From the farm to the table

Ever spend much time thinking about that tasty muffin you sometimes have with your morning coffee?

Where did the eggs used in the batter come from? What about the flour? The berries?

While you’re at it, think about a roasted chicken dinner you might have had recently or the salad served with it. Where did that food come from?

For many, the closest they can get to answering that question is “the grocery store.”

But there are a growing number of folks in the region who want people to think more about the foods they eat. They’re trying to give consumers a chance to see – and taste – the difference between locally produced foods and those trucked in from other states or even other countries.

“People are trying to come back to basics. We want to look the person in the eye who grew our food. We want to put a name to that food,” said Jennifer Hall, small farm marketing coordinator for Washington State University’s Spokane County extension program.

Diane Green, a longtime organic farmer and advocate of sustainable agriculture who sells at the Sandpoint Farmers’ Market agreed. “People are more conscientious of where their food is coming from. At the farmers’ market, people are asking about the food they’re buying.”

Still, Hall, a strong proponent for sustainable agriculture, said the growing awareness isn’t at the level it should be.

“Think about it; if we got all cut off from oil tomorrow, where would our food come from? No way could this area support it (the need), not yet,” Hall said. Foods such as wheat may be grown here, but it’s processed elsewhere.

Though she said she’s doesn’t like to use scare tactics to get people to make changes, Hall wishes more people would understand why they should support local farmers who are producing food through sustainable practices.

Many farmers believe that such awareness comes from personal interactions between the consumer and the farmer. Whether it’s simply picking your own fruit or vegetables at a local farm, shopping at a farmers’ market or participating in a farm tour, in the past couple of years, the opportunities for people to reconnect with a food source have grown.

And many believe that the best way to convince average consumers to buy local is by tickling their taste buds.

Last summer, Green and friend Sora Huff, a chef and organic farmer/baker who sells at the Boundary County Farmers’ Market launched Sunday Brunch on the Farm as a way to give people a chance to experience farm-fresh food. The program was so well received, they are doing it again this year.

Held on the farm that Green and her husband live and work on a few miles outside of Sandpoint, guests enjoy a brunch made from foods grown right there. The brunch menu changes throughout the season, reflecting what’s ripe in the garden. After the meal, guests tour the gardens and learn about organic farming and hear why Green believes that communities really can support their own food needs.

“People are really excited to see the vegetables growing that they were eating,” Green said. She’s been surprised at how disconnected many people are from their food.

“It’s unfathomable to me that people don’t know what a tomato growing on the vine looks like,” she said. But at each brunch they have held, there always seems to be someone who has never seen food growing.

Lora Lea Misterly from Quillisascut Cheese Co. in northeast Washington echoed Green’s discovery.

“People don’t know what a bean plant looks like,” she said. “They’ve never seen an eggplant growing.”

But beyond consumers not being able to recognize vegetables at the source, Misterly said there’s a bigger problem: “People are losing a taste for what foods should taste like. We’re all aware of tomatoes that have no flavor. We think fast food is good. We have developed a taste for fat and salt.”

“People think there’s something wrong with the good food (because it tastes different),” said Gary Angell, a rancher in Reardan, Wash., who raises natural beef and poultry and takes orders for the meats at the Spokane Farmers’ Market. “We need to counteract that somehow.”

Most advocates of local and organic foods say the problem comes from the proliferation of processed foods and fruits and vegetables that were harvested too early so they can survive being transported, sometimes thousands of miles, from the source to a store.

In contrast, local foods such as those you can buy at a farmers’ market or a U-pick farm are often harvested the day before or even that morning, at peak ripeness.

At a recent brunch, Green served strawberries picked from the garden the same day. One guest commented that she never knew strawberries could taste so sweet. Another said she always adds salt and pepper to her foods but didn’t have to at the brunch because the food already had so much flavor.

“And fresh – as far as meat goes – there’s no comparison,” Green said.

It’s simple, Misterly said, “With local food you get the freshest taste.”

Misterly and her husband run a farm school for culinary and agriculture students on the farm where they make goat cheese and grow food. They’ve also held farm tours and a harvest dinner to help educate their community about sustainable agriculture.

They are now taking reservations for a weekend-long retreat next summer that would give nonfood professionals a chance to experience food from the very beginning. Participants would milk the goats, help make the cheese, harvest food from the gardens and more.

Misterly said people are turning to local foods for many different reasons. Some simply think shopping at a farmers’ markets is fun. Others are concerned about the environmental impact of large-scale commercial farms. Still others, she said, are concerned about nutrition and health.

“Think about it,” Green said. “From the moment it gets picked, the nutrition goes down. The closer to the food source, the more nutritious.”

Hall said adults often get turned on to local and especially organic food when they become parents. “They get concerned about what they’re putting in their kids’ bodies,” she said.

Reaching kids is at the heart of many local farms, which offer tours for school-age children.

Spokane’s Eli Penberthy wants to go much further with students. She dreams of something like The Edible Schoolyard program (see www.edibleschoolyard.org) at a middle school in Berkeley, Calif. There, students grow organic food, harvest it and then prepare meals with it in an on-site kitchen.

“Spokane is really ripe for this kind of program,” said Penberthy, who grew up here and is finishing a college thesis about food and how it affects and is affected by society. She works as the nutrition educator for the Women, Infants and Children program, which among other services offers vouchers that can be used to buy fresh produce at the Spokane Farmers’ Market.

