Freezing Fresh Asparagus

We recently decided to make a trip around the corner (Not literally, but darn near...) to our local U-pick-it farm, Day Farms in West Layton, UT to pick ourselves a few pounds of fresh asparagus to put up for this year.

Of course we always eat some of it fresh in the spring as well, but asparagus is one of those very short season crops that we really enjoy having at other times of the year. We can either pay the price, both in dollars and in "food miles", to get it all year long, or we can take a little bit of time when that crop is in season here to not only enjoy it fresh but put some up for later. So that's what that afternoon was about.

After the trip to the farm, where we picked six pounds of asparagus - which cost us a mere $9.00 by the way - we brought it home and immediately soaked it in cool water to let any dirt fall from it and to make sure the spears stayed fully hydrated and crisp while we prepped for freezing them.

The first thing we did was to prep a few pound at a time by trimming off the ends of the shoots. After that we needed to blanch the asparagus in a boiling water bath.

NOTE: If your processing quite a few pounds of asparagus, or any other food for that matter, it can be tempting to try to use a big pot and do a lot at one time. Don't. You'll cool the water off too much and won't get a good blanch. Also, it's easier to work with smaller batches, a pound or two max, at a time.

Blanch your spears of asparagus for between two and four minutes depending on the thickness; ours were all a medium size so we went for two minutes.

After the blanch, you'll need to immediately place them into a cold ice bath to shock them and stop the cooking immediately. Leave them in here for a few minutes until they are completely cool. Usually the time between batches is perfect.

This next step isn't necessarily "in the book" but it's one we took anyway. We laid the spears out on a wire rack to let then drop dry a little. Isn't the color Amazing?! The reason we took this step was because we will be freezing them and excess water will only add ice and too much ice can cause damage to the end product.

After they've dried a bit, we laid them out on a parchment lined cookie sheet in one layer and placed them in the freezer. We've found that it's better to freeze our vegetables this way rather than to bag them first and then freeze because it sort of coats the product in an individual ice shield and allows you to remove what you need later one at a time rather than having one big lump of whatever it is.

After the spears are just frozen through, we separated them out into individual spears and vac-packed them in our new kitchen tool for this year. (We allow ourselves one handy time saver or food prep item per year generally.) We packed them in to groups of 30/pk to allow for five so per family member per meal and a possibility of a couple of left overs for lunch for me the next day.

We packed up 8 or 9 bags of these and will probably try for some more this weekend. Of course, there's other things to do with asparagus too... like pickles and soup...
Stay tuned!

P~

UT Natural Meat

Last Friday afternoon A~ and I needed to head into Salt Lake for some errands and scheduled a part of the trip to stop by what turns out to be one of our areas only small farms that sells locally raised pastured meat in smaller quantities.

As we spent some time earlier this year tring to find as good source for better quality, more sustainable meat, I thought we were in luck with our local butchers. Wrong! Dons meats, the one in Syracuse at least, was a total flake. He told me that they would be able to order meat in for me from a local producer and that he also brought it in from time to time to just be able to sell it. I've checked with him a number of times, and told him what we'd like to buy but never managed to have him have any on stock but for the first time I was in there. I wonder if I wasn't duped that time and just told it was local.

Of course there's really only one way to make ABSOLUTELY sure that the meat you get is actually a locally grown and pastured product. Go to the farm! So we did.

UT Natural Meat is located on the WEST side off the valley on a pretty modest piece of land, no sprawling pastoral hills our anything like that, but they're average people that care about their animals and about the food that they will one day bring to their and their customers tables.

We had a great time at the farm talking with Kristen and briefly with her husband Shayne in between his caring for a sow pig that had just birthed the night before. It was readily apparent to both of us that they are very interested in making their small farm a local source for grass-fed, hormone free meats. She even had a table full of all the "required reading" for any aspiring localvore like _Omnivores Dillema_, _Everything I want to Do is Illegal_ and videos like Food inc for example.

No doubt though, one of the best parts of the day was getting to see the piglets prancing around their spacious new digs. This is the part of visiting and making an effort to get to know the people that produce your food that cannot be beaten.

