Crabapples harvested from 4th Street, Boulder, CO :)
Millet and goatmilk pancakes, with crabapple, ghee, and honey sauce spread on top...ummmm, yes!
My specialty: sourdough bread, with whole wheat and white bread flour, and millet. Yes, it's definitely sourdough thirty!
Well, it was a good lesson, this first week. When I began on August 1st, I hadn't really done a lot of planning ahead or stocking up of local staples, so I found myself rather restricted in my diet.
My first meal of the month was breakfast of wild berries harvested from behind my house on the mountainside, raw whole milk yogurt I made from the raw grass-fed cow's milk I pick up each week from Windsor Dairy in Windsor, Co. A delicious way to kick off a month of local food, and I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself...of course what came next was a feeling of "what am I going to eat next?"
I finally made it down to a grocery store, and it was a peculiar feeling to walk through the aisles realizing "I can't eat any of this." A good lesson, and it really made me re-think my ideas of the locally grown food options even in this natural foods grocery. I finally settled on some Palisade peaches (a little outside the 100 mile radius, but I was hungry!) and some Colorado-grown millet from the bulk section.
One thing that this experience has brought me so far is a re-connection with my love of cooking. When I can't just go grab something in a package, or even trail mix from the bulk section of a grocery store, everything I eat has to be prepared and planned for. This means I am spending a lot more time each day on the process of gathering, preparing, and eating food. I've been baking a lot of bread (sourdough, so no industrially produced yeast, although I am using salt from who knows where), making pancakes, eggs with veggies, and drinking a lot of raw milk and herbal tea with leaves from the herbs on my deck. If I want something sweet, I need to make sure to keep up with getting bulk Colorado honey, and as for oil, I've been using some homemade ghee I made from organic High Meadow colorado butter. I haven't been using spices from far away other than salt and black pepper (and I'm trying not to use much pepper), and have been using herbs from my CSA share and the herb pots on my deck.
Also, I'm realizing that I don't want to/can't really afford to pretend like I have lots of money to spend on gourmet local cuisine. So when I ran out of honey, I put a little sugar in my zucchini bread, and when I didn't have any other oil, I used a little of the coconut oil I had in my cupboard...I've got these things in my cupboard, and my wealth does not lie in dollar dollar bills, so why pretend? I'm going to do my best, but also try to be honest with myself and you about the choices I make and compromises I end up making or not.
A big part of this experiment is an exercise in imagination: imagine if we didn't have access to food outside our local landbase, how would we eat, what could we eat, how creative would we get? If I was strictly trying to make the most sustainable, landbase friendly food choices in the system we current operate within, I would probably be dumpstering all my food. No additional land being tilled, just salvaging the grotesquely abundant leftovers from industrial growth society, a closed loop.
But the imagination part is what I'm working with for this month. Once the month is over, I will go back to salvaging from the free food at the back of the grocery store I work in, saying "yes" to pretty much any food offered to me, making choices for organic, unpackaged, inexpensive food, but for now, this is where I'm at. And also, I don't know what changes will take place within me over the course of this month, so who knows what my food choices might look like on September first.
Okay, culinary highlights of the first week:
-Seth
My first meal of the month was breakfast of wild berries harvested from behind my house on the mountainside, raw whole milk yogurt I made from the raw grass-fed cow's milk I pick up each week from Windsor Dairy in Windsor, Co. A delicious way to kick off a month of local food, and I was feeling pretty satisfied with myself...of course what came next was a feeling of "what am I going to eat next?"
I finally made it down to a grocery store, and it was a peculiar feeling to walk through the aisles realizing "I can't eat any of this." A good lesson, and it really made me re-think my ideas of the locally grown food options even in this natural foods grocery. I finally settled on some Palisade peaches (a little outside the 100 mile radius, but I was hungry!) and some Colorado-grown millet from the bulk section.
One thing that this experience has brought me so far is a re-connection with my love of cooking. When I can't just go grab something in a package, or even trail mix from the bulk section of a grocery store, everything I eat has to be prepared and planned for. This means I am spending a lot more time each day on the process of gathering, preparing, and eating food. I've been baking a lot of bread (sourdough, so no industrially produced yeast, although I am using salt from who knows where), making pancakes, eggs with veggies, and drinking a lot of raw milk and herbal tea with leaves from the herbs on my deck. If I want something sweet, I need to make sure to keep up with getting bulk Colorado honey, and as for oil, I've been using some homemade ghee I made from organic High Meadow colorado butter. I haven't been using spices from far away other than salt and black pepper (and I'm trying not to use much pepper), and have been using herbs from my CSA share and the herb pots on my deck.
Also, I'm realizing that I don't want to/can't really afford to pretend like I have lots of money to spend on gourmet local cuisine. So when I ran out of honey, I put a little sugar in my zucchini bread, and when I didn't have any other oil, I used a little of the coconut oil I had in my cupboard...I've got these things in my cupboard, and my wealth does not lie in dollar dollar bills, so why pretend? I'm going to do my best, but also try to be honest with myself and you about the choices I make and compromises I end up making or not.
A big part of this experiment is an exercise in imagination: imagine if we didn't have access to food outside our local landbase, how would we eat, what could we eat, how creative would we get? If I was strictly trying to make the most sustainable, landbase friendly food choices in the system we current operate within, I would probably be dumpstering all my food. No additional land being tilled, just salvaging the grotesquely abundant leftovers from industrial growth society, a closed loop.
But the imagination part is what I'm working with for this month. Once the month is over, I will go back to salvaging from the free food at the back of the grocery store I work in, saying "yes" to pretty much any food offered to me, making choices for organic, unpackaged, inexpensive food, but for now, this is where I'm at. And also, I don't know what changes will take place within me over the course of this month, so who knows what my food choices might look like on September first.
Okay, culinary highlights of the first week:
- Millet and goatmilk pancakes with crabapple sauce spread on top (crabapples foraged from trees in Boulder, crabapple sauce made from crabapples, ghee, and honey cooked on stove)
- Crabapple and Palisade peach pancakes (with the fruit chopped up inside, and honey drizzled on top, mmm!)
- Wild gooseberries and bayberies with homemade yogurt and honey
- Homemade yogurt and peach smoothie with honey
- Orgasmically ripe and juicy Rocky Ford Cantaloupe straight up
- My homemade sourdough bread
-Seth
First day, harvested berries for breakfast: Wild gooseberries and bayberries from my backyard!
Add some home-made raw milk yogurt and local honey, and viola!, instant gourmet local breakfast!
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