tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38203072005653475882024-03-05T12:40:12.950-08:00Local EaterAmy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.comBlogger31125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-91466567539837138102011-04-10T10:49:00.000-07:002011-04-10T11:06:14.382-07:00Refreshing Summer Lunch<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr1I06pAoMWU06mG8wWbX9WyB1pJn94VcE9J-l5WFmvTVvY2XCrBbcAvVweL7K3b-JVUNFSJvcz-BX78egQ3YCUgvXh3TEIYCOjMR0rLrPuePqenetDcktZBtUAvctIgCzByazczqTtZ5M/s1600/IMG_4833.JPG"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr1I06pAoMWU06mG8wWbX9WyB1pJn94VcE9J-l5WFmvTVvY2XCrBbcAvVweL7K3b-JVUNFSJvcz-BX78egQ3YCUgvXh3TEIYCOjMR0rLrPuePqenetDcktZBtUAvctIgCzByazczqTtZ5M/s200/IMG_4833.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5594017588160623106" border="0" /></a>At last, my garden is producing! As most of you know, I was away for about 8 months last year, and it's been slow going getting the garden back up to speed. But this week, I've finally got lettuces, spinach, kale, onions and peas coming up. And I picked the first of the season's strawberries yesterday. I popped them in my mouth still warm from the sun. Such sweet and simple pleasures.<br /><br />This past week, the humidity has also arrived. A few days ago, I was riding George in the early evening and the sweet, intoxicating smell of honeysuckle blooming wafted in on air that was just a tad moist. I can't tell you how much I love the feel of that air on my skin, and the sweetness of the fragrance seemed like paradise. Even this northern girl is surprised at how much pleasure the sultry air gives me.<br /><br />That changed today of course, when it is nearly 90 and the humidity a bit over 50%. Okay, I've had enough. No really, this just means the mornings and evening are the best time to be outside and the best lunch is light and refreshing. I came in from a morning working in the garden, mostly noodling over my baby plants, and fixed myself a lunch of chopped salad, salted buttermilk and berries and yogurt garnished with mint and honey. Everything but the salad dressing came from the garden or the local market.<br /><br />Eat local, live local!<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Chopped Salad</span><br /><br />Salad greens such as arugula, spinach, mixed baby lettuces<br />Vegetables, such as carrots, radishes, green onions, cauliflower, asparagus, kohlrabi<br />Herbs, such as cilantro, dill, chives, parsley, basil<br />Pecans or other nuts<br />Fruits, such as berries or pears<br />Cheese, such as crumbled goat feta, shredded romano or gruyere<br />Olive oil and balsamic vinegar or other dressing<br />Salt and pepper<br /><br />Pile everything up on a large cutting board and chop into small, bite-sized pieces. Sprinkle with oil and vinegar or dressing and toss. Serve on a platter with crusty bread.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-25530838351647087702011-03-27T07:35:00.001-07:002011-03-27T07:35:21.076-07:00Thinking Pre-SeasonallyThis is not my usual thing, but I think it's worth blogging about because I feel change is a coming, and not in a good way. Those of you who know me will find this sudden turn toward apparent pessimism a bit disturbing, but I see it as an opportunity to anticipate and prepare for what is heading down the pike toward us. If you have a feeling that things are just not quite right, don't ignore it. This is not just fear-mongering, doomsaying or 2012-apocalyps- hysteria--I'm saying that if you look at history, we've got it coming. I'm writing about this here, because I have an audience, (thanks for reading and sharing), and dealing with what is coming has everything to do with food and community.<br /><br />A bit of backstory:<br /><br />A few years ago my Dad (AKA Dr. Doom) shared with me a book by the name of the 4th Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Around page three the authors (writing in 1997) predicted September 11th--roughly the time-frame, the method, and the aftermath. This got my attention. I read most of the rest of the book, and the jist of it is this: every hundred years or so, western societies go through a convulsive change, known as the 4th Turning, which ushers in a new era, also known as the 1st Turning. This is largely driven by cycles of history (social theorists will recognize shades of Wallerstein here), and the generations of people who are born and come of age during various periods of history. They refer to these cycles as seasons of history, and according to them we are now entering a "saecular winter". I am of the Nomad generation (called Thirteeners by Strauss and Howe) that will (with the Boomers) have to take leadership through this seasonal change. So, here, in the way that I can, I am going to start leading.<br /><br />Strauss and Howe could see the 4th Turning beginning in 2005, give or take a few years. I would argue that 9/11 and the 2008 economic crash are highly related, and manifestations of a system in trouble seeking change and equilibrium. I believe we are well on our way into the 4th Turning, which lasts about 20 years, on average. Strauss and Howe call it a "crisis", which I think is just a slowly unfolding global set of events that will be more or less horrific depending on where you are when these crisis events erupt. There are economic, social, political and ecological dimensions of this, and every place will have its own unique manifestations. How we react to, lead and organize through this crisis will determine how we end up on the other side of it. Forget about American exceptionalism (if you ever believed it). The 4th Turning levels the playing field. I highly recommend that you read the book yourself, so I won't narrate much more about it here, other than what I see coming and how we can deal with it.<br /><br />Here in Athens, we have economic problems with poverty that are clearly related to racial inequalities, past and present. This is related to our social problems that leave our communities deeply divided, both within and between. We have political problems that are related to our economic problems--corruption in government and tax/spending priorities that privilege the super rich. Our ecological problems relate to climate change and our susceptibility to drought, which will limit our primary economy activities (agriculture and forestry) from providing capital to the economy. Case in point, wildfires in SE GA, today. The 4th turning is, of course a social, not an ecological phenomena, but climate change and the crises this generates will only exacerbate the challenges of the 4th Turning. In Athens these will be the deepening of poverty and eruptions of violence not unlike what just happened here with the shooting of a police officer. The state, in an attempt to gain control, will increase its powers, and this never bodes well for human or civil rights. Inflation is likely to increase (and/or the devaluing of currency) and the fragile and flimsy basis of our economy will continue to falter. Investments may soon be meaningless, so we need to think about real material security through food and real social security through community.<br /><br />Strauss and Howe suggest that we can best weather the 4th Turning if we start thinking now--what they call pre-seasonal thinking--about how we will have to live during the crisis, and what we want life to look like on the other side. As for me, I am saying adios (to the degree that I can) to the infrastructures that I depend on for food, water and energy. I believe these infrastructures will fail (or will fail to meet the needs of most people), and our manifest vulnerability to corporations and governments will be laid bare. I also believe that this crisis will be manifested by inflation and further contractions of our economy, which will limit our ability to consume (and make our consumer-based economy shrivel). We need to learn new habits that reflect our limited choices in the coming year. I will blog about this and more as these efforts get underway.<br /><br />The second general area of preparation is linked to our dependence on institutions and our lack of inter-dependence as a community. I have eggs to share (and soon lots of other produce), so I am going to start using them to build community in my neighborhood. We'll have to stand together, or we all will fail. I have to say that I know precious few of my neighbors, but I aim to get to know them, and make the food forest of my yard a resource for our whole community. I also intend to reach out to the wider community in Athens through a community kitchen in one of the poorest, but most historic, neighborhoods in Athens.<br /><br />Showing up is 90% of life, and I intend to show up for peace, community and self-sufficiency in the coming years.<br /><br />Show up with me, y'all.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-12180816762144849112011-03-06T05:16:00.000-08:002011-03-06T06:20:59.282-08:00Towards a Reciprocal Social Economy of FoodIt's been a good week for the traffic in banned foods. I bartered my illegal backyard eggs for illegal backyard honey from the Normaltown Beekeeper and I lucked into a source of raw m__. (Woohooo! Let the cheesemaking begin!) In the wake of the supreme satisfaction I got from both of these transactions, I decided three things.<br /><br />1) the banning of backyard, homescale, out-of-the-system food production is not only unethical, it's a violation of human rights. According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Article 3, I have the right to life, liberty and security of person. Given that waterboarding is legal and article 5 guarantees the right to be free of torture, I understand that I won't get much traction with this argument. Having said that, somewhere, I am guaranteed the right to provide for myself (i.e., life) when it doesn't hurt anybody else (chickens don't, bees don't, raw m__ doesn't). I have a right to liberty, which means I am free to do what I wish on my private property (as long as I don't hurt others), and I have a right to liberty in my economic transactions. Suck it, neoliberals. Last, salmonella-contaminated eggs and the like, threaten the security of my person, *from the inside*, and I have a right to alternatives that don't threaten my health, or the health of my unborn baby. (Just try it, Bobby Franklin).<br /><br />2) the participation in the purchase and sale of food is the stupidest thing humans have ever done. (don't feel offended...I have been doing this for 35 years...and it's not too late to get smart). Buying and selling food not only stripped us of useful skills that could be exchanged for food (for more on this, see K. Marx, Capital, vol 1), it also handed over all of our rights in the food system to the brokers who buy and sell. For the most part those jokers who make money on transactions don't give a damn what goes into your body. The only reason they pretend to care is because, legally, they have to. This means that as long as they don't get caught, they will encourage (even demand) the farming practices that get the salmonella in your egg and the e. coli in your milk. Technical fixes, like pasteurization, are unnecessary when proper farming practices are followed, but they funnel a lot of profit toward the processors (oh, right the jokers who profit from transactions...). Let's get out of this system. Now. Here's how.