Sorry We're Slackers

Just a quick note of closure. We made it! Life got a bit hectic in the end, but have no fear we finished the month with flying colors. The last day in February coincidentally coincided with Sam's birthday so we celebrated in full force with good food, good booze and good company. I made a carrot cake with 90% local ingredients (the exceptions were sugar, salt, spices, and baking soda) even the cream cheese frosting was local!

The End.

Why February?

Good question.

Answer: why not?

It may seem crazy to subsist off of winter produce alone, but we live in Texas. It’s actually easier to grow things through the mild winter than keep them alive through the hot summer. Sure, we don’t have strawberries or eggplant right now but all in due time, all in due time. Winter crops from California to Florida are full of exciting greens and citrus among other fruits, veggies, and nuts.

This diet has proved to be a crash course in seasonal eating. By eating seasonally we eat foods that grow naturally with the environmental conditions (ie lettuce in the winter and bell peppers in the summer), it reduces the energy and resources put into growing water intensive plants in the summer and light intensive plants in the winter. Can you imagine trying to keep arugula alive through August in Texas?

The local element cuts out anything that might be grown somewhat seasonally say in Mexico and trucked up north. Again, we do live in Texas where it is possible to grow food through the winter. This is not necessarily an option for more northerly regions but I challenge you to find one fresh food item produced in your local region in the winter. You might be surprised, mushrooms for example can be grown almost anywhere.

All the seasonality aside, we have been

experiencing a rash of weather conditions here in Austin. Check out these two pictures of my garden, the first taken on Tuesday and the second on Thursday…

Switching gears, here is the best lunch I have had all month!

Grilled and sautéed mushrooms, onions, mustard greens and potatoes on a bed of spinach with a side of black eyed peas topped with cheddar cheese and Guacamole!

The guacamole is one avocado mixed with some diced red onion, tomato, cilantro and a splash of grapefruit/ orange juice. Mmmmmmm

And lastly, the treasure of the day from the Downtown Farmer’s market: Cream Cheese!! This comes from Full Quiver Farms, the same place we get cheddar and mozzarella from. It’s so delicious I wouldn’t be surprised if I finish the tub today.

Our First Reader Submitted Meal

Ginnie took up my offer and submitted the list of foods that she ate for dinner on Wednesday. Since last I can recall she was in The Second City aka City of Big Shoulders aka Hog Butcher for the World I used that as her hometown. Unfortunately, her details were a bit lacking so I embellished as needed. Given that she's the only one to submit the current rankings are:
1.) Liz and Sam
2.) Ginnie

Submit what you ate and try and claim your own piece of Olympic history.

Ginnie's Repast:
Beluga caviar on table water crackers (I assumed only the best here, Carlisle for the crackers and the Caspian Sea for the caviar)
Italian, salt-packed capers (L'isola di Pantelleria vicino a Sicilia)
French brie (also on the crackers) (The French Region of Brie, same crackers waste not want not)
New Zeland Gala apple (Middle Earth)
Belgian Chocolates (Brussels)

We have no idea where 60% of infected carcasses come from

* Synthesizer Trumpets GO!*

It's the final countdown

That’s right y’all; Liz and my locals only diet is in its last throes and the word ya’ll should be indicative of just how serious things have gotten. This time next week we’ll be 24 hours into our month-long coffee, beer, and popcorn tofu bender, but for now we’re still going strong. Although most of our current thoughts are firmly focused on exactly what next Monday will entail (margaritas, popcorn tofu po-boys smothered in cashew tamari, etc) I think it’s worthwhile to post a bit about our motivations for this whole adventure.

This past summer, I participated in a workshop at the National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis on modeling Bovine Tuberculosis in the United States. As it turns out, this is a non-trivial problem in part because there are few to no requirements for recording where food is born, raised, shipped, and slaughtered. To illustrate this points, consider the title of this post, a reference to one of the most damning statistics shared during the meeting, “Of all the bovine TB cases identified at slaughter only around 40% can be traced back to a herd of origin.” Let that sink in.

Now you may think that cows and pigs have it bad, and they do, but poultry by far has it worse. There are nearly 300 million laying hens in the US confined to cages so small they can’t even spread their wings, all while their slaughter does not fall under the US Humane Methods of Slaughter Act. These huge factory farms are literally breeding grounds for animal diseases. Fact - The recent swine-origin H1N1 emerged from an industrial hog farm in central Mexico. Let that sink in.

