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Local Food Sound Food Blog
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What kinds of food are grown locally? When are they in season? How can you prepare them? Our writers share thoughts, information and inspiration about eating locally.
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Local Food
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Written by Mary Ann Tollefson
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Thursday, 25 February 2010 11:38 |
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Much like the yellowed newsprint photo in my pantry of smiling faces seated around a table, my memory of that gathering over thirty years ago is a bit faded. But an autographed chef's apron tucked away at the bottom of my kitchen drawer, and the nearly 700 page cookbook inscribed in magic marker to "the duck breast broiler supreme", are tangible reminders of the  sweet pleasure of a winter lunch long ago with the remarkable Julia Child. Seeing the recent film of "Julie and Julia" brought those memories back to the surface once again for me.
It all began as an intriguing proposition - an opportunity to submit recipes featuring Pacific Northwest ingredients to a contest sponsored by a local newspaper. The timing coincided with a visit to Seattle by Julia Child to conduct classes in classic French cooking at St. Mark's Cathedral. The contest prize winners would be invited to a private lunch with Julia! It was too inviting to pass up. I was certainly a novice cook, but I had grown up loving the full flavors of fresh produce from our family garden, the thrill of finding morel mushrooms with my dad, and later having access to wild duck that my husband, Val, hunted in the Skagit Valley. The challenge sounded like great fun!
While stoking the wood stove to keep the January north winds at bay (that memory is vivid!), I settled on the idea of submitting recipes in two categories - a creamy soup featuring hand-picked wild morels, and an entrée of broiled wild duck breast. Painstakingly composed and typed on the Smith-Corona, I'm sure the recipes were mailed in barely before the deadline. Much to my surprise and delight, I was informed that both entries had passed the first step in the selection process. Step two, however, posed a much more intimidating challenge. Each of the preliminary winners was required to prepare their recipes in the huge institutional kitchen at St. Mark's for tasting by a panel of judges. Fortunately, that group would not include Julia! I retrieved my very last (to this day!) container of morels from the freezer, along with several of Val's carefully filleted duck breasts and found my way to |
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Local Food
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Written by Carolyn Goodwin
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Thursday, 25 February 2010 11:08 |
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Are you getting tired of squash and kale yet? After a long winter without anything fresh and green to eat, the first things to push up through last fall’s leaves are nettles. Handled with care they make a perfect spring tonic for body and mind.
There is a prolific nettle patch across the road from my house, and I have been keeping an eye on it for weeks. Last weekend the nettles reached the perfect height of about 8 inches. I grabbed the thick orange rubber gloves that I keep for just this occasion, along with my pruners and a big paper bag, then tread carefully through the nettle patch, beheading the fledgling plants and using the pruners to drop them in the bag. Be careful not to brush up against them – even young are diabolical in their ability to penetrate through jeans and socks and just about anything but thick rubber.
I carry my harvest back to the house, and (with gloves still on!) pick the leaves off and either blanch them or steam them for a couple of minutes. The heat completely neutralizes their sting. Once you have carefully disposed of the sack and the remaining stalks, you can treat your nettles just like spinach or chard or any other tender green.
This year I wanted to try a recipe for nettle pesto that Langdon Cook, Northwest forager extraordinaire, posted in his Fat of the Land blog. It only took a few minutes, and resulted in a vibrantly green and flavorful paste that I’ve been mixing on pasta and smearing on salmon ever since. He also shows how to freeze little nettle-pesto-pops in ice cube trays that can be bagged up to pull out all year long when you need a bit o’ the green.
There are many, many more nettle recipes available on the web. Cook has several others on his site, for nettle soup, nettle gnocchi, and more. My favorite all time nettle recipe is a soup with lovage and mussels created by chef Jerry Tranufeld (of Herbfarm and Poppy). Or try a simpler nettle soup with just potatoes and cream.
In addition to their bright green flavor, nettles are attributed with a long list of health benefits. It has long been know as a blood purifier and tonic. Anemia, arthritis, rheumatism, and eczema appear frequently in lists of afflictions that have traditionally been treated with nettle juice, tea or tinctures. It is important to use just the young upper leaves of plants in the spring, before they go to seed. Old leaves contain particles called cystoliths that, in addition to being rather nasty to eat can act as an irritant to the kidneys.
So grab those gloves, grasp the nettle, and wash those winter blues right out of yourself.
Stinging Nettle Pesto
from Langdon Cook's Fat ot the Land blog
2 cups stinging nettles, blanched and chopped (figure 6 cups raw)
1/2 cup Parmesan
1/2 cup pine nuts, roasted
4-5 large garlic cloves
1/2 cup olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper, to taste
Blanche nettles for a minute in boiling water. Remove to a salad spinner and shake off excess water, then ball up your nettles and give one good squeeze to wring out more water. It's tough to watch all that dark green, nutrient-laden liquid vanish down the drain, but you'll want olive oil lubricating your pesto, not water. Now dump in the food processor, along with roasted pine nuts (or walnuts, if you prefer), grated Parm, garlic cloves, lemon juice, and seasoning. Pour half of the olive oil in and...Whirrrr. Pour the rest of the oil in. Whir again, until your preferred consistency.
