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.

The Challenge of Buying Local Beef: No Viable Business Model

Since I started this blog in April, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to buying beef from a local farm. Clearly, it’s something I want to do. Supporting Vermont farms is critical to the state’s economy and to its future.

Unfortunately, I’m realizing that buying local beef isn’t easy, at least not down here in the southwestern part of Vermont. Consider my beef buying options:

Option 1: Drive approximately 30 miles to the Merck Forest in Rupert, Vermont.

The Pros:

I can purchase individual cuts of meat on an as needed basis.

The Cons:

a. I have to drive close to 60 miles round trip to get this meat.

b. The meat is frozen.

Wildcards:

a. I have no idea if this meat is expensive.

b. I don’t know what the cows eat. I do know that the meat is not certified organic, but the fact that it’s not doesn’t matter so much to me.

Option 2: With a group of friends, purchase a cow from a farm in Shaftsbury, Vermont.

The Pros:

a. Shaftsbury is a hop-skip-and-a-jump from my home in Arlington.

b. The net price of the beef is cheap. Friends tell me that the meat winds up costing around $4 per pound.

c. The cows are grass-, not corn, fed. Thus, I don’t have to feel guilty about supporting the corn-industrial-complex.

d. I’ll get a ton of meat. (This is also a con. See below.)

e. I’ll get to the know the farmers who raise the cows.

The Cons:

a. I’m responsible for getting the meat butchered, and finding a reliable butcher nearby is not always easy.

b. Since I’ll be getting so much meat, I’ll have to freeze most of it.

c. I won’t have room for anything except this meat in my freezer. Thus, I may have to buy a small, standalone freezer to store this meat, and I have no idea what that will cost.

Wildcard:

Coordinating with a group of people could be a pain.

I’m finding that the problem with buying local beef is the lack of a viable business model that serves both the farmers who raise the beef and end consumers.

The direct-to-consumer model that I describe above in option 2 puts too much onus on the consumer for that model to be viable. The practice of buying local beef will never penetrate the mainstream if consumers have to find a butcher for the meat, figure out a way to transport a side of a cow from the farmer to the butcher, and then have to buy an extra freezer to store all the meat. I realize buying local forces liberal do-gooders like myself to act in alignment with our ideologies, but I’m sorry: Asking average consumers to jump through all of those hoops is absurd. And for the Buy Local movement to become something more than a bumper sticker slogan and passing food fad, it’s got to penetrate mainstream consumers. We’ve got to find a viable and realistic way to get fresh, local meat on Vermonter’s kitchen tables.

In upcoming posts, I will talk with friends about their experience purchasing a cow from a local farm. I’ll also explore different options for getting local meat to consumers. In the meantime, I’m interested in hearing about your experiences buying local meat, whether you live in Vermont or Virginia, and what you see as the barriers preventing the Buy Local movement from really going mainstream.

Even More Fiddleheads

Eric went fishing last night and came home with a handful of fiddleheads he picked alongside the Battenkill. And I thought I had missed the boat on this year’s fiddlehead crop.

I realized last night the reason why the water that I used to steam the fiddleheads when I cooked them the other night turned rust: The fiddleheads have a thin husk around them, which is a rusty color. Even though I tried to remove most of these husks from the fiddleheads before I steamed them, I could tell there were pieces of husk within the coiled ferns. The color from these husks must have leached out into the cooking liquid while the baby ferns were steaming.

Fiddlehead Ferns, Part Two

Eric wasn’t convinced the ferns in our yard were of the fiddlehead variety. Since I was pretty sure they were, I had him take a closer look. I pointed to the coiled tops of the ferns that hadn’t completely unfurled, and asked, “Doesn’t that look like a fiddlehead to you?”

Eric spread apart a swath of ferns and weeds along the side of yard, and this is what we found:

Behold: Fiddleheads! Apparently, not all of the ferns in our yard were fully grown. I was ecstatic, especially since Eric and I desperately needed a green vegetable to have with the pasta I was preparing for dinner (and dandelion greens were out of the question). Eric picked as many fiddleheads as he could find. Unfortunately, that was only about a dozen.

Eric advised me to thoroughly rinse the fiddleheads to rid them of dirt and any insects hiding inside them. He also suggested I steam them (as opposed to blanche).

I steamed them for a good seven minutes, possibly more. I usually like my cooked vegetables on the rare side, but I feared the fiddleheads would taste gross the closer they were to raw, so I erred on the side of caution and overcooked them slightly. They were a little more gray than bright green when I took them out of the steamer basket. The water in my saucepan had turned a rust color–from what, exactly, I have no idea.

(Humble apologies for the blurry photo.)

I melted a dollop of butter on the fiddleheads and sprinkled them with salt and pepper. It was time to dig in. It was also time to face a fear I’ve always had about fiddleheads.

Part of the reason I’m so curious about these little buggers is because, frankly, they give me the creeps. There’s something evil about them. I think it has to do with them being so tightly wound. They’re coiled like snakes, and I hate snakes. I can’t help but think the fiddleheads are going to suddenly pop open and expose an alien head that’s going to bite me in the face. This must be some kind of residual trauma from having seen Little Shop of Horrors at a young age.

