Update

Our CSA ended last week, so I had no fresh veggies to pick up yesterday. Honestly, I didn't really miss it at all. I had a little more time in my day. (The nearest CSA to us was still about 35 minutes away, which is actually pathetic considering that I live in a rural, agricultural part of the state. It's kind of like being unable to find a seller of raw milk in in Wisconsin. But I'm not bitter.) The extra time was nice this week because I've actually had subbing jobs most of the week . . . I turned down a job on Monday because I had lunch plans, but if you keep reading you'll see why this ended up being a particularly wise decision.

Today I headed over to the local Farmers' Market to check on my Thanksgiving turkey and to pick up the two bunches of carrots I ordered last week from the great farmer who supplied me with fifty pounds of canning tomatoes this summer. It turns out the woman who I ordered a 15 lb turkey from never wrote down my order . . . which explains why I didn't get a call last week to say the turkeys had been "processed" and would be available for pick-up at the market last week. (By the time I got to the market last week this particular vendor was gone, or I would have found this out then.) The guy who was there today seemed annoyed with that woman, but told me someone else had not responded to repeated calls about the status of her turkey, so he said I could have hers. It's 20 lbs, a LOT more turkey than I need for my 11 guests, two of whom are very little girls. It's also selling for $3.50 a pound. I could have taken it home today but I didn't have that much cash on me, and I wasn't sure I actually wanted to go through with the purchase. I *think* I saw a sign for pastured turkeys at Jordandal Farms at last Saturday's little market in Madison . . . but at the time I thought I already *had* a turkey so I didn't stop to chat. Also, there was a big line of customers.

I'm not worried about the turkey situation. I'll either get one on Saturday at Jordandal or I'll keep my fingers crossed that the 20 lb turkey is still available next week, clear a space in my freezer, and stock up on soup ingredients.

Speaking of soup ingredients, I picked up six medium sized candy onions, three or four tomatoes, and two bunches of carrots from my favorite farm, and a bunch of larger carrots, a small bag of apples, and a 2 lb bag of popcorn from some other vendors today. I spent $14, which is less than our CSA share would have been, and I got to pick what I brought home with me. I'm still kind of on the fence about the CSA for next year. I'll keep you posted.

But the real reason I wanted to write tonight is that I have a house full of leftovers and goodies, and I've been enjoying the heck out of having homemade, real, fast food available every night. Last week I think I blogged about making pasta with eggplant, those tiny zucchinis, the grocery store mushrooms, etc. We are still eating that up - I made a BIG batch. Plus, I made a batch of chicken noodle soup over the weekend, and there's still a little bit in the fridge, in addition to what's in the freezer. The FACE (Family and Consumer Education, for those of you who took Home Ec back in the day) teacher brought lasagna to the teachers' lounge for lunch yesterday, and my husband was instructed to bring a salad. That did away with the remainder of the lettuce, carrots, and radishes I had from our CSA, but it made a very big salad, which I just finished off for dinner tonight, topped with an apple from today's shopping.

We had dinner with friends on Sunday to celebrate three significant birthdays in October, and I made a batch of dinner rolls and cupcakes, along with another yummy salad. We left the salad (and plenty of cupcakes) with our friends, but enjoyed some carb overload at home - and there are still two cupcakes left. My plans to freeze the remaining rolls didn't work out because the second batch, which I refrigerated on Sunday night and cooked on Monday, were cooling on the counter while I made applesauce, and they got splattered with sticky apple puree. (I had an interesting night on Monday.) So instead of freezing them with a really long label that read "Rolls baked 10-19, glazed with applesauce" we ate them. They made good breakfasts.

I made a batch of chocolate chip cookies today - not at all good for us, made with white sugar and white flour - for my former museum boss/neighbor/friend, who had a hard week. They didn't turn out particularly well because the butter was too soft, but they taste okay. So now I have about 3 dozen chocolate chip cookies, two cupcakes, two more servings of pasta, one very generous dish of chicken noodle soup, and a bunch of fresh vegetables in my fridge. I still need to make a cranberry apple pie before my cranberries go bad . . . but I'm kind of enjoying not needing to do any cooking at all.

