From Edible Seattle: On eating local

While cruising Metropolitan Market for upscale lunch eats, I found a nifty new magazine called Edible Seattle that features news, articles, and listings for local eaters.

So in addition to snagging some melt-in-your-mouth Washington strawberries, I grabbed the magazine. Very kewl! They also have magazines for other regional eaters, including Edible Lowcountry, which will soon be making its way to my mailbox. A taste of home!

Although you can pick up a copy at Metro Market, all of the articles for the spring issue are at their website. Check it out!

We should all want to know the provenance of our food, to have a traceable history of where our food comes from. Without a chain of custody, there is no responsibility for the safety and the quality of the product. That's how we get salmonella in peanut butter, e. coli in bagged spinach and meat recalls that total in the millions of pounds. The easist way to know the provenance of your food is to know the farmer who grew it, the fisher who caught it, the artisan that produced it. It's not that hard to do, and you can start making it a priority to buy local. - Alex Corcoran, Publisher of Edible Seattle

Week 5: Beat it, beets.

When I went to pick up my share this week, my veggie buddy, Cindan, with whom I share my share of vegetables promised me there were no radishes in my bag, even though it might look like it. This is a good thing - we are still on a mission to find a good way to eat the ones that we do have.

When I peeped in the bag, I spied the radish imposters: beets. I have eaten beets on a couple of occasions, and once was the "lucky" recipient of someone's home canned pickled beets. The pickled beets were a disaster, and one gastric frontal eruption from eating these canned nasties was enough to put me off of beets. For a VERY LONG time.

Needless to say, the beets didn't make the bus ride home with me. They did, however, go home with Dave, who only has a quarter share of veggies and was beet-less.

Seeing as how we are mostly caught up, I am only going to post what we received in our share. If we've used the veggie, it will be noted.

Apart from the beets, this is what we got:

Week 5:

• Green cabbage: a quarter of this was chopped for our pork stirfry. It was pretty tasty!
  
  
• Butter lettuce: Added to the salad pot. We have a ton of greens from this week and last, and I know I will be taking salad to work in addition to eating a lot of it at dinner.
  
  
• Green onions/scallions: One of my favorite things to do with green onions I learned when I was a bad food worker in charge of the Sunday Morning Buffet at Country Kitchen. In order to have a more upscale appearance, I would make mice out of pears. The whiskery ends of green onions were noses for mice, and the long, thin tapered points made great tails.
  
  Green onions lend themselves to so many different garnish possibilities - I want to find something out of the ordinary to do with them. Ideas?
  
  
• Chinese cabbage: This is one of those veggies that I have to investigate further...
  
  
• Kale: When you're little and staying with gramma, daytime TV is a death sentence. One of the brighter points was watching cooking shows after lunch and in between the soaps and afternoon cartoons. I remember watching The Galloping Gourmet with Graham Kerr, and Good ol' Graham was loosing his mind over how delicious and tasty the kale was. I hope he's right.
  
  
• Fava beans: The Celebrity Chef is "eyeing" up someone's liver.
  
  
  We're going avoid jail time and go with the Chicken and Fava soup.

Note from Otis: I don't even know the last time I met a census taker. Besides, the soup kicks ass.

Week 4: Chop Chop!

I lived up to my promise of being about as sharp as a marble after Tall Ships and Tacoma Freedom Fair. Being a defender of food safety is tiring. :)

And after Freedom Fair, Otis and I went to Idaho to visit family, watch fireworks and finalize the purchase of our espresso stand turned cabin. After an interesting trip from downtown Sandpoint across the long bridge to Sagle, the cabin is finally ours and on the property. Here we are, along with Otis's parents, Don and Janna.



*New for Week 4 - a group photo! It's hard to get vegetables to smile.

• Snow peas and snap peas: Pork stirfry is going to claim some of these tasty treats, but we're working on using using them in other things. There's a tasty recipe in our CSA guide for glazed snap peas and carrots that we might have to try out.

• Red leaf lettuce, radicchio and spinach: Salad, salad, and more salad. We all love having fresh greens for dinner. Even Otis.
  
  In a funny aside, this is the first time that I've seen radicchio out in the "wild" - my only experience with the vegetable is hearing about it in a song by the group The Uninvited:
  

  Starting off in aisle one,
  fruits and veggies by the ton:
  Hey check it out, raddiccio!
  These red leaves, man, they almost glow!

  And do they ever glow! They're quite pretty, and add a tasty twist to our salads.
  
  
• Swiss chard: The leaves were turned into chiffonade and the stems chopped for stirfry. Otis can't wait to eat another pan of the Swiss Chard Mushroom Bake. Neither can I - the stuff is great!