<br /><br />3) instead of a transactional system based on money, we need to have a reciprocal exchange system based on calories. I am borrowing this partly from the solar economy literature, but I also appreciate the beauty of it's logic. First, commodities like coffee that usually come at great cost to human and ecological life, would be worth nothing since they have no calories. Therefore there would be no incentive to ship it halfway across the world. (Coffee addicts, I don't envy you the headache you will have when you wake up from the dream of global capitalism. In the meantime, sleep well and dream of large cups of coffee). Second, calorie dense foods like meat would be very expensive, thus, limiting their consumption. I am a carnivore (see the 1 chicken, 10 meals blog post), but I do recognize the incredible waste, ecological devastation and animal cruelty caused by conventional meat production. Third, low calorie, nutrient-dense foods, like kale, would be widely available (a bit like 1 dollar bills are ubiquitous) and easy to get, which is not the case now. They are incredibly easy to grow as well, so they may even disappear from circulation eventually, as we get smarter. Fourth, grains and sweeteners would be very expensive, and would force us to figure out ways to grow our own, barter for them, grow them cooperatively or find substitutes, like potatoes and honey.<br /><br />I could go on, but you get the picture. We need to move toward a steady-state food system in which the inputs are equal to the outputs. One way to do this, is to start increasing our awareness of the calories in our food and use this as a basis of exchange. We can all become growers of something and exchange this on the basis of calories. Or we can examine the kind of work we do, and the calories we expend doing it, and exchange food on the basis of this. Physical labor has sustained us for millennia and should be the basis of our health and vitality of our society and economy.<br /><br />So, if I follow my own logic, I owe the Normaltown Beekeeper a dozen eggs. I exchanged a dozen eggs for a pint of honey this week. I should have given the beekeeper two dozen eggs if we follow the calorie math. A dozen eggs has about 1000 calories, while a pint of honey has 2000 calories. Now that I know, I'll catch up with him next time. I had to pay for my raw m__, only because I don't have anything to give the farmers that they don't already have. I've traded skills for money, and, I realize now, that that's a real shame. But...maybe they would like some ricotta cheese...<br /><br />Make cheese, make a difference.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-51387222814964692182011-02-06T16:36:00.000-08:002011-02-06T17:16:12.888-08:00Superfood SundayTonight for supper I ate baked wild salmon, mashed sweet potatoes and sauteed kale with blueberries and yogurt for desert, topped off with tea. I am literally bursting with micro-nutrients. All these foods just happened to be what I was craving for supper, and they all just happen to be available locally. (More on how the salmon is local in a minute.)<br /><br />All these foods have also been identified as "superfoods" by one dietetic association or another. This just means that these foods will cure what ails you, namely cancer. Crammed full of quaint (or scary) sounding nutrients like "flavonoids" and "carotenoids" these foods have everything you need to live forever. Eating well never tasted so good. This food is "good to think" too, to borrow from anthropologist Levi-Strauss, because it's come from local, organic sources.<br /><br />I know, I know, you're saying, I get the sweet potatoes, but wild salmon, in Georgia? Come on. Well, climate change has not brought salmon to Georgia, but Athens Locally Grown has. A local family goes up to salmon country in Alaska and brings back the catch to sell here through ALG. While it's not local in the strict sense of the word, it does a lot of the work that "local" consumption/production does.<br /><br />We buy local because it completes the three legged stool of justice--social, economic and environmental--in sustainability. It is a complete and functional system within which people are compensated fairly, social capital is built through direct connections, and the ecology of the environment is protected to the greatest extent that it can be. Buying direct is almost as good as buying local when it provides income to a family business and doesn't exploit workers or treat animals inhumanely. And let's face it, the salmon I just ate wasn't going to live a long peaceful life into its reclining years. It was likely heading directly to death after spawning in the river in which it was caught. The ecological piece is obviously lacking in this purchase, since this food came from more than a thousand miles away from here. That part troubles me enough to keep this food a luxury, not a staple. (This also makes me want to cry, or move to Alaska).<br /><br />As I have found in my research on fair trade and organic food products, the interference of middle-people creates a lot of the problems in our current food system. (And the minor detail that we have to *buy* food.) When food is for sale, and lots of people get a cut, the least powerful actors take the biggest hit. In the case of organic bananas, these are Haitian workers who have little more than the shirt on their back. In the case of organic produce in the United States it is migrant workers in the same situation, who often work for less than minimum wage.<br /><br />The best way I see to work out this food puzzle is that I have to eat healthy, and I have to eat righteously, which means eating with ethics and with an eye to justice. This means, that I can't place animal lives above human ones. No way. I'll eat a lot of animals before I knowingly consume something (like a banana) that puts workers lives at risk and permanently erodes their life chances in the same way that slavery has and still does. Fortunately there are some good options for eating healthy food that doesn't come at the expense of human lives. Even if it happens to come from across the continent, I'll take it.<br /><br />The beauty of all this lies in the fact that these locally produced and directly traded foods are *the healthiest* foods on the planet! I didn't buy any of these things because I knew they were good for me. I bought them because they were delicious and righteous. The fact that they will make me live forever is just the blueberry on my yogurt.<br /><br />Live, eat and love righteous.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-26687153078413586372010-07-06T10:36:00.000-07:002010-07-06T10:39:17.737-07:00Grow, Cook, EatFor more on local eating, gardens, kitchens and farms around the world tune into my other blog, growcookandeat.blogspot.com.<br /><br />I won't be updating this one til I return to my local eating home in Georgia in January, 2011.<br /><br />Eat well, live well!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-36366258430985773382010-05-29T18:19:00.001-07:002010-05-29T18:31:22.501-07:00Two Salad Saturday Night<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MHkUUoVJRGfaAYNJTNtdYEPSZkUeZXtza0oGZCmoj2Mrrn62lOQP0Xsb28sRBsdAJnoscegGRloEad0p6b2n3a6RMIY_CLqRZtDE58Etqbq3yeMAy-lKYW05UphZpJ5zNJBjTz-jwwu0/s1600/IMG_1671.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 225px; height: 169px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MHkUUoVJRGfaAYNJTNtdYEPSZkUeZXtza0oGZCmoj2Mrrn62lOQP0Xsb28sRBsdAJnoscegGRloEad0p6b2n3a6RMIY_CLqRZtDE58Etqbq3yeMAy-lKYW05UphZpJ5zNJBjTz-jwwu0/s200/IMG_1671.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5476866625044541954" border="0" /></a><br />Tomato Basil and Fresh Mozzarella Salad with Arugula and Goat Feta Salad<br /><br />**where noted, these ingredients came from local sources....read more about them at Athens Locally Grown (athens.locallygrown.net)<br /><br />Ingredients:<br />Two medium sized fresh tomatoes, sliced thinly (Italian Goliath variety from The Veggie Patch)<br />Handful of sweet Genovese basil, chopped (Veribest Farm)<br />Two cloves of garlic, chopped with the basil (Backyard Harvest)<br />4 oz of fresh mozzarella, sliced thinly (Atlanta Creamery)<br />Olive oil<br />Sea salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Handful of fresh baby arugula (my own urban homestead)<br />Ends of the tomatoes from above, chopped<br />2-3 T Goat feta cheese (Split Creek Creamery)<br />Olive oil<br />No more than a tsp of balsamic vinegar<br />Sea salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Arrange the sliced tomatoes in a circle and scatter the arugula around the edge. Top each with their respective toppings, drizzle the whole thing with olive oil. Sprinkle the arugula with a with the vinegar. Top it all off with pinches of sea salt and a grind of fresh black pepper.<br /><br />Serve with fresh bread (Luna Bakery)<br /><br />Enjoy!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-31121291302818473732010-05-23T16:04:00.001-07:002010-05-23T16:22:36.740-07:00Urban HomesteadingIt's official. I'm an urban homesteader.<br /><br />You wanna know how I know...? It wasn't the blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, figs and peach trees I've planted. Or the bean teepee with four different kinds of lima beans. Or the 30+ tomato plants in the raised beds. No. It's official because I invested in some chicken wire today.<br /><br />I can't give you any specifics, because, as Joel Salatin knows and has written a book by that name, Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal when it comes to local food. All I can say is that there is some chicken wire going up in my backyard. Not saying what's gonna go inside it, but I think you're smart enough to put the pieces together.<br /><br />As in most urban places, Athens outlaws "livestock" in the metro area. Chickens are included in the ban, but there are lots of folks looking to change that. I'm going to start convincing my neighbors of the wisdom of legalizing poultry as soon as I get a spare dozen of bribery material. I encourage you all to try this grass-fed approach to politics.<br /><br />According to Rebecca and Iain, who will be house sitting for me when I travel abroad this summer, now is an especially good time to adopt some overgrown Easter presents. These two will be bringing their small flock with them when they move in, and so if any feathers are ruffled, I can pretend I didn't know. Yeah, right.<br /><br />Wish us all luck!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-33433957272566196042010-04-24T09:46:00.000-07:002010-04-24T10:07:44.298-07:00Two Breakfast Vignettes1. A few weeks ago I bought, on impulse, some cereal at the grocery store. I know...I totally caved in to some kind of lightly sweetened, organic corn squares cereal just cuz it was sitting there looking yummy and I was feeling crummy as I walked by it. Well here's how those chickens came home to roost. I don't drink milk, cuz it doesn't agree with me, and Righteous Juice (a fresh squeezed juice company in Athens) wasn't selling almond milk. Soooo, back I went to the dumb grocery store and bought some organic soy milk so that I could eat my cereal. Next day, I cracked open a bag of frozen blueberries, loaded up a bowl with cereal and poured on some soy milk, thinking yum, what an indulgence! Turns out the soy milk was spoiled and ruined my whole breakfast right in front of my eyes. I dumped out the soy milk and the cereal and got out some of my homemade yogurt and ate it with my backyard blueberries like I shoulda/woulda/coulda done before I got seduced by Kashi (which is owned by Kellogg, by the way). Sigh. Sometimes even a die-hard locavore has to learn the hard way again that the illusion of quality and goodness in our food system is a lie.