mushrooms – Page 3 – Sheetar.com

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 19

By Sheetar 29 October 2014 29 October 2014

Still chugging along into October. We should be winding down in the next month or so since the availability of fresh vegetables tends to fall off after the first hard frost. Fortunately, our mushroom guy grows indoors in a climate controlled environment and still has PLENTY of fresh mushrooms every week. I used a recipe this week, kinda. As usual, I used the recipe as an idea and then modified it to suit the local ingredients available, putting the whole thing into one large casserole dish instead of individual ramekins to save on cleanup time. What I should’ve done is made mashed sweet potatoes and made a sort of mushroom shepherd’s pie, adding in other root vegetables, but this still came out really great and surprisingly filling. I used three types of mushrooms – Shiitake, Crimini, and Chicken of the Woods. I’d never had Chicken of the Woods before, so that was a new mushroom to me. It cooked up a lot like chicken with a thicker, more solid texture that was a little reminiscent of extra-firm tofu. The beer used was our “house” beer, the Flying Pig Stout named for a hilarious incident involving a pig shaped dog toy on a rope and a pot of boiling wort. We pretty much keep a keg of that on tap throughout the year since stouts are a big favorite in the house. It’s not really local, but it is brewed and poured in about a 50 foot radius which is far fewer food miles than trucking in beer from California. What’s best about this is it’s all for me! Husband would never touch a meal made nearly entirely from mushrooms, so the leftovers are safe. Add some butternut squash ‘fries’ and a couple of slices of asian pear on the side and it’s a full plate!

On a side note, my annual saffron harvest is now over and I need a recipe that uses saffron and local ingredients. I’m open to suggestions! Keep in mind that I don’t/can’t eat anything that once lived in water, but will eat every vegetable available! In past years, I’ve made saffron pasta and saffron polenta, so something new would be fun. Maybe blue potato saffron gnocchi?

Ingredients:
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Butternut Squash – Jack’s Farm
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Tomato – Our Garden
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, oil, thyme

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 11

By Sheetar 23 September 2014 15 September 2014

Another meal down, just three more to go to make the goal line. I was on my own again for this meal, but I had this idea in mind for a while. It’s a Philly Cheesesteak on a sourdough roll with Chanterelle mushrooms and blue cheese. When the right mushroom came along for the last meal, I saved some for this dinner. I’d been working on a sourdough starter for a while and got it going really well with the same flour from the Eggplant Parm, Meal 9. I decided to make rolls for the sandwiches instead of a loaf of bread because I wanted more of a roll shape. I let them rise up in a standard cereal bowl, but should’ve let them go a little longer. The rolls came out a bit dense, but still had a wonderful sourdough flavor. The mushrooms and onions were sauteed together, added to the bison chip steak, and the roll was given a thick coat of the blue cheese spread. Going counter clockwise around the plate, we have grilled eggplant, blue potato fries, and some green beans. The whole thing made for a really great dinner, and the fancy mushrooms and blue cheese worked very well with the bison making for a delicious fancy-pants cheesesteak.

Ingredients:
Potatoes – My Garden
Green Beans – North Star Orchard
Zucchini – My Garden
Bison Chip Steak – Backyard Bison
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Non Local – Olive Oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 10

By Sheetar 16 September 2014 15 September 2014

Wow. So this is a pizza. Kinda. The crust is polenta that was baked in the oven to help crisp it up. Then the toppings were added. OH THE TOPPINGS. Husband was away, so I was free to add as much fungus as I pleased, and I did. The mushroom guy was on vacation the week prior, but found a bunch of Chanterelle mushrooms growing in the wild, so he grabbed them and brought them home. This was the first time I’ve ever had Chanterelles, and just typing about them is making my mouth water. They’re peppery but sweet and might just be my new favorite mushroom. I sauteed the mushrooms with some onions and peppers. Once the crust (a polenta crust with a wee bit of butter) was crispy enough from baking in the oven, I globbed some homemade Cherry Jam (from locally picked cherries), blue cheese spread, then put on the onions/mushrooms/peppers. On top of that I sprinkled on some more blue cheese and popped the whole thing back in the oven to mush together. This was INCREDIBLE. The whole thing disappeared in one sitting since it was about a 12″ pizza anyway. The cherry jam ended up oozing off the pizza and made the crust a little mushy, but it really didn’t matter – it just meant I had to use a fork and knife instead of picking each slice up. It was worth it!

