Tag: <span>tomatoes</span>

Tag: tomatoes

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 19

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Still chugging along into October.  We should be winding down in the next month or so since the availability of fresh vegetables tends to fall off after the first hard frost.  Fortunately, our mushroom guy grows indoors in a climate controlled environment and still has PLENTY of fresh mushrooms every week.  I used a recipe this week, kinda.  As usual, I used the recipe as an idea and then modified it to suit the local ingredients available, putting the whole thing into one large casserole dish instead of individual ramekins to save on cleanup time.  What I should’ve done is made mashed sweet potatoes and made a sort of mushroom shepherd’s pie, adding in other root vegetables, but this still came out really great and surprisingly filling.  I used three types of mushrooms – Shiitake, Crimini, and Chicken of the Woods.  I’d never had Chicken of the Woods before, so that was a new mushroom to me.  It cooked up a lot like chicken with a thicker, more solid texture that was a little reminiscent of  extra-firm tofu.  The beer used was our “house” beer, the Flying Pig Stout named for a hilarious incident involving a pig shaped dog toy on a rope and a pot of boiling wort.  We pretty much keep a keg of that on tap throughout the year since stouts are a big favorite in the house.  It’s not really local, but it is brewed and poured in about a 50 foot radius which is far fewer food miles than trucking in beer from California.  What’s best about this is it’s all for me!  Husband would never touch a meal made nearly entirely from mushrooms, so the leftovers are safe.  Add some butternut squash ‘fries’ and a couple of slices of asian pear on the side and it’s a full plate!

On a side note, my annual saffron harvest is now over and I need a recipe that uses saffron and local ingredients.  I’m open to suggestions!  Keep in mind that I don’t/can’t eat anything that once lived in water, but will eat every vegetable available!  In past years, I’ve made saffron pasta and saffron polenta, so something new would be fun.  Maybe blue potato saffron gnocchi?

Ingredients:
Onions – Jack’s Farm
Leeks – North Star Orchard
Garlic – Jack’s Farm
Butternut Squash – Jack’s Farm
Asian Pear – North Star Orchard
Tomato – Our Garden
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Sweet Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, oil, thyme

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 15

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And now we’re surpassing the goal of 14 with ease!  I think this is the best attempt at cooking Bison Ribs the husband has ever had.  They’re a little tricky being much lower in fat and need to be cooked low and slow.  The ribs were back ribs and were put in the smoker with apple wood, cooked for about 4 hours resulting in DELICIOUS ribs.  On the side we have those popular corn fritters, a grilled peach with melted blue cheese, and a bowl in the back with tomatoes from the garden, a sprig of basil, and some local cheese.  The wine is a homemade mead made partially with cherries I picked in Maryland and was a great match to the rest of dinner.

Ingredients:
Bison Ribs – Backyard Bison
Corn – Brogue Hydroponics
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Peppers – Neighbor’s garden (we share!)
Blue Cheese and Equinox Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Tomatoes – Our Garden
Basil – Our Garden
Non Local – Wine, spices, olive oil, vinegar, salt and pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 13

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Meat and potatoes.. can you guess who cooked?  Yep, the husband!  But, no complaints from me, because chicken and potatoes is a great dinner, especially with fall slowly taking over summer.  This meal was cooked the day after the prior meal, because we happened to have the food on hand for all of it, so we figured we might as well!  A basic tomato and onion salad with oil in vinegar in the bowl using our own tomatoes now that they’re finally ripening on the vine.  The darker color is because they’re mostly Brandywine Black tomatoes, a house favorite.  The vinegar is the stuff we make ourselves using either our own mead or Yuengling lager – we very seldom use commercial vinegar anymore!  Purple mashed potatoes you say?  Yep, made from blue potatoes harvested from the garden earlier that week.  The potatoes didn’t grow so well – our soil is full of clay despite 6 or 7 years of tilling in compost, it  still can’t quite handle growing potatoes.  They still have a wonderful color and taste, and cook up well, they just look like massive clumps of 3 or 4 potatoes that didn’t split up.  The chicken was cooked a-la-beercan-up-the-chicken-butt and came out nice and tender.  The beer used was Landshark, so not local, but it’s basically used for steam and isn’t a major contribution to the meal.  Overall, really delcious!

