One Local Summer-Week 1 Recap

A number of years ago I tried playing along with an idea hosted by the blog Farm To Philly http://farmtophilly.com to eat at least one meal a week totally (with exceptions for stuff like salt, pepper, sugar and oil) from food grow or raised locally. Over the years there were several different definitions of local and several levels of exceptions made, some of which I've chronicled here, some that I did on my own. Unfortunately, as the scales of balance tipped in the wrong direction, cooking anything, not to mention cooking healthy, sustainably sourced, locally grown meals fell off. And I've been worse off for it.

But no more. I'm back with a CSA subscription to a new local farm just 24 miles down the road, a farmers market that host only vendor-produced foods grown within 125 miles, and a commitment to make this my summer to back on track. 

One of the reasons I let go of this before was all the rules of what and how far and the guilt of including something "not approved". It made what should have been an educational, inspirational journey into a comparison of who was "really" being local and who could afford to source more expensive meats and exotic veggies to eat well. In an effort to avoiding all of that I'm playing by my own rules this year and celebrating even the little steps as success. 

My rules will be:

Cook at least 3 local meals a week

A local meal is a meal that contains at least half local foods and no exotic items that could not reasonably be obtained  locally. The point is to eat things in season, not how creative can I get at stretching the rules but I will note the non local items. I will also feature things like pickles where the primary ingredient that is ultimately eaten is local even if the liquid and spices are not. 

Local is anything grown or raised within 150 miles. 

I will endeavor to find sustainable, environmentally friendly, economically feasible alternatives where possible but will hold no guilt if I use store bought items or a cheaper product if it results in the ability to provide a healthy, home cooked meal to my family. 

I will source and meal plan from my share first and do my best to fully utilize all the yummy stuff.

I hope to see a gradual transition from partially local to mostly local as I use up non-local ingredients and replace them with local sources. Things like butter, flour, herbs should be easy but I wont just toss usable food to buy new local versions, I'll use up the old and replace with the good. Things like oil, salt and some sugars probably wont be replaced at all but either reduced as I make healthier meals or simply kept as my exlusions.

So for the first week, here is my recap:

Thursday evening I picked up my share and started meal planning but didn't get any cooking done as it was too late. I also still had a few few things left from my last farmers market trip like grape tomatoes, pasta, and carrots.

Friday I cooked a batch of kale (share) chips using a non-local drizzle of oil and dash of salt and pepper following this recipe at http://www.beardandbonnet.com/how-to-make-crispy-kale-chips-gluten-free-and-vegan/.

Then I took half the asparagus from the share and made a jar of refrigerator pickles using this recipe http://shesimmers.com/2010/03/quick-and-easy-refrigerator-pickled-asparagus.html. My BF, the pickle expert in the household found them quite good. 

For the main meal I used all the curly kale (share), a pint of grape tomatoes from Ticonderoga (fm), some fresh linguine noodles from Caravan Pasta (fm), and non local garlic, oil, and feta to make a delicious one pot pasta dinner. We enjoyed the incredibly fresh juicy strawberries plain for dessert.

Saturday I had previously prepared store bought chicken to use up so for local content I made a quick salad out of our lettuce (share) and some shredded carrots (fm) and braised some pok choy (share) in non-local soy sauce to go with the lemon chicken and rice.

Sunday I made a mostly local fritatta from the last of our Lancaster Farm Fresh eggs (share). This version had some non-local feta and paremsean cheese and some commercial lunch meat ham slices but also used up the leftover pok choy (share) and some sauted asparagus (share).

The rest of the week was filled with veggies too but none met my feature conditions. Chard warped salmon with sautéed asparagus, chineese cabbage and carrots in an Asian chopped salad, and kale and carrots in soup used up every last bit of the items in the week 1 share. 

Canning Beans

Its been a while since I've done much preserving and even longer since I've blogged about it. I've started to get back into cooking and deriving pleasure from creating healthful meals for me and mine and even did a massive kitchen, and kitchen gadgets, clean up this week. It was so nice to see my kitchen space neat and tidy. So of course the first thing I wanted to do was mess it up. :-)

I dug out the pressure cooker and inspired by this recent canning beans post from Food in Jars , a long time muse in my blog feed, which reminded me that even in the darkest days of winter there are things that can be preserved, I set out to can some beans. I had some dried white beans left over from a local Mennonite farmers market vendor that I had picked up last year. I also had some of their mixed beans and commercial black beans but for this experiment I decided to stick with the smaller quantity. Now I just needed a few jars.

