Day 2

Early to bed and early to rise, I awoke at 7 and took Tali for a quick walk. There was not too much to do in the trailer and we still haven't been to a grocery store so breakfast was quite meager, grape juice, tea and a power bar. We got the trailer ready and hooked up to the car and were on the the road just before 8.

The way out was quite different than the way in, it took us through a mountain pass. The interesting thing was that we wound up on the same manmade lake that we started on just a little further down the road. We saw three deer cross the road in front of us and then a fox shot across the road. We stopped to grab a cache mark "cache and dash" It wound up being just along the side of the road but in the mean time we go a reflection that lead us off into the bush. We were just leaving when I noticed that the gps distance to the cache was going down as I walked away from where we thought the cache was. Once I realized this it only took a minute or so to find it.

The next larger town we came to was Ridgeway and we stopped at a small dinner there, The Pennsy Restaurant. I had a couple of pancakes and 2 slices of bacon. Laurel had scrambled egg and bacon with homemade toast. Again this was an amazing price $10.50. You can eat like a king here for very little money.

We drove for some time after that only stopping for gas. We finally stopped for another cache and that way Tali gets a bit of a walk and a chance to pee. Anyway Laurel found the cache and called me over, I went one way and Tali went the other. He pulled me just as I was off balance and down I went. I hurt my left shoulder and scraped my elbow. I was a bit sore and it took me some time to get up. Still nothing broken so we finished the cache and headed off again. By this time the temperature was getting up into the mid 80s (33).

There was a lot of traffic at one section of the 270 so we got off and went around it. It was a very scenic drive and would have been fun in part except for the trailer. We got back on the highway and drove into town without any troubles. Thank God for GPS's, I am not really sure how we ever managed with out them.

We arrived at the camp site just after 4PM registered, got some information, set up the trailer and drove over to the AT&T store and managed to get there just before they closed at 5. I wanted to get 2 refurbished phones but they didn't have any refurbs. We picked up 2 cheap Nokias for $29 each including $15 minutes of air time. These are pay as you go with $.10 per minute and $1 per day, but the bonus is free mobile to mobile calling so calling so for a dollar a day we can use them as walkie-talkies.

We finally got out and did some grocery shopping. By the time we ot back home it was after 6 and I suggested that we should go out for supper, I was hungry and had no desire to cook. So we went out to Hard Times restaurant. Their specialty is chili and I had the 5 side Chili and Mac (Chili over spaghetti ) with chili, beans, onions, cheese. Laurel had Frito Pie, chili over Fritos with cheese. Total was $26.

We headed back to the trailer and after feeding and walking Tali we went to the pool for a swm. By this point my ankle was sore from the fall this morning. I looked at it and it was swollen, huge by this point and now quite sore to walk on. The swim helped and I hink the swelling had visibly gone down. Laurel thinks the cold water helps. It certainly was refreshing after the heat of the day. We phone Jo, Sue and Laurel's mother using soft phone, free from anywhere if you have a PC (my little laptop) and the internet. I forgot to mention I have a SIP provider, Voipgo that I use for my home phone which I also use for the SiP.

One more walk for Tali and we watched some tube and then off to sleep for the night.

Camping Prep July 11 & 12

As we were heading back out camping again on Sunday I had a lot of things to prepare before we left. I headed down to the market and bought some apples, chicken breasts, smoked pork chops, and carrots. We headed over to a trailer place and I found a jack to fix the trailer. I still have a problem with the lights and they said they could get me a unit for $140 but they would have to bring it in from Montreal. I came back and made a new BBQ Sauce. This one turn out much better, the basic recipe was

2 garlic scapes, diced

1 small onion, diced

1 cup of red wine

¼ cup of cider vinegar

¼ cup of honey

½ cup of ketchup (see ketchup recipe from an earlier blog)

1 tbls oil

 

Heat the oil and add the garlic and onion. When the onion is translucent, add the wine, vinegar and honey. Boil until reduced by about half. Remove from heat and add the ketchup. Puree the sauce.

That evening we dine on Smoked pork chops, sweet potatoes and a salad.

