Local food is great! It's often fresher, tastes better, and buying it supports people in your community. But is all local food what it seems to be? And what about restaurants that serve local food? Are they the real deal? A recent series by Laura Reiley in the Tampa Bay Times called Farm to Fable looks into this and what she finds is shocking. A lot of "local" food isn't what you think it is.
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One of my favorite places is the farmers market, especially during the transition from one season to the next. There are so many delicious fruits and veggies to choose from! Here's everything I got on my most recent farmers market trip in late August.
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Here's everything I got at my local farmers market in early May in Virginia! Spring is one of my favorite times of the year because of all of the fresh, crisp produce we get after a long, cold winter. We've got so many delicious spring fruits and veggies right now and I'm loving it!
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One aspect of healthy eating that a lot of people miss is eating seasonally. Eating seasonally means eating the foods that are in season in your local area. Following a seasonal pattern with your meals has several benefits, including better nutrition and more money in your pocket. Plus, it's the best way to not get bored with your meals.
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Local food is often more nutritious and offers more variety. Plus, you can talk directly to the producer and support your community. Finding that local food, however, can be difficult. Here are my top tips and resources for finding farmers' markets, CSAs, farms, and other local food resources in your area. [x_video type="16:9, 5:3, 5:4, 4:3, 3:2" m4v="" ogv="" poster="" hide_controls="" autoplay="" embed='' no_container="true"]Local Harvest
This is the last Fall CSA box! Here's everything I got. Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
The peppers and large sweet potatoes went away to be eaten another time. We snacked on the radishes and the decorative corn got a place propped up in our kitchen.
The first meal is (you guessed it) eggs! You know I love me some eggs and we couldn't NOT have them in the final week. I used the kale for a yummy salad and roasted the baby sweet potatoes.
This meal is what happens when I don't plan well. We were supposed to have homemade pizza, but then I realized that we didn't have any cheese. So what did I do instead? Homemade breadsticks. That plus an arugula salad and marinara sauce for dipping was dinner. My hubby thought it was awesome.
For this last one, I broke down a chicken into parts and marinated it in a combination of tamari, garlic, ginger, honey, and water, and baked it in the oven. I cooked down the marinade to kill any nasties and used that as the sauce for the cabbage. Roasted baby sweet potatoes (from a previous CSA box) completed the meal.
And that's it for the 2014 CSA season! I hope these posts gave you a little peek at what dinner looks like at my house and some ideas for your seasonal produce. Here's to all of those yummy veggies!
Here's everything I got in my box! All items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
The sweet potatoes went into storage (we've got quite the pile at this point) and we pickled the cauliflower. It might sound weird but pickled cauliflower is one of my favorite things. : D
We ate the salad mix with some chopped apple and pulled pork I made in the slow cooker. It was delicious and made for a super easy dinner because the slow cooker did all of the work for me.
We also had one of our favs: egg biscuits. For the vegetable I sauteed the turnip greens.
The turnips and watermelon radishes went into the roasted vegetable mix for Thanksgiving dinner. We all agreed that the food this year was the best we've ever done. It just seems to keep getting better each time.
I used the leftover turkey bones to make some broth which made the perfect base for cabbage soup. In addition to the giant head of savoy cabbage, I threw in a few potatoes and some leftover chicken we had in the fridge.
Here's everything I got in my box! Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
The jalapenos went into homemade hot sauce and the sunshine winter squash went into storage for another day.
The cabbage went into some homemade sauerkraut. I made a whole video on that, if you're interested.
I roasted some of the sweet potatoes and served the arugula as salad with some scrambled eggs. Simple and delicious.
For pizza night I used a sweet pepper as the pizza topping and had the mixed field greens as salad with a tahini dressing.
This one can be added to the evidence that I'm seriously bad at taking pictures of soup. This is a peanut sweet potato soup I made that was quite tasty. The only CSA item in this one was (you guessed it) the sweet potatoes.
