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5 Things to Eat Locally

17 May 2012

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I was completely inspired by reading this post on Little House in the Suburbs this afternoon. The easiest way to “Eat Local” is produce. Local produce is easily available in Gainesville thanks to our almost-daily farmer’s markets, Ward’s Supermarket, Citizen’s Co-Op, and even sometimes Publix, which is a chain but is headquartered in Florida and has a close relationship with Florida agriculture. The second most popular local foods are probably a tie between eggs and honey. But there is so much more out there!

Since we’re in the middle of our Eat Local Challenge month, how about trying some local foods that you may have never tried before?

1. Smoked Mullet

Anyone who was raised in North central Florida has probably had smoked mullet many times, most often as Mullet Dip, a cream-cheese based dip with plenty of smoked fish. Mullet is caught all around us, on both coasts, but much of it comes from the Cedar Key area. The Smokin’ Mullet makes excellent smoked mullet and sells at farmer’s markets all over the city. I love smoked mullet in dip, but it’s also really excellent in quiche and shredded in a salad. Mullet is a common fish that’s easily caught in sustainable ways, too!

2. Rice

Did you know that there are hundreds of acres of rice grown in Florida? Most of the rice in Florida is grown around Lake Okeechobee and Loxahatchee and is a rotating crop with sugarcane. This area is well beyond the 200-mile limit that many people place on “local food” but since most of our rice comes from Asia or South America, I consider 350 miles to be local rice. Florida rice can be hard to find in stores. If you can’t find rice grown in Florida, try rice grown in Texas, Louisiana, or South Carolina. Each of these areas have special breeds of rice that taste completely different from the “regular long-grain” rice that most of us eat. You can even grow your own rice!

3. Cheese

We are lucky enough to have several fine cheese makers in the area, so local cheese is readily available. Cypress Point Creamery makes several varieties of aged cheeses like tomme and havarti. Anyone who reads this blog knows I’m a big fan of Glades Ridge Dairy. Their soft fresh goat’s milk cheese is a refrigerator staple. I use it in dips, on pizza, quiche, and grits.

4. Cornmeal

There is lots of corn grown in Florida, but dry corn is usually sold to wholesale dealers and shipped off to faraway mills. Right now there is only one farm selling locally grown open-pollinated corn that is also ground on the farm and sold directly to the public that I know about. Greenway Farms is selling bags of cornmeal in various grinds at the downtown farmer’s market every other Wednesday and I believe you can also buy his corn at Citizen’s Co-op. His cornmeal is a little too coarse for me to like in cornbread, but it makes excellent polenta cooked in the crockpot.

That’s a recipe I haven’t posted yet, I’ll have to make some this weekend!

5. Field Peas

Have you ever tried field peas? They are the common “beans” grown in our area, better adapted for our hot humid weather than beans. There are many kinds of field peas grown locally including white acre, crowder, zipper, and black-eyed peas.  Any field pea can be substituted for any other in recipes, but most recipes are based on canned peas like black-eyed peas. Fresh peas that we buy at the farmer’s market are raw and must be cooked before adding to a recipe. I like cooking them in salted water for an hour before adding them to a recipe that calls for canned beans or peas. They also make excellent Indian dal dishes, chili, even hummus!

Go out to one of our great farmer’s markets this weekend and try something new!

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge

Getting serious about recycling

16 May 2012

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We make too much trash, people.

The kitchen in our last apartment was tiny. Seriously tiny, just under 4′ x 8′. One of my garden beds was larger than the floor of my last kitchen. We had to move the garbage can back and forth to open the dishwasher or open the bottom cabinet with the tupperware bin. I pulled out trash to be recycled, gave it a good rinse, and put it on the floor next to the garbage can for the kids to take out at the same time as the trash, but my husband loathed this practice. We tried tying a bag to the pantry doorknob for recycling, carving out room for a paper bag under the sink, a paper grocery bag next to the trash can… nothing worked well enough to become a habit.

