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 July – Chuenchom (Chom) Sangarasri Greacen

Chom’s Lopez Bounty Blog – week 4

Reflecting on my experiment of trying to eat local on Lopez Island, I gained a renewed respect for the sun.

Growing up in a tropical country, I often took the sun for granted. In fact, the sun was something to be feared, shielded against, and avoided, by staying indoors during the mid-day, using an umbrella on sunny days, or wearing protective clothing.

The tropical sun also means abundance of food all year round. Plants like basil, peppers and eggplants are perennial in Thailand and can be harvested year round. Others, such as mangoes, are seasonal. But different fruits and vegetables are available at different times throughout the year. With all-year-round availability of fresh fruits and vegetables, there was little need to put up food. It was easy for me to take for granted the food abundance.

But here, at 49’ latitude, the sun feels very different on Lopez Island, and so does the seasonal nature of food abundance. Local food availability is linked so closely to the ability to harness the energy from the sunlight, which is plentiful in the summer and in short supply in the winter. To eat local to the extent possible requires growing/harvesting a lot of food, eating seasonally, and putting up surplus food for later, darker days.

Cucumber salad                                                   My first sauerkraut!

Salad harvest                                                        Dinner with neighbor Sue’s beans

I certainly have a new found appreciation for bears. Their ability to eat a lot when food is plentiful, store abundance by getting fat, and then hibernate when food becomes scarce is very enviable. No need for freezing, canning, dehydration, fermentation, refrigeration or root-cellaring!

I had a perfect opportunity to channel my inner bear while on a hike with Chris in Eastern WA two weeks ago. The trail (Black Lake Creek) was incredibly lined with such generous offerings of two distinct types of huckleberries, wild raspberries, black-capped raspberries, thimbleberries, wild black currants, and elderberries. (I couldn’t help but consider them part of my “local” diet.) I had never seen such a diversity and abundance of berries such that our “hike” quickly became a slow crawl between berry bushes along the trail.

Despite the advantage of having opposable thumbs, I found berry foraging to be hard work, but with the high reward of scrumptious bursts of flavors. I LOVE the direct bush-to-mouth action of feeding myself. How primal, efficient and delicious! Despite my best intention and attempt to turn the berry bounty into fat reserves for scarcer times, I was disappointed to find that my tummy had a space limit, even for wild berries! And there were still so many ripe berries begging to be eaten! Even my 1-quart container got full way before all the berries got picked. It was hard to walk away from them, knowing full well that they would likely fall to the ground and rot before bear-like creatures (like me) or real bears got to them. I thought to myself then how I would be willing to trade my opposable thumbs with a bear’s ability to store abundance and hibernate!

If my cravings for non-local foods could be turned off, eating local in July is really not difficult because so many fruits are ripe, veggies & root crops are plentiful, and salmons start to come in. But knowing that the sunlight abundance was at its peak and declining, eating local beyond the month of July would require a lot of harvesting and putting up food.

Wild berries

   Two kinds of Huckleberries                            Thimbleberries

Wild Currants

Wild Raspberries                                                   black capped Raspberries

Unknown Currants

I am a novice when it comes to food preservation. Not having grown up with traditions of putting up food, I used to think it was wasteful and a bother to use energy to freeze, can, or dehydrate food. I have now understood the need to store surplus food for scarcer times. Signing up to eat local also gave me the nudge I needed to learn and practice to can and ferment food. I was very happy that my first batches of orach and cabbage krauts turned out successfully and were yummy. I have also been busy harvesting and making jam and dehydrated fruits. All these take a great deal of time and resources. Eating locally and sustainably would have been much easier if humans were as evolved as bears! It also gave me a perspective on why, in a tropical environment, it takes less energy and land per capita to sustainably feed a person.

Some plants naturally store better than others. Potatoes, onions, and winter squash can store through the winter while seeds, beans, nuts and grains (wheat) can keep for years, without requiring energy input. During the month of July alone, Chris and I (mostly I) probably went through 20 lbs of hazelnuts (including the weight of the shells). They were the main comfort food that I could just pop in my mouth for instant gratification. Certainly, we would need a lot more nut trees on Lopez to sustain this level of consumption. I would also like to personally grow more dried beans and plant more trees, if we would have access to land. Working toward a community root cellar would also be very nice.

Coming back to the original question that I had posed for myself at the beginning of my experiment: what have I learned about myself in my attempt to move “eating local” from my head to my heart?

I found this question to be difficult to answer because of my hesitance to face my inner demon. Yes, I found that I sorely missed certain familiar food and flavors such as rice, oil, soy sauce, sesame, limes, coconut, curry, fish sauce, dried shrimp, etc. But what I also missed was the convenience and comfort of purchased food. How nice to not have to shell nuts before grabbing a handful of them to pop into my mouth! How convenient to want something and just buy it at Blossom or LVM. How easy it would be to think of food as a mere commodity.I think the most difficult part of this journey from the head to the heart is confronting my own hypocrisy. Despite what I know and what I value, why do I still shop at Costco, for example? Is it greed (getting more for less money)? A sense of powerlessness (discounting the impacts of my action)? Willful ignorance (not wanting to contemplate the inter-connectedness of my food choice and the industrial economic system and the earth)? It is probably all the above in descending order.

As I ponder my own hypocrisy, I really wonder why my greed is so deep-rooted. Why is it hard for me to let go of the thought that I’m losing out if I don’t get the best deal out there? That I’m an isolated island out to compete against others, trying to not lose out in the system of a big faceless market place of food capitalism. My heart knows so well that this voice in my head is dead wrong, but why am I still weak and powerless against it? That is the question I certainly need to ponder some more. If anything, I should at least give myself a pat on the back for having the courage to admit hypocrisy.  At least the Lopez Bounty Experiment has enabled me that much, and this blog exercise has helped me name my inner shadow.

Now that I got my confession out of my chest, I feel somewhat lighter but totally exposed. Going forward, I want to remember my love of foraging, harvesting, and sharing abundance. I love the smiles and happy faces of beautiful people who grow and make local food and infuse their love in it. I am immensely grateful for abundance in all forms. Abundance of wild and cultivated foods, of rich, prolific soil, of health and healing that takes place if we allow nature to do its magic. Abundance of heart, generosity, community, and good cheers of shared bounty and meals.

May love and light heal and radiate from myself, the people around me, and the interconnected web of life—the soil, the ocean, and the earth. Lastly, thank you to the almighty, life-sustaining sun.

Chom’s Lopez Bounty Blog – week 3

Horse Drawn wheat sprouts

If I gave you the impression last week that eating local was all rosy, I’ll focus my writing this week on the challenges to give a more balanced portrayal of my overall experience of eating local.Vicki Robin from Whidbey once said “eating local is like an extreme sport.” I started to understand it now. Despite July being one of the easiest month to eat local, I found myself at times light-headed, exhausted, weak, stuffed up, cynical, doubting myself and even questioning my sense of belonging.Eating only food grown and harvested from Lopez Island can be restricting in social situations and kept me from having a taste of homemade coconut-based spinach mint ice-cream and many other creative culinary creations that many Lopez potlucks had to offer. It is certainly tormenting to have integrity warring with curiosity and cravings inside of my head. Food prep can also be very time consuming. For example, it took me 6 solid hours to shell enough hazelnuts to last me a month. Six hours of swinging a hammer and dodging flying shell shrapnel plus some physical therapy to recover from it.A major challenge of mine is grain. I spent a lot of time learning to tame our local grains: wheat. I had been off wheat and gluten for a while because I often felt wiped out energetically and had stuffed up nose and sneeze attacks when I ate wheat (white processed wheat is the worst offender). So when the month of July started, I tried to do without grain initially. After only 4 days, I started to feel light-headed and low-energy. I wanted so much to make use of my CSA wheat from Horse Drawn but was wary of the effects wheat had on my body. In my journey to “tame” wheat, many thoughts came up. I felt frustrated and inadequate that I didn’t really have any knowledge base to draw on when it came to wheat. I felt I was such an imposter trying to eat local when my physical existence itself is an import. Having grown up in a culture where meals (breakfast, lunch and dinner) are referred to as “rice”, wheat was not really part of my diet growing up. How I wish we could grow rice on Lopez or even in the Pacific NW! (But really, I would be scared if this wish were to come true – what mess would we be in if that day would come.)  But my struggle with local grains did bring up doubts about whether my body could really belong, dietary-ly speaking, in a rice-less country. To address the hollowness I felt from grain-free diet, I decided to give wheat a try. That was when I decided to try sprouting and fermenting wheat berries. Thanks to tips from Adam Lee, Sage and Nathan and Steven Wrubresky, I tried different combinations and variations of soaking, sprouting, blending (to cut intact berries), and fermenting. Some turned out to be flavorful oatmeal and rice substitutes, with minimal allergenic effects. Others (particularly the batches cultured with straight yogurt starter) ending up being excellent chicken feeds. All these personal R&D efforts certainly took time. The long process of “taming” wheat also means that it takes about 4 days for the grains to be ready for my consumption. And I didn’t even try to make flour, having decided that my yearning for baked goods was not enough to justify the extra effort dehydrating and grinding sprouted grains).  But all in all, I was very happy that I was able to find a way to locally meet my dietary need for grains, thanks to the CSA wheat from Horse Drawn through LCLT. Potatoes helped me big time as well. New potatoes in my garden became ready just in time to give me some varieties in the starch department. Another major challenge I had was the fact that my kids had very different definitions of what is considered “local” (“only things from the earth surface” for Sara and “only things from the solar system” for Ty). As for Chris, when he called from Myanmar to let me know that he was eating local papaya for breakfast, I couldn’t help but retaliate by being protective of my hard-earned shelled hazelnuts and butter from Vera (whose sacred teets I humbly laid my hands on to extract creamy nourishing liquid). So I became the loner in the family on this Lopez-food-only journey. Given my jello-like will to start with, it was thus not surprising that my will completely crumbled about half way through the month. After a long day at the Farmers Market with the kids, I was quite hungry in the evening. My plan was to make the easiest meal (fried rice) for the kids and Chris so that I could get to preparing my own meal ASAP. By the time fried rice was done and everyone else was ready to sit and eat, I just stared at the fried rice and had this overwhelming urge to “screw it”. Too low-sugared to have any self-control, my long suppressed craving for RICE came rushing out like a torrent. I pleaded silently for sympathy and understanding from my family and found love mixed pity in their gazes back at me. Seconds later, I found myself scarfing down heaping spoons full of fried rice and moaning with pleasure. Such a delicious, guilty defeat of my shattered will! Though I didn’t want to admit it, but that was not an isolated incident! Sigh…(Please forgive me so I can forgive myself.)

Breakfast of sprouted fermented wheat plus hazelnuts

Scrumptious breakfast of leftover salmon and Sunnyfield Farm chèvre

Making slat in the solar oven

Yummy picnic at Point Coville with Laney (intern at Sweetbriar Farm)

My favorite veggie that reminds me of home (Ipomoea aquatica Forsk. Var. reptan or “kangkong). Grown in my garden with seeds smuggled from Thailand.

Ready to be turned into breakfast

“Life is good” meal with stir-fried Kangkong, sockeye salmon and sprouted wheat berries

Vera’s butter is so golden!! My main source of fat.

Chom’s Lopez Bounty blog – week 2

“Wheatmeal” with blueberries, peaches, plums and hazelnuts

My head My head has been exposed for a long time to the fact that growing food and eating locally make sense, ecologically or otherwise. A while back, Faith Van de Putte and I wrote an article in the Islands Weekly on food and crude. Here is an excerpt. “We often think of sun, rain and soil being the basis
 of our food chain, but the typical American diet is essentially dripping with 
oil. According to University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Agriculture, 
an average of seven calories of fossil fuel is burned for every calorie of food
 we eat in the U.S. This means growing, processing, and delivering the food
 consumed by a family of four requires the equivalent of 930 gallons of gasoline 
per year. How does all that fossil fuel get embedded in our food? It starts on the 
average farm with machinery and inputs. A study by David Pimentel at Cornell
 University reveals 30% of fossil-fuel expenditure on conventional (non-
organic) farms is found in chemical fertilizer. An organic farm may have less
 of a fossil-fuel footprint, unless they rely on manure or other inputs trucked in 
from long distances. Many do. 

Some foods take far more energy—grain-fed beef, for instance, which requires
 thirty-five calories for every calorie of steak and burger produced. In general,
 plant calories take less energy than animal calories.

There is often a long journey between farm and fork. Oil fuels that journey.
 The National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service estimated that 
processed food now travels an average of 1,300 miles. Some, like imported frozen shrimp and tuna, travel more than 8,000 miles to get here.

 Cleaning, cooking, refrigerating, canning and packaging food before it arrives
 at the store all take energy and add up to a larger footprint.” LCLT’s former intern Ezra Fradkin has also collected some facts about the connections of food, energy, economy, sustainability and community. –          Agriculture is responsible for ~18% of global GHG emissions. –          Studies have shown that, on average, we have 10 times as many conversations when we shop at the farmer’s market than we do at the grocery store! –          When you shop locally, you reinvest 45 cents of every dollar within the community, versus only 15 cents when you shop at chain businesses. –          The average dollar bill, when spent at a local business, will be spent 30 more times within the same community before being spent elsewhere, whereas a dollar spent at a chain store will recirculate less than 10 times locally. And each time a dollar recirculates locally, it is has the same benefit to the local economy as a new dollar coming in from the outside! (Ezra is currently doing The Lopez Island Foodshed Assessment to evaluate our island’s food supply and identify a vision for change. Please participate in the survey or learn more about the project by visiting the website: http://lopezfoodshed.weebly.com/.) My heart When I reflect on my experience of the past two weeks, the smiling faces and generosity of people who have shared so abundantly with me are what touched me so deeply. Though my journey toward local food has been slow prior to the Bounty experiment, after two weeks I have truly felt in my heart the joy and happiness of eating local. I feel so loved! Today (Tues ) after joining David and Faith for a morning yoga, they fed me a local breakfast of poached eggs with wild-crafted beach asparagus and a slice of Barn Owl Lopez loaf. We then went to the Birkemeier’s to pick blueberries and I brought enough home to eat, freeze and share!  Later, I had a rare treat of peach goat-milk ice-cream that Sandy had earlier put in my freezer while I was not home! Suzanne Berry also dropped off a bucket of perfectly ripe and beautiful plums, an assortment of dried beans and frozen tomatoes and squash the evening before. I saw her again in the evening at her house and walked off with a big bag of almonds from her tree.  My next stop was Liz and Teri’s house and they gave me four different types of their gourmet homemade cheese and a box of peaches from Jim and Margaret’s farm. The day ended with me and four LCLT interns picking gorgeous plums from an awesomely loaded tree that Sheila Metcalf has beautifully tended and generously offered to share. It has been such a remarkable day. But it also very well highlights the spirit of my experience eating locally this past two weeks. I earlier wrote about doubt and dread of eating local. At the beginning, I felt a tangible fear of letting go of the comfort and convenience of store-bought food. It felt as if I were to let go of the fraying rope of manufactured or imported foods, I would be falling into a dark unknown or unfamiliar territory of self-imposed food limits. Now I have that warm, fuzzy feeling of being so well cared for. (We’ll see how long this will last, especially since I’m taking a two-day trip to “America” in a couple days.) I’m awash with deep gratitude. I owe my nutritional and spiritual nourishment to yummy greens and beets from Doug and Tamara (Sweetbriar Farm), eggs from Sandy & Rhea and Sally Reeve, hazelnuts from Ronni and Levi, wheat grains from Ken and Katherine (Horse Drawn Farm), wheat know-how from Sage & Nathan, Adam Lee and Steven Wrubleski, goat cheese from Andre and Elizabeth (Sunnyfield Farm), frozen tomatoes from Faith and Suzanne, honey from Kevin Murphy (McCauley Farm) via Sandy & Rhea, beets and carrots from Adam Lee (S&S Farm) and Julie (Helen’s Farm), butter from milk from Vera of David Zapalac’s cow-op, sockeyes from the Sellers, basil from Ed Suij and Maile Johnson on Orcas, whey from Janie, cherries & plums from David Bill, snow peas from my mother-in-law Asha, black currants from Ab, last year’s dried apples from Sue Roundy, various berries along the path at Common Ground maintained by my lovely neighbors, plant starts from T&D farm, oven heat for making salt at Barn Owl Bakery, abundance from my garden, the hard work of various critters and microbes in the soil, compost from Midnight’s Farm, and the sun and rains.

Plums from Suzanne

Four different types of homemade cheese from Liz and Teri

Sara and beets at Sweetbriar Farm

Great rapsberry year

Volunteer potatoes in my garden

If eating 100% local is like taking a plunge, it feels as if I am falling, but with complete surrender and a smile on my face. Instead of free falling into a scary unknown, I found myself touched and supported by many loving hands holding me up. I think I kind of get it now – what it feels like to be a rock star jumping into the waiting hands of a supportive audience.                                         Sharing abundance and laughter

Who knew I’d get to experience the thrills of a well-loved rock star from eating local! P.S. Many people asked me if my children Ty (almost 13) and Sara (11) are also eating local. The answer is yes, with a caveat. They have their own definition of “local.” Sara’s definition: “only food from the earth’s surface” (by the way, the ocean is part of the earth’s surface, in case you were wondering). Ty’s definition: “only food within the solar system”. P.P.S. I’ll have to come back to reflect on the challenges of feeding while different household members have different definitions of “local” later.

