The "Keep it Local" Challenge

The Grande Finale…of sorts

This years challenge had a hard time getting started and getting going…but a few of us were able to eat locally and eat well all month long.  It was delicious.  As always I love seeing all the good food, getting inspiration for my own cooking and meeting my (and your) farmers.  for me eating locally is, of course, about making choices that might benefit our environment, but mostly it’s about fresh food, supporting local business and getting to know my farmer.

As always there were many folks who signed up to participate, but never quite got going.  I hope that you too were inspired by some of the good eats and while you may have never sent in a photo of your food – I hope you ate well, supported your farmers and enjoyed our posts.

on to the food

WEST COAST

Beth – California

Dinner was fava beans, corn, and salad.  Dessert was a melon popsicle.

 

• From my garden:  cucumber and purple bell pepper.
• From my CSA:  lettuce, radishes, tomatoes, musk melon
• From the farmers market:  fava beans, avocado, corn, garlic, olive oil (!)

I'm very happy that I got in a dessert, got local beans, and finally bought some local olive oil.

Kathy, Liz, Matt and Nathan – Washington

Tonight we had Zucchini ricotta cheesecake and corn chowder

In the zucchini cheesecake was:

• Zucchini (obviously!), garlic, shallots from jubilee farm, Carnation, WA
• Ricotta made from milk and buttermilk from Smith brothers Farm, Kent, WA
• Basil from our yard
• Eggs from our chickens

This was a really good recipe http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/zucchini-ricotta-cheesecake-recipe.html.  Surprisingly light—not eggy like quiche and not heavy like cheesecake and it was easy to make. We made it with shredded zucchini, but you could use most any vegetable.

The corn chowder was one of the best I’ve eaten. The recipe was in a recent issue of Cooks illustrated http://www.cooksillustrated.com/recipes/detail.asp?docid=29692

In it was:

• Corn from Magana Farms, Sunnyside, WA
• Bacon from Blue Valley meats, Walla Walla, WA
• Onion from Jubilee Farm
• Potatoes from somewhere in Yakima, WA
• Basil from my yard

MIDWEST

Wyatt and Maura – Michigan

This weeks meal was butternut squash soup (squash, onion, garlic were local)  had to search elsewhere fore curry and cinnamon (Sorry!)

• Green beans - Veg from farmers market,  beans were frozen from earlier this season
• NY strip steak - Bearfoot Farms  Paw Paw , MI about 20 min

Kids wouldn't even try the soup but the 10 month old loved it.

Thanks, Erin
Keep it Local
Wyatt and Maura

 

Erin (your hostess) Illinois

So I had this grand plan to pick up some local vodka (there are a couple choices actually!), but it didn’t happen.  Luckily, Lara (who has participated a few weeks of this challenge) picked up a local cherry wine for me while she was in Door County Wisconsin late last month.  I made a local sangria!

I added apple and raspberries (that I froze early this summer).  Cheers!

**********************************

Thanks to all who participated this year – it’s always fun for me to get a little peek into your lives this way.  Keep it local!

xoxo

erin

Week 4!

Another week of good looking food, from good-hearted people.  And some interesting thoughts from our friend Georgene in California.  What reactions has eating local brought up for you? Negative, positive – leave a comment and tell us all of it!

There is one more week of the challenge – don’t forget!  eat well, be well…now on to the good eats…

MIDWEST

Sara, Ari, Charlie and Lucy - Illinois

This week's local dessert was an exercise in chemistry: I tried to make meringues, but it was just too humid and I couldn't get the egg whites to form stiff peaks. Do the challenge again in the winter and I'll try again in an arid kitchen.

I had intended to layer meringues with berries and whipped cream in an "Eton Mess" kind of recipe. Instead, we had to get by with fresh strawberries and raspberries from J.W. Morlock in Watervliet, MI and Kilgus Farmstead cream in Fairbury, IL. Poor, poor us. ;)

 

Wyatt & Maura, Michigan

Today's meal consisted of baked chicken breast, roasted carrots, onion, red and sweet potato.  Michigan peaches, always delicious.  A sliced tomato to brighten up the plate.  Wasn't sure what to do with all of the hot peppers from my garden, so I stuffed them with cheese and wrapped them with bacon.  Wonderful.

