The South, week 10

How can it already be the end of One Local Summer 2007?! Well, I trust we'll be seeing all of you at the Eat Local Challenge, right?

This week Laurie made this summery, sunny plate of open-faced chicken salad sandwiches (note the Pineapple tomatoes) and bright-orange Charentais melon. The melon could have been sweeter, she says, but it was still good.

Jeff and Joyce dined on macaroni and cheese (yes, with homemade noodles, and locally sourced dairy and eggs) with corn on the cob and squash.

Jen incorporated a co-worker’s homegrown banana peppers into a dish of vegetarian enchiladas.


Eating locally sourced food changes your habits fundamentally, Maggie reflects: “Having one local meal a week has not been a challenge, choosing which meal to post about has.” She wrapped up OLS with this stunning mustard- and herb-crusted rack of lamb with Russian Banana fingerling potatoes, Roma beans, and her neighbor’s homemade kamut rolls.

My local meal this week was an ode to the two vegetables that are surviving best in Georgia right now: tomatoes and peppers. I made panzanella (Italian tomato and bread salad) and served it alongside local organic free-range pork chops.

Stew, ever a girl after my own heart, made ratatouille and ate it for dinner one night and breakfast the next morning. I love a meal that multitasks.

Molly calls her last OLS meal “not very exciting and kind of a repeat”--although I beg to differ. I'd have gladly shown up for hamburgers on homemade buns (the ground beef was from her family's own cows), roasted okra, oven french fries, and arugula salad with tomatoes.

Pattie took me at my word when I suggested we go all out this week. She harvested her garden, went to the farmers’ market, collected her CSA box, and put together a Grand Feast. The main dish was an assortment of multicolored heirloom tomatoes with grass-fed lamb on a bed of organic grits. Genovese basil pesto and lamb’s quarters (this year’s MVP!) were the accompaniment, and a muscadine and scuppernong granita made a spectacular dessert. “I wish I could have taken a picture of how my house smelled last night,” she said.

Finally, Paulette decided to give One Local Summer 2007 a grande finale. All but one of her family’s dinners--and all but one of their breakfasts, too--were local this week! Check out the menu she put together, and note especially the homemade beef breakfast sausage.

Thanks so much, everyone! And especially to Liz for making it all possible.