Pumpkin Pie - Locavore Style

Happy Thanksgiving to all of our readers! Whether you'll be traveling like us or staying home, whether you'll be at a big gathering or with just a few friends or family members, there are a few dishes that just make it feel like Thanksgiving. Most people would agree that a pumpkin pie is one of them. Here at You Can't Eat a Lawn world headquarters, we were put in charge of that very pie for one of our families' feasts. Naturally, we started out the same way everyone does:

What? You mean everyone doesn't make a pumpkin pie from a whole pumpkin?? Okay, okay, we know the ubiquitous cans of Libby's pumpkin are really handy, and we have made our fair share of pumpkin dishes in that way. But here in Iowa (and the Midwest), there are so many places where you can get a whole pumpkin fresh off the vine, grown by a local farmer. In fact, we got our little pie pumpkin at a lovely pick-your-own patch called Wills Family Orchard, just a short drive from our house.

The Wills Family grows a whole variety of pie pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, squashes and gourds. We picked up a couple of jack-o-lanterns for carving, but we made sure to buy one pie pumpkin for baking. In theory you could use a jack-o-lantern for pie, but it doesn't really have the right qualities. Jack-o-lanterns are bred to be larger, with thin walls for easy carving. That means not much flesh for a pie. A pie pumpkin wouldn't impress sitting on your front porch, but it'll make a great pie.

So, once you've got a pie pumpkin, then what? It's actually really easy! First, cut it in half and remove the seeds and stringy guts. Be very careful when cutting, since the skins are quite tough and your knife can end up slipping. We use a very sharp knife and wear a cut resistant glove, just in case. Once you've got the pumpkin cut open, it'll look like this:

We placed the halves, cut side down, in a 9x13 baking dish, tented with foil over the top. They went into a 350 degree oven for 90 minutes, by which time the flesh had softened up noticeably. You can really tell that it's done by poking around various spots with a fork. When it pierces the flesh easily, the pumpkin is done. As this picture shows, it may not look much different, so you'll have to go by feel.

Next we scooped the flesh away from the skin. The cooked pumpkin is really soft, and it should be quite easy to scoop out with a spoon. We placed all of the cooked pumpkin directly into a blender and pureed it until it was silky smooth.

And honestly, that's about all there is to it! This puree in the blender can be used just like the canned stuff you buy in the store. But you have the added bonus that it was grown locally this season, probably by a small family farmer. You can use this in any recipe you like; we opted to make our pie using a recipe from the always-helpful Pickyourown.org. When it came out of the oven it looked like this:

Tempted though we are, we dare not cut into this pie until the feast tomorrow. If you can judge it by aroma alone, this is sure to be a delicious dessert. It may have been a little more initial effort than simply opening a can, but we're sure it will be worth it.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Our Adventures Rendering Lard

When we ordered our half hog last winter, the final question on the order form asked us to circle the, what you might call, leftover parts that we wanted to keep. Things like liver and heart, which we still have no idea how to use, and lard, which we knew would be very useful. Our share of the hog included 11 pounds of lard, and just recently we decided to do something about it.

That's half of the lard, as it arrived from the locker. It doesn't come in the most attractive package. But then again, we're talking about 5 pounds of frozen ground pork fat, which is kinda hard to dress up. In this state, lard can't really be used for much. It has to be rendered, or cooked down, to get a product that can go into pastries or cooking. We began by opening the package and chopping the frozen chunk into smaller pieces so they'd melt quicker.

We placed the pieces into our stock pot, and set it on the stove on a low heat setting.  It is important to melt the fat slowly without scalding it, otherwise the lard will have a yellowish-brown color and will smell rather "piggy."

After a few hours, the fat had completely melted.  There are lots of little solid bits suspended in the melted fat.  These are commonly referred to as "cracklins," which are basically connective tissue that was in the pig's fat. You can keep these after you're done rendering lard, and fry them up to eat. We tried that with a small portion of our cracklins but didn't really enjoy them enough to do the rest. It must be an acquired taste...

