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.

The South, week 9

Whew. The dog days of summer are upon us. The garden is sun-scalded and plagued by pesky blister beetles. But there's good stuff to be had!

Lastewie made a diner-style dinner of local burgers, fries, and TWO kinds of tomatoes: sliced red, and fried green (now that, my friends, is a victory for southern cooking). For dessert, she had frozen strawberries and lemon ice cream.

Similarly, Molly made hamburgers on homemade bread with a side of tomato and cucumber salad. Oh, and some edamame from a local farm. (I wish ours was still in season--it seems to have disappeared!)

Jeff and Joyce never planned a local meal this week, but they did accidentally have two of them. (Isn’t it great how that happens after you’ve been doing this a while?) One was crustless quiche, and the other was--yes, once again--tacos.

As for us at 10 Signs, we had tacos twice this week: once with White Oak Pastures beef and once with our own chicken. But I submitted spaghetti with meat sauce as our OLS meal, due to degree of difficulty. I had to make the Italian sausage on the spot because I hadn’t gotten around to it when we got our half-pig in January. Freezer raid! Where’s that bag labeled “future sausage”?

Jasmine has noticed that she tends to eat her meals in an unassembled state. Recall that last week she had enchilada filling. This week it was eggplant ravioli filling! I say bravo--assembled or not, the food chez Jasmine always looks phenomenal.

This week Laurie made a crock pot stew of chicken, carrots, onions, and cutting celery with herbs. She served it with field peas, butterbeans, and okra. Dessert was cantaloupe, which is at its best right now!

Week after week, Paulette has wowed us with beautiful beef dinners from her family’s ranch. But in the third straight week of 100-plus-degree temperatures, all she wanted was a vegetarian meal. Check out the dessert wine!

Pattie made a cheese-, egg-, and vegetable-filled “quichey/tart thing” and spent much of her week foraging for figs, muscadine grapes, and greens.

Amy gave new life to leftover North Carolina-caught grouper by making it into beer-battered fish fritters. The little fried nuggets accompanied bowls of chilly gazpacho, and the meal was topped off with a dessert of apple crumble and locally made ice cream.

Maggie had a mightily hectic week, but still managed to squeeze in two almost-local meals: one of spaghetti with marinara sauce, and one of shiitake mushroom and wild rice soup.

That’s it for this week...one more to go! I’m going to try to go out in style. How ‘bout you?

The South, week 8

This is the time of year when my garden turns into a Little Shop of Horrors and I just stop giving a darn. But I have to admit the food is good. We are taking special note of the vegetables that are surviving the drought and heat wave. (For those keeping score at home: Green Zebra and Sungold tomatoes; Fairytale eggplants; and all the hot peppers.)

E-mailer Molly and I are in the same boat: Both cooking a lot of local food, but too frazzled to keep track. “I don't even know what week it is now!” she laments. But she managed to make a delectable tomato pie, with sides of edamame (ooh, my favorite!), mashed potatoes (my other favorite!), and vegetable sauté.

Meanwhile, I copped out big time and only made peel-and-eat shrimp, which I ate messily while watching an episode of CSI. But you should go read about the shrimp; they’re pretty special.

Gazpacho, grouper fritters, and apple crisp with local ice cream? I don’t know about you, but I’m going to Amy’s house.

Jasmine used an astonishing array of local produce in “a meal that is in [her] regular rotation”: the filling for roasted vegetable enchiladas. What would we do without local feta cheese, eh, Jasmine?

Joyce, not wanting to continue her summer Tacopalooza, went rummaging in the freezer and found a forgotten package of stew beef. With summer vegetables and Southern Biscuit flour, it became a beef pie that fed her and Jeff for two whole meals.

The Purloined Letter is back from North Carolina, and has made two OLS meals. I love the idea of cooking banana peppers into hamburgers. I’m going to have to try that as soon as humanly possible.

Maggie’s ducks are laying! She used one of the eggs to bind the meatballs in this week’s spaghetti dinner.

Laurie continues to cook with the most intriguing heirloom tomatoes. This time it’s Pineapple toms, which accompanied pan-fried pork chops and her own homegrown butterbeans and field peas.

