Tennessee Locavore

Wordless Wednesday - November 4

Wordless Wednesday - October 28

Pizza as a Secret Weapon & Day 6 of the Eat on $30 challenge

Pizza - it's my secret budget weapon.  For $1.06 and the price of a pizza stone, I can make two large pizza crusts better than just about any I could find in Knoxville.  Friday nights are pizza night in our house and we do this for two reasons.  One - it's a fun tradition and it's a cheap one.  Two - homemade pizzas taste so freakin' good and they're fun to make.  I'll make a post next week with the pizza crust recipe we use and a couple of topping suggestions.  For the Eat on $30 challenge, we stayed pretty basic.  We went with a homemade sauce, mozzarella cheese, onions and homemade turkey sausage.

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
I'm missing our usual sweet tea that we drink with most meals - a lot.  I also am having cravings for the crappiest candy imaginable - things like Laffy Taffy and Nerds.  I had a dream about Lemonheads.  I don't even want to try to interpret that.

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
Again - I'm using a pizza stone.  You can make pizza without it but I think the results are far better with it.  I also find myself skipping ingredients so I don't have to account for the cost.  I had no idea how much a garlic clove should cost because we grow our own garlic.  I didn't want to run down to Krogers just to see how much it cost so I left it out.

Breakdown of costs:

Pizza crust cost:
3 cups flour: 51¢
2 tbsp olive oil: 40¢
1 tbsp yeast: 15¢
Total Cost: $1.06 for two crusts

Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Hamburger Stroganoff over penne pasta
Dinner: Homemade pizza with homemade sauce, cheese and turkey sausage
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie - 2

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $1.78

Lunch:
Beef Stroganoff - 2 servings: $3.59
TOTAL: $3.59

Dinner:
Crust: 53¢
1/2 can organic tomatoes: 63¢
4 oz mozzarella cheese: 56¢
4 oz homemade turkey sausage: 26¢
2 oz onions: 10¢
TOTAL:  $2.08

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondies: 76¢
TOTAL: 76¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $8.21
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $46.16

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

I'm a cheater - Day 5 on the Eat on $30 challenge

I feel like I never have enough time in the day.  I'm horrible at time management so I'm sure that's part of my problem.  I'd love to be one of those women who wake up in the morning and have a list of things done by 9am.  Of course, that involves getting up by 8am so I may be reaching a bit in wanting that level of organization. 

I also have a lot of demands on my time.  I run my own business with my husband and while I love being my own boss, when you work from home, it's hard to delineate where work stops and home begins.  I own more cats than I'm willing to admit to most people, several who have medical conditions and I feel like I've spent weeks of my life just scooping litter boxes.  I have a rather large garden by urban yard standards and I try to produce and preserve as much of our food as we can.  This involves lots of canning.  We have a house that was built in 1894 that will one day be gorgeous.  Right now, it's missing things like walls, plumbing in some areas and is a bit decrepit.  Lots of time goes into fixing it up.  My husband and I talk about kids but I'll admit that I feel so crunched for time now and I know how much time kids take!

However, no matter how rushed I feel, I have an abundance of time when you compare it to a lot of people on food stamps.  I work from home so it's easy for me to let a pot of stock simmer all day.  Eating a meal of leftovers involves no planning.  No figuring out how to get it to work and heat it up.  I have time to bake my own bread and preserve my own food.  Granted - I make the time for that but I'm not having to work two jobs to get by.  It's not a choice between me baking bread or working an extra job so my kids can have clothes to wear.

I've got lots of ways to save time:   I make extra and freeze it. My freezer right now holds containers of gumbo, Hopping John, spaghetti sauce, mushroom-wine sauce, chicken stock, frozen pizza dough & a bag of breadcrumbs.  Whenever I make something that might freeze well, I usually double the recipe so that I have some to eat later.  I also have a list of quick, easy meals that are made from wholesome ingredients but come together in a flash. I always have pasta on hand and I make use of a slow cooker and pressure cooker.  But these tips might not be helpful to someone who doesn't have the extra money to buy food in bulk.  You have to first own a pressure cooker or a slow cooker. I bought a chest freezer so I'd have space to save leftovers - that was a serious upfront investment.

What it comes down to is that there's no way I could do this challenge and not cheat.  No matter how closely I count my pennies or follow my planned meal plan, there's no way this even begins to approximate the choices and considerations that someone who lives this budget on a daily basis has to deal with.  I knew that when I started this challenge but I don't think I really KNEW that.  It's become a lot clearer to me that no matter how strictly I follow this challenge, I can't really follow it because I'm not really living this life.  

PS - I apologize for the lack of pictures in this post.  My data card got corrupted and all my pics were corrupted as well.

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
 I often make Beef Stroganoff with hamburger. It's a great way to use ground beef and make it different.  I've never really followed a recipe before but I had to with this challenge.  I needed to know the exact cost to make sure our budget could swing it.  So I turned to SimplyRecipes.com because I knew Elise had posted a recipe for this dish recently and I knew her recipe would be great.  It was wonderful.  Instead of winging it, I'll probably use her recipe in the future.  Normally, I'd serve this dish over egg noodles but since I had penne pasta and it was cheaper, I used that.

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
I've been thinking a lot about the time component of this challenge.  The amount of time it takes to make sure that we don't go over our budget - the calculating out every last thing.  But even though that's a pain, I'm lucky because if we do go over our budget, it just means I've screwed up this challenge.  It doesn't mean I won't be able to pay my electric bill.  Calculating out my costs isn't personal to me because the consequences aren't very dire.  Granted - I want to not go over my budget but if I do, all I lose is a little bit of pride. That's a pretty small price to pay in comparison to someone who doesn't have the leeway in their budget.

Breakdown of costs:

Hamburger Stroganoff:
2 tbsp butter: 24¢
1 lb local, grass-fed ground beef: $3.45
8 oz onion: 40¢
8 oz Bella Mushrooms: $1.67
1.25 cups sour cream: $1.19
1 tsp lemon juice: 4¢
3 oz penne pasta: 19¢
TOTAL: $7.18 for 4 servings
 

Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: BLTs
Dinner: Hamburger Stroganoff over penne pasta

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $1.78

Lunch:
bread: n/a
2.5 oz grass-fed bacon: 93¢
6 oz tomato: 60¢
1 tbsp mayo: 25¢
TOTAL: $1.78

Dinner:
Beef Stroganoff - 2 servings: $3.59
TOTAL: $3.59

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $7.15
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $37.95

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Quick Day 3 Recap

Just a quick recap for today - it's been a crazy day of work and I'm feeling under the weather.

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
Bread is my friend.  Fills me up cheap.  But I'm not getting nearly the amount of fruits & vegetables I should be eating each day.  I can't afford them on this budget.

