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The Gospel of Local Food, Part Two: To Label or Not to Label?

May 21, 2012

A while back I published a post about “pink slime“. I’m sure you haven’t forgotten pink slime just yet…it’s also know as “lean finely textured beef” and it’s pretty much a by-product of the beef processing industry that is mixed into ground beef and sold in some grocery stores as well as used in the school food program. I’m not a fan, but if you don’t mind to eat it, I support your right to do so.

Back when I published my post, I was an advocate of forced labeling to let the consumer know whether or not the product contains lean finely textured beef. After that post, however, I finished reading Joel Salatin’s Folks, This Ain’t Normal. Salatin is a farmer who raises a variety of livestock at Polyface Farms in Virginia. He uses traditional, sustainable methods and he and his family and staff have restored a once nearly ruined farm to rich, beautiful, and productive. His voice in the book is honest and frank, and he makes no bones about his feelings about matters of food and farming. His ideas and discussion brought me from my obsession with “organic” food to a realization that local food-even if it isn’t always 100% organic-needs to be our focus (it also was my inspiration to write my first Gospel of Local Food post).

Salatin points out the prohibitive cost of labeling of all sorts for small farmers and producers. For an industrial farming or meat production operation, the cost of the actual labeling process is pocket change; their concern is the loss of business that they risk when their products are exposed for what they really are. For small farmers, however, labeling could effectively cost enough to put them out of business-even though it would no doubt bring more customers their way. Interesting dilemma.

So, what’s the solution? I like Salatin’s answer.

“When foodies say, ‘Demand this food [product, service, label] at your supermarket,’ I want to respond, ‘Quit going to the supermarket. Go find your farmer instead. Thousands and thousands of farmers are out there to serve you….We’re here and we’re ready to serve you outside this abnormal system.”

Abnormal system. Have you ever thought of it that way? Think of it like this: when your grandparents were children, supermarkets were a new thing. People had their own gardens, their own chickens, their own cows. That was normal. Now, you mention backyard chickens or baking your own bread or making your own cheese, and everyone looks at you like you have two heads. I have to laugh when people talk about the “growing local food movement”. Back in the day that was the only food movement. I say we just get back to the old normal…who’s with me?

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: local food, writing By Mary // Chattavore 2 Comments

Brussels Sprouts, Sweet Potato, and Bacon Hash

May 1, 2012

Tell me the truth….are you a Brussels sprouts hater?  I know knew a lot of them.  The reason I say knew is that every Brussels sprouts nay-sayer that has tried my tasty Brussels sprouts and bacon has been converted.  I do not recall being served fresh Brussels sprouts as a child.  I don’t remember my mom ever making them at all, but I do recall my grandmother cooking frozen Brussels sprouts.  I also do not remember hating them, but I do remember that early in my marriage I decided to prepare some frozen sprouts and instantaneously regretted my decision.  It was several years later when I finally decided to give fresh ones a try, using a recipe from Tyler Florence’s book Dinner at My Place.  Sold!  Now my whole family loves them, and we have them at every holiday.  Family favorite!

Fall Creek Farms sells beautiful fresh Brussels sprouts 10 for $1.00, so when I picked some up a couple of weeks ago I decided to pair them with the sweet potatoes that I had also purchased at the FCF stall 3/$1.00 and some Link 41 bacon to make a wonderful hash.  I love hash…..you can pretty much throw whatever into a pan then top it with a fried or poached egg and voilà-perfection!

Prior to beginning your recipe, bake a couple of sweet potatoes and allow them to cool slightly. I baked mine in the microwave since I was short on time. Don’t cook them until soft….you want them to still be a little firm on the inside.

Preheat a medium skillet (I used my 10″ Lodge cast iron skillet) over medium heat, then throw in a few strips of chopped bacon (I used three) and cook to desired doneness, then drain on paper towels.

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Add half of a sliced onion into the bacon fat and cook until soft. While the onion is cooking, quarter or slice about 10-15 Brussels sprouts, depending on the size. Add the sprouts to the softened onions and cook until they begin to soften.

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Slice the sweet potatoes into chunks and throw them into the pan with the onions and Brussels sprouts. Cook until the vegetables are cooked to your desired texture and the edges of the Brussels sprouts begin to blacken.

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Season the hash with salt and pepper and top with the bacon and a fried or poached egg!

Yield: 2

10 mins Prep Time:

20 mins Cook Time:

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Ingredients

  • 3-4 strips of bacon, chopped
  • 2 baked sweet potatoes, cut into chunks
  • 1/2 onions, sliced
  • 10-15 Brussels sprouts, quartered
  • salt & pepper
  • poached or fried eggs (optional)

Instructions

  1. Cook the bacon in a medium to large skillet until crisp. Remove to a plate lined with paper towels.
  2. Cook the onions until soft, then add the Brussels sprouts and cook until they too begin to soften.
  3. Add the sweet potatoes and cook to desired doneness. I like to cook them until the Brussels sprouts get a little brown and crispy on the edges.
  4. Salt and pepper to taste. Divide between two plates or bowl and top with a fried or poached egg if desired (it is physically impossible for me to consume hash without and egg on top. For me...it is a requirement. But you can do what you want.)

