Tag: <span>tomato sauce</span>

Tag: tomato sauce

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 9

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I really sort of love having visitors over for One Local Summer meals because they’ll bring new and  fun ideas to the One Local Table.  There were a TON of beautiful eggplants at the market this week, so I grabbed two thinking, hmm, well I’ll find something to do with them.  Talking about it with my sister-in-law who was visiting, we ended up with Eggplant Parmigiana using local ingredients.  We didn’t have mozzarella, but I had plenty of blue cheese on hand, so it was a little different, but the flavor was incredible!  And, unintentionally, we ended up with a vegetarian dinner.  While the spaghetti squash was roasting in the oven, we prepped the eggplant by slicing thick slices then breading them with flour and an egg/yogurt mixture.  We double dipped a few of them (egg then flour, repeat) and those seemed to come out better.  They got a quick pan fry in the cast iron pan, then were set on a wire rack in the oven to finish baking for about 15 minutes.  I found some sauce from summers past in the freezer, so we heated that up on the stove to top the spaghetti squash once it was done.  On the side, a small bowl of tomatoes with oil, vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt finished off the meal along with a glass of wine.  Really a great dinner, and we even used the leftover eggplant on sandwiches the next day!

A quick note on the flour.. it’s not ENTIRELY local.  I picked this up at the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market a year or two ago.  From what I remember, the owner was visiting family in the area and brought along his flour from Minnesota to sell at  our local  market.  In that sense, it travelled along with a person who was making a trip anyway, and wasn’t using up extra “food miles” just to get to my doorstep, so while it’s not local, I’m going to allow it since it still follows in the One Local Summer ideals of a lower food carbon footprint and not using excess food miles to transport food from across the country when I can find it basically in my backyard.  I do occasionally make exceptions for things like this that come home with us on our travels.  The Sunrise Flour Mill also uses varieties of wheat that are heritage wheat varities and more along the lines of what one might have eaten 100 years ago, so it’s pretty unique and will be fun to work with!

Ingredients:
Eggplant – North Star Orchard
Tomato Sauce – My Garden
Spaghetti Squash – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Tomatoes – My Garden and Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Wine, vinegar, oil, salt.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2013 – Week 22

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CHILI! My favorite, and the first time we’ve been able to pull this off as a one local summer meal.  Our local orchard, North Star, had been experimenting with growing beans and drying them, so we finally got a harvest and my FIRST thought upon seeing them at the market was CHILI!  Husband again took the lead on this since he’s the chili master and had this amazing stuff simmering in the crock pot all day.  I can honestly tell you that the only thing holding us back from the chili was the beans, and we had been pretty much doing this locally anyway, using bison instead of cow beef since it makes the resulting chili way less greasy.  The whole meal together on the table was incredible – the asian pears were heated up a bit and drizzled with maple syrup.  We managed to get enough tomatoes from the volunteer tomato plants to put in salads, so that worked out great.  Really can’t wait to do this again!

Chili with Cornbread and Salad:
Bison – Backyard Bison
Hot Bison Sausage – Backyard Bison
Beans – North Star Orchard
Celery – North Star Orchard
Peppers – Jack’s Farm
Jalapenos – Charlestown Farm
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Tomato sauce – Homemade, frozen from prior harvest
Tomatoes – Our Garden
Asian Pears – North Star Orchard
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Salad Greens – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – cocoa powder, salt, pepper, olive oil, balsamic vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 12

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So it’s not as spectacular as last week’s entry, and it’s still a zucchini pizza, but a little different this time – no polenta.  The ends of those monster zucchini had no seeds, so when I grilled up the rings from last week, I did these too and saved them for ordinary old zucchini pizza.  They were re-grilled to heat them up and melt the cheese a little, but it was an easy quickie dinner and a good way to use up all that zucchini.  The little green things in the front are Mexican Sour Gherkins.  They’re about the size of a fingertip when ripe, and have been my garden snack when I go out to check on things because it’s so easy to grab a handful and munch in the evening.  Simple dinner here, but still delicious.

