honey – 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 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 13

By Sheetar 1 September 2016 31 August 2016

It may not be the world’s most exciting meal, but it’s classic Chez Sheetar comfort food – meat and potatoes. It was a quick and easy meal to make in the oven in one pan, and I get to show off the peach jam I made! Our single little peach tree yielded quite the harvest this year, so I was able to do two batches of jam, a run of canned peaches, and even froze two bags of skinned and pitted peaches for pies over the winter. Of course, the squirrels got a fair share of the peaches too, but it’s no big deal since there were SO many. Anyway, the meal is kielbasa with potatoes plus a small salad and some cheese and jam. The cheese is Birchrun Hills’ Red Cat that was washed in Tired Hands beer and it was OH SO DELICIOUS with the jam. It actually made for a nice little dessert!

Ingredients:
Kielbasa – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Lettuce – North Star Orchard
Tomatoes – Our Garden
Peach Jam – Our Honey, our Peach tree
Non Local – Salt, Olive Oil, pectin (for jam), Salad Dressing

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 12

By Sheetar 19 August 2016 19 August 2016

Yep, still playing catch-up. It should be week 15 as I’m posting this, so I’m still behind. Life just keeps getting away from me and the first thing to go when things get to be too much is cooking. But hey, I’m still here making the effort, and I have to wonder if I’d even bother cooking at all if it weren’t for this challenge! So, this meal was a ham steak with grilled onions and eggplant and a cucumber and tomato salad on the side. Everything was cooked on the grill, so it was great to not have to heat up the house on a day that was already too hot to begin with! I may have ever so slightly overcooked the ham steak, but it was still delicious since it was given a little rub down with our own honey before it was introduced to the grill. I need to remind myself that I don’t have to be fancy, and it’s okay to slap meat and veggies on the grill and thats good enough (and better than a microwaved boxed dinner).

Ingredients:
Ham Steak – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Tomato – Kimberton CSA
Eggplant – Kimberton CSA
Cucumber – Jack’s Farm
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Peach – Our Tree
Honey – Our beehives
Non Local – Olive Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 11

By Sheetar 9 August 2016 7 August 2016

Well, still playing catch-up and I really haven’t made much progress I guess! This week was a bit of a wash on the catching-up game, but at least I cooked one meal this week! I had found a pack of stir fry beef at the Wednesday farmers market at the Mill at Anselma and decided to run with it. So, Saturday, I grabbed peppers and mushrooms, found an onion in the fridge, and decided to give this recipe a try. I omitted the oyster sauce (because EEW GROSS OYSTERS), and ended up only using honey, soy sauce, pepper, and wine for the sauce which worked out just fine. I suppose most folks would’ve served the beef over rice, but since rice isn’t local, I stir fried the crimini mushrooms, onions, and peppers separately which made a nice base for the beef. Now, I’m not a terribly huge fan of beef, but in a stir fry, this was honestly really good, and the sauce came out just perfectly – sweet and a little salty. This may be something I have to add into regular rotation in the kitchen!

Ingredients:
Beef – Gauker Farms
Onion – Charlestown Farm
Peppers – Charlestown Farm
Garlic – Charlestown Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Honey – Our Beehives
Wine – Paradocx “Barn Red”
Non Local – Soy Sauce, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

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 2016 – Week 7

By Sheetar 28 June 2016 28 June 2016

Another week of One Local Summer! Still a little behind, but this was honestly cooked and consumed during week 7, I’m just a lazyass blogger. Oops. So anyway, we’re beekeepers, and this past week I robbed the hives and extracted about 30 lbs of honey from one hive which is pretty damn awesome for our first actual honey ‘harvest’ from the hives! I was trying to figure out a way to incorporate that into the meal since honey from the beehives in your backyard is about as local as it can get when I stumbled across some recipes for honey ginger chicken. Ginger falls under the allowable-spice-exemption clause to One Local Summer since it was used sparingly and isn’t a main feature of the meal. The chicken was cooked with garlic scapes and set next to some roasted broccoli. Then there’s a well overfilled bowl of salad greens, splashed with a little olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Not bad! I think next time, instead of cooking the chicken in a pan, I may toss that in the oven whole, then coat with the sauce and set under the broiler for a few minutes to allow the honey to caramelize a little. The flavor didn’t come out quite as much as I had hoped, but it was still delicious!

Ingredients:
Garlic Scapes North Star Orchard
Broccoli – North Star Orchard
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Lettuce – Charlestown Farm
Honey – Our Beehives
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Ginger, Olive oil, Balsamic vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 22

By Sheetar 19 October 2015 2 October 2015

Husband is at it again for this installment of One Local Summer. It was more like a One Local Fall sort of day – gloomy and rainy – so soup it is! The soup is a chunky potato leek soup since we happened to have all those things on hand and husband is truly the soup master. He somehow manages to make everything work well together in one pot whereas I tend to make disasters that skirt the line between edible and fodder for the garbage disposal. We used up the last of the pretzel rolls from the freezer and paired the roll with some mustard seed gouda made from local milk. Top the whole meal off with a glass of cool cider and we have a filling and warm dinner for an icky day. This may be the last of the meals for 2015 seeing as there was a vacation happening during the time the last three OLS posts went up, but fear not, we’ll be back next year!

Ingredients:
Flour Mill at Anselma
Egg Deep Roots Valley Farm
Butter Spring Creek Farms
Honey Baues Busy Bees
Cider – North Star Orchard
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Onions – Clover Hill Farm
Potatoes – North Star Orchard
Garlic – North Star Orchard
Cilantro – My garden
Milk – Birchrun Hills for homemade cheese
Whey – frozen from cheesemaking using Birchrun Hills milk
Non Local – mustard seeds, salt, pepper