<br /><br />2. This morning while cracking a couple local, free-range chicken eggs into a pan for a feta spinach scramble, I discovered an earring nestled underneath an egg. I love finding evidence of a human being on the other end of my food. A real person fed these chickens and picked, washed and packed these eggs for me. (My name is on the carton). The only evidence of humans that you'll find in a carton of conventional eggs is evidence of human greed, cuz it's likely to come in the form of salmonella poisoning due to the inhumane and unsanitary conditions conventional chickens must endure to produce eggs for us.<br /><br />Buy local. Pick local. Make local. Eat local. Love local.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-24399732142402345852010-03-17T15:35:00.000-07:002010-03-17T16:17:46.553-07:00Paneer Makhani<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgkN9a1F6KSPfjs-Q9zJ59CyrD7YqVtpNqx9jXvLVGP5kmTcmAYbW5CyeB7lX9kZLMFVKn-B0SydFWI63ZlsJ4jbM2SFfWw0uN8ckibuAitATkN6FbgIISYYqnVRXfk3esQyuyVE0CaNtYt/s1600-h/IMG_1580.JPG"><br /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPAnF73CMK6BSBtw0Iu6xFZ93OOTCYUw754LuzBlq2MRo8qfUzvkL4uU_-UTv9XN6TAZoz-Vb98YMNwhWLUi7hJ1ALh8pUEI-yHrlB0rfEcLRgkar74t0A14plXWnlWAkjr4ET-6jmKOn/s1600-h/IMG_1579.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 226px; height: 169px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRPAnF73CMK6BSBtw0Iu6xFZ93OOTCYUw754LuzBlq2MRo8qfUzvkL4uU_-UTv9XN6TAZoz-Vb98YMNwhWLUi7hJ1ALh8pUEI-yHrlB0rfEcLRgkar74t0A14plXWnlWAkjr4ET-6jmKOn/s200/IMG_1579.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5449735702973554658" border="0" /></a>I'm not Irish, so for St. Patrick's day, I ate paneer makhani. It was almost going to be a beer and popcorn night, but the raw m___ in the fridge needed to be made into something. It made lovely soft curds that soaked up the flavors beautifully. This was made entirely from local ingredients, aside from the spices, which ended up making it really HOT! I savored the fragrance, flavor and intensity of this meal while thinking about returning to India this summer. Richly colored saris, camels and cows on the road, cheerful temples, dust, sun and heat are beckoning. <br /><br />Paneer Makhani<br /><br />butter, ghee or oil<br />1/2 tsp each whole spices (cumin, fenugreek, mustard are my favorites)<br />chopped green chilis (1-3 depending on your heat tolerance)<br />chopped garlic (1-3 cloves)<br />1 T grated fresh ginger<br />coarsely chopped onions, red peppers or other vegetables, as per your taste<br />2 cups fresh paneer, cubed (see instructions below)<br />1/2-1 cup tomato paste (I food mill frozen tomatoes to make the paste)<br />1/2 cup cream, milk or yogurt<br />1/4 cup chopped cilantro<br />powdered spice mix for paneer makhani (see note)<br />salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Heat your fat of choice in a cast iron pan over medium high heat. Add the spices and heat in the oil/butter/ghee until they sizzle and are fragrant. Add the chili, garlic and ginger (avert your face!) and stir on high heat for about a minute. Add whatever additional vegetables you like and saute until soft. Add the paneer cubes and gently stir to coat with spices. Add the tomato paste and your dairy product of choice. Bring to a gentle simmer, cover and lower the heat. Simmer until it reaches the desired thickness (thin for over rice, thick for eating with paratha or chapati) and season with spices, salt and pepper. Sprinkle the top with cilantro right before serving. I ate this with fragrant basmati rice (a rare, not-local treat...), yogurt raita and sauted collard greens and swiss chard.<br /><br />Paneer:<br />Heat 1/2 gallon milk in a large stainless pot until nearly boiling. Add 1-2 T of vinegar (more if the curd fails to break) as the milk rises, turn off the heat and stir with a slotted spoon until curds rise to the surface. Drain in a colander lined with cheesecloth (save the whey for ricotta if you like!) Toss the curds gently to shake out the whey and sprinkle lightly with salt. Gather the cheesecloth around the curds and form into a flattish ball. Press with a heavy-ish object (I used my full yogurt container) for a few minutes, or longer, depending on how hard you want your curds. <br /><br />Note: I highly recommend checking out an Indian grocer for spices mixes. They are unbelievably flavorful and include things like ground green cardamom, mango powder, aesofetida, etc, that truly are the essence of deliciousness in Indian cooking. Failing access to an Indian grocer simply add powdered cumin, coriander, turmeric, salt and pepper to taste (and miss out on something special). You can also add microscopic amounts of nutmeg, cloves, mace and star anise, which would be in this spice mix. But don't overdo it!!! Do not, EVER, buy the generic "curry" powder in the grocery store. The spices will be bitter and old (like me someday!) and will not have any of the lovely "sour" and "sweet" notes of proper spice mixes.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-86098763103364816032010-03-14T16:38:00.000-07:002010-03-14T18:02:36.417-07:00Pro-Life Wheat-Free Ricotta Tart<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgREZaQ2PBYyyLoLIWD1U5uT28ZqZFoYtnYmYUCfzGDXlcgqMdcpN5BS897iBFt06z268svcjl7skpg_hmENqnYcM8flogwCFeyPkoqpPVA9ESqO3-HatXt7-5cgL54zlMQfSWsK9oaUEnr/s1600-h/IMG_1578.JPG"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 224px; height: 168px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgREZaQ2PBYyyLoLIWD1U5uT28ZqZFoYtnYmYUCfzGDXlcgqMdcpN5BS897iBFt06z268svcjl7skpg_hmENqnYcM8flogwCFeyPkoqpPVA9ESqO3-HatXt7-5cgL54zlMQfSWsK9oaUEnr/s200/IMG_1578.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448657218606972546" border="0" /></a><br />So, I was just encouraging y'all to get wheat out of your diet, and here's a a little yummy something to help you do it. My mom has celiac sprue, which is an intolerance to wheat gluten, so I think about cooking wheat-free a lot for other reasons. As it turns out, celiac is an auto-immune disease, which seems to run in our family. Her sister also has celiac, and I'm Type 1 diabetic, which is also an auto-immune malfunction of the endocrine system. No doubt, our common flaky immune system was caused by exposure at critical times in our collective development to endocrine disrupting chemicals, which were just beginning to be sprayed liberally in Iowa at the time my mom and her sister were born, and continued to intensify all over the Midwest as was I conceived and born in North Dakota. Read more about pesticides as endocrine disruptors here: http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/qendoc.asp. Also, see Sandra Steingraber's books: <span style="font-style: italic;">Living Downstream</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Having Faith (</span>http://steingraber.com/) for an explanation of the persistence of agricultural chemicals in the environment and their effects on fetuses. You can't be pro-life and pro-agricultural chemicals, folks. Pick one or the other, cuz the effect is pretty much the same. Or worse.<br /><br />I digress.<br /><br />So, my last local food adventure involved cheese making, and happily this one does too! I ripped this recipe off from <span style="font-style: italic;">Stonewall Kitchen Harvest</span> (my favorite cookbook), but I added a few twists, like making my own ricotta. I have always wanted to make this recipe, but always loathed buying the dead ricotta in its plastic coffin in the grocery store. Thanks to cheese rebel R___, I have been inspired to make my own. So the basic recipe involves making a crust with thinly sliced high-starch potatoes. The highest starch potatoes are russets, but if you're a potato nerd like me, you can also use medium starch Kennebecs or my personal favorite, German Butterballs. I used Rose-Golds (low-med starch) because that's all I had, and it turned out great. Superlative, even. The filling of the tart is a mixture of garlic, greens, eggs and ricotta cheese. This recipe is great for making now when the winter potatoes are almost done and there are lots of spring greens in the garden and at the market (er, sorry folks, there are lots of spring greens in Georgia--the rest of yas will just have to wait. Or better yet, come visit.)<br /><br />I made ricotta out of a certain illegal substance, that shockingly, was still fresh and sweet smelling in my fridge in spite of being a week away from the cow and horrors, not p______. The news coverage on TV in Atlanta regarding the raw m___ seizure in Athens highlighted the deleterious side effects of drinking said substance. Their bulleted list included "spontaneous abortion," which is bogus political speech alluding to the fact that some bacteria present in ALL milk can cause an infection, which, like all bacterial infections, might be bad for a fetus's chances of survival. I am pretty sure that the right-wing boneheads who put that segment together actually meant "miscarriage" but why waste a political opportunity? I certainly don't. I wish there was a warning label on conventionally produced foods that would give y'all a politically loaded headsup about what you were consuming and the consequences of that action.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">The production of this food has been proven to cause spontaneous abortions in women all over the world, and has the potential to cause serious endocrine disruption, including sterility in men, cancer and birth defects. </span><br /><br />I think we could just stop with causing sterility in men. That might get the attention of some of the overwhelmingly male decision-makers in our food system. Maybe. They make enough money to buy all organic food, and why should they care about whether the Colombian banana picker or Mexican migrant worker can have kids or not? Surely the poison pushers at Monsanto <span style="font-style: italic;">know </span>what this does to our bodies? They pay the EPA and FDA to look the other way, in the form of fast-tracking approval of pesticides, after all.<br /><br />I digress.<br /><br />So I made ricotta using whole milk and vinegar--just like when I make paneer, and sadly it turned out a little bit more like paneer than ricotta. But, it was still tasty. I think the milk, being a little less than fresh, needed less "starter" than I used, and we all know how much raw m____ likes to be cheese! So, it was a little lumpy but fresh and delicious. See this site for more information than you'll probably ever need to know about making ricotta. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2010/02/how-to-make-fresh-ricotta-fast-easy-homemade-cheese-the-food-lab-recipe.html<br />Enjoy--this guy loves him some curd.<br /><br />Instead of swiss chard, which Stonewall Kitchen calls for, I used spinach and arugula, cuz that's what I had. I should also mention that this took just under an hour to make, which included preparing the ricotta and picking and washing the greens while the milk heated. I also didn't have parmesan cheese, which the recipe called for but subbed some local feta instead. Cooking with what you have is sort of an important basic principle of eating locally. You can't always get russets, but that doesn't actually matter. What matters is that you didn't contribute to destroying someone's ability to have children or their ability to eat certain foods or their ability to carry a child to term. You do not have a right to eat whatever you want when that right interferes with someone else's basic human rights. In the over-privileged hemispheres of the world, we certainly do have the privilege of eating whatever we want, and we should never forget that it comes at the cost of human life everywhere, even and especially those that are yet to live.<br /><br />So, do something pro-life. Make your own ricotta. Buy some local potatoes. Enjoy.