Dark Days Challenge

Our first all local meal for the Dark Days Challenge....wasn't entirely all local. I decided to use the grass-fed beef from Springville to make spaghetti sauce. I browned the sausage and added it to my home-made tomato sauce (made with our very own home-grown tomatoes). In the same pan I sauteed the onions we had bought at the farmers market, along with our own peppers (which despite the cold weather are still producing) and garlic from last spring. We also bought parsley from the market so that went in along with dried basil from the summer garden and a bit of oregano (which was not ours but will be in next years herb garden).

The salad was home-grown greens, local apples, pecans from our tree, pomegranates from the neighbors tree and local cheese. The dressing was local olive oil and honey, more basil, California mustard and balsamic vinegar from Italy (so I guess that's a bit outside the 150mi rule).

The bread was home-made but we're still looking for a local source for grains, so the flour that went into it was not.

And the noodles were (eek!) from Pennsylvania. I had planned on making home-made noodles but got busy in the garden and doing other projects so I used the boxed kind.

All in all, not bad but we still have to make some adjustments to stay within the definition of local for this challenge. I'm not posting recipes because everything was pretty much what most people can already cook, just with ingredients found in our neck of the woods.

Maybe next week I'll come up with something more exciting....must go look for recipes :)