Locavore Movie Night

My favourite night time snack is buttery popcorn. I tried the local Uncle Bob's hull-less white poppong corn from Eat Local Sudbury, popped up like a dream. If you're thinking of trying to replace one meal/snack with a local option, here's one that is super easy,

Hull-less popcorn doesn't stick in your teeth.

I so badly wanted popcorn action shots

Nearly ready!

My locavores

 My own garden has been neglected this year, too much time away from home I guess. The plants I bought in July have struggled, The peppers thrived, but the squash did not, thankfully the CSA keeps me in zucchini and cabbage. Our family reunion is this weekend I plan to keep it local so I'll be posting more later in the week.

Shannon D.
  

Kohlrabi Fritters (Alien Smackdown)

This is kohlrabi:

    It is a cousin to the cabbage,  a very exotic cousin.  When I first discovered this peculiar vegetable in my CSA box, I had to do some work to identify it and figure out how to serve it. So far, its been raw, raw, raw and more raw. It's bland and I am bored of it.

   Last weekend, at a visit to my friend's cottage I managed to weave kohlrabi into the conversation. My friend Kelly's husband Jamie told me about the kohlrabi fritters he had made, which sounded delicious. Immediately I imagined crunchy little kohlrabi buddies to delight the family, maybe even pakora?  Thank you Jamie, for the inspiration!

  I couldn't wait until he sent me his recipe, I searched the internet and found My Conscious Eating, an awesome food blog, which I am now following.  I followed the recipe at the above link.  

Local eggs, local flour

Local Kohlrabi, grated.

Add the herbs, yummy (but not local)

Local oil, hot and ready.

Drop in a spoonful and smash it flat.

Set on a plate, cue ohhha and ahhhs.

   I did change the recipe, I left out the mint and coriander and used cumin, but not enough, next time I'll be more generous. I have so many onions I added extra.  The final result is good, I put them in my toaster oven for extra crispiness.  They are a bit to eggy, I likely could have done with only one egg, but they are good, an excellent starting off point.  I hope there is a new Kohlrabi in tonight's CSA box!

   I have a new tasty treat to test and perfect, all thanks to the farmers at Dalew and Jamie's brilliant inspiration. Those alien cabbage won't be messing with me, I'll grate them up, drop them in hot oil, smash them and eat them. AHAHA!

Mid-Summer Update

 I realized this morning that the kids have been out of school for a month now, and I just counted up that we've been home for supper 10 times! I had no idea that we'd be travelling so much this summer. This means that we haven't been doing very well eating local meals unfortunately, and I haven't had anything to blog about. Don't get me wrong, I've been enjoying our time out of the house, but I'm getting sick of restaurant food! We still have a few more days of travel ahead of us this week, then we'll be home for a week before I have to make another quick over-nighter to pick up Sydney from camp. The rest of August will be spent in the garden and  kitchen, getting the kids ready for school, and enjoying the last few dog-days of summer...all of my favourite things!!

Mother Nature has been slow to produce this summer, so the abundance of Foodland Ontario "Grown Close To Home" fruit has just started to trickle in to the grocery stores, so thankfully I'm not behind in my canning. There was absolutely nothing at the biggest of our grocery stores yesterday, so I spoke to a produce manager and he said he can't believe how little they are receiving for fruit right now...he figured 80% of what they normally get has not been arriving! I picked up a bunch of bananas and left sulking. The smaller grocery store behind our house had a small display of baskets filled with peaches, so I happily scooped up one of those. On my way home I stopped in at Frosted, a brand new bakery that just opened up last month, to find something to bring to my Father-In-Laws house for dessert. The lady there told me she had strawberry rhubarb pies in the oven made with strawberries from Bealieu Farm (same place where I picked my berries a few weeks ago) and garden rhubarb. Score! I paid and stopped in again an hour later to pick up the piping hot pie. It was a resounding hit at dinner! Hooray for local fruit!

Today I have to deal with my CSA box that I picked up frm Shannon D yesterday...who was kind enough to pick it for me from the darm delivery Wednesday night! The bin weighed a ton and was too full to snap the lid on! I guess that's a bit of a "problem" with a summer CSA share...it keeps coming even if you aren't home to eat it. That's fine, I'll freeze what we can't eat.

