In the summer of 2009 we joined several other people in the Kitchener Waterloo region in a 100 Mile Challenge.
Our GHGs (GreenHouse Gases) are roughly 1/3 diet, 1/3 residence and 1/3 transportation. By changing our diet we can make an immediate change in our impact on the planet.
"Modern agriculture is the method by which we convert petrolium products into food." Dr. Albert Bartlett
You can't consume your way to sustainability. We must power down, scale back and
start to live in a LOCAL sustainable way by removing from society most of the garbage we've
added in the past 100 years - the demand to consume, to drive, to eat things from far away and
out of season. Globalization has allowed us to export the destruction caused by our lives of wanton
consumption.
In short: We must consume locally what we can produce locally. We must chock and get sick and die, locally, in the smog of our locally produced electricity and other energy - because only then will we rein in our unlimted
wants.
My words will turn to anger, malevolence in need, can not provide direction, I won't accept this thought - That this is who we are VNV Nation (Victory Not Vengeance) What IF all the money spent bombing, destroying, bailing out banks and useless auto companies and killing were instead spent building a better world?
Our goal is to increase our local eating to 75% of our vegan/vegetarian diet. This is accomplished by removal of many things from our diet (garbonzo beans, pasta, commerical rye bread, rice, cuscus, nuts, exotic fruits like bannana and oranges) and the substituion of foods (local honey and syrup for fair trade sugar).
The goal is to force an examination of our diet to see what that reveals.
Here are our primary sources:
Note that I have commuted by bicycle for nearly 20 years and to spend time running around to get local food isn't an option. We have a car and make monthly trips to the market - often getting a bushell of apples and 50lb sacks of potatoes. Community comes to our help. A friend picks up local, freerange, eggs for several people. We have a network of friends and when one is going to Oak Manor farms - they pickup food for everyone who wants some.
What we've noticed:
We've certainly learned that we can do without many things. No yeast? Make flatbreads. We've gone WWOOFing and spent a week living without running water or electricity and by cooking over an open fire. One can do without these things - and much more - but rarely does one choose to do so.
We miss "nut fudge" - which is tahini, ground walnuts and almonds with flax meal and sweetned with honey and made more tasty with cocao. We buy >10lb of walnuts in the fall (when it's nut season) and make this for it's omega-3 oils. Technically you get all of the oils you need from leafy greens; but this is tasty insurance.
We miss raisins, dates and figs. I would not miss them so much if I still had a peach and apricot tree and had loads to dehydrate (and if cranberries were cheap!). But dates and raisins for sweeting breads, muffins and oatmeal are something we miss - but could do without.
I'm against butter - it's high is saturated fats and growth hormones and animal protein. If it's a part of a diet it needs to be a small part. I was raised on lots of it (all deserts are 1/3 butter, 1/3 white flour and 1/3 sugar!) and really don't like the taste. But as in Marion Nestle's book What To Eat I think that I agree that it might better to have a less processed food (butter) instead of a chemically created one (margarine). Either way it needs to be a very very small part of total calorie intake.
I don't see much difference (proteins or anything else) between spelt and wheat - but we've been using unbleached "white" organic spelt flour instead of non-local garbage white flour. My partner feels that it's beneficial if we don't consume as much wheat as we currently do - and shift some of that to spelt.
We've been making our own pasta and it doesn't take very long if one makes a thicker pasta. The squash pasta wasn't as easy to make as potato pasta. We currently store foods (water, seeds, sacks of flour and seed flakes, dried, canned, processed (pasta, instant potatoes and rice), rice, potatoes) and moving to home-made pasta would require us to store more raw materials. Whole wheat pasta from the store is easy to buy and squirrel away and it lasts virtually forever.
Hominy, or masa, or nixtamal is processed corn which improves the taste and nutrition. Some good links are: Masa production and lime water (used for the production of masa and sugar from beets
I made this - but not with wood ash yet. It's traditional and tasty. I can easily get lye; but am unsure if it's
food grade; so I used baking soda. I boiled up some wood ash and it was PH 10. Baking soda was also PH 10 so it should
be equivalent. The taste is unique. When I grind the corn into meal for corn bread there wasn't much taste of corn.
But if I make hominy first and make corn bread with that it has a very nice taste.
