slowly she turned

Last night’s meal of pork chops with barbeque sauce, field peas, and potato/leek salad was very, very good. I got out my first cookbook, Better Homes and Gardens, to remind myself of how to cook the pork chops. I browned them first, and then simmered them for a long time in the sauce. Excellent. Since I snagged the last four chops that Wes had until the fall, I’ll save the other two for a special meal.

While I was doing that, I baked a carrot cake. I was not kidding when I wrote that I have never baked a cake. I’ve never been a big cake eater, which is funny because my mother bakes cakes that routinely bring more than $100 at charity auctions. It’s not that I don’t like them. I just don’t usually save room for them because everything else is so good!

I used up all my carrots except for the three still out in the dirt. I had no idea it would take so long to grate them, and I regretted throwing out the food processor parts for doing such tasks. I assumed that my mouli would make short work of it, but it seems that my mouli is very, very dull.

Then I realized that the cake was not going to be enough for 30 people, and I was too tired to start another one. I had enough ingredients for half a recipe so I got up early and baked another half cake. No time for the cream cheese frosting. That meant I barely had enough time to get to the farmer’s market, pick up my chicken from Wes, and shop for half the items on my list.

When I got to Charlie’s at 9 a.m., I found out that I misunderstood and there would be 20 people. After actually losing sleep over this and running around like a nutcase this morning. D’oh! But hooray – I have carrot cake to eat this weekend!

Oh yeah, and I used flour from the Old Mill of Guilford. Donna happened to have a special order that didn’t get picked up, so she sold it to me. So at least I have found locally milled flour – maybe not from locally grown wheat, though.

Anyway, the workshop was great, but that’s another post.

For lunch, Charlie made a spinach lasagna with spinach from his garden, and we made a huge salad from his garden, including radishes from mine.

I’m not sure I can cook tonight. It might be carrot cake, field peas, and potato salad for dinner.

This morning at the market I bought:
chicken, eggs, spring onions, and snow peas from Back Woods Family Farm
dried navy beans and onions – Faucette Farm
alfalfa sprouts – Snow Creek Organics
strawberries – my new friend from Julian, NC

And didn’t have time for the rest, so I may be taking a Sunday trip to the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market, something I don’t normally do because it is so much farther away off a busy highway. They have a who-o-o-le different thang going on out there. Not better or worse, just a different vibe and some different products. I hear that there’s a vendor who brings fish from the coast, so it will be worth the trip to check that out. Especially if s/he has shrimp.

Tonight will be a cooking night, since I promised to bake a cake for tomorrow’s permaculture gardening workshop with Charlie. I told him that I’ve never baked a cake before, so if it’s awful, he has to tell me it’s delicious anyway.

Now I wish I had thought ahead enough to buy lots of strawberries last weekend for this dessert, but it looks like it will be a carrot cake. I’m using the recipe from the Moosewood Cookbook, and making a cream cheese (Organic Valley, NEVER Horizon!) and pecan frosting. The carrots are from my garden, the pecans are from the farmers’ market, the butter is from Homeland Creamery, and the rest of the ingredients will be organic except the baking powder and soda.

As long as I’m in the kitchen, I’m going to bake marinated pork chops (from Back Woods Family Farm), use the rest of the egg salad (which I had AGAIN for lunch) in potato salad (red potatoes from Gann Farm, lovage and dill from the back yard, an organic leek still in the fridge from Deep Roots Market, and of course, Duke’s mayonnaise), and cook a small pot of field peas frozen from my garden last year.

“Lip Lickin’ Sweet and Smoky BBQ sauce” is made in Greensboro. Around this area you can’t throw a rock without hitting a barbecue joint. I will commit a sacrilege right now and confess that I don’t care much for chopped barbecue. I’m not into that vinegary sauce that’s used in North Carolina. When I go, it’s for the hush puppies. These will be the first pork chops I’ve eaten in ten years, by the way, so I’m planning to put this sweet sauce on them.

Uh, how do I cook pork chops? I don’t remember! But I poured this stuff over them last night.

According to the Slow Food RAFT map, our region is the “Corn Bread and BBQ Nation.” I understand why, but I don’t have to like it. If I really decide to cook this meal the way my family did when I was growing up, I’ll fry my cornbread like pancakes, or make corn muffins. Around here people bake it very sweet, like cake.

Looks like my ELC daily posts will cover the evening before, since I don’t usually get on the computer late at night. My eyes need a rest by then.

Last night, Sandy and I went out for a couple of drinks after I watered the community row. We have two local breweries in Greensboro – Natty Greene’s (named for Revolutionary War General Nathaniel Greene, who lost an important battle with the British here, but weakened them so much that it led to their surrender at Yorktown soon after) and Red Oak. I had a Buckshot Amber Ale at Natty Greene’s and a Red Oak at McCoul’s Irish Pub. Also tasted Sandy’s Smithwick Irish Ale, which may result in me adding another exemption to the list! The waitresses at these restaurants were puzzled at my queries about local food.