<br /><br />Pro-Life, Wheat-Free Ricotta Tart (makes 1 tart in a 7 X 9 inch-ish pan)<br /><br />1 1/2 pounds greens (arugula, spinach, swiss chard)<br />1/4 + 2 T butter, melted (make your own...see earlier blog post)<br />1 large garlic clove, thinly sliced<br />2 large potatoes (high starch preferred, but will work with just about anything), unpeeled, and scrubbed<br />3 tsp chopped fresh thyme, oregano, rosemary (I also used dried thyme...use what you have)<br />1 cup feta cheese (or cheddar, or mozzarella or whatever you have)<br />2 large eggs<br />2 cups ricotta cheese (start this right before the rest, it takes about 10-15 minutes)<br />Salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Clean, trim and chop the greens. Heat 2 T of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Add half the garlic and half the greens. Add more garlic and greens as they cook down. Season with salt and pepper. Cook for about ten minutes, stirring occasionally. Drain off any excess liquid.<br /><br />Slice the potatoes very thinly and of uniform thickness. Create a thin layer of potato slices on the bottom of your pan and overlap them slightly to make a crust. Slide a few up the sides to make an edge. Drizzle the remaining melted butter over the crust. Sprinkle salt, pepper, herbs of choice and cheese of choice over potatoes of choice and/or availability, as the case may be.<br /><br />Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.<br /><br />Whisk the eggs in a large bowl, add the ricotta, more herbs and cheese of choice, salt and pepper. Gently add the greens and mix well. Spread the cheese-greens mixture over the potato slices and press lightly.<br /><br />Bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the temperature to 350 and bake for another 10 minutes. The potato crust should be brown and crisp and the filling should be firm to the touch. Let cool about five minutes before cutting into wedges. Enjoy with a green salad or braised carrots. Add a frozen fruit-yogurt-honey dessert to finish it off!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-62096504008245307982010-03-08T10:33:00.000-08:002010-03-08T10:35:16.165-08:00Hot SaladToday, I wanted a light lunch, but was feeling chilly. I took my favorite salad fixings (spinach, chard, feta, pecans and carrots) and sauteed them with garlic and salt. Turned out great!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-92094318037860257752010-03-07T09:00:00.000-08:002010-03-08T18:13:53.075-08:00So-Called 30 Minute MozzarellaI promised y'all that the next time I posted something about pizza that it would have homemade cheese involved. With a little help from my friends that is now being delivered. The objective was to get some creamy contraband from across state lines and try out Ricki Carroll's 30 minute mozzarella recipe. I'm not sure we actually believed mozz could happen in 30 minutes, but what was going to be a little afternoon road trip and fun in the kitchen turned into a 12 hour celebration of life, food and chance. Like all things local, relationships, knowledge and in this case, a little daring, were key to making this happen.<br /><br />Best girlfriend R__* spurred this project on by attending and being, um, rather inspired, by a cheesemaking session at the recent Georgia Organics conference held in Athens. Armed with veg and non-veg rennet and "starter" we converged at an undisclosed location and proceeded to make a certain illegal purchase. The purchase of the illegal substance was pretty anti-climactic, and sort of underscores the ridiculousness of legislation around unpasteurized m___. What could be more uncontroversial and normal than visiting a farm and taking home a substance frequently described as the world's most perfect food? As I have pointed out before, this was a regular feature of my childhood and I'm still here to talk about it. It is ludicrous to imagine that it might have been more legal to transport wine (another heavily regulated perfect food) across state lines.<br /><br />On the way home I noticed a man leave a gas station not more than a few miles from the farm we visited. He was carrying a gallon of milk. I mused for a moment on the thousands of miles, the countless gallons of petroleum and uncountable tons of carbon dioxide that were racked up, used up forever and released into the atmosphere in the supply chain for that particular gallon of milk. That customer has the option, but probably not the knowledge about the option, a few miles away to purchase a gallon of milk that has a supply chain of approximately five feet. Why can't we have more of this?<br /><br />I think cheese, actually, is the world's most perfect food, and over the course of the day, I realized another reason why raw m__ is so scary to the dairy industry. That's because raw m___ WANTS to be cheese. Really really really badly. The ease of which cheese is produced from raw m___ should strike fear in the hearts of all dairy processors and they should immediately run to their state legislator and demand further restrictions on the rights of citizen eaters to purchase and process whatever life giving substance they want. The should also, while they are there, request further rights and privileges to support the waging of war in the name of cheap energy, to create permanent climatic destruction and to drive trucks around the planet mindlessly and purposelessly. All for the sake of a greasy buck. That's dumb. (Utah Philips, my favorite anarchist, said that, and I'm proud to repeat it).<br /><br />After enjoying a lovely meal at a local restaurant we took a little break to enjoy the gorgeous weather and reconvened for some seriously subversive and illegal activities later in the evening. The basic process of making cheese is to add a starter, which is anything that will "sour" the milk and can include vinegar, citric acid or buttermilk. Then add rennet, which is a coagulant derived from the intestines of very young cows... (Vegetarians, if you don't want to think about that too much, you should try the very easy process of making your own cheese out of veg rennet. We did!) The next steps involve varying forms of cutting, kneading, heating, salting, etc, etc, to create the kind of cheese you ultimately desire. Our mozz required nuking the curds in a microwave, and kneading and stretching the resulting ball of fragrant yumminess.<br /><br />Our cheese turned out delicious, but a little bit squeaky and rubbery and not exactly solid. It was ultimately fantastic melted on spinach, sun-dried tomato and garlic pizza which we enjoyed around 10pm with several glasses of wine. But that's not the most important part. The important part was that we were using recipes designed for pasteurized milk, and you all know we were using something else!!! Wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Timing is everything in making different kinds of cheeses, and when we added the starter, our milk instantly curdled. That should have happened when we heated it... But we pressed on and ended up with really gigantic curds that we then proceeded to process to a rubbery, squeaky mass. We concluded, perhaps, smugly (?) that maybe raw m___ doesn't actually need all that processing to make really nice cheese...? Or maybe we just don't know what we're doing? Maybe both.<br /><br />We can't wait to experiment and we'll let you know how that goes too! That is if we aren't arrested the next time we smuggle the good stuff across state lines! Wish us luck!<br /><br />*all names and locations have been changed to protect the innocentAmy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-19372793676915172282010-03-01T16:24:00.000-08:002010-03-01T17:21:20.082-08:00Kale and Sweet PotatoesI worked at Athens Locally Grown last Thursday for the first time since last summer when I was "laid off". For one reason or another, I was sent home with armfuls of vegetables. Now, some of my nearest and dearest know about my secret bachelorette habit of eating popcorn and drinking beer when I should be eating kale and sweet potatoes. I know, I know. But I come by it honestly...just ask my dad.<br /><br />In my mind, the whole point of cooking and eating is <span style="font-style: italic;">sharing</span>. So, cooking a lovely meal for myself and sharing it with approximately no one makes me feel more lonely than I already was feeling before I started cooking and made a mess of the kitchen. Guess who is going to clean that up? At least popcorn is something I can share with my hound dog--Ksanti--who finds the project of catching flying popcorn endlessly interesting.<br /><br />To remedy this sad state of affairs, I've been having friends over for dinner once or twice each week. So when I brought home cauliflower, potatoes, spinach, carrots, collards, cream, milk, etc, etc, I knew I needed to cook for somebody(s), or all this loveliness was going to go to waste. Looking at a gallon of milk I couldn't dream of drinking by myself and two adorably little and lacy heads of cauliflower, I couldn't help but think of<span style="font-style: italic;"> paneer makhani </span>(fresh cheese in tomato cream sauce) and <span style="font-style: italic;">aloo gobi</span> (potatoes and cauliflower). Best girlfriends, Regan and Erin, were more than happy to assist with dispatching the yumminess, and even volunteered to sample my ever-evolving attempts at making paratha (stuffed Indian flatbreads).<br /><br />I am always impressed with how Indian cuisine lends itself to the produce available here, and everywhere but at the Arctic Circle, really. Regan pointed out that Indian cuisine just does a good job of working with vegetables, which is a really good point. Other cuisines tend to have wheat or other grains as an essential base. Italian has its wheat, Mexican its corn and Thai its rice. Indian food obviously has rice and wheat breads as an essential part of the plate, and you probably won't go anywhere in India without seeing one or both on a <span style="font-style: italic;">thali (</span>platter of three or more main dishes complete with breads, dessert, salad and condiments, served family style).<br /><br />Having said that, you could eat a plate of potato <span style="font-style: italic;">subji </span>(vegetable dish), <span style="font-style: italic;">paneer</span> (cheese) or <span style="font-style: italic;">gosht</span> (meat) masala, sauteed greens and <span style="font-style: italic;">dahi</span> (yogurt) and never miss the grains. Which is what I just did. And it was delicious.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span> As a diabetic, I've never been too worried about whether I was eating wheat or potatoes--it's all carbs to me. I think this is an important strategy for local eaters to adopt. It's next to impossible (as I've railed about before) to get grains in local markets. Forget local, organic grains grown by small-scale farmers. Unless you're Amish (who do this for their communities) you won't be able to produce a large enough volume of grains to make it anywhere near affordable for people to buy...I think the buying and selling of it is actually the problem here...but I digress.<br /><br />In an otherwise fiber rich diet (read, a base of fresh fruits and vegetables) the complex carbohydrates from grains aren't really that necessary. Regan related some statistics about vegetable consumption in the United States, which are actually too horrifying to repeat. Suffice it to say that the CDC is concerned enough about this to launch a whole new campaign of research and outreach around vegetable consumption as disease prevention. When I expressed some concern about my popcorn habit and my long term health, she said in reference to the meal I had cooked for her last week, "You have kale and sweet potatoes in your life. You're fine". Whew.