Here we go! Life with the Shibaguyz...

IT WORKED!! WOOHOO!!

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 04:49:00 +0000

Well, we did it! We have made the move. We will keep this site up and running for now but now you can go to our shiny NEW (and still developing) blog. There will be all kinds of exciting new features... as soon as we figure them all out. LOL

So... head on over to our new space and say hello! Everything from here is over there! So don't stay here... go there... shoo... go on... see ya there!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Moving day...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Keep your fingers crossed... after a hiatus from all/most things electronic, we have decided today is the day. After some research and endless decision making, we're moving our blog. Again... just keep your fingers crossed while we get everything set up. See you all on the other side!

talk to you soon...

(hopefully)

The Shibaguyz

Still here...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 21:37:00 +0000

Yes, we know it's been a while since we posted but you know how it gets. Between crazy work events and all of the present making for the holidays we've been pretty well swamped. Can't complain though... well... less of the J-O-B and more of the work here around the house would be nice but hey... at least we HAVE jobs so we're thankful for that!

Unfortunately, because so many Nosey McNosersons read out blog (i.e. friends and family), we can't tell you about ANY of the gift making we've been doing because then everyone would know what they are getting for Christmas.

Anyway...

It finally snowed here! Yup... we're at the top of the crest line here in West Seattle and we just got pummeled with high winds and rain then, last night, SNOW! WOOHOO!! We got home from a work event around eleven last night and the snow was already starting to accumulate and cause some icy roads. As long as we were home safely, we didn't care. We made hot chocolate with orange brandy in it and sat on our butts working on Christmas presents and watching movies in front of the fireplace. Perfect...

Until...

This morning arrived. Mind you, because of the crazy work schedules, we haven't been to the market for a few weeks. Thank goodness for our stock pile in the freezer of meat as well as that HUUUUGE turkey we had from Thanksgiving. We've been eating yummy turkey sandwiches, turkey and rice and, our favorite, turkey and dumplings since Thanksgiving. That said, our stocks of fresh veggies and meat have run VERY low. The Ballard Farmers Market was a MUST this morning.

HA!!

We woke up to four inches of snow. I know to you hard-core snow country dwellers that's not a lot... here in Seattle... it's a lot. Most of the roads were pretty clear but our hill as well as the main road to get out of West Seattle was a solid sheet of ice. Perfect. But, still, off we went and have just returned home cold and tired. Even now in the middle of the afternoon, the sun has gone away and the partially thawed roads have frozen back over again... ick...

The most horrific part of this little snow storm was the damage to our French Chenille row cover. The weight of the snow collapsed one entire side of the cover causing some damage to the young broccoli, snow peas and shallots. Today found me running around out there with a broom clearing away snow and talking to plants that looked like they were on their last leg. Fear not, however... all is well in the garden now and it looks like minimal damage was sustained. After this snow clears, we'll put in some more cross supports to help out our brave little row cover.

So there you have it... the condensed version of where we've been and what we've been doing. Thanks for all the notes and emails but we're just fine... just a LIIIITLE busy. LOL We'll get a market report up today and maybe even a recipe or two. Now excuse me while I go have some coffee with bourbon... mmmmm... knitting in front of the Christmas tree with a hot cup of kicked up coffee... gotta love this. Like you always say, little brother: Life is good...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Sunday Projects... a lazy day...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sun, 30 Nov 2008 20:03:00 +0000

First priority of the day... be totally lazy! LOL After a loooong but satisfying week of giving thanks for our friends and family and sharing time with those we care about, we're crashing today.

We're going to head to the market to do our version of fast food shopping... meaning we're only picking up a few basics... Then it's home again to make stock out of our turkey carcass, knit up a rag rug, and maybe make some yummy concoction from the leftovers of Thanksgiving.

Oh... I also have to thin out the broccoli seedlings under the cloche and replant the Chinese cabbage that was obliterated when I forgot to water the cloche on a particularly sunny day. It gets hot under there!!

That's about it! Throw in some blogging to get out some more recipes and this sounds like the perfect lazy day for us. Gotta love days like this...

What are you all doing with your Sundays?

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

A Rant... What is wrong with people???

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 20:56:00 +0000

This post was started yesterday but had to be put on hold because the emotions that came out were more of anger and shock. What results today, is an edited version that is a little more palatable. We hope our message is made clear here.

Okay... I still can't calm down enough to write very clearly about this and maybe that makes me a bad writer/blogger. TOUGH!! We had a perfectly wonderful post to put up about our meal from yesterday along with the recipes. But that post won't go up until we get this rant over with.

In case you haven't been near a news source all day, let us catch you up:

Last night, a 34 year old man named Jdimytai Damour had Thanksgiving dinner at his half sister's house. Right after dinner, he went to his job at the local Wal-Mart. He stocked some shelves and did some maintenance work around the store while a crowd of over 2,000 people gathered outside. At a little before 5am, that crowd ended his life when they burst through the glass doors of the store front and trampled him to death. All in the name of consumerism.

One witness said people were irate when they were told someone had died and they needed to clear the store. They kept shopping...

There's a new meaning to the name "Black Friday."

Yes, we are consumers as well. We do not make every stitch of clothing on our backs nor do we make our own shoes. However, the past two years has brought us a new awareness of the futility of over consuming. And, as regular followers of this blog can attest, we have been focusing on a more frugal lifestyle to curb this voracious appetite we had in us to buy buy buy every time we needed some "retail therapy" or whenever a little extra cash came our way.

We're not trying to sound self-righteous. Just making a point.

That man has a family and, although we don't know anything about him as a person, there is no person who deserves to die in the name of consumerism gone raging mob.

What is wrong with people? The mob was so focused on buying cheap consumer goods that they didn't notice or even care that a man was lying dead, literally, under their feet? Does this make anyone else sick to their stomaches? What has happened to us? What have we done to our minds that we believe this was an acceptable behavior? When did the attention to human life become so reduced for the sake of "getting the good stuff before it's all gone?" What have we done? Who are we becoming? What is wrong with us?

Over quoted probably, but ringing loudly in our ears today: "Be the change you want to see in the world." You don't have to subscribe to all the teachings of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi to understand that this is important in so many ways. Right now, to us, it means that we must change first. We have made the commitment this year to cut back on our consumerism and use what we have on hand rather than buy new. Fix it, mend it, make it ourselves. If we must buy it, try finding it used or free (LOVE Freecycle). When we must buy, look for goods that are produced in a sustainable matter. If none of the above works... see if we can do without.

In addition, this year for Christmas we have committed to making our gifts from what we already have rather than buying yet another gift that people may or may not need or want. Gift baskets full of canned goods, knitted dish cloths, hot pads, scarves and gloves and pj's Jason is making are in our plans for this year.

As with the rest of this journey we have taken along this two year path, we did it with one step at a time. It is true that a journey of 1000 miles starts with a single step. First you take one, then the next then the next. What step are you, our readers and friends, going to take first? Have you already taken the first step? If so, is it time for another step? Tell us here what commitment you are making or would like to make next in order to further the human journey toward a more frugal lifestyle and away from the mentality that murdered a fellow human being yesterday. What steps can you take? What advice do you have to offer those of us not as far down the path as you? Speak. Share your knowledge with us now so we can maybe spark some ideas amongst ourselves that will lead to a world where it is unacceptable for a man to die trying to fend off crazed shoppers. Help us become a planet where children and families are not exploited to produce cheaper and cheaper goods for corporate entities to market in our retail stores.

Speak. And end this mess. Help us see that there is hope out there. Speak.

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Preparations...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 11:23:00 +0000

Our little homemade family of five will be sitting down to one heck of a meal tomorrow. Jason has been baking bread and making sure everything is ready for our cooking extravaganza and three of our friends who can not travel this Thanksgiving will be joining our family table.

So far, we have a few loaves of bread and cranberry relish along with our homemade cranberry jelly for the turkey tomorrow (and for sandwiches the rest of the weekend... YUMM!!). *Post-publication addition!! Jason also made a pumpkin pie (you won't believe what he puts in his crust to make it PERFECTION!) that will be accompanied by an orange brandy whipped cream and a cheese cake flavored with chocolate and espresso. Had to come back and add those items to the list.* In addition...

THE MONSTER IS IN THE BRINE!! LOL Sorry about the dramatics but seriously... it's a 22 pound turkey... that's nuts. We are brining it in our ice chest for the next six hours then, right after we watch the parade, we'll take that bird out of its bath and prepare it for some heat! WOOHOO!!

Hope you all are having fun with your prep and, to all of our friends all over the world...

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

Don't worry... we'll be snapping pictures and including recipes for EVERYTHING we make tomorrow. But, for now, here is one recipe to hold you over:

Shannon's Cranberry Relish

I have made this for Thanksgiving for as long as I remember making my own Thanksgiving meals. It is, at this time of year, where even localvore, homesteader folks like ourselves allow ourselves a luxury item or two. In this case, Washington State is the second largest producers of cranberries in the country. How cool is that?!? I get to make my favorite condiment without going too far back to the commercial food grid.

The one pleasure we allow ourselves to add to our holiday meals is oranges. Hey... even Little House on the Prairie got an orange in their stockings! So, this is where our lovely friend the orange is focused in this meal.

One orange
1, 1/2 cup of cranberries
Hazelnuts

This is soooo simple...

Put the cranberries in the food processor.
Zest the orange. This is the part I LOVE doing. While you are running your zester along the orange, you will find your hands covered in the oil from the orange. After you have all the zest into the food processor, go splash a little water on your hands. Then, rub the fragrant oil all over your hands. Even tonight as I was knitting, I could smell the scent of oranges. mmmmm...
Next, throw in a few hazelnuts. I used about a dozen in my relish this year. A note about the nuts you use. We could not get any locally sourced walnuts this year so we used hazelnuts instead. Hazelnuts are grown here in Washington State and our source is just barely within our 100 mile requirement... whew... However, if you can get walnuts, go for it! The walnuts add a darker flavor to this relish and I would have used them had I been able to get them. However, hazelnuts are local and that's what we're using. The end result was a different flavor than previous years but still totally yuuuuumy!
Give everything a good whir in the food processor until the nuts and berries are chopped well. Then, get out your reamer and break open that orange you just zested. Work the orange over until it is dry to make sure you have enough liquid for your relish. Add the juice and any pulp that comes free into the food processor.
Pulse the mixture a few times to incorporate all of the ingredients then turn the whole shebang on low for about five seconds. This should give you a wonderful consistency that is not smooth by any means but all parts are evenly chopped fine.
Empty the contents into a dish and cover. Allow the relish to chill overnight in your fridge. This will also give the individual flavors to mingle a bit and really come out lovely the next day.

The color is wonderful, the fragrance is fantastic and it has just the right kick to accompany the rich foods you will be serving throughout your meal.

Now, I LOVE the dry, sour flavor of cranberries and the orange is usually enough for us to sweeten the relish sufficiently. However, if you have to have a little more sweet, you can add a little bit of sugar. NOT TOO MUCH!! Remember, these flavors are meant to be a little more sharp. If you want, the next morning, you can add a little sugar to it and put it over your hot cereal. Or, use it as an addition to your favorite muffin recipe. Personally, I can just about eat this stuff with a spoon and be happy.

Okay... that's enough for now. gotta be up in six hours to watch the parade then the National Dog Show!! WOOHOO!! Can you tell we love the holidays?? LOL

We'll post up some pictures tomorrow night. What all did YOU do tonight to get ready for your Thanksgiving meal? Any brilliant recipes you have for preparing the night before and either doing very little or nothing to the next day? Share 'em here! Tomorrow we'll put up a post and have everyone share their Thanksgiving menus with us.

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Market Day!! WOOHOO!! 11/23/08

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:00:00 +0000

You all know how much we love going to the farmers market on Sundays. To be more specific, we love going to the Ballard Farmers Market because we have grown to be friends with so many of the farmers. This Sunday was particularly exciting because it was our trip to pick up the fixin's for our Thanksgiving dinner.

We really enjoy sharing with our home with our friends and Thanksgiving signals the start of the holiday season for us. It's time to fling open the pantry doors and be thankful for the bounty the Earth has assisted us with this year and it's also time to be thankful for the farmers who worked so hard so we could have real, good food.

So, without further ado... We bring you Market Day for Sunday, November 23, 2008. Enjoy!

Starting on the left and moving across the table... by the way, please note Atlas trying to get into the picture from under the chair in the lower right hand corner. It's like a game of Where's Waldo.

Yes, that's one HUGE bag of carrots from Oxbow Farms. You'd have to taste them to understand why it seems perfectly reasonable to buy a seven pound bag of carrots. They are also fairly easy to store for a month or so in the fridge as long as you don't let a lot of moisture get to them. Besides, right now we're eating them like candy around here. In addition, they are a welcome addition to all of our soups, stews and casseroles right now.

