We are swimming in eggs! Luckily, I love eggs, and it's really not unusual for me to eat 3-5 eggs a day. Don't worry, I've had my cholesterol tested a couple of times, and it's excellent. Studies are beginning to demonstrate the advantage of free-range eggs compared to those of the caged counterparts, and either my experience or my genetics or most likely a combination of both certainly seems to bear this out.
Also on the menu this week was the first taste of our recently butchered pork, raised here on our pasture. We had some chops and some Southern-style turnip greens with salted pork. The turnip greens are absolutely amazing, making turnips a worthy addition to our winter garden. Here's the recipe:Ingredients:
Cook salt pork in a large pot or dutch oven over medium heat until crispy and brown. Add about 1 1/2 cups water, turnip greens, onion, salt, pepper and sugar and bring to a boil for about 1-2 minutes. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer for about 40 minutes or so until greens are nice and tender.
Delicious served with cornbread.
*Notes: if using traditionally cured salt pork, you may not need additional salt. Also, greens can be blanched for 1-2 minutes and the water poured off to get rid of any bitter taste. Turnip greens may react with aluminum.
Week 16: During this week, I made homemade angel hair spaghetti, homemade sauce from frozen tomato paste I made this summer, meatballs from local grass-fed beef, and our favorite ciabatta bread.
Quiche and frittata have become dinner staples around here as a great way to use up those extra eggs. And yes, I admit to throwing in a couple more than the recipe calls for when our fridge is full up. This is a ham and cheddar quiche with spinach and herbs fresh from our garden. The quiche is paired here with herb foccacia bread. Everything is from our farm but the dairy, which is from down the road.
This week we also enjoyed some braised goose breast from the geese Jim hung to age intact. This technique is regularly used for wild game, aging it before dressing it, which leads to a fuller bodied flavor. They were a beautiful deep red color, looking more like beef than fowl. I browned the breasts in goose fat and then deglazed the pot with some red wine. I then put the whole in the oven to cook at a low temp for about 40 minutes. The meat was delicious and tender, though I definitely could have backed the time down a bit in the oven because I didn't use the whole bird. Carrots are the only non local item here. In my potatoes, I also combined some bleu cheese and spicy salad microgreens, which were quite tasty.
Also on the menu this weekend was a Thanksgiving redux. We still have several turkeys in the freezer, and with my in laws visiting, it seemed a great time for leftovers. Everything in this meal was local, even the sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. The green beans were from our garden this summer, but weren't very tasty. I think this was the batch I forgot to blanch, which stops the enzyme action in the bean and helps preserve the flavor.
This week we cooked up one of our dry-cured hams, so country ham featured large in our meals. Here's a breakfast burrito on homemade tortillas.
We also had delicious ham and cheese pannini sandwiches on homemade ciabatta bread.
Later in the week, we enjoyed a local chuck roast, mashed potatoes, gravy, homemade ciabatta bread, and a lovely salad from the garden with homemade bleu cheese dressing—made from scratch, but with non-local ingredients. Everything else was local or homegrown, and the dressing was well worth the cheat.
The weekend before Christmas, I got myself up and to our local farmer's market on the off chance that I might be able to get some staples. In particular, I was looking for carrots, onions, and potatoes.
For Christmas Eve, we made breadsticks, seasoned with homegrown herbs; sauteed kale from the garden; and crab cakes from locally caught and packaged blue crab. To go along with the crab cakes I made a tartar sauce with the last of my canned pickles. Of course the mayonnaise I used wasn't homemade or local, but it was tasty all the same, and the pickles and locally-grown onions lent it a local flair.
Christmas morning we had homemade monkey bread while opening presents and afterwards enjoyed a delicious brunch of eggs benedict and country home fries, all local but for the English muffins—the eggs, bacon, and herbs being homegrown. My goal for 2008 is to learn to make my own muffins and bagels, two bread products we still rely on being produced outside the home. The bagels we get when the in-laws visit from New Jersey, however, count as local because they are made at the small bakery where my in-laws buy them. Still, it'd be very nice to have bagels in between visits!