Stay tuned for Week 5!

Week 3: Round up

Here's what we got in the goodie bag for Week 3...

Week 3:

• Snow peas and snap peas: Again, what didn't make it into our mouths straight from the bag, we stirfried!
  
  
• Lettuce, spinach: Salad! We really love how awesome the lettuce is and eating salad has been our nightly staple.
  
  
• Bok choi: This is a wonderful multipurpose vegetable. The stems were chopped for stirfry, the hearts used in braised bok choi, and the leaves were thrown into the salad pot.
  
  
• Fava beans: These were shelled and stored. I have an awesome soup that I make with favas, fresh basil, spiced chicken sausage and sweet red peppers. Now that I finally have enough (thanks to Week 5), I'll be making it soon. However, according to our Celebrity Guest Chef, there are other options for our favas...
  
  
  We've got the Chianti, but we're waiting for a census taker to come by.
  

Braised Bok Choi

This recipe used the bok choi that we got in Week 2 and Week 3. The results were mixed - it was OK, but nothing spectacular.

I think I am more partial to the quick-cook, tender crispness of stirfried veggies.


Braised bok choi

Ingredients:

• 1-2 small garlic cloves, minced (We used the 5 called for in the recipe; trust us, less is more)
• 1/2 tbsp. olive oil
• 6-8 baby bok choi or hearts of bok choi, cut in quarters
• 2 cups chicken broth

Wash and rinse bok choi. Cut baby bok choi into quarters; cut bok choi hearts in half.

Heat oil and saute garlic, about 4-5 minutes. Add chicken broth and bring to a boil. When boiling, reduce heat, add bok choi and simmer until tender, about 10 minutes on low.


Notes for next time:

I think that I will saute some portabellas, garlic and Spike first and then add smaller pieces of bok choi.

And I will also use less garlic.

Week 2: Round up

Seeing as how I am behind in posting on our weekly haul, here is a brief wrap-up of what we got in the bag as well as its final disposition...

Week 2:

• Peas: These were so sweet! The ones that didn't get eaten out of the bag were cut in half, quick steamed and added into stirfry, pods in all. Yummy!
  
  
• Salad mix, spinach, endive: More salad. The salad pot runneth over and we're eating salads for dinner every night.
  
  
• Baby bok choi: We saved these to eat along with the inner hearts and leaves of the bok choi we got in Week 3.
  

• Radishes: Added to the bag 'o radishes. Thank goodness they keep. We're still trying to figure out what to do with them... We're thinking of throwing them on the grill because everything tastes better on the barbeque. Ideas?
  
  
• Garlic scape: All of the recipes I have found for garlic scape involves grinding them up for pesto. What a waste of a visual delight! They are too pretty to grind up!
  
  
  I am thinking of grilling the bottoms and then using the tops as garnish.
  
  Have you used garlic scapes? Let me know!
  

Useful Stuff: Eating Seasonal Lists & Produce Washing Tips

In the spirit of being helpful... wait, no, let's be honest...

Because my creativity will be at an all time low after doing inspections at Tall Ships and Tacoma Freedom Fair and in keeping with my job as a food inspector eating local, I am posting some canned content. The good stuff will return this weekend with a wrapup of our produce haul!

Give us this day our seasonal nosh...

In our last post, we wrote about eating seasonally. So how do you know what's really in season? If you're like us, we cheat and have a share in CSA to load our fridge with time appropriate goodies. Or you can also support your local farmers by going to a Farmer's Market and choosing fresh produce from local growers, which also means your food doesn't have more frequent flyer miles than you do.

If you want to know what's in season because it's NOT the season for Farmer's Market - like late fall through early spring - Sustainable Table has a listing of what's in season in your part of the country. Check it out!

Right now, 'tis the season for a lot of stuff in the Puget Sound!

This is the way we wash our food...

The inspector part of me wants you to know that washing your produce is one way to cut down on Foodborne Illness - the fun stuff like diarrhea, nausea, vomiting, and generally feeling like death because of something you ate.

Our produce, even though it looks clean, really isn't clean. Produce can be irrigated with water contaminated with sewage, pesticides, chemicals or agricultural run-off (aka Cow Poo Tea), coated with waxes, covered with dirt and grime during transport, not to mention handled by growers and pickers who may not be the cleanest themselves.

The solution to all the funk on your food? Wash it!

Check out the FDA's tips on safe handling of raw produce and while you're at it, wash your hands too!

Our handwashing heroes - Super Scrub and Bubbles