One Local Summer - Dinner # 11

This is a picture of the bounty from our garden. We have basil, pea sized tomatoes and a white eggplant. The pea tomatoes and our green tomatoes are doing well, and the basil is always a sure thing, but our potted squash and zucchini plants died suddenly in the middle of July. I think I am going to give growing squash and zuchinni one more try next summer because I know that they can be productive, thus saving me the $2 per pound that I pay every week. I also feel very ambitious when I start my seedlings in March so hopefully the discouragement I feel now will abate by then and I will be able to give these onerous plants another try.

Dinner this week was a mish mash of summer vegetables, many from our potted garden. We had fried eggplant rounds, prepared from one of our homegrown white eggplants, sliced tomatoes from our homegrown, always green, tomatoes, squash and zucchini ribbons with cheese (recipe borrowed from here) from the South and Passyunk Tuesday Farmer's Market, and french bread drizzled with olive oil that we bought from Greensgrow a while ago and froze.

One Local Summer - Dinner # 10

This week we had our local meal down the shore with friends. And since the meal was already written up on a blog, I cam taking it easy and just linking to it here. Oh, it was tasty.

One Local Summer - Dinner #'s 6,7 & 8

This week we did 2 dinners.  We got a tons of good stuff from our CSA, tomatoes, nectarines, peppers, zucchinis, cantaloupe, white eggplant, kale, butter, goat cheese with ginger, almond and honey (YUM!), whole wheat bread, a bunch of basil and a seedless watermelon that I dropped on the floor as soon as I walked in the house.  So, since Andrea came home from camp last Saturday, on Monday we had a 'Welcome home from camp, here is some fresh, local food instead of the (mostly frozen and or fried) camp food you have been eating for two weeks' meal. Andrea had sliced tomatoes with mozzarella (her favorite) and I had some sliced tomatoes on bread with the goat cheese (with ginger, honey and almond!!) instead of mayo, and some fried (oops! more fried food) eggplant.

The next night, Andrea's mom was visiting again and I came home from work to a meal of grilled zucchini and squash (from CSA), fried green tomatoes (from our garden!), grilled string beans (from Andrea's mom's garden).  It was a

 really good meal. The next night we had stuffed tomatoes (the cheese & bread crumbs were not local, but the tomatoes were), corn, cucumbers, and home made egg rolls stuffed with cabbage, carrots and green onions.  All of the vegetables were from Andrea's mom's garden.  It might have been the best meal ever.  I had 2 more egg rolls the next day for lunch and they were just as good the next day.  Andrea said the same thing about the fried green tomatoes that she also had for lunch the next day.

Also, Michael Lee has branched out into string beans. Last week we got some from the Head House Farmer's Market that were purple - they turn green when you cook them. It was neat - food AND a science experiment!

Pie!

Ok, I made this cherry pie about a week and a half ago, the cherries were local, but that was about it. But, it turned out so pretty, I had to post the pictures somewhere. Ever since cherries came into season, I had been dying to make a cherry pie, but we kept eating all the cherries before I could make it. I bought a pie crust mix up by Andrea's parents house, I don't think any of it was local, but I have never made a pie crust, so I thought I would just try it (even though it is sorta cheating). I realized afterwards that I did the lattice a bit wrong, but it looks ok! So, here are the pictures. And it tasted pretty good, if I do say so myself!

One Local Summer - BBQ # 1

So, this weekend I made my local meal without even realizing it.  Michael Lee and I were headed to my aunt's house for some swimming and I volunteered to make potato salad.  I have two young cousins (Hi Gavin! Hi Tommy!) who are allergic to several things so I decided to make 2 types of potato salad:  one with blue cheese crumbles, blue cheese dressing,  and sour cream (no good for kids allergic to dairy, but dang, I like my cheeses!) and one with red wine vinegar and olive oil.  I had a bunch of white fingerling, red skin and blue potatoes that I bought at Robin's  farmer's market down in Newark, DE, and I added some parsley, chives and dill from our backyard.  I am not a fan of dill, but I have to say, it wasn't bad. Oh, and don't forget salt and pepper.  That is always key. 

I was telling Robin about and she said, "oh, so is that your local meal?"  Yes!  I was planning on having a summer veggie meal for dinner the next night, so I didn't even realize that I had done one already.  Not to mention the several meals of leftover Tortilla Español I had.  Local eating just gets easier and easier.  

Finally, Michael Lee has enjoyed both zucchini and yellow squash this week.  This boy loves his vegetables.  It really makes life easy!