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
I'm really glad I'm doing this challenge.  But I'm already prowling the net for recipes to make when this challenge is over.  This isn't a way of life for me - that's something I'm trying to keep in mind.  Everything I'm doing is much harder for people who have even less money to spend and don't see an end in sight to their day-to-day challenge.

Breakdown of costs:

Breakfast: Scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Mushroom Barley Soup with bread
Dinner: BLTs
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $1.78

Lunch:
4 cups Barley Mushroom Soup: $3.04
bread: n/a
TOTAL: $3.04

Dinner:
bread: n/a
2.5 oz grass-fed bacon: 93¢
6 oz tomato: 60¢
TOTAL: $1.53

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondies: 38¢
TOTAL: 38¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $6.73
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $24.65

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

How the hell do you cook barley?!!

I've been lucky enough to grow up in a family where a lot of emphasis was put on eating healthy food.  My mom is a retired nurse and we were drinking 2% milk before most people had heard of it.  Granted, some of the nutritional advice of the 80s and 90s has turned out to be wrong (margarine anyone?) but fresh fruits and vegetables were always emphasized.  We had a garden and I grew up thinking vegetables were pretty tasty and could never understand why some of my friends thought they were disgusting.

I'm also very lucky that I know how to cook.  My parents strongly encouraged that by praising me for making some of the most disgusting dreck I can think of.  Remind me some day to tell you about the weevil pudding.  They bought me cookbooks and helped me clean up the disaster of a kitchen I always seemed to create.  I grew up watching my mom cook.  Baking cookies for us, making us a batch of homemade playdo to squeeze through the garlic press, stirring the huge pot of spaghetti sauce that she made every summer to freeze - cooking was an act of love and this attitude transferred over to me.  Sure - my mom got busy between working the night shift and taking care of us but she had a repertoire of quick, easy meals that she pulled out when the need arose.

Because I loved to cook and was strongly encouraged to experiment in the kitchen, I learned how to cook a lot of stuff - quite a bit of it by messing it up a few times.  My parents either paid the cost for those messed up meals or I was able to absorb the cost of those meals when I was living on my own.  A lot of people don't have that luxury. When you have a limited amount of money to cook with, you can't take chances that it won't turn out.

I also have access to blogs, TV shows, magazines and cookbooks where I can learn how to cook things.  I took several nutrition courses in college and have subscribed to several magazines that discuss health issues like this.  What seems like perfectly common knowledge to me is not to a lot of people.  I think assuming that our knowledge is known by everyone else is an issue that's at the root of so many of our problems in this country.

I think the food blogging world is a fantastic place and full of some of the most wonderful, helpful people in the world.  But I also think it's easy to get caught up in the belief that what we know is known by everyone.  There are so many people who don't have any idea how to cook or any idea what kind of food is healthy.  I was at the Fellini Krogers one day and I saw a woman buying breaded fried okra.  I overheard her telling her daughters that vegetables are healthy.  Far too many people would rather mock her for being stupid, rather than try to understand that with the knowledge she had, she really was trying to do the best she could to put healthy food on the table.

Another example - lamb shanks.  One of the cheapest cuts of lamb and one lamb shank will flavor a whole pot of beans.  But I know how to soak dried beans.  I know that lamb is tasty because I've had it before.  I know what to do with that strange knobby piece of meat to make it taste good.  I know these things because someone taught me how.  That's so easy to take for granted!

My husband grew up in a very country family.  I'll admit that I was shocked the first time I went to a family dinner.  I remember asking him where the vegetables were and he laughed and laughed at me.  "Honey - there were tons of vegetables there!" And when he explained them all to me, I got it.  There WERE tons of vegetables there.  They were just all fried, drowned in bacon fat and covered in processed cheese.  But they were healthy because they were vegetables!  He had never eaten a green green bean.  When I mentioned that I loved peas, he readily agreed.  His favorite dish was canned green peas, mixed with velveeta, cream of mushroom soup and covered with buttered Ritz cracker crumbs.  Now he plants peas with me every spring and when we harvest them, we eat the first crop straight from the vine.  But he had to learn that snap peas from a vine were completely different than peas from a can.  

There are several groups out there that are doing their best to teach low income families how to cook with whole foods and how to eat nutritiously.  In a perfect world, every state would have these programs.  But until then, a lot of people are just getting by the best they can.

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
I love No Knead bread.  So cheap and makes better bread than I can buy most places.

Barley is a wunderfood! $1.19 a pound for organic barley.  It's cheap - bulks up readily, tastes great. 

Turkey feet look pretty gross bobbing up and down in a stockpot but I love what bird feet do to a pot of stock.

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
It's amazing how much I can crave something that I can't have.  I usually keep a small bag of jelly beans from Earthfare in my office.  They have no artificial colors in them so they're ridiculously pricey, so they're out for this week.  Naturally, they're all I can think about.  I want a damn jelly bean and I want it now!!!

I almost killed my husband when he changed the end cost of the turkey stock THREE TIMES!  Eat on $30 - you were almost responsible for the death of man!

Breakdown of costs:

I made a huge pot of turkey stock on Saturday.  I'm going to count it as I use it in recipes.

I also cut off a tablespoon of butter to use as spread for bread or other minimal uses.  I'm going to just count the cost of the whole tablespoon here and when it's gone, I'll count another one.

Breakfast: Chorizo scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Hamburger patty and leftover veggies from yesterday + 2 oz cabbage
Dinner: Mushroom Barley Soup with bread
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

Turkey Stock:
8.5 lbs of turkey carcass: $4.72
1 lb turkey feet: $2.50
8 oz onion: 40¢
1 lb organic carrots - $1.04
TOTAL: $8.66

Mushroom Barley Soup(see below!)
2 tbsp butter: 24¢
10 cups turkey stock: $3.60
2 containers Bella mushrooms: $3.34
10.5 oz organic carrots: 68¢
5 oz organic celery: 95¢
12 oz onions: 60¢
6 oz organic barley: 45¢
TOTAL: $9.86 or 76¢ a cup

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
1/2 oz Chorizo: 44¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $2.22

Lunch:
1/2 lb hamburger: $1.73
2 oz sautéed cabbage: 11¢
TOTAL: $1.84

Dinner:
4 cups Barley Mushroom Soup: $3.04
1 tbsp butter: 12¢
bread: n/a
TOTAL: $3.16

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondie: 19¢
Sweet precious wine: 72¢
TOTAL: 91¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $8.13
TOTAL SPENT SO FAR: $17.92

Mushroom Barley Soup

This freezes well and tastes even better the next day.

