The Days are Dark Indeed - It's time for more Soup

I hope that no one thinks the title of this post means that I find soup dreary. Just the opposite! A nice pot of soup brightens the darkest winter evening, which is why this is my third Dark Days post featuring soup.

Plus, this is an especially exciting soup because it features one of the beans grown by my friend Marty Heller. You may remember him from the post I wrote about his beans back in early December.

I used two cups of his lovely peregion beans.

Do you think beans can be serene? These look serene to me.

Last time I made a bean soup for the blog I used (and photographed) a quick soak method on the hutterite soup beans my husband and I grew. This time I did a long soak. A long soak is so easy. All it requires is a minuscule amount of thinking ahead. (I know, sometimes thinking ahead is actually very hard.)

A long soak is simply an overnight soaking of your beans. If you want to make a bean soup tomorrow, cover some beans with water and pop them in the refrigerator while you're making dinner tonight.

Here is what will happen:

2 cups beans + 3 cups water.
This is what they look like going in.



A few hours later I decided the soup also needed wheat berries.

Into the fridge they went. 1 cup wheat berries + about 2 cups water.

 Notice the beans have already plumped a bit.





This is about 24 hours after the first picture. The beans are huge!
The wheat berries aren't too much bigger, but they've obviously done something.
Look how golden their water is. Time to make soup!



I started the soup by caramelizing some onions (grown on our very own farm) with garlic, thyme, bay leaf, salt, and pepper. To the onion I added the wheat berries and beans, both of which had been drained, and about two quarts of turkey stock made from turkeys we raised. Once I had that boiling, I added three sliced carrots, grown by our neighbors the Peterson's. Thanks Peterson's! The soup simmered for about an hour, and it was done. That's it. The long soak made it that simple.



I inherited the Navy spoons from my grandparents, who uh...borrowed them
when my grandpa was on a submarine in WWII.



In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that the wheat berries are not in any way local. I am using them for the Dark Days Challenge anyway for two reasons. First, it would be silly (and not at all sustainable) to buy new wheat berries just to fit the challenge. Second, I have tracked down a local source for them which I will use once I have finished the wheat berries I have on hand.

I also have to say that I loved the wheat berry and bean combination in this soup. It was something I had never tried before and I found that I really enjoyed the nutty pop of the wheat along side the creamy beans. Just look how lovely they were together.

I was amazed by how well the peregions held their color.
These beans are beautiful and delicious.

Shepherd's Pie

Shepherd's pie is not a staple at my house. I knew what the components should be - a lovely lamb stew and mashed potatoes. Those things are staples in my house so I was able to put them together without consulting any sort of recipe. My ingredients and methods are below if you would like a consultation.


The finished dish. I could not have asked for a better winter meal.
The brown flecks are potato peel. I like peely mashed potato, proceed
as you prefer.

However, while the potatoes were boiling and my family was getting hungrier, my husband asked me how long it would have to bake. That I did not know (you can tell I always plan ahead in the kitchen), so I waded into the trusty internet to retrieve an answer. I found, to my surprise, a roaring debate about the proper components for a shepherd's pie. Mostly it was a lamb vs. beef issue. There is also a lot of contention about cheese.

It's all semantics and personal taste; things not worth actually arguing over. Nevertheless, I feel compelled to weigh in. My thought is: of course shepherd's pie is made with lamb. It's called shepherd's pie. Shepherds are people who raise sheep. Therefore their pie is likely to contain lamb. Right?

Debate on about the cheese though. I didn't use any (apparently this is the English way that purists tout) but I am sure it would be delicious with some grated Parmesan or cheddar on top (we Americans do like to cover everything with cheese).

Authentic or not, it was very good. I think this will become a staple at out house. Also, it was local. We raised the lamb, and the turkey in the stock. The potatoes came from nearby in Wisconsin, the carrots from our neighbor, and the dairy was all from the U.P. I even managed to use up some garden kohlrabi that I had lost in the freezer two years ago. Winter vegetables you have on hand, such as rutabaga, parsnips or celeriac, can be substituted for the carrots and kohlrabi.

Shepherd's Pie

Stew Ingredients:

1. Two teaspoons olive oil
2. One pound lamb, cut into one inch pieces
3. Salt and pepper
4. Two cloves garlic, minced or pressed
5. 4 or 5 whole allspice berries, ground (or about an 1/8 tsp ground allspice)
6. One cup stock (I used turkey, any good meat stock will do)
7. Three carrots, sliced into half to one inch pieces
8. Two kohlrabi, cut into one and a half inch chunks
9.  One tablespoon whole wheat flour



The stew, ready for a topping of mashed potatoes. Don't worry if the lamb
isn't quite tender at this point. It will finish cooking in the oven.



Mashed Potato Ingredients:

1. 2 pounds of potatoes (four to six potatoes), each cut into 6 to 8 pieces
2. Butter
3. Milk
4. Salt

Preheat the oven to 400 F

• In a pot large enough to hold all of the stew ingredients, heat the olive oil over medium/high heat.
• Add the lamb, salt and pepper (to taste), garlic, and allspice.
• Stir and turn occasionally until the lamb is browned on all sides.
• Add the stock, vegetables, and flour to the pan, stir well.
• Allow the stock to come to a boil, turn the heat to simmer, cover the pot.
• Place the potatoes in a pot, cover with water, and bring to a boil.
• Boil until the potatoes are very tender, about 10 or 15 minutes, drain, and return the potatoes to the pot.
• Mash the potatoes with a potato masher, adding milk, butter, and salt to taste.
• Spoon the stew into a deep nine inch pie plate, leaving most of the liquid behind in the pot.
• Spread the mashed potatoes evenly over the stew.
• Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes.
• While the pie is baking, simmer the remaining stew liquid, uncovered, to make a gravy. Add a bit of cornstarch if it needs some help to thicken up. Serve this gravy with the shepherd's pie.



This was all I could rescue for lunch the next day.



Fast and Local

A lot has happened since my last post. It has been kind of a crazy, non-stop week. A few of the highlights include:

Slaughtering five turkeys that hadn't quite made it up to size at thanksgiving time.

Grinding said turkey meat with our new kitchenaid grinder attachment (best Christmas present ever!).

Negotiating with my boss to go down to part time at the day job - and getting a pretty hefty raise out of the deal. I'm one step closer to the goal of full time farming.

Then Saturday I wrapped the week up with a day long grocery shopping trip to the "big city" of Houghton. That is how we small towners roll. We don't run to the store. We have huge grocery shopping marathons once or twice a month, braving white out conditions (seriously) to stock up on toilet paper and organic potatoes.

So, when I got home Saturday I was tired and a little bristled that my husband hadn't made dinner. Clearly it was an omelet night. My first thought was cheese, but all the cheese had been eaten in my absence. So I poked in the fridge and came out with seven eggs from Byler Family Farms in Pelkie, Michigan, butter from Jilbert Dairy in Marquette, Michigan and two jars containing remnants of the ginger scallion sauce I made last fall.

I had the omelet almost done before I even realized I could use it for a Dark Days post. The picture shows it just after folding but before the flip - a few minutes before it was fully cooked.

Since deciding to participate in Dark Days, I have been paying more attention to how many of our meals come from completely local sources. I've been pleasantly surprised by how often it turns out that those quick "grab whatever is on hand and make something tasty" types of meals turn out to be 100% local. I think that means we are doing something seriously right.

We finished off the meal with some homemade applesauce made with apples grown in our front yard.

Lamb, Eggplant, and Becoming a Real Farmer

A lot of farmers, the kind with 100's of acres of a single crop each year or thousands of beef cattle, don't consider us CSA farmers to be "real farmers". While I don't agree with them, I can totally understand where they are coming from.

