Getting the most out of your food

My friend K, asks

"Do you have suggestions/comments for people like me with many mouths to feed on a small budget? Obviously, anything we can grow in our own yard is awesome but any tips you may have on where to shop or how to stretch a particular item (like using the chicken carcass) would be very helpful."

This is a very good question and I think most of us want to try and stretch our dollar and our food to its maximum potential.  I am not a food storage or economics expert, so I have found some other resources to help us, along with what works for Iz and I, and some tips that just make sense.

First of all,  if you want to try and incorporate more fresh produce, eggs, meat etc. from the farmer's market, that is great!   You also don't have to break your budget doing so.  Start small and see how it goes.  For example,  make it a goal to go to a farmer's market and budget to buy one thing.  Whatever looks fresh and yummy to you, buy it and take it home.  It will be fun to come up with a recipe for your item and you'll have invested minimum dollars and time in the process.  

If you are past this point and know you want to incorporate the farmer's market into your grocery budget for the week, month (however you budget) you can go about this a few ways.  Here is a blog post that shows one approach to budgeting for the farmer's market. There are some really good ideas that I agree with in this blog post.  To summarize:  

• Make a list 
• Prioritize what is important to you. Are you willing to spend a little more on eggs or certain produce at the market that you can budget into your grocery list?; what can you simply not give up that you buy at the store? (whether it be a time saver that you would rip your hair out if you didn't have, or if you have a picky eater, for example)
• Eat less meat
• Find some fast/easy recipes that you can make ahead and freeze or put in the fridge. (see below to get started)
• Try to grow your own herbs. This doesn't have to be fancy.  You can start herbs from seed rather easily and for about the price of a one use "fresh" herb in the grocery store. Pick which ones you will likely use the most. I recommend basil, parsley, oregano, chives, and thyme as staples. 
• Don't waste.  This can be hard! Just do your best. If your greens look wilt-y, just give them a quick saute in garlic and olive oil; if your tomatoes are a little overripe, cook them into a sauce. Also, save all of your vegetable trimmings in a freezer bag, keep them in the freezer until you have enough to make a stock. If you are a gardener, I would recommend setting up a compost bin or pile of you don't already have one. 

Here is another good blog post with a list of how to maximize your time and budget at the farmer's market. 
They mention going early or late.  This is good since it won't be as crowded. Early is good because you get a better selection. Late is better because some farmers, rather than throw out unsold produce, or take it home with them where it may not last until the next week, might be willing to give you a two for one price, or even just give you some produce.  I was talking to Isaac's cousin who's husband has a small farm in Michigan.  She said that she will just give people extra tomatoes because she doesn't want to take them home and they couldn't possibly eat the leftovers before they go bad.  This will be on a farmer by farmer basis, but if you develop a relationship with someone, it wouldn't hurt to ask.



If you are even more gung-ho about the farmer's market, I would suggest trying out a CSA.  These are weekly baskets of produce that the farmer sets aside for you.  You pay a fee in the winter (we pay ours in February) and then start picking up your basket at the designated time and place.  You really get more for your money in this case.  Our CSA, for a full share of produce (which you will start seeing when we start picking up this weekend) adds up to approximately $30.00 a week.  If you buy a lot of produce "a la carte" at the farmer's market, you may save money by joining the CSA.  The upfront fee can be large, so if you want to try it for a season, I suggest asking an interested friend or family member to share the cost with you.  We did this for the first two years we participated in a CSA and it worked out rather well. You just need to have someone available to pick it up each week.
Local Harvest is a great website to learn more about CSAs in your area. 


This post is getting rather long, and I will talk more about this in the future.  But allow me to list some cookbooks and website that you can check out at the library or on your computer to get you started.  


Time for Dinner: Strategies, Inspirations, and Recipes for Family Meals Every Night of the Week
This has some really nice time saving ideas for make ahead staples.

Everyday Food: great food fast from the kitchens of Martha Stewart Living
I own this book and use it regularly. There are minimal ingredients, easy prep and cooking. It is organized by season which is nice.

Joy of Cooking
I cannot live without this book.  It is a handy reference for any type of recipe you will need in the kitchen.

Cook and Freeze: 150 Delicious Dishes to Serve Now and Later

Vegetable Harvest: vegetables at the center of the plate
I also love this book.  It goes through vegetables by season. Simple but unique preparation.


Websites:
Food & Wine: Healthy Farmer's Market Recipes
Sunset Magazine: More Ways to Love produce from the farmer's market
Food Gawker: Just type in any ingredient and you will get a list of blog posts with beautiful ideas
Epicurious.com


What are your favorite websites or cook books? 

Farmer's Market Visit

Isaac and I made our first visit of the season to the Hyde Park Farmer's Market.  This is the market where we will pick-up our CSA baskets from Hazelfield Farm, starting next week.

