Pile It High

There is something magical about the combination of ranch dressing and barbecue sauce.  Especially on a salad.  Also with croutons and coconut bacon.  

It's a lot easier to make salads for dinner when you keep crazy good salad toppings like these around.  I've eaten mixing bowl salads three times in the past week.  This one has locally grown baby spinach, chopped romaine, shredded yellow carrots, croutons, coconut bacon, locally made smoked blue cheese, baked tofu soaked in my bestie's homemade whiskey barbecue sauce, and ranch dressing. This is a filling salad.  Be sure you pile the spinach and lettuce high to balance all the rich toppings.

My buddy Jesse says I only like barbecue and ranch together because I'm from Texas, but I think everyone should try it.  I enjoyed this salad while watching an episode of King of the Hill.  Hank Hill thinks you should go prep some salad toppings now so that you're prepared.

His words of wisdom on tonight's episode: "Plan ahead.  Then when stuff happens, you'll be prepared."

Chef Salad

I feel really lucky to have gotten one of the last salad mixes offered by Dehn's Garden Herbs at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market this season.  This is no ordinary salad mix.  It has herbs, flowers and the most beautiful baby greens I've ever seen.  And the best part?  It says fresh for well over a week!  I can eat a salad out of this container every day for a week and still not have any slimy lettuce bits to pick through. Bonnie Dehn says this is because the lettuce is so fresh- usually picked within hours of me buying it.  This impresses me. 

It does make me sad, though, that the lettuce comes in a big, plastic clamshell container [Update: I got word that these are bio-plastic containers that will compost away.  Hooray!  Now to get my compost bin hot enough to handle it...].  Maybe that's part of the magic of how it says fresh?  Here's how I make myself feel less guilty:

I've started using the containers for 1-2 days to pack a giant salad for my lunch.  This one is packed with grilled seitan, Honeycrisp apple chunks, roasted sunflower seeds and a lemony-olive oil vinaigrette. I looked forward to this salad ALL DAY!  It reminds me of those gross cafeteria chef salads that have tons of toppings and are whole meals in themselves.  Except way healthier.  And way tastier. 

Overgrown Green Beans?

My favorite way to eat green beans is to grill or saute them very briefly- so they're bright green and still snappy.  But when I've neglected to harvest the beans for over a week, I end up with overgrown pods that I'm tempted to toss in the compost.  These beans are way too tough to eat nearly raw- you'd get a serious jaw workout trying to get these down.

This is where Southern cuisine saves me.  While I typically shy away from long-simmered vegetables in favor of fresh flavors now, I have to admit there's a place in my kitchen for green beans boiled up until they nearly fall apart.  I just leave out the bacon grease.

I used to sit and eat cold green beans straight out of the can when I was a little girl.  I loved the tenderness of the pods, the way you could split them in half and eat the little beans from inside and, of course, the extreme saltiness of the canned beans.  Even better were canned green beans with little skinned new potatoes (also canned).

So now, when I have overgrown green beans, I just toss them into a pot with some little potatoes (skin on for me, now), a chopped onion, and water to cover and boil away until everything is tender as can be.  A vegetable bouillon cube, sea salt and pepper is all that is needed to flavor this dish.

This past week I served these up with an heirloom tomato salad dressed with olive oil, honey and red wine vinegar.  The bowl of purple hull peas on the side was a last minute addition to the menu- I just dropped the frozen peas into the crockpot with an onion and some water before I went to work.  When I came home, they were perfectly cooked and ready for dinner.

It's That Time!

It's that time of year again, folks.  It's the time of year that I forgo bananas and avocados.  The time I think twice about each piece of chocolate and don't down a glass of almond milk each night.  It's the Eat Local Challenge!

I'm not mourning the bananas and almond milk yet, though.  It's just day 3 of the challenge and I've been eating really well.  I've enjoyed yogurt and homemade granola for breakfast, cucumber and tomato salads from the garden, grilled corn & zucchini salads and tonight's kidney bean chili for lunch and dinner.  Oh, and lots of black bean tacos and Whole Grain Milling Company chips.  All local.  It's crazy how good we can eat here in Minnesota.

