Category: <span>One Local Summer</span>

Category: One Local Summer

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 22

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TWENTY TWO!  Yeah, that’s a lot of orange on that plate (Heyooo Dutch reference again), but it’s delicious orange!  The plate contains a pork butt steak with steamed carrots, mashed sweet potatoes, and a chunk of delicious Fat Cat Cheese.  Mmmm root vegetables and meat, all washed down with a glass of sweet apple cider.  Husband braved the chill outside to cook the pork on the grill after it was rubbed with a sweet and spicy  rub  which, while the rub isn’t made from locally sourced ingredients, it is blended by a local woman, so I’ll count it as a partial win.  This is probably one of our favorite cuts of pork because it’s easier to grill up and still keep it tender and juicy.  Pork goes from edible to rubber quickly if you’re not careful with the temperature, but the butt steaks seem more forgiving.  It was devoured quickly, but there was enough steak and vegetables for some leftovers.

Just a quick note too, the cheese maker, Birchrun Hills, has started a Kickstarter to help them “Raise a Cave” at their farm.  They’re currently renting space at another facility to make their cheeses which isn’t incredibly cost or time effective.  We love these folks SO much and enjoy supporting local agriculture, and hope you might consider sending a few dollars their way!  It’s always great to see Sue at our local farmers market, and we’d love to see this succeed.  Also, if you haven’t yet been able to find their Smoked Blue Cheese, you aren’t really living.  Honest.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/993112740/birchrun-hills-farm-raise-a-cheese-cave

Ingredients:
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Carronts – North Star Orchard
Apple Cider – North Star Orchard
Pork Butt Steak – Countrytime Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Milk – Camphill Kimberton
Non Local – Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 21

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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 20

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DSC_1294-rgbMeal 20.  Meal TWENTY.  Thanks to the husband’s big interest in One Local Summer and his culinary creativity, we’ve pushed well past the goal of 14 meals and made it to twenty meals with still more planned.  He’s back home again and decided to work up a meal he remembers fondly from his childhood.  His mom was regularly cooking for a table set for  10 or more people, so recipes that were cost effective and served lots of people at once were the standard.  This is called Hutspot, a Dutch meal consisting of mashed carrots, parsnips, potatoes, and topped with bacon.  It actually dates back to the 1500s in Holland and was no doubt a part of Doug’s paternal family that came over from Holland in the 1950s.  History and dinner!  I’ll admit that it’s kind of bland (that’s the point though) but the bacon on top is a nice touch and the use of root vegetables means you could’ve likely made this most of the winter as well when fresh vegetables were scarce (pre-electricity).  Perfect time of year to introduce this into our One Local Summer set of meals.  On to the ingredients!

Ingredients:
Turnips – Jack’s Farm
Carrots – Jack’s Farm
Potatoes – Our Garden
Bacon – Countrytime Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 19

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Still chugging along into October.  We should be winding down in the next month or so since the availability of fresh vegetables tends to fall off after the first hard frost.  Fortunately, our mushroom guy grows indoors in a climate controlled environment and still has PLENTY of fresh mushrooms every week.  I used a recipe this week, kinda.  As usual, I used the recipe as an idea and then modified it to suit the local ingredients available, putting the whole thing into one large casserole dish instead of individual ramekins to save on cleanup time.  What I should’ve done is made mashed sweet potatoes and made a sort of mushroom shepherd’s pie, adding in other root vegetables, but this still came out really great and surprisingly filling.  I used three types of mushrooms – Shiitake, Crimini, and Chicken of the Woods.  I’d never had Chicken of the Woods before, so that was a new mushroom to me.  It cooked up a lot like chicken with a thicker, more solid texture that was a little reminiscent of  extra-firm tofu.  The beer used was our “house” beer, the Flying Pig Stout named for a hilarious incident involving a pig shaped dog toy on a rope and a pot of boiling wort.  We pretty much keep a keg of that on tap throughout the year since stouts are a big favorite in the house.  It’s not really local, but it is brewed and poured in about a 50 foot radius which is far fewer food miles than trucking in beer from California.  What’s best about this is it’s all for me!  Husband would never touch a meal made nearly entirely from mushrooms, so the leftovers are safe.  Add some butternut squash ‘fries’ and a couple of slices of asian pear on the side and it’s a full plate!

On a side note, my annual saffron harvest is now over and I need a recipe that uses saffron and local ingredients.  I’m open to suggestions!  Keep in mind that I don’t/can’t eat anything that once lived in water, but will eat every vegetable available!  In past years, I’ve made saffron pasta and saffron polenta, so something new would be fun.  Maybe blue potato saffron gnocchi?

Ingredients:
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Butternut Squash – Jack’s Farm
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Tomato – Our Garden
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, oil, thyme

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 18

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Another week down!  This has become an annual favorite of mine.  There’s a magical time of year where sweet potatoes and fennel are both available at the same time.  Those get roasted in the oven with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and then sausage is added on top till that’s cooked through.  It’s a really easy dinner to create and the leftovers keep and re-heat well.  Add a bowl of applesauce (oh yes, there’s still more) and a mug of beer, and we have a complete dinner.

Ingredients:
Fennel – North Star Orchard
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Veal Kielbasa – Birchrun Hills
Old Tosser ESB beer – Armstrong Ales
Apple Sauce – grandparents house
Non Local – salt, pepper, olive oil

And just in case you were interested, the mug was even locally produced by Tom Longacre.  It’s a HUGE mug and works really well with session beers!

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 17

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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

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 16

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Oh yes, it’s crock pot season!  The husband is a master of the crock pot and always manages to work up meals that blend perfectly together in that steamy cauldron of good cooking.  It’s funny, crock pot meals never tend to look all that appealing, but you can be sure my mouth was watering for the last two hours of cooking because the whole house smelled amazing!  Starting with a base of apple cider from our local orchard, husband added a Pork Loin Roast to the pot and topped that with cabbage, apples, onions, a little maple syrup, salt and pepper, and a little dried mustard powder.  Such easy prep for such amazing results.  By the end of the six hours, the pork had become incredibly tender, the cabbage simmered down, and the apple cider had infused its way into everything.  Add to that a little bread (not entirely local, but from a local bakery), a chunk of cheese, and some delicious Hopped Blueberry Mead from a Meadery in New Hampshire, and we had a great fall dinner.

Ingredients:
Pork Loin Roast – Countrytime Farm
Onions – Hoagland Farms
Cabbage – Jack’s Farm
Tomme Mole Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Bread – St. Peter’s Bakery
Cider – North Star Orchard
Apples – Grandparents House (tons of apple trees!)
Mead – Sap House Meadery
Non Local – Vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard powder

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 15

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And now we’re surpassing the goal of 14 with ease!  I think this is the best attempt at cooking Bison Ribs the husband has ever had.  They’re a little tricky being much lower in fat and need to be cooked low and slow.  The ribs were back ribs and were put in the smoker with apple wood, cooked for about 4 hours resulting in DELICIOUS ribs.  On the side we have those popular corn fritters, a grilled peach with melted blue cheese, and a bowl in the back with tomatoes from the garden, a sprig of basil, and some local cheese.  The wine is a homemade mead made partially with cherries I picked in Maryland and was a great match to the rest of dinner.

Ingredients:
Bison Ribs – Backyard Bison
Corn – Brogue Hydroponics
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Peppers – Neighbor’s garden (we share!)
Blue Cheese and Equinox Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomatoes – Our Garden
Basil – Our Garden
Non Local – Wine, spices, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper