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Cooking &
Preservation Good food is central to our lives and our farm. We find that the tastiest, healthiest meals are made with fresh, quality, in-season ingredients sourced from local producers, and we do our best to provide those both to ourselves and our customers. Here we will share some of our experiences and advice on eating well year-round, including preserving produce for winter and using it appropriately. We are not vegetarian, using quality meats once or twice a week in accordance with Thomas Jefferson's principle that "meat is best used as a condiment to vegetables". |
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Menu
Planning To us, the key to using and appreciating seasonal ingredients is NOT to plan menus ahead. Whether your ingredients come from a farmers market, CSA share, or home garden, simply buy, gather, and use whatever is freshest and most interesting. With good cookbooks and well-stocked kitchen (see below), we can always discover new and worthwhile ways of preparing whatever is available. This may seem like more work, but we feel that it (a) makes us better cooks, (b) allows us to naturally follow the seasons, and (c) distributes the work of planning ahead evenly over many days. |
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Local vs.
Global Foods The concept of "eating locally" is growing in the United States, and carries a variety of interpretations. To us, focusing on locally grown and produced food ensures fresh high-quality ingredients, but we do not believe that diets must be restricted to an arbitrary radius. Some ingredients are best fresh & local, like fruits and vegetables, while others travel and store well, like spices, olives, and dried beans. We happily complement our fresh, seasonal menu with global ingredients that do not grow in Missouri but travel well (such as cinnamon, capers, olives, and almonds), buying the highest quality we can find. This approach allows us to benefit from a dynamic global marketplace while encouraging the environmental, political, economic, and health value of local food supplies. Eating locally is a way of taking pride
in our region and community, by enjoying the unique flavor and value of
our small farms, breweries, dairies, and so on. It is not an
all-or-nothing philosophy, but a guiding principle that encourages
healthy eating and sustainable agriculture around the world. |
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Kitchen
necessities A well-stocked kitchen makes seasonal, on-the-fly cooking far easier and more enjoyable. The initial outlay may seem large, but once established, the turnover is slow and the benefits are enormous. For us, a well-stocked kitchen includes: - Abundant and diverse spices (over 20, not including herbs) - Fresh herbs year-round, kept in window pots during winter. - Diverse and comprehensive cookbooks (see below) - Bulk staples always available (grains, beans, rice, etc.) - Chest freezer, allowing easy storage of many ingredients |
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Using cookbooks & recipes Good cookbooks, more than anything else, ease the process of learning to use fresh, seasonal ingredients. We find that vegetarian cookbooks are often best, even for omnivores, because their authors have learned to use vegetables in the best possible way. Too many meat-based recipes rely heavily on the meat for flavor, and neglect the possibilities of other ingredients, whereas a good vegetarian recipe tends to use all ingredients to their full advantage. Eric, in particular, loves taking vegetarian recipes and reintroducing the meat. For example, a good vegetarian stew will easily equal a standard meat stew, but when small quantities of meat are then reintroduced as a Jeffersonian complement to the vegetables, the dish reaches another level. We also find that the best cookbooks rely on fresh, raw ingredients and spices, not shortcuts like "one jar pasta sauce" or "chili flavoring". Our favorite
cookbooks: |
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Sources of
meat By far, the best meat will come from pasture-raised animals fed their natural diet, not confined in feedlots and force-fed medications. In mid-Missouri, we have many small farmers raising quality meats for direct sale to consumers, including chicken, turkey, beef, pork, goat, lamb, and more. In the past, our meat came from these fellow farmers, though we have increasingly begun butchering our own as the next step in quality control and cost-effectiveness. |
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Preserving food During the spring, summer, and fall, we work hard to can, freeze, or otherwise put up fresh food for later use. Many vegetables and fruits take well to preservation, especially when acquired fresh from farms, and will be of noticeably higher quality in the winter than equivalent store-bought "fresh" material that was trucked across the country out-of-season. We tend to freeze most raw ingredients, as it is faster and easier than canning. An efficient chest freezer uses very little energy and is extremely convenient. Some items, like pickles, jams, sauerkraut, and some fruits, are best canned. Later
rewards |
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