A Series Look at Local Foods

Every so often, I feel like I'm just spinning my wheels, writing on this blog. Sure, you know I'm a fan of local foods, you know I love to bake, and you know I'm constantly experimenting in the kitchen. (See that bread? It's made with local flours, local dry milk, local honey, and those richly golden local eggs I recently bought.)

But given the cyclical nature of local foods and the way my cooking generally falls into set patterns that follow the seasons, after a while I feel like both my cooking and my writing get a little stale. (Honestly, do you really want to know how often I can live on homemade pizza for a week?)

With the summer swiftly approaching, bringing with it the farmers' market, I'm hoping to reinfuse this site with a little more excitement as well as little more substance (like that loaf of bread you see pictured above). Not only will I have weekly Market Reports for you, with luscious tales about my market finds, but I've got a couple of other series planned for you:

1. Since this year marks the first time I've ever subscribed to a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) -- and it's the first time my farming friends the Bakers have set up a CSA -- I'll post weekly reports about my CSA box and what I hope to cook or preserve with the produce. And since I think patriotism shouldn't be limited to mere flag-waving symbolism, you'll find this series under the tongue-in-cheek title of "Oh, Say, Can You CSA?" (Talk about following the beat of a different drummer...)

2. I've been pondering the outline for a possible book project on eating seasonally and preserving food for the lean months. I really don't have time to pursue a book right now, though, so I'll make this a month-by-month series called "Preserving the Seasons" with set weekly entries on what's growing or being harvesting each month, what to cook with fresh produce, what to preserve (and how), and the example of one local meal to tempt you into trying it yourself. Obviously come winter, the focus of each week's post will vary, but that's the current plan.

All of these series will start in June, since both the CSA and the farmers' market begin early in the month, and since for us here in northern Ohio, early June is really the first time in the year when we can find a consistent source of local foods.

With any luck, these series will help you and me both to incorporate more local foods into daily meals, to preserve more food in a variety of ways for winter, and to get ideas for doing just a little more next year. (Maybe I'll even get inspired to build a cold frame to have more fresh greens during the winter!)

You may have also noticed that I've stopped updating the index pages in favor of using labels for each post. I'm still coming up with labels to use, but at some point I may try to go back and add labels or at least add a section with labels appended to the index list. For those of you who follow this blog through an RSS feed, would you please let me know if updating individual back posts will flood your feed? I don't want to make it impossible for you to keep up with what's going on.

As always, I'd love to hear back from you. What are you doing and would like to share? What questions do you have? What other possibilities do you see?

I'm no expert, so I'm happy to learn from my Dear Readers at the same time that I hope you'll find something to learn from me.

Stay tuned -- and we'll see where this journey leads us!

Patch Work

In planning my gardening this year, you may remember, I had decided to put in an herb garden at the Inn.

Those plans have fallen by the wayside, as I simply haven't had the time to spend at the Inn all spring, save for turning the compost.

The Innkeeper, an understanding soul, didn't seem too put out when I said I thought I would have to divert my energies elsewhere, though I know she misses our times cooking together.


But what was I to do with all the extra herbs I had ordered from the Lady Bountiful? I gave one to My Wonderful Parents, and I still have yet to pot several for my own home, but that left me with more orphan herbs.

Thankfully, the Renaissance Man -- ever the gentleman, and ever so hungry for my cooking -- graciously offered me space in his back garden for some of those herbs. He cleared a large section of mint from one side of the bed, leaving plenty of mint behind, and when I stopped by this afternoon, he swept his hand toward it in invitation.

Well, I don't have to be asked twice. I ran inside and grabbed the potted herbs (which he had been herb-sitting) and started plopping them into the ground, interspersed with rows of herb seeds.


When I finished, I had sown yarrow and borage, anise hyssop and skullcap, and a row of Jaune du Doubs carrots, as well as planting basil, lavender, sage, and cilantro. It seemed logical to plant those items, since some will be used in cooking (and I expect I'll be cooking a fair amount there this summer) and others will be dried for herbal tisanes (something we both enjoy often).


It's not a large space, compared to that patch of mint, but it's more than enough to start a few more herbs for us both to share.

And, like a patchwork quilt pieced together with leftover scraps from here and there, it's a cozy little example of our shared work.

I'm sure those herbs will be snuggling up to each other in no time!

Pretty Seeds All in a Row

The prospect of having a large vegetable garden this year -- the first in a couple of years -- has kept me excited the past few months. (Had you noticed?)

Still, even in my excitement I realized that I couldn't do everything all at once. Around northern Ohio, it's sheer folly to put all of your garden in before May 15 or so because there's always that last remote chance that we'll have a freak snowstorm or hard frost in early May.

Not this year, I'm happy to say -- even if the temperatures have dipped a bit lately. I was able to stick to schedule this week and pick up my herbs and tomatoes before heading to the garden today, on the second best weather day all week.


I asked the Southern Belle to keep My Adorable Nephews busy for a little while so that I could get the big and unwieldy plants into the ground before I had little boys jumping all around and wanting to be "helpful." She kindly obliged me, and I managed to plant the tomatoes, peppers, basil, and the first other herbs before the boys came rushing up to me.

"I want to help!" shouted Beaker as he bounced up and down. (Scooter wasn't much interested today, thank goodness.)

Having strained my back earlier this week, I gladly accepted his assistance in planting the rest of the herb seedlings. I had already dug holes, so I tapped the plants out of their pots, set them firmly in the holes, and directed Beaker to scoop dirt back around the plants' roots and to pat it down gently.


