Food
Hot peppers at a market in Guiyang, China, July 13, 2015.
Various soy products at an outdoor market in Guiyang, China, July 13, 2015.
Generous Farm Share Yesterday
Our weekly farm share feeds two people with room to spare, and often it works okay for three. There is less diversity than at the grocery store, because we eat what is in season, but a lot is in season in the summer. Yesterday’s share was particularly amazing: Asian greens, salad mix, spinach, kale, spring onions, cauliflower, beets with greens, zucchini, broccoli, kohlrabi, and turnips. These items from our farm were supplemented with couscous, black beans, maple yogurt, shell peas, and blueberries. Yummy!
Yesterday morning was my turn to help count out and set up the food for something like 200 CSA members. It was hot, so I don’t remember the exact number, but it was a lot. Still, five of us (including my wife) managed to get the bulk of the work done in something like three hours. Of course, this does not count all the organizational and logistical work to get the food there in the first place, or the work done on the farm.
The results are fantastic. High quality food that is good for the earth at affordable prices, and I get to work with good people too.
Vegetable Goodness
I just cooked some bok choy and something similar whose name I don’t know. I won’t be eating these greens tonight, but they were getting old and needed cooking. I used more water than was probably necessary, which left me with some good stock for a soup. Tonight, however, was one of those nights when the stock didn’t get saved. Instead I just drank it. It is amazing how much flavor goes into the water. Presumably some nutrients are in there too, though I was just in it for the flavor and warmth.
I’m pretty simple when it comes to things like this. Maybe sometime I’ll look for recipes, but usually the food from my farm share tastes good without doing more than cooking up vegetables and potatoes or rice, or maybe making a soup out of what is on hand. This afternoon I did that with some white turnips, carrots, Brussels sprouts, an onion, a potato, and some homemade noodles from my CSA. I used some vegetarian bouillon from Rapunzel too, since I am not methodical enough with saving vegetable stock. I have found, however, that the vegetables from my CSA have so much flavor that I need much less bouillon than usual, one half to a third of what the directions call for.
Waiting by the Oven
It’s the end of a long day, or rather the beginning of a new one, if the passing of midnight means anything. Two squash pies are doing their thing in the oven. These were long in the making. I washed a bunch of dishes and cooked the squash this morning. Usually I make the pies for Thanksgiving with canned pumpkin, but we had the biodynamic squash from our farm share, so I did it the old-fashioned way. This included washing and laying out the seeds to dry. (They’ll make a good snack.) Afterwards, I did my weekly food run to Bethesda, where my CSA is. This evening I filled in for someone at LADO, where I’m teaching English to non-native speakers. Then I came back home, took a break, and began converting the cooked squash into two pies. I have leftover pie mixture too, so I’ll make more tomorrow or Friday.
In case you’re wondering, I used a recipe called Dolly’s Pumpkin Pie in Uprisings: The Whole Grain Bakers’ Book (p. 199). This is the same book that taught me how to bake whole grain bread.
Orange Juice, Apple Juice and Applesauce
We get most of our fruit and vegetables through a local cooperative called a CSA, which stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Unlike a typical buying cooperative though, a CSA also works to support the producers of food, often one farmer. It binds producers and consumers together, so that producers know they have a certain income, and consumers get more or less food, depending on how things are going.
The one to which my wife and I belong is called Spiritual Food CSA. It supports biodynamic farming, which practices more stringent standards than regular organic farming, though I don’t know all the details. The word spiritual comes in, because the CSA is organized by a local yoga ashram, for whom healthy food, a healthy earth, healthy people, and a healthy spiritual life are inseparable. At least that’s what I think it means. I don’t get into the spiritual side of things, but I like taking yoga, and the people at the Shanti Yoga Ashram are just plain good folk. If only I had time for yoga right now. My commute from Northwest DC to Fairfax, VA and my teaching schedule has been keeping me away. Must change that.
Anyway, we pay one price for half a year and then pick up a share of food every week. Apples from the fall harvest had been accumulating in my fridge, as had oranges, which the CSA gets direct from Florida. Today, I decided to take action. I dug out the old juice maker and made orange juice and apple juice. I also made a large glass of apple sauce. Yum!
Baking Bread
We were out of bread, and my wife asked me if I would bake some. It had been a while, so I said yes. Now three small loaves of whole-grain wheat bread are rising on a cookie sheet with a clean thin cotton towel over them. They look beautiful too. If only I had a camera! Of course, then I’d also have to know how to use it. Food photography, I suspect, is not easy.
The bread contains whole-grain wheat flour, yeast, water, barley syrup, oil, and salt. Simple, healthy ingredients. Also good was all the kneading. There’s something satisfying about that. The bread tastes twice as good when I make it myself, maybe because it is part of a more authentic experience than going to the store represents.
One thing I would do, if I had my druthers, would be to grind the flour fresh from wheat berries. But we don’t have a mill like we used to when we were living in Augsburg, Germany back in the early 1990s. Also, wheat berries are expensive and not available here in DC in large quantities. In Augsburg my wife drove with a friend out to a farmer to buy sacks of grain—wheat, spelt, rye, barley, millet, and Grünkern (spelt harvested while only half ripe and then roasted). We ground the grain as we needed it with a little electric mill. We milled fine flour for baking or course stuff for cooking entrees of various kinds.
Now the bread’s in the oven.
Baking bread requires several periods of waiting. First I had to wait for the water and yeast mixture to bubble. During that time I made supper. Then I had to wait for the dough I made rise. During that time I made some whole grain ginger cookies. Then I punched down the dough, made the loaves and had to let them rise. Washed dishes, listened to the news, and began some blogging. Forty-five more minutes till nirvana.
I used to bake a great deal more, and then I went years without doing it. I started again last winter, but the heat in the summer put me off it. Well, winter’s here again, so a hot kitchen feels good.