The next morning we got up I had a lot to do. I had not had a chance to fix the trailer and was concerned about the turn signal on the trailer which was still not working. I headed to Canadian tire and found a controller that I needed for $64 and they had it on the shelf. It was for a jeep (which I don't have) but it was a kit and I only needed the control. I started a dough (French, which I made into baguettes) and once it was done started a bread. I headed out to work on the car/trailer. The jack was really quick but putting in the controller proved to be quite difficult. I did manage o finish the trailer before the bread was done. We finally got under way; it was late afternoon, good thing that we were only headed to Bronte Creek in Oakville.

We arrive and set up the trailer. We had streak, baked potatoes and salad. We sat out that evening and enjoyed a camp fire. Unlike most people we take the fake fire logs. They wind up being cheaper that wood, are easier to light and are better for the environment.

Camping at the Pinery July 5-10

Well it's Sunday and I am rushing around like a crazy man trying to get everything ready for my camping trip to the Pinery. L is heading to a church camp and I am going to meet my sister at the Pinery I made 2 batches of bread a batch of yogurt and some BBQ sauce.

This was my first try at the BBQ sauce and I made a few mistakes. It tasted good but was not quite what I was looking for. The base was my homemade ketchup and cider vinegar. I had used honey when I actually meant to put in maple syrup. I also made some crackers which were not quite as thin as they should have been, or they needed to be cooked a little longer, they just weren't as crunchy as I would have liked. Live and learn next time all these things will improve.

I drove toward Exeter my first stop for this camping trip. This time I did stop at Hayters Turkeys, LCBO and beer store, quite the combination. I looked around and after discovering that they are now open 7 days a week I decided to stop here on the way home. I left Hayter's and arrived at Exeter, there is a great little park right on Highway 4 that I have wanted to stay at for some time.

That night I had a steak with some new potatoes and a salad with collard greens, kohlrabi, snow pea, pea shoots and mung bean sprouts. I topped that with sunflower oil, cider vinegar and a pinch of salt. I put some of the BBQ sauce on the meat. What an excellent meal. I left the trailer connected to the car as I was not staying for any length of time. I took a walk that evening; this is truly a lovely little park. There are numerous trails and a river running through it. There was a flower garden with memorial stones place throughout. There was also a pavilion and many BBQ stands.

I got up the next morning and had a meal of pancakes with honey (as the maple syrup was left at home) and apple cider. On my way again with a very short drive to the Pinery. I arrived in time for lunch, crackers, cheese and homemade salsa. The salsa was excellent but a little bit runny. Another thing to improve the next time I make it. I have a good idea how I will manage that without cooking the salsa any longer, deseed the tomatoes and drain the juice before I start. I will keep the reserve liquid as I have something else I want to try with it. While I was eating my sister and brother-in-law drove by with their trailer yelling that they were not going to be at the site they told me but were moving to another site. I popped over and for a quick visit but then had to head into Grand Bend to look for a trailer part that broke. I only arrived back home in time to make supper. Supper was 2 BBQed Bison burgers with homemade buns. The buns were a bit soft and rather filling, I think I will try a different recipe next time. I made sliced potatoes, Mushrooms, Garlic Scapes and onions in foil pouches all on the BBQ. For desert I had some of my homemade yogurt for desert. I spent the evening over at my sisters where we had a lovely campfire.

The next morning I had a bacon and tomato sandwich. Same bread dough as the buns, same complaint. I had another glass of cider and 2 glasses of water. It appears like it could rain any minute now. I headed over to see what my sister is doing before the rain hits. I got over there and they were having breakfast still. While I waited for them to finish eating the clouds dissipated and we never did get any rain. I never did get lunch but we had a great swim at the beach. We headed out that evening for supper. I picked the most local thing I could find, fish and chips. The fish was local and the potatoes were fresh cut I was hoping that they were local. We had a campfire that night and I had a few peanuts in the shell from Picard's nuts.

