Tennessee Locavore

Route 69 Cherry Limeade

My husband thinks I have a very annoying habit.  When it's hot out, one of my favorite things to drink is a Route 44 Cherry Limeade from Sonic.  It just screams summer to me.  I've noticed though that they aren't nearly as good as they used to be.  They also always forget to put cherries in it which to me, is half the fun of the whole thing. But liking Cherry Limeades is not the annoying habit that irritates my husband.  Along with mispronouncing Crappie and calling a bobber a float, whenever he goes to order a Cherry Limeade for me, I make sure to tell him I want a Route 69 Cherry Limeade.  I'm hoping that one day, just because I've put this idea in his head, he'll head to Sonic and instead of ordering a Route 44 Cherry Limeade, he'll pull up to the drive-in speaker box and ask for a Route 69 Cherry Limeade.  And then die a little death of shame.

So far, he hasn't fallen for it.  So I figured a little more indoctrination is necessary.  Since Sonic seems to be slipping in the quality department, I wanted to create my own version of the drink.  It will also help me use up the giant bag of un-pitted sour cherries I have in my freezer.  And if you're going to call it a Route 69 Cherry Limeade, you might as well throw a little liquor in it.  Here's the recipe:

Route 69 Cherry Limeade:

First take 2 cups of sour cherries and 1/2 cup of sugar.  Mash them up a bit and simmer with a lid over medium low for about an hour.  Strain out the bits and save the syrup.  We froze the extra to use later.

Use a 16 oz glass.  Take 2T cherry syrup.  Add 2 T fresh lime juice.  Add 1 shot vodka or to taste.  Fill glass 3/4 full with soda water and add ice.  Garnish with a slice of lime and as many cherries as you would like!

Enjoy!  And don't blame me if you slip up at the drive-thru!

One Local Summer - Week Four

This week has been full of OLS meals!  On Monday, I made a delicious frittata with local eggs, ham, zucchini, potatoes and onions.  In fact, even the mozzarella we subbed in for the cheddar was local because we made it from Cruze Farm milk!  Tuesday, we made tortillas using local lard and filled them with local chicken and onions.  Only the cheese wasn't local.  We served them with homemade salsa made from local ingredients.  Wednesday was tomato toast made with homemade bread, local garlic and tomatoes from our back yard.  On Thursday, we made one of my favorite grilled meals, Vietnamese Chicken, made with local chicken and grilled local zucchini and onions.  We finished the night off with a cherry crisp made from frozen local cherries. We made a simple pasta sauce out of local zucchini, tomatoes and garlic on Friday and served that with a grated beet salad made from beets from our friends' yard.  On Saturday, we started the day off with local raspberries, blueberries and blackberries and had that with a scone from VG's Bakery.  We had a wonderful sandwich for dinner made with our homemade local milk mozzarella, leftover grilled zucchini and onions, homemade basil mayo and ciabatta rolls from VG's bakery.

However, today was our "official" OLS meal and everything we ate today was local, except for some feta cheese and flour.  We started the morning out with local eggs scrambled with feta and local garlic scapes.  For lunch we had local beet greens and swiss chard sauteed with local bacon and served that with steamed local new potatoes with local butter and dill.  Tonight for dinner, we had a pizza with local potatoes and leeks and local goat cheese.  I even made a sourdough crust so we didn't have to use yeast in our pizza crust!  For dessert, we had homemade peach granita we made from local peaches.  I had wanted to make sorbet but all the recipes I found contained lemon juice.  Instead, we made peach granita from David Lebovitz's book, Perfect Scoop. I do have an ice cream maker but the beauty of this dish is that you don't need one to make this.  I had never had granita and I had visions of it being an icy mess.  I'm an idiot because this is good stuff.  I love that it doesn't have a lot of sugar and it was perfect for the 93 degree day we had today.

Peach Granita:

6 ripe peaches, peeled
1 1/3 cup water
1/2 cup sugar

Slice peaches and cut into small chunks.  Cook with 1 cup water in a medium saucepan over medium heat.  Cook until cooked through which is about ten minutes.  Remove from heat and stir in sugar and let cool.  When cool, place in blender with remaining 1/3 cup water and blend until smooth.  

Pour the mixture into a shallow non-reactive pan in the freezer. Check after 30 minutes. As the mixture begins to freeze, use a fork to scrape the frozen puree that froze around the edges into the center. Return to freezer.

