Thursday’s Lunch

Tuesday, December 04, 2007

Weaving around blindly through a migraine last Thursday, I needed food made slowly and without too much thought.  I made this salad up as I went along, bird by bird (as Annie Lamott says).

Speaking of birds, the three eggs are from Morningstar Farms (I can’t remember if we bought these ones at the Fair Food Farmstand or if we got them through Farm to City’s Wintershare program).  I soft/hardboiled them using M’s method—put them in a pan with hot tap water, boil for four minutes, cool them immediately with cold water.

I steamed some frozen lima beans that we had shelled from Mood’s Orchards in NJ, green beans from the Amish farmstand across from our co-op, and corn from our CSA.  I put these lightly steamed veggies into a bowl and mixed them with salt, pepper, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar (all non-local), plus a healthy dose of a local garlic vinegar that I love. 

Finally, I topped it all with non-local walnuts and New Jersey cranberries we bought a couple of months ago from our co-op and froze.

I love pulling out the parcels and packets of things from our big freezer, feeling cozy and chilly and amazed that summer is over, that it will be many months before we are eating these things fresh again. 

Due to the sticky gunk in the various systems, cystic fibrosis patients get about half the nutrients from food as most other people, so we have to eat twice as much.  I realized when I was taking this photograph that it is clear I am a woman with an elephantine appetite, but cut it in half in your mind and it’s a bit more managable!  (The good news is that I’m generally twice as hungry, so it’s not too much of a hardship.)  Maybe my interest in food stems from having to consume a whole mess of it! 

Food good.  Let’s leave it at that.

p.s. that book is not a plant—I really am reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle!

Dark Days: Chicken Parmesan

Sunday, December 02, 2007

Having caught whatever plague is making its rounds in Philadelphia this week, I’ve not been much in the mood to cook.  That’s not entirely true - but my meals haven’t been all that interesting or elaborate.  It’s been grilled cheese and soup, mostly.  Of course, it’s all been local - good bread from Le Bus, local butter, and the most awesome raw milk cheddar available from the Fair Food Farmstand, as well as soup made from homemade stock and whatever local vegetables were handy.

Now that I’m starting to feel better, I felt compelled to make a real dinner.  Nothing too complicated, mind you…but still a little more involved than grilled cheese!

Of course, it was still comfort food: chicken parmesan and steamed green beans.

The chicken is from Harry Ochs in Reading Terminal Market, the bread crumbs made from my leftover Le Bus bread, the tomato sauce is from my pantry (I canned it this past Summer), and the parmesan is that wonderful parm from Hendrick’s Farms (purchased at Salumeria in Reading Terminal).  And the green beans were from this past Summer’s CSA bounty.  It made a nice, homey dinner that was perfect eaten in front of the fire.

Even When You Think You Have Nothing, You’ve Got Something

Some of my favorite recipes aren’t really recipes at all: they are desperate explorations of a seemingly empty refrigerator or pantry.  Determined to make something, we pull out whatever we have and find a way to pull it together.  Sometimes this results in disasters (my sweet-potato gnocchi being the most recent example), but more often it’s a miraculous transformation.  These accomplishments are doubly pleasing: we feel frugal for not wasting food we have nor purchasing anything new, and we feel particularly creative for doing what we wouldn’t have thought possible an hour before.  This morning, determined to make breakfast (my wife loves breakfast), my wife pulled out of our empty fridge an apple, leftover bourbon cranberries, and walnuts.  Using a recipe from Nigella Lawson’s Feast as a guide, she created these delicious muffins.  One more thing - my wife loves to make baked goods as guilt-free as possible without sacrificing flavor, so feel free to sweeten or fatten these as you like.

Apple, Cranberry, Walnut Muffins
1 cup walnuts, chopped
2 cups flour (I used a combination of spelt and whole wheat pastry)
4 teaspoons baking powder
½ cup wheat germ
pinch salt
½ cup yogurt
½ cup honey
¼ cup canola oil
¼ cup milk
1 egg
¾ cups whole cranberry dressing
1 apple, finely diced
1 tablespoon brown sugar (optional)

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. 

Combine ¾ cups of the walnuts with the flour, baking powder, wheatgerm and salt in large bowl. 

In another bowl, whisk together yogurt, honey, canola oil, milk, and egg.  Add cranberries and apple. Pour wet ingredients into dry and combine. 

Spoon mixture into prepared large muffin tins. Chop remaining nuts more finely and combine with brown sugar.  Sprinkle onto muffin tops.

Bake for 20 minutes.