<br /><br />So, just a little bit of advice and encouragement--support your local farmers and don't worry about what you might be missing by not eating grains. They are overrated anyway, as Marion Nestle points out in her book, <span style="font-style: italic;">Food Politics. </span>The FDA/USDA tells us what to eat with their cute little pyramid according to who pays them the most money. I guess if I had that kind of money, I would try to pay the government to tell you to eat local. But I don't. I just have this blog, so thanks for reading and get some kale and sweet potatoes in your life. You'll be fine.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-22287044596367949322010-02-02T14:59:00.000-08:002010-03-02T15:53:54.337-08:00Thanksgiving<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqhhLRgzUDcwKnIgIN6IcINvyJZ7gcF2QTo0QquFfru69Dbo-rKvVnAHdFgg9XxHB3cncwhl5CqtZXoGhlWlcRusY4dfjhzCRvLKRp9D89TtbEjOQU9eMgIf932Np0mVURNMaWKnkBzPh/s1600-h/high+on+the+hog.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 279px; height: 207px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGqhhLRgzUDcwKnIgIN6IcINvyJZ7gcF2QTo0QquFfru69Dbo-rKvVnAHdFgg9XxHB3cncwhl5CqtZXoGhlWlcRusY4dfjhzCRvLKRp9D89TtbEjOQU9eMgIf932Np0mVURNMaWKnkBzPh/s200/high+on+the+hog.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5444188847761447634" border="0" /></a><br />I know I've been neglecting my blog responsibilities lately (and there's a good reason...) so bear with me as I catch up. Right now, I need to take a moment to give some belated thanks for old friends, new farmers and my family.<br /><br />After almost a decade of Thanksgiving dinners in Maryland with my Dad and his wife, I elected to travel to Minnesota to visit old friends and family on my favorite holiday. Words fail me in describing the gifts of love, forgiveness and hope that I received on this trip. It was probably the most important road trip of my life.<br /><br />But what I really want to tell you about is the turkey.<br /><br />Let me begin with the fact that you can actually get a Thanksgiving turkey for free from a chain grocery store as a kind of brand loyalty marketing strategy. I understand the symbolic importance of turkeys and sheesh, they are expensive, as they are danged long-lived... It's harder to shorten the lifespan of a turkey (as opposed to a chicken which can be raised in a virtual nano-second these days) to extract as much profit as possible from it's short(ish) miserable life, but Tyson, Purdue and the like do their best to force farmers into selling themselves and their livestock for the lowest possible price. The fact that these birds are given away free by grocery stores who pocket all the profits from the sale of Cheetos and the like is a slap in the face of (no, actually, it's a dehumanizing act of thievery against the) honest hard work and sincere efforts to make a living by the working poor. Having said that, I appreciate the fact that a family who otherwise would not be able to afford a T-day turkey can get one free by buying all their groceries for several months from one store in exchange for a free one. Yup. Got it. But still. I don't want one of those.<br /><br />I will not particpate in trading farming livelihoods for profit mongering.<br /><br />The fact that I have the luxury to do so is a troubling and problematic reality. It the height of injustice that the very essence of life--food--pits the consuming poor against the producing poor and leaves healthy food to those who can afford it. I don't want to participate in this system either. But still, my family needs a turkey, or it's not Thanksgiving. My vegetarian nieces would disagree, and I'll give them that too. Next year, it's T-day at my house where carnivores, omnivores and herbivores will get their fill, and where local farmers are the biggest beneficiaries of our happy tummies.<br /><br />But we really didn't do so bad this year on the local farmer score.<br /><br />So, my first call home about my trip was to my dear friend Kristi, who farms with her husband in western Minnesota, and for whom reconnecting on this trip meant everything to me. Did she have turkeys? Did she know anyone who did? Turns out she didn't but her good friend Jessi had some. Was Fed-Exing my deposit going to be fast enough to get the last Bourbon Red in the flock? These birds had led pampered lives with free-run (notice, not free range--free RUN) of the farm all summer and were huge, healthy and semi-feral. Without going into two much detail, there was a smidge of a logistical and geographical problem associated with retrieving the bird on Saturday when it was available (and when I was in approximately po-dunk nowhere between GA and MN in my car) and Thursday when the bird was supposed to be on the table in all its roasted glory.<br /><br />All logistical puzzles aside, retrieving the bird and it arriving on the table, involved being delivered into the arms of loved ones and loved landscapes again and again, which ranged from being smothered in embraces by five year olds to driving in silence through stretches of prairie visited only by the sunsets. Real life and real love showed up and danced to the song of life and death, and it was rich.<br /><br />On the way to get the bird out of Jessi's freezer Kristi took me to the grave of her infant daughter--Nora--her daughet Anika's twin sister. We hugged while Anika played by the grave, and I felt a tremendous, devastating loss that can only be cliched in comparison to the grief of Kristi's family.<span style="font-style: italic;"> It ain't right. No. It ain't right. But what are you going to do? </span>When we got to Jessi's the spade-foot hogs were out and helping themselves to grain from the silo. Jessi shrugged when we pointed it out and said <span style="font-style: italic;">They're happier that way</span>. I wrote her a check for more money than I ever thought possible for poultry and sat on the couch with Jessi and Kristi's kids while they told me about life.<br /><br />I ask you...has this ever happened and will this ever happen to you on your way to get your free turkey from Giant?<br /><br />When I left for Duluth the next day, after Kristi and I said a heartfelt goodbye, I got in the car with my heart in my throat...and a niggling feeling I had forgotten something important. Um, yeah, the turkey was still in Kristi's freezer. Later, with the turkey safely in a cooler, a half of a pig for my BFF Becky in Duluth and a leftover meatloaf sandwich (from Brad and Kristi's pigs and cows) in my pocket, I was ready for more adventures in love and eating.<br /><br />In Duluth Becky and Brad treated me to grilled pork chops the best mashed potatoes ever, more hugs and kisses from young ones and long talks into the night that stretched into the morning when we walked through the woods and talked about how farming really is the answer to life. Becky sent me "home" to my brother's house with a bag full of red potatoes from her garden and I cooked up a kick-ass brine for that bird while she and Brad put the kids to bed. Rosemary from my mom's garden, garlic from Becky's garden and love wrapped up in it all.<br /><br />Reuniting with mom, step-father, brother, sister-in-law (Tracy-didi, in hindi is so much sweeter, I must say) and grown-up lovely nieces, Taylor and Alexis and step brother Travis (the comedian) made all the driving worth it. We feasted on a golden delicious bird and more of the best mashed potatoes ever, sweet potatoe souffle, brussel sprouts, pie, etc etc.. It was superlative and especially so since it was enjoyed in miles of love that we came to after traveling through acres and acres of pain.<br /><br />There is more. I wish I could share it all here, but let me just say that sincere efforts to do the right thing will always be rewarded with richness, healing and love.<br /><br />You can't get that at Giant.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-25763983013224725222009-10-15T17:34:00.000-07:002009-10-15T19:01:34.350-07:00Georgia Department of Agriculture Raids Unsubsidized Legal MarketToday, at Athens Locally Grown, "investigators" showed up and threatened Eric Wagoner about his sales of "raw milk". Hear tell, Eric was told "you know, you can't sell raw milk in Georgia". Horrors! Selling a commodity that people want! Not to mention that it was sold in South Carolina, not in Georgia. Crossing state lines to share legally pre-sold raw milk with people are willing and able to pay for is apparently a federal offense. Hmmmm, where is the free market in all of this? Fine, Georgia, bureaucrats, be more backwards than the government in South Carolina which allows the sale of raw milk. Do you want a prize for being more in the pocket of special interest than your more conservative cousin?<br /><br />So, what is the problem you might ask? Well, raw milk has only been sustaining human populations since the neolithic. It's only been since the advent of industrial agriculture that we have really worried about killing off the bacteria in our milk through pasteurization. Of course, we can appreciate advances in sanitation, but confinement systems certainly do not offer that. If you can imagine(or have seen as I have) cows standing knee deep in shit, you might be really glad to know your milk it pasteurized. But, pastured cows don't live in those conditions, and tuberculosis and brucelosis are virtually non-existent in these systems. It's not difficult to imagine which lobby (um, milk processors who own expensive pasteurizing equipment and are few and far between, if you don't have a clue) is behind this excessive and inexplicable use of tax dollars to illegally harass the owner of a small, grass-roots and local market.<br /><br />Approximately 0 percent of your tax dollars in the form of agricultural subsidies go to small scale dairies who pasture their cows and direct market raw milk,while 35% (to the tune of 2.8 billion dollars) goes to growing feed grains which go to your corn syrups and your beef cattle, which single handedly contribute to all the leading health problems in the United States, which include heart disease, obesity and diabetes. Approximately 3.2% of all subsidies go to peanut production (the lion's share in Georgia) and we all know how well the Department of Agriculture manages to keep pathogens, like salmonella, with their root in human and animal feces (and certainly not legumes like peanuts...) out of our food system. The self-importance of the "investigators" at our market today was hypocrisy at it's finest. Where were these people when children were dying from salmonella poisoning from eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches???!!!<br /><br />No, they show up and harass the facilitator of a completely legal market selling a commodity people want earnestly to buy (for whatever crazy reason they might have). This country prides itself on the freedom of its markets, all the while it subsidizes dangerous commodities like beef and peanuts that actually kill people when they unknowingly and unwittingly consume those products. At least people who buy raw milk know the risk they are running. And take it willingly and apparently bravely, in the face of imminent death if we can believe the Georgia Department of Agriculture. If drinking milk fresh from the teat of a cow or a goat or sheep or horse or a camel or a llama killed people en masse, then the human species would be extinct by now. Let's not pretend that raw milk done right actually hurts people. I drank raw milk every day of my life, and I'm still here to talk about it.