One Local Summer: Week 12

Rotisserie chicken, fingerling potatoes with garlic butter, heirloom tomatoes stuffed with onion, garlic, basil and chevre cheese.

All zero mile. Not too shabby, and pretty darned tasty, too.

One Local Summer: Week 11

Breakfast is really my favorite meal of the day. I like dinner food, but not nearly as much as breakfast food, and I think a good brunch buffet is really the most perfect thing in the world.

Here's one of our zero mile breakfasts: fried quick potatoes and an onion, tomato, mozzarella omelet.

The fresh mozzarella I made didn't keep well texture-wise for eating fresh, but it melted beautifully, as you can see in the photo. The omelet sports sauteed mini puplette onions and sungold tomatoes. I like to caramelize the onions with some sea salt before adding the tomatoes to cook down just a bit. Then add eggs, cheese, and cook down before folding. Yummm.

For quick potatoes, heat a high-heat oil like peanut in a skillet on medium high heat until hot but not smoking, then grate the potatoes directly into the oil to barely cover bottom of the pan—too many and they won't cook properly. Turn the heat down to medium after a minute or two and cook until golden brown; flip and repeat. Salt and pepper to taste. These are a super-quick version of hash browns, and they come out light and crispy, especially when made with fresh potatoes. Store-bought potatoes can be disappointing and starchy, but that's just cuz I'm spoiled.

One Local Summer: Week 10

Wow, it's the beginning of August, and it's starting to feel like the summer's already over. Kids are heading back to school all across America, and even the weather is turning fallish. Not to mention the days getting shorter. But I've just started to harvest my tomatoes! Surely we have a few good weeks left to revel in the glorious food of summer.

Last year, we enjoyed tomatoes into October, so I remain hopeful.

This week's meal for One Local Summer features some of those glorious tomatoes, though I was so excited about my mozzarella that I let it hog the camera. This is a fabulous(ly easy) bruschetta, featuring multicolored heirloom tomatoes: German red strawberry (red), German striped (yellow with sunsplashed rays of red), ananas noire (green—donated by CSA member Carrie P.) and the non-heirloom sungold (orange, sweet, and tasty!).

Also in the bruschetta are purplette onions, basil, garlic and fresh raw mozzarella from our cow's milk, which was absolutely divine. I'll be making that much more often, I can tell you. We enjoyed this atop some bread baked local to my in-laws, who were kind enough to bring a giant bag down for my freezer last time they visited. Sometimes it's nice to be able to pull something out to reheat rather than baking from scratch.

To round out our meal (though I would've been happy with just the bruschetta and wine!) was a whole chicken, roasted with butter, rosemary, thyme and Russian banana fingerling potatoes, another heirloom veggie—all fresh from our farm. If you've never tried fingerling potatoes before, you're missing a real treat. They are creamy, buttery goodness: roasted in homemade butter and herbs, they approach Nirvana.


Don't forget to check out the giveaway and sign up for the drawing by August 15th if you'd like to participate.

One Local Summer: Week 9

The first ripe tomatoes of the season are finally here! Well, this week anyway. This is probably the third time we've eaten them, not counting the number I eat while harvesting.

This is my one pot chicken dish, yet another really great meal for CSA nights, not counting the hot oven. I stuff the chicken with onions and garlic and rub it down with butter, sprinkling some garlic, thyme, and cayenne pepper over top. Surround it with diced potatoes, sliced carrots, and chunked onion and bake. The potatoes get nice and crisp while the carrots and onions caramelize so deliciously. Yummmmm.

Accompanying the one pot chicken is a salad of tomatoes, basil, green onion and fresh mozzarella in a balsamic vinaigrette and an herb focaccia.

All zero mile but the flour, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, and some spices—even the butter was ours. Herbs, too, were all from Touch the Earth Farm. Mozzarella was made local to my in-laws and brought down on a visit. The potatoes are red nordland potatoes; the carrots are red core chantenay and purple dragon, a showy, spicy little carrot; tomatoes are a mix of gold nugget, sungold, and sweet olive.

