Happy Holidays!

I'm busy baking away, as I imagine many out there are as well, but I wanted to pop in and wish every one happy holidays.

The sun has returned, but we've yet to see it here in our neck o' the woods where we've been gray, gloomy and rainy for ages now it seems. We just missed a white Christmas as the cold snap broke yesterday, leaving us with ice and inches of rain and mud but nothing like what's hit other parts of the country. This weather has made me keenly aware how tenuous off-grid solar would be for us: I think we'd be going into month 3 of no power at this point. I feel very grateful for the electricity that enables me to make nourishing food and wonderful treats as well as for all the other many blessings in my life.

I feel grateful for our basement family room that has taken us 3 years to create, which is now nearly done. Down here, it's always sunny with our yellow walls, warm with our woodstove, and filled with love and happy faces. Here, I can leave the outside gloom behind and snuggle in my cozy cave, dreaming of spring while I plan and rest.

I feel grateful for food and job security, for our land and animals, for all the choices we've made that have contributed to our relative insulation from the hardships hitting homes all around the world this season. I feel especially grateful that we've managed to disentangle ourselves from so many failing systems, and I feel hopeful that we can rebuild local ties from the ground up in ways that empower individuals. Mostly, at this reflective time of year, I feel grateful for my ability to remain optimistic and to be in a position to make plans for outreach and help in the coming year.

We'll be caroling and delivering cookies to neighbors tomorrow, something the girls have really pushed for, and something I've come to see the wisdom behind even if it means I have to sing. ;) We'll be adding another link in the community chain we're working to forge, hopefully bringing a little bit of light into other people's homes from a place they least expect it. We're still the new folks on the block around here, so making connections is important. We delivered cookies our first Christmas here, but have missed the last two years for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's hard to be the outsider in a rural community, but I've noticed that there's not much interaction among folks here on our road, partly because we're so spread out. Maybe we can be the spark that ignites a new energy of neighborliness by reaching out and sharing a little of our time and ourselves. Maybe this small connection can create the space for larger connections when the time arises.

Happy holidays to all, wishing you peace, love, and joy this season.

Food Security, Part II

In my last post I talked primarily about dry storage, but now I'd like to turn to the importance of freezer storage and the role it plays in my family's food security. I'd be remiss for not pointing out here what an incredible luxury freezers represent for food storage; they are by no means necessary. People stored meat on the hoof, smoked, cured, dehydrated, and devised ways to keep foods cool before the advent of electricity, including ice houses, spring houses, and even ice pits, which many grand mansions in Europe relied upon for hundreds of years. Familiarizing ourselves with alternative storage methods makes sense on many levels—economic, ecological, preparedness—and there are many wonderful resources available. Preserving Foods Without Freezing or Canning makes an excellent reference addition to any bookshelf.

Freezing is also a huge energy draw, so considering carefully how to preserve different kinds of foods is crucial. Valuable freezer space should be reserved for the most perishable items in order to maximize the investment. Freezing produce often seems so much easier than learning to can, but by doing this, you're giving up space for meats, fats, and whole grains that go rancid quickly when stored at room temperature. Freezers offer the luxury of longer term storage for these kinds of items. While meats can be dried, smoked, canned, and cured, this kind of preservation changes the quality and the consistency as well as the nutritional aspects of the meats. Dry cured meats, for instance, should be eaten far more sparingly than frozen meat because of their high salt content.

This would, in addition, be the moment to point out that avoiding animal products altogether can drastically reduce or eliminate the need for freezers completely, though as I said, even a small chest freezer can be useful for storing whole grains, nuts, and oils long term, ensuring that essential fatty acids are part of food stores and the family diet.

A full freezer is more efficient than an empty one, so keeping the freezer at least 3/4 full at all times will increase efficiency. Chest freezers are more efficient than uprights, taking advantage of cold's natural tendency to sink: opening a chest freezer releases less of the refrigerated air than opening an upright, which allows that air to quickly spill out. If I had my druthers, I'd have chest freezers and do away entirely with electric refrigeration by rotating frozen water jugs from my freezers into a large upright box fridge for cooling, much like the old fashioned ice boxes, but that's another post.

Freezing is convenience, certainly, but it also allows us to preserve safely many things that do not store well dry, like butter, milk, or colostrum for instance, and even very low acid foods like pumpkin, as well as to preserve more of the nutrients in the foods as they've not been subjected to the heat processing of canning. Freezing, however, does not stop microbial action, so careful maintenance and organization of freezer stores is essential, particularly with chest freezers that have the ability to bury older items at the bottom or in corners. Those that come with compartments will make the job easier, though homemade compartments can easily be fashioned. Vacuum sealing can extend the freezer life of any food because it excludes oxygen, which supports bacteria growth, and seals in moisture. Vacuum sealed meats can easily last a whole year in a deep freezer that goes down at least to 0° F.

