The Magical Stuff that Makes Blue Cheese Blue

(Best fungus ever) 

This is the stuff, baby- Penicillium roqueforti.  It came in the mail yesterday from Leener's and I'm thrilled to my toes.  

When I get back from this weekend's 10th annual Weston A. Price convention (this year in Chicago!), I'm taking the plunge and making Roquefort.  My mouth is watering just thinking about it.

Waxing My Cheese

This is how the cheese looks when it's ready to wax.

This is my pathetic little waxpot- an old cappuccino frother.  I need to get a bigger pot, because dipping cheese in wax rather than painting it on is much preferable. I'm using beeswax, which most cheese makers don't use because it's so expensive, but I love the scent of it.  I get the wax fairly cheap from the honey man at our farmer's market.  The drawback- beeswax is basically the same color as cheese, so I have to inspect the coverage very carefully.

Here it is- the waxed cheese.  Isn't it cute?  It's a cheese wheel made from one gallon of milk.  I date it on the day I wax it.  Now into the cheese cave it goes.

I should have waxed this cheese about 2 days earlier- cheddar should be waxed as soon it's dry to the touch... but it sort of got away from me.  It will be ready to eat in about 2 months, or longer if I can wait that long.  There are 3 other cheddars ahead of it, so I think I can wait.

Stirred-Curd Cheddar, and a Whey Ricotta

I made a cheddar on Sunday from my gallon of raw milk- my fourth cheddar, and second stirred-curd cheddar.  I also made a whey ricotta from the leftover whey- it yielded about a cup of a dry-textured, incredibly delicious ricotta.  I'm using Ricki Carroll's recipes here.

Stirred-curd cheddar is not a true cheddar.  To cook these curds, they are stirred for a half-hour over low heat (100 F). Traditional cheddars require the curds being sliced into strips and air-dried, and I haven't figured out the set-up yet. I'm working my way up to it.

(Sunday's cheddar in its second pressing)

I'm keeping a cheese journal- very important for reproducibility, and to figure out what I did right or wrong when after the cheese is ready to eat, which is usually a couple of months from the make date.  

Here's the blow-by-blow of Sunday's cheese:

Stirred-Curd Cheddar, 11/01/09

11:30- Direct-set mesophilic starter added  @ 96F, not 90F as in recipe.  Pot removed from double boiler and covered.

12:15- Rennet added @ 94F; stirred in up-and-down motion for 4 minutes.

12:50- Curds cut.  Pot covered, placed back on DB.

1:05- Heat turned on to lowest setting.  Curds allowed to rest with lid on; temp slowly raised to 100F.

1:40- Began 30-minute stirring of curds- water in DB is 110F.

2:10- Stop stirring- curds considerably smaller.

2:25- Curds drained, whey retained for ricotta.  1 tbsp kosher salt added to curds.  Pot covered on DB, with heat on low to keep curds at 100F.  Stirred with hands every 5 minutes.  Heat turned on and off with every third stir.

3:25- Curds resemble a very large curd cottage cheese sans cream.  They are pebbly and a little grainy.

3:30- Curds spooned into cheesecloth-lined mold and put under press with 10 lbs.

4:05- Cheese removed from mold, turned over and re-wrapped, returned to mold.  20 lbs.  Cheese was turned about a half-hour later than recipe instructions.

9:15- Cheese removed from mold, re-wrapped and turned a final time, returned to mold.  30 lbs.

After the last pressing, the cheese is removed from the mold in 24 hours, then air-dried for a few days at room temperature.  Then, it gets waxed- in my case, with beeswax.

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(Whey Ricotta)

Whey Ricotta, from a little more than 1/2 gallon of leftover whey-

Brought whey to a near-boil.  Added two glugs of cider vinegar; whey precipitated immediately.  Added a little salt after draining and cooling.  Dry, crumbly texture.

S.O.S pads- the original and best

Brace yourself, I'm endorsing a product.

