Year: <span>2010</span>

Year: 2010

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 20

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Pumpkin, again. Yeah when I get on a kick, I get on a kick, but at least here there are plenty of other ingredients involved. The recipe took a lot of searching – I wanted to use both bison and this little Long Island Cheese Pumpkin I brought home last week. Finally, I came across a recipe for Potato Topped Beef and Pumpkin Casserole which ended up being the perfect recipe to use for my new little casserole dish. Naturally, there were a few modifications. I didn’t have any carrots, so I used turnips instead. Left out the beef stock cube, and used three types of potatoes. The pumpkin makes for a great base, but the sweet pumpkiny flavor is mostly lost in the recipe – I suppose this works out okay, since the flavors all run together well, but I was expecting more smack-you-in-the-face pumpkin. Still, it’s delicious, and VERY much edible.

Oh and if you’re curious, the dish comes from Karin Lorenc on etsy.

Potato Topped Beef and Pumpkin Casserole:
Bison – Backyard Bison. Sirloin
Flour – Mill at Anselma. Bread Flour
Onion – North Star Orchard
Turnip – Maysie’s Farm
Long Island Cheese Pumpkin – Smith’s Produce
Red Wine – Paradocx. Barn Red
Sweet Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Purple Potatoes – Unknown Vendor at Anselma
White Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Non-local – Olive Oil, spices

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 19

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Well it’s feeling more like fall and there were some GREAT squash and pumpkin choices available at the Anselma Market this week. I stopped by the Smith’s Produce booth and found a funny green pumpkin that I was told was a Kabocha pumpkin. The producers even had a recipe ready for Kabocha pumpkin soup, so the inspiration belongs to them! Going back to one of my favorite food blogs, I found a recipe for Pumpkin Soup with Smoked Paprika. Sadly we didn’t have smoked paprika on hand, but we did have the regular kind. I’m sure the smoked variety would’ve added an extra kick, but this turned out just fine. I left out the cream since I couldn’t find any locally, but the one cup of goat’s milk created the texture I was looking for. Also, I’d be LOST without our immersion blender – it got a solid work-out with this recipe and did a fine job. I added on some grilled cheese to make this dinner and sprinkled some chevre and the toasted seeds from the pumpkin on top of the soup.

Pumpkin Soup with Grilled Cheese:
Kabocha Pumpkin – Smith’s Produce
Onion – North Star Orchard
Garlic – North Star Orchard
Apple – Unknown Vendor at Anselma (forgot to grab the name!)
Goat’s Milk – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Sage – My Garden
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. Whole Wheat
Yogurt Cheese – Farmstead Fresh
Non-local – Butter, Paprika, Cumin, Salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 18

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Pizza.. AGAIN?! Oh yes, pizza again. It never gets old with the wide variety of toppings and ways to make the crust. This week we have a flatbread grilled pizza topped with Chevre, Red Onion, Asian Pears, and bacon. Bacon always makes everything better and again, no exception to that rule here. Asian Pears are FINALLY in season and I’ve been gathering them up from the market like the world is going to end, so they’ve ended up in everything I’ve made recently. Gotta love a pear you can eat like an apple. I’ll admit that the pizza was an experiment in combining flavors, but I liked how it came out – a little sweet, bacony, savory, pizza. The recipe is Bobby Flay’s for the flatbread and I’ve used this one a number of times, mixing half whole wheat pastry flour and half bread flour for the dough. Just make sure you’ve got the dough coated VERY WELL with olive oil before throwing it on the grill and it’ll work perfectly.

Grilled Flatbread Pizza:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bread Flour – Mill at Anslema
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Onion – North Star Orchard
Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Non-local – Yeast, salt, olive oil.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 17

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Sister-in-law Brenda was in town this week and was flipping through the Cook’s Country compilation book for 2008. The husband had bought the book on super-sale at Amazon.com and we haven’t really made any of the recipes so far. So, when Brenda stumbled upon a recipe for Thin-Crust Skillet Pizza (August/September 2008, pg 18), I was more than happy to pull out the cast iron skillet and get cooking! The recipe calls for beer as the liquid in the dough, and we happened to have a homebrewed Hefeweizen on tap in the kegerator. It proved to be a good choice! The dough came out nice and crispy, and we had plenty of vegetables available for the topping. For me, this was easier and quicker than heating up the pizza stone, we didn’t have to wait for the dough to rise (no yeast – just beer and baking powder), and it was a delicious lunch to enjoy out on the patio.

Thin-Crust Skillet Pizza:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bread Flour – Mill at Anselma
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini
Tomatoes – My Garden. These are Super Italian Paste Tomatoes
Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm.  Clipper variety.
Sharp I Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Basil – My Garden
Onion – North Star Orchard
Non-local – Baking powder, sugar, salt, beer, olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 16

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I got a little backed up with putting in posts, so here’s the catch-up! This week was a Summer Garden Galette. I pretty much threw in any vegetable I could find that would fit in the crust and wow was it good. There’s a decent amount of prep work involved since everything has to be cooked before it goes in the shell, but all that can be done while waiting for the crust to chill in the fridge. I guess it sounds easier than it is, but if you’ve made a pie crust before, it’s really the same process. The bottom layer is sweet potatoes covered by tomatoes and squash, mushrooms and onions, and then topped off with a heavy dose of goat cheese. YUM!
Summer Garden Galette:
Onion – North Star Orchard
Summer Squash – Smith’s Produce
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Sharp I Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Chocolate Cherry Tomatoes – My Garden
Sage – My Garden
Sweet Potatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini.
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non-local – Butter

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 15

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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

One Local Summer – Week 14

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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

2010 Knitting, Finished Objects, Sweaters

Knitting update

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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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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.