Getting Ready for Company

It's been awhile since I have blogged about food, hasn't it? The situation for Wisconsin educators is pretty grim. Teachers are retiring, which would ordinarily be good for someone like me who wants a permanent position, but school boards need to cut (LOTS OF) spending, so they won't be hiring new teachers to replace those who leave. Class sizes are almost definitely going to go up. While the school board in the district where I am subbing (but am not working under a contract or protected by a union) decided to extend the teachers' contracts for two years before our governor got rid of collective bargaining for teachers, the school board in the district where my husband is employed (with a contract) refused to extend their contracts, so he (and all of the other teachers in the district) now have their jobs at the whim of the school board, with no real union protection at all. We're looking at some big changes for next year.

One positive piece of political news is that the Wisconsin legislature may be thinking about making sales of raw milk legal (again). I hope that any such bill survives a veto this time.

In spite of not blogging much lately, I have been cooking up some yummy things in the kitchen. In an effort to streamline my life so that I can focus on teaching during the week, I've been making a huge batch of something on Saturday or Sunday, and living off of leftovers for the rest of the week.

Here are some pictures of the food we've been enjoying:

Spaghetti with grass-finished beef, homemade spaghetti sauce, and zucchini from last year's garden:

The pot roast (which came from Viroqua, not Argyle as I previously stated).


A casserole made with zucchini, onions, mushrooms, pasta, grass-finished ground beef, 3/4 of a jar of homemade tomato sauce, and a full quart of homemade spaghetti sauce, topped with local farmer's cheese. (It is not hard to get local cheese in WI, fortunately!) It was a little bit watery - I a going to keep that in mind for canning next year and really cook down the tomatoes before canning them. (I plan to can at least five batches of plain tomatoes plus two batches of the spaghetti sauce from Animal Vegetable Miracle.)
(Ideally, I would have sauteed the onions in a separate pan to make sure that they got fully softened. I didn't want to make extra dirty dishes, but at the same time, I wanted to really dry the zucchini out, because it tends to be pretty soggy after several months in the freezer. My solution was to brown the zucchini first, then add the onions later so that the liquid from the onions wouldn't keep the zucchini from getting a little bit crisp. I don't know if this worked or not since it all cooked down together in the casserole!)

I made creamy tomato soup from the remainder of the tomato puree. It was delicious.

I have also been experimenting with making bread from scratch.

Delicious. And pretty too, if I do say so myself.
While the bread dough was rising, I was simmering a gallon of chicken stock on the stove.
I was running low from the last batch, but I had a chicken carcass in the freezer from a few weeks earlier, and it seemed like a good day to cook AND bake. I thought about roasting my turkey giblets and neck from Thanksgiving and adding them to the stock, but decided they will make their own stock when I run out of the turkey stock that I made from the turkey carcass after Thanksgiving.

I never posted about it, but I made a batch of crackers from scratch before the Superbowl. They were okay although in spite of baking them twice they never got quite crispy enough. I think that is because I did not roll the dough out thinly enough. Here's what was left after my dad and I took some to the Garden Expo in February:

As I posted previously, I am no longer eating meat from restaurants (unless I know where the meat came from and approve of the way it was raised) or buying it from the grocery store anymore. So yesterday I headed out to the farmers' market to pick up some meat to get me through the next few days with company.

My sister and my nieces are coming to town later this week. They eat "normal" things like Shredded Wheat, Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, and hotdogs.

I bought the cereal and the blue boxes of mac and cheese. But I just couldn't bring myself to buy hotdogs at the store. So yesterday at the farmers' market I picked up a package of brats (no nitrates)

and a package of hotdogs (with nitrates, but still a better choice than Oscar Meyer because the bison (shhhh) that the hotdogs came from led happy, pastured lives).

I also got a package of nitrite-free bacon for breakfast,
and my mom bought two chickens for next Sunday's big meal. (Not pictured. Yet.)

I'll be serving spaghetti with grass-fed ground beef and homemade spaghetti sauce (my last jars!) for dinner on Thursday night, and the two chickens with mashed potatoes and (frozen) garden peas and CSA corn on Sunday. I'm sure Adele will need to lick some jam off of a piece of homemade bread. And I'm planning to fold some frozen farm stand blueberries into the Rich Cream Scone recipe I haven't made in too long.

Back at the garden, my dad said he'd look into getting our huckleberry seeds and onion seeds started this week! I ordered about $75 worth of seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange, and have been drooling over them for a few weeks now.

Today I'm working on a pork roast that I will serve with wild rice and creamed asparagus (frozen last May). If I remember, I'll take pictures and post them later.

In Pictures

I hope the state senators stay in a safe, undisclosed location(s) for a long, long time. Please don't come home, Jon Erpenbach. I lived in Illinois for 4 years. You can hang out there till June if need be.

This is definitely one of my favorite signs - especially for those who don't realize that teachers are making a VERY Difficult decision by calling in sick to attend the rallies.




I loved the Russ Feingold for Governor sign.







Jesse Jackson! I swear he is really there. Click on the picture to make it bigger.

The capitol lawn has been trampled this week, so we were standing in sticky, gooey mud.
I support me! Yay! (Sign in Starbucks)

Maybe you saw my state on the national news last night . . .

I'm glad red has sometimes been my favorite color, because I've been wearing a lot of it this week. I have at least two clean red shirts to go before I have to start over in the red clothing rotation. The new Republican governor of my state has decided that the best way to overcome the 137 million dollar shortfall by giving $117 million in tax cuts to corporations (because, if you've driven into my state from Minnesota, Iowa, or Illinois recently, you know that Wisconsin is "Open For Business") and by busting unions. (Yes, that link is to an opinion article. But the statistic it quotes links back to the Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The numbers are good.) Teachers, public employees, union members, students, (news anchors? was it a coincidence that all of the local CBS news anchors wore red yesterday? Maybe so, since the Governor was wearing a red tie. And was it a coincidence that Meredith Vieira also wore red today?) are fighting back by Wearing Red for Public Ed.

As a college student in Illinois, one of the very, very few on campus who hailed from the Badger state, I was always aware of a certain reverence several of the History/Poli Sci professors had for me and my deep Badger roots. This state used to be an amazing place. This state used to be a great place for the average Joe to get a job. While we've had our share of seedy, terrible politicians in the list (Joe McCarthy comes to mind) we have also had amazing progressive leaders like Bob LaFollette who have spearheaded movements to give this nation back to the people. Wisconsin is the state that invented workers unions for state employees. And now Wisconsin is on the threshold of being the first state to take those rights away. Undoubtedly, other states will follow. Ohio will probably be next, but such a bold move will be less surprising coming from a state that voted for George W. Bush. Twice. Allegedly.

And now my governor wants to take away the rights of the citizens in favor of the rights of corporations. And, of course, he is not alone. The Citizens United case, decided by the Supreme Court in 2010, is one day going to give Wal-Mart the power to single-handedly decide the president of the United States, and to appoint all 9 members of the Supreme Court.

It is unsurprising that in addition to bulldozing the rights of workers, Gov. Walker is also willing to bulldoze right through environmental concerns to meet his objective of turning the entire state of Wisconsin into a giant big box store. A few weeks ago he unveiled an amazingly intelligent plan. He wanted to fill in a marsh near Green Bay in the hopes of luring a Bass Pro Shop store to the area. The Bass Pro Shop response? We don't build on wetlands.

(Here is the text of the article, if the link doesn't work: MADISON, Wis. -- Gov. Scott Walker has signed a bill designed to help lure a Bass Pro Shop to a site near Lambeau Field.Walker said the bill creates the opportunity for jobs in Green Bay while balancing environmental concerns.The bill would allow Neenah-based car dealer John Bergstrom to fill in about 1 1/2 acres of wetland between U.S. Highway 41 and the Green Bay Packers' stadium without a permit.Environmentalists are challenging the development and argue that Bergstrom is getting special treatment.Supporters argue the development would create jobs and that there is a reasonable plan to deal with the wetlands.A spokesman for Bass Pro Shop said last week the company had not committed to the project and would not build on a wetland")

Way to go, Walker.

Walker has previously demonstrated an inability to think a project through to the end before barging full-speed ahead into a project. He thought it would be a great idea to redesign Wisconsin's commerce department after the example set in Indiana. Too bad he didn't stop to look at the cold, hard facts. Since Indiana redesigned its commerce department, the move did not create the number of jobs that had been estimated. And the Economic Development Corporation lied about it.

"As governor-elect, Walker has discussed abolishing the Commerce Department and creating a new public-private partnership modeled on the Indiana Economic Development Corp. But that might not be a good thing for transparency. One Indianapolis television station reported that the Indiana agency would not release records to support its claims that it helped bring more than 115,000 new jobs to the state. The station’s investigation showed the agency had inflated those claims. As a result, the state's former deputy budget director - now with the conservative Cato Institute - calls the agency a 'boondoggle.'" (italics added).

In an effort to provide full disclosure, I should state that I am not a union member. I am a long-term substitute teacher. I spend five days a week educating the children of Wisconsin taxpayers. I don't get benefits. When teachers call in sick to attend rallies and the school has to close, I don't get paid.

And let me tell you something else. When the superintendent calls an emergency meeting to tell his staff that there WILL be layoffs next year, when he calls his staff together to thank us for trying to keep things together during a week of social unrest, and tells us that his best advice to preserve the fiscal stability of our families is to MOVE TO A DIFFERENT STATE, there are a lot of long faces.

And when he announces that there will be no school because teachers have to stand up for ourselves and attend rallies designed to stop our governor from forcing a bill through the legislative process before anyone has even read the entire text, people cry. Aides cry. Interpreters cry. Elementary school teachers cry. Middle school teachers cry. High school teachers cry. Secretaries cry. Men cry. Women cry. Principals cry. Superintendents cry. No one is happy that the situation in our state is this grim. No one wants this to be happening. But we all know it needs to happen in order to make our voices heard, and in order to preserve the future for our children.

(Contrast this type of school closure to a weather-related school closure, where teachers try to stay calm and keep kids from blurting out "there's not going to be school tomorrow" because everyone knows this will jinx the situation, and teachers are hoping just as hard as students that schools will, in fact, not be open tomorrow. Then, when school finally is closed for the day, everyone breathes a collective sigh of relief and enjoys the free time. Very few people cry over snow days.)

While this political situation seems very grim from the perspective of a brand new teacher who is really hoping to find a permanent job next year, I do want to point out that we are primarily arguing about money here. While the $6,000 combined pay cut that my husband and I face next year IF we are lucky enough to still have jobs teaching in Wisconsin will be tough, we live in a peaceful country and there will be an opportunity to right this wrong in a few short years. We do not live in Egypt where our very lives would be at stake every day due to political upheaval. It is good to keep things in perspective.

This private sector, big-box, huge corporation mentality cannot be a good thing when it comes to getting healthy food to my table in this Dairy State. Consequently, in an effort to make this world a better place one person at a time, I have had to take matters into my own hands. While I have been a full vegetarian in the past, I also enjoy eating meat, and have been eating meat for a while now. I have pledged to myself (and so far have only forgotten my pledge once during a trip to Culver's after a trip to the gym, the second day of my pledge) that as of last week I will stop ordering meat at restaurants unless I know that the meat comes from animals that have been raised in humane, natural conditions. I have struggled with buying "regular" meat at the grocery store for a long time, so I have pledged to stop that too (although I haven't been buying much of it lately anyway). I am still eating meat, and enjoying it. I have two containers of beef pot roast in my fridge from last Sunday's meal, which I have been heartily enjoying at lunch with my co-workers, dressed in red. But this particular roast came from a grass-finished steer in Argyle, Wisconsin. If I wanted to, I could visit the farm and watch the animals chew their cud. I feel good about that.

So there are things to feel good about in Wisconsin these days. We're not in Egypt, and we have access to grass-fed meat, if we're willing to drive to Madison for the Farmers' Market. But, hey, we were going there to protest anyway, weren't we?

Eating my words, and good vegetables too.

In the middle of December I got an email from the farmer who runs the CSA we joined last year. I put "thinking about joining a CSA" on my list of things to get to eventually. Yesterday I let my dad pour over my Seed Savers Exchange catalog for a while. He pointed out that the huckleberries I want to plant are described as "tasteless" (unless you make them into mock blueberry pie or preserves) and he picked out a couple of varieties of peppers to plant (I don't like peppers) but other than that he seemed to approve my choices.

Nevertheless, I'm hungry for a little more than we can grow in four raised beds and a sprawling melon/squash patch. So I started thinking about CSAs again this morning. At first, I thought we'd rejoin the CSA from last summer. Sure, it's out of the way, but I could get a worker share and we could eat for free (and a little sweat and hard work). When I checked out the worker shares, though, I discovered that they won't work with my spring and fall schedule. Last summer, too many workers were high school students who could only work on the weekends during the school year, so this year all of the workers have to pick a time slot sometime between 8 and 5 Monday through Friday, and they need to stick with that slot all summer. That might be fine if I were in a different profession, but I can't ask my high school students to have English class in the evenings so I can work at a farm in May and September.

I thought about writing to the farmer to see if we could arrange a different schedule. This farmer is a great guy, he has access to amazing sweet corn, and if I could have found a few more interested buyers, he would have hooked me up with a freezer full of grass-fed beef. Oh yeah, and he sells eggs and maple syrup too. He's a good guy. So good, in fact, that last summer he recommended that my husband and I join a different CSA that is a little closer to home. Because the worker shares didn't seem to be working for me, I looked up the other farm, and sure enough, they have a pick-up on Tuesdays that is approximately five blocks from my house. Their half share is also cheaper than my old CSA's. And while I'm a little too shy (and inexperienced) to sign up for a worker share at a farm I've never been to, we can go to their farm events this summer, like we did at Forest Run Farm last summer, and get to know people. Then maybe I can get a worker share for next summer with the new CSA - Luna Circle Farm.

I have the application all filled out, but we're waiting to send a check until I find out that they do have a share available. (I think they do, or their website would say their shares are all sold out, but it seems silly to send $300 off into the void without making sure we're going to get something in return.) I know I said last summer that I didn't think we'd do a CSA again, but it turns out I just can't help myself.

Good food is all around. Yesterday my mom and I went to the indoor farmers' market and I brought home some frost-sweetened spinach (that my mom bought), some raw milk cheddar cheese, a bag of organic carrots, two bulbs of garlic, some gluten-free cookies for the teacher I share an office with, and a roast.

My dad also sent me home with part of a roast he'd been marinating for some buddies, and I have some ham thawing in the fridge for Worms, so we're going to be eating pretty well this week! (The roast I bought is in the freezer, waiting for a time when we have a little less ready-to-eat food in the house.)

Right now I need to go make a loaf of bread, and get back to school work.

Beef Soup for the Soul

Life has been a little hectic lately. Mostly in a good way, but still hectic. Which is why beef soup that I made in September has been coming in very handy. I also pulled some kale soup out of the freezer, which I made in July. I got the recipe from our CSA farmer's wife, and that soup is delicious! It has a neat blend of spices in it that are different from my usual Betty Crocker spinoffs.

I also have many containers of chicken, turkey, and beef stock stuck away in the freezers, so I can make more soup when I have time and fresh veggies from the indoor farmers' market - where I think I'll be headed this weekend!

Yum!

Go Packers

Out with the Old, In with the New

Goodbye 2010!

Overall, 2010 has been a good year for me - although at times it did not seem like it. I finished student teaching, became a licensed teacher, and then sat around for too many months waiting to find a teaching job. Fortunately, many other employment opportunities came my way while my teaching dreams were on hold. I started the year the way I have for the past several years - working at my dad's tax preparation business. I won't be able to give my dad as many hours in 2011, but I expect I'll find myself assembling a few tax returns come March. Near the end of March, as the taxes were rolling into their final weeks, I was finally hired as a substitute teacher, just in time to take a trip down to Indianapolis to visit my quite-pregnant sister. I had my first substitute teaching assignment on April Fool's Day - a half day of school before a long weekend - and I survived somehow.