Hominy made with wood ash (The Derelict Epistle on YouTube)
Hominy without Lye (USDA)
Here are some directions for making the nixtamalized corn and corn pie.
We seem to celebrate every Feb as a buy nothing (but food) month. It's easy enough for us to do.
I'm trying Painted Mountain corn this year and possibly Sorghum for molassis and grinding the seed into flour. Both look not that easy to do.
Squash from Neuman's farm is still keeping well in our warm basement. We're down to the last 5 big ones.
We've taken to using a few 1L Mason jars to keep a supply of sprouts (mostly alfalfa) on hand. It's healthy winter food. The book Sprouting Beans and Seeds by Ridgway is a good reference if a bit dated about some things (sprouted seeds are not a _RELIABLE_ source of B12!).
We're still getting half bushels of local pears! They're quite good and are a nice change from the local apples availble.
We've not quite celebrated with a real non-local pigout yet. We've had 2 potlucks - and prepared food for
that (roasted Jeralusim articokes, apple crumbles, squash cookies, corn bread/pie, cabbage dishes) and our work
schedules have prevented us from going to one of the Ethopian places in town - or some other place we miss. We
had a few olives - but the main thing is the return of non-flavoured cooking oil and dried raisins and dates to
breads and oatmeal AND commerical cerals as part of breakfast.
We're getting together with friends and showing them how to make hand-made squash and potato pasta and hominy.
Our pigout is being planned. The kids want chocolate chips. So I'll make chocolate chip squash cookies. I've been eager to make my raisin bread again. Mind you - I've not eaten my replacement bread because I've been eating sooooo much corn, and now squash. My partner is eyeing chips (unhealthy snack foods) and chocolate.
Everyone, but me, is looking forward to breakfast cereal. I'm awaiting the return of dates and raisins to our morning oatmeal.
We had a nice change of diet after picking one patch of our carrots and putting the smallest ones into a carrot soup (with onions and left-over buttercup squash).
I made the first squash cookies on the 100 Mile Diet. You cook a squash (buttercup is best) and then take about 1c of it and add enough flour to make it muffin-like. Throw in a bit of honey and 1 tsp of baking powder as well as a bit of dried cranberries and cut up dried apple (or whatever fruits you have). Then bake at about 350F for 20 minutes.
Today I eat the last of the local sweet corn. It's not really been worth it the past few days. Sure it was local, and it was a minor miracle that it can still be had - but it's been preserved past it's best before date. Now it's onto squash. I've not picked up acorn squash yet - but I've been grabbing the cheaper pie pumkins and some (more expensive) buttercup squash for lunch, pastas and cookies (more like muffins - firm, thick but with no added fat).
Yesterday we made squash pasta and a roast tomato and onion and herb sauce. In comparison to the potato pasta the squash pasta had a taste - but it didn't have a strong taste compared to regular home made pasta. Squash pasta is basically 1 to 1.25c of cooked and mashed / blended squash. Then just keep adding flour (whole wheat or spelt) until it's about right. This will take at least as much flour as squash. A drier squash (buttercup) will require less flour than a pumpkin pie squash (which we used). Roll, cut and cook after letting it sit for about 10 minutes.
For our wedding aniversary we went to Charbries. One of the things we tried was a thick squash pasta and that got me thinking yesterday. So I took a basic pasta recipe and used 1c whole wheat flour, 1c home ground soft wheat flour and 1c "white" spelt flour with 1/2 tsp salt. I mixed and added 3/4c water and then took a cooked large red potato and took off the skin and mashed it with a fork and kneeded the potato into the flour. I let it rest 10 min. rolled it on the thickest setting on the pasta maker and then cut it with a knife into large strips and cooked it for about 2 min. The pasta sauce was our own onions and tomatoes (help we're drowning!) as well as some of the left over pasta sauce we had and some garlic and bell peppers. The kids loved the pasta more than the sauce. It did have a potato flavour to it - but not as strong as I thought.
Next time I'll add squash to the pasta sauce. As long as kneeding the dough gives a good elastic feel I don't think that one can go wrong doing this. My partner has tended to make egg pastas (add no water but eggs instead) but I'm more vegan than vegetarian. The choice of what flour to use is mostly academic. "White" flours allow one to roll the pasta thinner and into wierd shapes. I go by the feel of the pasta in terms of water to flour ratio. If it's a bit wet it'll really stick to itself - which is great for rolling fillings into the pasta (I've not done any with fillings yet but have had issues with slightly wet pasta gluing to itself).
