More fun with tomatoes

Last weekend, I posted about Daylight Savings and Tomato Canning. This week, my chef friend sent me a new recipe to preserve roasted tomatoes:

Sprinkle tomato halves with sugar and kosher salt and olive oil and roast in a slow oven 200' for a long time or even over night. Once they are dehydrated completely, layer them in clean jars or plastic container with olive oil on top to make a seal. Keep them in the fridge or in a really cool, dry place. When you go to use them, use a stainless steel utensil.

She is also the friend who taught me how to make puff pastry, so my plan will be to roast and preserve the tomatoes and then make them into little roasted tomato tarts in December. I love plan-ahead cooking!

Experimenting with Quince

For some reason, I am super fascinated with the fruit called Quince. They are lumpy, bumpy and when ripe, smell intoxicating. A neighbor has a tree in her backyard and was gracious enough to share many, many with me. The beautiful scent made my kitchen smell wonderful, but this week, it was clear I needed to start doing something with them.

When I think of quince, the first thing that comes to mind is Membrillo, or quince paste. Typically served with Manchego cheese, I thought it might make good holiday gifts (especially if I keep with the homemade theme I wrote about last night). I followed a recipe from Epicurious that seemed simple enough - it involved baking the quince until soft, then peeling and pureeing and cooking with sugar. I think this is where I went wrong, as I should have cooked the quince paste much longer. Since I did not, I ended up with something closer to a quince jam, which actually is not that bad. We had it with some tasty cheeses, Patacabra (goat) and Ombra (sheep), both from Spain.

I also made Poached Quince, using a recipe from Sacatomato. These look pretty in the jars I canned them in, and I plan to give them as gifts, perhaps with some pound cake. All that in a pretty basket will be a nice gift for my busy friends during the holidays.

I also decided to cook my quince into Quince Compote, which interestingly enough, is almost exactly like the recipe above, with the main difference being the size of the quince pieces. On Epicurious, this recipe is paired with a Mascarpone Cheesecake, which I plan to make for the holidays - maybe Christmas dinner!

These cooking projects used about 13.5 pounds of my stash, so I have another 10 pounds to go. Since my first attempt at paste is more like a jam, I would like to try making that again. I will use the mistakes from the first batch for Stilton and Quince Jam Puff Pastries, which seem like a nice appetizer for Thanksgiving. For Thanksgiving dessert, I am considering the Quince Tart Tatin or Five-Spice Apple Quince Pie. And then maybe some Cranberry Quince Sauce. Nami-Nami has a recipe for Apple and Flowering Quince Jam, Elle at Feeding My Enthusiasms has a nice recipe for Quince Jelly (with pictures!), and over at Cook & Eat, a great recipe from Pure Dessert, Sesame Cake with Poached Quince (from eggbeater). Ooh, I cannot wait to work through my Quince stash!

Daylight Savings and Tomato Canning

Today is one of my favorite days of the year, with Thanksgiving and my kid's birthdays in close contention. The reason I love it is today is the day we change our clocks back. Almost every time I looked at the clock today, it was an hour earlier than I thought. I really did gain an hour!

And with my hour, I read the entire Sunday paper, looking at every ad; I made 3 containers of potato leek soup with organic produce from my CSA box; I canned 8 quarts of organic tomatoes for use this winter; sorted my big mail pile; bought two birthday presents; lunched with the family; and several other inconsequential errands. We also managed to fit in dinner with some friends.

I love daylight savings!

Wordless Wednesday

Photo of squash, waiting to be delivered from our
Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
Two Small Farms
photo by Andy

Cooking together

Little Miss A and I are cooking together. Several things happened today to make this possible:

1. I have two heads of cabbage from our CSA that have been in the veggie bin since last week
2. I listened to a podcast of Kitchen Wisdom from NPR and they featured a risotto recipe with cabbage

Bada-bing, bada-boom, we are in business. This risotto recipe is made in the microwave, so it is pretty fast. While we are waiting for the boys to get home, we are whipping up this dish.

