It doesn't cost a fortune, in other words. Nor does it require a pickup truck, or a calico bonnet. Just the unique belief that summer is the right time to go to the fresh market with cash in hand and say to some vendors: I'll take all you have. It's an entirely reasonable impulse, to stock up on what's in season. Most of my farming and gardening friends do it. Elsewhere, Aesop is history. Grasshoppers rule, ants drool.
Three-quarters of the way through our locavore year, the process was becoming its own reward for us. We were jonesing for a few things, certainly, including time off: occasionally I clanged dirty pot lids together in frustration and called kitchen strikes. But more often than not, dinnertime called me into the kitchen for the comfort of predictable routines, as respite from the baked-on intellectual residue of work and life that is inevitably messier than pots and pans. In a culture that assigns nil prestige to domestic work, I usually self-deprecate when anyone comments on my gardening and cooking-from-scratch lifestyle. I explain that I have to do something brainless to unwind from my work, and I don't like TV. But the truth is, I enjoy this so-called brainless work. I like the kind of family I can raise on this kind of food.
Still, what kind of person doesn't ask herself at the end of a hard day's work: Was it worth it? Maybe because of the highly documented status of our experiment, I now felt compelled to quantify the work we had done in terms that would translate across the culture gap--i.e., moolah. I had kept detailed harvest records in my journal. Now I sat at my desk and added up columns.
Between April and November, the full cash value of the vegetables, chickens, and turkeys we'd raised and harvested was $4,410. To get this figure I assigned a price to each vegetable and the poultry per pound on the basis of organic equivalents (mostly California imports) in the nearest retail outlet where they would have been available at the time we'd harvested our own. The value-added products, our several hundred jars of tomato sauce and other preserved foods, plus Lily's full-year egg contribution, would add more than 50 percent to the cash value of our garden's production.
That's retail value, of course, much more than we would have earned from selling our goods wholesale (as most farmers do), but it's the actual monetary value to us, saved from our annual food budget by means of our own animal and vegetable production and processing. We also had saved by eating mostly at home, doing our own cooking, but that isn't figured into the tally. Our costs, beyond seeds, chicken feed, and our own labor, had been minimal. Our second job in the backyard, as we had come to think of it, was earning us the equivalent of some $7,500 of annual income.
That's more than a hill of beans. In my younger days I spent a few years as a freelance journalist before I hit that mark. And ironically, it now happens to be the median annual income of laborers who work in this country's fields and orchards. We who get to eat the literal fruits of our labors are the fortunate ones.
I harbored some doubts that our family of four could actually consume (or give away as gifts) this dollar-value of food in a year. But that is only $1.72 per person, per meal; that we'd spent that much and more was confirmed by the grocery receipts I'd saved from the year before we began eating locally. As I sat at my desk leafing through those old receipts, they carried me down an odd paper trail through a time when we'd routinely bought things like BAGGED GALA APP ORG, NTP PANDA PFF, and ORNG VALNC 4#bg (I have no idea, but it set me back $1.99), with little thought for the places where these things had grown, if in fact they had grown at all.
We were still going to the supermarket, but the receipts looked different these days. In the first six months of our local year we'd spent a total of $83.70 on organic flour (about twenty-five pounds a month) for our daily bread and weekly pizza dough, and approximately the same amount on olive oil. We'd spent about $5 a week on fair-trade coffee, and had also purchased a small but steady supply of nonlocal odds and ends like capers, yeast, cashews, raisins, lasagna noodles, and certain things I considered first aid: energy bars to carry in the purse against blood sugar emergencies; boxes of mac-and-cheese. Both my kids have had beloved friends who would eat nothing, literally, except macaroni and cheese out of a certain kind of box. I didn't want anybody to perish on my watch.
Still, our grocery-store bill for the year was a small fraction of what it had been the year before, and most of it went for regionally produced goods we had sleuthed out in our supermarket: cider vinegar, milk, butter, cheese, and wines, all grown and processed in Virginia. About $100 a month went to our friends at the farmers' market for the meats and vegetables we purchased there. The market would now be closed for the rest of our record-keeping year, so that figure was deceptively high, including all the stocking up we'd done in the fall. In cash, our year of local was costing us well under 50C/ per meal. Add the $1.72-per-meal credit for the vegetables we grew, and it's still a bargain. We were saving tons of money by eating, in every sense, at home.
Our goal had not really been to economize, only to exercise some control over which economy we would support. We were succeeding on both counts. If we'd had to purchase all our vegetables as most households do, instead of pulling them out of our back forty, it would still be a huge money-saver to shop in our new fashion, starting always with the farmers' market and organizing meals from there. I know some people will never believe that. It's too easy to see the price of a locally grown tomato or melon and note that it's higher (usually) than the conventionally grown, imported one at the grocery. It's harder to see, or perhaps to admit, that all those NTP PANDA PFFs do add up. The big savings come from a habit of organizing meals that don't include pricey processed additions.