To get the lard which we did want to keep, we needed to filter out the cracklins.  We used two colanders stacked together with a layer of cheesecloth between them.  The cheesecloth allowed us get rid of even the smallest solid bits and using two colanders helped keep the colanders from getting clogged up.

The five pounds of lard that we started with ended up rendering down to about 1 1/2 quarts, which we divided up into two quart-size canning jars. Right out of the stockpot, it was a slightly yellow liquid, which made it easy to pour. Unfortunately, it didn't look terribly appealing straight away. Thankfully that went away as it cooled, and we were left with...

Snow-white, fluffy lard. It has solidified somewhat from its earlier liquid state, but it's still recommended that you store it in the freezer or the fridge so it's easier to scoop and measure it. This is the state in which you can use it in baking or cooking, typically in a place where a recipe would call for shortening.

Which, of course, we just had to try! We had over a quart of brand new lard, and we wanted to make a pie crust with it. Now, as a warning, this lard does retain a little bit of its pork flavor, so you'd probably want to stick to savory pies. Leaf lard, the fat from around the hog's organs, is supposed to be virtually flavorless, so you could use it for a dessert pie, though we haven't gotten around to that just yet.

We followed a recipe from one of our cookbooks (The Good Cook) for a lard-based pie crust. Stacia rolled out a perfect-sized crust, which we then prebaked. This one was going to be used for a quiche, so we filled it with a mixture of scrambled eggs, bacon from the same hog, and a lot of spinach from our garden.

It was so beautiful when it came out of the oven! Thankfully it was just as delicious as it looked. The pastry crust came out light and incredibly flaky, with maybe just a hint of savory pork flavor. A suggestion we found that we definitely want to try next time is to make the crust with half lard and half butter. This yields a best-of-both-worlds result, with the amazing flakiness of the lard, but with the added flavor of butter. That's for next time; for this time we were satisfied enjoying our first of many homemade quiches!

Rendering lard probably isn't for everybody, but it's not really that hard to do. Of course, it starts with having a source of unrendered fat, which you pretty much only end up with if you buy a half hog. But the cooking process was relatively painless, although it did take several hours. There did end up being a little bit of a pork-y aroma in the kitchen, but it wasn't too potent. And we can take a little bit of that if it means we get to eat fantastic quiches and pies! We're certainly glad we checked "yes" on the lard part of our hog order form.

We'd like to thank our farmer for all of the help we got from this great tutorial on rendering lard!

This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.

A Visit to the Berry Patch

It's June in Iowa, and that means one thing: it's strawberry season! You might remember we planted our own strawberry plants earlier this spring, but they likely won't produce any fruit at all in their first year. But we didn't let that deter us from taking advantage of the season so we did the next best thing.

A local pick-your-own berry farm! Berry Patch Farm is another producer that we first met at the downtown Des Moines Farmers Market, and we liked their produce so much that we decided to drive the 45 minutes to their farm north of Des Moines. It was going to reach 90 degrees by the afternoon, so we got out there right when they opened at 8 AM. Apparently we weren't the only people with that idea...

The friendly farmers directed us to a strawberry field that was ripe this weekend, and gave each of us a row to start picking. They also provided containers, ranging from individual pints up to 10 pound flats. As you might imagine, we opted for the latter.

Now, you can't really see any strawberry plants in that picture of the field. That's because strawberries grow very low to the ground, and some opportunistic weeds are towering above them. To get to the berries, you have to bend, stoop, or outright crawl along the rows. It's also a good idea to wear long pants, and maybe even long sleeves. Even though it's hot, wading through the weeds can be irritating to your skin. But it's worth it when you find a clump of strawberries that looks like this:

These locally grown strawberries are almost nothing like the ones you buy at the grocery store. The skin is ruby red, and the flesh is velvety soft and sweet. The berries were so sweet that the whole field gave off a sugary aroma. We picked a few, then tried a small sample, and then really started picking to get as many of these luscious berries as we could.

