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.

Three things to do with beans

I mentioned that we are staying at a farm where we have been eating a lot of beans and grains. One of the things we have been eating a lot of is tacos. We started out pretty basic (beans and cheese). But I thought I would share some of the ways we've been changing it up.

All of these recipes utilize kidney beans, because that's all we have. Every couple of days we soak about two cups of dried beans before we go to bed. The next evening when we want to make dinner we bring them to a boil and simmer for about 45 minutes, or until they are tender. I season them with some salt and pepper, chili powder, and cumin. We then use the beans in various recipes, including but not limited to, tacos.

Basic Tacos

To the left is our first taco attempt. It is pretty basic. Each taco has some beans, shredded lettuce, grated carrots, and about a tablespoon of feta cheese. It's not really feta, it's a salty kind of goat cheese that they make here on the farm. But I think feta would be a good approximation. Obviously we used corn tortillas.

I didn't take a picture of it but I think my favorite is when we saute 1 or 2 mild green peppers and then add one cup of beans and two eggs. We use corn tortillas.

Post Punk Kitchen Lettuce Wraps

This next one isn't really a taco, more of a wrap. But I think the essence is the same. The recipe is from Post Punk Kitchen, one of my favorite cooking websites. The original recipe is titled Portland Porche Lettuce Wraps. It is a bean and nectarine filling wrapped in lettuce and topped with edamame pesto. I also liked it because I think there description of Portland, OR was pretty funny. It was a good mix of recognizing the really awesome things about Portland, while still recognizing that people can be kind of pretentious about it. I think the PPK recipe would be delicious, but I made some substitutions based on what I had. I used sugar snap peas instead of edamame, and I didn't shell them. I also used sugar snap peas instead of asparagus. And, of course, kidney beans. I thought it turned out really well. The dish was particularly visually appealing.

Sweet Fried Green Tomatoes

Fried Green Tomatoes

Usually you make fried green tomatoes in the fall when some of the tomatoes don't turn green before the first frost. We transplanted a bunch of tomatoes late, so they already had little baby green tomatoes on them. We had to pick the green tomatoes so that the plant would put energy into establishing its roots and putting out a full crop of tomatoes later. It seemed like a waste to just compost all of those baby tomatoes... so obviously we decided to fry them. I can't quite remember why we decided to make them sweet, maybe because we had already had dinner?

This was an experiment, and I am not sure I would actually repeat it. The tomatoes were tasty, but they were tasty in the way that all fried foods are tasty. I don't know that they really added any tomato-y-ness to the final project. But should you find yourself which a bunch of tiny green tomatoes that you simply can't throw away, this is probably as good of a use as any.

Fried Green Tomatoes - before they were fried

Sweet Fried Green Tomatoes
Lots of small green tomatoes, washed and sliced in half
1/2 cup corn meal
1/4 sugar
1 tsp cinnamon
a pinch of salt
1 egg beaten
1/4 milk
1/2 tsp vanilla
Vegetable Oil


Mix cornmeal, sugar, cinnamon, and salt. In a separate bowl mix egg, milk, and vanilla. Heat oil to medium high. Dip tomatoes in egg mixture and then corn mixture. Place tomatoes halves in oil. Flip after about 30 seconds, or when the first side is suitably brown. Cook until the second side is suitably brown. I think they would have been extra good over vanilla ice cream.

Savory Carrot Pancakes

We have been harvesting carrots on the farm. As you can see, in addition to the usual orange, they come in several beautiful colors. It has been really fun trying to wiggle them from their homes in the dirt. 

Carrot Porn

The carrots were not thinned very well, and have grown into some, rather "unusual" shapes. These shapes have inspired Shaun has to go into carrot porn... Not really, this is the only sexual carrot pictures that has been taken (cross my heart)

If pictures of carrots that vaguely resemble human body parts are not what gets you off (and I kind of hope they don't) carrot pancakes are probably a better idea if you .

Carrot Pancakes

3 large carrots, grated

1 egg

1/4 cup flour

1/4 cup feta cheese

2 tbsp dried italian seasoning

Mix all ingredients and fry 1/4 cup portions in 1 tbsp vegetable oil for a couple of minutes on each sude. This recipe made about 6 pancakes, which ended up being two good sized servings. The carrot pancakes were crispy and slightly sweet. We had this dish for lunch with some watermelon slices and boiled potatoes tossed with a little bit of butter. 

Polenta Bowl

Kind of like a teriyaki bowl, or maybe a soba bowl, but this is a polenta bowl. As opposed to rice or noodles, the base of this bowl is polenta. Shaun and I are WWOOFing at Pine Meadow Farm and are learning how to eat very seasonally. In addition to produce Pine Meadow has goat's milk, eggs, and staples such as beans and grains. So right now we are eating a lot of beans, grains, lettuce (not featured in this recipe) and beet thinnings. Garden tip: You plant beet seeds in very dense rows and then pull most of them out so the healthiest can grow to full size, but you can still eat the greens.