This summer, after finally admitting that I wasn't in a good place to deal with canning and preserving I had loaded up all my extra jars, finally empty and the contents used or tossed from my preserving high water mark in 2010-2012, into their boxes and moved those out to the storage closet on my porch. Of course, its 10 degrees out there and snowed 8 inches so I wasn't interested in bundling up and dealing with the cold just for a few jars. So I dove into my pantry/junk storage are in my laundry room and was able to scrounge up 3 wide mouth Ball pint jars in addition to the one I've been using as my coffee cup for the last month, which I would have sacrificed if I had too but luckily that wasn't necessary. In a winning moment for my sporadically obsessive organizational binges my jar lids, rings, and accessories were right where they were supposed to be, right next to the pressure weight for my pressure cooker!

So following Food in Jars helpful tutorial and dusting off my own knowledge gained from years of canning experience I preped my equipment, heated my jars, pre-cooked the beans (which I had soaked overnight), jarred them up in 3 pint glasses (had about 1 cup of beans left over which will go towards dinner) and proceeded to can.

I'll let you know how they turn out.

Stocking Up on Local Food

Despite a rather packed Saturday schedule, somewhere between swim lessons at the Community Center and a matinee of the Nutcracker the munchkin and I braved the cold to get to a winter Farmers Market, this time the Oakton Smart Markets. My first stop was to Heritage Farm & Kitchen to stock up on more dried kidney beans as well as other assorted beans, frozen chicken legs, eggs, lettuce, onions, maple syrup, sweet potatoes and Trickling Springs Creamery butter.

I picked out an assortment of apples—mostly honey crisps, nittany, and gala—from one vendor and a large bear of honey from Celestial Farms before rounding the trip out with 3 bottles of wine from Fabbioli Cellars. My head is filled with visions of what I could make with the chicken and red wine and I'm excited to add butter and not one but two sweeteners to my culinary possibilities.

I also had the good fortune of running into a friend from the neighborhood Sustainability movement and Local Foods Working Group. We took the time to catch up; I shared my commitment to eating local during the 5th annual Dark Days Challenge and she updated me on effort to bring a local grocer/storefront to our town. We also chatted over canning, preserving and fermenting endeavors recent and planned and after lamenting about the difficulties of canning large batches in a postage stamp apartment kitchen I was invited to “borrow” her kitchen the next time. I can get by with small batches just fine but I think I will have to take her up on her offer when tomatoes are back at the markets.

I plan to get to the local grocery near my work soon to as I hear they have Daisy flour and I would like to pick up a whole chicken for roasting so I can make some more stock before I run out.

Dark Days-Week 1

Dark Days indeed.

Trying to fit in my increased mileage meant that I either pushed it to run in the oncoming dusk, had to peel off to the gym for the treadmill, or switch to morning runs. This plus the the always busy work week meant that I failed to do any prep, shopping, planning or even thinking about the dark days challenge until this weekend. Normally not an issue but since I haven’t made it to the farmers market since Thanksgiving (and all that was used up in the big feast) my pantry was near bare (of SOLE food anyway, I’m almost embarrassed to share the amount of other junk that is in there). I could almost cry to think that I had fail before the challenge had started.

I did manage to stop by the garden plot to finish tucking in the greens, seeing how my row covers faired in the rain and winds of last week, and harvest a head of Pok Choy, 20 leaves of kale, a few baby celery leaves and some mint. I also started rooting around in my packed little freezer and found one last package of pork sausage produced locally.

Granted, the spices and beer used to flavor the sausage probably doesn’t grow around here but I know the pork did. When I can’t get locally grown I guess I will be settling for locally made. This still meets with my goal of supporting a locally based food economy. I then remembered that I still have a bag each of dried kidney and great northern beans from Heritage Farm and Kitchen, a Mennonite Co-Op in Pennsylvania. All was not lost!

I set the great northern beans to soaking overnight and started to search the internet for inspiration

This morning, after I returned from our 5k Run with Santa race, I cooked up the sausage and added in a quart of my home canned veggie stock (all local veg).

