OH! You know that nagging feeling of wanting to do something and never getting around to it? Well... Go! Go now! Go do it! Ok, well finish reading my post first, then go ;) In my last post I wrote about blueberry guilt. All week long whenever I opened the fridge, there they were, staring at me. Creepy foreign blue fruit.
I signed on with a CSA farm that same week and a week and a half later I received my first delivery. It's so easy! I pay online and put my cooler on my doorstep. I leave a blanket in the cooler for a bit of insulation. They deliver right to my door!! When I got home this week, it was like Christmas!!! My oldest son (JJ, he's 7) helped me carry the cooler to the kitchen and we unpacked it together.
It was full of surprises!! Mushrooms, garlic, heirloom potatoes, lettuce, micro greens, carrots, parsnip (new kind of carrot, as JJ put it), chard, celery, onions, sweet potato... I must be forgetting something.
Oh yes! broccoli and cauliflower! Notice the bright red bell pepper right in the middle there? We filled half the table with tons of produce. Tons of local produce and celared roots. My kitchen table was so bright! JJ even asked me if we could make a salad for dinner!! Um? Yeah!!
Check out the inside of these gorgeous heirloom potatoes. Wish I knew what they were called!
I'm thinking that my menu planning for the coming week might be a bit easier with a fridge full of vegetables. I'm already looking forward to my next delivery, and the next one, and the next one after that...
Does January officially have 45 days? This month feels like it's never ending. The Holidays are over, the thermometer reads -30C and all I can see out my window is snow. I suppose that's all part of being Canadian. Then there's the flu, the ear aches, the tummy aches and all the other bugs that make you feel under the weather and make you want to stay under the covers and hibernate the winter away.
Not sure if it's like this in your house but here, whenever we're run down by winter bugs, we always seem to come up with a new resolution: gonna wear an extra sweater under my coat (until I'm at the bus stop and realize I didn't), gonna do more exercise (as soon as I *feel* better), gonna go to bed earlier (yeah, right!), gonna eat more fresh fruit... wait! what? in winter??? Not if mommy-the-local-produce-obsessed-household-grocery-shopper has anything to say about it.
Apparently "fruit" means: melons, grapes, pineapple and berries (all kinds - not frozen) and not the apples (local), bananas (my token acceptable year-round imported fruit), or oranges (currently in season) which are in my house. So... what's a mom to do? Offer beets and turnips? Epic fail. Sure enough, during my Saturday morning grocery run, what do I see at the entrance of the store? Blueberries (from Chile - gasp!) 3 pints for $5!!! The offer is too good to pass up!! For the sake of sanity I am standing 2 meters away from them contemplating the pros and cons. There is no way $5 for my 3 pints covers the entire cost of transportation or the farmer's wages, plus think about the Greenhouse Gas emissions, the pesticides, the freshness (surely they were not picked yesterday)... Yes. All of this is going through my mind because of blueberries in January. I finally suck it up and put the 3 pints in my cart. As Rex the big green dinosaur from Toy Story says so well: Oh! Now I have guilt!! I may have broken out into a cold sweat. I felt like I was wearing the scarlet letter. I turn to my Twitterverse and tell my followers that I might get struck by lightening because I am buying blueberries.
I got home and guess what!?! Everyone is thrilled to have blueberries. So now the boys are going to be eating fruit all week. That's not such a bad thing is it? They eat their apples (most of the time), they find oranges messy and even in the banana container, my 5 year old still manages to make a banana mushy and won't eat it. A bit of change in the routine might do them some good.
As for me, did I get over my sinful purchase? Not really. It just seems so wrong to have fresh berries in winter. But I did realize one thing, I need more freshness in my kitchen. So what did I do? I signed up for not one but two CSAs.What is a CSA? Consumer supported agriculture. You can read about it here. One is a local farm that delivers fresh produce year-round (even in winter - thanks to its greenhouses) and cellared vegetables. I can't wait to see what I get! I will certainly have a post about my first CSA experience. The other is meat and eggs and it's only for the summer. I have written a post about the Rock n Horse farm before and I only have wonderful things to say about their meat. Somehow I think perhaps these blueberries were put there for a reason, as a reminder that even in winter, local farmers are in need of our support. They're also a reminder that everything in moderation is good for the body and good for the soul.