Christmas dinner was 100% local this year. We roasted two of our geese, which were absolutely delicious, but had almost no fat of which to speak. While this may seem like a good thing to some, I was sorely disappointed not to have my year's supply of goose fat to pull from the freezer. We had homemade ciabatta bread, roast goose, and white/ sweet potatoes roasted in goose fat. I stuffed the goose with local onions and apples as well as herbs from the garden. The apples gave the gravy a sweet flavor, which I thought went very well with the sweetness of the pecans in the salad and the sweet potatoes. Jim and Emily, however, weren't nearly so fond of the sweet gravy.
Jim's family arrived a couple days after Christmas, and for our family celebration we enjoyed a delicious, local standing rib roast, with mashed potatoes, Yorkshire pudding, and a homegrown salad. The Yorkshire pudding was a recipe out of the River Cottage Meat Book, one of our Christmas presents to Jim, and it was absolutely amazing—even the kiddos loved it, not the least because of the way it grew up and over the sides of the roasting pan.
Considering it's the week before Christmas, and I've had geese to butcher and a new CSA year to gear up for, this has been a tricky week to keep up with totally local. There were some definite short-cuts along the way, though most of our stuff still falls into 0-50 mile.
One of our quick staples around here is taco salad and burritos. For this meal I made tortillas, which the kiddos devour. I had mine over tortilla chips instead—non-gmo, sourced from Manassas, Virginia. Salad ingredients all from our farm. Grass fed beef from up the road. Cheese from our local creamery.
Also on the menu this week was shrimp quiche, salad, and a local Chardonnay from Boordy Vineyards, located within a 100 mile radius, but many of the grapes were grown right here in the Catoctin mountains. The shrimp were caught off the Gulf Coast by a local shrimper where my mom lives, and we brought them home frozen after our last visit. The baby swiss came from our local creamery, and all greens, herbs, and eggs were from our farm. Yes, the crust is made from scratch, and mmmmm, was it tasty.
This week, we've also enjoyed two roast chickens, one of which Jim cooked for us the night we returned from our vacation. The other, shown to the left, I roasted with garden fresh herbs, and accompanied it with homemade biscuits, and sauteed swiss chard. The chard has crumbled feta from our local creamery. The carrots and potatoes are admittedly not local, but they rounded the meal out nicely.
The kids and I were away last week, so we missed week 8 of the Dark Days challenge. Not to be outdone, however, my honey took up the gauntlet and created this bachelor-style local meal: steak and eggs. Gotta love him!
Sunday night, we had delicious organic grass-fed beef fillet (from a farm 37 miles up the road) topped with crumbled bleu cheese, sautéed swiss chard and kale with caramelized onions, country potatoes with the last of our green peppers, herb foccacia and a delicious mixed green salad. Alas, the potatoes weren't local.
For Thanksgiving this year we managed to pull an almost totally local, nearly zero mile meal—if it weren't for the lousy potato harvest this year, we would've done it. As it was, however, dinner was pretty magnificent. I made two heritage turkeys this year, one for dinner and one for leftovers. (Remember that gluttony post?) This one is a 17lb Narragansett tom, and the other was an 11 lb Royal Palm hen, both of which I brined for about 36 hours. The heritage birds have such incredibly long legs that they're impossible to truss in the bird, and they hang over my largest roasting pan. Next year, I'll have some twine on hand at least.
For the stuffing, I made two loaves of country white bread (made with half whole wheat pastry flour), diced them into cubes and tossed them with several garden herbs—rosemary, thyme, oregano and Italian parsley—and crisped them in the oven for about an hour and let set out overnight. Thursday morning I browned our last package of sausage that I'd been saving together with green onions, garlic, and swiss chard stems, and of course fresh herbs then drenched it all with homemade turkey stock.
For sides, we enjoyed roasted butternut squash stuffed with onion and parsley; 
kale and chard wilted with olive oil and caramelized onions; sautéed mixed beans; our three Beauregard sweet potatoes baked with cinnamon and brown sugar; the requisite mashed potatoes and a beautiful deep brown gravy; and a lovely side salad with mixed greens, a red wine vinaigrette, onion, one of our last storage tomatoes, and crumbled gorgonzola.
For breads I made our standard ciabatta as well as mini Gruyère gougères—a small, light puff pastry. Dessert was a homemade pumpkin pie with puréed pumpkin from our freezer. 