CSA farmers are different from other types of farmers. We fill a different role for our customers, we have a totally different business model, and even the daily work we do can be dissimilar from that of other farmers. I usually describe CSA farming as tending a giant garden. 600 acres of soybeans can hardly be described as a garden. Many of us are new to farming, and we often start out with unrealistic ideas of what we can accomplish. Also, unfortunately, many CSA farmers seem to place a higher value on the the CSA model of farming and forget how much we can learn from other farmers.

All that being said however, we are real farmers. We grow nourishing food for our communities, tend our land lovingly, and plan our lives around the needs of our animals and crops.

But even real farmers face challenges. Though those with thousands of beef cattle probably faced and overcame the particular challenge I am going to mention here long before I had to.

I find it difficult to raise animals for food. It isn't a huge surprise. I grew up in a suburb of Detroit. I was very removed from the sources of my food. As a teenager I was a vegetarian and even went vegan for a year or so because it was the thing to do among the crowd I hung out with. I had some issues eating meat.

When I was twenty I went to culinary school and the first class I took was butchery. I was afraid I wouldn't be able to handle it but instead found that it helped connect me to the idea that it is natural for humans to rely on animals for food.

But raising them myself does add a whole new dimension to things. Sheep, and even roosters, have personalities. They don't want to die any more than anything else does. And, for most of their lives, I don't want them to die either. What is especially embarrassing about it is that it's harder for me to eat cute animals.
I was sad back in September on sheep slaughtering day. Really sad. I was thinking that maybe deep down I am not a real farmer.

Then I ate some. And it was seriously good. We raised two sheep last summer and, not only did they help us clear out some unwanted plants and fertilize our fields while they were alive, they helped us fill our freezer with flavourful, tender, healthy meat.

So, while I'm torn by some aspects of it, I love being a real farmer. But I will still be sad on sheep slaughtering day 2011 - though maybe not really sad.

And of course, the meat our sheep provided us is the perfect thing to cook during the dark days challenge. So, here it is, a dark days dinner featuring lamb we raised, eggplant we grew and pickled, and kale given to us by a neighbor that we dried for the winter.



From sheep, to lamb, to cast iron pan.



Eggplant, pickled according to the method in
The Joy of Pickling.



Kale, dried in our electric dehydrator.


There is no recipe to share because unless you have pickled eggplant on hand you really can't duplicate the dish. I sauteed about a pound of cubed lamb in some of the oil from the pickled eggplant, then allowed it to simmer until it was tender, adding a bit of eggplant and a cup of crumbled kale to the meat towards the end of the cooking time. We ate it with some entirely non-local rice because my lack of planning left me without a local starch option and this dinner needed a starch.

Holiday Hiatus

I thought that I might have a bit of time to sneak in some blog work the over the holidays, but, as those of you following the blog may have noticed, I haven't.

I have had time to do some other wonderful things though. Like celebrate Christmas with my husband and daughter, hang out with my husband's family over at my brother-in-law's house, take my daughter on her for her first sled ride, and eat a lot of yummy food (including buckwheat pancakes). Some of the food was even local.

She likes the piano too,
but man that's a good box!



Taking time to focus on
the new toys.





Partying at the bowling alley with Grandma!

 With all the fun, I haven't had the chance to make any completely local meals for the dark days challenge since my cabbage soup (unless you want to read a post about scrambled eggs - local eggs and local butter, what could be better?) but I have been fitting in a few dark days side dishes here and there as I experiment with some new things at home and help out with the cooking at the in-law's.

The list is short, but here are my recent local food creations:

Roast squash (sweet dumpling and honey bear from Seeds and Spores in Marquette) filled with homemade lemon cheese (Made with milk from Kolpack's farm in Ontonagon)

Sweet and sour cabbage (Made with cabbage from a neighbor's garden and honey from Algomah Acres in Greenland)
Cabbage with sweet pickled beets and cauliflower (Made with cabbage from a neighbor's garden, beets and cauliflower we grew and pickled)
Roast brussels sprouts (From a neighbor's garden)



The squash were roasted plain, then filled
with a simple homemade cheese and baked again.