In some objective and measurable ways, we could see that our hard work had been worth the trouble. But the truth is we did it for other reasons, largely because it wasn't our day job. Steven and I certainly could have earned more money by putting our farming hours into teaching more classes or meeting extra deadlines, using skills that our culture rewards and respects much more than food production and processing. Camille could have done the same via more yoga classes and hours at her other jobs. Lily was the only one of us, probably, who was maximizing her earning potential through farm labor.
But spending every waking hour on one job is drudgery, however you slice it. After an eight-hour day at my chosen profession, enough is enough. I'm ready to spend the next two or three somewhere else, preferably outdoors, moving my untethered limbs to a worldly beat. Sign me up on the list of those who won't maximize their earnings through a life of professionally focused ninety-hour weeks. Plenty of people do, I know, either perforce or by choice--overwork actually has major cachet in a society whose holy trinity is efficiency, productivity, and material acquisition. Complaining about it is the modern equivalent of public prayer. "Work," in this context, refers to tasks that are stressful and externally judged, which the worker heartily longs to do less of. "Not working" is widely coveted but harder to define. The opposite of work is play, also an active verb. It could be tennis or bird-watching, so long as it's meditative and makes you feel better afterward.
Growing sunflowers and beans is like that, for some of us. Cooking is like that. So is canning tomatoes, and making mozzarella. Doing all of the above with my kids feels like family life in every happy sense. When people see the size of our garden or the stocks in our pantry and shake their heads, saying "What a lot of work," I know what they're really saying. This is the polite construction in our language for "What a dope." They can think so. But they're wrong.
This is not to say family life is just la-di-dah around here. Classes and meetings and deadlines collide, mail piles get scary. Children forget to use their inside voices when charging indoors to demand what's for dinner. Mothers may also forget to use them when advising that whoever's junk is all over the table has three seconds to clear it up or IT'S GOING TO THE LANDFILL. Parent-teacher night rises out of nowhere, and that thing I promised to make for Lily's something-or-other is never, ever due any time except tomorrow morning, Mama! Tears happen. On the averag
e January weeknight, I was deeply grateful that I could now just toss a handful of spaghetti into a pot and reach for one of the quart jars of tomato sauce that Camille and I had canned the previous August. Our pantry had transformed. No longer the Monster Zucchini roadhouse brawl (do not enter without a knife), it was now a politely organized storehouse of healthy convenience foods. The blanched, frozen vegetables needed only a brief steaming to be table-ready, and the dried vegetables were easy to throw into the Crock-Pot with the chicken stock we made and froze after every roasted bird. For several full-steam-ahead weeks last summer, in countless different ways, we'd made dinner ahead. What do we eat in January? Everything.
But when the question comes up, especially when winter is dead upon us, I feel funny about answering honestly. Maybe I'm a little embarrassed to be a dweeby ant in a grasshopper nation. Or I'm afraid it will come as a letdown to confess we're not suffering as we should. Or that I'll sound as wacky as Chef January Pesto, to folks trying to eat locally who are presently stuck with farmers' markets closed for the season.
If you're reading this in midwinter and that is your situation, put the thought away. Just never mind, come back in six months. Eating locally in winter is easy. But the time to think about that would be in August.
* * *
Getting Over the Bananas
BY CAMILLE
Many summers ago my best friend Kate, from Tucson, came out to visit our farm in Virginia for the first time. She was enamored of our beautiful hills, liked working in our garden, and happily helped pick blackberries from the sea of brambles that skirt the surrounding fields. She did her part, carrying with us the armloads of beans, cucumbers, squash, and tomatoes that came out of our garden on a daily basis. But one day, on a trip to the grocery store, we hit a little problem. When my parents asked if there was anything in particular she would like to eat, she replied, "Let's get some bananas!"
My parents exchanged a glance and asked her for another suggestion.
"Why not bananas?" she asked, feeling really baffled by their refusal. My mother is not the type to say no to a guest. She waited until we were in the car to explain to Kate that it seemed wasteful to buy produce grown hundreds of miles away when we had so much fresh fruit right now, literally in our backyard. We'd picked two gallons of blackberries that very morning. She didn't want to see them get moldy while we were eating bananas.
"Plus, think of all the gasoline it takes to bring those bananas here," Mom pointed out. My friend was quiet while the wheels turned inside her head. "I never thought about that before," she admitted.
Kate has grown up to become passionate about farming and eating organic food. Since the banana incident, she has volunteered on small farms and developed a sincere interest in agricultural methods that preserve biodiversity. She looks back at that conversation in the grocery store as a life-changing moment. Some things you learn by having to work around the word "no."
Of course local eating gets trickier in wintertime. Fresh fruits and vegetables are rare or just gone then, for most of us. In the colder months we have to think roots, not fruits. Potatoes, carrots, beets, turnips, parsnips, and celariac cover the full spectrum of color. Winter squash are delicious too; most people I know have never eaten one, probably because they never needed to. They couldn't see them for all the bananas in the way.
