Curbside Veggies. In Arkansas?!

This is not a post about frugal living. Nor is it about Oklahoma, although very close to us. This is about accidentally discovering a place that is a gem of a sustainable restaurant model where veggies are vogue. Last weekend we went to a family wedding in Fayetville, Arkansas. And thanks to Urban Spoon, I stumbled upon a little green restaurant called The Greenhouse Grille. The building was actually green and it was very near to the University on one of the busiest streets in town in one of the most modern and chic shopping centers in town. No wasted space here. Even their green islands in their parking lot were overflowing with edibles. (This is also an important type of space cities need to utilize as bioretention sites to prevent waste water runoff in parking lots)

Their front space was not adorned with purposeless plants like Asian bradford pears or azaleas but with strawberries bounding out to greet me, asparagus crowns towering up, fennel fanning out, parsley making a landing pad for sleepy butterflies, and Swiss chard sporting it's rainbow style. Their side space had more veggies and peas dutifully standing at attention and in the back they had several raised beds about fifteen by four inside of a mini hoop house. Let's go back to these gardens of yore because doing so would be really a victory. Wow! Talk about curb appeal, talk about fresh to my plate. This is the kind of thing I have read about at sites like Alice Waters Chez Panisse world famous restaurant and would encounter snippets of when I lived in Santa Barbara, but to see such a restaurant model in the mid-west in an area dominated by businesses making everything bigger and outsourced from as far as possible- one does clucks and one is the biggest retail world within our world-was refreshing.

Additionally Greenhouse Grille sources their meats, veggies, and grains from other local producers. Including the War Eagle Mill, which is an outstanding historical fieldtrip in itself. They also actively work to support local musicians and to abate local hunger in an area that is cursed with simultaneously being the richest and the poorest region in Arkansas. And what better way to abate hunger than to start from the ground up. And yet, many cities outlaw front yards that could contribute to the hunger solution or provide an ecological stopover for native birds and butterflies. Our cousins outside of Joplin told me that their mowing ordinance is to keep their grass at one inch or less- oy!

Does your city allow veggies to be front and center in urban landscapes, yards, and businesses? Do you and your city use your urban land to it's maximum potential, especially as one acre of viable farmland is lost every minute to urban sprawl in this country? What acts of gardening civil disobedience have you or your neighbors performed secretly or overtly? How do we tell our city commissioners and home owner's associations that we deserve the freshest food for our forks and spaces reclaimed from the tyranny of bermuda grass and japanese honeysuckle?

Tell them we need veggies front and center.

Garden Folk

 

A couple of Saturdays ago I got to be on the other side of the table at a Farmer's market event at the Oklahoma City Oklahoma Food Cooperative store. For the first time I was there as a vendor. Wow! What a beautiful day doing business the way it was done for many years at this location in it's prime. Getting to know these farmers and regular variety garden folk was really touching to me. Plants make people happy, pure and simple. And I got to give part of that happiness. I was there selling cards and garden seeds but I got to sit next to the plant people- those who know hospitality, heirlooms, and handshakes.

 

My newly found friends are amazing. My friend Dev Vallencourt and her husband Kip Francis at High Tides and Green Fields grows 147 different varieties of peppers. Pretty sure you will never see a tenth of that many varieties in any grocery store. She also was teaching me about some innovative (or perhaps wise, antiquated ways) she has begun to grow winter crops in hugelkultur method from Germany that creates so much heat by planting on top of old wood that she was able to grow crops all winter long, uncovered.

I met a young farmer, Samantha Lamb who was managing a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) endeavor on her grandparents homestead in the Medicine Park area. I met Michael Ruzycki who is farming and hosting a store in Choctaw, The Veggie Lounge who said he started because he was always amazed at how much leftovers his grandfather always had from his garden. Two other guys have started an event composting and zero waste company, Fertile Ground in Oklahoma City. Others, like Renrick farms are working diligently to provide more drought tolerant, native, and butterfly loving flowers. Double R farms  was there  selling pastured lamb and eggs and Barb was trying to figure out what growing things looks like in Oklahoma after living for years in Alaska. There was experience and there was youth, but above all there was energy. Urban Agrarian hosts an all local market five days a week and their staff was busily working indoors sorting crates of tomatoes and processing local foods from all over into a wide assortment of baked goods while the old dog swatted flies with his tail on the porch. While we sat in our store outdoors community organizers from a "Better Block" project had gathered and were literally painting the town- covering over years of neglect and breaking ground for new beginnings.  

And then there were the customers. The lady who got a "pet" fern. The radiant Reverand who had been healed from a stroke. Everybody who marveled over how strawberries grow. Those whose garden was an epic fail last year, but they were trying again because they were determined to get their eight year old to like vegetables. And then the lovliest of my day, a young girl who had just come from a workshop where she had made a planter box a few inches wide by about three inches deep. She was absolutely bursting to find a way to plant things. No one had showed her the dirt in her own yard. She was so enthusiastic she could have made seeds sprout just by sheer wish. "I just want to grow something I can eat she told me." So we made a deal and I sold her two packets of lettuce and peas... And, hopefully, a share of the garden.

