Archive | Darling Homemaking

It occurred to me this week that the traditional Thanksgiving meal is – in fact – an iconic example of real, local, in-season food.  In autumn, our seasonal foods are all highlighted at the event: potatoes, cranberries, brussels sprouts, yams, sweet potatoes, applesauce, pumpkins and squash.

Also, autumn and winter is the heralded time of pies, meats and warm thick family meals. Can you imagine eating this heavy meal in August? Likewise, can you imagine feeling fulfilled with fruit salad and potato salad in November? We all have a sense of how we want to eat seasonally. Part of it is likely innate, but we can build off of the cultural knowledge that is passed down through our seasonal meals.

Food writers, such as Michael Pollan, bemoan the fact that we have lost a lot of the cultural food knowledge that used to be passed down in the kitchen from one generation to the next. It’s as if the current generations don’t know how to eat, most of the time, and that’s why it’s so easy to fall prey to the glistening lights and greasy palates of fast food joints. However, our food heritage isn’t completely gone. At times like Thanksgiving, we remember grandma’s secret recipe, we cherish the old foods and the long processes of cooking them.

But, we cram all our favorite foods into one event, then sit, stuffed as a turkey, snoozing on the couch.

What if – instead of saving the tradition for Thanksgiving Day – we carried it over into the entire season? If we made one or two of those special dishes every week, we’d be celebrating our heritage, spending time in community cooking and eating, and we’d be attuning our food senses to the natural dishes of the season.

There is so much to be thankful for, and there are so many local foods to be thankful for, that saving up for one day a year hardly seems possible.  Express gratitude with your kitchen. Feed yourself with heritage.

By ekwetzel
2010-11-26

WEEK 21

(Top row)
Beet
6 Apples
2 Delicata Squash
4 Pears
Yellow Carrots
(Middle row)
Bok Choi
Brussels sprouts
Onion
Garlic
(Bottom row)
Fennel
Celery

=/ We also had a 5 lb bag of potatoes, but I for got them at the farm.

The trees are crayon box hues and the mornings are getting brisk.  As the seasons change outside, the way we eat our foods change as well. In the summertime, I like fresh foods that I toss or eat raw. The oven is never on; food preparation is rarely complex. In autumn, however, there is a call in the kitchen to warm things, season them, or turn them to stew.  What better way to make a meal from the autumn produce than by chopping it up and slow cooking it all afternoon.

Slow cooking meat makes it tender and fall apart in your mouth. Using your crock pot to cook veggies keeps you from hovering over a stove, worrying if the water is steaming properly or boiling the right way.  What is the best part of slow cooking? Is it the way it makes your whole house smell like dinner? Or, is it leaving the meal to stew, and coming home in time to simply dish it onto the dinner plates? You take your pick.

Do you need a recipe with a crock pot? Not really. Chop an onion. Braise some meat. Add potatoes and/or root veggies. Add some broth or water to the pot. Perhaps add garlic. Do you have fennel? Give it a try! Do you have a myriad of weird and wonderful spices? Experiment with them, as well! How do you add cheese or milk to a particular combo of veggies? Look it up on a recipe site like allrecipes.com. Overall, let your nose be your guide: if the foods smell good together, they’ll likely soup up nicely as well.

A few tips:
–    If you include beans and tomatoes, make sure the beans are cooked first before adding them to the crock pot; otherwise the acid in the tomatoes will make the beans tough.
–    If you are using meat, it is often a good idea to brown it or braise it first.
–    If you are adding a liquid, broth is always tastier than water.
–    No time to prep in the morning? Do your prep at night and store the mix in a bowl in the fridge.

Slow cooking takes time, but it helps to slow me down. The summer is so hectic. Autumn is so beautiful and rare, like the blush of all nature’s beauty before a cold, deep frost.  No need to eat on the run anymore. The days are getting shorter; the nights are giving more time for rest.  When we are awake, when we eat and are in community, let us take time to breathe, to see, to appreciate the moment we are in.  When the leaves turn brilliant colors, they are gone in a flash, and if you don’t stop and appreciate them, they are gone before you know it.

Enjoy the last fresh foods that come before your plate this autumn. Enjoy the unwinding of the days. Enjoy these last warm breaths before the harshness of winter.  Put all your memories and thoughts in a pot; mull over them, slowly, and let them enrich your dreams.

By ekwetzel
2010-11-12

WEEK 19

(Starting from the bottom left and going clockwise)
Fennell
2 Leeks
Beets
2 Parsnips
2 Pears
Head of Garlic
Red potatoes
Carrots
Loose turnips (upper right-hand corner)
3 Turnips with Greens still attached
Purple Kale
Kabocha squash
Onion

Plus a bowl of apples in the center.

When I see a red delicious, the iconic apple of school lunches and cafeterias, I cringe a little thinking of how bland and mealy they taste.  Sure, they are a deep, rich red. Sure, they have been buffed and waxed to shine in the fluorescent lights. But looks ain’t everything.

