Portuguese-ish clams and sausage, except I basically barely followed the recipe. I used soft, [...]]]> I have all these tabs open so I don’t lose track of the recipes, but my browser is starting to drag … so that I can close them, here is what we have been making, in no particular order:

Portuguese-ish clams and sausage, except I basically barely followed the recipe. I used soft, not cured linguiça from Uli’s, and more sausage and fewer clams, and I added kale. It was delicious.

Leibovitz’s marshmallows!!! with the egg whites left over from …

Goat milk ice cream, sweetened with honey, with a strawberry swirl. Except I am not very good at using the ice cream maker, so it isn’t really very icecreamey. But it is super tasty. I added some freshly ground white pepper to the strawberry mixture, which is pretty awesome.

Candied ginger (Leibovitz again) so that I could make …

Blueberry ginger jam, which turned out pretty dang good too.

Ramp greens kimchi, except I used onion greens and a bit of garlic scape, because that is what I had. I haven’t tried it yet, but it smells fantastic, and Garth made some fried rice with it and pronounced it “omg noms.”

Rhubarb liqueur, still steeping, and strawberry vodka (Lebovitz *again*!).

Garth’s home-cured and home-smoked bacon.

Garth’s home-cured and home-smoked HAM.

We’ve also frozen about 10 lbs of cherries, with more coming soon, and yesterday we blanched and froze a GIANT cauliflower in florets. A few weeks ago we had a good canning day, with pickled asparagus, cherry jam, strawberry jam (which didn’t gel, so it’s strawberry syrup), strawberry-rhubarb jam, pickled scapes, and sweet and spicy pickled rhubarb. There has been beef jerkying, and marinated and grilled top round made into burritos, and short ribs on the grill with homemade cherry-rhubarb barbecue sauce, and roasted chicken that later turned into chicken salad and also a tortilla soup with last year’s frozen corn and the last can of home-canned tomatoes. Fried chicken. Fresh potato and homegrown fava bean salad. Fresh cabbage and carrot coleslaw. And tonight, our four tiny ripe tomatillos from the garden, combined with with storebought avocado (only way we can get it), Laughing Crow garlic and Persephone onions (from the handy farmstand at Bay Hay), home-grown and -pickled jalapeños, and Laughing-Crow-intern-grown cilantro all combined to become approximately this avocado salsa verde, which we put on our grilled scallop tacos.

Oh yeah, and we’ve been gardening too. The fall brassicas are in, along with the winter’s carrots and leeks (I hope). If all goes well, there are 3 pigs coming in a couple of weeks (alive!).

Sunday night:

Alton Brown’s Mighty Duck, with homegrown duck (with Laughing Crow garlic, organic orange juice, market mixed kale [...]]]> So I’ve been feeling bad about not cooking the ducks from a while back. Garth, meantime, has gotten into charcuterie. This has led to an accidental convergence of Meals of Duck here at Dropstoneland.

Sunday night:

Alton Brown’s Mighty Duck, with homegrown duck (with Laughing Crow garlic, organic orange juice, market mixed kale from Stoney Plains, and Bluebird Grains farro/emmer.

Last year for my Dark Days debut, I made roasted duck with some other stuff. I wasn’t super impressed, and in the comments, a couple people suggested the Alton Brown recipe. So I aimed for that this week, though I used plain orange juice instead of pineapple-orange.

Crispy duck after Alton Brown	Kale in duck fat, and farro boiled with duck stock and a bit of the duck brine	Plated duck, kale, and farro

Duck Week Meal #1 Ingredients roundup!
Homegrown: duck (Canadian organic feed), thyme
Grown by people we know: garlic & shallots (Laughing Crow),
Local sources: kale (Stoney Plains Farm — used instead of chard); Bluebird Grains farro/emmer
Organic: Orange juice
The usual exemptions: Salt, peppercorns, sherry vinegar (Spanish).

Very simple meal, ingredient-wise, and though there seem to be a lot of steps it was pretty easy in terms of labor, too. The duck recipe included the greens, and we added the farro as a side dish in place of a rice-ish dish — a brown rice or hearty white would also suit. I added a dash of the brine to the grain cooking liquid, as well as a bit of duck stock, which definitely gave flavor and helped it stand up to the rest of the meal. Super tasty all around, though I was a bit confused at his cutting instructions (not to mention highly entertained by the instruction to “remove the popup thermometer”).

Monday night: duck prosciutto pizza à la Mrs. Wheelbarrow and Charcutepalooza.

Duck prosciutto pizza #1, in the oven.	Ingredients for duck prosciutto pizza, looking handsome.	Finished pizzas.

