June 29, 2015

Things are looking up. We have food to eat this week, quite a lot actually. Rob had to pick up our food shares this week by himself. I had to be at a horse show with Tristan, which was fun but exhausting. Six kids and six ponies all had to be cleaned up, kitted out, hauled to the show, and then watched carefully once there for impending disasters. It just about killed me. I wasn't even the one in charge. I was just helping. Anyway, he picked everything up for us. This week we got the flour! I was so excited. This was also a meat week and we were given six pounds of pork, and six pounds of beef! I really had no hope that we would get the meat, so I was pleasantly surprised.  Evidently they forgot, or just plain didn't know about the previous three pounds of beef we got before. I'm not telling them. So in all this glorious meat we had two pounds of hamburger, short ribs, two more of the yummy steaks, two pork chops, a good size piece of pork shoulder, a package of breakfast sausage, a pound of ground pork and a pound of bacon. This is supposed to last us a month. We are also due to get two broiler chickens next week. Because we have a good supply of meat already in our freezer this seemly small amount does not worry me, I think it might be too little for most families, but I don't know how much meat the average family of three would eat each week.

For our dairy share we received one block of cheddar, one blue cheese and a small 6 oz. tub of cultured butter. Cultured butter has a slightly yogurt taste to it because the cream is left to mature before it is made into butter, while I don't love it, the butter was well made. It is waxy in texture, not greasy.  I did not ask for butter and once again our order was messed up -- I had asked for two cheddars -- but I am so pleased with the quality of Brookfords dairy products that I didn't really care. I can tell you though I will not drink their raw milk until I get a look at their milk room and bulk tank. I also will ask them for a look at their milk counts. Milk counts are the test results for bacteria, somatic cell count and coli form counts in the milk. These test results tell you how clean the milk is. New Hampshire has different standards for raw milk than milk that will be pasteurized. Basically raw milk is held to the same counts as pasteurized milk after it has been pasteurized, but milk going to a plant to be pasteurized can be "dirtier" because they are going to boil the living daylights out of it. Constant vigilance and having very high standards of cleanliness, is the only way to do it.

So on to the veggies. Lettuce again this week, two bags of spinach, a bunch of Swiss chard, garlic scapes, a ridiculous sized bag of dill and cilantro, which yes, was actually in a bag this time. A bunch of basil (not in a bag, therefore wilted), four zucchini and a quart of very ripe and somewhat fuzzy strawberries. The strawberries I saved by picking out the moldy ones and blitzing the remainder of the good ones in the food processor to make a base for strawberry ice cream.

The flour that we have been waiting for was a three pound bag of whole wheat pastry flour and a three pound bag of whole wheat bread flour. I made my hamburger roll recipe with the pastry flour on Friday night. The rolls came out ok for using all whole wheat, they were a bit crumbly but had a nice nutty flavor. We had cheeseburgers with The CSA’s cheddar cheese, lettuce and their hamburger. I even made mayonnaise this week which I love on burgers. So we actually ate one whole meal from the CSA. Cool.

When Rob went in to pick up our box at the store, the owner was there. He had a very interesting conversation with her about Brookfield Farm and their CSA. She said she has been trying to get out of being a distribution place for the CSA for a while now. This is due to the farm constantly messing up orders and her constantly getting yelled at by unhappy customers. She also has a problem with them returning phone calls, they simply don’t. This week she had ordered a case of eggs and only received one dozen, so the CSA is out of luck and so are her customers that buy their eggs there. We got the dozen eggs only because Rob was the first one to pick up. I feel sorry for the customers that have signed on for this CSA and I feel sorry for the farm itself, I want this type of agriculture to succeed, but farmers must also be good business people or have the smarts to hire a good manager when they get in over their head.

