A picture of a normal week

Not pictured are the pork ribs and chops, and the bacon and sausages that I made that might find their way into a meal or two or not. We have a little garden on the deck with cabbage and lettuce. Also not in the photo is some organic hamburger meat and the organic goat milk for Amaya.

My Dollar a Day Deal has shot itself in foot because we stocked up on some staples at the store: butter, flour, milk, creme fraiche, and eggs. I had planned on not getting them just to see how we do, but oh well! I also didnt spend a dollar a day, I spent nothing because I have been trapped at home waiting for a delivery (not even for me) for FOUR days. The farmers market closes at noon and they kept saying that they were coming between 9-1pm and still no dice.

In the photo are a lot of free to us foods, loquats, artichokes, strawberries, foraged weeds, and mulberries (which I have spent the last four days picking them while waiting at home).

Homemade whey mayo and kefir and kombucha drinks are in house specialities in our house. We also have them. No need for bottled drinks. Our water is perfect out of the tap. I keep a glass bottle of it cold in the fridge.

I'll still keep up the dollar a day deal for the last week of May just to see what wonderful things I find at the farmers market. For a great photo story of weekly food budgets and items check out the Other Families across the World.

A Dollar a Day in May: Potatoes

Food for famine? Or nourishment to save the world? Potatoes are full of nutrients and vitamins and one of my favorites to eat not just because I am from Idaho. Also, it's the international year of the Potato. Guess the tuber needs some good press as it deserves, we could live off these if we had too.

We have only been spending a euro a day this month. I havent bought anything for the last couple of days so my next installment should be something grand and four whole euros. I feel like a kid with fresh allowance money only I am not buying candy bars, I'm getting fresh, local fruits and vegetables with my monthly chump change.

What did I make first with my four pounds of spuds? Italian melt in your mouth Gnocchi of course! Served with a nettle hazelnut pesto.

From Mario Batali's (or any basic italian kitchen's) armory; I skipped the ice bath

3 pounds russet potatoes
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 egg, extra large
1 pinch salt
1/2 cup canola oil

Boil the whole potatoes until they are soft (about 45 minutes). While still warm, peel and pass through vegetable mill

Set 6 quarts of water to boil in a large spaghetti pot. Set up ice bath with 6 cups ice and 6 cups water near boiling water.

Make well in center of potatoes and sprinkle all over with flour, using all the flour. Place egg and salt in center of well and using a fork, stir into flour and potatoes, just like making normal pasta. Once egg is mixed in, bring dough together, kneading gently until a ball is formed. Knead gently another 4 minutes until ball is dry to touch.

Roll baseball-sized ball of dough into 3/4-inch diameter dowels and cut dowels into 1-inch long pieces. Cut pieces off of fork or concave side of cheese grater until dowel is finished. Drop these pieces into boiling water and cook until they float (about 1 minute). Meanwhile, continue with remaining dough, forming dowels, cutting into 1-inch pieces and flicking off of fork.

As gnocchi float to top of boiling water, remove them to ice bath. Continue until all have been cooled off. Let sit several minutes in bath and drain from ice and water. Toss with 1/2 cup canola oil and store covered in refrigerator up to 48 hours until ready to serve.

The next day, I made these scrumptious baked potatoes (on a cold stormy night) with my homemade maple cured bacon and fried garlic on top. For breakfast the following day we had hashbrowns and I still had three left to make mashed potatoes tonight. I saved the potato water for making bagels and I saved the peels to make another soup with some duck broth. I don't feel famished at all.

Kiwis for my dollar a day...

The Month of May marks our fun adventure of only spending a € per day. Really, I think that we could go without grocery shopping at all for the entire month, but I hate to miss out on the seasons fresh fruit and vegetables that are overflowing with abundance at the farmers market.

