French-style local breakfast

This could be a picture taken in France, but notice the milk from Spokane Family Farms! Local milk!

I made the peach jam myself from peaches I bought at the market a few weeks ago, from the Columbia Valley. I'll be teaching a class on how to make jam, in September. If you want to come please register through Moscow Parks and Rec department.

And the bread, is multigrain, from Moscow's own Panhandle Artisan Bread. They use Shepherd's Grain flour, grown and processed right here in the Inland Northwest. I'm addicted - two loaves a week, without fail.

The Inka that's lurking in my cup, pretending to be coffee, came from Eastern Europe. It's one of the exceptions to my local diet, because I just can't do without Inka. Luckily it weighs very little, so the shipping is fairly carbon-light.

Gazpacho week at our house

Tomatoes, bell peppers, onions, shallots, cucumber, olive oil, vinegar, salt. Chop the veggies up into a very fine dice, mix in a bowl, add a good splash of oil, a smaller splash of vinegar, and a dash of salt. Stir it up, chill it well, and serve cold, with big hunks of crusty baguette. It's the perfect summer lunch and god is it good. Don't ruin it by using your food processor. Enjoy the process of dicing, and you'll be rewarded by an explosion of taste and crunch.

Feel free to keep tomato seeds in there, but you might want to leave out the bell pepper seeds. Keep the cuke peel if it's organic, otherwise toss it.

I bought all the veggies this morning at the Moscow Farmer's Market, every Saturday from 8 to noon, downtown in Friendship Square. Most came from Affinity Farm, others from Elizabeth Taylor.

Easy way to fix green beans

So if you've got a big mess of lovely tender fresh green beans, the first thing to do with them is to snap off their little stem ends. But do leave the cute little tails - they're delicious. While you're topping the beans, bring a pan of water to boil on the stove; salt it well. When it's at a rolling boil - that is, boiling madly - put all the beans in at once. Let them cook for about 5 minutes and then immediately pour off the hot water and run cold water over the beans until they're cool.

Then you can do two things. You can put them in the fridge in a covered dish to eat later, dressed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar and a little bit of diced shallot or onion and a pinch of salt, or you can eat them immediately with those same ingredients. A bit of cooked bacon is delicious too.

The French would eat these as part of a nice dinner by reheating them quickly on the stove in a saute' pan with melted butter. YUM!

Got these beans from Elizabeth Taylor. She's at the far end of the first row of the Moscow Farmer's Market, on the left.

Mexican Chocolate Zucchini Cake

This is our favorite summer cake and a really decadent way to use all that zucchini that your friends are forcing on you this time of year. Perfect with vanilla ice cream and a lovely snack or breakfast all by itself.

Mexican Chocolate Zucchini Cake

Makes one 8 x 5 inch loaf pan

1 ¼ cup flour
1 ¼ teaspoon baking powder
1 ¼ teaspoon baking soda
¼ cup unsweetened dark cocoa powder (plus more for dusting pan)
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup sugar
½ cup butter, softened
2 medium eggs
¼ cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 teaspoon orange extract
1 cup grated zucchini (unpeeled if organic, peeled if not)
½ cup chopped nuts (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a loaf pan with butter and lightly dust it with cocoa powder.

Combine all dry ingredients in a mixing bowl, stir with a whisk and put aside.

Mix butter and sugar together in a small mixing bowl until well combined; add eggs, milk, and vanilla and orange extracts and mix well but do not overbeat.

Gently mix the butter mixture into the dry ingredients. Add zucchini (and nuts if using) and combine gently. Spread into the prepared loaf pan.

Bake for 1 hour or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out clean. Let cool for 15 minutes in pan before tipping cake out of pan onto a cooling rack.

Between the Teeth...

I've been flossing a lot more often lately and that can only mean two things. Sweet corn, and blackberries!

I've just returned to the Palouse from a trip to the Midwest, where the sweet corn was abundant. The farmer next door to my parents' invited my dad to come pick sweet corn and Dad brought home a feed sack full, so we ate it for many a meal. Remember, the trick to good sweet corn is not to over cook it. FIVE MINUTES in boiling water is enough!!

Then, we arrived home Friday evening, just in time for me to hit the farmer's market at 8 am sharp Saturday morning, where I found sweet corn as well. Even better, the blueberries and blackberries are in, too. I bought a flat of blueberries for $24 which all went straight into the freezer in freezer bags, to use throughout the winter. I bought 2 pints of blackberries that I baked into a pie this morning. The juice overflowed into my oven, making a mess, as usual, but it just added to the mess from the last pie I baked that overflowed. There is no way around it I think.

