Pimento Cheese!

Roasted homegrown pimentos

After a long, long period of neglect of my beloved Milkweed Diaries, I'm breaking radio silence with a short little ode to pimento cheese.  Oh pimento cheese, I love you!

A classic staple of the American South, this delicious and creamy treat is traditionally made with Duke's mayonnaise and canned pimentos. My slightly pretentious, healthy, homegrown version is made with raw goat cheese and fresh roasted peppers.  As I spooned this experimental concoction straight into my mouth fresh from the food processor, I announced to Christopher: "I believe this is the best thing I have ever made."  Even in the clear light of day a week later, I'm pretty sure it's true.  

Here's how to make it:

• Roast the pimentos. I did this at 450 degrees using the broiler setting of my toaster oven.  I drizzled  them with a scant bit of olive oil and broiled them until they had begun to pucker and develop black spots on one side and then flipped them and broiled on the other side.

  

  Roasting the pimentos

• Let the pimentos rest in a paper bag.  This will make them easier to peel.
• Peel the pimentos. This is the tedious and slightly time-consuming part. Remember, it's worth it.  At this point you can store the pimentos in a jar for a day or so if you need to sit the project down til you have time to complete it.

Mixing in the food processor

• Mix the pimentos with fresh raw goat cheese. I used a basic soft goat cheese I had made the night before from our goats' milk using Ricki  Carroll's recipe - a raw, cultured goat cheese made with mesophillic culture.  Any good mild, cultured goat cheese will do - the slight cultured tang adds a really nice zest.  I did the mixing by dumping the pimentos in the bottom of my food processor and gradually adding cheese until the consistency, color, and mix looked right. 
• Enjoy immediately!  This cheese stores well in the fridge and also freezes well, but I find it tastes best at room temperature.

The final product: Pimento Cheese!

One important tip: use good pimentos - as fresh as possible.  I was inspired to make this by the abundance of pimentos rolling in from our garden this year.  I used about 25 homegrown peppers - the beautiful, plump, and prolific Ashe County Pimento from the High Country of Western NC via Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.

Ashe County Pimentos

I also threw in some Doe Hill Golden Bells which are supposedly a bell pepper, but to me look like a small, golden pimento. This seed was also from Southern Exposure, and has been a great addition to our pepper production bed this year. The plants have produced abundantly, and the flavor is wonderful.  According to Southern Exposure, this little gem is a pre-1900 family heirloom from the Doe Hill area in Highland County, Virginia.

Doe Hill Golden Bells

This cheese is so delightful spread on toast, noshed upon with crackers, as a garnish on tomato salads, and eaten straight up with a spoon. I froze a ton of it and am envisioning pimento deviled eggs, pimento grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches, and all manner of pimento goodness through the months to come. Yum!

On Fullness

Onion seedlings

Life has been incredibly full since the beginning of 2010 - and consequently my posts here at the Milkweed Diaries have become become woefully sparse.

My Real Job (working with nonprofits and political campaigns) has been at full throttle since the first week of January, a rude awakening after a relatively sleepy 2009. I'm not complaining though: income is a wonderful thing.

Adding to the fray, I worked as a cook at a Permaculture Design Course in south Georgia for two weeks last month, sharing kitchen duties with my kitchen co-conspiriator and dear friend Puma, cooking three meals a day for 30-60 people using local and regional in-season foods. Though I didn't blog about this Great Cooking Adventure, I did chronicle the experience on facebook.

And then there's Red Wing Farm, our homestead garden that has very quickly grown to market-garden proportions. We're selling at two tailgate markets this season, hosting our first farm interns this summer, teaching classes on the farm, and ramping up our production fast and furious with an eye toward both Christopher and me being able to quit our day jobs.

Lettuces, mustards, and kales growing in the unheated hoophouse

Homemade heat table for seedlings (salvaged lumber + gravel + heat tape) with tatsoi & bok choy growing in a raised bed underneath

Christopher has been in non-stop construction mode, building the first section of our duck and goat barn, a heat table for our hoophouse, and various other structures and contraptions, and I've been prepping beds, making soil blocks, and planting seeds. Thousands and thousands of seeds. And stepping up plants. Thousands and thousands of plants.

