Sustainable Eats

Dark days are clipping by faster than a picket fence out the window of a hot rod Chevy. Despite my distraction with California citrus this week I’ve been busy cooking up some local grub as well.

I’ve had 100 pounds of apples sitting in my garage waiting for some attention all fall. Last week I juiced a gallon and a half and tried to whey ferment it but it molded on the third day. This week I decided to stick with the basics since we consume an extraordinary amount of apple sauce (I sauced around 160 pounds last year in January and we finished it right around late July when the first “gold” apples came into season. I sauced around 30 pounds of apples this week and have another 40 to go…

This applesauce is pink because these are Akane apples and I sauce them with the skin on. I love it’s bright clean flavor and fun pink color and so do my kids. In general I find the early apples are best for saucing. I love anything with a gold in the name and find they keep their color and don’t separate into juice and sauce layers when canned or thawed like others do (honeycrisp, gala, etc.) I also love Liberty, Lodi, King, any of the Pippins and Swiss Gourmet. It’s fun to look at the jars I have canned and compare the color of each kind.

One reason we go through so much applesauce is that we use it to make fruit leather. It’s good on it’s own but you can add puree from any fruit or veggie up to 50% and still get that great texture that you can from straight up apple. Here is the last of the grape fruit leather the kids polished off this week, made from foraged grapes picked up in Shoreline. Can you believe the woman was going to let them rot on the vine?

I’m a fan of birds and all but we’d like your grapes too…

We started the week off with a quick and hearty soup made from the sauce & remaining meat from last week’s pot roast. I added some of Nash’s Chinese cabbage, turnips, carrots, an onion, dehydrated celery and potatoes from Methow.

The next night I made a garlic and bay roasted chicken raised for me by Shawna of Pastured Sensations. I picked the bay leaves off the tree in the side orchard and roasted some of Skeeter’s potatoes in the pan juices a la Herb Garden.  The garlic I pulled from the freezer, roasted late summer when it was plenty.  I think I roasted 4 pounds of garlic which is two pint bags worth.  It’s so convenient to just break off a clove and add it to anything, including cooking potatoes for mashing or to spread it on crostini.

I made a quick side of braised kale and Rockridge Orchard apple cider glazed delicata from Skeeter’s squash (Methow Valley.) Skeeter, by the way, is Michael Pilarski who farms in Methow Valley and regularly comes to Seattle to teach wildcrafting classes. We were lucky enough to buy quite a bit of surplus squash, potatoes and root crops from him this fall and are enjoying them immensely (as well as enjoying our visits with him!)

The next night I made a pan full of chicken enchiladas from leftover chicken, our corn from the freezer, Beecher’s cheese melted into white sauce with my home canned green chile sauce (made from green tomatoes last fall.)

That lasted us two nights and the next night I made a pan full of chicken and spelt dumplings with the final chicken and the stock from the carcass. This is how one chicken can feed a family for the better part of a week – using “build upon” cooking techniques and stretching the meat with less expensive ingredients. The carrots were from Methow Valley, dehydrated celery, almost the last onions I had bought from Nature’s Last Stand in early December and spelt dumplings made from home clabbered buttermilk from Dungeness Creamery milk, dehydrated parsley and backyard eggs.

Bread pudding muffins made from backyard eggs, Golden Glen cream, and my everyday bread (Blue Bird hard red wheat, Lentz spelt and Nash’s rye.) I added french toast seasonings to this (cinnamon & nutmeg) to entice my littlest persnickety eater to try them. I told him they were eggnog muffins. It worked! Can you believe I have to talk him into eating something loaded with eggs and cream?

A quick supper of husband-made Loki fish patties – backyard eggs, my sandwich bread, Loki canned salmon, onion and spices served with home canned (and grown) dill pickles and cabbage slaw.

A local southern comfort dinner of pan seared pork chops glazed with local ale, medley of collard greens, kale, turnips and carrots cooked in garlic and ham hock and thyme seasoned creamy polenta pudding made from fresh ground corn from Dufur, OR. If only I’d had time to make that sweet potato pie. I did find local sweet potatoes at the West Seattle farmer’s market. The guy told me that’s the only market they sell at. Why I have no idea but you can get local sweet potatoes there. I bought 6 pounds to celebrate so I’m thinking sweet potato pie and sweet potato fly are both in my future for next week.

English muffins – I had to because I made a LOT of citrus marmalade this week and there is nothing better to sop it up with than a toasted english muffin. I used all white flour from Dufur, OR for these and even my 6 year old said “why do these stick to my teeth?” It’s been so long since we’ve eaten white flour we don’t even like it anymore! Next time I’ll make these with spelt. They were a huge hit and I put some in the freezer for breakfast egg sammies one day…

The nooks!  The crannies!  They filled right up with meyer lemon and rosemary marmalade and butter!  Delish. 

Friday is dessert day so I made some individual pie shells from Golden Glen butter and Lentz spelt.  I filled them with the most amazing meyer lemon curd which isn’t local so I’m leaving the picture out of this post.  

Trying the recipe was more curiosity than anything because I love the Pasta and Company lemon curd and once I’ve committed to something I don’t frequently cheat on it but this recipe called for not one but two sticks of butter.  I had to see just how that would incorporate into one small batch of lemon curd.  Quite nicely it turned out.  It confirmed my long running suspicion that French cooking is really just mastering the technique of infusing as much butter as possible into any given food.  And that’s working for me this week.

The other thing I’ve been working on this week is building up my medicine cabinet. I made a wee bit of elderberry syrup from berries I got from Mountain Rose Herbs. They have some great tutorials on their website. I’m also making tinctures of various other herbs and roots in 180 proof vodka for flu remedies. The tinctures last several years and it will be nice to have them around. One is dandelion root, one is echinacea and one is lomatium.

I had been buying the elderberry syrup at Met Market for $10ish per bottle. For less than that I made all of these which are now in my freezer. Elderberries are yet another of nature’s gifts that scientists are now realizing actually have empirical evidence supporting their beneficialness. If that’s a word.

One complete fail for the week – since I had so much dandelion root around and have been thinking of ways to decrease my coffee consumption I roasted some and brewed a tea. Can I just say nasty? I practically spat it out, even sweetened with honey and milk. Ma and Pa Ingalls may have had to stoop this low when they couldn’t afford coffee but I would rather just do without. Of course it’s nice that I don’t really have to.

I’m looking forward to when my backyard tea plant is producing but for now I have a secret stash of local tea and next year I’ll save more of the chammomile, lemon verbena, mint, raspberry leaves, wintergreen, sweet woodruff, lavender and catnip. They made fine teas while they lasted. The nice thing is they are only a short few months away now.

I want to point out that any Mountain Rose Herb links are affiliate links and I hope you’ll consider using them if you were going to be shopping online anyway. It helps to fund this blog.

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