Sunday, August 30, 2009

One Local Summer: Final Meal, Week 13

This is one of two meals that I cooked this week with local ingredients.

First, a pot roast in my crock pot. Last Tuesday I got beef bones from one of my favorite vendors at the farmer's market in Roseville, Chaffin Farms. I've been making chicken and vegetable stock all along but had not tried my hand at beef stock.

These bones provided a tasty step toward that stock. I added the bones, garlic, onions, a potato and a few carrots and cooked it all for about 12 hours.

I poured the stock over the chuck roast in my crock pot. Added my usual carrots, potatoes, more onions and seasoning and let it cook away for 8 hours. It was the best pot roast I've ever made; I really think the stock made all the difference.

Second, we had friends for dinner last night. Kerry barbecued tri-tip as usual (I had to make another batch of barbecue sauce). I made spinach, mushroom risotto using homemade chicken broth from Chaffin Farm chickens. I love risotto in any form; even though it was 107 outside I managed to keep stirring without melting away. I had the air conditioning turned down to 76.

I had planned to serve sliced tomatoes from our garden but all of a sudden our orchard had a bunch of ripe pears, and I had blue cheese and walnuts. So a salad of home grown pears, roasted walnuts leftover from last year's farmer's market and bleu cheese topped with a vinaigrette dressing.

I also made salsa for the first time to go with chips (not homemade) for an appetizer. We had cantaloupe for dessert. It was so sweet.

This week I want to try my hand at making sun dill pickles. I'll let you know how it all turns out.

1 comment:

blogauthor said...

YUMMMMMMMM. How do you get such great photos of your food? Food is notoriously impossible to photograph.