Food Inc.

I recently watched Food, Inc. again. I think the movie presented a lot of great facts regarding our current food system. It definitely made me consider not eating meat after seeing all those factory farming operations. I don’t actually buy non-organic meat, and really try to buy local organic meat, if at all, from a nice farmer about 15 miles from my house. It is amazing to see how much agriculture has changed since WWII.

Part of me thinks it is great that we can produce so much food at such a cheap monetary cost, but what about the other costs involved with growing this cheap food? A few years ago I really started getting involved in the local food movement. The reason? All the recalls on things like spinach for E. coli, and peanut butter for salmonella poisoning. At that point I knew something was seriously wrong. I had never really thought about food before, not because I didn’t like high quality, but because I just assumed it would be safe like when my mom grew her garden. How wrong I was.

Now I feel almost obsessed about local and organic food. I use the term organic loosely here though. It seems to me that there have been so many changes to what the USDA thinks “organic” means. So now I am more likely to ask a local farmer what he does, whether he is certified organic is less important to me than what he says he does to his crops, his animals etc.

One of the interesting points from the movie was from the CEO of Stonyfield saying it would be impossible for everyone to eat within 100 miles of their house. I wonder how accurate that is. I know that there are definitely places where it is more difficult to find quality food, but I do wonder if it is possible. I guess I am just lucky to live in the area that I do, which I never expected I would say :-) Even though we have a short growing season, it seems to work out.

I am anxious to have a lot of storage crops this year. This will be the year of preservation for me…well that is the plan. Can I do it? I sure hope so. It would be really wonderful to be one of the blogs that commits to eating only from their food stores through the winter. How exciting would that be? Not to have to rely on a grocery store for anything. We’ll see how plausible that is. Although I have to say, we have been eating mainly rice and beans for the past few weeks in an effort to save money at the grocery store, and it is all stuff I already have on hand, not bad :-)

Has anyone else seen this movie? What did you think about it? I’ve heard some people say there weren’t enough facts involved, but I disagree. I think there were just enough facts to make you want to do more personal research and prepare in your own personal way. Overall, excellent movie!

CSA

As you know, this is the first year we have had a CSA, and I have to say that it was the best investment ever! We have gotten lettuce every week since the first week in June, and the amount of lettuce we have received alone has more than recouped our investment. Of course, we don't eat nearly as many salads as we should be. I know that soon we won't be having anymore lettuce for another year. I haven't been nearly as good about posting pictures as I had hoped either, so here are some pictures of the past couple weeks worth:

CSA week 3

I can't believe that we already are picking up our 3rd week's share. The summer is starting to fly by...I guess having a new baby does that. It's crazy to me that little Miss Emma is going to be 6 weeks on Monday...yeah...crazy. So I am a little behind in posting...what a surprise. I'm hoping eventually someday my life will resemble order again. Perhaps not with a baby though...Onto this weeks goods!

This week our basket was even bigger than the past 2 weeks. Literally, the basket that holds our produce had doubled in size. We got the following:

2 bags of beets
3 bags of lettuce
1 bag of spinach which looks like baby swiss chard
1 bag of carrots
1 bag of broccoli
1 bunch of green onions

Now, I don't know what the grocery prices are like for anyone else out there, but that amount of produce probably would have cost us around $50 at the grocery store (seeing as how our CSA farm is certified Organic). And we got it for a mere $20, not bad right? I am really excited to see how the weeks progress. Since we are in Maine it takes a little longer for produce to come in during the summer, so the beginning is a lot of greens, but once we get into July and August, I foresee a large amount of veggies coming through...I just wish we had a way to preserve lettuce. Now for some pictures :-)

2008 Garden!!!

OK, so I can't seem to post more than once in a great while. I am really hoping to change that now that we have our precious baby Emma home and I am feeling so much better. I won't get into the details of my labor and delivery, let's just say that it didn't go nearly as well as I had hoped. But, on the bright side, I now have this perfect little person at home with me who has brought so much joy to my life and Matt's life. We are extremely blessed!

Now onto my *container* garden for this year! Matt and I finally got everything into the pots this past weekend. I was getting worried that we wouldn't actually be able to plant all the seedlings, but alas, Nana was able to come and watch the little one for a couple hours while we worked outside. I ended up with 6 Brandywine tomato plants, 6 roma tomato plants, 6 basil, 3 cilantro, 2 sweet peppers, 1 jalapeno pepper, and either 3 cucumber plants or 2 cucumbers and a zucchinni. I swear that I bought a zuke plant, but for the life of me, I can't actually see where I put it or planted it. And I also can't remember if we ended up buying 2 or 3 cucumber plants this year. I have a feeling I lost the zucchini plant in transit, don't ask me how.

