Another part of being back at home is getting back to my CSA shares from George Hall Farm, which were sorely missed during my travels.  Yesterday’s goodies showed that the fall harvest has been here in full force – what a difference from the last CSA share I picked up a month ago! I’m sorry to have missed so much, as this was the last CSA for the summer/fall season.  However, the winter CSA will start in a couple of weeks, so there is that to look forward to in addition to the ongoing (and winter) farmers’ markets.

Acorn squash, carrots, butternut squash, kale, sweet potatoes, green onions, garlic, hakurei turnips, white sweet potatoes, and “regular” turnips.  I very much liked this share, lots of potential here…. This farm is the only place I’ve found that grows white sweet potatoes and hakurei turnips.

I’m late, but I’m here.  Here back at home, and back here reporting on life in my LocalZone.  My Spotlight meal for the Eat Local Challenge was something new, and something I’ve not had for a long time.

The “new” was millet, cooked very simply with water.  I did overcook it a bit, because I was looking for something comforting, and soft food often gives me that feeling.  The “returning” part of the meal was cauliflower cooked with tumeric, cumin, paprika, chili powder, and some cumin seeds.  Standard fare in my parents’ house – something I’ve not done for a while.  It tasted all the more delicious after its absence.  Leftover millet and some onion were stuffed into a huge green bell pepper.

Sources:  Cauliflower, pepper, onion from Amelia’s Farm and Bakeshop.  Millet – its not possible to get local grains that I can eat, so the millet was from “away” but purchased from a local family business.

Today was raw and miserable.  No other words for it, just gloomy.  It seems fitting to choose comfort food as my Spotlight for Week 2 of the October Eat Local Challenge.  I had some white beans cooked from earlier in the week, and a LOT of kale that needed to be used.  Add to that a bit of leftover sauteed onion, and I was on my way to kale stew.   Maybe that’s not a conventional name for it, but it was thicker than soup, and closest to the comfort that comes from a warm bowl of stew.

Pretty basic, just the torn green kale cooked on a low flame for an hour and a half or so, along with the sauteed onion, some dried green and red pepper, and dried rosemary.  It cooked down nicely, and I then pureed part of it to thicken the whole thing.  Added in the cooked white beans at the end, so the flavors could meld, and there was dinner.  I pan-toasted up some polenta sticks I made earlier, and dipped them right in as well.

Sources:  Kale from Dematteo Farm; onion from Amelia’s Farm and Bakeshop; dried herbs and peppers from my summer garden; cornmeal for the polenta from Grays Grist Mill; white beans from Caygula Organics

Ack! I thought this posted, but I guess not.  Here’s what I was thinking/doing on Sunday…

I’ve been thinking about how to approach this October Eat Local Challenge and I think I’ll aim to make some *new* recipes from either friends or internet-poking-around each week.  I know there is a lot out there, and since my standbys have largely been taken away from me due to the gluten-free development (and the known lactose problem), this is the time to do it.

(1) I’ve been thinking that it might be good to start with corn tortilla-based meals, as this is one of the new breads I’ve learned to make.  So this week I poked around on Vegetarian Times online, and found a recipe for Black Bean Tacos with Roasted Peppers and Onions.  Conveniently, before I found the recipe, I made my first batch of black beans for the season.  I’d been taking a break over the summer, given all the other produce to enjoy, but with the return of a chill in the mornings and evenings, it seemed time to reintroduce them to the table.  I had gotten some peppers and onions from the farmers’ market this weekend, so it made even more sense to use them.  I adapted the recipe a bit, omitting the olive oil, and using the last of the tomatoes rather than the canned ones to make some salsa.  No avocados, and obviously no sour cream or cheese.  I added more spice with some poblano chilis I’d dried earlier in the summer.  Now that I think about it, my meal was an interpretation of the recipe rather than the “real thing” but I’ll just go with it – I wouldn’t have made it before, and it was delicious.  Picture to come once my camera decides to let me upload pictures…

(2) One of my latest fall cravings has been butternut squash “fries”.  I often make butternut squash stuffed with cranberries, baked with apples, or in a spicy tagine.  But I’m starting to enjoy them with a bit more crunch to them.  For this preparation, I slice the squash in strips (with the skin on – it seems to help keep the squash from falling apart) and then cook on the stovetop until they soften just a bit.  Then sprinkled with some black pepper and into the oven on a sheet-pan to brown and crisp.  I’ve also done this entirely cooking in the oven, but since that takes about 40-50 minutes, the alternative method allows dinner to get on the table a bit faster.  I’ve paired this with some of the homemade ketchup that I made with the summer’s tomatoes, and it is a meal in itself.  My squash lately has come from Amelia’s Bakeshop and Farm, found at the French Farmers Market.  Now that I’m back home, I plan to go to Dondero Orchards to start my winter squash storage in bulk.

