Winter Preparations

As the summer begins to wind down, we are overrun with tomatoes, cucumbers, basil, and fruit. I find this time of year so comforting because I know that my freezer and pantry will be full when the darkness of winter sets in. While I am not able to fill the freezer as full as I would like (we are still debating the potential merits of a small chest freezer in the West household), I have started an annual routine that means we will have some tastes of summer in January. To date, I have made pasta sauce, oven-dried tomatoes, pesto, ratatouille, pickles, and frozen fruits.

Dill pickles from Waltham Fields cukes.

Makings of pesto - I blend Waltham Fields basil with olive oil to freeze.
I can add the garlic, salt, and other ingredients fresh when I use the pesto.

Freezing pesto in a muffin tin makes the perfect serving size.
I pop these out and keep them in Ziploc bags.

Making Susan's marinara sauce with Waltham Fields garlic, onion, basil, and tomatoes.

We got 7 pounds of tomatoes one week! Some went in to sauce, the others
I skinned and froze whole...or enjoyed juicy from the vine.

WHEAT WHEAT WHEAT!

Baker Andrew is *still* on hiatus, unfortunately, but I have tried to lure him back into the kitchen by buying Massachusetts-grown wheat! (And maybe when temperatures drop below 90, we will be willing to turn on the oven...) The girls at Boston Localvores recently volunteered to drive to White Oak Farm in Belchertown, Massachusetts to pick up shares of organically-grown grains. On a crazy whim, I ordered 25 pounds of unground wheat, and immediately had buyer's remorse! During the weeks before the wheat arrived, I had time to research storage, grinding, and baking with this stuff, and ordered a small hand grinder from a shop in Utah. By some divine coincidence, the wheat and the grinder arrived within days of each other, and Susan and I set to caring for our wheat immediately. The first task was to store it properly: it needs to be kept cool and dry so it won't mold or sprout, so we bought large glass jars with seals and tucked it in the pantry.

Next, it needs to be ground, so we tried out the grinder - it's a bit of an arm workout, but produced several fluffy cups of flour in mere minutes!

Now, it needs to be eaten...Susan and Tim have already made homemade pita bread on the grill, and I will attempt my no-knead recipe today. Hopefully the smell and bliss of homemade bread will help quell my fears about keeping all this grain!

Chestnut Farms Meat Share

I am not a vegetarian, have never been one, and never intend to give up meat. However, after watching Food, Inc. and driving through Fresno, California where I saw meat lots with my own eyes, I have been torn about how to work healthy meat in to our diet. We have been buying meat at Whole Foods and cringing at the price, but happy that our Cambridge store sells New England-sourced beef - but what about chickens and pork? We were never really sure where they came from or how they were raised. The solution came through our vegetable CSA, Waltham Fields Community Farm, which is the drop-off site for the Chestnut Farms meat CSA. After seeing happy customers walk away with a cooler of meat each month, we were intrigued and put our names on the wait-list. We are now, happily, off the wait list and are eating meat guilt-free! Chestnut Fields is a family farm in western Massachusetts, and they raise pasture-fed pigs, cows, chickens, turkeys, and lambs without hormones or antibiotics. They share pictures of the farm and invite us to visit, and keep us updated about farm activities through their website and newsletter. As Andrew said when he ate his first bite of Chestnut Farms' chicken: "BAM!" It is succulent, flavorful, and lovingly raised. What more could we ask for?

Chestnut Farms chicken tacos with farm-fresh corn, homemade
tomatillo salsa, and Cabot cheese. Perfection!

Susan and I enjoyed some of the chicken breast this week, which I rubbed lightly with olive oil, salt, and pepper and roasted in the oven. I always use a thermometer to judge my meat's done-ness now, which works really well for me. After these cooled, I shredded them for the tacos and filled steamed corn tortillas with the shredded chicken, corn cut from the cob, shredded Cabot cheddar cheese, and our homemade tomatillo salsa. You can see how we make this in an earlier post, but it's simple: I fill a dry cast-iron skillet with cut tomatillos, husk cherries, jalapenos, and garlic cloves and put these on the stove-top until everything has a bit of a blackened crust. Then I blend them with a bit of salt for a very flavorful salsa.

Susan enjoying our Mexican meal!

Quahogs!

Freshly gathered quahogs.

