Yellow Brick Road

Spring has Sprung!

2010-03-17T16:12:00.000-07:00

It's time to start a spring garden! At the co-op the other day I got seeds for peas, kale, and two kinds of broccoli. I've also dug out some of my left over seeds from the last couple of seasons to see what we have! I've started the broccoli and kale to be transplanted later and will put in peas, swiss chard, and spinach in the next few days. Hopefully everything will start producing before we have to move out at the end of June. We may miss out on broccoli, but I have hope for the peas and the greens!

From the depths of the freezer!

2010-02-18T15:11:00.000-08:00

Not long ago, in a moment of urgency (we didn't have enough pasta sauce to make lasagna), I managed to dig to the bottom of the chest freezer and come up with a container of long-lost tomato sauce. I thought we'd used up the last of the sauce long ago and was marveling at my find when our friend Puja suggested that I inventory the entire freezer so we'd have a better sense of what really was still in there. I didn't take her advice until just now. I've just spent about 20 minutes pulling everything out of the freezer, counting it, and putting it all back in (a little neater this time). I've discovered that not only do we still have FOUR containers of tomato sauce in there, we have tons of zucchini, TONS of corn, a lot more berries than I thought, and 9 bags of frozen tomatoes. SO... If anyone wants to come over for all-you-can-eat chili and blueberry pie night, give us a jingle!

Broccoli Sprouts!

2010-02-02T18:15:00.000-08:00

As of November, and even into early December, there were still a few local produce options at our co-op, like some lettuces, apples, pumpkins and other winter squash, brussels sprouts, bok choy, and a few herbs. However, pretty much since a week or so before the holidays, the pickings at the co-op have been slim (and by slim, I mean that they aren't carrying any local produce at the moment). The other day I was doing my shopping and discovered some containers of broccoli sprouts marked "local." I've never been a big fan of sprouts on sandwiches, and unsure of how else to use them, I hesitated to get some. Still, my rule has always been, in terms of local produce at this time of year (at least at the co-op), that I buy it no matter what it is and figure out what to do with it later. I would just like to say that my earlier hesitation was uncalled for. If you've never had broccoli sprouts before, run out and find some immediately. They are delicious. Also, sprouts are the most amazing things ever. EVER. They're still alive after they're harvested so they actually increase in nutrients rather than decrease like other vegetables after they've been picked. Sprouts are also really good for you, so eat up! We've been enjoying them in lettuce and chicken wraps, sandwiches, and just plain (well, that's only me who eats them plain)!

So, in addition to our freezer fair (and some non-local stuff we've mixed in to make sure we're eating enough fruits!), we're still enjoying produce grown right here in Ohio in the middle of January! Long live greenhouses!

January

2010-01-23T06:43:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything since before Christmas, mostly because, at this point, things are pretty calm. There have been some changes in the past week or so, though, that deserve some mention. Up through the first weeks of January, we were still getting fresh fruit (apples and cider) from the Winter Farmers' Market. However, the apple guy announced his last day at the market in early January and we have been eating applesauce made earlier this winter and fall, and some of our frozen berries, ever since. I expect that at some point we will either run out of those things or break down (or both) and find some reasonably acceptable substitute at the store. Still, the Winter Farmers' Market continues to be a source, albeit limited, of fresh greens, onions, and garlic (from a farmer who has a greenhouse). Every week at the co-op, we look for local produce, which I buy there when I see it no matter what it is. Since probably mid-December, there has been nothing. This time of year, the co-op is mostly carrying organic stuff from California. We have, however, discovered a company that cans diced tomatoes locally. The whole operation is right here in Columbus - Ohio-grown tomatoes canned here in town. They're not that expensive, either, so we've cracked into those a few times.

As for the freezer, we've consumed an entire 3-quart bag of broccoli, a bag of green beans, all of the tomato sauce I made at the end of the summer, about a third (maybe even half) of our berries, all of our spinach, some of the corn, and none of the frozen-solid whole tomatoes (mostly because you have to set those out to thaw in advance and I always forget... At some point I'll whip up a big batch of chili in our new crockpot and blog about that). We still have tons of green beans and corn left, some pesto I made from late-summer basil, berries, more broccoli, some containers of squash and pumpkin soups I made this fall, and probably some stuff at the bottom of the chest that I'm forgetting about. It will be a surprise for later!

Though we're still deep in the thick of winter, I'm getting excited for spring - for asparagus and then the first strawberry, the blueberries that will follow, fresh basil (mine died indoors - we don't have a grow light and I think ultimately Columbus winters just proved to cloudy for the poor plants, despite their south-facing window... Also, I think it's not warm enough in our house), tomatoes off the vine, and fresh green beans. Until then, happy winter!

Early Christmas dinner

2009-12-23T10:51:00.000-08:00

Barbara and I celebrated a mini-Christmas last Saturday before splitting up to make the rounds to family. On the menu:

- Locally-raised, free-range chicken (right here in Columbus!)
- Salad with winter greens (spinach and arugula) from central Ohio, and hydroponic tomatoes from nearby Columbus. Fresh tomatoes in December!
- Mashed potatoes (Ingredients: locally grown potatoes, local milk, and Ohio butter. The garlic powder and salt were un-local).
- Wine from a Cleveland-area winery - made from their own Ohio-grown grapes!

Delicious.

Locavores in December

2009-12-11T18:28:00.000-08:00

Our long, mild fall has come to an abrupt end. December has arrived and brought winter right along with it, in the form of 50-mile-an-hour winds, snow, rain and some kind of hail-like freezing rain/snow that may or may not have been described on the local news as "wintry mix" (I don't know 'cause I didn't watch the local news that day. Or most days). While our fresh local foods options are surely dwindling, I've been surprised by some of the things that were still available even this week.

Last Saturday, I headed out to the Columbus Winter Farmers' Market (at the Unitarian Church on Weisheimer) for the first time. It's a small, indoor market, mostly consisting of vendors selling baked and other prepared goods. I came away with a bag of fresh apples, a gallon of fresh cider and $3 worth of baby spinach. On my way home I stopped at the Clintonville Farmers' Market, which technically ends in October. Still, a small but hardy group of vendors showed up on Saturday and a small but hardy crowd of shoppers obliged them. There I bought arugula and some potatoes.

