eat more locally grown food

I’m happy to live in a town in a country, where I can go to the food market tomorrow and buy all those delicious local vegetables. And meet. And milk products.

And I’m at the same time sad that its too much up north here – they are so widely available just two or three months per year. after that you have to have strategies, or you’ll end up buying something from the other side of the Earth.

But right now I just finished some apples, I brought from my own garden earlier. mmm… :)

I first planted my garden in June, and started harvesting spinach and chard in July. They were very abundant, but I still wished I’d planted more. I was surprised and blessed with how those leafy crops came up so quickly, and kept on producing so reliably.

Peas came in August, and though very sweet and delicious, felt almost sparse. There were always eager mouths to gobble up fresh peas straight from the garden. They never even made it inside my house.

Our summer was not very hot, and tomatoes were slow in ripening. The green ones just hung on and hung on, refusing to blush into any color. Brazen things.

By September, though, they finally relented. Each week this month I’ve harvested a rainbow of tomato colors from golden to purple. Never many at once (I only have four plants), but enough to flavor my salads, or enjoy eating fresh.

Green beans are another story. Just when the leafy greens and peas gave up the ghost, the green beans shot up and started fountaining out fruit as fast as I could pick it. I’m amazed that those silly vines just don’t give up! Every time I think I’ve picked the last of them, they surprise me with a new crop trailing like jungle moss the next time I enter the garden.

A month ago some very sweet and friendly Mormon lads helped me dig over half my garden and get it ready to plant fall/winter crops. I took the lessons I learned from the yearning for more greens and peas, and planted way more than I thought I could use this time.

Everything has sprouted by now. The peas are a good 8” high, and will be needing support soon. They are the “sugar snap” variety, because I decided I could get way more food out of the peas if I didn’t have to waste the pods by shelling them. I also scattered three or four varieties of spinach, and a good packet of chard, as well as broccoli and carrots. I ate my first tender baby spinach leaves today! It should be in full production in another week. Other new crops should be ready by the end of another month, weather permitting.

Today’s big surprise – I harvested my own corn! I had the tiniest of tiny stands… Only 3’x3’. But it was enough to grow half-a-dozen small ears which I enjoyed today. (Yes, I ate them all myself! They were GOOD!) I really had little hope that the corn would turn out to be edible at all. But it is, although it’s undersized.

Next year I intend to plant a bigger stand of corn, and get it in the ground earlier. This stuff is just too good to miss! But the real point of growing the corn at all (to me) was to maximize the biomass coming out of my garden. All those tall stalks will now make good mulch and compost, which has all winter to decompose.

I could hardly be prouder. Not half bad, for a newbie, I think!

I think I’m to the point where I’m comfortable giving up milk. I still think the arguments for drinking raw milk are good, and drinking local milk is great, if you intend to drink milk at all. The more research I do, the more I think milk isn’t a food my family really needs in the first place.

I’ve switched us to soy milk, and have found a couple of brands that my kids and I seem to like even better than cows milk. I feel good knowing no animals are being harmed in any way to feed us this product. I’m glad knowing that soymilk is such a good environmental choice, with a smaller ecological footprint gallon for gallon than animal milk.

I might still eat ice cream or real cheese from time to time. But my family’s major consumption of dairy was always as liquid milk (almost a gallon a day), and I know this switch will make a significant difference in our environmental impact.

Fresh produce from local growers and our own garden are fantastic this year, Tomatoes, peppers, corn, beans etc. have all been really good. looking forward to the bumper apple crop this year, especially honeycrisp and suncrisp.

I just harvested 7 of the most gigantic zucchini that I have ever grown. Absolutely HUGE! Many people pick them younger, but we pick them very large. We slice them about a half inch thick, drizzle olive oil on them and grill. Just before they are down we shave Parmesan onto them.

Super Yum!

I’m finding out some strange facts about cholesterol and saturated fats. I studied this in college chemistry, but never really thought about it before…

Check out this video for a quick snapshot. src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/v8WA5wcaHp4&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&feature=player_embedded&fs=1” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” allowfullscreen=”true” allowScriptAccess=”always” width=”425” height=”344”>

This entry isn’t about a great success I’ve had yet, it’s about one I plan to have.

I decided to bring strawberry shortcake to a potluck party I attended yesterday. It was a last-minute decision because I realized that strawberries are still an in-season fruit in Canada. That may be stretching the concept of “local” a bit, but at least I’m not buying them in December or something, when they would have to be shipped from the southern hemisphere. Canada is within driving distance for me. That’s not my real success though.

I was looking for some real cream to whip for the topping, since it was a party and I didn’t want to settle for ordinary Cool Whip. I don’t buy cream very often, and have never really thought about it much before. The cream on my store’s shelf was Darigold brand, ultra-pasteurized. Well, after the research I’ve done recently about pasteurization, especially ULTRA-pasteurization, naturally I wanted to find something a little less processed. The cream of the milk is actually where the largest part of the vitamins and healthy enzymes, etc. reside. Ultra-pasteurization denatures the milk to where cream is nothing really more than just tasty fat.

