How Far Does Your Salad Travel To Get To Your Table?

There is a common expression used in Peak Oil circles, as well as sustainability circles, how far does your food travel? The carbon footprint for many food items is insane. A salad can travel thousands of miles before it reaches the supermarket. This is why I started to grow my own food. I can do my part to reduce my carbon footprint, and most of all I save money. Growing lettuce is a lot cheaper than buying it at the store. It's about as easy to grow as it is to buy at the store. Drop the seeds in the ground and then pick off leaves as it grows.

The photo is a proud accomplishment of the first lettuce picked from the garden last month. Tasted very fresh, very letuccy, a new word I just made up. It really did taste more like lettuce than what I would buy at the store. So right now my salad travels about twenty five feet to reach my kitchen, another five to ten feet to get the to the table. I haven't measured, just approximating, but I would be confident to go in front of any lettuce court in the county. The prosecutor would challenge me and it would go like this:

Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer, how far does your salad travel to get to your table.
Me: I am proud to say that it is less than fifty feet. I may add that I picked it myself.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer will you please keep your answers to the questions asked.
Me: I was just pointing out that I grew the lettuce myself and that I don't live next door to the supermarket.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Mr. Mayer that is obvious unless you lived in the supermarket.
Me: I wouldn't say that was obvious........
Lettuce Prosecutor: Uh, Mr. Mayer, do you add anything to your salad?
Me: Do you mean other vegetables?
Lettuce Prosecutor: Yes. Any tomatoes, mushrooms, other vegetables of that kind?
Me: No, I just have a plain salad. My tomatoes haven't grown in yet.
Lettuce Prosecutor: Do you add salad dressing to your salad?
Me: I would like to plead the fifth amendment and refuse to answer any more questions.

OK, so I do put salad dressing on that has probably traveled a bit to get to the supermarket. My salad is not 100% local just over 90%. But the great thing about growing lettuce in the northwest is that it can grow most of the year, hearing that from what I've been told. It is my first year growing lettuce, but as long as it keeps coming up I'll keep tearing off the outer leaves and eat them. I need to add different varieties of lettuce, I'll probably do that around early September when the temperature starts going down. I'll add them the same time I plant some beets. My goal is to have enough lettuce to have a salad for Thanksgiving.

I'll proudly pick and eat my lettuce and think of how much I can save in one year. Might be enough to bail out my blue cheese dressing. Boy that Lettuce Prosecutor is one mean dude.

Kim chi!

There are few things in the world that get my mouth watering than Kim chi. I make large batches of it myself, as seen by this photo of my most recent batch which is sitting in the refrigerator. I made 10 lbs, which was two cabbages, and this should last about four to six months. How did a white boy originally from Queens and now living in Oregon come to making his own Kim chi? A tale I will tell and follow up with my own personal recipe.

Back in 1994 my wife and I were living in downtown Flushing. At the time there was a growing Korean population as well as a good number of restaurants opening up. One night we went to one near the Queens Botanical Garden, can't remember their name, but it was a fancy restaurant. They had metal chopsticks! Try and pick up rice with those, it takes some practice. I ordered something that I had never ate before, Yukhui, which is a raw meat dish served with a raw egg. Before you get sick I'm telling you it is really good.

When the dinner was served the waiter placed out a bunch of small bowls with various foods in them. I found out years later this is known as banchan which is standard in Korean cooking. Looking at the bowls I saw items like seaweed salad and other interesting items and one bowl that had a green and white thing in it covered in red sauce. I asked what is that, I was told that it is Kim chi. I asked what is Kim chi and was told that it is a spicy pickled cabbage and that I should try it. I did and I fell in love.

Kim chi is a staple in the Korean diet, like the way potatoes are in our diet. I started to go to different Korean restaurants in my neighborhood, the metal chopstick place was expensive after all, and saw that it was everywhere. One night after work I stopped into a Korean supermarket on Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing and bought a five pound jar of Kim chi for ten dollars. I started to eat it on a regular basis. I finished that jar and proudly turned it into a flour jar to reuse it, yes I've been an environmental geek that long, sadly even longer. I did buy another jar that was only five dollars thinking that I got a great discount only to realize that when I got it home that it was very old and was way too fermented to eat plain. I now know what to do with Kim chi like that, more on that later.

Shortly after I moved to Oregon and would pick up Kim chi when I could, usually at Uwajimaya over in Beaverton or at the supermarket. A 16 oz jar would cost almost five dollars, I thought there has to be a better way. And when I say better way I mean cheaper. I feel comfort with cookbooks, so I went out and bought one. This one to be exact. I started to read it and learn as much as I could since I am scared to try something the first time but can't wait to try something the second time.