Now, I don't buy much stuff new.  If I can't get it used, I probably don't need it-- well, with the exception of underwear and personal care products.  I buy even less brand-name stuff.  There is some stuff, though, that has no peer.  S.O.S pads are such stuff.

Ever try the off-brand scrubbing pads?  Complete junk.  They start bleeding rusty liquid after one use, fall apart after two uses.  If you want a steel wool scrubber, you gotta go with the real deal. S.O.S pads are the definition of real deal.

Now that I'm working with dairy, the pots get scummy.  A substance called milkstone (deposits of mineral salts in milk) build up on the pots, and it's hard to get it off.  S.O.S pads are the solution.  And it's not just mineral salts- I'm here to tell you, they can scrub off ANYTHING.  My pots have never looked better, inside and out.  Yes, they cost more, but they are so totally worth it.

So, that's my irony-free paean to S.O.S.  Thanks, S.O.S!

Playing With Cheese

Cheese making. Yes, my friends- cheese making.

(Ricotta salata above, 3 cheddars below)
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I know, I know- I fell into a hole. It was the 'unemployment sucks' hole; the 'crap, I'm turning 40' hole; the 'what am I gonna do with the rest of my life' hole. After I realized that dietetics was decidedly not going to work (higher math, hello) I couldn't see past it. Took months. I was miserable. Summer was awful. I read and I knit, but mostly, I sulked.

To add insult to injury, gardening in Michigan just completely blew this year. Few tomatoes, terrible for hot crops in general. No heat at night makes for miserable little plants.

But then I had a revelation. I made my first raw-milk cheddar.

Now, I've been fiddling around with soft cheeses for a while-- paneer, various spread-type cheeses. And of course, butter and yogurt. But the pressed cheeses felt distant. Then one day, I just did it. Took 7 hours. Pressed cheeses are definitely an all-day event.

But, let me tell you- cheese is magic. I labored for 7 hours and gave birth to a cheddar.

In fact, that first cheese (a little more than a month ago) changed my life. I realized almost immediately that, holy crap, I belong in culinary school, and I am now enrolled in Schoolcraft College in Livonia, MI-- about a half-hour drive from here. I start in January.

So that's where I've been. Off with my cheese.

Haven't cut into the cheddars yet- I have some doubts about the first one; I suspect the curds were too undercooked and it will be bitter because of the high moisture content. But that's the cheese learning curve for you- it's sort of a long haul. Jerry-rigging home equipment on a stupid glass-top stove has proven to be the toughest challenge, but I'm finding ways around it.

I'm going to start posting "A Cheese A week"- I'll go into more detail with individual posts.

Homemade Raw Milk Butter!

I purchased a raw milk cow share a few months ago. At first, it was just a gallon every other week, and I mostly made yogurt. Recently I upped it to a gallon a week, so now have to find other things to do with all this amazing milk.

My milk comes from a Jersey cow. Jerseys are famous for giving milk with very high milk fat content; I can count on about a quart of cream per gallon of milk. And with that cream, I'm making raw milk butter every week. And I'm here to tell you, it is amazing.

Here's how I do it:

Let the cream rise to the top for about 24 hours in the fridge. Suck the cream off the top of the milk with a turkey baster. Cover the quart canning jar with a cloth and let it sit at room temperature for at least 3 hours. Seal the jar with a lid and shake the jar until butter starts to form. It usually takes around 10 or 15 minutes. According to my old copy of Joy of Cooking, 50F is the temperature you want the cream to be.

Note: Do not let the butter form into a firm ball in the jar, because once it does, it's very difficult to get all the buttermilk out of it. Stop shaking once butter "grains" start to form.

When the butter has loosely formed, pour it into a mesh strainer (I retain the buttermilk for cooking). Then rinse the butter in cold water. If the curds are loose, they rinse pretty quickly. It's vital that butter be rinsed completely free of buttermilk- otherwise it will go rancid.

