Go local out

Rob and I went to Pour at Four last night for a late dinner and to greet the new year with the community that has organized itself around the restaurant. Mark set Howie loose last night so at 9 p.m. the standard menu was replaced by a special small plates New Years Eve menu. The food wasn't local, but it was really good. And, as Rob and I sat there, we talked about how we don't really feel guilty when we go out to places like Pour at Four, The Hub, The Spar, or Primo Grill. We tend to only go to restaurants that are truly locally-owned. Yes, Sea Grill and Matador are owned by Washington-based mini chains, but we still consider that local.

When we decided to eat local this year, the intent to support local farmers was the most important reason. Cutting down on food miles was a significant factor, but there are some arguments that do hold water that can be made for the mass transportation of food and how it could be better for the environment, which we'll explore later because you can poke holes in almost any argument.

Anyway, the discussion we had last night is that we particularly like places like Pour at Four, which we frequent enough to be regulars. For years Rob and I have talked about our urban village. When we worked at home, we rarely ventured south of 6th Ave., east of Oakes, and West of Mildred. The area around Proctor and a few places on 6th, like Shakabrah Java, composed the core of our village. Since we both work downtown now, we have added it to our village. By living within this village, and by cutting down to one car augmented by bus and bike, we use less gas than many people in the area (especially less that the people who live in Gig Harbor and criss-cross the bridge several times a day). But, we have also created a community within this village of people who, while not necessarily friends, definitely add to the fabric of our lives--the clerks at Metro Market, the cobblers at Proctor Shoe Repair, the family members who own and operate Gateway to India, and the servers and other regulars at the restaurants we frequent.

And then there are some, whom we call friends. In fact, last night H&L invited us over for a casual get together this afternoon to recover from New Year's Eve and celebrate together. S, who also works at Pour at Four, commented about how the regulars always seem to know about the things that are going on in the lives of the employees. We do. We also know what's going on in the lives of the other regulars, maybe not the nitty-gritty details, but we know when a loved one is ill, when someone needs a word of cheer, when a fur-child dies and they need a hug or a glass of wine. That's all part of belonging to a community. Churches used to serve this function; small-town diners also served it. For some people they still do. But for us, now, today, we find it in different ways in our urban village.

-- Natalie

Local food holidays

Our Christmas has been an extended one due to this extreme (for us on the West Coast) weather. We celebrated Yule at Hannah & Heidi's Solstice party. It was a small group this year since snow began falling in the afternoon and continued until late into the night. The drive to their place on the East side of Tacoma was not too bad. Rob chose a route without any major hills and the Super Subaru made it with only one wiggle. We had fun at the party, especially when we played Les & Fred's dictionary game. Hannah made three different soups (included local veggies from Terry's Berries), cornbread, and a few pies.

Six inches of snow and frozen, ice-encrusted windshield wipers made the drive home particularly memorable. Rob cleaned them off at Jana & Jason's when we dropped off Jana (Jason rode his bicycle, of course). We made it home safely and watched the dogs play in the snow, which they absolutely love. For Yule I gave Rob a promise on Cliff Mass' book about weather in the Pacific Northwest, which I have on order at King's Books. The book feeds Rob's weather obsession. He gave me the Tazo bamboo tea box, which I mostly wanted for the box.

Rob and I had our first solo Christmas ever, and we really enjoyed it. My parents in Longview were expecting even more snow on top of the knee-deep snow they already had--and the hill to their place is difficult. Plus, Rob and I were planning to drive to Salem to pick my grandparents and Portland roads were still a mess. So we all agreed to postpone our Christmas until the weekend. That left us in something of a lurch with too much food since we had a hame and a smoked turkey from Cheryl's farm. Luckily the turkey was completely cooked and preserved thanks to the smoke. So, we left it and the ham in a cooler on the back porch. With temperatures under or right around freezing, the cooler doubled as a second fridge.

We get a lot of questions about whether eating local costs more. We never sat down to figure out the equivalent of foreign food stuffs to compare. But we did have a few moments of local-food sticker shock on Tuesday when our 16 pound turkey cost us $112.00. We know it's a fair price, though, and it is supporting a local farmer, a local butcher, and a local smoker.

Rob and I both had the 24th off, so we took it easy and made a nice local brunch for ourselves before crashing Jana and Jason's early reservations at Sea Grill for Christmas Eve dinner. On Christmas morning we made brunch and set the ham in the crock pot. We weren't sure how it would turn out. In fact, on Wednesday we considered heading to Target to pick up a roaster since our oven is still broken. The ham was a country ham, which means it was not fully-cooked as are most that are sold in grocery stores. I looked online for crock pot recipes, but all of them called for a fully cooked ham or a canned ham. We put the ham in the cooker all by itself and set it for 8 hours to start and later turned it down. By the time the mashed potatoes and squash were ready, the ham had burst its skin, but it tasted perfect. Everything was local.

Friday afternoon we drove down to my parents. Unfortunately Grandpa got sick and ended up in the hospital night, so on Saturday all four of us drove down to visit him and grandma and trade gifts. As soon as we got back to Mom & Dad's around 6:00, we threw the turkey in the oven at 325. It took a couple of hours to reheat, during which we wrapped presents and cooked the sides for dinner: lima beans and rolls from Mom's freezer (not at all local); local squash with chile powder, cinnamon, and nutmeg; mashed local potatoes and gravy. Dinner was pretty late, which meant we opened presents late. Our normal Christmas morning breakfast, which Rob and I always make was replaced by a trip to Burgerville--kind of local.

We didn't know that Mom neglected to plan anything for meals, so even though we cooked, it wasn't all local. If we'd known, we would have taken more food down and had a local Christmas. Next year.

Last night I sliced the meat off the turkey and boiled the carcass with local mirepoix for stock. Tonight I made Rainbow Turkey Soup with turkey (which is kind of pink due to the smoke), two sticks of celery, a yellow carrot, an orange carrot, sweet dumpling squash, and purple kale. It's yummy good. Definitely a comfort food, and it's almost too healthy with all those veggies. We also ate store bought but locally-made bread.

Three quick side notes

1. One of the things I'm proud of this holiday is our gift wrapping. By using things we had on hand like recycled gift boxes and bags and re-useable items like kitchen towels, fabric shopping bags and raffia or real woven ribbon that can be re-used, we avoided using disposable wrapping paper and ribbons with the exception of a few sheets of tissue.

2. If you've never gone to a Burgerville, you should. They blow all the other fast-food joints out of the water, and they source their products locally: meat all comes from Oregon, Washington and Idaho, wild salmon and halibut, Washington and Idaho potatoes for fries, and local dairy products, including Rogue River Bleu and Tillamook cheeses. Part of their menu changes annually.

3. We went tonight to buy a new kitchen range. We got a Kenmore flat-top with a single oven. Rob, aka Baker Boy, is excited because the oven has three racks. We went to the outlet and bought one that was returned and may have some cosmetic damage (all I noticed was a spot in the oven). We both like the idea of buying something that is ultimately used--the discount is a bonus. I'm excited about the turbo-boil element that will make boiling a pot full of water faster. I'll desperately miss the old Westinghouse double oven, but we looked at the double oven options and decided against it. To get a duplicate of what we have would cost around $1,500, and I don't want it that badly. The double ovens that are out now have a shallow oven on top and a larger one below. I imagine that picking up a roasting pan with a 16 lb. turkey and sides from floor level will get more and more difficult as the years go by. We'll report on performance.

--Natalie

A local meal inspired by Hanukkah

Tonight's dinner was the epitome of simple. After hearing a Hanukkah song that mentioned latkes then coming home from a snowy day with a ton of potatoes in the larder, we connected the dots and ended up making an evening meal of latkes, pealed, diced and cooked apples, kefir cheese we are trying from Greek Gods in Seattle, and a squash from Terry's Berries cooked in the microwave.

I still have dishes to do from the meal, but I am reminded that sometimes the simplest meals are the best. The authors of the 100 Mile Diet wrote about how their meals tended toward the simple over time, as they adapted to the new diet. There are nights like tonight when I can see why...

A different recipe for Honey Whole Wheat bread

I decided to experiment with a new bread recipe today, and after eating my first slice of a honey whole wheat bread, I would say this is a winner that is very easy to do with all-local ingredients. Here is the recipe, credited to Linda Larsen from a newsletter called, "Your Guide to Busy Cooks."

