Dark Days Challenge week 13 - Vegetarian chili

Chili is one of those things that is always vegetarian in my house. Even though I am no longer a vegetarian, the veggie version is just so good that I see no reason to make it with meat. This is the first time I've ever made it from scratch (I confess I love the Fantastic Foods box mix!) and it came out quite well. For a base I used onions, green pepper (frozen from last year's farmers market) and carrots. For tomato goodness I used the last of the stewed tomatoes from the freezer - boy, do I wish I'd put up more of those! For beans I used 5 different dried varieties from local growers Pop and Judy (these were Pink Floyd light red kidneys, Red Ryder dark red kidneys, calypso, black turtle, and appaloosa beans.) I added corn (frozen) for taste and texture. I topped the chili with shredded raw milk cheddar cheese from Meadow Maid. Everything was local, except for salt, pepper, and chili powder. Making this chili was an all-day venture, but it yielded 3+ quarts, so there was plenty left over to freeze for a snowy day!

Dark Days Challenge week 12 - Chicken barley soup

We are both having colds here Chez Green Leanings, and we've just had a blizzard... so clearly, dinner is soup! Soup is one of those things I cannot in good conscience buy (unless it is at a favorite restaurant, of course!) It is just too easy to make, and really requires very few ingredients. This week's soup was chicken barley, and it contained local chicken thighs, chicken stock, hulled barley*, celery, carrots and parsley. Non-local ingredients were shallots and poultry seasoning. As a side dish I served toasted semolina bread doused in butter, garlic, and Ludlow (a semi-hard aged cheese.) I cooked the barley in chicken stock and a little water (it took about an hour.) I could have just throw everything into the pot together, but since the chicken thighs were bone-in/skin on I cooked them separately in a skillet. I set them aside to cool slightly as I sauteed the chopped carrots, shallot, and celery in the remaining chicken fat. Cooking things in chicken fat makes them extra-tasty! I left them a bit crunchy, as they were going into the pot with the barley. They joined the barley about 15 minutes before the barley was done. Once the chicken breasts had cooled I skinned them, shredded the meat and added it to the barley. I added the bones to the pot as well, since it seemed a shame to waste all that potential flavor. (I could have added them to my bag o' bones in the freezer that I save for making stock, but that was a little too ambitious for me today.) I added the chopped parsley at the very end, and it was the perfect finishing touch. The chicken and stock came from North Market Poultry and Game at the North Market. Carrots are from Persinger Farms (and were purchased in the fall and stored in my crisper drawer.) Celery is from last year's garden, and was found squirreled away in the corner of my freezer. Bread was from Omega Artisan Baking at the North Market. Butter is from Hartzler's Dairy. Garlic is from H-W Organic farms. Cheese is from Blue Jacket Dairy. *The barley came from a local Amish farm called Stutzman Farms. I *think* they grew it (my area of Ohio is in the range for commercial barley farming) but I'm not 100% sure. They do mill some non-local grains in addition to the wide range of grains that they grow. So I will describe this barley as "local as possible," because if anyone grows it in Ohio, it's Stutzman.

Dark Days Challenge week 11 - tired of potatoes!

This is the time of year when I get really tired of mashed potatoes. I've tried hard to avoid the meat-starch-veggie pattern of meals this winter, but sometimes it's just the easiest thing to fall back on. A recent episode of a cooking show by Nigella Lawson got me thinking about mashed beans instead of potatoes, and that brought me to this week's meal.

Dinner was a pan-fried pork chop, green beans with garlic and shallots, and mashed beans (stueben yellow variety) and cauliflower with garlic and shallots.

I used about twice as much beans as cauliflower, and I cooked the beans low and slow during the day. (Out of all the methods I've tried, low and slow seems to give the best results. I think these cooked for almost 4 hours on low.) When the beans were almost done I added the cauliflower (which had been blanched, frozen, and defrosted) and continued cooking until the cauliflower was soft. In another pan I sauteed the garlic and shallots in olive oil, then tossed the well-drained beans (reserving some of the cooking liquid) and cauliflower in the pan. I had this idea that I could just use a potato masher, but the cauliflower was a little too fibrous for that. So I ended up using the immersion blender, which resulted in a slightly chunky mash. I added a small amount of the cooking liquid to get the right texture (in the same way that you'd add milk or cream to mashed potatoes, but I didn't want to add dairy to this side dish.)