My new kitchen, on the other hand, is blissfully huge. There is plenty of room for garbage cans and recycle bins (and indoor worm composting bins, but that’s going to take some convincing) but I just can’t seem to get my husband and kids to care. I need to find a system that’s easy and neat.

Here are some ideas I’ve seen:

So, my green readers, how do you keep your recycling tidy?

By: Andi Houston Category: Current Fascination Tags:

Blueberry Boy Bait… for Breakfast

15 May 2012

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Blueberry season is in full swing and we are taking full advantage of the bounty. I bought another 2 pints of blueberries at the farmer’s market on Saturday for pancakes, but pancakes never happened in our busy Mother’s Day weekend full of a cousin’s wedding, canoeing on the Santa Fe River, and giant family potlucks.

Last night I got the urge to bake a cake and remembered the blueberries in the fridge. I’m trying to limit my baking to reasonably healthy treats so I started searching for yogurt cakes using whole grain flours for breakfast. No luck. Most whole-grain cake recipes are also low-fat or use sugar substitutes, which we don’t use. So I took the recipe for one of my favorite summer cakes, Blueberry Boy Bait from Smitten Kitchen, and started making substitutions. And adding pecans, because what’s a breakfast cake without pecans? The final change was baking it in a cast iron skillet after finding that my cake pans are still at the other house!

Florida Blueberry Boy Bait… for Breakfast!

1/2 c butter, softened
1/2 c raw sugar
1 egg
1 c whole wheat flour
1 c gluten-free baking mix (I used Bob’s Red Mill)
2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c whole-fat plain yogurt
1 c fresh blueberries, picked over for stems
1/2 c pecans, chopped
1/4 c cold butter, cut into small pieces
1/4 c whole-wheat flour
2 tbl raw sugar
2 tbl raw local honey

Heat oven to 350. Spray a 10-inch cast iron skillet with cooking spray, or use the paper from the butter to grease the skillet and flour it lightly.

Beat together the butter and sugar until the color lightens. Add the egg and beat until smooth. Dump the flours, baking powder, and salt in a pile in the middle of the bowl and combine the dry ingredients by lightly stirring them with a rubber spatula. Then add the yogurt and beat everything together just until fully combined. The batter will be very thick.

Scrape the batter into the cast iron skillet and smooth out. Then sprinkle the blueberries on top of the batter, then the chopped pecans on top of the blueberries. Then in the bowl that contained the batter combine the cold butter, flour, sugar and honey. Rub the ingredients together with your fingers until it forms clumps. Drop small clumps of this mixture evenly over the blueberries and pecans.

Bake at 350 for one hour. Test the center of the cake. When it comes out with no wet batter (blueberry juice doesn’t count!) then it’s done. Let cool to room temperature before serving, it will fall apart if served warm.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , , , ,

The Great Kimchi Experiment

11 May 2012

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The Great Kimchi Experiment has begun! Remember the tremendously huge bok choy I bought at the farmer’s market two weeks ago? Well, somehow it hung in there, wrapped in paper towels and a plastic grocery bag in the fridge. It even survived the move. So when I had an unexpected afternoon at home waiting for cable repair men to show up I decided to seize the time available and jump right in.

I had kimchi making worked up in my head as this huge process, taking all day long. The giant batch I made only took a little over two hours, and some of that was just waiting for the salting to finish. The style of kimchi I decided to make is based on Maangchi’s extensive recipes and videos, using the glutinous rice paste base. My version ended up veering away from hers because I was working with what I had in the house and needed to stay away from the onions she uses. My poor husband loves onions but they tear up his stomach so this batch is completely onion-free.

Bok Choy, Pear and Carrot Kimchi

1/2 c glutinous rice flour (mochiko)
3 c water
1 large bok choy
1/2 c salt
2 1/2 c Korean coarse pepper powder
1/4- 1/2 c sugar
10 cloves of garlic
3 ” piece of fresh ginger
1 c Korean anchovy sauce, or fish sauce
1 large Korean pear
3 large carrots

There are a lot of steps, just take them one at a time.

Wash the bok choy thoroughly in cold water. Trim the bottom off, then stack the leaves and chop them into large pieces. Pack the bok choy into large non-reactive bowls, sprinkling the salt in as you go. Set aside to wilt for 1 1/2 hours.

Combine the rice flour and cold water in a small pan. Put over medium heat and stir constantly until the mixture comes to a simmer. Turn to low and cook for 2-3 minutes or until the mixture thickens considerably and smells cooked. Remove from the heat and pour the cooked rice flour porridge into a large mixing bowl. Stir in the sugar and set aside to cool.

Now prepare the fresh vegetables. Peel and mince the garlic and ginger. Slice the pear into thin matchstick pieces. Grate the carrots.

Once that is done, check the rice flour porridge. If it’s cool enough to stick a finger into, add the anchovy sauce, garlic and ginger. Stir thoroughly. Then add the pepper powder 1/2 cup at a time, stirring thoroughly after each addition. Do not get your face near the bowl or the measuring cup. If you breathe in the pepper dust you’ll regret it.

Once the pepper powder is stirred in thoroughly, take a minute and rinse everything around you. Wipe down the counter top with a damp rag, rinse out the measuring cup, and put any remaining pepper powder into a sealed container. If you used something re-usable to wipe down the counter top like a wash rag, put it immediately into the washing machine.

Now stir the pears and carrots into the mixture. You should have a thick red paste with all the fresh vegetables evenly distributed in the paste. It takes a lot of stirring! I used a long-handled wooden spoon.

The last step is washing and sterilizing the container you are using. Maangchi doesn’t address this at all because her kimchi is not fermented outside of the refrigerator. If you want to ferment your kimchi outside the fridge I would suggest washing the container now with hot soapy water and rinsing thoroughly with boiling water. You can also put your jars or containers through your dishwasher on high heat to sterilize them, or put them in boiling water.

Check the time. If it’s been 1 1/2 hours, go to the next step. If not, go take a break!

After at least 1 1/2 hours has passed, start rinsing the bok choy. I did this by filling my sink with cold water, then lifting the bok choy out of the brine with tongs and putting it into the fresh water in the sink. Now comes the fun part! Now, using tongs, lift the rinsed bok choy out of fresh water in small bunches and start stirring it into the red chili-vegetable mixture. I did this with long tongs, but you can also do it like Maangchi and use your hands if you have clean long rubber gloves. Keep adding the bok choy to the chili paste until it’s all mixed together very well and there are no “dry spots” between leaves with no paste. Then when it’s all combined, start packing it into the jars or container. Pack it down really well and then scrape any left over paste into the jar, too. Put on the lid loosely, wash off any pepper paste on the outside of the jar, and set it on the counter for 12 hours.

In 12 hours, look carefully at the jar. If there are lots of bubbles showing on the sides, take a long-handled wooden spoon and carefully push the handle of the spoon down into the kimchi, releasing the bubbles and packing all of the bok choy down into the pepper paste. Put the top back on loosely, and then put the whole jar into another bowl. Set it aside for 12 hours.

At this point the kimchi should be bubbling and happy. Push everything back down into the brine, rinse off the outside of the jar again, and put it in the fridge, preferably resting in another bowl just in case of spillover. Wait a couple of days or eat it right away. Enjoy!

Seen on Frugally Sustainable’s blog hop!

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Quinoa Greek Salad

10 May 2012

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So the first quinoa salad was good, but unfortunately did not keep well. So I decided to take the flavors from my standard chickpea salad and try it with quinoa. Definite winner. Salty, crunchy and just the right amount of sharpness from the balsamic vinegar dressing. Plus it’s a great way to use up the pile of sweet peppers I bought at the farmer’s market.

