goat’s milk yogurt – Sheetar.com

One Local Summer 2017 – Meal 6

By Sheetar 6 June 2017 3 June 2017

Meal 6 in week 9! I actually cooked this on Saturday right after the farmers market, having come home with my head full of ideas thanks to the kind folks at North Star Orchard. You see, I was gushing over how pretty the rainbow chard was and how versatile the leafy green is since it’s the best of celery and spinach in one plant, plus, THOSE COLORS. We chatted for a bit about the myriad of ways to use this gem of a plant, and how great is it that farmers take the time to extol the virtues of their vegetables and offer recipe ideas and cooking advice?! Well, a quiche is just one of the ways to use chard, so the second I got home, I set out to make a late breakfast for myself. I like using recipes since I need a good guide when I cook, so I found this one that included a cornmeal and flour crust for the quiche. I replaced the shortening with lard, because lard, and again instead of milk, I used goat’s milk yogurt. Chard replaced the spinach, and I sautÃ©ed the chopped stems with spring garlic, garlic scapes, and scallions. Instead of swiss cheese, I used blue cheese fresh from my first Collective Creamery cheese CSA pickup. I cheated a little and just pressed the crust into the pie dish instead of rolling it out, saving myself the trouble of washing the rolling pin and mat, but that worked out just fine since the crust came out nice and crispy, and the dark roasted cornmeal I used kicked the flavor of the whole thing up a notch. On the side are three asparagus spears wrapped in culatello, topped with a bit of Red Cat cheese (because always cheese), and a wee little fried quail egg. The bowl in the back contains fresh strawberries drizzled with our own honey, and I’m not ashamed to say I polished off a whole pint of strawberries in one sitting because they were FANTASTIC. There’s also a mug of non-local (but absolutely necessary) cold brew coffee. I also now have a whole bunch of quiche leftovers, so there’s breakfast for the week!

Ingredients:
Asparagus – Hill Creek Farm
Eggs (Quail and Chicken) – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Cheese (Red Cat & Blue) – Birchrun Hills
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Dark Roasted Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Lard – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Rainbow Chard – North Star Orchard
Culatello – Countrytime Farm
Garlic – Charlestown Farm
Scallions – Jack’s Farm
Garlic Scapes – Jack’s Farm
Strawberries – Jack’s Farm
Honey – Our Beehives
Non Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2017 – Meal 5

By Sheetar 3 June 2017 3 June 2017

Week 8, meal 5, technically. I’m not stressing over keeping up with the weeks specifically this year since my schedule seems to be a bit of a mess, and with it just being me at home since the market opened, I find that one meal makes enough leftovers for one person for a whole week (sometimes a little more). We went through a bit of a chilly and rainy spell in May, so I went in search of recipes that utilized the crock pot as a nice way to cozy up the house while it was dreary and cold. I stumbled across this recipe for Slow Cooker Pork Chop Stroganoff, and I knew I had the ingredients on hand already, so we had a winner. I did make a few substitutions, as usual. We had two huge pork butt steaks in the freezer, so I used those instead of pork chops, In place of the butter and gravy mix, I used olive oil to quick brown the pork butt steaks, and then just plain water in the crock pot with the mushrooms and a wee splash of vinegar. After cooking all day, I took a bit of the liquid in the bottom of the crock pot and mixed it with some flour to thicken it up, then added goat’s milk yogurt to make the sauce. I tend to use goat’s milk yogurt in place of cow’s milk since I don’t enjoy the taste of cow’s milk, and goat’s milk yogurt has this nice tangy flavor to it. The meal is super simple, and while it doesn’t look like much on the plate, wow was it ever good. On the side, I had a strawberry and rhubarb tart from my favorite Flour Fairies at the farmers market. The rhubarb is local, so this one fits in better with the One Local Summer theme. The tartness of the rhubarb with the sweetness of the strawberries made for a wonderful treat!

