Tennessee Locavore

One Local Summer - week three

Summer is finally getting into swing here so there's a lot of wonderful local produce to choose from.  Last night was proof of that.  We started with Tomato Toast made with local tomatoes, local bread and garlic we harvested last week from our garden (we grew 18 kinds!).  Then we had grilled local zucchini and squash marinated in a dressing made with olive oil, red wine vinegar and herbs from our garden.  We served that with a few slices of a local cheese called Cumberland. Dinner was grilled local peaches that we basted with homemade butter and honey.  I also finished up our last batch of cherry sorbet.  Mark and I then spent 3 hours pitting two huge buckets of sour cherries - how wild and crazy our Saturday nights are now!  We turned several cups into sweetened dried cherries and the rest we froze to use in cobblers and pies.

Tomato Toast

This morning, we went to our local farmer's market and were thrilled to see some ripe tomatoes there!  Yes - they looked kind of puny and No - there was no way they'd be as good as late season heirlooms but they would still taste better than anything we could find at the grocery store.  Even our famed Grainger County tomatoes aren't anything like they used to be.  They're the standard Celebrity variety that is hard as heck but ships well.  And they're never picked ripe so they're tasteless.  So our puny looking tomatoes were a treat indeed.

Bruschetta is the meal we always make when the first heirloom tomatoes are ripe - it wasn't time for that yet.  But we could make another one of our favorite summer foods - Tomato Toast.  This is easy as can be.  Take a nice, artisanal bread - we either use peasant bread or Ciabatta.  Rub slices with olive oil and grill.  When they're nice and grill-marked, take a clove of garlic and rub it into each slice, right before you eat it.  Then take a tomato half, hold it with the cut side toward the bread and rub the tomato until most of it has dissolved onto the bread.  Sprinkle with kosher salt or sea salt and eat.  Summer's here!

One Local Summer - week two

I love this time of the year.  Eating locally is so easy and we often find that we've eaten a meal that's entirely local without even thinking about it.  We had an abundance of shelling peas in our garden as well as more radishes.  Most of our spring crops are done so we've spent most of the time this week planting more tomatoes, hot and sweet peppers.

One of my favorite spring treats is from a recipe in Local Flavors.  Combine unsalted butter with diced radishes.  Spread on bread and sprinkle with sea salt.  This is so good!  We've had several of these sandwiches this past week.  We've also made Peas with pasta and cream a couple of times.  One night we made a ground pork stir fry with snowpeas, side shoots of broccoli and garlic scapes, all from our garden.  I made goat cheese from local goat milk and some butter from the cream we skimmed off the top of our Cruze Farm milk.

Today was one of those days where we realized we had eaten completely local without even trying.  We split a white chocolate and cherry scone from VG's Bakery.  We ate this with a smoothie made from homegrown frozen strawberries, yogurt and honey.  Only the yogurt wasn't local.  I plan to try my hand  making yogurt later this summer.

Lunch was sauteed spinach from A Place from the Heart Farm with a hamburger patty.  The ground beef was from Laurel Creek Farm.  It was pretty hot out today so we had a snack of homemade cherry sorbet.  Supper tonight was a grilled sirloin steak from Laurel Creek Farm and grilled marinated summer squash from A Place from the Heart Farm.  The only nonlocal ingredients were the olive oil and red wine vinegar in the marinade - the herbs and garlic were from our garden.  An hour ago, we split the first ripe peach of the year from The Fruit and Berry Patch.

Tomorrow we're on our way to check out our reception area for our wedding.  Instead of fast food, we're taking sandwiches, cherries and a peach.  The first sandwich will be made with bread from VG's Bakery, leftover grilled squash and my homemade goat cheese.  The other sandwich will be store bought cream cheese mixed with chives and green garlic and topped with local cucumbers.  Mickey D's cant touch that!

Cherries up the wazoo!

