Fresh blackberries

Today's featured home-grown food was blackberries. DS's been picking them every morning for breakfast but today we each had a bowl of berries with some top cream and a couple of honey wafers for dessert with our lunch. The honey wafers are similar to a sugar cookie or thin shortbread. They only take 4 ingredients and are good keepers -- if you can keep them hidden, that is.

I kept the rest of the meal simple, too. DH grilled our garden-fresh squash (green and yellow zucchini), onions and potatoes over the gas grill. Prior to grilling I par-boiled the potatoes and drizzled a little olive oil and soy sauce over the squash and onions. Also made a tomato and mozzarella salad using our yellow pear tomatoes and Genovese basil plus cheese I'd picked up Saturday at the farmer's market. When the grilled veg was ready I sprinkled chopped chives over the potatoes and passed butter, as desired, at the table.

Honey Wafers

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup honey
2 cups all-purpose flour (I use fresh-ground soft wheat)
1 teaspoon baking soda

Cream together butter and honey, warming them carefully for a minute or two, if desired, for easier blending. Combine dry ingredients and add to (cooled) creamed mixture.

Chill dough 1 hour or until firm enough to roll easily. Roll out 1/8" to 1/4"-thick on lightly floured surface. Cut with floured cookie or biscuit cutter. Can also be chilled in log shape and then sliced 1/8" to 1/4" and baked as needed.

Bake on greased cookie sheet in 350°F. for 8-10 minutes if 1/8"-thick or 12-15 minutes for 1/4"-thick cookies.

I usually prefer a mild honey in these but orange-flower honey with bits of orange zest added is a wonderful variation. Try adding 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon and 1/4 teaspoon each ground cloves and allspice to make a spice-scented version.

Yield: 36 2" cookies

Another marinated summer salad -- this time with homemade Catalina dressing

The days of the week blur together lately. I put up 19 quarts of green beans, 15 quarts of pickled beets, dried 8 pounds of beets, 16 pounds of various types of summer squash, 9 pounds of cucumbers and more this past week. I swear the corner of the kitchen in this photo is never empty. As soon as I take care of one dishpan of vegetables, another seems to magically fill and take its place.

To get us through busy weeks like this, I rely on make-ahead dishes and "twice is nice" menus. The latest addition to my cookery repertoire is a marinated salad that can be made in advance, uses up lots of garden produce and makes a great side dish or topping for use with a tortilla roll-up and which, with the addition of chopped cooked chicken, sliced hard-boiled eggs or a can of rinsed and drained beans, can serve as a main dish.
For one of our completely local meals this week I included this salad, topped with hard-boiled eggs and accompanied by zucchini chips and a glass of mint tea. All but the tomatoes came from our homestead and those came from the local farmers' market. Next week when I make another bowl, I'll add a couple of our just-ready peppers, either bell or sweet banana.

The dressing I use is a homemade Catalina. You could use a bottle from the store but I don't because the homemade is so easy to make and it has the spicy tang I can't find in a bottled version these days.

The recipe allows for a lot of variation. Just be sure to use fresh vegetables that won't go limp sitting in the dressing. For that reason, I prefer to use a meaty plum tomato and remove the seeds before chopping. Chop as much of each vegetable as you want to include. I don't measure but just use a bowl that will hold a little more than I want to make. That way I have room to toss the salad in the dressing without spilling it. When I have enough veg chopped, I pour on the dressing, toss to coat then cover and refrigerate till serving time. It needs at least an hour or two to blend flavors before serving. Leftovers will keep 3 days or so in the fridge.

Catalina Dressing

2/3 cup mild-tasting vegetable oil
1/4 cup ketchup*
2 tablespoons honey (or 1/4 cup sugar)
1/4 cup white wine vinegar
1 tablespoon grated onion
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/8 teaspoon hot pepper sauce

Combine all ingredients in a jar with tight-fitting lid. Shake to blend and then let sit for an hour or so before using. Shake thoroughly or use wire whip each time before serving.

Makes about 1-1/2 cups.

*I use Farm Journal's "Western Gourmet Ketchup" which I can every year using our garden tomatoes. (Recipe available here.) It has a sweet tangy flavor and works well in this recipe but probably any flavorful bottled ketchup would serve.

Lunch in a hurry, as usual

The garden's doing great this year and that means when we're home we're usually working out there or in the kitchen putting up produce. Strange as it seems, amongst all this food, it can be hard to get a meal on the table some days.

