Chestnuts - how to get to the good stuff!

Chestnuts started showing up at the farmers' market last week and I am happy! I love these rare treats and eat them whenever I can in Creamy Chestnut Risotto, or raviolis, or simply out of hand like other nuts. Today I learned a lot about how to avoid some of the challenges I've experienced with this precious foodstuff.


Before I get started though, take a look at this picture with some of the nuts still in the protective armor they wear while still on the tree. You have to wonder how hungry the first chestnut-eater must have been to even think about eating one of these. Notice the resemblance to the handful of baby porcupines? Ouch!

Last week I saw the first chestnuts at the Amber Oaks Raspberries stall, run by Timothy Boughton. Timothy and his wife, Rhonda, grow all kinds of interesting produce on their farm including berries, fruits, and nuts. You can also find "happy" cheese and handmade tortillas at their stall, with Timothy enthusiastically and professionally passing out tons of information about how his stuff is grown and used. He's been farming for twelve years but has been a farmer in his heart all his life, hybridizing his first raspberry when he was eight years old. Today it dawned on me...Ah ha! This is the guy to ask about my ongoing chestnut challenges.

Chestnuts are deliciously creamy, nutty, and slightly sweet but it can take a bit of work to get to the good stuff. Timothy tells me he can shell about a pound of nuts per minute -- here's his technique. Take a sharp knife and cut off the light-colored broad end of the shell; boil the nuts in water for two minutes then put them in the oven to roast at about 425 degrees until the shells are practically black. After they've cooled squeeze the nuts from the pointed end and the meat will pop right out, leaving that pesky papery skin behind and your fingernails intact.

Most of my experiences with eating chestnuts at home have been disappointing. I'd put significant time into getting the nuts ready to peel while daydreaming about the yummy dish we'd soon be eating, only to finally get the shells open to find the meat had gone moldy...yuck! Today I learned why this happens. Even though chestnuts seem to want to be stored like a nut they should actually be stored like a fruit, that is, kept moist and cool in the refrigerator. Chestnuts that are not kept at sufficiently cool temperatures will quickly develop mold. If you want to store them for a couple of months put them in a plastic bag along with a paper towel and put it in the refrigerator. If you want to keep them for a really long time put them in a ziplock bag, cover the nuts with water, close up the bag and put it in the freeze. When it's time just defrost them and roast as usual. The next time you see a pile of chestnuts and are tempted to buy them ask yourself how likely it is they were picked yesterday, or if it is likely they were picked a few weeks ago and stored properly. If you have doubts, move along. It's not worth it.

Applesauce, plan B

I continue to be amazed by how much I don't know about food. This time it is apples and pears.

Life's hectic right now and I've been wondering how I'd find the time to get to Apple Hill anytime in the next six weeks but managed to clear yesterday, so I took the beautiful drive to the California apple region via Highway 80 to Auburn, and 49 through Placerville. I'd never been before and was by myself (Mark had an activity planned with his Little) so I visited the first orchards I could easily get to that had a wide selection, High Hill Ranch and Boa Vista.

I took along my copy of Chez Panisse Fruit because I don't really know which apples are better for sauce, pies, or out of hand and needed something to reference. This worked out all right but a better resource is The Best Apples to Buy and Grow, fragrant, with unpolished skin and leaves mixed in with the fruit. Picked up two big boxes of apples for the astonishingly low price of $20.

The first box is filled with Gravensteins which will be transformed into applesauce sometime this week; during the drive home my car was filled their intoxicating fragrance. The second box is a mix of varieties I'm familiar with like Rome Beauty, Jonathan, and McIntosh, and others I'd not seen before like Mutsu, two varieties of Winesap, Red Gold, and Empire. I also bought two Red Delicious apples just because I wanted to know if they tasted any better than the ever-present globes you see in the supermarket. I ate one on the way home but it wasn't very tasty so I'll store the other one for a while to see if the flavor improves. Apparently some apples need some time in storage to give the flavor time to develop, and some very tasty varieties are practically inedible without it. These varieties do not meet the "money first, taste last" criteria of industrial shippers so you probably won't ever see them in supermarkets. These are the ones I want!