This past week, we've picked over 20 pounds of cherries.  Picking them in the easy part.  I never remember in my zeal for picking them that we will have to process all of them which is not quite as much fun.  I try very hard not to buy too many specialized gadgets but I will be buying a cherry pitter for next year.  If you don't have a cherry pitter, you can make due with a paper clip that's been bent into a 'S' shape.  Bend the botton curve up a tiny bit and insert it into a cherry at the stem end.  Pie cherries are much easier to pit but do this outside in old clothes.  Once pit, you can freeze the cherries, can them or dry them.  It was so hot this past week that the thought of spending a couple of hours over a hot, steamy stove made me feel faint.  So we froze most of the cherries.  We did dry some of the pie cherries and I really liked how they turned out.  I think they'll be amazing in muffins and recipes this fall.  We use a dehydrator - it gets rather humid here so this is the easiest way to dry stuff for us.  We dried several pie cherries plain and they're tasty.  Very tart but still good.  The other recipe was more like the Craisins you buy in the store.  We're going to pick a few more pounds next week to dry this way.

Cherry 'Craisins'
2 cups pitted pie cherries
1/2 cup sugar

Combine in saucepan and let sit for ten minutes.  Bring to a boil over medium heat and boil for one minute.  Remove from heat and let cool.  Strain and dry cherries.

Do NOT throw the leftover cherry juice out.  It makes the most amazing cherry limeades ever - we froze it ice cube trays to use later this summer.  I also plan to experiment with the amounts of sugar.  I think we could use a little bit more in the recipe.

I am now so in love with pie cherries that I'm going to figure out a way to put one in on my city lot.  Cherry juice is so amazingly wonderful but it gets a little pricey when it's made from cherries that are $2 a pound!

We froze the rest for canning later.  I plan on making several different kinds of jams and there's a chutney recipe that looks yummy.

Garlic Scape Pesto

This is wonderful tossed with pasta.  You can also use it in place of garlic butter to make some yummy garlic bread.  Thin it out with sour cream and it makes a great salad dressing or dip.  Use it as a base for pizza.  I freeze pesto to use all year for my version of "fast food".  Boil some pasta, add pesto and sundried tomatoes.  Mix in any leftover vegetables.

Garlic Scape Pesto:

½ lb. scapes (chopped into 1" pieces)

1½ cups olive oil

2 cups grated parmesan cheese

In a blender, combine the scapes and olive oil. Pour mixture into bowl and blend the cheese in by hand. I freeze this in ice cube trays - the cubes get put in a freezer bag.

One Local Summer - week ???

I started a week too early so I'm going to start labeling them as they should be.  That's why this one has a ???

This morning, Mark and I had local eggs scrambled with homemade goat cheese and swiss chard from our garden.  We also had a smoothie with local milk, frozen homegrown strawberries and a little bit of oatmeal blended in(not local).  I know the oatmeal sounds weird but it's very tasty.

It's been miserably hot here - we hit 95 yesterday!  We had to get a couple of garden beds set up because I've got some more heirloom tomato plants that need a home.  Because it was so hot, we weren't very hungry so we had homemade garlic scape pesto(recipe coming soon) on bread from a local bakery.  We ate local cherries as a snack and drank gallons of water.

Dinner tonight wasn't completely local but it was frugal.  I've got penne pasta that needs to be used up so we made Pasta with Peas and Cream again.  The peas were from my garden(I used Waverex petite pois and Wando shelling peas) and the cream was from Cruze Farms.  Dessert was homemade cherry sorbet we made from local sweet cherries.

I'm planning on picking pie cherries Tuesday (tomorrow is my birthday and I will be drinking very nonlocal margaritas) so I hope to have some recipes for preserving them that I can post.  This friday will also be the start of our traditional summer pizza nights so I plant on making some mozerella before then.

Local Cherry Sorbet

We made this a couple of days ago from local sweet cherries from the Fruit & Berry Patch.  It's been miserably hot here this week so this has tasted especially good.  I got this recipe from Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver.  It's one of my favorite books.

Cherry Sorbet

2 heaping cups pitted sweet cherries
3/4 cup sugar (or honey to taste)
2/3 cup water

Combine sugar and water over low heat, stirring until sugar has dissolved completely.  Let cool.  Combine with cherries in a blender and blend until smooth.  Pour into ice cream maker and freeze as directed.

