One Local Summer, Week 7 Babyback Ribs and Green Beans

This is somewhat of a cautionary tale about finding and remembering recipes this week. I always read the food section of the newspaper each week and I also read a variety of food blogs - recently, the folks around the country who are participating in the One Local Summer eat local challenge. Earlier this week, I remember reading more than one or two descriptions of preparing ribs. And I also saw a recipe for green beans, using a little maple syrup, that sounded interesting. Then, I happened to see that Sheridan was having Carlton Farms babyback ribs at what looked to be a good price. And I got green beans from the CSA. So, I went back to look for those recipes I'd seen. And, of course (!) I couldn't find any of them. I don't know why I read things and think I'll remember where to come back to find them. I think I need to do more bookmarking of online recipes and more cutting out of newspaper ideas.

But, obviously, there are lots of ways to cook green beans and ribs. As it turns out, we have some locally made barbecue sauce in the fridge and it seemed to make sense to use that rather than make something new from scratch - especially since it was a warm day and less time in the kitchen sounded better than more. So, the ribs got the "Ooga Booga" treatment - with advice from the butcher at Sheridan on how to cook them. And, in a happy coincidence, while looking for the previous recipes, I found a nice description of a treatment of green beans in the blog of another OLS participant: Versatile Green Beans by Ami at Writing:My Life . She used tomatoes, onions and garlic (which I had on hand), basil (which I have in the garden) and goat cheese (had a small chunk leftover from the anniversary party). I also roasted some fairly local small potatoes with a little olive oil and salt and pepper.

Here is the rundown of where our dinner tonight came from:
Babyback ribs - Carlton Farms, Yamhill Valley
Ooga Booga BBQ Sauce - made in Northeast Portland
German butterball potatoes - from "Oregon" (according to New Seasons market)
Green Beans, tomatoes, and onions- from Deep Roots Farm, our CSA
Garlic - farmer's market
Basil - our backyard
Goat cheese - Rivers Edge, Logsden, Oregon

We had spent most of the week eating leftovers from our anniversary party, and had two dinners out. So, today was really the first time I was doing any serious cooking this week.

Back From Norway - One Local Summer, Week 6

Yes, we're back from our adventures in Norway and France. More on that later.
In the meantime, I wanted to make a quick report for the One Local Summer Challenge since I missed out on weeks 2-5. And even this is a bit late, but I can chime in on the comments section.

This is not about a whole meal, but one thing that I made for our anniversary party Saturday night. We celebrated 35 years this week, so decided to have a party and invite what turned out to be about 35 friends. We had three people who were at our wedding with us - my sister, Grady's sister and our best man. We have fabulous contributions from friends and family, cooked a few things here and got a couple of items from a caterer. All in all it was a lovely evening - good food, good friends and lots of catching up.

So, one of the salads I made was pretty much all local. It was a tomato-bread salad using a recipe from one of our cooking classes taught by Ken Hoyt at "In Good Taste" Cooking School. The tomatoes and onions came from our CSA (Deep Roots Farm), garlic from another stand at the farmer's market, basil out of our garden (survived our absence - hooray!) and the bread was made at New Seasons. Here is Ken's recipe:

Tomato-Bread Salad with Basil and Capers
5 C 1/2 inch cubed French or Italian bread
1.5 lob tomatoes, diced medium
2 medium garlic cloves, minced
1/2 large red onion, diced
1/2 C fresh basil leaves, julienned
1/4 C capers, drained (I forgot these)
1/4 C olive oil
2 T red wine vinegar (I actually used a white wine vinegar because I didn't realize I was almost out of red wine vinegar)
salt and ground black pepper, to taste.

Put bread cubes in middle of 250 degree oven until bread is dried out, about 30 min.
Combine tomatoes and garlic in medium bowl; stir and let stand until juicy, about 30 min.
Add all remaining ingredients (reserving bread) and fold to combine. Ten minutes prior to serving, add the bread cubes; toss again. Adjust seasoning, including pepper, to taste.

Since I was making this the day of the party, and was just a tad bit busy, I didn't remember to take a picture. But, it both looked and tasted quite wonderful.