Coming back into town we discovered Nauman's Farm. We picked up a wack of squash that we had never seen and look forward to it all. I usually eat buttercup and acron squash plain for lunch. I just microwave it and eat about 1/2 squash per day.
We've also started enjoying some of our cabbages. I'm not much of a fan of cabbages (except for brussel sprouts) but when they're fresh then a cabbage salad (shreadded cabbage and fruits - bell peppers, carrots, celeriac, apples?, onions?) can be quite nice.
It's time to make squash pies - minus the unhealthy crust (choose if you want saturated fats or trans fats!). I cook squash into squash cookies but we have to forgoe the raisins and chocolate chips for now.
The everbearing raspberries are finally starting to ripen - we're getting 16 per day. Fallen apples from our two trees make about one desert crumble per day. The apples are far from pest free - but they're great for this.
It's a glorious time of year. At the market we grab half or full bushels of tomatoes, pears, apples, potatoes and smaller quantities of peppers and squash. Last year was bad for squash (winter) but this year seems much better (we gave up growing squash after years of fighting squash vine borer). Winter squash, potatoes and apples will handily last thru the winter and into the spring.
It's time to start dehydrating - squirreling things for the winter and next year. Many soft fruits don't last long and must be canned or dried - tomatoes, pears, peaches, peppers.
Soon it'll be time to put away some sacks of corn, wheat, oats. Corn season is winding up. I'm starting to get sick of it! Our Indian (flour) and popcorn is still a good month from harvesting.
Kale is still a while from harvest but Swiss Chard is ripe for picking, eating and freezing now.
Our wedding anniversary just past and it was local with fresh egg pasta, tomatoes and herbs with a wonderful peach cake.
Camping season came and went. The kids did hikes upto 12km - not bad for 6 year olds and we, for the first time in years enjoyed some short (to us) hikes. The camping trips were not very 100 mile. Trying to bring local foods for canoeing into the interior - and cook with limited amounts of fuel presents problems that are easily overcome with minute rice, instant mashed potatoes. Still we did pack in lots of local oatmeal, fruits (apples - and boy were we sick of them by day 7!) and veggies from our garden (the beans lasted 4 days!). Lunches were flatbreads (could be local - but I can't make them last that long when I make them) and jam or nut butter or just-add-water hummus. Some non-local treats included veggie dogs, granola bars and home made logan bread. Next time around I'll make the logan bread with white spelt or wheat flour and not whole wheat. White flour is deficient in many nutrients but it packs in calories! Frankly - when your struggling to heft your food packs up into the trees (bear proofing) you want lots of calories with less weight and space! Because I lost some of my fruit trees last year we were not able to pack in all of the local dehydrated fruit I usually have on hand (pears, plums, apples, apricots, peachs)
It's still corn and more corn! We made a bean paste for our home made bread; but I've not been eating it because it's still corn season! Lunch is still 2 cobs of corn (6 minutes in the microwave) and an apple.
I've been gobbling corn. The kids liked my corn pie but it wasn't appreciated by my partner. So - now it's just 2 cobs of corn for lunch every day and some for supper every few days. At home, the string beans are coming in; round two of the raspberries (ever-bearing) is about to start and plums are starting to ripen - while the apples are a way off.
But right now I love corn corn and more corn. The local (GMO?) super-sweet hybrids are kind of sickening in their sweetness at times though.
The racoons have not started going after my "indian" corn yet. Hopefully I'll have a bumper crop to grind into corn meal. At this point the kernels are "milky" - small, white, juicy and sweet. The strawberry popcorn is also coming along as are rutabega and celeriac (celary root). The Purvian Blue potatoes are almost done (tops are dying off) and we'll save them for later. The local red potatoes are better boiling ones - the blue ones seem to be better for baking as they come appart easily if boiled a too much.
I love summer. Fresh string beans, herbs, potatoes, tomatoes, onions and garlic are flowing from the garden. How we miss olives!! Meals tend to revolve around those foods and less on pot barley and dry beans. Heather made an egg pasta yesterday and that was good - although I'm really against eating that many eggs (high cholesterol and lots of unnecessary/unhealthy fat). But fresh pasta with basil and tomatoes is great!
