One Local Summer-week 11: Western Region

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

Colorado & California:

Summers in San Francisco might not be as hot and predictable as they are other parts of the country, but if they lead to dinners with names like Braised Lamb with Young Vegetables, they can’t be all bad. Anita took advantage of the need for a sweater to make a light summer stew that makes my mouth water!

She’s still waiting for baby girl to appear but she’s cooking up a storm while she does. Momaste featured two local meals this week. The first was a summer vegetable and barley soup that featured meatballs from the freezer and ingredients from the CSA box and front yard garden. With whole oats in the pantry, she decided to put them in the slow cooker and add milk, cherries, cinnamon and vanilla - and it sounds as good as I bet it smelled!

Ellen continues to experiment with raw foods. This week’s adventures included raw gazpacho with heirloom tomatoes, cucumber, garlic and Brazil nuts as well as green smoothies featuring a variety of green ingredients.

While spending the afternoon making a summer saison on homebrewing day, Lauren turned her attention to dinner and decided on chili in the slow cooker. Dinner not only was delicious, but writing about it marked her 100th post!

Oregon & Washington:

Making use of the Summer Corn Salad recipe she picked up in her “dog days dinner party” cooking class, Joan made a dinner perfect for those too hot to cook days. It featured corn salad served with cheese, tomato and jalapeno quesadillas.

In a clean out the fridge before going on vacation all local dinner, Donna featured BLT sandwiches, corn on the cob and carrot sticks. Enjoy your vacation Donna!

Worried that local salad and water wouldn’t cut it, JM also made a honey rhubarb betty for dessert (and dinner) as well as a zucchini ricotta savory cheesecake. Mmmm, both sound excellent.

I’m assuming they’re not surviving on fruit alone (but you never know with those crazy Shibaguyz) while they preserve up a storm. Last week featured fresh jam, canned berries and peach jam as well as peach salsa, dill pickles, bread and butter pickles, tomatoes and peaches. They’re putting us all to shame, or at least me anyway…

Monica had a busy week but still found time for dinners of bok choy and chicken as well as pasta with lentils and arugula. The second recipe could use some changes to make everyone in the family love it - swing by her blog if you want to help her out.

Kimberly was busy this week. Her featured dinner was designed to avoid cooking in the heat of the afternoon and included a “height of summer salad” and homemade sourdough english muffins. She also made raspberry syrup for use on pancakes and as a soda base. And finally they had homemade mixed berry sorbet for dessert. Yum!

Here at The Hennery we went super local with a dinner of Coq au vin brought to us by the sacrifice of a couple of extra roosters. Not my favorite way to arrive at a local dinner, but well worth the effort. We used Anita’s recipe and combined it with a summer veggie salad, steamed broccoli and greenbeans and a raspberry tart brought by a friend.