Urban Dark Days - Local Eating Challenge - 11/13

Well - I am officially thinking more often about where my food is coming from and trying to eat more local. Today Lexi and I went to Sonnewald Natural Foods - where the sell only natural and organic food and products - and have a bulk section where you can purchase bulk items such as grains, nuts, pastas, dried fruits etc. and I stocked up on some staples. I am not sure that these purchases really qualify as "local" in the sense that many items were not local (ex. pasta) however, they stock dairy and meat from local farms as well as produce - some of which they grow themselves. It is a small family business that has been ongoing for years. They also do nutrition and natural supplement counseling. I just love shopping here. It is a bit out of the way, but I combined my trip with a Freecycle pickup.

Lexi really wanted a whole coconut - not at ALL local - but it was organic. We took it home and she and Chase cracked it and drank some of the mil. I then found a recipe for Fresh Coconut Cake on the Internet and although it was involved - the kids grated all the coconut and we made this cake from scratch. We used organic flour, sugar, vanilla(also Fair Trade) shortening, butter and eggs and we had a whole cup of coconut milk which we used in place of the dairy milk. It was excellent.

On the Menu for Dinner:

A modified version of Jamie Oliver's Real Mushroom Soup.
I used Portobello and Cremini mushrooms grown locally, purchased at Sonnewald. The red onion was part of last weeks CSA share from Spoutwood farm. I used garlic and dried lemon thyme from my garden. I did not use truffle oil, lemon ( but the thyme gave it a nice flavour) or marscapone cheese - but gave it instead a bit of whole, raw milk bought at Sonnewald.

I also made a French bread dough in the bread machine - and rolled it out to be more of a foccocia. I added olive oil and some of the feta cheese that I made and sage from the garden(yes, some of my herbs are still hanging in there!) Served with the mushroom soup - it made for a great fall dinner.

For dessert we had our Coconut Cake - with the raw, whole milk.

I not sure if this one would qualify for the 90% local rule - but I did find those mushrooms to be excellent and have found that I have been able to really use a lot of the things that I have grown by drying and preserving them. I have lemon thyme, rosemary, oregano, garlic - and should pull in some sage and parsley for drying.