Here it is, all rinsed. Now you have to get the little pockets of water out. Hold the bowl upright and use the back of a soup spoon to smear the butter against the sides of the bowl until liquid stops trickling out of it. When no more water comes out, add salt if desired- it helps preserve the butter, but salt is optional. I smooth the final butter into a little bowl and put it in the fridge. Yield is about 1/2 cup of butter from one quart of cream.

And yes, that's the real color- when the cow is grass-fed, that's the color of butter!

Favorite Lunch

(yum)
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Pickles n' sandwiches- what could be better?

These are some of the pickles I made last summer, from four different jars--
--Baby eggplants, fermented first, pickled later
--Mixed hot and sweet peppers, fermented first and pickled later
--Spicy dilly beans, pickled only
--Giardiniera (cauliflower, Romanesco broccoli, peppers, garlic) , pickled only

And a turkey sandwich-- home-roasted, buttermilk-brined turkey (a really big turkey breast from Heritage Foods- best turkey ever) on my favorite farmer's spelt bread.

The eggplant was a funny thing. I decided to leave the skins on, since they were all about golf ball-sized; I just washed and quartered them and tossed them into the brine. But after two weeks in the crock, something was amiss. They weren't spoiled, but the mouth-feel was wrong. The flesh was too soft, the skin was too toothy. The flavor was shallow and mainly metallic. But the eggplant whispered to me: give us a chance. So I jarred them up with basil, garlic, and red wine vinegar. And then, they sat. I cracked the first jar in about January- that means they pickled for 5 months. Something truly magical happened in vitro. The flavor became wonderfully complex, the skins softened, the flesh firmed up. I'm so glad I listened to the eggplant. I will always pickle eggplant now.

Hand spun yarn

(1400 yards of two-ply- destined to become a Gansey)
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I've been spinning a lot lately. I love spinning. I first learned how in college, but I picked it up again about three years ago after a long time away. It's mostly a very soothing thing to do (well, unless the roving is crappy-- lumpy, oily, badly carded, full of vegetable matter). Honestly, I prefer it to knitting. Knitting requires far more brain cells, which I don't always have in ready supply at the end of the day.

Starting in January, I'm teaching a spinning class twice a week, and I've been working through the verbiage of the process in my head. Spinning can get very technical, but beginners can't be bothered with crimp-to-staple ratios and other such nonsense- heck, I don't bother with them, either. New spinners just want to make enough yarn to knit a hat or a scarf. So, how to explain what is really very non-verbal? What's important? I do have a handle on a few points.

Pre-drafting is important. Pre-drafting is loosening the fibers before spinning them into yarn. It's probably the single most important thing you can do before spinning.

Treadling as slowly as possible, and in rhythm, is also important. I was told by an experienced spinner to sing a song, such as "Happy Birthday", very, very slowly. Since I can't carry a note in a bucket, I'll probably tap a stick on the floor a la an old-school ballet teacher. And anyway, the first class will be taught on drop spindles.

Sending the new spinners home with some kind of yarn from the very first class is important, too. Even if it's just one measly yard. The first yarn a spinner makes is precious stuff.

I'm open to suggestions. How do you teach something that is really rather intuitive?

Thanksgiving pic, 2008

(An intimate dinner for four)

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This is sort of late, being December and all, but this was a really good meal. Since our table is so small, I had to plate most of it in the kitchen. The menu was nothing out of the ordinary, but everything was from scratch. Here's the list:

Buttermilk-brined heritage turkey
Sage stuffing, made from spelt bread
Mashed potatoes
Giblet gravy
Candied sweet potatoes
Spinach sesame casserole
Roasted cauliflower
Stuffed baked mushroom caps
Whole cranberry sauce
Green tomato chutney
Fresh jardiniere ferment (root and cole mix)
Pumpkin pie with spelt crust

I must say a word or two about the buttermilk brine. Buttermilk brine is the magical prep method for turkey. From here on out, this will always be the way I prep a turkey. I hear it's amazing with chicken, too. This was the best bird any of us had ever eaten. It made truly amazing gravy too, and lots of it.

