Charcutepalooza: Duck Prosciutto

I promise, I have had a lot going on besides Charcutepalooza. But dangit, Charcutepalooza is the fun one of all my current projects! And finally today we got to enjoy its benefits.

The duck prosciutto was ready last week, but we were busy and only had time to try a little nibble. Our duck breasts had quite a bit of fat on them, which wasn't so good to eat straight, but I learned I could trim it off and use it to give an amazing richness to a pot of beans. Beyond that, we wrapped up the duck prosciutto and stashed it in the freezer for a better day.

Today was that day, and I decided that if you can't have a fancy appetizer for breakfast sometimes, then you aren't really living. I've always seen pork prosciutto served in thin slices wrapped around chunks of melon... and I got to thinking that the sweeter acidity of a mango would go nicely with our juniper-cured duck prosciutto.

The great thing about having frozen the prosciutto: It was easier to slice it very thin. And by the time I had the mango peeled and cubed, those thin slivers of duck had thawed out. So I just wrapped them up and plonked them on a pretty dish, and we nibbled our mango-prosciutto bites with our fingers over the newspaper. I had coffee because I'm a junkie, but Keith had his with peppermint tea, and in retrospect I bet that was really lovely with the fruit and duck.

So that's project one of Charcutepalooza, and I still have plenty of home-cured duck prosciutto in the freezer. (I'm thinking I need to chunk some of it up in the spring and make a pasta dish with duck prosciutto and the first little green peas from my garden.) Next up is homemade bacon, and I was out pricing pork belly for that today.

It's funny how cooking expands your horizons. Five years ago, I was in Hollywood experimenting with new produce from the Sunday farmers' market at Sunset and Vine. Three years ago, I was new in Portland and beginning to try my Grandmother's old freezing rituals and planning my garden. Two years ago, my dabbling interest in canning took off into an ever-growing epic that now consumes my summers and allows me to go Christmas shopping in my own pantry. One year ago, I started making cheese. And now that I've nailed down the science and craft of freezing and canning, my preservation inclinations are coming to include charcuterie. Not bad for a former-vegetarian urbanite.

And I find the more I learn, the less I know, and I like it that way. This way I always get to keep on learning! Now, on to that pork belly...

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We Got Crabs.

That joke never gets old, does it?

I don't usually do shellfish as a general rule. I like it - well, some of it - but I've got this combination of Jewish obligation and Catholic guilt that makes me feel like I'm doing something perverted whenever I eat shrimp. So I steer clear and give in only when I know it's going to be worth it.

I knew it would be worth it at the farmers' market a few weeks ago. It was the week before Christmas, the last market of the season before they close up for three whole months, and the vendors were doing their best to unload whatever they had left. Keith and I had done our shopping and were trudging back to the car when we passed a couple of fishmongers who were advertising local Dungeness crabs for $3 a pound. We bought two huge fresh crabs for under $5.

When we got home, we were busy with a lot of Christmas preparations, so we stuck the crabs in the freezer. A couple days ago, Keith was itching to cook them up, so he did. I was way too intimidated to do it myself - but no longer. It was quite easy, just a little messy but worth it. Last night we were at the grocery store and Keith found a tub of Dungeness crab meat for $25; he figures it contained about the same amount of meat as we got from these two crabs. We only had to work a little for it - but then, that was fun too, sitting down at the table to crack the legs and dig out the meat while nibbling little bites of risotto.

I made the risotto while Keith cooked the crabs. It's a pretty simple one, but I added the minced peel and some juice from my salt-preserved Meyer lemons, and I also stirred in some fresh parsley and a three-year aged parmesan Keith picked up in southern Oregon. I didn't have any good chicken stock to work with, and I complained that the risotto was bland before I added the lemon and parsley... but once they were in, wow! What a difference. It went great with the crab.

So well, in fact, that the next morning I combined the leftover risotto, leftover crab meat, and an egg, and then I melted the leftover clarified butter and fried up little crab-risotto patties for breakfast.



Sometimes guilty pleasures can be the very best kind.