Ingredients:
Corn Meal – Mill at Anselma
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Peppers – Charlestown Farm
Chanterelle Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese (spread and crumble) – Birchrun Hills
Cherries – Walnut Springs Farm
Non Local – Sugar (in jam)

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 Meal 8

By Sheetar 2 September 2014 26 August 2014

Another one down, and just six more to go till my goal of 14 for the summer. So far, it looks like we’ll more than surpass the goal of 14 meals, and I really do like the pacing of meals vs. weeks MUCH better. It feels less like an obligation and more like fun this way. What’s on that plate? A sort of remix of chicken parm. I breaded the chicken using goat’s milk yogurt and cornmeal for more of a cowboy sort of version of chicken parm, topped it with tomatoes, blue cheese, and mushrooms (MUSHROOMS! Oh how I love fungus). Some potatoes and zucchini on the side and KABAM. A pretty easy one local summer meal. Instead of frying the chicken, I popped it on a tray and baked it which kept it lighter and, in a weird way, crispier. Sometimes the greasiness of pan frying just doesn’t work, and I’m glad I baked it instead. The leftovers from this are already gone even, it was that good.

Ingredients:
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Zucchini – My Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 Meal 7

By Sheetar 25 August 2014 26 August 2014

Okay, so this one was OUT OF THE BALLPARK good. I know I say that often when I talk about One Local Summer meals, but seriously. I’m not sure there is too much that will top this. We finally found a local source for butter and husband immediately remembered that the only thing holding us back from making these pretzel rolls was the butter. BINGO! Thus, dinner was Pretzel roll burgers with watermelon, grilled peaches with blue cheese, and a wonderfully delicious salad. Even though there are some non-local ingredients in the rolls (baking soda, yeast, oil), they’re still really minimal in comparison to the whole of the meal, and we were even able to substitute the required sugar with honey. Our rolls came out a little flatter than the recipe’s photos, and I had a feeling we should’ve used more flour (the dough seemed a little too squishy), but for a first time, they’re still 100% edible and delicious. I was really glad we had leftovers of this meal so I could enjoy it a few more days, and we even have four more rolls tucked away in the freezer. Definitely expect to see more pretzel rolls in our One Local Future!

Ingredients:
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Watermelon – Hoagland Farm
Peaches – Hoagland Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Egg – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Veal & Pork Patty – Countrytime Farm
Lettuce – North Star Orchard
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Cheese – Lambsquarters from Valley Milkhouse
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Honey – Baues Busy Bees
Non Local – Baking soda, yeast, oil, salt, pepper, dressing.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 3

By Sheetar 29 July 2014 29 July 2014

Another One Local Summer meal, shared with the same friend from the prior post! Yep, two in one week, and it was really easy to put together. I had a ton of salad greens in the fridge, so I put the other vegetables in a foil packet on the grill with the zucchini and we had a REALLY filling salad. Dear friend was enjoying the zucchini so much that she was sneaking the ‘small’ pieces off the grill before they were even cooked. She may or may not have been swatted at with the grill tongs. All that, paired with a glass of homebrewed ginger mead, and it was quite the nice dinner outside on the patio!

