Dark Days: Kale and Sausage with Wine-Cooked Lentils

Sunday, December 23, 2007

There’s been a package of Eliza’s Lamb Sausage from Jamison Farm in my freezer for about a month or so now.  I’ve been hemming and hawing over what to use it for and after seeing some tempting Lacinato kale (also known as Dinosaur kale) yesterday at the Fair Food Farmstand, I decided on skillet dinner of sausage and kale with some of my precious Margerum’s lentils and some local onions cooked in red wine.  I just cooked it up for lunch with some Hendricks parmesan shaved over the top and, despite the fact that it is unseasonably (and kind of creepily) warm outside today, it was the perfect Winter weekend lunch - hearty and warming and delicious!

Everything in my lunch was local except the red wine and salt. 

Yes, it’s December and the choices (at least in fresh produce) aren’t as plentiful as the choices in, say, July...but for all of that, I’ve been having some really great local meals lately.  The grits I had a few days ago were excellent, and the soups have been wonderful.  I have a dinner for tomorrow night planned that is going to be great.  Initially, when Farm to Philly started, some of the writers were concerned they wouldn’t have much to post about - I haven’t found that to be the case at all!  I’m sure that come April I’ll be craving a decent tomato, but the range of locally grown foods available fresh right now and the all the foods that many of us have put up for the Winter...well, I feel really lucky.

On a related note, I highly recommend the Lacinato kale - I bought enough so that I’d have enough for my lunch and for a big old pot of soup.  The taste is outstanding!