Surviving the Week

June 23, 2015

We made it through another week. I feel like I am always cooking, and that all the cooking takes longer. Every bread product we want to eat will now have to be made from scratch or will have to be the bread we get from our CSA share (yuck!). The very last of the store bought English muffins were used up, and we maybe have three bagels left. For most breakfasts this week we had eggs. It’s a good thing we have about 24 of our own chickens producing eggs, as well as a dozen eggs we get in our share. This week we went through 4 dozen eggs. Most lunches were the last of the bagels with goat cheese, or fried egg sandwiches. On a very hectic day, when Tristan had his riding lesson, and we had a bunch of errands, we went to Burrito Me, which is this hipster burrito place in Laconia. While this little restaurant is not really my favorite place because it is seriously filthy inside (and my standards are not that high), Tris loves it and the food is locally sourced and it is fresh, real food.  Dinner on Wednesday was Hake fillet and a steak, from the CSA and our Community seafood share.

Pippa the Border Collie, thinking the steak looks pretty good.

 The steak was tender and flavorful. The fish was fresh and similar to Cod. We had asparagus and salad with all dinners this week, except the night we had burgers. The burgers on our own homemade rolls are very popular with the boys, and the rolls make good sandwiches. I will include the recipe here at the end of this post. We used up a box of store spaghetti, and our own ground beef, with some canned Muir Glen tomatoes. We had twice baked potatoes with the cheese from our dairy share, and a mix of herbs from the garden.

One popular thing I made for me and Tristan, was strawberry milk. I take a quart of milk, add 5 or 6 strawberries to it, a tablespoon of honey, and about an ounce of buttermilk. I then blend it up with a stick blender. Slightly sweet, frothy and tangy, it’s just perfect.

We are getting sick of eating a piece of meat with a side of vegetable for every dinner. This weekend I’m going to try for lasagne, which will be made the hard way, with homemade pasta, and homemade ricotta and mozzarella. I have done this before and it takes most of the day. I will make a big one and freeze a good portion of it for later.

I made two desserts this week, a raspberry sorbet from some frozen last-year's berries, and a chocolate cream pie. I would say most of the food we have eaten this week was from our homegrown food supply and from our leftover store bought food. Very little was from our CSA share, maybe only one quarter if that.

On another note, I have noticed I have more money in the checking account, about 400 dollars more, because I haven’t shopped in two weeks, and we are eating less and wasting less. I stop and think before I chuck sometime in the garbage, or throw it to the chickens. Something else strange I noticed this week -- though more money is definitely strange -- was the look of the inside of our fridge. At first I couldn't pinpoint it, but after several times of putting food in and rearranging things, I figured it out. It was because most of the food did not have a label on it.  What had labels were the condiments on the door and that was about it. It gave the fridge a very streamlined look, you could see the food, and just the food.

Here is a recipe I’m now making about once a week. These rolls are soft, rich and soak up the juices from the hamburgers. It is well worth the time it takes to make these compared to your store bought rolls.  We use all organic ingredients for this recipe. You can substitute half of the white flour with whole wheat if you must, but I urge you to try them first with all white flour. These rolls freeze well and are great with all kinds of other sandwich fillings.

Worth the effort to make.

Hamburger Rolls

Yield: 8 rolls

3 ½ cups flour

2 1/4 teaspoon or 1 packet instant yeast

1 cup very warm water

1 egg

3 Tablespoons sugar

3 Tablespoons salted butter, melted

1 egg and 1 tsp. of water combined for egg wash

sesame seeds for sprinkling on top (optional)

Combine yeast, ½ of the water and  ½  cup of the flour in a bowl and whisk together. Let this mixture set until it starts to foam, it should look like the foam on the head of a beer.

Add the egg, sugar, salt, butter, and the remaining water. Mix well.

Place in a standing mixer with a dough hook and add the remaining flour, mix for 5 to 6 minutes until dough comes together and pulls away from the sides of the bowl, but still sticks to the bottom of the bowl. If you don't have a mixer, by all means knead this by hand. The dough will be very sticky, but resist adding more flour, as you work the dough it will become less sticky and more manageable. Time yourself to make sure you work the dough for the full amount of time.

Place dough in an oiled bowl and let rise until doubled in size. This takes about 1 hour.

