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One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 14

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MMmmm Pork.  Also, our goal meal, number 14!  It doesn’t look like much on the plate, but the whole thing was a delicious summer meal, even if it’s getting to be the end of summer.  Corn on the cob cooked on the grill with a Pork Butt Steak and a baked apple sprinkled with maple sugar then given a creme brulee treatment.  The wine is our homemade (and all local) PA Maple Reserve – 2 gallons of PA maple syrup and three gallons of local cider.  So really, aside from the spices, this one is all Pennsylvania!  Husband coated the pork butt steak in a home-blended rub, then grilled it with some smoke chips on the grill along with the corn.  The apple baked in the oven with some wine, and then got that sprinkle of maple sugar that he carmelized with the brulee torch.  Best way to eat an apple ever?  Maybe!

Ingredients:
Pork Butt Steak – Countrytime Farm
Corn – Brogue Hydroponics
Apples – North Star Orchard
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Wine – Miller’s Maple and Linvilla Orchards
Non Local – Spices, salt, pepper, olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 13

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Meat and potatoes.. can you guess who cooked?  Yep, the husband!  But, no complaints from me, because chicken and potatoes is a great dinner, especially with fall slowly taking over summer.  This meal was cooked the day after the prior meal, because we happened to have the food on hand for all of it, so we figured we might as well!  A basic tomato and onion salad with oil in vinegar in the bowl using our own tomatoes now that they’re finally ripening on the vine.  The darker color is because they’re mostly Brandywine Black tomatoes, a house favorite.  The vinegar is the stuff we make ourselves using either our own mead or Yuengling lager – we very seldom use commercial vinegar anymore!  Purple mashed potatoes you say?  Yep, made from blue potatoes harvested from the garden earlier that week.  The potatoes didn’t grow so well – our soil is full of clay despite 6 or 7 years of tilling in compost, it  still can’t quite handle growing potatoes.  They still have a wonderful color and taste, and cook up well, they just look like massive clumps of 3 or 4 potatoes that didn’t split up.  The chicken was cooked a-la-beercan-up-the-chicken-butt and came out nice and tender.  The beer used was Landshark, so not local, but it’s basically used for steam and isn’t a major contribution to the meal.  Overall, really delcious!

Ingredients:  
Chicken – Bendy Brook Farm
Potatoes – My Garden
Tomatoes – My Garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive oil, vinegar, chicken seasoning, pepper, salt, beer

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 247: Motorbikes, pillions, uniforms, couriers, turban, tents (again), towels

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I had only one lonely motorbike in my collection of family photos, but no person on it and no real story about it, so I decided to go with uniforms for this week’s Sepia Saturday.  The uniform is that of my grandfather, John Rachocki.  He served in the Air Force from 21 July 1941 through 13 Dec 1945 as a driver, acheiving the grade of Sergeant.  Back then, the Air Force was still part of the Army and was the “Army Air Force.”  He served for only 1 year and 18 days abroad, involved in the Rhineland  campaign.  I don’t know much about his service, but we have a few photos of him in uniform at various places during his service in the Air Force.  I was only four when he passed away, so I have very few memories of him but am told he was a gentle giant (at 5’11”) who only spoke when he had something to say.  Upon returning after service in the Air Force, he worked as a coal miner in Pennsylvania until he retired, living out his life in the house that he built.

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One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 12

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Husband is back home and went for a simple but delicious favorite this week – Sausage and peppers!  The farmer’s market has seen a glut of peppers, so we went with it, using some tomatoes from our garden along with pork sausage and some homemade sourdough bread.  Topped off with a cool glass of crisp, tart cider and we had ourselves a great meal.  It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a quick and easy meal that always goes over well.

Ingredients:
Pork Sausage – Countrytime Farm
Tomatoes – My Garden
Peppers – Jack’s Farm
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive Oil, Pepper, salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 11

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Another meal down, just three more to go to make the goal line.  I was on my own again for this meal, but I had this idea in mind for a while.  It’s a Philly Cheesesteak on a sourdough roll with Chanterelle mushrooms and blue cheese.  When the right mushroom came along for the last meal, I saved some for this dinner.  I’d been working on a sourdough starter for a while and got it going really well with the same flour from the Eggplant Parm, Meal 9.  I decided to make rolls for the sandwiches instead of a loaf of bread because I wanted more of a roll shape.  I let them rise up in a standard cereal bowl, but should’ve let them go a little longer.  The rolls came out a bit dense, but still had a wonderful sourdough flavor.  The mushrooms and onions were sauteed together, added to the bison chip steak, and the roll was given a thick coat  of the blue cheese spread.  Going counter clockwise around the plate, we have grilled eggplant, blue potato fries, and some green beans.  The whole thing  made for a really great dinner, and the fancy mushrooms and blue cheese worked very well with the bison making for a delicious fancy-pants cheesesteak.

