It's Easy Being Green

We didn’t just fall off the turnip truck yesterday nor is this our first visit to The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee. We sure got smacked with a healthy dose of vegan elitism though and I’m still reeling from it.

When The Farm, a hippie commune developed by a caravan of bus traveling hippies was originally established in the early 1970’s, veganism ruled. The commune is no longer as active or bound by the original ideals as it once was. The commune’s population boomed to about 1600 in its heyday but the growth was unsustainable. There weren’t enough jobs in the rural Tennessee area to support the communal residents and interest waned over time. About 160 people still live at the commune today, some new and some original residents but some have chosen to stick to what they know. We’ve never been given a hard time about our meat-eating habits when we stay at the farm but the woman running The Farm Store ruined that streak yesterday.

The Farm Store is a warm, cozy general store and central meeting spot for many who live on The Farm’s 1500 acre commune. It’s a place to meet up with friends, make new acquaintances, grab a snack or find that obscure natural food item you’ve been on the hunt for. In years past, we know we’ve been able to get a fresh plate lunch whipped up at the store’s counter. That’s why when we had an appointment to meet a documentary photographer there, we thought it would be a good opportunity to grab a bite to eat.

When I walked up to the counter I immediately noticed the blackboard menu, usually artistically written in several different colors of chalk and propped on the back wall of the store, was missing. I asked the woman (not the usual storekeeper we’ve befriended over the years) if she had a menu for the day. She just looked at me bright-eyed and laughed.

“We don’t have a menu here,” she quipped. “I didn’t make soup today but there is chili in the cooler that was left over from yesterday. There are also some pre-made black bean burgers and things in there too.”

Needless to say we were confused and disappointed and this woman didn’t help the situation. There was no namaste here. I resorted to poking through the frozen foods section, looking for anything we might be interested in microwaving for our lunch. Meanwhile the woman behind the counter  continued chortling away in her own blissful bubble.

“That’s just so funny,” she said, forking her own food on a plate behind the counter. “I think you are only the second person who has ever asked me for a menu.”

Sensing the pregnancy hormone rage beginning to ooze out of Homestead Hottie’s pores, I explained that we had stopped in for a wrap or sandwich a couple times before on previous visits to the farm 2 to 3 years ago.

“No, we’ve never served food here,” she continued. “I wish!”

At this point there was no holding back the pregnant lady. “I’ve definitely had a tuna sandwich or something here before,” Talina insisted.

“No, nope, not here,” the storekeeper shot back. “We’ve never served meat or fish or sandwiches here. This is only a vegan community and we only serve vegan food. You must have been visiting someplace else.”

Well then, we had certainly been told and the shopkeeper wasn’t going to stop telling us as long as we were in The Farm Store. Her vegan elitism attitude was ruling this roost and she was going to go ahead and mock us as the outsiders we are. It’s truly uncharacteristic of anyone at The Farm. We’ve never encountered this type of attitude from the dozens and dozens of commune residents we’ve met and befriended over the years.  They’re all so accepting with the exception of this woman.

There were no usual questions about where we were from or why we were there, just snide and snippy vegan elitism. Yet, sitting in a woven basket marked clearance on one of the store tables were two bottles of pancake syrup. The main ingredients in both: high-fructose corn syrup. That made me chuckle a bit on our way out the door, in search of someone else to serve us lunch. “How’s that for irony,” I thought to myself.

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I'd like to think Julia would be proud of my forays into French culture...poor accent included. Image via Wikipedia

Monday kicked off a new week here at the Half-Acre Homestead with little to no bang.  Our week-long spell of sunshine and 60 degree temps came to an end today as heavy rain lashed at the side of the house for most of the day.  Tonight we’re supposed to plunge into the 30’s.  It was one of those stare out the window type of days with the exception of buttoning the hot boxes back up after they caught some afternoon showers.

Tonight was “Poulet de Troi Repas” though…that’s “chicken of three meals” en Francais if you don’t speak my language of love.  Yes, I studied French.  Four years of that daunting language stretched across both high school and college and what have I done with it other than gain an inside track into Julia Child’s mind.  It was a strategic move at the time living in the desert southwest.  Shun the language that made sense to learn and be the only guy in a classroom full of French speaking girls.  I was Jean Nate and if the name sounds familiar it is that famous shampoo in a bright yellow bottle.  How could I not have a fun and fancy free nickname for all those practice sessions in class…voulez vous…ok for this nerd that was wishful thinking.

