There’s a tradition in my family of going around the table on Thanksgiving giving each person a turn to speak about what they are most grateful for. Since we’ve invited you to our virtual kitchen table, I thought I’d start things off by expressing some of the many things I’m thankful for. Please feel free to join in to this little love fest by leaving your ideas and comments. It’s always lovely to hear from you since you’re the main reason we’ve been motivated to continue to share our passion for local food and living a sustainable life. I’m appreciative and honestly amazed that with all the blogs out there, so many people find the time to come to Mixed Greens. Many thanks to our readers.

Thanksgiving is the ultimate day to be grateful for the abundance of healthy delicious food we have available to us. My life would be quite different without the bounty our farmers and fishermen provide each week at our farmers market, rain or shine. The vendors bring us an incredible variety of their very best, usually with a smile, even under the dreariest circumstances. Whenever I rush back to my car to warm my hands, I’m aware they’ll be out there for several more hours. I’ve been a regular customer for years and this is something I’ll never take for granted.

I’m very grateful to have the opportunity to create this blog with my dear friend, Sally. I could say we work together but more often than not, we’re collaborating in a way that is more engaging and fun than I ever thought work could be. Sally’s all about making art and being in nature. Who else is perfectly fine with stopping to stuff our pockets with autumn leaves and then spending several (and I mean several) hours photographing them? Our friendship is the basis of all we share with you.

And finally I’m very thankful for my beautiful family . I TRY not to be one of those grandmas that whips out a photo of my precious grandchild every chance I get. But with Lily, it’s not that easy to restrain my enthusiasm especially when she’s spontaneously inspired to create a little dance for me. What a gift.

Happy Thanksgiving to all of you. Don’t forget to save your turkey carcass. We’ll be making soup next week.

Canned tuna is my version of “mother’s little helper.” It has gotten me off the hook for a fast meal more times than I can remember. Need a quick sandwich for a spontaneous picnic? A tuna salad sandwich is hard to beat. Looking for inspiration for dinner when all you have is a fridge full of salad greens? Take tuna, hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, onion, olives and later in the season, tomatoes and green beans, dress with a simple vinaigrette, serve on a bed of lettuce and you have the oh-so-French, Salad Nicoise. Canned tuna even makes a decent alternative to mac and cheese when cooked in a casserole with egg noodles, a cream sauce and mushrooms.

If you check out the shelves of Whole Foods or PCC, you’ll find that several small fisheries are canning tuna locally. You may remember a consumer boycott of tuna back in the late 80’s. That was the result of dolphins being trapped and dying in tuna nets. Now there are strict standards for the safety of dolphins and the use of deadly nets has been eliminated in most countries.

The three local companies I found all use hook and line and are dolphin-safe. Kimmel’s comes in an actual glass canning jar and is processed in Port Townsend. Fishing Vessel St. Jude is another family-owned business with high standards for sustainability, high omega 3’s and low mercury. Of these three companies, they are the only ones that mention testing for mercury on their website. Unfortunately, mercury is a concern and we would all do well to not get in the habit of eating tuna every night of the week.  Tuna Guys is the brand that inspired me to do a taste test. I used it recently in a fairly complicated recipe destined for the “not worth repeating” file. My first taste, before I mixed in so many flavor-masking ingredients, was delicious. I couldn’t wait to try it again, unadorned.

Thus, the taste test. And the winner is… Tuna Guys, hands down. On closer examination, Krista noticed that it was the only one of the three that was packed with salt. Hmmm… that might have something to do with it. It also seems to be moister and needs less mayo for tuna salad. All three are far superior in taste to your everyday tuna and you don’t need much to make an inspired meal on the fly. You also have the added benefit of supporting local, sustainable family businesses.

Lily took her role as a judge in the taste test very seriously.

As it turns out, she loves tuna, especially Tuna Guys. She hasn’t been a fan of tuna salad, but straight out of the can, it was pronounced, “yummy.”

Check out the Monterey Bay Aquarium for complete consumer information on seafood sustainability.

Lately I’ve been obsessed with the color of food. For a while it was white vegetables, now it’s anything black. To me, black food says nutritional richness, exotic taste, ripeness, sexiness and just plain weirdness all mixed together. I can’t help but react to the contradiction it evokes, just by its intense color.

