No Grocery Store Challenge Wrap Up

So, the no grocery store challenge has ended.  We went three and a half weeks only spending $12.94 at Meijer Supermarket.  This challenge was a way for us to save money while our budget was temporarily tight.  Many advocates of food storage cite natural disasters as a reason to be well supplied but fail to mention that food storage can be extremely helpful during times when the pocketbook is lean.

Here are some of the things I learned about myself in the past weeks:

1.  I am a food hoarder. My pantries bulge. I collect staples.  The problems is while Webster's defines a staple as "a basic and necessary food item" my definition is quite broader.  I shop at grocery stores and ethnic food markets like most people shop malls and antique stores.  (Case in point: On our recent trip to Omaha, the only shopping I did was at Whole Foods and various ethic food stores.  Yes, I was a tourist at a Whole Foods.  If you happen to live near one, don't take it for granted!)  I’m always in search for the seeds, nuts, legumes, pulses, beans, grains, ect. that I can’t get in my limited Bowling Green grocery stores, and I buy up.  I also buy up whenever I see something on sale.  In fact, pantry space has overflowed to the laundry room.  Shelves are heaped haphazardly with bags of lentils, rice, beans which threaten to avalanche at any moment.
 

2. The No Grocery Store challenge made me less of a hoarder.  I HAD to use what was on hand.  Many times I have the tendency to save the good stuff for a special occasion, but that occasion never comes.  It didn’t occur to me that this was the case until I started buying groceries again.  Yesterday, I was prepping to make a beet and lentil salad.  I only have French lentils on hand (from Omaha’s Wholefoods, before that I got them at Cleveland’s West Side Market because I can't get them in B.G.).  I thought, I can’t use these in this recipe—it’s my precious stash—so I sent Kent out to buy regular brown lentils.  So it's great to collect uncommon grains and beans, but I need to stop saving them up.  Perhaps this is why I find the urgency of using fresh, seasonal produce so compelling.

3. I didn’t make much of a dent in my pantry or freezer.  See two previous items.  I really must do better with this.  So, while Kent’s gone next week, I should make sure to eat all the frozen food that he won’t normally eat: KALE. FISH.  But, at the same time, if it's not in danger of spoiling, it IS comforting to have extra food on hand.

4.  I liked the limitations of using what was on hand because I didn’t feel overwhelmed with too much food to cook.  While I think I do a good job of not letting food go to waste, I still overbuy.  Or I let the CSA box get the best of me, and can't seem to use up everything before it goes bad.  I hate feeling anxious about having TOO much food! 

5.  Limitations make even small treats feel decadent.  After awhile, the limitations did begin to feel spartan.  We ate a lot of peanut butter in 3 weeks.  But, when we sprung for Parmesan, it felt lavish.  I forget how easy it is to be jaded by over saturation of something.  Which again, brings me to Alice Waters’s quote “The things most worth having are not available everywhere all the time.”  Because if they were, they wouldn’t be worth it.

6. I appreciated and celebrated the food that I did have more.  I felt grateful for the soups I had frozen this winter and thawed.  I felt thrilled that I was able to cobble together healthy, delicious meals from what was left in the pantry.  I was even prouder of the vegetables from my garden (if that's possible).

7.  I had more free time because I wasn't obsessing over grocery shopping.  This challenge made me realize that I don’t like going to the grocery store. Submitting weekly to a crowded big-box store, with it's onslaught of heavily marketed packaged food, not to mention the plethora of decisions about what to buy and not buy, makes me a little crazy.  I’d rather not have to deal with it.  It's more manageable for me to stay out in the farmer’s markets, CSAs, my own garden, and the underground food network I’ve made for myself here, and to go to specialty markets for special treats.  Of course, I can't stay out of the supermarket forever, but at least during the summer, I don't need to rely on it nearly as much for my food.


What about you?  How do you approach food storage?  What is your pantry like?

* I forgot to give photo credit where, credit is due.  Kent took the two grocery store shots in this post.  Good job, honey!

Friendship Farm Friday: Snap Peas and Sage (!!!)

This week's CSA box: (clockwise from top left) Sugar Snap Peas, Lettuce, Beets, Kale, Sweet Banana Peppers, Jalapenos, Ponna Kheera Cucumber, Italian Parsley, Green Onions.

Sometimes eating seasonally means dealing with a glut.   While Alice Waters said it quite poetically: "The things most worth wanting are not available everywhere all the time."  There's more to it than that.  For instance, the past three weeks are the only weeks of the entire year that I can eat local, fresh, organic, sustainable sugar snap peas.  Then they will be gone until next season.  This fleeting window presents challenges.  On one hand, I'm tired of dealing with my 6th pound of peas in 21 days, but on the other hand, I am desperate not to let them go to waste.

Snap peas are brilliant.  Here is a pea that can be eaten pod and all! They do require stringing, though.  This is not nearly as tedious as shelling, and because the pod is succulent and tasty, there's less waste both in prep time and in product.  For the first few weeks, I prepared the snap peas with Asian flavors.  I highly making Sesame Orzo Salad from Sarah's Cucina Bella Blog.  However, substitute the orzo for a whole grain, as the refined flour in the orzo is not very healthy.  I substituted short grain brown rice.  The flavors that really pull through in this dish are ginger, sesame, and garlic.  I like this recipe because it uses the snap peas raw, which makes them particularly crunchy.  Plus, they look really cute when they're thinly sliced crosswise.

