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!
Glad to see another Tennessee participant in OLS! Sounds like a great weekend of meals.
Posted by: Capturing Today | June 10, 2008 at 03:55 PM