There's a reason why gruel went out of style!

Yesterday my friend Serena came over to pick tomatoes with her two little girls. The girls brought their Easter baskets and filled them up with pretty, multicolored cherry tomatoes--it was so cute! Theresa gave them some eggs from our chickens to take home in their baskets too.

The porridge never did get to a point that I would call appetizing, but then, I really dislike oatmeal and all hot cereals, so I don't know what gave me the idea that I would start liking it now. However, I am determined, so I made pan-fried porridge-cakes with kinpira-style vegetables for breakfast. I won't give the recipe for the cakes, because they were not so good that they should be repeated. But Kinpira vegetables are delicious. When I lived in Japan, Kinpira Gobo was one of my favorite foods...and I was in love with the Kinpira Gobo Burger from Mos Burger. It had two toasted cakes of rice for a bun, and a pile of warm Kinpira Gobo in the middle.

Here is my simple formula for making Kinpira vegetables at home. The usual vegetables are gobo (burdock root) and carrots, but I like to add shiitake mushrooms too. And today I also included small batons of turnip and a handful of cauliflower florets. (And left out the gobo...you can find it here, but it's not exactly readily available. I got some last spring from Winter Green Farm at the farmer's market.)

Stir-fry about three cups of mixed vegetables, preferably including burdock, carrot, and shiitake mushrooms, all cut into slivers or strips, over high heat, in 2 tablespoons of toasted sesame oil, with a light sprinkle of salt. (The traditional way of cutting vegetables for kinpira is to cut the roots as if you are sharpening a pencil, so you get sort of diamond-shaped slivers.) Add a few shakes of hot red pepper flakes. When vegetables are nearly done, add a generous tablespoon each of sake and soy sauce, and cook until there is almost no liquid left. Serve with toasted sesame seeds on top. (If you don't have sake, that's ok, just leave it out; sometimes I also add a teaspoon of sugar; and sometimes I leave out the sugar and add a clove of garlic.)

So It Begins...

September 1st, the first day of my second annual Local Foods Challenge. I'm up late working on food for tomorrow...went to the Alberta Street Co-op tonight to look for a few more local things--I was hoping to find walnuts and black beans, but no such luck. It's pinto beans and hazelnuts for us until the Saturday Farmer's Market where I hope to find another source of vegetarian protein. (There's always the Tillamook Medium Cheddar Baby Loaf, but I'm trying not to count on cheese for ALL of my protein.)

These are the local grains I've found:

Rye, whole grain and flour
Wheat, whole grain and both white and whole wheat flours
Farro, whole grain (a favorite for soups and grain salads)
Wild rice

Local beans:

Only pinto so far, but I've found cranberry beans, white beans, "sulfur beans", black beans, and a few other varieties in the past so I'm hopeful that I'll track down some other legumes.

Local nuts and seeds:

Hazelnuts
Pumpkin seeds (shelled)
I hope to find walnuts too. They're all over the street, but I'd like for someone else to get the green shells off for me if possible.

Local dairy products:

This one's easy. I have a milkman from Noris Dairy who brings me milk and yogurt every week, and there are so many good local cheeses at the Farmer's Market and in stores. I'm a fan of Fraga Farms' creamy chevre and goat feta. Plus Tillamook and Bandon are both only about three hours' drive from here, so their cheap 2-pound blocks of cheddar are always a good option. There's also my favorite butter, Rose Valley Organic.

Local vegetables:

In season now we have just about everything, including good staples like potatoes, turnips, beets, cauliflower, and carrots. Winter and summer squash, all kinds of salad and cooking greens, mountains of tomatoes, onions, garlic, you name it, it's available.


Local fruits:

Prune plums are coming in and a couple of other late plum varieties, Bartlett pears are dropping off the trees, a lot of apples are getting ripe, local grapes are just showing up in the markets, some fig varieties are getting ripe now, and Asian pears are also ready to eat. I've also got some dried and frozen peaches and frozen blackberries that I'm excited to eat.

Prepared foods:

I'll be baking bread, biscuits, and so on starting tomorrow. We have some apple-pear sauce that I made tonight. And in honor of National Trail Mix Day, some cherry-hazelnut-pumpkin seed trail mix. Also a little bit of hazelnut butter that would be good on apple slices. And I've got the crock pot going with some very coarsely ground grains which I hope will turn into porridge by morning!

Wish us luck, and if anyone else is up for joining the September Local Food Challenge please comment with tips and your experiences!

Happy Trail Mix!

Local Food Challenge--September 2009!

My friend Dina told me yesterday that I should start a food blog. Maybe she just wants me to stop talking about food in other contexts. But this seemed like a good time to start, since it's harvest season like crazy in Portland, I am doing food preservation of some kind almost every day, AND I'm gearing up for my second annual personal Local Food Challenge. My girlfriend and I chose September, the easiest possible month to subsist entirely on locally produced and processed food. With a few exceptions (selected after doing a hard-core local diet last September that wasn't very much fun), all of our food will come from Oregon or Washington.

These are the exceptions: salt and spices, lemon and vinegar (although I did start a batch of homemade apple cider vinegar a week ago), cooking oils (we primarily use olive oil from California), chocolate, coffee (only for Theresa, not for me!), and sugar only for use in food preservation.

Want to join us? All you have to do is decide to eat only local foods next month! Pick out a few things you can't live without to make it easy. Then get all your groceries from the many Farmer's Markets, People's co-op, New Seasons, your backyard, and your CSA. Once you figure out the big stuff, like where to get your grains and protein, it takes no work at all. My hints to you, if you live in Portland, Oregon: Shepherd's Grain flour, which is outstandingly delicious, is grown and processed in Washington, and you can buy it at People's, Pastaworks, and the Sellwood farmer's market. People's also carries locally grown and fantastic black beans, farro, dried cranberries, dried Ranier cherries, and nuts. And Freddy Guy's has local hazelnuts and wild rice.

Coming soon: pictures.