Saturday's meal, put together on the run between garden chores and a little holiday merry-making, was meatloaf made with local, grass-fed beef from the freezer, red cabbage and summer squash from our garden, grain from down the road in Raphine (Wade's Mill) and a few new potatoes I couldn't resist picking up at the farmers market that morning. The squash casserole and rolls included eggs from our backyard hens, plus butter and a bit of top cream from a dairy at Burnt Chimneys. The meatloaf and squash also included onions from the garden and the meatloaf utilized a few tablespoons of the wonderful tomato powder I made earlier this spring with what was left of last year's dried tomatoes. Red cabbage required a dash of homemade apple cider vinegar and local honey, too.

Too get it on the table fast, I prepared the squash casserole in the morning and refrigerated it, unbaked, till close to lunch time. The red cabbage went in the oven with the meatloaf a little over an hour before lunch. And the rolls were made with refrigerator dough I try to keep on hand so we can enjoy fresh hot bread with most meals. They spent most of the morning rising in their baking pan on the counter and then went into the hot oven as the meatloaf and squash casserole came out.

We had ice-cold apple cider we made and froze late last fall. I often can cider, too, but then it just becomes apple juice, in my book. This stuff was still the real thing and a perfect sweet yet refreshing drink to go with the rest of our local meal.

Do you brown bag it?

Well, DH does. Though his employer provides a large break room complete with sandwich and snack machines, he prefers to pack his lunch every day. One reason is he's a thrifty guy and would rather not fork out a minimum of 5 bucks a day to eat a day-old sandwich, a handful of chips and a soda plus the closest restaurant is almost 4 miles away. But the main reason is he's envious of me and DS.

Yes, that's right. He's driven by jealousy. He thinks of us, at home, doing our usual chores, homeschooling, stretching out with a book and then enjoying home-cooked meals without him. He can handle it all right up to the point when DS describes some great tasting dish we cobbled together for dinner. Then, especially if the meal included fresh garden produce, he turns green.

Now for me, having to cook and preserve almost all our food, I sometimes dream of being served a meal I didn't have to prepare. Just goes to show, one man's bane is another's pleasure. And it's not even that DS and I dine on exotic dishes or seek out little known recipes to enjoy when DH is at work. I think it's just the idea that we're enjoying the fruits of his labor without him.

So what does he pack for lunch? Usually leftovers. Yep, all this fuss and the man eats leftovers. But since I usually cook extra chicken with the idea of making tortilla soup from the remains or turn a few slices of ham and boiled potatoes into a fritta with the addition of eggs and onions, it's not always traditional leftovers. More of the cook once, eat twice or plan-ahead cooking style.

One day this past week, I realized he'd packed a totally local meal to take to work. Here's what he packaged up: ruby red beets, steamed and sliced, zucchini and yellow squash in browned butter, sugar snap peas with garlic-soy sauce, Harvey House slaw, sliced cucumbers in vinegar and a slice of locally raised and smoked ham.Except for the ham slice (the last of a fellow homesteader's delicious Christmas basket), DH grew everything from beets, cabbage, cucumbers, garlic, onion, sugar snap peas, yellow squash to zucchini. The dried and crushed hot red pepper on the peas came from last year's garden.

The butter came from Burnt Chimneys, the soy sauce from Richmond, and the honey in the slaw came from an apiary on the next county road over. The apple cider vinegar was more of the batch we made last fall from (non-pasturized) local cider. Non-local ingredients included in the meal were celery seed, dry mustard, kosher salt, a teaspoon of brown sugar and salad oil.

Sugar Snap Peas in Garlic-Soy Sauce

1 pound sugar snap peas, ends clipped, strings removed
2 tablespoons garlic-infused olive oil (OR sub plain olive oil and 1 minced garlic clove)
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 teaspoon brown sugar
dash of crushed cayenne pepper

Toss olive oil with peas to coat. Broil 2"-3" from heat for 5 minutes. Mix soy sauce and brown sugar together and pour over peas in broiler pan. Toss to coat. Season lightly with pepper. Serve.

These are good hot or cold.

Cornbread

In my house cornbread is never sweet and is always made in an iron skillet. Just the way my mama made it.

