The Calculated Free Spirit: September 2015

First Day

I don’t have much local food at hand because I have been waiting for the Farmer’s Market which is on Saturday in order to purchase produce. I ate some homemade bread but the flour wasn’t local but the butter was from Cache Valley. We purchased local flour for future meals from Lehi Roller Mills, however, we are not sure if the wheat was grown in Utah. So if I want to be completely Local, I would need to not eat wheat or grow my own. But it’s my first day and I’m learning so I’m going to make this allowance.

We headed out to the Murray Farmer’s Market to get produce for the week. We decided to go there because their prices are cheaper than those at the downtown Farmer’s Market. Also it focuses strictly on produce and not on crafts. Not only are my husband and I eating local but we are also on a budget. Planning meals in advance is key! Lots of planning is needed for an all local diet. Many people adored our dog and we were able to get most of what we needed but there was no garlic and how can we cook without garlic! We then made a snap decision to go to the other Farmer’s Market downtown with an hour left. We are happy that we went because we saw our good friend that works for the Downtown Collective that is behind the Farmer’s Market. We also found our garlic but for a high price of a dollar per garlic. We needed celery for a homemade vegetable stock and we found local eggs for $4 a dozen from Clifford Farms and Anthony got pork shoulder to smoke and smoked bacon from them as well. On the way home, I had a craving for raw apple cider from Farnsworth Farms. It really is the best apple cider/juice that you will ever have in your hole life. This farm is two miles from our house and when we walked in, we found loads of produce and it's practically in our backyard. Another thing we found was garlic and it was really cheap. We drove to 2 farmer's markets and could have gone just down the street! Farnsworth also has a pick your own option for their apples and peaches. We will be coming here much more. I told them about the Eat Local week and they didn't even know what it was.

When we got back home, I was quite hungry so I made a caprese salad.

Here are the ingredients and where I got them:

3 sliced tomatoes - a friend grew them
A handful of basil - from the garden that I shredded
Mozzarella - from Epicurean Chefs that also provide butter and quail eggs) from the Farmer’s Market and local honey in place of balsamic vinegar.
Honey from the Harmon’s on 11400 South because they have an amazing bulk isle now! It’s the cheapest way to get local raw honey. Whole Foods also has local raw honey as an FYI. This is replacing balsamic vinegar since there isn’t any completely local honey. You can try Slide Ridge mead vinegar. Do know not all of the honey or ingredients are sourced locally but is as local as it gets for vinegar.

We then started working on stock to have for soup for the week. Soup is a great way to make your dollars stretch and eat carb free if you’re also on a diet.

Here is my husband's recipe:

Lots of water – we eyeballed what looked good
A bunch of celery, chopped and leaves removed – purchased at the downtown Farmer’s Market. Only 1 celery vendor in the whole market!
A small bushel of carrots peeled - from farmer's market
5 medium onions - from farmer's market
Half a bunch of parsley – given to me free from the Farmer’s Market!
2 Bay leaves – we have our own bay tree that we grow in the shade outside and take indoors for the winter
Herbs (thyme, oregano, rosemary) – picked from our garden
10 cloves of garlic (a whole head) - Farmer's Market

While that was cooking, we started on dinner which was fresh made fettuccine and marinara sauce.

For the pasta

350 grams white bread flour (Lehi Roller Mills)
4 eggs (Clifford Farms)
tsp salt (Real Salt)
We put in water but it was too elastic. We will try it again without water next time so we recommend trying it without water.

Combine the ingredients together and knead for 3-5 minutes. Wrap in plastic wrap (I use biodegradable plastic wrap from biobag) and put in the fridge for 30 minutes. Roll out as flat as possible. Make thin quarter inch strips with a knife and put the strips aside. Fill a pot with water and let it come to a boil. I like to salt the water. Let it boil for a few minutes until it is al dente. Strain and put aside.

Marinara sauce - cook this while you're refrigerating the dough.

1/2 Tbs of butter - Cache valley from Smith's
1 large onion - Farmer's Market
8 tomatoes - Friend's garden
1/4 red jalapeno - we used a whole one and it was too spicy! We did put in the seeds too
1 red pepper - Farmer's Market
1 yellow zucchini - Farmer's Market
2 cloves of garlic - Farmer's Market
Tsp of fresh thyme - from our garden
TBS of fresh oregano - from our garden
2 fresh bay leaves - from our garden
1 TBS fresh basil - from our garden

Instructions

Slice onion, peppers and zucchini.
Crush garlic
Cook onions and garlic until translucent and soft.
Add peppers and zucchini
Blend tomatoes, pulse for a few seconds
Add tomato to pot, add salt to taste and all herbs except basil and simmer for 20 minutes
Put two ladles of the mixture into the blender and blend until smooth and thick
Pour blended mixture back into the sauce and simmer until desired thickness
Add basil just before serving

We didn't have any made yet but we would have put in a cup of fresh stock. We would have also added a small glass of red wine. We actually forgot that we had made some from our neighbor's grapes but used it the next day in a soup. If you have cheese on hand, feel free to grate some on top. We did!

