Tag: <span>onions</span>

Tag: onions

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 8

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I’m late getting this one posted, but it was cooked during week 8, honest! We had an abundance of dill growing in the planter on our deck, so I decided to make some tzatziki, one of my summer favorites. It’s just cucumbers in yogurt with dill, but I LOVE dill like nobody’s business.  Husband grilled up the chicken to perfection, and our guest, Abbie, slid all the vegetables (squash, onions, and bok choy) onto a skewer that also went onto the grill.  Pretty basic, but it was DELICIOUS and we were able to put it together last-minute before dinner.

Chicken with tzatziki and vegetables:
Chicken – Mt. View Organics
Cucumbers – North Star Orchard
Dill – My Garden
Squash – North Star Orchard
Candy Onion – Smith’s Produce (Anselma Market)
Bok Choy – North Star Orchard
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Non local – olive oil, pepper, red wine vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 25

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A friend pointed out, after the last post, that it’s definitely not summer anymore and perhaps I should change my title. I realized, at week 25, that we’re nearing a half year’s worth of local meals.  I’ve clearly somewhat lost my mind, but there are still new and incredible local vegetables out there and I’m determined to see if I can make it a whole year. The title is going to stand, because it started with a summer, and so long as there are vegetables growing, it’ll still be summer in my kitchen. I’m just going to not pay attention to those hard frosts we’ve already had. 🙂

This week! Dear friend Abbie was out for a visit and I subjected her again to a local meal. We made a chicken pot pie from scratch, and while the broth inside didn’t come out quite as thick as I would’ve wanted, the very vegetable-heavy chicken pot pie had us both coming back for seconds.

Chicken Pot Pie:
Daikon – Maysie’s Farm
Bread Flour – Mill at Anselma
Whole Wheat Flour – Mill at Anselma
Broccoli – Smith’s Produce
Onion – Maysie’s Farm. One red, one white.
Garlic – Maysie’s Farm
Carrots – Maysie’s Farm
Trumpet Mushrooms – Oley Valey Mushrooms
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Non-local – Butter, salt, sugar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 21

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The husband has returned home and planted himself in the kitchen. I can’t say I mind, when the result is an amazing crock pot meal. He took a Bison chuck roast out of the freezer and threw in all manner of vegetables and fruit that I had from the farmer’s markets and came up with something AMAZING. The bison was SO tender after cooking for five hours and the way the flavors blended together was really a work of art. I think I’m still in a food coma over this one!  It was all served over some home made noodles using Whole Wheat Pastry flour and Buckwheat flour from the Mill at Anselma.

Crock Pot Bison Roast:
Bison Chuck Roast – Backyard Bison
Onion – North Star Orchard
Purple Potatoes – Unknown Vendor at Anselma
Apples – North Star Orchard
Noodles – Egg from Mt View Organics, Flour from the Mill at Anselma, Buckwheat flour from the Mill at Anselma
Peppers – My Garden
Wine – Paradocx
Beer – Homebrew Imperial Blonde
Sage – My Garden
Cilantro – My Garden
Basil – My Garden
Non-Local – Spices

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 9

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Rotisserie chicken and grilled vegetables was on the menu for this week. I picked up a whole chicken and a bunch of different vegetables for the grill wok. The chicken was basted with some non-local jelly and olive oil, but otherwise, everything else is local!

Chicken:
Whole Chicken – Why Not Farm

Vegetables:
Onion – Smith’s Produce
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Flying Saucer Squash – I can’t remember which stand this one came from, but it was delicious!
Portabella Mushrooms – Marsh Creek Farm

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 7

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Another week is on the books. Or Blog.  I’ve always been a big fan of Greek food and gyros in particular. So, this week, with dill running amok in the planter on the deck, I decided to prune it back a little, make some tzatziki and work up some chicken gyros.  This was also the first meal we had on our brand new patio, and what a way to start many summers of relaxing dinners!  MANY thanks to Ryan Steckel of Steckel Building for his amazing work on the patio.  We’re positively thrilled with the results.  Onto the ingredients!

Chicken Gyro:
Pretty basic, when you get down to it. Pitas were homemade using this recipe and really were more time consuming to make than difficult – I did substitute one cup of flour for whole wheat pastry flour and used plain old bread flour for the other two.  I decided to throw them on the super-hot pizza stone on the grill since it was just so incredibly hot this past week and I wasn’t going to heat up the house with any baking.  Turns out,  it worked out perfectly, once I got the hang of it.  The thinner the dough is and the hotter the stone is, the better the pitas puff up and shrink back down.  The chicken was marinated, skewered, and grilled while the pitas cooled a little, and the vegetables were in the grill wok on the next burner.
Bread Flour – Anselma Mill
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Anselma Mill
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Oregano – Back deck planters (used in marinade for chicken with Olive Oil, Vinegar, and Lemon Juice)
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Sharp II Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm.  Used this as the base for the Tzatziki
Cucumbers – Smith’s Produce
Dill – Back deck planters
Non-Local: Salt, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast, Pepper, Lemon Juice

Vegetables:
These cooked up and were so tasty.  The first zucchini of the year are always my favorite.
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Carrots –  Jack’s Farm
Non-Local – Salad Dressing as a marinade

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 11

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And another week down, bringing us to week eleven of the One Local Summer challenge. This week we decided to attack the pulled pork sandwich. I wasn’t able to find locally baked rolls that would work for sandwiches, so we found Vermont Bread Company rolls at Kimberton Whole Foods that worked out well, even if they’re not really that local. It’s probably the biggest non-local item I’ve used, but I really, honestly tried to find local rolls that would work and just couldn’t find any. Oh well! We did go the extra mile with the barbeque sauce and  made that from scratch. The dinner was delicious and while the pork butt took all day to cook in the smoker and then crock pot, it was WELL worth it. Non-local ingredients used (other than the rolls) were in the barbeque sauce: pepper, salt, cider vinegar.   The rest of the ingredient run down follows.

Corn: Kimberton Whole Foods (locally grown)
Peaches: North Star Orchards
Feta Cheese: Apple Tree Goat Dairy
Pork Butt: Countrytime Farm
Maple Sugar: Miller’s Maple
Tomatoes: Jack’s Farm
Garlic: Jack’s Farm
Onion: North Star Orchards

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