LocavOregon

I had to move the wine out of our wine closet to give access to a home inspector. In the past year, our wine inventory has not varied from between 100-120 bottles. This is despite good-faith efforts to drink more wine and buy less.

Of the wine, at least 75% of it is from local wineries. We have our favorites, as well as exploring new wineries and buying a couple of bottles when we find something we like.

We attended the annual Harvest Soiree at De Ponte Cellars in Dundee, Oregon. I hesitate to ever mention this winery because I love their pinot noir so much. I don’t want others to know about it. It is a private event limited to those who have purchased at least a case of their wine in the past. We have been buying a case of their Dundee Hills Pinot Noir each year since the 2003 vintage. It usually has strong notes of cherry and red fruit with a vanilla note. Usually the Baldwin Family Reserve Pinot Noir is not to our taste. However, something flip flopped with the 2006 vintage. The less expensive Dundee Hills has a nice raspberry note, but no cherry notes and a Robert Parker rating of 91. The Baldwin Family Reserve, at twice the price, has the lovely cherry notes we enjoy and a Robert Parker rating of 92. In tough economic times, what to do? Don’t lay in a case at all? Buy the less expensive case knowing you won’t enjoy it as much? Buy only a half case of the more expensive swill? Bite the bullet so you won’t have any regrets in 2012? After trying both a second time, I decided I had enough in the checking account to get a full case of the spendy stuff I know I will enjoy.

The tasting room was packed with people (including a former Oregon Secretary of State) and cars were parked all the way down the long drive. But despite it looking like they had enough customers, I got a very sincere thank-you from the gal behind the wine counter, who then lugged the case to our car. I was impressed with the sincerity. I want to keep this winery in business, so that made me feel even better about the more expensive purchase.

I enjoy the Harvest Soiree free barbecue buffet. The food was very good, although Maysara has them beat. We’ll be visiting Maysara on Thanksgiving weekend.

It looks like I may be able to stock up on potatoes and carrots after all. Here is the list of events from the LocalHarvest calendar for the next two weeks in the Portland area.

• Thanksgiving FEASTival (November 22) At: Portland Farmers Market (Portland, OR)
• Harvest Market (November 22) At: Beaverton Farmers’ Market (Beaverton, OR)
• Eastbank Thanksgiving Reunion Market (November 25) At: Portland Farmers Market (Portland, OR)
• Moreland Holiday Market (November 25) At: Moreland Farmers Market (Portland, OR)

It’s November and pretty much every farmers market is now closed until late spring. These are the challenging months for locavores. I signed up for the late season subscription to my CSA and so I’m still getting lettuce, greens, squash, and some root vegetables. But I am wondering what I will do until May. I froze a lot of roasted tomatoes, but other than tomatoes I had no surplus to put away. I really regret that my CSA didn’t seem to produce carrots or potatoes in any quantity. I still look at those as great winter staples.

Since May, I have changed my cooking and shopping habits tremendously. We have eaten out only rarely for dinner. I felt the pressure to use those vegetables I got from the CSA, which drove me to cook different dishes. I supplemented them with more produce from the farmers markets. In the end, I only stopped at the grocery store or Costco for meat, bread and milk products.

My aim was always to explore being more of a locavore, rather than a strict locavore, and in that these past six months have been extremely successful. But there were many other virtues:

• Saved money on impulse buys at grocery stores
• Saved money on eating out.
• Saved space in the trash can as there were very few take-out containers.
• Ate a far wider variety of vegetables
• Found sources for grass-fed beef
• Learned or created many new recipes.

With the recession, by spending a big chunk of money for a CSA subscription, I probably saved 5 to 10 times that amount in reduced expenses for eating out and buying prepared foods in the grocery store. While it can be more expensive to buy local products, it promotes a lifestyle that saves big bucks over a typical American “I’ll pick something up on the way home” lifestyle.

I have already signed up for the 2009 CSA subscription.

Rutabagas and turnips are more vegetables that mom never grew in the garden or put on our table. But my husband’s mother liked to cook both turnips and potatoes and chunk them up together. Looking into turnips online, this seems to be a common presentation. But my husband simply hated that.

