Today I received my 15 minutes of celebri-tay at the News and Record, our regional newspaper. Katie Reetz and Jerry Wolford did a terrific job on the article and photographs, which appeared on the front of the “Savor” section. Jerry even braved the mosquitoes in the shady morning back forty to take a great photo of a very camera-shy blogger.

I summed up things somewhat at the Eat Local Challenge blog early this morning. I may do a better summary tomorrow here, but right now I’m just too beat to think straight!

As for my food diary, I won’t be sorry that it is ending. During the week it became kind of tiresome, especially when I was just eating leftovers and salad. But I won’t end eating locally. If you’ve been reading my blog, you already know that it has become a way of life for me. I’ll just open it back up to foods that I don’t want to eliminate, such as wild salmon, olives, tomatoes, and luscious stinky cheeses. I’ll still cite sources in my recipes.

So for the final record, day 30 included egg salad on pita crisps, strawberries, salad, and a Red Oak draft. Today I had leftovers from the weekend, and baked marinated chicken from Back Woods Family Farm. The eggs were from them too. I was sorry that Back Woods Family Farm didn’t make the list of my favorite farms in the newspaper, because I buy more food from them than any other farm, and they are definitely on my online list. I think that it was because there wasn’t an address on their web site, and that seems to be what they were looking for.

I want to say thank you to my mentor and friend, Charlie Headington. He has been a source of incredible support, knowledge, and friendship. If I can inspire even one person the way that he has inspired me, my life will have been well worth the trip. Thanks, Charlie.

A long, hot day.

Lunch: a green salad with tennis-ball, spotted aleppo, and green-leaf lettuces, spinach, radishes, and peas from my garden, topped with my homemade green goddess dressing. Sliced strawberries. Pita crisps with marinated goat cheese. Leftover field peas and red potatoes.

Dinner: Pita crisps with egg salad, made with herb mayonnaise and quince chutney.

Pita bread: Dough Re Mi
Sesame seeds, olive oil: Deep Roots Market
Goat cheese: Goat Lady Dairy
Eggs: Back Woods Family Farm
Herb Mayonnaise: homemade
Mustard: Eden organic, from Earth Fare
Quinces for the chutney came from the next-door neighbor’s tree last fall.
Herbs for the dressing, salad fixings: My back yard
Field peas: frozen from last year’s garden
Red potatoes: Gann Farm

I couldn’t have tried harder to mess up these barbecued pork chops. First I put them on low to simmer while I went to water the community garden row. When I got back, they were burnt on the bottom. So I flipped them and removed the pan from the heat. Then I turned up the heat on a pot of field peas that I had cooked earlier today, and went out to water the back forty. Except I didn’t turn the heat up under the field peas, I turned it up under the pork chops and burnt the other side of them.

Maybe multi-tasking isn’t my forte.

Other than that, we’ll have new red potatoes cooked in chicken stock made from soup bones that I buy from Back Woods Family Farm and vegetable trimmings that I store in a bag in my freezer.

At lunch we had pancakes with fresh strawberries, butter, and a little maple syrup.

I made some pita crisps from some organic whole wheat pita that I purchased from Dough Re Mi and put into the freezer. I cut them into slices, split them apart, brushed the rough sides with olive oil, sprinkled sesame seeds on top, and put them under the broiler for a minute or so, per instructions in Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone by Deborah Madison. This is to resolve the cracker cravings, and to make nice little vehicles for egg salad tomorrow. I boiled the eggs today, and I’ll make the egg salad when I come home for lunch tomorrow.

Sources:
Pork chops, chicken soup bones, and eggs: Back Woods Family Farms
Sticky Fingers BBQ Sauce: Charleston, SC (Harris Teeter)
Field peas: My garden via freezer
Red potatoes: Gann Farm
Pita: Dough Re Mi
Strawberries: Vendor at Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market
Olive oil, canola oil, sesame seeds, maple syrup: Deep Roots Market
Butter: Homeland Creamery
Pancake mix (bulk): Earth Fare

Today has been a great day, and it’s not over yet!