Also from Oxbow Farms, one Long Island Cheese Pumpkin. Adam told us about this heirloom when we were looking for butternut squash. Says they make everything from pies to soups and anything else you can imagine. Apparently they are very versatile and we can't wait to try this beauty.

Whole, raw milk from Sea Breeze Farms on Vashon Island per our usual weekly purchase. Again, nothing goes better in my morning coffee and Jason just loves cooking with it.

Leeks from our little flower stand. No idea where they are from yet because they always just smile and nod. It's enough because there is still that connection. We'll find out who they are eventually and let you now.

Eggs from Skagit River Ranch. Yes, there was more than that from George and Eiko this week but we'll get to that later in this post. No scrolling down and peaking!! hehehe...

Garlic, yellow onions and brussel sprouts from our friends at Sidhu Farms. We're roasting the brussel sprouts for Thanksgiving and then tossing them with Jason's Free Berry Vinegar and feta cheese.

A few pounds of potatoes from Olsen Farms. Again, we are using the Viking Purple potatoes this week. Just a wonderful all-purpose potato that makes its way into most of our meals in one form or another.

River Valley Ranch feta and ricotta curds are in the little round tubs. Can't wait to see what Jason's going to do with the ricotta this week.

Lacinto Kale and Chard from Oxbow Farms as well. Jason cooked some of the kale up tonight with caramelized onions and garlic to accompany his famous meatloaf recipe. YUMM!!

Two jugs of cider and one heck of an overflowing box of apples. Of course where else could that have come from but Rockridge Orchards. Once again, Judy came through for us after a quick call on Saturday late afternoon. On Sunday we picked up our usual jugs of cider and that MOUND of apples destined to become more apple sauce, dried apples, apple butter and canned apples for pies and cobblers.

Here's another shot of the same table but this time Hera had to get in on the action from her usual perch on the arm of the couch. Such an attention hog... LOL

And here's the big catch of the day....

TAADAA!! From Skagit River Ranch... our 22 pound turkey. No, we don't really think we need a 22 pound turkey for Thanksgiving but we are looking more for the leftovers and the bones for broth. We decided my hand for perspective would help you all see exactly how huge it is. H-U-G-E!!!

And here was part of a serious coup from Skagit River Ranch... We called Betty and asked her to talk to Eiko. With the turkey coming, it turned our thoughts to broth and making stock. When we asked Betty to see if they could set aside some "ugly stuff" for us to make stock from. Lo and behold, we were met at the market with a HUGE bag of "ugly stuff" including these two pots of chicken necks...

We simply boiled the necks all day reducing the liquid and adding more until we had two pretty intense pots of the most incredible stock. One of the pots turned into dinner that night. Jason threw in some garlic, onions, carrots, a couple of potatoes then made some drop noodles. Some of you all might call them dumpling noodles.

Let me tell you... when he brought that to the table, it was the PERFECT meal. I went back for a second bowl later that night and had the other for lunch today. The only thing we'd do differently next time is we'd make more.

Right now, the rest of the stock is chilling in the fridge waiting to be canned tomorrow night. I don't think we've ever seen such rich broth and we're looking forward to using it this winter.

Other meat from Skagit River Ranch included some ground beef, ground pork, bacon, bacon ends and two packages of short ribs for braising.

Total bill for non-meat items was around $75. Our meat bill came to $165. Consider that was a 22 pound turkey, the eggs, two packages of ground beef, two packages of ground pork, three packages of sausage, bacon, bacon ends, two packages of short ribs and two very very large bags of chicken necks. You stock up when you can!

Please note: last week we did not go to the market and next weekend we only plan on going long enough to pick up milk and greens. We suspect we have enough meat to last us now for nearly a month.

It looks like we are reaching our goal of getting off the commercial food grid and even being able to survive without large weekly trips to the market. Mind you, that doesn't mean we won't go... remember, we actually like hanging out with these people and it is the relationships you build that actually make it possible for you to learn and benefit from supporting their farms.

Remember: NO FARMS NO FOOD!!

We hope these little trips through our weekly market purchases are helping you all see how accessible and affordable it can be to become a localvore. We're going to keep these updates going all Winter so feel free to ask questions and we'll give 'em a go! Looking forward to hearing from you!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

The Winter Jungle... The Tour

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 12:13:00 +0000

Farmer Jason preparing the soil for planting his cover crop of clover. Time to put the nutrients back into the soil for our tomatoes and some new guests arriving next Spring... gonna keep a lid on that one for now... hehehehe... you KNOW how we love a good teaser...

And here it is ladies and gentlefarmers... our sophisticated rain catching system. LOL Ain't it great?? The first time, it happened accidentally but now we do it on purpose and use hardly any water from our hose to water the row cover and pods. This will have to do until we get our actual rain barrel system in place. More on that little stroke of genius later as well... see... more teasers...

Cabbage

Purple Cabbage

Early Dividend Broccoli and... MORE Early Dividend Broccoli

Purple Cape Cauliflower

MORE broccoli...

And now we pause for some completely gratuitous pictures of one of our non-edibles. This was just too stunning to not shoot. This is our Smoke Bush all decked out in the garb of Fall.

Back to the edibles...

Rainbow Chard, Volunteer Garlic and Kale. Everything here has been off to a slower start than we anticipated. Thinking we need to start these about a month earlier next year... live and learn...

Second seeding of Chard. Kinda spindly... we're planning on putting in a row cover to help these along a little.

And now under the French Chenille

Snow Peas lookin' gorgeous inside their row cover a la Francaise.

The Shallots are coming!! The Shallots are coming!!

Happy Happy Broccoli... in DESPERATE need of thinning. Guess we'll be having some young greens to munch on this week... YUMM!!

Looking out over the broccoli into the back of the cover, all of that green carpeting you see there is beets, beets and more beets then Chinese Cabbage.

And this is one of the alien Pods with its cover drawn back to reveal purple bunching onions. These are going to be yummy in our greens about the end of December or January.

More gratuitous Fall color. This time on an edible... our strawberries go out in a blaze of glory and, just when we think they are finished...

The new growth starts from the root stock. These will be divided up and put into other pots for next year's berries.

And, finally, a few shots panning around the garden. We think you'll find it's quite a difference from The Summer Jungle.

The Western Wall. Lots of herbs still chugging along and those green vines in the back (and some of them not so green!) are the last planting of fresh beans still kicking out some tender little morsels.

More fresh herbs along the Northwest Wall as well as the last of the second planting of beans. You can see the top of one of the pods in this picture. That particular one has garlic in it.

South Wall with more herbs at the base of the pear tree. You can see the potato condo now and onion tower with Walla Walla Sweets and yellow onions. The two pods on the ground are garlic (uncovered and almost out of frame) and salad greens. These little pods are really turning into a great little tool in changing over to a four-seasons garden.

More pods with onions and garlic.

Yes, this is our first tour of The Winter Jungle and we couldn't be happier with it so far. It looks like we'll definitely be building another row cover of some sort to help boost things along that aren't growing as quickly. More updates as the Winter Jungle here at the Shibaguyz Micro-Farm unfolds. Thanks for coming along on this inaugural tour!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

The-Cake-That-Must-Not-Be-Named

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:22:00 +0000

Okay... it's time to come clean...

We are The Shibaguyz and... it's true... we like Fruit Cake! Yes, the seasonal cake with the name akin to the evil character in a certain book about a certain young wizard. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named... The-Cake-That-Must-Not-Be-Named. But, despite all that, we love it... and we're going to share with you the reason why we do. And we'll even name it!

This is the recipe Jason's mother, Kay, has handed down to us from his Great Grandma Hoyt. We're sharing it with you this early because it takes 30 days to complete. You will NOT want to use this as a door stop... or to anchor your boat... and it will not be around after the only life remaining on Earth is cockroaches. Believe us, it will not last that long. And, again, remember this takes 30 days to complete so get yourself started now. You're gonna love it!

So... without further ado... we present to you a family heirloom as sent to us from Jason's Mother as sent to her from his Aunt Irene. We will name the cake and it is:

Great Grandma Hoyt's Applesauce Fruit Cake

Prepare the following candied fruits to stand 12 hours or longer before mixing cake.

Lemon peel 6 oz
Orange peel 3 oz
citron 6 oz
pineapple 9oz
cherries 6 oz
(or substitute l lb candied fruit and 1/2 cup
candied pineapple for these fruits)
raisins 8 oz
golden raisins 8 oz
walnuts 8 oz
pecans 8oz
brandy 4 oz

Cut fruit and nuts not too fine and add brandy and let stand overnight

Crisco 1/2 C
White sugar 1 C
Brown Sugar 1C
Eggs 2
Vanilla l tsp
Salt 1/8 tsp
Cinnamon 1 tsp
nutmeg or mace 1/4 tsp
soda 2 tsp
applesauce 2 1/2 C
Flour 3 C

Cream crisco and sugar add eggs beat well add flour, spices and vanilla. Mix soda in warm unsweetened applesauce add to flour mixture. Mix in the fruit,bake in greased floured angelfood cake pan (10 inch) that has a 3 inch collar added to the top at 350 for 2 hrs. or until done. Put a pan of water in bottom oven for glaze on top of cake.. When cake is well cooled wrap in layers of cheese cloth wet in brandy and store in closed container in a cool place. Keep cloth moist until you are ready to eat. 30 days or so.

My comments: You could leave the citron out and add more cherries and pineapple. I hate citron. It's what makes fruit cake taste funny. You get to figure out times for smaller pans of this. Shouldn't be to hard. Test with a tooth pick for doneness.

We agree with Mom that citron is definitely out... unless you like the way that stuff tastes. We do not so we follow her advice.

We're starting ours this week and serving it the week of Christmas and New Years. It might even end up in our gift baskets. Try it... Enjoy!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

End All Oxtail Stew

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 11:50:00 +0000

Our next recipe comes from sheer hunger and the continuous urge of a frugal household to use the odds and ends in our kitchen. That's why we call it...

End All Oxtail Stew

1 oxtail
six cups of water
carrots
onions
garlic
potaotes
apples
rosemary
savory
thyme
green beans
peanut oil
red wine
salt
pepper

This is a true heart warmer... not to mention a kitchen warmer. From the searing of the tail pieces to the final simmer, this will become a fast favorite the first time you give it a go. In no time, you'll be chowing down on this, our second, frugal recipe.

We choose peanut oil because of its tolerance of high heats. When it comes to the start of this recipe, high heat is exactly what we are looking for. Just put enough oil in the bottom of your soup pot to coat it evenly without a lot of free standing liquid. Get the oil HOT and your splatter guard at the ready. When the oil is at the sizzle point, drop the tail pieces into the hot oil all at once then cover them with the splatter guard. Next, wield your tongs and turn the now browning pieces to ensure a quick sear on all sides. BE CAREFUL OF THE SPLATTER!!

What you are doing now is sealing off the outside of the meat to make sure it retains its juices rather than slowly loosing them during the cooking resulting in dry meat. Yuck. Also, this intense heat starts to melt the connective tissue under the meat. This will add a ton of flavor to the next step. To ensure a solid sear, don't turn the meat too often. Simply put it on one side, wait for the browning to occur, turn, wait, turn wait until all sides are browned thoroughly.

The final result of the searing will be a more appetizing appearance and texture to the meat after the braising process. Mushy meat = nasty.

While the meat is searing, throw in two large onions and two heads of garlic. Let them brown up in the meat juices that are caramelizing on the bottom of your soup pot. Here comes the good part. Remove the pot from the heat and start adding red wine to the pan. Begin scraping all of those little brown bits off the bottom of the pot with a spatula or spoon. Keep adding wine a little at a time until you have liberated all of this browned goodness and mingled it with the liquid. What you will have after a few minutes and some elbow grease is the base for your stew. It should be a rich, dark brown-ish red with a sheen on the top.

When you get here, start chucking in all of your potatoes, carrots, green beans and... well... anything else you have laying around the pantry. We used two cored apples in this to add a little sweetness to the savory. Also at this point, put in your fresh or dried herbs. Since we were simmering this for a looong time, we used our dried herbs we've been harvesting all summer and saving. For this recipe, we used rosemary, savory and thyme.

Here's what it looks like at this stage in the game...

You can see the well browned meat as well as the large chunks of veggies and fruits... YUMM!!

Here's a close up just in case you weren't hungry enough already! hehehehehe...

Finally, add about six cups of water or whatever your pot will hold. Again, we've made a pretty potent mixture up to this point so it will definitely stand up to the water without becoming diluted.

Here you can make one of two choices. These oxtails need to be allowed to cook for a long period of time to soften the connective tissue and make them soft and sweet. Also, the marrow of the bones will add such rich flavor to your stew you don't want to miss out on any of it. So... either bring this to a boil then reduce to a simmer and let it set for a couple of hours or do what we did...