Chicken from Otto's Chicken
Bacon from the farmers market
Cheese from Battle Creek Michigan, 20 min
onion, carrots, and potato from CSA
peaches from farmers market
tomato and peppers from backyard

Erin Loughlin (your hostess!) – Illinois

It was dessert week – wahoo!  I’d been thinking about making this dessert all summer, just waiting for the peaches to be ready.  The main ingredients are all local (flour, peaches, blueberries and butter)  the sugar, tapioca and lemon juice are from far off lands I’m sure.  But this cake. THIS CAKE. it’s good.  Even though my nephew doesn’t think so. 

• flour – Ted’s organic grains
• Peaches – Fat Blossom Farm
• Blueberries – from all over Illinois/Michigan I’ve been storing away blueberries every week all summer. 
• butter – Alcam Creamery

 

WEST COAST

Beth – California

Super Summer Stacker. 

Grilled bread and veggies with a white bean herb puree.  I cheated a little this week with the beans because I really needed protein for dinner. 

Bread from Palo Alto.  Onions, eggplant, and herbs from my garden. Pattypan squash and zucchini from my CSA.  The beans, olive oil, and red wine vinegar are not local.

I planned to do a side salad with cucumbers and tomatoes from my garden, but I was too hungry.  :)

 

Georgene  - California

Well, not quite a meal exactly.

I've been sick and food has been a challenge of the non-local sort, so I'm copying Erin's idea of "cocktail" as meal.  Here we go:

Z Cuvee wine from Zaca Mesa Winery in Santa Ynez 137 miles

Goat Cheese Souffle made with:

    Goat Cheese from Soledad Goats 93 miles

    Eggs from Lily's Farm 55 miles

After that, it gets a little dicey.  The souffle has a few drops of milk in it that the container says comes from a Southern California dairy.  No idea of the miles there.  And no idea how far the black pepper of cream of tartar traveled.

Each week of the challenge, I find myself questioning why am I doing this and what is local? I try to eat local outside of the challenge, mostly for environmental reasons.  But if environmental is really my goal, than this "meal" is a total fail because it's pretty well-established that going vegan is the best thing we can do for the environment.  (so my meal the second week of the challenge, which was vegan and straight from my garden) was the very best I could do.

I have a tendency to think of myself as doing pretty well on the local front, but when the challenge forces me to confront the reality of my diet, I see a lot of short falls.  I wanted my lunch to be my local meal for this week -- tomato, basil and buratta sandwiches with tomato and basil from my garden, buratta from about 25 miles away and bread the grocery store labeled "local."  But while the bread may be baked locally, where does the flour come from?  And where did the place that made the burrata get the milk?  These are things I don't normally think about when the challenge isn't going on.

These kind of thoughts really get me down, but that being said, this is the first year in our house, and the first year we could truly garden.  I'm really proud that this summer I grew every single herb I needed, every ear of corn, every bean, every leaf of lettuce, every tomato, every pepper, every squash and every slice of watermelon.  Sometimes I think that's not a lot, but when I look at our grocery bills, they're down about 30%.  Part of that is because we are growing our own food and part of that is because growing our own vegetables encourages us to have a more plant-based diet.  Next year, since we will have been in the house in time to actually plan a garden and not throw in whatever plant we can find at the farmer's market, I am hoping to get about 70% of our summer food from our own back yard.  We shall see.

And on that note, signing off from Los Angeles.

 

Kathy - Washington

This week we ate:

 

King Salmon—troll caught on the Washington Coast

Corn from Magana Farms, Sunnyside, WA

Grilled zucchini, onions and peppers from Jubilee Farm, Carnation, WA

Grilled eggplant from Magana Farms

Basil for pesto from Jubilee farm

Beer—made by Matt, Kathy’s husband in our backyard (grains were not necessarily local, but the hops are grown in Washington)

Week 3

The holiday weekend seemed to throw most of us for a loop.  We have 2 more weeks of the challenge to go…hope we get some return folks for these last two weeks.  Anyone want to join me in creating local desserts next week?