The importance of the color of food goes beyond our psychological reaction to it. Heidi Swanson in her cookbook, Super Natural Cooking, explains the nutritional value of phytonutrients “which have seemingly endless health benefits. Some believe that the lack of phytonutrients in a diet high in processed foods is a contributing factor to many of the diseases that are epidemic in industrialized nations.”

Black foods are seemingly high in the phytonutrients called anthocyanins. These pigments help protect plants from UV damage and are considered potentially powerful antioxidants. That’s why dark blue foods, like blueberries, are popular among nutritionists. We’ve all heard that eating a variety of foods in every color group insures a healthy diet. Usually they are referring to red, yellow, orange, blue, purple and of course, green. But what about black food? Recently I’ve read that black foods are becoming more popular in Asian countries, especially Japan. That makes perfect sense when you think about black vinegar, black soybeans, black rice.

I’m not saying that I’m going to start adding more black foods to my diet. Though, if there were more black local foods, I would definitely give them a try. We have our local black beans and black(ish) kale. The Alaskan black cod, also known as sablefish, could be considered somewhat local. For my black food, I chose mussels, not that the edible portion is black. I’ll admit that my choice of mussels was to pitch another local food. Then there’s the physical beauty, so irresistible for photography.

The next time you go to the farmers market, pick up a bag of mussels from Taylor Shellfish Farms. I wasn’t quite sure how to prepare them but found they are really very easy.

I got a 2 lb bag of Mediterranean Mussels which turned out to be more than enough for a pasta sauce for 2 and would probably serve 4 as an appetizer. You can store them in the fridge or in a cooler covered with a moist cloth. I actually did this for a couple of days and they were fine.

When you are ready to cook them, wash the shells well, discard any that are already open and pull the “beard” off (hard to describe but you’ll know it when you see it ). Once you remove the beard, the mussels may begin to open before you’ve had a chance to cook them. That’s okay, if you cook them soon afterwards. I learned this because I removed the beards, set the mussels out to photograph and saw all of these open shells. I called Taylor Shellfish and learned that’s the reason they don’t de-beard them before selling them.

Meanwhile I melted 3T butter in a heavy pan, sauteed several shallots and cloves of garlic, added 1/2 cup dry vermouth (white wine also works) brought it to a boil and added the cleaned mussels. Turn the heat down to a simmer, cover and steam for about 6 minutes. Remove any mussels that don’t open after about 8 minutes. Squeeze fresh lemon juice over the top and serve right away. Make sure you have a loaf of crusty bread to sop up the juice.

I used my mussels as a sauce on top of black pasta (colored with cuttlefish ink). The jury is still out on the pasta. It reminded me of Charlie’s comment about one of the American Idol contestants, “If you close your eyes, you’ll realize that she has a very good voice.” The pasta tasted very good but somehow the texture and color……not so much.

I know I’m beginning to sound like the refrigerator police. “Use what you have” has become my latest mantra. It’s like I’m not allowed to put anything else in the fridge until I’ve taken some things out and used them. Reluctantly, I rummaged around in the freezer and found half of a salmon we filleted (more like butchered) around Christmas. Examining the salmon more carefully, I quickly realized that it would make great salmon burgers. After all, much of the chopping was already done.

Several weeks ago I bought Harumi’s Japanese Cooking as a birthday gift for my sister-in-law. This is a wonderful cookbook by Harumi Kurihara, who has taken traditional Japanese dishes and made them more contemporary and accessible by using easy-to-find, seasonal ingredients. It was the type of gift that I kinda really bought because I was lusting over it myself. I justified my purchase by the fact that Michelle travelled to Japan and loved it — and the food. In a perfect twist of fate, she was on her way out-of-town and offered to let me use it until she returned.

Harumi’s recipe for salmon burgers can be completely local in the Northwest. As a matter of fact, I already had everything I needed — salmon from Loki Fish, ground pork from Skagit River Ranch, an onion from Willie Greens, an egg and potato from Stoney Plains. Hmmm…. salmon & pork, a surprisingly delicious combo that makes these juicy burgers superior to any others I’ve tried.

Here’s Harumi’s recipe. It was so good, I didn’t change a thing except for the sauces on top.

Salmon Burgers

12 oz. salmon

4 oz. ground or chopped pork

1/2 small onion

1T butter

1 small potato, peeled

1 small beaten egg

salt & pepper

vegetable oil for frying

Remove bones and skin from salmon and chop until it is almost ground.