Eggs on the menu again! This time fried, with roasted sweet potatoes and sauteed spring raab.
I promise we didn't actually have pizza twice in one week (although I wouldn't mind it if we did). This was a straggler meal that I used to eat up the rest of those peppers about a week later. I lightly cooked them so they didn't loose all of their crunch.
I have to say, this week, we had some seriously delicious meals. Here's everything I got in my box! All items are listed below, starting at the the top and moving left to right.
The radishes were eaten on their own for a snacky snack.
I roasted the fingerling potatoes and tossed them with the garlic chives. Along with that we had grass-fed burgers and the salad mix.
All of the bell peppers went into a frittata and then I sauteed the bagged greens as our side. This was a great quick meal.
I roasted the beans because that's delicious and made a honey-mustard roasted chicken with some sweet potato fries. This was so so yummy, even if it does look a little boring color-wise.
The remaining sweet potatoes and baby sweet potatoes all went into storage for the future. We've got quite the sweet potato pile accumulating.
Here's everything I got in my box! All items are listen below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
The radishes and green pepper were eaten as snacks.
I roasted the roc d'or beans one day for lunch which, I have to say, is quickly becoming my favorite way to cook them. So good!
I roasted a lot of the sweet potatoes and we had them with fried eggs and a kale salad. I made a garlic-lemon tahini dressing for the salad and it was delish!
This dinner was actually plan C. The end result tasted good, but it looked mediocre at best. I roasted the eggplant and we had some leftover sweet potatoes from the night before. All of that went as as planned, but I was originally going to serve the eggplant and sweet potatoes with eggs. Then, I realized we were out of eggs, so I went with plan B: sausage. The only problem was, when I went to pull the sausage out to thaw it, I realized we didn't have any of that either. So, that brought me to plan C: ground pork. I added some Chinese five spice powder to the pork and made patties out of it. They actually ended up tasting really good, but the overall presentation wasn't my best work.
Pizza night was the same thing it's been for a few weeks now (red pepper pizza) and I'm ok with that because it's delicious! These particular peppers tasted awesome! I'm not sure of the variety, but I'm a fan. The head of lettuce got chopped up for salad.
We had egg biscuits this week, which is one of our favorite dinners. I sauteed the mustard greens as a topping and side dish. They were good, but I tried an experiment that didn't turn out so great. I was feeling a little lazy and decided to try cooking the mustard green leaves whole instead of stripping each one off it's stem and then chopping all the stems up. That was a mistake. It was just hard to chew the whole leaves, so I won't be taking that shortcut again.
And we finish things off with my favorite meal from the week! Some grated sweet potato, chickpeas, spices, and a few other things all got mixed together to make patties. We ate those with the bagged Swiss chard and topped it with a spicy peanut dressing.
Here's the Week 4 box! Everything is listed below, starting at the top and moving from left to right.
I'm sad to say, we did have some CSA casualties with this box. The okra and the parsley both ended up in the compost heap. It was just bad planning on my part. I hate when perfectly good food goes to waste, but it still happens sometimes.
The magenta lettuce, black eyed peas, and banana peppers all came together to make some yummy burrito bowls.
I roasted the eggplant and fingerling potatoes and served them with fried eggs. This meal wasn't great color-wise, but it tasted good. :D
We had eggs another night, this time scrambled, and enjoyed them with the salad mix (topped with a tahini dressing) and roasted sweet potatoes. This was my favorite meal of the week!
Here's everything from Week 3! Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
I snacked on the tomatoes and radishes and added the sweet potatoes to our pile.
The head lettuce made a great salad with our weekly pizza and the salad mix stood in it's place with the leftovers. The red pepper went on our pizza.
I tried something different with the beans this week! I roasted them, along with some potatoes and served them with scrambled eggs. Roasting the beans made them a little crispier, which was nice.