Check every 30 minutes, scraping each time.  David says it usually takes 2 hours but when we went to bed last night, it still wasn't frozen enough and it had been 3.5 hours.  So we some for breakfast!  If it gets too hard, just leave it out for a bit.

Weekly Menu - June 22 - 28

I've gotten out of the habit of keeping up with the various meals that I eat.  At one point, I was very good about updating my menus on a regular basis but I've gotten out of the habit of doing that.  I've always found posts about menus on seasonal eating type blogs to be very helpful when I'm planning my own meals so I'm going to post mine on here.  I think having a weekly roundup will be easier for me than a daily post.  I also want to note that I'm going to be brutally honest when I post my menus.  I live in the real world - this blog isn't an experiment to see how "pure" of a local eater I am.  It's about trying to eat local whenever I can.  I also don't always have time or the willpower to make from scratch dishes every meal.  On Thursday, we put in a new border in our front yard and the thought of making something to eat for lunch was too much to deal with.  So we got fast food.

I'm missing a few meals but I've got most of them from this week.

Monday:
Dinner - Zucchini-Potato Frittata

Tuesday:
Breakfast - local eggs scrambled with feta and local garlic scapes, sliced local peaches
Lunch - Leftover frittata
Dinner - Homemade flour tortillas made with local lard, filled with local chicken and onions.  Salsa made with local tomatoes, cilantro and garlic.

Wednesday:
Breakfast - English muffin with local egg, bacon and cheese, cherries
Lunch - Leftover quesadilla
Dinner - Toast with tomato, basil and fresh mozzarella, cherries, aged gouda, olives and salad

Thursday:

Breakfast - English muffin with local egg, bacon and cheese, cherries

Lunch - Half a Wendy's Spicy Chicken sandwich and a cherry limeade from Sonic

Dinner - Vietnamese Grilled Chicken and Grilled Zucchini, Cherry Crisp

Friday:

Breakfast - English muffin with egg, bacon and cheese, cherries

Lunch - Leftover chicken and Smoky Zucchini Salad

Dinner - Raw Beet Salad and pasta with local zucchini, tomatoes and basil

Saturday:

Breakfast - Scone from VGs Bakery, local blueberries, raspberries and blackberries

Lunch - Half a ciabatta roll with fresh mozzarella melted over homegrown local sungold tomatoes and basil

Dinner - Leftover grilled local zucchini and onions on ciabatta roll with fresh mozzarella and basil mayo

Sunday:
Breakfast - Local eggs scrambled with feta and local garlic scapes.  Sliced peaches
Lunch - Local beet greens and swiss chard sauteed with bacon.  Local new potatoes with butter and local dill
Dinner - Potato leek pizza made with all local vegies and peach granita

PS - I am so happy at how great our pictures turned out!  I realize they're nothing when compared to Heidi's gorgeous pictures but I'm pretty damned proud of them!

Caturday - June 27

Because quesadillas are their natural prey in the wild.  This was taken a few weeks ago and it's a picture of Cleo and Little Man.

Zucchini-Potato Frittata

I am in love with this dish!  I've had frittatas before and I haven't been too fond of them.  The eggs have always seemed tough and it just wasn't something that I found myself craving.  Yet, frittatas are one of the easiest ways to use up vegetable odds and ends.  And I have had a tortilla that was really good when I was up in Milwaukee a couple of summers ago.  So it's turned into a bit of a quest - I was going to find a frittata recipe I liked if it killed me.  Luckily, I haven't been killed by untasty egg-based dishes - instead, I found this recipe and on a whim, I tried it.  It's everything I hoped a frittata could be.  It's fairly easy.  It retains the creaminess of the eggs and relies heavily on the vegetables in it to bulk up the recipe.  Plus cold leftovers of this are amazing!  

Zucchini-Potato Frittata
serves 4-6
Recipe reprinted from Andrea Chesman's Serving Up the Harvest with permission from Storey Publishing

1 medium zucchini or yellow summer squash, sliced
Salt
4-5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, or more as needed
1 1/2 pounds waxy potatoes, thinly sliced
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
1/4 pound smoked Canadian bacon or ham, diced
6 eggs
Freshly ground black pepper
1 cup grated Cheddar

1. Combine the zucchini and 1 teaspoon salt in a colander and toss well. Set aside to drain for 30 minutes.

2. Heat 3 tablespoons of the oil over medium-high heat in a large, well-seasoned cast-iron skillet or ovenproof nonstick skillet. Add the potatoes and onion, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook, flipping and stirring occasionally, until the potatoes are soft, about 20 minutes. Increase the heat to medium-high and continue cooking, tossing occasionally, until the potatoes are are brown, about 5 minutes. Remove the potatoes with a slotted spoon but keep the skillet on the burner.