Now, if you want to add sugar, corn, peppers, sausage, onion or cheese, I still may eat it but it's strayed from being cornbread and started taking on airs. Oh, and if there's any buttermilk or yogurt in the house, that's always used in the batter in preference to any other liquid such as milk. Though, if it's a poor month, water will work in a pinch.

Around here cornbread often serves as a kid-friendly extra or as a meal extender, stretching a few leftovers into a full meal. Plus everyone's always happy to see it on the table when they sit down to eat. Combine it with homemade preserves and it can serve as a between-meal snack, too.

Because corn grows in so many areas of the country, local cornmeal often can be found more readily than wheat flour. Besides nearby Wade's Mill, we have a couple of local folks who set up during the year to grind and sell cornmeal at local events such as the Virginia Fall Foliage Festival or sometimes under a tent on the fringe of a large parking lot sort of like the ubiquitous chicken barbeques -- serving as a fund-raiser or simply a way to make extra money. Since we have a grinder, I can prepare our cornmeal fresh as we need it. I like to use popcorn as it makes a hearty, good tasting cornmeal and is something we can grow ourselves.

Cornbread came to my menu-deprived mind again yesterday as I planned a late dinner that was more of the same garden fare we usually enjoy this time of year. We'd been on the go since early morning and wanted something quick and easy for supper. Preferably something that could cook as we showered and changed after the hot, tiring day. So I fixed a quick two-skillet meal that's one of DS's favorites: sweet salsa cabbage with ground venison and cornbread.

First I mixed up the cornbread and put it in the toaster oven to bake. My small iron skillet just fits in the little oven and lets me bake in the hot summer without heating up the house with the larger gas oven. The cornbread takes about 20 minutes to bake which is just enough time to get the main dish prepped and cooked.

The cabbage and venison dish is another variation on combining available vegetables with ground meat and adding a sauce. In this case I chopped onions and green cabbage from our garden as I browned the frozen ground venison in a tablespoon of oil. The venison was from a deer put in the freezer last fall. When we grind it for the freezer, it's all lean meat so needs just a bit of oil for cooking like this. And I package it in flattened three-quarter pound packages so it can be cooked right from the frozen state, no waiting for it to thaw.

I tossed the onions on top of the cooking meat and covered the pan with a lid while I finished chopping cabbage. The sauce was 2 cups hot salsa we'd put up out of the garden last year and 1/2 cup home-canned peach preserves made last year with fruit and honey from an orchard just over the mountain from us. I added a bit of salt and black pepper, stirring all the sauce ingredients together before pouring it over the now-combined cabbage, onions and venison in the pan. Put the lid back on and let it simmer on low while I grabbed a quick shower.

No real dessert necessary with this meal but we all enjoyed an extra slice of cornbread with some more of the peach preserves as a sweet finish to dinner. Another successful OLS meal and another meal elevated to something special by a pan of cornbread.

Cornbread

2 cups cornmeal
2 eggs
1-1/4 cups buttermilk or thinned yogurt
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
2 tablespoons vegetable oil or butter

Add the oil or butter to an 8-inch or 10-inch iron skillet and set in preheated 450ºF. oven while preparing rest of recipe.

Combine remaining ingredients in medium mixing bowl. Pour hot oil or melted butter from iron skillet into batter, stir quickly to blend then transfer to hot skillet for baking.

Bake 20 minutes at 450ºF.

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.

One Local Summer 2009

As usual for this time of year, we're eating primarily out of our garden but this week I made a point of planning one whole meal comprised entirely of foods produced within a 100-mile radius (excepting oils, salt, pepper and spices) in order to celebrate the return of One Local Summer. I still relied on our garden's produce for the vegetables and berries but sourced the pork, cornmeal, wheat, honey, and dairy products locally.

It started with a huge dishpan of Swiss chard and bok choy which DH cut along with a couple heads of garlic and a few Egyptian onions pulled on the way to the house. I sent DS out to pick the sugar snap peas and strawberries and as usual a lot went directly into the picker before the rest were delivered to the kitchen. Fortunately this is shaping up to be the best year ever for peas and strawberries -- lots of rain has made a big difference in production amounts for both so DS's been able to eat his fill at each picking without causing any problem for the cook's supper plans.

The pork came from Staunton's BackDoor Butcher, a shop located one street over from the Staunton/Augusta Farmers Market. They don't seem to have their own website but the link will take you to their listing on the Eat Well Guide site. I cubed 12 ounces of meat and set it aside to marinate in a mixture of 1/2 cup soy sauce, 3 tablespoons sherry, and 2 teaspoons honey while I prepped the vegetables. The honey came from an apiary only a mile away as the crow flies -- who knows? Maybe the bees who produced the jars I have gathered pollen around our homestead...

