End of the Season Carrot Bread

It's hot out there, and I know that the last thing you want to do is turn on your oven. But, a carrot is a terrible thing to waste, and if you're like me, you might have a couple of extra bundles hanging out in the fridge from the end of the season harvest. So what to do with all those carrots? If you're tired of eating them raw, and you don't have any cabbage to make slaw, why don't you work your magic in the kitchen and bake a loaf of carrot bread. Come on it's easy! And, it's a sure fire way to get rid of a lot of carrots at once - which means more room for squash, cucumbers, eggplant and other summer veggies. All you need are the baking standbys, a few shelled pecans, and a strong air-conditioner. Enjoy your bread in the morning with a cup of coffee or at night with a scoop of vanilla ice cream (from Wright's Dairy of course!).







End of the Season Carrot Bread

2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup wheat bran
1 cup sugar (or 1 cup honey)
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup vegetable oil
3 eggs
1 1/2 cups peeled and grated carrot
1 cup chopped pecans

Combine eggs, oil, vanilla in a large mixing bowl. If you choose honey instead of sugar, add honey to wet ingredients. Sift together dry ingredients in separate bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix together. Do not over mix, bread can become dense and tough. Fold in carrots and nuts. Pour in greased 9" loaf pan and bake for about an hour at 350 degrees. If you use honey instead of sugar, decrease the oven temperature to 300 degrees and bake longer - 15 to 30 more minutes.

Alabama Farmers in the News

Alabama farmers have been getting some national attention as of late, and I thought you might like to know about it. Tasia Malakasis of Fromagerie Belle Chevre in Elkmont, made an appearance on the Today Show (you can watch the clip here, but it may take awhile to load) in late May and was featured as one of Country Living's 2009 Women Entrepreneurs. Of course, her delectable goat cheese has already received nationwide acclaim and is sold in stores all over the country. But, we always like to see her and her operation getting the recognition that they deserve! In the recent issue of Garden & Gun magazine, Frank Stitt is charged as the catalyst of Birmingham's renaissance in the early 80's - the creation of his Highland's Bar & Grill a turning point for the city's restaurant culture. The issue also gives props to Edwin Marty of Birmingham's Jones Valley Urban Farm.

Eating Alabama salutes these farmers and purveyors of local food! Keep up the good work!

Foraged Dewberry Pie

This is my favorite part of the summer, when, despite the gruesome heat, the progression of spring and summertime fruit marches mercifully onward, supplying our parched palates with sweet, nourishing elixirs. Yes, all I have to do is walk outside into the sweaty, buggy outdoors and I'm sure to stumble upon the minefield of wild (and cultivated) Alabama fruits. In my own yard a lone strawberry plant sits in a pot on the periphery of my garden and has been supplying me with a few berries here and there since early April. The fig trees that flank our house are bursting with tiny green fruits that are on their way to becoming golden and soft-fleshed in the weeks to come. And what I once thought were prolific weeds growing around the compost pile are actually dewberry vines that blossomed and fruited in mid-May.

What I can't get from my yard I look for elsewhere. Just a short drive from our house is the University Arboretum - a prime fruit foraging spot. We've gone there several times in search of the season's fruit - persimmons and muscadines in the fall, japanese bitter oranges in the winter (and if you're wondering, they really are bitter), and dewberries in the spring/summer. There are also a few other choice spots for fruit foraging around Tuscaloosa - I've heard that there's both a pear tree and a pomegranate tree on campus (I have yet to visit these) and in my own neighborhood there's a peach, pear, and apple tree all less than a block from our house. Last year my neighbors willingly shared their surplus fruit with me when I asked. And I plan to do the same this year. Except this time I'd like to make it a good old-fashioned barter. I'll trade some of my garden booty for a sack of peaches any day.

Apparently, fruit foraging has become a nationwide trend. Neighborhood fruit exchanges are popping up all around the country. People sign up to share their yard's bounty with others. You give me some of what you're growing, and I'll give you some of what I'm growing. Here's a case where apples and oranges really are equal! Check out a few mentioned in the New York Times: Neighborhood Fruit and Veggie Trader. (Neither have Alabama entries, it seems. Get to work, people!)

A couple of weeks ago we headed to the Arboretum in search of the season's last dewberries, and we found them - although not without some difficulty. Dewberries are blackberries kissing cousin, growing on low-lying vines riddled with stickers. In our case, the brambles were often comingling with poison ivy, so picking the berries was even more of a challenge. But oh the pie...

Farmers Market Fresh

The summer is upon us, and farmers market season is in full-force. In addition to our weekly CSA share from Snows Bend Farm, we try to visit at least one, if not two markets a week to supplement our supply of fresh vegetables and fruits. We are lucky to have two great markets during the week - the Tuscaloosa Farmers Market on Tuesday and Saturday mornings, and the Homegrown Alabama Market on Thursday afternoons. Occasionally, we visit the Pepper Place Market in Birmingham (if you go, be sure to look for Joe and Sara at the Fig Leaf Farm table). The Tuscaloosa Market draws quite the crowd, and the best produce often sells out in the early hours of the morning. Sleeping late could cost you some precious goods - like the first green tomatoes of the season or a basket full of plums. Even if you arrive past peak hours, there's always a lively group of farmers ready to offer you vegetable staples and a few unusual eats for good measure. On a recent trip to the market, we picked up one such item - Sue Lewis' pickled eggs with beets. While I was drawn to the vibrant hue, I wasn't quite ready to commit to what was contained within those red-stained juices. I suppose it was Andy's food curiosity and palate for eggs that prompted his purchase. He didn't waver in the least bit, making a quick transaction - as if the purchase was premeditated all along and he was simply replenishing his store of pickled eggs. We also picked up a variety of zucchini that we have not ever seen before, the 8 ball. These little green gourds were also grown by Sue Lewis, and according to her, make a great dip bowl - after you've utilized the innards of course.

Armed with our newly purchased stores, a few standbys from Snows Bend, and some sweet potatoes from Pepper Place Market in Birmingham, we made another killer all Alabama meal. Andy and I ended up splitting one of the 8-balls, because it turned out that there was way too much food. So be advised if you want to recreate this menu for yourself!











Stuffed 8-ball zuchinni with dill:

2 eight ball zucchinis
1 onion, chopped
3 T freshly chopped dill
3-6 oz of crumbled feta (to your liking)
1 T olive oil

Preheat oven to 475 degrees. Cut off tops of zucchini and scoop out flesh. Roughly chop zucchini flesh and set aside. Arrange zucchini and tops cut side down on rimmed baking sheet, bake 15 min. Remove.

Meanwhile, heat oil in large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and 1/2 tsp pepper to skillet. Cook, stirring often, until soft: 3-5 min. Add chopped zucchini and cook until most liquid has evaporated. About 10 min. Remove from heat, let cool slightly. Fold in feta and dill.

Fill zucchini bowls with prepared mixture, bake until top lightly browned, ~20 min. Top with freshly chopped shallots (green parts). Lift zucchini from baking sheet with wide spatula and serve.

Roasted Beet Salad with dill, goat cheese, and arugula:

4-6 medium beeets
2 1/2 T red wine vinegar
2 T olive oil
1 T chopped fresh dill
1 T minced shallot
goat cheese
arugula

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut off tops of beets, then wrap beets with skins on in aluminum foil. Place wrapped beets directly on oven rack. Bake for ~1 hr. After beets have cooked (should be soft), open foil and allow to cool. When cool enough to handle, rub beets to remove skin. Cut into chunks or slices, whichever you prefer. Place in a medium mixing bowl. Add goat cheese and arugula to the beets. The amount really doesn't matter, it's up to you. In a separate bowl, whisk together vinegar, oil, dill and shallots. Add salt and pepper to taste. Pour over salad and mix well.


Sweet Potato Fries:

2-4 medium sweet potatoes, peeled and cut into wedges or slender sticks
olive oil
salt, pepper, and cayenne pepper to taste

Dress sweet potato fries with olive oil in a large mixing bowl. Make sure they are sufficiently coated. Add salt, freshly cracked pepper, and cayenne pepper. Spread evenly on baking sheet and bake for ~45 min. at 350 degrees, checking occasionally to make sure they are not burning on edges. It helps to mix them up a bit during cooking.

Hello Summer!

We're back. Sorry for the long respite, but it's prime gardening season here in Alabama, and I've been spending a lot of time tending to my little food factories - weeding, watering, and willing the nascent fruit to ripen. We've improved the garden quite a bit since last year, taking the opportunity to increase our acreage by tilling up more of our front yard. Once again, the virgin soil proved fertile, feeding a sea of tomato plants that are trying their hardest to rival me in height. This confirms my theory that lawns don't actually want to be lawns. Somewhere under that manicured corral (or weed-ridden, as the case may be) is a mini-ecosystem - a workable earth that is waiting and hoping for you to buck convention, trim its grassy mane, and let it do its part. Well, we heard the call, and we responded. And so far, our edible landscape has exceeded our expectations, providing us with sustenance, beauty, and a sense of self-reliance.

This year, I got a little overambitious (as I tend to do), and started about a billion tomato plants from seed. Cherokee purples, green zebras, and roman stripes all began their lives in our guest bedroom, suffering through the less than ideal conditions, to grow into the plants they are now. Because my indoor seed-starting was an experiment, where I couldn't necessarily predict the results, I had to have a back-up plan. So in addition to growing tomatoes from seed, I also purchased a few plants at the Arboretum's plant sale, just to be on the safe side - in case my experiment went terribly wrong and I was forced to eat tomatoes that somebody else had grown (if I sound snarky, here's a caveat: last season I harvested over 150 tomatoes from my garden. Once this happens, there is no going back - unless, of course, an army of hornworms decides to wreak havoc). What followed was a garden of more than 20 tomato plants, half from the Arboretum and half from the greenhouse de Grace. Although it may seem that our garden is nothing but a tomato monoculture, rest assured that we're also growing lots of okra, eggplant, basil, hot peppers, sweet peppers, melons, herbs, and beneficial flowers.

Every evening after work, I say hello to the hubby, pet the cats, then hurry out to my working laboratories - taking notes on my subjects and checking to see what a day's worth of sunshine has done for them. I deadhead, sucker, and weed. And I take care to squash any rogue pests that jeopardize the integrity of my plants, or challenge me for the first taste of whatever's growing. I also do a lot of oohing and aahing - yes, my childlike wonder is still well intact, and I continue to marvel at the general science of the garden (seed germination, plant physiology, and pollination, oh my!). Last Saturday, we harvested our first vegetables of the season - a lone Japanese eggplant, a blushing beauty pepper (albeit a little prematurely, it had not yet blushed), and a single sungold tomato (a marvelous hint of what's to come). Since then, we've also picked a few of the many peppers growing on our jalapeno and banana pepper plants. We've got a lot of tasty vegetables on the horizon. Here's hoping you do too!

Meet your farmers in north Alabama this Saturday!

Quite a long hiatus we've taken from posting on this lil old blog. Many apologies are in order. We've been traveling and working and tending the garden and generally lolling about in the heat. There are no less than 4 - count em, 4! - posts in the hopper that we plan to publish soon. They chronicle our eating trip to San Francisco, the ridiculously large garden Rashmi is growing in both the front and back yards, and our continued pursuit in eating Alabama. I'm currently editing the documentary and working to get some finishing funds. Look for a trailer here in the next month.

In the meantime, for those of you in the north Alabama area, please head over to the Flying Monkey Arts Center at Lowe Mill in Huntsville to meet the growers in the Clean Food Network this Saturday, June 13th. We posted a while back about what the CFN is doing to create a local food system in north Alabama and it's really quite exciting. Hope you can make it out to their meet and greet - as Dove says, "We look forward to meeting the people who are eating our food and bringing a sense of community back into our community." Amen. You can find directions here. The farmers will be there from 12:30-4pm.

Santa Fe Farmers Market

When the French priests in Willa Cather's novel, "Death Comes for the Archbishop," arrive in New Mexico in the late 1800s, they are humbled by its stark landscape; the “monotonous red sand-hills” seem to go on forever, breaking only intermittently to show the smallest signs of life- a juniper tree, or a grove of Cottonwoods that promise water. While their time in New Mexico presented mostly ecclesiastical challenges, many of the discomforts they would bear were gastronomical in nature. You might expect there to be some level of adaptability, they were from France after all! Roasted leg of lamb gave way to stewed mutton in a pot with chile and onions ("Frenchman, as a rule, do not like high seasoning.") They complained about the lack of green vegetables in winter ("and no one seems to ever to have heard of that blessed plant, the lettuce"), soups made with onions in lieu of leeks ("how can man make a soup without leeks, that king of vegetables?"), and god forbid, a diet of dried beans and roots ("are we to eat dried beans and roots for the rest of our lives?").

