One Local Summer - Week 1

I've decided to sign up for One Local Summer sponsored by Liz at Pocket Farm Each week for the next 10 weeks, I need to make 1 dinner from local ingredients. Tonight was our first local dinner.

The dinner consisted of:

New York Strip, grass-fed, pastured beef from Rumbleway Farm - 25 miles

Asparagus and Royal Purple Beans sauted in butter and garlic

Asparagus - local farmstand - 10 miles

Beans - my garden - 0 miles

Garlic - Newark Natural Foods - 10 miles to store, not sure where garlic is from but the sign said local

Butter - not local

Sweet Potato Bread made by myself

Sweet potatoes - Newark Natural Foods, same as above

White Bread Flour - Daisy Flour, McGeary Organics, milled in Lancaster PA, wheat grown all over PA and surrounding states, I bought the flour at Rumbleway Farm, but it is about 60 miles to Lancaster

Butter - not local

Yeast - not local

My next major project is to find local butter and cheese. I did find local raw milk today, but I've never had raw milk so I'm not sure if I'm going to get it. The milk we drink now is grass-fed in Lancaster, PA.

iPhone

Maybe I'm just in a mood today, but this iPhone thing is really pissing me off! People have waited in line for over 24 hours, here in the rain, to pay over $500 for a studid phone. These are the same people who will say that organic food is too expensive and any environmentally friendly products cost too much. I'm just so dismayed by the priorities of the average American! The mayor of Philly has been in line since 4 am and the phones don't go on sale until 6 tonight. What type of message is that sending to the people of Philly? They showed 13 year old boys in line, where did they get the money for this thing? It is simply ridiculous in my opinion.

USDA comment period

The USDA has extended the comment period on allowing 38 new inorganic ingredients in foods labeled organic. These ingredients include intestinal casing from conventional raised animals to be used in "organic" sausage, and conventionally grown hops in "organic" beer. I feel this is a real attack on what organic means.

To read more about it: http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=11401

There is a form letter you can send on this page or you can send your own comments from this page: http://www.regulations.gov/fdmspublic/component/main the docket ID is: AMS-TM-07-0062

Butterfly garden

Here is what my butterfly garden looks like right now. The yarrow, butterfly weed, coneflower, bee balm and monarda are blooming right now. The sage is already done blooming. The Joe Pye Weed, goldenrod, milkweed, and sunflowers haven't bloomed yet. I saw a few gold finches fly in yesterday to enjoy the seeds of something. It is swarming with bees and I've seen many butterflies so far. UPDATE: I saw a hummingbird eating from the bee balm this evening!


Coneflower close up.
Monarda close up.

Butterfly weed Yarrow, it has purple and white flowers.

Bee balm

Solar cooker

Logan and I finally finished making our solar cooker. It is a box cooker from the book Cooking With Sunshine. It was pretty easy to make, it is basically 1 box inside another box with crumbled newspaper as insulation. We painted the outer box black and covered the inner box with foil. Logan had a lot of fun painting the glue onto the box, smoothing the foil down, and then painting the outer box black.



We cooked for the first time in it yesterday. Here is the completed cooker with the pot in it. We made white rice for our first attempt since it is easy and cooks relatively quickly.


We left the pot outside for 4 hours and viola, rice! It tasted great and was so much fun. I highly recommend the book Cooking With Sunshine. It has easy to follow directions and a ton of great looking recipes. I look forward to playing with this more as the summer goes on.

Today's garden update

I hope I'm not boring everyone with these garden updates but I figured I could use this as my garden journal to keep track of what grows well, when I harvest etc.

Here are my potato plants. I can't believe how big they have gotten!


The potato plants are starting to bloom! They do have a pretty flower. I can't wait until it is covered in flowers.

Our first cucumber that is ready to harvest (I think). I don't remember cucumbers being prickly, it is just the strain I'm growing or do the prickers go away when it is ready to harvest?

The mini-pumpkins are blooming. I even see a little baby pumpkin starting to grow.

My 1 sweet potato slip is doing great! The others didn't make it so this is all I've got.

My brocolli is starting to look like brocolli. 1 head won't go far but it was an experiment.

My Cherokee Purple tomatoes are getting pretty big. Now I just have to wait for them to get ripe.


I've got other plants going too. The Amish Paste tomatoes also have tomatoes on them that are waiting to get ripe. I've been harvesting and using my herbs as we go. The strawberries are getting ripe and Mark is enjoying eating them right off the plant. The hot pepper plants are blooming so we should be getting peppers before too long. I'm starting to see the shoulders of the onion bulbs come up through the dirt, which is just cool. I'm having to water the tomatoes twice a day now, I'm so glad I have a rain barrel full of rain!

I harvested my first batch of purple beans and they were delicious. I didn't get a picture but will be harvesting more tonight or tomorrow so I will try to get a picture of those.

Sweet Potato Bread

I've been reading posts at A Year In Bread http://ayearinbread.earthandhearth.com/ and Beth posted a recipe for potato bread. We love potato bread here but we didn't have any potatoes. We did have some sweet potatoes that were getting close to going bad so I decided to use them instead. We also didn't have any bread flour so I used unbleached white flour instead. I also halfed the recipe since I only own 1 bread pan right now.

This bread was incredible! It was by far the best bread I've made and the loaf was gone that night. We've never eaten a whole loaf of bread in 1 night! It was sweet and moist, just perfect. I may try it with some whole wheat flour next time, or I may not mess with it and just leave it as it is. I would highly recommend making this bread. And it was one of the easier one's I've made.

Sweet Potato Bread (The recipe as I ended up doing it, you can find the original recipe at A Year in Bread)

water - 1 cup
Unbleached white flour - 2 3/4 cup
Instant Yeast - 1 tsp
mashed sweet potatoes - 3/4 cup
softened butter - 1 tablespoons
Unbleached white flour - 1/2 cup
salt 1/2 TBS

I peeled and boiled the sweet potatoes until they were falling apart and then I mashed them with a fork. My cup of water came from the pot I boiled the sweet potatoes in.

In mixing bowl, combine water, potatoes, yeast and 2 3/4 cups flour and mix until well combined. Add the butter and mix until it is integrated into dough. The dough will still be very soft. Cover and let rest on the counter for 20 minutes.

Add the salt to the dough and spread the 1/2 cup flour on the counter and knead the dough for 4-5 minutes, adding more flour if needed. Roll the dough in flour, put it in a clean bowl, cover and let rise until doubled in bulk (about an hour).Turn the dough out on a lightly floured counter and shape the loaf. Grease the loaf pan. Put the shaped loaf in the pan and let rise until doubled in bulk (about an hour).Preheat oven to 375°f . Bake bread for 35 minutes or until golden brown (~195°f). Turn out of pan onto cooling rack for at least an hour.

Both of my rises took less than an hour (about 35 minutes) but it was 85 in the house. We also didn't let the bread cool an hour before eating. We couldn't wait that long.