Did you see that today Michelle Obama is going to start digging a patch of White House lawn to grow an organic vegetable garden to feed their family? As a first time gardener, Michelle Obama's victory garden will be an inspiration to all who struggle to feed their families healthy, local and organic food. This victory garden is a win-win for EnviroMoms and kids everywhere!
I have carried on a ten-plus year love affair with this salsa:
Every time I eat it I love it all over again. I put it on eggs, chili, and anything remotely Mexican-inspired. It's made with all natural, organic ingredients down in Eugene, Oregon, which is a couple hours away. So it's local. Why on Earth would I want to make my own when this salsa is absolutely perfect?
Well, there's that darned plastic container, which I'll reuse or recycle. But still, they made it just for this one batch of salsa. And there's the transport of the salsa to the store as well. I'm not sure what their manufacturing process is, nor do I know where they get their ingredients.
Are you as nervous about the economy as I am? All of these uncertainties about Wall Street and the impact on the economy and job security have got me rattled. My family is trying to cut back everywhere, and it's made grocery shopping a real challenge. I look at the milk section. I could spend hours looking at the milk section. Do I spend $7 on a gallon of organic milk or half that on a gallon of non-organic, rBST-free milk. Do I continue to spend $5/dozen on the local, pasture-raised chicken eggs from the farmer's market, or do I go with the so-called 'free-range' eggs for $2.50/dozen at the grocery store? I try to focus on the long-term impacts: definitely want to support local and organic farmers and definitely want to feed my family the healthiest food possible. Knowing that I could probably slice my grocery bill in half, though, does make it tempting to choose the less expensive options.
One bright spot: a friend is giving us his upright freezer for free. So I can justify a trip to the distant bakery outlet where our expensive sandwich bread is discounted and buy up ten loaves at once. When that organic chicken is on sale, we can load up. Cutting back on our consumption of meat would definitely help us save money. And given the amount of organic yogurt we eat around here, I think it's finally time to try making our own. But, at the end of October our CSA program will be over for the year, and I'll be back to paying a premium for veggies at the grocery store. It's a real juggle.
Are you feeling the pinch at the grocery store? Are you making any trade-offs? What are your best tips for feeding your family the freshest, healthiest food possible without breaking the bank?
[And, hey, Portlanders. Have you been wanting to try out New Seasons' home delivery? If you click on their ad on our sidebar, you can try your first delivery for FREE. It's typically $9.95. Give it a try! I've used this service a ton, and I do find that when I shop online I can save money because I'm not tempted to impulsively buy stuff we don't really need. Plus, while I'm shopping online I can check the pantry and fridge to see what we already have.]
I'm a so-so chef at home, but I've prepared just enough successful meals to make me easily try new recipes. And when the CSA bin overfloweth with tomatoes and squash and peppers, well it's hard to cook a bad meal. It's like, every evening I look to see what veggies we have and what meat I might have purchased and how I can combine them to please everyone around the table. Bonus points for quick and easy. My go-to recipe site is Epicurious. If I want to make something with sausage and tomatoes, that's exactly the keywords I'll use in my search. Lately I've been hooked on one-dish meals and have fallen under the spell of paella.
Paella is a traditional Spanish dish that includes saffron rice and seafood. (It's pronounced pie-YAY-yuh.) My paella usually includes neither (and I'm pretty sure my kids wouldn't touch yellow rice), but I love this technique of cooking up meat and veggies and rice all together in one pot. Like this recipe for Italian Sausage and Bell Pepper Paella. Delish and so frickin easy. (That's the photo. Looks like I added shrimp and subbed out some peppers.) Or this one, which does most of the cooking on the stove top rather than the oven, for Spicy Turkey Paella. I used ground turkey instead and had no saffron, but had the rest of the ingredients. So easy and so good and I got to use lots of market produce. You could use this technique to cook any number of meat and/or veggie combinations -- whatever you have on hand.
I foresee a winter of one-dish meals: stews, different types of lasagne, casseroles, using the veggies that I've been freezing up for the rainy season. Mmm, comfort food.
Last night at my food discussion group we talked about how a family could eat local foods throughout the year. As recent books like Plenty and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle have shown, it's almost a full-time job to eat local food exclusively, what with all the sourcing of grains and food prep and preservation that's required. My time isn't quite that free, nor is my family that motivated. But we are doing our best to preserve what we can right now, and our method of choice is to freeze our bounty. (Next year we'll tackle canning.)
Last summer I froze tomatoes, red and yellow bell peppers and peaches, all of which freeze exceptionally well. I cut up the peppers in chunky strips, which is generally how we eat them in stir-fries and the like. The tomatoes I cut into wedges, and the peaches I peeled and sliced. I stored all of these foods in plastic, zip-top baggies. Labeling is important, too, because sometimes it's hard to tell the red peppers from the tomatoes after they've froze.