Cather's novel was on my reading list for a recent trip to Santa Fe. Naturally, I was delighted and surprised to find that food played such a supporting role in the story of the French clergymen. I felt some sort of connection with her characters- they missed greens in the winter, they talked of planting gardens, they learned to perfect their sauces, and managed many other culinary pursuits despite “the poverty of materials.” In a new, and inhospitable land they were adapting to the changes in their diet (chiles in everything!) and dealing positively (although sometimes begrudgingly) with their limitations; and no matter what, food held a special place in their memory. They were like us!

After my year as a locavore, I carry my regional food curiosities with me wherever I go. When planning any vacation, I usually make it a priority to visit the local Farmer's Market, a nearby farm, or a restaurant that features locally grown foods. On this trip, my sister and I visited the Santa Fe Farmers Market, one of the most widely recognized markets in the country. Every Saturday morning of the year, people gather to shop for the season's best farm fresh produce, meat, and cheeses. Despite New Mexico's tortuous landscape, there seemed to be no shortage of vegetables. Cather's priests would have been overjoyed to see the buckets of lettuce, Swiss chard, and asparagus, not to mention the incredible variety of organic, pastured meats - chicken, beef, goat, lamb, bison, and even yak! It was a veritable oasis of foodstuffs, much of which was augmented with chiles (fortunately, I do not share the sentiment of Cather's characters, and enjoy on occasion a little spice in my cuisine)! There were also breads and pastries, teas and cheeses, hothouse tomatoes, and lots of free samples to munch on while perusing the aisles of vendors. What a way to travel!

Some of the market offerings:

Asparagus galore (this didn't last very long!)
Squash plants and flowers for sale
Organic beef, one of the many meat options available

My sister with her first tomato of the year! This is a yellow heirloom variety that was grown in a hothouse.


Freshly baked breads


"that blessed plant, the lettuce"

Alabama Supper Photos

Here are some very belated photos from our big supper out at Joe and Sara's place back in November. I post these now because I want to get you excited about an upcoming supper this summer - sometime in mid-June. Stay tuned for details. Here are some choice pics from the afternoon taken by our good friend Laura Shill. If you were there and have some of your own choice pics, please send them in to info(at)eatingalabama.org and we'll post those too.


Hill Country Hemhaw, at your service


Margaret Ann - Farmer and a Cook!


Buddy the pig. Buddy, do NOT go down to the grill


Chef Adam with the good stuff


Laying hens (until Biddy takes a bite)


Joe Brown, masked locavore crusader


My mom, Sarah, who helped make it all possible!


abg and Rash, the calm before the storm


Geary Hewett - our honey man


Tennessee Sippin' Whiskey = exception.


Rash with her mom, Latika (Nutwallah)


Jason from Good People pours an early pint


Randall from Highlands is ready to cook OYSTERS!


Cider press at the ready


Sara chats with Cat Hunt and Cat's daughter

Radishes and Arugula

There's something so satisfying about pulling up root vegetables. I probably already said that the last time I harvested carrots or radishes, but I'm happy to say it again, just so I know you're getting the full effect. For weeks you wait patiently, watching as the little green tops emerge from the soil, growing bigger with time - a litmus of what you hope the roots are also doing tucked safely beneath the ground. Then one day, on your way to the mailbox, you see their little pink heads peaking out of the dirt. Hooray!

Last week, I harvested my first crops of spring. Not only the healthy handful of radishes you see here, but also bowls of the incredibly flavorful arugula, my favorite type of salad green. I snuck in a late planting in mid-March, knowing that these fast-maturing crops would soon complement my meals come April (radishes and arugula both mature at around 21 days, although mine took a little longer than that). Here's a few recipes that highlight these springtime favorites.

Rigatoni with Arugula and Alabama Pork Sausage (modified from Epicurious)

1 T olive oil
4 leeks, chopped (white part and about half the green part)
3 garlic cloves, chopped
1 lb Alabama pork sausage (we used a pound, but I think you could use more like 3/4-1/2 lb)
2 cans of tomatoes in juice (we used two 24 oz Mason jars of canned tomatoes)
1 lb rigatoni or other pasta of your choosing
2-3 cups (packed) of fresh arugula, stemmed (we used 2 cups, but I thought the dish could have used more)
1/2 cup fresh basil, thinly sliced
1 T fresh oregano, chopped
1/2 cup freshly grated Asiago (or Parmesan) cheese

Heat oil in heavy large pot over medium heat. Add leeks; saute until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add garlic; stir 1 minute. Add sausage; cook until browned, breaking up with back of spoon, about 5 minutes. Drain drippings from pot. Add tomatoes with juice; increase heat and bring to boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer 30 minutes to blend flavors, stirring occasionally.

Meanwhile, cook pasta in large pot of boiling salted water until tender but still firm to bite, stirring occasionally. Drain.

Stir pasta, arugula, basil, and oregano into tomato sauce. Simmer until arugula wilts, stirring often, about 2 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Top with Parmesan.

Young Root Vegetable Braise (from Deborah Madison's "Local Flavors")

4 slender leeks, including a little of pale green (or 1 bunch scallions)
6 carrots, yellow and/or orange, 3-4" long
12 small turnips with their greens
1 bunch radishes-with 1/2" of their stems
sea salt and freshly ground peeper
1 lb fava beans, shucked (we left this out)
2 T unsalted butter
2 T finely chopped tarragon (we used dried)
1 T fresh lemon juice (we used apple cider vinegar)

1. Slice the leeks crosswise about 1/4" wide, then rinse them in bowl of water and drain. But all but 1/2" of carrot greens off, peel the carrots, and slice them in half lengthwise. Leave 1/2" of turnip greens attached. Peel up to shoulders. Cut into halves or quarters. Have the radishes lengthwise, soak them briefly in a bowl of water, then rinse, esp. the stems.

2. Bring 6 cups water to a boil and add 1.5 tsp salt. Blanch carrots, turnips, radishes for 7 min., then set aside. Drop fava beans into the water for 1 min, then remove. Save the cooking water. Rinse the fava beans to cool, then pop them out of their skins.

3. Melt half the butter in an 8 to 10" saute pan. Add the leeks and cook over med heat for 2 min., stirring frequently. Add 1/2 cup of the vegetable cooking water, the blanched vegetables, half the herbs, and 1/2 tsp salt. Simmer until the vegetables are fully tender, 10-15 min, adding water in 1/3 cup increments so that the pan doesn't dry out. There should be a little sauce.

4. Add the fava beans, remaining butter, and lemon juice. Raise the heat and swirl the pan back and forth until the butter has melted into the juice. Remove from heat, add the rest of herbs, season with pepper, and serve.

Montevallo Literary Festival | April 16 | 2:30 pm

Sara, Rashmi, Joe and I will be speaking at the Montevallo Literary Festival this Thursday, April 16th at 2:30 in the afternoon. We'll be talking about the project and the blogging/filming that we've done in our year of local eating. You can find more information about the Festival on Montevallo's website. But the most exciting thing about our trip to Montevallo has to be the Sustainability Banquet that evening. Michael Patton, a philosphy professor at Montevallo, has been teaching a course entitled "Science, Technology, and Value," which has in recent years focused almost exclusively on questions of local food and sustainability. Each semester the students put together what they've dubbed the Sustainability Banquet - where everything served is grown or raised within 100 miles. We're fortunate that the Banquet and the Literary Festival coincide this year. The Banquet is open to the public and if you're in that neck of the woods, we'd love to see you there! That, and Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood will be the featured guest and speaker at the Banquet.

You can read about the course here, or a recent newspaper article about the banquet here.

Wright Dairy at Manna in Tuscaloosa!

I know this might only apply to a few of you who live in the Druid City, but I can't help but beam with excitement about the local food news here. After a year of making milk runs to buy Wright Dairy milk (and recently, cheese) at stores in Birmingham, I'm happy to say that my local health food/grocery has started carrying the sweet cow nectar. Manna Grocery - which is about ten blocks from our house - has been doing their part in providing local food solutions for the Tuscaloosa community. Bo Hicks, a good friend and their produce manager, has really made a concerted effort to carry as many local products as possible. They carry chicken from Mississippi, some Snow's Bend produce, local honey, goat cheese, and now the best damn milk in Alabama. So if you're in Tuscaloosa sometime - even this fall to watch the Crimson Tide mercilessly slaughter our opponents - I encourage you to make a trip to Manna. You can find them here if you've never been.

UPDATE: Wright Dairy cheese too! Shipment just came in this morning!

Strawberries at BC Hunt!

Exciting, exciting news. Our friends at BC Hunt in Prattville are happy to announce the arrival of the strawberry season - the first fruit of the year which starts the magical procession of seasonal fruits all over again! Bring your friends and family out to pick a few gallons. You will not be disappointed - these are the best berries we had last year. Brian and Cat are serious about organic growing, and it makes a big difference. Here's the info:

The strawberry fields will open FRIDAY, APRIL 10TH

Hours of operation: 7am - 5pm Monday - Saturday

Prices: $9.50/gallon if you take our basket; $9.00/gallon if you bring something to carry your berries home in.

YOU MUST PICK IN OUR BASKET.

Please check the website www.bchuntfarms.com for field updates and availability daily.

The Finish Line

We did it. One year of eating Alabama. I must admit to feeling a little melancholy by this anticlimactic ending. In this year of investigating where our food comes from - of questioning every grain and every leaf while reconnecting broken foodways and meeting the people who grow what we eat - neither one of us came remotely close to dying of scurvy. Despite some lean times, neither one of us broke down and drove to Burger King as the hour hand cruised toward ten o'clock while a complicated meal sat simmering on the burner with "just twenty minutes" to go.

We did occasionally break down. There was that time in October when, working at the artist hospitality tent of our local arts festival, I decided that the good Lord would not be delivering hundreds of dozens of hot Krispy Kreme donuts around me just to test my strength. Maybe the first thirty dozens, yes. Those were a test. But after that, He was saying, "Yes my son. They are Hot, Now." And there were others, too. But this is not the time for confession...

This was the year of more food scares, most memorably the contamination of southern peanuts. But it was also the year I first saw peanuts growing in the ground. First saw the huge mass of a plant that produces the tiny nut. First wiped the dirt off fresh picked peanuts, and discovered the hard way that green peanuts can't dry out in a paper sack, they'll just go moldy. I had a woman in Waverly give me a dozen or so peanuts in an old mason jar - seed to plant this year from a variety that has been passed down in her family from the time of slavery. Maybe this variety, with five nuts to a shell, is one that made its way from Africa in the hull of a slave ship, like so many of the other vegetables we enjoy as staples of southern cuisine. Incidentally, Rashmi and I were never sickened by any of the food we ate during our project.

Maybe this ending is anticlimactic because Rashmi and I have been so absorbed with other aspects of our lives that our food has become, while not taken for granted, at least predictable. We've got certain things in the freezer, and while we wait for the Alabama growing season to start up we get by on frozen okra, green beans, pork, canned tomatoes, canned and frozen soup, bread, cheese, wild onion and garlic, and a few other incidentals. Our meals are variations on that motif nearly every night. Wish that it were that Alabama had a stronger farmers market culture with a local market filled with carrots, leeks, greens, asparagus, salad mix, broccoli, winter squash, beets, kholrabi, swiss chard, and radishes. But we're not there yet. Maybe a few more years of educating consumers and producers and a few more years of rising food prices and we will be.

So we ended this experiment, to quote another poem by TS Eliot, not with a bang but a whimper. Last night I read the paper while Rashmi made a delicious butternut squash soup (from butternut squash grown and donated by Sara and Joe). We made a salad with kale from Snow's Bend, goat cheese, and a little homemade vinaigrette, and we topped the soup with crispy bacon from our pig. Then we sat down together, like every other night, to talk about our day and reflect on the rich taste of our meal. It was, well, normal.

And this normality, while anticlimactic, is revolutionary. We've inverted the system. Through local food subterfuge, the traditions of our ancestors, and a handful of willing and able farmers, we've thrown off the nearly unyielding pressures of the Food Industrial Complex; the full court press of food marketing and the lure of cheap "fresh" produce year round. We've retreated into our own communities to forge this New Diet, and in so doing we've discovered, despite our own arrogance, that really it's an Old Diet. There is wisdom in the way we used to eat and derangement in the way we eat now. There is vibrancy and pride in local, small scale agriculture, and there is a dehumanizing loss of community in farms that grow exponentially bigger with fewer workers growing less crops with more chemicals. There is logic in eating food grown nearby. There is absurdity in eating food grown halfway across the continent. There is dignity in supporting local economies and complacency in choosing not to.