When the dough has doubled in size, take it out of the bowl and gently deflate it. Cut the dough into 8 equal pieces and gently form each piece into a small ball.

Line a sheet pan with parchment paper or a silpat mat. Form the balls into flat disks, hamburger bun size.  Place the disks in a 2,1,2,1,2 pattern on the pan.  Let the rolls double in size. When the rolls have risen, very carefully brush with the egg wash and sprinkle with the sesame seeds. Bake in a preheated oven at 375 degrees for 15-17 minutes until golden brown. Cool on a rack.

People always ask, after having these rolls, can the dough be made as hot dog rolls? The answer is yes and they are just as good as the hamburg rolls. To make hotdog rolls, form the divided dough into small logs the length of the sausage you will be using. Place the logs in a side by side row down your baking sheet so that they will touch as they rise. Before you place them on the sheet, brush each side that will touch with melted butter. With the back of a knife, make an indentation all along the top of the roll,  a long line down the center. They will start to look like a New England Hotdog roll. Let rise until about double in size. Skip the egg wash and bake for 15 to 17 minutes. When cool, cut the top indentation ⅔ of the way through. These are perfect for lobster rolls, when brushed with melted butter and grilled on the sides.

June 20, 2015

We were having a cream cheese crisis. I took the last package of the store bought cream cheese out of the fridge and realized there was only one bagel worth of cheese left. Which meant if we didn’t have any cream cheese, no bagels would be eaten. The farm that distributes our CSA makes a wide variety of dairy products, but cream cheese is not one of them. I had been thinking about going to the new farmers’ market in Gilford, and this was as good an excuse to go as any. I could also do a little research about prices and talk to a few farmer friends I knew would be there. We arrived just about the middle of the market, the opening rush was over, but there were still plenty of things left. It seemed like a busy and well attended market, they had about 18 vendors, live music and a good variety of products for sale. One of the first things I noticed was that everyone seemed more professional since the time we had last been selling at market. All the stands had good clear signage, everything was priced, and the farmers were engaged and talking to their customers.

We looked around at every one's products and then hit the goat cheese vendor. Tristan wanted one of every type of cheese they sold, but with taste testing we narrowed our purchases down to one tub of raspberry cream cheese (score), a piece of cheese in olive oil, and a rosemary spread. This would give us quite a variety for the week, but at 20 dollars total, it was not cheap. There wasn’t anything else we needed so we stopped to talk to a friend, Aaron Lichtenberg, who owns Winnipesaukee Woods Farm http://winniwoodsfarm.com/. He sells at two markets, Gilford and Laconia.  He pointed out the interesting fact that what would sell in Gilford for a high price, say organic free range eggs at 6 dollars a dozen, would definitely not sell in Laconia. Aaron has a CSA which has 60 members, he says that he can hardly produce what he needs to service the CSA and the two markets. This year the problem has been lack of water early in the season and now cold weather and too much rain.  After hearing about our local eating project and that we were subscribers at Brookford Farm he talked about how a lot of farms that are offering CSA shares were experiencing the problem of getting more business than they could handle and not handling their customer service at all well. He believes this is very unfortunate for the farms that are doing a great job because it gives the whole concept of CSA a bad name. What I talked about was the fact that  we went into this project very optimistic about what we would get and that we would be eating just great food, but the reality is different and just three short weeks in, disappointing.

Just a note: while putting up some links that some of you asked for, I went to put up the Brookford Farm link, which is where we get our full diet share from, and their web page is down, due to them not renewing their domain. Someone isn't paying attention.

Some prices, More reasonable than we are paying through the CSA.

June 18, 2015

Embarrassingly rotten and under ripe strawberries.

