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.