I can’t believe that 4 months have really come and gone. It seems like just last month we were starting the challenge and groaning about all the squash we were going to have to eat over the winter. And yet, here we are at the last (and late) recap of the winter. Seems fitting that I finally got it done on the first day of spring. I know some of us are still a long way away from the first greens and fruit of summer, but others are already enjoying the first asparagus and strawberries of the year!
What an amazing way to spend the winter, cooking with friends. Once again I’ve been inspired and amazed and humbled and made hungry by everything that everyone has cooked over the winter.
If you’d like to keep cooking over the spring, Mangochild has a few ideas up her sleeve and hopefully she’ll decide to share them with us soon! Otherwise, check back in the fall for details on what I’ve got in the works for next winter.
Laura
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The South
Attempting to recreate a special meal from a special restaurant, Laurel made a simple creamy parsnip soup. If you’ve got a few still languishing in the fridge or cellar, this sounds like an excellent way to use them up!
To end the challenge, Laurel visited the farmer’s market and found everything needed for breakfast tacos. A bit of spiced potato with scrambled eggs, onion and cilantro, pepperjack and spinach. Mmmm, now that’s a grand ending!
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The Midwest
A crisp and fresh apple and carrot slaw added just the right amount of Spring to Anne‘s rajma curry over spelt berries – a colorful, all veggie meal.
With a return to a standard protein-veg-veg-starch format, Anne‘s final Dark Days meal sourced some great local products, including pork chops topped with an apple and paw-paw/habanero chutney, roasted sweet potatoes with butter and maple sugar, summer corn, and brussel sprouts with onions. Like many of us, Anne is thankful for the comraderie of the Dark Days Challenge and all the interesting ingredients and recipes she’s learned along the way.
Karen has delightfully rediscovered the joy of scones this winter as she paired a tender batch of cheese scones with her over-the-top potato stew turned pottage. The meal was finished off with a choice of gleaned apples pie or chess pie.
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The East
As the Dark Days Challenge winds down, so, too, do our fellow participants. Nicole feels like she’s ending the challenge on a whimper, instead of a bang, with her golden turnips and pork chops smothered in buckwheat honey. Still, the winter challenge held a few good lessons, including frozen asparagus is yucky, roasting cauliflower for a puree is good, and she can make a “kick ass” turkey gravy! Check out Farm To Philly for this year’s “One Local Summer” challenge, coming up soon.
Kim popped in for one final recap of gorgeous goodies: homemade pizza topped with local pepperoni, tomato sauce and Cabot cheese, a beautiful sirloin served with tender parsley potatoes, and a bejeweled salad alongside mini frittatas (great idea!) and local bread.
A different kind of bread found its way to mangochild‘s table, in the form of pizza dough! A perfectly balanced pie made from whole wheat flour, tomato sauce, homemade cottage cheese and basil completed this free-form meal. In celebration of her Hindu and Jewish roots, mangochild‘s local foods the last week were a veritable festival for the senses… a pumpkin & carrot dish with dried chilies, cumin and honey served with a spinach flat bread called bhaji-thepla & bean cakes with a dried apple treasure in the middle, a squash, potato and carrot stew served with cabbage, cranberry rolls.
Sophie raced to the “Dark Days” finish line by packing in three local meals the second to last week. On rotation: veal chop, pan fried potatoes, and sauteéd spinach on night one, lentil soup with wheat berries on night two, and coriander rubbed pork chops served with cauliflower on night three.
For the last round the “bang” moved over to Sophie‘s house, where three local meals made it to the plate. On the agenda this week: tenderloin and broccoli, ribeye, potatoes and spinach, and macaroni and meatballs. The latter was a goal of the challenge finally accomplished, and served up with one local nephew, too!
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The West
Einat finished out the challenge with a day of baking. A breakfast of pancakes from scratch with fresh butter and apples was followed by a ready to bake pizza from the farmer’s market. For dinner, ground goat in homemade pitas with cucumber, peppers and hummus. I keep thinking we should try goat – how does it compare to lamb?
A busy week #16 made Maya glad to have preserved the summer harvest last year so that she could make a pesto tomato soup one night. To end the challenge, she made use of the hearts and kidneys from some local pigs. The hearts were sliced thin, fried and served with Hubbard squash gratin. The kidneys, served two ways, were the final meal. One was deviled with onion and shitakes, the second was seasoned and grilled. Both ways would be new to me…
Realizing that the freezer was getting a bit crowded, Anita and Cameron have declared that they are giving up buying new meat until the stash is depleted (an exception for bacon of course). The winningest dinner the first week was a chicken pot pie with a gorgeous crust!
The second week of operation freezer saw dinners of cassoulet, spaghetti and meatballs, posole verde and a simple paella that used up a number of bits and pieces plus the season’s first fava beans. A recipe we will have to try!
Week 16 found Joan and Grady enjoying sirloin tip steak, potato casserole and sauteed chard. The potato casserole just went on my must have list! Lent found Joan also using up the freezer contents to make a mostly local chili (I love chili). I guess maybe we should get on the freezer cleaning outing around here too!
Weeks 15 and 16 found Denise and Holly eating locally at home and on the road. First up was a pumpkin and sage pasta drenched in squash sauce and served with broiled steaks. On the road they took homemade yogurt and other treats as well as a bag of treasures as a hostess gift. When the power went out on the last day of the challenge it seemed fitting. Dinner was still on as the stove is propane and p ork chops in cream sauce, wild rice pilaf and green beans were enjoyed by all. Mmmm.
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Thanks for all your hard work in bringing this challenge together. We had a great time with it!
As for your question on Goat, I find it a little gamier than lamb. We used the leftover goat meat in soft tacos and it was fine, but the flavor was slightly off compared to beef or pork. If you are using non-ground pork, I’d recommend slow cooking as some of the cuts can be a bit tough.
Thanks again!
Einat
Hi Laura, thanks so much for doing this all winter! and sorry I fizzled out there at the end. We actually did get a proper local meal in this week (baked eggs with greens) but I took no pictures and didn’t get around to writing it up. And here we are on the 2nd day of spring and it SNOWED HERE yesterday. Unacceptable!
Happy spring planting.
please don’t apologize for the timing on the roundup — the first day of spring is the perfect time for the end of Dark Days
Thank you a thousand times over for being such a great host. I love reading about and seeing everyone’s local meals, and I doubt many of us would have the initiative to blog about it (or visit one another all the time) if it weren’t for the challenge.
Thank you a million times over for hosting this challenge – it made the winter so much more tolerable for me and definitely did the work of getting me out of the easy-to-fall-into cooking ruts. I had a great time learning about the creations people came up with using the limited ingredients often at hand. And yes, I’ve got an idea for another challenge/project that I’ll post this week- so if people are interested, take a look!
I’d like to add my thanks as well…looks like the ante is up to a billion now! This challenge does indeed make the winter more bearable, and although I have a propensity for falling into cooking ruts (I call it repetitive food syndrome; others call it laziness), I am happy that they are at least local ruts.
As always, I enjoy seeing what other people do with their ingredients and enjoy living vicariously through some of the more ambitious and daring chefs.
And finally, I love reading your recaps. The way you tie it all together, it almost seems like there was a plan behind the disparate menus.
Reading what everyone else was having for dinner was inspiring, yet humbling as well. I pride myself as being a good cook, but noe close to what some of you were able to prepare. I think too, most dishes that seemed overwhelming to me had lots of herbs (salt–pepper is an herb to us). We are going to try growing more of our own herbs–especially now that I know what to do with them.
congratulations to everyone for surviving the “Dark Days”!!
I can’t wait to sign up for it next year!