What about those goals you mentioned?

I talked yesterday about menu planning which was part of a series of goals focused on "planning ahead" for this fall. Menu planning has been very successful, but there were five other goals I set for myself this fall. How am I doing on those? Well, let's recap, my goals were:

• Sign up for a winter CSA
• Purchase staple items in bulk
• Can tomatoes
• Make meal plans at the beginning of each week
• Give up the clothes dryer
• Ask farmers market growers about their practice

I have to admit that I have not been perfect on these. I did sign up for a winter CSA that actually starts next week. I am super excited about it. I live in Minnesota and last year found it very difficult to find local food during the winter. For some reason this resulted in my purchasing less organic food, and more processed foods. Hopefully the CSA will help keep me on track. The CSA is through Featherstone Farms.

My tiny kitchen

I have started purchasing more items in bulk. I have purchased bulk items for a long time. I love buying in bulk. For some reason it feels more natural, plus things are often a lot less expensive. In the past this has resulted in having many small bags of 1/4 cup of millet, or maybe quinoa? This fall we purchased several plastic containers, the kind usually used for shoes for about $1 each from Target. We have been purchasing" garbanzo beans, black beans, soy beans, wheat berries, barley, oats and sugar in bulk.

It has been really nice to pretty much always have these things on hand. It has also made it easier to make a big pot of beans a couple of times a week in the pressure cooker and then have them prepared different ways for the next couple of days. It is very convenient to have cooked beans on hand to throw into things. It's not the best picture, but you can see some of the bulk containers on the shelves in this picture. You can also tell how tiny my kitchen is and see the cool pot rack Shaun and I made.

I did not can tomatoes.  I did freeze about 15 tomatoes. What, freeze tomatoes? Yes! You can wash tomatoes and then freeze them in a plastic bag. You don't have to freeze them on a cookie tray first or anything. Later you can just pull out a frozen tomato and through it into soup or something. The resulting texture is pretty similar to canned stewed tomatoes. But it does take up a lot of room in the freezer, and we have already used most of the tomatoes we freeze. I have also not developed a list of questions to ask farmers at the farmers market. Part of me doesn't want to know how they can sell such a giant bushel of tomatoes for $10. Also, I have not had time to do any research on what types of growing practices I particularly want to support. If anyone has a good set of questions I would love to hear it. Though the farmers markets are all pretty much closed for the season at this point, and like I mentioned, my CSA is starting next week!

I will have to talk about line drying in a future post. I need to take some pictures. The drying racks set up in the office are kind of funny.

Halloween Menu Plan

One of my goals for this fall was to create weekly menu plans. I haven't written about it recently (technically I haven't written about anything recently), but this is a goal that I have had a lot of success with. I started trying to develop menu plans last year and found it really helpful. My partner and I ate healthier. We also saved money because less food was going to waste and we plan meals so that we have something for lunch the next day, thus saving the expense of going out to lunch. For some reason my menu planning tapered off last winter/spring and had to be re-invigorated this fall.

Minneapolis in the fall - photo by Shaun Daniel

I usually make a menu plan on Saturday morning and then got to the Farmers Market either Saturday or Sunday. This week we went to the farmers market today (Sunday) so that's when the menu plan starts. I thought my efforts at menu planning might be helpful for others. We are predominantly vegan and you may notice that a lot of the recipes come from the Post Punk Kitchen (one of my favorite sites) or Veganomicon, which I recently checked out from the library and will likely have to purchase since I have been using it so much.

