Dark Days Challenge report

The cat of the day is Mr. Grey, who decided to live here a number of years ago. He has the most beautiful markings on his face, and the most annoying habit of poking the humans in the face when they're asleep.

The past few weeks have featured meals that will sound familiar to readers of this blog. The soup I made this week was new though! I dug through the veggies in the freezer and the storage cupboard to produce a soup with all local vegetables: garlic, red onion, Lima beans, white kidney beans, green beans, tomatoes, cabbage, and corn. Tomato and veggie stock were also local and made by me. Non-local ingredients were salt, pepper, and a squeeze of lemon.

This week I also tried spaghetti and meatballs again. The meatballs were actual ball shapes this time, at least until I browned them. Judging by the wave of garlic that hit me when I opened the leftovers, I should have called it spaghetti, garlic and meatballs.

I also made chicken breasts with gravy, broccoli, and mashed purple potatoes and leeks. I used chicken and stock from the local poultry butcher, and the gravy was amazing as a result. My own chicken stock clearly needs some work.

We've also had cottage ham with sweet potatoes, corn, and Brussels sprouts with leeks - that was the last of the fresh leeks. There's still a cup or so of chopped leeks in the freezer, and I wish I had more of them.

The potatoes and onions are almost gone, save for the root cellar experiment. I should probably check on that soon (In the garage I have a cooler filled with sand and potatoes, carrots, and turnips.) I look forward to seeing what tomorrow's winter market will bring.

Dark Days week 11

Most of the local eating this week has featured local foods combined with leftovers from family gatherings (making it difficult to stick to the 90% rule, but wasting food seems silly.) Mothers will send home leftovers! I've noticed that some of the people around me have started taking notice of where there food comes from, and I am quite happy with that.

For Christmas eve I roasted a chicken from Speckled Hen Farms (38 miles) and braised some rainbow chard and leeks with butter and apple cider vinegar (all local.) I made stuffing from scratch (locally baked but not ingredient-sourced bread, non-local celery, local butter, stock, and onions) as well as pan gravy, and heated up leftover mashed potatoes from a family gathering.

Other partly-local meals included chicken curry (with the leftover chicken and local onions and carrots, non-local chickpeas and sauce), steak and noodle salad (local frisee, radicchio, shitaake and chives; non-local soba noodles and sauce; leftover steak from mom's house.) I have to say that local eating has made me more creative in the kitchen!

Today we had another brunch of local eggs, bacon, and hash browns with purple potatoes and red onions. The red onions scorched a little, so it wasn't quite the interesting colors I was hoping for.

Dark Days week 10

Ten weeks already! Hard to believe that it's almost the end of December.

This week I tried my hand at making meatballs. They were "mostly local," containing some parmigiano reggiano cheese and bread from the grocery store bakery. The meat, eggs, and milk (used to soak the bread) were all local. The mixture ended up being way too mushy, but the extra moisture did ensure that the grass-fed beef stayed nice and moist. They were too soft to hold a "ball" shape, so they were promptly dubbed "meatlumps." I served them with locally-made pasta and my homemade spaghetti sauce. I believe that "spaghetti and meatlumps" will become a new family favorite. Hopefully next time they will evolve into actual ball shapes.

Other local meals for the week included brunch of bacon, eggs, and purple potato pancakes. Next time I make them I am using red onions with the purple potatoes, just for more fun color.

Tonight I was eating alone so I had a plate of potato pierogi (locally made, from the church up the street), which I cooked up with local onions and butter. They weren't quite as good as my grandma made, but it's nice to have homemade pierogi again after all these years.

Dark Days, Market update, local holidays and caturday!

It's a snowy, snowy day here in central Ohio. I'm glad we made it to the market early; sadly the trip to the tree farm will be postponed until the roads clear up.

I was hoping to find Xmas trees at the North Market; instead I found two of the organic farmers and the honey guy were there! I got some rainbow chard, purple potatoes, eggs, arugula, and a frisee/raddichio blend. I bought a number of small candles from the honey guy, mostly for holiday gifts. Inside the market I couldn't resist some peppered bacon and cottage ham slices, and also the Kentucky Bourbon Eggnog ice cream from Jeni's.

