Day 38 & 39 – 100-mile Diet : Busy last few days and prepapring for a partial “break” off the challenge.

So 2 weeks ago we received a very unexpected phone call from my mother-in-law announcing that they were planning a long week-end up in Quebec. Being from Pennsylvania, they would be driving up all day on the Friday (today), spending the whole week-end with us and leaving to drive all day back on Monday.

We were THRILLED! They haven’t been able to come up and visit since the wedding almost 3 years ago so we got busy making the place nice and ready for guests.

First : Busy nights and this challenge don’t exactly mesh well if you don’t have pre-prepared foods – which we were out of – which meant lots of quick cooking staples that didn’t really spark the imagination.

But I still managed to whip something nice that I thought you all might like :

White bean and roasted butter nut squash spread

• Soak about 1 cup of beans over night and then cook them until the flesh cracks. Drain and set them aside to cool.
• Cut about 1 cup’s worth of buttenut squash in cubes, lightly cover with oil and set on a baking sheet in the oven. Roast for about 30 minutes at 400’F. When they are done, set them aside to cool.
• When everything has cooled down, in a food processor, put the beans and squash, a couple of table spoons of your favorite local yogurt - we used plain goat - and add whatever fresh herbs you have. We added chives that we had frozen and dill.
• Refrigerate to let the flavours blend in and serve on bread or crackers.

Where does the BREAK thing come in?

Well, as you can guess, having company over that is hoping to be out and about doesn’t really go well with this challenge. We figured, this was a happy surprise and this is a social life amendment situation if there ever was one!

Now, while we are at home, we are planning on being as 100-mile as possible. All veggies and fruits will be local, all cheese, eggs, milks, yogurts… That won’t change. All oils, vinegars, flours, herbs will be the ones we have used for the last 5 weeks. I’m gonna be working on a couple of loaves of bread tonight – which should be ready to bake tomorrow – so that should go over pretty well too. I plan on making pancakes and eggs for breakfast, home made frozen fruit smoothies instead of juice. We were smart and froze local berries and melons for the coming month. We are even having my parents over Saturday night and are planning a big market fall veggie type stew for dinner.

But while we are out visiting the town, we can’t run home all the time to have lunch. My in-laws were here for 3 days and busy with wedding stuff the first time and I want them to enjoy the city this time around without stressing them out about our challenge.

So there it is.

I’ll be back next week to tell you about our week-end. I’m really curious of HOW MUCH local foods we will be able to “sneak in” during this week-end. It’s almost a new challenge in itself.

We are so looking forward to their visit. It will be amazing to see them!

Have a great week-end everyone!

Day 31 & 32 – 100-mile Diet : Mastering and taming the sourdough bread beast!

We have bread! Real bread… bread we could make little sandwiches with: Sourdough goodness that has a golden and hard outside crust and a wonderful creamy center.

We couldn’t be happier!

We decided to never mind the quick recipes online. All web sites we found seem to be very much in a hurry to make bread : “Let rise for 1 hour”, “Let rise for 2 hours”, “Bake for 20 minutes”… It made no sense to us. Isn’t making bread an art form?

I remember my uncle Paul who used to make bread in his kitchen. For days, he had loaves of rising bread splayed about ever counter and fridge tops. It would be a week-end long endeavour and that is what we wanted; to have EARNED the bread.

So we decided to go with James recipe from the 100-mile book. We wanted to watch it come alive, wait for it and let it come to us. And we did.

His recipe is simple:

Ingredients:

• ½ cup of starter
• 6 cups of flour
• 2 ½ cups of warm water
• Oil
• (He writes salt, but we didn’t cheat!)

Let's GO!

1. Take the starter out of the fridge and let it cool at room temperature.
2. Mix the starter, water, salt (if you use it) and 4 cups of flour and blend.
3. Knead the dough, adding the remaining 2 cups of flour ½ a cup at a time. (We ended up adding almost a half a cup of flour just to be able to knead it. That thing was alive!)
4. Oil a ceramic or glass bowl and put the kneaded dough in it. Let rise for 12 hours in a warm place. (We chose the top of the fridge.)
5. Take out of the bowl and knead for 5 minutes (we kneaded for almost 10 minutes, adding another ¼ cup of flour to get it to un-stick from our fingers.)
6. Lightly oil 2 bread tins and put half of the dough in each.
7. Let rise for another 6 hours or until it doubles. (We ended up letting it rise for almost 9 hours.
8. Preheat the oven at 425’F and bake for 115 minutes.
9. Turn down the heat at 350’F and bake for another 45 minutes.
10. To know if it’s done, stick a knife in the middle. If it comes out clean, it’s ready.