I went to the Greensboro Farmer’s Curb Market as I do every Saturday morning except this time there was one difference. A photographer from the News and Record went around with me while I shopped.

My first stop was at the Molners’ booth, where I bought some extra-sharp cheddar cheese that they get from their Amish brethren in Ohio. This is great stuff that will spoil you. Then I bought some baby Japanese turnips from my friends Pat and Brian Bush of Handance Farm.

On my way to Back Woods Family Farm’s table, where I bought chicken breasts and soup bones, I noticed that Donna of Epicourier had spelt flour from the Old Mill of Guilford for sale. This is not a regular item for her so I picked up a bag.

I found my strawberry fellow from McLeansville and bought a large container from him. As I was giving him my money, another woman walked up and said, “I heard that you don’t spray your strawberries.” See, word gets around. Look, do they look any worse for not spraying chemicals on them? They are incredibly sweet now and I hulled and froze half of them whole and sliced the others to munch on all week long from the refrigerator. I may follow Sarah’s simple recipe for preparing them.

The last stop has become a regular one for me - the friendly lady at Rocking F Farm who sold me two pounds of frozen grass-fed, home-raised hamburger for $5.

Then I came home, and cut my first two artichokes from my garden! I steamed them, and I made Green Goddess dressing to dip the leaves and heart in. I may have dealt the final death blow to my Oster immersion blender. I believe that I may follow Farmgirl’s advice and spend a little extra money on a Kitchen Aid next time. But what a way for it to go out! I used the rest of my olive oil based herb mayonnaise, a little buttermilk, sour cream, more parsley, tarragon, and chives, garlic, and a little salt. This is the salad dressing that I set out to make from the beginning. Now if I can just figure out exactly how I got here…

That’s the appetizer. We will also have salad from the garden, and then sauteed shrimp and snow peas. The shrimp are the North Carolina wild-caught that I bought at the market last Saturday and froze. The snow peas are from my garden, and I nearly let them get too full to eat. They were next to the artichokes, who were stealing all the attention.

I like a marinade called Hot and Spicy Allegro Creole Marinade on just about everything I’ve tried. I decided to try to make my own from reading the ingredients off the bottle. It is mostly soy sauce, and I added lemon juice, dried Kung Pao peppers from last year’s garden (I snipped these with kitchen scissors), dried onions, and fresh minced garlic. The shrimp are soaking in it. (Update: I added some five-spice powder to the saute.)

Okay, gotta go cook and eat now. I hope tomorrow is just as fun and relaxing as today was, since I have to work on Memorial Day.

It’s going to happen - on Wednesday there will be an article about me and the Eat Local Challenge in our local newspaper! I talked with the reporter last week and a photographer walked around with me in the curb market as I shopped. Then he took some photos of me in my garden. People who know me know that I shy away from the spotlight so this has been both exhilarating and weird for me. I was telling someone just the other day that my split personalities of drama queen and introvert are always going at each other, but usually the introvert wins. However, I thought that it would be great publicity for the curb market and the Slow Food movement, so I forced the hermit back this time.

I suppose this means I should re-subscribe to the paper!

I think we’re ready for summer. We bought a window unit air conditioner to cool the bedroom and adjoining computer room so that we can use the central air less often. My main issue is sleep - I have an anxiety/panic disorder and I have learned that the best treatment for it is to insure that I get at least eight good hours of it a night. Whatever it takes. We lived without any air conditioning for many years, but as I started hitting my middle years, I realized that it was going to be a necessity for me. Along with ear plugs!

In the rest of the house, fans are installed in the windows and ceiling fans are whirling to keep the air flow going. I bought a new dual one that I really like for the kitchen window that has a thermostat and can switch to exhaust on either side easily. It’s easier to cool that part of the house without a.c. because of the placement of the walls and windows.