Off I go. Happy Eating!

Shannon A.

Grocery Day!

  The bread was a hit! This morning we had fried eggs and buttered toast- yummy! Summer eggs are beyond delicious They are so lovely to look at;  deep yellow yolks, almost orange really, even the whites seem to fry up whiter- altogether perfect.  

Dalew sliced ham is perfect in sandwiches, chopped up in a
salad or fried up along some eggs for breakfast.

   Today was grocery day, and one of those grocery days when the cupboards are bare! I baked the rest of the dough for bread, picked up my half share of CSA veggies and eggs from Dalew Farms, stopped by Eat Local Sudbury for some sugar and canola oil, and rounded out the trip at my local grocer who now carries Farquhar's Dairy and Thornloe Cheese for a block of cheddar, milk, and some butter. 

Eggs, Granulated Maple Sugar, Butter, Cheese, Milk, Green &
Yellow Beans, Snap Peas, Zucchini, Potatoes, Lettuce, Cabbage
and Broccoli.

 

    I am an all or nothing sort, well a recovering all or nothing sort. I will have this picture in front of me and only see what is not in the picture. Like the marshmallows in the cupboard I bought for a campfire with the kids, the slice of cake at a friends house or the orange juice I use for my morning smoothie in the fridge. I get discouraged with myself and think,  if I cannot get it 100% local, what difference am I making?   I am still plagued by Locavore Dilemmas: Can I really bake bread all year round? What the hell am I going to do with all these radishes? 

   As I said, I am recovering from this kind of thinking, I continue to seek ways to have local food, if I can get it locally, I do. I am replacing as much as I can, growing as much as I can, and getting better all the time. More importantly I am thinking about local food and talking to others and learning all the time. I may have ketchup in the fridge this year, but who knows? When the tomatoes are ready I may make it myself.

   If you're interested in having a veggies CSA share there are some available at Dalew Farms. A bin full of locally grown veggies every week, check out this web site for more info: http://www.dalewfarms.ca/. You'll be delighted!

   

Very Nearly Local Bread

    This summer has been the greatest summer ever! We've been busy visiting friends, camping and hanging out at home. We've been so busy coming and going that my blogging has fallen behind, sincere apologies.  


    This week I finally got started on my goal of making local bread.  I've borrowed this book from my local library:

Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day is a cookbook that promises a basic method of bread making that is both easy and delicious. It was this video that convinced me that this could be my local bread break through.

 So I followed the instructions, mixed warm tap water with yeast. I still can't find local yeast, I used Fleischman's, which is made in Quebec. I used kosher salt (also not local) and local flour. Stirred and, well, see for yourself:

Looks a bit like papier mache

After two hours on the kitchen counter:

Then I covered it in a lidded container over night. The next evening I cut off a grapefruit sized piece and cloaked it. Then I set it on a cutting board with cornmeal on the bottom.

I let it rise for 40 minutes. Then got it dressed for the oven, I used a cookie sheet covered with parchment paper, if things go well I'll ask for a pizza stone for my birthday. I dusted the top with flour and cut the top with a knife and put it in the oven-

 Thirty minutes later, voila-

It's yummy and lovely to look at.

It's really good, a little on the smallish side but I like it and it is the most local bread I can make.  I've ordered my own copy of the book and am looking forward to trying out the rest of the recipes. 

Garden Heartbreak

    Something horrible has happened in my garden. Many of the seeds I'd planted have not germinated. I've been worried for a week now, I've checked the soil, watered, prayed, but much of the garden remains barren.  My tomatoes, which were plants when they were added to the garden, aren't dying but don't seem to be growing either. The weeds, however, are just fine.


     The mistake I made, as far as I can figure, is that I planted too deep, not accounting for mulch. I also mulched right away, I should have waited for the seeds to germinate first.  This is the first year we mulched the vegetable garden. My husband had cut down half of the cedar wall in our back yard and has spent days mulching it all for our flower beds and gardens.  We were so pleased with how it looked, still are, just a little disappointed at our mistake.