Six of us participated this week and the food looked just as tasty! 

(No links this time – I was rushing to get this up today!)

MIDWEST

Sara, Ari, Charlie and Lucy – Illinois

So you can look at this week's local dinner one of two ways: on one hand, it was the most ambitious because the ingredient lists were long. On the other hand, not all the ingredients were local. I wanted to cook vegetarian though because it is my favorite, especially this time of year and finding certain ingredients in many of my favorite dishes locally just was never going to happen. I realized that some is better than none though, so I present my Mostly But Not Entirely Local Spinach Mushroom Burgers and Tomato Cobbler.

Here are the local ingredients for the spinach mushroom burgers:

• olive oil from The Olive Mill in Geneva, IL
• onion, garlic and spinach from Nichols Farm in Marengo, IL
• Phil's Eggs from Forreston, IL, butter from Organic Valley in La Farge, WI
• and mushrooms from River Valley Ranch in Burlington, WI.
• The nonlocal ingredients were rolled oats, parmesan cheese, panko crumbs, salt, pepper and pine nuts.

• The tomato cobbler's local ingredients were:
• that same Olive Mill olive oil
• onions and garlic from Nichols Farm
• beautiful cherry tomatoes...I forgot to write down where they came from but it was somewhere in Illinois and I bought them at Green Grocer
• butter from Organic Valley
• Gruyere Cheese from Roth Kase in Monroe, WI
• cream from Kilgus Farmstead in Fairbury, IL
• and Clabber Girl baking powder that I was delighted to discover comes from Terre Haute, IN. The nonlocal ingredients were flour, red pepper flakes and salt and pepper.

 

Lara – Illinois

Okay, week 3! Almost forgot this week.  All the details involved with going back to work after maternity leave kinda put things like cooking on the back burner.  We pulled it together though tonight with a meat and potatoes meal. 

We had a delicious cut of sirloin steak from Heartland Meats (Evanston Farmer's Market) and lightly fried some potatoes from a farm stand in Door Co.  I also had a cucumber from a farm stand and sliced that on the side as well.  That was it......  Only non local ingredients were again salt, pepper and the grapeseed oil.

 

Erin (your hostess) – Illinois

For my dinner this week I also put together a vegetarian meal…which was not my original plan!  There is a guy at the Rogers park farmers market that sells the best looking sausages and my plan was to buy some meat from him and grill it up and call it a meal.  And then I saw a couple of ladies making locally sourced and produced tofu! And I became unnecessarily excited about this.  I don’t even really like tofu.  But you don’t see a lot of local tofu around here, which is ridiculous when you see the number of soybean crops surrounding this city.  Anywho…I roasted the tofu along with some tomatoes, green beans, mushrooms and loads of garlic (along with balsamic vinegar, olive oil and sugar).  it was delish.

Katie – Iowa

Well today we had brats that are made at the grocery store, tomatoes from the back yard, corn from Stratford, Iowa (15 miles south of big ole Webster City) buns from Boone, Iowa. Earlier in the week I had a slice of apple pie from an orchard near my office

 

WEST COAST

Beth – California

Eggplant Panzanella and Robdello Red Wine.  Wow. This was yummy.

The eggplant, lemon cucumber, onion, basil, and parsley are from my garden.  The tomato is from my CSA (110 mi).  The bread is from Palo Alto (2 mi).  The wine is from Sonoma (75 mi).  The lemon was labeled "local" at the store.

What's not local or unknown?  The red wine vinegar, salt and pepper.  And the olive oil, which is disappointing since I can get local olive oil.

 

Kathy and Liz – Washington

So Liz and I made BLTs yesterday.

• The bacon came from Blue Valley Meat in Walla Walla, WA
• The tomatoes and lettuce came from Jubilee Farm, Carnation, WA
• The bread came from Essential Baking company Seattle, WA
• We had pickles we made from cucumbers and garlic from Jubliee Farm, Carnation, WA