Back to our chicken of three meals, this is an excellent way to use your resources to their fullest.  We’ve always been thrifty with our leftovers but since we became members of the Stonewall Farm CSA Program (community supported agriculture) we’ve made our yummy organic meat go as far as possible.  If you haven’t tried their meat or eggs yet, you’re missing out.  Let them know Nathan Ryder referred you and they will take good care of you. One whole chicken can usually be made to stretch over the course of one week creating three or even more dinners.  We usually start our chicken of three meals out the first night by roasting the bird.  Our favorite method to roasting isn’t the ordinary stick it in the oven and watch it brown.  No, we encrust our poulet in salt before shoving it into cook.  Homestead Hottie discovered this roasting method several years ago and we’ve never turned back.

You might think this will cause the chicken to turn out unbearably salty but surprisingly it doesn’t.  The salt hardens and forms a thick crust during the roasting process, locking in your chicken’s juice and preventing it from squeezing out into the bottom of your roasting pan.  The resulting skin underneath that roasted salt crust is the most amazing golden brown, crispy and downright delectable as it melts onto your tongue.  Tonight’s chicken had a French theme thanks to one additional ingredient:  Herbs de Provence.  This herbal blend contains lavender, the aromatic which on first whiff whisks you away to a sunny Mediterranean destination.  If this isn’t already a staple in your herb cabinet I highly recommend you buy some or make it yourself.

Ingredients:

- 1 organic, whole chicken (Evansville locals can get one from Stonewall Farms, tell em we sent ya!)

- 1 or 2 cups kosher salt depending on size of bird

- Herbs de Provence seasoning blend

- 1 large lemon cut into wedges

- 2 to 3 cloves of garlic

- Several sprigs of rosemary

Directions:

1)  Stuff cavity of chicken with lemon wedges, garlic cloves and several sprigs of rosemary

2)  Place chicken breast-side down in roasting pan and dust skin with Herbs de Provence.  Spear more rosemary sprigs through skin in several different spots.

3)  Pour kosher salt over the top of your chicken, patting in place to prevent salt from falling off into pan.  A light spritz of water can help the salt stick if your bird’s skin is dry.

4)  Place into oven and roast at around 400 degrees until internal temperature of the chicken reaches 180 degrees.

5)  Remove chicken from oven and use the back of a carving knife or wooden spoon to shatter the salty crust, scraping salt off the skin and into pan.  Voila!

Make sure to refrigerate leftovers and carcass for meal number two to be discussed in a future blog post. Bon Appetit!

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Homestead Hottie’s pregnancy cravings are ramping up to full-speed these days.  Wait you say, you didn’t announce you were expecting.  You can get filled in on the preps for 2.0 by heading over to Harvest of Daily Life for the details.  As any loving husband should do, I make sure every one or at least most of those cravings are met with attentive detail.  When Momma is happy, everybody is happy!

A couple of days ago Talina got an insane craving for P.F. Changs Chicken Lettuce Wraps.  With her nausea she’s been leaning toward light fare to fill her stomach as anything heavy leaves her feeling like “death” as she says.  Then came the Changs craving and of course, we don’t have one of our favorite restaurants within a quickly drivable radius.  That doesn’t mean I can’t attempt a clone recipe in our own well-equipped kitchen though!

This need for lettuce wraps also spurned a craving for Panda Express Orange Chicken, another one of our family favorites when we “splurge” on eating out.  Loving and cooking Asian food pretty frequently in our household, I’ve been anxiously watching work going on at the new Aihua International Market and so we made a family trip to see if they were open and to round up the necessary supplies for both clone meals and some future Thai cooking.

Aihua International Market just opened on Green River Road just north of the intersection at Lynch. It made for a perfect Sunday afternoon cultural adventure.

Much to our surprise, the parking lot was packed and the store was bristling with customers of several different nationalities all speaking several different languages.  You feel as if you’ve stepped into a completely different country right in little ‘ol Evansville, Indiana.  Walking through the automatic doors, you find yourself staring straight down the cooler case at all sorts of exotic fruits, veggies, herbs and roots neatly stocked and ready for your hot wok.  It’s a lot to look at and easy to get lost in, at least for a foodie like me.

Distracted already but I have to get back to the list: water chestnuts, crushed red chilies, arrowroot, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, Kaffir lime leaves, galangal root and fresh lemongrass.  When it comes to organization, things are a little hard to find at Aihua.  If items are labeled, deciphering the labels is difficult and takes extra time.  Chinese characters stand out above the secondary English printed on many of the packages and it’s nowhere near as simple as grab and dash.  It’s more like hunt and peck, turning over every rock and leaf until you find what you’re looking for.  The rice wine vinegar and red chilies were located without much effort.  The rest required a tour guide and the staff was eager to please.

