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One Local Summer – Week 19

By Sheetar 17 September 2010 15 September 2010

Well it’s feeling more like fall and there were some GREAT squash and pumpkin choices available at the Anselma Market this week. I stopped by the Smith’s Produce booth and found a funny green pumpkin that I was told was a Kabocha pumpkin. The producers even had a recipe ready for Kabocha pumpkin soup, so the inspiration belongs to them! Going back to one of my favorite food blogs, I found a recipe for Pumpkin Soup with Smoked Paprika. Sadly we didn’t have smoked paprika on hand, but we did have the regular kind. I’m sure the smoked variety would’ve added an extra kick, but this turned out just fine. I left out the cream since I couldn’t find any locally, but the one cup of goat’s milk created the texture I was looking for. Also, I’d be LOST without our immersion blender – it got a solid work-out with this recipe and did a fine job. I added on some grilled cheese to make this dinner and sprinkled some chevre and the toasted seeds from the pumpkin on top of the soup.

Pumpkin Soup with Grilled Cheese:
Kabocha Pumpkin – Smith’s Produce
Onion – North Star Orchard
Garlic – North Star Orchard
Apple – Unknown Vendor at Anselma (forgot to grab the name!)
Goat’s Milk – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Sage – My Garden
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. Whole Wheat
Yogurt Cheese – Farmstead Fresh
Non-local – Butter, Paprika, Cumin, Salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 10

By Sheetar 18 July 2010 18 July 2010

I really cannot believe it’s week ten already. I just didn’t feel like getting everything together and seriously cooking this week, but I did manage a meal. This week, I bring you a veggie panini!

Vegetable Panini:
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. This is their wheat bread.
Yellow Squash – Arrgh I can never remember the name of this producer at the Anselma Market
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Onion – North Star Orchard
Cherry Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Eggplant – Smith’s Produce
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini Mushrooms.
Colby Dill Cheese – Conabella Farms. This cheese is absolutely amazing.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 8

By Sheetar 9 July 2010 9 July 2010

Only the finest in outdoor cooking! This was last week during some of that AMAZING and beautiful weather we had. We busted out the new electric fondue pot and went to town with some beef broth fondue. There’s no real plate photo today because cooking meat and veggies in the broth gives you little bites here and there, a lot of conversation, and a relaxing and long dinner – perfect for a gathering of friends. Dear friend Debbie and her 4 month old son joined us for this meal and it was a really enjoyable evening. The ingredients list looks much shorter than usual, but it really was a filling meal and we certainly were not left hungry when the meat and veggies were gone.

Fondue:
Turkey – Mountain View Organics
Top Round Beef – Bethany Farm
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Potatoes – Smith’s Produce
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Baguette – Saint Peter’s Bakery
Non-Local – Beef Broth

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 5

By Sheetar 16 June 2010 16 June 2010

Dear friend Abbie was over for a long weekend so I subjected her not only to the farmer’s market, but also to cooking a One Local Summer dinner with me. Reflecting back on the food coma we were in afterwards, I dare say that she didn’t mind the experience one bit. Dinner consisted of a bison burger stuffed with mushrooms and blue cheese on some thick slices of wheat bread. There’s a little bit of salad at the back too (yep, salad, again). We probably made the burgers a bit too thick, but it didn’t seem to matter much since they both disappeared.

Burger:
Bison – Backyard Bison. Just your plain old ground bison.
Egg – Mountain View Organics. Just one, to help bind the burger together.
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills. Not only was it inside the burger, but we melted some on top too.
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. We decided on Shiitake for the burger, and put a few on top too.
Spinach – Charlestown Farm. Just for a little crispy crunch in between the burger and bread.
Garlic Scapes – Charlestown Farm. Chopped these and sauteed them with the mushrooms.
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. Wheat bread cut into thick slices
Zucchini Pickles – from my garden. Canned these last year and they’re still incredible.
Non-Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil.

Salad:
Lettuce – Jack’s Farm. Looseleaf lettuce, delightful. We topped this with some more blue cheese
Non-Local – Salad Dressing

Wine:
Gewurztraminer – J Maki Winery. I don’t know what he does to this grape to make such a unique Gewurztraminer, but boy is it ever delightful.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 2

By Sheetar 17 May 2010 17 May 2010

And we’re onto Week 2. So far, there’s not a lot of produce to pick from at the market given that our growing season REALLY gets moving at the end of May into early June. Oley Valley Mushrooms always comes through with fantastic mushrooms – these Crimini ‘shrooms were seriously the best mushrooms I have ever eaten. There may have been one or two that didn’t make it into the pan. The recipe we used was the Beef Stroganoff recipe from SimplyRecipes.com with a couple of local substitutions made. We used bison in place of beef, goat’s milk yogurt instead of sour cream, and since we couldn’t find onions at the market just yet, we ended up replacing those with a few leeks and it worked out just fine. So, let’s start in the back with the bread and run around, clockwise.

Bread:
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. This was their rustic white bread, which was sweet and super soft.

Beef Stroganoff:
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini mushrooms with this incredible earthy flavor.
Bison – Backyard Bison. We used a sirloin that we happened to have in the freezer from a few markets ago.
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. The yogurt is tangy and actually made a perfect substitute for sour cream.
Leeks – Hoagland Farm. It’s a little bit of an odd substitution for shallots, but it worked out well.
Noodles – Mill at Anselma. The base for the noodles was whole wheat pastry flour from the mill made with wheat grown in Pennsylvania. This is one find that I’m SUPER proud of and just love that it’s a local ingredient. I also used an egg from Mountain View Organics and a touch of olive oil. Then the pasta roller/cutter and KitchenAid mixer did the rest of the work. These noodles really came out fantastic, arguably my best attempt at pasta yet.
Non-local – Olive oil, spices.

