The Butter Bitch and I celebrated Bastille Day in as close to the French fashion as one can find in Seattle for a reasonable price: Savory crepes and balloon animals at a local crêperie, complete with Lillet and a corny “French Chef” balloonist who was standing in for the regular magician. We considered going to an upscale bistro in Fremont, but we decided that Bouchee’s offerings were closer to the ideal of the sans culottes, if only by a little. (The monkey is clutching a banana, in case you are wondering, and is resting in the middle of a balloon heart.) The following day, the Butter Bitch worked a full day on what would have been the beginning of her weekend while I spent several hours working in the yard and sanding bookshelves. Both of us were tired, and we decided to eat dinner out again rather than heat our kitchen. The outings were a little hard on our pocketbooks, but Saturday’s dinner featured lavender-infused vodka and basil strawberry margaritas made with local ingredients.

I knew that we had a lot of produce left over from our CSA box, but I had no idea the task that lay before us until I inspected the refrigerator on Sunday morning. With two days until our next CSA box arrived, we had three heads of lettuce, a bundle of fennel bulbs, two types of peas, a small bundle of green onions, enough carrots to feed all the wild rabbits in Woodland Park, and a bunch of chard bigger than both our heads. I would swear that we had eaten more of our vegetables than the above list would show–some of the peas and most of the carrots had been carried over from our July 4th CSA box. Looking at the vegetables, it was easy to think that our meals for the next few days would consist of nothing but salad this and salad that.

We had a few other things in our fridge and cupboard, so I set about cooking. The first challenge would be to use the giant chard. Salad is easy to make and eat, especially if you have carrots and peas and a little salad dressing. Chard, at least to my palate, poses a challenge. Chard is earthy and a little bitter and, like organ meats, it needs some assistance to make it enjoyable. Fat and sugar have long been known to improve foods, and we happened to have eggs and cheese aplenty. (As an aside: Rabbit or chicken livers can be seared in a Brandy flambé, cooked in butter, sliced thinly and served on crostinis smeared with chevre.)

For some reason, I had in my mind to make a frittata, which I’ve never made before. I’ve had spinach frittatas, and spinach is similar enough to chard (earthy, though not as bitter) that a chard frittata would not be a stretch of the imagination.

Frittata

Frittatas originated in Italy and use a lot of eggs and parmesan, and are filled with a vegetable of some kind. I wanted to include ham, thinking that the salty sweetness would improve the frittata, but we didn’t have ham and both the Butter Bitch and I wanted to eat first and venture forth later.

I’d bought the pine nuts and parmesan to make pesto with the basil from our CSA box. Pesto is pretty easy to make: Chop one bunch of basil, add 1/4 cup of pine nuts, 1/2 of grated parmesan, and 1/4 cup of olive oil. Blend the mixture in a food processor or with a mortar and pestle. I still had pine nuts and parmesan left, so the first thing I did was toast the few pine nuts, about half a cup.

I trimmed and diced the green onions and cooked those in olive oil with a sliced fennel bulb. The fennel’s flavor was lost amid the sautéing and later cooking, but it was worth experimenting. I chopped the chard stems and leaves and cooked them with a quarter cup of water under low heat until the chard leaves had wilted and the stems had softened. The mixture was set to drain in a colander over a bowl. I didn’t want the chard liquid making the frittata soggy, but the liquid might come in handy for soup stock or as the base for a reduction sauce.

I varied from the original recipe in The Joy of Cooking by quite a bit, starting with the number of eggs used. I beat 8 eggs (they seemed small) with some salt and pepper. In a different bowl, I mixed a cup of grated parmesan and a few slices of uncooked fennel. We happened to have a round of goat cheese that had escaped consumption for two weeks, so I cut away the wax coating and cut the chevre into pieces about the size of quarters. The chevre chunks would result in salty fat surprises throughout the resulting frittata. I mixed the cheeses and the vegetables into the eggs. The recipe called for two tablespoons of oil or butter, and that seemed about right. I put two tablespoons of butter in a large skillet and, once the butter had melted, I poured the egg mixture into the skillet.

The egg mixture set after about three minutes, and I confirmed this by pulling back the edges of the mixture with a spatula. I let the mixture cook two minutes more because there was so much and it was so thick. That gave the broiler plenty of time to ignite and warm the oven, and I put the skillet directly under the flames. The original recipe said to leave the frittata under the broiler for 30 to 60 seconds, but perhaps they meant that recipe for an electric broiler. The extra eggs and cheese certainly had something to do with the frittata’s visible lack of solidity. I put the frittata back under the boiler for two more minutes and, upon retrieving in for a second time, poked at the surface with the spatula.