I did get to introduce several family members to the simple art of roasting brussles sprouts with olive oil, salt, and pepper until they just begin to brown. They loved them! Some were already brussels sprout fans, but I managed to convert my sister-in-law from a person repulsed by all things brussels sprouty to an appreciator of the roasted sprouts. Score one for the tiny cabbages!

The cabbage was stir fried with honey, dried jalapeno from
our garden,and non-local lemon juice (leftover from
cheese making), salt, and pepper.

Cabbage Soup with Bacon and Caraway

A soup for every other Dark Days meal sounds about right to me. As I mentioned in my first Dark Days post, I do like to make soup.


Cabbage, bacon, and caraway soup before its final simmer.
The orange bits are rutabaga.

And why not? Soups are satisfying, simple to make, endlessly variable, and lend themselves well to my locally available ingredients.

This was, sadly, another almost local soup. I like to give soups quick flavor by starting with bacon, or sometimes sausage. There used to be a wider selection of local bacon and sausage at my co-op than there has been the last couple times I've shopped for them. This last time I had four options, bacon from Wisconsin that would have fit my broadest definition of local (we are very very close to Wisconsin) but had nitrites, non-local nitrite free bacon from far away, bison sausage from I know not where, and some apple chicken sausage from California. In the past I have been able to find bacon and/or sausage sourced within 50 - 100 miles of me.

I had to go with the nitrite free bacon option. I cannot say whether or not nitrites and nitrates are a food safety issue, but they give me migraines so I avoid them.

This was a weekend shopping trip so I couldn't speak with any buyers, but I will need to ask my co-op about this change ASAP. If I'm lucky, their past suppliers are still around and I can buy directly from them.

3/4 of a twelve ounce package of bacon, one medium onion, one rutabaga,
two turnips, a tablespoon whole caraway seed, and some dried jalapeno.
I deglazed this pan with a bit of water, added a medium cabbage, chopped,
one pint home canned tomato puree, and water to cover.This simmered
for about a half hour, until the cabbage was tender but not limp.

The rest of the soup, aside from the salt, pepper, and caraway seed, was local. The vegetables, which included cabbage, rutabaga, turnips, onion, canned tomato puree, and dried chile pepper were a collection from four different area gardens (including ours).

"Bacon Bits"

The highlight of the soup was the bacon crumbles I garnished it with. I used about 3/4 of the bacon for the soup itself. The remaining was chopped into bite sized pieces and fried with a generous pinch of whole caraway seed and a half a dried jalapeno pepper minced.

Building My Holiday Traditions

This is my first Christmas as the mother of a toddler. This is also the first Christmas that I've chosen to make cookies for my friends and family. Also, this is my first Christmas as a blogger. It makes quite a combination of firsts.

There are so many beautiful food blogs, and right now they are full of beautiful Christmas cookies. Cookies with qualities of deliciousness that I aspired to match during my week long cookie making marathon. But of course, no matter how many beautiful cookies I planned to make, I never stopped being the mother of a toddler.

Now that the marathon is complete, I feel I need to make a public service announcement of sorts. The snowflake cookies with only five points, the truffles that are as misshapen as their namesake, the candied lime with chewier-than-you-meant-it-to-be peel are all as delicious and loved by your loved ones as they would be if they were picture perfect.

Deep breath. Your cookies will be fantastic.

You see, I'm not really a Christmas person. I'm new to this Christmas spirit thing and I don't want to turn the love I want to share with those that have touched my life this year into a giant stress fest. And I don't want anyone else to either. I'm pretty sure Christmas traditions are meant to be enjoyable for everyone involved, even those with the role of Santa's elf.

For a long time I have been something of a Christmas observer. My husband and I would make sure to see our families during the holiday season, we would get presents for our nephews, we would try to find gifts for our respective siblings, but we just didn't get that into it. December is our quietest month farm wise, nothing is growing and we've just barely started planing for next year, so we've always liked to keep it laid back. The actual day of Christmas was generally just a nice day off from work that we could spend together. Our Christmas included no decorations, a few gifts, and a big batch of buckwheat pancakes with jam.