I've also been making an "Italian herb bread" with the bread maker that's great with fresh tomatoes. Basically saute 2 large garlic cloves with 2Tbl of oil and 2 tsp dry basic, 1 tsp dry oregano, 1/2 tsp dry rosemary, 1/2 tsp dry tyme. Put it into the bread maker with 1 1/4c water 1/4c milk (soy or whatever or just use water) 2 tsp sweetener (honey, maple syrup), 1 tsp salt (or less for health - sprinkle it on instead of embedding it in), 4c flour (we use 3c whole wheat and 1c spelt), 2tsp yeast. I had to add about 3Tbl more flour during mixing to get it to work out right. More spelt flour will make a lighter bread.
New apples are showing up at the market. They're tart as the seeds are white (immature) but it's great to have fresh apples. Sweeter ones will come in weeks and months. Oh how I miss the loss of my one plum tree, one pear tree and the lack of a crop on my last pear tree!
Our everbearing (2 crops per year) of red raspberries are just starting. Our first Brandywine tomato is blushing red. I dug up one of my first Purvian blue potatoes and will cook it soon.
I used a manual Pasta maker (Atlas Marcato) with a 1/2 "white" spelt and 1/2 whole wheat pasta using only water and salt and it worked fairly well. I many many mistakes with the pasta machine - rolled the pasta too thin, hung it over the handrail (it broke and fell), didn't make the pasta as wide as the rollers (pasta gets rolled longer NOT wider) and assumed that after 20 minutes of hanging that it would not stick. My pasta is nothing like the pictures they have of egg pasta with 3 eggs per batch and all "white" flour.
Corn, corn and more CORN. It's local corn time - yummy. Eat it raw; eat it plain or with a bit of oil and salt or with cottage cheese and chilli peppers (opps that's Mexican!).
We picked up a sack of unbleached "white" spelt flour at Oak Manor Farms. I tried a 75% whole wheat bread with it as the remaining 25% and it worked well. Recipies that are >75% whole wheat don't tend to work well in a bread maker because they don't really have much of a 2nd rising - even though they're fine if you do a single rising and then baking.
I made a maple tempeh for the rained out potluck. The kids asked for more and one really liked it. Take 8 oz of tempeh and cut it into 4 squares. Cut each square to 1/2 the thickness and then cut each square into 2 triangles. Marinate that in 3 Tbl maple syrup, 1 tsp vinegar (I used local applie cider vinegar), 2 pressed garlic cloves, 1 Tbl oil (optional) and a dash of salt (in place of 3 Tbl of whatever Soy'ish sauce you normally use). After 2 hours to 2 days or marinating grill it or pan fry it in a non-stick pan or with a bit of oil in a cast iron pan.
I made 100% local pasta - 3c of organic whole wheat flour, 1tsp salt and 1c water - kneed 15 min, let sit 15 min, take pieces and roll it flat - let it hang for about 20 minutes (to dry a bit), the cut it into strips and throw it into a pot of boiling water. Then add a sauce of roasted red peppers (preserved last year), roast veggies and toss. I found very little difference beween 100% whole wheat pasta and the one I made a week ago (with bean flour and white flour). We also just acquired a manual pasta machine which rolls and can cut pasta - I can't wait to try it. The biggest problem is that after the pasta is cut it tends to stick together - but with this I should be able to just have rolled sheets hanging - and quickly cut it and put it into the water.
Here is a good pasta / bread / potato sauce. It's from Vive le Vegan! by Dreena Burton and has been modified for a more local diet. Use 1Tbl to cook a diced red onion for 4 to 5 min with 1/4 tsp salt and 1/4 tsp dried mustard, 1 tsp oregano, 1 Tbl tamari (or similar). Add 2 chopped garlic cloves and about 2c chopped mushrooms and cook for additional 5 more minutes. Then blend in a food processor with about 1/4c bread crumbs and 1c (soy) milk and 1 Tbl apple cider vinegar. Walnuts work well in it when crumbled over after the blending.