INGREDIENTS:

• 3-1/2 to 4 cups all purpose flour
• 2-1/2 cups whole wheat flour
• 2 pkg. active dry yeast
• 2 tsp. salt
• 1 cup milk
• 1 cup water
• 1/2 cup honey
• 3 Tbsp. oil
• 1 egg

PREPARATION:

In large bowl, combine 2 cups all-purpose flour, 1 cup whole wheat flour, the yeast, and salt and mix well.

In saucepan, heat milk, water, honey, and oil until a thermometer reads 120-130 degrees F (warm). Add liquid mixture to flour mixture along with the egg and stir to combine. Beat this batter for 3 minutes. Then, gradually stir in rest of whole wheat flour and enough remaining all-purpose four to form a firm dough.

Sprinkle work surface with flour and knead dough, adding more flour if necessary, for 5-8 minutes until smooth and satiny. Place dough in a greased bowl, turning the dough in the bowl to grease the top. Cover and let rise in a warm place about 1 hour, until double in bulk.

Punch down dough and divide into 2 pieces. On lightly floured surface, roll or press each piece of dough to a 14x7" rectangle. Starting with shorter side, roll up tightly, pressing dough into roll with each turn. Pinch edges and ends to seal and place dough, seam-side down, into greased 9x5" bread pans, making sure short ends of bread are snugly fitted against the sides of the pans. Cover and let rise in warm place until the dough fills the corners of the pans and is double in bulk, 30-40 minutes.

Bake in preheated 375 degree oven for 35-40 minutes, until bread is golden brown. Remove from pans and cool on wire racks. I like to brush the bread with butter when it's still hot from the oven for a softer crust.

A 100 percent local lunch

I decided to work at home today and just made a really yummy, 100 percent local lunch (I have a picture that I'll post later). We'll call it late summer hamburger succotash. I took a pound of hamburger that we needed to use and cooked it with an onion, garlic, and then a variety of late summer veggies: yellow squash sliced on the bias, poblano pepper cut into strips, a few slices of jalapeno, a chunked tomato, a sunburst squash that I cut into wedges. I also tossed in the bean trimmings leftover from the beans that we pickled last night. Cooked the onion and garlic, pepper, and hamburger together until browned/translucent and then added the rest and steamed until tender-crisp and topped it all with sliced Italian basil.

Yum - even the dogs look jealous. Everything in the lunch with the exception of salt came from no farther than Yakima - and only the peppers are from there. Everything else is from Pierce County. This is starting to make up for the abysmal record of local eating this month.

More canning this weekend - 40 pounds of paste tomatoes for whole, sauce, and salsa; pepper, beans, pickled jalapenos, corn, blackberry and peach jams. And anything else we decide we can make time for. Of course, to do this, we're exempting bottled lemon juice, pectin, and vinegar. But, we're using honey as sweetener.

-- Natalie

With best intentions

Best intentions, right? Everyone knows that St. Theresa said the road to hell is paved with them. If I believed in Hell, I'd say I'm already firmly there, and with an exceedingly smooth road plastered with best intentions such as the best intentions I had of writing a couple times a week - at least - for EatLocalWashington.com. I have written here and there, but much of it - such as the stuff from my trip to NOLA, has not been processed for the site. Someday, maybe; then again, it might be another brick in my Highway to Hell - just like the last two weeks equal 14 days of best intentions.

We have not been able to get back into the swing of local eating since returning from NOLA. However, things have improved considerably this weekend. Oh, and new rule, when one of us is sick, we get much more liberal with the rules.

Even though I was super sick on Tuesday, I forced myself to go to the 6th Avenue farmers' market on my way home. I wanted to pick up some melons from Buck at Alvarez Farms, but he wasn't there. Instead, I ate Indian food because I couldn't resist when I saw Surrinder was cooking and talked with Lisa from Terry's Berries and Cheryl Ouellette, the Pig Lady. Sue from Wilson's Fish just happened to be inside E-9 and came out to chat when she saw me. Wilson's wasn't at the market and they weren't at Proctor last Saturday because the catch hasn't been big enough to justify it. I left the market with feta marinated in olive oil (from Montesano) and two pounds of bacon from the new smoker that Cheryl's using.

On Saturday the City Manager's Office held a potluck picnic at Manitou Park. So in preparation, Rob mixed up two sponges for bread on Thursday night. On Friday he baked two loaves. We also cooked a batch of garbanzo beans (Yakima) and a batch of wheat berries (Methow), which I combined and dressed with boiled garlic (Puyallup), olive oil and balsamic vinegar with salt and pepper (ex).

We hit the Puyallup farmers' market Saturday morning after pancakes with eggs and bacon (the bacon is good, I'd like a little more smoke or sweet) for breakfast. Buck from Alvarez Farms was not there, but some of his relatives were staffing the van. We bought a case of green beans to preserve as well as watermelon, cantaloupe, and a variety of eggplant (thinking of making caponata to can or just eat fresh). At McDonald's Farm - yeah, really - I bought basil, cabbage, and artichokes. We got crumbled feta and chevre rolled in Dill from River Valley and tomatoes and corn from a Yakima farm. We looked for some chiles to buy and freeze, but I didn't want to deal with the crowd at the only place that had good-looking poblanos. In the pavilion I bought two pints of cherry tomatoes from Westover Farms and clams from Brady's Oysters (Gray's Harbor). We also bought a full flat of blueberries from a Puyallup valley farmer who sets up across from the pavilion; they threw in a third half-flat for free. That was a great bonus and the berries are really sweet - perfect sweet.

On our way home we picked up our share from Terry's Berries, which included the first apples of the year, two cups of raspberries, potatoes, greens, cucumber, lettuce, summer squash, Napa cabbage, and broccoli. Of course, we also got our salad and eggs share.

At home I added chopped fennel and oregano from our garden with some basil, one container of cherry tomatoes, some green onions, and the crumbled feta to the garbanzo-wheat berry salad. It tasted pretty good when it was all mixed up and was well-received at the potluck. So was Rob's bread.

Last night we had a comforting and satisfying local dinner. We sauteed an onion and a tomato in butter then added the steamer clams. Covered it all just until the clams opened and served it soup style in bowls. A sweet Maryhill Rose (sangiovese) and slices of Rob's bread completed the quick, simple, and delicious dinner.

Recipes

Garbanzo & Wheat Berry Salad

1 C dried garbanzo beans, soaked

1 C wheat berries

1/4 C olive oil

2 T balsamic vinegar

2 T red wine vinegar

1 t mustard powder

1/4 C chopped fresh herbs (mint, oregano, basil, fennel)

3/4 C crumbled feta

1 tomato, chopped or 1 pt. cherry tomatoes, quartered

2 scallions, chopped

Salt & pepper to taste

Bring garbanzo beans and enough water to cover by two inches (3 C) to a boil. Turn heat down to a simmer 60 minutes or until tender.

Bring wheat berries and three cups water to boil. Turn heat down and simmer 45 to 60 minutes.

Mix vinegars, oil, mustard, and salt and pepper to form dressing. Drain and combine wheat berries & garbanzo beans. Dress while still warm. Let cool and add herbs. Refrigerate overnight. Just before serving, add chopped tomato, scallions, and feta. Drizzle with more olive oil or vinegar if needed.

Alternatives: change the herbs depending on what is available; or add any other seasonal vegetables: seeded & sliced cucumber; chopped zucchini; chopped carrots; corn kernels.

Steamed Clams

2 lbs. steamer clams in shell, rinsed

1 T butter

1 med. onion, chopped

1 large tomato, chopped

In a large skillet with a lid, saute onion in butter until translucent. Add tomato and cook until warm and liquid is released and boiling. Add water or wine if more liquid is needed. Nestle clams into mixture. Put lid on and steam until clams open, about 8 minutes. Ladle into bowls and serve with crusty bread to soak up sauce. We took clams out of shells, dropped them back into broth and ate it like a soup.

Options: Add coarsely-chopped basil or parsley, hot red pepper flakes, and minced garlic before adding clams.

-- Natalie

Resuming our local eating

Tomorrow we will ease back into local eating after a week-long vacation in New Orleans where we tasted the local foods there - even though much of the local fare surely came from a wider geography than we are accepting during our Washington eating year here at home. One thing I notice as we go through this year is the clear feeling of tradeoffs and compromises as the year wears on. We chose to not carry our local eating to a new location in New Orleans, because we wanted to taste the local cuisine in what could be our only trip to the Big Easy. But that was a conscious choice. We could have chosen to eat simply on the road, even though eating "simply" when you don't have more control over your situation than a typical tourist attending a conference in a new part of the country would be anything other than "simple."