2 tbsp butter, divided
2 1/2 cups onions, chopped
1 cup celery, chopped
1 1/2 cups thinly sliced carrot
2 8-oz packages mushrooms, sliced
1 cup pearl barley
10 cups chicken stock
3/4 tsp salt (this depends on how salty your stock is)
1/2 tsp dried thyme

Heat 1 1/2 tbsp butter in a large skillet over medium-high heat until it bubbles.  Add the carrots, celery and onion to the pan and saute 5-6 minutes until they start to lightly brown on the edges.  Add mushrooms and saute until they soften, about 5-6 minutes.  Set aside.  In a large saucepan, melt the remaining 1/2 tbsp butter over medium-high heat until bubbly.  Add barley and stir constantly until it brown a little, between 6-8 minutes.  Add stock to barley and add vegetables to pan.  Add salt and thyme.  Simmer 20 minutes and taste.  Add more salt if necessary.  

Makes about 13 cups

Please click here for a printable recipe!

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Why I Am Grateful for Our Fellini Krogers

Even though we don't live in a wealthy area (random people sitting on my garden wall-check, used condom on the sidewalk-check, empty malt beverage bottles routinely stuck in my flower border-check), we're lucky enough to have a fairly decent-sized grocery store within a 15 minute walk.  No - we don't have the olive bar or an extensive organic selection like grocery stores in more prosperous areas of our city but we do have what many here refer to as the Fellini Krogers.  One trip shopping there and you'll understand why.  I once had the mind blowing experience of listening to the muzak version of "Master and Servant" by Depeche Mode while a man in a woman's flowered nightgown shopped nearby.  Our local foods co-op is only 15 minutes away.  We can buy local eggs, milk and produce and they have a decent selection of bulk foods as well.  They'll have even more of a selection when they move a few blocks away and expand over the next couple of years.

I'm lucky though.  In a lot of poorer areas in Knoxville, the only local markets are neighborhood corner stores where the food tends to be more expensive and whole foods are few and far between.  I ran down to our local corner store today and was able to find a few fruits like apples and bananas but they were overpriced and looked way past their prime.  Beyond snack type food like Easy Cheese, there were a few convenience meal products but very little in the way of whole foods.  The most nutritious meal I could put together was some spaghetti noodles and jarred sauce but those were at least 50% more expensive than they were at our grocery store.  Similarly, in some of the more remote areas of Grainger County, TN, there's one grocery store and that's it.  Forget about trying to buy organic produce or trying to shop around for the best price.

I'm also lucky because we own a car.  Granted, neither one is very impressive but they run (knock on wood!) and get us where we need to go.  I'm able to shop sales if I need to and drive to the grocery store.  Yes - we do have some mass transit in our city but it's pretty pitiful and I can't imagine trying to carry a load of grocery bags and wrangle a couple of small children.  

Another advantage we have that a lot of people don't is that we own our house.  Granted - it's ancient and under renovation and because of our budget, renovating it is taking us a long time.  We're hoping to get walls in the rooms that are lacking them this year and we might even go crazy and put in storm windows to keep the winter breeze from tussling our hair.  But we own our house and that gives us a fairly decent space to store food.  I have a Rubbermaid tote full of pasta that I bought when it was on sale a couple of months ago.  I've got a creepy cellar where I can store our canned goods and things like potatoes and apples.

More importantly, we have a YARD! I think I drove our realtor crazy when we were house hunting because having a yard with sun was of utmost importance for us. The first year we were in the house, we put in two raised beds and we've been increasing them every year since.  Gardening can be an expensive hobby but every year, Marcus and I grow over 1000 tomato, eggplant and pepper seedlings to sell at our local farmers market.  This income funds our gardening and allows us to eat the localest local food that ever localed! It also makes it a lot less expensive to eat tons of organic produce.  I'm a very strong proponent of backyard "victory" gardens and we preserve a lot of our food to eat during the fall and winter.  But again - we have a backyard where we can do that and we have the time to do that.  It's very easy to run out back and weed a bed while I'm on hold with a business associate.

It's very easy to take for granted the access most of us have to nutritious foods.  But a lot of people lack this access and I wish we did more in our society to address that.  One thing I'm thrilled about is that our downtown farmers' market began to accept food stamps this year!  This is a wonderful opportunity for people to get their hands on fruits and vegetables and I'm thrilled the Market Square Farmer's Market is doing this!

Thoughts on the food I ate yesterday:
I love chorizo scrambled eggs.  A little bit adds a lot of flavor and you don't have to add any oil to the pan when you add the eggs.

I love my Penzeys Double Strength vanilla but if I had another kind, I would have used it in the Snickerdoodle Blondie's I made.  Using it added a whopping $1 to the cost of the dessert.

My sandwich contained Nduja that I bought from Boccalone while in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago.  Anita from Married with Dinner suggested it and I only wish I had bought three more.  It's wonderful because the tiniest amount gives tons of flavor and it spreads so nicely, especially if the bread is warm.  Yes - it's not inexpensive but I use so little that it's economical in my book.  My stomach and wallet are happy.

Free-range grass-fed ground beef is worth the extra cost to me.  I don't have to worry about E. coli in my food and it just plain tastes so much better. 

Thoughts on the Eat on $30 Challenge so far:
I hate calculating every single penny.  Not so much the calculation but the research of having to account for everything.  I had no idea how much baking powder was so I was stuck until my husband went down to Krogers and got the price.  I'm so grateful that I don't have to calculate everything down to the penny in my normal life.  But it also has made me aware that there are ways I can cut costs without missing it.  I do love my Penzeys vanilla but I'm going to buy some vanilla beans and try making my own.  The Nduja?  Worth every penny - so much so that I'm thinking of ordering some.

Breakdown of costs:

I baked bread and rather than try to figure out the amount of bread we use each day, I'm just adding this loaf to yesterday and I won't factor that cost in for each meal.

Breakfast: Chorizo scrambled free-range eggs, bread, fair trade coffee and local organic milk
Lunch: Sandwiches with Nduja, mozzarella & tomato from garden, Snickerdoodle Blondie
Dinner: Hamburger patty from local grass-fed beef, brown sugar roasted local, organic winter squash & sautéed local, organic cabbage
Dessert: Snickerdoodle Blondie

Bread:
2 cups all-purpose flour: 30¢
1 cup King Arthur White Whole Wheat Flour: 21¢
1/4 tsp yeast: 4¢
1 tsp salt: n/a
4 oz beer: 37¢
TOTAL: 92¢

Snickerdoodle Blondies(will post recipe soon!):
1 1/3 cup flour: 20¢
1 tsp baking powder: 2¢
1 tsp kosher salt: n/a
1 cup packed brown sugar: 33¢
1/2 cup butter: 93¢
1 local free-range egg: 19¢
1/2 tbsp vanilla extract - $1
1 1/2 tsp sugar: 3¢
1 3/4 tsp cinnamon: 33¢
TOTAL: $3.03 (16 pieces) - going to add these individually to the days we eat them.