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Beefy Pumpkin Stew

This is one of my winter favorites - we both just love it. It's hearty, very filling, warming, and delicious, and so easy! The crockpot does most of the work, and the spices make the whole house smell delicious by dinnertime.

BEEFY PUMPKIN STEW

1 small pumpkin or butternut squash (about a pound)
1 lb cubed stew beef *
1 medium-sized rutabaga or potato, cubed
1 medium-sized turnip, cubed
1 large carrot, sliced
¼ onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
½ cup pearl barley
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 heaping tsp cumin
1 tsp salt
½ tsp paprika or chipotle powder
¼ tsp black pepper
¼ tsp cinnamon
Hot sauce to taste
4 cups water or broth

* To make this vegan: Use mushrooms instead of beef.

Cut the pumpkin in half and scoop out the guts. Quarter each half and carefully cut the rind off until the whole pumpkin is peeled. This is the most labor-intensive part, but if you're slammed for time, they do sell pre-peeled chunks of butternut squash in the grocery store; it won't be quite as good as fresh, but it's still tasty. Dice the peeled pumpkin into 1" cubes and put them in the crockpot.

Add all the remaining ingredients to the crockpot. Turn it on low and cook 8-10 hours. As it nears the end of the cook time, give it a good stir and check the seasonings. Enjoy with hot yeast rolls or cornbread.

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Turkey-Leek Pie (with vegetarian option)

In the winter, I often make this vegetarian leek-artichoke pie with excellent results. Today I was craving it, and I had some leeks, but I didn't have any artichoke hearts. So I dug around in the fridge and improvised, taking the opportunity to use some of the huge gallon bag of turkey I had left over from Thanksgiving weekend (we froze most of it, but I had some I'd thawed this week). The result - even better than the original.

And with this crust, it's unbelieveably simple. You don't even have to roll the crust out or dirty up a bowl! It really is "easy as pie." Make it gluten-free with brown rice flour instead of wheat, if that's your thing.

To make it vegetarian, just leave out the turkey and throw in another cup of veggies - artichoke hearts are great, obviously, but so are potatoes or even beans. You could throw in some chunks of frozen tofu as well, and I was just thinking how good pine nuts would be. If you want to leave the egg out, just increase the milk to a full cup. This is a very flexible dish! And soooo comfort-foody. Just serve it with a salad for a delectable dinner.

TURKEY (OR VEGGIE) LEEK PIE
Serves 4-6

Crust:
1 cup whole wheat flour
½ cup unbleached white flour
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
½ tsp pepper
¼ cup + 2 Tbsp milk
¼ cup olive oil

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

In a glass or metal pie plate, combine dry ingredients and whisk to blend. Add the milk and olive oil, then gently mix until it forms a dough. Use your hands to pat it into place over the bottom and sides of the pie plate. (A few tiny holes or rips are fine, just pinch them together if you can.) Set aside.

Filling:
1 Tbsp butter
4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced
1 large leek (or 2 smaller ones), white and light green parts, sliced & rinsed
1 cup kale (or spinach), rinsed and chopped
1 medium-sized turnip (or potato), diced small
1 cup cooked turkey (or chicken), diced
Salt & pepper to taste
Dash nutmeg
Fresh thyme (optional)
¾ cup milk
1 egg
2 Tbsp flour, any kind
½ cup crumbled gorgonzola cheese, divided

Melt the butter in a big saucepan or wok over medium-high heat, and add the garlic. Saute for a minute or two, then add the leeks, kale, and turnip. Stirring occasionally, cook until the leeks and kale begin to wilt. Season with salt, pepper, nutmeg, and thyme if using. Add turkey and cook another minute or two more.

Whisk the egg into the milk, then add the flour and whisk to blend. Pour into the pot with the veggies and turkey, and stir for a minute until warm throughout. Take it off the heat.

Spread all but 1 Tbsp of the gorgonzola into the bottom of the pie crust. Pour the veggie mixture on top and smooth it out evenly. Sprinkle the remaining 1 Tbsp gorgonzola crumbs on top and bake for 30-40 minutes or until set firm. Let stand at least 5-10 minutes before serving.