Chom’s Lopez Bounty blog – week 1

I was born and grew up spending my summers in a rural village near the Thai-Malaysia border. Clear cool water came from a hand drawn well located right in the kitchen. My mom or grandmother would prepare meals in a 3-foot-wide wok or a pot over firewood or charcoal. Vegetables and fruits mostly were home grown (fertilized with urine), from our neighbors or wild-harvested. Protein came from fish in a nearby pond, chicken in the backyard, or occasional game like wild boars from the woods.  With no electricity or refrigeration, the best way to preserve food, when faced with a temporary over-abundance (say, from butchering a chicken), was to share with neighbors (who happened to all be blood-related one way or another), in the hope that they too would do the same. The nearest market was in the town of Betong, about 20 kilometers away from the village on a winding road. Going to the market was an infrequent special occasion worthy of getting dressed up for and involved riding an old wooden truck, crammed with passengers (with serious catching up to do), their animals, produce and other trade items. To get an afternoon snack, I would trail behind my machete-wielding grandma, ready to dislodge and whack a green coconut or wild pineapple into submission. All these experiences are now properly classified as fond memories. But back then, sour pineapples and fern fronds did pale in comparison to the manufactured snacks that were later introduced when a local shop was opened in the village. Oh, to spend (my parents’) money for such a novelty like chemically colored sugary drinks in a shiny plastic bag was like to experience an ecstasy of tasting power, luxury and progress, all in one hit. My early contact with industrial food imports was a source of pride and joy, as well as hope for the future (“more progress, please!”). Look at how far I’ve come! Now I even signed up to eat local for a month, while living in a beautiful tourist destination island in the superpower country of the U.S.A.! Why did I sign up for the “eat local” experimentation? (“Yeah, Mom, why do you do this?” echo my kids, Ty and Sara.) Because I’m confused? Well, I am often confused and disoriented by the contradictions and ironies of my life (or shall I say “lives”?) but that’s not really the reason why I decided to experiment eating locally. There are lots of reasons that my head can give for me signing up: to walk the talk, to support local farmers and economy, to reduce my carbon foot print, to strengthen my connection to the land and people in the community, to be part of the awesome Lopez Bounty project, to explore and reflect on my relationship with food, to heal my body, soul, soil and the planet, to try something different, to torture my kids (though they have now learned to feed themselves (the food they like to eat) out of necessity), and to have something to talk about with other people. But only a fraction of what’s in my head is also felt in my heart. If I’m honest, I am not sure who actually did the signing up: my head (my ego) or my heart. There is this little being in me, named Doubt, that keeps planting seeds of thoughts about why I should not bother, how it’ll be too difficult or time consuming, how I lack the will to let go of my addiction to instant gratification, convenience and comfort food, etc. As the month of July approached, I felt dread and doubts seeping in my consciousness as Doubt grew louder, if not stronger. So before Doubt got better of me, I’m using this month, this blog as an opportunity to hold myself accountable, to face my shadows, and to allow the “why” of eating local to travel from my head toward my heart. It’s been a week of local eating adventures and so far so good. Other than olive oil in my pesto, salt and sugar in my food preserves, occasional slips (e.g. I semi-unconsciously gulped down some lemonade to quench my thirst during the 4th of July), I have enjoyed the local abundance in early July. It has been quite an adventure with a lot of food for thought actually. More on this later. Stay tuned!

some colors of July bounty

white currants

hazelnuts from Ronni & Levi’s farm

harvesting sea water for making salt

gooseberries

garlic scapes

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Week 4 – Jan

  “Nothing is more powerful than a community discovering what it cares about!” ——-Rhea MillerDuring our “last week” participating in the BOUNTY Experiment, we enjoyed having our youngest grandson visiting with us. As a result I now “know” more about the world-wide phenomenon of “Mind Craft” than I’ll ever remember! Also, we experienced the lukewarm reception of “more vegetables than David had ever eaten before” in his life! We were delighted at his willingness to try them all! Somehow that was reassuring. Also, we allowed ourselves to eat out a couple of times, and we were actually surprised at the “locally sourced” foods we were offered! A backward glance: early after taking the leap into joining in the BOUNTY Experiment, I spent much of the “high harvest” of 2014 procuring, processing, and storing the foods we’ve used during our ramp-up to being “it” in June 2015. I’ll do the same during this years “high harvest.” Why? It Works! Perhaps the most satisfying part of the Experiment for me were the many days I spent exploring my “dated” but fascinating knowledge of grains. I recalled the efforts toward the “standardization” of grains and flours in the United States that I studied while at Kansas State University and the grains my family raised. Then the standardization efforts were so the USA could continue to supply the world with white flour to make the white breads abundant enough to feed the world. I like to think my family would have worked toward “diversity” of wheat and other grain crops in order to create a more productive resource. Incidentally, my thanks to Bluebird Grains in Winthrop, WA for growing diverse grains & Blossom Foods for stocking many of them in their Lopez Island store. I’m painfully aware that this last blurb for the BOUNTY Blog is past deadline. Therefore it takes the form of a “bread ‘n butter” note. Myself and Bob and many guests and visitors who’ve enjoyed our participation in the BOUNTY Experiment this past month—-and they will again as we plan to incorporate many of the foods available locally into our going forward mode of eating. Our thanks to the Lopez Growers community, many individuals who’ve educated us and provided direction when we arrived at crossroads. Also, our thanks to the Lopez Community Land Trust which has worked so diligently to fill the former lack of locally grown wheat. Thanks for helping me rekindle my deep interest in breads. Part of the appeal of “The BOUNTY Experiment and Blog” for us was its focus on PLACE and BELONGING, things so many think lost in our hectic and even uprooted lives. For us – and perhaps the Growers and even YOU the reader…..it’s about trying to stay in place, and care for the land that feeds us!

“When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love & respect.” —-Aldo Leopold

Week 3 – Jan

“Hunger is the best sauce” —-an old Chef’s saying

So, let’s chat some about the dilemma of “how to get milk when you ain’t got a cow”! As you know, the local milk cows have full-up fan clubs! I say, “ you go girls!” And, we solved our dilemma by taking a “foodie field trip” to Skagit County to buy farmstead cheese at Samish Bay Cheese and locally caught fish at Skagit’s Own Fish Market & Berries by the Barn. We had wonderful conversational tours at both places and purchased some Ladysmith cheese with fresh chives. This Samish Bay ‘signature’ cheese is somewhat like a Queso Fresco or a Ricotta Salata. Since 2010 Ladysmith cheeses at competition, have consistently “brought home the bacon”, so to speak in the “unripened cow’s milk cheese” competition. The varietal of Ladysmith with fresh arugula and calendula flower petals is not only pleasing to the eye but also delightfully light and flavorful. This past Friday, 6/19/15 I took a plate of Ladysmith with chives and some very thinly sliced rafts of my ever-improving “Bubbles” bread to share with friends at a mid-morning coffee. Everyone agreed this fresh cheese is packed with a complexity of flavor that wasn’t expected. Bob and I came away from our foodie trek along Chuckanut Drive with the strong sense that places to taste & eat are seemingly located on 6 foot centers. Sure beat the other common reason to be off island —visiting doctors and Costco. You know every time I make a note to include in our weekly blurb for the BOUNTY blog, I’m sure all of you readers know far more about this exquisite opportunity than we ever will. However, being highly verbal even in written speech, I’ll go on. Yesterday a friend (bearing great and gorgeous Lopez greens) remarked “well you started getting ready to do this BOUNTY experiment for a month almost a year ago”! She’s right! However, growing up in mid- America in the middle of the last century prepared us for “getting ready.” It seemed we were forever eating the foods we planted in the spring last year in the spring of this year. And forever we shall be doing that again. My first and most enduring mode of learning “readiness” and the craft of cooking was imparted on the Farm in the kitchen with my mother and Aunts and my 1st cousins. In those times “Harvest Crews” were our neighbors and everyone’s relatives returned to “help” and to re-energize their personal sense of community! During the weeks leading up to harvest the elders checked historic weather records (maintained on every farm), wheat yield records , corn yields and costs of getting crops to market were the stuff of every conversation. The Kitchen notes maintained by the elder women were reviewed and current meal plans were made dependent upon present day garden crops and their readiness and the inventory of the contents of Food Lockers at the freezer Storage Center located near the community Grain Elevator complex (the High Rises of the Bread Basket of the Country in our town of Minneapolis, Kansas) population ‘about’ 2,000 people! Designation of my jobs and of my first cousins task assignments were age dependent. We all started out washing fresh foods vigorously. If scrubbing them was needed we used small brushes specially given to every farms ‘summer kitchen’ as a courtesy by the Fuller Brush man. Then we moved through “the chairs” doing more and more prep work every year and finally some Crew Jobs like baking, saucing, chopping and storing cold foods, cooking the Main Dish meats, or desserts. The ever important coffee, iced sun tea (made in tubs) and cooled by ice chunks stored in the onsite cold room after being delivered by a truck insulated by HEAVY thick layers of canvas. The Cold Room on my grandfather’s farm was a dug-out, similar to a root cellar but much deeper so as to hold the cold for as long as possible. The BOUNTY Experiment evokes within me that almost liquid feeling of community, caring, relatedness, being known and valued that the family farm always provided me. And finally, this week’s crowning jewels! The dry beans offered us by many Lopezians, left at the back door, even handed to me in a smallish brown paper bag by a fellow worshipper one Sunday. These wee morsels of nutritive value go far beyond their diminutive yet gorgeous appearance would suggest. I’ve planted three hills of beans so I can already begin appreciating them. And, the patience needed to grow, harvest, dry, and shell these wee nuggets of goodness will help teach me to wait, watch, and care for the plants and the fruit they produce. What we ate this week: HUGE, LUSCIOUS Salads. Seafood and pizza. Hamburgers, Lopez buns, Salmon, Spareribs, baked True Cod, coleslaw, Rhubarb & Blueberry Cobbler, whipped cream and MORE SALADS! SPECIAL APPRECIATION THIS WEEK TO: Sweetbriar Farm, Horse Drawn Farms, T & D Farms, Stonecrest Jams, Crowfoot Farm, Fresh Breeze Organic Dairy, in Lynden, WA (available at Blossom), Samish Bay Cheese, Skagit’s Own Fish Market & Berries by the Barn, and Rosabella’s Garden Bakery in Edison.

I leave you this week with something Julia Child so famously said: “Cooking is like love; it should be entered into with abandon or not at all!”

Local beans – jewels … pantry

Glorious Greens

Bubbles bread sandwich loaf

Frizzy Lizzy my favorite!

Spareribs and Caramelized Yams

Stella waits for Gravity to work!

Blueberry Rhubarb Cobbler

Week 2 – Jan

“The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must all eat to live.”

Joy Harjo’s poem, “Perhaps the World Ends Here.”

A meal, particularly a locally sourced one, created by hands we admire and treasure, often transports us to other places like little else can. The stories awakened and shared at table move hand to mouth with few shortcuts. The most precious ingredient at my table is the time invested in adjusting the dishes of my youth, welcoming extended family while creating warm new memories with those gathered. Remembering the privileges of my age (which I’ve mentioned before) lets me rediscover the flavors and savors of Midwest cultural cuisine, and put aside the unsatisfying effects of fast food (and Jello salads). Some months ago I began acquainting myself with other participants in the Bounty Project, learning about some things I never even thought of. As a result, I challenged myself to create my own personal bread starter that would yield an acceptable sour dough bread, using my flour shares grown on Lopez by Horse Drawn Farms under the auspices of Lopez Community Land Trust, and milled by Lopez Grist (a new Lopez institution, thanks to Steve & Karla Lillestol). My deepest thanks to all my teachers. With the help of my King Arthur Flour Bakers Companion book, I prepared my first starter mixture and hoped for success in catching so-called Wild Yeast just looking for a home and a job to do. The starter was by now known as “Bubbles,” (we named it after the bubbles coming up through the mixture or, perhaps it was a dancer we saw years ago at the Gaslight in St. Louis). A second starter followed, and a mere three weeks ago I mixed up my third batch of starter, as I questioned the efficacy of the older starter – it had thinned out some and to use one pound of that starter in the bread mixture would have required more flour than necessary. In the recent past, “Bubbles” seemed a little bit off. The initial dough seemed wetter and less elastic. I soldiered on, however, thinking humidity was high; even the flour seemed more “set up” because of lower temperature and higher moisture. During the last rising the dough, even though the heavy cloche cover was in place, popped and blew the top askew. Really weird, but I baked it anyhow and it created an ugly loaf with great flavor. What I learned is that more water makes a chewier, more flavorful bread with a more uniform crumb. Except, you know, wetter dough is really difficult dough to handle and shape. So whatever shaping I did, I found it best to wear disposable surgical gloves and spray them with PAM and to work quickly. Whew. Quick childhood story (after all, I’m a storyteller): During World War II, we kids all knew about the joys of a mouthful of wheat berries…well chewed, they turned in to an elastic wad. If you were careful, you could blow a bubble with it, and finally it could be discarded over toward the dogs or hens! We are amazed at how similar our “bounty” meals are to the way we’ve already come to eat! In the mid to late 1990’s we bought our first CSA with Christine Langley, who grew her products then at Susan Bill’s farm. We’re still hooked on year round Lopez vegetables. So, what did we eat this week? We are creatures of habit so we each fix our breakfasts and lunches…usually an egg and toast or oatmeal and yogurt; lunch is “planned overs.” Frankly, I love to cook and always look forward to prepping dinner but, I do like ideas of what to make for us (recommendations welcomed). This past week we ate pasta with Lopez tomatoes sauce, Stir-Fries (our favorites), lots of salads, and berries! Special thanks this week to: T&D Farms, Sweetbriar Farm, Horse Drawn Farms, One Clay Hill Farm, Jones Family Farms, Crowfoot Farm, and Stonecrest jams. Close to local goods included Hell Fire Noodles from Orcas Island Pasta, and red wheat berries from Bluebird Farms in the Okanogan. Next week: The challenges of milk when you ain’t got a cow.

Typical Huge Salad

Sauce of frozen tomatoes and basil

Orcas pasta for sauce

Lopez Dinner 100%

What a lot of greens!

Week 1 – Jan

“If we don’t sing the songs, tell the stories, and make the foods that are dear to us, our children won’t know what they missed, but I think they’ll miss it just the same.”           Laura Branca

Fully believing age has its privileges (it’s a cultural artifact inherited from our OLD relatives) ….we embark upon our month of eating locally while exercising some privileges! Our goal is to source our food within an approximate 50 mile radius of the center of Lopez Village. Further, we’ve adjusted the above goal to source at least 75% of our foods from Lopez Island; the remainder will come from Anacortes, Bow, and Winthrop. And, oh yes….we’ve seldom met an “exotic” we didn’t like. We’ve selected a list of food exceptions including: olive oil, black pepper, coffee, teas, Agave sweetener, limited cane sugar, some nuts (mostly walnuts), limited dairy products (more about that throughout the month), some oats, lemons, and for Bob, some dark chocolate! Stella, of course, gets her regular dry kibble and anything else she can find while cleaning up aisle 1 and 2 in the kitchen. Both of us were born smack dab in middle of the country in the middle of the Great Depression, cut our teeth on the boundary of WWII , and were parented to be frugal (“if you are making two cups of tea only boil 2 cups of water”). I still do that! My mother came from a big family born & raised on a big farm (she was 10thamong the 13 children), and when I was young I spent every summer at the farm with lots of first cousins who related to me, an only child, like surrogate siblings. Even with grasshopper invasions now and then, periodic droughts, frigid winters, and winds year-round, Kansas was a great place to grow up, in the middle of the last century. Nowadays, Kansas is a great place to be from…..away from. Bob is a “city guy”. Born and raised in Kansas City (where everything is up to date)! However, he did spend some time up in Northeast Kansas with his maternal grandfather and an uncle & aunt who farmed some. He waited until we married though (in 1960) to really explore the world of vegetables. We found our way to Lopez Island about 24 years ago via a circuitous route I’ll gloss over for you quite rapidly. We met during undergraduate school at Kansas State University, then jobs in St. Louis, a transfer for Bob to Los Angeles where he continued his career in electrical engineering and I worked for Southern California Gas Company, then a transfer to the San Francisco Bay Area where I worked at California Wine Institute and Bob joined Western Electric until the government in its wisdom directed AT&T to divest of Western Electric. We looked around then and noticed we’d been married 5 years, had car payments and a mortgage so, it must be time to start a family. Along came Brie in 1965 and Beth in 1969. In the mid l970’s we were transferred to Seattle and unlike some mid-westerners we took to the Pacific Northwest like ducks to water! Way back in August 2014 when we volunteered to join in the BOUNTY EXPERIMENT, Rhea said “It’s great that you’ll have this time to prepare, and make allies who can be helpful!” As usual Rhea was right and our thanks go out to the many Lopezians who have aided us in our planning and sourcing local foods. More will follow in additional “blurbs for the blog”. Hope you’ll travel along with us. So, let me leave you with this tidbit of advice, “Never throw anything away….it’s just a ‘planned over’ until the dog gets it if the frittata doesn’t.” Bob, Jan and Stella !

 Bread made with wild yeast and Lopez wheat flour

Bread cooling

Salish Sea Salt – thanks to Jamie Stephens for ‘water catchment’

Egg noodles drying on the rack Bob made

 Bi-season Chicken Noodle Soup with egg noodles

Stella gets some of the noodles too!

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May – Teri Linneman & Liz Scranton

Week 4 – Teri

Liz and I finally made it out to gather some wild foods. We had a wonderful day visiting with Ruby and Irene, looking at their gardens and harvesting a bit too. We did get a few wild foods, dandelion greens and chickweed, but our bounty was mostly harvested garden goodies. Not only did we come home with lots of greens, but Irene also passed on some hard cider and dried beans. We were also able to get two big bags of rose petals, which    I made rose water out of. Our trek to get wild food turned into a fine afternoon of laughing and telling stories and a huge bounty of food. Not a bad day!!

Weeks bounty

  Irene & her beautiful beans

So let me tell you about my love affair with the pressure cooker!

Last week I canned chicken broth in my big pressure cooker, this week I used my 5 qt. stainless pressure cooker to make some really yummy meals. I started the week off with cooking Irene’s tiger eye beans with chicken gizzards. I used to take a lot of time to cut up the gizzards and take the tough parts off, but now I put the frozen gizzards in with the beans after the first soak, and cook them for about 25 minutes. The gizzards are so tender and the beans were cooked to perfection. After pressure cooking I then add them to a pan of cooked shallots and garlic and red peppers. Such comfort food, from dried bean and frozen gizzards to the table all cooked within one and a half hours.

