A hundred ways to eat a root vegetable

A little more than a year ago we settled into the old house we are repairing, and had some lovely people live with us for short bursts of time. Foodies. Locavores. Teachers. And boy, was I in a good spot to be taught. Doritos for lunch or the occasional chocolate-bar-breakfast was not that uncommon in my life. Instant gratification over nutrition. Blame it on youth.

This picture still makes my mouth water, Pavlovian-style.

I'm proud of how our habits have changed for the better, and the repertoire we've worked on. I'm gonna brag a bit. The biggest change was buying a share in our CSA last year. Every week we would get tons of vegetables, with some selection, chosen at the weekly farmers market. I found it easier to plan meals for the following week because at least this aspect of it (the vegetables available) reduced the possibilities. Heard of Omnivore's Dilemma? Reading that book shed alot of light on life in general but eating habits in particular. Too much choice can be overwhelming. Going to CostCo gives me a near-aneurism. Anyway, the trick is to let someone else (local farmer) pick part of your grocery, then all you have to do is fill in the rest.

We are lucky we live in a place that has a weekly Saturday morning farmer's market. It is still small enough to afford only a single/very few stands for chicken/pork/beef. And none for seafood (which is sad to me). That said, 35 km away there is a giant farmer's market that has multiple booths for all that stuff plus tons more (honey, cranberries, apples, pears). So we have a pretty basic "comfort-food" menu that can get us through the week eating locally produced goods almost all year long, especially if we supplement from our freezer and the neighbouring market. Here are some of the things we'll eat this week:

local trout/butter/flour fried up, served with an apple/carrot/cilantro salad (all local, with a dressing of imported olive oil and organic lemon juice), and our own dill pickles from the garden. Non-local rice served as a carb side-dish. Someone gave me cilantro seeds last weekend as a gift, so I'm going to try and grow those in a window over the next few months. God knows we've got enough apples and carrots in storage to last us.

Honey garlic sausage from our local vendor, fried julienned carrots in a pepper/maple glaze, mustard pickles from our garden and a buttered piece of locally made bread. Sometimes we add fried red cabbage in garlic too. Yum!

local beef stirfry: the best beef I've had in a long time combined with local root veggies (kohlrabi, carrot, red onion), local bean sprouts and local mushrooms. I added some items from my freezer, which I stocked when stuff was in season: green peppers from the farmer and zucchini from our garden. Served with some more non-local rice. Randomly thrown together sauce of tamari & ginger (imported) + garlic & maple syrup (local).

local chicken breast roasted in the oven with spiced broth, combined with mashed sweet potato and frozen local corn. Cranberry sauce from our own cranberries. I'm not gonna lie, I'm fairly addicted to Kraft Stovetop stuffing, so I may round out this healthy pseudo-thanksgiving meal with a 99 cent box of crap-laden Stovetop. Can't win them all...

Carrot ginger soup. We eat alot of meat, but I try to get in one veggie meal (usually a soup) and/or a noodle based dish over the week. The carrot ginger soup is a favorite: we can get local carrots all year long (that taste as good as the ones I remember pulling up from my grandmother's garden as a kid). Combined with some local onion and some local garlic (if we can find it....the stuff we planted this year lasted only until November. I've planted twice as much this year hoping to harvest enough for the entire winter at least), the soup is the nicest thing to eat after shoveling the driveway for the sixth time in seven days. Fried onions & garlic in local butter on the woodstove, add some chicken broth (my own if I've thought ahead to thaw some from the freezer, organic pre-packaged if it was on sale and the pantry is stocked, or regular boxed stuff in a pinch) and four cups of cut up carrots. Add some rice for texture, simmer for an hour then blend to smooth consistency. Voila!

And for breakfast this week I made a batch of the baked oatmeal. We ate it with local maple syrup and brand-name yogurt that was on super-sale this week at the grocery store. I'm still having a hard time with local dairy products. Cow's milk is easy to find and I've grown to like mild goat cheeses (which are lovely on beets. I scored some golden beets in the fridge waiting to be cooked up!). But the yogurts and mild cheddar-like cheeses I've tried so far are 1. really expensive and 2. not that great. So this is an area of improvement: we still stock up on Danone yogurt and Black Diamond cheddar when it goes on sale at the grocery store. But the baked oatmeal had tons of locally sourced ingredients: cut oats, milk, eggs (from our backyard!), dried cranberries, dried apples, dried pears. I think I put in a handful of imported organic raisins too. I feel better about the imported stuff if it's organic (like the celery in my fridge right now) but that's just because I'm a privileged white person who tries to fix the world's giant environmental problems with my grocery money. You know.

Basically, I like buying food from people who grew it/made it. I look them in the face, give them my money and thank them for their hard work. It's just kind of a decent thing to do, if you can.