I arrived home late last night, around 12:30 a.m., so by necessity I had to carry on eating outside our local food diet today - since there was no time to ramp back up to our local eating. In a few minutes I will make the "sponge" for the simple no-knead bread that we make and then set it aside to bake tomorrow night. And earlier this evening I took out a package of hamburger from Cheryl the Pig Lady to unthaw for dinner tomorrow night. I pick up Natalie from the airport around 3 p.m., but before I make the trip to pick her up I will visit the Proctor Farmer's Market, quite likely the Puyallup Farmer's Market and then stop by Terry's Berries to get all of our fresh food to start another week of local eating. It's time get back on the wagon!

I sense fresh, local fruit and berries in my very near future. Now, off to make bread!

-- Rob

Local eating, New Orleans style

Last night Natalie and I had a dinner of a lifetime at chef John Besh's restaurant August here in New Orleans, where we are spending a hot week or so while Natalie attends a conference for work. We chose to eat at August because Besh uses this restaurant to feature local food from around the New Orleans area. Some of the featured food can be seen in the PDF of sample menus for dinner, lunch and dessert.

During the meal, which featured our first summer tastes of melons, peaches and local berries, we talked about how our local eating year is going and what the biggest surprises have been so far. Among those surprises, one of my impressions is just how easy it has been to switch to making most of our own food. For me, making my own food is like a step back in time to when I was a child growing up in a family that lived on a farm and had very little money. Back then, we ate local food from our own garden, we raised our own cows for slaughter, we milked a cow every morning and had homemade butter, we raised pigs, chickens, rabbits - in other words, we interacted with our food supply every day.

Since we started our Washington eating year on April Fool's Day, we have been doing an urban equivalent to what I did by necessity when growing up on rural Thurston County, Washington, as a child. Now we have relationships with the farmers who produce our food, rather than raising the food ourselves. We venture out every week to markets to pick up the latest ingredients for our local eating life, as well as to have conversations with Cheryl the Pig Lady, Terry and Dick Carkner from Terry's Berries and Buck from Alvarez Farms.

I will look forward to rejoining our Washington eating year when I return home next week after this week-long sojourn in New Orleans. Until then, I am eating my gumbo, po boys, fried oysters, beignets and other local foods here in the Big Easy. Soaking up the flavors!

-- Rob

Bingeing on berries as summer plenty arrives

For the second Saturday morning in a row, Natalie and I made the most of our morning and early afternoon by first visiting the Proctor Farmers' Market, taking our goodies home, and then driving to the nearby Puyallup Farmers' Market before visiting Terries Berries to pick up our weekly garden share on the way home. That means that combined with Thursday's regular visit to the downtown Tacoma Farmers' Market, we are hitting three markets a week right now.

Why visit so many farmers' markets?

Each market is different. The Proctor market is hyper-local - just over a mile away from our house - and it offers a lot of variety in a very small space. Today's purchases included cheese curds and chevre from River Valley Ranch in Fall City, salmon and halibut caught in Washington waters from Wilson Fish, and another flat (12 pints) of strawberries from Spooner Farms. We also picked up four small artichokes and cauliflower from Zestful Gardens.

The Puyallup market is nearly as large and varied in local produce as the well-known Olympia Farmers' Market. We made the trip to this market, about 20 miles from home, mostly to be able to pick up specialty items ordered directly from Buck at Alvarez Farms. Today's major score was a 25-pound bag of rolled oats. Those are going straight into the big freezer in our garage for about 24 hours, to make sure that we don't have any insect eggs in them that are going to hatch and ruin the oats. We also picked up a couple of whole frozen chickens from Cheryl the Pig Lady, a whole box of rhubarb that we need to process and freeze tomorrow from another farm in Buckley - near the foothills of the Cascade Mountains - and three more pounds of cherries for fresh eating that will have to hold us over until we can get more fresh cherries at the Thursday market in downtown Tacoma.

I have to say that local eating is not a sacrifice at all right now. We are adjusting to the additional work involved in thinking ahead and storing up the fruit and other ingredients that we can find fresh right now, but the rewards are clear. Who could complain about local eating when it features goodies like homemade strawberry shortcakes including berries picked less than 24 hours ago from fields less than 20 miles from our house?

RECENT LOCAL MEALS FROM YESTERDAY

Breakfast - Hot cereal made from cracked emmer wheat and other grains from Bluebird Grain Farms in the Methow Valley.

Lunch - Mixed greens salad topped with barbecued chicken and first-of-the-season tomato, accompanied by a handful of Bing and Rainier cherries from Eastern Washington and a handful of plain, in-the-shell peanuts from Alvarez Farms in Mabton, Washington.

Dinner - Had our friends Jana and Jason over for grilled sturgeon coated in a sauce made from yogurt, buttermilk and cayenne (Natalie will have to list the ingredients for this sauce in a future post...) that was joined in a fresh taco salad with lettuce from our weekly garden share from Terries Berries, and taco meat (ground beef from Cheryl the Pig Lady mixed with onion, chili powder, a little cayenne, and salt and pepper). Dessert was fresh Bing and Rainier cherries that we needed to finish eating before they started getting too soft.

THINGS TO DO WHILE WATCHING A MOVIE

We both have sore thumbs from last night as we spent the whole time while watching a movie separating the kernels of dried corn from the cobs so we could bag them up in anticipation of grinding the corn in the near future for polenta and other uses. We processed this 25 pounds of corn from Alvarez Farms in a slightly noisy process, pushing the kernels off the cob with our thumbs and into two huge stainless steel mixing bowls. After we freeze the kernels for at least 24 hours, we will remove the corn from the ziplock bags and remove as much of the chaff as we can before we actually grind the corn for future use.

-- Rob

Cherries and attention span

One of the things I say fairly often is that the average American has the attention span of a gnat. Normally I say this in reference to politics, and when it comes to politics, I have the attention span of an elephant. I’m kind of a junky. Yes, I watch C-Span. But, today, I have decided that I am the gnattiest of Nats. I can’t even read a short article on Exit 133 before I mentally switch gears to thinking about looking up sources of local vinegar. And before I can even enter “Vinegar” and “Washington” in the Google box, I think of how short my attention span is and how I’m trying to teach myself to focus on one thing at a time and how I should write about it, which is what I’m doing now. But, now I’m going to switch back to reading Exit133 and eating my lunch of a grilled salmon (Wilsons from PM) green salad (TB) with dried cranberries and almonds (PS) and a side of cherries (PuyM) and an aprium (TM). Then, I’ll look up vinegar sources before plugging back into work. Hmmmm, maybe I’m losing focus because it’s 3:30, and I’m just now eating lunch…..

Yum, I think I could eat grilled salmon every day. But then I’d have something like mercury poisoning—would I be able to tell the difference? Would anyone else? Besides, the Mad Hatter is one of my all-time favorite literary characters. There’s something to emulate, right?

The cherries were a perfect foil to salmon oil (like that?). I’m learning to like cherries again. A few years ago, okay, maybe a decade ago, Rob and my grandma and I were driving back to Gold Beach from my aunt & uncle’s house in Myrtle Point. Aunt Vera treated us to cherry pie, frozen but freshly baked. On the curvy road just before Humbug Pass I told Rob to pull over. He did. I got out. I promptly puked cherry chunks over the railing that kept cars from plunging into the Pacific. Ever since then, I haven’t been too fond of cherries, especially the crappy treacley and artificial cherry flavors featured in such things as gum and lollipops and ice cream and frozen pie. Then a few years ago, I discovered Bordeaux cherry ice cream from the Umpqua Dairy. I’m not a big ice cream fan, but the chunks of whole cherry halves sold me on that ice cream and on trying cherries, real ones, again. Slowly I’ve worked my way up to being able to eat a handful of raw, real cherries. Now, my craving for vitamin C-filled fruit has me eating several handfuls at a sitting. So far, so good. Not quite as good as this weekends strawberry orgy, however.

This, from Exit133 regarding a tall ship that ran aground near Shaw Island, made me laugh out loud: “Ironically … it’s 133 feet long. Hmmm … That can’t be a good sign.”