Top Chef was filming their 2011 Tour at the market today; there was a line all they way out to the sidewalk with people waiting to get into the filming tent.  Since we are not big Top Chef viewers (I have no idea who any of the contestants are), Isaac and I made the rounds, visiting some of our favorite tents at the market.  The season is still young, so there was not a ton of fresh produce yet, but we were able to pick-up some fresh asparagus, shitake mushrooms, eggs and a whole small chicken.

The eggs came from B & D Goats.  As the name states, they also have a handful of goats and the milk is used to make soaps and lotions.  Isaac and I talked to the owner, whom we have become friendly with over the past few years, and found out they just had a new goat born just recently.  We mentioned that we are interested in visiting their farm as we are thinking about raising dairy goats in the future.  She welcomed us to the farm whenever we wanted to come.  Hopefully I will have more to report on that soon.

The chicken came from Eaton Farm.  We have purchased many chickens from them in the past and are happy with the quality. We know that the chickens have good, healthy lives before they are processed for consumption.  Of course, the chickens are smaller than those you find at the supermarket, but that is because they are not fed any hormones and are allowed to roam free-getting more exercise than those who are confined to a small pen. A small whole chicken is enough for a meal and we use the carcass for stock.

The mushrooms and asparagus came from Sheltowee Farm.  They cultivate all the mushrooms they sell. Check out their website, there are lots of pictures of their process, it's pretty cool.

We also stopped at the La Terza Coffee booth.  Isaac had a dark roast drip coffee and I had a latte.  I didn't have a chance to take a photo until I was finished. It was very good, I think the fact that the beans are locally and freshly roasted certainly helps. I'm not a coffee connoisseur but I actually prefer La Terza to Starbucks.  The taste is much more nuanced and flavorful than Starbucks, which I find to be a overpowering (burnt tasting) at times.  Their store and roasting facility is actually not that far from our house, so when I get a creamy latte craving, I will try to make the effort and go to La Terza rather than the 'Bux.

All Gone! :(

I was FINALLY able to do some cooking in the kitchen.  Everything is not back where it belongs, but I wanted to make Isaac some food to take back with him.

In progress

 Herbed Egg casserole with spinach, onions, asparagus.

Lasagne with herb-y ricotta, home-made red sauce, and fresh mozzarella

(It rained [again!] today so the lighting in the house is not optimal for food pictures, but you get the idea)

The spinach, asparagus, herbs (oregano, thyme, sage, parsley) came from either a farm or our yard. I'm hoping someday that the cheese will be home-made too!

There was some steamed asparagus left over so we had it as a snack. They were so good, we ate them plain.

It Has Begun!

It is finally time for Isaac to go to Yellow Springs and start his apprenticeship with Smaller Footprint Farm.  This is bittersweet as I will miss him very much until I see him on the weekends.  Despite missing Iz, I am really proud of him and happy that he is doing this!

We packed Iz up this morning, put his bike in the back of the truck and we were off.  We met Doug, one of the farmers, and he introduced us to Al, the man with whom Isaac will be staying with while in Yellow Springs.  Al is a very nice man who is a retired farmer.  He is also a veteran host as he told us that he has had people from China, Russia and Africa to name a few stay with him in the past.

 After we unloaded the bags, we followed Doug to the farm where he gave a tour.

The entrance:

View from the other side

Doug pointed out all of the beds that are growing vegetables for their CSA including, onions, Red Russian Kale, Kholrabi and Radishes to name a few.  We also saw the green houses/hoop house with tomato and other seedlings.

We then had the pleasure to meet the newest additions to the farm:

Pigs!

And they sure live up to their name when the eat!

We then took a stroll over to the chickens.  Here is one proud rooster!

The stylish coop.

See more chicken photos here.

I think Isaac is going to have a lot of fun even if working on the farm is going to be hard work!

After our tour of the farm, Iz and I decided to take a tour of the town. We have been to Yellow Springs before, but we wanted to spend as much of the day together.  Besides, we had never been to the famous Young's Dairy.  Every time we tell someone about Isaac working on a farm in Yellow Springs, they mention Young's.  So off we went. We had some yummy ice cream.

And met some super cute goats!

Again, please click here to see more photos.

It has been a busy and emotional day and there are many more days to come.  I think Isaac will post some entries in the future, I hope. We just have to make sure that he has access to wifi.  Thanks to everyone who has been so great to us. We really appreciate all of your support and encouragement!

Catching Up&Weeds

It's been raining cats and dogs here this April.  It has literally put a damper on our outside activity so far this month.  Isaac only has one more week at home and we are scrambling to finish some home projects before he leaves.  We are currently in the middle of a medium sized kitchen remodel which has also kept us from the yard.  Despite all of this, we have had a little garden activity.

