Food Blog: jwagnerdsm

[jwagnerdsm]

Have you been able to find locally grown/made pasta?

There's a Barilla plant just north of Des Moines in Ames. But we've also made pasta this year. the kids prefer the Barillas.

[jwagnerdsm]

Monday

Breakfast at the Wagner house is pretty simple. Zoey has to be out the door by 7:55 for pre-kindergarten and we are all slugs in the a.m. CeCe drinks coffee (that's our beverage exemption) and Zoey and Kiernan usually have some fresh toasted bread or some eggs and hand cut bacon. We get the most amazing fresh meats from tiny locker plants all over the state. My best find is a beef stick that's shaped like a slim jim but contains no trim: it's all meat. We buy those from a small cooperative of livestock farmers who have them made at a locker in northeast Iowa. They are sold at our indoor farmers market, a new place on the local food scene where I get our milk, ice cream, chicken, beef and pork, honey and other assorted foods. It's a nice addition but I worry about the mix of retailers there. There are a few too many "country cute" gift shops -- you know, bunnies in dresses and stuff like that -- and I worry that people won't visit every week without a healthy mix of food products.

I eat those beef sticks during the day. I work at home and spend a lot of time at the computer, pimping for magazine assignments or writing stories on the presidential elections. (We get several calls a day from campaigns seeking our support. I made the mistake of joking to a Howard Dean aide that I might be able to squeeze him in for dinner some night -- you meet all the candidates before the caucuses, sometimes two or three times -- and they took that to mean that I was a supporter. I'm holding out, but they call often inviting me to rallies, debates, and receptions.

Anyway, because of my work routine, I graze all day rather than eating a set breakfast and lunch. At about three I pick up my daughter from school and then come home and start cooking dinner. But during the day, I ate a beef stick, some leftover stuffing, and several carrots.

People in the local food movement often talk about defining moments when they taste something so unbelievably good that they know they are making a correct lifestyle choice for themselves. For me, it was a carrot. Gary Guthrie, who farms near Nevada, returned from Peace Corp work in South America about a decade ago and, after running a peace institute here, returned to the family farm. He converted the operation to an organic vegetable operation and he's best known for his carrots. He plants several varieties; the ones I'm eat right now are Bolero, a coreless carrot that is extra sweet because he pulled it from the ground after the first frost. I bought ten pounds (enough to fill a plastic grocery store bag) and have been parceling them out. They will stay good for about six to eight weeks so I will have them until Christmas. The thing about coreless carrots are they don't have the tastless white center that commercially-grown carrots have. Commerical growers pick their carrots with big machines that dig into the ground and they have to grow a variety that is hearty enough so that it won't crack. Hence, the variety. Guthrie hires high school and college kids to help him pick his carrots. They are worth the price. ($1.79 a pound).

Tonight, I used the last of the ham to make sandwiches. I put them on some Thanksgiving rolls, added a little cheese, wrapped them in foil and let them bake in the oven at 300 degrees for about 25 minutes. I also made potato chips using the Cranberry Red potatoes we bought from the Droste family in Waverly. Those were sprinkled with a little sea salt (not an Iowa product). We also had a little bit of Anderson-Erickson Cottage Cheese. This is the large curd variety and it's one of those products that people pack up in coolers and take home with them when visiting central Iowa from other parts of the U.S. Until earlier this year, it was the last cottage cheese in the country still being packed by hand. It's still good, but I miss the nostalgia of knowing the cottage cheese I was eating was hand-packed.

For dessert, we all ate ice cream from the organic dairy northwest of town. The folks who own it decided that their 140 cow herd wasn't going to support them. They had three options: get bigger, get out, or figure out a way to add value to their product. They opted for the third and now offer organic milk around central Iowa.

Their story is similar to that of lots of farmers in the area, and I guess I would have to say that it makes me feel good to know that I am helping preserve a way of live. I apologize. I am a romantic.

See you tomorrow.

Edited December 2, 2003 by jwagnerdsm (log)

[tejon]

Reading your posts, I want to start growing vegetables again. There really is nothing like a tomato you just picked, still warm from the sun, or a carrot that is so sweet and crisp it begs to be nibbled right away.

[GG Mora]

For dessert, we all ate ice cream from the organic dairy northwest of town. The folks who own it decided that their 140 cow herd wasn't going to support them. They had three options: get bigger, get out, or figure out a way to add value to their product. They opted for the third and now offer organic milk around central Iowa.

