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Shopping blog featuring products made by people not factories.

What’s In Season Now: November Edition

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Here, last weekend marked the final Farmer’s Market of the year. While it’s a bittersweet passing of time for growers — the loss of convenient, weekly contact with customers is never a welcome thing, but the late fall and winter downtime that is a result of a lightened market schedule is imperative in the planning of the next year’s crop — it’s mostly just bitter for shoppers. Especially those new to eating local and those who are not accustomed to stocking up. Many will have few choices other than to turn back to their local chain supermarket to feed their families.

Last year in On Year-Round Appreciation, I briefly grazed the topic of keeping in touch with your local growers year round, and the advice there is still relevant and useful to this day, but if you’re committed to eating local even in the off-season you may need to dig deeper. The end of organized markets doesn’t necessarily mean the end of local food, but you may have to do a bit more homework to find it. And even if your local Farmer’s Markets are still open, doing your homework may yield you better sources of local food than you had before.

Most locales are still supporting some growth, though the variety will be less impressive than it has been. If your markets are still open be on the look out for those early spring vegetables that are making a comeback for a second season this year. Greens are huge — spinach, lettuce, kale, chard, collards — as are fast growing root crops. Think: radishes. Also keep your eyes peeled for long-season crops that are just now ripe, such as leeks, egg plant and winter squashes, as well as those crops that store well for winter like potatoes, onions and garlic. Those that store well can be stocked up on now, and eaten throughout the coming cold months. Just be sure to ask the grower to make sure the variety they’re selling is one that stores well; not all do.

While you’re out there also ask the vendors you frequent whether or not they’ll have limited crops available during the time when the market is no longer operational. You may be able to pick up local food on-farm all winter. If your market, like mine, has already closed for the winter search Local Harvest for growers near you and get on the phone to line up sources of your favorites for the whole winter season.

Of course the transition to the non-growing season also means a transition to those foods that have no season. Meats, soft dairy and hard cheeses can be produced and harvested year round and are excellent staples for hearty, warming winter meals. Canned products, if you didn’t can your own during the months of summer bounty, are also something you may want to be on the lookout for as December approaches. Think outside the box and even a simple jar of jam can go a long way. Raspberry, spread atop a pasture-raised pork loin is to die for.

However you choose to round out your winter pantry this November, happy local shopping!

The Case for Meat Part 1: The People

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Skinny Bitch

Lately, there have been more than a handful of high-profile books touting a vegan existence. Freedman and Barnouin’s Skinny Bitch (pictured above) and Alicia Silverstone’s The Kind Diet among them; I read one, skimmed several others and I have, to risk the use of a terribly cheesy pun, beef.

While I can, mostly off the top of my head, recite for you the nutritional needs of every animal in my care human nutrition is, admittedly, not my strong suit. For that reason — and because I find it largely irrelevant, another story for another day — I will not argue against the premise that meat is nutritionally detrimental to humans.

What I will point out — over the course of the next few weeks — is that books like those listed have completely overlooked an important and rapidly growing demographic of food producers in North America and that the consequences of doing so, on a mass scale, will negatively affect not just the people, but the animals therein. Yes, even those intended for slaughter. And that it is, as long as we’re speaking in cheesy puns and cliches, possible to have your happy, healthy pig (or cow or chicken or quail or duck or goose) and eat it too!

So what about the people? For the first time in decades the U.S. is seeing a significant increase in the number of small farms in operation. Perhaps since WWII herself, when the industrialization and centralization of our food system hit full stride, David is wiggling from under the thumb of Goliath. And, most significant, he’s being backed by consumer dollars. The very thing that makes the world, or at the very least business, go ’round.

But it’s not just David either. “Donna” has also entered the brawl. Between 2002 and 2007 the number of female farm operators increased by nearly twenty percent. Like medicine, engineering, mathematics and countless other industries agriculture has always been a boys’ club, but today women are playing a major role in the restructuring and revival of it from within. They’re supporting their families, strengthening their communities and paving the way for a healthier, more equal society tomorrow while implementing systems that can sustain both the earth and its people.

In fact, organic produce was harvested from more than 200,000 acres in 2007. That’s just from the farms that are not so small they’re flying under the census radar; and where there is organic produce, there are small meat producers not far behind. In many instances they are one and the same.

Small, diversified farms may, as a matter of fact, be the single most sustainable model on the agricultural landscape today. Able to produce natural fertilizer off their land, by way of animals they feed from it, they can create a cyclical balance that cannot be reproduced. And the people behind those farms are the ethically astute people we need behind the scenes of our Agricultural Evolution. Stop supporting them and we stop supporting the sustainable restructuring of our food system.

So how do we cut through the jargon and find the right meat, milk and egg producers? Join me next week when we’ll look at just that.

Candied Beauty

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Mmmm, Grape Crush soda… A tub and this cupcake bath bomb would take me back to when I was about 10 years old.

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Candied Beauty: 100% Vegetarian, 100% Cruelty-Free, 90-100% Natural! (Vegan products include everything, but those with whipped topping- they contain a small amount of meringue powder/powdered egg whites.) Made with ONLY the finest, top-quality ingredients!

An Egg of a Different Color

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I imagine the supermarket sales of white eggs soars this time of year. Soar may be a strong word, but I can’t imagine the increase is insignificant in any way. I’ve known even those with their own backyard chicken flocks to lament the need for supporting the corporate, commercial egg giants around Easter. I’ve overheard regular local shoppers, small farm subscribers even, who routinely add a dozen supermarket eggs to their shopping ritual just before the spring holiday, in fact.

Why? Because you can’t dye brown eggs.

Our Grandmothers would be rolling over that last statement. Absolutely rolling with laughter.

Of course you can dye brown eggs. Not only can you, you can do so with all natural dyes. And the result is stunning. Simply stunning. But somewhere, at some time, in the past fifty years or so that fact has been lost on America’s masses. Somewhere, at some time, in the past fifty years or so we’ve been conditioned to believe only the brightest, whitest, factory washed eggs are suitable for the spring-time ritual of dying eggs. And because of it, we’ve been missing out.

So gather your local farm fresh eggs, brown shells and all, boil them up, stack them in a bowl in the center of the table and summons the children — and children at heart. You’re about to make the most beautiful Easter eggs you’ve ever seen.

All you need is a couple of small stock pots, a little water, a splash of vinegar and whatever dying materials you can muster up. Beets make a striking red dye, while blueberries and their juice make the most vibrant blue I’ve ever seen and turmeric — such as the organic ground you can buy on Etsy, pictured above — makes an amazing deep, golden rod yellow.

Tip: Remember, keep it simple. From just the three primary colors your dying options are endless. No need to make countless dyes. Get creative and layer colors instead.

But you needn’t stop there. Onion skins, wine, coffee and tea grounds, and so much more can make excellent dyes. Use your imagination and what you have on hand.

Once you’ve chosen the items you’ll use to make dye. Add each to a small stock pot all its own, one at a time. Cover with water and bring to a boil. Maintain at a boil until dye reaches your desired depth and vibrancy. Strain into a coffee cup and add a splash of vinegar to help the dye adhere to the egg shell.

The dye will be, literally, boiling hot so if children are helping it’s best to let it cool slightly before using. Otherwise, you’re ready to begin.

Tip: Be patient. Natural dyes take a little longer than store-bought kits. The longer you leave the egg in the dye bath, the more intense the final color will be.