While I might find it possible to eat locally in October, thousands, perhaps millions, of people are wondering, "What about December?"

I have relaxed quite a bit in my food habits--eating more pasta and rice again, going out to restaurants without feeling like a cheater.  And yet, for the most part I am still eating similarly to what was documented in Oct.

Last night we had some guests over for dinner and made it a locavore theme meal.  We like these people, so this wasn't about keeping them from coming back.  Truly, local food is great food!

I'll begin with the appetizer.

Dec 10th Appetizer

This is not the plate in its "pristine" condition.  Several paws has already claimed bits and pieces of cheese (Dry Jack from Sonoma), walnuts (from St. Helena) and persimon (from Redwood Valley).  

Having guests over is always an incentive to get your house clean.  We spent much of the day processing stacks of paper work that had accumulated on our dining room table.  By early evening we could set the table and make it look inviting.

Dec 10th Table

Marc and Suzie were our guests. Chris is staying here for a while as he gets established in Willits to help out on the Brookside Farm, part of the Energy Farm network.  Check out:  http://www.energyfarms.net/

Here's what my plate looked like before I began shoveling the food.

Dec 10th Dinner

Drank wine of different sorts, all from this part of California.  Had local tap water.  The plate features some kind of fish caught near Ft. Bragg.  Kristin made a tartar sauce that probably included non-local sauce base.  Dairy products in the potatoes and squash, like butter and sour cream, are from Clover of Petaluma.  Our backyard was the source of the beans, squash, tomatoes and potatoes.  Seasonings like garlic, basil, oregano and sage are also from our yard.  The blue potatoes are naturally that color.  I have a lot of them this year.   

So December is not that much different from late October.  We are out of the fresh summer veggies, but still have some canned, dried and frozen veggies.  Storage of potatoes and squash is really important.  In the ground we have parsnips, celeriac and jerusalem artichokes that I dig up once in a while, especially for making stews.  Fresh lettuce is available too.  I have been making a lot of late season grape juice out of Concord's.   

 FYI, I weighed in at 153 lbs on Nov. 2, Kristin weighed in at 113 lbs at the end of the month.  I lost 1 lb, she gained 1, call it even.

Bradfords complete month of eating locally

By Mike A'Dair/TWN Staff Writer
The Willits News

Article Launched:11/08/2006 11:14:17 AM PST  

Jason and Kristin Bradford have fulfilled their pledge to eat only locally grown food during the month of October. Both are feeling well and are pleased that they were able to "eat locally for the month of October" without any major negative health impacts.

"The positive side is, I loved it. I had a great time doing it, and I ate better than I ever have in my life," said Jason Bradford.

Kristin too added that she felt "great" and noted that she had actually gained a pound.

"The whole point of it for me was raising awareness and learning what's available," said Kristin. "And also stimulating discussion around what's available locally. I had lots of people stopping me and asking about what we were doing and why we were doing it."

To a large extent, the "locovore" movement created here in Willits by the Bradfords and by others, especially by members of the Willits Economic Localization Group (WELL), is spurred into action by the awareness that the American Way of Life, as we have come to know it since the Second World War, may be coming to an end as world oil production peaks and the economic system that is dependant upon cheap oil, cheap and plentiful energy and cheap transportation collapses.

Asked if he still believed that Peak Oil was going to happen and if he still believed that diminishing oil production was going to force people to "re-localize," Bradford was emphatic that it was not a matter of belief.

"This is not a philosophical issue at all," he said. "This is the laws of physics. Our food system has to have the ability to produce more energy than we are putting into it. The only way we can keep eating something in the future is if the act of growing, storing and cooking food uses less energy than you get out of the food. And right now, it is way skewed."

"So the laws of physics, as related to Peak Oil and Climate Change, tell us that, if we're going to eat in the future, it's because we are going to have to have a local food system. This is not a matter of ideology or philosophy. This is a matter of, what is going to need to happen if we are going to eat, period.

"This has huge implications for our transportation system, our market system, our patterns of land use, our employment patterns, our dietary system. They are all going to alter, not necessarily because I argue that we ought to do this. They are going to alter because, if we don't do them, we are not going to eat.

"The positive side is, I loved it. I had a great time doing it. I ate better than I ever have in my life. That's the positive side.

"The other side is, we don't have a choice here in the long run," Jason Bradford said.

Kristin Bradford pointed out that Jason spent a lot of time in October gathering and preparing food and planning meals. Asked if "re-localizing" meant that America would have to go back to a single earner family model, so that one of the family members could concentrate on what used to be called home economics, Kristin pondered for a moment and then answered, "That is a really good question. I think that, because of how underpriced food is now, that affords us the ability to have two persons in the household working.

"But the real cost of food is much more expensive. And actually growing and doing the preparation of the food yourself can be much more economic, especially as the cost of food becomes more realistic over time, as the prices of oil and all the things that go into preparing food in vast quantities goes up.

"In doing this, you can see the value to a household, or a neighborhood group, or a community, in having people who either can divide their time from their jobs to do the work of food growing or food preparation, or to have certain people within their family group that have that role, or that share that role. Because it's really an important one. I think it has become less valued. But it really should have more value," she said.

Photo caption: Kristin and Jason Bradford stand in front of their home on Redwood Avenue in Willits. The straw mulch is from a permaculture installation in their front yard, which was being installed on Monday afternoon by workers from the Pine Mountain based Mendocino Ecological Learning Center.

Today is the annual ritual whereby America feeds its prediabetic kids large quantities of high fructose corn syrup.

Give all those sweet young ones a nice big hug and kiss tonight when they go to sleep...assuming they do go to sleep...probably following an insulin induced hypoglycemic crash. Just be glad they still have sensitive insulin receptors.

Breakfast

Oct 31 Breakfast

Apple-pear juice, more of those homemade muffins (described previously), pears from our tree, a plum and fig from within town, and cottage cheese from Petaluma.

Lunch

No suffering at lunch either.

Oct 31 Lunch

Potatoes and fish and tartar sauce leftover from last night, plus walnuts from St. Helena, and a fabulous soup Kristin made. The soup is sauteed onions and garlic with butter, added water and a boullion, baked butternut squash pureed, half and half and milk added at end. The squash came from Fawn's garden (in Willits) the dairy products from Petaluma, and the onions and garlic from our yard.  Tap water.

Dinner

In 1992 I was at an apartment in Barcelona and learned how to make a Spanish omlet. We ate it at about 2 am. I remember spending a lot of time waiting for restaurants to open. We would walk in at 8 pm and they said come back at 10. By the time we ate I was half asleep. Perhaps the CIA should try this instead of the water torture they are getting flack over.

Loco, not Locavorism.

Oct 31 Dinner

I actually ate about 2-3 times what is pictured here. It was that delectable.

The Spanish omlet consists of a lot of eggs, six in tonight's version, four from Laytonville and two from our hens. I whipped it with a small amount of half and half (from Petaluma). The rest is simply mixed veggies from our garden: baked potato cubes, a couple of peppers, a couple of tomatoes, finely diced onions, crushed garlic, some dried oregano and thyme. That's Calrose rice from Woodland and the Sacramento Valley, which is a bit beyond the 100 mile diet limit.  Beer brewed with Hale at his 3rd Gate camp.

This is the final Locavore Month post. Looking back, I really think I ate better than I ever have in my entire life. It was a perpetual gourmet extravaganza most of the month. And I don't think it was expensive. A few special items (like the wild rice) were costly, but for the most part we got by using ingredients we grew ourselves, traded with others, or bought at standard prices in local stores--simply mindful of their origin.

My own habits have probably shifted a bit and I am likely to keep up many of them. I am going to be more relaxed when socializing, but also try to maintain high standards in my own home.

I will probably take a blog break, but come back with thoughts and analyses of the month, and what this experience teaches us about how to move forward.

