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. 

Dark Days: Leftovers!

I’m probably going to be using up Thanksgiving leftovers for the entire winter season.  I wanted to make sure I bought a local turkey, so I went to our neighborhood shop (American Provision) that specializes in local fare.  We had Thanksgiving the weekend BEFORE the actual holiday, so our options for a fresh, unfrozen turkey, were limited.  I ended up getting a 14 pound bird from Misty Knolls, which is actually 200 miles away, and not nearly so ideal as I'd previously been led to believe.  I would have preferred a bird from Natick Community Organic where I used to work and volunteer, but they tend to have big birds, and I didn’t want to end up with a 33 pounder.  For a group of 4, 14 pounds was more than enough.  Out of my turkey purchase I’ve made turkey broth, and then bone broth, and I’ve frozen a ton of meat.

This weekend, for my husband’s 41^st birthday, we went on a hike in the Blue Hills Reservation, only 20 minutes away by car.  It was wonderfully (and a bit unnaturally) warm, but cool enough that something warm, like a soup or stew, was just the thing after the end of a 3 hour hike.  Since I’m involved in the Dark Days challenge I decided to pull out some turkey and some homemade bone broth from the freezer and make a soup.

I have a bucket of sand in the basement preserving the carrots I grew this year.  I’ve “sanded” some of the potatoes I grew as an experiment to see which way holds them the best through winter.  Beside the turkey, broth, carrots, and potato, I needed to add spices, which were not local.  I did have some local spices in my weekly box this year, but I often failed to preserve them, so I’m using my stockpile of organic spices purchased primarily at our local food cooperative, Harvest CoOp. 

I have to confess, I also snuck some gluten free noodles into the soup.  The noodles were an unnecessary addition, but I was also feeding friends and I wanted the soup to taste close to chicken noodle.  It got me thinking about making some homemade noodles and drying them for occasions like this where I really want to fill out my soup.  For my first official entry into the Dark Days challenge I suppose it’s not quite there yet, but you’ve got to start somewhere, right?

I follow the blog, Not Dabbling In Normal, whenever I have the time.  Recently they, along with another blog site, (not so) Urban Henry, posted a challenge that I just couldn't ignore! Now, I've never participated in a blog challenge, but it's right in line with what I've been trying to do anyway.  I'm going out on a limb and am going to try to make a 100% local dish once each week.  For more information on the challenge, go to this link, and you can find the guidelines and the bloggers who are participating in your area.  It's not to late to sign up if you want to join in as well. 

From the Cupboards

I'd like to post some of the meals that are a result of stocking up for winter, although I've already realized that I'll be doing quite a bit of shopping over the winter anyway.  I wasn't expecting to be on a gluten free diet, and that's really thrown my planning for a loop.  I'm hoping to post at least 2-4 meals per month that come from my pantry, but I'll let you know if I've had to buy anything for the meal.

One thing I can make this week is Vegetarian Chili!

I had a few wilting green bell peppers that desperately needed to be used up.  My garden did great until about mid-November, but then it was obvious that I needed to pull the last of the peppers off if I wanted them before the whole plant died.  Add to the bell peppers a jar of home canned tomato sauce, a local onion from one of my boxes (my onion cup runneth over), some spices, and two cans of beans. 

Okay, everything was pretty local until the beans (and I DO have local beans) but pre-cooked beans mean I can be spontaneous about my cooking.  I'm still missing a part to my pressure cooker (not canner), so I really should have planned ahead and soaked some beans overnight.  Yep, I'm not that organized.  I'm a look in my cupboards and see what I can do kind of girl.

I'd planned on pre-cooking and pressure canning some beans before the start of winter, but I didn't get around to it.  While making this meal I realized how nice it would be to have some home canned beans, but I have no idea when that's going to happen!