Food

Food Rant Friday

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Growing Food in Protest

 

My initial intention was that Food Rand Friday would be a one time thing, apparently I have just too much to say about it.

I’ve been seeing a lot of info this week about the nationwide march against Monsanto and wonder to myself what this is really going to accomplish.  A group of basically like-minded people will get together and rant about what Monsanto is doing to our collective good health.  Marching against anything these days doesn’t seem to have the impact it once had.  Our legislators are not going to change their ways of voting on the farm bill or anything else because thousands of citizens got together to voice their disapproval of big ag’s farming practices.  Most will vote with whoever is funding their bids for reelection, plain and simple.  The sooner the population realizes this the sooner we can deal with it in a more constructive way.

Michael Pollan is my hero if for no other reason than to tell people to read labels and if there is more than five ingredients on it or there are ingredients that you don’t understand don’t eat it.  That’s pretty simple.  It doesn’t take much to read the label on that bag of Cheetos to know that they probably aren’t that good for you and that you are supporting big ag by buying and consuming them.  There are so many other reasons not to eat processed food but honestly I’ve said enough about that.

Today I have two articles to share the first is about the possible effects of Roundup on our guts and potentially our very lives (like we didn’t really already know that).  Gut Punch: Monsanto Could Be Destroying Your Microbiome was an article I read this morning that I thought was interesting but just one more reason not to eat food produced by large agriculture.  This article led me to Michael Pollan’s piece in the NYT – Some of My Best Friends are Germs.  This is a lengthy piece which is typical for Pollan only because when he makes a case for something he gives you as much information as he can.  Read it, it’s fascinating and more than a little scary.

Our food, in my humble opinion, has become one of the biggest political issues of our time.  I feel like there are so few people who are even aware of it that the idea of changing what is happening to the everyday American is all but impossible.  We are bombarded everyday with news of terrorism and tragedy that the danger of the food you buy in your grocery store takes a very back seat to the tragedy du jour.  Let’s put armed guards in every elementary school in the country to keep our children safe, let’s make sure there’s a safe room in each school as well to ensure in case of a tornado they’ll have somewhere safe to go.  Okay, I get it, but how about increasing the food budgets and finding access to organic fresh foods in every cafeteria across the country.  How about putting home economics back into the school curriculum to give our children the knowledge they need to cook a meal from scratch or help them to read the ingredient labels on their food.  How about teaching them where their food comes from?

Honestly, kids need to know more about farm animals than the cow says moo and the chicken says cluck.  They need to know the cow means milk and burgers and the chicken is eggs and McNuggets (maybe).  I worked at Old Sturbridge Village as an interpreter for a few years, fortunately for the kids I was in textiles.  Early on though I worked as a gardener. One year we were harvesting carrots and I had a little girl help pull some up – she was amazed, she didn’t know they came out of the ground!  I also had an experience of stopping kids from harassing one of the roosters in the barnyard.  He thought it was just a stupid bird, I told him that if he continued to corner and harass that bird it would attack him and then we’d have to kill him and eat him.  The kid looked at me like I was nuts and I told him that that was where his chicken nuggets came from – then he really thought I was crazy.  These kids were typically in the fourth grade.  I’m beginning to think that we’ve crossed the Rubicon with food education because the vast majority of parents don’t know where their food comes from either.  Talk about the dumbing down of America.

I will continue to use the poster at the beginning of every food rant because I am convinced the only way we are going to get ourselves out of our collective health problems is to grow our own food or source it, know where it comes from and what is in it.  If it makes you feel better go march against Monsanto on Saturday, while you’re there talk about what you are growing this year or what farmer’s market is near the person you’re talking to.   I’m hoping that in addition to being a protest it can be an education and an avenue for people to know where they can get good, healthy food for themselves and their families.

 

 

 

 

Food Rant Friday

/ handmadebyjo / 5 Comments

Growing Food in Protest

 

Okay, so there are a few friends and relatives that know how pissed off I get when yet another article crosses my path about Monsanto and their GMO’s.  This week was the motherload in reading about various lawsuits that Monsanto has brought against everyone in the world from the small farmer to the state of VT.  Apparently the money stream is so important to them they are willing to take on any state in the union that would try to label food as containing GMO products.  Hmmmm, doesn’t it make you wonder what they are trying to hide?  I believe in informed consent.