The next morning I woke and made the rest of the pancake mix. After breakfast we headed into Grand Bend as there is a farmers market there every Wednesday morning. I looked over the whole place and was impressed that it was truly local. No one was there selling food terminal produce or lemons… I bought a few cherries and some honey. I was hoping that there would have been some produce from Leamington, in particular some hot peppers, no such luck however. I knew that there would be some at the antique market but unfortunately I would not be here on Sunday when it was open. We headed back and I prepared a bowl of soup for lunch. The base for it was some beef broth I had previously made. To this I added a garlic scape, some onion, kohlrabi, and some sprouts. I rounded the meal out with a couple of pepperettes and a bowl of yogurt. After spending the afternoon at the beach I we headed back to my sister's site for supper. They were having sausage and I was too. Different sausages though as hers were for Zehrs and mine from a local butcher, I thought mine looked and likely tasted better. I served the sausages on a couple more buns and had a rather large salad with a sunflower and cider vinegar dressing. That evening we again had a campfire and more peanuts.

Thursday, my last full day here. I had a breakfast of bacon and tomatoes sandwiches. I spent the morning over at my sister's site and came back to mine for lunch. This was a quick meal of crackers, cheese and pepperettes. We headed into Grand Bend for a bit, I check my emails at the local Library and my sister picked up some supplies. We came back and enjoyed the beach again. It seems like that is all we are doing but… I just am not mentioning the walks we are doing or any of the other things. The beach is fun and the dogs enjoy it too. I headed back to my place to make supper. I decided to go to my sister's as the meal was somewhat complicated. I BBQed some chicken and another foil of potatoes. For a vegetable I boiled some collard green and then fried them in a little butter with garlic scapes and a splash of cider vinegar just at the end. I headed over to my sister's site for the evening campfire.

I awoke Friday and had a bowl of yogurt and an apple for breakfast. I finished packing up the site hooked up the trailer and went over to say goodbye to my sister. They were in the process of getting ready to leave but as she has a tent trailer and I have a hard top my packing was quicker and easier. I knew they were going to head to the beach for one last hurray but I had a few places I wanted to stop at on the way home.

My first stop was back to Hayter's turkeys. I picked up a netted turkey roast, some turkey burgers and some ground turkey. This was a great place for me. My kids think I am turkey crazy, I admit I like it better than chicken so I use it a lot. I find chicken tends to get rubbery (if over cooked or cooked wrong}. Turkey get a bit too dry but never rubbery. At one time it seemed that you could only get whole turkeys, now you can get any parts you want. They had some beans there and I inquired about them but all they could tell me was that they were from London but did not know which they grew and which they imported. Oh well, I will keep looking. I drove to Wellesley next. I picked up 2 litres of cider vinegar, 4 litres of apple cider and some grape juice. Then on to home.

I just barely had time to do some washing, get the car cleaned and it was time for supper. I had a couple of the turkey burgers, a sweet potato and a salad. I then headed over to Chapter's. I met both of my sisters and L there. L was just finished her camp and headed directly there. It was sort of weird and we sat and talked for some time, but I couldn't have anything.

I should make a comment here, the Chapters thing started a few years ago. L and I would come go to Chapters on Friday; we would read a few magazines and maybe peruse a book and then have a coffee or in L's case a hot chocolate. There were live bands every Friday n those days and upon occasion there still is. It was a great and cheap way to spend an evening. Then my family started showing up and doing the same thing. It has now become a family tradition.

Wow I can't believe that I got through all of this. It has taken me some time and I am really still way behind but I think I will be able to catch up quickly.

Ketchup Recipe

Knowing that there are certain thing that are going to be difficult to live without, I made a batch of ketchup. I am horrible with following recipes, This is the approximate recipe, measurements my not seem very exact. First I had frozen tomatoes from our garden that we froze last year. I pulled out 2 large freezer bags of these. This was enough tomatoes to fill our dutch oven.