The first woman I found stocking the shelves couldn’t speak English and apologized profusely that she couldn’t help me.  It was cute and I could tell she felt really bad so that didn’t stop her from flagging down the woman who seemed to be running the ship.  As she determinedly breezed past, dark chin length hair perfectly quaffed and not moving an inch as she headed toward the store room, she quickly whipped her hand to the shelf without even looking and grabbed the only tiny, elusive bottles of sesame oil they had to offer.  That’s anther check off the list.

Now to find those water chestnuts, I flagged down a tall Asian man wandering about the aisles.  He intently tried to understand what a water chestnut was, trying to correlate in his mind the proper translation so he could lead me to the right spot on the shelf.  After a couple minutes he enlisted the help of a pre-teen Asian girl, her white fuzzy ski cap bouncing between aisles crammed with shoppers as she scurried about.  She had the matriarch of the store, now back and standing strong at the register, translate and tell the man where to take me for water chestnuts.  Check!

Realizing the young girl was my lifeline to finding the other unusual ingredients I needed, I quickly tracked her back down and spewed out my laundry list of ingredients.  She led me from one corner to the next, quietly reading my list back out-loud as she pointed and plucked the items from the shelves.  Kaffir lime leaves were tucked away in an unlabeled bag, hidden in the cooler like a treasure only available to those who seek it out.  I felt like I belonged in an underground club as she measured two handfuls of the aromatic glossy green lime leaves into a smaller sandwich bag for me.  Then she grabbed a stalk of fresh lemongrass and finally showed me the galangal roots and let me pick which one I wanted for our soup pot.  Check, check and check.

Now I know to look for my fresh ingredients by sight next time and not by hand-written sign. From top to bottom: glangal root, lemongrass and Kaffir lime leaves

Standing in line at the checkout, a tiny, older Asian woman was purchasing a cardboard box filled with all sorts of noodles and vegetables.  When it came time to pay, out came a credit card.  “You pay with card?  Where you’re cash?” the matriarch demanded.  The customer said something unintelligible to which the owner replied “You know better!  Cash better!  Next time!” as she pulled out a credit card triplicate form and began rubbing an imprint on the counter.  The dread hit me as I only had a dollar bill in my pocket but that was before I spotted a small, hand-written sign that said cash only under $10.  Knowing Homestead Hotties love for Tiger Balm, we quickly grabbed a tube to bring our total above the $10 mark.

Our visit to the international food store gave new meaning to the term "watching carbs", something Everly adored.

Darling Daughter Everly had a blast taking in all the different languages and foreign items displayed throughout the store.  The biggest kick came from a tub of live blue carbs (really crab but that’s how it was spelled) crawling over each other and looking for a way out.  The Asian women adored little miss Everly and her bright red hair and even gifted her with a special magic wand-like lollipop at the check-stand.  Her grin was priceless and so was the fun in finding some real culture here in Evansville.  Oh yeah, the dinner of Chicken Lettuce Wraps and Orange Chicken turned out pretty damn good too, except for the fact that nausea kept my Homestead Hottie from really enjoying it too.  There’s always leftovers!

I would encourage any international foodie to stop by Aihua sometime and don’t forget to bring cash.

Nothing like a magic-wand lollipop to make a girl's day!

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If you’re looking to become more self-sustaining, growing and preserving your own food is an excellent way to achieve that goal.  Not only is it probably one of the easiest ways to achieve your sustainability, it is also one of the cheapest.  For some reason, I had always imagined home canning to be a bygone era but reaching back I could vividly remember one of my Mom’s old high school friends canning her own jams and jellies frequently when I visited.  Maybe I thought, it’s not that far out of vogue.

As Homestead Hottie and I looked for more and more ways to make our life more green and self-sustaining, food preservation seemed to be a logical next step following our entry into growing some of our own food.  Home food preservation does take time but the end results are so worth it and will save you a ton of money in the long run.  You won’t have to rely on a run to the grocery store for a canned good but simply walk into your kitchen pantry.  Check out this video as I show you how we turned a bumper crop of green tomatoes into a half-dozen quart jars of our own, homemade pasta sauce.

If you didn’t catch my post on how to ripen or use all those end of season green tomatoes,  click here.