At the end of the day, we brought home a couple of Corriante (a heritage breed of cattle) beef roasts, some ground beef for the periodic recipies that we use it in, and a few packages of pork chops. It wasn't a huge order, but that was part of our attraction to this farm. We wanted to get a good sample of what the product that they offer is like without having to invest hundreds of dollars in it. The other reason was that we really don't eat a ton of beef or pork at our house. A~ is largely vegetarian and our kids are picky about meat. Mostly because they don't like the heavily fatted nature of traditional meat. Hopefully this will help with that too.

If your in the General Salt Lake City area, I definitely recommend you check out UT Natural meat. Very Nice people running a small operation and trying to make a good go of it. As for the product, I have great hopes but have not yet had opportunity to cook any. As soon as I do trust me you'll be first to know!
Local First..
P~

Union Station Fermentation

After our aforementioned cheese class, A~ and I went down town, Ogden that is, to check out a new store that we had just learned about, the Union Station Fermentation store. While there, we had an opportunity to speak with one of the owners, Nigel; a very cool guy. You may remember back some time when I had my little Mr. Beer home brewing experiment. I was very happy with those results and have decided that this year I will be stepping up my home brewing game to include using fresh hops (Which we'll also be trying to grow in the garden this year as well.), partial mash and really trying to get some good brew going... but I digress. I, along with everyone else in the "north counties", needed to either drive to Richmond (1hr north) or Salt Lake City (1/2 hr south) in order to get their beer making supplies; but no more. Here's the other great thing, they don't just supply products for home beer and wine making, they also have kits and equipment for the home cheese maker. In fact, that's how we learned about them in the first place, through our cheese making class instructor. They carry cheese molds, cultures, wax and other such cheese making stuff. This will come in handy at some point this year when we try to make some actual hard cheese. This weekend however, I'll get to participate in another of their offerings... classes. I'm scheduled to attend a class there on Saturday to learn about making mead. Yep, you heard that right, the ancient honey based liqueur of the Celts and my own personal ancestors... the Vikings! This will be information that I'll add to my knowledge base to keep for future use when we finally put our plans into action to keep bees. They also offer classes periodically on cheese making and both beginning and advanced beer making. I intend to do as many of them as I can. The long and short of it is that the Fermentation Station seems to be the kind of place that we'll be spending a lot of time at in the foreseeable future. If you're in the Northern Utah area and are at all interested in any of the things I've talked about here give them a check out. Here's their contact information:

Union Station Fermentation 274 25th St Ogden, UT 84401 (801) 392-9772

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The Most Local Meat

In a follow up to the last post that I put up, regarding my search for more sustainable and local meat sources I thought I'd share with you one of the most local sources of meat that I have access to. FISH!

Since just after the new year, our local reservoirs and lakes have been frozen over and ice fishing has been good. I grew up in Southern California, and access to fresh seafood was never an issue, but I really hate to buy seafood here in the Intermountain west, because anything that I get has to be trucked in and is never as fresh as it could be and also has a pretty significant carbon foot print. That isn't even taking into consideration the issues of overfishing of our oceans that really needs to be a concern of everyone.

With the lakes frozen and the ice fishing on, none of those things are a concern.

This reservoir is only a half hour drive from our house, and is close enough that within 1 hour I can be on the lake fishing. What more could I ask for? Well, except for maybe actually catching something that is... And I had a little of that luck too lately.

These little guys averaged 12-15 inches and were plentiful the last few times I've been up.

The funny thing, is that I know Trout are a members of the salmonid family, but in the winter it seems they really live up to their family name, look at how orange and salmon color they were.

AND, they were delicious too. No complaints here at all.
Anyone else been out on the ice or bringing in their own "wild" meat sources? I'd love to hear about it.
Take Care.
P~

I almost gave up...

Really, I was this close to it. I'd done my homework, diligently looked for alternative options and had come up short. All but for one option that I thought I'd already covered... bingo! Oh geez, sorry, I guess I didn't mention what the heck I was talking about, let me take you back a little ways in my thinking and this might make a little more sense.

Every year I take a look at my life and try to find the things that I think I really have a chanced at making a difference in with it. One year I decided too really focus on learning about and becoming more sustainable, another I focused on really getting a good yield from our garden and so on. Some years have been more successful than others, but all have enabled me to at least take a good look at how and why I am doing things the way I am. This year was no different, I just haven't had the chance to get online and put it down in writing for posterity.

The thing that I've decided on, or had decided on but wasn't sure was going to happen, was to finally put my money where my mouth is and actually make a concerted effort to consume primarily sustainable meat products. I'll get into the details more another time, but let me first finish what I was saying about almost not even being able to do it at all.