No Local Pancetta - Yet

Saturday, December 01, 2007

I think every Italian cookbook published has a version of Carbonara, and at least have of them claim to be “authentic.”  Since the recipe has never been codified, I am not sure how that is possible.  This is one I’ve changed over time, adopting various proportions of ingredients and different techniques while dropping others.  One of the most helpful recipes was Nigella Lawson’s.  To get a creaminess, she suggests combining the egg and cheese before adding them to the cooked pasta.  Rather than pancetta in this dish, I have used Meadow Run Farm’s Cottage Bacon.  It’s lower in fat and has a smoky flavor, so I won’t be substituting it for pancetta very often, but here it works.  I can compensate for the loss of fat with olive oil, and the smoky flavor somehow makes it more like the “breakfast” pasta (or hangover pasta, as Mario Batali claims) it is in Italy in my mind.  This is not when we eat Carbonara (mostly a lunch dish here), but I still like the idea.  I also use the bacon sparingly, as the smoky flavor is rather strong.  If you were to go back to using pancetta, you’d probably use quite a bit more. 

Spaghetti Carbonara

1 lb. Severino Spaghetti
1/3 cup Meadow Run Farm Cottage bacon, cut into strips
4 oz. Hendricks’ Dairy Parmesan, grated (or more or less to taste)
4 eggs (preferably Meadow Run Farm), scrambled
1/2 onion, finely chopped
1 cup flat-leaf parsley, roughly chopped
Salt and Pepper
Olive Oil

Put a large pot of water on to boil.  Once it boils, salt it aggressively and turn it down to a simmer. (Well-salted pasta water is essential to good pasta.  Also, I like to the sauce or “condiment,” as it is referred to in Italian, almost done before I put the pasta in to cook.)  Add the bacon to a cold pan (a wide-bottomed, shallow pan big enough to hold the pasta) with some olive oil (enough to film the bottom of the pan).  Slowly heat the bacon to render the fat.  Once the bacon is crispy, remove it to a plate with a slotted spoon.  Lower the heat (if necessary) to medium-low and add the onions.  Allow them to really cook, to soften, grown golden and sweet.  This will take a good ten minutes if not more.  Once the onion is cooked, reduce the heat again and bring the pasta water back up to a hard boil; the, add the pasta.  While the pasta is cooking, stir together the egg and cheese until they are well incorporated.  Cook the pasta until it is slightly undercooked (this is a matter of taste, as I prefer a firmer pasta) to your judgment.  Remove the pasta from the water, reserving approximately one cup of the pasta water (which should be beautifully clouded and salty), and add the pasta to the pan with the cooked onions and toss to coat with the oil and onions.  Next, add the egg-and-cheese mixture and parsley, tossing the pasta and parsley to coat and slowly cook the eggs.  The eggs should cook and the cheese should melt into a nice sauce, with bits of onion and parsley suspended in it.  If you need additional liquid,  add some of the reserved pasta water.  Serve with additional cheese and freshly cracked pepper.   

Mill Creek Farm Benefit

Friday, November 30, 2007

If you’re interested in urban agriculture and sustainability, you might want to check out a fundraiser for Mill Creek Farm:

Celebrate our second season and learn about our work with urban agriculture and sustainability. Light food and drinks from local restaurants and brewerys, silent auction, live music featuring the West Philadelphia Orchestra and Fan of Friends.  Sun, Dec 9, 3-7 pm, The Ethical Society Building, 1906 South Rittenhouse Sq, $20 advance, $25 door. More info and tix: http://www.millcreekurbanfarm.org

The Marketplace at East Falls

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

A new marketplace, modeled after the Pike Place Market in Seattle opened last week in East Falls. The Marketplace at East Falls only has a few vendors open right now but more are scheduled to open in the next few weeks. Though not all of the vendors appear to feature local foods, many do.

Jeff’s Produce had a sale on locally grown apples when I stopped in on the weekend and I got to sample Hudson Bread (which I believe is made in New Jersey or New York) with some DiBruno Bros. cheese spread. The Head Nut has a location at the marketplace and Crossing Vineyards, a local winery is slated to open there as well. King’s Dutch Country goods which sells Lancaster County baked goods, ice cream, milk, eggs and yogurt was closed on Sunday when I stopped in, but I’m thrilled to have local, Amish products closer to my house than the Reading Terminal Market. CB Enterprises selling Jake and Amos jarred fruits and pickeled products, Bulk Baking Products from Lancaster Co., Pappadelles Pasta, and Harvest Bread and Candy also looks very promising for the locavores though it wasn’t open yet either.

The Marketplace also features prepared foods, deli meats, and a Kosher and Halal meat place is supposed to open soon. A full list of vendors is on the website though they’re not all there yet. I’m looking forward to making it a regular grocery stop.