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to participate in the Eat Local Challenge for this year.  I certainly have been absent a lot lately! But then I started thinking, maybe (like the Dark Days Challenge last year) this would get my creativity moving and prompt some more interesting meals.  Not that I have anything against the simple, familar ones – they are the staples of a life, especially in the busy world - but its nice to break out a little. 

So here I am, determined to make good use of the Eat Local Challenge.   Since I’m eating locally anyway, I’ll use the Spotlight method to highlight one or two meals each week this month that perhaps use those seasonal ingredients that are overflowing to the point of “now what do I do with this”, or something out of the ordinary for me.  According to the Challenge organizers, each week will have a ”theme” of sorts (personal challenges, family, community, etc).  I’m not sure how those will work, but… I’ll figure it out.

Exceptions are the same as I have throughout this blog: 1 mango a day.  Salt and pepper – though my herbs and other seasonings are still local.  When I’m sick, all bets are off.   And I have to add the new flour/grain exceptions, since I can’t use my local grains anymore now that I am gluten-free.  I have been making my own breads with the new flours, but the flours and grains themselves are outside my 100 mile radius.   

First post is coming up this weekend!

Ack, I’ve not posted in a long time.  Things have been very busy – I’m on the road again (so to speak) back working on that project for work.  Luckily I’m able to stay at my parents’ home, so its a bit more calming to come back after work.

What’s even nicer is being with my family for the holidays.  We just started Navaratri, which is 9 nights of walking through the path from working to eliminate/tame negative qualities of the personality; working next to build up the good; and finally reaching for the understanding of what else can be.  Throughout it all, there is an examination of G-d in our lives and the power of G-d to both ruthlessly eliminate evil and just as determinedly raise the good.  It is my favorite holiday of the year – a very joyful and at the same time contemplative time.   The first night was Saturday, September 19, with the last night on Sunday, September 27.  The 28th is the tenth day, also celebrated as the culmination and victory of the entire process.

Every year so far I’ve marked the holiday with a different sweet for each of the 9 nights.  They nearly all involved various preparations with wheat or other glutenous products.  So this year is my first trying to create things gluten-free.  Many of the dishes are very (very!) traditional, with a set taste, memory, and method.  The hardest kind of dishes, in other words, to adapt.  While I’m looking for naturally gluten-free breads in regular life, for the holiday, its hard to think of something like that.  So… I’ve been experimenting a lot in the kitchen. 

Night 1: Traditionally, I’ve done a kind of sweet porridge made with cream-of-wheat, milk (enter lactose-pill), sugar, raisins, and some butter (again, some discomfort endured).  It is hands-down my favorite sweet, always has been.  The cream-of-wheat is dry-toasted in a large non-stick skillet, and then the butter added – about 1 to 1.5  generous Tbsp for a 1/4 cup of cream-of-wheat.  Lots of stirring with a soft spatula to prevent burning.  When the granules formed, I’d add in sugar (1/4 to 1/3 cup), and a minute or two later, the milk (1/2 cup or so).  The mixture soon starts to pull away from the sides of the skillet into a soft solid mass.  Raisins are folded in (and optional almonds - I never liked to do that), and the entire thing removed to the serving plate.  Very tasty.

This year, I’ve learned that cream-of-rice has the same texture and a lot of the same taste as the cream-of-wheat.  Almond milk stood in for the “regular” milk.  A “butter substitute” was the substitute for the regular butter.  Sugar was maple-syrup sugar I got back last March from the sugaring at a local farm that month.  Raisins – no problem there.   I gave it a go, and it turned out really well! Texture = exactly the same.  Taste = 99% the same.  Appearance = 75% the same – it was brown instead of white due to the brown rice used, and the darker maple syrup sugar.   I don’t think I’ll have any problem with this, and neither did the rest of the family.

Night 2: Normally, I’d do a carrot halwa similar to the linked recipe.  Coarsely grated carrots cooked on the stovetop in a large skillet until nearly solid in a large saucepan with sugar, milk, cardamom, and a tiny bit of optional melted butter.  Again, I went with the almond milk and the same local maple sugar.  Carrots were local too, and the cardamom, well, likely quite far away for that spice.  And the verdict?  Again, happily positive – my mother said it was better than the “traditional” one I’ve done in the past.  So this *can* be done after all…..

