Monday, February 9, 2009
Butternut Squash is the Bomb
Squash and Greens
1 butternut squash
2 bunches of greens, about 2 dozen stems, I prefer Kale or Chard
½ onion
Toasted walnuts – 10-15 minutes at 300 usually toasts them nicely
Feta, blue or other tangy, crumbly cheese
2-3 Tablespoons Olive oil
Cube the squash and put it in the oven at 400 degrees, until tender (20-30 minutes.) Chop the onion and saute it in a large pan over medium low heat. While both are cooking prepare the greens by washing and removing the stems then coarsely chopping into several pieces per leaf. Turn up the heat on the onions and add the greens and a cup of water to the big pan. Steam/saute the greens until nice a tender, add more water if necessary. When the greens and the squash is done prepare the plate by first arranging a pile of the greens. Put a big scoop of squash on top and then sprinkle a generous amount of walnuts and cheese over that.
Squash and Quinoa
3 cups quinoa, cooked.
3 cups butternut squash, cubed (1 large squash)
1 onion, chopped.
1 Tablespoon thyme
3 Tablespoons olive oil
1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar
1 cup toasted walnuts
Toss the squash cubes with the onion, thyme, olive oil, and vinegar. Spread the mixture on a baking sheet and back for 20-30 minutes at 400 degrees until the squash is done. Cook the quinoa as the package instructs while the squash is in the oven. Mix the cooked squash and the cooked quinoa together and enjoy.
Harvest Chili
1 onion
2 cups broth, chicken or vegetable.
1 large butternut squash cubed
1 cup corn, canned, frozen or fresh
1 cup or 1 can cooked white beans, actually any bean will do,
Tomatoes – I use tomato sauce, about 2 cups, but the recipe this started with used chopped fresh tomatoes
Peppers – this time of year I use dried hot red peppers saved from my garden
2 Tablespoons chili powder
Saute the onion in a tablespoon of olive oil, add broth and turn up the heat til it starts to boil then turn it down to a brisk simmer and add all the other stuff. Add broth and tomato sauce if there isn’t enough liquid. Let it cook for 30 minutes or until the squash is cooked through. Salt to taste.
Stuffed Squash
1 clove garlic
1 large squash
1 T olive oil
½ cup walnuts
¼ cup blue cheese
2 tsp thyme
1 T honey
Cut the squash in half the long way, take out the seeds and stringy stuff and bake for 1 hour at 375 degrees. Mix the other ingredients together, enlarge the hole in the squash by scrapping bits of the flesh into the hole, pile the other ingredients in the hole and bake it until the cheese melts a bit, 5 to 10 minutes.
Where to get it local
Squash: all over the place, Midway Farms, Roths, EZ Orchards
Walnuts: EZ Orchards
Onions, Kale and Chard: Midway Farms, also likely at the Salem Public Market and certainly at the Corvallis Indoor Market.
Cheese: EZ Orchards, Roth’s, Lifesource, Fitts Seafood and check out www.oregoncheeseguild.org
Olive Oil: Victoria Estates of Keizer is available at EZ Orchards
Corn: check out the processors section for brands of corn canned and frozen in Oregon, get them in most grocery stores here.
Tomato Sauce: check for the Oregon brands but not a lot of tomatoes are processed here since our cool summers make commercial production of tomatoes somewhat challenging. A few of the farm stands have home canned sauce and Buona Terra near Monmouth is one of them.
White Beans: I’m not sure who has these locally grown here. If you know somewhere, let me know.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Ten Reasons I Eat Local
2. You get to meet farmers. I like Willamette Valley farmers and look for any excuse to meet them. People who make their living growing flavorful, nutritious food are almost always interesting, intelligent, exceptional people. They risk everything to do it too. Variations in the weather, the soil and the market can easily wipe them out and yet they work endless hours to fill our plates with wonderful stuff.
3. You get to check out farms. Touring a farm will teach you that some of the world’s most innovative people who are leading the way on renewable energy, water conservation and land preservation are farmers.
4. You get to pay a farmer directly. It makes me feel good to know who is getting my food dollar. In 1950 farmers got 40 cents of every dollar that was spent on food, now they get around 20. If we want people to keep growing great things for us we’ve got to change to make sure they can make a living at it.
5. It’s good for the local economy. One study from the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture concluded that if an additional 10 percent of 28 common fruits and vegetables were grown and sold in Iowa, it would result in $54.3 million in sales for Iowa farmers (based on wholesale prices).