So, as I was saying, I had been looking for options to buying what is essentially factory meats, beef in particular, and had not had a lot of luck. Oh there were products available, but really they were pretty price prohibitive because you generally have to buy them by the quarter or the half of beef, which at $3.00 - $5.00/lb and two to four hundred pounds respectively, is quite an investment. I looked into a couple of local producers that I knew of, combed the web for others and talked to friends that I knew had ordered "good" grass-fed beef before. Still I came up short, and that's where we came in to this whole story - with me about ready to give up on the whole experiment before the first month was over.

If you've been reading this blog for very long at all then you've probably heard my proselytizing about how we can and will receive those things that we believe in and fully expect will come... well, here we go again. Just as I was about to give up on the whole thing, and I mean the day I had really gotten down about it, I had a friend of mine mention that he was in a conversation with a guy the day before who had mentioned that he bought locally raised grass-fed beef from a local butcher that was literally just around the corner from my house. I had talked with that same butcher last year when they opened the shop about this exact thing and had found them, quite honestly, to be what I thought of as very pro grain fed and not very open to the idea of organic local products. I decided that I at least had to check in with them and see if what I had heard was right and lucky day it was! As it turns out, there are a couple of other families that are also coming to the butcher for local grass-fed beef and he's able to get it in regularly on request. While we were in there he did have some very nice pieces of tenderloin available from the local provider so we went ahead and bought a few steaks.

This weekend we grilled them up and ate them with some homemade butternut squash ravioli and roasted fingerling potatoes and they were delicious! Our boys, who are sort of on the fence meat eaters, like to have steak occasionally but really can't stand fat; that wasn't a problem with this meat. The steaks were very tender with just enough marbling to give them good flavor, but not enough to make them fatty. I think we have a winner.

Oh, and by the way, the butternut squash raviolis... delicious! I'll have to get around to getting that recipe up online for ya'll.
Be well.
more to come soon.
P~

A little community work

I've mentioned in passing, here and there, little tid bits about community gardens. I've wanted to get my hands into a community garden in my area for sometime. This spring, I thought I was going to get that opportunity.

A nearby city, wanted to start a community garden. A co-worker of mine brought in a newspaper with an article that he had read that said they were looking for a coordinator to help provide them some vision and to bring the project to fruition as it were. A~ and I went to the first meeting that they had, as interested parties. There was one other person that showed any interest in helping and he was there as well.

As it turned out, he and I were about as far apart on the community garden front as two people could possibly be. I, to put it plainly, believe community gardens should be organic poly-cultures made up of plots that are "owned" by individual gardeners or families. I think they offer a great opportunity to learn from each other and to offer instruction to the community. The other fellow is more of a "traditionalist" shall we say. He likes to have big rows of one crop. He's big on chemical fertilizers, even to the extent of telling me that he's "planted a little late when it's been cold weather and then just really go heavy on the fertilizer for a few weeks to catch them up." and when we discussed classes for beginning gardeners his belief was that we'll tell them when they have to spray for this bug or that. Yeah, like I said, we're really diametrically opposed on the basics.

Long story short, and believe me it was a long story, I ended up not doing the community garden at all. Not so much because I'm not willing to work with others well or anything. Basically I guess I was just not willing to put the things I believe in so strongly to the side for the sake of working with what was a very very... ummm... Strong personality. Yes, that's it, a strong personality.

If I'm being honest about the whole process, I don't blame that guy at all. He was reliable, he was motivated and he was a hard worker from what I saw. He and I were just from two different schools of thought. The problem I have with the whole process was with the city and it's representatives through the whole process. From the get go, I realized that we envisioned two distinctly different visions for the garden and I put my vision together on a very clearly stated "mission statement" for lack of a better description. I sent this to the administrators and said basically "This is where I'd like to take you, if you want to go there, I'm your guy. If you don't them he's your guy. No hard feelings either way." Still, the city had no commitment to a particular vision of their own, and from what I can tell were just bulldozed into doing whatever was in front of them by a "very strong personality".

In the end, I did end up going down and helping the five families that ended up having small plots in the garden to get a few things planted. I donated some tomato plants that I had started and I felt good helping out to some degree. It was a learning process and one that pointed out a number of things to be concerned with the next time I take on a venture like this again in the future. And I will take one on again I'm sure!

