Cheers !

While on the road, it is becoming increasingly more difficult to eat locally . However, we found you can always fall back on locally brewed beer ! In the small glass is a sample of pumpkin beer, the big glasses are filled with Pemaquid ale, both local products.

End of summer

Eating locally is just too easy right now for those of us living in the country with a big vegetable garden. Every day I bring in baskets and buckets full of vegetables and fruit - the problem is using it all up fast enough before it becomes overripe. The kitchen is humming along at top speed : there is tomato sauce bubbling on the stove to be canned later, peppers are being chopped for freezing, apples need to be pared for apple sauce, and someone needs to help cut up those green beans, but woven through all that activity is a bittersweet good-bye to summer and all its bounty.

These early fall days make the gardener very aware that soon all harvest will cease with the first frost. Today I picked the last cucumbers for this year. Funny, how I suddenly value the odd fruit or two now and how much I appreciate it . Just a few weeks ago there was such an abundance of cucumbers , that I picked only the youngest and slimmest and the rest went to the chickens. Hmmm, seems like there is a moral here somewhere....

The Eat Local Challenge is about to ratchet up a notch, however. Tomorrow morning we start on a 10 day trip through New England with the Easy Houseguests and the big question is how we will be able to keep eating locally on the road. I've done my homework and found out a few restaurants in Maine, where local food is served, thanks to Liz at Pocket Farm, but what and where will we eat the rest of the time ? Stay tuned for road trip adventures.

And so to bed.

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 .

Easy house guests

After our frantic Labor Day clean-up and beautifying spree, we are now ready for our house guests from Germany.

I gingerly tried to explain to them our month-long local eating , since they will be affected by it, and was surprised by their enthusiastic reception of the idea. They are excited by all the fresh vegetables in the garden and said they could eat ripe tomatoes for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

As a matter of fact, here's our breakfast table this morning: two kinds of local honey, home-made peach and blackberry jam, home-made bread, the bowl of vegetables, and some ham which was still on hand. Freshly laid eggs from the chickens were turned down in favor of more ripe tomatoes.

Feeding them is going to be a piece of c...,ummm,... a slice of tomato !

Some rules

Emlyn poses the question of whether to choose local or organic food when you can't have both in one. I think I would choose organic over local if I had to make a choice : why eat something of inferior quality which may be bad for you ?

But I think we each need to make up our own rules for this challenge.

Here are my rules :

1. Anything already in the pantry can be eaten, but no replacements can be bought, if they don't fall within the 150 mile radius T and I decided on.

2. If you can't eat a 100 % locally produced organic meal, at least have some ingredients that are local and organic.

3. If none of the food can be local, try to buy ethically produced food , which means organic , Fair Trade, no meat produced by huge commercial operations, etc.

4. If that's not possible, buy from a local farmer or business.

5. Last, tell your friends about why you are doing this and encourage them to think about where their food comes from and what they are supporting with their food dollars.

Does this help, Emlyn ? Let's hear the rules which you set for yourself.

Don't let the Perfect get in the way of the Good

I entered into this challenge with all good intentions but without decent prior planning you may as well forget it. I was doing ok until both R and W came down with a rockin' case of diahrrea and required the BRAT Diet. That's Bananas, Rice, Applesauce, Tapioca pudding. The only ingredient that I can source locally is apples and I don't even know what tapioca is, let alone where it comes from! I had to rely on what I had in the pantry (not much) and what I could procure quickly (not much). So since I failed miserably this weekend, I'm planning on not letting the perfect get in the way of the good. What I mean is - I'm pressing on and trying to get more and more local with every meal. Tonight I think will be an organically raised roasted chicken (not local), organic rice (not local) and salad (local and organic). What I've found, is that many locally produced foods are not organic while you can buy organically raised bananas from Costa Rica. Because I have to feed two children, ages 4 and 1, I am stuck trying to figure out what is better: Feeding them locally grown foods, or organic foods?