Breakfast:
3 Eggs: 57¢
1/2 oz Chorizo: 44¢
6 tbsp milk: 18¢
3 tbsp coffee: 33¢
Bread: n/a
1 organic local apple: 70¢
TOTAL: $2.22

Lunch:
Bread: n/a
1/2 oz of Nduja: 57¢
2 oz tomatoes: 20¢
1 oz mozzarella cheese: 14¢
TOTAL: 91¢

Snack:
Snickerdoodle Blondie:19¢
TOTAL: 19¢

Dinner:
1/2 lb hamburger: $1.73
1.5 lbs winter squash: 1.94¢
2 tbsp butter: 24¢
.8 lb sautéed cabbage: 71¢
1 tbsp brown sugar: 2¢
TOTAL: $4.64

Dessert:
Snickerdoodle Blondie: 19¢
Sweet precious wine: 72¢
TOTAL: 91¢

GRAND TOTAL FOR THE DAY: $9.79

Our daily budget is $8.57 so we went over a bit but we also won't have to factor in bread for the next few days.

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Eat on $30 Challenge - Poverty and Hunger in East Tennessee

This coming week, I'm going to be participating in the Eat on $30 Challenge, organized by the fabulous Tami of Running with Tweezers.  There are a number of reasons why I'm doing this challenge but the main reason is to bring a little attention to the issue of hunger in the United States and especially in East Tennessee and the Appalachian region.

70,000 people in the city of Knoxville and Knox County will go to bed hungry tonight.  That's 20% of the population in Knox County - a truly staggering statistic.  At the closest elementary school to our house, 78% of the students are eligible for the reduced or free lunch program.  We have a local food pantry several blocks away and every month the number of people making use of that pantry increases.

I downloaded the statistics for monthly food stamp participation in Tennessee.  In October 2008, 46,317 individuals and 21,949 households received food stamps.  In September of 2009, 56,766 individuals and 27594 households received food stamps.  In every single major metropolitan area in Tennessee, demand for food stamps has risen.  But this isn't just a problem found mainly in our urban centers.  I went through the statistics for every single county in Tennessee and every single one showed an increase in the number of people and households using food stamps.  In October of 2008, 443,115 households got some form of food stamps.  Only eleven months later, that number has risen to 542,930 which is a 22.5% increase.  In our state, the average monthly food stamp benefit works out to be $1.07 per person, per meal.  

Urban poverty tends to have a face in our society but rural poverty is less known. I have spent a decent amount of time in the mountains of East Tennessee and Western North Carolina and have seen poverty that made it seem like time had frozen since the Great Depression.  Appalachia is an area that has seen great progress since the 1960s but poverty is still is endemic to many areas.  The per capita income in Martin County Kentucky is $10,650 and 37% of its residents live below the poverty line.  In the Central Appalachian region, per capita income is only 71% of the national per capita income.  My Grainger County husband's family has a long, proud history of farming but it's become a lot harder to make a living farming, especially with the demise of the domestic tobacco market.  Most of them work two jobs just to get by.

In our society, we spend a lot of time categorizing people into groups and pitting them against one another, liberal versus conservatives, city dwellers versus country folks, etc.  We pit religions against one another and feed into the simmering resentment between people of different races and backgrounds.  But poverty is an issue that touches all of us, either directly or indirectly.  I own my own business and I'm grateful that my husband and I can work for ourselves, but in this economy we're all vulnerable and anyone of us could find ourselves in a situation where we had to rely on food stamps or food pantries.  I see people dressed in very nice clothes getting groceries from our nearby food bank and it reminds me that nothing in this life is ever certain.

So what are the other reasons why I'm doing this challenge? I think anything that bring awareness to the issue of poverty and hunger is a good thing.  At the same time, there are some personal reasons why I'm doing this.  Even though I see the lines of people trudging to our local food bank,it's easy for me to get caught up in my own worries about our budget and concerns about the economy and how it affects us.  There's a lot to worry about.  But I also have a lot to be grateful about.  I also struggle with the balance between being a food lover and blogger and keeping in mind that not everyone has the luxury of being able to cook what they want.  I deal with the guilt that my food dollar doesn't stretch far enough to buy all the local and/or organic foods that I'd like to buy but I also try to remind myself that it's a luxury to be able to feel guilty about that and at least we have the means to buy food. 

This week, I'm going to attempt to do the Eat on $30 challenge using a decent amount of local and organic products.  However, after crunching numbers, I can already tell that we'll have to compromise a bit.  We never buy anything but local, grass-fed beef but we will buy chicken or pork that's on manager's special at our local Krogers if it's cheap enough.  I don't like doing it and we haven't recently but we do have a few cuts of meat in our freezer I might use.  The stock we'll be cooking with is from a turkey that we got on sale after Christmas last year, supplemented with turkey feet supplied by River Ridge Farms. We do buy our milk from a local dairy and our eggs are free-range eggs that aren't certified organic but the farmers that produce them raise them according to organic methods.  The cheese I'll be using is not organic and is our local store brand.  I also will be using some organic fruits and vegetables.  We have a large garden but that's a resource that a lot of people don't have.  I'll factor in the price for those things by using the price for them at our local grocery store.  If I need to buy them from the store, I'll use resources like the Dirty Dozen list so that I know which produce I buy has to be organic and which I can economize on.  I'm not counting the various fresh herbs we grow in my budget.  The parsley that grows in my yard has reseeded itself year after year so it has long paid for its room and board in my garden.  I also grow several perennial herbs that I've had for years or have gotten from other gardeners in my neighborhood.  For things that we preserve, I'll use the current price of a comparative product from our local food co-op.  I also won't be factoring in plain kosher sea salt into my budget.  There are a few items where I might be unsure about the final cost.  In that case, I'll always go with the highest reasonable estimate I can figure out.

It also might be more realistic if I took $30 and went to the grocery store and bought food with it - no tapping into my large freezer or stockpiles in my pantry.  That's going to have to be a challenge for another day.  I've got numerous perishable items in my fridge that need to be used.  I learned last year that the average household wastes 14% of their food purchases and one thing we've tried to do this year it to reduce the amount of food that goes to waste in our house. My budget also can't handle buying things like whole wheat flour when we already have almost a full bag that needs to be used in our pantry.  I'll also be using fruits and vegetables from my garden but I'll be factoring in the price that it costs to buy them from our nearest grocery store.

