still more fitness and doggie - with flowers

1.2 km - Thursday

3.0 km - Friday - doggie was psycho, weather was fantastic

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No walk on saturday. We went to Oakridge Acres Fall Farm Day, and spent a ton in the store. Thoka went along for the car ride, but it was too busy there to let him out.

In the afternoon, we had friends over to build a bead furnace and they brought Bella. Bella exhausted Thoka, and vice versa.




Neil found building a bead furnace to be physically challenging, and Karen's only excuse is pretty marginal in that her sinuses are trying to kill her.

------------

We did a ton of housecleaning today.

2.5 km tonight. Thoka was relatively well behaved. Or I was channeling Ceasar Millan. Can't figure out which.

Karen

One Local Summer - Weeks 3 and 4

Life keeps getting in the way, ya know?

Not in the way of local eating - one does have to eat, after all. We might as well do it locally.

But it does get in the way of blogging about it.

So.... since I theoretically missed Week 3's deadline (yesterday) - I give you Week 3 _and_ 4. Just to get caught right up so I don't have to worry about it again for another week.



Meat pie - it's possible that some of the ingredients aren't strictly local, but the trick here is that the beef is Black Angus cow from Well Fed Food in Ayr, our favourite farm store. The family that runs it raises the Black Angus cows right there on the farm, and feeds them properly (no chemical additives) during their lifetime. They also sell their neighbours' farm fish, chicken, turkey, pork, venison, wild boar, eggs, honey, and milk.

Anyway, these lovely farm folk want their business to make a go of it so they recognized that folks want convenience, and they have hired a professional chef in town to make up these meat pies, which they then sell frozen and waiting. Good ingredients go in here - the meat and the creation of the pies are local, and although I haven't actually asked, I'd betcha that most of the vegetables and spices in it are local as well.



Meat, again from Well Fed Food, aspargus and potatoes from just down the road at the other nearby farm store - Herrles. Herrles is a little closer in that we drive by it every day on the way to work. Even the marinade on the aspargus is local, though I can't remember where it's made.

Karen

One Local Summer 2008, Week 1

Bacon and Eggs for lunch.

Bacon is from Well Fed Food in Ayr - it's a neat little farm store that is gathering meat from local farmers that it believes feeds their meat decently during it's lifespan. Ayr is 25km from us.

Eggs, cheese and tomatoes - Eggs are from Elmira, tomatoes are greenhouse grown in Elmira, and cheese is both organic and from Millbank.

Millbank is 28km, and Elmira is 26km.

Spices used in the eggs: basil, organo, paprika, rosemary and fennel. The basil and oregano are from my own garden - 0km. The others are not local, but by the end of the year, the fennel will be from my own garden - the plant is enormous already.

Later this week, I'm going to ponder the idea of local eating and how I define local, and talk about my first attempt to make skyr (an Icelandic delight that we can't easily get in Canada).

Karen

One Local Summer #10

Meatloaf leftovers, with pasta sauce topping.

All this summer, I've been trying to find, or get around to making, pasta. Because I've been making my own pasta sauce for years and it takes very little effort to make it with all local products.

Except the paprika - I must have paprika.

But I just haven't had the energy to make my own pasta. Imagine my surprise when other OLS entries recently have had local sauces and non-local pasta. I coulda been a contender!

Anyhoo... this contest is almost over, or is over, I'm not sure. But I've definitely made big changes that are going to stick.

We found a freezer food store for local meats, and bought a freezer to contain them. It's also starting to contain my pasta sauces as I use up all of the tomatoes that I'm growing.

We found a couple of quasi-local cheese makers. The biggest problem is that the best of them was recently taken over by a big multi-national. So while the production is still local, it's doubtful that their ingredient suppliers still are. How far will I define 'local' as 'local'? Things to think about.

The other local cheese-makers just aren't as easy to obtain, or are somewhat expensive. But they are more definably local - the goat cheese maker is using his own flock!

Vegetables, while easy during the summer at farmer's market, aren't going to be so easy to obtain during the winter and I haven't gotten into canning or freezing them. I really like freshness in a vegetable. So that will change back to being non-local during the winter.

I'd been buying commercial pre-made pizza shells and building my own pizza for a few years, but this summer I learned how to make my own pizza shell as well. Finding a local flour supplier was another happy accident that made that possible.