One Local Summer - Dinner # 5 (or breakfast or lunch)

Andrea is away for 2 weeks and I am living as a single mother (and let me tell you, it ain't easy - I don't know how other women do it). So, I decided that I was going to do something simple and quick that I don't mind eating five meals in a row. Plus, my friend John came down from North Jersey to watch Michael Lee for 2 days while I was at work, and he just got home from a vacation in Spain, so what better way to welcome him back than with my favorite Spanish dish - Tortilla Español (aka potato and egg fritatta)!

The eggs & portlet cheese (I know cheese isn't traditional, but I love to throw some on top) were from our CSA, the potatoes & onion were from the Headhouse farmers market (I am terrible at remembering the name of the place I am buying from). The olive oil is Goya. I love making this and I love eating it. Also, I love the picture because I realized after I took it that it looks like Pac-man.

Last but not least, Michael Lee has been enjoying local sweet potatoes this week. Next week it's zucchini. We'll see how that goes.

One Local Summer - Michael Lee's meal #1

Today we fed our five-month old a vegetable for the first time.  He has been eating (organic) rice cereal for a week and did really well with it, so we decided to go for it and feed him some carrots. Andrea bought these at the farmer's market (local & organic!) the other day and we just boiled them up, then chopped them up to a blob in the blender, added some of the water they were boiled in then dumped it all into an ice cube tray and froze it.  We didn't quite fill a tray, but close enough. This evening we heat up a cube & I think he liked it alright.  He ate it all at least.  He might still have some carrot on his nose though.  Babies are messy.

One Local Summer - Dinner # 4

We had the best dinner last night. Andrea ran to the farmer's market on South and Passyunk and brought home blueberries, cherries, peaches, carrots, corn and tomatoes. So, for dinner we had sliced tomatoes with basil from our garden and drizzled with balsamic vinegar and olive oil, corn - that was really really good and sweet, and we had carrots and a squash (from another farmers market) that we marinated in garlic, olive oil and rosemary then grilled. It was the perfect summer dinner, nice and light for a really humid day.

Then, today for breakfast I did a repeat of my local breakfast from last week, fried egg w/ bread and butter - all local. (Although this time I included some fake bacon {aka facon} because I had a long hot bike ride into work & I needed the extra energy). Then for lunch I made a tomato sandwich and had a peach and some blueberries & cherries - again - all local & all REALLY good. With lots of delicious tap water. Yum! I swear with all this healthy, local eating and hot sweaty bike rides I will be back down to my pre-pregnancy fighting weight in no time!

Oh, and something ate all of our lettuce. It was just ready to be picked and now it is gone. All gone. I am pretty sad about it.

One Local Summer - Breakfast # 1

This is a tough week for us, we are only home for 2 days, it's not a CSA week AND due to both having to pack and unpack, a doctor's appointment (for the baby), work etc. no time for a farmer's market run. So, today I decided to use what we have and have a local breakfast. It worked out well and here it is 10:30am and I am not starving like I usually am. Hmmmm, local food just packs more punch, I guess. After a lot of thought (I am not so with it in the morning) I went with a fried egg (from our CSA) with Amish butter (also from our CSA) and some cheese melted on top (CSA again) and on the side a piece of toast (oat bread from the Reading Terminal - made locally) with more Amish butter and some homemade blueberry jam (made by a friend's mom & it was her wedding favor - it is so good!) then another piece of bread (not toasted) for the messy yolk. AND some local milk to drink (from Lancaster). It was delicious. It's cool what you can throw together, even if you think you don't have anything. Stuff will get even better once our garden stuff comes in! We have tiny tomatoes!!

One local summer - Dinner #3

This weeks local dinner was centered around cabbage.  We got some cabbage in our CSA share two weeks ago and didn't want to waste it, so we made our favorite sandwiches from the Reading Terminal Amish Stand.  Cabbage is one of those things that we would have ended up throwing out last year because we just wouldn't have known what to do with it.  This year we are committed to not throwing anything away (thus I must tackle the Ricotta from two weeks ago next) and instead planning meals around what we get instead of planning the meal and waiting for the arrival of the food.  

The dinner consisted of corn on the cob from the CSA share (it was surprisingly sweet for this time of the year), beet chips made from white beets from the CSA share and the sandwiches.  We turned the cabbage into cole slaw, and this is where we diverged from the rules a bit.  Kristin tried to make mayonnaise with which to make the cole slaw but it tasted too much like olive oil to be just right for our special sandwiches.  It's going to be really good with tuna though.  So I ran to the store at the last minute and got Marzetti's cole slaw dressing.  My motivation was two fold for breaking the rules:  I didn't want to waste the cabbage and I wanted to enjoy my meal and not just do it for the sake of doing it.   The Marzetti's made the cole slaw just right too and we are counting it as a spice.  So the sandwich, it was composed of the cole slaw,  smoked cheddar cheese and oat bread, which are both locally made (in Lancaster) from the Reading Terminal.  We drank locally brewed Kenzinger beer and if we could fit anything else in there are blueberries and peaches from the CSA for dessert.  