So, what to do with the bundle of rutabagas from my CSA this week? I decided to put them into beef stew, both the roots and the greens, along with some broccoli raab, carrots, and potatoes. I kept the rutabagas in a distinctive shape so I could be sure I would eat them rather than springing them on my husband. The resulting stew was delicious as usual. Because I use a base of red wine, the rutabagas really tasted about the same as the potatoes. The greens added nutrition but no off-flavors. I used grass-fed beef from La Cense.

I decided it was time to get the cat her own kitty perch rather than have her continue to hog the desk chairs. But I was reluctant to shell out good money for something the cat would reject. My friends all recommended Kitty Hooch, a local company that makes cat climbers, cat pagodas, and cat toys. Their secret is their primo grade of catnip. All of the cat furniture has a secret catnip compartment, so the cat is guaranteed to be attracted to its new hooch. Kitty Hooch had a store at the Jantzen Beach mall, but the just closed it. Instead, they now sell live at Portland Saturday Market and at craft fairs, plus on the internet. Kitty Hooch web site.

Their catnip is organically grown locally. It is far more potent than the usual catnip found in pet stores because it is fresh and local. They sell loose catnip as well as premium catnip toys, catnip beds and furniture. I inspected the basic Kitty Hooch Mini Hammock at the Portland Saturday Market. The carpeting was very soft, but the construction seemed solid. At 19 inches high, it looked about the right height as a desk chair, so my aging cat wouldn’t have trouble getting to the top. The proprietress loaded it up with catnip and I carried it back to my car. All of their furniture is modular and can easily come apart to replace sections or for moving.

Now for the real test - would the cat like it? Our cat enjoys catnip, so I suspected she wouldn’t ignore the new Mini-Hammock. Sure enough, I put it next to me desk and within seconds she was loving up to it, rolling around the base and getting high. When she had settled into a torpor, I picked her up and put her in the top hammock. She settled in contentedly. The shape is perfect for snuggling the cats. Cats like to feel semi-enclosed. Success so far!

For a few years, I’ve been making Wendy’s Wendy’s Chili, my crockpot variation of a recipe that is similar to the chili served at Wendy’s fast food restaurants. The recipe relied on canned beans, tomatoes and green chilies. Since I had a stock of fresh tomatoes, tomatillos and hot chili peppers, I used those for my latest batch. Wendy’s Uncanny Crockpot Chili was great! I simmered the beans for a half hour and then let them soak for two hours before adding them to the crockpot. I diced 8 medium tomatoes, 10 small tomatillos, two green peppers and four hot peppers. I toasted and ground cumin seed fresh for the batch and added standard chili powder, smoked paprika, salt and pepper. I would have put in onion but I didn’t have any handy from my CSA and hadn’t made it to the farmers market the past two weekends. The result was great chili without any cans in the trash or worries about BPA in the can lining. I didn’t have any local grassfed beef, but I used Moran’s Natural Beef from the grocery store.

One of the newest state parks in Oregon is L.L. Stub Stewart State Park. We enjoyed a hilly volksmarch walk there last weekend. Map and photos of the L.L. Stub Stewart State Park Walk . “Stub” Stewart was a local lumber company owner who served on the Oregon Parks and Recreation Commission and died in 2005. This is a bun-burner of a hike on wide trails. The Banks-Vernonia Linear Park rail trail passes by the park. My walking buddy Will and I explored this park last year when they were still building the camping spots. Of note is that the trailer campsites are larger than my house lot. And you could fit in two of the row houses they are building just south of us!

For locavores, there are farm stands along Hwy 47 and Hwy 26. Take the time to stop, enjoy a corn maze at Jim Dandy Farm on Hwy 26 and have some fun!

Last weekend I hiked in one of the newest state parks in Oregon and one of the lovely old parks in Clark County. This photo is of a stone hearth in a log picnic shelter at Lewisville Regional Park, Battle Ground, Washington. The park structures were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Depression. Out of that economic despair, we got lovely infrastructure. The stone railings lining many old highways and these structures in state and local parks are classic Northwest to me. I love them so much that I tried to choose rock trim for my house that recalled the stone highway railings.