I'm sure I'll be whining about missing mangos in a few weeks, but for now I'm satisfied.  Here's the basic recipe for the chili I made tonight:

Local Kidney Bean Chili
Not a "meaty" chili- but darn good.  It would also be good with zucchini in it, now that I think about it.  That's a little non-traditional for chili, but it sounds good to me.

About 1.5 cups of dried kidney beans (local bulk beans from the co-op)
Water
2 cups tomato sauce (I used homemade canned stuff, but Buon Giorno Minnesota tomato sauce would work)
1 jalapeno, seeded and minced (from the garden)
2 fat cloves fiery garlic (from the Madison farmers market last weekend)
Kernels from 1 ear of sweet corn (from Wheatfield Hill Organics in Wisconsin)
1-2 Tablespoons chili powder (from Frontier Co-op in Iowa)
Salt to taste

Soak the kidney beans overnight or bring to a boil, then turn off heat and let soak for 1 hour.  Drain and add fresh water to cover.  Cook for ages and ages in a regular pan or use a pressure cooker and cook for 3 minutes.  Make sure there's not too much water/bean broth in the pot after the beans are cooked.  It should just be barely covering the beans.  Then add tomato sauce, jalapeno, garlic, corn and chili powder.  Bring to a simmer and cook for about 5-10 minutes.  Season with salt to taste.  Serve with corn chips or cornbread or other delightful local accompaniment.

Cranberry Biscuits and Gravy

Biscuits are the ultimate comfort food for me.  I've been craving them ever since my trip to Texas.  That trip stirred up all sorts of memories of late nights at IHOP, eating biscuits and gravy and goofing off with Brandon.  Alas, those biscuits and gravy aren't even close to vegan or up to my super snobby standards.  

Here are the biscuits and gravy I enjoyed tonight.  

I mixed up a batch of the baking powder biscuits from Vegan with a Vengeance as soon as I got home from work.  Then I started browning a half of a sweet onion to flavor some gravy.  There's no real recipe for this gravy- just browned onions, Earth Balance, flour, almond milk and salt and pepper.  Sometimes the simplest gravy is the best.   Who am I kidding...Gravy is just the best.  

 But I wanted to add a little something different to the biscuits and gravy.  After working on Thanksgiving promotions at work, I felt the need to add some cranberries!

I had a nice big bag of Wisconsin cranberries in the fridge, so I added about a cup of them into a little skillet with a few tablespoons of cane sugar and a bit of water.  Then I brought it to a boil very quickly.  As the cranberries heat, they pop.  It's fun!

When the berries are done, they should look like this.  It's basically a thick, tart jam.

I slathered a thick layer of berries between the steaming hot biscuits and then poured the onion gravy over the top.  Holy yum.  IHOP's got nothing like this.

Sweet Onion and Pear Salad

I was sitting at work today when I realized it was time for a salad.  I was eating squares of chocolate (free samples from a co-op vendor- They do know the way to our hearts...) and trying to get up the motivation to go to the gym after work.  And I was writing about vegetables.  Luckily I work somewhere that prompts me to eat both chocolate AND vegetables, huh?

Anyways, I was powerpointing some slides about fiber and flavonoids and figured I'm better dose up on the veggies before teaching a class on the subject the next day.  So I picked up some things that sounded good, not really knowing what I'd end up doing with them: arugula, sweet onion and concorde pear.

Here's the resulting salad- Simple, rich flavors and very quick to prepare.


Browned Sweet Onion and Pear Salad
You'll notice that arugula isn't in the title.  That's because I think there's more pear in the salad than anything else!  Also, I didn't take the time to truly caramelize the onions, I just browned them rather quickly.  I actually prefer this flavor to the mellowness of caramelized onions.  You should do what you like, though.