I fully expected the fiddleheads to taste terrible. I mean, c’mon, how good can a fern taste? I was pleasantly surprised. They tasted like a green vegetable, like a green bean. They weren’t awful at all. In fact, they were pretty good even without butter. And they didn’t bite off my face!

Do you like fiddlehead ferns, or do they frighten you? If you like them, how do you like to prepare them? I’m interested in learning more ways to cook fiddleheads so I can be better prepared for when they grow next year.

Fiddlehead Ferns

I missed the boat on the fiddlehead fern crop that grows wild in my yard. The fronds have completely unfurled and the ferns are fully grown. It’s too late to harvest them for dinner.

This is such a disappointment. I had been looking forward to trying fiddleheads and had been eagerly anticipating their tightly coiled bodies sprouting from the ground. I wanted to know why this most prosaic plant had become such a delicacy.

When Eric and I first started dating, he took me to what was then Montreal’s hottest restaurant, Toqué. It was a little too innovative for my taste. All the dishes on the menu showcased the most random combinations of ingredients. For example, one of us (I no longer remember who) ordered scallops with wild Maine blueberries and fiddlehead ferns. That, my friends, was the most sensible sounding entrée on the menu. I remember thinking it was so strange to add ferns, something that grows in my backyard, something that dinosaurs feasted on tens of millions of years ago, to what was supposedly a gourmet dish. Frankly, it still strikes me as odd, but now I’m willing to eat them as Vermonters do, with lots of butter and salt.

I realize now that the reason I missed the fiddleheads in my yard when they were young is because they were completely covered by weeds. I couldn’t see them growing. Next year I will know to peek between the weeds throughout the month of April so that I can catch the ferns while they’re young.

Fortunately, I may still have a chance to sample fiddlehead ferns: There’s on old, blind farmer who lives on route 7A who sells them every year. When I was passing by his home the other day, I saw the wooden sign he puts out on his property every spring. It reads: FIDDLEHEAD FERNS.

A Forager’s Feast Starring Wild Turkey

Eric’s brother-in-law and nephew visited this past weekend. They’re both serious outdoorsmen so the three musketeers spent the entire weekend fishing and turkey hunting.

Gary, Eric’s brother-in-law, brought a turkey he shot opening day so we could all enjoy it for dinner Saturday night. He had plucked and boned it, and he asked me to prepare it. He suggested I season the turkey with salt and pepper and bake it in a covered casserole dish with lots of butter. Gary was worried the turkey would dry out if we cooked it uncovered. He also suggested I cook the turkey with the bunch of wild leeks he had picked Saturday morning while hunting with Eric and Jake (nephew). He figured the bird would take an hour to an hour-and-a-half to cook in a 350-degree oven.

I did as told and seasoned the bird with lots of kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper. I rubbed soft butter all over the meat. I scattered the wild leeks, whose heady aroma filled my kitchen, around, on top of and below the turkey. I poured some cheap white wine that had been aging in my fridge into the roasting pan, which I covered, and put it in the oven around 7 o’clock. I prepared garlic mashed potatoes to go with the turkey and a salad of dandelion greens that I had picked the night before.

The guys staggered into the house shortly after 8 PM after several hours of fishing. I didn’t think they’d be home until 8:30, but they were beat from having woken up at 4 in the morning to hunt turkeys. They were also famished. I checked the turkey as soon as their truck rolled into the driveway. It appeared to be done and it smelled wonderful.

Amazingly, the bird was perfectly cooked. When Gary sliced into it, the white meat was tender and juicy. When we tasted it, it was succulent and sweet, as if the turkey had been eating from sugar bushes while it was alive.

And the wild leeks: The hour in the oven rendered the ramps’ bite a rich tasting flavor.

How do you like to prepare wild turkey?

Dandelion Greens

I decided to pick some dandelion greens this evening. I’ve never eaten them before, and I wanted to try them. See what the fuss was about. I quickly filled the basket from my salad spinner with bunches of the long, narrow scalloped leaves that I plucked from the unkempt flower beds in my front yard.

If you’ve never picked dandelion greens before and decide to do so, I caution against picking ones that grow between sidewalk cracks or along sidewalks, as those are likely to have been peed on by a dog. I do recommend running lots of cold water over the dandelion greens you do pick, giving the wet leaves a good twirl in your salad spinner, rinsing the bowl of your salad spinner between twirls, and then repeating that process two or three times to make sure you get all of the dirt off the greens. I couldn’t get over the amount of muddy water that collected in my salad spinner after my first whirl.

I sampled a leaf while I was wrapping them up in a damp paper towel to store in my fridge. The flavor was mild at first, perhaps a bit citrusy, but as my teeth macerated the leaf, the taste grew increasingly, powerfully bitter. “Blech,” I said.

It’s a funny thing, eating weeds.

Do you like dandelion greens? How do you eat them? I, for one, am going to need a lot of Cheez Whiz to get these greens down.