I've got a crazy week ahead but I'm going to try to at least post my daily menu the next day.  I'll try to post a couple of recipes but if I'm not able to do that this coming week, I'll make sure to post them in the weeks after.

This challenge isn't a patronizing attempt to try on what it's like to live on food stamps for the week.  It also isn't an attempt to mimic the millions of people in our country for whom hunger is a daily companion.  It's about reining myself in - giving a little bit of substance to my beliefs. It's about balancing my love for food and it's myriad possibilities with the understanding that so many people don't have that luxury of choice.  Mainly, it's a way to reaffirm the knowledge of how lucky I really am.

Here are a list of the other wonderful bloggers participating in this project! If you decide to follow along on Twitter the hashtag is #EatOn30:

• Tami of Running with Tweezers - Twitter @runwithtweezers
• Betty Joan of Trouble With Toast - Twitter @bettyjoan
• Carrie Neal of carrienealland - Twitter @carrienealland
• Paula of Bell'alimento - Twitter @bellalimento
• The Broke Socialite - Twitter @brokesocialite
• Jimmy of Eat It Atlanta - Twitter @EatItAtlanta
• Robert of WhizKid Sound - Twitter @rdyson
• Jen of Use Real Butter - Twitter @userealbutter
• Mike's $30 Project Blog - Twitter @boutte
• Zach of Mise en Face - Twitter @drzachary
• Hailey of Hail’s Kitchen - Twitter @hailskitchen
• Susan of Doughmesstic - Twitter @doughmesstic
• Frugal Hostess - Twitter @frugalhostess
• Diana of Spain in Iowa Twitter @dianabauman

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Facing the cruelty behind my cooking

The Clinch River is one of my favorite places in Tennessee. Sure - It's a creation of TVA and that in itself is a strike against it. But it's such a beautiful place that I find even that can't diminish my love for it.

TVA or the Tennessee Valley Authority has a very mixed heritage in our area. During the 1930s, the Tennessee Valley was a very poor area, even by Depression Era standards. TVA projects displaced over 15,000 people, covering over towns, native burial grounds and land that had been in families for years. On the other hand, TVA provided jobs to an area that was surrounded by poverty. Marcus's grandfather was an electrician at Norris Dam and a few other TVA projects. TVA reduced the devastating floods in this area but they also destroyed pristine areas when they built projects like the Tellico Dam. The creation of the Tellico Dam ruined one on of the best trout fisheries in the area when they dammed the Little Tennessee, and land that TVA acquired through eminent domain at a very low cost is now being sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars per acre to developers.

No matter what my feelings towards TVA are, Norris Lake is here to stay. The Clinch River starts in Southwest Virgina, near Tazwell. The Clinch and Powell River meet up at Norris Lake, formed when Norris Dam was built in 1936. Norris Dam is the first dam built by TVA and at the time was constructed in a modernist style - considered quite advanced and controversial at the time. It really is an impressive sight, especially at dusk.

Because the dam is 285 feet high, it impounds a large quantity of very cold water. This cold water is the perfect temperature for trout. In the 80s, TVA constructed a weir dam that speeds the river back up about two miles from the dam - this adds oxygen to the water and makes it even more habitable for trout.

On a hot summer's night, not many things are more refreshing then walking alongside the tailwaters. Not only is it beautiful but the rushing, cold water kicks up a cool breeze, even on a hot night. During the summer, there's usually fog that begins to form as sunset approaches.

Norris State Park, Cove Creek Wildlife Management Area and Chuck Swan State Forest all preserve areas around the lake. We've seen groundhogs, hawks, osprey, deer, skunks and foxes around here. 

On Friday, Marcus and I went blueberry picking at a farm nearby and stopped by the river so Marcus could fish for a bit. It was one of those days when the fishing alchemy was perfect and in the hour we were there, Marcus quickly caught several brown trout. Two were too small to keep and one was too big so they were quickly let go. Marcus asked me if we should keep the other ones to eat and I told him he could make that decision. It was a cop-out. If he decided to keep them, I wasn't responsible for their death. But even doing that made me feel bad - I could have asked him to let them go and he would have.

I'm a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to facing the cruelty of my cooking head on. Sure, we buy the majority of our meat from local, humane producers and we eat a lot less meat than the average consumer. But I don't feel guilty when I eat that meat. I don't feel like I personally caused that animal to die and it's because I'm so insulated from the process.

I think there's a lot of truth to the saying that if slaughterhouses all had glass walls, we'd be vegetarians. Most of us have insulated ourselves from the cruelty of our choices. We buy pork or beef at our grocery store, sanitized and packed in a neat little package. We don't have to see the horrific conditions those animals were raised under. We don't even have the courage to call it by it's animal name - cow meat or pig meat.

I've had people throw a fit when Marcus has mentioned that he sometimes hunts and fishes quite a bit. These people stand there in their leather shoes, holding a burger from McDonalds and tell us that hunting is cruel and have no idea of the irony of their statements. We've created a world where we don't have to see the consequences of our actions, at least when it comes to the meal on the kitchen table.

There's no getting away from the fact that creatures on this planet will die to produce the food that keeps you alive. You can be a vegan and animals will still have died to produce your food. Even humans will be harmed and possibly die to produce the food you eat. All kinds of animals die during the harvesting process. Merely using the land for the growing of food, rather than animal habitat, causes death. If you don't eat organic produce, farm workers will contract cancer because of the chemicals that are used in the farming of your food. Even if you eat organic foods, farm workers in foreign country will go hungry when the organic peaches they grow to provide for their families are turned down for not being up to standard. Even if you buy local, organic produce, you're still not blameless. An organic farmer I know lost 600 tomato plants in one night to deer. His losses were so great that he had to get a depredation permit in order to get any kind of harvest at all and to control his losses for next year.

I grow a lot of our produce in my suburban garden. Every year we fight off the birds and possums so we can harvest our tomatoes. They don't usually take enough to cause severe losses but I know the frustration of going out to the garden and finding nibbles and pecks in almost all of the not-quite-ripe tomatoes. A few weeks ago, we had a difficult choice to make. The biggest groundhog I had ever seen was in our back yard. They may be cute animals but anyone who's gardened knows that devastation they can cause in a garden in a single night. It disappeared, never to be seen again but what would we have done if it had decided to make its home nearby?

We need to strip off the marketing gloss of our dining choices and come face to face with the cruelty that comes as a result of our choices. That doesn't mean we need to go out and shoot a deer or kill a chicken ourselves, although I greatly admire people who are willing to do that. It does mean that we need to be aware that our food comes with a cost. We need to treat our food with the reverence that it deserves - we need to use it wisely. We need to appreciate the farmers that grew it and the lives that were lost in the production of it.

