Hey folks, today we went on a much needed spontaneous road trip. We headed south and stopped by the new Happy Girl Kitchen / cafe in Pacific Grove hoping they might have some local goodies for us. Alas, they were closed for a workshop; we could see Jordan perched up on a stool lecturing a very attentive crowd of food preserving pupils. From there we continued down the coast to Big Sur. It’s kind of sad — I’ve been living in the South Bay area almost my entire life and have only been to Big Sur once when I was a teenager. It’s absolutely amazing; the vastness of the wilderness was dizzying. Being mainly in cities for the last year, our eyes have gotten used to closed off spaces and things like reading and computer work. It was almost like an optical illusion looking at those peaks. They seemed to be wavy like some sort of dream.

We pretty much beat the rain, but we felt it come down on our skin — especially Mira because she was shirtless. She loves being outdoors. When we are out at the farm or in our backyard garden she starts batting and grabbing all the plants and flowers; it’s quite adorable. Anyhow, we already knew but we were reassured that she is a great hiking companion, and we are planning another trip down there. Next time we will do an overnight hike to the hot springs.

On the food front:

Last night I made polenta out of the cornmeal from Pheobe Farm, topped with home made red sauce. I used tomatoes and fresh herbs from our backyard, some dried dry farmed tomatoes from Happy Boy, cippolini onions from Coke Farm, Garlic from Pinnacle, and salt from Big Sur. Eleanor is not a fan of cooking with oil, which is definitely a challenge for me. I am so used to making a base of olive oil sauteed onions and garlic, as this combo pretty much makes any meal. So last night I just chunked the tomatoes and started cooking them down, added the onions and garlic, soaked the dried tomatoes in hot water, drained them, and added them to the sauce pot… and let it all cook down for about 45 minutes. After it had cooled a little bit, I added a ton of the olive oil from Oils of Paicines. We love that oil and practically drink it — the two of us go through a gallon of that in a little over a month. The sauce was great, even without the cooked oil, and topping the polenta was delish!

Tonight we had some steamed kabocha squash and a salad with grated apple and watermelon radishes. Kabochas are seriously our favorite squash right now. Just add oil and salt or heck even just eat it plain. They have a great hearty texture and you can even eat the skin.

Lastly while we were on our way back from Big Sur we stopped by Whole Foods in Monterey. It’s the only natural food store that we knew of on the way back to our house, which is in Corralitos now. While we were there, we sampled a great new local cheese. It comes from the Salinas Valley and is called Schoch Farmstead. They use raw cows milk and make a few different types of aged cheese. We are for sure going to contact them to get it listed on SCLF. Check back for that soon.

Until next time… We’ll have photos of our new open pantry and more..

Schoch Brothers

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If you had been following our posts, you probably noticed we haven’t had any for a while. The short of it — we’ve been so so busy, moving to a new place out in Corralitos, and then of course the usual farm business baby trio — going to bed felt more important for a minute.

But we are still livin’ la vida local!!! Right now, Noah has a tamale casserole in the oven, using locally grown and ground cornmeal from Phoebe Farm, plus dragon’s tongue fresh beans from our farm, some pumpkin from our backyard, carrots, and a sauce sprouted almonds, red bell pepper, and smoked peppers from Crystal Creek Farm. I’m waiting to try some!

In the meantime, our adventures in local food have caught us feeling quite hungry a couple of times lately. With being so busy and living further from our office, we’re having to get into the habit of thinking ahead about what we’re going to eat. On Monday, we found ourselves knee deep in work, but foodless — no way to get prepared food to eat on the spot. Even though many restaurants use local ingredients in Santa Cruz, they also include non-local ingredients. We could grab some fruits or vegetables from the grocery store, but we didn’t have a way to prepare anything, and it was difficult to tell what was truly local, even upon asking employees. I found myself starving, but Noah saved the day, and whipped out a magnificent salad to feed us both. Now we’re keeping our rice cooker at the office so we can at least steam some veggies on the spot if need be!

Another time, we traveled to San Jose to take our car into the shop. Their only natural foods store is Whole Foods, and there it was especially difficult to find anything to eat. I ate as many strawberries and raspberries as I could stomach — still felt hungry. So many items just say they are from “California.” Kind of vague. But Noah found local cheese from Cowgirl Creamery, actually, and was pretty satisfied.