-- Natalie

Feeling the affects of funky local weather

Our local weather this year helped lead to a rare local food failure for Natalie and me tonight. Normally by this time in June we would be able to buy some early local fruit in stores, and tonight Natalie was really in need of some fresh fruit. So I made a suggestion that may have worked in nearly any other year - let's run to Metropolitan Market and suck it up to pay high prices for local cherries. We have already had some cherries from farmer's markets, and yesterday I committed the cardinal sin of eating too many of the cherries that Natalie had purchased at the Proctor market on Saturday. So I know that local cherries are around, but when we went to the store around 10 p.m. there were no local cherries or other local fruit whatsoever, other than Washington pears and apples, which we have been eating for months now.

So we came away empty handed. Soon we should be able to find local strawberries, fresh blueberries, and more plentiful cherries. But in some cases the unseasonable weather may have compromised the crops so much that this will just be a year without many early season fruits. Last week's snow in Eastern Washington had me thinking about this. Fruit trees and other plants are not used to a dusting of snow in June in this part of the country.

The impact is very local in the garden in our front yard, where it took three weeks for carrots to pop out of the soil because soil temperatures have been so cold. Normally the seeds would emerge in 10 days or so.

My fingers are crossed that seasonal weather is here to stay now. It's still not too late to plant a few more seeds for summer crops, and we are just a few weeks away from time to plant another round of peas and other crops for harvest in the fall.

-- Rob

My new favorite bread recipe - No-knead Bread

Yesterday I attended a day-long retreat for board members for the Tahoma Audubon Society, and after doing a 39-mile bike ride at o-dark-thirty in the morning to reach the University of Washington Pack Forest near Mt. Rainier, I was talking with fellow board members about our Washington eating year. One of the example foods I talked about is a simple bread recipe that I have adapted using all Washington ingredients. We found the initial recipe in an April edition of a magazine called The Week.

Here is the recipe:

No-knead Bread

Time: About 1.5 hours, plus 14 to 20 hours for rising time

• 3 cups of all-purpose or bread flour, more for dusting

• 1 and 5/8 cups of water

• 1/4 tsp instant yeast (I use a little less than 1 Tbs of regular yeast)

• 1 and 1/4 tsp salt

• Cornmeal or wheat bran as needed

In a large bowl, combine flour, yeast and salt. (If using regular yeast, use warm water (110 - 115 degrees or so) and then add the yeast. Let it sit for 10 minutes or so to "proof" the yeast. It should bubble up and form a foam on the top of the warm water. Then add the other ingredients to the yeasty water.) Stir everything together in a sufficient sized bowl until it is a sticky mass, then cover with plastic wrap and let it sit at room temperature for at least 12 hours. Remember to use a bowl that will leave room for the dough to rise up and bubble. I try to let my bread sit for 20-24 hours, so it gets more of a sourdough taste.

After letting the dough rise, lightly flour a work surface and remove the dough from the bowl where it has been rising to the work surface. Sprinkle a little more flour on the surface of the dough and fold the dough over itself once or twice. Leave the dough on the work surface and cover loosely with plastic wrap. Let it rest about 15 minutes.

After letting the dough rest, shape it into a ball and then place it into a bowl that has a light dusting of cornmeal in the bottom. I often spray a little olive oil on the bottom and sides of the bowl, then sprinkle cornmeal, or in my case since I haven't been able to get Washington cornmeal, some substitute like cracked emmer that we buy from Bluebird Grain Farms from the Methow Valley. Then put a damp towel over the top of the bowl and let the bread rise again for 2 hours.

At least a half an hour before the dough is ready to be baked, place a heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, etc.) into a 450 degree oven. When the dough has finished its 2 hours of rising, carefully remove the covered pot from the oven and shift the dough from the rising bowl into the heavy pot by simply pouring it in. I use my fingers to loosen the dough from the sides of the rising bowl, then turn the bowl over and pour it into the hot pot. It may not look pretty at this point, but that won't really matter. Then you place the pot back in the oven and cook the bread for 30 minutes with the lid on the pot and another 15-30 minutes without the lid. The bread will be done when it is browned on the top. Then simply remove the loaf and place it on a cooling rack.

These instructions create one rounded loaf, but last week I experimented using the same dough in loaf pans and that worked out pretty well. So feel free to experiment, and let me know how it turns out for you. What I have found is that because of the long rising time and the nice sourdough taste, this bread has a flavor and texture similar to other breads that we would buy at the store for $3 or $4 per loaf. And because those breads are not made with all-local ingredients, we can't buy them anyway during our Washington eating year. This should be a hit if you like crusty, flavorful bread!

-- Rob

Two months of Washington eating

We're two months into our year-long eating odyssey of limiting our food intake to foods from Washington state. Over those two months we have hit a few milestones and realizations, and now is as good a time as any to offer a quick summary.

First, what we are doing is really not all that different than what a lot of families all across the US and around the world do every day. We used to eat out at restaurants way too much, but with our self-imposed limitation/challenge to eat out only two meals per week, this has meant that we have to pack our lunches every day and cook dinner at home a whole lot more than we ever have before. This is normal behavior, but what takes out challenge to the next level is the commitment to use all Washington ingredients. This has meant no sugar, no beer, and living without tomatoes and fruits unless we already had them in the house when we started our challenge on April 1.

The first month of Washington eating was easier, because we could eat through a number of ingredients that we won't be able to get again until we either find a local source or until our local eating year is done. I ran out of rolled oats in early May, so now I make a Washington-grown cereal mix from Bluebird Grain Farms in the Methow Valley - the same source we use for a variety of flours. We are just about to run out of dried cranberries, which I have been gradually using on daily salads for lunch.

We still have some items to work out, like what to do about butter. We know of a number of local milk producers, including Organic Valley milk that we can pick up and Metropolitan Market. You can check the numbers on the carton of Organic Valley milk and determine if it is from a farm in Washington if it has these numbers: 41-35, 41-34, 41-017 and 53-21. Since most organic milk producers in Washington are part of the Organic Valley cooperative, this is a good option. But we have been told it is harder to guarantee that Organic Valley butter comes from Washington rather than the larger Washington-Oregon region. We can get heavy cream from a dairy in the Dungeness Valley from Marlene's Deli here in Tacoma and then make our own butter. We're just still trying to decide.

The biggest change in two months is the realization that eating local requires constantly keeping your mind on the next meal. If I don't think about what we will have to dinner tomorrow night, we might not have ingredients ready to go in time for the meal. We ran into that exact situation tonight and managed to ad-lib and do baked potatoes with a cheese sauce and left over grilled hamburger from a couple of nights ago. But because I wasn't ready to make lunch today and I was late getting up, I had to get by without breakfast. Planning is everything.

To close out tonight's rambling entry, here is a link to a related article about which is better - eating organic or eating local from The Daily Score blog: Food and Climate Change.

-- Rob

A sucky week

This week has totally and completely sucked for me on trying to eat only Washington foods. BUT, it's not the Washington thing that's getting me/us. No, instead, what's getting us is our inability to plan so that we have leftovers and things set up for easy-to-throw-together meals that we both find palatable. We have enough Washington food, we just don't have the discipline and time that others seem to have that allows them to cook all of their meals at home. Although, as I write this, I also realize that their "cooking" depends largely on processed and semi-prepared foods like packaged mixes, boxed cold cereal, and quick hot cereals. We aren't using those, which adds to our challenge.

Our awful little kitchen with (have I mentioned this?) six square feet of counter space IF the counter is completely clear, a one-bowl sink, no dishwasher, very little cupboard space doesn't help make any of this easier. All of that is further compounded by abysmal design. On one side of the kitchen we have a dog-legged "breakfast nook" currently stuffed with an under-used microwave, an overflowing desk with a chair that's too big. On the other side a doorway between the refrigerator and the range that opens to a bedroom that served as our office when we worked at home and that is currently overflowing with clutter and books and books and more books with books on top of all of it. In order to get from our front room to anywhere else in the house, you have to walk through the kitchen, passing between the sink/breakfast nook and the range/refrigerator. I hate to have people in the kitchen when I'm cooking. I really, really, really do not like it. The kitchen is difficult enough with just Rob and me--and we know how to move around each other and find a square inch of counter space to set a cup. But, put some other body in there just to talk, or gods forbid, to try to help cook, and things become truly untenable. It's not the size of the kitchen. Fantastic food can come out of boat galleys and apartment kitchens--it's really the design that gets in the way--and the fact that the counters always have something on them.