3. Transfer the zucchini to a clean kitchen towel and pat dry. Add the zucchini and Canadian bacon to the skillet and sauté over medium-high heat, until the zucchini is just tender, about 4 minutes. Remove the zucchini and Canadian bacon with a slotted spoon. Keep the skillet over the heat.

4. Beat the eggs and pepper to taste in a medium bowl until well blended. Fold in the potatoes, zucchini and Canadian bacon, and cheese.

5. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of the remaining oil to the skillet as needed to lightly coat the bottom. Pour in the egg mixture, reduce the heat to medium-low, and cook without stirring until the bottom is set, about 10 minutes.

6. Transfer the skillet to the oven and bake until the top is set, 5 to 15 minutes, checking every 5 minutes.

7. Place a serving plate on top of the skillet and carefully invert. The frittata should fall out of the pan. Cut into wedges and serve.

Sorry about the bad pictures - they should be improving soon.  Marcus has started taking most of them with the macro feature on my camera and we're shooting them outside on our porch so we can get at much natural light as possible.  This picture should be the last awful one!

Roasting every vegetable in sight!

I have become a convert to roasted vegetables.  I always knew they were good but I mainly stuck with root vegetables.  I had no idea what I was missing out on.  I tried roasted carrots and broccoli last year and they were so good, I've been tempted to try more.  Roasted asparagus was delicious this spring.  I had a whole mess of fresh snap beans from the farmer's market and while I wanted to enjoy them without a lot of adornments, I didn't want to just steam them.  So I tried roasting them.  These are fantastic.  

Roasted Green Beans

1/2 tablespoon olive oil

1 pound green beans

Cook at 450 for 15 minutes until they're as brown on the undersides as you'd like them to be.

I served these with salt boiled new potatoes.  I'd post a picture but all my pictures came out with the potatoes looking like olives!

One Local Summer - Week Three

We have been roasting here in East Tennessee.  It's been over 90 degrees the past few days with high humidity.  Combine that with a kitchen that has no air conditioning (or walls, cabinets and ceiling but that's a story for another day!) and cooking is the last thing you want to do.  We've been grilling out a lot and doubling up recipes so we have lots of leftovers.  Later this week I'll post recipes for roasted green beans and an amazing recipe for a potato, squash and ham frittata.  I thought I didn't like frittatas but luckily, I was wrong.  My favorite recipe this week comes from one of my fail safe cookbooks,A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen by Jack Bishop.  It was very easy to make and it was delicious hot and cold.  It's also deceptively filling.  The only non-local ingredient was the lime juice and the ginger, which although it wasn't local, was still reasonably close - it's from Alabama.  This soup served with grilled chicken thighs from Laurel Creek Farms was my "official" One Local Summer meal.  We finished it off with a peach cobbler that was completely local except for the flour. We sweetened it with local honey and homemade butter from local cream.  The ice cream was made with local honey and local milk and cream.

Chilled Curried Yellow Squash Soup with Cilantro-Lime Puree

5 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 1/2 pounds yellow summer squash, chopped (about 5 small squash)
1 medium onion, chopped
1 tablespoon minced ginger root
3 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 teaspoons curry powder
6 cups vegetable broth
1 medium russet potato (about 8 ounces), peeled and diced
Salt
1/2 cup packed fresh cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon fresh lime juice

Heat 2 T oil in a Dutch oven over medium heat until shimmering.  Add the squash and onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown, about 8 to 10 minutes.  Stir in the ginger, garlic, and curry powder and cook just until fragrant, about one minute.  Add the broth, potato, and salt to taste and bring to a boil.  Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until the potato is very tender, about 25 minutes.  Cool slightly, purée the soup in batches until very smooth.  Adjust the seasonings.  Transfer to an airtight container and chill thoroughly.  When ready to serve, purée the cilantro, lime juice, and remaining 3 T oil in a blender until smooth.  Salt to taste.  Taste the chilled soup and adjust seasonings as necessary.  Ladle soup into small bowls.  Drizzle some cilantro purée over each bowl and serve.  Serves six to eight.

