With a broken camera (oh that fateful final “click!”), family visiting, and no internet at home, the time is ripe for a blog summer break!  Only for a week or so, and then we’ll be back.  In the meantime, pop over to www.localgrain.org to see a video of Ben and Seth cultivating the bean field with our horse Cole.  Also, sign-ups for the 2010 Pioneer Valley Heritage Grain CSA are now open, and you can print out the form!

We had a fabulous Field Day with Alan and got to see the spelt field just days before it will be harvested.  We’ll have photos and video up very soon from that Field Day.  Have I mentioned that we got a wonderful Sustainable Community Grant from New England Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education (NESARE)?  That’s part of what is making this whole year possible, especially this space here and our Field Days.   So thank you NESARE!

This week, Ella and I will be continuing a pilgrimage through Julia Child’s Art of French Cooking, a wonderfully spattered copy handed down from Ben’s mom.  I’m reading (and loving) Julia’s memoir My Life in France, so it’s only natural that I would cook from her.  Did you know she couldn’t cook a lick until she was in her thirties?

Why haven’t I used her recipes more before?  A mystery.  Last Sunday, with cherries from our Kitchen Garden CSA share, we made Cherry Clafoutis.  I’ve always wanted to like clafoutis, but it’s always seemed soggy and weird.  Not so when you make it at home!

Super easy – Clafoutis is basically a pancake batter without leavening, spread half in your buttered hot pan, dump on fruit (any fruit, not just cherries!), then top with remaining batter.  Put in oven.  Devour.

So until next week, folks.  We’ll be out in the fields, in the kitchen, in the lake, and knitting away as furiously as a squirrel gathering nuts.  (Seriously, I’ve got this shawl, this fall hat, this sweater, and more on the needles!  Apparently June tells my brain: prepare for the winter!)  Have a great week everyone!

This week, we’ve closed down Wheatberry, to train some awesome new staff, and to prep and plant beans for the CSA.  In case you were worried we were sitting around, here’s our morning in photos:

Meet Kara – new Wheatberry staff, and PVHG intern extraordinaire.  She can now add “rock picker” and “wheat trial manager” to her resume!

Have a great week, friends.

Last week we made the Rye Grits recipe from Lorna Sass’s Whole Grains Every Day Every Way (yes, I mention this book all the time.  That’s because she’s amazing, and one of the only resources that really talks about how to cook with whole grains, not just whole grain flour).  Anyhow, we made a lot of changes, enough that I feel confident calling the recipe below our own, adapted from hers.  I especially like this recipe, because eating rye berries whole or cracked is pretty unusual, but really delicious.  Enjoy!

(whole, uncooked rye berries – aren’t they beautiful?)

Savory Rye Grits

1/4 lb sausage or 1/4 lb bacon or 1/4 lb mushrooms (crimini, button, portabello . . .)

1 cup cracked rye (if you’re a member of our CSA, just pulse your rye in a blender or cuisinart a few times.  If you’re not a member, you may be able to find cracked rye at your local coop or health food store)

1 large onion, sliced

2 cloves chopped garlic

1/2 lb potatoes, grated (no peeling necessary!  Yukon Gold is a great choice)

1/2 tsp salt

2 tbsp finely chopped fresh parsley (optional)

1/2 cup grated cheddar cheese

Put a kettle of 3 cups water on to boil.

In a heavy-bottomed pot, brown your meat or mushrooms over medium-high heat.  If you’re using bacon, you don’t need any additional fat in the pan.  If you’ve chosen the sausage or mushrooms, add 2 tbsp butter or olive oil.  Brown for about 5 minutes, until meat is browned, or the mushrooms have softened.  Move the meat/mushrooms aside to a plate.

In the same pan (with the meat/mushroom drippings still inside), cook the onions until golden brown (10-15 minutes).  Set the onions aside with your meat/mushrooms.  Add the cracked rye to the pan and toast over medium heat, stirring, for 1 minute (it will become aromatic).  Stir in the garlic and cook another thirty seconds.

Turn off the heat and protect your hand from any potential spattering.  Pour 2 cups of boiling water into the cracked rye while stirring, being sure to scrape up anything stuck to the bottom of the pan.  Stir in the potatoes and salt.  Bring to a boil, cover, and reduce the heat to a simmer.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the potatoes and rye grits are tender, 10-15 minutes, and the water is absorbed.  (If the water is absorbed but they aren’t tender, add a few tbsp more water, but try not to stir too much – it will build gluten and make your grits gummy.)