Weeknight dinners (or suppers where I come from) are not a big thing at our house. Sandy is not usually hungry because he often eats a large late lunch. He wasn’t brought up to eat regular scheduled meals like I was. I use the late afternoons to work in the garden during the week, and sometimes I am too tired to cook or even eat. So I often end up picking at leftovers or having a good snack in the place of dinner.

Local snacks are an issue. It’s a good thing that I like cheese.

Breakfast today: Yogurt and strawberries! I almost forgot that I had local strawberries!

Lunch: my co-worker and I went to Lucky 32, whose owners have made a commitment to supporting local foods, co-ops such as Eastern Carolina Organics, companies such as Niman Ranch, as well as Slow Food Piedmont Triad. It was a little more expensive that I usually spend for lunch, but after two days of eggs and lettuce I was ready for some real food.

After asking about the origin of the shrimp (California, but at least she could gave me an answer!), I decided to order Cornmeal Crusted Carolina Catfish with Creole mayonnaise, creamy grits and “seasonal vegetable,” which turned out to be broccoli rabe – all delicious. The grits served at Lucky 32 (and sister restaurant Green Valley Grill) are savory and fabulous and I could eat them by themselves. They buy their grits and cornmeal from the Old Mill of Guilford.

Okay, I did eat the pickled okra on my companion’s plate. I’m only human!

Okay, don’t laugh, but the egg salad sandwich I had for lunch today was nothing less than scrumptious!

I was making up a batch of regular egg salad for the Sandman with sweet pickle relish, and spotted the jar of chutney. Generally I wouldn’t think of eating eggs and fruit together, but it was a winner.

You won’t be able to recreate this exactly, but I’ll bet that you could come close to it if you tried. I made mine with hard-boiled eggs from Back Woods Family Farm, quince chutney chopped up fine, honey mustard (not local, but I’m going on a quest for local mustard and BBQ sauce this weekend), a little Duke’s mayonnaise (technically within the perimeters, it was made in Richmond, VA), salt and pepper, and topped it off with tennis ball lettuce.

The eggs were huge and so good that I ate two standing at the sink, salt shaker in hand, for my dinner last night. And I didn’t need anything else!

Although the quince chutney was not made totally from local ingredients, the quinces were from the tree next door, the peaches were bought at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market last year and dried in my food dehydrator (something I definitely plan to do again this summer), and the raisins, dried cherries, sugar, and apple cider vinegar were organic and from Deep Roots Market.

The wholegrain bread was from Simple Kneads Bakery. I bought it already sliced, and I keep it in the freezer so that I can pull out a few slices at a time. Since there are only two people in this household and we’re not big sandwich eaters most of the time, a big loaf of bread can go stale before it is half eaten. However, I have noticed that their bread will keep as long as a week on the counter and still be fairly fresh. When it isn’t, it goes in the freezer for meatloaf or bread pudding or strata.

Because I’m not wasting food, I am eating the yogurt that I forgot about this week, so it won’t go bad. So I had that with “Good God Granola” from Snow Creek Family Organics (Sandy Ridge, NC) this morning. They didn’t grow the ingredients, but they put them together.

For lunch, I had a salad with the thinnings from my garden this weekend. Tennis ball lettuce, spotted Aleppo lettuce, the few Lutz salad beet greens that survived the Critter, carrots, and French breakfast radishes, topped with marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy (Climax, NC). This was my first salad from my garden. Last year I ate my first salad in late March!

For dessert, I had a slice of wholegrain bread from Simple Kneads Bakery (Greensboro, NC) topped with quince butter that I made this past December, from the quince tree next door.

As I posted before, what I am exploring this month as part of the Eat Local Challenge is making my salad dressings from scratch. Yes, it’s simple, but I’ve never bothered because I liked the bottled dressings I bought. Here’s the recipe I used for a basic vinaigrette from my favorite cookbook writer:

1 cup olive oil
5 Tbsp vinegar
1/2 tsp salt

Her recipe then calls for garlic, but I added 2 Tbsp. of garlic chives from my garden instead. I poured it all in a bottle, shook it up, and that was that.

The vinegar was local! I bought it from Quaker Acres Apiaries at the Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market. It is honey wine vinegar, and if you want to hear all about it, all you need to do is look at it and you’ll get the full story.

Did I like the dressing? Well, not especially. I think I’ll use it to marinate a roast. I’m a green goddess girl, myself. I need to make a trip to Earth Fare for some Homestead Creamery buttermilk. And I’m going to make mayonnaise.

While I’m there, I may buy some North Carolina trout. Although Earth Fare sells humanely-raised meat and poultry, I asked the guy at the butcher counter, and none of it is local. Not much of the seafood is, either.

This will be a brief post, since I’ve had migraines since last night around 9:30, and I don’t want to poke the monster while it’s snoozing.

Because of my sickliness, eating anything and just getting up was a challenge today. So I wasn’t 100%.

Today I ate some leftover mac and cheese with broccoli. The mac and cheese was Annie’s, but the broccoli was local from the farmer’s market.

