Tag: <span>onions</span>

Tag: onions

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 19

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Another week all on me.  We finally got a REALLY ripe watermelon from the garden.  So ripe, it practically burst open the second I started to cut. The watermelon naturally has this glowy orange-yellow inside, so no, your monitor isn’t off.  The garden is pretty small, so I usually only get one watermelon, but that’s enough for me.  A local farm was offering a new product, veal kielbasa, so I jumped on it and got the last package.  It was delicious!  Spiced just right.  I decided to pair it with some zucchini (we’re STILL getting zucchini from the garden) cooked with onions and shitake mushrooms.  The neighbors and I have a little garden exchange program going on, so I picked up a bunch of peppers from them which I sliced, grilled, and stuffed with cheese from the same farm that had the kielbasa.  The beer is a maple porter, homebrewed with maple syrup from the state, even if the malt and grains aren’t locally sourced, I’ll call it part local.

Kielbasa with vegetables and watermelon:
Kielbasa – Birchrun Hills Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills Farm
Peppers – Neighbor’s Garden
Watermelon – Our Garden
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Non local – olive oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 18

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Another week on my own.  I think I worked up something pretty good though!  Pretty basic – good ole Pork Chops, with acorn squash and onions.  The fun part is the balsamic vinegar and fig sauce for the top of the pork chop which was made using figs from our wee little fig tree!  We just planted the little thing this spring and it’s already gifted us with a few figs.  Not bad for its first year!  The balsamic vinegar is obviously not local, but I needed something to go with the three little figs I had to extend them a little.  I was just so excited to finally have them.  The pork was pan seared in our cast iron pan and allowed to sit in the pan until it reached the proper temperature.  The onions and squash were also roasted up in a pan while the pork cooked.  Pretty easy!

Pork Chops with Squash:
Pork Chops – Countrytime Farm
Acorn Squash – Charlestown Farm
Figs – Our Tree
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Non local – olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, pepper.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 16

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In a move of colossal idiocy, I formatted the card that contained the meal photo for this week, and wrote right back over it with some lovely portraits from a family session.  *FACEPALM*  So, I will describe the meal instead, which won’t be as good as the photo, because the photo was really really good, and I can’t believe I did that.

It was husband’s last week home, and he did the shopping at the Farmer’s Market, bringing home a big chunk of Pork Butt to feed to the crock pot.  It simmered in there all day with some home made hard cider (apples sourced locally) and maple sugar, and was falling apart at dinner time.  SO tender and juicy.  Next to that, on the plate, was a pile of mashed potatoes which had been mixed together with caramelized onions and garlic.  Next was steamed and sauteed garlic string beans.  Then we had grilled roma tomatoes from our garden, and finally grilled peaches with Fat Cat cheese (the highlight of the plate for me).  Seriously, those peaches were delicious and inventive, and something I would’ve never thought to have made.

Epic Meal that you’ll Never See:
Pork – Countrytime Farm
Maple Sugar – Miller’s Maple
Hard Cider – with apples from Linvilla Orchard (I think?  This was brewed a while ago!)
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
String Beans – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomatoes – My Garden
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, various spices, cider vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 15

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Just something simple for breakfast this time.  This is a frittata, the cooking world’s way of using up leftovers in the fridge. You can throw anything in the pan, cover it in eggs, toss it in the oven and VOILA!  Frittata.  This one has potatoes, tomatoes, onions, and a little cheese.  Add a slice of melon on the side, and you’ve got a nice looking plate for breakfast.

Frittata:
Melon – Smith’s Produce
Tomatoes – My Garden
Potatoes – Maysie’s Farm and Jack’s Farm
Onion – Maysie’s Farm
Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Eggs – Mt View Organics
Non Local – Salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 14

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Here’s where I admit there was a little cheating going on with a few of our ‘weeks’ in the challenge. We had a two week vacation to Scotland, so these weren’t exactly cooked during the exact week listed. It’s pretty close, but I figure we’re still making the local meal, even if it’s later, so it counts in my book.  This meal is particularly interesting.  The sausage is from a little farm in New Hampshire, so it’s not local to where my home is, but we passed through while on vacation, so I’m saying it works.  The farm is a small farm, run by a lovely couple, and every time we vacation up that way, we stop in usually to feed my yarn and fiber habit, but decided to bring back home some meat this time.  Husband wasn’t as impressed with the taste of the goat meat – the texture is more firm than other sausages – but I liked it well enough.  The meal is your basic sausage and peppers, with tomato sauce we made using tomatoes from our garden.  It’s been a really great year for tomatoes, finally, given the last two were pretty dismal.  Here’s the ingredient rundown, and I’m still catching up on posts for the last few weeks, so bear with me!

