Enough

“You can never have enough,” Grandma Klee would advise.

Take care opening her closet doors, cupboards brimful of reassurance; can after can of button mushrooms and baby onions, along with infinite other treats, definite signs of culinary security, might jump off the laden shelves.

Apparently, my affinity for having a full larder has ancestral roots which have sustained me throughout my life, and has been fed by others as well. I was impressed and excited to tour our neighbors’ cozy bomb shelter, stocked with enough food to last forever, or so it seemed to a seven year old.

At eleven, Sue Smith and I equipped our under porch “sleepover fort” with ample penny candies to get us through the night.

As a young adult, when our New Mexican neighbor showed us his garage, filled floor to ceiling with large jars and bulk bins of grains, awe overtook me.

Now that I have gone six months with nary a trip to the grocery store, I realize what values my Mormon neighbor and I share— prudence, self-sufficiency, and forethought for times when illness or catastrophe might intervene.

While Apocalyptic fervor doesn’t dictate my life, and while I don’t have 720 Freeze Dried Emergency pouches of delectables to get me through a year, I even have something in common with Survivalists and Preppers. Oh my Gosh! Y2K was not even on my radar, but food security obviously is inherent.

Tis more the foraging squirrel or the busy bee in me, preparing for a long winter in the Northeast, that guides my food prep choices. Tis my love of gardening and eating locally that determines how I spend my summers. Tis my frugality and aversion to shopping that spurs me to forage for wild edibles, and to stock up on sale items, big time. Tis a pinch of persistent determination that gets me through long hot fall evenings making and canning gallons of applesauce from drops which nobody else seems to have nimbleness or desire to gather off the ground.

Flexibility and cooking creativity rule my kitchen and have gotten me through this food buying moratorium experiment with fun, enjoyment, curiosity, and an insights into my choices and values around food.

Throw in a pinch of challenging discouragement over the past month when no chocolate was to be found in my house.

Enough of this experiment. I am done.

I shall now move onto another project, likely scraping and painting the deck, or filling cracks in my driveway with hands dirty from gooey melted chocolate….after I go food shopping.

Where ARE all my reusable grocery bags?!






Off to a good start for next winter...

Pesto Chango!

An interview with Deborah by her Fairy Godmother,

after six months of a food buying moratorium and pantry emptying experience

FG Now that you are nearing the homestretch of your Food BuyingMoratorium, how has your life changed?

D I have gone from daily emptying food contents from glass jars and freezer bags, to filling them with home-grown fresh veggies and gallons of strawberries for the upcoming year.

FG You must have found some interesting dregs when dredging the recesses of your deep freeze?

D Yes, the most delicious excavation was just enough lemon dessert hummus to take on a kayaking picnic to the lake yesterday. Most unusual was a baggie of six homemade ghee candles made from cotton balls, leftover from my friend Nan’s memorial service four years ago. You never know when I may need them, and they remind me of Nan, whose Vermont garden was the “first one you saw driving into town, so the rows had to be straight.”

FG Any epiphanies over the last six months of your experiment?

D Home-ground tangerine rind is delicious, as is rice pudding with tamarind, apricot and cardamom.

FG What lessons have you learned?

D Twenty-five pounds of garlic is way too much for one person to use up in a year! I have enough high potency powder from two years ago to even sprinkle on oatmeal, should I choose.

FG Any regrets?

D Instead of rushing out to buy a pound of cardamom on December 31^st to ensure “cardamom security”, I might have stocked up on chocolate bars to get me through the six months. Fewer frozen Asian greens and more broccoli would have provided variety. I would have saved time if I’d foraged more instead of spending weeks gardening. Dehydrating produce instead of freezing it takes up less room and costs nothing to store.

FG What’s been most challenging throughout your moratorium?

D Not getting through the gallon of spicy homemade kimchi (some of those Asian greens that grew so prolifically last summer, having escaped the ravaging paws of Grandpa Groundhog, which I then fermented to save.) Here, try some. I still have the gallon. Maybe it will help fuel your flight home.

FG What will you do with all that leftover frozen pesto I saw you bag up and return to your almost empty freezer?

D Hmmm. There is a lot. Top a pizza, toss it with pasta, or finger paint with my grandkiddles all sound good to me.

FG What wisdom have you gleaned from this personal challenge you set for yourself on December 31st?

D I have very good friends and family who ate my home made concoctions, no matter what ingredients, tastes and combinations. They were curious, supportive, and generous in gifting me treats when I ran out of certain supplies. I have never been offered so much coconut milk and chocolate in all my years!

FG When I wave my magic wand to help you restock your pantry, what’s at the top of your shopping list?

