Dark Days Week Four (or Thanksgiving: Round Two)

Because we were at the inlaws for Thanksgiving, dinner, although delicious, was out of my control.  As usual, there was entirely too much food including a pie for every two people.  Now that the Thanksgiving leftovers are gone, I decided it was time to cook my own.

Delicious homemade, locally-grown Thanksgiving meal.

I ordered a turkey from my CSA months ago.  I could have picked it up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving, but because we already had plans for dinner, I waited and picked it up the Saturday after Thanksgiving.  It is a giant bird for the four of us, but I’ll use it for stock and soup and all kinds of goodies so that the leftovers don’t go to waste.

I drizzled the turkey with olive oil and sprinkled it with kosher salt inside and out.  Then I stuffed it with an onion, a carrot, some celeriac and parsley from Providence Farms, and some thyme and rosemary from my garden.  I didn’t cook the stuffing in the turkey, but it was made with leftover spelt bread from earlier in the week, some onion, celeriac and lots and lots of sage. 

Baked dauphinois potatoes with homemade cheese and local milk.

Side dishes included acorn squash baked with homemade butter and brown sugar; dauphinois potatoes made with Shetler’s milk, homemade feta and cheddar and local garlic; homemade jellied cranberry sauce; corn on the cob that we froze this summer and homemade spelt croissants with homemade butter.

All that food required a tasty and festive beverage; sparkling pear cider from Left Foot Charley.  The kids had their choice of milk from Shetler’s, or cider that we pressed ourselves in October. 

Tiny little cup-pies in pumpkin, dutch apple and blueberry.

I love pie.  However, I did not want three whole pies sitting around.  So, I decided to make cute little cup-pies.  I rolled the crust and cut it into little circles that fit in my muffin tin and then filled each with different fillings.  I made pumpkin pie filling and poured it into four of the cups.  The next four cups were filled with the apple pie filling I canned this summer and topped with streusel topping.  The last four cups were filled with blueberries I picked in Empire blended with a couple tablespoons of flour and sugar and then topped with  the same streusel topping I put on the apple pies.  With cup-pies, everyone gets the pie they want and I don’t have to eat pie all week.  Plus, they’re really cute!!

Everything was local except my olive oil, salt, and the brown sugar I sprinkled on the squash.  In hindsight, I should have used honey or maple syrup instead, but I didn’t. . .  There’s always next year!

(not so) Urban Hennery

Laura at the (not so) Urban Hennery has hosted a  Dark Days Challenge for the last several winters.   She motivates both die-hard and would-be slow eaters to consider their food even in the winter when it is difficult to find local food.  She also writes up recaps of the fantastic meals everyone whips up using their local ingredients and posts them so that you and I (and the rest of the world) can see them.

When I signed up to do the Dark Days Challenge, I also volunteered to help with the recaps; what a huge job!  Last night I sifted through the posts from participating bloggers in the West and Midwest and finished my very first “guest post” on another blog. It was really interesting and I got to check out a lot of really cool blogs.  So check out my post and follow some of the links to see what other urban farmers and slow foodies are doing.

After I finished the first post, Laura announced that she needed help with the other regions so I picked up the South, too so check that out while you’re over at the Hennery.

Dark Days Week Three (or Slow Fast Food??)

I can honestly say that the idea of fast food repulses me.  Don’t get me wrong, I used to love Burger King as much as the next gal.  I loved it even though I knew it wasn’t good for me; they don’t call it junk food for nothin’.  But, somewhere along the way I realized that it wasn’t just bad for me, it’s bad for us.  When I say us I mean that collective “humankind” that we all belong to.  It’s bad for the earth.  It’s bad for our economy.  It’s bad for our healthcare industry.  

I won’t go into industrial food and factory farms because I’d probably be preaching to the choir, but if you’re not familiar with agribusiness and the related issues, I highly recommend Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma: a Natural History of Four Meals.  I stumbled upon it in Horizon books one day last spring and decided to make it my summer reading.  I’ve been a slow foodie in the making for a while, but this book was the proverbial “straw that broke the camel’s back”; I haven’t eaten fast food since I finished it. 