One Local Summer: Week 8

Among other local meals this week, we enjoyed barbecue ribs, mixed beans, and country home fries made with our potatoes, onions, and peppers. All zero mile.

We also served a mostly zero mile menu for Emily's birthday party yesterday: roast turkey carved for sandwiches, slow-cooked pork shoulder, and homemade potato chips. Yummm. Sandwiches were served on bread made local to my in-laws who joined us for the celebration. There's just nothing quite as good as Jersey bread products.

One Local Summer: Week 7

This week, among other meals, we enjoyed a delicious fresh rotisseried chicken from our farm, mixed beans, small red new potatoes, salad with onion, cucumbers, grated Italian zucchini, and chevre cheese. The garlic in the sour cream and on the garlic bread was our own, and the bread was made locally to my in-laws whom we visited last weekend. The sour cream was store-bought, all else was zero mile but for the balsamic vinaigrette.

One Local Summer: Week 6

Just to get off my zero mile high horse for a bit... because OLS is largely about showcasing local foodsheds:

We don't produce our own beef here on the farm (though with the new cow, that will hopefully be changing in the next couple of years), so we buy it from two different farms down the road. Well, one farm is up the road: Groff's Content grass fed beef. The other farm, Legacy Manor, is down the road, closer, and more convenient, but we wanted to try both. I know both farmers, and I'd highly recommend beef from either, though LM grains their beef while also pasturing. The pure grass fed beef definitely has a gamier flavor that may take some getting used to. Personally, I like them both.

This week we enjoyed our first red potatoes. Yay! After the drought last year, I can't tell you how much we've been looking forward to these babies!

We also had broccoli and the first of our green beans, together with a salad of mixed greens, onions, and grated zucchini and balsamic vinaigrette; herb focaccia; marinated beef kabobs from Groff's Content; and a garlic herb butter to top the potatoes. All from our farm.

Yummmm.

Here's to more potatoes! The fingerlings will come out to play next week.

And while Touch the Earth Farm is definitely part of the Northwestern Maryland food shed, I think it's also useful for folks to see how much of their food they could actually produce themselves with just a little land and a lack of restrictive covenants. We have 5.25 acres—not very much by farming standards, but plenty in terms of creating a zero mile food shed. Get to know a few other local farmers, and voila! You've some great local eats. Even an acre can produce an excellent veggie crop, eggs, maybe a bit of goat's milk, and a few broilers to boot for those who eat meat.

Some good resources for farming on small holdings:

Path to Freedom

The Modern Homestead

One Local Summer: Week 5

We had some friends stop in for dinner on their way home from dropping their daughter off at camp in Central Pennsylvania this week, and we enjoyed a delicious homegrown meal.

Wine: Boordy Vineyards Chardonnay.

Roast heritage turkey from our farm; couscous with mini bulbing onions, basil and garlic from our garden and chevre from our milk; salad greens, carrots, onions, and kohlrabi from our garden topped with a balsamic vinaigrette. The bread is an Italian bread local to my in-laws and brought down on a visit—ain't nothin' like Jersey bread.

For dessert we enjoyed fresh raspberries from our farm, whipped cream from our milk, and fresh shoofly and peach pie from a local Pennsylvania market where our friends were visiting. As far as I can recall, this was the first time I've had shoofly pie, and I'm a total convert. Yummmm. The earthy density of shoofly was the perfect foil to the raspberries and just-barely-sweetened whipped cream. The photo isn't very appetizing because, as you can see, I've already heartily tucked into it as I remembered to take a picture. Ummm, and yes, I'll admit to having three slices of that pie, though in my defense, they were little personal pan pies and tiny slices.

*Note to self: must learn to make shoofly pie.

One Local Summer: Week 4

This week is a transition week here at the farm as we move into the very beginnings of summer's bounty.

This meal features pesto-chevre fettuccine (no the pasta's still not mine—I'm lame, I know) with pesto from the freezer, but sprinkled with the season's very first fresh basil trimmings. Yummm!