We'll take any excuse to make buckwheat pancakes with jam.

Last year our Christmas routine changed a bit. I suppose all routines change when you toss in a three month old. I was up at midnight on Christmas Eve, wrapping the world's greatest teething ring in shiny silver paper. I had thought I wouldn't want a tree, but at the last minute I even sent my husband out into one of our brushier fields for a tiny little Christmas tree to decorate our living room. I got a taste of what it is like to be a Christmas person, and I loved it. This year, I wanted more than that little taste.

Baby's First Christmas, or The Most Presents I've Ever Purchased

So, although I'm still not buying a lot of presents, I'm starting some new traditions. I've got cookies, I've got lights on a tree in my yard, I'm donating to three different charities on behalf of my parents and sister, and, of course, I'm taking a laid back day and eating buckwheat pancakes with jam on Christmas morning with my husband and daughter.

Maybe you would like to join us.

Buckwheat Pancakes

We got this recipe off of a box of buckwheat flour, I think it was Hodgson Mill, several years ago. It's the only 100% buckwheat pancake recipe I've run into. It is now written on a piece of loose leaf paper and taped to the inside of our plate cupboard door. That is how special this recipe is to us. It must be enjoyed with homemade jam, preferably blueberry or blackberry.

• Two tablespoons butter, melted
• One cup milk
• One egg
• One cup buckwheat flour
• One teaspoon baking powder
• Two tablespoons sugar
• Half teaspoon salt

1. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl large enough to accommodate all of the ingredients.
2. Combine the egg, milk, and melted butter. Stir until well combined.
3. Add the wet ingredients to the dry ingredients. Stir until just combined. It will be a little gooier than non-buckwheat pancake batter.
4. Heat a griddle or shallow pan over medium heat.
5. Grease the pan with butter, vegetable oil, or cooking spray. We prefer butter, but we're decadent. They all work.
6. Pour about 1/3 cup of batter onto the pan, as many times as will fit.
7. Watch the batter. When bubbles are just about to break the surface, flip the pancake over. This traps those bubbles in the pancakes and makes them nice and fluffy.
8. Cook until the center is set and the bottom is lightly brown.
9. Repeat with the remaining batter.

Roast Duck with Chokecherry Barbecue Sauce

Plants. As a botanist, farmer, herbalist, and cook I study, grow, prepare, and consume them. Plants tie my passions together. Why? Some people are just plant people. We know who we are. My path to plant personhood is too long a story to share here. Actually, now that I think about it my plant story is basically my life story. I wonder if that is true of most plant people? I will say that foraging, or gathering wild plants for food, has been an important part of my life for a long time.

This meal, my second for the dark days challenge, (click here if you don't know what I mean by dark days) features the chokecherry. Chokecherries are easily found in the Western U.P. and are foraged, at least casually, by just about everyone who ventures outside around here.

How have I never taken a picture of the chokecherry?
Ah well, here is an old school one from the
USDA-NRCS PLANTS Database
to give you an idea.

The chokecherry, or Prunus virginiana, is an astringent (astringent food = unripe banana) little cherry that grows in racemes on scraggly bush/trees in brushy areas. A lot of folks pick it for jelly when it is ripe in late summer. It does make good jelly. It also makes an excellent barbecue sauce. You can find my chokecherry barbecue sauce recipe below. As a bonus, chokecherry bark makes a very effective cough syrup. It's a great "gateway" herb to convince non-believers of the efficacy of herbal remedies.

Chokecherries can be found in this Dark Day's dinner as barbecue sauce, which I made and canned last summer, and wine. We drank chokecherry honey wine from a vineyard called Threefold Vine Winery in Garden, Michigan, about 200 miles from me. That's a vineyard in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. For real.