This is an especially good feeling, as I have been presented with a possible opportunity for more work in the near future, if I can reach some kind of arrangement that allows me to work flexible hours around my completely unpredictable substitute teaching assignments. The new job opportunity is actually at a law firm in town . . . to which I sent a resume three and a half years ago, only to hear back that the firm was not hiring attorneys, but it sincerely wished me good luck finding a job in this little town, where my then-boyfriend, now-husband lived. My boss from the museum (where I had been working, till it closed for the season last Friday) put me in touch with one of the junior partners in the firm, who is the daughter of the senior partner who wrote the nice rejection letter (which I saved, along with all the other rejection letters I got from law firms) because my boss thought we should meet - we're young, professional (okay, I could be a professional if I could get a real job) women in town who are interested in civic life and leadership, but are significantly younger than most of the other active women in town. Also, my boss thought I needed a friend (I was originally introduced to my boss by a neighbor who thought my boss and I should become friends) and my boss is too busy to hang out with me. (Earlier this summer my boss broached the topic of introducing me to a young lawyer, and told me her name. I asked if she worked at the law firm that shared that name. My boss said yes, and seemed surprised that I'd heard of the firm. I explained that I had tried to get a job there back in the day. I was, and still am, amused by this. I know it really isn't that funny.) We had lunch a few weeks ago, and, just for kicks, I brought the rejection letter -as I said, I think this situation is amusing. (To be clear, I sent resumes to most, if not all, of the law firms in this town, and none of them wanted to hire me. Some of them wrote back to say so. But I felt strongly about *this* firm because the senior partner went to the same college as my husband, and one of the junior partners did too. I thought I'd have an "in" with them, if I could score an interview. But it wasn't meant to be. And then I ended up going back to school - that very same college, in fact - to become a teacher - so now my connection to the school is less tenuous than "my boyfriend went there" but my professional outlook has changed a bit.) The three of us (boss, junior partner, and myself) had lunch again on Monday. Imagine my surprise when the lawyer said she had talked to her dad and he said he'd hire me this time around, even though I hadn't applied for anything. They're always busy and could use another person to do stuff around the office. Since I have multiple degrees and I was working part-time for just-above-minimum-wage this summer, everybody (correctly) assumes I'm in the job market. I'm meeting with the attorney next week to sort out the details of how I can work part-time doing paralegal type activities (my law license is currently inactive) at the firm while still staying active on the sub list.

If anyone else wants to introduce me to a potential friend who is going to end up getting me a job, I'm game. Just sayin'.

Fall Wanderings

Michael and I enjoyed getting outside last weekend when his mom and step-dad were in town. We went to a state park and took the dogs (their cocker spaniel Loki, our Oliver) on a long (by Oliver's standards) walk around the lake.

We forgot to bring the camera.

Michael suggested we go back there today, because he was ready to get away from it all again, but I didn't want to be repetitive. So we went to the UW Arboretum instead, sans dog. (No dogs allowed, which meant I couldn't be disappointed by the fact that my dog is usually uninterested in walking more than a block and a half from our house.) The arboretum was a good choice because we were already in Madison - I picked up 10 more pounds of apples at the Farmers' Market, along with some garlic, sweet potatoes, and half a gallon of honey!

I brought the camera today. Here is a little bit of what we saw.
I don't know why this picture is funky. Something happened when I rotated it on the computer. I did not think it would still look like this when I posted it in my blog, but apparently it was not just a glitch in the software, it is actually a change on the picture file itself. I know I could have cropped the picture, but that would have been work!

Last of the Zucchini, Take Two

On Wednesday, before I picked up the last CSA of the season, I went to my parents' house. I went there for two reasons. First, I wanted to see my dad who had knee surgery last week, but is now up and walking around on crutches. Second, I wanted to do some gardening.

I left the remaining carrots in the ground, since they keep well there, and knew I was getting some from the CSA. I picked a lot of zucchini, though. And two potatoes, two butternut squash, and a pumpkin. And I brought some questionable onions home with me.

I'm not kidding about the zucchini. I picked a Lot. NINE.
The dog ate part of one, because the flower end was starting to rot.

Okay, so they weren't particularly large zucchini, like some of the ones I harvested this summer. In fact, they were downright puny:
but they're still zucchini (and that is a votive candle).

