The past two weeks around here have been pretty crazy, but more on that tomorrow. Our dark days meals since January 1st have been pretty varied. I’ve got four worth reporting on, so bear with me.
First was a pot roast made on the stove in the Dutch oven. The chuck roast was from the freezer, the carrots and potatoes from local farms. The celery was organic from California. It was perhaps the best pot roast I’ve ever made – recipe from Alice Waters’ The Art of Simple Food.
A couple of nights later we took the leftover pot roast and made it into beef stew by breaking up the roast, slicing the potatoes and carrots and adding corn and peas. The corn was some that I froze this summer and the peas came from Cascadian Farms. Cascadian isn’t a local company anymore, but they still grow a lot of the produce sold in Washington up in the Skagit Valley. I can’t prove my peas were local, but I’m taking my chances as I don’t have another source and I love frozen peas in winter. The stew was also amazing.
This past week our local dinners included wild rice soup and beef hash. The soup was made with a mix that we picked up while in Ely, MN this past summer. To it we added ham from the freezer and the same peas and corn we put into the stew. The soup was just what the cool rainy weather called for and fed us for two nights.
The beef hash was ground beef from the freezer sauteed with onion and then tossed with skillet potatoes. Then I added green beans that I froze this summer. It was simple, unsophisticated and quick – exactly what’s required to keep our kitchen spotless and inviting.
*Note: all the beef and ham referenced here is local, pasture raised and currently in our freezer stash.
Thank you to everyone that is helping to keep this challenge going. I really hated to let it go but I wouldn’t have kept it up without the participant’s enthusiasm and willingness to help out with the posting. Enjoy the first recap of 2008. I can’t wait to see what our guest writers come up with next time!
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The East:
Nicole’s been working on the perfect burger. The Angus burgers were complemented with creamy provolone, baby shiitake mushrooms and her homemade catsup. Added bonus was that she found out that her burger supplier also sells beef by the steer.
Proving once again that she plans ahead, Kim made fajitas with bell peppers that she froze this summer. The color of those frozen peppers is amazing – they look fresh from the garden! I’ll definitely be trying both the fajitas and the freezing peppers soon.
Wendy joins us with two meals that come in a bowl. The first was a yummy looking Indian corn chowder. The second was beef stew with a side of mostly local homemade break.
Pork chops with sauerkraut and applesauce in honor of the Amish farmers who supplied it were The Purloined Letter’s meal first meal of the new year. The lacked that something green, but the deficiency was only in the color palette not the nutrients.
I’m playing catch-up with Danielle this week. Just before Christmas she hit the mother lode at the farmer’s market for onions, white potatoes and sweet potatoes. Holiday meals included 1) crab cakes, sauteed kale and homemade tartar sauce and breadsticks, 2) a brunch of eggs benedict, country home fries and monkey bread, 3) Christmas dinner of roast goose, ciabatta bread and white/sweet potatoes, 4) standing rib roast with Yorkshire pudding, mashed potatoes and homegrown salad. Wow, I know where I want to spend the holidays next year!
Sophie joins us with a local meal featuring some of my favorites. Roast beef accompanied by broccoli, homemade egg noodles with butter and local wine. And Sophie, no need to apologize for the origins of your semolina – I’m just impressed that you made pasta!
Making yet another salient point, Ed notes that these Dark Days meals are starting to require more advance planning – especially for those of us that didn’t put aside that much produce for winter. Even so, he posted two wonderful looking meals, poor man’s chicken stew and turkey tetrazzini. While they were long in the planning, they both turned out well. Ed also made his own pasta and now I’m starting to think mayhap I need to get a pasta maker one of these days.
Julia joins the challenge with two ambitious meals both healthy and local. The first was kale and bran meatloaf and colcannon. The colcannon caught my attention because I’m never sure what to do with kale and putting it in mashers sounds like something Mike will eat. The second was steak, roasted potatoes, kale and homemade bread.
