Eat Local Challenge: Week 2

Week 2 and I'm on a roll... This is fun!

MONDAY
Breakfast: homemade granola (I substituted local black walnuts for all the nuts and local honey for the maple syrup)
Lunch: leftover white pizza from Sunday night and a local salad with feta cheese and homemade balsalmic vinegarette
Dinner: grass-fed beef pot roast with carrots from my garden, potatos from my father-in-law's garden and farmer's market onions. Braised in 12 oz. of Mountaineer Brewing Company Stout Ale (okay for drinking, but better for cooking) and 2 cups Wolfgang Puck organic veg broth. Throw in a bay leaf, salt and pepper. Voila!
Snacks: homemade carrot cake muffin (local carrots and applesauce), string cheese, local Rome apple and local free-range hard boiled egg

TUESDAY
Breakfast: homemade granola, milk
Lunch: leftover pot roast and a side salad from the cafeteria
Dinner: Calzones made with local flour, onions, spinach, all-local homemade red sauce, hot peppers, and not local goat cheese.
Snacks: carrot cake muffin, egg, string cheese, apple ... do we see a pattern here??

WEDNESDAY
Breakfast: granola and milk
Lunch: Roasted tomato soup
Dinner: Open-face roast beef sandwiches with leftover pot roast and gravy, local mashed potatoes, and homemade hamburger buns made with local flour
Snacks: apple muffin (local flour, apples, eggs--I left the pecans out), egg, Cabot snack cheese and apple

THURSDAY
Breakfast: granola
Lunch: leftover open-faced roast beef sandwich
Dinner: Italian wedding soup with venison meatballs, carrots from my garden and local spinach. I hate to admit, but I used store-bougtht chicken broth, but it was Wolfgang Puck organic free-range chicken stock.
Snacks: same as every day...

FRIDAY
Breakfast: granola
Lunch: the best BLT I've had in a while from Bluegrass Kitchen. I love this place cause the food is awesome, and guess what? The bacon was from Jackson County. I also had their blue cheese coleslaw, which I highly recommend.
Dinner: Graziano's Pizza. Booo! But it was good and I was busy handing out 5K packets to pre-registered runners for the 5K on Saturday. Convenience food. I also bought some Starr Hill Brewery Red Ale on my way home. The brewery is in Charlottesville, VA. 241 miles away. I checked...

SATURDAY
Breakfast: granola
Lunch: Pork BBQ from the food vendor at Pumpkins in the Park. Not even sure the name of them.
Dinner: Fettucini with Meatballs made from venison and homemade sauce. Almost 100% of this meal was local. The breadcrumbs in the meatballs weren't. Everything else was local or is on my list of exceptions. This is getting easier the more I do it.

SUNDAY
Breakfast: two eggs and whole wheat toast with peach jam I made last year.
Lunch Roasted Tomato Soup. I am wearing out this recipe. I made a double batch and froze most of it. Wish I had this recipe when tomatoes were in high season.
Dinner: Stouffer's Vegetable Lasagna. Hey, when Mom offers to make dinner, you can't turn it down.
We also drank a bottle of Fisher Ridge Pork Barrel Red. This is my new favorite red wine. Sorta spicy. And, its from Putnam County. Good stuff for $14 a bottle.

Here is my recipe for venison meatballs. Last year, we must've put up 15 pounds of ground venison in the freezer. The problem with deer meat is that it has a wild taste, which limits you on using it in place of ground beef in some recipes. I found this meatball recipe from Simply In Season, which I've checked out from the library a handful of times. It's a pretty nice cookbook, as it is organized by season, and has a section for all-year things like breads and sauces. The recipe is specifically for venison, but I'm sure you could substitute lean beef.

VENISON MEATBALLS

1 lb. ground venison
1 egg beaten
1/2 c. bread crumbs
1/2 c. milk
1/4 c. diced onion
1/2 tsp. garlic
1/2 tsp. each salt and pepper
1/2 tsp. chili powder

Mix all ingredients thoroughly and form 1 inch balls. Bake on a greased baking sheet at 350 for 30 minutes.

These freeze very well, too, BTW.