Tag: <span>cheese</span>

Tag: cheese

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 14

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Husband returned home again and as his first act of One Local Summer head chef, he made a quick breakfast.  Let’s be honest, most of these meals are a little team effort, but I usually play sous chef to his ideas, chopping and prepping ingredients for him to work his magic.  Well, I happened to have a few crepes left over from the last meal, so he quickly turned those into chorizo, egg, and cheese crepes (though, overstuffed like that, really tacos more than anything else!).  We also had a bunch of pink potatoes which made the oddly colored hash brows on the side.  Our grape harvest was just starting to come in from the vines in the back yard, so we included a few bunches of those along with a big cup of cold brewed coffee, my newest obsession.  Sadly, the coffee isn’t local, but as a caffeine addict, I can’t function without it.  Fairly simple, but filling and mighty delicious – a great way to start a One Local Day!

Ingredients:
Flour Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Milk Shellbark Hollow
Butter  Handmade by Abby
Smoked Chorizo – Countrytime Farm
Eggs – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue Cheese
Potatoes – Charlestown Farm
Grapes – Our Garden
Non Local – Coffee, salt, pepper, olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 13

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Home alone again, so I decided to try something a little fancier than usual.  Most of the recipes I use are really basic, and for a good reason.  I’ll admit it, I’m a lazy cook.  I like to be finished quickly and be stuffing my face full of delicious food rather than spend two hours creating something that’s gone in under 30 minutes.  I just don’t see the point!  (Some of you do see the point, and cooking is an art form, and that’s wonderful as I do enjoy eating such creations, but dude, the fact that I’m even actually cooking every week is such a big jump from when the microwave was my best friend, that making complicated dinners may never be my thing, and that’s cool too)  Such is the case with this meal.  I got the recipe from here, and it’s one of those ridiculous food blogs with more photos than actual recipe content (20 photos for a recipe that takes up only two pages).  Sadly, I was out of spaghetti squash from the neighbor, so I used the unnamed bumpy yellow generic squash that arrived along with the spaghetti squash the week prior.  Roasted that up in the oven while I prepped the crepes which were actually fairly easy.  Cooked up the mushrooms, combined them with the pureed roasted squash and a little maple syrup while the bechamel sauce cooked down.  BTW, you can halve the recipe for the sauce because it made half a pot full and I needed about maybe a cup’s worth for the amount of crepes the recipe makes.  It’s really absurd, the amount of sauce this made.  Anyway, after the crepes were filled, I crisped them up in the pan, popped them on a plate, drizzled on some of the sauce and called it done.  They were indeed delicious, but  took SO long to make, I’m not sure I’d do this particular recipe again (or, at least, skip the bechamel and just grate some cheese on them and call it done).  Also featured are some cheese, a nice juicy peach and another bowl of tomatoes and cucumbers as is become usual around here!

Ingredients:
Cucumber Full Circle CSA
Tomatoes Full Circle CSA
Flour Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Milk – Shellbark Hollow
Butter –  Handmade by Abby
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills, Red Cat
Mushrooms –  Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onions Clover Hill Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Olive Oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 12

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This summer has gotten ahead of me so quickly, but I finally have time to sit down and catch up on the blog backlog!  This one goes back to June 24th when I was on my own again.  A neighbor had dropped off a spaghetti squash since their garden was going wild with them.  Never one to turn away free vegetables, I steamed the squash, scraped out the wonderfully nutty and delicious spaghetti strands, added some Italian sausage and tomatoes, topped it off with blue cheese, and called that a dinner!  On the side is a tomato and cucumber salad along with a bowl of raspberries from our backyard invader raspberry bush.  The neighbor isn’t fond of raspberries, but the plant has special family meaning (I believe it propagated from another family member’s garden and has been passed down and around a bunch), so she’s more than happy to let us collect all the berries we can have.  This past year it took off under the fence and found a nice spot in our yard, so we’re happy to let it stay.

Ingredients:
Spaghetti Squash – Neighbor’s Garden
Italian Sausage – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Blue Cheese –  Birchrun Hills
Tomatoes –  Full Circle CSA
Raspberries – Our Yard
Armenian Cucumber –  Full Circle CSA
Non Local – Vinegar, Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 11b

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Another catch-up post, and I’m a week behind on posts!  Getting caught up (again) though – it’s crazy how summer can just fly by like this.  Husband is away and I decided to try out a few new things.  I know he’s not a big fan of fennel or farro (really, wheat berries in this case), so I decided to go crazy and combine the two!  I found this recipe (Roasted Fennel  & Farro Salad) and went for it.  The wheat berries came from North Star Orchard and we’ve had them hanging around in the freezer for a while.  They do take a while to cook, but the results are absolutely worth it.  Combined with the fennel and peppers, it made for a dish that was great warm or cold.  The simple cucumber and tomato salad was a recurring theme for the rest of the week too.  Drizzled with a little balsamic vinegar, it made for a great afternoon snack, and there’s just something about fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.  The cucumber is an Armenian cucumber and something I’ve never had before.  It has a soft fuzz on the outside that I scrubbed off with a vegetable scrubber brush, and I found it a little more crisp and less acidic than a regular cucumber.