Kristin has read more of my blog now.  She says it is full of sarcasm and she worries that some people will not understand that and think I am a jerk.  So, she wants to report that I am not a jerk.  I am very lovable but not available. If you thought I was a jerk and are still reading the blog, go back, read it again and laugh this time.

Breakfast 

I can't remember what I ate until I put up the picture.

Oct 30 Breakfast

Ah yes, leftover muffins (described yesterday), eggies from Laytonville, prunes from a neighbor, and figs from a tree in Willits.  Someone gave them to Kristin.  Apple-pear juice from neighborhood trees that we pressed.

Lunch

Kristin made me lunch!  I was toiling outside and came in mildly hypoglycemic.  Tasted good.

Oct 30 Lunch

Same fruit and juice as at breakfast.  Bread is from Bruce's in Redwood Valley.  Inside is feta cheese from Sebastapol, lettuce, sweet peppers, and tomatoes from our garden.  

Dinner 

The husband of Candy, a local nurse, caught fish out of Ft. Bragg.  Kristin somehow got ahold of some and it was great.  I have no idea what kind of fish it was.  Probably lived in the ocean.

Oct 30 Dinner

Same juice all day long it seems.  Potatoes from our garden, baked, with butter and sour cream from Petaluma.  Baked the fish too.  Kristin made a tartar sauce out of mayo, lemon juice and relish.  Not local folks.  Anyone keeping score?  

Went to a WELL meeting tonight and George brought by a bowl of freshly baked, organic, peanut butter cookies.  Wow!  I was helpless.  Ate three.  I could taste the cane sugar and I liked it.  Am I still okay?

Alternative sugar sources that could be localized besides honey are sugar beets and sorghum molases.  I should grow these starting in the spring.  Peanuts don't work here however. 

Tomorrow is the last day of the month and it will be filled with grotesque temptations.  I will meditate and try to be strong.  When the sun sets and the moon comes out pehaps I should arrange to be bound to a chair.  

My mild hangover stuck with me most of the day. Not until eating dinner did it clear up finally. I swear, I only had a few beers and went to bed stone sober. Must have been the lack of water.

The weather is obviously turning. Today didn't warm up like it has lately. We haven't heated our house yet this season but are on the verge now. This morning was 58 F and only got as high as 66 F. It will likely drop to the mid fifties overnight and take a long time to warm during the day and I'll be asked to start a fire I suspect. We are wearing sweaters and hats indoors much of the time.

Breakfast

I was tempted to just go out and cheat this morning for breakfast. Wasn't feel great, had three kids (a friend spent the night), and Kristin went to work early and was probably going to be gone all day. I dreaded a messy kitchen and wanted time to get outside and work in the yard.

Kristin convinced me to do otherwise. She got out some bananas from the freezer and said I could make some muffins. In a fog I started grinding wheat. Then Tara and Davis took over. What a splendid use of their energy. While doing this chore they were unable to make any trouble in the house.

Kid Power

They ground almost 2 cups of grain, which made a bit over 2 cups of flour. Nearly all the wheat I grew this year in my yard is gone. Three recipes and its over with. Disheartening. I know the math on grain. About 400 lbs per year, per person. I grew about 3 lbs of wheat. My garden won't cut it. My family needs at least an acre of grain. So do all the other families in Willits. The math screams "Farms!"

The muffins were delicious.

Oct 29 Breakfast

The ingredients for the muffins: freshly ground whole wheat from my garden, eggs from Laytonville, butter from Petaluma, honey from Willits, walnuts from our yard, baking powder, and organic bananas from....oh my goodness. Bananas aren't local!

I didn't break this news to Kristin. She was so sweet, getting the bananas out of the freezer the night before so I could make this treat in the morning. Kristin is obviously an innocent and I just couldn't bear to disillusion her. Likewise, she hasn't yet read the blog entry about the cutting board.

Eggs on the plate are from Laytonville and the plums from a few blocks away. That's some herbal tea that was supposed to make me feel better and save Tibet at the same time. I don't think it worked.

Lunch

This never happened. It took me so long to cook those muffins that we had breakfast at about 11 am. I am amazed the kids didn't mutiny. They were patient but then ate like a pack of sled dogs. Tara even mixed the muffins in with the eggs. I guess they mix in the stomach anyway.

Dinner

Aside from the fact that the kitchen was still a mess from breakfast, dinner was easy.

Oct 29 Dinner

The last of the London broil and mixed root crop special, plus a sautee of tomatoes, tomatillos, sweet pepper, zucchini and garlic from the garden. Had a healthy portion of tap water too.

I keep forgetting to rant about the oxymoron "Sustainable Tourism." This is just a placeholder mini-rant to get it off my chest before bedtime so I'll sleep super soundly. Think about how people do their touring around here or how those of us from around here would do our touring elsewhere. What modes of transport would be used, what sorts of fuels would be consumed, how many pounds of greenhouse gases would this all emit, etc?

If the cognitive dissonance doesn't end, or at least lessen, I am apt to open my window and start shouting, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!"

Quick, that's a line from what movie?

I am posting yesterday's meals a day late.  Was up last night for a Halloween dance and fundraiser.  Now hung over a bit.  

Did a weigh in this morning (Oct 29th) and was 151 lbs, a couple more than at the last couple of checks. 

Breakfast 

Nothing unusual.

Oct 28 Breakfast

Those are walnuts from St. Helena, pears from outside of Willits, on top of cottage cheese from Petaluma, Bread from Bruce's bakery in Redwood Valley with Petaluma butter and Willits honey.

Lunch

Another glorious feast thanks to Briar Patch Farm.

Oct 28 Lunch

See description of Oct. 27th dinner for details.  One addition are plums. These come from trees about half a mile away at Phil and Annies property on Exley Ln.  George is renting there now.  But these were harvested by Wolfgang and dropped off at the house by Sara.  I gave Wolfgang some juice so this is a sort of trade.   Washed down with more grape juice from Redwood Valley merlot.

Dinner 

Locavorism totally broke down for dinner.  WELL, REDI and the Little Lake Grange held a joint dance/fundraiser.  I was helping organize the silent auction part and had been working all day in the yard.  So no time to make special meal arrangements and was at a party with food.  I did what any reasonable person would do.  I committed major sins all night long.

Just look at this spread if you dare.

Oct 28 Dinner

I can't bear to go into the gory details.  The beer on the right was from a Ukiah brewery and consists of certified organically grown ingredients.  I drank too much of that stuff though.  Not pictured is a chunk of cheese cake...and another piece of cake...and a box of Cracker Jacks (the prizes stink nowadays, what is the world coming to?).  

Looking back, I am horrified by what happened.  It reminds me of the last time I went to a Halloween event...the Spooky Story Night!  What a nightmare that was.  

This holiday season stinks if you are a Dedicated Locavore.  The temptations are everywhere and no support groups exist.  Soon I am going to hear Xmas music.

Should I withdraw from society?  Given how I feel right now, even with a lot of herbal tea and a couple of aspirin, that sounds like the best option.  Has the bubble on secluded cave properties burst yet?

Two articles placed next to each other on Energy Bulletin today really resonated with me.  http://www.energybulletin.net/21676.html

The first is about David Suzuki.  He's calling it quits trying to get the message out about the environmental problem.  This is someone who's perhaps done as much as anyone else in history, and done it very eloquently with lots of funding and the best use of major media, to help people not commit mass suicide and take a good chunk of the biosphere along with them.  

Well, he's decided people just haven't listened, so he's done talking. Going to go out to the forest and fish and carve wood. 

I've only really been at this a few years (publically trying to convince people that a problem exists, and that the response involves changing behavior) but I already understand his frustration.  It doesn't matter how many people thank me for my work, etc.  I am looking for behavioral change, on individual, and most importantly, collective scales.  All the nice rhetoric means almost zero to me.  I've heard plenty of it and it doesn't seem to match what people actually do.  

