Obese carrots

I'm pretty sure this is not what a carrot is supposed to look like:

Therefore, I totally get it if I'm fired as the family vegetable gardener. It's a tough economy. We have to expect some cuts. There's no free ride. No golden parachute. Face it, I suck. Probably if I had picked my carrots (that were planted in June), oh, a little bit sooner than November, they might not have gotten so fat.

I will say that the neighbor's chickens thought they were delicious, even though they looked like turnips that had taken a turn in a tanning bed. The chickens didn't even mind the mud.

I've been reading some gardening advice columns. This is typically the time to regroup and plan what you would do differently next year. I think I will give up entirely on veggies (as our CSA provides more than enough, and grows a heck of a lot yummier stuff than me). I will stick to berries. They are the only thing I can grow that don't constitute a firable offense.

Any gardening lessons learned from your neck of the woods to share?

CSA Year 4: the good, the bad and the beets

Yesterday, I went down to our local farmers' market in the pouring rain. A river practically ran through the middle of the market. I expected to see Pooh and Piglet float by, with Pooh's head firmly stuck in that hunny pot. It was the kind of day I really appreciated having a CSA subscription. I walked briskly to our farm stand. Picked the box with the least water pooled in the lid. Stuck it all in my bag. Checked our name off the list. And I was back on my way home, with this gorgeous and slightly soggy bounty in tow:

You may recall that last year Heather gave up on the CSA. Too much produce to deal with in a timely manner. So I was left in a bit of a pickle. I toyed with the idea of doing the whole share on our own, but truthfully, didn't think we could handle it. A few friends said they were interested, and one family agreed to go in with us. They have loved it. We have loved it. We've worked out a similar system to what Heather and I used to do. We usually pick a time each Sunday to meet at the market. We divvy it up as close as we can down the middle. The other family is required to take the beets every time they appear. And we're all happy.

We are two weeks away from our CSA ending, and coming from how overwhelmed I was with it the first few years, I'm proud to say that I'm sad! I will miss these lovely, local, in season and organic veggies. The first week or so, when I switched from buying produce at the store to getting the box at the market, there was a little hiccup in my meal planning. Working with what I had instead of what I could simply plan to buy. But all in all, year four had been the charm.

So, if there's any take away from this post (besides the pretty picture of the fall harvest), it's that you may really have to give yourself time to grow into your CSA. If this was your first CSA year and you felt overwhelmed, don't kick yourself too hard. If this was your second year or beyond, and you're thinking about bailing out? Well, you know yourself better than I do. You decide what's best. I can honestly say, that on our fourth year, we are seasoned CSA pro's. It's been a dream. In two more weeks, when it's finished, I will miss that CSA box dearly until it starts up again next spring.

What do you cook on cast iron cookware?

Do you ever buy yourself something in the hope that you will use it or wear it, and then it sits in your closet collecting dust? Oh, you may peek at it from time to time. Like a scarf that might look fantastic on a chic woman in Paris, but not so much on you (or me!) in Portland, Oregon. So there it sits. Lonely. Dejected. A museum piece.

I fear that may happen with my cast iron skillet I just triumphantly bought at a rummage sale a few weeks ago. Problem being? I don't know what to cook in it. I remember my mom making fried eggs and bacon in hers. Not something we eat a lot of.


Couple this conundrum with the brand spanking new double-sided cast iron griddle we presented my husband with for Father's Day. If my husband hadn't already claimed the super-hero name 'Cheap-o-Dad' he might easily jump into the persona of 'Pancake Man!' He loves pancakes more than life itself (while I like a pancake just fine, I usually find after eating pancakes that I am hungry again by about 9:30, a mere hour or so after breakfast). Regardless, Saturday is holy pancake day (and I just have to deal with my hungries). The need to replace the old pancake griddle we had received as a wedding gift was noticed some time ago. I shudder to tell you, but it was in the family of non-stick, quite possibly Teflon. And after 14 years of marriage, and untold batches of pancakes, it did not look good.

So, dear readers. Do tell. What do you cook on your cast iron cookware? In your skillets and on your griddles? I really want to make a love connection with cast iron and get any and all remainders of Teflon-ish cookware out of my house once and for all. Any tips about cleaning and keeping cast iron seasoned are highly welcome.

The plight of the honey bee in modern agriculture

I've never really acquired a taste for honey, but that doesn't mean I don't buy it. My youngest daughter is like Winnie-the-Pooh. Keep her far, far away from mud puddles, balloons and honey trees.

Pooh's got such a great prophetic line in this piece, when you examine the plight of today's honey bee: 'I think the bees S-U-S-P-E-C-T something.'  Perhaps, that the bees have been used like slave laborers in the mono-crop agri-empires that make up much of American agriculture? Which is a pretty crappy way to treat them, when you consider that bees pollinate the majority of the crops we eat. These are the workers that deserve the Wall Street bonuses!

Our Sunday paper ran an op ed, No Way to Treat a Bee, written by Joe Hansen, a commercial beekeeper from Oregon. I'd first learned about the trucking of hives around the country to pollinate mono-crops while watching a PBS special about bees and the devastating colony-collapse disorder several years ago. According to Hansen, beekeepers, who used to be in the business of selling honey, have had to find a new way to make a living since imported honey sells for less than domestic honey. (After reading this article, I went to my pantry, and lo and behold -- the organic honey sitting on the shelf was from Canada. And I'm sure I bought it because it was the lowest priced organic honey I found on that shopping outing.)

