Local Check-In

It's been a bit since reporting on my local eating endeavors.  The good news is that eating locally isn't feeling like some big accomplishment right now.  It's just feeling like eating good food.   The bad news is that it doesn't feel very blog-worthy.  I'll have to work on that.   Anyways, here's some yummy stuff from last week.

I canned lots of Thai-style pickled green beans and cucumbers!  They had mint, lemongrass, ginger, garlic and chilies.

 Taco salad!  The easiest meal to eat locally: LaBore lettuce, Whole Grain Milling Co. chips and black beans, homemade local corn and tomato salsa.  Fantastic!

Local camping is tough.  I remember it being easier last year.  There were homemade granola and muffins with local ingredients,  pickles, sandwiches, etc.  I relied on some non-local staples like canned beans and TVP (textured vegetable protein) for chili, but used my home-canned tomatoes and WGM chips again here.

 Kinda looks like dog food on chips, but I assure you it was really good!  But we were really hungry after swimming and being lakeside for about 3 hours, so maybe it wasn't as good as I remembered???  I do know that it was filling as hell and warm on a really chilly evening!

I was weeding the garden a couple days ago and look what I saw: Trouble cat has taken to napping in the beets, carrots and garlic!  Must be cool among those plants because she didn't even move when I started snapping pictures of her.

Tonight I'll be at the Ramsey County Library talking about local foods for a Simple, Good and Tasty event.  Here's the link in case you're in the area.

The Camping Local Challenge

Eatting locally while camping for 3 days is a challenge unto itself-

I did my best- and here's what we packed:

The first night we had beer brats with tons of sauerkraut and coleslaw. I made the brats with locally grown wheat gluten and Vine Park brewery beer (Mai Bock). The coleslaw is made with locally grown cabbage. I was bummed to not have any plain homemade sauerkraut ready for the trip, but I do like the Eden Organic variety.

My favorite way to eat vegetables while camping is to pack the prepped vegetables in a big bag and the dressing in a little jar and throw it all in the cooler. The coleslaw was super easy to mix up at the campsite and I marinated the zucchini, sweet onion, and tomato salad for a full day in its dressing before enjoying it- yum! It was really nice to have fresh vegetables while camping- I usually use just frozen or dried veggies while camping.

Another night I fried up a spice blend of mustard seeds, cumin seeds, coriander and garlic power with frozen locally grown potatoes and peas in my trusty cast iron skillet- the only pan I ever have to bring on camping trips. They were thawed nicely by the second night and mixed well with Jyoti lentils and vegetables. Too bad I didn't double the amount of food, though. We all wanted more of this!

One of the quickest meals was "chili over chips", pretty much my favorite camping food, next to tofu jerky (I use the basic recipe from Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard's book, How it All Vegan).

Quickest Camping Chili

Just pour this chili over locally made tortilla chips or cornbread for a quick and hearty meal!

1 can diced fire-roasted tomatoes with green chiles

1 can unseasoned chili beans (or kidney beans)

1 c TVP (textured vegetable protein)

1 tsp. cumin

1/2 tsp. garlic powder

2 tsp. chili powder

1 tsp. salt

Water

Pack the TVP and premeasured spices in a little container (Try packing these ingredients in a 16 oz. glass bowl with resealable lid and then use it as your chili bowl- less waste and less to pack).

Heat a cast iron skillet over a camp stove or open fire. Pour the can of tomatoes and drained can of beans into the skillet. Add the TVP mixture and then enough water to form a thick soup consistency. Stir frequently for couple of minutes, adding water as needed as the TVP absorbs the liquid. Serve all alone or over cornbread or chips. I served it over Whole Grain Milling chips and put some homemade garden pickles on the side. And locally made root beer afterward!

Desserts and snacks are pretty important for camping. I made 3 pounds of tofu into jerky and we nearly finished it off on Day 2. There were 24 gluten-free chocolate chip cookies (locally milled rice flour) and the makings for plenty of 'smores (not at all local, but very necessary). I also packed a double batch of homemade granola (locally grown oats and maple syrup and home-dried Michigan blueberries), Wisconsin nectarines, and my favorite trail mix.

I was sad when my trail mix filled with raw almonds, raw walnuts, dried cranberries, mini chocolate chips and hibiscus salt melted together in a big hunk in the hot sun. But I was happy when it cooled and I ate trailmix smothered in chocolate. I just might do that on purpose from now on.

We all had a great time, but it's nice to be back home and in my own home. Here's the wigwam the kids built... Don't worry- we didn't let them sleep there during the crazy thunderstorms.

A Camping We Will Go...

A few times a year we pack the Golf up to the ceiling with gear and head to the the MN Bluegrass and Old Time Music Association Festival.  I won't lie.  I'm in it for the s'mores, outdoor morning yoga and forced laziness more than the music.  But do I LOVE square dancing.  

Since it's a regular occurance, I've created an electronic list of things to pack.  Anyone else do this?  I can rest easy when I know that everything I need is on the list and as long as I pack this, I won't have forgotten anything.  Of course, every year the list gets a little longer...

We also have a file for the housesitter.  I also recommend creating this if you ever need to have someone take care of your house.  We include info about the animals' care, the plant watering, emergency contacts, etc.  And the best part is that it's ready to go at a moment's notice!