Also last week, I bought fresh, local brussels sprouts at our co-op, which were delicious. I didn't realize how fantastic brussels sprouts were until I cooked these up! We've also started digging into our freezer in a major way. Berry smoothies have become a favorite treat at our house (and allow us to eat summer fruits - a welcome break from apples, which themselves, just short weeks ago seemed like a novelty!). We've also eaten some of our frozen broccoli and just last night broke into the green beans. We're already almost through my tomato sauce (though we still have plenty of whole frozen tomatoes waiting to become sauce, chili or soup). It's kind of fun to go through the freezer and pick things out - like looking through a catalog of the seasons. I don't think what we have will last us all the way through next spring un-supplemented, but the experiment has been an important learning experience. I'm already looking forward to getting started on our next winter's food (and trying to figure out, logistically, how I'll do it in the midst of our impending move to D.C.). In the meantime, winter is here in full force and local eating is still open for business in our kitchen!

Alana's Restaurant

2009-12-10T18:22:00.001-08:00

The other week, Barbara and some friends of ours ate at Alana's, a restaurant just north of OSU, for the first time. I have passed back and forth by this restaurant nearly everyday since living in Columbus and always thought it was some weird little Greek place (for some reason, the fact that there is an image of a bunch of grapes on the Alana's sign led me to believe this). Turns out, Alana's is not a Greek joint, and though it is unusual, it's pretty freakin' awesome (though a bit pricey - enough so that we'll likely only eat there once more before leaving Columbus next summer...).

Alana's specializes in local foods - as much as possible, for as much of the year as possible, they serve what can be grown in and around Columbus, OH. Our meal was fantastic. From pumpkin soup to local greens in the salads to my pasta dish (With kale! My favorite!), it was the best meal I have ever eaten in the state of Ohio. Go there. Get soup. Order dessert. Enjoy the bounty of the midwest in late fall!

Step 10: Thaw a Strawberry

2009-11-22T14:48:00.000-08:00

Last week, I was very excited to delve into our frozen stash of berries for the very first time. We've had a really mild fall so far in Columbus, but even so, the available local fruits and vegetables have diminished sharply in the past couple of weeks. It's about time to start opening the freezer and seeing how a summer and autumn's worth of work as paid off. A week ago, I decided to make smoothies for breakfast on Barbara's birthday. I was really excited to eat berries again (after the flood of late summer fruits became a trickle and the thrill of the season's first apple started to subside, I found myself getting bored with apples and looking forward to my frozen berries).

I cracked open one of my bags of strawberries (the subject of one of my very first posts last spring!) and also, because it was a special day, I dipped into the raspberries as well (a very special treat, as we never did get around to raspberry picking, so we only have one ziploc bag of those!). As follows is the recipe I used, partly based on one in the Earthbound "Food to Live By" cookbook and partly out of my head:

1 c. frozen strawberries (local!)
1 c. frozen raspberries (local!)
1/2 c. plain or vanilla yogurt (unfortunately, not local)
1/2 c. orange juice (also not local)
Crushed ice cubes (3/4 c. or a whole cup, I can't remember. At any rate, some ice)
I would also add a bit of honey (local!) to taste

Blend! (I recommend putting the ingredients in the blender in this order: Ice, strawberries, raspberries, yogurt, honey, juice). This makes two big servings. They're more filling than you'd think!

Oink Cluck Moo

2009-11-13T10:53:00.000-08:00

"Oink Cluck Moo" is the name of the place where my first bite of chicken in over 7 years came from. A few weeks ago, Barbara and I bought some chicken breasts at the farmers' market - from folks who grow meat and poultry not far from Columbus. It took me a while to prepare myself to abandon my vegetarianism, though I'd been thinking about it for months (see my earlier post, "The Vegetarian's Dilemma"), but finally, last Wednesday night, we cooked up some chicken and I transformed from dedicated vegetarian to devoted locavore. Though I did hesitate before taking the first bite, eating chicken wasn't as weird or difficult as I thought it would be. It was pretty tasty - and exciting because it represents a new horizon for me in terms of my local foods journey. I don't expect this to have a profound effect on the way I cook and eat, as I doubt I will ever eat beef or pork again and will probably eat very little in the way of poultry, in part because the poultry I eat will be locally and humanely raised, and is thus a little pricier than conventional stuff. Thus, I will still remain a vegetarian in much of my actual "practice," just replacing tofu from across the country with chicken from down the road.

Pie Adventures

2009-10-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

So, my friend Puja and I thought it would be an excellent idea to make some pies for a get-together she and Barbara and I are going to tonight. We decided on apple pie (because Barbara and I were going to go apple-picking, which we did), and sweet potato pie (because it's my favorite).

We also decided that we would make our pie crusts from scratch because neither of us had really done it before. Now, I usually shy away from baking, because I'm not very good at it. I find cooking much easier because the exactness of the amounts isn't as important and you can substitute ingredients and add extra spices and it never seems to matter very much. But baking is like chemistry, which I was always terrible at. Still, we set out on the pie adventure around 7:30pm last night, which, apparently was also the designated Trick-or-Treat night in Columbus, unbeknownst to me (how silly of me to assume that trick-or-treating would occur actually on Halloween...). Thankfully, I was prepared. After handing out some candy and eating dinner, Puja and I began our dough-making experiment. Perhaps many of you are esteemed bakers and will find my struggle laughable. Still, I provide for you a list of tips you might find useful if you too decide to embark on a pie extravanganza:

1) Ensure that your basic arithmetic skills are intact. For example, if the sweet-potatoe pie filling calls for 4 eggs and the sweet potato pie crust recipe requires a 1-egg-yolk "glaze," you will need 5 eggs total. Thus, the 4 eggs in your refrigerator will not suffice. Proceed to Tip No. 2.
2) Double check that you have all the ingredients (and supplies) necessary for your project BEFORE starting. This will spare you late-night dashes to your local grocery store or co-op (which in Clintonville, is thankfully open until 10pm) to procure heavy cream and eggs.
3) Avoid, if possible the following unpleasant scenarios: The house that you have purchased with your new husband, but do not yet live in, appears to be flooded. Your husband calls and says that when he steps on the living room floor, water is seeping through. OR, you discover (also via telephone) that law school is causing your partner to have a mental breakdown. You will find that the telephoning required by both of these scenarios will limit your dexterity and brain power, thus compromising the creation of pie.
4) Again related to Tip No. 2, if you do not own a rolling pin and realize a bit too late that you forgot to purchase one earlier that day, make sure you have a well-stocked cupboard of bottles of wine that you have never opened. One of these will suffice in place of a rolling pin.
5) Finally, related to Tip No. 4, you may want to double check that you have a cork screw, because after your long night of pie-making, you just might want to crack open you rolling pin/wine bottle and may feel quite defeated upon the realization that you lack the tools to do so.