Note: If you're pressed for time after work, you can make the filling and crust a day ahead and refrigerate them separately; then just dump in the filling and cheese and throw it in the oven when you're ready.

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December

It is EXTREMELY December out there. The sun is shining, but the temperature is 40 with a wind chill of 25; the winds are strong enough to knock you back a few steps, and I can hear it blowing from inside the house. Today I woke up watching our massive Douglas fir, swaying like a yoga teacher through the skylights over the bed, and then I bundled up in several layers of jacket, coat, hat, scarf, gloves, warm thoughts, and headed out to the farmers' market.

First stop at the farmers' market was hot coffee, and then I hiked briskly through the wind while thinking back on the summer of peaches. No more peaches now, that's for sure. I noticed quite a lot of turnips but almost none with the greens, which are my favorite part, so I asked and one lady told me that the weather had already wrecked a lot of the greens. It's pretty early for that, but there's one more sign we're in for a hard winter.

Once I got home, I snuggled down, and here I am for the rest of the day, sipping hot tea in my jammies with cats piled all around me. I'm about to work on screenwriting for the rest of the afternoon, but first, some pictures I've taken since the start of December...

The ultimate winter meal, pot roast cooked with potatoes, turnips, and carrots in rosemary and Black Butte Porter.


Fry and Davey, snuggled up warm in a little chair in my sewing room. (They do this a lot.)


Leftovers Soup, made with leftover pot roast, potatoes, and carrots with barley and lentils, in a broth made from red wine and leftover gravy. Unholy delicious on a cold rainy night!


Our hens snuggled up out of the wind on a chilly night.


And finally, my little fire, which I'm going to try and keep going as best I can while I sip hot tea and knock out the rest of this screenplay.

Happy Chanukah!

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This is getting ridiculous.

It's been a busy time for me these days, which is why I haven't been blogging as much. It's been a busy time for the FDA too - the jackbooted thugs are out in droves once again, holding children at gunpoint, confiscating hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of inventory from small family farms, illegally stealing computers and office equipment without warrants, and generally doing what they do best, which is eliminating the competition for Big Ag.

The current target is raw dairy, and cheese in particular. It started with an illegal raid on the private food buying club Rawsome Foods in California. I'll let you read the article so I don't clutter this space by repeating information, but this baseless raid resulted in the (illegal) confiscation of certain raw cheeses produced by Missouri's Morningland Dairy. Those samples sat around for 30 days - a few months after leaving the dairy - and then one of them somehow tested positive for listeria even though none of the dairy's thoroughly-tested equipment was contaminated. No, I'm sure no one tampered with that sample...

So anyway, now the FDA is out to destroy Morningland Dairy. This tiny family farm has been prohibited from making or selling any cheese since August, and they've been ordered to destroy over $250,000 worth of product, which would completely put them out of business. For six weeks they were forced to dump their milk - remember, we live in a country where children are suffering from malnutrition in an economy that makes it difficult for many people to buy whole foods, and six weeks' worth of fresh milk is a lot of nourishment to feed the sewer. Eventually Morningland was permitted to sell the milk for pasteurized, homogenized distribution, which nourishes no one, may cause heart disease, and does not generate a significant profit for the dairy, but they take what they can get while the government holds them hostage.

Now they're after another farm, the Estrella Family Creamery in Washington state. Same shit, different day - the FDA shuts down the dairy and orders the destruction of massive amounts of high-quality cheese that carries no pathogens whatsoever, ostensibly because someday it might.

It should be noted that the Morningland Dairy has been in operation for over thirty years, and the Estrella Family Creamery for nearly ten, and not one person has ever been sickened by their award-winning cheeses. Can Kraft say the same?

It's worth contrasting the FDA's actions here with their handling of the recent salmonella outbreak at Umpqua Dairy, a pasteurized-homogenized industrial "milk" company here in Oregon (they sell their products at supermarkets throughout Oregon, Washington, and northern California). Back in August, the state of Oregon issued a press release warning that 23 people had been infected with salmonella as a result of consuming Umpqua's products. Two of them were hospitalized. If you're waiting to read about the FDA raiding and shutting down Umpqua in the name of public health, well, so am I. Instead, a voluntary recall was issued, and government officials bent over backwards to soothe the public about how low the risk of illness actually was.