Everything but the seasonings and olive oil were local in this meal.

Dark Days Challenge week 10 - trout and veggies

This week's dark days meal still seems a bit exotic to me, living in the Midwest - rainbow trout! Farmed trout from Freshwater Farms of Ohio, to be exact. We stocked up on it during their Fish and Shrimp Festival in the fall (although, alas, they ran out of shrimp before we got there.)

I pan-fried the trout and served it over a medley of carrots, daikon radish and snow peas. The trout and all the veggies were local; the sauce (a homemade Asian sauce with soy sauce, sesame oil, fresh ginger and freshly-squeezed orange juice) was not. I am proud of the fact that I can now make my own sauces, even for Asian food - no bottled sauces with dubious ingredients and high sodium content here! The snow peas are one of the items we can usually get at the winter farmers market, and the carrots and daikon radish were unearthed from the crisper drawer, and were probably remnants of our CSA.

Dark Days Challenge week 9 - scrambled eggs and bacon

Some nights, the best you can do is scrambled eggs. It's one of those foods I'm just now learning to eat; as I child they were they were the bane of my existence. They were that one food I wouldn't eat, and I was once forced to sit at the table for hours with them, until I finally choked them down, ice cold. Fortunately my mom soon realized that I just didn't like egg yolks; I'd eat any number of egg whites, but the yolks were a no-go.

As an adult with a steady supply of pasture-raised eggs in my fridge, it seemed silly and wasteful not to eat the yolks. I still need something to distract me from the taste (either herbs or marmite, generally) but I can now make a meal of scrambled eggs or an omelet (provided I have toast on the side.)

This week's meal is scrambled eggs from Speckled Hen farm, bacon from Bluescreek, an apple from Gilogly Orchards, and 7-seed bread from Andelain Farms. The butter is from Hartzler's Dairy, and the seasoning in the scrambled eggs is non-local (but is "Sunny Paris" from Penzey's, and is really fantastic in eggs!)

Dark Days Challenge week 8 - Welsh rarebit and tomato soup

We've had January weather in earnest this week - plenty of cold and snow. I decided to stay on the comfort-food theme, so this week's meal featured caws pobi, or Welsh rarebit. Beer, cheese, bread - what would be better? In an attempt to add in some vegetables, I whipped up some homemade cream of tomato soup with stewed tomatoes from the freezer. I fully intended to add a salad as well, but in the end I was too tired and hungry to bother. I have definitely learned that I should make the salad first if I plan on serving it!



Welsh rarebit: this was made with raw cheddar cheese made from grass-fed milk from Meadow Maid, along with butter from Hartzler's Dairy, milk from Snowville Creamery, and a little mustard powder, Worcestershire sauce, and beer (the beer was decidedly not local, being from Wychwood brewery in the UK. But it was probably my favorite beer thus far for Welsh rarebit. You can actually skip the beer and just add milk or cream, but I like it with beer.) I'm still working to perfect this dish, and I have trouble keeping the cheese and other liquids together in a unified whole. I begin to suspect that the cheese is the problem, but even though it tended to separate, both the thicker cheese goo and the beer-milk-mustard liquid were completely delicious. I served the dish over focaccia bread from the farmer's market (as it was the only bread on hand), and it was a surprisingly good combination.

Cream of tomato soup: I'll admit that I didn't actually add cream - just a little 2% milk at the end to give the soup a little body. This was the first time that the soup didn't come out tasting like marinara sauce! I used a base of onions, garlic, and carrots, sauteing them as I would for any soup. Next I added a pint and a half of stewed tomatoes from the freezer, then added chicken stock to cover. (You could easily use a vegetable stock and keep it vegetarian.) I let the soup cook until the stock reduced (about 30-45 minutes I think), then hit it with an immersion blender. I let it cool a little before adding the milk at the end. It was a far cry from the velvety-smooth canned tomato soup of my childhood, but it had a robust texture and great taste. The only seasonings were salt, pepper, and a little thyme (which I seem to put in everything these days.)