Eat Local Challenge

September 2007 is Eat Local Month, according to Locavores (and many other foodie sites), and the idea is simple. For one month, try to eat what is local in your area. The challenge can take on many aspects, I guess it depends on how intense you want to get, but I liked the first two suggestions of Katherine Gray at Dish To Dirt, namely:

1. Eat local whenever possible
2. If I cannot eat local, buy from a local company

In addition, I pledge to:

3. Preserve as much as I can
4. Limit driving, and work on integrating transportation alternatives into our lives
5. Start caring where things are made and see if I can find manufactured items 1) locally, 2) in California, 3) in the Western US, and/or 4) in the US, before going overseas.
6. Try to not sound holier-than-thou when talking about eating local

One week into the challenge, this is where I stand
-- On Monday, I spent 4 hours in the stupifying heat, canning local tomatoes for winter soups and stews. Not as hard as it sounds, although I occasionally feel as though I am channeling my grandmother, or the author of Little Heathens.

- On Tuesday, the kids and I rode our bikes to school. Fortunately, we live around the corner, so the ride is not that tedious. Thank goodness the challenge is in September and not January, I find myself to be a fair weather cyclist.

- On Wednesday, I went to Whole Foods for 5 items. It took me nearly 30 minutes to shop because I was reading the labels so thoroughly. Fortunately, the chicken was local, from Petaluma. So was the goat cheese, from the coast. But the organic peas had a confusing pedigree and I had to buy soy butter from Illinois for lunches, since peanuts are not allowed at my kids' school. And I needed nonfat milk - the local stuff was twice as expensive as the house brand, but hey, at least it comes in a shwanky, retro glass bottle. That should justify the additional $4 a gallon.

- On Thursday, I took a break. All this sourcing has me exhausted and fortunately, we had enough leftovers for dinner!

- thank goodness for Friday - we get most of our veggies through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) Two Small Farms, from Watsonville and Hollister. If I buy nothing else, I can feel very confident that at least today I am doing something right!

So, at the end of our first week of participation, I would say that our results are mixed. Thank goodness the kids are in school (for a good three hours), otherwise I am not sure where I would find the time to source our local food. Join me on the challenge, I would love to hear other folk's stories!

My local food moment

Last month while in Santa Barbara, I finished reading Michael Pollen's The Omnivore's Dilemma. A great book, although long, but when I finished, I was energized. That and seeing An Inconvenient Truth had me all galvanized for change when I returned home.

Besides the fact that the book is based a good deal in Northern California and the Bay Area, one of the parts I most enjoyed in the book was Michael's discussion about gathering his food locally. Over the course of several chapters, he talked about hunting wild boar in Sonoma, gathering mushrooms in so-secret-I-would-have-to-kill-you locations, and meeting up with various Slow Food movement folks in the Bay Area.

Last weekend, interested in checking out more of the local food scene, I went to the Menlo Park Farmer's Market to see what I could find locally. I chose it because on Sunday they have a fishmonger, and because we could ride our bikes there. The farmer's market is great -- wonderful stone fruits, fresh flowers, fresh corn, lots of families and kids. However, it is expensive! I did not think eating local would be so expensive. Peaches and nectarines were all around $3 a pound, corn was 2 ears for $1, and for a week's worth of fruits and veggies, I spent about $40. After our farmer's market trip, I drove over to Whole Foods to get a couple other items, and noticed in their produce department a concerted effort to point out all the locally grown food. I also noticed that while I think Whole Foods=Whole Paycheck, their prices were pretty similar to the farmer's market. Sadly, locally grown does not translate to lower prices.

So, as I have pointed out to my husband, I can only control for one variable here - we can either eat local or keep our food budget down. Sadly, I don't think we can do both. And while I am really fascinated by local food and the Slow Food movement, unless I become a sustainable pastoral farmer or quit my day job, I won't have enough time to find all our food locally at prices that I feel comfortable paying....