Like most endings, this one is an opportunity for a new beginning. This blog is not going away. We will continue our local food pursuits (despite some dried beans, tortillas, and rice...) and we plan to keep you posted on the fledgling idea of organizing ourselves into a group devoted to fighting for local food in the state of Alabama. It really has been a joy and an inspiration to read your emails and to know that there are hundreds if not thousands of people around this state who want to forge a new culture of local food. Thanks for your support. But we're not there yet. We hope you'll join us on this new beginning, and we hope you'll stop by sometime to share a meal.

I almost forgot! What did we eat on that last day? As a comparison from last year, if you're interested, here's the Last Supper, as it were...




Breakfast: Rashmi's famous fig bread













Lunch: At my desk, with leftovers from the previous night - fried okra, sauteed green beans with fresh wild garlic, pork chop with parsley from our garden, and a piece of cornbread.










Dinner: Butternut Squash soup with bacon, kale salad with goat cheese and vinaigrette

Desperate Times

How desperate can a Locavore get?

Eating AL's Andy Grace set down his $1,000 camera so that he could pick wild onions from a patch in Albertville, Al. After three months with no onions, I guess a man gets a little desperate.

Farm Trips: The last day of Winter, first day of Spring

Last weekend we stole ourselves away from monitoring the one tray of little seedlings nestled snugly in our spare bedroom window to take a trip up north to visit farms. We'd been meaning to get up to north Alabama again for some time, and this first weekend of Spring seemed like the perfect opportunity.














1. Birdsong Community Farm
We wrote about Joshua and Beth Haynes a few weeks ago after receiving a torrent of emails about all the local food connections they're making in Cullman. They're working to provide vegetables, eggs, poultry, dairy, and meat to their community through a network of farmers. Rashmi and I headed over there Friday afternoon and toured the farm at sunset. The moment we arrived they handed us a bag of popcorn grown on the farm and we set off. We knew this was our kind of place! The land they farm is the land where Joshua grew up and his parents still live in a house adjacent to their lot. They have crops in different plots all over their property. Joshua, Beth, their baby Andrew, and their intern Bret showed us all the work they're doing for the upcoming season with tours of their gardens, their greenhouse, their chickens, and their egg operation. They have quite a lot going on and this year promises to be bigger than last in terms of production. They grew some wheat last year and harvested the small plot by hand. But thankfully, they've got an old school combine on its way and they hope to grow more grains as well as dried beans this year.

After the tour, we sat down to a local meal - most of which was harvested on the land where we were eating. Green beans, asparagus, peppers, mushrooms, sweet potatoes, applesauce, creamed corn, pecan encrusted pork chops, and bread. The bread was Beth's proudest concoction - their very own wheat, honey, eggs, and applesauce mixed with local milk and butter. And it was a fine meal. They even wrote about it on their blog! The blogger becomes the blogged about...strange.

As I mentioned in our last post about Birdsong, Joshua and Beth are seriously considering CSA deliveries to Birmingham if enough people can form a buying group. I can't brag enough about what they're doing. If you're looking for local food options, Birdsong is the way to go.

BELOW: Joshua shows off some of the eggs in a fridge, a new field ready to be plowed, a lone asparagus about to be my dinner.





2. Sand Mountain CSA and the Sand Mountain Seed Bank
Russell and Dove Stackhouse have put together a unique network of farmers on Sand Mountain. The Clean Food Network, which uses an online farmers market to connect growers with consumers, has proven to be a real solution for local food in the area. They also run a CSA, sell at the Madison market, and generally connect people with food. They farm two main plots in different parts of the city - one of which has been in continuous operation for 62 years, despite the fact that a neighborhood has grown up around it. But one of the most interesting things they're involved in is the Sand Mountain Seed Bank.

Charlotte Hagood and Dove exchanged letters and seeds through the mail for a handful of years before finally meeting up, quite serendipitously, on Sand Mountain a few years ago. Charlotte, a gardener with a long standing interest in seed saving, and Dove found one another through a world-wide seed saving network called the Seed Savers Exchange. They formed the seed bank in 2006 to preserve local seeds and the stories that are passed down with old family and heirloom varieties. Charlotte and Dove both feel strongly about the need for a network of regional seed banks to save and grow out seeds for specific climates and regions. To this end, they've got dozens of varieties stored in mason jars in no less than four refrigerators in Albertville. But all that is soon changing - they recently purchased a Mayfield ice cream cooler truck (missing the actual truck) to be the permanent vault for their seeds. If you're interested in seed saving and in joining the seed bank to grow out some varieties, contact Dove and ask about membership. It's only $10 a year! In all this talk about food, it's easy to forget where it all comes from. And with huge multinationals increasingly controlling the supply of seed, the need for regional seed banks makes even more sense. Not to mention it's a really cool thing to grow out some ancient local heirloom variety!

Sara and I also picked some wild garlic while we visited a soon to be plowed field. If you're in the Albertville area, be sure to look up Dove and Russell. Don't forget to ask them where the authentic Mexican place is too. You won't be disappointed!

BELOW - Fat man pole beans, one of the fridges, and Sara and I picking garlic.





3. Jay's Garden Variety
I met Les Rivett of Jay's Garden Variety back in November - too late in the season to realize that she and her husband Jay were one of the few people we've been able to find who grew beans and sold them dried. We've been dying for some dried beans - so versatile, so perfect for winter soups, so nice in a tortilla. But beans or no beans we decided to drop by and see their operation. Jay and Les moved to north Alabama from California after finding a sweet piece of land for sale in between Ider and Henegar on Sand Mountain. Now they've got a sustainable farm specializing in vegetables and herbs - lots of them. Jay even built a nifty herb drier which they use to dry everything from peppers to lemongrass to basil (and everything in between). If you're looking for local herbs, they're your one stop shopping source. They also run a small CSA on Sand Mountain, sell through the Clean Food Network, and attend the Ft. Payne and Chattanooga markets. That, and their herd of cats, two dogs, and one guinea keep them fairly busy...

BELOW: Rashmi talks to Les, Joe strikes a pose next to Jay's Galaxie, and baby basil sprouts in the greenhouse.




4. Gardens of Huckleberry Hill

The next day we headed back south and drove through Talledega to visit Gardens of Huckleberry Hill in Alpine. Sandra who runs this small CSA and goat farm, is originally from the area, but moved to California where she began organic gardening. But she was drawn back to this land which has been in her family for many generations. Her narrative of returning home to the land that nourished her parents and her grandparents was really inspiring and reminded me a lot of farmers around the state who are farming land that has been passed down through the generations. Unfortunately, for many younger farmers who're trying to make a living growing food, sometimes using free family land is the only way to meet their narrow profit margins. But I digress.

When we visited Sandra, her daughter who lives in Atlanta was also there. She comes over every other weekend to help manage the farm. They showed us their vegetable plot and herb garden, and took us across the road to see the goats. Originally Sandra thought she might sell the goats for meat, but she has grown attached. As her daughter said, "They have names!" That's never a good sign. She still sells one every now and again, but she's more interested in having the goats around for when local children come to visit.

Like Birdsong, if enough folks in Birmingham banded together to form a buying group, Sandra would be open to trying to find a way to deliver CSA shares there. Contact her to ask about the details, and be sure to visit her and the goats next time you're in the area!

Alabama's Fat Tax

Last August, in response to Alabama's growing obesity epidemic, our state officials decided to impose a so-called "fat tax" on state employees who do not pass a required wellness screening, which includes a measurement of Body Mass Index, blood glucose levels, cholesterol, and blood pressure. Those individuals who are considered obese, or have high readings in any of the aforementioned categories, will pay an additional $25/month for health insurance starting in 2010.

About a month ago, I took my spot in line, joining my fellow co-workers for our own in-office fat test. We were escorted to scales, our fingers were pricked, and our risks were assessed. We all had our time behind the curtain, where a nurse gently went over our results, and urged us to take one of the many handouts that outlined a successful diet. As you might imagine, I was curious to see what suggestions these handouts might make, so when prodded, I gladly grabbed a few. The handout that I found the most entertaining was the one depicting sample meals -the staged pictures just don't look appetizing at all. Is it just me or do those vegetables look like they came straight out of a can? It's funny that out of all the possible healthy lunch options, that they chose to feature hamburgers and pizza. Take a look at some of the other handouts I received below - you'll especially love the one that delineates foods into Go, Caution, and Stop categories.

At the end of my consultation with the nurse, I thought about telling her I was on the all Alabama diet. After all, it had worked for me - I felt healthier, had lost weight, and was eating mostly vegetables. What if instead of telling people to eat more Go foods and follow this handy dandy chart, we tell them to spend more time in the kitchen cooking meals from fresh ingredients? To limit their consumption of processed foods, fast foods, and junk foods? But, as the next person was shuffled in and the nurse began her proselytizing, I decided to save my food confessional for another day.

One week to go...

One week. Seven days. That's how long we have left here in this year-long experiment of ours. What started with the four of us for four months, turned into a prolonged experiment in eating locally. Joe and Sara fought the good fight, but their jobs and their farm ultimately won out, and they bowed out of the experiment at the end of October. But Rashmi and I trucked along, with the exception to eat out every now and again to ease the difficulties of dinners at 9:30, and Friday nights where the last thing we wanted to do was to stand in the kitchen for four hours. But even with eating out every once in a while, we still haven't made a trip to the grocery store for anything more than toiletries and cooking oils. And it's been quite nice, frankly. Maybe that's why we haven't really had the time to reflect on this year ending. We've been too busy visiting farms (a blog post coming soon), starting our seedlings (mostly that's Rashmi), and thinking about our upcoming vegetable season and the arrival of fresh produce. So we haven't really been thinking about "stopping" per se.

And why would we? Case in point: tonight we went to campus to see a screening of some of my student's documentaries. We finished with the screening at 8:30 and had zero idea of what to eat. We didn't have any suitable leftovers - only shrimp and grits that we'd already eaten for lunch. So we considered a lifeline. We'll go out to the diner down the street and get a hot plate stacked with Sysco canned yams, a CAFO pork chop, maybe some previously frozen green beans swimming in oil, and a dry piece of cornbread. It looked dreary indeed. But then I remembered the half loaf of bread I baked early this week, and the tomato soup we froze back in the fall. Brush the bread with some olive oil, broil, throw on some goat cheese, serve with a hot bowl of soup, and you've got yourself a delicious week-night meal that beats canned vegetables any day. That's why it kind of shocks me that we find ourselves here at the end of this project. I guess I just don't foresee much Hamburger Helper in our future.

But what I do foresee is driving to Birmingham to buy some more Wright's Dairy milk, and tilling up another vegetable plot in our front yard. Maybe I'll do that next week. Maybe on April 1st...

Feeding the Elderly

A few weeks ago, my mom sent me this snippet from the Huntsville Times about a group called CASA (Care Assurance System for the Aging and Homebound), a non-profit agency that provides services to the elderly. This was the first I'd heard about the group, but I quickly learned that they have been running a community garden since 1994. The garden is entirely volunteer-run, and over the years they have delivered over 184, 500 lbs (that's some record-keeping!) of fresh vegetables to homebound and elderly folks in Madison County. Unfortunately, CASA has experienced some recent theft that has twice left them without their farm equipment. They are currently seeking donations to purchase a high-security shipping container, to ensure that their equipment is better protected.

I know the struggling economy is making everyone tighten their belts a little, but this organization is making local food a reality in Madison County. If you can't donate money, reach out to donate your time for this worthy cause. You can visit them on the web here to find out more.

Return of the Victory Garden

Today, Michelle Obama will begin digging up the White House lawn to plant a vegetable garden. Not since Eleanor Roosevelt's Victory Garden during WWII has the President's backyard seen such a transformation. During both world wars, the public was urged to plant these aptly named gardens to ease the burden of food production and transport during wartime. Planting victory gardens became a sort of morale booster. It empowered the average citizen through labor, and gave each person a chance to do their part by growing some of their own food. In 1943, there were more than 20 million victory gardens in America, which supplied some 40% of the produce consumed nationally (Michael Pollan, NYTimes Open Letter to the President-Elect).

And now during a time of high energy costs, processed food, and a national obesity crisis, Michelle Obama is doing her part. With 55 varieties of vegetables, the White House garden will of course be a source of food for the Obamas, but it will also serve as a teaching tool, to educate children about healthy eating. In fact, Michelle has recruited 23 5th graders from a local elementary school to help her prepare the garden.

It's refreshing to see the issue of food getting some much deserved attention in the White House. It seems to be a high priority on the first lady's political agenda, and I don't think we'll stop hearing about her crusade any time soon. So if you haven't thought about planting a garden yet, now's your time to follow Michelle's lead and dig up your lawn.

What a victory for local foods!

From Eleanor to Michelle...

Alabama Lasagna

It's spring break for those of us fortunate enough to work in the University system. But if you also happen to be married to a state employee, your horizons for this yearly retreat are somewhat diminished. Seems the only state employees that get the week off are the lawmakers, resting up for their next filibuster. They work so hard! Suffice it to say that I'm here in Tuscaloosa for the week with a litany of home improvement projects to tackle and a few food related endeavors as well. First on the list - lasagna.