A Return to Caturdays

I haven't been good about posting regular Caturday updates, especially when you consider the fact that I own enough cats to be embarrassed giving casual acquaintances the total number.

East Villagers Remember a Cat Called Pretty Boy

I've been missing my own pretty boy lately.

One Local Summer - week two

I don't usually comment too much on political issues or current events (unless it's food or farming policy).  It just seems so surreal to me to be sitting here on my couch composing my One Local Summer post while in Iran, people are risking and/or losing their lives to gain a modicum of the freedoms that many Americans take for granted every day.  If you're interested in following the events there, here are the best three sites I've found besides Twitter.

Andrew Sullivan
Huffington Post's Live Blog
National Iranian American Council

This week has been a week of easy local eating.  Lots of salads still and the first summer squash of the season have arrived at the farmer's market.  I still have tons of swiss chard left that my parent's gave me and it was starting to look a little bedraggled.  I cut the leaves off the roots and washed them in my OXO Salad Spinner.  I'm not big on kitchen gadgets but this is one of the best purchases we've made.  It makes cleaning greens so much easier.  That perked them up enough to keep through the weekend.  I've made this quiche recipe before so I just subbed in chard for the spinach.  I also made a wonderful swiss chard and artichoke dip for a party last night.  I'll be posting that later this week.  Another winner was the Potato LeeK Soup we made earlier this week. 

Tonight I made a recipe from Italian Vegetarian Cookbook by Jack Bishop.  I have several of his cookbooks and they really can't be beat for simple, wonderful meals.  I made Polenta with Garlicky Greens but I had to make a few substitutions.  I'm out of spinach from the garden and it seemed silly to buy some at the market when I had so much chard and other vegetables to use up.  I had some broccoli left over from last week so I used that in place of the spinach.  I diced it pretty finely.  I also used the chard stems.  I added both of these to the pan after the garlic and cooked them a bit before I added the chard leaves.  Everything (even the cornmeal) was local except for the olive oil and salt.  Now dessert was not even remotely local but when you have leftover chocolate birthday cake, that's really not the time to be zealot. 

Polenta with Garlicky Greens
Servings: 4 to 6

Ingredients:
2 cups cornmeal
Salt and pepper
1 ½ lb. chard
1 ½ lb. spinach
¼ cup extra virgin olive oil
2 medium onions, thinly sliced
6 garlic cloves, slivered
2 tbsp unsalted butter

Directions:
To prepare Polenta: Pour 8 cups of water into a saucepan and bring to boil. Add 2 tsp of salt and lower the heat to medium. Whisk in the cornmeal in a slow, steady stream. This should take almost 1 min. Make sure to whisk the cornmeal continuously to prevent lumps from forming. Continue whisking as the cornmeal comes back to a boil. Simmer, whisking constantly, until the polenta starts to thicken, 1 to 2 mins. Reduce the heat until the polenta is at the barest simmer. Cover the pot and cook very slowly, stirring with a wooden spoon every 10 mins or so, until the cornmeal loses its raw flavor, 35-40 mins.

To prepare the Greens: While the polenta is cooking, remove and discard the stems from the chard and spinach. Tear leaves into small pieces. Wash the leaves in a large bowl of cold water to get rid of any dirt. Shake the leaves to remove excess water, but do not dry them. Set aside.

Heat the oil in a large saucepan. Add the onions and saute over medium heat until translucent, 5 mins. Stir in the garlic and cook until golden, about 2 mins. Add the greens to the pain. Stir to coat the leaves with oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Cover and cook, stirring 2 or 3 times, until the greens are tender, 5-7 mins. Remove the cover and simmer until some of the liquid evaporates, 2-3 mins. The greens should be moist, but not swimming in liquid. When the polenta has finished cooking, stir in the butter and add more salt if needed.

Friday Link Love

Hungry for Change - this is the blog associated with Food Inc., the new movie coming out tomorrow that goes head to head with the food industry.  Right now it's only playing in NYC, LA and San Francisco but hopefully it will pick up steam and move on to other cities.  When it comes out on video, I plan to have a screening at our house! 

The 20th healthiest foods under $1

A great article at Salon.com - Can we afford to eat ethically?

This has been around for a while but I discovered it when I read the above article and there's some great information here - Rebecca's Pocket: The Organic Thrifty Food Challenge

One Dollar Diet Project - very thought provoking blog

My friend Jeff has a great blog called EatWisconsin.  He's got lots of restaurant reviews and information on all kinds of local food products for you Cheeseheads! 

