On the lack of cold storage and convenience

On Friday, we had pizza. Not the homemade variety, the "call someplace and it's delivered 20 minutes later" variety. Almost assuredly not local (especially not the pineapples and olives)... However, when one has 4 month old twins, a 2 year old, and those twins have been going through a growth spurt and what might be the beginning of teething, and one's wife suggests pizza for supper... I believe that the course of wisdom is NOT to remind her that it isn't local, but rather to say "why, that's a marvelous idea", order a Vegetarian and a Hawaiian and enjoy it.

7th - Sausage, Potatoes, Carrots, Asparagus
8th - Pizza
9th - Pork chops, potatoes, carrots, green beans.

However, on Thursday and Saturday, we definitely at local. The Sausage and Pork Chops came from the same farm as our beef, the green beans were either from the garden or 'de nos champs' (from our fields) at the local vegetable market, as was the asperagus, with the same prices as already mentioned. The carrots and potatoes are both "product of Quebec", and a little research reveals that they are likely from around Trois Rivieres, which isn't too bad on the local scale. We can actually buy them from local farms here in the fall, but this brings me to my other point for this post - the lack of a cold cellar in most modern houses[1]. Our house was built in the 70's, and while we have a goodly amount of room for our freezers and canned goods, we don't really have anywhere that we can store a 50lb bag of potatoes or carrots, and thus we are faced with the choice of buying our potatoes from the "right down the road" local and then having 1/2 of them rot or otherwise become inedible and still not last us until we can get new potatoes and baby carrots in early summer, or go down to the local grocer, and make sure that we buy the "Product of Quebec" carrots and potatoes (instead of the "California" and Idaho varieties).

Continuity...

As my lovely wife just posted, last night, we had a wonderful cheese and pasta meal. One thing she didn't mention was the local Broccoli from our freezer that we had with it.

Out of the various ingredients, the oil is sunflower oil bought from a local farm (we'll have to hunt down the cost of this soon :), the onions and garlic are the same as previously mentioned as is the flour, the chicken broth is from frozen supply that was made last fall (I think you'll have to wait for the recipe, but it's made from local farm grown chickens), the squash is from the local market, and the rest of the ingredients are from the local standard grocery.

The night before, we had a great stew, which was consisted of local potatoes, carrots and turnip, mushrooms from southern ontario (Leamington), beef broth (which again, you'll have to wait until the next time we make it up to get the recipe), onions, and garlic. There might have been a bit of red wine in there as well :)

Squash & three cheese pasta

So P has asked that he not be the only one to write these posts, so I will have to see what I can come up with.

Last night my original idea had just been to have macaroni and cheese (one of my quick and easy "no meat" meals). But I have also been thinking recently that we really need to be eating more vegetables. So I decided to include some squash in the sauce which put me in mind of some yummy squash soup that I have made in the past.

All of these thoughts culminated in the following (please note that I rarely use an actual recipe when I am cooking so the following measurements are my educated guesses):

Squash and three cheese pasta

2 tbsp oil
1 small onion - diced
1 clove garlic - crushed
2 tbsp flour
2 cups chicken broth
1 1/2 cups squash (I used Hubbard but you could use any with a nice flavor and texture)
2 tbsp Parmesan cheese
1-2 cups cheddar cheese - grated
2-4 tbsp cream cheese
2 tbsp whipping cream (optional)
salt & pepper

Heat the oil and add the onions and garlic. Cook until just browning. Turn down the heat and add the flour to make a roux.

Add chicken stock (this can be wholly or partially substituted with vegetable stock or with milk) and stir to thicken. Cook for a few minutes to cook out some of the flour taste. Add the squash and cook for 5-10 minutes on a medium-low heat. Add the cheese (these amounts can be adjusted for what you prefer or have on hand).

Adjust the consistency with chicken stock or milk and season with salt & pepper.

Add the cream if you are using it. Serve with hot pasta and a green vegetable to make a nice complete meal. This made enough sauce for P and I plus our 2 year old and there are enough leftovers that I can either serve this again or possibly add more liquid to it and turn it into soup for lunch.

If you are concerned with a lack of protein in the meal then a couple of eggs can be added at the same time as the cheese. Just make sure not to cook the sauce too much after adding them or they will cause the sauce to end up with little bits of scrambled egg.

Practicality

One of the things that should be mentioned, is that while we try and eat local, we're not completely zealous about it, nor are we always consistent. For instance, yesterday's meal was meatloaf, rice, green beans and beets. Now, while the beef, green beans and beets were local, the rice certainly wasn't (it's from California, which, as my wife pointed out, is better than from somewhere in Asia, but it still had to travel a long distance, and was farmed in who-knows-what kind of conditions by who-knows-whom).