I've made plenty of pasta at this point in our year of Alabama eating, but I've yet to try this staple of Italian American cuisine. I toyed with the idea of making a very classic Italian Bolognese style dish with a béchamel sauce, but opted instead for a more American interpretation. Our fresh leeks and carrots from Snow's Bend would make a wonderful sauce with some of our canned tomatoes and some fresh rosemary, and while I lack in the mozzarella department, I felt certain that the bite of goat cheese would be welcome with the pasta and tomatoes. I know that mozeralla - lightly browned on top and gooey with every slice - is a signature of most American lasagna, but our diet often calls for improvisation. Fortunately I did have the raw ingredients for ricotta (or paneer, depending on your perspective). So I began with my first ever batch of ricotta, and I must say that it was simple and delicious. Thrown together with the goat cheese and my tomato sauce, the sauce stacked in layers between the al dente fresh lasagna, topped with goat cheese and baked for 20 minutes...perfection. We ate this dish in homage of our trip this time last year to visit a friend in Tuscany. I might not be able to recreate the oso buco that our friend MC wept over (literally wept it was so good), but I can make a damn fine lasagna anytime. Just give me a few hours warning...

In the News - Installment 2

1. The Cow Tax. The latest in the efforts of lawmakers to ban taxation of a cow's methane emissions. In case this is the first you've heard of the so-called "cow tax", the E.P.A. first made mention of a such a measure back in December during a meeting about greenhouse gas regulation.











2. Pigs, MRSA, and You. It's another case of a commercial meat farm compromising the health of the public. This mini-expose by Nicholas Kristof tells the story of a small Indiana town's battle with MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus). After scores of residents developed the mysterious rashes associated with the infection, the town's doctor began to explore the connection between the disease and nearby hog farms.





3. Farmscapes. Need to get away? Well, look no further. Serenbe Farms, outside Atlanta, is your chance to experience the latest trend - agritourism. The 25-acre farm in Palmetto, GA is a working example of the nation's growing farm-to-table movement. Guests can dine at the Inn's Farmhouse Restaurant, which features award-winning cuisuine made from fresh produce right off the farm. Look for Serenbe Farms at the upcoming Georgia Organics Conference next weekend in Atlanta.

In the News - Installment 1

1. Michelle Says Eat Your Veggies. It's about time the press started giving Michelle Obama props for more than just her well-toned arms (although those things are pretty impressive, just look at the accompanying photo). In this article, the NY Times alerts us of the First Lady's intent to spread the message of healthy eating. While visiting Miriam's Kitchen, a DC non-profit providing a range of services to the area's homeless, Mrs. Obama urges us to think about those that are less fortunate in our communities; to offer them the same fresh and locally grown food we should be seeking out for our families.

"Collect some fruits and vegetables; bring by some good healthy food. We can provide this kind of healthy food for communities across the country, and we can do it by each of us lending a hand.”

She praises community gardens. She loves the White House chef's healthy broccoli soup and cream-less creamed spinach. And she doesn't feed her daughters loads of processed foods and sugars. She's a role model for all of us. With Michelle Obama on our side, how can we fail?

2. Is Organic Safer? It doesn't look like it. In the wake of the national salmonella outbreak, where both organic and non-organic products were affected, many consumers are questioning the sanctity of organic. In a related post back in January, I discussed my surprise in discovering that Health Valley Organic Peanut Crunch Chewy Granola Bars (wow, that's a mouthful) were on the hit-list of salmonella-tainted products. I had inherently associated the label organic with an elevated level of food safety. You generally pay more for organic, and you assume that there is some degree of care that goes into its preparation. Well, according to the Times that's not necessarily the case:

"Although the rules governing organic food require health inspections and pest-management plans, organic certification technically has nothing to do with food safety."

It turns out that organic certification was given to the Georgia peanut plant responsible for the salmonella tainted products, even though it lacked a state health certificate. Revoking it's organic status took months, and obviously not all products claiming inclusion of organic peanuts/paste/oils were recalled. That really doesn't bode well for the credence of the organic label.

3. Michael Pollan Wants to Know. Don't miss out on this exciting homework assignment from the food guru. He's collecting food rules from us average Joes to be published on his website.

Birdsong Community Farm

Young farmers are popping up all over the state, pursuing sustainable methods and creating local food systems for their communities. One of the best examples I've come across in recent months is Birdsong Community Farm in Cullman. I was fortunate to meet Joshua and Beth Haynes at an organic agriculture conference in south Alabama last November and they graciously donated some organic popcorn for the Alabama Supper. They've got a lot of great ideas, a lot of energy, and they're offering a tremendous amount of resources for their area. I'm on their mailing list and wanted to pass along a deluge of info about things they've got planned this summer. It's seems as though they've become a clearing house for all the local food opportunities in the Cullman area. In addition to their own offerings of chicken and their ambitious and successful CSA, they're going out of their way to help create a whole food system in Cullman by offering information about beef from a nearby farm, pork, goats milk, and other dairy opportunities. You can read more about what they're doing at their website here, and I encourage you to sign up for their mailing list. Cullman is only 45 minutes from Birmingham, and they've considered setting up a buying group for the Birmingham area if there are enough interested people. Joshua, Beth, and their young son Andrew are the future of farming in Alabama, and we hope you'll support all the great things they're doing.

A hint of what's to come

For the last couple of weeks, I've come home from work hungry. I throw open the refrigerator, desperately hoping that there will be something inside for me to munch on. Lately it's been slim pickings. I usually have a snack of Wright's Dairy cheese before dinner, or sometimes enjoy a few pickled tomatoes or okra from our stock of canned goods. That should be enough to appease me, right? It should, but it's not. I'm starting to struggle with my lack of food options, especially when it comes to figuring out what to eat for supper. At first, eating out of the freezer and from our canned stores was exciting. We got to reap the benefits of all of our long hours preserving food last summer and fall. I also welcomed the often reduced preparation and cooking time associated with eating this way. But now the novelty has worn off. I'm craving fresh fruit and vegetables. I want to open my refrigerator and be inundated with the smells of the farm, to be greeted by piles of leafy vegetables, and boxes of freshly picked strawberries. The onset of spring weather may have something to do with my transformation, or maybe I've just reached my frozen food threshold. Whatever the reason, last night I got my wish- a much needed and much welcomed reprieve from our freezer. Our friend Ashley, an intern at Snow's Bend, stopped by to give us freshly harvested leeks, carrots, and kohlrabi. She also threw in a bunch of last season's potatoes. Needless to say, we were overjoyed by the season's first produce. Snacking on carrots and peeling potatoes and kohlrabi for the evening's meal, we remembered that the start of our CSA is only weeks away, and that soon we would be planting our own garden.

Thanks to Ashley and Snows Bend. We needed that little boost!

Hoover Library, 3/29, 2:30pm

We've been asked to come speak at the Hoover Library in a few weeks and we'd love to see you there. Sunday, March 29th at 2:30 the four of us will be talking about our experiences with the project, and sharing some photos from our year of local eating. I believe there will even be a gift basket door prize of Alabama products! If you're interested in attending, it's free - but reservations are required. Call 205-444-7840 to RSVP. I think the space is limited, so call sooner than later.

Hope to see you there!

Directions here.

Buying in Bulk

You don't have to be a member of Sam's Club to buy in bulk. One of the things we've learned in this year of local eating is that if you've only got a few local staples, and you're cooking for two, three times a day, it's best to load up on the good stuff. With Rashmi constantly baking apple bread (now, with the decline of our apples, a turn to fig bread using preserved figs we acquired in the fall) we've gone through our fair share of Hewett's honey. So we had the bright idea of buying in bulk. Hence the milk jug of Honey you see sitting on our table here.

And if you've got a hankering for some bacon, why not buy a whole pig? That's what we did. Back in the summer I stood in Brian and Cat Hunt's pasture down in Prattville and filmed a group of young pigs running around. Little did I know that one of them would become my dinner for many many nights to come. Brian was kind enough to take our hog (quite a big one, actually - he clocked in around 220lbs) to a meat processor in Clanton, and I brought him back here in the five coolers you see below. Don't worry - we split the pig with Joe and Sara. We don't have the freezer space! The processor didn't spare anything - we got livers, neckbones, and about ten pounds of pork fat. I told Rashmi that the only thing they didn't package was the squeal...

Some thoughts on food and culture.

An article in the New York Times last week got me briefly all bent out of shape. A nice long feature in last Wednesday's Dining section discussed the emerging culinary movement in Brooklyn. Maybe it's the southerner in me - always feeling maligned or overlooked, a perpetual need to overcompensate and to puff out my chest every now and again - but I couldn't help but feel that this article creates the sense that Brooklyn is some kind of island where young folks engaged in thinking critically about food can find refuge. That the only place a real unique food culture could emerge was, of course, in one of the boroughs. Now in retrospect, after a long conversation about the article with my friend Adam, I realize that I was probably overreacting. The article mentions a "culinary-minded generation" which leaves room for other members to live outside the hallowed ground of Williamsburg. But I guess that's what I was reacting to - the fact that the article fetishizes Brooklyn as some holy land of local food, where (and I quote) “Every person you pass has read Michael Pollan, every person has thought about joining a raw milk club, and if they haven’t made ricotta, they want to.”

Oh, Brooklyn. How do you make hip look so easy!?

There goes my smugness again. Sorry. I guess this unexpected reaction to the article comes as Rashmi and I have had countless conversations in recent weeks about the enthusiasm for what we're doing here in - gasp - Alabama! And that the enthusiasm for our project isn't based on some curiosity about those weirdos who only eat food from Alabama, but it's based on a groundswell of folks thinking critically about their food - where it comes from, how it was grown, how we can make it better, and how food should inspire community. For our generation - beaten down by the homogeneity of just about every one of our daily interactions - food has become a revolutionary act. It's the new counterculture. And it's not just a passing fad. What we're arguing for, this generation engaged in thinking critically about food both inside the hallowed ground of big cities and marooned here in the flyover zone, is a wholesale revolution in our food system. We're engaged in this action because we truly believe that our current food system is unhealthy for us and for the earth. Further, we know that losing the traditions of local and regional foodways would be devastating to our culture and our sense of history. We have to believe in cornbread and collards - not just as good food, but as a way to preserve what it means to be from here.

So if you, like me, live outside of Brooklyn, that doesn't mean that you can't start a food revolution. Just meet some local farmers, encourage them by buying from them, and ask your local chefs to do the same. Ask where your food comes from and slow down when you're cooking and eating. Slowly but surely we can bring this revolution out from its safe hideaways in the five boroughs and down the street to your local restaurant and produce section.

Monday Night: New Take on an Old Favorite, BLA's and Slaw

It's almost March, and we still have plenty of goodies tucked away in our freezers. Among those frozen vittles, are what seems to be an endless supply of beans and peas - lima beans, butter beans, navy beans, purple hull peas, and crowder peas. We bought many frozen ziploc bags full of them back in October, at a small farm stand in Montevallo. With hopes of lessening some of our stores, I took out a pack of lima beans to use in Monday night's dinner. I looked up some lima bean recipes on the web, but everything sounded a little blah to me. I know the beans would have been good simmered or sauteed with a little garlic and bacon, but I just wanted something a little different. And then, voila, a quick look on Epicurious did the trick. I found a recipe for Lima Bean Crostini that I reimagined into a sandwich spread- something to lend a new flair to our bacon and arugula sandwiches. Sure I could have made mayo, but I've done that before. It was more fun to think of inventing a new sandwich, the BLA: Bacon, Lima Bean Hummus, and Arugula. This recipe is simple to make, and in addition to the lima beans, it calls for a stalk of rosemary, 2 dried red peppers, a lemon (from Petals from the Past, leftover from the Alabama Supper), and a couple of cloves of garlic. The peppers give it just the right amount of heat, and the rosemary is a complimentary flavor to the limas. And not suprisingly, it goes well with bacon (but what doesn't go well with bacon?). Also, I used crostini in the sandwich instead of just plain old toasted bread. To make crostini, just brush both sides of the bread with olive oil, add a little salt and/or pepper, and broil until brown and crispy on both sides. Beware, this recipe makes a lot, and I mean a lot- enough for you to enjoy multiple BLA's, or just have a nice dip to accompany veggies, bread, or crackers. In fact, last night Andy made crackers just so we could eat up some of the remaining dip.

To accompany our new sandwich concoction, Andy whipped up a batch of spicy coleslaw with our weeks old cabbage (it stores well!), and I opened up a jar of canned peaches. With our apple supply gone, we both are going through serious fruit withdrawal. Thank goodness strawberry season is only a month away!