Our mess (about 1/2 way through):

Despite the chaos, our pies turned out great and were received with enthusiasm at our friend's potluck! See below picture for proof of pie success!

Reading list

2009-10-17T08:50:00.000-07:00

I just finished Omnivore's Dilemna by Michael Pollan (yeah, I know, no one can believe I'd never read it before...). I highly recommend it.

I am currently reading a book called Lords of the Harvest, which is about the history and implications of our reliance on genetically-modified crops.

Cold!!

2009-10-16T06:33:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have included a few events that truly signal the end of summer, and quite significantly for us, the end of the growing season. In the morning, we wake up in the dark, we've turned on the heat (though our new "thermal" curtain in the front window is doing wonders for the living room) and on more than one occasion, we've worn hats.

Another signal of the changing seasons, at least for me, is my lack of appetite for fruit. When it's hot out and a variety of fruits are abundant, that's all I want to eat. But once it's cold, I really struggle to make myself eat it. It's so cold and sweet. When it's cold outside, all I want in terms of food is warmth and savory flavors. I make soups, devour leafy greens (they're back in season in early fall after melting in the August sun), revel in things like oatmeal and breads, and rediscover my love for peanut butter. I don't know if this is just one of my weird idiosyncrasies (it happens every year), or if it's a holdover from a time when we did eat more seasonally - a person would have had to really pack in the fruits (eat your colors!) during the warmer months and then make do with late fall and winter's limited fruity offerings. At the same time, bodies need fat and energy to get through the winter months (which is why so many winter holidays are accompanied by feasts and baked goods), so it makes sense that once the weather turns, I start craving those things.

Thus, we've recently been enjoying potato-leek soup, pumpkin soup, baked macaroni and cheese, home-made bread and home-made applesauce (all with mostly local ingredients!).

At tomorrow's Farmers' Market, I'll be looking for squash and pumpkin, apples and cider, any other final vestiges of summer fruits (for the freezer), leafy greens to freeze (spinach and chard), leafy greens for soup (kale), tomatoes (final call!!), potatoes and onions and garlic. Our co-op has also been great at stocking local produce this summer and fall. Between whatever they can offer us until next spring and everything packed into our freezer, we'll see how far we get in the coming months and we'll start planning for next year!

Locavores on the road

2009-10-10T13:55:00.000-07:00

We just returned home from a week-long journey through the heart of the midwest, including stops in Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota and Ohio (we also drove through Wisconsin and Indiana). Last weekend, we hit the road for homecoming at Luther College and so my friend Dylan and I could play a few small concerts for friends celebrating the completion of our home-made 5-song CD.

In Decorah, we stayed with friends who live in an old farmhouse outside of town. We watched Maria (age 6) milk her goats and Thomas (age 8) collect eggs from his hens. We enjoyed the eggs in the form of french toast one morning and I tried the goat's milk on oatmeal the next. My aspirations to someday raise chickens were renewed.

In Minneapolis, we accompanied our friend Krissy to a Farmer's Market and to the Seward Co-op to collect ingredients for pizza-making and some other treats. We ended up making (in addition to home-made pizza) an apple pie using both local Minnesota apples and Ohio-grown apples that had tagged along with us on our long car trip.

We finished off the Minnesota leg of our trip at the Seward Cafe, which has a garden out back and serves many locally-grown foods on its menu.

We are now back in Columbus preparing to squeeze in our last three food projects before the frost - broccoli, spinach and raspberries!

Step 9: When life gives you apples, make applesauce

2009-09-22T17:46:00.000-07:00

At last week's Farmers' Market, Barbara and I made a momentous purchase. Given their widespread, year-round availability in the U.S. (often due to international import), many folks may not find this event as special as we did. But then, we had not eaten apples since beginning this journey last June.

That's right, a week ago, Barbara and I bought $6 worth of our first of this season's apples. They were McIntosh apples from Ochs Fruit Farm in Lancaster, OH. This week we bought $12 worth (More McIntosh for Barbara and some Golden Delicious for me). These apples are pretty fantastic - it's been well worth the wait. But this means that WE NEED YOUR HELP! We plan to go apple picking fairly soon and hope that we can pick some varieties of apples that will keep for a few months into the winter (some are hardier than others), but we also want to make and can applesauce! We're on the lookout for recipes! Let us know if you have a favorite!

Thoughts on Seasonality: Why Little Kids Go Bonkers for Pumpkins

2009-09-20T16:50:00.000-07:00

At the Farmers' Market yesterday, I noticed something. First, for probably the first time this season, pumpkins large and small were in abundance at several stalls throughout the market. Second, the kids were CRAZY over them. They were thrilled to look at them, pick them out, help their parents carry them... Why is this? In a nation of severely vegephobic children, what about pumpkins in the fall gives kids such a thrill? Maybe it's just that they associate them with the holiday beloved of all youth, Halloween (also known to the under-12 crowd as National Free Candy Day), but I think there might be other reasons. There are a small number of fruits and veggies in the U.S. that still make only seasonally appropriate appearances - even at large chain grocery stores. Among them, of course are several members of the cucurbit family, such as watermelons and pumpkins. Watermelons (whole ones, anyway) are still associated with the heat of summer and pumpkins with the coming of fall. Both fruits seem to be fairly popular with kids, which I think gives us some insight into the thrills of seasonal eating. Sure, watermelons are bright colored and sweet and (at least until recently when the seedless varieties came on the scene - perhaps the subject of another blog entry...) come equipped with shiny little black seeds that have fostered many a distance-spitting competition. Pumpkins are equally delightful, with their bright orange hue and their slimy innards. They are both an art supply (canvass for the Jack-O-Lantern) and dessert (pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread, pumpkin ice cream...). But other similarly astounding fruits and veggies, available year round, don't seem to have the same rapport with kids (broccoli, for instance - little magic trees; brussels sprouts - mini cabbages?). OK, so maybe I'm stretching this, but is it too much to think that maybe one of the reasons kids go bonkers over pumpkins is the same reason folks tuned into food's seasonality look forward to asparagus in the spring, strawberries in early summer, tomatoes in July and August, kale and spinach into the cold months and fresh apple cider in the fall? Sometimes the old saying is true - distance does make the heart grow fonder. We don't see whole pumpkins year-round, so their appearance in September and October feels like a special occasion.

