And the Month Rolls On; or, Update on the Refrigerator

So for my birthday I made Earl Grey tea. And it was amazing.

This morning I made Earl Grey tea again - reusable cup, local cream, local honey, bulk tea in a strainer - and...left it on the counter when I left. Major disappointment. But I drank it cold when I got home!

I think I need to really work on eating more protein. Meat is so expensive when you buy local grassfed - I need to buy from the Amish instead - that I haven't bought or eaten much of it this month, and I'm not feeling as good as I should for the quality of food I've been eating otherwise.

In brighter news, I have a (reusable) bag full of goodies from Local Roots just waiting to be turned into amazing food again - pumpkin, leeks, sweet potatoes, red and blue potatoes (a bunch of baby ones!), white and orange cauliflower, lettuce, basil, ground beef, Swiss cheese, and the crowning glory - a piece of maple hickory pie!

Local eating is really going well for me. I get frustrated with the lack of easy options, and I snack sometimes on the mixed nuts I have in the cupboard from last month. I take advantage of opportunities to go out to eat. But by and large, it suits the eating style I already have, and the one I aspire to, and it's mostly just hard on my time and grocery budgets.

Socially it's not an issue at all. It barely comes up. I live mostly alone; the people I cook for aren't going to give me a hard time about anything I make for them. My friends don't care what I eat. Anyone else I see in a setting where I sit down and pull out my food and start eating either isn't interested, doesn't know me well enough to talk to me, or is used to seeing me pack my own food around. I always have. I'm used to being just that little bit offbeat so that people who know me for long expect me to do odd hippie things. People who don't know me well get used to it fast, because I don't apologize for it. If you want to give me a compliment, tell me I'm weird.

Shopping Day

Seriously, I should be posting pix, because Local Roots is a lovely, lovely store.

I bought broccoli and cauliflower, garlic, half a chicken, ground beef, a chunk of cheese, and a giant roll of butter that won't fit in my fridge's butter compartment. I also bought grits and a kale-cheddar roll. The latter will be for dinner tonight at the freshman football game, along with an apple and the last of my chestnuts and maybe some cheese.

I don't know what I'm going to pack for breakfast and lunch tomorrow. I'm not up to cooking and I don't have much that's ready to eat. I guess I can hard-boil some eggs and take those, apple, and cheese for lunch, apple and yogurt for breakfast.

I'm eating a lot of apples lately. Hate to say it but they haven't kept the doctor away.

Pumpkin

So I'm back in the saddle of local eating today, and if that's not a dirty mixed metaphor I don't know what is. Sorry.  Happily and unhappily I ate the last of my quiche today - I was getting tired of it, but it was the easiest food I had to pack.

Also I rescued my mixed squash seeds (one pie pumpkin, two acorn squash, and one spaghetti squash) that had been around too long. The surrounding squash flesh was starting to smell, ah, fermented. Well, fermentation never hurt anyone, and besides I'm going after the seeds, right? So I washed 'em off really well (silverware drainer = impromptu colander, FYI) and roasted them in melted butter and salt.

They. Are. Good.

I knew I needed to roast them. Seriously, I should have done this days ago. This is the snack food I've been whining about not having. (Nosh nosh nosh.)

And then, because I want it, I took half the roasted pumpkin and scooped out the flesh, plopped that in the blender (doesn't look good then - stringy and ick), added four eggs, a bunch of half-and-half, and two spoons of honey, whizzed it around and then put that in a pan in the oven. Hopefully it'll taste like the pumpkin custardy thing I'm envisioning.

Speaking of What Doesn't Work

...when they tell you to heat your milk up nearly to boiling in the process of making yogurt, folks, that is an important and beneficial step. And no, it's not because of the germs.

Apparently there is some certain protein in milk that, when not heated to a certain degree before being cultured, doesn't uncoil properly. And when it doesn't uncoil properly, it results in the stringiest yogurt you ever saw.

This is not an appetizing sight, I assure you. It tastes just fine, but I won't mind seeing the last of this batch.

So Far So Good; or, How It's Working So Far

What's working:
Cooking ahead. So far that's worked out really well - I'm still eating my own leftovers - and I'm planning another cooking day later this week.
Not stressing it. I can't afford to NOT roll with the punches here. When I missed Local Roots' hours on Saturday I just went up the street to Buehler's and bought everything I could find that was marked "Smart to buy local" - thanks, Buehler's!

What's...not, or not quite:
Cleaning. When I said, "I don't want to use disposable cleaning products this month," apparently I meant, "I'm not going to clean this month. Um, no. Time for a cleaning binge this weekend or sooner.

So far I'm happy with the project. I ate sushi last night. I have been eating non-local food with happy gusto when it's offered to me. I took non-local crackers (but local dip!) to a housewarming party, because I didn't have time to cook properly and let's face it, "I'm eating local this month!" isn't being a good guest when it's paired with, say, cold baked squash cut into irregular cubes.

Breakfast is a routine of yogurt, apples, honey, and usually black walnuts. I very much appreciate the chestnuts a friend gave me, because they are the perfect snack food in a fridge that is now very devoid of snack food. It's hard to rummage through my cupboard and pass up the mixed nuts, the jerky, the cookies, the chips (okay, I ate mixed nuts the other day. I did). I should make jerky soon too. It's delicious.

Lunch is quiche or roasted vegetables or free food from school, I don't care where it came from when it's free. Dinner is something I took a little more time to cook/reheat or it's someone else's food.

So that's how things are going. I have potatoes, green beans, eggplant, turnips, and parsnips to cook up, along with a bunch of eggs (hard-boiled eggs are another good snack food). If it wasn't apple season right now I'd be so screwed.

Best-Laid Plans; or, Epic Fail Ahead

I have dinner packed but I'm sleeping over tonight and won't be home until midafternoon tomorrow. Local food, it's been nice eating you!

Oh well, an essential part of surviving the zombies will be the ability to forage for food. I think my foraging will include scoring a large hot cup of coffee, since I'll be working in the coffee shop.

No Impact Man; or, Common Ground With Zombies

By the way, the lamb stew was awesome. I almost scorched it to nothingness, but revived it with some water and simmered all the burnt bits off back into the stew (there's a cooking term for it, but I forget now). It was salty and rich and AMAZING. I actually poured half of it over chopped cabbage for dinner and am very happy knowing that half is still in my fridge.

Free lunch today at the campus - met No Impact Man himself, actually! Very cool. You can tell he's a writer - or at least, he talks the way I think when I've been writing a lot. Slow and recursive. I'm looking forward to his talk tonight.

We went around the table, introduced ourselves, told our major, and shared our passion. Every single person at the table listed people - family and/or friends - as their number one passion (I added food, books, and life in general to my list). Colin Beavin made the point that whether we agree or disagree on what the world needs or how it should be done, we all have common ground in that we care about the same basic things, more often than not. Approaching issues from that viewpoint rather than as an argument is the way he thinks we can accomplish change; I can't disagree.

However, I don't think we'll be able to reason with the zombies.