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Summer has definitely come to a close for 2010 and many gardeners are left wondering what to do with all those leftover green tomatoes. We had many ourselves and then also acquired three more boxes from a gardener who had quite the bumper crop of green tomatoes that they didn’t want to mess with.

Green tomatoes can be left to ripen. The process is slow but if you have the space, you can enjoy red ripe tomatoes in the dead of winter.  In the book Root Cellaring: Natural Cold Storage of Fruits and Vegetables, it is recommended that you store green tomatoes in a single layer, out of direct sunlight in a 60 to 70 degree room.  Green tomatoes can hold for several weeks in the 50 to 60 degree range, delaying ripening even more.  We’ve had good luck ripening green tomatoes with the stem end facing down on a bed of crinkled newspaper.  Homestead Hottie has beat into my head that the tomatoes need to be checked ever few days and turned to prevent them from getting too soft on one side and molding.  If let go, it will spoil your whole box of summer stretched into the winter.  A couple I’ve let go have gone airborne across the kitchen at me and believe me, you don’t want to get hit in the face with a rotten tomato!

If you’re impatient and would prefer trying another treat with green tomatoes, you might want to consider pickled green tomatoes.  The odd pickles can be used as an accompaniment to hamburgers, roasted chicken and charcuterie.  Tied with a red ribbon, they’re pretty enough to give as a hostess gift or to bring to a holiday party so you can share a taste of your summer garden after it’s long gone.  Here is a recipe that was printed in the 2009-2010 winter edition of Organic Gardening Magzine:

Pickled Green Tomatoes

1.5 quarts white wine vinegar
1.5 cups sugar
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
4 cloves of garlic, sliced thin
2 pounds green tomatoes sliced into wedges 1/2 to 3/4 inches thick
1/2 cup fresh tarragon leaves, stems removed

Combine vinegar, sugar, salt and garlic in a stainless steel saucepan and bring to a boil. Once sugar is completely dissolved add in tomatoes. Simmer over low heat for about 10 minutes until the tomatoes are tender. Don’t let them get mushy!

Strain the tomatoes but reserve the pickling liquid. Add tarragon to the reserved pickling liquid. Refrigerate both the drained tomatoes and the pickling liquid in separate containers until cool and then combine. Spoon into lidded glass jars and refrigerate for up to 3 months.

A month into the pickling process, I’ve already dipped into one of my two jars.  I’ve found the pickled green tomatoes to be sweetly sour, a combination of the vinegar and sugar.  I think I might try a jar or two without the sugar to see what the end result is because I’m not a fan of sweetly pickled products with the exception of cinnamon pickles, a completely different jarred treat to discuss in another post.

Do you have a favorite recipe or way to use up green tomatoes?  Share your ideas and inspirations so others don’t let those green tomatoes go to waste!

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As the nights get cooler and the days get shorter, apples that ripen in the Fall are finally ready to come off the tree.  We have several U-Pick apple orchards in the area and enjoy going to fill up a bag or two as we wander down the rows of apple trees.  Inevitably we come home with more than we can simply eat so naturally, we look for ways to preserve a piece of Fall.

Last year I dug out the apple slicer and corer.  It took about an hour or two to make my way through the entire harvest and get them ready for preserving.  We left several of the jars of apples plain and packed them in sugar water.  I used another batch of apples to make jars of apples packed in cinnamon red hot syrup.

Both have proven to be a winner and have their own special uses.  The regular apples I use for baked goods, pancakes or waffles and main dish recipes like Pork Chops with Apples.  The cinnamon red hot apples are good for desert toppings and breakfast treats like waffles.

Yearning to celebrate the changing of the seasons this weekend, I cooked up Baked Pork Chops with Apples and a side of Baked Sweet Dumpling Squash.  Both were delicious and I will put them in our seasonal recipe collection.  I’ll share those recipes later this week.  In the meantime, if you’re looking to can some apples, here are the two recipes I use.

Apples In Syrup

courtesy: Ball Complete Book of Preserving

Ingredients:

-  10 to 12 lbs. apples, stemmed, peeled, cored and quartered (to prevent browning submerge apple slices in 1/4 cup lemon juice and 4 cups water)

-  1 batch of hot syrup (I used a light syrup recipe because I wanted to preserve as much of the nautral apple flavor & sweetness as possible.  Make by combining 2 & 1/4 cups of granulated sugar in a large pot with 5 & 1/4 cups water.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring until sugar is dissolved.  Reduce heat to low and keep warm until needed, making sure you don’t boil the mixture down)

Directions:

1)  Prepare canner, jars and lids.