This life can be an amazing gift - full of beauty and wonder. But none of us can escape the fact that it can be cruel as well. In the gorgeous surroundings of the Clinch River valley, I was responsible for the death of three living creatures. The best thing I could do is to be grateful for the loss of those lives so that I could live.

Trout with Brown Butter-Caper Sauce

1/4 teaspoon olive oil
2 trout fillets - about 4 oz each
Salt and Pepper
2 tablespoons shallots (We used Egyptian Walking Onions from our garden)
1 heaping tablespoon of drained capers
1/2 teaspoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon butter

First off, if you caught your own fish, you need to clean them and fillet them. 

Chop your shallots and get your capers and lemon ready. Add oil to a non-stick skillet and put over medium heat. Heat for 2 minutes. Salt and pepper both sides of fillets and add to pan. 

When the edges of the fillet start to turn white, flip. This will take 1 to 1 1/2 minutes. After flipping, cook for another 1 1/2 or until fish flakes easily with a fork. 

Remove fillets from pan, put on a plate and tent with foil to keep warm.

Add butter to skillet. Watch carefully because in a non-stick skillet it's hard to see when it begins to brown. It usually takes about 2 to 2 1/2 minutes for us. 

When it's beginning to turn brown, add shallots and sautee for two minutes until they begin to soften.

Then add lemon juice and capers, cook for another minute.  

Pour sauce over fish and serve.

For a printable recipe, click here!

This meal is part of my One Local Summer meal for this week.  Admittedly, capers aren't local but I'm hoping that next year, I'll have pickled nasturtium buds to use as a substitute.  The butter was made from Cruze Farm milk and we used some of the caper juice to sub in for the lemon.  Instead of shallots, we used Egyptian Walking Onions from our garden.  We served this fish with roasted Dragon Langerie, Masai and Purple Trionfo Violetto beans from our garden.  Dessert was a blueberry cornmeal cake made with local blueberries and local cornmeal.

Wordless Wednesday

Cherry Pies for April

I'm going to be blunt- I really wasn't sure if I should even write this post.  I feel like my writing skills can't even begin to convey what a heartbreaking week this has been.  Part of me doesn't even want to write this because I know I'll cry the entire time.  But I feel like not writing about it would be cowardly - April's been such a strong, courageous person throughout this entire ordeal that it would be wrong not to share it.  It would be wrong not to try to describe how much love and care could be found, even in the worst of times.  I apologize for how inadequate my words are but I had to try.

Our friend April has been fighting breast cancer for the last two and half years.  She was diagnosed at the young age of 33.  When her cancer was discovered, she already had multiple tumors and several were inoperable in their current state.  The hope was that they could use chemotherapy to shrink the tumors small enough so that they could remove them.

She's been through several rounds of chemo.  Some have seemed to help for a while but the tumors always kept coming back.  Some rounds of chemo had to be discontinued because they were killing her.  But we all hoped that the fix for her was right around the corner.  

When Marcus and I got married in November, we asked her to do a reading. She was obviously very tired, but she came and made a day that was already special, even more special to us.  We were all worried but we still hadn't given up hope. 

Even when we found out last week that April's liver was starting to fail, we all still held out hope.  Surely the stopgap chemo would work so that she could participate in a new trial she had gotten into for a drug that showed a lot of promise and hope.

Saturday, April went back to the doctor to see if her liver levels had improved.  The doctor was compassionate, but blunt with her and told her that he needed to let her know that she probably wouldn't be leaving the hospital again.  April turned to her family and said "I'd like to have a house party blow-out, with all the people I love." So plans were put in motion Saturday afternoon for a party on Sunday.  A Hawaiian Luau was planned and we were all told to wear our brightest, most gaudy outfits.

In this country, we love our David and Goliath stories.  We love to hear about people overcoming all odds, fighting through every obstacle in their path.  But sometimes we need to be reminded that no matter how hard we try or how hard we fight,  we can't win. We don't always get our fairy tale endings - no matter how much we want them. We want to hear the Chicken Soup for the Soul version of cancer and we tend to forget that life is rarely that black or white.  No one fought harder than April and her family and no one deserved a happy ending more than them. This is a real story with an ending that no one wanted, but it's the ending that we got.

I can't even begin to convey how wonderful it was to see the tender care that April's husband has been giving her.  Watching him feed her, gently wipe her mouth and try to get her to drink - I still have a mark on my hand from where I rammed my thumbnail into it so I wouldn't completely break down in sobbing tears.  I couldn't even look at my husband because I know in my heart how much we love one another and I know we've both been putting ourselves in April's husband's shoes. When Mac and April said their wedding vows, they had every reason to hope that any sickness they were promising to support one another through would be brief or after they had spent a lifetime together.  Yet the love they've shown one another throughout this whole ordeal has been a gift to all of us who love them. 

I can't even begin to describe the grief of a best friend who put a party together in less than 24 hours - knowing it would be the last gift she could give her.  We watched her hold her infant son in one arm while the other hand held her best friend's hand.

We laughed as one of our friends showed up in a coconut shell bra and grass skirt that was very becoming to him and we were all grateful to see one another and tell stories about April. One of April's best friends, Val, remarked about how heartbreaking it was to know that we were all probably going to be seeing one another again soon.

I can't even begin to describe the grief etched on her parents faces - watching a daughter they loved begin to weaken and knowing that in this unfair, cruel world, she was going to die before them. We listened to her dad break down as he described how they had to have this party because it was April's last request and hugged him, wishing we could do more.  We watched her sister play with her little boy, and wished that he was able to grow up with his Aunt April looking out for him.

I can't begin to describe how helpless I felt, asking if there was anything, ANYTHING I could do to help and knowing that the one thing everyone wanted most was beyond my ability to help.

I can't begin to describe the bittersweet mingling of grief and love that everyone at the party felt.  I heard people that used to work with April talk about how lost they've been without her.  How she was always so organized and knew where everything was.  Friends shared stories about her.  Marcus reminisced about the week they were co-counselors and got stuck with the boys that would not shower.

I can't begin to describe what a beautiful party it was.  We had lots of babies around us, good food to share.  There were fireworks and lots of laughter - tears too - but the party really was a celebration of April's life and what she had meant to all of us.

We made food to bring - how could we not?  But the entire time I was trying to figure out what we could bring, I kept thinking how screwed up it was that I was bringing something to a party to say goodbye forever to a friend.  I mean - what the hell do you bring to that?

April has always told us that she loved the way we experimented with food.  Marcus visited her Friday, bringing homemade sourdough bread and elderberry jelly we had canned that week.  Marcus explained why the jelly was named 'Monty Python' jelly and she laughed and told Marcus that she loved it when we got inventive in the kitchen.  So we made a grilled corn salsa and peach brown butter bars - both are foods that celebrate the bounty of summer and are a little different, without being strange.

