The Perennial Plate: Episode 78

Insects as protein. Watch David Gracer, an entomophagy (bug eating) expert, offer a good case for making wider use of bugs.  He’s eating them to save the planet, not to make a buck.

Can You Source Your Thanksgiving Dinner from within 100 Miles?

From GOOD, comes this challenge: Use only ingredients sourced from within 100 miles of your dinner table this Thanksgiving. Think of it as an opportunity to celebrate local food, rather than an obligation. Every region has fabulous specialties to please your palate.

Check out this long infographic to get some ideas! And check back with Life Is Fare to see what’s on the menu Chez Marcita later this week!

Thank You!

I’m so excited to announce that Life Is Fare has topped 100,000 site views—with more than 600 posts—since August, 2009.

I appreciate the loyalty of my readers and the curiosity of people interested in happy food.

Thank you for following me!

The Feast Nearby

I came across The Feast Nearby in Taste for Life, the free magazine I pick up when I shop at Nature’s Market. Each issue has suggested reading–”Food for Thought”–and I figured this book by food journalist and locavore Robin Mather was right up my alley.

The book is about how, within a week, Robin found herself on the threshold of a divorce and laid off from her job at the Chicago Tribune. Forced into a radical life change, she returned to her native rural Michigan where she learned to live on a limited budget while remaining true to her culinary principles of eating well and as locally as possible.

What I didn’t realize when I ordered the book from the library is that “rural Michigan” meant West Michigan. Robin lived only one county away from Bill and me when she wrote The Feast Nearby. I was so excited to read about her exploration for local food sources and her discovery of some of the same ones I use, such as Geukes Market (for meat processing) and Dancing Goat Creamery. (I still need to make a trip to the Kalamazoo Farmers Market, her local market, but it’s a bit of a drive for me.) And, her seasons–as well as her produce options–aligned with mine since she lived nearby.

But even if you don’t live in the Midwest, this book is a great read for locavores, or anyone who is learning to live on a limited budget while eating healthy and procuring local resources. The Feast Nearby chronicles Robin’s preparation of local food through all four seasons of one year, all on forty dollars a week. It’s loaded with recipes that accompany the seasons and tips for storing food long-term, as well as stories about her relationships with her neighbors, local farmers, and other people from whom she procures/barters for food. (As an animal lover, I also appreciated the stories about her three pets that kept her company in her little cabin by the lake.)

When I finished the book, I was hoping I could interview her for my blog but it turns out she moved to Kansas after accepting a position at Mother Earth News. I guess I’ll have to wait until I make that road trip to Kansas to meet her in person. Meanwhile, please join me in following her blog at TheFeastNearby.com.

Veggie Wrap with Garbanzo Bean Schmear

As part of my “How to Eat Healthy on $5.00 a Day” experiment, I made a veggie wrap for lunch on Day 1. This could be done in a number of ways: Use lavash instead of tortillas. Take advantage of vegetables in season. Add olives, pickles, or cheese….whatever’s in your budget. These wraps could be made ahead of time to bring for lunch or a snack. They would pack well for a road trip, too. Here’s the recipe I came up with for my lunch:

Veggie Wrap with Garbanzo Bean Schmear

2 tortillas
2 oz. garbanzo beans
1/2 tsp. olive oil
Juice from a quick squeeze of a fresh lemon
Salt and pepper to taste
1/2 oz. sunflower seeds
1 carrot, grated
2 oz. lettuce greens

Smash garbanzo beans in a bowl, add olive oil, lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Mix together. Meanwhile, warm tortillas briefly either on a griddle or in microwave. (I nuked them for 15 seconds.)

Divide and schmear the bean mixture in the center of each tortilla. Sprinkle with sunflower seeds.

Grate the carrot, and divide between the two tortillas.

Add lettuce. Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Roll tortillas into a wrap. Portable!

How to Eat Healthy on $5.00 a Day

People generally think that eating healthy has to be expensive. Bill and I decided to demonstrate that it’s not.

This post begins a series of blog posts inspired by an article I read last fall in The Grand Rapids Press. It documented the diary  of two writers who were taking the Grand Rapids Hunger Challenge as part of Hunger Action Week. Challenged with spending only $30.59 per week—about what a person on food stamps would have to spend—or $4.37 per day, Jacqueline Prins and Samantha Dine shared their experience in a series of daily articles.

On Day 5 the headline read, “Today, fast food tastes ‘lovely, glorious.’” Really? I don’t ever remember using those words to describe fast food. But I suppose these girls were pretty hungry by then, choosing Taco Bell and McDonald’s foods for lunch and dinner. Understanding that fast food is cheap and convenient, I realize how people with limited income head to those establishments first. But in my mind, I threw down the gauntlet. I wanted to figure out how someone could eat healthy–and inexpensively–on minimal income.