D Fresh tropical fruits- pineapple, mangoes and almond milk for summer smoothies. To heck with eating local. My six month experiment is over, so I can indulge.

FG Poof! Pesto Presto Chango! You’ve got it!

Peace of Cake

Imagine spending more time driving and shopping for one food product than it takes to make a cake! I can’t remember ever in my life shopping for a sole ingredient.

I hankered for gingerbread cake, and what better excuse than the Women’s Resistance Choir performance and celebration potluck. I had all the ingredients I needed – molasses, plenty of powdered ginger and spicy homemade apple butter to sub in for oil. I figured the fruit spread would enhance the cake, where olive oil might render an off flavor. I had everything – but flour.

As we’re a peace-loving group of women who sing songs of joy and empowerment, I cut a peace sign stencil of parchment paper, lay it down on the cake and sprinkled powdered sugar through a metal strainer over the stencil as decoration. I quickly realized that it’s impossible to erase confectioner’s sugar, and that the image might distort in transit. Oops. Maybe the design wouldn’t melt or blow away. Perhaps a humid day wouldn’t be as forgiving.

Four months into my “Food Buying Moratorium” (when I decided to restrict meals to eating out of my pantry and chest freezer for as long as possible), I’ve had to adjust some of my rules. If I plan to share food with others, it’s okay to shop for an ingredient when it’s needed for a recipe.

Since January, I’ve been enjoying all sorts of homemade dishes and delicacies without needing to venture to the market. Alleluia! My preference is to be outside skiing, hiking, or biking. Anything but shop.

Although I’m starting to miss having food choice, an abundance of last year’s frozen greens, beans and pesto await consumption. Possibly my supplies will last through June. My friend, Loekie, suggested that it would sound much more impressive to survive half a year without buying food, , rather than five months.

We’ll see.

Fascicles, Sessiles and a Medicinal Dose of Power

“What are you collecting?” the gardener had inquired.

“You are going to laugh at me, but I am collecting lob-lolly pine pollen, the same messy yellow powder that everyone here in North Carolina has recently been complaining about covering their windshields, porches, decks and shoes.”

“Cool,” he replied, without missing a beat. “Want some company to get more?”

What are the chances of finding another person in my cousin Jeff’s co-housing community, who appreciates foraging for free medicinals?

Until this trip, I had never even heard of a Loblolly Pine, the second-most common species of tree in the United States, after red maple. The lanky “telephone pole tree” can stretch over 100 feet when mature. As they grow taller, the trees lose their lower branches. Locals refer to them as lolly pop trees.

Jeff had complained one too many times about the yellow powder’s prevalence, so I sarcastically interrupted his diatribe with, “Bet it’s good for something. I’ll go look.”

It turns out that the pollen can be helpful medicinally in many ways:

The pollen is chemically almost exactly identical to the male hormone testosterone and can be purchased in big bags over the internet as a testosterone supplement. Supposedly, Native American warriors would carry a small bag of this pollen with them to eat before battles to "pump them up.”

Lob-lolly pollen contains 18 amino acids, numerous vitamins, including D which is rare for plants, is full of minerals, and has beneficial enzymes. Some uses in Chinese medicine include: relieving fatigue and rheumatic pain, strengthening the immune system and heart, as well as increasing mental agility.

My new friend, Bern, and I managed to collect a quart each of cones, which I spread out on a paper bag on the counter until they had dried, opened and released their pollen. I ended up with a meager quarter cup of relatively flavorless, but powerful powder- 12 teaspoons, which I readily shared with Jeff before we headed out on the wooded trails on our mountain bikes. Did we fly! Hah!

Bern was going to save his scanty stash until early spring, next year, when he planned to take it preventatively as an antihistamine.

After learning that the needles are rich in Vitamin C (five times the amount found in a lemon), I collected a handful, over which I poured boiling water for a lemony -piney flavored tea.

Imagine what a resource is going to waste throughout the southeast! I imagined giant shop vacs attached to humungous bags, hanging from helicopters throughout the forests, collecting this nature’s powdery wonder.

***Lob-lolly has two or three needles per fascicle, which is a slender bundle (as of pine needles or nerve fibers). The cone is directly attached to the branch, which is called a sessile (a plant or animal structure attached directly by its base without a stalk or peduncle).

Crackr'in Up

A quart of crackers a day—that should be more than enough to last 2000 miles, I imagine.

Packing clothes for a two week trip and getting the gardens and strawberry bed all cleaned up and ready for spring bloom was the easy part of my travel prep. Planning travel menus while continuing to use up food supplies was a bit more challenging.

