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Byrne Black Angus Farm

Return of the Nerdy Locovors

Thursday trip to the market
We’re doing that thing again, the one where we spend the summer eating only fresh food produced within a 10-mile radius of our house and what we forage from our own garden [queue the laugh track for that last part, not even I can say it with a straight face].
I recently read an excellent piece of advice posted by my personal life coach Pinterestthat, aside from being a mash-up of stuff Michael Pollan has been saying for years, gets to the heart of it:
“Avoid eating anything with an advertising budget.” 
Yep, that.
Yesterday was the Skaneateles Farmer’s Market and here is the resulting simple meal:
Feta and Spinach Burgers


Feta & Spinach Burgers
           1 October Rose Farm egg (our girls have mysteriously suspended laying at the moment)
1 pound Byrne Black Angus beef
2 cups chopped Elderberry Pondspinach
2 cloves Good Karma Russian Red Garlic, diced (we’re down to our last bulb from the Fall harvest and eager for the new stuff to come in!)
                                                                                                       4 ounces crumbled feta (comment         below if you know a local source)
Buy these.
Directions: Mix ingredients; form into patties; throw on the grill. Top with slices of Horsford Farms onion and place on a SkaneatelesBakery roll; serve with a side of Navarino Orchard pickled tomatoes.
On the topic of Navarino Orchard Pickled Tomatoes which I impulse purchased and may or may not have subsequently eaten half the jar thereof using chopsticks: I am prepared to release a statement at this time informing the public that These. Are. Yum. That is all.
And, continuing in that spirit of preparedness, I rolled a few meatballs after dinner for today’s TGIF bento box:
http://onegirlsbento.blogspot.com
Happy Friday!

January 1st Thanksgiving

January 1st. I dearly love the first day of a new year. Before us shines self-fulfilling prophecies, the link between Belief and Behavior so clear on this day that it blazes like the sun and beckons for us to follow.
Thank you, October Rose Farm,
for all the sage advice.
More importantly, hardly any of us have had time or opportunity to really screw the year up yet. It really is a very good feeling.
New Years is my Thanksgiving and on this day I give thanks for the good people and things that 2012 brought into my life:
I am so thankful for my husband, daughter and brothers who are also friends and for friends who have become like family.
Thank you, Elderberry
Pond Farm, for the
gardening tips.
I am thankful for the people who grew or produced the food that nourished us so deliciously this year, and for the friendships we have forged with each of them. 
I am grateful that we live in a place where fresh local food is abundant. I am thankful for the little seeds of change that are slowly shifting our thinking about food. And I am thankful for a husband who loves to cook, the obvious disadvantages of this fact notwithstanding.
My NB 510’s: a.k.a. life changers.
For which I am so thankful.
I must also give thanks to the New Balance 510 cross trainer running shoes I bought in August at the Bass Pro Shop for undoing 10 years of burning Achilles pain caused by a pair of badly fitting pink sneakers I bought off the internet a decade ago. To be free of foot pain after so many years is life altering, and certainly one of this year’s highlights. Yes, I bought a second pair of the NB 510’s to replace this pair when it wears out.
Thank you, Wake Robin Farm, for 
putting family and community first.
Thank you, Owen Orchard, for
growing our favorite apples.
And I am thankful for the restless internal voice that keeps reminding me I’m not there yet; urges me to keep going; helps me visualize the link between belief and behavior when it doesn’t seem nearly as real nor blaze quite as brightly as it does on the first day of a new year.
Thank you, vendors at the 2012
Skaneateles Farmers Market. 
So onward and upward. Vacation is over and the grind is at hand. What better way to get through the awfulness of a New York winter than by preparing for its inevitable concession to Spring? Did you know we northerners have just six weeks before our garden seeds must be started indoors? There are many choices to be made between then and now!
Thank you, Good Karma Garlic,  for
turning your hobby into a product
we cannot live without.
I spent the last two days of 2012 plotting and scheming our 2013 Heirloom garden. And I have plans, people, big ones. It is time to find out if we can actually grow stuff in the back yard.
Thank you, Byrne Black Angus Farm,
for raising happy cows.
Of course there is always the possibility that we will look back on these ambitions in September over a glass of wine and guffaw. But just in case, a quick, final note to The Husband concerning our new garden: you know the bench in the corner of the yard that’s all set in cement? We’ll need to yank that out.
Quite possibly the maple tree, too.

My Diabolical 2013 Heirloom Gardening Plans.

10-Mile Meals

Our bounty from Saturday’s Farmer’s Market run.

