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 :(

There had just been a Dark Days email list thread about what to do with winter squash, and I thought the squash mac & cheese sounded fantastic, so I improvised. We don’t have a pasta extruder (?) so I made some short wide pastas from organic flour (Utah) and homegrown eggs, and mostly followed the recipe … except I used a homegrown acorn squash*, a homemade chicken stock cube, half-and-half (Fresh Breeze Farms), full-fat homemade ricotta from Fresh Breeze cream, Tillamook cheddar cheese (non-organic but non-rBST too) and an artisanal parmigiano reggiano imported by an independent cheese company in California. The recipe turned out great — more of a casserole than a cheese saucey slippery thing, but that’s OK with me; I like casseroles.

Rounded off with a fresh salad of greens grown by Butler Green Farms, this made a lovely warm homey meal. And pretty, too; I should get back into the habit of taking pictures.

Homegrown: squash; chicken stock; eggs for pasta
Homemade from local ingredients: ricotta
Homemade from organic ingredients: pasta (flour); bread crumbs for mac & cheese (ground up by me)
Island-grown: pork; garlic; salad greens
Local: half-and-half
Local-ish: Tillamook cheddar cheese
Happy: parm
Unknown: red wine vinegar; soy sauce; salt; nutmeg; cayenne; olive oil.

* After I cut its top off, I doubted my original idea, as the recipe calls for peeling and cubing it, and acorn squash are so deeply grooved on the sides that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to peel it effectively without wasting lots of squashflesh. Here is my current method, which seemed to work OK: I peeled what I could reach (the peaks) with a vegetable peeler. Then after cutting the whole squash in half, I used the big heavy knife to cut it along the valleys — that is, I made several spears with half a valley on each edge and a (naked) peak in the middle. Then I used a paring knife to trim the skin from the sides of each spear. It worked pretty well, and wasn’t even as fraught with danger of stabbing oneself in the hand as I had worried.

The first step (after eating delicious cinnamon rolls) was to find and cut down suitable hardwood trees and/or branches of 3-6 inches in diameter. I stayed out of the way for that, so no dramatic photos of timber falling (also no photos of Garth in his silly-looking hardhat with attached ear protection). But there were no chainsaw-related casualties, so that’s good.

The process is simple, if somewhat time-consuming, but once you get a rhythm down it goes pretty smoothly, assembly-line style … though we learned it would work better with a corded drill; the battery life on our 3 drills was our limiting factor.

You take your 5/16″ drill bit and put a bunch of holes in your logs, about 4 inches apart, in a diamond pattern. After you drill up a log, hand it over to the hammering section, where the next person puts one little plug into each hole and hammers it in. This was my favorite job.

Garth inserts inoculated dowels into drilled holes

Log with plugs

Plugged log, with wax

And now, we wait, and keep them from getting too dry (water them or cover with burlap or shade cloth). And in the fall, we harvest (we hope) lots and lots of organic local shiitake mushrooms! I’m already planning lots of beef stew …

I found Julia Child’s recipe (login probably required, sorry) from a 1987 issue of the New York Times, and since Julia has never steered me wrong, I went with it, with some modifications, as noted below.

Julia’s ingredient list

2 large carrots
2 medium onions
2 tender ribs of celery (I omitted this as I do not have any growing currently)
2 medium-sized leeks, white and tender green parts only (I used several small ones)
.5 teaspoon dried tarragon
Salt and freshly ground white pepper to taste
2.5 pounds cut-up frying chicken, legs or thighs or breasts (with bone), or a mixture of these (I deboned and chopped up the chicken into bite-size pieces — I didn’t want partygoers to have to try to remove meat from bones in plates balanced on their laps, and I didn’t want to deal with the degreasing required if using skin-on chicken parts. Also, because I use homemade chicken stock that has plenty of gelatin and flavor, I was not worried about losing that benefit of boiling the bones in the soup.)
1.5 cups dry white French vermouth (I omitted this because of a pregnant partygoer. I substituted about a third of a cup of lemon juice, for the acid, and more stock.)
1.5 to 2 cups chicken broth (I used the aforementioned homemade chicken stock, which we reduce down quite a lot and then freeze in ice cube trays.)
.5 cup heavy cream
1.5 teaspoons cornstarch
6 egg yolks
3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley. (I omitted this, because I forgot to bring the stems I’d just picked.)