I found the first flea on Guido so all four cats have been doused with Advantage. It is very expensive but last year I managed to get through the whole summer without bombing the house. The fleas have become immune to everything else, so when they become immune to this, somebody better have come up with some new stuff or we will have to move.

Today Sandy and I went shoe shopping, an activity I absolutely abhor. My feet are so hard to fit and I hate most shoes. Hobbit feet would suit me just fine. I have been on a quest to find a pair of black Clark’s sandals in 8 1/2 wide. Finally, finally, I found some, on sale at a discount store no less, and guess what? The 8 1/2 medium fit me better. I could have had these ages ago if I had bothered to try them on but I swore that I’d never try to squeeze my boat paddle feet in another pair of regular width shoes.

Because I never guessed that I would find the holy grail of sandals, I was going to buy a pair of Birkenstocks. I have been saying this for years. Years. I may never buy the fabled Birkenstocks, and I am such a perfect Birkenstock-wearing stereotype.

We recently received, for free, a huge old bookshelf that looks fabulous in our living room. I have been buying way too many books lately so there will be NO problem filling it up. I haven’t updated my book list because I have many, many more than five books on deck. How can I choose? What a wonderful dilemma!

Guido says that it’s time for dinner, and he’s right. I’ll write more about OUR dinner later. This is a great weekend so far.

Day 25: Not much happened food-wise. I went to the chiropractor for the first time in six years for a very sore and stiff neck, and I just didn’t feel like eating. I munched a little on leftovers and some marinated Goat Lady Dairy cheese. The good news is that my neck felt a lot better this morning, and my appetite was definitely back!

After work I went to Harris Teeter for beer and cat food, where I bought a 12-pack of Carolina Blonde for the hot holiday weekend ahead, and a 6-pack of Cottonwood Low-Down Brown Ale, made by the same company. I usually prefer a brown ale, but when the temperatures start hitting the high 80s and it’s muggy, I’d rather drink a pilsner. I really liked the Carolina Blonde that I tried last week, and I wanted to try a new North Carolina beer for this week, thus the Cottonwood purchase. I will be buying both of these again. Leave it to a bunch of lake (Norman) bums to know how to brew a fine summertime beer.

Day 26: I woke up hungry this morning, so I hit Tate Street Coffee House for an apple danish, baked for them by Spring Garden Bakery, one of the five local bakeries I decided to support during the challenge. The others are Simple Kneads, Dough Re Mi, Nora Glanz, and Ninth Street Bakery.

Then, when my co-worker asked me what I was doing for lunch, I just didn’t want to go home and eat leftovers AGAIN. So I made a phone call to a very nice little restaurant that is on our Slow Food list (yet unpublished, but hopefully coming soon) of restaurants that serve local food.

“Hi, I was wondering if you have any foods from North Carolina, South Carolina, or Virginia on your menu for lunch today.”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Are you serving any local foods at lunch today?”

“Excuse me.” (Off-phone) “Hey, this woman is on the phone asking about local food and I don’t know what she is talking about.”

New Person: “Hi, my name is ****, and I’m not sure we understood you. Did you have a question?”

“Thank you, ****. I am on an Eat Local diet this month and I’m eating only foods that are from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. I wanted to check to see if you were serving any today at lunch before I came out there. I write about this on the Internet and there’s going to be a newspaper article pointing back to it, so I want to make sure that I can eat there.”

“Oh yes, almost all our food comes from North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia, except for lettuce, which I think comes from California. But the chicken, deli meat, all that is local.”

“That’s great! Can someone tell me which foods are local when I come out there?”

“Yes.”

So we show up, and the poor waitress has no clue what we’re talking about. She scrambles to figure it out, and runs back and forth to the chef several times. “Oh yes, we buy all our food locally, but I don’t know about whether it is PRODUCED by local farms. But everything we serve is fresh!”