Next I shredded the kale leaves and added in about 2-3 cups of beans.

Though one bowl barely passes for a meal and wish I had some other seasonings, the veg broth was flavorful and extremely fragrant, the sausage added a nice bit and the beans were really high quality so after the first sip I forgot all about the missing salt. I hadn’t know it but this was just the thing I needed post run on a cold winters day and thanks to no planning, a last minute panic turned into the perfect –local—bowl.

Dark Days Challenge 2011-2012

Nothing like the Dark Days Challenge to remind me to do what is best for me, my family, my health, the earth and the local economy. Yes it’s that time again. Time to face the cold and dark with delicious sustainable, local, organic and ethical (SOLE) food. As in past years I will again be joining with other local food enthusiasts to prepare at least one meal a week entirely prepared with foods grown, raised or created from ingredients available in my local food-shed. For me that is about 150 miles up and down the Potomac River, into the Lancaster region of PA and a little down the Blue Ridge Mountains except for salt, pepper, minimal amounts of oil, chocolate and mom’s home canned raspberry jam and tuna from CA (it is unthinkable to come home without a few jars of home preserved goodness in our family).

Got a quick look at my stored ingredients when I cleaned out the pantry before thanksgiving and even though I didn’t get much canning/preserving done this summer I think with a few trips to the farmers market I will have a good run at it. Still have canned potatoes, chicken stock, vegie stock, a salsa or two, peach butter, grape juice, and some other sauces. I’ll have to check the freezer but I know I have some oven-dried tomatoes, and some farmers market sausage. Also have some local wheat flour left Managed to get in a small crop of carrots, turnips, beets, celery, kale, cabbage, oriental greens and lettuces into the community garden plot at the end of July. The root vegies are all looking good and the greens are thriving under the row covers so I may even get to have some salads

Since I had originally planned to eat out for Thanksgiving until my daughter begged me to cook it, I didn’t end up with an entirely local meal like previous years but I made the best of it. I went to the Wednesday Reston Smart Market and stood out in the freezing cold (not quite but with the wind it was bitter) to purchase an 11 pound heritage breed turkey from Heritage Farm and Kitchen. It cooked up beautifully and went great with my 1/2 local mashed potatoes (the last of my self-harvested spuds from the Great Country Farms Potato Dig plus a Trader Joes assortment), pan gravy (pan drippings, local flour, my stock and a bottle of gifted non-local red wine) and cranberry mold (cranberries from whole foods that may have been right at the 150 mark, local honey, non-local orange/cranberry juice). Haven’t gone too fancy with the leftovers, mostly repeats and sandwiches. Local Saturday Farmers Markets were closed so hopefully I can get some more local food stuff or this weeks entry will be barebones (guess its time to make the turkey soup).

1st canning of 2010

On a rainy Saturday I realized that with the garlic and sweet red peppers I had picked up at the farmers market and the tomatoes, peppers and onions I got in my CSA share I had the makings for some salsa. I had recently purchased the Ball Home Canning Discovery Kit, a pretty neon green plastic basket with handles meant to can small batches (3 jars) in regular old pots, so I set out to make the basic salsa recipes. I swapped out sweet red, red bell and a banana pepper for the spicier options in the recipes and used one roma that I had leftover from the store.  It went quite quick with the help of my electric hot water kettle to boil water to remove the skins of the tomatoes  and before I had imagined it I had 3 jars of salsa cooling on the counter. The measurements were precise, fitting in the three jars that came with the kit. I had forgotten to even taste how the salsa came out on canning day but I opened the first jar to serve with taco salad and it was perfect, sweet and mild like I like it.

While I was at it I diced up some of the over ripe peaches and mixed up 2 quarts of peach freezer jam that I intend to use as pie/tart filling in the fall.

LiveJournal Tags: canning,salsa,preserving,food,cooking,peach,tomato,freezer,Ball

Week 12 CSA

This weeks CSA share included some incredibly delicious nectarines, more beautiful corn, some nice fresh lettuce and some big tomatoes.

I mean look at these things. They are definitely destined for some sauce or salsa or something canned.
The u-pick bonus this week included some more peaches and edamame. I don't know what I'm going to do with more peaches but I'll probably take the same path as the tomatoes...canned. I plan to keep the edamame till I get more next week and boil and freeze it for future stir fries.

