The South
Jennelle of Delicious Potager was too busy with work to make the winter squash carbonara she had in mind, but instead prepared a wonderful local breakfast over the weekend. Traditional brekkie fare of bacon, eggs, butter and toast were paired with a not-so-traditional jam of her own creation from last summer. The recipe for her delicious “B3” (Balsamic Basil Blackberry) Jam, and her account of what inspired her to pair these particular ingredients, can be found here.
HT over at Life is Like a Box of Chocolates adapted the South African dish Bobotie and paired it with a turnip-gruyere casserole. Her version of this Cape Town recipe included local beef, eggs, milk, and bread. Local turnips, milk, butter and flour were used for the casserole.
A fellow North Carolinian over at the mommy porch pulled together a satisfying Southern meal of buttermilk-brined pork chops, cornbread, mustard greens and black-eyed peas, and the kids got to wash it all down with chocolate milk from a local creamery. And although she’s way up in Appalachia, she also just found a CSA that makes winter deliveries to her area. Yay!
The East
At the farmers’ market made slow-cooked, shredded pork tacos for this week’s challenge. In addition to giving a long list of her sources (paprika from NY!) she includes her recipe for the pork. She didn’t have the necessary Masa Harina to make corn tortillas from scratch, but something tells me that the next time she blogs about homemade tacos, she will.
Over at Daftly Smitten, Jennie didn’t have any local barley and took a chance using local spelt in the Mushroom & Barley Soup recipe from one of her favorite cookbooks. And although she was able to make it work, if you want to make this recipe yourself, she recommends you “find yourself some local barley!”
At the time Stacey of Fessenden Farmstead made this meal, DC was experiencing their second major snowstorm of the season. Her dinner guests only lived a few blocks away and decided to brave the weather for a fantastic meal. Pork ribs from her heritage hog, roasted green beans and garlic from her garden, and roasted potatoes from both the market and her own garden made up the main course. A good old fashioned vanilla pudding, a la the Joy of Cooking, was served up for dessert.
Marissa over at Food in Jars reminds us that “while shopping locally doesn’t have to be hard, it does take some pre-planning.” Having missed her ordering deadline for her Winter Harvest delivery and with no neighborhood farmers’ market to visit (cancelled due to snow, of course!) she threw together a quick local meal of roasted sweet potato fingerlings and scrambled local eggs, and called it good.
Sophie from Late Bloomers Farm and Kaela of Local Kitchen joined forces with other passionate local foodies for The Northeast Locavore Feast! Organized and hosted by Sophie, this gathering was so much fun that a summer feast is in the works. Details, photos, and links to the other participants can be found in Sophie’s words here and in Kaela’s here.
Over at Northeast Kingdom Localvores, Annika’s son had two reactions to her challenge meal: Meatballs (Yay!), but no noodles (Boo). As Annika explains, the adults in the family are sticking to primal fare, which means no grains. Not so for the kids, who went ahead and made themselves some noodles. Despite what the kids thought, the adults still had a great meal: meatballs made with beef, pork sausage, and sheep’s cheese, served with red sauce and sautéed cabbage.
Over at The Palmyra Sliver, Peg nursed a glass of wine and band-aided thumb while her husband took over dinner duty. Inspired by Moosewood Restaurant Simple Suppers, they had a simple, delicious meal of broccoli, onion and cheddar melts, followed by chilled peaches that they canned themselves last summer.
Our expatriate friend who’s living The Simple Life in France made roasted root vegetables – tossed with locally pressed olive oil, salt from visible salt flats, and herbes de Provence that she got from her butcher; olive oil scones; and an apple crisp made with pink ladies from the Alps. The southern Alps, which are close to her 100 mile limit. (Umm, yes, I’m jealous.)
Pizza, pizza! That’s what Margo from Thrift at Home made for her challenge meal. Her own sauce came out of the freezer, local organic goat milk mozzarella and mushrooms…I can practically smell it baking. Paired with local greens and raw turnips, she only forgot one thing – the local beer sitting in the fridge!
Amber of Unstuffed may not have had a specific meal to showcase for this week’s challenge, but she certainly has the principles down pat. In the myriad almost-local dishes she highlights in her week’s recap, she came very close. And although she doesn’t think the completely local breakfast she had counts (she’s already done a “dark days breakfast”), at the end of the day, it was still a local meal.
What did she do today? Well, she made local baked beans. SOLE ingredients included beans, salt pork, onions and maple syrup. You can check out her link to the bean recipe, along with a very cool tip she learned involving baking soda, here.
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