slowly she turned

Yesterday I had leftover hamburger casserole for lunch, and I finished it off today at lunch. Good comfort food, and I seem to need that this week. It’s just been stressful all the way round, but not necessarily awful.

Yesterday afternoon a friend called to wish us a happy anniversary. “Oh my God,” I said. “Thank you for reminding me.”

Sandy came in from work.

“Honey, did you forget that it was our anniversary?” I asked.

He looked like a deer caught in the headlights. “Oh my God. I’m sorry,” he said.

I could’ve had some fun with this, but I decided to be kind.

So we went to Bert’s to celebrate our 19th wedding anniversary. We usually go to Bert’s for special occasions, although we did not for the last two birthdays. My only problem with Bert’s is that it is so hard to choose from the huge menu of seafood dishes. And they have other entrees now, like elk.

I had remembered that Bert’s had a card on the tables about a farm that they bought their veggies from, but I’m not sure of my memory now, because the waiter did not know. I asked him what seafood came from either North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia – I was ready for some shellfish. But I was disappointed, because he came back with the answer flounder and grouper, fishes that I don’t particularly care for. I ordered the grilled feta cheese and leek grouper with a roasted red pepper relish, and I chose sides that I thought might have a chance of being local – green salad, collard greens, and cheesy grits.

I wrote Bert’s an email today and I hope that they will send me some information about their local and regional buying connections, now or in the near future. I’ll write about it if they answer my questions. Bert’s is a favorite of mine and I suspect that maybe the waiter was wrong or there’s a reason for them not having local food right now.

Tonight, it is another late dinner. I am waiting for my baked lemon chicken breasts to cool down. Remember that lemons were one of my exemptions. I used the leftover olive oil and honey wine vinegar salad dressing from the first week over the chicken, plus lemon juice, lemon zest, and dried basil. Side dish is navy beans and lamb’s quarters again. Not very original, but damn, they were good and I was ready for them again.

Sources:
Chicken – Back Woods Family Farm
Honey Wine Vinegar – Quaker Acres Apiaries
Olive Oil and Lemon – Deep Roots Market
Basil – My back yard
Navy Beans – Faucette Farms
Lamb’s Quarters – “weeds” from the community garden

Lunch today was late because I was too stressed out to eat, but once I did I had a salad with lettuce, spinach, radishes, and carrots from the back forty, strawberries from my front porch pots, sprouts from Snow Creek Family Organic Farm, and homemade dressing made with an egg from Back Woods Family Farm, olive oil, buttermilk from Homestead Creamery, and herbs from the back forty. I snacked on roasted peanuts from Faucette Farms.

Dinner is coming out in a few minutes. I was tired of eating rabbit food, so I made a basic peasant dish – a layered hamburger and potato casserole. I used to make casseroles with cream of mushroom soup, but for the past year or so I’ve been making a thick white sauce with chopped mushrooms to substitute for that. It makes an ordinary dish seem like a gourmet meal. Well, I don’t think anything could make this dish seem gourmet, but it sure is good.

Sources:
Hamburger – Rocking F Farm
Onion – Faucette Farm
Elephant Garlic – My back yard
Red potatoes and white mushrooms – Gann Farm
Milk – Homestead Creamery
Butter – Homeland Creamery
Flour – Old Mill of Guilford
Extra-sharp cheddar cheese – the Molners at the Curb Market – technically not made by them, it is Amish cheese that they get from Ohio. I can’t find a local source of sharp cheddar, and life is not worth living with only regular cheddar. And Ohio is not so far away…

Part of the problem with this time of year is that I spend the remaining daylight hours in the garden, and then I end up cooking very late, if at all. Normally I would cook a few big dishes on the weekend to get us through most of the week, but again, this time of year is full of things that keep me out of the kitchen on the weekend.

We need more restaurants that make an effort to buy food from local farmers. We have some, such as Lucky 32, Green Valley Grill, Bistro Sofia, and Bert’s, to name a few, but we need more on the lower end too, such as breakfast places that serve local sausage, bread, and pasture-raised eggs. I was in a place in Asheville that charged a little extra for free-range organic eggs. I would happily do that if I had a choice here in Greensboro.

Yesterday I headed to the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market with the major goal of buying my mother a present. Soap was out because last year I bought her soap and she said, “Everybody gives me soap. Do I smell?”

So I bought some soap for us, and for her, a nice hanging basket of flowers.

I also picked up some red new potatoes, a tomato (special request from Sandy), and a very small bunch of oyster mushrooms from Gann Farm’s booth. He’s really getting into the mushrooms. Many people are selling shiitakes now, but he has shiitake, white, portobello, and now oyster mushrooms.

Because I like to snack, I bought a bag of roasted peanuts from Faucette Farms. That should help me stay away from the vending machine at work.

