Food and cooking tips

Buy Local Food : It’s easy to take locally abundant foods for granted when they’re in season, but you can enjoy many locally produced foods out of season by stocking up. Storing big baskets of hazelnuts (in the Northwest) or pecans (in the Southeast) will come naturally if you start thinking like a squirrel. Look for foods that keep well, such as nuts, honey, winter squash and sweet potatoes and stock up.

Buy Local Food : Cultivate an awareness of how far your food travels. When Rich Pirog, Food Systems Program Leader for the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University, tracked the miles traveled for 16 types of produce, he found that locally sourced fruits and vegetables such as apples, lettuce and tomatoes traveled an average of 56 miles, compared to 1,494 miles — nearly 27 times farther — for the same fruits and vegetables delivered through conventional retail channels. Things get stickier with combination foods, strawberry yogurt for example. Pirog came up with 2,216 miles by adding up the distance traveled for the yogurt’s milk, sugar and strawberries. That figure could be slashed by 90 percent if you buy plain yogurt and stir in some locally grown honey and fruit.

Chocolate Maple Nut Bars Recipe

	Category	Nut Recipes
	Views	47
	Ratings	0

Ingredients And Procedures

1 1/2 c Flour; unsifted

2/3 c Sugar

1/2 ts Salt

3/4 c Margarine or butter; cold

2 Eggs

14 oz Sweetened condensed milk

1 1/2 ts Maple flavoring

2 c Nuts; chopped

1 c Semi-sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350~F. In a large bowl, combine flour, sugar and salt; cut in margarine until crumbly. stir in 1 beaten egg. Press evenly in a 9x13" pan. Bake for 25 minutes. Meanwhile, in medium bowl, beat sweetened condensed milk, remaining egg and flavoring; stir in nuts. Sprinkle chocolate chips evenly over the prepared crust. Top with the nut mixture. Bake for 25 minutes more or until lightly brown. Cool. Cut into bars. Store tightly covered at room temperature. Makes 24 - 36 bars.

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