Robin's Blue Eggs

The chives I planted last year in a small pot on the deck are a good six inches high already and I'm remembering advice from my sister-in-law to wait til they've flowered and then chop them off to about an inch high.  The first year I tried to just clip what I needed when but now know they need to be harvested in full so they can regrow that same season.  Every plant, vegetable and flower comes with it's own set of rules which used to overwhelm me.  One thing gets snipped (parsely), the other left on the vine til the leaves have shriveled (pumpkins) and yet another picked immediately before the birds can get them (strawberries).  I'm picking up tips and tricks from numerous sources, considering a compost pile and yearning for a chicken coop (zoning?).  I wonder what my husband would say if I told him I wanted chickens.  "No rooster," would probably be his response.  He's gotten used to my cockamamie ideas over the years - allowing me the freedom to play while supressing a small amused smile.  He's tried everything I've put on a plate for him - maybe not finishing the meal but giving it a good college try.  I take credit for his recent clean bill of health from the doctor due to organic and as close to raw food as is appealing to me.  Throwing local and in season into the mix has strained the mealtime mood recently because there's not much on the plate right now.  Today I hunt for locally sourced meat - beef, fowl, fish, pork.  The last few farmstand visits, however, have taught me to let my fingers do the walking first.  That proves much easier than I thought - the Connecticut Department of Agriculture has a complete listing by county of all meat producers in Connecticut.  Great! - the first site I land on produces heritage turkeys and yes, I can buy them directly from the farm.   Okay, well, I can chase one of those down on the side of the road on my way home from Skylar's Tae Kwon Do class.  Not that I want to - but yes, turkey definitely seems to be local and that certainly takes care of next Thanksgiving!  I find veal, lamb, Cornish rock chickens, pork, natural pasture raised dry aged beef, sausage - and even blue eggs.  Blue eggs?  Grabbing the keys - I gotta find out more about that!

I want to be Laura Ingalls

I want to be Laura Ingalls - or better yet, her husband Almanzo Wilder as he was as a boy in northern New York State.   Life was simple but more importantly, eating was pure.  The sheer simplicity of living off the land, enjoying the sweetness of sugared off maple syrup - eating as much pumpkin pie as you can hold in your belly.  As I read the "Little House" series to my daughter each night, my mouth waters not only at the descriptions of family food and meals, but also at the verbal illustrations of the painstaking process of growing those foods.  How to raise a milk fed pumpkin, the exact placement of seed for carrots or corn.  It's alluring and nostalgic and - well - ordinary.  Seems we've come so far from the earth with our technology and readily available shelf food that we've become bored with the extraordinary wonders of progress.  The ordinary life of Almanzo Wilder seems very romantic to me here on my little patch of ground in my little patch of a house.  True, life was harsh then too - winters exceedingly colder than anything I've ever experienced - and extended days of hard manual labor.  But the smell of warm wheat drying on the barn floor - or the delight on your tongue of wild wintergreen berries buried in snow on the south facing slope of a forest hill in late winter seem extraordinary to me now.  Cooking was straightforward but delish - I'd love to be in that kitchen and cellar - smelling the smells and tasting the tastes.  A quick search on Amazon and Bam! there I am - The Little House Cookbook -place in cart, enter credit card information, choose shipping method and in a few days I'll be cooking circa 1866.  Could be just the way to learn to eat as my great-grandmother ate - that is my quest after all isn't it?  Funny how our fast-paced complex world of technology can so easily summon the simpler, slower past.

Grow, swap, eat

The before shot - what a mess!

Jersey garden plan

It’s easy to bite off more than I can chew playing around with Garden Minder and planning my summer bounty.  I did my best to restrain myself considering availability of equipment, time management, and growing zone.  The app made it easy to create my gardens in my mind but the app won’t do the work for me – just remind me what work I need to do.  So I already have a list of what needs to happen this week – let’s see how I do in getting it done.  I’ve also laid out a meal plan for the week trying to include as much of what I think should be available locally but filling in with organic and fresh from elsewhere for now.    I realize it will be a lot of good, hard work over the spring and summer to see results from the garden.  We should be eating pretty darn well by summer, though, if all goes as planned.  My concern is what to do once the garden is no longer yielding a crop.  Where will my veggies come from then?  I remember Grandma Emily canning and preserving many things when I was a child and she even taught me how to make strawberry jam albeit with a truckload of white sugar.   I tried canning tomatoes from last year’s garden but not sure I want to be opening those jars at this point – they look more like a science experiment at this point!  I figure a few classes in canning and preserving won’t hurt and will most likely be a lot of fun.  Lucky for me, Sport Hill Farm up the road offers just that during the summer.  (Note to self:  make room in summer schedule for canning classes.)  If I don’t yield enough for canning and preserving to last the winter months I can always hit the From Scratch Club swap – a homemade locally grown food exchange party.  I haven’t seen or heard of any in the immediate area but maybe by then I’ll organize my own!  If all else fails maybe I can swap with Aldo’s wife Edelweis – she canned 100 jars of tomatoes last summer.  I’m beginning to see many options as long as I plan ahead.  I’ll hit the farm stands again today to see if they’ve got anything new and make a plan as to where I’ll be getting my vegetable plants since seed starting is not on the agenda for me just yet (next year).   Planning, organizing, executing, working, sharing – I knew all those years in Girl Scouts would come in handy someday!