SUPER successful. I followed the dough directions (except for the chives) because we usually make one specific pizza dough recipe, and I thought it would be fun to mix it up. It turned out really well, though it was a bit soft and I punched holes through the second dough ball. I think I will always brush crusts with olive oil in the future; it made them super crispy and tasty.
I had no arugula so I blanched some baby kale immediately after the potatoes, and used them instead to form the bed for the duck egg. I also used pesto from homegrown garlic and basil (imported Italian olive oil) instead of arugula pesto, and instead of the garlic scape pesto I was looking for — mostly because I found the basil pesto first, as it was on the top layer of the freezer.

Duck Week Meal #2 Ingredients roundup!
Homegrown: duck (Canadian organic feed), basil & garlic in the pesto, duck egg, cayennes for red pepper flakes
Grown by people we know: potatoes (Laughing Crow as usual)
Local sources: kale (Stoney Plains Farm), mozzarella (Golden Glen)
Organic, non-local: Wheat in dough (Utah-grown)
West-coast!: Olive oil! Hooray for non-imported!
The usual exemptions: Salt, pepper, yeast, parmigiano cheese

Wednesday night: Cassoulet.

This was mostly Garth’s meal to make, starting with the confit of the duck legs a long while back. But as far as I know he followed Julia’s recipe more or less, except for the inclusion of some wine and a quart jar of tomatoes, and the use of goat chunks instead of lamb. Also we have no fresh parsley, and no thyme to speak of. Julia had some other super-complicated-seeming instructions that we didn’t follow, but …

Garth’s blurry picture:

And Garth’s description of the recipe-ish.

Duck Week Meal #3 Lauren’s unofficial ingredients roundup!
Homegrown: confit duck legs (Canadian organic feed); goat (organic fed from various sources), a kaffir lime leaf
Locally grown by people we know: pork meat for sausage and as chunks, from Within Reach Neighborhood Farm; bay leaf
Home-processed from local sources: tomatoes distributed by All One Family Farm;
Local sources: white beans (Willie Greens)
Homemade from non-local sources: bread (organic flour from Utah)
The usual exemptions: Salt, pepper, cloves, yeast, wine, red wine vinegar.

If you want to get on the [...]]]> Wow, that was fast. After the last batch of 75 didn’t all sell, I was thinking we’d have to do at least two days at market. But one day plus some excellent word-of-mouth plus everyone stocking up for the winter means we are sold out already.

If you want to get on the waiting list, you can fill out the form as usual (see below). Otherwise please click here to sign up on our mailing list to get notified of the first batch in the spring! At this point we’re thinking probably May.

If you missed out, we have some recommendations for chickens available at markets in Seattle. Let us know if you are looking.

Thanks, everyone, for your support. We are happy to be part of the agriculture and deliciousness community.

Details here: http://www.dropstonefarms.com/2010/08/chickens-round-3-pickup-august-21-23

Order here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-3

Skip the deposit, since the mail probably wouldn’t get to us in time.

We are now accepting [...]]]> ** UPDATE! 7/22 **
While most of the details here are still correct, this batch of chickens is long gone. We’re now accepting orders for the second batch. Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-2.
This batch will be ready July 31. The rest of the logistics as described below still apply.

We are now accepting reservations for our first batch of chickens! Sign up here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-1.

We are aiming for these chickens to be ready the second weekend of July, the 10th-11th. They are pastured this year at Day Road/Suyematsu Farm, home of Laughing Crow Farm, the Bainbridge Island Winery, and more. For now, we will take reservations for approximately 60 birds out of a flock of 75. We opened signups to our notification list subscribers first, so there are about 25 left unclaimed. (Subscribe here for priority notification next time!)

For your reference when ordering, we will have at least two more batches of 60-75 birds, approximately 4 weeks apart. So you can expect to be able to order more in about a month.

The cost will be $5 per pound total, with a $5 deposit per bird, to be paid when you reserve them, to cover initial feed costs. This deposit will be deducted from your total when you pick them up.

