family pic

photo-shopped by Cherie Barth for maximum coolness.

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Vote with Your Fork! State of the Pantry Report

As we continue our efforts to disassociate ourselves from agri-business, believing it to be harmful to our personal financial and physical health as well as being harmful to the well-being of others (financially, physically, and environmentally), we are moving more and more of our purchases over to niche markets.

Here are our goals, in no particular order, with the over-arching consideration in parentheses.

• to shun misery-laden production practices (personal ethical health, preservation of small parcel agriculture[usually]),
• to shun edible-food-like products that have factory origins (personal physical health, personal financial health, regional environmental health*).
• to shun farming practices that rely on the intense use of petroleum-based fertilizers (personal health, regional environmental health).
• to shun foods laden with antibiotics and insecticides (personal physical health, community/regional environmental health).
• to source our food from as nearby as possible (community financial health, preservation of small parcel agriculture),
• to purchase it directly from the farmer or as close as we can get (community financial health, preservation of small parcel agriculture),

Here is our State of the Pantry report:

Goals Met:

• Beef -- Misery-free grass-fed beef born, raised, and butchered in one set of pastures within our region. Purchased directly from farmer.
• Eggs -- Our own misery-free yard-fed hens give us plenty of these.
• Flour -- Organic regional flour milled by locally-owned flour mill.
• Salad Greens -- Part of the year we grown our own. Part of the year we buy Earthbound mass produced. We don't feel good about the latter. More later.
• Apples -- Purchased directly the non-organic, but watershed activist, farm 2 blocks away.
• Milk -- Purchased from locally owned grocery chain who buys it from the dairy 8 miles from our home and sells it to us in recyclable glass bottles.

Goals Unmet:

• Chicken -- yes, well, obviously I could raise and butcher my own, but that is not going to happen. Purchasing misery-free yard-fed hens from others is really expensive. I found some at the local butcher (by butcher, I mean a man in an building that is a killing house for animals, not the employee behind the counter at a store that sells quasi-edible-food-like products), but they were pricey. Right now, we do without it, but it is so handy for a quick stir-fry. What to do . . .
• Salad Greens -- During the off-season we end up buying the Costco bulk tub of Earthbound farms, which is an organic industrial producer of baby salad greens. The greens are machine-harvested and trucked across the country. There must be a better way. Build a greenhouse and grow our own? Find a local grower of winter greens and hire them to grow for us? I need to study up on what winter greens could be grown here (note to self - review this part of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle and see what she grew).
• Other Fruit -- planted 15 new fruit trees this year. Must get up to speed on spraying and storing.
• Bread -- organize time better to bake all of our own, not just some.

This started when I read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. My goal then was to take a look at my shopping cart and to alter the proportion of what I used to call manufactured stuff versus real stuff, but what I now call quasi-edible-food-like products versus food. My first goal was half and half: no more than half the cart could be manufactured stuff. At the time, this seemed like an honorable goal. Looking back now, I am ashamed that I would allow that much quasi-edible-food-like products into our home.

When the half-and-half goal was met, I budged it over to 25%/75%. When that became doable, I pumped it up to only 1-2 indulgences per shopping cart (Heat-and-Eat lasagna or pizza for Crisis Nights). This means that I am buying mostly ingredients and only a little bit of ready made. Canned goods count as food, as does bread and other items that involve minimal manufacture. This may sound odd, but if it is something that I could make at home, it's okay to buy it. If is something that I would have no idea how to make (Twinkies, soda pop), then I probably shouldn't be eating it. I don't make tortilla chips, but I could, so those are allowed, as are beer and wine by the same token.

Then I read Omnivore's Dilemma and realized that it is my civic duty to get as far away as possible from the agribusiness food chain. Last spring we got chickens and doubled the size of our Victory Garden. This year I aim to bake more bread and can and freeze more produce as well as to whittle away at the "Goals Not Yet Met" list.

Are you changing your food habits? How so? Why? Are we part of a tide change? or is this a passing fancy?

*environmental health -- the packaging, the shipping, the trucking. All of these are wasteful of natural resources and are wasteful of my money. When I buy the food, I am paying for the packaging and for the long-distance voyage. Why would I want to do that?

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Pop Quiz: What Book Have I Been Reading?

Chickadee has been assigned lines: I will not barge in when Mom is typing. x10

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs?

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Comes back down and sits and glares at her lines. All 10 of them.)

Chickadee: Mom?

Mom: Do you have a question about your lines?

Chickadee: No, but I . . .

Mom: We'll talk about it when your lines are done. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs?

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Comes back down and sits and glares at her lines. All 10 of them.)

Chickadee: Mom, can I have lunch?

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things.

(2 minutes pass)

(I put on some Chopin -- which she usually loves.)