I'd also planned to make apple crisp with local apples, but by the time dessert rolled around, we were all totally stuffed. So we limited ourselves to the pumpkin pie and the deserts my mother-in-law brought down, showing uncharacteristic restraint, considering we've been known to have one desert per person at the table.
Last week, besides zero mile breakfasts, I made a 25 mile frittata—all zero mile but for the local cheddar. I just can't live without cheese! This frittata was made with leftover herb foccacia bread, salted bacon, chives, parsley, garlic, and caramelized onions. On the table it was joined by a delicious mixed green salad with a red wine vinaigrette.
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.
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 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!
"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.
Here's a photo of a mostly zero mile meal but for the baby swiss, which was store bought. We enjoyed a caramelized onion and herb frittata, baked with grated baby swiss cheese and our own bread, eggs, onion, herbs, and garlic. It's paired with a delicious salad of black seeded simpson and red salad bowl lettuces, onion, and a balsamic vinaigrette.
Although it would seem that I was slacking on the zero mile front this week, I was busy preparing for a Halloween Harvest Farm Day we hosted for our homeschool group. I made mini pumpkin muffins from our own Little Pam pie pumpkins, carrot cupcakes from our own red core chantenay and oxheart heirloom carrots, and our very own deviled eggs. The pumpkin muffins were delicious, but would be very much improved with nuts, which I'd left out to keep them available for those with nut allergies. The deviled eggs go without saying, and I'm embarrassed to admit how many I ate! Of course we also had the requisite homemade chocolate chip cookies and brownies.
Also on tap this week was picking and processing our green tomatoes, as we had our first killing frost Sunday night. That evening, I harvested the last of our basil, zucchini, peppers, and tomatoes in time to preserve them all. I washed
and froze the basil, put the zucchini in the fridge, and processed an entire bushel of green tomatoes and a half bushel of peppers over the week, resulting in 14 pints of green tomato salsa, 13 pints of pickled green tomatoes using Ed's recipe over at The Slow Cook, and 7 pints of green tomato chutney, seen coming to a boil above. My one regret was that our onion crop did so poorly in this year's drought that I didn't get to use all homegrown ingredients in my salsa and pickles. But there's always next year, and next year, we'll have hard irrigation lines in the market garden.
Breakfasts are nearly always zero mile meals, often featuring homemade toast, grape or strawberry jam, and our own free-range eggs, which are, in my opinion, the most perfect food ever—filled with flavor and a built in sauce, just doesn't get any better than that!
Rosemary and garlic roast pork tenderloin, roasted butternut squash stuffed with garlic zucchini hash, roasted sweet olive tomatoes with garlic and green pepper, homemade ciabatta bread, and a side salad with oakleaf and red salad bowl lettuces, gold nugget tomatoes, red onion and carrot. I brined the tenderloin for about 2 hours before cooking, and it was superb! We had some spring garlic coming up because it's been so warm, so I chopped that up and used it in the rub for the pork. Mmmmm. Everything you see here was produced on farm except for the olive oil, balsamic vinegar, flour, salt and pepper.
On this particular morning, I enjoyed a breakfast burrito on a homemade tortilla stuffed with eggs, salt-cured bacon, and sauteed green onion and green zebra tomato—all zero mile. What bumped this into the 25 mile category was the local cheddar cheese from Trickling Springs Creamery because I'm all about the cheese.
Roast beef with gravy, roasted carrots and onions, kale sauteed in olive oil and garlic, sliced Brandywine tomato, and homemade ciabatta bread. All the produce came from our farm. Yes, we're still getting tomatoes at the end of October! Crazy weather. I'll be picking a bunch of the green ones this week to save in the root cellar.
Again, a zero mile meal but for the meatballs, which bumped us up to a 15 mile meal and are totally worth it. I eat way too many of these when I make them, and of course, having bought half a cow, we have lots of ground beef in the freezer! This meal featured homemade ciabatta bread and angel hair pasta, with a slow-simmered sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes, garlic, thyme, parsley, rosemary, and oregano all grown here on the farm, in addition to a salad of mixed baby greens with a balsamic vinaigrette. The greens included tatsoi, broccoli raab, kale, speckled bibb, oakleaf, and black seeded simpson lettuces.