We are big fans of the pressure cooker so we threw on the lid and let 'er go for about 45 minutes. We know from your comments on earlier posts, some of you are a little phobic about pressure canning and cooking so the slow method is just fine as well. We just happened to have worked on the garden and been at the market all day and forgot to eat so we were in a little more of a hurry to get to the end product. And, we can honestly say, there is no difference in the resulting product. Flavor, texture, color... all wonderful either way.

So... while that was hissing away on the stove, Jason ran out to grab some more Stone Buhr Flour for his weekly baking and I got creative. As an accompaniment to our End All Oxtail Stew, I decided to make a mash that would hold up to the bold flavors of this rich stew. Improvising with what we had laying around, I came up with this recipe that will now be featured at our Thanksgiving Local Harvest Meal...

Shibaguyz Mish-Mash

One small Hubbard Squash
Three medium potatoes (We used Viking Purples)
Thee cored apples
One Celeriac
Milk or Cream
Butter
Salt... VERY LITTLE IF ANY!!

Once you try this mash, you will have a hard time going back to the traditional fall mash of the past. And talk about simple!!

Preheat your oven to about 350.

Cut your Hubbard in quarters. Remember, this is one of the little guys. You can see in the picture below the size in perspective with the standard sized baking sheet the quarters are placed on.

Core the apples and leave the skins on

Half up or quarter your potatoes

Peal the celeriac and cut it into chunks

Arrange everything on a baking sheet like so...

Place in your oven to bake for about 30 - 45 minutes. If you time this right, you'll be able to have the mash finished at exactly the moment your pressure cooker stops hissing and the little valve pops down telling you your creation is ready for consumption!

Using a spoon, remove the Hubbard from the softened skins and throw everything else into a large mixing bowl or your Cuisinart. We recommend the Cuisinart because this stuff is not easy to mash at first. Let the machine do your work. Slowly add butter and milk or cream to the mash. But be careful not to add too much. Let the mash work around and absorb the liquid before adding any more. For this recipe, you'll want a thicker, more dense mash. If you want a smoother mash, add more liquid. You'll see why we used tighter mash this time. Now... before adding salt... taste. We didn't use ANY salt in ours. This was the most flavorful mash we have ever come up with and we felt like it didn't need anything to make it perfection.

Now, grab the largest soup bowl you can get away with and not look ridiculous... LOL just kidding... go for the HUGE one!!

Ladle in your End All Oxtail Stew then... wait for it... put a big ol' dab of the Shibaguyz Mish Mash right on top of the stew... thus the need for a big bowl.

The result... TAADAA!!

STOP LICKING YOUR COMPUTER SCREEN!! LOL Yes, it was a good as it looked. The mash went very well in the stew making for the perfect sweet/savory accompaniment to the rich stew. Use your spoon to get a little of the mash and a little of the stew and go to town. You will NOT be sorry you tried this.

Plus... how easy was that?? This is going to be a staple here in our house for the winter. Eiko from Skagit River Ranch thinks it's funny that we will eat these cuts of meat that only she and her family will eat. She can't give this stuff away to other people. That's fine with us... although... now that the secret is out... hhhmmmm... oh well... plenty of oxtail to go around!!

Try it, enjoy it, and let us know what you think. We'd love to hear variations on this as well. Thanks for coming back for another in our series of Cookin' With The Shibaguyz! And yes, Mom (Jason's Mom), we think a cookbook would be a good idea too... we're working on it... hehehehe...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Frugal Soup

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 08:30:00 +0000

This week in the Shibaguyz kitchen it was all about warmth and comfort food. It was also about seeing just how far we could make our food dollars stretch. We have no shame in stating loud and clear that we are frugal in the truest sense of the word.

From the dictionary application on our Mac:

Frugal

adjective

sparing or economical with regard to money or food: he led a remarkably frugal existence. See note at economical.
simple and plain and costing little: a frugal meal.

From Wikipedia:

Frugality

Frugality is the practice of

acquiring goods and services in a restrained manner, and
resourcefully using already owned economic goods and services, to
achieve a longer term goal.

Okay... we'll take that... and that brings up another point... but that will have to wait for another post.

The point is, regardless of the state of the economy or how that has impacted you, there ain't nuttin' wrong with using what you have to it's fullest potential. We'll be exploring this further here on our blog in future posts as we feel very strongly that there is much to be learned from living a more frugal lifestyle.

This week we focused our frugality on our meals seeing just how far we could stretch a week's worth of market shopping. Using everything we had in the pantry, fridge and freezer along with the items from the market, we did what every cook in the past has done... we made soups and stews. In these two posts, we're featuring two of our recipes guaranteed to please both tummy and wallet.

First is our...

Chunky Potato Leek Soup

1/4 cup of butter
One quart of chicken stock
two pounds of potatoes
three or four cups of water
six medium sized leaks
garlic
about one half pint of cream
thyme
salt
pepper

Keeping in mind that chickens are not readily available fresh this time of year if you are buying from a sustainably run farm, while chickens are abundant, it would be wise to make your stock ahead of time and freeze or can it for use later. Or just throw a few of the fresh chickens into the freezer and defrost later. If you don't have a stock stockpile (that was funny... right??), or if your preferences lean toward a vegetarian lifestyle, you can always make some veggie stock. Either way, you'll need one quart of stock for this recipe. First thing's first though...

Butter... and don't be skimpy! Yeah, yeah... but if you are eating a BALANCED, varied and seasonal diet, you won't be using so much butter all the time. I mean really... 64,473,140-ish French people can't be wrong (thank you Wiki)... so just put in the butter 1/4 cup to be precise.

Melt the butter slowly in the bottom of your soup pot. Remember that real butter can scorch without all of the other oils in it so slowly is the key word here. While your butter is melting over a low heat, prep your leeks.

Begin by cutting down the length of the leek to split it in half, then cut those lengths again so you now have long quarters. Sorry... no pics of the prep process for this one so you'll have to visualize them for yourself. Now cut those longer strips into about two inch pieces. Once the leeks are cooked into the soup, they don't break down completely so you'll want the smaller pieces like this so you don't have a "stringy" soup.

If you like, chop the tops of the leeks for garnish or keep them for tossing in with your braising mix of chard and kale later in the week. If you are lucky enough to be growing tender greens under a cloche or cold frame, they are great in a fresh salad as well.

By now your butter is melted and you can add the leeks and garlic. How much garlic? It depends on how strong your garlic is. In this case, we're not trying to make a garlic flavor come through but adding three cloves seems to enhance the flavor of the leeks without covering them up. Give them a rough chop and toss 'em in with the leeks into the hot butter.

Turn up the heat a bit but not enough to caramelize your leeks. You just want them to soften up. If you get them steaming too much, they will turn to mush and have a horrid consistency. Remember that you are cooking in a deep pot not a shallow pan. The steam created by the butter and the liquid in the leeks will turn the leeks goopy if you leave them alone in there too long. Instead, right when they start to release their liquids and soften a bit, add the stock.

Depending on how cooked down your stock is (and how big your soup pot is!) you'll add up to four cups of water. You can use more stock and less water but definitely no less stock or the merits of your stock will not be realized in the final product. And, let's face it, you worked long and hard to get your stock flavor JUUUUUST right... don't water it down too much so the care and attention you put into it is wasted. That said, if you cooked down your stock to a dense consistency, adding the four cups of water won't hurt at all. In addition, it will ensure you have plenty of leftovers for lunches and/or freezing. Ours never lasts long enough to freeze but if you are as busy as we are, it's great to just reach in the freezer and grab a container for lunch that day.

While you bring this to a simmer, cut your potatoes into nice sized chunks. We used Binjte potatoes upon the recommendation of our friend from Olsen Farms. She was very specific about this variety as it holds up well to being cooked without getting too mealy or breaking down to mush. Oh, and don't peel them. Clean the skins well cut 'em up and pop 'em right in the pot. The skins of this potato cooked to soft without sliding off the flesh during cooking. If you aren't a fortunate to have such a fantastic potato resource, use what they have but either test a piece in boiling water or just peel them and feed the scraps to your composting worms. The last thing you want in your soup is a bunch of tough, floating potato peels so err on the safe side.

Bring everything up to a boil. Now is thyme time (again... funny, right??). We're using some fresh still in our cooking but in this case we used one sprig of the dried harvest we talked about in a recent post. Just strip tiny leaves off and throw them in. Naturally dried herbs that haven't had heat used on them to dehydrate them (heat = cooking, air = drying) reconstitute very nicely and thyme adds a wonderful flavor to this soup. Again, use a little more if you like but no less.

Add about one pint of cream at this point. In truth, we just poured off the top of our milk jug since we buy our milk from Sea Breeze Farms and it is whole, raw milk. The cream really does rise to the top! Again, if you don't have that resource, buy the cream separately.

Once the pot is boiling, turn it down to a good simmer, add your salt and pepper to taste then kick back for a while... about 30 or 45 minutes to be more specific. Just depends on how long it takes your potatoes to soften up and that depends on how chunky you made your chunks. Yes, we use a lot of words like "about" and "that depends" in our recipes. That's because, honestly, we just make it up as we go along. Sometimes we have a basic model to follow as in the case of this soup but we adjust everything as we go along according to our own tastes and how it looks. Both of us being raised in kitchens where the cooks measured by handfuls and pinches made us this way... and we like it just fine... it leaves room for creativity and experimentation.

Keep tasting as the pot simmers to see if you want to add more salt, pepper or herbs. Adding a little at a time over the entire cooking process will keep you from adding too much of an herb or spice. You can always add seasonings but you can NOT take them out... to state the obvious...

Finally, remove about two cups of soup from your pot... potatoes and all... and blend it all up in your food processor or with a blending wand. This makes a wonderful creamy consistency and, when added back to your simmering pot, enriches the texture of your soup without using too much cream. This is a good trick for stretching your budget a little more we both learned. Cream can be expensive and we don't want to skim it all off our milk because that's what makes it so great in my coffee and in our other cooking. S-T-R-E-T-C-H!!

Note: Some folks like to blend the entire pot but we like the more chunky texture of our soup so we don't... you can try it both ways and see what you like best.

And here it is...

I'm tellin' ya... totally yummy... here you can see the chunked potatoes, the leeks and the little thyme leaves. It is very satisfying and warms back up well the next day at work for lunch.

Stay tuned for our next post. More frugality to come! And, obviously we aren't starving ourselves in the process! LOL

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

The Letter...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 09:28:00 +0000

You know what it feels like... you lay awake all night waiting... anticipating. It's like Christmas Eve or the night before your birthday. The anticipation is nearly unbearable. It's been that way around here for over a month.

Then...

Finally...

I guess there wasn't any need to be TOO anxious yet. They said there would be a decision by the 15th and that is tomorrow... well... today since it's 1:30am. I guess I had just kind of given up on any good news. Still, there was always one more day. Generally I tried not to think about it too much.

Then...

Finally...

I mean really... I am qualified, we wrote up a complete application with good references. We didn't exaggerate and Jason helped me remember all the pertinent dates and events. Why shouldn't there be a letter??

The thing is... If you don't make it, they just don't say anything. No letter. No call. No nothing. So there is just the waiting.

Then...

Finally...

Tonight, Jason came walking into the studio with a grin on his face. I was working with a student so he stood on the edge of the floor and held up an envelope to me. The logo on the envelope was from Washington State University.

I remember getting significant letters in my life. My first college acceptance letter. Scholarship letters. The letter that brought our marriage certificate. All significant letters.

This one was significant for sure.

When we started on this journey nearly two years ago, we dreamed that something better was coming into our lives but we just didn't know what that something was. All it takes is a quick look through the posts on this blog to know how that dream took shape. The form that dream took. We've always been good at watching and waiting for the right moments and walking through the doors as they open.

Finally...

Classes start in January so watch this space for the chronicles of the newest member of the class of 2009.

"Congratulations! On behalf of the Washington State University Extension Master Gardener's Program..." I didn't get much further than that.

WOOHOO!!

WOO-FRIGGIN-HOO!!

NO FARMS NO FOOD!! A day of activism at the farmers market.

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 08:00:00 +0000

This week's market report is brought to you by cheese! Yes, cheese... we splurged... what can I say. As you will soon see, we were seduced by the comfort food of fall. On this week's list of items we added four different cheeses and a fillet of smoked salmon... YUMM!!

So, without further ado... In no particular order...

Squash: Our stock up on the winter's supply of squash continues. Our friends at Oxbow Farm were, once again, our main supplier of great squash. The light yellow rind you see belongs to a spaghetti squash and the gorgeous dark green is an acorn squash. The acorn is one we have not tried before but the folks at Oxbow Farm have never steered us wrong so we're going to give it a try.

Napa Cabbage: Also from Oxbow, we really enjoy the milder flavor of this cabbage for stir fry or just eating plain as a salad. It has a sweet flavor to it with just a hint of the bite typically found in cabbage. And, while we enjoy a good ol' traditional cabbage, we were looking for something to throw in that cast iron wok we picked up at a yard sale this summer for $2.00.