Time to take the wind from the vegetarian sails. Pesticides cause irreparable harm to the environment, fertilizer is generating clouds of death that extend hundreds of miles from the mouth of the Mississippi into the Gulf of Mexico, and bacterial (think e. coli and salmonella) outbreaks are becoming more common every year. Fact - even though industrial dairy farms don’t slaughter their milking cows they can be nearly as inhumane. This is why all milk has to be pasteurized.

Which brings us to our current state of affairs. You don’t have to eat locally for a month to make a difference (in fact even if you did it still wouldn’t make a difference), but you can make a conscious effort to eat only products that are farmed and processed in an environmentally friendly, sustainable, and humane manner. It’s easier than ever to take food assurance into your own hands. Not only will you end up living a healthier life, but I’m sure you’ll be impressed with how wonderful food can taste (we’ve all been missing out).

We also challenge you to consider the environmental impact of your food choices in terms of both production and transportation. As motivation, consider the above map. Each line connects either the farm where our food was produced or where we purchased it to our houses in Austin. Now tomorrow think about what your map will look like. Fact - If you send me location information on the food you eat and where you live I’ll make the map for you and post it to the blog. Contest anyone? Happy responsible eating and sorry if the final countdown is stuck in your head, it’s still is in mine : ) * Synthesizer Trumpets GO!*

"The line of the buildings stood clear-cut and black against the sky; here and there out of the mass rose the great chimneys, with the river of smoke streaming away to the end of the world." – Upton Sinclair The Jungle

Fat Tuesday Sweet Tooth Recipes

We knew this blogging thing would eventually slow down, but here we are back in action! It’s Wednesday (Ash Wednesday at that, Happy Mardi Gras), which is synonymous with CSA basket day. Still gettin’ a lot of greens but as I was unloading the box into my grocery bags a bright shinning beacon of hope was tucked away in the back corner waiting to surprise and delight me… an Avocado!! I knew they grew in Texas but had no idea about the season or region. Apparently this one came from the citrus farm that also supplies our CSA with oranges and grapefruits. There were no more to be found today but maybe we will spy some at the Saturday market (one can only hope).

The beans have been a great boost to our diet. Egg protein is starting to get a little old so it’s nice to throw in the complete rice and bean protein now and again. Although the woman I bought eggs from today gave me a half dozen for free! So now I have 18 eggs to try and consume. I guess it’s a good thing we have so much dill and mayo. Speaking of mayo- here are the latest recipes:

Notice the use of BUTTER. Way Back When Dairy sells butter along with yogurt milk and cream at the sunset valley farmers market. What a treat.

Orange Pecan Cookies

3 Tbsp honey

3 Tbsp butter

6 Tbsp flour

grated orange peal

toasted and chopped pecans

-mix honey and butter in a pot on low heat. When uniform, add flour, orange and pecan. Bake at 375 for 7-10 minutes. They go great with peppermint tea.

Rice Pudding
2.5 cups whole milk
1/3 cup white rice
two heaping spoonfuls of raw honey
splash of vanilla
pecan pieces
-Bring rice and milk to a boil and stir occasionally to prevent sticking and scalding. When rice is al dente add honey and vanilla. Stir until honey is dissolved and keep on low heat until milk has thickened to desired consistency. Serve hot or cold. To get a nice skin formed on the top- let cool uncovered before storing. Mix in pecans right before eating.

Herbed mayo
One egg yolk or full egg
Juice from half an orange
½-3/4 cup olive oil
chopped parsley and dill
-put egg and orange into food processor with normal blade and run for a minute. Very very slowly add oil through feed tube while the blade is still running. You should start to see the mixture thicken up. Stop a few times to scrape down the sides and make sure the bottom is mixing in. Add chopped herbs when you reach your desired consistency. Just using the egg yolk will produce a very thick “peaky” mayo. Adding the whole egg will make it more of a puffy dip. Ordinarily I think you are supposed to use a less flavorful oil like canola because this mayo tastes overwhelmingly like olive oil. Not necessarily a bad thing, but just a heads up.

Update on the Paneer
I was a little skeptical of making it with grapefruit instead of lemon and the result was a pinkish curdled mass. However when I pulled it out of the fridge yesterday it was a perfect cheese texture and browned up nicely in a stir-fry with rice and roasted veggies.

And just for fun here is a picture of how I start about 70% of my meals- Mushrooms, green onions, olive oil and my favorite cast iron skillet

Beans, Beans, They're Good for Your Heart...

