chicken – Page 3 – Sheetar.com

One Local Summer – Week 9

By Sheetar 13 July 2010 13 July 2010

Rotisserie chicken and grilled vegetables was on the menu for this week. I picked up a whole chicken and a bunch of different vegetables for the grill wok. The chicken was basted with some non-local jelly and olive oil, but otherwise, everything else is local!

Chicken:
Whole Chicken – Why Not Farm

Vegetables:
Onion – Smith’s Produce
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Flying Saucer Squash – I can’t remember which stand this one came from, but it was delicious!
Portabella Mushrooms – Marsh Creek Farm

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 7

By Sheetar 30 June 2010 30 June 2010

Another week is on the books. Or Blog. I’ve always been a big fan of Greek food and gyros in particular. So, this week, with dill running amok in the planter on the deck, I decided to prune it back a little, make some tzatziki and work up some chicken gyros. This was also the first meal we had on our brand new patio, and what a way to start many summers of relaxing dinners! MANY thanks to Ryan Steckel of Steckel Building for his amazing work on the patio. We’re positively thrilled with the results. Onto the ingredients!

Chicken Gyro:
Pretty basic, when you get down to it. Pitas were homemade using this recipe and really were more time consuming to make than difficult – I did substitute one cup of flour for whole wheat pastry flour and used plain old bread flour for the other two. I decided to throw them on the super-hot pizza stone on the grill since it was just so incredibly hot this past week and I wasn’t going to heat up the house with any baking. Turns out, it worked out perfectly, once I got the hang of it. The thinner the dough is and the hotter the stone is, the better the pitas puff up and shrink back down. The chicken was marinated, skewered, and grilled while the pitas cooled a little, and the vegetables were in the grill wok on the next burner.
Bread Flour – Anselma Mill
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Anselma Mill
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Oregano – Back deck planters (used in marinade for chicken with Olive Oil, Vinegar, and Lemon Juice)
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Onions – Smith’s Produce
Sharp II Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm. Used this as the base for the Tzatziki
Cucumbers – Smith’s Produce
Dill – Back deck planters
Non-Local: Salt, Sugar, Olive Oil, Yeast, Pepper, Lemon Juice

Vegetables:
These cooked up and were so tasty. The first zucchini of the year are always my favorite.
Zucchini – Smith’s Produce
Yellow Squash – Smith’s Produce
Carrots – Jack’s Farm
Non-Local – Salad Dressing as a marinade

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 3

By Sheetar 30 May 2010 5 June 2010

Week three brings us Shiitake Chicken Fettuccine Alfredo with a salad covered in Portabella mushrooms. I really cannot get enough of those crispy spring greens and they’ve been making an appearance at every meal. The ‘alfredo’ sauce was home made, and while it didn’t come out just like the store-bought stuff, it was pretty good for using only local ingredients. I probably could’ve added a hunk of cheese to make it more flavorful, but didn’t happen to have any on hand. I’m a little late getting this one posted (week 4 is cooked and consumed already!), but, better late than never, right? Here’s the run-down.

Fettuccine:
My basic recipe consists of one cup whole wheat pastry flour, one egg, a teaspoon of olive oil and water to make proper consistency. Then the good ole KitchenAid Mixer with pasta roller/cutter attachment does the rest!
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Egg – Mountain View Organics
Non-Local – Olive Oil

Chicken:
Chicken was marinated in olive oil, pepper and italian seasoning, then tossed on the grill.
Chicken – Mountain View Organics
Non-Local – Pepper, salt, olive oil

Sauce:
I’m not going to provide the recipe because it didn’t come out right, but I’ll give you a basic idea. Mushrooms and spring garlic were sauteed in some olive oil. Melted butter and added flour to thicken to a roux. Then added milk and goat’s milk yogurt to make consistency.
Raw Milk – Kimberton Hills Dairy
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Spring Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Non-Local – Butter, Olive Oil

Salad:
Spring Mix Greens – Jack’s Farm
Portabella Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Non-Local – Salad Dressing

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!

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 13

By Sheetar 30 August 2009 30 August 2009

One Local Summer’s last meal is on the table and consumed already. I can’t believe we made it to the end of the challenge and participated in every single week! This week, we threw a whole chicken in the smoker with some barbeque sauce leftover from the pulled pork sandwiches and let her cook up while some zucchini, garlic, basil, onions, and peppers were simmered together with last year’s tomato sauce from the garden. I decided to pop open a jar of the zucchini pickles, and WOW are they delicious. Definitely worth doing again next year. Non-Local ingredients include some vinegar, mustard seed, turmeric (pickles), olive oil, and McCormick’s Chicken Rub. Here’s the rundown of local ingredients.