Most of the details are the same as last year:

• We are raising a breed of chickens that is developed from French and Amish heritage breeds: “Freedom Rangers” from JM Hatchery.
• The chickens are fed Certified Organic grains grown in Canada, and the pasture is untreated.
• The WSDA permit that applies to farms of our size requires that the end consumer (you) pick up the birds on farm within 48 hours of processing. If you can’t make it in person, you can have someone else pick them up for you.
• Orders will be allocated first-come, first-served. We will take reservations for fewer chickens than we have in each batch, in case of flock loss. This batch consists of 75 chickens, so we’ll take orders for 55 to start with, and keep a waiting list after that. Folks on the waiting list are likely to be able to get chickens.
• In the unfortunate, and (we hope) unlikely case of significant flock loss, the last to sign up will be the first to have their deposits refunded and their orders canceled, and our sincere apologies — and priority ordering on the next batch.
• We will also likely have “factory seconds” available for less — as a result of errors in processing, these may have broken wings or legs, or need to be skinned, or otherwise be cosmetically damaged but perfectly safe and delicious. Please let us know if you would like to be on the list for these!

More info about our chickens and the ordering process is available on our About our Freedom Ranger Chickens (formerly called Colored Range chickens) page.

New this year: Your order will not be considered finalized until we receive a deposit from you! You can send a check for $5 per bird to the address listed on the signup form. If you prefer to pay with cash, or in person, or via trade, or some other alternative arrangement, let us know and we can work it out.

Reserve your chickens here: http://tinyurl.com/chickens2010-1

Please feel free to let interested friends & family know. And as always, please contact us with any questions, comments, concerns, or ideas, or just to say hi — we love to hear from you!

So once I had this sour cream, I froze 3/4 of it but we still needed to [...]]]> For some reason I got all het up to make some sour cream this week. I followed this recipe, because I didn’t realize Mother Earth News had one too. But they are pretty much the same.

So once I had this sour cream, I froze 3/4 of it but we still needed to use up a half-pint of it that I kept fresh in the fridge. We also have a LOT of eggs (want eggs? email me!!) and Garth loves black beans almost as much as he loves ketchup. So: huevos rancheros, only mostly following the recipe (as usual).

• Black beans from Alvarez Farm (150+ miles, but just barely), simmered for a long time with pre-fried Skagit River Ranch bacon and Laughing Crow Farm onions, and a bay leaf from our farmers’ market.
• Fresh tortillas from the awesome tortilla-maker machine at Central Market! (Now that we have lard we might be making our own tortillas soon!)
• Salsa: onion from Laughing Crow, organic storebought :( tomatoes, homegrown jalapeños, Laughing Crow hot peppers that we dried at home last summer (not sure what variety, but I thought they looked a lot like Bulgarian Carrot peppers). Obviously did not use cilantro, as it is, you know, February.
• Homegrown eggs! as always. Fried in my happy cast iron pan with leftover tasty bacon fat.
• Homemade sour cream with cream from Fresh Breeze dairy, also as always. I used Nancy’s organic full-fat plain yogurt as the starter.

Verdict: YUM. Will definitely be making this again. I usually order this when out for breakfast because I don’t eat meat whose origins are not intimately known to me, and it’s often one of the only vegetarian meals on a breakfast menu. But the addition of the little bit of bacon in the beans is fantastic and adds a nice depth to the whole thing. I also cooked the salsa for a good long while, which made it caramelizey, and neutralized the acids a bit, mellowing it out — though it still had some good heat from the peppers.

Homegrown: eggs, jalapeños
Island-grown: onions, hot peppers, garlic
Local (150 miles): cream for sour cream; bacon; bay leaf
Local (Washington): beans!
Locally-made from unknown ingredients: tortillas!
Unknown, organic: tomatoes :(

—

We were out of town this weekend, [...]]]> Oh no, I just found this post that I wrote last Tuesday (so, still late for week 9) and thought I published, but apparently didn’t! It was late already so I guess a week and two days late isn’t any different from just two days late.

—

We were out of town this weekend, in Reno to visit family. Reno’s always a bit hard for me as I have apparently-arbitrary criteria for the meat I’ll eat, and it’s always seemed to be not a terribly diverse town, food-wise. But this time, formerly-vegetarian friend Phoebe came over from Davis to hang out, and took us to the enjoyable Pneumatic Diner. While there, I asked the staff about the food co-op I’d heard existed. We got directions and headed over to try to figure out what to make for dinner for my dad’s household.

After wandering — pacing is more like it, really, given the store’s teensy layout — for a while, we ended up with the localest versions we could find of: potatoes; leeks; garlic; kale; carrots. I don’t know what was from Nevada and what from California, but I opted to bypass the versions with the purple big-organic plastic labels, and get the ones with no labels … somehow that makes me think that it’s more like what I’m looking for (I may be a sucker). We also snagged a nice-looking steak from a Nevada rancher, and some locally-bagged (i.e. not Earthbound) baby greens, and some little chunks of parmigiano imported by a California company, Cowgirl Creamery.