Lucky Lastewie happened upon an untended fig tree--which, to me, ranks as one of the all-time great local eating pleasures. The figs were dessert after a meal of pork chops, stuffing, long beans, and summer squash.

Paulette notes, “I know it seems that our One Local Summer meals always center around some form of our beef.” Well, when you have your own herd, that’s fair enough! This time it was T-bone steaks with peppers and onions, cucumber salad, and vegetable fritters.

And last, but perhaps most beautiful and haunting, Pattie’s eggplant parmigiana with orange cherry tomatoes evoked memories from her childhood.

The South, week 7

It has been between 100 and 105 degrees here every day this week except for Saturday. We are all going stir-crazy, and one of my best market-gardener friends lost almost all of his tomatoes to the scalding-hot sun. The fruit literally cooked in its skin. We have fared a little better, but I think only because we grow more tougher-skinned and potato-leafed varieties.

No one really feels like eating too much, but we are doing our best! In fact, some of our southern OLSers really pulled out the stops this time around.

Jasmine says “the heat and drought has had some strange effects on what is available from my CSA and the market.” Still, she’s been making some gorgeous roasted vegetables. She used them on pasta last week and has been contemplating pre-freezing homemade pie crusts for spur-of-the-moment vegetable tarts.

After her heroic turn as my temporary replacement last week (thanks again, sweetie--Cairo is doing quite a bit better, and he sends you a kiss!), Stew put up a batch of pesto and invited a friend over for a ravioli dinner.

Jeff and Joyce are on the all-tacos-and-corn diet lately...which doesn’t sound like a bad way to be. Can I come over for dinner, guys?

The Purloined Letter, on vacation in Asheville, N.C., managed to whip up an entire day’s worth of local menus. And that’s not all: follow her links to see a Shabbat dinner and a tour of local restaurants.

Jen and her hubby are “the Best Blackberry Scavengers Ever in all the world.” They’re going to thank themselves later for making blackberry jam and wild blackberry wheat ale. Oh, and meanwhile, they’ve been canning spaghetti sauce, too.

Laurie had my very favorite type of meat this week. And delectable Green Zebra tomatoes, too! And a homemade baguette. And corn. And cobbler. Sigh.

Busy day? Check. Excruciatingly hot weather? Check. Paulette responded by making a quick, easy, and delicious meal of steak strips and sauteed veggies.

Maggie cleared the tomatoes off the dining room table so she could serve roast chicken, freshly dug fingerling potatoes, Roma and wax beans, and cornbread.

Pattie beat the heat with a cucumber salad “just like Mom used to make.” Sounds good to me--we've been looking for any excuse to use the cool, crisp veggies.

Amy and I both made desserts that mysteriously turned into soup. Hers was a peach pie, and mine was a muscadine grape cobbler. Ah, well--things happen! Better luck to us both next time.

The South, Week 6 (Take 2)

Hey there all...It's Stew.

I'm stepping in here today to post a Week 6 Southern One Local Summer roundup for Jamie, since she's got a doggie crisis going on at home.

First, a little anecdote to get us going. Today I was feeling bad for using wheat flour that's milled in NC, without knowing whether it was sourced locally or not. So I wrote them an email trying to figure it out. Within an HOUR I had an email back from their "Director of Commodity Procurement" with an answer. Call me impressed.

Especially because the answer was what I had wanted, but didn't dare hope for.

Most of this wheat comes from North Carolina and South Carolina. Since there is not enough wheat grown in Catawba County to last us a month we also need to get wheat from eastern North Carolina around Greenville, Wilson, Plymouth and Washington...Sometimes we buy soft red wheat from Ohio and Indiana but because freight costs get so high, that is limited

I didn't really expect it to be that local. And it's not 100% sourced locally, but I'm not perfect either. I was just surprised (and delighted, I think I said) that this is the same place that is supplying Bojangles with their biscuit flour (Huh. And therefore shipping it. Must dig more).

The bad news is that the local corn goes to the pigs and turkeys (and presumably the ones at the factory farms, but maybe I'm just being cynical), and it seems that the corn that I buy for cornbread likely comes from elsewhere. But at least he was upfront about it, you know?

I thought that was a fascinating exchange.

On to the One Local Summer Week Six entries!!!