Tiger eye beans with chic hen gizzards

My second date with the pressure cooker was on Friday morning, when at the last minute I decided to make lunch for the orchard work party. We had taco salad, with Dragon Tongue beans from Horsedrawn and ground beef from Helen’s Farm. I pulled out frozen tomatoes, dried hot chilies, and roasted red peppers from last summer and made a yummy salsa. Then instead of sour cream, I strained yogurt to make it thick. All served on a huge bed of fresh greens. The crew had been working all morning thinning fruit, filling in a trench for drainage and covering the berries to keep out the birds.

My final date was on our last day of the local diet where we had a wild dinner. I cooked a whole wild rabbit in the pressure cooker for 35 minutes, and it was so incredibly tender that I was able to pull the meat off the bones and make a rabbit stew with wild harvested lobster mushrooms, shallots and red peppers. As side dishes we had cooked lambs quarters, Cossack asparagus (these are the tender inside leaves of the cattail plant), and fried day lily flowers. The Cossack asparagus was just OK, but everything else was really delicious. We also had a very delightful rhubarb wine given to us by Denny and Stuart McDougal. It was a wonderful meal to end our month of local food.

Our wild dinner

One other meal this week that was noteworthy was our spotted prawn dinner. These little beauties are pure heaven. They are harvested in our local waters, but you need to have a boat or know someone who is willing to share. I had been holding off on cooking the prawns because I really wanted some kind of grain to have with it. Suzanne and Table shared some of their quinoa with us, and I have to say that it was the best I have ever tasted. I love finding new recipes on line, and this one was a keeper. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/food-network-kitchens/healthy-garlic-shrimp-and-quinoa-grits.html I used up the last of my Asiago cheese in place of the parmesan. Sure wish I had hung on to that cheese.

Spotted prawn dinner

So with this last meal, we salute you. We had a lot of fun, and we ate well. If eating local for a month is not something you aspire to, I encourage you to make a goal of eating local at least once a week. It is a lot of fun to gather foods that are grown here, and to support the local farmers. If you haven’t seen the new Farmers Market link on Lopez Rocks, check it out regularly or go visit a local farmer to see what is available. (http://www.salishrocks.org/page.php?handle=25)

Cheers!

Week 3 – Teri This week started with Liz smelting with Randy O’Bryant. She came home about 9:30 with a gallon or two of smelt, and then was up till 2 am cleaning the fish. Some people just eat them whole, heads and guts, but we like to clean them, then freeze them in Ziploc bags filled with water. They stay fresher that way. I cooked them with chicken fat, garlic, shallots and fresh herbs. Such simple food, yet so tasty. We are so lucky to have Randy and his commercial license for smelting. If you haven’t been following what is going on with this issue last year, check out Randy’s story by reading Adam Nash’s blog ( http://www.adamnash.us/island-way-of-life/ ), which beautifully documents this wonderful community event and has a heartfelt letter from Randy about the plight of smelt fishing. The good news is that with all the public support Randy was able to obtain a group permit which will allow him and the community to continue the tradition of smelt fishing on Lopez. This week was our week to have Ashi over for dinner. She is 16, and last year she approached me about spending some time together because she wanted to learn to cook. We have a lot of fun cooking, and often talk about local food. This week we made a frittata with roasted peppers, tomatoes, Swiss chard, and leeks, along with a fresh salad. It has been a lot of fun to watch her gain confidence in the kitchen.

Our orchard is so full of promise right now. The trees all have fruit set and the berries are are bursting with fruit/flowers. We were so excited to see apricots this year, but unfortunately we had fruit drop. Not sure why, but we knew it was risky planting them. Eric says we will be lucky to get fruit every 3 or 4 years. I wanted to try though, because I love apricots, especially ripe off the tree. We got the cherries and strawberries covered with netting this week before the crows got to them. Last year, they didn’t even wait for the fruit to ripen. We lost over half the crop before we realized that the birds were eating everything. I am so looking forward to the first strawberries. Should be within the next week or so. I of course made cheese this week, 6 camembert, and a new cheese that I am very excited about. It is called Stracchino di Crescenza. This fresh cheese is ready to eat in just a few days, so I will be sharing what I think about it in my last post of the month. Tomorrow I am making 10 quarts of yogurt and a pound of butter because we had extra milk due to Liz covering for someone in our milk share. I am anxiously waiting for my new wine cooler/cheese cave. I have five tommes that are aging in my back room and the temp is starting to be a bit warmer than I want it to be. A few days ago I was rooting around in the fridge for a cheese to grate on our crab salad and came across an Asiago cheese I made in December. When I was aging this cheese, it got really stinky so I was giving it away to be eaten young. Well now I wish I had kept more of it as it turned out to be a really tasty cheese. That’s the hard part of making hard cheese, you have to wait so long before you eat it that you never know if it is going to be great or pig food. I have had my share of both. In preparation of the upcoming harvest of chickens I made chicken broth. How is making chicken broth preparing for harvesting chickens you ask? Well I had three giant 2 gallon bags of carcasses from last year’s birds in the freezer, and I need to make room for the new birds. We have one freezer that is just for our years’ worth of chickens. I am able to fill an eight gallon pot with enough bones to make 18 quarts of broth. Last year I bought this giant pressure canner that holds up to 19 quarts. It is such a time saver!!!! I usually make this much broth about 3 times a year. I use it when I make soups and grains.

Everyone talks about how organic chicken is so expensive. Making broth and using the fat is a way to make sure we are getting all the value from those lovely birds. And, if you think about the work that goes into raising chickens in a healthy environment instead of the warehouse of commercial growers, you are getting a bargain. Not to mention, we get our orchard fertilized for free every year. If you are interested in raising your own chickens but don’t know what it takes, Liz and I would be happy to let you see what we do. And, there is rental equipment to process chickens or turkeys available right here on Lopez. Check out the ad on Lopez rocks: http://www.salishrocks.org/page.php?type=item&item_handle=1432651827&menu_type=postit&return=21&offset=0&limit_key=&limit_rock=9  Since I was making broth, and I had all those bits of chicken from the bones I made chicken soup and added some fresh beans that Marney gave me from her freezer along with roasted peppers and tomatoes from my freezer. Those beans were incredible. The soup and a fresh salad with day lily flowers made for a perfect meal.

We hope to harvest wild foods on Monday. Ruby and Irene invited us to see what they harvest from their garden and land. Last weekend at the farmers market, Ruby showed me some bread she made with cat tails. She is very excited to show us what she knows. Liz’s mom was a harvester of wild foods. In fact Liz’s Aunt Ditty use to say, those Scranton’s are always gathering food, cooking food, or cleaning up after eating food. After lusting over Liz’s mom’s copy of Stalking the Wild Asparagus and Stalking the Blue Eyed Scallop by Euell Gibbons her Mom found a new copy and sent them to us. Liz remembers that whenever they went out for a drive her Mom could be heard saying “Brad stop the car, there’s something I need to pick on the side of the road.” Liz and I are not quite so dedicated about wild harvesting, a least not yet. Who knows, after our visit to Ruby’s we may get re-inspired. In reflecting on our month so far, one thing I noticed was the lack of garbage and recyclables. An added bonus for eating local, very little packaging when you are harvesting fresh and local food. Yes there is some planning that needs to happen with eating local, but so far it hasn’t really been too hard, the main thing is to keep the fridge full of options. One last thought for this week. Marney shared a post about the drought in California. Subject: Your Contribution to the California Drought http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/05/21/us/your-contribution-to-the-california-drought.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=second-column-region®ion=top-news&WT.nav=top-news I was shocked by what I read, and wondered if much of the water usage could be decreased by drip irrigation and planting more diverse crops instead of monocultures. Overhead irrigation needs to be outlawed. What a waste of water to evaporation. I also wonder what organic practices do to reduce water usage. I know we are very careful about water usage, and rely on heavy mulching to decrease our need for water. I would love to see a study on organic growing and water usage. So with that sobering thought; eat local, use less water and less packaging, and support your local island farmers! Week 2 Submitted by Teri We have had an amazing week with food. I had hoped to go out and forage for wild stuff, but life is very full and I didn’t make it. We did have some great offers of places to collect wild foods and other foods that we have not been able to source, and it its top on my list of things to do for next week. Hopefully having a four day weekend will free up some time to get out. We have yet to suffer from boredom for our meals. I do not tire of our nightly salads. Tonight we had Christine’s lettuce and spinach with beet greens from the giant beet we got from Chom. (This beet has been adding to our meals all week), and chopped apple from Marney. I added some cheese that I blended with yogurt and cream, and salad dressing of yogurt mixed with cider vinegar and quince syrup. Yum!!!! Speaking of cheese, I have been experimenting with making a hard cheese that will store longer than the soft ripened cheeses I have been making the past few years. I think I finally have a cheese that I am happy with, but with the weather changing I had to finally break down and buy a big wine cooler which I can age my cheeses in. This should make a huge improvement on having a cheese that is more reliable for the final results. The other benefit of making this particular cheese is that it is made with skimmed milk, so I am also able to make over a pound of butter each week. You should see this butter; it is so yellow from all the fresh grass the cows are eating. Of course I will also continue to make those creamy Camemberts from Roses milk. This is our 5th year to raise meat chickens. We have 48 Red Rangers that are now 6 weeks old. They arrived in the mail as two day old chicks. We had ordered 4 extra so we would be sure to have 50 on harvest day, but unfortunately we lost 5 in shipping, and then in subsequent days we lost 5 more. This is very unusual, as we usually only lose a few. Fortunately for us, the supplier sent 4 extras beyond the 54 we ordered. They lived in big box with a heat light for 4 weeks, and then get moved out to the field in a chicken tractor, where they are moved to fresh grass every day. We soak their organic grain with the whey left over from cheese making so that it is slightly lacto fermented. They seem to love it and are growing like crazy. The grain is from Scratch and Peck a local producer from Bellingham that sources organic grains locally. We use to get grain from Canada, but found out that some of the grain was coming from China, and decided that not only was it too far away for a food source, but it was also not to be trusted. We will harvest at 12 weeks, just before the 4th of July which is when my parents arrive. Usually the few days after harvest I spend making bone broth with the heads and feet and the carcasses from the birds that I part out, but this year they will have to go in the freezer to wait until after my parents leave.

Our scores on gifted food this week were Lopez honey and the giant beet from Chom, cider and some gnarly potatoes from Lyiardia and Charlie, cider syrup from Alex, and rose blossoms from Midnights farm. We were also able to get cauliflower, eggs, herbs, artichokes and horseradish from Horse Drawn Farm. And of course the beautiful greens from Christine.

The potatoes, while gnarly were happily used as sides to an amazing steak we got from Blake and Julie (Helen’s Farm), and in the best salmon chowder I have made in a long time. The cauliflower was lightly boiled then baked whole for a crispy crust, and also mashed with the leeks we got last week from Sweetbrier Farm. Both were incredible. We had them with our chicken one night and as a side to eggs for breakfast one morning.

On the subject of restaurants, both Liz and I ate out this week. My experience was less than local, but very tasty. I went to the Bay for a birthday party. Looking over the menu, I saw that if I wanted to eat off the appetizer menu I could come close to local, but it didn’t hit my fancy for that night, so I settled on Dungeness crab cakes figuring that they had to come from somewhere close by. I also had Lopez Island Vineyards Siegerrebe and a delightful salad with Christine’s arugula, along with other non-local ingredients. And I did partake of the desserts going around the table, not local for sure. Liz went to a Mariners-Red Sox game in Seattle. She took a cooler of food for breakfast and dinner, but was not allowed to bring food into the Stadium. She was able to find a vendor who sold Seattle made sausages and locally brewed beer. But then she splurged and had roasted peanuts, not local, but mighty tasty and a tradition. We also had to go off for a day of appointments. We packed a cooler of food and had a very nice picnic in Mount Vernon with my cheese, hard boiled eggs, salad and some wonderful smoked salmon from Marney.

When we got home I made Liz some peach ice cream using frozen peaches from the Birkemeier’s. I figured out that you can freeze peaches whole, run them under water to quickly peel off the skin, slice them off the pit, add cream from our lovely cows and whiz them up in the food processor for quick and amazingly peachy ice cream. No sugar used, no processing fruit, just pop the whole peach in the freezer.

What do we miss? Olive oil, Kombucha, olives, crackers, fruits that are not in season or grown in tropical places, rice and other grains and seeds. All in all, eating a local diet is not too difficult, and certainly worth the experience. Has it been hard? Not really. We eat mostly local anyway, so it was just an adjustment to the few things we can’t get or didn’t prepare for. We are excited to go out this week and collect some things that we would not have normally eaten. We plan to glean wild foods from some of our friend’s gardens and will let you know how that goes next week. We are so lucky to live in a community that is so educated about food, and has an abundance of food. Also, we are lucky to have had such a mild winter, other years there may not have been as much growing as is the case on the east coast where they suffered a terrible long cold winter.

INTRODUCTION TO THE MAY FOOD BLOG Teri Linneman and Liz Scranton

Teri and I are excited to participate in the Bounty Food Project. About 15 years ago, Teri and I made a commitment to eat 25% of our food organic. At this time we were becoming educated about the origin of our food and the methods used to grow much of the food we were eating. Chemical fertilizers and the industrial agriculture model are damaging to the environment and we had decided we would vote with our dollars on the food we eat. At the time, we felt we could afford to buy 25% of our food organic. We realized right away that the organic food tasted better and within 2 years we were purchasing almost 100% organic foods and by budgeting we found that it was not a hardship. Also, at this time we began educating ourselves about the importance of eating local and seasonal foods. So in some ways, this commitment to eat local food for one month is not a new concept. Eating food that was grown or raised locally within our island boundary opened our eyes to how fresh food can taste, and we learned an appreciation for each season. Despite this commitment to eating locally produced food, we still rely on outside sources for our food. Just peeking in our pantry we have found that a good percentage of our food stuffs are from off island (maybe 20 to 25%). Some of these items are: rice, beans (although we have begun buying horse drawn beans this year), coffee, tea, olives, nut butters, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, tamari, crackers, sweeteners (honey, sugar, maple syrup), flours, nuts, pasta, spices, lemon juice, lemons, other citrus, various condiments to name a few of the items. Foods that we hunt, gather or grow ourselves include: Fruit: apples, plums, pears, strawberries, raspberries, tayberries, marion berries, blueberries, cherries, dried apples, pears and plums, apple sauce, fruit chutneys; Meat: chickens, chicken broth, chicken fat, goose jerky, sausage, duck, goose and venison; Other items: mint tea, nettle pesto, some wild mushrooms, smelt from Randy O’Bryant’s smelting gathering, We make vinegar, fruit shrubs, Kumbucha and sauerkraut. We grow a few herbs – rosemary, sage, chives and each year I collect some sea salt at iceberg point. From local farms we obtain most of our vegetables, some beans, whole grain, peaches, tomatoes which we freeze, red peppers which we roast and freeze, eggplant which we roast and freeze, squash which we cook and freeze, basil which we make into pesto, back fat for lard and most of our meat beyond the wild meat and chicken which we raise. We are members of a “cow share” so we get local, organic cow’s milk that Teri makes into cheese, yogurt and butter and sometimes mascarpone. We buy a few cases of wine from Lopez Island’s Vineyard (LIV) each year so we can support our local winery and drink wine made locally. We like to participate in food trades and have traded chickens for vegetables and fruit for garlic. We also purchase locally caught wild salmon and have traded foods we make for some locally caught prawns and oysters. Teri and I had been vegetarians for many years – Teri for over 20 years and me for about 17 years. We were aware of the cruelty and pollution generated in industrial raised meat and did not want to be part of this. In 2000 I was chair of the Lopez Community Land Trust Board and was instrumental in convincing the board to develop the Mobile Slaughter Unit. This was a new idea that had not been done anywhere in the United States. Len Kanzer and I completed the fund raising for the Mobile Slaughter Unit and board member Barbara Thomas and community members; Bruce Dunlop and Kay Gagnon served on a committee with island farmers to develop the Island Grown Farmers’ Cooperative. Bruce Dunlop was hired as a consultant to help facilitate the process of getting the unit designed and approved by the USDA. It was a huge concept to sell the mobile slaughter unit to the community and the LCLT board. The LCLT was taking a big risk with this project. Now, many years later, the project continues to be a great success and has proven to be a big asset for local farmers and the community! It was through working on the Mobile Slaughter Unit project and learning about locally raised meat that Teri and I decided we wanted to begin eating local meat. At the time, I said to Teri that I could not eat meat unless I could kill the animal and butcher it myself. So the first thing I did was buy a 20 gauge shot gun and Bob Lyon took me hunting rabbit and Canada goose. Soon I shot, cleaned and ate my first rabbit and since then I have shot a deer and processed it each year. I hunt water fowl – mostly Canada goose and shoot the occasional rabbit. We now raise our own meat chickens. Neither of us likes the killing part of this. When I hunt or kill our chickens, I say a prayer for each animal I kill and give thanks for the animal giving its life so we can eat meat. We are reverent and grateful for every life we take. We do this because we enjoy eating meat and we are happy that our big protein source is local, sustainably “harvested” and humanely raised on grass pasture. We believe that meat is an important part of our nutrition. So it is with a great depth of knowledge about local and seasonal foods that we embark on this project. We have a lot of food put by so we know we will eat well but there are some items we are NOT willing to give up and in the spirit of the spice trade (historically spices and other goods have been traded across many miles), we will continue to eat the following items: coffee (for Teri), green tea (for Liz), chocolate, maple syrup, spices, walnuts (our walnut tree is young and produced only 6 walnuts last year but someday I hope it will provide the walnuts that go on my yogurt in the morning). Historically our ancestors processed foods and lived on what they grew, gathered and processed. Putting food by was serious business – it could determine how well a family thrived or even whether they survived. Every year we dry, freeze and can all kinds of food. We are very aware of how our putting food by relies on fossil fuels – we have 3 freezers and a big food dryer. Our dependence on fossil fuels is a dilemma we will not try and tackle here. So now you have a bit of background as we enter into this blog. We hope to engage you and ourselves in the bounty around us. My lovely wife is an awesome cook and I am sure together we will have some amazing meals. Bon Appétit Liz and Teri

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APRIL – Sandy Bishop

Week 4

A succulent radish we enjoyed

We went to the mainland to get our drivers licenses renewed. So….you know what that means: preparation and packing food for the day. Rhea got out the cooler – we tucked in some greens and leftovers from the evening before and away we went with a picnic on the road. Actually, there was no we involved. Rhea packed it for me and all day I pulled out little surprises she had stashed in the cooler.

