One Local Summer 2007, Week 4, A Meal

Posted on | July 21, 2007 | 5 Comments

After a distracted trip to the farmers’ market this morning with Lila, who insisted we walk sans stroller and then proceeded to throw herself around on the devil strip in front of the market stalls, coming awfully close to falling into traffic, I managed to cobble together a fantastic local meal.

I’ve been craving Borscht, and snagged 2 bunches of gorgeous beets, some shallots from the beautiful garlic growers, and bunching onions from a new vendor. I used a recipe I found on Martha Stewart’s website. I like to add green beans to the soup, just for the last ten minutes of simmering, so they’re still a bit crunchy. Unfortunately, due to the above distraction, I forgot green beans, and my snap beans are only just beginning to flower.

I ran out to the garden and picked through the Vermont Cranberry bushes, full of speckled bean pods just about ready to pick, until I found a fat handful of young beans, easy enough to slice thin and toss in at the last minute.

They got added along with some dill heads to complement the giant bunch of dill fronds I snipped from the herb bed by the kitchen door. I know, it looks as if I snipped the heads off of neighborhood children in this photo. Borscht preparation leaves the kitchen looking, well…dangerous.

Soup isn’t quite enough of a dinner, so I thought I’d do a little summer squash, a salad and some garlic bread. I seem to have been in a yellow-to-orange mood today.

I accidentally bought only yellow patty pan and not green zucchini (except for the ginormous one I snagged for .50, with the intention of making more yum zucchini fritters). I also thought I’d make a caflouti for dessert, and accidentally bought white (yellow) cherries, instead of the black cherries that were sitting on the table right next to the bland looking white ones. Nitwit.

So yellow, yellow, yellow. The woman who sold me all of my yellow foods (also 3 yellow tomatoes and an onion, the hell?) said her friend cubes the patty pan and sautées it in olive oil until lightly browned, then drizzles it with honey and chopped fresh mint. That sounded interesting, but I didn’t have any local honey. I should have a jar because last Saturday I bought a small one at the market, but again with the Lila distractions, I paid for it but walked away from the table without it. That was naturally on my list of things to remedy today, but with her throwing herself under a bus every five seconds I just couldn’t focus.

I do, however, have a small jug of local maple syrup, which I drizzled on the squash, then sprinkled it with fresh thyme. It was kind of gross and we all wound up dumping a glop of the Raita I made for the soup on top of the squash, which helped immensely. It was scrumptious in the soup, as well.

I needed salad, and believe me when I tell you I searched high and low for some local lettuce, but I could not find a single leaf that came from anywhere but California. My hearty greens have all gotten much too big to make a salad with, so I caved in on that and bought the high mileage lettuce. My colon thanks me.

I made the garlic bread with a gifted loaf from Rafael at the market. What an interesting guy. He says he missed the bread he grew up on in Spain so much that he planted a small wheat field, and mills his own flour, then bakes bread in his kitchen and sells it at the market. He gave one to us because I’m writing the guide. Too sweet. I melted some Amish butter from Wooster, Ohio, chopped some of my young garlic, basil and oregano, then spooned it all over the loaf that I halved lengthwise. Put the two halves together, wrapped in foil and warmed while the caflouti baked. It was most excellent for sopping up the dregs of the soup.

The jury was out on the caflouti until about five minutes ago when I got up from the computer to answer the phone and spooned out a few bites. Oh. My. Yum. It’s not the prettiest thing, so I’ll spare you the yellow photo. Let’s just say that I need to hurry up and finish this post so I can go have a proper dish full.

Borscht:
Shallots (40 miles)
Onions (3 miles)
Cabbage (30 miles)
Chicken Stock (made with local, Amish chicken –40 miles– and local veggies)
The same chicken shredded
Beets (10 miles)
Carrots from the garden thinning (0 miles)
Green Beans from the garden (0 miles)
Dill from the garden (0 miles)
Red Wine Vinegar (away)
Salt & Pepper (away)

Squash (30 miles)
Maple Syrup (20 miles)
Olive oil (away)
Thyme from the garden (0 miles)

Salad:
Lettuce (away)
Cukes (30 miles)
Grape Tomatoes from PA (75 miles or so)
Dressing was Newman’s (away)

Garlic Bread:
Bread (10 miles-wheat grown and baked!)
Garlic (from the old garden, 14 miles)
Unsalted Amish Butter (40 miles)
Basil & Oregano from the garden (0 miles)

Caflouti:
Eggs from my hens (0 miles)
Milk (organic but away)
Vanilla (away)
Cointreau (away)
Sweet yellow cherries (30 miles)
50/50 organic flour (400 miles…next week I hope to have the PA flour)

It’s weird to have my garden just hanging out in this green stasis. Some ripe fruit would be grand, but I’m thinking it’s going to be another couple of weeks before we have any realistic harvesting going on.

[tags] eat local, locavore, borscht [/tags]

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