Company for Saturday lunch and the sheer bounty of it all inspired some other purchases: new potatoes, green beans, lettuce, heirloom tomatoes and cherry tomatoes, parsley, carrots, and of course, two loaves of Panhandle Artisan multigrain bread. It's my new favorite and I think I'll be going through several loaves of that each week. Affinity Farm provided most of my veggies as usual. Our lunch menu (vegetarian and gluten free for our guests) included a vegetable gratin, green beans with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and shallots, a quinoa salad with grapes and pecans, and for dessert, Cowgirl Chocolates mild chocolate truffles. We loved all of them but my favorite was the double dark chocolate in the aqua wrapper. Second favorite was the one that tastes like Creamsicles. YUM!

Dinner later was sweet corn with salad and roasted chicken. No dessert - just a tiny glass of Kahlua w/ cream. Not local but oh so delicious. :)

I've been doing a LOT of reading this summer about local vs. organic, organic vs. conventional, sustainability and so on, and what I've learned is that it's too complex to think I know what's right and what's wrong. There are no pat answers. No one can just say, this thing is always better than that thing, or everyone should eat like this, or farmers ought all to do this. It's all very dependent upon the particular conditions in a particular place. I encourage anyone who is interested in food and farming and eating well to keep an open mind and most of all to seek out what is the best food for you in your place, and to enjoy it fully, with friends and family.

Eating Integrity

Eating Integrity
by Kelly Kingsland, Moscow Food Co-op newsletter volunteer

The other day while I was pushing my gas powered lawn mower around (and around) my large lawn I contemplated my local diet. In light of the blaring noise, and puff of smoke emitting from the mower, my actions seem pretty futile. Especially for someone like me who eats something like an 80 percent local diet year round, the net gain in reduced imports is fairly insignificant.

So as I continued circling my machine towards my ultimate goal- a strangely satisfying shortly mown expanse that I consider my yard, I asked myself why I had taken the Local Challenge. Was it hope? Did I think I could change the world through my actions? Was it sacrifice? Was I giving up eating imported foods as some sort of offering- paying for my own or others' carbon spewing transgressions? Was I just following a national fad- locavorism is reaching a fever pitch in some circles across the country. What was motivating me anyway?

I ruled out hope right away. I am a pessimist, and through that lens think that with our current global population and consumptive addictions, pure inertia ought to easily propel us deeply and irreversibly into climate crisis- seemingly during my lifetime if you listen to some scientists. In a non biblical way, I actually believe that we are approaching the “end times” and certainly I don't see my local diet as any method of changing that course.

What about sacrifice? Am I giving up things that I love to eat in order to somehow justify my periodic airplane flights to see family, or my more frequent drives to wilderness to backpack? Am I running some internal form of carbon trade, exchanging this summer’s resisted chocolate bars for next winter’s flight to see family in Florida? I do have a deep desire to walk lightly on this planet. And I carry a bit of guilt at being American-a member of a great consuming culture that will go down in history (if there is history) as the most destructive ever. But I'm not a martyr and don't think I can right the world by forfeiting pleasure.

What about fad? Am I just doing this because everyone else is? Generally I am not very faddish, but a fad that is about NOT buying something does have its appeal. But no, while it does feel good to share convictions with the likes of Barbra Kingsolver, Gary Paul Nabhan and Michael Pollan, I have been on this kick for many years, and have come to my own conclusions about what side of the fence I want to stand on.

Having ruled out hope, sacrifice and fad, I realized that I am eating a local diet because it feels good. In addition to feeling really great physically when I quit eating sugar, chips, chocolate, and dairy products, the local diet fills me with a sense of integrity. Not righteousness, integrity. It feels good to step away from the constant and dire implications of our consumptive habits. Rather than approaching meals with a sense of guilt and acquiescence I see mindful action at work. As I fill my body with vegetables, meat and fruit that have been produced locally I feel as if I am not only nourishing my body, but also my relationship to the earth and other living beings that live here with me. Whether it reduces my carbon footprint, or buys me a trip to the wilderness or not, I like eating integrity.

One of Kelly Kingsland's current favorite local meals is steamed Artichokes with garlic aioli, Pickle Flat Farm grass fed beef burger with homemade catsup, and braised cabbage and beets. We're not missing much at all.

Hooray for Local Milk

Hooray For Local Milk!
By Peg Kingery, Chill and Frozen Buyer, Moscow Food Co-op

Summer is a good time for road trips. What better excuse to hit the highway than to visit a small, family-owned dairy whose milk I yearn to make available to the Co-op’s customers? So with Co-op store manager Steve Kobs riding shot gun and my furry companion Toby wagging in the backseat (because he likes adventures too) we headed north to Spokane to check out the operations at Spokane Family Farms.