Jack and the Bean Stalk

We’ve recently been talking about local sources for dried beans, but don’t overlook the fact that you can grow your very own dried beans in a very small amount of space.  In my case, I didn’t quite mean to grow dried beans - I just didn’t have time to keep up with the beans in my garden and they became dried beans.  As you might be able to see, the limas, green beans, and purple beans overgrew, dried up, and left me with a couple fistfuls of beans.  And there would have been many more had I completely ignored my little plot of beans instead of only doing a half-assed job of keeping them picked!

You can plant regular old beans and just let them get out of hand, like I did.  But there are quite a few varieties of beans that are intended for use as dried beans.  Victory Seeds has a nice selection of heirloom varieties, but you can get them from nearly any seed company.  And it’s a good, low maintenance thing to plant in the garden - simply plant, keep watered, and don’t harvest until the end of the season when the seed pods have dried up on the vine.

Help Markets Grow

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

The Food Trust sent out an email today announcing this op-ed piece that was recently run in the Philadelphia Inquirer.  The article, co-written by The Food Trust’s deputy executive director and a representative of the Pennsylvania Farm Bureau, advocates for three measures to improve the state’s farmers’ markets:

1.  The PA state legislature should fund the grant program approved as part of the Farmers’ Market Development Act passed last year.  This would allow grants of up to $10,000 each for new or expanding markets.

2.  The voucher program that allows low-income senior citizens and mothers to buy produce at farmers’ markets should be expanded so that participants receive a greater amount per year (currently, they get a yearly $20 voucher redeemable for fresh fruits and veggies).

3.  The state should provide wireless card readers to allow markets to readily accept food stamps.

The Food Trust suggests contacting Governor Rendell and other elected officials to support these measures and including the op-ed piece if you want.  Beyond buying local, this is a great way to advocate for some tangible measures that support local farms and markets!
 

The Corn Queen

A few weeks ago Lauren and I were sorting of doing a wishful thinking thing about locally grown oats.  I have yet to find any, despite emailing or calling any leads I can find.  Until Lauren and her husband manage to plant oats for us all to covet, I continue to try to track some down.

Over the weekend I took my visiting-from-out-of-town parents to Reading Terminal Market.  I noticed Kauffman’s had a nice display of oats and grits and few other things.  I know that the Amish are not necessarily selling things grown in their neck of the woods, but I asked the nice man at the Kauffman’s booth anyway.  Alas, his answer was rather disappointing: Pennsylvania is just not an oat state. 

It’s not that oats don’t grow here, he said, just that most of the oats produced for human consumption are grown in the Midwest.  The oats that Kauffman’s sells are trucked in from the Midwest and cut here in Lancaster County.

He did remind me, though, that Pennsylvania does grow a lot corn and pointed out the grits Kauffman’s sells are local.  Of course, I could not resist the lure of local grits (that will be smothered in local butter and cheese, I might add) and bought a bag.

I should have realized, though: the Fair Food Farmstand sells cornmeal that’s produced from local corn and I’ve made some excellent polenta from it in the past.

While I prefer olive oil when cooking, I wonder what the chances are of finding oil made from local corn.  There are probably bunches of corn products one could find from local corn.

Winter Harvest buying club

Monday, November 26, 2007

So!  CSA shares have ended, the Thanksgiving cooking extravaganza is over—and you may be feeling that your pantry/refrigerator is rather bare now, your local food supply (and supply of sugar for baking, in my case) more than decimated.

Well really, I’m sure none of you are despairing about places to purchase local food over the winter.  E.g., the Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal is still open Tues.-Sun., and we have plenty of varieties of leafy greens and tubers to explore.    But here’s another excellent way to continue purchasing local food over the winter—Farm to City’s Winter Harvest buying club!  I’ll describe the buying club a bit, then you should rush out and join—the deadline for the current ordering period (for deliveries during DECEMBER) is 5 pm on Wed., 28 Nov.  (My apologies for not posting this earlier to give you more time to investigate, but the good news is that we are now set up to accept initial payments by credit card through PayPal, rather than merely snail-mailing a check.  Or no worries, you can start ordering any month—place an order at the end of Dec. for deliveries during JANUARY.)

Winter Harvest is a buying club facilitated by Farm to City, designed to conveniently bring local food to urban residents during the wintertime.  There is still plenty of food that can be locally produced or stored over the winter, such as grass-fed meats, raw milk and cheeses and other dairy goods, spices, jarred goods, skincare products, and even some vegetables.  Currently we have over 400 available products; check out the list at our website (Farm to City website @ http://www.farmtocity.org -> buying clubs -> Philadelphia Winter Harvest.)