I made the rest for dinner tonight, along with an eggplant I picked up at my local Thursday Farmers' Market,
two CSA onions and one questionable onion from my garden, (The onions my dad and I grew are all spotty and slightly soft.)
a quart of homemade tomato puree from Thursday Market tomatoes,
and some garlic powder, because I don't have any real garlic at the moment.
Okay, okay, I also threw in the 16 ounce package of button mushrooms from California that I bought at the grocery store last week.
I mixed this veggie goodness with a package of curly pasta that my husband requested from the grocery store. Voila. Dinner for two, and a whole lot of leftovers.

Grocery Store

Wednesday was our last CSA pick-up of the year. In spite of the fact that I blogged that I don't want to do a CSA next year (and then chose to have last week's share donated to a food pantry because we did not have time to pick up the share during the week and I didn't feel the need to accumulate more vegetables in my newly weeded-out fridge), I spent a LONG time talking to our farmer on Wednesday about a 1/2 of a steer that my mom and I might purchase through him. We also talked a little bit about controlled substances. Namely, raw milk. Yes, he knows a farmer with a tiny dairy operation who is thinking of getting into the CSA business. No, that farmer does not sell raw milk to the public - nor should he, according to my farmer, because his herd is not in very good shape right now. But he could get into the grass-fed milk business. My farmer and I swapped information about where to buy real food (my grass fed milk at the grocery store, his recommendation of a CSA that is closer to my house for next year).No, I did not tell him I will not likely be back next year. Let's just say I may have spoken too soon about abandoning the CSA system. (Last week I ended up donating carrots, celery, leeks, and onions to the food pantry. Those are the kind of veggies I have been waiting all summer for. But last week was a crazy week.)

I mentioned something about making soup, or having been sorry that I'd missed the celery the week before, and my farmer sent me home with an extra bunch of celery because he had it. As we walked over to the part of the yard where the celery grows he said 'I can't guarantee how fresh it will be' and, since I don't really know him that well, I assumed that the celery had been picked but hadn't made it into anyone's share for the week. Nope. He was just joshing me. He pulled it right out of the ground. Beautiful. Then he told me a cute story.

Last week a customer was upset to see celery in his box. This was the second time we'd gotten celery. (I made broth with my first batch.) He said something like, "I've never tasted such strong celery. It was awful. I didn't like it at all. It was nothing like the celery I buy at the groc - "

Oh. He paused, dumbfounded.

Apparently the customer stopped being mad at the farmer sometime before the word "store" didn't quite make it out of his mouth. My farmer saw the light bulb go on in this guy's brain.

Nope, celery from the CSA is nothing like the celery you buy at the grocery store.

More soup is coming this weekend. Stay posted for pictures.

New England Pot Roast

Last summer my mom and I bought a rump roast at her Saturday morning Farmers' Market. This wasn't just any rump roast. It was significant in many ways. First, it was the biggest hunk of meat I had ever purchased. I haven't always been much of a meat eater. Second, it was the biggest (and possibly the first?) piece of grass-finished beef we had ever bought. We planned to cook it together some time last fall/winter, but somehow that never happened.

So I decided to serve it to my in-laws, who visited last weekend. I took it out of the freezer on Wednesday night. I don't really see my husband on Wednesdays right now, because of a class he is taking an hour and a half away from home. On Thursday he told me his mom was taking him (and presumably) me out for dinner at his favorite Japanese restaurant on Saturday night. So I rearranged my mental menu and decided to make the pot roast on Sunday.

The Japanese food was great, and the pot roast turned out well also.

My mother used to serve (something very similar to) this dish when I was a kid, so "pot roast" is defined in my mind as a hunk of beef, carrots, potatoes, and onions. Pot roast, in most of my cookbooks, has a LOT of other ingredients, and many of them don't even have carrots or potatoes. Hmm.

Fortunately I kept flipping through Betty Crocker, and found her "New England" Pot Roast, which was everything what I expected pot roast to be, with the lone addition of a jar of horseradish sauce, which I skipped anyway. I don't know much about horseradish sauce, but I know that what Betty wanted me to use came in a jar from the grocery store, and I wasn't about to ruin a perfectly 100% local meal by adding something processed by someone far away in a factory. (I almost ruined the localness of it by adding a package of California mushrooms. Fortunately, even if my conscience would not have stopped me the size of my pan did. Stay tuned for more on those oh-so-alluring but entirely non-local mushrooms.)