I came close to exceeding the 100-mile radius with the soy sauce. It's brewed in Richmond, Virginia and I buy it locally but depending on the company's exact location in Richmond (I didn't look that up), it may exceed the desired distance by a mile or so. I decided to include it in the meal anyway for several reasons. We like soy sauce and I often use it to marinate meat destined for a stir fry plus I already had it on hand and one reason I like to participate in the OLS meal planning is to expand my knowledge of what I can find locally and then continue to buy those local foods as available year-round. So for the last couple of years I've started keeping a large bottle of San-J Organic Shoyu Naturally Brewed soy sauce on the pantry shelf in addition to my stand-by gallon-sized can of Kikkomann. I like San-J's slightly lighter, and I think, vinegary taste in lots of recipes.

So, if the soy sauce most likely falls within the allowed radius for OLS, I know the sherry I used doesn't. Again, it was from a bottle I had on the shelf but it hails from California as, tho Virginia vineyards almost always can provide me with great wines for drinking or cooking, I haven't been able to locate one that makes anything close to a sherry. If anyone knows of a Virginia winery that does, please let me know.

After washing the Swiss chard I chopped the stems and the first inch or two of each leaf for the stir fry. The bok choy leaves showed some insect (probably slug) damage so I treated it similarly. The garlic and onions were cleaned and chopped and I snapped the stem ends and pulled any tough strings from the peas. The rest of the chard leaves went into a pot for eating as cooked greens.At DH's request, I also scrambled three eggs from our hens and made a thin egg pancake to shred and toss with the stir fry before serving.

Before I started the stir fry I mixed up a batch of cornbread to go with the meal. Usually I would rely on brown rice as an accompaniment but I don't know of any rice still being grown on the East Coast, much less within 100 miles. Cornbread's always welcome here in any case and I even think some days DS would eat cornbread as the MAIN dish if he could get by with it. As always I used my mom's recipe which makes a hearty, non-sweet cornbread and uses more cornmeal than wheat flour. I soured the batter's milk (sourced from Homestead Creamery, Burnt Chimney, VA by way of a local market) with a few teaspoons of apple cider vinegar I made from last year's cider. Generally I can just transfer the vinegar mother from one jar over to a new jug of cider and let it sit till it's turned to vinegar, too.

The cornbread takes about 15 minutes to bake so once it was poured into the hot skillet and went into the toaster oven, I heated the wok for the stir fry. With everything chopped and ready, it didn't take long to drain the marinade from the meat, pour a tablespoon of peanut oil into the almost-smoking wok and quickly cook the pork, removing it from the pan as it cooked. I wiped the pan out after cooking the meat as the marinade leaves a slightly sticky residue which, with the high heat, often burns before I can stir fry the rest of the ingredients. So next in another tablespoon of oil and then the peas quickly followed by the garlic, onions, bok choy and chard. I'd also covered the separate pan of still-damp chard leaves and set it on the burner to steam for a couple of minutes. I tossed the meat back in with the veg, added the egg strips and called it ready. We served ourselves straight from the wok with a separate bowl for the cooked greens topped with a splash of cider vinegar. With a side plate of cornbread, the table was loaded and it was all produced within a 100-miles. (See note below for final breakdown of local vs. non-local.)

For dessert I whipped almost a cup of top cream with a few tablespoons of honey to sweeten and served it on top of the hulled strawberries DS had picked. The cream for the berries and butter for the cornbread both came from Homestead Creamery, too. And the corn and wheat I ground for the cornbread both came from Wade's Mill in Raphine, VA. They more normally sell the local grain already ground but will accommodate a home grinder if they have the whole grain on hand.

Locally sourced ingredients (H-produced at home, LP-local producer):

Garlic (H)
Walking onions (H)
Swiss chard (H)
Bok choy (H)
Sugar snap peas (H)
Pork (LP)
Eggs (H)
Honey (H)
Cornmeal (LP)
Wheat (LP)
Butter (LP)
Milk (LP)
Strawberries (H)
Cream (LP)
Vinegar (H)

Non-local ingredients:

Peanut oil (2 tablespoons)
Sherry (3 tablespoons)
Baking soda (1 teaspoon)
Salt (1 teaspoon)

Honey-sweetened Whipping Cream

1 cup whipping cream
3 tablespoons light-flavored honey
1 teaspoon vanilla, optional

Beat cream till soft peaks form. Slowly add honey and vanilla. Continue beating till stiff peaks form. Makes about 2 cups.