At any rate, I've sucked at local this week because I've turned to Starbucks for breakfast all week and ended up going out to lunch today. I didn't eat lunch yesterday until I whipped up and scarfed some tuna salad when I came home for a few minutes before heading to hear Joel Salatin. Cheryl Ouellette and some local farmers have created a co-op with the intention of opening a mobile abbottoire and processing plant so that animals raised locally can also be slaughtered and processed locally. Palatin was here to advise and inspire. The talk was not what I was expecting: I expected him to talk more about what he's done on his farm and about the connection between farming and what we eat. Instead he focused solely on recommendations and cautions for the co-op that is raising money and planning to open a mobile abbotoire. More later on his talk, but one thing he said really made me laugh, "Most farmers just aren't good at marketing." That is a text-book example of a truism.

Nobody said this would be easy. We certainly didn't.

Friday Dinner: Party at my boss' house. We took a dish of Cheryl's sausage mixed with garbanzo beans from Alverez farm and kale, onions, and garlic from Terry's Berries and herbs from our yard.

Saturday Dinner: Went to market in the morning (curds, feta, goat cheese, pears, asparagus, salmon, plants) and had Starbucks with Linda and then gardened all day. Can't remember lunch and had barbecued salmon and curds from the market and salad for dinner.

Sunday Dinner: Blueberry waffles made on our new wafflemaker/griddle for brunch; barbecued mini-burgers on homemade buns and homemade refried beans.

Monday Dinner: breakfast was frozen waffles heated in the toaster; lunch was leftover & frozen barbecued chicken on salad with chopped almonds and dried cranberries, which we're running out of, along with refried beans topped with curds. Leftover salmon on salad for dinner.

Tuesday Dinner: Rob had waffle for breakfast, I had Starbucks; I didn't eat lunch until after 6 p.m. (that's still lunch) and then had some tuna salad; after meeting went to Pour at Four (at least the delicious illicit oysters we were gifted came from Washington).

Dinner tonight: Rob skipped breakfast and I had Starbucks; I ended up meeting a friend for lunch at Matador. Dinner after evening meetings was baked potatoes topped with crumbled hamburger and cheese sauce with fudge for dessert. I worked on organizing the kitchen to clear off the counters and clean the fridge. Have some new ideas for re-arranging it to make it more useable.

Road food sucks - When it's processed

I was in Topeka, Kansas last week. I have no clue where my food came from. And, there are some "foods" for which one just should not look at the ingredient list unless one is prepared, mid-mouthful, to be completely turned off. I got to Kansas City late on Monday and spent the night in a Homewood Suites (which I like for a standard chain hotel). Thankfully the suites have full kitchens and their lobbies contain a mini-store where you can buy processed foods to prepare on the stoves and microwaves in the rooms. I bought a beef and bean burrito. Based on the taste(lessness) of it, I wasn't too surprised at the ingredient list. I wonder though why processed food have to be, well, so processed. If I made myself a beef and bean burrito, it would contain a tortilla (wheat flour, shortening); shredded beef cooked with some chiles and spices, maybe some vinegar; beans, likewise cooked with spices like garlic and onion and coriander and cumin; some cheese (milk, rennet, culture); salsa (tomatoes, onions, garlic, jalapenos, cilantro, salt, pepper, dash of cayenne cause I like it HOT); and perhaps some yogurt or sour creme, maybe some lettuce and tomatoes and jalapenoes. It wouldn't contain all of the things in this sample product. I know that all of those ingredients are not evil, but I do think they are unnecessary. I also think that the processed food items are made with the dregs and are barely a step up from cat and dog food and canned corned beef hash.

Of course, compared to what we would make here, and to any other really homemade burrito I've ever had, this thing completely sucked. If I hadn't been so tired and so hungry with still a lot of work to do, I would have thrown it out, hopped back in the car, and asked Garmin (my GPS) to find the nearest fast-food joint - not that the food would have been any better. Breakfast was a strip of disgusting beef jerky and a granola bar, as I picked up a co-worker and drove the hour-plus to Topeka. Road food sucks (road food being defined as the grab-it-fast fast-food variety versus finding a real restaurant and making an effort - which unfortunately can also still suck, but one's chances for finding food are better).

One thing I discovered after leaving the land of processed food: Kansas is not a foodie's state. Kansas City may be, but the heart of the state - Topeka - has a tame, American palate. Breakfasts were strange affairs of steam scrambled eggs mixed with strips of pre-seasoned and maybe pre-cooked chicken one morning and with deli-sliced roast beast the next morning. Luckily the little cinnamon wheels and the spiced pears were good enough to make up for the eggs.

Lunch in Topeka was far from exciting. We went to a little cafe near the inn where we had our meetings. I ordered taco salad and iced tea. It was disappointing - iceberg lettuce mix with unseasoned ground beef, shredded processed cheese, a plop of sour cream, and a plop of commercial salsa, all served with some over-watered Lipton powdered iced tea. Dinner salvaged the day's meals - at least the actual food part of it did. We had 12 people at dinner. We went to a well-established bar and barbecue joint that looks like it must get hopping and must be used to large groups. Our group was served six at a time even though we were all sitting at the same table. Side one got their food fairly quickly. Side two, the side I was on, got its food by the time side one was mopping the sauce off of their plates with slices of soft, white bread. However, the food was good. I am willing to guess, that the beef and pork in my barbecue dinner came from nearer than beef normally comes from here: baby back ribs (which I consented to eat with my fingers) and burnt tips. They also make this chocolate cobbler with cinnamon ice cream - three of us split a dish of it. Yum.

Meals the next day sent us back to fast-food hell: Jersey Subs for lunch where I had a philly cheese steak (authentically gooey) and pizza for dinner. I do not like pizza. I just don't. I don't like how much sauce or cheese pizza joints glob on and I don't like the sub-par toppings like flavorless pepperoni and greasy sausage. I like authentic Napolitan pizzas with thin crusts and light toppings; I like "gourmet" pizzas made one at a time in wood-fired ovens like those that Charlie McManus makes at Primo; and I like the pizzas we make here at home with Rob's cornmeal dough (we now substitute cracked emmer for the cornmeal) and homemade pesto with real toppings like the sausage we get from Cheryl the Pig Lady or the things we buy at the farmers markets: tomatoes, spinach, greens, mozzarella we buy at the Proctor Farmers market from River Valley Cheese, and smoked salmon from Wilson's Fish Market.

I was glad to get home to real food again. Although, Rob picked me up and took me from the airport straight to Pour at Four. I needed food fast. The trip was awful, and I was feeling sick from a three-day headache and from not eating enough on Thursday. I ate a little at breakfast - but not enough - and then, due to some poor timing on my part and the fact the Kansas City airport is lacking several services such as restaurants. I bought a couple snack bags on the plane from Denver to Seattle, but by then I was feeling so poorly that eating wasn't much of an option. Still, I forced down a handful of toffee nuts and four granola chunks. By the way, Frontier Airlines has the best snacks of any airlines even though they are all pre-packaged. The nuts and granola chunks contained more than peanuts and real sugar - no corn syrup or fillers.

One of our rules is that we can eat it if one of us or someone we know travels some place and buys something that is grown in the state they travel to and brings it back with them - but it must be carried back in their luggage, it cannot be shipped back separately. I wanted to try to buy some sunflower seeds while I was there, but my meetings were really all-day affairs, which left little time to look and shop.

- Natalie

Beans!!!

We found beans at the Tacoma Farmers Market today. Kidney beans, pinto beans, and garbanzo beans--which, you must know, are the best beans ever. Alvarez Farms, from Mabton in the Yakima Valley and supplier of some of our vegetables through their exchange with Terry's Berries, is coming to the market this year. We knew we'd eventually find beans, but I haven't taken the time yet to call and try to order any from the sources we've found that may sell them direct. I have actually been hoarding the last two cans of garbanzos in our pantry in case it took us too long to get to eastern Washington to buy some. But now, I don't need to because we have one pound of garbanzo beans. We also bought a couple of pounds of peanuts--we can make our own chunky peanut butter. I was so happy to find beans that I wanted to cry--and next week he's bringing us 10 more pounds of garbanzos and 10 pounds of black beans. The peanuts? A great bonus. I'm not normally a peanut butter fan, but every once in a while I want some on toast or with an apple--and strangely, over the last couple of weeks I've wanted some. Later in the summer, I know we'll order cases of tomatoes and peppers to preserve, plus Alvarez grows melons and potatoes and onions and cucumbers and a lot of other delectable green things.