The book explained about the red pepper used in Korean cooking, it is similar to the Mexican Cayenne pepper. They were planted by Portuguese missionaries in the early 1600's all over Korea and it ended up replacing the Schezuan pepper. Kim chi has been around for a long time, thousands of years it's estimated. Cabbage is the most common type but it can be made with a number of other vegetables. One for example is to use Korean radish which is very similar to daikon radish.

I found a recipe for Kim chi radish which is very simple. You cube up radish, julienne a head of garlic, ginger, green onions, fish sauce or salted shrimp, sugar and lots of red pepper. Put it in a jar, keep it out for 24 hours, then refrigerate and eat. It was easier than I though it could be. The radish shrank in the jar and after awhile I started to notice that the sauce got thicker. I am starting to realize that it might be the sugar that is creating the thickening. I was now ready to make a try with cabbage. I'll post the recipe first and how I learned to make Kim chi.

Kim chi (my version)
Napa Cabbage 2 to 3 lbs
Korean Radish (can use daikon) 1 lb
Bunch of Green Onions (usually 5 to 6)
7 to 8 Garlic Cloves
1" Finger of Ginger
Carrot
1 Tbs Salted Shrimp Fry (can use Fish Sauce)
1 to 2 cups Red Pepper (powder and flakes)
Kosher Salt
Hot Water

First split the cabbage in half from the top to the base. Put about a table spoon of kosher salt on each half, get it between each layer of leaves. Place the cabbage face down and allow it to drain for at least 3 hours. Wipe off the salt and squeeze out as much water as you can. Cut a few round cuts off the radish, enough to put two to three in the bottom of each jar. Take the remainder of the radish and julienne into small strips. Do this with the garlic, ginger and carrot. Cut the bottoms of the green onions, the white portion, thinly and the green tops about a half inch to one inch long. Combine into a bowl and add salted shrimp fry, the red pepper and enough hot water to make it into a paste. Take mixture and put some between each layer of cabbage, it may be easier to cut it smaller first. Place into mason jars, close them and let sit unrefrigerated for 24 hours, then refrigerate for at least one week. The jars don't need to be sealed like you would in canning, just cleaned out first. You are trying to get the cabbage to ferment so it doesn't have to be sealed too tightly.

I didn't list sugar since I don't eat much of it and I'm not sure if it is the "secret" ingredient that I'm missing. My Kim chi doesn't get very thick but I have time to learn. Years ago I was installing a T1 for a local company in Beaverton that produces Kim chi. I told the women working there that I make it myself, she was amazed. She was really shocked to find out that I make radish as well. She told me that she has never met a white guy who made his own Kim chi. I asked about how to make the sauce thick, she told me that the owner, whose recipe they were using, spent many years learning how to do that. Nothing more, no secret spilled.

The first time I was excited and painfully waited for a week. It tasted great, even if it didn't taste like what you got in a restaurant or at the store, I made it myself. At some point later I was diagnosed with high cholesterol meaning I would need to change my diet. Since Kim chi doesn't have any cholesterol and I needed to find breakfasts that had little to no cholesterol, I figured out how to make Kim chi pancakes. Buying a ready made pancake mix for scallion pancakes, and after doing the stupid metric conversion I was able to make a nice hearty breakfast, served with low sodium soy sauce and white vinegar.

I started to realize that after a few months that the Kim chi keeps fermenting. Facing the problem I had when living in New York, I read up on what to do. It turns out that when Kim chi gets to that point it's used in soups, stews and cooked with pork. The acids help break down the pork and make it much more favorable and tender. So every few weeks I make a pot of Kim chi tofu stew with fish balls and what ever else is laying around and toss in some Udon noodles.

The main reason for this post, besides putting up another of my favorite recipes, is to show that being sustainable in my view is to be in control of your food source. And it's very economical. The photo taken above cost me about 12 dollars to make. If I bought that in a store it would cost at least 75 dollars or more. Ultimately I want to be able to grow as many as the ingredients as possible. By the time for the next batch I should be able to use my own garlic. If I start growing cabbage, radishes, green onions, carrots, ginger well not sure if I can grow ginger, but to make a home made batch from home made ingredients! That is one way to reduce my carbon footprint. One tasty pepper covered leaf at a time.

So I get to dry my clothes and save money!

I just want to start off saying that I think the dryer is one of the greatest inventions of the last century. And if my dryer reads this post, I just want to say that I love you and that there will always be a place for you in my home. That is until you break down and I get the most energy efficient model that I can afford. But still, I won't give up my dryer completely anytime soon.