Each season requires thinking about food in a different way. In her book Local Flavors, Deborah Madison writes that when she teaches a fresh summer eggplant dish in her cooking classes, students always say two things: "Wow, I never liked eggplant before, but I love this!" and "What kind of eggplants should I buy in December, to make this for Christmas?" It takes a while for them to realize that these particular fresh eggplants were so yummy because they weren't buying them in the winter. Most of us agree to put away our sandals and bikinis when the leaves start to turn, even if they're our favorite clothes. We can learn to apply similar practicality to our foods. Here are some delicious winter-vegetable recipes, along with a week of dinners for the cold months at our house.
BRAISED WINTER SQUASH
2 pounds winter squash, peeled, halved, and sliced into
1/2-inch rounds 2 tablespoons butter
2 cups apple cider
1 teaspoon salt
Rosemary and pepper to taste
Melt butter in skillet with rosemary; after a few minutes add the squash, salt, and cider. You may need to add some additional cider (or water), enough to cover the squash. Bring to a boil, then lower heat and braise for 20 minutes or until tender. At this point the juice should be reduced to a glaze. If not, raise heat for a few minutes until excess liquid evaporates. Add pepper and a splash of balsamic vinegar if you like.
BUTTERNUT BEAN SOUP
(serves 4)
11/2 cups dried white beans, soaked overnight and drained
3 medium portobello mushroom caps, sliced (optional)
6 garlic cloves, finely chopped
1 tablespoon thyme
1 tablespoon sage
4 teaspoons rosemary
Combine beans and spices in a large saucepan, add water to cover amply, and simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, until beans are tender and most water has cooked off. Add mushrooms toward the end.
2 butternut or hubbard squash, halved lengthwise and seeded
Olive oil
While beans are cooking, drizzle a large roasting pan with olive oil and arrange squash skin side down. Cook at 400deg for about 40 minutes, until fully tender when pierced with a fork. Remove from oven and serve each half squash filled with a generous scoop of bean soup.
VEGETARIAN CHILI
1 pound dry kidney beans, soaked overnight and drained 1 cup chopped carrots
2 large onions, chopped
1 cup frozen peppers (or 1/2 cup dried) 3 cloves garlic, minced
Olive oil
28 ounces canned tomatoes, undrained
4 cups vegetable stock or tomato juice
3-5 tablespoons chili powder
4-5 bay leaves
1 tablespoon cumin
Saute garlic, peppers, and onions in olive oil until golden, add chopped carrots, and cook until tender. Combine with beans and remaining ingredients; stir well. Thin with extra water, stock, or tomato juice as needed. Cover and simmer for one hour. If you are related to my mother, you have to add 8 ounces of elbow macaroni, 15 minutes before serving.
SWEET POTATO QUESADILLAS
2 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic
1 tablespoon oregano
1 tablespoon basil
1 teaspoon cumin
Chile powder to taste
Olive oil for saute
Cut sweet potatoes into chunks, cook in steamer basket or microwave until soft, then mash. Chop and saute garlic and onion in a large skillet. Add spices and sweet potato and mix well, adding a little water if it's too sticky. Turn burner very low to keep warm without burning.
4 flour tortillas
4 ounces Brie or other medium soft cheese
2-3 leaves Swiss chard (or other greens)
Preheat oven to 400deg. Oil a large baking sheet, spread tortillas on it to lightly oil one side, then spread filling on half of each. Top with slices of Brie and shredded chard, then fold tortillas to close (oiled side out). Bake until browned and crisp (about 15 minutes); cut into wedges for serving.
Download these and all other Animal, Vegetable, Miracle recipes at www.AnimalVegetableMiracle.com
WINTER MEAL PLAN
Sunday ~ Roast leg of lamb with mint jelly, baked Yukon Golds, and multicolored beet salad
Monday ~ Vegetarian chili
Tuesday ~ Pasta with pesto, olives, and grated cheese
Wednesday ~ Steak with winter potato salad or baked sweet potatoes
Thursday ~ Bean burritos with sauteed onion and dried tomatoes
Friday ~ Crock-Pot chicken soup with vegetables, served with warm bread
Saturday ~ Cheese and mushroom tortellin
i with tomato sauce
* * *
19 * HUNGRY MONTH
February-March
As I grow older, more of my close friends are elderly people. I suppose I am auditioning, in some sense, to join their club. My generation will no doubt persist in wearing our blue jeans right into the nursing homes, kicking out Lawrence Welk when we get there and cranking up "Bad Moon Rising" to maximum volume. But I do find myself softening to certain features of the elder landscape. Especially, I'm coming to understand that culture's special regard for winter. It's the season to come through. My eighty-four-year-old neighbor is an incredibly cheerful person by all other standards, but she will remark of a relative or friend, "Well, she's still with us after the winter."
It's not just about icy sidewalks and inconvenience: she lost two sisters and a lifelong friend during recent winters. She carries in living memory a time when bitter cold and limited diets compromised everyone's immunities, and the weather forced people to hunker down and share contagions. Winter epidemics took their heartbreaking due, not discriminating especially between the old and the young. For those of us who have grown up under the modern glow of things like vaccinations, penicillin, and central heat, it's hard to retain any real sense of this. We flock indoors all the time, to work and even to exercise, sharing our germs in all seasons. But vitamins are ready at hand any time, for those who care, and antibiotics mop up the fallout.
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life Page 34