We also picked up a chicken, two pounds of Italian sausage, and four packages of smoked sausage from Cheryl Ouelette, (a.k.a. Cheryl the Pig Lady). I also asked whether she still has any hams left. In her last newsletter she mentioned that several people had not picked up their hams. Rob especially likes ham, and unless we get another one in the freezer, we won't have any until next spring. We still haven't cooked our spring ham, but I think when we thaw and cook it, I'll repackage and freeze some so it doesn't spoil before we can use it all.

Other things we saw at the market: oysters, crab, shellfish; spring onions, spring greens, herbs, green young garlic; pepper and tomato starts (and other plants); honey. We didn't buy any in part because I'll be out of town next week in Topeka, Kansas. Plus, all the stuff we can't buy: popcorn, pretzels, bread--all looked good, all produced locally and worthy of purchase, but not grown locally, so out of bounds for us. Of course, we did cheat for lunch at the market and had Mexican food. As Ed Murietta pointed out however, none of the food vendors seem to use locally grown foodstuffs: blogs.thenewstribune.com/edsdiner.

Dinner tonight: Mozarella & Ham Sausage from Cheryl's and baked fries made with potatoes from Terry's Berries.

- Natalie

Recovering from a week away from local eating

This week I am settling back into local eating after a forced week off while I was at a disaster training exercise on the other side of the country in Emmitsburg, Maryland last week. I went from spending more than a month eating little other than local food to spend a week eating like I was back in college - institutional food, all you can eat. This meant that I fell back into old habits, without the possibility of eating any local food. And how did it feel going back? Not that good. I felt more sluggish with the return to eating food full of sugar, corn syrup, and other ingredients that are off limits in our Washington eating.

After returning home last weekend, I broke back into local eating by branching out and baking homemade hamburger buns to make barbecue sliders on Sunday. But tonight's meal was even better - barbecued lamb chops with a mint sauce that Natalie made from mint in our yard, served alongside chunky apple sauce from Washington and local potatoes made into baked fries with a dusting of ancho chili powder. With a meal like that, there is no need to think that eating local food is a sacrifice of some kind!

- Rob

Eating local (or not) alone

I intended to do so much this week. I even wrote it down: get the dishes done--every piece of cutlery was dirty; plan all my meals; clean the bathroom; clean the bedroom; get the kitchen nook/office cleaned up; clean the living room; write for the blog; clean the freezer and the refrigerator; buy and preserve asparagus; do laundry; buy bins for the pet food and clear out the pantry area; take donation bags to the second hand store; finish weeding the bottom of the terrace. I'm not sure how I imagined I'd have the time and energy to do that. I got quite a lot done on Sunday even though after I dropped Rob off at the airport I came home and slept the rest of the morning. Still, I got the rest of the terrace weeded, I did most of the dishes (including a fine, obsessive cleaning of the decorative grooves on every piece of cutlery), and I cleaned out the freezer. I even made sausage and pancakes for dinner, which I also had on Monday for breakfast. I took leftover chicken breast and salad and a hunk of cheese to work for lunch, and then came home and made a Northwest Waldorf salad for dinner with more chicken breast, Greek Gods yogurt, a crisp apple, walnuts, and a little mayo.

Tuesday I ate every meal away from home--and thus, none of it likely from Washington. I had a conference in SeaTac and had eggs and a mini-bagel for breakfast. Lunch was a green salad, salmon, and a good vegetable medley with snap peas and thick-julienned carrots, rutabaga, and turnip. Then I came home exhausted, fell asleep on the couch, woke hungry and went to Pour at Four for dinner.

I woke up Wednesday morning with a migraine, took some codeine, called my boss, and then promptly went back to bed for a couple of hours. I ate some toast and cheese for breakfast late on my way into work so that I got there in time for our shareholders meeting. In the afternoon I came home to spend an hour with the dogs before heading back to work for the board and leadership boat cruise. The served something on the boat that they said was salmon. I'm sure it was, but wow, did they ever ruin that poor farm-raised salmon. That fish had no freedom in life and no justice in death. Mushy, flavorless, overcooked, dreck. It tasted like a spawned-out dog fish (Chum). The steak they served was only slightly better.

That brings me to today. I had great intentions this morning of boiling an egg and taking it and an apple and some bread to work. Unfortunately our dog Ada derailed my plans when she found a way out of the fence. Instead of spending time making breakfast, I spent time panicking and looking for her. I then resorted to a total cheat and went to Starbucks on my way into town to get a sausage muffin and an iced tea--with simple syrup. Let me say now that I miss the simple syrup in my iced teas--and it's just not the same with honey. Honey always has an added flavor that I really don't like in my iced tea. I had a lunch meeting at Matador with our new paralegal at work, so that was not native. But, I just took out more sausage and will have that and salad for dinner. I think I'll also cook up some wheat berries to take for breakfast with milk and cinnamon in the morning. Maybe the other sausage for lunch tomorrow, but dinner will be out with Jana before the Oprah.

Okay, so my week alone hasn't gone as well as planned, but I still have tonight to get all those things done that I wanted to do--yeah, right!

- Natalie

Proctor farmers market opens

The Proctor Farmers Market opened today. I wouldn't have known except we saw Bill Evans at the Howard Kunstler lecture this week (pretty depressing lecture, but it made me glad we have started this venture), and he told me that it started today. He also told me that a cheesemaker is at the market this year. So I decided to go this morning after my massage. In all honesty, and embarrassingly, I can't remember the last time we went to the Proctor market. It's been years, and then it was not what we were looking for. It was mostly arts and crafts and not much food. I was pleasantly surprised today at how much food was there, and most of it counts as local for us. The bread and popcorn didn't nor did the jams and chutneys since they contained sugar, but all of the vegetables, the meats, the fish, and of course, the cheese.

We decided before the switch to exempt fish from Alaska because we weren't sure how reliable it would be to only eat fish from Washington state. However, in March we found a cannery in Tokeland that cans crab, Oregon shrimp, tuna, and salmon. The tuna may come from Oregon waters, but it's caught by WA fishers. Then today, I found Wilson Fish Markets (Jania Wilson, 253-722-7100). They are from LaPush and sell line caught King and Coho salmon and Halibut. Hurrah! We don't eat it as often as we probably should--it being a superfood and all--but I do like my salmon and halibut. I bought $30 worth of salmon, including a chunk of frozen king that we'll grill tomorrow, a chunk of smoked coho, and a chunk of smoked king. My executive decision was to allow the brown sugar that is used in smoking since the fish is local, and the exotic ingredient is less than 2% of the full product.

At the Lopez Island Farm stand, I bought Apple Cider Syrup. I was tempted to buy some of their jams, syrups, or chutneys, but they included suga, a substantial portion, and the chutneys included other vegetables that cannot be verified as local. They also sold lamb and pork.

The last stop of the day was the cheese booth. River Valley Ranch sells goat and cow milk cheese. They also make sheep and yak milk cheese. She'd sold out of all but two cheeses by the time I got there. She gave me a taste of Fire Roasted Chevre, and we talked about the Washington eating venture and our Web site. I bought a small log of the chevre and a hunk of Naughty Nellie Raw Cow's Milk ($22.06 for both). I made another temporary exemption since the chevre contains peppers that may not be local and the other is brined in Naughty Nellie Ale.

There are a few things that we are exempting by default--and that, we would probably have to exempt even if we were resourceful enough, efficient enough, organized enough, and had enough time to make all of our own everything from scratch. To make cheese, which we plan to do later this year, you need rennet and culture. Granted, the rennet could come from the stomach lining of a local calf (it's third stomach--listen here http://128.208.34.90/ramgen/realarch/WeekdayA/WeekdayA20070517.rm to learn more), but vegetable rennet is likely exotic. But to get Cheddar cheese, you use a cheddar culture; for gouda, a gouda culture, and so forth. Other things also influence the flavor of cheese: what the cow's eat, local fungi/bacteria, skill of the cheesemaker, etc, but most cheesemakers use a starter culture. It's the same for yogurt and buttermilk. Then there's yeast for bread. Eventually, we'll have our own sourdough starter. You can start sourdough with wild yeast off of cabbage and grapes, but we'll likely use a starter culture or get a start from someone else. We just haven't found that person yet. But, even when we have the starter, we'll likely use yeast sometimes. And, we've exempted other baking necessities such as baking soda, baking powder, creme of tartar, and spices. I'm still waffling on herbs and spices that we can grow here, though. I need to be disciplined enough this year to harvest our own dried herbs like oregano, marjarom, thyme, rosemary, and sage, etc. I should also get organized and plant caraway and cilantro--some to eat fresh and some to harvest as coriander. I'll look next week at the market for more herbs to transplant.

