Rhode Island 100 mile

Close call.

ri100mi — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 21:09:25 +0000

Tagged: Earl, hurricane

Give peas a second chance.

ri100mi — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:02:34 +0000

With this year’s growing season starting so early and seemingly continuing on, we decided to give growing peas a second shot. Our first go-round didn’t work out so well- we turned a tomato cage upside down to use as a trellis and the peas never really grew on it like I expected. Due to the demise of our zucchini, a spot opened up in one of our boxes. I grabbed some downed branches from the wooded area down the street and built a support to hang some twine that the peas can grow up…they just broke ground last week and will be reaching the twine any day now…hopefully we’ll have better results!

-Josh

Tagged: peas

Poor planning

ri100mi — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 01:07:03 +0000

So Josh and I are doing great eating within 100 miles when we eat at home. We have lots of options – so much in season and lots of different meats to pick from and now we have a local rye flour we can use. What we’re finding difficult is eating when we pick up and go somewhere – even when it’s close by. This past weekend, we rode our bikes to Coastal Growers Farmers Market at Casey Farm. It was my longest ride of the season so far – only a little over 10 miles each way but I’ve probably only done 15 miles at one time and that was on bike trails and back roads. We had to ride on Route 1 which was not too fun. It was a beautiful day to be out on the bikes though – sunny but still cool in the morning – really great. However, we didn’t bring any food with us and when we go to the market, I wanted more than a fruit! So we cheated and I had an iced chai tea and a blueberry coffee cake type thing. Josh had a coffee and breakfast burrito. It was all so incredibly good but there was a little guilt for cheating. Next time we ride to the market, I’ll have to pack something so we’ll be set once we get to the market.

Planning, planning, planning!

Egg fiasco?

ri100mi — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 23:40:29 +0000

Anybody else a little creeped out by the recent egg recall? This little article in today’s Boston Globe at least gives a glimpse on how 500 million eggs can get contaminated and unfit for human consumption. I know that local eggs can become contaminated as well, but at least the people producing the eggs are usually the ones selling them them to us and if something were to occur, it would be much easier tracking down the source. I hate to say it, but I guess this is what happens when you get all your eggs from one *uhm* “basket”!

-Josh

Tagged: eggs

(Almost) a hill of beans…

ri100mi — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 23:05:40 +0000

Some of our more prolific producers this year have been our bush string beans. We planted three each of “Provider Snap Bush” and “Royal Burgundy Bush” beans and we have had about three harvests since they have matured, which was a surprise because I thought we would get one round of beans and that would be it. The plants lie pretty low, so they get knocked over in the rain, but that doesn’t seem to bother them…the funny thing is that when the purple beans are cooked, they turn green!

-Josh

Tagged: beans

A Mighty Fine Saturday Night!

ri100mi — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:55:06 +0000

…we were busy in the RI100MI kitchen last night, trying out some new recipes for some adventurous diners. We tried to keep everything as local as possible seeing that this is a 100 mile challenge month, but since the meal was planned months in advance we snuck in a few things that fall outside our challenge boundary:

Pickled beets, carrots and watermelon from David Chang’s Momofuku cookbook- all the fruits/veggies were from RI- elements of the pickling brine were not.

Cucumber, mango leather, candied lemon zest from the Alinea cookbook- not much local here!

Salad, frozen form from Alinea cookbook- Unfortunately due to the volume of greens needed to make this recipe it would be pretty cost prohibitive to make this from local ingredients.

Pear, eucalyptus gel, olive oil, peppercorn from Alinea cookbook- Once again, struck out on the local.

Lamb flatbread (based on one that we had at Cook and Brown)- All local (flour is from MA)…lamb, tomato, cucumber and yogurt all are from RI.

Pine nut olive oil marshmallow from A day at El Bulli by Ferran Adria- Milk was local. Olive oil and pine nuts were not.

“Caprese Salad”; Basil Ice cream, tomato sauce, dehydrated mozzarella, aged balsamic vinegar- The tomato sauce, cream and basil in the ice cream were all from RI.

Tomato salad from Momofuku cookbook- All the tomatoes and the basil were from RI; oils and tofu were not.

Corn sorbet from the Alinea cookbook- Corn was from RI; butter and stabilizer were not.

RI bluefish with yellow tomato sauce, heirloom tomatoes and aioli from Sunday Suppers at Lucques by Suzanne Goin- Fish and tomatoes came from RI along with the egg yolk in the aioli; bacon and olive oil were not.

Raspberry Napoleon from Thomas Keller’s Bouchon cookbook- Raspberries and cream from RI, all other ingredients are from elsewhere.

Battle Tomato!!

ri100mi — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:05:34 +0000

…more on this tomorrow.

Tim Burton tomatoes and tiny eggplants

ri100mi — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 18:45:22 +0000

Well, our gardens have been bittersweet this year. Lots of lots of zucchini, peppers, two kinds of eggplant (we’ll get to the third in a minute), herbs – it’s been great. And though we have the tomato blight we did get some of each tomato except for the White Wonder. I picked the White Wonder to go all the way this year – it was going to produce first and the most. They are supposed to look like this. Josh now calls it the White Blunder – needless to say I’m less than impressed. However – I’ll probably try it again next year just to see if we can do it! Josh recently started referring to our tomatoes as the Tim Burton tomatoes. Look below to see why!

Why do I keep them you may be asking yourself when you see this picture? It’s because there is 1-2 tomatoes on each plant that I will harvest in 2-3 days and I will harvest them! I know some of you may be doubting me (Carolyn) – but there really are tomatoes on those plants.

Onto the next strange product from our garden. We bought three different types of eggplant in the spring. The plants themselves are going crazy – super-tall, super-green, looking really good. However, we are only getting eggplants from two of the plants – one plant produces long and dark purple ones and the other produces ones that are the size of a large softball and tie-dyed white and purple. And then we have the third plant.

In this first picture one might say – red eggplants – interesting. However, in the second pictures – eggplants that are smaller than a wine cork – what is it? I’m thinking they may be Turkish Italian Orange Eggplants – but I’m not sure. I’ll keep looking but I think it’s pretty funny that it took us about three months to produce those two eggplants!

Back to our roots.

ri100mi — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 20:46:47 +0000

Welcome to our 200th post! It seems fitting that this post is about a place that is near and dear to the way we think about food- the Portsmouth, NH Farmer’s Market. It was while Ingrid was living in Portsmouth that we discovered this market and the benefits of eating seasonal and local foods. We got to visit the market a couple of Saturdays ago- and while things haven’t changed much, it’s good to see that it’s still going strong! We picked up some food on our way up to northern NH for a camping trip- some potatoes, eggs, fruit and cheese ended up in our cooler, helping us to stay nourished during our hike up Mt. Moriah…it took a few trial runs, but I think that we finally figured out how to go camping during our 100 mile challenge and not go hungry!

-Josh

Some views from the market:

Tagged: Portsmouth

and on the fourth day…

ri100mi — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 00:01:39 +0000

Today’s backyard harvest:

Tonight’s dinner:

…our garden boxes that we added to our back yard are starting to pay dividends; every other day or so we pull something out of there…a squash one day, eggplant the next…maybe an onion when we need it. It’s kind of cool seeing the vegetables growing and planning ahead for when they are going to be ready. For our forth day on the 100 mile, I took two eggplant and grilled them which were then tossed with some tomatoes and a cut up pepper (all from the yard). Along with that is a nice steak from Simmons Farm here and RI and some red potatoes from the Goddard Park Farmer’s Market.

-Josh

Tagged: eggplant, steak, tomatoes