Next we headed to the Worthington Winter Market, just as snow began to fall. There I bought a ton of maple sugar (which is made from boiled down grade B syrup which gets put into a mixer until it crystallizes), grass-fed beef, scallions, sweet potatoes, cider, shitake mushrooms, and baked goods.

Ah yes, the meals! I roasted a pork loin this week, and it was the main protein at both of our local meals. On the first night it was marinated in a non-local pomegranate syrup, and served with chard and leeks, as well as mashed purple potatoes with garlic and leeks. I served it with the unadulterated pan juices, and boy was it good! For the next meal I sliced the remaining pork loin and warmed it with more pomegranate glaze, and served it with green beans with peppered bacon and delicata squash with maple syrup. I think I'm now down to 17 squash. Non-local ingredients for both meals were limited to the pomegranate glaze and a little olive oil, as well as salt and pepper. The green beans tasted just like summer, so I am glad that all the hard work of putting them by has paid off!

On local holidays: holiday gift baskets for my mom and my partner's mom will include locally made apple cider vinegar, maple sugar, honey, walnuts, maple syrup, popcorn, and beeswax candles. I thought about including cheese and grass-fed beef, but I didn't want to deal with the logistics of refrigerating them. Maybe next year! I really wanted to give them a taste of how good local products can be.

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!

dark days

I missed the recap this week, and since I was incredibly busy I didn't do much in the way of cooking this past week. I did learn how NOT to make curried pumpkin soup: don't experiment with the whole batch; don't toss in too much Thai red curry paste; don't add an apple, thinking that sweet will counteract the hot; and definitely do not add some heavy cream to try to save it. That last step really killed the soup, sadly. If you're going to use Thai curry paste, make sure you have some coconut milk on hand (I think that would have saved the soup.) Ah well, live and learn.

This past week I have been enjoying a new product: maple sugar! I got it from the maple syrup folks (Pleiades Maple Products, Mt. Gilead, Ohio) and I am in love. I'd noticed that putting maple syrup in my oatmeal wasn't working out so well - I had to use a lot of it, and the texture/taste was a little off. The maple sugar works like a dream! I use less of it than I would of brown sugar, and it gives a wonderfully sweet maple flavor. With it I can make a bowl of 100% local oatmeal (with local oats and a grated apple.) It's so good that I could eat it by the spoonful, so thank goodness it came in a shaker bottle (and I've only pried the lid off two or three times! :-)

thanksgiving, local eating, and my favorite cat

I have to confess that I totally suck at taking photos of food. I'm reading a few articles to improve my technique, but until I get some portable lights I will spare you my attempts. Instead I will post the occasional cat photos, because my cats are awfully cute. They all wish they could dine locally on the birds, squirrels, and occasional mouse that visit our home. (The cat pictured here is named Little Guy.)

I had an unexpected Thanksgiving day at home last Sunday - a party I was going to was canceled, and I had a 10 lb. turkey to cook. So with no advance prep, and having spend the day before making soup and vegetable stock, I dove into a Thanksgiving dinner for two. Curiously, I had all of the ingredients at hand to create a local turkey dinner with all the fixings (except cranberries) so this is what we ate:
-turkey (a little overcooked, sadly.)
-dressing (made from bread on hand plus local onion, non-local celery and herbs from my garden
-gravy made from pan-drippings
-broccoli (local and fresh)
-praline sweet potatoes (local sweet potatoes and walnuts, non-local brown sugar and an orange)
-mashed potatoes with local milk and butter

The only non-local ingredients not mentioned above were salt, pepper, a little oil for the turkey, flour for the gravy, and a bit of cinnamon.

After cooking I had a 10 minute break, then stripped the turkey (freezing 1/2 the breast and a lot of dark meat) and made stock. When the stock was done I pulled more meat off the bones for a turkey soup. I made the soup with non-local celery and local onions and carrots.

Thanksgiving day we went to my mom's house. She got a local turkey from the butcher and I brought butternut squash and the ingredients for a pear galette, along with a few veggies we forgot to cook. We had to use apples instead of the too-hard pears, but it was a wonderful flaky dessert. (My mom asked about my recipe, which made me laugh. I just make things up as I go along. Fortunately my favorite farmers had made the pie crust dough, saving me a lot of work and the need to actually dig out a recipe.)