 

The duck was one of the Khaki Campbells we raised last season. We also ate sweet potatoes grown by us and Brussels sprouts from a neighbor's garden. I basted the duck with a mixture of half butter (from Jilbert Dairy, about 115 miles from me) and half barbecue sauce. The bird weighed about 3 pounds and I roasted it at 400 degrees for around 35 minutes. When I removed it from the oven I let it rest on a plate and added my vegetables to the pan of duck fat, butter, and barbecue sauce. I turned the oven up to 450, put my pan of sweet potatoes and sprouts back in, and let them roast while the duck rested and my husband did the fancy carving job you see in the photo here.

Everything was good, but the roast vegetables in duck fat were definitely the highlight of the meal. I seriously recommend this method of cooking Brussels sprouts if you have the chance to try it.

I found the wine at a gas station of all places. I was already planning the duck with chokecherry barbecue sauce and I thought it would be fun to try a chokecherry wine with it. A sommelier I am not. It was much sweeter than I expected and didn't work so well with the barbecue sauce. It was surprisingly good with the roasted vegetables though. I liked the wine overall, but I like sweet, fruity, spicy things. It probably isn't something that wine lovers would rave about, but I think that is true of all cherry wines. I am very excited to try more things from Threefold Vine Winery. Especially the wines made from the grapes they grow. There is another winery even closer to me in Houghton that I will be purchasing wines from during the challenge, but they don't grow their own grapes. I still can't believe there is a vineyard in the U.P. Already, I love the things this challenge is helping me discover.

As promised above, here is my recipe for a small batch of chokecherry barbecue sauce. If ever you spend a pleasant afternoon picking three and a half pounds of chokecherries this is the thing to do with them. We like it on chicken as well as duck. I'm sure it's good on pork too, we just don't eat a lot of pork. I use either honey or sugar depending on what I have on hand. This year I used sugar. It's good either way, but I like it a bit better with honey. This recipe makes about three cups of barbecue sauce.

Chokecherry Barbecue Sauce

• 3 1/2 pounds chokecherries
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tsp black mustard seed
• 25 peppercorns
• 2 whole cloves
• 1 small onion, finely minced
• 1/2 cup raw sugar or honey
• 1/4 teaspoon fish sauce
• 1 teaspoon red wine vinegar
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses

1. Place the chokecherries and water over medium low heat in a large, heavy bottomed pot.
2. Simmer until they have burst.
3. Push the chokecherries through a strainer to make a thick pulp. You should end up with about two and a half cups of pulp.
4. Return the pulp to a small heavy bottomed pan over medium low heat.
5. Lightly crush the mustard seed, peppercorns, and cloves, tie them in a spice bag, and add the bag to the pulp.
6. Stir the remaining ingredients into the pulp.
7. Allow the pulp to barely simmer for about an hour.
8. Remove the spice bag and puree the barbecue sauce with an immersion blender if you would like it to be very smooth. Leave it as is if you don't mind little chunks of onion.
9. This can be refrigerated for about two months, but it keeps longer canned.
10. Can half pints in a boiling water bath for ten minutes.

Thinking Hard about the Dark Days

The upcoming Dark Days Challenge is heavy on my mind. In a good way. Winter is clearly upon us here in the north, the gardens are asleep, and I am trying to figure out exactly what my definition of local is.

Last night's snowfall on the office woodpile.
When you live in the U.P. you have an office woodpile. 

I really thought this would be easy. I'm a CSA farmer. I am local food, right? But there is so much more to it than that.

I live in a small community that is still very agricultural, so in many ways I am at an advantage. The local foods I have are varied and readily available. I have meat in the form of chicken, duck, turkey, and lamb my husband and I raised, beef from a nearby farm, and fish that we catch or purchase from a local market. I have a fair amount of fruits and vegetables canned, frozen or dried, some root vegetables in storage, and two good co-ops that will be sources for other local winter produce. I wish I had more stocked up in this category, but being beginning farmers means that we often sell the produce that we would like to can for ourselves and end up buying from bigger local farmers in the winter. It is getting better every year though. What I have put up is a mix of our produce and produce from other local growers. I also have eggs, from our chickens and other local farms. I have a milk share from the same farm that we get beef from, which is less than ten miles from our place. I can also get cheese and butter (and milk if we need more than our share provides) from a regional dairy that is located about 100 miles from us.

