Localize Your Pantry

Blackberry Chocolate Chunk Ice Cream

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If you’ve never spent time in Southwest Ohio, you might be surprised to know that it is home to some pretty unique foods. Aside from standard midwestern fare, not only one but two chains of restaurants devoted to Cincinnati chili speckle the region, each of which has ardent followers who flock there for liquid-y chili served atop spaghetti and under a mountain of cheddar cheese.

As someone who grew up in the Southwest, chili means something very different to me. The local fare I was far more enthusiastic about was the delectable dessert served at Graeter’s Ice Cream. Sold both in ice cream parlours and also by the pint at area grocery stores, Graeter’s features seasonal flavors amongst a collection of favorites, and one of their most beloved varieties is Blackberry Chip.

I’ve been scheming to invest in an ice cream machine for the last couple of years, and I finally took the plunge earlier this summer and got one. Frivolous? Perhaps. Necessary? Certainly not. But utterly worth it? Ab.So.Lutely.

This ice cream features one of my favorite tastes of summer: blackberries! Sweet but tart, these berries not only lend their lovely flavor to the ice cream but also provide their spectacular hue. The whole berry doesn’t end up in the final ice cream, just the juice, but with fresh berries you’ll end up with plenty of blackberry flavor.

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Homemade Beef Jerky

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Landing in North Carolina, and dragging luggage out of the airport in the peak of summer, is always rather shocking after several days in the cool, dry air of southwest Colorado. Sure, my hometown is hot during the day at this time of year too, but no matter what temperature the mercury hits while the sun is up, the air cools each night jeans-and-sweatshirt weather.

Every trip to Colorado seems too short, but sometimes, I get to bring little tastes of home back with me. And this time, it’s some tasty homemade jerky!

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Community Garden: An Eight-Month Tale of Garlic

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You guys.

You see that garlic? I grew that garlic! Me and eight months of nature magic, that is.

When I scored a plot on my community garden, I was excited for the salad greens, the squash, all the fresh goodies. But one of my major goals was to learn to grow some of the staples and storage goods that I pull off the shelf before anything else when it’s time to make a meal. Garlic is, perhaps, the poster child of that concept: I mince up at least a clove or two in just about everything.

One of the vendors at the farmers market grows copious amounts of garlic, selling the trimmed and cured heads by the pound during the summer and fall, so I picked his brain one day last September about planting garlic myself. Armed with new knowledge and a few heads of garlic, I spent a crisp October morning starting what would become a significant test of patience.

Most garlic is grown by planting a single clove for each head you hope to produce. Planted in the fall, garlic grows slowly throughout the winter. It’s a remarkably hearty plant. When most of the garden plots around mine were dormant or inhabited only by kale, my perky little garlic plants stood tall and leafy.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: March-May 2012

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Soooooo.

I’ve done a really bang-up job of giving a monthly update on my food budget, haven’t I? I started in January, updated in February, and then… got busy. And it’s not that I haven’t posted other things. I have! I really wanted to tell you about this. And these. And my progress on this. Firsts of months came, and I thought, I should write a budget post, and then before I knew it, Fifteenths came by and it was no longer relevant.

If you’re new here, to ring in the new year I started meticulously tracking my food expenses, both for groceries and for restaurants, to get a sense of just how much of my money was going to local food sources rather than corporate, distant ones. Despite my lack of updates, I have managed to continue this tracking. You can check out my first post on the subject to see how I distinguish one type of purchase from another.

So without further ado, here’s a three-month update.

On the Grocery Dollars front, I’m making some interesting progress. Interestingly, the purple wedge (the one I’m trying to get rid of) has only reduced a little since January, about 3%. The convenience of a 24-hour store SO close to my apartment is, I confess, challenging to overcome sometimes. And oddly, there are some items I simply cannot find at the co-op. Brad’s preferred pickle relish. Instant tapioca. Our favorite sandwich bread. But look at the blue and red! Up from about a third to over HALF! Not surprisingly, I’ve got a lot more produce out of my garden in the spring months than I did in January, and the variety of food available at the farmer’s market has increased as well. Exciting!

And to the restaurants…

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Container Garden: Learning Lessons

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When we moved to North Carolina, I had some plans for our apartment on which I was unwilling to budge:

1. I would obtain a dining table and chairs.
2. I would paint some wall, any wall, some pretty color other than white.
3. I would grow some food on my dang porch.

Quick trips to Ikea and Home Depot made it easy to accomplish the first two goals, but it took me a couple of months to figure out the best way to complete the third. For one thing, I still, still, after two years of low-sun apartments in DC, struggled to get direct beams to my balcony for more than a few hours a day. To complicate matters further, the lovely lattices on our porch railings broke up what little sun that did reach the balcony: an excellent situation for lounging on the porch without getting too hot, but not so great for keeping plants alive.

Containers on the railings had to be the key. But alas! Every style I could find at stores in my area was designed with a bolt or a screw or some other attachment mechanism I’m sure our property managers would not appreciate.

But then.

I found them online! Two feet wide, six inches deep, and adjustable to whatever width of balcony railing you want to hang them on.  I bought some lettuce, some mums (to feel fancy!), and plopped ’em into some soil. By the tim spring rolled around, well, I had expanded my little fleet to the size it was when I first introduced this hodge-podge little garden last April.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: February 2012

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It’s update time.