Tomato seedlings

Cardoon!

Our Starting from Seed class planting peas in the garden

Life is good. And full.

So apologies in advance, dear readers, for the less frequent posts in the next few months. I promise to post images as often as I can of what's going on on the homestead, in the garden, and in the kitchen.

You can also follow Red Wing Farm on facebook, where I'm posting more frequent albeit briefer updates.

In the meantime, here are some images of recent goings on at the farm...Happy Spring and good gardening to all!

Local Food and Climate Change: Every Day is Blog Action Day

To celebrate today's blog action day, I'm posting photos of our recent stint selling at the West Asheville farmers market (see below).

Decreasing your foodprint is a great small step that individual people and families can take to help slow climate change. But individual actions--low-impact eating and living, conserving energy and resources, consuming less, reducing your carbon footprint --are a drop in the bucket. These actions are inherently political, but they are not enough on their own.

In addition to individual action, the world needs our collective political action for immediate and large-scale change. I'm grateful for and impressed with 350.org's organizing work building power, raising awareness, and advocating for such change.

In nine days, on October 24, 350.org is holding an International Day of Climate Action. The organizers of Blog Action Day are also putting forward a petition urging President Obama to make the US a leader in solving the problem that we have led the world in creating. Add your signature here.

Individual choices like eating local food and large-scale political action like participating in 350's Day of Action are essential, but there's more: we must build new systems to replace the dysfunctional one that's caused the climate crisis in the first place. We need to build the lifeboats, create the world we want to live in, and set up alternate structures to replace the crumbling ones that have caused so much damage to the planet. Building local food systems is part of that creative work.

So here's to actions small and large. May the systems of life on planet be healed by all of our creative individual and collective acts. Including these very small ones:

On the Gift Economy

Gift pears

Two things happened this week that made me pause in gratitude for my circle of friends and community.

I remember when I first heard of the concept of a "gift economy," and secretly thought to myself as I listened to the radical feminist explaining the idea: "Well, that's a bit far fetched. It's a nice idea in theory, but it would never really work in this society."

I was so very wrong! I feel so grateful to have spent the past ten years in a community--the city of Asheville--where generosity is alive and well, and the gift economy is everywhere you look.

So here are the two things that happened that reminded me to notice and be grateful for generosity.

One: I posted a request on Facebook for advice on where to buy an "EZ-up" canopy tent locally. We need a canopy tent for our booth at the West Asheville tailgate market, and I was having a hard time finding one to buy. Within two hours, I had received two offers of long-term loaner canopy tents from friends. Thanks Melissa and Marin! The same day, various folks offered loans and gifts of all kinds of things we need for our booth, thwarting our plans to buy things. Hurrah!

Gift quinces

Two: CF and I were running errands in town today, and in the course of our travels around West Asheville and downtown, we gleaned and were given all kinds of free food.

We happened to be passing by Shane's, so we made a quick stop to say hello. We left with unexpected gifts in the form of pattypan squash and perennials in need of homes.

At Paul and Jude's, we dropped off some (gift) bottles of elderberry mead and were invited to pick some Asian pears, which we did.

Then we stopped to say hey to Tim and Gecko and see if we could get some eggs from their chickens. They weren't home but had invited us earlier to pick our fill of quince fruit from their backyard, and the quinces were ripe, so we did. We left there with a box full of quince, after a short visit with the new baby chicks and broody hen.

On the way home, we stopped at the honor-system based Haw Creek Honey stand and bought a couple of gallons of honey for mead-making. Not quite the gift economy, but a delightfully trust-based element of the local economy here.

Gift pattypan.