We spent about an hour in the field, and these were the (literal) fruits of our labor. We pretty well filled the flats, ending up with 18 pounds of red ripe strawberries. After that work, we were ready to head home and enjoy our harvest. Now, we're always up for a challenge, but 9 pounds apiece is a bit much for even us to eat fresh. But one of the key parts to getting produce in season is finding a way to store it to enjoy year-round.

Strawberries can be made into jams or jellies which would be put up in cans for later. We've done that before, but this time we decided we'd rather freeze them whole. We've lately been enjoying homemade smoothies with other frozen fruits, and these delicious strawberries seem like a good fit for that too. Otherwise, frozen berries can still be used for pies, sauces and many other things.

Freezing strawberries is pretty simple. We cut out the hulls (the top center part of the berry where the stem is attached), rinsed the berries under cool water and patted them dry. Then we stood them all up on a lined cookie sheet without letting any of the berries touch. We put that into our chest freezer for 3-4 hours to get them partially frozen.

We then tossed the berries into ziploc bags for long-term storage. We needed that initial freeze to keep the berries from sticking together in the bags; this way we should be able to pull out a handful at a time to make our smoothies. We'll freeze a little more than half of our haul, and find lots of ways to eat the fresh ones over the next few days. Until we have our own plants, there really is no better way to get fresh produce than going to a pick-your-own farm, and Berry Patch sure is a nice one!

This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.

How to Shop a Farmer's Market

Here on our farm, we like to grow as much of our own produce as we possibly can. But before we had land of our own, and to supplement what we harvest here, we love farmer's markets. They are a fantastic source of local, in-season food that you just can't get at the grocery store. Often times, the veggies are picked earlier that same day, so it can hardly get much fresher.

But if your local farmer's market is like Des Moines' (i.e. huge) and you've never shopped at one before, things can be a bit... intimidating.

Where do you begin with so many vendors and crowds of shoppers? Well, have no fear; as multiple-year veterans of farmer's market shopping, we're here to share some of our favorite tips.

Tip #1. Get there early. The downtown Des Moines Farmers Market runs from 7AM to noon, but you'll never catch us arriving much past 8. Sure, there is fun to be had strolling around and munching food from the prepared food vendors later in the day but your selection of fresh produce will have been diminished. The farmers bring a certain amount of their crops and when they're out, they're out. So for the freshest produce and meats available, plan to get there as early as possible. For us, 7 is pretty hard to do on the weekends, but we can typically manage 8AM or so.

Tip #2. Fuel up. The "experts" say you should never shop on an empty stomach or you'll end up buying too much. To us, that hardly seems like a bad thing at a farmers market, but the advice still holds since you'll be doing a lot of walking. Plus, most farmers markets have a nice selection of prepared foods as well as fresh produce, so you can buy yourself a treat to nibble as you do your shopping. Des Moines has everything from breakfast burritos and sandwiches to egg rolls, pupusas and samosas, but our favorites are the Austrian pastries from the Strudl Haus. Find something that looks tasty, and get that first to power you through your shopping.

Tip #3. Get to know some farmers. Most farmers markets are populated by the same vendors week-to-week. If you find a vendor who consistently has tasty, fresh produce or always takes the time to answer your questions about their farm and practices, it might be nice to "vote with your dollars" at that stand. As farmers market veterans, we've now got a pretty good routine of our favorite farmers that we always make a point to visit and see what they've got. In fact, this was also how we ended up getting a half hog a few months back; we'd previously purchased individual cuts of pork from Crooked Gap and knew it was delicious and sustainably raised. When we opted to buy a half hog share, we knew exactly where to look.

Tip #4. That said, don't get stuck in a rut. Most vendors are the same every week within the season, but there is some turnover of market spots at the start of each season. So even though we may have a mental list of farmers we want to visit in any given week, we don't limit ourselves to those. Just last week we discovered Yang Homegrown Vegetables, a farmer we'd never seen before, and who had some of the best looking organic rhubarb around. We bought a few bunches and now their stand has become part of our planned rotation for the rest of the season.