There's an app for that!

Making a plan has never been my problem - sticking to it? - well now there's the rub a dub dub.  I spent most of yesterday surveying, measuring, clearing out old vines, leaves and plant matter from last year's garden.  Taking before pictures, comparing with Aldo's clean, trim, thriving colony of plant life and plotting a tract for my garden's expansion made all the more easier by Garden Minder - a new mobile app by Gardener's Supply that helps you grow a better garden and learn as you go.  Now I can take my garden with me wherever I go, get alerts, reminders and how to's.  All those questions I can't ask Grandma Emily or Nana anymore? -- answered!!   I laid out a diagram of what plants will go where and created an action plan for accomplishment.  What I forgot about was last night's dinner.  By the time the school bus rolled up depositing my 8 year old jumping bean into my arms I had done a week's worth of planning - and not a minute of execution.  Too late to try the farm stands again - whatever they had this morning will be gone now.  Too tired to battle the grocery - especially with the bundle of energy now circling my house on her go-kart.  I'm just back from a long weekend away so there are no fresh veggies in the house, no defrosting meat on the counter.  With a 5:00 doctor's appointment, arranging for pick up of the cranky car they towed away earlier, and having to meet my husband's train at 6:30 all looming before me, there's no time to make a slow food dinner that's been sourced less than 50 miles from my house.  Am I really back at square one?  I realize I need an everyday action plan for daily meals each week as well as a list of go-to meals fitting my requirements that can be rounded up in a pinch.  This time and attention to the quality of our meals is taking over my days.  There are other things to be done - cleaning, teaching, mothering, and oh yeah - my job.  Spring is here so that means much more outdoor work that needs to be done - how do I make it all mesh?  I figure the rest of today is about creating the diagram and action plans for everyday just I like I did for the garden which won't be giving me any returns for awhile yet.  I'll post all those tomorrow - I may not be curing cancer, but you know what?  Maybe in the long run..... I am.

Unexpected Inspiration

As the tow truck slowly backs up the driveway to cart away my husband’s persnickety BMW that almost left us stranded at LaGuardia Airport last night,  I realize I’ve succeeded in eating only one meal this week that was whole, fresh, organic, in season and local.  Every other meal sacrificed at least one of the above categories – even an amazing meal at the innovative new Seasons 52 on the rise in cities around the country could not deliver a meal that was inclusive of all of my requirements.  I gaze longingly at the peas and lettuce now starting to thrive in Aldo’s garden spurred on by this very early New England Spring.  Heavy set and hairy, clad in dirty jeans and a skullcap, Adam, the tow truck driver asks if that garden is mine.  “No”, I reply sullenly.   His response takes me by surprise.  “I hope to have one that size this year.”  Talk about a head turner.  Apparently,  the guy who has come to save my dead battery is now my garden hero.  He tells me of his test gardens last year of three 8x14 raised beds.  He tells me where to buy bulk vermiculite online – but watch out for the shipping.  He tells me how to keep the slugs from getting my purple cabbages this summer (cover the rim of your raised beds with copper or sandpaper).  Adam apparently tends the Garden of Eden.  He knows it all and robustly regales me with his life story of culinary school in Manhattan, starting seeds in his garage, picking bugs off the plants instead of spraying pesticide.  The wind has turned to the colder side today but the sun is out and Adam has inspired me to get out back and get my own garden going.  I won’t be starting seeds this year, and I won’t have any early peas or lettuce like Aldo– but I can get my hands in the dirt and get started.  Already I’m behind the ball, but today I’ve got nothing but time and sunshine.

Florida Oranges?

