Wow – 33 of us are participating in this! Not sure what the Dark Days Challenge is? Find out more here.
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I just realized that I never posted my own personal rules for this challenge, so before I update you on what everyone else is doing, I’ll tell you what our goals are.
- We have to cook 2 meals per week that are at least 90% local.
- Any other meals we prepare at home need to be at least 50% local.
- Local for us is 100 miles for everything but apples, wine, wheat and cheese for which we’re allowing 200 miles.
- We need to include friends and family whenever possible.
- Our exceptions are sugar, olive oil, coffee and chocolate.
This week was a marathon for me at work, but before the week got brutal we had the pleasure of entertaining 20 of our closest friends for an Oktoberfest party here at the house. Almost 100% of what we served was local including German brats boiled in porter that we brought back from MN, German style potato salad, veggie platter with homemade blue cheese dressing, cheese and crackers, Washington wines, local beer and apples with caramel dip. Our none-local exceptions were olive oil, red wine vinegar, mayo (from the fridge), and caramel squares. I attempted to make my own caramel sauce from scratch but burned it twice and gave up for Kraft squares in the interest of time and sanity.
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The West:
Anita at Married with Dinner exposed herself as a locavore on her blog and wrote a great post about what it means to her to commit to the challenge. She’s clarified her own rules and is ready to get started. I can’t wait to see what they come up with as the challenge goes on.
With an early commitment, Donna at Chocolate Crayons & More has got two meals under her belt so far. Their first meal was a wonderfully simple menu of spaghetti and salad. For her second meal she intended to make a chicken soup (and bought some spendy noodles for it!) and then realized that her Monday dinner of pork chops, potatoes and beets was so local that her son had even fed the pig! They finished out the week with that chicken soup with a few exemptions thrown in for flavor.
Laura at Hello, Sunshine has outshone me by far. She posted her rules for the challenge, some fabulous photos of the produce for the week and a recap of it all. Laura is planning to eat 95% local for as many meals as possible – earning my undying respect. While she’s been eating 90% local and is feeling great about the challenge, a sore mouth has left her with much produce to work her way through in the coming days.
Over at The Daily Grind, Ellen is looking forward to the challenge and a winter filled with local eggs and veggies from her CSA. I’m looking forward to seeing what she makes from her new vegan cookbook.
Melinda at Elements in Time has got her rules established and is looking forward to eating local six days a week. I envy her garden and ability to grow veggies all winter. She’s got a great link to recipes for all that squash and pumpkin available right now.
With help from her super cute son, LeeAnn at Apostle to Suburbia is off to a fine start. She made a wonderful sounding recipe of yukon potato roesti and vichy carrots with produce from one of my favorite farm stands.
Katrina at Kale for Sale has her rules up and continues to impress me with her fabulous market finds. This week she wrote about herbed honey, and resisting the siren call of more squash. She found some excellent dry ingredients instead. Wonder what she’ll end up doing with those poppy seeds?
Over at the Skagit Foodshed, Saara has an impressive harvest of home grown potatoes to see her through the winter, as well as a list of local sources if you didn’t grow your own. In an impressive show of skill she also made juice from 25 lbs. of blue elderberries using her steam juicer – Wow!
Marcia in Wyoming emailed me her update, but my email is currently down. I’ll update to add her meal as soon as I can get back into my mailbox.
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The Middle:
Anne at Green Leanings enjoyed managed a local lunch, dinner and breakfast this week. Everything sounds just wonderful, from the bacon to the ham, the eggs to the raspberries, the potatoes to the pancakes. What will she come up with next week?
Over at Maybe Local, Chessa worked up an impressive dinner. She event posted recipes and distances for everything. I’m going to have to give her brussel sprout recipe a try, and perhaps even the honey baked lentils.
FarmMom at Children in the Corn made a deepdish pizza that I’d have given my eye teeth for this week. Her array of toppings including peppers, tomatoes, spinach, morels and sausage made my mouth water when I saw the pictures go up yesterday.
Penelopedia’s Penny is gearing up for the challenge by pondering what to do with the butternut squash squatting on her counter. Personally, I’d make a curry ginger soup with it, but I’m sure she’s got plenty of great ideas!
Valerie at Cincinnati Locavore is getting everything in order to start her local meals. She’s joined a herdshare for milk and freezing onions. I didn’t even know you could freeze onions… I’m looking forward to hearing more about the local sources that she finds.
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The East:
A hearty dinner of burgers, oven fries and broccoli over at Yankee Food have my mouth watering. Kim has her rules up and is looking forward to finding new sources as some of her favorites shut down for the winter. Look for Kim’s guest recap here next week while I’m out of country.
Caroline at A Rowhouse Kitchen wrote about two wonderful meals this week. The first was a meal after my own heart, roast chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans and local wine. Her son objected to photos of the second, but the lamb chops with sides of cauliflower and salad sounded equally good.
Orchards Forever’s Peg made my stomach growl with her dreams of potato-leek soup, apple crisp and roasted winter vegetables. I’m anxiously awaiting her first meal (hopefully she’ll post recipes…).
A well rounded meal of salad, pasta, sourdough and apple-cranberry crisp from Christy at Farm Dreams sounds divine. She’s already thinking ahead to what they’ll do when their CSA ends at Thanksgiving.
Wendy at Happily Home at first regretted her decision to limit herself to Maine for the challenge. But then realized that she had everything she needed already in her kitchen for her first meal of minute steak, creamed corn, mashed potatoes and pickled beets.
With the bonus of running her own exclusive CSA, Jenny at Touch the Earth Farm is planning to wow us with 0 mile meals supplemented by other ingredients from within 100 miles. I’m really looking forward to seeing what she comes up with as she cooks from scratch this fall and winter.
Beth at Sustainable Food Blog is kicking us off with a recipe for a simple all local potato soup. I bet it’s a recipe that we can all find local ingredients for, wherever we are this winter.
Knitting 40 Shades of Green’s Jasmine made a delicious ratatouille with the last of the summer vegetables. She posted ingredients and mileage as well. I’ve never made a ratatouille, but if there are any summer veggies left when I get back I may have to try now.
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Did I miss you? If so, please drop a note in comments with a note about your meal and a link back to your post.
Quick Question Laura,
As I have started doing my own grocery shopping this year and making my own choices about what to eat (since the lovely dining hall has fed me for the last 2 years as a college student), I have a question. I was at the grocery store today and wanted to buy carrots. I could either buy Organic carrots from california, or the store brand which were grown in Massachusetts. Which would be better, the organic ones that were flown across the country to boston, or the regular carrots which were grown locally?
Your lil cuz, Nikki
I will cook my Dark Days Challenge Dinner tomorrow since Farmers Market is on Sunday in our neighbourhood. Sorry for being late !
Wow, thanks for all the hard work on the review–it was really inspiring to read about everyone’s efforts!
Just for the record, though, my name’s Danielle, not Jenny, though I do have a good friend named Jenny who has an equally amazing and inspiring farm, more so even.
Wow! You did a great write up on everyone’s meals! This is going to be a lot of work for you!! You didn’t know what you were getting yourself into did ya?! :)
Okay, I just posted my dark days challenge meal. It was harder than I thought it would be!
http://www.culinarystudent.us/?p=173
Here was our very local Sunday:
Breakfast: local cherries (frozen) in local yogurt, with pumpkin bread made with local butter, flour, eggs, and pumpkin (non local: sugar, spices).
Lunch: Egg salad with local eggs and butter, local bread (prob without local wheat), CSA apple and CSA carrot with dip I made with local parsley, garlic, onions and non-local olive oil.
Dinner: Southwest Skillit: local ingredients: potatoes, onion, peppers, garlic, jalapeno, tomatos, corn, cilantro, cheese, butter, and sour cream. Non local: black beans, tortilla, spices.
For dessert we had apple crisp made with local crabapples, flour, and butter. Non local: sugar and spices.
Not bad for a Sunday!
MARCIA FROM WYOMING…My life-partner, Rob and I live in remote west-central Wyoming on a ranch that my grandparents began some 90 years ago. We live “off-grid” with solar and wind power, raise a huge garden, have Navajo Churro sheep for wool and meat, a guard llama for the sheep, chickens for eggs and meat, fatten pigs for meat and to sell, and have a fish pond stocked with native trout. We try to live a sustainable lifestyle, trading in part for some of the things we can’t produce ourselves. My “rules” for the Dark Days of Winter Challenge will be to eat home-grown or locally every meal, every day with a few exceptions: 1)coffee, tea, wine, beer (WY is NOT known for it’s wineries and breweries), 2) dairy (although we live in the middle of ranching country – it is BEEF – not DAIRY that is grown here – I am working with a young ranch wife to “co-own” a milk cow with several people) 3) condiments, spices, olive oil 4) possibly wheat – although I am attempting to get some from Montana which may be around the 200 mile away limit.
FRIDAY NIGHT DINNER – Beef roast (locally grown – traded in part for a pig) carrots, potatoes, onions in with the roast, ½ acorn squash – cavity filled with honey, butter and cinnamon-all veggies home grown. We get local honey in trade for letting them keep their hives on our property near our hay fields. Frozen raspberries sauce – raspberries from http://www.raspberrydelightfarms.com/ 60 miles away – over “alas” Meadowgold ice cream.