Earlier this month, Penberthy coordinated a day-long event for high school students, giving them a chance to visit the Spokane Farmers’ Market, meet the farmers and watch and discuss the film “Supersize Me.” The students wrapped up the day at Luna restaurant with farm-fresh food and the chance to make ice cream and pizza. Though only two students participated in the first part of the program, several more made it to the lunch and cooking demonstrations.

Luna owner Marcia Bond said having the kids at the restaurant rubbing elbows with the chefs and tasting fresh food brought a longtime dream of hers to reality. While Luna has been a place to taste local foods for years, Bond said she is excited about the increased interest in local products throughout the community.

“It is so exciting,” she said. “There is more energy. People are going down to the farmers’ markets, and you can see and feel the energy flowing.”

Penberthy is considering hosting another similar event for students later in the summer and is looking forward to the start of the school year with hopes of tapping into classes in area high schools that are already touching on the subjects of obesity or food sources. And she and Bond, who along with her husband, recently bought the Cannon Street Grill and additional land to expand their gardens, hope to develop a youth garden. The Bonds will reopen the Cannon Street Grill later this month as Café Marrón.

“I think it’s really, really important kids have this experience,” Penberthy said. “They gain a whole new appreciation of food, seeing where it’s coming from.”

Spanikopita

From Sora Huff, Paradise Valley Organics

Huff and Diane Green have served this dish at several Sunday brunches on Green’s Sandpoint farm. They use farm-fresh eggs, organic flour and local greens and herbs. Guests always rave about it, and the women insist it’s the farm-fresh eggs and local products that make it stand out.

Crust:

1 cup flour

6 tablespoons butter

Ice water

Filling:

3 large eggs (farm-fresh)

½ cup sour cream

1 pound ricotta

½ cup fresh grated Parmesan cheese

1 pound spinach, or a combination of greens such as Swiss chard and kale)

2 tablespoons finely chopped fresh basil

½ cup chopped onion

½ teaspoon salt

½ teaspoon pepper

To make the crust, cut butter into flour until the size of peas. Add ice water (1 tablespoon at a time) until a ball can just be formed. Wrap in plastic to keep moist. Place in refrigerator while making the filling. The trick to pastry is to keep it cold while handling and then bake it hot.

To make the filling, steam spinach (or mixture of greens) lightly in small amount of water until soft but still dark green. Let cool enough to handle. Squeeze out as much liquid as possible and chop fine. Beat eggs until fluffy, reserving a little bit to brush the top pastry. Add the greens and remaining filling ingredients to the beaten eggs and mix well. Place mixture in a buttered, 8-inch square baking pan (glass or stainless steel work best). Roll out the pastry very thin, trim to an 8-inch square and place over the spinach mixture. Brush the pastry lightly with beaten egg. Bake for 50 minutes at 400 degrees until crust is light brown and puffy.

Yield: 6 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving: 420 calories, 27 grams fat (16 grams saturated, 58 percent fat calories), 20 grams protein, 25 grams carbohydrate, 175 milligrams cholesterol, 2.9 grams dietary fiber, 663 milligrams sodium.

Chard with Curry Sauce

From Betta Bunzel, Genesee, Idaho.

This simple recipe allows the flavor of local chard to shine.

1/2 to 1 pound chopped chard (organic preferred)

1 tablespoon canola oil

1/8 teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons water

Curry Sauce:

1 cup milk, divided

1 tablespoon arrowroot powder (see note)

1 teaspoon curry powder

Sauté chard for 1 minute in oil. Add salt, and stir so that all leaves are coated. Add water, cover and simmer on medium-low heat for 10 minutes.

In a separate bowl or cup, add 1/4 cup of the milk to the arrowroot powder to make a paste. Stir until smooth. Add remaining milk and curry powder to the paste and stir. After the chard has cooked 10 minutes, slowly add the curry sauce to the pan and cook 1 to 2 minutes, stirring until thickened.

Note: Cornstarch can be used in place of arrowroot powder as the thickener.

Yield: 2 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving (using 1 pound of chard): 173 calories, 8.7 grams fat (1.4 grams saturated, 45 percent fat calories), 8 grams protein, 18 grams carbohydrate, 5 milligrams cholesterol, 4 grams dietary fiber, 691 milligrams sodium

Roast Chicken with Spring Vegetables

From “Fresh From the Garden Cookbook,” by Ann Lovejoy, a food and gardening columnist for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer

1 roasting chicken, 3 to 4 pounds

¼ cup fresh lemon balm leaves

1 tablespoon fresh thyme leaves

2 tablespoons stemmed fresh fennel greens

2 tablespoons olive oil

4 small bulbs Florence fennel, ends trimmed

1 bunch asparagus, ends snapped off

1 pound organic new potatoes, well scrubbed

8 ounces snow peas, ends trimmed

¼ teaspoon kosher or sea salt

1 lemon, cut into quarters, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Loosen the chicken skin and cover the bird with lemon balm leaves, sliding them under the skin. Use about 3 tablespoons of the leaves. Shred the remaining lemon balm and combine in a small bowl with the thyme, fennel greens and olive oil. Brush the fennel, asparagus, potatoes, snow peas and chicken lightly with the herbed oil and sprinkle with salt. Place the vegetables and chicken in a roasting pan and roast until the chicken is cooked, about 1 hour. Let rest for 5 minutes. Carve the chicken and serve with the vegetables, spooning pan juices over each portion. Garnish with lemon wedges.

Yield: 4 servings

Approximate nutrition per serving: 642 calories, 22.7 grams fat (5 grams saturated, 32 percent fat calories), 64 grams protein, 46 grams carbohydrate, 170 milligrams cholesterol, 11.6 grams dietary fiber, 448 milligrams sodium.