Everything else ended up in this meal: honey mustard chicken and roasted vegetables. Basically, I roasted the chicken like I usually do, but brushed on a mixture of honey and Dijon mustard near the end. The broccoli, eggplant, and peppers all went in, along with some potatoes and Brussels sprouts I had picked up at the farmers' market.
Do you have a favorite roasted chicken recipe? Share in the comments below!
Week 2 includes some summer items and our first winter squash! Here's everything we got in our box! All items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
I ate the tomatoes all by myself. I basically grabbed one whenever I walked by their box on the counter. :D
The delicata squash were roasted with some oil and a sprinkle of salt. Easy and delicious. I just made them kind of randomly to eat, not as part of any of our dinners.
The round eggplants stood in place of noodles in this eggplant lasagna-esque dish I made. It was actually supposed to be eggplant Parmesan rollatini, but I decided to try something different at the last minute and it turned out pretty good. We loaded up with salad to help balance everything out.
This is one of the best dinners I've made in a while. I cut up a whole chicken and marinated it in a mixture of soy sauce, water, ginger, and garlic. That baked in the oven while I sauteed the broccoli, half of the beans, some of the sweet peppers, and an onion. I also cooked down the chicken marinade to reduce it and kill any raw chicken nasties and then poured that over the veggies. So. freaking. good!
This is a repeat offender, so I'll be quick. I made our favorite veggie stew (again) and topped it with a fried egg (again). It's just so tasty! The dark purple eggplants, remaining beans, a couple sweet peppers, and the basil all went in.
To finish things off, we had our weekly pizza. The only thing from the CSA for this meal was the salad.
I'm holding back the sweet potatoes since they'll keep pretty well over the winter and the hot peppers are going into some homemade hot sauce. I've never made hot sauce before, so we'll see how that experiment goes. :)
And that wraps up week 2. I have to say, I'm starting to struggle with the eggplant situation. I won't definitely won't be sad to see them go.
What yummy food have been cooking lately? Let me know in the comments below?
Fall is in the air and the CSA posts are back! Now that our Fall CSA has started up, I'll be sharing everything we get and what I do with it each week. Thanks for all of the positive feedback I got on the Summer CSA series and requests to continue it in the fall. I truly appreciate it! Here's this week's box! All items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
I decided to keep the black eyed peas for later since they can store well for a while.
The lettuce made a great salad for pizza night. I dressed the salad with some homemade ranch, but didn't get a picture before my hubby started pouring ranch on the pizza. Haha! Hey, we've got to get back into the routine of these dinner pics.
I decided to take advantage of the last of the summer veggies by making one of our favorite recipes, a vegetable stew from the Local Flavors cookbook by Deborah Madison. Topped with a fried egg, it was perfection. The peppers, zucchini, half of the french filet beans, and a few tomatoes all went into this dinner.
Now on to the eggplant. It's not a favorite around here, but we've just got to work with it. This is actually one of the better recipes I've found for eggplant. It's an Eggplant Chickpea Stew from Local Flavors by Deborah Madison (it's a good cookbook!). The rest of the tomatoes went into this one as well.
And we'll finish this week off with a little dinner fail. Somehow I hadn't used the okra and the rest of the french filet beans. So, I sauteed them together and baked some sweet potatoes and that was dinner. It's not the most exciting (or balanced) meal we've ever had, but not every dinner is going to be great and that's ok.
It's hard to believe, but this is the last week of our Summer CSA. This post is a little late because we just hadn't eaten everything up yet. :D As this series comes to an end, I'd love some feedback from you. Our Fall CSA will be starting soon, so if you liked this series and would want to see a fall version, let me know!
Now on to the food!
Here's everything we got in our last box. Items are below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
We ate all of the tomatoes for snacks (as usual).
The arugula served as a great salad for pizza night. I topped it with some tomatoes from our garden and a quick vinaigrette.
