Meatless Monday

Thursday I ended up at South Station.  My school had had a field trip to City Hall and we dismissed students from there, so I kind of wandered, a little lost, looking for the bus that would bring me home.  Since I don't usually go to South Station I had no idea there's a farmer's market there...that goes all the way to December 23rd!

It wasn't a big one, and since it was the day before the Occupy Boston eviction, the tents kind of blended in, but there was a pretty good variety of winter crops available.  I didn't have much cash with me, but I instantly decided that I would center this week's local meal around something from the market.  I probably should have bought the chard, but I don't LIKE chard.  Instead I bought more squash.  I have so much butternut squash I really didn't need to buy any additional squash, but I saw some carnival squash, and thought that it would at least be a different squash this week!  I asked how far away the farm was, and it was 60 miles away, so not bad on the local score, plus 3 large squash were only $2.50.

I'd planned on cooking over the weekend, but meals over the weekend included lunch at a local bread bakery, leftovers, and a few bowls of granola.  It was just that kind of weekend.  Monday I realized that I'd better get my act together if I wanted to really live up to this challenge, so I stopped off at our little local shop in search of anything local.

I could have purchased some local flour, eggs, milk, or yogurt, but I really wanted to stay away from a traditional meal this week, plus I wasn't in the mood to cook anything.  If I was going to make local, it was going to have to be dead easy this week.  I picked up some sweet potatoes from Rhode Island (70 miles away) and some butter from Vermont (180 miles away, but man is that butter good) and decided to make do with other stuff at home.  I could have bought some local meat, plus I have some stocked up in my freezer, but I was more in the mood for a meatless Monday.

So what did I cook?  I made squash with butter and maple syrup (from Natick), roasted the sweet potatoes with some brussel sprouts (marketed by the coop as local, but I'm not sure where they came from) and added some homemade sourdough bread with butter.


Okay, the bread wasn't made with local grain (although we have some), but I'm not going to turn down my husband's sourdough.  He gets the rye from our coop, but as soon as I have time to experiment we'll be grinding our own.

All in all it was an okay meal.  Super cheap.  I estimate that the meal must have only cost about $3 in total (including the bread), and for 2 people, that's a pretty good deal.  I even have leftovers for lunch.  If I did the meal again, I would definitely add some meat.  Sweet potato and squash is just a little too orange.  Still, it was filling, and local, and pretty tasty.