The writer asks some interesting questions: Would you pay more to have your locally grown foods pollinated by local bees? And can we label it locally grown if it's not locally pollinated? It's a tough one. I already feel like I pay a premium on organic, local and sustainable foods. But yes, I will make a greater effort to buy locally produced honey. And I'll ask more questions about how produce was pollinated.

No one really knows the cause of colony-collapse disorder. But the trucking of hives to pollinate mono-crops surely doesn't help hive health. Clearly, there are no easy solutions:

'No matter what path agriculture takes, bees will need to be involved. Beekeepers will continue to do what we must, but I for one hope we can return to a model that will allow us to treat beehives less like livestock and more like the elegant societies they really are.'

Tut, tut. It looks like rain.

Yes, you can grow tomatoes in part sun

*** Thanks for all of the commiseration and wisdom regarding my CSA failure. You guys rock! ***

Yowsa! I grew tomatoes in my very shady backyard! This is huge. Granted, the tomatoes themselves are not huge, but they are delish. When I stuck the Roma and cherry tomato starts in the ground sometime in June, I really didn't believe they would produce much of anything, except maybe a little swearing. There's a little patch in my slope-y yard that gets about 3-4 hours of sun, so I figured what the hay? Give it a try. Well, we've been plucking juicy fruit off these plants for the past few weeks now, and they are still going strong. I think our late summer weather helped immensely, but I also stopped watering them in early August. I've always heard that you're supposed to stress out your tomato plants to stimulate the ripening process, and dang, I do believe those garden experts know what they're talking about. Because I stopped watering it, the Roma plant is almost totally brown. It looks dead with the exception of the bright red fruit. Keep going, baby. Romas are probably the biggest tomato we could grow in part sun, so we'll shoot for the big beefsteaks in our sunny front yard next summer.

I'm reading the All New Square Foot Gardening book right now, and he has an interesting take on growing tomatoes. He says to cut off all of the branches so you just have a single stem when the plant is tiny. This forces the plant to put its energy into production, which in turn is suppose to yield more fruit. We'll see.

Since I didn't plan for any tomato harvest, we've mostly been eating them on salads or as snacks. I think it would be cool to plant more Romas next year and actually make and freeze (or can) pasta sauce. One thing I've been doing with these Romas, however, is making a lovely little sauce to go over salmon:

Chive-Tarragon Sauce (Adapted from Mark Bittman's Fish book)

1/2 cup dry white wine

2 tblspns minced fresh chives

3 sprigs fresh tarragon (or approx 1 tsp dried, which is what I use)

2 tblspns butter

2 big tomatoes, or about 4-5 Romas (seeded if you prefer, but I don't) minced

salt & pepper

1/2 lemon (optional)

In a pan, bring wine to boil and let it bubble for about a minute. Add herbs and butter; stir. When butter is melted add tomatoes and cook for 30 seconds or so. If sauce tastes flat after seasoning with salt and pepper, add lemon juice (but I've never had to do this). Spoon sauce over fish. This could serve 4, but I make this amount for just my husband and me (my kids won't touch fish). I like to serve salmon with brown rice and pour this sauce over both, which makes the rice nice and flavorful.

I know I've been writing a lot of food posts lately, but I've really been getting in to cooking and baking now that both of my kids are in school all day (what else am I going to do?). I do feel strongly that cooking healthfully for my family, using local, organic, whole ingredients as much as possible is just as important to environmental health as reduce/reuse/recycle, green cleaners and all the other efforts we all try to make on a daily basis. I will try to branch out a little more. :-)

Oh, and we're going to kick off the EnviroMom Meatless Supper Club next Friday, October 2, so stay tuned!

Confessions of a failed CSA subscriber

This is the third summer that Renee and I have split a CSA share of an organic farm. For me, it will be the last. Everything about the CSA model is lovely: you pay a lump sum up front to a small, local farm in exchange for a weekly bin of organic produce picked fresh the day before. In our case, we pick up our bin every Sunday at our local farmer's market. We provide capital to a small farm, they in turn provide us with their bountiful harvest (which works out to be an extremely fair price), and we nourish our families. How can this not work for someone?

For me, a foodie who is intimidated by food preparation (I am actively working to address this disorder), it's a struggle. I am clearly not a person who can be handed a bag of random perishable ingredients with the expectation that I must now figure out what to do with them before they rot. If you truly wanted to torture me, just put me on Iron Chef. I would be the contestant holding the kohlrabi and begging to spill state secrets. "Anything! I'll tell you anything! Don't make me cook this thing!" When it comes to meal prep, I need to decide what to cook first and then go and secure the ingredients. It took three years to figure this out, but at least now we know.

What's been particularly painful is the daily walk to the backyard compost bin to dump this once-lovely produce. It was never my intention to make the MOST EXPENSIVE COMPOST EVER. Good-bye formerly purple eggplant. Au revoir squash-like substance. Toodeloo putrid parsley. I recently read something somewhere (momnesia) that said throwing food away is one of the worst things we can do for the environment. Growing and transporting food is energy-intensive, even if it's coming from a local, organic farm, and I'm just throwing away all of that energy. Reading that was what made me decide that my family's days with the CSA were numbered. With regret.

I certainly don't want to discourage anyone from joining a CSA. But it helps to know what kind of cook you are before you dive in. If you're like me, save yourself from tremendous guilt and the stench of moldering beets and shop the farmer's market with intention. I will continue to buy produce from my CSA's farmstand (they do have wonderful food), but under my own terms with my shopping list firmly in hand. No kohlrabi.

(Photo credit: Gathering Together Farm)

Victory (Garden)! At the White House!!

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!

But I don't want to make my own salsa

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.

How to stay organic & fresh without spending too much green?

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.]

Paella: cookin' up the summer bounty

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.