I also ordered another rain barrel from Dan Borba for $70 and bought two bundles of cilantro for $1 each, eight assorted tomato plants to transplant at $2.50 each, four pots of spinach to grow, three flat leaf parsley plants, and three African daisies to put in the terrace ($30). Next week we might by cauliflower, cabbage, blueberry bushes, and some more tomatoes.

Rob was home from the Birdathon Kickoff, where he lead a short birding by bike trip. While he showered off bike sweat, I assembled a salad with greens from Terry's Berries topped with smoked salmon, frozen blueberries, Naughty Nellie cheese, hazelnuts (bought from OR pre-switch), and a vinaigrette I made with raspberry vinegar, dried spice mix, olive oil, and the apple cider syrup.

I think we'll be regulars at the market this year. Join us, every Saturday from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.

- Natalie

A challenging week of temptations

I knew when we took on this challenge that there would be times when the temptation to fall back into old habits would be especially strong. This week I was definitely challenged. It started with a bad headache on Tuesday night, when I had to work late and then missed the 7:20 p.m. bus home, which led to my asking Natalie to drive down and pick me up so I didn't have to hang out at the office until the next bus at 8:20 p.m. By the time she arrived, my headache was progressing to a migraine, so I suggested eating out.

Months ago when we started making our own ground rules for a Washington eating year, we set the standards for how many times we could go out in a given week. We agreed that eating two meals per week at restaurants would be acceptable. So, Tuesday night's meal of American-Mexican food at Matador in downtown Tacoma was our first meal out for the week.

Our second meal out for the week was at Ravenous in downtown Tacoma, as we had to squeeze in a meal before attending a lecture by James Arthur Kunstler.

So, with two times out finished for the week, it meant we wouldn't be able to visit our friends at Pour at Four, a wine bar in our neighborhood in Tacoma's North End.

The worst of it, though, has been the temptation of seeing my co-workers coming back from Tully's with lattes. I had the bad habit of drinking a grande vanilla latte every other day - sometimes every day - and going cold turkey for this entire month has been tough. Sure, I brew French-pressed coffee at work, since we made coffee on of the exempt items in our Washington eating year. But it isn't the same.

Despite the temptations, I managed to stick to the regime. Now it is Saturday afternoon and if I want a latte I can just make one here at home. It's just another week in the experiment.

- Rob

Breakfast has been a challenge

Breakfast has been a challenge. It's not a resources challenge, we have plenty to choose from. It's a timing and habits challenge. Since I haven't been leaving the building to take a morning break and get breakfast at Starbucks, I find that I don't actually eat the breakfasts I take to work unless they can be eaten a few bites at a time. Oatmeal, which really isn't good once it has cooled, does not work well if eaten over more than an hour.

On Tuesday I had to scavenge for breakfast. It ended up being toast made from the two slices of honey wheat bread that I accidentally left at work the night before - and a Snickers bar that was in my desk from before the switch. Why? Well, Rob and I didn't communicate very well that morning. He asked whether I wanted oatmeal. Oatmeal sounded pretty disgusting when he asked me - I rarely feel like eating first thing after getting up in the morning. I said no, but I didn't ask for anything else, and he didn't put anything together for me. So, bread and snickers. Which made me realize, I need to stock the cupboards, so to say, at work. I need protein at breakfast. Not a lot of protein, but more than is in a bowl of oatmeal or cereal. Usually a little yogurt or an ounce or so of cheese or an egg will do. So, we'll have to keep some boiled eggs on hand. I can take boiled eggs, some cheese, and cups of Greek Gods yogurt to work. That, the occasional slice of toast - I found a hidden toaster at work - will make due for breakfast. And, when we've eaten through the oatmeal we have at home, we'll be eating wheatberries and BlueBird Granary cereal for breakfast.

I found today that oatmeal reheats okay in the microwave. Just have to sprinkle it with a bit of water before zapping it. It's pretty good topped with cinnamon, honey, and milk that I took to work, and sprinkled with chopped walnuts that I still have in my desk.

- Natalie

Greek Gods yogurt

Greek Gods Yogurt is made with milk from Washington!!!! I'm so happy to know this. I feel like dancing around and singing, "Yay, yay, yay," but that's not really in my nature. Greek Gods' yogurt is yummy. Even the plain yogurt is good, which is all we'll be able to buy and eat since all of the flavored yogurts contain sugar--even the honey one. Still, since it's made with Washington milk, and it is my all-time favorite yogurt, we can add our own honey and frozen blue berries and raspberries from Terry's Berries, I have another breakfast option.

- Natalie

DC Whole Foods irony

I find deep irony in the fact that I went to a Whole Foods in Washington, DC, to try to find local foods. I found very, very few. I found some local foods from Washington State, though--apples and potatoes, maybe even the onions. I went to pick up a few things to keep in the hotel room since I had a refrigerator and was going to be there for a week. Normally, when I am traveling I like to keep bananas and granola bars on hand. I'm not a morning person, and these make good portable breakfasts. Plus, in DC on meeting days, it's a good idea to have a granola bar in your bag since you may not find time to eat until late in the evening. If I have a refrigerator, I sometimes also buy some yogurt and cheese and other fruit. So I went to the cheese station and asked one of the salespeople whether they had any locally-made cheeses. She took me around the case and showed me a few cheeses--apparently Wisconsin is a local manufacturer of cheese if you are in Washington, DC. Luckily there were also a few made in Maryland and Virginia. I picked up a chunk of Naturalist's Cheese made in Virginia. I skipped the bananas, but I did buy a pint container of sliced fruit, including oranges. I figure they may at least have been grown in this country, rather than wherever bananas come from. I also bought two bottles of HonesTea and a box of Kashi granola bars. I was so busy on this trip though, that I never had a chance to eat the cheese. So, am taking it home. One of the rules we have established is that we will honor a food as local if we or someone we know travels somewhere and buys something grown within 100 miles of where they are, and brings it home. This cheese counts. And later this summer, we'll have more maple syrup when Jana and Jason bring us some from Massachusetts.

- Natalie

Local eating in the news today

Issues about local eating have grown so mainstream over the last year that we have moved from a world where the idea that grew popular through books and Web sites is now drawing two editorials in the same newspaper in the same day.

The Seattle P-I offers the following:

• Good reasons to support local farmers, by guest columnist Jennifer Wilkins

• That mouthful shouldn't travel so far, by guest columnist Paul W. Birkeland

Meanwhile, I am planning to attend a discussion about local eating at my local bookstore here in Tacoma, Washington - King's Books. The community Web site Exit133.com highlights Thursday night's discussion, which will include Terry Carkner from Terry's Berries on the panel. I look forward to an interesting conversation and maybe sharing a few of the tips that Natalie and I have discovered in our research before starting a local eating year, a Washington-only food year, on April 1, 2008.

- Rob

Day 1

Yesterday I had a breakfast sandwich at Starbucks--sausage and cheddar on an English Muffin. I have no idea where any of it came from. I have no idea where it was even processed and packaged. I also had my last iced tea lemonade. At least it was sweetened with sugar syrup instead of corn syrup. Still, lemons from where? Grown and processed where? I can get that drink in any Starbucks anywhere in the nation and at any time of year.

For lunch I went to the cafeteria upstairs because I was desperate to get lunch before my afternoon meetings. Our cafeteria is operated by one of those services that staff corporate cafeterias. The food is mass produced and comes out of big box trucks. They serve mediocre fare that you'd find in an airport. I grew weary of it a long time ago. Nevertheless, without enough time to hit one of the locally-owned restaurants nearby, I hoped they'd at least have some soup that I could eat. They were out of the vegetable soup and I won't eat the broccoli-cheese soup. The special of the day was "confetti" taco salad. Of course the lettuce was iceburg with a few shreds of cabbage and carrot. It came out of a bag. It was tasteless. It was completely anonymous. I asked if they could put the ingredients into a burrito for me. In went slightly seasoned ground beef, a few shreds of lettuce, tubbed salsa, sour cream, and cheddar shreds. I asked them to add pickled jalapenos but passed on the anemic and mushy looking tomatoes and nstead of pre-made, overly-salted, out-of-a-tub guacamole, I asked for fresh avocado. I love avocado. I will miss avocado this year. I took the mess back to my desk and worked through lunch.