Sitting there in that bedroom with her was such a painful experience - seeing how yellow she'd become in two days.  Looking over at the pictures of her on her parent's desk - pictures of her when she graduated from high school, pictures of her looking radiant on her wedding day - times when everyone, including her, thought she had a lifetime in front of her.

There were moments of laughter as well.  When we came back later that evening, she whispered that if we didn't mind, she was keeping the bread we had brought and we both laughed and told her the bread was all hers.  We spent some more time with her and then we both kissed her goodbye and Marcus told her that we loved her.  She had been struggling that day to stay awake with limited success but a brief moment of lucidity came over her and she looked at us and told us she loved us too.  We left and cried all the way home.

The last update we heard was that April was mostly unconscious but seemed to be resting comfortably.  So we wait - waiting for the news that we know is going to come.  News that you'd think would be a relief but no one wants to hear. 

We love you April.  The world is a much better place because we had you as long as we did and it will be a much poorer place without you.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Marcus and I were talking with April's mom Sunday afternoon before the party and she mentioned that April had always loved cherry pie so when she was at Kroger's getting food, she tried to get her something that might get her to eat.  She picked up a cherry coffeecake but like most grocery store baked goods, they're always a lot prettier than they taste.  I knew at that moment, exactly what we were going to do.

As soon as the party was over and we had helped clean up, we let her parents know that we'd be back in a little bit and we drove as fast as we could to the closest grocery store.  We ran in, got our supplies and headed home.  Our kitchen was a mess - full of dirty dishes from cooking food for the party and we had boxes of fruit and tomatoes everywhere that we had been planning to can that day.

Normally, we'd make our own pie crust but in a 90 degree kitchen with no counter space to find, that was not going to happen in a speedy manner.  So we bought pie crust at the store, along with puff pastry.  We did have several bags of frozen cherries we'd been hoarding away since last summer so we combined them with a jar of homemade pie filling we had.

Were these pies pretty?  No - we didn't have time to let them cool before drizzling icing on them.  We raced back to her house and when we got there, I realized that we both looked like deranged bakers - I had flour prints all over my black top and Marcus had managed to splash cherry filling on his ear.

We came in and Mac was feeding her but it was obvious that she was struggling to eat.  After she had rested for a bit, she whispered to him that she wanted to try the pie.  I held the plate while Mac fed her.  Did April eat them because she was really hungry or did she eat them because she knew it would make us feel better?  I have no idea - April's the type of person who would have eaten them even if they had tasted awful.  All I know is that we have never felt more privileged in our lives to cook for someone. 

My Mom later told me what a sweet thing it was that we did.  I explained to her that it was the very least thing we could do - how blessed we were to be able to do it.  Those aren't just pretty words I said - words to show off and prove how humble and giving I am.  I have never in my life cooked something for someone and had it mean so much to me.  I know Marcus feels the same way.  I never want to have to repeat that experience and if there was some way to have warded off the circumstances, we would have done just about anything to do so.  But circumstances were beyond our control.  I'm grateful we could do this one thing.

I know that for the rest of my life, whenever Marcus or I eat a cherry pie, we're going to think of April.  And while we may cry, we'll both be smiling through our tears.

Quick Cherry Turnovers and Quick Cherry Pie

1 can cherry pie filling - try to get a good one so it isn't sickly sweet.
3/4 cup frozen sweet cherries
3/4 cup frozen sour cherries
Sugar - I can't give you a precise amount.  Just add it until the sauce is a little sweeter than you'd like it to be because you want it to soak into and sweeten the cherries a bit.
1/4 cup flour, sifted into mixture and stirred.

Combine all of the above in a medium saucepan and heat over medium heat until sugar and flour are completely incorporated into the mixture and the filling is heated all the way through.

To make turnovers:
Take one package of puff pastry and thaw one piece.  Cut into four squares.  Spoon a few cherries onto each piece(don't overfill) and fold the pastry over until it's a triangle.  Brush a little beaten egg on the edges and crimp together.  Spread a piece of parchment paper over a baking sheet or pan and place the turnovers on it so they're not touching.  Brush the turnovers with the beaten egg and sprinkle with sugar.  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until turnovers are puffed and turning golden.

To make pies:
Take the circle of pie crust and cut it in half.  Cut each half in half again.  Spoon pie filling onto each piece and dab a little beaten egg on the edges.  Fold the dough over to form a triangle and crimp the edges shut.  Brush with beaten egg and cut a couple of slits in the top of each pie.  Bake at 350 for 20 minutes or until pies are beginning to turn a golden brown color.  Mix 1/4 powdered sugar with as little milk as possible to turn it into a thick liquid.  When pies are done, wait until they cool and drizzle icing over with a spoon. 

Just a note - I wrote this post last night.  We found out earlier today that April passed away in her sleep this morning.  Please keep her family in your thoughts and prayers.  

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Wordless Wednesday

Still 1.5 hours left for my Wordless Wednesday Picture!

Another reason why I don't eat factory farmed meat

A horrifying post at The Slow Cook

While I have no issues with eating meat, I do have issues with cruelty.  It goes against everything I believe in.  CAFO meat is inherently cruel.  There's just no getting around that.  :-(  Please go check out the links in the sidebar and find a local farmer you can purchase meat from.  It's tastier, healthier, better for the environment, better for your local economy and better for your soul.  I know it's more expensive - that's why we eat less of it now. 

I know - it's been a while!

I'm sorry - this last month has been crazy.  My business keeps me jumping in the month of December and on top of that, I had kidney stones.  Fun, fun!  I promise to get caught up with some of the awesome recipes we had soon.  Before I do that, I wanted to post a wonderful blog post I just read:

Christmas on Purpose

It's late but still absolutely beautiful.  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  Here's to 2008!!!

NaBloPoMo is over!

I'm shocked I did this!  Completely shocked!  Every day this month I made a blog post.  I probably won't keep posting at this frequency because I don't want to HAVE to make a blog post every day.  But it's been a good habit to get into and I think it will help me in the long run to become a more productive blogger.  So thanks NaBloPoMo!

Goals for 2008 and goals met for 2007

I actually started this blog post out just wanting to talk about my plans for becoming more crafty next year but it kind of expanded from there.  It's not the end of December and not really time for end of the year ruminations but I've never been that great at following rules or being patient so here I go.