Here are a few picture of the garden as is stood on the 22nd of May when we went out to plant. It had rained hard for two days prior to planting so it was a bit of a mess, but we did get get planted nonetheless.This is the whole garden. It's a really good sized area that the city decided to use. You can see some of the plots along the back and right side that have been planted already. Corn, Tomatoes, peppers and tomatillos. That's it. All planted by one guy, paid for by the city. It will go to the local food bank so that's good. But apparently the local families will have only corn and salsa?
This section. has a number of smaller plots laid out and are the plots allotted for individual families. The plots on the right side were complete soup. Very very wet!

And here were a few of the families that showed up to plant.

I hope I don't come off too whiny about the whole process. It was a great thought that the city had in wanting to have a community garden for it's citizens and I wish them all the very best of luck. I just can't help but see so many possibilities that are being missed.

One day.... Till then, best to you all.
P~

Local produce, Campfire-Baking and Canning info

This weekend was another busy one. I took Friday off, as I had already met my hours required for the week and we ran errands all day; and I do mean all day! One of the tasks we decided to do was to make a stop by our local you-pick-it farm. They are not an organic farm unfortunately, but I think supporting our local small scale agriculture is more important, not to mention the HUGE savings that we're able to get from it. Check out this haul.Clockwise from the bottom left we got Ancho chilis (to be roasted and frozen for salsas later), jalapenos (also to be roasted and turned magically into chipolte peppers), Yellow wax peppers, Black Beauty eggplants (made ratatouille this afternoon), Green Bell Peppers, Yellow Bells, and Big Jim green chili's (to be steamed and canned for later use.) All together we got two full bushels of veggies. Guess how much? Go on, bet you can't get it?? Twenty bucks total! Ten dollars a bushel of whatever we can get in the box.
We had some shopping to do later that afternoon so we checked on the going prices and we estimate the store value to be approx. $128.00. So if you count the time we put in, which was about an hour total from the time we left the house till we got back, we made a little over $50.00/hr. each. I can live with that!
An observation that A~ and I made to each other while we were there was that there was so much diversity of people there. We saw Asians, Eastern European and of course Mexican families there along with us. Sadly, we were one of only two families of what might be called the UT majority, i.e. non-immigrant whites. I think we have a lot we could learn from some of our immigrant neighbors on this front. I won't get into the issues of legality or immigration policy here because that's not what this blog is about, suffice it to say I have strong opinions. My point here is that these are families that are, generally speaking, on the lower end of the income scale. When we see them doing certain things, like sharing rides, harvesting their own foods and cooking fresh meals and not wasting them, you can bet those are pretty good ideas for someone wanting to live a little more frugally. Our standards of living are, in much of the world, in the top 5 to 10 percent overall. I think this has made us a bit lazy. That's all fine and good in a world of plenty, but I think we can all see that to at least some degree those times are creeping into extinction. Enough on that for this post, you get my point I think.

I alluded to having been inspired by our success with our outdoor Campfire-canning (as I like to call it), and as a matter of fact we did another batch of 4 qts and 1 pint of dill pickles this weekend using that method, what I was talking about was wanting to try my hand at baking some NY Times no-knead bread over the fire.I made sure that since this was a food product that was going to be exposed somewhat directly to the smoke from the fire, to use clean wood and not OSB or other treated woods for this. I burnt down a good deal of coals, and placed our large cast iron stove on them to preheat. After prepping the loaf and coating the bottom with cornmeal (to reduce sticking and allow me to slide it off the cutting board) I dropped it into the pot and placed a few coals on top.
And here's the finished product. You can see that the pot was a little too hot by the thick, blackened bottom, and the little too-dark top crust. All in all though I'd say it wasn't an all out loss. The texture and crumb of the bread was very good. Perhaps a slight bit more undercooked than I'd have liked, but the taste was the best I've made yet. It had a very similar taste to the sourdough pancakes that we eat for Saturday breakfasts. Not necessarily a true sourdough but a very bready taste. I attribute it to the longer time I allowed it to sit before the first forming. For the novice bread bakers out there time equals flavor and that's the real strength of this recipe, it's ability to be slowly made. To help you plan your bread making with this recipe check out my NY Times bread planning scheduler.
And last but not least, for Sandy, a quick bit of wisdom on starting to can. First off we, A~ and I both, are still novice canners. I think the best advice I can give is to not be afraid and to research, research, research. And after you research it thoroughly, respect what you find out. If the recipe calls for 'X' amount of sugar or vinegar or to cook it for 'X' amount of time then add the called for sugar or vinegar and cook it for the right amount of time. Canning your harvest is a great way to preserve your hard work for later enjoyment and it's really nothing to be afraid of with care and attention to detail. One book that A~ and I picked up from the library this year and have really been enjoying is the "Ball Complete book of Home Preserving" (seen below).
I've also read very good things about Balls, "Blue Book of Preserving". You learn about these books or find great resources on their web site as well. Another great resource is Causabons book, a blog with very detailed and concise information on not only canning, but dehydrating, freezing and myriad other food storage and peak oil survival information.
And now that we're up to date on my weekend, how was yours? Hope it was as fun and productive as mine.
Till tomorrow.
P~