We'll be making a second trip in a few weeks to pick up the late harvest varieties, Arkansas Black and Pink Lady among others. Boa Orchards had some Bartlett pears but they were ready to eat. I needed slightly under ripe so we'll try for other varieties and different orchards on the next trip.

I always try to buy from Nevada growers first and Agape Organics was my first choice for apples but 2007 frost and fire forced me go with plan B. For my family's needs I define local as anything produced with 150 miles, so Apple Hill is still local because it is 144.24 from my door to the apple tree-filled parking lot, the produce is grown in a sustainable way, and the money I pay goes directly to the people who do the actual work and raise their families in their communities. Do you know that growers receive only about 6-11 cents of every dollar spent on their product when it is purchased in some far-off supermarket? The remainder goes to middlemen and corporations. Doesn't seem right.

Apple Hill is a great family day trip. I've always lived in the desert so a drive that includes trees is endlessly fascinating. It'll be fun to see how the landscape changes as fall takes over the next few weeks. Could there be a trip in your future?

Northern Nevada apples - nature happens

Like I said in the previous post apple season starts about now. Apples are delicious in many ways but I especially love them cooked...pies, tarts, and applesauce. Until last year I ate grocery store applesauce but then I discovered homemade applesauce. I naturally shared this food wonder with all my friends. To my surprise even their kids loved this slightly spicy applesauce.

Imagine my delight to learn that Al and Delane Pennington, of Agape Organics - The Apple Basket, grow organic apples in Washoe Valley. Nevada apples...cool! The orchard has been open to the public for about the last four years. Those lucky few who are in the know visit the orchard, pick their fill, pay by the pound, and go home with a treasure--truly fresh, pesticide free apples. Al and Delane grow Golden Delicious, Gala (introduced to the U.S. in the 1980s; good for cooking and exceptional applesauce), Braeburn (introduced in the 1950s; good for cooking and stores well) , and Cameo (introduced in 1987; good storage apple).

Imagine my disappointment to learn that Agape Organics apples will not be available this year because "nature happens". Two natural occurrences conspired to decimate the 2007 apple crop ...frost and fire. Early this year, just as the apple blossoms emerged it snowed, killing off the blossoms that become the fruit. Then we had fire, which drove bears out of the mountains to look for food. Some lucky bears found the orchard; the remaining apple crop was probably a savior for these bears but has resulted in fewer apples for us. If we're going to have homemade applesauce this year we'll have to go to plan B...Apple Hill.

Fire and its devastating effects on homes and businesses have been getting a lot of press lately, but the natural consequences to wildlife and those who live close to it is often less newsworthy. This season demonstrates the fine line our community growers tread; one day of abnormal weather and a harvest is lost. Community and governmental support and understanding is most critical at times like these.

Delane told me an interesting story that really brings home how closely we are connected to nature, even if we don't acknowledge it. Earlier in the season a man who is both fireman and beekeeper contacted the Penningtons about putting his bees to work in their orchard. Before they could make that happen fire struck and he was called to duty. While he fought fires his bees did what bees do...made honey. Lots of it. Bears fleeing the fire found his overflowing beehives and took them apart looking for food, while he fought the fires that displaced them.

Eating locally...it all started with a book

It all started with a book titled The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan. I read this title last year; it was one of a long stream of books written by journalists and authors focused on the American food system (see My book list for other titles). This book is beautifully written in a way that makes you think "How could this be happening and why am I complicit?", but it also shows the average eater (that would be you and me) that there is something to be done. This book affected me in a way that can only be described as profound, changing my feelings about food from enjoyable to passionate. Listen to a Michael Pollan interview here.



Don't get me wrong, until last year I was a Bon Appetite Girl putting together menus and shopping to the ends of the earth to find ingredients required to create the latest new dish. My friends and family enjoyed global bounties as often as Mark and I could arrange it. We loved every minute of the cooking and eating experience. But simple foods, prepared outside their season, left something to be desired and we didn't really know why until authors and growers started writing about it. I learned that supermarket food looked good, but the producers were focused on concerns other that taste and nutrition, and that the long term consequences of the industrial food-system are devastating.