Taste for seasoning, and add more salt or pepper if desired.  Turn off the heat, cover, and steam for 10 minutes.  Just before serving, stir in the onion, and meat/mushrooms.  Sprinkle with the fresh parsley (this really makes the flavor sparkle), and cheese if desired.  Delicious as a main course, or a side dish with eggs.

Bon Appetit!

]]> http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/04/20/rye-grits-recipe/feed/ 2 http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/02/09/pioneer-valley-heritage-grain-member-recipes/ http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/2010/02/09/pioneer-valley-heritage-grain-member-recipes/#comments Wed, 10 Feb 2010 01:22:58 +0000 adrie http://www.localgrain.org/fieldsandfire/?p=1239

Hello folks – wanted to share some links to some of our wonderful CSA members, many of whom have blogs where they’ll be posting recipes and photos of the delicious meals they make with their shares!

Leslie Cerier – local cookbook author and chef, holds cooking classes, and has many whole grain recipes in her book Going Wild in the Kitchen.  Check out her new blog at http://july22.wordpress.com/

Elspeth Hay – writer and radio show host on Cape Cod.  She interviewed me when she came to pick up her share, and you can listen to the interview here after Thursday.  Also, check out her blog Diary of a Locavore.

Jennifer Hartley – who recently made some amazingly looking local flour Tagliatelle, at her blog Scintillating Speck.

Amy Cotler – local cookbook author of The Locavore Way, and founder of Berkshire Grown, can be found at her Recipe Blog.

Darry and Kristi, the good folks at Boston Locavores.

If you’re a member with a blog where you’re sharing your local grain meals, and I left you off this list by accident – send me an email and let me know.  I’ll be creating a sidebar category for CSA member-blogs, so we can all keep an eye on all the delicious goodness!  And of course, we’ll continue to post lots of recipes right here.

Bon Appetit everyone!

In the nuttiness of this past week, I didn’t get a chance yet to post about my February pledge for the One Small Change Project.  (By the way, if you haven’t checked out the site, there is a lot of really amazing inspiration to be found by the over 200 participants!)

In January, I wanted to get cracking on some insulated curtains and draft snakes – and I did it!  I made two curtains (starting with the draftiest, north-facing windows in our most used rooms, kitchen and living room), and two draft snakes for the other living room windows, plus two almost-finished snakes for our bedroom.  I made the curtains with the outer layer of a thick, upholstery-weight fabric, wool quilt batting inside, and a pretty quilting-weight fabric for the inside (the side that faces the room). I have more to sew, for sure, but a good start.

(yeah, we really do need more insulation – this lazy Susan in our kitchen doubles as a root cellar!)

And now . . . February!  Goodbye to the grocery store. I actually hope to keep this going the whole year (and beyond!), but let’s start with a month.  I haven’t been to the store since we came home from Montreal in January.

First, why avoid the grocery store? There’s always the driving, which we obsessively try to avoid, other than our drive to work and back home (and that kills us – if you know of an affordable 30 acre farm biking distance to Wheatberry let me know!)  There’s the industrial food chain, which is our life’s work to avoid, and while our local coops do carry some local veggies, 90% of what’s inside comes from the factory system.

Also, lately, I had noticed a disturbing behavior developing with Ella in the store.  She was becoming obssessed with buying stuff.  Ack!  You may recall that we are not too keen on stuff. Walking through the grocery store with Ella, she was suddenly aware that everything there could, in theory, be purchased by us.  And she wanted it.  I was finding myself buying things I really didn’t want to buy (say, a juice box with a plastic straw wrapped in another plastic liner), because it was better than the candy bar she really wanted.  Ugh.  I was also finding myself buying things I didn’t really want or need.  Stores are, after all, set up to inspire these behaviors in us, and they do a good job.

Plus, now that we have locally grown grains, we actually don’t need anything from the store!