My eyes open wide as the produce clerk in the grocery tells me they have no Florida oranges-only California.  Seriously?  but I'm in Florida!!  "You must have something?" I say.   "Well we do have some bagged oranges at the back on that small display. "  Tucked out of sight like the relatives you never want your spouse to meet are the Florida oranges so prized for the juice I buy back in Connecticut.   "This is crazy ," I think to myself.  In the few days I've been focusing on eating fresh, local and in season I've realized you can't trust even the food that should be a no-brainer.   Does everything I put in the grocery cart have a carbon footprint the size of Texas?  I grew up in the Garden State where summer meant almost daily trips to the red top or green top market and definite pick your own visits to Russo's farm for strawberries, blueberries, peaches- you name it.  The only footprints of my childhood were the barefoot ones left in the soft sand of the orchard roads or the dirt paths of the strawberry fields.  But today those pick your own trips are scheduled activities like playdates or museum field trips.  Something's gotta change starting with getting my hands dirty again to clean up my plate.  We cultivated a small garden last summer mostly to introduce my then 7 year old to the world of gardening-a task I now realize was substantially insufficient- almost a play acting at gardening instead of the real thing.  Time to get my brother up here with his John Deere and tear up a much bigger patch of the back yard.  Watch out Aldo, game on!

Terminal Fishing

Third day in and I am already up against the "what to do when traveling" monster.   Pack a healthy snack/ lunch for the plane or take my chances en route?  I decide I've got nothing whole, fresh,  healthy and local to pack as we gobbled up all of the fresh greens from Sport Hill Farm at last night's dinner.  I can't even pack a sustainable water bottle from the filtered tap water because security will surely confiscate it at check-in thereby stripping me of my $20 BPA free Kleen Kanteen.   So at the terminal I buy the obligatory plastic bottle of SmartWater- yeah right.  Hmmmm- vapor distilled and purified.  Bottled in Whitestone NY?  Okay- well the water seems to be local - that's a start.  Strategically placed nearby I spy a small container with two freshly hard boiled eggs inside and above that a box of what looks to be some bright, colorful micro greens.  Wow, this airplane food is beginning to look a lot like last night's dinner save for the local fish.  I've had to sacrifice organic but I think I've done exceedingly well for Terminal B at La Guardia International. Settling in to my hamster cage that is seat 25A, I open the inflight magazine to page 45 and find my fish.  Seems there is a movement happening right in my  own backyard (Boston, Mass) to source local seafood for restaurants and markets directly from the boat - each individual fish complete with its own business card and QR code.  A quick scan of the code brings up Trace and Trust, an organization devoted to the traceability of seafood - a detailed account of when, where and how your fish was caught and transported, how much it weighs and who it was partying with last night (wink wink). I wonder if Trace and Trust has an application for tracking teenagers?;))

Where's the food?

So I'm already lost. I hit the road with the best of intentions and the best of moods in search of early spring bounty. But all I could find was a bag of fresh mixed greens and some farm fresh eggs. Not much of a meal if you ask me. Where are the last of the root vegetables? Maybe some early peas - something...anything, I've got a family to feed! I even found myself peering over the fence of Aldo's garden to see what he might have brewing -- nuthin'. I'm beginning to understand why my grandmother canned and preserved everything in sight summer and fall - so people had something to eat in early spring. Okay - so I should be able to find some local meat - chicken, pork, oh wait - fish! Yes, that must be the answer, a nice spring green salad with grilled fish and hard boiled egg. Now I see a meal starting to form. A visit to the fish market revealed some New England Cod and cherrystone clams. I'll take it! I'm realizing I just need to think differently and change my ideas of what makes a balanced diet. Nature provides what you need for your body, your climate, your season. Funny, I didn't even consider trying to look for local grain - I'm not sure we even grow that stuff here in Connecticut.

Week One - making a plan

WEEK ONE

I’m a yoga teacher and eat as whole, clean and healthy as I can but when life gets hectic, and fresh local produce gets scarce - how do I stay true to these principles?  I recently led a group of clients through a detox, cleanse workshop to help inspire these same ideals in my students.  Somehow, not a single one was able to stick to the program for even a few days.  Why?  Time crunch was one answer.  Lack of motivation, lack of knowledge, lack of recipes were some others.  So I thought - is it really that hard to stay local, fresh and organic all year long?  I’m about to find out.  As much as I eat fresh and organic - I have no idea how local my produce is all year.  So this being the first day of Spring I’m going to hit the farms stands (if any are open yet), try the farmer’s market (if I can find one yet), and research buying in on a CSA.  I take my planting cues from old man Aldo next door who cultivates a substantial garden all Spring and Summer.  I think we are about to become much better friends:)........