2 Tbsp. olive oil
1 small sweet onion, thinly sliced

2 Tbsp. fig vinegar (or other sweet, thick vinegar

Salt and pepper to taste
2 cups arugula, washed and dried
1 concorde pear, sliced thinly
1/4 cup walnuts, coarsely chopped


In a small skillet, heat oil.  Add onion slices and cook over medium high heat until onions are browned and fragrant.  Allow to cool for a couple of minutes.  Add the fig vinegar to the oil and onions along with a pinch of salt and plenty of black pepper.  Stir to combine (this is your dressing).  Arrange arugula, pears and walnuts in a salad bowl.  Pour the warm onion dressing over the salad and toss to coat the greens and pears evenly.  Serve immediately before the greens can wilt.

Eat and then feel virtuous about getting both fruit and vegetable servings in one salad.

Coconut Collards

Now's the time of year that we have to harvest all the greens from the garden for freezing and using all year.  It's one of the few things that I can grow enough of to last us nearly all year.  Green beans come close.

This year I grew lacinato kale, Scotch curly kale, collard greens and mustard greens.  We already have about 3 lbs of mustard greens and 8 pounds of curly kale washed, chopped and frozen in the chest freezer.  But all of the lacinato and collards are still out in the garden waiting to be processed!  Please don't freeze, please don't freeze...

Here's Mike all bundled up, harvesting the curly kale in our big cooler.  It makes a great kale transporter!

Until we can do another big harvest, wash, chop, freeze assembly line, I'm trying to eat as many fresh greens as I can.  Tonight we had some awesome coconut collards.  This is my favorite way to prepare collard greens- I thought I had posted the recipe already, but then couldn't find it.  So here's the recipe as I made it tonight.  It's a little different every time.

Coconut Collards
Serves 4-6


1 Tbsp. olive oil
1 yellow onion, diced
1 fat carrot, diced
1 lb. collard greens, thick stems removed and sliced into ribbons
1 large tomato, diced
1 can coconut milk
1 tsp. dried ground ginger (or use more fresh ginger)
Sea salt to taste

In a large saucepan, heat olive oil.  Add onion and carrot and cook until onion is transparent and beginning to lightly brown.  Add collard greens, tomato, coconut milk and ginger. Stir to combine and then put a lid on the pan.  Turn down the heat to medium-low.  Simmer the greens for 20 minutes or so.  You don't want to cook them into oblivion, but they should be tender and the coconut milk thickened.  Add salt to taste.

Tonight I served these greens with wild rice and roasted vegetables on the side (or all mixed together if you're Mike).  These greens are also really nice over basmati rice with some dal.  I really like to add some hot red pepper to the mix, but the kids would never stand for that.  They did, however, devour these collards!

Hickory Scones

A couple of weeks ago I was in Madison, WI and got to visit the awesome farmer's market there.  I was really excited to find (among other things) hickory nuts.  I actually squealed, I was so excited.  

But, honestly, I'd never even had hickory nuts before.  

I had an idea of what they might taste like, though, from hearing descriptions of them and loving the smell of  hickory wood.  So I shelled out six bucks for a little baggie of nuts that I didn't really know if I liked or not. I LOVE finding locally grown nuts, even if they're unfamiliar.  

Lucky for me, I loved them.  They taste like richer, woods-ier pecans.  I'm sorry to have to make up words like that.  There's just no other way to say it.

But how to use them...  

They'd been sitting on my shelf for weeks and I kept saving them for something special.  So this morning I decided to make something special.  

I mixed up a batch of plain scones from Vegan with a Vengeance and added 1/2 cup (maybe a bit more?) of the coarsely chopped nuts.  A happy accidental deviation from this recipe is that I was out of any type of milk except light canned coconut milk.  So I used coconut milk for all the milk/cream called for in the recipe.   I also reduced the oil by about 2 Tbsp. (because the light coconut milk still has a good bit of fat) and added 2 Tbsp. maple syrup to compliment the earthy nuts.  

