The urban homesteaders of Clarion have developed a tradition over the years of coming together at the turning of the seasons for a big pot-luck feast in which everyone cooks something using ingredients that they've produced themselves (or bartered with other members of the group, since everyone has certain specialties that others don't). Not only is it a lot of fun and a promise of fantastic food, but it also gives us all the chance to swap recipes and get ideas for growing/production from each other (above and beyond the usual level of this at our regular gatherings... really it's just a great excuse for a party).
For my dish, I'm inflicting my legendary mushroom pesto on everyone. Being able to reproduce my pesto mixture with entirely homegrown ingredients took about a year of planning and plotting, so this will be the first time it's made it's way to the table at our quarterly gatherings. I do admit that I had to cheat at one ingredient: the olive oil. After doing the research, I concluded that not only did the Eastern US climate simply not accommodate olive trees, but also that the number required to make even a small portion of oil made it not worth it. In the end, with the group concluding that this was not against the rule since I was at least keeping up the spirit of the task, I've taken to ordering olive oil from an urban homesteader in California. Apart from this, everything else, the mushrooms, feta cheese (yes, I like cooking fusion... sorry Italian food purists), tomatoes, basil, garlic, onions, and pine nuts (foraged, not cultivated) were all from my own labours. I admit I was nervous about pasta-making the first few times, but by now Adrienne and I have really got the hang of it.
Apart from the food, my other contribution is a regular and much-lauded part of all of our gatherings: the booze.
I first experimented with brewing when still living in York. Unfortunately space made doing it regularly impractical, so as soon as we got the house in Clarion I immediately claimed a corner of the basement as my brewery. I trade with one of the other homesteaders for my grains in exchange for a share of the finished beer. The same goes for the honey for our mead (Adrienne's allergic to bees, so a hive was a resounding no). As for my wine, a few jury-rigged rotary clothes lines stuck into the ground next to one another turned into a perfectly serviceable grape arbor for both red and white grapes. Particularly early frosts even allow me to do one last harvest and make up a batch of ice wine (aged just enough to be ready for Spring Feast).
I cannot tell you how satisfying it is sitting down to a meal with a bunch of friends knowing that you're all sharing and enjoying the fruits of each other's labours.
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