Dark Days 2008 Post #1

Did I kick off the week with something unbelievable? Creative? Brand-new to my palate?

No.

I made Honeybaked Lentils, which I've made about 100 times before, including my Dark Days Meal #1 for 2007! Ha! They are just so delicious! And easy, easily adapted, healthy, etc. I'm a honey-eating vegan, but you could soooooo easily substitute agave or maple syrup or rice syrup for the honey. Or sugar. Really. It's that kind of recipe.

We were amazingly able to find a bunch of washington grown legumes this summer at one of the farms we visited for the King County Farm Tour. Black-eyed peas, white beans, pink beans, 2 kinds of lentils, some pearled barley - I'm kicking myself for not buying more when we were there! And I know that Washington is a big place and it might be more than 200 miles away. But you know - I'm vegan! We need legumes!! And these were grown in my state. I don't know why more local farms don't grow affordable* legumes, but they don't so far. Something we will investigate further as we look for land to start our commune! Bwahahahaha!

*I've seen some legumes for sale at my local farmer's market but they are $6-8 per pound! OMGWTFBBQ?!?! I think we bought the others for between $2-4 per pound. Not sure if its the yuppie mark-up or what, but I can't afford that, folks.

Back the meal - So the lentils, delicata squash, shallots, and garlic are all local and with the exception of the lentils are from our CSA share (we got a storage share, woo-hoo!). And did you notice that bread there, in the bowl? Didya? I made it! Woo-hoo! And it rose and everything!!!! I'm counting this as 90% local, since the flour is locally sourced (Stone-Buhr, for those in Washington).

Here's a gratuitous shot of my first successful bread experiment in months:
It was soooo good! I can't believe we ate it all in under a week. Eesh. There are only 2 adults and 1 2-year-old in the house, just for context.

I think my success was attributable to these factors: 1) I used a sponge method for the bread, something I've never done before 2)I used leftover grains in the recipe, in this case brown rice (not local, eeks!) 3) I preheated my oven briefly and then turned it off, and let the bread rise in there. Since we keep our thermostat set at 62-64F, it's just not warm enough for the bread to rise in this century.

Local Food Meal Honorable Mentions

Chile-Cornmeal Crusted Tofu Po Boys

So here we have some local tofu dredged in some liquids (non-local) and then locally purchased cornmeal (from when we lived in MI) and some spices. That was baked and then combined with homemade crazy pickles (from cukes from the CSA), some homemade coleslaw from local cabbages and carrots, and the aforementioned homemade bread. Soooo good!

Sloppeh Joes with Smoky Collard Greens

Ok, so the tempeh is NW produced but 229 miles away - still within my local foodshed bullseye. That was combined with some local onions and garlic, ketchup and spices. Over the magic homemade rolls. The smoky collards consisted of local collards, shallots, garlic, non-local mushrooms and a host of spices. Still, the bulk of this meal with local, so I'm pretty psyched about that.

I know I've promised you memes, and now I have TWO to catch-up on! Bethany, you're killing me! I'm kidding. I swear I will do them soon, along with some other non-local food catch-up. My parents are coming this weekend and as our levels of cleanliness are not exactly matched, we have a lot of cleaning to do. Wish me luck!