Our previous living situation had us without a stove, which wasn’t a huge loss for us as we often eat salads and smoothies anyhow, but we like to cook, too! So, since we have moved, we are enjoying having a stove again. The other night, Noah made a simple-and-simply-delicious blended soup with carrot and celery root. I’ve been enjoying the roots raw as well, making them into thin noodles with our mandoline, and then tenderizing them by adding a little salt and crunching them with my hands. Then I add some olive oil, or some other sort of dressing.

Dinner is here — yum!! We have been going a little heavy on the roots, so this is a great change!

One more piece of news. Our local foods potluck in the park was a success! Noah, Daniel, and I made some roasted roots and salad, and we ate them together under an oak tree in the rain!! We were beginning to think everyone else was at home cozying up with a book and a hot bowl of soup for the season’s first rain, when two Santa Cruz High School students (twins even) showed up with a pot of vegetable soup and a pear crisp, all using foods from their garden! They were awesome — unfortunately I accidentally ran the piece of paper with their names and emails through the wash… Mimi & (not sure of your name…) — thanks for coming!

Until next time.

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Exciting local food news from the up at the farm on Highland ave. We just planted out 300 baby kale plants. Along with those (dino and red russian) we are growing 5 other varieties still waiting to get put in. The garden is going all out for the winter and fall. We’re planting our favorite lettuces and greens like arugula, mizuna, tatsoi etc.. and a few different salad mixes. We’re also planting out lots of delicious root crops like rainbow carrots, daikon, watermelon radish, parsnips, rutabagas and more. And then there’s the four varieties of cabbage and broccoli and 5 varieties of cauliflower we have in the ground now.

As far as the food scene at our house goes, we had another super busy day, as usual. We steamed a huge pot of mixed root veggies: parsnips from Route 1, inca gold potatoes from Lonely Mountain, carrots from Happy Boy, and celery root from Coke Farm. We had our regular smoothie midday with tons of super nutritious protein rich bee pollen (this stuff is our steak). We’ve been loving the asian pears from Arrowhead Farm and from Kashiwase Farm. Whenever I crave a snack, I just grab an asian pear, maybe even two. They are crisp and watery — downright satisfying.

So much great food to enjoy right now. While riding my bike today, I noticed some huge pineapple guavas that had fallen off of a tree. They are almost ready. These are some of my favorite winter fruits! Our new house has a 200 ft. hedgerow of these trees. We will be sharing with everyone when the season rolls in.

But for now — bed.

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We were at the west side farmers market this morning promoting our local food potluck. (It’s happening at 1pm next Sunday, October 17th at Harvey West park.)

Stopped by the Happy Boy booth and found out they had just harvested the first of their sweet potatoes!!! They are the Nancy Hall variety, and I am a total sucker for these things. My favorite way to eat them is baked in the oven as fries and dipped in a huge bowl full of Happy Girl Kitchen’s dry farmed tomato ketchup. Unfortunately they use a little amount of sugar in that stuff so none of that for 21 more days.. and counting. I am just steaming them right now, and I am going to top them with salt and olive oil and maybe mash em up. For sure we’ll be offering some of these in the coming weeks.

Also at the market we enjoyed a basket of Live Earth Farms’ golden raspberries! These could possibly be some of the best berries we’ve had all season. They are very big and perfect texture and sweetness.

I really enjoy eating with the seasons. When treats like these start rolling in I get really excited. I will pretty much eat sweet potatoes everyday until they are out of season. By the end I will probably be pretty burnt out, but then it will be winter time and we will be enjoying all kinds of other delicious root crops and greens.

Meant to stop by the sausage fest tonight over at the west side farmers market space. Instead got hung up at the farm thinning out the carrots and daikon and saving the cilantro and dill from weeds. At the fest they were featuring sausage from El Salchichero, Chris uses local meats from marin and local chiles and herbs from Lindencroft farm. Definitely a must if you haven’t tried these yet.

Some other highlights from the day:

We made our first restaurant sale from our farm. Ristorante Avanti is going to have our dragon’s tongue beans on their menu! A pretty big ego booster for me, I am still beaming.

Salad with little gem lettuce and baby arugula and some mystery avocado I picked from a tree in Santa Clara of all places.

Oh yea and we were featured on the local news station check it out!