Today was the first Saturday that we slept in since May! There may have been a few vendors at the market but my fridge was still full. I defrosted raspberries and bacon for a local brunch (served with pancakes) and for dinner went a little crazy with frozen corn and edamame, fresh braising greens with red onion and apple cider vinegar, grass-fed burgers with Gouda on ciabatta bread, and "almost" potato chips (inspired by another Dark Days blogger; I sliced potatoes thin on my mandoline then cooked them in a 1/2 inch of canola oil.) Non-local ingredients were cooking oil, salt and pepper.

squash mania

I just did a squash inventory in the garage. I have 21 squash! Seven of those fall into the "huge" category, including three marina de chioggia pumpkins, two French pumpkins, a hubbard and an enormous spaghetti squash.

The squash tally was prompted by plummeting temperatures and my newest root cellaring project (which is to wrap apples in newspaper and store them in a cardboard box.) I'll need to move them from the garage when it gets colder.

At dinner today I got my mom and her twin talking about their mother and her food preservation techniques. I definitely learned a few things. Wish I'd thought to ask my grandma about this when she was still alive.

I will blog about thanksgiving craziness later, when I can get some photos out of the camera. I hope you all had a wonderful day!

dark days meal of the week

We had a lovely local meal tonight. I was feeling a bit under the weather so I defrosted some pumpkin soup (made with a marina de chioggia pumpkin) and doctored it up with a carrot and plenty of garlic, along with some skim milk and grated Gouda cheese. My pot of herbs is still hanging on, so I was able to add some fresh thyme and chives. Non local ingredients were salt, pepper, and a little olive oil. I served it with a salad (probably the last batch of lettuce for the year) with grated carrot and helios radishes and dressed it with a vinaigrette made from local cider vinegar. Again, salt, pepper, and olive oil were the only non-local ingredients. We did have bread from the grocery store bakery, because driving 15 miles to a bakery for local bread seemed kind of silly.

I had a glass of non-local orange juice tonight, in honor of being sick and needing vitamin C. It was the first I've had since... spring, I think? It was good, but I wish I'd had some local cider instead. Next year I'm going to buy extra cider and experiment with freezing it. Wish I'd thought of that when the cider folks were still coming to market - after all, there's still some room in the freezer!

farmer's market report and local eating in November

It was quite cold at our one remaining farmer's market (at the North Market) on Saturday, but we braved the cold and got fabulous rewards. I bought a ton of greens (lettuce, braising greens, and tatsoi) because I'll most likely not buy them again until they're available locally in the spring. I also got some eggs, onions, spaghetti squash, another marina de chioggia pumpkin, and a large hubbard squash. I have renamed my garage "the home for wayward squash" since we have so many. We also picked up some pepper bacon and pork chops.

Next week we'll have a special thanksgiving market in Clintonville, and one of the North Market folks assures me that they'll have tons of stuff next Saturday - they've been stockpiling for their thanksgiving CSA, and once the boxes are filled there will be extra veggies to sell (most notable leeks - I plan to get there early and buy them all!) I hope I can find plenty of potatoes next week as well; we eat them so often that my stores are dwindling already.

Local meals for today: lunch was fried pullet eggs, pepper bacon, and hash browns? home fries? Shredded potatoes with onions, whatever you call it. Non-local ingredients were salt and bread for toast. Dinner was pork chops cooked with (all local) apples, onions, and apple cider; braising greens with local bacon, local apple cider, and local apple cider vinegar; scalloped potatoes (with local milk and butter) and spaghetti squash. Non-local ingredients were salt, pepper, and a little cream and flour for the potatoes. I almost pulled some green beans from the freezer, but decided that we could have greens and squash as vegetables this week. I just hate to break into my winter stores when there are still fresh veggies to be had.

The local apple cider vinegar is as good as I hoped. I may buy a gallon next week and bottle it for holiday presents.

This week I plan to roast a pumpkin or two (maybe the rouge vif d'etampes and a marina de chioggia) and make some soup (probably potage bonne femme, if I can find a leek or two in the fridge.)

dark day challenge meal for the week

I finally cooked the pork chops, and they weren't too bad for a first attempt! They marinated in apple cider for a couple of days before I cooked this meal. Then I dredged them in flour (non-local, and I will probably skip this step next time)and seared them in a pan. Then I turned down the heat a little and added sliced onions and apples, and I put the lid on it and let them cook down. At the end I deglazed the pan with apple cider, and it was a lovely dish! I was surprised by how well apples and onions went together.