I have heard horror stories from people who live in HOA's about not being able to put up a laundry line. One of the reasons I chose the house I live in is that if I want I can put up a laundry line in my backyard. In fact there was a device that had a line to use for laundry but the locking mechanism was broken. If you pulled the line out it would sag when you put any weight on it, not a very useful way to dry your clothes.

So I decided on running the line in a different direction and attach to a hook on the side of the sun room. This was a good plan except that it didn't make the line taught enough. Using a hook to hang plants on pounded into the ground worked, that is until I put on more than two pieces of laundry. Then gravity (stupid gravity) took over, the hook tipped but I caught the line just in time. Then a solution presented itself.

Yes, I ran the line across the roof. Not actually the roof, but the covering over the south garage door. I then stretched the line as far as I could and found a nail on the sun room that it reached to. The line was now tight enough to hang laundry and to keep it from hitting the ground. I proudly put some on my laundry just wet from the washing machine with the wooden clothes pins I got at BiMart and went inside.

It takes time to dry clothing on a laundry line, but it doesn't use any electricity. It works better when the sun is out, but even though it was cloudy and late in the day, I was glad that I could get the laundry out and not have to run a dryer load. When I checked the laundry before I went to bed it was still a little damp, I knew it would by dry by the morning.

I woke up that Saturday morning and looked over at the clock and saw that it was 5am. I laid there and listened to the rain falling outside. RAIN! I got up and ran out to the backyard and quickly pulled the laundry off the line, it wasn't too wet but got a good soaking. I waited until it stopped a few hours later, put the laundry back on the line and let it dry, again.

As the days are sunnier during the summer I will put laundry out on the line. Why not, it saves money and it keeps the laundry room from getting too hot. Also the dryer does make a lot of noise (again sorry to my drier if it's reading this) which I can do without. Some items, according to my wife, still need to be dried in the dryer. I have done two loads of laundry in my life, last year while my wife was in the hospital, so I am no expert when it comes to laundry, I'm guessing that she must be right. She tells me that she is always right. But even if I can reduce at least one dryer load then I'm saving energy and most of all saving money. If the dryer is not running then I'm not paying the power company. The dryer will still be used in the winter, it will help keep the house warmer when it's on and I don't want to have to run out at 5am again to pull clothing out of the rain.

Tearing Up My Lawn Part 2

As from my first post a while back, I decided to tear up my backyard to start growing food. The first three strips were dug out in early spring and I planted garlic in one row, lettuce and fennel in the next row and onions in the third. I wanted to add two more rows for tomatoes. I bought some seeds and only got one plant out of that batch. I bought additional seeds and got twelve more, each one I prepared ended up growing. I was already to get them into the ground over Memorial Day weekend, but was sidetracked by having a heart attack.

While I was recovering I desperately wanted to dig up the yard and get those tomatoes into the ground, but didn't have the strength. To the rescue came family and friends, not the government. Maybe it's because we don't have a gardening czar, yet. My mother-in-law and close friends Heidi and Keven came out the next Sunday and helped dig up the next two strips. The ground wasn't as soft as it was a few months earlier when it was raining all the time, but Kevin and I were able to get the grass up.

My dad gave me advice that I remember doing when I was a kid, plant milk jugs into the ground with holes punched in the bottom. Fill them with water and it will drain into the soil helping keep the tomato roots well watered. I started saving my 1% half gallon jugs in February in the garage, I cleaned them out first of course. It was a struggle explaining to everyone why the milk jugs would be buried in the ground, but everyone agreed and pitched in.

As soon as the grass was removed and the milk jugs buried, bagged soil was added to the ground to mix in with the current soil that was broken up slightly with the new ground weasel spiky evil sharp thing to tear up earth. This was raked in and then I planted the tomatoes in between each milk jug. A baker's dozen which I'm hoping this will give me a bunch of tomatoes. Red and greens, especially the greens since I haven't had a pickled tomato in years. The tomatoes will be canned as sauce, chopped and whole to use during the fall and winter. My goal is to not have to buy canned tomatoes ever again, so I'll need to calculate over the next few years how much this will take.

So the garden is getting there, I actually had some lettuce the other day. I found a few garlic plants already growing when I cleared out some weeds near a rose bush. At first I wasn't sure but after pulling it out found some cloves on them, I cooked them in the chili I made (recipe listed in Farmer's Market part 4). The fennel is starting to grow strong, a few onions are starting to shoot up and the jalapeno I dropped in is still growing, I'll see if it gives me any peppers. As the vegetables grow I'll keep updates.

