Dinner Menu: Wednesday Night

For a meat-and-potatoes man…actually, allow me to rephrase this. The meat-and-potatoes man I’m writing about is my husband, but he’s not so much of a potatoes man. He likes potatoes, for sure, but he also likes to avoid carbs.  So I guess I should just call him a meat man.

For a meat man, my husband, who loves his steak and his venison and eats bacon for breakfast almost every day, is surprisingly open to eating vegetarian meals, including tofu.  The fact is, the guy just likes to eat. It doesn’t matter what he’s eating so long as it tastes good.  I am grateful for this because, although I am a flesh-eating omnivore, I enjoy cooking and consuming vegetarian meals. 

Tonight I cooked a meatless meal: A quick black bean soup, Delicata squash and salad.  The recipe for the black bean soup came from Simple and Delicious magazine, and it was indeed simple and delicious. It consisted of just four ingredients: a can of black beans, a cup and a half of chicken stock, 3/4 of a cup of chunky salsa (I used Newman’s Own) and lime juice.  Dump all the ingredients in a pot, heat over a simmer, and voilà: You’ve got instant, tasty black bean soup.

The Delicata squash came in last week’s CSA. I baked it at 375 degrees for 30 minutes.  The red leaf lettuce and bell peppers that I used in the salad also came from Clear Brook Farm. 

It was the perfect, hot, nourishing supper for a cold, rainy Vermont night.

Clear Brook Farm CSA Week 3

Eric and I signed up for Clear Brook Farm’s 10-week winter CSA again this year, and we’re heading into week three of our farm share. 

Every Wednesday, Clear Brook Farm sends an e-mail to all CSA members listing everything they’ll get in their share that week.  It’s a courteous gesture designed to help us plan our meals–and the rest of our grocery lists–for the following week.  I’m sure it’s also intended to generate excitement for that week’s share. I know I look forward to receiving these newsletters in my inbox every week and to finding out what awesome organic veggies I’ll get to cook with. 

This year, Clear Brook Farm’s newsletters contain recipes for some of the produce in each week’s share.  I’m glad they’re doing this because last year I really didn’t know what to do with some of the veggies I had never heard of, such as romanesco and celeriac, and I never made the time to search for recipes for those items online.  This week’s newsletter contains recipes for roasted root vegetables, celeriac root bisque, beet and celeriac salad, and sweet and sour carrots.  As you might have guessed from those recipes, this weeks’ share contains celeriac and carrots, in addition to butternut squash, fennel, spinach, brocoli, lettuce, scallions and onions. 

I saved two carrots from the first week’s farm share, so I think I’ll make my favorite carrot ginger soup–the recipe comes courtesy of The Silver Palate cookbook via my friend Alice Stokes.  Maybe I’ll try that celeriac root bisque, too.  The recipe didn’t excite me at first, but it did elicit a Homer Simpson-esque “oooh!” from Eric.  (What the heck else am I going to do with celeriac?) I’ll definitely make roasted root vegetables, too. 

What would you make with this week’s farm share?

Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge: Day 7

As you can see, I’ve come to the end of the Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge and I’ve run out of enthusiasm and inspiration:

Breakfast: Vermont Morning hot cereal with Domino brown sugar (duh, I should have used Vermont maple syrup, but I wasn’t thinking), half and half from Vermont’s Thomas dairy. Still drinking Trader Joe’s coffee.

Snack: NY state peach

Lunch: Leftover tuna casserole.

Snack: Maple cream sandwich cookie.

Dinner: Leftover tuna casserole.

Dessert: Maple sandwich cookie, milk chocolate non-pareil.

Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge: Day 6’s Dinner Dilemma

Boy am I glad this eat local challenge is almost over.  I’m HUNGRY.  You know what I’m craving? My mom’s tuna casserole made with Kraft Macaroni & Cheese, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom soup, Bumble Bee tuna and those french fried onions.  I’m very tempted to make this for dinner tonight. The alternative is McKenzie hot dogs, and I’m not really in the mood for a hot dog.  I am in the mood for a hot, hearty casserole.

