Dark Days Eat Local Challenge: Week 4

Once again, I'll be updating this post throughout the week rather than creating separate posts.

My beautiful zero mile meal Monday night, otherwise known as "Where's the Beef?"

Butternut squash soup: roast butternut squash with onion, garlic, chives, rosemary and thyme, pureed with homegrown chicken stock and a dash of nutmeg. Herb foccacia bread, and a delicious three lettuce salad with green and red salad bowl lettuces and thai oakleaf lettuce, oxheart heirloom carrots, second year green onions, and Brandywine heirloom tomatoes. Tasty and filling...unless of course, you happen to be my husband. Hence the dinner's name.

So, here's the meal we actually ate, which ended up including small twin fillets from a few miles up the road. Delicious, no doubt, but they definitely bumped my beautiful zero mile meal up to the 15 mile category. But, if I'm perfectly honest, I'll fess up to that lovely little swirl of sour cream in the soup that already knocked me out on a technicality.


Tuesday night: zero mile

Chicken stuffed with herbs and roasted with carrots and green onion. Roasted baby acorn and butternut squash stuffed with sauteed green zebra, Brandywine, Amish paste, and San Marzano tomatoes, green pepper, delicate spring garlic greens, minced garlic cloves, onions, basil, and parsley. Two-green salad with tomatoes, onion, and a balsamic vinaigrette, and a braided loaf of French bread with sesame seeds, dipped in olive oil, garlic, and basil. Everything from Touch the Earth Farm but the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and pepper.



Wednesday Night: 25 mile taco salad

Wednesday night for dinner I made tortillas, which disappear almost as quickly as I can make them. Having spent two years out in Albuquerque, we grew accustomed to light, tasty tortillas, which East coast tortillas resemble in name only. So, I learned to make my own, and I really need to start doubling the recipe because the kids eat them so fast. For this salad I fried my tortillas, topped them with rice, local ground beef, green chili brought by friends from New Mexico, cheddar cheese from our local dairy, and vegetables and herbs from our garden. So simple, so tasty!


Thursday Night: 25 mile meal

"Nothing goes better with cabbage than cabbage." So says a character in Tim Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which I always think of as I use Tuesday's roast chicken for a meal of chicken soup later in the week—two meals for the price of one. The weather has finally cooled enough to relish soups and salads as meals that feed body and soul. The chicken soup is entirely homegrown, from chicken to stock to herbs, and Jim made drop noodles to add, which were quite tasty. We had salad from veggies grown here on the farm, topped with our very own goat cheese that I made the night before. What bumps us up to 25 mile are the grilled cheese sandwiches on homemade bread, made with cheddar cheese from our creamery.