Dark Days Challenge Week 7 - beef burgundy

With temperatures in the 10's and 20's F, it has definitely been "a big pot of something bubbling away on the stove" weather. I decided to use stew beef this week, and made beef burgundy over mashed potatoes and turnips with a side of Brussels spouts. This version of beef burgundy had grass-fed stew beef from Long Meadows, leeks and thyme from the garden, carrots from Wayward Seed CSA, Cabernet Franc wine from River Village cellars, Ohio-made beef stock, and non-local cremini mushrooms. I used slightly more potatoes than turnips in the mash, since the turnips were incredibly pungent; next time I will use a 50/50 mix, I think, or perhaps slightly more turnips than potatoes. My fridge is still overflowing with turnips, rutabagas and beets from my CSA! The Brussels sprouts were from the very last holdout vendor at the North Market farmer's market.

I'm not sure why I decided to make beef burgundy; it was most likely inspired by the (not local) package of mushrooms that followed me home from the store. I knew I wanted red meat, red wine, and mushrooms together. I used no recipe and have never made this before; in fact, I'm not even sure how I knew what beef burgundy is. I used to read recipe books while I ate, so I'm assuming it was a remembered thing. Also, I know that red meat, red wine and mushrooms all go together very well, and I know the basics of stew-making.

I started by dredging the meat in seasoned flour and browning it. There are a lot of theories behind both the dredging and the browning; I dredge because I like the resulting texture of the meat, plus the slight thickening property of the flour. I brown because once you've dredged something in flour you pretty much have to brown it. Grass-fed beef is lower in fat than regular beef so it needs to be cooked - and browned - at lower temperatures (I never go above medium.)

The thing about stew beef is that it is notoriously tough, and tough meats really need to be braised (which will break down all that chewy connective tissue that makes it tough.) Once the beef was browned I added red wine (the acid in alcohol and fruit can also help tenderize tough meat) and a bit of stock. I put the pot and low and let it cook for a little over two hours, and took my time chopping and adding the leeks, carrots, and finally mushrooms. When the stew was finally done it was a bit more liquid-y than I'd wanted, so I pulled out a few cups of the liquid and reduced it in a saucepan (which isn't as much work as it sounds; I just let it do it's thing on medium-high while I cooked the Brussels sprouts and mashed the leeks and turnips.)

Dark Days Challenge week 6: It's what's in the kitchen

This week's meal was one of those "look around the kitchen and see what needs to be cooked." We had Swedish Christmas sausage, mashed acorn squash with apples, lacinato kale sautéed with leeks, and steamed potatoes.

The sausage came from our local butcher shop, Bluescreek at the North Market, and contained potato and allspice. It was quite good, but since I am not the biggest sausage fan I am glad we only had one link to split. The lacinato (sometimes called dinosaur) kale was from our CSA farm, as was the acorn squash and Green Mountain potatoes. The leeks were from the garden and the apples from one of the local orchards. It was a fairly quick and healthy meal, since I was fairly restrained in my use of butter (for once!)

Dark Days Challenge week 5 - good old spaghetti and meatballs

Spaghetti and meatballs are on our rotation of winter meals here Chez Green Leanings. I've even made peace with the fact that the meatballs are never really round, unlike the ones I remember from my childhood. But lopsided or not, these are darn tasty!

The meal included fresh linguine from our favorite pasta shop (Pastaria in the North Market) along with homemade meatballs made with grass-fed beef and marinara sauce from the freezer. I topped the meatballs with fresh mozzarella (also from Pastaria) and served it with focaccia bread from one of the new winter market vendors, Black Cat Bakery from Pataskala, Ohio. I could eat that focaccia bread all day, every day!

The meatballs contained ground beef, fresh baby spinach, garlic and onion, an egg, herbs, and enough bread crumbs to make it all stick together. This batch of marinara sauce contained tomato skin and seeds, and I don't think I'm sold on it. I definitely prefer the more labor-intensive version that involves peeling and seeding the tomatoes.

Non-local ingredients were salt, pepper, and bread crumbs.

Dark Days Challenge week 4 - squash soup (and the Slow Food Ark of Taste)

This week we had a lovely soup made from green-striped cushaw squash and caramelized onions, along with some homemade croutons.

