Dark Days Challenge #2

For this meal, we joined our fellow CSA members in a pot luck to celebrate the last pick up of the year.  For the potluck, I made a Black Radish Salad with lettuce, black radishes and cosmic purple carrots from the CSA share and Georgia apples.  It was dressed in a sage vinaigrette with sage from my garden.  I can’t guarantee that everything at the potluck was local, but my addition sure was and I’d be willing to bet most of the dishes there were.  We had an abundance of dishes made from the African Squash found in our share this week – like African Squash/peanut soup, and roasted root vegetables with African Squash.  There was a sweet potato pie!

Pictures soon.  I promise!  Just have to remember to get my camera in the same place as my computer….

Dark Days Challenge #1

Our first Dark Days Challenge meal  was a quick and easy one.  I had a pound of ground beef in the freezer from Nature’s Harmony Farm.  I made bunless burgers with the meat and served it with some barbecue sauce that I put up over the summer using tomatoes from my garden and our CSA share and Georgia apples.  On the side we had sweet potato fries from my garden and steamed broccoli.  Nothing special… except that it feels special to know where everything on my plate came from and that it was raised and harvested lovingly and sustainably.

Pictures coming soon.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Leading up to Thanksgiving I was nervous about preparing the turkey.  Until last year I was a vegetarian, so I had  never roasted a turkey before.  I was nervous about cooking the turkey and a meal in a way that would live up to the emotional investment HB had made in butcheting the turkey.

I created a meal around as many local and organic ingredients as I could.  A good bit came from our garden or the farm in the community.  For a while I stressed about ingredients like flour and dairy and not being able to get those locally in time.  But I finally had to let it go and just do what I could. 

The meal was fabulous (if I do say so myself).  The turkey turned out well, though I was quite unsure when I pulled it out of the oven that it was done enough.  I followed directions for a heritage turkey which said to get it to a temp of 150, but I was still nervous about it.  Regardless, HB thought it was great and that’s all that matters!

The rest of the meal consisted of honey roasted, mashed sweet potatoes (from my garden), Cornbread and Sausage dressing (corn meal and sausage from Riverview Farms), Framboise Cranberry Sauce (not local), Sauteed Mushrooms and Green Beans (shiitakes from our property and green beans from Crystal Organic Farm), and Cheese and Chive Challah (chives from my garden).  The Turkey was roasted in a honey butter using honey from our bees.  And we finished with a pumpkin pie (not local).  It was a lovely and yummy meal, local and unlocal!