End of this year's Locavore Challenge

Today is the last day of the 2010 Locavore challenge, and we have already eaten the last meal. I feel it is going out with a whimper. I wasn't able to convince all that many of my friends to join me in the locavore way. Sure, there are plenty of gardeners at the community garden who are local-friendly, but not as much as the folks closer to Ojai. This has been a tough year for many of my friends and others in my community, and I think that has alot to do with why more people didn't sign up.
I'll continue to be a locavore, at least where fruits and veggies are concerned. Every season, my own fruit crops and trading network grow. I am still having trouble getting local meat.
Tonight's plans were cancelled last-minute, and I didn't have much else besides the wonderful veggies from the garden. I stopped in at the garden earlier in the day and enjoyed the sunny weather and the company of other hardy friends, and harvested a huge basket of greens and sunchokes. We decided to stop by Fresh and Easy for some fish. There, we ran into the evening sale, and picked up some non-local salmon. I baked the salmon and served it topped with sauteed leeks, celery, fennel and serrano peppers I had harvested earlier. I served it with Osaka purple mustard cooked in kumquat marmalade with mandarin oranges. We enjoyed a huge sweet potato from the garden, and chunks of Belgian dark chocolate for dessert.
So it was mostly local.
What's for next year? I'll continue with my veggie gardening and increase the variety of fruits. Our two Manzanita olive trees are growing well and the Mission olive tree is producing nicely. This may be the year I figure out how to cure the olives, or at least press them. This year, I have nurtured two grape vines, a Eureka lemon tree, a blackberry vine and two blueberry bushes. I would like to propagate more this year. I would also like to acquire a banana tree and transplant the fig tree into a more desirable location.
It will be a good year I am sure.

Salty Beets

The is about the strangest thing to happen since I have been growing my own local food. Last winter, I planted some beets in an area with poor soil and low water. I harvested a few small beets, but others were eaten by animals and forgotten. There was one beet that survived, and I watered it here and there over the summer and otherwise left it alone.
I had some other beets (Bull's Blood) that were grown in a similar harsh manner and they were the sweetest beets I had ever grown, so I didn't think that this new beet would be any different.
Wow! Was I surprised! The beet (a Detroggia that turned out mostly orange) was small and hard, and there was hardly any sugar in it at all. It was so salty that it tasted like I had already made pickles with it. It was almost too salty to eat, except for small slivers.

Winter Veggies and More

I have been eating more meat and less carb this fall and winter, and doing well with it. Well, this former vegan is a little bit surprised, with all that steak and eggs for breakfast. It's in small quantities, and I still enjoy my greens for winter breakfast, just not over a potato.
The greens are especially nice this season, and I have many colors of chard popping up everywhere in the garden.
We had at least 3 good rains on the community garden so far, and each episode sends out more volunteer favorites. I have a carpet of fennel, wide swaths of baby celery, several types of parsley popping out from underneath the flowers (they seem to enjoy the initial protection), and a nice variety of chards and kales ranging in color from magenta to red to orange to pale lemon yellow to white to green.

Into the Fall

Right now, the Nightshades are starring in the garden. Today I harvested some tiny potatoes. I usually don't get a second crop of potatoes, but this year has been a bit unusual. They are pink and gold fingerlings. The tomatoes are almost finished for the year, but the peppers really haven't peaked yet. Somehow I went hog-wild and ended up with about 39 pepper plants! I am about one third of the way into the tomatillo harvest. They are really sweet and flavorful this year. Here's a recipe for a low-salt sauce I use on chicken.

Nightshade Sauce

8 tomatillos
2 large yellow tomatoes
1 jalapeno or other hot green chile
1/2 t. leek powder
dash cumin (not local, though I would like to try growing it)

Chop and seed chile. Cook in a 1/4 cup of water in a small saucepan until tender. Remove the husks from the tomatillos and chop into large chunks. Chop the tomatoes. Add the tomatillo's and tomatoes to the pan and cook a few minutes until everything is mushy. Run the mixture through a food mill to remove the seeds and skins and return the puree to the pan. Add the leek powder and cumin and cook down until the sauce thickens. Serve over meat or tofu.

The Big Haul

Cherry tomatoes have been taking over my patio. Things were getting out of hand. I was harvesting one to two cups a day, turning them into sauce and juice, or just eating them on the run.
I went away for a couple of days and when I returned, I thought there would be too many for me to handle, but when I went to take a look, I found all the plants were stripped. Now I am getting two or three a day. I am not sure what took them all. Squirrels? Crows? People?

Secret Plots

I have a nice tatume summer squash plant, but it has really slowed down production. I know that this is not really true, that there are, in fact, some super secret squashes growing way in the background that I cannot find.
I need to hack back my cocozelle and yellow crookneck plants. The cocozelle is known for traveling quite far, and right now the two branches going in opposite directions take up a total of about 32 square feet. The yellow crookneck (which should be called breakneck, for the speed in which it sends out new branches) has overtaken the butternut squash patch, and I am sure there are more super secret squashes back there, plotting their maturity.

New Potatoes

This year, more and more community gardens are trying potatoes, and all of us are getting better at growing them. This year's cool spring has helped.
I haven't been paying all that much attention to my potatoes. They had been looking a bit sad, so I quit hilling them up after a couple of times. Yesterday I decided to take a look in one raised bin. I realized that I still had two plants out of the four small plants I started with. I dug around the largest one and was amazed to find about 6 pounds of the most perfect red potatoes. They were packed so closely together that they all have a nice compact shape and really easy to dig out. The insides are so creamy and white, and they have such a fresh, earthy flavor.
I took two smaller potatoes and buried them in another bin I rarely water. I need to figure out how to keep these small potatoes healthy until next winter, when I can plant them again.
Over the weekend, I planted 4 sweet potato and yam plants, so hopefully they will do as well as the white potatoes.