Azure $130.65 (local distributor)

Alden’s Chocolate Choc Chip Ice Cream 6 x 48 ozs. $20.00
Alden’s Cookies ‘n Cream Ice Cream, Org 6 x 48 ozs. $20.00
Alden’s Chocolate Mint Chip Ice Cream, O 3 x 48 ozs. $10.00
FFL 7-Sprouted Grain English Muffins,Org CASE of 12 $26.00
SB Pimento Stuffed Olives 12 x 5 ozs. $26.60
M.O. Whole Capers, Organic 3.5 ozs. $3.00
Spectrum Balsamic Vinegar, Organic 3 x 16.9 ozs. $15.83
Spectrum Canola Mayonnaise 12 x 32 ozs. $51.60
Lundberg Wild Rice Blend 5 lbs. $9.32

Raw Cane Juice Crystals 10 lbs. $12.00 (Cafe Mam, local coffee roaster)
Dairy $28.00 (local, farm direct raw milk)
Produce $140 (local, farm direct prepaid CSA share)
Chickens $39.13 (local, farm direct Deo Volente)
Beef $19.00 (local, farm direct Thundering Hooves)
TOTAL: $368.78

OK, OK, so we eat an obscene amount of ice cream…

…but other than that, I love seeing our budget shrinking. We have canceled Organics to You because we get to eat the excess fruit from Organically Grown Company (which I pay for with my labor taking orders and assembling bins for the families in Portland Green Parenting). We have also canceled Noris by default because forgetful me didn’t put a check out 2 weeks in a row.

Also, our garden has been producing greens like crazy, which is nice! I don’t quite know how to figure in the cost of our garden (especially the loss of all my seeds due to eaving them outside to get ruined in the rain– did I mention I am forgetful?), and I have not kept track of restaurants this month either, so my accouting is not perfect, but all in all, I am very pleased to see this month’s out of pocket spendings under $250!

Speaking of our garden, today I harvested a bunch of green and rainbow chard and sauteed them in lots of delicious Noris butter with some garlic scapes and broccoli florets from our CSA share. For dinner, we went to our friends’ place for Dinner Club (a wonderful new tradition that a few of the PGP families started) and I brought a huge green salad with lettuce from our garden, and spinach, mizuna and fennel from our CSA share that went well with the homemade flat bread, dips, and veggie pie that were served. Yumm!

We are not there 100% yet, but eating mostly organic and so much more locally than before really feels great. I am loving learning about the business of produce by reading the weekly reports put out by Organically Grown Company, and just starting to feel more in touch with the seasons. I am also loving getting dairy, chickens, beef, and produce farm direct as much as possible, cutting out the middlemen and of course cutting way way down on food miles. It feels good to know who I am supporting and where my food comes from. I am also starting to think that my initial idea when I set out on this crazy ‘no more grocery store shopping’ mission to only buy dry goods/staples twice a year was not such a bad one. It’s been very liberating to not have to depend on the grocery store and to learn how to make food with what I have on hand. It’ll be interesting to make it through this 1st experimental year, and be able to look back and see where I went wrong and what I did right… no matter what, so far I am enjoying the experience!

Today, as I was cleaning out the chicken coop, I found our very 1st eggs from our very own backyard chickens– two cute little brown eggs!!

I’m not sure when they were laid, or which hen laid them, but they were in the nest box and they are still fresh. They are smaller than normal eggs, but that is to be expected in the early laying stages. Finding eggs now is actually a bit earlier than I expected since our hennies are barely over 4 months old. I had heard 5-7 mo is the normal range to start laying.

Anyway, yay for fresh eggs!! I am very excited! Time to start mixing in oyster shell with their chicken scratch.

And speaking of chickens, we got Rose back. She is one of the original eight chickens that I bought back in February. We tried introducing her in the daytime to her sisters, but it did not go over too well. Blackie, our Black Australorp immediately started pecking her, and when I put Blackie away, Rose started pecking at Goldielocks. Maui and Ginger, our two friendly Rhode Island Reds (I think?) mostly stayed out of it.

Right now, poor Rose is asleep in a cat litter box in our basement, and I will try to sneak her into the coop late at night when the other girls are fast asleep. Hopefully, that will work, and balance will be restored in the hen house.

June 30th, 2008 — Here is a photo of the 3rd egg we got; it was a double yolker!

The truck from Thundering Hooves arrived this morning at 9 am with about $1,800 worth of meat for everyone!

I know Dan is excited about his “1st timer beef sampler pack” and grilling some real, 100% pastured meat on the 4th of July. I will post again with a review of the taste of the meat after that date.