Presto Pesto

Image from La Grange college library

One of the things that I have grown to love nearly above all else is pesto. (And it is especially great when you have the foresight to freeze some of your summer basil bounty. So perhaps this post is a little unfairly tantalizing in February, but I have been hoarding it since September... I’ll remind you again in June how much you love pesto!)

 My large bushy bouquets of basil in my garden were such a source of delight. Pine nut pesto is delicious, but usually a non-local luxury. Plus  many of the pinion pine trees that produce this delicious nut are dying (Boo you, climate change).

1908 Milk truck in America. Image from Wikimedia.

Here in Oklahoma the land is still dotted by orchards of huge old pecan trees. In some cities, like mine, the land has been developed but remnants of the orchards still dot the landscape in mighty towering shady rows. They stand like the crumbling columns of ancient buildings, the bones of former civilizations.  Such a beautiful reminder of the adage that wisdom is planting trees, the shade of which one will never see.

I wonder about what my city was like then- 100 years ago when my land, now one block from a bustling main street, fed cows in a very large dairy for the milk delivered daily by horse drawn cart, to houses with wooden ice boxes and an additional delivery of ice.

Where did the water come from to grow these trees in our frequently dry, often unpredictable, landscape? Did some farmer's daughter carry it one bucketful at a time, for her whole adolescence, maybe through her whole adult life, from the life giving well? For how many long years did she have to wait, to even taste the fruit from her labor? And how astonishing would it be to her that now these nuts are shaken down, skinned, packaged, and pulverized by machine. Perhaps I need to savor them just a bit longer.

Sun dried tomato polenta (Start the night before or morning of. So easy, don't be intimidated)!

• 4 cups of water
• 1 cup of coarse corn meal  (I omitted the Parmesan to save some money)
• 1/2 cup of sun dried tomatoes (free from last summer's garden)

I can buy a small log of polenta at my grocery store for around for Polenta $3.75 or make your own for about $0.75 

Roasted pecan pesto

0.5 lbs of roasted pecans $3 (Local price if you pick them from a free source but take them to a sheller . Lucky lucky me my sweet grandparents had just given me several pounds from their tree that they picked and shelled by hand). For some other posts about my grandparents and my Granny Smith's sweet petite pies go here.

• 6 large handfuls of basil leaves(free from garden) or $2.00
• 0.5 cups olive oil $1
• 1 tbsp nutritional yeast 0.25
•  1/2 tsp sea salt

$6.25

So, when I make pesto I love to add a degree of richness to it by first roasting the nuts. Lightly coat them with olive oil and roast in 375 degree oven for about seven minutes or just until they smell pungent but not burned. Sometimes, to save energy, I do this in my tiny toaster oven. Sometimes when I do this, I also almost catch the house on fire, but those incidents are another story...

I have also found there is an unmistakeable but mystifying difference in the taste between pounded pesto and chopped pesto. If you have a mortar and pestle or even the back side of a cup or rolling pin handle crush the basil. Your pesto will be so much more fragrant. If you don't have the time to pound it completely just do it a bit before putting in food processor with other Ingredients.

The nutritional yeast is a powder that can be found at health food stores and is a cheaper (vegan alternative), also rich in B vitamins, alternative to hard cheeses traditionally used. It can be overpowering so use sparingly.

Roasted vegetables

• 1 red pepper (frozen) $1
• 2 summer squash (or about 1 pound of other seasonal squash)$1.50
• 3 large carrots $1.00]]  

$3.50 
*********

Menu total: $10.50 or $1.75/ person

Set broiler to low. Cook squash and carrots for about 7 min and then add pepper and corn for 7 more min until barely browning and blistering. Set aside to cool.

While the veggies are cooling slightly Pan fry the polenta in 1/4 inch slices for 4-5 min each slide with pesto added to the pan about halfway through to warm it. Rub the skins off the vegetables and mix them.
Simple one dish meal.
For more "golden nuggets", ie ultra cheap meals, check out others in our 10 for 10 series.

Egg pasta with buffalo sausage and roasted vegetables. Candied oranges.

For the next few days we are doing a ten for $10 series. 10 recipes, service for 6 for $10. Also please check out how you can submit a guest post and be entered to win $20 of stuff from Oklahoma Food Coop (out of staters welcome too) in our submissions section! [Update: This contest has ended. Our winner choose to buy some great yarn from the Oklahoma Food Coop producer Shepherd's cross].

What could be more Oklahoman than a recipe featuring wavin’ wheat and buffalo summer sausage?

Egg pasta

 Every week when I get my package from my good friend it feels like I am opening a present from her family to mine. I know these chickens- my children go and feed them bugs out of their hands. These chickens are pretty pampered pompous bug-eatin', weed scratchin', farm trottin' helpers on my friend's farm. Each of these free-range eggs is an orb of goodness. The shells are so thick in a diverse palate of lovely pastels and the yolks a whole spectrum of bejewled oranges. All unique in size and some even slightly lopsized. Everyone competes to see who gets the green egg (it is really pale green) from the Easter egger ameraucana chickens (also, really it's name). After I wash them I love to hold them in my hand and run my fingers over their smoothness and marvel at their perfection, every time. They are also wonderfully inexpensive and great in oh so many things.        

Recently we decided to make our own pasta! This project is a delightful mess. We modified the recipe from the River Cottage Family Cookbook and had to add a substantial amount of water.