When you’ve sworn off fast food, what do you do when your son asks for, “A burger like Burger King without any corn in it” for dinner?  You cook. 

Oleson’s Buffalo Farm is just down the road from us and the meat is sold in their grocery stores.  The burger is leaner and tastier than any ground beef I’ve ever had, and is reasonably priced if you don’t plan on eating it every day.  Plus, if you drive by the farm, you can see the buffaloes wandering around the field eating grass like they are supposed to.  Oleson’s sells ground buffalo already made into patties; they’re uniformly shaped and really flat, just like fast-food patties are, so Tuesday night I thawed a pack and started dinner. 

Fast Dark Dinner!

My dinner wasn’t as fast as the drive-through would have been, but it was cheaper, way more delicious, much better for us and didn’t come with a side of diesel fuel like a fast-food dinner does.

101 Things to do With Whey

Okay, so it’s not really 101; it’s nine, but some of them are really good.  Let me know if you can think of more. 

1. Make ricotta cheese.  (I have done this, and it’s quite tasty, but the amount of ricotta you get from the leftover whey is (in my opinion) not worth the time it takes.)  If you really must try making your own ricotta, here you go:
   Bring the whey almost to a boil (200° F).  The ricotta will begin to precipitate out of the whey and form little white particles that float around in your whey.  Line a colander with a cloth napkin and set it over a large bowl or pot to catch they whey.  Hang the ricotta to drain.  After it has drained for a few hours, salt it to taste.  Keeps in the fridge for up to two weeks.
2. Boil potatoes in it.
3. Make lemonade. (I haven’t tried this myself yet, but it sounds delicious.)
4. Use it in place of milk or water in your oatmeal. If you eat oatmeal every morning like I do, you’ll use it up quickly.
5. Make dog food.
6. Water plants with it.
7. Bake bread
8. Add it to the stock when making homemade soup
9. Use it to cook rice, bulghur, barley or other grains.

Homemade Butter

Shetler's Heavy Cream

I love butter.  There’s just something about freshly-baked bread smeared with butter that seems almost magical.  If you love butter as much as I do, you have to try homemade butter.  Making butter yourself is really easy.  All you need is some heavy cream and a way to shake it.  I salt mine, but salt is optional. 

One day at school the kids and I made butter.  I filled a pint jar a third full with milk and let the kids take turns passing the jar around shaking it until the butter magically separated from the buttermilk.  The kids really thought this was magic and loved it on the homemade bread we made that morning.  If six-year-olds can make butter, so can you.

Relax, you don’t even have to spend all morning shaking a jar full of cream to make your own butter.  If you have an electric mixer, you can make butter in just a few minutes.  First, get a jug of heavy whipping cream, NOT half and half.  I used a quart of cream and got a pint of butter and a pint of buttermilk, but there was a lot of splattering involved.

Cream in Mixer Bowl

Next, pour the cream into the bowl of your mixer and turn it on a medium high-ish setting.  Make sure the cream is very cold.  You will have a harder time getting warm cream to turn into butter.

After a minute or two, the cream will start to whip and peaks will form, just like it would if you were making whipped cream.

 

Whipped Cream

Let the mixer keep running.  It will start to shake as the butter forms and starts to thump around in the bowl.  This is when the splattering starts!  As the butter forms, it will cling to the whip and separate from the buttermilk.  I actually had to drain some of the buttermilk off so that I could finish whipping the butter. 

Yellow butter separating from the whitish buttermilk

 

Once the butter has formed, it needs to be washed in cool water.  This rinses the buttermilk out of the butter and helps prevent the butter from spoiling.   I rinsed mine by draining off all the buttermilk, adding cool water to the bowl and mixing it.  I drained the water and added fresh a couple times until the water was clear.

When I was finished, I packed the butter into this cute little canning jar because I didn’t have a fancy butter dish; I’ll have to watch for one of those. 