Zucchini: My Garden
Basil: Back Deck Garden
Peppers: My Garden
Garlic: Willow Creek
Onions: North Star Orchard
Chicken: Mt. View Organics
Barbeque sauce: Leftover from Week 11
Wine: New Hope Winery’s Raspberry Wine

Final thoughts – I’m SO glad I participated in this year’s challenge and I can’t wait to do it again. This challenge has gotten me into local foods and has actually gotten me cooking (something that shocked and amazed my family and friends). I hope to continue doing one local meal a week since our Phoenixville Farmer’s Market is open year-round and I can get most items (except for seasonal vegetables) regularly. Thanks to the folks at FarmToPhilly.com for hosting the challenge!

food

Zucchini Week: Day 7

By Sheetar 9 August 2009 9 August 2009


Day 7, a week late. Oops. I’m a bad, bad blogger. Well, the meal was made on day seven, however the picture didn’t make it off the camera until today. Yeah. Anyway, in all of its glory, I present to you my own creation, a zucchini pasta salad. The idea took form after I realized I could make pasta noodles from zucchini using my mandoline. Since I heavily modify recipes anyway, I’m just going to give you the basics of what I did. Onions were browned in some olive oil, then the tomatoes were added along with the zucchini and a bit of homebrewed beer. While that was simmering, I grilled the chicken and portobello mushrooms. The mix on the stove went into the fridge after the liquid was drained and so did the finished chicken and mushrooms. After everything was well chilled, I brought it out, sliced the chicken and mushrooms, added some local blue cheese on top and finished it off with a blackberry vinegarette (Olive oil, crushed blackberries, red wine vinegar, fresh basil). All the flavors worked well together and it made for a light afternoon lunch.	Zucchini Pasta Salad – My Own Recipe
	Ingredients Used: Zucchini – my garden Tomatoes – Charlestown Farm Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm Chicken – Eberly Poultry Onion – North Star Orchard *Blackberries – Willow Creek

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 3

By Sheetar 22 June 2009 22 June 2009

I’m a little late on this one, but we spent all of week 3 in Scotland. So, I think that’s okay, right?

For the record, this was a lunch meal and I tend to go heavier on the green things and lighter on the meat for lunches, hence the big blob of green on the plate and little bitty blob of chicken. In the back is red lettuce from Kimberton Whole Foods, marked as grown locally, unknown farm. On top of the salad are little turnip chips – dehydrated turnip slices from turnips found at the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market during Week 1. In the very front is that delicious back-porch dill and goat’s milk yogurt from Week 2 (frozen while we were away, and then thawed to enjoy again). The chicken roulade is made with chicken again from Eberly Poultry – pounded out thin. Inside the chicken is dill and basil from the deck, bacon from Country Time Farm, sundried tomatoes from last year’s garden, and ‘Dillicious’ cheese from Clover Creek Cheese Cellar.

Not Local: Olive oil for cooking the roulade and the salad dressing.

This meal gave me a whole lot of leftovers since I used the whole pound of chicken for the roulade and will likely keep me well fed for the week. I still have the leftovers from last week’s meal in the freezer too! I think I’ll make a trip to the Anselma Market on Wednesday to find ingredients for Week four. If anyone knows of a source of local flour, I’d love to hear about it! I might be up to try my hand at home made pasta for something different.

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 2

By Sheetar 11 June 2009 11 June 2009

Week 2 of One Local Summer is cooked and consumed already.

I did say dill last week right? I should’ve said yogurt would be the theme of this week’s meal. Let’s go over what’s on that plate. In the front, Sugar Snap Peas picked up at Kimberton Whole Foods (KWF) in Kimberton, PA. They were labelled as being grown locally, but didn’t mention which farm. The skewered chicken, also found at KWF is from Eberly Poultry and was marinated in olive oil and lemon juice before being tossed on the grill. The sauce over the chicken is a sort of cucumberless tzatziki sauce using goat’s milk yogurt from Shellbark Hollow Farm and dill from the deck planter. In the back is wilted turnip greens from the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market with a few sun-dried tomatoes from last year’s garden (roasted and then frozen, thawed, dehydrated). Dessert is the same goat’s milk yogurt with some fresh Lancaster County farm-stand strawberries blended in.

Non-local ingredients: Olive Oil, lemon juice, spices (marinade for the chicken)

Now let’s go over why I LOVE LOVE LOVE this meal. First, my obsession with dill – it’s limitless. I pretty much believe that dill belongs in everything and I love the Oregon Herb bread that the Great Harvest Bread Company makes because the herb pretty much means dill. Sadly, I don’t think cucumbers are in season around here yet, but even without the cucumber, that tzatziki sauce was delicious. MMMmm dill. And the chicken with the marinade worked out perfectly – so soft and juicy and DELICIOUS. But, my new find of the week and a new favorite is that goat’s milk yogurt from Shellbark Hollow Farm. There’s something about the goat’s milk that gives the yogurt a little extra zip or zing or pizzazz. You should go and check out the website for Shellbark Hollow and watching the “awwwww” inspiring videos on the goat of the month page. I have a feeling that the goat’s milk products will be making a regular appearance in my diet now that I’ve found out how incredible they taste. And now, as I sit here and digest that wonderful meal, I’m already making plans for the leftovers.. Frozen Goat’s Milk Strawberry Yogurt anyone?