Maybe I'm over-romanticizing, but I think this thrill at the arrival of a new fruit or vegetable season (coupled of course, with the sadness of the end of others) is important. Americans have such a problematic relationship to food - too many of us eat too much (or not enough, as we succumb to bizarre fad diets or the like) that our view of food, like the system that produces it, has become industrial, and really, kind of boring. For me, waiting for things to come into season has brought new joy to food and cooking that I might have otherwise missed out on. I wonder if that wouldn't make a difference for more of us if we allowed ourselves the opportunity to eat the rest of the cornucopia with the seasonal reverence currently reserved for the pumpkin.

Step 8: Count Your Blessings

2009-09-13T22:30:00.000-07:00

Since returning to Columbus in mid-August, I have felt that this local foods project has been moving slowly. However, looking in our (new!) chest freezer after this weekend gave me a renewed sense of accomplishment.

To date, we've frozen the following:
- Over 40 pounds of tomatoes (and counting)
- Nearly three dozen ears of corn
- A half-bushel of half-runner beans
- Three 3-quart bags of strawberries
- About 8 or 9 pounds of blueberries
- About a quart of raspberries (and counting)

We also have been consumers of the following local stuff:
- Honey (produced by bees kept by Barbara's friend, Caroline)
- Flour (grown and milled in Ohio, available in bulk at the Co-op)
- Potatoes (grown on a nearby Ohio farm, bought at the co-op)
- Maple syrup from the state of Ohio
- Milk (from the Snowville Creamery, 100 miles away in Pomeroy, OH, available at our local Co-op)
- Cheese and butter (Amish-made at the Minerva Cheese Factory, 140 miles away in Minerva, OH, available at the Co-op)
- Eggs (Free-range from Holistic Acres, 79 miles away in Ashland, OH, available at the co-op)
- Tomatoes (locally grown and available at the Co-op)
- Watermelon (locally grown and available at the Co-op)
- A variety of fruits and veggies from the Co-op and Farmers' Markets

Blueberries or bust

2009-09-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

Over the past few weeks, we've been thwarted in our attempts to obtain a number of items, including a breadmaker, a freezer and the second season of Veronica Mars. There appear to be several factors at play in these situations such as the apparent fact that the period of time when folks considered breadmakers kind of useless but everyone got one for Christmas anyway has ended. The "sandwich maker" (which is what, exactly?) and those shiny new ninety-billion setting ice-cream makers seem to have claimed the place in our hearts that breadmakers once occupied. We saw these items at every store at which we tried (and failed) to find a breadmaker. Finally, while visiting Barbara's parents on a recent Saturday, we hit up the garage sale down the block from their house. What's the first thing I saw? A breadmaker! For $15! Miraculously, I had $15 cash on me and bought the thing on the spot. We took it home and Barbara, Barbara's mom, and I attempted to try the thing out in the kitchen. I am not kidding you, it didn't work. Luckily, I was able to pack it back up, walk it back to the garage sale and get my money back from its rather befuddled and apologetic original owners. Breadmakers abound on the internet but my frugal reluctance to pay the shipping has momentarily ended our search.

The freezer. After decided to buy a new one after all, rather than play craigslist roulette with a major appliance, there was apparently a mad run on small chest freezers at our local Lowe's (which purports to have free delivery of said appliances). So we headed to Sears, but found that they would charge us $60 to deliver. I refused (See above-mentioned frugality re: shipping. Plus, the thing only cost $170 in the first place!). Intimidated by the prospect of bringing a freezer home ourselves, we tried to find another Lowe's. Long story short, we ended up back at Sears, loading a 5 cubic foot chest freezer into the back of my station wagon. Needless to say, while we had originally intended to put the freezer in the basement, an executive decision was made on the sidewalk between the street and our front door that it's final resting place would be in the kitchen.

For a couple of weeks, we also had difficulty finding blueberries in central Ohio. I never thought I liked blueberries very much, but this summer, after finding out how good for us they are, I decided to force myself to accept them. Soon I was buying $7 worth at the Farmers' Market near our house in D.C. every Sunday. As my grandpa would have said, if I ate any more blueberries, I was going to turn into a blueberry. So I looked forward to obtaining mass amounts upon our return to Columbus so that I could enjoy frozen blueberry smoothies and blueberry pies and blueberry crisp and blueberries in my oatmeal all winter long. I searched high and low for blueberries and asked every fruit farmer at the Clintonville Farmers' Market, one of whom told me blueberries were "done and gone" for the year. I refused to believe him. Columbus, OH is at almost the exact same geographic latitude as Washington, D.C. and has similar weather, so how could we have come from the land of blueberry plenty to a blueberry graveyard without changing climates? I turned to the internet. There I found the Blueberry Patch near Mansfield, OH, an hour north of us. They had a U-pick operation and their berries, they claimed, would be in season until early September. Over the course of two different visits, Barbara and I managed to pick almost 10 pounds of blueberries, most of which are now happily washed, frozen and packed into our lovely new freezer. I count my blueberry bounty as the triumph of our struggles these past few weeks.

Now, does anyone have a breadmaker hanging out in the basement that they'd love for me to take off their hands?

Step 7: Milk a Cow

2009-09-07T17:58:00.000-07:00

OK, so I didn't actually milk any cows lately, but the small Ohio dairy farm that Barbara and I now purchase dairy milk from (via the Clintonville Co-op) is near enough to our house that I could probably drive over and at least look at the cows if I felt like it. So, to all who are interested, I have forsaken my beloved (but quite un-local) soymilk for some less processed, less industrial organic cow milk. My original reasons for giving up on dairy milk - that it was full of hormones and puss (and generally kind of gross anyway) don't hold water in the face of the Snowville Creamery. I have to say, it's been pretty delicious. And the best part is that most of the money we spend on our milk (which is more than for a gallon of conventional stuff but pretty much the same as we spent on soymilk), goes directly to the dairy farmer. What else could you want?

Beans!