My neighbors an hour or so to the West, Joyce and Jeff, are taking advantage of corn season with a second meal in a row featuring corn-on-the-cob. They made flour tortillas (from the Southern Biscuit flour I just blathered on about) for their beef enchiladas. The sauce was from Dad's garden. It looks divine!

Also over there in the Piedmont Triad area of North Carolina, we welcome Amy back from a hiatus. She made a quiche from bits and pieces of good stuff leftover from previous meals. Country ham, spinach and red onion. I'm all about dishes that transform leftovers into a wondrously new meal.

Down the road from Amy a piece (I'm getting into this, considering I grew up in Michigan and typically only speak Southern when I've had one too many porters), Laurie whomped up a zucchini frittata, paired with sliced tomatoes and bread. I'm a little jealous that Laurie says she has a secret cow to get raw milk from for butter. (Plausible deniability, y'all. She says she does. Raw milk is illegal to sell for human consumption in NC, so we don't want to out her. I may or may not have a connection myself. I'll never tell.)

Still in North Carolina, but moving up to the mountains, we welcome back Maggie, who had been on the road. She made my absolute favorite summer meal: burgers, corn-on-the-cob, tomatoes and slaw.

I guess I fit into the NC category, too. I, unfortunately, slacked this week. I did have much local foods, but I didn't take pictures or anything. I had canned 60 lbs of tomatoes ($1 lb in bulk, suckers!), and was exhausted. My meal was picked at throughout the day, and I had baba ganoush, tomatoes, and chocolate ice cream.

The coolest meal preparation method award goes to the postest with the mostest at The Purloined Letter. She cooked their veggie stew in a homemade SOLAR cooker! When it had cooked all up, the stew went on top of some blackeyed peas, and next to some garden greens.

Over in Tennessee they had TWO FULL week 6 meals at the M4-D Ranch! Overachievers. Harumph. Both looked gorgeous. Number one was steak on the grill with onions and peppers, sliced tomatoes, butter beans and blueberry buckle. Rowr. The second was no less impressive: steak fajitas with homemade tortillas. Are you using Southern Biscuit flour, too?

Pattie from Food Shed explored agriturism at a Georgia Dairy that had an attached country store. She gussied up a wild-greens infused salad she made for lunch with the dressing she got at the store. She washed down with chocolate milk. Yum. Chocolate milk.

Not least (though apparently last today), our Jamie managed to wade through the tomatoes that are covering every surface of her house to make her week 6 meal. She went straight up deep south: country ham, stewed okra, and biscuits from scratch. I'm not usually big on country ham, myself, and Jamie seems to have found a recipe that made it work.

OK, everyone. Y'all are doing a fabulous job. I'm entirely impressed with the variety of foods you're making.

You'll have Jamie back next week, I promise! I'm a little corny. I blame in on my Dad, who's the corniest guy I know.

Mmmmm. Corn. Dinnertime Chez Stew. See ya!

The South, Week 6

Will be slightly delayed due to veterinary emergency -- stay tuned.

The South, week 5

Ever forget to take a picture of your OLS meal until after you’ve eaten a bunch of it? Yeah, I do it all the time. And so did our non-blogger Molly:



But no matter. There's big news at Molly’s place: her young hens are laying their first little pullet eggs! She served the eggs fried alongside a potato, onion, and corn hash; green beans from her garden; and sliced tomatoes. Everything came from a 1.5-mile radius of her house, except for a little bit of cheese her parents brought back from Ontario.

The Purloined Letter had the same fabulous tomato-using idea that I did: gazpacho! But there the similarity ends. Whereas I paired mine with turkey in mole sauce, she served hers with homemade pumpernickel and blueberry-peach crisp.

Pattie’s special superpower is her ability to incorporate lamb’s quarters into anything. Watch: this week it was pizza! The other toppings included local goat cheese and heirloom tomatoes.

Laurie loves Green Zebra tomatoes as much as I do. No surprise there--they are the best-kept secret in tomatodom. But the tomatoes didn’t appear in her dinner--just in her photo. Apparently her OLS meal of baked chicken breasts, wax and green beans, and braised carrots with honey and parsley wasn’t as photogenic as the stripey veg.