My method for squash soup is very similar to the one for making potato soup. I start with aromatics, which in this case was simply onions. I decided that I wanted a very rich flavor from them, so I caramelized them until they were a rich brown color (to do this you must cook them slowly, use plenty of butter or oil, and have infinite patience. It always takes much longer than you think it will. Try to allow half an hour.) I added some garlic at the end (garlic will burn if you cook it too long or in too hot a pan) and also a chopped carrot. Carrots go very well in squash soup, and they have the added bonus of really upping the orange factor of the soup. This particular squash had pale yellow flesh, so the carrot really made it look more appealing.


I was using a larger squash so I roasted it beforehand; you could easily use peeled and cubed raw squash for this, but when it comes to tackling a big, hard-skinned squash you can save yourself a lot of trouble by washing it, poking a few holes in it with a knife, and roasting it whole at 400 degrees, checking it/flipping it at 15 minutes for a small squash, or 30 minutes for a large one. I usually put my squash in a pan or on a cookie sheet, but you can also put it directly on the oven rack. For larger squash an hour should do the trick; smaller squash will be done in half an hour. The squash should give to the touch. I split the squash when it comes out of the oven, then let it cool before trying to scoop out the seeds. Okay, so I don't always let it cool completely, but trying to scoop out the seeds while the squash is steaming hot is fairly painful, even with kitchen-hardened fingers. I usually hold the squash with an oven mitt and use the other hand to scoop away the seeds with a spoon. Once the seeds are removed I spoon the flesh into the soup pot.

At this point your squash is cooked and your onions are cooked, but they need some quality time together. I add stock or broth to just cover the squash, and let pot simmer for 10 minutes or so. If I am using raw squash, I do the same thing but allow the squash to simmer until tender, stirring frequently. I added some fresh thyme at the end of the cooking time, since it is my favorite herb at the moment (and you don't want it to cook too long.) I attacked the soup with my immersion blender, seasoned with salt and pepper, then served it with freshly-ground pepper and a sprinkling of Alaea sea salt, which is a traditional Hawaiian table salt with a beautiful red color.

The squash came from Pop and Judy, two of my favorite farmers (and also my source for local heirloom beans.) Pop told me a wonderful story about how the cushaw squash was his mother's favorite, and that the first year he grew them the plants only produced 2 squash. He gave one to his mother for Christmas, and she proudly showed it off to all of her friends and family. Apparently cushaw are a popular squash in the Appalachians, so my love for it is perfectly understandable (since I have a fair bit of Appalachian heritage.)

Both the sea salt and the squash are items in Slow Food's Ark of Taste Program, which is a catalog of foods that are being threatened with extinction. I'd become hooked on cushaw squash last year (when I roasted an enormous orange-striped cushaw), and the sea salt was left over from an Ark of Taste tasting I attended with my local Slow Food group.

Dark Days Challenge week 3 - Asian pork and cabbage

This week's Dark Days meal features some of the last of our CSA produce from Wayward Seed Farm. I shredded Napa cabbage, carrots, and daikon radish together, and cooked them with an improvised sauce made of honey, garlic, ginger, soy sauce, sesame oil, and ponzu shoyu. For protein I cooked a single pork chop (from our local butcher shop, which has its own farm) in a similar sauce, then sliced it into strips and tossed it with the cabbage. You could easily turn this dish vegetarian by substituting mushrooms for the pork chop.

My partner asked me what sort of "method cooking" I used for this. I put this in the category of "mixing things that play well together." Carrots, daikon radish and Napa cabbage all make sense in an Asian context, and pork is another classic Asian ingredient. I was aiming for a lightly-cooked shredded salad, but ended up cooking it a little too long. It was still delicious, a good way to eat lots of veggies, and I was able to stretch a single pork chop into multiple (three!) servings.

As for the sauce, being able to improvise an Asian sauce is definitely a work in progress! My biggest tip is to balance out the salty flavor of soy with something sweet - I usually use honey, since there is always a big jar of local honey on my counter. And acid is a must, whether it comes from vinegar or citrus juice (either fresh citrus or strange bottled juices like sudachi from the Asian store. )

Dark Days Challenge week 2 - for the love of soup

Dark Days Challenge meal week 2: leek and potato soup, with freshly-dug leeks from the garden and green mountain potatoes from my CSA with Wayward Seed Farm.