We made parotha/roti (1/2 tsp salt, 2c whole wheat flour, 2tsp veg oil (optional), aprox 3/4c water)
and instead of frying them tried baking them. Then they were topped with black bean paste, corn from
the cob, last years salsa and garlic scape pesto. It was ok - but the roti are much better when
fried.
The roti didn't roll quite as well as my pasta - but it bodes well for the next attempt at 100% local
pasta via whole wheat and spelt (?) flour.
Today we head out blueberry picking. We're just finishing up what we picked, and froze, last year - but it was augmented by Ontario 1kg bags of frozen blueberries from the grocery store. This year we aim to pick more - much more. We didn't like how the dehydrated ones turned out (very dry) but we'll put them into pancakes, cookies and oatmeal for months to come.
Home made vegan pasta noodle experiment via: Vegsource: Bryanna vegan pasta. The pasta worked out very well. It rolled thin and cooked in about 1 min. It's far from local as I used mystery "whole bean" flour and white-crap flour. But the sauce was all local as was the whole wheat flour. Next time it'll be all local with black bean flour perhaps (milled with the Porkert "corn" grinder).
Yummy potatoes can be had at the market in half bushels and more. Red potatoes, this time of
year can be eaten with the skin and are great when boiled or fried with dill.
Local corn is also available now. Just eat it raw, or cook it and eat it. Cook it into a
corn pie (vegetarian).
Raspberries are still coming in and we're going blueberry picking (dehydrating didn't work well last
year - but they're great fresh and frozen.
Thefts from our community garden have been a big disappointment. One of our plots and two others are being raided. Half of the garlic or onions has been taken, carrots pulled up and the tops shoved back into the holes. Yesterday they even pulled up rubbarb took a bit of the stems and just threw the root-ball aside.
We're back from a week of off-grid living. Translation - no running water (hand pump from the well), no pond to jump into to wash off, no plumbing or electricity and a sawdust toilet (read the book - free online The Humanure Handbook). This year we were not cooking everything over an open fire though. With upto 11 people to cook for and the host family being a single parent with 5 kids ... the only local food was lettuce from the garden.
Needless to say we suspended the 100 Mile diet for this trip. We brought a a pile of Swiss Chard leaves from our garden, a pail of organic local oat flakes and another pail of local sour cherries and a half bushel of local apples to keep as much local content as possible. The farm house burnt down last Thanksgiving so I was busy helping build the new house while the garden was being planted (yes in LATE July!). I pulled a good 6 wheel barrows of stones out of the garden ....
I'm happy to report that, at home, I'm still picking black raspberries and cherries at home - the birds did not strip them. Tomatoes are coming along well and Swiss Chard and Kale are flowing from the garden.
I spent 2 hours picking and pitting cherries today and taken upto 10lb of cherries from the tree in an afternoon. We've been eating cherry/apple/rubarb crumbles galore.
We're eating lots of lettuce and peas from the gardens. We went strawberry picking and made jam, froze and dehydrated some. Currents, cherries and raspberries are coming in too (as well as wild strawberries from the "lawn". This time of year I can easily spend an hour a day picking and preserving fruit. We bought a bushel of local apples from the market and dehydrated them, made fruit crumbles and snack on them.
Swiss chard is coming on strong and spinach is pretty well over. Tomatoes are green.
Pea soup was a first for us - but we got tired of raw peas!
No luck with my kohlrabi in the garden this year - but that's typical. At the market you can, in the fall get monster head sized ones. The one I had last year took about 5 days to eat and it was just perfect, crunchy, juice and a very mild taste with no hardness to it.
We're looking froward to the usual flood of squash, corn, beans, tomatoes, apples, fruit, kale (kale soup).
Our destruction (greenhouse gasses) is basically broken into thirds - 1/3 for our vehicles, 1/3 for our homes and 1/3 for our food. Of the three - it's easiest to change what you eat and make a big, IMMEDIATE, impact. We're looking for a new car (or possibly just give up our car) but sadly since our 1991 Chevy Sprint (1L engine, 50hp) cars have gotten WAYYYY more powerful and polluting and a small engine isn't even an option for a 4-door car. The Mitsuibishi iCar is the only car I'd consider buying new as I want a sub 1L engine or sub 250cc engine if the car is a hybrid.
We are vegetarian primarily for environmental reasons, thanks to the book Diet For a Small Planet.