Apples sautéing

My week started with a gift from Faith: three small artichokes sitting on my desk at work. I marveled at their beauty, the green and rich purple of those spiky leaves. I steamed them and ate them, as is – nothing but the pure flavor of fresh, tender, first of the season, artichokes. Faith was so sweet, she said something like, “Well, we didn’t have enough for our meal so I thought of you and your month of local eating, and it was perfect”. It has been another fun week in local eating. Chom introduced meto thinly sliced raw rhubarb with some chopped mint and rosemary drizzled with honey. We used it on greens and also with yogurt. I highly recommend this nice crunchy slightly sweet and tart treat. There are 4 of us who share this land and all 4 of us are Taurus’s. We have birthdays within 2 weeks of each other. Just before Pamela and Suzanne left on their birthday adventure, they brought by a couple quarts of milk. We have lots of eggs from our chickens so this last week has once again been rich with dairy and eggs.

Potato/onion/squash frittata

I had a birthday celebration after our Sunday evening gathering. People were so adventurous and generous in their food preparations. Two weeks ago we discussed having a shared local meal and feast we did. Davis brought venison, with garlic chives, that he foraged from Liz and Teri’s flower garden and also some big, plump Scarlet Runner beans. Karen and Marv made a beautiful veggie pie with a crust. Adam brought cooked beans and Janie made a Tarte Tartin with figs and leeks, which were sautéed to perfection in a hefty supply of butter. Bob brought delicious lamb stew meat with locally grown lime leaves. To top it off, Suze brought a leek potato soup and Chom brought her famous rhubarb compote and a lovely three layer blue corn bread. Grace and Jean made strawberry brownies (sans chocolate) and a large bowl of strawberry ice cream. Geordie brought a bucket load of fresh tender greens and we also had some fruit pies and a frittata. It’s April in the northwest, but we had no problem finding enough foods for a celebration.

Part of the feast

Lamb with local lime leaves, and venison/garlic chives and scarlet runner beans

Strawberry brownies and ice cream (notice some sugar for those not eating local)

The gathering

All ten chicks are still alive. They are now 20 days old. The mama hen is a wonderful protector. Rhea heard the trill of the eagles and thought for sure tragedy would follow but the mama had rushed all of the chicks deep under the chicken run where they could tuck safely under her. When the clouds roll in, I love the way she prepares the ground, spreads her feathers and then lets the chicks tuck in warmth. I have experienced the month as both having flown by and moving at a snails pace. I’ve adjusted some of my plans since I was eating local. There were times it proved too much energy to prepare for guests more often. I have been gifted so much this month and I’ll never forget just how generous and creative people are. It was really a treat to feel so cared for and well nourished. I wouldn’t have had nearly the fun if I had to be on my own figuring all of this out.

Berry pies – one with custard

Rhea is happy the month is coming to an end – there were days when we cooked different foods based on what I had available in the local department and what she needed. I am looking forward to using olive and coconut oil again and giving up side pork. As much I have enjoyed the science of bread making and the flavor of our local wheat, I look forward to removing bread as a mainstay. I like a large variety of fruits and veggies and will be adding many of them back into my diet. All-in-all we live in a place of great abundance with great friends. Viva la Lopez. Viva la Lopezians.

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Week 3 – local food experiment

Breakfast greens with egg and side pork

The chicks are now 11 days old. They are safe in our garden, tucked inside the chicken run at night and roaming in a larger open area during the day. The worm population is being rapidly diminished, along with the slug eggs, weed seeds and other small bugs.

Mama and chicks

This has been a rich and abundant dairy week – the gifts of milk, cream and yogurt have sustained a big part of my diet. Tonight Chris and Chom called to say that they found a stash of apples in their shed. They also have some local kelp and hazelnuts. At our Sunday evening gathering, Karan and Marv brought a local dish made with shallots and frozen zucchini, Adam brought some cubed potatoes with S&S grated cheese and Geordie showed up with a beautiful bag of greens, including tender spinach and kale.

Bok choy and side pork

A few days ago Rhea cooked a local dinner for some friends visiting from Seattle. It was really beautiful and nourishing food—winter squash with sautéed bok choy and onions, potatoes, local salmon and green salad with yogurt/blackberry dressing. We ended the meal with fresh mint tea, rhubarb and honey topped with Vera yogurt. The dinner stirred some great conversation, including our wild adventures in dumpster diving, the politics of food and the importance of knowing where your food comes from. We asked the young couple how they got inspired to dumpster dive. The answer surprised me. He said he was first introduced to Theo’s Chocolates’ dumpster. My, oh my–another version of the sweetness of local eating – right from the dumpster. There was so much chocolate that his eyes feasted for a while on the sheer abundance. From Theo’s he went to other establishments, including local food coops and high-end specialty stores. They described their rich finds, including organic dried buffalo jerky–as in many, many pounds of it, now safely tucked inside their freezer. They mentioned that some of the coops are now into composting and that is putting a crimp in their dumpster finds. They find that most people just let them walk away with the food, but a few chase them away. It seemed to depend on whether or not they were caught by management or by an employee.

Rhubarb sauce with yogurt and honey for dessert with guests

I’ve been wondering about local eating and the social aspects of sharing food. I have been on the receiving end of so much local goodness and abundance – but I find it more difficult to cook for people. Today, I attended a board retreat. I brought a jar of soup and everyone else had food to share. Then Chom appeared with an all local dish of apples, raspberries, honey, rosemary and a topping of local wheat and Vera butter–such a generous gift.

Chom’s apple-raspberry crisp with honey, rosemary, and butter

Before this month is over, I am going to cook a big bunch of local foods and invite people to share it. I am learning about creativity in sourcing foods, combining flavors and sharing abundance. I like hearing from various people about how they combine foods and flavors.

Whole wheat bread rising

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Week 2

I was home for lunch and wondering about what I was going to eat. I was poking around the garden and heard sounds under the rosemary bush. I thought maybe I was going to catch our missing chicken and shoo her back to the chicken yard. Before I could get around the bush, I heard a whole lot of peep, peeps, and chirp, chirps. There I saw ten little day old chicks scurrying around the mama hen, a little frantic, a bit excited after bursting out of the egg and not quite knowing if I was friend or foe. Rhea poked around and found the nesting place just outside our front door. It was tucked under a fern beside a cedar tree, on the edge of the garden. There we found cracked shells from the 10 hatched chicks and 5 whole eggs which were cold to the touch. We called Pamela and Suzanne. They gathered a chicken run and some fencing and now the little chicks and hen are safely enclosed in our garden. To me this event signifies local food at its finest…a full circle event. Much gratitude to the hens for laying all the eggs we eat – I have to say it is more fun to see little chicks than to scramble eggs. We received an invitation from Audrey DeLella Benedict, Cloud Ridge Naturalists and Joe Gaydos, SeaDoc Society to join them for the book launch of their new book, The Salish Sea, Jewel of the Pacific Northwest. I thought we were going out for the evening for hors d’ouvres and a short program. Rhea had grabbed some fresh mint before we walked out the door. We strolled through the village, and when we opened the door to the Bay Café, I could see two long tables laid out for a full sit-down dinner. The publisher, Audrey, wanted to show her appreciation to the community of Lopez and meet some new people, and she was treating us all to dinner. What an extraordinary evening. I had been resigned to drink water with my sprig of mint and pass on the hors d’oeuvres and wine, but out came the Shoal Bay clams, then Christine Langley’s arugala salad. I passed on the risotto, but thoroughly enjoyed the fresh bok choy also from Christine’s. Fresh caught halibut was served. I passed on the dessert and wine, but otherwise enjoyed a mostly local faire. I thoroughly enjoyed partaking in the gifts of local foods that were laid before us. The Salish Sea, Jewel of the Pacific Northwest, is a not to be missed book sold at our local bookstore. The rest of the week has been filled with gifts: greens from Geordie, Ona, Janie and Davis; beautiful plum/apple compote from Karan; and lots of fresh milk and cream from David and yogurt and milk from Table, Pamela and Suzanne. I have enjoyed lamb stew made with Audrey and Michelle’s lamb, and breakfasts with broccoli shoots and shallots from Horse Drawn and fresh eggs from our chickens. Bruce brought me a sweet treat of frozen Crowfoot strawberries and I found myself dreaming of summer when I opened the container and smelled the fragrant scent. The amount of prep time needed, and the additional decision-making time, has made this past week more demanding than I would have liked in an already too-packed week. Inspiration comes and goes. I did make four small delicious squash pies with fresh eggs and milk and a flaky home-rendered lard crust for our guests last night. All in all, I am feeling BIG gratitude for all the support people have offered, including Rhea’s. The gifts and sweet offerings are so helpful. Next week is a new adventure. We have a plump chicken from Blake and Julie….and will see what pops. It’s spring and the soil is bursting with life.

New chicks in the chicken run

Morning mint tea from the garden

French toast from our bread and eggs

Sandy adding the side pork form Faith’s pig to breakfast

Prep for potatoes

Beans and side pork

Lamb stew with our chili

Breakfast Greens

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Week One

When I came to Lopez Island 36 years ago I was a vegetarian and thought that eating meats was a form of barbarism. About 10 years ago I noticed a shift happening with my thoughts. I was becoming more sensitive to how far food traveled, the conditions in which it was grown, water sources used and the holistic health of the entire food system. It was around that time I introduced local meats into my diet. Now I have to say I am glad I did – because it sure makes a local diet in April much easier for me. Rhea has chosen not to do the local eating experiment with me this month, due to the fact that she has a blood sugar condition. Nonetheless, she is the best of best in terms of support. We still cook together and often eat the same meal—it’s just that she also adds foods. Colors: white, orange, green seem to dominate my plate these days. The white flesh of chicken, onions, egg whites, creamy white yogurt, stems of bok choy, pure white leaf lard, orange egg yolks, orange roasted winter squash, green kale, bok choy, chard, and broccoli shoots. Next comes browns, the crusty, brown Lopez wheat bread, bits of bacon, local beans. Foods I have added that I usually don’t have: Bread. I rarely eat bread and now I eat it once or twice a day. I am having so much fun learning the art and science of bread baking and bacteria catching. Bacon or side pork—I find myself cooking either with a bit of smoked bacon we put away last fall or some fresh side pork. (Thanks to Faith’s piggy’s). I have been using ¼ piece with breakfast, sauteed with onion, kale stems and flowers, roasted squash and a pile of fresh kale leaves and a delicious fresh egg. Voila – breakfast is ready. Foods I usually enjoy but have cut: A few items come immediately to mind: olive and coconut oils, almonds, non sweet cranberry juice with a green powder each morning, a sip of red wine now and then, mushrooms, citrus of all kinds—lemons, grapefruits, oranges, tangerines—and a greater variety of vegetables. April Fools Day – how appropriate that this day marks my first day in local eating. Last summer when I signed up for April, I took it upon myself to do some prepping. We had a bumper crop of pears and quite a few apples. I got Birkemeier peaches and blueberries, Crowfoot strawberries, and two little boys picked 5 gallons of blackberries, which I reduced into 6 pints of sticky sweet pure goodness. (I consider myself a fruit-aholic. Bruce Creps knows this about me and sympathizes with my condition. He often delivers excess fruit to our office). We canned, froze and dried fruits, roasted tomatoes, cubed and roasted winter squash, purchased local meats and for about a month I was busy seriously preparing for April. It occurred to me that if I planned to eat local all year long I would have to quit my job. After a flurry of activity I stopped preparing. I was aware that with each passing day April was coming, but life took me in other directions. Soon it was February and it was warming up. So I planted the cold frame chock full of greens. One morning in March, our friend Tannur Ali was visiting and she said, “Hey, there goes a baby bunny in your garden”. We have bunny fencing everywhere so it is highly unusual to have bunny action. I walked out to check on the cold frame and every single baby green had been mowed down, except the spicy mustards—depressing in the fresh baby green department. The garlic is shooting up, rhubarb is lush, kale is still coming on strong and colorful buds and flowers are bursting forth everywhere. It’s hard to stay depressed over baby bunny action when the whole world is exploding in color and scent, but still, damn that little bunny for taking away some sweet baby greens from my April diet. But back to April 1 looming. I have this job that demands a lot of time, and the Village planning committee is getting ready for an April 9th public meeting, and the Dump is getting ready to host the April 18th Great Islands Clean Up, there is sign painting for the dump, setting up the food lab, supporting the school farm and garden program, the Bounty project, the Islands Energy Coalition OPALCO forum and the Solar de Mayo planning sessions for solar on the schools….I have been a wee bit distracted and not taking seriously my commitment to 100% local eating for the month of April. Then just as I am telling myself I need to get serious because the next morning will be April 1, our neighbor Suzanne appeared at the door. She and Rhea had been talking. Suzanne may as well have ridden up on a galloping horse, with a cape flying off her shoulders. She appeared bearing gifts. A real she-ra (like a hero). She brought a 6 pound 4 oz. chicken, a dozen eggs from our chickens, a bag of onions, some apples, and fresh salt. I had managed to make 3 quarts of fresh yogurt from the lovely cow, Vera, and with some Horse Drawn grown wheat I made bread consisting of whole wheat, whey (left from the Greek yogurt process), Brook Brouwer’s starter and local salt. The next day Chom gifted us more local milk with a lot of cream on top and I made butter and she also gave us some hazelnuts from Ronni and Levi’s. David Zapalac, in his kind and generous way, gave me Kenearly, Hutterite and Marfax dried beans along with two plump pats of yellow butter, some potatoes and more milk. We grew some sprouted alfalfa, and soon I was deep in the experiment ready or not – April was here. People are both generous and thoughtful beyond measure. Table made a gift of bread. We came home from the Nicaragua fundraiser (where I couldn’t enjoy the beautifully prepared south-of-the-border fare) and there by our spirit house, right next to front door, was bread. We thought, “It must be a gift from Table.” Later she and I compared notes on one of last steps of this 21-hour bread making process. I’m going to try her way (baking in glass lidded loaf pans instead of cast iron). It was delicious with the texture and taste perfect. Karan Yvonne also shared bread with me. It was so scented when I opened the cloth napkin it came wrapped in—one more person to discuss this magical process of sourdough bacteria with. Both the science and art are intriguing. With the big fat chicken and the beans I made two soups. From those two main ingredients I figure I have about 12% of all of my monthly meals made (and some of it tucked safely in the freezer, in glass jars with little socks around them to prevent them from cracking when jostled). Based on 30 days has April, and 3 meals each day = 150 meals for the month, I have 22 servings between the two soups, so 12% it is. I like to practice being in the here and now but I operate better in the now when I have planned for taking care of my basic needs. This whole affair with local eating now seems more on the fun adventurous side of life and less like another stressful project I’ve gotten myself into—not to mention that I am on the receiving end of just how generous people are. We headed to Horse Drawn to get a pound of fresh broccoli side shoots and some celeriac to round out our foodstuff. During my morning headstand on Saturday, an image came to mind for a sweet little weekend treat. Combining fresh bread, and bit of butter, milk and eggs, some canned pears, and roasted strawberries…why not make a type of bread custard? No cinnamon or cardamom but it was delicious. How sweet is it to live in place where we have abundance both in terms of friends and food. I am reminded of my time in Sado Island, Japan. In the 1980’s I lived with a monk and his assistant. The monastery was located at the top of a mountain just outside a small bustling seaside village. My job was to cook (which I didn’t know how to do) and to clean the four, larger-than-life gold leaf Buddhas situated in the four nooks on the stark white massive stupa. I had my ladder and cleaning supplies and each day rubbed the golden life forms until they shone bright. A few days after arriving on the island I began to wonder, just how the three of us would survive. We grew no food of our own and none of us worked for money. Then, on Saturday morning I discovered what the tradition was. Every Saturday morning after our morning prayers and chores, we would make a trip into the village. We walked slowly down the narrow roadways, beating drums and chanting to the lord Buddha. Then when the monk recognized a supporter (often by the flag they made visible), the shopkeeper would fill our begging bowls with either fresh foods or yen. We would bow and then head on down the road. At the end of each of these forays into the village we would be set for another week. How did this idea for a 12-month experiment in local eating, pop? Last spring Rhea and I were sitting with Vicki Robin in her kitchen in Langley. It was early morning. Vicki had been up for awhile in her room finishing her new book, Blessing the Hands that Feed Us. Rhea and I were in the kitchen preparing tea. Vicki joined us and the three of us sat perched on high stools around the kitchen counter. The conversation soon turned to food and the politics and art of eating locally. Soon we were laughing out loud about the crazy nature of trying to get enough crunch and sweet in a local Northwest diet. We then learned about Vicki’s venture into zackers and zookies (zucchini crunch – savory and sweet). A few months later, Vicki arrived on Lopez to do a talk and read from her newly published book, Blessing the Hands that Feed Us. She is laugh-out-loud funny. And all of us, myself and the audience, were chuckling as she talked and read about her antics from her new book. The book is well written and well researched, which caused me to want to purchase it and devour it in its entirety. One morning soon thereafter, I was in bed reading and laughing out loud at a passage in the book. It occurred to me that it would be fun to do a year of local eating on Lopez. Of course, I did not want to do a year. Our neighbor Suzanne did that a few years back and I knew my life was not set up to take that on. But, I wondered about 12 different people on Lopez, each taking a month and sharing our findings, trials, and joys? I shared this idea with Rhea and Sue Roundy. We agreed, it would be a great addition to the Bounty Project. (Bounty–Lopez Island Farmers, Food and Community tells our local food story through beautiful photographs and oral history. Twenty-seven Lopez Island farms are participating in this three-year project sponsored in part by the Lopez Community Land Trust and Lopez Locavores. Bounty website:  https://lopezbounty.org/ ) Rhea agreed to coordinate the project, Sue agreed to post. Soon we had all 12 months filled and it’s been really interesting to read the accounts of those who have gone before me. I said I would take the month of April. It’s my birthday month and I usually like to do something that I haven’t done before. Although we eat a lot of local food, I have never eaten 100% local. Let’s face it I wouldn’t be eating local without the many contributions from those who grow and process local foods. Big thanks to everyone on that front. You all are the best. One thing I can say thus far is that I haven’t had a single meal that wasn’t delicious and healthful. It’s all about the preparation time (weekends are really good for this) and having enough relationships to get the food in order to get meals on the table.  Enjoy the attached photos.