Here's the recipe for Spicy Slaw:

1/2 head cabbage (from a big head), cut into coarse strips
1 cup cider vinegar
1/2 cup honey
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup water (to mellow taste of vinegar, add more as needed)

Whisk together ingredients, until dissolved. Toss with cabbage and serve. Makes about 4 servings.

In the News

1. First Lady Firsts. First lady Michelle Obama gave a tour of the White House kitchen to a group of culinary students from Maryland on Sunday afternoon, just before the first official White House dinner. And the good news is, it looks like she's on our team! Yes, the first lady bared her foodie soul, taking the opportunity to back local and sustainably grown foods and healthy eating. Here's a snippet from the NYT article that shows her true colors:

When food is grown locally, she said, “oftentimes it tastes really good, and when you’re dealing with kids, you want to get them to try that carrot. If it tastes like a real carrot, and it’s really sweet, they’re going to think that it’s a piece of candy,” she continued. “So my kids are more inclined to try different vegetables if they are fresh and local and delicious.”

In addition, it looks as though White House chef Sam Kass could also be a potential mover and shaker in the realm of food system change. During an event last May, he vocalized his disappointment in the National School Lunch program, and advocated for healthier food choices in school cafeterias.

2. Beef, It's NOT for dinner. It's another case of the energy-sucking, high-polluting cattle vs. the American people. In previous posts, I've made mention of the high costs - both to the environment and our health - of our over-production and over-consumption of beef. Mark Bittman wrote several articles for the New York Times, urging us to eat less of the stuff, and also gave us hair-raising statistics of just how much energy and grain go into producing a kg of beef, and how much pollution and waste come out (see this post from June). This article does much of the same, but speaks of new data that shows, among other things, that grass-fed or grass-finished beef isn't necessarily more climate-friendly. In fact, according to scientists who presented their findings at a recent meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the climatic impact is often higher. It's a sad day for the burger, I know. But take heart, as one scientist suggested if we just decreased our overall beef consumption from 90 kg per person/year to 53 kg per person/year, we could feasibly reduce associated carbon emissions by 44%. So if anything, it's another reason to make beef a luxury item, something to be delved into only on special occasions.

3. City Chicken. In these tough times, more people are taking to raising chickens in their backyards to save a little dough. What's that you say? It's illegal to keep chickens in the city? Not necessarily. More and more cities are passing laws to allow residents fowl-privileges. If you remember, back in April Joe posted about his own chickens and the preponderance of "yard eggs" in the state. He included in that post a link to a related article in the Mobile Press Register. It's worth checking out if you haven't already.

Sunday at Bottega Cafe

There's a Slow Food event happening this Sunday at Bottega Cafe in Birmingham. From our friends at Slow Food Birmingham:

Learn more about creating a sustainable future through alternative fuels with Tony Petelos, Mayor of Hoover at Bottega Cafe.

Sunday, February 22, 2009 at 2:00 p.m. Slow soup, hot bread, local beer and organic wine

$20 per person. RSVP pardis.stitt@gmail.com

These events are a great way to meet other folks interested in local food and sustainability issues. Rashmi and I will be there, and we hope to see you too. Please contact Pardis Stitt as soon as possible to let her know you're coming. That way, there'll be enough soup for all!

If you've never been to Bottega Cafe, you can find directions here.

THURSDAY: Spaghetti Night

Last night we faced one of the many conundrums of our eating project. Rashmi wanted to attend a Bollywood dancing class at the yoga studio downtown (that's probably another story in and of itself...) which began at 7 and lasted until 8:30. With limited options for quick meals, we knew this meant we wouldn't eat until after she returned. So what to cook? Like most men faced with some free time in the evening, I chose to spend four hours in the kitchen making pasta from scratch. I've used our new pasta roller for ravioli, but I hadn't experimented with the spaghetti attachment. Pasta making and pasta rolling isn't exactly a science, but I'm still picking up some skills in the area. I worked from a recipe in Bittman's How to Cook Everything - a slight variation of a spaghetti and meatballs recipe called "Spaghetti with Sausage." Mmmm....sausage. Armed with some frozen sausage from Gibson's Farm Fresh Sausage in Union Grove, and a can of tomatoes we put away in late summer, we had all the requisite ingredients for this simple dish, save for that omnipresent ingredient that reminds me daily of the need for better stocking next season - one medium onion. The magical onion seems to be included in just about everything I want to cook, and after our stock ran out in early January, I've been frustrated ever since. But I trudged out into the front yard with a headlamp and came back with some wild onions growing near our mailbox. If you see how overgrown our yard is, please believe that we keep it that way for foraging purposes and not out of laziness...

Wild onions, washed and prepped, go into a skillet of browned sausage. Cook a little longer with the onions, add a can of tomatoes with juices, some salt and pepper, let simmer until the tomatoes break down and get saucy (about 5-10 minutes). Boil the fresh pasta quickly (fresh pasta need only cook for 3-5 minutes), drain, and mix the sauce and pasta together. This makes a pretty heavy and filling dish with lots and lots of leftovers - always a good thing since we consistently eat leftovers from the night before for our lunches. Finally, top with some fresh cheese. We've been out of the heavenly variety offered by Sweet Home Farms since our last trip to the coast in the summer. So, once again, we return to our old standby and what seems like our sponsor for this week: Wrights Dairy Aged Cheddar.

WEDNESDAY: A Winter Standby

At this point in the season, nearly every one of our meals begins with a trip to our very own grocery store - the chest freezer in our shed. There we peruse the shelf (singular) for various and sundry vegetables and meats. Rashmi and I spent many a long night in the fall blanching all variety of vegetables for the freezer, and despite complaints at the time, we're most grateful for the effort now.

One of my tasks in the late summer was to make a couple of huge pots of tomato soup. I froze the soup in perfect serving sizes - about two and half bowls in each Ziploc. This gives us enough for one heaping bowl and a tiny bit leftover for whoever claims the most hunger. Combine this with an old standby - the veritable grilled cheese - and you've got yourself a solidly respectable, if not extremely sexy, meal. The cheese is from Wright Dairy (I'm seeing a pattern this week...) and the bread was my second attempt using Alabama wheat in the now famous "no-knead" method, written about first by Mark Bittman and then later adapted into videos, converted for pizza dough, and capitlized on in books. But the wheat we have is just not glutenous enough to give the kind of rise called for in the no-knead recipe, and I'm always disappointed with the results. The flavor is outstanding and the crust holds much promise, but it never gets the kind of airy, artisanal inside I'm searching for. But I'll keep fighting the good fight and try again another day. Any suggestions are much appreciated.

So there you have it. A perfectly regular Wednesday night meal in the year of eating Alabama. The soup was fantastic - like the tomatoes were just picked off the vine. And the pleasure I get dunking a hot slice of grilled cheese into tomato soup makes me forget how barren our refrigerator is right now...

TUESDAY: Shrimp off the barbie

After two evenings of gourmet cooking by Señor Grace, it was my turn to come up with the menu for Tuesday night. Unless I have a lot of spare time to peruse the internet or pour over recipe books, I usually try to come up with a meal that I can prepare quickly. I don't want to sacrifice taste of course, but if there is something that promises to wow my palate without keeping me in the kitchen for hours and hours - especially after a long day at work - then I'm all for it.

We found our kitchen relief in the form of a tiny crustacean and two unlikely sidekicks - cabbage and apples. The shrimp was farm-raised in Greene County, and has been frozen since this summer. We bought two 5 lbs bags from a man at the Montgomery Farmers Market, and have already plowed through the first bag. Whenever we want a quick dish, we just grab a few and saute them in the wok with a little garlic and herbs. If you like the inherent flavors of cabbage (I do!), then it can be easily prepared under 20 minutes or less in a steamer. Andy picked this cabbage up from a small produce stand in Centreville a few weeks back. While the man promised the cabbage had been grown in Cullman County, it was purchased from the Finley Avenue market in Birmingham and, like most truck farmers, the origin of his produce was of little concern - especially this time of year. But hey, I'm an optimist. After all, trust is a huge part of the farmer/distributor/consumer relationship. And, at least Andy didn't come back with the shriveled up sorry looking tomatoes the man was also offering. The apples came from the last of our stockpile from Scott's Apple Orchard in Hazel Green, and are delightful sauteed in some butter, honey, and cinnamon. Overall, I would say we spent about an hour preparing this meal from prep to finish - a record in the Grace household!

Sauteed Shrimp with garlic and cilantro
(follow the recipe for Garlic-Basil shrimp posted in June, substituting about a handful of cilantro for the basil)

Steamed Cabbage
1/4-1/2 head of cabbage, cut coarsly into strips
steam for 15-18 minutes

Sauteed Apples (Mark Bittman in "How to Cook Everything")
1-1 1/2 lbs apples; peeled, cored, and cut in slices
3-4 T butter
1/2 cup honey (Bittman uses sugar)
1/2 tsp cinnamon

Melt butter over medium heat in large skillet. Add apples, then turn heat to low. Cook, covered for 10 minutes. Add honey and cinnamon, stir to distribute evenly. Turn the heat to medium, and cook about 10 minutes more, until soft. Stir often.

Breakfast of Champions: Alabama Apple Bread

Monday night I baked yet another loaf of my famous apple bread. And I'm calling it famous, simply because I've been making a loaf pretty much every week since the beginning of October. This breakfast item has been a staple in our diets ever since we received our first apples, and I've changed the recipe a bit over the months, supplementing the fall fruit with whatever else happened to be on hand at the time - persimmons, hickory nuts*, figs. A healthy amount of Alabama honey makes this bread incredibly moist. I also love the flavor that the bran imparts.

The phenomenon of our constant apple bread is due largely in part to our robust supply of apples. As you can see, they save remarkably well. My mother-in-law gave us a big basket of apples for Christmas from Scott's Apple Orchard. Since they most likely had been off the tree for some time, I immediately put this batch of apples in the crisper of our refrigerator, where they have remained suprisingly pristine, save the occasional rogue (or just very old) few that soften and turn brown. I have to remind myself sometimes that it's February - I definitely was not anticipating four and half months of uninterrupted apple bread! But the stockpile is already dwindling, and soon there will be no more apples. Thankfully when that happens, I can turn to my cupboards and grab a can of fig preserves or applesauce to use in lieu of the fresh fruit. The bread will survive. And maybe, just maybe we'll be eating it until the strawberries are in season.

Alabama Apple Bread

2 cups chopped apples (Scott's Apple Orchard)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour (Elmore County)
1 1/2 cups wheat bran (Elmore County)
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp salt
3 eggs (Katie Farms, Coker)
3/4 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups honey (Hewitt's Honey, Duncanville)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup chopped pecans (or hickory nuts*) (pecans from my yard, hickory nuts from my parents' yard)

Combine eggs, oil, vanilla, and honey in a large mixing bowl. Sift together dry ingredients in separate bowl. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and mix together. Fold in apples and nuts. Pour in greased 9" loaf pan and bake for about 1 1/2 hours at 300 degrees (Because this bread uses honey instead of sugar, it's best to bake it more slowly at a lower temperature than most breads, so that it won't burn).

*Sometime in November, my Mom brought us a ton of shelled hickory nuts from her yard (you can see in the photo below that she filled up a CoolWhip container, which unfortunately I cannot quantify. I'm guessing it was easily 5 or more cups). If you have ever tried to crack hickory nuts, you know that it is quite a chore. She spent about 10 hours preparing the nuts for us - cracking the shells with pliers, then meticulously picking out the meat (by the way, she also shelled a comparable amount of pecans for us, which has led me to dub her the "nutwallah" in true Indian fashion). The nuts are a little bitter when eaten fresh, but work well in baked items. If you're interested in doing a little nut foraging, hickory nuts usually fall off their trees in the autumn, and are also a favorite of squirrels. So make sure you get to them before those pesky rodents do! There's a great article in Mother Earth News about hickory nuts if you're interested - including the best way to crack these suckers open and how to use them.

MONDAY: Chicken Soup with Hominy

Last week I roasted a chicken from Hartselle with rosemary from our garden, and the carcass, with a good bit of meat still on it, was left sitting in the fridge. So last night I decided to pick off the rest of the meat, make fresh chicken stock, and create a soup.

This summer I was shooting a film about craft artists throughout the state and I had the good fortune of meeting Bettye Kimbrell, a nationally known quilter from Mt. Olive, Alabama. In the course of the few days of filming we talked a lot about southern foodways, farming, gardening, and cooking. She was born and raised in Fayette County, where my grandmother was born, and she spent most of her childhood living off the land. She and her brother take great pride in their sprawling garden in Fayette, and they still embark on the yearly ritual of making hominy. It's actually a fairly involved process that begins by soaking corn in lye to remove the germ and the hull. Back in the days when Mrs. Kimbrell was first making hominy they probably still derived their lye solution from wood ash - a process fascinating in its sheer ingenuity and resourcefulness, if not particularly appealing to our modern sensibilities because it, like most traditional foodways, takes an amount of time and effort far greater than a trip to the supermarket.

