Tag: <span>cider</span>

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 4

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Week four, cooked and consumed already during our One Local Summer.  Husband was home again this weekend, so I was happy to step aside and let him take charge of the kitchen!  The vegetable supply is really starting to diversify since so many farmers start seeds early, so we already have zucchini and snap peas available.  The meal is a veal chop marinated in vinegar, salt and pepper, cider, and cilantro then grilled with some cheese on top.  On the side are  grilled carrots, snap peas, and zucchini and some more cheese (because there can always be more cheese), paired with a nice leafy green salad tossed with some olive oil and vinegar, and a glass of homebrewed cider.  The cider we had here actually finished off a 5 gallon keg we’ve been nursing for over a year now, but fortunately  we have the next batch ready to go, made from apples picked at my grandparents’ home some four hours west of where we live.  Since the apples followed us on a trip we would’ve made anyway, I include them into local summer since their “food miles” didn’t count as just transporting food.  We crushed and pressed the apples into cider ourselves, gave the juice some yeast, and let it do its thing.  The resulting cider came out tart and dry, just how I like it, so while I’m a little sad to see this keg go, I’m also eager to see how the second batch tastes!  Anyway, enough about the cider, the meal was a nice way to cap off the long holiday weekend since this was Monday’s dinner before husband left again for the week.  Hopefully he’ll get in one last OLS meal before heading out on a long stretch for work, and then it’s all on me!  I may have to entice some guest chefs to visit and contribute  (read: beg friends to cook for me) during the summer.

Ingredients:

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 22

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Husband is at it again for this installment of One Local Summer.  It was more like a One Local Fall sort of day – gloomy and rainy – so soup it is!  The soup is a chunky potato leek soup since we happened to have all those things on hand and husband is truly the soup master.  He somehow manages to make everything work well together in one pot whereas I tend to make disasters that skirt the line  between edible and fodder for the garbage disposal.  We used up the last of the pretzel rolls from the freezer and paired the roll with some mustard seed gouda made from local milk.  Top the whole meal off with a glass of cool cider and we have a filling and warm dinner for an icky day.  This may be the last of the meals for 2015 seeing as there was a vacation happening during the time the last three OLS posts went up, but fear not, we’ll be back next year!

Ingredients:
Flour Mill at Anselma
Egg Deep Roots Valley Farm
Butter Spring Creek Farms
Honey Baues Busy Bees
Cider –  North Star Orchard
Leeks –  North Star Orchard
Onions – Clover Hill Farm
Potatoes –  North Star Orchard
Garlic –  North Star Orchard
Cilantro – My garden
Milk –  Birchrun Hills  for homemade cheese
Whey – frozen from cheesemaking using  Birchrun Hills  milk
Non Local – mustard seeds, salt, pepper

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 21

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Husband has returned home and cooked up this classic summer meal – a pulled pork sandwich.  A good part of this one was a long time in the making.  The sauerkraut was made months ago, fermented from fresh cabbage in a huge stoneware crock.  The pickles were started a month ago and came out as terrific sour pickles.  The buns were made last year and pulled from the freezer.  The cider in the glass was also made last year and was just kegged and ready to drink this past month.  The only thing new on the plate is the pulled pork which cooked up in the crock pot all day with some cider, peppers, onion, vinegar, and tomatoes, and came out DELICIOUS.

Ingredients:
Cabbage –  Jack’s Farm
Pork Butt –  Countrytime Farm
Cucumbers – My Garden
Peppers – Steer Vegetables
Tomatoes – My Garden
Onion –  Clover Hill Farm
Cider – Fermented from apples picked at my grandparents’
Buns:
Flour Mill at Anselma
Egg Deep Roots Valley Farm
Butter Spring Creek Farms
Honey Baues Busy Bees
Non Local – Salt, pepper, spices, homemade vinegar

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 19

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The weather turned crisp and cool over the past week, and I decided it was time for chili!  Usually husband is the chili master, but the pork shoulder was on special sale at the farmer’s market, so I went for pulled pork chili done up in the crock pot.  I used the remainder of the leftover tomato sauce, added some spices, onions, and peppers and let the whole thing simmer for hours until the pork fell apart.  I added some beans towards the end, and topped the whole thing off with blue cheese and a biscuit from that biscuits and gravy breakfast.  A juicy asian pear on the side and a glass of homebrewed cider, and we have a meal!  It was just the thing for a cool evening.

