One Local Summer – Week 15
Hooooboy did I knock this one out of the park this week. It’s more of a dessert, or sweet, light lunch meal, but I could not resist giving this recipe from ChocolateandZucchini.com a go. The only big non-local item used here was the butter – pretty necessary to get the crust just right. I used honey chevre for the ‘sauce’ underneath the squash which gave it this sweet flavor without being too sweet. Left out the mint since I’m just not a fan of mint when it’s not in gum or toothpaste, and it was perfectly fine without it.
Yellow Squash Tarte:
Flour – Mill at Anselma. Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Goat’s milk yogurt
Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Honey Chevre!
Squash – Smith’s Produce. Generic yellow squash
Non-local – Butter, Sesame Seeds, salt
One Local Summer – Week 14
My little garden in the backyard has finally started producing something! After a REALLY disappointing zucchini season – read: Lack Thereof – the garden has made up for things by giving me a ton of cucumbers. I planted lemon cucumbers, regular old green cucumbers, and miniature white cucumbers. I’ve foisted some off on the neighbors, and have been eating a lot of them fresh out of the garden, but there are still too many. So, I found a wonderful recipe for cucumber soup. I doubled the recipe, using three green cukes, two lemon cukes, and two of the over-ripe white cukes that turned bright yellow. Used cilantro, oregano, basil, and sage from the deck herb planters, plain old water instead of broth, and left out the avocado. My soup isn’t bright green like the picture in the recipe, but I let the onion get a good carmelization going which contributed to the brownish tinge to the soup. It’s great both hot and cold, with or without the dollop of yogurt.
Cucumber Soup:
Cucumbers – My Garden
Herbs – My Garden
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Garlic – North Star Orchard
Non-local – pepper, olive oil, lime juice, salt, cayenne pepper
Knitting update
I know it’s been a while since I’ve had a knitting/spinning update, in the midst of the One Local Summer fiesta I’ve been having. I’ve still been knitting and spinning, honest! Now that it’s been half the year, I suppose we should go back and look at the knitting resolutions for this year and see how things are progressing.
1. The American Aran Afghan. This is the beast that I will tackle and finish this year.
Yeahhh.. I have four squares done. I’m finding the charting and the way the book is set up to be VERY frustrating and it’s putting me off from knitting the squares. Each square goes rather quickly if I sit down and work at it, but it’s an absolute pain to copy, cut, and arrange the charts so that it makes sense to knit row-by-row. Plus, there was this random odd injury that made knitting painful for a few months. So, I was spinning A LOT but barely knitting a stitch. Then there was the Tour de Fleece which took up almost a whole month of just spinning.. Not sure if I’m going to finish this afghan this year.
2. Knit /spin any club yarn/fiber in the month it is received.
Doing REALLY well with this one. I’ve had three club shipments for yarn this year that resulted in three pairs of socks so far. There was also a fiber club with three braids of roving that ended up as three skeins of yarn.
3. Knit two sweaters.
One down, one to go. I knitted the Leaf Pattern Gilet which knitted up rather quickly and will be a fall favorite when weather comes back around to actually knit. Here are the details!
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Leafy Cardigan Pattern: Leaf Pattern Gilet Needles: US 6 (4mm) Yarn: Balmoral by Sirdar -Ravelry Project Link- So incredibly pleased with this project from the color to the yarn to the pattern. It’s a really lovely and simple knit and I’m so glad I was able to grab the magazine that contained this pattern while it was available. |
4. Knit one double-knitted item.
Uhhhh… Maybe this winter? I’m still feeling a little overwhelmed by the idea and it probably sounds more complicated than it really is.
One Local Summer – Week 13
Week 13?! At this rate, I’m almost sure I could do this all year. The folks at Hoagland Farm really inspired this week and egged me on into trying this recipe. They had cabbage and pork roast, and I ended up coming home with both ingredients and intentions on this being an easy crock pot recipe. It was just that, and I never could’ve imagined the delightful flavors that came about as a result of combining the two. I’m SO glad we have leftovers on this one! We sort of followed a recipe here, making a few changes to make it more local.
Pork Roast with Cabbage:
Green Cabbage – Hoagland Farm
Pork Roast – Hoagland Farm
Onion – North Star Orchard
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Wine – Mount Hope. Gewurztraminer.
Non-local – Vinegar, spices
One little bonus localish item that didn’t make it into the dinner photo – cupcakes! These were so good, and I’m still blown away by how amazing these cupcakes are. I picked up a 6 pack of cupcakes from Iced by Betsy this past week and WOW WOW WOW. If you go to the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market and haven’t yet given in to temptation, you really ought to. Trust me.
One Local Summer – Week 12
I came home from the Market at the Anselma Mill with a Spaghetti Squash. I’d never had spaghetti squash and I’ve been trying to broaden my vegetable horizons and try new things. Searching online, I found this recipe for spaghetti squash pancakes. Interesting, different, and easy! I didn’t quite follow the recipe as written. I baked the squash in the oven for an hour as the site instructs, let it cool and then scraped the contents into a bowl. Instead of adding all the ingredients, I just sprinkled flour in until I got a consistency that would stick together, slapped the little pancakes down on a pan with a little olive oil and put some toppings on. Clockwise, the front is just topped with cheese, next is tomato, cheese, and basil, then we have a cucumber, and finally the bacon, lettuce, and tomato spaghetti squash pancake. Bacon always makes things better and this was absolutely no exception. Ingredients list below, and this was a fantastic light lunch with PLENTY of leftovers!