This is true of small dairy farmers all over the country. When you're getting 13¢ per lb. ( or whatever it is) for your raw milk, there's not much incentive to stay in the business. Many of the dairy farms in Vermont are now making (excellent) cheeses. There are 2 right here in Londonderry – Taylor Farm and Middletown Farm. There are some 60 cheesemakers all together throughout Vermont, but that includes goat and sheep, too.

I'm really enjoying your blog. Glad I tagged you!

[jwagnerdsm]

Actually, cheese has been one of the challenges. There are a few cheese makers in the state -- mostly goat cheese -- and man (and kids) can't live by goat cheese alone. There's a couple of small cooperatives in northeast Iowa where we can buy cheese in bulk.

[Cusina]

I also made potato chips using the Cranberry Red potatoes we bought from the Droste family in Waverly.

Mmmmm. Homemade potato chips. Do you fry them or bake them?

[ronnie_suburban]

Those carrots sound amazing.

Thanks for the lore.

=R=

[jwagnerdsm]

Mmmmm. Homemade potato chips. Do you fry them or bake them?

We fry them. I give them a soak in water first to get the starch out.

[jwagnerdsm]

Tuesday

Woke up to find that our neighborhood raccoon had found his way into the garbage and decided to gnaw on the turkey carcass from Thanksgiving. Our garbage pick-up is Monday but for some reason the city decided this would be the week to change their policy on the number of bags they would pick up from the curb. So after I heard the garbage truck come, I went out front to find five garbage bags remaining on the curb. Figure that out: the second biggest garbage week of the year (behind Christmas) and this was the week people would be left hold the (extra) bag, literally.

The carcass lay in the backyard like some strange excavation and around it were strewn little pieces of bread, a small bag of corn, an ice cream carton, and other odds and ends. At least the remaining leftovers didn't go to waste.

One of the fascinating things about this project is that I expected it to greatly reduce the waste we produced each week. I should have started a compost pile because instead I noticed our garbage actually increase. The other interesting thing is that even in the heart of a city of 300,000 people, we have a significant wildlife population. We had lots of visitors to our backyard garden this year: raccoons, possum, deer, rabbits, and lots of squirrels. And was it just a coincidence that we had our first bats in our house in the five years since we moved here?

After I cleaned up the mess, I came inside and ate a breakfast of leftover homemade potato chips, still crisp and fresh 12 hours after I fried them up. Of course the kids wondered why they couldn't have chips for breakfast and I had to pull some of my parents' wisdom out of the recesses of my gray matter and tell them: "Because I said so."

Today was going to be the day that I cooked something that I could really brag about in my food blog. I was thinking about a French Farmhouse Roast Pork that I like to do. But I had a meeting with a client at 11 a.m., had to go to a local bookstore to autograph more children's books later in the day, and had my wife around the house most of the day, working on a pro bono case involving immigrant families and a local used car dealership. So I also had to run some of the errands that she would do on the way to and from work.

I had lunch with my client at a local restaurant. Tuscan Tomato Soup and a pasta with chipolte red sauce and what was advertised as rotisserie chicken. The meat was so finally hacked up that I could barely find it and the sauce didn't have the zip I was hoping for. But the soup was good and I have to admit that after all the cooking I've done in recent days, it was nice to have someone else do the work for a change.

Alas, we decided at the last minute to pick up some hamburgers and fries from a little bar and grill near Drake University. The owner is a friend of mine, he buys his meat from a small butcher whose supply comes from local farmers, and his stuff is darn good. And the kids will eat it too. Plus, there was the added bonus of being able to drink a couple of beers while I waited for him to cook up the food.

Good news! A fairly large publisher has inquired about a, what would I call it, a companion book dealing with local food. It would be kind of like the idiot books that outline how to eat local. It would delve into CSAs, farmers markets, gardening, canning and freezing, heirloom vegetables, etc. It's not the book I've been working on, but it would provide a nice cash advance and would allow me to still write the narrative for a smaller publisher. So now I am busy putting together an outline and writing three sample chapters. (If all of you post messages saying how eager you are to buy the book, maybe it will give me some leverage. hint. hint.)