VOILÀ! Patiently, awaited bread…


We are heading to my sister’s place this week-end. The car full of 100-mile staples and she is all about the adventure with us for a week-end. We will be hitting local markets and buying all kinds of goodies from her 100-miles. We love her for wanting to join in, she’s the best!

I’ll be back on Sunday night to tell you guys all about it!

Have a great week-end!

Day 24 - 25 & 26 - 100-mile diet : Lots to do and lots to think about...

On Day 24 (Thursday), a friend of mine sent me a recipe for home made fresh cheese. Our first thought was “amazing! A money saving idea!” Turns out it may not replace the sharp cheddar we love so much, but it will replace ricotta in a home made stuffed pasta!





Now, I think that I may have squeezed too much of the whey out which is why it became so dry. By the time I was done with it and it had cooled. It had the crumbly texture of extra firm tofu.


BUT! I was able to crumble it up with a fork and we made frittata which was wonderful. We accompanied the whole thing with Brussel sprouts in cream and caramelized onions and had a wonderful meal.


Day 25 (Friday) was a day of gifts and discoveries. A lady I work with told me a while back that she would bring me her left over curly parsley. She grows it as a perennial in her landscaping and simply cuts it down every year. When she found out about our challenge, she offered to bring it to me so I could dry and use. Of course I said yes and I’m glad I did: She walked in with a garbage bag full for me to go through and hang. Although it was further along in the season than it should have been and parts of it had yellowed, we were able to get a decent bit washed prepped and hung. It should keep us in parsley for quite some time. We also kept a bit of it fresh in the fridge for the next few days.


The other wonderful thing that happened was that we stopped at a little organic farmer stand at our local farmer’s market that had… drum roll… THAI CHILIS! I’ve never before seen Thai chilies here other than at the supermarket. We have a lot of mild and medium peppers, but to find real hot peppers is quite a venture. I think I took him by surprise when I picked up the little box of them and asked him “How much?”. He looked at me and said “50 cents”. I looked at my husband thinking it was a steal until I realized what he was saying and then asked again “No, how much for the whole box?”. He started laughing and said “Wow! Okay, 5$”. Got home and had 18 Thai chilies. I hung half of them to dry and froze the others. This made my day!

Day 26 (Saturday) was a wonderful day and a hard day all at once.

We started out early in the morning with one mission: Pick a road, set the trip-odmeter at zero and drive until we hit our circle limit. We decided to head North East along the south shore of the Saint-Lawrence River and headed to the county of Kamouraska, 155 kilometers away (96 miles).

What a beautiful drive it was!

Along the way, we bought quite a few things thinking that if we were to put in the miles, than at least make it count. We got:

Flour at the mill we had found earlier in the summer. La Seigneurie des Aulnaies, it is the only mill we found that is not only Eco-Cert organic certified, but also uses grains that are exclusively grown in the Kamouraska region. We came back with a 10 kg (22 pounds) bag on white flour for pasta and trying our hand at a sour starter again and a 2 kg (4.4 pounds) bag of wheat pastry flour for apple pies and a possible future pound cake attempt.

We stopped at a local smoke house called Les Pêcheries Ouellet and my husband got maple smoked sturgeon and eel, both caught by the man behind the counter that pointed out the window to the exact spot where he did. It was hard to get much more local than that. He was also very proud to say that the maple planks used came from his land across the street!

Our last stop was at la Fromagerie du Mouton Blanc where they make one of my favorite cheeses of all time: Le Tomme de Kamouraska! Made from raw sheep’s milk, the Tomme is almost as hard as parmesan but much milder, which makes great to just eat or in food. Not only that, but the company follows Kyoto protocol practices by having built manure recycling vats that transform the methane gas into the electricity that is used for the farm.