Plain old Zucchini Pizza:
Zucchini – My Garden
Goat Mozzarella – Yellow Springs Farm
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Mexican Sour Gherkins – My Garden
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 11

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Sometimes, I impress myself.  I’m not one to really enjoy cooking, which is partly what this whole thing has been about.  I force myself to do this personal challenge of cooking locally all summer long, and it makes me actually cook.  Every once in a while, I really enjoy making the meal because it’s something new and different, and that’s what I’ve got here.  The garden has been giving me ZUCCHINI (all caps, on purpose, because they seem to think they’re watermelons and not zucchini).  Anyone who has grown them before knows that if you neglect the plant for two hours, you end up with baseball bats and that I’m really not exaggerating.  Ours, instead of growing in length, grew in width, spectacularly, and seemingly overnight.  For scale’s sake, that’s a 9″ plate.  The zucchini were really seedy inside, but I sliced them up anyway and once I pulled the seeds out, I had enormous zucchini rings.  Then inspiration hit.  Take zucchini rings, grill, add freshly made polenta (1 cup cornmeal, 3 cup water, boil while stirring until it pulls away from the pan) to the center, bake, flip, top as a pizza and bake until the cheese melts.  And that’s exactly what’s on my plate above – I used blue cheese and caramelized onions for the topping, and the sauce was even made from local tomatoes, courtesy of Jack’s Farm who was selling a big big bag of tomatoes for $6 (there’s another whole pint of sauce in the freezer too!).  I really don’t have a recipe to give you for this, because it’s the kind of thing that is very basic and I’d rather give you the idea and let you go create.

Zucchini Polenta Pizza:
Monster Overgrown Zucchini – My garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 17

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Gnocchi!  This was my first time ever making gnocchi, and I think we did alright!  It was pretty simple – boil about 1lb potatoes for an hour, or until tender, then rice or mash or make them smooshy and non-lumpy as best as possible, add about a cup of flour, shape, dust with flour, and then boil until they float.  Husband worked up the sauce from our own tomatoes canned this year, a load of peppers from the garden (SO MANY PEPPERS THIS YEAR), an onion, and some Ground Bison.  This is really my idea of comfort food, and it fit the bill.  Most of the ingredients came from a farm stand we passed on the way home from a trip to Lancaster, and I neglected to get the name of the farm.  Suffice to say, they weren’t shipped in from California, but from just a county away.

Gnocchi with Bison Sauce:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Potatoes – Lancaster Farm Stand
Bison – Backyard Bison
Tomato sauce – My Garden
Onion – Lancaster Farm Stand
Non Local – Spices, Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 13

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One Local Summer’s last meal is on the table and consumed already.   I can’t believe we made it to the end of the challenge and participated in every single week!   This week, we threw a whole chicken in the smoker with some barbeque sauce leftover from the pulled pork sandwiches and let her cook up while some zucchini, garlic, basil, onions,  and peppers were simmered together with last year’s tomato sauce from the garden.   I decided to pop open a jar of the zucchini pickles, and WOW are they delicious.   Definitely worth doing again next year.   Non-Local ingredients include some vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric (pickles), olive oil, and  McCormick’s Chicken Rub.   Here’s the rundown of local ingredients.

Zucchini: My Garden
Basil: Back Deck Garden
Peppers: My Garden
Garlic: Willow Creek
Onions: North Star Orchard
Chicken: Mt. View Organics
Barbeque sauce: Leftover from Week 11
Wine: New Hope Winery’s Raspberry Wine

Final thoughts – I’m SO glad I participated in this year’s challenge and I can’t wait to do it again.   This challenge has gotten me into local foods and has actually gotten me cooking (something that shocked and amazed my family and friends).   I hope to continue doing one local meal a week since our Phoenixville Farmer’s Market is open year-round and I can get most items (except for seasonal vegetables) regularly.   Thanks to the folks at FarmToPhilly.com for hosting the challenge!