Vert-à-Go

Now that the farmers’ market is in full swing, and the garden is growing nicely, the majority of our meals are locally grown. Here’s a sampling from the weekend:

Fusilli pasta salad with sugar-snap peas, yellow peppers, green onion, cilantro, mint, and Canadian goat cheese feta (source: Vegetables: farmers’ market, herbs: my garden, feta: Bulk Cheese Warehouse)

Barbecued Mennonite farmer sausage & steak, new potatoes with chopped herbs & butter, sautéed beet stems & greens (source: Smokehaus sausage: Bulk Cheese Warehouse, Benlock Farms steak, vegetables: farmers’ market, herbs: my garden)

Sliced Mennonite farmer sausage, new potatoes with chopped herbs, mixed salad (lettuce, cucumber, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, green onion, mixed seeds), Saskatoon berries and chokecherry syrup on vanilla ice cream (source: Smokehaus sausage: Bulk Cheese Warehouse, lettuce & herbs: my garden, vegetables: farmers’ market, Sunview Farms eggs: Herbs & Health, Saskatoon berries: my neighbour, chokecherry syrup: my grandma, ice cream: Homestead Ice Cream)

Early last week I cut up a whole Pine View Farms chicken (6.5lbs), which lasted our family of four for meat the whole week. One night we had half the breast with a pepper/sugar snap pea/mushroom stirfry (I cut up the other half and fried it, then put it in the freezer to add to a curry next week).

At lunch time one day I popped the chicken back into some water with (organically grown) celery leaves/tops and let it simmer away for about half an hour, then added the resulting broth and chicken stock that I already had in the freezer to sautéed celery, onion, garlic, and mushroom. Once the vegetables were tender, I whizzed the soup with a hand blender and stirred in the chopped cooked chicken with salt, pepper, and juice from a (organic) lemon. This made enough soup for us for 2 meals.

Another evening I put the de-skinned legs, wings, and thighs into the slow cooker and made a coconut chicken curry with onion, carrot, chickpeas, and swiss chard (I would have added peas to this too but we’d already scarfed the fresh ones earlier in the week with the other half of the swiss chard, and I was out of frozen ones). This fed us very well, gave me lunch the next day, and I froze 3 additional large single portions of leftovers.

Any remaining bits of that chicken went into the freezer for future chicken stock!

This week I plan to make (among other things) a beet/goat cheese/arugula/walnut salad, a balti curry with baby tomatoes and chicken, a green pepper/sugar snap pea/mushroom/cashew stirfry with quinoa, whole wheat/buttermilk pancakes with garden strawberries & Saskatoons, pasta with fresh peas/basil/pumpkin seeds, rhubarb crisp, monastery lentils or lentil salad (depending on the weather).

Posted July 13th, 2008 under Action, Cooking, Farmers' markets, Food miles, Local food, Local food ideas, Menu, Recipes, Uncategorized, food, gardening, vegetarian. Tags: Action, Cooking, farmers market, food, gardening, Local food, Local food ideas, Menu, Recipes, vegetarian
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