Harvest continues

As summer winds down, we've been putting up fruit and vegetables almost every day. Enough tomatoes and hot peppers to make 18 quarts of salsa on Thursday, more grapes on Friday, this weekend found us chopping a couple heads each of green and red cabbage for the dehydrator and also canning a few jars of pepperocini peppers. I can't remember exactly when we did what earlier in the week but we have some applesauce in the freezer and a pound of jerky in jars on the counter to show for it.

The photo shows some of what came in this week. Plus DH dug a couple rows of potatoes yesterday that he laid out to cure before we store them in a cool cellar. All the garden and kitchen work means meals were cobbled together from the fresh produce and make-ahead dishes from the fridge or freezer. Yesterday's supper was no exception.

It was a filling vegetarian feast that included Marinated Tomato and Green Pepper Salad, one of our favorite make-ahead salads, yellow eye beans and lacy corn meal cakes with slices of a Sugar Baby watermelon for dessert. The vegetables and watermelon came from the garden, the cornmeal I ground fresh from local dried corn, the egg in the griddle cakes came from the backyard girls and I thinned whole-milk yogurt made from rich local milk for the cakes, too. Tho the recipe doesn't require it, I used fresh ground whole wheat (local) for the indicated flour amount. I think the whole grain adds an extra boost to the flavor of the griddle cakes tho they're also great made with regular all-purpose flour.

The yellow eye beans aren't very common apparently but I came across them several years ago at a little produce market in Pulaski that featured local farm products. We ate most of what I brought home but saved back enough seeds to plant our own the next year. The texture is creamier than a pinto, if that makes sense, and the taste reminds me a little of a navy bean. We all like dried beans so it was nice to find a new-to-us variety to add to the mix.

The cornmeal griddle cakes are a great way to have a hot bread with a meal without heating up the oven and they're fast to fix, too. My mom likes to make the batter thin (add more liquid than recipe indicates) and make the cakes crisp and lacy. If you want, you can spread butter on them but that's gilding the lily as far as I'm concerned but a spoonful of sorghum is a good choice especially if you're eating one at the end of the meal.

Cornmeal Griddle Cakes

2 cups buttermilk or about 1-1/4 cup yogurt thinned with 3/4 cup water
1 egg, beaten
1 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 teaspoon baking soda
1-1/2 cups cornmeal
1/2 cup all-purpose or whole wheat flour

Combine dry ingredients in a mixing bowl. Make a well in the middle and pour in buttermilk and add eggs. Beat till smooth and then add oil, stirring to combine. Cook on a hot griddle like a pancake or fry in a skillet to which a teaspoon of oil has been added. Yield: 8-10 cakes.

Homegrown meals or One Local Summer challenge weeks 9-12

For the past month or so I've been whinging offline about having to post locally sourced meals for the One Local Summer challenge. Now, this is especially bad because I chose to sign up for this challenge but have not been keeping up with the posts.

The one thing in my favor is we have not deviated from the local foods idea behind the challenge. Even tho drought in our part of Virginia is playing havoc with our garden and those who supply most of the local farmers' markets, we've managed to keep some things growing and producing. Because we're diligently preserving any excess produce we're in good shape to continue eating locally through much of the coming winter.

So the one local meal (out of many eaten this week) that I want to describe was a harvest party of sorts that we enjoyed at my sister's house yesterday. We were over at her neighbor's to pick grapes and since her neighbor happens to be our mother, it quickly turned into a big family gathering, even including DBil's parents. That happens a lot in our family. Two will gather and the next thing you know there are so many family members around we're spilling out the door. Could be good, could be bad, I guess. In our family it's usually good.

Mom's two grapevines were filled with particularly sweet grapes this year thanks to the very dry weather we're experiencing. And, since Japanese beetles didn't besiege the grapes this year, it was a bumper crop. We picked grapes, washed, stemmed grapes, put them in jars and processed several batches of jars in a boiling water bath to make 54 quarts of grape juice concentrate.

