Dark Days Challenge weekend edition

Another wonderful weekend of local eating! Our winter market was on Saturday, and we beat the crowds and stocked up with mesclun salad mix, baby spinach, scallions, radishes, potatoes, apples, eggs, and a wonderful loaf of whole wheat bread with sunflower seeds.

Saturday night I turned some more of our grass-fed ground beef into meatballs (which, despite baking them this time, were still not spheres. I give up. Symmetry is something that happens to other people!) with the help of the local baby spinach, garlic, onions, egg, basil, and oregano dried from my garden (some non-local breadcrumbs, Parmesan cheese, and salt and pepper completed the mix.) I served them with some of the last of my homemade marina sauce (with added oomph from more garlic and onions), locally made fresh pasta, and garlic bread (local garlic and butter and the whole wheat/sunflower bread.) It was divine, despite the lack of symmetry in the meatballs.

Today I had a potluck to attend, so all of the butternut squash soup came out of the freezer. While it came up to temperature in a crock pot I cooked shredded carrots (local) with some non-local curry and ginger. I had a brief moment of panic when the final product tasted too strongly of ginger, but the addition of (non-local) condensed milk took the bite out of it. The final product tasted so good that I must rescind my earlier assertion about not liking butternut squash!

While the soup was coming together I cooked up some bacon (local, from the freezer) with some fresh eggs and more of the whole wheat bread. We won't talk about how much butter from Hartzler's Dairy I slathered on the toast - I ran out of their butter last week (and a couple of local stores were out of it!) so I was celebrating its return. I've never had a butter so sweet as the 2 lb. rolls from Hartzler's.