<br /><br />Give me a break, GA DOA. We know what you're really about. You're in bed with milk processors who bottleneck our milk supply and control the price. Don't be so precious about protecting people. We know who you're protecting and we aren't going to buy their processed crap no matter how much you lie to us about health and safety. Give us a free market and let the consumers decide. Live up to your free market ideals already!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-76119302841146062442009-09-12T19:07:00.000-07:002009-10-18T16:24:43.296-07:00Fig GiftsDuring Ramadan, which has been observed for the last month and ends today, observers in central Asia often break the fast (iftar) at sundown with figs.<br /><br />This week I observed a fast of sorts on Thursday. Under the influence of some absurd Midwestern work ethic, I went to work while sick with the flu, and of course, I didn't have the energy to pack a lunch. Not that I was hungry.<br /><br />I picked up my order at Athens Locally Grown after work, en route to bed. My order included about 8 figs from McMullan farms, and I ate them in the car in the parking lot as the sun started to go down. Their sweetness was a revelation to my parched mouth and I swore they were a gift from god.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-33395940320650651872009-09-12T17:35:00.000-07:002009-09-12T18:54:58.782-07:00Avian Soup in a Can Influenza<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUqtfX3O6ShGbVQlnaSmRv_kZJV3uUyg3q03R5noMTCuzonT1G5ZG7FBlmUIjCxgF0f3F2euxdOcdrR323Ew_Wt1Zsr7qYEZlIfLKkpvW51Bbwu97vN-Ig337jdHrJHRzJTOon_EAWOlMa/s1600-h/IMG_1393.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUqtfX3O6ShGbVQlnaSmRv_kZJV3uUyg3q03R5noMTCuzonT1G5ZG7FBlmUIjCxgF0f3F2euxdOcdrR323Ew_Wt1Zsr7qYEZlIfLKkpvW51Bbwu97vN-Ig337jdHrJHRzJTOon_EAWOlMa/s200/IMG_1393.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5380744426426789474" border="0" /></a>I just survived more fatigue I ever thought was possible to endure. It was likely swine flu, although I didn't bother to go to the doctor to find out. I figured since I went to the doctor for my 121st diabetic checkup last week, and came down with this post-exposure to all the sick people in the waiting room, I probably would live (perhaps longer) not knowing whether I had regular old flu or some other allegedly more contagious kind of flu. In my opinion that falls under the category of too much information.<br /><br />Other interesting symptoms of my flu included a salt craving that drove me just about crazy, and which I satisfied with garlic salt on toast and chicken soup from a can. Yes, dear reader, it was so bad I ate chicken soup from a can. I did buy organic and free range, yah da yah da yah da, chicken soup, two allegedly made by Wolfgang Puck. Yeah, right. This desperate act was necessary, however, because the very idea of cooking made me want to go fetal. The idea of doing anything but sleeping made me want to go fetal. I'd like to suggest a new name for this flu--the avian-soup-in-a-can-fetal-position-influenza.<br /><br />Not only did I not want to cook, I also didn't want to eat. Not exactly nauseous, just not interested. Horrors! And for me, like most mammals I know, being off my feed is a pretty serious indication of illness. So, today, when a ferocious hunger started stalking me around 11 am, I figured I was probably gonna be alright. Whew.<br /><br />Interestingly, I also ate the same thing for breakfast today (chicken soup from a can and crackers) and gave the same amount of insulin as I had for the last three awful days and *today*, I had a low blood sugar afterward, right around 11 am. When ill, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol that raise the blood sugar. In the diabetic body, which has no insulin to deal with this rise, the blood sugar stays inelastically high, which adds to the misery, have no fear. When my blood sugar finally came down, I took that as a bonefide indication of being back in the saddle--so to speak. (The real kind of getting back in the saddle will have to wait til tomorrow. Yaaaaaaaay!!).<br /><br />So, what to eat, to break this influenza fast? I'm not much of a wheat-eater, but all I could think of was a big fat pizza--the quintessential comfort food. My good friends Amy and Jimmy Cox had given me some venison sausage a few weeks ago and I had lots of tomatoes and basil. Sometimes these combinations stick in my head like a tune, and I can't expunge them, except for to make them come to life. So, ole, ole, ole, come to life!<br /><br />I cooked up some fast pizza sauce from my ripe Amish Paste and San Marzano tomatoes with some Sweet Nardello peppers from McMullen Farms and some super strong <span class="name">Inchelium Red </span>garlic from Backyard Harvest with a little dried thyme from some huge garden I had in Pennsylvania in another life. I browned the sausage, and the gamey scent of it brought back memories of growing up in Minnesota. I piled the sauce and sausage high with onions from Cedar Grove farm, green pepper from my garden, more garlic and sweet nardello pepper, layered with heirloom tomatoes from Green Girl Gardens and basil from Roots Farm. Oh my. To make a kick-the-crap-out-of-influenza pizza it takes a whole county. Wolfgang Puck, eat your heart out!<br /><br />More seriously, though, I would have really liked to have sourced the weat flour and mozzerella cheese locally, both of which I bought at the grocery and both of which have origins relatively unknown to me. I just made my students trace the ingredients of a favorite food, and I really should do this myself. Do I as say, not as I do, young ones! The King Arthur flour I know is processed in Vermont, but that's all I know, and it probably contains Bt wheat, which in a recent post, I just railed against. (Does it count that I had already bought it before I ranted against it?) The Sargento cheese is probably made from imported casein, and is likely to make me feel bad since I am lactose intolerant, and casein is usually made from a lactose-based waste product that is also used in cosmetics and paint. Yum, huh?<br /><br />Ergo, my next big investment is going to be in a mozzarella cheese making kit. The next time you see a pizza, or it's facsimile, on this blog, it will include cheese made from milk from a dairy in Georgia and crafted by my ownself in my very own kitchen. I gotta think a bit harder about the wheat. In the meantime, I am soooooooooooooo happy to be cooking again!<br /><br />Eat well, be well and love well.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-42804635537299593362009-09-05T19:13:00.000-07:002009-09-05T20:31:32.970-07:00New Foods<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi00aWjqfeIRe2t543fRqE2Fkyqv7voIUnnShBtLhziusYTbxBQafWPVTNRtpOn29HiSX3Sxn2X54w89VoTvb5YK8eWTyb0AA1pWgltVeXKsH4bzwAL6cbffdWmk5Bhed3uPNbJgmmW8_L9/s1600-h/food_inc.gif"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 224px; height: 119px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi00aWjqfeIRe2t543fRqE2Fkyqv7voIUnnShBtLhziusYTbxBQafWPVTNRtpOn29HiSX3Sxn2X54w89VoTvb5YK8eWTyb0AA1pWgltVeXKsH4bzwAL6cbffdWmk5Bhed3uPNbJgmmW8_L9/s200/food_inc.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5378177542261413666" border="0" /></a>So, tonight, I enjoyed "lamb bacon" at the National with Eric McDonald of UGA's School of Environment and Design, before taking in Food, Inc. at Cine (I saw it again, I am such a dork--and this time I took NOTES = super dork). While savoring the impossible scrumptiousness of (already amazingly delicious) pastured lamb turned into salted, smoked, crispy, juicy, fatty heaven, we discussed the idea of a comprehensive lists of foods, so that we can check off edibles when we eat them (like birders do when they see birds that are new to them) and so we can add novel items like lamb bacon to the list when we find them. I suggested that the possible combinations of foods are probably infinite (limited only by our ability to imagine those combinations), so you couldn't really have a comprehensive list, like lists of species, which are allegedly (at least on the scale of a human lifetime) finite.<br /><br />Let's put Amy-the-arguer in cold storage for a second, and talk for awhile about what would be on that list. High fructose corn syrup? Mechanically separated chicken? Xylitol? The more I think about this, the more I warm up to the idea. It would be a great exercise for us all to examine the ingredients of our diet and be shocked to find that it distills into a rather short list of hyper-processed ingredients that have their origin in corn, wheat and soybeans. (The birding equivalent would be seeing a few variants on crows, starlings and vultures every time you went birding. This revolting scenario is more likely than you imagine if we keep up the status quo in our food system). The production of these commodities destroys our bodies, our environment, our communities and our democracy. This is an empirically proven and validated fact. (See the movie, do some reading and talk to people if you disagree. Then we'll talk.) There is no more important struggle on this earth than to free ourselves from this illusion of choice and freedom, and to put some checks and balances on the control of agricultural transnationals over our food system.<br /><br />I go out on a limb, and argue for a global movement against transnationals, because today, in India, farmers (some of whom are poorer than the poorest person you can imagine--think about it for awhile...start with no toilets and go from there) take to the streets in peaceful protest for the resurrection of the Doha Round of the WTO. They just want another chance to farm on a fairer playing field. They just want to turn the blood, sweat and tears they put into growing food into enough money to feed their families. In India, almost 50% of all children suffer from such severe malnutrition that their growth is stunted. This is directly related to the fact that US farmers get paid to grow commodities below the cost of production. (As the step-daughter of such a farmer, I can say that I never ever worried about my next meal and I definitely had a toilet). The chance for Indian (or Sudanese or Laotian) kids to have some good eats like the rest of us, is not gonna happen until we start asking Congress to stop spending our precious tax dollars on growing the corn, wheat and soybeans that poison us and the ecology of our country. Our money that we trust our government with, goes directly (IN CASH!) to farmers so that they can buy patented seed and grow the next crop of genetically mofidifed commodities, some portion of which will be sold (or dumped) on international markets, and which will undermine some of the poorest people in the world who have ALREADY invested time, money and energy into growing crops that are now virtually worthless. No wonder they drink pesticides. I would too. In return, we in the "developed" world (with our well developed asses) deal with diseases like diabetes because carrots and broccoli are more expensive than Big Macs. That is CRAZY! Do something about this!<br /><br />After watching Food, Inc. again, I am absolutely galvanized in my opposition to the incredibly stupid waste of our resources on the production of corn, wheat and soybeans. We are so duped into thinking that our trips to the grocery store allow us to participate in some kind of choice about our diet that we don't think to look any further for our food than that oasis of inefficiency, creative destruction and death. Call me a liberal, and a communist and a tree-hugger, and a feminist and a fascist and then sue me for veggie-libel, but dammit, figure out what is in your diet, understand what your food choices contribute to, (and, yes, spend some time dealing with feeling really bad about it) and then go find and buy and eat some food that didn't hurt somebody, something or someplace already. Enjoy that meal. And do it again.