Overall, it really makes me think about where food comes from and how it's made. I will definitely be continuing with this in many different ways!

One more local story success story that actually ties this post back into my garden, where I usually like to keep the blog - local grapes.



How local? Two steps out and 6 steps to the right from my own back door - our grape vine has finally started producing!

We inherited the grape vine with the house, but I didn't like where the old homeowner had planted it, so we moved it. Then the next year, I didn't like it there either.... so we moved it again. Suffice to say that it took awhile to recover, but this year, we're all happy and they taste delicious!

Karen

Good intentions, and OLS #9

Ya see, I had the best of intentions to get up more garden pics, and to tell you all about the incredibly boring life that I have, and to participate in One Local Summer #8 and all .... but it didn't happen.

Life has been very boring indeed, but very draining. I've almost literally been working, eating and sleeping. Most of the time falling asleep in front of the tv a few hours before bedtime. I'm not sure what has been so tiring - maybe it's the temperature and weather ricochting around the spectrum.

I have two OLS pictures that may now never be seen again by human eyes. The memory card on the camera has somehow gotten fucked up.

So I took a picture of the leftovers of one of those meals, and I'll call it OLS #9.



MeatLoaf:

Ground Turkey (25 km), green pepper (from my garden - 0 km), basil (from the garden - 0 km), oregano (0 km), paprika (not local), onions (5 km), two slices of bread (5 km) - goat cheddar (22 km), 2 eggs (25 km).

The missing OLS #8 was a simple steak and potates - you can almost picture it, yes?

I won't make any promises about more blogging or pictures this time, but I will hope. We're planning a big expenditure of energy for next weekend (our labour day holiday weekend), so I must go and save up for it.

Karen

One Local Summer #7

Local eating has been going on here, but picture taking and blogging about it have indeed fallen by the wayside.

On the bright side, we just had our new freezer delivered, and went out today to stock it from Well Fed Foods in Ayr. If you've never been to Well Fed Foods, I highly recommend it - all of the meat is local, the concept is simple, and the family that runs it is really friendly.

So... skipping OLS #6, and moving right on to OLS #7, I present.... a simple scrambled eggs.



Eggs - OK Egg Farm (just north of Elmira, 25.1 km)
Green pepper, mushrooms, leeks (Herrles Market - all produce is local)
Cherry tomatoes - from my garden
Oregano - from my garden
Basil and paprika - sadly, not local
Cheese - Bright's Cheeses (Bright, approx. 28 km)

Garden pictures - coming soon! I have some new flowers to show!

Karen

One Local Summer # 5

Homemade pizza!

Dough:
Flour - from Oak Manor Farms (Tavistock - 28 km)
I used a mixture of hard unbleached, whole wheat, and a bit of rye flours. I like flavour.
Dry Yeast, salt and sunflower oil (not local)
water - from the shared well in town, the destruction of town to refit the pipes is documented in September 2006's blog entries.

I made up the dough in the bread machine on tuesday night, and used it wednesday night.

Toppings: goat mozzarella (darned, I've thrown out the wrapper already, but it was local), 2 year old cheddar (Millbank - 28 km), tomatoes, green peppers, mushrooms (all from Herrles - just down the road, mileage in a previous post - I've forgotten), paprika (not local), basil (from the garden), and oregano (from the garden).

I forgot to add garlic, but it was unbelievably tasty anyway. Can you believe it?

Karen

One Local Summer #4, and more from the garden

I don't remember which meat this is, but since there's only one piece of non-local meat left in the freezer (and it's not this one), it must be local. We've completely switched over to buying local, in the meat department. Potatoes and peas, also local.



I defined Ontario as my local food shed at the beginning of this project. And it's a pretty big place. But so far, I'm not having too much trouble sticking to within a 100 kilometre (approx. 62 miles) range. Some of the basics - salt, margarine and some spices - are my only exceptions.

Next week, I'm hoping for all local homemade pizza. I discovered a local source for flour and tried it out this week, but it..... needs practice. :)

More from the Garden:

Pretty lavendar....



The last of the lilies....



This picture is a week or so old.... but it's notable, because while all of the other lupins are actually rotting, this one decided to bloom one more time.