Local bounty—the beginning….

Chicken broth soup with dollop of yogurt

Breakfast strata

Serving of strata

Alfalfa—yes

David Z’s gift of beans for soup

Fresh morning egg with veggies

Lopez wheat sourdough

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MARCH – Suzanne Berry & Table (Amy) Stuzienko

By Table: Every Sunday all four of us celebrate “Family Day” where we commit to the garden and get So. Much. Done. Its amazing bonding time for humans, animals and plants alike.

The real heroes of local food month, our chickens.

Our bees have finally come through!  All right! first bit of homegrown honey.                  Nice work Pamela!

The little guys are growing up so fast!

This was last week’s bread, honey almond. The nuts are so hard and take forever to crack- but just such a delicacy.

I made this loaf with extra honey and let it ferment a bit longer                                         and boooooyyyyyyy is it goooood!

Still have plenty of stores left over. Winter squash, onions, and potatoes.

We broke our fast in the finest of style with this garbage.

By Suzanne: Reflections after a month of eating Lopez only local food: I am immensely grateful for all the beautiful food that I ate this month. I am grateful for all the people who joined me and prepared inspired food with Lopez ingredients. I also thank Table for sharing the cooking tasks so that we didn’t each have to do it all ourselves. I loved playing with squash to make many interesting dishes. I loved the loaves of wild yeast bread Table made. It seems my appreciation for each bite was enhanced and every meal was delicious. I think the biggest difference was that it took more thought and more time to prepare meals and think of what to cook. I thought that if I /we always ate Lopez only, our preparation and food storage would be more so than it is. I remember a couple years ago, for a holiday gift I gave my parents a package of eight jars of jams and pickled vegetables and canned goods from the garden. My mother was so expressive of her appreciation for the gift. She repeatedly told me that she couldn’t believe that I chose to can food from the garden. My mother said she was so grateful that she did not have to can and put up food. She had grown up in the time of the Great Depression and World War II and Victory gardens and was grateful for packaged food and “modern” processes that made preparing food less time intensive for her as an adult. I had a heightened awareness that food connects us to all people everywhere and throughout time. We all have the need to eat and we all search for food that is available to us where we live. In this time, we in the US are able to find available and eat almost any food from anywhere in the world throughout the entire year. But this is a relatively new phenomenon. Being on the Lopez diet reconnects me with the historical practice of finding and cultivating foods that fit my local terrain and climate. I appreciated looking around to see what was available outside as well as looking in the freezer and cupboards for what we had preserved. I am aware that I am usually accustomed to experiencing a diversity of foods throughout any given week. While on the Lopez only diet, the number of foods available to me shrank. I appreciate all the foods and spices we get to enjoy regularly that aren’t from Lopez , and at the same time that I realize that when less is available, each thing is more precious. I appreciate all the local food that is a normal part of my diet and I feel lucky that there is so much regularly available on Lopez and that we get to eat so well. So many vegetables and fruits, grains and legumes, nuts and seeds do well in our climate and produce for a long season. Now as I enter April, I’ve had ginger and chocolate and a banana. It’s all good!

Beautiful salad with spinach and bok choy from the garden with a little veggie and bean soup on top with Sunnyfield Farm goat chèvre and Table’s bread.

Apple pie

Savory squash dish…sort of like a soufflé.

Mashed potatoes and butter.

Roasted garlic. (Not as good without olive oil, but still delicious and good in other dishes)

Homemade yogurt with milk from Vera. Table got to be an expert at making this.

By Table:  Pamela’s brood, busily putting up their stores for the winter. OK Gang, I’ve been slacking on the post front. Wish I could say it’s because I’ve been slaving away in the kitchen preparing the finest, most innovative, nutritious local meals mankind has ever-nay will ever- see, but unfortunately this is not the case. I mean, sure we’ve been cooking over at our place, but somehow it’s unnervingly easier than last time. All March I’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, and puzzling why this experience feels so different than October. I think it comes down to two things. #1 Preparedness! I don’t know why this word is any different than “preparation” but I always see it associated with disasters and thought that our endeavors to prepare-ify averted doomsday scenarios like “No butter? Enjoy your raw potatoes” or “Some salt in your soup? Don’t think so!” Oh our prepare-ocity was simply inspired. 
Henceforth Pamela has been a great sport about letting us skim all the Vera cream from her latte milk so we could whip it into shape, specifically butter shaped. This time around we collected it bit by unnoticeable luscious bit, over the course of months and managed to sneak into the freezer over a quart worth! We’ve pied, fried, toasted and garlic roasted, with no skimping on my new favorite food group. That’s right, for me, butter is now a food group
As for salt, something near and dear to my heart and personality, we boiled off enough sea water in October to get March started. Then Ralph and I kayaked out Davis Bay one of those beautiful later winter days we’ve been having and filled two more gallons along the Strait of Juan de la Fuca. (So fresh and clean clean.) It’s nice having salt enough to share. It is in such abundance here, with just a minimal and fun bit of effort. 
A few weeks back, I was fortunate enough to attend the Bread Lab workshop at the Ag Summit. KABLOOIE! That was my mind being blown. At the time I found it a bit overwhelming. “What the heck is an autolyse? How do you even say that? What if I don’t have a scale/ bread baskets/ scraper thing/ stainless steel table/ timer, oven large enough to cook multiple loaves/ etc etc etc.” Well I did my best to fear not, and lo and behold LOAVES! Slightly less dense than those of yesteryear. I bake once a week, which gives us enough bread to nosh here and there but not enough to be lazy and ditch out on cooking. Now I must take a moment to give props to the amazing Kenny Peaches Fuggiarwhatsisface, for repeatedly supplying us with 100% local, 110% delicious bread. Sourdope The other fun thing I’ve been cooking up is yogurt. Vera’s in full swing now and we get over two gallons a week. Every time a new batch of lait comes in, I yogurtify the last. It’s an incredibly versatile food, and serves as a nice cheese stand in, dessert, sauce, smoothie companion, or plain ol’ snack. It can even be a savory thing! Remember tzatziki? I especially enjoy it on my pancakes!
  Finally I must express my love and appreciation for my dear friends, freezer and dehydrator. Without their steadfast endurance and hard work March would not be possible. Thank you two for all those sweet crunchy tomatoes chips, juicy berries, peppers, onions, corn, prunes, tomato sauce, quinoa, currants, pears and frozen yogurt lighting up our appetites. Staples like these provide us with incredible whipped smoothies, crumbles, pies, soups, savory custards and edge curbing snacks.  Go dehydrator/freezer Go!

Asian pears & Berry sorbet

Berry Cobbler & Savory Squash Custard

#2 Novelty. Or should I say, lack thereof. In October this was new, there was a countdown. There was pomp, and dare I say circumstance. This time around it’s like yesterday’s news. It barely feels like any extra work (pretty cool really), and I don’t even notice the holes in my diet. (EXCEPT COFFEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!)  Which leads me to this little thingy thang I wrote for the blog weeks ago and never posted. To replace coffee I’ve been making lattes by steeping yaupon holly and mint, then adding a lil honey and steamed milk. Tastes great, looks just as cool in the cup as it does on your teeth and it kicks like a wee little pony. HOLES Eating locally is a lot like looking at Swiss cheese, or more appropriately, sourdough starter. The first thing that stands out is all the holes, the absence. But the reason we love sourdough and other CO2-ed out fermentees is in fact the suspension. Rich,”cultured,” steeped in wholesome goodness- a thing that is alive and passed on, and actively interacting with surrounding biota. It’s the antithesis of individually sealed singles immortally un-expire-able carrageenan yellow industrially kraft-ed or the white flouffie Blunder Bread. 29 Ingredients in Wonder Bread: 
Wheat Flour Enriched ( Flour , Barley Malt , Ferrous Sulfate [ Iron ] , Vitamin B [ Niacin Vitamin B3 , Thiamine Mononitrate Vitamin B1 { Thiamin Vitamin B1 } ,Riboflavin Vitamin B2 { Riboflavin Vitamin B2 } , Folic Acid Vitamin B9 ] ) , Water , Corn Syrup High Fructose ,Contains 22% or less , Wheat Gluten , Salt , Soybeans Oil , Yeast , Calcium Sulphate , Vinegar , Monoglyceride, Dough Conditioners ( Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate ,Calcium Dioxide ) , Soy Flour , Diammonium Phosphate ,Dicalcium Phosphate , Monocalcium Phosphate , Yeast Nutrients ( Ammonium Sulfate ) , Calcium Propionate , To Retain Freshness 3 Ingredients in Table Bread: Flour, Water, Salt Now enjoy the photos!

Food

_____________________________________________________________________________ By Suzanne: Beautiful brunch at Christine and Claudia’s. All Lopez local. Poached egg on a nest of onion, nettle and kale. Salad of spinach, beets, cabbage and corn. Kimchee made with sea water. Lopez wheat bread and local butter. Squash custard (basically pumpkin pie filling without the spices.)

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Today Table and I begin our second month of eating Lopez local food only. When we were deciding which months to select, we chose what we thought would be an easy month and a hard month. October was the full on harvest, easy month and March would be the hard month. It hasn’t turned out that way, due in part to a mild winter and in part to the wealth of stocked food we put up in the fall. Out in the garden we have lots of kale, some carrots, Brussels sprouts, parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme, oregano, mint, brassica greens, leeks, new arugula and pak choi and nettles. We’re planting out spinach, lettuce, chard, kale and lettuce starts. In the fridge and freezer we have butter, yogurt, milk, eggs, cabbage, some saved Horse Drawn carrots, some beautiful kim chee Christine made with seawater, some of Elizabeth and Andre’s chevre, lard from Blake and Julie, lots of tomato sauce rich with summertime produce, pureed squash, corn, blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, applesauce, peaches, fig sauce, some hazelnuts from Levi and Ronni’s trees, Waygu beef, chicken, some of Faith’s pork. Table doesn’t eat meat and I eat it only infrequently. In the house we still have loads of onions and garlic and winter squash. We have dried peppers and dried corn. Lopez sea salt, dried summer squash, dried beans, honey, dried mint, dried tomatoes, Lopez wheat berries and flour, quinoa Table grew, almonds from our tree, apple cider vinegar. I’m sure there’s more, but you get the gist. It still feels like a time of abundance. So different from the winter months the last time I did the Lopez only diet years ago. This diet puts me in touch with my European heritage, the memory of bringing ways to grow favorite foods with us as we travel to new places, the agriculture of raising foods in garden beds and orchard bushes, trees and vines. I am aware that many of the foods I will eat during this month are transplants to this land, much as I am. I am aware of the excitement of being able to grow and provide for ourselves locally with foods that we enjoy. I am also curious about ways older than my knowledge. Pamela is in the midst of the Ask Me Training that Russell and Madrona are offering in the islands this year. She learned from them at a recent training that some of the native people who used to inhabit this island, were year round residents, not transient peoples harvesting the wealth of the sea in the summer months. I want to learn what they were eating in March and if what they were eating is still available today. I am guessing they satisfied their hunger with less wealth of choices of foods then we are used to enjoying. I just know it feels different to look to the land and sea around for what is naturally present in that environment and to eat what is found there, than to bring to an environment familiar foods from different regions of the world and grow them to eat in the new place. It’s all very interesting to me!

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FEBRUARY – Marney Reynolds

Living and Learning and Eating Local This past week in the garden was enjoyable. Not only did I finish the pruning and mulching but I also worked in the greenhouse starting seeds. It never ceases to amaze me how each little nubbin of a speck can carry all that DNA to give the plant its uniqueness. Some of the seed I use I have been saving for many years. Planted with hope for a good outcome – our food for the coming season and also for next year! As for the food side – February has been a fairly easy month in terms of sourcing some fresh food. Not a lot but enough to give us a bit of crunch with our dinners. This week I harvested the last of my carrots and kale. I still have some beets, a bit of chard and one giant celeriac. The lettuces from the greenhouse are done. I pulled all of it out because of aphid. I did transplant the larger lettuces out in the beds. Next year I’ll plant only spinach and maybe some mustards to see if I can curtail the hungry little green critters. The transplants are doing fine outside. I’ve got them covered – each with a mini cloche over them to mostly protect from slulgs. I am keeping my fingers crossed that we don’t have a big frost. We really haven’t had a harsh winter. Well at least not yet! I keep a garden almanac and it tells me that about this time last year we had snow and wind and cold. This year my fruit trees with their blossoms starting to open, will not like a freeze! A highlight of my week. The last 2 days I have attended the Ag Summit held here on Lopez. What a wonderful opportunity to take in some classes and learn about soil, seed saving, pollination, and bread baking! And these were just the few that I chose to attend – there were certainly other classes/workshops offered. Lopez-grown wheat was one of the grains that was featured in the bread class. I took some of the dough home and baked it off. It was quite unlike any other dough I have worked with. And the aroma in the house was different than my usual bread baking. It was sweet smelling! I do bake with a percentage of Lopez wheat but not 100%. This was indeed an eye opener for me. The taste is a very full wheat flavor, nutty and somewhat sweet. Here are photos of what I came up with for our evening meals. Again, I made enough of the braised pork (thank you Ken for the recipe!) to give us leftovers.  This meal features black beans, pulled pork and a veggie stir fry. All Lopez! For this meal I stuffed poblano peppers I had grown, (roasted and frozen) with the pork, some roasted squash, topped with goat cheese and a spicy chile sauce. Again all Lopez!  The chile sauce was ground serrano and jalapeño that I dried. Really easy and really good!  This meal was a quickie! Soup from the freezer and freshly baked bread. All Lopez!  And for dessert.. a berry tartlet using local butter, leaf lard pastry and our blueberries and marionberries.  So, this is my last week (sniff, sniff!) of eating local and writing for the Bounty blog. I am not sure if I will be eating all that differently come tomorrow. Well, I think I will have a bit of chocolate and I will most likely have citrus along with a few other things! This (our second month) has been a pleasure and a great opportunity to explore the local-ness of eating. Thanks to the Bounty Team and to those who have participated in this food experiment for all the great inspiration of eating local! I also want to thank our Lopez farmers for the food that they provide for us. Without them we would not be nearly as well fed nor nearly as happy! _____________________________________________________________________________ The Garden Awakens!

Here we are in the middle of February. My thoughts are on pruning the fruit trees and fertilizing the berry vines. When the sun is shining I make way for time in the garden. I love my garden this time of year when the fruit buds on our trees are peeking out from what could be considered a dead branch. Garlic, planted in November, is 6 inches tall. The lovely leucojum aestivum are showing their beautiful flowers. I can’t believe all the emerging growth! It is magic!

So begins my work but it is work of enjoyment. Well, almost enjoyment! There are days when it is raining and windy and cold and I have chosen to be out there in the garden doing tasks that have to be done. The love affair continues though. This year I decided to give the plum tree a really good pruning. Now I suppose pruning a plum should be done at a different time but I could not wait. I am aiming for a tree that is manageable in height. I have been told by some really good fruit growers here on Lopez that it is possible to prune a tree, bringing its fruiting limbs back “down to earth”. I think pruning is just about one of my most favorite tasks. To focus, really seeing a tree and be truly aware of each limb and each bud, there is nothing more meditative than this task. For this tree I took off about 12 feet of height. Time will tell if this was a good move. But for me that is what gardening is all about. The trial and error from which I learn. Intuition tells me it will be fine. Maybe not so many plums this summer but in the coming years I think it will continue to thrive.   Once again a very busy week but not so busy that I didn’t have time to enjoy cooking. Our meals have been nourishing, hearty, and (may I say!) delicious not to mention local. Granted, February does not offer much in the way of local and fresh but as I said last week, my root cellar and freezers are full of home grown ingredients and meats from our local farmers, just waiting for a bit of love and attention. I did purchase a head of cabbage and one beautiful cauliflower when I went to pick up my eggs at Horse Drawn. The cabbage was used in many ways including slaw, quickly stir-fried, and in a roast of mixed vegetables. For the roasted vegetables I took potatoes, beets, onions, squash, cabbage, carrots tossed in a bit of schmaltz (rendered chicken fat) added some aromatics like thyme and rosemary and roasted. I made a lot because I wanted to have leftovers. With this I grilled a pork tenderloin that had marinated in garlic, rosemary, thyme and rubbed with a bit of rendered leaf lard. Alongside, I also served a quick saute of apples, and a roasted cauliflower that I dusted with my own chili powder. Next evening I made a “hash” out of this entire meal, chopping all the ingredients (save the apples) and topped it off with an egg per serving. This “left-overs” meal took me all of about 15 minutes to make. It was so delicious! I don’t like to waste food. To me this shows disrespect for the farmer or person who grew this sustenance. We rarely if ever discard leftovers. When we do have leftovers we usually eat them for lunch. But this week I guess I took it a step further. Many of our dinner meals consisted of utilizing these tasty tid bits! I made a strata one night with pulling ingredients out of the fridge. It contained the remaining roasted vegetables (I told you I made a lot!) and locally-made sausages from Liz and Teri. I traded oysters and prawns for these incredibly savory beauties. For this recipe I used their venison/apple sausage (locally harvested of course!). I also used my bread, dried tomatoes, some eggs, and feta that I had made in December. Again a simple meal but very satisfying. It was rounded out with a slaw mixed with chopped apple. To finish up this week in food I was invited over to Teri and Liz’s for dinner. Another lovely evening spent with friends who respect the land we live on and who cook the food they harvest and buy with such love and skill. After all isn’t that what food is about; sharing the bounty and enjoying it with friends. I am truly grateful for this land we have and what can “spring” forth with a bit of attention, care and love. Thank you and see you next week. Bon Appetit! _____________________________________________________________________________ My Week of 8 – 15 February A Little Of This, A Little Of That As I write this I am on the ferry headed for the mainland. I have the opportunity to join a study group taught by my meditation teacher. So, I have packed food! Lopez food! I bring with me apples, goat cheese, goat yogurt, freshly baked bread, part of a roasted chicken, carrots and the end of my celery and a roasted squash. I know this sounds like a lot of food and I will only be gone about 24 hours but I didn’t want to chance running out! This week has been rather challenging for me. I returned home from our trip to Mexico with a head cold. I also had to come up with a PowerPoint presentation on the current news regarding GMOs for the Orcas Co-Op. I didn’t have a lot of time and I didn’t really feel like cooking and fortunately for me, I didn’t have to. I pulled out from the freezer, soups and then some. We have been eating tomato soup, bean and vegetable soup, chicken soup and one night we had turkey pot pies. Now those were a treat. Yes, I did roast a chicken with vegetables and the glory there is lots of leftovers. I have come to look at my freezer as my sous chef in certain ways. Never did I think I would be the proud owner of 2 full- size freezers but there you are. When the vegetable garden and fruit trees brim with food these modern conveniences come in mighty handy. To really keep foods at their best I use a vacuum sealer. I also dehydrate and can. I recently bought a pressure canner. For broths and tomatoes there is nothing better. For those who preserve food you know how much work is involved. But when winter rolls around what bounty there is to be had! To be able to enjoy raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, plums, peaches, marionberries, broccoli, spinach, peas, corn, snap peas, haricot vert, cranberry beans, and Romano beans is truly wonderful. Let’s also mention what is in the root cellar. Lots of potatoes, squash, apples and even a few bell peppers. One word about what is coming out of the garden – not much! I harvested carrots, chard, beets, greenhouse lettuce and that is about all. Not bad for the middle of winter! See you next week. Here are just a few photos from this past week. I promise to have more this coming week! _____________________________________________________________________________ Traveling and Finding That “Eating Local” Is A Necessity The first week of February saw Page and I returning from Mexico. We took a month to travel around the Yucatan Peninsula visiting Maya villages, farms, and ruins and oh yes, some beautiful beaches as well! So for this first installment for the Bounty Food Experiment I’d like to give you a snapshot of some of our experiences pertaining to food (of course!) and farming and how we came to understand that “eating local” is not just for us folks in the U.S. but is the way the people we visited, eat. From the fruits and vegetables to the cheese, tortillas and beans we ordered, in both large and small restaurants, we ate what the locals were eating: foods that were almost exclusively produced within a 5 to 75 mile radius of any given place we found ourselves visiting. Of course in the small grocery stores there were “junk food” options but for the most part in the main mercados the food offered was local and fresh. Why is eating local a necessity here? My opinion – because Mexico is not a rich country. Oh sure, the standard of living in the large cities is good but for a lot of the people living in the more rural areas, food needs to be inexpensive. One of the best ways for that to happen is to grow it within close proximity to where people have access to it. The cost of transporting food over great distances is not in the program. We traveled through and stayed in some rugged areas. Mostly inhabited by Maya people. In their villages we found that most had a small garden, had access to a water well and had a community grain mill where they would bring their prepared corn to grind into masa. The taste of a freshly made tortilla is so delicious especially if it is grilled over a wood fire!