Fulton Street Farmers Market in Winter

Last month I was excited to learn that Michigan ranks in the top ten states for its number of winter farmers markets. Even though the Holland Farmers Market, my most local one, isn’t open in the dead of winter, the Fulton Street Farmers Market in Grand Rapids is. Generally, it’s a bit of a drive for me on a Saturday morning, but Bill was planning to be in town today so he paid a visit, picked up some produce from Visser Farms as well as some bratwursts from Crane Dance Farm, and took these photos. For now, the market is temporarily located in the Salvation Army parking lot while construction is underway to expand and upgrade the current site, including the addition of permanent roof structures to provide shelter for this open-air market.

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Thanks to these hardy folks for enduring the elements each week to provide us their local goods!

Grassfed Beef Rump Roast

The last, lonely cut of beef from our 2010 mixed quarter from Lubbers Farm became tonight’s dinner: Rump Roast. One of my favorite recipes for rump roast is a Tuscan version that I learned at Chef Claudio’s cooking class near Florence, Italy, but tonight I opted for a different approach: Oven Rump Roast from Cooks.com.

As always with grassfed beef, it’s important to be conservative with the cook time because grassfed meat is leaner than factory farmed so it cooks quickly. Our cut of meat was 3.28 lbs. so I halved the recipe and reduced the cooking time to one hour and ten minutes.

It’s an easy recipe. You just rub some fresh garlic on the meat and then mix salt, pepper, and dried mustard together, which you rub on the meat before putting it in the oven.

Then you mix together some Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, and dry red wine, and baste the meat with it.

While my digital meat thermometer read medium rare when I took the roast out, it looked more like medium after letting the meat rest, covered, for ten minutes.

To accompany the roast, I simply roasted a vegetable medley of Yukon gold potatoes, carrots, celery, and garlic cloves in a skillet with olive oil while the meat cooked at 325 degrees F. When I took the roast out, I bumped up the oven temperature to 375 for another 20 minutes to finish cooking the vegetables.

Yummy, happy, Sunday dinner.

A Special Dinner

Last night I had the privilege of collaborating with Butch’s Restaurant in Holland, Michigan to promote my cookbook, Nothing to Sneeze At, during a dinner for which Chef Adam prepared wheat-free, corn-free, cow-dairy-free recipes from the book. I think several of the dinner guests were pleasantly surprised when they tasted the dishes he made and realized how delicious they can be–even with substitutions. For me, it was a treat to taste my recipes made by a professional chef!

We had a great turnout of 20 people and dinner was held in one of Butch’s private dining rooms.

The evening started with a book signing and, after a brief introduction about the cookbook, we began our four-course meal.

Each of the courses was chosen by Chef Adam from one of four sections in the cookbook: soup, meat, pasta, and vegetarian.

Dessert was a yummy vegan chocolate cupcake provided by the baker at Uncommon Grounds in Saugatuck, Michigan, who also bakes for Butch’s.

The event was a fun way to share my experience with food allergies, which were first introduced to me by Bill.

Thanks to Butch for hosting the event–the first of its kind at his restaurant with a focus on food allergies–and showing how the restaurant values its customers by accommodating special dietary needs.

Lamb Shanks for New Year’s

I love lamb shanks. But because Bill and I get one lamb a year, we only have lamb shanks once a year. Last year’s recipe is one of my favorites. I was torn: I love sticking with a recipe I know is good but I also like experimenting. So for New Year’s this year I decided to try Rosemary Lamb Pot Roast with Cannellini Beans. The recipes are similar except this one doesn’t call for any tomato.

My lamb shanks only weighed about two pounds so I cut this recipe in half, except for the cannellini beans. I ended up dumping the whole can in by accident but I was glad I did in the end!

Here are the lamb shanks browning in olive oil with herbes de Provence.

After browning, you add the wine, onions, rosemary, and garlic. I didn’t have cipollini onions so I substituted with two red onions, quartered.

Because our lamb is pastured, I always err on the conservative side for cooking. For example, the recipe called for a 350-degree oven but I set mine at 325. And, I only cooked two pounds of pastured lamb shanks for two hours, then checked to see that the meat was starting to fall off the bone. It was, so that’s when I added the carrots and beans.

Forty-five minutes later, perfection!

I actually let the meat rest about 20 minutes while Bill and I enjoyed our first toast of the evening. The meat and vegetables were so tender. It was a nice one-dish meal and we ate the leftovers the next day with brown rice.