Peas + cream + pasta = heaven!

I made this recipe tonight.  It's from Ed's lovely blog, The Slow Cook.  It's a wonderful blog and I highly recommend it.  Ed's blog keeps me up to date on a lot of current events in the food world.

Peas with pasta and cream

Sweat 1/4 onion, diced small, in a heavy saute pan or skillet with olive oil. Season the onion with salt to draw out the liquid. When the onions are soft, after about 8 minutes, pour in 1 cup heavy cream, in this case the deliciously thick cream we get delivered from South Mountain Creamery. When the cream starts to bubble, lower the heat so that the cream continues to simmer.

Meanwhile, bring a pot of salted water to a boil and add 1/2-pound pasta. While the pasta is cooking, the cream should thicken to a sauce-like consistency. Add 2/3-cup shelled peas to the sauce and cook just a minute or so, until the peas are softened to your taste. Season with a pinch of salt.

When the pasta is al dente, remove it from the pot, drain it well and toss it into the skillet with the cream sauce and peas. Stir in a liberal grating of pecorino cheese. Serve immediately in warm, shallow bowls.

This was absolutely wonderful.  I used Waverex petite pois and Wando shelling peas in my dish.  The Waverex are a pain in the butt to shell but they are incredibly tasty.  I actually got my peas started very late this year and I'm shocked they've done as well as they have.  I don't think they're long for this world with the very hot, dry weather we're having.  The cream I used was from Cruze Farms.  Their milk is lightly pasteurized and not homogenized.  It is some of the most fabulous milk I've ever had.  We let the cream rise and skim it off.  We usually end of making butter out of it but it went into this dish tonight.  I used penne pasta because that's what we had.  Obviously, that wasn't local - the pecorino wasn't local either.  I did use some small baby onions from our garden.

For dinner, we're having homemade cherry sorbet from local cherries we picked yesterday.  I'll post the recipe if it's good!

One Local Summer Report - week one

I'm going to start updating my daily menu postings blog again - this helps keep me inspired and gives me ideas for future meals.  But these posts will be just for meals I'm reporting to OLS 2008.

First - a big thank you to Joyce for taking on the task of our regional coordinator!  You're awesome Joyce!

Second - I apologize for the lack of pictures.  I've misplaced our camera!  Hopefully, we'll find it soon. 

This weekend was a local food-a-thon here in the TNLocavore household!  We started out Saturday with a picnic breakfast.  We brought along hard boiled local eggs, homegrown sliced strawberries with vanilla sugar and we picked up green garlic/rosemary focaccia and biscotti from our farmer's market.  We got a whole bunch of veggies while we were there as well.  Then we headed down to the University of Tennessee trial gardens for a picnic!  Lunch was decidedly unlocal - we did some hardcore gardening so we split a fast food chicken sandwich.  Dinner was much tastier.  We had roast chicken from Laurel Creek Farms and roast asparagus from another local farmer.  I don't think anything could taste more like spring to me than asparagus!  The only nonlocal ingredients used were salt, pepper and olive oil. 

Breakfast today was local eggs and bacon from Laurel Creek Farms, hash browns from local potatoes and bagels from a local bakery with our own homemade strawberry freezer jam.  You can't get much more local than 25 feet from your front door!  Lunch was leftovers from yesterday.  Dinner was stir-fry.  I pulled up the mizuna, spinach and tatsoi plants today so we used the last few leaves.  We also picked snow peas in our garden and the last few side shoots of broccoli.  We stir-fried green garlic in some organic grape seed oil.  We added ground pork from River Ridge Farm and then added in the snow peas and broccoli. When they were almost finished cooking, we added in the greens.  We swirled in some pepper paste we made last summer, some soy sauce and a little brown sugar.  Dessert was strawberries topped with homemade lemon curd.  Now I know lemons aren't local but I like to think we made up for that by using local eggs, and butter we made ourselves from local milk.  The sugar also wasn't local but we did substitute in some local honey for some of it.