It all makes you wonder what the FDA's true agenda is - public health, or industrialization? And it also makes me worry about the Food Safety Modernization Act, currently before the Senate. This act, designed by Monsanto's own Michael Taylor, would give the FDA unprecedented and unconstitutional powers and allow them to act completely without judicial oversight. This bill would spell death for organic farming, farmers' markets, and small local food. (Monsanto's own power and influence would also, of course, increase exponentially, delivering the last nail in the coffin of family farms.) As Hartke says of the FDA, "If they get more power through S.510, they will regulate the family farm and real food to death and give you Cheez Whiz and Twinkies as government approved food."

That's not what I want or need. Think hard when you cast your ballots next week, and remember - if we don't speak up for Morningland or the Estrellas now, who will speak up for us later?

UPDATE: As of today, it looks like Morningland is going to court. It also appears as though it is a crime in the state of Missouri to request justification before obeying a government order to commit suicide. This has terrifying implications for all Americans... whatever happened to due process?

Terrifying.

Well, I'm back. I've got some pleasant settling-in things to talk about, but first I need to mention the ever-increasing threat of the passage of the Senate's ironically-titled Food Safety Enhancement Act (what a perfect example of Orwellian doublespeak).

Click this link to get the info.

Then call your Senators, your local newspaper, and all your friends and family. We need to raise holy hell over this. If EVER there was a time to step up and scream "NO!" - this is it.

Happy Times

Apropos of nothing: Here's a baby zucchini in my garden.

Apparently, I post on Sundays now. I keep meaning to post more often but man, I am SLAMMED! With work, and writing, and cooking, and of course, canning.

I'm up early today to put up some salsa verde before I go to work, and then we're heading to Sauvie Island for a 10 lb bag of pickling cucumbers to go with my 10 lb bag of beets. Half the beets are going to be pickled, and half will become beet relish. I also want to pickle some carrots, after nibbling some spicy pickled carrots yesterday...

Ahh, yesterday. Nearly a perfect day! We started out at the farmers' market for a nice long breakfast and some lingering shopping. I treated myself to a cup of lucious French press coffee, and a transcendent caprese salad - juicy, candy-sweet cherry tomatoes, halved and mixed with fresh mozzarella, fresh basil, and torn chunks of a gloriously salty crusted baguette, all tossed with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Unholy.

After we loaded up on fresh produce - OH MY G-D, the tomatoes are FINALLY in at a reasonable price! - we took a little walk downtown and browsed through Powell's Books, the world's largest independent bookstore, and then I went to work. Decent day there, and when Keith picked me up, we headed up to Mt. Tabor (Portland's volcano) for a brief hike; we left Mt. Tabor for The Moon & Sixpence, our favorite British pub, for dinner over the newspaper and the crossword. And then we saw the new Todd Solondz movie, Life During Wartime, which I've eagerly anticipated for over a year. All told, a fabulous day.

Does mean I have to catch up on the canning though, and I've also got some extra cream I skimmed off our raw milk, so tonight I'll be whipping up some butter. Now's when I miss having a food processor - it's so easier to make butter with one - but I'll get by.

Gotta love a weekend that is this pleasant AND enjoyable.

Yes, I Can! (A Lot.)

I have a hunch that very soon, I'm going to have enough grapes to share a few.

We need to get some carboys and get ready to make some white wine, I think!

I've been canning like it's 1899 these days. More corn salsa, some more peach salsa coming up... I've also put up blackberry jam, ginger-blackberry chutney (which is really too thin and runny to be called a chutney, but it'll taste good poured over baked brie at the dinner gathering I'm having tonight), some cherries in wine, and more.

We've been picking blackberries almost every day, since they're growing wild and abundantly all over the neighborhood; on Wednesday we went up to Sauvie Island to pick blackberries and lie on the beach for awhile. It was a nice break from work and cooking, but the canning work continues. Every time I get caught up, we go to the farmers' market or find a blackberry bush, and I'm off again.