Tip #5. Figure out what's in season, and buy that. Compare the above photo of Yang's produce with the picture below of another vendor just a few stands over. Both have beautiful looking produce, but there is one pretty big difference.

When these photos were taken, in mid-May, some vegetables are in season, and others just aren't. Yang's radishes, onions, rhubarb and greens are common early-season crops. The other stand has bigger-than-expected broccoli and cauliflower, but even more questionably they already have bell peppers. In Iowa those shouldn't be ripe until the late summer so you wouldn't expect to see them just yet. This particular stand is especially brazen, leaving the grocery store stickers on the peppers, so there's really no question that these are not locally grown. Most vendors aren't out to trick you, but simply being aware of when different vegetables ripen in your area can be helpful. This website is a pretty good resource, but keep in mind these are estimates only. This year a lot of vegetables have ripened much sooner than they seem to think.

Tip #6. Feel free to ask questions. If you can't tell whether something is in season or not, or if you're wondering anything else about the food that you see, go ahead and ask. One plus to shopping at farmers markets is that the farmers themselves typically work the stands. This means that they know what they're selling, and can tell you all about it. Anything you want to know, from identifying a plant you've never seen before to knowing if the farm is organic, chemical-free, or conventional can be answered with a simple question. No one will make fun of you for not knowing, and most farmers enjoy talking about their food with someone who really wants to know.

Tip #7. Don't be afraid to try something new. You can go to a farmers market and buy locally grown versions of the same food that you can find at the store, but that's only part of the fun. Farmers love to experiment with different varieties, and many unusual items are typically on display at the market. If you see something eye-catching, ask what it is and how to prepare it, and then why not give it a try? In the past, we've gotten these interesting looking dragon tongue beans, plus a range of items as diverse as purple potatoes and actual Iowa-raised tilapia. Not every one will be a new favorite, but it's part of the fun to check out a new taste.

Tip #8. Have fun! A farmer's market is a great opportunity to try new things, support local farmers, and enjoy great food. These tips can make your trip more successful from a shopping perspective, but don't worry about following them to the detriment of the experience. Our collection of tips is built up from years of experience shopping at farmers markets, and we still don't always do things perfectly efficiently. But we do always have a great time, and we're sure you will too if you give it a try.

How about you? Any particular tips or habits you follow when you shop at the farmer's market? What's your favorite thing to buy at the market?

This post has been shared with Simple Lives Thursday.

The Birds

Last fall while we were house hunting, we told our Realtor all about our desire for a big backyard with lots of sunny space for a garden.  But there was one other thing that we were silently considering as we studied each backyard.  We sometimes spoke about it vaguely; in a sort of "code" that only we could understand.  Because you see, everyone can somewhat understand the desire for a garden, but we were making plans for something a bit more unconventional.  In an effort to seem reasonably sane in the company of our Realtor, we opted not to mention it.  Then one day as we were scrutinizing a relatively small backyard, Greg had no choice but to question, "Where would we put the birds?"

Ah yes, the birds.  Because no urban farm would be complete without a little livestock, we will be adding some backyard chickens this spring.  Our Realtor was surprised to hear that it was even legal to keep chickens in an urban backyard.  Well, fortunately for us, Des Moines is a very progressive city when it comes to backyard chicken-keeping.  We even chose to limit our house search to the city limits of Des Moines rather than any of the less chicken-friendly suburbs.

So now that you know that you can keep chickens in some cities (check your municipal code to find out), let's discuss why we want to keep backyard chickens.  The simple answer is: EGGS!  Eggs are a fantastic source of protein and a productive hen will lay an egg almost every day. Of course, you can buy eggs at the grocery store, but the commercial egg industry has serious problems with salmonella outbreaks, not to mention the poor living conditions and downright cruel treatment of the chickens. So why not raise your own?