Jason made that stir fry tonight with some leeks, the Napa Cabbage, orange and purple carrots, garlic (only one head this time LOL), broccoli and some soy sauce. He used country-style spare ribs from Skagit River Ranch sliced into thin strips then tossed into the hot wok. Smell that first thing when you walk in the door after a 12 hour work day and see if you don't experience instant euphoria!

Great big yellow onions, brussel sprouts and cauliflower: This batch came from our friends at Sidhu Farms. It was good to see Chet back at the stand again this week. He always greets us with a smile and calls out "hello, my friends!" Sometimes it really is good to go where everybody knows your name... and, while we aren't exactly Norm, these friends are the best kind to have. Chet loaded us up with those beautiful brussel sprouts and searched through his overflowing boxes of cauliflower until he came up with this gem of a vegetable pictured here to the right of the colander. And those onions... just about drove us both out of the kitchen when I chopped them up for chili that night. What flavor! The brussel sprouts are something I always look forward to. We roast them in the oven then toss them with our own raspberry vinegar and feta cheese. YUMM!!

By the way, that raspberry vinegar we started making the beginning of this summer is now rich and thick to the point of tasting like an aged balsamic. It goes well in salads and is incredible for reconstituting dried fruits and boiling down for reduction sauces for meats... just thought we'd mention that... hehehehe...

Leeks and Bok Choy - This is from our flower vendors again. The sister was there this time and she never speaks at all. She just smiles brightly and nods when we hand her our money. We picked these up with the thought of soup or another stir fry. Not sure why we had stir fry on the brain this week.

... and here comes the rain/wind storm they were predicting for tonight... As I'm writing this post, Jason has fallen asleep, as have the Shibaboyz and Hera the Cat, and the rain is pounding away on the roof and our sky light. What a gorgeous sound... just had to share that with you...

Viking Purple Potatoes: From Olsen Farms, this is our usual weekly potato stop. And, as we have mentioned in previous posts, the source for our Potato Condo in habitants next year. Our potato lady also told us they would have special treats for the Shibaboyz next week they have been working on for the past several weeks. We'll keep you posted on that as well.

Peppers: Both hot and mild, we stopped off at Alvarez Farms to pick up a few pounds of peppers. We've been drying our peppers for a special project we will let you in on next weekend. The little red and green round ones taste just like the sweetest bell pepper you've ever had. The purple ones are supposed to have the same heat as a jalapeno... they don't... but they looked good in our tomatillo salsa we made.

Yes, sad but true the last of the tomatillos from our garden are gone. But don't they look great in this salsa!

The purple and green tomatillos were roasted under a high broiler along with a head of peeled garlic cloves. After turning the fruit once, the skins started to crack and darken to a nice char. Scrap the entire pan into a blender. We added a purple pepper, some long, green pepper that looked like it should have been scary hot but only added a flavorful heat to the dish. Finally, we added a bright red poblano to the party and whirred the whole concoction around until we had a chunky consistency. Served warm, this is great for dipping or, my new favorite, adding is to my chili... talk about YUMM!!

Garlic: We bought more garlic?? Go figure. When our recipes are measured in heads of garlic and not cloves... it's a wonder we ever have enough to last the winter.

Cider and Tayberry Wine: From Judy at Rock Ridge Orchards, we were able to make off with one more 1/2 gallon of Honey Crisp cider and a small bottle of her newest wine creation. While we have had both their blackberry and spiced blackberry wines, Judy assured us we would be hooked on the Tayberry immediately. To report on it, the wine is a little too sweet for my taste. Jason, on the other hand, loved it. My cocktail of choice was recommended by Judy. You mix a splash (or two) of the Tayberry wine with a glass of cider and you get what she calls a snake bite. Very tasty indeed! Please note the bottle is not completely full... you were right Judy... we're hooked!

... and now for the indulgences...

Cheese!

First, setting on top of the onions in a brown, butcher paper wrapper is one of our favorite hard cheeses from Sea Breeze farms. Their Vache de Vashon has a sharp, nutty flavor to it and grates like a good parmesan. We use in mainly in pastas and on soups to give them a little punch. Great cheese.

Next, there is a lone tub of mozzarella from River Valley Ranch Cheeses. Not cow or goat curds this week... oh well... that's how the farmers markets are. You eat what they produce that week. Believe us when we tell you, this mozzarella is wonderful. hhhmmm... maybe we'll just learn ow to make our own... hhhh... I'm seeing another project in the making!! LOL

Finally, there are three cheese just to the right of the cauliflower. These are three of our favorite cheeses at the market and they come from Mt. Townsend Creamery. Talk about some great cheeses! We really went overboard this week and picked up a Sea Stack (it was on sale!!), the Trailhead and one lovely container of Fromage Blanc. This last one goes really well on Jason's homemade bread with jam or fresh fruit. You have GOT TO stop by and sample these folk's cheeses. Definitely a treat for us.

Our last indulgence of the week was a smoked salmon fillet. Flavored with brown sugar and garlic, this is, indeed a splurge treat for us. Provided by Loki Fish Company from here in Seattle, we just couldn't resist the free samples this week and we gave in to their temptation. The final destination for this salmon is tossed with garlic and cream over bow tie pasta (homemade) with broccoli and chard. Good lord these posts make me hungry!!

Not pictured? My usual 1/2 gallon of raw milk from Sea Breeze Farms and the THREE POUNDS of peanuts we purchased from Alvarez Farms. Seriously... do you KNOW what three pounds of peanuts looks like... really... Just in time too. We used all but the very last of our peanut butter from last week in the chili for this week. Guess it's time to get out the food processor again!! WOOHOO!!

So there you have it...

Also not pictured was our meat purchase for the week from Skagit River Ranch. We got off REALLY easy there this week. We purchased three packages of ground beef, three packages of sausages and another roast. The total only came to $35 dollars. That is the LEAST amount of money we have ever left behind at George and Eiko's stand! This Saturday morning we received a call bright and early from Betty at Skagit River Ranch telling us our turkey would be at the market for pick up the Sunday before Thanksgiving. WOOHOO!! I asked her how big it would be and she said she didn't know because they hadn't butchered them yet. We can hardly wait!! More on that one next week though.

All told, with the stocking up on cheese and extra extravagance of the smoked salmon, we spent $97 this week plus the $35 at Skagit River Ranch on meat. Still not a bad haul!!

Again, our point in posting the foods we purchase weekly from the farmers markets along with the ways we use them, it just our way of showing that this localvore lifestyle is not difficult at all. Also, it's completely affordable. No added fuel costs for shipping the produce or processing and shipping the meats. No pesticides or GMO to worry about while we sit down to dinner. All in all, we're pleased with what we get and the cost.. and, yes, we're on a budget just like the rest of you so it's not like we have cash to burn laying around. Anyone with an average income can do this!

Oh... what about the activism?? It is the strong believe by a lot of folks we know that growing your own food and living from a local, sustainable source goes against supporting the corporate food monster that is not to subtly eating away at a way of life that is better for us, better for our local economy, better for the environment and better for our communities. This simply act of refusing to buy irradiated meat and vegetables is a simple act of defiance. That's where the activism comes in... and here all this time you thought we were just buying and eathing yummy food!! LOL

We'll keep posting these market days until people stop making the statement about how hard it is to cook seasonally and how difficult it is to find food they like at the farmers markets. We have to learn that our food comes from one valid place: the family farm. If it were not for these family farmers, we would all be up a crick for trustworthy, organic produce, dairy and meats. If these folks go away, what will we have left?? Tell us... what will we do when/if the commercialized food system in this country can no longer support itself? What happens when the land just gives up and won't produce anymore? What happens if we let the rampant use of pesticides and GMO's infect our water supply and our bodies? What will be left?? The small family farmer. Then we'll all have to step up and eat our lawns. Remember folks NO FARMS NO FOOD!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

GROSS!!

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 16:54:00 +0000

YOU MUST READ THIS POST!! Furthermore, make sure everyone you know reads this post. Then, ask your local markets and the FDA to look into this on their own.

We have never done one of those posts where we just put in the information from some news story or posted about someone else's post. However, we're going to break form here and direct you to an online article recently written here by one of our local Seattle affiliates. Jason ran across this yesterday morning and told me about it. Now, we pass it along to you to do some investigating for yourself.

Click here to go to the story.

While we are not 100% behind the way the information is presented and we would like to see more extensive testing done from a broader research base (good scientific method you know), this is still something to consider very seriously. Further, it is something to demand more testing be done on and something to demand more extensive information on.

This does not affect us here in casa Shibaguyz because we buy ALL of our meats from Skagit River Ranch and trust their handling and processing completely. However, people are getting sick and dying from this and that's just unacceptable (as is the loss of any life) in a technological age when we can prevent it.

So... read the article, do some questioning of your own. Get some answers. Or, follow what we and so many other localvores have done and buy local from a small family farm that you know and trust. And if you don't know any of those... get to know them! If these types of incidences keep occurring (as we believe they will), those family farms and your backyard are going to be the only safe place to get food. NO FARMS NO FOOD!

If we sound like alarmists... it's because there is an alarm going off people. We've been hearing this from our televisions and radios a lot lately: It's time for a change. And, if there is to be a change, it must start with each one of us. One consumer at a time. One purchase at a time. We can make a difference. (Dare we say it... yup, we will) YES WE CAN!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Farmers Market Day Report for November 2nd, 2008

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 18:46:00 +0000

My that title sounds official! LOL Don't worry... we're not going to start taking ourselves that seriously. And if we ever do, we would hope that you, our wonderful readers, would remind us to chill out!

Nope, today is all about the ongoing quest for fresh, local foods on our weekly foraging trips to the farmers market. We've decided this is a good way to give you all a little more perspective on just how easy it is to eat locally and seasonally. The traditional arguments against a localvore lifestyle are usually about price and lack of knowing what to do with the seasonal items one may not have used before. Since we're all about promoting our local farmers (Remember: NO FARMS NO FOOD!), we'll keep up on posting what we are buying from the farmers markets and how we are using it.

Sunday is our market day with both the West Seattle and the Ballard Farmers Markets being our places of choice. We only use the West Seattle market when we get up to late or are just too lazy to go to Ballard. We live in West Seattle so it would make sense to attend that market more often but we do not agree with many of their policies regarding vendor selection and dogs... but we won't rant about that again in this post. Unless we are just picking up two or three items for that week, you can find us in our primo market of choice: The Ballard Farmers Market... and Sunday was no exception to that fact.

This is where all of our favorite vendors can be found. In our two years of living la vida localvore, we have come to be friends with many of the farmers and usually spend two hours or more at the market browsing stalls and chatting with the farmers about just about anything under the sun. If you are ever in Seattle on a Sunday, the Ballard Farmers Market is the best place to go visit. The atmosphere is vibrant and exciting with the feel of a festival more than just a farmers market. There is music playing and people stopping to listen or just chat with each other. And the regulars often stop to chat like old friends even though they may not have any connection other than their love of local food and the desire to support their local food producers. They too hold the mantra in their hearts of NO FARMS NO FOOD and that draws us all together as a unique community of people.

So enough waxing romantic about the joys of our favorite Sunday market... on to the tally for this week!

Coming in at around $85, today was definitely a stocking up day. We are mainly eating the remaining fresh produce from our own garden now and supplementing that with the canned and frozen preserves from this summer. What you see here are a few items to be used fresh as well as items mostly for using throughout the winter. In no particular order, here they are:

Honey - Rock Ridge Orchard is still our producer of choice for the best local honey. We started buying from Judy and Wade for their wonderful cider and spiced wine that first winter two years ago. The honey became the staple sweetener in our diets as a result of cutting back on refined sugars and high fructose corn sweeteners. No, those stupid propaganda commercial where the praises of high fructose corn sweeteners are touted have not worked on us. We still feel very strongly that the production of this type of crop is one of the main reasons for the collapse of the small family farmers that used to feed this entire country just fine. BAH!! Don't get us started on the desperate brainlessness of these commercials. It just goes to show that the work we all are doing to spread the word about healthy, local eating is starting to work... the big boys are scared and they're starting to fight back. They had better be scared... gggrrrr...

*ahem*

*end of rant... for now*

Rock Ridge Orchard, honey... got it... Jason uses this honey in all of his baking rather than using refined processed sugars so we keep stocked up on it year round. And it's great on toast! LOL And it keeps from feeding the slimy maw of the evil corporate food machine! NO FARMS NO FOOD!! *sorry, couldn't hold that one in*

Cider - also from Rock Ridge Orchard and the original reason we fell in love with them. Return your jugs for a dollar discount and take the time to have a chat with Wade or Judy. They are both fantastic people with a wealth of knowledge. We've learned so much from listening to the advice of our farming friends that we're not sure where we'd be without them all. Judy has, more than once, offered us advice on fertilizer, pest control and the types of crops that grow best in our climate.