I used 1 lb, 13 ounces of rolled rump roast from Jordandahl Farms (I always thought my mom cooked her pot roast in the crock pot, but I learned on Sunday night that she doesn't. She cooks it in the green Dutch oven that she gave me, which I gave back to her after I got this set of Cuisinart stainless steel pots and pans for a wedding shower gift. She does cook her roast in the oven, which I did not want to do because . . . well, I had a recipe that said to cook it on the stovetop, and you know how I feel about deviating from recipes. Most of the time.)
Local candy onions from my grocery store and potatoes from my CSA
Potatoes from my garden

Another look at "those" "potatoes" - you won't find this at the grocery store!

Carrots from my garden
That carrot on the right is not a short, squat carrot variety. It was just a regular carrot with a rock in its path, so it got wider instead of longer. I'm going to have to try the "stuck on a rock" excuse for why I grow wider instead of taller after eating too many yummy dinners like this.

Another shot of my beautiful "misshapen" carrots for anyone in New York who loves funky veggies.
Full Pan!
Dinner (Sorry I don't have a picture of the gravy that went with this.)

I think the dish turned out well. I went back for a second helping of carrots. And it made three generous portions of leftovers. Not bad since Betty's recipe made enough food for eight servings, and I used less than half of the amount of meat she called for.

Free to Good Home

We don't buy bananas any more. Michael never really cared a whole lot for bananas anyway. I, on the other hand, used to eat a banana every single day, starting sometime while I was in law school, and continuing through my teacher education classes. Eventually (after Michael and I had been dating long enough for me to mention I would like to put one on a wedding registry, if I ever happened to need a wedding registry) I bought a banana holder. It matches my napkin holder and my paper towel holder.

But it hasn't held any bananas in over a year. So it is time for my banana holder to find a new home.

Interested?

(Disclaimer: I still do eat bananas occasionally, when they are at other peoples' houses. Especially the lovely over-ripe ones that no one else wants. They're my favorite.)

Holiday (Comfort) Food

COB, who write Table of Promise, recently said, "Most of the time, we accept the food we eat because it is familiar. But how much of its contents are really up to our own standards? How much of it could we make in our own home kitchens? And when you find out what is in something, do you still want to feed it to your children?" This was posted on KidHaven, where COB has just become a regular contributor! In the post she talks about her project to get herself and her family off of processed food.

This has also become my goal. I have read most of the books that COB read, and we were similarly inspired to change our lifestyles based on what we had read. I don't know COB at all in real life, but it is so exciting to learn about regular folks out there who are doing the kinds of things I want to do in the kitchen.

But our common reading list is not why I bring up this comment. COB often says exactly what I'm thinking, and she puts it so nicely that I can't help but wish I'd thought to say it first so I don't look like a copycat! And this sentence got me right in the gut. Literally and figuratively, I guess.

I'm struggling with something right now. It's called Planning A Thanksgiving Meal for my Family. It could become a full-time occupation over the next few weeks. The guest list includes my niece who is allergic to peanuts, oats, eggs, and possibly other things. Also, her dad (my brother-in-law) who would like us to believe he is allergic to vegetables. Then there's my younger sister, whose palate has expanded since she was a young child and only ate peas, baked beans, bananas, and hotdogs, but I am never really sure about what she'll eat on any given day. (The day after Thanksgiving in 2001 I was shocked to watch her pour balsamic vinegar and olive oil on her salad. I wondered where my *real* sister had gone. I'm actually still looking - if anyone has seen the namesake of the "Jenny Beans," please let me know.) The other guests are easier to please, but to complicate matters, I am trying as hard as I can to make this an entirely local meal, and as organic as possible.

I have secured a pastured, organic turkey. I have bag upon bag of frozen corn in my freezer. I have recipes to make whole wheat rolls from scratch. I have a surplus of potatoes that should last until Thanksgiving, but if they don't I think I will be able to find some at a farmers' market. (I'll even let my twin sister mash them.) I have carrots in my garden. I will use apples in the stuffing instead of raisins, and homemade bread instead of the store-bought variety. There will be cornstarch in the gravy but it is a family recipe and I feel okay about using it. It's all covered.

Except this one pesky little dish. Traditionally my favorite Thanksgiving food. The one whose recipe calls for Michael Pollan's favorite ingredient - a can of cream of mushroom soup.

