Eating Well Anywhere

“Can things get any easier than slipping a few buttercup squash under your bed, or finding a place in your closet for sweet potatoes?”
- Barbara Pleasant, in “Enjoy Fresh, Local Food All Year” for Mother Earth News

This 2007 article advocates food storage for self-sufficiency, saving money, and supporting local farmers and economies. The article’s accompanying .pdf guides cover cool and cold storage, freezing, water bath and pressure canning, and dehydrating.

“Even when canned or frozen, home-stored foods save huge amounts of energy in reduced processing, packaging, transportation and storage costs,” Pleasant says.

The implications? Buy apples in peak season when they’re plentiful and cheap and store them yourself. Stave off pangs for garden-ripe tomatoes in mid-winter by breaking out a jar you canned in July. You don’t have to grow your own; patronize local producers during peak seasons and “put up” the food so you can eat local even when local food is scarce.

“Enjoy Fresh, Local Food All Year,” Mother Earth News; August/September 2007

So we know fresh peas, only a few hours removed from the plant, taste better than any others. And a garden-ripe tomato is hardly the same as one from a hothouse. But garlic?

Garlic is one of those things that is a real treat, in my opinion, when it is truly fresh (it will make you wonder where exactly some of the stuff in the supermarket has been) and yet it keeps for months when properly stored. My mother grows several varieties of garlic in her garden and always gives me a portion of her harvest, which I eagerly accept and horde as if it were the last garlic this planet will ever produce, or a chocolate bar. The firm, plump, unblemished cloves that we enjoy in the waning summer months are the best, but the balance is enough to get me through most of the year, keeping in mind the following:

Don’t refrigerate or immerse it in oil. Store it in a place that is cool, dark, and provides plenty of circulation; I use a paper sack, which serves the purpose quite well, and have an unusually cool kitchen, which I of course keep that way just for garlic storage and not because during long winter months I horde firewood like garlic and chocolate bars.

It always bothered my frugal mind how much heat was left in the coals after we’d grilled for supper. Because I worry about nothing else. Yep, my mind is free to fret about wasteful charcoal use. Marshmallowless, I one night threw a head of garlic on the grill in between cleaning up the kitchen and watching a movie, and now it’s all I can do to keep from dragging out the charcoal just to have grill-roasted garlic.

Is it any better than garlic roasted in the oven? Well, I like the way the slow, imprecise heat of the grill leaves some cloves pearly white and plump, yet buttery soft, and others nearly charred, with chewy edges. And the timing is perfect: put the garlic on after supper, go away for a couple hours, then pull the garlic out to cool a bit and throw it in the frig before bedtime.

Here’s what I do:

Lop off the top of a head of garlic. Wrap the entire head first in parchment paper, then aluminum foil. Set the garlic package on the grill over indirect heat and close the lid for a couple hours. The garlic is done when it wholly yields to the slightest pressure from the tip of a knife. Leave the garlic in its packet to cool, then refrigerate.

(Refrigerating cooked garlic is supposedly safer than raw, but for my peace of mind and yours, too, promise me you’ll use it within a few days.)

Use the tines of a fork to pull out the cloves with fully-exposed tops. Peel the papery skin away from others. I’ve never much liked the suggestion to squeeze the whole head, as it just gives you just a mess mushed garlic and no whole cloves, but you could try that, too.

And a few serving ideas:

• Serve a few cloves alongside a green salad (my favorite);
• Spread on crusty bread;
• Fold into bread doughs;
• Top pizzas with whole or chopped cloves;
• Use in any recipe that calls for roasted garlic (dips, soups, etc.).

The spicy-sweet sprinkle in this bacon recipe yields a crunchy, melts-in-your mouth layer with just a little kick that doesn’t overpower the bacon itself. It uses a few more ingredients than the Maple Bacon (my other favorite), but it’s no more difficult. If I had to compare the two, I’d say the Maple Bacon is a great way to one-up and make at home the maple-flavored bacon you can buy at the supermarket, and the Sweet-and-Spicy Bacon is something that’s more-obviously not just plain bacon and likewise very good. I use a cooling rack placed over an aluminum foil-lined sheet pan to cook the bacon.

Sweet-and-Spicy Bacon, Gourmet; September 2006

One of the grocery stores in my small town is especially devoid of organic products, filling only a three-foot by three-foot section of Produce with a few shelves of organic berries and salad dressings. When selection is as limited as it is in some stores, we need good rules of thumb and alternatives to help us make wise decisions. These are a few strategies I use. What are your tips for making choices when it comes to organic foods?

1. The reasons to buy organic are more than just pesticide residue, but you can use the Environmental Working Group’s guide to make smart choices: buy what you’re comfortable with, substitute or seek out elsewhere what you’re not.

2. Grow what you can at home. Herbs and greens in pots are a good starting place. Get a good organic gardening book and try a kitchen garden if you don’t have one already, or grow potatoes in mulch.

3. Make a list of organic, easily-stored foods (flour, grains, canned goods), and when you’re somewhere you can stock up, do so wisely (buy only what you can use in a reasonable period of storage time).

4. Look at the big picture. All organic, all the time, isn’t necessarily a good way to think. Also give credit where warranted for production practices and sources; it might open up new doors for you. A local producer might use organic practices but lack certification.

5. Buy organic ingredients instead of products. Maybe you can’t find an organic three-cheese pizza in the freezer section, but you can get organic flour, cheese, and canned tomatoes. And many pantry staples can be made at home, with varying degrees of commitment: think tomato sauce, bread, cheese.

High fructose corn syrup is everywhere–in food and in the media. It’s been linked to a number of ailments, and exonerated by some studies, too. But if we look at high fructose corn syrup as a hallmark of the foods we eat rather than a singularly-guilty or -innocent ingredient, we don’t have to jump on every study that says HFCS might be more unhealthy than sugar and ignore any that say otherwise. Eat foods, not products: a simple, if not always easy, solution.

Cathy at A Life Less Sweet eloquently explained recently why her family is eschewing high fructose corn syrup while still eating table sugar:

“By giving up HFCS, we’re cutting out a lot of junk and refocusing our eating energy toward healthier stuff. HFCS seems synonymous with junk food, and for good reason. It seems to turn up in the worst of foods (and rarely in really healthy food) . . .”

“What about table sugar?” A Life Less Sweet; August 10, 2008 (via Fake Food Free)

An easy take on pies in jars: Each jar contains one large peach, peeled and cut off the pit into small pieces, as well as 1/2 teaspoon each sugar and flour. Topping (for three half-pint jars): 1 Tablespoon butter cut into 1 Tablespoon each brown sugar and all-purpose flour, plus a pinch of salt. Bake at 350 degrees until juices bubble and fruit is soft.

Not as cute as the pies, but just as portable and portionable. The peaches cooked down quite a bit, so brimming jars turned into crisps about half that size, but they (amazingly) didn’t boil over. You could probably freeze first and then bake; I did the opposite so we could just pull them out of the freezer in the morning for lunches.

Very-ripe peaches might not need any sugar. For other fruits, consider the fruit’s tartness and juices: a bit of sugar cuts tartness and “seasons” the fruit to bring out the flavor, I think, and flour thickens especially juicy specimens. For example, apples might require a little less flour and a little more sugar; maybe add a dash of cinnamon, too.

Print/save recipe (this .pdf recipe is a test; if you like it or have suggestions, please say so)