Challenge update - week 1

Monday, September 10, 2007

The first week of the September Eat Local Challenge is over!  How did we all do?

• Anj and her partner, Sue, made an amazing looking frittata with bread salad!  And everything was local except the salt, olive oil, and balsamic vinegar - impressive!
• Sue made Baba Ganoush using some lovely eggplants from Livengood Farms.  The recipe sounds delicious!
• Naomi and her dad went on a canning free for all!  They put up “applum” jam (apple and plum), grape-ginger jam, raspberry-lime jam, and apple-tomatillo chutney - most from locally grown ingredients!  Additionally, Naomi made herself a locally grown meal - salad, a cabbagey marinated salad with SE-Asian style dressing, and roasted potatoes. Yum!
• Jeanne had a huge week in local food!  She shopped at the Rittenhouse Square Farmer’s Market for the first time, and she swung by the Schuylkill River Park Wednesday Farmer’s Market where she found honey crisp apples from Highland Orchards.  She froze chopped zucchini, chopped onions, and rasperries, and plans to freeze carrots and more zucchini this week.  Jeanne’s local meals sound excellent - local bread with homemade strawberry jam; oven fries with local potatoes and BBQ baked local tofu (commercial BBQ sauce); panzanella with local heirloom tomatoes and Metro Bakery bread.  And last but not least, she found some locally produced foods at Whole Foods - Severino Pasta, made by a family-run business in Haddonfield, NJ, and ZenSoy chocolate pudding, made by a family-run business also in NJ.
• I made raspberry jam out of raspberries my husband and I picked at Linvilla, and I made some really excellent tomato sauce last night using the huge glut of tomatoes from the CSA share and my garden.  I also roasted and froze bell and hot peppers, and made baked, breaded eggplant cutlets to freeze.  Eight ears of corn were also boiled and de-kerneled, and then frozen.  And the local meal for the week was steaks from Natural Acres and honey roasted Delicata squash from the CSA.

Missed the report deadline for last week?  Add your progress report in the comments!