I love having a few special treats for the camping trip.  We generally eat pretty healthily while camping, but we also need some fun treats.  How did I not know that Liz Lovely makes gluten free vegan cookies?  I'm a big fan of the regular vegan cookies, but now my sweetie can eat them, too!  [Uh. Oh.  That means less for me...]

I got these at Fast and Furless, a super awesome vegan shop on Franklin Ave. in Minneapolis.
A recent perk at work was samples of this new product: Little single serving pouches of organic peanut butter and almond butter.  Normally I'd say, "What a waste of packaging!"  But for camping, these make perfect sense.  I plan on squeezing some straight into my mouth.  
Also from Fast and Furless are my favorite snack.  Mike and the kids have never even seen these because I always eat the entire box while driving home from Fast and Furless!  

I restrained myself to only 1/4 the box for the purposes of this trip, though.

Another camping staple is tofu jerky.  I loosely base my recipe on Sarah Kramer and Tanya Barnard's from How it All Vegan.  But really, I don't use any recipe.  I just dump tons of smoked paprika, cumin, black pepper, garlic, tamari, liquid smoke, maple syrup, and a smidge of balmasic vinegar on the tofu, marinate overnight, and then bake slowly until most of the moisture is gone.  Here it is, ready to be baked:
Pretty much the only time the kids will eat black pepper is on this tofu.  We all devour it.

I'll be back after this weekend.  Don't try to rob my house while I'm gone or my housesitter and vicious dog will slay you.

Camping Food

Preparing for camping is one of my favorite things to do. When I'm packing away our supplies, I get the very same feeling I used to get when playing house on the front porch, weaving together baskets out of monkey grass to store away the berries and acorns I'd gathered from the neighborhood. Only now I'm old enough to actually identify and eat the berries I find.

Camping involves the ultimate combination of planning (including list-making) and food: Two of my favorite things. I keep a camping supply list on my computer so that I'll never forget to pack something. And about 2 weeks ago I started planning what food we'd pack.

Did I mention we're only camping for 3 days and 2 nights?

Yeah, I know I make it a bigger deal than I need to...But that's part of the fun!
And when camping with 2 hungry and very energetic 8 year old boys, you need some serious food. Plus, when your family is eating organic, local (or fair trade), gluten-free, and mostly homemade, it takes some time to make all this!



Here's what we're packing:
2 jars of homemake TVP and kidney bean chili (For "frito" pie!)
1 jar of homemade mexican style black beans
1 jar of homemade, local salsa
2 bags of chips (local org. tortilla chips and organic "fritos")
a triple-batch of homemade tofu jerky
4 ears of local org. corn
1.5 pounds Door County dark cherries
1 pound local org. green beans
3 Larabars
1/2 pound instant hummus
1 can org. tomato sauce
bulk polenta
1 pound org. local hemp granola
Org. local popcorn kernels
Org. graham crackers
2 boxes of gluten-free crachers
Fair trade chocolate
Vegan marshmallows
Org. peanuts in the shell
4 batches of homemade cookies
12 homemade mulberry/cherry/maple sodas

I was worried about not having enough food. Now I'm worried about having too much junk and not enough veggies. But really, isn't camping is all about eating junk food? Or maybe that's just my idea of camping?

St. Croix Adventures

Yesterday our family embarked on a journey into the wilderness. Okay, we just went to a state park, but it felt eons away from the city. We went to William O'Brien state park on the St. Croix river to spend the day canoing, picnicking, and swimming.

Now it probably wasn't the smartest idea for two folks who have never so much as touched a canoe to decide to go on a 2 hour canoe trip on the windiest day of the year with two restless 8-year-olds...But we were feeling adventurous! So we rented a canoe, two paddles, and 4 life jackets and set sail. Except the sailing wasn't exceptionally smooth. It was more like frantically paddling upstream both ways, zig-zagging across the river so much that our short loop probably quadrupled in mileage.

Is there some secret to canoing? It looks so simple in movies and from my usual landlocked view. Perhaps Mike and I didn't have our rhythm right. Or maybe it was the kids deciding to STAND UP and both lean over one side of the canoe, sending us tilting perilously close to the water. Or maybe we had the boat backwards or something (is there a front?). Or maybe the wind really did make our trip be upstream both ways. Whoever we decide to blame, it was pretty stressful trying to keep going one direction and avoiding getting stuck in the shallow parts. But there were moments when we looked up into the trees and the sky and remembered, "Oh, yeah. This is really beautiful!"


It didn't look like a sunny day- in fact, it was downright cloudy with storms coming in that night. Both Mike and I got sunburned kinda bad, but the kids were fine with their farmer tans already established for the summer.

After we got safely back to shore we went to the beach and swam for a little bit and the kids worked on a sand castle. I layed on the beach and tried not to fall asleep. Then we found a shady spot to cook dinner and enjoyed some potatoes and refried beans alongside rice-veggie burgers. Oh, yeah- and chips and soda of course. No eating local today. {wait, that's not true. the corn chips were local and so were the frozen potatoes} In true camping style, we ate these out of paper cups.



We finished eating just as the clouds started rolling in and made it home before the biggest part of the storm hit St. Paul. And just a few minutes later? A tornado warning for our beloved park. We made it out just in time. Good thing we decided not to make it a camping trip!