So here are some pictures of my beautiful garden space up on the high high deck, which, by the way, I am extremely happy we have now. My mom had a ton of herbs up on her deck in pots (she lives just down the street from us), and something got up on the deck and ate them all...along with most of her flowers. We are thinking woodchucks, but can they climb stairs? Never seen any rabbits around here...so we are at a loss...and my mom is seriously upset about it. I'm all for nature, but when something comes up on the deck and eats the plants...come on! That's why I'm happy that any animals that want to eat our plants have to climb up 20 steps to get to our deck ;-) Oh yeah...pictures :-)

I also wanted to talk about my CSA share. I meant to actually post a picture last week for our first share pickup, but in order to post the picture we actually would have needed to take a picture. So instead I will tell you what we got last week. In our 1st CSA share ever we received:

2 huge bags of spinach
5 baby beets and beet greens
3 bags of lettuce
1 bunch of scallions
1 bunch of radishes
2 chinese cabbage

It was a lot of food, and actually we still have a lot of it left over which is interesting. I thought for sure we would eat it all, but apparently I was wrong! Not that I mind having extra lettuce, might as well eat as many fresh salads as possible :-)

This week we received:

8 beets with beet greens (obsviously they come with the greens, but I find that is a whole other meal side)
1 bunch of carrots
2 bags of spinach that looks like baby beet greens (but the board at the farm assured me it was actually spinach, the type I can't remember at this point)
1 bag of lettuce

Now onto the pictures :-)

it has happened...

Something is eating my tomatoes...my tomatoes that are on a second floor balcony 15 feet off the ground. What is it?! And not only are they eating my tomatoes, they are leaving their mark IN my pots...their mark? Yes, poop. I can't figure out what the heck it is. It must be squirrels, it definitely isn't mouse poop. So for the past two days I have been spending quite a bit of time on google searching for every animal I can think of, and not just looking up the animal, but looking up what the poop for these animals looks like. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything that looks like what I have seen. I thought about taking a picture and posting it here, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it...maybe that's why I can't find a picture of it online. Although, there are an awful lot of pictures of poop out there.

The good thing? They are only attacking 2 of my plants right now, the two furthest down on the steps. So, I am just leaving those plants there, and probably tonight and tomorrow I will pick all the other tomatoes I have, and ripen them inside. I hate to do that, but I don't want to lose the rest of my tomatoes! The bad thing? These were my two best tomato plants, producing perfect looking tomatoes and ripening to perfection. I knew it was only a matter of time...

Oh, and with this lovely bought of warm weather we have had recently, all of my pepper plants have decided to bud again and I have little peppers all over the place...would be nice if they could get to a normal size and then we can eat them. And I thought they were dead :-)

UPDATE:
So I asked my all knowing garden friend at work what might be causing this poop infestation around my tomato plants, and she promptly tells me that it is tomato horn worms. I look them up on google, and yup, that's definitely what the poop looked like. I proceed to call my mother to have her go look and see if she can see them, and she calls back "YES! THAT IS DEFINITELY IT!" Apparently these little guys, are not so little. My mom said she saw one that was at least 3 inches long and 1/2 inch in diameter. Pretty much I am so skived out right now, but at least it isn't some weird rodent crawling up my stairs!

busy/OLS weeks 8 & 9

I never realized how busy I get sometimes! But, here it is, a couple weeks after my last entry, and I don't even know where the time has gone! I have been crazy busy at work doing our physical inventory and valuation...fun stuff let me tell you. So, by the time I get home at night, I have no desire to even look at the computer, or do much else for that matter!

I haven't even had a chance to post last weeks OLS meal, which we had! I don't even know if I took pictures of it...I made pizza. I have never made pizza dough from scratch, but it was really easy. I think it was just flour water and yeast (the yeast was not local). I didn't have any pizza sauce, so I just sliced up some yummy tomatoes from the garden and put those on the pizza dough, with some olive oil and salt. I didn't have local cheese either, just your everyday shredded mozzarella...I still can't find milk that isn't "ultra-pasteurized", and am not sure I am ready for actual raw milk, is there something in the middle? Then on the cheese, green peppers from the garden, and also some shredded chicken that I had roasted up the day before. It was really really good. It also made more pizza then I knew what to do with. I think next time I will freeze half of the dough so that it is available to me later on for an easy pizza...I think I can freeze the dough, does anyone see a problem with that?