Spaghetti Squash Pancakes:
Spaghetti Squash – Smith’s Produce
Tomato – Smith’s Produce
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Basil – My own deck planters
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Lettuce – Brogue Hydroponics
Cheese – Farmstead Fresh. This is their cheddar cheese.
One Local Summer – Week 11
I’m a little behind on blog posts, but better late than never! This week I fired up the grill and stuffed some chicken breasts. Lettuce, in July, you say? YES! Brogue Hydroponics grows it all year round, and by now, I think the One Local Summer readers know that I love my greens. So, clockwise, starting on the left, we have grilled squash, in the back is a salad with lettuce, mushrooms, and my first cucumbers from the garden, and in the front chicken stuffed with chevre, mushrooms, and peppers and grilled with a peach slice on top. Detail of the ingredients follows and this was certainly a delicious and filling meal!
Squash:
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Salad:
Lettuce – Brogue Hydroponics
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms, Crimini variety
Cucumbers – My garden! White Ghost variety
Non-Local – Salad dressing
Chicken:
Chicken breast – Mountain View Organics
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms, Crimini variety
Peppers – That same producer at Anselma Mill that I can’t remember the name (still!)
Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm. This is their Sharp II Chevre.
Peach – Northstar Orchard
One Local Summer – Week 10
I really cannot believe it’s week ten already. I just didn’t feel like getting everything together and seriously cooking this week, but I did manage a meal. This week, I bring you a veggie panini!
Vegetable Panini:
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. This is their wheat bread.
Yellow Squash – Arrgh I can never remember the name of this producer at the Anselma Market
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Onion – North Star Orchard
Cherry Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Eggplant – Smith’s Produce
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini Mushrooms.
Colby Dill Cheese – Conabella Farms. This cheese is absolutely amazing.
One Local Summer – Week 9
Rotisserie chicken and grilled vegetables was on the menu for this week. I picked up a whole chicken and a bunch of different vegetables for the grill wok. The chicken was basted with some non-local jelly and olive oil, but otherwise, everything else is local!
Chicken:
Whole Chicken – Why Not Farm
Vegetables:
Onion – Smith’s Produce
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Flying Saucer Squash – I can’t remember which stand this one came from, but it was delicious!
Portabella Mushrooms – Marsh Creek Farm
One Local Summer – Week 8
Only the finest in outdoor cooking! This was last week during some of that AMAZING and beautiful weather we had. We busted out the new electric fondue pot and went to town with some beef broth fondue. There’s no real plate photo today because cooking meat and veggies in the broth gives you little bites here and there, a lot of conversation, and a relaxing and long dinner – perfect for a gathering of friends. Dear friend Debbie and her 4 month old son joined us for this meal and it was a really enjoyable evening. The ingredients list looks much shorter than usual, but it really was a filling meal and we certainly were not left hungry when the meat and veggies were gone.
Fondue:
Turkey – Mountain View Organics
Top Round Beef – Bethany Farm
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Potatoes – Smith’s Produce
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Baguette – Saint Peter’s Bakery
Non-Local – Beef Broth
One Local Summer – Week 7
Another week is on the books. Or Blog. I’ve always been a big fan of Greek food and gyros in particular. So, this week, with dill running amok in the planter on the deck, I decided to prune it back a little, make some tzatziki and work up some chicken gyros. This was also the first meal we had on our brand new patio, and what a way to start many summers of relaxing dinners! MANY thanks to Ryan Steckel of Steckel Building for his amazing work on the patio. We’re positively thrilled with the results. Onto the ingredients!
Chicken Gyro:
Pretty basic, when you get down to it. Pitas were homemade using this recipe and really were more time consuming to make than difficult – I did substitute one cup of flour for whole wheat pastry flour and used plain old bread flour for the other two. I decided to throw them on the super-hot pizza stone on the grill since it was just so incredibly hot this past week and I wasn’t going to heat up the house with any baking. Turns out, it worked out perfectly, once I got the hang of it. The thinner the dough is and the hotter the stone is, the better the pitas puff up and shrink back down. The chicken was marinated, skewered, and grilled while the pitas cooled a little, and the vegetables were in the grill wok on the next burner.
Bread Flour – Anselma Mill
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Anselma Mill
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Oregano – Back deck planters (used in marinade for chicken with Olive Oil, Vinegar, and Lemon Juice)
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Sharp II Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Used this as the base for the Tzatziki
Cucumbers – Smith’s Produce
Dill – Back deck planters
Non-Local: Salt, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast, Pepper, Lemon Juice
Vegetables:
These cooked up and were so tasty. The first zucchini of the year are always my favorite.
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Carrots - Jack’s Farm
Non-Local – Salad Dressing as a marinade