Finished butter and leftover buttermilk

Dark Days Week Two

This week was a busy, crazy week.  Thanksgiving was a wonderful day spent with my hubby, my kids and my inlaws.  I took some local freezer slaw that I put up months ago and homemade cranberry sauce that I canned last weekend along with a pumpkin cheesecake.  I plan to do my own “Dark Days” Thanksgiving but I didn’t pick my turkey up until this morning and I don’t have the time to deal with him, so that will have to wait a week or two. 

Instead, I needed a way to utilize my exciting new local ingredient! Thanksgiving morning my friend, Michelle, deliverd a 50lb. bag of freshly-milled, organic spelt flour from Organic Bean and Grain in Caro, Michigan.  I’ve been looking forward to using it ever since I learned about it and I had just the recipe in mind. 

When I was a kid, my mom used to make pasties.  Much to my mother’s chagrin I ate them doused in ketchup.  As an adult I fell in love with pasties all over again when I started making them myself.  My husband, once a chef at both The Grand Traverse Resort and Spa and North Peak Brewing Company, and I started making our own pasties years ago.  While most pasties are simple meat and vegetable pies, Hubby and I experimented with pasty recipes for a long time until we found the perfect recipe.  Pasty purists might disagree, but they’ve never tried mine!

Angela’s Homemade, Local Pasties:

For the Crust:
1 1/2 cups cold, homemade butter
3 cups organic spelt flour
1 1/2 cups organic spelt flour
1 1/2 T. yeast
1 1/4 cups milk or buttermilk (leftover from making your butter)
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 t. salt
1 egg
1/4 to 1/2 cup organic spelt flour

Cut butter into chunks and stir into the flour until coated and separated; chill.  Combine 1 1/2 cups flour and yeast.  Heat buttermilk, sugar and salt until warm (120-130°) and add to flour/yeast mixture along with the egg.  Beat on low with an electric mixer 30 seconds and then on high for 3 minutes.  Stir butter/flour mixture in with a spoon.
Sprinkle a board with a quarter cup of flour.  Turn dough out onto the floured board and knead gently about eight times.  Roll dough into a rectangle and fold into thirds, loosely wrap and put in freezer for 20 minutes.
Roll dough again, fold into thirds, turn 90° and roll again.  fold and roll two more times, wrap dough and refrigerate for four hours.
Remove dough from refrigerator and cut into quarters.  Return three quarters to the fridge.  Roll the remaining quarter until it is about 1/4″ thick.  Cut the rolled piece in half.  These pieces will be used to make two pasties.  The process will be repeated with the other quarters as necessary.  You will probably have one or two quarters left over to freeze for later.

For the filling:
1-2 T. olive oil
1/2 onion, diced
1 1/2 lbs. buffalo stew meat or roast cut into bite-sized chunks (tenderloin is preferable, but quite pricey)
salt, pepper, garlic
1-2 T. flour
water to cover
2 smallish carrots or 1 large one, diced
4 baby, 2 small or 1 large turnip(s), diced
1 medium potato, diced
1 small rutabaga, diced
shaved homemade cheddar

Drizzle a little olive oil into a preheated skillet.  Add onion and stir to carmelize.  Season buffalo with salt and pepper then dust with flour.  Add buffalo to skillet and saute ’til brown.  Cover with water and simmer until the meat is tender.  Add vegetables and cook until the vegetables are al dente and most of the sauce has simmered away.

Assemble pasties:
Spoon filling onto one half of dough semicircle.  Sprinkle shaved cheese onto filling and fold pastry in half.  Fold, pinch and crimp edges of pastry to seal filling inside.  Bake in a 375° oven.  Check after 15 minutes; you may need to cook them one or two extra minutes.

I served the pasties with a salad of mixed greens and carrots from Providence Farm, diced tomato and my old stand-by dressing: yogurt, minced garlic, homemade feta and cracked pepper.  Even though we didn’t really need bread with our pasties, I couldn’t help myself and tried out my new flour on homemade spelt bread.  Dinner was pretty labor intensive, but it was so good that it was worth every minute of prep time I put into it.  Plus, I have leftover croissant dough stored in the freezer now to use another day.

