I’m still sometimes not sure how I manage half a year of doing this. And it might be more than half a year, but TWENTY-SIX weeks of blogging about making one meal each week using only locally grown food. The number of different things we’ve done, the amount of gas saved from not having to transport produce/meat from another part of the country, the amazing quality of the meat and produce, the neat things that we can find at our farmer’s market that we can’t find in grocery stores, the challenge of cooking (for me, it’s a challenge anyway), the rewards of the healthy food. All of it. If you’re reading this, it’s probably preaching to the choir, but I’m proud of it anyway. So, we’ll call this the last week of One Local Summer for 2012, and we’ll return the blog to genealogy and fiber arts, and some neglected posts on travel for the winter.
This meal is pumpkin soup with some toast. The pumpkin was a long necked pumpkin which I chopped up and roasted in the oven for about a half hour. I took a container of chicken stock (from boiling wings for chicken wings, also local!) and brought that to a boil on the stove. Added in the pumpkin which was now nice and tender, and let it simmer until I could get the immersion blender (BEST KITCHEN TOOL EVER) into the pot and mush things down. Then I added leeks, sage, some salt and pepper, and some curry seasoning to the mix. Ran it through another go-around with the immersion blender and let it simmer a little while longer. Finally, added some goat’s milk yogurt at the end to make it creamy, and topped the whole thing off with fresh goat cheese, a sharp chevre. I really love the blend of the tangy goat’s milk yogurt and cheese with the curry. Finally, I added a slice of toast (the ingredients aren’t local, but the bakery is!) topped with hot pepper jam made by a friend. If I remember correctly, the peppers were grown locally. The whole thing was delicious and the perfect meal for a chilly fall day.
Pumpkin Soup:
Long Necked Pumpkin: Charlestown Farm
Sage – My Garden
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Chevre – Shellbark Hollow
Leeks – My Garden
Toast – St Peter’s Bakery
Hot Pepper Jam – A friend, who told me it was made with local peppers.
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Curry