Notes

The prep/cook times do not include the time it takes to bake the sweet potatoes. This recipe can easily be divided to serve just one or multiplied to serve a group!

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https://chattavore.com/brussels-sprouts-sweet-potato-and-bacon-hash/

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Filed Under: By Course, By Main Ingredients, Main Dishes, Recipes, Sides, Vegetables or Vegetarian Tagged With: local food, main dishes By Mary // Chattavore 6 Comments

Spinach Salad

April 15, 2012

I’ve loved spinach my entire life. I was that weird kid that, when my mom or grandmother were serving some vegetable that I didn’t care for, got served a can of Popeye spinach. With ReaLemon juice. And loved it. Now, my taste in spinach has gotten a little more sophisticated over the years, and I probably wouldn’t touch canned spinach with a 10-foot pole unless there were no better alternatives, but spinach still falls into the category of one of my favorite vegetables. I love it just barely sauteed with a little garlic, lemon juice, salt and pepper. I love it in a spinach and artichoke dip (who doesn’t?). I love it as a creamy filling for crepes. And I adore it in this salad.

I’ve been making this salad in some form for most of the eleven years of my married life, but after years of hot bacon grease popping all over my hands when I added the mustard and vinegar to the hot pan (bacon can be dangerous business!) I think I’ve got this recipe down pat. I found this amazing spinach for $3.00 for a big bag from Fall Creek Farms at the Main Street Farmers Market, and I used about half of it for this salad. The other half is still waiting to see what it will become.

The first thing that you need to do is get the eggs boiling. Don’t ever let anyone tell you that you can do a great spinach salad without bacon and boiled eggs. They are absolutely necessary! Here’s how I do my eggs….perfect every time: cover the eggs with water in a pan. Bring to a boil, then kill the heat and cover. Allow to sit for 10 minutes, then cover with cold water until you are ready to use them. To peel, lightly tap them all over to break the shells then peel under cold running water. Now, if you have a way to peel that works for you, go for it! This is just what works for me.

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While the eggs are working, cook the bacon. I cooked three slices of Applegate Farms bacon on my microwave tray (my preferred method for cooking bacon!) for this recipe. Once the bacon is going, wash the spinach. This spinach was pretty clean, but sometimes spinach can be super sandy. I like to float the leaves in water in my salad spinner, then lift the basket out to avoid pouring grit over my greens, then rinse and repeat…then spin.

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Pour the drippings from the bacon (I got about a tablespoon) into the bottom of a bowl while they are still warm. Add a couple of teaspoons of brown or dijon mustard and about a tablespoon of red wine vinegar, then salt and pepper, and whisk to combine. Add the spinach and toss to coat completely.

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Slice the boiled eggs (or chop them if you prefer). Divide the dressed greens between two bowls and top with the sliced eggs and crumbled bacon.

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This salad was so good….I could have eaten both bowls of it. I really considered making more, and this might actually be the fate of those remaining spinach leaves in my fridge as well. My only regret was that I didn’t think to stop at the grocery store to pick up some cremini (baby portobello) mushrooms to slice up and add in with the spinach (you could also add some sliced red onion…but you all know my feelings about raw onion, right?).

My local food project is going well so far. We did deviate slightly from the meal plan today when I realized that I had forgotten to make chicken broth for the cream of broccoli soup, so instead we went to Good Dog (return review coming soon). I’ll make my broth in the Crock-Pot tomorrow and just move all my meals up a day…which actually works out better, since my class starts this week and I’ll need to get some classwork done when I get home from the Market on Wednesday. I am excited about seeing where this will go!

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Filed Under: By Course, By Main Ingredients, Recipes, Salad, Vegetables or Vegetarian Tagged With: eggs, local food, salad By Mary // Chattavore 4 Comments

Farmers Market Caesar Salad

April 13, 2012

Dinner from day two of my farmers market meal plan was potato-leek pizza and Caesar salad.  This salad is kind of a “mash-up” of a Caesar salad recipe from the early days of Alton Brown’s Good Eats and a recipe from Alex Guarnaschelli from the latest Food Network magazine.  I used greens and Brussels sprouts (yes, Brussels sprouts…you’ll see how I use them in a minute!) from Fall Creek Farms, purchased at the Main Street Farmers Market and eggs from my “egg man”.  Local food at its best!