I'm hoping to get started on pickles and tomatoes this week. I recently learned that the FDA, in their infinite... uh, wisdom, requires all tomatoes and tomato sauces to be canned with BPA in the can lining. Even the organic ones. As a woman who's hoping for pregnancy, I'd rather steer clear of BPA when I can, so that means I need to put up tons of tomatoes now because I use the heck out of canned tomatoes in the winter! Thank you, FDA, for giving me still more busywork. You never fail to impress me with the deepest depths of your competence.

And the pickles. Ahh, pickles. I'm currently looking at a 10 lb bag of beets we got for $9 on Sauvie Island, which is destined to become beet pickles and beet relish. And the pickling cucumbers are coming in, so I'll be putting up some dills as well as bread and butter pickles, which Keith has requested since we sampled some awesome bread and butter pickles at the farmers' market.

I had wondered just a month or two ago if canning season would come at all. Hilarious.

Peach Summer

This is the summer of peaches.

Last summer was all about cherries, due to the snowstorm we had the winter before. We dehydrated cherries, we ate them fresh, we canned them and froze them. We stayed up into the morning on nights too hot to sleep, pitting and slicing cherries until our hands dripped with a Shakespearean stain. And by winter, when they were gone, we wished we'd put away more cherries.

There wasn't a bumper crop of cherries this spring, although we've had our share of fresh ones, so juicy from our excess rain that they burst bloody in our mouths. I preserved some in spiced brandy - they'll be ready around Thanksgiving or Christmas - and I got some more today that I'll preserve in red wine with orange and cloves. But this summer, we're mostly about the peaches.

It started a couple of weeks ago when I won a free flat of them in a contest: "Tell us a little-known peach fact, and the best one wins a flat!" My peach fact, which I learned from The Little House Cookbook, is indeed an interesting one - back in nineteenth-century America, before tropical vanilla became widespread, peach leaves were often used as the standard flavoring for custards, pies, and other desserts.

That tidbit launched a love affair with Baird Family Orchards peaches. We blew through that first flat in two days and are halfway through our second one; as we picked up our box of peaches from the Baird stand at the farmers' market yesterday, Keith mused, "I think I found my brand." Yeah, I grew up in the South, but I can't recall ever having such juicy, succulent peaches in my entire life. You could get high just sniffing them like glue.

Keith took a bite yesterday, moaned, and sighed, "This is the kind of fruit that launches wars."

So sure, we've eaten them fresh, drenching our shirts, slurping from our fingers as our elbows grow sticky. But I'm saving some too. I combined them with some of the hot peppers from my dad's garden, several different kinds, with a bit of lime, garlic, and cumin, in a sweet-firey peach salsa that I wanted to call "Atlanta Is Burning."

Others went into a frozen pie filling with marionberries, tapioca, and a bit of cinnamon and cardamom; that'll be delicious later in winter. Later I'll be preserving some in brandy for our waffle brunches, and I'm sure I'll think of more ways to keep them, because these peaches inspire hoarding.

Soon, when it's thirty-four degrees outside in the drizzling rain, dark at 4 pm, perhaps one day I'll open a jar, or bake up a pie. And then we'll remember the summer we spent dripping peach juice and sweat. Already it's a warm baking memory.

Quick Pics

Just a picture-post to facilitate the catchup.

First, last night I made a grassfed pot roast for dinner, for no apparent reason other than the fact that they had the beef at the farmers' market and roast was (obviously) the cheapest cut. I simmered the roast in the crock pot all day. To go with it, I smashed some purple and red new potatoes with parsley and paprika, and made a salad of speckled lettuce, snow peas, and fried squash flowers. Mighty tasty. I didn't get a picture of it because my friend and I devoured it while watching Chungking Express.

Pineapple would've been the perfect dessert to go with that movie, but alas I was out of fruit (I'm always out of fruit because I eat it all the day I buy it). So I took an empty pint basket and jogged across the street, where an abandoned house sits behind a chainlink fence that supports a massive blackberry bush. The blackberries there are still slightly underripe and tart, just the way I like them best! So I filled my little pint basket for free, listening to the music from my own windows in my bare feet, and trotted back home to wash and dry my dessert.



