Michael Pollan on Organic Food, Very Good!

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Market Report

This is something I want to get in the habit of doing. Fresh produce markets probably won't be around much longer so I want to report in what we got and how it was.

At the Thursday market, there wasn't much of interest so we got 2lbs of stewing meat from King Limousin Farm and since we got there early, I was able to get 2 dozen farm fresh eggs. It was $6.50 for the beef and $6 for the eggs.

On Saturday, I got 4lbs of tomatoes ($0.50 a pound! I would of bought them all but I didn't want to be greedy), a bag of dried beans ($2), a bunch of swiss chard ($1) and a big bag of organic greens ($3). $8 is a great price for all that stuff! It would of been way more at the grocery store.

Let's see, it would of been at least $4 for the tomatoes (not local), $3 for the same beans, $2.49 for the swiss chard (not local or organic) and $6 for organic greens, again, not local. So nearly $16 at the grocery store for non local, mostly non-organic food.

So $22.50 spent at the farmers markets. Next post will be how good it was and/or what I've done with it!

Orange Blossom Honey Cake with Fresh Blueberries — Zoe Bakes

Orange Blossom Honey Cake with Fresh Blueberries — Zoe Bakes

Yummm...I made this cake yesterday and it is very yummy! Actually, I made the cake to bring to a potluck today and a cupcake so I could taste it. It was very good! I never used mace before and it had a nice taste to it so I imagine I'll be using more of it. I did make a couple of changes; I used all whole wheat. It didn't even occur to me until after I made it. I also tried using half olive oil instead of butter since I only had half a cup out. Won't make that mistake again! It overpowered the honey but it was still good. I also used a 9x13 baking dish since my recent bundt cakes haven't turned out so well and I couldn't afford for this not to turn out. I ended up baking it at a lower temperature the second half.

The kids and I picked 14lbs of blueberries the other day and on our vacation, we picked up a gallon of honey even though we have 3/4 of a 7lbs bucket left. Yumminess! Plus these two things go very well together :)

I haven't said anything in my main family blog yet, but my Facebook friends already know this. The kids are going to public school in the fall. The reasons are many. It will be hard to afford lunch and snack foods (their school doesn't have a cafeteria) so I plan to be making a lot more by scratch.

I will be posting more recipes here so I don't lose them, both successes and failures. I also want to try harder to eat more local food. I will be working on alternative food preservation (other than canning) since a lot of my past canning efforts were ruined plus from what I have read, there is a lot of nutrition loss with canning due to the heat processing. I am looking forward to having more free time to do this.

I am bound and determined to at least get a quarter of an organically raised local beef (they're still $2.50 a pound but will probably go up soon since they have finally been certified organic. I am debating between a local side of pork or a local pastured side of pork (as in advertised as pastured), the difference in price being $100. Maybe I should try to contact the farmer of the one not claiming to be pastured to see how his pigs are raised. I once read of how some cities fix their garbage problems by getting pigs to eat it. Gross! I was pretty turned off by pork for a while after reading that.

So we will need to eat down our freezer to have room for this. I want to stop buying convenience foods, which take up a lot of room. One of the blessings of having the kids in school is I will have a lot of free time to do the cooking I have always wanted to do.