Buttermilk brine recipe
1 part brine: 1 gallon filtered water to 1 cup pickling salt, plus 1/2 cup brown sugar- stir well until dissolved
1 part buttermilk-- 1 gallon

Cover rinsed and dried bird completely with brine mixture (I used a 3-gallon pickling crock- the little 9 pound bird was a perfect fit). Soak for 8 to 24 hours in the refrigerator. Remove and rinse; roast to preferred instructions.

Wow, just... wow. Great turkey. Highly recommended.

Pumpkin pie with spelt crust

(My first ever pie crust, and the finished pie)

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The wife of my favorite farmer is an outstanding baker. A born baker. A baker's baker. She sells not-to-be-believed sourdough spelt bread. (Oh, and I should mention that her husband grows the spelt on his family's centennial heritage farm- they are living the dream.) I picked her brain for some tricks to spelt pie crusts and she had excellent advice. To you bakers out there, none of this advice will likely come as any surprise, but I'm a born pickler. What do I know from baking?

1) sift flour until you think you can sift no more.
2) cut cold fat in slowly, and in stages.
3) add as little liquid as possible.
4) work the dough as little as possible.
5) keep the pastry board well-floured.
6) chill, baby, chill! (the dough, that is)

And she loaned me a few books- crunchy little baking books from the 60's and 70's, when baking with whole grains was in vogue. Most helpful. The recipes do differ from the new recipes that call for all-purpose or white flour. The book I found most helpful is a tiny 1975 publication called "Making Homemade Apple Pies and Crusts" by Phyllis Hobson. Hobson has an amazing variety of crust recipes in this little book. I'd like to find a copy of this book for my own library.

The recipe I followed is this:

Flaky Pastry
3 C Flour
1 tsp salt
1/2 C butter
1/2 C lard
3/4 C ice water

Sift flour and salt together. Add butter and lard and cut with pastry cutter until mixture has texture of small peas. Sprinkle with ice water and mix with fork until dough forms into a ball. Place dough on floured board, sprinkle top with flour, and roll with a rolling pin until 1/2 inch thick. Fold both ends of dough towards the middle, making dough 3 layers thick. Roll again to 1/2 inch thick. Repeat folding process. Chill dough for one hour before rolling for pie.

The crust is spectacular. Though it is not flaky, it is very, very thin; a quality made possible by the leaf lard, and probably, too, my french rolling pin. The crust leaves not a trace of grease in the pie plate, cuts cleanly, and holds it's shape. I'm so glad I finally know how to make a decent crust.

And for the filling? I baked and processed the squash myself, but the rest of the recipe is good old Libby's. It really is the best recipe for pumpkin pie.

Come Friday, this same crust recipe will become a turkey pot pie. Can't wait for that.

Rendering leaf lard

(Cubing the lard)

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(Roasting the lard)
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(Rendered lard, before it cools)
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I went on a wild goose chase last week looking for leaf lard. What is leaf lard, you ask? Why on earth would I want lard? And, um, lard? Really?

Well, yes. Lard is real food. It isn't hydrogenated like shortening. (Hoists self up on soapbox.) There was a time when we humans ate real food. Then the "nutrition experts" --usually connected to the government, or corporations, or both-- stepped in and declared real food bad for you. Next, the chemists were hired to replace real food with food-like substances. Then we all started to get sick and fat. Think these things are related? (Falls off soapbox in a froth.)

But I digress, as I am wont to do. Leaf lard. Leaf lard is the interior lard that surrounds the organs, usually the kidneys. It is a finer grade of lard and doesn't have a pork taste or smell when baked, so it's much preferred for pastries.

Now, I'm not much of a baker. It's just not on my list of things to do, and even less so since I was diagnosed with celiac a decade ago. But, I decided that if I was going to bake this year for Thanksgiving, I was going to go whole hog (sadly, pun intended).

I looked for lard all week in downtown Detroit, in vain. It got to the point I was ready to order it online- for about $50.00, shipping included. That's an awful lot of dough for lard, even good lard.