Other than that, I drank coffee (organic free-trade from Deep Roots Market, with organic sugar from DRM, and lightened with milk from Homestead Creamery, which is in Wirtz, Virginia, but according to Yahoo Maps is 87.3 miles away. I like them because they use glass bottles that you can rinse and return to the store.

I made my pitcher of iced tea flavored with mint from my garden last night, and I am oh so glad that I did.

I have no idea what I’ll try to put on my stomach tonight, but it will likely involve bread and goat cheese. If I start feeling much better, salad from my garden with a simple vinagrette dressing.

The Eat Local Challenge is scheduled for May, 2006.

Goal: To eat food produced within 100 miles as much as possible, then extend the range to food raised, produced, or caught in North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia.

Exemptions: salt, pepper, flour, pasta, rice, olive oil, lemon juice, coffee, sugar. I’ll buy my fair-trade organic coffee from Tate Street Coffee House, and sorry, but I have to have sugar in my coffee. I’ll buy my bread from Simple Kneads, a wonderful organic bakery in downtown Greensboro, or from nearby Spring Garden Bakery.

Challenge: Seafood. Cheddar cheese. My addiction to Pepsi One, which I’ll try to kick in May. My new craving for olives.

Help needed in finding: Grains of all kinds, pasta. Donna Myers of Epicourier is researching flour for me. If I can find local sources for flour, pasta, and Carolina grown rice, I’ll take them off the exemption list in an update.

Tips offered: The Greensboro Farmers’ Curb Market sells locally grown chicken, beef, pork, milk, butter, goat cheese, and eggs. Chicken will be available from Back Woods Family Farm again in May. The corn for the grits and cornmeal from the Old Mill at Guilford is grown in Yanceyville. Donna sells their products at the Curb Market. The Piedmont Triad Farmers Market also sells sustainably raised lamb, and ostrich.

Daddy and me, 1965.

Lately I’ve been sitting around fantasizing about a little farm, with a wee house, and a kitchen with a door so that I could produce baked and canned goods for sale. The door is necessary to keep our four cats out so that I could pass a health inspection. See, I’m even practical in my daydreams.

This is a frequent fantasy for me. I say fantasy because I know full well how nearly impossible it is to earn a living doing such a thing. When I read blogs such as Let it Grow, Moonmeadow Farm, and Farmgirl Fare, I am smitten with terrible jealousy at the same time that I realize that these people are working their asses off. I don’t think that I have the physical stamina to do the work or the emotional stability to take the risks that they do.

I could farm a few acres of my family farm. Currently my brother rents most of it out to a large tobacco farmer. He raises a few cattle, but he has pretty much given up farming. He works a full-time job at an agriculture chemical company. Talk about irony – one of the reasons he has to lease his land so cheaply is because it is worn slam out from years of “better farming through chemistry.”

Converting it to organic would take an enormous amount of work. And a lot of debt and no income for a few years. And risking severe depression since I have long said that I’d rather slit my wrists than move back to rural eastern North Carolina. And leaving my husband, since he is a sane city boy and there’s no way in hell he would do this. There’s also the matter of rampant fire ants, nasty cottonmouths, huge rattlesnakes, and cat-eating dogs. And a serious lack of knowledge about farming and business.

I’m thinking about our farm today partly because it is the anniversary of my father’s death from colon cancer nineteen years ago. I am an entirely different person than the wild rebellious young artist that he knew. How would he, a former agriculture teacher in the age of the Green Revolution, the descendant of generations of farmers, react to the ideas that I write about? The die was already cast for small farmers by the time my father passed away, and he knew it. Would he cheer these “new” ideas or dismiss them as so much liberal fantasy? I don’t know. He was a complicated man.

I do know this – my father would be very pleased that I am growing my own food, studying agriculture and exploring the idea of farming. If he was here, he and I would discuss these topics for hours, even if he thought the whole thing was nuts. He would give me very good advice, and help me build things. And I can guarantee you one thing – he would think that George Dubya Bush is a moron. He had no patience for stupidity or spin or impracticality. The last election he voted in, he cast his vote for Walter Mondale…and Jesse Helms. Like I said, he was a complicated man.

I vividly remember Daddy shaking his finger at me yelling that I’d better vote for Jesse no matter what kind of a jerk he was because tobacco was what supported our family and I’d better remember that. After Jesse was re-elected that time, he shifted from the agriculture committee to the foreign relations committee, and Daddy’s vote was wasted.

Tobacco farmers are learning to grow grapes now. What would he think of that? My brother says that some farmers in the area are trying no-till agriculture. I wish that he and I could talk to Daddy about these things. I wish that I could argue with Daddy about politics, or whether Brandywines taste better than German Johnsons. I want to know the names of the varieties of blueberries he planted.

So, today I’m thinking about farming, and I’m thinking about Daddy. The two subjects are really inseparable for me. He so much wanted one of us to go on farming on this land.

Daddy and me, 1986.