Today we picked up our week #2 box. This time we picked up early at 11:30, just after the boxes had been delivered to the store. Our vegetable share was correct this time. In it were two large heads of lettuce, a ¾ lb. bag of spinach, a ¾  lb. bunch of swiss chard, and a handful of dill which was simply thrown in the box, once again it was wilted and not too appealing.  There was also a bunch of garlic scapes and a quart of strawberries. Unfortunately, half the strawberries were rotten and some were not ripe, as a farmer and business person I would not have dared put these in someone’s box of produce.  Much to my disappointment, the two loaves of bread we received were the same as last week, one being sesame, and the other aromatic, which contains some spices. While the breads were good last week, by the time we got to the end of the loaves I was glad to see the last of them. I will have to get creative.

Weirdly spiced bread, that I'm hoping we don't get again.

We received three more 6 oz. blocks of cheddar cheese because I didn't tell the store what we wanted for dairy. If you don't let them know they give you the same as you had the week before. That would be fine, except last week the store told me to inform the farm of my choices, not the store, so I informed the farm and this week the store told me I need to inform them. This was, needless to say, irritating.

“Ok, there you go,” the women at the store said.

“ Nooo!" I replied. "No. What about our meat, eggs and flour?’’

“Huh?” she asked, looking confused.

“We get a full diet share,’’ my husband said. He could see I was getting pissy, and was trying to head me off. I let him take over.

“We should have a 3 lb. bag of flour, actually two because we didn't get any last week, and a dozen eggs and this is a meat week so we should get some meat,” he said firmly.

Wow, he’d been on the website, I was impressed.

“Ohhhh," said the chick.“Ohhhh, you have a full diet share!”

She was getting it now.

“Yes,” he said, with only the faintest hint of impatience.

Of course by this time I was starting to loose my shit. He shot me a significant look to keep me in line.

“ Maybe you have a list to check to see what we get this week?” he asked gently.

“No, they just give us a list at the beginning with your name on it so we know you're getting a box.”

“Right, ok, then what did they send, did they send meat and eggs, maybe flour?" he asked, kindness oozing from his voice.

I could tell he didn't want to scare her, it’s the same way he talks to small animals.

“They did send eggs, and some meat, but no flour, definitely no flour!”

She was on a roll now.

“We should have some meat then, and a dozen eggs, and I will call them myself about the flour,” said my husband, knowing when he was beat.

She smiled, clearly relieved she was not going to get yelled at, at least by him. She gave me a wary look and proceeded to pack up the eggs and some beef, about 3 lbs. There was a nice rib steak, a package of hamburger and a very small flat steak.  Better, I thought. Not great, but better. I had my jaw clamped shut so I wouldn’t say anything. After all it really wasn't her fault. I guess.

“That’s all, and I gave you one of the cheeses someone else should get," she said. "They shorted us on cheese. The guy who dropped the stuff off was new and he didn't know anything.”

He’s not the only one, I thought.

So at this point we had everything we were most likely going to get. Later Rob called the farm in an attempt to find out what was going on. He left a message. We might get a call back, but I’m not holding my breath on that one.

After that adventure, we went into Laconia to get our fish http://www.nhcommunityseafood.com/ which you pick up outside a local restaurant. They leave the fish very well packed on ice, in coolers. You just stop by and make sure you get your correct bag, because there are different sizes of shares. The fish is always delivered on time, it is always fresh and tasty. This week they sent Hake, which is a great chowder fish. I put some in the freezer for later.

I have more to work with this week. We are also picking plenty of asparagus and strawberries. I have a ton of fresh herbs. We have basil, parsley, dill, oregano, tarragon, thyme, chives, mint, and rosemary so we are good on that front. I am going to try to go to the farmers’ market in Gilford this week to see about goat cheese. Supposedly they have someone selling it there. It’s Tristan’s favorite cheese . At this point I wish I could just go buy what I want from the farmers’ market or a farmstand, which of course I can, but I don’t want to waste what we have in the share. I know if I buy what we really want we won’t eat what we are paying more than half of our grocery bill for -- stuff that is just ok, and what I would never normally buy. We are out of our comfort zone. We have not been to the grocery store in two weeks.

Our meat share..

