Tag: <span>cheese</span>

Tag: cheese

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 2

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We had picked up chip steak from Backyard Bison last week, knowing full well that we were going to do Philly Cheesesteaks, Local Summer style this week.  So, all we needed were mushrooms, something resembling an onion, cheese, and some bread to finish the meal.  Husband took the reins on this one and had everything ready to go for lunch when I got home.  Perfect!  The bread was supposed to be St. Peter’s Bakery’s rustic white, but somehow we ended up with an olive loaf instead (honest mistake) which worked out alright anyway!

Philly Cheesesteak
Bison Chip Steak – Backyard Bison
Crimini Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Experimental Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
Spring Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Bread – St. Peter’s Bakery
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Non Local – olive oil, pepper

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 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 12

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I came home from the Market at the Anselma Mill with a Spaghetti Squash. I’d never had spaghetti squash and I’ve been trying to broaden my vegetable horizons and try new things. Searching online, I found this recipe for spaghetti squash pancakes. Interesting, different, and easy! I didn’t quite follow the recipe as written. I baked the squash in the oven for an hour as the site instructs, let it cool and then scraped the contents into a bowl. Instead of adding all the ingredients, I just sprinkled flour in until I got a consistency that would stick together, slapped the little pancakes down on a pan with a little olive oil and put some toppings on. Clockwise, the front is just topped with cheese, next is tomato, cheese, and basil, then we have a cucumber, and finally the bacon, lettuce, and tomato spaghetti squash pancake. Bacon always makes things better and this was absolutely no exception. Ingredients list below, and this was a fantastic light lunch with PLENTY of leftovers!

Spaghetti Squash Pancakes:
Spaghetti Squash – Smith’s Produce
Tomato – Smith’s Produce
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Basil – My own deck planters
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Lettuce – Brogue Hydroponics
Cheese – Farmstead Fresh. This is their cheddar cheese.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 10

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I really cannot believe it’s week ten already. I just didn’t feel like getting everything together and seriously cooking this week, but I did manage a meal. This week, I bring you a veggie panini!

Vegetable Panini:
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. This is their wheat bread.
Yellow Squash – Arrgh I can never remember the name of this producer at the Anselma Market
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Onion – North Star Orchard
Cherry Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Eggplant – Smith’s Produce
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini Mushrooms.
Colby Dill Cheese – Conabella Farms.  This cheese is absolutely amazing.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 6

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I finally made it out to the Anselma Mill Farmer’s market this past week to get flour and a few other things.   I don’t think all the flour is grown locally, but it’s definitely ground at the mill using the centuries old equipment. It’s really pretty awesome to think that this mill has been around for so long and is still useful today.    Here’s a link with more information about the flour, if you’re interested.  I also met the woman who runs Pure Blend Tea and came home with the Fruit Boost tea which made one heck of a batch of iced tea.  Anyway, onto the ingredients in the meal, starting in the back.

Salad:
Lettuce – Charlestown Farm.  Nice and crispy!
Cucumber – Smith’s Produce.  I was so psyched to see cucumbers already, I had to bring some home.
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm.  It actually made a really great dressing for a simple salad.

Ravioli:
For the ravioi pasta, I used a basic recipe I had found ages ago on the web and have modified a bit. It’s one cup flour (here, there’s 3/4 cup whole wheat pastry flour and 1/4 cup buckwheat flour), one egg, one teaspoon olive oil, and water to make consistency. I roll it out using the good old KitchenAid pasta roller set which makes the process SO much easier.  To form the individual ravioli, I found a form that pasta sheets are laid over, filled, then sealed with a rolling pin.  First batch using this was a little off, but the second batch came out perfectly.
Hot Bison Sausage – Backyard Bison.  Just the right amount of spice!
Cheese – Birchrun Hills.  Used the Equinox cheese inside the ravioli with the sausage.
Flour – Anselma Mill.  Used Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Buckwheat Flour – Anselma Mill.  They said this was a new one for them and I heard that adding buckwheat flour into the pasta dough mixture made it different, and it did, in a very good way.
Egg – Mountain View Organics.
Sauce – Homemade.  We found a few bags in the freezer left over from our 2008 amazing tomato year.
Spinach – Charlestown Farm.  Put a bunch of leaves in the steamer for just a minute.
Non-Local – Spices, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil.