Carrot Halwa, Navratri 2009

Look for a report on nights 3 and 4 soon!

I’ve not posted for a few days, but its been busy in the LocalZone.  I mentioned last week that I had about 1.5 bushels of apples for preserving, and I added in some pears.  So they got preserved – 38 quarts of applesauce, and about 7 quarts of pearsauce.    I also found myself with an unexpected gift of huge tomatoes (quite ripe) from my parents, so that promptly got made into about 3 quarts of tomato sauce (with some onion and garlic I had around).  I never realized how long it takes tomato sauce to boil down and thicken!

Those peppers from last week? Yes, they were also preserved.  Not all, of course, but a fair amount was made into spicy pepper jelly, using a mix of Serrano, jalapeno, bell, banana, and long green peppers.  I used apple juice for the sweetness, yet a quick taste from a finished jar confirmed that this was an honestly *spicy* jelly!  My father was thrilled, which is good since he will likely be getting a few jars, as I had about 10 half-pints total.

On a related note, we also got several stand-alone steel rack-type shelves for putting all these preserves on.  My cabinets are quite thick, with shelves about 1.5 inches of solid wood, but we still aren’t sure if they will hold all the preserves, and avoid sagging slowly over time.  I also have a pantry (cluttered now, I admit, but it can be cleared) that has seemingly-strong racks – not sure of the material, but if I push down hard I can bend/budge them a bit.  And then there are the stand-alone shelves I mentioned.  The manufacturer claims the shelves can withstand 250 or so (I think!) lbs total distributed among 3 shelves.  Obviously the jars don’t weigh that much, so it will be okay.  But if I can keep them in the kitchen cabinets or the pantry, that would be more convenient – not to mention leave more room in the kitchen.  For now, the quart sized jars are on the stand-alone shelves, and the pints/half-pints are in the kitchen cabinets.  But is this an over-abundance of caution? What do you do? How sturdy are the shelves/racks/etc. where you keep your preserves?

As a venture into gluten-free breadmaking,  my family and I made a flatbread made out of wholemeal sorghum flour.  We know this bread as “jowar rotlo” – a kind of dense bread made on a hot griddle.  What made this hard was the fact that the dough was so crumbly.  It kept falling apart even as we formed the balls of dough to roll out for the bread.  But soon we got the hang of it.  It helped incredibly when I suggested using a plastic Ziploc-type bag, cut open, to put the dough between as it got rolled out.  This kept it from sticking to the board, and, interestingly, from falling apart quite so much.

Basically, the recipe is simply the sorghum flour mixed with water to form a stiff dough.  Then take off golf-sized balls, working it until it is as smooth as possible (dipping hands in water as needed) and then flattening it into a disk.  Inside the bag, it then gets rolled out into a disc as thin as possible (which is not so very thin – the best ones we got were about 1/4 inch or a bit thinner).  Then gently lifted out and onto the hot griddle to cook.  The flour turns a cream/ecru color as it cooks.  After about 4 minutes, it is flipped and cooked until that ecru color on the other side.  The bread started to crack, but I understand that is normal for this kind of flour.

I had a piece of the bread with lunch yesterday, and it was really good.  Filling too.  I tried it with some black bean puree on the top as a kind of hummus-like spread.  I think it would also be good with spiced pepper jelly.  Here are some pictures of the process – my mother did the batch in the pictures.

The sorghum dough

Shaping the balls of dough

Under the plastic bag, ready for rolling out

Rolling out the rotlo

Cooking on the first side

After the flip

The finished stack

Jowar rotlo from the top view

The learning curve for this venture was *very* steep – the difference between the first and last rotlo was incredible.  I’m sure it’ll get even better with the next batch.  The same method can be used with millet flour (under the name of bajri rotlo), so that will be next weekend’s attempt.  The sorghum flour was not local, naturally, but the bread was homemade – and I did like it.

Week 15 report of the Independence Days Challenge, but it doesn’t feel like Tuesday since yesterday was off from work for Labor Day here in the United States… Here’s the recap of the past week:

A week and a day late, but here is my final One Local Summer Spotlight meal.  After all the canning I did this weekend, I wanted something simple yet, for some reason, on the spicier side.  I turned to polenta (acceptable as gluten-free and made with water as the liquid) with scallions and jalapeno peppers.  Alongside was roasted eggplant stuffed with the same scallions and jalapeno and serrano, along with some diced red onion.

Sources: Eggplant and all peppers from Easy Pickins Orchard; scallions from George Hall Farm; cornmeal for polenta from Gray’s Grist Mill.