As the second week of January begins and we finish (only) the third week of winter (hard to believe), the local produce in the grocery store is scarce and can seem boring. That is until you bring it all together, with a help of a few extras!
In my last post I mentioned that I would try root vegetable chips. I am sad to report, those were an EPIC failure. I bought rutabaga, beets, carrots and parsnips (all available from Ontario at the moment) and sliced them with the thin setting on my mandolin. I made an industrial quantity of the stuff. Add a bit of olive oil, some sea salt and some dried rosemary from my garden and I thought for sure I had a winning recipe. No such luck. The slices either burnt to a crisp or never crisped after cooling. So I scraped the batch. As the old saying goes, there are no mistakes in the kitchen only composting opportunities! I washed off my mandolin, reset it to the thick setting and tried again. Smaller batch and no rutabaga. These didn't burn but they also didn't crisp. I still don't know what I did wrong and I was so disappointed. I've done potatoes the same way and I've always succeeded. I will try again, when I have a spare hour or so to dedicate to another attempt.
The second batch wasn't completely ruined however as I chopped them up and added them to a dish of stewed lentils with bacon (local), spinach (not local but organic) and some canned tomatoes (product of Canada). ~ Side note: always check the origin of the canned product. Sometimes they can be made from Canadian and imported products or sometimes the country of origin isn't even listed. Why don't they list the country of origin? So frustrating! ~ The lentil dish was very tasty and those roasted carrots and beets made the dish very colourful. Even the boys ate the dish and probably didn't even realize they were eating beets ;)
Dear Friends,
I have thought of this post for a while now, seems thinking is the only bit of blogging I get to do these days because life is so hectic. It's been quite the year (I say this every year) but this time I can truly say it was great. I stuck to my 2010 resolution which was to step out of the box. I always play it safe when buying anything from shoes to jewelry, I prefer warmth and convenience and I like some pumped up fast paced exercise. This year, I ventured into yoga and wow! what benefits! I bought a few fashionable accessories for my wardrobe which usually means spending a bit more but you know what? I also started taking the bus to work (boy oh! boy is it cold out there!!) and for the amount of money I save on gas and parking, I think a few wardrobe additions are perfectly acceptable don't you?
Stepping out of the box also means letting go of a few convictions. When you let go of ideals, you'd be amazed at how much more relaxed the household can be. This Christmas Eve we celebrated as a family and we all had a wonderful time. No one noticed the laundry baskets full of clothes upstairs and so what if there were a few Cheerios on the floor! Santa still came, left his presents under the tree, ate some of our homemade candy cane cookies and Rudolf had some organic-but-not-local baby carrots.
That brings me to my real post intention: living local, the reality. What a challenge it is to live local, in winter, working full-time outside the house and feeding a family with 3 little boys. Realistically, the only "local" fruit available are apples or the few frozen berries I have in my freezer from this summer. The local vegetables at the grocery store include the few greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers and peppers along with onions and root vegetables. I suppose with some careful planning I could build every meal around these vegetables but to be honest, I'm not really a big fan of parsnips and rutabaga. I'm trying though, that's what counts right? :) I still buy seasonal produce even if it isn't local and I consider organically available vegetables ok in my shopping cart even if they are imported. I used to cringe at the thought of imported produce and I still consider the travel distance before buying but honestly, if my 4 year old requests sugar snap peas for his school lunches (and actually eats them), how can I say no?
What's in store for 2011? I think I will try homemade root vegetable chips. I'm pretty sure the boys will love them and I can certainly find a good variety of local produce to make them. I will continue to find some creative recipes to feed my clan. I will master the homemade granola bar recipe. I will continue to spread the word about the importance of supporting local businesses. I will branch out my little lavender bath salts venture to include more local products and diversify the flowers by growing more in my garden. I will find some time to be creative and blog about my local gems.
Best wishes to everyone in 2011 and bon appétit!
I had a little *wow* moment last night in the grocery store about a secondary benefit to reusable grocery bags. At the check out with my 7 year old ~ he's always eager to help out ~ he told the cashier that she could use this bright green mesh bag for the groceries. She told him it was a pretty cool looking bag and he said that it was a bag we got when we went apple picking in September. I was so surprised and thought it was really neat that he had a memory associated to this bag. But of course he would right? I mean it was given to him as part of the outing and he had such a great time. A plastic bag would have long been sent to the landfill by now, even if it had been reused a couple times. It really got me thinking about the true meaning of sustainability and value of reuse. It's not just about keeping things out of the landfill, it's about wanting and loving the things that you have.
