Tag: <span>honey</span>

Tag: honey

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 21

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Husband has returned home and cooked up this classic summer meal – a pulled pork sandwich.  A good part of this one was a long time in the making.  The sauerkraut was made months ago, fermented from fresh cabbage in a huge stoneware crock.  The pickles were started a month ago and came out as terrific sour pickles.  The buns were made last year and pulled from the freezer.  The cider in the glass was also made last year and was just kegged and ready to drink this past month.  The only thing new on the plate is the pulled pork which cooked up in the crock pot all day with some cider, peppers, onion, vinegar, and tomatoes, and came out DELICIOUS.

Ingredients:
Cabbage –  Jack’s Farm
Pork Butt –  Countrytime Farm
Cucumbers – My Garden
Peppers – Steer Vegetables
Tomatoes – My Garden
Onion –  Clover Hill Farm
Cider – Fermented from apples picked at my grandparents’
Buns:
Flour Mill at Anselma
Egg Deep Roots Valley Farm
Butter Spring Creek Farms
Honey Baues Busy Bees
Non Local – Salt, pepper, spices, homemade vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 18b

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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 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 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 2013 – Week 17

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So, this one might not look as impressive, but so far, it’s been my favorite meal all year (well okay, maybe tied with the bacon wrapped filet).  Yoinked straight from Pinterest, but with a few changes.  The original post I pinned is here, in case you’re curious.  I took the idea, but instead of using apples, I substituted with asian pears.  The asian pear season is in FULL swing and our local orchard is churning them out  almost   as fast as the local population consumes them.  They’re hugely popular around here, and you best get to the market early if you want a couple!  Anyway, I cut slices in the pork loin, stuffed in slices of apples, and put it in the crock pot.  I covered the loin with a dusting of cinnamon and honey, added some asian pear cider in the bottom and onions on top.  WOW.  It came out so tender and just plain amazing.  I may have to do this one again and try using other fruits.  Add in some roasted potatoes instead of mashed, and we have a full meal on the plate.

Asian Pear Stuffed Pork Loin:
Pork Loin – Countrytime Farm
Asian Pears – North Star Orchard
Asian Pear Cider – North Star Orchard
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Honey – Baues’ Busy Bees
Non Local – olive oil, salt, pepper, cinnamon

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 1

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Seeing as our local farmer’s market kicked off its first regular market of the season, I figured I’d start One Local Summer back up again.  I seriously contemplated whether or not to do this again.  This year would be my fourth year of a summer’s worth of making one meal a week using only local ingredients.  To be honest, I’m lacking motivation this year, and have gotten pretty busy with a bunch of other things.  But, reason won out, and said hey, this is good for your health, it doesn’t have to be complicated, so cook something local once a week, no big deal.  This year may be a little less inspired than other years, but I’m still doing this.  ON TO THE FOOD!

This is pretty basic.  It’s still early in the vegetable growing season, so my veggie options are limited.  Our opening farmer’s market with the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market was a honey bee festival, so I included that here.  Going around the plate clockwise, we have chicken marinated in honey and olive oil, then crispy beet greens from the grill, crimini mushrooms, and wilted beet greens with wee little baby beets on the end.  When they ‘thin the herd’ so to speak, to prevent overcrowding with the beets, the greens and baby beets are perfect for eating.  The whole thing is edible – the greens are sort of spinachy and the teeny beets on the end grill up in short order and are perfectly tender.  The wilted beet greens were done up in foil with a little olive oil and salt and set on the grill.  EVERYTHING on that plate was cooked on the grill!  Easy peasy.  Here’s the rundown on ingredients.

Chicken and Beet Greens with mushrooms:
Chicken – Mt View Organics
Honey – Baues’ Busy Bees
Beets and Beet Greens – Charlestown Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Non Local – Salt, Olive Oil, homebrew beer (Saison)

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 2

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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!