Tag: <span>butter</span>

Tag: butter

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2017 – Meal 2

 , , , , , ,

Meal two of this year’s One Local Summer is in the books!  We’re still a little short on vegetables since it’s early in the growing season, but there’s plenty of spinach and mushrooms to go around, plus we had a new vendor at the market that had sheep’s milk feta, so the idea for this meal came together pretty quickly.  I found a recipe for a spinach and feta galette here, and with a few modifications, it ended up working as a perfect One Local Summer meal.  I didn’t have ricotta or sour cream, but I did have mushrooms, so I made a small change.  I probably should’ve added a bit more spinach to fill in the gaps, but really, it was fine without it, just a little thin.  I’m going to reveal one of my biggest baking tips here too – for the crust, instead of cutting the butter and pulsing it in a food processor, I freeze my butter and grate it into the flour.  It makes for a more even distribution of butter and a perfect flaky crust every time.  On the side is a simpleMâche salad with olive oil and our own homemade vinegar.  These greens are something I haven’t had before but are buttery and nutty  and a real delight next to the galette.  The galette is also great as leftovers, reheated in the toaster oven!

Ingredients:
Mâche –  Jack’s Farm
Butter – I think it was Yellow Springs Farm – the farm name isn’t on the label, but it looks like their font/style!
Flour –  Mill at Anselma
Mushrooms –  Oley Valley Mushrooms
Feta Cheese –  Day Spring Farm
Spinach –  Charlestown Farm
Non Local – Olive Oil, homemade vinegar, salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 22

 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

DSC_8981
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

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 21

 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

DSC_8976

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

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 13

 , , , , , , , , ,

DSC_8223
Home alone again, so I decided to try something a little fancier than usual.  Most of the recipes I use are really basic, and for a good reason.  I’ll admit it, I’m a lazy cook.  I like to be finished quickly and be stuffing my face full of delicious food rather than spend two hours creating something that’s gone in under 30 minutes.  I just don’t see the point!  (Some of you do see the point, and cooking is an art form, and that’s wonderful as I do enjoy eating such creations, but dude, the fact that I’m even actually cooking every week is such a big jump from when the microwave was my best friend, that making complicated dinners may never be my thing, and that’s cool too)  Such is the case with this meal.  I got the recipe from here, and it’s one of those ridiculous food blogs with more photos than actual recipe content (20 photos for a recipe that takes up only two pages).  Sadly, I was out of spaghetti squash from the neighbor, so I used the unnamed bumpy yellow generic squash that arrived along with the spaghetti squash the week prior.  Roasted that up in the oven while I prepped the crepes which were actually fairly easy.  Cooked up the mushrooms, combined them with the pureed roasted squash and a little maple syrup while the bechamel sauce cooked down.  BTW, you can halve the recipe for the sauce because it made half a pot full and I needed about maybe a cup’s worth for the amount of crepes the recipe makes.  It’s really absurd, the amount of sauce this made.  Anyway, after the crepes were filled, I crisped them up in the pan, popped them on a plate, drizzled on some of the sauce and called it done.  They were indeed delicious, but  took SO long to make, I’m not sure I’d do this particular recipe again (or, at least, skip the bechamel and just grate some cheese on them and call it done).  Also featured are some cheese, a nice juicy peach and another bowl of tomatoes and cucumbers as is become usual around here!

Ingredients:
Cucumber Full Circle CSA
Tomatoes Full Circle CSA
Flour Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Milk – Shellbark Hollow
Butter –  Handmade by Abby
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills, Red Cat
Mushrooms –  Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions Clover Hill Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Olive Oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 11b

 , , , , , , , , , , , ,

DSC_8198

Another catch-up post, and I’m a week behind on posts!  Getting caught up (again) though – it’s crazy how summer can just fly by like this.  Husband is away and I decided to try out a few new things.  I know he’s not a big fan of fennel or farro (really, wheat berries in this case), so I decided to go crazy and combine the two!  I found this recipe (Roasted Fennel  & Farro Salad) and went for it.  The wheat berries came from North Star Orchard and we’ve had them hanging around in the freezer for a while.  They do take a while to cook, but the results are absolutely worth it.  Combined with the fennel and peppers, it made for a dish that was great warm or cold.  The simple cucumber and tomato salad was a recurring theme for the rest of the week too.  Drizzled with a little balsamic vinegar, it made for a great afternoon snack, and there’s just something about fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.  The cucumber is an Armenian cucumber and something I’ve never had before.  It has a soft fuzz on the outside that I scrubbed off with a vegetable scrubber brush, and I found it a little more crisp and less acidic than a regular cucumber.

Also on the plate are peaches with blue cheese, another summer favorite, and beet chips which didn’t come out all that well.  My slices weren’t uniform, so they were too crisp on one half and just barely baked on the other.  That didn’t stop me from eating the whole beet though, and I really like how they taste when roasted.  One final piece of the plate was another new recipe I tried called  gougères – it’s a fancy french savory puff pastry made mostly with flour, butter, eggs, and cheese.  The recipe was part of the Birchrun Hills Kickstarter campaign rewards and I was really psyched to try something new.  It was easier than I thought and I sort of felt like a super hero having produced results that tasty and perfect on the first try!

Altogether a delightful dinner and really rather filling!

