Thanksgiving for the food

We ate Thanksgiving with friends. They supplied the home and we brought the bird.

I had gotten a 17-pound turkey from Freeman Homestead. It was wonderful -- no mess during the thawing, no fuss in the cooking. We also had local potatoes, squash, and greens from our garden.

Our local challenge of late has been finding the time to prepare our local food. We're looking to refocus.

I put apples and potatoes in the far corner of our basement to see how they will keep. Apples are still available at the farmers markets, too, and winter squash. We went a few weeks ago and there was still a lot of fresh stuff. I have a bunch of garlic to preserve, and I want to make some dried apples and some more apple butter.

Turkey time

I got a 16-pound pasture-fed turkey and half of a much bigger one (cut down the middle) on Tuesday from Freeman Homestead. They deliver twice a month at a location in West Seneca and offer chickens, ducks, pork, and beef, as well as turkeys at Turkey Time.

To see their blurb on the Eat Wild web site, click on the link in this post and scroll down. The entries are alphabetical. Another farm in the list that we have bought from is Honeyhill Farm in the Fingerlakes region. Their chicken is amazing, too. Honeyhill has NOFA organic certification.

The Freeman folk are friendly and helpful, and their meat is excellent. The prices are competitive with other artisan sellers but much higher than supermarkets. The difference is, I want to eat their meat and cannot stand the garbage that the chains sell. As for price, a meal at a fast food place, for two, is the same price as I pay for a pasture-fed whole chicken or a pound of steak or a roast.

Recipes ... tomato paste/waste

I got a half-bushel of paste tomatoes at the Farmers Market in North Tonawanda on Saturday. I put half in the slow cooker on Sunday and finished it off this afternoon.

My recipe is five pounds of tomatoes, seeded and chopped. Heat to simmer and cook until soft. Run the pulp through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins. Cook for an hour or two -- until the paste stays on the stirring spoon. I like to use the slow cooker to reduce the pulp overnight, then finish on the stove burner.

Add 3/4 cup of vinegar of your choice. Freeze in ice cube trays. Put in freezer bags.

A double recipe will make about two ice cube trays of tomato paste.

I'm making a basic tomato sauce with the balance of the tomatoes.

There has been a high percentage of waste in these tomatoes. Mostly black spot problems. And the fruits are over-ripe.

The tomato sauce recipe is the one in Stocking Up, a Rodale Press book. Check Amazon.com for used or new copies. It's the best.

Garlic goes in the ground

I'm giving a program at the Cottage this afternoon on planting garlic.

These are the things to remember:

* Plant in mid-October and harvest in mid-July -- from Columbus Day to Bastille Day.

* Use hardneck garlic purchased at a COOP or natural foods store, the Internet, or a farmers' market. Hardneck garlics have a central stem; upside down, the stem looks like a tiny umbrella after the cloves are removed.

* Avoid Gilroy garlic, or softneck garlic. It has smaller cloves that taste like sulphur and that may have been treated to retard sprouting.

* Prepare the soil by making raised beds or berms. Add compost or other organic soil amendments.

* Break apart the bulbs of garlic into cloves. Plant cloves, pointed end up, two inches deep in rows 8 to 12 inches apart.

---------------------

Garlic is hardy in our harsh winter climate. You can mulch or not; the garlic will make an initial growth of roots in the fall and will spring up in the spring. If your soil is adequate there is no need to fertilize. If you decide to do so, early spring is the time. Later fertilizing will promote plant size not bulb size.

Garlic is ready to harvest when the double curve at the top of the plant, the scape, has straightened out and is pointing toward heaven. Check weekly after the Fourth of July for maturity: the thick, fleshy covering of the bulb will thin and the cloves will begin to show their individuality under the covering. Dig the bulbs up carefully to avoic nicks. Trim the roots and cut the stems to 18 inches. Bundle and store in the basement or other cool, dry place.

Use the bulbs with gladness.

After choosing your planting stock, trim the tops of the garlic plants to one inch and store the bulbs by variety in brown lunch bags or cardboard boxes, in the basement or a cool stairwell.

Links:

http://thegarlicstore.com/index.cgi/INDEX.HTML

Note: garlic growers accept orders during the spring and summer, and they ship the garlic after September 1st. Cost is in the range of $10 per half-pound. Order early if you have favorite varieties that tend to sell out.

Local prices begin at $6 per pound or there-abouts. Local stock has a proven ability to grow in our region; however, garlic is just plain tough and probably most varieties will do just fine. I rarely have crop failures of any varieties that I have grown.

I've been growing garlic for more than 10 years and usually try to plant several varieties, local and distant. My available space is 100 to 200 square feet of raised beds; my usual harvest is 10 ro 20 pounds of garlic, which lasts the two of us until January. My average cost for this size harvest is $40 for planting stock.

Recipes (see Garlic is Life by Chester Aaron):

* Cut tops of bulbs and drizzle with olive oil, salt, and pepper. Wrap in foil and cook at 350 degrees F. until soft. Use on bread or in recipes. Roasted garlic is smooth and sweet, with almost none of the pungent tone of fresh garlic. We especially like to roast garlic this way when using our smoker or grill. This is a good option if the heat and bite of fresh garlic is not to your liking.

* Cut a few cloves of garlic in half. Remove skins. Toast bread, drizzle with olive oil, a little salt. Rub the garlic on the toasted bread until it disappears. This is wonderful with a pot of green tea.

Other books:

A Garlic Testament: Seasons on a Small New Mexico Farm by Stanley Crawford.

Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers by Ron L. Engeland.

Cider press deadline

Jeff Summit's Cider Press

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/scrumpy/cider/press2.htm

Here are two low-cost, low-rent solutions for making an apple cider press.

With the press of weather deadlines and the coming on of apples, more and more, this seems like a reasonable thing to consider making. I like the design of the second link better, because of its utter simplicity. The first link, Jeff Summit's, calls for some welding, which increases the irritation factor for me. Still, it's a simple design, too.

Cath and I went up to Bond Lake and got two more buckets of bosc pears and a few sorry looking but tasty apples. It's just like magic to walk through the orchards, abandoned and neglected.

Flour power

Weekend project: Sunset's outdoor adobe oven

With all the emphasis on local, this seems like a good project -- an outdoor bread oven.

Recipes ... apple butter

http://www.pickyourown.org/pdfs/applebutter.pdf

Making apple butter today and will try this recipe from pickyourown.org, which is a good place to run down local u-pick places, too.

Recipes ... Mike's Pepper Garden - Stuff

Mike's Pepper Garden - Stuff

I'm doing non-stop canning right now but took some time to find a recipe for habanero honey.

What's in a name

Recipes, because I have been canning my fanny off this summer, and now this fall, so that Cathy and I, in following the 100-Mile-Diet, will have local food to eat this winter. These posts will begin with Recipes ... .

Rants, because I am a passionate guy with lots of strong opinions. These posts will begin with Rants ... .

Local food sources, because Cathy and I have been covering lots of miles within the 100-mile radius of our home, in searching for and securing local sources for meat and vegetables, and -- we wish -- grains, too. These posts will begin with Local sources ... .

Please, please, please ... do exercise your ability to comment on my posts, to add recipes, local food source information or to give feedback, or just to have your own say.

Of course, if you see a post with some other flag than the three I've listed, run as fast as you can the other way ... . Just kidding!

Jon