The whole grocery bag full turned into a delicious soup, except the greens and parm of course, which were a nice salad. Even the resident kid liked the “green thing” (the kale, which I had let him know he might not like, and that that was OK with me).

Anyway, I was pretty proud of with how we ended up, as well as with Reno’s apparently growing local food scene. Go, co-ops, go!

We also had a field trip to a farm, on which more to come later.

We have been talking for years about making meat loaf, which Garth remembers fondly from his childhood. But his mom used the recipe from the back of the Quaker Oats box, and [...]]]> Still no pictures, as my small camera is full and I am still too scared of the new big fancy camera.

We have been talking for years about making meat loaf, which Garth remembers fondly from his childhood. But his mom used the recipe from the back of the Quaker Oats box, and I wanted to do something a bit closer to home. I looked around a bit for recommendations, then mostly made it up as I went along, using what was on hand. I did have to compromise a bit though as he was not willing to give up the ketchup on top.

The mostly-local part: the loaf.

I caramelized some onions for a long time in butter (organic, co-op, non-local). When they were nice and brown I put a bottle of Pike Pale Ale, brewed at Pike Brewing, and let it sit on low heat for a while, just barely simmering, then dumped in the remains of a freezer bag of home-ground bread crumbs so they could get moist before mixing, to keep them from drying out the meat loaf.
While that was happening, I grated a giant carrot from the garden in the food processor, as well as a few cloves of garlic. I removed two Skagit River Ranch sausages from their casing and put them in a bowl with two pounds of ground beef from our cow. The beef is pretty lean so I also melted a spoonful of home-rendered lard from a local pig.
I carefully mixed everything together in a big bowl, stirring with a spatula instead of kneading with my hands, as I read that kneading dries it out also. I also added two little eggs from our hens as a binder.

Onion, garlic: Laughing Crow Farm, Bainbridge Island
Beer: Pike Brewing, Seattle
Eggs, carrot, thyme: the yard
Ground beef: from our quarter cow, raised by On the Lamb Farm in Arlington
Pork Italian sausage: Skagit River Ranch
Lard: home-rendered from a pig grown on Bainbridge Island
Bread crumbs: the last of several months’ worth of home-ground crumbs from both home-grown and store-bought bread, kept in the freezer

On a silpat-lined sheet pan (with edges!) I shaped it into one small loaf of about 1/3 of the meat, for dinner, and one large loaf, composed of the rest of the meat, for future sandwiches. Following Alton’s instructions, I put it all in the oven at 325° and set the timer for 10 minutes.

The not-local-at-all part: the glaze.
In my favorite tiny cast iron pan, I mixed the following:
Ketchup, Worcestershire sauce, sriracha, and I don’t even remember what other things, all from jars of indeterminate origin. Oh, and a little bit of local honey from Pike Place Market.

Alton said to brush the glaze on after it had been cooking for ten minutes, so I did. I did it again a little while later when I checked on the temperature. The little loaf hit temp first, of course, so we took it out and served it up while we waited for the big one to finish.

My verdict: Yum! Not dry at all — plenty soft and flavorful.
Garth’s verdict: “Not much like my childhood meatloaf. It was better. It tasted like food.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to come between him and his ketchup, though.

Our pretty Blue Slate hen turkey met an [...]]]> I was home not-quite-sick-but-not-great on Monday, the solstice, so we built a big fire in the fireplace and did our Solstice stockings at noon instead of after work as planned. And we cooked all day, which is what really makes it a holiday, I think.

Our pretty Blue Slate hen turkey met an untimely end back in October, about four weeks ahead of schedule, when she got over the fence into the neighbor dogs’ yard. Poor girl. They didn’t kill her, but we had to. Wanting to make the best of it, we were able to salvage about 3/4 of the meat, only discarding the portions with puncture wounds and bleeding.

After also checking Julia, Bittman, and some butchery books we have around, I consulted the one with the best photos — The River Cottage Meat Book — for info on breaking down a bird, since it’s not something I’m very good at. I’m the Evisceratrix, but a carver I am not. At the same time, also in the Meat book, I noticed the author suggested using turkey legs to make coq au vin rather than a, well, coq. So when I bagged up Poor Girl, I set aside the legs, thighs and drumsticks still connected, in their own bag, ready to be coqauvinified.

We started by cubing and frying Garth’s home-cured bacon, made of Skagit River Ranch pork belly. Removed that from the pan and added one chopped shallot, organically grown by Alvarez Farm just outside of the 150 mile range, over near Yakima. Removed the shallot and then pan fried the turkey legs, separated into thighs and drumsticks, which we’d lightly rolled in flour seasoned with salt and pepper.