The other recipe that I adapted for snap peas is Rice Noodle Salad, which I found on Dorie Greenspan's blog.  This salad is Thai inspired so it's got some heady flavors: fish sauce, GARLIC, chili. (I LOVE garlic, but 1 1/2 tablespoons called for in this recipe is overwhelming.  Start slow with a 1/2 tablespoon at a time.)  You'll also notice that this recipe doesn't even call for snap peas, but they were a lovely addition.  Simply string the snap peas, and blanch them in a huge pot of boiling water for about a minute.  Then drain and pour cold water over to stop the cooking.  Do not over cook!

After these two recipes, I was out of ideas for snap peas, so I turned to the handy dandy Flavor Bible.  Which I can't sing the praises of enough.  At the end of each ingredient entry, there is a list of "Flavor Affinities" defined as "what herbs, spices, and other seasonings will best bring out the flavor of whatever it is you're cooking."  Most ingredient entries have long lists of Flavor Affinities.  Snap peas had one: snap peas + brown butter + sage.  Sage?  WTF?  

The Flavor Bible was recommending that I use an earthy, woodsy, Thanksgivingy herb to season the sweet, delicate, springy, and succulent snap peas?  It was too strange of a suggestion not to try it.  Oh my goodness!  I've never had snap peas more delicious.  The sweetness of the snap pea seems to intensify as it lingers with the brown butter, perhaps because the brown butter oozes notes of caramel.  And the sage is the bass line. It's deeper than either of the other flavors, but rather than overwhelming them, it lets all the other flavors sing.

 

Brown Buttered Snap Peas with Sage

This recipe would make a great side dish with any chicken dish or even incorporated into a pasta dish.

1 lb. sugar snap peas, strings removed

4 T. butter

1 to 2 teaspoons fresh minced sage

Bring large stock pot full of salted water to a boil.  Add snap peas, let cook for about 1 min.  Drain and set aside.  In stainless steel pan, (not dark nonstick) melt butter over medium heat.  Continue to heat until milk solids in butter turn dark brown, but not black.  Remove from heat immediately.  (This should only take a minute or two.  You can also judge doneness by the photo above.)  Toss together snap peas, brown butter, and sage.  Season to taste with salt.  Devour. 

 

Mulberries and The Kindness of Strangers

Food foraging can be nerve wracking.  Soon after picking, doubt begins to set in.  Is it really edible?  Am I really, truly, sure that this plant/berry/mushroom is the right species and not an evil, poisonous doppelganger?
On the other hand, food foraging to feels exhilarating.  It’s the culinary equivalent of dumpster diving. Getting luscious berries like this for free isn't a bad deal at all.

When foraging for mulberries, I have no worries about getting the genuine thing.  I've been picking wild mulberries for as long as I can remember.  In fact, even before my little sister was born, I remember family foraging trips, down dusty dirt roads to find the best road-ditch mulberry trees in the county.  When I was 5, I thought it was quite spectacular to watch mulberry picking.  Mulberry picking is best accomplished by laying out a large sheet under the tree and shaking the branches until it rains mulberries.  Quite an exciting affair, especially compared to buying a can of pie filling at the grocery store.

My mulberry picking adventure this year was still exciting.  I've been scoping out the trees in my neighborhood for the past few weeks.  Waiting for ripeness.  I finally found the perfect picking tree two blocks from my house: a large specimen with low hanging boughs.  The only problem was that it is very much on private property.  I decided to Blanche DuBois it and "rely on the kindness of strangers." I knocked on the tree owner's door and asked if I could pick mulberries.  The gentlemen that answered the door said yes.  (Sometimes loving an unappreciated fruit can have its benefits. I don't think I'd have been nearly as lucky had I tried the same thing with a backyard cache of raspberries.)  Though mulberries are under appreciated, I find that I like them precisely because of how common, how pedestrian they are.  Here is a delicious berry that nearly goes unnoticed.  I also admire that fact that they seem to thrive in countryside road ditches as well as they do in my urban neck of the woods. 

Mulberries make a lovely pie filling.  In fact, that's the only use my mother ever had for the berry after my dad had shimmied and shaked the tree free of all its fruit.  She was on to something. Mulberries are best cooked to draw out the most flavor.  Mulberries are like blackberry’s shy, younger sibling. They're much more dainty in flavor, and delicate in physique.  Mulberries are juicy like blackberries, but they have the earthy humility of a blueberry, but without the tartness. They aren’t as tart as blackberries, either, and they aren’t nearly as aggressive with their seeds—which is particularly appealing.

For the pie, I made a butter crust this time because I didn't want to buy lard.  I used Michael Ruhlman's 3-2-1 Pie Crust from his book Ratio.  At first I was nervous that I had added too much water because the dough was a bit sticky when rolling out—so I used a lot of flour—and had to roll out each piece of dough twice because the first time it stuck to the table.  Even so, the crust was not overworked.  It was impeccably tender. More tender than any lard crust I had ever made before.  I loved how the butter flavor complimented the berry filling.  Although I love a lard pie crust for robust and spicy apple pie, that would have overwhelmed the flavors here.

I also made a batch of jam.  Another life lesson taught by cooking: everything gets easier with practice. Putting up a batch of mulberry jam took less than an hour today.The jam is brilliant—dark and shinny—mostly purple, with deep garnet undertones. I added cinnamon and just a pinch of ground clove to the jam.  While the cinnamon is less detectable than the clove, the two spices would fall under the realm of secret ingredients because without knowing they're in there, you just can't quite put your finger on what the flavor is.  But the spices round out the flavors, bringing the floral notes of the mulberry forward. The jam has commercial powdered pectin in it, which is easy to work with.  I simply followed the package directions, no recipe needed.  The pectin, which naturally occurs in many fruits, especially unripe fruits, works to thicken the jam.  Using powered pectin means that the jam doesn't have to cook for hours, just a couple of minutes on a good rolling boil.

All in all, a gratifying day.  Thanks to the kindness of a stranger, I was able to make these mulberry treats.