It's a process

Well, the winter passed fairly uneventfully. I spend little time focusing on local, sustainable food, and mostly on making sure there food made it to the house and my processes for procuring it was vaguely streamlined. With a toddler and being pregnant, for me, this was enough. As winter started to wind down and I started preparing the house and our lifestyle for two kids I started re-visiting my family food goals.

I was absolutely thrilled when our local farmers market re-opened weekly for the summer.

I know they come by once a month in the winter, but half the time I was out of town the week they were here, or I counted wrong on my calendar and went the wrong week. I just really needed a weekly routine this winter.

In any case, I was thrilled when they re-opened weekly. I bought more rhubarb than one would tend to imagine. I discovered an amazing rhubarb ice cream recipe. (More about ice cream in a later post). I bought asparagus by the dozen and mostly roasted it. I bought a few apples and potatoes that had seen better days but appear to have made it though the winter storage, we bought spinach (all green leaves are "salad" according to my toddler), a few early hothouse tomatoes, oh and at my daughters insistence, we bought radishes, but we're probably not going to do that twice. I bought some basil which is now doing fabulously in a pot in our front yard. Oh, and how could I forget the early garlic!! And I'm sure some some other stuff, but I think that was the bulk. Sometimes I'm a little unclear, where he gets his produce from, some is labeled organic and non organic, and I'm not sure how much I care, but I wonder about distance a little..

And I have to admit it, I drove. It's about a half mile away, tops, but I am just too big and awkward to walk with my toddler and carry the bag back and not have the whole experience take three hours, so, I coordinated the trip to pick up my mail. Maybe by the fall, I will be walking again.

So, veggies were sort of taken care of. But of course there is my favorite summer experience. PYO!! I went three times this year for PYO strawberries and two of those times I picked some english peas. I've been going to Butler's Orchard since I was a very small child for both strawberries and pumpkins. I've tried branching out to other PYO farms, and sometimes I do, but the appeal of being able to drive my car to the field so that I can sustain my energy on child care and picking rather then carrying produce and walking with toddler is too great this year for any other option. She LOVED the English Peas. I was amazed at how interested she was in the peas over the strawberries. The yield on both were not great this year due to the ridiculous rains. But we had a great time, and there is nothing like a strawberry eaten straight from the field. The other up side to this experience is that we shared it with friends. We went on two visits with friends who had never been to a PYO field before so that was great. I bought a ton of seconds on peaches (again, not 100% sure where they come from) but was thrilled to have them.

And sadly, I just haven't been up to the kind of prep for storage I was hoping for. Mostly we've just consumed everything, though some fruit was cooked down for later desserts. Oh, and 4 cups of strawberries were frozen for bread.

On other exciting storage notes though, we bought a new refrigerator! I love it! It holds everything, the lighting is great. I'm still working on organization a bit, but there is so much room, it's been easier to use what we have.

Lastly on my quest to simplify and localize food acquisition, we have started glass bottle milk delivery. So far it has been fabulous. I highly recommend South Mountain Creamery for dairy, eggs, bread. Their granola was wonderful, if not expensive, the cream has had slightly mixed results regarding shelf life, but otherwise wonderful, the meats were amazing, although also expensive. Oh and the yogurts are great. My mother couldn't believe they were no sugar added. They are a little liquidy, and therefore sometimes difficult for my toddler to eat on her own, I'm not up to sending her to school with them yet, and they only have 6oz containers, and I would love to be able to buy a few large containers instead of lots of littles, but nothing that we can't live with. Supply on yogurt is also not up to the apparent demand as two of the four weeks they have not been able to completely fill our order.

So, once a week I go to TJ's and pick up turkey breast, some cheese that SMC does not have, and some extra produce or whatever. But I am thrilled to report I have found so far, this new system to be less stressful and quicker for me.

(Guess I should post more often).