Here is what the owners, Rachel and Pascal-André, have to say:

“Innovation, leadership and know-how… “Our business does its part for the planet by saving energy and respecting the environment. Over the years, we have planted windbreaks on our land to ensure the comfort of the animals at pasture. In addition to creating natural habitats for wildlife, these windbreaks help prevent soil erosion. They also limit the sheep’s access to bodies of water for their protection. What is more, the farm harnesses solar energy for its activities.

We are especially proud to be part of the 15 dairy businesses recognized as energy innovators within Canada’s dairy industry. This recognition, which the farm received for building its cheese making facilities according to the Kyoto Protocol in 2003, is a first in North America.” (Source)

So we got home pretty happy with ourselves… until we sat down and added up the receipts.

What there is to think about?

Unfortunately, reality struck when we got home and realized, once again, that we were broke. This has been a reoccurrence ever since we have started.

One aspect of this I’ve been keeping out of my blog in fears of scaring people off from trying local eating is the money side of it. The reality is that our grocery budget has tripled since we have started and we are starting to run out of funds. The sad thing is that, the reason WHY everything local cost so much for people like us that are trying to take such a challenge is that no one buys local. The more people would buy local, the less things would cost… but you need a handful of people to start actively buying local, which everyone finds too expensive and can’t afford. Catch 22 really, and it is stretching us thin.

What to do?

We sat at home depressed for hours at the idea of having to stop before our time was done. The simple idea of it was unbearable. The feeling of being failures because of money was too much to handle so we had to find something else.

We thought of doing it partially. 3 days a week for longer lets say. But that would be even harder: The farmer’s markets all closing in 3 weeks would mean living on nothing but reserves for months on end and for better parts of the months, in Quebec’s harsh winters, which just can’t happen. And it would mean making MORE reserves now, which would only increase our grocery bill that much more which defeats the purpose.

After hours upon hours of quiet sulking, we came to a decision: Tough it out.

One of the problems I think has been that we tried to make this too “fantastic” and it’s not the point I think. So back to basics… Cooking simple foods and staples, keeping the fancy stuff for the week-end and special occasions.

New challenge: Living within our NEW means and making this a real challenge…

Day 18-19 & 20 – 100-mile Diet : A very big and productive week-end…

I hope everyone had a great week-end. Sorry for being away for a few days. Between not being home and then being home but having the computer unhooked for painting, I haven’t had the chance or the time to write.

Day 18 (Friday) was pretty uneventful. After work, we drove across the river to pick up a few wine bottles from one of our favourite local wineries and stopped at La Fromagerie Bergeron (cheese maker) and stocked up there. During our little trip, we came across a wonderful little farmer stand that had beautiful corn and beautiful spaghetti squash so we picked those up and had ourselves a dinner.



Saturday (Day 19) was the beginning of a very busy week-end. We had major home renovation plans for Sunday so all the cooking and baking had to happen today.

First, we tried our hand at a new yeastless recipe for rye bread. It turned out pretty good, but very massive and chewy. We HAVE to figure out this sourdough starter thing…

We set off, after a lovely breakfast, to my parents place where we brought the corn we had bought the day before and had 100-mile lunch with them. We had brought over a nice bottle of local apple cider and had a big filling meal before going apple picking.

Although it was raining, we bundled up and head out to my favourite local orchard and picked 25 lbs. of apple for eating, baking (we will try our hand at 100-mile apple pie this week!) and for making apple sauce.


Then home for dinner. One recipe we had been wanting to make since the beginning was 100-mile perogies. Seemed to me like an easy enough recipe. We have flour, we have eggs, we have cheese and BOY do we have potatoes!

100-mile leek and cheddar perogies

First, make your mashed potatoes. I decided to caramelize some leeks and grate some local sharp cheddar and mash them all in. Set the potatoes aside.

The recipe for pasta is pretty simple: 1 egg for ½ cup of flour. Then knead for about 10 minutes, adding flour when it gets sticky. We decided to not bring out the pasta machine and went with the rolling pin. Roll out the dough until it is almost paper thin, then take a large mouth cup and cut out circles. Place a spoon full of potatoes and fold in half. Press the edges with a fork.


Place the perogies on a baking sheet and place them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. I find this helps them stick together better when boiling. Take them out of the freezer and boil them for about 6-8 minutes.

