As I mentioned last week, I signed up for One Local Summer. I figured with the CSA this would be a snap. But you know what? Eating local isn’t as easy as it sounds. I’m motivated and I’m trying but it’s the middle of July and I haven’t put a completely local meal on the table yet. Sigh.
This is the closest I’ve gotten. Swiss Chard Quiche, tossed salad and steamed kohlrabi. Everything is local except for the pie crust ingredients (although I did make the pie crust myself) and the cheddar cheese in the quiche. And it was delicious. The quiche was made with local organic eggs and milk and the dressing for the salad was made with herbs from my sister-in-law and the kohlrabi was a new vegetable for my family. We enjoyed it all.
The share we picked up yesterday including a huge amount of zucchini, both green and yellow, and cucumbers. Anyone got a good pickle recipe?
That all looks so good!
That all looks so good. In my book your doing very well to eat as much as you do that’s locally grown.
That meal looks delicious.
We are lucky enough to have a few local cheese makers. I must say their cheeses are wonderful too! But finding local flour for that crust would be a tough one!
I am still visiting NC. Last night we went to a very special meal at a local restuarant. The chef worked with local farmers and even local wineries to produce a totally NC dinner. It was fantastic!
OMG, look at those cukes! I LOVE fresh cucumbers!
Your dinner looks delicious.
That looks like a delicious meal. Now I’m hungry! Doesn’t kohlrabi have such a good flavor? My kids like to eat it raw, chopped up into little matchsticks.
I don’d do any canning, but here is a good quick pickle recipe. I’ve made it before, though I altered the spices and lessened the amount of sugar to suit my tastes.
Looks delicious!! I have a Bread & Butter pickle recipe…
It IS hard, isn’t it….but the good thing about One Local Summer is that it has made me much more aware of how I am purchasing our food here.
I love the quilt under the veggies 🙂
Oh so yummy!
(((hugs)))
I’m envious of your produce! My garden didn’t do well this year.
I have an easy freezer pickle recipe with onions and spices. They’re not crisp pickles, but I remember them being tasty. I have a bunch of other recipes filed, too, and can look one up for you.
It turns out to be a revelation when you start looking at how far your food travels and what you can and cannot get in your area. You are doing great! Look for a book called Small Batch Preserving to help when you get an overabundance from the CSA.
It might be a bit out of your way but you can get fresh local chickens at Owen’s Poultry Farm in Needham. You’d probably take the Muzi Ford exit. That makes the chickens local to within 50 miles. My first home was about a mile from Owen’s!
no pickle recipes here, but I do love to make big batches of pickled cucumber salad in the summer. It keeps incredibly well in the fridge.
Sliced cukes, sliced onions, some fresh dill, vinegar, sugar and water. Put in tightly covered bowl and refrigerate.
As for the zucchini and yellow squash.. One of our favorite summer dishes is where we take both of these, slice them up, put them in tin foil with sliced onions and a whole lot of minced garlic, some pats of butter, seal it up and grill for about an hour (or you can do this in your oven, or sauted on your stove top. We like the ease of the grill though.)
I could eat quiche every day of the week. YUM!!!
I think it’s good to have an awareness about “eating local” and hold it as an ideal, but next to impossible and incredibly expensive to do on a regular basis. Goodness, can you/most of us even get “local flour”? There are still small cheese factories around, but millers? I can’t imagine the cost!
Mmmm, have you tried grillin’ some of that zucchini — cut it into long planks, brush with just a bit of olive oil and season (I like no-salt mixtures), grill a few minutes on each side ’til tender. A summertime favorite!
Eating local is really difficult, especially if you feel you need to use local flour and such. But by just being conscious of eating local you’re making a big difference! The quiche looks delicious as does the entire meal. Looking at all the zucchini has me craving mom’s chocolate zucchini cake 🙂 But, the thought of turning on the oven right now makes me want to cry, LOL!
Mmmmmm… pickles… Aren’t fresh eggs incredibly yummy? I am going to make a quiche with my eggs too, but was going to make it crust-less (or use zucchini for the crust) so that it is all local. (I can get local cheese at the farmers market in Boston and Marblehead). Your beet greens look nice and crisp and yummy!!