This is a dilemma. I’m about to make dinner, and part of me really wants to stick with the eat local challenge.  The other part of me–my stomach and id–is saying, Screw the eat local challenge. You did your part. You gave it the ole college try. You’re free to resume consuming over-processed, corn-based foods that travelled hundreds of miles and consumed hundreds of gallons of oil to reach your dinner table.

Now I feel like a real shithead. Anyone else having trouble with the eat local challenge? Tell me I’m not the only one.

Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge: Day 5

What I ate on Sunday, September 21:

Breakfast: Granola and yogurt.

Lunch: I went to a friend’s house for lunch. She made a delicious carrot ginger soup, which she served with salad (her husband is a farmer with Burlington, Vermont’s Intervale community farm, and he grew the salad greens), Red Hen Bakery bread and local goat cheese.

Snack: Myers bagel (baked in Burlington.)

Dinner: Eric cooked chicken in San Marzano tomatoes with kalamata olives, served with leftover couscous (leftover from the week before) and arugula from Clear Brook Farm.  This was hardly a local meal, but it was tasty!

Snack: Milk chocolate non-pareils and maple cream sandwich cookies.

Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge: Day 2

I finally got to Clear Brook Farm and to the Village Peddler yesterday on my lunch break. At Clear Brook, I bought Honey Crisp apples from Scott Farm, NY state peaches, arugula, basil, tomatoes, smoked turkey and sweet Italian sausage from Green Mountain Smoke House, bread from a bakery in Middlesex, eggs from Someday Farm in East Dorset, granola made in Manchester and another package of Putney Pasta.  That haul cost me just under $50.

At the Village Peddler I bought “Old Fashioned Squares” crackers, Castleton Crackers (made in Castleton, VT), Vermont Common Crackers, Maple Grove Farm’s maple cream sandwich cookies, Vermont Morning hot cereal (a reader recommendation) and a small box of milk chocolate non-pareils. This small haul cost me about $26.

I figured eating local for a week would cost me a lot more money than I’d normally spend for a week’s worth of groceries, but yesterday’s tab came to about $75. That’s a lot cheaper than what I normally spend on groceries, which ranges between about $100 and $120.  I still have a few more items to pick up for dinners, so it’ll be interesting to see if eating/buying local costs me more or less for my weekly food supply than my normal Clear Brook-Price Chopper shopping routine.

(I’ve also been meaning to weigh myself to see if I gain or lose weight during a week of eating local foods.)

Yesterday was a much easier day once I had done this shopping.  Here’s what I ate:

Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge: Day 1

Technically, this is day three of the Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge, but since I was in Massachusetts on Monday and Tuesday, today is day one for me.

I didn’t fare very well in the challenge today because I haven’t had a chance to go grocery shopping.  Once I have a chance to hit Clear Brook, the Village Peddler and the Wayside, I’ll be in good shape, but I don’t expect to be able to go shopping until my lunch break tomorrow. Work is crazy, which is not unusual.

Breakfast: 1/2 a home-made banana crunch muffin washed down with Trader Joe’s coffee.  Even though the muffin is home-made, none of its ingredients are local. The bananas are grown in Ecuador. .

Mid-morning snack (consumed at noon EDT): The other 1/2 of the banana crunch muffin plus a  Stonyfield yogurt. Stoneyfield yogurt is made in N.H., so at least I’m getting closer to Vermont.

Lunch (consumed at 3 PM EDT): Teleion Holon hummus (finally! A local product!), Ritz crackers, Trader Joe’s corn chips and Cabot cheddar cheese. I have no bread in my house, therefore I couldn’t make a sandwich.

Dinner: It’s going to have to be Putney Pasta. We have a package in the freezer.  Otherwise it’s bacon and eggs.

Eat Local Challenge: A Strategy for Survival

Monday, September 15, 2008 — Framingham, Mass. — The Southwestern Vermont Eat Local Challenge begins today, and I’m nervous about participating in the event: I’m worried I’ll starve. I just don’t know if I have access to enough local growers and producers to subsist solely on local foods for a week, so I developed a survival strategy.

Before I unveil my strategy, let’s look at what I typically eat on a daily basis to see the extent to which I’m going to have to change my diet.

Meridith’s Week Day Diet