    So I am off to the garden centres today to buy seedlings and plants for my garden, if there are any left.  It feels like cheating, and they won't likely be from organic seeds... and I am trying not to be a big baby about this... you know that saying, you don't know what you've got till it's gone?  I never realized how much I enjoyed growing my own food, how much pleasure and pride I took from bringing something from seed to the table. But if I've learned anything from gardening it's to be tenacious, time to Farmer Up!


    A quick trip to the local garden centres has me stocked up on zucchini, acorn squash, cauliflower, cabbage, more peppers, lettuce and some solid advice on what went wrong.  It's the mulch, not really necessary for a vegetable garden, as the fella at Botanix put it,"You don't mulch a vegetable garden, you weed it." Alrighty then, I've pulled back the mulch, planted the new additions and replanted the beans and peas, maybe I'll get a late crop. Fingers crossed.


Shannon D.

Sara's Spinach Salad Goes Local

    I love potlucks. I love how everyone brings their signature dish and shows it off to its best potential. I love getting new recipe ideas and learning something new about the person who made the dish. Out of nowhere,  you might learn that a colleague has a recipe for lasagna from an Italian mother in law that will make you weak at the knees. 

  At work potlucks, I cross my fingers and hope that Sara will bring strawberry spinach salad, a salad I'd never had or heard of before she brought it in to my life.  I've had it elsewhere, but hers is the finest, whatever personal touch she brings to this recipe makes it my favourite. With a little tweaking I've made a local version to accompany my Dalew Weiner's and Valley Grower roasted potatoes for dinner tonight.

I've included Sara's original recipe, with my notes along side.

Spinach- included in this week's CSA delivery
Strawberries (sliced)- picked at Beaulieu in Chelmsford
toasted pine nuts- skipped
goat cheese (you can substitute feta, brie or another cheese but it's so yummy with goat cheese so just don't substitute)-if I'd had some on hand I'd have used it.

The dressing (the piece de resistance)

1 garlic clove, minced- In the CSA box, garlic scape was included, thank you, how I've missed local garlic.
1/2 tsp. honey dijon mustard- honey from buzzy bee's, dijon from the fridge
2 tbsp. raspberry vinegar- I used Cranberry Juice concentrate from Iroquois Cranberry Growers
1 tbsp. balsamic vinegar- stuff in the fridge

1 tbsp. brown sugar- maple sugar from Seguin Sugarbush

1/4 cup vegetable oil- Pristine Gourmet soya bean oil
(whisk together - I put it into bottle and shake the heck out of it, which also does the trick)- good advice.

Enjoy Locavores!

The hot dogs were for the kids, but I couldn't resist!

Garlic Scapes are new to me, they look like this:

Garlic Scapes

You can learn about them here: Garlic Scapes , if you have a tried and true recipe send it my way I'd love to try it!


Shannon D.

                                                 

Strawberry Fool

I thought I'd better pop in and update while I'm home on a break from our cottage vacation. Believe it or not, I came home just so I could pick strawberries. The berries are late this year, well compared to last year anyways, and when I realized that I'd be missing the season while I was gone, I hatched a plan to get myself home. This way I could pick and then process in the comfort of my own kitchen and with all my tools. I could not imagine canning in our tiny cottage kitchen nor did I want to lug all that stuff up there. 


So two days and 24 litres of berries later, I have 2 batches of freezer jam (strawberry/vanilla, strawberry/lime), a semi-failed strawberry/rhubarb/rosemary jam (a glass thermometer burst in the pot and I could not locate one tiny piece, so I strained it through a jelly bag and made jelly that set too thick, grrrrr!), a small batch of strawberry/balsamic/black pepper jam that is going to knock-our-socks-off served on some chèvre or feta cheese and crackers come winter time, a jar full of dehydrated strawberry pieces for muffins, and a very beautiful bottle filled with strawberries and vodka that is hanging out doing it's thing....that's going to be for chocolate strawberry martinis I think! 

Drunken Strawberries!

I had a very yummy spinach, green onion, chèvre and strawberry salad last night for supper and we've been snacking on them here and there. I also have three bags of frozen berries in the freezer and I'll be taking the better part of a basket back to the cottage with me to share. Phew! 


Done until blueberry and raspberry season in a few weeks.