I've also gotten some tasty bounty from my own yard. Out of my five blueberry bushes, three are an early-season variety and two are a late-season variety. So those two are still covered in little green blueberries, but the other three have been producing extremely well for their small size and young age. Let me tell you, if you've never had blueberries freshly picked and still warm from the sun, you've never had blueberries, period!



And a final picture that I got the other day, when I caught Lana and Lucy working on my breakfast. Keep up the good work, ladies!



Speaking of chickens, the seven chicks were 14 weeks old yesterday. I'm calling tomorrow about renting processing equipment, and it looks like that date they have with the sharp knife is fast approaching. Stay tuned!

Bad Blogger! Bad Blogger!

I haven't posted in forever and I'm sorry. I got back from L.A. and have been hunting for a job, getting the garden going (ooh, lots of winter squash coming soon!), blah blah...

I messed up when I planted my Three Sisters all at once. Apparently the corn needs a head start. I have two kinds of corn coming up nicely, but the pole beans are coming up much more quickly and now they're falling all over the place because the corn isn't tall enough for them to climb up. Oops. We live and we learn.

The weather has improved and it's beautiful summer out. Not too hot - a couple days in the 90's, a few in the 70's, most in the lower 80's - and a lovely sun in a brilliant blue sky. We still haven't seen the first tomato yet, but the farmers' market today was loaded with young summer squash, zucchini flowers, berries of all kinds, fresh local cherries, baby chard, lettuces... even if summer's off to a late start, we're doing all right.

I got some Bing cherries today that were just perfect. So I ate a few of them, but I preserved most of them for Thanksgiving or the holidays. I made a simple syrup with a little sugar and water, and simmered it with lemon juice, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, and vanilla beans; then I stirred in some brandy, packed the pitted cherries into a pint jar, and poured over the sweetened spiced brandy. That jar went into the fridge, where it will hang out until Thanksgiving, at which point we will have the most delicious spiced brandied cherries, and spiced cherry brandy too!

I'm sipping the leftover spiced brandy right now and it's delicious. The best part of canning is enjoying the leftovers while you look forward to the future.

We're Home! (A Very Portland Weekend.)

Oh man, am I exhausted! But it's the good kind.

We made it from L.A. to Portland in one 18-hour day, including a stop for lunch at a decent little pizzeria in Northern California, and a trip to a kitchen goods outlet store, which is a dangerous place for us to be but we scored a great deal on a salad spinner I really wanted and a very nice ice cream maker at half the retail price. Yay for homemade ice cream! We've really wanted an ice cream maker for some time now so that we can make our own deliciousness out of raw milk/cream and good organic fruits and herbs. Coincidentally we also scored ten bananas for fifty cents at our little produce market here in Portland yesterday, so it looks like banana ice cream is first up (though more on that later)!

Anyway, we also made the obligatory stop in Central Point, Oregon, for Rogue Creamery cheese and Lillie Belle chocolates, plus a very pleasant wine tasting. So we weren't in the car for the full 18 hours. But we were still pretty exhausted by the time we got in, about 10:30 pm. We loved on the cats some and passed out.

Since then it's been a flurry of catching up. Portland has suffered through a pretty massive rain in our absence, yesterday being the last day of a twenty-day run of straight rain. This is typical of winter around here but not summer, and no one knows why it happened. The most noticeable effect of it all was evident even as we pulled into our driveway in the dark: an explosion of roses, and knee-high weedy grass. Oops.

So we had mowing and weeding and staking roses to get through, plus unpacking, laundry, straightening up, restocking chick feed, restocking people feed, marveling over the chicks' incredible growth, and otherwise restoring the balance. We've been hard at work and still aren't done yet. I hope to finish tomorrow.

But today was Saturday, so we went to Sauvie Island for the afternoon. We made a stop at Kruger's Farm for fresh-picked, candy-sweet roasted corn, then headed for the beach, where we waded through thigh-high flooding to get to a narrow strip of sand along the swollen, fast-moving river. After so much rain ending in a sunny warm Saturday, all of Portland was out enjoying the weather today, but our strip of beach wasn't too crowded and we soaked up some vitamin D and relaxed for awhile. Eventually we headed back to Kruger's Farm to pick ourselves five pints of strawberries.

