Category Archives: Food

Days like this

I retrofitted one of our trunk bike racks, engaged in extensive planning, drove on a day I was scheduled to be a passenger in the carpool . . . all so that I could do some bike scouting for work yesterday.  All of this effort, and I arrived at the location, parked the car, and realized that my bike key?  That thing I needed to unlock my U-lock and free my bike from the bike rack?  I left it in my office, twenty miles away.

Oh, was I upset!  Thinking, “I won’t need my regular set of keys since I’ll be driving a department car, instead of my car,” I oh so cleverly left behind that one little thing that would have made all my planning and preparation fruitful.

To make matters worse, since I had planned to do my assessment by BIKE, I wore my bike shoes, which are not particularly conducive to walking.  Instead of spending my afternoon cruising around on my bike, getting a bike-level perspective of the surroundings, I spent the afternoon cruising around in a car — blah!

I recovered from this frustrating setback remarkably well, if I do say so myself, and managed to make it a productive afternoon.

My resilient attitude may have been due in part to anticipating our dinner date at Pi.  We visited their new location in the CWE for some delicious veggie pizza, a nice salad, and a great dining experience.  We don’t eat out often, but Pi — with their commitment to the environment, smoke-free policy, and great food — ranks up there with our favorites.  Day saved!

Locavore in winter

It’s been awhile since I’ve written about food, but have no fear — we’re still eating!  All of the work cleaning, cutting, blanching, and packaging vegetables and fruit really pays off during the winter.  We have frozen fruit and basil (oh, the basil!) to last until late spring (and we’re still getting local apples!).  We’re rapidly eating our way through the frozen vegetables (we knew we would not have enough to get us through the winter), but we still have a lot of butternut squash.

I highly recommend the butternut squash because it requires approximately zero effort to store — just hang it in mesh bags in the basement (to reduce the bruising that would occur if you just placed it on a shelf), and you’re good to go!  Locally grown dried beans, local eggs, and our canned pasta sauce round out the stock piles.  Oh, and the potatoes, I almost forgot the potatoes.  We have made a big dent in the 200 pounds of potatoes we harvested, but we still have some left.  At this point, we’ll be able to plant some of them as seed potatoes for this year’s crop.

Obviously, we’re not eating everything local.  I shop at the regular old grocery store for grain (including flours, pasta, etc.) and soy milk.  We finished our local onions, so those are a grocery store purchase, also.  We’re looking into a source for local, organic, pastured cow’s milk.

We continue to enjoy the monthly winter farmers’ markets.  At the January markets, we found unexpected windfalls of fresh spinach (thanks to tunnels, hoop houses, or something of the sort) — this has to be some of the best spinach ever!  Anything fresh, green, and local in the middle of January qualifies as special — bring on the salad!

New Year eats

I recently stumbled across the southern tradition of eating black-eyed peas, greens, and cornbread on New Year’s Day.  We purchased some locally grown black-eyed peas and kale at the farmer’s market recently, so we’re ready to start the New Year on the right foot.  Or is that the right stomach?

I will either make some kind of soup/stew with the black-eyed peas and kale, or serve black-eyed peas and rice on a bed of kale — cornbread on the side.  If the dish turns out well, I’ll post the recipe here.

Happy New Year!

Business and pleasure

Last night, as I passed my lonely and forlorn bike in the basement, I ran my hand along it, and said, “Mama still loves you.”  In truth, we had not been apart for all that long, because I rode it on Sunday (in the snow, no less).   I’m just still not happy about trading my bike commute for a car commute.

This morning (the start of a four day weekend — great happiness), I finally convinced myself to bundle up and leave the house.  I planned to bike to the grocery store and then straight back home, but it was warmer than I expected, and I was on a roll.  I rode right past the grocery store and into the park for a bit of extra bike action.

This detour led me to stop by Local Harvest (a small neighborhood grocery store), where I found a treasure — a big, beautiful head of locally-grown red cabbage.  My eyes were almost bigger than my panniers, but I managed to stuff everything into them and make it home on my fully-laden bike.

Green state dinner

The green news just keeps rolling out of the White House.  The state dinner hosted on Tuesday night included such touches as local greenery and a vegetarian menu (except for the prawns).  No doubt it helped that the guest of honor, India’s prime minister, was vegetarian.  Still, at least in this country, serving an all-vegetarian meal makes a pretty big statement!  If President Obama can serve a vegetarian meal at a very fancy and prestigious dinner party, you can, too.  You can get the full scoop in the NYTimes article here.

Now, if we can just get some green policies to come from the same location, I would really be excited.