This week's challenge meal was inspired by the bed of leeks that were unharvested until last Wednesday. The weather had been pretty mild, but I knew that I was beginning to push my luck. The fact that I had a ton of leeks meant that this soup had A LOT of leeks - probably 4-6 large, if I remember correctly. At one point I had equal amounts of leeks and potatoes in the pot, and I was very tempted to leave it that way, but I ended up adding an extra potato (since I'd already scrubbed it.)

So what exactly is in this soup? Leeks cooked in butter, potatoes, stock to cover said potatoes, salt and pepper to taste, and a dollop of fresh whipping cream and a few snipped chives to finish. Simple, eh? I didn't even peel the potatoes. It was probably the best potato soup I have made to date, and I totally credit the ingredients. Good quality ingredients allow for simple preparations.

And as for a recipe... I can't imagine using a recipe for potato soup! Okay, I actually can't imagine using a recipe for most things, but potato soup more than others.

So what goes into potato soup?

Aromatics: I like mine with leeks, so that was my aromatic of choice. I could have easily used less leeks or even more and still had a great soup. I know I needed to cook the leeks before the potatoes joined the pot, and that butter and potatoes love one another - so I used butter for cooking the leeks. I could have easily used olive oil to keep it vegan. I could also use onions or shallots, and even added garlic to it.

Potatoes: I use whatever type I have on hand, and I try to estimate enough to serve four people. Sometimes I add a carrot to the mix and turn it into a type of potage bonne femme; it really lends a lovely color to it!

Stock: I either make my own or I use the soup base from Penzey's Spices. There's no shame in that. I use enough liquid to cover the potatoes, and add more during cooking if necessary.

Cooking time: Potatoes take about as long as they take. Seriously, it depends on how small you slice them, and probably what type of potato they are. And maybe the barometric pressure, and when the potatoes were dug. If you twisted my arm I'd say 10-20 minutes. I let the stock come to the barest boil and then cook, covered, on simmer.

Seasoning: Salt and pepper. I could have added thyme (which is good with most savory things) or even a little nutmeg (great with cream), but it was perfectly scrumptious with just french grey salt and pepper. I think chives taste good and make the soup look pretty, so as long as my chive plant is still producing I grab a few stems and snip them in. Chervil and parsley are other good options.

Mashing it all up: I'm a fan of smooth soups and I have an immersion blender, so I just go at the cooked potatoes with my immersion blender until I like the texture. You can also just give it a bit of a beating with a potato masher, or put it through a ricer or a food mill, or (carefully!) put it into a regular blender. Make sure the potatoes are fully cooked before mashing!

The finale: One of the classic ways to serve leek and potato soup is with a dollop of cream mixed in at the end. I leave my soup a little thick because I find that the cream thins it out a little. I like to put some fresh-ground pepper on top (I'm a huge fan of pepper), or put some snipped chives and/or chive blossoms on top, or even do a little grating of cheese (my favorite is a local aged gouda.) You could easily skip the cream and cheese if you want to keep it vegan, or add a pat of butter if you want to be extremely decadent.

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week one

One of the best things about winter is the Dark Days of Winter Challenge, hosted by Laura at (not so) Urban Hennery. I love seeing what other bloggers are eating in the winter, and getting new ideas for my freezer and pantry stores.



This week I cooked a meal that debuted last year during the dark days challenge, and has become a favorite in our house. It also happens to be my number one comfort food: creamed chipped beef on toast! For this version I used dried, chipped beef from our butcher shop (Bluescreek at the North Market.) It is a little harder to work with than the dried beef from the grocery store, but with two pairs of hands we get the thin slices of dried beef pulled apart in no time. The beef is much less salty than the grocery store variety, but it can still benefit from rinsing, so once rinsed it joins a cream sauce made with milk from Snowville Creamery (best milk in Ohio!) and butter that's either homemade from Snowville cream, or from Hartzler Dairy. I still use commercial AP flour for the roux, because I'm not convinced that the local soft wheat flour can do as good of a job as a thickener.

While the pulling apart of the beef may take a little while, this is a pretty quick and easy meal. I could have added some vegetable side dishes to make it healthier, but this is comfort food, after all! We finished the meal with smoked chocolate ice cream with homemade marshmallows from Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams, a true Ohio treasure, and I had a glass of Traminette wine from River Village Cellars (Ohio River Valley.)

