Has your cooking changed much since the move?
In some ways. It was a good thing that I already had some experience with growing, harvesting, preserving, and butchering, because those things are obviously much more important out here where our access to high-quality food is greatly hampered by distance. I mean, we can buy food, obviously, but it's not always what I might want or the quality I wish to have.
As for the differences in actual ingredients . . .
Is it more because of what you have access to, or what you don't have access to?
Both. I have always allowed my environment to dictate what's in my kitchen. So in New Mexico, it was inevitable that I would end up using green chiles in my cooking, which is an ingredient I had never in my life cooked with.
Likewise, I'm sure I would never have started making my own tortillas if I weren't living somewhere with ten varieties of masa at the grocery store.
Also, although we have always made an effort to buy cows wherever we have lived, it's so effortless to do here in cattle country, we have and eat more beef.
Cows are so numerous here, they're often the only impediment in the road when we're on the school bus.
What I do not have access to here that I used to rely on a lot more are quality dairy products and Italian sausage.
Upstate New York is a paradise of dairy. It's easy to find unpasturized heavy cream and real aged cheddar cheese. It is not easy to find those things here. It is, in fact, impossible to get real cream without milking your own cow.
Italian sausage is something I always had on hand in New York for a quick meal. Here, it's not an option. I don't like spicy sausage, and that's the dominant kind of sausage here. Also, it's not really high-quality sausage. It tends to be too much fat, gristle, and salt.
Oh, and apples. There are some local apples, but they tend to be kind of dry and tart. Not good for applesauce or baking, so I don't make the same quantities of applesauce I used to make, which the children miss.
If you can buy (or butcher) ground pork, you can make your own italian sausage (bulk) pretty easily.
ReplyDeleteJody: Oh, you'd better believe A. has Plans for Pigs. I am . . . not so enthused. It's the link sausage I miss, and stuffing sausage casings is pretty high on the list of kitchen tasks I wish to avoid.
ReplyDeleteIt will be interesting to see if the apples this year, when it has been rainy, will be juicier. And I think you should start advocating for a really well-equipped machine to mix your bread and stuff your sausages. No, I am not suggesting that you do it; you are raising little cooks that seem appropriately low on the squeamishness scale.
ReplyDeleteAt first I thought, "How can you be in cattle country but not have dairy?" But then I realized beef cattle and dairy cattle are different breeds. And dairy cows aren't going to keep up with a herd on the move, they need to be milked every day. Never thought about that before.
ReplyDeleteSo is A planning to add swine to your flock, or do you have a neighbor raising them?
Then too, Drew, will there be a dairy cow in the future?
ReplyDeleteDrew: No one raises them here. That would definitely be on us.
ReplyDeleteG.P.: I continue to resist daily milking and cheese making. Don't think we haven't talked it about it multiple times, though.