind of owed it to the kids for not serving up something better. Pat on the back for me.


Shannon A.