I’d read about Spokane Family Farms in two local newspapers and was both excited and skeptical. I love supporting local businesses, but am REAL picky about quality. This dairy is not organic, so I had to see for myself if they were at least following organic, humane and sustainable practices. I’m also quite fond of cows and was hoping to see animal care that rivaled . . . well, the care I give to Toby.

I was totally impressed.

Mike and Trish Vieira began their 30-cow milking operation in April of this year. Mike previously worked as a dairyman near Othello, Washington. He grew tired of seeing his high quality milk being dumped in the same tank with milk from other dairies and sought a market that would support an “old fashioned” dairy that produced and bottled its own milk. Lucky for us he chose the Spokane area.

Along the way we picked up Jennifer Hall, a key player in Spokane’s soon-to-open Main Market Co-op, who kindly arranged the visit for us. We arrived just as Mike was putting hay in the cows’ feeding bunk. I admit to being concerned when I saw the cows were on dry lot, not pasture. Mike explained that he’d hoped to have the cows on the pasture he planted to oats by now, but lack of rain had prevented the crop from maturing quickly enough. All his feed comes from local, no spray producers in the Spokane area. He plans to plant one of his other pastures to grass and legumes this fall.

While Mike prepared to milk the cows, Trish gave us a tour of the facilities and answered our questions. The milking/bottling barn was spotless. Within the barn there is also a lab where the Vieiras quality test and formulate the cows’ diets and monitor bacteria counts in the milk (which is always way lower than average). They bottle the milk every other day after pasteurizing it at 145o for 30 minutes. Their milk is not homogenized, meaning the cream rises to the top of the jug.

The Vieiras DO care for their cows with the same concern I have for Toby. They all have names (even nicknames!), receive grain mixtures according to their individual needs and those needing extra TLC got plenty of it. They range in age from 2 to 8 years and average 80-100 lbs of milk per day per cow (which works out to about 9 gallons of milk per cow per day).

At the time of our visit the Vieiras were finalizing arrangements to have Spokane Produce deliver their milk to the 18 stores they provide milk to in the Spokane area. That’s good news for our Co-op because Spokane Produce brings us veggies and fruit twice a week. Idaho regulations differ a bit from Washington regulations and the Vieiras were in the process of doing what they needed to to comply with them. So here’s the good news – now that I’ve seen the operation, we’ll be stocking Spokane Family Farms milk as soon as we are able to!

Poultry Love - Is It Wrong?

That's my son with one of our new chicks a few weeks ago. Local farmers, the Zakarisons, sold us some chicks that will become laying hens when they grow up. For us it was a momentous occasion, like birthing a baby, as it took about nine months to get the coop and fence ready (we started in the fall and halted construction during the winter), and their arrival was preceded by the mulling over of names, the gathering of equipment and bedding, lots of reading about care and feeding. The whole thing was very similar to pregnancy, without the sleeplessness and weird food cravings.

Except these babies put themselves to bed at night, eat almost whatever we throw out there for them, and are a little skittish about being held very much. I adore them, and find myself spending time cutting up our kitchen waste into tiny chicken beak sized pieces and then watching to see what they love and what they don’t love. So far the absolute favorites are the pie cherries from our neighbors’ tree, onion skins, and the prostrate knotweed that grows everywhere in our yard. They also love bread, bits of fruit, grass, slugs and bugs, and a shovelful of almost finished compost to scratch through.

Our girls are about half grown, little Nellie, Dorothy, Mabel, Cinnamon, Margaret, and Leonora. Two barred Plymouth Rocks, two Rhode Island reds, one speckled Sussex, and one blue Andalusian. The barred rocks and the blue Andalusian are downright friendly; the others a little more standoffish. But we’re making progress, and there’s nothing I like better than to sit down and have a little chicken time in the evening to relax after a hard day.

Eventually our girls will give us eggs; you’ll read about it here first!

Fruit crisps to remember

Fruit crisps used to seem painful – all that topping to mix up – but now that I know that a recipe is not required, fruit crisps are my favorite dessert to make.

Topping: a couple cups of rolled oats, a stick of butter, a generous measure of brown sugar, a few teaspoons of cinnamon, and a handful of flour. Mix it up with your hands until the butter is broken down into little pebbles and rubbed into the oats. Add some chopped nuts if you like them. Try something besides cinnamon if you prefer. Maybe cardamom or allspice. I made a cherry crisp this morning that used almonds in the topping and a bit of almond extract mixed with the fruit. Delicious.