The other was about a whole lot of scientists and activists and how they are coping with so much bad news.  William Rees of University of British Colombia struck me.  He says he doesn't want optimism.  Sappy, uplifting stories of hope have not seemed to get people to do anything substantial.  More realism is what is needed from the media he says.  

That comment reminds me of a something John Jeavons said.  He gave a talk to WELL and it was pretty grim.  All sorts of statistics about how the population is about to outgrow its food supply followed by "What do you think will happen next?" rhetorical questions.  Some people got upset by the "doom and gloom" but John later said that he used to give talks he thought were highly motivational, emphasizing all the great things people could do to solve the food crisis.  Then he realized that almost nobody he spoke to actually did anything.  They went home thinking, "This is great, somebody is solving the food crisis, I can go on with my normal life!"  So he changed tactics, hoping a few people would at least be frightened enough to get their lazy asses in gear!

Which bring me to...

Breakfast 

Oct 27 Breakfast

Tea with Petaluma milk and Willits honey. Bagels from Garberville with Petaluma butter and Willits honey.  A local melon.

Lunch 

This was really nice.

Oct 27 Lunch

The last of the lamb stew.  The stew has a really mellow, savory and mildly sweet flavor.  I had some mildly sharp goat cheese from Lakeport that complimented the stew perfectly.  And the tart pickled vegetables did so too.  The beans, galic and onions are from our garden, I bought the carrots and celery from the farmer's market.  More of the melon from breakfast.  Local tap water.

I had snacked on some walnuts from St. Helena before lunch.  

Dinner 

Jaynie of Briar Patch Farm gave me a London Broil this morning!  I left it out to melt all day and it was ready to cook by 6 pm.  

London Broil is the flank of the cow.  This is lean meat, so shouldn't be over done.  I went out to the yard and harvested some parsnips and jerusalem artichokes.  Combined these with small potatoes and garlic, salted it all, poured some olive oil on it (probably not local enough) and stuck in the very hot oven for half an hour.  Right at the end I put the meat in the broiler and gave it 5-6 minutes per side.  Also got some lettuce from the garden and found a ripe tomato and sweet pepper from harvest last week in a basket in the house.  A salad was born.  

Before Serving

Just look at that slab of beef on top of those rooty veggies!  Man-o-man was this good.

Oct 27 Dinner

A perfect medium rare.  Sour cream and ground black pepper are over the root crops.  I put a dash of pomegranate champagne vinegar from "The Wine Country" out of Santa Rose on the salad.  Crossing my fingers the ingredients are local.  Drank more beer and grape juice too.  

Sorry Kristin wasn't home for supper. She's on call and the hospital sounds busy.  The call service and the nursing home have phoned, which means I might not see her tonight.   But given her vegetarian leanings, this meal may have been a tough one to swallow. 

It was pretty rare flesh.  I even think I heard it moo a few times while chewing.

Tomorrow I want to comment on the "sustainable tourism" promotion happening in Mendocino County...all to "support our local economy."  Boy do I feel co-opted.

http://www.willitsnews.com/search/ci_4524288

Bradfords...after 16 days of eating local
By Mike A'Dair/TWN Staff Writer
The Willits News
Article Launched:10/20/2006 02:57:35 PM PDT

Jason and Kristin Bradford are in good health after sixteen days of eating only locally grown food.

"I feel good," said Jason. "I don't feel emaciated. I am eating well. I am still working at the end of the day. I've been eating as healthy as I ever have in my whole life."

Jason said that earlier in the month he had weighed himself and found that he had lost three pounds. But, he said, since then he hasn't weighed himself.

Kristin, a physician at Little Lake Health Clinic, added that she too is feeling well. "Actually I think I am sleeping better since I am not eating desserts," she said. "There's just not a lot, besides the warm milk and honey -- and last night I made a berry cobbler-- recently here we've just been forgoing, and I realize that I am sleeping really well."

Jason said that he has been sipping a combination of warm milk and honey before going to bed at night. "It's real calming, as opposed to some high sugar, caffeinated thing that gets you all riled up. Warm milk and honey is mellowing," he said.

One of the benefits that have come to the Bradfords from this work is that they, and their comrades in local eating, have made numerous connections with local food producers. Because Willits was, until as late as the 1930s, a rural, self-reliant place, and because lots of people who still grow or raise their own food live here, it has been possible for the Bradfords to find people who raise beef, or lamb, or chickens. One person who had for years raised chickens for sale, but who had recently decided to stop doing so, has been persuaded to keep raising chickens, because of connections made by the Bradfords and by a commitment that the Bradfords and other locovores made to buy that person's chickens for food.

According to Jason, the other 13 people in the local eating group also are surviving nicely. "They seem to be doing it kind of like I am. They happen to have gardens themselves, a lot of them, and so they're eating a lot out of their own gardens, like I am, and supplementing it with what they find. If you've got a good garden, have got potatoes and a lot of fruit, this time of year is kind of easy. It's just getting the grains, the breads and the dried beans are really hard to get. You can't get any of those locally, as far as I can tell. But I am growing some of those, in small amounts. And then dairy. We don't have any dairies at all, locally. The closest is Petaluma, which is 99 miles away. So if it wasn't for Sonoma County, Petaluma, we'd be pretty hurting right now."

Jason said that he has discovered that there are no locally grown wheat and flour products. Jason and Kristin have decided to use breads baked by Phoenix Bakery, which is located next to Safeway in Willits. Although the grains that go into their products are not locally grown, it is a locally owned and operated bakery, and their breads have been a central pillar of many of Bradford's meals this month.

Judging by the photographs of each of Jason's meals on his "blog" (a web site on the internet), one can eat well, eat locally and enjoy beautifully prepared and visually pleasing, food, at the same time. His "blogsite" is www.relocalize.net/blog/42.

I let my guard down today and was eventually possed by the Dark Angel itself.  A wily demon that got to me at my weakest moment. 

Can somebody please arrange for a reputable exorcist to visit me soon?  This is a cry for help. I can't find one in the phone book.

I ate chocolate. 

But first, let's review some happier times.

Breakfast 

I made a mistake about the origins of recent bagels. The plain, organic whole wheat variety that I've been consuming lately was baked in Rohnert Park, which is in Sonoma County, probably about as far away as Garberville.  This is full disclosure in case any attorneys specializing in Locavorism are reading this blog. 

Like David in LA who's a prosecutor and has been tripping out over some facts divulged in "The Omnivore's Dilemma" (a hot new "foodie" book) regarding McDonalds and Chicken Nuggets and the fossil fuel called butane (it has four carbon atoms). 

(Am I allowed to even mention the names of corporations and implicitly slander their products without risking my freedom to blog?  Or is this only a problem in Great Britain?)

Oct 26 Breakfast

More grape juice, a melon I picked up at the farmers market so definately local, cottage cheese from Petaluma, bagels from Garberville (organic wheat and blueberries), with Petaluma butter and Willits honey.

Lunch 

This was a feast!

Oct 26 Lunch

The same lamb stew and mashed potatoes as last night, same tomato and tomatillo salad, same melon as at breakfast, same juice.  The walnuts are from the tree in our front yard.  I don't know the variety, but it is a fantastic one.  Big nuts and non-bitter flavor, easy to shell.

Soon after lunch I made dinner.  Decided to go for a frittata and lentils, something I made a lot during the summer.  Here are the frittata ingredients before processing. 

Frittata Ingredients

I think of a frittata as a crustless quiche, but wikipedia calls it an italian omlet:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frittata

Anyhow, it is an extremely flexible dish based on eggs, cheese, cream, and whatever else you want to add.  I just add what is available in the garden at the time.   I had a bunch of sweet peppers and chose a small one. The zucchini is on its final throes for the year.  Onions, garlic and some herbs are also standard. 

