Sheetar.com

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 16

In a move of colossal idiocy, I formatted the card that contained the meal photo for this week, and wrote right back over it with some lovely portraits from a family session.  *FACEPALM*  So, I will describe the meal instead, which won’t be as good as the photo, because the photo was really really good, and I can’t believe I did that.

It was husband’s last week home, and he did the shopping at the Farmer’s Market, bringing home a big chunk of Pork Butt to feed to the crock pot.  It simmered in there all day with some home made hard cider (apples sourced locally) and maple sugar, and was falling apart at dinner time.  SO tender and juicy.  Next to that, on the plate, was a pile of mashed potatoes which had been mixed together with caramelized onions and garlic.  Next was steamed and sauteed garlic string beans.  Then we had grilled roma tomatoes from our garden, and finally grilled peaches with Fat Cat cheese (the highlight of the plate for me).  Seriously, those peaches were delicious and inventive, and something I would’ve never thought to have made.

Epic Meal that you’ll Never See:
Pork – Countrytime Farm
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Hard Cider – with apples from Linvilla Orchard (I think?  This was brewed a while ago!)
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
String Beans – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomatoes – My Garden
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, various spices, cider vinegar

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 15

DSC_9194_color

Just something simple for breakfast this time.  This is a frittata, the cooking world’s way of using up leftovers in the fridge. You can throw anything in the pan, cover it in eggs, toss it in the oven and VOILA!  Frittata.  This one has potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and a little cheese.  Add a slice of melon on the side, and you’ve got a nice looking plate for breakfast.

Frittata:
Melon – Smith’s Produce
Tomatoes – My Garden
Potatoes – Maysie’s Farm and Jack’s Farm
Onion – Maysie’s Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Eggs – Mt View Organics
Non Local – Salt, pepper

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 14

DSC_9193_color

Here’s where I admit there was a little cheating going on with a few of our ‘weeks’ in the challenge. We had a two week vacation to Scotland, so these weren’t exactly cooked during the exact week listed. It’s pretty close, but I figure we’re still making the local meal, even if it’s later, so it counts in my book.  This meal is particularly interesting.  The sausage is from a little farm in New Hampshire, so it’s not local to where my home is, but we passed through while on vacation, so I’m saying it works.  The farm is a small farm, run by a lovely couple, and every time we vacation up that way, we stop in usually to feed my yarn and fiber habit, but decided to bring back home some meat this time.  Husband wasn’t as impressed with the taste of the goat meat – the texture is more firm than other sausages – but I liked it well enough.  The meal is your basic sausage and peppers, with tomato sauce we made using tomatoes from our garden.  It’s been a really great year for tomatoes, finally, given the last two were pretty dismal.  Here’s the ingredient rundown, and I’m still catching up on posts for the last few weeks, so bear with me!

Sausage and Peppers:
Goat Sausage – Riverslea Farms
Onion – Maysie’s Farm
Peppers – Maysie’s Farm
Melon – Smith’s Produce
Tomato Sauce – My Garden
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 13

DSC_8529

Time is really getting away from me this summer. Is it really week 13 already? And to think that I was considering not doing this!  Local meals can be breakfast too, and this is pretty much what breakfast looks like every morning.  Some sort of meat, an egg, fruit, and a seriously not local but very necessary double shot of espresso.  The meat is a pork roll, or if you’re from New Jersey, Taylor Ham.  Both are cooked up in a little pan, and I usually just crack the egg over the pork roll and let them cook together, but I figured to make it look nice, I’d do them separately this time.  Our local orchard has had an abundance of fruit from plums to nectarines, peaches and even the first apples of the season!  And that coffee, well if you’re a coffee drinker, you know.

