My Latest Blueberry Pie

Don't you want a slice?

Baked Wednesday, July 9, 2008

Chicken from Two Spoon Farm

On Sunday, when I was shopping at Clear Brook Farm, I purchased two whole, organic, free range chickens raised on Two Spoon Farm in Pownal, Vermont. I was delighted to learn that I could purchase locally raised, organic chicken at Clear Brook, which is going to be carrying chickens from Two Spoon Farm throughout the season. It seems Clear Brook Farm is carrying a lot more local meat this year than previous years.

The chickens weighed in at about five pounds a piece, though they looked bigger, and they cost $4 a pound. I paid $40 for two chickens, which to my cheapskate mind is a staggering amount of money to spend on poultry. Talk about golden eggs…

Two Spoon Farm Chicken

The upside of spending all this money is that Eric and I got three full meals out of one bird, and we’re supporting a Vermont farm. And that, my friends, is worth the money (and also the reason why I no longer buy designer jeans).

Eric hacked the chicken into eight pieces (we don’t own poultry shears, but since we will be buying more Two Spoon Farm whole chickens we will invest in a pair), and generously seasoned the parts with salt and pepper and then grilled them to perfection. The thick skin was as crisp as a Ruffles potato chip, and the meat was juicy and tender and tasted like it had been poached in matzo ball soup. It was geschmecht (that’s Yiddish for lip-smacking good). Two Spoon Farm chickens are raised on organic grains and whatever other tasty treats they peck at in the pasture.

There was a lot of meat on the chicken. Eric, looking at the plate of chicken on the dinner table exclaimed, “Look at the size of those breasts! They’re double Ds!”

Grilled Salt & Pepper Chicken

Two Spoon Farm also raises organic beef, pork, lamb and turkey and is offering shares to interested consumers. The turkeys, which are fed organic grains, cost $3.25/lb and weigh approximately 18 lbs, which is a good-sized bird. Grass-finished beef is $6.00/lb. for 100 lbs (a full share) or $6.50/lb. for a half share (50 lbs.) and comes butchered in a variety of different cuts (steaks, roasts, ground beef, stew meat, etc.) A share of pork, which like the turkey is raised on organic grains, consists of chops, ribs, smoked bacon, sausage, and for those who ask, ham. Pork costs $6.00/lb. and you get about 40 lbs. Grass-fed lamb sells for $7.50 lb. and a share provides roughly 20 lbs.

A $100 deposit is required to purchase a share in Two Spoon Farm. Then, 50 percent of your balance is due by August 1. You make your final payment when you pick up your farm share.

I’d really like to buy half a beef share for $325 and a pork share for $240, but Eric and I first need to iron out some logistics. We have to figure out if we have room for a chest freezer somewhere in our house, and if we have enough electrical juice to run it (we’re still running knob and tube wiring in our house).

Tabbouleh

I made this chunky tabbouleh last Friday with my bumper crop of fresh parsley. The recipe comes from Barefoot Contessa: Parties!

Blueberry Pie and Cherry Pie

I’m about to make a confession.

I make a blueberry pie that everyone–EVERYONE–who tastes it loves. It’s my mother’s recipe, and it’s just the best blueberry pie ever. That’s all there is to say. (This is not the confession.) My friends will vouch for this pie’s sweet taste and bursting blueberry flavor, and not just because they’re my friends. This pie is so good it has caused lovers to fight over the last slice–nay the entire dish. True story. Last year I made my mom’s blueberry pie to give to a friend for his birthday, and his then-girlfriend-now-wife, who is also a friend, wound up eating the whole pie. Every last crumb and lick of indigo filling off the fork. Mike didn’t get a single bite. This pie-hording didn’t go over well with Mike, but Janice couldn’t help herself. The pie was that good. She had to have it all. Perhaps the pie satisfied Janice in a way Mike could not? We’ll never know…

Part of what makes this pie so scrumptious is the crust. People always remark, “This crust is really good.” And I’ve always smiled sweetly yet sheepishly in acknowledgment but never said anything about the crust. The reason? Here’s the confession, folks:

The Economics of a Vegan Diet

I’ll be honest: I’ve always considered the vegan diet insane. It just seems like a recipe for starvation. If you want proof of just how extreme–and dangerous–the diet can be, read the article by Robert Christgau, “Beth Ann and Macrobioticism,” about a macrobiotic woman who died of malnutrition, with carrot juice dribbling from the corner of her mouth. I know I could never subsist solely on roots, nuts and berries. As I’ve said somewhat facetiously before, Give me Oreos or give me death.

