Fresh, local eats

I haven't been following recipes much lately in my cooking. Whatever I get from the CSA is what I throw together in a meal. Here's an example of a tasty meal made with fresh and local ingredients.

This stew started out with some steamed red potatoes and a separate dish of mixed vegetables. We had "elote blanco" which is similar to field corn - starchy but not really sweet. I boiled them and cut the kernels off the cobs. This does not cook as quickly as sweet corn and they were still a bit chewy at this point. I sauteed an onion, some green pepper, and then added a yellow summer squash before stirring in the corn.

To make the stew the next day, I started out by dumping the leftover potatoes and vegetable mixture in a saucepan and adding a jar of tomato juice leftover from processing a flat of tomatoes. Fearing this would not be quite enough for dinner, I added some dehydrated potatoes. For seasoning, I added a few dehydrated jalapenos. To bulk it up a bit more and make it filling, I ground toasted pumpkin seeds and dehydrated Great Northern beans in my spice grinder. I sifted out the chunky bits of pumpkin seed hulls and stirred the rest into the stew, giving it that somewhat grainy appearance.

Result? A filling stew with lots of fiber and flavor.




A new vendor at a new Farmer's Market in town is selling hydroponic lettuce. We don't get lettuce this time of year from the CSA so I greedily snatched up a head of lettuce at the Farmer's Market. A simple salad with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumber, and some of the olives I cured myself went nicely with the stew. The saltiness of the olives plus the moisture of the tomatoes made a dressing unnecessary.

My husband is experimenting with hydroponics and has some lettuce started so I hope to be harvesting lettuce eventually from home. Until then, I suspect I'll pick up local lettuce from the Farmer's Market from time to time.








A refreshing summer drink is easy to make from the huge Armenian cucumbers we get from the CSA plus some lime juice. I don't have a juicer so I blended my peeled cucumber with a little water until very well ground. After straining out the solids, I stirred some lime juice and simply sugar syrup into the cucumber juice. Add a little bit of ice and this drink is perfect for a hot summer evening. (I didn't toss out the solids either. Watch for a post on what I did with them over on my other blog.)

This meal was low in fat, high in fiber, mostly local, easy to make, and wonderful to eat.