It's Friday!

I always enjoy reading Lauren's High Five for Friday posts so I figured why not jump on the bandwagon and do one myself.  Right now my days are so jumbled and it's hard to even remember what day of the week it is so I figured a Friday post would at least help me remember that the week is almost over.

1. Papa J has been working 12-18 hour days at football camps the past couple of weeks so we haven't gotten to see much of him.  But we did go to a Kite & Bike Festival here in town for a few hours on Sunday and it was beautiful.  Baby J mostly enjoyed the sucker.  My mom conscious speaking: Are you supposed to give a 15 month old a sucker?  Shhh!  Don't tell.

2. We got our cow!  On Monday the meat locker called and our beef was ready for pick up so Baby J and I made the trip to pick up our beef.  Turns out it was not as much of an adventure as I thought it would be; it was pretty easy.  Full post coming soon.  

3. Since Papa J has been working so much, he's really been missing his time with Baby J, so he decided to take him to football camp one day.  I was both excited and nervous, but I decided to focus on the emotion of excitement because rarely do I get a few hours to myself.  What did I do with my free time?  First, I cleaned, then I went bargain sale shopping and had lunch with a friend.  I know I'm turning into my mom when I decide to use my free time for cleaning.  Many years ago I would have thought that a bad thing.  Now, not so much.  It's funny how you start to see your mom differently after you become one yourself.

4. This week I had a goal of using up all the produce in my fridge and not letting it go to waste (I way overbought at the farmer's market the last 2 weeks).  I'm slowly chipping away at it.  The beet greens went into a huge batch of Hulk pancakes.  The kale went into cheesy scrambled eggs (which was not very good and I won't make it again).  The sugar snap peas & asparagus went into a stir-fry.  The rest of the asparagus went into a chicken risotto. The beets went into another beet salad (it's so good!).  And the whole wheat bread went into cinnamon toast, french toast casserole and a few sandwiches. I can't forget about the garlic scapes!  I'm proud to report that they have also been used up and were delicious in the stir-fry and risotto.  They were not overly garlic as I expected and they turned out very tender after a few minutes of sauteing in a pan.  I'm still working on the lettuce, red bell pepper, purple "green" beans, tomato, watermelon, bananas and pluots.

5. Today we had planned to go strawberry picking with some friends but due to a flat tire and a surprise rain storm, it turned into a soggy visit to the tire store, an over-packed van, a visit to the children's museum and an impromptu lunch consisting of more processed foods than I'd like to admit to.  The kids survived, the adults survived and the tire is temporarily fixed so we'll just leave it at that.  

How was your week?

Food Challenge: Local Eating

According to the documentary Ingredients, 20% of the United States' natural fossil fuel consumption goes towards the packaging, processing and transporting of food.  People always say we are in an energy crisis but before now, I simply contributed the crisis to cars with bad gas mileage and long commutes to work.  Never did I realize that the food I put in my mouth could be contributing to the energy crisis as much as the miles I drive.  So I started to think, where is my food coming from?  How far is it traveling? What kind of life does it have before I buy it?  Who is growing my food?

Unfortunately I could not answer most of those questions.  Instead, I bought food because it was on sale.  I bought food that we're comfortable with eating.  I bought food that I grew up eating.  I bought food that was convenient to buy.  I bought food with no idea where it came from, not even if it was of U.S. origin.  In order to help with the energy crisis, support local farmers and eat food that has better nutrients (because it's picked based on ripeness, not based on it's ability to travel long distances), I am choosing to eat more food grown locally.

One of our grocery stores does sell some local produce on occasion, but I have found the easiest place to buy local produce is at the farmer's market.  It's open twice a week, Wednesday afternoons and Saturday mornings, and takes place in a parking lot here in town.  At the peak of the season, there are about 10 vendors who sell a variety of produce, meats and baked goods.  Not only is it convenient for finding fresh, local produce, but it's a great way to meet the farmers and develop a relationship.  The farmer's market is only open May - October so come November - April I am going to have to find another way to buy local produce.  At that point I think I'll dabble in the world of CSA's (Community Supported Agriculture).

Here is the bounty of produce I picked up the first time I went to the farmer's market this season: beets, loose leaf lettuce, sugar snap peas, kale, purple "green" beans, asparagus, whole wheat bread and cinnamon sugar apple flat bread.

The easy part for me is shopping for the food, and it's fun to try new things.  But remember when I told you that this wasn't going to be easy and that there are going to be challenges?  Well, I found a challenge.  The hard part for me is making sure all the food gets put to use and eaten before it goes bad.  I bought all of this on June 14th and I have already used the ingredients to make: salad, roasted beet salad, sauteed beet greens, kale chips, roasted green beans, chicken pesto lasagna, sweet beet cookies, "Hulk" pancakes (aka beet green pancakes but my husband thought Hulk pancakes was more appealing since they are green) and normal bread things like toast & sandwiches.

But now it's June 22, 8 days later, and I still have some of the lettuce, beets, sugar snap peas, kale, asparagus and whole wheat bread.  And beyond that, I went back to the farmer's market yesterday and loaded myself down with even more produce.

Why?  Because I got excited about strawberries & rhubarb because the two go together like chocolate & peanut butter.  They make the best desserts!  Within two hours of bringing them home I made strawberry-rhubarb scones and cherry-rhubarb crisp.  Yum!

My challenges for this week:

1. Use the remaining produce before it goes bad.  I'm thinking maybe a stir fry, soup and/or frittata will be on the menu.
2. Figure out how to cook with garlic scapes.  Before yesterday I had no idea what they were but one of the farmers had them in bulk and was handing them out for free.  I couldn't say no to something new. 
3. Try not to eat cherry-rhubarb crisp at every meal. :)

My sister is sweet enough to already call me a locavore, but I don't think I've earned the right to wear that badge quite yet, but I do appreciate the vote of confidence.

Food Challenge: We Bought A Cow

This is our first step to more sane, environmentally conscious and healthy eating.  We bought a cow.  Not a whole cow, but a quarter of a cow.  I still think that counts though.  If you didn't catch last week's post then you'll be a little behind on my train of thought for buying a cow.  Here's the link so you can catch up.

Disclaimer:  I classify myself as a city girl.  I grew up in a suburb of Oklahoma City, with a population of ~25,000 people and in a neighborhood with paved streets.  There was no farm, no animals, no garden, except for the occasional tomato plant my Mom tried to grow.  We had about 3 grocery stores in town and that's where I remember getting all of our food.  I have never known how to buy meat or produce anywhere else but a mainstream grocery store.

Living in South Dakota, where billboards like "Beef, it's our STEAK in the future" line the interstates, I figured it couldn't be hard to find good meat sources.  Our town has a farmer's market so I started my search there.  According to their website, they have a number of meat producers that sell at the market.  I visited the market for a couple of weeks in May hoping I could buy some of the locally produced meat, but they never came.  I took matters into my own hands and contacted one of them directly, Cliff Millsapps.  Cliff produces grass-fed, organic beef on a farm about 50 miles away.  I contacted him through his website, asking for basic information on how to buy his beef. We exchanged a number of emails and phone calls before deciding what would be best for us to buy, which is a custom order of quarter cow.  Translation for all you city folk like me, that means we are buying roughly 100 pounds of beef (which according to Cliff, fills a small chest freezer or the freezer compartment of a combination refrigerator/freezer) and we get to choose how we want it cut & packaged.

Okay, so we're buying a quarter cow, but what exactly does that mean?  These are the steps it's taking to get the beef from Cliff's ranch to our freezer:

1. Tell Cliff how much beef we want to buy. (We decided on a quarter b/c we think it can last our family of 3 for close to a year - but I could be wrong about that - AND we only have enough freezer space for a quarter cow)
2. Cliff takes the cow to the meat locker to get butchered.
3. Cliff calls me to say the cow is in the meat locker and the hanging weight of our quarter cow is __ lbs.  I then write him a check for ___ lbs x $3.15.  (FYI, if you buy a full cow, it's a bit cheaper, $3/lb)
4. I call the meat locker and tell them how I want the meat cut & packaged.  I was nervous about this part because I don't know that much about cuts of beef or what I prefer or not prefer.  I basically just took Cliff's advice, got the steaks 1.25" thick, the meat wrapped in paper (vs. vacuum packaging which raises the price significantly) and agreed to try cuts of meat such as short ribs, brisket, heart and liver (we had the option of tongue but I said no).  I also asked them to throw in some soup bones for making beef stock and some bones for the dogs. 
5. After butchering the cow, the meat locker ages the beef for 2 weeks then cuts it to our specifications.  During this process the beef will lose 60-70% of its weight due to evaporation (that's the difference between hanging weight and the actual weight).  In mainstream beef production, the beef is not aged as long so the weight gets lost during cooking, which is why a hamburger is so much smaller after cooking.  Apparently this beef will not shrink as much when it is cooked.  
6. The meat locker calls to tell me our quarter cow is cut, packaged, frozen and ready for pick up.  
7. I drive to the meat locker (about 20 miles), pay the locker for their butchering services (~ $0.80/lb) and bring our tasty beef treats home. :)

(Right now we are between step 5 and 6.  I anticipate step 6 to happen by the end of this week or early next week.)

