Sunday, October 4, 2009

Eat Local Challenge: Week 1

Well, I've made it 4 days...

FRIDAY
Breakfast: omlet with 1/4 cup egg beaters and 2 free-range local eggs, filled with all local potatoes, onions and red bell pepper, and goat cheese.
Lunch: Tricky Fish!! (Thumbs up and perfect score on "Behind the Kitchen Door" on WCHS news) I like to eat here because a lot of their food is organic, free-range and most of the meat is from local farms. I had 2 crispy chicken tacos with red beans and rice. Too bad Charleston doesn't have more places like this to eat.
Dinner: I had the salad (all local) and PB/J sandwich I packed for my lunch and didn't eat. BTW... peanut butter is my "10th" exception. I also made a homemade balsalmic vinegarette that is better than Kraft's.

SATURDAY
Breakfast: Got up early and made biscuits and tomato gravy. I thought I'd never had tomato gravy before. (My mom told me I had.) To be honest, I'd never even heard of it until a few years ago. It's a "country thing." Basically, you make gravy and add diced tomatoes and crush them with the back of your spoon a little bit. My mom said that she made it a few times when I was little, but she'd never heard it called "tomato gravy," just creamed tomatoes. At any rate, Jeremy said his Mawmaw Jones used to make the best tomato gravy. She would brown some bacon and use the bacon fat for the roux for making gravy. Then when she was finished, she'd put the crumbled bacon back in the gravy. My mouth is watering just thinking about it. Here's the recipe I used and it was pretty darn good. Next time, I'm using bacon, though.
Lunch: we took Sandy to the Olive Garden for her birthday. I had Grilled Shrimp Caprese and gratuitous amounts of bread sticks and salad.
Dinner: Okay, here's where I messed up. I wasn't planning on eating dinner. Big lunch at the OG. Well, Jeremy bought some wings at Sam's Club that afternoon, and took them up to my mom's to make while we sat around a fire pit drinking non-local wine. (She had some opened she wanted to finish...) And I had some wings.

SUNDAY
Breakfast: oats with milk, coffee and creamer
Lunch: Roasted tomato soup (all local)  and Olive Garden leftovers
Dinner: a local salad with feta cheese and homemade balsalmic vinegarette and the best white pizza I've ever made. Made the crust with local flour. Topped the pizza with some homemade bechamel sauce with local basil, and topped the pizza with tomato, roasted garlic, a diced cherry pepper, carmelized onions, spinach (all local) and goat cheese.

The good news is that Thursday, when Jeremy went to the WVU game, he stopped by Ike and Tiff's to see their new baby boy. And he left their house with this:

Bell, hot banana, habanero, red chili, and cherry peppers. I don't even know what to do with them, but I couldn't be happier. I am def going to make some red chili chutney and some hot pepper jelly. Does anyone have any ideas what to do with a half a kroger bag full of habaneros?

They also sent a gallon zip lock bag full of basil, which I just finished turning into pesto. Yum.

1 comment: