- Rocking F Farm beef (Climax), organic taco spice mix

- Sweetwater Valley Farms Cheese (Tennessee)

- hot house tomatoes raised in Pleasant Garden (Mendenhill Farms)

- homemade yogurt instead of sour cream (organic starter, Homeland Creamery [Julian]milk)

- green beans canned by my mom

- homemade tortillas from Southern Biscuit flour and organic oil

- local, organic potato (not entirely sure from where, the MIL grabbed them)

Dinner was very tasty, and everyone was feeling happy and well fed last night.

Christmas is my dad’s family’s holiday (growing up, it was always spent with his family, and Thanksgiving, most years, with my mom’s up in Baltimore).  We live in an area populated by his family (when I started teaching at the local community college, I had to call to get one of my accounts set up.  They asked for my last name, and I chuckled and gave it to them.  They responded with ‘The Er, there’s 14 of you in there.  What’s your first name?’  It’s not quite of the Smith and Jones variety, but around here, it’s close.)

Christmas lunch is at my great-aunts’ house, and dinner is usually at my parents’, but this year, we rotated to an aunt and uncle’s house who just moved home after four decades elsewhere; they say they have some hosting to make up for.  Both meals are huge potluck affairs, and family occasions are one of those times when I put aside my food sensibilities in favor of being grateful for what my family is sharing with us.

That being said, our contributions are mainly local and organic, and I wanted to share what I’m cooking up for family meals this week are our Dark Days entry for the week.

For lunch, we brought:

• a cheese ball:  local cheddar, organic walnuts, organic spices purchased at the co-op (non-organic cream cheese; the co-op only carries it in tubs, and I don’t like buying multiple plastic tubs of it around holiday time.  Target only had non-organic cream cheese.  At some point, you have to weigh the environmental cost of the gas to go hit another store for one thing versus the non-organic item.  If I’d been thinking, I’d have gotten the cream cheese early in the week); non-organic cream cheese.  [This didn't get eaten very much; because of the Worchestershire sauce and the white cheddar, it ended up a grayish color, and I think folks just couldn't identify it.  Next year, I either label things, or make more readily identifiable food.]
• mashed potatoes & gravy: organic potatoes, organic butter, local flour (for the roux), organic broth, local milk [I made the potatoes the day before, and they just didn't hold up well to a night in the fridge; they were tasty, but not very mashed, even with reheating.]
• monkey bread:  local flour, organic sugar and salt, non-local yeast, organic butter [Noms.]
• pumpkin bread:  organic pumpkin, local flour, organic butter, organic sugar, organic spices [I liked this, but only about half the loaf got taken, and I have another loaf which has gone into our freezer,]

For dinner, we’ll be bringing:

• cheese enchiladas, based loosely on this recipe:  local cheese, homemade tortillas (local flour, co-op purchased oil, local milk), non-local sauce [2/3 of the pan got eaten at dinner, which was impressive with the other food out; we killed the rest with dinner last night.]
• sausage balls:  local cheese, local sausage, local milk, local flour [These vanished, as they always do.]
• cheese crackers:  local cheese, local flour, local milk [I ended up not baking these up; we had enough food already.  The dough is still in the fridge, so we'll have to bake these up today.]

There was a definite cheese theme this year.

Merry Christmas to those that do, in whatever form, and merry days to those that don’t!

The stairs to the basement in our house were ‘paneled’ in this cheap, crappy, particleboard paneling that was already ripping off when we moved into the house.  We took a look at it and said ‘Oh, hey.  We could put shelves in the studs for pantry space.’

So Jeff started working on that today while I’ve been cooking away for tomorrow.  We’re trying to figure out how to work storage into every inch of this house we can, and this is a great start.

The materials:

• 2 rolls of hardware cloth, half inch, 2 feet by 5 feet, enameled:  9.98 each
• 3 foot u-posts, 4 of them:  2.25 each

Total cost?  $28.96.

Construction was pretty straightforward.  We measured out a square on the ground and pounded the u-posts in, then started wrapping the hardware cloth around them, just a little off the ground.  The u-posts had hooks that we were able to use to affix the hardware cloth (we might go back with zip ties later; we’re just going to have to keep an eye on it).  At the end of the first roll, the squares of ‘cloth’ had been left open, so we were able to bend them around to join it to the beginning of the next roll.

The whole thing took maybe 45 minutes, and the compost is out of the kitchen.  I’m pleased.  (And it turns out that I’m a wimp, and it’s harder to hammer u-posts into the ground than I would have thought.)

(The snow we had this past weekend is mostly gone.  There’s still patches here and there.)

Anyhow, we made it out and back in one piece.  That was in for our snowy adventures, however.  (I know this is heresy, but I hate snow.  Living for a winter in Utah ruined me for winter forever.  Working for an educational institution where we have to make up snow days has done it too. I prefer spring break to snow days.  Right now, we’re on holiday break, so I didn’t grouse much.  )

So, last night, we were in the mood for something warm and filling.  I put together a pork stew, and made a quarter batch of my favorite rolls (they’re dead easy, and really good.  But I got 12 yesterday out of a quarter recipe, so be warned, it makes a ton.)  Ingredient breakdown as follows:

Stew:

• pork chops:  Rocking F Farm, purchased at the Farmer’s Market (farm is 6.6 miles from the house, though they went into town to sell it and we went into town to buy it)
• flour to coat the pork with:   self-rising, from Midstate Mills (Southern Biscuit brand), probably purchased at Food Lion or Harris Teeter (105 miles)
• tomatoes:  bought local or grown by my dad (hard to know at this point), canned by my mom (3 miles, if home grown)
• beef broth:  organic, Harris Teeter brand (bob knows)
• spices:  bought in bulk at the co-op (ditto)
• cheese:  Sweetwater Valley Farm, purchased from the Homeland Creamery store  (350 miles)

Rolls:

• flour:  regular old Gold Medal bread flour, because I need to restock on non-self-rising AP
• yeast:  purchased in bulk at Earthfare
• salt:  purchased in bulk at the co-op
• milk:  Homeland Creamery, purchased at the farmer’s market (4 miles)
• sugar:  organic, purchased in bulk at the co-op
• oil:  purchased at the co-op

So, mostly local, mostly organic, mostly purchased in a sustainable way, and all very tasty.

(Oh, and leftovers rolls?  Work nicely the next morning with a couple of soft-boiled local eggs [Ward's Happy Chickens, up in McLeansville, purchased from Homeland Creamery], and some local sausage [Phillips Brothers Country Ham, down in Asheboro.)

Last night, though, I roasted some chicken drumsticks from Rocking F Farm over some local potatoes and served them up with some local lettuce (we have hot house hydroponic lettuce all year long. ) There is no pictorial evidence, because I am incapable at the present of taking pictures of chicken on potatoes and making it worth looking at. It was might tasty, though, and we have leftover chicken for chicken salad.

I had forgotten, during the winter, how much of our food stops coming from our local sources and starts coming from our co-op. I’m not saying that’s a bad choice, but foods from the co-op often come from further away than I would like. I’d still rather buy those far away foods from our co-op than our local megamarts, but. We’re lucky to have a year around market here, but what’s available (meat, potatoes, other root vegetables, hot house tomatoes and lettuce, dairy), while awesome, is nothing compared to what we get used to in the summer.

Hrms.

However, every time I try to email myself the pictures, my phone reboots itself.

So, imagine, if you will, two local meals last Sunday. The first was breakfast. Sunday breakfast, around here, is very nearly 100 percent local very nearly every week (today, we cheated with some non-local, but very tasty, turkey bacon.) However, last Sunday was scrambled eggs from the Ward’s up in McCleansville, potatoes from Faucette Farms (roasted with some non-local oil and spices), and sausage from Rocking F Farm. Sunday breakfast is one of our favorite meals of the week.

Sunday’s dinner ended up being local, too. We had some apple bratwurst that jumped in front of us at the market Saturday morning (seriously, we were walking out, passed by the booth, saw “apple bratwurst” at the top of the sign, and had to have some) from a vendor that we don’t shop regularly from and whose name, alas, I didn’t catch; biscuits made from NC grown and milled flour and milk and butter from Homeland Creamery; and spring mix from Tony-our-lettuce-guy at the Farmer’s market (with a little non-local salad dressing; I really need to learn to make our own.)

And that was this week’s local meals. There were plenty of meals with local elements – most of our meals have something, if not most things, local – but those were the two overwhelmingly local meals.

Dark Days Challenge Week One

So we’re participating in the third annual Dark Days Challenge, dedicated to local eating during the winter. Our good food habits have been slipping a bit lately, and I wanted to work on being mindful of them. This seemed a good way to get started.

My mother-out-law made dinner (I am seriously lucky) Thursday night (that’s my long teaching day, this semester): roasted potatoes, green beans (last of the season), country ham, and tomatoes (we’re lucky enough to get tomatoes year around here, as we have some very successful hot house farmers; I don’t know if these were hot house or not). Everything came from our local farmer’s market, and everything was dead tasty.

I posted several shots of the outside of the house on my Flickr account.

You’ll see a giant satellite dish in the pics. We’re thinking of painting it like a giant daisy. Yay whimsy.

We can’t wait to get started on gardening. I also want to build a small greenhouse as soon as it’s feasible. Several things have to come first though, like building a workshop/garage for me to get started on my woodworking business.

I’m going to document the work we do on the house here as well as my personal blog, which can be found here: http://blog.jeffharbert.com/.

So. Hi.

An informative video on YouTube: How To Butterfly A Chicken.

• Chicken Taco Soup
• Chickpea Patty Burgers
• Baked Chicken and Wild Rice
• Middle Eastern Couscous Salad
• Wild Rice Waldorf Salad
• Roasted Corn Chowder
• White Bean Soup

The two main reasons this blog lapsed into disuse were: 1) We kept finding ourselves in food ruts where we were making the same handful of dishes over and over again, and 2) Joyce was doing the bulk of the work on putting posts together.

We’ve been trying a lot of new recipes lately, including two in the list above.  To get away from the rut problem, we’ve branched out into vegan recipes and discovered a goldmine of potential.  I view this rut avoidance as a success, which takes care of the first reason I mentioned.

As to the second, I can only promise to try harder. To that end, and being the technology fan that I am, we are now on Twitter and FriendFeed.  This will make it easier for us to get content into the blog, which will be handy when we’re at the Curb Market or Deep Roots, and make it easier for our Twitter and FriendFeed using readers to follow us. It also helps that I am now armed with a Blackberry and can post from anywhere.

Oh, and a quick recommendation for Windows Live Writer from Microsoft.  It’s the best blog posting tool I’ve ever seen. Here’s a great overview with tips from Lifehacker.com: http://is.gd/ljTK.

My goodness, how life happens to you. Nothing bad on this end, just busy, with lots of changes. You know how it is.

We have some new ideas for this blog. I’ve dusted the place out and spruced it up a bit. I hope you like it. More minor changes will follow in the next few days.

The economy, of course, is on everyone’s mind. Things are bad, money is tight, and we’re not quite sure how to handle it. The biggest thing we want to do with LMF is to show people how to eat well – you won’t find any ramen here – for very little money. We’ll have recipes, cost breakdowns, and we’ll compare our fare to commonly available store-bought items – you know, TV dinners and such.

Now is a prime time to make the point that cooking for yourself (and possibly eating locally grown food) is the perfect way to save money. And, it needn’t cause any hardship.

So, watch this space. We’re jazzed, and we hope you will be too.

The rules are pretty simple. Your challenge: prepare one meal each week using only locally grown ingredients – the exceptions are oil, salt and pepper, and spices. Everyone defines local differently – a lot of folks are working to stick to a 100 mile radius, and that’s pretty awesome. My definition for local is pretty much North Carolina (or southern Virginia, as we’re pretty close to the state line) grown. Our exception to the North Carolina grown foods is our cheese. It comes from Ohio, but it’s sold at our farmer’s market. We know the people (the Molners) that we’re buying from, and we know we can trust them when they tell us that the milk used in making the cheese is sustainably raised. Ohio isn’t so far away, and I know that this cheese isn’t made in a large, unsustainable factory. That’s good enough for me. (There is North Carolina cheese available at our market and our co-op; Goat Lady Dairy makes some incredible cheese that is normally right out of our budget; perhaps, for a splurge this summer…)

I’m a bad, bad person and forgot to take pictures this week; I haven’t gotten back into the OLS mindset yet. We did quiche and vegetables Thursday night.

Quiche: eggs from the Wards, cheese from the Molners, bulk sausage from Rocking F Farm, milk from Homeland Creamery, and Southern Biscuit flour, along with a touch of non-local oil and salt and pepper and nutmeg.
Veggies: local yellow squash from joe-random vendor at the market, Chinese cabbage from Weatherhand Farm, and tossed salad with spring mix from Weatherhand Farm

It was all very, very good. The inmates were pleased. We also had a bonus local meal Friday night: roasted pork tenderloin from the Wards, and twice baked potatoes (cheese from the Molners, potatoes from Faucette Produce), along with leftover vegetables from Thursday night.

Everything was purchased at our local curb farmer’s market, except for the oil and spices, purchased at our co-op.

Meals this week (subject to change, of course):

Saturday: I had a party to go; I sent Jeff and his mom, who is in for a visit, out to Moe’s Tacos, where we had buy-one-get-one coupons
Sunday: beef stew; homemade rolls (yes, I realize the absurdity in making beef stew when it’s 95 degrees outside. It’s what the household wants to eat)
Monday: salad. cold, cold salad.
Tuesday: out at a locally owned Mexican joint for Jeff’s 40th birthday
Wednesday: bbq beef sandwiches
Thursday: falling apart roast
Friday: leftovers