What I Have to Work With

June 18, 2015

Pantry

4 cans of tuna fish, packed in water and salt

2 tins sardines, from Maine

9 quarts maple syrup, our own

4 bottles Heinz Organic Ketchup

2 jars Pace Salsa

3 tubs Spectrum Organic Vegetable Shortening

2 boxes Bigelow chai tea

1 box Arborio rice

4 lbs. Basmati rice

7 1lb. boxes of assorted pasta

1 1/2 lbs. brown sugar

10 lbs. organic sugar

1 can baking powder

14 cans Muir Glen organic tomato sauce

1 can sauerkraut

2 boxes Medjool dates

2 bottles Tabasco sauce

1 quart honey, locally produced

2 lbs. cocoa powder, organic

1 pint jar curry powder, organic

1 lb. cinnamon, organic

1 quart jar chili powder, organic

1 pint molasses

1 pint Tellicherry peppercorns, organic

5 1 ltr. bottles assorted vinegars

9 lbs. King Arthur Flour, Organic

½ jar cornstarch

1 pint coconut oil, organic

7 cans pumpkin,organic

2 jars peanut butter, no sugar, no salt, organic

1 lb. red lentils

2 ltrs. olive oil, organic

2 ltrs. chickens stock, organic

2 ltrs. veg stock, organic

1 small bag hazelnuts

31 jars assorted spices, organic

4 12-packs seltzer water

Freezer

1 box Phyllo pastry

1 box puff pastry

2 bags frozen peaches

2 big bags raspberries

8 packages canadian bacon, our own

1 package coconut flakes, organic

½ package almond meal

½ package stone ground cornmeal

½ package popcorn, organic

15 1 lb. packages ground beef, our own, grass fed

12 bagels from Panera

1 lb. cod

1 lb. salmon

4 packages salt pork our own

Around 30 lbs. assorted lamb cuts

6 assorted premium cut steaks, our own, grass fed

The First Box

June 12, 2015

I posted on Facebook the other day that we had received our first full diet share from Brookford Farm. Quite a few people thought we were crazy to sign up to receive a box of veggies and other farm products when we already have a farm. Possibly this is true, so let me explain. For a few years now we have sold vegetables at farmers’ markets. We have also sold eggs, milk, honey, maple syrup and meat off our farm. We often have discussions on what it would be like to be on the other side of things, being the consumer, and not the producer. Questions came up; would we eat what we received? Could a family really buy a full diet share and live off it? Is it affordable to eat local and organic? Will we be any healthier?

I first brought up the idea of buying a full diet share for our family back in February. I knew we were slowly running out of our frozen meat supply of chickens, pork and beef, with no cow ready for the freezer and no desire to do broiler chickens again for a while, I knew we would be buying from the store soon. I really didn't want to go back to that. Yes, we could go vegetarian, but I have to say I would be the only one happy with that. Our milk supply was going to run out too, the cow we were milking was slowly giving us less milk and when the grass stopped in late summer we would dry her off. We didn't have another cow due to calf anytime soon, and you gotta have a calf if you want milk. If we bought a full diet share we would get milk products, and meat and vegetables all in a box each week. The share also came with a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread and a 3 pound bag of flour. Rob said okay, and a small fortune later we had signed up.

So now that you have the full story, I will fill you in on some of the details. First off, how much it cost for this wonderful, local, organic box of food each week. Well, a lot. Two thousand, three hundred and fifty four dollars to be exact. This is for the next twenty weeks. We also bought a six week New Hampshire seafood share from the Fish Co-op http://www.nhcommunityseafood.com/, in which we get fish off the boat each week. Because this ends in two weeks, I will be signing up again because the fish has been fantastic. This turns out to be about twenty six dollars a week. My idea with this is to not to go to the grocery store for the next twenty weeks. I figured the cost of the farm share to be about one hundred and eighteen dollars a week. So what we are going to find out is; is this possible? I am going to use up what we have here in stock, in our pantry and freezers, and use what we can produce on our own. Each week I will let you know how successful we have been, with a breakdown of what we ate, and what we received in our share.