You can only eat so much beans and rice, so we started looking for another grain we could use. We arrived at corn.Expect more bean related posts in the future...

OK here are the components of the bowl:

Polenta
Kidney Beans
Sauteed Beet Greens

For the polenta
Polenta is super quick and easy. We have been eating a lot of it on the farm since it is so much faster than rice. When making rice you usually use a two parts water to one part rice. With polenta it's four parts liquid to one part corn meal. I combine four cups of liquid (some combination of water, broth and/or milk) with one cup of corn meal, stir, and let simmer on low stirring occasionally to frequently for five to ten minutes. Or until the mixture looks thick and porridge like. I use normal corn meal, sometimes fine grind, sometimes corse grind depending on what I have. While on the farm I have been using two cups of goat milk and two cups of water for the liquid. At home (where goat milk is in much shorter supply) I usually use four cups of vegetable broth and then a little half and half or a tablespoon of butter added at the end.

For the Beans
I had leftover beans... They had no seasoning what so ever, so they were pretty bland. For this preparation I used two cups of cooked kidney beans and tossed them with a quarter cup of balsamic vinaigrette.

For the beet greens
Take all of the beet thinnings you have, or remove the tops of one large bunch of beets and use the root for something else. I might suggest beet feta gratin. Saute the greens and one or two minced cloves of garlic in about 1 tbsp of olive oil. Add salt and pepper to taste.

To prepare the bowl
For each bowl I used one cup of polenta, 1/2 cup of beans, and 1/4 of the available greens. I thought the assembled bowls were quite visually appealing.

Meet the Goats

Hello! I am a baby goat

OK, this post is going to reveal how little I know about farming/how disconnected I am from my food - even AFTER shopping regularly at the farmers market for years and spending six weeks working on an organic farm. I mentioned in my last post that Shaun and I are now WWOOFing on a farm outside of Spokane that has goats. I have seen some blog posts from sustainability minded people and urban homesteaders who have dairy goats. The idea greatly appealed to me, goat cheese is delicious after all. The potential to learn about goats was one of the reasons Shaun and I chose this farm.

This is where I reveal how little I knew about milk producing animals. So, um, getting milk from goats requires them to have baby goats. There are ten female goats at Pine Meadows Farm (and one adult male goat). These ten goats had babies, and that's why they are able to give us milk! I think if I had really thought about it I would have been able to figure this out, but that's kind of the point, I hadn't really thought about it. I don't know that I have ever really thought about where milk comes from.

Entrance to beautiful Pine Meadow Farm

That's the big, obvious thing that I have learned thus far. There have been a couple of others as well. We separate the baby goats from their mommas every evening so that all of the momma goats are able to be milked in the morning. The babies spend the day with their moms and are able to nurse. There are a couple of goats who for various reasons don't nurse and they get milked in the evening as well.

It was both harder and easier to milk a goat than I expected. Goats I have interacted with in the past (mainly in petting zoos) have been very obstinate. These goats knew their names and jumped up on the milking stanchion as soon as it was their turn. Actually squeezing the teet to get milk to come out was challenging for me. It's kind of like squeezing liquid out of a balloon. For some reason it took a lot of thought to get my hand to move in that particular way.

Goats hanging out in the pasture

In the evening the milk is for the chickens, so sanitation isn't so important. We drink the milk in the morning, often raw, so sanitation is VERY important. The goat's utters are sanitized with a mixture of water and hydrogen peroxide. The first squirt of milk, where most of the bacteria is, is thrown away. And the containers that we milk into are carefully cleaned.

Goat being milked in a stanchion

When I got to Pine Meadow I was a little unsure about drinking raw milk. I guess I am still a little unsure about it. I know there are a lot of people out there (The Weston Price Foundation seems to be the most vocal) who believe that raw milk is the healthiest, safest thing out there, and I understand where they are coming from. There are also a lot of people (the CDC for example) who consider it dangerous. I was talking with Chris, the primary farmer, about it, he pointed out that pasteurized milk has no bacteria. The complete lack of bacteria means that once some type of bacteria is introduced it has a super awesome environment to colonize. With raw milk there is bacteria, but (hopefully) it's the good bacteria. Since the milk is already full of bacteria there is no room for the bad bacteria to get in. Or that's the theory at least. I think I am opening up to the idea of raw milk. Thus far I have mainly used it in in cooked dishes like oatmeal and sauces. Others on the farm have been drinking multiple glasses a day, some have been drinking it for years. Everyone appears the picture of health.

Does anyone out there drink raw milk? Have an opinion about it?