The potatoes and green beans were sides for a roasted spatchcocked chicken. I'm in love with this method of cooking a whole chicken! It cooks faster and gets nice and crispy all over. If you want more info, I raved about it in my August Favorites.
I roasted the potatoes with the chicken and then sauteed the green beans.
I'm trying to get some good BLTs in before all of the tomatoes are gone. Instead of lettuce, we used some basil from the garden and served it with the okra. I tried sauteing the okra this time and it was ok. I definitely need to play around with it a little bit. The cucumber went into a big batch of refrigerator pickles, which we also ate with this meal. I have no idea if the particular pickle here is actually the one from our CSA, but you get the idea.
The peppers and the eggplant got to take a trip to the beach with us and I threw them in with a bunch of other veggies to make my favorite easy dinner: roasted chicken and vegetables. I spatchcocked this chicken too, because, ya know, it's awesome.
And that wraps everything up for the Summer CSA. Summer flew by for me, and I'm sad to see it go, but I'm also excited for all of the fun autumnal things ahead of us.
What are your thoughts on the CSA series? Would you like me to continue it in with our Fall CSA? Let me know in the comments below!
It's hard to believe, but summer is coming to close and there is only one more summer CSA post after this one! Here's everything I got in my box. All items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
I ended up freezing the German lunchbox tomatoes to use this winter in a soup or stew. I laid them out in a single layer on a sheet pan in the freezer and, once they were frozen, put them in a mason jar for storage.
The arugula made a great salad to go with this tomato and sweet pepper pizza.
One night we had gumbo. It was good, but still needs some perfecting. My plan was to use all of those peppers in this dish, but, when I tried a piece of poblano, it was super spicy! According to my research (aka the Poblano Wikipedia page), sometimes poblanos can end up being spicy for whatever reason, even though they are usually a mild pepper. That meant that this gumbo ended up having a lot less in the way of veggies than I had planned. I used the okra, though you can't see it in the picture, plus some onion and a couple bell peppers I had.
I sauteed the green beans and served them with fried egg biscuits. So good!
A lot of the veggies went into this meal. I have to say, this isn't the most visually appealing thing I've ever made. I got the recipe for these Eggplant Lasagna Boats from the Half Baked Harvest blog and her pictures are much prettier. But hey, these posts aren't styled, they're I-just-made-this-for-dinner-and-took-a-quick-picture-before-I-ate-it, so yeah. The zucchini, patty pan squash, large tomatoes, and eggplant all went into this dish and I have to say it was a winner. The only note I would make is that eating this as your entire meal was a little too heavy with all of the cheese, sausage, and oil. Even though this has a lot of veggies in it, I would recommend eating it as part of your meal with lots of other veggies to go along with it.
What do you think I should do with all of those peppers? Share in the comments below!
This week, my box had all of the ingredients for fresh salsa! Oh and I almost lost my lips to some seriously hot peppers.
Here's everything I got in my box. Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
You guys know the drill. I ate almost all of the tomatoes fresh. :D
One night, we had black bean tacos. I used some of the tomatoes, onion, and hot peppers in the salsa.
Lots of the veggies found their way into this stir fry. I combined the leeks, sweet peppers, a hot pepper, garlic, and cabbage with some leftover chicken and served it all over quinoa. This dinner was about 30 minutes later than planned due to a hot pepper emergency. I took a small bite from one of the peppers to see how hot they were and practically lit myself on fire. I've seriously never experienced anything like it, and I love spicy stuff. My lips were in agony! It took a lot of scrubbing, but I eventually got to a point where I could stand the pain without running my face under cold water or holding an ice pack on my lips.
This next little experiment wasn't the worst thing ever, but definitely not a winner. I sliced and cooked the zucchini and eggplant and then rolled them up with some goat cheese. I think they probably needed more goat cheese, but even then I don't think they would be great. It's all just part of trying new things in the kitchen. Sometimes things don't work out, but it's not the end of the world. The fried eggs and bread were good. :D
Does fear of failure ever stop you from trying something new in the kitchen? Share in the comments below!