Forest Grove Farmer's Market Part 4

Another trip to the farmers market yesterday and there were a lot more booths there as well. Before I go into what my wife and I got there, I want to update from the last post of what I cooked. If you remember I got sugar snap peas, some of them were snacked on but the remainder were used in a stir fry with rice noodles. The potatoes were uses just as I stated, drizzled with olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted in the oven until tender. The onions I used in a batch of homemade chili, the recipe of the week.

Everybody has their own chili recipe, if you don't, start with this one and build from there. I focus more on the flavor and not so much on the spice. Granted I eat incredibly spicy food, to the point of inhuman levels but I can always spice it up after it's made and that my wife doesn't eat spicy food. She is getting better now, when we first met she found oatmeal spicy (just kidding, please don't kill me dear if you read this) but now she can handle small amounts of spice. Ether way its good to know how to make chili, its a good dish to serve to a bunch of people or cook up a large batch and freeze for yourself.

Home Style Chili
1 to 2 medium onions
8 or more cloves of garlic
1 red pepper
1 green pepper
1 lb chopped meat
28 oz can whole tomatoes
14 oz can beans
chili powder
Italian seasonings
season salt
lemon pepper
Balsamic vinegar

First fry the chopped meat and drain most of the fat. Cut up onions, garlic and peppers to saute in the pot that you browned the chopped meat in. Cook for a few minutes to get the mixture tender. Add the can of tomatoes, juice and all, and chop up with a knife or your hands until it resembles small pieces. Add the meat back and the spices, use as much as you want according to taste, a few shots of vinegar is always nice. Then the controversial issue of adding the beans, I'd add them now but my dad used to add them in the last hour of cooking. I usually use kidneys or black beans but this time there was a special mixture for Southwestern style with red beans, some other beans, corn and Southwest spices which usually means extra salt and sugar. It tasted good and I think it helped this batch. Pinto beans, chili beans, pretty much any type of bean will work. Cook at a low temperature for two to three hours stirring occasionally, like every thirty minutes. I served it with rice or just eat it plain. If you can, cook a day in advance, it is so much better if you let it sit in the refrigerator overnight then reheat it. Chili is one of those few foods that taste better the next day, like cold pizza.

Now for this week, first grabbed two cucumbers from where I got some a few weeks ago. They were really good and they seem to be the only booth selling cucumbers. When I went to buy them the guy selling them asked if I would take the last one in the bin and all three for two dollars. I agreed and I now have three cucumbers. My wife then got a small container of white and red raspberries. The guy selling said he didn't have any more change and for the additional fifty cents offered another cucumber from a different bin, so now I have four cucumbers.

That night with dinner I got lettuce from my garden, the first batch pulled out of which I am so proud, and added one of the cucumbers. This was a terrific cucumber, one of the best I have tasted in years. Usually the ones you get at the supermarket taste like water, this one tasted great. One down, three to go.

As my wife and I continued to walk through the market I was stopped by someone from Oregon Environmental, or something like that, they are the new name of OSPRIG. He started to talk to me about cap and trade of which I then explained to him why it doesn't work and the only way to solve pollution problems is through the free market. After about five minutes talking to him he realized and said that you have to use capitalism to trick businesses into doing what's right for the environment. I'll accept that as a minor victory.

While I was talking my wife was busy getting other stuff. When I ran back into her she had already got a gluten free chocolate cookie, some baking mix from the same gluten free vendor, a pint of strawberries, and some more small red potatoes. We then went to the booth where I got the sugar snap peas from last week and before we left a big bag of garlic Parmesan popcorn of which we will take down this weekend when we go visit our friends. We both realize that we would finish it by Friday but since there would be enough salt to kill us, it's better to have other people to share it with. Not that I am trying to kill people with salt, at this moment in time, but popcorn is much more fun when it's shared with friends. And of course less kernels stuck in your throat. I'll update what I cooked after the next visit, may use the fruit in a pie if I have the time and energy.

I'm telling you officer, that really is my compost pile!

So many things in life start with the best of intentions. I had always looked forward to composting, yes I know, I shoot for the moon. What I have now looks like a dead body in my backyard but it's not how it all started.

For years it frustrated me that I would throw away food scraps; onion peels, strawberries that have gone bad, apple cores, etc. In fact this is why I started to make pumpkin bread. I was upset that I would throw away the pumpkin after I would roast the seeds. I love roasted pumpkin seeds, pulled out with the stringy stuff on them, put on a sheet pan with salt and roasted slowly at a low temperature until they are dried out and taste like heaven. Addictive too. So to make pumpkin bread I found a recipe in Fanny Farmer, my cooking bible, and went to task. Anyway, I was ready to start composting!

