A map to help you eat local

I stumbled across this map, which shows by state and month, what ingredients are in season. Very spiffy graphics. When checking for Wisconsin, it does become apparent that it can be challenging to eat local around here. For November through May, the growing season is listed as dormant and you would have to go for stored items, such as apples and potatoes. This does put our challenges of hosting a local meal in March into perspective.

Press Release: Keeping it local

Sorry for just throwing an unedited press release out, but the topic of this meeting just fits perfectly with what we're trying to do, so it seemed to make sense:

A northeastern Wisconsin local food co-op forum will be held on Friday, November 16, 2007 from 1pm to 4pm at Moraine Technical College, Fond du Lac in room A111. Margaret Bau, Cooperative Development Specialist, USDA Rural Development will provide information on cooperatives, the histories of cooperatives in Wisconsin, cooperative trends, and how to start and organize a cooperative. In the second half of the program Anne Reynolds Assistant Director of University of Wisconsin Center of Cooperatives will present successful local food cooperative models in Wisconsin and nationally. She teaches in the Center’s Director Leadership program, works with boards on governance issues, leadership, evaluation, and strategic planning. She has led research and cooperative development projects in the areas of board governance, cooperative education for emerging leaders, value added agriculture, housing, and home health care. She served for four years as an Advisory member of Home Grown Wisconsin, a cooperative that markets local produce for 25 farmer members. The forum is sponsored by Glacierland RC&D, Enlightened Schoolyard Project and Eastern WI Sustainable Farmers Network. It is free to the public. Advance registration will assure enough materials for everyone. For more information and registration please contact, Fred Depies 920-418-2718, Dean Malloy 920-251-6036 or e-mail fkdepies@charter.net

Wisconsin Apple Season?

Went to the grocery store last night for the weekly shopping trip with fruit on the list. Coming off of the Eat Local Challenge, I checked the apple labels carefully to make sure I got some that were local. After all, apples are right in season now in both Wisconsin and Michigan.

I was dismayed that the best looking apples (Braeburn) were from New Zealand. There were several apple varieties from Michigan, but they frankly looked like they were last year's harvest. Several were bruised and some were even visibly rotting. Had they been on sale to move them quickly to make room for the current harvest it would have been understandable, but prices were just as usual: expensive ($1.20-$1.75/lb).

I just couldn't bring myself to pay that much for bad apples, so I ended up buying just a few bananas from Nicaragua for 45 cents per pound. At least they looked good, and had traveled less distance than the New Zealand apples - and I saved quite a bit.

Oshkosh-Style Stir-Fry

As the eat local challenge is drawing to a close, we decided to throw together a stir fry made up of mostly local fare. Here's the recipe:

• 1.5 pounds sirloin steak
  
• 2 potatoes
• 1 small beet
• 2 carrots
• 2 onions
• 1 green pepper
• 1 chili pepper (not too hot)
• 2 leeks
• 1 small can water chestnuts
  
• 2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
  
• 1 tsp minced fresh ginger
• Canola oil for frying
  

Sauce:

• 1 Tbsp Toasted sesame seed oil
  
• 1/4 cup Soy sauce
• 2 Tbsp Hoisin sauce
• 2 cups Water
• 2 Tbsp Corn starch

Instructions:

1. Cut meat into thin slices. Slice vegetables thinly. Cut onions into wedges.
2. Heat oil in skillet or wok.
3. Fry meat while stirring constantly, about 5 minutes. Transfer to separate platter, and keep warm.
   
4. Add vegetables to skillet or wok, and fry 5-10 minutes, stirring constantly.
   
5. Transfer vegetables to separate platter. Keep warm.
6. Heat sesame seed oil in skillet.
   
7. Add soy sauce, hoisin sauce, and water, and bring to a boil
8. Dissolve corn starch in cold water, and add to sauce while stirring.
9. Let boil for 3-5 minutes until thickened, and adjust taste as you see fit. Add more water if the sauce is too thick.
   
10. Return meat and vegetables to skillet and heat through with the sauce.
11. Serve with white or brown rice (we did basmati tonight, as the brown rice would have taken too long and the kids won't eat it).

It was a bit of an experiment with potatoes and beets in a stir-fry, but it worked out nicely. The potatoes added extra volume and a nice mellow taste, while the beets added sweetness. Our version did not havec a lot of heat. You could try add more hot peppers and more ginger, wouldn't hurt either. We also served it with home-brew beer (Fuggles IPA).
How local was it? All the vegetables were from our garden, the meat was from Cattleana (our local meat CSA), and the beer was brewed at home. The water chestnuts, the rice, and all the ingredients for the sauce were standard supermarket items, so who knows where they came from. But I think this still qualifies as a nice local meal - it certainly used some of our veggies, which is always nice.

Eating Local Update

Whew - semester and school start really took some time away from more leisurely pursuits like writing blog posts!

So, welcome back to school and all the fall activities like harvesting, canning, etc. We have spent some time over labor day weekend preparing our jams (strawberry, strawberry-rhubarb, and blueberry). We now have quite a large number of jars and have even sold the first few jars to a friend - a nice way to extend the local eating to later in the year and to other people - anybody buying our jam around here would presumably save buying a jar of Smuckers from ... who knows where? All the berries for our jams are either grown in our yard or within 30 miles from our house (oh, except the blueberries - they're from Michigan). So we think it's pretty local. Of course, we have no idea where the sugar came from... Might have to investigate that for next time.

