Tag: <span>zucchini</span>

Tag: zucchini

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 8

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More than 5 ingredients this week for One Local Summer!  I decided to get a little more ambitious after having seen dill at the farmers market and decided to go for chicken pitas (pita recipe) with a tzatzki-ish sauce.  Unfortunately, I neglected to run back and grab a cucumber, but managed to cobble something together that worked well enough.  The pitas were done on the grill using our pizzaque – they seem to work best this way since the stone gets really hot and a quick open and close of the grill keeps the internal temperature high enough for them to puff up perfectly.  After the pitas were done, on went the mushrooms and fennel with the zucchini sliced right beside it and then the chicken with a healthy spring of dill on top.  Then on the side is a simple salad with some cheese and more of the tzatzki-ish sauce as dressing.  The sauce is a goat’s milk yogurt base with garlic scapes and dill added to the yogurt.  It was a really nice meal for a warm summer week, and being able to cook everything outside on the grill made everything easier since I didn’t heat up the house!

Ingredients:
Chicken –  Deep Roots Valley Farm
Zucchini –  Jack’s Farm
Fennel –  Jack’s Farm
Garlic Scapes –  North Star Orchard
Dill –  North Star Orchard
Cheese – “Pepito” from Yellow Springs Farm
Goat’s Milk Yogurt – Shellbark Hollow Farm
Lettuce –  Charlestown Farm
Mushrooms –  Oley Valley Mushrooms
Flour –  Mill at Anselma
Honey – Our Hives
Non Local – Olive Oil, Salt, Pepper, Yeast

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 5

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I actually have TWO this week for One Local Summer, so I’m jamming them into one post instead of splitting them into two.  This week was husband’s final week home before going out to a ship for quite a long while, so he took advantage of the time home to cook up a storm.  This is me, not complaining.  First up!  A house favorite, biscuits and gravy with a side of yogurt and strawberries and of course, coffee.  We made our biscuits with lard – I have no idea where the recipe came from, but if I find out, I’ll add a link  – and they come out so delightful.  We had the buttermilk for the gravy and it felt like it would be a slight not to include it in the biscuits as well.  The flour is probably my favorite part of this.  We actually have an old stone mill locally that buys their wheat from PA farmers and then mills it with a gigantic water wheel just a few minutes down the road.  They sell it, along with cornmeal, to help fund the mill’s educational programs and it’s SUCH a delight to have locally grown and milled wheat available to us, not to mention the historic aspect of the fact that it was ground in  a mill that’s 250 years old!   In order to make the meal just a little more healthy, we added the side of strawberries and yogurt.  The coffee?  Not local, but I dare you to tell me that I can’t have it with breakfast.

Ingredients:
Lard – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Sausage – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Flour – Mill at Anselma
Strawberries – Hoagland Farm
Yogurt – Seven Stars Farm
Buttermilk – Maplehofe Dairy
Non Local – Coffee, Salt, Pepper

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I did mention this was a two-fer, right?  Second local meal for the week features ribs with grilled vegetables, a cucumber salad and CHEESE.  The ribs were cooked in the slow cooker first and then given a quick roast in the oven with our own homemade fruit ketchup using tomatoes and apples from the farmers market and peaches from our own tree.  Pretty sure this is the same recipe we used from the Ball Canning Book  for the ketchup.  The veggies on the side were carrots, snap peas, and zucchini.  Then there was the classic cucumber salad – cucumbers soaked in vinegar making not-quite-pickles, but a nice refreshing not-lettuce sort of salad for the side.  Then there’s the CHEESE – I believe that’s all Birchrun Hills cheese between Fat Cat, Red Cat, and some Clipper.  REALLY a good dinner – the ribs were absolutely perfect and it was a nice way to end a stormy evening.

Ingredients:
Ribs – Countrytime Farm
Cucumbers –  Jack’s Farm
Zucchini –  Jack’s Farm
Snap peas –  Jack’s Farm
Carrots –  Charlestown Farm
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills
Non Local – Homemade Vinegar, Salt, Pepper, Olive Oil

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2016 – Week 4

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Week four, cooked and consumed already during our One Local Summer.  Husband was home again this weekend, so I was happy to step aside and let him take charge of the kitchen!  The vegetable supply is really starting to diversify since so many farmers start seeds early, so we already have zucchini and snap peas available.  The meal is a veal chop marinated in vinegar, salt and pepper, cider, and cilantro then grilled with some cheese on top.  On the side are  grilled carrots, snap peas, and zucchini and some more cheese (because there can always be more cheese), paired with a nice leafy green salad tossed with some olive oil and vinegar, and a glass of homebrewed cider.  The cider we had here actually finished off a 5 gallon keg we’ve been nursing for over a year now, but fortunately  we have the next batch ready to go, made from apples picked at my grandparents’ home some four hours west of where we live.  Since the apples followed us on a trip we would’ve made anyway, I include them into local summer since their “food miles” didn’t count as just transporting food.  We crushed and pressed the apples into cider ourselves, gave the juice some yeast, and let it do its thing.  The resulting cider came out tart and dry, just how I like it, so while I’m a little sad to see this keg go, I’m also eager to see how the second batch tastes!  Anyway, enough about the cider, the meal was a nice way to cap off the long holiday weekend since this was Monday’s dinner before husband left again for the week.  Hopefully he’ll get in one last OLS meal before heading out on a long stretch for work, and then it’s all on me!  I may have to entice some guest chefs to visit and contribute  (read: beg friends to cook for me) during the summer.