And because I feel pretty strongly that scones in wedges are far superior to the round variety, I patted the dough out and cut it into triangles (Follow the instructions for the orange scones for this shape if you're already looking up the recipe.  Just turn the page.).  

These babies baked up pillow-y and studded with hickory nuts throughout.  I mixed up a little coconut-maple glaze for the top (sifted powdered sugar, maple extract, vanilla bean paste, and just a couple drips of coconut milk to form a thick liquid) and then sat down to breakfast.

Southern Comfort

I might have lived in Minnesota for the past 11 years, but I'm a Southern girl at heart.  And summer just isn't summer without okra.  

I panicked a little bit at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market on Saturday when only a few farmers still had tomatoes.  Duh, Liz.  If your garden isn't rolling in the tomatoes right now, then their farms aren't producing them either.  Then I realized that I still hadn't gotten any okra this year.  And it was almost too late!

I think the only redeeming quality to Texas summers was that there was more okra than you could ever eat.  They were all beautiful little pods, so tender you barely had to cook them.  Here I struggle to find okra that's not overgrown.  I promise you now that I will be planting some next year.

Luckily one farmer  brought some okra and I snagged 3 baskets of it.  I should have gotten more.  I processed it into 6 pints of pickled okra and not quite a pint of sliced frozen okra.  It's taking every ounce of restraint that I have not to crack open on of these jars right now.

On the subject of Southern food, I made some rockin' biscuits with kale and black eyed pea gravy the other day.

I used the baking powder biscuits from Vegan with a Vengeance, tons of kale from the garden sautéed with  garlic and Bragg's, and almond milk cream gravy with some black-eyed peas thrown in.  Whoa.  Seriously good and comforting breakfast on a cool weekend.  You should make this.

Digging up Carrots

It's a weird time for the garden right now.  We're still right in the middle of September, but none of my tomatoes have ripened in the past 2 weeks.  It's October weather and I'm a bit scared that I'm going to have about 30 lbs. of green tomatoes to deal with soon.  Green tomatoes are yummy, but I don't want quite that many!  

Some plants are loving this weather, though.  The Fall green beans are flourishing and the carrots are huge, earthy and sweet.  I've always grown carrots, but they are usually a bit small and gnarled.  I tend to use my garden carrots more for soup and cooking than for eating plain.  But not this year!!!

This year I filled an entire 8' by 4' bed with carrots and it paid off.  Even though I usually rotate the crops in my beds each year, I might have to leave this the "carrot bed" because the soil and sunlight are so well suited to them.  Just look at this thing.  And it's not overgrown and tough- This carrot is sweet as candy and perfumes carrot-ness as soon as it's plucked from the soil!  I've been slicing these up in my lunchbox and actually skipping any dip for them (Never before done, folks.  I love my vegan ranch dip!).  

It's a little silly, but I could help but snap a few more photos with the carrot.  Just look at how Hannah Dog begs for them!

First with her tongue hanging out...

 

Then with her teeth and ears out!

Canning Demo on Saturday!

This is short notice (sorry about that), but I'll be at the Minneapolis Farmer's Market tomorrow at 10:30 am doing a little canning demo and answering questions.  Come by for a lesson in canning or just to pick up some rockin' produce!

Two Easy Meals

I'm loving this cooler weather we're having because now I can bake things in the oven without having to strip down to take the heat.  Bring on the casseroles!

This week we enjoyed ratatouille over pasta.  It probably would have been faster to heat this up in a skillet, but it was nice to just pop it into the oven.  The ratatouille was basically just tons of roasted veggies- it was awesome!!  I put a cubed, peeled eggplant, 1 zucchini, 3 tomatoes, 2 carrots, 2 celery ribs, 1 onion, a head of garlic and lots of basil and thyme in roasting pans until everything was roasty-toasty-carmelized.  Then I just mixed it all together with some salt and pepper.  I did all this and precooked some gluten free pasta this past weekend, so on Tuesday night Mike just popped it into the oven!  Super easy and super good.  