We served them with left over tomato sauce and grated aged Gouda.





Sunday (Day 20) was a huge day! We were up at the crack of dawn because my husband wanted to paint the entire main room of our apartment. We had been living with the horrible faded milk chocolate brown color of the old tenants since we moved in last July.

During this time, I was put on canning duty.

CONFESSION

I must be honest, what I was making this week was my fruit ketchup. I did not make it 100-mile. Although the ketchup won’t be ready to eat until after the challenge is over, I needed to come clean about having cooked with ingredients that were not from within my range. I make ketchup once every 2 years (I make about 30 jars) and fruit ketchup with only apples is kind of, well, apple ketchup. My recipe asks for pears and peaches and although they were not from here, I did manage to find Ontario growers that sold them up here. I figure it’s not 100-mile, but at least it is growers from my side of the country. The veggies (onions, celery, tomatoes…) and apples were 100-mile.

We promise not to eat the ketchup until after the diet challenge is over. But because we cooked with 100-mile ingredients knowingly, we have added 2 days to our challenge.

Our challenge will now end on November 19, 2009.

Day 16 – 100-mile Diet : Simple is best.

Until now, I’ve never really taken the time to fully appreciate what the convenience of quick food brings us. The idea of coming home, mixing together a few things and sitting, lazily, while they bake or cook, has become foreign to us now.

The average dinner meal at our home now takes about 1 hour and a half to make. Even though we have never been big on “meals in a box”, we would still take advantage of buying pizza dough, buying pizza sauce and then having nothing to do but cut up veggies and grate cheese. A slightly more involved version of the frozen option, but all ready in 20 minutes. Then we would sit, relax and wait for dinner to be ready. Those days are still far away. Will we ever go back fully to those ways? I don’t know. But it seems that having the choice of going back or not is the luxury itself.

Yesterday was our first real lazy evening when it came to dinner. And I say that still after my husband spent most of the first hour home after work doing dishes. (This diet makes a LOT of pots and pans!) Then, while I was putting together a soup and making dinner, he spent the next hour cutting up the huge celery and the 2 huge rutabagas that we had bought to freeze for the following month. If you ask my husband, THIS was lazy compared to any other night since we have been doing the challenge.

Dinner was simple:

Cauliflower and Broccoli florets sautéed in sunflower oil, garlic and red onions. Then topped with the tomato sauce I made last night and covered in aged cheddar. Sent in the oven for 15 minutes and served.

Total time of preparation: 30 minutes. I almost cried.

Our first 100-mile soup

This one was inspired by a million acorn squash soup recipes I had been looking at. It is squash season and I couldn’t resist buying an acorn squash almost the size of my head when we were at the market a few days ago.

Ingredients:

• 6 cups of vegetable stock (Made the night before… The taste of the soup will change with the flavours of stocks, but I recommend a sweet stock for this soup.)
• 1 large acorn squash, peeled and cut into pieces
• 5 small apples (I used Paula Reds), cut into pieces
• Half a large red onion, cut into pieces
• 3 medium potatoes, brushed, with skins on and cut into pieces
• 4 large carrots, brushed and cut into pieces
• One good size sprig of thyme. (Use any herbs you have around the house)

Cook everything at low boil for about 45 minutes (until everything is tender).
Pull out the thyme sprig from which the leaves will have fallen.
Spoon out all the veggies and purée everything in the food processor.
Add back as much of the leftover broth as needed to make it the desired consistency.

It makes a LOT! You can freeze parts of it. I never keep soup in the fridge longer than 5 days.

Voilà!

And we have soup for 2 lunches each and a container in the freezer for another hopefull lazy evening next week.

Day 10 – 100-mile diet : Revelations and Amuse-bouche!

Good evening to all.

Today was a good day food wise! Not only did my mayonnaise turned out great and we found a celery the size of a small grocery bag and I was able to make egg salad, but we had an important realisation about this challenge while walking through the mall after work.

Let me explain…

For the longest time, my husband and I have had one tradition on Thursday night, every 2 weeks, when we get paid: We go for pad Thai before doing all of our grocery shopping and all. Now, this may not sound like very much, but pad Thai is one of my husband’s favourite things and tonight was the first Thursday we got paid and there we were running errands and no pad Thai. Actually, there will be no pad Thai for 4 payday Thursdays.