Later, I'll do a post on some of the local foods we ate in Norway.

Off to Norway with the Family!

We are off to Norway and then to Paris - leaving tomorrow morning. It's a family trip - Grady and I, our two kids, his sister, and her two kids. Several years ago, G and I took Aileen and Kris to Ireland and were able to visit with some of my Irish end of the family and see Arranmoor Island, home of the Boyle end of our family. Since that time, I've suggested to Grady that we should follow up with a similar family trip to Norway where much of his family originated. So, it's finally happening!

This means my blog and my weekly reports for One Local Summer will most likely be on a hiatus until early July. We return on July 2, but then head to the coast for the 4th of July holiday. I'll keep an eye out for Norwegian food specialties, but I don't know whether I'll want to spend much time in internet cafes. I hope to have things to report on when I return.

A Day at the Races

Dragon boat races - for Rose Festival here in Portland today. Grady has been practicing with the Realty Trust team 3 times a week since March. That's three 7 a.m. times per week, I should add. Oh, boy, doesn't that sound like fun. But, he did it - never missed a practice except for the two that took place while we were out of town back when they first started. So, today was the first day of racing - two heats, one at about 11 a.m. and another at 3:30 p.m. Tomorrow morning they will race again - this time in a group of other boats that had similar times to theirs. If they win the first one, they race again and possibly a 3rd time. That's it - no vast monetary prizes, just the glory and prestige of winning.

Dragonboats are large wooden boats paddled (not rowed, I was informed) by 18 people plus a drummer and a flag-catcher. The ones used for the Rose Festival races here were given to Portland by our sister city in China, Kaohsiung. There are smaller boats without the decoration that are raced year-round.

I walked over from my gym for the morning race. Ian, Liam and Graham joined me to cheer on the Realty Trust Red Dragons in their first heat. Later in the afternoon, I walked over from the east side of the river and watched the afternoon race with their coach.

Ian's picture of the Red Dragons as they were coming in for their first race. Came in 3rd, but at least they beat the Victoria's Secret Team. (How bad would that be to say you were beat by the underwear team?) Grady is in the last seat on the right (OK, that's starboard, right?) side of the boat with the tan hat (which you really can't see.)

First place in a close finish for their afternoon heat. When the flag-grabber gets the flag, that's the official end.

Coach Sue pointing out that they hadn't done very well with the precision paddling in the second race, even though they won.

Grady listening intently, of course, to the coach's comments.

On the way back up after the 1st place finish.

About 85 teams in and out, using the same eight boats, all day long. It takes a system and they have one - very organized - always four teams lining up while another four are loading and another four are racing. Grady's team is heading down the ramp and out onto the dock for their afternoon race.

These gals looked more like my kind of team actually. Cheerleaders for one of the teams - complete with poodle skirts, heart-shaped sunglasses and little white canvas shoes. They had a full selection of choreographed cheers. I wonder what time of day they practice?

Pasta with Spring Vegetables in Light, Lemony Cream Saucie - One Local Summer WEek 1

One Local Summer Begins this week. Our west region's activities will be moderated by Becke at Columbus Foodie. It's great to find a new food blog with beautiful photographs and great ideas.

We started out the week with a dinner inspired by a recipe in "The Oregonian" recently. In the category of great minds think alike, I was at Jeff's house recently and he had made the same thing. We both made several modifications, but the basic recipe was a terrific starting point. You can go to this link to see the original newspaper version.

I made made a trip to the farmer's market this weekend and had new spring veggies I wanted to use. I also had gotten some spinach fettucine at the market. A cool thing about this recipe is that it does use some cream, but it is fairly minimal, and yet still makes a very nice sauce. You reduce some chicken broth (no, not a vegetarian recipe inspite of its name) by about half, add the cream and reduce further, adding lemon zest after taking it off the heat. Then toss in the veggies, some parmesan cheese and fresh herbs.