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The West:
Catching up with Anita is always fun. She’s got a fabulous post up about their 10 day holiday vacation and meals. I’ll just recap by telling you to check it out and also clueing you in to the fact that the photo is of the mini beef wellington’s they made for Christmas supper. Other meals included Dungeness crab, crab omelettes, chicken cacciatore, pasta bolognese, beef cheeks and cassoulet. Another place I wouldn’t have minded being for the holidays. Of course my pants wouldn’t have fit by the time I headed home… Alas, I didn’t win the notecards she donated to Menu for Hope – I had a momentary fleeting hope before I realized that she hadn’t spelled my name wrong, I really didn’t win.
Melinda kept up the inspiring meals from her garden and local farmers. Their meals included grapefruit and homemade toast for breakfast, salad and pizza for dinner, grilled cheese & tomato sandwiches with raw veggies and pasta with homemade tomato sauce. Melinda also launched her own challenge, the Growing Challenge which is intended to get us all thinking about planting our own garden or at least a container this year. I joined up and so should you!
Ellen has been cooking, and writing, up a storm. Meals since the last recap include: roasted acorn squash soup, pumpkin black bean soup, chickpea cutlets with potato squashers and steamed broccoli, lentil buttercup soup with paratha, caramelized apples and turnips and carrot soup with brown rice and beet salad.
Porkchops with fried apples and onions accompanied by delicata squash made an appearance at Donna’s house. So glad that you decided to join us again Donna!
Continuing to combine beautiful food with great stories, Katrina gave us a glimpse of her experiences with kabocha squash, stinging nettles and frozen blueberries this time around. Her blueberries post reminded me that I’ve got a boatload of frozen and canned fruit around here that we need to eat.
Michelle joins us with a great post about her trip to the farmer’s market and a meal of roasted root vegetables, simmered mustard greens, fresh salad, local wine and homemade hot cocoa. And they definitely are some cold nights that follow these dark days.
I’ll pretend she’s not a Packer’s fan while I type this out. Joan jumps in with a meal fit for these cold nights. Her first meal is ham with pecan bourbon glaze served with swiss chard gratin. I wish our local winter market sold greens by the piece, I’d be much more likely to buy them more often.
Idaho Locavore rounds out the newcomers in the West. Recipes for this first recap include baked beans and elk short ribs and huckleberry pots de creme. The detail and step by step photos on these are fabulous. I wonder if I can make the pots de creme with my strawberry jam that failed to set?
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The Middle:
Anne tried her hand at meatballs again, only to find out that they flattened in the pan. Other meals included a veggie soup with tomato broth, chicken breasts with gravy, broccoli and mashed purple potatoes and cottage ham with sweet potatoes corn and Brussels sprouts. And Anne, there’s no such thing as too much garlic. (don’t you just want to kiss Mr. Grey’s face while purring yourself?)
Continuing to make me drool with the kind of comfort food that I grew up with, FarmMom made use of frozen eggplant this week to make Beefy Eggplant Parmigiana. Her husband might not have been impressed, and mine wouldn’t be either, but I think it looks like a great dark days kind of meal.
Katie is our newcomer in the middle. She’s got a nice long post up with all the details so I’ll just recap here. Her challenge meals so far have included a birthday cake, goat and vegetable stew, pan fried walleye, homemade applesauce and finally mashed celeriac/potato/sunchokes with lasagne. Thanks for joining us Katie.
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Forgot to say this earlier but I’d be happy to help out with writing weekly roundups sometime during the challenge. Cheers!
yay, I made it in time
thanks for another fabulous recap. Can’t wait to hear more on the house front.
Laura, thanks for continuing the challenge – it keeps us on the straight and narrow path we need to be on!
And thanks for joining THE GROWING CHALLENGE!! I’ve used the Dark Days Challenge as a model for how to set it up. A lot of work, but I like that we can all go to one place and see what everyone is up to!
My apologies for the Packer-boosting. Should have been more sensitive. I wasn’t thinking about the possibility of another Seattle-ite (other than my sister) reading the posting even though you had, in fact, said you were going to do the first recap. My excuse is that it is genetic. We grew up about 100 miles north of Green Bay and it is a family obligation to support the cheeseheads. I’ll try to be more cautious in the future. (If they’re not playing the Packers, I always cheer for the Seahawks.)