4 quarts of tomatoes

2 medium onions sliced

2 cloves of garlic finely chopped

2 Tbls of sunflower oil (did not want to use peanut oil here as you never know who might use this)

½ cup of cider vinegar

2 Tbls of honey

2 tsp of salt

1 teaspoon of pepper flakes (I have some roasted/smoked hot peppers from the garden last year)

Put oil into the pot and heat. Once it is hot add the onions and stir. Cook the onions for about 8 minutes until soft, tender and translucent. Add garlic and cook for another 2 minutes. Add all other ingredients and bring to a boil. Simmer until it very thick, this was about 3 hours for me. Put sauce into a blender and puree. Bottle (I had an empty ketchup bottle so I put half in that and froze the rest)

June 21, 2009

Not much to report today as I did very little. I did however receive an email follow up on a bean opportunity that I had. It turns out that they are more than willing to sell me bean and currently have black turtle beans available and will have red kidney beans very shortly. The down side on this is that at this time they are selling them in 25lb bags for $45. There is no way that I could use 25 pound of beans, at least all 1 kind unless they were chick peas. They are considering selling 2 lb bags for $6 now I could see using a few pounds that way. I email back stating this. Unless I could find some other people interesting in sharing 25 pounds I will have to abandon this line until the start selling in smaller quantizes. I am sure there are people out there who would be willing but I am unsure how to find and contact them. Again maybe I need to contact the blog about this.

June 20, 2009

Go up this morning after a rather restless night. I could not stop my mind from racing. I sent off the following email to the waterloo Region's 100 mile blog site.

"I attended the 100 mile diet seminar and have committed to 60%.  This is not because I do not want to try 100% but because I will be away and unable (and possibly unwilling) to maintain 100% while away.  I have 1 suggestion and a couple of comments.  Let me start with the comments.

 

Baking Soda is not a grown product but rather a chemical composition that is produced rather than grown.  As such if you feel the need to find this locally I would think any good laboratory could produce a batch.  I think it should not be consider a food but rather a food additive, sort of like adding red dye to make your cake look nice except this make the food rise.  Baking power follows right behind it as it is a mixture of baking soda and a powdered acid, and has the added benefit of not requiring an acid in the food you are baking to be active.  Again I personally think (although I am not the referee) that this also is a food additive and not a food.

 

  Let's look at yeast now. This is a fungus and can be grown.  I have done a little bit of research on it and think I have a viable solution to the problem.  I will note that I have not seen this done and to this point have not tried it myself.  I did some reading and many people making beer reuse yeast.  My original thought (you can read it on my blog) was to reuse the yeast over and over keeping it in the freezer between uses.  After reading I discovered that there would be a problem with this approach as apparently yeast will mutate over generations.  Most everything I have read states that you can use from 4-20 generations without any problems.

 

  So my solution is get some yeast from where ever you want to get yeast, spend some money and get good quality yeast.  Next fill a measuring cup with enough warm (30 degree C) water to fill and ice cube tray, that was approx 640ml for me for a 16 cube tray, you will likely only need 10 cubes but better safe than sorry.  To this add some honey (I am guessing 5-6 teaspoons would be more than enough) add your yeast put in a bit more than you need again I suspect you will want 5-6 individual packages of yeast and stir.  Proof the yeast for 5 minutes (let it sit); if the water smells yeasty and bubbles are forming on the top it should be good.

 

Mix the yeast water well and pour it into an ice cube tray. Pop it into the freezer for 24 hours. Take the frozen yeast cubes out of the tray and put them into a freezer bag.  Take one of the ice cubes and add it to enough water to fill an ice cube tray add honey as above and allow to proof.  This is strictly a guess on my part but I think that 5 minutes might be good.  Again this should smell yeasty when it is good.  Freeze this mixture back into the ice cube tray.  Again this could be removed from the ice cube tray after it is frozen.  If you do that make sure you do not confuse these cubes with the original cubes.

 

  Now each day you want to make a bread remove 1 cube and melt it in a quarter cup of warm water with a teaspoon on honey.  Let this proof and then add it to your bread dough and proceed as normal.  I think that you will need to reduce the amount of sweeter (honey/sugar/maple syrup) and water (by that 125ml in the yeast water) that the recipe calls for. Once you run out of cubes from the second tray, pull out a cube from the original batch and repeat.