Today, I found these Kiwis. Last night, I was feeling wheezy so easy breezy Kiwis are just the ticket for me. (We will eat them straight out of their peels after lunch but I made a kiwi strawberry jam the other day with our frozen kiwis)

Actinidia fruit - kiwi fruit to most of us - are very high in vitamin C. Actinidia deliciosa, is the common green kiwifruit that we get three good boxes from our three plants in January.

These emerald jeweled delights contain numerous phytonutrients as well as well known vitamins and minerals that promote your health. A phytonutrient has the ability to protect DNA in the nucleus of human cells from oxygen-related damage!

The protective properties of kiwi have been demonstrated in a study with 6- and 7-year-old children in northern and central Italy. The more kiwi or citrus fruit these children consumed, the less likely they were to have respiratory-related health problems including wheezing, shortness of breath, night coughing and runny nose.

A couple of kiwifruit each day may significantly lower your risk for blood clots and reduce the amount of fats (triglycerides) in your blood, therefore helping to protect cardiovascular health

Kiwifruit is an excellent source of vitamin C, and polyphenols, and a good source of vitamin E, magnesium, potassium, and copper, all of which may function individually or in concert to protect the blood vessels and heart. In one study, human volunteers who ate 2 to 3 kiwifruit per day for 28 days reduced their platelet aggregation response (potential for blood clot formation) by 18% compared to controls eating no kiwi. In addition, kiwi eaters' triglycerides (blood fats) dropped by 15% compared to controls.

Coming Up ROSES!

Rose Vinegar

A natural facial mask, a cure for red blotches, a wonderful addition to salad dressings and an all purpose floor cleaner, who wouldnt want their house to smell like roses? Now that everything is coming up roses. Take a little bit of time and use some of those spent organic (pesticide free) blooms to make Rose Vinegar, Rose Honey and Rose Water for a whole year of beauty.

For a Rose Vinegar skin tonic: A versatile skin tonic and undiluted, this concoction makes an effective gargle for sore throats, or can be used mixed with an equal quantity of vegetable oil as a salad dressing. Or use it iced for burns and bee stings, jelly fish stings, and to take the itch out of mosquito bites and ouch out of sun burn. For a hundred other uses check out the vinegar book.

To make a pint

• 2 large handfuls fresh pink or red rose petals
• 7 tablespoons white wine vinegar
• 1 pint/570ml purified water

Place the rose petals in a glass container and add the white wine vinegar. Leave in a cool, dark place for 1 week, shaking occasionally. Strain and discard the petals, then dilute the rose vinegar with water to make a refreshing skin lotion.

Rose Honey

Wonderful for baking, spread on bread or to flavor porridges. But Rose Honey is also one of the best facial masks that you can make. Honey is an antibacterial and Rose does wonders for red blotches and other skin discolorations. Both honey and roses can speed healing, prevent scarring and heal blemishes and pimples.

Fill any jar with wild rose petals of any color (from a source that you know that didn’t use sprays) and that you previously rinsed off and dried on a tea towel (to remove dirt and bugs) then add honey. Cap and let it sit for a few days or weeks. Turn the bottle every so often to infuse the petals in the honey.

Try making Rose Honey ice cream this summer, while patting your face with Rose Honey and taking a little 15 minute break while it works its wonders, then rinse off with tepid water. You can finish by spraying your face with rose water (next recipe).

Rose Water

France produces perfume with it (for a recipe from 1609), In Iran they make sorbets with it; Turkish Loukum known commonly as Turkish delight is made with it, but Rose Water is one of the gentlest of all astringents for your skin too.

Fill a bowl with cold water and a tablespoon of Vodka and a handful of Rose petals. Cap tightly, keep out of the sun and let it distill for 2 weeks. It will make your skin softer and less prone to inflammations.

If you want to try your hand at home distillation, here is a great kitchen method that I will be using for some other fresh herbs soon.