2)  In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine apples and syrup.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat.  Reduce heat to medium-low and boil gently for 5 minutes, until heated through.

3)  Using a slotted spoon, pack hot apples into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot syrup into jar to cover apples, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbled and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot syrup.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4)  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process both pint and quart jars for 20 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 5 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

Apples in Cinnamon Red Hot Syrup

courtesy:  Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving

Ingredients to make 8 pint jars:

1 & 1/2 cups granulated sugar

1/2 cup cinnamon red hot candies

2 cinnamon sticks

2 tsp. whole cloves

1 tsp. ground ginger

2 cups water

1 & 1/2 cups vinegar

2/3 cup light-corn syrup

2 tbsp. red food coloring (optional)

24 medium apples, peeled, cored, sliced and treated according to directions above

Directions:

1)  Prepare canner, jars and lids.

2)  In a large stainless steel saucepan, combine sugar, cinnamon candies, cinnamon sticks, cloves, giner, water, vinegar, corn syrup and red food coloring, if using.  Bring to a boil over medium-high heat, stirring frequently.  Add apples and stir gently over medium-high heat until apples are heated through, about 6 minutes.  Discard cinnamon sticks.  Turn heat off, but leave saucepan on heating element while filling jars.

3)  Using a slotted spoon, pack hot apples into hot jars to within a generous 1/2 inch of top of jar.  Ladle hot syrup into jar to cover apples, leaving 1/2 inch headspace.  Remove air bubbles and adjust headspace, if necessary, by adding hot syrup.  Wipe rim.  Center lid on jar.  Screw band down until resistance is met, then increase to fingertip-tight.

4)  Place jars in canner, ensuring they are completely covered with water.  Bring to a boil and process for 15 minutes.  Remove canner lid.  Wait 10 minutes, then remove jars, cool and store.

Now let the fruits of your labor cool for a couple of days and coming up later in the week, I’ll share the delicious recipe I used for Baked Pork Chops and Apples and Sweet Dumpling Squash.

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So I haven’t really announced to my readers yet that I’m getting ready to make a cross-country trek to a new home. I’m leaving Flagstaff, AZ after so many wonderful years and heading to Evansville, Indiana. I got a new a job there, the cost of living is much lower and I will have a long growing season to spur a quite productive garden. At least that’s my hope anyway! The drive is more than 1500 miles and we obviously can’t take perishable food on the road with us. So we’ve been dwindling down our supplies both in the cupboard and in the freezer. That’s led to some very uninteresting meals but also extremely low grocery bills. I knew we hoarded food for a reason!

Within our stash of food, we had several bags of frozen fruit. Two of those bags were a triple berry mix with raspberries, blueberries and blackberries. The third was a bag of strawberries. I’ve dipped into them on occasion to make one recipe or another but they were mostly unused. Not wanting to waste all those berries or give them away, we decided to whip up some quick batches of no-pectin jam. Pectin is that stuff you buy in the little box at the grocery store that gels up your fruit mix. I didn’t have any to begin with and really didn’t want to waste the gas driving into town for some so I found pectin-free jam recipes online (my canning book was packed away by my very efficient box packer).

My first batch of triple berry jam worked out great. I found a recipe that basically is nothing but 4 cups of fruit and 4 cups of sugar. Boil it until it gets to 220 degrees and then can it in sterilized jars. Pretty simple! But my next batch of strawberry jam wasn’t working out so good. After an hour of rapid boiling I could not get the temperature to climb above 203 degrees. Getting worried I headed to the world wide web to do some SOS searching on what to do. Luckily, I stumbled across Laura and Barb’s blog called My Sisters Kitchen. Their blog post on making jam without any added pectin informed me of a temperature correction formula if you’re above sea level. At 7500 feet, I definitely needed to correct down on a boiling point for my jam!

I quickly rushed back to my kitchen and began putting my strawberry jam into sterilized jars. Those two saved my day! I could have been waiting for strawberries to boil until they absolutely could boil no more and turned into some strange gooey concoction that would have made for a dish washing disaster! Check out their blog. They seem to have a lot of wonderful recipes and life experiences to share. I’m going to add them to my frequent list!

What have you done to avoid wasting food?  Have you found yourself making changes due to rising food prices?  Share your hints and tips with our other readers.  For some time we’ve been using a whole chicken right down to the bones for several meals.  For more on that, read The Art of Resourcefulness.

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