Fruit: Grease your baking dish and fill with sliced fruit. Apples, apricots, peaches, pitted cherries, diced rhubarb and strawberries, whatever. Sprinkle sugar on the fruit, more if it’s rhubarb, less if it’s peaches, none of it's Bing cherries, or use your own plum or cherry jam left from last year instead of sugar. That’s what I use for sweetener, and the extra fruit flavor gives it extra depth. Slather the oat topping on top, nice and thick, and bake in a 350 degree oven until the topping it toasty brown and the fruit cooked through, about 45 minutes. Serve warm with vanilla ice cream… in a big bowl. Don’t be shy – you’re only going to eat this a couple times each summer, and the memories of it will last all winter long.

Palouse Potato Salad

Potato salad comes in many forms but I like mine with red potatoes (unpeeled), hard boiled eggs, a bit of dill, something crunchy like celery or cucumber, bacon bits, onion or shallots, a little mayo, and lots of olive oil and lemon juice, plus salt and pepper. If I can get away with a little sweet pickle relish I will, although too much and the rest of my family will complain. The trick is to put the olive oil and lemon juice on the potatoes as soon as they’re drained, and still hot. Mmm.

The potatoes are from Washington, the eggs from here, the cucumber and shallots from the Yakima Valley, and the bacon from a Washington company, Hemplers. Don't know where the pigs grow up; need to find that out.

The opposite of deprivation

We started our locavore diet a few days ago. We’re not militant about it; I’m aiming for 40 percent local (within 200 miles) and 40 percent regional (Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and western Montana.) I have a long list of exceptions such as Inka, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, lemon juice, steak sauce, olives, goat milk (maybe there’s someone nearby selling it I haven’t discovered yet?), peanuts, almonds, cashews, etc. and the occasional pint of store bought ice cream, among other things. My definition of local doesn’t quite mesh with the Co-op’s definition of local; maybe I can lobby the Co-op to change theirs, since I’m not going to change mine!

Saturday morning was the first farmer’s market of our diet and I rode my bike and took two canvas bags, expecting to get a lot of salad greens and some carrots and chard, forgetting that in the river valleys that bound the Palouse they’ve already got apricots, cherries, green beans, beets, and more. And our local growers had cucumbers, broccoli, kohlrabi, onions, peas, arugula, baby yellow squash, mizuna…

Thinking, “I’ve got another week before I get this chance again” I just kept buying and buying, finishing up with two loaves of bread from Panhandle Artisan Bread (they get their flour from Shepherd’s Grain Cooperative in Spokane, from wheat grown right here!) and a glass of iced horchata made this morning by Patty’s Mexican Kitchen. I’ve got to get a recipe for that stuff. I know it’s rice, sugar, water, and cinnamon – not local at all, but who cares, it’s so good. Maybe I just can just figure it out. Anyway, hauling the bags of stuff back to my bike (I had to use plastic bags offered by vendors so next time I’ll take more canvas) and then figuring out how to pack the load home was a good logistical challenge for 9 am on a Saturday.
The Palouse is particularly well-placed from a locavore’s perspective, or at least it would be if there were still salmon to be had nearby. But for fruits and vegetables and meat, the locavore must be prepared for the sheer bounty of summertime. Eating local in July is the exact opposite of deprivation.

On the menu in the next few days are stir-fry, chard frittata, borscht, and pizza. This morning after the market I made potato salad, green beans w/ balsamic vinaigrette w/ shallots and bacon, and cherry-rhubarb crisp. The satisfaction of cooking and eating such delicious fresh food cheered me up. It had been such a long hard wet winter and I had begun to lose my appetite while still gaining weight (all those lemon cream scones at the Co-op, yikes), a sure sign of trouble.

What's local at the Moscow Food Co-op?

It's early in the growing season but there is some delicious produce available right now. Try fresh radishes sliced very thinly, served on a sliced baguette with a generous smear of butter and a sprinkle of salt. Yum! And see my previous post on bok choy for a recipe idea.

In the bulk department there are a few options; lentils and split peas! We are on the Palouse after all. But there is also wild rice from St. Maries. And don't forget the big selection of mixes from MaryJanesFarm, right here in Moscow! I'll do some recipes in the coming days that use lentils and split peas.

In the meat department there is lamb, beef, and yak, local and regional, and don't forget about our local Eaton beef, located in the freezer case.

We have local eggs in the fridge case, and a selection of cheeses from the region. Nothing like an omelette, a salad, and a glass of local wine for an easy summer dinner!

What to do with bok choy?