Ingredients:
Pork – Countrytime Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non Local – Salt, Olive Oil, Pepper, Homemade vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2017 – Meal 4

By Sheetar 27 May 2017 3 June 2017

See, I knew I was going to get behind on these, so while this is meal 4, it’s technically week 7. Things have been a bit crazy, so while I haven’t had time to put together exclusively local meals, most of what I eat while the farmers market is in full swing ends up being local since that’s where I do the majority of my grocery shopping. Anyway! This is a bit of an ambitious dinner for me, but it’s a pretty awesome one, if I do say so myself. The centerpiece is the banh bao, a Vietnamese pork bun. Husband came across these on his travels for work at one point or another and we figured the recipe had to be fairly easy – meat and a hard-boiled egg in a dough wrapper. We found a recipe online and made a huge batch a few years ago. They freeze and reheat surprisingly well, but it definitely is quicker work with two people. For this version, I made my own self-rising flour using the ratio here, making a 3 cup batch of flour. The original recipe calls for milk and sugar, so I substituted in 1/2 cup honey and 1 cup of goat’s milk yogurt to keep it local. My flour is also a whole wheat flour, so they didn’t come out perfectly white like the traditional banh bao, but that’s just cosmetic anyway. The filling consists of a hard-boiled quail egg, scallions, and ground pork. I even took half the batch and added a few cheese curds just for fun. The quail eggs are a new offering from our farmers market poultry vendor this year, and it’s neat to be able to use quail eggs instead of quartering a chicken egg. The poultry vendor’s two girls are raising the quail and running the whole quail egg operation on their own, so supporting the next generation of farmers as well as two young girl entrepreneurs sweetens the deal! Going around the plate, next we have sliced, roasted cheesy asparagus. I picked the bigger asparagus lot at the market, sliced them on a mandoline slicer, then tossed them with olive oil, salt, and pepper and topped with cheese. Into the oven at 425 for about 8-10 minutes, and voila! The cookies may not be made with local ingredients, but they are from a farmers market baker. Supporting local business is part of the One Local Summer equation, so while it’s a bit of a cheat, it’s chocolate chip cookies, how could I not? In the glass is some more homebrewed mead to finish out the meal.

Ingredients:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Quail Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Ground Pork – Countrytime Farm
Scallions – Jack’s Farm
Cheese – Cheese curds and Fat Cat from Birchrun Hills
Asparagus – Hill Creek Farm
Cookies – The Flour Fairies
Honey – Our Beehives
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Non Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil, baking powder

One Local Summer

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 2016 – Week 8

By Sheetar 6 July 2016 5 July 2016

More than 5 ingredients this week for One Local Summer! I decided to get a little more ambitious after having seen dill at the farmers market and decided to go for chicken pitas (pita recipe) with a tzatzki-ish sauce. Unfortunately, I neglected to run back and grab a cucumber, but managed to cobble something together that worked well enough. The pitas were done on the grill using our pizzaque – they seem to work best this way since the stone gets really hot and a quick open and close of the grill keeps the internal temperature high enough for them to puff up perfectly. After the pitas were done, on went the mushrooms and fennel with the zucchini sliced right beside it and then the chicken with a healthy spring of dill on top. Then on the side is a simple salad with some cheese and more of the tzatzki-ish sauce as dressing. The sauce is a goat’s milk yogurt base with garlic scapes and dill added to the yogurt. It was a really nice meal for a warm summer week, and being able to cook everything outside on the grill made everything easier since I didn’t heat up the house!