My first reaction, as I looked at my husband’s slightly antsy face making “jokes” about the fact we had only forgotten one thing, that being PAD THAÏ, I found myself going through the ingredients and trying a find a way to fake pad Thai for my hubby. That’s when it hit me:

Trying to find substitutes for things will only make this harder.

My egg salad was good at lunch, but without salt and onion powder, it just wasn’t the same. Tomato sauce without spices is just not the same, fries without ketchup just doesn’t taste quite like what I’m craving.

So WHY try to slightly comfort ourselves in “pretend” foods when we could just create a whole new thing or try something completely outside of the box!

I remembered one of the first recipes that James and Alisa write in their book:

Potato Amuse-bouche

All they are really are slices of beets topped with blue cheese mashed potatoes. I thought to myself: “Now, THAT is something you have to think outside of the box to think up!” So simple, but of all my cookbooks and all my dining experiences, I’ve never heard of something like that.

So we made them for dinner:

Local Blue-Brie cheese, melted in yummy waxy yellow mashed potatoes pilled high on top of slices of boiled beets 2 inches in diameter and ½ an inch think. Sent them in the oven at 250’F for 15 minutes to double-bake the potatoes and roast the beet and VOILÀ!



Paired with a tossed salad (complete with my own raspberry-maple vinaigrette) and two glasses of amazing local red wine, we had a meal!

Funny enough, neither of us missed the pad Thai after this.

So new mission: CREATE! Look at what you have and make something.

I send the challenge out to all of you:

One night soon, look in your fridge and create something with what is there! It’s a wonderful feeling. Share it here. I would love to hear of your experiments.

Day 7 – 100 mile diet : Why can't mustard seeds grow in Québec?

So, we are almost at the one week mark and I must admit, a few things are starting to gnaw at me. I guess the novelty wearing off a tiny bit (or maybe it's the chocolate chip cookies they had in a meeting this morning that I didn't touch) and being a few days before we get paid, going out and buying fancy cheeses and such isn’t a possibility right now.

The first thing that set us back a bit is trying our hand at a yeastless bread recipe and having it go bust. We were really hoping to eat a bit more than pitas this week, but we may not have a choice until our sour starter is ready… *fingers crossed*… I will post about that IF and WHEN we get it right!

The second thing would be sweets. Yes, my husband and I are sweet freaks and we have really been missing our after dinner desserts. There is just so much maple syrup and fruit will do and we are itching for an honest to goodness cupcake! We are on a mission to rectify this soon.

The last thing would be condiments and spices. Now, as much as I was never a “salty” person per say, I must admit I did use a lot of spices. I love exotic ethnic cuisine. Curries, salsas, chilis, Moroccan couscous, these were some of our staples and they have all been put on the shelf (or taken OFF the shelf) and we have been left with herbs, garlic and vinegars. I will be a 5 year-old about it and say I want ketchup with my hash browns in the morning!

But that is the point of the whole adventure…

IT WOULDN’T BE A CHALLENGE IF IT WASN’T CHALLENGING!

So what to do? Make mayonnaise of course!

Started with the basic ingredients and decided I’ll see how that is and go from there:

• 1 egg
• 2 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• 1 cup of sunflower oil.

In the food processor, beat the egg and vinegar. Drizzle the oil while the processor is beating until it’s fluffy.

Now, the recipe I found also had lemon juice, salt and mustard powder. But they were in such small quantities (1/4 to ½ teaspoon each) I thought “we won’t miss them”! WRONG!

What now? I added basil, a bit more balsamic vinegar and garlic. It should keep for 2 weeks, but I don't trust raw eggs that long so I'll most likely make potato salad or cole slaw soon with it.

Hopefully, the night in the fridge will help out with the flavour kicking in.

SO LET’S PLAY A GAME!