Mrs. Kimbrell was kind enough to give me a can from last season, and since July I've been holding onto it, unsure of exactly what to do with hominy, until I ran across a chicken soup with hominy recipe that seemed the perfect starting point. So, armed with some frozen corn, the hominy, the remaining cooked chicken, a can of tomatoes given to us by Simon Bevis a year ago, some provisions from our garden (parsley, cilantro, and wild onions from our unmowed yard - our onion stock ran out weeks ago), and a few rogue spices like cumin and paprika, I set out to make the soup. First, the stock - chicken carcass, parsley, wild onions, Alabama bay leaf. It's not quite as flavorful without celery and carrots and real onions, but it works for our purposes. Saute the wild onions with the spices in a little olive oil, then combine the remaining ingredients, heat to a boil, then simmer for a spell. I choose to go one step further and lightly pureed the soup with our immersion blender because, well, I'm obsessed with our immersion blender. But I also thought it tasted vaguely like Brunswick stew and I wanted to acquire that shredded chicken look in the finished product. Top it all off with some cheese from Wright's Dairy (wish they made sour cream or I had the time - it would have been delightful on this dish) and a little hot sauce, and there you go. Rashmi was right in saying that the soup tasted a little like an enchilada - probably due to the inclusion of so much corn and the use of paprika and cumin. This is a great thing to do with leftover roast chicken, and another reminder that although we're in the dead of the growing season we can still eat great food.

The finished product:

SUNDAY: Cheeseburger in winter time.

An all Alabama take on a classic American dish: the cheeseburger with fries. Nothing like shaking off the winter blues (although it feels positively spring-like recently) with a good old American burger. Last night we did just that. I whipped up some buns out of our Elmore County wheat, Rashmi sliced some fries from our stockpile of sweet potatoes, and we made venison burgers donated by our friend Jessica. Top it all off with Wrights Dairy cheddar, and fresh arugula straight from our front yard tossed with a little oil and vinegar...you got yourself a meal! We were also fortunate to serve homemade ketchup that Rashmi's parents made from their garden last year, and pickled green tomatoes that my Aunt Diane generously donated to our cause. The only casualty here was our pizza stone which tragically broke after baking the buns on the grill. He will be missed, but a replacement is soon on the way. Recipes for such a simple dish seem a little unnecessary, but I will tell you that my secret to good burgers is a little Alabama Sunshine hot sauce, some Dales, and a generous glob of local honey. The honey helps congeal everything and also imparts a little sweetness to mix. For those of you who might nitpick my inclusion of two Alabama products that most likely don't contain all Alabama ingredients, I ask you to leave your grievances at the door. I'm off to raid the fridge for leftover burgers!

This is the first of a series of posts we'll be doing about our meals this week, just to give you a sense of what we're eating here in the dead of (spring-like) winter. Check back throughout the week for updates.

Making Do

Last week Andy was fighting a little winter cold, so I decided to make a hearty soup for supper. As you might imagine, we are into the lean months, and meals take a little bit more planning these days. So, I looked around the kitchen to see what we might have on hand - one butternut squash leftover from the CSA, sweet potatoes galore, garlic, and a few lingering apples. Then I did what any modern cook does next - I went online to see if there were any soup recipes that might fit the bill. A few minutes later I returned to the kitchen with a recipe for a farmhouse butternut squash soup from Epicurious, which is a wonderful recipe resource.

What was great about this recipe is that it allowed me to utilize some of my own garden reserves, what little I have left of them anyway. Usually when we plan to make a soup we will have saved some vegetable stock from cooking greens. Occasionally we'll have cause to make some chicken stock, if chicken was on the menu that week. But in this case, we had nothing. So I cut some of greens from the garden (mustards, baby kale, arugula), cooked them, and used the stock for the soup. The recipe also called for carrots. I had planted carrots in the fall, but was planning to let them overwinter so they would have time to fully develop. But after pulling one up and seeing it wasn't too scrawny, I decided that in the name of good soup these puppies should be donated to the cause. I also gathered fresh thyme from our garden to add to the pot. It was such a treat to go out to the garden at the end of January and actually have something to harvest. Who knew pulling up carrots could be so satisfying?

Here's the recipe from Epicurious with some minor Eating Alabama adjustments:

Farmhouse Butternut Squash Soup
3 bacon slices (Rosita's Farm)
4 large garlic cloves (Alice Parker, Tuscaloosa)
1/2 tsp cumin
1 1/2 lb butternut squash (Snow's Bend Farm)
1/2 lb sweet potatoes (Smoky Smith, Tuscaloosa)
1/2 lb carrots (our garden)
1 apple, we didn't have a granny smith (Scott's Apple Orchard)
3-5 fresh thyme sprigs (our garden)
2 bay leaves (UA Arboretum)
5 1/2 cups vegetable stock, can also use part water (made from greens from our garden)
1-1 1/2 tsp cider vinegar
salt and pepper to taste

from Epicurious: Cook bacon in a 4-to 6-quart heavy pot over medium heat until crisp. Transfer bacon to paper towels to drain.

Add garlic and (cumin) to fat in pot and cook, stirring occasionally, until garlic is pale golden, about 1 minute. Add squash, (sweet potatoes), carrots, apple, thyme, bay leaves, broth, water, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/2 teaspoon pepper and boil, uncovered, until vegetables are tender, 15 to 20 minutes. Discard thyme and bay leaves.

Purée about 4 cups soup in a blender, in batches if necessary, until smooth. Return to pot and season with salt, pepper, and vinegar. Serve topped with crumbled bacon.

This Just In

1. Another one bites the dust. It's back. Captain Salmonella strikes again, this time tainting our peanuts, sending food companies into a frenzy of peanut product recall, and hundreds of consumers to the hospitals. More than 125 products containing peanut butter and/or peanut paste from the Peanut Corporation of America plant in Blakely, GA have been recalled, marked with the proverbial scarlet letter (S is for salmonella), reminding us just how vulnerable our food system really is. An AP article, noted that peanuts were considered to be low-risk for salmonella, and that:

There is no federal law that mandates the number of inspections that must be carried out each year at peanut processing facilities. The Food and Drug Administration contracts with states to perform inspections but allows them broad discretion when it comes to how they do them. The agency asks the states to base the frequency and nature of inspections on how risky a food is considered, giving priority to high-risk foods.

Hmm...well, that doesn't make me feel too good. And if you read on, the article later states that the plant was inspected a month after the first people fell ill, but that inspectors had failed to test for salmonella during that inspection. Whew, I have to say that in the Year of Salmonella I sure am glad that I'm eating nothing but Alabama peanuts, and making my own peanut paste (for dippin' sauce, of course).

After perusing the list of possibly contaminated products, I was a little surprised to come across an organic granola bar - Health Valley Organic Peanut Crunch Chewy Granola Bars. How could an organic product be on the list? You would think that if the lead descriptor of a product was organic, then most of its ingredients would also be organic. Well, upon further investigation I discovered that the only organic ingredients in this granola bar were the oats. Go figure.

Ingredients: brown rice syrup, brown rice flour, cane juice, chocolate coating (cane juice, natural palm oil, cocoa, soy lecithin, vanilla), organic oats, peanuts, peanut butter chips (cane juice, natural palm oil, whey powder, peanut flour, penut butter (peanuts, salt), milk solids, soy lecithin, salt), soy grits, rice bran, vegetable glycerin, natural flavors, natural vitamin e (for freshness), salt, soy lecithin, concentrated fruit juices, (pear, pineapple, grape), barley malt.

Why don't they just call it Health Valley Peanut Crunch Chewy Granola Bars with organic oats? Because Organic sells. And because food companies don't have to give you all the information. They are misleading by nature. And just so you know, there's no mention of the recall of the granola bars on the Health Valley website.

(photo from www.fiery-foods.com)

2. Food Matters. Mark Bittman is at it again. In his new book, Food Matters, Bittman dishes out the food wisdom so often shared in his New York Times columns - a few of which I've mentioned in this blog. If you want to change the world, start by changing what's on your plate.


(photo from Torontoist.com)








3. Food Police. A not-so nice critique of Alice Waters and - what the author believes to be - the waning local foods revolution. He writes:

Cooking, after all, is not about doing good; it's about tasting good.

Pshaw. Why can't it be both? Read this article only to learn how the enemy thinks. Then, strike it from your memory. Retaliate by eating local foods for an entire week. Food is the new counterculture!

(photo from Getty Images)




4. New Chef in the White House. The Obamas hire a new chef, Sam Kass, to help prepare meals in the White House. According to the NYT, Kass, who often cooked for the Obamas in Chicago, has a "particular interest in healthy and local foods". Arugula salads all around!

(photo from TimeOut Chicago)

In the News

I've been a little delinquent in my coverage of recent food-related news. But it's better late than never, right? The following articles were published last week, except for the NPR story:

1. Meaty Books. Slate Magazine takes a look at some recently published books on the subject of beef. These may be lean times, but beef is surely on the brain. From Napoleonic slaughterhouses to refrigerated railway cars, this article touches on the history of beef production, and our descent into the world of 2 buck chuck.








2. In Soil We Trust. President of the Land Institute, Wes Jackson, and the great naturalist writer, farmer, and sustainable ag advocate, Wendell Berry, team up on this op-ed piece in the New York Times. A treatise in defense of soil, the two argue for a return to our agricultural roots and a respect for the land that feeds us.








3. Welcome, Mr. Secretary. It was smooth sailing for Secretary of Agriculture nominee, Tom Vilsack, during yesterday's Senate confirmation hearings. In addition to lack of tough questioning, there was no mention of Vilsack's ties with Monsanto or support of GMO's (an issue that has been at the forefront of some food groups/organizations' opposition to Vilsack's nomination), nor any indication a potential shift toward sustainability. In fact, chairman of the Senate Agricultural Committee, Tom Harkin, touted Vilsack as someone who knows "what's needed to promote profitability". I know that statement could probably be taken a number of different ways, but I would have much rather seen Harkin replace 'profitability' with 'sustainability', you know?

Italian Alabama: Take Two

I returned from Cuba just two days before Christmas. That's quite a stark contrast - going from the total lack of commercial culture in Havana to that final marketing push of our most commercialized holiday. But I wasn't complaining - especially come Christmas morning when Santa, in the guise of my sister-in-law Shashi, gave me a shiny new pasta roller. She took a hint from an earlier blog post about my frustrations rolling pasta a few months back and took it upon herself to remedy the situation. Rashmi and I are both thankful for the addition in the kitchen. I put the roller to good use last week with a butternut squash ravioli concontion with pecan butter sauce. I'm still learning the skills to make whole-wheat ravioli with our Elmore county wheat, and I have to get better at timing out the filling. This time my pasta sheets began to dry out before I could get to all of them. But I made a good dozen or so fat ravioli that were the bee's knees. The meal was Rashmi's idea - to make some pasta dish including our butternut squash - so we hunted around the internets and our cookbooks to find some inspiration. Turns out that the new Frank Stitt cookbook, "Bottega Favorita," held a recipe for pumpkin ravioli that we cribbed from. I stole the sauce idea from a hazelnut butter recipe on Epicurious, and the pasta recipe was from Mark Bittman's "How to Cook Everything" - our go-to bible in the kitchen.

If you've never made fresh pasta, it's really quite an interesting and easy process. The best way is to create a flour bowl on a clean countertop and break your eggs directly into the bowl. Beat the eggs, one by one incorporating a little more of the flour each time. Once you've finished beating all the eggs with the flour you should have a sticky (but not too sticky) dough. Work this dough onto a floured surface and knead until it's smooth - just a minute or two. Most recipes suggest you divide the dough here to make rolling easier later and then let the dough rest in the fridge for a little while.










The butternut squash filling was really very simple, and I took some advice from Stitt - especially in roasting the squash first with plenty of olive oil, salt and pepper. I then combined the roasted squash with some onions (our last storage onion, by the way) sauteed in butter with sage from our herb garden. At this point we could have used some goat cheese in the mix, but our foresight didn't include defrosting the cheese before dinner time. I threw in about half a cup of the new Wright's Dairy aged cheddar, and it gave a nice bite to the filling. Not the subtlty of the goat cheese, but needed fat nonetheless.









Next was the inaugural trip with the pasta roller. Sorry no pictures exist of the rolling. It's a two person job, and the cats take terrible photographs. The roller was smooth and easy and I'm a big fan. Don't know how I lived without one. Filling the pasta was simple, but sealing the ravioli became frustrating. The dough began to dry out too fast and I eventually had to abandon the ravioli and cut the remaining pasta into strips. No big loss - the cooked noodles went well with the remaining butternut squash filling for lunches the next day. But the ravioli...Oh the ravioli! Heavenly. Cooked briefly in gently boiling water and then served with a butter pecan sauce (a stick of butter combined with 1/3 cup of chopped roasted pecans, fresh sage, salt and pepper), this meal can't be beat. A new winter classic for the recipe books!

