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Bob's Notes: News and Views
From Northwest 21st Street
January 2004
I don't know about y'all but our household has been Season's Eating our way through December and now into January. We are not full yet and figure that we will just continue to eat. For Christmas dinner, we had a ham from PDH Farms, rolls made with PDH wheat, pork dressing made with Horn's corn, pies made with butternut squash from Worley's Farm (which we bought in November on the first order and saved for the holiday) - as was true for Thanksgiving, these squash pies tasted just like pumpkin pies.
We also made a really elegant gravy from a box of Lost Creek Mushroom Farm's shitaake tortilla soup mix. We use the "fiery" of course 'cause that's how we like everything. Anyway, to make a gravy I simply reconstituted the soup mix with some water and drippings from the cooked ham. Then I made a roux and browned it well, adding the reconstituted soup into the roux and cooked it until it thickened. This made a lot of gravy, one of the small boxes of the soup mix could be divided to produce 2 or 3 "episodes" of gravy for 3 or 4 people. We used the gravy on mashed potatoes and also with our 2/3rds Oklahoma Food green bean casserole. This time we had our homemade mushroom gravy AND homemade beer-battered onion rings, and only had agribidness green beans. Next year of course we plan to have our own home preserved green beans so the traditional green bean casserole will be 100% locally grown.
Our Oklahoma Food Cooperative is moving right along. We had 36 orders in November, totaling $3220. In December we had 41 orders totalling $4450. We've mde substantial progress on developing our procedures and creating the necessary software to process our orders and deliveries. Thus far we have created a customer and producer member database, a database of products, prices, and details, mailing lists for producers and customers, and an invoicing system that allow us to enter only the product ID number and quantity and both the customer and producer invoices are generated. Emma of Red Earth Design is presently working on an online customer order system; we are testing it this month and it will be available for folks ordering in February. When we are finished with this project, we will have created a fully integrated online software management system for an order delivery food cooperative.
We've also made substantial progress in developing the procedures and improving the efficiency of our Delivery Day and general administrative operations. Mistakes and errors continue to be low which is helpful, because of course every error is a time burner as it then needs to be corrected. John Herndon is our new Membership Secretary, and Walter Kelley is our new Cooperative Secretary, and this helps divide the work a little better. Jonalu Johnstone as treasurer has her hands full keeping track of the finances, so adding more help with membership and general record keeping is essential.
Looking for fresh veggies this month? Kygar Road Greenhouses and Price Family Produce and Crestview Farms all have fresh, Oklahoma grown produce this month. Both Kygar and Price will have vine ripened tomatoes (you can specify how ripe you want 'em). I saw some of Kygar's last month and they were quite beautiful, I'm sure Donna's produce will match it. Donna also has long European style cucumbers this month and yellow crooknecked squash. She's reporting that she's used no pesticides or herbicides this season. Kygar's salsa kit is really nice and a clever product. Besides the spices and tomatoes you need, he also includes a nice little gee whiz utensil to take the stem/core part of the tomato right off. Much easier to use than a knife.
Crestview added a couple of products this month, including chervil and cilantro. Alas, nobody has any turnips left. Fortunately I still have a few in my garden. The greens are pretty scraggly, although I did manage a pot of mixed greens on Christmas from our garden, and of course our black eyed peas on New Year's Day were saved from our fall garden.
We are happy to welcome Max and Carol Grier of Udder Farms who make the Cream of the Crop laundry powder on their farm, 85% of its ingredients are Oklahoma farm products. I have used their detergent and vouch for its effectiveness. Smells nice too.'
If you want to get a head start on your summer tomatoes, Jim Branum is taking deposits for heirloom tomato plants.
To accommodate this kind of transaction, and also to make it easier to order items with a lead time longer than one week, or to plan your purchases in advance, you can order for more than one order date with this month's order. Upcoming Delivery Days are January 22, February 19, March 18, April 22, and May 20, with the Order Deadline Day being one week in advance of each of those dates.
Both Kim Barker/Walnut Creek and Kastl's Quality Beef are out of ground beef this month, but promise they'll have more next month. In the meantime, maybe this is the month for you to try ground venison, or ground buffalo, or ground lamb, all of which are available from our other producers, and of course Natural Farms has ground beef. Kim also has these nice bacon wrapped ground lamb filets, which cook on top of the stove or on a grill.