So I went looking for local resources and found there is a burgeoning movement in Reno. Our like-minded friends were willing to consider changing the way we acquired food and are drawn to the community-based nature of "shopping" together. Some are interested in taking advantage of absolutely every opportunity to buy local, others pick and choose according to their lifestyle. I still love Bon Appetite and often cook meals from it, but now I try to choose menus with ingredients that fit my new priorities: fresh, local, and seasonal. Bonus: I'm learning to cook in a more freestyle way, using what's available rather than what I "need". It's all good.

We are coming up on the one year anniversary of our first consciously local food purchase. Last year our group purchased an entire grass-fed beef, and made the activity an opportunity to get together and enjoy each others company. This weekend we'll come together, throw the two Tri-tips on the BBQ to cook slowly while we visit and talk about year two.

Next big thing...it's apple season so this week we'll be trying to contact local apple growers because it's time to can for applesauce. More soon!

A day spent canning pickles and "reading"

One of the best things about eating locally is the opportunity to eat food that is really fresh; the fruits and veggies we get from the CSA and farmers' market are on our table soon after they've been harvested. We're now in the abundant season when local is readily available, but if you want to keep eating local grown produce later in the year, preserving is one option. Local produce grown for taste rather than how it withstands shipping really improves the quality of preserved foods, whether it's frozen, canned, or dried.



I'm an inexperienced canner, this being only my second season preserving, but I'm getting more comfortable with it. Canning pickles is a good first project because the process is simple; finding a good pickle recipe is more difficult. This year I'm trying a family recipe called Spicy Basque Pickles, provided by my friend, Ann Ebner.

The pickling cucumbers and dill (the huge black bag in the picture is whole dill) were ordered in bulk from Lattin Farms on Thursday and picked up at the farmers' market on California Saturday morning; garlic came from Carrol's Truck Corner stall, also at the farmers' market; canning jars, alum (found with the jarred spices), pickling salt, vinegar, and dried whole chili peppers came from Raley's. The canning process is really pretty easy, all you need is a good resource to help you with the basics. Canning books are widely available; visit Washoe County Library for good, free resources. I use Joy of Cooking: All About Canning and Preserving, which has clear instructions and pictures (need those!), and recipes to get you started.

One of my favorite things to do is work with my hands while listening to audio books, and canning is the perfect project for this. This day I listened to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and Mary Modern. Later in the afternoon one of my other favorite things happened; my husband joined me in the kitchen to talk, laugh, and join in the process.

If you've never canned before I highly recommend it. This activity gives me a chance to hang out with my best friends, talk, practice a valuable skill, feed my family and friends, and make food not available through retail outlets. What's not to love!

Local food -- coffee?

There's a new coffee place in town and we now have one more reason to live close to our home. Kats Koffee, located in the the Sparks Crossing Shopping Center, opened a couple of weeks ago serving great coffees and teas, as well as breakfast, snack, and lunch items. Mark and I have visited a couple of times and liked it so much it is now our coffee shop of choice.




Wait, you say, how can coffee be considered local food? When we started thinking about living a local food life we did some research. Other local food enthusiasts emphasized the importance of determining up front how much you'd be willing to give up to eat local. For me it was easy. Could I live without tropical fruits? Yes. Coffee? Not so much. But when defining "local" Kats Koffee fits in a very important way...community support. Kats Koffee buys their beans from Tim Curry of Fire Roasted Coffee, breakfast-friendly baked goods from Rollin' in the Dough, and the sandwiches from Mr. Pickles, another Sparks owned establishment (and one of my favorite lunch stops). We've been drinking Tim's coffee for well over a year now and love it. We used to pick it up at Tim's shop in Reno but now we can buy our beans in Sparks.

Gotta go! It's a farmers' market Saturday morning and pickling day. But first we're going to get a cup of coffee.