Also on the plate are peaches with blue cheese, another summer favorite, and beet chips which didn’t come out all that well.  My slices weren’t uniform, so they were too crisp on one half and just barely baked on the other.  That didn’t stop me from eating the whole beet though, and I really like how they taste when roasted.  One final piece of the plate was another new recipe I tried called  gougères – it’s a fancy french savory puff pastry made mostly with flour, butter, eggs, and cheese.  The recipe was part of the Birchrun Hills Kickstarter campaign rewards and I was really psyched to try something new.  It was easier than I thought and I sort of felt like a super hero having produced results that tasty and perfect on the first try!

Altogether a delightful dinner and really rather filling!

Ingredients:
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue and Equinox
Beets – Jack’s Farm
Wheat Berries – North Star Orchard
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Eggs –  Canter Hill Farm
Peppers – Clover Hill Farm
Cucumber – Full Circle CSA
Tomatoes – Full Circle CSA
Butter – Handmade by Abby
Honey – Baues’ Busy Bees
Flour – Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Non Local – Balsamic vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 11a

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This is the last week of catch-up posts, I swear.  Well, at least for now.  I can’t make promises about future weeks, but I’ll try to get them posted on the actual week that they’re made this time!  I’m back by myself for this week, and went a little crazy with the vegetables.  A neighbor had let his zucchini plants go a little wild and had a few baseball bats sitting on the vines.  I graciously offered to take one off his hands so he didn’t have to ding-dong-ditch zucchini all over the neighborhood.  It’s hard to tell underneath all the other vegetables, but I spiral sliced the zucchini with my new slicer and made zucchini pasta!  I cooked that quickly in a big pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, just enough so it still had a little crunch to it, but was warmed thoroughly.  In another pan, I had onions, fennel, and tomatoes cooking together  to put on top of the zucchini pasta.  The sausage was pan seared, carrots steamed, and potatoes roasted.  Then the peaches!  Oh it’s peach season and these are particularly perfect, eat-over-the-kitchen-sink-because-they-drip-everywhere, juicy and delicious peaches.  I smothered them in blue cheese and baked them in the oven and they always make a perfect sweet and savory dessert.  The plate is incredibly full this week, but it’s 90% vegetables, so I don’t feel bad about it, not one bit.

Ingredients:
Zucchini – Neighbor’s Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Carrots – Clover Hill Farm
Tomatoes – Clover Hill Farm
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Clover Hill Farm
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue and Equinox
Sausage – Canter Hill Farm, South African Borewors
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 10b

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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!

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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 2015 – Week 5

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Husband took the cooking reins again and grilled up a delicious dinner.  The veal tenderloin was marinaded in red wine, salt, vinegar, and freshly ground pepper and then cooked on the grill.  The spinach was steamed and seasoned with salt and a touch of vinegar.  The last thing on the main plate is a chunk of blue cheese that rounded out the palate of flavors on the plate.  In the salad bowl are mushrooms and snap peas over a bed of mixed greens, dressed with a mix of red wine, vinegar, and olive oil.  The wine is from Seven Mountains Winery and isn’t exactly local since it’s about 2.5 hours away, but it’s on the way out to my grandma’s house, so we consider it local since it’s a trip we would’ve made anyway, not a special trip just to pick up the wine.  It’s absolutely delicious with hints of honey and a nice, crisp dry finish.

Ingredients:
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue
Veal Tenderloin – Birchrun Hills
Spinach – Jack’s Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Snap Peas – Jack’s Farm
Mixed Greens – Jack’s Farm
Wine Marinade – Paradocx, Barn Red
Wine – Seven Mountains, Dry Riesling
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Homemade Vinegar, Olive Oil,

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 4

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Another wonderful week of local food!  We’re getting some awesome vegetables ripening, and strawberries are ready for picking.  We’re probably a week ahead, even after the very long, late winter, mostly thanks to a TON of rain in April and then three weeks of full sun.  We could use the rain now though, but it isn’t stopping our local providers from having some great food for us to enjoy.  Husband and I worked together on this one – he did the main plate and I worked up the salad.  We have a pork butt steak cooked on the grill, rubbed with maple sugar, salt, and pepper and marinated in malt vinegar.  Then there are carrots with a touch of maple syrup, another chunk of homemade gouda with milk from a local farm, and cucumbers in vinegar with salt and pepper.  In the salad, we have DELICIOUS strawberries over a bowl of mixed greens and snap peas, dressed with an olive oil, wine, and homemade vinegar dressing.  To finish things off, there’s a glass of homebrewed peach ice wine.

Ingredients:
Port Butt Steak – Countrytime Farm
Cucumbers – Jack’s Farm
Carrots – Jack’s Farm
Cheese – Milk from Birchrun Hills
Strawberries – Charlestown Farm
Mixed Greens – Jack’s Farm  and Charlestown Farm
Snap Peas – Jack’s Farm
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Wine – Paradocx Barn Red
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Homemade vinegar, Homebrewed peach ice wine, olive oil