6. It’s good for the environment. The Leopold Center also determined that a common dinner of roast, potatoes, carrots, and green beans could travel a collective distance of 5,375 miles through conventional channels before reaching the dinner table. I have all of those things in my freezer and cupboards right now and none of them traveled more than 20 miles.
7. The food is more nutritious, really it is. Again from the Strawberry Commission website. A study conducted by Dr. Mary Ann Lila of University of Illinois, suggested that the climate of the Northwest creates berries that are higher in health benefits because the plants are exposed to more stressful weather conditions and as a result produce protective phytochemicals that are beneficial to humans and help the plant ward off disease. Here’s the scoop on some of our other berries http://www.oregon-berries.com/common/docs/BERRY101.pdf.
8. It connects me to where I live, the seasons, the weather, the soil, the water. When the summer is cool I wait longer for blueberries and am crazy for them by the time they arrive, when it’s too cool in the spring for bees to come out at the right time I pay more for the few peaches that arrive, when it’s a perfect season for cherries I rejoice in the abundance.
9. The coolest people are into eating local. I don’t mind putting myself in the same club as Barbara Kingsolver, Lin Rosetto Casper and famous chef Alice Waters.
10. There are so many choices of local food in the Willamette Valley, even in winter. Here is a list of currently available local foods from Ten Rivers Food Web in Corvallis.
Fresh: kale, leeks, beets, fennel, carrots, turnips, spinach, celeriac, parsnips, broccoli, parsnips, kohlrabi, rutabaga, cauliflower, mushrooms, red and green cabbages, Brussels sprouts, Chinese cabbages, mustard greens, hardy lettuces, Swiss chard, apple cider, corn salad, collards, endive, arugula, Boc choi, cilantro, kiwi. Storage foods: garlic, onions, shallots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squashes, dried beans, dried corn, walnuts, hazelnuts, chestnuts, amaranth, quinoa, honey, wheat, rye, oats, spelt, barley, kamut, wild rice, yakon, apples, flax. Dairy: milk, cream, butter, yogurt, ice cream, buttermilk, sour cream, cow cheeses, goat cheeses, cottage cheese. Eggs. Meats: beef, goat, pork, lamb, rabbit, buffalo, chicken; Fish, seafood. Dried/Frozen/Canned: (virtually anything!) jams, jellies, juices, all fruits, all vegetables, mushrooms, pickles, meats, fish, seafood.
Monday, January 5, 2009
Midway Farms - Winter Oasis
Thanks to Midway Farms, my favorite winter farm stand, I just had the best lunch. It was sautéed kale and onions with two poached eggs on top. Fresh, organically grown, kale is one of the best things and the pastured eggs from Midway Farms are just too tasty to mess with so I poach them for the purest flavor.
Midway Farms is my favorite year-round farm stand. I found them while on a search for pasture raised eggs. They have so much more than amazing eggs, they are one of the few farm stands open all winter selling fresh local produce.
Yes, Cynthia, owner of Midway Farms, has figured out winter vegetable farming in
Midway Farms sits midway between
Cynthia told me a story during my first visit about taking her children out to eat, a rare occurrence for small farmers. When her daughter got her meal with chicken she asked Maggie, “Whose chicken was this?” Maggie was initially confused and told her it was her chicken but her daughter insisted she wanted to know whose chicken it had been. You see her daughter was so used to knowing where her food comes from that the concept of a chicken whose owner you hadn’t known was new to her. This made me think about my freezer and how now, after spending a year buying much of my food direct from farms, I know whose chicken I have, and whose berries and whose beef.
When you visit Midway Farms you come away with so much more than great food, you come away knowing that you have had a part in building a more sustainable future for all of us. That and the best eggs you will ever eat.
Midway has a website at www.midwayfarmsoregon.com
http://www.motherearthnews.com/Relish/Pastured-Eggs-Vitamin-D-Content.aspx?blogid=1508Friday, December 26, 2008
Christmas Cherry Chutney
The land I live on had an acre of old cherry trees when I bought it 22 years ago. Now after clearing for a garden and a driveway, I have about a dozen tress left. This last summer they had cherries by the bushel. I invited friends and family to pick all they wanted, they did, and still an embarrassing amount was wasted. I’ve always thought that Royal Anne cherries were just good fresh. I tried canning them years ago and didn’t really like the result. This year Robert and Dee, who raise 60 kinds of apples, told me about cherry chutney. I looked up some recipes, made a couple of alterations to the one I had the ingredients for, and the result blew me away.