My husband made a comment that he now understands why one person went to work and another did the shopping and cooking back in the day. Making everything from scratch is labor intensive. We did both. We both went and shopped and both cooked. It was really fun but exhausting too. It's great to have each other's help. I'm also trying to not drive my car which is going to take more time. I think at first it's more difficult but if we made ready meals on the weekend and got all of our big tasks done like baking bread, making stock, etc, then it's easier to eat local throughout the whole week.

Gone Local

I like a good challenge. My current challenge will be going locavore for a week in conjunction with Salt Lake City’s Eat Local Week. Locavore was the Oxford Dictionary word of the year in 2007. Urban Dictionary defines it a “A locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius such as 50, 100, or 150 miles usually for ecological reasons.” After researching this movement and thinking through the end to end process, it seems doable with some planning and time set aside. I can find local eggs and butter and produce within a mile walking radius of the house. The SLC Eat Local challenge, running 09/12/2015-09/19/2015, seems to indicate a consensus of a 250 mile radius. Some say that’s not very big but it does allow me to borrow from other states like Wyoming. I’m a bit intense and take challenges like this quite literally and therefore am taking a strict approach. For instance, I am not eating chocolate, drinking coffee or tea, using oil like olive oil or coconut oil for consumption purposes.

I even started thinking about the packaging of local items. Bottles and plastic aren’t local but I’m going to make an allowance for hard to find items like nuts which do grow in farms in southern Utah. I buy most of my items in bulk or farmer’s market so packaging shouldn’t be much of a concern. I’m trying to combine this challenge with other former challenges of giving up plastic and riding my bike to these places because gasoline isn’t local either, even if it is coming from Texas or Alaska and certainly isn’t environmentally friendly.

Going local means thinking about my local community and what benefits it, not just eating local. I won’t buy unnecessary non-local things like clothes and shoes as I have plenty by this point. I will continue to use products for non-consumption purposes like deodorant and shampoo (you’re welcome). It did get me thinking though… could I make these items too from just local products? I think I could with a lot of work so that’s for some future homesteading point in my life when I’m preparing for the final days before the zombie apocalypse or I have tons of time on my hands. But how cool would it be to have truly local product? I look at local products and think – well, that’s not entirely local is it? There’s an Eat Local movement with branding and what not. I think there needs to be an even more specific label for “Truly Local” if all ingredients were locally sourced and manufactured locally. My local chocolatier, although they’re good and conscientious (even though Solstice stopped using paper packaging and switched to plastic and won’t respond to my email inquiry about this change), it’s still not really local if you think about it. It’s from Africa. I don’t live in Africa. I also can’t grow chocolate in Utah. And I’m a chocoholic! I have looked into a tree called chocolate pudding. I am seriously considering buying this.

It really is a global landscape that we are dealing with for every single thing that we touch. We are quite removed from processes and consequences of mass-manufactured, low-cost items. California’s water reservoirs are depleted because farmer’s are providing almonds and many other resources to the world. Wildlife in California is suffering from lack of water. Also farm workers, particularly in California, suffer grueling conditions with unbelievably low pay. I would rather give fair wages to the farmer’s and their family at a Farmer’s Market. If I focus on my food needs within my community and even my own backyard, my carbon footprint is greatly reduced. Also, it’s pretty convenient to walk outside when I need a certain herb or vegetable. I grew up having a garden. There’s no question if I will have a garden from year to year. It’s a part of me.

I’m a bit crazy though and thought, what if I make a simple product and all resources that went into making it were local. An example would be lip balm. So I get beeswax and make essential oil from sage and process lanolin from local wool. Compress that together and wrap in paper. But the paper isn’t local so I would get wood and put it in a chipper and then a food processor or blender and make a paste and lay it out on screens and dry it. Then I could make dye from beets and paint that on with a feather for my branding.

Getting into this locavore stuff, if I want to be hardcore, and I do, I have to grow a lot of this stuff myself. I am trying to grow soybeans and looking into growing quinoa, nuts like pistachios, wheat, hops, sunflowers for oil etc. My husband and I are pretty do-it-your-selfer types so making our own butter from local cream, baking bread our own bread, cultivating yogurt, homemade beer, wine using our neighbors grapes entirely… these are all things we do currently before I even took up this challenge. But we could be doing more like making our own cheese, buying all local ingredients, using less exotic spices and making our own spices. I actually think it’s a lot of fun to challenge myself in this way. It also helps out local farmers and businesses and undermines major corporations who lobby the government for their special interests and I’m all for that.

If it sounds hard, let me give a few ideas and resources to lead you towards a more locavore way if it is of interest for Utahns.

www.utahsown.org - a comprehensive list of local businesses

http://eatlocalweek.org/resources/market-map - list of Farmer’s Markets in the area

http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/344/locavore.html - Tips on becoming more local

Recipes

https://www.pinterest.com/asimplerplace/eating-like-a-locavore-locavore-bag-recipes/

http://www.accidental-locavore.com/

http://eatlocalweek.org/recipes

http://www.motherearthliving.com/food-for-health/locavores-delight-local-recipes-winter.aspx

http://www.amycotler.com/blog/

https://sustainablegrub.wordpress.com/category/locavore-recipes/

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/how-to-eat-like-a-locavore