One of two feverfews in the garden. Slightly different varieties, this one has cute, tiny little petals surrounding the centre flower. Feverfew tea is reported to be a good cure for headaches.



Karen

One Local Summer #3

Last sunday, I still had leftovers from saturday's salad, which made a good side for this not particularly local cheese sandwich. The bread is local, but the sheep's cheese is from Bulgaria! We do keep local cheese in the house, but had bought this cheese for the Viking adventure over the Canada Day weekend (which I still haven't blogged about - maybe someday).



Now, this meal, from this morning, fares somewhat better. I was inspired by Cheryl's OLS #2 meal. One thing about eating local, it's making me search out new ways of making meals and I find that I'm really enjoying stretching my culinary muscles!



The eggs are free-range (inside a barn, according to Avian Flu regulations) and local - Elmira (25 km).
All of the vegetables (peas, onions, sweet peppers, potatoes) come from Herrles - 3km.
The cheese is from Bright's Cheese House - 51 km.
- Oregano - from the garden, 0 km.

The only major ingredient I can't necessarily claim is the milk. It's possible that it's local - Nielson's does have a processing plant in Halton Hills - 83 km - but I can't tell for sure.

Karen

One Local Summer #2

This week I managed a two-fer!

For lunch, I mixed up this salad of all local ingredients from a place down the road called Herrles. It's a seasonal store, open only June - September and sells products from their own farm and others in Ontario. Herrles is sort of the centre of the "Buy Local! Buy Fresh!" folks from FoodLink.



Romaine lettuce, saskatoon berries (local!, not from Saskatoon!), peas, yellow and red sweet peppers, tomatoes, celery, and zucchini. And for the man (who suffered greatly for the cause*) - I added hard-boiled eggs. I love the wild mix of colours!

*Neil believes that salads are the food that food eats. Not intended for eating directly. He did grudgingly admit that, for a salad, this one was quite good.



For supper, Neil barbecued some burgers (local cow from Well Fed Food, in Ayr). Now, he had a commercial bun from the grocery store (which could come from anywhere), but I had two slices of locally made cheese bread (sold at Herrles) as my 'bun'. And more of that wonderful salad on the side.

Oops, I almost forgot - even the raspberry vingarette salad dressing is local! Again, picked up at Herrles, it's made by Goodies Two Shoes in Shelburne, Ontario.

Karen

Odds and Sods*, and Canada Day!

*I thought it was one of those odd British sayings that permeated my childhood and stuck with me, but apparently it's the title of a compilation album by The Who.

How odd. Maybe it's both.

In any case.... a post of odds and sods.

Happy Canada Day! I was out in the field, camping with the medieval types - the SCA - so I missed posting on the actual day. No computers in the Viking Age!

Check out my fellow Canadian's blog detailing the ABC's of why Canada is great!



Farmer's Markets are NOT necessarily populated by farmers. A lot of the produce available at the two local farmer's markets nearby are for sale by resellers, who somehow garner foodstuffs cheaply and resell them at market. Often out of season and often driven some godless number of miles to get there. Apparently, this is a really common occurrence in Ontario, and two recently created farmer's markets in Toronto have gone to the trouble of _certifying_ the farmers who want to sell there.

It's a tad annoying for those of us new to Eating Locally, who want to depend on the local farmer's market for food.

Trans Fats: According to Wikipedia, some trans fats occur naturally in ruminants - cows, sheep, etc. And Canada's nutritional labelling laws include the naturally occurring trans fats. So, a product like cheese might reasonably include some natural trans fats. I guess ya just gotta decide on what a reasonable amount is, and how the trans fats most likely got into the product in question.

The Garden: It's a strange year. First, it took longer then usual to clear the last frost date. And then all of a sudden, it's HOT. Freaking HOT, and frequently HOT. The garden has zoomed ahead of all rationality - blooming and dropping flowers at a heartbreaking 'blink and you miss it' speed. I have daises in bloom, and where I am, that's not supposed to happen until August. It's still June!

Playing catch-up then on the pictures: these lovely foxgloves are largely gone now.



Pretty colours.....



And a source of heart-stopping digitalis as well.