The steps are simple, up until the end. Julienne the vegetables — I used a mandoline slicer for the carrots, but did the rest by hand, and actually just sliced the onion thinly rather than julienning it. Toss all veggie sticks in a bowl with some salt and pepper and the tarragon, and in your big dutch oven or stock pot, layer a third of the veggies, half the chicken, half of the remaining veggies, the other half of the chicken, and the rest of the veggies. Add your vermouth (lemon juice) and stock just to cover.

Julia says you can stop here and refrigerate for several hours to finish up later, so we packed up and took everything with us to finish at the party.

Simmer for 25-30 minutes or until chicken is done. At this point Julia says to strain it, degrease the broth, and season. I just poured most of it through a strainer into a bowl, and didn’t worry too much about the dregs left in the pot. (I could do this because I used skinned meat. If using skin-on meat, you’ll definitely want to degrease.)

While the chicken simmers, you whisk the cornstarch and cream together, and in a large bowl whisk the egg yolks. Add the cream mixture to the large bowl and stir. Gradually add the hot broth to the egg & cream mixture, whisking the whole time. I used a ladleful at a time, or if you have a helper or a container that’s easy to pour, you could just pour in a slow steady stream. Be careful not to dump it all in at once, lest you accidentally cook the eggs suddenly. When it’s all mixed, return it all to the pot with the chicken and veggies, and bring it up to heat, but do not let it simmer, or the eggs will curdle. Not that it’s a big deal if they do — but it spoils the perfection of the beautiful creamy rich broth (which is really more like a sauce at this point).

Serve with crusty bread, or over noodles or boiled potatoes. Garnish with the chopped parsley.

I wish I’d gotten pictures, as it was quite pretty as soups go. I will definitely be making it again, though, so I’ll try to remember to update then. It seemed to be a success overall, which is always a relief when cooking a recipe for the first time, for others.

Homegrown: chicken, chicken stock, leeks, carrots, forgotten parsley, eggs
Bainbridge Island: onions (Laughing Crow Farm)
Washington: Fresh Breeze cream as usual
Unknown: salt, pepper, tarragon, lemon juice, cornstarch (but it’s advertised as non-genetically modified!).

One thing we know: we’re not going to grow produce for sale this year. We’ll grow to feed ourselves, as usual, but not worry about selling. This turns out to be very liberating! We can choose the varieties we want, rather than trying to make decisions based on what might be interesting and do well at market.

One thing we are pretty sure about (dependent on some decisions about pastures): we’ll be raising several batches of chickens and one batch of turkeys for sale. Keep an eye out here to hear more when we are ready to take orders.

Lazy? Sure. But still delicious.

They seemed happy and came up to the gate to say hi. We got a stick and scritched backs while they all jostled for places by the fence (including one or more who seemed to be trying to eat the fence). They wiggled their noses through the fence at us and I was surprised to note it was hard to restrain myself from touching them! I kept looking at their soft-looking pink noses and wanting to poke them, just a tiny bit, but then remembering how much I like having fingertips.

laurenipsum’s Pigs photoset
www.flickr.com

Next time I see these pigs they will be all cut and wrapped and ready for the freezer or smoker. Thanks, pigs! Thanks, farmers Adrienne and Mark!

—

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 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.

By the end of the month we’ll have a half a pig! I look forward to tasty pork recipes coming up.

(like posole!)

Fried chicken:
homegrown chicken fried à la Alton Brown, with Organic Valley buttermilk and organic, non-local flour and miscellaneous spices

Pot roast:
Made by Anne at Small Potatoes with a roast from the cow we shared; some carrots from our garden and some from the Bainbridge Island farmers’ market; mushrooms from BC; herbs grown and dried by Anne’s mom.

Scrambled eggs and cheese:
Four homegrown egg whites reserved from Ruhlman’s cooked egg nog, combined with two more whole homegrown eggs and a mess of grated (non-local, non-organic, but rBST-free at least) Tillamook cheddar.

Potato parsnip gratin:
Made-up recipe inspired by a meal at Agate Pass Café, with potatoes from Soup Garden Farm, parsnips and garlic from Laughing Crow Farm, leeks from Persephone Farm — all from the Bainbridge Island farmers’ market; homegrown parsley; and Fresh Breeze Organic milk as usual.

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

I made some quick sausage-shaped buns from Artisan Bread in Five Minutes A Day — get this book if you eat bread! — omitting the steam step so the buns were not too crusty. The whole mess, sausages and kraut, piled onto the buns to make a quick and easy and delicious wintertime dinner.