I spent the rest of my money on pepper plants from Handance Farm and WeatherHand Farm. I bought 11 different kinds:

Red Bell (WH)
Serrano (WH)
Sweet Banana (WH)
Lipstick (HD)
Gourmet (HD)
Doe Hill (HD)
Golden Bell (HD)
Chocolate Bell (HD)
Ruby (HD)
Valencia (HD)
Joe’s Round (HD)

Then I nursed a migraine until I was well enough to drive down east to Mama’s house. I knew that the Eat Local Challenge was going to be seriously challenged once I got there. For one thing, I was going to offer to take her out to eat like we usually do, and there are not many options near Marietta, N.C. But Mama had already cooked dinner, and didn’t really want to eat out.

Sidenote: The food news from down home is that there is now a Chinese restaurant in Lake View, South Carolina. You have to be from there to understand how absolutely amazing this is. The last step in this exotic direction was pizza at the restaurant in the convenience store.

So we had chicken tetrazini, which had nothing local or organic in it, fruit salad, which had some strawberries from one of the local farms, and field peas and silver queen corn from Mama’s freezer from her garden last year. She baked this Vidalia onion/cream cheese pie that was incredible. I have the recipe – it’s from Cooking Light or I’d post it. For dessert, strawberry angel food cake. The cake was from a mix, but the strawberries were local.

Not bad, considering she had no warning. But that’s pretty normal eating for her. We had the leftovers for lunch today.

After I explained the Eat Local Challenge to her last night, she made blueberry muffins for us this morning. The blueberries are from her bushes. And those muffins were so delicate and delicious!

Late that afternoon, I went over to the farm where there is a house built in 1820. The chimney had fallen down and I wanted some of the bricks. They were in a pile of dirt and my brother and I picked the whole ones out of the top of it. Apparently the chimney had been mortared with mud. The bricks are probably too soft and crumbly to walk on, but I’m going to stack them up, lay some old landscape ties across the tops, and use the shelves against the south side of my house for container plants.

I was guilted into attending Mama’s church with her this morning, which I swore off forever after a horrendous homophobic and just plain stupid sermon on Mother’s Day two years ago. But Mama knew that she was going to be the oldest mother there this year, and she would be recognized. We offered to hire a hit man last year when she was the next-oldest mother, but fortunately it turned out not to be necessary.

To my relief, the sermon was not offensive and I enjoyed it. It was about Hagar, and I was just waiting for him to launch some right-wing denouncement of Islam, but he actually pulled an interesting message from it about not knowing God’s plan when one feels abandoned and talked about helping single mothers.

My brother had plowed Mama’s garden twice this week. Every year she says that she will not be able to have a garden again next year. But then she complains that no one will plow her garden for her. Mama is 82 and although she is in great shape for her age, she was diagnosed with osteoporosis and it is hard for her to stoop and plant and pick now. She really does want a garden – she has never NOT had a garden. By the time I got there she already had a huge garden planted with seeds coming up in every row except a small area she saved for my tomatoes. I planted a couple of Brandywines, Romas, and one Amish Paste tomatoes in two different spots. The spot she saved for them had a tomato virus in the soil so I talked her into trying them in a different area as well. That soil looks really worn out. She’ll put one of the Brandywines into a pot.

So I’ve had a big weekend. I don’t know what I’ll do for dinner, but it will be light and probably involve strawberries, cheese, and/or salad. Right now I’m enjoying a New River Pale Ale, “brewed and bottled in Ashburn, Virginia.”

Whew, what a long week this was! After I did that panicked buying at the farmer’s market last Saturday morning, I checked the refrigerator tonight and realized that I haven’t eaten hardly any of it. I ate leftovers and salad all week because I didn’t have time to cook.

This morning I went to Tate St. Coffee House, where I picked up a fruit bar for a mid-morning snack and a slice of broccoli quiche for my lunch. Tate St. Coffee House gets its baked goods from Spring Garden Bakery, its bagels from Best Bagels (which Becky thinks is a chain, but we’re not sure), and its tarts and savory pies from one of my favorite vendors at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market, Nora Glantz. I’d be willing to bet that her broccoli pie had at least some local ingredients from the market in it.

When I got home I went out to the community garden and spent some time weeding and side dressing everything with some very fine composted manure. The tomatoes are finally looking healthy and happy – stocky little fellas. I put up all my tomato cages and I still need to buy 22 (!!!) or build some wire cages. I will have a lot to contribute to the Plant a Row for the Hungry program this summer. Hope they’re hungry for ‘maters.

There are a few of either the green lettuce or endive plants that I had given up on coming up. I don’t remember what I planted where. The peas are just not that into me. The broccoli, kale, and friends are looking great and I picked some kale, along with a bunch of lamb’s quarters in the uncultivated areas of the garden. And a few cherrybelle radishes.

It was pretty late when I began dinner, and the chicken breasts I thought I had thawed out for dinner turned out to be chicken backs and neck, so I’m making stock even though I didn’t want to do that tonight.

So I chopped up the kale, three spring onions, minced a clove of elephant garlic, sliced some white mushrooms and sauteed them in some olive oil and sprinkled dried basil all over it. Cooked up some organic penne rigate, tossed it all together with a dollop of the olive oil/herb mayonnaise I made earlier this week and grated parmesan/reggiano.