Let’s calculate my food mileage using the original recipe:

• 1 egg: 30 miles – 49 km
• Balsamic vinegar from Italy: 3800 miles – 6115 km
• Olive Oil from Italy: 3800 miles – 6115 km
• Mustard seeds (if I was to buy Canadian grown in Saskatchewan): 2100 miles – 3400 km
• Sea Salt (We used to use gray salt from the Baltic Sea): About 3500 miles – 5600 km
• Lemon juice from Florida: 1600 miles – 2600 km

Total for home made mayonnaise: 14830 miles or 23879 km

Now my alternate recipe:

• 1 egg: 30 miles – 49 km
• Balsamic vinegar from a local winery: 23 miles – 37 km
• Sunflower Oil from Les fermes Champy: 98 miles – 158 km (barely but YAY!)
• Garlic from Montmagny: 45 miles – 72 km
• Herbs from home: 0 miles – 0 kilometres

Total for 100-mile home made mayonnaise: 196 miles – 316 km

This is NO WAY meant to make anyone feel bad. On the contrary, I do it to remind myself of why I do it, but I will probably buy olive oil again one day. I don't think the diet is meant to make 100% locavores out the participants. I really think it is made to open our eyes to the impact we have in every little thing we do.

So...
Have you tried calculating your food miles?

Day 5 and 6 – 100-mile Diet: The social life amendment and goat cheese!

So this will be a double post as the week-end was filled with good friends, good food, a great fall afternoon hike and great local discoveries. But what a wonderful week-end it was.

Saturday was our day of full on realisation of what the 100-mile diet was. First off, we hadn't really taken the time yet to fully pack away all the non-diet foods that we had in the house so we started with that. Needless to say the pantry was very empty by the time we finished.

Having started on a Tuesday, right after coming back from vacation, the challenge had been a time cruncher. Although we cook mostly for ourselves, we have rarely had to make everything from scratch which meant nights filled with long hours of dinner preparations and planning for the lunches the next day. Finally a week-end where we could cook in huge quantities and have food to carry us through the week and hopefully, having a few minutes to breathe.

Saturday morning was busy making more bread, our first attempt at crackers (not such a success!), making a big quantity of veggie stock in preparation for slow cooker split pea soup which we will be making tonight as we sleep and creating a new recipe for white bean hummus 100-mile style (see recipe further in the post).

Another Grande adventure that day was that last night was our first dinner party with friends at our house since on the challenge so everything had to be perfect! The dinner was not 100% vegetarian since I was the only one at the table, but my husband took care of the meat.

The social life amendment

One of the first things that you read about when reading Alisa Smith & J.B. MacKinnon’s book is the fact that, although truly serious about having every ingredient in everything they ate for that year come from within 100 miles, they also knew there would be some times when it was going to be hard for them to do it and still have a social life. So they created the social life amendment and it went a little like this:

“Should friends have us over for dinner, or working life lead us to a business lunch at a Thai restaurant, we would not hesitate. We were off the hook also when we travelled (…) unless we were able to buy our own groceries and prepare our own meals. When travelling, we were also free to bring home products from 100 mile of wherever we were. That being said, we could not plan a trip to Hawaii because of a pineapple craving.”

So when our friends asked what they could bring, they mentioned that during their trip to the Niagara region of Ontario, they had picked up a few bottles of wine at a winery. So we said why not! I know… cheating a bit. But it was in good spirit and my husband and I have decided on a new rule:

When ever we apply the Social Life Amendment, we add a day to our challenge. Which means our new finish date is now November 16th.

Here is the menu we served:

• Moose (roast beef cut) seared in goat milk butter and in which my husband had pushed in cloves of garlic and fresh rosemary leaves. (The moose was a gift from a co-worker and was hunted inside our 100-mile.) The roast was slow cooked for an hour and a half.

• Boiled red potatoes.
• Honey glazed carrots and beets.
• Garden salad with balsamic vinaigrette.
• Strawberry-Blueberry-Cantaloupe sorbets sweetened with maple syrup for dessert.
• Wines from Niagara and local berry port wine with dessert.
  

And then of course, we did what we said we would: We put the salt and pepper shakers on the table for our guests... And went through dinner without having one person at the table touch them! we were thrilled!

IT WAS A SUCCESS!

Today was also a very wonderful day. We decided to go for a hike in a regional park about 1 h 15 minutes away. While driving up, we had seen a little blue sign that read “Fromagerie 4 km”. Huh? A little cheese shop? Wonderful! we thought, we’ll hit it back on the way home.

To our surprise, we found the most adorable little independent goat farm that had, annexed to their home, a little store in which they sold some of the best goat cheese we’ve ever tasted.

