One Local Summer, week 12:  Midwest

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

With end-of-summer activities taking up our time, many of us are having trouble finding the time to blog about our local meals, but we’re still eating local!

Jenny of The Nourished Kitchen wrote: “This week, we celebrated with a spectacular brunch featuring fried eggs, Swiss chard sautéed with garlic, zucchini and fingerling potato hashbrowns, lavendar-scented breakfast sausage (recipe forthcoming), fresh sliced green zebra tomatoes, fresh apricots, cold raw milk and warm apple-cherry cider.”

Karen of toteleeding wrote:  “This week’s meal included tomatoes straight from the garden, kale pie and homemade squash buns topped with homemade jam.”

Joy from The Spiral of Seasons wrote:  “Today’s lunch entree was a potato (Yukon Gold from our CSA) topped with the leftover side dish from a couple of nights ago—grilled eggplant in salsa, which turned out to be essentially ratatouille with a Mexican accent.” She also served it with an Asian pear and two kinds of plums.

Anne of Green Leanings didn’t get a chance to photograph her meal (but aren’t the cats cute?).  She wrote:  “This week’s meal entry was a totally local chicken gumbo! It included chicken breast and chicken chorizo, corn, onions, green pepper, garlic, tomatoes, celery, thyme and okra. Non-local additions were salt, pepper and oil. It would have been better with bacon (wouldn’t everything?) but sadly we were out. It was the only ingredient missing from the recipe though!”

Anna of twelve22.org made the most of some of her Brandywine tomatoes in a grilled mozarrella, tomato, and pesto sandwich (on bread made with local ingredients) and served it with green beans and broccoli.  Yum.

Becke of Columbus Foodie wrote:  “Making moussaka in late August/early September is starting to become something of a tradition around here. I was tempted to try a new recipe, but this one is just so good that I don’t even want to look for another. The kalamata olives in the sauce is what makes it special. You can find the recipe here."

Debbie of Rites of Passage reprised her soy burgers from earlier in the summer, this time in smaller patties and seasoned with cumin, coriander, garlic, and cayenne for a falafel-reminiscent flavor and served them in pita from Chicago topped with soyziki (with local soy yogurt), along with a pile of cherry tomatoes and corn on the cob.

Only one week to go!