Now that we have all of our members on board and people are starting to get their Dark Days Meals up on their blogs it’s time to recap all these fabulous meals. For the EAST group this is our ON week, so the member’s meals are listed below. If you’re in the WEST group, check back later today for the DD meals of your leaders and to see if they’ve posted a recap of your meals on their individual blogs. We apologize if we missed your meal, we’re doing the best we can while still trying to iron out all the wrinkles in this challenge. If you are in this group and don’t see your meal listed below add the links in the comment section. Make sure you e-mail links to your group leader by Wed of each week to make sure it’s included in these recaps.
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OHIO VALLEY with Susy from Chiot’s Run
(photos link to respective blog posts – some have recipes,
to read about each meal click on the photo)
These past two weeks were tasty ones here in the Ohio Valley. My group members were cooking up delicious goodness for sure.
Margo from Thrift at Home made two tasty meals: Macaroni and Romanesco and Crock Pot Stroganoff. Shayla from Life On Fire After 40 struggled a bit and is searching LocalHarvest.org and a few other places to find more local ingredients. She managed to get a nice batch of Butternut Squash Soup going for her first meal.
Allison from The Life of a Novice made oven baked grass fed beef patties, roasted beets and roasted purple potatoes. Gabe from life, from the ground up. made delicious maple pork chops with collar greens (now that sounds like a perfectly southern meal to me even though Gabe is in Ohio).
Jenelle from Delicious Potager cooked up some wonderful looking Roasted Butternut Chowder with Apples and Bacon her first week and Butternut Squash Carbonara her second week. Learning to love squash is a great way for us northerners to make it through the Dark Days Challenge with ease!
Other Participants, didn’t get meal e-mails from them, I know a few of them are behind & haven’t officially started yet.
Put Em’ Up: A Chronicle of Making Stuff
Our Rural Home
SOLE for the Soul
C & J Homemade
Martha who’ll be adding her meals in the comments
UPPER NEW ENGLAND with Ryan from Phoenix Hill Farm
It is only the second week and I am already inspired by all the SOLE and TASTY meals my group has been cooking up. I am also excited to see how our 100 mile circles overlap in ingredients.
Barbara from the crowing hen is looking forward to embarking on this challenge and hopes that she is opened to a new world that will result in great positive changes as when she participated in the 25 Things for Charity. Her first meal was a simple, potato and carrot with a bit of bacon soup topped with green onions and cider vinegar.
Emily from finicky farmer had my mouth watering as soon as I opened her blog to see a big picture of a kale, potato frittata. She combined all the seasonal items I love the most and put them into one meal.
Fred from grown away started his meal off with a too sweet butternut squash soup that he served with a crostini topped in melted cheddar. The main course was a delicious garlic and horseradish marinated sirloin steak with roasted carrot and turnips.
Sherry from the onion flower made bison stew with dumplings with root vegetables and fresh frozen vegetables from her garden.
Lella from 31 and holding found the first week easy as she was able to use her CSA ingredients to make a Pan fried cube steak with roasted root beets, carrots, sweet potatoes and potatoes.
Bryne from You Got Me Cooking made homemade tortillas and burritos. Her burritos started with sour cream, then local beef, Cabot cheese, and home canned peach salsa.
Stephanie from This Little Monkey cooked up some chicken stew and dumplings all from local ingredients that she found when cleaning out her fridge.
Lindsay from 100 Mile Locavores made what she called a truckstop meal, potato and carrot latkes, with fried egg and maple breakfast sausage, but I’m not sure I have ever been to a truckstop that has made a meal of such quality.
Bethany from prosperous pantry focused on using up her leftovers from her locally sourced Thanksgiving and made a tasty turkey soup. Amy from My Vegetarian Paradise also made a meal from an assortment of leftovers from Thanksgiving. Kimble from A Localvore Lost in Urbanity used her new meat CSA to make an herb roasted chicken with a turnip au gratin.
Caitlin from Nine Lives n More made chili, served over rice, with corn bread on the side. Rachel from Great Faith in a Seed prepared bacon, slivered cabbage and sweet potato, sliced apples and caramelized onions fried in a cast-iron pan and sauced up with her homemade maple syrup.
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SOUTH with Emily from Sincerely, Emily
Jes (VA) at Eating Appalachia is creating, sourcing and cooking vegan. She rolled up her sleeves and dug into the fridge and freezer to create a mostly local (and beautiful) meal. Pumpkin Cream Pasta with Kale and Chickpeas.
AnnieRei (MD) at AnnieRei Unplugged cooked up a spectacular local salad, sweet potato galette service with local turkey utilizing her local CSA and a local winery too. Visit her blog for links to her local sources.