We got home sun-tired and woozy, but hungry, so I quickly seared and roasted a fresh salmon filet we bought yesterday (with fresh rosemary from the yard), and served it up atop a lovely salad of red lettuce, green onions, red turnips, sunflower seeds, and smoked bleu cheese. A lemon vinaigrette held it together nicely, made with a lemon from Keith's father's lemon tree (that tree makes the sweetest, juiciest, tastiest lemons I've ever had). The salmon was so perfectly moist and flaky, and went so nicely with the smoked bleu cheese, that we both just sat at the table quietly licking our lips like cats for several minutes before Keith got up to do the dishes.

I was going to make the banana ice cream tonight, but I'm just too freaking tired right now to skim the cream off the three half-gallons of raw milk we have in the fridge, much less cook up the custard and make ice cream. So I'll save that for tomorrow. It'll be a good day for it, since tomorrow is the first day of the Lents International Farmers Market (our favorite market in Portland, and also our closest one)! We'll have to celebrate with strawberry-banana ice cream now since we picked all those strawberries. Maybe we got too many, but they were so brilliantly red and sweet, still warm from the sun - I could've picked the whole field and brought it home.

Joel Salatin on the Revolution

I just had to share this article - actually an excerpt from Joel Salatin's foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights. If you don't know Joel Salatin yet, you should - and if you know me, then you know him, because I admit to devoted fellowship in the First Church of Salatin, Farmer. I know I talk about him a lot. Have been ever since seeing him in Food, Inc. and reading his groundbreaking, revolutionary book Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal.

It's not just his farming technique, it's his worldview, his classically American belief in liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Joel Salatin is at the forefront of a movement which recognizes that a corporate-controlled government oligarchy is NOT equipped to decide what we should eat, how we should conduct free enterprise among neighbors, or how we should nourish our families. I'll raise a glass of my grey-market, life-affirming raw milk to that philosophy - especially as Congress moves forward on current legislation which would effectively ban organic farming and farmers' markets (yes, really).

So anyway, the article. I can't repost the whole thing here, so click the link to read it.

I drink raw milk (sold illegally on the underground market)
by Joel Salatin

Excerpt:

Isn't it curious that at this juncture in our culture's evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be "science-based," I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee. I do not believe that is an overstatement...

Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don't have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?

Is it not, indeed. Jackbooted government thugs are harassing Amish farmers like Daniel Allgyer and Emmanuel Miller while Monsanto contaminates our groundwater and other corporations infect our children with E. coli and diabetes. And Congress, predictably, comes down on the side of its corporate sponsors.

Joel Salatin is right, we are absolutely at Wounded Knee. Voting out the incumbents and casting real votes for freedom this November, that's not just about taxes or Obamacare or who looks better on TV. This election is about our very survival, our fundamental right to choose nourishing, life-sustaining foods. There's nothing more basic, or more important, than that.

Bleu-Green Salad

O happy day! At long last, I have learned to love avocado.

I hated it for years. Hated the texture mostly, but the flavor didn't much do it for me either. I could tolerate avocados once I moved to the west coast, where they are fresh and abundant, but I still didn't really care for them. I don't even like guacamole.

They're so good for you though. And recently I've been deliberately trying to cultivate a taste for avocado. It's pretty good smashed up and spread on a vegetable sandwich with hummus, and it's good tossed into a salad with a lot of other textures. Finally I discovered that the secret to a delicious avocado: citrus and vinegar. Together. Something about that acid really brings a nice rich flavor out of all that creamy green.

So for lunch today, I made the greenest salad ever, and based it on avocado. I started with this recipe and just ran with it, using up the farmers' market goodness that I had on hand, enjoying the first local asparagus of the season. This salad was perfect. Next time someone asks me what spring in Oregon tastes like, I will serve him this salad. I'm just sorry that Keith missed out on it, because he would've absolutely loved it. I'll have to make it for him next week when I get down to L.A.