Quinoa Greek Salad

4 red sweet peppers, roasted, peeled, seeded and chopped
1/4 c caramelized onions, chopped
1 large cucumber, seeded and chopped
1 oz good quality feta cheese, crumbled
a handful of kalamata olives, pitted and chopped
2 tbl capers, chopped
1 c cooked and cooled quinoa
Plenty of salt and pepper
Balsamic vinaigrette- I used the Bolthouse Farms brand because it’s what I had on hand, but homemade would be better

Combine peppers through quinoa in a large bowl. Toss gently to combine. Dress lightly with balsamic vinaigrette and pepper. Let sit in the fridge overnight, then taste again and adjust salt and pepper if necessary.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Blue Breakfast

9 May 2012

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Sunday morning was our second morning in the new house. I made a big pancake breakfast with blueberry sauce, bacon, and fresh-squeezed grapefruit juice to celebrate.

My daughter decided to decorate the pancakes with some little tubes of colored gel we uncovered during the move. She didn’t realize that the gel was food coloring, not icing. Then we all poured blueberry sauce on top of our decorated pancakes.

After breakfast we took turns showing off our beautiful blue tongues and teeth. It was an excellent celebration.

Whole-grain Pancakes with Vanilla Blueberry Sauce

If you don’t like cooking the blueberries inside the pancakes, try this easy variation. The sauce cooks while you make the pancakes, so you have a luscious warm sauce ready to top hot whole-grain pancakes.

1 pint of fresh blueberries
1/4 c unrefined crystallized sugar
a pinch of salt
1/2 vanilla bean, slit down the length with a sharp knife

2 c whole-wheat flour
1 c oat flour (or 1 c of rolled oats/oatmeal, whirled in a food processor until finely ground)
1 tbl baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
3 eggs
3 tbl melted butter
2 cups of milk
oil
butter

Combine the blueberries, sugar, salt, and vanilla bean in a small saucepan. Set over the cold burner and turn it on to medium heat. Cover.

Add all of the dry ingredients in a 2-quart mixing bowl. Stir together until thoroughly combined. Add eggs, butter, and 1 cup of milk. Beat together until the mixture is smooth, then add milk 1/4 c at a time until it reaches the consistency you prefer. I like thinner batter for whole-grain pancakes as the thinner batter lets them rise better.

Check the blueberry sauce. If it simmering, uncover and stir. Turn the heat to low and let simmer.

Heat a griddle or shallow saute pan over medium heat. Lightly oil the griddle and then pour 1/3 c batter onto the griddle for each pancake. Wait until bubbles come up in the middle of the batter and the edges look dry, then flip. Let cook on the other side until lightly golden brown. Lightly oil the griddle (I use a paper towel with a little sunflower or peanut oil) between pancakes. Repeat until all of the batter is gone.

Serve with plenty of butter and the warm blueberry sauce. Give a prize to whoever gets the vanilla bean. That person gets to do the dishes!

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , ,

The Long Walk Home

7 May 2012

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On Friday I decided to walk to the new house from work. I needed some exercise after an overly-indulgent lunch at Harvest Thyme and needed some mental space and quiet before the madness of Moving Weekend.

You know what? Gainesville is a beautiful city.

A hidden backyard sanctuary and a fence covered in passionflowers, along with Gulf Fritillary caterpillars, of course

There were so many beautiful gardens. I wandered all through the Duckpond area and up through the Northeast side, paying careful attention to thriving fruit trees and what plants were grouped together both in planned gardens and in the wild edges and empty lots. Part of permaculture design is creating guilds- groups of plants that support each other biologically. Learning which plants like to be together can be learned by paying attention to the nature all around us. It just takes time and careful study.

I love this yard. It was like a cool shady oasis, beckoning me in, in a street full of mown grass and boring trimmed hedges.

As I wandered, I snapped pictures of gardens that I was drawn to. I realized that I was caught by the same style of garden over and over. Dense. Lush. Layered, with trees and large flowering bushes and low underplantings. Shaded and cool. No grass.