There are now apps available to help you boycott all kinds of products as you peruse the groceries in the store, just scan the barcodes and voila you know what subsidiary that food is coming from and can make your choices with a little more knowledge.  I’m thinking that’s all well and good if what you are eating is processed but it’s really not going to help you in the produce section.   I read today that one of the country’s leading suppliers of French fries is asking the federal government to approve genetically modified potatoes.  This is to prevent those unsightly brown spots.  Really?

You know that lawn that you hate mowing every week?  Why not use part of it to put in a raised bed and plant some tomatoes there she goes talking about those tomatoes again?  Put a few potatoes in your little plot or grow a few carrots to eat right out of the garden.  I promise you the seeds that you grow will surprise and delight you. You will have such a feeling of accomplishment and be astonished at the money you save over the summer on some of your favorite things.  It’s also FUN.

I baked a batch of cookies the other day, shared them with sister Sue.  They are a delicious soft molasses cookie encrusted with course grain sugar, crunchy on the outside, soft and chewy in the middle.  Spicy and delicious they are the ultimate comfort food for me.  Then I started to think about the ingredient list – what’s gmo and what’s not.  Yeah, I know, but I’m always thinking about where my food comes from or what’s in it.  That doesn’t mean I don’t eat what’s put in front of me but I’m always aware – so is my sister.  After she ate those cookies with me and brought some home I texted her about all the potentially bad things that were in them.  Today in the interest of science and my guilty conscience I decided to actually look up what went into them.  I was pleased to find out that the things that were a little sketchy for me were all within my tolerance level for food weirdness.  So I’d have to say that if you are going to eat cookies bake your own and source your ingredients.  Now I can email Sue and tell her that those treats were really much more okay than I had led her to believe (and maybe she’ll stop sending me all that email about Monsanto).

 

 

Gardens

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130515 Rhubarb

 

The first edible plant to arrive in my garden is rhubarb.  We eagerly look forward to it thinking about pies all winter long.  I have found no really effective way to preserve rhubarb that allows me to bake with it in the off season so we enjoy as much as we can while we can.

This particular rhubarb came from Bill’s grandfather’s property.  After he died and we were cleaning out the house for sale I walked the yard to see if there was anything I could transplant.  His back yard was very shaded and there was a very anemic patch of rhubarb in the back corner of the garage.  I dug it up and brought it to Rowe.  I planted it in front of a huge rock – it faces west.  The plants are shaded until noon during the growing season and I’ve found that really works well, it keeps it from bolting early in the season.  Last year I made a rhubarb pie in September and it was awesome.  I always thought if you didn’t get it in the spring that was it.

Being able to go out and pick something edible this time of year is a blessing.  Gives you hope for the rest of the season even if you haven’t planted anything yet.  I have garlic that looks amazing this year but I know I didn’t plant enough.  I will be tilling the garden this weekend barring any bad weather. I will set it up in anticipation of the ground warming to a temperature where I can plant most of my vegetables.  We had three nights below freezing this past week so I make it a rule to never plant before Memorial Day.

I’ve had a vegetable garden for about 8 years now in varying sizes and layouts.  I’m getting a grip on what grows and what will not and have had gardens through summers dry and hot, cool and rainy.  I think everyone should have a garden where they can grow something of their own to eat.  Our healthy choices are being taken away from us at a breathless pace.  I don’t believe if you go into a grocery store right now that you can have any clue where your food comes from or what goes into it.  You are being lied to on a daily basis about what’s organic or natural.  I figure if it says that on a package than it’s probably not.  Start using your farmers gardens.  They are springing up everywhere this time of year.  There may not be a lot of variety but soon there will be.  You’ll know that your veggies and herbs haven’t spent days in a truck coming to you from parts unknown.

The other thing I would add is if you plan on ever growing any of your food now is the time to start.  Gardens are slow motion works in progress, they can take years.  What works one year may not the next but those experiences are what help you to be a better gardener.  So many people I talk to think they can just put one in one year and it’ll be fine so they wait until they think they “really” need it.  Don’t wait, do it now, even if it’s just pots of tomatoes and basil.

