grilled veggies and pasta!

Not my normal blog style, but after working all day (and I mean ALL day) outdoors in the garden/yard, I just couldn't bear to eat a heavy dinner.  So, looking at all my yummy veggies, I decided to get a little creative in the kitchen.  I browsed a few of my seasonal food cookbooks for ideas, then put them away and got to work.
First, I took my patty pan squash and sliced it into nice wide pieces, then came the zucchini and eggplant.  I grilled those on my stovetop grill pan with just a little olive oil.  Then, I took all my onion thinnings from this morning, which were actually about golf ball size and so sweet, and tossed them with garlic, olive oil, and a green pepper from the farm (diced).  After all that was done, I layered the grilled veggies in a baking dish, topped them with the peppers, onions, and garlic, and sprinkled a few herbs on top.  I covered all that with a couple of thinly sliced heirloom tomatoes (green zebra and a striped red).  Then, an 8 ounce ball of mozzarella on top, which I grated. Popped that into the oven at 350 for about 15 minutes.
In the meantime, I cooked up half a box of linguini (we use dreamfields since Jeremy is diabetic, but I'd love to use a local pasta here).  In a small saucepan, I heated up a little flour and butter and then added some whole organic milk.  After it was nice and thick, I tossed in just a handful of fresh grated Parm.  Mmmmmmmmm!  I love to grate a little fresh nutmeg in, too, so I added that as the milk was simmering.
When the pasta was done, I drained it and tossed it with the bechamel sauce.  Each bowl got a spoonful of pasta and then topped with a heaping of the grilled/roasted veggies.
I was worried that it might not fill us up enough, but WOW it was good AND filling!
Of course, we saved room for dessert!  I tossed diced fresh peaches with blueberries and stirred in a spoonful of maple syrup.  Then, topped it all with a sprinkling of brown sugar, flour, and real butter blended into crumbles.  Popped that into the oven for just about 30 minutes.  Top that with some vanilla ice cream and you've got dessert!
Sometimes the best meals are the ones that are designed on the spot.

Animal, vegetable...lunchable?

My children are used to the local diet I am working hard to provide for them.  They are willing to spend time with me in the garden picking beans or checking my tomato plants for any sign of color change.  They have gotten used to the fact that we rarely go to the grocery store, and when we do, we can usually cart away all the purchases in one fabric bag.  They both have a good definition of "healthy" when it comes to eating.
However, it is more difficult to overcome the marketing aimed right at those girls of mine.  It is hard to explain to a 3 year old why we are passing up the yogurt with that silly rabbit on it for the Maple Hill local cream-on-top variety.
"But, mom, it says right on TV that it's healthy AND has a changing color stick to make frozen yogurt!"
It's hard to pass up convenience, too.  Not just for my kids, but for myself.
I really do quite well when it comes to sticking to my local diet, but sometimes, life hits me hard from all sides and I cave.  Most nights, I stop by North Star on the way home for anything I need to supplement the produce we have on hand.  I come home, check out the garden for any new fresh growth that's ready to be picked, and head to the kitchen.  Some days, though, when I've been stretched to the max at work and had two girls attached to my legs from the moment I hit the door at home, I just can't bring myself to do it.  And what do I do when my family has to eat while I am at work?
Every season that I have progressed in my local goals, I have discovered a new obstacle to overcome, and this season I have to admit that convenience is at the top of the list.  I am sure that my new schedule (which came with my new job title) has something to do with my struggles, but it is something I'd like to work on.
While eating fresh from the land tastes better, and is more nutritious, it does take more preparation and knowledge than opening a can of Chef Boyardee or peeling back the plastic on a frozen lasagna.  Of course, I was aware that preparation was key, but before the season hit, I was working 12 hour shifts at night, giving me several days off during the week for planning.  Now, I'm adjusting to a daytime, weekday schedule, which gives me more time with my family, but less large blocks of time.  So, this summer has been a lot of preserving for the future, but sometimes a lot of eating out, too.
I try to still stick to the smaller, more local establishments: the places to eat that you don't find all across the country.  I can remember going on vacation with my family as a kid, when, as a family, we chose to never eat anywhere we could eat at home.  While I live here in upstate NY now, I still desire to eat at places I never had back in the Midwest.
The biggest problem then, is what to serve for lunch when I'm not really here to serve it at all.  I like to have easy to serve things on hand for my husband or my dad, who are the primary care givers when I am working.  Natural peanut butter with homemade bread, yogurt with fruit, local cheese and crackers, and an occasional Annie's natural shells and cheese.  Sometimes, we even splurge on local, nitrite-free hotdogs.  Yum!
But, before you think I'm all natural and nothing else, I beg you to remember that this is a process.  I wish I could tell you that I jumped in with both feet and never looked back, but the truth is, I took it one step at a time.  I'd recommend to anyone that this is the way to do it.  Otherwise, it just gets too overwhelming.  Yes, now I buy about 80-90% of our food from local sources, but it took about 3 years to find and use these sources.  One by one.  Nothing too stressful.  It sort of snowballed, too.  One farmer recommending another until we had a source for almost everything.
So, here is my confession.  I still have a few processed foods around the house.  Until I find good local products to replace them, or can convince my children (and my husband) that convenience and cool marketing ploys are not the best, we will still have a few straggler products hanging around.  I mean, really, nothing beats that abnormally yellow cube of Velveeta for a party queso.  My husband isn't quite ready to give up salad dressing from a bottle.  And my kids love to have a few snacks around that come from a box.
Although I try to dish out bowls of fresh fruit, stove popped natural popcorn, or homemade ice cream, sometimes nothing beats a fistful of alphabet pretzels or a wrapped piece of chocolate.
So, when my 3 year old was asked what her favorite vegetable was the other day, I suppose I shouldn't be too surprised that she replied without hesitation "lunchables!"  Although, truth be told, she loves to open it up, drink the novelty drink and ask me for a salad!