One Local Summer

The 2008 One Local Summer sign ups are going on now at Farm to Philly. I am committed to eating local all summer starting now for me. Just the other night we had the best salad in the world from edible wildflowers (redbud blossoms, borage) home grown on our terrace lettuce, cilantro, hazelnuts from grandpa's tree, chive blossoms, mint also from his garden, little strawberries the grandma planted years ago and were lost in the weeds with a homemade vinegarette with honey, hooch vinegar (made from wine dregs) and local olive oil. We will be making variations of this salad all summer long with different edible wild flowers.

One Local summer is a group blog that not only talks about all things localvore, but also shares recipes, gardening tales, and national and international news bits that impact us all. One Local Summer will begin this year on Sunday, June 1 and will run until Sunday, August 31.

The rules will remain the same: create at least one meal each week during the challenge that's made entirely of locally grown ingredients (the acceptable exceptions: salt and pepper, oil, spices). Post your meal(s) to your blog (or for those without blogs, you can email in a report about your challenge meal). Posts broken down by region will be posted at Farm to Philly that detail what everyone's doing!

Whey Bread

Didn’t really follow a recipe for this bread because I have made it a dozen or so times and I am too lazy to measure out ingredients. It is similar to Susan’s farmhouse white bread recipe except I used half wheat flour and whey instead of milk or water, olive oil instead of canola and I do a quarter of the recipe. As you know I have been using whey for everything except the baby’s bottle.

approximate ingredients

2-3 cups of flour

Package of bread yeast

2-3 tablespoons of sugar (to your taste)

1 cup of whey

2 tablespoons of oil

Dash of salt

So that leaves it a little up to tossing half the flour into a bowl adding yeast, salt and sugar, mixing, adding whey and stirring to get a sticky dough that I let rise up a bit. Then I keep adding flour to until it just comes off the edge of the mixing bowl and knead it with the dough hook for a few minutes. Coat it in a couple of tablespoons of olive oil and put in a sunny place with a tea towel for two hours. Once it has doubled, I put the dough on a floured surface and cut pieces off into rolls. Under that towel again to double again before baking in a hot oven for 20 odd minutes and we are rolling!

That is my basic recipe. A lot of times I add honey instead of sugar and sprouted grains and or soaked grains like spelt, barley, flaxseeds, oats (even leftover cereal goes in there). When I have sour dough starter, I’ll add some of that too. Though my husband is not a big fan of sourdough but he loved the one with honey and flaxseeds. If I am feeling decorative, I’ll cut the top of the loaf with a sharp knife.

Way too much Whey?

Cheese making is something that I do at least once a week or more now. Cream cheese, ricotta, farmers cheese, goat cheeses, and feta are my latest creations. I even had my husband build me a “cheese house” to age them. Which gives us great fresh made cow and goat’s milk cheese to munch on in salads, in savory tartes and spread fresh on baguettes with jam or honey. But it leaves my refrigerator clogged with a myriad of repurposed glass bottles of whey—the natural juicy by products that are squeezed out to make cheese. Whey is full of protein, essential amino acids, and minerals thus it is very nutritious, and you know how I hate to waste. So what do you do when you have “Way too much whey?”

Mayonnaise with Whey

1 whole egg, at room temperature
1 egg yolk, at room temperature
1 teaspoon Dijon-type mustard
1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1 tablespoon Homemade whey
Sea salt and and freshly ground black pepper to taste
¾ cup olive oil or a light seed oil, or a mix of the two or three (coconut oil is great too)

Place egg, egg yolk, mustard, salt and lemon juice and whey in your food processor. Process until well blended, about 30 seconds. With the motor running, add the oil blend drop by drop (some food processors have a hole at the bottom of the cylindrical part that does this automatically). Taste and check seasoning. You may want to add more salt and lemon juice. If you have added whey, let the mayonnaise sit at room temperature, well covered, for 7 hours before refrigerating. With whey added, mayonnaise will keep several months and will become firmer over time. Without whey, mayonnaise will keep, refrigerated, for about 2 weeks.

Buttermilk
Add ¼ cup of whey to a liter (quart) of milk and leave on the counter for 24 hours.

