An almost local Christmas dinner

My best friend triple-dog-dared me to prepare a Christmas dinner with local ingredients. And like poor Flick from A Christmas Story, I could not turn down such a challenge, although hopefully, unlike Flick, it would not be to my demise.

It is not impossible to prepare a meal in December with local ingredients, but for someone doing it for the first time I knew I had to pace myself. There were just some ingredients I was not prepared to exclude from my menu like my beloved salt and pepper or other fine ingredients like cumin, coriander, cinnamon or … chocolate. I was prepared to limit myself to what is “in season”, with of course a few exceptions.

This is a cold winter season, and I knew that vegetables, let alone fruit, would be hard to find. I made a list of what I wanted to serve with the turkey, keeping in mind what would be available this time of year: red cabbage, carrots, parsnips, roasted potatoes, and kale. I also decided that I wanted to greatly reduce the amount of refined carbohydrates such as sugar. I completely eliminated it from my recipe, which is perfect because if there are two things that are guaranteed local, they are honey and maple syrup.

Before I set out on my challenge, I had to determine what would constitute “local”. I already had the turkey from Aubin Farm which is located about 80 km from Ottawa (I used Parliament Hill as my point of origin). I also have some vegetables from Rainbow Heritage Garden which is about 132 km from Ottawa. I settled on food originating within a 150 km radius of Ottawa as constituting “local”.  For someone who loves loves loves spice and chocolate, I decided that up to five pounds of food would be excluded from this challenge. That would be plenty to allow me to cook and bake with my favourite ingredients, and also fulfill my challenge (again, baby steps).

I then set out to buy my food, with an understanding of what is in season. A trip to the Ottawa Farmers’ Market and an order of winter vegetables from Rainbow Heritage Garden gave me a lot to work with. I didn’t find red cabbage or kale but I picked up green cabbage from Acorn Creek Garden Farm located in Carp. I also found apples (yay) which meant I could bake an apple crisp for dessert.

I did manage to get most items on my list, and added a few more: daikon, leeks and parsnips from Roots and Shoots Farm located in Manotick. I was also pleasantly surprised to find local cranberries. My best friend was convinced my challenge would be frustrated by the simple unavailability of local cranberries this time of year. Not only did I find them, they were harvested 15 minutes away from the market. Boom!

This is what I came home with:

I also had a stash of vegetables from a delivery from Rainbow Heritage Garden earlier this month, including rainbow beets, onions, garlic, radishes, carrots, and potatoes. Unfortunately, I had already eaten up all my delicious kale from them so would have to do without something green on the table (if anything has satiated my desire for fresh vegetables this winter, it has been the delicious vegetables I ordered from Rainbow Heritage Garden which have lasted me several weeks already).

I was truly happy with my purchase from the local market, and began in earnest my menu for Christmas dinner:

Soup

Curried carrot and pumpkin with roasted pumpkin seeds

Main

Turkey and stuffing

Cranberry sauce

Braised red cabbage with apple and onion

Pumpkin purée

Roasted curried potatoes

Dessert

Apple crisp with vanilla maple ice cream

Chocolate peanut butter balls

This was truly a learning experience. For one, not all vegetables will survive through this cold winter. As my husband began to core the cabbage, he discovered this:

I was short one side dish, as I was not planning on cooking spoiled cabbage, but then I remembered a small red cabbage buried in the back of my fridge from months ago when Bryson Farms delivered fresh organic vegetables to our home. We cut open the cabbage with some trepidation, but were bursting with relief to find a crunchy, deep purple cabbage.

I was able to make my braised red cabbage with apple and onion after all.

The apples were mostly bruised, but who can expect to find fresh apples at the end of December. I was planning on cooking with them so it didn’t quite matter in the end.

Some ingredients were easier to substitute than others. Instead of using celery for the soup and stuffing, I used leeks which were grown in Manotick (Roots and Shoots). Since honey and maple syrup can be found year round, it was easier and healthier to use them instead of granulated or confectioners’ sugar, which I (regrettably) am used to baking with. I turned out a pretty tasty cranberry sauce having used honey instead of granulated sugar.

Other ingredients were trickier. I couldn’t find “local” cream or butter so had to resort to store bought. Although I could have baked my own bread for the stuffing using local ingredients, again store bought brought the added convenience.

I even attempted to serve “local” beverages. Local beer is probably just as accessible as honey or maple syrup and we always buy Beau’s Lug•Tread Lagered Ale  which is located 101 km from Ottawa (although, I would have to check to see if their ingredients are also local).

We ended up with a full course meal, including beer, derived from mostly local ingredients. Not bad for a first try. Not only did the food contain healthier ingredients (honey and maple syrup instead of refined sugars, rolled oats instead of flour), it didn’t end up costing me an arm and a leg. Yes, the turkey, like any pasture-raised bird, was pricey (costing about $85.00 for 16lbs), but I saved A LOT on vegetables. I was able to find two delicious pumpkins for only $4.00.