Oh.

He meant that they bought their food through a food distributor based in town. A very good food distributor that most of the good restaurants in town get their food from, but the food doesn’t qualify as local food.

The waitress comes back. “The chef says that the chicken is from North Carolina.”

“Oh, that’s great! Is it free-range?”

She comes back. “He only knows that it is from North Carolina.”

If it’s free-range, they know. Believe me.

She comes back. “The chef says that the grouper we serve at dinner is from North Carolina, and he would be glad to prepare it and sell it to you at the lunch entree price.”

“Uh, no, I’m sorry, I can’t do grouper. I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be difficult, but I write a food diary on the Internet and I need this to be correct. How about the bread - do you get your bread from a local bakery?” I knew that their bread was really good.

She comes back. “The bread is commercial, but the chef has a really good pimento cheese recipe from his grandmother that everybody loves, and he can make you a lightly grilled sandwich with the pimento cheese…”

At this point, I just can’t torture this poor waitress any more. Really, she was going way beyond the call of duty. I don’t know what clairvoyant abilities the chef had to know that I had a real weakness for lightly grilled pimento cheese sandwiches, and I hadn’t had one for a lo-o-o-ng time. I ordered pasta salad as the side, since pasta is one of my exemptions. So it was a real carb and cheese fest for me at lunch. And the sandwich was great.

My realization for this month: Even people that work at very nice restaurants don’t seem to know what “local food” means. Food advocates know, and we zero in on all the publicity that the Slow Food and local food movements are getting nowadays and crow about the progress we’ve made, which is admirable, to be sure. But most restaurant folks, the ultimate foodies, the ones we expect to know about it, did not get the memo about local food.

One of the big problems I see with this is that I was about to put together the second installment of our convivium’s Local Food Guide, which was to cover restaurants that serve local food. I did not gather this data. Now I wonder how many other restaurants on our list told the surveyers that they bought local food, when they meant they bought through this particular local food distributor. The other restaurant on the list that I wrote about previously never answered my email questions about local food. There seems to be a basic misunderstanding about what local food is. This is where we need to get the word out to make a major difference in this region’s foodshed.

Now I think that the way to go about this is to ask what specific producers and farms do you buy your local food from? If they answer a particular distributor, then we’ll know to dig a little deeper. Some, such as growers’ marketing cooperatives, carry North Carolina produced foods. Most others do not. If the restaurant does not carry food from local producers, then at least it will get a little hint that this is a subject of growing interest, and it might benefit their business to check into some local food sources and publicize it when they use them.

Ladies and Gentlemen, in that corner, we had the mustard-based “Sticky Fingers Carolina Classic Barbecue Sauce“, hailing from Charleston, S.C. In this corner, from the pork chops a couple of weeks back, our returning champion, tomato-based “Lip Lickin’ Sweet & Smoky BBQ Sauce,” hailing from Greensboro, N.C.

In Lip Lickin’s favor, it was bought at Earth Fare, a medium-sized and growing chain of grocery stores that emphasizes organic foods, and of course it has the hometown advantage. However, Lip Lickin’ is not organic.

In Sticky Fingers’ favor, although bought at Harris Teeter and it has that prohibitive and scary “high-fructose corn syrup” as the second ingredient, the missus of the house loves mustard. However, the HFCS is a prohibited substance in this household, and so this bottle was the last to fight in this arena.

Both was served over a chicken leg quarter and wing each, from Back Woods Family Farm, last night.

The winner - the hometown “natural,” Lip Lickin’ Sweet & Smoky BBQ Sauce! Sticky Fingers was a contender, especially with the hot and spicy surprise, but it was not mustardy enough to overcome the other sweet and spicy flavors, which might have won the lady’s heart.

Yesterday and today, lunch was leftover frittata, which Sandy would not even taste, so I am left with it all. However, it is surprisingly good even on the third day. I added a little Louisiana Hot Sauce today.

