For the Cricket Bread project, the question “why?” could be a very common one, but I really have not had to answer it. No one has asked me, and I find that very interesting. To answer the question though, my “why” seems to change from day to day. While I’m not inclined to be evasive, I find that the reasons behind all this local eating are stacked and convoluted – at least for me.

In many ways this project has nothing to do with the actual ingesting of food or finding out where that food comes from. Sure, these two things are integral to what Cricket Bread is about, but is there a more primary reason for the project? I could say food miles or reducing energy consumption or examining carbon footprints, but many of these equations don’t come out well when applied to local food. It can be argued that it is more energy efficient to ship large volumes of produce by train than it is to drive yourself to the farmers market and back. While this might be something for discussion in the wider food distribution debate, it isn’t necessarily what I am trying to get at.

Is this project about supporting a local economy that just happens to include a food component? I could answer yes every time I hand a farmer some cash at the Farmers Market or buy local honey at the co-op or visit a farm stand. But then again, we could say this is all about nutrition, taste and slow food preparation.

Yet another possible “why” is to challenge myself to learn things that are very new to me. I made no pretension that this project would be easy for me or easily replicable. Things like fermentation, foraging and simply reaching out to growers and producers that I haven’t spoken to before are making me stretch and grow as a cook, researcher and community member.

As for the diet itself, for the most part the first month and a half has been relatively painless. Most things are pretty easy when food is in abundance. We are in the early part of the summer and produce is available in quantity and variety. The Stash has given me ample time to adjust to the new diet paradigm, and I am having fun in the process. However, it is not winter and I am not relying on stored food and very basic meals to get me by. Winter will be a very different time for this project, a time that will require a bit more scavenging and certainly more creativity with fewer ingredients.

Maybe, at the heart of it all, I am asking questions about how we choose to live our lives and what we hope to get from all that is going on in those lives. If all we want is to work eight hours a day, battle traffic to and from, eat a microwave meal and watch television until bedtime, then I think the majority of us have it covered. But if that lifestyle is not satisfying, if it is leading to emotional problems, relationships disintegrating and dissatisfaction with the normal life, why cling to it? Why not challenge yourself to get out of the rut, take yourself by the shoulders, shake vigorously, and say, “What am I doing this for?” If there is no good reason, no justification for continuing, no answer that makes the least bit of sense, then move on.

So, at the end of all that, the answer to “why” is simply that the other way of doing things just wasn’t working out for me. I could not think of a good reason to continue down the path of a non-local diet, borrowing the seasons from distant places in order to serve up a nice looking dinner plate. That way of eating had to end for me, and I hope, on some level, it can end for you as well.

Tea is out of my 100 mile range, as is coffee and nearly every other caffeinated beverage known to exist. Before starting this experiment I drank a lot of coffee. I loved coffee; the taste, the smell, the stimulation. I drank it black, nothing to interfere with its various flavors of bitter, smoky or sweet depending on its area of origin and growing conditions.

I snuck coffee once after starting off this project, once when I helped Noel and Danielle at the Farmers Market. I didn’t regret it, but it prolonged the caffeine withdrawal symptoms for another set of days.

These days, my stimulating drink of choice is a “tea” made from a handful of spearmint leaves from my front garden, a splash of honey (7 miles) and a frosty half-pint mason jar. However, I have recently found out that yaupon holly (Ilex vomitoria) contains caffeine and grows in our area. It is the only native North American plant known to contain the stimulant. Noel just happened to have a jar of the leaves that he foraged and roasted. The jar is now in my possession, but I have yet to try the tea. For now, try this mint and honey iced tea:

1 – Pick a handful of mint. Mix it up if you have several varieties. I have spearmint and orange mint at the house, wild mint at the park down the street and peppermint at the co-op garden.

2 – Boil a cup or two of water.

3 – Remove from heat. Add most of the (washed) mint leaves and stems. Cover and let stand for 5 to 10 minutes.

4 – Pour the liquid into a glass jar. Add remaining mint leaves.

5 – Place the open jar in the freezer until ice starts to form at the opening.

6 – Add a bit of honey or enjoy the simple mint flavor on its own.

Mint and honey are both said to be great for digestion. Mint is also great for a refreshing jolt, and this drink is especially great on a hot day.

For the quarts of peach halves -

1 – You can use a “syrup” to can whole or half fruits or you can simply use water. Sugar has no preserving qualities and is used mainly for taste. I decided to use a very light honey syrup. To 5 cups of water add 1 ½ cups of honey. Heat to simmering.

2 – Wash peaches while you boil a bit of water in a sauce pan, enough water to cover a half peach. Reduce water to a simmer after it boils.