Chop the onion finely and cook lightly in the butter. Leave to cool.

Steam the potato for 15-20 minutes until soft enough to mash. Mash with a fork (don’t add anything to it) leave it to cool.

In a large bowl mix the chopped salmon and ground pork. Add cooked onion, mashed potato, beaten egg, salt & pepper.

Shape the mixture into small burgers (I made 8, the recipe says 12). Heat oil in a frying pan and cook burgers evenly on both sides. Serve with your favorite toppings. Some suggestions are soy sauce, lemon, mayo, wasabi mayo, chopped watercress (from Foraged & Found) and chives.

Chives are just beginning to pop up in my garden…..

Day after day of winter grayness, when morning blends into midday and soon becomes night, I start thinking about how they used to do things in the old days. You know, when they didn’t have freezers but still wanted to preserve the catch-of-the-day, that kind of thing. Thinking about the old notion of preserving with salt led me to consult Jerry Traunfeld’s Herbfarm Cookbook to look up his recipe for home-cured salmon or gravlax. Home-curing fish is a simple process and requires very little, other than plenty of room in a reliably cold place for weighting the fish while it cures. Over the holidays I bought some super-fresh sockeye salmon from Loki Fish. I didn’t have much room in the fridge, but still managed to make it work with lots of very precarious stacking. (I’m proud to report that I have since completely cleaned out my fridge. That’s a different story, but I seem to need to pat myself on the back for tackling that task).

I actually made this recipe twice. The first time I used a one pound fillet as suggested by the recipe. It turned out so well that I decided to buy a whole fish, a 3 pounder, and attempt to fillet it myself or more accurately, watch Charlie, while reading instructions to him off the internet. All I can say is that it’s a good thing we were going to slice it up anyway. The next time, I’ll go for the fillet.

Start out with a piece of sushi-grade salmon. One of the reasons Loki fish is so deliciously fresh is that it’s “dressed onboard and immediately chilled to below freezing in refrigerated seawater holds”. You can bring it home and use it right away or continue to freeze it until you need it. Since curing fish isn’t the same as “cooking” by raising the temperature, you’ll want to buy the freshest you can find.

Remove the skin and gray fat with a very sharp knife and bones with tweezers or needle-nose pliers.

Stir together 11/2 T coarse sea salt & 1T sugar in a small bowl or cup. Place a piece of plastic wrap on the counter. Spread several dill sprigs in an area about the size of the fillet on the plastic. Rub the top of the fish with sugar & salt mixture and then place it on top of the herbs. Cover with freshly ground pepper. Turn the fillet over and repeat with the sugar & salt mixture and more pepper. Cover with the remaining herbs. Sprinkle with 1T gin or pernod. Wrap the whole thing up in the plastic and set on a flat plate.

Cover with another plate and put a weight of 4-5 pounds on top. I used a 2 qt container filled with water. You could also use 3 large cans of tomatoes. Let it cure, refrigerated, for 36 hours, turning it over once about halfway through and replacing the weight.

When you are ready to serve, scrape off the herbs and salt with the edge of a sharp knife. You can rinse it and dry it with paper towels, if you wish. It can be wrapped in a fresh piece of plastic and refrigerated for several more days.

To serve as hors d’oeuvres, slice very thin and place on pumpernickel, rye bread or crackers with a dollop of creme fraiche mixed with a touch of horseradish and mustard. Top with dill or fennel sprigs or capers. Add a shot of icy cold vodka, sit by the fire and let yourself be transported to the “old country”. Maybe this weather is not so bad after all………….

This is when eating local gets interesting, or shall I say challenging? Up until now, I’ve been spoiled with all that has been available at the University Farmers Market. After a few weeks of freezing temperatures and heavy snow, it is amazing to find any vendors still at the market. On Saturday, this is what it looked like around 9 AM. Pretty impressive, given the circumstances. Needless to say, there wasn’t a green vegetable of any description in sight. Several of the regular vendors suffered extensive damage to greenhouses and crops. My hope is that they will recover quickly and their losses aren’t too extensive. Don’t get me wrong, there is still plenty to buy and it’s well worth a trip to the University District on Saturday morning, if for nothing else but to support the vendors that still have something to sell. Here’s some of what I bought –

Rockridge Orchards has a good supply of dark and light honey — so perfect in a steamy hot cup of tea.