A lot of our two year old parsley did really well over the winter, we were able to dig under the snow and clip off a few sprigs of fresh parsley which was nice during this past bitter winter.  However, this parsley is biennial, which means that it during the second year it will flower, set seed and die. Parsley is a very nutritious herb and easy to grow. It is a great staple if you have limited garden or container space for your herb garden. Here is some nutritional information about parsley.  Although the parsley we have is abundant (5 very large chunks) all of it is going to flower soon, so we are trying to use it up before then.  Isaac removed three large plants and we made pesto with it.  I LOVE pesto!  Fresh basil pesto is my favorite, but I will eat it made with parsley, thyme and arugula to name a few.  We don't really follow a recipe, just eyeball everything (that is how I make salad dressing too).
All you need it a food processor or blender. If you are really hardcore, like some people we know and admire, you can make this with a mortar and pestle.

Take a handful of your herb, in this case parsley.  Place in your mixer of choice.  Add 3-4 smashed cloves of garlic. (This can be more or less to taste, but for me garlic, next to the herb, is the most important flavor in pesto.)  Next add 1/4 c. or so of nuts.  We use walnuts because they are cheaper than pine nuts, but you can really use any kind of nut or seed. Add 1/4 c. of Parmesan cheese, either grated or in small chunks.  Add a small amount of your oil of choice, we use olive, to the rest.  Pulse the processor until the ingredients start to incorporate. Next add more olive oil until the ingredients start to blend finely and becomes a loose paste.  Add salt and pepper to taste.  Add to pasta, sandwiches, veggies, bread etc.


We also had quite a bit of red Russian kale that overwintered nicely.  It was starting to bolt so we pulled it up and made Kale chips!
I learned about this from Isaac's lovely sister.  Preheat your oven to 350 degrees.  Wash, dry and separate your kale. Spread on a baking sheet. Spray or drizzle olive oil onto the kale. Sprinkle with sea salt and any other seasonings that you like. Bake for 10-15 minutes until the kale shrinks and starts to crisp and lightly brown. Let cool and enjoy! These taste like or better than regular chips. They are light crispy and almost melt in your mouth. If you get kale at the farmer's market, your yard or even the store-give it a try! Here is a very nice blog post about kale chips. Here is a photo of some of our kale chips after they came out of the oven. Ignore the messy stove!

 

I suspect many of the plants are enjoying the warmer weather and copious rain. Including the "weeds".  We don't weed in the garden per-se, only when the grass or trees or other somewhat large or invasive plants start growing where we want other stuff to grow.  We treat the plants that volunteer in our garden as allies.  Dandelions aerate the soil and bring up nutrients with their long tap roots and attract pollinators, clover fixes nitrogen and is food for the rabbits (instead of our veggies!), dead nettle is a nice ground cover as their roots grow mainly lightly along the top of the soil, they also attract bees and other beneficial insects.  Here is a photo of all three hanging out in the garden.

So before you start spraying the RoundUp, spend hours on your hands and knees or call your local chemical lawn service.  Remember that lots of these plants are beneficial to your soil, food for animals, attracts beneficial insects and look pretty as well!  Here is another informative blog post on this matter.
I hope to be updating this much more often.  This week will be busy for us, but I should have more time to blog once Isaac is settled and the kitchen is back together.
I'm sure I speak for everyone, I am so happy that it is getting warmer and greener everyday!

New Plants

*Click on the Links for more information about the plants mentioned!*
Last post I showed you some new plants we bought from Companion Plants.  We are slowly finding homes for them and others that have been waiting for attention for a little while.
One of the homes for several plants is the finished compost pile I shared with you in an earlier post.  Here is the pile now:

It's hard to see, but there is a species (wild) rose: Rosa sancti-andreae (syn. R. villosa?) at the top of the pile.  It will get rather large: 6ft tall and spread; and have small pink flowers.  While this plant will be beautiful in its own right, we are also growing this for its hips that will emerge after the flowers fade. Rose hips are high in vitamin C among other things. Surrounding the rose are small clumps of Roman Chamomile (Chamaemelum nobile) that we are hoping will spread all around this pile. I think most people are familiar with Chamomile tea. Once the plants start blooming, you can collect the flowers and the leaves to make a soothing cup.  Ideally, when the hips on the rose form, we can collect the hips and the chamomile to make an even more nutritional tea. The final plant in this arrangement, to the left and bottom of the pile, is Sweet Woodruff (Galium odoratum) that Iz collected from my most gracious parents who have too much of it. It likes moist and shady places and we hope that the shed next to it and the Paw Paw behind it will give it enough shade in the hot summer months.
Sweet Woodruff is used medicinally for stomach ailments as well as in culinary applications such as to flavor teas and juices.  It is also used to flavor May Wine which is a punch made with Woodruff infused white wine, oranges, pineapple and sugar. This is only one example of May Wine as apparently there are other versions with different flavors. We are really looking forward to making herbal teas from the garden once again. There is nothing like gathering a bunch of fragrant herbs and making a nice iced tea with honey to drink on a hot summer evening. Perhaps that will be a blog topic in the near future!

