Day 4, Mourning the Tomato Plants

For breakfast this morning, my parents enjoyed some of the blueberry muffins I made yesterday. I wasn't feeling well, so I just ate the last of the yogurt we bought at Farmers and Artisans and two carrots from our CSA share.

For lunch, we had homemade salsa and organic blue corn chips bought at the Lexington Food Co-op. The tomatoes were homegrown, the sunflower seed oil (in place of olive oil) was bought at Farmers and Artisans, and the Italian peppers, jalepeno peppers, and onions were from our Thorpes CSA share. The chips obviously weren't local. However, the Locavore Challenge allows you to choose five non-local items that you can continue to consume throughout the month of September, known as Wild Card Items.

My dad's Wild Card Items are 1. fair-trade coffee, 2. peanuts, 3. lime, 4. tortilla chips, and 5. all-purpose flour. My mom's are 1. fair-trade tea, 2. granulated sugar, 3. lime, 4. tortilla chips, and 5. all-purpose flour. Mine are 1. lime, 2. tortilla chips, and 3. all-purpose flour. I haven't chose a forth and fifth Wild Card Item because I can't seem to come up with anything else non-local that I just can't live without for a month.

Dinner was simple, just boiled potatoes from our CSA share, boiled green beens from our CSA share, local corn on the cob, and some of my homemade whole wheat rolls. All this was served with milk and butter bought at Farmers and Artisans.

It was a bit of a sad day. Since Sunday, I've realized that formerly glorious tomatoes were being killed by something. I've been going out every day and snapping off dying leaves and stems, trying to little avail to save the healthy part of the plants. Today while we were in the garden together, my dad and I decided that the problem was probably late blight, though I'm going to bring part of a blighted plant to our local Cornell Cooperative Extension office on Tuesday to see if anyone can tell me if I've diagnosed the problem correctly.

Anyways, we broke and snipped so many sickened parts of my tomato plants today, and I even ended pulling out out a practically dead plant. The sight that we were left was rather pathetic. Just three weeks ago my dad and I spent the some time catching up on some tying up of our tomato plants. The end result was "The Great Wall of Tomato". The Great Wall of Tomato is now just a shadow of its former self.

As my dad pointed out, the tomato plants probably only had another couple of weeks of bearing left, and we still should get most of the tomatoes we would have from the still-living plants. However, they were such vibrant, healthy plants, the joy of my garden, for so long. It breaks my heart to see them dying.

Day 3, Feasting on... Pizza?

Right now, I'm sorely tempted to throw my dad's box of Grapenuts out. Despite my mother's offer to make him blueberry muffins for breakfast and my offer last night to wake up early to make peach smoothies for breakfast, he insisted that these options would take "too long" and ate Grapenuts again for breakfast. That man makes me so mad!

Breakfast for my mom and I, on the other hand, was lovely and local. I made peach smoothies for us using just the local milk and yogurt we'd bought yesterday at Farmers and Artisans and the peaches we'd bought at Thorpes. The peaches were so ripe and juicy that I didn't even have to use any kind of sweetener! I love to make smoothies from whatever fruit is in season, like strawberries, raspberries, and blueberries. However, I've peaches make the best smoothies, probably because good ones are so juicy.

Later in the morning, I made blueberry muffins from grain bought at Thorpes, sunflower seed oil, homemade maple syrup, eggs from my flock of pastured laying hens, and blueberries bought at The Country Cupboard.

For lunch, my mom and I each had a couple of the whole wheat rolls I'd made from grain bought at Thorpes plus a little conventional all-purpose flour, milk and butter bought at Farmers and Artisans, homemade maple syrup, and eggs from my hens. Accompanying the meal was milk bought at Farmers and Artisans and grapes bought at Thorpes.

I believe my dad's lunch consisted of a couple of my rolls, some salad from local vegetables, and some of the local fruit we bought yesterday.