Another Green Zebra lover is Lastewie, who had a friend over for dinner this week. She served three varieties of toms, fresh mozzarella, potato salad, mixed greens, cucumber and red pepper salad, caramelized summer squash, and locally baked bread with local butter. She also made a fruit salad, but she and her dinner guest nipped out to Locopops (a nearby Mexican fruit-pop stand that uses lots of local ingredients) after dinner instead of eating it. I can identify--when I visited Stew in April, we went there three times.

Jeff and Joyce had not one, but two local meals this week. The first was an “easy and tasty” pork tenderloin with roasted potatoes and corn, and the second was corn and potato chowder with bread homemade from locally milled flour.

Paulette sourced her Week 5 meal from a 60-mile radius. The steak strips were from her own cattle, while the baked potatoes and speckled butter beans were grown within an hour’s drive.

Amy has been on blogging hiatus because of an especially taxing move. But now she’s back, and she promises to tell us about her recent local cooking efforts: an entirely local peach pie (local flour and honey), a scallop pasta, a blackberry cobbler, and shrimp quesadillas. Stay tuned...

The South, week 4

I sense a slight slump in participation, but I can't throw stones, because it's all I can do to keep afloat! July'll get ya. The days might be long, but they can never be long enough.



This week I made a Chinese-themed meal out of locally caught fish and homegrown cucumbers. Dessert is a no-brainer; the figs have started coming in fast and thick. Figs, figs, figs. We LOVE figs.

Jeff and Joyce had fresh sweet corn with breakfast casserole. The casserole included homemade tortillas made with local flour and butter!

The Purloined Letter staged a dinner on the grill: burgers, sweet corn, squash, and cukes, with grilled peaches for dessert and mojitos to drink! She made the burgers with zucchini and chard mixed right in--something I’m going to have to try. Go look at the series of photos, if for no other reason than to look at the mouthwatering way the tomatoes slouch off the burgers. Now those are ripe.

Jen is finding the true spirit of OLS: networking with friends and sharing the spoils of all your gardens. “Home grown and canned green beans from the In-laws. One can down, 23 to go...” she notes. Also, take a look at her photo of the world’s scariest cucumber.

Laurie incorporated leftover carrot soup into a meatloaf (the naturally sweet addition was a real winner, she says!), then served it alongside a simple cucumber salad.

Paulette’s husband was home on a weekend pass, so they celebrated with local lamb chops, veggies, potato pancakes, and Tennessee wine.

Pattie borrowed Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan with a Vengeance several times from the library before relenting and purchasing her own copy. Why? Because of easy, appealing recipes like the corn fritters that were part of this week’s OLS meal. She served them with a Georgia peach salsa and a side of lamb’s quarters.

Pressed for time, Maggie made a quick and delicious meal of North Carolina-made linguine with homemade Bolognese sauce. Dessert came from her favorite local ice cream shop, Ultimate Ice Cream (5 miles from her front door).

Lastewie made her very first batch of egg noodles--and I’m proud to say that she used one of my eggs! She served the noodles with pan-fried rainbow trout, hush puppies, green and wax beans, tomatoes, and cantaloupe.

And despite a hectic week, non-blogger Molly managed a lovely local meal. Her parents brought some food from the North Carolina coast, including (ready to be jealous?) local tuna. The meal: beef, veggie and tuna kebabs; fried okra; and corn on the cob.

The South, week 3

I can't remember where this week went; I only know that I've been sweating a lot. The watermelons are in in south Georgia, and we continue to partake of them. Tomatoes are everywhere. Peppers are starting to ripen. Leave a cucumber alone and it turns into a melon overnight.

We don't grow sweet corn ourselves, because to get decent pollination you need to plant a big block of it. We don't want to spare the space. And why should we, when so many other folks around here grow it? It's easy to get, and man, is it good.

Elsewhere in the steamy southland...

Molly made a frittata-like zucchini casserole (photo at left) with eggs from her own hens and zukes from her own garden. The side dish of roasted veg came from her own garden and from a farm 1.5 miles away. She washed it all down with beer from the Duck Rabbit Brewery in Farmville, N.C.




Steph is posting about last week's OLS meal this week, and will be posting about this week's OLS meal next week. Got it? Good, because you'll want to see what she's been doing with all her farmers' market gleanings.