Pear Blossoms

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IMG_20130511_104220I wait eagerly for this each year.  The pear tree blossoming in the back forty.  It is always so beautiful, this year more so because I finally got down there to prune it.  Bill and I drove the tractor down next to the tree and took turns lifting each other in the bucket at different angles to cut off the suckers.  This tree has never been pruned and was rather overrun.  I used the lopping shears and he used his smallest chain saw.  It was more than a little scary being 15+ feet off of the ground and moving into a tree.  I think Bill’s ride was probably a little scarier since I don’t drive the tractor that often.  My ride was fairly smooth backwards and forwards, up and down.  Bill’s on the other hand . . . let’s just say next time he’ll probably opt for a ladder.  At Old Sturbridge Village they always said to prune your fruit trees so a cat tossed into it wouldn’t hit any branches.  Fruit trees like a lot of air.  With any luck we will have more than the one pear we got last year.  The spring has been more “normal” this year with a more gradual warmup so the blossoms didn’t come out too early.  As long as we get some pollinators out there we should be okay.

The patches of what looks like white in the field are bluets.  We always put off mowing the field until these have gone by, the patches get bigger every year.  They are like clouds in the grass.

It’s a drizzly, rainy day today but everything is looking wonderfully green and lush.  Something about it just soothes the soul after such a long, cold winter.

The Frustration of Food

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ChickensToday’s level of farming ignorance is unprecedented in history—including all time and all cultures. Never have so many people in a civilization been able to be this far removed from their food umbilical. 

Joel Salatin

An acquaintance of mine, Jenna Woginrich of Cold Antler Farm just received her order of 45 baby chicks today and posted part of an article written by Joel Salatin in response to those who would criticize the practice of sending chicks through the mail.  Joel has the ability to explain in very simple terms why it is possible to have chicks comfortably make the trip from his farm to your house and remain perfectly healthy.  He also wrote this article out of frustration and I’m sure that anyone that raises animals for food can appreciate that but I think everyone needs to read the article.   The article is called  Rebel With a Cause: Anthropomorphism Against Farms, take a few minutes to read it, maybe read it to your kids, you will all learn something.

I grew up when most of our meat was grown ourselves or my father shot in the woods.  Sounds backwards and like I am some kind of hick doesn’t it?  I think something is lost when you don’t make an effort to know where your food comes from.  I believe you have to see their faces, understand what they are and what they give to you, sustenance.  I believe you need to know the kinds of lives that these animals have led and what kind of deaths that they have had in order to make peace with the fact that you are an omnivore and flesh is part of your diet.  Factory farming is farming at its worst, the only thing this is about is the almighty dollar, produce as much as you can as cheaply as possible.  It’s all about volume.

The frightening part to me is now everything you can buy in a grocery store comes from some sort of high volume farming situation.  If you want to know what is in your food you need to seek out the farmers of every single ingredient, visit their farms if possible and buy it directly from them.  I am fortunate to live in an area where there are many farmers of various kinds.  There is a small, family run dairy right down the street from my house in Enfield.  Smyth’s Trinity Farm takes dairy farming to a new (old) level in my mind.  I go there to pick up my dairy products and see all of the girls either in the pasture or in the stanchions in a very clean barn chewing their cuds and seeming very content.  All of their products are processed right there.  Once you start drinking and cooking with their milk, half and half and cream you will never go back to what passes as milk in the grocery store, you realize that you are being lied to about what they are selling you – it looks like milk but it doesn’t taste like milk.

Maybe that’s the problem, we’ve been lied to for so long that we now see what passes for food and something good and wholesome because it says so on the box.  We’ve lost our way, we really don’t know what is good and what is crap.  The gap seems to grow wider everyday.  If you’re reading this you could maybe Google GMO corn, or Monsanto, or the difference between wheat 20 years ago and now.  I can promise you it’s not pleasant reading, any of it, but it pays to educate yourself, you need to know what’s happening to us because of the profitability of big Ag.

Someone that reads my blog commented on what I really eat and if I was somewhat of a hypocrite.  In a word, yes.  I think we all are complicit in the problem with factory farming on every level.  I cook at home a lot of the time from scratch but even those recipes handed down for generations use ingredients that are now questionable.  It would require me to do a LOT of research to make some of my favorite meals from total scratch and I have not figured out how to replace American Cheese . . . sigh.  So I may not always cook as fresh and local as I want to for every meal but you can be assured that I think about and calculate what is going into it.  Then I make a decision about how bad I want that meal and at least know (and try to justify) what I’m ingesting.  Sometimes that’s the best you can do.

