ELC 9/07, Day 5

We're figuring this stuff out, I swear.

Breakfast:
Homemade granola (about 60% local by volume; local oats, butter and sunflower seeds; unlocal: coconut, wheat germ, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, cinnamon, canola oil and maple syrup)
Yogurt (nonlocal; can't find any local! help?)
Eden soymilk (local company)
Strawberry kefir (unlocal. Anyone have a local source?)

Lunch:
Hubby was sent to work with a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on local bread, an heirloom tomato salad with local mozzarella cheese (non local EVOO, balsamic and salt), and a local Molly apple.

I munched on leftover tofu "egg" salad sandwiches (local tofu, celery, onion; nonlocal soy mayo, mustard, relish, turmeric, s&p) on fresh rye bread from one of our local bakeries, Strawberry Moon (they use organic flour, too, yay!; the ambrosial tomato salad from vintage cooking (so good!) with local cherry & pear tomatoes and oregano from the backyard (nonlocal EVOO, honey and s&p). Oh, and alert the media! I, Chessa, former hater of all things related to raw celery, at several skinny stalks of fresh CSA celery! Dipped in nonlocal peanut butter. But seriously, I don't think I've intentionally eaten raw celery since I was in 3rd grade. Always hated the stuff. I feel a little silly now, because mostly it just tastes like crunchy nothing. But it was my one holdout, immature "I hate you just because" vegetable, and I'm feeling pretty awesome about overcoming that issue. Could it have something to do with it being local, and not grown for the supermarket showcase? It makes me wonder.

Dinner
For dinner, I was planning eggplant parmigiana, because we received two white eggplants in our CSA share. My recipe called for me to peel them and bake the slices for 15 minutes. I realized as soon as they were sliced and on the baking sheet that this was probably going to be far too little eggplant to make it. Hmmm. So I thought, maybe lasagna! I got out my no-cook lasagna noodles, the homemade sauce and the TJs cheese. But what about ricotta? We didn't have any, so I thought maybe seasoned tofu, but that would be a lot of work (what with needing to food processor and then having wash it). Then I realized that on a whim earlier this week I purchased some local-ish cottage cheese (funny story: I bought it because the brand was "Michigan." When I got home I checked the location on the packaging out of curiosity and found that in this case Michigan was in Ohio. Lame.) I checked in with the internet and found that yes, cottage cheese can sub for ricotta with no known issues. So in it went. About an hour later, I dug into our tiny 8x8 eggplant lasagna, and all I can say is, it was worth it. So good! The sauce was amazing, the eggplant tender and smoky, and the cottage cheese did just fine, thank you.

Oh and we also had some cherry/pear tomatoes that I intended to make into salad, but when the time came around to do it, I was too hungry so we just ate them plain. Still delicious. :)

And there may have been an ice cream run later in the evening, to a locally owned joint just a few miles up the road.