The next thing you know, it's getting late and everyone's hungry. Do we call for pizza delivery? Are you kidding? First of all, they live in the country -- I'm not sure that's even an option. And secondly, DSis and DBil's garden was just sitting there waiting to be plundered.

From their home garden we prepared corn on the cob with fresh butter, Italian flat beans cooked with a small piece of home-cured ham, sweet and juicy muskmelon and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers. Alongside she served Harvey House slaw made earlier in the week with some of the cabbage we harvested earlier this summer and stored in their cellar.

DH cooked a few brats over the fire in the outdoor fire ring while every thing else was being prepared in the kitchen. The brats are made by a local seller at our farmers' market. DH can't go there without getting one hot off the grill and sometimes picks up a few for the freezer, too. DSis didn't have any rolls for the brats (this was a spur of the moment dinner party, remember) but we just spread a little Nectarine Mustard on them or, in DS's case, topped them off with homemade fresh salsa.

There's only one more week left on the One Local Summer challenge and the idea of spending time over the next few days searching out some esoteric ingredient perhaps only available in this county or finding a local source for oats, a food we use a lot of both as a dish on its own and as an important ingredient in many favorite recipes, is very appealing. But I know it's not going to happen.

Tomorrow I'll spend several hours processing homegrown tomatoes into beautiful jars of whole tomatoes or salsa or just plain dried tomatoes. Tuesday's probably going to be focused on making more jerky -- DH and DS have found a recipe they both love. The fall crops of beans and more tomatoes need to be weeded and watered. Wednesday I'm going to check on a friend's pear tree and pick if they're ready. Thursday's subject will be either pears or more grapes. Jelly's on the to-do list. And so it goes.

My envy of those posters who weekly get to track down sources for local foods is part of the "grass is greener" thing. I get to harvest most all of what we eat but I do it at the expense of time to be out in the world amongst other consumers. Everyone has a niche, I just get the urge to move outside mine after several months of continuing garden care, harvesting and processing. But I'm not giving up my garden.

One Local Summer challenge - week 8 (and weeks 6 and 7, too)

I know the premise of the One Local Summer challenge is to eat at least one completely local meal each week, excepting spices and oil perhaps, and report the details for compilation in weekly regional report. But given the last few weeks, I think it almost would be easier to report what we ate that WASN'T local.*

Our garden is supplying the basis for every meal. Green beans, four kinds of potatoes, zucchini and yellow squash, green and red cabbage, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, beets, onions, chard, sugar snap peas, blackberries, blueberries, garlic and all kinds of herbs (even bay leaves) come in to the kitchen fresh every day. The pantry still has 40+ pounds of local wheat ready for grinding and baking in our twice-weekly bread batches and the freezer's stocked with local meets like beef, venison, chicken and a bit of lamb. We collect over 2 dozen eggs every day and my sister has kept us supplied with local fruit as it comes in season -- this week it's been donut and regular peaches, earlier in the month it was sweet cherries. All we've had to pick up at the store the last few weeks has been local milk, a box of orange pekoe tea, and a bag of granulated sugar to make sweet tea -- I like mine unsweetened (heresy, I know) but I can't convince DH and DS that it's better that way tho we all agree adding fresh-picked mint or lemon balm/verbena is a good idea. As for the milk, I keep telling DH we need a cow or at least a couple of dairy goats but so far no luck.

Today was the first day for regular eating tomatoes. Lunch was a couple of red ripe tomatoes on toasted homemade whole wheat bread spread with homemade mayo. A sprinkle of kosher salt and black pepper made the sandwiches perfect. To go along with them we had Harvey House slaw from our own cabbage and onions, sliced cucumbers and a bowl of just-picked blackberries with a spoonful of top cream from the milk jug. Now that's a local meal.

*Non-local foods or ingredients used in our kitchen over the last few weeks:
-oils (olive, sunflower, peanut, sesame)
-coffee
-tea
-sugar (DH uses it in his coffee every day and it's always in the pitcher of tea otherwise we mainly use local honey, maple syrup and sorghum for cooking)
-unbleached all-purpose flour (baked a couple of cakes for the local fireman's lawn party fund-raising effort)
-rolled oats or old-fashioned oatmeal (tho farmers around here grow oats I haven't been able to find a local source for rolled oats)
-dried beans (pinto, kidney, garbanzo and black beans -- DH has grown kidney beans before but it's been a few years)
-seasonings and canning supplies like salt, black pepper, mustard seed, vanilla beans, distilled white vinegar, and pickling lime

One Local Summer challenge - week 5

We raise a lot of our own food so keeping to the OLS challenge isn't a hardship most of the time. This is prime gardening season in our region and we're having to put in more hours weeding and, unfortunately, watering these days. (We've watched storms move around us for the last couple of weeks but still haven't gotten more than a few drops of rain.) The kitchen chores fall in importance this time of year -- well, except for preserving what the garden produces, that is. So many of our meals are all about quick preparation and, where possible, providing really good leftovers for other meals. Saturday's lunch fit both criteria besides being just plain good.