2009-09-03T19:54:00.000-07:00

Here is the half-bushel (almost... we ate some) of beans I bagged today!

Step 6: Save the World, Freeze a Tomato

2009-08-24T20:26:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday, I was fortunate to acquire a large amount of tomatoes for very little money. At the Urban Farmers' Market in Columbus, I asked the guy selling backyard tomatoes about which ones he'd recommend for making and freezing pasta sauce. When it became clear that I meant to make and freeze a winter's worth of the stuff, he actually jumped at the chance to unload an entire milk crate full of tomatoes on me. It was almost 12:30 and the farmers' market closed at 1. Tomato guy reassured me that he had no use for so many tomatoes himself and didn't want to be stuck taking them all home. He offered me as many as I could load into a milk crate for $5. I've learned quickly that when you're trying to put up food for the winter (and really for spring too, since, remember, as soon as the snow melts it's not as if tomatoes start shooting straight out of the ground), you should take advantage of every opportunity that comes a-knockin'. Unfortunately, I was not equipped to transport so many tomatoes back to my home at that moment... I had, of course, biked the mile or two to the market. After a couple of seconds of debating the environmental damage that might be caused by having someone drive to pick up the tomatoes, I called Barbara. I figure that her driving a few blocks each way to procure our winter's tomatoes is better than buying ones at the store that became fruit in California, turned red in trucks on the way across the continent and sat in the grocery store until I go (drive) to buy them.

Once I got the tomatoes home I began the day-long process of turning them all into sauce. 35 pounds is a lot of tomatoes, folks. A lot.

It took me most of a day to wash, core, puree, cook and finally pour the tomatoes (all sauced up) into little freezer-worthy containers, but (hopefully!) it was worth it. We'll find out in January, when we open up the freezer for a brief taste of August.

Finished sauce!!!

A "New" Locale and Well on Our Way!

2009-08-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

We left D.C. almost two weeks ago and as of the Sunday before last, are back in Columbus, OH! Since being back, we've already had some exciting moments in our local foods adventure (I drank dairy milk!! And then celebrated by buying, cooking and freezing 35 pounds of locally-grown tomatoes...). We're still on the lookout for a chest freezer - that's a project that will need serious attention shortly (see the previous sentence re: 35 pounds of tomatoes). This weekend we're hoping to make a quick trip to Cleveland, stopping to pick a winter's worth of blueberries and raspberries on the way home, so stay tuned for more updates, including new pictures all August has offered us. I promise.

The Washington Youth Garden

2009-08-03T14:11:00.000-07:00

I realized this week that since starting this blog, I have not yet written an entry explaining what I'm doing in D.C. this summer. I have spent that past seven weeks working as an intern at the Washington Youth Garden. The garden is located on the grounds of the U.S. National Arboretum and has a 30 year history! In fact, the garden's current director was involved in projects at the Youth Garden when she was a child growing up in D.C.

I have learned so much over the past few weeks - about planting, growing and harvesting, about food and nutrition, and about the transformative power of gardening. When I feel depressed about the state of everything these days - the junk food kids eat too much of, the destruction of small family farms, genetically engineered food, the decline community - I think about the kids who are really getting something out of the summer programs at the garden. I really believe that community gardening and youth gardening are going to be the things that put us back on the right track as a society. The thrill of having a connection with their food makes these kids profoundly more adventurous with regard to food. Most are learning to try almost anything, especially if they planted or cared for it or harvested it or prepared it themselves.
Just last Wednesday, the kids all had lessons in knife safety and used those skills to create (with the help of our special guest Carla Hall of Top Chef fame - of whom I am an HUGE fan, but don't fret all, I played it real cool...) a raw salad that included garden greens, carrots, onions and beets. At their age, I don't think I would have touched beets with a ten foot pole (and my mom was a health food nut when I was little), which just goes to show how important those connections are. The kids have watched the beets grow. They harvested them themselves. They peeled them and shaved them into slices for the salad. They were intrigued by the pink and purple stains the vegetable left on their hands. They tried it. A number of them liked it. Beets.

So there's my share of hope and inspiration for the coming months. Kids who eat beets. And like it.

Mid-Summer Bounty

2009-07-20T11:16:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night, we enjoyed ourselves some straight-up summer for dinner. I made pesto from basil grown in the Washington Youth Garden. I also threw some carrot top greens into the mix, which are edible and, I think, delicious (Barbara disagrees :-)...)! We used almonds (instead of pricey pine nuts) from the Glut co-op in Mt. Rainier, MD. With our pasta and pesto, we had some sweet corn and watermelon from the Sunday Farmers' Market at 1st and R in NW D.C.

Other things we've been enjoying lately:
Pizza with homemade crust and sauce
Stuffed bell peppers (with rice, beans and veggies from the Farmers' Market)
Blueberries!!!! (I never gave blueberries a fair chance until this summer and I've discovered a new favorite!)

Step 5: Making Lists

2009-07-13T14:00:00.000-07:00

The results of an early July brainstorm by Barbara and me in anticipation of our return to Columbus in just over a month:

What we can get (or make ourselves) locally:
Grain and flour (Amish Ohio-grown, from Co-op)
Locally-made pasta (Co-op, and we can also make our own)
Dairy milk
Cheese
Eggs
Ice cream!
Local hydroponic lettuce (at the Co-op in the winter!)
In-season fruits and veggies (Farmers’ markets, Co-op)
Poultry
Bread
Granola (It's easy to make!)
Applesauce (Gonna try...)
Tomato sauce, salsa, etc…

What we cannot get locally:
Avocadoes
Mangoes
Citrus
Orange juice
Soymilk
Tofu, Seitan, etc…
Rice?
Peanut Butter Cap’n Crunch

What will be in season in August when we’re in Columbus and can begin to save/freeze/can (and EAT!)?
AUGUST:
V: Basil, carrots, cilantro, sweet corn, cucumbers, green beans, onions, oregano, bell peppers, hot peppers(?), potatoes, summer squash, tarragon, thyme, tomatoes
F: Apples(?), Apricots, blackberries, blueberries, melons, nectarines, peaches, plums, raspberries, watermelon
SEPTEMBER:
V: Basil, beets, broccoli, carrots, chard, sweet corn, cucumbers, green beans, kale, kohlrabi, leeks, lettuces, onions, oregano, bell and hot peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, rosemary, summer and winter squash, tarragon, thyme, tomatoes
F: Apples, blueberries, melons, pears, raspberries
OCTOBER:
V: Basil, beets, bok choi, broccoli, carrots, chard, chives, fennel, green beans, fall greens, leeks, lettuces, onions, oregano, hot and bell peppers, potatoes, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, rosemary, spinach, winter squash, thyme, turnips
F: Apples, pears

