Market to table - One local summer week 3

I have to say, I'm really excited about this week's One Local Summer Challenge - Day of Local Eating.  It took some planning ahead, but my taste buds are still dancing. Let's see...

BREAKFAST: Last week, I was experimenting with my new local flours - cornmeal, rice flour, and whole wheat flour. I'm not much of a fan of whole wheat (I'm sorry, I know) but I absolutely love whole wheat pancakes (WAY better than white flour pancakes). I love the nutty flavor and texture which is strange, because I don't really like wheat bread. Go figure. So anyway, as I was playing around with flours, I cooked up a couple recipes worth of whole wheat pancakes (recipe). This isn't my normal recipe, which also has oatmeal (not local), but it's a good one!

SIMPLE/FRUGAL ALERT -  When I make pancakes, I REALLY make pancakes - two to four batches at a time. I do this not because I'm a complete oink-er, but because I like to freeze them for super easy breakfasts and making them all at once saves energy (the stove's and mine). Once cooled, I wrap the pancakes individually with the wax lining from cereal boxes (so they don't stick together in the freezer). Then when I get up in the morning, I pull out a couple, pop them in my toaster oven for 4-1/2 minutes and they're nice and toasty warm.  

Back to breakfast. So here I am with my two toasty whole wheat pancakes. Rather than syrup (which is homemade but not local), I chose to use a recommendation from eco 'burban mom from Monday's post on peaches - peach sauce. I chopped up a peach, added a little sugar and cinnamon, and microwaved it for about 30 seconds, stirred it up to break up the chunks and microwaved it just a few seconds more. Mmmm - peaches, cinnamon, and sugar - seriously good stuff! I devoured these beautiful little flapjacks with a hot cup of herbal tea (mint and sage both local) and a side of yogurt and peach skins. Right - this I'm going to have to explain. 

Peach skins, peach skins. How to explain the peach skins? It's like this. My dad came over last weekend with a bushel of peaches. That's right - a bushel. As you can imagine the weekend was spent making jam (3 batches), canned peaches (4 large jars) and frozen peaches (2 bags). You should have seen the piles and piles of peels that came off these beauties - some of them still with a little bit of peach attached. I just couldn't bring myself to compost them. So I cut them into small pieces and have been enjoying them with my morning yogurt and those ripe little skins taste pretty darn good, thank you!

LUNCH: At the end of each week, I take all the leftover veggies from the market and make a huge pot of soup. This soup then supplies my lunches for the following week. It's a great plan that almost completely eliminates food waste - I just freeze any excess soup and pull it out as needed. This week's soup started out the same way, but ended up a total drool-fest! Last week's leftover onion, mushrooms, and potatoes went into my soup pot with a little olive oil. Then after the veggies had softened, I tossed in some corn cut right off the cob (I have to admit, I've never actually cut corn off the cob before), squash, slices of polish sausage from Sand Creek Farm, salt, pepper, and vegetable stock (reserved from steamed veggies and boiled potatoes of last week's meals). I served it with some shredded gouda sprinkled on top (Mmm cheese). This stuff rocks! Was it the sausage and all those extra sausage spices, or what? Definitely my best soup EVER and it was so easy (if I can do it, anyone can do it - and I'm sooooo not exaggerating this).

DINNER: One of the blogs I read each week is for Long Bean Farm, a local CSA. I'm not a member, but I love talking to the owners at the farmers market each week so I follow their blog, leave comments, etc to keep in touch. Last week the blog mentioned spaghetti squash going into CSA boxes so when I arrived at the farmers market on Saturday morning, I bee-lined for their booth hoping they had some extras. They did! Now I'd never had spaghetti squash before a couple months ago, but after one taste, I was in love, and here I was with a second chance at this gorgeous and unique veggie. 

I started by putting both spaghetti squash (whole) in the oven for 1 hour at 350 degrees (with just a tiny cut in each one to release steam). As it was baking, I chopped some fresh green pepper, mushrooms, tomatoes, and carrots in a frying pan with a little olive oil and let it simmer. To thicken the sauce, I mixed some local whole milk with a couple tablespoons of local rice flour, added it to my veggies, and let it simmer awhile longer. About this time, the squash were done in the oven. I popped them open and removed the seeds (those will get toasted later). Next, I loosened up the insides with a fork to reveal those amazingly spaghetti-like innards. Gorgeous! Perfectly cooked (thanks Vicki for advice on how to cook them)! I spooned the strands up out of the gourd onto a plate, topped it with my creamy veggie sauce and some shredded gouda cheese (isn't everything made better with cheese), and voila! Looks good, huh? A side of fresh watermelon gave a super sweet ending to an awesome day of eating.

You know the tomato-veggie sauce would be great on a baked potato or on my local rice, too! And the toasted seeds from the squash will make for a nice afternoon snack. Yum! Oh, the possibilities!

What was local?  So here's the breakdown for today's meals:

Pancakes

• whole wheat flour (local - DiIorio Farm and Market)
• eggs (local - farmers market)
  
• milk (local - Sand Creek Farm)
• vegetable oil (nope, sorry)
• baking powder (nope)
• salt (and no)

Yogurt

• homemade from raw, whole milk (local - Sand Creek Farm)

Peach Sauce

• peaches (local - North Texas farm)
• sugar (nope)
• cinnamon (nope)

Fruit

• Peach skins/peels (local from a North Texas farm - although they were attached to the peaches when I got them)
  
• Watermelon (local - from South Texas)

Soup

• polish sausage (local - Sand Creek Farm)
• corn (local - farmers market)
• squash (local - farmers market)
• mushrooms (local - Madisonville TX though purchased from grocery)
• potatoes (local - farmers market)
• onions (local - farmers market)
• veggie stock (local - made from cooking farmers market veggies)
• gouda (local - Sand Creek Farm)
• olive oil (nope - from Tuscany, but owner is local)
• salt (nope)
• pepper (and nope)

 Vegetables over spaghetti squash

• spaghetti squash (local - farmers market)
• mushrooms (local - Madisonville TX though purchased from grocery)
• tomatoes (local - boss' home garden)
• carrots (local - farmers market)
• milk (local - Sand Creek Farm)
• rice flour (local - DiIorio Farm and Market)
• gouda (local - Sand Creek Farm)
• salt (nope again)
• olive oil (nope, nope, nope)
  

Let's see, that's salt, pepper, oil, the tinsy bit of sugar in the peach sauce, and the baking powder for the pancakes - everything else was local! 

Local isn't always easy - it takes some extra time and planning - but after a day of meals like this, how could I ever go back to supermarket fare? I don't think my taste buds would ever forgive me.

For more ideas on eating local foods, check out the One Local Summer Challenge website (hosted by Farm to Philly) and see what others are eating (weekly OLS posts are made to the Farm to Philly website on Tuesdays of each week). Happy (and mindful) eating!