Tag: <span>bison bacon</span>

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 20

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Winding down to the end of One Local Summer with just a few weeks left of our set.  Usually we drag this out through November, but we’re taking a break and wrapping it up soon.  At the top of the meal, we have a bowl filled with all sorts of tomatoes, drizzled with some balsamic vinegar and topped with basil.  Next around is a mug of homebrewed beer.  The on the main plate is zucchini, sweet potatoes, lamb sausage, and banana peppers stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in bison bacon.  This meal involved a good bit of prep work, but once everything was cut and wrapped and ready, it all went onto the grill (except the tomatoes).  Pretty easy!  The lamb sausage was absolutely delicious and I’m glad I sprung for it at the market.  The whole thing together made for a great dinner.

Ingredients:
Tomatoes – My Garden,  Full Circle CSA
Basil – My Garden
Zucchini –  Full Circle CSA
Sweet Potatoes –  Jack’s Farm
Lamb Sausage – Canter Hill Farm
Banana Peppers – Steer Vegetables
Bison Bacon –  Backyard Bison
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills, Blue Cheese
Non Local – Balsamic Vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 1

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!

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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.

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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.

 

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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.

DSC_9556The 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

 

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 16

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Okay, there’s always a bit of summer where I fall apart and neglect posting these to the blog. They’re all cooked and whatnot, but between guests and vacations, things fall by the wayside. Anyway, I’m finally catching up, and need to do a little bit of get-ahead in preparation for the upcoming vacation to Scotland (WOOOHOO!). So, I’ll still be covering all the weeks, just not cooking while we’re not in the country, but still cooking for one meal a week. Not sure that made sense! This one was a lazy breakfast but was still super delicious. Pancakes from an old favorite recipe, and bison bacon that turned up to be WOW DELICIOUS. Pretty simple, but really satisfying.

Pancakes and Bacon:
Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Egg – Mountain View Organics
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Bison Bacon – Backyard Bison
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Baking Soda, Baking Powder, Salt, Sugar