Supplies/Resources needed:
Large pot for canning
Mason jars and lids
Extra freezer for the basement ($75 on Craigslist)
Freezer bags and containers
Humidifier for storing potatoes in the basement?
Mad organizational skills

The Vegetarian's Dilemma

2009-07-09T06:51:00.000-07:00

Barbara and I had a long conversation over dinner recently (which included basil from the back porch, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and plums from our local farmers' market) about how serious we are about the local eating project we are in the process of undertaking. How extensive will our local commitment become? We needed to talk logistics (which has inspired me to search craigslist to check on the availability of a cheap freezer to nab once we're back in Columbus in August) - what will we freeze, what will we can and most importantly, what will we eat?

The last question brought up an issue I'd been beginning to bring up in recent days - an issue which, at least for me, has been an elephant in the room ever since I decided to embark on this project: My vegetarianism. While I find tofu quite delicious and a wonderful protein source, it is decidedly not very sustainable (most soybeans are grown on large industrial farms and the processing, packaging and shipping of tofu uses a lot of energy) and not usually very local (even though the midwest does produce a lot of soybeans...). I also love soymilk. Which is also not local.

My aversion to dairy milk probably began when I was a kid. I don't ever remember being a huge fan of the stuff, though we drank so much of it at our house, it might as well have poured out of the sink tap. In college I studied abroad in Tanzania where most milk is pasteurized but not homogenized (i.e., the milk can be rather, um, lumpy). Not willing to brave chunky milk, I forewent the beverage during my five months in East Africa. Upon my return, I found my younger brother in an attempt to convince our mom to switch to organic milk because, as he explained, there was pus in conventional milk (please note that my brother did not advocate for organic moo-juice out of full concern for the environmental or health effects of said pus, but primarily because he wanted a constant supply of a particular brand of organic chocolate milk). My own research confirmed that my brother was right about the pus thing and that was it for me. I don't think I've had more than a few tablespoons of cow milk since that day. It's been all soymilk for me. (I am well aware that the fact that I still consume non-organic dairy ice cream, cheese and yogurt on a semi-regular basis makes me a raving hypocrite in this regard, and for the past four years I have accepted this truth about myself).

My vegetarianism began earlier, during a high school philosophy class in which I and some classmates completed a group research project on world hunger. I learned that most of the grain grown in the United States feeds not people, but animals - often cattle - that then become much more expensive and less efficient meat products. In a world with a large share of starving people, I found this absurd. After I graduated high school, I took my vows of vegetarianism.

Just this past June, I celebrated the beginning of my eighth year as a vegetarian. Weeks later I began to crave chicken for the first time in the better part of a decade. Was I hungry, you ask? No. Protein-deprived? Maybe - but usually when that is the case, I crave my old standby, tofu. In reality, I was coming to terms with the fact that my local food project might require me to give up tofu (or at least limit my consumption) and embrace a different, more locally available source of protein. This thought has been tickling the back of my brain for a short while and I think I secretly feared that I would struggle to eat meat again. But in fact, the past few days of embracing my new interest in chicken have been exciting rather than fearful or sad. I'm not ready to give up my vegetarianism yet, but herbed roast chicken with green beans and fall potatoes may be calling my name come October.

Step 4: Do Your Homework

2009-07-04T11:39:00.000-07:00

Over the past month, I've been tackling a reading list dealing with topics of local food and environmental and economic sustainability. I thought I'd share a few titles with folks. I highly recommend the following:

1. Deep Economy (Bill McKibben)
2. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (John Perkins)
3. Farewell, My Subaru (Doug Fine)
4. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle (Barbara Kingsolver)

Also, the documentaries The Future of Food and The Corporation are excellent. A new film, Food Inc., is currently in theatres. I hope to see it so I can write about it soon!

Step 3: Pay the Farmer

2009-07-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me well knows that I love sandwiches. As my volunteer corps roommates and I learned a few years ago when we collectively determined that we also loved sandwiches, bread - at least bread that's worth eating - is expensive. Our volunteer stipends allowed us such a small food budget that we realized buying enough high quality bread to feed all half-dozen of us for a week was going to quickly become prohibitively costly. We wanted to avoid spending our food budget on 99 cent loaves of Wonder Bread. Wonder Bread (and, in fact, most store-bought breads) are cheap, but filled with bleached, processed flours, high-fructose corn syrup and preservatives. They are what are known as "empty calories." Our food money was too precious to warrant its waste on anything "empty." Wonder Bread was out. Since we couldn't afford the $4.00 loaves of whole-grain, corn syrup-free, pre-packaged wheat bread, we decided to make our own. Here, I use the word "we" loosely. In fact, it was one roommate in particular who stepped up to this task. Once the decision was made to forego store-bought bread, our roommate Jana proceeded to bake nearly all of our bread herself for an entire year. Though I know her efforts were occasionally supplemented by Rebekah's bread-baking skills, I'm fairly certain that the rest of us, though we surely benefitted from the loaves that emerged from our oven every weekend, never lifted a finger in this arena. After my volunteer corps, another former corps member (though not one of my roommates) gave me a bread-making tutorial and walked me through the steps a few times. However, I remained too intimidated by the process to go for it on my own. Thus, once I made the transition from volunteer stipend to graduate student stipend (a step that nearly doubled my meager income), I concluded that I could afford those $4.00 loaves of whole wheat store bread.

