Cranberry Season & the Hyperlocal

with a recipe for Cranberry Pecan Tea Bread

Saku and I recently moved into a repurposed barn in coastal Maine, and we were walking down our little road the other day, when I was delighted to find a cooler full of locally harvested cranberries for sale at the end of a neighbor’s driveway. I grabbed a five pound bag, left an i.o.u. in the re-purposed peanut butter jar in the cooler, and headed home to find out how cranberries landed here, in an area full of, and widely known for, its blueberry barrens.

My ignorance, it turns out, was profound. Cranberries, like blueberries and Concord grapes, are native to the region. Since long before it was called New England, cranberries have been harvested wild from naturally occurring bogs and used for everything from dye to medicine to food. When, in 1989, the Maine Cranberry Growers Association was formed—remarkable in the absence of a single commercial cranberry farm in the state—small farmers, like my neighbors who farm organically, steadily cultivated an annual harvest over the intervening decades that is as vibrant as the berries themselves.

As I stock my larder for winter, it warms my heart and soul knowing that a big bag of these gorgeous red berries sits in my freezer alongside an equally big bag of local organic blueberries. When the long, dark winter takes hold, and it’s very cold outside, I’ll make breads and pies, crumbles and muffins, sauces and chutneys to warm things up.

On this grey day, it’s not yet very cold, but most of the leaves are gone from the trees surrounding the pasture, and we change the clocks tonight. I write you with a chill in the barn and blankets piled high on my lap. With this hint of things to come, I munch on my first effort with these hyper-local cranberries sourced from just few driveways down our rural road. I also sip on some of my favorite oolong, sourced from a parallel hyperlocal practice of growing tea on a small family farm in Taiwan.

The efforts of people across the planet to grow and make food happen in specifically local ways makes possible a healthy dose of daily joy wherever I live as I consider the exquisite diversity of ingredients in my larder—their provenance, the traditions in which they’re embedded, and the cultural histories they support—and then, weave them together in traditional and experimental ways of my own to create sustenance.

Thanks to the internet, and my own wanderings, my entire larder is filled with someone’s hyperlocal. All the shipping and high tech involved to procure hyperlocal from afar undermines some of my equally concerted small-footprint efforts, and I acknowledge the inherent contradiction in my decidedly global twist on hyperlocal.

I like to think, however, that my celebration of a global spectrum of the hyperlocal, and my indulgence in it, consequently supports growers and producers who practice ecosystem harmony and steward age-old diversity where they live. I hope it helps to honor the bigger picture value of landscape particularity and the planet’s fundamental diversity.

In that spirit, and for a little joy of your own, I’ll sign off by encouraging you to source the most hyperlocal ingredients that you can find—near or far—and make yourself some bread for tea. My recipe for the tea bread follows, and you can switch up the fruit and nuts just about any way you like, to honor the bounty in your own larder.

Big love, Ashley

P.S. It’s a FED Friendsgiving & You’re Invited!

This season, FED invites you to participate by sharing your own taste of home. Send us a recipe, an anecdote, just about anything really, plus an image to go with it, and we’ll put it on the table. Don’t overthink it, and don’t delay. We can’t wait to sample the fare. Yum!

Cranberry Pecan Tea Bread

Ingredients

• 1-1/2 cups locally grown and milled ancient wheat all-purpose flour, or the Einkorn wheat flour readily available in many natural foods stores

• 1 teaspoon baking powder

• 1/4 teaspoon salt

• 1/4 cup milk, room temperature

• zest of 1 orange

• 1/4 cup freshly squeeze orange juice

• 1/2 to 3/4 cups brown sugar

• 6 tablespoons softened unsalted butter

• 2 hyper-local large eggs or eggs from pasture-raised hens, room temperature

• 1-1/2 cups fresh or frozen cranberries

• 3/4 to 1 cup pecan halves or pieces

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees and line a loaf pan with parchment paper.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.

3. In measuring cup, combine milk, zest, and orange juice.

4. In a large mixing bowl, cream together butter and sugar. Beat in eggs and mix well.

5. Add flour mixture and liquid mixture alternating with half one, then the other until just incorporated.

6. Fold in cranberries and pecans and pour into loaf pan.

7. Bake for 45-55 minutes until golden on top and a toothpick comes out clean. Cool on a rack and store in the fridge.

Re-warm individual slices for your tea and enjoy!

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For more goodies…

For more recipes, be sure to check out FED’s Recipes & Free Advice. And, to learn more about FED’s entire global crew of musicians, artists, writers, growers, gleaners, cooks, and craftspeople check out our Special Guests and the wonderful contributions they added to the FED table in the Spring and Summer seasons.