Eating local goes on the back burner for most of our cottage time (see last year's post on the subject) since my Mom tends to look after most of the meals. We are however bringing a ham, bacon, eggs, pickles, cheese and our farm veggies for the meals that we are responsible for, and we plan to do a fair amount of fishing, so hopefully that will provide us with a meal or two! Last year we continued eating local dinners long past our goal of the first day of Autumn, which we will do again this year to make up for the missed days this month. Sounds fair I think!


Happy Eating! Back to posting in a week or so.

Shannon A.

Strawberry Infatuation

    My greatest regret from last summer was not having picked enough strawberries. I woefully under picked, and did without for a long time. However, beside myself with strawberry lust, I surrendered my politics and have been buying strawberries from the grocer for a month or so, the justice in this is that they taste of nothing, like water for chocolate as they say...
    Today was my first pick of the season, I packed up my kids and four 4L baskets and off we went to Beaulieu Farms in Chelmsford.  

so plentiful

    At home I used the fancy tool Shannon A. gave me last summer to hull three of the baskets. I have three cookies sheets of strawberries in the freezer downstairs. I lined the pans with parchment paper and lined up the berries so they would freeze separately, ready for smoothies. 

I also made 1 container of strawberry preserves using a recipe from a book I've borrowed from the library- super simple- 

4 cups sliced strawberries, 

1 tbsp corn starch, 

3/4 sugar (I used maple sugar from Sucrerie Seguin)

cook over medium heat for 5 minutes,

Enjoy & freeze!

  After our all local dinner, chicken, salad, and roasted potatoes we enjoyed some strawberries and cream.  

They were so dedicated! *sigh*

Shannon D.

Week 1 Done

We had some successes this week and we had some laziness too. Our meals at home were all local, but we ended up eating out 3 times, which isn't normal for us. The kids and I had a pizza dinner out Friday, the next day we went to a mid-afternoon Birthday party and no one felt like eating come supper time, and then last night we went out again to celebrate the awards the kids received at school and their awesome report cards. Tonight we buckled down again.


We had this guy over for dinner:

Beer Belly Chicken

He came to us from just down the highway. He spent last summer in a big open yard, doing all kinds of fun chickeny things.  Tonight, I gave him a nice herbal massage and then he spent an hour and a half in the tanning bed with a can of beer. He's one lucky duck...I mean chicken! 


We ate him with Blezzard potatoes and Dalew broccoli.


Looking forward to finishing off the leftovers on a salad made with fresh Dalew lettuce and green onions tomorrow night....our first CSA delivery of the season! Yeah!!

Shannon A.

Locavore Dinner 3 & 4

Quick dinner of Dalew bacon and omelettes last night, featuring Thornloe cheese, Dalew eggs and chives from my garden. Simple and delicious.

Who knew the chive blossoms were so yummy?

Now it's Friday, Cameron graduated from Kindergarten this morning, I found out Sydney is going to receive an award at next week's year end assembly at school, Keith is on night shift....so I'm treating the kids to an outing of pizza and a movie. 

Shannon A.

Zucchini Frittata

    I've been wanting to shake things up in the kitchen lately, this is  a new dish for us, although we've had it in restaurants, this is my first homemade frittata. And I am very pleased, very pleased indeed..

Zucchini Frittata, yummy and fun to say!

Here's my adapted recipe:

* ingredients italicized are not local

1 very large frozen zucchini 

Pristine Gourmet Canola Oil

7 eggs

3 egg whites

1/2 cup of 1% Farquhar's milk

1 cup feta 

oregano

garlic

salt and pepper

Thornloe Cheddar

Dalew Smoked Ham

Preheat Broiler (mine is default to 550C)     

In a bowl whisk together 7 eggs, 3 egg whites, milk, and feta.

Heat oil in oven safe skillet, add zucchini, cook until tender. I drained some of the liquid off because it seemed like far too much, perhaps because I had coined my zucchini, instead of shredding, before I froze it, which also meant seeds in the dish.  Add finely chopped garlic and oregano to skillet and cook for 1 minute.

Add the egg mixture, allow to cook for approximately 5 minutes, using a spatula to lift the mixture from the sides and bottom, letting the liquid slip behind and under the cooked egg. 