Freezers also enable people to purchase pastured meats from local farmers by buying in bulk. Many farmers sell beef or pork by the whole, half, and even quarter at a much better price than each individual cut would cost. Some sell by the share, but most sell by "hanging weight"—a per pound price based on the weight of the cleaned carcass. For example, buying a half beef at $3/ lb would mean expensive ground meat, but very cheap tenderloin. So if you like the more expensive cuts, buying by the half will definitely save money. More than that, however, many small, sustainable farmers don't have the capacity to sell individual cuts, so buying a half or a quarter is the only option. If that amount seems overwhelming, finding a friend or family member to split the share with you can be very helpful.

There's a learning curve to buying meat this way if you haven't grown up with it, and having an adventurous spirit—and a few reliable cookbooks—can help. Those of us who grew up in the supermarket generation have missed out on the incredible variety of butcher cuts. An old fashioned butcher will offer dozens of cuts never seen by cellophaned grocery aisles. Learning what to do with and how to cook all the different parts of an animal takes a bit of time and experimentation. Mostly, you'll come to realize how much gets wasted in conventional food systems! Well, not wasted necessarily, but funneled into different food chains, obscuring the relationship of factory processed meat to a living, breathing animal. I'd like to see an artist's rendition of the supermarket animal along the lines of Kingsolver's "vegetannual." Now that would be a scary sight indeed!

Here on the farm we use freezers for storing most of the meats we produce, allowing us to focus on seasonal production, giving the pastures (and farmers!) a much-needed rest. We can raise a batch of meat birds when the weather's warm and put them up in our freezer for the rest of the year until the cycle begins again. Meats take on a seasonal quality in much the same way as produce: chicken in mid-summer, turkey in November, pork in December. Everything but our breeding stock is off the farm by the time cold weather sets in. Of course butchering traditionally took place in the fall, taking advantage of the natural cold weather and the animal's well-fed state heading into winter. Butchering in one large batch can also save both time and resources over one-at-a-timing it, offering another potential advantage of freezers over storing meat on the hoof. As with most things, however, the energy equation certainly isn't cut and dry; there are savings and expenses on both sides. Finding a food storage system that works for your family and maximizes energy savings will take some tinkering.

Arguably the most important aspect of food security that a freezer offers is the ability to store humanely, sustainably raised meats from farmers you know and trust. A freezer can mean the ability to disconnect entirely from factory farmed meats and the many hazards they represent to animals, the earth, the workers, and the consumers. Knowing where your meat comes from can be the biggest step towards food security you can take short of cutting animal products out of your diet entirely. There are loads of resources out there that detail the dangers of factory farming, including both Eric Schlosser's and Michael Pollan's excellent work, but the Meatrix videos offer a clever overview if you haven't already seen them. The sustainable family farm is not just a fantasy, but it does take some effort from the consumer to find one.

For those interested in some really good resources for cooking, curing, and butchering different kinds of meats, I highly recommend Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall. (Love the guy, have to look up his name every damn time.) His River Cottage website has some wonderful recipes and info, but his books are simply outstanding. Though I haven't read them all, I can't imagine you could go wrong with any, but I've listed my favorites below along with some other useful books.




The River Cottage Meat Book, now available in paperback, is worth every penny for its information; Hugh's outstanding commitment to organic, sustainable meat production; as well as its amazing photos. A truly stunning book.









The River Cottage Cookbook, also available in paperback, is another must have. Its seasonal recipes are delicious, and it has lots of valuable information about curing meats.










Charcuterie: The Craft of Salting, Smoking, and Curing by Michael Ruhlman and Brian Polcyn is another excellent addition to your collection, especially if you have any inclination towards making sausage and salamis.









And of course, for anyone interested in raising and butchering their own meats, I'd recommend Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game by John Mettler.







Our basic freezer stores are listed below. At the moment, we're out of beef and goat, both of which we often have in the freezer; next year, we'll also add lamb. After Bella calves in February, I'll also be sure to freeze some colostrum to have on hand; same when our goats kid. This can mean the difference between life and death for an animal.

Pork:
chops
roasts
ground
ribs
bacons
breakfast sausage
sweet Italian sausage

Chicken:
whole
wings
breasts
legs/ thighs
soup backs

Whole Turkey

Other:
butter
chevre cheese
pine nuts
cashews
pumpkin puree
shredded zucchini
basil leaves
pesto
roasted red peppers
cherry tomatoes
whole wheat flour
yeast and cultures

Food Security, Part I

I've been wanting to do a series on food security for a while now, and a question just came through one of my email lists about food storage. So now seems like a good time to begin talking about what food security means, especially during these uncertain economic times.