This week, the CSA box had lots of tomatoes (hallelujah!). We also got something new: carrots! The flavor of fresh carrots is incredible, plus you get the greens. Those frilly tops are totally edible and I'm not a fan of wasting food, so I make sure to work them in when I get them. Here's everything I got in my box. Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
I made a yummy summer veggie soup one night, using homemade chicken broth. The leeks, zucchini, yellow squash, a couple tomatoes, about half of the carrots, and all of the carrot greens went into the pot for a quick dinner. We ate it with some bread I picked up at the farmers' market.
Next up is one of my favorite summer recipes (we had this in Week 5 too). It's basically a huge pot of vegetables stewed in their own juices and finished with a basil puree. The recipe comes from Deborah Madison's Local Flavors cookbook. The green peppers, remaining carrots, and about half of the green beans were used in this, along with some other non-CSA veggies. Some of the basil was used for the basil puree (surprising, I know :D) and I topped our bowls with fried eggs.
We had those eggplant and tomato stacks I tried last week again this week. The hubby isn't a huge eggplant fan, so he also had some leftovers to round off his meal.
For pizza night, I actually switched things up from the tomato version I've been doing practically all summer long. Instead, I used a sweet pepper we got out of the garden that night and a little red onion. I topped the pizza with fresh basil and sauteed the rest of the green beans for our vegetable.
Did you know that carrot tops are edible? Share your answer in the comments below!
This week we got our first green pepper! We're definitely pepper fans over here so it was nice to get that little gem mixed in with all of our other goodies. Here's everything we got in this week's box. Items are listed below, starting at the top and moving left to right.
As always, most of the tomatoes were eaten as snacks. What can I say? I love tomatoes!
About half of one of the long, skinny eggplant and some of the yellow tomatoes made their way onto this week's pizza. The green beans were served as our vegetable and it was all quite delicious.
This night was super simple: fried eggs with sauteed zucchini.
The remaining eggplant and some tomatoes were used in a new recipe. Basically, you slice the eggplant and tomato, make a quick pesto, and then layer it all with feta cheese. Then, the stacks get baked in the oven. It's delicious and now qualifies as one of my favorite ways to use eggplant!
I made falafel for the first time this summer (it was a weekly staple last year) and served it with a tomato, cucumber, and red onion salad. The only CSA item in this meal were the tomatoes, but it still counts. :D
Ok, I'm not gonna lie, this last one isn't the most visually stunning meal, but it definitely tasted good! I roasted the potatoes, made a cole slaw from the cabbage, and served them with pulled pork. Yum!
As excited as I was about that pepper, I still haven't used it. We might just eat it raw or toss it in with a meal this week.
This week was a good one for dinners. We had a nice mix of old favorites, plus a new one! Here's everything I got. Items are listed below starting at the top and moving left to right.
Most of the tomatoes were eaten up as snacks, either plain or with a little salt and pepper. The garlic and onions didn't get used this week because I had some older stuff to go through first.
I've really been loving this tomato basil pizza combo, so I made it again this week! I paired the pizza with some sauteed peppers.
One night, I roasted a chicken with a ton of veggies. The yellow squash, heirloom zucchini, and potatoes ended up in the mix, along with some peppers and red onion.
The green zucchini found its home in a frittata. That yellow-green disk on the bottom is the cabbage! I sliced it up and then roasted it with a honey and Dijon mustard mixture. It was so good! If you think you hate cabbage, cooking it this way might just change your mind. I also roasted some purple potatoes to round off the meal.
The last meal for this week is one of my favorite summer dinners: BLTs! I used a homemade eggless mayo (recipe coming soon!) for these because the store-bought kind is gross and making the traditional stuff yourself is a huge pain. We threw in some of the basil too, to mix things up, and had a cucumber salad on the side.
What do you think about the roasted cabbage? Share in the comments below!
