Loco Locavores

It’s a miracle! Our dwarf lime tree is back from the dead!

Lime tree miracle

We thought it was a gonner but apparently it was just dormant. =)

So, yeah, it snowed the other day… but spring is on its way! I swear! I took photos as proof:

Crocuses: These early bloomers have been out for a couple of weeks already!

The trees are budding and unfortunately I am allergic to tree pollen, but I'm still glad spring is on the way!

The Grass Widow is a native iris of the Pacific Northwest and, according to the internet, is the only member of its genus in the U.S. It is one of the earliest blooming native flowers. This photo was taken on Dad's native hillside.

More crocuses!

We planted this spinach in the fall. We had a spinach salad in February, which was a treat since we don't get many fresh veggies these days.

Bunching onions that were planted in the fall: They stayed green all winter even under piles of snow!

Here come the tulips!

I thought it might be fun to let you all know what a typical week is like for a locavore this time of year. For one week I kept track of all the food and beverages I ingested and I also recorded some locavore related activities. The “week in the life of a locavore” began on Monday, February 21st and ended on Sunday, February 27th. Each day in the locavore week appears as a separate post here on the blog in chronological order starting with the most recent date and going back in time from there. As you will see I had a pretty social week so I ate out quite a bit, which is not always the case, but highlights the fact that we are not exactly purists when it comes to locavoring (see the “about us” section of our blog for more details). All the ingredients used in our homemade meals were local (within 200 driving miles of our house) unless otherwise noted or unless the item is on our list of exceptions (see the “about us” section of the blog for more details). I also tried to indicate the ingredients that were from our own garden by using the word “our” so you have an idea of how much we were able to grow ourselves.

Breakfast: Hot cereal with toasted hazelnuts, honey, milk, and strawberries plus a cup of orange-mint tea. I grew quite a few types of mint and other herbs this summer with tea in mind and my favorite is definitely the orange-mint. The hot cereal was made of a combination of flaked emmer and spelt (both organic). We have an attachment to our mixer that allows us to flake grains. Dad does most of the flaking around here. Just call him Mr. Flaky! We picked the strawberries in the Spokane area this summer and froze them. They have been a nice treat to have in the winter.

Lunch: Leftover beef and veggie stew from last night.

Dinner: Pork steaks (my nephew raised the pig for us) cooked with sliced purple onion and sauerkraut followed by gooseberry cobbler — sooo good! This summer we cooked up the gooseberries with honey and a little tapioca (on our list of exceptions) and froze it to enjoy during the winter.

Some of the gooseberries that we picked this summer. Thanks again to Sara for helping out!

Breakfast: 2 shirred eggs with “end of the garden” pickles (pickled mixed veggies from our garden) and toast (from our homemade artisan bread) topped with olive oil (on our list of exceptions) and salt (on our list of exceptions, plus we brought it back from our Utah family vacation last spring).

Lunch: Zucchini pancakes that Da-Jin from the Daoist Hermitage taught us to make and yogurt with canned pears and toasted hazelnuts. To make zucchini pancakes grate some zucchini, add some salt, cover and let sit 30 mins or until there is quite a bit of juice in the bottom of the bowl. Add flour (we used local soft white wheat flour) and mix. Fry in oil.

A zucchini from our garden which has been stored in the garage since summer. It is interesting how it turned yellowish on the outside and the inside. It tasted good and fresh!

Dinner: I made a hearty winter stew with a zucchini from our garden that has been stored in our garage since summer, our frozen diced tomatoes, beef broth, our carrots, green beans from Carver Farms, ground beef, our garlic, purple onion from Carver Farms, wild rice, honey, salt, and our ground sage. We topped our soup with grated gouda cheese that Anna made.

After Dinner: Anna and I went to our neighbor’s for a wine, cheese, and chocolate get-together and we brought strawberries from the Spokane area and a bottle of Anna’s dandelion wine.

Anna testing the Dandelion Wine this summer. She made this wine before our locavore year started. It is not made from completely local ingredients, but I'm pretty sure the dandelions were local =)!

Breakfast: I don’t work on Fridays so I get to have a real breakfast! I had a soft-boiled egg and toast with peach butter and a little bowl of hot cereal with milk and honey because it’s so darn good. Our artisan bread was made with hard-white wheat from Montana this time, since Rosauers was out of the all-purpose flour that we usually mix with local hard red wheat flour. The all-purpose flour was not on our original list of exceptions, but we added it (see Feb 22 for more info).

Lunch: I thawed some green beans that we picked at Carver Farms, chopped them up, and scrambled them with an egg. I topped the scramble with our homemade salsa and had toast topped with olive oil (on our list of exceptions) and salt (on our list of exceptions).

Dinner: Happy hour and appetizers with friends in Moscow.

After dinner: I made yogurt earlier today and I really can’t resist having some when it’s done incubating and before it goes into the fridge. I had it with canned plums this time.

Making yogurt is easy and way better than store-bought.

Breakfast: Slice of honey tea bread that Anna made, hazelnuts, and orange-mint tea with honey.

Lunch: So, I brought the meat/wild rice/ garbanzo mixture from 2 nights ago and a ground pork patty from last night to work today, but just could not force myself to eat it. I don’t like eating leftovers too many days in a row and I don’t do well with legumes (I’ll leave the details out), so I went out to eat. I was so excited because the sandwich I bought had fresh veggies on it. One of my friends mentioned how strange it is that I get excited about sprouts!!! When you locavore your priorities change. I also get excited about oranges. If someone had put an orange in my stocking at Christmas I would have been very happy.

Dinner: Mom made baked potatoes with our fava beans, our carrots sautéed with our garlic, sautéed onions from Carver Farms, sprouted lentils, and a delicious white sauce that had some of Anna’s feta cheese in it. Food heaven!