When you see fresh Royal Anne cherries at the fruit stand or the grocery store you can be fairly certain they’re local. These delicate things bruise when touched and brown where bruised. Most of the trees that grow these were planted, like my nearly 50 year old trees, when fruit wasn’t chosen for its shipping qualities but for its flavor. You can get them fresh during the summer but if you want to save a bundle keep your eyes open for what looks like old orchards. South and west of
5 cups frozen, fresh or canned sweet cherries. If making this with tart cherries add ½ cup of sugar. If using canned cherries leave out some of the sugar.
1 cup chopped dried tart cherries.
1 cup walnuts
1 cup sugar
¾ cup vinegar, I use white but you can probably use others.
2 tablespoons finely chopped candied ginger.
½ teaspoon each of ground cinnamon, ginger, cayenne pepper and salt.
¼ teaspoon of ground cloves.
Bring it all to a boil and then cook over medium heat for 30 minutes.
Cherries and Walnuts Locally Grown
Cherry Country has dried tart cherries – check the link on the right.
Willamette Valley Fruit has frozen tart cherries and Roth’s, EZ Orchards and Aspinwalls carry them.
Oregon Fruit has canned Royal Anne cherries and Roth’s has them.
Bauman Farms has frozen cherries as well.
Truitt Brothers also cans sweet cherries.
Walnuts – check the previous post. EZ orchards, Asplinwall’s and New Seasons in
Monday, December 22, 2008
Walnuts worth the Cracking
I love walnuts. They’re healthy, they’re just right on oatmeal and I eat them several days a week. Like most foods, the price of walnuts has been increasing lately. But when I recently paid $8.99 a lb for bulk walnuts, that turned out to be stale, in the “natural foods” section of a local grocery story I realized it was past time to look for local walnuts.
I know there aren’t many walnut farms around the valley but I had a memory of a small handmade cardboard sign advertising walnuts on
I broke out these walnuts one morning when I was cooking that awesome Christine and Rob’s oatmeal from Aspinwall’s. I cracked one open, it broke apart with ease, and I popped a half in my mouth. It was entirely different from any walnuts I’ve ever eaten. It was crisper, light and kind of delicate. Most importantly, it was sweet.
I took the other half to my boyfriend and said “here taste this.”
“What’s on it?”
“Nothing, I just took it out of the shell.”
A quizzical look came over his face.
He thought that walnut must have been sugar coated.
Not long after this we set out to find the farm with the sign I’d remembered to see if we could buy more walnuts direct. East of
The more I eat these walnuts and learn about growing them the greater appreciation I have for the farmers who grow them. They’re so good I’ll be stocking up soon so that I’m never stuck with stale, expensive, grocery store walnuts again. I’m also looking at walnut trees, they take lots of room and often don’t produce a crop for the first 10 years. Imagine the commitment of a farmer who plants a few acres of these and then makes nothing from them for 10 long years of watering, weeding and pruning. I reflect on it and think “I should have paid him extra.”
For those to the North here is the walnut page from tri-county farms.
http://www.tricountyfarm.org/oregon_walnuts.asp
and their list of farms
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Welcome
Welcome to Eating Local in the
I’ve filled this blog with the resources to help you find great food here as well. Along the right hand side you’ll find web resources for local food. Most of these links are lists of farms that sell direct or search engines meant to help you find farms near you. If the listing has an address and specifies when the farm, or stand, is open to the public, then it’s pretty safe to just head out there. But, if you want to be sure that you can get what you are looking for, call first. Some of the farms have websites, and I’ll keep adding links to those. But most farmers are too occupied with growing food to maintain much of a web presence, hence the usefulness of lists like these.
My favorite farm stand section is currently focused on those open in the winter, but I’ll add the spring and summer ones as the seasons change. Some farm stands sell only produce from their farm, and sometimes a few nearby farms; others sell a mix of their own produce and products from around the world. If you see bananas, you can assume they buy from a traditional distributor in addition to moving their own goods. So ask where the item you want is from. Most farm stands are proud of their fruit and vegetables and will happily tell you about their origins.
I also include local processors here in creators of great local food.
I hope you enjoy my stories about finding local food and the farms it comes from. Please feel free to add your own stories of