Meanwhile, I am very excited to have found this source of home delivered meat and to have Portland Green Parenting be the first Thundering Hooves buying club in Portland! Even though I personally don’t eat much meat, it feels good to be supporting a local farm that has won the Vim Wright Stewardship Award, and that has sustainable and organic practices. If you do eat meat, I think it is so important to find sources of 100% grass fed animals that have been allowed to forage and graze at will. I admit that I did not understand what horrible havoc a diet of grains and corn wreaks on a cow’s stomachs until I saw the movie King Corn, and I am willing to bet that many others do not really know about the obesity, ulcers, infections, and early death caused by this kind of fattening diet (all for profits so that the cows can be butchered at a younger age)…

Anyway, I don’t mean to preach here and get all down and depressing. Let me instead leave you this lovely description of how the hogs they sell are raised:

The Hesse pig farm has a series of giant hoop-like shelters (nearly 80 feet wide and 150 feet long). These spacious shelters are open at both ends, and on one end open to a large outdoor space where the pigs are fed a 100% vegetarian feed grown on the Hesse’s farm. When we first visited the Hesse farm,we were impressed with the cleanliness of both the farm and the pigs, so we asked them how often they had to replace the soft straw bedding on which the pigs are raised to keep everything so clean and odor-free. It seemed like it would be a massive job to remove all that organic material, and we wondered where the pigs would go during the cleaning. The answer both surprised and impressed us.

The straw bedding is never removed or cleaned during the 6-month life of the pigs. This sounds awful, but it’s not. Rather, more straw is “blown in” every morning to cover the older straw with another half-inch of fresh straw to create the ultimate compost bin. (Apparently, the straw blowing in is the highlight of the day for the pigs, who run around and play in it as it falls.) In the winter, the heat generated from the composting action serves to warm the pigs. The proof of its effectiveness was not only in the cleanliness of the pigs, but also in the almost total lack of an odor…ON A PIG FARM! When the pigs are finally sold, all of the compost is loaded up and spread out over the fields. Not only does this system create zero waste or pollutants, but the rich compost replaces the need to apply chemical fertilizers to the fields – where they grow the pigs’ feed. It is a very wholesome and utterly sustainable system that leaves the pigs happy, healthy, and clean, and left us most impressed.

To learn more, click here for a short clip explaining what makes Thundering Hooves so environmentally friendly. The next delivery will be July 24th. Please contact me if you would like to participate in our buying group.

We also got our first batch of free range, pastured chickens from Deo Volente Farm in Mulino, OR. They arrived, less fancily, in the trunk of my friend Jennifer’s car. I just had to share this somewhat macabre photo!

We’ve been getting Hakurei turnips in our CSA share and I have not had a clue about what to make with them. So today I was very happy to find a recipe for curried turnips on the CSA blog. I modified it a bit, and it came out really tasty. I think this recipe would work well with potatoes, cauliflower and peas too. Indian food is “Ummm,” as Munchkie would say. She ate a whole bunch of it. I love that she will eat just about anything we put in front of her. Zoe was not too thrilled with it, but she did have some, which is a definite improvement. She has also adjusted to eating only Ezekiel sprouted pasta, which she hated in the beginning. Overall, looking back on the last 4-5 months, I think the changes in our diet have gone over pretty well. Not going to the grocery store is really what has helped me stick with it and not give in (sometimes easier said than done). I can’t emphasize enough how much freer I feel not having to drag an unwilling kid to the store and then having to say “no” a bizillion times when she asks for chips or soda or cookies or crackers. Grocery stores should be outlawed!

Ingredients

2 onions, sliced into rings
3 stalks green garlic
2 tbsp butter + drop olive oil
2 bunches Hakurei turnips, peeled and sliced thinly
curry powder to taste (I like a lot)
1 tsp salt
squirt of lemon

Preparation

Cook onion and garlic in butter and oil for approximately 5 minutes over medium heat, stirring regularly, until it begins to brown. Stir in the turnips and cook 5 minutes more. Add curry powder and salt, and cook until tender, about 3 to 5 minutes. Squeeze a fresh lemon wedge over dish before serving. Serve hot with additional wedges. Serves 4.

I bought some amazing basil farm-direct from Deep Roots Farm, and made a very yummy pesto.

Ingredients

2 cups packed basil leaves (approx. 2 oz)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 cup finely chopped walnut
2 cloves garlic, minced or crushed
1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese
2 tablespoons softened butter (optional)
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)

Directions

1. Place basil, olive oil, walnuts, garlic and salt (if using) in food processor.
2. Blend until thoroughly combined.
3. Add Parmesan and butter (if using) and blend 5-10 seconds more.
4. Just before serving, add 2 Tbsp of hot pasta water from cooked pasta.
5. Serve over pasta with bread and salad.