Buffalo Pasty, Mixed Green Salad With Tomato and Carrot, and Homemade Spelt Bread

Dairy Queen Part 2 (Or, How to Make Yogurt)

Repurposed beverage cooler

What is this???  Don’t know?  Read on.  I love when I can reuse or repurpose old things. I almost took this beverage cooler to Goodwill on several different occasions.  It was actually in a donation bag when I rescued it for its new life as a . . .  yogurt warmer.  I don’t know about your house, but mine goes through a lot of yogurt.  I’m ashamed to admit that back in the days when we were a more “disposable” household, we went through Go-gurt by the gallons.  I’ve long since stopped buying Go-gurt for the kids because of both its waste factor and the fact that it is made of corn, coloring and chemicals.  However, Hubby was a hold-out on the Go-gurt.  He packs his lunch every day and appreciated the convenience factor of the stuff.  I finally won that battle when his doctor explained to him that he may as well eat sugar as Go-gurt since it has little or no actual nutritive value and is mostly sugar, food coloring and artificial flavoring with enough yogurt added in so that they can call it yogurt.  

Because we eat so much yogurt, this summer I started making my own.  It was actually a first step on my road to cheese, but it is so easy and economical that I can’t imagine stopping now.  If you google yogurt making, you will find lots of different recipes; some even have videos.  I’ve been making yogurt regularly enough that I have it down to a science: 

Quart of milk ready to heat.

First, fill a quart jar with milk.  You can use soy milk if you prefer.  Put the jar of milk in the microwave and heat it until it reaches 110°.  (My microwave takes just over three minutes to do this.)  Many recipes tell you to heat the milk to 180° to scald it and then cool it to 110°.  I did that when I first started making yogurt, but I don’t anymore.  If you’re a purist and you prefer, you can heat the milk on the stove, but it takes a longer time and you have to watch the milk carefully and stir it often to keep it from scorching to the bottom of the pan.  Plus, you have to wash an extra pan.

Wait until the milk reaches about 110°

The milk may not be exactly 110° after the initial time in the microwave.  Heat it a little longer if it’s necessary.  If you have accidentally heated the milk to more than 110° or purposely heated it to 180°, you will need to wait for the milk to cool.  If you heated your milk significantly past 110°, putting the jar in a bath of cool water will help it reach the correct temperature faster.  Whether you are heating or cooling the milk, monitor the temperature fairly closely unless you like having to reheat your milk over and over again to try and get the proper temperature. The bacteria that turn milk into tasty yogurt thrive at about 110°, so keeping the temperature as close to that as possible will help ensure your success.

The last tablespoon or so of yogurt from my last batch.

Once you’ve gotten the yogurt within a degree or two of 110°, get out your old jar of yogurt, or if this is your first batch, you can use a tablespoon of PLAIN store-bought yogurt.  Even if you are making soy yogurt, you will need to use cow yogurt as a starter for your first batch.  You can dump (or spoon) the yogurt into the waiting jar of warm milk, but I like to dump the warm milk into the jar with the old yogurt in it to rinse all the yogurt out of the jar without wasting any.  After several batches of yogurt, you may need to buy a new plain yogurt to use as a starter.  I haven’t had to buy a new starter, but I do every once in a while.

Warm milk dumped into the jar from the previous batch.

After I’ve dumped the milk into my old yogurt, I like to dump it back into the clean, new jar.  I feel like it helps to keep things more sanitary, but it is probably not necessary. Now that you have a jar full of inoculated warm milk, tightly screw a cap on the jar.  If you used a standard-mouthed jar you can either use a canning lid and ring or a standard-sized top from a commercially-made jam or pasta sauce with the same size lid.  Either way, make sure the lid is on securely so that water won’t seep into your yogurt in the next step. 