Dylan at Loki Fish has some sushi-grade sockeye that made an excellent home-cured salmon appetizer for Christmas Eve.

Skagit River Ranch has eggs and bacon for breakfast and soup bones for the incredible pho I made yesterday and will tell you about in the coming weeks.

And a quick stop at La Panzanella for some of their fresh foccacia.

This is only a sampling of what you can find. There are also potatoes, apples, oysters and lots more. I hope we haven’t seen the last of the vegetables until spring but in the meantime, try to go and support the vendors that have braved the weather to bring us our local food.

Some people hate to cook and maybe always will, but others might discover something creative and satisfying in the preparation of a meal. (Meditative even? I could wax poetic about the benefits of preparing one’s own meals.)

We also want to educate ourselves about food production. What are the relationships, the stories about agriculture, agribusiness, small farms and farmer’s markets that directly affect our tables? This NY Times article which appeared in the PI last week addresses food production and is another plea to a President about reforming food production and our thinking about it.

Have a look at Obama’s Secretary of Food if you haven’t already.  Nicholas Kristof starts out quoting Michael Pollen:  “We’re subsidizing the least healthy calories in the supermarket – high fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated soy oil, and we’re doing very little for farmers trying to grow real food.” Kristof builds a case in a relatively short op-ed piece about why and how we might attend to food production differently.  248 comments/retorts so far and they’re as informative and interesting as the article itself.

And, Green Holidays . . . these sites are worth checking out during the holidays and bookmarking for future reference:

Seattle Times Home and Garden section recently published Easy Ways to Make the Holidays Green and Jolly; and, The National Geographic Green Guide to Shopping is a great source of information about shopping, from jewelry to cat food.

I just received this email from Rob at Vashon’s Plum Forest Farm (holding carrots in photo above):

Greetings,
Due to the weather, the farm stand is closed until things thaw.  I
double covered the salad greens plus they have a blanket of snow, so
if we are lucky and the cold doesn’t stay too low too long, there may
still be salad later in the year.  I expect many other crops to make
it and will let you know when we open the farm stand again.
If you haven’t ordered pears, you still can. We have orders for 25 so
it looks like it is likely to be a go.

Rob

]]> http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/12/16/local-living/farmers-markets/a-secretary-of-food/feed/ 1 http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/11/17/local-living/small-actions/precious-dirt-pcc-farmland-trust-2/ http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/11/17/local-living/small-actions/precious-dirt-pcc-farmland-trust-2/#comments Mon, 17 Nov 2008 23:21:20 +0000 Sally http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/11/17/uncategorized/precious-dirt-pcc-farmland-trust-2/ Whenever I can include a little dirt in the course of a conversation about local and seasonal I’m happy. This time it’s about preserving some land for growing food.

“The PCC Farmland Trust secures, preserves, and stewards threatened farmland in the Northwest, to ensure that generations of local farmers productively farm it using sustainable, organic growing methods.

The PCC Farmland Trust is an independent, community-supported 501(c)(3) land trust. It was founded in 1999 by PCC Natural Markets as a separate, non-profit organization.”

Since we’re not all going to become urban farmers, small backyard plots notwithstanding, we rely upon others to grow most of our food. When my youthful grandparents arrived in eastern Washington in the mid-1920s they could buy land for a song if they were willing to do the backbreaking work required to clear it, which they were and they did. Those days are over. It’s become difficult, an understatement, for potential small farmers to compete with big name corporate real estate. Food producers can’t compete with the earning potential of retail, for example, on that same acre of land, so it’s an expensive acre. Things to use and wear vs. food for the table. Take your pick.

PCC has a remarkable commitment to social responsibility on many levels. They’ve been involved in efforts to acquire local organic farmland for a while now and fund raising for this cause is ongoing. In a recent newsletter they describe current endeavors to purchase 100 acres on the Puyallup River that can support up to five farmers, and 730 acres on the Black River in Thurston County.