At the Saturday market this week I was thrilled to pick up some peppers for salsa and the first small batch of what will be my fall fruit staple, apples. I also got some chicken to keep in the freezer for soups or something.

At the Sunday market I got more salsa ingredients, some potatoes and carrots, mushrooms and apples. It was quite a score.

National Farmers Market Week

Did you know that this last week (Aug 2-9) was National Farmers Market Week? Well, I did thanks to the heads up and encouragement from FoodieTots. Of course, we planned on being at at least one market anyway but in true Murphys Law fashion, the one week we should be at the market almost turned into the first week of the year where we did not even get to a single market.

I don't know how I forgot to swing by the Frying Pan Park Market on Wednesday when I planned my early lunch hour specifically to take advantage of it. Or how I managed to not leave with enough time to swing by the Reston Town Center market before I had to pick K up from preschool in order to make it to swim lessons. And then came Saturday, our usuall day of local food worship with planned stops at the Leesburg Farmers Market and/or the Purcelville Market along with u-pick and share pick-up at the farm. Surely, we'd be able to pick up our regular list of goodies and at this market I could take the time and get some good pictures of K for the Flicker pool.However, Saturday morning came and I woke up 3 hours late with a killer migrain and a whole host of other ailment that kept me in bed or immobilized most of the day.

Saturday night, with only one day left, I was just sitting up to re-write my list and plan a Sunday trip to the Cascades Farmers Market when K decided that no bedtime routine would be complete without some death-defying feat of acrobatics. The scream that emanated from her room was enough to get past my migraine and I bolted out of bed. No broken bones or abnormal swelling were immediately apparent but it was certain that she had at least sprained her right wrist and was intent on making her pain known to the whole world. She couldn't sit up, lay down, read books, drink water, move blankets, reach for a stuffed animal or go to the bathroom on her own and every few hours all night long, screamed bloody murder for my assistance. I was afraid that it might be worse than it looked or that we'd both be too tired to go anywhere, much less try to maneuver the crowded market.

But I had underestimated the power of fresh food, good people, and the sights and smells that only a Farmers Market can bring. All I had to do was ask "Do you want to go to the Farmers Market?" and my frail invalid was suddenly recovered enough to get dressed on her own, complete with arm sling, and head out to the car, albeit slower than usual, with the hope of getting not only her favorite market treat, a cookie, but also yummy food for the week ahead. My list was down to only the essentials as I had too much food to use up from overfilled shares and I was in a cooking rut and unable to make even a basic meal out of the food I had on hand but I planned to get bread, bacon, eggs, and potatoes. When we got there during the last hour of the market, K happily walked very slowly back and forth with my while I browsed for the best buys on my list. I ended up with my gold standards, Becky's Whole Wheat Bread, Bakers bacon, Red, Yellow and Blue potatoes from Onyx Hill Farm and a last minute find of eggs at Bigg Rigg's along with some of their bottled Awesome Sauce and a carton of Tomatillos. K also asked for some flowers so we got a bunch of zinnias from Medinas Produce. Last, but most importantly, K got her brownie bar from MeLoveCookies.

There is something magical about spending a few minutes at the market. The people, the sounds, the smells and the moments. I like, when K lets me, to just stop and take it all in. K likes the colors and shapes, the samplers and the dogs; I like the inspiration, the motivation and the feeling of community. Today she was really drawn to all the different tomatoes and how none of the looked like the purple ones we are growing at home. She picked out a bunch of tiny purple potatoes, tasted Bigg Rigg's Peach Jam on crackers, listened very shyly as the Banjo player sang Mary Had a Little Lamb just for her, was very intent on following a rather large shepard as he and his owner browsed for corn, and reluctantly let me hold her beloved flowers so that she could use her one good hand to pet the stuffed dog at Chase Your Tale Bakery.

On what started as a miserable day K returned with a smile on her face (and chocolate brownie too) and a story to tell her grandparents. And the market turned my day around too. When I got home, my headache and my cookers-block was gone and I effortlessly whipped up bunch of local dishes like BLTs, roasted cabbage colcannon and tri-potato mash, diced potato bakes, freezer coleslaw, roasted corn, peach medley and put by a bunch of cabbage, zucchini, peaches and onions with dreams of local produce in winter soups, breads, and pies.

