Turns out we’re really on a roll with local cooking her this week. I give the credit to the fact that local produce has finally hit it’s stride. Everything is finally available from within a 160 mile radius (except for cheese) and that’s making it soooo much easier to plan and eat local meals. Here’s our final recap for this week. And looking ahead to next week it seems that we might be able to have pretty much every dinner be local, with exceptions for a few things that I haven’t found local sources for yet (sugar, condiments, dried spices).

OLS 7.3 happened on Friday night. No photo as this one didn’t strike me as local until we were eating and discussing. Then it dawned on me, but by then the remnants wouldn’t have made a pretty photo. Dinner was simple manly fare - a dish that I learned from Mike and that still relies on him to be cooked correctly. This dish, this wonderful filling dish, is beef hash. Or at least that’s what we call it. It’s simply ground beef, potatoes, onions and spices cooked in the skillet until the taters are crispy and the onions are browned. We added green beans on the side to redeem it slightly from being a total “meat and potatoes” dinner.

• 3 Sisters ground beef (Oak Harbor, 56 miles + ferry)
• Frog Song Farm Potatoes and onions (Fir Island, 31 miles)
• Green Beans (Mt. Vernon, 45 miles)
• Johnny’s seasoning, garlic powder and olive oil (non-local)

OLS 7.4 was shared with our friend Kevin last night (hi Kevin!). The day started out with Mike and I moving in a new 14.8 cubic foot chest freezer to replace our circa 1970 upright freezer. We got it at the Lowe’s appliance sale for a reasonable price and we’re already so relieved to not have to worry so much about total melt down due to the faulty door on the old one. Of course, by the time we add the hoped for 40 lbs of salmon and 1/2 hog that we ordered to it later this summer we’ll be out of space. Hopefully the guys will get an elk or two on their trip to Montana in Sept, but if they do we’ll need more freezer space. Oh well.

Anyway, Kevin came up to go on a mountain bike ride with us that ended up cut short due to technical issues with Mike’s bike. So the guys headed out to try the new boat on the sound and I went up to Sedro Wooley to pick up 15 chickens from Akyla Farms. I got to the farm to find the Ostermans finishing up the last of the cleaning and packing. They’ve got a beautiful spot there! At first I was a bit disappointed at the size of the birds - they raise Buff Opringtons instead of Cornish Cross - because even at 4 months old the birds averaged only 2 lbs apiece and were on the scrawny side. I called Mike on the way down to say that I thought they were probably better suited to oven roasting and soup than going on the grill as we’d planned for that night. In the end, we decided to grill a couple as a test anyway, and I added potatoes to the menu just in case.

Oh my gosh - those little birds just go to show that you should never judge a chicken by it’s carcass, or er something like that. While light, they grilled up beautifully and tasted just like a fresh chicken should - just like I remember from home. We had chosen two of the larger birds, rubbed them with oil, kosher salt and fresh herbs and grilled them. They were moist and flavorful and there was more than enough for the three of us for dinner. With our fabulous chicken we had a salad, corn on the cob and garlic mashed potatoes. We washed it all down with fresh peach ice cream. So good!