Ingredients:  
Chicken – Bendy Brook Farm
Potatoes – My Garden
Tomatoes – My Garden
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Butter – Spring Creek Farms
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive oil, vinegar, chicken seasoning, pepper, salt, beer

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 12

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Husband is back home and went for a simple but delicious favorite this week – Sausage and peppers!  The farmer’s market has seen a glut of peppers, so we went with it, using some tomatoes from our garden along with pork sausage and some homemade sourdough bread.  Topped off with a cool glass of crisp, tart cider and we had ourselves a great meal.  It doesn’t look like much, but it’s a quick and easy meal that always goes over well.

Ingredients:
Pork Sausage – Countrytime Farm
Tomatoes – My Garden
Peppers – Jack’s Farm
Onion – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Cider – North Star Orchard
Non Local – Olive Oil, Pepper, salt

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 9

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I really sort of love having visitors over for One Local Summer meals because they’ll bring new and  fun ideas to the One Local Table.  There were a TON of beautiful eggplants at the market this week, so I grabbed two thinking, hmm, well I’ll find something to do with them.  Talking about it with my sister-in-law who was visiting, we ended up with Eggplant Parmigiana using local ingredients.  We didn’t have mozzarella, but I had plenty of blue cheese on hand, so it was a little different, but the flavor was incredible!  And, unintentionally, we ended up with a vegetarian dinner.  While the spaghetti squash was roasting in the oven, we prepped the eggplant by slicing thick slices then breading them with flour and an egg/yogurt mixture.  We double dipped a few of them (egg then flour, repeat) and those seemed to come out better.  They got a quick pan fry in the cast iron pan, then were set on a wire rack in the oven to finish baking for about 15 minutes.  I found some sauce from summers past in the freezer, so we heated that up on the stove to top the spaghetti squash once it was done.  On the side, a small bowl of tomatoes with oil, vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt finished off the meal along with a glass of wine.  Really a great dinner, and we even used the leftover eggplant on sandwiches the next day!

A quick note on the flour.. it’s not ENTIRELY local.  I picked this up at the Phoenixville Farmer’s Market a year or two ago.  From what I remember, the owner was visiting family in the area and brought along his flour from Minnesota to sell at  our local  market.  In that sense, it travelled along with a person who was making a trip anyway, and wasn’t using up extra “food miles” just to get to my doorstep, so while it’s not local, I’m going to allow it since it still follows in the One Local Summer ideals of a lower food carbon footprint and not using excess food miles to transport food from across the country when I can find it basically in my backyard.  I do occasionally make exceptions for things like this that come home with us on our travels.  The Sunrise Flour Mill also uses varieties of wheat that are heritage wheat varities and more along the lines of what one might have eaten 100 years ago, so it’s pretty unique and will be fun to work with!

Ingredients:
Eggplant – North Star Orchard
Tomato Sauce – My Garden
Spaghetti Squash – Jack’s Farm
Flour – Sunrise Flour Mill
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Tomatoes – My Garden and Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Wine, vinegar, oil, salt.

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 Meal 8

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Another one down, and just six more to go till my goal of 14 for the summer.  So far, it looks like we’ll more than surpass the goal of 14 meals, and I really do like the pacing of meals vs. weeks MUCH better.  It feels less like an obligation and more like fun this way.  What’s on that plate?  A sort of remix of chicken parm.  I breaded the chicken using goat’s milk yogurt and cornmeal for more of a cowboy sort of version of chicken parm, topped it with tomatoes, blue cheese, and mushrooms (MUSHROOMS!  Oh how I love fungus).  Some potatoes and zucchini on the side and KABAM.  A pretty easy one local summer meal.  Instead of frying the chicken, I popped it on a tray and baked it which kept it lighter and, in a weird way, crispier.  Sometimes the greasiness of pan frying just doesn’t work, and I’m glad I baked it instead.  The leftovers from this are already gone even, it was that good.