Ingredients:

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 20

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Winding down to the end of One Local Summer with just a few weeks left of our set.  Usually we drag this out through November, but we’re taking a break and wrapping it up soon.  At the top of the meal, we have a bowl filled with all sorts of tomatoes, drizzled with some balsamic vinegar and topped with basil.  Next around is a mug of homebrewed beer.  The on the main plate is zucchini, sweet potatoes, lamb sausage, and banana peppers stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in bison bacon.  This meal involved a good bit of prep work, but once everything was cut and wrapped and ready, it all went onto the grill (except the tomatoes).  Pretty easy!  The lamb sausage was absolutely delicious and I’m glad I sprung for it at the market.  The whole thing together made for a great dinner.

Ingredients:
Tomatoes – My Garden,  Full Circle CSA
Basil – My Garden
Zucchini –  Full Circle CSA
Sweet Potatoes –  Jack’s Farm
Lamb Sausage – Canter Hill Farm
Banana Peppers – Steer Vegetables
Bison Bacon –  Backyard Bison
Cheese –  Birchrun Hills, Blue Cheese
Non Local – Balsamic Vinegar, olive oil, salt, pepper

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 11a

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This is the last week of catch-up posts, I swear.  Well, at least for now.  I can’t make promises about future weeks, but I’ll try to get them posted on the actual week that they’re made this time!  I’m back by myself for this week, and went a little crazy with the vegetables.  A neighbor had let his zucchini plants go a little wild and had a few baseball bats sitting on the vines.  I graciously offered to take one off his hands so he didn’t have to ding-dong-ditch zucchini all over the neighborhood.  It’s hard to tell underneath all the other vegetables, but I spiral sliced the zucchini with my new slicer and made zucchini pasta!  I cooked that quickly in a big pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, just enough so it still had a little crunch to it, but was warmed thoroughly.  In another pan, I had onions, fennel, and tomatoes cooking together  to put on top of the zucchini pasta.  The sausage was pan seared, carrots steamed, and potatoes roasted.  Then the peaches!  Oh it’s peach season and these are particularly perfect, eat-over-the-kitchen-sink-because-they-drip-everywhere, juicy and delicious peaches.  I smothered them in blue cheese and baked them in the oven and they always make a perfect sweet and savory dessert.  The plate is incredibly full this week, but it’s 90% vegetables, so I don’t feel bad about it, not one bit.

Ingredients:
Zucchini – Neighbor’s Garden
Potatoes – Jack’s Farm
Carrots – Clover Hill Farm
Tomatoes – Clover Hill Farm
Fennel – Jack’s Farm
Onions – Clover Hill Farm
Peaches – North Star Orchard
Cheese – Birchrun Hills, Blue and Equinox
Sausage – Canter Hill Farm, South African Borewors
Non Local – 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 2015 – Week 9a

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We’ve gotten rather ahead of ourselves with One Local Summer, so I’m going to double up this week with two posts to get back on track. Sometimes we just cook local meals by default and then I forget what week we’re on and things all go crazy. I figure doing extra local meals isn’t a bad thing and since we made them, I might as well share them! So, here’s a catchup post and in two weeks I’ll be all caught up, I hope.

We dug into the freezer for this one and found a Bison roast. Husband rubbed it down with freshly ground pepper and salt and put it on the rotisserie on the grill. While I realize it may be blasphemous to red meat eaters, the end chunk was cooked nicely well done (brown the whole way through) but was still tender and DELICIOUS. Also cooked on the grill were those skewers with zucchini and tomatoes, covered in olive oil, salt, and pepper, then there’s a cucumber salad with red wine and vinegar, and finally the salad bowl just like every week, with the same mix of greens and vegetables. It all came out great, and we found a local Cabernet Sauvignon to pair with the dinner.

Ingredients:
Radishes –  Full Circle CSA
Turnips –  Full Circle CSA
Mushrooms –  Oley Valley Mushrooms
Lettuce Full Circle CSA
Cucumber – Clover Hill Farm
Tomatoes – Clover Hill Farm
Bison – Backyard Bison
Zucchini – Clover Hill Farm
Wine – Sand Castle Winery, Cabernet Sauvignon
Non Local – Salt, pepper, olive oil, homemade vinegar

One Local Summer

One Local Summer 2015 – Week 7

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Don’t tell anyone, but we’re actually a week ahead due to husband’s love of cooking local food.  Really though, that’s fine, because at some point, we’ll end up being away or too busy or something and we’ll fall behind a week, so I figure this will all come out in the wash, as Willy Wonka might say.  Husband is a big fan of the basics – meat, vegetable, and a salad makes a meal.  However, it’s the prep and spices and whatnot that bring it far beyond that level.  I’ve never had a complaint about any dinner, and how could I – my basic policy is that any meal I don’t have to cook is a good one!  Enough babbling, onto the plate!  First up, in the salad bowl, we have lettuce, turnips, radishes, and some carrots with a non local but homemade dressing.  On the plate is a slice of a Pork Loin  Roast on the rotisserie after being rubbed with pepper, maple sugar, and salt, glazed with red wine and maple syrup while being cooked.  Then we have carrots drizzled with maple syrup, and grilled zucchini (a personal favorite).  Topped the whole thing off with a glass of red wine and we had a lovely dinner.

Ingredients:
Pork Loin  Roast – M&M Creek Valley Farm
Zucchini – Clover Hill Farm
Carrots – Clover Hill Farm
Lettuce –  Full Circle CSA
Turnips – Full Circle CSA
Radishes – Full Circle CSA
Maple Sugar/Syrup – Miller’s Maple
Wine – Paradocx, Barn Red
Non Local – Olive Oil, homemade vinegar, salt, pepper