Sounds good, right? I thought I was pretty much set, until a tiny whispered question crept into my brain.

What am I going to do about grains and pulses?

You know, the staples of my diet. The quart jar of hutterite soup beans from our little dry bean test plot is not going to last through the winter.

Hmm...I am looking forward to a serious learning curve.

I'll leave you with that until after Thanksgiving. I'm planning a lovely holiday with the things I am most grateful for. My family and good food.

I hope you all find yourselves doing something equally wonderful.

Eat Your Greens

A while back my friend Meghann posted this as her facebook status:

"Someday, I'm sure my children will be shocked to find out not every Mom put Kale in everything."

It made me giggle because, as a CSA farmer, the question I most frequently receive from members is "What do I do with all of this kale?" or chard, mizuna, arugula, escarole, sorrel, or whichever green things are being tucked into the shares that particular week. I have a hard time not responding with this simple statement: Eat it.

Chard growing in the morning light.
CSA fields tend to be a bit messier than home gardens,
but we still manage to grow the good stuff!

That isn't meant to be flippant. It's just that, well, that's what I do with it. In my house we munch on raw greens just because they're there, make them into salads, and add them to at least half of the dinners we cook. In fact, my family and I like greens so much that I get kind of sad when winter comes and the greens stop growing. So, not only do I eat my greens, I dry kale and chard so that I can eat even more of them later.

I know that the kale chip, oiled and seasoned kale dried for snacking, is pretty hot right now, and those are good, but I am talking about simply drying greens so that they can be added to dishes during the off season.

It is an easy process, and now is the time of year to do it. 


 I use an electric dehydrator, though you could just as easily use your stove or a solar dehydrator. We use what we have - even if it isn't the most efficient option. A solar dehydrator is certainly on our wish list...

Cut or tear the greens into small pieces and lay them out on the dehydrator tray. Space them evenly, so that they are not touching.

Dry them overnight on the lowest setting. When they are done they will look pretty much they same as they did when you started, just a little duller and more velvety, and they will be crisp.



Well dried Kale.



Crisp Rainbow Chard.




Pack the dried greens into jars, close the jars tightly, and the greens will keep all winter long.

Dried kale, ready for a season of storage.

Now that you have dried your greens, you may be left with that lingering question. "What do I do with all of this (dried) kale?" Once again, my answer is simple: Eat it.

The recipe below is almost as easy as the drying itself. It makes a hearty breakfast, a satisfying lunch, or a comforting low key dinner. It really just depends on how you look at things. You can also throw a handful of the dried greens into many of your standard dishes. I suggest starting with spaghetti sauce. Once you see how tasty that is, go from there. Be extremely creative.

This can also be made with one or two leaves of fresh kale or chard cut into bite sized pieces.

Oatmeal with Dried Greens, Chicken Stock, and Root Vegetables

• One cup steel cut oats 
• One cup thinly cut root vegetables - I used carrots for this version because our neighbor had dropped a bunch off for us (look how huge!). Celeriac and parsnips are also divine here.
• 1/2 cup crumbled dried kale or chard, plus more for serving
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock -  Vegetable stock or water works too if you want to go vegetarian.
• Salt and pepper to taste

1. Bring the stock or water to a boil in a small saucepan.
2. Stir in all of the other ingredients.
3. Turn the heat down to simmer, cover the pot, and simmer, stirring occasionally, until the oatmeal is fully cooked. Cooking time will vary depending on the oats and your personal texture preferences. 
4. Add salt and pepper to taste.
5. Spoon the oatmeal into serving bowls and top with additional crumbled dried greens.

It may not be that photogenic, but it is highly tasty and oh so comforting.