Can it really be Thanksgiving without green bean casserole?

Again, COB asks: "Most of the time, we accept the food we eat because it is familiar. But how much of its contents are really up to our own standards? How much of it could we make in our own home kitchens? And when you find out what is in something, do you still want to feed it to your children?"

Green bean casserole is familiar. When I spent 3 hours a day driving to and from college, and then student teaching placements, I listened to a lot of NPR. My favorite part of the afternoon program "All Things Considered" is during the holiday season when they discuss holiday recipes. A year or two ago I was shocked and horrified to hear the host and a chef talking about how to substitute fresh green beans with slivered almonds for the usual soupy green bean casserole which they claimed was "blech," or something similar.

My mind rebelled. "What??? Green bean casserole is holy! You can't skip it on the Thanksgiving table." In the words of my mother, "that's not right." I remember distinctly having my own little conversation with the chef while driving on Hwy 23 between Princeton and Montello, explaining to them how very wrong it would be not to serve green bean casserole on Thanksgiving. I made it at my sister's tiny apartment the first Thanksgiving she was married, where we ate chicken instead of turkey, and my dog Frodo saved us from a grease fire in the kitchen. And I made it the next year when we ate off of her fancy china in her new dining room. It has always been a part of the Thanksgiving table.

But as I begin to prepare my menu for this Thanksgiving, at my house, with my new husband, Michael Pollan speaks to me. On page 200 of "In Defense of Food" he writes, "As cook in your kitchen you can enjoy an omniscience about your food that no amount of supermarket study or label reading could hope to match. Having retaken control of the meal from the food scientists and processors, you know exactly what is and is not in it: There are no questions about high-fructose corn syrup, or ethoxylated diglicerides, or partially hydrogenated soy oil, for the simple reason that you didn't ethoxylate or partially hydrogenate anything, nor did you add any additivies. (Unless, that is, you're the kind of cook who starts with a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, in which case all bets are off.)"

I'm not kidding, guys. He's standing in my kitchen, shouting this at me while I try to brainstorm local, seasonal family-friendly appetizers.

But it's comfortable.

It's familiar.

It's a holiday.

I don't know what's in Campbell's cream of mushroom soup, but I know I could make my own cream of mushroom soup at home with three ingredients - cream (or half-and-half), chicken stock, and mushrooms. But the green bean casserole recipe doesn't call for homemade cream of mushroom soup. It calls for a condensed, salty, hydrogenated (Maybe. I don't really know.) food-like substance. I'm not ready to condense or oversalt or hydrogenate a beautiful cream of mushroom soup I make from scratch just so I can add it to green beans for a Thanksgiving casserole. And honestly, I don't even want to think about those french fried onion things that go on the top. Really.

Okay, the truth of the matter is that even though I really used to love green bean casserole, the thought of putting those crunchy little onions into beautiful luscious green beans I grew in the garden is revolting. And since I successfully (in my opinion) skipped the cream of mushroom soup in my shepherd's pie, I know I can skip it for Thanksgiving.

But it's going to be a little weird. And I'll probably have to eat my words about how wrong it would be not to serve green bean casserole at Thanksgiving. And I'll have to mentally apologize to the NPR host and the guest chefs who have been trying to get cooks to replace green bean casserole with real green beans.

Green Bean Casserole, which was probably invented in the 1950s and hailed by women across the country as the best thing ever because it tasted a little bit fancy, but only had three ingredients (canned beans, canned soup, and canned crispy onions), and was a snap to make, is familiar holiday food. It is definitely something I used to look forward to.

But it does NOT live up to my standards. I could not make those ingredients in my kitchen and recreate the dish without, well, let's be honest - a bunch of corn and soybean products for texture and color and consistency. And I don't really want corn and soy in my green beans. I don't have children (yet) but I'd feel better about feeding my toddler niece "boring" old green beans with butter (even if she doesn't eat very many) than I would about introducing her to canned beans drenched in sodium, corn, soy, and more sodium.

Thanks for making me be honest with myself, COB. It's not hard to eat well, but it can be hard to let go of old favorites sometimes.