Honey Rhubarb Muffin:
Okay, maybe this wasn’t 100% local, but we’ll call it a bonus localish item on the plate. The recipe came from here and I tried to keep it as local as possible, but with bakery items, it’s just not possible to use pastry flour and get just the right consistency. A blend of flours (all-purpose and pastry) seems to work out best, and I figure it’s better to stick with that than force the locality issue and get something that’s more like hardtack than a muffin. We left out the chopped nuts.
Flour – Mill at Anselma. Split 50/50 with generic all-purpose flour.
Rhubarb – Hoagland Farm. I remember not liking rhubarb as a kid, but now? I cannot get enough. There is chopped rhubarb in the muffin as well as a sort of honey rhubarb reduction jelly sort of spread on top.
Egg – Mountain View Organics.
Sour Cream – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Substituted goat’s milk yogurt here again, and it worked fine.
Honey – Baues Busy Bees.
Non-local – Sugar, Canola Oil, Salt, Baking Soda, Vanilla

Wine:
Penns Woods Chambourcin Reserve (2006). It’s a local winery that we hadn’t had the chance to try before and decided to go for it since they were at the farmer’s market running tastings. We were not disappointed.

This might just be the best one local summer meal we’ve ever made. I’m pretty sure it will be going into regular dinner rotation in the future! Now I want to hear about some other recipe sites that you enjoy using for dinner ideas. I’m slowly picking through Elise’s Simply Recipes site and am just plain running out of meal ideas. So, please share your favorites!

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 1

By Sheetar 10 May 2010 10 May 2010

I don’t think farmtophilly.com is doing the One Local Summer challenge again, so I figured I’d just do it on my own for the duration of the summer Phoenixville Farmer’s Market. This past weekend was the first market for the regular season and wow was it incredible. There were so many great vendors, and the market was PACKED! So nice to see. So, the meal!

Clockwise, starting with the pile of mushrooms..

Salad:
Portabella mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Always delicious.
Mixed Greens – Jack’s Farm. Crisp and clean. Perfect.
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills. This blue cheese is incredible and a household favorite.

Bread:
Bread – Sweetwater Bakery. The ingredients may not be entirely local, but the baking sure is. This is the first time we’ve tried their bread and we were definitely not disappointed.

Chicken Roulade:
Chicken – Mountain View Organics. Pounded out thin
Bacon – Countrytime Farm. Nitrate free, and if you’ve never had nitrate free bacon? This stuff is amazing.
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Same Portabella’s as the salad, and they cooked up perfectly.
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills. Same as in the Salad.

Non-Local:
We marinated the chicken in homebrewed beer, garlic, and spices, then added some BBQ sauce (mixed with Tangerine juice, maple syrup, and Good Ole Jack) and some other spices on the outside (paprika, Montreal Chicken Seasoning) while it was cooking up in the smoker.

This was a pretty easy one. The bacon stayed soft inside the roulade and the fat also kept the chicken moist, not to mention the slow-cooking in the smoker aided as well. The Husband decided to not use mushrooms in his (blasphemy, I know), but did come up with an excellent BBQ sauce and spiced the outside just right.

I’m so excited for another Local Summer to get started, I’m already planning a whole bunch of meals in my head for the next few weeks until my backyard vegetable garden gets growing!

food

Zucchini Week: Day 3

By Sheetar 29 July 2009 29 July 2009


Day three! Are you sick of zucchini yet? I’m not! In fact, it’s pretty fun using up zucchini left and right in all these different recipes with the whole meal coming out pretty different every time. Today was a Zucchini Breakfast Casserole, another recipe from Elise’s vast collection. This is the last one from her for the week, I promise! I’ve come to love casseroles because they’re just so easy – put all the ingredients in one dish, bake, refrigerate leftovers to enjoy all week. And, I’m willing to bet that this is just as good the next day as it is fresh. I used a fresh goat’s milk ricotta cheese, basil from my back deck herb planter, and substituted fresh heriloom tomatoes from the farmer’s market. The bread was a “rustic wheat” that was really delicious in sandwiches, but I happened to have just one slice leftover for this recipe. I also added a lump of that spicy chipotle chevre again. There aren’t a lot of ingredients in this one, but the simplicity is what makes it so attractive and delicious. It’s easy and quick to make and goes a long way.	Zucchini Breakfast Casserole – Recipe on SimplyRecipes.com
	Ingredients Used: Zucchini – my garden Basil – my herb garden Egg – Mt. View Organics Tomatoes – North Star Orchard Cheese – Shellbark Hollow Farms Bread – Oley Baker *Chevre – Amazing Acres

food

Introducing the Lemon Cucumber

By Sheetar 26 July 2009 26 July 2009

I’ve taken to growing this peculiar little vegetable in the garden every year after finding a packet of seeds in Target (Thank you Martha Stewart). I thought, Wow, that’s different, let’s give it a shot. Well they grew like weeds the first year, but our soil wasn’t quite ready to support them, so I got a few, but the vines died off. We tilled in a little compost this year and they’ve all but taken over the garden.

They’re somewhere between baseball and softball sized usually and, when ripe, have a yellow skin that ranges from a very pale yellow to nearly orange. All the information I can find online says that they’re less bitter than traditional cucumbers and have more seeds. Today, one little cucumber was destined to be a part of my sandwich, paired with some bison bologna, lettuce, goat’s milk feta cheese, and some rustic wheat bread. DELICIOUS! This upcoming week, we’re going to review the Zucchini, all week. If you’ve ever grown zucchini, you understand the agony of finding new things to do with zucchini after you’ve already steamed it, fried it, and grilled it. I’m going to try and do all the recipes using only local ingredients to go along with my One Local Summer challenge.