To start off, I preheated my oven to 450 degrees and cut the bottoms off of five Brussels sprouts.  I peeled the leaves off of the Brussels sprouts until I got to the point that I couldn’t get anymore off and laid them on a sheet pan.  I sprayed the Brussels sprouts with olive oil and lightly salted them.  I baked them for about 8 minutes, until they were browned around the edges.  I forgot to take photos of the finished sprouts!  While the sprouts were cooking, I cooked 4 pieces of bacon (Applegate Farm, not Link 41-saving that for Saturday breakfast!) to divide between the pizza and the salad.

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Next, I heated a small pan of water to a boil, then placed an egg in for one minute.  I removed the egg using a slotted spoon and placed it in an ice bath.  Next, I dumped the bag of mixed greens from Fall Creek Farms into my salad spinner and set the basket down into the bowl.  Some of the leaves that were near the top had wilted slightly, so I cracked some ice into the basket and ran cold water over the lettuce..the cold water perked the lettuce up.  I let it sit for a while…good thing, because these greens were dirty!  I had a good laugh thinking about how “sanitized” we expect our food to be….we are so used to getting “triple-washed” greens from a bag.  Real produce is dirty, meant to be washed by the consumer!  Another thing that struck me was the fact that the lettuce, besides the few leaves near the top (which was open in the fridge), was still extremely fresh after a week.  Again, we are so used to lettuce that has been shipped across the country that we don’t even know how fresh truly fresh greens are!

While my lettuce was soaking, I crushed a clove of garlic in my garlic press and used my knife to mix it with a good sprinkling of kosher salt into a paste.

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I drained my lettuce, gave it a spin in the salad spinner, and dumped it into my salad bowl, then added my garlic-salt paste to the bowl.  Next, I added about a tablespoon of olive oil, the juice of half of a lemon, a couple of dashes of Worchestershire, and the yolk of my egg (yes, it was still pretty much uncooked, and I’m okay with that.  I trust my source.  If you have anyone in your home that is in a high-risk group….skip the yolk).  A couple of grind of pepper and some fresh Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese completed the salad, then I gave it a good toss.

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Finally, I divided my salad between two bowls and topped it with crumbled bacon and the Brussels sprouts chips.  This was a great salad with our delicious pizza!

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Filed Under: By Course, By Main Ingredients, Recipes, Salad, Vegetables or Vegetarian Tagged With: local food, salad By Mary // Chattavore Leave a Comment

Farmers Market Revelations

April 9, 2012

If you read my post The Gospel of Local Food, you already know some of my frustrations about buying local, shopping at farmers markets, etc.  I’ve been buying eggs from a guy a few streets over (with yolks so gorgeously yellow-they’re orange!).  There’s a farmers market (St. Alban’s) five minutes from my house, but during the winter, the only producer that is there is the “meat guy”, whom I have not patronized nearly enough!  I plan to change that soon.  The other farmers markets are about thirty minutes away, downtown and in Brainerd.  Oh, suburbia….I love you and I hate you.

I got over myself last week, though, and trekked down to the Main Street Farmers Market on Wednesday afternoon.  It was their first week for their warm weather hours (4-6 as opposed to 4-5).  I had only brought a twenty with me because I really wasn’t sure what all I’d find.  Turns out I should have gone ahead and brought my grocery budget.  Fresh veggies (tons of them), local honey, cheese, beef, chicken, eggs, flour and wheat berries (I plan on milling my own grain soon-yes, I might be crazy!), bacon, sausage….and on and on.  For $18.50 I left with a 36-ounce jar of honey, a huge bag of kale, a bag of lettuce, 20 Brussels sprouts (they were 10/$1.00), and 4 potatoes.  I made kale chips the next day-if you haven’t had them, you should!

My brain started churning when I left and I realized that I could almost do my grocery shopping at the farmers markets.  There are a few things-butter, milk (although one of the farms does sell herd shares to get raw milk), certain fruits, and so on-that I haven’t figured out how to get locally and will need to get at the grocery store, and in the winter I will have to do more grocery store shopping (unless I become a super-duper food preserver over my summer break!), but for the warmer months, I think I can put the bulk of my grocery money into the hands of the people who are producing the food.  It’s pretty exciting to imagine!

So, look out for Chattavore to be hitting the farmers markets hard and hopefully producing some meal plans to help my fellow Chattanoogans purchase more local products as well.  If they’re willing, I’m also hoping to profile some of the farmers and producers.  Help me support local food!

Filed Under: Chattavore Chats Tagged With: local food, writing By Mary // Chattavore 1 Comment

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About Chattavore

Hi, I'm Mary! Welcome to Chattavore, a destination for people who want to feed themselves and their families well every day! Life can be crazy, which means that getting dinner on the table can be a challenge (more often than not!) and my mission is to take all your favorite recipes and figure out how to serve them on a Tuesday.

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