The chevre in both the pasta and the salad is homemade with our own milk. The grilled pork tenderloin is from one of our Tamworths, and the salad combines our salad greens, mini bulb onions, and hardboiled eggs from our hens, topped with a homemade balsamic vinaigrette. The bread is a homemade flat bread topped with garlic and olive oil.

Zero mile but for: garlic (coming soon though!), bulk pine nuts, flour, pasta, and vinaigrette ingredients.


Oh, and ummmm.... I'm almost embarrassed to admit this, but yes, that is my plate full of all that food featured in all these photos, not my husband's or some other reasonably large individual's. And sometimes it's so tasty I even have seconds. Hey, growing all that food works up a serious appetite!

One Local Summer: Week 3

Can you tell couscous is my go-to grain for busy days? It's really just the most excellent fast food, and I'm coming to rely on it for CSA nights when we have pick-ups between 6 and 8 pm, which can make it tough to pull together a family dinner at the same time. If only I could locally source it, I'd be a happy girl.

This evening we enjoyed pork tenderloin medallions from Tamworth pigs, a heritage breed raised here at Touch the Earth Farm that were tender and delicious. These were accompanied by a just picked salad with fresh, tender young lettuces, spinach, green onions, hakurei turnip and home-made chevre. The couscous is flavored with chevre, garlic, and green onions. Of course, there's the requisite ciabatta bread on the side.

Everything was zero mile but for the flour, couscous, garlic, and vinaigrette ingredients.

And since I'm talking about food, I had to include this photo of our first artichokes. We cooked these up for a lovely local meal for father's day, and they looked absolutely amazing.

Unfortunately, they sucked.

*laughing*

Seriously, while they smelled delicious and produced a very tasty sauce, the chokes themselves were woody. I grew them from seed, which is a rather tricky thing apparently, as only 60% or so of artichokes grown from seed are tasty and edible. Ahhh well, it was a good experiment and the plants themselves are so striking that it may be worth growing them as ornamentals.

After a bit of reading on the subject, planting offsets of a known plant is apparently the way to go. I guess I could just keep trying until I get a good plant, but thank goodness I didn't try to foist these onto my CSA members.

One Local Summer: Week 2

This week, one meal really stood out from the others for local and zero mile flavor.

Rotisserie chicken; couscous with sundried tomatoes, basil, and ricotta cheese; mixed green salad with chevre, radishes, and green onions; homemade ciabatta bread.

Wine: White Linen by Deep Creek Cellars.

Everything in the meal was grown and made at home except the couscous, flour, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt, and cayenne pepper. The cheeses I made fresh this week from our raw Jersey milk. Mmmmmm! The tomatoes and basil are from last year's garden.

The ricotta was tasty, but the chevre was dynamite, and we've been enjoying it in everything from eggs to burritos. It lends a creaminess to everything that's just out of this world. Speaking of which, I need to make some more!

One Local Summer: Week 1

This is the first week of the One Local Summer Challenge, hosted by Nicole at Farm to Philly this year. I had wanted to participate last year, but chose not to because of our zero mile focus rather than just 100 mile radius. I had loads of fun with the Dark Days of Winter challenge though, so when the OLS challenge popped back up again this year, I jumped at it.

Dark Days helped me realize how much we still rely on ingredients outside the farm for cooking. A reality check to my zero mile smugness. So, for this season too I'll be shooting for zero mile meals, though I'll be excluding grains again because I cannot source them locally. I planted my own quinoa this year though, along with oats and, soon, amaranth, so that stipulation may change come the dark days of this year.

This week we had a nearly zero mile meal: pasta salad with lettuce, radishes and green onions from our garden, topped with a balsamic vinaigrette, grilled baby pork tenderloin from one of our piglets, and homemade ciabatta bread. I'm working on making more of our pasta from scratch as well as trying my hand at cheese making now that we have our cow. I'll be confined to soft cheeses for a while until I get my cheese press, but I have a lot of basic learning to do before delving into artisinal cheeses.