Just to re-cap, I started the new year with a goal: I wanted to learn just how I spend my money on food. Do I trade it with local culinary artisans? National corporations?

After some debate over which delineations mattered, I made a list of categories into which I would divide my purchases —  both for groceries and for restaurants — and began the semi-tedious task of tracking every single receipt. My first month of tracking gave me some results that were expected, and some that surprised me.

Here are the results for February:

On this front, the numbers are almost identical to January. I did have a few extra runs to the big box grocery store close to my apartment this month, and to be totally honest, I’m not exactly sure why. Other than I must have really planned meals poorly that week. My goal for this month is to only hit the grocery store once a week, which should save food dollars, gas dollars, and time dollars. Yes time dollars.

But look! Grocery dollars may have been the same, but restaurant dollars show major improvement! I had friends in town one weekend and my parents in town for almost a week, which gave me opportunities to go outside my normal restaurant box and show off Durham’s local flavor. We’ll see how it keeps up when I am not entertaining guests…

So on goes the tracking. And finally, as promised, if you want to track as well, I’ve uploaded the spreadsheet I’m using. You can download it at the link below… it’s pretty smart and makes all your numbers turn into graphs. Poof! Time to get excited.

Food Dollar Graphs

Happy tracking!

Favorite Pizza Crust + Chicken Spinach Alfredo Pizza

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Remember a week or two ago when I made fresh mozzarella cheese? And I said I was gonna tell you what you could do with the 1/2 gallon + of whey that results from the cheesemaking process?

I’m here to fulfill my promise.The promise of pizza.

It’s a lovely thing when completion of one kitchen project leads inexorably to another. What better way to use a pound of fresh mozzarella than to throw the old pizza stone in the oven, pull out the pizza cutter, and have yourself a pizza feast? And this pizza crust? THIS one uses up the whey from making mozzarella. Some of it. Or if you’re moderately obsessive me, it uses all of the whey.

I’ve used several recipes over the last couple of years for homemade pizza crust. Sometimes thick and fluffy, sometimes thin and crispy, sometimes in that strange place in between. This crust is simple to put together, has a short list of ingredients, and can go from disparate ingredients to rolled-and-ready-for-toppings in less than 30 minutes.

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Fresh Mozzarella Cheese

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Cheese.

I made some.

This cheese, to be specific.

It’s not like this is one of the most magical things I’ve ever done.

(It is. It is one of the most magical things I’ve ever done.)

A couple years ago, after reading — and being thoroughly inspired by — this book, I really wanted to to try my hand at making cheese. An ancient art, cheese making has sustained and entertained people across the globe for thousands of years. I wanted in. So my parents bought me this basic cheese making kit, which contains all the special ingredients and equipment needed to make both mozzarella and ricotta cheeses. Other than a really big pot, some spoons and bowls, and of course, milk.


Let’s talk about milk. I don’t think I’ve ever bought whole milk before, except with the intention of making cheese.  Because cheese is made up of the proteins and fats in milk, using a milk with higher fat content produces more cheese. Also, you can’t use “ultra-pasteurized” milk to make cheese (at least not this one). Why? The super-high temperatures of ultra-pasteurization denature the proteins in the milk, which means it won’t curdle. Regular old pasteurization is fine, but make sure your milk doesn’t say “ultra”.

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Money Where Your Mouth Is: January 2012

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Fair warning: if you didn’t know I was a moderately obsessive, detail-oriented, and rather analytical, you certainly will be the end of this post.

I love cooking and baking. Taking photos of the process, digging through shots to find the best ones to tell a recipe’s story, and sharing them with you. I get a thrill from planting seeds that, after a few weeks of sunshine and water, will produce food. And my weekly trip to the farmers market is a cornerstone of every weekend.

But part of my intent in starting this blog was to challenge myself toward a lofty goal. I’ve spent the last couple of years trying to buy locally  (or grow myself) as much as I could, but I’d never really tracked how I spent my food dollars exactly.

The new year gave me a great opportunity to step. it. up.

I wanted to see just how much of my money I spent in a local food versus, well, non-local food. Easy enough, right?

Eh. It turns out it’s not quite so simple.

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Homemade Dried Pasta

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There are few things that can distract a pasta lover while making homemade pasta. I was so intent on working on these lovely little noodles that Brad cooked our entire dinner, which is both lovely and rare (it was uh-mazing, by the way).

However, one thing that did manage to pull me away from a mound of fresh pasta dough was Sierra calling to inform me that she had come across a post from my little food blog (shared by Paul at Dudecraft) on a fairly major craft blog, which then led to pick ups by several other sites, and it turned out that my site was crashing from so many people trying to visit. Holy crapoly. A tiny viral internet moment!

I’ve been overwhelmed and flattered by the feedback as thousands of new readers have taken a look at 30 Pounds land. The spike will level out, I’m sure, but still! I write this blog because I enjoy it, for sure, but if I wasn’t interested in sharing with you my successes, failures, moments of confidence, and snippets of frustration, and hearing about yours in return, this site would not exist. So thanks to all of you for reading. I’m really, really happy you’re here.

Okay, sappy reflective moment over. Let’s make some dang pasta!

We’ve discussed my pasta obsession. I love it. I cook it a lot. The major part of an entire shelf in our pantry is dedicated to pasta and its friends.

(I love you pasta.)

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