Ingredients:
Potatoes – My Garden
Green Beans – North Star Orchard
Zucchini – My Garden
Bison Chip Steak – Backyard Bison
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Non Local – Olive Oil, salt, pepper

Sepia Saturday

Sepia Saturday 246: Children, tents, fences, fields, poppies, smocks, sailor-suits

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Well, I couldn’t resist posting these two for this week’s Sepia Saturday.  When I saw the prompt photo, these two immediately came to mind, mostly because they match the prompt photo so well!  I’ve pasted what’s written on the back of the photo at the bottom of the image because it’s fun to see the handwriting, especially from other countries.  I think the photos are probably from about 1930 +- 5 years and are from my husband’s Dutch family, likely taken somewhere in northern Holland.

Left Photo: We have, Left to Right, Ellechien Dijkemna, Geertje Bouwman, and Willemina Dijkema.  “Elly” and “Mien” were sisters of my husband’s paternal grandmother, Hilje Dijkema.  Geertje is probably a family friend of some sort – I haven’t been able to connect her to the tree yet.  I have to imagine that Hilje took the photo since she’s in the next photo.

Right Photo: Left to Right are Ellechien Dijkema and Hilje Dijkema.  Different dog in this photo!

The set looks like a nice afternoon out somewhere.  I can’t tell if they’re actualy camping or just using the tent for shade.  Either way, it makes for a charming set of photos for this week’s theme, showing that the three sisters spent lots of time together as young girls.

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Gloves/Mittens, knitting

Night Owl Mittens

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Actual knitting content on the blog!  Fear not, even though there have been a lack of posts about knitting and spinning, I’ve still been doing both.  It’s just a lack of time to photograph the finished objects!  But I have one here, and there will hopefully be more to post in the next few weeks.  They knit up in three days (about 5 hours in the evenings after dinner and before bed), and used about 225 yards between the two colors (125 of the blue and 100 of the yellow).  The yarn is a nice, densely spun wool completely sourced and produced in the USA from Rambouillet sheep, using natural dyes that surprisingly didn’t bleed when I gave these a wash and block.  The yarn has incredible stitch definition and feels really sturdy which is perfect for mittens.  I only made one big modification to the pattern – I switched the thumb to a “sore thumb” instead of the charted traditional Selbu Thumb since I find a sore thumb fits better.  A pretty easy modification to make, just shifting the thumb gusset  placement over a few stitches.  Speaking of the thumb, I love that cute little owl worked into the thumb chart.  Really happy with how these came out between the colors and the fit!  Finished them just in time for the slow creep of Fall’s chill.

Pattern:  Night Owl Mittens
Designer: Jorid Linvik
Needles: US 1.5 (2.5 mm) for the cuff, US 2 (2.75mm) for the mitten body
Yarn:  HiKoo by Skacel American B.R.A.N.D. in Yellowstone (Yellow-108) and Hawaii Volcanoes (Blue-102)
–Ravelry Project Link–

 

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 10

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Wow.  So this is a pizza.  Kinda.  The crust is polenta that was baked in the oven to help crisp it up.  Then the toppings were added.  OH THE TOPPINGS.  Husband was away, so I was free to add as much fungus as I pleased, and I did.  The mushroom guy was on vacation the week prior, but found a bunch of Chanterelle mushrooms growing in the wild, so he grabbed them and brought them home.  This was the first time I’ve ever had Chanterelles, and just typing about them is making my mouth water.  They’re peppery but sweet and might just be my new favorite mushroom.  I sauteed the mushrooms with some onions and peppers.  Once the crust (a polenta crust with a wee bit of butter) was crispy enough from baking in the oven, I globbed some homemade Cherry Jam (from locally picked cherries), blue cheese spread, then put on the onions/mushrooms/peppers.  On top of that I sprinkled on some more blue cheese and popped the whole thing back in the oven to mush together.  This was INCREDIBLE.  The whole thing disappeared in one sitting since it was about a 12″ pizza anyway.  The cherry jam ended up oozing off the pizza and made the crust a little mushy, but it really didn’t matter – it just meant I had to use a fork and knife instead of picking each slice up.  It was worth it!

Ingredients:
Corn Meal – Mill at Anselma
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Peppers – Charlestown Farm
Chanterelle Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese (spread and crumble) – Birchrun Hills
Cherries – Walnut Springs Farm
Non Local – Sugar (in jam)