Posts under ‘recipes’

I had a fabulously local Thanksgiving! The meal was the culmination of a years’ worth of locavoring with several dishes from the freezer, jars, and vacuum-sealed packages, where they’d been since they were picked and preserved in season. I enjoyed collecting and preparing the various menu items as much as I did eating them!  I [...]

Saturday’s local dinner (not part of any challenge) was: Homemade corn chips with salsa verde (recipes below) Pan sauteéd chicken breasts (from Ox Hollow) with cumin (not local) Steamed broccoli (from Waldingfield) Salsa Verde Recipe 1 lb tomatillos (from Rose’s) 1 cilantro ice cube (from our freezer, most likely from Missy’s of Goshen, NY) 2 [...]

Macoun season is coming to a close so it’s time to gather up as many of these delectable apples and save them for the cold dark days to come. We core and section the apples and simmer them in about one inch of cider. When the sections are fork tender, we crank them through the [...]

September 30 was the fifteenth week of our CSA  (Waldingfield Farm, pick-up point Sandy Hook Organic Farmer’s Market behind St. John’s Episcopal Church). We scored: three heads of lettuce mustard greens broccoli rabe greens two bags of potatoes several mini eggplants green beans assorted tomatoes butternut squash acorn squash In honor of all of those [...]

I tried my hand again at making butter from raw milk. The trick is allowing sufficient time for the cream to rise. It’s not difficult and the butter was delicious. Here’s how I did it. Separate the cream from the milk. I poured the milk into this glass vessel, covered and refrigerated it for at [...]

I finally made a decent raw milk yogurt! I had the flavor I wanted, but couldn’t get the consistency. I kept getting something that would properly be called a yogurt shake. The problem was that I wasn’t heating the milk enough. Heat destroys the enzymes and natural good bacteria in the milk and I wanted [...]

My biggest barrier to making my own raw milk yogurt was in finding a reliable low-heat source. My electric oven does not have a pilot and the light bulb lights intermittently. With the arrival of my Excalibur Dehydrator, I am ready to go! I do like the organic local Hawthorne Valley yogurt as well as [...]

Cranberries are one of three fruits indigenous to North America. In case you were wondering, the other two are blueberries and concord grapes. One of my “rules” for defining local is 100 miles. These cranberries come from just under 200 miles away so I’m calling them mezza-local. This year, something bothered me about the typical [...]

Making granola is one of the easiest things to prepare and it may even qualify as baking. Wonderful smells emanate from the kitchen. And it’s versatile: you can eat it right out of the bag, you can eat it like cereal, you can sprinkle it on yogurt or anything else that needs a crunch; the [...]

The first local pumpkins of the season appeared on the scene. I found mine at Mason’s Farm Market. (They don’t have a Web site, but they’re on Route 25 in Monroe, Ct. at the Bradford Drive intersection. Map here.) It turns out that pumpkins are quite nutritious; they’re rich in beta carotene, potassium, Vitamin C, [...]