I made a frittata with eggs from our own chickens and a few vegetables and herbs from our garden along with a little local chevre. I used my "Anything Goes Frittata" recipe adding leftover boiled new potatoes, a walking onion and the very last of our asparagus -- no more fresh asparagus till next spring. A handful of garden-fresh herbs comprised mainly of parsley and chevril went in to the mix right before I poured it into the iron skillet. The frittata tastes great hot but is also good as part of a cold meal for another day.

A choice of pickled beets (homegrown and pickled last month) or cucumbers in vinegar (from my sister's garden -- our cucumbers are late this year) and a plate of steamed green beans (homegrown) drizzled with olive oil and dashed with kosher salt completed the main meal. DH and DS had glasses of grape juice to go along with their lunch, I opted for water. The juice, which we canned last fall, came from my mom's grape vines.

No dessert as we still had a lot of work to do -- DH went to work setting up a larger rainwater collection tote so if it ever does rain here, we'll be able to hold onto some of it. Hope to have pictures up later this week.

Summer supper

Lots of activities this week along with the usual gardening and general chores meant not much time for cooking. But when it's hot we tend to prefer lighter meals anyway. Last night's meal fit that profile with a combination of garden vegetables and a bit of local cheese.

Yesterday morning I prepared Harvey House Slaw (recipe below) using a head of cabbage and several Egyptian onions from our garden. It's best when made at least 4 hours ahead of serving and any leftovers will keep for several weeks in the fridge. I think it gets better the longer the vegetables marinate and have seen similar recipes with names such as '6-weeks Slaw.' The onions lose quite a bit of their edge in the slaw so don't feel like you have to start with a sweet onion.

Earlier in the week I cut the crust from the last of a loaf of wholegrain bread (from local wheat) I'd baked in my pullman pan. Then thinly sliced it and baked the slices in a very low oven till dried and crispy -- making homemade melba toast. I do this regularly with extra bread so I almost always have a tin of crisp melba toast sitting on the shelf. We use it in place of crackers much of the time and since I planned to serve a cheese spread for last night's meal, the melba toast was a perfect accompaniment.

A friend and I had been talking about cheese spreads lately and when I went to town in the middle of the week I couldn't resist picking up a small tub of a locally-produced goat cheese and dried tomato spread. I love this spread and hope one of these days we can make our own version -- DH is slowly coming 'round to the idea of a couple of dairy goats and this cheese on a crisp toast makes a great selling point.

To go with the slaw, cheese, and toasts, DH picked a mess of green beans (third one this week from the garden!) which I lightly steamed and then sprinkled with coarse salt. Sometimes I'll dribble a little olive oil over the beans but since the Harvey House has a vinegar and oil dressing another oil didn't seem necessary.

We're still eating sweet cherries my sister picked and tho we've added cherries to a few yogurt smoothies and canned or frozen most of them, we enjoy them best by the handful. Yes, spitting out cherry pits as we go. That's how we ate them last night sitting on the back deck watching a faraway neighbor's fireworks. Relaxing end to a busy week.

Harvey House Slaw

1 head of cabbage, cored
1 large onion, thinly sliced
1-1/3 cup sugar or 2/3 cup honey
1 cup vinegar (I use apple cider vinegar)
1/2 cup salad oil (I use sunflower oil)
2 teaspoons dry mustard
1 teaspoon celery seed
2 teaspoons salt

Cut cabbage into wedges and then thinly slice. (Alternatively, may use food processor to slice.) Put cabbage in a large bowl and scatter onion slices on top. If using sugar, pour over onion.

Put remaining ingredients (and honey if using rather than sugar) in medium saucepan and bring to a rolling boil. Stir to dissolve honey and pour over cabbage immediately. Cover with lid or plastic wrap to hold in steam. Do not stir cabbage mixture at this time. Refrigerate at least 4 hours before serving. Stir prior to serving.