One Local Summer Week 10

In celebration of our first homegrown tomato and the bounty that is available here in Northern Virginia, K and I spend Monday evening washing, spinning, slicing, dicing, shredding, and throwing our very own local salad buffet party. Here is K holding the first of the Purple Russian tomato and one of the red bell peppers.

After harvesting the fresh tomato, bell pepper, spinach, chard, beet greens and nasturtium blossoms from the garden we pulled out the cucumber, green beans and peaches from our farm share and added the smoked ham and lettuce we got from the farmers market and the cheese that gets delivered, along with our milk, from South Mountain Creamery. Each got its own little bowl and once we sat down at the table we got to pick our own combination of fresh, local produce to make our party salad.

Here is what mine looked like.
And here is K adding the final touch to her creation: cheese, cheese, and mom can I have some more cheese?

Disclaimer: items pictured on this child's plate may or most likely may not have actually been eaten. This image has been provided to represent a sampling of likely edible objects. Each was tried, however not all passed the "I don't like it" test equally. The cheese, however, was delicious.

Week 9 CSA

I can't believe that its already been 9 weeks. I'm so excited to see the first cobs of corn. I'm hoping to can up a bunch like I did last year because its such a treat to have your own corn in soups, on salads, and anywhere you would normally use canned corn all year round. These ears, however are destined to be enjoyed fresh. Green beans are also starting to appear in large quantities and will likely continue for the remainder of the season thanks to successive plantings.

We are starting to get the free stone peaches and I finally got a few precious donut peaches to try. I was afraid that I was going to miss the chance to try them. Another treat is the very first apple of the season! I can't wait until fall and the chance to make apple pie.

2 pints of blackberries were the u-pick bonus again along with 4 peaches but we spent our time picking an extra 2 pints of blackberries (not free) and there were some problems with the hayride so we skipped the peaches. Its OK, I think I have 6 bags of them slowly ripening and waiting to be sliced and frozen right now.

From the Leesburg Farmers Market I got more onions, garlic, and eggs from Potomac Vegetable Farm, a head of butter leaf lettuce from Endless Harvest and Boston Pork Butt from Bakers. Not sure what I'm going to do with the pork but I'm slowly restocking the fridge with both veggies and meat and the price was good so why not.

Week 7/8 CSA

I took advantage of my farms vacation hold to take a much need break from all the driving and excess of vegetables on week 7. That means I can double my share on a future week, which I did for week 8. As my fridge was indeed very full for week 7, I went easy on the Farmers Market purchases, grabbing a new bag of organic, fair trade, locally roasted coffee from the Thursday Reston Farmers Market run by Smart Market, Inc. at Reston Town Center and stocked up on onions to dice and freeze from Potomac Vegetable Farm at the Saturday Reston Farmers Market in the Lake Anne Plaza. From there we enjoyed lunch al fresco at the little latin eatery that overlooks the edge of the lake before taking a long afternoon hike along the trails that circle around that part of Reston. We had a great casual Saturday that I hope to repeat more often as the temperatures return to a reasonable level in the fall.

For week 8 we returned to the farm and picked up double our usual share. Pictured below is only one of the two boxes (my usual half)
Also as this weeks u-pick bonus, we picked 2 pints from the very last few blackberries on the over-picked first field during the blackberry festival at the farm and managed to find 4 semi-ripe peaches.

Week 6 CSA

Here is a quick snapshot of what came in my box for week 6.
And here are the green beans, plums and peaches that we picked (all but 2/3 of the peaches came as a u-pick share bonus--which means free)

Here is what I picked up this week at the Leesburg Farmers Market on our way to the farm. The smoked sliced ham and bacon is from Baker's.

Here is a close up of the delicious, indulgent chabatta bread from South Street. It was even better than I had imagined it.

At the Potomac Vegetable Farms booth I got onions, shallots, garlic scapes (probably the last until next year) and some rosemary.

At Bigg Riggs booth I stocked up on zucchini and potatoes and couldn't pass up a patty pan squash.

And for our sandwich and toasting pleasure (and because it's too hot or I'm just plain too lazy to bake my own bread right now) a nice wheat loaf from Becky's Pastries.