And also, I made kale chips Thursday night.  Kale came from the CSA too, tons of it. Kristin got the idea from this blog, and since we both love to make chips from vegetables, we thought we'd try it.  But, kale brings back childhood memories of my Dad boiling kale and fatback on the stove and it permeating the entire house with it's bitter smell so I didn't enjoy the kale chips, but Kristin says she likes them.  

One Local Summer - Lunch #1

So, we didn't do anything big this week.  I just made a salad for lunch.  It had spring mix, swiss cheese & hardboiled eggs from our CSA and carrots from the farmers market @ Headhouse (they were HUGE!). Andrea made the salad dressing - just oil and balsamic vinegar with some herbs from our backyard.  I am not sure which ones, I know rosemary was involved though. And I also know it wasn't a scary poison herb (sometimes they make me nervous, who knows what she is growing out there),  so that's good.  And then I also had an apricot we got from the Headhouse market and had I made more beet, turnip and sweet potato chips, so I took them too.

Sadly, they did not turn out too well.  I think I put to many in the frying pan at once and it lowered the temperature,  so they were soggy.  I tried to heat them up in the toaster oven, but it still didn't work.  They were ok, but not great.  But, now I know better for next time.  They were a decent snack right after they were made though.  And yum! Kenzinger!!

Hopefully next week's meal will be better.  We are hitting the Collingswood farmers market on Saturday. We are pretty excited because we haven't been there since last season.  

What's in season? The sweet potato question.

I don't know about you, but I am never 100% sure about what is actually in season or not. I went to the Headhouse farmers market Sunday and saw so many good things & thought I had a handle on what is in season locally & got so excited. Then I saw the sweet potatoes. I forget who had them, but there they were. And since I was planning on making beet & turnip chips for lunch this week, I thought - "hey! sweet potatoes - lets make some of them into chips! And make some sweet potato fries for our Monday night veggie burger dinner!" And so we bought them. And then I wondered - "hey! potatoes aren't in season till the fall! Isn't that the same for sweet potatoes?" According to this site they are not in season until fall. But here is what is in season - in the Northeast now. I have included spring and summer because we are pretty much in between both right now & I know how confused I get.

Spring:
Vegetables
asparagus
beets
broccoli
cabbage
cauliflower
fiddleheads
garlic greens
greens
arugula
beet
bok choy
chard
collard
cress
dandelion
mizuna
mustard greens
sorrel
turnip
lettuce
mushrooms
parsnips
peas-snap and snow
radishes
rhubarb
spinach
sprouts
Fruits
apples
strawberries
Seasonings
chives
cilantro
dill
marjoram
mint
oregano
parsley
sage
thyme
Summer:
Vegetables
beets
broccoli
cabbage
carrots
cauliflower
celery
cucumbers
eggplant
endive
fennel
garlic
green beans
kohlrabi
lettuce
mushrooms
okra
onions - red and yellow
peppers - hot and sweet
potatoes - new
radicchio
scallions
sprouts
summer squash
sweet corn
tomatoes
Fruit
apricots
blackberries
blueberries
cherries
currants
elderberries
gooseberries
melons
nectarines
peaches
plums
raspberries
Seasonings
basil
cilantro
dill
marjoram
mint
parsley
rosemary
savory
tarragon

One Local Summer - Dinner #2

Well, here we are at our second local meal.  We had to rely on our CSA pick up again because we were not able to make it to a farmers market this week (3 weddings & 2 sick people - it' s been busy).  So, at the CSA we received kohlrabi (see previous post), butter, ricotta cheese, pierogies, peas, strawberries, napa cabbage, rosemary bread and spring mix salad.

We were going to make a whole dinner party out of it, but discovered that we did not have enough of everything for 6 people.  We will do that another time.  

Anyway, we made roasted kohlrabi, peas, pierogies w/ sauerkraut and grilled (with olive oil) rosemary bread.  It was a pretty white meal - I think we need a salad and one less white food next time.  But it was all pretty good.  We fried the pierogies and they were really good - I usually only like the cheese kind, but these were tasty.  And Andrea, who hasn't been able to eat peas since being given a huge plate full (with ham) while in Spain, was able to eat a good bit and even finished them!  Good job Andrea!  I love peas (and never get them) and had them with a little vinegar (is that cheating?) The kohlrabi was pretty good.  Very turnipy and the bread was also really good.  