More local eating

Megan, I am so happy you decided to join us in the Eat Local Challenge ! It's a lot of fun and somewhat sobering , especially when you realize how much of our food either 1. comes from incredibly far away or 2. is packed or distributed by some far away place and you have no clue where it comes from or even what is in it !
As far as fruit which is ripe right now - apples, peaches, blackberries, raspberries, plums, pears , melons of every description. I'm sure there are a few more, but the above should be readily available everywhere.
Can't wait to read about what's cooking in NYC !

Labor Day Weekend

We really did labor this weekend mowing the pastures, clearing the garden of spent plants, mulching and composting ,getting ready for fall and winter.




T put together a new composting machine ( Finished Compost in A Mere SIX Days !!! ) It's fun to fill up the compartments to see whether it really will turn into compost that fast. The idea is to turn the drums every day - there's a handle on the right , aerating the contents and thus speeding up the decomposing process.

I was going to show pictures of all the lovely meals I had cooked for the Eat Local Challenge, but they all disappeared as soon as they hit the table. I'm beginning to wonder if the Eat Local Challenge is turning into a Butternut Squash Challenge here at chez RFD. We have a wheelbarrow full of squashes and have eaten them for every meal for days !
First I roasted cubes of peeled butternut with some butter and finished with a sprinkle of brown sugar - elegant with a roasted chicken and a green bean salad with sweet SunSugar cherry tomatoes, garlic and basil.

Next, I sauteed slices of squash in olive oil, garlic and a splash of white wine, why not ? I also cooked slices in butter and oil with garlic and then removed the squash from the pan and deglazed the pan with red wine vinegar and a little brown sugar until the latter had caramelized and poured this over the squash - divine ! This squash is terrific hot, warm or cold, even straight out of the refrigerator if you want a little snack.

I am beginning to wonder if we are sufferingfrom a vitamin A deficiency ( butternut is high in A ) or if we are simply eating seasonally as well as locally.

Get ready, get set ...

Tomorrow the month long Eat Local Challenge starts and I thought I would do a trial run tonight at dinner - and what a delicious dinner it was !
Both hamburger and accompanying vegetable were inspired by Emlyn, who is an inventive and imaginative cook who combines sometimes odd ingredients fearlessly and comes up with surprising new creations.
The hamburger was mixed with chopped onions and a generous scoop of black bean sauce with garlic, a Chinese sauce. The patties were cooked on the grill by Mr. T while I made the following :

1 butternut squash, peeled and cut into bite-size slices

1 zucchini, sliced the same way

5 small, mildly hot, red peppers,diced

1/2 onion, sliced

Bunch of chard, washed and cut into ribbons

garlic, minced

olive oil

1/4 c white wine

Saute the squash in olive oil until slightly caramelized and soft, add a generous sprinkle of garlic, salt, pepper and 1 t sugar . Stir gently, cook a few more seconds and reserve.

In the same large pan, saute the zucchini in some more olive oil until slightly soft, add peppers and onions and cook until vegetables are crisp-tender. Salt and pepper and reserve.

In yet the same pan, heat some more olive oil, add the chard and saute until it turns dark green and looks cooked. Add garlic and salt and cook a few seconds more. Finally add 1/4 c white wine and boil down until wine boils away. I used Riesling, which is slightly sweet and combined really well with the sweetness of the butternut squash.

When ready to serve, arrange chard around the rim of a serving platter, place zucchini mixture in the middle and top with the butternut squash.

This is such a pretty presentation - too bad we dove right in and ate it up before I had a chance to take a picture.

The dinner was judged to be delicious. I have a feeling we will not suffer by eating locally ! All the vegetables came from our garden, the rest of the dinner was food that was in the pantry or the refrigerator.

What's local ?

Hurray, Emlyn ! I'm so glad you are joining me in the Eat Local Challenge . Here's a dandy little tool to help you figure out what is local for you.