Local Salt??

Yes...LOCAL SALT!!
One of the truly great benefits of being in a place famous for it's Salt Lake is that there is easy access to an abundance of salt! A little over a week ago, A~ and I took our bi-annual trip out to Wendover NV. It's relatively close, and it gives us a chance to just be together and be grown ups. We weren't sure if we would be able to make it this year due to expenses, but since the hotel sent us a coupon for a comped room we figured it was a sign.

On our way home we decided to stop and gather ammunition for a little experiment, naturally evaporated "Salt Lake" salt. Here's what I had to work with. It's beautiful in its way isn't it? Just to be clear... that's not white sand on that shoreline, and it sure the heck isn't snow. That's all salt! Take a look below at the slabs that were forming and jutting up into the air right there on the shore.
Oh yeah, and by the way, any Salt Lake readers that get inspired to go out and collect themselves some salt slabs bring some mud boots. That salt ain't solid. You may be able to tell below that I am above ankle deep in the salt. What it does is to form a heavy salt crust that is darn near impermeable, unless your a crazy road traveler that like to try to make their own stuff. I saw those heavy slabs though and of course I had to get a couple of pieces of it. (didn't want to let you down after all.)
And there I am...digging away for a little saline goodness. Funny thing was that it was near to or maybe even over 100 deg. this day and yet the white salt was fairly cool to walk on. The pavement leading up to it was another story!
After grabbing a couple of the slabs of salt from right near the shore, I decided to scoop up some of the Fleur de Sel, (Flower of salt) At least that's what I believe it is called in this form. It was in the coolest flaky form. Almost like snowflakes but hard and crystalline. I scooped up a couple of cups worth.
Another picture of the flaky salt that was nearer to the road and was dryer than the other salt which was still slightly damp on the underside.

Finally, this is a good closeup of the salt that was carved off of one of the larger chunks that I grabbed. I crushed it up by hand into a pile of broken salt chunks. These I weighed and then processed into finished table salt. But that is a post on it's own. Soon to come, so stay tuned.

P~

That time again - Local Food Challenge 2008

The folks over at Eat Local Challenge for Salt Lake City are once again sponsoring a local food challenge for 2008. Utah has abundant resources for acquiring local foods and this challenge is well worth at least a partial attempt at participation. I am not going to be "officially" announcing participation in the challenge for the same reason that I haven't ever participated in the Dark Days or One local summer challenges. It's not my place. By that I mean that I don't do our cooking or shopping so I don't feel it's anymore my place to dictate to A~ what she will make and serve than it is her place to tell me what type of joint to use on my bookshelves. I know it sounds sexist, but it's really not. We have our roles in our home and respecting them is part of what makes our home tick away so well. Besides that fact, we try to buy and serve locally produced products as often as possible throughout the year anyway. It just isn't our priority. If you are in Salt Lake City area, and are curious I encourage you to drop in over there and learn more about what it is that they're up to.
P~

Back in Time

OK, since I've been ridiculously funkilicious lately and have, nearly entirely, slacked off on all but the poor me posts, allow me to travel back in time a bit. (Duh, no I'm not really gonna go back in time, just bear with me here.) In the next few posts I'm going to try to catch up on all the positive and interesting things that have been going on here in the last couple of weeks, updates on the 100 foot diet, how the garden is coming along and some of the pics that I've been filling my cameras memory card with over the last little while. So yeah, I think I can effectively say I'm about to be traveling back in time... won't you join me?