Talk about local. I am completely amazed by my mother: she now has a shellfishing license and digs for quahogs! This word is pronounced "co-hog" and it's a hard-shell clam that is found in the coastal Northeast. With her license, Mom can gather 10 quarts of these shellfish, which she stuffs and serves with yummy butter dipping sauce. The method for collecting quahogs, as I understand it, is to check the shellfishing warden's report on the health of the shellfish and the ocean waters, then to head out with your gathering equipment. You tie a 10-quart basket around your waist and it floats by your side as you wade through the water, scraping at the bottom of the ocean with a special rake. Mom says it's quite an arm work-out and I am dying to see her in action - her next goal is scallop gathering! These are my favorite seafood, so I am eager to taste the results.

Wonder where I get my enthusiasm for food?
Mom and Uncle Bob with the results of their shellfishing!

Toronto

This weekend we visited the city of Toronto to celebrate Robyn and Matt's wedding. We had a wonderful time seeing friends from California, exploring the city, and enjoying the friendly Canadian people. We discovered the lovely St. Lawrence Market in downtown Toronto, mere blocks from our hotel. This is a wonderful public market, much like those in Seattle, San Francisco, and Philadelphia, where local cheeses, breads, meats, and other specialties are available. These are among my favorite places to visit in other cities, and we are very hopeful that Boston will have one soon...there has been talk of this for some time, and the Globe reports that donors have pledged millions to make this happen!

Catherine enjoying fresh-baked bread in the St. Lawrence Market.

While Andrew was involved in wedding preparations, Catherine explored the city on her own. After a visit to see China's terracotta warriors at the Royal Ontario Museum, I took a hike into Chinatown. It's not the biggest Chinatown I've seen, but it was one of the busiest places I've been! I was pushed down the sidewalk in a tide of people while I examined the produce in the many groceries. While the produce was likely not local, I was happy to experience the sights and smells of traditional Chinese cooking.

Views of Chinatown.

Squeezing sugarcane to make a drink.

Eating on the King Salmon

Patrick with his catch!

I have just returned from a month of doing archaeology with the Alutiiq Museum on the King Salmon River in Alaska. Could you eat locally on the King Salmon River, you ask? There is a reason this river got its name: the runs of king (or Chinook) that pass through here on their way to spawn each year. While the runs were small, dig director Patrick Saltonstall was able to catch some for several meals as a fresh alternative to the camp food we normally enjoyed. Patrick cooked the filets on our Coleman stove with Old Bay Seasoning, which made for a delicious treat. Trust me, this ain't your grocery store salmon.

Enjoying king salmon on the King Salmon!

The people who lived on this site more than 1000 years ago probably fished for salmon, captured migrating birds and caribou, and also made use of local plant life. Thanks to Discovering Wild Plants, we were able to identify many usable plants on our landscape. While we were a bit early to eat the abundant cloud berries, we did nibble on fireweed shoots, beach lovage, and watermelon berry leaves, and enjoyed the strong scent of Labrador tea as we walked through the muskeg around camp. I was too afraid to make it into tea after I found out the potential side effects, but it is also quite popular for throwing on the steamy rocks in the banya.

Collecting Labrador tea. It smells like pine and rosemary.

Dr. West in action. Note the "summer" outfit.

Kodiak, Alaska is an amazing place to take advantage of local food sources, but most of these come through subsistence activities: hunting deer, elk, and goat, gathering berries, fishing for halibut and salmon, and storing these foods for the winter. Betty Odell supplied our camp with homemade salmonberry jelly and her very own smoked salmon, which were produced by the berries and fish she and her family harvest on the island. Patrick keeps a lovely garden that flourishes in the short growing season, since local veggies are impossible to buy in the grocery store, and he is a skilled and committed hunter. Enjoying Kodiak elk roast and halibut filets in our Massachusetts kitchen brings a whole new dimension to our local eating pledge!

The beautiful chocolate lily - named for its color, not its taste.
The root can be boiled and ground into a paste or flour, I believe.

Bordeaux Part Quatre: Steak Frites!

Need I write anything about the famous steak frites? Sean and Marisa took us to L'Entrecote in downtown Bordeaux, which is a restaurant that serves one thing: steak frites. The only thing required of the patron is to choose red or rose wine and how the meat should be cooked (a point, saignant, bleu, etc.). When the steak arrives, it appears on a warming stand smothered in butter and herb sauce and accompanied by an enormous pile of perfect French frites. These frites are not too big and not too small, taste like fresh potatoes, and are fried to an even golden crisp that stands up to the richness of the meat and the buttery sauce. Oh la la!

The warming tray with our portions of steak swimming in butter sauce. Hopefully the red wine balanced out this cholesterol fest...

Owen is a wonderful dinner companion! You can see du pain clutched in his fist.