My raw milk provider had no raw cream in stock, but said she could order some to arrive Tuesday. My first reaction was disappointment that it didn’t help me much for this party. Then I remembered my daughter is having a party next Saturday. I ordered some for her, so now SHE can look awesomely cool serving the best quality stuff to her friends.

It’s no secret that the dairy industry is big. Giant dairy producers have money to lobby government officials to pass laws conducive to their own profits, and detrimental to their competition. Raw milk is produced by small farms, and therefore is an annoying source of competition to the giant producers. The easiest way to eliminate this competition is to convince the public that raw milk is as disgusting as raw meat, and that pasteurized milk is the only milk which is clean and healthful.

That is such a load of crap.

Milk is the food God designed to feed to all the mammal babies of the world. BABIES. The most helpless, the most vulnerable, the most in need of good nutrition. It contains an extremely complex matrix of co-active enzymes, protiens, vitamins, minerals, antibodies and delicately balanced fats. The mother’s body (unless she is drastically ill in the first place) cleans the milk of all impurities and infections as it is produced. It would not be biologically sound any other way. The babies’ health must be protected.

Infections and contaminations, therefore, are the result of milk being contaminated AFTER it is removed from the mother. Sanitation, then, is the necessary ingredient to keep milk as clean and healthful as it was when it was first produced. Pasteurization is not intended to kill dangerous germs which inherantly grow in fresh milk. It is there to kill dangerous germs with which sloppy milk producers contaminate their product.

When looking at sanitation practices it makes a lot of sense to consider how the cows live on a daily basis. Major milk manufacturers keep their cows crowded into filthy pens, and feed them unnatural foods to keep milk production as high as possible. Check out this picture:

The cows are crowded together without shade, in 100+ degree heat. They are not standing in healthy pasture like the milk ads would like you to imagine. They are standing in their own and their neighbors’ filth. That is the way to minimize expenses, and maximize profits per cow, per acre. It is NOT the way to maximize the health benefits of the milk produced, or to ensure sanitation.

A natural pasture has countless checks and balances to recycle manure into healthful fertilizer. Given the choice, cows will automatically avoid their own droppings and move on to fresh grass. Given a varied organic diet of pasture grass, as God designed them to eat, cows have high immunity to diseases, and produce milk rich in antibodies.

Pasteurizaton kills those antibodies. It also denatures delicate protiens, and destroys enzymes and many sorts of vitamins. That’s why giant milk producers have to add artificial vitamins back into their product, so they can claim it isn’t a completely worthless food.

I’ve now found not one, but TWO sources for local eggs. I’m going with the more expensive one, because in a side-by-side taste test they were better tasting by far. The yolk was a much richer orange color, and the whites were firmer. Also, these local eggs are raised by a farmer with just a few chickens, who is a friend of a friend. These eggs were probably laid by chickens with NAMES. I like that. I feel really close to the source now.

The less expensive source was the mom-and-pop store I’d mentioned in another entry. Unfortunately, I really couldn’t claim that those eggs were any better than the ones I generally buy from Safeway. They were just brown. (so what)

The new eggs come in all colors. There are all shades from white through cream, tan, brown, speckled, green, and pink. That’s just plain more fun! The richer yolk color also makes me feel confident there are more vitamins and nutrients in them, as well as better cholesterol ratios.

Being almost twice as expensive as Safeway eggs, though, I have to ration them out to myself. No more three-egg omelettes every morning for me. Well, my doctor wanted me to watch my cholesterol intake anyway. At least now I have something to REALLY look forward to when I do indulge.

I found local milk for sale at a tiny mom and pop type store near a city park. Naturally it was very good. I also found out they carry RAW milk, though it has to be ordered ahead of time. I’ve tried this raw milk now, and must admit it is pretty darned good.

One reason I’m glad to find raw milk is so that I can use it to make homemade cheese. That’s another goal of mine, and I’m going to start working on it before long.

Another thought I had was that raw milk was probably also not homogenized milk, and maybe it would separate into layers of skim milk and cream. It would be fun to skim the cream off the top of the milk and use it separately, like to make butter, etc.

Unfortunately, that hasn’t worked out yet… Maybe it’s because my family loves milk so much that they can’t seem to leave it alone long enough to separate. We keep drinking this raw milk, and it stays mixed up all the time.

Next time I’ll have to buy enough milk that I can set at least one gallon aside to separate. Come to think of it, I’ll also need to pour it into a different vessel if I want to skim the top of it. It’s probably like skimming the fat off the top of broth. It could never work in a standard milk jug. I’ll need to get a tall container with a wide neck I can get a skimming spoon into.