One Local Summer; Week 10

Yes, I know, not quite a whole meal here, yes? However, we also had a wide variety of summer squash and sweet corn from our CSA that are not pictured, most unfortunately, as it made for a very colorful meal. I grilled the veggies wrapped in foil with some olive oil and salt. I got the blueberries and cherries from the local farmer’s market…origin, Michigan. A healthy, light, and tasty meal! Ah, I WILL get inventive again….soon!

One Local Summer; Week 9

Oh, this is getting tougher than I thought…but delicious! Local brats with potatoes. (Some potatoes local, some not.) Salt and some olive oil (on the potatoes.) Best brats I ever had. Yes, I said it again (the “best I ever had” part.)

One Local Summer; Week 8

OK, I must admit that my creativity has not been too high this past week or two. We’re eating lots of local foods, sometimes several meals a week of only local, but those have largely (OK, completely) been salads, salads, salads. We’re enjoying the fresh food from our CSA, but also enjoying summer which means I’m not taking as much time to prepare meals, or to photograph them (plus they’re eaten up quickly.) Up above is a photo of what we received, and ate, from last week’s CSA basket. New basket pick-up is tomorrow, and with more variety now that we’re more into the season I bet I’ll have something new and exciting to post about next week.

One Local Summer; Week 7

This past week was the week of mulberries, which were picked by me and my kids at a local park about 10 minutes away from us. We had mulberry smoothies (local milk + frozen mulberries), salads using CSA greens with mulberries on them, and even some of last week’s corn pone (which had been frozen) with mulberries on the side. Nice and sweet, and best of all, free!

Green Litter

So we’re attempting to make the change, albeit slowly, from the cat litter we’ve used for years to Yesterday’s News. The last thing we want to do is upset any of our cats, because we will be the ones paying the price when they decide to make an impromptu facility for themselves elsewhere in the house. With one old cat and two adolescents, we have be very careful and slow with this transition. We mixed about 4 cups of the new litter in with the old, and every time I scoop I add a little more. Next litter change we’ll increase the ratio until the new stuff is all we’re using. Since this change isn’t 100% up to us, I’ll have to report back later as to whether we’re still using it. We won’t be pushing it…if they don’t like it, it’s out! So far, so good. I hope it stays that way.

One Local Summer; Week 6

This week I had local foods with just about every meal, but often in combination with many non-local foods. For this meal, I had some ideas in mind, but really didn’t know what I was going to make from one step to the next. So I took a few pictures since I never knew where it was going to end up.

Not sure where the corn comes from, but it’s milled right on the premises, within a 15 minute drive or so from my town. What to make with it was the big question. Ah……

Corn pone! Easy to make with just water, corn meal, salt, and then I threw in a handful of defrosted frozen corn (non-local) and fried it all up in butter (non-local). But then what else? Hmmm….

Well, I love cheese, and I’ve got a lot of CSA greens, so there you go. I put it together and topped it with the pone. The end.

One Local Summer; Week 5

This week was pretty straightforward….another veggie wrap, along with a local steak from Gloria’s Gourmet in Illinois (no website, yet.) Best steak ever.

Not local; Tony Chachere’s Creole Seasoning, a must on steaks (and good on chicken and fish, too.)

Cutting down on food waste; update.

So, my empty freezer bags have started filling up.

On the left is a bag with frozen juice from a couple different bottles (we don’t drink a lot of juice, so don’t drink it quickly enough when we do have it in the house). In the middle is a bag full of assorted veggies and veggie “remnants” such as the greens from radishes, and, um, honestly I don’t know exactly what all else as I can’t always visually identify what comes in the CSA basket (as I’ve mentioned before), and also since I’ve been throwing things in there for a few weeks now and didn’t keep a list. The bag on the right contains fruit that was on the verge of going bad such as a slightly brown banana and mushy berries. I’m thinking I could make a great vegetable broth with the veggies, and fruit smoothies with the fruit and fruit juice. So far this plan is working out great, and I feel good that we’re not wasting as much food. Stay tuned for a future post on a composter, which we’re looking into getting soon.

Green Milk (!)

Another change I made this year was to sign up for Oberweis milk delivery. The facts that they don’t use hormones, get their milk from independent family farms, are local-ish (I’m not sure how far away all of the farms are, but the plant is very local to me), and that they re-use their milk bottles made it a pretty easy decision. Although I’m not much of a milk drinker, my family says it’s noticeably better than any other milk they’ve had before. We’ve seemed to have hit a pretty good amount with 2 1/2 gallons standing order as we’re big water drinkers, too, so have that with some meals instead, although now that the kids are home from school we may have to add 1/2 gallon or so. Sometimes we tack on some yogurt or ice cream to our standard milk order. I can personally attest to the fact that the ice cream is excellent. At the end of the week, our empty bottles are taken away and the cycle starts again.

One Local Summer; Week 4

I’m coming in just past the nick of time this week, but that’s not due to any lack of local food. Despite the cool start to the growing season, our CSA has given us loads of great greens and other veggies, herbs, and some strawberries to work with. We’ve been eating a lot of great, fresh food as a result, but usually in the form of a salad with added non-local ingredients, or just plain. We’ve been out enjoying the nice weather a lot lately, but I finally took some time to come up with something a little different:

Wrapped in a large leaf of CSA provided greens (Erehwon Farm provides a great newsletter with news from the farm, and a list of what’s coming that week with recipes, but I’m not familiar with everything by sight so am not quite sure what this is..it tasted a bit like spinach (Aha, looked up photos for the greens online, this leafy wrap is Swiss Chard)), is CSA radishes, garlic scapes, sugar snap peas, and Lamb’s Quarter (which includes some from my yard, as well), with some melted Monterey Jack cheese with dill and garlic from southern Wisconsin. On the side, Michigan strawberries (the CSA berries were gone as soon as I got them home.) The only non-local ingredients are the butter I sauteed the veggies in, and salt and pepper.

I’ve never cooked radishes before, but read about people roasting them so thought I’d give them a try sauteed. They, and everything, turned out great. Even better than I expected. I’ll definitely be making something like this again.