3 – Cut peaches in half, remove pit and any pit pieces. Dunk the peach halves in the hot water for a few seconds. Skins will come right off after they cool for a few more seconds.

4 – Place the peach halves in the honey water mixture. Simmer for a few minutes.

5 – Hopefully you have started your canner water to boil and washed your jars. If you haven’t, now is the time. Simmer the jar lids and rings, then cover and set aside. Scald the quart jars in the boiling canner water.

6 – Taking the peaches right out of the simmering syrup, pack the halves in the quart jars as tightly as possible.

7 – Using a ladle or large spoon, fill the jar with the honey syrup to ½” of the jar top.

8 – Using a plastic spoon handle or chopstick, try to remove as many air bubbles as possible from the jar. Shove the utensil down the sides of the jar to remove the bubbles.

9 – Remove a ring and lid from the hot water and tighten on the jar.

10 – Place in the boiling water canner and process for 25 minutes, 20 minutes for pints.

11 – Remove the jars and let cool overnight. In the morning, check the seals, remove the rings, label and store in a cool dark place.

12 – Use the excess honey syrup to make peach honey vinegar.

For the peach sauce -

1 – Repeat steps 2 and 3 above. Also, get your canner water ready and wash up a bunch of pint and half pint jars. Simmer the lids and rings then cover and set aside.

2 – Add the peach halves to a large stock pot. Smash with a potato masher of whatever you have in order to get the peaches into small chunks. Heat to simmering.

3 – Add honey and cinnamon (if you have it) to taste. Neither of these things is necessary; they are merely for taste when the jars are opened for use.

4 – Heat the mixture to boiling, being careful not to burn it.

5 – Scald the jars then fill to ¼” of the jar top with the peach mixture.

6 – Remove jars and lids from the hot water and tighten on the jars.

7 – Process for 15 minutes in the boiling water canner.

8 – Remove the jars and let cool overnight. In the morning, check the seals, remove the rings, label and store in a cool dark place.

I use fruit sauces instead of jams for a few reasons. First, they don’t take as long to make. Cooking a peach jam without pectin would take several hours. Second, I use the sauces with my rice breakfasts for a little something in addition to the honey.

Returning from the trip to Whiteville, I saw a road side stand with huge signs for peaches. I decided to go back today and get a bushel, which is about 50 pounds. The stand also had tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, green tomatoes, snap beans, and a shelf of preserves and honey setup in the bed of truck.

I had pulled up when no one else was around, but soon the place was covered with older folks, business men in suits, county maintenance workers and a variety of others. Some were looking for deals, others a quick lunch.

The man was excited to see me and everyone else, a trait that I’m sure is part sales and part real enthusiasm about selling peaches and such. I told him I was only interested in peaches, lots of peaches. He told me the small box was $4 (for about 2 pounds) and the large basket was $6 (for about 5 pounds). I told him what I wanted; he thought about it, and then went to the truck for a big crate full of massive peaches. He threw in a “large basket” off the display table plus a couple strays. I called it close enough to a bushel, and he asked for $36.

It is times like this when I would usually insist on paying more money, mainly because I know about margins and such and what it actually costs to grow a peach around here. I felt this especially when other folks at the table were whispering about how $6 was far too much for a little basket of peaches. That basket held a lot of nutrition for $6, but I wasn’t about to argue the point to a bunch of suits and working class folks on their lunch break.

Back to the old argument about how produce is so expensive in, well, the eyes of a majority of people, yet crappy processed food is consumed all day and night for equivalent prices and minimal nutrition. Right now at the co-op you can get a one pound container of ripe red organic strawberries from California for $2.99. At Harris-Teeter you can get a two pound container of white and sort-of red conventional berries, no doubt still coated in methyl bromide, from Chile for the same price. With the later you get twice as many berries, of sub-par quality, from three times as many miles away, for half the price.

Once the trimming is done, a person might get a pound of berries with a quarter of the flavor, yet the organic berries are way still too expensive for most folks. Those folks will make very audible comments about the prices while loading up their carts with sugar sugar sugar, salt salt salt, processed processed processed, blah blah blah. This makes me crazy, especially the part about how far those berries have traveled, and how they are still cheaper than the California berries. This equation is broken, and folks don’t even care what the inputs are. What costs have been passed on into other forms of payment and recovery? We’ll get into that some other time, but for now we’ll get back to the local peaches…

There is nothing like canning when the heat index is 105 degrees. Unfortunately, many of the rules of fresh produce dictate that the preserving happens when the fruit or vegetable is coming out of the fields or trees in summer. When the peaches came home it was time to get to work.

First, the quarts of peach halves. Second, the pints and half pints of peach sauce. Both processes are fairly easy if only time consuming and hot. Instructions coming in the next part…