I don't use any recipe, but just make sure the eggs, cream and cheese are mixed to form a thick slurry.  The fridge was hiding a few different kinds of local cheeses, all sort of scrappy and difficult to use other than as grated additions to a frittata slurry.

Frittata Slurry

The solar cooker is perfect for this dish.  I have these round black pans with fitted lids.  Cooked the lentils in one of these pans and the frittata in another.  Those are the last of some lentils I grew two seasons ago.  

Lentils

They stacked easily in the oven.  Notice how the oven has a swiveled platform for keeping the food level even as the oven's angle can be adjusted to tilt towards the sun.

Solar Oven

It was 350 F when I opened the oven's door.  A really serious oven!

Dinner

How wonderful it is to come home at about 5 pm after working at the school farm and have dinner ready.  Of course, I am lucky enough to be able to be home often during the day to set up my solar oven.  Folks who have more 9 to 5 jobs will prepare dinner the night before and put it in the oven before going to work in the morning.  Aim the oven south and it will cook fine.

Oct 26 Dinner

I finished the mashed potatoes and even had some Calrose rice during seconds (prepared for the rest of the family).  Also drank the last of the fresh grape juice but hope to pick some Concords soon and make more.  

The Darkness that Has Enshrouded My Soul

Okay, now back to the henious crime committed tonight.  I was off my guard at Spooky Story Night at my kids elementary school.  Caught up in the pageantry of little kids in costumes listening to spooky stories, watching as they did arts and crafts out of plastic objects, I passed by the table of cookies, rice crispy treats and brownies and quietly, non-chalantly even, took a couple and started eating them with my kids and about 200 other people in the gym.  

I will sleep with tightened thumb screws tonight and hope, pray even, for forgiveness by the morning. 

Okay, I admit a minor fantasy today regarding chocolate. I haven't had any for nearly a month now. Pretty amazing, actually, that this hasn't happened before.

Getting off a heroin addiction is probably more difficult.

Luckily, I don't work in some mega mall with a "Fudge Factory" at each end.

Breakfast

Standard fare.

Oct 25 Breakfast

That's tea again, steeped in local water, and local milk and honey at least.

(Hey, don't chuckle about the local water. If you live in LA your water probably comes through the San Francisco Bay Delta and could be gonners in a big quake, if sea levels rise too much, or a pineapple express meets a high tide. But let's not raise taxes to fix anything. Go for a bond and have our kids pay for it later).

Eggs are from Laytonville and our backyard hens. Watermelon from Ukiah Valley and Sebastapol goat milk yogurt atop. Bagels baked in Garberville, spread with Petaluma butter and plum butter from my friend Holly who lives several blocks east of here.

Holly is also on the City Council so she pretty much controls what goes on in this town.

Lunch

Leftoverville.

Oct 25 Lunch

That's the squash-pesto dish I've described earlier. Walnuts from St. Helena. Feta cheese from Sebastapol. Tomatoes and tomatillos from our garden. Spectacularly delicious and fizzy grape juice pressed at the Harvest Festival this weekend with grapes from Frey Vineyards of Redwood Valley.

Some gratuitous promotion: http://www.freywine.com/freywine/

At lunch time I also made a stew pot and put in on the solar oven. This made dinner a breeze.

Dinner

I took a meat cleaver to the shoulder and broke it up to fit in the pot. I missed a little at first and snapped one of our cutting boards in half. I think I need to practice this more often. I am hoping my wife reads this and I don't have to tell her what happened to her face. Sorry honey.

As it stewed, the meat just pulled away from the bones, so the stew is a real pleasure to consume. In my opinion, this compensates for the ruined cutting board. I should be redeemed and forgiven.

Oct 25 Dinner

That was a very good mug of beer brewed with Hale. The stew has lamb shoulder, garlic, tomatoes, tomatillos, onions, bay leaves and thyme stems, all from Willits. Over a bed of mashed potatoes from our garden, with Petaluma (Clover) dairy products blended in. Tomato, tomatillo and feta cheese salad on the side.

Just finished my mug of warm milk and honey. Think I should get to bed soon.

Goodnight.

Quote of the day:  "...the worst mistakes most often come not from faulty deductions, but from unexamined false premises and proneness to delusion."
- Stanislav Andreski, Social Sciences as Sorcery

 Amen.

Breakfast

We were out of locally baked bread.

Oct 24 Breakfast

Watermelon from Ukiah Valley with goat milk yogurt from Sebastapol atop. Scrambled eggs from our own hens and those living in Laytonville.  Grape juice from Redwood Valley stock.  A tea with Petaluma milk and Willits honey.

Lunch 

Put t-posts in at the farm today. Got home famished, and so just reheated last night's dinner for lunch.

Oct 24 Lunch

Here's how the dish on the left was described last night:  "The squash was combined with a pesto sauce that used our own basil but non-local olive oil. The last of the roasted Willits chicken was mixed in, and the serving was topped with a dry jack cheese from Sonoma."  The bagels are from Garberville (will likely be seen in the morning too), which is the nearest bagel-making place.  Same grape juice as at breakfast.

This is planting time so been really busy in the garden.  Putting in onions now.  I am not a big fan of planting onions so have this variety called potato onions, which are actually related to shallots.  They propagate from bulbs rather than seeds/seedlings.  So a third of the bed is in those, making it easier and quicker to get planting done.  I am thinking about net energy here.  

Dinner 

The roast chicken is a gonner, so I am back to the lamb.  I really wish I had time to thresh those pinto beans I grew.  Probably not until a rainy day.

This is what the sheep looked like about 1 minute before meeting that "Great, Sweet-Green Pasture in the Sky."  

The Final Moments

Greg raised him and is one of the high school ag teachers.  I suspect W on the hat is for Willits.

This is what became of a part of that animal tonight...the shoulder to be specific.

Oct 24 Dinner

I sauteed some onions, peppers and tomatillos then put the lamb steaks into the middle of the pan and covered to let simmer there a bit.  Turned it once and added crushed garlic.  In a few more minutes it was cooked.  The mashed potatoes are taters from our garden, with Petaluma butter, milk, half and half, and sour cream added liberally.  The salad is simply ripe tomatoes and ripe tomatillos.  Tomatillos have a fantastic, mellow-warm flavor with a slight tang when ripe.  I never new that until recently.  This was all swished down with beer made with Hale in the forest (scroll back to an early post for beer details).  

I'll probably have some warm milk and honey really soon.

I made a whole lot of mashed potatoes so expect them to turn up again for the next few days.  Look at how big some of those taters were.

Davis with Taters

I had to remind him to wash his hands before picking them up and to not grin so goofy-like.  He's only 7 and looks like his momma. 

Sometimes I get pretty depressed when I sit at the computer and read the news. Most of the really important news I find on-line. The regional papers are pathetic. We don't have any T.V. Public radio is pretty good sometimes. I am most freaked out by climate change. The more I know the worse the situation appears. My own sense is that there's an emergency going on right now. Quick, drop what you are doing and intelligently access the situation and act responsibly!

Meanwhile, folks are just carrying on with their lives as if all is normal. And in most ways, for a lot of people it still is. Live in the present and a lot of what we are used to still works. Don't think about the mathematics behind peak oil, global grain stores, remaining topsoil, aquifer depths, and climatic tipping points, and just hope "those smart people" will make sure it all holds together. I like Kunstler's term for this: The Consensus Trance. Roll on, roll on...Blah, blah, blah...So much useless chatter. Pretend to be interested.

The best antidote to these feelings is getting outside and working. This fall weather is perfect for that and we are currently redesigning an area of our lot called the concrete jungle. I have been thinking about how to transform this into something beautiful and productive and we got going today. I'll share some before and after photos at some point.

Breakfast

Didn't eat a whole lot this morning.