Don't go running for the hills just because I've said we're accepting beef heart and liver.  It sounded gross to me too but I watched YouTube videos on how to prepare it, then asked 3-5 different people their thoughts on it.  They all agreed that heart is good (when cooked properly) and the majority said the same about liver.  Plus, my grandfather-in-law's favorite meal was fried cow heart so it can't be that bad, right?  I also figured it would make a good blog post - How to Cook Cow Heart. :)  Stay tuned.

In conclusion: we envision receiving a good mix of steaks, roasts and ground beef (plus the organs and bones).  We are anticipating the final cost to be ~$6.25/lb after it is butchered, dried, cut and packaged to our specifications. In comparison to store bought ground beef, that is expensive, but considering a steak or roast, it's comparable if not cheaper.  Plus, this is grass-fed, organic beef, sans hormones or antibiotics and humanely raised just 50 miles away.

This is a whole new world for me.  More expensive, less comfortable (I have never visited a meat locker or prepared most of these beef cuts), more personal (I'm really getting to know Cliff, turns out he's a great guy and has a dry humor like my Dad), and hopefully more tasty & healthy.  I just keep reminding myself of what they said in Ingredients: as an industrial nation we spend the least of our income on food and the most on medicine.  And I can't get this one out of my head: meat from 100-1000's of cows can go into one, one pound package of ground beef.  I will rest more soundly at night knowing I am eating meat from just one cow.

Food Challenge: What Am I Eating?

In summer 2011 while vacationing in NYC I bought a book called Food Matters by Mark Bittman.  Around that time of my life I became curious about food: what it is, where it comes from, how it grows, when it grows, who grows it and why we eat it.  I dabbled around with the book, planted my first garden, but didn't take it much farther.

Once Baby J approached the age to start solid foods (July 2013), the food curiosity came back around.  As I'm sure most first time moms are, I was over bearing, controlling and cautious about everything that went into his mouth.  Something occurred to me one day as I was preparing our oatmeal for breakfast.  After cooking the oatmeal and just before serving, I separated mine from Baby J's so that I could add brown sugar to mine and a fruit puree to his.  You see, I didn't want Baby J to have any sugar so that's why I sweetened his with a homemade fruit puree.  But then I realized how silly it was to be so concerned about his sugar intake and not my own.  If I don't want him to have it, then why should I have it?

About a month ago I stumbled upon a documentary called Ingredients.  The documentary brings to light the local food movement and reveals the crisis our food industry is approaching in America.  Here a few of the points that stuck with me the most (in paraphrase):

• As a country, we've been educated to believe that food is cheap.  As a result, we spend the least of our income on food than any other industrial nation.  We also spend the most on medicine (per capita). 
• 20% of the United State's natural fossil fuel consumption goes towards the packaging, processing and transporting of food.
• Although our population is growing, our farm land is shrinking.  We are losing one million acres of farm land a year.
• 33% of the children born in 2000 will be diagnosed with Type II diabetes.
• There can be beef from 100-1000's of cows in just one, 1 lb roll of ground beef from the grocery store.

Since watching Ingredients, I've been running into several articles, blogs, etc centered around the whole foods movement.  In a nutshell, its the idea of replacing processed foods with real, whole foods.  Here are a few of the blogs: 100 Days of Real Food and For The Love Of (I haven't read this one as much yet but I'm intrigued).

All of these things combined have made me think a lot about what I'm eating and what I'm feeding my family.  I do 98% of the grocery shopping and cooking for our household so I feel a huge responsibility in making sure I buy the right products and cook the healthiest foods for Papa J, Baby J and myself.  I also want to do right by our environment and this beautiful place called Earth that God has given us to live in.  