Dinner was truly the highlight of the day when it came to local eating, with a simple meal of homemade pizza and grape juice bought at the Pride of New York Store at the New York State Fair. In the crust was grain bought at Thorpes, sunflower seed oil bought at Farmers and Artisans, and homemade maple syrup. (There was also obviously water and yeast, the latter of which was, of course, not local.) For the sauce, I used butter bought at Farmers and Artisans, garlic and basil from my Thorpes CSA share, and a mix of homegrown and Thorpes tomatoes. I topped it all off with locally produced but probably not locally sourced mozzerella cheese from The Marilla Country Store and some grated Mediterranean (summer) squash from my Thorpes CSA share.

In my mind, there are few better meals than homemade pizza. It's a rather simple meal, but a hearty, chewy crust like mine and some good fresh tomato sauce, it simply tastes so good! It was a bit of a rough evening before dinner, but by the time we all finished our first slice of pizza, we were talking, joking, and laughing together, all hard feelings at least temporarily put at bay.

Good food truly has the power to bring people together with joy. It's probably one reason that people in agricultural societies all over the world traditionally had festivals at harvest-time!

~*~

Peach Smoothies

2-4 peaches, the riper the better

1 cup yogurt

1 cup milk

sugar or other sweetener to taste

Chop up two peaches and blend with the milk and yogurt. Taste. If not flavorful or sweet enough, add more chopped peached. Continue process until you're satisfied or until all the peach is used up. If still not sweet enough with four peaches, add a little sweetener.

Makes 2 to 4 servings

Blueberry Muffins

(modified in small ways from a Betty Crocker recipe)

1 egg

1/3 cup butter or oil

1/4 maple syrup

3/4 cup milk

2 cups flour*

1 tablespoon baking powder

1 cup blueberries

Preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Grease a muffin tin.

Beat egg in a large bowl, then other wet ingredients. Mix together dry ingredients in a medium bowl. Stir dry ingredients into wet ones. Add blueberries.

Pour batter into muffin tin and bake for 20 minutes.

*Muffins are pretty forgiving things. They usually taste good no matter what percentage of the flour is all purpose and what percentage is whole wheat. In addition, if you grind your own, the muffins taste good no matter what combination of hard red and soft what you use. I love soft, crumbly muffins, so I tend to use a lot of soft white.

Dinner Rolls

(modified in small ways from a recipe from Great Whole Wheat Breads by Beatrice Ojakangas)

1 cup very warm water

2 tablespoons active dry yeast

2 eggs, beaten

1 cup scalded milk, cooled

1/2 cup maple syrup

2/3 cup melted butter or oil

4 cups whole wheat flour, preferably from hard red wheat

2 cups or more all purpose flour or whole wheat flour, preferably from soft white wheat

In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Let sit five minutes, then stir in other wet ingredients. Gradually start adding in flour. Once most of the flour is added, knead for five minutes, adding in more flour as needed to make the dough of the right consistency.

Cover with a dish towel and put in a warm, draft-free place for an hour and a half or so to rise. Then punch down, divide into sixteen to twenty-four balls, and put onto two greased cookie sheets. Cover and let rise for forty-five minutes to an hour.

Towards the end of the second rise, preheat oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit. Once preheated, put the rolls in and let bake until they begin to brown, about 15 minutes.

Pizza Crust

(modified in small ways from a Betty Crocker recipe)

1 cup warm water

1 tablespoon active dry yeast

1 teaspoon maple syrup or other sweetener

2 tablespoons butter or oil

1 cup all purpose flour

1 and 1/2 cup whole wheat flour, preferably from soft white wheat

In a medium to large sized bowl, dissolve the yeast in the warm water. Add maple syrup and oil. Gradually stir in flour. Knead for a couple of minutes, then let sit for five minutes before rolling out.

Makes one standard-sized pizza crust.

Day 2, The Transition to Locavorism

Just back from the state fair, we still weren't too prepared to make a local breakfast today. My dad, who's usually at work before I'm awake, ended up eating Grapenuts cereal since I wasn't around to stop him. He also made his usual lunch, which consisted of peanut butter on rye bread (more on that below) and a salad from local vegetables.