Sweet potato drink—a fermented drink made from grated sweet potatoes, sugar, nutmeg, whey and egg white. The recipe is in Wild Fermentation by Sandor Katz (a great book that I read and reread all the time)

Feta brine- add 10 percent salt to whey and make a brine for your feta, add thyme, rosemary, herbs of your choice and black peppercorns.

Starting next batch of cheese: great for breaking the curds and whey apart, just pour in enough to your hot milk until they separate. It will be more whey than if you use white vinegar or lemon juice because of their acid concentration. Strain through cheese cloth and you will have even more whey!

Whey Bread—substitute 1 cup of whey for water or milk in your favorite bread, roll, pita, etc recipe

Protein shakes—add to smoothies

Kvass (stale bread) fermented drink which you can add whey to start it or soak the bread or seeds. You can make kvass with caraway seeds, honey, barley, raisins, mint just about anything.

Beet Kvass—a fabulous drink and I use the leftover beets to make borscht where I add a dash of the purple beet whey at the serving table. Its gorgeous.

Whey pie crust
2 teaspoons white vinegar into
1/4 cup water chilled (or chilled whey without vinegar), put in the freezer for a bit

a stick of butter, cold and cut into pieces
3 Tbsp of leaf lard, cold

(about) 2 cups of flour, pinch of salt, baking powder, 3 Tbsp sugar (omit sugar for a savory crust), mix and put in freezer for 20 minutes

cut lard and butter into flour mix with a pastry cutter, then add water mix and form into a ball, add more water or flour if necessary. roll into a ball, press down into hockey puck form and put in fridge for an hour.

Chinese stir fry—when I need a bit of juice to keep the stir fry from sticking, I add whey

In place of wine in most cookery recipes. Like spaghetti sauces!

Chili—to thin out chili, I add a cup of whey and let it cook into the mix

Soak grains, rice and beans overnight or for a few days to increase their nutritional power, then cook as usual or make Dosas or Idlis, Indian flat breads. I like to grind up yellow beans that have been soaked in whey to make a thin pancake batter.

Soak thick rolled or steel cut oatmeal overnight

Irish Oatmeal
a recipe from Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon

1 cup whole oats

2 cups warm filtered water

4 Tablespoons whey, yogurt, kefir or buttermilk

(or if severe milk allergies substitute lemon juice or vinegar)

1 teaspoon sea salt

2 cups filtered water

Place oats on a baking sheet and bake at 350 degrees until they turn light brown. Process roasted oats to a medium grind in a home grinder. (The resultant meal should be part flour, part small bits.) Soak from 7-24 hours in a warm place in 2 cups warm water with the fermenting agent (whey, yogurt, kefir, buttermilk, vinegar or lemon juice.) The fine flour particles will rise to the top and may be lifted off carefully with a spoon. Bring additional 2 cups water and sea salt to a boil, add soaked oatmeal and cook over very low heat stirring frequently for about 10 minutes.

Muesli Recipe
From Nourishing Traditions, by Sally Fallon

1 cup rolled oats

¼ cup crispy almond slivers (see recipe below)

¼ cup dried sweetened coconut meat or commercial dried unsweetened coconut

½ tsp cinnamon

1 ½ cups warm filtered water plus 2 Tbsp whey, yogurt, kefir or buttermilk

½ tsp salt

1 cup filtered water

¼ cup raisins

1 tbsp flax seeds optional

Mix oats with almonds, cinnamon and coconut. Combine oat mixture with warm water mixture, cover and soak at room temperature for 7-14 hours. Bring an additional 1 cup of water to boil with sea salt. Add soaked oats and raisins, reduce heat, cover and simmer several minutes. Meanwhile, grind optional flax seeds in a mini grinder. Remove cereal from heat and stir in flax meal. Serve with butter or cream and natural sweetener like Rapadura, date sugar, maple syrup, maple sugar or raw honey.