Remove from heat while still liquidy on top, sprinkle cheese on top and finely chopped smoked ham. Put in the oven at least 6 inches from broiler cook for 5 minutes or until  puffy and golden. 

Serve with your favourite salad, we did a not so local Caesar, and TADA!! 

My tip:  put your oven mitt over the skillet handle, so you don't grab it and burn yourself like I did, YOWSA!!

This makes quite a lot, lovely leftovers for breakfast and lunch.

What's even better is the source from this adapted recipe; the book below The Gourmet Cookbook which I picked up for fifty cents at my local library. It's huge, over 1000 recipes and full of Chef's tips and other useful information. I would never have bought this book on my own or at full price, but now that I have it, it's quickly becoming a go to cookbook.

 

Locavore Dinner 2

Pork Chops, Spelt Pasta and Peas

I had a side dish panic attack tonight. I planned for the pork chops and took those out of the freezer this morning, but didn't give a second thought to what we would eat with them! 4:30 arrived and it was still pouring rain, so grilling the chops with potatoes was out of the question, and since we had fries last night, I wasn't really in the mood for them anyways. Of course, rice doesn't grow around here, and I haven't been to Eat Local Sudbury to see if they have any grains in stock. The only local product I could find in the cupboard was a bag of Spelt Flour from Grass Roots Organics of Desboro, ON. That's just over 400kms away, but since we lost our supplier from New Liskeard last summer, this has been one of our only choices for flour. I found a recipe for spelt pasta online and went to work.


It turned out great! I served it simply with butter, Thornloe Asiago cheese and pepper. I pulled out a jar of plum sauce I canned last summer for the pork chops and some peas from the freezer to round out the meal. The kids gobbled it down, which is better than any compliment!

Shannon A.

Summer Sliders!

     Dinner's Ready!

Next time the buns will be local.

       This time of year is the storm before the calm, garden planting and end of school excitement keep this house hopping.  Last night I was out, so my husband made classic grill cheese for dinner. Tonight it was sliders, quick and delicious.

       I have fallen quite badly for Jamie Oliver. He's so lovely and clever.  I received Jamie At Home for Christmas and have been swooning over him ever since. What I love about him is how he describes how he cooks food. Given the rain tonight I pan fried the sliders, using this advice.

      I've been using canola oil I purchased at Eat Local Sudbury Co-op. It is from The Pristine Gourmet and for the most part I love it, it is too heavy for a salad dressing but excellent everywhere else.


The sliders were super easy, Burt's Farms beef is so flavourful, so delicious, it will ruin you for all other beef.


Lean Ground Beef (Burt's Farms)
1 egg (Dalew)
bread crumbs 


Pristine Gourmet oil for the pan.
Topped with Thornloe 1 Year Old Cheddar




Enjoy Locavores!!


 Shannon D.

Locavore Dinner 1

Fish, Chips and Asparagus ~ 800kms

So for fun I thought we'd do a comparison of our meal and a grocery store equivalent meal.


Locavore Meal
Ontario Asparagus: let's say these came from Simcoe, ON 500kms
Pickerel: from Kirkland Lake, ON 300kms (and this travelled with us)
Potatoes: Blezard Valley, ON 5kms
Total = 805kms


Typical Grocery Store Meal
McCain Fries: Florenceville, NB 1400kms
Asparagus: Mexico 4000kms
Captain Highliner Fish Sticks: Lunenburg, Nova Scotia 2000kms
Total = 7400kms


The McCain and Captain Highliner numbers are just estimates because I can only find processing locations, not where they source their products, so the numbers are likely higher!


Food for thought, eh?

Shannon A.

It's That Time Again!!

   Locavore Summer 2 is on and I am feeling much more confident than I was last year, despite the fact that we haven't started receiving our CSA veggies yet! The cupboard in the basement is still full of applesauce, peaches, pickles, beets, flavoured oils and sauces. I have two bags of frozen strawberries left, shredded zucchini, green and yellow beans, broccoli, brustle sprouts and a few jars of freezer jam. The freezer is also well stocked with Dalew pork and beef, moose, duck, fish, venison, chicken and even a giant turkey from my Father In Law's neighbours. I've had the canner out already, processing 16lbs of rhubarb in to savoury jam, sweet jam, BBQ sauce and juice and there is still some left in the freezer. There should still be Ontario asparagus and fiddle heads at the grocery store, and lucky for us, mushrooms, and hot house cucumbers that are grown in southern Ontario all year round. We won't go hungry, even though the first few weeks are going to be a little meat heavy/veggie light, as I ration out last year's left overs. I think this summer is going to be a piece of cake!