Monday night was beans, rice and greens night.  I think I need to do this at least once a week.  This weekend I cooked up some rice and black eyed peas.  On Monday night I just warmed up the rice in a cast iron skillet and heated the black eyed peas with some tabasco vinegar (tabasco chiles preserved in vinegar).  The kale from the garden only took about 2 minutes to sauté with garlic and Bragg's aminos.  Then I drizzled a bit of tahini over everything.  

The kids totally loved this and it made a great meal in my lunchbox the next day- except that we ate all the kale!  There's never any leftover kale.  

Super Quick Black Bean Soup

Here's a make-ahead meal that I love once the weather starts cooling off.  It's just a bit cooler this week, so I couldn't resist a creamy black bean soup.  

All I had to do to make this possible on a weeknight was just pressure cook some black beans this weekend. That took all of about 5 minutes.

Then last night I sautéed some onions and garlic in olive oil, added the black beans, water and a bouillon cube and brought it up to a simmer.  Then I sprinkled in some yummy spices: cumin, coriander and a little cayenne pepper.  Once heated though, I used my immersion blender to puree it all.  My favorite toppings include pico de gallo, tortilla chips, avocado and pickled jalapeños.

My favorite part about this soup?  It's crazy rich in protein because it's basically all beans!  Plus, there's some serious fiber going on here.  I'm bringing it to work tomorrow to eat for second breakfast!

Spring/Summer Rolls

Spring rolls are one of my favorite summer meals.  Maybe that makes them summer rolls?

While it pained me to turn on the oven to bake some tofu, the rest of the spring roll preparation was simple and perfect for a humid evening.  Because of the crazy quantity of garden cucumbers in my fridge, each roll included a couple of generous hunks of cucumber along with shredded local carrots, local lettuce, mint and basil from the garden and thin rice noodles.  That's it!  So simple, but so good.  This is one of the kids' favorite meals.

Dipping sauce is important for spring rolls and I usually do some sort of rice vinegar/ tamari concoction.  But tonight I mixed up peanut butter, Bragg's aminos, umeboshi plum vinegar, lemon juice and some hot water to make a smooth peanut sauce.  I was a big fan- It's going to be my salad dressing for the leftover rice noodles and veggies!

For the first time ever, we had leftover spring rolls.  This has literally never happened.  I made enough for us each to have 4.  But when I make enough for us to each have 3, it's never enough.  Oh, well!  More for my lunchbox!

Roasted Red Peppers Galore!

I felt a little like Santa Claus coming home from the farmer's market with a big sack of red and green slung over my shoulder.  Except the presents were for me: I found a 1/2 bushel of pesticide-free peppers for $15-  crazy cheap!

After dumping all these peppers into the sink for washing, though, it was clear that it wasn't as good of a deal as I thought.  About 6-8 peppers were totally rotten and many had big bad spots. I was momentarily upset with my farmers' market vendor.

But luckily these peppers were fated for roasting, so I just cut out the bad parts, ditched the slimy ones in the compost and left my crabbiness behind.  

In the past I've roasted peppers under the broiler or just held them over the flame on my stove.  But this was a LOT of peppers!  So I fired up the grill and let it work its magic while I relaxed indoors.

Look at how gorgeous these are!  The smell was fabulous and I didn't have to heat up the house (well, at least until I starting canning them...)

I followed Linda Ziedrich's pickled roasted peppers recipe from The Joy of Pickling to preserve these- A nice simple recipe with just some garlic, a little salt, a little sugar and lots of vinegar.  I admit to eating nearly a pint's worth plain.

I'm so excited to open these up this winter and enjoy their rich, smokey flavor!  I'm already planning all the fun uses for them and relishing the fact that I won't have to wait until the commercial canned ones go on sale!

