Recently in Local Musings Category

If you want a local Thanksgiving turkey, your options are pretty limited as many places (such as Skagit River Ranch) have long sold out. However, there are two suppliers that you can visit within the next two or three days and possibly get yourself a local bird.

1. Sea Breeze Farms: At the Ballard Farmers Market today, Sea Breeze had a sign up stating that they still had a limited number of turkeys available. Give them a call or visit the farm store as soon as possible to reserve yours.

2. Thundering Hooves: We got our turkey from Thundering Hooves two years ago and it was fantastic. They sold out of their initial allotment, but they had a very good year in terms of turkeys surviving until November, and they will be releasing a limited number of turkeys for order on their website tomorrow morning at 8am.

Can you digg it?

We'll return to recipes here this afternoon, but I was browsing blogs today and found the excerpt that I was looking for from President-Elect Obama.

In a recent interview, Obama talks about reading Pollan's Letter to the Next President and some of the concerns he (Pollan) raises.

Link courtesy of TreeHugger.

Can you digg it?

Wow. Last Thursday night we spent several hours with Michael Pollan. This was, for food writers, possibly the event of the year. I was lucky enough to attend the cocktail reception prior to the event where two of the nicest farmers I've ever had the pleasure of knowing, George and Eiko Vojkovich of Skagit River Ranch, introduced me to Michael Pollan.

I didn't get a lot of time with Michael Pollan, but I did get a chance to tell him about Cook Local and give him a business card, so hopefully he'll check out the site soon. On Cook Local's hero list, I'd definitely put Michael Pollan and George and Eiko.

The event was part of Bastyr University's Founders' Day Weekend celebration. Michael Pollan spoke for about two hours on stage with Warren Etheredge. The evening had a very honest and 'off the cuff' feel to it. I took at least five pages of notes and while we twittered a large portion of the event, here are some of the key points I took away from the evening. NOTE: Most of these points can be found in Michael Pollan's books. I know the The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals is a really huge book, but it really is worth a read.

On politics

• The big problematic issues we face in this country all have roots in the food system and the problems with that system. Our current food system contributes 1/3 of the total greenhouse gases we produce and consumes 20% of the fossil fuels we use. 30%-40% of the increase in the cost of food we've seen over the past few years is due to the conversion of farmland from producing REAL food to producing ethanol. The foods we're eating (speaking generally here) are not "REAL" foods and not healthy. So we've tied food back to Climate Change, Health Care, and the Energy Crisis.
• The corn and soy that is subsidized now isn't actually food. It is used for feed, for ethanol, and for additives like high fructose corn syrup. His answer isn't to stop the subsidies, it's to subsidize farmers for growing REAL FOOD that people can actually eat.
• One of his ideas (that he talked about on NPR's Fresh Air and in his Open Letter to the Next President), was that we need a Victory Garden at the White House. How great would it be if the next president had not only a head gardener, but a head farmer. Just turn 5 acres of the White House lawn into a garden. The White House could give the food away to local food banks, who would have fresh, locally grown food.
• We need to revamp the system for food stamps. $1 in food stamps can buy 1250 calories worth of junk food or 250 calories of broccoli. So the system is predisposed to steer recipients towards unhealthy choices. What if we gave people a credit for fresh fruits and vegetables? $1 in food stamps could buy $2 worth of vegetables.
• Card readers at local markets would also help public assistance recipients eat locally. 

On eating locally

• Michael Pollan does practice what he preaches. He shops at farmers markets, eats seasonally, and has reduced his consumption of meat (more on that in a bit). He raised chickens for a while. He wanted to know whether or not he could actually raise, care for, and then slaughter a chicken. He built a movable pen, much like Joel Salatin from The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. He soon realized that yes, he could slaughter the chicken and isn't convinced that everyone shouldn't have that experience at least once.
• We are very lucky here in Seattle. We've got farmers markets all around the city. Many inner cities simply don't have any. We need to create incentives that get the farmers markets into the cities.