Besides, chickens don’t need much more care than a typical housepet. They just need shelter, food, and water. The shelter is actually a work in progress already! Stacia has been spending time in the basement taking the salvaged pieces of the backyard playset and assembling them into small sections of the future chicken coop. They will eventually come together to make something like this:

There will be pictures of the real thing eventually, but for right now, it’s mostly just a concept. We’ve got a few months before we’ll need it anyway. Our current plan is to buy the baby chicks in mid-March, and keep them indoors for their first 5 to 6 weeks. Baby chicks need to be kept very warm until they grow their adult feathers. Then in early May they’ll move into their permanent home in the backyard. We’ll post plenty of updates here on the blog, so be sure to watch this space!

Sidenote: If backyard chicken-keeping isn’t an option for you, consider getting your eggs at a Farmer's Market. Or you might even be able to find a grocery store that sells eggs from small, local farmers. If you’re in the Des Moines area, we’ve seen local eggs at Gateway Market, Campbell’s Nutrition, and New City Market. (If you know of others, feel free to add them in the comments section.) We’d love to see people support farmers that care about the welfare of their animals and provide people with safe, fresh, healthy food!

Half Hog = Full Freezer

You might recall that back in November we stopped by the Winter Farmers Market and started the process of ordering a half hog from Crooked Gap Farm. We figured out how we wanted it cut up, and then last week we were notified that our hog was ready for processing. The farmer took it in to a nearby meat locker, and less than a week later it was ready to be picked up. This morning was the exciting excursion to go see what we'd gotten.

We woke up early on a snowy morning, and drove down to the sleepy hamlet of Milo, Iowa (population 839). It's a quaint little town, just about an hour south of Des Moines.

At the end of Main Street is the Milo Locker, where our hog (and one of the farmers who raised it) were waiting for us. The Milo Locker is a family owned business that processes everything from beef and hogs to deer and lamb. For a small business, they sure do keep busy. The guys in the store commented that they've processed 3,000 deer this season! Pretty impressive for a little place like this:

Our particular half hog had weighed in at a hanging weight of 95 lbs, meaning the entire "meat section" of the animal, including all the bones. This weight is the basis for the customer's fee to the farmer. For example, Crooked Gap charged $2.50 per pound of hanging weight. There's also a smaller fee to the locker for the cutting, curing and packaging of the meat. Ours was around $65 for the half hog.

For that cost, they break down the hog into tidy little paper packages that look like this:

Our half hog pretty much filled two full-size chest coolers to capacity. So, what do you get in two coolers worth of pork? Well, with our choices of cuts, we received:

14.2 lb of shoulder roasts
9.7 lb of pork chops
7.9 lb of sausage patties

7.3 lb of deli-sliced ham
7.3 lb of ground pork
6.2 lb of bacon
4.4 lb of ham steaks
4.3 lb of cured ham hocks
2.5 lb of spareribs
2.2 lb of pork liver
1 lb of jowls
and 11 lb of lard

That's a lot of pork, but it fit neatly into our 5 cubic foot deep freezer without any trouble. It's also going to keep our stomachs full of bacon, pork chops, and carnitas for some time to come, which is exciting to think about. You probably won't see us at the grocery store meat counter any time soon!

This was our first time ordering a half of any kind of meat (hog, beef or otherwise) and it's gone really well. Crooked Gap was great to work with, thoroughly explaining the process and answering any questions we had along the way. The folks at Milo were cheerful and friendly, and helped load up our pork without us even asking. Each package is clearly labeled, and in the weight/size increments we asked for when we ordered. Plus it's from a great local farm, where "pigs get to be pigs." Going half-hog is definitely an option to think about if you've got the freezer space and want to know just where your meat came from. We're likely to do it again (whenever we finish all this pork!).

Quick Bites - Chicago

Things are a bit slow down on the urban farm, so how about a brief story from Greg about holidays, travel, and an unloved little fish?