I served this with thinly-sliced fried potatoes (in my eternal quest to find more ways to cook potatoes) and broccoli with butter. I haven't used any of my frozen veggies yet; it seems like a waste to eat them when broccoli is still available fresh.

Tonight will be simple dinner of pasta (locally made) with my marinara sauce and garlic bread. Here's hoping there's still bread in the freezer!

local eating in the autumn

Last Saturday was the final week of a few of our markets, so it was a sad day indeed. The North Market farmer's market will hang on for a while (apparently it lasts until the farmers quit coming) and there will be a couple of special pre-Thanksgiving markets as well. We opted not to get a thanksgiving CSA as I didn't have a spare $150 sitting around.

We got a lot of stuff at the markets, as you might expect. Sunflower heads, French pumpkins (rouge vif d'etampes and musque de provence), raspberries (gotta love the late fall raspberries!), walnuts, short ribs (I've never cooked ribs before. This should be interesting), fresh Lima and white kidney beans, shallots (finally!), quince, pears, onions, chard, potatoes, carrots, broccoli... I think we bought 2 of everything. I gave the fridge a thorough rearranging and discovered that we're going to be eating a lot of carrots. (I somehow ended up with a crisper drawer full of them!)

I always cook a special meal for Halloween, focusing on favorite foods of my deceased relatives. This year I roasted a beautiful pasture-raised chicken and served it with honey ginger carrots, mashed potatoes, stuffing, and carnivale squash. The stuffing and seasonings were not local, but everything else was. Tomorrow I plan to turn the chicken into a stew with local carrots, onions, and potatoes.

Other local meals include my favorite weekday breakfast of local oatmeal, grated apple (a grimes golden this time, my grandfather's favorite), and maple syrup; also a lovely potato-leek soup with bacon. The local bacon we get is covered with peppercorns and gives an amazing smokey flavor to everything it touches.

It will be so sad to get up in the morning and only head to the one remaining market! I hope to use this weekend to stock up on more squash (kabocha, mainly) and hopefully find some late broccoli. I'm suddenly craving cream of broccoli soup, and it dawns on me that I've never made it! I don't think I have quite enough of it in the freezer to experiment.

One of the farmers last weekend had a sign up: Only 6 months until asparagus! It seems like forever, but I have a freezer full of summer vegetables, a garage full of winter squash, and stockpiles of soups and jam. I think we'll make it through the winter just fine (but I'll still dream of fresh asparagus in the spring!)

dark days challenge update

It's been a good week for eating locally. Over the weekend we had french toast and bacon in another permutation of local sunday brunch. We've had fresh pasta (from the North Market)with my homemade marinara sauce twice this week, with marinara sauce to spare. Both meals were accompanied by amish wheat bread with local garlic and butter.

Early in the week we had roasted chicken breasts and gravy with broccoli and mashed potatoes (only non-local ingredients were the stock and flour for the gravy.) The leftovers/scraps were reincarnated into chicken and noodles (amish noodles with carrots, onion, celery (non-local), chicken scraps and gravy.) Last night we had even more broccoli (it is so good, but the little green worms freak me out a little) with cottage ham, scalloped potatoes, and spaghetti squash. I cooked the ham in local apple cider and had local butter on everything else.

I also cooked many butternut squash into soup, and then determined that I do not, in fact, even like butternut squash. It is just too sweet for me. I left the soup very plain (just onion, garlic, and veggie stock) and froze it; I plan to season each batch differently, in hopes of finding a combination I like.

For this weekend I must have a few potluck dishes, which I think will include a salad with roasted beets, goat cheese (not local), and walnuts, as well as something involving squash, or maybe butternut squash soup. :-)

local food shopping in the fall

Yesterday was market day, and as it was the 20th of October, I think we can all agree that it is autumn. The weather is still unseasonably warm, though there have been some cold nights (no frost yet.) Three of my farmer's markets are ending this week (one more will continue until the vendors run out of produce; two other markets will have winter and/or a thanksgiving market day option.)