I realized, reflecting on the gifts I received today, that the gift economy is a big part of my economic life. I shop at the Free Store at Warren Wilson College. Our house is built with all manner of salvaged materials, many of which were offered to us by people renovating or tearing down buildings. We have heated our home for the past few years with firewood and scrap wood given to us by various people we know. When I look around me at the things I own -- furniture, clothing, dishes, art, houseplants -- the vast majority came to me as gifts from friends and family. I give spontaneously with great frequency, and am given things spontaneously even more frequently.

Of course, I still pay for plenty of things with old-fashioned paper and plastic money, and barter a fair bit. One of our errands in town today was dropping off potatoes and garlic at Rain and Shannon's house as part of a trade for farm work that they did earlier this spring. But my dream economy is one based on spontaneous generosity. And I can see evidence of this economy all around me.

So here's to generosity, sharing, and the mundane daily process of creating the world we want to live in.

Wild Blueberries fresh from the Commons

Blueberries, and a few blackberries picked yesterday on Black Balsam.

Yesterday, we took an afternoon trip up to Black Balsam on the Blue Ridge Parkway to look for wild blueberries.

You never know when the wild blueberries will be ripe -- it's usually sometime in August, but you have to hit the right place at just the right time to strike a rich ripe blueberry vein. We had tried Craggy Pinnacle a week ago, but the berries were still green. This week on the Ivestor Gap Trail, we were in luck!

Kelly in the blueberry thickets.

I love foraging on public lands - it feels like a way to reclaim the idea of the commons, places open to all for shared use, and collectively stewarded for future generations.

Stewardship means that while it's fine to fill a bucket or bag with blueberries, it's not OK to dig up a blueberry bush, removing the plant from the ecosystem and depriving others of future blueberries. It's important to make the distinction between foraging for things like berries and wild mushrooms on public lands, which is great, and removing plants or animals from wild lands, which is unethical and often illegal.

A bit more scenic than a trip to the super-market.

Wild blueberries are a native plant, valued in many native traditions as an important edible and medicinal.

Recent studies have confirmed the nutritional value and health-promoting qualities of blueberries, and in recent years blueberries have become a trendy health food. Blueberries are often referred to as a superfood, packed with antioxidants, good for your heart, your brain, your eyes, and your gastrointestinal system, and cancer-fighters extraordinaire.

Luckily, they are also incredibly tasty!

I find wild blueberries especially delicious, and I believe that nothing can beat the nutrition of food growing in the wild, picked fresh, and eaten as soon as

possible.

As we picked yesterday, I kept thinking of Blueberries for Sal, a beloved children's book which my mom must have read to me and my brother and sister hundreds of times throughout my childhood.

We loved the story of little Sal picking wild blueberries with her mother, and her surprise encounter with a mother bear and cub who are also foraging for berries.

I remember picking blackberries with my brother and sister in our neighbor's overgrown pasture (an informal commons) and bringing buckets of berries home to my mom, who would make a cobbler from them. Mouthwatering memories of those cobblers kept me picking yesterday, and bolstered my willpower to put at least some of the berries in my bag, rather than straight into my mouth (this was a difficult task for Sal, too).

Sal and her mother processing berries.

Me processing berries.

Sal and her mother canned their blueberries, to eat all winter long. We will use 3 quarts of yesterday's haul to make a batch of blueberry mead--another, more ancient way of preserving fruit. We'll pick more over the next few weeks to freeze, and the cobbler extravaganza has begun using the remaining quart of fruit we gathered yesterday.

In the spirit of childhood nostalgia, here's my mom's cobbler recipe, with a few tips in her inimitable style (my mom's tips in quotes):

My Mom's Summer Cobbler

(can be made with blueberries, blackberries, peaches, or any fresh fruit)

Dry Ingredients:

• 1 cup sugar
• 2 Tbs. baking powder "make them FULL tablespoons"
• 1 tsp. salt
• 3/4 cup flour

Stir or sift dry ingredients together.

Once they are mixed, melt a whole stick of butter in a baking dish in the oven as it preheats. "Make sure it gets good and hot and bubbly."

As the butter is melting, add 3/4 cup milk ("or rice milk or half and half or whatever") to the dry ingredients.