And i finally got around to shelling the two bags of peas that were waiting in the fridge. All it took was a good movie and a couple of hours and now I have 2 quarts of frozen blanched peas waiting for winter soups.

One Local Summer Week 5

Meals during week 5 have alternated between the incredibly simple but local type and the type where a local item is featured but you could hardly claim even half of the ingredients as local.

K and I participated in our own way in Kitchen Gardeners International's Food Independence Day this 4th of July. We started the day out with a simple eggs from Potomac Vegetable Farms, bacon from Baker Pork, whole wheat honey toast from a local bakery topped with butter from Blue Ridge Dairy and home canned strawberry jam from fruit picked in our u-pick share from Great Country Farms, and topped off with a fresh brewed cup of DogWatch Dark Blend from Black Dog Coffee, local coffee roaster, with a splash of non-local soy milk (lactose intolerant) for me and a tall glass of whole milk from Trickling Springs Creamery for K. We snacked on the first peaches and apricots of the season while enjoying some local cheese in the middle of the day.

For dinner (no pictures, I was too busy cooking and chatting with family) I baked caramelized onion buns made with farm share onions, whole wheat flour from Wade's Mill to hold broiled hamburgers made with ground beef from Millcreek Farms, served with a small side salad with farm share lettuce and cucumbers. This was followed by what I like to think of as baked berries with a little bit of cake. I used the recipe from The Kitchen Sink, only I used about double the berries and increased the pan size to 2 qt in order to spread out the surface area to accommodate. What resulted was so good that it didn't last long as I was snacking on it even before the burgers were out of the broiler. Altogether the only non-local ingredients were the vinegars, sugar, oil and vanilla. I call that a day worth celebrating

Another meal this week is closer to the second type but I think that I pulled it off. The chicken is from Whole Foods but the butcher assured me that the PA location sticker meant that the chickens were raised there not just processed. I have no local source of soy sauce or sesame oil and I am working my way through the my existing sources of vinegar before obtaining a local variety. Also the red bell pepper is not local, but is a sliver leftover from another dish earlier and the week and would have had to be thrown out if not used soon. Other than that everything is from our shares, the farmers market or my back porch.

I marinated the sliced chicken breast in soy sauce, apple cider vinegar, minced ginger, a dash of orange juice as I washed, sliced and assembled the rest of the ingredients. It always helps to have everything ready to go, all you have to do is wait a minute then dump another bowl of stuff in. The instructions called for lots of garlic but as I was using scapes I omitted it.

I heated the olive oil and a dash of toasted sesame seed oil then added the chicken to cook on all sides. It gained a nice golden hue from the marinade. Then I removed it from the pan and refreshed with another dash of the sesame oil before adding in the onions, garlic scape and more ginger.

After a minute or two I slowly added the remaining broccoli, bell pepper, peas and lastly sliced chard as I stirred. Once the chard had begun to wilt I added the chicken back in along with the reserved sauce and heated it through. I had too much liquid (by adding the OJ and having very hydrated meat and veggies) so I removed the solids to a serving plate and reduced the sauce significantly before pouring back over the dish.

I some how missed getting the final shot but I assure you that it was delicious.

One Local Summer Weeks 3 & 4

This is late but better than never. I've been a bit over worked and simply forgot to post about all the yummy local food I have been eating. In both weeks 3 and 4 I have featured salads; the wholesome, chock-full-o-veggies kind but sadly I have no pictures...they were that good. In addition to some wonderful lettuces from my CSA box and the farmers market I have at times tossed in my own fresh snow peas, shelled peas from CSA, roasted market beets, CSA cucumbers, broccoli, onions, chard, zucchini, yellow squash, strawberries, blue berries, black raspberries, bacon from the market and have tried out a few herb infused vinaigrette as well as enjoyed them as they are.

Update: I found a picture of one of my salads hidden amongst some random garden shots. This salad featured sweet onion chibatta bread, bacon and lettuce from the leesburg farmers mareket, and my own peas, salad greens and nasturtium petals.