  

My dehydrator got a workout as I turned quarts, probably even gallons of fruit sauce and frozen berries into fruit leather (roll-ups). I emptied jars of grains, (teff, amaranth, red lentils), and ground them into flours to roll into trays of hearty herb and garlicky crackers, topped with sunflower, sesame and poppy seeds.

I will be spending several days in North Carolina with cousin Jeff, who doesn’t do much cooking and likes to spend hours a day bicycling. Instead of packing tour books and theater tickets, I will fill a large ice chest with frozen meals and prepared snacks to eat and share while there. I shall eat my way to South Carolina to my friend Jackie’s, and maybe even back north if I have leftovers. I will likely have surplus dry goods to unpack once back home, enough for my next trip, but hopefully not.

My travel menu:

(already supplemented with 2 non-dairy ice cream bars— yes, one a day, courtesy of Jeff)

2 blueberry, black raspberry, pear crisps—one already shared with my Servas hosts in Bethesda, Md

a jug of wild grape kombucha tea

4 quarts of assorted fruit leather (unsweetened)

3 quarts home-dried pears

rice and tofu stuffed grape leaves (the last container of those), consumed on I-95

7 containers of homemade crackers

millet balls

nettle basil pesto and pasta

tomato white bean soup

black bean soup (made in Vt and brought to Rochester, and now to NC- this definitely needs to be consumed…before it is tired of traveling)

black bean brownies

tamari garlic roasted pumpkin seeds

olive spread

walnut spread

nori to make sushi if and when most of the above is gone…

and a jar of organic peanut butter, just in case!

Maybe I should just set up at a picnic table at a park and have a party with strangers! Or fix the flat tire (my first ever), and join Jeff for a ride. Nothing like biking through the woods in spring time to work up an appetite.

Racing Nature

On your mark

                     Get set 

                                Go!

Backpedaling her way over frozen

    Bok choi and Beans

    Broccoli and Berries

Dedicated Derbbie holds her own

Racing ‘round the pantry backstretch

    Pintos and Popcorn prevail

Fall-planted Spinach sprints ahead

Head-to-head with Mighty Mache

    hurtling through snow and mud

Jockeying her way down the homestretch

    committed to a course of limited consumption

Derbbie approaches the homestretch

    easing her way through last years’ food stash

                                           Neck-in- neck with herds of wild and spiny Nettles

                                               on the cusp of breakout

                                           Derbbie streaks forwards

                                           Early planted Peas hurtle forward in the infield

                                                 Overtaking last years’ frozen Edamame?                

                                                                       A long shot

But Derbbie might just win the emptied freezer relay

    before bolting into the upcoming garden heat.

Tiny House Treats

.

Wowie-ker-powie—Wienie muffins and a Lilliputian tea set!

What fun to find this spread in the tiny house where I stayed while visiting family way up north in Craftsbury Common, Vermont mid-March.

  

I’m not sure how the delivery happened, as the path was banked with nearly three feet of snow on each side, and a stream of ice at the turn, but my wee snack was delicious!

The only downside was eating alone, although, had another full sized being joined me, sixty square feet might have been a bit crowded. Who am I to complain, cozying up to the small wood stove, gazing out at mountainous scenery, while chowing down fresh goodies?

While I was visiting my daughter and her family, I enjoyed the change of scene, along with sharing soups and meals which I’d brought frozen from home in a cooler. I gifted my daughter a huge bag of homegrown sage and another of nettles, reducing my surplus, as I know that neighborhood nettles will soon be poking their prickly heads out of the earth, and I’d harvested and dried more sage than one person could use, even for sore throat tea.

Now that I have returned home, I have resumed eating my way through my cupboards and freezer. I just took inventory, and although I have used up two thirds of my food supplies, emptying jars and freezer bags daily, I still have ample provisions. My recipes are more unusual, and I am coming up with combinations I would have never imagined, some better than others, but am determined to follow through with my intention. Today’s salad is rehydrated dried beets, dried apricots, and rice with a dressing of OJ concentrate, pomegranate syrup, rice vinegar, with a dash of cardamom. It actually is surprisingly tasty. The beets have taken on an interesting chewy texture.

I realize it may not be until June that I have eaten my way down to spices and condiments. Hmmm... Two more months might drag on, but already I have fresh greens peeking out of the garden mud, so meals will soon take on a fresher focus with wild leeks, green onions and spinach.

I am blessed and grateful to have such abundance, both food-wise, and time-wise. Combining ingredients into hearty meals continues to be a fun challenge, as well as a practical strategy to start anew.

I can’t even imagine having shopping lists come June. I kind of like this eating locally, so by then, maybe I will just eat my yet-to-be grown veggies, and forage even more local wild plants than last summer.