But all along, all I really needed to do was wait for Saturday morning to go to our beloved Eastern Market in downtown Detroit. We go every Saturday, year in and year out, but our dear old farmer's market never ceases to amaze. If you can't find it at Eastern Market, you probably don't need it.

Certain vendors at Eastern are seasonal, meat vendors chiefly among them. The big old sheds that comprise the market are unheated, and the meat can't spoil in a Detroit winter. The pork vendor who appears in late November has an old portable glass butcher case with whole pig heads inside, among other impressively large pork parts. It's quite spectacular to see these whole, freshly butchered parts in what is essentially an outdoor market.

And wouldn't you know it; the pork vendor had leaf lard. For One Dollar and Forty-One Cents. that's a buck-forty-one. $1.41, people. That beats fifty bucks and airplane shipping any day.

Now I had to render it. And it was easy, and didn't take too long, either. Cube it up, toss it in a roaster (no lid), let it bake at about 325 until it melts. What's left will sort of look like soft pork rinds (but it's not what I'd call edible- I tried it, and it's darned nasty.) Strain out the solids, pour carefully and slowly into jars. Let cool. Voila, home-rendered lard, ready for baking. I cooled it outside; in a matter of hours it was solid and a beautiful snowy white. I will say that the smell during rendering was pretty strong- like I'd been frying chicken all day- and the smell stuck to my clothes and skin. But it diminished pretty quickly with the crack of a window. And personally, I don't mind smelling like I've been cooking something interesting.

I recommend this food adventure to any baker out there. It made for a fun, educational day. And I have my very own leaf lard, and also a source for leaf lard. Neat, huh?

My pickle cart

(O glorious pickle cart)

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Here's my pickle cart... or is it one word?- picklecart? I ferment vegetables with salt and water in these crocks. After two weeks or so when the fermenting is finished, I preserve most of the finished product with vinegar for long-term storage- a jar or two of the live stuff sometimes goes in the fridge so we can get the live-culture benefits. If I had a really big fridge (which I don't want) or a root cellar (which I do want), I wouldn't need to vinegar-can any of the finished product- they could live out their glorious, delicious lives in the brine. But alas. Condos and root cellars, never the twain shall meet.

These lovely old crocks range in size from about 3 to 5 gallons. Aren't they beautiful? Old crocks are everywhere, but they are usually cracked or pitted inside. These, freakishly, have beautiful interior finishes. It's amazing to me when something old and well-used makes it through a century or more, basically unscathed. On some of the handles, you can even see the potter's fingerprints. So pretty.

Not to go all Martha here, but I'd so much rather use these salt-glazed wonders instead of "food-grade" plastic buckets. Who knows what freaky chemical weirdness might be released in a plastic bucket during the magical brine bath? They weren't free like all the pickle buckets out there, but I love them very much. And what else do I buy, really? Yarn; the occasional knitting tool; fiber for spinning; books; garden stuff; and canning jars. I'm a pretty cheap date. If a somewhat Luddite date.

The metal cart is from a junk shop in downtown Detroit. Why this cart would have a stamped "patent pending" metal label on it, I have no idea, but that clever patent-worthy bit is long disappeared. The wheels are stiff, and I've found out the crappy finish can't withstand brine (it's rusting in a most interesting way), but it was 20 bucks and it's built like a tank. And these four very heavy crocks, which I can barely lift when full of water and veg, fit perfectly on it. I scoot it in and out of our very tiny closet to keep it in the shade and out of the way.

My husband is gently urging me to try and make a small business out of my fermenting and pickling. While I do seem to have a latent pickling gene, I have zero idea where to start on a mountain of an endeavor like that. Don't you need a commercial kitchen? And, um, licenses? And good knees for all the standing?- (one really big day of pickling, and honestly, it hurts to walk the next day). And any inspector would take a look at the giant freaking worm bin at the other end of my dining room and gape and gasp in germy horror. But folks who've tried my kraut and pickles think I may be onto something here. I get a lot of wordless "yummmmm"s and "oooohh"s and "ahhhhh"s. Their eyes really light up. It makes me gloriously happy.

