Homegrown's All Right with Me

Environmentally, it just doesn't make sense to eat meat. We can get all of the nutrients we need from fruits, vegetables, and grains which require much less energy and water for production. However, in colder climates, produce must be transported from the South, and that takes energy too. I am Canadian, and this is winter: you can't get much more local than locally produced meat. After all, that is the only way our ancestors were able to survive through the winter.

My family does not produce their own food because of the "locavore" trend or because they decided to live off the land. For my father, farming is a way of life. As a boy, he and his brothers hunted rabbit, deer and partridge to help their family of 11 survive. My grandfather raised various types of livestock on their rural Peterborough County farm. Farming is in my heritage. Today, my father farms lamb, beef, and chicken on our Hastings County farm, and in the summer my sister cultivates a vegetable garden in a converted section of pasture.

Living on the fruits of my family's farm is the truest way for me to eat locally. After all, I can't get much more connected to the earth than this! I know where these lambs were born, how they were raised, what they ate, and that they were killed in a humane manner. I can eat meat and truly feel safe, because I know exactly where it came from.

I wanted to do something fun with lamb, so I found yet another wonderful recipe from my favourite cook book, Simply in Season by Mary Beth Lind and Cathleen Hockman-Wert. This is a fragrant, spicy, warm North African stew that you can heat up with spice as much or as little as you like.

Marrakesh Lamb Stew

1 1/2 lbs boneless lamb



Brown the mean in 1 to 2 tablespoons of cooking oil and set aside.

1 large onion
2 cloves garlic

Stir the onion and garlic into the meat drippings until translucent and tender. Return the meat to the pot.

5 medium carrots, chopped
2 cups of stewed tomatoes
2 medium turnips or 1 rutabaga
1 medium potato
1 cup of beef broth or tomato juice
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon each: ground cumin, coriander, cloves, turmeric
crushed hot chilies to tastes
a pinch of ground allspice and nutmeg


Add all of the above ingredients and bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 40 minutes.

Then add:

2 cups of cooked chickpeas
1/2 cup of pitted prunes
1/2 cup of raisins

Cook until everything is tender and then stir in some fresh parsley. Serve with couscous or rice!

Cookies!

Reverse chocolate chip cookies: probably the only kind of cookie that can compete with good old chocolate chip. My dear friend Rhonda was kind enough to share with me her secret recipe for chocolate chip cookies, which she honed to perfection a few years back. Recently, I decided to whip up a batch for the holidays, but to my chagrin, I discovered that my supply of baking ingredients had somehow depleted. As usual, I was forced to get creative!

Here's a picture of the original recipe that I copied out in lime green marker:

I made two minor alterations to this recipe: instead of semi-sweet chocolate chips, I used white chocolate chips, and instead of using 1 3/4 cups of flour, I used 1 1/4, replacing the remaining 1/2 cup of flour with cocoa.

As with any cookie recipe, I can't stress how important it is to use butter, unless the recipe specifies otherwise. Cookies made with margarine will obviously have less fat, but they will also be less moist and chewy. I make cookies so infrequently, I feel that it's important to make the product worth all of that work! If you're desperate, the best substitute for butter is shortening.

Here are some shots of me mixing up the batch.

Note the awesome hand-knitted wool sweater (with a tag that says, "Made with love by Grandma." Seriously. It really does. And it really was.), and festive Christmas socks. I was really pumped for the holidays.

In case you're wondering, that's homemade butterscotch ice cream in the background. I didn't make it, my boyfriend did, but combined with cookie dough, it's to die for. Even in the winter!

The finished product! Or at least some of it. This recipe makes at least 2 dozen big cookies, so make sure to share with some cookie monsters near you.