This looks like Eye Candy Friday to me – yum.
Eating local is really difficult, especially if you feel you need to use local flour and such. But by just being conscious of eating local you’re making a big difference! The quiche looks delicious as does the entire meal. Looking at all the zucchini has me craving mom’s chocolate zucchini cake 🙂 But, the thought of turning on the oven right now makes me want to cry, LOL!
My husband, the self-appointed Pickle Man of Crestwood, uses this recipe:
http://coconutlime.blogspot.com/2006/08/dill-refrigerator-pickles.html
Let us know how it comes out!
Carole, that looks amazing!! As for your feeling that it’s only “sort of” local, I think you should get a couple of slaps with a wet noodle. 😉 The motto of OLS is to “do the best you can” and I think you are!
If it’s hard to find “local” cheese or flour, try expanding your circle until you find some that fit the criteria. Smith’s Farmstead in Winchendon, MA makes a fabulous sharp cheddar that we really enjoy, and Cabot in Vermont isn’t all that far from you, either.
You’re doing great!!
Totally local is very hard. Doing the best you can is very good.
My Mom has a really nice sweet pickle recipe.
That’s great that you’re eating local! I think that produce bought from a farmer’s market or straight from the farmer tastes so much better than the stuff in the stores.
there’s absolutely no way that we could eat locally because that would require eating vegetables and some very stubborn person who lives in my house has a palate reminiscent of that of a 5 year old so anything that comes from the earth (i haven’t pointed out that rice and pasta potatoes and bread also came from the earth) doesn’t pass his lips.
ironically though, it was much easier to eat locally when i lived in the city.
I think you’ve made a very concerted effort to eat local, so don’t be down on yourself. That quiche looks yummy.
it looks delicious. now I’m hungry
I do not have a pickle recipe, but your family will thank you if you make a Chocolate and Zuccini Cake. It is heavenly. Rich and moist and super-chocolatey. And even a tiny bit virtuous, considering it is made with whole wheat flour and two whole cups of zucchini.
http://chocolateandzucchini.com/archives/2004/04/chocolate_zucchini_cake_imbb3.php
You won’t be disappointed.
mmmm, quiche. Looks fantastically good.
My Mom used to make pickles every summer.
We like to grill zucchini, yum! Just cut into 1/4 slabs, olive oil them up a little, sprinkle with salt & pepper, and grill. Throw on some balsamic vinegar at the end if you like. mmm, now I’m hungry.
I’ve found the bread & butter pickle recipe on Martha Stewarts’ website is very good – good luck!
Oh, you can also pickle the yellow squash…I haven’t tried to pickle zucchini yet…
I second what Chris said – I had to look at the calendar to make sure it wasn’t Friday. All looks so yummy. Hmmm pickle recipe? Open jar, eat. That’s all I know. Thanks for this inspiring post!
I always find myself buying more (non-local) vegetables to fix with the ones from the CSA. Well, at least the CSA gets my monney too….
Beautiful produce!! If that’s all the pickles you got I would have NO PROBLEM using them all up just slicing them to go with meals and on salads!! YUM!!
I could get really excited about OLS if I didn’t have SO many other things to think about right now. It would be quite an effort to find enough local food that we could make all our meals with it. But how fun! I might do it next year. We luckily have a meat source here in town (all local meat) and we could probably work out the produce but dairy and flour…. I’m not so sure! That would really take some searching!
OMG! Everything looks so delicious!! I admire your effort Carole!
Love the look of all that fresh produce. Our family (both my gram and mom were canners) has always depended on the Ball Blue Book of canning for recipes. Oh course, over the years we have adapted them to our personal taste. Mom adapted the watermelon rind pickle recipe by using zucchini for the rind. Also the old Joy of Cooking (blue plaid cover) has pickle recipes that are good.
mmmm! swiss chard quiche! that’s brilliant . . . i am SO gonna make that this weekend. we have tender chard that seems to ahve stopped growing, so i’ll pick it all and make quiche.
Mmmmmmm…the quiche looks delicious! Swiss chard? what a nice ingredient.