On organic

• He both praised and slammed the label of organic. For example, a package of chicken breasts in the supermarket is labeled organic. That label says nothing about the health and welfare of the chickens. Do the chickens have access to the outside? Do they actually use that access? Are they treated humanely? The label Natural Meat means nothing. You can still use pesticides on an organic farm, they just need to be organic pesticides.
• One of the problems with organic (and particularly big organic) is that people are now conditioned to ask vendors "Are you organic?" If the vendor answers no, that's the end of the conversation and some people will just walk away. Organic certification is expensive (just for the paperwork). So while a farm might actually be organic, or even better than organic, they might not have paid for the certification.
• Even if a local farm isn't organic, they might be wonderful stewards of the land. Most locally grown food isn't doused with pesticides.
• Organic (especially big organic) can be thought of as a gateway drug though. First you start shopping at Safeway and buying their organic produce. You might not look at labels or where the food came from, but you start buying organic. Then you start thinking about where you food came from a bit more. Maybe you decide to read one of Michael Pollan's books. So then you start going to the farmers market once in a while. Then more often. Then, all of a sudden, you're eating locally. Asking people to make huge changes right away is a recipe for failure.

On changing behaviors

• The average American eats 9 oz of meat per day. If everyone set aside one day a week without meat, we could save the equivalent greenhouse gases of taking 20 million cars off the the road.
• Grass fed meat can actually give back to the environment. Sure, the cows produce methane, but they also take care of the soil and help it absorb carbon dioxide.
• It takes 10 pounds of corn to produce 1 pound of feedlot beef.
• Use meat as a flavoring agent, not a main dish.
• How food is produced and packaged makes a big difference in the amount of meat we eat. If you buy a whole chicken, you're much more likely to use all of it. But boneless, skinless chicken breasts are all the rage these days. Whatever happened to bone-in breasts?
• Farmers markets are great opportunities for social interaction and engagement. Get to know the farmers. Find out where your food comes from. Don't recognize a particular vegetable? Ask a farmer how to cook it.

Can you digg it?

Thanksgiving is a holiday that focuses almost completely on food. The Thanksgiving dinner is usually full of tradition and of foods that most of the time, are not at all local. Let's look at a few typical Thanksgiving dinner menu items.

• Turkey: The vast majority of turkeys available in the grocery store are not raised organically or locally. One of the largest turkey suppliers in the U.S., Butterball, raises a large percentage of their turkeys in the Eastern United States. For those of us here in Seattle, that's definitely not local.
• Yams: Sure, you can get local sweet potatoes and yams, but those marshmallows? Not local at all.
• Mashed potatoes: We grow some of the best potatoes I've ever had here in Washington, but if you look for Russets in the grocery store, most of the time you don't even know where they were grown.
• Cranberry Sauce: Those bags of fresh cranberries at the grocery store often come from New England. While Ocean Spray (one of the largest producers of bagged cranberries) does have bogs in Oregon, Washington, and British Columbia, there's no guarantee that the bag you buy in the store came from anywhere local.
• Vegetables: In my house, the typical Thanksgiving vegetable was spinach and swiss cheese. Not only didn't I like it (I didn't like any cooked spinach growing up), it was made with frozen spinach. Definitely not local.
• Rolls: Flour and yeast don't tend to be local for very many people. White flour in particular can only be found from a couple local sources in the Pacific Northwest.
• Stuffing: Bags of bread crumbs and those little packets of spices are certainly easy, but definitely not local.
• Pumpkin Pie: If your house was anything like mine, Libby's Solid Pack Pumpkin was the typical main ingredient in your Thanksgiving dessert. Add to that a couple of cans of evaporated milk and you've got a very non-local dessert.

These are just a few generalized Thanksgiving Day dishes. Of course your typical dishes will vary and hopefully some of them are even local. However, if they aren't, and you want to try for a local Thanksgiving this year, Cook Local is going to provide you with some excellent recipes and resources. We'll try to stick to a 250 mile radius for our ingredients, but we will make small exceptions for salt, pepper, and a few spices.

If you have any particular Thanksgiving favorites that you'd like to make more local, let us know!

Can you digg it?