Prison Cuisine - Out of Octopus!

Using food as punishment seems unethical, which is why critics of nutraloaf call it cruel and unusual punishment.

The Eighth Amendment does not state that prison food must be tasty or aesthetically pleasing, and hundreds of prisons around the country serve this delicacy to unruly prisoners. Nutraloaf, once described by Chicago Magazine food critic Jeff Ruby as "a thick orange lump of spite with the density and taste of a dumbbell,” is an unseasoned brick of carrots, cabbage, beans, and tomato paste.

In December of 2015, New York decided to end the use of nutraloaf in its’ state prisons. I guess I should count my blessings - no Nutraloaf for me last weekend when I spent over 20 hours in a medium security prison in New York state.

Instead, as a vegetarian, my menu choices included: half a cup of greenish beans, canned spinach, a brownie, corn mush, yoghourt, apple crispless crisp, milk, waffles, lots of white bread and butter. Since I prefer to forgo dairy products and white bread, I celebrated royally when I saw a large bag of fresh oranges. Halleluiah!

I had set aside my weekend and had traveled a total of 180 miles as a prison volunteer to share skills and exercises promoting non-violence with motivated convicts, spending long days confined to our workshop room.

Not only was the workshop a success, with enthused and eager folks wanting to turn their lives around, but I was able to indulge in juicy, aromatic, drippy, finger-licking, fresh fruit— a big treat during my food buying moratorium/ larder emptying project. I lost count of just how many oranges I wolfed down.

Actually, we outsiders are given permission to bring in one store-bought unopened bag of nuts, a small bag of fresh veggies, a small tub of hummus and one unopened bottle of water each day. I cannot share any of this with the guys who exclaim, “Hummus! I used to eat hummus.” Out of consideration for their lack of food choice, I often dine away from the crowd.

Fresh fruit used to be on our gate clearance list, but for some reason, has been nixed by the powers that be. I am told that prisoners are creative, and could ferment the fruit into alcohol, which is why we could not bring in trail mix with dried fruit in it. Five raisins here and five raisins there might add up to trouble!

Yes, I did have to break my moratorium rules and food shop for my weekend away in prison as I did not have store-sealed containers of anything, but I justify the ten dollar deviation as necessary for my sanity. Glad I had the choice not to fast in prison while co-facilitating the workshop. I likely would not have been very productive or present.

Many of our workshop participants live in honor dorms with kitchens, so they can do their own cooking with mailed and approved ingredients sent by family, or items purchased at the commissary.

I was told by several disappointed consumers, “There’s no more octopus this week. They’ve run out.” Though I have not food shopped in ten weeks, I might enjoy strolling down this slammer’s shop aisles, out of curiosity.

I’ve heard stories of how overweight incarcerated men have lost numerous pounds eating the restricted quantities of food they are served in the clink, and sometimes I think this is the world’s best kept secret. Why pay lots of money for a gym or diet plan, when you can just go to prison and lose weight and keep it off? Just kidding. I don’t wish prison on anyone.

I’ve also been told  by those with health issues that they blame the nutritionally challenging diet. There’s good reason to not end up in prison, if only food considerations.

I  was happy to munch on my baby carrots, and to sample whatever novelties appealed from the well- used brown plastic divider dishes of edible (questionable) institutional items, knowing I am free to return to my kitchen, where I have leftover bean burgers and squash soup to finish up.

Here’s a recipe I found online, not endorsed by me, but worthy of acknowledging its creative use of available ingredients:

Chocolate Cherry Vanilla Prison Pie

This recipe was devised by William Heirens, who was serving a life sentence in Illinois. Heirens stated that this was his favorite dessert before discovering he had diabetes. Heirens was the longest-serving inmate in the United States until his death in 2012.
Pie Crust Ingredients:
• 1 bag of vanilla wafers
• 5 oatmeal cream pies
• 1/4 cup water
• 2 tablespoons of butter
  Pie Filling Ingredients:
• 2 packages of powdered milk or 2 packets of vanilla cappuccino
• 1 package of cherry Kool-Aid
• 2 packets of sugar
• 1/4 can of Sprite
  Topping: Hershey bar

Directions:

Break vanilla wafers into little pieces while still in the bag. Crush up the oatmeal cream pies, then add to the vanilla wafer bag. Mix the water in with the vanilla wafers and the oatmeal cream pies. Add butter. Shape into a ball, press into pan or a bowl, shaping up the sides to resemble a pie crust.

Filling:In a large bowl, mix all filling ingredients with a spoon and stir for 5 minutes. Pour into pie crust and allow to set until pie is firm. After the pie is firm, melt the Hershey bar in the microwave and pour over pie.