I am convicted.  I have been blindly eating, not concerning myself with where my food comes from, how animals are raised or butchered or processed, or even how our farmers are treated.  I want to AM GOING to change the way I eat.  I want to AM GOING to change how and where I get my food.  I want to AM GOING to eat more whole foods and less processed foods.  I want to AM GOING to spend more money on good wholesome food, knowing it's better for my family's health and the environment.

I know it's a long road ahead to make these goals a lifestyle but I intend to take it one day at a time.  I also intend to share the journey with you, in case you are also interested in doing the same thing.  I haven't been the best at keeping up with this blog but I think that's due mainly to the fact that I hadn't found my voice or what I wanted to gear the blog around.  I am passionate about this though so I am hoping it will drive me to be a better blogger.  Be patient with me though, I am first a Christian, a wife, a mother, a ... and somewhere down the line, I am a blogger, so it doesn't always get first priority. :)

Here's the tagline to keep you coming back for more...we bought a cow.

A Simple Appetizer: Bruschetta

When I think of bruschetta four things come to mind:

1. Emily.  One of my best friends and the person who introduced me to bruschetta.  (This is a picture from her wedding in October 2013, she now lives in Japan.)  Emily and I lived together after college and I remember coming home from work one day to find she and her brother Paul making bruschetta in the kitchen.  Not only was it the cutest thing that she was cooking with her little brother but it was absolutely delicious!  
   
2. The movie Julie & Julia.  I have a little obsession with Julia Child that all started with this movie.  There are very few movies that I'll watch more than once and this is one of them.  When I need motivation, I watch this movie.  In turn, when I watch this movie, I always crave bruschetta...and chocolate cream pie but we'll leave that for another day. 
   
3. Breakthrough.  My husband hates fresh tomatoes.  He avoids them at all cost.  He takes them off his salad at a restaurant and slides them onto my plate.  Despite this hatred of tomatoes, he devours bruschetta.  He even sings a little song "I love bruschetta..." and does a little jig as he eats it.  It's the funniest thing.
4. Blank.  To be honest, I started this blog several days ago and now I can't remember the last thing that comes to mind when I think of bruschetta.  I'll let you know if it comes back to me.

Bruschetta is a no rules kind of dish.  I find comfort in a recipe and usually follow them to a T but not with bruschetta.  All you need to know are the ingredients and then you can make it what you want.  

Ingredients:

• Fresh Tomatoes (whatever type is on sale)
• Fresh Basil
• Fresh Garlic
• Cheese (Feta, Parmesan, whatever floats your boat)
• Olive Oil
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Salt & Pepper
• French bread

The idea is to keep it fresh.  Fresh ingredients almost always make a recipe taste better and it's no exception with bruschetta.  If you've never made it before and need just a little more instruction, here's how I made the bruschetta you see in the picture above.

1. TOMATOES.  Chop 4-6 Roma tomates into 1/4-1/2 inch pieces.  Place the chopped tomatoes in a bowl and drain any residual juice.
2. BASIL. Chop approximately 10 large basil leaves and add to the chopped tomatoes. (Here is a good tutorial on how to chop fresh basil if you've never done it.)
3. GARLIC.  Mince 3 cloves of garlic (we're big fans of garlic so take it down to 1-2 cloves if you're not such a fan).  Heat a tablespoon of olive oil over medium heat and toast the minced garlic in the hot oil until brown.  This will take a couple of minutes; toss the garlic around every so often to toast it evenly.  Add to the tomatoes and basil.  *Toasting the garlic is not necessary, we just like the flavor.*
4. CHEESE.  Crumble feta cheese and add to the tomato mixture.  I used an entire 3.5oz package of feta cheese.
5. OLIVE OIL.  Drizzle in a tablespoon or two of extra virgin olive oil (no need to be precise, just do a couple of swirls around the bowl and call it good).
6. BALSAMIC VINEGAR.  Splash in a tablespoon or less; it completely depends on your preference.  Remember to start with very little; you can always add more, not take away.
7. SALT & PEPPER.  Sprinkle in a little at a time, stir and taste test to see if it needs more.
8. FRENCH BREAD.  Slice into 1/2 inch thick pieces and toast in hot olive oil/butter over medium heat.  It only takes 1-2 minutes on each side.  

Serving Suggestions:

• Bruschetta in a bowl with the toasted bread on the side.
• Pieces of toasted bread laid out on a plate with the bruschetta spooned on top (this can get a little messy but sometimes I think it makes for a better presentation).