This week's local meal, also no pictures, I took all the many veggies I had in the fridge...ok so it was zukes, onion, peppers from the garden...not as much variety as I thought. Then I just put them on the grill. It was delicious, that's for sure. I have never had grilled zucchini, I have to say it really brought out some amazing flavor. Seasoned with just a bit of (non-local) olive oil and salt and pepper. Yum!

I'm hoping that I can get back on track with posting, although I don't know what I want to post about now. I am still concentrating a lot on getting the house finished, and just settling into a normal life...It's really nice to feel slightly settled.

I love my garden!!

I have been wanting to get these pictures up for a while now, but have been so busy! Life never slows down, that's for sure. We had our first tomato this past week! As you can see Matt had a lot of fun arranging our food to take a picture :-) And I have to say, it was the best tomato ever! Now if the other 100 or so would turn red, I would be happy! And my one cucumber plant is seriously producing a lot. Well, I have no idea how much a cucumber plant usually produces, but we are around 20 cukes from this one plant...I kept meaning to make pickles, but they disappear way too fast for me to do anything besides cut them up for sandwiches or just plain with a little salt...yum! I have been eating peppers and cukes for dinner most nights, so how much more local can I get?!

One Local Summer Week 7

This week I decided to try making tortillas. I had seen the recipe on Liz's site, and figured I would try it. I have been in a bit of a baking mood recently. It was actually really easy. Of course I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I should have. So I made the tortillas with King Arthur flour, non-local oil, and some local (tap) water :-) Can't really beat that!



I also decided to start picking the jalapeno peppers that are growing on my plant on the deck. I wanted to make pico de gallo, and of course wanted it super hot, but since Matt wasn't in the mood for hot, I made a nice mild pico de gallo (no seeds or ribs). I picked up some organic tomatoes and onions at the Farmers' Market (Hallowell, 6 miles) and used a bit of non-local lemon juice and some salt. Yum! I love to just put this over salad greens as well.




And for the filling, we scrambled up some free range eggs, also from the Farmers' market. This was the point at which we forgot to take pictures. Matt is almost finished with his here :-)




Mine were closer to being whole when I remembered to take the picture. All in all, really a great meal!




I hope to make these again soon, and the next time I think I will probably try and bake them to make nacho chips.

One Local Summer week 6

OK, so I feel really bad about not posting an OLS meal last week. We did eat some local food, but not primarily in a dinner, and I didn't have time to post or take pictures of anything not wedding related. So this week I would like to do two meals, but not promising that either. To start, we will have one, and see where it goes from here :-)

I was really in the mood to have pasta again. My last attempt...well it was less than stellar to say the least. Not that it didn't taste great, but I eat with my eyes first, and the strange pasta shapes I came up with...well not the best. So this time I borrowed my mom's rolling pin. I think I need to work in smaller sections though, because I ran out of space to roll on the counter, and ended up with thicker pasta again. It was still good though, and it actually resembled those wide noodles when you order drunken noodles at a thai restaurant...mmmm drunken noodles.


With the pasta I decided to make fresh sauce again from some Backyard Beauties. They really work quite well in the interim, and I find them to taste really good as well. I just chopped up the tomatoes, threw them in a pot with some olive oil and the rest of the garlic I had gotten at the Farmer's market. Add some oregano and salt and pepper...

And there you have it, fresh tomato sauce.



I thought I should also add something else to the sauce, so I chopped up the zucchini and squash that I had (from Waterville 32 miles), and sauteed them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper.



Here is the finished product. Yummy if I do say so myself. Matt really likes the homemade pasta as well. I think I would like to try making ravioli at some point...I don't think I can do a local one unless I don't use cheese. I haven't been able to bring myself to try making cheese yet. Well part of that is the fact that I can't find any non ultra-pasteurized milk...maybe someday :-) For now, I have to just try and buy cheese that is in my region. Does anyone have any idea on a New England ricotta?



I can't believe that OLS is almost done! Just a few more weeks. I just have to say that I am really thankful that I found Liz's website. She has really helped me look more closely at the food that I am eating, and where it comes from. Plus, it now gives me an excuse to spend hours in the kitchen, which to some may seem like a chore, but to me it is like heaven!