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Well it looks like TLC Ranch is calling it quits after 6 years of raising pasture fed livestock and eggs. It’s a tough world right now for our farmers. Especially those who don’t own their own land. All the big industrialized farms are getting the government subsidies and exemption from rules and inspection. Meanwhile the small family farms are regulated into bankruptcy. This is a huge reason for us to be committed to eating locally. Why support these huge agribusinesses that really don’t care about us, the land, or the animals? Sure it’s easy to throw terms like local and sustainable around. It is time for us to act on it. We all know the reasons for eating locally. Now it’s time for action. If we don’t start supporting our brothers and sisters who are supporting our communities with healthful nutrition foods they might not be here tomorrow.

With all that said we are still enjoying eating simply. In fact I feel lighter and more energy. I didn’t realize how much sugar I had been eating. Not that we ever had sugar in the house, but I would definitely find myself eating a chocolate bar. Also not eating bread is huge. We didn’t get bread very often but in recent weeks I had been eating more than usual. For sure those refined foods were taking a toll on my vitality.

So today we pretty much fasted on water and asian pears until about 2. I made a huge salad for us that had broccolini and salad greens all chopped up, asian pears and cucumbers sliced with the mandolin, an avocado mashed up, juice from a lemon, parsley, dill, chives and a dressing of walnuts blended with raw garlic and plum vinegar from Triple J Ranch. Definitely an epic salad, we even took a picture of it. That’s how we make a whole meal of a salad.

Dinner was a smoothie with frozen nectarines and raspberries blended with bee pollen and honey.

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Well today was super busy. This morning we headed up to our farm where we were interviewed by a reporter from The Sentinel. We did our watering, picked some grapes from the arbor and made our way back down to the office. While doing computer work and getting all the new products and stuff added for this week we all started to get restless especially Mira, so we decided to go downtown to run some errands and check out the farmers market.

We got Massa Organics almond butter for the site (not for us since it’s outside the livin la vida local 100 mile radius). This stuff is so good, a few weeks ago we got a jar and i pretty much ate the whole thing in 2 days. I was just eating it by the spoonful and stuffing dates with it.

I guess we will have to make some almond butter for ourselves from the Kashiwase almonds we have. To make it we just process the nuts through our champion juicer using the blank plate.

We bought a 25 pound box of almonds just for ourselves. We love to make fresh almond milk. We save the pulp by dehydrating it, and then later we can use it as almond flour in recipes. I haven’t made almond butter with these nuts yet — maybe that’s tomorrows project.

It’s kind of crazy but lately I am obsessed with the Inca Gold potatoes from Lonely Mountain Farm. These potatoes are such a beautiful yellow color inside and the texture is superb. It’s what I had for breakfast and dinner. I just steamed them with cippolini onions and mashed them with tons of olive oil, salt and some herbs I dried a while back. Lunch was a little more exciting I made a smoothie with the peaches and raspberries we have in our freezer. It was so creamy and rich, I put a 1/4 cup of bee pollen and honey in it for a kick — it definitely had us buzzing.

The more we get into this we are considering just extending our local habits and making it a part of our everyday lives even after this month long experiment. It comes pretty easy to us and we are blessed to live in a place where we have access to the best food in the world. Much gratitude to all the farmers and food producers in our area, you guys and gals are superheros for sure. I feel like we need to make farmer trading cards. Start treating these folks like celebrities and give them the praise they deserve. After all they are basically trading their lives to produce your food.

Enough rambling for now..

Goodnight and do you know where your food is coming from?

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Naturally, Tuesdays are all about local food for us; it’s all we see. While we were packing orders this morning, a news reporter from KION arrived unexpectedly. So, we squeezed in a little time to do an interview for the evening news as well. Apparently we were on there tonight, but we were busy at that time and are also without a TV, so we haven’t seen the spot yet.

After the busy day of packing orders, I made one of my favorite walnut-lemon-dill salad dressings, which can be made easily with local ingredients. I don’t have a recipe per se, so it turns out a little different every time, but basically it’s a handful of walnuts, some olive oil, lemon juice, a clove or two of garlic, salt (and this time, I put my celery salt, too), dill, maybe some other herbs (tonight parsley and chives). Then I add enough water to make it the right consistency. I usually like my salads on the heartier side, as I often eat them for a whole meal. So — I made my dressing thick, and I also put an avocado on my salad.

Ken from Arrowhead Farms sent us home with a box full of asian pears today, and we’re looking forward to making some amazing fresh juice with them tomorrow!! I’ve also been dreaming of a cucumber / celery / carrot juice lately — maybe I’ll make that tomorrow, too.