How are we doing it?  We have a winter (root vegetable) CSA share, we have a pantry bursting with our grain & bean CSA share, our local meat CSA, a pantry still heartily stocked with food we preserved from the summer (yay!  I am still humbled and amazed that we were able to do this), and we get milk and eggs from local farms.  What am I missing here?  We bring home supplies like baking soda, baking powder, vinegar, and recycled toilet paper from our bakery (although now I’m really contemplating the family cloth, thanks to Suzy).  We try to make our own vinegar, make or buy locally made soap, and we don’t really drink wine or beer except on very rare occasions.

I have certainly been tempted a few times already to go to the coop, to get some item that would be tasty (ice cream),  just to get out of the house, or to get something that seems like it would make dinner “easier.”  So far, I’ve resisted temptation, and each time, I’ve been relieved that I did.  Here’s wishing you luck with your own small changes in your lives!

Added on Feb 8:

I just wanted to say that I in no way mean this to seem as an attack on coops.  We love our local coop – we are, actually, dues-paying members.  If I didn’t have the option of ordering various goods bulk through the bakery, I would go the route of some of the families we know, who place bulk orders through the coop (a wonderful service they provide) every month or so.  It is the addictive nature of buying from stores that I am trying to break away from, and the purchasing of goods from the industrial system.

It’s always incredible to me how hard the world can be, and also, how incredibly beautiful.  How thoughtless we can be, and how kind.

This week has been filled with a broken tractor, broken huller, farm land negotiations, the mill getting stuck (but not, thankfully, actually broken!), scrambles to finish this year’s distributions and prepare for the coming season. .  .

On the other hand, one of our generous CSA members (and blog readers) left us a really sweet card and this amazing gift – a wonderful handmade bowl.

(and look what I found under all the melted snow – crisp green parsley!)

She said, “I figured if anyone would love a handmade, lopsided bowl, it would be you,” and I do.  It says to me “fill me with hot chocolate.”  And I say, Sure.  Also, we’ve been so touched by all your recent comments and emails – it is a true blessing to feel that we touch so many lives.  Thank you!

I managed to get these gifts in the mail for my mother (lucky for me sending late gifts is a family tradition).  I think she was maybe a little jealous of all the handmade aprons – so now she has her own, from this fun funky Alexander Henry fabric.  I got it at a local quilt shop that was closing, and at the time had no idea how I would use it.  There was just enough to make her requested apron and matching potholders, plus matching aprons for myself and Ella.  I winged the patterns – that’s one of my favorite things about making aprons.  They’re quick, easy, and wide open to interpretation.

And now – potholders!  These were super fun.  I started using Millie’s Pot Holders from Handmade Home, but found myself compelled to make square ones, and to use four layers of batting (two was too thin).  So I switched to a super easy version – sew three sides, flip right-side out, insert batting, sew up final seam, machine quilt.  I had never machine quilted before either, but it was fun (even if it’s a little wonky – I like it that way, gosh durn it).  Potholders are also a great way to use scraps of fabric you love, but only have a wee bit of.

It feels very full circle to me, to make kitchen accoutrements for the woman who first taught me how to cook.  And soon, hopefully, we’ll get a photo of three generations of us in the kitchen, with funky aprons for all.

Ok folks, for a refreshing change of pace let’s talk about food, shall we?  Excellent.

I’ve been diving into our grains and beans, and am really excited to share so many recipes with you over the coming months!  First up, the pudding with totally politically incorrect name  – Indian Pudding.  Call it Corn Maple Pudding if you prefer.  This recipe comes from the original American colonies, and they called it Indian Pudding because the Native Americans showed them how to plant corn (and therefore saved their lives, since this grain was totally crucial to the colonies avoiding total starvation).  I’ve wanted to try this for years, and with our own freshly ground dent corn from the share, there was no time to waste!

I adapted this recipe from another – the original included a lot of spices (I left them out to enjoy the flavor of the corn itself), and also raisins, which we’re avoiding for Ella’s teeth health(really wish I had read this article 2 1/2 years ago).  I think dried cranberries would be wonderful, and more true to the New England cuisine this recipe arises from.  This was super simple and delicious – we ate it with dinner, but it would also work well with breakfast or brunch.

Indian Pudding

5 1/2 cups milk

2/3 cup cornmeal (preferably freshly ground organic – the better the cornmeal, the better this dish will be!)