Local Check-In

It's been a bit since reporting on my local eating endeavors.  The good news is that eating locally isn't feeling like some big accomplishment right now.  It's just feeling like eating good food.   The bad news is that it doesn't feel very blog-worthy.  I'll have to work on that.   Anyways, here's some yummy stuff from last week.

I canned lots of Thai-style pickled green beans and cucumbers!  They had mint, lemongrass, ginger, garlic and chilies.

 Taco salad!  The easiest meal to eat locally: LaBore lettuce, Whole Grain Milling Co. chips and black beans, homemade local corn and tomato salsa.  Fantastic!

Local camping is tough.  I remember it being easier last year.  There were homemade granola and muffins with local ingredients,  pickles, sandwiches, etc.  I relied on some non-local staples like canned beans and TVP (textured vegetable protein) for chili, but used my home-canned tomatoes and WGM chips again here.

 Kinda looks like dog food on chips, but I assure you it was really good!  But we were really hungry after swimming and being lakeside for about 3 hours, so maybe it wasn't as good as I remembered???  I do know that it was filling as hell and warm on a really chilly evening!

I was weeding the garden a couple days ago and look what I saw: Trouble cat has taken to napping in the beets, carrots and garlic!  Must be cool among those plants because she didn't even move when I started snapping pictures of her.

Tonight I'll be at the Ramsey County Library talking about local foods for a Simple, Good and Tasty event.  Here's the link in case you're in the area.

More Vegetables, Please

Continuing on the theme of eating lots of vegetables, here's what I have prepped for eating in the next couple of days:

Steamed Beets

Sure, not that exciting.  But I love beets like nothing else and can eat them steamed plain!  Maybe I'll make these into a salad for my lunch this week.

Beet Greens

This was a huge bunch of beet greens from the garden.  I sautéed a locally grown shallot in some Driftless Organic sunflower oil and then wilted the greens.  On top is some toasted locally grown sunflower seeds.  I like to toast the seeds in a cast iron skillet and then sprinkle with salt while they're still hot.  It gives the greens some crunch and brings tons of minerals and protein to the dish.

Salsa

Fresh corn is going in everything these days and salsa is no exception.  These are heirloom garden tomatoes with fresh (uncured) garlic, super hot chiles and corn.  Only the corn isn't from my garden- It's from Wheatfield Farm. Just a splash of vinegar and salt and it's a rockin' good salsa.


Lest you think I'm eating too healthily, here's a photo of that giant blackberry biscuit I made a couple days ago.  Just regular biscuit dough with fresh blackberries and sugar pressed into the top.

Vegetable Takeover

I like to think that I do pretty good with eating my vegetables, but taking the Eat Local Challenge always reminds me that I can eat more.  My world is revolving around vegetables right now.  The garden requires daily harvesting, every day at work there's some new vegetable or fruit arriving from the local farms (Zestar apples already!!!), and it's too hot too eat much besides vegetables.

Today I pulled in 5 1/2 pounds of tomatoes, 2 pounds of cucumbers, 2 pounds of green beans and 2 pounds of beets & greens.  The cucumber situation is getting a little out of control.  Just last week (not counting today) I harvested 16 pounds of them.  I was able to use about 10 pounds of overgrown pickling cucumbers in a giant salad for my friend Morgen's wedding.  Usually these cukes are not too good for eating and they're definitely too big for pickling.  But the salad was nearly gone by the time I got to the buffet line, so I'm fairly certain it was delicious.

Too Many Cucumbers Salad

5 parts overgrown pickling cucumbers, peeled
2 part tomatoes, seeded and cored
1 part sweet onions, thinly sliced
1 part kalamata olives, sliced
Lots of fresh basil, thinly sliced
Red wine vinegar
Olive oil
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Halve the cucumbers lengthwise and scoop out all the seeds.  Sure, it seems wasteful.  But you weren't going to use these overgrown cukes anyways, right?  And the seed slime makes salads too watery.