We use the cider for sipping hot or cold. Jason and I both enjoy a warm cup of spiced cider with bourbon or dark rum added to accompany the winter rains of our beloved Seattle. Also, I really enjoy what we have affectionately come to name "Juicy Tea." This is a blend of iced green tea with cider. With the ciders made from apples and berries, this is a refreshing pick me up any time of day or night.

Seasonally, the ingredients in the cider changes so we always have at least two varieties in the house to suit our needs. Free samples are always available and the Rock Ridge stall looks a lot like a wine tasting with people flocking around and discussing the merits of each different variety.

Apples - again from our friends at Rock Ridge Orchard. Mind you, she does not sell her apples as a normal cash crop and will not take business away from the other farmers who do sell their apples as their main source of income. This was a case of begging and pleading on our part because of our lack of a source for mass quantities of apples for preserving this year. As a result of knowing her and buying from her every week, we can get a little favor in here and there. Thanks again, Judy, you certainly know your apples and these are no exception to that rule.

Delicata, Hubbard and Sugar Pie Squash - these are from another of our favorite, knowledgeable vendors at Oxbow Farm. Adam and Luke are the usual inhabitants of the Ballard Farmers Market stall and they really know their stuff.

Pictured here are the squash we scored from them this week. We have seen the delicata squash (the yellow stripy one) before but never knew what to do with it. There were tons of them and they were cheap cheap cheap so we asked Luke what to do with them. He enthusiastically not only sang the highest praises we have ever heard for a squash, but then delved into how to prepare it in such a simple way that we couldn't help but pick up a couple to try this week. If all goes well, these will go in the pantry for storage and use throughout the winter.

The small, blue squash in the back is a Hubbard. Traditionally, you will see these as huge suckers suitable for cooking up and freezing the leftovers for later use. These, however, are the perfect size for a meal for two. And, since they are smaller, easier to store over winter. Gotta love the convenience of that!

Finally there is the Sugar Pie pumpkin squash. What a little marvel these are! In the past, we have purchased the traditionally larger pumpkins, baked them up, then frozen the leftovers for use in pies, cakes and soups later. This past weekend, Jason was making a cake to take to a party and we baked up one of these little guys for use in the recipe. We cut it into four sections and baked it in the oven. The house was filled with the aroma of sweet, nutty pumpkin and it was hard not to eat it all right away when I peeled the roasted rind from the flesh. Hardly any sugar went into the resulting mash to complete the pumpkin portion of Jason's cake. Just a little bit of sour cream and we were good to go. I would even eat this freshly roasted and scoop it right out of the shell as a side dish.

A last word in praise of the Sugar Pie... seeds. We obtained an entire tray of seeds for roasting from this one little pumpkin! One of my favorite side benefits to cooking any type of squash is roasting the seeds afterward and these did not disappoint. The seeds were plump and plentiful and very easy to clean from the stringy mush housing them. Ten minutes on a cookie sheet and we had a treat to be enjoyed for the entire winter.

Leeks - I am embarrassed to say that we only have a casual acquaintance with this vendor. He runs a flower stand with the most gorgeous, gigantic bouquets for sale every week. He speaks broken english and our lack any knowledge of the Chinese language makes communication difficult. However, he is the man responsible for our obsession earlier this year with Chinese spinach. YUMM!! That reminds me... gotta put that one on the list for planting.

Onions, cauliflower and broccoli - All from our friends at Sidhu Farms, we count on their abundant supply of these as well as brussel sprouts to get us through the winter months. Onions are a staple around our house and we stock up on them while we can, drying some and banking on the storing abilities of the farmers to supply us with them throughout the winter. Always greeting us with a smile, Chet, his wife or their helpers always remember us and have been a joy to do business with these past two years. This week's produce from them will be featured in combinations from soups to roasting the cauliflower and mashing it with celeriac root (from Oxbow Farms) and potatoes (Olsen Farms). You won't go back to traditional mash again after you've tasted this!

Potatoes and Red Onions - Olsen Farms has been our potato supplier since we were first drawn in by their $5.00 bags of "spud nuts." These tiny tiny baby potatoes are great thrown whole into a pan with frying bacon for breakfast or stir fried in our cast iron wok for dinner. This week our potato selection included our standard purchase of Viking Purple and Maris Piper. Being the potato enthusiasts that we are, we purchase the Viking Purples weekly now using them for everything from baking to mashing. Their dark purple skins give way to an astonishingly white flesh that stands up to baking, frying, boiling or microwaving the next day for lunch leftovers at the office. You just can't go wrong with this beauty and we're banking on that as we are planning on planting these in our potato condo for next year with seeds potatoes supplied by Olsen Farms.

The Maris Piper is a newer variety for us but is a wonderfully creamy potato when cooked up in mash or soups. In particular, this week was potato leek soup... recipe to follow.

The red onions were just a bonus but also from Olsen Farms. While they carry dozens of potato varieties, they also offer onions seasonally and organic beef products. While we do all of our meat purchases from Skagit River Ranch, we have been known to pick up a pepperoni packet from time to time from Olsen Farms. These little morsels are a great way to deflect your hunger pangs while unpacking your market booty or working in the garden.

Dry Beans and Peanuts - Alvarez farms is the only local farm we know of that carries organic peanuts. We featured these in yesterday's post about making our own peanut butter. The dry beans are another staple around our household. While we do grow a modest crop of dry beans ourselves, we use so many throughout the winter that we always find ourselves running out. Not this year! The two bags you see are one of garbanzo beans and another mixed bag of red and black beans. We're not sure how many different ways we are going to use the garbanzo beans... humus came immediately to Jason's mind since it is one of his favorite foods so I can imagine that is where the majority of them will end up.

The mixed beans will most certainly go mainly in chili. We are big chili fans and make it at least a couple of times a month. We usually make a big enough batch to last most of the week for leftovers and omelets on the weekend. This year's goal: all chili is made from totally local ingredients... well... minus the masa flower... hhhhmmm... I'll bet we can find that locally too... hhhhmmm... we'll keep you posted.

Raw Milk - Sea Breeze Farms from our neighbors on Vashon Island. We use Sea Breeze milk in all of our cooking and baking. In addition, it is a favorite for me in my morning coffee. The flavor is rich with a velvety texture that can't be found in the watered down version of "milk product" found on grocery store shelves. This week, we were greeted at the elaborate town-butcher-style stand with an invitation to the open house of their new restaurant and retail operation. The grand opening celebration for La Boucherie is on November 15th from 5pm - 10pm. With all of the wonderful beef, dairy, poultry and pork products they produce, we can only salivate in anticipation of what awaits us at this new restaurant. And, as if we needed another one, this is a grand excuse to make the quick trip across the water (we can actually see it from our house here in West Seattle) to Vashon Island. We're planning to make a day of it with trips to our favorite farms and beaches. I'm sure we will do a post about La Bousherie as soon as we return from the grand opening... can't wait!

Cheese - those two round tubs you see there are our weekly allotment of artisan cheese from Julie at River Valley Ranch. Our typical week includes feta, goat curds and cow curds. All three are used tossed with pasta or braised greens for a perfect finish to most of our dishes. Julie and her sons are our usual greeters and the Shibaboyz love visiting her because there are always a few samples that have fallen to the ground in front of her stall.

Not pictured - meats from Skagit River Ranch. As always, our first stop at the market is ALWAYS to see George and Eiko. Not only do we consider them friends, but they are fantastic educators and advocates for the localvore and sustainable lifestyle. Get either one of them talking about their farm and why they do it and you'll leave a better person for it.

This week, we stocked up on roasts and sausages so we spent a lot more than we usually do... but it all averages out to about the same as mentioned in our last post. While this week was about $90, next week will be closer to $40 or so. Either way, this is the best quality meat you can buy for the price. Check out their website for more information on these amazing people.

*whew* there is it... As you can tell from this post, what we purchase anymore isn't necessarily for use that particular week. We predominantly use what we have here at home as the base to our menu then stock up on staples weekly as well as pick up any items we might plan on using fresh at the market. Also, as you can see, we do preserve a large portion of what we can buy seasonally from the local farmers for use throughout the year. That was the case this week with big chunks of our food budget going to dry beans and squash and stocking up on meats.

Also this week, we wanted to say a quick hello to the couple who stopped us to say hey at the market. As we've stated before, we're a little obvious when we go to the market. There aren't too many couples we know of that walk around with two Shiba Inu companions. Mind you, our friends Jeff and Jim often show up with their Shiba, Jake... but we're pretty recognizable for the most part. Anyway, this particular week, a nice lady and her husband stopped us with "I'll bet you're The Shibaguyz." They made our salsa and both loved how it turned out! Good to know y'all are having fun Cookin' With The Shibaguyz (that has a nice ring... don't ya think??).

Finally, here is another picture of our market bounty. I couldn't resist posting this one just because of the look on Hera's face in the background. She is carefully insinuating herself into the photo without looking too eager. Don't let her fool you, she's an attention hog and loves the camera. She fits in just fine around here! LOL

Everyone enjoy your week and thanks for allowing us this opportunity to pass along a little information on how to shop seasonally at your local farmers market. Remember, it's good for you, good for the farmers and good for your local community. NO FARMS NO FOOD!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

How The Ancient Incas AND George Washington Carver Saved The Day

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 01:23:00 +0000

So, yes, we're bored... LOL Not really, there is plenty to do but we've fallen in to such a rhythm of coming home from the market and having something immediately to do that we're actually creating new projects for ourselves.

Here's a normal Sunday post-market:

Get home and immediately unload all the goodies.

Put away the meat, milk and cheese (with the exception of the cheese we will snack on while working... of course)

Sort the produce into items to be refrigerated, items to be stored, items to be preserved.

It is that last one, the preserving, that usually dictates our day and even our week in terms of what will be going on in the kitchen. With the turning of the season, we find ourselves without tomatoes to can, dry or freeze. The pickles are pickled as is the cabbage turning to sauerkraut in the crock. The jellies, jams and salsas are put up, the spring and summer fruits are all canned and frozen and with this last box of apples from today's market trip we'll have enough fruit to last us through till next season.

So now what? I'll tell you how today went. We got home, put everything away then Jason took pictures of everything for a future post and I stood there in the kitchen turning around in circles trying to find something to do. We're like addicts without our fix! Projects... we need projects... what else have we always wanted to try??

The answer came to us in the form of a bag setting there with the other market catches of the day. There sat the answer to a year long thought... a wondering if you will. We purchased a bag of peanuts from one of the local vendors with the intent of using them as snacks the same as we did last year. They store perfectly in their shells and are a boon when you are craving a quick snack on the run. So that was our original intent... that changed quickly in the absence of other preservation projects and in the stroke of inspiration.

So here is our latest creation...

TAADAA!! Peanut Butter!!

Doesn't it look GREAT!! Not to blow our own horn... but this one is a hoot! I still can't believe we haven't done it sooner.

And talk about easy to make. Nothing to it... here's what we did:

Grab about six good hand-scoops of roasted peanuts from your favorite local source. We chose the salted peanuts so didn't add any more to the recipe. Our peanuts came from the Alvarez Farm. Certified organic, they are the only local producers of peanuts we know and they are great folks with a wonderful story. You can see their inspiring story as well as other local farmers in the film "Good Food." Check out the film's website for more information.
Shelling the peanuts is easy. Simply crush the whole thing between your two hands and, over a large bowl, rub your hands together vigorously. This will break up the shells and remove the hull (that paper-like layer on the peanut) from the nut all at one time. This method is quick so you don't stand there picking peanuts forever.
When you have two cups of peanuts, toss them into your handy-dandy food processor along with one tablespoon of peanut oil. Don't freak out and put more oil in than that. You will be tempted to add more oil when this whole concoction starts processing into a lump... but DON'T FREAK OUT!! You'll just end up with an oily mess if you add more than this.
Pulse the peanuts until they are chopped up finely.
Here's the fun part... turn that sucker all the way up to high and hold on tight! Ours just about lifted up off the counter a couple of times!
As the peanuts process, they will go from a whirring mass of ground nuts to a wet lump. DON'T FREAK OUT!! Just keep processing on high. This lump forms a ball for all of three seconds. It is scary as all heck when it first flies around the inside of your food processor but it breaks up into a smoother consistency almost immediately.
Keep up this whiz round until you have the consistency you want. You can see ours is a very soft, creamy consistency which took us about three minutes of processing on high to achieve. Pick what suits your taste. It doesn't hurt to stop the processor every little bit to test it.
If you have purchased unsalted peanuts, add 1/2 teaspoon of salt. If you have the salted peanuts, don't add any salt at all.
During the butter-ication of the peanuts in the food processor, you might need to scrape down the sides of the hopper but we didn't seem to need that. If you do, just use a spatula or spoon to wipe it down and continue processing on high until you have the consistency you want.
If it is crunchy peanut butter you desire, stir in 1/2 cup of chopped peanuts after the processing is finished.
Finally, transfer your creation into a suitable jar and place it in your refrigerator. Remember, this doesn't have any preservatives in it so it can go rancid on you. Of course you won't have that problem because it won't last that long.