It seems that, as I explore the realms of real food, local food, and heirloom varieties, I discover more and more that the ugly foods taste the best.  My favorite tomatoes look like Frankenstein stitched them together. Greens can taste terrific when they appear to be wilted. Melons and other fruits often taste te best when they are at their ripest and easily bruised.

This week on the farm we chose apples from a crate of Jonagolds covered in ugly black spots. Terry explained in her email about the share food this week that there were “lots of scab this year because of the rainy spring.  That is the main reason there are few apple orchards on this side of the mountain!”

But you know what? I rinsed off my apples. Took a crisp bite. And – mmmm – they are good. Chopped some up and cooked them on the stove, and they made the prettiest applesauce I’ve had in a while.

Sure, sometimes food that looks bad is bad. You can typically use your nose to tell the difference: if the food smells rancid, toss it. If it smells sweet or appetizing, it’s probably right where you want it. Well, technically you’d want it in your mouth, but you get the picture.

Applesauce is easy to make, by the way. Just slice your apples and remove the core. I prefer to keep the skins on, but it’s more common to remove them. Thin slices will help it cook down faster.  Put in a small pot with a tiny amount of water, and turn on high temperature. Make sure to keep the lid on the pot sealed. If the moisture goes down, add a little water (you don’t want to ruin the bottom of your pot). Monitor the apples and let them cook down for about 30 minutes, adjusting the heat as needed. The apples are ready when you can mash them up with a spoon into sauce.

By ekwetzel
2010-11-05

WEEK 18 – First week of the Fall Share

We decided to not sign up for the egg share this fall, hence no eggs in the picture.

(Starting from the top and going clockwise)
Celery
3 Onions
Fennell
Head of Garlic
Head of Cabbage
Butternut Squash
4 Parsnips
Bok Choi
Lots of Purple Potatoes (I think it was 2 lbs worth)
(In the Middle)
Broccoli
8 Jonagold Apples
4 Pears

After a long day, it’s easy to order takeout, nuke a freezer meal in the microwave or “cook” up a box of hamburger helper.  The clean-up for these meals is also easier.  Takeout meals have disposable utensils, napkins, containers and condiment packages.  Very little cleanup is required for freezer meals or boxed meals as well.  While this food is easy to make, however, it is food that has been changed-processed and complicated-in order to be able to freeze well, taste good or be cheap to mass produce.  Complicated food is not intended to nourish, primarily, but to be sold. It is a commodity; and, for the most part, it is a food substitute.

We romanticize certain kinds of foods, foods that are homemade, heirloom, specialty, craftsman, or gourmet.  We intrinsically recognize that non-industrialized foods hold great value and character.  Even industrialized foods try to hearken back to simpler times, when food was grown primarily on small farms and livestock were able to roam under the sun and rain.  We want simple food, but simple food is hard to come by.

To eat real food, and to eat it as simply as possible, you have to buy raw ingredients. You have to prepare them. You have to wash tons of dishes. And tomorrow you have to do it all over again.

How would you make your own salsa?  How would you can or preserve your summer tomatoes? How would you bake your own bread or grind your own flour? Can you imagine making your own yogurt, or even your own cheese? Have you ever considered raising backyard chickens?

The more “simply” you eat and the raw-er your ingredients get, the more time you spend preparing them, and the more dishes you have to wash.  When a meal is simple and your ingredients are simple, there is often much work, preparation or training involved.  It’s a pity, really, that we have lost a lot of our innate cultural wisdom regarding food preparation.  To our grandmothers and great-grandmothers, much of this simple living came naturally as they learned the traditions from their mothers; for those raised in an industrialized world where our mothers were raised to depend on supermarkets and Betty Crocker, we have to strive to find a food niche from which to nourish our families.

I’m thankful that farmers markets are on the rise. I’m thankful that people are demanding local food options. I’m thankful that meat shops across the nation are offering butchery workshops for average citizens. I’m thankful heirloom seeds were preserved by a handful of wonderfully weird and independent farmers and gardeners. I’m thankful that the internet is available to be a great resource for those of us who want to walk away from over processed fake foods and be retrained in the wonderfully deep and mysterious world of real, simple food.

I’ve learned a lot, and I still have a lot more to explore. In the meantime, who wants to come wash my dishes?

By ekwetzel
2010-10-22

*Photos of the takeout bags and of the girl in the kitchen, courtesy of Molly Morris.

WEEK 16

(Clockwise, from the eggs)
Eggs (again, the farm has young hens, and they are laying smaller eggs this week, so we received 18 eggs instead of the normal dozen)
3 Jalapeno Peppers
2 Leeks
Red & Purple Potatoes
2 Purple Onions
4 Tomatillos
Delicata Squash
Garlic
2 Beets
Red Chard
2 Eggplant
(In the middle)
4 Tomatoes
Apples
3 Green Peppers