This year we're expanding our frozen veggie selection to include green beans, broccoli, onions and summer squash. Last weekend I bought several pounds of big, brilliant green beans at the farmer's market and spent about 30 minutes prepping them for the freezer. It's recommended that you blanch green beans before freezing. (Blanching is the process of killing bacteria and enzymes on food so that it doesn't discolor.) While a large pot of water with a pasta insert came to boil (no salt), I snipped off any stems I found on the beans. I also filled a large soup cauldron with ice water. I put a few handfuls of beans into the boiling water, and after it came back to boiling I set the timer for 90 seconds. 
Then I pulled out the pasta insert, let the water drain out and immediately put it into the ice water to halt the cooking process. When the beans had cooled, I laid them out on a towel to dry a bit. Then I tossed in a few more handfuls of beans for blanching and continued the process. I patted the beans so they were mostly dry, put them in the baggies, squeezed out as much air as I could (you can also stick a straw in a tiny opening and suck out the air) and then popped them into the freezer. Done!
I'm going to do the same for the broccoli and the summer squash. (Here's an excellent visual tutorial on how to blanch summer squash.) You don't have to blanch onions, so I'll just dice and bag them. Aside from delicate greens, I can't think of a veggie that you couldn't freeze. My Keeping the Harvest book says you can freeze mushrooms, celery and eggplant, which was surprising. Anything else that does or doesn't freeze well?
Now I just need to get a separate freezer to store all of this goodness because I'm running out of room for the really important stuff like ice cream and vodka. Are you freezing veggies this summer?
We go through phases here on EnviroMom where we seem to get stuck in a category. Given that it's the harvest season, predictably, all I can think about is food. Berries, melons, greens, tomatoes, cukes. Yummmmm. Produce.... Sorry. Had a (healthy) Homer Simpson moment there.
The good news this year is that I am not as panicked about the weekly CSA produce as I was last year. The CSA just seems normal. I even got to offer some guidance and advice to some CSA newbies. I don't feel like I have veggies coming out of my ears. I've been taking the approach to freeze whatever we don't eat in any given week. However, that's led to a small problem. My freezer is full. The good news about the freezer being full is it gives me a great excuse not to buy any more of those darned frozen convenience foods any more (i.e., frozen waffles). The bad news? There's no more room in the freezer.
So after doing some research (mostly picking the brains of people who have supplemental freezers and who do food preservation via freezing), we are getting a chest freezer. It should come sometime later this week, and I hope to celebrate the arrival of the freezer by going berry picking and filling that bad-boy up! We did opt for a chest freezer, which I understand can be a bit awkward to search around in. I'm hoping to set up some kind of map or list of what's in its frozen depths, and we'll cross things off the list once they are removed from the freezer. I've always meant to do that with my regular freezer but haven't. That's why I can characterize my relationship with my freezer as follows: I love my freezer; I hate my freezer. The other day I found stuffing from THANKSGIVING in my freezer. How in the heck does that happen? The stuffing is the best part of Thanksgiving next to the pumpkin pie! In any case, it became part of a strata that was marketed to my family as "leftover pie" and it went down quite nicely.
Do you have a chest freezer? How do you keep track of all the stuff frozen inside?
He blew my mind with The Omnivore's Dilemma, and he's done it again with In Defense of Food. Michael Pollan's latest book explores the Western diet, which is primarily made up of processed corn and soybeans, white flour and rice and how these foods are causing obesity, diabetes, cancer, etc. (and how the government backs it all). Our culture has become obsessed with Nutritionism, which focuses on the nutrients of food rather than the whole food itself. Packaged foods boast claims of 'loaded with vitamins! omega-3! whole grains!' when in reality these foods break down in our bodies as glucose, and we end up eating more and more because we never feel satisfied. We're busy worrying that we're not getting enough fiber or we're eating too many carbs, when we should be thinking about the food itself, how we eat it, where we eat it and from where it comes.
Pollan delves into the history of processed foods, and it is both fascinating and frustrating. Big money is being made at the expense of the population's health, and the poor suffer the most because the food is so cheap and so unhealthy. Most of the food Americans eat is fast -- either from a restaurant or a box popped into the microwave. We have no 'food culture' in the US that celebrates food (think about the French, Italians, Japanese) where every meal is eaten slowly with other people and savored. He offers suggestions for how we can change our own approach to mealtimes, shopping and cooking.
The book is not long, and Pollan has such an engaging writing style that even a reluctant reader could really get into it. I'm still processing it and trying to figure out how to apply it to my own family. My husband is reading it next, and I'm anxious to discuss it with him. Lucky for Portland, Michael Pollan will be in town next week (thank you, Powell's) to discuss his book: Tuesday, February 12 at 7pm at the Bagdad Theater (SE 37th & Hawthorne). Tickets are $21.95, which includes a copy of the book, and are available through Ticketmaster, the Bagdad or Crystal Ballroom box offices. See you there?!
(And here's a nice, long excerpt from the NY Times.)