 

Technically this should yield 256 loaves of bread (assuming a 16 cube tray, which mine is) which should be more than enough to last the 100 days.  The only set back I can see to this is that maybe the frozen yeast will die.  I read that it should be good for 3-4 months but that is based on reusing beer yeast not bread yeast.

 

A final note if you are trying this and using a bread maker does not use the delay function, the bread must be made immediately once the yeast is done proofing.

 

M"

I will wait and hopefully get a response.

Got up and headed down o the Kitchener Market. I do not do this every week but most. I really did not buy much as we have already spent quite a lot this week and have the loft box coming on Wednesday for vegetables. I did pick up some sweet potatoes (from Simcoe) and spoke with the poultry dealer that I like to deal with there. He is out of St George and he assured me that all the chicken, turkey and duck that he carries is definitely local. That is a good this as I use a fair amount of whole chickens and turkey breasts along with many other cuts. I thought I scored as I found a seller selling beans. I had seen then all winter and knew they sold beans but it had slipped my mind.

I bought the last of his beans and ask him where they were from. He told me he grow them himself, he was out of Burford. He also told me that the beans cook in about 2 hours, they look like pinto beans. Ten he told me that this was the last of the beans he would have for the year and would have more in the fall. Sure typical situation I find myself in a day late and a dollar short.

I headed from there to the STOP store. I really like my Soft shell taco shells and wanted to find out how much a taco press would cost me. They only have one size and that it 4" and the price was $28.99. I really wanted a 6 or 8" press and thought the price was just too high so I passed.

Thought I would take a quick look at the Guelph Market but by the time I got over there the market was closing. I thought they had longer hours than this but… I will be back to check it out later. There was a vendor there who sold sprouts that I am interested it.

It brings me back to the question I keep posing, when does something become local. If he buys mung bean seeds from where ever and sprouts them, are they a local crop. I guess I will ask these burning questions to the 100 mile blog before too long.

June 19, 2009

Well I set myself a news task for today but so far have failed. With that said it was still a very interesting and informative day. I started by searching the net. I would not go so far as to suggest that it was exhaustive but I seem to have the ability to quickly find almost anything on the net. I struck out so next I tried contacting foodlink. I received a response from them very quickly, love it when that happens. Unfortunately the answer was not what I wanted to hear, "Thanks so much for this. I don't believe any of our participating farms grow legumes to sell dried." They had a couple of suggestions but… What can I say; I like to do things my own way as should be obvious from this blog.

L had a shocking input, at least to me. From out of the blue she says "There are legumes in Aylmer" I asked her where she got that information to which she responds "I read it somewhere." Glad one of us is detail oriented and reads the entire thing instead of just skimming looking for the "important" details, like moi. Well a couple of quick minutes on the keyboard and I have discovered a possible source for dried beans. Unfortunately this means travelling to London or St. Thomas not something I want to do but I do know someone who regularly goes to the London Market. I picked up the phone and made a quick call to see if it would even be possible. After 10 rings I hung up think okay I'll try again later, which I have not yet done. I have not completely abandoned this line but it is on hold for the time being.

We headed out to follow up on something else I wanted to try. Since we are doing a 100 mile diet and the Waterloo Region buy local, buy fresh has been such a help a quick web search reveals that Guelph-Wellington have a similar map and program. I spoke with someone who said that Brant county should be releasing one shortly and there is one (sort of) online for Oxford County. We picked up one of the Guelph maps and sifted through it. It is similar but seems to stress more on restaurants. It looked very good and we thought we would head over to one of the places. It was a farm that looked very interesting. When we arrived I was sort of surprised as it is actually a Jesuit Centre. It looks like a very peaceful and serene. There are hiking trails, gardens, mediation labyrinth etc.

They are running a farm Community Share Agriculture Program and although it said there hours were open Friday afternoon we found a closed sign up. As we were looking a very nice and helpful gentleman came to the door and helped us. He explained that they were a CSA and were currently full at least for the summer, they also run a winter program (2 pickups, one in January and one in February) mostly of root crops that will keep and still had some space in it. He also gave me a very good lead to pursue for dried beans. I regret not getting his name, stupid, stupid, stupid. I would really like to thank him!