This year, as usual, the company for which I work shut down the entire facility for the week between Christmas and New Year's, and I took the opportunity to head back East to my native state of Illinois. I spent a wonderful weekend opening presents, eating a huge Polish dinner, going to my family's favorite coffee shop, and just hanging out with all of them. Then Tuesday came, and (almost) everybody had to go back to the real world, meaning back to work. So it was just my little sister and me, and we decided to go explore The City.

This trip was more novel for me, as my sister attends college in Chicago, and now probably almost feels at home there as much as she does in our suburban enclave. I however, wanted to see more of her campus, walk along the lakeshore, and eat at one very special restaurant.

That's Uncommon Ground, a restaurant and bar specializing in local and sustainable foods, which was recently named the Greenest restaurant in America. As a strong proponent of eating local and caring for the environment, I was excited to check it out.

One downside to visiting in December is that we couldn't look at possibly their coolest attribute: the certified organic rooftop garden from which much of their produce is grown. In my snapshot above, you can just see some of the raised beds and trellises which would be covered in green during the spring and summer months, but are sadly bare in late December. Even then, Uncommon Ground sources produce from nearby farms with greenhouses or high tunnels that can keep growing into the colder months. They also focus on seasonal produce, which means a lot more root vegetables this time of year.

There's a host of other neat green stuff about this place - recycled materials and furnishings everywhere, but I was more excited about the food! My sister ordered this flavorful flatbread, made with local gorgonzola cheese, and topped with small-farm bacon and pickled turnips!

And me? Well, I got that unloved fish I alluded to earlier. The Lake Whitefish, a small fish native to Lake Michigan, and part of a historic fishery now on the decline. By that, though, I don't mean that the whitefish is being overfished and that there aren't many left. It's actually the fishing of the whitefish that's starting to drop off.

You see, Lake Whitefish are small, and not particularly attractive, and as it became easier to ship in "exotic" fish like salmon and mahi mahi, people grew less interested in this rather ordinary local option, so demand dropped.

That was their mistake, because Lake Whitefish make some amazing fish tacos! Uncommon Ground served them topped with some local greens and a unique sweet potato relish/salsa. Finished with a drizzle of a zesty pepper sauce, and served alongside house-made fries, it was one of the better meals I've ever eaten. The cold crisp beer from Half Acre Beer Co, less than 5 miles away, was the perfect complement.

All in all, this was a dining experience I'll remember for a long time. The company was top-notch, the food was phenomenal, and I felt good about eating it, knowing that everything was responsibly sourced. I was able to fill my belly, all while supporting local small fishermen and farmers. The restaurant was still pretty busy as we had lunch around 2:00, which is a good sign for the local food movement. As this trend continues to gain steam, hopefully more restaurants will make room for these kinds of items on their menus. As they do, I know I'll continue to seek them out.

Homemade Apple Butter: Part One

When you've had a good year in the garden, you often can't come close to using up all the produce you've grown. You can try eating Swiss Chard for breakfast, lunch and dinner, but even then you could end up falling behind an overly enthusiastic plant. It would be a real shame to waste this perfectly good food, so when faced with this situation, we turn to preserving, meaning canning or freezing.

Now, as we've well documented, this hasn't been a particularly stellar year in our garden, what with the moving process, the small space allotment we had, and the combination of theft by others and neglect by us. But just because we had a small harvest doesn't mean that everyone else in central Iowa did. One of the many successful growers in our area this year was Iowa Orchard, a neat little fruit oasis in the middle of the Des Moines suburbs.

We're a little ways beyond apple season here in Iowa by now, but we did our best to take advantage of it while it was going on (from July to October, per Iowa Orchard's website). We picked up several pecks of apples over the fall, many for fresh eating, but one peck of Cortlands was specifically earmarked for apple butter.