And then! We have hit a milestone in our cooking lives! We added a quarter cup of vermouth (it called for brandy, but we had none) and lit it on fire, on purpose! It was neat. Whoosh! Then chicken and vermouth were removed, and wine went in to deglaze, and then some stock. The whole mess — bacon, shallot, and turkey legs, plus chopped homegrown carrot, thyme, rosemary, parsley, and market bay leaves, and homegrown and -canned tomatoes went in to the pan. At that point it just simmered in a 250° oven until the turkey was fally aparty — a couple of hours at least. Then we put it back on the burner, removed all the solids from the broth, and added some butter and a couple pinches of flour and whisked to make a thick, delicious gravy.

I also made some quick oven fries from Yukon Golds grown by farmer Laura at the Soup Garden here on Bainbridge — just toss the cut potatoes with some oil, salt, pepper, and minced garlic (Laughing Crow, as usual). If the fries are accompanying burgers or something less rich and flavorful than coq au vin, I often also add ground cumin and cayenne. I cook them at about 425° until the fattest fry is cooked all the way through.

Coq au vin and oven fries, garnished with homegrown parsley, and served with island-grown and -produced wine, made for a fantastic Solstice meal and celebration of the past year and the year to come with the returning light.

Homegrown: turkey, carrots, tomatoes, parsley, rosemary, thyme
Bainbridge Island farms & market: garlic, potatoes, bay, drinking wine
Local-ish: shallot (Alvarez)
Organic: butter (Organic Valley)
Unknown: the usual (salt pepper oil), cooking wine (from somewhere in France), vermouth

Looking for something easy early last week, I fell back on the category of meals that we call “piles.” Food piles generally consist of leftover meat if there is any, whatever veggies are available, and [...]]]> … another “part 1″ because we eat piles so much, I am pretty sure they’ll come up again.

Looking for something easy early last week, I fell back on the category of meals that we call “piles.” Food piles generally consist of leftover meat if there is any, whatever veggies are available, and one of the following:

• Potatoes — a potato pile is a hash (sometimes served with a fried egg on top)
• Rice — a pile on rice is stir fry
• Eggs — a pile built in a cast iron pan easily turns into a frittata or faux-frittata
• Pasta — a pile tossed with pasta is a variant of carbonara (we often do the thing with the raw egg on the hot pasta)
• Stock — a pile built in a stock pot becomes soup.

Feeling possessive of our potatoes*, since our crop basically failed this year, we have been eating less hash and more of other types of piles. This week I was inspired to make pasta, so pasta-pile it was.

I made homemade pasta with homegrown eggs (thanks ducks) and organic wheat from Utah, following local food friend Anne’s recipe more or less (I haven’t used olive oil, but I intend to try).

While the pasta dough was resting, I peeled and cubed a medium-sized delicata squash that we grew. I sautéed it in olive oil (not organic) at medium-high heat to get some nice caramelization on the cubes. Towards the end I sprinkled some organic sugar on them to see what would happen, and it made an even nicer brown crispy sweet crust on the cubes. Non-local, but so tasty! I removed the squash cubes from the pan and set them aside.

A quick (because it was COLD out there!!) check outside revealed that our homegrown kale was either uncovered so frozen, or covered so under a sheet of frozen plastic — so, figuring that frozen kale is frozen kale, we grabbed some we’d blanched and frozen this summer when our market boothmates, Terra Bella Farm, had surplus. I added the chopped kale to some chopped market leek from Persephone Farms (Indianola, just off the island) in the same pan I used for the squash.

As the veggies were sautéeing, I boiled the pasta and dug around in the fridge to find some smoked peppered salmon I bought at my favorite fishmonger, Pure Food Fish at Pike Place Market. I don’t know how local the fish is, though it is surely Pacific salmon. I should’ve asked, but it was the end of the day and frantic, and I was trying to catch a ferry …

I suppose I also could have left the smoked salmon out of this dish, but when the pasta was done and I tossed it all together, the soft, smoky, peppery salmon turned out to go really well with the sweet squash and leek and the toothy kale and pasta.

Homegrown: eggs, delicata
Bainbridge Island Farmers’ Market: leeks, kale
Seattle market(s): Smoked salmon
Organic, non-local: wheat, sugar
Unknown: olive oil, salt, spices on the salmon. And the parmigiano cheese obviously, but we just can’t manage to give it up.

* We have since secured plenty of storage potatoes from other farmers, and are feeling well-armed now.