As a bonus this week, there was also Jam!  Two types.

Jammed Yellow Cherry Jam
A friend and I went to Walnut Springs Farm to pick cherries.  I LOVE yellow cherries and when the folks running the booth let me know there were two types available to pick, my eyes must have lit up like I had won the lottery.  I immediately knew that they were destined for a batch of jam, and sure enough, three pounds turned into 5 jars of sunny yellow jam.  I sort of want to go pick some more, add in a few blueberries, and see if I can make green slime jam because that sounds like fun.
DSC_2101 Black Forest Preserves
I did actually pick some red cherries too.  Three pounds of those (I came home with about 10 lbs, but did a lot of taste testing while we were there too) became Black Forest Preserves.  It’s a recipe out of the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving and involves cherries and cocoa powder.  I have to admit that the chocolate doesn’t really come out in the recipe – the jam just tastes RICH – but it’s destined to be a part of thumbprint cookies when cookie baking season kicks into full gear.
One Local Summer

OLS: Week 10

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Week ten of one local summer is cooked and consumed already. The husband is home again and decided to try something different – tacos! I was in charge of the taco shells and toppings while  he did the filling. I found a good shell recipe here which used both cornmeal and flour.   I went with whole wheat flour instead of regular old all-purpose flour and it didn’t seem to make a difference.   They were surprisingly easy to make and then form inside of a napkin holder lined with some tin foil.   It looked a little funny, but it worked out well!   The husband improvised a taco spice recipe (sadly, none of those are local, but it tasted great!) which he added to some ground bison and onions. I also found these curious little mexican gherkin cucumbers at the farmer’s market on saturday and just had to bring them home after Jack let me taste one.   They’re sweet, with a little sour and just perfectly bite sized.   It’s really amazing me, week by week, the different things we can make using local ingredients that I never even thought of doing (making taco shells from scratch?!).   This is totally spoiling my ideas of store-bought and semi-homemade that I had been used to cooking  (and mostly microwaving), but all in a good way.   I’ve recently been doing some canning and preserving and I should do a post on that too – it’s another new thing this year that I’m trying and is again, surprisingly easy – much easier than I had thought!

There were a few non-local ingredients in this week’s meal which included salt, canola oil, and the taco spices.   Here are the local ingredients:
Ground Bison – Backyard Bison
Onions – North Star Orchard
Tomatoes – Our Backyard Garden
Peppers – Cressley’s Greenhouse
Mexican Gherkins – Jack’s Farm
Fat Cat Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
Lettuce – Willow Creek
Corn Meal – Mill at Anselma
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma

food

Zucchini Week: Day 7

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Day 7, a week late. Oops. I’m a bad, bad blogger. Well, the meal was made on day seven, however the picture didn’t make it off the camera until today. Yeah. Anyway, in all of its glory, I present to you my own creation, a zucchini pasta salad. The idea took form after I realized I could make pasta noodles from zucchini using my mandoline. Since I heavily modify recipes anyway, I’m just going to give you the basics of what I did. Onions were browned in some olive oil, then the tomatoes were added along with the zucchini and a bit of homebrewed beer. While that was simmering, I grilled the chicken and portobello mushrooms. The mix on the stove went into the fridge after the liquid was drained and so did the finished chicken and mushrooms. After everything was well chilled, I brought it out, sliced the chicken and mushrooms, added some local blue cheese on top and finished it off with a blackberry vinegarette (Olive oil, crushed blackberries, red wine vinegar, fresh basil). All the flavors worked well together and it made for a light afternoon lunch. Zucchini Pasta Salad – My Own Recipe
Ingredients Used:
*Zucchini – my garden
*Tomatoes – Charlestown Farm
*Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
*Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
*Chicken – Eberly Poultry
*Onion – North Star Orchard
*Blackberries – Willow Creek