The lid is on securely

Remember the beverage cooler from the start of the post?  It’s time to get that thing out.  My old cooler is the perfect size to hold a quart jar of yogurt.  Fill the cooler about half full of 110° water.  It can be a little warmer, but I wouldn’t recommend water any cooler than that.  You can warm water in the microwave or a kettle, but I’ve found if I turn the hot water on in my kitchen and let it run for a moment until it heats up, it is almost exactly 110°, so I just fill mine with hot tap water. 

Yogurt in warmer submerged in warm water

Over the sink, set the jar into the warm water.  If you don’t do it over the sink, water will overflow all over your countertops when you submerge the jar of milk.  The jar should be completely under the water and the water should be level with the top of the jug.  This keeps the water warmer, which keeps the yogurt warmer.  Screw the lid onto the cooler and let it rest for about seven hours.  I generally make the yogurt at bedtime and take it out in the morning, but it can be made in the morning if you have time to deal with it. 

I’d show you the finished jar of yogurt, but it looks just like the jar of milk except thicker.   So, instead I’ll show you what I do with the yogurt to make it convenient and portable.  These cute little plastic cups are available in the canning department of a store near you.  They’re designed to be used in the freezer for jams, but are perfect for single serving yogurt.  They actually come in packs of five for around three dollars, but one of mine seems to have “magically” disappeared.  You can make the cups up one at a time but I like to make them all up at once to make packing lunch easier.  Spoon a little jam, jelly, honey, pie filling or applesauce into the bottom of each cup.  I used apple jelly, but I really like peach and cherry.  Scoop yogurt in on top of the spread.  Make sure you leave a little “head room” in each jar and screw the lids onto your cups and you’re finished. 

Just like disposable yogurt cups from the store only reuseable!

Making your own yogurt may seem intimidating, but you have nothing to fear.  Homemade yogurt saves money and eliminates a great deal of garbage that is involved in pre-packaged yogurt.  A quart of premade yogurt costs over $3, more if you buy individual containers or organic yogurt, and even more than that if you buy locally made yogurt (if it’s available where you live).  When you make cheese, you have a lot of whey left over.  With yogurt, there is no waste, so homemade yogurt costs whatever your paid for your milk.  If you pay $3.59 a gallon for milk, you will get four quarts of yogurt for that $3.59.  Even if you buy organic or local milk, you are saving money on your yogurt.  Plus, homemade yogurt is delicious!

Dairy Queen

Feta brined and ready for the fridge.

As a school teacher, it is easy to settle into the lazy days of summer.  For three months I hike, run, garden, cook, walk to the Farmers’ Market, take my kids to the beach and actually read grown-up type books that I enjoy.  This summer I also started canning again after a long hiatus and started making my own cheese and yogurt.  I’d make a new batch of cheese every week.  I started with mozzarella, tried feta and then moved on to hard cheeses.  After a few batches, my husband even built me a cheese press.  While each cheese has its merits, feta is by far my favorite.  I have always loved feta, so when I found out how easy it was to make,  I became even more enamored by its crumbly goodness. 

But, summer inevitably comes to an end.  When September rolled around this year, I started to panic.  Not only did I have to go back to work, but I had a class that I had to complete homework for and attend every week.  How would I keep cooking good, homemade food?  Where would I find the time to can? How would I go to the Farmers’ Market, pick berries, bake bread or make yogurt and cheese???  My life as I knew it came to a screeching halt.  I didn’t know how I was going to manage all the things I needed to do. 

At one point, I was so distraught that I would come home from work and cry to my husband.  I wanted to run away and live on a farm off the grid.  None of this had anything to do with the actual work that I do every day; I love my job.  I love working with kids and knowing that I’m making a difference.  My distress was all about my lack of time.  I needed to adjust and I didn’t know how. 

Better than Zoloft.

While I’ve wanted chickens ever since I read “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” last summer, part of me needed them after school started.  I researched and researched chickens.  I learned about different breeds.  I learned about how many eggs chickens lay and what color they are.  I researched ordinances  and the legality of chickens here in the city.  I spent hours researching chicken coops and chicken care.   Getting chickens was my way of running away and living on a farm without having to really run away.  Chickens weren’t a step away from the life I was living, but they were a step towards the life I want to be living.  The impact those girls had on my mental health still amazes me.  While they didn’t create any more time for me, they did remind me that there were things I could do to have the life I want. 

Even the undead need their exercise.

Since the girls arrived in September I’ve started adding elements of my “summer life” back into my real life.  I hike three to five days a week.  I haven’t managed to keep running regularly but I did run the Traverse City Zombie run and I’m signed up to do the Turkey Trot 5k Thanksgiving morning.  I haven’t done much in the garden, but I planted a row of blueberry plants and I’ve got raspberries, grapes and soapwort waiting to go into the ground.   I may not cook a homemade “slow” dinner seven nights a week, but I try to cook a “real” dinner for my family most nights and still try to eat as much local food as I can.  I cook vats of soup on the weekends to freeze for lunches.  I even signed up for the “Dark Days” challenge to try and cook a completely local meal at least once a week.   I managed to can some tomatoes, jam and jelly and found time to can (and pick) countless apples.  I’ve made it to the Farmers’ Market every Saturday morning and a couple of Friday evenings even though I couldn’t go to the Wednesday morning markets in September.  I didn’t make it out often to pick berries, but I did get out once to get a couple quarts of blueberries for the freezer.  I’m not making my own sandwich bread, but I have been making homemade loaves three or four nights a week. 

Homemade yogurt

 It took a while before I decided that I really did have the time to make yogurt, but in hindsight, that was silly.  Yogurt is so easy; I make a quart or two a week now.  Cheese however, is a completely different story.  Cheese isn’t difficult, but it is intimidating and it takes a long time to make. 

In my mind, I just didn’t feel like I could spend that much time on one project when there are so many other things I could and should do with the time cheese takes.  So what do you do when you go to the grocery store, purchase two gallons of milk and return home to find that you already have two-and-a-half gallons of milk, in your refrigerator??  You do what anyone else would do; start a batch of cheese and a quart of yogurt. 

When I got home from the store with The Milk,  I put away the groceries and started a quart of yogurt.  That barely made a dent; I still had over four gallons of milk left in the fridge.  It was time to make cheese.  Although I’ve been wanting to make cheese for a while (and I finished the last of my feta on the first Dark Days dinner) this wasn’t a cheese made of desire, but one of necessity. 

I got out the giant pot and poured in two gallons of milk.  I turned on the stove and monitored the temperature until it reached 90°.  I put the pot in an ice bath in the kitchen sink and let it cool back down to 86°.  When the milk reached 86° I whisked two tablespoons of Brown Cow plain yogurt into it and let it rest for an hour.  After the milk rested for an hour I mixed 40 drops of vegetable rennet into the milk and left it alone until the next day.  Just like that I had eliminated half the milk in my fridge!

Draining the feta curds.

The next day the milk had gelled and the whey had separated from the cheese curd.  I cut the curds with my long bread knife, let them rest for 15 minutes and then drained the whey from the curds.  I hung the curds to drip for the rest of the day and added then put them in the cheese press. 

Hanging the cheese to separate the whey from the curds.

Today I removed the feta from the press, cut it into chunks and put them in mason jars filled with brined whey.  In another day or two I’ll be able to enjoy my own, homemade feta cheese again.  While it takes some time to make cheese from start to finish, it really isn’t that much work.  The recipe is from Dr. Fankhauser at the University of Cincinnati.

The amazing thing about making cheese is how much whey you have left over when you’re done.  Two gallons of milk yields about six cups of feta cheese and a gallon and a half of whey.  What do you do with all that whey when you’re done making cheese??  Stay tuned to find out!

What do you do with all the whey once the cheese is made?

Traverse City Urban Chickens Finally Get Some Press!

Do you think being famous will go to their heads?

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post called “Northern Express” about my interview with Noah Fowle discussing my chickens, and the growth of urban chicken farming since Traverse City changed its ordinance to allow residents to keep four hens.  Well, I’m excited to announce that the article has arrived!