Oct 23 Breakfast

The grape juice is really amazing now. Fizzing delightfully. I drank it all day. Bread is from Bruce's in Calpella. Apples from the neighborhood. That's some black tea (a minor infarction) with Clover milk and Templeton honey.

Lunch

I came inside famished and quickly found that I had two partial servings of leftover soup. So I put them together.

Oct 23 Lunch

The same great grape juice from Frey's Merlot harvest. Soups were made last night (the butternut squash) and Oct 20 dinner (chicken and wild rice). They went fine together. On the side are tomatoes from the garden and a feta cheese from Sebastapol.

The vine-rippened tomatoes are almost gone. I will miss them but the joy of having them again next year will be supreme.

Dinner

Kristin made dinner again! First, she cooked spaghetti squash in the solar oven.

Oct 23 Dinner

I must have drank a couple of quarts of that grape juice today. The squash was combined with a pesto sauce that used our own basil but non-local olive oil. The last of the roasted Willits chicken was mixed in, and the serving was topped with a dry jack cheese from Sonoma. Cucumbers and tomatoes from our garden. That's more of the Bruce bread with Clover butter.

I probably ate twice the amount pictured here.

Worked hard today.

Will probably have some warm milk and honey before bed. 

I am happy to report that I have turned a corner with my cold, or whatever it was that gave me a headache and made me tired. Woke up badly but felt good from 2 pm onwards today.

Breakfast

The fourth Sunday of every month is the breakfast at the Little Lake Grange. I am a grange member, but not very active as such. Most of my work is trying to revive the grange by partnering with WELL on events, like the Harvest Festival yesterday. Anyhow, we traditionally go to the grange breakfast and didn't change that habit even with Locavorism on our agenda.

Oct 22 Breakfast

The juice was grape from yesterday, which is an improvement for the Locavore-minded over the usual orange or grapefruit choices. The bowl has plain yogurt, Nancy's brand from Eugene. It is organic, but Clover of Petaluma would have been closer. All the fruit is local, with the apple and fig coming from Stella's yard about 100 ft away from the plate. The pear is from around Upper Lake in Lake County. I can't attest to the granola origin but assume it is a member of the vast, global, industrial food system, even while being organic.

The same crew that was in the kitchen from last night's dinner was there this morning. I hope they got a good bit of rest afterwards.

Lunch

We had a brunch-like hour for our breakfast, so didn't feel hungry again until 2 pm. Got famished while doing harvest and planting activities and was fortunate to find leftovers.

Oct 22 Lunch

The juice is an apple-pear-grape combo, which is the best I'd say. The chicken and wild rice soup was incarnated for dinner on Oct 20 and described as: "The chicken was more leftovers, the rice is that wild stuff grown in Potter Valley, also in the mix are onions, garlic and ripe tomatillos from our yard, parsley from Covelo, and seaweed."

We keep bees and this involves checking on their health periodically. Neighbor Ron got a hive that lacked a queen and recently had to put one in, so we were hopeful the hive would accepted her majesty. We were lucky enough to pull out a frame and see her right away.

Ron with Bees

We don't typically use any protection but none of us have been stung so far. The key is smoking them a bit. When they get a whiff of smoke they think there's a fire and start sipping honey in case they will need to abandon the hive. This makes them lethargic and have more important considerations on their little minds than what we may be up to, including major manipulations of their home.

Behind Ron is Ingmar, an exchange student from Germany who is 17 but has been keeping bees since he was 10. I am his senior project mentor and the topic is how to keep bees. I have been keeping bees for a couple of months. Don't tell the principal this. Oh, wait, Ingmar lives with the principal!

Here's what a queen bee looks like in case you are intrigued.

Queen Bee

Big momma is the long-bodied bee near the edge of the frame in the middle of the picture. She is pure golden colored...hubba-hubba!

Before working on the bees I grabbed a snack while at Ron and Angelas.

Oct 22 Snack

The stew is simply lamb from Little Lake Valley, tomatoes from the garden and neighborhood apples. It is on quinoa, which is imported from afar. Juice is grape from yesterday's pressing, which was merlot from Redwood Valley.

Dinner

For the past 22 days I have been deeply concerned about what I am going to feed my family for dinner. Since I am a kept man and my wife is the one who brings home the bacon, the onus falls on moi to sort out the grub. Frankly, it gets old sometimes. One thing I miss about my Pre-locavore days was the freedom to just give up and go out to a restaurant when I am tired and it is getting late and the kids are starting to raid the fridge and whine.

So dinner tonight was very special because it was nearly totally conceived and executed by Kristin (I chopped a few onions).

Oct 22 Dinner

Apple-pear-grape juice again, with a bonus--the grape juice is fizzing a little. Adds a nice tang. The soup is butternut squash with onion, garlic and cream added. It is topped with walnuts and a dollup of sour cream and a piece of canned pear is floating around too. The break is from Bruce Breads, which is a bakery between Willits and Ukiah. The cucumber is the last from our garden, and that's a yellow tomato from the garden too. We aren't sure where the butternut squash was grown, but it was left at the Harvest Festival yesterday after cooking in one of the solar ovens. The walnuts are from St. Helena, the cream and sour cream and butter are from Petaluma. All fruit and veggies from our yard.

Still feeling lousy today, but since I wasn't comatose, I really had no choice but to be very busy. Today was our harvest festival and it was extremely well done and attended. Wait 'till you see dinner.

Before breakfast I did a weight check. Down to 149 which puts me at my college weight! Kristin is noticing my trimmer physique. She's down to 112 but I haven't noticed anything at all.

Breakfast

Today I lived my fantasy and turned my front lawn into pancakes.

Last year about this time I planted Mare's Widgen wheat in front of the house. It was harvested in late June. It was threshed and winnowed last weekend. Today I ground one cup into 1 and 3/4 cup of flour.

Wheat Berries from Front Yard

I hand ground this in our mill, added two eggs from our own hens, some half and half from Clover dairy out of Petaluma, a smidgen of baking soda, about a teaspon of honey, some water to give it the right consistency, then cooked in in a pan.

Curtis with Pancakes

Look, I know we live in Mendocino County and my boy is wearing a tye dye shirt, but I swear he is not stoned. He is just a goofy kid.

These really filled me up (why is it filling up when you swallow food down?).

Oct 21 Breakfast

That's goat milk yogurt from Sebastapol on top, as well as Willits honey. On the side is a canned pear from Briar Patch Farm a few miles outside of town (where I the steak came from a couple weeks back), and cottage cheese from Clover of Petaluma. Our own apple-pear juice washed it down.

Didn't really have a lunch today. At the harvest festival I was in charge of the apple and grape pressing. We made a whole lotta juice. Frey Vineyards donated Merlot grapes, Jo Ann and Karen gave apples. We ended up pressing enough to fill up my solar oven with juice for canning, with plenty to drink fresh during the whole day, and to have for a dinner of over 100 people. A few gallons were even left over.

In addition to the juice, I ate a couple of hard boiled eggs from Willits.

I'll do a big spread on the harvest festival later. Can't do it justice now.

Dinner

The culmination of the day was a communal feast of local food. The Little Lake Grange was at capacity, which was so great to see considering all the work so many people put into this. The dinner was planned ahead of time and individuals made the dishes then brought them to share. So it was not a potluck, but some of the cooking work was spread around.

Oct 21 Dinner

I don't know all the details of this meal but will do my best starting at 1 o'clock. That's a salad with greens, peppers, onions and tomatoes, dressed with olive oil. Baked beans with onions (cooked in a solar oven). Eggplant parmesan. Corned beef. Acorn squash baked with corn, onions, ham and probably some other stuff. A butternut squash soup. A squash and apple fritter. A dinner roll. Grape juice to lubricate it all.

I was stuffed, but managed to fit in dessert.