Here are a few photos that my friend Ellen took of the three of us at the strawberry patch yesterday. I think she has an amazing eye and talent that she could (and will) use professionally. She does incredible things with the camera (I love her shallow depth of field) and Photoshop, cropping, and color adjustments, and just has this way of creating serene, relaxing imagery that’s vivid and alive. You can contact her at eshurtleff (at) hotmail dot com.

I am especially impressed by this last one!
Anyone with a preteen knows how hard it can be to get a natural smile!

Here is a long overdue update on how our backyard is doing. You may want to compare this photo collage to a similar one I compiled just a few months ago…

Our ecolawn has come in very nicely, and is starting to look like it needs a serious mowing.

Our fig tree looks like it will produce nicely this summer.

Our kiwi vine is growing and even sprouting little kiwi buds.

At least 1 out of my 4 garden boxes is doing very well… we are getting radishes and lettuce galore!

…and our chickens are happy being allowed back out into the yard!

This morning I took the girls out to Sauvie Island to pick organic “shebbies” as Munchkie calls strawberries at Bella Organic Farm. We got just over 20 lbs, excluding the ones that went straight from the vine and into our bellies! Yumm!

I am going to start freezing some for the winter (using the cookie sheet method even though I am also curious about using dry ice). Now that we have a chest freezer, I don’t understand how we ever lived without one.

I may also, if I get really ambitious, learn how to can some jams in honor of my Nonna. She would always make big batches of strawberry jam that would be waiting for us every summer when we arrived in Tel Aviv just as fresh strawberries went out of season, so that we too would be able to enjoy their taste… My now 90 something year old Nonna no longer cooks, and her memory isn’t what it once was, but I should see if I can get her recipe and perhaps carry on her tradition…

Who knew that so many of those “old fashioned” things our grandmothers did would come back into style with the added value of sustainability?

We are now set up with home delivery for just about everything except meat, so I have been thinking about starting a meat buying club with Thundering Hooves in the next few weeks or so. They are located in Walla Walla, WA and deliver to Portland (Grand Central Bakery in NE is their customer) every other Thursday, and they are willing to stop by my house first on their way there.

I have been looking into various sources of farm direct meat (mainly for Dan and Zoe since I don’t eat it), and have gotten really confused by hanging weight, butcher fees, processing fees, cut and wrap, and all these other expenses. What I like about Thundering Hooves is that they sell the meat by actual weight, not hanging weight, so you get what you pay for. They also have the ability to give you the exact cuts that you want if you can’t/don’t want to get a quarter, half or whole animal. And if you do want an entire animal, they can do that too. To me, their prices seem quite good ($5.09/lb for actual weight for an entire cow, for example), which if you figure a 40% loss from hanging weight works out to right over $3/lb hanging weight.

All their ruminants (cow, lamb and goat) are 100% grass fed. Their hogs do get some grain in their diet, but they explained to me that hogs are omnivores like humans and need a mix of carbs to thrive. I do not pretend to know enough about hog diet to be able to say if this is accurate or not, but I have heard from several sources that hogs will eat anything.

Their pastures are certified organic, and by practice all the farmers that they get meat from are also organic, but some have not paid for the certification so they cannot legally call themselves Organic.

Their minimum order is right around $1,000. They said the average person spends $80 per order, so I would need 12 people to commit to this to get set up. Let me know if you are interested!

Yesterday was produce day again. This time the group’s order was twice as large, weighed about 1,200 lbs and was enough food for 36 bins averaging $50 each. It took a solid 9 hrs to sort, weigh, divide, and organize everything– a lot of work, but fun too! My friend Beth came to work, and Zoe helped as well when everyone started showing up to get their bins. The quality was really excellent again, and everything went really well minus a few small goofs. You can really tell it is much fresher than at the grocery store, and the savings are incredible! I also really enjoy feeling more in touch with what I’m eating. I am learning about growing seasons and regions, and realizing how far food normally travels. Apples, for example, are just not available locally right now, so they are mainly coming in from New Zealand and Chile. But who needs apples anyway when cherries and stone fruit are coming into season?!?

We also did an Azure drop on Friday, which went well. I only had a small order for some mayo, wild rice, ice cream, almonds, figs, mustard and sprouted English muffins.

Tonight we had 3 families over for dinner club. I made wheat berry pilaf with raisins and cashews, a veggie/sprouted garbanzo stew, and a fig salad with lettuce from my own garden and a tangy yogurt dressing, plus homemade blueberry frozen yogurt for dessert.

It’s been so nice to meet so many new families and all these really neat people, and to feel like I am part of a real community that I have been a part of creating. It’s been almost a year since we moved to Portland, and it is really starting to feel like home here. It’s all very exciting!

I took these 2 photos of some of the produce we got– yumm yumm!!