A month in Cuba

Apologies for my lengthy hiatus from writing here on the blog. An explanation is in order. The morning after the Alabama Supper I boarded a train from Tuscaloosa to Atlanta and the following day I flew to Havana, Cuba for a month of work. I was there documenting a cultural exchange between an American theater director and Cuban actors. But this was no ordinary work trip. Cuba is a complicated and stimulating place filled with contradictions at every turn. The ideals of the Revolution butt against the reality of daily life in the country, where intelligent and well-educated people are constantly underemployed and struggle to buy basic goods. The people I met weren’t starving, and had all their basic needs supplied for them by the government. But the lack of any expendable income and the fierce travel restrictions seems to crush the ambition of many Cubans. Even my Cuban friends acknowledged the intense paradoxes at the heart of their lives. But they don’t let it get them down. They’re a happy people who work through their frustrations by laughing, dancing, and drinking lots of rum. There’s something to be said for that kind of therapy.

And then there’s the aesthetics of Havana itself. If you think of a city as a living organism, it's almost as if the city of Havana stopped growing in 1959. Yet the people there kept on going with their lives - getting married, having babies, growing old. So what has emerged is mostly a life among the ruins. Dilapidated buildings with generations of crumbling paint, ancient American cars like Desotos and Studebakers retro-fitted with Soviet-era Lada engines, Habana Vieja, the oldest and most touristy part of the city which simultaneously summons both Tuscan squares and Bourbon Street, and the once stately now broke-down mansions of Vedado in the center part of the city, reconverted from living spaces to everything from clinics to auto repair shops. It's an unbelievable and almost inconceivable place. By the end of my stay I felt like the things I didn't understand about the country could fill many volumes, while the few things I did understand I could tell you in a few sentences. If you’re at all interested in Cuba, there was a great piece in the New York Times Magazine published about a month ago. I was fortunate to have spotty internet access and was able to read the piece while I was in Havana. Take a look here if you’d like.

While I wasn't there on any food related work, this project has made us all hyperaware of the foodways that surround us. I was looking for good local food the minute I stepped off the plane. But searching out local foodways in a different language in a country that tries to shield outsiders from the everyday lives of its citizens proved at first to be difficult. My first few meals in Havana were terribly uninspired and uninteresting. Most of the tourist food is without celebration - decidedly bland, not all too fresh, and ridiculously expensive compared to the average Cuban’s monthly salary. For instance, the first night I was there we went to a tourist restaurant in one of the larger hotels in Miramar. I had a smallish and boring “marinara” pizza that ran about $8. Most Cubans make between $15-20 a month.

As Joe mentioned in his post about Cuba a while back, Alabama is one of Cuba’s largest agricultural trading partners. Alabama agriculture producers did about $120 million worth of sales to Cuba in 2007. It’s a bizarre facet of our embargo that doesn’t get a lot of attention. So I can make an assumption that, even though I wasn’t intentionally eating Alabama while I was there, Alabama products most likely made their way onto my plate a handful of times. But my real interest in eating was to eat as much local food as possible, and to that end I was initially frustrated. That is, until I discovered the agro.

There are supermarkets in Havana, but they’re mostly filled with processed goods and a few frozen meats and vegetable medleys. I could never find an ounce of fresh produce. That’s because the fresh produce is all at the mercado agro (essentially government run farmer’s markets). The agros supply all the fresh fruit and vegetables grown on the island. There are dozens around the city which vary in sizes - some are simply a table with a few tomatoes while others cover half a city block. Below are some photos from the one I visited most frequently. The fruit and vegetables were unbelievably tasty, like the best organic vegetables grown here in Alabama. That’s because without exception they were organically produced – naturally grown and free of pesticides and fertilizers. How is this possible?

For those not up on contemporary Cuban history, after the fall of the Soviet Union, Cuba went into a deep economic depression. The Soviets, for obvious reasons, were Cuba’s principle trading partner, and their demise spelled an economic disaster for Cuba. During the height of the Soviet Empire, Cuba developed an agriculture system that relied heavily on fertilizer and pesticides. When the Soviet oil stopped flowing into Cuba so too did the costly fertilizer that was supporting their industrial, Soviet style agriculture system. For those few years - what Castro referred to as “The Special Period” - Cubans faced widespread food shortages and transportation breakdowns. What does this mean? Cubans caloric intake dropped by a third during the Special Period. Their diet was hovering around 3,000 calories a day, but during the crisis they took in about 2,000 calories per day. That’s like everyone you know missing one meal, every day, for weeks and years.

The only real agricultural choice the Cubans had was to go organic - to remake their food system without fertilizers and pesticides. They rebuilt their soil with nitrogen fixers, they began rotating crops, and they took composting very seriously. It’s ironic that cheap oil has made industrial agriculture our inexpensive solution to feeding all the people while organic produce remains a viable choice for only those with ways and means. In Cuba everyone is poor and everyone eats organic. Complicated, indeed.

So, while Cuba still struggles on a variety of economic fronts, at least their caloric intake has risen to pre-Special Period levels. Most meals for Cubans consist of rice and beans with fresh vegetables and maybe pork if there’s a guest. In fact, that’s what I was served in a home I visited during my filming. My friend Roberto and his wife were kind enough to give me a hearty meal of Yucca, rice, beans, and pork with a wonderful fresh garlic vinegar sauce. There on the right of the plate you'll see another Cuban specialty - french fries. They're pretty much everywhere you turn. But potatoes are actually hard to come by. Looking for them one day at the agro I asked a vendor, one of dozens at the market, if he had any because they were nowhere to be seen. He said, "No, no, no..." like it was crazy to look for them. Then, he gave a nod and a wink - the universal language of the black market - toward a man nearby who gestured for me to follow. We walked out in the street and negotiated. I gave him the equivalent of about $2, which he promptly gave to another young man standing nearby. He in turn walked into a nearby house and another man emerged with a plastic bag tied tightly. Everyone casting furtive glances over their shoulder, my hookup delivered the goods - about 5 lbs of earthstained fresh potatoes. Turns out that most potatoes on the island are rationed and that buying them in the agro is illegal, hence the black market trade outside.

If studying about the history of Cuban agriculture seems like a worthy pastime, checkout this wonderful Harper's article from a few years back. You can also take a look at a documentary made about the subject. But enough about Cuba already. Here are some photos from the agro...

Cows' milk cheese rising

We're overjoyed that Wright Dairy of Alexandria is now producing cheddar cheese from local milk! Although Sweet Home Farm's award-winning farmstead cheeses are still very much worth the drive south, it's nice to know that Tria Market in Homewood now stocks this one. So while we continue to lament the closing of the Wright Dairy store on 280, we're glad that local markets are carrying their products, and thrilled to have more local hard cheese options.

Remember folks, we have to ask our grocers to carry these great local products. My new year's resolution is to get Wright Dairy milk in my local dairy aisle. I plan to badger all involved until it happens.

Happy eating.

Apples

I've always loved apples - I'm thankful they grow among us here in the Deep South. There were some beautiful trees at my aunt Pernie's place just north of Haleyville, where I spent some of my awkward youth. Each season brought lots of fried pies (see recipes, below), apple cobblers, and lots of late summer evenings spent on the porch with a bowl of sliced up apples to enjoy fresh. I loved those apple trees. As far as I knew, they were never sprayed, pruned, or otherwise managed. My uncle Grady had planted them years before in a corner of the yard and they were mostly forgotten. I don't know what kind of apples they were, but they were sweetish, slightly tart, easily bruised, very dark red, with white flesh that would stain pink when bitten. Heavenly apples very unlike the waxed, boring, perfect, near-tasteless ones you'll find at most supermarkets (and shipped all the way from New Zealand, no less, to no good purpose!). Years later while living in England I chanced upon a local variety – there is an extraordinary number of local varieties there, considering the small size of the country – at the Cambridge Botanic Gardens that was very similar. It was a kind of York apple, so that's what I'm calling our old apples. Sadly, new owners of the old home place have cut the trees down. A sin, obviously. On the positive side, there are a fair number of growers in our region dedicated to preserving and propagating old southern apple varieties. Get ahold of Lee Calhoun's well-known book Old Southern Apples or have a chat with Arlie Powell at Petals from the Past to get yourself an education on the subject. We're putting in more trees this winter on our place, which I'm very excited about.

Sometime back in November, Sara and I made our way up to Steele Orchard in Cullman and came home with 5 or so bushels of apples, a few gallons of cider, and a bellyful of yummy fried pies. The first fruit we'd had in a while, since our frozen blueberries, strawberries, peaches, and blackberries had given out in October. We also bought an old cider press from a man in Dora on the way back home. Those of y'all who joined us at our party were sipping cider from our first two batches, the first of many. I've been making loads of apple pies lately, also, so many that Sara fed the last one to the dog. Apples keep well, can be preserved (perhaps most easily as frozen apple sauce), and are always a good snack. Our pig enjoys the cores. In short, we're in favor of them, in moderation of course. And what's better than a big slice by the roaring fire, topped off with some ice cream from Wright Dairy? I'll tell you: nothing.

Alabama Apple Pie and I shut my mouth

Crust
2 cups unbleached white flour from Elmore County, ground by Joe at Oak View Granary
½ cup butter from Wright Dairy whole milk (if substituting, that's "two sticks")
6 tablespoons cold water
1 egg from Bryson Farm, McCalla (exit 106 off I20/59 between B'ham and Tuscaloosa; call Bob Bryson at 205-477-4649 or 205-907-2807)

Filling
6-8 golden delicious apples from Steele Orchard, cored and sliced
½ cup molasses
½ cup Hewett's Honey or Reeder's Honey purchased from Red Rain
Nutmeg and cinnamon to taste (not from Alabama, but tasty additions)

Making the crust, or at least, how I make it: search internets for alternatives
Butter a 9-inch pie dish. Put flour and butter in a mixing bowl and mash with a fork until all the butter is chopped to little pieces and mixed in well with the flour. Add in the water to make your dough. Roll this out on a floured surface with a rolling pin (a wine bottle works as well if you don't have a pin). Roll this out until to your desired thickness. Now you'll cut out a circular piece of dough that's bigger by 1 inch than your pie tin/dish, and transfer the dough gently by spatula to the buttered dish. You should have a lot of dough left on the surface; after you've added the filling you can cut this into strips and lay it on top. Once you've done that you can brush on a beaten egg to make the crust crispy and brown.

Making the filling
Put your sliced apples, molasses, honey, and spices in a mixing bowl and stir it around. Voilà! You have your filling. Dump this into your crust, top with strips of dough, and brush with beaten egg.

Bake on 350F for about 40 minutes. Once the crust is golden brown, it's done.

Fried pie variation
Make the dough and the filling as above. Bake the filling for 30 minutes to cook the apples. Now take 5-6 inch circles of dough, add in some filling, and fold over and crimp. Now you have roughly semicircular pies perfect for the fryer or skillet. You can fry them in canola oil or butter, or even better: local Alabama peanut oil. Can anyone down around Enterprise tell us how to get a hold of some? We know it exists! NB: olive oil doesn't work well for frying pies, for some reason.

Apple Butter, from The Foxfire Book
"Peel and slice apples, and immediately place them in a pan of cold, salty water so they won't turn brown. Then rinse the salt out and cook the apples until soft and mushy. Add one cup sugar to every cup of cooked apples, cinnamon to taste, and cook until thick. Put in jars and seal."


A few places to get apples or apple trees in Alabama

Petals from the Past, Jemison: we got a few heirloom trees from them last year

Steele Orchard, Cullman: friendly folks with a wonderful onsite store

Scott's Orchard, Hazel Green

Pepper Orchard, Athens, 256-230-6029

Old Southern Apples Nusery, Oxford

If anyone else knows of others, post a comment!

We're also all hoping that a new owner will revitalize the impressive orchards of Classical Fruits in Moulton, an Alabama institution for many years that's now fallen on hard times due to the death of the owner. There are hundreds of trees there – probably dozens of varieties of apples, including Arkansas Blacks, Pippins, and others, and other fruits besides – but no caretaker. Venture capitalists: take note.

Expect to be overcome with a giddy, crazed feeling as you wait the eternity it takes for your pie to cool enough to eat.

So long for now...