   I haven't been in to Eat Local Sudbury since Christmas but I'm really looking forward to renewing my weekly trips there once the Dalew CSA starts up again, hopefully next week. I'm craving Burt's Cheddar Smokies in the worst way! I bought cheese sausages at the grocery store a few weeks ago, hoping I would get my fix, but they were a huge disappointment! We also got word that Dalew's are offering hot dogs now, much to Shannon D's delight. She's already picked up 4 packs and gave great reviews! They have also found a new source for local flour, which, when I heard that they had lost their last supplier, I feared would be the downfall of our project. Now we are good to go again!


   My garden is in and doing pretty well. We decided to focus more on freezing/canning vegetables and herbs this year rather than fresh eating... things like shelling peas, beans, carrots, spinach, golden beets, pickling cukes, peppers and a pretty good variety of herbs. We get so much from Dalew's for day to day eating, so we thought this might be a good plan to try. I also planted radishes between my rows. I don't really love radishes but I've been wanting to try them roasted à la Shannon D., so I thought I'd give them a try. I only planted 3 brandywine tomatoes and 1 cherry tomato, which was a huge cut back from last year. I decided that for the amount of space they take up in my small gardens, relative to yield, I'd rather take up the space with smaller plants, and just buy a bushel of tomatoes in the late summer. The added benefit is that I can process them all at once, rather than a few here and there. I hope I don't regret this decision!


   So, for our Locavore 2.0 Kick Off Meal tonight, we will be having fish and chips fried in our backyard, featuring pickerel Keith and I caught on our last trip home, local potatoes and steamed green and yellow beans. Yummo!!

My 2011 Garden of Eatin'

Shannon A.

Ready, Set, Go!

  So happy to be back! 


     This winter was a reasonable success for us. We've continued our weekly trip to Eat Local Sudbury throughout the winter. I buy all my meat and a bag of Farquar's 1% milk at ELS every week. I fill in any gaps with Farquar's from my local grocer during the week in order to support both. I can say, with confidence, that the dairy and meat in this house are consistently local. The habits formed last summer were cemented into our lives and I look forward to stretching further this summer.  
    
   I have two goals for this summer; to freeze significantly more fruits and vegetables to carry this family through the long winter months and to find a solution to my local bread problem.


     The gardens are planted, I am pleased to report that most of the tomato plants were grown from seed BY ME (a remarkable personal achievement). The others were intended as back up plants, they were purchased at the ELS plant sale and Sudbury's Garden Festival from a local gardener.  Feeling ambitious, my husband revived an abandoned patch to plant some strawberry plants, corn and potatoes. We have planted a lot this year,  two vegetable gardens, two perennial beds, and containers on every level surface.

Strawberry Patch

Corn and Potatoes at the far end.

MINE!! I SAW IT FIRST!

Circle Garden, name it, I planted some...

Flower Garden, Welcome Bees!

Lettuce 

More lettuce and some peppers

    We've also gone halvsies with a friend for Dalew's  CSA program. I had my own share a few years back, but found it to be too much with my own garden's produce. It is my hope that between the two I'll have enough frozen vegetables to last well into the winter.


    I have also managed to secure a place on Dalew's egg share and will not, therefore, be whining about lack of local eggs this summer. 


    Fortunately, Dalew has also begun carrying flour from Poschaven Farms. I bought a 4kg bag and once school's out, it is my dream to begin making my own "as local as possible" bread products. Here's my plan; once a month I'll spend a glorious day making bread, buns, pizza dough, bagels to last all month, then freeze and use. It's a fanciful dream, but I believe I can do it.   Of course, if I find a bakery that uses local ingredients, I will probably just buy it.


     Here's to a great summer!! Shannon D.