We actually tried going completely local for a short while for starches, but we rapidly got tired of potatoes, and making our own pasta all the time is too much work with three little ones around (ok - those of you over the age of 70 that read this, yes - I know - we're wimps :). And our reasons for eating local are partially environmental, but they are also community (I *like* knowing the people that grow or produce our food) and health related (I like being able to know and ask what went into the growing and raising of our food, and, perhaps more importantly, what didn't).  Besides, local food just plain tastes better - it hasn't been sitting in some warehouse, and it wasn't picked before it was fully ripe, and it isn't always the exact same 1-2 varieties of whatever tomato, pepper, zucchini, or whatever.

So, if we have to make some exceptions sometimes, we're fine with that. If all else fails, we can use the excuse that we want our children to have as many gastonomic experiences as we can, and if that means that occasionally we fall off of the local bandwagon, then so be it.

With that said:

Meatloaf:
(Recipe forthcoming)

Ravioli

My wife is not one to let practicality get in the way of a good meal. While helping our two year old make some shapes with playdoh, she got the idea to make ravioli for supper. And not "take the frozen ravioli out of the freezer", but "make them from scratch". While dealing with 4 month old twins (hence the impracticality of the idea). So, while the kids were all down for their afternoon nap, she started on the project.

Out came the pasta maker, pasta dough was made, filling was decided upon, one then the other, then the other of the children woke up, and amidst the increasing mayhem, a couple of dozen raviolis were produced.

 Once supper time rolled around, we boiled them up, covered them with some sauce that we had previously made, and much tasty pasta was had (actually, we only cooked up 1/2 of it - the rest has been frozen and will make another meal).

For those of you who may be inclined to try this for yourselves, here is the recipe:

Filling:

1 small onion

1 cup grated zucchini

1 cup swiss chard

1 1/2 red pepper (chopped)

1/4 cup parmesan

2 tbsp pesto

Salt and Pepper to taste

1 egg

Sweat the onions, and then add the rest of the vegetables in a saucepan. Cook on medium heat until the red pepper is softened and all of the liquid is evaporated.  Add the parmesan and pesto after taking the pan off the heat.  Season to taste.  After the filling has cooled add one egg and stir to incorporate.

Pasta Dough:

2 2/3 cup Flour

4 Eggs

1/4 tsp Salt

Once assembled, boil for 10 minutes

Sauce:

1 lb ground beef

1 onion

2 cloves garlic

1 cup grated zucchini

1/2 red pepper

1/2 cup red wine

1/3 lb mushrooms

2 quarts tomatoes

spices (oregano, bay leaf, salt, pepper etc.) to taste

From a local eating view, the swiss chard came out of our garden (free), the zucchini was either out of our garden, or from the market ($6 for a very large zucchini) as was the red pepper ($1.95/lb). All were bought or picked at the height of the season, and frozen. The tomatoes in the sauce were bought in 20lb boxes ($7 / box) from a local farm and canned. The beef was part of the 1/2 cow I previously mentioned. The flour for the pasta was from a local milliner (price tbd), the eggs were the "free range" from the grocery ($5.45/doz from the store, since our $3.00/doz local farm source unfortunately stopped selling "at the farm door", and we've not found another source yet). The garlic and onions were from either the market, or from a local organic place ($2 / garlic head).

A new year, and a new project

One of the things that bothers me when listening to folks talk about local food, is that it seems to most people that when they think of local food, they appear to think that it is also expensive. A number of times, I've heard "I'd buy local, but I can't afford it" from people when asked why they don't buy locally more often on the various interviews and articles that have been written.

Personally, I believe that it is quite the opposite. True, local food is probably more expensive in terms of the time that it takes to process, preserve, or otherwise prepare the food so that you can still be eating local asparagus in January, but, since that asparagus was bought at the peak of the season, and in larger quantity, it SHOULD be cheaper than asparagus that is flown in from Chile, Argentina, or wherever. I'm not sure if the misconception stems from the fact that some people associate "local" with "organic" (which may be more expensive, but it depends on the farm), or if people see the somewhat exorbitant prices that sometimes appear at the large urban markets, and think that is the REAL cost of local food (a good example is that we found 20lbs of stewing tomatoes at one of the urban markets downtown for $12-15, but that same box was $7 at the farm gate... and since for us it was either 40 km into town, or 35km to the farm, guess where we went?).

So, what we will be trying to do with this blog is, over the next year, try and record each supper that we've made, and provide what a similar cost is if we had bought the ingredients for the meal from a non-local, non-seasonal source. This will also serve to record, for us, how successfully we are sticking to our goal of "eating as locally as possible".

So, without further ado, for New Years dinner, we had:

• T-Bone steak
  
• Roast Potatoes
• Cauliflower
• Asparagus

The steaks were from the 1/2 cow that we bought (for around $3.75 a lb) from a farmer 25 km away, the potatoes are the least local (just standard bag-o-potatoes from Quebec bought at our local grocer), the cauliflower (< $2.00 per head) and asparagus ($2.00 per lb) are both from the vegetable farm that is 5km away when they were in season and preserved (blanched and frozen).