Señora Guadalupe from the village of Ek Balam shows Page how to form and cook tortillas over a wood fire!

The Yucatan Peninsula is quite a remarkable area of Mexico. It is blessed with arable land and is surrounded on 3 sides by ocean; Gulf of Mexico on the west and the Caribbean on the north and east sides. When we were near the coastal areas our meals consisted of fish, very fresh fish. These meals were almost always accompanied by black beans, corn tortillas and a salsa made of onions, tomatoes, cilantro, lime juice and either jalapeño or habanero. In some of the areas rice would also be included on the plate. Rice is grown in the state of Campeche, which is part of the Peninsula. Corn is a huge staple as are black beans. I think habanero runs a close third. Over the course of our visit we came to enjoy this extremely spicy hot pepper! Also, I was pleased to know that Mexico continues to prohibit the growing of GMO corn. Meaning I could enjoy all the tortillas I wanted! Grilled fish and onion with a tortilla topped with beans, tomato, radish and avocado crema.

The area south of Mérida (Capitol city of Yucatan State) was the focus of our visiting the Maya ruins. There are dozens of them. The Maya built their great cities here most likely because, in this region, the land was fertile – they could grow their 3 main crops of corn, squash, and beans. This area continues today to support farms and ranches. We enjoyed seeing the numerous farms as we drove to yet more ruins. And what was on the menus? Cochinita Pibil or Pollo Pibil of course! Translation – roasted pork or chicken prepared with achiote and baked/steamed in banana leaves. Here it was served with black beans, guacamole, pickled onion, and freshly grilled tortillas. Habanero salsa on request!

One other item that kept showing up on our plates was chaya. As near as I can tell it is a cross between spinach and chard. Quite delicious, it is grown on bushes and harvested year round. We had it juiced with mangoes (which were in season and last only about 2 months), chopped into scrambled eggs, and sauteed and served with black beans. Again, simple and delicious.

And finally some scenes from one of the central mercados that we visited. Note the price of plum tomatoes – $8 pesos. With today’s exchange that is about U.S. 70¢ per kilo!

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JANUARY – Faith Van De Putte

What are the flavors of our Lopez culture? What is our regional cuisine? These questions have been woven through this experience of eating only from our island. When I travel I seek out the tastes of those places; the dishes and flavors that spring from a people’s relationship to their land.

Our contemporary Lopez culture is so young; waves of immigrants from Europe, Scandinavia, the Midwest, California, Mexico. Although the Salish and Lummi nations have thousands of years of eating from these shores other than crab, clams, salmon in the smokehouse or venison on the fire little of their food ways have been maintained by current islanders. This new culture has had a little over a hundred years to form. The early settlers brought their milk cows, their lamb, planted the orchards and introduced new seeds. Betty Hastin, who was born and lived her life on the South end once told me the story of bringing zucchini seeds to the island. She lived in Seattle during World War Two and her neighbor was an old Italian man who gave her the seeds. After the war when she moved back to Lopez she brought them with her. Now it is hard to imagine summer without the abundance of zukes. How they suddenly get huge and by August everyone is giving them away. I find myself doing experiments in my mind. If we were all eating from Lopez for generations (because I image that is what it takes for a regional cuisine to mature) what would our food look like? What would our staples be? What would we serve at celebratory feasts in the winter or in the summer? When a visitor arrived and sat down at our tables what would they notice? What would surprise them? As I ask these questions I begin to question the questions themselves. The isolated self sufficient world that grew so many regional food cultures is not the world we live in. We live in a time of rapid change, of access to the foods and seeds of the world, season extending infrastructure and plant breeders who are shifting genetics of crops to work in our area. And as a community we are creating our identity. This creative question of how to have a local identity and be global citizens is being worked out by communities all over the USA. I think it is one of the underlaying appeals of the local food movement. It is a movement about belonging and caring for the land of one’s home. Each farm that grows a favored crop, each gardener saving seed over the years and sharing it, each recipe passed on, each request for that favorite dish again, each potluck on the beach is creating our food culture. I have become excited about what we can create together. In this month in the middle of winter I have had an abundance of flavor. The base is meat. Seared or roasted so the rich brown of caramelization informs the dish. Stock from chicken, duck and pork that imparts a soft on the tongue comfort of marrow and collagen cooked down. Tomatoes roasted in the wood fired oven until their sugars balance perfectly the acidic base . Onions or shallots start so many dishes. Softening into their sweetness in hot lard. Apple cider syrup whose sugar opens to a mellow tang reminiscent of a balsamic reduction. And salt. We are surrounded by it. Herbs began to fascinate me since I couldn’t just open up the spice drawer. I already used the rosemary, thyme, oregano, parsley, etc. that grow so faithfully here but was excited to find myself reaching of others. Dill seed. I love fresh dill in summer but in winter the little seeds sprinkled on grated carrot or sauted cabbage liven things up. Fennel seeds became another favorite. A pinch of whole seeds in a pork braise. Yum. I worried about not having sugar at the start of this month but have found that there is so much sweetness. All the warmth of summer stored in the flesh of fruit, of squash, of tubers and grain. My tongue seemed to recognize and celebrate the complexity of flavors without the exclamation point of refined sugar taking over. Many people have asked- what about vegetables? With our mild climate and season extending infrastructure we have the capacity to have greens all year round. It has been fantastic to have the hoophouse and that has allowed me to have lettuce (which I actually didn’t utilize as much as I thought because I couldn’t work out a dressing I liked due to no oil source that was liquid at room temperature), spinach, broccoli, Ip Ssam Hong Chinese cabbage (love this variety!), and corn salad. Kale and brussel sprouts survive out in the garden. Fruit is plentiful in the freezer and canned in the pantry. Apples are a little soft but one gets less picky when there is less to choose from. There is an intimacy with decay one gets from eating from the land in January. The last hard freeze is visible in the brussel sprout cut in half. A line of brown where leaves succumbed to the cold. The delicata squash in the basket that suddenly softens and sports a white furry coat. In the onion bin I rustle through, squeezing for softening under paper skins. I cut out the dark spots out of my imperfect potatoes and the wireworm holes in the carrots. There are little slugs nestles in the base of the cabbage. I don’t really mind. We are all trying to eat. The slug, the mold, the vole, the human. There is plenty for me. I give what I don’t want to the worm bin, the chickens or pigs. Life is hungry. My Swedish grandmother grew up on the south end of Lopez in the teens and twenties. She was raised on what they could grow and the abundance of a milk cow. Before it was an experiment, when it was just life. As a young woman she cooked at Norton’s Inn on Orcas and told me stories of starting the morning butchering the chickens for the evening meals. Later she was Mr. Moran’s personal chef at Rosario. When she died she left a freezer full of pies and we would take them out on Christmas or Thanksgiving. She stayed with us for years through the food she left. I still have a couple of jars of cherries canned back in the 80s. During this month of eating local I have thought of her. Of custards and cream. Of a well stocked “fruit room” and the taste of canned plums for breakfast. My earliest memories of garden are with her on Orcas in her Crow Valley garden (she moved there in her 20s, married and raised my Dad there on a 20 acre farm). What have I missed? That is the question that people are asking me this week. The first on the list (and this was a surprise!), oatmeal. I have been eating fabulous breakfasts of sausage or bacon and eggs, French toast or pancakes and I have yearned for the simplicity of oats. Ironically, they grow well here and were historically one of the island crops. And yes, I have missed my black tea in the morning and did cheat and get a single shot of espresso after I had rushed to the early ferry, forgotten all of my carefully packed food. David saved the day by speeding it down to me in the ferry line (I hadn’t even noticed I didn’t have it). As he passed in my cooler he said “just get a cup of coffee when you get to the mainland.” I figured it was good advice! The hardest part of the month was going to potlucks or parties and not being able to eat. I did not like the being the guest who was saying no. Who was not able to graciously eat the gifts that were offered. There a magic that happens when we all break bread together. When we eat the same things we share the same ground. Our bodies store bits of the same earth. And when the food we eat together comes from the land on which we live then we create a trilogy of belonging: earth, nourishment, community. I welcome back the foods and flavors that I have not had for this month. In part out of recognition that I/we are citizens of this whole planet and those plants: olive, cacoa, coffee, tea, tumeric, cumin, ginger can hold the thread of our connection. What is the fabric that I am weaving with my food. I want the warp and weft to tie me to this place, this community but I also want threads of color and different texture. Threads from the jungle, the sugar maples, vineyards and other food communities. I have been inspired by this assignment and will continue to blog about food, farm and community on the Midnight’s Farm blog: http://www.midnightsfarm.com. Thank you to the Lopez Community Land Trust and the Lopez Locavores for putting this project together. I look forward to reading further adventures in local eating! ____________________________________________________________________________

Slaughter After cleaning up, when I was coming in to make dinner, the flock of mallards on the marsh rose together, arching across the sunset, only to land again with much scolding and worry. Overhead an eagle, graceful, silent, and intent, with talons lowered swooped down. It is so easy to identify with the ducks, fleeing the predator but I know that today I am more aligned with eagle. There is blood on the driveway, in the grass, on my pants and hands. We fed the seven pigs their last breakfast this morning and then ushered them one by one into the chute. It is fast- how life can end. I held a tub under the neck and caught the last heartbeats of blood. Startlingly red. Pigs Pigs are how I crossed the line from growing food to feed myself to growing food for others. Pigs are how I moved from buying 25 pound sacks of chicken feed from the Island Farm Center to1000 pound sacks of hog feed. Pigs are how I dipped my toe into being a “farmer”. I am an imposter but learning. On Tuesday we slaughtered. It was the first time we had used the Island Grown Farmers Co-operative (IGFC) USDA approved mobile slaughter unit for hogs (David has used them in the past for beef cattle but that was before my time here on the farm). The truck and trailer rumbled in before dawn. Setting up right outside our front door due to its flatness, circular drive and proximity to the pigs. Our seven hogs were not enough to fill the unit so other farmers brought their animals, all sheep. Soon pickups and trailers lined up with their flocks huddled uncertain in the corners. A pesky ram was the exception and he bumped and butted the inside of the truck canopy.

Jim and William the IGFC guys deftly set up in the dark and got to work. They were graceful to watch in their bib raingear and butchers sheaths full of knives. A shorn black lamb was the first and a blind ewe the second. Starting with the hind legs, working into the groin and down the belly the skin is parted from flesh. The whole coat comes off inside out with some tugging but surprising ease. Underneath the fascia is a web of differing density with the pink of muscle showing through. The lambs look so small without their wool.

Outside the trailer the farmers stand in the growing light, sipping coffee and sharing tips about the best places to send sheepskins for tanning, the difficulties of drying hides in the winter. Offal is loaded into the tractor bucket and David takes trips up to the compost. Four sheep an hour. One by one the trailers leave empty. Finally, afternoon and time for the pigs. We go up to their pen and two by two they enter the chute, are stunned, bled and hung by the hind legs on the tractor bucket to be taken down to the trailer. Pigs are fascinating creatures. Once they get used to you they do love a belly rub and will plop down and contentedly let you rub their soft undersides. They frolic too. With new pasture or wallow or when the air is right. Their little tails go in circles with delight. They love to be sprinkled and I would indulge them on hot days. They would tip their snouts up and mouth the water. Sometimes when they got bigger they would sleep outside in pigpiles. A row of four or five pigs spooning, each twitching to its own dream. And yes, they really love food and are not tidy eaters. There is shoving and competition at the trough and hurried gobbling when something extra tasty is available.

The day after the slaughter there is an emptiness on the farm. A quiet. There is nobody to feed in the morning. Nobody to eat the scraps from the days cooking. When I drive in there are no piggy shapes silhouetted against the evening sun. I miss them as I get the last roast from the spring batch out of the freezer. Somehow cooking and filling the house with the scent of meat browning brings the pigs home again. In the rich flavors of stew nestled with the tomatoes and squash they loved so much I let my appreciation wander back in time, remembering. And as I sell these hogs to others I am so glad that they are going to be appreciated, to be savored, to gather people around tables, fuel conversations and community. Treat Our friend Isobel Davis came from the city to visit. She is an artist and accomplished cook among other talents. Neither of us follows recipes and we decided to call our style “improvisational cooking”. I shared how the constraints of the “Lopez Diet” has spurred my creativity and even if I wanted to follow a recipe they do not fit the “what is on farm” pantry. Cooking becomes a rhythm, an evolution of one thing into another. We asked the question “what would an improvisational recipe look like?”. For example: a chicken. First it is roasted and the proud center of a dinner. The left over meat is picked from the bones and the carcass is put in a pot with water on the wood stove to cook down into broth. The next night the meat goes into something- soup, stirfry etc. The broth is strained, the bones are picked again for the dogs (and given to the pigs when they were still here). The broth gets cooked with beans and becomes another main course soup later in the week.

Isobel gave me the biggest treat. We went off island for the day to pick up the pork. I had my lunch bags packed and my thermos of tea. I was prepared to want and I did. It is easy on the farm to just eat from Lopez but the mainland is often associated with treats. With a latte or going out to lunch. Of getting some novel tastes. And this trip I had only my tiffin to look forward to. It was actually a fabulous lunch that would have cost a pretty penny at some smancy organic café. And lucky for me the treat came when we got home. Isobel had gone to town in our kitchen! There were a lovely dip of soisson vert beans cooked in duck broth with toasted Barn Owl Bakery Lopez Loaf to start, a roasted chicken, wheat berry pilaf, brusselsprouts, broccoli with garlic, and a celeriac salad with an apple cider dressing. And a bottle of Lopez Island Vineyards Madeleine Angevine (which was a treat after just having cider for days). It was all so good! Improvisational Recipe for a Braise In a Dutch oven sauté alliums (onion family) in a fat source until translucent and beginning to caramelize. Add (if you want to go in this direction) carrots and celery, or peppers or mushrooms and sauté on low heat until soft all the way through. Add some garlic at the end. Take all of that out of the pan and set aside. Take your meat (usually a roast) and sear on all sides. Sear it until it browns and caramelizes but does not burn. When that is done put a cup or so of liquid (broth, wine, cider, beer, water, fruit juice) in the pan and deglaze the pan. Add the onions, etc. and enough liquid (more of the earlier list or tomatoes, plums, etc.) to go at least half way up meat. Squash, potatoes and or soaked beans can be added to the liquid. Flavor with herbs such as rosemary, thyme, bay, fennel, juniper, sage, oregano….. and salt. Cover and put in the oven at 250-300 degrees for 4ish hours. Greens such as cabbage, kale, collards or parsley can be added at the end if you would like!

Breakfast Walnut sourdough pancakes with Birkemeier peaches and blueberries and apple cider syrup. On the side our bacon and sausage.

Dinner Meatloaf with our woodfired oven roasted tomato sauce, delicata squash with chicken stock and apple cider syrup, broccoli from the hoophouse, grated carrot salad with dill seed and Berta’s footlong white beans.

Dessert Warm fresh goat ricotta, our raspberries, walnuts and apple cider syrup.