Medicinal Herbs: I'm currently growing motherwort, comfrey, sage, echinacea, valerian, catnip, lemon balm, mint, calendula, feverfew and foxglove. While I'm aware that all of these have medicinal uses, I haven't the foggiest on how to actually go about using them. Can anyone recommend some good reading material on growing and using medicinal herbs?

Rest assured, I don't want to be a dabbler. I have no intention of using them until I'm quite certain I know what I'm doing. I've taken valerian as a sedative aid in the past. The vomiting wasn't fun.

Air Conditioning: We caved in to the heat, increased our carbon footprint just a bit, and bought a small room air conditioner. The intention is to run the bedroom temperature down at night to a comfortable sleeping space and shut it off during the day. So far, my sinuses have disagreed with the air it outputs and my ears with the noise. The cooler and dryer air is definitely to the good 'though. I'm hoping that we will all adjust to each other.

One Local Summer: The One Local Summer project has been so successful that Liz has started a new blog to accommodate all of the entries. Check it out here!

Cheers,

Karen

One Local Summer #1

My first documented local meal for Liz's One Local Summer project.

Bison steak (cut in two after grilling): the farm that raises them is near Stratford, approximately 33 km.

1 kilometers = 0.621371192 miles, for the US-impaired.

Potatoes: bought at the nearby farmer's market. Didn't ask for specifics, but I trust this group to have been in the Waterloo Region.

There was also margarine and salt involved in the eating thereof, and they are not local. I had water, and my hubby had a coke with his meal.

Karen

sunday's musings

Take a good look now....


Blink and you'll miss them....


All of these lovely irises are now gone.


I can't believe the kind of year we're having. It was a slow start.... cold, cold, late frosts.... and then BOOM! too much heat and everything's melting away in seconds.

I'm convinced (from memory, because apparently the last two years of blogging isn't keeping enough information) that the irises were still blooming right up til the end of June. And this year, not even halfway through June and they're gone.

It's crazy.

Something else while I have weirdness on the brain....

I've recently been picking Anti-V's brain for cooking clues. She's really quite a genius in the kitchen. And she's introduced me to some new ingredients and flavours - but many of them are not-from-here! To make the lemon and sesame seed fish, I had to buy a lemon from South Africa in the grocery store, and the leeks for the venison stew are from Mexico right now! I can get local venison, just not one of the veggies to go with it.

Believe me, I look at these things now that I'm getting more into the local food movement. It's really quite frustrating, these contradictions.

And the point of wanting to expand my cooking abilities in the first place was to be better able to cook local foods!

But back to pretty.....take a deep breath now...



Bridal wreath spirea. :)

Oh by the by - Nina, I'm with you on the violets. Another one of those evil pernicious weeds. I can't believe that nurseries sell those too!

Karen

One Local Summer

Woohoo! Liz has started up her One Local Summer project again. And this year, I'm going to participate!

My definiton of "local" is the most of the province of Ontario. Foodland Ontario and FoodLink Waterloo Region will both be very useful tools.

I'll be back in a few days with a picture and details of my first local meal!



Karen

garden, thinking locally

We have a robin nesting on top of our front door light. I've named her Martha.



Martha got very upset at us when we attached the monster trellis to the front porch. We're planning on growing hops all over the trellis and porch.



Later in the weekend, we went here....



....and managed to escape with only a few dozen more plants. :)

The front garden is alive with light and colour these days.



An anemone, close up.



The first tulip of the spring.



And yes, I do some fiber things.... here's the madder plants I hope to dye with this fall. Finally, I think, they'll be old enough. Madder roots need to be at least 3 years old to dye with.



Leif the Licky wasn't terribly happy at being on the other side of the gate for most of our working out in the front of the yard.



I've just finished reading a new book - The 100 Mile Diet: a year of eating locally, by Alisha Smith and James McKinnon.

It's quite thought-provoking. Did you know the average foodstuff travels 1,500 miles before reaching our local grocery store?

Did you know that it bugs me that the authors are Canadian and defined their local food circle in miles, and not kilometres? But I suppose that's just a petty digression...

Anyway, I've been thinking about this Eat Local thing ever since Liz ran the One Local Summer challenge at Pocket Farm last summer. Last year was a non-starter for me, but I might join in this year. It takes me awhile to get from growing awareness to doing. There's just so many questions to ask yet, and answer.