Since the taking of this photo Iz has added more to this bed: Lemon Verbena (Aloysia citriodora) (another delicious herb in tea or putting under the skin of roast chicken); Codonopsis (Codonopsis pilosula), Meadowsweet (Filipendula ulmaria), and Meadowfoam (Limnanthes Douglasii)

In other plant news Iz planted the Goji Berries (Lycium chinese or barbarum). It is also known as Matrimony Vine.  The folklore attached to this plant states that one must not plant this vine near the home as it may cause "marital discord".

This is Iz planting the Goji in one of the beds at the front of the house, and with my permission, near the house! While the folklore is charming, the best place we have for the Goji is near the house. We promised to move it if we start lashing out at each other for no reason.  This is a vine and Iz added some stakes next to the plants to give them something to climb on.
I better end this now, we have more additions but I will leave that for later! I shall leave you with a little honeybee that was visiting our tulips. Bzzz Bzzz!

Road Trip: Companion Plants

Iz and I took a trip to Athens, Ohio this week to visit a nursery where Iz has bought a lot of our plants. We drove three hours to visit Companion Plants buy a flat of plants and then drove home! The drive through South East Ohio is beautiful, changing from flat farmland to rolling pastures to dense pine forests. There is really no major interstate that goes from Cincinnati to Athens, so there is plenty of scenery.

We have met the owner of Companion Plants before at and herb festival, but Iz took a moment to reintroduce himself and chat. The owner is so nice and knowledgeable! We took our time to browse, they offer around 600 different plants, and started to accumulate a nice stash of plants.


Click the images to see what we purchased.



Here is Isaac browsing in a small section of the greenhouse. Look at the eucalyptus tree!


There were some really cute terra cotta plant tags for sale but I abstained from buying any.


 We didn't manage to plant everything when we got home, but we found a home for the Kentucky Colonial Mint. Isaac divided the plant into three to give it more opportunity to spread around the bed.

 I can't wait to use it in tea and other yummy summer drinks!








Even though it was a short road trip, we had a great time!

Cover Cropping It

Since my last post was about working with your soil to get it healthy and nutritious, I thought I would continue on the theme and talk about growing cover crops.  Generally this is done after your last harvest of whatever you have grown for the season or if you are planning on leaving a plot empty for a season or two. This publication will give you a lot of specific information on choosing which plants to grow and all the benefits or growing cover crops and green manure.

I found a few good passages to put here to give you a better idea of what I am talking about.

"Green manuring" involves the soil incorporation of any field or forage crop while green or soon after flowering, for the purpose of soil improvement. A cover crop is any crop grown to provide soil cover, regardless of whether it is later incorporated. Cover crops are grown primarily to prevent soil erosion by wind and water. Cover crops and green manures can be annual, biennial, or perennial herbaceous plants grown in a pure or mixed stand during all or part of the year. In addition to providing ground cover and, in the case of a legume, fixing nitrogen, they also help suppress weeds and reduce insect pests and diseases. When cover crops are planted to reduce nutrient leaching following a main crop, they are often termed "catch crops."

A major benefit obtained from green manures is the addition of organic matter to the soil.

Cover crops will also aid in fixing nitrogen into the soil. provide a healthy ecosystem for beneficial bacterial and aerate the soil.

Iz and I chose to add some winter cover crops to our large raised bed last fall. We sowed seeds for winter rye, red and white clover, dandelion and alfalfa.  Since this was the first year for this raised bed, which is sitting on top of plain old Ohio clay soil, we wanted to try and break up the soil beneath the bed and encourage the worms and other nutrients to travel up into it.

It looks a mess but will be incorporated into the soil as it decomposes

A winter cover crop is planted in late summer or fall to provide soil cover during the winter. Often a legume is chosen for the added benefit of nitrogen fixation. In northern states, the plant selected needs to possess enough cold tolerance to survive hard winters. Hairy vetch and rye are among the few selections that meet this need. (From the ATTRA Publication)

We turned over the plants two weekends ago and found that the plants did a good job and rooting deep and providing some organic matter to build the soil as it decomposes.

Look at the tap root and root system of this red clover!

The nice thing about having dandelions in the mix is that you can eat the greens and dry the root for tea instead of turning them into the soil. They just might be the first edible crop you harvest from your spring garden! Enjoy!