Monika (NC) at Windy City Vegan has prepared a sprouted tofu with red bell peppers, shitake mushrooms, caramelized onion and shredded roasted brussel sprouts. How about adding some local while miso to toast? Check out her blog and see what she is up to.
Susan (VA) at Backyard Grocery made marinated smoked venison, compliments of her bow-hunting hubbie and made radish chips on the side. Go see her recipes for the radish chips, I don’t know about you, but I am inspired!
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Rebecca (VA) at Eating Floyd has made a beautiful pan fried trout (local!) complete with homemade tartar sauce. She added homegrown roast butternut squash and homegrown canned green beans to her meal. If that wasn’t enough, so look at her beautiful and artistic apple dumplings for dessert.
Liz (VA) at Family Foodie Survival Guide prepared a salad, not just any salad, but a steak salad a la Nicoise! Utilizing foods from their garden and local farmers market and farms. Visit her blog to directly link to her local gems.
Jessica (SC) at Eat. Drink. Nourish. presented a roasted pork loi with cauliflower, carrots and pearl onions. Using one pot from stove top to oven she has more time to enjoy eating her meal (and her husband only has to wash up on pot!)
Jackie (NC) at Southern Fried Goodness cooked up a huge, I mean HUGE Sunday Brunch/ Blueberry buckwheat pancakes, spinach & cheese frittata and rounded it off with sausage patties. Stop by her blog to see where she sources her local ingredients, including organic wheat berries and flour!!!
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Victoria (MD) from The Soffritto has a great organic local grocery near by. She prepared bison patty melts with roasted vegetables with homemade marinara sauce where she used her homemade chili powder. Visit her blog to read about her experience.
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LOWER NE/MID-ATLANTIC with Emily from Tanglewood Farm
Sophie from Late Bloomers Farm has been working with spaghetti squash to start out the season, first in alfredo sauce and then as spaghetti squash latkes – how unique!
Angela from Bumble Lush Kitchen Garden told me that she was making “simple” meals as if it wasn’t enough effort, but honestly her meals seemed just fine and dandy to me! She started with some ground beef stuffed peppers. Her next post was about a delicious looking potato, pepper, tomatillo and spinach omelet, with rosemary. Yum!
Stacey from Fessenden Farmstead has enjoyed pork chops with fig jam from her community garden, and has been using lots of greens from her garden. She also made a beautiful roast chicken with roast potatoes.
Monica from Monica Tries to Cook made a breakfast-for-dinner omelette from local eggs, sausage and cheese. The omelette in the picture was stuffed with sausage.. looked good to me!
It would appear that Karen from Prospect the Pantry is no stranger to cooking with local, seasonal foods. Her entries were amazingly detailed, including turkey hash (I didn’t even know you can make a hash from turkey. Cool!), parsnip pear soup and ginger-scallion fish on a bed of chard and squash. Her posts include beautiful photos and detailed recipes.
Lea and Derek from A Lighter Footprint made a meal of pumpkin pappardelle with sausage bechamel, crimini mushrooms, arugula and roast squash. This meal sounds as intricate as it was beautiful!
Samantha from Listen, Foodie! has diligently eaten local foods, multiple meals a day, including poblano pepper porridge for breakfast and roasted cabbage for dinner.
Shirra from Knit and Be Happy managed to make it to the farmers’ market for her meal which consisted of venison sausage with peppers and butternut squash with rosemary. She also picked up some seckel pears at the market, as well as local honey. She’s a lucky lady to have access to such a nice market.
Jenny from The Suburban Road Less Travelled used brussels sprouts from her local co-op as well as carrots from her own garden to make soup (along with a few other veggies), though she did have an adventure finding her frozen broth, mistaking tomato sauce for it at one point. While she did mention that this wasn’t the best soup she’s ever made, it was a great example of using seasonal foods! The second week she made a meal of locally pastured pork, pulled and mixed with barbeque sauce, and honeyed beets using honey and beets from her own yard!
Kaytee from Gardening to Preserve used her own barbeque sauce to whip up some sloppy joes, but when she discovered she didn’t have bread that fit the SOLE profile she decided to use up some sprouting potatoes to make sloppy joe potatoes! Necessity is the mother of all, eh?
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We hope you enjoy traveling around the regions, reading about the East participants and what they prepared for the challenge. Be sure to click on the links to their blogs to read more about their individual challenges in preparing their dishes. Not only will your read about their individual challenges, but also find some local resources that maybe you didn’t know about.
I can’t wait to visit everyone’s blogs – thanks for the great compilation!
Woah! Look at all these great recipes to try! This is going to be a great few months of local food!
Thanks for taking the time to compile this. Can’t wait to get recipes ideas!
These look fantastic! I can’t wait to get inspired by following along with all of you.