Earth Day Coming Up

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8469v

 

Earth Day has evolved for me over the years.  I used to spend my time cleaning out my flower beds.  I’ve planted trees, shrubs, and flowers on this day.  This year I seem to be on a mission to augment as much of my food supply as I can with things that I’ve grown.  This Earth Day week will be spent in prep for the vegetable and fruit growing season.  Seeds will be started and although it seems late to some I can’t plant ANYTHING until Memorial Day in Rowe.  There is still snow on the ground and the entire back forty was completely frosted this morning.

I want everyone to know the feeling you have when you eat or serve a meal with food that you have grown.  You know everything about this food.  You may have nurtured it from seeds or have seen it eating grass on a sunny hill.  You have watered and fed and cooed over these plants and animals.  You have planned and brought these home grown ingredients together into something that is fabulously delicious in its own time.

Years ago (really not that many) people ate what was in season.  You didn’t eat tomatoes in January unless they were the “hot house” variety that completely lacked in both taste and nutrition.  Vegetables were not flown in from Argentina or California during the winter. The cycle of meals had everything to do with what was ripe at the time or food that you had put up and was in your cellar or freezer.  Growing up I remember my aunt and cousins staying with us when the garden was really beginning to produce.  For lunch each day there would be sandwiches made with the freshest of tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce.  A platter just laid out with the bounty of summer, a taste that can not be replicated in any way other than to pick the produce, slice it up and eat it within minutes. I understand what it’s like to share the food that I have grown with the people I love.  Hard work goes into it but it’s worth it when you see the look on someones face that is eating a particular plant for the first time or an old familiar one that tastes completely different because it is so fresh.

This year I think everyone should at least put a tomato plant in a pot of soil on their patio or steps or yard.  Throw in a few basil seeds for good measure.  This is sooo inexpensive to do and you will be paid back ten fold in something that you can not buy, the true taste of summer.

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Food Rant Friday

/ handmadebyjo / 4 Comments

 

 

There's Nothing Like Homemade.

Farmhouse Cheddar and Apple Pie

 

There are few things that fire me up more than food.  I mean fake food versus real food.  I follow a blog called Auburn Meadow Farm.  This week her blog brought me to this informative pdf called Food Stamps, Follow the Money by Michele Simon.  Take some time to read it.  Or you could be like me and be soo angry after the first page that you have to put it down for a little while and come back to it.  Do come back to it though because in the interest of being informed on so many levels it is an excellent read.

I’m dating myself here but when I grew up we still had home economics required in high school, cooking and sewing.  I also belonged to a number of 4-H clubs including cooking, sewing, knitting, etc.  Over the years all of these opportunities for education have gone away.  I think some of it has to do with the women’s movement, some has to do with budget cuts in schools and some with the perception that this sort of thing is just old fashioned – why knit yourself a sweater when you can go to a store and buy it right now at half the cost.  Home Arts has gone out of style.

As I age in this land of consumerism I fear for my children – all of them – sons, daughters, nieces, nephews.  They have grown up in a society that values nothing but money and instant gratification.  Instead of going to a market to buy the ingredients for a meal they buy fast food.  It has little nutritional value, contains GMO’s, huge amounts of sodium, and a whole lot of things I can’t even pronounce.  My daughters do go “shopping” in Rowe from time to time and raid the canned goods shelves.  I take satisfaction in knowing when they take that jar of spaghetti sauce off of the shelf it contains grass fed beef and vegatables that I have grown.  I am blessed to have that ability and am willing to teach anyone how to do anything from gardening to canning to handwork. They just have to want to learn it.

 

 

Culinary Experiment Revisited

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corned-beef-cabbage

 

St. Patty’s day is a memory and so is my corned beef and cabbage.  I finished corning that 6 pound brisket of Heath beef last Wednesday and wrapped it to wait until Sunday afternoon.  I’d heard that a home made corned beef tastes so much better than something you buy already processed but honestly I wasn’t prepared for how truly wonderful this was.  Maybe it was the beef we have been eating, you know grass and sunshine kind of beef.  Maybe it was that very slight hint of cinnamon that came through from the brine.  The texture was perfect, the taste divine.  Makes you think about eating a nice corned beef more than once a year.

Now there is that problem with only having 2 briskets per side of beef.  Hmmmm, I may have to trade some steaks with Russell for another brisket.  It was that good – ribeyes for brisket, yes.

I highly recommend anyone trying this.  It probably could be categorized as slow food.  You have to plan at least a week ahead but it is incredibly easy to do, in fact I will never buy a corned beef again.  I posted the recipe I used previously and will freely admit that instead of making my own concoction of pickling spice I used the jar I had in the cupboard I normally use for bread and butter pickles.  I can’t imagine that creating my own spice concoction would have made a huge difference but you never know.  Next time I will try that.