My primary goal in committing to eating as locally as possible was originally to reduce the amount of fossil fuels used to get my food from its origins to my table. However, as I've been reading more, talking to people in the local food movement and doing some of my own research I've discovered some other reasons to not only eat locally, but to buy more things like dry goods in bulk, avoiding highly packaged or processed foods which frequently deny farmers a fair share of profits. Most loaves of bread at the supermarket cost somewhere between $1.50 and $5.00. For the most part, the average grain farmer sees only 3 cents of profit from each loaf sold. 3 cents. How could this be, you ask? Well, the thing about pre-packaged foods is that the farmer is not the only person involved in the supply chain. There's the factories that process the grains (wheat into flour and corn into syrup), chemical preservatives to add, large-scale industrial mixing and baking of the loaves, plastic packaging to pay for and assembly lines to get it all ready for its life in retail. Not to mention the fact that most of the finished, packaged bread must be shipped to all corners of the country - costing us more in fossil fuels and funds. In the end, companies that "make" bread, like Wonder Bread, Sara Lee, and etc... see most of the profits from bread sales. Grain farmers do not. While it may be difficult to find local grain, cutting out as many of the "middlemen" as possible by trying to buy unbleached, bulk flours and looking into making things like bread ourselves, allows grain farmers a larger share of the profits for their work than store-bought breads do, since at least in this scenario, farmers don't have to share their profits with everybody else involved.

This still brings us back to the issue of my fear of baking. Last week, I decided to conquer my fear once and for all. I opened up a copy of Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything and decided to follow his "Sandwich Bread" recipe. Worried because I did not have my dear friend Joanie's bread-making cheat sheet on hand, and further concerned that I had only regular yeast and not the instant yeast Bittman's recipe called for, I tentatively activated my little packet of yeast in some warm water and stirred it into my flour mixture. Sure enough, just as plants want to grow, yeast wants to rise, and a couple of hours later I had a big puffy ball of bread dough in my bowl. I was delighted. I punched my risen dough and set it to rise another half-hour or so (it was supposed to be an hour but I didn't have time). 40 minutes in the oven later, I had a beautiful loaf of "sandwich bread." Also to my pleasant surprise when I used it to make a sandwich the next morning, the bread wasn't crumbly or too dry or anything. I, the baking novice, had conquered bread. The whole process was so easy and so satisfying I almost cried. When and why did we as a culture stop baking bread? It seems like it takes a long time because of all the rising, but you don't even have to be home while that's going on. Baking bread is ridiculously easy and ridiculously cheap. And it has the potential to promise farmers more money. Where's the downside? I'm certainly a convert.

Step 2: Learning the Hard Way and Looking for Signs

2009-06-25T15:07:00.000-07:00

Last week I experienced an unfortunate event that I'd like to interpret as a sign from the powers that be that I'm headed in the right direction on my local-crunchy-sustainable quest. A week ago this afternoon, I went to the grocery store a few blocks from my house which stocks a wide variety of processed foods from who knows where, along with lots of ice cream and some sick looking produce (sick as in literally sick, not sick as in "cool"). This store also carries alcohol, which was the primary object of my visit. Along with a few other items we needed to prepare for the house guests coming in late that night, I bought a six-pack of my beloved Woodchuck Hard Cider (which is purportedly made in Vermont, which is not local. Unless you live in Vermont.)

Since it is not quite yet apple season, my aspirations to make homemade hard cider have not gotten off the ground. I was discussing my autumn hard cider-brewing plans with my partner Barbara and our friend Joanie as I began to enjoy a bottle of the not-homemade/not-local Woodchuck I'd purchased at the previously discussed chain grocery store. Satisfied with my future goals, I finished my bottle of Woodchuck and headed to the kitchen. When I opened the fridge, another of the Woodchucks fell out and hit the floor. I picked it up and noticed that it was only half full (or half empty depending on your perspective). I assumed the bottle must have been cracked. I searched the fridge shelf and the floor for signs of leaked cider but found none. I then realized that the bottle's cap had already been twisted off and put back on. Confused and mildly alarmed, I proceeded to poll our housemates to determine if anyone had, for some reason, drunk half of a bottle of cider and then put it back in the fridge. No one had. We decided that someone must have walked through the grocery store, drunk half a cider and put it back in the pack, which I then bought. I considered taking the ciders back to the store, but abandoned that plan rather quickly. Who would believe me? "Uh, I bought this six-pack and now half of this bottle is gone..." So, I dumped the half-empty (or half-full) bottle down the sink and decided not to drink anymore from this batch, which turned out to be a fortunate decision.

Our out-of-town friends had left Boston late in the afternoon and were not scheduled to arrive at our place in D.C. until 1 or 2 A.M., so after telling them to call us to let them in when they arrived, Barbara and I headed to bed. Sometime after midnight, I awoke feeling slightly strange in the stomach. I thought it was butterflies - excitement for the coming weekend with old friends, but soon realized that something was wrong. The tingly sensation in my belly was distinctly unpleasant. I decided to remedy this problem the way I normally confront stomach aches - with a healthy dose of strong peppermint tea. A few sips into the mint, it became clear that tea wasn't going to cut it this time around. I headed to the bathroom (I'll spare you the details) and feared that I might be greeting my visitors with a couple of dry heaves rather than hugs. Thankfully, my strange illness was as short-lived as it was sudden. By 1:30am when my friends rolled in, I was most of the way through my tea and beginning to feel much better, if no less confused. The next day, I returned to the previously-mentioned chain grocery to attempt to return the cider after all. My friend Liz stood in line with me at customer service, where I told the woman behind the counter that after drinking one of the ciders, I'd noticed another one was already open and half gone. "Later that night," I informed her, "I became violently ill." "Oh!" she exclaimed, recoiling slightly. She took what remained of the six-pack from me and asked if I wanted to exchange it for another package or if I wanted a refund. Wary of any further death-cider disaster, I went ahead and got the $8.25 back.

So, the powers that be have spoken. No more (or at the very least less...) Vermont Woodchuck for me. Lesson learned: Drink locally. I intend to spend the fall hitting up farmers' markets for fresh cider and learning the fine art of fermentation.

Step 1: Save the World, Freeze a Strawberry

2009-06-16T16:03:00.000-07:00

During my post-college stint living the volunteer corps life, my housemates and I discovered that the seemingly simple task of living the "simple life" is not really so simple after all. In fact, it is actually quite complicated to do things like find unsweetened apple sauce at an urban grocery store while shopping for food for six on foot and remembering to soak the dried beans the night before it's your turn to make burritos. The first step I took in my recently begun quest to reduce my dependence on fossil fuels reinforced this paradox - that the simple life is sometimes, well, complicated.