One Local Summer Week 4

Today I decided to make my OLS meal, and after this dreary cold and rainy day I figured soup would be perfect! My old standby is my take on the Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana soup. Usually I start out with some onion, but I didn't see any at the Farmers' Market, so instead, I just took my organic local hot sausage (Snafu, 15 miles) and sauteed it with a little non-local olive oil and red pepper flakes.

Then I took some of the chicken stock I made and froze from my roasted chicken a couple weeks ago, and threw that in the pot after the sausage was browned. Add a little salt and more red pepper flakes...I really do enjoy spicy food, have I mentioned that before? Anyways, in went some sliced up local Maine potatoes, from the Fish and Produce guy in Hallowell. I didn't realize that all of the produce they sell comes from his father just a few miles away. They aren't certified organic, but they don't spray and seem to farm organically. It's amazing what a few questions will tell you! Let the potatoes cook, and then add some Kale, and maybe a little more salt (I am a firm believer in seasoning every stage of the meal.) When the kale is wilted, just add a little heavy cream, or in our case half and half from Oakhurst farms, then the soup is done. Although it tastes much better if you let it sit overnight. Usually I add a little cheese to top it off, but since I didn't have any local cheese, we skipped that :-)

So here it is in all it's glory, my lovely soup, and probably one of my most favorite meals. And pretty easy to make. I have enough for tomorrow's dinner as well. In my original recipe I also add a little bacon which I could have done if I had thought far enough in advance and bought the bacon at the farmer's market on Saturday...but, overall not bad at all!

I am really enjoying putting together local meals. I really want to thank Liz for getting me to think about my food and where it comes from. I feel so much healthier eating this way as well. I have also found that I tend to have more local meals during the week, although we still do buy lot of stuff too. But, it is all about baby steps and that is what we are trying to do.

garden update

My garden is doing so well! I am super excited about it. I can't wait to actually be able to pick more from my garden. I have been picking the herbs constantly, but no actual vegetables. Well...I did have that little green pepper that I just couldn't manage to wait to pick :-) I am so happy that nothing is dead yet though!

Friday I came home from work and looked up at the step and deck where all of my plants are, it looked a little different though, so I went around to the front of the steps to see properly. I looked up the steps, and there were my two cherry tomato plants, completely tipped over and out of their pots. I almost dropped at the foot of the stairs. I ran up to look at them, and most of the little tomatoes that had been on the plant had been snapped off.

Luckily I was able to get the whole plant back in the pot, and some of the tomatoes are still on there. I am just hoping that it doesn't die. I think the saving grace was that I had cages around those two plants, so when the wind blew them over, they kind of got stuck upside down on the step, and weren't able to go anywhere else. If they had completely fallen down all the steps...well it would have been all over.

Tomato cages...well...I only had 3 tomato cages, so most of my tomatoes seem to be growing like a forest currently. Is that bad? Are they not going to grow well? I can't imagine that is the case, because all of my tomato plants have tons of tomatoes on them. I planted 13 tomato plants so that in case I killed most of them, I would still be able to have a few tomatoes for salads and maybe to make a little sauce to throw in the freezer. How was I to know that my tomato plants would take off and I would have enough tomatoes to feed me for at least 2 years? Well here are my pictures then:

updates

I can't believe it is actually July right now, I don't think I remember having June! Everything has been crazy busy around my house...and it is about to get crazier. I have weddings galore this month...including my baby brother's wedding...awwww :-) Matt and I celebrated our 2nd wedding anniversary on the 2nd, and 8 years of being together on the 3rd...again...crazy.

Yesterday we managed to put in new flooring in the living room. Yay! That means I can walk from the front door of the house all the way to the back of the house in my bare feet now...no more carrying shoes from the entryway to the living room so we can get to the bedroom. Now, all I have to do is prime and paint the window/door trim. Pretty exciting stuff considering we expected to be DONE with the house May 1st :-)

I must confess, the only reason the living room was finished so quickly this past week is because Matt and I bought a new TV, and it is being picked up on Friday. Granted, we don't have cable, but since we watch so many movies, I figured it was worth it...plus I have this little Legend of Zelda addiction...but that is another story...So much for trying to reduce what we have. I am happy with the purchase, but still feel a tad bit of guilt.