A few years ago The Husband read The Omnivore’s Dilemma and it got us thinking about the seriously weird stuff we humans now pass off as food. It also got us thinking about the politics of food and life back when people were self-regulating, counting on their own — and the local community’s — enterprise to fill basic needs. Food wasn’t convenient or fast but people could pronounce the ingredients; and hardly anyone was compulsively hoarding useless chachkies from a local megamart.
Signs of Summer.
About that time The Husband and I also started noticing other things: the bunches and bunches of local food farms, farmer’s markets and little road-side veggie stands surrounding us; the fact that we felt better after eating fresh food rather than crispy chicken strips out of a cardboard box; that our food choices appeared to be damaging our health. We started talking about raising chickens and planting a garden and several times even toyed with the idea of making local farms our primary food source for a summer. Just for the fun of it.
It took a couple years of gradual toe dipping into the proverbial sustainability water but when spring rolled around this year The Husband and I felt ready to revisit the local food idea. In May we issued ourselves this challenge: make farmer’s markets, local farms and our own garden our family’s primary source for food this summer. We decided to try and ‘make do’ with Thursday/Saturday trips to the Skaneateles Farmer’s Market, visits to Wake Robin Farm’s store and an occasional trek to the Regional Market.
The Husband’s Lamb, Spinach and home-made Pasta dish
from Farmer’s Market sources.
This game of Make-Do has unexpectedly turned into something fun and delicious. We’re making friends, learning how to cook with fresh ingredients, and discovering a rich food culture in our region.
Now that we’re about a month into this thing I figured I’d share what I/we’ve learned so far:
Scape and asparagus.
We Don’t Know Much: There are a whole bunch of edible plants growing in the region that I’ve never heard of. What the heck is a scape? Or a rabe? Or rocket? And how do you prepare these things? Turns out the people who grow and sell food are also very willing to share family recipes. We’re trying new foods constantly.
Variety Abounds:We get our whole milk, cheeses, and yogurt at Wake Robin Farms; at the Skaneateles farmer’s market we get fresh local lamb, beef, chicken, goat cheese, canned goods, breads, herbs, and all manner of vegetables, both known and unknown. The flavor is worlds, worlds better than the processed stuff. No comparison.
Eating Local Makes You Loco: I thought this challenge was going to be too difficulty to stick with but the opposite is true: we’re energized, maybe because of the better food choices we’re making, and motivated to permanently cut out as much imported and processed food as we can. We’re looking into canning and charcuterie, pickling and salting, smoking and drying, to preserve our food for the winter.  
These Andy’s turnips are delicious
blanched or candied.
A New Kind of Saturday: Saturdays have become a new kind of day – one of food preparation for the upcoming week. Delicate, leafy produce spoils quickly unless thoroughly washed, dried and wrapped; meats and veg bought in bulk have to be separated and frozen or canned; we’ve learned to cook en mass and to anticipate future need. Saturdays have become the food-prep and preserve day for the upcoming week.
You Just Never Know: We’re dependent on what is in season, and weather, and temperature, the health of the farmer — all things we never gave a thought to before. We just never know exactly what will be on our plates in any given week, and we’ve learned not to freak out about it. We’ll figure it out. This is a diabolic shift in our food consumption and our attitude about food in general. It requires us to succumb to the process of cooking what we have on hand, even if those ingredients are the same ones we made our meals out of yesterday. Developing a robust recipe collection has been key to keeping us on track.
Beans from Ethiopia. El Salvador and Guatemala
roasted in The Husband’s  Behmor 1600.
Buying Local is Socially Gratifying: Building relationships with the people who grow and raise our food has been the single most enjoyable aspect of this challenge. These people are passionate. They are knowledgeable. And, frankly, in an apocalypse these are the folks you want to know.
Exceptions: There are certain things we cook with and consume that are not and never will be produced locally:  olive oil; coffee (The Husband is a home roaster and buys his green beans from Sweet Marias. He roasts in-house with his Behmor 1600 – this isn’t going to change); bananas (I love them – don’t judge).
So where do we get our food these days?
Good Karma Garlic
Susanville
Navarino Orchard– Sweet onions and potatoes, apples, strawberries, peaches, canned goods, fruit pies. (they also make barley and peanut butter doggie treats that our mutt loves.)
Byrne Black Angus
Byrne Black Angus– These guys do one thing: natural, grass-feed black angus beef.
Wake Robin Farm – Yogurt, artisan cheeses, and milk. Visitors usually get to see the cows just outback in the pasture.
Meadowood Farms Lamb sausage and a sheep’s milk brebis.
Susanville Good Karma Garlic – A large variety of garlic and tomatoes, and seasonal vegetables. The Good Karma Garlic keeps the fresh veg coming well into the cold season.
An October Rose broiler smoked on
The Husband’s grill.
October Rose Farm– Free range and antibiotic free eggs, chicken and turkey. 
Other Seeds of Change that got this Fat American thinking:
Food, Inc. documentary
Fresh documentary
The Future of Food documentary