Ham and Eggs with Plums:
Pork Roll – Countrytime Farm
Egg – Mt View Organics
Plums – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Coffee

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 12

DSC_8526

So it’s not as spectacular as last week’s entry, and it’s still a zucchini pizza, but a little different this time – no polenta.  The ends of those monster zucchini had no seeds, so when I grilled up the rings from last week, I did these too and saved them for ordinary old zucchini pizza.  They were re-grilled to heat them up and melt the cheese a little, but it was an easy quickie dinner and a good way to use up all that zucchini.  The little green things in the front are Mexican Sour Gherkins.  They’re about the size of a fingertip when ripe, and have been my garden snack when I go out to check on things because it’s so easy to grab a handful and munch in the evening.  Simple dinner here, but still delicious.

Plain old Zucchini Pizza:
Zucchini – My Garden
Goat Mozzarella – Yellow Springs Farm
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Mexican Sour Gherkins – My Garden
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 11

DSC_8534

Sometimes, I impress myself.  I’m not one to really enjoy cooking, which is partly what this whole thing has been about.  I force myself to do this personal challenge of cooking locally all summer long, and it makes me actually cook.  Every once in a while, I really enjoy making the meal because it’s something new and different, and that’s what I’ve got here.  The garden has been giving me ZUCCHINI (all caps, on purpose, because they seem to think they’re watermelons and not zucchini).  Anyone who has grown them before knows that if you neglect the plant for two hours, you end up with baseball bats and that I’m really not exaggerating.  Ours, instead of growing in length, grew in width, spectacularly, and seemingly overnight.  For scale’s sake, that’s a 9″ plate.  The zucchini were really seedy inside, but I sliced them up anyway and once I pulled the seeds out, I had enormous zucchini rings.  Then inspiration hit.  Take zucchini rings, grill, add freshly made polenta (1 cup cornmeal, 3 cup water, boil while stirring until it pulls away from the pan) to the center, bake, flip, top as a pizza and bake until the cheese melts.  And that’s exactly what’s on my plate above – I used blue cheese and caramelized onions for the topping, and the sauce was even made from local tomatoes, courtesy of Jack’s Farm who was selling a big big bag of tomatoes for $6 (there’s another whole pint of sauce in the freezer too!).  I really don’t have a recipe to give you for this, because it’s the kind of thing that is very basic and I’d rather give you the idea and let you go create.

Zucchini Polenta Pizza:
Monster Overgrown Zucchini – My garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 10

DSC_8521_color

Yup. Ten weeks already! Our garden is finally giving us a whole bunch of zucchini, so I made the best of a pretty insane situation. The zucchini in question is the 8 ball zucchini which grows in a round, softball shape/size instead of the typical elongated shape of a normal zucchini. They’re much more seedy than regular zucchini, but once hollowed out, they’re perfect to stuff with all sorts of good things, which is what I did here.  I know I did this in prior years, but it’s just so easy (and delicious).  The zucchini is stuffed with chorizo, pepper, tomato, onion, garlic scapes, and topped off with a few slices of goat mozzarella.  I had leftover potatoes from last week, so I put those in tin foil on the grill and used them on the side.  Not bad!  And, there were two whole zucchini, so I’ve got a TON of leftovers.  Also, I have a TON more zucchini, if you’ve got any recipes to recommend!

Stuffed Zucchini:
Zucchini – My Garden
Chorizo – Countrytime Farm
Potatoes –  Brogue Hydroponics
Peppers – Brogue Hydroponics
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Garlic Scapes – Jack’s Farm
Goat Mozzarella – Yellow Springs Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 9

DSC_7176_color

This one is getting posted late, but I’ve been busy, honest!  This one was on my own since husband is out to sea for a month.  We’ve got veal cubes with turnips, fennel, and mushrooms on a skewer, and potatoes on the side, all cooked up on the grill!  The skewers are pretty neat – they’re Fire Wires, and are basically stainless steel cables with a tip.  Put the food on, marinate in a bag or bowl, then throw on the grill.  Once the tip has been heated for about 10 minutes to burn off any bacteria, you move it off the grill so that you can pick up the whole wire using the tip that has cooled.  Pretty easy!  I filled up four Fire Wires, so I have plenty of leftovers.

Veal Kabobs:
Turnips – Jack’s Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Veal – Birchrun Hills Farm
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil