What We Need Is Here

Spunky Oaxacan Squash and Potato Soup

I was so happy to see potatoes bountiful at the market again. I know you can get them year around almost anyplace, but this is part of the joy of eating local food in season: you look forward to things like potatoes! Planted in January in the dead of cold, potato plants are lovely, deep green, bushy things in the garden. Their tubers are like buried treasure in the early spring - new potatoes for potato salad, and now full-blown potatoes ready for soup.

We used market squash, onions, and green beans as well as cilantro from a friend to make this practically-local soup. It was so delicious, it took me by surprise. Something about it is just right for the hot weather we're having. Folks down at the cafe seem to be liking it too.

Spunky Oaxacan Squash and Potato Soup

2 cups onion, chopped
5 cloves garlic, diced
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 tablespoon cumin
2 teaspoons ground coriander
1/2 - 1 teaspoon ground chipotle peppers (found at Ward's - delicious)
1 tablespoon salt
2 cups diced potatoes
2 cups chopped squash
2 cup chopped green beans
2 large cans tomatoes
1 can kidney beans
enough water to make soup

Optional toppings:
Sour cream
Cilantro

Saute onion and garlic in olive oil till tender.  Add coriander, cumin, and chipotle pepper, and stir around a bit. Add a little water to keep from burning while you thow in the green beans and potatotes. Cover with water, bring to a boil, and simmer till potatoes and beans are tender. Add tomatoes and squash, bring to a boil and cook just a few minutes till squash are tender. Add kidney beans and enough water to create adequate amount of soup broth (thick or thin, up to you). Salt to taste, bring to boil, then turn heat off and serve with  a dollop of sour cream and a sprinkle of cilantro if desired.

Potatoes, we are glad you have returned to us!

Ode to the Potato

"They eat a lot of French fries here," my mother
   announces after a week in Paris, and she's right,
not only about les pommes frites but the celestial tuber
   in all its forms: rotie, purée, not to mention
au gratin or boiled and oiled in la salade niçoise.
   Batata edulis discovered by gold-mad conquistadors
in the West Indies, and only a 100 years later
   in The Merry Wives of Windsor Falstaff cries,
"Let the skie raine Potatoes," for what would we be
   without you—lost in a sea of fried turnips,
mashed beets, roasted parsnips? Mi corazón, mon coeur,
   my core is not the heart but the stomach, tuber
of the body, its hollow stem the throat and esophagus,
   leafing out to the nose and eyes and mouth. Hail
the conquering spud, all its names marvelous: Solanum
   tuberosum, Igname, Caribe, Russian Banana, Yukon Gold.
When you turned black, Ireland mourned. O Mr. Potato Head,
   how many deals can a man make before he stops being
small potatoes? How many men can a woman drop
   like a hot potato? Eat it cooked or raw like an apple
with salt of the earth, apple of the earth, pomme de terre.
   Tuber, tuber burning bright in a kingdom without light,
deep within the earth where the Incan potato gods rule,
   forging their golden orbs for the world's ravening gorge.

"Ode to the Potato" by Barbara Hamby, from Babel. © University of Pittsburgh Press, 2004.

Everything is growing!

It seems like every time I round the corner into the family room I come face to face with two totally different chickens. It's hard to believe they were two little peeps who could fit together into a custard cup just two weeks ago. Today they seem to have twice the amount of real feathers they had yesterday and they look as gawky as middle schoolers. We're going to have to come up with a larger pen for them while they grow old enough to go outdoors (just two more weeks).

Same thing with the garden. The seeds we planted two weeks ago are little plants in the garden now and the transplants are twice as big in spite of the recent cold snap.

It's happening everyplace. Our bucket at the farmers' market runneth over. Each week after we buy what we can afford, we leave a bucket out for farmers to put any leftover produce in that they want to donate to our soup. This week we had about four buckets full - so much that we ended up giving some away to families in our neighborhood. It was nice to think of all those steaming pots of collards, mustards, and turnips on Easter day.  And we still  have plenty for a week's worth of healthy soup.

I love this time of year - beautiful weather, new life, new leaves, new growth everywhere. It is good.

OJ - The way it used to be...

 
Warren and Erika Henderson, orange growers extraordinaire at the Saturday market, had some delicious Valencia oranges for juicing last weekend. We brought a bucket home. Serendipitously, on the way home, I passed by my favorite hardware store, George's, to look for more canning supplies. George's is so much more than a hardware store - more like I imagine a dry-goods store from the past might have been. They've got a little bit of everything (including the jars I was looking for), PLUS there on one shelf of odds and ends was the orange juicer of my dreams.  Seriously, I have been looking for an affordable, non-electric juicer like this for ages.