I am pretty well vegan because of much reading from the following authors: MDs John McDougall, Joel Furhman, Caldwell Esselstyn Jr (Prevent and Reverse Heart Disease), William Harris, (The Scientific Basis of Vegetarianism), and John Robbins (many good books), T. Colin Campbell (The China Study), John Robbins, Marion Nestle, (Pet Food Politics, What To Eat, Food Politics), and others.
If we reach our goal of having an energy independant home, with a small piece of land; then we will have small animals and diversify our food - becoming non-vegan. Modern meat production is cruel, inhumane, unhealthy and generates "food" that is environmentally horrific and unhealthy. We are not carnivors - and can not handle large amounts of cholesterol well. Cows milk is for baby cows - but for the sake of a stable food supply diversification is key.
Although I'm vegan - I don't buy into not eating honey (but it should be used in moderation) or wearing leather (why let it go to waste?) and I'm about as strict as John Robbin or Dr. McDougall.
We prefer organic - but local food is more important than organic - as we must transition to a local economy.
Junk food makes junk bodies. Food should be minimally processed. If it doesn't go bad when it's left on the counter - then it's not food that's healthy for consumption.
The book Your Money Or Your Life, along with the Voluntary Simplicity movement aka Simple Living (WikiPedia) and Intentional Living (WikiPedia) brought together many faucets of our lives under one umbrella.
We are aiming for a 75% local diet - not based upon calories or weight or money - but by finger-in-the-air valuation. Much as we signed up for a CSA years ago and found ourselves forced to eat local foods or watch them go bad - this is an exercise in giving things up.
We've not given up soy milk as it's our insurance. As I'm pretty well vegan it's my guaranteed vitamin B12 source - as well as calcium and other trace vitamins. This is more so for the kids. While the research of Dr. McDougall and decades of research has shown that we don't need supplements (or that they're bad) we do this one thing - as insurance. I suggest you read The End of Food to gain an appreciation for what's happened to our food.
Sorry - we've been vegetarian for so long that we like our spices! We could live without them. We can also live without running water, electricity and cook over an open fire (been there done that and about to do it again for another week) - but we choose to reduce our impact in other ways and enjoy those little things.
Our standard breakfast fare has been quick cook oatmeal from Oak Manor. I've started using toasted barley flakes as well (it's a bit chewier but not much different - not like rye flakes). I make a big pot (8.5c of dry oatmeal) about every 2.5 days. Instead of 2/3c raisins and 12 dates I now add 100g honey (big ladel full).
We've started making a batch of granola (honey, grain flakes, local dried fruit) weekly as well.
I've been eating local, Oak Manor, cereals for a while - but I've had to give up the dates and raisins which I normally add. I've not given up the soy milk that I usually add.
Lunch is still home made breads with home made jams or honey.
We bought a sack of local organic black beans. They smelled a bit - but were great when cooked and mashed for sandwiches.
Weekends I make corn bread (corn meal, a bit of wheat flour, baking powder, honey, water and a bit of soy milk).
When it's corn season I have a few cobs for lunch. When it's squash season I usually nuke a butternut squash and eat 1/2 per day with applesauce, something else or plain.
I'm missing tahini, hummus and my usual rye bread as well as my home made raisin bread.
We gave up lots of starches - rice, cuscus, many beans.
Here are some of the local starches we eat:
Where oh where has the chocolate gone?
I have to wait a long time to make squash cookies! Oh we better have a good year for squash (we've given up growing it - Google squash vine borer).
Goodby to my exotic teas - and hello to mint tea all the time.
We take whatever fruit is in season, add some honey and oatmeal/barley flakes and turn it into a fruit crumble. I'm not partial to the taste of butter - but we've not found local oils yet.
It's a pretty cold summer and we'd usually be eating cold pasta salads with olives. Now where did I leave that olive tree of mine?
Cooking oil? I'm partial to the no-added-fat McDougall diet - but not my dear spouse.
If it could be grown locally can I eat it on my 100 Mile diet?
This takes time! I can bake lots of bread - but that starts to take lots of time.
I can make 4 loaves of bread with 1 tsp of yeast (sponge, poolish or biga method) and could easily keep yeast alive - but it would be more work. It would become less work if I was baking bread regularily instead of doing big batches every 3 weeks and freezing it.