After that, he insisted on helping sow the rest of the seeds, so I thanked my lucky stars that I had talked with a co-worker yesterday about having youngsters help in the garden. Her sage advice led me to offer two areas to Beaker for his input: the melons and the beans.

He was thrilled. He loves watermelon and cantaloupe both, so he eagerly dug the small holes in the melon patch, and once I had handed him the right amount of seeds for each hole, he covered them up and mounded the dirt over them. I added a couple rows of nasturtium seeds in between the mounds, explaining that the flowers would be good companions ("friends" was how we put it) to the melons.

Then I showed him where to hoe the rows for the cannellini and Tiger Eye beans I wanted planted. Once he had done that, I squatted down, started laying the seeds in the ditch with a comfortable distance between them, and he followed my example perfectly, working his way in from the other end. Using bigger seeds apparently does the trick in having children help: it was clearly easier for him to handle the seeds and gauge the appropriate distance for planting.

I added in a few more rows of seeds, including yet more lettuce and carrots, and I left a little space for the kale to be planted later next month.

Once we had finished, I had some time to investigate the earlier plantings.


While the lettuce was off to its usual graceful start, I discovered that the pac choi was already filling in thickly in its little row, so I'll have to make time next week to come back and thin the seedlings.


The fava beans continue to stretch their way up to the top of the deck railing, so one of these days I'll either have to stake them or tie them to the rail so they don't fall over.


With several patches of new seeds hidden beneath the topsoil, the garden still doesn't look too impressive, but to my eyes it's coming along beautifully.

Just keeping asking me, "How does your garden grow?"

Eat Your Weedies

Since I haven't gotten to forage on the farm lately, I've been feeling a distinct lack of greenery in my diet. It takes a while for the cultivated crops of lettuce and spinach to start coming in, even with cold frames, while the wild edible greens seem to pop up early and fill the gap for us (if we bother to look).

So even though the Lady Bountiful sent me home yesterday with plenty of the first lettuce of the year, I still felt excited about toting home a bag of lambs' quarters, too.

Tonight seemed like a good night to pull out the greens and add them to a comforting pasta dish, after a drizzly trip to another farm, so I invited the Renaissance Man to join me for dinner.


I haven't had time lately to make more homemade pasta, so I ended up using whole wheat spaghetti from the store. But all the other major ingredients were local: some of the last garlic from last year's farmers' markets, oven-dried tomatoes, a sprig of fresh basil (broken off one of my new herb pots), and the lambs' quarters.

Like most of my comfort-food pasta dishes, once I had cooked the pasta I sautéed the garlic and added the tomatoes along with a hint of pepper, then tossed in the lambs' quarters to wilt them before adding the mix to the top of a pile of pasta and garnishing it all with a chiffonade of basil.


Add a little freshly grated Parmesan cheese, and there's dinner!

While the Renaissance Man teased me gently about eating "weeds" -- he patted my hand and told me, "We'll have to get you eating a little higher on the food chain next time!" -- he agreed that the resulting dish offered a fresh taste of spring and a satisfying meal.

I still have a large quantity of greens left, so I'm sure I'll be cooking with them in many ways as the week progresses. I may even try something like lambs' quarters pesto or some sauce. Who knows?

All I know is, I'm going to eat them up!

So Farm, So Good (Part 2)

I'm getting so close to having the rest of my garden planted, now that I have my herbs ready to add in the corners along with the last of the seeds. Only one thing is missing...

Tomatoes!

That's right, it's not a real garden in my family's book until you've got tomatoes planted. And though I know I will buy plenty of tomatoes this summer -- both through my CSA and from the farmers' market -- there's nothing quite like growing your own and eating them right off the vine.

So for this year's tomatoes, I asked My Dear Papa what kind of tomatoes he wanted. His request was the old-fashioned and heirloom variety of Rutgers.

Not wanting to start tomatoes myself from seed, I turned to an expert: the Original Organic Farmer. She greeted my request with great enthusiasm and offered to keep my tomatoes in the greenhouse on her farm until it was time to plant.

Guess what, Dear Readers? It's time to plant!

My Dear Papa drove me down to Elee's farm after work so that I could pick up our tomato plants as well as get a look around the farm as her growing season gets started.


As we drove back the lane, I noticed plants already sprouting in the garden, as well as several cold frames containing the first greens of the year.


We headed into the greenhouse to get out of the drizzling rain, and we found plenty of green growth there, as well. She had several flowers, a handful of herbs, and the last of her tomato and pepper plants waiting for a good day to head outside into the garden beds. She generously offered me a couple of pepper plants, something I hadn't really considered planting this year. How could I resist a pack of four small ancho pepper plants and an heirloom variety (I think; she couldn't remember the exact name of it, but a Google search indicates it might be Quadrato d'Oro) of chile pepper?

Well, I couldn't. And neither could I resist those big, beautiful Rutgers plants.


There were only three pots of them, but they had already grown so large that they sprawled all over the flat. Oh, my!

Once we had the plants tucked into the minivan, I followed Elee into her kitchen for two dozen eggs from her very happy hens. Having enjoyed these eggs last year, I knew I couldn't visit the farm without picking up more!

We spent some time chatting (Elee and I, not the chickens), and she even introduced me to the newest member of her farm family: a little duckling hatched from one of this spring's eggs.


He's a cute little fellow, but I wasn't about to try and hold him: he wiggled a lot, and his babysitter -- a big grey goose -- was very protective!

My Dear Papa and I left shortly thereafter, and I sighed, thinking how much I would love to have a farm and a life like Elee's. I don't think I'll get it, but it's always such a treat to visit and to enjoy the tranquility and the hard work of her farm.

In the meantime, I'll keep working on my garden... starting tomorrow.