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Faith Van De Putte – January 1, 2015

Day One:  I dreamt of a kitchen (mine but not- they way things are in dreams) and there were bowls of strange exotic fruits. I knew I could not eat them because they were not from Lopez.  I woke up less hungry than I feared. Vera It is frozen and clear. My day to milk Vera, the cow who lives down the road. Glass half gallon jars clink in my basket. I enjoy this morning routine: boil water, sterilize pails, put a flake of alfalfa in the bin, open the gate to let Vera into the corral. This morning the cold has turned the mud to hoof print craters. She shies from the uneven ground and with her udders swinging slowly crosses to the milkshed. I give her a nudge on the rump as she puts her nose in the headgate, drawn by the alfalfa even though she knows I will push the bar over and trap her there. She settles in to bites and chewing. I brush her down, murmuring about how pretty she is. Then sitting on the little plastic stool I take the rags out of the warm soapy water and wash her udders. I feel the milk let down and the fullness of her bags becomes a tauntness of skin. With the bucket positioned underneath I finally begin to milk. The squeeze of thumb against forefinger and then the full grip to push the milk out in a stream. At first a metallic zing and then froth builds as the bucket fills and the sound become smooth. I ease into the rhythm, my hands active as I rest my head against Vera’s warm and earthy flank, let my eyes wander out to the crisp morning. When I am done I take the buckets in and strain the warm white into my jars. Milk for the week. The Horse Drawn Farm Carrot In the village and I didn’t pack any snacks. I duck into Blossom Grocery. Is there anything I could eat? Freezers, fridges, shelves and bins. And I find only a carrot. A pure, unadulterated Lopez carrot. Other than squash and frozen meat it is the only thing that is just from Lopez. Crisp, sweet and so satisfying. I wonder- why don’t I usually buy carrots for a snack on the run? Salt A Southwesterly throws waves against the tide in Cattle Pass. The Olympics are obscured with clouds. The dogs run ahead, circle back to make sure we are following and run ahead again with tails erect and wagging. I pull my hat further down over my ears as I pick my way down the rocks to the waters edge to fill my gallon jug. Salt. I have not had it for days. Salt. Such a staple, traded for eons, the first preservative, the enhancer of flavors. Living on an island I am surrounded by it. I fill a big stainless pan with my gallon of seawater and put it on the wood stove. Over the next day and a half of evaporating it condenses, transforms. Turns from clear liquid to white crystalline flakes. It is light and putting a bit on my tongue the sharp bite of sea and brine and salt expands into my palate. When I scrape out the pan I end up with a cup of salt. One gallon turns into one cup! When I sprinkle the flakes into my dishes, onto my eggs I am cooking with wind, waves and tide. Abundance The realization that I have grown more food than we can eat slowly dawns on me. Pumpkins are piled in the utility room, squash sit in a basket in the corner of the living room. Potatoes, onions, shallots and garlic are waiting in the barn. Our freezer is full of chickens, pork and beef we raised, berries from the island, old yogurt containers of stock (pork, chicken, salmon and duck), tomatoes roasted in the woodfired oven, pesto, bacon we cured and salmon. In the garden- brusselsprouts, kale and in the hoophouse- broccoli, lettuce, asian cabbages and spinach. So much abundance, it is easy to cook. Easy to eat well. Meals Breakfast Barn Owl Bakery Lopez Loaf French Toast (eggs from the farm and Vera milk) with preserved pears and apple cider syrup. Lunch  Chicken, bacon, red pepper (from Susan Bill’s greenhouse), shallot, black coat runner beans and a lacto fermented dill pickle on the side. Dinner Lamb chop raised by Molly Bill with leeks, broccoli and carrots braised in chicken stock. Tea Mint and wild rose

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Faith Van De Putte

If I told you about my life through the food I have eaten, it would start with clams. Old memories of raingear on white shell beaches.  The sucking of mud on the shovel. Each one, a find, to drop with my child hands with a plunck into the bucket.  Later at dinner, hard little shells opening to soft bodies and the briney sweet on my tongue.  I grew up on a sailboat. Moved to Lopez in 1979. There was venison on the fire at parties.  Old refrigerators in barns with glass gallon jars of milk and a little box to leave your payment in.  Abandoned orchards full of apples and plums.  There were crabpots to haul up and berries to pick.  There were giant ice cream cones at Richardson Store. Mom cooked. Dad cooked.  We ate well. In college in Bellingham I purchased my first CSA share- working off part of the payment by helping on the farm.  It was balance to the rice, beans and cheap pasta. Professional years in Seattle.  Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, sushi, Ethiopian, the flavors of the world. Shopping at the farmers markets and the PCC. Various gardens tucked into backyards. Forays into the parks in the spring to gather nettles.  Nettles my link to the wild.  I committed to the gathering, the steaming mounds of green drenched in butter.  I served them to friends.  I dried them.  I knew where they came from.  How they grew. Lopez again.  Now an adult.  “I want to inhabit my food supply.” We buy squirming little piglets.  Chickens run about in the afternoon.  The garden expands into long efficient rows instead of the intermixed tumble I had been experimenting with.  We put up a hoophouse that bursts in summer with tomatoes and shelters the tender greens against our current cold.  I can. I dry. I freeze.  Squash is piled in the utility room.  Potatoes wait for stews in their boxes in the barn. And now.  December 31st.  Filled with the sweets and treats of winter holidays.  I realize how my much I do inhabit my food supply.  I am drinking my last cup of tea.  I will miss this.  I am committing to eating food only from Lopez and its surrounding waters for the month of January.  The only exceptions will be salt or sugar which I have preserved things with this summer. Seems like a good way to start a new year.

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DECEMBER – Linda Hudson

It’s a Very Vegan Local Christmas Feast!

Friends gather around the bounteous feast table.

Last week we had our now-to-be annual Vegan Christmas Potluck at the warm and welcoming home of friends, Connie Holtz and Chuck Schietinger. We didn’t ask for people to bring local foods, but in keeping with the Lopezian mindset, it was almost a given that the dishes contained Lopez squash, carrots, apples, pears, quince, salad fixing’s, cabbages and beets, in addition to a selection of Lopez wines. Not everyone who came was vegan, but everyone made the effort to honor our vegan hosts with their dishes.

Here is a close-up of dishes on the table: Our offering was the Sweet and Sour Cabbage-Apple-Leeks: lower right hand corner.

So, our month of Local Eating is almost over, as is our year, 2014. Time to reflect over both, I think. First of all, I have found that our goal of eating 50% local foods from within 50 miles was very easy to do…and this was in December! Though I do realize that local eating would be harder in the upcoming months of January, February and March, my mind boggles at how easy it would be to do the rest of the year. So those thoughts, naturally, bring me to the subject of resolutions for the upcoming year, 2015. In 2015, I resolve to cook as locally as possible. If it takes a little more effort to go to a farm stand instead of just grabbing the same item at the supermarket, then make the effort. Check what’s in the freezer to see what’s left from last year’s harvest when planning menus. Be more proactive in networking with local farms and farmers to find some of the extras on my list, such as eggs, butter and cheese. Cook with what’s available at the time. And most important, stay away as much as possible from boxes, bags and cans! I can think of no better way to close than with a picture of our beautiful Christmas dessert lovingly made by our hostess, Connie Holtz. Red Kombucho Squash “Cheese”cake, yes, it’s Vegan! Even “I never eat dessert” eaters were grabbing for a piece of this one! Wishing everyone a healthy and happy 2015;  filled with friends, family and good local food! Linda Hudson _________________________________________________________________________

December 22nd, 2014

Linda Hudson

It’s a funny thing, but as I progress into week three of the Bounty Local Eating experiment, I am continually hearing a little voice in my head whispering, “Simplify, simplify”.  When I look into our pantry I find myself wondering why we have so many boxes of cereal (blame it on David?), or why I still “need” pancake mix. It’s actually a little bit embarrassing at this point. Has the answer been, “But it’s so handy (is it?)”, or “We may run out?” Anyway, it’s something for me to ponder at the very least. Another question that has been on my mind this month and, in fact, has been for some time now, is how can we work towards becoming more food self-sufficient on our farm? For a couple of months now, several of our friends and neighbors have been having discussions about teaming up to construct and maintain a High Tunnel Hoop House, to be erected on our property. We were already thinking big, say 20’ by 48’, when I found out that funding was being offered through the EQIP (Environmental Quality Incentives Program) of the USDA. I applied right away and am hoping that we will receive some kind of help with the expenses. Our plan is to concentrate on year round vegetable production to feed at least 8 people. I would also like to return to dried bean production, something I had great success with a few years back. Then the busyness of life got in the way. But, oh, what a variety of beans are available to grow and how gorgeous they are as well…I must make a go of it again next summer! Well, now to our preparation and consumption of local food in our meals this week. With my continuing supply of potatoes, carrots, squash, eggs, and luck in finding sources of local bread and cheese, we ate well this week. Here’s the photographic evidence!

Root Vegetable Pad Thai with Rice: all vegs locally sourced

Cheese, Bread and Fruit Board: cheeses from Ferndale, Bow, Pt Townsend: Bread, Barn Owl

Veggie Omelet: local eggs and all vegs

Stuffed Baked Acorn Squash with Zucchini Fritters and Root Veg Pilaf: all local except for rice

And last, but certainly, not least:

My Harvest Festival Potluck Award Winning, Green-Tomato-Chutney Bran Muffins

Ok, coming up this week….The Holidays! No fear, as we are going to a Christmas Day Potluck with like-minded friends: Veggie/Vegan Locavores, all of them. I should be posting some great pictures from our sumptuous year-end banquet! See you next week, Linda H.

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December 15th, 2014

Linda Hudson

Ok, so it’s been a good week. With my supplies; both frozen and canned, donations to our cause, plus what’s still going in the garden (not much), I’ve been able to put together some amazing local meals. I’ve also made a Local Food reconnaissance mission to Bellingham during the last week. Actually David had a doctor appointment and we decided to stay for a couple of overnights. So what did I find? Well, first of all, I was so looking forward to shopping at perhaps my number one favorite grocery store, Trader Joe’s. What I found there was kind of a shock. Previously, I found the store a treat; full of interesting, trendy, organic goodies mostly offered at a very reasonable price. This time I walked in with eyes wide open and saw shelves carrying pre-packaged processed foods and, after a few minutes spent looking in vain through the produce and cheese departments, I gave up on finding nary an item produced within 1000 miles. What has happened to me? Can it be that after just two weeks of cooking mostly locally, my consciousness has been raised?…could it have been that fast? In thinking about it though, perhaps not: I’ve been on the path to local for some time now and I think visits to Trader Joes were just my replacement for trips to the candy store. In better news, we stopped at both the Bellingham and Skagit Valley food coops. Here it was like night to day. Every fruit and veg for sale was labeled as to its locational origin, with much being very local, and most being from Washington State. But what got me is that origin was mentioned at all. Most of the time, finding where a product was made requires a magnifying glass. I loaded up on some root vegetables which I have been unable to find on the island; turnips, parsnips and rutabaga, plus some cheeses from Ferndale and Bow, (expensive, but worth it) and several kinds of apples, (the Elstars were grown on Guemes), and sailed home with visions of local recipes-to-be in my head. Ok, so what did I prepare last week? Here are some of the highlights:

Stuffed Baked Mini Acorn Squash, with Zucchini Fritters and Roasted Root Vegetables with Rice. (Local: squash; Horse Drawn, zucchini; our garden, Root vegs; Coops, bread; Bread Farm) Baked Apple-Blackberry Turnover with Pecans (Local: Apples; our orchard, Blackberries; picked last fall and frozen, Honey; Old McCauley Farm, Lopez and Pleasant Valley Farm, Rexville, WA  Potato-Carrot Chowder with Pumpkin Babycakes (fritters) (Local: potatoes, carrots and pumpkin; Horsedrawn Farm and Hummel House)

 Curried Root Vegetables with Rice (Local: our tomatoes for sauce, root vegs; Horsedrawn, Coops and Hummel House)

And last but not least: Bean Burritos with Spanish Rice and Roasted Potatoes and Carrots (Local: dried beans from Horsedrawn, tomato, garlic and parsley from our garden, potatoes and carrots, Horsedrawn and Hummel House) Thinking over my food sources from the last week, I am calculating that I am easily accomplishing my goal of 50% local from within 50 miles.  In fact, I may be achieving more than my goal. What a yummy week we have had! I am so glad that I am joining in this experiment! Next Week: Planning and looking ahead to eating more locally on Great Meadow Farm next year! Plus, more yummy local food…

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December 8th, 2014

Linda Hudson

“If every U.S. citizen ate just one meal a week (any meal) composed of locally and organically raised meats and produce, we would reduce our country’s oil consumption by over 1.1 million barrels of oil every week” (Steven L. Hopp, p. 5).

Barbara Kingsolver quoting Steven L. Hopp in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle

Over the past few months, preparing for my month of local eating, I have been thinking of how I got to this point, food-wise, verses my childhood and young adult years of Hostess Twinkies, Snowballs, and McDonalds. Growing up in the Chicago area, I was exposed to some ethnic foods most notably, fantastic pizza and other pastas served at the Italian restaurants, but at home our spaghetti came in a box labeled Chef-Boy-R-Dee. I remember the box as containing spaghetti, a can of spaghetti sauce and a small container of Parmesan cheese. I remember eating a lot of things out of cans too; Dinty Moore Beef Stew and Hormel Chili were favorites. But there were small glimmers of a better food future to come. Mom always bought wheat bread, leaving me to have to go to friends’ houses to get Wonder Bread, and she would not allow soda in the house. One early memory I have is of Mom and Dad wrestling over a bottle of Coke; Mom trying to pour it down the sink and Dad trying to stop her. Dad had a beautiful garden, but it consisted mainly of flowers, though I do remember enormous tomatoes and melons, easy to grow in those hot and humid Chicago summers. When I married, I married an Englishman, so it was meat and two veg from the start; the veg mostly coming from cans. And as my husband discovered enormous jars of peanut butter right away, I shudder to think that his first work lunches consisted of sandwiches of peanut butter and Marshmallow Fluff! So, how did we get to from there to here? It’s been a slow progression of education and experience. Following in my father’s footsteps, I started to garden, but to me gardening meant fruit bushes and tomatoes and other vegetables. That meant figuring out what to do with the bounty when everything came in at once. I made jams, syrups, froze and canned and found that I really enjoyed the whole process, not to mention having good things to eat throughout the winter. An early influence on my thinking about food was the publication, in 1971, of Frances Moore Lappe’s Diet for a Small Planet. By this time, we were living in Bellingham and saw the rise of food co-ops and farmer’s markets. As a result, our eating habits began to change, and by 1984, we became a vegetarian family. In 2007, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s wonderful book, Animal Vegetable Miracle and I became enamored of the concept of eating locally and aware of how far most of our food travels before it gets to our tables. It has been estimated “that the average American meal travels 1500 miles to get from the farm to our plates” (Center for Urban Education about Sustainable Agriculture), and that’s just wrong in my opinion. So eating locally for at least some of our food, in our case, trying for 50% this month just makes sense to me. So, how did we do with eating locally this week? Well, it’s been a good week, especially food wise. I’ve made good use of squash/pumpkin and the tomatoes that I froze in great quantity a few months ago. Here are some of the dishes I prepared last week using mostly local foods.

Frozen tomatoes, ready to be sauced

Potato-Leek Soup with toasted cheese on Earthfarm bread

Pasta with tomato sauce, vegetables, (herbs from the garden) side of buttered Hubbard Squash.

 

Vegetable Quiche with squash, sides of many vegetable slaw and pickled beets.

And last but not least:

Pumpkin Bread which David got to before I could take

a picture!

Sources of vegetables were mainly Horsedrawn Farm, T&D Farms and from our garden. Cheese from Pt Townsend Creamery (from Blossom) Ok, so that’s it for this week. Over and out, Linda (and David)

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December 1^st, 2014

Linda Hudson

Ok, so it is Day One of my participation in our Lopez Island Bounty food experiment. I have to say that the blogs of the last three participants created really hard acts to follow, in both local eating and blogging, but I am up for the challenge. First a bit about myself: I am a mother of two and grandmother of one, and I have been married now for 48 years…yes, to the same man! My husband and I moved to Lopez Island 10 years ago and together, and with the help of others, we planted an orchard (28 various fruit trees), planted berry and currant bushes, put in seven kitchen garden raised beds and fenced-enclosed a large area of garden with hoop houses, in which I mainly grow tomatoes. We also have a greenhouse in which I start my tomatoes, mostly from seed saved from the previous year. We call our spread, “Great Meadow Farm”.

A fistful of tomatoes from last summer’s harvest

Seven years ago, a crop of barley was planted on our land, (we have 20 acres), and as the summer was perfect for barley growing, (raining nicely, once a month) and we ended up with a record crop. The barley straw was used to make straw bales for the Lopez Community Land Trust offices which were then under construction, and the bulk of the barley seed went to Henning and Elizabeth of S&S Farm for their animal feed. To this day, I remain committed to the idea of the possibility of bringing back the practice of growing grains on many, if not most, farms across Lopez Island.

Barley Harvest, Lopez Island, 2007

So now to my/our participation in the Lopez Bounty Food Experiment for the month of December: I have decided that my husband and I will try a 50/50 experiment; 50% local food from within 50 miles. I figure we normally eat around 25% local foods year round, (much more in the summer/fall of course), so this will be a bit of a challenge for us, but not be impossible. Unlike some of the previous bloggers, I don’t have a big vegetable garden, but share/trade with several other gardening friends who give us their extras. For the past few months, in anticipation of this experiment, I have been canning jams, (blackberry, strawberry, black current, green tomato), pickling garlic and beets, and freezing lots and lots of apples, shredded zucchini and, yes, tomatoes. I have been stocking up on lots of squash, much of it from Horse Drawn Farm, but I even found squash left in a “free” box by the side of the road near the Village! Here is a picture of much of what we plan to eat this month; frozen, canned, fresh.