Back in the spring, the conservative paper The Wall Street Journal ran an article about the pantry being the best return for one's money based on rising food costs. It was an interesting and telling piece because the ideas many of us have been talking about and thinking about for some time had begun to go mainstream. The idea that one could have home food stores instead of relying on capricious prices at the grocery stores is such a basic idea but so foreign to so many people that I used that article in many a conversation and correspondence to begin convincing skeptics that basic food security might be a good thing to have on their radar. The fact that at least half these people still gave me that, "Riiiiiight" kind of reaction didn't deter me from prattling on like a freak, citing Katrina, 9/11, and winter storms as evidence for my own increasingly debatable rationality... from their perspective, of course.

But now, we've gone past the writing on the wall (street) stage and have gone straight into the bashing over the head stage. To put it bluntly, folks who don't have some basic food and emergency supplies in place are downright irresponsible. Everyone, and I mean every one, with an income to manage it needs to have at least two weeks of food storage and basic survival supplies for power outages and water supply compromises, no matter how meager. Even if it's just a big ol' bag of rice and beans.

Folks need to take responsibility for themselves instead of relying on and then blaming FEMA's incompetence. C'mon folks, this is the federal government we're talking about—of course they're going to be incompetent! Of course they're going to drop the ball and leave people floundering and falling through the cracks. Don't let it be your family.

Now, I'm not saying that everyone has to go all Mormon or survivalist (and there's a lot to learn from both groups) as I've been gently teased of doing, but I am saying that as a culture we have become dangerously complacent. It's time to take a page out of our grandparents' Depression book and learn to take care of our own instead of depending on the system to take care of us. Considering most of us have been schooled in the system at every turn from an early age, this is a pretty tall order. I get that, and I've been there. I remember when Jim and I were on our honeymoon in a small New England town and couldn't figure out how people got money without any ATMs in town. Well, we got that people went to the bank and all, but how inconvenient that seemed! Why not just do everything electronically? Why not just run to the 24 hour convenience store if you run out of something?

This thought pattern is pervasive, and it's what the system itself depends upon. What we're now seeing unravel in the financial markets and beyond is the idea that the system is self-sustaining and doesn't need to rely on real goods or real money or real responsibility. But the minute people pull up and say "whoa!" the illusion of sustainability collapses, revealing the very tentative structure of the system itself. We're seeing the house of cards this illusion was built upon collapsing all around us, and it's not going to stop any time soon, certainly not until it reaches a supply chain near you.

I'm not talking about panic or hoarding. I'm talking about taking the time now while it's still a luxury to do the slow, steady food storage thing: a little bit extra here and a little bit extra there leaves plenty to go around for the time being. The more of us who prepare in this way ahead of time, the more supply will be available when it's really needed for those who didn't prepare in advance. If you still need a reason to act now, consider the fact that the US has lost more than 1 million jobs in the past three months alone. How comforting would it be to at least have paid for food to feed your family in the face of unemployment?

Enough ranting and convincing and on to the nitty, gritty practical details; I'll start with our pantry.

For my family, I store what we eat, so there's a constant rotation, with some things obviously going more quickly than others, especially based upon the season. I can't really give amounts off the top of my head, but I would say that at this point we easily have a year's supply of food. We don't have a year's worth of everything we like, but we have a year's worth of healthy meals.

It's taken me the past year to make that a reality, just buying a few things extra every month. I belong to a bulk co-op, which has made that kind of buying really easy—a bag of rice and case of coconut oil this month, a bag of rolled oats and a case of tuna the next, that kind of thing. Also, picking up extra jars of peanut butter or boxes of pasta from the grocery when it goes on sale helps tremendously. Spreading out this kind of purchasing not only leaves enough on the shelves for others, but it also ensures that your own food stores have different expiration dates. Once you have your food storage in place, then it's just a matter of basic maintenance purchasing to keep your rotation going.

Because we live on a small farm we have a steady supply of eggs, meats and dairy. I'll expand on our freezer storage more in the next installment, and I'll also do an installment on growing fresh food year round, as well as one on the practicalities of preserving. But for now, I'd like to focus on just a basic list of what's available in our pantry to give folks some sense of what a well-stocked pantry might look like.

Below is a general list of what's in my food stores, though I may be leaving something out—I didn't go in and do a detailed list, and no, I don't have an elaborate tracking system. My food storage system is based on the kinds of things I need on a regular basis. If I run out of something, then I know there's a gap in my storage plan.

My stores say a lot about how we cook and the kinds of food we eat. Pantries should reflect the regionality, personal preferences, cultural traditions, and diverse needs of the families they serve. I make most things from scratch, but not all, as you'll see, so I have lots of basic baking ingredients. I also have lots of home canned goods, in large part a result of growing my own food and cooking from scratch, but this kind of thing can also be done with bulk purchasing from co-ops, farmer's markets, and even grocers.