Last year, Heather and I decided to subscribe to the Gathering Together Farm Community Supported Agriculture program without a lot of forethought. At the time when we signed up last spring, we were fairly new on our green journey, excitedly trying new things. Joining a CSA seemed like the right thing to do. We'd split a full box and pick it up weekly at the Hillsdale Farmers' Market. What we found was that being in the CSA had its highs and lows. So there was much discussion this year on whether we would do it again. Gathering Together Farm lets last year's subscribers enroll before opening it to the general public. Although we went down the wire on our decision, ultimately we decided to go for it. There's no question that the CSA produce we ate last summer was the tastiest, healthiest we had ever had. There was a lovely feeling of community in meeting each weekend at our local farmer's market, running into old friends, meeting new ones. But there was also the frustration of having onions, potatoes, tomatoes, peppers and squash coming out of our ears at times. We felt like Lucy and Ethel trying to keep up with the chocolates in that famous assembly line episode.
But I do think we learned some important lessons. The most valuable: prep and freeze in small batches for the winter. Michelle told us that she'd take her box home every Sunday (our designated pickup day) and chop, prep and freeze everything she didn't think her family would eat that week. What a revelation. I had got myself all hyped to do big canning jobs, but when it came down to it, really didn't have the time or energy to do that. When I tried Michelle's approach and chopped and froze small portions of produce, it worked. I can't tell you how happy I've been to pop a chopped pepper out of the freezer and throw it into a curry I'm making for dinner.
The other thing we learned is that we have to be ready. We had grand visions of preserving fresh berries by dehydration. But come berry season -- which really sneaks up on you -- we didn't have a dehydrator. We hadn't researched one. Which one was the best? Gosh, did we really want to add another appliance to our appliance-filled kitchens? Would we really use it? How would we store our dehydrated produce once we'd dried it? A case of analysis paralysis. Flash back to the scene of Lucy and Ethel. My family was buying and eating fresh berries as fast as our local farmers could grow them. Then it was melons. And the squash and tomatoes and pepper piles were piling up. So, it just never happened.
This year will be different. I'm researching that dehydrator now. So I'm excited about our next CSA season. And happy to know that we've inspired lots of friends to take that plunge, and join a CSA of their own. Are you new to joys of CSA? What are some of the valuable lessons you've learned, that you'd like to share?
We're all for locally farmed foods getting into Oregon schools. How about you? Here's the deal on what's being considered by the Oregon legislature on January 23:
Locally grown foods will become more prevalent in school cafeterias by the end of this year under a new farm-to-school and school garden concept now under consideration in the Oregon Legislature. Introduced by the Oregon Farm-to-School and School Garden Network, a broad coalition of agricultural, economic, public health and environmental organizations, the legislative concept (LC 79) will be considered at a hearing before the House Education Committee on January 23, 2008.
LC 79 would create a pilot farm-to-school and school garden program in the Oregon Department of Education (ODE) Child Nutrition Program (CNP). The CNP administers the state’s school meals program and is the sole state agency with the technical expertise and relationships necessary to assist schools, interpret current regulations, and facilitate the purchase of food products that meet state and federal guidelines.
During the regular 2007 legislative session, the Oregon Department of Agriculture (ODA) was authorized to work with Oregon’s agricultural community to capitalize on the purchasing power of K-12 schools around the state. To maximize ODA efforts, it is critical to create and fund a corollary position and program in ODE to work effectively with ODA’s farm-to-school program. The proposed 2008 legislation will fill a critical inter-agency coordination gap so that both state agencies can work effectively with schools around the state to develop farm-to-school programs.
Continue reading "Want more local foods in Oregon schools?" »
Betty from our GreenGroup is like many of us. She wants to buy organic as much as possible, but the prices can sometimes make it cost prohibitive. Here's her experience:
H/R: In 2008, I want to purchase more organic foods, so I found the following article -- Organics on a Budget -- written by a green mom interesting. It made me think about why I have never made it a regular practice to purchase organic foods more consistently in the first place. The first things that usually come to mind are higher prices and having a more difficult time finding organics in the places that I normally shop. I have no idea whether these statements are factually true or not, but because I believed them to true, I hadn't made any effort to disprove them.
When I lived in San Francisco, I thought organic foods were priced much more expensively in comparison to their non-organic counterparts. On my way home from work, I often passed by a small organic store. I never thought to go into it though because of the price issue. Then, over the years, I one day found myself in the store because I was desperately needing an item (probably milk), and decided that it was much easier for me to walk here and get a carton and save lots of time in the process. Even though I might have to pay more for it, I was willing to make the trade-off. Well, much to my pleasant surprise, I remember the milk costing a little bit less than the supermarket that was a 10 minute walk away! So, after this positive experience, I found myself walking to this store more often to get my milk on the way home from work. Then, one thing led to another, and I started buying fruits and vegies there. Over a period of time, as the store began to have more regular shoppers, it seemed to me that the prices slowly started to come down so that they were more comparable to the prices set at chain stores for the same items.
Have you noticed a price decrease in organic products in the time that you have been shopping for organic products?
It would seem that if more people are buying organics, then the prices might come down as organics becomes more the norm. On the flipside, I think I've read that because demand for organics is growing so quickly, the prices may go up to meet demand. I do think there's a lot of value in shopping around. Market of Choice seems to regularly have much lower prices on organic milk than Fred Meyer does (two of my regular shopping haunts).
Do you shop around? What have your experiences with organic food prices been?
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