Last Saturday, Dec. 20, marked the end of the farmers market here in Tuscaloosa. Since the beginning of April, when the season began, we have been able to count on the smiling faces of our community of farmers to deliver us our weekly dose of fresh produce. From Jimmy McAteer's sweet potatoes, to Smoky Smith's neatly tied bundles of collards, Sue Lewis's bags of cornmeal and green tomatoes, and Alice Parker's satsumas, these foods have sustained us, and have given us reason to engage with our food community. We have not been to the grocery store in months - 9 months to be exact - and we have loved every minute of it. Do you know how nice it is to wake up on Saturday mornings, and sometimes even Tuesday mornings, to pick up your food? To see the people who actually toiled and strained to grow it? To put money directly into the hands of a small-scale farmer, instead of some big food giant like Kraft or ConAgra? Well, I'm here to tell you that it is wonderful. And I'm only sorry that I had not resigned myself to live this way sooner, and that after 3 and 1/2 years in Tuscaloosa this was my first full season as a patron of the farmers market.

I woke up extra early on Saturday morning, hoping to secure one final load of satsumas, but alas another citrus-craving patron had beat me to it. I fear that our brief tryst with citrus has come to an awful, halting end. With not so much as a goodbye, it has left us wanting, with the memory of sweetness on our tongue and sticky on our fingers. Next fall will not come soon enough! Luckily my disappointment waned, as I began to fill my bags with a veritable winter cornucopia - cabbage, collards, carrots, onions, sweet potatoes, and bags of freshly ground cornmeal - some of which would be used in our family's Christmas Eve meal. And my heart warmed when Sue presented me with a Christmas gift of fig preserves and pecans.

I have to admit, it saddened me a little to walk away that day. These farmers have nourished both my body and spirit, and have given me such a special gift. What I have gained in these 38 some odd weeks, has been truly invaluable. Thanks to you all for feeding me. I will miss our meetings under the pavilion. Until next April...




Sue Lewis looking festive














Smoky Smith in his sea of greens
















Handmade holiday wreaths by Sue Lewis and Alice Parker

Vilsack named Secretary of Agriculture

This week Obama named former Iowa governor Tom Vilsack as Agriculture Secretary, upsetting many sustainable food advocates, whose efforts to petition the President-Elect for a 'Secretary of Food', through sites such as Food Democracy Now! and Food Declaration, seem to have had little effect. Many are concerned that Vilsack, a trial lawyer, doesn't "come from the farm", and that his history with agribusiness (specifically Monsanto) and strong advocacy for corn-based ethanol energy will not bode well for a new era of food policy. Journalist and author Michael Pollen, who recently wrote an open-letter to the President-Elect concerning the future of food and it's should-be importance to the administration, gave his views of the recent pick on NPR:

"I was very disappointed in that news conference," he said, "not to hear Vilsack use the word 'food' — or 'eaters.' And the interests of everybody except eaters was discussed: farmers, ranchers, people concerned about the land."

And in regards to Vilsack's support of corn-based ethanol production, Pollan had this to say:

"It's the embrace of corn-based ethanol that has driven up all food prices. It's not making agriculture more sustainable."

Despite these criticisms, there are some who believe that Vilsack will rise to the occasion and that unconventional times will necessitate unconventional measures, no matter what Vilsack's record shows. Let's hope so.

Interesting reads:
"Maybe Vilsack Won't Suck" - The Huffington Post
"Vilsack in Perspective" - Grist (long time Iowa organic farmer and food activist, Denise O'Brien)
"Obama's 'Secretary of Food' - Nicholas Kristof for the NYT

**Above photo is from the Seattle Post Intelligencer

A Christmas Salad

Looking for something to make your salad a little more festive this holiday season? Maybe something that's red, green, and yummy, and doesn't compromise your essential intake of vitamins and minerals? Well, look no further.

Ahem, little drummer boy? Some pa-rum pum pum pums please. It's none other than the very curious, very peculiar, looks like a watermelon, taste like a radish...WATERMELON RADISHES! Yes, when whipping up this fresh salad to take to my friend's holiday potluck, I noticed that the watermelon radishes were an instant eye-catcher, lending the necessary holiday gene se qua with its natural Christmasy hues of red and green (in the upper rand hand corner of the salad bowl). Not only does it dress up the average salad, it'll get all the party guests talking. And if you can't find watermelon radishes (I got mine in my CSA share), the regular ones will do just fine (in the left hand corner of the salad bowl). Top it off with some goat cheese and your good to go!


Christmas Salad

Fresh Spinach, Arugula, and carrot top greens (arugula and some spinach is from my garden)
Carrots
Watermelon or regular radishes (regular radishes are also from my garden)
Pecans (I harvested these from my backyard)
Goat cheese (Try Belle Chevre, they know their way around the goat)
Red wine vinagrette

Combine all ingredients and toss together. Enjoy with friends and family, and make note of how the salad matches all the Christmas decorations. She's a Beaut!

In the News

1. Eat Less Meat (Again). You may remember seeing such a title in one of my other food-related news posts from back in June, when I introduced Mark Bittman's dire treatise for carnivores to cease and desist. Ok, so I'm exaggerating a little - it wasn't that harsh, but he did offer some practical reasons on how and why we should curb our meat consumption. Well the subject of over-meating has reared its ugly little piggy head again. This time, a group of innovative and conscientious farmers in the Netherlands (you knew it was going to be Europe) are teaming up to turn their cow patties into energy. With 18% of the worlds greenhouse gas emissions attributed to farm animals, there is growing concern on what's to be done to mitigate the disastrous effects of large-scale meat production to our environment.

2. Please Mr. President. Foodie heavyweights like Michael Pollen, Alice Waters, Eric Schlosser, and Wendell Berry team up to urge our new president to make a change in the realm of agriculture. And if you haven't read Pollen's open letter to the president regarding the agricultural and food crisis, you can find it here.

3. Man Cannot Live on Organic Alone - or Can He? Read about one doctor's 3 year organic-only eating adventure!

Alabama Thanksgiving

So one of the best things about this eating project has been recruiting friends and family to join in on our local diet, even if it is just for a meal or two when we get together. My parents have a huge garden of their own, and can usually be found eating from their stash of homegrown vegetables every night. They especially love kale, and it is not uncommon to see it on their plates multiple times a week. So when I showed up this Thanksgiving with a couple of coolers full of my Alabama food, my parents didn't protest one little bit. I brought a small fully-cooked, smoked turkey to share from Bates Turkey Farm in Fort Deposit, AL, cauliflower from my CSA share, broccoli from the Tuscaloosa Farmers Market, radishes from my own garden (although they didn't actually make it into Thanksgiving dinner proper, their cranberry color did lend a festive air to our salads in other meals that weekend, not to mention a little crunch), and a variety of greens that had turned my refrigerator into a leafy mess. The line-up for the greens included Spigariello (aka Italian Leaf Broccoli), radish greens (well, I guess they did make it into the Thanksgiving dinner after all!), the greens from the cauliflower and broccoli, collard greens, turnip greens, and beet greens. Now, that's what I call eating high on the vegetable! We made a sweet potato casserole using sweet potatoes from Scott's Orchards in Hazel Green, Alabama, and splurged a little by adding the requisite holiday cranberries and brown sugar, non-local of course. I also had hopes of making an apple pie from our Elmore County flour and Scott's Orchards apples. It worked, and I can now add successful apple pie baking to my list of accomplishments (although, I only managed to snag one piece of the final product! It turns out my dad also loves apple pies). I also brought eggs from Katie Farms and local cornmeal, grown and ground by Sue Lewis of the Tuscaloosa Farmers Market. My grandma took over cornbread duty, which we then crumbled into delicious cornbread stuffing. Yum! Alabama-eating in late November. Now for that, I am truly thankful.

Thanks, Thanks A lot.

Well folks, the first ever Alabama Supper was a success! On Nov. 22, 150 people converged on Fig Leaf Farm in McCalla for an afternoon, evening, and night of good food, good music, good beer, good people (consequently also the name of the beer!), and good times all around. I think we proved two things - one, that we've got some party planning in our blood, and two, that the local foods movement is growing in Alabama. We may not be California yet, but there's definitely a burgeoning interest in local foods here, and as far as I can tell, a community of people (like you!) who are committed to supporting Alabama's farmers. We'll get there eventually, I know it. In the meantime, enjoy those Alabama collards and sweet potatoes. There's plenty to go around.

Thanks to all of you for coming. We really enjoyed meeting all of you. Special thanks goes out to the farmers, providers, and volunteers that made this celebration happen. We couldn't have done it without ALL of you.






Farmers
Rosita's Farm (Karen Wynne and Santiago Lima): They raise a mean pig
Birdsong Community Farm (Josh and Beth Haynes): You brought popcorn back into our lives
BC Hunt Farms (Brian and Cat Hunt, daughters Kim, Mary, and Ryan): Putting the green back in salad
Belle Chevre (Tasia Malakasis): Goat cheese!
McAteer Farms (Jimmy McAteer): More sweet potatoes than we knew what to do with
Snows Bend Farm (David Snow and Margaret Ann Toohey): Mean greens. And a vegetarian surprise.
Noah Valley Farm (Simon Bevis): Delectable butternut squash. Don't remember it? It was hidden in those sweet potatoes.
Scott's Orchards: The best damn apple cider i've ever tasted. Period. Oh yeah, and the apples for the crumble cake.
Steele Orchard: The apples for the cider press.
Oakview Farms Granary (Joe and Patty Lambrecht): Elmore County wheat, ground to perfection.
Katie Farm (Jon Fleenor): Magnificent multicolored eggs for the apple crumble cake.
Hewitt's Honey (Bill and Geary Hewitt): These men know their way around the honey bee. Their honey was used in the bread.

Providers
Good People Brewing Company (Jason Malone): Mmmm...beer. Tasty fermented goodness!
Highland's Bar and Grill (Randall Baldwin): Where he is, an oyster is sure to follow.
Petals from the Past: Meyer's lemons to do those oysters up right!
Continental Bakery (Chris Richardson): Master of the baguette. Man can live on his bread alone.
Edelweiss German Bakery and Coffee Shop (Ester Scheef): Let them eat (apple crumble) cake!

People
Adam Weinstein: Master of the Pig and the BBQ sauce. We are eternally grateful for your culinary prowess.
UA New College Students: You know who you are! They made your potatoes, they served you food, they made your cider warm, they raked, they cleaned, they lit a million luminaries, and the list goes on...
Emily Tipps: The letterpress guru. She made those invitations shine! Don't forget to put one in your scrapbook.
Jessica Peterson: Book artist extraordinaire. Thanks for the guest book. It'll keep us straight with posterity, and help us document future Alabama suppers!
Sam Brewer: Tables were a plenty!
Walter Flowers: He popped you popcorn all night!
Hill Country Hemhaw (Mecca Lowe and gang): Fiddle tunes by the fire.
Jean Mills and Carol Eichelberger: They came, they saw, they conquered! Thanks for your help!
Sarah Gurganus: She sang songs by the fire too!
Parents: Thanks for picking up the cider Mom and Dad! And a big shout out to Andy's mom for her party prep prowess, and for picking up the pig and popcorn (wow that's a lot of P's!)

To those of you who missed our little shindig, take heart. We're sure to throw another event like this in the future. Maybe in the spring, when the strawberries are in season. But, you sure missed a helluva of a party. See pictures of the fun below:




(l) The scene
(r) Hill Country Hemhaw in action









(l) Adam and New College crew pulling pork
(r) Adam, my Mom, David and Margaret Ann at the pig pit










(l) Joe's newly constructed composting toilet
(r) View from inside the barn loft









(l) John Fleenor of Katie Farms leads the cider press efforts
(r) Walter and my Mom at the popcorn table











(l) Oysters!
(r) Table decorations

It's a sell out...

After a deluge of donations, we've reached capacity for The Alabama Supper. All the seats are taken. However, if you wanted to come and missed the opportunity, take heart. After witnessing this outpouring of support (and if we manage to survive the weekend...) we have every intention of doing fundraisers like this again in the future. Thanks to all of you who have supported our project, and we look forward to seeing many of you this weekend. For those of you who managed to make it under the wire, we've got a few updates. You can look forward to hearing the sounds of the Hill Country Hemhaw and I'm very pleased to announce that the Alabama oysters are on their way from Cedar Point in Mobile Bay. Our friend Randall from Highlands will be there to cook them up low country style, served with Meyer Lemons from Petals from the Past. If you ordered tickets we'll be sending your invitation in the mail and we'll be sending you an email in the next few days with directions to the farm and some other info. The main thing - please do everything in your power to carpool with as many folks as possible. There's a dual reason for that: one, sustainability, and two, parking is going to be tight. We all know that riding by yourself is for squares anyway. If you have room in your car, please post it in the comments section below and see if you can offer some other kind folks a ride. Or, post if you're looking for a ride. I'm sure someone could help you out. One of the main goals of this whole project has been to connect people and help us form community around local sustainable food. What better way to achieve that goal than to ride with like-minded folks to The Alabama Supper!