We left there and I decided to go to one of the places on the Waterloo Region buy local… map which I thought sounded interesting, Jeese and Verna Gingrich. The store was quite large and featured a lot of home baking and fresh produce. Unfortunately the produce is fairly limited at this time of the year, almost nothing is out yet. They still had some onions and shallots from last year I imaging that they would be great fresh, I'm sure we will not have to wait much longer. We did pick up some radishes and honey. We already have Maple syrup at home so I think we should now be good for sugar substitutes for now. I really do need to check and find the correct amounts of honey needed to replace sugar. Will post it once I find it should be easy.

We still had a little time to kill so again stupidly we drove to Ayr. We went to Oakridge Acres. This place was recommended to me by someone who shops there regularly. Nice big store with lots of space. The variety of meat and poultry was surprisingly large. We spent a lot more than we were intending but I got a few Bison burgers, extremely lean meat, a few other assorted cuts and the makings for some broth. This is something I am likely to miss; I use a lot of broth but guess that I will have to make my own for the duration of this challenge. This might be a challenge as it is not something I have done well within the past and I have tried.

Since the Faul Farms was right around the corner we could not resist going there. The store in embedded in a lovely older farm house. The owner met us in the store and was extremely helpful and very pleasant. I chatted with her, well as chatty as I get, despite what you might think from this Blog I really am shy and don't mix well with people I don't know. L browsed and picked up a few more things.

I started making broth. I had the BBQ on and what better spot to brown the bone etc. After supper I threw the bones into some water to boil and we headed over to Chapters/Starbucks, our Friday night ritual. I am not sure what to do about this. Both of us love browsing though the books and then we meet some people for pleasant conversation over, well a coffee for me and whatever for L who does not drink coffee. I cannot think of a thing that Starbucks offers that could even be construed as local (not even for my vivid imagination).

After that we headed home and … well I can't imagine how I have come this far without mentioning Tali. Tali (Taliasin) is our soft-coated wheaten terrier. He has travelled with us to all of the locations so far and was greatly disappointed today as he did not get a walk. He is a fairly typical terrier and has more than a bit of energy to spare (read in he needs to burn it off). I took him for a walk and during the walk had one of my eureka moments. Let me digress, yet again. A while back I was surfing the web and decided that could make my own yogurt. Not only could I but I discovered that it was easy and with a few modifications from the original recipe was quite quick. Anyway in the process of making yogurt it is important to separate some of the yogurt and put it aside for the next batch. Yogurt is made using a live bacterium. This is where I tie it back in.

Yeast is also a living organism (a fungus) which we grow. I have not tried to tackle the idea of where to get yeast yet although I have been keeping my eye on the Waterloo Regions 100 mile blog who I know are also trying to tackle this problem. Well if you start with a yeast and add water and sugar (honey) to it you should be able to keep it alive and growing for some time. So like my yogurt each time you use the yeast you put some aside to be used next time you need it. Now I keep my yogurt culture in the fridge and that works for yogurt I think that the yeast would need to be frozen to make it go dormant in between uses. I think that this actually is the way that monster dough used to work in the past. I will have to do a bit of research but my hunch is that this has to work. There is only one question left for those trying to maintain 100% and that would be when does something become local.

My yogurt is many generations from the original store bought yogurt that I started with. At some point the yeast in the freezer also local. It brings to mind the question of whether we need to judge if something is local based on not just that it was grown locally but also where this seeds came from!

Speaking of which some research done,

To use honey in place of sugar, use 7/8 cup for every cup of sugar, and reduce the liquid in the recipe by 3 tablespoons.

To use maple syrup in place of sugar in cooking, use 3/4 cup for every 1 cup of sugar.

To use maple syrup in place of a cup of sugar in baking, use 3/4 cup, but decrease the total amount of liquid in the recipe by about 3 tablespoons for each cup of syrup you use.

Interesting tidbit I discovered and thought I would pass along granulated sugar has 46 calories per tablespoon, brown sugar has 50, maple syrup has 53, and honey tops them all with 64.

Thanks to http://www.ochef.com/91.htm where I found this information.