I should mention that we are vegetarians, but do eat cheese and eggs. I can see that my biggest challenge this month may be finding local cheese and I am currently investigating sources on the island. I do have access to fresh goat’s milk and recently tried to make goat cheese, but I have a way to go on that one! This week, I will be off island for two days in “America”, land of fast foods and Big Gulps, but I plan to check out both the Skagit Valley and the Everett Coops to see how local foods are faring there. Ok over and out on this December 1^st, 2014 Linda (and David) Hudson

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NOVEMBER – Marney Reynolds

November 23-30, 2014

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“If you really want to make a friend, go to someone’s house and eat with him… the people who give you their food give you their heart.”  –  Cesar Chavez – “I am more modest now, but I still think that one of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I, I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world.”   –  M.F.K. Fisher – “If you’re afraid of butter, use cream.” — Julia Child

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Sustainability has been on my mind as Page and I go into our fourth and final week.  Bounty Food Project has allowed us to look at questions pertaining to food and yes, the politics of it as well.  Are we (the collective we) truly practicing food sustainability when we purchase food that comes from other parts of the country, especially out-of-season offerings?  Are we sustainable when in order to feed our livestock we have to import grain and alfalfa from long distances?  Not that I have answers to solve these questions, but I believe it is good to be consciously aware of these observations. Last Sunday GMO-Free San Juans was featured in the Seattle Times Pacific N.W. magazine.  As some of you may know, my face was on the cover of that publication.  I was a bit stunned to see this photo but I was very pleased to have given the interview to the reporter back in June.  Equally and more importantly glad that there is recognition for what we all accomplished in 2012 – protecting our farmlands and our food from the contamination of GMOs. I am including a photo I took several months ago and haven’t as yet published on this blog.  I feel it important to recognize the seeds that we plant in the carefully prepared soil that yield us our food.  This photo shows some of the seed that I save for next year’s planting.  Yes folks, all GMO-free!  Most of the seed pictured I have been saving and planting for over 20 years!  Also, I’d like to mention the Seed Library at LCLT.  Stop by and visit and “borrow” some seed to plant next spring.

What came out of the garden this week –

Escarole, beets, chard, carrot, parsnip, radicchio, kale.

This past week I was prepping for the big day…Thanksgiving!  Happens to be my absolute favorite day of the year!   I can’t think of a better “foodie” day than this particular Thursday.  So instead of giving you a play-by-play of this past week’s daily menu I am going to jump right to November 27th with photos and some musings: We hosted the dinner.  We had 8 guests, all of whom contributed greatly to the food that was eaten including our friend Bill who is 96 years old who graced our table with his wit and great appetite!  Thank you dear friends for making our Thanksgiving so memorable. Our Thanksgiving Menu– Hors d’oeuvres which consisted of Erika and Brad’s roasted local oysters, Teri’s chicken liver paté, Stuffed cherry peppers, Cornichons, Goat Camembert, Teri’s cow-milk cheeses, Erika’s locally-caught prawn frittata Roasted Turkey (Skagit River Ranch – organic of course!) Herbed Dressing (made from our homemade bread) Gravy (my family’s beverage of choice!) Mashed Potatoes (Barb and Oswaldo) Roasted Delicata Squash (Barb and Oswaldo) Apple/Fresh Cheese Stacks w/ Kale (Teri and Liz) Roasted Broccoli (Karleen) Lopez Wheat Dinner Rolls (Karleen)

Bon Appetit!

And yes! there is always room for dessert.  Teri’s Pumpkin and Apple/Quince Pies with fresh whipped cream Oh, la, la! What a meal!  What a great bunch of people! Now that is what sharing food is all about:  Gathering together, giving thanks for the bounty surrounding us and counting our blessings. I so deeply believe that good food, well prepared, is for connecting with others – nourishing ourselves both spiritually and physically.  Made with love and given freely to enjoy, food is more than just sustenance – it is comfort, camaraderie, and connectivity to the earth. And Finally – Some folks have asked me if I have really missed anything this past month?  Not necessarily.  I guess if I had to say, what immediately comes to mind is citrus!  This time of year it perks me up.  It adds sparkle to my meals.  But really, I have such a varied diet and a wholesome one at that, I didn’t miss much. Thank you for joining me this past month.  Enjoy your food and please… Don’t forget to thank a farmer!

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November 16-22, 2014

Marney Reynolds

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November 8-15, 2014

Marney Reynolds

“Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.” – Michael Pollan

This has been a good week for focusing on local as I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and reading on food issues.  There is much to ponder.   The good news is there are tons of books, magazine articles, and websites out there telling me eating local is the way to go.  Across the country (mostly on the coasts) folks are lining up at Farmer Markets buying directly from their local farmers and food providers.  The farm to table movement is alive and well.  Every year the statistics are published and I am amazed at the increase of numbers in dollars spent especially on organics and/or sustainably raised food.  So here comes the bad news – Then why do we have such a difficult time passing GMO labeling laws?!  I mean wouldn’t you think that this is a no-brainer?  With so many people buying all this locally-sourced food, most of it sustainably raised, I have to ask, “What is the hold-up?”

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We held a dinner party last evening (photos below) and we started talking about this very issue.  And the consensus: money!  Duh!  It is money that is driving the big food producers who have backed themselves into a corner, what with the unhealthy ingredients that they are using.  They are so invested in using cheap GM corn, soy and sugar beet (heavily subsidized by our government – our tax dollars at work!) that if they did decide to label their products they would most likely be forced to change to better (read healthy) ingredients!  But are there enough “better ingredients” out there to fill the need for all the processed food that is produced in this country?  Are we actually able to produce enough food (healthy food that is sustainably raised) in this country to feed us all?  And are we able to do this keeping food costs low (the U.S. has some of the cheapest food costs in the world)?  Some articles I’ve read tell me it is possible and that the “tipping point” for sustainable food production is getting closer.  This is what I have been pondering.

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I’d like to share with you the person who inspired me the most both in cooking and in gardening.  It is my mother, Josephine!  She was a fabulous cook and a good gardener, not to mention an accomplished dressmaker!  She was of Sicilian descent and knew how to grow and cook vegetables which is what made up most of our meals.  That woman could stretch out a roast chicken or beef roast enough to cover 3 or 4 dinners using a little meat and a lot of veggies.  I continue this concept to this day.  Along with my mom there was also my godmother, Mary Ferrari, also Italian, who inspired me to cook simple meals with great ingredients.  I lived with my godparents when I was 16 and learned so much about cooking.  It wasn’t until I was in my 20’s that this all came around to help me in my learning to cook.  I have this innate “flavor memory” that serves me to this day in recreating the flavors that these two women created in their kitchens.  Their meals, made with love, live on!

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Here is a photo of what came out of the garden this week –

Had some great moments in the kitchen this week.  Foraged for mushrooms.  Didn’t have to look too far.  Shaggy Manes are everywhere.  And I just remembered I was going to say something about fishing.  I think that will have to wait until next week.  Or, maybe, I will write something about it midweek.

ALL (most) LOCAL!

Our Meals For The Week…

Nov. 8

Breakfast : Yogurt and berries.

Lunch:  Sauteed veggies.

Dinner:  Chicken soup with potatoes, carrots, celeriac and broccoli.  Schmaltz (oh yum!) with bread.

Having saved several frozen carcasses plus one whole chicken I made chicken broth.  Had to make space in the freezer since I’ll be picking up more of Julie and Blake’s chickens this coming week.  The aroma in the house was wonderful.  Such a great thing to have a fire in the wood stove and a pot of chicken broth on the cooking stove!   The making of this broth produced quite a bit of fat.  I separated it from the broth and saved it.  I also used some to make schmaltz which is basically chicken fat heated with herbs such as oregano, thyme and a bit of salt.  Bread dipped in this is so wonderful!

Unless I have mentioned it beforehand, all of the food listed is homemade with either my ingredients or those that we have gotten from the farmers here on island.

Nov. 9

B:  Poached egg on toasted homemade bread with a bit of spicy salsa.

L:  Chicken broth and a green salad.

D: Sauteed shaggy mane mushrooms topped with chicken breast, roasted potatoes with a bit of schmaltz for flavor, steamed broccoli, and a green salad.

Before:

After:  Can’t really see the mushrooms.  They are tucked under the chicken.

Nov. 10

B: My homemade Valençay and feta cheeses with apple and toast.

L:  Chicken salad w/fresh tarragon, celery, apple over greens.

D: Dinner at Sue’s!  Wonderful cauliflower bisque, green salad and my bread with goat cheese.

This meal was lovingly prepared using all local ingredients.  Food is good but food shared with friends is even better!

Nov. 11

B:  Scrambled eggs with dried tomato and a bit of goat cheese.

L:  Veggie salad with dried tomato, cucumber (brought over by my neighbor!) and goat cheese.

D:  Another dinner out!  Wow!  I am lucky.  This was a chicken broth with cabbage, onion and shredded chicken.  On the side was grilled cauliflower loaded with garlic.  Absolutely delicious.

So now this makes two nights in a row that I have had “girl nights” where my friends, knowing about this Bounty project, have produced some delicious meals.  That coupled with having a good “chin wag” on both occasions.  Thank you Sue and Erika!

Nov. 12

B: Yogurt with berries.

L: Vegetables with chicken broth.

D: Veggies and roast chicken.

Nov.13

B:  Oats soaked in whey overnight, blueberries, maple syrup.

L:  Leftover roasted  vegetables.

D:  Pot roasted pork shoulder (Horse Drawn Farm) in a red chile sauce, black beans (again Horse Drawn), roasted squash w/apple, sauteed chard and for dessert cajeta flan.

Now this was a meal!  I had a terrific time creating the chile sauce used to braise the pork.  I took chiles that I had dried this summer, toasted them and together with garlic, onion, oregano, thyme, bay leaf, a bit of chicken broth created this sauce.  The pork was sublime if I do say so myself!  Our guests enjoyed it as well.  Nothing like getting together with good friends and sharing a meal.

Before:

Nov. 14

B: Yogurt with fruit

L:  More chicken soup.  Really, how can you tire of a good thing?  This brings such warmth and nourishment.

D:  Leftover pork, squash, black beans and green salad.

So that was my week in food.  I enjoyed it tremendously and I am grateful to be able to share this with all of you.

Here is to the enjoyment of food and friends.

Don’t forget to thank a farmer!

See you next week.

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“There is no love sincerer than the love of food.”    –  George Bernard Shaw

I am not sure if George was a cook.  One thing I’ve noticed about this island community we live on is that there are a lot of great cooks!  And naturally these cooks love food.   What an inspiration for me!  Not only that – there are a lot of great farmers out there providing us with an amazing assortment of delicious and nutritious options.  WOW!  We are so fortunate to have this at our fingertips.

At this juncture in my life, growing and cooking food are my passions.  I also love to fish and forage.  Eating as local as I can is another passion.  I believe it is the single most healthy thing I can do for myself, my family and friends, and this planet.  These days it is a progressive act not to mention a political statement.  If you don’t like the way this country is being lead around by the large “food conglomerates” then eat local and eat only whole foods, meaning very little or no packaged foods.  Vote with your food $$ for a more equanimous, healthy, and sustainable food system.  If you do choose to buy packaged food make sure you buy it from a responsible company that does not contribute to campaigns that deny your right to know what is in your food.  I am guessing that you already know this and do this!  Go to gmofreesjc.org to see more info on this.

The last 15 years, I’ve been involved with some pretty exciting political actions having to do with the environment and preserving the integrity of food.  In Seattle, I started “No Spray Zone” with a few of my neighbors, rejecting the state’s policy to aerially spray pesticides over populated areas not to mention local food gardens. Then in 2012, working with Ken and Kathryn, I, along with many others, contributed to the passing of GMO-Free San Juan County.  Yahoo!  And last year, 2013, I was the county liaison for Washington state’s GMO labeling Initiative 522 which narrowly lost by less than 2%.  By the way, San Juan County was one of five counties in the state to pass it!

Okay, enough of my soap-box rambling.  For this month of November, I aspire to contribute to the Bounty Food Experiment some of my thoughts on food, the cooking and eating of it, and a bit about what inspires me.  It is great to have this opportunity!  I have to tell you though that this first week I have been a bit nervous having read the last two contributors.  Their entries were wonderful, truly entertaining, and the food they prepared, so inviting.  I thought what could I possibly say that could add to what they have already done?  Well, perhaps I should just write about my own experiences – those in the garden, foraging/fishing, and of course cooking.  So here goes!

ALL (most) LOCAL!

I do have a fairly large garden dedicated to raising fruits and vegetables.  With the exception of protein foods, we pretty much eat from it year round.  We purchase our eggs, meat, and goat milk directly from the farmers on island.  I also have a Lopez grain share which gives us wheat for the bread that I bake.  Here is a photo of what came out of the garden this week –

I think now would be a good time to list the “food exceptions” that Page and I decided on:

Bread Flour

Butter, Milk, Cream

Parmesan Cheese

Olive Oil & Vinegars

Maple Syrup

Spices

Oats

Almonds

Coffee

Oops!  I almost forgot to list red wine.

We thought long and hard about these items and decided our participation in the Bounty Food Project was not an endurance test but a way to take a good look at just how much of our food does come from off island.  With every meal I prepare I get a better understanding of this.  As you can see I have not included other grains.  We do eat them on a regular basis but not this month!

Our Meals For The Week…

Nov. 1st

Breakfast : Granola with yogurt and berries

Lunch:  Left over beef hash, salsa

Dinner:  Squash Bisque with apple confit, green salad, bread, apple/maple syrup/thyme crostata

Nov. 2nd

B: “Dutch Baby” with marionberry syrup and strawberry/rhubarb compote

L:  Squash bisque, salad, bread

D: Potato/fennel gratin, roasted salmon, sauteed broccoli with garlic

Nov. 3rd

B: Cooked oats soaked overnight in whey (left over from cheese making), berry medley, cream

L:  Celeriac soup, green salad

D: Ribolita soup, bread with goat cheese, vegetable salad

Nov. 4th

B:  Poached eggs w/toast and jam

L:  More Ribolita (even better the 2nd day!)

D:  Pan fried oysters (local) served over lightly sauteed mustard greens, baked potato w/ scallions and yogurt, green salad

  I would have taken a photo of this dish but we were so excited to eat these that I wasn’t fast enough with the camera!  They were incredibly delicious!

  Some friends invited me to help out with cleaning their oyster bags and so I went over to MacKaye Harbor, helped with the maintenance of the oysters, and was rewarded with enough of these beauties to make dinner.  So simple, so good.

Nov. 5th

B: Granola, fruit, yogurt

L: Warm veggie salad, poached egg

D: Pappardelle pasta, ragu, green salad, fresh baked bread with goat cheese

I made the pasta using about 30% Lopez wheat.  The ragu was made with local beef and pork and our tomatoes, simmered all day – it was heaven!

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Case and point: Fruit Leathers aka dehydrated smoothie.

Well now that I’ve updated you, I’d like to hop back in my journal again, since it relates. I swear it relates! Food Log-Starbase 1 September 17, 2014 14:45 P.R.O.T.E.I.N. It’s an overcast mid-afternoon, mid September. It’s a Wednesday- my day off- and the first sprinkly day of a predicted few. The harbinger of fall. I’ve seen a decline and shift in the breed of tourists at the coffee shop. Despite our summery 80something afternoons, the brisk mornings and nights tell tale of winter creeping in around the corner.  After a long manic summer the island breathes a sigh of relief. Kids are back in school, colds are spreading, adults are finally trying to get a little sleep. I find myself exhausted, flopping onto the bed in wee dark hours of…WHAT?! 8:30? That’s just not right. And yet, the work ‘aint over, it’s just begun! My leisurely day off began about 7:30 this morning when I called Horsedrawn to see if the hay was in. “Yep,” Kathryn’s voice- clearly upandatem for hours- rang over the phone. By the time I got there a dozen cars- affiliated with roughly 20 farmers/homesteaders/generally awesome Lopezians- were already there.  Like a busy ant colony folks were unloading the several tons of hay, one 130# bale at a time.  Ken, Dave, Eric and Kenny stood aboard Mt Alfalfa- aka Hank’s tuck- loading bales from multiple directions onto a hay elevator which spanned into the barn loft. Audrey and Michelle directed the bales off either to one stack on the north side of the barn where Rob, Andre and friends hauled em into order. Or else they sent the bales forward onto the tandem elevator which carried them to the center of the barn.  Here they were stacked -by Julie, Norm, Sally, Tahoma and yours truly- into two piles that eventually joined in the middle. Kim and Kathryn flitted to and fro surrounded by a small cloud of dogs, crunching numbers and sending folks off to destinations island round.  In 4 hours it was done. It was a sweet and beautiful scene, a great example of the unique cooperation and camaraderie of Lopez Island farmers. I’ve been growing food and working as a farmhand for 5 years, in 3 states, at half a dozen farms, not to mention all the quickie volunteer stints- and I’ve never witnessed a community of farmers so intensely invested in one another.  Just a few days ago I was helping our Cow-op move Vera home. Scott Meyers, of Sweetgrass, drove by, pulled over and helped us coax the reluctant mother and her newborn bull calf into the trailer. (A feat which took MUCH longer than anticipated and involved a record breaking number of cow pies and at least one shock of hotwire.) He’d interrupted his day to help “-Because it looked interesting.” It’s these selfless, hardworking, hard as nails bunch of sweethearts that make local food challenges a possibility, which is my segue to the part about food.  Today- all my thoughts are on protein. Alfalfa the magical legume that transforms dirt, water and sun into protein-rich (intensely heavy) green cow crack(while simultaneously fixing nitrogen into the soil at depths of up to 30 feet with its impressive sprawling roots. Go ahead, say “WOW!”). After I left the farm I zipped home to secure MY winter protein source. The rain started and I skipped past the laundry line and went straight for the dry beans- named aptly for how they are best stored. 

The final protein source is egg thanks to our 15 or so hens and ducks. I also have to figure out our game plan for the quinoa, a grainy protein superfood that’s also super saponified. Anyone have any super suggestions? I’ve heard something about repeated rinsing involving a Cuisinart. Thanks for reading -Table PS. Tomorrow morning I depart for Waldron for several days, and guess what… I PACKED LOCAL! Crazy right? Of course I can’t forget the photos! Sweller and I harvested bunch of asian pears and made cider over at David Zap’s.

Cheddar fresh from the press