Tomorrow we're making homemade goat cheese and pesto from some of our garlic scapes combined with some we found at the farmer's market!  Then we meet with a possible caterer for our wedding in November!  I hope he's as excited about using local produce as we are.  Otherwise the search continues!

One Local Summer 2008

Last year, I discovered the One Local Summer Challenge.  If you think eating locally is limiting, you need to take a look at some of the archived posts there.  I discovered the blog too late to sign up but I made sure to sign up for this year.  This year, the challenge is being hosted by Farm to Philly.  Make sure to check it out!

Mark and I have evolved to the point where eating locally is just second nature.  From late spring to late fall, we only eat local produce and the vast majority of our meat, dairy and egg consumption comes from local farmers.  Last year we made cheese for the first time and we also canned quite a bit.  We no longer eat any beef that's not local and grass-fed; I can't even remember the last time I ate any non local beef.  We ate chicken from the grocery store a total of maybe 7 or 8 times last year.  The only pork we bought were roasts for a party once, a couple of hams and about 6 packages of bacon.  We've eaten fast food less than 10 times and the only restaurants we eat at are non-chain restaurants.  We're eating out and getting take-out very rarely as well.  So what do I want to work towards this summer?

Let me tell you first what I don't want to do.  I could say that I want to completely rule out any non local foods this summer.  However, I don't want to do that.  Even if I wasn't limited by a lack of local grains and seafood, I don't ever want to get to the point where I get so rigid that I shut myself off to so many wonderful nonlocal ingredients.  That's not the point of eating locally for me.  I also don't want to get to the point where I feel guilt for the occasional spicy chicken sandwich from Wendys.  Mark and I split one yesterday because we had a marathon gardening session and the idea of even trying to figure out a late lunch seemed daunting.  Eating locally has become the rule in our lives, not the exception.  But I never want to rule the exception out.  I don't want to feel like a meal doesn't count because it contains olives from Italy in it.  I have a tendency to either be all or nothing in my life and I'm very happy to be content with my efforts so far. 

So what do I want to accomplish this summer?  I want to space out my canning more.  I waited too long last year to start canning tomatoes and it got to a point where it was going to be too expensive to can all the tomatoes we would use in the summer.  I also want to can more stuff - I only made a couple of jars of pickled okra last year and Mark and I could have eaten at least 20 of them!  I want to repeat the successes of last year - habenero gold will definitely be made again and in larger quantities.  I want to find a really yummy salsa recipe - the one I had heard raves about year was just OK for me. 

I also want to be more frugal this year.  I'm very bad about forgetting what I have in the fridge.  I don't do a very good job of using up leftovers and making do with what we have here in the house.  Our local food co-op is a half mile away from the house so it's far too easy to run and get whatever we need.  I want to be better about that this summer.  I also want to barter more for stuff.  I've already made a deal with one of my favorite local farmers - he got heirloom tomato plants from me and I'm getting him to grow a bunch of heirloom squash for me and a few boxes of tomatoes when tomato glut time arrives.

I want us to eat more local fruit this year.  Last year, we ate very little.  We only had the strawberries we saved with multiple layers of plastic and heaters and figs and fall bearing raspberries from our own garden.  The late freeze devastated local fruit farmers in the area and the continued drought has made it even worse for them.  Because of the drought, we couldn't buy local strawberries this spring but we did manage to harvest quite a few from our garden and the summer fruit crops look good so far! {knock on wood}   

I'd like to experiment with baking this year - we don't have a local flour source here (except for White Lily Flour and that's only for biscuits) but I can try to make my own bread using as many local ingredients as I can.  I also am eying a solar cooker - our house is in midst of renovations and this kitchen has only a couple of box fans.

My main goal this summer is to keep eating locally and not go crazy!  Mark and I are finally tying the knot this November and I have been overwhelmed with the amount of work this wedding has been so far.  And it's only going to get worse!  I'm also trying to add in as many local touches as I can.  I'd love to be able to afford all local meat for dinner but that's out of my budget.  I do plan making sure that chocolate covered strawberries are not even considered for my fall wedding!  :-D  I meet with a caterer tomorrow and I'm curious to hear what he can do with all the heirloom squash and local apples I want him to use!