Pour the batter over the melted butter. Then pour on 3 cups fruit "or whatever you damn well please" (the exact amount of fruit is not important).

Bake at 325-350 for 40-50 minutes until golden brown and slightly crunchy on top.

More on The Commons:

• Here's a good starting point website on issues related to The Commons: onthecommons.org.

• Here's another interesting piece on tenets of The Commons, as established by legal precedent.

• Here's an interview with Vandana Shiva which includes a discussion of the commons. "The commons and the recovery of commons is vital to earth democracy. It's at the heart of sustainability of the earth and democratic functioning of society." -Vandana Shiva

• And here are a couple of excerpts from an article I wrote a few years ago for a local paper about the loss of the commons:

Originally, the term "commons" referred to lands and waters where anyone could forage, grow food or hunt. In ancient Rome and Britain, and in indigenous societies around the world, these shared inheritances were held in common rather than privately owned.

Among the generally accepted modern commons are public lands, the oceans and the atmosphere. But today, the concept of the commons has expanded to include commonly held systems, places and even ideas: community gardens, parks, public libraries, radio waves and herbal lore. Participants at the 1992 Earth Summit defined commons as "the social and political space where things get done and where people derive a sense of belonging and have an element of control over their lives."

. . .

Historically, conquering empires seized the commonly owned property of indigenous peoples for private profit. Here in Western North Carolina, the Cherokee Nation held most land in common until the U.S. government forced it to establish a system of private land ownership just 150 years ago.

Today, battles are being waged around the world over ownership of and access to water, land, energy, services and even genetic material. Ecologist Vandana Shiva points to a "series of enclosures" of commons in the Third World under colonialism, beginning with land and forests, then water and finally biodiversity and indigenous knowledge. Seeds saved for generations and medicinal plants growing in the wild can now be patented by private corporations and sold on the global market. As privatization is imposed, the values that sustain commons as the center of community life are eroded.

This loss has had devastating ecological and social consequences. With multinational corporations and financial institutions like the World Bank leading the charge, what was once stewarded as common property is now plundered for private gain -- a major factor in the deepening global environmental crisis. And the enclosure of commons often happens at the local level.

You can read the full text of my article, which centers on the loss of a particular commons in Asheville, NC here.

Inaugural bread-baking in the woodstove

Here's the first bread baked in the wood cookstove yesterday on President Obama's first day in office:

Nantahala Herb & Onion Bread

This bread is a nostalgic favorite of mine.  It used to be made fresh daily at the Nantahala Outdoor Center resturant.  Maybe it still is, for all I know!  

• 4 c water (I substituted whey leftover from raw milk cheese-making)
• 1/4 c active dry yeast
• 4 tsp sea salt
• 1 tsp dried dill weed
• 1 tsp dried rosemary leaf
• 6 T sugar (I substituted honey for half of the sugar)
• 1/4 c butter, melted
• 1/2 c powedered milk (I omitted this. It's not necessary, especially if you're using whey instead of water)
• 1 c onions, chopped
• 10-11 c flour (i used 1/2 spelt and 1/2 whole wheat pastry flour)

1. Combine water/whey, yeast, salt, dill, rosemary, sugar/honey, melted butter, powdered milk if you're using it, and onions.  
2. Allow yeast to activate until mixture is bubbly, approximately 10-15 minutes
3. Add flour.
4. Mix by hand until uniform.   Turn dough onto floured surface and knead for 10 minutes.
5. Put the dough someplace warm and allow it to rise until doubled, approximately 45 mintues.
6. After dough rises, knead well.
7. Shape into at least 3 loaves (you can also make more smaller loaves, but don't do fewer than 3 or you'll have a doughy center) and place in greased bread pans.
8. Bake at 350 degrees for 45-55 minutes.  
9. Brush tops of bread with butter after removing, and allow to cool or eat warm!