I ended up making enough pumpkin soup to feed 11 people, as well as take some over to my in-laws, which fed an additional ten people.

Once again, cooking with simple ingredients, can make for a delicious and healthy meal. As well, it never hurts to try new challenges that can teach and expand a deep appreciation and love for food.

Crazy Organic Mama

Crazy!

I’m crazy about three things: family, friends and food. And I’m crazy about food labels, what they say, and, quite frankly, what they don’t say. I just may be crazy for thinking that cows are happy. But I may not be crazy for thinking that cows raised on open pasture make for healthy animals. And healthy animals make for nutritious (and very delicious) food, and I’d like to think, healthy humans.

So I decided to blog about my crazy aka unconventional thoughts about food. How food is meant to connect us to each other, the animals and produce we eat, and the environment at large. I question everything about food, especially food labels, like why is it “free run” when the chickens may never have seen the light of day, how it is “made with real fruit”, when only a tablespoon of fruit juice has been added, and what exactly is an “access mom”?

I’m going to try to answer my own questions, and more importantly, try to see if I can connect to family, friends and food through a diet that is kind to animals, the planet and my budget.

Organic

Traditional agricultural practices that evoke images of the pastoral scene have been replaced by feedlots, concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), and increasing greenhouse gas emissions.

The irony is that the images of the happy cow grazing through the open meadows, the eggs freshly picked by old Macdonald, and the piglets blissfully feeding off the sows are portrayed as modern farm life. A television commercial selling eggs from the farm depicts the farm to fork process. We see the beautiful, spacious, barn, the eggs gently rolling off the conveyor belt, hand selected and inspected, and the farmer standing proud that he is feeding our nation’s families. But the protagonists, the chickens who lay the millions of eggs that are sold across this country every year, are completely absent from the scene. Are the egg producers concerned that consumers would be turned off by images of chickens in battery cages, debeaked and living in their own waste?

Indeed these images that were described in documentaries like Food Inc. has led many people to turn to “organic”, “free range”, “free run” thinking these “labels” are a sound alternative to the large-scale agriculture. Do these terms carry any substantial meaning? For instance, beef can be labelled “organic” when it is “grain-finished” i.e. the cow is fattened on grain before it is slaughtered. Yet cows are meant to digest grass. They are not ingrained to digest grains (pardon the pun, but I couldn’t resist), which may cause them all sorts of digestive problems. It’s almost counterintuitive to the whole concept of organic that we feed animals diets that are inconsistent with their anatomy.

Which has led me to the conclusion that while “organic” does pack some punch, I approach the concept with a grain of salt. I appreciate many things that come with the label “organic”: cannot be produced from genetic engineering, no use of synthetic pesticides, ionizing radiation or forms of irradiation are mostly prohibited, but I’ve had to dig deeper to truly appreciate the meaning of organic.

Enter the happy beef. The argument against pasture-raised farming is that it’s near impossible, too expensive and cannot cater to large-scale consumer demand for cheap meat. So it came to a surprise to me a few years ago when I came across a farmer who sells 100% grass-fed beef with the tag line, “our cows are on grass, not drugs”; something that is foreign to those who are only familiar with grain-fed “organic” beef. Yet, this farmer delivers on the best tasting, most succulent meat I have ever enjoyed. While many fine things in life come with a price, I’ve tried to reconcile the high price of pasture-raised beef with two trade-offs. First, I’ve had to reduce my meat consumption, or I’ve bought in bulk bringing the cost of my meat to less than the cost of conventional, grain-fed beef from the grocery store. Second, in the words of the infamous Joel Salatin, “if you think the price of organic food is expensive, have you priced cancer lately” basically sums it up for me.

For over three years I’ve served only pasture-raised meat to my family and learned a few things: it tastes better, it’s healthier, and if I plan well it’s not that much more expensive that what I used to buy at the grocery store.

Mama

I’m a mother to two amazing little people. When I started becoming more conscious about food I realized that what I put on my children’s plates is far more important that what I put on my plate. Not just because nutritious food helps children develop and grow, but because they have very limited control over what they eat.

So instead of watching soap operas every day, we became obsessed with cooking shows. Now we cook together, visit markets together, and experiment with new recipes together. My children love to eat. Almost anything.

I once walked into an Italian pizza joint in China town that was serving Indian food. And who says food can’t be imaginative? If I can have access to that kind of culinary variety in Ottawa, I can definitely have access to a wide range of wholesome, fresh local food. So for the next five months, I will visit a local farm in my region that is committed to truly sustainable agricultural practices, where the cows, pigs, yaks, elk, and chickens are happy and the pasture truly green. Because, as I have come to experience, there is nothing more refreshing than being on a first name basis with the man or woman who is responsible for helping to feed my family. It’s a connection that I want to cultivate for myself, and more importantly, for my children.