Back in the day, folks used to eat foods when they were in season, and when the season ended, they either ate what they had canned or went without. This is why, for instance, the Little House on the Prairie kids were always thrilled when Santa Claus brought them an orange. As children, my brother and I found this comical. Now I get the underlying message. Oranges don't grow in Wisconsin in December. They also don't grow in Wisconsin in the summer. Thus, they are an incredible special treat. Most of us who came of age in the latter half of the twentieth century don't see it that way anymore, seeing as a wide variety of citrus and other tropical fruits are available to us year-round at our local grocery chain. But those oranges and bananas (and apples in January) come to us at a cost. We don't necessarily feel the cost in our wallets since huge multi-national corporations have found out how to exploit people in the "third" world and bring Westerners these tasty treats for very little money. The cost is in fossil fuels and the extreme harm they cause to the earth (and to the earth's people who include both us and the "third" world workers breaking their backs growing those oranges and bananas for us). So my first step towards kicking the oil habit and living more locally was to secure a local, year-round fruit supply.

My partner, Barbara and I love strawberries. They are among our favorite fruits. Fortunately for us, strawberries are easily grown in most parts of North America. Unfortunately for us, the strawberry season doesn't last terribly long into the summer. Thus, inspired by the author of Deep Economy, who ate locally in Vermont for a year, I decided to freeze a batch of summer berries so that we could have some fruit variety over the winter. This first entailed obtaining a large number of strawberries. Determined to have as close a relationship with my food as possible, I wanted to pick the berries myself. I enlisted my roommate, Lex to assist me in this cause. However, the realization soon struck me that in Columbus, Ohio, which is much further south than say, Decorah, Iowa (the last place I picked strawberries), the strawberry season ends in early June rather than in early July. As a result, during the week of June 8, when I decided to embark on this project, most "Pick-Yer-Own" places were only open for limited times and could not guarantee me prime strawberry picking. To complicate matters further, I discovered that strawberry-freezing is at least an overnight endeavor and I needed to leave Columbus for my summer internship in Washington, D.C. on June 11. Finally, we found a place that had pre-picked berries available for sale. I was pleased to find that this farm was just outside of Columbus, a quick drive from my house, and that it also sold a bounty of other produce (though I was disturbed that it was located across the road from the biggest mega-church I have EVER seen in my life). Lex and I bought $30 worth of strawberries (I would estimate 7 or 8 quarts or so).

I had consulted the web as to strawberry-freezing procedures and the consensus was that you can freeze the fruit by cutting off the stems and leaves, laying them out on cookie tins, refrigerating for about an hour and then freezing for six hours (on the cookie tins) before finally putting them in large ziplock bags where they'll stay, in the freezer until we want them. This is all fine and dandy if you have more than one cookie sheet. And more than one freezer. Of course, we have only the one cookie sheet and our one freezer is full of stuff that needs to stay frozen. A friend had earlier suggested that this might be a problem for me when I told her of my desire to freeze a bunch of fruits and veggies this summer and fall, in preparation for a winter of eating local produce. She asked if I had a chest freezer. I said, "Uh, no..." So I was vaguely aware that my strawberry-freezing vision might take some creativity. In the end, we decided not to freeze the entire $30 worth - we ate about a third fresh (on home-made shortcake a la Lex). I prepared and froze the berries in two shifts, making do with my one cookie sheet, and wax paper on various other flat, movable surfaces and a temporary reorganization of our freezer.

By the evening of June 10 (departure time to D.C. was in T-minus 12 hours), I had four or five quarts of frozen strawberries ready and waiting in my freezer.

We'll see, come November, how well they hold up.

We're Not in New Mexico Anymore

2009-06-15T12:03:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I am completely and hopelessly addicted to fossil fuels. This may come as a shock to many who know me, and perhaps many who don't (see "About Me," right sidebar). But, friends, it is true. And it's not just about driving my car, which, though I may do less of than most of my peers, I still do more than I should. It's about food. Food and stuff. The truth is, I really like both and for the most part, both take a ridiculous amount of fossil fuel to get from wherever they originate to me. I like music, so I buy CDs that are shipped to me (using fossil fuel) from some warehouse in Nevada (after being manufactured in some sweatshop in China and shipped to Nevada using fossil fuel, I would assume). I like lots of things that are made of plastic (which requires fossil fuels), like my computer and its related components, packaging for my beloved Not-Dogs, and child-safe pill bottles that our cat cannot open no matter how many times she knocks them off the dresser at 3am. And damn, do I love mangoes and avocadoes, which decidedly do not grow in central Ohio and thus must be shipped to my local co-op (using fossil fuel) so that I can occasionally drive my car (using still more fossil fuel), or, more often (at the very least...) walk to obtain. Why is this fossil fuel over-use a problem? Well, polar ice cap melts, the Iraq War and Hurricane Katrina aside, we're just plain running out of the stuff. Besides, why do I need someone 2,000 miles away in California to grow strawberries for me when Ohio is perfectly capable of growing its own? Now, in order to deal with my total addiction to petroleum, conventional wisdom states that I need to admit that I have a problem, which I am completely willing to do. I've got a MAJOR, MAJOR problem. Unfortunately, a quick Google search reveals that there are no Fossil Fuels Anonymous chapters in Columbus, OH, so the next dozen or so steps are up to me.

I recently read two books that, surprisingly, may have changed my life. The first was Deep Economy (Bill McKibben), which pretty much scared the crap out of me (fundamentalist Christians, take heart. Apocalypse may be nearer than we think) while also inundating me with hopeful and practical suggestions for kicking the oil habit and bolstering my local economy. The second was Farewell, My Subaru by Doug Fine, who headed out to rural New Mexico to attempt to power his conventional American lifestyle using the sun (and also to make his own ice cream from home-raised goat milk and grow vegetables in the desert). One veggie-oil run Ford diesel truck (to replace the Subaru) and a half-dozen solar panels later, his experiment has turned out to be a phenomenal success. Galvanized by his story, I thought, "Hey, I can do that." Except for a couple of pesky details... I don't live in rural New Mexico, don't own a house (and thus am barred from installing solar panels) and don't have enough land to raise goats (or even chickens, which are my current aspiration). But I have my own questions. I want to know if what Fine has accomplished - or at least a version of it - can be achieved in a less remote location... say, Columbus, OH or Washington, D.C., or wherever I end up next. Since I can't afford to make the big changes quite yet (like solar panels or a switch to bio-diesel), I've decided to take my addiction step by step - to do what I can now and worry about the rest later (and by later I mean soon), because the truth is, we've got to do something and we've got to do it as fast as we can or we might really lose it all.