Let me give an example: there's a local butcher in town. But where does he get his meat? Where do the cows come from? What about the food that the cows ate while growing up?

Just how local is local?

The authors of "The 100 Mile Diet" took their definition right down to the ingredients. They didn't have any wheat products in their diet for eight months until they found a farmer growing wheat in their 100 mile circle.

I might be happy with locally made bread, even if the baker got his ingredients outside of the zone.

Food for thought indeed....

Karen

Random Tuesday

First, we have our usual garden fare:

I think I need more then 2 cucumbers to start pickling. Perhaps next year, more cucumber plants.


But I've got more then enough echinacea, if I ever get off my butt and start to use herbs medicinally. But it won't be this year - I am way too busy.


One Local Summer, almost:
This morning, I was, quite unusually, ready before the hubby and staring at my tomatoes and wondering how to use them all this summer. The idea of a tomato sandwich appealed. So quick like a bunny, I threw together bread, fresh from Angie's Kitchen (just around the corner from me and sold at the farmer's market down the road) and tomatoes (from my own garden) with margarine and a wee tiny bit of salt.

It occurred to me while I was making it that this mostly fit the criteria for a local meal, but I got all fussy in the head and didn't go and take a picture of it. After all, the margarine and salt aren't local.

But having had no breakfast, and being completely without will power, I just ate it for morning break at work and it was.... wonderful! I'll have the bagel I bought for breakfast for a late lunch instead.

Tomorrow maybe, I won't be so fussy about qualifications and take a picture in the morning.

Michfest:
This weekend, a friend and I are off to the Michigan Womyns' Music Festival, aka MichFest, for short. I'm one part excited as all get out, one part nervous of the drive, one part wanting to stay home (I'm a Cancer, we're homebodies), and one part starting to get tense about not being properly packed yet.

Conflict is us: I'm also an Aries moon - cardinal fire, and cardinal water (Cancer). So much fun. Ya know, assuming I put much stock in astrology and all...

New Rovings:
Mmmm mmmm! My but Wellington Fibres does a good job. And very very decently priced as well! I just got the Shetland fleece that I picked up in June (check the archives, apparently I don't have individual post links set up) back from the Mill and the rovings are beautiful!

I got so excited by the price, even before seeing the results, that I took them all the other fleece in the house as well when I went to pick it up. One bag of mystery fleece, and several bags of Icelandic fleeces.

The question of the day is: should I take the new rovings and a drop spindle to the Festival, or not? My decade old memory of the Festival says that would put me firmly in the 'wyrd' category. That is, despite the stilts, prom dresses, sarongs, and various leather accroutements that are all pretty normal festigear...

Karen

Garden again, and eating locally

This little scarlet flax flower is compliments of Canadian Tire, free with purchase. While I had absolutely no expectation that they'd grow, if someone's going to give me free seeds, I'll probably find a place to plant them. :)


I haven't the foggiest what flower is - do you? It certainly doesn't belong to the tag that's behind it.


Close-up of the lavendar. It's such a pretty plant, and smells so good. I've heard you can cook with it, but that seems so strange to me.


I've been trying to join Pocket Farm's One Local Summer challenge, but I'm having the darnedest time finding the local meat suppliers. And we're not vegetarians.

Today's brunch was french toast and sausages. Only the bread was reliably local. The eggs, milk, cinnamon and sausages were all bought at the big chain grocery store so who knows where they came from? It's kind of frustrating.

But I did just find this set of pages for Eating Locally in Waterloo Region, so stay tuned. All it takes is a little more effort, right?

It's possible that I'm overthinking this too much. We got some steaks from a nice store just around the corner and they said the butcher is over in Guelph, but they didn't know where the cow came from. Probably not that far away but still... if I don't know, how can I claim it's local?

And of course, I am being my usual nitpicky self - I want to do a 100km radius just because we use the metric system up here in Canada and I can't even think in miles anymore. Given that y'all are using 100 mile radius in the USA, I'm making it even harder on myself. If we do the math, 100 km is approximately 62.14 miles. See why I don't want to remember some odd number?

It shouldn't be that hard, I'm smack in the middle of Foodland Ontario.

Fussy, fussy girl....

Karen