Here’s how it works.  You send a $50 check to our bookkeeper at the usps mailing address listed under ‘Ordering Instructions’—OR, newly-available, you can use PayPal.  Note that you are not buying a ‘share’ or paying an extra membership fee.  This $50 does make you a ‘Winter Harvest member’ inasmuch as you receive a password-protected account on the Farm to City website through which you place your orders, but that $50 is entirely contributed to your first order(s).  During the ordering period, which is approximately the last week of a month (e.g., November), you place your order for the next month (e.g., December).  Because it’s a buying club, you can order whatever and however much food you would like, and you schedule the frequency of delivery.  You pick a drop site that is convenient for you, and you can choose deliveries weekly, every other week, or monthly.  So, one person may order half a gallon of raw milk once a month, and another household may receive a large order of meats and vegetables every week.

Check it out!  (And perhaps mention if you found out about the program through this blog; I’m curious whether this is an announcement about a new resource for people.)

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire

I love this time of year - it means chestnuts.  And there is nothing better than roasted chestnuts.  At the same time, it makes me a little sad - the blight of American Chestnut trees is an incredibly sad story.  But there’s still hope - there are many organizations in the U.S. trying to save the American Chestnut by replanting with the goal of reintroducing the American Chestnut to American forests in Eastern North America.

Here in Pennsylvania, there are approximately 37 American Chestnut orchards, several of them local.  I don’t think you can purchase edible chestnuts from these orchards, but you absolutely can get edible chestnuts of other varieties from local trees.  Just this past weekend, a farmer from Lancaster County had a couple tables set up in Reading Terminal Market (I have no idea who this farmer is - he’s not there all the time, but it’s sort of the middle of the seating area in the middle of the RTM) and was selling half pints of chestnuts grown on his farm.  I believe they are an Asian variety.

My preferred method of cooking chestnuts it to roast them in the oven.  Preheat the oven to 425 degrees.  Cut an X into the flat side of each chestnut (I like to use the really awesome chestnut knife in the photo - my husband bought one for me last year after I nearly skewered myself cutting chestnuts with a regular paring knife), lay them X-side up on a baking sheet, and roast for 15-25 minutes.  You’ll know the chestnuts are done when the X starts to peel up and the chestnuts are easy to peel. 

A Wave of Selfishness

Sunday, November 25, 2007

The hordes left yesterday, and lovely though they all are (T-Day at Mom and Dad’s house was for 16), it is nice to wake up Sunday morning and eat JUST FOR YOU!  M slept while I made myself a quiet, local breakfast.  I had two Morningstar Farm eggs scrambled with a little local thyme, as well as non-local rice milk, salt, and pepper.  I had a couple of tomatoes which we canned from a local pick-your-own farm this summer (the photo above is from when we canned them in late summer).  Finally I threw a few local lima beans and corn from our freezer on to steam, and topped them with non-local salt and balsamic vinegar.  Aaaahhh… 

Grass-fed Dairy

Although I was not local over the holiday, I did eat locally in the Twin Cities where I spent my Thanksgiving. One of the highlights was the butter and cream from the farm where these sweet creatures live in New Prague, Minnesota. The farm is organic, and the cows feed on grass only. Because of a summer drought, the farm has had to buy grass to feed the herd (there’s a big group of adult cows across the road from these young ones), and buying organic grass is some serious coin. 

My stepsister Meg is the Organic and Diversification Specialist for the Minnesota Dept. of Agriculture—a very nifty job. I’ll have a little interview with her soon about trends in the organic food industry.

LeRaysville Cheese Factory Portelet

LeRaysville Cheese Factory, a small Amish-run cheese factory in Lancaster County, makes serviceable cheese.  I would not call their cheese artisan cheese, but it’s a nice alternative to store bought cheese.  Their Sommelier is a lovely melting cheese, but the Portelet is…not great.  And really, it didn’t stand a chance.  Here’s the description:

“A low-salt, low-cholesterol cheese that is reduced in fat, but melts like butter - contains about half the fat of Cheddar.  Made in a similar process to Port Salut.  Ideal for sauces or snacks.”

Look, if you’re watching your cholesterol and need to purchase diet products, Portelet is probably a better choice than the commercially made reduced fat cheeses that taste of pencil eraser.  But the texture is a little on the rubbery side and it’s a little on the bland side.  I didn’t try to melt it, but it probably does melt nicely.

Local Vino Steps Up…

Saturday, November 24, 2007

...says this article in today’s Inquirer.  I’m still searching for some go-to wines from the region.  Any favorites that are must tries?