This is what a sweet potato looks like when it’s been damaged by voles.  Pretty ugly, eh?  But other than the obvious cosmetic damage, there’s no harm to the sweet potato — you can trim off the damaged parts and use it as usual.  Vole-damaged sweet potatoes even store just as well as perfect specimens.  But of course a lot of people would be put off by the visual and pass these up in favor of more perfect-appearing sweets.  So when you’re hitting the farmers’ markets at the end of the season, if you see some ugly sweet potatoes cheap, snap ‘em up!  They’re a bargain, and  you’re rewarding a farmer for using organic methods.

I also had some excellent-looking young spinach in this week’s CSA box, and a few onions.  I’d picked up some wonderful linguica from a local sausagemaker a few weeks earlier, and I always keep chicken stock in my freezer.  It’s a blustery day here in Southwest Ohio, with the first sleet of the season.  Soup seemed like the perfect choice.  So I made one of my favorite rustic autumn soups:  Linguica, Sweet Potato, and Spinach Chowder.

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• Introduction to Food Preservation
• General Canning
• Canning Acid Foods
• Canning Low-Acid Foods

For more details or to register, visit Preserving Food at Home: A Self-Study.

More about home food preservation:

• Killer Canning
• Preserving the Harvest

TableTours is offering a three-day local eating and drinking tour of Kentucky’s Bourbon country October 2 - 4.

The price of the tour is $350 per person and includes diverse Bourbon tastings, customized breakfast, lunch, and dinner menus from some of Kentucky’s most celebrated chefs, distillery and museum visits, and lectures on Bourbon and Kentucky history. Lodging is on your own from a selection of Bardstown bed-and-breakfasts.

If you’re interested, act now! Registration closes today.

Oh. My. God. This is what oats taste like. I like good old-fashioned oatmeal just fine — I’ve eaten it for years, still happy to eat it if that’s what’s on the table. When I discovered pinhead oats and stone ground oatmeal, though, I realized just how much regular oatmeal had lost in the process of being…well, processed. (Don’t speak to me of instant oatmeal. That’s not a food.) So it comes as no surprise that getting closer to the whole grain results in an even more interesting taste and texture.

Even so, oat groats were a revelation.

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The Tin Angel Cafe is right across from Pioneer Park at 365 West 400 South. (Addresses in Salt Lake City and in much of the rest of Utah, after some initial confusion, are incredibly helpful — an address actually provides directions to the location.) The funky ambiance manages to avoid both kitsch and preciousness, not a mean feat. The outdoor patio is a fun space overlooking the park across the street, but temperatures were in the 90s at 8:30 on a mid-June evening, and we opted to sit inside.

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Fresh Peach Spritzers

6 fresh peaches, quartered (I leave the peels on, but peel them if you prefer)
2 Tbsp honey, or to taste (I like raw honey)
1 bottle inexpensive white wine, chilled
1 liter sparkling water, chilled
Sprigs of fresh mint and peach slices for garnish

Combine honey and peaches in a blender or food processor and puree well (or use a juicer, if you have one.) Pour through a sieve into a large pitcher and chill thoroughly. Add wine and stir to combine. Add sparkling water to fill pitcher and stir gently.

To serve: Pour into tall glasses (over ice if desired) or large wine glasses and garnish with a slice of peach and a sprig of mint. Serves six.

More summery drinks:

• Summer is the Season for Sangria
• Drink Local: Keeping Cool With Rhubarb Cocktails
• Think Pink

Image credit: Cary Bass via a Creative Commons license

Quebec, like the rest of Canada and the U.S., has long required raw-milk cheeses to be aged 60 days before sale to ensure against the possibility of harmful bacteria in unpasteurized milk. Artisan cheese makers have argued that many raw-milk cheeses reach their peak flavor at three to four weeks and the longer aging requirements change the inherent characteristics of those young cheeses. The North American versions of brie, camembert and other soft cheeses are very different from what is commonly produced in France, where a cheese cannot be labeled ‘Camembert de Normandie’ unless it is made according to strict rules.

The change in Quebec’s law is accompanied by new regulations controlling sanitation and handling of the raw milk and raw milk cheeses.

Let’s hope this incident of uncharacteristic government sanity crosses the border into the rest of Canada and the U.S. I’ve tasted young raw-milk cheeses given to me (because they can’t sell them to me) by some of my local dairy farmers, and the difference is amazing. I wish my government would stop protecting me from risks I’m willing to take.  But until they do, I may have to consider a quick smuggling trip across the border to Montreal.

Related stories about food policy and milk:

• Put Down That Glass of Organic Milk and Forget About Sipping Soy Milk! USDA Labeling Challenged by the Organic Consumers Association

Image credit: Marc Roussel under a Creative Commons license.

But often there’s a way around it: A herdshare program. Drinking raw milk from a cow you own is not illegal. When a milk drinker joins a herdshare, he’s buying a part of a cow — usually 1/25th of a cow — and paying each month a fee for that partial-cow’s board and care.

I own 3/25ths of a cow (a Jersey named Cinnamon), which I purchased from a local dairy farmer for $50 per share. (If I ever decide to sell my shares, the farmer will buy them back from me for the same price I paid.) Each month, I pay my farmer $22 per share for my portion of the costs of Cinnamon’s care, and each week I drive out to the farm (in Ohio, it’s illegal for my farmer to deliver my milk to me) and pick up 3 gallons of beautiful whole unpasteurized milk. It works out to $5.08 per gallon, which just a few months ago might have seemed like a lot to pay for milk. It was worth it to me because I wanted to buy my milk from a local farmer raising cows on pasture without rBGH — cows living the way cows are supposed to live — and in my area that means raw milk. It’s worth it to others because they want raw milk in particular.

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Unfortunately I’m seeing a large number of unsafe canning recipes posted on various food, recipe, and local eating blogs, and we aren’t talking about just the kind of unsafe canning that gives you a few days of gastrointestinal misery. We’re talking serious neurotoxins, botulism, paralysis, and death.

Here are a few key bits of knowledge, useful whether you’re canning yourself or are the recipient of a home-canned gift.

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Our very first stop forced me to rethink that assumption. Boy, did I underestimate the potential of the National Parks food service. The food was often very good, and several stops were a traveling locavore’s dream. Yellowstone was a standout.

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