Sausage and Peppers:
Goat Sausage – Riverslea Farms
Onion – Maysie’s Farm
Peppers – Maysie’s Farm
Melon – Smith’s Produce
Tomato Sauce – My Garden
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2012 – Week 11

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Sometimes, I impress myself.  I’m not one to really enjoy cooking, which is partly what this whole thing has been about.  I force myself to do this personal challenge of cooking locally all summer long, and it makes me actually cook.  Every once in a while, I really enjoy making the meal because it’s something new and different, and that’s what I’ve got here.  The garden has been giving me ZUCCHINI (all caps, on purpose, because they seem to think they’re watermelons and not zucchini).  Anyone who has grown them before knows that if you neglect the plant for two hours, you end up with baseball bats and that I’m really not exaggerating.  Ours, instead of growing in length, grew in width, spectacularly, and seemingly overnight.  For scale’s sake, that’s a 9″ plate.  The zucchini were really seedy inside, but I sliced them up anyway and once I pulled the seeds out, I had enormous zucchini rings.  Then inspiration hit.  Take zucchini rings, grill, add freshly made polenta (1 cup cornmeal, 3 cup water, boil while stirring until it pulls away from the pan) to the center, bake, flip, top as a pizza and bake until the cheese melts.  And that’s exactly what’s on my plate above – I used blue cheese and caramelized onions for the topping, and the sauce was even made from local tomatoes, courtesy of Jack’s Farm who was selling a big big bag of tomatoes for $6 (there’s another whole pint of sauce in the freezer too!).  I really don’t have a recipe to give you for this, because it’s the kind of thing that is very basic and I’d rather give you the idea and let you go create.

Zucchini Polenta Pizza:
Monster Overgrown Zucchini – My garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomato Sauce – via tomatoes from Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 23

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We had to quick throw together a meal before another trip (short one to Fort Lauderdale, FL for husband’s work), so I found all the vegetables in the fridge, and threw in a whole bunch of stuff.  Beets, goat cheese, onions, bison bacon, and fennel all went inside the easy crust (2 cup flour, 2/3 cup yogurt) and VOILA!  Dinner.  There are still leftovers in the fridge, and I love how the beets turned everything insdie a pretty shade of red.

Bacon and Beet Galette:
Whole Wheat Pastry Flour – Mill at Anselma
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Chevre – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Beets – Jack’s Farm
Onion – Hoagland Farm
Fennel – Charlestown Cooperative Farm  
Bison Bacon – Backyard Bison
Non Local – Olive Oil, salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2011 – Week 22

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This is one of my favorite meals that the husband makes. We weren’t sure if it could be done locally, but once we sat down and figured it out, it was SUPER easy to find (almost) all the ingredients. This is a Steak and Ale pie, a traditional British meal that’s a great way to warm up on a chilly day. It’s basically a chicken pot pie, but with beef and beer and mushrooms instead of the chicken and vegetables. The beer we used was a homebrew made with a pound of Pennsylvania Maple Syrup from Miller’s maple, so even though the grain used in the beer is not local, it’s at least more local than other beers we could’ve used. The only other exception is the pepper and a little bit of oil. The leftovers are already gone, that’s just how good it is.  We’re not sure at this point where the original recipe came from since ours has been heavily modified (bison instead of beef, etc), but this recipe is pretty close.  We made the ‘beef’ broth this time using a stew bone from the bison vendor with a few vegetables thrown in the pot for flavor – worked out PERFECTLY and was super delicious, not to mention very low in sodium.

Steak and Ale Pie
Bison Sirloin – Backyard Bison
Crimini Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Eggs – Mountain View Organics
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Onion – Hoagland Farms
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Sage – Jack’s Farm
Milk – Camphill Village – Kimberton Hills Dairy
Smoked Sea Salt – Pureblend Teas
Non Local – Pepper, Olive Oil, Maple Porter Beer