If I go back the farthest, it would have to be this:
This was a photo of a very local meal that was somehow ignored on my camera card since the end of May, go figure?. It's the wild asparagus that I harvested locally and some baby greens from the garden. The rice dish is not local (Unless you count the Walmart that's within walking distance? No? dang!) but the bread is homemade and delicious.
Stay tuned...more to come.
P~

2008 Asparagus

It's that time of year again. Asparagus season. It took forever getting here too! This spring has been one of the weirdest that we can remember, although strangely, no one seems to be noticing it, at least in our neighborhood. I can tell that it is an "in tune" with the earth thing because I finally found someone who gets it too; the farmer at our closest you-pick-it farm. He told us last weekend that the asparagus has been slow to come in this year because of the roller coaster hot/cold weather we've had. Either way, last weekend we made two trips, (Fri and Sat) to the farm to pick a bunch of sweet, tender asparagus.

Here is only a part of the total haul. All told we had over ten pounds of raw asparagus. We brought it home and let it soak for probably a little longer than we had too, but it was in cold water and it kept itself well.
Look at that color! It was, no kidding, the most vibrant green I can imagine. After rinsing and trimming, we shocked the young greens in boiling water. We added 1 lb of shoots to a large pot of water and timed it for 1 min. After the minute passed I pulled them out and they went straight into an ice bath to stop the cooking. We took them from there and layed them out on some paper towels and blotted them off.
Here is a picture of Amber vacuum packing one of the 1/2 lb bags of asparagus that we made. I need to diverge into another product review here.

We bought this small light duty vacuum packer a while back. It is battery operated, and uses a special zip lock bag that has a vented hole built in. We decided to purchase ourselves a Food saver Vacuum Sealer this year. We know that we are going to be putting up more food, and thought we could justify a little expense for that reason. Well let me tell you, we got that thing home, followed the instructions and gave it a whirl. it vacuumed that bag tight, everything looked great, and then... no seal. ??? What's up? We tried that thing 9 ways from Sunday and couldn't get it to seal worth a damn. So guess what we ended up using? That's right, the 15 odd dollar battery operated model with the special zip locks and it worked great! Go figure?

Here is the total haul from one weekend of putting up asparagus. finished weight is approximately 9 pounds. Guess what we spent on it? 10.00 for the asparagus (1.00/lb) and a few bucks for the bags. Can you beat that? I don't think so. If you have U-pick-it's near you I encourage you to get to them and see if they have asparagus ready, it's one of the real prizes of the spring. It's also one of the crops that, although we love it, we will not grow. It takes too long to mature and takes up too much space for our small lot. I rather go down to the farm stand and pick it myself. Besides, it's a great Saturday morning out with the kids and A~.
Hope you all have a great day tomorrow, I'll be finishing my fence. Pictures anyone?
Till then.
P~

Stimulus

Hi all, P~ checking in here... Remember me? I was listening to NPR the other day on the way home from work, and heard one of the public service announcements that they're so well known for. Well it got me thinking.
The PSA talked about the upcoming stimulus payments that so many of us will be receiving in one way or another. As we think ahead about all the wonderful things that we can get with this check in order to do our part in "stimulating" the economy, consider this. Before you run out for that new plasma TV, or even that great new kitchen gadget that you've been eying for so long, ask your self..."will this stimulate the economy?" So many of our goods are manufactured outside the country any more that the chances are pretty good that you're buying some fine Chinese, Taiwanese or Mexican goods. This is doing wonders for our global neighbors economy, but for ours, well, not so much. Unless of course you're the retail industry.

I mentioned that we're putting up a fence the other day. It's a vinyl fence. (I know I know, it's plastic, and comes from the petroleum industry, yada yada, yada.) It is one of those things that I kind of have to do, based on standards in our neighborhood. Anyway, I researched the company that we decided to go with, and found that not only are they a local company, (2-3 miles), but the product that they are supplying me with is manufactured right here in the good ole' USA. I'm glad for it. I think the stimulus money should go back into our economy.

I encourage you to really give a little thought to how you decide to spend yours. Here's a couple of suggestions I heard on the radio.

• spend the money with local businesses.
• set some of the money aside and use it throughout the summer at your local farmers market to support local farmers.
• donate a portion of the stimulus to an environmental charity.

I'm sure there are a million other ideas out there, but you get the jist. I don't honestly think that the stimulus checks that are scheduled to go out are going to effect the economy as dramatically as is hoped, but perhaps we can improve those numbers by giving a little thought to how we decide to use it. If you have any specific plans for your "stimulus check" let me know what it is.
Have a great weekend all. I'll check in as I can.