Homegrown: none.
Bainbridge market: cabbage, onion, garlic (in the kraut)
Seattle market(s): sausage
Organic: non-local wheat
Unknown: spices in the sauerkraut (mustard seed, peppercorns, etc.), salt, the usual.

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.

My mom often made something she called Swiss steak, which I remember fondly. I was afraid that when I went to find a recipe, her version would be nothing like the canonical Swiss steak, but actually something with variations that moved it beyond recognition as Swiss steak — and therefore that every time I spoke highly of the dish in the past, I was either talking about something that didn’t exist, or leading people astray to a dish that was not tasty.

I should have realized that something with only like three fundamental ingredients is not only very hard to screw up, but also absolutely invites and encourages variations. So I went with memory, the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook recipe, a phone call to my mom, a version published by one of Accidental Hedonist’s guest bloggers, and my current ideas of what tastes good.

Starting with two top round steaks, originally from On the Lamb Farm in Arlington, most recently from the freezer (one from last year’s cow, shame), I cut them into pieces and dredged them in flour (organic, non-local) spiked with salt, pepper, cayenne, and Hungarian paprika (from a great local spice store) and seared in canola (organic) and then olive (non-organic) oil when the canola ran out. After removing the steaks from the pan, I added two sliced onions from Laughing Crow Farm here on Bainbridge, and then after that cooked partway, several cloves of chopped garlic, also from Laughing Crow. When the onions and garlic were soft, I dumped in a quart jar of home-canned, homegrown tomatoes, as well as a couple bags/half jars of homegrown tomato product (some pizza sauce, some roasted and frozen) that I found in the freezer when I was looking for the meat. In went a splash of wine, an ice cube of homemade beef stock, an ice cube of homegrown oregano and another of parsley, and a bay leaf from the farmers’ market. Turned it up to simmer and left it until the meat was fork-tender (about a hour and a quarter).

Garth set out to make mashed potatoes (potatoes from Laughing Crow) but added too much milk (from Fresh Breeze, within 150 miles) so quickly added one of our eggs and some organic flour to make a batter for fried potato pancakes.

I quickly steamed some market green beans — also found while on freezer investigation — then drizzled with organic bottled lemon juice and served with a pat of organic, non-homemade butter.

Some brown stuff on a plate, with green beans. AKA Swiss steak (foreground) and potato pancakes (background).

While the meat was cooking, I made Anna’s simple plum torte with home-canned, homegrown Italian prunes, canned according to Food in Jars’ recipe, in honey (local, bought at Pike Place Market). The prunes weren’t solid when they came out, so instead of halved plums arranged on top of the torte, there is a sort of a thick smear of chunky jammy prunes across the whole thing. I ain’t arguing though; it tastes fantastic.

Apparently I’m still recovering, though, as despite our enthusiasm and dedication to a local and homegrown Thanksgiving/harvest festival meal, I am late to the Dark Days update and can’t bring myself to do much more than list what we had. You’ll have to imagine the beautiful pictures and delicious flavors.

I prepared some things ahead of time, including making butter from Fresh Breeze Organic (saving the buttermilk for later). All of our dairy came from them, actually, as is usual for us. I also prepared the beets and cranberry sauce, listed below, ahead of time, as well as some sugared cranberries (very delicious), which were later joined on the snacks table by Bittman’s fiery roasted pumpkin seeds.

Turkey was homegrown, roasted simply with salt & pepper and basted with homemade butter for crisping in the oven at 425°, then moved to the Nesco roaster and finished at 325°. Gravy of course composed of delicious turkey drippings and stock made from simmering giblets and neck. Thanks, big guy.

Stuffing was made of homemade bread cubes were left out to get stale for a couple of days. Homegrown carrot, celery and garlic, and shallot from Alvarez Farms (within 150 miles) were sautéed with butter until soft. I added some apricots from Tonnemaker Farm (180 miles), which I dried at home this summer and reconstituted by soaking in warm water all day, and hazelnuts from a vendor whose name I don’t remember at the U-District market. All was tossed with the bread cubes and enough turkey stock to moisten everything. Added some more pats of butter on top to get everything nicely browning in the oven.

Mashed potatoes were a basic roasted garlic version with homegrown garlic and potatoes from Betsey at Laughing Crow here on Bainbridge.