If you've never had apple butter, first of all, give it a try; it's delicious! But secondly, it's a fruit butter, which is a lot like a jam, but spreads much easier. You can make and preserve it at home with a few simple tools, as long as you follow the right procedure. That is of the utmost importance, since improper canning can make you quite sick or even be fatal. You can follow our process here as a general concept, but make sure you have a trusted manual to ensure you follow the right safety procedures. A good bet is the Ball Blue Book, which we used for our recipe here. Just be careful, and home canning can be perfectly safe.

With that disclaimer stated, the first step in making apple butter is basically to make homemade applesauce, or a nice apple puree. Our recipe called for four pounds of apples to make a half dozen jars of apple butter. We weighed our peck to be about 10 pounds, and it ended up making 14 jars (two separate batches), which is about the same proportion. These needed to be peeled and cut into pieces, which you can do by hand... Unless you have an Apple Master!

It peels!

It slices!

It dices... er, cores!

Our Apple Master was a find at the local TJ Maxx, which made it a reasonable bargain, especially considering that we planned to continue making apple butter in our futures. It helps, but it's not necessary; you can just peel with a knife and then cut into pieces. The apples went into a big pot with 2 cups of water per 4 pounds of apples, where they simmered on the stovetop until soft, somewhere between 10 and 15 minutes maybe. You'll be able to tell when the apples soften, so you likely won't need to time it.

Next we put the softened apples into our second gadget of the process: a food mill. This step could be done in a regular food processor, but it doesn't work quite as well. If you plan to make apple butter semi-regularly, we'd recommend you invest in the food mill. It basically presses the apple slices through a grate in the bottom, which also serves to strain out any skins or tough parts that didn't get Apple Mastered away. A food processor wouldn't have that filtering ability, plus there's the danger that it's too powerful - liquefying the apples instead of making a puree. And it's just so much fun, in an old-fashioned kind of way, to crank away at the apples and watch the mush drip through the bottom.

If you want to make your own applesauce, congratulations, that's pretty much what you've got here! It hasn't been seasoned in any way, and it's still a little too squishy to spread onto toast, so it needs a little more work to become what we want. Come back next time and we'll show you the rest of the journey, where it transforms from puree into the thick, amber goodness of apple butter. We'll also break out the canner, and (very carefully) pack it into shelf-stable jars we can enjoy for months to come. See you then!

Thinking Outside the (Big)Box

If you were to take a walk through the produce department of your local grocery store, you'd probably find neatly stacked (I would know, I used to stack them -Greg), perfectly uniform towers of various different fruits and vegetables. Apples and oranges, carrots and cucumbers. But unless you're at a specialty grocer, you might not find something that looks like this:

Any ideas what this guy could be? Well, don't feel bad if you don't know; we hadn't heard of delicata squash either until our friend Sarah did a squash taste test a few weeks back and declared delicata the winner. The delicata is frequently referred to as a winter squash, like butternut or acorn, but it's actually more closely related to the zucchini. It came highly recommended, and like other squashes is chock-full of fiber and nutrients like potassium, magnesium and vitamins B & C. With this knowledge in mind, we made a point to keep an eye out for delicata as we shopped.

Fortunately for us, Gateway Market in Des Moines frequently sources produce from local suppliers, and we were able to pick up a few delicata squash that were grown in Murray, Iowa, just about an hour from home. You might remember our adventures in squash cooking haven't been terribly reliable lately, so we decided to keep things simple this time around. It doesn't get much simpler or more classic than slicing in half and removing seeds, throwing in a few pats of butter and some brown sugar, then roasting at 350 F for about an hour. And the result looks so delicious, doesn't it?

Once the squash were cooked, Stacia scooped out the flesh while Greg pan-seared up a couple of pork chops with some rosemary and thyme and whipped up a quick pan sauce. Altogether, it made for a delicious, hearty dinner, perfect for a chilly December evening.

