Challenge update - final week!

Monday, October 01, 2007

The September Eat Local Challenge is officially over!  How did we all do?

Jeanne’s local meal for the week was a yummy all-local stirfry of eggplant, green beans, shiitake mushrooms and garlic.  She also went into a Whole Foods last week, her first trip to a big chain grocery store since the beginning of the challenge.

Their whole produce section just looked weird to me - what are they doing with grapefruits??? They don’t grow here and they are not in season in Florida!  Why on earth are they selling apples from Washington and berries from California???  After this Eat Local Challenge month, I looked at the produce department with all new eyes.

Naomi made a delicious-sounding local meal - she chopped a zucchini and half a bell pepper, and sauteed them along with a local egg.

Anj had a meal of potato salad (local potatoes, local celery, local hardboiled eggs) with homemade mayo (local eggs), and mizuna greens and garlic (both local) with a side of likely non-local free range no-horomone chicken.  And she went on a preserving spree last Monday, blanching and freezing okra (to be used for a gumbo), making kimchi (in the cellar fermenting as I write), and roasting tomatoes that were then stored in oil, garlic, and basil and frozen.  Additionally, Anj dried some figs and topped them with Shellbark Farms sharp goat and honey for a yummy snack.

I visited the Haddonfield Farmer’s Market in Jersey for the first time, tried a new locally made cheese and some locally grown hardy kiwi, and went on a freezing frenzy on Saturday - roasted beets, blanched kale and edamame and rutabaga tops, and fennel fronds in oil.  The latest glut of tomatoes became ketchup that got canned in a water bath, along with homemade applesauce and cranberry sauce made from some great white cranberries I snagged from the Fair Food Farmstand in Reading Terminal.  My local meal for the week was a stir fry of spaghetti squash and pork tenderloin.

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