4 Tbsp butter

1/2 cup maple syrup (you could substitute honey or brown sugar, but the maple is awesome)

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup raisins or dried cranberries (optional)

Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.  Butter a small casserole dish.  Over medium heat warm milk in a saucepan, but don’t boil.  Slowly whisk in cornmeal, and continue to stir until mixture begins to thicken (5-10 minutes, our corn thickened more quickly than store-bought will).  Add remaining ingredients, and stir just until heated through.  Pour into casserole and bake two-three hours, until sides are golden brown (the dish hardens a bit as it cools).  Again, our corn cooked more quickly than store-bought will – if you’re a PVHG CSA member, it will probably take 2 hours.  Serve warm or cold.  Yogurt is a wonderful side with this, as is fruit or jam.

Enjoy!

(photo by Jim Sims)

Tis the season to be cleaning grains Fa la la la la la la la la

(photo by Ben Lester)

Don we now our gay apparel Fa la la la la la la la la

(photo by Seth Seeger – Ben is wearing a respirator here to keep the grain dust out of his lungs while hulling oats)

Thought you might like a peek at the work we’ve been up to.  When we haven’t been working like crazy at the Bakery and Granary, we’ve been enduring the bitter cold at home,

(photo by Jim Sims)

and working a little bit on this  . . .

(photos by Jim Sims)

(more soon)!

Happy Holidays everyone!

(photo by Jim Sims)

Ok, so maybe “let the craziness continue” would be more appropriate, but truly, this is crunch time folks!  This week we’re preparing for holiday baking at Wheatberry, doing our best to get as many CSA grain shares distributed as humanly possible before the holidays, and also .  . . trying to celebrate some holidays ourselves.  All this to say, I’ll probably be pretty quiet here this week.  But a few quickies before I disappear into the baking, grain bagging void.

All these lovely books from Chelsea Green Publishers are 15% off at Wheatberry for the holidays.  For the eco-minded, food lover, or gardener in your life.

Also, we have these beautiful mugs from Amherst potter Bob Greeney available, to drink your coffee from, and also to take home.  Locally made – he even uses local materials in the glazes.  Plus, of course, we have whole wheat flour grown in Hadley and milled in our own stone mill, and  gift certificates.  Shop local for your holidays!

I was hoping to make these cookies at Wheatberry this year as a holiday special, but it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.  We had these every Christmas at my house growing up – I think my grandmother brought them back from when she and her husband were stationed in England.  I’ve adapted it a bit for our family’s current diet (butter not shortening, and whole wheat flour instead of white). These have a beautiful pattern from being rolled in cinnamon sugar and are pretty scrumptious.

Here’s the recipe – from our table to yours.  Bon Appetit, and Joyeux Noel!

Snickerdoodles

(Yields about 5 dozen)

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 cup butter, softened

2 eggs

2 3/4 cups whole wheat flour

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

3 tbsp sugar

3 tsp ground cinnamon

Heat oven to 400 degrees F.  Cream together 1 1/2 cup sugar, butter, and eggs in a large bowl until thoroughly mixed.  Stir in flour, cream of tartar, baking soda, and salt.  Use a teaspoon to scoop out dough, and roll it between your palms to form small balls.

Mix remaining sugar and cinnamon together on a plate or shallow dish.  Roll balls in mixture.  Place balls about 2 inches apart on a cookie sheet (now we always use a Silpat, but I certainly didn’t have one growing up and these worked just fine).  Bake until set and lightly golden, 8-10 minutes.  Immediately remove from cookie sheets and cool.

“I knew it”, you’re thinking,” She’s finally cracked.  Now this crazy hippie want us to go out to the front lawn like rabbits and eat grass.”

Never fear, friends, I mean eat grass (and sunlight!) through the meat and dairy products you consume.  Meaning, make sure those animals ate grass, not corn and other industrial by-products.  If you’re eating meat from the grocery store, there’s a high chance that the meat you eat comes from animals who spent their life crammed together in knee-high manure, eating corn and other by-products (such as ground-up animal parts – this is where Mad Cow comes from folks, eating the brains of the same animal), not to mention all the hormones and antibiotics, which are contributing to a) early-onset puberty in children and b) more anitbiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.  Many of you know this, some of you may not.  See the books list at the bottom of the post if you want to learn more!