When we bought our house I was all ready to get a compost pile started. Two things held me back, first I am nervous before I do anything for the first time. After I try it I get confidence and quickly become an expert. But that first step is the hardest. The second is that my wife was in the hospital for the first month that we lived in our new house. The compost pile was put on hold.

I looked at brochures, glanced at some books and talked to people who already compost. I realized that I am making more out of my fear of trying composting and should buckle down and do it. What's the worst that could happen, satellites falling out of orbit from the sky? Actually that would be pretty cool. So I put together a compost bin.

To save the poor bin's feelings I don't have any photos of it. It was a tomato cage that I wrapped with chicken wire. Took me two evenings to finish it, but I was excited and ready. I placed it out in the backyard and started to fill it up. I realized that in a matter of days it was getting rather full of vegetable scraps and raked leaves and that I was not able to turn it easily or at all. And I saw that I had no more room in there so it was scrapped for compost bin 2.0.

The new bin started out great as you can see. I got plywood and glued the boards together to form this box. I poured out what was inside the old cage and started to add to the pile and turn it. Then I started to tear up my backyard to start my garden. Where can I put this turf and soil, why lets put it into the compost bin. The bin grew and grew and grew (sounds like a fairy tale) and then exploded.

I filled the bin too much and the walls fell over and my crime scene was now there. Also the soil is clay and my 2 to 1 ratio of brown mixture to green is so far off its funny. But I keep adding to it and my guess is that sometime by next year I'll have the proper ratio. I keep it watered and put a sheet over the top to keep as much moisture in the pile. When I did move the grass I dug up over to the pile I brought a bunch of worms. I have seen some of them in the pile, some actually are really large, almost radioactive large, but nothing to fear, yet.

I'm proud of my compost pile, I know it will work. In fact I have seen some of the decomposition happening in the pile, things I put in there months ago are making the soil softer and mulchier, if that is a word. The important thing is that I am enjoying myself and even if I do it wrong, then I'll learn. It can't be that hard, people do it everyday. But I feel good knowing that I am not adding to the landfills. Sure it may only be a few pound of waste a month, but every little bit counts. And of course if I do get it to work I'll have nice soil to use for next years garden.

Now if I can only convince the police...........

Forest Grove Farmer's Market Part 3

Another week, another visit to the farmers market. Lots of strawberries, too bad I got a bunch at the supermarket last week. I'll use the one's I have to make a fruit pie with what ever else is laying around. No rhubarb but now there are strawberries, I'll get some next week and come up with some good recipes.

I did grab some baby red and Yukon gold potatoes, real tiny ones that can be cooked whole in about fifteen minutes in the oven. Or put them on a skewer and roast over a barbecue grill. I'll toss them in with something in the next week. Sweet onions are in season so I grabbed a bunch of them, I already have onions but I am going to use these first. Nice round white bulbs with the tops on them, add them when you cut up onions they are edible too. And some sugar snap peas, maybe use them in a stir fry but I doubt that they will last that long.

Last post I talked about using the red potatoes to bake, I went against that and had a craving for horseradish garlic mashed potatoes. Our stove, the burner section, went out last weekend while I was trying to made a batch of curry. Having to wait from Saturday to Monday without a stove was too much for me, so I needed a meal to comfort me. So along with the shake n' bake pork chops, I made my Thanksgiving staple. Great recipe that I'm sure that can be amended.

Garlic Horseradish Mashed Potatoes
6 Potatoes (any will do, this time I used small reds)
1/4 cup sour cream
1 tablespoon grated horseradish*(see note/rant at bottom of post)
Granulated garlic
Salt
White pepper

Cut the potatoes into small chunks, skinning is optional, and place into a pot of water with enough to cover and bring to a boil. Cook until potatoes are tender, a knife will slide though easily. Don't over cook the potatoes, or anything ever for that matter, they will be harder to deal with and won't taste as good. Add remaining ingredients as to your taste level. Remember white pepper is spicier than black pepper. Use a good potato masher until you get the consistency that is desired, for me that means no lumps of potatoes. I got that from my dad who would make me mash for hours until my hands bled to get smooth mashed potatoes. Horrible memories but really great tasting mashed potatoes.

*Note on grated horseradish - Only use grated horseradish, they type they sell in the refrigerated section of the supermarket, or make it yourself. Creamy horseradish is the greatest crime against humanity, seriously. It tastes terrible, looks terrible and is terrible. Don't use it ever, get the good stuff, real grated horseradish.