Ingredients:
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Zucchini – Jack’s Farm
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Garlic Scapes – North Star Orchard
Dill – North Star Orchard
Cheese – “Pepito” from Yellow Springs Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Lettuce – Charlestown Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Honey – Our Hives
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, Yeast

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 18b

By Sheetar 16 September 2015 14 September 2015

The husband isn’t terribly fond of mushrooms, so what do I do when he’s gone? Put mushrooms in ALL THE THINGS! There are only a few foods that he’s not particularly fond of including mushrooms and fennel most notably, which happen to be two of my favorite things. If fennel happened to be in season, it would be in this meal, but I had to settle for making a galette with mushrooms, onions, chorizo, and blue cheese. I added a half an asian pear to the side, a salad with blue cheese dressing, and a glass of homemade cider. We actually pressed and brewed that cider ourselves using apples from the house where my grandparents lived. We have no idea what variety the apples were, but the trees gave up an incredible harvest last year and made for a tart, dry cider that’s exactly how I enjoy them most. For the galette crust, I used a recipe from here that uses yogurt, substituting honey for the sugar. I also added a tablespoon of lard instead of milk to help lighten the crust since goat’s milk yogurt is rather low in fat in comparison to a cow’s milk version. It came out not quite flaky enough, which means more lard next time! All in all though, the spice from the chorizo, paired with the onions and mushrooms came out incredible and I’m super happy with this one!

Ingredients:
Mushrooms Oley Valley Mushrooms
Cheese Birchrun Hills, Smoked Blue Cheese
Dressing – Birchrun Hills
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Tomatoes Full Circle CSA
Lettuce – North Star Orchard and Charlestown Farm
Cucumbers – Our Garden
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Chorizo – Countrytime Farm
Lard – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Flour – Mill at Anslema, Whole Wheat Pastry Flour
Honey – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 17

By Sheetar 16 October 2014 13 October 2014

I suppose it’s not even One Local Summer anymore – it’s One Local Fall! Some of my favorite foods are available in the fall. Pumpkins and squash, apples and asian pears! The day the meal was made was rainy and chilly which made for perfect baking and cooking conditions. And yes, I actually used recipes! Usually our One Local Summer meals end up on the wing-it spectrum, somewhat simple, and tend to be basic stuff that doesn’t involve a lot of thinking and prep work. Grilled cheese and soup are still pretty basic, but I needed a bread recipe and hunting around for soup ideas gave me the soup recipe.

A few weeks ago, we were in central PA and picked 160 pounds of apples at my grandparents house. We came out with 4.5 gallons of juice that’s being fermented for hard cider, but we threw in the towel with about 10 lbs of apples remaining since it was getting pretty dark and late and we were dead tired from crushing and pressing all the apples. Husband went back out to sea and I was scratching my head, trying to figure out what to do with the remaining apples. I’m not a huge fan of applesauce, but figured it was the easiest way to use them up. I cut them into chunks, steamed them in batches for 5 minutes, then ran them through the press. That press made SUCH quick work of the apples that I was done in about an hour! I added nothing to the sauce – no sugar or cinnamon or spices – and actually like it a lot as just straight up applesauce with nothing else added. Then came along the bread recipe for Applesauce bread. It’s a basic sandwich bread with the only non-local ingredient being yeast (and flour, kinda, since the one flour imports wheat from the midwest but they’re both still milled at the historic grist mill nearby). I used both blue cheese and a nice alpine style cheese to melt between the slices. The soup is made from delicata squash and leeks for the most part with water instead of broth and a little goat’s milk yogurt. Those “apple croutons” on top are slices of apple sprinkled with maple sugar and crisped up in the oven. I didn’t quite follow the recipe and decided it was easier to leave the skins on the squash and just immersion blender them to pulp which was easier than trying to take the skins off the roasted squash. Add a warm cup of hot cinnamon spice tea, and it was a great meal for a dreary day.

Ingredients:
Flour – Mill at Anselma (Whole Wheat Pastry Flour and Bread Flour)
Applesauce – grandparents house (no sugar added)
Cheese – Birchrun Hills (Blue and Equinox)
Delicata Squash – Jack’s Farm and Charlestown Farm
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Apples – North Star Orchard (for apple croutons)
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Non Local – Olive oil, salt, pepper, sage, tea

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.