This recipe made enough to overflow that little 8oz jar in the right of the picture. Knowing we would be stirring it before use, we separated it into two jars to make it easier.

There you have it. And man is it good!

In addition to being able to eat your own peanut butter with your own jam on bread that you made yourself from local flour and honey (a point Jason made while taste testing the recipe), you'll also be able to feel good about what you are eating. By purchasing from your local farmer, you are supporting the most vital part of our non-governmental food chain... the small family farm. Remember: NO FARMS NO FOOD! Plus, you know exactly what you are getting. Three ingredients: peanuts, salt and peanut oil. What is in the commercial brands, you might ask. Well, let us tell you about some of the ingredients we found in our research.

Roasted Peanuts
Sugar - a lot... check your labels!
Various oils including palm oil in one major brand. Have you seen what the demand for palm oil is doing to orangutan habitats? It will make you sick to your stomach to see what atrocities are being committed just so we can have palm oil in our beauty and food products. Check your labels!
Molasses - this one was in addition to the other sugar in this particular national brand.
Partially Hydrogenated vegetable oil - soybean listed here
Fully Hydrogenated Vegetable Oils - they listed rapeseed and soybean as the source for these oils
Monoglycerides - emulsifying agent... keeps the oils from separating so you don't have to stir your peanut butter before eating.
Diglycerides - another emulsifying agent
Salt - 150mg of sodium per serving on average

We'll take fifteen minutes to make a batch of homemade peanut butter over the mass-produced, over-processed goo previously known as peanut butter. Seriously, once you try this stuff, you won't want it from the store anymore. Try it... you'll LOVE IT!

Our plan is to buy a HUGE bag of peanuts next week and keep them in the house all year so we can whiz up a little batch of peanut butter from time to time and keep them for snacks mixed in with our dried fruits.

So thank you to the Ancient Incas who are deemed the original makers of a peanut paste as early as 950 BCE. Also, our thank you to George Washington Carver who, as we all learned by watching School House Rock, was the man responsible for popularizing peanuts here in the US starting in 1880. Thank you for making our post-market day a little more fun and adventurous and for making our curiosity pay off into yet another local, delectable, healthy food. YUMM!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

To Market To Market...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 16:59:00 +0000

Man... this post almost started with some boring tirade about the rising cost of food and the falling economy... yikes... delete, delete, delete... and start again...

Anyone who has met us even once knows we are The Shibaguyz and they very quickly thereafter know how we feel about the commercial food machine and the feeble agricultural system in our world. With the current state of affairs in our economic system, the question people are asking with greater frequency is about the cost of food when we consume 98% of our groceries from the farmers markets or from our own backyard.

In order to answer the curious among you, here are the past two weeks of market purchases for us. Keep in mind that this is supplemental to what we have already picked, canned, frozen or dried from our own garden. That said... here we go...

This was a $40 market week for us. We stock up when we can find the produce we like to use and this particular week, our own tomatoes and frozen veggies was enough for our food plans for the week. These are just a few more items we stocked up on.

From left to right:

Raw milk from Sea Breeze Farms - I use this mainly for my morning coffee and Jason sometimes cooks with it in sauces.

Ricotta cheese from Sea Breeze Farms

Sugar pie pumpkin (there are three of them here... one is mostly hidden by the beets)

Spaghetti Squash - this sucker was HUGE!! We used half of it for one meal with leftovers for lunches the next day. I've used it for two more lunches after that and there still is a little bit in the fridge... HUGE!!

Beets - roasted, stewed whatever! I love beets! The greens are tasty too if you get them before they go south on you. Just steam them or pan sear them like you would any other hard greens.

Peppers - Nardello Sweet, Jalapenos and the tiny ones are Ring of Fire Cayenne. Jason's been drying and using these fresh in just about everything lately. Great flavor with the definite added benefit of clearing your sinuses when you're getting a cold!

Purple Kale - braise this one in a searing hot pan with some duck fat or the drippings from a roasted chicken or bacon and you'll be in heaven. Jason's prep for this batch was bacon and garlic. YUMM!!

Butternut squash - see that deceivingly small, light colored squash sticking out from beneath the purple kale?

Not so small!! Yes, this is a butternut squash. We hadn't seen this particular variety but it was pointed out to us by the farmer at the market. We were looking for the traditional butternut for eating the flesh as well as roasting the seeds. If you haven't tried roasting butternut seeds before you really must! They have a warm, vanilla flavor to them when roasted. We like them better than pumpkin seeds. This particular variety is all meat in the neck section then the seed pod is in the large, bulbous section. Here, Jason happily (???) stands in for scale on how ginormous this thing is!

This is an $80 day at the market. There were lots of wonderful items this week and we were at the Ballard Farmers Market (our favorite) so we were seeing some of our favorite vendors as well as one that was packing it in for the winter. So this was a week for stocking up.

From left to right(ish):

Cider - we LOVE Rockridge Orchards!! This vendor is a weekly stop for us. Their cider is out of this world in varieties from sweet to tart and some infused with fresh, local fruits. This particular jug is the Honey Crisp cider. It is slightly sweet with a sharp edge to it. I love to put it in green tea (iced). In the back, center of the picture, you can see the top of another jug. That is cider also in Jason's favorite variety. He likes the spiced cider with a splash (or two) of either dark rum or bourbon. Warmed, this concoction is good for what ails ya... or just warming up on a cold day.

Butternut squash - yup... we're stocking up on squash for the winter.

Fresh onions from our friends at Magana Farm - these are the folks who have supplied our extra tomatoes for the past two years. While we eat a LOT of the ones that come from our own garden fresh (although this year we canned as much as we ate!), the three generations of farmers we have come to know at Magana have been the source for our tomato habit and many of the jars you see on our shelves come from their farm. This was Magana's last week at the market so we always stock up before we bid them a sad farewell until next spring.

Peppers & Garlic - also from our friends at Magana, there are four or five types of peppers here. Jalapeno, pablano, banana and something tiny that Jason keeps drying on the bamboo in the kitchen. I can't even tell you how many pounds of peppers we bought. We are drying most of them and roasting others to be frozen for use in dishes throughout the winter.

Potatoes - Thanks to our friend at Olsen Farms, we have stayed stocked up on German Butterball, Purple Viking and the wonderful Binjte. This particular week, we've stocked up on Purple Vikings which have a purple skin with brilliant white flesh. We bake 'em, roast 'em, stew 'em and pan fry 'em. You can NOT go wrong with this potato. She is saving some of these for us for seeds next year in our Potato Condo.

Celeriac - see them... right there next to the cider and under the onions... no, those aren't something dead we dragged in from the garden. Those are two wonders of the veggie world we discovered last year shopping for something fun to include in our Thanksgiving meal. Possibly one of the ugliest veggies we've ever seen, the celeriac (or celery root) is great for boiling and mashing to add a little kick to your mashed potatoes. Sliced and eaten raw, it has the consistency of something between a firm potato and a turnip. Any way you prepare it... YUMM!! Ugly... but YUMM!!

Asian Pears - Okay, so we didn't buy these... This is one of the advantages of knowing the farmers you buy your food from. We were buying cheese from one stall and she was telling us about these wonderful pears her friend was selling down the way from her. She handed us these two from her own shopping bag and said we should try them. Bonus snacks!

Carrots, Chard, Celeriac, Hubbard Squash, Spaghetti Squash and Butternut Squash - all of these are from our friends at Oxbow Farm. These folks know their produce! We even bought one of our San Marzano seedlings from Oxbow this spring. It started out slowly but ended up being one of our heaviest producers and just as tall and bushy as the other we purchased larger. If you are lucky enough to be able to get to a market where they sell their produce, grab as much of it as you can! And, yes, we are obviously stocking up on squash for the winter.

Goat and Cow Cheese Curds - most of our meals have some influence from River Valley Ranch cheese. This woman is truly amazing. Leaving her corporate job, she started raising goats for making cheese. You'll have to stop by her booth and ask her to tell you her story sometime. Very inspiring and now she is featured in several local restaurants and has been interviewed by all the major news programs and magazines. Food celebrity and some of the best artisan cheese you'll ever find... what more could you ask for?

Raw Milk - Again from Sea Breeze Farms, this is a standard stop for us every week. They sell a lot more than just milk but the flavor influenced by the grass fed, free roaming dairy cows on their Vashon Island farm is just too good to pass up. My coffee just doesn't taste the same without it. I even keep a small container of it at work for that second cup of the morning. And using this creamy delight in sauces is just heaven for Jason... and for me... I get to eat them! LOL

In a conversation about weekly food costs, we must also add our weekly stop to Skagit River Ranch. George, Aiko, their daughter and farm store staff are always our first stop at the Ballard Farmers Market. We have posted endlessly about Skagit River Ranch and featured them in one of our articles. 100% of the meat and eggs we consume is from Skagit River Ranch and we wouldn't have it any other way. With a weekly bill averaging anywhere from $50 - $90, we are assured the best in grass fed, healthy meats and eggs. We have been to their farm and George and Aiko are amazing people with a wealth of food knowledge unsurpassed in their field. They have been featured in Mother Earth News and are the highlight for some of the finest restaurants and private clubs in the Seattle area.

An average buy from Skagit River Ranch for us includes three each of ground beef and pork, two to three packages each of hot, sweet and andouille sausages, two packages of pork chops and maybe a roast or two if they happen to have them. Occasional purchases include various cuts of steaks, roasts, jerky, ham and bacon. These are items we don't use on a regular basis but purchase when they have them so we can stock up and use them later from the freezer. Seasonally, we will buy whole chickens from them. When the season is right, we stock up on roasting hens for making the most delicious crock pot meals. Roasted or stewed, their chickens are the most flavorful we have found producing juicy meat on all parts of the bird and a stock that doesn't even need salt to taste amazing. Being fans of the Shibaboyz, Aiko is apt to throw in some bones or a tube of their raw dog food from time to time. In addition, if there is ever anything interesting or new they are trying out, we are willing test subjects for their experimentation with smoking, jerky and unusual cuts like ox tails.

OH!! We almost forgot to mention the turkey! This is the second year our Thanksgiving table will be graced by the presence of a Skagit River Ranch turkey. These birds live a good life and are fed the natural foods a turkey eats. They are not the nearly dead, over-bred, barely-able-to-move foul seen on the industrial turkey farms. Even the breast meat has a rich flavor to it. Not a thing goes to waste on these birds. We cook the bones down for stock and eat the leftovers for as long as they hold out. You MUST get your order in early because there are only a few of the gobblers available. No overcrowded lots of sick and dying birds here!

No hormones, free roaming animals fed on rotating pastures of grass. It's worth every penny of it and we end up averaging about the same price we would buying the crap meats from the grocery store... and not even the farmer who raised those beasts can tell you what toxins are in those packages rolling off the corporate meat assembly lines. YUCK!!

To market to market... every Sunday is our market day. What price? Not too shabby when you consider we are getting FRESH produce from LOCAL farmers who we have become friends with over the past two years of our localvore adventures. Not only are we supporting and protecting our own health by buying from people we trust, we are also supporting and protecting the lifestyle of the small, family farmers. Remember folks: NO FARMS NO FOOD. And we aren't going to be able to rely on the corporate, governmentalized food machine the world is stuffing their malnurished gullets with right now.

Ask us if the price we pay is too much for shopping and eating locally and we will immediately and resolutely say NO! Man... that post turned into a rant didn't it?? LOL Oh well... there it is then...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Two Buzzards In A Tree...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 18:35:00 +0000

The Jungle is harvested, the compost piles and the worm bins are full. Everything that could be put into jars or bottles or freezer bags is safely tucked away until we need to call upon their services for some future meal. The winter crops are growing nicely and the cloches are in place making the Jungle look more like a futuristic bubble city. Now what...

What do The Shibaguyz do when there just isn't anything else to do right now?? It was last Saturday that Jason and I sat there looking at each other saying just that to one another. We had just put the last batch of box-ripened tomatoes into the oven to dry filling the house with the warm scent of tomatoey goodness... you know... that smell that makes you hungry all the time! Anyway... that last batch of tomatoes was drying and we sat down to have a cup of morning coffee. We sounded like those two buzzards sitting in the tree in the classic cartoon:

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know... what do you want to do?"

This went on for a while so I'll leave the rest of it to your imagination.

So, we went downstairs to the Nekkid Jungle to peek under the chenille and the cloches and to see how the broccoli, cauliflower and cabbages were doing in their open air pots. Everything looked GREAT! (another post with pics of everything to follow) So we sprinkled some water on the seedlings under the chenille then we stood there looking at each other... that took about ten minutes... good grief...

BEANS!! The green beans were still producing great looking beans per our plan for the third planting of seeds. As predicted, we were able to harvest another two or three dinners from the vines clear up through the end of October. And, believe it or not, we still had a couple of honey bees out there buzzing around the new blossoms. We might even get beans up till Thanksgiving. Good plan well executed... that took about fifteen minutes. Still not through the first pot of coffee...