Fed a taste to husband who refused to eat more, although he said it wasn’t bad. In fact, it is very, very good but he’s being a juvenile about food tonight. It happens from time to time. It was probably the mushrooms. He’s particularly weird about them, even though he likes them.

I did eat a very good salad today, with spotted aleppo, tennis ball, and oakleaf lettuce, French breakfast radishes, carrots, and a creamy herb dressing that I made myself, starting with my own mayonnaise. I’ll post the recipe sometime when I am not so tired, and have tweaked it a bit.

But tonight I fell totally off the wagon after running full-tilt all day and then ending the evening at a reception where there was cream cheese crab dip and lots of chocolate. The spirit was willing (I passed on ALL the meat) but the flesh was weak.

Open-faced roast beef sandwiches, leftover Seattle Grits Cake, blah, blah, blah…

I’ll try to come up with something else soon, but tomorrow will be so busy that it will probably be salad. But it will be a GOOD salad.

I’m turning my fingers purple as I snack on these mulberries I picked from the tree across the street. I thought the robin in it was going to have a heart attack it was so agitated. Some of them are really good, and some of them are so-so. I can see why they have never made it as a “shippable” product. I guess I always ignored them because I regarded them as such a nuisance, but I can see the value in them now that I’ve tasted them. Thanks, Diane, for making me aware of these. Maybe one day I will make a cobbler.

Today has been such a good day! But foodwise, it was mostly leftovers. This morning I ate carrot cake around mid-morning. Snacked on some granola. Lunched at home with my leftover Seattle Grits Cake from Lucky 32 and STILL couldn’t finish the whole thing. Tonight we’re heading to the Sierra Club meeting where Charlie is speaking about Slow Food, and there will be refreshments there. I’ll have to be good and wait until I get home to eat, then we’ll probably have some of the leftover roast beef on Simple Kneads bread. Or marinated goat cheese from Goat Lady Dairy.

Oh yeah, and I’m sipping on a Duck-Rabbit amber ale, “handmade in Farmville, North Carolina.” It’s really good, almost Newcastle good.

Lunch today: leftover beans, lamb’s quarters, field peas, and brown rice from this weekend, strawberries, and carrot cake.

Dinner tonight: I was lucky indeed that the Sandman offered to take me out to dinner and we were near Lucky 32, so I went back and had a great meal with North Carolina ingredients again! This time I ordered the Seattle Grit Cake, which was supposed to be an appetizer, but turned out to be a huge plate of delicious slices of toasted grits (or polenta, if that suits you better) covered with asparagus, onions, portobello mushrooms, spinach, and a cream sauce. I only ate a third of it, so if you don’t see a post from me tomorrow, you can assume I finished this meal off. And it only cost $7.95 in a beautiful restaurant with great, friendly service.

Plus, their cornbread was without a doubt the BEST I have ever tasted (Sandy had a piece with his meal). It had a naturally sweet, caramelized corn taste to it. The problem I have with most cornbread around here is that it is usually like eating dessert. This had exactly the right amount of sweetness. When I praised it to the waitress, she brought more for free.

Groan – I’m hauling my fat and satisfied self to bed now.

Might I remind you about the newly born international Eat Local Challenge blog, where I just posted an article and recipe about lamb’s quarters?

My husband and I really enjoyed this at lunch today. There was not a morsel of meat in it and Sandy ate two bowls full. It was easy, inexpensive, and delicious!

The navy beans came from Faucette Farm at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market. The lamb’s quarters came from my community garden row. I used a half clove of elephant garlic from the back forty. Elephant garlic is really amazing. I dug this last bulb up over a year ago and it is still good! I was lucky to find it today, and will use the last few cloves sparingly until I can get some garlic locally. Some salt, pepper, and Liquid Smoke and that was it.

The big meal was tonight’s dinner. I have been marinating a grass-fed beef roast from Rocking F Farm for three days in the oil and vinegar salad dressing that I made last week. One thing I have learned about this pasture-raised beef is that the cuts that I can afford are tough, and have to be dealt with accordingly. I meant to put it in the crock pot yesterday morning but didn’t have the time. With a rare rainy, stay-at-home in pajamas day ahead of me, I decided it was time to dig out a cast iron dutch oven that my mother gave me for Christmas two years ago.

I had nearly forgotten about it. We found it at a country antique store – seasoned and perfect and just like hers, except not so black. I had had my fill of trying to season several cast iron pots and pans in the last century. One set that belonged to my late mother-in-law had some kind of hard goo in them that I simply couldn’t chisel out. The other set I just lost patience with and finally sold the whole she-bang really cheap at a flea market.

I dusted the roast in flour, browned it in olive oil on all sides, then simmered it all day long in the rest of the marinade with a little water, a little red wine, a sliced up onion, the other half of the elephant garlic, and two chopped portobello mushrooms. And I finally got the thing tender!

The portobello mushrooms were from Gann Farm at the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market. The onion was from Faucette Farms. The wine was a great discovery – from Grove Winery, a Merlot grown in my county! I bought it at Deep Roots Market. It is very good to drink, too – I plan to sample a little more as I watch the Sopranos.

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.