I'm a fairly creative person but too much of a perfectionist.  Not caring as much is actually a goal of mine for 2008.  I love being crafty but I get way too frustrated when something isn't perfect.  My Mom used to be the same way and even with her warnings, I'm still pretty bad about it.  This time of year is too crazy for me to start any projects but I'm feeling pretty high after the successes I had reaching some creative goals in 2007.  I used to sing all the time and because of two wretchedly bitchy high school music teachers, I had all the confidence beaten out of me.  Finally, I'm singing again!  Mark signed me up for lessons and I'm finally getting the confidence back to sing again.  I also have always wanted to learn how to ballroom dance and this year, Mark and I finally started lessons.  He's an incredible dancer and we have so much fun dancing together.  So next year, I want to take a class on mosaics.  I've had some experience on my own and I want to develop those skills.  I really want to take a ceramics class.  I want to learn how to crochet and/or knit.  And I am bound and determined to sew some stuff! 

I've only been moderately successful on my goal to declutter.  I've gotten a lot better about not buying stuff - that's been part of a larger goal to simplify and become more self-sufficient.  I've been a little better this year about getting rid of clutter we've accumulated.  Mark and I both pack rats.  Add to that an old house in the process of being renovated with almost no storage space and you can see why it's a bit difficult to nip this tendency.  The problem is that in order to get more of the house renovated, we're going to have to declutter - it's actually holding us back now so we need to work on that for next year.

I'm very proud of how locally we've managed to eat this year.  Earlier this year, we decided that we wanted to make sure the bulk of the meat we ate was humanely raised and grass-fed.  We wanted to eat animals that got to live like animals should and were treated with respect, including the way they were killed.  This summer, Mark and I both swore we'd never buy another piece of CAFO beef again.  This fall we've bought chicken from the grocery store twice.  We've taken little steps to get to where we are and I'm very proud of how far we've come.  I think next year I'd like to set a goal to buy no meat from the supermarket at all (maybe putting in a couple of get out of jail free cards).  I don't ever want to be too rigid but I also enjoy the challenge of trying to make due.  We've also made the transition over to all local milk and I learned how to make cheese.  I'm still impressed with myself!  :-D

I'm also thrilled with how seasonal we ate this year.  And not only that, how right and how natural it felt.  Part of it is a desire for the best possible ingredients and you're not going to get that trying to buy eggplant in December.  I think a good deal of that is learning to listen to your body.  In the spring, greens just taste right.  They're a tonic for your soul.  And when fall comes around, it seems natural to eat heavier, warming foods.  I still get weird cravings for stuff {whispering - I love Rotel dip and I think I always will} but they're getting fewer and farther between.  I'm also thrilled that we expanded our canning this year.  We actually pressure canned for the first time!  And next year, I'm bound and determined to get even more produce canned next year.

We had an awful late frost in our area (it devastated a lot of farmers) and we're in the middle of a drought.  It seems like consistency and patience are skills that are very much needed when it comes to gardening so I've never really understood why I love it so much.  I think because it's such a challenge to me.  It's very hard to finesse your way through gardening.  Each year our garden expands and it gets better and that is so rewarding to me.  Last year, we got our garlic planted in January.  We still got a good crop but it didn't get as much water as it should have.  This year, we're hoping to get it planted in December.  Next year, we may even get it planted in November which is about the right time for around here.  Little steps!  :-D  Our tomatoes had a rough year.  It was so hot and so dry which didn't help.  We also didn't prune them enough towards the beginning.  We're going to be much stricter with them to start out with.  I also plan on spraying them with Serenade (an organic fungicide) every week next year - it looks like we're in for more hot, dry weather and I think doing that will help keep disease down.  Our tomatoes also had to deal with a very picky possum.  I'm all about living in harmony with nature so I expect some losses.   However, not when possums manage to eat 2/3 of our paltry crop.  I may try a low electric fence next year.  I'm also going to put in a bird fountain with a dripper - I think a lot of tomatoes got pecked because it was so dry this year.  I've also invested red, orange and yellow Christmas ornaments this year to start hanging up before the tomatoes start ripening. 

Next year, I plan on getting our plum and fig trees permanently planted.  I also plan on putting our raspberries and blueberries in a permanent bed and purchasing more.  I want to develop more of a plan for keeping crops growing successively - like greens.  I also want to work harder at developing more of a plan for fall and winter gardening.  I'm usually so worn out by gardening come fall that I don't want to bother.  And each winter, I'm upset that I haven't bothered.  I'm thinking about putting a few beds in our side yard that are set apart and used only for spring crops like peas and such.  That way those beds could be prepared earlier in the summer and could be quickly made ready for planting come fall. 

I think next year, I'd like to work on eating more simplistic meals.  I'd like to develop my bread baking skills.  I'd like to either make or buy a solar oven.  I'd like to look into making a clay oven for outdoors.  We're also going to need to focus on getting our house renovated - it's been four years now and we need to make some progress.

All in all, I'm pretty proud of ourselves for some of our goals we met.  There's a lot of room for improvement but isn't that true for most of us?

Fair Trade v. Local?

It's been a crazy day here so there's no way to do a longer post.  Instead, here's a wonderful article about the whole concept of eating locally and whether or not it's biased against fair trade food products.  My only coherent thoughts on the whole debate is that there seems to be an awful lot of sniping lately about how local eating is elitist and there have been a lot of attacks directed towards it.  I think some people in power are getting pretty nervous about the eating local movement and I expect more attacks to follow.

Fair Trade Vs. Eat Local?

Great article from Michael Pollan

Weed It and Reap

"Americans have begun to ask why the farm bill is subsidizing high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils at a time when rates of diabetes and obesity among children are soaring, or why the farm bill is underwriting factory farming (with subsidized grain) when feedlot wastes are polluting the countryside and, all too often, the meat supply. For the first time, the public health community has raised its voice in support of overturning farm policies that subsidize precisely the wrong kind of calories (added fat and added sugar), helping to make Twinkies cheaper than carrots and Coca-Cola competitive with water. Also for the first time, the international development community has weighed in on the debate, arguing that subsidized American exports are hobbling cotton farmers in Nigeria and corn farmers in Mexico."

Why Grass-fed Beef?

Laura from Urban Hennery has a great short essay on why you should eat grass-fed beef.

The food we eat!

It took me long enough!

I've been wanting to set up a blog devoted to my quest for local foods for a while now.  It's a passion of mine and it's been a passion for the last few years.  Lately I haven't been feeling the passion for my regular job so I need an outlet.  I'm a ridiculous perfectionist which is what's been holding me back the most.  I wish I could write like Shauna or be as funny as David or take pictures like Heidi.  But there's no way I'm ever going to get better unless I suck it up and do it.  So if anyone ever happens to stumble across this, be gentle! 

I don't plan on getting too political on here but it's impossible to discuss food without mentioning politics at all.  So I'll try to keep it on topic if I do go there.