P~

Michael Pollans Lecture

Thursday of last week I had the pleasure of getting to go a keynote speech by Michael Pollan in "The nature of Things 2008" lecture series that was being put on by the Utah Museum of Natural History. I read his most popular work "The Omnivores Dilemma" last year, and am currently in the midst of reading his latest work; "In Defense of Food : An eaters manifesto"

I went into the event hoping that it wouldn't be merely a rehash of the same lines from his books, and that I would get a better idea of the man, and his opinions. I was not disappointed. Of course a lot of the big points of the lecture were the same ones that he drives home in his writing, but there were a lot of details that you can really only get from having a face to face, or should I say face to capacity crowd, discussion. At the end of the lecture was a Q & A session that gave him the opportunity to expand on some of the detail points, as well as to let more of his personality come out.
As I alluded, the crowd if not sold out was very very close to it, and this was in a facility with a max capacity 2,768. As I sat there and listened, one of the common things he mentioned is that there is a real food movement going on across America. I really felt a part of it that night. In fact it was one of the first times recently that I haven't felt like the oddball in the room for making my own yogurt or raising chickens in my suburban lot.
After the lecture I had the good fortune to have brought my edition of "The Omnivores Dilemma" and to be able to get in a line right at the start to get it signed. He scribed "Vote with your fork". Mr Pollan was a very sincere person, and genuinely seems happy to be doing what he is doing. This picture was snapped just after he finished signing my book. (Please forgive the quality it was taken on a cell phone.)

This brings me to a very good point of the lecture. He kept mentioning that phrase, "Vote with your Fork." What a concept. Think about it. What if more and more people decide to opt out of the industrial food chain and produce more of their own food. What kind of sway could a thousand or a hundred thousand or even a million people have? This thing that so many of us do; this food production at home thing. It is truly the greatest act of rebellion. We are not merely complaining about a problem, we are actively actuating a solution to it. That really is living "A Posse ad Esse", or moving "From Possibility to Reality." Keep it Up!

Namaste

P~

Eat what you can..

and Can what you can't, that's the old mantra from the Victory Garden era of our parents and grandparents. We dug into the cold storage and brought out some of our homemade homegrown pickles and pickled beans this weekend to enjoy with our sandwiches. (HM bread too, but I didn't click fast enough and it was gone... better luck next time.) I also finished with another jar of sprouts. These have really become a sandwich staple around our house. Especially during the cold winter months when we have literally nothing growing in the yard. So much in fact that I am now keeping my eyes open for a new, larger container to sprout them in.
This jar makes approximately the same amount as you would get from the small plastic containers in the grocery store and it's just not cutting it anymore. We go through one of these in one Saturdays lunch.

A~ and I were driving home from a trip to town this weekend and were talking about our progression from really just an ordinary family, taking our lifestyle for granted and being totally disconnected from it, to really paying more attention and building habits that could sustain us if/when the current climate of plentiful food, cheap energy and easy transportation changes. I'm not a defeatist, but I am a realist. There will come a day when we as a society will have to answer for a very long period of very unsustainable living. I think we'll get through it, I mean if Cuba can we can, right? Well as we were talking about it, my thoughts on the subject gelled into a pretty clear idea; we were lucky to become aware when we did.

In effect by accepting the fact that changes are going to happen, we have seized the opportunity to prepare ourselves and to mentor our children in a way of living that will be much less impacted in the future, purely because we are beginning to provide more and more of our own sustenance. We have the opportunity to make mistakes, and take the time to find out what works for our particular family. Time that many people won't have in the future. We are not, at this point, very different from most American families. In some ways we are, but in many ways we're just not. But I do think that one of the main differences is the fact that we are trying. That's really what the 100 ft diet comes down to for me, trying to make the biggest impact in my diet and my families self reliance that I can.

Namaste~
P~

I hunt, therefore I am.