Last night for dinner we ate the leftover Indian food we got at Gateway to India on Sunday night.

At midnight the switch flipped--whether it clicked on or off I'll leave to you to decide. Actually, the switch is in more of a slide because we didn't plan ahead well enough. Rob spent most of the night making bread out of that nice wheat we got, plus some molasses we have in the cupboard and need to use. Cool, we have bread. So we knew we'd at least have bread for today.

Only about 1/2 of our food today was grown in Washington. It might be a while before we have entire days where everything we eat is from the state because we have a lot of stuff in the house.

For breakfast Rob made oatmeal and tossed in some dried and sweetened cranberries. I don't really like to eat immediately after I get up, so he put mine in a plastic container. Unfortunately, he didn't add any sweetener. I really don't like unsweetened oatmeal. So, when I got to work and finally reheated it, I added a packet of sugar that was in my desk. When I started eating, I realized that we need new containers because the one the cereal was in smelled of onion and garlic. The smell has permeated the plastic. That did not make the oatmeal any more appealing. Normally I like oatmeal, but this morning I could barely choke down half of it. Even if I had been able to eat all of it, 3/4 cup of oatmeal would not keep me satisfied until lunch. So, around 10 a.m. I ate the second half of a biscotti that was in my desk from Friday.

I pulled out lunch around 2:00. Two thick slices of the bread Rob made last night, two slices of the cheese that Sue brought us from Denmark, a pear, and an apple. I never got to the apple.

This evening I went to a reception for work. They served chicken satay, stuffed mushrooms, salumi, crudites, the normal reception spread. I pondered our rule for being able to eat whatever is served us at friends and when traveling. But, this was not a friend and I'm not on the road. I opted to eat a single chunk of Cougar Gold cheese. I don't think I'd be too far off to guess that the chicken was grown in Washington, but the peanut sauce definitely had some alien ingredients.

We read last night on the Golden Glen Creamery Web site that Stadium Thriftway carries their products. I wanted to see what they carried--I'd really like to find a local store that carries their cheese. We also needed to pick up a chicken for dinner. The don't carry Golden Glen's cheese, just their milk--not even their cream or half and half. They also carried some apples and a couple of vegetables from Washington. I got really excited for a few seconds when I saw the sign in their meat department for Misty Isle Beef. It is the most delectable, melt-in-your-mouth beef, and it's organic and grown on Vashon Island. But, alas, they switched almost a year ago (just haven't changed their signage or advertising for some half-assed reason) to Painted Hills Beef, which is out of Oregon. Nevertheless, plenty of their chickens are grown in Washington. We picked up a free range fryer. Unfortunately dinner didn't go quite as planned. The chicken still was not done after nearly two hours in the oven. I chalk it up to the fact that it was still a little frozen inside when we got it home. We ate the cooked bits along with fingerling potatoes from Terry's Berries and canned green beans grown and canned by Rob's parents, who live in Fall City. Desert was a piece of fudge--chocolate is, after all, exempt.

- Natalie

A year of local eating begins

Really, what business do we have taking on this self-imposed challenge of trying to eat only foods grown in Washington? We are the last characters that you'd think would try this. We are a couple who eats out almost every night—sometimes nearly every meal in a week.

We certainly don't look like the typical granola munchers who you'd think would embrace something like this. I'm not likely to be cast in any role addressing healthy choices. I weigh twice what an average woman my height should. So nearly everyone who looks at me would not imagine me doing anything like this. And, although Rob is a runner, he isn't trotting around town in the Tevas, cargo pants, and REI polar fleece costume.

So why are we doing this? Are we crazy? Maybe, I've never claimed to be incredibly sane. Are we deluding ourselves? Quite possibly. Are we ready? We think so, but we expect some surprises from the wings to smack us upside the head. We're prepared for the frustration that this new script is going to create. We're certainly not heading into this without direction since we've spent much of the last six months researching it

What, you may ask, are we doing? We're joining the latest sustainability meme. You may have heard of something called The Hundred Mile Diet or of Locavores. We've put our own spin on it. For at least the next twelve months we will eat only foods grown in Washington State, (with a few exceptions).

Why? Because we can. Because, like the mountain, it is there, it is a challenge, it is something to do. Plus, it will be fun. Oh, you really want to know why?

We don't have a simple answer. Right now it feels like this is where we've been heading for a while. It's close to where we want to be. It's in the wings sitting with the Platonic ideals of who we think we should be.

Part of this originates in a sense of patriotism that few would recognize as such. Distributed food production is important to our security as a nation and as a species. When too much of our food is grown in other countries, when too much of our farmland is paved over for housing and strip malls, when too much of our food has to travel from the heartland or across the country or around the world, we—as a nation, a bio-region, a community—put ourselves at risk. Small farmers who nurture their soil and grow the right foods at the right time, in the right place, with the right materials will help keep our food supply safe—not to mention our air and water and land. (And yes, we realize this is somewhat subjective, but we have our own ideas of what "right" is in this case.)

For more than a decade, Rob and I have tried to support our local economy by buying local products from local businesses, even if it cost us a few dollars more. Competition between small businesses creates options that we value. We value the local economy. We value our community. Ultimately, no matter how complex the problem, we want to be more connected to our food; we want to cut the distance (in all of its translations) between us and our food; and, mostly, we want to support local farmers. But, we wanted to go further. The stage was set.

Act I: We peaked under the curtain three years ago when we joined a CSA in the Puyallup River Valley, Terry's Berries. We wanted to find a local CSA after we read about them in magazines like Organic Gardening, Sunset, Utne Reader, and Orion and books that discussed sustainability. When CSAs first started popping up in magazines, we couldn't find one to join in Pierce County. Then when we could, we couldn't afford it. Our business, White Rabbit Publishing, was a casualty of the dot-com bomb. But, three years ago, when we again had enough income to make the up front investment that most CSAs require, we read about Terry's Berries. Then we met Terry Carkner and her crew at the Tacoma Farmers Market. She still had a few spaces left for her summer share and we hopped at the chance to join.

Cool, huh? It was cool, but we weren't ready.

Let me tell you a little bit about our lives at that point. Rob and I both were fairly new to jobs that we love, but our responsibilities in our jobs grew quickly, our roles kept changing, and that took more energy and time than we'd anticipated. Plus, we were finishing our third book, Washington Disasters. On top of that, we were nearing the end of a grueling two-year stint as co-presidents of the Tahoma Audubon Society. When you are as busy as we were, something has to give. What gave was our garden, our home, and time to regularly plan meals and cook.

We turned to an easy, albeit not inexpensive, solution. Have you noticed how many good restaurants have opened in Tacoma over the last three years? We have. And, we've tried nearly every one of them. Okay, that might not be true, but we have tried quite a few of them. There are a couple that we go to again and again and again and again and ag...you get the picture. The one redemptive quality about our restaurant habit is that we choose locally-owned restaurants like Primo Grill, Pour at Four, and the Rosewood Cafe, and we avoid big chain slop joints that serve boring mass-produced pablum. Still, not a great way to save money, lose weight, eat locally, or maintain any sort of balance.

Act II: Takes place in Spring 2007. By this time we were cooking at home a little more, and I'd lost 25 pounds. The remainder of the act resembles the first. In May, we read an article in the News Tribune by Ed Murrieta, A pig dies, a meal is born, a local farmer pays her bills, about Cheryl the Pig Lady. This was followed the same week by our standard Thursday trip to the Tacoma Farmers Market where we met Cheryl Ouelette, who sold us one of two remaining half-shares for a summer worth of meat.

Then, enter Barbara Kingsolver, Alisa Smith, and J.B. MacKinnon. Late last year after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Kingsolver and Plenty (called the 100 Mile Diet in Canada) by Smith & MacKinnon, we decided we would re-enact their local-eating dramas.

We're not following this scripts exactly. We've re-written it a bit so that it's more feasible for folks who aren't quite as committed nor willing to restrict their lives as much. We also hope that this Website and blog become resources for others who want to incorporate this into their lives.

And, thus, begins Act III.

- Natalie