Ingredients:
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue and Equinox
Beets – Jack’s Farm
Wheat Berries – North Star Orchard
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Eggs –  Canter Hill Farm
Peppers – Clover Hill Farm
Cucumber – Full Circle CSA
Tomatoes – Full Circle CSA
Butter – Handmade by Abby
Honey – Baues’ Busy Bees
Flour – Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Non Local – Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 6

 , , , , , , , ,

DSC_7634

Well I really have no reason to cook since the husband enjoys it so much and I find it such a chore.  That said, I did help out this week by making the spaetzle!  We had bought a spaetzle maker (basically a slotted metal plate like a cheese grater with an open-bottomed container that slides across the plate) but hadn’t tried it out yet, and this week seemed like a great opportunity to use it and fill in some space on the plate!  We followed the recipe on the spaetzle maker package which gave us a really thin batter, but I’ve tried it once now and know what sort of consistency to shoot for.  Also on the plate is a pork rib roast, cooked on the rotisserie on the grill, covered in maple sugar, salt, and crushed pepper and brushed with homebrew amber ale, vinegar, salt, and pepper while on the rotisserie.  Then we have bacon wrapped asparagus, a bowl of cucumbers with salt and pepper and vinegar, and a nice glass of Blaufrankich from Chaddsford Winery.  Everything came out AMAZING and made for a really nice dinner.

Ingredients:
Pork Rib Roast – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Asparagus – Clover Hill Farm
Spaetzle – Whole Wheat Pastry Flour from the Mill at Anselma and butter from Handmade by Abby
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Cucumber – Clover Hill Farm
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Wine – Chaddsford Winery
Non Local – homemade vinegar, salt, pepper, homebrew amber beer

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 21

 , , , , , , , ,

DSC_1295Husband cannot get enough of cooking One Local Summer, so we’re still marching along!  The idea for this one came up two months ago when we purchased a waffle iron.  Husband spent a while researching irons to get the right combination of affordable, easy to use, and durable, and we came up with a winner.  It’s surprising for a brand of appliance I don’t generally associate with reliability and quality, but hey, nearly 1500 amazon reviewers can’t be wrong!  Anyway, in case it’s not obvious at this point, we made Chicken and Waffles!  The version we’re familiar with is the PA dutch version that used something that looks more like pulled chicken with gravy (or creamy chicken soup)  instead of fried chicken.  Adding a little more food history for you, the PBS program The History Kitchen has a great article on the origins of Chicken and Waffles (thank you again, Holland).  In any case, they came out DELICIOUS and so very filling.  Both of us barely managed to finish off one waffle heaped generously with the chicken mixture and we both quickly lapsed into a deep food coma post-dinner.

Ingredients:
Raw Milk – Camp Hill Kimberton
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Chicken thighs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Eggs –  Deep Roots Valley Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Red Onion – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, pepper, beer

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 17

 , , , , , , , , ,

DSC_0806

I suppose it’s not even One Local Summer anymore – it’s One Local Fall!  Some of my favorite foods are available in the fall.  Pumpkins and squash, apples and asian pears!  The day the meal was made was rainy and chilly which made for perfect baking and cooking conditions.  And yes, I actually used recipes!  Usually our One Local Summer meals end up on the wing-it spectrum, somewhat simple, and tend to be  basic stuff that doesn’t involve a lot of thinking and prep work.  Grilled cheese and soup are still pretty basic, but I needed a bread recipe and hunting around for soup ideas gave me the soup recipe.

A few weeks ago, we were in central PA and picked 160 pounds of apples at my grandparents house.  We came out with 4.5 gallons of juice that’s being fermented for hard cider, but we threw in the towel with about 10 lbs of apples remaining  since it was getting pretty dark and late and we were dead tired from crushing and pressing all the apples.  Husband went back out to sea and I was scratching my head, trying to figure out what to do with the remaining apples.  I’m not a huge fan of applesauce, but figured it was the easiest way to use them up.  I cut them into chunks, steamed them in batches for 5 minutes, then ran them through the press.  That press made SUCH quick work of the apples that I was done in about an hour!  I added nothing to the sauce – no sugar or cinnamon or spices – and actually like it a lot as just straight up applesauce with nothing else added.  Then came along the bread recipe for Applesauce bread.  It’s a basic sandwich bread with the only non-local ingredient being yeast (and flour, kinda, since the one flour imports wheat from the midwest but they’re both still milled at the historic grist mill nearby).  I used both blue cheese and a nice alpine style cheese to melt between the slices.  The soup is made from delicata squash and leeks for the most part with water instead of broth and a little goat’s milk yogurt.  Those “apple croutons” on top are slices of apple sprinkled with maple sugar and crisped up in the oven.  I didn’t quite follow the recipe and decided it was easier to leave the skins on the squash and just immersion blender them to pulp which was easier than trying to take the skins off the roasted squash.  Add a warm cup of hot cinnamon spice tea, and it was a great meal for a dreary day.

Ingredients:
Flour – Mill at Anselma (Whole Wheat Pastry Flour and Bread Flour)
Applesauce – grandparents house (no sugar added)
Cheese – Birchrun Hills (Blue and Equinox)
Delicata Squash – Jack’s Farm and Charlestown Farm
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Apples – North Star Orchard (for apple croutons)
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Olive oil, salt, pepper, sage, tea