This is one of the most exciting things about growing your own food or shopping locally grown produce. The variety is virtually endless, far beyond the handful of options that are commercially produced. If you go to the store, you'll find tomatoes, but if you leaf through a seed catalog, you can find literally hundreds of different kinds of tomatoes, all with different characteristics: size, shape, color, flavor, texture, etc. Growing food in the garden puts all those choices into your hands, for unrivaled culinary freedom. And you just might discover a flavorful new squash you've never tried before.

When you're able to find such interesting, high-quality ingredients, a simple preparation can lead to a really tasty meal!

Going Whole Hog

Believe it or not, there are a few things that you simply can't grow/raise on a half-acre urban farm. We're willing to push the limits on some unconventional backyard additions, but neither the city of Des Moines nor our consciences would allow us to try to keep pigs, for example. When that happens, you do the next best thing - find a small (non-urban) farm that you know and trust, and buy your beef, pork, etc there. That's what we do during the farmers market season, albeit in a piecemeal manner. Need pork chops? Buy a pack or two. Short on chicken breasts? Pick up a few pounds. But winter is coming, and with it, a long cold stretch with no markets.

Which brings us to the exciting electronic arrival that came while we were out of town for the holidays. Confirmation and instructions for our purchase of half a hog! Maybe we neglected to tell you all, but when we went To Market, To Market a few weeks back, one of the things we did was Buy A Fat Pig! To be more specific, we put down a deposit on a half hog from Crooked Gap Farm. Crooked Gap is a small farm not far from Des Moines that is owned by a couple relatively new to the farming trade, and who we could have visited this summer if our schedules had worked out better. They raise heritage breeds of pork, much unlike the bland mass-produced kind found in stores, and have a strong focus on the welfare and happiness of the animals. A perfect match for us! Oh, and we've purchased individual cuts of their pork at the farmers market this summer, and it's delicious, so that helps too.

Now if you're a city slicker like Greg, you might hear "half hog" and imagine an entire pig sliced in half (no joke, that's kind of what I thought -G). Not to worry, all it means is that the farmer takes the pig to the meat locker to be processed normally, and all of the meat from one half of the pig is ours. It will come in neatly wrapped white paper packages, which hopefully will fit into our chest freezer without overflowing.

So, why buy a half hog in the first place? If we wanted to stock up, we could have tried to buy a bunch of packages of individual cuts to last us through the winter. But that's not really sustainable, and it's not great for the farmer. Sure, everyone loves pork chops, but the farmer isn't raising chops; he's raising pigs. So if everyone just buys chops, there's a lot of perfectly good meat that isn't being sold and could be going to waste. Think about it next time you're at the meat counter and see those rows and rows of nice pink pork chops. Where's the rest of all those pigs? Whole (or half) hog is win-win. The farmer sells an entire hog, and in return we get a pretty favorable price compared to just buying hundreds of pork chops. Which brings us to the exciting arrival this week.

Crooked Gap breaks down the hog by section, then lets us choose how each section is processed and cut. For example, in the loin area, we can get the entire loin, or it can be cut into roasts, chops, or tenderloins. Same for all the other parts of the pig: shoulder, ham, ribs, and side (meaning bacon!). Most of these cuts we know pretty well, but some are things we've never tried. Then there's all the parts we'll call "less desirable." Buy purchasing the hog as a half, we can receive pieces like hocks, heart, liver, jowls and lard. What on earth do you do with a pork heart, or liver? We don't know, but it sounds like it might be worth exploring. This half hog could be a big crash course in many new ways of cooking. We'll try to be like the proverbial Indians using every part of the buffalo, and document our adventures here.

If any of that offal stuff (hahaha) bothers you, you can still buy a half hog and respectfully decline the organs. You'd still be doing a service to the farmer by buying some of the less popular cuts and you'll expose yourself to some delicious new flavors; shoulder roast carnitas anyone? Who knows what the next pork-y discovery will be? The farmer says jowls taste like bacon, and it's hard not to be excited to try that. We may never be able to raise a hog in our backyard, but this comes pretty close!