We had the muffins I made late last night for breakfast this morning. If it can be avoided, don't cook when you're exhausted. The food that results sometimes just isn't worth the effort. By the time I made the muffins last night, I couldn't have cared less how they turned out. I just wanted to be done so I could go to bed (as you may have picked up from yesterday's post). I knew that the muffin batter seemed too thick, but I just threw them in the oven anyways. The result actually could have been worse, but the muffins texture was rather lumpy and weird.
After a busy morning, my mom and I finally managed to settle down for lunch around 2:00 p.m. We had boiled potatoes from my garden, sauteed okra from my garden with Indian spices, and salad made from farmers' market lettuce, farm stand cucumber, and garden carrots. My mom topped her salad with tomato from my garden, while I used two of my Wild Card items, olive and and lemon, to make a dressing for my salad.
Later in the afternoon, we picked up our fruit share at Thorpes, which consisted of plums, two kinds of apples, peaches, and red raspberries. I must admit that I've already managed to eat most of the raspberries, as they're my favorite fruit -- along with strawberries, peaches, and apples. I have a lot of trouble deciding which fruit I like the very best! I think I'm a big part of the reason our fruit share usually only lasts about half a week.
After going to Thorpes, I started making tomato sauce for dinner. When my dad got home from work, he took over supervising the sauce's simmer, while my mom and I went to Five Points Bakery to get rolled oats.
We went through way too much butter last September during the Locavore Challenge, and my parents and I resolved we'd be much better about our butter consumption this time around. I simply couldn't figure out where all the butter had gone. I quickly figured it out last night as I melted half a cup of butter for a recipe that made twelve muffins! It was obvious that having baked goods for breakfast simply wouldn't be acceptable if we wanted to limit our butter consumption.
So we went in search of rolled oats with a real sense of urgency. Unfortunately, the list of products for sale on the website of Five Points Bakery apparently hasn't been updated lately, because the woman working there told us that they'd stopped selling rolled oats a while back.
Besides the fact that I really wanted rolled oats, I was disappointed because I'd been excited about the opportunity to support Five Points Bakery if we were to start getting our oats there. Five Points is located in a poor neighborhood on the West Side of Buffalo, and is certainly the only business of its kind in the area. It shares a building with Urban Roots, a small community garden center that sells plants and gardening from its indoor space and neighboring lot, which it keeps up beautifully. Between the bakery, garden center, and the nearby urban farm of the Massachusetts Avenue Project, the food enterprises give the neighborhood a unique and, I believe, hopeful feel.
Thankfully, our trip there wasn't for naught. They did have four or five packages of Flour City pasta, the local pasta that Farmers and Artisans said they wouldn't have in stock for weeks. We bought three packages of the pasta at Five Points, but I'm afraid we should have taken them all. The woman at there said they probably wouldn't be selling the Flour City pasta for much longer, because people hadn't been buying it. I suspect that when we run out of pasta, Flour City will have stopped stocking it and Farmers and Artisans won't have any more in yet.
Because we were so close to the Lexington Food Co-op (located in the more upscale, trendy Elmwood neighborhood of Buffalo), we stopped in there to check for local foods. I'd remembered how disappointed I'd been with their local selection (or lack thereof) when we'd been shopping for the Locavore Challenge last year, so I was prepared for disappointment.
Walking through their produce section when we entered the store, the only local organic items I noticed were two kinds of squash and red leaf lettuce. Seriously? Western New York has is chock full of farms (Genesee County, I believe, has either the most farms or the most farm land in the state) and the ever-expanding number of organic farms, but that's all the local organic produce the Lexington Food Co-op could locate? I blood practically boiled as I walked past (non-local) cabbage wrapped in plastic while thinking about all the beautiful cabbage I'd seen in local fields and at the East Aurora Farmers' Market.
My mom inquired about origin of the rolled oats that were for sale, but it turns out they came from Saskatuen (a Great Plains province of Canada). In the process of finding out about the oats, she talked to a couple of employees of Lexington about the Locavore Challenge. Neither of them was very knowledgeable about it, though. The Locavore Challenge is advertised at Lexington, and in an apparent effort to appeal to any shoppers from the challenge, the store has set up a shelf full of Cayuga Organics products under a large sign about buying local food. We our pancakes from scratch, grind our own polenta, and have plenty of beans, so we didn't have a need purchase any of those products. Still, the beans were a better price than Farmers and Artisans, so we may end up buying beans at Lexington next time we need them. My mom did end up purchasing Equal Exchange Organic Darjeeling tea, because she didn't like the flavor of the fair trade tea she'd purchased at the supermarket yesterday.
After surveying the store, my mom came to a conclusion with which I wholeheartedly agree: Lexington doesn't stock food for us. We just don't eat much in the way of processed foods, which Lexington devotes a majority of its store for us. Just because TV dinner is "Certified Organic!" or "Natural!" doesn't make me think it's good for me, or even make it appealing in any other way.
On the way home, my mom remarked that it seemed like we were the only people doing the Locavore Challenge. I countered that there were 5,000 who did it last year, but there probably wouldn't be too many people in WNY doing it if the participants are spread throughout the state proportionately.
There is at least one other local person doing it, as I've discovered through the NOFA-NY website. Annie at The Land of Peapodriot is doing it, and on a much tighter budget than my family. It's pretty humbling to read her blog, which I highly recommend doing.
Once home, I scrambled to finish dinner. I made whole wheat pizza dough (local ingredients Thorpes whole wheat and homemade maple syrup, along with exception items of yeast and Tuscany on Main olive oil), which my mom rolled out while I struggled to grate the mozarella. Our friend with the goats had made it earlier and frozen it, and she said she'd heard it's easier to grate frozen. It isn't. The coldness is hard on the hands the the hardness makes grating slow going. I wouldn't mind using frozen mozarella on pizza again, but I'd definitely let it thaw before grating.
I digress. Anyways, I assembled the pizza, threw it in the oven, and added some leftover fried eggplant part way through the baking. Served with goats milk from our friend, it was a good dinner. My dad loved the eggplant topping, which my mom and I were less fond of. Still, it was a perfectly fine way to use up the leftover eggplant.
I'm disappointed that I didn't get any blueberry or apple done today, and I've got so many other things I've got to do tomorrow that fruit-picking probably won't happen. My mom and I did make it to Thorpes, Five Points Bakery, and Lexington Food Co-op, so at least it isn't like I didn't get any locavore stuff done today. Oh yeah, and I did of course keep my family in local food all day!
~*~
Tomato Sauce
for spaghetti or pizza
6 medium tomatoes
4 cloves garlic
1 Tablespoon oil or butter
lots of basil
Core and chop tomatoes. If you want to remove skin or seeds, do so at this point. I don't find it necessary. Peel garlic. Heat oil or butter in frying pan. Once hot, crush garlic into pan. Immediately add tomatoes and begin boiling down medium heat. Chop basil (as much as you'd like, whether it's four leaves or half a cup) and add to sauce. Continue cooking and stirring until sauce thickens to desired consistency. Serves three to four.
The recipes for muffins and pizza crust can be found at the bottom of the post Day Three, Feasting on... Pizza? from last year.
No comments:
Post a Comment