“Are frittatas supposed to be completely solid?” I asked the Butter Bitch.

“It’s okay if they aren’t completely firm, but they shouldn’t be liquid. You can let it sit for a few minutes to finish cooking.” I looked at the liquid seeping through the break I made with the spatula and put the skillet back under the broiler.

The original recipe made four servings, but I effectively doubled the size of the ingredients. The extra cooking time makes some sense, but I’m beginning to wonder if our oven is “cold.” The frittata turns out fine after a few extra minutes, and we sit down to a delicious repast. The meal would be better with a bit of ham, but the chevre provides a nice substitute and a pleasant surprise each time we bite down on one of the gooey chevre pockets. The frittata isn’t finished until after noon, and we are hungry enough to eat half.

Fennel salad and Misty Isle hamburger

For dinner, I don’t make a large dent in our produce supplies, but it’s a start. We have a tomato that will go bad soon, so I slice the tomato and one of the fennel bulbs for a simple salad. The dressing is olive oil, lemon juice and zest from the lemon. One fennel bulb down, one to go.

The hamburgers come from Misty Isle Farm of Ellensburg, Washington, a local producer of naturally raised beef. We have had their burgers at Hale’s Ales, one of the early Washington craft breweries. Misty Isle makes certain that their cattle are raised free of antibiotics and growth hormones, but their livestock “naturally raised” not “organic.” The distinction is certified by the USDA. While Misty Isle does not administer hormones or antibiotics to their livestock, they don’t guarantee that their animals are pastured on organic land either. The resulting livestock is cheaper to raise than organic livestock.

The problem with this approach is that toxic chemicals become concentrated as they pass up the food chain. An herbivore (such as a cow) eating plants that have been treated with toxic chemicals will have a higher concentration of the chemicals than the original plants. The carnivore (such as a human) that eats a lot of those cows will ingest that higher concentration of toxics. Misty Isle makes no claims about the land their cows graze on or the hay or the grains that the cows are fed. The cows may not be given hormones or antibiotics, but there is no telling what their feed contains. (They calves are raised on their mothers’ milk, but milk is another way that concentrated toxics pass to animals.) Rachel Carson wrote about biological concentration over 40 years ago in Silent Spring.

We hadn’t heard of the difference between “naturally raised” beef and “organic” beef before, but it makes sense. Ranchers who pasture cattle on public range land would have no idea whether or not the range land is free of pesticides unless the government makes that information available. Even so, I would rather buy beef that is raised with organic hay and alfalfa (pasturing isn’t possible during the winter months, at least in the cold northern climates). Misty Isle does not list organic feed, so we assume that the feed is not organic.

I cook the burgers and melt Tillamook cheddar on top. Tillamook cheese comes from a cooperative creamery located on Oregon’s coast. Their cheddar was the first decent cheese I ever ate, after a childhood of American cheese slices and bitter Idaho cheddar. (The bitterness is a sign that the cows were eating some bitter plants from the Idaho brush lands, a natural touch that I do not miss.) Tillamook guarantees that the cows that provide milk for their cheese are free of artificial growth hormones, but their cheese is not organic.

I used to like Tillamook much more than I do now. The flavor of their cheeses pales compared to some of the other cheddars I’ve had, and their recent business practices leave me with a bitter taste in my mouth. Oregon used to have a small organic creamery, Bandon Cheese, that made very good organic cheeses. While doing research for this post, I discovered that Tillamook bought Bandon Cheese, closed them down, and outsourced Bandon cheese production to Wisconsin while continuing to label the product as “Oregon Coast Cheese.” This is akin to producing Cabernet Sauvignon in Arizona and labeling the product as genuine Napa wine. Additionally, Tillamook has adopted strong-arm techniques, going so far as to threaten to sue the city of Bandon, Oregon, for violating Tillamook’s intellectual property and trademark over the name “Bandon.” The city of Bandon was settled in 1873, well before the Tillamook cooperative was founded.

Although American Intellectual Property laws have certain flaws, that doesn’t mean that a company has to expose those flaws through stupid, anti-community behavior. Someone should tell Tillamook that it is not in their long-term interest to threaten their own communities. Until Tillamook County Creamery Association comes to their senses, we will not buy their products.