It's so simple and elegant, and so old it was actually "made in America."  It's got a little spout just far enough off the table for a juice glass to fit under. Remember juice glasses? Back in the day before the "big gulps" took over, tiny 4 oz. sizes glasses were just right for the treat that fresh oranges must have been. In short order, our juicer produced a half-gallon of the perfect sweet-tart orange juice - which disappeared in about 24 hours. I need to remind the other members of our household of the virtue of the juice glass...

Thank goodness it's still orange season here. And by the way, local folks, there's one more juicer at George's.

Beets are back

I've mentioned before that I'm not a beet-lover, more of an admirer. Like turnips, they're pretty to look at, and they also share a nice solid history of bringing substance and nutrition to the soups and stews of those who couldn't afford much else. I respect this in a vegetable.

But beets have an earthy taste that is a little off-putting to me for some reason. I find them much sweeter - and prettier - raw.  I was able to use them in a delicious, almost-all-local lunch salad today. 

March Beet, Carrot, and Goat Cheese Salad

• green and red lettuce leaves
• grated carrot
• grated beets
• a few  of last fall's pecans
• a little local goat cheese
• kidney beans - optional, but I had some left over from soup and they helped transform the salad into a full lunch
• vinaigrette (my favorite combines equal parts rice vinegar and vegetable oil with a bit of salt)

Except for the goat cheese and kidney beans, it's all at the farmers market now. I buy the kidneys in bulk from Ward's. And the local cheese... I'm really lucky to have a friend with goats!

You can't have it all

Last week when the students were here, I was asked a question I hear a lot, "How can you afford to buy locally when you can get things so much more cheaply at Wal-Mart?"

This is an umbrella question that covers several others: "How do you afford it?" "How do you justify it?" Why do you go to the bother?"

The last one, we talk about a lot. While it does add an additional - and sometimes burdensome - step to shopping decisions, we find buying locally worth the trouble. You know these goods already: keeping money in the local economy, knowing food producers so we can be assured that the food is healthy and grown in a sustainable way, supporting folks who are working hard to keep their local businesses thriving in a world of big box stores.

For us, the justification is fairly simple as well - although like all simple things, it's not always easy. We want our money to go toward supporting a just "system." Because we live with and near folks who live in poverty, we see first-hand and every day the downside of the economic and social system that we - John and I, and other middle class folks - have profited from. The larger the system, the more the parts become... just parts. A number of people we meet are treated as "expendable" - whether as former soldiers now living on the streets, laborers working for minimum wage, undocumented immigrants trying to support their families on less than minimum wage, or addicts and alcoholics who've been given up on. Go back a generation and a lot of these folks were from farm families and blue collar factory-working families. They weren't "living high" but they were making a decent living, raising thriving families, and enjoyed a certain amount of social stability. The farm crisis of the 80s and the slow death of manufacturing as jobs were shipped overseas to folks working way below minimum wage (so we could have more and cheaper stuff) destroyed a way of life for many people. Signing on with the military, seeking day labor work, migrating across borders, and seeking relief from drugs and alcohol isn't providing a substitute for the life that's gone. While we aren't under the illusion that our efforts to support small, local enterprises is solving this huge problem, we hope to be a part of a growing movement of people who can begin to turn things around. It simply doesn't make sense for us to be reaching out to the victims of our economic/social system while supporting the same system.

How can we actually afford it? In a nutshell, we decide what we can live without. Like our mamas told us: "You can't have it all." Personally, we can live without cable TV, meat, a very warm house in the winter ore a very cool house in the summer among other things. And we find we can live with eating lots of dried beans along with our farm-fresh veggies. Questions about what exactly one can live with or without are highly personal, but they're worth spending a lifetime pondering. Not to wax too philosophical, but the thrilling question at the core is "What do you want your life to be about?" For a long time, we as a people didn't ask the right questions and the not-asking sent us down a road most of us no longer want to be on. Living the questions (thank you, Rainer Maria Rilke) can begin to set us straight. You can't have it all. What do you want your life to be about?

I can't stop loving you...

I am a coffee addict. Coffee does not grow in Gainesville.

Lucky for me, I am not a purist (so I tell myself), so I can compromise when absolutely necessary (and it IS absolutely necessary) and buy fair-trade, bird-friendly, organic, etc., etc., etc. But no coffee I buy and brew at home tastes half as good as the stuff for which I spend ten times as much at a coffee shop and drink with a friend - or a good book and a little knitting.

It's the experience, the ritual... I recently read that it is now a Documented Fact that ritual is important to the enjoyment of the cuppa. Apparently the good feeling associated with the caffeine buzz attaches itself to the props as well - the mouth-feel of a particular cup, the ambience of a particular coffee shop, the morning ritual of newspaper and quiet. Put more bluntly: "People develop a passion for the way the drug is delivered." 

Right now, I really like my drug delivered at Volta. How this place escaped my notice for as long as it did is amazing to me. Volta specializes in coffee, tea, and CHOCOLATE for Pete's sake. It is a five minute walk from my house. I can practically see it from my front door. 