Now onto pastrami!

Another Baking Adventure

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1267724021-22-(Small)This past weekend was an adventure in baking.  My niece, Meredith, had given me a book entitled “Crust: From Sourdough, Spelt and Rye Bread” saying she thought it was a little beyond her skill level. This is a wonderful book that really goes beyond your basic bread making.  His method of working dough is quite a departure from how I usually do things and I have to confess I read it and thought it was interesting and did it the way I always do.  The recipes are wonderful though so I decided to step out of my comfort zone and leap into laminated dough.  What do you ever really have to lose in doing this?  Maybe a few hours, but even if it’s a total fail you learn something, sometimes you learn a lot.

My oldest daughter spent some time in Ecuador a few years ago and smuggled back some chocolate croissants that she had eaten daily for breakfast while she was there.  They were wonderful.  I have to say that a yeasty, flaky pastry has always intimidated me a little.  I think because it is such a departure from making a loaf of white bread.   So Pain au Chocolat was what I decided to make.  This is something that takes a little more than 24 hours to make so a little planning is needed (but most of that time is waiting).

There are enough posts on the internet that tell you how to make laminated dough, suffice it to say that it is way easier than it looks and the results are more than worth the trouble.  It does represent more of a workout than I had anticipated (do you know how long it takes to roll a piece of dough that’s 8″x12″ to 12’x30″?).  The recipe made a total of 18 rolls, all light and flaky and quite delicious.

I have read recipes for Pain au Chocolat in many places, all a little different.  I decided on this one only because the pictures were pretty and self explanatory.  It was like taking a little class with no one watching what you were doing or judging the end result.  The judges were the company that devoured them on Sunday morning.

 

What you can do with a little flour and fresh eggs

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Chickens

My sister has quite the flock of chickens that are just beginning to lay eggs (note the rooster in the back over seeing his girls).  Last week she brought up some eggs and since then I’ve been thinking a lot about what to do with the motherload of eggs like she will be seeing in the coming weeks.  You see, she has 26 very healthy hens.  That’s a lot of eggs.  Once they are all laying it could be up to 2 dozen a DAY.  Hmmmm, what to do with that wonderful fresh egg bounty?

Make omelets, quiche, pudding, angelfood cake?  Fry them, scramble them, poach them – aahh, Eggs Benedict.  Eat them at every meal, sell them, give them away.  The list goes on but how about something a little different?

Saturday I decided to try something new.  I’d been thinking about it for a long time.  Pasta, specifically ravioli, I was determined to make my own.  I scoured the internet and watched way too much Diners, Driveins and Dives in preparation for this new gastronomic adventure.  I bought a pasta machine and ravioli mold (all very on sale) as well as a bag of Perfect Pasta Flour from King Arthur.  Then she brought up those eggs and I was ready.

After all of that prep I ended up using the recipe on the bag of flour (how can you go wrong with a recipe from King Arthur Flour?).  Three cups of flour, four large eggs, very little water.  Sue’s eggs are small so I used 5 eggs. Put it all into the mixer with the dough hook and let it mix.  Well, for a couple minutes anyway.  The dough is so dense that it really requires hand kneading, so I divided it in half and did so.  Let it rest for 30 minutes then shape into anything you want.

Now I have to tell you that this didn’t really look like it was going to make much pasta – I had 4 dozen meatballs just waiting to be turned into filling. Sister Sue wanted to be part of this adventure and entered the kitchen in time to help – good thing because this is a 2 man job (they don’t tell you that anywhere). I started rolling out the dough a little at a time and was AMAZED at how pliable a dough this is.  Stretches like crazy, does not fall apart.  After the first dozen raviolis were made we decided to cut the meatballs in half since the first batch looked more like Chinese dumplings instead of the intended Italian pasta.  Perfection!

We made 3 dozen raviolis.  I also have a pasta cutter attachment with the pasta machine so we made linguini and then spaghetti.  I had no where to dry it so we made piles to freeze.  We had a delicious meal with a homemade sauce and put everything else in the freezer.  It takes only 4 minutes to cook fresh linguine, the ravioli took 5 minutes and was amazingly good.

The question remains, what are we going to do with all of those eggs because this is what we made with only 5!

Pasta