Hamburger, fries and a dish of ice cream -- all local!

DH likes a good hamburger but we rarely eat out these days as we like to know where our food comes from and there aren't many (any?) local food restaurants in our area. So this weekend we had our version of a hamburger and fries.

The hamburger starts with local venison we prepared ourselves. I have trouble powering my old handcrank meat grinder for very long so last summer, in preparation for hunting season, I bought a grinder attachment for my KitchenAid mixer. With that and the vacuum sealer, we can have ground venison in the freezer ready for use any time of year. Our hamburgers start with thawing the venison and a package of locally-produced country pork sausage, also stored in the deep freeze. I mix about 1-1/2 pounds of venison with a pound of sausage and shape into patties. No further seasoning needed.

DH put the patties on the gas grill while I prepared the fries. Thursday I boiled new potatoes from our garden in their jackets and the leftovers went into the fridge for just this moment. I pulled the skins off the cold cooked potatoes and sliced them to fry in a combination of oil and local butter, about 1-1/2 tablespoons of each. I use a heavy iron skillet as it's nonstick for all practical purposes and lets me get on with the rest of supper without watching the potatoes too closely.

While the potatoes sizzled, I topped and tailed a bowl of sugar snap peas also from the garden and threw in the first couple of garden zucchini which were ready today. I just steamed the vegetables and sprinkled a bit of kosher salt over top before serving. The buns were wholegrain made from wheat I sourced at a local farm last year. I used my all-purpose bread recipe, just shaped the dough into rolls and baked. The sliced onion came from the garden as did the cucumbers and onions in the jar of bread-and-butter pickles I canned last year and opened to go with the sandwiches. A little of the lettuce is still hanging in there so DS could have a few leaves on his sandwich but no ripe tomatoes yet -- don't think anyone noticed their absence.

Even the mustard and ketchup could count as local as they're from jars I put up last year. The tomato ketchup recipe (below) is called Western Gourmet Ketchup and comes from an old Farm Journal cookbook. It makes a nice table ketchup plus is good in recipes calling for ketchup or a slightly spicy tomato sauce. I've been making it for years from our garden tomatoes. The mustard, Nectarine Mustard, is a real favorite around here and I've learned to make it by the gallon, literally! For Christmas I give my brother-in-law a dozen pint jars and my mom says he still eats it at her house by the spoonful. Very easy and, since the nectarines come from an orchard just over the mountain, also very local.

For dessert we had ice cream made at Perfect Flavor, which uses local ingredients such as eggs from Joel Salatin's Polyface Farms and milk from Holsinger Dairy Farm. I'd been meaning to stop by their shop at the foot of Afton Mountain for several months and finally had an opportunity on Tuesday when the local homeschool group toured the creamery and talked with Lynsie Watkins about her business. The vanilla and chocolate ice cream samples were wonderful! Even though we usually make our own ice cream, I couldn't resist bringing home a container from Perfect Flavor. It was a great way to finish our very local dinner.

Western Gourmet Ketchup
(from Farm Journal's Freezing & Canning Cookbook: Prized Recipes from the Farms of America)

7 quarts tomato puree (18lbs tomatoes -- See Note*)
3 tablespoons salt
2/3 cup sugar
1 tablespoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 tablespoon dry mustard
1 tablespoon whole black peppercorns
1 tablespoon whole allspice
4 bay leaves
4 chili peppers
1 tablespoon dried basil
2 cups vinegar, 5% acidity (I use apple cider vinegar)

Tie spices loosely in a cloth bag so they can be retrieved after cooking. Add all ingredients, except vinegar, to tomato puree. To prevent lumps, blend dry mustard with a bit of tomato juice before adding to puree. Cook until thick, about 1-1/2 hours. Will not thicken as much as storebought but should reduce by at least one-third.

Add vinegar the last 10 minutes of cooking.

Remove spices.

Pour into hot, sterilized jars; seal and process in water bath canner for 10 minutes. Makes 4 pints.

*Note: Cook 18 pounds of washed and cored tomatoes until soft. Then put through a sieve to yield 7 quarts of tomato puree.

If you've never canned using the water bath method, please refer to the latest Ball Blue Book of Preserving or the USDA-funded website, National Center for Home Food Preserving, for detailed directions.