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Cheating

Posted at 5:02 PM on February 16, 2008 by Vera Schabicki

My list of local items thus far:

A weekly supply of eggs from Mr. Van Cheeseman, as well as whatever greens he has. Today I recieved a little bit of spinach, tiny bit of collards and a nice bunch of mustard greens. He also gave us a gift of two duck eggs. I came home and scrambled them with a little butter, salt and pepper, and divided them into four servings. The vote was DELICOUS.

I have been getting milk from Mr. Helwig. Today I arrived as he was pouring the fresh warm milk into recycled plastic bottles. He also gave me some really cute little pullet eggs. Next week he will have some beef from a free range steer, I will let you know about that....... While I was there I spoke with a young couple from India who were also getting milk, and they told me how to make the paneer cheese. Mr. Helwig also told me how to make clabbered milk. (I make yogurt, riccotta and kefir from Mr. Helwig's milk. My kids are not used to the taste of fresh milk yet so I make stuff out of it, lots of hot cocoa. ;) )

I have my Southern Brown Rice and War Eagle Mill flour and corn meal.

Tofu from The Farm can be gotten at Fresh Market stores.

Mississippi has a lot of sweet potatoes, so I make oven fries with them.

I have cilantro, parsley and lettuce in decent quantities in my backyard (I love to put a whole bunch of parsley with a few garlic cloves in the food proccessor and toss it with hot fresh pasta, lots of olive oil, black pepper and Romano cheese, yum yum).

I also found a pasta from Hodgson Mill at my Wild Oats. This is within the 500 mile range (Effingham, Illinois), but I will miss the Bio Natura whole wheat from Italy. The Hodgson Mill product is very nutritious tasting, almost like a home made whole grain pasta.

Half of us are eating very well and happy, and could live on just this stuff with a smile on our faces. But the other half of the people in our house will not eat a lot of this stuff, mostly the greens and sweet potatoes are not popular. So I cheated and went to Wild Oats and got frozen corn and peas, apples from Washington and carrots from California, and the most local potatoes I could find (not organic, ouch).

I feel badly but starving little Galens are just not on.

Best wishes, Vera