Adventures in Cooking --- The local way

My homework assignment for ANTH 3200  was to cook a meal from only locally produced items. That was a challenge!

I produce a lot of my own food...but not really. Yes, we grow a garden.  We could live okay off of some of the things we have in storage.  But what about the OTHER stuff?  I don't have meat (except a few cans of Spam and tuna) except in the freezer, and not a whole lot.  Lots of fruit and some veggies. 

So I took the challenge to cook a meal using only locally grown and produced food stuffs and then I talked to my farmer friend, Susan. They grow sheep and other animals, have chickens. I figured I could make a frittata and be okay calling it a "meal."  I offered to trade some salmon or cod for eggs or whatevers.

She and her sister put together a beautiful array of wonderful LOCAL Eats. I made them for our Saturday night dinner.

Menu:

Pork chops
Applesauce
Tossed  Green Salad
Vegetable Frittata

Pretty impressive, huh?  And almost everything there was  locally produced. I forgot and added in a half cup of milk from the fridge while mixing up the eggs for the frittata,  and I have no idea where that milk came from.

Here are some photos and explanations of interesting work-arounds.

What I have in my fruit room. Why not just make a big pot of soup, you say?  Next time. These are tomatoes from the backyard garden I bottled some time ago. Didn't use these.

The "Real Salt" from Redmond, Utah. It really is good. But not $5.29 good for those few ounces. It was one of two purchases I made for this meal.

Dried apples and peaches and bottled apricots. Didn't use any apricots (sugar--not local).

The lovely finished meal of pork chop, applesauce, tossed green salad and frittata.

The 3 ounces of Asiago cheeseI bought for $3.  The block of Pepperjack purchased for about $4.00 and what I would have preferred to used.

What I have in my freezer.  Roasted tomato puree, frozen peaches and frozen raspberries. No sugar added to the fruit, just pure fruit (I think....maybe the peaches have some sugar in them). I didn't use any peaches.

Peach jam and bottled peaches.  We certainly have plenty of dessert fixin's! I didn't use any jam, either, for this meal....that ol' non-local sugar, you know?

The centerpiece.  Because it's spring and one must have a centerpiece in spring, even if it does make me sneeze. That was locally produced in my yard. We did not eat the flowers.   (Though, personally, I think they ARE pretty enough to eat!)

Re-hydrating the dried apples from my basement. I used the juice/water from this for a number of things in the meal.

Dicing up dried plums.  Carolyn's plums were way prettier than mine.  I halve mine before drying, she slices hers.  Mine are dark and hard usually (and  I have to soften them up with a slice of bread in their jar or something similar).  There is also a little baggie of frozen roasted green chiles from my garden a few years ago. I also added those to the frittata.

I simmered my big dried plums and dried pears for some sweet juicy-stuff  and considered making some kind of plum sauce for the pork chops.

The stuff I got from Susan and her sister: Lettuce and spinach greens, pecans from Washington County, eggs, pork chops and dried plums. (and some dried red peppers, too.)

More stuff from fruit room I did not use.  We could have had beets and green beans and pears to round off our meal.  The sugar in the pears was not locally produced.

This is what I really had to go to the store to get, however. Coconut and jelly beans to put on the bunny cake for Easter Sunday dinner.  And not one bit of any of it is locally grown or produced and I don't care because you gotta have a Bunny Cake for Easter!!

awaiting the feast Saturday evening. Berenice and Gayela

Tossed salad with toasted pecans, diced dried plums and raspberry dressing; applesauce.

Pork Chops with apple slices; veggie frittata

Rendered fat from the pork chops to sautee the vegetables for the frittata, in backwards order.

Cleaned greens. There were a variety--leaf lettuce, red and spinach.

Frozen grated zucchini I found in the freezer. From the garden. It thawed and shrunk down from a larg, full, 1 quart zip lock bag to about 2/3 cup of veggies. It's all water, that zucchini. I added it to the frittata.

What the stewed plums and pears looked like.  I pureed them and made a sauce after draining off the juice to use for salad dressing.  The puree was too thick, so I added  apple water/juice.

This is what I wanted to just reach and grab as I went--the spray vegetable oil, the seasonings and rubs.  But I didn't. They are not locally grown or produced. I dug around and found some of my home-dried herbs and only came up with chives that were useful.

The whole afternoon was spent cooking. And ruining a cake--it fell apart when I took it out of the pan. I don't know how I'll turn it into a bunny cake, but I'll try.

Happy Easter, and happy cooking local, folks! I hope I get an "A"