In May, I took a week off from subbing and headed to Indianapolis for the birth of my niece. On that trip Adele helped me shell peas from the garden, and even ate a few peas for dinner. She decided, without any prompting, that the large peas were "man peas" and the tiniest peas were "baby peas." The morning after her sister was born, Adele woke up and came down the stairs asking, "My baby sister came out last night?" We're not quite sure how she knew, since her mom was in the bathtub when Adele went to bed, and the baby was not born until Adele was fast asleep. We got home from the hospital around 2 or 3 in the morning, and I don't think anyone woke Adele up to tell her. However she came to find out about it, I am still awed that my sister allowed me to be in the room to watch the whole birth (except the epidural) and will never forget that the nurse mistakenly gave Anna to me before her dad had a chance to hold her. (In my defense, I did not realize that Brian hadn't held his daughter until she was already in my arms.)

In July, my nieces came to Wisconsin for a visit, and I got to have a very special sleep-over with Adele! She ate Memaw's raspberry jam, shelled a few more peas, and went for a walk along the river.

I was disappointed not to get three teaching jobs over the course of the spring and summer, but spent four hours volunteering at a booth at the county fair hours after learning that Michael's uncle had undergone a successful liver transplant, and ended up meeting a new friend and getting a job where I actually had the opportunity to do some teaching, albeit in a museum rather than a classroom.

Over the course of the spring and summer, my dad and I grew a fairly productive garden (although the tomato crop could have been more successful) and I canned and froze a substantial amount of produce, which has been a godsend in the recent weeks when I've been too tired to cook when I get home from work. Dinner is as easy as thawing out a container of grass finished beef and garden turnip soup I made in July.

As the summer came to an end and the farmers' markets and museum closed up for the season, I was fortunate enough to get another job (for which I had not applied) at a small law firm in town as my dad recovered from knee surgery. The weekend after I started that new job Michael and I headed to Indianapolis again - this time to serve as godparents for Anna Kate. We had to rush home after the church service, so I missed seeing Anna Kate dressed up as Raggedy Ann, but she brought the costume to show me for Thanksgiving.

Work at the law firm was fairly stress free, interesting, and manageable, but I kept applying for teaching positions, and was shocked when I finally got a call, many weeks after the interview, asking if I could come in right away to start a long-term subbing position teaching English an hour and a half from home. And later that same day, I was just as shocked to get a call inviting me to interview for another long-term substitute English position - at a school only 20 minutes from my house.

I am halfway through the six weeks in Beloit, and was hired to begin in Pardeeville at the start of the second semester - so I will have exactly one weekend (during which Adele will turn 3) between jobs.

2011 is shaping up to be a good year. I will be employed full-time as a teacher until the first week of June, I have resources about companion planting and food preservation (and a new rack for my water bath canner!) and I am excited about growing a years' worth of food in the upcoming summer.

Until the garden starts growing, I have a freezer full of fruit and jam, vegetables including peas, green beans, asparagus, corn, zucchini, and tomatoes, cupboards with jars of pickles, cranberry preserves, tomato sauce, spaghetti sauce, and one last lonely jar of applesauce. I have many pints of chicken, beef, and turkey stock, much of which was produced using all or mostly local food.

I never got around to making resolutions for 2010, but I'm pretty proud of the way I was able to use local, real food sources for so many of my meals. One of my goals for 2011 will be to continue my efforts to wean myself off of processed, highly-traveled foods. I also want to be able to talk to other people in a coherent way about why I am making the food choices I'm making - not just so that I can be understood (right now I tend to ramble endlessly without making a lot of sense) but also so that I can introduce many of the people that I know to a much healthier, earth-friendly way of living and eating.

I am sure this post could use some significant editing, but I need to go get ready for this party! (My plan is to come back and update this post with pictures when I have time.)

Happy 2011 everyone!