Oct 21 Dessert

Apple cobbler with a crust of Mare's Widgen wheat flour from my yard and Ridgewood Ranch and topped with whipped cream from Clover dairy of Petaluma (hand whipped that day).

So this evening, many in the town of Willits were given the gift Locavorism, and they all seemed to like it!

Grange Hall Dinner

I have a cold today.  Even so, did some work outside with Max and Maria, who are going to help redesign and rebuild the space around my house.  They are permaculturalists and have a beautiful place of their own.  http://www.melc.us

But before they arrived, I had breakfast.

Breakfast 

Oct 20 Breakfast

That's our own apple-pear juice, some raw apples and pears from the neighborhood, French toast using non-local flour from a local bakery, smothered with goat milk yogurt from Sebastapol and Willits honey.

I took a nap soon after getting my kids to school.  Then worked a bit with Max and Maria before having lunch.

Lunch 

This was simply leftovers.

Oct 20 Lunch

That's tap water, veggies and chicken from last night, a berry cobbler from a few days back.  Usually I'd give more specifics but right now I don't feel so hot and will leave it to any eager reader to sort it out for themselves by scrolling back over the month.  http://www.relocalize.net/blog/42

I am a bit grumpy too.

Dinner

I walked into the kitchen around 5 pm and it was a mess, and I didn't have any dinner plan, and I was feeling sorry for myself and wished I could just order a pizza to be delivered to my door, steaming hot, right out of a little car powered by gasoline and an internal combustion engine...No!  I got a grip on myself and powered through to create this.

Oct 20 Dinner

Pure comfort food. Chicken and rice soup.  The chicken was more leftovers, the rice is that wild stuff grown in Potter Valley, also in the mix are onions, garlic and ripe tomatillos from our yard, parsley from Covelo, and seaweed.  I'll give ya'll a close up of the seaweed.  I was using it as a table salt alternative. 

Mendocino Seaweed

It was a nice touch.  Flavor pretty bland, texture soft and a bit chewy.  It quickly soaks up the broth and expands in the soup and looks like it was recently picked.  Drying is a great way to preserve food.

Now I am snacking on some popcorn and will watch a movie on our DVD player to veggify my brain.  My DVD player draws 20 watts and my T.V. 110 watts.  Assuming the movie is 2 hours, that would be 0.26 kilowatt hours, which is 887 Btus, which is equivalent to 0.00016 barrels of crude oil, which is also equivalent to the work a single quite fit person could do for those two hours.  

Watching a movie = Having an energy slave

http://www.nous.org.uk/energy.slave.html

http://transstudio.com/2006/01/energy-slave-equivalency.htm

http://www.peakoil.ie/newsletters/580

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_Slave 

It is now after dinner.  I am in front of my computer and 80% of the rest of America is watching TV.  The sky is nearly dark.  I haven't had enough sleep lately.  

During my globe trotting, jet fuel spewing era, I spent many nights camping in remote forests in the tropics where it gets dark soon after 6 pm every day of the year (parts of former life are still web accessible here:  http://www.andesbiodiversity.org/ABC/abc.html).   With headlamps and maybe a small fire we might stay up a couple hours after dark, but in general it was to bed by 8 pm and up around 6 am. I miss the time for soft conversation and contemplation forced by darkness.  Lately my wife and I have been on separate computers until late, working on various "obligations."  

Breakfast 

Nothing fancy today.

Oct 19 Breakfast

Our own apple-pear juice, scrambled Laytonville eggs, and the homemade zucchini bread with that local flour.

Lunch

A simple near repeat of last night's meal.

Oct 19 Lunch

This was described as:  More local lamb, in a stew with carrots and parsely from Covelo, and barley, garlic, sweet and hot peppers, tomato paste and tomatillos from our own garden.  Oh, and a bay leaf from the tree at the junction of North St. and Redwood Ave.  The mashed potatoes are from our garden and many were blue so that's really the right color.  I added Petaluma milk and butter to these. 

Dinner

I need a drum roll here because the real excitement of the day was dinner.  (Whoa now people, settle down.  Back off please, all these blog hits are getting overwhelming.  Stop calling!)

Oct 19 Dinner

Check it out!  Chicken tonight.  This comes from the operation of Denise and Shane Chilson of Willits.  They are nearly out of business because they have had a hard time selling chickens around town and weren't about to start competing with Tyson.  Without a Locavore Ethic in place, however, their enterprise has stalled.  Can the Willits Locavores step up to the plate and pay a fair price for good chicken meat?  We need to get organized around supporting these food producers.  The first step was buying out the remainder of their stock.  Now we have to give them some guaranteed business and preorder for next season.  They can be reached at:  456-1142.  

I had a longing for rice with this meal so went with the Calrose from Winters, ca. 137 miles away.  The tomatoes, sweet peppers and yellow squash were from our yard.  The beautiful chicken carcass came perfectly clean and I tossed in several cloves of garlic and a couple bay leaves, all from the neighborhood.

It was cooked in the solar oven in a baking dish and the results were outstanding.  Tender and moist chicken with plenty of that classic poultry flavor.   

Tap water is also pictured.

I will close tonight's Meal Report with a thought.  Is Locavorism ready for a celebrity spokesperson?  Can we handle it?  What do you think.  I want some big ideas.  Think Blue Sky and Out of the Box for this one.  

Sleep on it.   

I spent a lot of time today with Gerry working on our old house.  We spent hours doing what were apparently simple tasks.  And yet nothing is as simple as it seems, especially when working on an old home.  You never know the sort of problems you'll encounter.  Our tools and supplies  were mined and manufactured from somewhere else.  Would I ever be able to replace this stuff if it broke and we were in some possible future when economic localization was a reality and not an ideal? 

It reminded me of Tainter's thesis about how complex societies can get into trouble from simple maintenance costs.  When infrastructure gets large and complex, just the act of keeping it functioning can be a huge burden when resources become constrained.  A young civilization going through a growth phase with abundant resources can easily overbuild, confident it can always solve its problems.  Afterall, look at how great it is!  

How delusional are we now, building more and more freeways, office parks and subdivisions while oil is peaking?  More folks ought to read Tainter (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Tainter) and Jared Diamond (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jared_Diamond) and then think about what investments we make.  I don't see any shift happening yet and it scares me.  We don't have much time.  

Breakfast

I was a good boy today.

Oct 18 Breakfast

That's our homemade zucchini bread again, with Petaluma butter.  Those watermelon bits come from Covelo and Sebastapol yogurt is drizzled on top.  The drink is our neighborhood sourced apple-pear juice.

Lunch

I raided the garden again.

Oct 18 Lunch

Same watermelon and juice as breakfast.  Sandwich bread from Pheonix bakery using non-local flour.  The innards consist of lettuce, cucumber, sweet pepper and tomato from garden.  Also included is a soft jack cheese from Santa Rosa area and a Mendocino Mustard spread using non-local ingredients I am almost certain.

Dinner

About the same time I made lunch I got the dinner stew going.  It was cooked in the solar oven.  I highly recommend the solar oven I own.  I ordered it from here and got a great price:   http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/IndividualItemPages/SunOven.html

The fact is, one of the most energy intensive parts of our food system is cooking.   

Oct 18 Dinner

This was a great meal.  More local lamb, in a stew with carrots and parsely from Covelo, and barley, garlic, sweet and hot peppers, tomato paste and tomatillos from our own garden.  Oh, and a bay leaf from the tree at the junction of North St. and Redwood Ave.  The mashed potatoes are from our garden and many were blue so that's really the right color.  I added Petaluma milk and butter to these.  The salad is from our garden and has four kinds of lettuce, tomatoes, and sweet pepper. The beer is what we made with Hale. 

Willits News reporter Mike A'Dair is following the Willits Locavores.  Here's his first story.

