People doing the Dark Days Challenge certainly were eating well last week! Not only partly- to mostly-local Thanksgiving feasts, but delicious dinners created from leftovers, lots of homegrown vegetables and more than a few meals made with backyard eggs.
West:
Now that she and Cameron have prepared 100-mile Thanksgiving feasts for three years, Anita thinks that this is perhaps the easiest week of the Dark Days Challenge. Anita says, “Maybe it’s because Thanksgiving is one of the few times each year when Americans eat with the seasons, whether they’re aware of it or not.” Their menu for the holiday doesn’t change much from year to year, although they did have a new-to-them sweet potato recipe, and cranberries hand-carried from a Massachusetts farm.
On the day after Thanksgiving, Einat used her lovely wedding china for the first time, serving a turkey soup made with local vegetables and long-simmered stock from the Thanksgiving turkey. The soup looks delicious and beautiful in the pretty soup plates.
Kristin joined the challenge this week, after Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal Vegetable Miracle inspired her to incorporate more local foods into her diet. She didn’t have time to source her entire Thanksgiving dinner locally, so her first challenge meal was a turkey and veggie pot pie, made with leftovers from the TDay bird, and topped with sweet potato biscuits. Sweet potatoes are one of my favorite foods; I’ve got to try those biscuits!
Maureen‘s local meal for the week was grass-fed beef cooked in the crockpot with tomatoes and Anaheim peppers from her garden, her home-canned green beans, and — yum! — roasted sweet potatoes. Her recipe glazes the sweet potatoes in a lime syrup with chives; if you’re a fan, you’ll want to take a look.
Julianne found herself craving hunters stew, which she made with locally-sourced buffalo, duck and rabbit, as well as vegetables and herbs from her garden. The stew was still in the crockpot when Julianne wrote her post, so she shared this photo of the beautiful vegetables from her garden that had gone into the stew.
While she normally doesn’t prepare complicated dishes, this week the local ingredients that Kathleen had on hand – farmers market eggplants, ground beef from a local ranch, and homemade tomato sauce – moved her to make moussaka. While it turned out well, she used almost every pan in her kitchen; she’s thankful that her husband does the dishes!
If only Tofurkey (a family tradition) and cornbread stuffing were available locally, Ellen would have had an almost completely local Thanksgiving dinner. The CSA share that Ellen‘s family picked up last week provided almost half of the ingredients for her family’s meal.
The evening before Thanksgiving, Jen‘s plans for dinner out fell apart. She took herself home, poured herself a drink, and whipped up a quick, satisfying dinner with local white beans, kale and cheese. While she cooked, Jen thought about how local foods have become her comfort foods, nourishing her soul as well as her body. Eating locally may feel stressful when you’re just starting out, Jen says, but if you stick with it, it will become easier.
Pacific Northwest:
What do you do when you’re planning a local “breakfast for dinner” of backyard eggs, bacon and toast, but find your roommate has eaten the last of the eggs? La Roux thawed some roasted tomato puree she’d frozen earlier this summer, and added sauteed garlic and local milk for a local tomato soup. She served the soup with grilled cheese sandwiches made with Beecher’s cheese, which she picked up at Beecher’s Pike Place shop on a weekend trip to Seattle.
Alison took a trip to the downtown Portland farmers market to shop, and compared the costs of what she bought there to what she’d pay at her usual grocery store. She’d written before that food is more expensive at farmers markets, but had to eat her words; the ingredients for her Greek-ish salad, roasted lamb riblets and cauliflower turned out to be less expensive at the market than at her grocers.
In preparation for moving, Donna cleaned out her refrigerator to make what she called Concoction, a dinner of ground beef from their beef share, farmers market vegetables, pasta and cheese. Sounds like a delicious one-skillet meal.
Jennifer added milk, leek and potato to a Thanksgiving side dish of frozen local corn, beans purchased locally in California, and local delicata squash, turning it into a beautiful corn chowder. Makes me wish I still had corn in the freezer!
“Thanksgiving is our main holiday,” Lauren says, “since we started growing food.” She and Garth grew/raised much of the food for their holiday feast, including the turkey and many of the vegetables. Reading her descriptions of their dinner will certainly make you hungry. After a couple of weeks of posts featuring mostly homegrown meats and vegetables, Lauren promises something like mac’n'cheese or spaghetti next week.
Maya and Gary celebrate Thanksgiving with a potluck-style feast at her aunt and uncle’s house. This year, her offering was made with a mystery winter squash from the volunteer vine in the compost. Cooked with leeks and sage from the garden, and local dairy products, the dish was entirely local except for olive oil, S&P and walnuts.
For the second week of the challenge, Beth obeyed her pregnant belly’s request that she make quiche for lunch using her own garden vegetables and eggs from their hens. Her three-year-old son calls it the quiche garden pie, and loves eating his vegetables.
Lexa enjoyed her breakfast for dinner of local eggs, bacon, home fries and toast with butter and homemade blackberry jam. That’s one of my favorite meals, too.
Sarah worked on stocking up her family’s eat local pantry this week with trips to the U-District and Ballard farmers markets. She picked up a couple of local coho salmon fillets, which she baked with garlic and dill (recipe included), and served with roasted fingerling potatoes and a Skagit Valley pinot noir.
This week, Jessi had a breakfast of apple muffins, made with apples brought back from an orchard near Omak. While the majority of ingredients were local, the sugar was not. Has anyone in the Pacific Northwest found a source for local sugar? If so, I’d like to know, too.
With holiday leftovers, and needing to eat what was on hand, Rois didn’t plan a dinner for the challenge this week. She and Chance have been discussing the affordability of the challenge; sometimes they can’t afford to buy enough organic, sustainable food to feed their family on their budget. They’re working to make their lives more sustainable and self-sufficient — growing more of their own food, learning to make their own vinegars, reducing their waste.
Erika didn’t quite manage an entirely local Thanksgiving dinner (I hear you!), but did have a local leftovers meal the next day featuring turkey and cheese melts, potato pancakes from leftover mashed potatoes, and honeycrisp apples.
While she did little cooking after Thanksgiving, Brittney enjoyed backyard breakfast sandwiches this weekend, featuring eggs from her hens, homemade sweet potato biscuits, Hempler’s bacon and Tillamook cheese. After reading Brittney’s post, I’m tempted to whip up some biscuits!
Annette wrote about her family’s Thanksgiving feast, with multiple posts showcasing each of the recipes she prepared. And she has photos of many of the farmers whose ingredients went into the feast. Lots of good reading for us, and delicious food for Annette and her family.
At our house, we went all out for Thanksgiving dinner, though we were cooking just for the two of us. Each year that we eat locally for Thanksgiving, I’m able to find one or two more ingredients for the dishes that are important to me. This year: sweet potatoes! I was really thankful to the farmers who grew some of the most delicious sweet potatoes I’ve ever tasted.
I’m looking forward to seeing what everyone’s eating this week!
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the best garden vegetables are tomatoes and potatoes, they look great and you can eat them too.:,*