Our Full Diet Share contains:

• Two loaves of whole wheat bread, each week.
• One 3 pound bag of whole wheat pastry flour, or whole wheat flour, or rye flour, each week.
• One dozen eggs, each week.
• 3 dairy products, each week, which are from a choice of most of the normal dairy products a farm would make.
• Each month we get 2 broilers, and assorted cuts of beef and pork, around six pounds of each.
• Each week we get a box of seasonal, organic vegetables.

This week we did not get much and I was in shock, there was no way a family could eat for the week on what came in our box, but then I found out we received some of the wrong things, so we only had a half share of veggies and someone else got our flour. This is totally the store where we pick up the boxes fault, which won't happen next week you can be sure. We chose three 6 oz. packages of raw milk cheddar for our dairy products because we already have milk and cream. The cheese is really good. We got a head of lettuce, a pound of spinach, herbs and salad mix. Not enough to keep a bird alive. I am trying to be patient because this was the first week. The two loaves of bread were both whole wheat sourdough types. They were pretty good and are lasting a long time. Each loaf was a pound and a half each. I am hoping for better next week. I must say the lettuce was quite bitter, which made me think it was greenhouse grown, it was also in pretty poor condition when we picked up because the store doesn't refrigerate anything. The boxes are available for pick up from three to six, but the boxes arrived around twelve thirty, I am glad we didn't have milk sitting there all that time. When we get through the week I will update what we had for meals and let you know how we did. I am a little worried because I could have bought all this from a local farm stand, fresher, and for less money.

June 16, 2015

This week I have found out we eat a surprising amount of vegetables. We ate the spinach for two dinners, the bag of salad mix lasted for two big salads for me and Tristan (Rob will not eat raw anything) and the lettuce finally was given to the geese because it was too bitter to choke down. The cheese we used at lunch on quesadillas, and on fried egg sandwiches. I still have two blocks left. I made meatball subs with our own ground beef and leftover store bought rolls. Thursday was a total loss, we had to work at Tristan’s school for the upper class's graduation. Tristan’s grade basically caters for the dinner they have, so we only ate breakfast at home that day. I made a savory bread pudding out of the end of the leftover bread with our own herbs, eggs and milk. I used up a frozen package of raspberries combined with some rhubarb to make a crumble, of course we put homemade vanilla ice cream on it. On fish day me and Tristan had American Plaice from our fish share, Rob had a home grown T Bone steak. Any meal that we could we had asparagus. We went through 3 dozen eggs, a gallon and a half of milk and maybe a pint of cream. Tristan ate 5 bagels from Panera which I had frozen, with cream cheese from the store. A couple of packages of lamb chops and two sweet potatoes, and one night we had pasta and cream, with mushrooms from the store. Because we had some leftover store food that I was going to use up and not just throw out, we have made it through the week. Our special Sunday dinner was our own ground beef burgers with some of the farm cheddar on top, homemade fries, and homemade buns. We had a big pot of chili made from our own ground beef and store bought organic canned beans, this was great as leftovers for lunch. Next week I am going to write down each meal so I don’t forget anything. I also plan on inventorying the freezer and pantry so you know just what I'm working with.

June 17, 2015

This morning we woke up to a beautiful June day, which for once, everyone had free. My husband Rob had the day off from appointments at our veterinary practice, our son Tristan was on his first day of summer vacation. I just had to milk the one cow we have in milk and do a few chores. Reality then kicked in and I started to think of all the little details we had to get done.  Go to the post office, pick up our CSA shares, get Tris to the eye doctor, weed the asparagus, clean out the heifer shed and horse's run in shed, which are muddy messes, because it has rained the past two days and the animals just stayed in. Going anywhere in town was going to take much longer than usual because of Bike Week. We split up the duties and got most of them done. Cleaning the sheep shed was on the list, but it will have to wait until tomorrow.  My goal this week was to get this blog up and running and to get everyone up to date on our Local Eating Project. So far, so good. I will post this link, let the games begin.