Anyone know how to go about it?

Pickles are a lot of work

(MMMMmmmmmm)
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Yes it's true, making pickles is hard work. But if you've never done it, I urge you to try- it's completely worth it. I (mostly) blame my pickle obsession for my utter lack of posting- that, and I've been spinning and knitting quite a bit, too. I've put up one or two batches of pickles every weekend since the beginning of August. I have put up about 100 quarts so far. Because if (fill in the blank) is not worth doing obsessively, it's not worth doing.

What's pictured above? Dilly beans, various jardinieres, peppers, eggplants, mixed zucchini. And of course, cukes. The sauerkraut is in the fridge, not the closet; I didn't want to cook it because the crunch is amazing and I wanted to preserve the live culture in the kraut. I shredded 30 pounds of cabbage, and after 2 weeks in a crock, it packed perfectly into 10 one-quart jars. My father-in-law gave me just about the best compliment I could ever hear- he said it tasted like kraut from his childhood in North Carolina farm country. I make old-fashioned farm kraut!

And sadly, there are far too many green tomatoes here- it was a bad year for ripe tomatoes. I made a batch (7 quarts) of plain pickled tomatoes with peppers; a batch of sweet chutney with vinegar, spices and brown sugar; and a couple of jars of tomato butter- it's just like apple butter, but made with green tomatoes. If I didn't tell you it was tomato butter, you'd think it was apple butter. It's delicious.

I'm madly in love with home-made pickles. It is just amazing to open up my own jars of vegetables. We eat pickles with nearly every meal. We didn't know what we were missing. They are better than anything I've ever had from the store. And now that the temperature is dropping into the 30s, I swear I can taste summer in them.

Most of the latest veg have come from the farmer's market- the earlier pickles were from my own garden. I pickle whatever looks freshest on Saturday morning at the market, and I try to pickle what's been harvested in the last day or two. This weekend's farmer's market will no doubt showcase the very last of the peppers and possibly a few other late summer veg. Perhaps this weekend will allow for one more batch of jardiniere?

Purple Beauty- the pepper that LIES

Lat winter, I traded some extra habanero seeds for some seeds of these pretty Purple Beauties. They are smallish bells, and quite delish. They grow easily, too.

This is how they look just after coring. I was a bit surprised to find green innards.

This is how they look freshly added to a pan.

And this is how they look after 5 minutes of sauteeing. The lying liars turn GREEN.

A couple of days ago I included a couple of these deceptive Beauties to a giardiniera lacto crock. I wonder if they will hold their color. Will let you know in 4 weeks.

Pickles!

(Yum.)

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Whoo-hoo! I have pickles. Well, mostly. One of the recipes didn't work out.
.

I used two different recipes from the wonderful book "Joy of Pickling" by Linda Ziedrich. In the large crock, I followed her "Spicy Crock Pickles" recipe. The recipe called for 12 pounds of cukes, but I only had 6 pounds, so I halved it.

.

The second recipe I followed was "Robert's Tea Pickles". I had exactly the correct amount of pickles, two pounds, so I followed the recipe to the letter.

.

I tried one of each today; the dill recipe is amazing. The tea pickles, not so much. Something went wrong with the recipe and the pickles are entirely too salty, and have an off flavor. I'm going to dump them and get more cukes this weekend. I'm not sure what I did wrong with the tea recipe, but thank goodness for the farmer's market. Every vendor last weekend had piles and piles of freshly-picked cukes. I'm sure that will be the continuing story for weeks to come.

.

Next up for this weekend- some sort of mixed giardiniera recipe...

Ach, the guilt

(best olive oil in the world, that Ze Tune...*sigh*)

Food miles (and carbon footprints, and especially embodied mass) are always knocking around in my brain these days. The first time I learned about food miles, I was gob-smacked. It had never occurred to me before.