Years ago, before John, before farmers markets, and before food writing, I thought a pig was a pig. Pork chops, ground pork, sausage, tenderloin... it's all pig. And one pig is much the same as any other pig, right?

Nope.

First of all, you've got pastured pigs. Skagit River Ranch is our go-to farm for just about every type of meat. Their cows, pigs, and chickens roam the farm, foraging. Only the chickens ever get grain, but that's just a small portion of their diet. They spend their days hunting and pecking for whatever pleases them.

Their cows are never fed grain. Ever. Not grain finished, not supplemented... absolutely none. Their pigs are "happy pigs". They eat a lot of veggies from their farm and in general are healthier than just about any pig you could ever find. I think I've commented before that many times a recipe will ask us to "drain the fat" and there's hardly ever any fat in the pan.

Mangalitsa pigs though, are a completely different breed. They are primarily from Hungary and the Balkans and are descended from wild boars. These pigs have a thick curly coat. They need a lot more room than most domestic pigs though, so they can be more expensive to keep. The meat is supposed to be some of the best pork in the world. Meat from Mangalitsa pigs has more than twice the amount of marbling that an average cut of pork has, and since the pigs are raised naturally, and humanely (meaning they are almost always outdoors, and are raised in a manner that does not require that they get hormones or antibiotics).

The place we bought our Mangalitsa pork from is a relatively new stand that showed up sometime last year at the University District Farmers Market. Wooly Pigs imported some of these Mangalitsa pigs and have been raising them the way they have been raised in Europe. Wooly Pigs even went to Austria to learn how to raise these pigs from the head of the Mangalitsa Pig Breeder's Association. They learned that there are actually two different ways to raise pigs: for roasting and for curing. Most farmers just raise pigs for roasting/cooking. Raising pigs for curing requires a much stricter level of control over the diet of the pigs.

Wooly Pigs has sold their meat to restaurants such as The Herbfarm and The French Laundry and recently they even sold some pigs to The Herbfarm so the restaurant can raise the pigs themselves for the ultimate level of control over the end product - their cured meat.

But this is a lot of text to just tell you that we bought some absolutely amazing ground pork for a recipe. Look for the recipe later tonight.

Can you digg it?

A few weeks ago, I attended a press event for a new cookbook - the Washington Local and Seasonal Cookbook. One of the authors, Becky Selengut, spoke on her passion for cooking locally and her successful website, Seasonal Cornucopia. I was lucky enough to grab a few minutes of her time over email a few days later for a more in-depth interview. I hope you find her responses as interesting as I did.

Patricia: You mentioned that most of the recipes in the cookbook were actually written by someone else, and you wrote the forwards for the recipes. As a chef, what was it like to work with someone else's recipes? Were you tempted to tweak them?

Becky: I love the opportunity to work with other chef's recipes. When I worked in restaurants I was constantly exposed to new ideas by both the head chef and my colleagues.  Now that I work for myself, it is something that I actively seek out to bring fresh ideas into my cooking. Yes I was tempted to tweak some of the recipes but through testing them and following what another chef recommends I often learn both a new perspective on food and further clarify my own style.

Patricia: As a follow-up, when cooking professionally, either for the Herbfarm or for your own business, how often do you come up with your own recipe as opposed to using a recipe from elsewhere?

Becky: Certainly when I worked in restaurants I would follow what the chef wanted - or risk getting something thrown at me :) , however most of the chefs I had the pleasure of working for were open to my ideas when I offered them. Now that I work for myself I find that I rarely use recipes anymore. There are a billion directions to take food but a much more limited set of fundamental cooking techniques. I find that once you really learn the techniques you are then able to let your creativity determine the direction of the food.  Of course, this took years of experience so I don't expect beginners to start at this point. That's why I feel that before you get all renegade with food, you simply must master the fundamentals first. 

Patricia: I've loved the cookbook so far, but one thing that has struck me is that many of the recipes use a lot of non-local ingredients. Soy sauce, lemons, limes, oranges, sugar, pistachios, vanilla beans, a banana, etc. Can you elaborate on your view of what "cooking local" means?