(And what a nutritional punch in this salad! Look at all that iron, those good healthy fats, a little protein, plenty of fiber... just perfect!)

BLEU-GREEN SALAD

1 bunch asparagus, trimmed and halved
2 avocados, peeled and cubed
Fresh, quality lettuce
Fresh baby spinach
Fresh sorrel
* Rogue Creamery Smokey Bleu Cheese
Sunflower seeds
Fresh mint

Dressing:
** 1 wedge salted Meyer lemon, minced, plus 1 Tbsp juice
1 small clove minced raw garlic
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp raw apple cider vinegar
1/2 Tbsp balsamic vinegar
1 small dollop honey
Fresh parsley, chopped
Pepper to taste

* Okay, you can use any bleu cheese here. But I really, really recommend the smoked bleu cheese for this if you can get it. It does the loveliest things with all the sweet crisp greens and creamy avocado... just incredible.

** Use the zest and juice of a lemon plus some salt if you haven't made salted Meyer lemons. But you should try those salted lemons sometime. They go with everything; I'm constantly finding new things to put them in, and that salted lemon juice is the best thing that ever happened to salad dressing.

So anyway, bring a pot of water to boil, then blanch the asparagus for a minute or two until it turns brilliant green. Meanwhile, whisk up the dressing ingredients with a fork and set aside. Drain the blanched asparagus in a colander and rinse under cold water until it's cool to the touch. Throw the asparagus and avocado together in a big bowl, pour the dressing over it, and mix it up.

Arrange the lettuce, spinach, and sorrel on a plate and dump half the avocado-asparagus mix on top. (Make two plates of greens to serve two people, or save the other half of the a-a mix for later.) Sprinkle with the bleu cheese, sunflower seeds, and mint. Try not to stuff it all in your face at once - it is that good!

Whew. I'm beat.

Busy busy weekend! Yesterday we started out at the farmers' market - find of the day, the season's first strawberries, all sweet like candy, and a lovely vanilla caramel made from goats' milk. Yum! Then we went to a meeting for Delia Lopez's Congressional campaign, and then home for yard work. TONS of weeding and Keith cut the grass for the first time since we bought this house in August - haha, it was awful. Then we scrubbed the house top to bottom and collapsed exhausted by the fire after our showers.

This morning I was up at 6:30 to get ready for the pancake party. I made all seven pancake mixes, got dressed, whipped up some raw cream; Keith made a lovely banana-strawberry compote topping and we set out maple syrup and butter. Our guests arrived at 10 a.m. to see the baby chicks while Keith got started on pancakes and waffles.

SEVEN FLAVORS of pancakes AND waffles. We were stuffed by halfway through! But I got a lot of great feedback. It looks like Ginger Chai Spice is going to be my biggest hit. I have comment cards to work from and I'll be tweaking the recipes and having another party very soon.

But now Keith and I are off to finally relax. We're taking the paper and some mimosas outside to the backyard, where we will spend the afternoon in the sunshine, reading the news and doing the crossword together, sipping mimosas and finally - FINALLY - relaxing.

Cakes, Pie, and a Mess O'Greens

Last night's shiitake mushroom risotto was superb - nice and creamy, and it went so beautifully with purple kale raab. But it was even better this morning. I beat two eggs and mixed them into the leftover risotto, then made them into patties and cooked them up in a little olive oil. They were SO GOOD! I've had fried risotto cakes before but never made them, and I'd put these up against anyone else's.

We had them for breakfast with some sliced radishes, then went to the farmers' market for a lovely morning. I loaded up on greens of every kind - some huge turnips with turnip greens, mustard greens, turnip raab, red chard, green onions, slim tender asparagus (the first of the year! Woohoo!)... a few other things too, but it was all green. It's spring, after all. Bright colors and fruits come later.

Dinner tonight looks like wild Chinook salmon, along with the asparagus we got today and the rest of the risotto cakes. I did get some rhubarb today too, actually, and I want to experiment with gluten-free pie crust, so I might entertain this idea I'm having for ginger-rhubarb pie sweetened with honey instead of sugar. But that might have to wait until tomorrow.