In terms of meals, we have really been doing great at eating locally. Of the five meals in September, we have had at least 75% local ingredients in four of them. Of course it helps having the start of the Eat Local Challenge coinciding with a garden where tomatoes are ripening in record numbers along with cucumbers and bell peppers. The potatoes also have been doing well and we've been eating those on a regular basis along with the carrots. And when you belong to a meat CSA, that takes care of a major portion of the meal as well.

Summary of meals made this month so far:

• Friday (Sep 1): Homemade pizza. Local veggie toppings, local cheese (we're in Wisconsin, duh!). Homemade beer.
  
• Saturday: Grilled ham steaks with veggie skewers. Local meat, and veggies from the garden (potatoes, onion, beets). Australian Wine.
  
• Sunday: Beer-can chicken with grilled and roasted vegetables (Roasted Beets and potato skewers). Chicken from CSA.
• Monday: Hamburgers and corn on the cob. Had to buy the meat from the grocery store because we forgot to get something out of the freezer, but the corn was local. More Australian Wine.
  
• Tuesday: Easy Shepherd's Pie (didn't take too long, but when the recipe calls for a roux and simultaneously having three pots going, it's a stretch calling it 'easy'). Almost entirely local. Served with homemade pickled beets and salad.

So far, things are going well (although we did drink a good amount of Australian wine - more on that later...)

Homebrewed Beer

I have been brewing beer since last October, and it's been a lot of fun. And the beer hasn't been half bad. In fact, of the five batches we've tasted so far, all have been praised by those who tasted them.

The work involved isn't too bad. There's work on each batch three times over the course of 3-4 weeks. I have so far been using pre-measured kits from Midwest Supplies in Minneapolis. First, on brewing day, you actually make the beer, which involves steeping grains for about an hour in a couple gallons of lukewarm water, then bringing the water to a boil, and adding malt extract and various hops. This process takes another 1-2 hours, after which the wort (beer without yeast) needs to cool down before the yeast can be added along with extra water to make about five gallons of beer. Then the beer sits for about a week in a food-grade pail after which it gets transferred to a glass carboy for conditioning. The transfer and cleanup can be done in about 45 minutes. Two weeks later the beer can be bottled. This takes 1-2 hours depending on the size of the bottles (less work with larger bottles - 5 gallons needs about 50 regular 355 ml (12 oz) bottles). Then the beer sits for 2-4 weeks before it can be enjoyed. So, it doesn't take that much effort, but you have to be patient.

The initial equipment purchase was around $100, and the ingredients for each batch will run around $30-$40 including shipping. The cost per beer is definitely higher than regular canned beer from the grocery store, but only about half the cost of specialty and imported beer, which is what it should be compared to. If all you want to do is drink Miller Light, then don't worry about making your own beer, but if you enjoy Bass, Newcastle Brown Ale, Guiness, and any other great tasting beer (especially ale), then you should give homebrewing a try.

Right now, I have two carboys in the basement. I'm hoping to be able to bottle the Fuggles brew today (we need it ready before we run out...). The other is a Holiday beer that was brewed back in June and will need another month or so before bottling. Then it will sit about 6 weeks in the bottle before it is ready in time for Halloween. It should be a Happy Holiday this year!

When you brew your own beer, there are two environmental benefits: First, you can reuse the bottles, which is far better than recycling (it takes quite a bit of energy to turn glass into glass...). Second, only the ingredients need to be transported (10-15 lbs), and in my case only from Minneapolis, as opposed to shipping both bottles (40 lbs), and water (42 lbs) from a brewery that's much farther way. Some of the styles of beer you can make with homebrew, could otherwise only be obtained from imported sources, so the transportation would add significantly to the equation.

Weekend canning update

Sunday was really busy at our house! We harvested 75% of our beets - they really did well this year! And pickled enough for about 14 quarts. We should have enough for a few years now.

We also made about 30 pints of raspberry jam. Between our own consumption, selling some, and giving some away, that should last us through next year. We had about 3 pounds of berries from our own canes. Pretty good considering this was just their second season. I think we may be able to harvest 3-4 times that amount next year. The rest of the berries we picked ourselves at a nearby farm.

Sunday night we sat down to a very local meal: Grilled porkchops from Cattleana Ranch, Twice baked potatoes (own potatoes), roasted beets (obviously our own beets), and a green salad (just a few lettuce leaves weren't from our yard).

Any ideas what to do with 20+lbs of surplus beets?

Eating Locally

We've been reading about the Eat Local movement recently. We will probably join the September 2007 Challenge at Eat Local Challenge. Of course, we already get a fair amount of our food locally. We buy locally raised meat from a local farm (Cattleana Ranch in Omro, WI). And we have a fairly large garden where we grow potatoes, beets, carrots, squash, tomatoes, onions, and quite a few other things. We are buying milk from a local dairy (not too difficult in Wisconsin, though!) - we get ours at a local supermarket from Lamers Dairy in Appleton, WI. But for a lot of stuff, we have no idea where it comes from. In the following weeks, we will take an inventory of where the things come from that we eat. Stay tuned...