Self-Esteem

Sometimes I read blogs of women who work full time, have children, cook much more adventurous dishes than I could ever dream up, actually use research while writing posts about food, and know how to take amazing pictures on camera phones. And then I, a part-time housewife with no kids, who started this week with three days off (but only ended up having two) write a post whining about having too many vegetables in my fridge that I can't use. Those days I feel like a big underachiever.

Other times, I add an extra work day to my schedule, send two kids to in-school suspension, come home and make chicken stock. 100% local chicken stock, with organic pastured chicken from the farmers' market (8 lbs of backs and necks), carrots from my garden, local shallots and onions from the CSA and my grocery store, and celery from the CSA. (Okay, okay, so the salt and pepper were not local. Sorry!)
8 lbs of chicken backs and necks did not fit in my stock pot. So I used three of my biggest pots and tried to divvy up the ingredients accordingly.
Stock!
Leftover vegetables and chicken meat. (I actually went through this for an hour after the stock was chilling in the freezer and picked the meat off the bones so I can turn it into chicken noodle soup this weekend.)I made close to 20 cups of chicken stock, and froze it in a variety of sizes. I'd love to say I froze different amounts so I could easily use the stock in different recipes, but that would be a lie. These were the best freezer safe containers I could find in my cupboards.
I went to bed feeling pretty good about myself on Thursday night.

And sometimes I work a regular shift at the museum in which I end up screaming in terror three (!) times in one day due to run-ins with the local wildlife, then invite my mom up to make cranberry relish and applesauce. (I actually let her carry five pounds of produce into my kitchen. I must really love my mom. I did make her take a jar of pickles home with her, though - and the three pounds of cranberries we didn't use.) I went apple-picking with a dear friend on Monday, and came home with about $9.00 worth of 60-cent-a-pound windfall apples and something like 5 or 6 dollars worth of 90-cent-a-pound apples I had actually picked from the trees. (My friend opted to pick all of hers from the tree, not the ground, and ended up with over 30 lbs of apples and a headache - some trees were so full of ripe fruit that when she grabbed one apple, three or four came off the tree.) On Thursday my mom picked up 5 pounds of cranberries fresh from the bog in near her brother's house in northern WI. (The orange we added to the cranberry relish is fresh off a plane from Australia. Maybe not the freshest fruit in the house, but it smelled really good. I miss oranges.) Her cranberries, according to the farmer, were not store-quality, but we think they taste pretty darn good.
My mom portioned the apples out into four-pound groups and we had 16 lbs here on the island. The rest of the apples from Monday went to my uncle's house and became a pie.
Three green apples went into this cranberry relish.


(My mom heats her jars in the oven instead of in a water bath. This is a particularly good idea with my water bath canner because my jar rack is really more a chunk of rust than a rack at this point. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that next canning season. Or for the rest of this canning season, if there is any . . .)

We thought we could seal the cranberry relish my grandma's way - without a water bath, just by letting it sit on the counter after ladling it into the jars. But after maybe 30 or 45 minutes my mom got anxious that the jars would not seal and we'd have to put them all in the fridge. These jars are not made to go in the freezer. Earlier we had debated running out to K-Mart and buying freezer-safe canning jars in the event of this exact situation, but had decided against it. Still, we wanted to be able to relish the relish over a period of months, not days or weeks, so I decided to put it in the water bath before the applesauce went in. It worked. Two of the half pint jars fell out of the rack in the canner, but they did not seem to be harmed in the process. All 7 jars sealed.

Earlier, while the relish had been cooking down into a thick gel, we'd been getting the apples ready for applesauce.
Quartering, coring, and peeling apples sure goes faster with two sets of hands.
But twelve pounds of apples is a lot.At this point I was asking myself, "Are we really only going to get three or four quarts of applesauce out of all this?" (Yes - three quarts, one pint, and another 3/4 of a pint that didn't go into the canner.)Next time I will mash the apples instead of pureeing them with my immersion blender. The sauce tastes really good (a little too sweet) but it is literally the consistency of baby food.

Unfortunately, while it is the right consistency, I think the apple sauce is too sweet to feed to my youngest niece at Thanksgiving. But her big sister will probably like it. And the relish will go very well with my local, organic, pastured turkey.


Productive, fun days like these make me feel much better about myself. Thanks for your help and your cranberries, Mom!
Good thing too, because I still have a lot of work to do in my kitchen! (And right now I need to get some sleep.)