So... what do The Shibaguyz do when there aren't any more tomatoes to harvest or sauce or can? What do they do when there aren't any more veggies or fruit to process and store away for the impending darkness of winter?

We pull up a chair and enjoy the warm rays of a bright fall sun and enjoy a lazy Saturday. Something we'd almost forgotten how to do! However, sitting there with my glass of wine and Jason with his spiced cider and dark rum (coffee long gone by now) just didn't seem to be enough. So...

out came the camera and out came my favorite winter past time:

That's right, with the colder days and lesser chores at The Shibaguyz Micro-Farm comes my knitting! WOOHOO!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE to sit and create new projects. Like any other yarn enthusiast I have stacks and stacks of books that I pour over regularly to find that next great project. Usually by this time of year, I have more than enough ideas to keep me busy for the entire winter.

This hat you seem me whipping up is a gift for our neighbor's birthday. She was walking by a stand at the fair where someone was selling those hats with the ear flaps on them and said she had always wanted one. I asked her if she was serious because I could make one for her. She jumped up and down gleefully. Thus... this project. Her birthday is on Halloween so I'm glad this is a project that can be finished in an afternoon.

Here is the finished project. Again, it just takes an afternoon to make and it really is a fun hat. I think I'll make one for myself later.

While we were sitting there soaking in the warm rays of the fall sun coming over the now mostly void back fence, Jason was busy snapping away at pictures of me knitting, the Shibaboyz and Hera as well as taking a number of shots of exactly how our chenille is built for a future post this coming week.

So as not to give too much away with his other great shots, here is a beautiful one he took when Atlas jumped up on his lap.

The thick winter coats of the boyz have grown in and the dense fur is wonderful to bury your face in. They always smell so toasty and warm. This shows the gorgeous color and texture variations of their coat. This is one of my new favorites.

Again, more of Jason's wonderful photos to follow in posts this week...

As any yarn worker can attest, it is usual to have a few projects on sticks at the same time. I am no exception. I have two quilts, a sweater and a scarf currently in my project tote. Now, with the birthday hat finished, I turned to a more immediate need of mine. I have noticed more and more over the past few years that the arthritis in my hands slows me down as the cooler weather approaches. I found this quick pattern for wrist mitts in one of my books and thought how perfect a project they would be for a hank of yarn Jason's mother gave me last year for Christmas. I've been waiting for the perfect use for this wonderful wool and this one just screamed to be made. It took me two evenings to complete for a total of about five hours. They were worked on double point needles because I didn't have rounds that tiny... added that to my Christmas list for Jason... hehehehe...

This is the top...

and this is the palm...

Easy easy project and they keep my wrists and knuckles warm for sure. I've noticed that knitting and even typing (wearing them now) is a lot less painful. I've already started another set of them made from a more durable yarn that will be easier to wash. I'll be able to use those for gardening this winter and in the spring.

So there it is then... What do The Shibaguyz do when there isn't anything to do?? Of course... we create more things to do. Jason's sewing machine even came back out this week. Flannel pj's for Christmas gifts and some new winter shirts for us are all on his list. Also, there is the promise of a new gardening apron that I designed. Jason was a costume designer in a past life and he can see a project in his mind and create a pattern pretty easily. WOOHOO!!

On my list: pot holders and clean-up rags from bamboo and recycled cotton yarns. Also, I'm going to finish those quilts, the sweater and the scarf I currently have on sticks and start a whole new batch of projects I just found in my books.

It would seem that even in the slower season for our micro-farm we are still finding ways to make ourselves more self-sufficient. We ain't exactly "Little House" but we're certainly finding out that we are more than capable of taking care of ourselves. Who knew it would go this far?? How cool is this?? Not blowing our own horn, but we are still amazed at how easy this is when you simply add one piece of the puzzle at a time. The next thing you know, you aren't eating from the commercial food supply and you are making your own clothes... LOL If only you had known us a few short years ago... you'd be laughing too... lordy... WOOHOO!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Who Said Fall Slows Down??

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 08:07:00 +0000

Honestly there has been so much going on around here that I don't even know where to start writing. Jason suggested we post a little bit of everything... so I'll just start typing and we'll see where this goes... here we go...

Clearing out the garden: check

All of the summer crops are cleared, cleaned up and composted.

The tomatoes have all been brought in and boxed, the remaining vines are already composting nicely out by the alley. It did look a little sparse at first but there was also something clean and beautiful about all that potential planting space and the beautiful soil. From our previous post you know we immediately filled that space with our winter crops and cloches.

Results are pretty much blowing us away in that department... more on that later...

Canning: check

HOLY COW!! Seventeen pints of apple sauce. Jason achieved this golden color by processing them in a very meticulous manner... we'll cover that in a later post. For now, this picture will hold you over. hehehehe...

Five, 8oz jars of apple butter (no picture of these yet).

At least ten more quarts of tomatoes sauce, crushed and whole shown here all in a row. Aren't they pretty??

And, finally, four more 8oz jars of paste. Does that sound like a lot?? It is... was... is... we love seeing the full pantry shelves...

Drying: check

Fresh herbs from the garden including rosemary, thyme, parsley, sage, oregano and lavender are now hanging from a couple of the same bamboo poles that served as supports for the tomatoes earlier. The lavender is drying nicely over the doors outside the upstairs bedrooms and the other herbs are hanging in a nook in the kitchen over the sink.

Tomatoes have been dried and bagged for use all winter in soups, sauces, dips, breads and any other dishes we want to infuse with their rich flavor. The hardest part about it was not eating them all like chips as they came out of the oven.

Jason's latest and greatest culinary idea is to make tomato powder to add to breads or dust on pasta. Just whirl the driest of the tomatoes around in a food processor and you have a whole new depth to your cooking. Can't wait to try it in a yogurt sauce or as a flavoring ingredient in Jason's bread. YUMM!!

Pickling: check

Sauerkraut has taken the place of the now canned dill pickles in our crock. One giant head of green and one giant head of purple cabbage is about three weeks in on the trek to becoming one of my favorite winter foods. As a kid, I liked to mix it in with my mashed potatoes. Again... YUMM!!

Of all the luck!

We let a lot of the tomatoes produce green fruit thinking it would be great for making two new recipes Jason found. One for green tomato chutney and another for green tomato salsa. Here's the thing though... we brought in all the green tomatoes and put them in the only containers we could find big enough to hold them all: two boxes. What happens to green tomatoes that sit in a box outside the kitchen for a week? They don't stay green... that's for sure!! Most of them have ripened and we've been using them in the kitchen with reckless abandon. We even used two huge pots of them to make the tomato paste mentioned earlier. We did get a great meal of fried green tomatoes but that's about as far as I think we're going to get. They were good while they lasted but we'll take the ripe ones too...

We called this sauce, which was a blend of varieties of red, black and green tomatoes Shibaguyz Tri-Colour Sauce. You can see all the colors here before they cooked down.

*whew*

Good grief... there are a lot more details we'll fill out in future posts but this at least catches us up for a little while. Thank you all for being patient with us... who said Fall was when the gardeners slowed down??? Not sure who it was but they were way off base... just in our humble opinion.

As always, we're not complaining! We've worked hard to get this far and now, looking back through the past two years of our photos, we're a little blown away by how much our lives have changed. Changed for the better to be sure. We are grateful to be busy. Life is good...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Giant Caterpillars From Space... or Maybe Just France??

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 09:15:00 +0000

This summer we were lucky and avoided the rampant scourge of the cabbage moth, the horn worm, cut worms and tent worms... for the most part. Aside from some tiny imports on nursery purchased plants, we survived the summer season without the usual gardener's plague of caterpillars munching their way to earning their wings. But now...

Now we not only have the mother of all caterpillars but we welcomed it, even assisted it, as it grew in our garden. The final stage of its development revealed something right out of a bad sci-fi movie about the space caterpillar that ate Seattle. Luckily for us, this particular variety of caterpillar is known as the French Chenille. It is known less for what it will turn in to or for eating unsuspecting Earth cities than for what it will produce in just one season.

Okay, enough of the elusive metaphors... The French Chenille is a type of row cover described by Eliot Coleman in "The Four-Seasons Harvest." On one of his trips to France, he discovered this wonderful way of attaching the covering to the ribs of the cloche without having to bury the edges in rocks or dirt. The idea is to have a way of easier access to the contents of the cloche (or in this case "Chenille") without having to shuffle dirt and rocks to get to your over-winter delights.

Thus was born the wonder that is the Shibaguyz Chenille... TAADAA!! Not a mere cloche or row cover but a Chenille and a Shibaguyz Chenille at that!

Here's the basic breakdown:

With book in hand and the borrowing of a neighbor's wire snips, we set out on our learning curve to cutting and bending our 9 gauge wire into the ribs. At the place where the ribs touch the ground, we used pliers to twist loops in the wire. It is these loops that are the key to the design innovation for this particular type of cover.

Once the ribs were set in place, we set about to cut the tarps into their appropriate sizes. Here you can see Jason making sure the row covering is cut correctly to fit the ribs before we begin the tie down.

And now for the tie down. Each rib has been bent into a loop right where it meets the ground and here I am tying down the last of the strings that criss-cross diagonally between the loops. It is the layout of these lines that allows the sides to be lifted and lowered without the hassle of moving rocks or dirt to get to your plants.

Here's the view from inside the chenille. Closest to the camera behind the white markers are (left) snow peas and (right) shallots, then the little green sprouts in the middle are broccoli (to be thinned at a future date), then behind that are beets (can't remember what kind) and more beets (Chioggia... YUMM!!) and, finally, Chinese cabbage. We forgot to plant the spinach under this cover so it will have to go in a separate one we designed for our pots.

And here, finally, is the finished French chenille row cover. After we were finished, we were able to take advantage of the easy-lift functionality of this particular type of cover. We watered the broccoli babies and watered in the newly planted seeds and shallot bulbs. As a test to its sturdiness, there was one HECK of a wind blowing that night and this giant caterpillar didn't even flinch.

In the foreground of this picture you can see where we started building smaller "pods" for the more delicate overwinter plants to make sure they don't get too wet or too cold during our wet, chilly Seattle winter.

Could this be the alien pod our caterpillar al a Francais landed in?? NOPE! It's just our Potato Condo in the newest look for this season. What was once the Potato Condo is now the Onion Tower! Okay... it doesn't have the same ring to it but it's the best we have right now...

This mini-pod version of our grand chenille is designed for the same functionality: to keep these little sprouts dry and give them a warmer environment so they grow all winter. The idea is to not let this cooler season slow down the growth of these veggies. This way, we can advance our four-season growing outside the whims of the weather. TAADAA!!

Okay... maybe that's just really really cool to us... but you have to admit it is... well... cool!!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

This Ain't Exactly Vivaldi...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 06:23:00 +0000

The Four Seasons... that's always been at the top of the list: favorite film (genious!), favorite music (beyond heavenly... genious!!), and now... favorite way to garden.

Last year when we set out to first amend our soil and work with the Earth to help it create what we now love as our Edible Jungle Paradise, we had no idea how bountifully successful it would be. This year with about 700+ pounds of tomatoes, 50 pounds of fingerling potatoes, cucumbers, garlic, salad greens, herbs, cabbage, broccoli, peas, peppers, tomatillos and more beans than we now have room for in the freezer, we are truly astounded at what can be done in such a small space. We have worked with the Earth and have seen unbelievable results.

With the impending winter upon us, we've decided there is no reason for the fun to stop now! So, with thoughts of an ever-bearing garden, we consulted our trusty favs: "How to Grow More Vegetables" by John Jeavons and "The Maritime Northwest Garden Guide" by Rob Peterson and Carl Elliott... and we added a new resource to our arsenal: "Four-Seasons Harvest" by Eliot Coleman and Barbara Damrosch. Studying away like the good students of life we are, we believe we have a good start on the concept of a four seasons garden... or at least something close to it.

As it stands now, we kind of missed a bit on the whole fall season. We've been so busy harvesting the tomatoes and other produce then canning, freezing, drying and such that we didn't really get any greens planted in time for them to be big enough to harvest right now. So, no to be daunted by the gap (which we are gladly filling at the Ballard Farmers Market), we have looked ahead to the winter and over-winter foods. Who knew you could grow all this here in the middle of winter?

So far, we have Walla Walla sweet onions, purple bunching onions, purple sprouting broccoli and a quick starting variety of broccoli the name of which escapes me right now. We have cabbage, cauliflower and a whole lot of kale and chard. That's what is in the ground and containers right now.

This weekend comes the garlic, shallots, beets, sugar snap peas, edamame, more cabbage and lettuce greens.

If you've put two and two together by now, you'll take note that this is an awful lot of food that we have already put in and the only way we'd have that much space is if something has vacated the premises to make room for the new tenants. If you have come to deduce this, you are correct! But that's a photo tour for later this week... let's just say we hauled in over 250 pounds of tomatoes this past weekend and our compost pile looks GREAT! LOL But... more dramatic photos of that to come... check back...

