an ent knits

local dinner and a recipe

I signed up for continuing the One Local Summer challenge as the September Eat Local Challenge with Farm to Philly.  This is last week's local meal: cornbread and a tofu stir-fry.

I adapted the cornbread recipe such that the only nonlocal ingredients were the salt, baking soda, and baking powder.  The approximate recipe is in the extended entry.  (The details on the tofu and bell pepper stuff are on flickr, if you're interested.)

eye candy friday, late-night edition

lettuce, originally uploaded by enting.

My computer is completely nonfunctional (not accepting charge) for a little over a week now.  I'm told that fixing it will cost hundreds of dollars that I don't have.  Otherwise, most of life is good, or at least not worse than last week...

One of the good bits was last weekend's trip to NYC, during which I went to the Red Hook Community Farm with a few of my friends--it's a really cute farm, topsoil placed on what looks like it used to be a parking lot.  Nearly all of their produce was incredibly tempting--just about everything, that is, except for the watermelons that were full of rat holes.  Ah, well.  The lettuce and kale and peppers and pumpkins (et cetera) were all lovely.

Knitting-wise, I've been working on a Secret Group Project and the Peacock Feather Shawl, plus I started Icarus out of the yellow/orange/brown mohair blend that I dyed on dye-day.

one local summer

Is it the last week of this year's One Local Summer already?  I marked the last OLS meal I posted as week 8, and then I wasn't home last week for any meals except Thursday breakfast, so this must be week 10 [of 10]...  Anyway, this is quiche, which I'd been planning to make for weeks.  It's still hot during the day--not that I notice that, wrapped in my sweatshirt and shawl in front of the microscope--but it's been cooling off enough during the evenings that I didn't mind turning on the oven last night.  The red pepper, zucchini, scallions, and mushrooms are all from yesterday's co-op run, all marked as local (same with the milk, which isn't exactly pictured).  The eggs, cheese (Hillacres Pride dill), and flour are also local, but the oil (I am lazy: I make oil pie crusts) and various seasonings were not.

I liked it.  It could've maybe been a little more garlicky or spicy...but quiche is hard to completely ruin, and it makes excellent lunches.  I wound up making two quiches because my pile of veggies looked way bigger than one pie pan (I still had leftover chopped veggies), so I've got more than enough for lunches the rest of the week. 

one local summer, week 8

I bought tomatillos yesterday, intending to make some black bean-tomatillo soup while it was still cool out.  That didn't happen--it's hot again today--so I decided to play with some chili-like thing that wasn't soup.  This is what I came up with.  It's beef from Winter Harvest (not quite as overcooked as it looks in this picture, but I do have less of an idea of how to cook meat than how to cook tofu or seitan), onion from the farmers' market a couple of weeks ago, garlic and a red pepper from the co-op, the carrots and the long, skinny red pepper from North Star on Thursday, and a little more than half the quart of tomatillos I got from Urban Girls Produce yesterday morning, along with about a third of the hot pepper that came with them.  None of the spices were local except for the bit of lemon basil I tossed in.

I called my grandmother this morning (not the one to whom I'm giving that scarf--the other one) to wish her a happy birthday, and we talked a bit about her birthday party.  She had a couple of my aunts and uncles over for a pesto-making party, which sounded like it would be awesome.  Some day, when I have someplace to put a garden, I'll plant lots of basil and have a party like that... 

one local summer, week 7

It's hot food weather this evening!  That makes me really happy.  It's pleasant out, and now it's pleasant in, even without air conditioning.

This is a sauté of seitan, peppers, and zucchini (with onion and garlic), seasoned as vaguely-Indian.  Mmmm.  (The spices weren't local.)

one local summer, week 6

Last week's OLS meal was probably my simplest ever--it's been hot enough that all I wanted was a salad.

Fresh Tofu Inc. tofu, Mill Creek Farm cucumber, local zucchini from the co-op, green pepper from a farmers' market stand whose name I don't know, red pepper from North Star Orchard, maybe an eighth of a sweet onion that was marked local at the co-op. 

I had this for two meals, actually, once with a non-local dressing, once just plain, enjoying the veggie flavors.  (Yes, yes, I'm an omnivore and I like plain tofu.)

We're also now into my favorite time of year: apple season.   I'll certainly be happier when apple season includes weather that allows sleep without air conditioning, but  Summer Blaze and Ginger Gold apples help a lot with my heat tolerance.  (Now, if I could just find local peanut butter...)

eye candy friday

tomatoes.jpg, originally uploaded by enting.

Heirloom tomatoes are lovely.  (Too bad they taste like tomatoes.)

local dinner and a sock

After two weeks of life exploding and preventing me from participating in One Local Summer, I finally pulled together a completely-local dinner last night:

This is salad mix under sautéed tofu, purple beans, purple pepper, zucchini, yellow squash, and mushrooms, all either acquired directly from local farmers at the farmers' market or labelled "local" at the co-op.  Non-local ingredients: olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, basil, parsley (imported from my dad's CSA).  It was pretty mild, but that meant that the flavors of the veggies came through.

This is the beginning of a sock I'm knitting out of my handspun.  I am possibly unreasonably excited about knitting socks with handspun.  (I'm also happy about knitting socks on a 3 and a 4 instead of a 2.5 and a 2.75mm needle.)

two belated wrap-ups

First: I tracked my running and walking as part of the second round of Run-a-gogo!  I didn't get in as much running as I'd've liked, but my total distance moved on foot (mostly walking, plus running and hiking) was about 230 miles from April 1st to July 1st.  That's a bit shy of my goal of 250 miles, but I'm still pretty happy with it.  I stopped tracking my mileage after that, but my new goal is to walk faster.  (Especially to and from work.)

Second:  Although I responded to the participant survey, I never got around to posting my summary of costs for the Penny-Wise Eat Local Challenge.  As I said earlier, I went a bit over my budget goal of $45, but I was well under the average single-person weekly food budget of $68.  There's a table of things I bought and things I used in the extended entry.

(The rose of sharon is just there to be pretty.)

one local summer: week two

Okay, this week's OLS meal is more like "real" food.

This is whole wheat linguine with ground beef, kale, zucchini, yellow squash, garlic scapes, fresh mozzarella, and lemon basil.  (Also included are an onion and olive oil, salt, pepper, and paprika.)

[This is about half of the leftovers, in sunlight instead of crappy indoor late-night lighting.]