Cassis et Mélisse is situated in Saint-Damien-de-Buckland, Quebec Province, and had a wide selection of cheese (fresh, soft and hard) in addition to having sausage, pâté, and ready made meals and desserts such as goat cheese quiches and goat cheese cheesecakes. We left with amazing cheeses for this week and will absolutely be taking a drive in their direction again soon.

Okay… that’s it for my week-end. My husband is busy making a 100-mile version of his cream sauce simmered Brussels sprouts with sharp cheese. Should be a great dinner. I hope all of you had a great week-end.

100-mile White Bean Hummus recipe

• 1 cup cooked white beans
• ¼ cup fresh basil
• A few table spoons of both veggie stock and oil (we used sunflower since it’s the only oil we have in our radius)
• 1 big clove of garlic
• Whatever fresh herbs you have. (We put thyme and oregano).

Blend everything in the food processor, transfer to a container and let sit in fridge over night for the flavors to truly sink in. eat with home made yeast-free flat breads!

Day 4 – 100-mile Diet: Trip to the downtown farmer’s market and home made PIZZA!

Yesterday, right after work, I took the bus and met my husband downtown for a discovery trip of the farmer’s market. We found so many things:

• Fresh veggies
• Fruit port wine
• Fresh cheese
• Legumes (red and white beans, split peas)
• Live herbs (so we could repot them at home for the fall)
• Strawberry flower Honey
• Bee pollen (which apparently is a very energizing supplement so we thought GREAT!)
• The season’s first pears

Came home and decided to make home made 100-mile pizza. How? Here is our recipe:

Crust: My husband’s flat bread recipe with a bit more oil, rolled out a bit thicker and kneaded with fresh basil, thyme, oregano and rosemary. Roll up the sides and bake in the oven for about 15 minutes at 350’F. Just enough to have it rise a bit and firm up.


The sauce: I made a quick little blender sauce with 5 roma tomatoes, fresh herbs, garlic and a splash of oil. Then I simmered it until the liquid was mostly evaporated.



The pizza: We topped the whole thing with red and green bell peppers, red onions and fresh mild cheddar made right there at the market cheese shop!



We sent everything in the oven for 20 minutes at 350’F.

Tada!

Oh, we also made oven baked garlic fries.



I will be honest; the one thing that has been hard is seasonings and spices. You don’t realize how much you depend on them to flavour your foods until you can’t use them anymore. And how I missed ketchup for the fries! For npw, we decided to go with sour cream that we had in the fridge. But I’m planning on trying my hand at home made mayonnaise here soon so that could be a great alternative! I will let you guys know how it goes.

Hope all of you are having a great Friday night! Thanks for stopping by…

Day 2 – 100 mile diet: Making bread without yeast!

So, day 2 was a bit better. Caffeine headaches are slowly going away and we had a bit more to eat today than yesterday so that always makes us happier. The day was filled with fresh eggs, cheese, milk, fruit, soup, fresh cut veggies. Dessert tonight was the best: Strawberries with granulated maple sugar.

But we were in the mood for a bit more tomorrow so we made bread! Okay, maybe they look more like a cross between a tortilla and a pita, but they smell so good. (We are planning our starting a sourdough strain this coming week-end. More on that later!)

My husband’s recipe was easy:

2 parts flour to 1 part water and a few table spoons of oil.
Make a ball and let sit for about 1 hour.



Roll them out into thin tortilla looking disks.



Then pop them in the oven at 400 degrees for 6-7 minutes.

Voilà!



We used local organic whole wheat flour (about 100 kilometres / 60 miles). We made them plain today but are planning on trying to mix some flavours in the next few times: Maybe basil and garlic, green onions, rosemary or even leeks.

Tomorrow means bread with 100-mile jam I made a few weeks ago for breakfast and lunch will be salad and bread with local goat milk brie. Not sure what dinner will be yet.

Off to bed!

How to make your own pectin – a true 100 mile challenge!

So, I promised I would be back with my first 100-mile challenge recipes and one of the first ones I wanted to master was a way to thicken my jams without buying the liquid or powdered pectin at the store. I did a little bit of research and found that making pectin is not that much harder (if not easier) than making apple jelly.