It's been a while since my last post and there's a reason for that: being a mom of 3 boys and working full-time outside the house while still doing volunteer work and taking some time for myself to do crafts (or sleep?) make for some very busy days. The leisurely drives around the area to pick up some local produce are long gone and so are my hopes of getting to our local Farmer's Market on Thursday evenings. What does this mean for my local commitment? It means that I will have to rethink a few things. If I can only get to the Independent Grocer one week, what will the contents of my shopping cart look like? The trick is in the meal planning. Not only is it a huge time-saver and headache-avoider but planning meals for the week before grocery shopping will let me choose meals with a seasonal flavour which means greater chances to find "local" products on the shelves.
On a side note, what is "local" anyway? Within walking/driving distance? Within the area code? The province? The next province over? Within Canada? This side of the Ocean? What about buying a Fair Trade item that supports some local movement somewhere? My answer: All of the above. Obviously if I have something growing in my garden, I will eat that first. If I need tomatoes and I have a choice between unspecified "Ontario" or "Manotic Suntech Greenhouse" tomatoes, I choose the closest ones. What about those products that don't grow here in our crazy-cold climate like citrus fruits? Well, a true local diet would go without but I prefer to have lemons, limes and those Yule-time favourite clementines in my diet. So here are my guidelines: choose Fair-trade and/or organic first, then consider distance: Florida? California? South Africa? What about South African Fair-traded oranges? would those make it into my basket over organic Florida oranges? Probably. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that every time we make a purchase, we vote with our dollars and we need to be aware of our individual impacts. We make a choice and we need to be comfortable with the choice we are making. Sometimes we might feel like we don't have a choice either because of price or availability but I say it all goes back to meal planning and knowing what's in season. Those root vegetables are much less exciting then those gorgeous pomegranates but if you focus on what is in season, your produce bill will be lower you will have room in your grocery budget to add a more expensive item as a special treat like a Fair-trade chocolate bar ... mmm...
Last weekend I went to Acorn Creek (www.acorncreek.com) since I hadn't been in a while. There were so many lovely preserves and plenty of dried corn on the cob (perfect for microwave popcorn) so I checked off a bunch of items from my Christmas shopping list. I love giving "consumables" for Christmas. Our homes are full of "stuff" and giving "stuff" only adds to the already plenty "stuff" we have. What better idea than giving some exotic jam or marmalade that someone would not normally buy for themselves and at the same time support a local business? I think it's a treat and I hope my gift-receivers will think so too :)
A full month has gone by since I started back to work and I must admit, I do miss the luxury hopping in the car at any time of day to get those local groceries. It takes a lot of planning to make it to a weeknight Farmers' Market. October is in full swing and in a few weeks, those Farmers' Markets will close for the winter.
Last Sunday was a very lovely Fall day and I asked the boys if they wanted to come with Mommy for a drive. They said yes, they were so excited. We got in the car and made our way to the Rock-N-Horse Farm (of course, I called in advance to make sure we could stop in). The boys wanted to know where we were going: Saunders Farm? The cottage? We get to Carleton Place and they think we're going to Walmart for toys. I must've told them 20 times that we were going to a farm to buy meat but that was just too real of an answer for them to believe.
The scenery is gorgeous and the farm is lovely. The owners are so kind and so patient! My boys (especially the oldest) are very curious about everything. Where are your tractors? Your horses are your tractors? Where are all the people? Why do you have one cow? You have more cows? Why are the pigs eating potatoes? Why do you close the fence? Do the sheep go in the barn every night? Can I have a snack?
We got to visit the pigs, the chickens, the turkeys (which were going to slaughter the next day), the sheep and the horses. The boys were fixated on the tire-swing hanging from a giant tree. After an hour visit, tons of fresh air and a new appreciation for where our meat comes from, we left with a trunk full of pork. I was sure to stock up on bacon and the most amazing sausages (try Oktoberfest ~ truly yum!)
Visit http://www.rocknhorsefarm.ca/ for details about the farm.
