Sunday, June 14, 2009

Packed lunch the OLS way

This was a busy week and it ended with us taking a day trip on Saturday to attend a homeschooling convention. There was a scheduled break for lunch between workshops but from past experience we've learned to pack a lunch to enjoy at the car instead of relying on the pre-packaged sandwiches available on site. Since the garden harvest is continuing to gain momentum, it seemed a good idea to build the menu around local, even homegrown food.

So today's lunch easily turned into our weekly all-local meal in the One Local Summer challenge. We just ate it in a parking garage in Richmond instead of at home. A few folding lawn chairs, a cooler serving as table and, in DS's case, a book purchased at the convention's used book sale, and we were all set.
In preparation for Saturday's meal I'd boiled eggs from our hens on Friday and used just-made mayonnaise to bind the resultant egg salad. Kept cold in the cooler with our frozen water bottles it was perfect with homemade crackers made from local wheat and Sugar Snap peas and peeled turnips, both from our own garden.

I liked dipping the peas in the egg salad but DH preferred scooping the egg salad onto crackers then sprinkling minced chives (again from the garden) over top. The last of our strawberries made a perfect sweet finish to the meal. And I appreciated that because it was all finger food we didn't need silverware beyond a butter knife for getting the egg salad out of the glass jar I packed it in.

As in years past, we weren't the only family tailgating in the parking garage but I bet we were the only one eating all locally-produced foods.

2 comments:

Homemom3 said...

now that's what you call homeschooling. I bet your son was happy to be eating everything he grew in the garden. Course ya'll made me hungry now and I have to go make egg salad, haven't had that in a year. (Not homesteading yet but about to make a garden)

Carolyn said...

Hope you got that egg salad made! Good luck with the garden, too -- it's definitely worth the work and can even be fun to boot. :)