Local Eating, Colonial style

After a whirlwind week with the Easy House Guests, we have become reacquainted with all the tourist attractions around here.

First stop was Mount Vernon, home and beloved farm of George Washington, to introduce our foreign guests to American history and give them an impression what life was like on a Colonial plantation, where everything necessary to life was produced on the farm by the people who lived there.

Besides all the normal farm products, they spun and wove the cloth for their clothes, made shoes, caught and salted herring , grew tobacco,made paint for the house , tanned leather - in short, they were pretty much self-sufficient. Talk about local eating - this was local living and in a very elegant style indeed.

I was impressed by Martha Washington's larder and smokehouse , which produced over 400 hams per year. Those hams were fed to 377 guests who visited George Washington in one year - it was Martha's rule that there should be a fresh ham on the table every day !

I was not able to produce a ham each day for my own guests, but I did manage to provide steamed crabs from the Chesapeake Bay, corn on the cob, and the ubiquitous tomatoes, this time in the form of a yummy salad made with green beans, lots of garlic , basil and a vinaigrette dressing. All of it either from our garden or the Chesapeake Bay right at our doorstep and totally local.

First ear of corn, ever !

The Eat Local Challenge continues .