I eat meat. A lot less than I used to but yeah, I'm a carnivore. I'm also trying to be more responsible about what I put into my body. This isn't why I began hunting, but as I see it, it fits in perfectly.
Hunting is always something that I wanted to do. I grew up in Southern California, and although it's not a barren wastland for hunters, as you may expect, it's not a very common thing. My dad grew up here in Utah, and as a young man he and his brothers hunted every year. It was a very different affair then than it is now. He has told me of the nights sleeping in a "shepards tent", a wool blanket on top of a tarp then flipped over the top of you. They also didn't only hunt for the sport of it; meat was expensive, and they weren't rich. I think that this perspective may have lead my father away from taking me hunting as a kid. I am glad to say that for the last five years, last year excluded due to a broken arm with two metal plates and 12 screws, my dad has made it a point of coming up here and sharing the experience with me. This year, I will have the privilidge of sharing it with my 12 yr old C~.
In todays fast world, where nearly everything we consume is cut cleaned packed and prepared with little to no interaction from us, I think it is important to share something that brings us into intimite contact with where our food comes from. It helps us to define anew our position in the world, and in the food chain. Growing a garden is much the same thing but the relationship is different. I can neglect my garden from time to time, pick some and perhaps not use it soon enough, but the plant persists and completes it's life cycle. To hunt, at it's most elemental, is to take a life to sustain another. There is a level of responsibility in that action that exists nowhere else. I am responsible to the animal that I take, to respect it by ensuring that I am effective and concise in my taking of it. I also have a responsibility to my son, and to other hunters, to ensure that I pass on not only the craft of pursuing the game to him, but the ethics and sense of responsibility in it. Also, much in the same way that my father hunted for meat, I too hunt to eat. I would take a trophy buck if one presented itself, but that is not my purpose. No matter how hard I've looked, I've never found a good recipe for antlers.
I know there are a lot of people out there that look unfavorably on hunting and in turn on hunters. They see it as an unnecessary act, a cruelty and a barbarism held onto by beer guzzling partiers with guns. Let's be realistic, in some circumstances that is true, but hunters are also some of the greatest conservationists in the nation. Without them and the fees they pay, many of our national parks and game preserves would not exist. As humans we are not removed from the wild world, as much as it may seem at times. Because we live here, and because our impact is felt regardless of how hard we try to reduce it, we have a responsibility to manage our herds and to optimize their range and numbers. I hope to be a part of that managment program, but I'll leave that to the fates.

I'd love to hear from you on this. What are your feelings? Are you opposed? Will you never read me again because of it? I'm curious.
P~

Last nights harvest

I realize that I am a little late with this, seeing as how it was yesterdays harvest, but I didn't have a chance to post yesterday; the harvest was a good one though.
In the picture you can see from front to back, jalapenos, anaheim chilies, yellow pear tomatoes, Zuchinni, black beauty bell peppers, large cherry tomatoes, regular tomatoes, green bell peppers, artichoke, cucumber, heirloom swiss chard, and green beans hiding in the back. I think that is all of them.

The big surprises this year were the green bell peppers, which I have grown every year, and which every year I have been very unhappy with. This year I am very very happy with them. The only difference that I can assume may have made the difference with them is that the drip system that I set up earlier for our vacation this spring does not water over the plant, but at it's base. In years previous I have found that my peppers get the white sunburns on the sun facing parts. I think this is due to the water pooling in the dips of the pepper and refracting the sun on them, thus burning them.

The other big surprise that I've had this year has been the artichokes. Last year we planted one just to see if it'd grow and it did, and toward the end of the year we got one tiny artichoke off of it; whoopee! This year I tried planting two plants and got them in the ground earlier in the season and these two are the 4th and 5th we've taken from them and there are a couple more on the plant. As we go along, they also seem to get bigger, and more tightly compacted more similar to the ones you might find at the grocery. My experiment for them this fall, will be to see if I can over winter the plants. In CA where I grew up, they are a perennial and get to be quite big if you let them, and will carry a lot of 'chokes per plant at one time. I am going to try a method that I saw italian families in New York use to over winter fig trees. I will pack the plant in straw, layers carefully mounding over the crown of the plant. Then wrap it in burlap and plastic to support it. It may not work, I don't really know, but that's the best part of gardening I think, trying out ideas, and passing them along. It'll be worth it if it does work though with early and plentiful artichokes.

My dissappointments this year have been the pumpkins again. I don't understand what the difficulty is with growing these d**n plants are, but I just don't seem programmed to do it. The only ones I have every gotten and the only ones that I have thus far this year are the wild volunteer plants that I can't get rid of. That's the other great thing about gardening, there's always next year to try again!
May your garden be green and your fruits sweet!
P~