Potato Leek Soup

We were tired and out of leftovers for dinner.  After searching the fridge and checking out the recipe folder on my computer, we came up with this recipe.  It was really easy to make and very tasty. 

Potato Leek Soup

3-4 medium potatoes 
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
4 small leeks
1 tablespoon butter (You really can use whatever amount of butter you want to use here - especially if you use a nonstick pan)
Milk - I ended up using just a half cup
Salt and pepper

Dice potatoes.  I left the skin on since the soup is pureed.  Simmer in broth for 25 minutes - you want them to be tender.  Meanwhile, clean leeks.  Chop leeks using only white and pale green parts of the stalk.  Make sure to save the tops for stock!  Saute leeks in butter until translucent.  Combine the leeks, potatoes and broth in a blender and blend until smooth.  Remember not to fill the blender more than half full.  Return to pan and thin with milk - use as much or as little as you would like.  You can also add a little cream to make this richer.  I use Cruze Farms whole milk here.  Heat until it's warm and season with salt and pepper and serve.

One Local Summer - Week One

I apologize for the lack of posting - one of our furbabies died a couple of weeks ago after a short but serious illness.  Between running around to our local and university vet, keeping his meds and six feeding times straight, sleepless nights and getting all the furbaby love we could pack in, it's been a long six weeks.  Little Man was one of two kittens that Marcus and I hand raised and we've always joked that we'll always consider them our first born kids - just slightly furrier.  He was our baby and a huge part of our lives and his time on this earth was just too short. 

While at the Market Square Farmer's Market Saturday morning, Marcus and I were reminded that local eating can sometimes be a disappointment.  We tend to get a lot of our fruit from the Fruit and Berry Patch.  They're not organic producers but they try to limit the amount of chemicals they use, especially since they're a Pick Your Own kind of place.  Last summer, we discovered the wonders of their cherries - both sweet and sour pie cherries.  I dried a decent amount of sweet cherries last year because I'm not a fan of raisins and these are a great substitute.  I also fell in love with pie cherries.  They're not quite as much fun to pick because they're not as tasty straight off the tree but they're amazing to cook with.  We managed to make the pitting more enjoyable once we found a really good cherry pitter and we concocted the Cherry Pitter Cocktail which involves sour cherry juice, limeade and vodka.  The weather this year has not been kind to the early fruits.  We had a lack of rain and then got all of our rain all at once which has caused a lot of farmer's strawberries and cherries to rot.  So after falling in love with cherries last year, I'll have to try to get by on the few bags we have left in our freezer.  Cherries from the grocery store don't hold a candle to them and you can't find fresh pie cherries in the store because they're so delicate.  We did make several cherry crisps this week - I'll post the recipe for the crisp later on this month.  It's easy to make a large batch of crisp topping and keep it in the freezer so you can make fruit crisps whenever you want.  We also made up some cherry sorbet that we also made last year.  Another dessert that we've made a lot of is Strawberry Shortcake.  Just mix up a batch of biscuits (I'll have to get Marcus to post a tutorial - the boy can make a biscuit to rival anyone's family recipe), slice some strawberries and top with whipped cream.  Thanks goodness we haven't had a late frost so the other fruits look to be doing ok - just pray for enough rain at the right time!

We've been eating a lot of breakfasts involving swiss chard.  My brother brought back eight pounds of it from my parents and we're trying to eat as much as we can before freezing it.  We usually add it to scrambled eggs that are topped with Locust Grove cheese.  Bacon is from Laurel Creek farms and bread is made from non-local flour but local sourdough and topped with local, homemade butter and jam made from local cherries or homegrown strawberries.  Lunch is usually leftovers or a salad made from local lettuce and greens, local hard-boiled eggs and local bacon.  One meal we've made several times is Pasta with Peas and Cream.  The pasta and cheese isn't local but everything else is and it is heavenly.  Fridays are pizza nights here so we made crust using our sourdough starter, homemade frozen pizza sauce made with our own tomatoes and topped with our favorite toppings this time of year, garlic scapes and caramelized onions.  We also made up a stir-fry using local ground pork, local broccoli, local bok choy and the first garlic of the season.

Our entirely local meal tonight was broiled pork neck-bones from River Ridge Farms, salt boiled new potatoes from Good Earth Farms and steamed snap peas from our garden.  Butter to top the veggies was made from Cruze Farm Milk.  Dessert is sliced strawberries.