As a regular visitor of our little corner of the Universe here, you will also note the absence of Jason's wonderful photos in this post. Where are the pictures of all the cute little plants?? Let's just say that it was dark when I finished the planting and clean up and it's been raining and blowing so far this week so badly that he can't get out there to take any decent shots. So... those will have to follow later as well... again... check back...

More importantly, we have a new quest: to carry our journey for self-sustainability into the dark(er) days of winter. The drizzle and gray will be driven out of our minds as we construct cloches and other protective domiciles for the new residents of The Jungle. Picking fresh veggies in the late fall and feasting on spring onions and edamame sautéed with fresh kale and chard in rendered duck fat is sure to make the drumming of drops fade into the background and not dim our spirits.

Construction begins as soon as the weekend bell tolls and we've been promised clear enough weather that you can be assured of many pictorial reviews.

Antonio Lucio Vivaldi has brought us so much joy in our home ever since the strains of his glorious seasonal tribute played on the night Jason and I decided to get married. Purely coincidental that particular piece was playing... purely coincidental that movie has always made me laugh and cry and love the life and friends I have even more... naahhh... probably not. That doesn't seem to be the way the Universe works in our lives. And, while this ain't exactly a master work that will be cherished 285 years later like the creation of Mr. V, it certainly is a new and exciting adventure for us... and that always means good things are just around the corner.

Here's to the new season... once again... check back... you won't be disappointed...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Shibaguyz Slideshow Feature

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 02:26:00 +0000

This is a fun slideshow put together called "Sustainable in Seattle" that features yours truly... The Shibaguyz!! WOOHOO!! The blog director from Really Gay Broadcast contacted us after seeing our blog and reading about us in another article. Next thing we knew... TAADAA!! Click on the picture below and you will be whisked off to our musical slideshow. ENJOY!!

(if the high resolution feed link doesn't work for you, you can go directly to the website HERE.

In A Pickle

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 07:04:00 +0000

It worked!! My Grandmother's pickle crock has finally been put to a use for something other than holding my current knitting project. Under our watchful eyes, we have created the glorious wonder that is crock dill pickles.

It's not like we sit and eat mounds of pickles, but there is nothing like a good crisp pickle with a sandwich or chopped up in an egg salad sandwich... YUMM!! We only made half of the recipe capacity Grandma's crock could handle and that still yielded four quarts of the salty, dilled delights.

Of course, that's not all we've been up to... YUP, Jason's been at the baking again. This is a recipe of his own creation. A concoction of great perfection and body that goes perfectly with our West Seattle Freeberry Jam as well as our other fruit butters and jams.

Oh, and those tomatoes... from our garden. That's one day of picking in the garden. Tonight, Jason turned that green bowl of San Marzano and Amish Paste tomatoes into three pints of tomato paste. You should have smelled the house when I walked in from work. INSTANTLY hungry!

Amish Paste, San Marzano, Purple Cherokee (not quite ripe but in danger of splitting with our recent rains), Russian Grushovka Salad and Principe Borghese... you name it and there it is right on our counter. All four jars are sauce from our heirloom tomatoes on our own vines. See those two darker ones?? Those are a blend of Paul Robeson, Purple Cherokee and Black Prince... again from our vines... thus the dark color. The flavor is just as dark and almost smokey with definite sweet overtones.

The pantry shelves as they are currently stocked. Bread and butter, dill slices and whole dill pickles, West Seattle Freeberry Jam, tomato sauce and those lovely purple bottles are Jason's Freeberry infused vinegar... This stuff fermented for a month or more in the dark of the closet until it had the consistency and sweet flavor of an aged balsamic vinegar.

By the way, that top shelf is all cookbooks from our collections and from Jason's mother.

Whole tomatoes and Shibaguyz Dark Heirloom Blend Sauce. That's Stone Buhr flour and hot cereal blend in the bags. Those are one of our local grain producers. Definitely a great find for a couple of localvores like us.

Bottom shelves with whole peaches, whole Freeberries, tomato sauce, peach jam and Shibaguyz House Salsa. Most everything else is canning supplies and vinegars for pickling and infusing.

There you go so far. And that's just what we can show on the pantry right now. There are more jars of sauce (45 so far) and about fifty pounds or more of our own tomatoes that need processed right away. Our goal is to have 100 quarts of tomatoes by the end of the season. We're well on our way there!

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

The Nekkid Jungle!

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:59:00 +0000

No, Charlton Heston and the Marabunta have not taken over here at the Shibaguyz Jungle Paradise. However, with the promise of a couple of weeks of warmer temps and plenty of sunshine, you'd think some sort of leaf devouring creature had swooped down on our Jungle and stripped it clean of its leaves. Not so... but the effect, you'll agree, is just as shocking...

Again, hearing there would be warmer weather for a week or two, we decided it was time to tell the summer crops of the Jungle it was time to slow down and just ripen already! So, in order to facilitate the ripening of the tomatoes, we went through with our clippers and garden scissors and took away every leaf and sucker that wasn't attached to a tomato. This was to both stop the plant from producing more blossoms and tomatoes (they were still growing!!) and to let more sun get to the heavy clusters of tomatoes buried deep in the intense vines.

Now, you'll notice we used "nekkid" not "naked" in the title of this post. "Naked" is when you're just walking around without any clothes. "Nekkid" means you don't have clothes on and you're up to something! Even though these vines are defrocked, they are definitely not shy about it and they are definitely still up to something...

This is that big leafy patch that sets right under our balcony where the peas were earlier in the year. You can see all the bamboo poles we built up inside of the vines to create a strong enough support structure. These are San Marzano and Amish Paste.

Again more San Marzano and Amish Paste. Look at those big clusters of ripening fruit! YUMM!! Jason called this picture "Sticks." Totally appropriate... don't you think??

Another shot of that same North Wall. These are the vines that grew to 12 feet tall before we finally topped them.

A close up of the Amish Paste. Definitely a good producer.

Once we cut back the excess foliage, we found these huge clusters of San Marzano tomatoes. We are picking them twice a day now and barely keeping up with canning and drying them.

This Green Zebra was one of our novelty tomatoes we grew this year. We had Red Zebra last year which, in our opinion, have a much better flavor than the milder Green Zebra. This one is fully ripe with it's green and yellow stripes. It ended up in the sauce that night for dinner... hehehe...

After the San Marzano and the Amish Paste, these Black Prince tomatoes were the best producers of the large tomatoes in the Jungle this year. Jason took this picture last weekend and we picked this entire cluster just yesterday (Sunday). This is one of the ones that will be coming back next year to the Jungle for sure!

Couldn't resist this one. These are the purple tomatillos. Everyone was dubious about whether we'd be able to get many from these vines we grew in one of our pots. Again, this was taken last weekend and yesterday we harvested 16 large, dark tomatillos with many many more to come in the next few days.

So there you have it... The Jungle in all its nekkid glory. We'll have an update for you all on how many tomatoes we've harvested so far but, as a teaser, this weekend we picked around 60 pounds between the different varieties. We're firing up the canner and drying some in the oven tonight. Yes, we do eat a lot of tomato sauce and our hope is to not have to by any all winter... and that's the nekkid truth...

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz

Q&A: Why we do what we do...

noreply@blogger.com (Shibaguyz) — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 19:47:00 +0000

1. What do you do with all those tomatoes?

2. That's an awful lot of beans, are you really going to be able to use all of those?

3. You fellas sure must like tomatoes!

4. What will you ever do with that many potatoes?

5. Do you really eat all those tomatoes?

6. All of your tomatoes are green... where are the red ones? Aren't any of them getting ripe?

These are all the questions we get asked on a regular basis about the Jungle. At first glance, this may appear to be a lot of produce we're growing back there... that is, of course, unless you eat food year round.

1. We eat them... eventually...

2. We don't use them all at once (we can barely keep up with picking them all right now!) but we can and freeze them for use this winter and next spring until the next crop of beans is ripe next summer.

3. Yes, we do like tomatoes.

4. Eat them... eventually...

5. Yes, we really do. No, we don't eat them all at once. Like the beans, we can barely keep up with picking them right now, but we can most of them either whole, in sauce or crushed for use all winter and spring until next year's crop of tomatoes is ripe.

6. Yes, all of the tomatoes you see on the vine are green. We picked the red ones (and purple and black ones).

Okay, maybe some of those answers seem a little simple. However, it is these simple answers that usually bring on the next line of questioning that really gets to the heart of the matter. We started out this little plot of ours with the idea that it would be such a treat to be able to walk out into our own back patio and eat fresh sugar snap peas and tomatoes right off the vines. And, that's exactly what we do.

However, due to our every growing awareness of food and the current state of our economy, our Edible Jungle Paradise has become so much more to us. Being able to educate folks on the reason we do what we do is such an important part of what we do that we welcome those questions listed about and answer them just as we did here in order to open up a wider discussion. It is at this point someone usually asks another question:

"You can and freeze all this yourself?"

"Yes, we do."

And, we're off...

We believe that, by planting this space with edible fruits and vegetables, we are standing up against the larger corporate food machine that is contaminating and poisoning our food supply. Through cross contamination caused by limited processing plants and chemical poisoning caused by the irresponsible use of pesticides and genetically engineered food products, our globalized food system is poisoning us and driving the world into a state of malnutrition and starvation.

It is our duty and great joy to be able to plant a large percentage of our food supply right here in our own back yard where we can control the types of plants that are used (all non-GMO), we can ensure only organic practices are utilized in the growing and processing of our food. In short, we have taken over control of this portion of our food chain.

On a larger scale, we use our own food produced here right outside our doorstep as well as our local farmers markets to supply 98% of our daily food needs. We do this through preserving as much as we can of the fresh, local produce we or our local farmer friends grow. This ensures we have enough food for all winter and spring so we can stay off the food grid.

Seem a little extreme? Not to us. Read some Pollan or Kingsolver or do some online research on where some of the food giants get their product from and how they produce and process that food. You'll feel a little extreme too. We always tell people, if we sound extreme, it's because the situation is, in fact, extreme. We won't go into it all here, others we mentioned above (especially Michael Pollan) have done a much more thorough and vivid job of describing where our food comes from and where it goes along the route to our tables.

Our first recommendation is to read "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan. While it was Barbara Kingsolver that gave us a somewhat romantic yet important sense of why we should grow our own food and, in fact, connected us to our farming roots and awakened that part of us that wanted to grow our own food, it was Michael Pollan that added a sense of urgency. Like Paul Revere riding frantically through the streets proclaiming the alarm of invasion, Pollan makes sure his message is loud and clear and heard by all. Read the book, you'll know what we mean.

Another great source we recommend is the internet... duh, right? Seriously though... if you are an iTunes user, there is a little known free service called iTunes U. There are lectures, radio broadcasts and just about any academic source and topic you can imagine... and all for free! We have listened to a number of Michael Pollan's lectures as well as the original interview with Barbara Kingsolver that tipped us over the edge.

Along those same lines, check out YouTube sometime. Just type in any topic you are looking for and you'll find enough video information to keep you busy for a LOOOONG time. Our favorite stop is the video channel for The Path To Freedom website. This is the Dervaes family living in Pasadena, California. Talk about intensive farming! Listening to the lectures Mr. Dervaes gave at UCLA was both inspiring and informative in a plain, simple way.

There are dozens of ways you have ended up here reading our words: you may have stumbled across our blog by accident on a random web search or if you picked us up from one of our friend's blog rolls. You might belong to one of the online social groups we belong to like Blotanical, Best Green Blogs or Path To Freedom. Whatever the case may be, we hope you are informed, inspired and motivated. We hope you can see that anyone can declare a little bit of independence from the corporate food chain and take that first step toward freedom.

We started with a few pea plants and a couple of tomatoes... it quickly escalated from there. This year was bigger than last and next year should be downright insane. We have been canning and freezing everything we can get our hands on and this weekend we start our dry preserving. We love what we do. We love the freedom it gives us and we love the fact that no matter how bad the economic indicators are or how destroyed our industrial food chain becomes, we can always put food on our own table. If even one tiny piece of that information or inspiration passes on to someone else, then we've accomplished all we set out for and more.

Thank you all for reading and for your supportive comments. As much as we love doing this, it is not always easy. It is all of you that have encouraged us and made us find more and more creative ways to develop our skills. Thank you. Come back and comment often. We do try to reply to all of our comments in a timely fashion (unless it's a week like this one where work and the harvest has kept us crazy busy) so feel free to leave questions and check back for answers and comments from us.

Off to the J-O-B now... then back tonight to start drying tomatoes... YUM!! Also, we'll put up a post tonight with some of the pics from our canning exploits this week. Jason put up several jars of sauce made entirely from our black and purple tomatoes... YUMM!! Check back for that tomorrow.

talk to you soon...

The Shibaguyz