Spaghetti Sauce

A local challenge update

It is getting pretty bare bones when it comes to fresh produce around here. If I want anything I am going to have to get myself to the Hillsdale farmer's market. I don't know if anyone will have carrots. Or celery root. But hopefully I'll be able to get my hands on some spinach and collards. Lucky for me I have lots of stuff in the freezer still.

This is the beginning of month six of the local food challenge we took on in October. How's it going? So nice of you to ask. There have been a couple of changes. After a lot of deliberation I have put Gulden's mustard and store bought ketchup back on the exceptions list. I can't find enough information about mustards to make one I like enough to replace the store bought. There is a book about making mustards that might help me but I haven't bought it yet. There are some local gourmet mustards but none of them are in the stores in my town, and they are all pretty fancy. Also I bought mayonnaise which I wasn't going to do because I can make it myself- however, being in the middle of a move has made it very difficult to take on any cooking besides the most rudimentary. Plus, we've been eating out a lot.

Which is now coming to an end. I've got most of my kitchen moved in. I can start cooking again. The first thing I made was spaghetti sauce with local mushrooms, home canned tomato sauce, and onion. Quite delicious!

So aside from the condiments, what are we still insisting on buying locally? Well, pretty much everything we've been buying locally so far. Max's food is still an exception and since he's wanted baby carrots, I've been buying them for him. But for me and Philip I haven't bought one non-local bit of fresh produce since October. I'm still only buying grains from the local mill and I'm not buying the grains I know for a fact are shipped from all the way across the country. Polenta is coming not from the local mill but from a local farm that grew their corn, dried it, and then milled it themselves. There is a local-ish grain company called Shepherd's grains that, while out of my 100 mile range, only sells grains grown in Washington and Oregon. I am thinking of buying grains exclusively from them only because the other local mills I buy from get wheat from Montana which is farther afield than Washington.

Things I'm missing? I would really like to make some winter squash tofu curry soup that calls for coconut milk. While cleaning out my pantry to move I found one can of coconut milk and was so excited I almost peed my pants!!

Ha, just kidding. But I thought I'd make the winter squash soup with it until I realized that tofu is still on the unavailable to us list because there is no local producer for it. I'm also really missing ricotta and feta. I still plan to make some but learning to make cheese is going to have to wait a little bit longer. Soon though. I bought some super expensive ricotta from a local cheese maker at the last farmer's market I went to but at $7.00 per cup I may as well be buying myself gold ingots because they'll last longer.

I'm really trying hard not to buy fresh cilantro from California. I pass by it every time I go to the store and it's cheap and I can smell it long before I reach it and I want it want it want it. I want it so bad that sometimes I feel my hands reaching for it before I slap myself to wake from my cilantro haze. I am definitely going to plant some because it's time now, but I haven't had any pots to seed them in and the dirt around here is (in case you missed mention of it earlier) solid clay. With the continuous rain it is no time to be planting (for fear of compacting the clay). Anyway, my mom just gave me a few pretty pots and I will plant some cilantro in them this week.

With home cooking on hold during the move I snacked on some of Max's crackers, the ones going stale because they went out of his rotation. I felt very guilty about it*. But some guilt is good for us, right? I mean, I don't have any Catholic or Jewish family members living close enough to heap on any decent levels of guilt so I must do things occasionally to bring it on for myself. Sun chips are good. Love that MSG.

Once you start eating mostly local as a matter of course it becomes second nature. I don't really think about the local challenge all that much. I mean, I check the onions at the store every time I go and when the box is from a local source I buy extra onions. I cruise through the produce sections looking for signs that say "local" or I check the labels on the boxes the produce is in or I ask the grumpy over-perfumed produce guy where stuff is coming from. I cook with what I end up with in the fridge or the pantry. It's so easy to do, really. I know lots of people think it's impossible. You just eat a little differently but certainly not awfully.

Of course, I have lots of stuff in my pantry and in my freezer. But I think what I've depended on the most has been my canned tomatoes. Tomatoes and tomato sauce can brighten almost any meal. Greens have been major. I need greens and they were hard to get for a little while there. But over all you just get used to not buying the other stuff and a lot of the time the other stuff isn't that great in the winter anyway. You eat more potatoes and onions and eggs and pantry stuff.

I don't know what all the fuss is about. Do you know how happy I'm going to be when carrots reappear at the farmer's market? And lettuce. I will be so excited to see those things again. I think it's good to be without some things for a while, because it's so easy to take what we have for granted. Now when things I haven't eaten for five months show up on my local radar- it will be so much sweeter. That is one of the biggest benefits to eating more locally.

No I'm not perfect. Dang, it's a good thing I told you all that from the beginning. I'm not perfect and I don't do things in the extreme. I think when my challenge is over I may occasionally buy some tofu and coconut milk. I don't think I'll buy ready made pasta again though. It isn't hard to make and it's so much better fresh. I think I'll keep not eating Max's packaged food. Oh- dang- I also have eaten some Oreos. BAD ANGELINA.

My plan for dealing with the cookie thing is to make some really amazing home made cookies to have on hand. Max does like my home made cookies.

OK, time to go eat something and walk the damn dog. She's a houdini and is bored and can get out of the yard through very narrow spaces between planks so I must walk her to get some of her restlessness out. Off to the old house to keep packing stuff up. I think I'll take her with me. Double whammy.

*Shhhh. I didn't really feel very guilty about it. I am not particularly sensitive to feelings of guilt. I mean, not over things like eating non-local crackers. Why waste time feeling guilty when one is already making lots of effort to live well and thoughtfully...I'm not a saint for crying out loud. Jesus. I only pretend to feel guilty about things because it makes other people feel more comfortable with their own self imposed levels of guilt. Frankly I think guilt is a waste of time. If I find myself feeling guilty about something I examine why, consider my options for the next time I am in a similar situation, and decide that I will make better choices the next time. If someone else is involved then I apologize to them, end of guilt. Damn. Life is too short. Guilt is corrosive. All guilt tells us is that we have chosen to act unwisely in some way and gives us an opportunity for reflection and change. It should be a brief feeling that we let go of freely.