Overflowing with Local

The Inventory Update

So, I was walking over to the Green City Market the other day, and who should also be pulling up. None other than market celebrity #1, Paul Virant. I say, "congratulations on the Iron Chef thing." He sez thanks, sez he does not know the exact air date. We both buy a lot of stuff.

OK, now that I mentioned that (hehehe), let's get to the inventory. Last December, I started tracking our inventory of food in the bungalow. The exercise was mostly to show how me and my family were able to eat local all winter through a combination of stored foods and winter shopping. Now, I need to write down the inventory just to keep track of all the food we have.


(Last inventory here)

Ramps - As I mentioned the other day, we have a lot of ramps right now. This on top of ramps in 3 meals last week: spring vegetable ragout, grilled, and in pasta with morels and asparagus.

Watercress - Used as a bed for grilled chicken, some remain.

Nettles - Purchased from a few farmers in Madison. Went into the ragout, some remain--I planed on using some in a stuffing for morels until we ran out of meals.

Mushrooms - Speaking of morels, we got a several good handfuls in Madison, both larger stuffers and other sizes. Also went into the above mentioned ragout and pasta, some also remain, ostensible to be stuffed. In addition to the wild morels, we have cultivated cremini's and oysters from Madison.

Herbs - Cilantro, lovage, rosemary, chervil, mint

Asparagus - Several stalks purchased/provided in the CSA and eaten this week, we still have a bit left.

Keeper onions - 2 more in our CSA box this week; keeping us in stock of onions required for cooking.

Garlic - Like onions, a locavore needs to stock enough garlic for not-so-bland-cooking, and we were able to do that. We still have plenty of garlic. To this store of garlic, we added about six stalks of green garlic purchased in Madison. I love the taste of green garlic, and it contributes strongly to the "spring" flavors in our current cooking.

Dried hot peppers - In talking about the need for stored garlic and onions in cooking, I remembered that I have never noted that our inventory has always included a stock of dried hot peppers, local peppers. Some of these we have dried ourselves, some have come from Farmer Vicki, and some we have purchased in Madison.

Cabbage - There is a head of red cabbage from the winter lying somewhere in the basement fridge; I doubt it will be eaten. On the other hand, from Farmer Vicki's hoophouses, we got two lovely heads of red cabbage this week. These will be eaten soon.

Carrots - Yes

Parsnips - See last report

Potatoes - Used a bunch of red potatoes last week in the spring vegetable stew and grill roasted our remaining La Ratte; that leaves us with about 3 lbs of russets and about 5 lbs of reds. Nicholl's Farm is selling last year's potatoes now in their market stands and I may or may not add some potatoes if we run out.

Apples - There may be crops coming to market but no fruit yet. We have bags of red and yellow local apples, but last week we only ate non-local fruit.

Lettuce - As I mentioned, we bought a big head of butter lettuce in Madison. We ate this during the week. At present, we have last week's CSA head of lettuce and this week's head of CSA lettuce.

Spinach - We bought a bag at one place in Madison then at another place and then we got a bag in our CSA. Lotso spinach.

Arugula - From Madison

Burdock root - 1 lb - No change

Beets - OK, here it comes: we got the beet. God, do we have the beet. We used last week's beet greens, but we did not use the bottoms. Several more beets in this week's CSA, greens included. Many beet.

Kale - No change

Radishes - No new ones, but a few leftover

Turnips - I believe I have been forgetting turnips in the last reports, but we have received several turnips in our Spring CSA.

Misc. - One small bok choi, one large bok choi; sunchokes (just when we threw out the last, we pull some in).

Local Pantry - Cheeses (tons of cheese as a result of being in Madison), yogurt, eggs, noodles, pork, beef, lamb, bacon, granola, grains, milk