Tonight I mixed chopped up leftover chicken, short-grain brown rice, and cooked lamb’s quarters. Again, this was good with Louisiana Hot Sauce. I seem to have a need for peppery goodness today.

I do intend to try out Anson Mills Carolina Gold Rice from South Carolina, as a few folks have suggested. However, I have a good stock of rice in the pantry, and the Anson Mills rice will have to be ordered by mail.

We visited Zeto Wines for a wine and cheese tasting after work. I will have to admit that I didn’t even think about it being off my challenge until I got there, but hey, I’ve been good. We didn’t buy any wine, but the cheeses were fantastic! It seems that whenever I go really nuts over a particular cheese, it turns out to be from Spain. Sandy bought a wedge of Valdeón, which I will save longingly for June 1. Here’s the description on the label:

“Best Blue Cheese in Spain’s 2003 national competition! A rich, creamy, intensely flavored semi-soft cow/goat milk blue. Saltier than Stilton. Made in Spain’s remote Valdeón Valley (northern region of Asturias) Valdeón gets its distinctive appearance from being wrapped in Sycamore leaves. The leaves add to its complex flavor. Pair with wines made from the gamay grape, lighter more fruit-forward Pinot Noirs, and with Muscat.”

Yum, yum, yum. I’ve been eating mighty fine lately, and the future looks purty good, too.

I just realized that I haven’t done much of a Back Forty Update lately. I reported that I planted a couple of cucumbers in the area where only one Red Calico Lima Bean came up - lemon and straight eight. I don’t usually have much luck with cucumbers.

I transplanted the pepper seedlings that I bought from the market back on the 13th just a couple of days ago. Two of them are not happy - maybe they got too potbound or maybe it was that the moon was wrong. I also planted some okra seeds that my mother sent me in the mail - they are probably Clemson Spineless. This year I am going to put some of my recycled mini-greenhouses over them to protect them from the Critter, who ate both crops last year. The mini-greenhouses are nothing more than clear plastic bottles with the bottoms cut off and the caps removed.

I’m planning to harvest the artichokes in the next couple of days. Oh joy!

Also, I planted the basil seedlings - sweet, Genovese, and opal - which seemed to have stopped growing altogether. I’ve read that they’re good to start inside, but I’ve always had better luck with direct seeding. The nice surprise there was that I dug down a bit (it was a new planting area) and found some more paving stones for the patio.

I think that’s it…other than my hollyhock is beginning to frighten me.

Every time I turn around, somebody is suggesting that I make a frittata. It’s so easy. It’s so versatile. It’s the perfect dish for spring. Yada yada yada.

Oh, all right!

I’ve always been a quiche baker - it is my standard potluck dish. But omelets - no way. They always end up as fancy scrambled eggs. So I’ve always been scared off from frittatas because of the comparison to omelets. I shall fear no more. The frittata has been tried, baked, and declared a success.

You can use any type of cooked vegetables with this, so it is great for seasonal cooking. You can also mix in cooked pasta, or rice, or potatoes before you add the eggs. You don’t have to use cheese. You can beat milk or cream or shredded cheese in with the eggs. The fact is, everyone has got a different method, making this a dish that would be difficult even for an omelet-mangler like me to screw up.

The recipe below is loosely taken from Mollie Katzen’s recipe in The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. Amounts should not be taken literally and should be liberally adjusted. I used what I had.