The biggest change that both Jeff and I made was to saute the vegetables in a very small amount of oil, rather than steam them. We both wanted to use mushrooms and steamed mushrooms just doesn't sound very good at all. In mine, I used fresh peas, leeks, sweet onion, baby carrots, zucchini and shitakes. Plus, Grady had brought up some green beans from last year's CSA that we still had in the freezer, so I added some of those as well. For the fresh herbs, I used chives and basil out of our garden. The meal was completed with a salad using three types of lettuce from our garden plus some a raw version of the same things we put in the pasta.

So, in the category of local foods in this meal were all the vegetables, the pasta, chicken broth and cream. Not local in Oregon, but important, were the lemon and the parmesan.

I didn't manage to remember to take a picture before we ate the pasta. Not back in the routine yet. But, here is a substitution:

our farmer's market goodies from this week. We have joined an alternative form of a CSA with Deep Roots Farm. Instead of having a box delivered somewhere each week, this is set up as a running account balance to use at the farmer's market stands. This scenario takes some of the challenge and surprise out of having a farm share. But, since we are going to be gone a fair amount this summer, this seemed to be more practical for us this year.

Let's see.....liver?..... or shrimp?

I almost got rejected by the Red Cross on Friday. My iron level was too low for making a donation based on the first sample they took. Since they offered a chance to have a second sample taken, I agreed and that time, on my dominant hand, the iron level was right at the level needed to be eligible to give them a pint.

Which means I need to pay attention to iron intake for a while again. This has happened to me off and on when I've gone to donate blood - periodically I get rejected. And, every time that I come home and talk about needing to get more iron, Grady says I'll need to eat liver and spinach. He's so predictable. There are many foods that are rich in iron, but he always mentions those two because he knows I hate liver and like spinach only when fresh. Actually, he is remembering when his mother would have to get more iron and what she ate, at that time, was liver and spinach. It's been MANY years since he lived with her and observed this liver and spinach regimen. But, it's stuck in his replay tapes.

So, imagine my happiness when I happened to see an article about the iron content in shrimp in the May issue of "Cooking Light". Six ounces of shrimp have 4 mg of iron (compared to .5 mg in scallops). This seemed like a good excuse to have shrimp for dinner last night. And the magazine actually had two different risotto recipes involving shrimp. I made a variation on
Spinach Risotto with Shrimp and Goat Cheese. As I mentioned, I'm not a big fan of cooked spinach, so even though we had fresh spinach from the farmer's market, I substituted swiss chard out of our garden. We also did not have goat cheese, but it tasted fine with some pecorino that I did have in the fridge. I also added some mushrooms just because I had some and thought it would be good. Made for a nice simple dinner with a salad of greens out of the garden. All in all, not a high percentage of local foods - but those parts that were local could be measured in feet traveled from the backyard.

I know I have some lists of iron-rich foods somewhere, but, if you have suggestions (other than liver and spinach), please let me know.

One Local Summer 2009

I have signed up for the One Local Summer Challenge again. It is organized by the folks at the Farm to Philly blog. They start up June 1. Participating in these challenges helps me keep my attention on local eating more often and also on keeping up the blog. It will feel good to be more focused on this again.

We are trying a different approach to joining a CSA this year. I loved getting the weekly boxes from Heather at Little Frog Farm last year and joining with other folks at St.Andrews in the Farm to Congregation program. But, it really didn't make sense for us to make that trip to the pick-up point every week - not very close to us. So, there I was putting extra miles on the car in the cause of supporting local agriculture. Our friend Jeff had taken a different approach last year and we've decided to do the same thing this year. We are part of the CSA through Deep Roots Farm near Corvallis and Albany. They bring their produce to a couple of the Portland Farmer's Markets. Having a CSA share with them means you select things at their market stand instead of having a box delivered somewhere. One of those two markets is pretty close to us so it will save on the driving. Plus, for this summer, in particular, it makes a lot of sense since we will be gone quite a bit. With this arrangement, we can get what we need when we're here and not have to make arrangements for produce getting delivered while we are out of town. I will kind of miss the surprise and the challenge of figuring out to use everything that comes in the weekly delivery, but this really seems more practical for now.

Meanwhile, we've been eating lettuce and chard out of our garden pots for a few weeks now and they are doing really well so far.