Cut the cukes in half lengthwise one more time and then slice cross-wise.  Chop the seeded tomatoes and add all remaining ingredients into a big salad bowl.

If preparing in advance, keep the dressing ingredients on the side until serving.  The cukes and tomatoes will give off a lot of juices that I like to drain off before serving the salad.  You could probably drink the juice and it would be awesome.

Tomorrow: Beets, greens and salsa

Eat Local Day #2

Day 2 of the Eat Local challenge-
Here's what I've eaten so far:

Breakfast
Garden tomato sandwich on 3rd Street Bakery bread (Duluth, MN) with homemade mustard and non-local Veganaise
Garden green beans simmered with non-local garlic and onion

Lunch
Shredded vegetable salad (about 60% local)
Shanghai dumplings (not local at all)

Blackberry biscuit....
Let me tell you about this one.  Last night I wanted something a little sweet and a lot local.  So I mixed up my usual biscuit dough using locally grown flour.  Then I patted it out into a rectangle and smashed garden blackberries into the top and sprinkled it with sugar.  I baked it just a little longer than usual biscuits and then sliced it into squares with a pizza cutter.  I highly recommend this covered with ice cream, but it was also good cold as a snack!

Dinner
I just picked up some lettuce and ears of corn from the co-op, so I might use those for dinner.  Still not sure.  I didn't get very far with planning my meals this week.  Need to practice what I taught at the local challenge class tonight and plan my meals!

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On a different note, but related to eating locally...

It's time to update you snobbery readers a bit.  A few months ago I started eating a bit of local, organic cheese.  I'd say my diet is still about 95% vegan, but I want to be totally transparent with you folks.  You see, I'm not ethically opposed to dairy on principle, but know I need to avoid it because I have fibrocystic boobs (too much information?!?!) and allergies.  My diet has shifted away from lots of really processed foods and I found myself preferring the thought of simple locally made dairy cheeses to various industrially-made non-local soy cheeses.  So I'm giving a little dairy a try.  I understand if you don't agree and that's okay.

One thing I'd like to try soon is to make my own cheese.  I figure that I need to fully understand and participate in the making of my food- whether it's growing my veggies or baking my bread or making cheese.  So I'll let you know if I do that.  But otherwise, I don't think the content of this blog will change much.  Just wanted you to know since this blog is all about the food I eat!

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Yesterday's post was my 500th one!  Woo hoo!

Eat Local Challenge: Starting off slow

The Eat Local Challenge started on Sunday and I'm still trying to clear out the very tempting non-local stuff from my fridge.  It's hard to eat super local when your fridge is still full of grapes from warmer regions and Szechwan dumplings shipped from New York.

I started off my day with harvesting a couple pounds of tomatoes from the garden and diced those up with some fresh corn kernels and basil.  On top I drizzled some basil infused balsamic vinegar from The Golden Fig.  Yum! This was a super easy lunch salad that I could make any day.

I also stopped to pick some blackberries this morning.  Our berry patch is out by the garage, so I usually eat berries when I'm getting home from work or leaving for work in the morning.  Yep- that's my rear end you see poking out of the thorns while the car is idling in the alley.  The berries looked perfectly ripe and bigger than my thumb...but wow are they sour still!  These are destined to be pie.

Dinner tonight is simple: Miscellaneous shredded vegetables from the crisper with some Salad Girl dressing.  I think there's cabbage, spinach, carrots and cucumbers in there.  It looks kind of like coleslaw, but with a light lemony dressing.  I know the cabbage and cukes are local, so I figure I'm at about 60% local for the salad.

Now?  Time to plan out some meals.  That's the real ticket to being able to survive an Eat Local Challenge!  Speaking of surviving...I'm teaching a Surviving the Eat Local Challenge class Tuesday night from 6-7pm at Mississippi Market's West 7th store.  And it's FREE!!!

Anyone else out there taking the challenge? Wherever you live (in the US), there's probably a co-op near you hosting a month of Eat Local events...it just might not be during August if your growing season is different!