Brand new garden being installed in stages in the Duckpond. I love the interlocking circles and curves.

Another huge stack of gardening books from the library awaits me. I think I’ll be ready to start sketching out plans soon.

By: Andi Houston Category: Current Fascination, Garden Updates Tags: , , , ,

Green Goddess Quinoa Salad, with Dandelions!

4 May 2012

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Outside of some very good restaurants, I didn’t get to do much “food tourism” while I was in Colorado. Farmer’s markets don’t open until May and I saw very little local food of any kind while I was there outside of beer and wine. Then as we were heading to the Walsenburg bus station for me to start my long trek home to Florida, we stopped in a little natural foods store looking for coconut water. Lo and behold, I saw something I did not know existed- Colorado-grown quinoa!

Well, I had to buy some. And the Colorado-native herbal tea. And the Colorado-made lip balm. And I even got my coconut water!

Quinoa is a relatively new food to me. I have only cooked it once before, many years ago, when it was new on the market. It was dark red, I made some kind of stew with it, and no one liked it. Not even me! So I never cooked it again. The opportunity to try quinoa grown in Colorado was too much temptation, though. So I browsed quinoa recipes for a week, bookmarking the ones that sounded good, and ended up combining several recipes with local ingredients and my usual “tweaking”.

 

One of the local ingredients I used in this recipe is dandelion greens. I am a total sucker for the French garden variety dandelion greens. The red stems, the dark green serrated leaves… so beautiful. I just cannot resist their aggressive bitterness. So far I’ve only eaten them stir-fried quickly with bacon and plenty of pepper.

In a salad they are still aggressively bitter, but the richness and saltiness of the dressing and the avocado really balances them out. I just cannot stop eating this salad. Use the dandelion greens sparingly if you’re not sure about intensely bitter greens, or you can even blanch them for a few seconds in boiling water to tame the sharpness a bit.

Green Goddess Quinoa Salad with Dandelion Greens

Mostly based on this recipe that came out much more photogenic than mine and is possibly as delicious.

2 c quinoa
3 c rich homemade chicken broth
1 tsp. salt
small handful of dandelion greens, finely sliced
large handful of parsley, chopped
2 cucumbers, diced
1 small yellow sweet pepper, diced
1 avocado, diced
1/2 recipe Anchovy Herb Vinaigrette

Put the quinoa in a pan with a tight-fitting lid. Cover with cold water and swish with your hands, then drain and repeat, 3-4 times until the water runs fairly clear. Drain off most of the water. Add the chicken broth and salt. Bring to a boil, cover, turn down to low and simmer for 20 minutes. Then without opening the lid, turn the heat off and leave for another 5-10 minutes. Fluff with a fork and set aside to cool.

When the quinoa has cooled to room temperature, measure two cups of cooked quinoa into a mixing bowl. Add the dandelion greens through avocado and toss. Then start with 3 tablespoons of dressing, toss gently, and add more if it looks dry. The quinoa will soak up a lot of flavor, so use the dressing liberally. Then cover and chill the salad for at least a few hours to let the flavors “get happy”, and then taste for salt before serving.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , ,

Florida Shrimp Pasta

3 May 2012

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Sometimes recipes can just get away from you.

Take dinner for example. Started as a nice shrimp & garlic pasta recipe. Just pasta, saute the shrimp, add a little butter, garlic, and some parsley from the garden. Simple, easy, right?

Then I looked in the fridge and thought, “Maybe we should eat this zucchini, too. Oh, and there are some green onions getting kinda wilty, I’ll throw those in. And here’s one lonely sausage. What am I going to do with one sausage? I’ll chop that up, too. Hmmm. This is looking sorta cajun-pasta-y. Let’s add some Cajun seasoning and see what happens…”

And on it goes, until it smells right and you’ve added enough vegetables to feel like a good Mom and enough parmesan cheese that the picky kid will actually eat it, and wham! You have a brand-new recipe.