I used :

• About 4 pounds of local green sour apples. Cut into pieces : core, seeds, skins and all! (The recipe I found called for unripe Granny Smiths which do not grow in my area so I had to improvise) The trick is to find them freshly picked and not to mature.
• About 2 cup of water for every pound of apples.

Here is the recipe I followed (from www.ichef.com) with tips when reducing the liquid :

1. Place the apples and water in a large stockpot or soup kettle, cover, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 20 minutes or until apples are tender. Remove from heat and allow to cool slightly.
2. Pour the pulp and juice through a jelly bag or line a large bowl with dampened cheesecloth, pour the pulp and juice through, gather the corners of the cheesecloth, and tie in a knot. Suspend from a cabinet knob or handle and allow to drip into a bowl overnight. (Now here, I used a metal wire strainer because I didn’t have cheese cloth. It worked very well, but let a bit of the pulp through so my pectin was a bit “foggy”.)
3. The next day, measure the apple juice and pour into a large pot. Bring to a boil over high heat and cook until reduced by half. Refrigerate and use within 4 days or pour into containers and freeze for up to 6 months. (Here, stay very close by! I walked away for a second and when it started to boil, it almost overflowed! Be there to quickly reduce the heat for the simmer when it starts boiling.)
4. An easy way to determine reduction is to measure the depth of the liquid in the pan with a plastic ruler before boiling. Re-measure as liquid reduces. No need to pour into measuring cup!

It worked wonders. This recipe made almost 14 ounces of pectin and I have some in the freezer for future recipes during the challenge! Now that I know how easy it is, even after the challenge I don’t think I could go back to store bought synthetic pectin.

Hope you enjoyed! I’ll be back tomorrow with more on the 100-mile jam I made.

How do you cut out and replace synthetic additives in your food?

Cooking from scratch : How to make the perfect organic muffins at home

Good morning. How are you all doing? I hope you are well.

One thing I’ve found that has help in our “going green” project is cooking and baking more from scratch. The reality of going organic with your food is that pre-packaged organic things can be quite costly. But organic base ingredients barely cost a few pennies more sometimes so I decided to do my own recipes more and more.

Now, like most of you, I just don’t have time to sit there night after night and pull out the recipe books. So it was about finding recipes that were easy, quick and flexible so that it could feel like I was making something new all the time with only changing a few ingredients. Well after months of experimenting with muffin recipes, I finally refined my own basic muffin recipe that you can then add whatever you want to and they will always turn out great!

Recipe :

Preheat oven at 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).

• 1 1/2 cups stone ground organic flour
• 1/2 cup organic whole wheat flour
• 2/3 cup organic raw sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/2 teaspoon organic sea salt
• 1 organic egg
• 2 organic egg whites
• 1/2 cup apple sauce (or sometimes I put pumpkin purée)
• 1/4 cup organic canola oil
• OPTIONAL : 1/8 cup organic maple syrup
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 tablespoons toasted wheat germ

In a bowl, you whisk together all the WET ingredients (eggs, egg whites, apple sauce or pumpkin purée, oil, syrup (if you choose to use it) and vanilla.

In a larger bowl, you stir together the flours, sugar, spices, fruits and nuts you choose to add, baking powder, baking soda and salt.

Then pour in the wet mixture, stir together until it’s all smooth and pour into muffin tins (about ¾ of the way up). Depending on how much fruit and such you add, and the size of your tins, you’ll make between 12 and 16 muffins.

No matter what the ingredients, bake for 15 to 20 minutes.

Flavours :

From here on out, you can put whatever you want in it! I don’t even count the amount per say. Sometimes the muffins will be breadier, sometimes more full-of-fruits, but they always end up being yummy!

Here are some of my favourite combinations :

• Banana, nut with allspice
• Carrots and raisins with cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice
• Cranberries and orange zest
• Lemon zest and poppy seeds
• Fresh field berries
• Apples and spices
• Dates and walnuts
• Etc…

TRY THEM ALL and create your own! The great thing about this recipe is that for the initial 20$ of ingredients, you’ll have weeks of fresh muffins on hand and you can always just make them with what you have laying around in the fridge or pantry!

Hope this can help making your homemade life a bit easier and fun!

What are some of your favourite recipes?