We re-attempted a dish I burned last year at Thanksgiving, about which I was so heartbroken I never even managed to post about it: roasted Brussels sprouts with bacon and apple. This year the sprouts were from Rebecca at Persephone Farm. The bacon was home-cured and -smoked pork belly from Skagit River Ranch (<80 miles), and the apple was from Tonnemaker again. It made it through unburned this year, thanks to the newly-discovered warming drawer feature of our oven, and was delicious.

I cooked thick-sliced homegrown carrots in a pan according to Bittman’s quick-glazed carrots recipe and garnished with homegrown parsley.

A story on NPR about ginger a couple of weeks ago inspired me, so I gave in and used decidedly non-local oranges (organic satsumas, even though they were twice as expensive as non-organic!) and similarly decidedly non-local (though also organic) ginger to make quick-pickled ginger orange beets with homegrown beets, onion, and garlic. Huge hit. I am considering trying to grow ginger.

I used a very simple recipe for a very tasty cranberry cherry sauce with cranberries from Mt. Rainier Cranberries, also found at the U-District market. Sustainable Eats has the scoop on their organicness as well as an identical dish.

A simple salad rounded it out with greens from Butler Green Farms, here on the island, and sold at our great grocery store, the Town & Country. I used the last of the hazelnuts and some more non-local orange segments and non-local, non-organic (gasp!) but thematic! with the season! pomegranate seeds. Ground more pomegranate seeds and orange segments to combine with a bit of olive oil and vinegar for a fruity vinaigrette.

The buttermilk resulting from the homemade butter turned into buttermilk biscuits according to my favorite biscuit recipe ever, one of the recipes that convinced me I could cook.

Dessert was a pumpkin pie with a crust bought at Blackbird Bakery (it was too pretty not to buy) and custard from scratch with homegrown pumpkin and our duck eggs. Garth’s folks brought a delicious apple pie from Sluys Bakery in Poulsbo, just a few miles away.

Even our wine was local — pinot noir (and all their wines, actually) grown & produced on the island at Bainbridge Island Vineyards.

All in all, a delicious meal and good, casual, comfy company. It is good to be wrapping up the season, celebrating our harvest and enjoying the luxury of taking time off and resting, spending time with friends and family.

(And we’ll stop looking like such show-offs in future Dark Days posts, I promise. After two weeks in a row of homegrown meat and mostly homegrown veggies, I am ready to do, like, mac and cheese, or spaghetti, or something.)

Unknown sources: orange, ginger (beets); pomegranate, olive oil, white wine vinegar (salad & dressing); cumin, cayenne, canola oil (pumpkin seeds); flour, sugar, baking powder, etc.

Novella Carpenter’s non-published op ed on Thanksgiving. Novella is smart and awesome and bad-ass. Thank you, turkeys.

Via Kimberly, a fantastic poem:

Grace
Rafael Jesús González

Thanks & blessing be
to the Sun & the Earth
for this bread & this wine,
    this fruit, this meat, this salt,
               this food;
thanks be & blessing to them
who prepare it, who serve it;
thanks & blessing to them
who share it
     (& also the absent & the dead.)
Thanks & blessing to them who bring it
        (may they not want),
to them who plant & tend it,
harvest & gather it
        (may they not want);
thanks & blessing to them who work
        & blessing to them who cannot;
may they not want — for their hunger
      sours the wine
          & robs the salt of its taste.
Thanks be for the sustenance & strength
for our dance & the work of justice, of peace.

Gracias

Gracias y benditos sean
el Sol y la Tierra
por este pan y este vino,
     esta fruta, esta carne, esta sal,
                este alimento;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo preparan, lo sirven;
gracias y bendiciones
a quienes lo comparten
(y también a los ausentes y a los difuntos.)
Gracias y bendiciones a quienes lo traen
        (que no les falte),
a quienes lo siembran y cultivan,
lo cosechan y lo recogen
       (que no les falte);
gracias y bendiciones a los que trabajan
       y bendiciones a los que no puedan;
que no les falte — su hambre
     hace agrio el vino
           y le roba el gusto a la sal.
Gracias por el sustento y la fuerza
para nuestro bailar y nuestra labor
        por la justicia y la paz.

(The Montserrat Review, Issue 6, Spring 2003
[nominated for the Hobblestock Peace Poetry Award];
author’s copyrights.)

Fortunately, she doesn't specify successful or competent farmers so we qualify.