Ingredients:
Buttermilk Maplehofe Dairy
Pork Shoulder    M&M Creek Valley Farm
Lard  M&M Creek Valley Farm
Flour  Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Beans –  North Star Orchard
Onion –  Jack’s Farm
Peppers – Clover Hill Farm
Cider – Homebrewed from apples picked at the grandparents’ house
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills, smoked blue
Non Local – Spices, salt

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 16

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Oh yes, it’s crock pot season!  The husband is a master of the crock pot and always manages to work up meals that blend perfectly together in that steamy cauldron of good cooking.  It’s funny, crock pot meals never tend to look all that appealing, but you can be sure my mouth was watering for the last two hours of cooking because the whole house smelled amazing!  Starting with a base of apple cider from our local orchard, husband added a Pork Loin Roast to the pot and topped that with cabbage, apples, onions, a little maple syrup, salt and pepper, and a little dried mustard powder.  Such easy prep for such amazing results.  By the end of the six hours, the pork had become incredibly tender, the cabbage simmered down, and the apple cider had infused its way into everything.  Add to that a little bread (not entirely local, but from a local bakery), a chunk of cheese, and some delicious Hopped Blueberry Mead from a Meadery in New Hampshire, and we had a great fall dinner.

Ingredients:
Pork Loin Roast – Countrytime Farm
Onions – Hoagland Farms
Cabbage – Jack’s Farm
Tomme Mole Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Bread – St. Peter’s Bakery
Cider – North Star Orchard
Apples – Grandparents House (tons of apple trees!)
Mead – Sap House Meadery
Non Local – Vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard powder

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 13

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Meat and potatoes.. can you guess who cooked?  Yep, the husband!  But, no complaints from me, because chicken and potatoes is a great dinner, especially with fall slowly taking over summer.  This meal was cooked the day after the prior meal, because we happened to have the food on hand for all of it, so we figured we might as well!  A basic tomato and onion salad with oil in vinegar in the bowl using our own tomatoes now that they’re finally ripening on the vine.  The darker color is because they’re mostly Brandywine Black tomatoes, a house favorite.  The vinegar is the stuff we make ourselves using either our own mead or Yuengling lager – we very seldom use commercial vinegar anymore!  Purple mashed potatoes you say?  Yep, made from blue potatoes harvested from the garden earlier that week.  The potatoes didn’t grow so well – our soil is full of clay despite 6 or 7 years of tilling in compost, it  still can’t quite handle growing potatoes.  They still have a wonderful color and taste, and cook up well, they just look like massive clumps of 3 or 4 potatoes that didn’t split up.  The chicken was cooked a-la-beercan-up-the-chicken-butt and came out nice and tender.  The beer used was Landshark, so not local, but it’s basically used for steam and isn’t a major contribution to the meal.  Overall, really delcious!

Ingredients:  
Chicken – Bendy Brook Farm
Potatoes – My Garden
Tomatoes – My Garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive oil, vinegar, chicken seasoning, pepper, salt, beer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 12

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Husband is back home and went for a simple but delicious favorite this week – Sausage and peppers!  The farmer’s market has seen a glut of peppers, so we went with it, using some tomatoes from our garden along with pork sausage and some homemade sourdough bread.  Topped off with a cool glass of crisp, tart cider and we had ourselves a great meal.  It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a quick and easy meal that always goes over well.

Ingredients:
Pork Sausage – Countrytime Farm
Tomatoes – My Garden
Peppers – Jack’s Farm
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive Oil, Pepper, salt

One Local Summer 2013 – Week 21

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I got really behind on getting posts up during busy November and December, but, better late than never (I seem to be really good at the late).  Husband prepared this one as sourced from the market at the Mill at Anselma.  The ribeye was cooked on the grill and topped with blue cheese, carrots cooked with some maple syrup, and the soup simmered all day.  It was absolutely incredible and very filling, finished off with a glass of cold cider.

Ribeye with Salad and Potato Leek Soup:
Ribeye – Bendy Brook Farm
Carrots – Maysie’s Farm
Salad greens – Maysie’s Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Potatoes – Maysie’s Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Celery – Maysie’s Farm
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – salt, pepper, salad dressing