The Purloined Letter has been somewhat wilted by the heat, so she only wants salads most days. But she managed to get close enough to the stove to make homemade Norwegian whey cheese. And then she served clafouti for dessert, which makes me want to ask for a dinner invitation.

Jen sneaked actual fruit and vegetable matter into her meat-and-potatoes-loving husband's meal. Behold the glory that is Squash (incognito) fritters.

Laurie's ratatouille on cheese grit cakes also passed muster with her husband, who normally spurns squash and eggplant.

Jeff and Joyce's cheddar studded meatloaf patties and mashed potatoes were so good, they forgot to take a picture. But here's what they had to say about it.

Like me, Jasmine stopped eating meat at age 16. And like me, she has since added it back into her diet. But beef and its kin are still a little foreign to her. Read her blog to share her first experience with locally raised buffalo.

Summer vegetables + mandoline = Jessica's work lunch!

Paulette served a local meal with local drinks: a perry (hard pear cider) from a local winery for the grownups, and muscadine grape juice for the kids.

The recent heat and humidity reminded Maggie of her childhood on the banks of the Missouri River. The perfect accompaniment to that feeling was oven-fried catfish.

Stew, whose Week 1 microwave soup you may recall, has taken eating locally at work to a whole new level. Her coworkers are even starting to notice!

And in other fish-related news, has anyone heard of Barramundi? Joanne hadn't before this week. But she was delighted to discover that it's a farmed fish that is raised in Florida in an environmentally friendly manner. She baked it in a coconut crust with a side of mango and orange salsa. She also served a salad made with local greens and Georgia melon.

Pattie has just eaten the last of her homegrown Purple Peruvian potatoes. And you should also check her blog to find out about her field trips to a local chocolatier and a cut-your-own sunflower farm.

A beef hash with vegetables was the special chez Bibliotecaria. It fed her for four days (!) and helped her clean out the fridge before a business trip.

Amy has been under the weather lately, so she craved something souplike. She made a hearty beef stew with golden zukes, tomatoes, potatoes, and onion. Dessert was fresh fruit, and plenty of it: blackberries, figs, and the first melons of the Carolina summer.

The South, Week 2

Week 2 of One Local Summer was a holiday week--and a food-centric one, at that. A lot of our participants took advantage of the Independence Day vibe and grilled all-American fare. As for me, I inexplicably made Greek food. I’m just a rebel, I guess. Nevertheless, the 4th is my favorite holiday (I think it's because I was at an impressionable age in 1976), and you can bet I spent it carving out big hunks of Georgia watermelon and watching the neighbors' fireworks mingle with the lightning bugs.

A business note, while I’m thinking about it: If you’re posting OLS photos to Flickr, please let me know in an e-mail. There are so many photos there that your pic may be lost in the shuffle unless you give me a heads-up. Thanks!

Okay, here’s the week that was...

Non-blogging participant Molly celebrated the 4th of July with grilled pork kebabs, sauteéd Swiss chard, green beans, and grilled zucchini. She and her friends drank Gaelic Ale from Asheville’s Highlands Brewing Company. Bonus points: the meat was from less than a mile away.

Another non-blogger, Joanne in Florida, tucked into wild Key West coconut shrimp, an apple and kohlrabi salad, and locally grown watermelon. “Yummers,” she said, and I agree 100 percent.

And Amber in Arkansas enjoyed pinto beans with brown rice; steamed baby squash and white bell pepper; fresh tomatoes; a lettuce, tomato, and cucumber salad; and grilled peaches for dessert. Everything except the peaches came from Arkansas. The peaches were sourced from just across the Louisiana border because--just like in my part of Georgia--local peaches were destroyed by adverse weather this year.

Jeff and Joyce celebrated Week 2 with garlic-butter roasted pork and scalloped potatoes, plus a side salad for Joyce. They wish the cheese they used was from somewhere closer than Ohio, but I say anytime you know the farmer, you’re doing something right.

Jasmine’s computer is in the shop, but she went above and beyond the call of duty and posted about her local meal from a nearby Panera franchise. She made a chard and zucchini frittata with roasted tomatoes, sauteéd okra with tomatoes and onions, and green beans with a sundried tomato pureé. Good, and very vegetable-y!