Ingredients:
Zucchini – Jack’s Farm
Broccoli – North Star Orchard
Fennel – Charlestown Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Garlic Scapes – Jack’s Farm
Lettuce – Charlestown Farm
Non Local – Salad Dressing

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 2

By Sheetar 22 July 2014 21 July 2014

This kind of involved cobbling together a bunch of things from the farmer’s market. I had the chicken in the freezer and had gotten the zucchini and other vegetables fresh from the market that day. Wrapped the chicken (a whole breast, ribs and all) in a little bacon, just on top, grilled that with the zucchini and tossed the rest of the veggies in an aluminum foil pouch. Added some dill to goat’s milk yogurt to make a sort of tzatziki sauce (minus the cucumbers and onions), and we had ourselves a meal! A friend from college days past was in town to visit, so it was really nice to be able to share a One Local Summer Meal with her!

Ingredients:
Zucchini – Jack’s Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Broccoli – North Star Orchard
Garlic Scapes – Jack’s Farm
Dill – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Bacon – Country Time Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 1

By Sheetar 18 June 2014 18 June 2014

Like I mentioned in my last post, we just haven’t had the time to dedicate to a full One Local Summer this year. Recapping, the One Local Summer challenge was started by the Farm to Philly blog years ago. Ever since that first year in 2009 when I joined the challenge with Farm to Philly, we spent every summer making one meal a week using only local ingredients (spices and oil being acceptable exceptions). This is now our 6th year of doing local meals, and while we won’t rack up 20+ weeks like we have in prior years, I’ve found that we’re doing local meals almost by default because it’s easier to make one trip to the farmer’s market and get delicious, fresh produce at its peak freshness rather than get questionable produce that may have been on a truck for days. It’s just easier, and the local farmer’s market happens to be closer than any grocery store. Plus, the point is to save “food miles” by buying from local farms instead of getting food that’s been trucked in from across the country, and support local businesses and farms at the same time. I’m aiming for at least 14 meals this summer, and I’m counting meals this time around instead of weeks because we have a really crazy schedule this summer and it’s not likely we can fit in a local meal every week on schedule. Anyway, without further babble, here’s meal number one!

The ever classic vegetables in a foil pouch! Here we have sugar snap peas, red onions, and fennel, covered in olive oil, salt and pepper. I also did another foil pouch with mushrooms (UNNGGHH MUSHROOMS *drool*) and onions. Surprisingly, the fennel worked well with the peas and onions and blended together nicely without overpowering the peas. Its worth noting that we happen to live near the Mushroom Capital of the World, and we get the absolute best mushrooms ever at our farmer’s market. The ones I had were the Crimini variety and have so much flavor, it puts store-bought mushrooms to shame.

Here, I’ve got some pork loin tips pounded out thin with a dollop of locally produced cream cheese (honey and sea salt flavored) with some thinly sliced onions on top. Pork loin tips, you ask? It sounded like these might have been mis-cuts at the butcher, but they were plenty big enough to stuff and roll up. The cream cheese is SO neat, and I’m glad our resident cheese lady makes this. There was apparently quite a history of farmers making cream cheese (or farmer’s cheese), and its great to see our local farmer keeping up the tradition.

Here are the pork loins all rolled up and wrapped with slices of bison bacon. Yeah, pork loin with bison bacon instead of bison filets with pork bacon. Sometimes you have to mix it up. The ties are these neat silicone ties made by Mastrad that I picked up somewhere online. So much better than toothpicks (if you ever ‘lost’ a toothpick while cooking, and later found it with your mouth, you know what I mean), and easy enough to throw in the dishwasher and use over and over again. Popped these on the grill until the internal temp hit 160F along with my foil pouches of vegetables and fungus.

The final plate! I added some salad (so fresh and crispy omnomnom) with some non-local dressing, then there’s the onions/fennel/peas, onions/mushrooms, and the meat in the back. Pork can be so tricky to grill and can dry out, but the bison bacon and cheese inside kept it SO nice and tender. I’m so glad I have leftovers of this one because it was really incredible.

Ingredients:
Pork Loin Tips – Countrytime Farm
Bison Bacon – Backyard Bison
Fennel – Charlestown Farm
Salad – Charlestown Farm
Snap Peas – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Cream Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Non Local – Olive oil, salt, pepper, salad dressing