Basically, cows (and sheep and goats and horses) are all ruminants, and their digestive systems are meant to digest grass.  So why do industrial factory farms feed them corn?  The short answer is – because it’s cheap.  Corn grows in abundance in the Midwest, subsidized by cheap chemical fertilizers and fuel.  (Great explanation of how this came to be in Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma).  Corn is cheap, and land (which you need a lot of in order to graze cattle on grass) is generally not cheap.  So even though feeding cows corn makes them so sick that it’s necessary to give them all these antibiotics, it still comes out cheaper to pack them into tiny lots and give them corn.  It doesn’t take a huge leap to imagine how healthy it can be for us to eat the flesh of an animal raised in such an unnatural way.

Cole enjoying his dinner off of Molly’s back (our animals are 100% grass fed, if you’re wondering)

photo by Jeanine Dargis

On the other end of the spectrum, farmers such as the increasingly famous Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm in Virginia do graze their animals in a  traditional rotation.  Salatin actually considers himself to primarily be a grass farmer.  (By the way, Salatin will be giving the Keynote Address at the NOFA winter conference, where Ben will be giving a grain workshop – check it out!)  In our fair Valley, wonderful farms such as Wheelview Farm, Austin Brothers Farm, Mapleline Farm, Misty Brook Farm, Chase Hill Farm, and our beloved Chestnut Farms are all part of this return to grass fed meat and dairy farming.  And can I tell you a secret?

It tastes awesome.

If you’ve ever had wild venison or other wild game, then you have an idea of what meat is supposed to taste like.  Meat has flavor.  One amazing thing about eating meat with flavor, is that you don’t have such a need to consume massive quantities of it.  Americans eat a staggering amount of meat – some of us eat it three meals a day, most days of the week.  That adds up quick, when you understand how much feed goes into those animals (especially if the animals are grain-fed), and how much methane they produce (which is even more destructive to the atmosphere than carbon).   As I said in the original ten steps post, E! Magazine said recently that “livestock is a major player in climate change, accounting for 18 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions . . . more than the entire transportation system.”  In other words, how much meat we eat could have even more impact than how much we drive our cars.  Eating meat one less day a week reduces 1,000 miles of driving worth of CO2.

I’m a believer in robust, diverse farm systems that include animal husbandry.  But I think we currently have an excessive emphasis on meat production.  Of course we like how meat tastes – it’s potent, condensed energy, and for most of our history, we didn’t get a lot of it (just like sweets), so we crave it.  There’s a lot of indication that an excess of meat in our diets is not only unhealthy for the planet, it’s also unhealthy for us.  (For instance, read the meat chapter in Diet for a Dead Planet – very interesting data from countries where they had war-time rations and many modern health problems pretty much disappeared.)

In our household, here’s how this goes down.  I could be a pretty happy vegetarian, eating cheese and some rare treats of bacon and fish.  But Ben loves meat.  Loves it.  Our compromise is the Chestnut Farms Meat CSA.  We get 10 lbs of meat a month, and that’s what we eat.  We occasionally supplement with bacon from another local farm.  Meat usually isn’t the main feature of our meals, it’s a component.  So we’ll eat meat in a stew for example, or small lamb chops with hearty vegetable sides.  Several meals a week are vegetarian.  One thing I love about the csa is that there’s a clear limit to what we’ll consume.  When purchasing from a grocery store, it’s so easy to get more.  And then more next time.  And then some more.  It’s much easier to only have to use your willpower to make the decision once, than it is to make the decision every time (more on this in future posts). We have definitely found that, just like with eating more whole grains, eating less meat has a noticeably positive effect on our digestive systems.  When we eat meat several days in a row, we feel sick.

Also, I personally don’t eat meat when we eat out, unless it’s from a local, grass-fed source (this is nearly impossible to find, except at Wheatberry of course).  This can be hard to do, but I really don’t want to give my money to supporting a system that I think is gross and dangerous on so many levels. So, good luck to you, and come find out how delicious real meat can be!

Book Resources:

Diet for a Dead Planet: Big Business and the Coming Food Crisis by Christopher Cook – Ok, scary title, but this is the BEST explanation of our current system in my i.  More in-depth and broad than Pollan.

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan – Very good, a little too philosophical for my taste, but many folks loved this.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver

Diet for a Small Planet, by Francis Moore Lappe

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck

Movies:

The Future of Food – Very good look at GMOs

Food Inc – Great, features Joel Salatin among others!

King Corn