Noah interviewed several chicken owners, soon-to-be chicken owners and city representatives, and discusses the many reasons people are interested in urban chicken farming from sustainable food to their novelty as pets.

If you’re in Traverse or the surrounding areas, keep an eye out for the latest edition. You can pick them up FREE all over town but it’s only out for a week, so get it while you can.   I plan to pick up a few copies for myself and my out-of-town family members.  But, you can also read the article by clicking here.  Enjoy!

What’s for Dinner?

Indoor market at the Mercato

Dark Days have arrived!   When I discovered the Dark Days Challenge at the (not so) Urban Hennery, it seemed a long way off.  I figured I’d have plenty of time to plan and prepare for my first Dark Days Dinner.   It was a lot of time, and I did plan quite a few things.  I even stocked up on some local items at the Farmers’ Market in the Mercato at the Commons and made a practice dinner  last week.  Despite my time for preparation, November rolled around quickly!  

So, what was the first dinner?  Roast cornish game hen from Olds Farm.  I stuffed it with thyme and a garlic clove and sprinkled it with olive oil, salt and pepper before roasting it in the oven.  The broccoli, also from Olds Farm was simply steamed and sprinkled with salt.  The roasted potatoes are redskins from one of the fifty-pund bags of potatoes that I bought at the Downtown Farmers’ Market.  They were drizzled with olive oil, sprinkled with salt and tossed with fresh rosemary.  The salad consists of Providence Farm mixed greens, tomatoes from the Mercato and dressing made with my homemade yogurt, homemade feta, garlic, salt and pepper.

Cornish Hen, Roasted Potatoes, Salad, Broccoli and Stonehouse Bread.

If you read my prequel post, you know that I’ve been trying to find local flour.  I searched on the internet for a while and came up with some possible sources, but none of them seemed realistic.  Finally, a friend told me about Organic Bean and Grain in Caro, Michigan.  She even arranged for delivery for me so that I wouldn’t have to pay for shipping!  This was a really lucky break; I wasn’t sure I’d be able to make my bread during the challenge.  However, the flour hasn’t arrived yet so I compromised.  The delicious bread you see on the plate is not homemade; it is a ciabbatta loaf from Stonehouse bread.  Dinner was delicious! 

Local Libation

To accompany my local dinner, I purchased a bottle of Witches Brew. Witches Brew is a seasonal, spiced red wine made locally. It’s best served warm and smells heavenly.  The spices remind me of fall.  You can warm it in a mug in the microwave in a pinch, but for the best flavor and aroma, it really should be warmed in a saucepan on the stove.

For my prequel dinner, I made dessert to finish off our meal. I planned to make an apple pie today, but a couple of things prevented this. One, my local flour hasn’t arrived yet so I didn’t have any local flour to use for my pie crust or topping. Two, cornish game hens take quite a bit of prep time. By the time I got everything else prepped, there wasn’t much time for dessert. Since I didn’t have adequate time to make a “real” dessert, it’s a good thing I’ve spent so much time making delicious apple creations lately. I decided to pull out one of the jars of spiced apples I canned last weekend to round out our dinner.

So, dessert was a dish of chai-spiced apples.  They were yummy!  The spice was very subtle, but the blend of flavors was good.  I will definitely make more of these.  I think the apple rings would be delicious served warm on vanilla ice cream.  Maybe next week.

Not quite dessert, but not dinner either.

Dark Days are here but I think we’ll be just fine.  For the purposes of this challenge, local foods come from withing 150 miles of my home in Traverse City.  However, I’m not counting the miles as driving miles, but miles “as the crow flies”.  My flour, according to Mapquest travels 167 miles to get to me by road.  If I drew a straight line from Traverse City to Caro, the distance would be less than my 150 mile limit.  Sugar from beets also falls within my radius as do honey and syrup.  Other than spices, yeast and oils, I think I can get all the rest of the ingredients I need locally but I’ll let you know if I can’t.