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-75875419097512879892009-08-30T16:59:00.000-07:002009-08-30T17:38:55.495-07:00Fruit CalculusSo, part of my eating local "strategery" is to estimate how much food (in this case fruit) I might need to preserve or store for the part of the year that I can't buy it fresh, which is approximately 6 months/26 weeks between November/December and May in Georgia. I generally eat two cups of fruit each weekday morning (and go for the "works" on the weekend--bacon, eggs and fried potatoes). So, I estimate at the beginning of the fruiting season that I will need to put up X amount of this and X amount of that, which is all very fine and good, but then life happens and I just put up what I can on the weekends and in the odd, wonderful moments between work and play that usually characterize my relationship with my food.<br /><br />Early this spring, with help from friends, I picked about a total of 12 gallons of strawberries ($10/gallon PYO) at Washington Farms in Watkinsvillege. In one big marathon, I froze about 20 pints. For the rest of strawberry season I ran over to Washington Farms after riding and picked the odd gallon (which took approximately 15 minutes) to eat for breakfast and froze the odd pint or so if they started to get too ripe. That didn't happen too often, though, since I am a stawberry eating machine. Then, blueberries started coming in, and I had the pleasure and privelege of picking blueberries at Covenant Grove Farm (where George lives) for free. Early in the season, after riding George I picked enough for breakfast and then when they really started coming in, I picked and froze about 6 gallons for the winter. Then it was peaches time! Yay! I bought about 24 peaches for $16 each week (for about 6 weeks) at Thomas orchard in Watkinsville. Generally I went on a Monday and a Friday morning after riding at the barn. The owner of the orchard and his father, who sits in a rocking chair by the peach table with his old dog, began to expect me after a while and always asked me if I'd had a good ride. I ate about three peaches a day and froze the ripest ones when they started to get soft. Then this last week, as peaches come to a close, I bought 4 buckets of peaches and canned 23 pints. Pears are just getting ripe now, and there are two trees at the barn that make offerings all night long. I pick a bucket of the not too badly damaged ones in the morning after my ride, and take them home for breakfast. I had accumulated about three buckets today and canned 17 pints.<br /><br />In a lovely conclusion to my efforts at preserving this fruiting season, I just counted that I have 131 pints of fruit frozen and canned, which is exactly 26 weeks worth of fruit for my breakfasts, which is exactly what I need. I was not really keeping track, just hoping that my efforts would be adequate enough, and if not, I would supplement with fruit from god knows where. Who says the universe doesn't provide when your heart and your efforts are sincere? And for about $240 (plus the huge generosity of friends and my own time and energy) I am able to eat two cups of local fruit each day (some of it organically grown) for an entire year. Who says local is more expensive?<br /><br />I think people are stopped from making efforts to eat locally because they are blocked by the idea that it can't be done, or that it will be too expensive. I think that it can be done quite handily, and my efforts prove that it isn't too expensive if you are willing to change your habits and patterns--your lifeworld, as it were--to do it. And what makes it all possible are the relationships that surround all these efforts--the Smiths especially who share their abundance for free and all the other farmers and orchardists who share it for very little money, and who come to know me and appreciate me, which is its own wonderful reward.<br /><br />Eat well and be well! You can do it!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-21846420723914904702009-08-30T13:56:00.000-07:002009-08-30T17:43:21.214-07:00Canning<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWU1tKqj5yNrwi_o6sjAf6IkPKVIJhsbVCrpHS4y_8M0J0JOf9raViLXpHO0i4Fi8Iru0YUUW4s1n07w7J7MhDn-gtAcTfRvmFXceNZArmbQolEHzd30wcu3dkAjaky7nLITxQM2E9uZvM/s1600-h/IMG_1367.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWU1tKqj5yNrwi_o6sjAf6IkPKVIJhsbVCrpHS4y_8M0J0JOf9raViLXpHO0i4Fi8Iru0YUUW4s1n07w7J7MhDn-gtAcTfRvmFXceNZArmbQolEHzd30wcu3dkAjaky7nLITxQM2E9uZvM/s200/IMG_1367.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375866000288389106" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrR5YE-LdP3pBcjaErb9rmagOKEoT_Nd3Yt2WfZ8rdjK61X1KMTD91beidGoFnh7wQzUVYfsQ7r_iZ8sB1Dmu-DTNsombaWNmJj1YGMGPkT30061S_wDv5JU1FhjyCyz3AM-6hRQfofqgP/s1600-h/IMG_1370.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrR5YE-LdP3pBcjaErb9rmagOKEoT_Nd3Yt2WfZ8rdjK61X1KMTD91beidGoFnh7wQzUVYfsQ7r_iZ8sB1Dmu-DTNsombaWNmJj1YGMGPkT30061S_wDv5JU1FhjyCyz3AM-6hRQfofqgP/s200/IMG_1370.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375866012393457314" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1aKM6Qracqwq9mHWY2ZnKI8xwWH7pkebN2avXyLgx4Tnc9ST_kf7Wtu4xwwdcHZZln-t0-GaSlPjF9ulg2MBCAJGvL96whUrYB6d-BQA9MmNJV4NoUUdxSwmBwQbZTV3VmDE_3-rY4zl/s1600-h/IMG_1376.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiG1aKM6Qracqwq9mHWY2ZnKI8xwWH7pkebN2avXyLgx4Tnc9ST_kf7Wtu4xwwdcHZZln-t0-GaSlPjF9ulg2MBCAJGvL96whUrYB6d-BQA9MmNJV4NoUUdxSwmBwQbZTV3VmDE_3-rY4zl/s200/IMG_1376.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5375866017158952290" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />This afternoon, for the first time in a few years, I put up 23 pints of peaches and 17 pints of pears. I am quite pleased with my efforts even though I am now very tired. I picked the pears out of George's pasture this past week and let them ripen for a few days in the house. I bought the peaches from Thomas Orchard in Watkinsville, a family run operation that produces glorious golden globes of ginormous goodness. It rained this afternoon, and I was grateful for the cool breeze from outside as steam from the canner filled my kitchen. I don't use any sugar and sprinkle on a little lemon juice to preserve the color of the fruit before I pack it in hot water. I love the sounds of canning--the perking of the water in the canner, the slinging sound when I screw on the bands, the little cheerful pops when the jar seals. I also love the feels and smells of it all--hot, squeaky clean jars and the fragrance of fresh fruit, lightly cooked. But what I really love is the result, and I will enjoy it even more in January when I open up one of those jars and inhale the fragrance of pure, delicious summer.<br /><br />Ever since I saw Food, Inc., I have been thinking a lot about how much impact we can have with simply changing our consumption habits (which if you haven't seen it, is the take home message of the film). My friends and colleagues (who won't let me stop thinking about it) point out that we are not all equal when it comes to our consuming power, and our food system is broken and corrupt in a way that only enrolls consumerism of any kind into its project (i.e., big organic). People aren't going to walk away from a movie with a good feeling (read, tell others to watch it) if the take-home message is YOU are fundamentally a part of the problem just because you exist and eat, so change your priorities, not just the store/market you frequent; shut off your TV; put some more effort into getting your food in your body; and take responsibility for the calories you consume that might come at the cost of someone else's freedom or health.<br /><br />Of course, being a dedicated local eater, (with a blog no less) I can't really say in good faith that we <span style="font-weight: bold;">shouldn't</span> change our consumption habits. I think that what we ALSO need to do is change our individual and collective relationship to food and agriculture. Lots of people view eating as something simply necessary for living and thus their food choices reflect a desire for convenience and quick gratification, among other un-self-reflexive and subconscious desires. Food, in this consumer's view, is a means to an end, and it shouldn't get in the way of more important things. I think for this person, going to the farmer's market might be the beginning of a new way of relating to food. As lots of people have pointed out, we have to start somewhere. BUT we can't STOP there. Given how tired I feel, I am having a hard time sincerely advocating for doing more, especially along the lines of what I just did. But I think doing something like this, along with other kinds of action on a variety of scales is essential to changing our food system. Rethinking our relationship to food means prioritizing a different set of values and objectives. I value getting my food from people I know, and I also value tasty food. I have an objective of health, which is directly and negatively related to how much sugar I put in my body. I also don't believe in buying food from people I know or eating tasty food just for right now, when it's in season and easy.<br /><br />So, I take a weekend afternoon (when I could be doing a lot of other things--shopping perhaps?) and spend some time getting hot, sweaty and a little frustrated, cuting up my hands and burning myself (not badly!) with scalding water. When I'm done, I have a cupboard full of sunshine and a lot more control over what I put in my body for a lot longer than the season when the trees in my world bear fruit. In an interesting twist of irony, the product I have made for myself is not available in any store (so I can't just change my shopping habits), since there doesn't seem to be a market for unsweetened canned fruit. I don't get it. I eat unsweetened fruit with plain unsweetened yogurt and don't feel deprived at all. But I digress.<br /><br />I'm actually a little sad that canning is over, because nothing in the rest of my week is going to make me feel like I've done something as important as this for myself. And, I probably won't get the same kind of sensual pleasure, measurable result and sense of accomplishment out of writing a paper or preparing a lecture, either. Try it. You might like it.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-42810470577365460882009-08-09T10:09:00.000-07:002009-08-09T11:01:07.773-07:00Shrimp and Grits<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3UKgFBHxf19dDH6Bz3LV5Q8HDELLjDKCemcxw_8I1XtWqVVg1KWWCAJgjOI1hbCv-ez2h-Au9CcRYGhHzT2S58X7mxAiX8dI_JdzAWk0YMNLcW9i5WNjl6gjHOHpz-PmwolUKaAumBYS9/s1600-h/IMG_1359.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh3UKgFBHxf19dDH6Bz3LV5Q8HDELLjDKCemcxw_8I1XtWqVVg1KWWCAJgjOI1hbCv-ez2h-Au9CcRYGhHzT2S58X7mxAiX8dI_JdzAWk0YMNLcW9i5WNjl6gjHOHpz-PmwolUKaAumBYS9/s320/IMG_1359.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5368012735950471122" border="0" /></a>I have a new favorite food. I also have a fairly unhealthy habit of reading while eating. In the absence of human company, books have always sufficed, I guess. While eating my new favorite food today, however, I was not able to concentrate on what I was reading. Every bite I put in my mouth exploded like fireworks of flavor and distracted me from my reading. I'm not sure what more I can say about this, other than whoever thought of putting shrimp and grits together on one plate was a genius. I also want to thank the good folks at Athens Locally Grown for letting me overhear them talking about putting poblano peppers, corn and shrimp together last week. Right around 8 pm, when our sweaty fatigue hits a peak, we start fantasizing about food, even though not a single one of us is going home to cook with all the goodness we just gathered up. I usually go home and have a mojito. :) The shrimp comes from Tybee Island and the "shrimp guy" shows up at the market and sells fresh caught shrimp for an amazing $5/pound. I made this up yesterday and then went out to watch High Strung at the Terrapin Brewery in Athens. I finished it up today for lunch and it was even better. Apparently the flavors had a chance to do some dancing while they sat together over night.