Most of my bulk grains are stored in the colored 5 gallon buckets on the left side of the photo just above. I finally splurged and bought the buckets and gamma lids, which make them much easier to open, from Pleasant Hill Grain, who offers free shipping on orders over $99. My buckets are somewhat color coded, but they're also labeled. The large wooden bins at the back hold potatoes, and I have wire baskets on my shelves for other stored produce like onions, garlic, and sweet potatoes. If you look at the first photo above, you'll see the baskets and the reused orange juice containers behind them that store water, not much but enough for an emergency.

You'll notice my list below loosely broken down into related categories that reflect different nutritional needs: be sure to have stored whole grains, fats, protein, and sugars. You'll also notice a lot of redundancy because I use different varieties for different purposes in my cooking; this is a definite luxury, and it's certainly possible to make do with less.

Grains:
jasmine rice
brown basmati rice
arborio rice

grits
popcorn

rolled oats

couscous
quinoa

wheat berries for long term storage
all purpose flour
bread flour
whole wheat pastry flour
whole wheat flour
dry pasta

Fats and Proteins:
red and green lentils
black beans
garbanzo beans

olive oil
coconut oil
peanut oil
hard cheese

peanut butter
tahini
tuna
refried beans
cashews (freezer)
pine nuts (freezer)

evaporated milk
dry milk

Sugars, spices, baking needs:
cane sugar
brown sugar
powdered sugar
turbinado sugar

raisins
maple syrup
chocolate chips
baking powder
baking soda
shortening

canning salt
real salt
sea salt
cheese salt

bay leaves
vanilla beans
sesame seeds
bouillion
bottled lemon juice

Home Preserves:
dried apples
dried tomatoes
jams
peaches
soups
tomato paste
whole tomatoes
chutneys
salsas
chicken and beef stock
dry cured ham
dried chilis

yellow onions
red onions
shallots
garlic
red potatoes
gold potatoes
fingerling potatoes
sweet potatoes

Other:
coffee beans
basic condiments
snack foods my kids like
cereals my family likes

Please feel free to ask any questions about why, how, what, etc. of anything I have in there, and I'd be happy to elaborate in the comments section.

Thankful for Slow Food

From this:




To this:



To this:



To this:



To this:



Round here, Thanksgiving dinner begins in the spring with the hatching of an egg. It takes 7 to 9 months to grow a heritage turkey to a modest table weight. That's roughly 420 to 540 trips out to the pasture to provide food and water for the gobblers. That's a lot of time.

This year I cooked two ~ 8 lb hens for our Thanksgiving feast: one for dinner and one for left overs. Me, I don't much like leftovers, but I found out the hard way one year when it was just Jim and I—after I'd brilliantly labored over a gorgeous duck—that Thanksgiving leftovers are apparently more important than the celebratory feast itself. So, I oblige.

Our turkeys not only provided a feast for 8, they also provided leftovers for four households, at least two more dinners for us, as well as lunches for Jim over the coming year, not to mention the remaining meals provided for two very happy dogs. Once all Thanksgiving gluttony was sated, I made turkey lentil soup with the two carcasses, eking out one last dinner before canning the remainder—5 quarts of soup that will nourish Jim through the winter.

Thank you turkeys for your beauty in life and your bounty in death. I am humbly grateful for all you have provided my family and sincerely wish to be worthy of the gift taken.

My Birthday Present

This year I got a cheese press for my birthday. Pretty lucky, huh? So, I've been playing around with making my first hard cheeses. I started with a farmhouse cheddar, an easy starter cheese without too many steps.

Here I am heating the cut curds to temperature in a waterbath:


Adding the curds to the mold for the first press:


After the first 10 minute pressing:



Here's what the mold looks like all put together:



After it's first 50 lb press. You can see it starting to firm up considerably as the whey is forced out:



Waxed farmhouse cheddar ready for aging in the cellar:


I chose red wax because I thought it would make nice looking holiday presents. The hardest part was cutting the block of wax for the initial melting. I bought a nice stainless steel bowl for it to live in, which I can use as a double boiler when I heat it for dipping. The nice thing about the cheese wax is that once you peel it off the cheese, you can reuse it many times.

The farmhouse cheddar only needs to age about a month, so we should be able to try our first cheese soon. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Easing Hunger

Thanksgiving conjures up notions of plenty: a board groaning under the weight of a well-won harvest. But this year's food shortages and economic downturns ensure that more people all over the world will go hungry.

Thick in the midst of planning our own celebration, I took time out to donate some of our turkey proceeds to Feeding America, formerly America's Second Harvest. This is a tradition for me, and I encourage folks from all over to reach out to the world's hungry and consider giving food, time, money to one of the many outstanding organizations dedicated to easing hunger. Food is a basic necessity as well as a basic comfort, and there's no better time than harvest celebration to extend a bit of that comfort to others. Now more than ever the world needs you.

Go Vote!