Dark Days challenge: week 8

Two meals this week, to make up for last week's busyness!

On Monday I made a lovely dinner of pan-roasted chicken breasts with gravy, mashed potatoes, delicata squash with butter and honey, and Brussels sprouts with leeks and butter. (Non-local ingredients were seasonings, olive oil, and a little flour and bouillon for the gravy.) I have to say that the Brussel sprouts with leeks were brilliant! The leeks gave them a wonderful sweetness.

Tonight I attempted short ribs, and they were very good. There was a lot of gristle and fat to work through, but I braised them for a couple of hours (in water and red wine with onions, garlic, carrots and celery) and they were amazingly tender. I decided to strip the meat off the bones while waiting for the cooking liquid to cool, and I served the meat shreds with the carrots and gravy (made from the reduced cooking liquid.) Rainbow chard with leeks (another great pairing - the leeks work so well with slightly bitter veggies!) and spaghetti squash completed the meal. Non-local ingredients were a little heavier this meal, and included the seasonings, olive oil, celery, wine, flour for thickening, and brown rice (to serve the beef over - I could have used local noodles but we'd recently had (90% local!)turkey noodle soup.)

Both meals were served with a blackberry wine, local to point of purchase in Morgantown, WV (and left over from Thanksgiving.) I'm also enjoying a pear wine that was local to point of purchase in Beckley, WV. If you are ever driving through West Virginia be sure to stop at Tamarack near Beckley. They had quite an assortment of West Virginia wines and food products (next time I'm buying the ramp wine!)

I am now down to 18 squash. I'll have to cook the giant marina de chioggia pumpkin this week as it is starting to mold in a couple of spots. In the fridge I have a little chard and plenty of leeks and carrots. (And a ton of eggs! I need some egg recipes!) In the cupboard I have some assorted potatoes (I'm rapidly running out of them, which makes me very sad.)

I also have a box of apples in storage (individually wrapped in newspaper; they are indoors right now because of low temperatures), along with my root cellaring project of carrots, turnips and potatoes (they are stored in a cooler full of sand in the garage.) We'll see how that goes!