OLS: Week 4

This week was a great week for eating locally - I am getting better at planning and at finding local foods. Plus, my CSA chare started 2 weeks ago - I am hitting more than 5 a day for veggies!

So, I decided to make Sausage and Greens Soup. A couple of ingredients are not local, but everything else comes from within 10 miles of my home.

Sausage - Cornerstone Farm ~10 miles
Garlic Scapes - Firefly Farm ~5 miles
Swiss Chard - Firefly Farm ~5 miles
Scallions - Firefly Farm ~5 miles
Potatoes - 150 miles (County)
Evaporated milk - unknown

The recipe is quite good, but if I decide to make it again, I will use a less spicy sausage! And, Swiss Chard is starting to grow on me - well, not literally, but each time I eat it, raw or cooked, I like it more.

And, I already have my local meal for next week planned - Minestrone Soup using veggies from my share and beans from Exeter.

Community Supported Agriculture

This is my first year having a CSA share. Using the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association's website, I found a local farm which offered prepackaged shares. My share is from Firefly Farm, owned and operated by Billi, in St. Albans. This farm is about 7 minutes from my house!

Last Monday, I picked up my first weekly share and spent a lovely hour chatting with Billi about local farmer's markets, food, blogs and numerous other things. She lives is a little farmhouse and, besides growing vegetables for the likes of me, bakes bread for her stand. As part of my share, I asked that a loaf of bread be included each week.

Last week, I received beets & greens, Swiss Chard, 3 pounds of peas (2 types), a huge bunch of scallions, cilantro and garlic scapes and 2 loaves of bread: rye and olive. I ate very well last week - you can check my previous post to see what I did with part of my share. Other parts I ate and then I froze some to enjoy later.

After spending time chatting with Billi, I realized how important it is for everyone to know where their food comes from. To be able to connect in some small way with their food chain - rather than just going into the supermarket and buying what looks good. Farming is hard work and going to pick up my vegetables there makes me realize, each and every week, what an important job farmers have in our lives.

Besides all that, though, it just tastes better.

OLS: Week 3

My CSA share started this week - I'll post more about that later - which made this week (and future weeks) so much easier to plan for! So, once I got home from picking up my share, I shelled my peas and blanched my swiss chard and beet greens for freezing.

Then I made Spring Pea Soup, which was good, but a little bland. Next time, I will reduce the amount of water called for in the recipe and add more spices.

Here are the ingredients and the miles they traveled:
Peas ~ 5 miles (CSA Share)
Garlic Scapes ~ (CSA Share)
Scallions ~ (CSA Share)
Potatoes ~ 150 miles (County potatoes)
Herbs ~ 0 miles

I also had some very yummy greek olive bread, which came with my CSA share. All in all, I am very glad that I decided it was time for me to know where my food is coming from and have a farmer "with a face."

OLS Week 2: Asparagus Quiche

Week 2 of the One Local Summer Challenge found me very prepared at the beginning of the week and, yet, I somehow managed to have almost no local ingredients ready for when I prepared my "official" meal (that would be because I ate it all - too much at a time, but fresh veggies are so yummy). Panicking, I decided to clean out my freezer and package up the 4 quarts of strawberries I had cleaned and frozen on Independence Day.

Lo and behold, I had, crammed way in the bottom, a small bit of asparagus that I had frozen and forgotten. Since I already had local eggs and milk, I decided to make Asparagus Quiche - with no crust. I would really have had to cheat on the crust, since I haven't found any local flour yet, so I made it crustless and just used butter to grease the pie plate. That is why there looks like a crust - the yummy butter darkened. The recipe is from my favorite cookbook, Simply in Season. I haven't found a recipe in there that I do not like! So, here are the ingredients and how far they traveled:

asparagus ~5 miles (last yrs farmer's market)
eggs ~ 5 miles
milk ~ 5 miles
bacon ~ 10 miles
cheese ~ OK, I cheated and used whatever was in the fridge. I doubt it came from Maine.
butter ~ 70 miles (I had some Kate's butter that I used, but when that is gone, I will be using butter made closer)


And, I found a great local source for the best sausage I have ever had. It is Cornerstone Farm in Palmyra - they attend the Augusta Mill Park Farmer's Market, the Waterville Farmer's Market and the Orono Farmer's Market. If you get a chance to try their pork products, you will not be disappointed! We grilled up their Hot Italian Sausage on Wedneday - oh, yum!


*The shelties LOVE asparagus - as I steamed my portion, I also steamed the woody ends for them. They ate them right up. And, I don't think they like me talking about them on this blog - they are all staring at my reflection in the window behind me and barking at it (shelties - in some way, they are so smart. In others, sigh).

OLS: Goat Stew

This is the first week of the One Local Summer Challenge, organized by Liz at Pocket Farm. Basically, the challenge is to eat one dinner each week made from local foods. The fun part is that I get to define what local means.

Since I have never really focused on purchasing local produce and meat, my goals for this summer challenge are to educate myself about available local foods and, as the summer goes on, find my foods within a 50 mile radius of Palmyra. I want this to include everything in the meal. But, for this first week, and, until my CSA share starts, I limited myself to ingredients from Maine (which is a huge area).

Some of the ingredients for this Goat Stew are very easy to find. Potatoes are grown in Northern Maine. I would have preferred local new potatoes, but I wasn't very organized this week and decided to just use what I had in the fridge. Carrots, garlic scapes and onions came from the Pittsfield Farmer's Market. I cheated with the celery.

I have never had goat meat. There are a lot of foods that I have never had. Most of them, I am willing to try, except seafood. I respect those who love lobster, shrimp, clams and mussels, but I just can't eat them. But, meat and poultry, I will try. So I decided to make a soupy stew for this week's challenge using ground goat meat. Since I cook for one, I tend to make meals that can eat for more than one meal - it saves me time on following days and I freeze at least 1 meal for future consumption when I do not feel like cooking at all.

My goat meat comes from St. Albans, just a few miles down the road from me.

Not bad! People around me turned up their noses and said "GOAT? That will be really gamey and stinky." I guess because goats have a certain odor about them? Well, it was bad bad logic on their part (I mean, cooked chicken doesn't smell like live chicken - and I haven't found a meat yet that smelled like its live counterpart, so why would goat be any different). This goat, while a little greasy (drain off the fat!), is quite mild. Milder than lamb in a stew and I LOVE lamb stew!

Goat Meat Stew

1 pound ground goat meat (or, goat stew meat) ~10 miles traveled

1 onion, diced ~ 10 miles

3 carrots, sliced ~ 10 miles

3 stalks celery, sliced ~no idea!

3-4 potatoes, diced ~ The County ~ 150 miles

3-4 garlic scapes, chopped ~ 10 miles

herbs of your choice (I used oregano, parsley, bay and thyme) ~ 0 miles

water/broth ~0 miles

salt & pepper

Brown onion in a skillet. Add goat meat, salt & pepper and cook until browned. At the very end, add the chopped garlic scapes and brown lightly. In a large pot, combine the cooked onion and goat mixture, potatoes, celery, carrots, and herbs. Cover with broth/water and cook on medium heat until potatoes are tender. This would be nice served with a whole wheat bread - especially with the cool weather of this weekend!

So, my goals for the next week are to explore some local farmer's markets I have not been to and to plan a dinner that even my picky father and sister would eat!