I went a little crazy at the market this week. It started out innocently enough - late strawberries, late red and golden raspberries, some bacon and cottage ham. The weekly split chicken breast. Four servings of locally-made fresh pasta. Some pumpkin ice cream. The the "getting carried away" part began.

I bought end-of-the-season roma tomatoes (ugly, but they made a wonderful pasta sauce for dinner tonight. It was wonderful! There's enough left to have our favorite local pasta meal for dinner again (local greens with helios radishes; marinara sauce over angel hair pasta; Amish-made wheat bread liberally doused with local butter and garlic.) I did unbend enough to use imported Parmesan (we've eaten all our pasta this summer with shredded local Gouda, which is surprisingly good.)

Oh yes, the marketing. Braising greens, salad greens, leeks, and lovely little heirloom turnips. Chestnuts for roasting. The largest carrots I've ever seen. Broccoli, eggplant, apple cider, green beans. And that's just the first market!

On to the next two markets! I procured 5 butternut squash, a pumpkin and 3 acorn squash (it was the farmer's last day, so I helped buy out her remaining produce.) Two pasture-raised chickens (also the farmer's last day at market; I have four of her birds in the freezer now.) A pound of grass-fed beef. Some lovely red-skinned potatoes with the whitest flesh you can imagine. A giant sunflower head (we may eat the seeds ourselves instead of feeding them to the squirrels.) Pullet eggs! I didn't really need eggs, but I have a weakness for pullet eggs. (They are the first layings of young hens. Very small, very pale yellow yolks, and a wonderful taste.) I also bought the aforementioned Amish-made wheat bread, and a bunch of peppers for the local food bank/community center (they were doing a produce drive at the market.) I also stopped for some local milk.

It will be a busy week in the kitchen - tonight I am blanching and freezing broccoli. Tomorrow I need to make yoghurt and a soup or two; I have ingredients for vegetable soup, potage bonne femme (a leek and potato soup with carrot) and hot-and-sour soup. The latter is the only non-local one, but it will still use local shiitake and scallions. Later in the week I need to parcook all of the butternut for soup and freezing. I should probably blanch and freeze some acorn squash too. And some onion/carrot mixtures for soup and stews. Whew! At least I know that wintertime local meals will be a snap!

local eating, week of October 15

Yesterday we enjoyed our favorite local brunch: pancakes (mix from Quiver Full Family Farm, ~20 miles, some non-local ingredients) with raspberries (Toad Hill Organics, ~70 miles) and peppered bacon (Blues Creek, ~32 miles). Butter and milk from Hartzler's Dairy (96.2 miles) and maple syrup from Pleiades (37.9 miles.)

Tonight's dinner is ham steak from Curly Tail (~45 miles), green lance from Wayward Seed (97.7 miles), potatoes from Flying J (26 miles) and squash from Bird's Haven (29.5 miles). Non-local ingredients: salt, pepper, brown sugar.

Come to think of it, lunch is local too: peppered bacon from Blues Creek, eggs from Quiver Full, and bread from Crumbs (~84 miles.) I'd better eat an apple (Wayward seed) to make that meal a little healthier. :-)

I should really just make a master list of all my local food sources. I'll try to put that together soon.

a winter eat local challenge

(I am failing to get the above button to work, so please follow the link below.)

I really meant to get back to some non-food content now that September has ended, but I just discovered the Dark Days of Winter Eat Local Challenge. The goal is to have one meal a week that is at least 90% local throughout the whole winter. And blog about it, of course. It should be fun!

My freezer is stocked with corn, green beans, peaches and strawberries. There are smaller amounts of edamame, raspberries, stock, tomatoes, and spaghetti sauce. I have local pancake mix, soft wheat flour, oatmeal and corn meal. We are slowly stocking up on burgers, ground beef, and chicken. My stores of frozen soup are growing. I have plenty of honey but I could use some more maple syrup. I need to do a few experiments with root cellar-less root cellaring (I'm going to try coolers filled with sand) so I can try to keep potatoes and carrots (and turnips and beets and whatnot.) I could use a few more hard-skinned winter squashes.

I can't wait to see what the winter market brings! It's the first year for it, and this Columbus locavore is mighty excited.