The elves at the Kathy Carter White residence have gone on vacation until next September, so the nice calligraphy "Letters from Santa" are on hiatus for a while. In their place, she is offering a "funky hand dyed oversized potholder", each one unique.. OK, I haven't seen her potholders, but I have seen her quilts, and they are works of art that the Cherokee Nation hangs on the walls of its headquarters offices, so trust her artistry at least until we get over being photographically challenged.
Both Swinging Gate Farm and Honeysuckle Hollow have new scents and products this month, check them out. I am a really low maintenance kind of guy but these hand crafted soaps are great. They are longer lasting than store bought soaps, smell much better, leave a pleasant scent on your skin, and get you very clean without that annoying soap scum that commercial soaps so often leave behind. I've started washing my hair and beard with it too (I obviously have more beard than hair) and thus have completed another sustainability and local economy circle. Now I don't buy bath products at the supermarket any more. I also got a Critter Bar from the Rowdy Stickhorse but it's been too cold to bathe the dog, and on the few warm days I was either gone or just plain lazy so I can't give a personal report on it yet. We continue to invent new ways to use Van's Pig Stand's Ranch Dressing (latest innovation: a couple of dabs of Ranch Dressing on a cracker with one dab of Styxx's Hell's Kitchen Bodacious Barbecue Sauce. That's good for what ails you.)
BL Waybackers has had communications and delivery problems for both the November and December orders, but we think we've gotten those resolved now and if you order from them in January you'll get your products. I hope to have a personal report on it next time, being as how I seem to be collecting barbecue sauces.
My family in Denver was really happy with the Oklahoma Food gift boxes I sent to them. They especially liked Country Sunshine's Wild Sand Plum Jelly and agreed it was very close to our "Memo's" jelly.
We really liked Natural Farm's Italian sausage, unlike the agribidness sausages sold in supermarkets, it was not so greasy as to be almost sickening, but rather had great taste and texture and no greasy after taste. (We need a hot link producer for this co-op!)
Mark your calendars right now for Oklahoma Food Banquet II: the Mardis Gras. This will be Tuesday, February 10th, at Mayflower Congregational Church on Northwest Expressway in Oklahoma City. We lost a bit of money on the last banquet so we have to increase the price to $5 for members and $10 for non-members, but that's still a good deal. The menu will be developed over the next couple of weeks, but if you are coming, please order your tickets EARLY. It is hard to plan without knowing how many will be present, and so we need your ticket order as quickly as possible. You can order tickets with your regular January order. Or simply send us a written or emailed reservation and pay at the door. Kids 12 and under eat free of course.
OH YES, I almost forgot, and this is important. We have been sort of hyphen-challenged and numerous experts in English grammar have pointed out to us that "coop" by itself is a place where chickens roost and the short form of cooperative really should be "CO-OP", with a hyphen. So we will gradually track down all our variations on the word "co-op" and get them regularized. In the meantime, remember that we keep no chickens here at the COOP, oops I mean CO-OP. If you want chickens, go to Charles Horne's Organic Farm or Mark Parman's Redbird Ranch.
The first Saturday of January Kim Barker and I spoke to the annual meeting of the Arkansas Farm Community Alliance at Mt. Petit Jean. They would like to start a cooperative similar to ours and started collecting names for an online directory at the meeting. After our presentation, which lasted an hour, there were quite a few questions and then I spent another hour talking with one of their organizers. They had an all Arkansas lunch which featured some very tasty lamb dishes, also a cheese cake "to die for" made with cream cheese from a local dairy. There was a pretty tasty chicken salad too, but they wouldn't fess up to their recipe, oh well, a trade secret is a trade secret I guess. I also bought a nice scented candle (nag champa scent) made by a farm family from soybeans. We don't have any candle makers, and we need candles for sale, so if you know of anybody making candles, put them in touch with us. We do have a candlestick maker, however (that would be Don McGehee of PDH Farms).
So we are barely getting started ourselves and already our neighbors are copying our good example. It never hurts to do the right thing, especially when the right thing tastes so good and is so healthy and nutritious for you and your family. Thanks everybody for your patronage, I hope I haven't forgotten anything important, if I did, I'll talk about it next time I'm sure.
Y'all all be blest in your comings and goings this month. Stay warm! Thank you for your patronage.
Robert Waldrop, Oklahoma Food Cooperative
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