This has been a good start to the One Local Summer challenge. I was camping locally over the weekend and brought enough local food to allow us a nice local breakfast al fresco under the canopy dripping from an overnight spring thunderstorm. We cooked up local bacon and scrambled local eggs on the camp stove and toasted the last slices of a local loaf on the cooling grill and spread the second to last jar of strawberry freezer jam from the 08 harvest. I've been very carefully dolling out the few containers of the jam, which is really more of a low sugar preserve, over the winter to make them stretch out until we had fresh ones again. K tried everything and begged for more jam.
The second meal, which I've had 2 times this week, has been a salad nearly entirely from what I've grown in the containers on my back porch. I harvested a variety of lettuces, mustard greens, spinach, a micro green mix, beet greens, kale, sliced green bunching onions, the first 6 snap peas, and a bright orange nasturtium blossom (all from the porch). I then picked most of the large basil leaves and blended up a vinaigrette that included the pureed basil leaves, a clove of local garlic (farmers market), local honey(farmers market), a little olive
oil (not local) and some apple cider vinegar (also not local, though I'll be looking for an alternative once I run through the giant bottle I have on hand). The dressing was a bit strong but when reduced made a nice complement to the simple, fresh salad that traveled 5 yards from "field" to table. K gets a thrill out of the salad spinner and its her reward for helping to pick the lettuce (and not ripping all the leaves off my non-edible green plants) and trying at least 1 bite of it.
This has been a good start to the One Local Summer challenge. I was camping locally over the weekend and brought enough local food to allow us a nice local breakfast al fresco under the canopy dripping from an overnight spring thunderstorm. We cooked up local bacon and scrambled local eggs on the camp stove and toasted the last slices of a local loaf on the cooling grill and spread the second to last jar of strawberry freezer jam from the 08 harvest. I've been very carefully dolling out the few containers of the jam, which is really more of a low sugar preserve, over the winter to make them stretch out until we had fresh ones again. K tried everything and begged for more jam.
The second meal, which I've had 2 times this week, has been a salad nearly entirely from what I've grown in the containers on my back porch. I harvested a variety of lettuces, mustard greens, spinach, a micro green mix, beet greens, kale, sliced green bunching onions, the first 6 snap peas, and a bright orange nasturtium blossom (all from the porch). I then picked most of the large basil leaves and blended up a vinaigrette that included the pureed basil leaves, a clove of local garlic (farmers market), local honey(farmers market), a little olive 
oil (not local) and some apple cider vinegar (also not local, though I'll be looking for an alternative once I run through the giant bottle I have on hand). The dressing was a bit strong but when reduced made a nice complement to the simple, fresh salad that traveled 5 yards from "field" to table. K gets a thrill out of the salad spinner and its her reward for helping to pick the lettuce (and not ripping all the leaves off my non-edible green plants) and trying at least 1 bite of it.
1 comment:
Sounds like a great week! My little one is reluctant to eat salad greens as well.
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