My mom and I were planning on having the rest of the zucchini bread, but apparently being toted around all day in the hot sun did it no favors and it tasted atrocious this morning. My mom and I ended up just having blueberries, although we really could have had blueberry muffins if I weren't so slow to get started this morning.

For lunch, my mom and I had carrot sticks and boiled potatoes. Both the potatoes and carrots were from our CSA, Thorpes. She also ate what was left of the lamb from her dinner last night and some leftover cucumber salad I'd made from cucumbers from a friend's garden earlier this week.

For dinner, my parents had BLT's. The bacon was from Federal Meats, so it was probably local but conventionally produced. The lettuce was purchased at the East Aurora Farmers' Market. The tomatoes came from Thorpes. The bread locally made rye, though the ingredients were probably not locally sourced. Both the bread and the bacon was left over from before the Locavore Challenge began, and thus needed to be consumed while it was still good.

We all also had for dinner pesto on pasta that we bought at Farmers and Artisans earlier in the day. I'd made and frozen the pesto a couple of weeks ago from basil and parsley from the East Aurora Farmers' Market and garlic from Thorpes. We topped off our pesto and pasta with a bit of ricotta that needed to be used up, again locally made but possibly not from local sources.

We also got a lot of local food today. We went to The Country Cupboard, a natural foods store in East Aurora, for bluberries; Thorpes Farm near East Aurora, where we picked up our CSA vegetable share and also purchased some low spray fruit -- Ginger Gold apples, seeded grapes, and peaches; and Farmers and Artisans, a local foods store in Williamsville.

At Farmers and Artisans, we purchased Ithaca Milk Co. 1% milk from the Fingerlakes region, Meadow Creek Farm yogurt from Interlaken, organic sunflower oil, dark red kidney beans from the Fingerlakes region, and Flour City Pasta's Emmer-Lina Fettucini from Fairport. We'll probably being going back soon, since we've finished the pasta and already used a significant portion of the butter, milk, and yogurt, and probably would like to try one or two of the local cheeses available at Farmers and Artisans.

The service was excellent there, with one person (the owner or manager, perhaps) spending plenty of time with my mother explaining the properties of various oils. Grape seed oil is wonderful for sauteeing vegetables, but because of its high price it should be used sparingly. Sunflower seed oil can be used for the same purposed as grape seed oil and is much cheaper. Butternut squash seed oil is supposed to be wonderful to use in salads. The man who talked with my mother also looked over the list of suggested items for the pantry for the Locavore Challenge from NOFA-NY, and told us that he may be getting more items on the list, including oats and barley, later this month or this fall.

It was another day where we didn't eat 100% local. I've decided instead of letting this depress or upset me, I must remind myself that I am part of a family, which entails compromising sometimes. Hopefully, we'll soon be pure locavores, and I'll be able to describe the first few days of September as the transition into locavorism.

Day 1, The State Fair Situation

It's been a tough first day of the Locavore Challenge. With the experience of half a decade of CSA membership, I thought I could make it through at least the first couple of weeks without having too many problems. What I wasn't counting on was State Fair.

Several months ago, I found out that I had been chosen to represent Erie County in the speech section of the state level of 4-H Public Presentations, held at the New York State Fair. My parents and I made tentative plans to take the train to the fair the night before and stay in the 4-H dorm there the night before so we could see a bit of the fair while we were there. It was only a few days ago that we realized that our trip to the State Fair coincided with the first day of the Locavore Challenge!

Because of our ill-preparedness, this morning found us eating breakfast at one of the few food stands selling breakfast at a little past seven in the morning. Of course there was no assurance that the food was from New York state, and I know for a fact that the butter was from Wisconsin (or at least packaged there).