That being said, I realize the vegan diet can be extremely salubrious, and I admire individuals like Dr. John Halamka who practice it sensibly. That’s why I try to reserve my judgmental comments for the diet itself and not the people who’ve made it their lifestyle. I’m sure many a vegan would criticize my diet of Pop Tarts, hamburgers, chicken fingers and donuts, and for good reason. What can I say? I love processed foods.

But I’m going to be thinking twice about consuming processed foods and meat, thanks to commentary I heard yesterday on on NPR’s Marketplace. Peter Singer, a professor of bioethics at Princeton University, gave the best argument yet for the vegan diet. What made his argument so effective in my mind was that it was grounded in economics rather than emotion. Professor Singer linked the global food crisis and rising food costs to the increase in meat consumption around the world.

What’s wrong with eating more meat, and what affect does it have on food prices? According to Singer, more people eating meat means more of the corn that we grow for food ends up fattening livestock as opposed to to being produced for human consumption. He writes:

..most corn isn’t eaten by humans; it’s eaten by animals and that’s the biggest part of the problem. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, 756 million tons of grain plus most of the world’s soybean crop are fed to animals…

When we use animals to convert grain and soy into food we can eat, they use most of the feed to keep warm and develop bones and other parts we can’t eat. So we’re wasting most of the food value of the crops we feed them. In the case of cattle, at least nine-tenths of the grain they eat is squandered.

The solution to the world food crisis, then, he says, is to “eat less meat, dairy and eggs.”

I recommend reading or listening to Professor Peter Singer’s commentary.  Let me know what you think.  I am prepared to be virtually tarred and feathered by the vegans and macrobiotic practitioners who read this post.

Clear Brook Farm Produce Stand to Open June 13

I ran out to Clear Brook Farm at lunch today in search of plum tomatoes for the gazpacho I’m planning to make for dinner tonight.  I thought for sure Clear Brook had opened its produce stand last weekend, while my summer cold rendered me bed-ridden.  The farm stand usually opens at the beginning of June.  I was pleasantly surprised to see a sign that said the produce stand would open this Friday and that I hadn’t missed the opening day (it’s something I look forward to every year), but alas, I didn’t get my tomatoes.

Anyone have a recipe for gazpacho that calls for canned tomatoes?  I was planning to follow the gazpacho recipe in The Barefoot Contessa Cookbook.  That cookbook has not once failed me.

Workshop on Farming

Bonnie and Oliver Levis of Manchester, Vermont’s Teleion Holon Farm are offering a workshop on extending the growing season in Vermont on Sunday, June 22 from 3 to 5 PM, according to an article in The Bennington Banner. The Levis’s will demonstrate how to grow certain vegetables through the winter by covering plants with plastic on wire frames. They also plan to explain how to grow melons in Vermont.

The workshop costs just $3 and is the last of three workshops on farming. The first two, which were about organic farming practices and raising pigs, took place last weekend. (Apologies for not getting this information to you sooner.)

If you’re interested in attending the workshop at Teleion Holon, call Mary Barrosse Schwartz at 802-362-7235 to reserve a space. I’d like to say I’ll see you there, but I will be entertaining visitors that weekend.

Thanks to Erin McEnaney who told me about the article in The Banner.

Update 6/12: A complete list of the workshops that are available throughout the summer is located on the website for the Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge.

Summer Cold

I’ve been stricken with a most persistent, pernicious summer cold. I came down with it around 5 PM on Friday, May 30th and I spent that entire weekend in bed, dozing on and off between infomercials for the Shark Steam Mop and GT Express 101.  Sadly, I missed my college reunion at the University of Vermont that weekend.

11 days later, the stuffy head and scratchy throat linger.  I’m seeing a doctor today.  I think it’s about time. Don’t you?

Needless to say, I haven’t updated this blog because of this damn cold.  It’s a shame because I have an inspiring story to share with you. Two days before my nose started gushing like the Battenkill during mud season, I met with a couple, Karen and Stephen Trubitt, who gave up their high-powered jobs in the Twin Cities to move to Vermont and start an organic farm.  I will bring the Trubitt’s story to you soon.

Herb Garden

I don’t have much of a green thumb, but I’ve always wanted to cultivate a lush, hardy herb garden.