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Local Food
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Written by Carolyn Goodwin
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Monday, 22 February 2010 16:19 |
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Lopez Island Farm's next delivery of pasture-raised meats and specialty items (sausage, chutneys and syrups) to Bainbridge Island is coming up soon. Friday, February 26 from 5 pm to 5:30 pm at 9300 Northtown Drive. Here is the link to the web page for sending in your orders, which must be placed by Thursday February 25.
Lopez Island Farm offers beef, lamb and pork from pasture raised animals. Owner Bruce Dunlop offers by-the-cut sales of frozen meat, which he delivers to several locations around Puget Sound, including Bainbridge Island. By buying direct from the farmer you are helping to support a local farm and ensure that high quality locally produced food will be available in the future. All of Lopez Farm's meat products are USDA inspected, via the Mobile Meat Processing Unit developed by a group of farmers in San Juan County, this first of its kind in the country.
Also coming to Bainbridge soon is All One Family Farm, making its last delivery of the season to Bainbridge Island, Silverdale, Kingston and other Westsound locations on March 6. Check out the order form on their website. They'll be delivering several varieties of pears and apples, including Braeburns, Fuji, Camoes, D'Anjou and Bosc. This is also your last chance to get ‘juicing apples’ if you haven’t made any applesauce yet. Orders are due by Friday, February 26th.
And finally, Pane d'Amore breads brings a selection of their freshly baked bread from Port Townsend to the Treehouse Cafe every Monday from 1 pm to 4 pm. Pane d'Amore will open their Bainbridge store next door to the treehouse in March.
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Local Food
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Written by Jon Quitslund
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Thursday, 28 January 2010 11:57 |
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Wendell Berry is a national treasure. For the growing number of people who care about sustainable agriculture, local food, and a sense of community that is both old -fashioned and forward-looking, Wendell Berry is a mentor and an inspiration. He richly deserves to be more widely known than Michael Pollan - and he may be already. (In his graceful introduction to the book under review, Pollan pays tribute to Berry's great influence on his understanding of agriculture, our economy, and the best and worst in the systems that supply our food.)
If you aren't already familiar with Wendell Berry's essays and his fiction, Bringing It to the Table is an excellent introduction, and if you're already an admirer, wanting to spread the word to people on your holiday gift list, this book is a fine addition to Berry's recent publications. (Eagle Harbor Books had a few copies on the Green Living shelves when I asked recently, and they're always ready to order more.)
Born in 1934, Berry has been publishing poetry, fiction in long and short forms, and essays since the 1960s; he has been working a farm in Kentucky for about as many years. In an essay from 2006 he recalls, "In 1964 my wife Tanya and I bought a rough and neglected little farm on which we intended to grow as much of our own food as we could."
Although he came from a farming background, he asked for advice from an organic gardener who was his editor at the time, and seeking out the source of that man's principles, he discovered The Soil and Health, by the British agricultural scientist Sir Alfred Howard. Berry says of Howard, "I have been aware of his influence in virtually everything I have done, and I don't expect to graduate from it. That is because his way of dealing with the subject of agriculture is also a way of dealing with the subject of life in this world."
Berry's influence on his readers has been similarly broad and long-lasting: Betsey Wittick, for example, was introduced to his essays on agriculture as an undergraduate at Rutgers, and they made her the kind of farmer that she has been for the last twenty years at Laughing Crow Farm on Day Road. And Rebecca Slattery, at Persephone |
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Local Food
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Written by Carolyn Goodwin
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Thursday, 28 January 2010 00:02 |
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Three years ago, a Puget Sound food blogger named Laura McCrae (Urban Hennery), came up with an idea. What if she could enlist fellow foodies to join in a  challenge to cook locally at least once a week during the dark days of winter, and share their discoveries with the rest of the online community?
Her concept took root, and now almost 100 cooks from all over the country join her every winter to take the "Dark Days Challenge." The idea is that participants will cook one meal each week using local, organic ingredients and then write about it on their blog. Laura offers themes throughout the winter to keep everyone's creative juices flowing. And then she posts summaries of the results each week, by region. This year's recaps can be found here.
The result? A stream of culinary inspiration from talented cooks. It is a fresh source of recipes for cooking locally at a time of year when freshness is hard to come by.
Two of the participants are Garth and Lauren from Dropstone Farms on Bainbridge Island. Reading through their weekly forays into local cooking is like reading a who's who of Kitsap farming combined with a Nancy Drew search for the right recipe. Lauren offers great ideas for what to cook, wonderful stories about food and the farmers, and links to local food sources I hadn't heard of.
She tells a story (Dark Days Week 6) about one of their hen turkeys who meets an untimely death, but then becomes a source of inspiration that results in Coq (err, Turkey) au vin using homegrown carrots, tomatoes, and herbs, along with home-cured bacon, Laughing Crow garlic and Bainbridge Island wine.
You can read all about Lauren and Garth’s Dark Days adventures on their blog. And then check into Dark Days Central at (not so) Urban Hennery to find out what about 40 other bloggers from the Pacific Northwest, along with another 50 or so from the rest of the country are cooking this week.
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