Yada Yada Frittata

2 Tbsp olive oil
1 Tbsp butter
1 small onion, chopped
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 tsp salt
black pepper
1-2 tsp each of minced fresh parsley, rosemary, and thyme
1 tsp dried basil
2 c chopped broccoli
2 c mixed diced greens (kale and collards)
4 chopped mushrooms
5 well-beaten extra-large eggs
Cheddar cheese
Parmesano-Reggiano cheese

Pre-heat the oven to 350. In a cast iron skillet, cook the onion and garlic with the herbs in the butter and olive oil for a few minutes. Add broccoli and cook a few minutes more. Add greens and mushrooms and cook a few minutes more. Turn the heat up high briefly so that the pan is very hot when you pour the beaten eggs over the top of the cooked veggies. Turn the heat down and lift the edges of the eggs as they set to let the uncooked egg run underneath. When the whole thing is pretty well set, lay thin slices of cheddar and grated Parmesano-Reggiano on top. Put the whole pan in the oven for 12 minutes.

Sources:
Organic olive oil - Deep Roots Market
Butter - Homeland Creamery
Onion - Faucette Farm
Garlic - Cornerstone Garlic Farm
Broccoli - Weatherhand Farm
Herbs, kale, and collards - My back yard
Mushrooms - Gann Farm
Eggs - Back Woods Family Farm
Cheddar cheese - Ashe County, N.C. (from farmer’s market)
Parmesano-Reggiano cheese - Earth Fare

Today was a special day of my Eat Local Challenge. Bistro Sofia and Slow Food Piedmont Triad co-hosted a local seasonal lunch that featured food and wine from many local farms. A few of the farmers joined us. Two of them are friends - Steve Tate from the Goat Lady Dairy, and Deb Bettini, who has been in a couple of food-related classes with me and is now supplying Bistro Sofia with salad greens, mushrooms, and other products from her farm. Bistro Sofia also has its own garden behind the restaurant.

Just like the last Slow Food tasting lunch, we had a fabulous meal AND entertaining conversation with dinner companions. I hope that I will see the people I met today again at Slow Food events.

Sandy and I don’t know a lot about wine, but we enjoyed both wine selections and everyone else seemed to as well. We bought a bottle of the Rockhouse Vineyard Cabernet Franc to go. I really wanted the Chardonnay but I’ll visit Zeto Wines later and get some.

I have eaten rabbit before at Williamsburg and loved it, but I was feeling a bit skittish about it this time. Let’s just call it remnants of Watership Down bouncing around the corners of my brain. I decided that I would just have to try not to think of it as a living animal - however, the rest of the table decided to trade rabbit stories! But I enjoyed it anyway. It was really delicious, and reminded me of the last time I ate it, when it was served in a pie.

Someone made a joke about people who didn’t like grits liking polenta, when both are just basically cornmeal. (It’s all in the way you cook grits, trust me. Plain grits are awful, but you can do wonders with them when you add cheese and herbs and spices. I prefer yellow grits, with garlic and sharp cheddar cheese.) To me the polenta reminded me of my mother’s cornbread dressing, especially combined with the gravy from the rabbit stew. There’s not much higher compliment than comparison to Mama’s cornbread dressing.

I learned something about mulberries. I wondered how they would deal with the stems - the stems do not come off the berries easily. That turned out to be simple - the stems were left on and I wouldn’t have even noticed if I hadn’t been paying attention to it. And it was exquisite.

I think that everyone learned something about local foods and the wide availability of them here in the Piedmont Triad, and so it was a real success for “the cause.”

1st Course:
Uwharrie Farms (Larry McPherson) tomato herb mousse, Bettini Farms (Deb & Randy Bettini) salad greens, sweet tomato vinaigrette
2nd Course:
Local rabbit (J&S Farms, John and Sue Marshall) and thyme stew, herb baked polenta (Old Mill of Guilford cornmeal)
3rd course:
Bettini Farms mulberry parfait, crème chantilly (Homeland Creamery Heavy Cream)
4th Course:
Goat Lady Dairy Providence cheese (Taleggio-style), walnut biscotti

Wines:
Round Peak Vineyard Chardonnay 2004, Mount Airy, N.C. (Curry Martin)
Rockhouse Vineyard Cabernet Franc 2004, Tryon, N.C.

Web sites:

Uwharrie Farm