Each week my grocery list features a pot pourri of fresh herbs that I need for the dinners I’m planning to prepare: Cilantro for the fish tacos, basil for the tomato sauce, dill for the potato salad and parsley for the tabbouleh. Fresh herbs elevate prosaic foods from hum-drum to holy-cow-this-is-good! Scrambled eggs taste so much more lively when they’re spiked with freshly chopped chives, thyme and savory.  Canned tuna gets transformed from cat food to culinary delight when I add a bunch of chopped dill (not to mention some diced red onion and my mom’s secret ingredient).  And my home-made ranch dressing, flecked with pieces of parsley, brightens up the sorriest, soggiest greens.

Of course, all this herbal goodness doesn’t come cheap.  I easily spend an average of $10 on fresh herbs each week at the grocery store.  So when I charged $30 worth of potted herbs on my credit card this weekend at Clear Brook Farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont, I didn’t feel so guilty about spending money on myself.  I considered the purchase a short-term investment in my foodie future.

I just hope the investment, which also consisted of $20 worth of potting soil and a $20 cedar barrel, pays off.  You see, I’m not very good at gardening.  I either over-water plants and they drown, or I neglect to water them and they shrivel up like mummies’ fingers. I plant them too close together, or in places where they get too much or too little sun.  Some people make gardening look so easy, but I just can’t get it right.

We’ll see how well my herb garden fares this summer.  Last summer I planted potted basil, but most of it got eaten by some kind of insect before I could harvest it for pesto and Caprese salads.

This summer’s herb garden got off to an inauspicious start on Sunday when I began planting some of the dill I had bought that day.  After two difficult attempts to remove the dill from the plastic container in which it had grown from seed—which resulted in the disintegration of all the potting soil—I thought to myself, Hey, maybe these herbs need to grow more before I plant them in the whiskey barrel? I left the rest of the dill in the plastic container.  I also didn’t dare touch the basil or the cilantro, both of which looked to small and delicate to transplant.  I did plant the parsley, thyme, chives and mint.

If you have tips on how to cultivate a prolific herb garden with a minimum of Miracle-Gro, please let me know!

Why Buy the Cow…Shaftsbury, Vermont Couple Explain the Ins-and-Outs of Buying Cows for the Beef

Shaftsbury, VT — When Scott and Erin McEnaney decided to buy their first cow from a local friend in October 2006, they weren’t motivated by a desire to get closer to the source of their food. They simply wanted to help a friend who had a cow he needed to slaughter.

In return for going in on the cost of butchering the cow with their friend, the McEnaneys, who live in Shaftsbury, received a veritable beef bounty: close to 100 pounds of hamburger, ribeyes, T-bones, roasts, stew meat and filet mignon—all for a price of less than $3 per pound.

“I remember biting into the steak for the first time, and it was like nothing I had ever eaten before,” says Erin, 29. “It was like butter. It really melted in your mouth.”

Indeed, it was love at first bite.

The McEnaneys are representative of a small but growing group of food consumers increasingly turning away from supermarkets in favor of local farms for meats, dairy products and produce. The McEnaneys and their ilk are members of the localvore movement that is sweeping the United States as rising commodities prices drive up the cost to produce and distribute food and as Americans grow wary of agribusiness thanks in part to books like Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

According to a survey conducted by market researcher NPD Group, 61 percent of consumers report being concerned about the hormones and antiobiotics industrial farmers give to animals. Consequently, 43 percent of consumers have incorporated locally grown foods into their daily lives. The market for locally grown foods reportedly reached $5 billion in 2007, according to market research firm Packaged Facts. Packaged Facts expects the local foods market to grow to $7 billion in 2011.

Though the McEnaney’s decision to purchase their first quarter of a cow wasn’t influenced by any ideology, the couple, who both work for Orvis, has become more aware of the potential health benefits associated with consuming meat that hasn’t been tainted by hormones and antiobiotics as well as the importance of supporting local farmers. This awareness has motivated them to continue to participate with friends in the purchase cows for their beef. In 2007, the McEnaneys went in with a group of friends on a second cow raised on a farm five miles from their house. The got a quarter of the meat from that cow. They plan to pick up and pay for their third quarter of a cow from the same farm, Saga Morgans in Shaftsbury, later this fall.

“I’m more surprised that I ate store bought beef, hockey puck steaks for the majority of my life,” says Erin, who, at five feet four inches tall and zero percent body fat looks like she eats lots more salad than steak. “Now it’s like, holy crap, why did I wait so long to do this.”

Adds Scott, “Anyone who ever does this doesn’t want to go back to getting grocery store beef. If you have the money to do the initial outlay, it’s a great way to go.”

The McEnaneys are a font of information about buying cows from local farmers. Here, they share their advice and lessons learned on buying cows for the beef.