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 5

By Sheetar 16 June 2010 16 June 2010

Dear friend Abbie was over for a long weekend so I subjected her not only to the farmer’s market, but also to cooking a One Local Summer dinner with me. Reflecting back on the food coma we were in afterwards, I dare say that she didn’t mind the experience one bit. Dinner consisted of a bison burger stuffed with mushrooms and blue cheese on some thick slices of wheat bread. There’s a little bit of salad at the back too (yep, salad, again). We probably made the burgers a bit too thick, but it didn’t seem to matter much since they both disappeared.

Burger:
Bison – Backyard Bison. Just your plain old ground bison.
Egg – Mountain View Organics. Just one, to help bind the burger together.
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills. Not only was it inside the burger, but we melted some on top too.
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. We decided on Shiitake for the burger, and put a few on top too.
Spinach – Charlestown Farm. Just for a little crispy crunch in between the burger and bread.
Garlic Scapes – Charlestown Farm. Chopped these and sauteed them with the mushrooms.
Bread – Saint Peter’s Bakery. Wheat bread cut into thick slices
Zucchini Pickles – from my garden. Canned these last year and they’re still incredible.
Non-Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil.

Salad:
Lettuce – Jack’s Farm. Looseleaf lettuce, delightful. We topped this with some more blue cheese
Non-Local – Salad Dressing

Wine:
Gewurztraminer – J Maki Winery. I don’t know what he does to this grape to make such a unique Gewurztraminer, but boy is it ever delightful.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer – Week 4

By Sheetar 5 June 2010 16 June 2010

My sister-in-law was visiting this past weekend so I took her to the market and we cooked together this week. Bockwurst with mushrooms, asparagus and a salad. Delicious! We both had fun cooking and gobbling down the dinner as a nice way to end a long day.

Bockwurst & Mushrooms:
Bockwurst – Birchrun Hills Farm. We boiled these on the stove with some homebrewed beer and then tossed them on the grill to finish cooking.
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms. Crimini mushrooms cooked in Chamborcin wine from Kog Hill.
Non-local – Olive Oil, spices.

Asparagus:
Asparagus – Hoagland Farm. Tossed on the grill in a tin-foil package with some non-local olive oil, salt, pepper, and parmesan cheese.

Salad:
Spring Greens – Jack’s Farm. One bag of greens seems to last me quite a while. Topped off with some non-local salad dressing.

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 2

By Sheetar 17 May 2010 17 May 2010

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!

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!

One Local Summer

OLS: Week 12

By Sheetar 23 August 2009 23 August 2009

We had a sort of hectic week, but I still managed to get a local meal in. There was a party at the house last night, and I managed to get up in the morning and throw together some pancakes (quickly becoming a favorite around here) with some fresh plums from the farmer’s market. Ingredients are the same as Week 9, but with no blackberries this time. The plums were sliced and plopped on the griddle to warm up, then put in a bowl with some maple syrup and cinnamon while the pancakes were being made. The tartness of the slightly under-ripe plums worked really well with the sweetness of the maple syrup and the whole thing was just plain delightful, receiving rave reviews from the guests who stayed over for the night. Non-local ingredients include cinnamon, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and sugar.
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Egg – Mt. View Organics
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Plums – North Star Orchard
Maple Syrup – Miller’s Maple