And our morale.

We've known since well before launch day that a company in Dallas, Green Valley Food Corp., grew black eyed peas and that in theory one could purchase these beans at Wheatsville in Austin. However, every time we asked we recieved one of three answers:

1. "They'll be in tomorrow."

2. "Sometime next week."

3. "No way will we have those before May."

Liz and I had effectively given up hope and turned our fantasizing efforts toward something more concrete (e.g. we're half-way towards coffee). Actually, I can only speak for myself in this regard and in all honesty we're having a blast with the diet and really only miss a few select items. Digression aside, last night I made the trek through our lovely El Nino weather, 40 and raining, to Wheatsville with the intention of replacing my exhausted dairy stash, but low and behold during my usual and again fruitless search of the produce section for local hot peppers I came across 6 bags of Green Valley Food's black eyed peas. I bought them all.

Sam: I have a black eyed present for you.

Liz: YES! YES! YES!

Sam: Eat huevos rancheros (unfortunately minus the hot peppers) the following morning.

Things were a bit crazy this week, but I'm still planning a post on food assurance in the US, which will probably happen sometime this weekend. In the meantime enjoy my recipe for ranch eggs sans hot peppers and please post any black eyed peas related suggestions.


Beans:

bring 7 cups of water and 1 cup juice from Pure Luck Feta cheese container to a boil.

Add 2 12oz packages Green Valley black eyed peas, reduce heat and simmer for 1 hour

Add 1 huge ass sweet potato, 2 beats, onions, garlic, carrots, and spices

simmer for 1 hour

Add de-stemmed kale

simmer for 30 minutes or until the beans and sweet potato are ready to eat

Ranch Eggs:

Prepare 2 flour tortillas (I've found that making up a huge batch and keeping them uncooked in the fridge is the way to go)

2 eggs in the key of over easy

warm the beans in a skillet with a tomato

place the eggs on top of the tortillas and submerge in beans

place huge grin on face

enjoy

But tell me how you really feel

1 week down, 3 to go.

This project has not only dictated a change in diet, but social environment as well. Preping and cooking every meal at home is quite an adjustment from the everyday routine (so many dishes, so little time) but there is also a certain element of social interaction that has been altered by lack of coffee breaks, going out to weekly lab lunch or grabbing drinks before rocking out to a Queen cover band. However, the inability to purchase practically anything has not led to total isolation.

My solution to the bar problem maybe frowned upon by some but it involves forethought in wine purchasing, a nalgene bottle and an empty pint glass. Not the classiest vessel for vino but I don’t think they have corking fee policies at Lovejoy’s or the Beauty Bar. The same might go for food at a restaurant although I can’t say I have tried that yet. My hope is that if you are there with a group of people and explain to the manager that you have a highly restrictive diet then they should let it slide. It would be the same thing if a gluten intolerant vegan allergic to most brassicaceae wanted to sit with their friends at a restaurant right?

As for the physical response to this diet the only thing I can say is I feel tired ALL the time. This is quite possibly due to the fact that school has just started back up, I have 600 things to do, and its February during an El Niño year. Check out the Austin weather for the next week. And while I do love a rich hot cup of french press coffee now and then, my caffeine cravings are no where near Sam’s who relayed this anecdote last week; as he walked down the hall in the afternoon every desk in every open office had a cup of stimulant on it. I think his withdrawal headaches have subsided though.

While this does seem to be a bit of a burden I do feel good after every meal I have. The lack of salt disappointment has passed and I seem to get more joy out of every experimental creation I produce in the kitchen. I believe it’s the same phenomenon that happens when backpacking where everything you eat tastes that much better because of the hard work you just put in before eating it (be it peak bagging or ingredient hunting and mental prowess).

Here are some of the latest additions to the menu:

Paneer- made by boiling milk, adding grapefruit juice to get it to curdle, and straining through cheese-cloth.

Pecan butter- pecans plus food processer. Great with carrots.

Orange yogurt smoothie- I think our vitamin C counts are through the roof with the amount of oranges we have consumed

Turnip chips- thinly slice, drizzle in olive oil and pop in a 400 oven until they are crispy

PIZZA!!- Sam’s tortillas, tomatoes** mixed with fresh rosemary and fennel and mozzarella cheese

**I found the tomatoes at Central Market yesterday. They are from a mom and pop farm outside of Waco. Additionally, Texas does have a large quantity of hydroponic tomatoes but we were lucky to catch these because I think the grower is almost out.