Becky: I'm so glad you asked me this question. I often tell people that I'm no "food nazi" when it comes to eating local. It's just so perfectly American of us to get so LITERAL and TRENDY with this concept. "Eating local" before it was a fad was and is an integral way of life in the great food cultures of the world.  My feeling is that if you stick with seeking out high-quality ingredients you will soon find that local food tastes better. Does this mean that I don't use lemons, mangos, vanilla beans? If we grew them here, you can bet I'd be using local but since we don't I am perfectly happy getting them from elsewhere. Most of my food comes from local sources but at least 25% comes from elsewhere. Life is so much more wonderful with spices, tropical fruits and citrus... why would I want to limit my food to food miles that strictly? For me, it's all about balance... and flavor. Weighing all the good reasons for eating local without going so overboard that you feel deprived of the treats that we get from other places.  Fair-trade coffee and chocolate? You can bet I'm not giving it up. Guilt and food are a terrible combination. I just tell people to educate themselves and follow their nose... it will- most of the time - lead right to a local farmer's market.

Patricia: Can you tell me about a favorite ingredient? What is catching your eye at the farmers markets right now? What are you anxiously waiting for?

Becky: I'm a big fan of briny, green sea beans.  Jeremy Faber forages for them along the coast.  He had a big huge pile of perfect ones last weekend at the University Farmer's Market. Many people are unfamiliar with them.  It's important to blanch them once or twice in UNSALTED water to leech some of the salt out of them. They can be pickled or just tossed with oil. They add this gorgeous pop of ocean brine to dishes. I like to scatter them over a roasted black cod dish with a wine sauce and morels.

Patricia: What is your comfort food (or one of them)?

Becky: Hmmm.  That's a hard one because I have so many and I'm an indecisive Libra who balks at just picking one. So here's my list: braised short ribs, french fries, macaroni and cheese with crusty bits of buttered breadcrumbs on the top, braised greens with olives and bacon with awesome toasted artisan bread, Dana Cree's salted caramel ice cream at Molly Moon's, and finally..... one perfect hamachi hand roll.

Patricia: Is it difficult to eat out? Do you deconstruct meals that you are served?

Becky: I like to eat out with other chefs or food-obsessed individuals because yes, I'm an insufferable downer to innocent diners not interested in tearing apart their meal with anything more than their teeth. Luckily my partner is a sommelier so while I sometimes critique the food, she occasionally scoffs at the wine :)  But seriously, often I'm very happy with eating out, especially when I go to inexpensive asian restaurants where I am often pleased and my pocketbook thanks me.  Where it gets dicier is when I'm paying a lot of money for something I feel I could make better at home. 
Patricia: Do you have one food that you hope people will try, even though it might not be "mainstream"? (I'm thinking of something like a mangosteen or tat soi.)

Becky: Funny you should say a mangosteen because I had one in Thailand. I believe there they refer to it as the "queen of fruit". It was one of the most amazing things ever.. but I recommend eating it in season in Thailand. I've had one imported here that just was a wisp of it's former self.  Locally I would recommend people try spring nettles. I've recently become the nettle poster child because they are so abundant here, so healthy and so, so tasty.  I make tea from them, pasta fillings, puree it like you would spinach, make soup from it... YUM.

Patricia: Anything else you'd like readers to know?

Becky: I would love readers to check out www.seasonalcornucopia.com  for info on local and seasonal ingredients.

Can you digg it?

I will talk to just about anyone about the benefits of cooking and eating local. However, there are a handful of non-local ingredients in my kitchen and there probably will be for quite some time. So what foods or ingredients are important enough for me to go far and wide for them? Well, it wouldn't be a blog if I didn't tell you, now would it?

So here are my primary non-local ingredients in no particular order.