I hadn’t been to Lewisville Park for several years. The walk there is a real “keeper” for regular training as the wooded trails provide wonderful shade, you enjoy the river and a new trail through the woods.
Lewisville Walk - Map and Photos

Wordless Wednesday Blogs

We enjoyed a volksmarch at Heiser Farms, Dayton, Oregon. Here is my AllSportGPS map of the walk. They have a Pumpkin Patch attraction each October and the walk is held about every other year. We enjoyed the flat walk on this elbow of farmland in the Willamette River. At the end, we chowed down on pumpkin pie and bratwurst and teased the animals in the petting zoo. But the big attraction was the Duck Hunter pumpkin cannon. Painted in OSU colors, it lobs pumpkins as far as 1500 feet! While it easily took out the closer target pyramid on the first try, we watched as five or more shots didn’t take out the far pyramid of blue barrels. One pumpkin exploded in midair.

First, the near target.

Success!

Next, load another pumpkin and raise the aim to the tiny, far off blue barrel pyramid.

Smoking Gun!

The ammo wagon is full of pumpkins, but no success on the far target this hour.

A visit to Heiser Farms Pumpkin Patch can get kids and adults excited about farms. It’s out in the wine country, and I stopped in at two wineries on my way back to pick up my quarterly wine club shipments.

After a couple of months of listening to books rather than podcasts, I was back to catching up with the Clark Howard personal finance radio show podcast. This came just in time for the economy to really tank. But I am feeling more in control than ever.

First, I signed up for Mint.com because one of Clark Howard’s producers said “It changed my life.” I’ve been comfortable enough that I have been lazy in really tracking my finances and not really budgeting. Rich and I both pay off our credit cards every month and are maximizing retirement savings. But beyond that, I am lazy.

Mint.com is meant to be used with all of your bank accounts, credit accounts, loan accounts, and investment accounts. When you open it up, it checks them all and downloads them all onto one ledger for easy budgeting. It’s smart enough to know the vendor and assign a default category. You can also view each account separately. Voila - easy budgeting! No excuse for the lazy!

With banks and insurance companies crashing all around, I took a hard look at my accounts. I immediately identified the following to reduce or eliminate:
1. US Bank online access charge: I questioned why I was being charged $5.95 a month when their web site says online access is free. I had to pick up the phone and call them. Turns out this was an old fee for using Quicken or Money to access your account. I had it eliminated.
2. Weight Watchers Online: I’ve been using Calorie Count Plus instead, so I canceled this $11.95 per month.
3. Walk Styles subscription: This is for online downloads of a pedometer they sent me to test. I was lazy in not canceling it after the testing period. $5.95 per month.
4. I keep an Earthlink account active to be able to keep my original email address, and rarely use the dialup as a back-up. But $26 a month is excessive. I went into an online chat with their sales people and had it reduced to $14.95 per month.

These are small potatoes, too small for me to care about for years in some cases. But they add up to $35 a month, over $400 per year. That is real money. I was wasting it. All together, this almost pays for my CSA farm subscription for 2009.

We were privileged to go to the Clark Howard night at Pearson Air Museum on Friday. We got free tickets by registering in time with radio station KPAM. They served an optional $8 pasta dinner that was super. You get great value with Clark!

Clark is cheap. His appearance was the evening that Congress passed the bailout bill. He had many reassuring comments, but plenty of advice on how to protect yourself in tough economic times. The questions from the audience were excellent.

First, live within your means. That sounds easy, but I know it isn’t for most people. Rich and I have never spent more than we earned. We have avoided debt other than car payments (now all paid for) and the mortgage. We resisted buying more of a house than we could afford. It still would be a stretch without our additional income from web projects, and so I am focused on saving for any future downturns in income.

I have saved a large amount of expense this year by getting the CSA subscription and cooking at home rather than going to restaurants or bringing home prepared food from the grocery store. I used to look forward to eating out. Now I look forward to what I am cooking at home.

I tried to stop by a local restaurant for lunch today and it was closed. Many small local businesses will be going under, especially those which are luxuries rather than necessities. I think it is our duty to support our local CSAs through these times. But I also want to give some business to the local restaurants and local produce stores.

I am dedicated now to budgeting and going after those small savings that I ignored for so long. When I want to be charitable, I’ll do it intentionally!