It's snowing here tonight as I write this and the stuff is actually sticking. The streets are slick and the weather goon on TV says to expect 2 to 4 inches, which means we'll probably get either a dusting or a foot. Anyway, I don't expect any more surprise Brussels Sprouts or Spinach this year. So now we're on our own.

See you tomorrow.

[bloviatrix]

Our garbage pick-up is Monday but for some reason the city decided this would be the week to change their policy on the number of bags they would pick up from the curb. So after I heard the garbage truck come, I went out front to find five garbage bags remaining on the curb. Figure that out: the second biggest garbage week of the year (behind Christmas) and this was the week people would be left hold the (extra) bag, literally.

Please explain -- seriously, I've never heard of being limited on the amount of garbage you can have taken away.

[jwagnerdsm]

Last year the city switched to an automated trash pick-up system. Everybody got one fairly big can that holds maybe seven or eight bags of trash. The truck has an arm that swings down, picks up the standardized can, dumps it into the top of the vehicle. The idea is that the workers won't have to get out of the truck or pick up anything heavy so they won't ever get hurt on the job.

Until this week the city had these chaser trucks that would come through an hour or two after the automated truck. These guys picked up everything on the curb that wouldn't fit into the standard can. But they were just transitional (until people could figure out how to cram 20 bags of garbage into one can, I guess) and they were phased out this week. We apparently have the option of calling the city and buying a second can, which I will do.

I hope that makes sense. Didn't mean to get off topic.

[tejon]

One of the fascinating things about this project is that I expected it to greatly reduce the waste we produced each week. I should have started a compost pile because instead I noticed our garbage actually increase.

I would hazard a guess that much more of your trash is now food trimmings, versus packaging of one sort or another. So, while you may be generating more trash, more of it is biodegradable.

If nothing else, it feeds the critters nicely .

Edited December 3, 2003 by tejon (log)

[bloviatrix]

Thanks for the explanation. At least you made a raccoon happy.

[jwagnerdsm]

bloviatrix Posted on Dec 2 2003, 11:31 PM

Thanks for the explanation. At least you made a raccoon happy.

Yeah, fatten that sucker up. Once the vegetables run out in February he may be supper.

[bloviatrix]

Yeah, fatten that sucker up. Once the vegetables run out in February he may be supper.

A braise might be in order. I hear the meat is tough.

[Cusina]

Hey, I'll buy your book!

(some of us take a while to pick up on those subtle hints)

We have the same deal with the garbage, but no limit on recycleables. I've gotten very good at recycling and compacting. The worst is christmas. All that wrapping paper isn't recycleable. I'm tempted to wrap most of our presents in butcher paper this year and make the kids color it... nah.

[SobaAddict70]

So, who's next?

Or....who wants to be next?

Soba

[guajolote]

pick ronnie suburban, he's having a doozy of a food week

[SobaAddict70]

Hm, either ronnie suburban or jackal10. Eeny-meenie-minie-moe...

Oh hell, let it be ronnie suburban.

Unless jwagnerdsm wants to tag someone else, of course.

Soba

[jackal10]

Hm, either ronnie suburban or jackal10. Eeny-meenie-minie-moe...

Oh hell, let it be ronnie suburban.

Unless jwagnerdsm wants to tag someone else, of course.

Soba

I'll volunteer for Xmas week, if anyone is interested...

[GG Mora]

Isn't anyone at all concerned that jwagnerdsm disappeared so abruptly and hasn't been heard from since? I PM'd him 2 days ago to see if he was okay, but haven't heard back. I'm sure he just got busy and blogging wasn't his priority, but I'm a fussy worrier that way. Hope nothing happened.

"...he tried to get down to the end of the town; 30 shillings reward."

I, for one, would love to spend Christmas week with The Jackal.

[ronnie_suburban]

Sorry to be so late to respond, but I hadn't received a notification about this thread in a few days. I will happily accept

=R=

[maggiethecat]

Oh yeah, Ronnie! I'm looking forward to a week with the sububans.

[SobaAddict70]

I'll volunteer for Xmas week, if anyone is interested...

Done.

Ok, ronnie, then Jackal. Cool beans, man.

I think we should wait until Sunday for ronnie to start, in the event that jwagnerdsm manages to appear between now and then.

Soba

[ronnie_suburban]

Soba,

I did start something, but if you want me to hold off, just say the word.

=R=