The smell of herb and onion bread baking in the oven is orgasmic. And breathing in that aroma as it fills the house to the soundtrack of newscasts about Obama's plans to close Guantanemo and reverse the global gag order qualifies as peak experience in my world.

Below: The Obamas greet visitors at the White House open house on President Obama's first day in office.

inaugural

adjective

1.  occurring at or characteristic of a formal investiture or induction; "the President's inaugural address"; "an inaugural ball" 

2. marking the beginning of a new venture, serving to set in motion; "the magazine's inaugural issue";"the initiative phase in the negotiations"; "an initiatory step toward a treaty"; "his first speech in Congress"; "the liner's maiden voyage" 

Firing Up the Wood Cookstove

Over the weekend Christopher finished installing our wood cookstove. 

C. was in charge of all of the work of installing the stovepipe, cutting holes in the roof and ceiling, running pipe up through the attic and out the roof, and hooking up the stove. I catered, deejayed, and photographed the event and otherwise provided support.

Christopher on the roof as the chimney takes shape...

...and the hole in the kitchen ceiling.

It was about four years ago that we bought this stove, made by an Amish stovemaker in Canada (ordered via Lehman's).

It was our primary heat source back when we lived in the old, drafty 1600 square-foot house in town before we moved to the ruburbs.* We learned back then that this stove can really pump out the heat. In those days we were living with two friends, and many was the winter night when we all stripped down to tank tops and shorts for a night of hot, sweaty dominoes as the stove blasted away.

Our intention all along was for this stove to be the heat source for our house here on the farm, and also our stove for cooking.  We used it to cook occassionally back in town, but cooking by wood was mostly a novelty at that point.  Now its a way of life.  

The cookstove differs from a typical woodstove in that it has an oven (with temperature gauge) and a large cooking surface on the stovetop. It is also built to accommodate a waterjacket for heating household hot water.  

This summer, our plumber friend will hook the stove up to our hot water system so that when we're using wood heat and cooking on the stove it's also  filling the hot water heater.  Our solar hot water panel will heat household water in the warm months when we're not using the stove for heat, and our plan is to turn off the electric hot water heater all together, using it only as a thermos for water already heated by wood and sun. 

Heating water for household use with electricity is one of the biggest energy hogs in a typical household, and by eliminating this power drain, our electricity load will be reduced to the point that we will be ready to go to a relatively small on-site photovoltaic (PV) system for our main power source.

I love using a woodstove for heat and cooking and hot water. When I lived in Ireland, I cooked on a stove very similar to this one, and I remember loving the simple tactile pleasures of stoking the fire, feeling the air around me gradually grow warmer and drier, and holding my palms above the surface or in front of the open oven door.  

Getting up in the morning, stirring the coals, and putting the kettle on feels like a beautiful natural rhythm to me.  It's so much more grounded, sensual, and humanely-paced than rushing out the door and grabbing a coffee to go.

Another thing that is so satisfying about using the stove is the idea of "stacking functions," a permaculture principle.  The principle of stacking functions means that every component of a well-designed sytem should serve more than one purpose.  

Here's a great description of what it means to stack functions: 

"To stack functions, one designs strategies that meet the most needs with the least effort. Thinking this way helps one become a problem solver: creative, adaptable, effective and abundant. One’s entire life can be based on these principles; they can be implemented with every decision that you make."

- Jennifer Dauksha-English, Financial Permaculture.

The wood cookstove, which heats our home, cooks our food, heats water, and can even dry our clothes (hung on a rack) is a great example of stacking functions.  It feels easy.  I've already found myself thinking things like, "the stove going to be fired up all day today anyhow, I'll put a pot of beans on and they'll be cooked by dinnertime...and maybe I'll make a pot of ginger tea, too."

The final stacked function of the stove that we have discovered is cat happiness. Having a fire in the stove makes Frankie the 

cat very, very happy (here she is sprawled out in the heat about four feet away from the back of the stove).  One downside, however, is that the dry wood heat has apparently made her very thirsty, and driven her to uncharacteristic water theivery.

*ruburbs=rural areas around a city