It is a little pricey - which will hopefully help limit my consumption. It's also not a grab and go kind of place. I've noticed most people stopping in and staying to drink, eat (they've got pastries...), read, and use the WiFi.  So it's community-building, okay?  Local community building, that's why I go.

the next generation (it's hot chocolate!)

Pressure-Canned Collards!

I am not impressed, at least not by the results. So few jars for so much time! And angst!

But the process was interesting. It took 2.5 hours from start to finish, probably due in part to inexperience and fear. We cleaned, cleaned, and cleaned surfaces, jars, and utensils, washed the collards three times, then got to steaming then canning them, using our brand new All-American Pressure Canner and the the Ball Blue Book of Preserving (aka The Bible). The real time-sucker was watching over the canner to make sure the weight jiggled "one to four times per minute" to assure accurate pressure - FOR 70 MINUTES. Next time, I'll make sure I have some knitting close by so I'll have something to do with my hands besides wring them...

It was a mistake to use pint jars. We couldn't find quarts anyplace over the weekend; Faced with a windfall of donated greens and wanting to make good use of them, we plunged ahead with the pints. If we had used the larger size, we would have had twice the output, which would have been heartening.

I have frozen extra greens in the past, but our smallish freezer is perpetually full of something or other, and using re-useable glass jars instead of freezer bags seemed like a plus... Does the canning process use more energy than a separate freezer does? I have no idea! But I would think quantity makes a difference, and we sure have that. In any case, I'm not giving up on the idea of "putting by" our excess produce this way. Next time, I'll see if quart jars (wherever you are) and a little more experience helps fine-tune the process!

Kohlrabi

image from fussyfoodie.co.uk

Also known as "vegetable Sputnik," kohlrabi is available at the farmers market now. High in potassium, fiber, and vitamins A and C, it's a good thing to learn to like. And it's pretty easy, too. Peeled and cubed it's almost indistinguishable from the sweet innards of broccoli stalks.  Some folks mash them like potatoes - or with potatoes. But I like to add them to soup (of course!). 

We used them in our cafe chili yesterday. It's still so cold, and our guests really appreciated its spicy goodness.  We named it "Southern Sweet Potato Chili" again although the rutabagas, turnips, and kohlrabi outnumbered the sweet potatoes two to one. Rutabaga Chili just doesn't sound as inviting. Plus the cubed, white root vegetables get lost in the soup and look, to the untrained (and unsuspecting) eye, like a potato.

Root vegetables like these grow so well this time of year, and good cooks have been adding them to soups and stews since time immemorial, nourishing their family and friends with the food grown right out the back door. The fresh leaves of kohlrabi can be chopped and added along with the bulb (actually a swollen stem) to add even more nutrition.

Calomondin Marmalade

This is one area in which our region excels: Oranges in Winter. Oh, it is good. Not only are they high in vitamin C which is very handy this time of year, but citrus fruits are little orbs of sunshine on a cold day.

We used some of the littlest orbs - calomondins - to make marmalade this week. Calomondins originated in Asia and are thought to be a hybrid of kumquats and tangerines - but no one seems to know for sure. They have thin, sweet peels like kumquats, and they peel easy and have easily sectioned fruit like tangerines. They are extremely sour, though, which is why most people grow them only as ornamentals.

We bought four little baskets full from the Hendersons at the farmers market on Saturday and turned them into sweet and sour marmalade. The process took about two hours of my time in the kitchen, although the juice had to rest in the fridge overnight midway to develop the pectin.

I am not a fan of jellies, jams, and marmalades generally. But I love the idea of local ones so much that I truly enjoy them when I make them or get them from someone who has.  And they do taste so much more fruity than the kind you buy at the supermarket. This one is my favorite so far - tangy, textured with little bits of tasty peel, and lovely to behold spread on warm toast on a cold morning.

CALAMONDIN MARMALADE RECIPE

Select four cups of firm fruit, free of blemishes. Remove seeds and slice thinly. Measure fruit and place in saucepan. Add 3/4 cup water to each cup of fruit. Bring to a boil and boil for 15 minutes. Cool, and place in the refrigerator overnight to develop pectin.

The next day, measure the stock, and for each cup of stock add 1 cup sugar. Bring mixture to a boil and continue to boil until candy thermometer reads 220 degrees.  Pour immediately into sterilized jars and process in a hot water bath for 5 minutes.

Michael Pollan for Food Czar

Now that Obama is putting together his cabinet, Bill Moyers (and a lot of others) wish he would choose some "real change" and place someone like Michael Pollan in there to address an issue close to home. Our food system, which Pollan posits as a driving force behind global warming, fossil fuel depletion, and our plummeting health, needs to be plucked out of the hands of the corrupt and self-serving Department of Agriculture and addressed in the context of these urgent issues. 