CSA Week 3

A welcome variety of flavors, textures, colors and uses came in this weeks CSA share from Great Country Farm. It had been a steady downpour on our drive west and was threatening rain when we arrived in Bluemont but it looked like a significant break between fronts awaited us. Silly humans. No sooner had we checked in at the front desk, returned our boxes, got our instructions for what was available as a u-pick bonus and walked outside, just missing the hayride, when suddenly the skies opened up and buckets of water pelted the valley. I don't just mean a regular heavy drenching but a solid, unrelenting 15 minutes of pure dumpage (thats a word right). I now know what it feels like to be a tiny seedling under the onslaught of a water hose. Luckily we were able to duck onto the porch of the country store to wait it out and debate what we wanted to do. We quickly drove across the street and picked our half pint of black raspberries as the rain lighted and returned as the hayride of drenched strawberry pickers returned.

K was so excited for strawberries that despite my cautions she convinced me to go, even if it continued to rain. So we braved it and after the big dump of rain the fits and starts of summer showers didn't seem so bad. We both wore big hats and the rain mostly stayed off our face. We emerged completely soaked with our 2 pints of strawberries in hand. One nice thing about the rain is that it drove off the bugs and kept us cool on an otherwise hot and muggy day. Those berries were well earned.

Before we got to the farm we stopped at the market This week I made it back to the Leesburg Farmers Market and was lucky to find some lovely garlic scapes for 5 for $1. I picked up my customary breads, stocked up on ground beef and found some lovely red new potatoes. What isn't show here are the muffins, cookies and chocolate chip chibatta samples that were consumed in the car and never had a chance in the world to make it to photo time.

CSA Week 2

Week 2 of our CSA share from Great Country Farms continues the beautiful green and red trend of early summer. In addition to more asparagus this week came with Chard instead of the spinach as it had wilted during a refrigeration meltdown. Fine with me. Chard made it into another Fritata and will sprinkle in many others. One strawberry pint came with the share while the other 3 were our u-pick bonus and the blue container is entirely filled with the bounty K picked for herself. K's are mostly squished or have little bites out of them and will make an excellent sauce for ice cream.

We left the farm just in time to make it to the very end of the Purcellville Farmers Market. High on my priority was a bag of salad and some coffee and in addition to some wonderful beets and turnips I picked up a whole frozen chicken and a bag of chicken backs to use for stock at some point. Here is a close up of the coffee bag. I got their darkest roast.

One Local Summer Week 2

The first week of One Local Summer was fun but it took a little planning to make it work while on the go so for week 2 I took it easy and stuck with your basic frittata. Throwing in what ever is local and fresh takes a lot of the planning out of it and this one came out so good. I used onions, chard and asparagus from the first week of my CSA share, the eggs and butter are from the local farmers markets and only the salt/pepper and a little sprinkle of Parmesan were from the supermarket.

I began by preparing all the ingredients: slicing the asparagus into .5"-1" lengths on the diagonal, slicing the onions into rings, separating the chard leaves from the stem (to be used in something else) and chopping them thin, and scrambling the eggs with the salt, pepper, all but 1 tbsp cheese. I heated my smaller cast iron pan(though if your serving more than one and a mouse you might want to go for the big pan) over medium heat and let the butter melt. I love the smell and character of real butter compared to the commercial stuff; it cooks differently. First the onions and chard went into the pan at the same time, stirring constantly. It will reduce down by about half.

After about 5 minutes, when the onions were almost starting to caramelize I tossed in the asparagus and gave it a good mix. I let it go another 5-7 minutes, stirring occasionally, to let everything get cooked through without losing the bright green color. It was about now that I remembered to turn on the broiler. Then I added the eggs and gave everything a good quick stir to get the egg mixed in before it started to cook and stick.

It continued to cook on the stove top until the top was almost set. I use the giggle test--shake the pan and if the bits move it needs more time, if only the top most bits move it needs a very little bit more time and the second the top bits stop moving its ready to be moved--as the top of the egg should look moist even when it is nearly set. If you wait until the top starts to look dry or set then you'll likely get a little too much brown on the bottom. If you move it too soon you may get undercooked areas in the center and in between the vegis--eeewww.

Sprinkle with your cheese. I used Parmesan for flavor without lactose or lots of extra calories but I seem to remember that many cheeses go well. Next I placed the pan under the broiler for 3-4 minutes to get the top to cook, the cheese to melt and to get a beautiful golden brown color.

I served it with a slice of locally baked bread topped with more of the butter and a dollop of home canned strawberry jam. Yum.