A Good Deed Well Done.

Phelan - blogger of A Homesteading Neophyte - has reached her goal in donations. She can keep her house! The donation button has been removed, so please ignore my shameless begging below. :) I can't describe the feeling of community I have right now, and I can't imagine how Phelan is feeling! Perhaps this is the very reason I am so obsessed with local, organic farming. Yes, it's more nutritious; yes, it's more sustainable; but it also creates a feeling of closeness to your fellow beings. A desire to reach out and help, no matter how little you might be able to contribute. To paraphrase the Dalai Lama, "A drop is only a drop, but little by little we will fill the bucket." Or something like that. Give me a break, I can't find it online!! But you get the gist. ;)

Shamelessly Begging.

I am an internet wanderer; Stumble is my bestest friend. Clicking through websites and blogs, I can discover and learn all sorts of nifty stuff. Today, my habit led me to a new blog: A Homesteading Neophyte. And this Homesteader is in trouble. Don't get me wrong, I'm not usually one to give anonymous strangers money over the internet. Too risky, I say! Too likely to be a scam! Here's why I think everyone should pitch in here, though: Her readers suggested the tip jar, so she's not phishing. Her posts are useful, so it would be a terrible waste of intellectual resources if she had to discontinue her blog. And, finally, she's living the dream. Out on the farm, working with animals, harvesting vegetables. Who doesn't want to support that?

No, wait, I have one more: Times are tough. Everyone's suffering, and things are probably only going to get tougher from here. With the internet, we can support those that have a similar goal, a familiar dream, no matter where they live. Why not utilize that resource?

Okay, I'm done. :) Don't feel guilty if you can't contribute - that's the beauty of the internet. It's anonymous!

I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date!

Ahhh, I love Alice in Wonderland. It's so... unintentionally creepy. I'll always think of the PC game Alice whenever I remember this beloved children's story. But I digress.

Last week, I spent the weekend in Lawrence. So... I cheated on the Dark Days Challenge. :( I'm not proud of it, but boy was it tasty. (I'm also horribly late, which is where the rabbit reference entered.) You see, we have this wonderful little place on Vermont St. called Local Burger, and it's exactly what it sounds like: Delicious local meats and cheeses (the veggies are, of course, only local when in season). I had a beef burger from Baldwin City, Kansas, with goat-milk feta cheese from Harrisburg, Missouri, on top. Scrumptious!! I will always recommend this restaurant to visitors passing through Kansas. It's definitely one of the best burgers in Lawrence, possibly in the whole state. And you don't even have to feel guilty about enjoying a nice dinner out. :)

Basil-rific!

On a whim, I decided to plant some basil last week. I had been perusing the produce section of my grocery store when I happened upon living basil from right here in the Midwest! Grown in a little town just over the border (Kansas territory - if you ever visit this area, make sure to ask about the rivalry between the two states. It's the stuff of legend.), it is 100% local. It has the potential to be even more local, too, since I could plant it right here in my apartment! Hopefully it will, if not thrive, at least not die over the winter. With a little luck, I'll have fresh basil at my fingertips whenever I need it. It's doing well so far - the stems are stiff, the leaves aren't falling off, and it's still as green as ever. I'm taking it as a good sign that my plant will live. Please, pray for my poor little basil plant, that it may survive the short, cold months to come and see the spring sunlight! And if anyone has any suggestions, let me know - I'm new to gardening and it's quite possible that this experiment will end in Plant Manslaughter. (Plantslaughter? I should suggest it to my attorney friends.)

I'm stuffed! Please, no more food.

This holiday season has been one of the busiest I've ever had. With my families, my boyfriend's families, and friends' dinner parties, we had five (count them - five) Thanksgivings to go to this year. Add to the frantic schedule the fact that I didn't have much left over from my trip to the farmer's market last week, and you've got yourself a sticky situation. How could I make a large enough side dish with the little I had for even one of these parties? Reluctantly, I settled on making a late lunch this Sunday for Paul and myself. I had purchased a couple round cuts of beef at the market, eggs, and a couple heads of cabbage, so I could at least do that.

A round cut of beef is notoriously tough - so much so that people usually use it to make jerky! Alas, I didn't have enough to make tasty strips of portable meat, so I settled on making the meat as tender as possible. The following are my gentle instructions for beating the crap out of tough meat: After letting it thaw overnight, cut the meat on both sides with a criss-cross pattern; it should look sort of like a tic-tac-toe table. This maximizes the surface area so that the marinade can get to as much of the meat as possible. Then use a tenderizer (gee, I wonder where it got its name?) to beat the meat into submission. Not too hard, though - you don't want it to be too thin - but a short/light-handed beating will help, well, tenderize it. Marinate it in a concoction of soy sauce, lemon juice, pepper, garlic, and pineapple juice for at least six hours (I did mine overnight). When you're ready to eat, broil the meat for a minute or two on each side, and it's done! I served mine with a sunny-side up egg on top, and the meat was tender and juicy and flavorful. Nothing like a filet, but tasty nonetheless. :) On the side, we had a simple vinegar coleslaw. Here's the recipe:

Two heads of cabbage (make them two different colors to jazz it up a bit)
One large carrot
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. celery seed
1 tsp. mustard seed
1 1/2 cups apple cider vinegar

Shred vegetables and mix them together in a bowl. Combine all other ingredients in a separate bowl; pour over vegetable mixture. Refrigerate for 24 hours before serving.

Dark Days: Week One

I know that it's only the first week of a very, very long challenge, but so far it's been relatively easy to obtain local food in my area. It seems that locavores in Kansas City are blessed with a winter farmer's market. I knew we had multiple summer markets, but winter?? It's too awesome to be true. Eggs, beef, lamb, end-of-season vegetables, greenhouse vegetables and more - all from different vendors, all under one roof. I purchased a dozen eggs and a basket of greenhouse tomatoes from a lovely woman with her own bit of land, some beautiful white radishes and arugula from a backyard garden, two small steaks from grass-finished cattle, and a couple heads of cabbage with which I plan to make cole slaw at some point. Everyone was so friendly as the crowd slowly packed its way into the room. I had a wonderful conversation on how to correctly prepare mustard greens. :)

This week, I settled on a local breakfast. I figured it would be a nice way to start my day. I wish I had a camera - I would provide pictures of how I used my bounty. It's broken, though, so you'll have to make due. I know you'll manage somehow. ;) I started by wilting some roughly chopped arugula in butter. As soon as it had turned that vivid Christmas green, I added the eggs, beaten with a bit of milk (also from a local Missouri farm). As they were just starting to firm up, I added bits of tomato. Salt, pepper, and some rooster sauce (none local) topped it all off. With it we had toast slathered with local clover-flavored honey.

As the months progress, I expect that meals will get more and more challenging, especially since I haven't saved anything from the summer. I'm grateful that there will be a local market open through at least part of this challenge, though. I'm glad to have the support system!

Why I am a Locavore: Part II

As you all remember from my first post in this series, the primary reason why I consider myself a locavore is nutrition. Local foods are simply bred more for their nutrients (and thus taste) than their industrialized counterparts. But there are also many other reasons why I have chosen this lifestyle. I'll try and limit this post to a single issue, with others to follow in the weeks to come.

What is my second biggest reason for choosing local food? Animal cruelty. It's a broad topic, so to narrow it down let's consider a single animal: The cow. The life of a typical industrial cow and that of a slow food cow are remarkably similar in their first six months of life: Both are born on wide-open prairies and raised on a nutritionally sound diet of their mothers' milk and, later, grass. At this point, though, they each take two very different paths. At six months, the industrial cow is shipped off to a feed lot, where for the next several months she is fed a diet of corn, grain and nondescript protein additives (from soy or, horrifyingly, ground up cattle/chickens). Ever wonder just why cattle so desperately need antibiotics today? This diet is the very reason. Since they never evolved to eat grain, it makes them extremely sick. They tend to develop a slimy layer of film across the liquid in their rumen (first stomach), which makes it hard to expel gas. Thus, they require a constant dose of antibiotics to stay "healthy" - if that word is even appropriate here. In extreme cases, the gas trapped in their rumens expands to such a degree that it is pushed up against their lungs and they literally suffocate.

A grass-finished cow, on the other hand, is eating exactly what she is supposed to eat where she is supposed to eat it. She lives longer, since it takes years for cattle to fully mature on grass. (Timeframe is one of the major reasons why cattle are fed corn - they are ready for slaughter several years ahead of their grass-fed brethren.) She is antibiotic and hormone free, since there is no need to protect against disease when cattle are naturally healthy. Furthermore, grass-fed cattle tend to contribute to large-scale poly-culture farms. The cattle come in and graze the grass; they leave behind cow patties, which fertilize the soil; the chickens come in afterwards and eat the larvae that grow in them, providing a natural curb on the insect population and a huge boost of protein to the chickens' diets; their eggshells are thus thicker and the yolks are a beautiful orange because of it. When the grass is ready again, the cattle come through once more and the cycle starts all over again. When they are finally ready to be eaten, their meat is significantly lower in bad fats since they spent years wandering around fields and eating healthy grass. It's also significantly higher in nutrients, like B vitamins.

Imagine that: What's good for the land is what's good for the animals, which is what's good for us. What more could we ask for?