This local eating thing is pretty fun & 4 month old Michael Lee can't wait to start eating locally with us!

Random Vegetable

This week our random vegetable from our CSA was kohlrabi. It's fun to say and neat to look at. Last year we would have gotten it and either traded it at the CSA, given it to a friend or put it in the fridge with intentions of figuring out how to make it, then letting it go bad & tossing it. This year we have decided to change our ways.

The name is German and it come from Kohl - cabbage and Rube or Rabi for turnip. And it does taste like a turnip. It can be eaten raw, like in a salad, but we roasted it. It was pretty good, but took about 45 minutes in the oven. We also saw a mashed carrot and kohlrabi recipe that looked good. But, no carrots yet. We also thought it might be pretty good sliced up and fried like the beets we did last week. So, if our CSA gives it to us again, we are prepared!

One Local Summer - Dinner #1

So it was Kristin's big idea to join the "one local summer" movement and who ends up making the first local meal? Me. However, I found it easier to cook with fresh, local ingredients than if I had had to thaw packages and open cans. Our first local meal of asparagus and scallion frittata with cheddar cheese, mashed turnips with swiss cheese and fried beet chips took under an hour to make and only required a labor input of grating, chopping and mashing.

For the frittata, I sauteed the scallions and asparagus in a skillet and then mixed in half a cup of swiss cheese and six eggs. I put that on a stove burner until it was set and then put it under the broiler to finish off the top. The turnips were cut into large cubes and boiled for a half an hour and then mashed with a half of a cup of swiss cheese and 3 tablespoons of butter (amish butter from the Reading Terminal). Kristin loved the turnips but my favorite were the beet chips. They tasted just like those expensive Terra chips. I simply sliced the beets thin (actually my Mom did it with a cheese slicer) and then fried them in an inch of vegetable oil until they started to curl a bit. Next time we want to try beets, sweet potatoes and turnip chips all together but I think sweet potatoes are a fall vegetable so that might not be possible.


Everything we used, with the exception of the cheddar cheese and the butter, came from our CSA share that we pick up from Greensgrow every other Thursday. We bought the cheddar cheese at the Headhouse Farmer's Market at Second and Lombard Streets last Sunday.

I think once we get our deep freeze we would like to eat locally year round, that is if Kristin will start eating winter squash.

CSA

Last night we had our first CSA pickup. We have a half share at Greensgrow. We did it last year and liked it, but didn't know what to do with a lot of the stuff we got - especially this time of year. But now we are determined to use as much as we can. Yesterday we picked up: a bunch of beets, chives (which we are also growing), strawberries, baby spinach, swiss cheese & a dozen eggs - for our dairy option (which can be-1/2 a gallon of milk, 2 yogurts, 1 dozen eggs or a pound of butter. Then, because we are vegetarians we get a little extra: asparagus, scallions, and bunch of turnips.The meat eaters get ground pork. I think it's a pretty good idea. Oh, collards were included, but we didn't take them because we knew they'd go to waste. There is usually a box where you can trade items you don't want or like but it wasn't out yesterday, so we just gave them up.

So, we have to get crackin' on Sunday - we have my sister's wedding on Saturday & Friday is the rehersal, so no cooking those days! My sister will be another contributer to this site once she gets back from her honeymoon. On Sunday we are going to try and make beet and/or turnip chips. We will let you know how that turns out. I am pretty excited. Last year we gave our beets away to my cousin because we couldn't even think of what to do with them. Apparently, even though they love beets, they couldn't either - they forgot about them and had left them in their car. Oops!

Also, this Sunday starts the local eating challenge! We're ready!

check me out

I just figured out how to post to a blog. All by myself. This country girl is getting pretty technological. The only thing we have been using from the garden so far is herbs, but they have made nice flavoring additions to our out of season vegetable dishes. Our next purchase is going to have to be a deep freeze so that we will never have to eat food from far, far away again (and Kristin is going to have to start eating squash). We already have a canning weekend planned for August too.

Starting out

We are 3 girls trying to eat local and grow food in Philadelphia. All three of us are going to write about our experiences trying to grow vegetables in our container gardens and eat local by joining a CSA and hitting farmers market. We have signed up for One Local Summer where we are challenged to make one meal a week entirely from local foods (within 100 miles of Philadelphia).

Some of us are picky eaters, so this will be interesting. We are looking forward to the challenge. Wish us luck!