1. Sugar: If you bake at all (outside of breads), sugar is nearly an essential ingredient. Our climate in the Pacific Northwest just won't support sugar cane. I'm not sure where the nearest sugar is, but it certainly isn't in this state. Check back for more information on where the closest sugar really is. I buy organic sugar from Costco as it's about 1/3 of the price of the organic sugar you find in the average supermarket.
2. White Flour: We use Emmer flour for the vast majority of our flour needs. However, the Emmer flour does have a very different consistency and taste. It works in some things, but doesn't work in others. We don't use it for biscotti, for example, because we make the biscotti to help raise John's blood sugar after a workout. Using a high protein flour wouldn't help that very much. So we still buy white flour on a regular basis.
3. Soy Milk: I have a very minor dairy allergy and so we use soy milk in our coffee.
4. Cornmeal: Our favorite biscotti recipe uses cornmeal. Even though there are a lot of local farmers who grow corn, we haven't found any that produce cornmeal. tonight we experimented with using cracked Emmer in place of some of the cornmeal in the biscotti recipe, and we'll report on that in the next few days.
5. Lemons and Oranges: Citrus does not grow here, though logically, I'm not sure why. After all, my dad grows fantastic lemons in California and our winters are only slightly colder than where he lives. We use lemons and oranges for recipes that call for zest, as well as some of our marinades and salad dressings.
6. Olive Oil: There is a fantastic vendor at our local markets that sells Hazelnut oil. While this works for a number of recipes, it has a very distinctive flavor and is quite expensive. I'll use it in small quantities (like for our Garlicky Kale recipe), but for salad dressings and marinades that require a significant amount of oil, we still use olive oil. Our olive oil comes from California.
7. Balsamic Vinegar: We can find some local vinegars in the Pacific Northwest, but they are mostly cider vinegars. If we want balsamic, we have to go as far as California or even Italy. I have yet to find something to replace balsamic vinegar, so for now, we'll buy it when we need it.
8. Ginger: Ginger is another one of those items that really should be able to be grown in eastern Washington. But until I find a farm that has it, we'll buy it for marinades, desserts, and the occasional main dish.
9. Coffee: Non-negotiable. Enough said.

Those are the primary ingredients we buy from far and wide. There are others, of course. I'll buy a mango once or twice a year, either to eat raw or to cook with. Occasionally I'll have a real hankering for carrots out of season and I'll give up and buy them even though they are from California or even Mexico. I'll also buy wine from a variety of locations, even though I do tend to prefer Washington wines these days.

So if you've been thinking of cooking local, but it feels overwhelming, just realize that you don't have to go 100% local to make a positive impact.

Can you digg it?

I was reading blogs today, as I am wont to do, and I came across a post from one of my favorite food writers, Matthew, from Roots and Grubs. In his post, he talks about choosing eggs at the supermarket. He didn't see much difference in taste between the non-organic supermarket eggs and the fortified or organic eggs. Well, he is probably right about the taste, but there are other differences to consider.

We buy all of our eggs from the farmers market. Specifically, we try to get eggs from Skagit River Ranch. We're not always successful because Skagit's eggs are very popular and if you don't get to the market early, you won't be able to get their eggs.

Skagit had their eggs tested recently (well, 2007) and the results might surprise you. I encourage you to read the entire study, here, but to summarize, here is how Skagit's eggs compared to your average supermarket egg.

• 4 times the amount of Vitamin E
• Double the Vitamin A
• 10 times the amount of Beta Carotene
• 3 times the amount of Omega-3 Fatty Acids
• 100 mg less Cholesterol
• 1/2 gram less Saturated Fat

Pastured eggs really are better for you. We eat a lot of eggs, using them for our breakfast frittatas every week. So the composition of our eggs is very important to us. We'll continue to use pastured eggs as much as we can (which is to say exclusively, unless something very important prevents us from attending a farmers market).

Unfortunately, it isn't enough to look for "free range" eggs in your local supermarket. The USDA's definition of "free range" states that the chickens must have access to the outdoors. This can be as little as a door in their chicken coop that allows them to leave. Most chickens in commercial egg facilities are not acclimated to the outside and don't even realize they can go outside. Not to mention the fact that they are fed only commercial grain. A true pastured chicken needs to forage for food in order to produce eggs with the above benefits.

For information on where to find pastured eggs in your vicinity, check out www.eatwild.com.

Can you digg it?