How to make bok choy - abundantly available in Moscow, Idaho right now - into a meal for the family?

I looked at a few recipes that use cabbage and here is what I came up with.

Ingredients: lamb sausage, onion, bok choy, dried cranberries, salt and pepper, log of herbed goat cheese

Two lamb sausage links (from Eastern Oregon) cut into small chunks, sauteed with 1/2 a diced onion (Washington) and finely diced bok choy ribs (Moscow, ID). I used the whole, large bok choy head. When sausage, onion, and bok choy ribs are done, add a sprinkle of dried cranberries (not local), the finely sliced bok choy leaves, and salt and pepper to taste (not local). Put immediately onto plates or shallow bowls, and top with a generous chunk of herbed goat cheese (from Idaho). Stir the melted goat cheese into the mixture and eat while it's hot!

This served 3 of us with no leftovers; we accompanied it with lots of crusty bread to soak up the juice in the bottom of the bowl.

Rhubarb for my birthday

My rhubarb grows in a sheltered spot on the east side of my house, where it gets morning sun and afternoon shade and no wind. On my birthday last week I decided to spend the morning doing whatever I wanted instead of going to work and what I felt like doing the most was harvesting something from my yard and baking something with it. Time was limited so I made rhubarb-strawberry crisp.

I gave up using recipes for crisp once I realized that for the topping you really only need oats and butter and sugar, and for the fruit you just need sugar and/or a jar of homemade jam. I just measure a few cups of oats and rub in a stick of butter and about a half cup of brown sugar with a bit of whatever spice I'm in the mood for; last week it was cinnamon. In the buttered baking dish I put the rhubarb and strawberries, cut into bite sized pieces, and then dusted sugar over the whole thing, and then poured over it a couple cups of plum jam left from last year. The oat topping goes all over the top and into the oven it goes at 350 degrees, until the topping is all brown and the fruit is bubbling and tender. MMM!

This week the rhubarb will be made into a pie, since my family loves it even more than crisp. The principle is the same: fruit mixed with some sugar and jam. But for the crust, well, I make pie crust with flour, butter, an egg, and some vinegar or lemon juice. I found this recipe in one of my mom's old cookbooks and it works for me better than anything I've ever tried. For a single crust, it works out to about a cup of flour with 6 tablespoons of butter, 1 egg, and a tablespoon of vinegar, mixed up in the food processor and then dumped onto a sheet of wax paper to roll out. I usually use a bit of flour under and over the pie dough to keep it from sticking to the paper or the rolling pin, and I use the wax paper so that I can lift the whole shebang and flip it over into the pie pan before filling it with fruit and then again on the top of the pie.

I think the appearance of rhubarb satisfies some deep inner need for tart, crisp, fresh food, that signals the end of our starchy and boring potatoes and carrot winter diet and the beginning of summer's wonderful juiciness. Every house ought to have its own little rhubarb patch.

Once I get over the need for crisp and pie I'll start using it for other things, like as a substitute for apples with cooked pork, or as an ingredient in cake. Rhubarb salsa or relish might be another possibility; I'll keep you posted.

BTW the chicken coop is almost done and our chickens will arrive in a few weeks! And the beehives are literally humming with activity. More on that next time.

Moscow Sourdough

After learning recently about the yeasts that live all around us and how that makes sourdough bread from one place different than sourdough from another place, I decided it was finally time to make my own sourdough starter. That is, flour and water with a little pineapple juice, left at room temperature to ferment. I did cheat somewhat by adding a single grain of commercial mono-culture yeast, but that was only because it has been so cold here I worried that nothing would happen and I would end up with a horrible mess. Well, I started with equal amounts of rye flour and water and a splash of pineapple juice, which is acidic but also sweet, perfect for creating the right fermenting environment. I stirred it every day and added fresh flour sometimes and fresh water sometimes, and finally last Sunday I took half of the fabulously beery-smelling concoction and turned it into bread by adding fresh flour and water, salt, and some oil, and kneading it as usual. It rose quite slowly but baked well and tastes wonderful.

In France this would be called "levain" and it is the way our WWOOF hosts, Renee-Jo and Andre, made their country bread every week for market. Who knows how old their starter was? I'll find out and let you know.

I wanted to see if I could make bread without following a recipe and in this sense the experiment was very successful. I just happened to learn what I would have learned from my grandmother who would have learned it from her grandmother from a group of people on a food-related listserv, the Association for the Study of Food and Society, who love to talk about this kind of stuff. And I've been assured, good naturedly, that there is a special prison reserved just for yeast-cheaters like me. Thanks everyone! Here's a photo of the bread.