What are you going to do with all those vegetables?

Throughout this process of growing my own food and sourcing out fresh, homegrown veggies and fruits, one question pops up more than any other:
How can you possibly eat all those vegetables?
But, I think that's missing the point.  Truthfully, if you only look at the present, I'm not!  I have a rather large area of my yard devoted to edibles, a weekly CSA box of locally farm grown vegetables, weekly orders placed with the foodshed buying club, and several trips a week to farmer's markets or farm stands.  That, my friends, is a whole lotta veggies!  But, I'm not just growing them to eat right now.  My goal is to be eating as many of my foods from local sources year round.  For those of you who don't know, I live in an area of the country with an extremely short growing season.  We more than make up for that with the quality and quantity of varieties that we can grow here, but it does make for seasonal challenges.
So, to make my goals just a little more clear, I'm working double overtime during this short time period to make sure we have food to eat when that blanket of snow reaches the ground and refuses to melt.
Right now, if you open my refrigerator, you'll find a tiny bit of dairy mixed in with a few leftovers from earlier this week and produce galore!  So, the challenge is to find ways to preserve all these yummy treats before they lose any flavor or nutrients.  Most of the time, the work isn't too hard.  I go out to the garden or unload my purchases, and get to work.  I have to admit, though, that the problem comes when I have an unexpected harvest at a peak time in my busy schedule.  This can mean hauling in bowl upon bowl of freshly picked goodies and prepping them all in one day.  If I had to recommend anything to you, it is to be prepared ahead of time.  I can verify this: your life won't stop just because your garden hands you a heaping bowl of beans.
I also have to admit, that just because I am heading toward a simpler life, that doesn't mean I am running from technology.  In fact, most sunny days you will find me in the garden with my i-phone in hand.  I am able to take picture of mystery plants and share them with other gardeners.  I can search for pest and disease problems online and find healthy solutions to them.  I also have two well used apps on my phone that make life a little, well, simpler.  IGarden is an app that I use to track planting and harvesting times.  This better prepares me for an abundance of kale to hit my chopping block.  Most useful, though, is allrecipes.  There is a website online to look up recipes by ingredient, in case you find an alien-looking kohlrabi in your CSA box and aren't quite sure how to cook it.  There is also a recipe spinner in the app itself, to make meal planning a snap.
But, back to the subject: what do I do with all those vegetables, especially the ones I know I won't be able to eat fresh?  I'll be honest, even after my fabulous canning class, I mostly freeze.  Even though this uses a bit of continual energy to store, I like the fact that is is in its more natural state.  For those who have never frozen veggies before, though, you can't just chop and bag most varieties.  Again, I consult the internet here, because most veggies need to be blanched before freezing.  This process of plunging them into boiling water, waiting a few minutes, and then plunging them into ice water to stop the cooking keeps their natural enzymes from turning them bitter or otherwise less appealing.  Most veggies are washed and chopped first, and then dried and bagged after.  Some veggies need to be flash frozen in a single layer, and others are just loaded into zip-lock bags with the air squeezed out.  Only a few veggies, like onions and peppers, are a quick chop and bag. If you want to take the frozen approach, like me, do your research first.  Some veggies only need a 1-2 minute dip, while others need a nice long 7 minute bubbling.  Also, some veggies, like cucumbers are better preserved in vinegar brine and canned.
Some days it's just a handful of beans that need a blanch and freeze, but others, like this weekend are more labor intense.  This weekend, I found myself with eggplants, carrots, heaps of heirloom beans, beets, 3 varieties of kale, swiss chard, onions, green peppers, and cucumbers to spare.  This is in addition to the veggies we plan to eat this week, like arugula, salad greens, green garlic, summer squash, cherry tomatoes, and fennel.  So, out came this big pot of water and all my cutting boards.  I had to make a quick trip to the wholesale store for the jumbo pack of freezer bags, too!  In addition to all that, I also flash froze 2 more quarts of fresh blueberries and have yet to tackle the unstoppable rhubarb!
I am not saying that it wasn't a lot of hard work, but I can tell you that the sight of all those bags of goodness in my new energy saving deep freeze is quite lovely!  So, this winter, when the ground is frozen and the stores are selling those bags of vegetables shipped in from across the world, I'll be shopping in my own basement from the fresh picked and quickly preserved produce grown in my own hometown.  I'll be reminded of the hot sun beating down on me as I took my kids to the strawberry farm in June.  I'll be swooning over the sweetness of the blueberries from the farm on my way home from work.  I'll remember talking with the farmer about how she prefers to cook and store her corn.
What am I going to do with all those vegetables?  Spend the next 12 months eating them, of course!