<br /><br />Southern Girl Shrimp and Grits<br /><br />Serves 2-4<br />Time: 30 minutes<br /><br />2 tablespoons butter<br />1 tablespoon dried rosemary (if using fresh, add at the end)<br />1 clove garlic<br />1 medium poblano pepper (more or less depending on your taste for hot stuff)<br />1 onion, chopped<br />1 red pepper chopped<br />2 ears sweet corn<br />2 larger or 3 medium paste tomatoes (San Marzanos if you got em)<br />1 pound shrimp<br />1 cup milk or cream<br />salt and pepper to taste<br /><br />Sizzle the rosemary in the butter in a cast iron pan over high heat. When it turns brown around the edges, add the garlic and poblano pepper and cook, stirring constantly for a minute or so. Add the onion and red pepper and turn the heat to medium-low. Cover, stirring occasionally for about 5 minutes. When the onions are soft and releasing their juices, add the corn and tomatoes and cook for a few more minutes until the tomatoes get soft. Add the shrimp and cook until pink. Turn the heat down to low and stir in the milk. Be careful not to let it boil or it will seperate. Season with salt and pepper. Serve wtih grits and sauteed greens. Collards if you're a real southern girl...Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-90497321672831755192009-07-23T18:05:00.000-07:002009-07-23T18:48:43.554-07:00Georgia Terroir<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit_W4mYDwts-rrhuwODATlOGUEm91AINrMH1cfv7fCGYKHvu343_5xMipDP61IrFLqLljdUda5HJtzCTiExcNfEcELdq9X47kFCR6X1vGHELGLNaFVPzrn65_ueFbCryUev5RR7Lf6nJR8/s1600-h/IMG_1317.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEit_W4mYDwts-rrhuwODATlOGUEm91AINrMH1cfv7fCGYKHvu343_5xMipDP61IrFLqLljdUda5HJtzCTiExcNfEcELdq9X47kFCR6X1vGHELGLNaFVPzrn65_ueFbCryUev5RR7Lf6nJR8/s200/IMG_1317.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361827280037155602" border="0" /></a><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdWPgjvCaG1iSOsVgf-JjavbfDa2uFCj1ksVX0FL35nV8-pIpJ0_bzdBMfbLPVeZ_zr3rUZhnL17lMGjaVJKlHEQs-rjQ54-CymcAALnNTzBvhJShH-GW8cggjvvvg1Cr2iEL_WAxTQAA/s1600-h/IMG_1297.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 150px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSdWPgjvCaG1iSOsVgf-JjavbfDa2uFCj1ksVX0FL35nV8-pIpJ0_bzdBMfbLPVeZ_zr3rUZhnL17lMGjaVJKlHEQs-rjQ54-CymcAALnNTzBvhJShH-GW8cggjvvvg1Cr2iEL_WAxTQAA/s200/IMG_1297.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361827285546263362" border="0" /></a>I've been looking for a good (mostly) local alternative to traditional pesto. Inspiration came from the Moosewood Lowfat Cookbook which recommends using tomatoes as a substitute for Parmesan cheese and olive oil. The flavors of basil and tomato are naturally complementary and are naturally growing together right out there in my garden. I added pecans because they are so ubiquitous here in Georgia it's a bit ridiculous. The only time I ever saw a pecan in Minnesota was in the pie at Thanksgiving if we were lucky and went to the neighbors who had more decadant tastes. At the barn where George (the horse) lives, there is a large pecan orchard with trees yielding nuts the size of limes, and the odd twenty or so pecan trees just growing around the place. Pecans litter the ground in the fall. I'm thinking I might go into the business of pecan pressing and start a little cottage industry around pecan oil, which could also replace the olive oil in this recipe--the only thing that isn't local. If you really want to go completely local you could skip the oil. It isn't really necessary, but gives the pesto a luscious mouthfeel. I love the taste of Sun Gold tomatoes (who doesn't?) and think they have the best complementary taste to the peppery bittery bite of basil. Pecans are also sweet and have a delicious caramelized taste and fragrance when lightly toasted. So, this pesto is a bit non-traditional in taste, but heck, we aren't living in Italy. We're living in Georgia, so who cares if it tastes a little bit more like Georgia than Italy?<br /><br />Sun Gold Pecan Pesto<br /><br />Yields about 2 1/2 cups of pesto<br /><br />3 cups packed basil leaves<br />1 cup Sun Gold tomatoes<br />3/4 cup pecan halves, lightly toasted<br />4 cloves garlic<br />1/2 tsp salt<br />1 T olive oil (optional)<br /><br />In a food processor, combine basil, tomatoes, garlic, pecans and salt and puree until smooth.<br /><br />I regularly have this with sliced Cherokee Purple tomatoes and goat feta with some salad greens. It doesn't need much more than a grind of black pepper and some saltAmy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-6991200606698603982009-07-08T06:57:00.000-07:002009-07-23T19:22:24.666-07:00Butter Addendum<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzd55t15ANuy-vyGFk5OTyr1OpbS8WMjZR_WB0UR2yeeDLS_cI9Wo1_PMS6jNjeynxuR5NcbfWpYIeN-FFRaeiEXxAiwrYLJYlD26upPGwRVmlISY7M7bCm9DqvkrzpgRtsyBO7su6mBV/s1600-h/IMG_1316.JPG"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgNzd55t15ANuy-vyGFk5OTyr1OpbS8WMjZR_WB0UR2yeeDLS_cI9Wo1_PMS6jNjeynxuR5NcbfWpYIeN-FFRaeiEXxAiwrYLJYlD26upPGwRVmlISY7M7bCm9DqvkrzpgRtsyBO7su6mBV/s320/IMG_1316.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5361838257220237634" border="0" /></a>I made butter again this morning (while getting caffeinated). From my last experience, I learned to have something else to do while waiting for butter to happen. This time, I let the cream settle (maybe, rise?) for a couple days and was rewarded with *heavy* cream, which is lot easier to turn into butter. Duh. This time I also am going to let the buttermilk sour and at some point, maybe for supper, I am going to make blueberry buttermilk pancakes with fresh blueberries, blueberry syrup and fresh whipped butter. Oh my god.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-46794271303905061262009-07-08T06:15:00.000-07:002009-07-08T06:47:21.855-07:00Braised Chicken with Thyme and Tomatoes<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_XXXgE4AZhMZe-xBdmY4v6UrcwZHEvFMqQCJ5umDRc_gTfPwfiH2iAmEL2t6prp5ih4TTDOwbO4AI0JGNLDUnhLg61yBHOu1EVoOxE8zZG8_CVy2gJPGA-ljVo8ODq7oasQcxRncqXLk/s1600-h/thyme+and+tomato+chicken.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA_XXXgE4AZhMZe-xBdmY4v6UrcwZHEvFMqQCJ5umDRc_gTfPwfiH2iAmEL2t6prp5ih4TTDOwbO4AI0JGNLDUnhLg61yBHOu1EVoOxE8zZG8_CVy2gJPGA-ljVo8ODq7oasQcxRncqXLk/s320/thyme+and+tomato+chicken.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5356080950964335026" border="0" /></a><br />Two days ago, I had some extra thyme and some very ripe plum tomatoes. There had been a generous yield in the garden and the market take of tomatoes was exceptional last week. Also, now free from work obligations for 6 weeks (for the first time in several years)--I did what most folks would naturally do with some extra free thyme (oh yes, pun intended) on their hands--I cleaned my freezer. While excavating, I found some chicken legs and thighs in the back. Grass-fed chicken (because the bird actually gets some exercise) tends to be a bit chewier than that anemic corn fed stuff called chicken in the grocery store, so it takes a little different kind of treatment, like marinating it in yogurt, garlic and pepper. Normally, this treatment also infuses the already tasty bird with some delicious flavors. I didn't have any yogurt at the moment--it was on the docket for the day and I only had enough left for starter, so I scratched my head (sipped a minty mojito) and looked around for inspiration. Next to my pile of thyme and tomatoes, I had some chicken stock thawing for braising vegetables, and I visualized a delicious mound of eggplant, kale and zucchini holding up a couple of braised chicken thighs and thought YUM! Braising (especially with tomatoes) tenderizes the meat with long, slow cooking, so marinading is not necessary. I made yogurt while this dish cooked. (yes I am the queen of the multi-task).<br /><br />Thyme and tomato chicken (serves 2)<br /><br />Oil, butter grease for the pan--2 T<br />2 of each chicken legs and thighs<br />Salt and pepper<br />2 garlic cloves, coarsely chopped<br />1 1/2 cups chicken stock<br />7-10 plum tomatoes, very ripe<br />Large handful of thyme sprigs, coarsely chopped<br /><br />Wash and dry the chicken and sprinkle liberally with salt and pepper on both sides. Heat the oil/grease/butter in the pan and add the chicken. Brown on all sides for several minutes, until the chicken starts releasing its juices (put a cover on the pan to avoid the splattering). Add the chicken stock, garlic, tomatoes and thyme and cover. Bring to a boil and reduce heat to medium low. Cook for 45 minutes-1 hour, depending on your chicken and your preferences. Enjoy!Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3820307200565347588.post-83065465370254070792009-06-29T16:04:00.000-07:002009-06-29T16:22:58.601-07:00Tomato paneer curry and sauteed kale<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggzRTMEBJZkY94bc0IfZF4dX6TmO6dxVTqY-qrUw9QQy3xgfDXqzOQKuN2o2CGe9O84ej3ZRfB7D4zIcOmO98JDF54JxFUEJtqmMDfiPoev1eXpXTkWkosrFFVxAAWGIp1cvyPvLtH4luj/s1600-h/tomato+paneer.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggzRTMEBJZkY94bc0IfZF4dX6TmO6dxVTqY-qrUw9QQy3xgfDXqzOQKuN2o2CGe9O84ej3ZRfB7D4zIcOmO98JDF54JxFUEJtqmMDfiPoev1eXpXTkWkosrFFVxAAWGIp1cvyPvLtH4luj/s320/tomato+paneer.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5352889787359551330" border="0" /></a><br />This is an excellent example of why I love local food. This is 100% local and 1000% yum. This is also why I made butter--so that I could make a curry without oil. Okay, so it has some non-local spices, but I'm working on it! This is a perfect light meal for a hot summer day. It's a bit spicy and the cumin is very fragrant and delicious. For lots of reasons I've stopped eating a great deal of carbohydrates for supper and I would eat this with a peach for dessert and maybe some yogurt raita on the side. You could cook up some potatoes in the kale if you want some starch to soak up the luscious juices. <br /><br />Tomato Paneer Curry (serves 2-3)--From Madhur Jaffrey's World Vegetarian Cookbook<br /><br />2 T butter<br />1 tsp roasted cumin seeds<br />1/4 cup chopped onion<br />1 1/2 cup peeled, chopped tomatoes<br />1 tsp ground cumin<br />1/2 tsp turmeric<br />1/4 tsp ground cayenne<br />1/2 tsp salt<br />ground black pepper to taste<br />1 cup cubed paneer<br />2-3 T chopped cilantro<br /><br /><br />Melt the butter in a cast iron fry pan and sizzle the cumin seeds for a few minutes. Add the onions and saute until the edges are a bit brown and crisp. Add the tomatoes and cook until reduced, about 5 minutes. Stir in the spices and paneer and cook for two more minutes. Turn off heat, add cilantro and adjust salt and pepper to taste. Serve hot.<br /><br />Sauteed Kale<br /><br />1 T butter<br />1 garlic clove<br />1/2 cup chopped onion<br />4 cups coarsely chopped kale<br /><br />Melt butter and saute garlic and onion until they release their fragrant juices. Add the kale and cook over medium heat until kale turns a bright green and/or until done to your desired texture. I like mine crunchy.Amy Traugerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03430108592313324227noreply@blogger.com0