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 17

I guess this is the last week of the challenge, which officially ended yesterday. Wow! I've had a great winter of really good, interesting local meals, and the rest of the challengers have been endless sources of inspiration. Thanks everybody!

My final meal has fallen back into the meat-vegetable-vegetable-starch pattern, but at least it features a new and interesting local product! The protein was a pork chop (Blue's Creek), topped with a mixture of diced apple and paw-paw chutney from Integration Acres of Albany, Ohio. The chutney was seriously hot, so the apples helped cool down those habaneros! Side dishes were a roasted sweet potato (Carousel Watergardens Farm) with butter (Hartzler's Dairy) and maple sugar (Pleiades's Maple Farm); corn (I bought from several local farm and froze it, so exact origins are unknown) with more of that butter from Hartzler's; and Brussels sprouts with butter and onions.

It's been a great winter. I didn't succeed in all of my goals (thanks to surgery with debilitating complications) but we have managed to enjoy fresh and frozen local food in new and interesting ways, and we've really enjoyed the journey. Thanks so much to Laura for all her hard work, and for her brilliance in starting this challenge. Winter local eating has been way more fun these last two years, thanks to the Dark Days Challenge!

SO now that it's over, that means spring is automatically here. Right?

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 16 vegetarian

This week we had a vegetarian meal that was pretty darn good. For this week's bean dish I decided to try my hand at rajma (kidney bean) curry. I used light red kidney beans (variety: pink floyd) from local growers Pop and Judy, along with local butter, onion, garlic, cilantro, and tomatoes from the freezer. The salt and spices were the only non-local ingredients. I served it over locally-grown spelt berries, which was tasty but not texturally the best combination (there was a little too much popping going on!)

The side dish was a simple all-local slaw of apples and carrots, dressed with local apple cider vinegar and honey. I was in the mood for something crisp and fresh, and this was definitely a winner! Thank goodness for my Benriner mandoline slicer, which made the slicing quick and easy. (I've owned a number of cheap mandolines over the years, and the Benriner is definitely the best.)

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - Week 15!

It was Mardi Gras week here at Green Leanings - not that we celebrate it in any way except for King cake. I have a huge weakness for very gaudy King cakes, and this one was both colorful and delicious. I didn't bake it, but it did come from Columbus' very own Piece of Cake, a lovely bakery in the Short North. It is an adorable shop that smells like the bakery of your dreams. Can't wait to try their whole menu!

For my actual Dark Days meal, j'ai laissé les bons temps rouler with a simple Creole Chicken. I used two chicken thighs (Speckled Hen Farm, Cardington), celery (my garden), green pepper and tomatoes (Honeyrun Farm, Williamsport) from my freezer, and onion from H-W Organic Farm (Sullivan, Ohio.) I won't vouch for its authenticity but it was very tasty, and a nice change of pace! Non-local ingredients were a bit of chicken soup base from Penzey's Spices and some random hot sauces and cajun spices from the cupboard and fridge. I had planned to serve it over local spelt berries, but my shoulder/arm had other plans, so it was served over non-local couscous.

I have to say that I enjoy having whole frozen tomatoes on hand in the winter. It's best to work with them while they are still partially frozen (as they get quite mushy) but they are a great addition to soups and stews, and they sound like cue balls when they are frozen solid. I usually freeze one or two gallon bags of them, and that sees me through the winter.

Dark Days Challenge - week 14

Week 14! Surely it must be time for spring, right? I am very envious of my friends in the south who are working on their gardens and enjoying warm weather. Here we have cold and flurries.

This week's meal is unencumbered by photos, because they came out quite poorly. I decided that it was time to institute my own bean night (after Laura of Urban Hennery)since I have a cupboard full of heirloom dried beans that haven't seen much use this winter.

The brown dutch beans won the bean lottery (meaning they were the first ones I grabbed), and into the pot they went. I soaked them overnight, and it took 2 hours to cook them. I added a ton of veggies (and ended up with more veggies than beans!), including garlic, onion, carrots, celery (from the garden via my freezer), and curly kale. I especially loved the addition of the kale - really brightened the pot. I did add some chicken chorizo at the end (cooked separately for fat-reduction purposes) but the dish could easily stay vegetarian and be just as good.