Sunday:

• Tofu Enchiladas - don't have a specific recipe, but I was planning on mashing up silken tofu with some sauteed onions, garlic, cumin and oregano - wrapping this mixture in tortillas - pouring some type of tomato based sauce (I usually add Mexican spices to store bought tomato sauce and call it enchilada sauce) over it and baking it at 350 degrees for 30 minutes
• Salad 
• Mexican Millet - recipe from Veganomicon

Monday

• Butternut squash soup
• Biscuits (probably half whole wheat flour, half all purpose)
• Sunflower "cheese" sauce - the recipe for cheese sauce is also from the Post Punk Kitchen, I really like it because it is tasty, easy, fast, and does not use cashews which are expensive

Tuesday

• Beet burgers - also from PPK - this is a new recipe, but the picture looks quite "meaty" which is intriguing
• Sweet potato fries 

Wednesday (Halloween)

• Pumpkin Saag - from Veganomicon - I am particularly excited about trying this recipe as saag is one of my favorite Indian dishes.
• Barley (rice would also be good)

Thursday

• Pasta e fagioli - Veganomicon - but I know their is also a good recipe in the Vegetarian Epicure 
• Salad

Friday

• leftovers! 

I'll let you know how some of the recipes turn out.

Planning Ahead

Planning Ahead

A couple of months ago I read the book Plenty by Alisa Smith and J.B. Mackinnon about a couple in Vancouver, BC who ate only food grown within 100 mi. for a year. I highly recommend it. While I am not ready to banish coffee, cocoa, and bananas (among other things) from my diet it was inspirational to see that it is possible, even in a small apartment in a big city. The authors included good tips and information about how they accomplished their goal. 

Bread requires planning ahead and setting aside a
couple of hours

One of the things that stood out to me was how much planning the project took. This is something that's kind of hard for me as I am still getting used to not moving every 6 to 9 months and the idea that I might someday have a garden that I plant asparagus in (asparagus requires waiting three years before you actually get to eat any). Smith and Mackinnon had to can much of their food and stored things like onions, squash, potatoes and nuts so they would have something to eat in the winter. 

Minneapolis has a great local food scene, and several wonderful food co-ops that source a lot of local food. BUT almost all of this delicious local food disappeared from grocery shelves at some point in the winter. At some point beginning around February I noticed that Shaun and I were a) spending a lot more money on produce and b) eating more exotic things (like bananas) and fewer organic items. You might say, "well, you live in Minnesota, I've heard it's an icy tundra covered by 12 feet of snow for 6 months out of the year. Of course there is no local produce in the winter".  That was more or less what I though as well, and then I found Featherstone Farm. 

Gardening requires starting seeds weeks in advance, and
preparing your soil (among other things)

Featherstone Farm is a certified organic, family farm, and they offer a Winter CSA! In Minnesota! They deliver to several places in the Twin Cities, Rochester, and a couple of other places. A friend of mine got the Winter CSA last year and highly recommended it. Another particularly great thing about Featherstone was that they offered multiple payment options. You can pay the whole amount upfront or you can pay in four installments. The installment plan is great since Shaun and I are WWOOFing all summer we have a very tight budget, but spreading the payments out means we're able to make most of them when we start working again in the fall. Installments also mean that you can use SNAP (formally Food Stamps) to pay for a CSA more easily since you don't have to use more than your entire month's benefit to pay for the CSA one month. 

Thus far Featherstone is the only winter CSA I have found, and last year they sold out and I wanted to make sure we signed up early. So Shaun and I planned ahead and are looking forward to being able to source at least some of our produce locally this winter! I'll be sure to share some of the recipes we develop here.

Making jam requires harvesting fresh fruit and not eating it
all at once :)

In addition to signing up for a CSA I have come up with a couple of other goals that require planning ahead that I think will help me more locally sourced and sustainable food this year.

• Sign up for CSA (check)
• Purchase Staples in bulk - tentative list of staples to be purchase in bulk:
• hard red wheat berries
• barley
• oats
• chickpeas
• black beans
• kidney beans
• Can tomatoes (I am thinking 52 jars but that may be a stretch as I have never done tomatoes)
• Make meal plans at the beginning of each week
• Give up the clothes dryer
• Ask farmers market growers about their practices - I like to think that all of the growers at the farmers market use more or less organic methods, but I know this isn't true. I need to do some research as to what types of methods I really don't want to support, a certain chemical for example, or if they spray after the plant has fruited, and come to the market prepared with specific questions.

Can you think of any other ways that I can use planning ahead to eat more locally and sustainably grown produce?