Our take on a local food diet may vary from many others, as we are accustomed to eating a lot of fruits, vegetables, and raw foods style dressings, spreads, and smoothies. Steamed vegetables with olive oil and salt is a common whole meal for us, as well as a salad or wraps made with romaine leaves or collard greens. Noah does also eat local meats, sometimes dairy. But we are intending to get creative with what we have and try some ideas outside of things we already know — while we are sharing our take on local foods, we would love to hear what anyone else is trying with what is in season as well.

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Two big changes in our locally-bound household today :: 1st being Mira has discovered how to roll from back to front, and nothing else seems to be worth doing; 2nd being we have salt! Thanks to Facebook follower Amey Mathews for letting us know of the Big Sur salt that can be found at River Cafe. It also turns out that our friend is the one who harvests it, go figure!! Now I am all excited about the possibility of making our own, though, too; This option had never occurred to me in the past, but it seems so simple, with a boat of course. Still looking for a boat connection to go out and collect some ocean water.

Now that salt is back in the game, I feel like my inspiration will flow again, although the steamed baby broccoli with olive oil, celery powder, and sea salt I had tonight was truly nothing short of amazing in all of it’s simplicity. Can’t beat salt and olive oil, especially the olive oil from Paicines — I only use the oil raw, putting it on cooked food after it’s been cooked. This preserves the flavor and the quality of the healthy fats. So good.

I got a hankering for some hot tea this evening, and being short of any good local herbs to brew, I made a hot lemon and honey drink. Quite nice, but now I’m also inspired to figure out what wild and locally grown herbs make good teas. Maybe Noah and I can come up with some good blends.

We are planning a local-food-centered potluck-in-the-park for the middle of this month — everyone is invited. This can be a time to challenge your creativity and eat with the seasons. We’re thinking a suggested 75% local food suggestion for your dish is fair — sound good? But hey, you can go all the way if you feel up for it, local salt and all!

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By this morning my celery was dry, and I powdered it in the blender. It has a nice mild salty flavor. We made steamed vegetables, coated them well with olive oil, and used the celery “salt” to season. It was great — didn’t feel like it was missing anything. Maybe my taste buds are adapting. Lemon juice is also a nice condiment we’ve been using. But if anyone has a sailboat or a kayak, we’d love to go out and collect some ocean water to make our own salt as well! We are used to eating high mineral content salts like celtic sea salt or himalayan crystal salt — making our own seems like the best option for flavor and quality, and the most adventurous as well! Anyhow I’m not giving up on it; I love salt.

We’ve still kept to mostly simple eating — it’s pretty much what we did before anyway, eating lots of fruit, salads, steamed vegetables. But we would often go out and get snacks or add raw chocolate or goji berries to our smoothies. Sometimes we would get a case of coconuts from the market, definitely not local. After going a few days without chocolate, Noah’s beginning to forget about sugar. We’re eating lots of honey in its place anyway! I don’t miss many other foods yet — just salt! It seems eliminating this snack habit will not only save on our carbon footprint, but will also save us a good amount of money. What could I even get at a grocery store anymore anyway? Now when I go there, I wander around confused.

We couldn’t have picked a better time to explore what truly local eating in Santa Cruz may be like. At this juncture of Summer and Fall, this peak harvest time, where we have the end of stone fruit crossing the beginning of winter squash and root crops. The variety is excellent. We’ve been spending most spare moments preserving foods. We have a freezer full of frozen strawberries, peaches, and nectarines; jars of sauces and pickled beans; armloads of dried tomatoes; and now we’re working on drying other fruits and vegetables. We just dries some strawberries and ate most of them — we’ll need to do a lot more of those.

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Keeping it simple for the first day. I enjoyed a basic salad with avocado, olive oil, and greens, and a smoothie with nectarine, raspberries, honey, and bee pollen. Noah’s off eating a burger with friends, sans bun, with some homemade mozzarella cheese made form Claravale milk.

Since they began offering water kefir in the health food stores here, we’ve made a habit of drinking some nearly every day. It tastes great, and we love loading up on the enzymes and probiotics. Last night, we bid farewell for a time, however, as the kefir grains are raised on sugar — definitely not local.

So what else? I was making a mental list of all of the things we eat regularly or occasionally that are not available locally grown. Quinoa comes to mind (Peru!), we use a lot of sunflower and sesame seeds, spices, chocolate, coconut oil, some superfoods, and.. what about SALT? Where do we get salt from? That’s the big question of the day…

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