If I could take photos as beautiful as Jessica’s, I would just about die of happiness. She whipped up a very picturesque plate of sauteéd tofu, potatoes tossed with rosemary and olive oil, fresh green beans, and corn on the cob.

The Purloined Letter focused on the green and herbaceous this week. Check it out: Garden crustless quiche (with local Amish goat’s milk and eggs, plus pickings from the garden), a salad laced with lemon verbena, and a dessert of honey ice cream with spearmint-and-lemon-balm tea.

Laurie eats off of outrageously beautiful pottery. And this week, what she was eating was Farmgirl’s caramelized beets with garlic, squash casserole, and a green salad.

Paulette is starting to make me a little jealous with her ranch’s homegrown grassfed beef! This time it was T-bone steaks, a vegetable medley, and local red wine.

Pattie says ice cream counts as dinner, and I’m not one to argue...especially when it’s homemade from raw milk, duck eggs, and blackberries.

Bibliotecaria was inspired by her CSA stash to create a pasta dish brimming with basil, parsley, tomatillos, and tomatoes.

Maggie had friends over for Independence Day. On the menu? Grilled steak, coleslaw, roasted potatoes, and a carrot salad. Inquiring minds want to know how in the world she found North Carolina vinegar!

Lastewie, needing a local meal, dropped in on some cheffy friends with a huge garden. (I can vouch for them, ‘cause I’ve been there. These are the folks you want to invite you to dinner!) They dined on dauphinoise potatoes, beet and bean salad, tomato and cucumber salad, homemade bread, and leftover pie with ice cream. Being a considerate guest, Stew brough a 6-pack of Carolina Brewing Company IPA.

And finally, Elian got creative, making veggie wraps with collard leaves as the wrapper! Southern sushi, y'all.

The South, week 1

Our southern OLSers have stepped up to the plate. (So to speak.)

Maggie grilled filet mignon and served it alongside her own fire-roasted potatoes, multicolored carrots, onions, and Chiogga beets. She and her husband quenched their thirst with Shiva I.P.A. from the Asheville Pizza & Brewing Company.

Lastewie proved that local food can be portable! She took veggies from her garden and made them into a delicious soup in her workplace microwave oven. She noshed homegrown fresh cucumbers, too.

Joanne lives in the tropics, so it’s the off season for her. So she whipped up a vegetable soup from local storage veggies: kohlrabi, radishes, carrots, parsnips, and onions. She topped it off with leftover free-range chicken. The best part? The kids ate it, too.

Molly (left) made a southern specialty: pork BBQ with a side of coleslaw (thank goodness Duke’s mayo is local!), smashed potatoes, and sauteed zucchini.

Jeff and Joyce kicked off OLS with the taste of summer: a chef salad with local country ham and eggs, and baked potatoes with cream.

Jasmine made pasta out of fresh local zucchini, then paired it with roasted sweet potatoes that she stored from the winter.

Steph rustled up hamburgers on Mennonite-baked bread (not forgetting, of course, a slab of local tomato on top), with a crisp side salad.

The Purloined Letter made gorgeous pizza adapted from Barbara Kingsolver’s recipe in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle.

Jen marinated a tangy cucumber salad and served it with Caribbean-rubbed pork chops.

Laurie’s first OLS meal was barbecue chicken with a side of potatoes and green beans--the same ingredients as my meal, but with a different spin!

Paulette served up her homestead’s very own steak, plus local baked potatoes and the essence of midsummer--blackberries.

Pattie made a local meal of turkey casserole (with eggplant and tomatoes) with a side of beets, radishes, beet greens, and Purple Peruvian potatoes. But she’s also been eating local full-time, sampling lamb’s quarters, amaranth, Persimmon Creek Seyval blanc wine, Magnolia bread, and Jittery Joe’s coffee.

Bibliotecaria kicked off the week with a summery vegetable salad, including red pepper, cukes, red onions, corn, parsley, basil, and cilantro. Then she made buffalo steak with roasted caramelized cauliflower.

Late-breaking news!
Jessica has put locally-produced tofu to excellent use on the grill. Just thinking about it--with its side dishes of sweet corn, potatoes, and zucchini--makes my mouth water.