Seasonal food was always pretty intuitive to me. I clearly remember being disgusted by out-of-season food when I was a kid-- it just seemed so ungrateful and greedy. Blueberries in February? Gah. Whadda I look like, some kinda princess?

Same with bottled water. Can't you people hydrate at home? How about a nice public water fountain? Just where do you think all those empty bottles go? Recycle, schmecycle- we shouldn't be making all these stupid plastic bottles in the first place! Clean, drinkable water comes out of every faucet in the USA! Why-o-why can't you see this, people??

Yeah. Pin a rose on me- what an aware kid. I was a dork. That's what a 10-year-long subscription to Ranger Rick will do to a young, pliable mind. Turned me into a far-left, bike-riding, waste-hating, nature-loving, vegetarian treehugger. All of which were decidedly uncool in the 80's. And it stuck for a long time- I didn't learn to drive until I was 25 because I hated adding to the pollution. That crying indian on the side of the filthy highway haunted me for years. Dork, I tell you.

But back to food miles.

I know there's a lot controversy about just how food miles are calculated. And sometimes, because of agricultural practices and various other factors, it is better to get some foods from far away. The complexity of food miles is daunting and oftentimes misleading.

(Which is why you should grow a garden! Take the 50-foot food challenge!)

Anyway, here's my short list of foods (actually, condiments) from far away I'd rather not go without:

-Ume Plum vinegar (Japan)
-Home-made olive oil (Lebanon- a guy at our farmer's market has it shipped in from his family farm in Lebanon- my husband and I practically wept the first time we ate it)
-Celtic sea salt (Ireland?)
-Kelp (somewhere in the big Atlantic ocean)

What's on your foods-from-far-away list? Is this something that niggles away at you? If not this, what does niggle away at you?

I made a list.

Something the Rabbit Saint (Rabbits' Guy from A Houseful of Rabbits) said reminded me that I really should publish a list. Here is everything I'm growing on my porch. Not everything has come up from seed yet, but it will (!). Seeing this all at once, it is quite amazing how much food you can grow in so little space, and in pots, no less.

I was thinking about the economics of all this last night- because my husband and I eat low on the food chain (vegetarian), we eat locally, and cook from simple ingredients (little to no processed food- are tortilla chips processed food?) we spend about $30.00 average per week on food. We spend less in the summer because of the garden at our back door, more if we need something like a gallon of olive oil. Eggs and bread come from a farmer we know (best eggs and bread ever!), pastured butter comes from the health food store. In the winter we live mainly on cabbage soup, carrots and potatoes from the Farmer's Market.

And all told, we've probably spent $1200.00 over the last 3 years on gardening equipment, pots, books, and tools. Not bad, huh?

Edible flowers:
Nasturtium
Anise Hyssop
Borage
Calendula

Chard:
Fordhook Giant
Five-Color Silverbeet
Bionda Di Lyon

Asian Greens:
Vitamin Green
Happy Rich

Spinach:
Bloomsdale

Kale:
Red Russian

Lettuce:
Green Bibb Buttercrunch
Black Seeded Simpson
Mesclun Spicy Mix
Mesclun Salad mix
Green Romaine Claremont
Rossa A Foglia Riccia Da Taglio
Arugula
Silvia

Tomatos:
Pink Beauty
San Marzano
Japanese Black Trifele
Paul Robeson

Peppers:
Purple Beauty
Mini Chocolate Bell
Alma Paprika
Peach Habanero
Round of Hungary
Lipstick Pimento

Beans:
Foremost
Scarlet Runner Beans

Squash:
Yellow Gold Rush Zucchini
Eight Ball

Cucumber:
Picklebush

Fennel:
Finocchio

Herbs:
Fernleaf Dill
Marjoram
Cilantro
Genovese Basil
Parsley

Peas:
Sugar Snap

And a few non-edible flowers, just because I like them--
Cramer's Celosia, Hollyhock, and Four o' Clock.