Chickadee: Mom? Can you turn the music off? It's bothering me.

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom? Can I have a snuggle?

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom? My toe hurts.

Mom: When your lines are done, we can talk about other things. Please don't talk to me unless you have a question about your lines.

Chickadee: Mom?

Mom: Honey, I keep asking you nicely to please don't talk to me unless you have some questions about your lines. I need to focus on my work, so now I need to ask you to please not talk to me at all.

Chickadee: WHAAAAAAAAAAaa. What if I have a question about my lines?

Mom: That will be a bummer.

Chickadee: WHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAA

Mom: That noise is hassling my ears. Would you like to quiet down? or would you like to take it upstairs.

(She takes it upstairs and has a right good screaming fit. Come back down and sits and glares at her lines.)

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Cream Cheese Teriyaki Frosting

Just wanted to let you know that if you are trying to pour maple syrup into your creamed butter and cream cheese, and that if you accidentally grab the teriyaki sauce instead, you can just dump the mess into a colander or sieve and rinse the teriyaki sauce out with cold water. One more crisis averted.

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quotable

Chickadee: I can do it! I'm strong! I'm strong like a bunny!

Go get 'em sweetheart.

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uh oh, a new toy

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Irish Stew

I know I have posted this before, but just in case you missed it, I must post it again. It is thrifty and easy and a perfect recipe for a beginning cook. Chop. Heat. Eat.

Irish Stew

In a heavy deep pot, sauté together:
1/4 C vegetable oil
1-2 lbs stew beef, cut into 1-inch pieces

When beef is browned on all sides, add:
6 good-sized cloves of garlic, minced

When garlic is golden and aromatic, add:
8 C liquid: beef broth or water
2 T tomato paste
1 T dried thyme
1 T Worcestershire sauce
1 T sugar
2 bay leaves

Simmer together for one hour.



In another pot, combine & sauté until golden:
2 T butter
6-8 C of ½ inch pieces of potatoes
1-2 chopped onions
2-3 C ½ inch pieces of carrots

Add veggies to meat. Simmer together for about 45 minutes. Remove bay leaves. Serve topped with a dab of sour cream and chopped fresh parsley.

This recipe is even yummier the second day and is ideal for crockpot reheating.

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Christmas cuteness

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quickie

• Jamie and Chickadee are building a kit doll-house, though I get to take a turn next weekend, I'm told.
• Chickadee made dinner for us tonight ala Mollie Katzen (the whole thing with ZIPPO mom help, though I did sit in the kitchen for 3.5 hours and supervise).
• I slogged through the towering pile of medical bills and E.O.B.s and am finally done with 2009, fiscally speaking.
• Dandy has lost his bedroom (again).
• My online class open on Thursday and it is all loaded up. As in, every assignment, task, discussion board, quiz, and essay assignment for the entire quarter is in place this very minute. I just have to answer questions and grade from here on in. This is -- in the life of an on-line educator -- indescribably delicious.
• We are buying daffodils and looking at seed catalogs and fostering a strong denial of how much winter we still have to endure. Can't we just fast-forward to April?

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Merry Christmas, I say. I'm such a rebel.

I'm taking a rebel stance on the Merry Christmas issue. I think we should all utter greetings appropriate to our own faith customs. I'll wish you Merry Christmas. You can wish me Happy Holidays, or Happy Hanukkah, or whatever holiday you wish. You'll learn that I celebrate the Birth of Christ. I'll learn that you celebrate whatever it is that you celebrate. We will all be friendly and cordial. It will be fine.

I posted the above in Facebook earlier in the month and then my clever cousin took the ball and ran with it all the way to a real paid article: go take a look. Doesn't she write beautifully?

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stocking stuffer ideas

Some ideas, for your stuffing pleasure


:: bath poofs
:: toy mice for humans owned by cats
:: chewies and tennis balls for humans owned by dogs
:: postage stamps for anyone off at college
:: good cheeses
:: nuts
:: Christmas ornaments for young adults
:: pocket flashlights for the cars
:: chapsticks
:: winter-weight Atlas garden gloves
:: hand-warmer packets for those in cold climates
:: tulip or daffodil bulbs
:: long matches
:: smoked oysters
:: woolie socks
:: Starbuck's cards
:: Trader Joe's cards
:: iTunes cards
:: pencils and erasers for school kids - especially home-schooling families
:: chocolate oranges
:: bottle of favorite fragrance
:: paint brushes and  other artsy supplies (hat tip to Audrey)
:: LUSH bubble bars
:: drill bits
:: hairclippies and rubber bands for little girls
:: sparkly glue


What did I miss ?

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The Pioneer Woman Cooks Cookbook

I tried to resist, I really did. I don't need another cookbook. I haven't cooked all the recipes in the cookbooks I have! But I succumbed. I want this one:

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