The only seasonings I added were salt, pepper, and thyme. No stock, no bouillon - it was perfectly tasty and full of flavor without it. I think a little wine would have been good in it, but I used wine in my last bean dish (and I'm trying to make each one different than the last.)

The seasonings and a little olive oil for sweating the onions and garlic were the only non-local ingredients in this dish.

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 13

I had great plans to make a very healthy meal this week - plans that were slightly foiled by the amount of butter I used, alas. It was tasty, though!

This meal featured locally farmed trout from Freshwater farms of Ohio. I pan-fried it with fresh lemon juice (not local) and herbs. My second attempt at cauliflower puree was fantastic! I used two small potatoes along with the cauliflower, plus cream and butter and caramelized shallots. Sadly, that was the last of the cauliflower from my freezer. Other side dishes included corn with shallots and butter, green beans with even more shallots and butter, and carnival squash with, you guessed it, butter (along with maple sugar and curry powder. And without shallots.) I've been experimenting with flavorings for roasted squash, and I have to say that maple and curry is a definite winner (cumin is also pretty good, and cumin with coriander is on deck for the next batch.)

So how are your supplies holding out? My freezer is still packed to the gills, and we've been getting fresh lettuce and greens and the odd potato (sweet potatoes this week!) from the winter farmer's market. I have a ton of small, slightly wrinkly and sad potatoes that I bought in the fall, so hopefully they will become soup this week. And plenty of squash are still around, of course - it's about time to roast one of the big ones (probably a marina de chioggia.)

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 12

Week twelve already! Look, we're getting closer to spring!

I haven't done much cooking lately - my minor neck surgery left me with nerve damage in my neck and shoulder, and my right arm isn't entirely functional (and we won't even talk about the pain. Nerve pain is way beyond anything I could have imagined.) And I am right-handed, of course, which makes this all so very interesting in the Chinese sense.

I did manage to make one nice (and almost all local) meal this week: beef stew with roasted tomatoes and braised curly kale.




The beef stew featured grass-fed stew beef from Long Meadows (tossed in flour, seared, and braised), the last of the purple potatoes from the garden, a carrot (Persinger Farms; Jamestown, Ohio), and an onion and fresh parsley (H-W Farms). I had to use boxed stock and red wine from Trader Joe's, because I am currently in no shape to make stock.

I sliced the grape tomatoes in half and drizzled them with olive oil, then sprinkled on salt, pepper, and herbs de Provence. I cooked them on parchment in the toaster oven (I think it was around 250 degrees for one-half hour, then briefly broiled at the end.) I both braised and stir-fried the kale (I start out with stir frying, then add a little water and put the lid on the pot, stirring occasionally until it is done) with garlic and butter and it was very, very tasty! The tomatoes and kale were both from H-W Farms.

Dark Days of Winter Challenge - week 11

This week's dinner featured spiced ground lamb with pine nuts from this recipe by my friend Lisa at Kitchen Chick. I use about a pound of lamb in the recipe, and I adjust the spices to taste. Allspice and lamb are fantastic together! This recipe has become a standard in my house, usually served over a little bit of (non-local) rice. The lamb I used is from Northridge Farm in Johnstown, Ohio. Onions were from H-W Farm, butter from Hartzler's Dairy, non-local pine nuts (because nothing can really replace pine nuts.)

The side dish was my first attempt at a cauliflower puree. It came out a little runnier than I would have liked, but it tasted very good and the texture was interesting and grainy, which I happen to adore. Next time I make it I will try adding a potato to the mix to thicken it up and make it a little creamier. The cauliflower was also from H-W Organic Farm, the butter from Harztler's, and the milk from Snowville Creamery.

In other news, we visited the Worthington winter farmer's market today and stocked up. We spent $15 at H-W Organic farm: grape tomatoes (that are actually red, not pale orange!), spinach, parsley, curly kale, carrots, and onions; $2.50 on hydroponic lettuce; $17 on a chuck roast and stew meat from Long Meadows Grass Fed Beef (and had a nice chat with our friend Ed); ~$6 on pork chops from Curly Tail Organic Farm; plus we bought some cookies and a croque-monsieur croissant for lunch (and it was really good!)