One of the great things about Seattle is the sheer variety of food you can find at the farmer's markets. I'm doing some writing for Seattle Metroblogging and part of what I'm doing is a series called 'Meet Your Farmer's Market Vendors'. I pick a vendor every week (sometimes two) and ask them about their products.

The first vendor I interviewed was Sea Breeze Farms. Among other things, they sell eggs. Duck eggs.

It took me a few months, but I finally worked up enough courage to try a duck egg.

Yes, I know. It looks like an egg. I'm not really sure what I was expecting. But it's an egg. The texture was a little meatier than a chicken egg, but overall, it was just an egg.

Can you digg it?

J and I are spoiled. We've managed to create this wonderful and fulfilling relationship. We not only love each other, we like each other. We can see Puget Sound from our living room. We have both committed to living a greener lifestyle. We both enjoy cooking. We both enjoy food. And we live in an area with such amazing farmer's markets that we can support these habits.

We visit at least one farmer's market every week. Most weeks, we visit two: the University District Farmer's Market and the Ballard Farmer's Market. During the summer, we buy enough at the markets to need two large canvas bags every week.

One of our favorite market vendors is Skagit River Ranch. They sell organic grass-fed beef and pork, as well as pastured chicken and eggs. Eating locally (and organic) is more expensive than shopping at the mega-supermarkets, but we've decided it's definitely worth it.

I'm going to get onto a short soapbox here for just a bit and talk about a few differences between grass-fed beef and grain-fed beef. I've compiled this information from the book The Omnivore's Dilemma as well as my own research and information from Skagit's website.

Cows have evolved to eat grass. It's why they have those ruminating stomachs. Much of the beef sold today however, is grain-fed beef. Grain-fed cows grow faster. A grain-fed cow can reach a weight for slaughter in a year. Grass-fed beef often takes two years. So a farmer's return on investment is quicker for grain-fed beef. Unfortunately, feeding a cow grain - a food for which its body was not designed, presents a few problems. The cows often suffer from health problems, including bloat and infection. Grain increases the acidity of the cows' stomachs and digestive track which can foster the growth of E.coli. This requires the cows be dosed with antibiotics along with their food. I'll skip further gory details, but I encourage you to read The Omnivore's Dilemma. Just don't read the first few chapters right before dinner out at McDonald's.

Feeding a cow grass instead of grain, helps maintain the health of the cow. This should be pretty obvious. Cows evolved to eat grass. Cows eat grass. Cows are happy (at least, as happy as a cow can be). The amount of saturated fat in grass-fed beef can be as low as 10%. Grain-fed beef can contain up to 20% saturated fat! In addition, grass-fed beef contains almost 6 times more Omega-3 fatty acids than grain-fed or grain-finished beef. Omega-3 fatty acids are the same fatty acids found in salmon. Grass-fed beef also contains higher levels of beta-carotene and CLA (both anti-oxidants).

The end result of these differences is that grass-fed beef cooks and tastes differently. If you typically buy grain-fed beef, try a taste test for yourself. The grass-fed beef should taste cleaner, with less pasty mouth feel. That pasty feel is from the saturated fat in the grain-fed beef. Make a note of how the beef smells when you cook it. Even the smell should be cleaner and meatier.

Now, off the soapbox and back to Skagit River Ranch.

We've bought a wide variety of beef and pork from Skagit and one thing we've always noticed is that there's very little fat when the beef is cooked. If we're making a recipe that calls for us to "drain off any excess fat", there is usually no excess fat to drain. The beef also cooks faster. This can be a bit tricky as we've overcooked their beef more than once. Even overcooked, though, their beef is still tender and flavorful.

They sell more than beef and pork. They also sell whole chickens and eggs as well. If you want eggs during the summer, you'd better get to the farmer's market early (like possibly right when they open) as there's always a line for Skagit's eggs.

This year, we're planning on buying beef bones from them as well to make beef stock.

If you live in Seattle and have access to the University District Farmer's market, the Ballard Farmer's market, the West Seattle Farmer's market, or Madison Market, I highly recommend you pick up some of their beef, pork, chicken, or eggs.

If you live elsewhere, look for grass-fed beef in your area. It's well worth it.

Can you digg it?