I keep thinking bumper sticker: S A V E T H E D I R T, save it for farming as if our lives depended upon it. Consider PCC’s Farmland Trust program as a cause worth supporting. We might have to sacrifice another fancy shoe store, but we’ll gain, perhaps, local cauliflower and bacon. Visit PCC’s site and contribute if you can. It would be a small action toward sustainability that might keep local, seasonal food on the table. Farmland Trust Donation Form

]]> http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/11/17/local-living/small-actions/precious-dirt-pcc-farmland-trust-2/feed/ 0 http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/10/20/seasons-eatings/fresh-shellfish-and-yoga/ http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/10/20/seasons-eatings/fresh-shellfish-and-yoga/#comments Mon, 20 Oct 2008 00:50:30 +0000 Poppy Barach http://mixedgreensblog.com/2008/10/20/uncategorized/fresh-shellfish-and-yoga/

And the connection is?? Orcas Island, of course. A perfect place to spend a quintessential fall weekend partaking in all the local specialties. We heard that Buck Bay Shellfish Farm was open for business and decided to take an excursion to one of my favorite parts of the island — Olga. Just around the bend past the Orcas Island Artworks is beautiful Buck Bay.

If you look at this photo carefully, you can see the pipe that brings water directly from the sound to an ingenious operation up the hill. Drive in and you are directed to “honk for service”. Toni was right there, eager to show us around Buck Bay Shellfish Farm housed in a barn on an old family homestead. She showed us how the water is pumped in through tanks which are the homes of the growing oysters and clams.

Granted, this might seem like cheating to our friend, Finspot, over at Fat of the Land, who would no doubt be out digging his own clams. We were happy to have all the work done for us and to be able to take home big bags of clams and oysters for appetizers that evening. Another benefit is being able to cook the clams right away without soaking to get rid of the sand. Toni showed us which oysters would sit easily on the grill. You can choose the size from small to ex-large. I chose medium but in the future, I’ll go with small. The mediums were quite large, especially for the unitiated oyster-eater.

My brother, Jon, did a perfect job with the oysters on the grill and then with shucking. His wife, Michelle, makes a killer cocktail sauce. We steamed the clams in a little Pinot Grigio, a couple of cloves of garlic and plenty of butter.

Simple, fresh and Orcas Island local.

When you are looking around your kitchen and thinking of ways to cut back your food budget, think about beans. They are affordable, packed with nutrition and full of comfort-food-flavor. These multi-ethnic staples are at the peak of their season in the Northwest. Shell beans, fresh from their dry coverings, are simple to prepare and can be eaten plain or seasoned with just about any herb or spice.

Alm Hill Gardens, a longtime vendor at the University Farmers Market, has been participating in a series of field trials with WSU to test numerous varieties of shell beans. Some of these are old favorites but there are plenty of new ones to try. Gretchen Hoyt and Ben Croft, owners of the 47 acre sustainable family farm for 35 years, are innovators in their own right. They have leased their land to their twenty Latino employees and new farmers working with the non-profit, Growing Washington. Hoyt and Croft still remain an important part of the farm and provide mentorship to the aspiring farmers.

If you choose to shell beans yourself, buy a pound for every cup you want to serve. If you buy the shelled beans, you may want to use them soon or take them out of the plastic container so they can dry without molding. One thing that makes these freshly shelled beans so appealing is their cooking time is much shorter than it will be when they’re fully-dried. No need to soak, just cook and enjoy the freshly-harvested flavor.

My favorite way to cook fresh shell beans is in my 10″ cast iron skillet. First I put some olive oil in the hot skillet, turn the heat down and saute several cloves of garlic , herbs and veggies for flavoring. Rosemary is a wonderful choice especially with white beans. Remember you aren’t going to be cooking the daylights out of these since they aren’t completely dried so carrots, onions and celery can all maintain their integrity when added now. If you are going to use some meat, like sausage or bacon, fry it first, remove from the pan, then use less olive oil to start.

Wash, pick out and discard any damaged beans. Add washed beans to lightly sauteed veggies and cook for a couple of minutes to coat with oil. Add water or broth and cover by 1/2 to 1″. You can always add more liquid if needed. Even without soaking, fresh beans will absorb less liquid than dried beans. Bring to a boil, then turn down to a simmer. Cooking time may vary depending on the variety but I have found 30 to 60 minutes will work for most. The best way to check for doneness is a taste test. Overcooking is preferable to undercooking — crunchy beans are not too popular. I always add salt at the end of the cooking process because it can toughen when added too early.

Beans and greens have long been best friends. Check out Sally’s entry for more on that — or try out her recipe for kale salad from yesterday, it looks like a winner. There is always beans & rice, Lily’s personal favorite and well-liked by kids (and adults) everywhere.