Florida Shrimp Pasta

1  1/2 lb Florida pink shrimp, peeled if you like them better that way
1 link of smoked sausage, or a few strips of smoked bacon, chopped
1 medium-large zucchini, sliced into 1/4-moons
1 bunch green onions, chopped
2 sweet peppers, sliced
3 large cloves of garlic, minced
2 glugs of white wine, maybe 1/4 c
1 1/2 c whole milk
2-3 tsp Slap-Yo-Mama Cajun seasoning
1/4 tsp sweet paprika
1/2 c shredded parmesan
handful of flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1 lb angel-hair pasta, cooked and drained, 1/4 c of the starchy cooking water set aside.

Heat a large frying pan or dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add sausage and stir until some of the fat starts top render out. Add garlic, peppers, and green onions. Cook until the peppers are wilted and everything starts to brown. Add the zucchini. Saute until the zucchini starts to brown. Turn the heat to high. When everything is really starting to sizzle, add the shrimp. Stir the shrimp until they are all just barely pink, then add the wine. Stir carefully to get all the yummy browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Turn the heat down a little and add the milk, starchy cooking water from the pasta, Cajun seasoning, and paprika. Stir until everything is bubbling nicely, then turn the heat down to medium-low. Let everything simmer together for 10 minutes.

Serve over the hot pasta, and sprinkle with parmesan cheese and parsley. I hate peeling shrimp, so I made this with headless shrimp and made everyone peel their own. Cooking shrimp in their shells makes them more difficult to over-cook, too.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Recipes! Tags: , , , ,

Beltane Thoughts and Garden Plans

2 May 2012

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Sundown yesterday was the end of Beltane. My Beltane evening included fire, a nice glass of red wine, and writing lists.

Beltane is often described as the beginning of summer, but that is only a part of the explanation. Beltane is the beginning of the light half, the planting half, the growing half of the year that ends on Samhain.  Much of these past months leading up to Beltane have been full of planning and dreaming and preparing. What you sow during the light half of the year, you reap during the dark. I am ready for some sowing!

I am always amused that the Eat Local Challenge starts on Beltane. That’s so fitting. We are putting our money where our mouths are. Literally! We are putting our ethics into action during the Eat Local Challenge. Since my challenge to myself is finding and trying new food plants for my garden, two of the lists were Have & Wish lists- what do I already have that’s coming with me to the new house, and what plants do I need immediately?

What I have: lemongrass, 2 different figs, 4 blueberries, 2 yuca, oregano, rigani, thyme, and a strawberry guava.

We have to start in the front yard. It’s been neglected the longest and is literally a huge area of unsightly weeds (sand spurs must die), two badly-placed tulip poplars, and some disconnected daylilies and roses. Those go on the “have” list, too. Much of the front yard will be native flowering plants and butterfly/bird food, but some plants that produce human food will be mixed in, too.

There are so many things to consider for the wish list: permaculture techniques, the state of the soil, budget. Permaculture design advocates lots of perennial food plants, native plants to attract pollinators, and combining plants to make “guilds”- plants that work well together.

I also have to consider water usage. Rain here is seasonal, almost monsoon-like, and I’m not willing to do more watering than a rain barrel can provide for. Anything planted in the front has to be able to tough out weeks with no rain after it’s established.

On the wish list so far for the front yard: more blueberries, Mediterranean herbs that will survive the heat (rosemary, definitely), sweet potato, sunchokes/jerusalem artichokes, roselles, and possibly globe artichokes.

This spot may become a tropical bed. It’s on the south-west corner, against a fence, and gets serious sun all day, but is protected from north wind. I thinking of trying bananas, edible gingers, turmeric, pandanus, and under-planted with Okinawa spinach and beach sunflower. This might also be a good spot for an African Keyhole bed since bananas are heavy feeders.

Winter is for thinking, dreaming, learning.  Summer is for doing. Summer starts today.

By: Andi Houston Category: Eat Local Challenge, Faith and food, Garden Updates Tags: , , , , , ,
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