Local Food For New Friends

Last night we acted as couchsurfing hosts for the first time. It was really fun. We hosted a family of four traveling from Florida to their home in Ottawa, Canada. They stayed just one night, but we all enjoyed each others' company - adults and kids alike. They were due to arrive after dinner, but we wanted to have a nice local dish for them to enjoy when they arrived. So we made our local dinner for us and then made dessert to share with our guests.

Dinner was pasta (not local), homemade tomato sauce which I canned from our 15 mile tomatoes and herbs, and separate local (10 mile) pork sausage. Simple but yummy. Dessert was homemade pies. The crust was made from butter (25 mile), home ground wheat, and salt. The pie filling was butternut squash (15 mile), local milk (15 mile), local eggs (5 mile), and spices from lots of places.

Being away for the holidays was really difficult on the local food front. We were guests in my mother-in-law's home and she really enjoys entertaining. That includes cooking for us - in her own style. So I had nothing to really post for my Dark Days Challenge ...

Dark Days Challenge Meal #3 or 4

I missed a week of blogging for the Dark Days Challenge. I was so obsessed with the whole car accident finding the ideal replacement car, that while we did eat locally the whole week, I did not even think of blogging about it.

But this week I am back! We enjoyed sausage from a local farmer (10 miles), roasted potatoes (15 miles) tossed with olive oil and salt, and a mix of (15 miles) veges including leeks, carrots, napa cabbage, vitamin green, and chickpeas (not local but delivered with my other natural coop food from Phili. We seasoned the veges with homemade gomasio (sesame seeds and salt) and a bit of dulse.



Persimmon cake was our dessert. I made it yesterday as a birthday cake for my new (actually used) replacement car. The persimmons were deliciously sweet and from my favorite farm 15 miles away. I ground the wheat and spelt which came from Pittsburgh, PA (well beyond my 25 miles goal). Local honey sweetened the cake. Do those pesky baking ingredients count? You know - the baking powder and baking soda? Anyway, it was yummy...



Here's the persimmon cake recipe although as usual I modified it ...

Dark Days Challenge Meal #2

I was going to blog about our sunday meal as my 90% local meal but then I realized it was not very different from last week's meal. How yummy but boring! So instead, two days ago we had a simple chicken salad, homemade pita bread, and a salad. The chicken salad contained: leftover roasted chicken (5 miles), apples (about 8 miles, lacinato kale (15 miles), carrots (8 miles), and raisins (California) with a dressing of mayo (Hain brand but from far away) and mustard (Annie's brand but from far away). The homemade pita bread used wheat from Pittsburgh that I ground myself, salt, honey (25 miles), yeast (in a jar but from where?). If I had made this with the whey leftover from cheesemaking, it would have been even yummier! The salad had a mesclun mix base (15 miles), homemade mozzarella cheese (using 25 mile milk), oil and ume plum vinegar dressing, and more of those far away raisins. Sorry no picture today!

Dark Days Eat Local Challenge

This year I am participating in the Dark Days Eat Local Challenge put on by (not so) Urban Hennery. I really enjoyed reading about everyone's food last year and wanted to play this year. Plus I get a lot more of my food locally now, so this should be doable for me. It runs from Nov 15 through March 15 and I am to blog every week, so there will be lots of food related posts coming up.

The Dark Days Challenge is to create, eat, and blog about one meal a week which is made from 90% local ingredients. What is local? We define it for ourselves. My local food is grown within 25 miles of my house.

Today's meal(s) looks like this...


Lunch is butternut and leek soup, homemade mozzarella cheese, mesclun mix salad,
apple (10 miles), and roasted potatoes (15 miles). The soup is made with homemade chicken broth (chicken came from 5 miles away) and local butter (25 miles) along with leeks and butternut squash (15 miles). I made the mozzarella using milk from about 25 miles away. The salad greens (15 miles) and apple (10 miles) What was not local? I used salt, cumin, pumpkin seeds, cranberries, a bit of olive oil for the potatoes, and salad dressing that were not local. There is a piece of homemade bread on my plate described in the dinner picture, but I didn't actually eat it at lunchtime.


Dinner is roasted chicken (5 miles), baked sweet potato (15 miles) with local butter (25 miles), swiss chard (15 miles), persimmon (15 miles), and homemade honey (25 miles) bread with local butter (25 miles). The wheat for the bread was grown in Pittsburgh, so that was not local and neither was the yeast :-) The chard had our magic sauce which is not local (ume plum vinegar, olive oil, agave nectar, and soy sauce).

Ok, so I am learning and will be using even less non-local ingredients in my next Dark Days Challenge Meal.