My garden is doing amazingly well! I have little tomatoes all over my many many plants...and I have one mighty fine green pepper which appears to double in size everyday. I think this weekend I might pick it...Matt wants me to wait until it is "as big as the ones at the grocery store," but I don't know if I can wait that long. My other 2 pepper plants are not doing as well as the green pepper one. Neither of them have any fruit, but lot's of little flowers, so I am hopeful that something will come of it. I will have to take some more pictures...The upstairs deck is starting to get a little crowded...

Having the 4th on a Wednesday really through off my whole week! All day yesterday I thought it was Saturday, but now I have to go back to work for 2 more days...I can't wait for the end of the month when I can have an entire week of vacation...yay!

One Local Summer Week 2

Here it is week 2 for One Local Summer. I am having so much fun with this challenge! And actually, I am trying to eat mainly local food...of course there are a lot of ingredients that are still not really local, but I am paying a lot more attention to labels, and asking a lot more questions. It definitely pays to be an informed consumer, especially with all the recalls going on...toothpaste? What?!

This week I roasted my first chicken. It's funny because I absolutely love to cook, and I love making homemade meals, but I never make normal family meals, ie the meals my mom used to make for us. Instead I do a lot of mexican, a lot of thai, anything and everything spicy. But, roasting a chicken seemed to be the perfect fit for this week, since I had an organic chicken from Snafu Acres in the freezer, and because Maine decided it was fall instead of summer ;-) A little heat in the house can't hurt!

Along with the roasted chicken I made potato salad. I was able to get some potatoes from Denis at Long Meadow Farm, in West Gardiner, and eggs were also from Snafu Acres. And thanks to Wendy for posting on her site that Cains Mayo is from Mass...I'll take it! I did put in some non local celery, but wasn't thinking about it at the time. Just chopped, dropped...and then realized. But, I am going to just go with it this week. Does celery grow in Maine? And to round out our dish, I bought a ton of peas at the farmer's market this past weekend and shelled them right before dinner...yum!

Breakdown as follows:

Organic chicken - Snafu Acres, Monmouth 15 miles
Organic Potatoes - Long Meadow Farm 3 miles
Free Range eggs - Snafu Acres, Monmouth 15 miles
Cain's Mayo - Ayer, MA 163 miles
Organic peas - I can't remember what this farm was called...but they are 21 miles

Non-Local:

Celery - the package says Chelsea MA, which isn't too far off, but who knows where the celery actually came from...

Matt wanted me to take a picture of him with the chicken...of course we had already started carving it at this point...what a goofball


Here is a lovely picture of our meal...I still need to work on the garnish :-)


And for dessert...the remainder of our strawberries...man...I went through those pretty fast! Oh! And the strawberries are about 17 miles away from a pick your own farm. Fun!

container garden update

OK, so here it is the end of June and my container garden has taken over the upstairs deck. I love it! I don't have anything that I can eat yet, but I feel by the end of the summer I am going to have more than enough tomatoes, cukes and peppers to do whatever canning I attempt :-) I am so excited about how well they are doing, and I am just praying that whatever I am doing keeps working. Actually, I must confess, all I am doing is watering the plants. I think that because they are in direct sunlight all day long is what really works for them, and being on an upstairs deck away from any pests...and woodchucks (we have a lovely family living next door) also helps :-)


My little herb experiment is working out quite nicely as well. I have plenty of basil, parsley, and cilantro. I end up picking the basil every couple days and then making paninis or this fresh tomato sauce: chopped tomatoes, garlic, basil, mushrooms, mozzarella cheese cubed, olive oil and salt. I like to heat it in the microwave a bit to get the cheese to melt some, and then I eat it plain. Matt puts it over his pasta, and it is sooooo good :-) I did make some guacamole the other day with our cilantro and I couldn't get over how amazing it smelled! I love the smell of freshly cut herbs!


So here are some pictures, they didn't come out great, but it gives you all an idea of how my container garden experiment is going :-)



my first green pepper!



Roma tomato plant...I think anyways...long and skinny looks like a roma to me :-)



My pepper plants being taken over by cucumbers. I didn't get the memo about spacing requirements for planting a garden :-/



All the herbs seemed to grow towards one side of the pot...and I thought I planted them in the middle...oh well, they still taste yummy!

Tomato plants

Some more tomato plants...I planted a lot of tomatoes :-)

My first cherry tomato, can you see it? It's like the size of a pea or something...