By Mike A'Dair/TWN Staff Writer
The Willits News

Article Launched:10/04/2006 11:00:00 PM PDT  

Jason and Kristin Bradford are leading a group of 13 food activists in a campaign to eat only locally grown food through the month of October.

Bradford says he has undertaken the project to help America transition away from heavy fossil fuel use in its food economy.

"Our food system is heavily dependent on fossil fuels," Bradford said in a recent interview. "About 10 fossil fuel calories are used to deliver one food calorie to our plates. Given our need to make an energy transition away from fossil fuels, we need to recreate our food systems so that they are local and sustainable.

"So we, in a sense, are pioneers in understanding what we can do locally now, and also, what is missing, what are the gaps in our local food system. These gaps are future vocational opportunities for people jobs in our community."

How are things going two days into the month-long venture? "I'm already hungry," Kristin says. "It's true."

Jason said so far he and his wife "are sort of playing catch-up. We were very busy over the past week and we didn't have an opportunity to fully assess where we are and where we need to go" to make the transition to an all-"locovore" food budget a smooth one.

Jason noted his group has adopted three definitions of "locally grown" for the local food project. The first is food grown in Willits. The second is food produced or grown in Mendocino County. The third is food grown or produced within 100 miles of Willits.

All three definitions are acceptable for the group's purposes, he said.

Jason said the biggest hole in the food picture is grains. "There are no local grain sources."

"We have lots of fresh vegetables, but are falling short on our protein and calorie foods," Kristin added.

People in the community who have locally grown food products and wish to donate, trade, barter or sell them to the Bradfords or members of their group may call Jason at 456-0760. 

I will have to spend another day in Pergatory because of another major sin today.  Again, it involved being invited out to lunch by folks from out of town. 

I just got back from the Willits City Council candidates forum this evening.  What a tough job it is to be a public official. And they get almost no money for it.  So I am very appreciative of those who serve.

It was a very civil affair and a lot of good questions were asked by the public.   I didn't submit one, but I didn't have to.  I swear about half the audience were official members of WELL (we even carry cards).  It is remarkable how in a couple of years the name of WELL was on the lips of the candidates repeatedly, and glowingly.  That was great.

The tough part was watching the discussions about growth.  More is expected and presented as inevitable.  There's both population and economic growth, and it is difficult to know what people are talking about.  I think they usually mean both at once.  Leaving aside any personal views on whether one wants to keep a small town small, just as a lifestyle choice, the math behind both economic and population growth given our impending energy realities just isn't there.  Try growing an economy and a population when, by say 2020, we have a quarter or less of the fuels we have now.  

It is really simple to do this math.  Say we maintain our current oil plateau until 2010.  After 2010 we have an average global decline rate of 4%.  Now because exporting countries are going to have internal growth, the export capacity may actually decline by more like 7% (it could be much worse than this).  A 7% decline rate means that the quantity will halve in 10 years.  Just divide the % figure into 70 to get the answer.  If the decline rate is 5% we get 14 years till halving. 

So how are we going to grow the economy, expand tourism (a popular theme, requiring well-maintained roads, cars and gasoline) and keep ourselves warm, fed and clothed with half the oil we have today?  

Here are some equations to compare. 

More Energy =  greater ability to do work = greater ability to build stuff, move things around, i.e., "grow." 

Less Energy = poorer ability to do work = poorer ability to build stuff, move things around, i.e., "shrink."

Shrinkage in economic terms (not a Seinfeld joke) = recession or depression.  Depressed economies also don't tend to have population growth. 

Global warming was also a grave concern, and the connections (or disconnections) between economic growth, energy consumption, greenhouse gas emissions were never made. 

Maybe I should have asked a question?

Maybe it isn't worth talking about much.  I think the scenario of no or negative growth is virtually unimaginable to the vast majority of people who came of age during the latter half of the 20th century, even with a giant WELL education campaign on these topics.

Just for the record, I've done a few interviews related to the connections among economic growth, resources, population and the environment:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/641

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/717

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/707 

And have written some essays too:

http://www.energybulletin.net/3948.html 

http://www.energybulletin.net/3788.html

http://www.energybulletin.net/3179.html 

Breakfast

I felt better about breakfast today because of the homemade bread.

Oct 17 Breakfast

Pears from our backyard, zucchini bread Kristin made using mostly local ingredients (explained yesterday), and apple-pear juice from neighborhood trees.

Lunch

I won't let it be seen.  We went to Taco Bravo and I ordered my usual, a chili relleno plate. 

The beans were so warm and the rice so fluffy.  But I am not going to think about the way the assorted flavors and textures warmed and blended in my mouth, like the gooey white cheese in the chili.  Instead, I will remind myself that the 1500 mile diet that I experienced today contributes to the greenhouse effect.  Left unchecked, who knows how bonkers our climate may get, how fast and high the sea levels will rise, how quickly fertile agricultural bread baskets will turn to arid wastelands, how many people will flee from their homelands as environmental refugees, only to encounter other populations only marginally better off, or how many species will vanish from the Earth leaving a depauperate flora and fauna for whatever future generations remain.

I'll try to keep that all in mind.  

The chips were crispy.

Dinner 

Leftovers are a beautiful thing.  Not so fun for the blog, but they keep me from going nuts trying to figure out a new meal every day.

Oct 17 Dinner

This is just last night's dinner without the biscuits so I'll just reprint:  "Potato soup from our own taters, onions, and garlic, combined with milk and cream from Petaluma, topped with goat cheese from Lakeport. Biscuits from our own flour. Tomato, cucumber and sweet pepper salad from our garden. Tap water."

I came home after the candidates event and had dessert.

Oct 17 Dessert

That's watermelon from Covelo drizzled with Petaluma goat yogurt and Willits honey.

One of the first things we learn as kids, informally and formally in school, is that all animals eat something else to live. Ecologists will go further and classify food webs by the direction of diversion from the plant world. Plants are the creatures that suck in carbon dioxide, combine it with water using the energy from sunlight and power the cycle of life. Herbivore-based food webs start from critters that eat living plants, like deer browsing or squirrels hiding acorns. Detritivore-based food webs start from critters that eat dead plants, like leaves on the forest floor or rotting logs.

Locavorism aims to be firmly in the herbivore camp. Non-locavorism is definately in the detritivore section.

Why I bring this up will become apparent during lunch.

Breakfast

Nothing special to report. Just the routine good stuff.

Oct 16 Breakfast

Bread from Pheonix bakery, toasted and layered with Petaluma butter, streaked with Willits honey. Strawberries from our yard. Cottage cheese from Petaluma. Apple-pear juice from neighborhood trees.

Lunch

This was another social occassion where I strayed from the Puritanical Path of Strict Locavorism. Some very interesting people who care deeply about local food systems and are keen to invest in a means of creating one came to town. I wouldn't deny this opportunity and so didn't deny the advantage of going to Al's Redwood Room for lunch and indulging in Thai food. Al's is also one of the favored bars for the bikers on the Redwood Run. But a local boy married a Thai woman who happens to be a chef and we have dramatically increased the culinary diversity of this small town.

I won't picture the lunch since it is shameful and was derived from massive inputs of fossil fuels for its creation. Instead of recalling the sensation of coconut milk in that green curry, I will instead think about the diesel truck that brought it here and how stinky and dirty it is. I will think about the natural gas powered fertilizer plants fouling the air along the Mississippi River in Louisiana and the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico from the runoff resulting from the industrial ag system.

Today, for lunch, I certainly was a detritovore. The food chain goes all the way back to an oil well somewhere, eating ancient sunlight.

Ahh, Thai food!

Dinner

I am much prouder of the meal we arranged later in the day.

Oct 16 Dinner

Potato soup from our own taters, onions, and garlic, combined with milk and cream from Petaluma, topped with goat cheese from Lakeport. Biscuits from our own flour. Tomato, cucumber and sweet pepper salad from our garden. Tap water.

After dinner snacks included a couple of small apples, from neighborhood trees, and this fantastic creation from my wife and kids.

Oct 16 Snack

That's our juice, plus zucchini bread. Backyard zucchinis, Laytonville plus backyard eggs, local flour, and Petaluma butter. I am afraid non-local sugar and oils were used. Perhaps the recipe could have been modified to use honey and butter instead, but I am not about to push the issue too far with my wife right now who did do a heroic job pulling this off while getting the kitchen cleaned up and the kids to bed while I was out at another meeting.

Sometimes I do know when to keep quiet.

Sometimes.

This was a purely "Home Economics" day.  I wonder how many schools still teach home ec?  If I could wave a magic wand schools would get rid of most computers and have kids spend time learning some real basics.  Like soil science, cultivating food, preserving food and preparing meals.  As it is now, most "schools are preparing the young generation for the high skilled, high wage jobs of the 21st century to keep American competitive and our economy strong in the global marketplace."  (Say that with Arnold's accent and try not to laugh).  

Breakfast 

I had the pleasure of spending a while at our rasberry patch this morning.

Oct 15 Breakfast

The bread is from Pheonix bakery using non-local flour with butter from Petaluma and honey from Willits.  Rasberries from our garden with goat milk yogurt from Sebastapol drizzled on top.  Black tea with Petaluma milk and Willits honey.

I was outside in the garden most of the day.  Sowed some wheat, dug up some potatoes, sorted and stored potatoes, and pressed apple and pear juice.

Potatoes get sorted into three piles:  (1) unblemished for storate, (2) damaged so eat first, (3) small so save for seed potatoes.  

The storage potatoes go into our cellar in a wood box I built and layered among straw.  I used the straw leftover after threshing the grains yesterday.

Storing Potatoes

No lunch to report today.  I did make a pot of popcorn and snacked on grapes, apples and pears from the garden.  Oh, and I had a small glass of beer and a taste of apple-pear juice.  

Dinner 

Went around and gathered from the garden for dinner too.  It just went into a pot for soup.

Oct 15 Dinner

The soup base is lamb.  Scraps from around the ribs and back, what would be bacon on a pig, are really good for this. I chop them up and they are great basic flavoring.  Veggies from the garden and include:  tomatoes, sweet and hot peppers, yellow squash, garlic, onion, and black beans.  Carrots came from Covelo.  The plate on the right has mashed potatoes from our garden with butter from Petaluma.  Corn is from Covelo too.  Tomatoes from our garden.  The biscuits are another locavore experiment gone awry.  Our whole grain flour doesn't do well with standard quick-bread recipies calling for a lot of baking powder.  We need to add maybe half the baking powder called for perhaps.  They were tolerable, especially when dipped in the soup.  I drank more beer, then some water.

Kristin used the same biscuit mix with dessert.  A berry cobbler using blackberries and rasberries from our yard.  After I began eating it, she admitted using tapioca (from the tropical manihot plant) and sugar (from the tropical cane plant), but I was hooked already and kept going.  She also put Willits honey on top.

Oct 15 Dessert

I had three or four servings and wasn't struck by lightning so I guess its okay. 

I had the pleasure today of doing a lot of food gathering and processing work.  Fell asleep on the couch at 5:30 pm.  I love it when that happens.

Breakfast 

I am in a breakfast rut, but I like it.

Oct 14 Breakfast

Pheonix bakery toast with Petaluma butter and Willits-area plum butter; Asian pear from Lake County, near Lakeport; eggs from Willits over mediaum; tap water.

After breakfast Wolfgang picked us up (me and the boys) and took us to Redwood Valley to go gleaning at Spenser's place.  He has walnuts and about 20 people came.  This is a bit of a trip, over a ca. 2000 ft pass then down the grade to the northern edge of  the Ukiah Valley.  We harvested bags of walnuts, but I couldn't help thinking that the Energy Returned on Energy Invested was negative given the gasoline consumed.  At least we went in an old Honda Civic.  The kind they made when gas was last expensive and they got great mileage without the swanky and overly complex hybrid drives simply by making the vehicles smaller. 

A sizeable chunk of the Willits population is giddy about how cheap gas is now.  Not just because of the broad trends, but because Safeway installed a huge new station and undercut the existing price structure. And if you use your club card and spend money on food in the store they discount the gasoline too. 

I could puke but local food is too precious so I'll keep it down.

I'll have to describe how to harvest and process walnuts sometime, but for now I'll just mention that I snacked on wine grapes adjacent to the walnut trees.

Oct 14 Snack

I have no idea what kind of grape they are or whether the wine will be good.  Wine grapes are generally sweeter and less juicy than table grapes. 

Lunch 

Sanhedrin Nursery in Willits had a fruit harvest fair today with Richard Jeske and a seed threshing and cleaning workshop with David Drell.  I hauled over some wheat, rye and amaranth and also benefited from the free grub.

Oct 14 Lunch

I was told that all the ingredients were local but I didn't have time to ask for specifics.  That's freshly pressed grape juice; an egg salad sandwich; tomatoes, plum, and goji berries.  I had never heard of goji berries but they appear to be eaten when naturally dessicated and have the texture of raisins.  Via the "information super highway" I just discovered they originate from the Himalayas.  Also had apple pie.  

The folks from Ecology Action at Ridgewood Ranch brought over their grains too.  Every other neighborhood should have this sort of equipment.  But it looks like home video game consols remain more popular.

Cereal Rye

Rye is the easiest grain to thresh and clean. 

Dinner

Kristin arrived back in town after a few days in San Francisco doing the sort of stuff that maintains her medical license.  She reports no official discussions of what to do as a doctor when the electricity doesn't work, but the curious can ponder that here:  http://peakoilmedicine.com/

Anyhow, I wanted to make a nice meal for her and so went after the lamp chops and one of our sacks of potatoes.

Oct 14 Dinner

Beer from Hale's place and tap water; lamb from Little Lake Valley seasoned with sage from our yard; roasted garlic from our garden; our garden potatoes, scalloped with our own onions and herbs (oregano and thyme) and cooked in lamb fat; assorted fresh tomatoes from our garden.

See how there are three chunks of meat in that picture?  I actually ate four. 

I have been thinking about this today:

“All of humanity is in peril,” said Buckminster Fuller, “if each one of us does not dare, now and henceforth, always to tell only the truth and all the truth, and do so promptly—right now.”

That was from the mid 80s I believe. Anyone who understands systems theory knows why the truth is important. It has to do with feedbacks. Information distortion and delay means that the system can get dangerously out of balance and we wouldn't know it and make appropriate corrective actions.

I will contrast this with a conversation I had to day with Sam Pierce, Vice Major of Sebastapol. We were talking about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and wean ourselves off of fossil fuels in general. The "scientific imperative" is to do this as quickly as possible and, I was saying, it will fundamentally alter our way of life. (Hence my Locavorism). My argument is that this transition goes beyond calculations of the net present values of efficiency gains in conservation or renewable energy system, but that is apparently all that the political system is willing to work with now.  This frustrates me.  "Don't ever tell people that," Sam suggested, meaning imply their way of life must change, "You will loose that argument." Now he is a politician and I am not, so I listen to folks with more experience than I do, but what does it say about our collective prospects if we aren't supposed to talk about the reality of the situation?

(I should also say that Sam knows what the scientific imperative is and is working hard to help his city and others reduce GHC emissions).

There's a scene in the claymation movie Chicken Run where the leading hen, Ginger, explains how dire the situation is, exclaiming something like, "If we don't get out of here we are all going to die!" Rocky, the leading rooster, pulls her away from the now panicky flock and explains that in America you can't motivate people like that. So we must lie, Ginger asks? Sort of, Rocky suggests.

But I digress.

Breakfast