blue cheese – Sheetar.com

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 10

By Sheetar 26 July 2016 25 July 2016

Still playing catch-up, but here’s One Local Summer week 10! I had originally looked up recipes for Polenta Pizza, and came up with a recipe that had that name, but it much more resembles cornbread pizza than polenta pizza. I figure once you add anything other than water and butter/oil to cornmeal, especially when the extra ingredients are flour and baking powder, it ends up being cornbread and not polenta. Still, for cornbread pizza done in the cast iron skillet, this was pretty decent! I think the blue cheese and chorizo actually worked out well with the cornbread base so it wasn’t a traditional pizza on top of cornbread. The quick jolt near the end of cooking under the broiler was really key to really bubble the cheese on top, and the crust ended up with a nice, crunchy bottom (not burnt, just nicely well-baked). The leftovers are even good!

The recipe came from here (http://www.simplehealthykitchen.com/skillet-margarita-polenta-pizza/) and let’s forgive them for the misspelling of Margherita because even though the recipe was a little misleading, it was still good and cooked up as specified!

Ingredients:
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Smoked Chorizo – Countrytime Farm
Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Basil – My Garden
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Egg – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, Baking Powder

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 10b

By Sheetar 9 July 2015 9 July 2015

Still another catchup post, but I think as of next week I’ll be back on track. This week, even though the husband was home, I contributed a good bit! We have a basil plant that’s gone wild and before it bolted, I thought I’d gather up the basil and put it to good use as basil pasta and pesto. I blenderized the basil with some whey leftover from a batch of cheese the husband made earlier that week, olive oil, and a small amount of non-local pine nuts, then combined that mixture with flour to make the pasta (1 cup flour to 1/4 cup liquid). The meatballs were part veal, part pork with onions, chives, basil, and some salt and pepper, baked in the oven. Then grilled zucchini and a cucumber salad finish the meal along with a glass of mead (technically a pyment) from the Sap House Meadery in New Hampshire. Okay, that’s not entirely local, but it did follow us home from vacation and didn’t take a special trip to get here, so I’ll allow it!

For something special this dinner, we made dessert with leftover milk from the waffles last meal, honey, and raspberries from the bush in the yard. Paired it with a raspberry mead from Moonlight Meadery (another followed-us-home mead from New Hampshire). It was the perfect end to a lovely evening!

Ingredients:
Zucchini – Clover Hill Farm
Basil – My Garden
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Equinox
Ground Veal – Birchrun Hills
Ground Pork – Countrytime Farm
Cucumbers – Clover Hill Farm
Onion – Clover Hill Farm
Flour – Whole Wheat Pastry Flour, Mill at Anselma
Milk Camphill Kimberton
Honey Baues’ Busy Bees
Raspberries – Our Yard
Raspberry Mead – Moonlight Meadery
Pyment – Sap House Meadery
Non Local – Pine nuts, salt, pepper, olive oil, homemade vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 11

By Sheetar 23 September 2014 15 September 2014

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

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 10

By Sheetar 16 September 2014 15 September 2014

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)

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 9

By Sheetar 4 September 2014 26 August 2014

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 2014 Meal 8

By Sheetar 2 September 2014 26 August 2014

Another one down, and just six more to go till my goal of 14 for the summer. So far, it looks like we’ll more than surpass the goal of 14 meals, and I really do like the pacing of meals vs. weeks MUCH better. It feels less like an obligation and more like fun this way. What’s on that plate? A sort of remix of chicken parm. I breaded the chicken using goat’s milk yogurt and cornmeal for more of a cowboy sort of version of chicken parm, topped it with tomatoes, blue cheese, and mushrooms (MUSHROOMS! Oh how I love fungus). Some potatoes and zucchini on the side and KABAM. A pretty easy one local summer meal. Instead of frying the chicken, I popped it on a tray and baked it which kept it lighter and, in a weird way, crispier. Sometimes the greasiness of pan frying just doesn’t work, and I’m glad I baked it instead. The leftovers from this are already gone even, it was that good.

Ingredients:
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Zucchini – My Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 5

By Sheetar 7 August 2014 4 August 2014

Another meal down, and just 9 left to my goal of 14 which we should be able to meet or exceed! We had a nice party over the weekend and have had a bit of fabulous weather (lows aorund 60 degrees F in July!), so we took advantage of the cool evenings for some outdoor dining. In the small bowl at top left is a tomato salad with some fresh basil, olive oil, and homemade vinegar. The main part of the dinner was a Bison sirloin topped with blue cheese – sooo good. Next, going around clockwise, are blue potatoes from our garden that were boiled, smooshed, and then put in a pan to roast after being doused with malt vinegar and sprinkled with salt. The idea for those came from Cook’s Country, but they didn’t quite smoosh down the way they were shown in the recipe. Blue potatoes seem to be starchier, and we boiled instead of baking them (short on time), so that might have been the difference. They still tasted excellent and really soaked up the vinegar. It was almost like having malt vinegar on french fries without the frying. Next around the plate are Corn Jalapeno Fritters from this month’s Bon Appetit. Couple of changes to locafy it involved using pickled banana peppers I had on hand already from a prior year’s bumper crop of peppers, and we used grilled corn leftover from our party over the weekend. The flour came from our local historic grist mill, and we had to add a little more flour and an extra egg since ours weren’t traditional grocery store ‘large’ eggs, but smaller farm-fresh happy-chicken eggs. They were SO good and so easy to make that we’re already thinking of other veggies to add in on the next go around since we still have leftover corn to burn through. And that’s that! I’m a few weeks late posting this one, but I kind of wanted to space out the One Local Summer posts on the blog instead of flooding them out as they’re cooked.

Ingredients:
Tomatoes – Hoagland Farms
Basil – Our Garden
Bison Sirloin – Backyard Bison
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Potatoes – Our Garden
Corn – Hoagland Farms
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Equinox Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Hot Peppers – Our Garden
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, olive oil, malt vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 4

By Sheetar 31 July 2014 31 July 2014

The husband is home again and took over for One Local Summer for this meal. We have fries, sausage, a bowl of tomatoes, and a seasonal favorite, a peach with blue cheese! We had planned to do everything on the grill, but a crazy rain storm and lack of propane pushed us inside. We did finally have occasion to use our homemade vinegar though, so that was a neat addition and worked really well with some oil over the tomatoes. We soaked the potatoes in salt water before frying, and that really worked out much better than previous attempts. Not a bad meal for a stormy evening!

Ingredients:
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Potatoes – North Star Orchard
Beer Brats – Backyard Bison
Tomatoes – Hoagland Farm
Non Local – malt vinegar, oil, salt, pepper,