Ingredients:
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow
Zucchini – My Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Chicken – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Mushrooms – Oley Valley Mushrooms
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Cornmeal – Mill at Anselma
Tomatoes – Jack’s Farm
Non Local – Salt, Pepper, Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 6

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Another meal cooked by the husband.  How can you tell he’s cooking?  There’s beef on the plate.  It’s just not my thing, but it is husband’s thing, and he’s learned to cook beef just the way I like it (VERY VERY well done) so I’ll eat it when he’s around to cook.  This week, he found a neat coffee chocolate spice rub at the market which really changed the flavor.  I do find a HUGE difference between grass-fed from the market and non-specific beef from the grocery store, so that makes it a little more palatable.  I’d still prefer chicken or turkey or pork over beef any day!  Anyway, getting on with things, we have corn fritters again, made with the same pickled peppers that I had canned summers prior.  They’re really becoming a house favorite, and we’ve even been putting them on the grill for an extra crisp crust on the outside.  In the back, there’s canteloupe, then a slice of Soltane bread topped with Tomme Mole.  The bread isn’t locally sourced, but it is locally made, so we’ll allow a little leeway here since it’s SO good.  The bowl in the back has cucumbers and tomatoes with some onions, oil, and vinegar.  I could easily eat the whole container we made of that, they were so good.  To drink, there’s a beer from Armstrong Ales, a  local brewery.  So, everything (even the not-completely-local items) was sourced very locally and made for a great meal in some great weather outside!

Ingredients:
Porterhouse Steak – Bendy Brook Farm
Corn – Hoagland Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Onion – Brogue Hydroponics
Tomatoes – Brogue Hydroponics
Cucumber –  Brogue Hydroponics
Canteloupe –  Brogue Hydroponics
Bread – Soltane
Cheese (Tomme Mole) – Birchrun Hills
Peppers – Our Garden
Non Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil, vinegar, java rub, beer

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2014 – Meal 5

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Another meal down, and just 9  left to my goal of 14 which we should be able to meet  or exceed!  We had a nice party over the weekend and have had a bit of fabulous weather (lows aorund 60 degrees F in July!), so we took advantage of the cool evenings for some outdoor dining.  In the small bowl at top left is a tomato salad with some fresh basil, olive oil, and homemade vinegar.  The main part of the dinner was a Bison sirloin topped with blue cheese – sooo good.  Next, going around clockwise, are blue potatoes from our garden that were boiled, smooshed, and then put in a pan to roast after being doused with malt vinegar and sprinkled with salt.  The idea for those came from Cook’s Country, but they didn’t quite smoosh down the way they were shown in the recipe.  Blue potatoes seem to be starchier, and we boiled instead of baking them (short on time), so that might have been the difference.  They still tasted excellent and really soaked up the vinegar.  It was almost like having malt vinegar on french fries without the frying.  Next around the plate are Corn Jalapeno Fritters from this month’s Bon Appetit.  Couple of changes to locafy it involved using pickled banana peppers I had on hand already from a prior year’s bumper crop of peppers, and we used grilled corn leftover from our party over the weekend.  The flour came from our local historic grist mill, and we had to add a little more flour and an extra egg since ours weren’t traditional grocery store ‘large’ eggs, but smaller farm-fresh happy-chicken eggs.  They were SO good and so  easy to make that we’re already thinking of other veggies to add in on the next go around since we still have leftover corn to burn through.  And that’s that!  I’m a few weeks late posting this one, but I kind of wanted to space out the One Local Summer posts  on the blog instead of flooding them out as they’re cooked.

Ingredients:
Tomatoes – Hoagland Farms
Basil – Our Garden
Bison Sirloin – Backyard Bison
Blue Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Potatoes – Our Garden
Corn – Hoagland Farms
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Eggs – Deep Roots Valley Farm
Equinox Cheese – Birchrun Hills
Hot Peppers – Our Garden
Non Local – Beer, salt, pepper, olive oil, malt vinegar