So, the husband has for the last few weeks been manufacturing mad venison sausage. I think we now have enough for the whole year. And if that weren't enough, over the holiday weekend he cooked an entire turkey confit, and many pounds of duck as well. I think our non-vegetarian friends and family will be receiving meat treats for the holidays.
Saturday evening, post stitch-n-bitch. Stuffed with crackers and cake. I have discovered that focaccia bread dough rolled out thin, slathered in olive oil, and sprinkled with herbs, cayenne, and sea salt, then baked, makes crackers that it's actually impossible to stop eating. Until your belly hangs over your belt and you feel like a whale. Lovely.
I'm watching the husband transform the KitchenAid into a venison sausage manufacturing center. It's pretty amazing...far more so than making jelly, which is my specialty at the other end of the food-preserving spectrum.
We received our first week's order from the Edible Garden food co-op. Last night we had fresh brocollia raab sauteed with garlic and olive oil. Apples are here awaiting a pie-fate.
Beautiful fungus from the Bath County trip:
I had lunch today at Edible Garden, where all the food is locally sourced. Delicious quiche, salad, bread, outside in glorious sun and flaming leaves. They've started a co-op for the winter. Pay a fee to join, and then each week you get a list of what's available from local farmers. Place an order, and pick up from the restaurant on Thursdays. We're gonna try it and see.
I am feeling very sentimental about Apple the cow today. Maybe because my yogurt was so good this morning. Apple is the cow at Avery's Branch Farms in Amelia County, in whom we own a share. Here she is with some of her family:
We get a gallon of her milk every week, from which I make yogurt, and sometimes cheese. It's sweet and rich and beautiful. When we skim off some cream and whip it to go with sour cherry pie or peach tart, nirvana is achieved.
In other local food news, hunting season (archery only) is on. The husband's bow is repaired at last, and he's spending a lot of time in the woods. Yesterday his friend took a big buck--really big. After ballet class yesterday, I received a beautiful and strange picture message on my phone of the deer's face crowned by its huge rack of antlers, resting on leaves, blood on its mouth.
The entry of hunting into our lives two years ago has taken us on a journey. It coincided with our growing interest in local and sustainable eating. Otherwise I might not have been ready for coolers full of deer meat coming home fresh from the field, or photos of the triumphant hunter holding the dead deer. But he hunts for food, and would not take an animal we were not going to eat. And I find I'd rather be closer to the meat I eat than totally removed from the idea of it ever having been an animal, which is what big business meat seems to be about.
So he hunts, and I gather--uphold the gender roles! I gather in the broad sense of running around town meeting up with farmers, visiting markets, and finding new sources for local goods. Driving out to farms and picking fruit: sour cherries in June, peaches in July, concord grapes in September. The seasons have come to dominate our city kitchen, and it's funny to me that this feels novel and exciting, where years and years ago it was an inescapable fact of life.
This year we've worked on preserving: peach preserves, tomato sauce, dried apples, pesto, grape jelly, really just a little of each. Looking at the few jars of sauce, three jars of peaches, and two tupperware containers of dried apples, I marvel at how much work it would take to put up enough food to actually last through the winter. Many have done it, even now, and Barbara Kingsolver talks about it most eloquently, of course, in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle. [Note: This week's New York Times magazine is devoted to food and its physical, political, sociological, environmental ramifications. Includes a big piece by Michael Pollan.]
All of this effort and attention ratchets up the gratitude a hundred-fold. Each meal feels that much more satisfying when its components can be traced from the plate, through the kitchen, and out the door into the countryside, to the gentle cow, the farmer's fields and hands, or to the woods and the husband's sure-sighted arrow.
My burning man has returned from the desert, and rescued me from impending vegetarianism. Last night we ate venison tenderloin (the best meat I've pretty much ever had), with cheese biscuits, sliced yellow tomato, and sauteed purple long beans. It was a regally-colored meal, with slices of dark, tender venison alongside the gold and purple vegetables, with biscuits for texture (on which I slathered butter and honey from Hartland Orchard, where I pick sour cherries every year).
Which reminds me, we are well into Concord grape season, and I have hopes of making it to Wenger Grapes vineyard in Waynesboro before the entire crop has been picked!
Making pesto this weekend from a huge bunch of basil that was a CSA share bonus this week from Amy's Garden. mmm...pesto.
When you set out to make and can tomato sauce from a bushel's worth of tomatoes, perhaps try deciding to purchase a pressure canner in advance, rather than at noon on the day of. This will prevent you from having to ride around aimlessly with your friend, both calling 411 and having simultaneous conversations with Lowe's or Bed, Bath & Beyond employees that sound like this:
"I'm looking for a pressure canner. Do you stock them?"
"A pressure cannon?"
"No, canner. Like for canning food."
"Uh, you mean you store food in it?"
"Never mind. Thank you."
Or, calling the Compleat Gourmet, Richmond's local haut-cuisine retailer.
"Do you carry pressure canners?"
"Yes, we have one in stock."
"And how much does it cost?"
"$319.00"
"Ok, thanks very much."
But then, you get the guy with the lovely southern drawl at Southern States, and damned if he don't just say, "Oh yes, we've got one!" How much? "$99.00." And then, upon checking out at the register with this same charming fellow, he pats the canner box and says, "My grandmother even used to can fish with one of these things." Yes.
Blanch, peel, core, seed. Simmer. For hours. With onions and garlic and bay leaves, salt, pepper, hot peppers, herbs, honey. Watch girl movies on the Mac in the kitchen. Sun goes down. Eat cake. Order pizza (yes, ordering pizza during elaborate local-slow-food projects does cause mild cognitive dissonance, but is allowable).
Then, start the pressure canner. After reading the instructions several times over to insure that you don't inadvertently create a bomb instead of a home canning aid. The shit is extremely cool, and a little scary. And we had 7 quarts of sauce, and 7 quarts is what the canner holds. Perfect.
Tonight we made ricotta cheese, according to Riki the Cheese Queen's recipe. Easy. Truly. Even easier than the mozzarella recipe, which we thought was surprisingly simple. Thanks to Apple and Sunshine of Avery's Branch Farm for providing the milk.
All of this is heading towards a local-themed lasagna, or perhaps ravioli. We'll make the pasta tomorrow night.
And now, instead of writing one of the several articles due very soon, I am blogging about food and making yogurt, and just took zucchini bread out of the oven. With Rob on his way to Burning Man, girl-energy is taking over the house.
To close--I can't be the only person who's noticed this--there are serious philosophical problems with predictive text on cell phones. You know, how you can switch your phone to a setting so that when you text message, you just type the keys for the letters you want, and the program guesses (often correctly) the proper combination of those letters for the word you want.
Well, this makes for faster texting, unless you're sending culinary themed messages (I'm sure it's true for other types of vocabulary, but cooking-vocab is where I've noticed it. Except for when I was trying to type "Beauregard"--I wish I could remember why--and the phone offered "Beatsegasd" as my only option). The phone doesn't know the word "kale", for example, and will only offer either "lake" or "jake" as the two possible combinations of letters you might want from those keys. At least lake and jake are words, though. For "ricotta" it offers "phantua." Of course.
The other problem is with priority. You can scroll through your various options for each combination of keys (ie lake and jake--lake comes first). But I want to know how these options are prioritized. I'm looking to type "bake", and with those four keys, the phone offers, in this order: able, cake (ok fine), bald, calf, bake, bale. It then goes on to offer "cale" and "abje". But "bald" before "bake"?
Non-food words can be amusing too. "Sex" is the first offer for those three keys, of course, but followed amusingly by "sew" and "pew". And, to get even dirtier, you can get to "cock" if you scroll through "coal" first, and then "anal" (really?). But "pussy" is nowhere to be found. "Puppy" is your only option. So I can text easily urgent messages about a male chicken, but if I want an alternative diminutive for kitty, I've got to switch back to manual?
Till soon.
Inspired by Starrhillgirl's food chronicles, and having written a few at intervals over the last few years, let me take a moment to appreciate what's been recently or is about to be consumed in my kitchen.
Last night's dinner was trout and flounder caught by our friend Jason. Even though Rob has fished so much this summer we thought we were getting weary of it, Jason's two were light and delicious. Accompanied by cheese grits with cayenne - grits from the Byrd Mill in Ashland, VA. And tomato salad (with sungolds and other heirlooms) with tomatoes from Amy's Garden CSA.
Looking in the fridge, there sits a bowl of figs from my mom's neighbor in Church Hill. Also yogurt I made from our milk share--grass-fed Jersey milk from Apple the cow, who lives in Amelia County at Averys Branch Farm. Today is milk pick-up day, and fruit pickup day from the 9-week CSA we have through Sprout with Westmoreland Berry Farm--heaven in a box. Blackberries, raspberries, peaches, oh my. I have been freezing many berries, stockpiling to accompany breakfast yogurt this fall (I'd say winter, but not sure I actually have enough to last that long).
Made zucchini bread the other night from zuchs grown by Rob's sister, using Kat's prize-winning recipe. mmmm...toasted, with butter, why would you stop eating?
Now pondering peach tarts using the preserves I made in July from peaches picked at Chiles orchard in Crozet.
This weekend, Kat and I plan to make and can tomato sauce, and perhaps an ambitious lasagna using said sauce, with homemade pasta (flour from Wade's Mill), and ricotta made from our local milk. We shall see.
We've gone pretty deep into sourcing local and sustainable food in our house. Some resources I've been discovering over the last year, below. Often best to get on the email list for these places so you know what's coming in, when.
CHEESE
Meadow Creek Dairy, Galax, VA: www.meadowcreekdairy.com
They ship. Ellwood Thompson's in Richmond also carries their cheese. I'm in love with the "Appalachian."
Everona Dairy, near Culpeper, VA: www.everonadairy.com
Sheep's milk cheese, and LAMB too. They also ship cheese. You have to go get the lamb.
Satyrfield Dairy in Cville offers fresh goat cheese. No website, but you can call them at 434-973-6505.
MILK
Avery's Branch Farm, Amelia, VA: www.averysbranchfarm.com
They have a cowboarding program, through which you can get milk from their grass fed cows (we do this now--there is no comparison to milk from pastured cows). They also offer turkeys--at Thanksgiving everyone at our table said it was the best turkey they'd ever had.
BEEF
Brookview Farm, in Goochland (off Rt 6): http://www.brookviewfarm.com/
Grass fed lean beef, super eggs, honey, etc.
PORK
Faith Farm, Green Bay, VA. They are usually at Richmond farmers' markets in season, and will do weekly drop-off during the winter. To get on email list, send message
to Brenda Lawler at faithfarmfoods@yahoo.com
We get pork and eggs from them often. They have a blog here: http://faithfarmfoods.blogspot.com/
CHICKEN
Polyface Farm is the famous one (discussed in The Omnivore's Dilemma), south of Staunton. You have to pick up. www.polyfacefarms.com.
I've never had better chicken.
Another great resource for finding these places is www.localharvest.org, though I've found many of them by just going regularly to the farmer's market, or through friends, or through web searches.