Dark Days: frozen treasures

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Now that it’s January, and both garden and CSA programs are looming, I feel pressured to use up all of my preserved food from last season.  For dinner last night, I hauled out a local chicken from Godshall’s Poultry in Reading Terminal, and then rooted around in my chest freezer for ideas for side dishes.  Every time I roast a whole chicken I’m compelled to make mashed potatoes, but I knew that my freezer would hold some kind of alternate treasure.

As it turns out, I was right - one of the first things I pulled out of the freezer was a back of roasted butternut squash.  Hmm.  Chicken and butternut squash.  Good.  And then I pulled out a bag of broccoli.  It certainly would make for a nice color combination, so I went with it.  Both have good, strong flavor, too - perfect to stand up to the citrus marinated chicken I planned.

This past weekend at the Fair Food Farmstand, I snagged about half a dozen of the organic oranges from a family farm in Florida, knowing that I wanted to use them for marinade.  Those oranges are really the only non-local part of the meal.  The other marinade ingredients: garlic from Landisdale Farm, bay leaf from my garden, and a bit of salt and pepper.  After the chicken was done roasting, I combined the pan drippings with the leftover marinade and reduced it, mixed it with local butter for a great gravy for the chicken.  There’s something really fantastic about fresh citrus in January, and what’s better is that even though it’s not local, I’m still supporting a small grower.

The broccoli was one of the last things I received in the CSA program last year.  I simply reheated it with some local butter.  The roasted butternut was also from the CSA program.  I heated it with some buckwheat honey from Linvilla Orchards and local butter.

It was a really great mid-Winter meal, and I felt great about getting to use some of my freezer bounty!