I felt like we failed the Locavore Challenge on our first meal! However, I reminded myself that one meal out of ninety doesn't make that much of a difference. Besides, it's called the Locavore Challenge, not the Locavore Test for a reason. Nobody's going to give you a failing grade but yourself, and I decided to let myself off for extenuating circumstances.

The rest of the day went much better. At lunch, we had the zucchini bread I'd made a couple of days ago and grape juice from the Growers' Co-op Grape Juice Co. that we bought in the otherwise-disappointing Pride of New York store at the fair. It's made in Western New York from Western New York Concord grapes. The juice was delicious, much better than Welch's, and we ended up buying some concentrate to bring home.

I gave my speech "Why Pastured?", about the advantages of meat, milk, and eggs from animals on pasture, in late afternoon. We then went back to the Pride of New York store on the opposite side of the fairgrounds and got some New York state ice cream, which was disappointingly boring. We then headed back to the 4-H Youth Building, where I found out that of a possible bronze, silver, or gold seal, based on my score of 178 points out of 200, I qualified for a gold seal. Thank you for bearing with me through my bragging, readers!

After finding out my score, we were ready to leave the fair. Actually, my dad and I would have been perfectly content to leave by nine this morning if it hadn't been for my speech. I found the fair thoroughly unenjoyable, a celebration consumerism and the worst aspects of the American diet. (Would you like your PB&J, your pickle, or you cheesecake fried, anyone?) At every turn was somebody trying to sell you anything from a new Toyota car to "ice cold" bottled water that had clearly been sitting out in the sun for who knows how long. It's rather sad what our fairs, which started out as a celebration of the agricultural achievements of an area, have become.

Anyhow, after leaving the fair, we went out to dinner at The Restaurant at Elderberry Pond. It's a restaurant on an organic farm near Auburn that sources much of its ingredients from the farm it's located on and other local sustainable farms. We picked up the flier for it at the NOFA-NY winter conference a couple of years ago, and have been wanting to go ever since.

We weren't disappointed! We sat outside on the patio, where there was a view of a maple grove with the farm's apple orchard somewhat visible through the maple trees. We all had apple cider, made right at the farm from their own heirloom apples, to drink. It tasted just like biting into an apple, crisp burst of flavor from the skin and all. Since I gulped mine down so fast, I also ended up ordering some milk, which I think was organic. My dad and I each had a bowl of the potato leak soup, which tasted nice and had a wonderful smooth, rich consistency. For our main dish, I had the pizza of the day with heirloom tomato sauce from the farm, my dad had heirloom tomato salad, and my mom had lamb. We all greatly enjoyed our food. My parents agreed that the flavors of their dishes blended beautifully together, and my mother especially enjoyed her potatoes.

We're hoping to go back to Elderberry Pond as the fall wears on. We'd like to try some of their various heirloom apple varieties in their farm store to help us decide which varieties to buy when we get some apple trees of our own.

~*~

Here's the recipe for my zucchini bread. It was originally from the book that came along with our Cuisinart food processor. However, I've modified it heavily so it is healthier and can be made without the aid of a food processor.

10 ounces of zucchini or other summer squash*

3 cup whole wheat flour**

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon allspice

3/4 teaspoon cloves

3/4 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup maple syrup

3 large eggs

1 cup apple sauce*** or melted butter

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and place rack in the middle. Butter and flour two 4-cup loaf pans.

Grate the zucchini or summer squash. Set it aside.

Mix dry ingredients in a medium-sized bowl. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat eggs together. Stir in maple syrup and apple sauce or butter.

After liquid mixture is thoroughly mixed, stir in dry mixture. Once the batter is smooth, stir in grated zucchini.

Divide batter equally between prepared pans and bake for about 50 minutes, or unitl a cake tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool on wire rack.

*10 ounces of zucchini is about two small zucchini or one large one.

**If you grind your own whole wheat flour, the best combination for zucchini bread is two parts soft white grain and one part hard red grain.

***Apple sauce can easily be made from local apples. I'll try to include some instructions in the coming days on this blog.