Pollan was interviewed recently by Bill Moyers. Here are some of his comments. Listen to the whole interview and read more about Pollan and his work here.

Why the farm bills keep paying agribusiness millions of dollars to continue doing what it's doing:

. . . That [agriculture] department of the government, the $90 billion a year behemoth is captive of agri-business. It is owned by agri-business. They're in the room making policy there. When you have a food safety recall over meat, sitting there with the Secretary of Agriculture and her chief of staff or his chief of staff is the head of the National Cattlemen's Beef Association.

What “Big Agriculture” is doing – and why our food system uses more fossil fuel than any other human activity, including driving to work every day:

. . . Grow[ing] those giant monocultures of corn and soy. As soon as you plant a monoculture, which is all that is lots of the same thing year after year. You risk depleting the fertility of the soil. So how do you replenish the fertility? Fertilizer. How do you make fertilizer? It's made with natural gas, diesel, oil. So we actually have to spread huge quantities of oil or fossil fuels on our fields to keep the food coming.

When you grow a monoculture, you also get lots of pests. They love monocultures. You build up the population of the pests by giving them a vast buffet of exactly what they're they evolved to eat. So how do you protect them? Well, you use pesticides made from fossil fuels. When you grow corn and soy, which are not exactly foods, they can't eat any of this stuff. It's raw material for processed food. You then have to process it. And so it takes ten calories of fossil fuel energy to produce one calorie of food at the end of that, you know, to make a Twinkie or something like that. It's a very fuel intensive process, with the result that all our food together, if you think of what's in the supermarket, is taking more than ten calories of fossil fuel, one calorie of food.

Why processed/fast food is so cheap:

When you have monocultures of corn and soy in the fields, which is what we have because they're our farm policy [heavily subsidized by our tax dollars], you end up with a fast-food diet because growing all that corn and soy, those are those are the building blocks of fast food. We turn the corn into high fructose corn syrup to sweeten the sodas. We also turn the corn into cheap feed lot meat. The soy we turn into also cheap feed lot meat and hydrogenated soy oil, which is what all our fast food is fried in. It has trans fats know as lethal. So we are basically, you know, subsidizing fast food.

Why the new administration needs to make the issue of food a priority: 

[to Obama] Well, I think if you if you really care about dealing with climate change, which you did talk about during the campaign; if you really care about dealing with the healthcare crisis, which is going to mean getting healthcare costs down; if you really care about feeding the rest of the world, because we haven't talked about how our agricultural policies are taking food out of the mouths of people in Africa and throughout Asia, our ethanol policies in particular, you can't escape food. Food is the shadow issue over all those other issues.

Why we should feel empowered in the face of all this bad news:

… The great thing about this issue, and it's very different than a lot of other issues. It's very different than climate change, energy and so many different issues we're grappling with is you don't have to wait for Nancy Pelosi or Barack Obama or Collin Peterson to get their act together on this issue. You can act now. There are alternatives. You can vote with your fork.

You don't, you know, it's important to vote with your vote as well, for better agricultural policies. But what's happening around this country is we're building an alternative food economy. It's being done without virtually any support from the government. And it's burgeoning. Now, yeah, sometimes it costs more. Not always. There is a moment in the farmers market where the tomatoes are really cheap. The potatoes, the apples are really cheap, and you buy them then, and you know, it's a really good deal. So I dispute that it's always more expensive. I think that you have to shop strategically and be prepared to cook. And then you can eat in a budget-conscious way.

So that's one thing. Think of the dollars you spend on food in a different way. You're not just a consumer. You're a producer too. And you can produce another kind of agriculture depending on where you choose to spend your money. So that's point one.

An example of the power of voting with your fork:

Look at the rise of organic agriculture in this country. It's now, what, $20 billion business, okay? It grew without any help from the government until very recently. It grew essentially, consumers talking to farmers, farmers talking to consumers. They developed this market. Everyone who is willing to spend that extra money on organic was helping to create a new kind of farm, a new kind of agriculture.

Finally, Michael Pollan answers the question we will all arrive at when discussing making changes in our food system: “Will we be able to feed the world if we make changes to this system?

The 'can we feed the world' argument has been used for 50 years to drive the industrialization of agriculture. It is agri-business propaganda, people who are not interested in feeding the world. They're interesting in driving up productivity, on American farms. Yes, some want to export it. ADM and Cargill want to ship it out to other places, but basically they want their raw materials as cheap as possible. I'm talking about Coca-Cola. I'm talking about McDonald's. And the way you keep you need overproduction to do that. You want your raw materials, if you're producing that McDonald's hamburger, or Coca-Cola, you're dependent on that corn and soy, and the cheaper that is, the more profit you're going to make.

Again, read the transcript or watch the video here. It’s well worth the half hour.