Sustainable Eats

Since we are having a slow food Thanksgiving I’m starting now and one of the earliest things you can make is the cranberry relish.
I’ve been making this for years and was delighted to see a cranberry booth at the UW farmers market a few weeks back. Mt. Rainier Cranberries are grown in Eatonville, and while [...]

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Week 1 of the Dark Days challengeand we’re looking ok. 

Breakfast of fresh made spelt/wheat bread, our strawberry jam, bacon from Akyla Farms and our amazingly yellow backyard eggs.

Steak from Cascade Range Beef, delicata squash slices glazed with local honey, creamed kale from the garden and steak fries from blue potatoes Michael Pilarski grew for me [...]

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I’ve been wanting to make apple cider for almost as long as I’ve been wanting to render pork lard and finally got invited to make cider with my friends Cinda and Wally.
Wally built his own cider press and the boxed garbage disposal that he uses to grind up the apples. It’s simple and brilliant. The [...]

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Ever since reading the Homesick Texan’s entry on rendering pork lard I’ve been wanting to try it. I don’t make pies frequently and don’t have a favorite butcher so I let that stew.
This fall, however, we had a pig butchered and I requested the give me the leaf lard – otherwise they just throw it [...]

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I’m a day late with this post but isn’t that par for the course with me? November 15 through March 15 is (Not So) Urban Hennery annual Dark Days Challenge and I am signed up.
What is the challenge you ask? From the horses mouth:
Cook one meal each week focused on SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) [...]

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One of the things you can never have enough of in the long winter months is bone broth of any kind because you simply can’t buy it. It comes from hours of slow simmering bones and extracting all the minerals and gelatin that are essential building blocks for the human body.
There is a reason you [...]

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Yesterday I drove up to Snohomish to pick up 3/4 of a cow that Cascade Range Beef had grown for me.
We had eaten Cascade Range beef last winter and even the hamburger was amazingly gamy and lean. I never once had to drain the pan after browning before adding the other ingredients. It made wonderful [...]

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Chicken Little attends Laurelhurst Elementary and they had an ubercool program this week where the kids attend 3 presentations on health and nutrition. There were some very talented presenters and somehow I managed to wrangle my way in.
My presentation was on how to ditch the store and grow your own groceries. I had a slideshow [...]

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I know it’s still a few weeks away but sustainable and local food is slow food so I’m planting the seeds now.
Have you thought about your supper yet? There are so many wonderful local options this time of year as we still celebrate the abundance of late fall with more time spent out of [...]

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A few weeks back we did a big roots and tubers buy directly from the organic farmer in Eastern WA. I have more info on him in this post.
He has a few things left and has generously offered to bring them over next Friday, November 20. Here is a listing of what is [...]

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