Will Work For Local Food

Are you the type of shopper who goes to the store on a mission? List in hand, meals planned out, rarely straying from the preappointed items and skipping whole aisles because you don't really need anything in them? Or maybe you're the type who has a few "must gets" and then kind of pokes around and might try something new or get inspired to create a meal around something that happens to be on sale? Or maybe you are like my mom who was notorious for making multiple trips to the store each week because she was forever buying cream cheese and no bagels or stocking up on more canned potatoes than any human should ever have to even look at, but forgetting to buy milk. I can't blame her though, she was married to a man for nearly forty years that ate a very well balanced diet from his own personal four food groups - coffee, Coke, mayo and salt. Seriously.
I would say that I am definitely a list girl, but if I see a sale on something I will definitely jump at the chance to stock up and occasionally that leads me to change my meal plan. The thing about Farmers Markets, is that they can really throw someone like me for a loop because they are very Forest Gumpy Chocolates. You never know whatcha gonna get. Last month's market was a prime example of this. I went in vowing to strike out to get more shopping done than the previous month, but my plan was thwarted by the very evil placement of the Sunflour Baking booth directly across from mine. I was starring at all their insane goodies while thumbing the predesignated spending cash in my pocket. Finally, I could fight it no longer and hopped down from my cozy corner booth and attacked a Cinnamon Beast. Selfish, but oh so worth it.
I was definitely interested in checking out the Fleur de Sel table and perused it with great interest. I am definitely a salt snob. I am also my father's daughter and, therefore, salt goes on and in everything except maybe pudding. Although if it was pistachio....hmmm. I have come to know and love Kosher salt. Oi! So good. But the price was a little steep and if I came home and said I spent the whole lot on a jar of salt I think David would have known that I have finally lost it and revoked my market privileges.

So what to get that would wow the whole fam? I was hoping for some more veggies, but I think I started shopping too late and missed out. I grabbed three heads of garlic, another ingredient which I am very high and mighty about and then continued on to the Yankee Fisherman's Cooperative table where I nearly fainted when I saw the prices. Ten pound bags of shrimp for $16.99? Should I tell these poor kids that they messed up their sign and are about to get robbed? My curiosity peeked, I approached their set up and asked if that was truly the price? Shocker! Yes! The yard saley, cheapskate in me asked "So after they are cleaned, about how much shrimp meat is that?" Half, was the answer. So we are looking at $3.39 per pound of edible shrimp. Not just edible, but local. Not the kind that looks really good in the seafood case, but makes you feel queasy when you think about the "Farm Raised" conditions they came from in Thailand.
So, much to the delight of the super helpful young guys from YFC, I plunked down the cash for the big motha bag and headed back to my table with my whole shrimp. That's right, whole. Shrimp have heads. They have eyes. They are not born on a plastic tray next to a slice of lemon and a tub of cocktail sauce. They are actually sea creatures and we were now responsible for preparing them into something delish. I had picked the brains of the Fishermen for the best way to peel them and also grabbed a handy little leaflet they had at their table. So here is where we started:

This is a small plate. They are small. This is New Hampshire, not the Gulf of Mexico. When you buy something local that you are used to getting from God Knows Where In The World, you need to change your ideas about what it should look, feel and taste like. The guys at the market had told me that these babies would be super sweet and wouldn't need cocktail sauce or anything and they were right. Our first batch, we cooked cocktail style and they were small, but super sweet and so tender you barely had to chew. We did try them with cocktail sauce, but they so did not need it and it actually overwhelmed their delicate flavor. 

Back to the prep. The first step was to pull the heads off and for this job, I called in my best recruits.

You are not delusional, you are seeing two little girls greatly enjoying ripping the heads off these little animals. (Big bro was out shoveling). I was a bit daunted by the sheer volume of shrimp to process, but many, albeit, little hands make light work and we blew threw them. Can I just say how much I love that my kids were not the least bit grossed out by this task? They loved checking to see which ones had eggs on them and making sure that no one was messing up the sorting. "No Caroline, you are mixing up the heads with the bodies. We aren't going to eat the heads. Mom, are we gonna eat the eyeballs, too? Can we please eat the eyeballs?"

                                         

We did not eat the heads, but we did separate them and put them aside to be combined with the shells to make seafood stock. The bodies, still with their shells and tails, went into a big bowl of water to soak. The soaking helps to loosen the shrimp from their shells. The shelling was definitely the most tedious part and was a bit beyond the capabilities of my trusty crew. So after the shrimp had soaked for about an hour or so, I spent another hour standing at the sink, shelling them. That might sound  like a nightmare, but it was actually very relaxing and gave me time to ponder the meaning behind this activity.

Food. In modern times, I feel like it has come to be something that we have elevated and yet neglected at the same time. It's almost as if food has become a novelty. In an age when we can get anything we want during any season and very much "on demand", we have forgotten that food is a need, not a want. We must have it to survive, yet the time most people devote to acquiring and preparing it has fallen in line somewhere between dropping clothes off at the dry cleaners and posting your status on Facebook. It is completely taken for granted that it will always be there.

                                        

In my youth, I used to participate in summer programs at Sturbridge Village, a living history museum in Massachusetts and one of my favorite places in the world. It depicts life in a rural New England town circa 1830. When I look back on my experiences there, I realize that the raising, harvesting, preserving and preparing of food was at the very core of everyday life then. Their routines and diets were dictated completely by the season. A housewife in 1830 didn't look at the clock, realize there is 30 minutes left until dinner time and suddenly whip up some grand meal. You don't kill a hog at 4pm and have pork chops at 5pm. If you had a hankering for corn bread in January, you would have had to have planted corn the previous spring, tended and harvested it in the summer and ground it in the fall. What you were having to eat today was predetermined months and sometimes years before. Communities came together to ensure that the necessary work was done that would provide for the survival of all. Food was not a TV network or a competition. It was a building block of life and a cherished and time honored tradition. I would highly recommend visiting Sturbridge if you have the opportunity. Open year round, each season offers a distint look into the daily live of 19th century Americans. If you are too far away or just want to check out a great and simple read, I highly recommend "The Ox Cart Man", the Caldecott Award winning children's book by Donald Hall. This is truly a depiction of how early American life moved with the seasons.

So standing at my sink with it's hot water on demand in 2010, I was left savoring the experience of having my hands in as much of the process of bringing this meal to my family as possible. I don't think I'll become a shrimping boat captain any time soon so we'll leave that part to the professionals. (How many Forest Gump references can one fit into a blog post?) I liked getting my hands dirty and then utilizing all the fruits of my labor. Once I was done shelling, I threw the heads and shells into a giant pot with some water, onions, celery and herbs and simmered it until I had beautiful smelling stock that filled the house. I strained and skimmed it and put two big containers into the freezer for future use. The rest I put aside for shrimp soup. I surveyed the treasures left once I had finished.

                               

Those shrimp are raw and, yes, they are pink. Not grey and slimy. From this bounty I made my gigantic batch of shrimp soup, some pasta with sauteed shrimp and a bit of shrimp salad for sandwiches. Plus, the small amount we had sampled plain the night before. All told, I would say we got three dinners and four lunches for five people out of our investment, plus I gave the last of the soup to my mom and she had it for a dinner.And don't forget my stock awaiting use. For the $16.99 in cash I laid out, plus about 2-3 hours worth of work, I consider this a great investment for our stomachs, for our wallets, for the earth and, most certainly, for my soul.