go local - week 3

We had our local meal a little early this week because I am leaving tomorrow for New Orleans. Our meal was simple...and almost totally local. My mom and I went to the Tuesday Market down at Edward's Greenhouse this week. It was nice. There was only one produce vendor at this farmer's market, but it also included arts and crafts vendors, local wine producers, and live music. At the market I bought this beautiful rainbow chard.


Using the chard, leftover napa cabbage (from Farmer's Market last week) and my new vegetables from the garden we had a local stir fry. The vegetables from the garden include snap peas, the first five of my yellow pear tomatoes, the babiest of baby carrots, and some cilantro. The only thing that wasn't local about the dinner was the rice. The rice is from California...not shipped overseas at least. It was really good; not the most creative meal, but fresh and delicious.

xoxo~stephanie

go local - week two

I had quite a week with local eating! I found so many amazing things to add to my local diet. As a vegetarian (who doesn't really like eggs), I have really struggled trying to figure out how to get enough protein into my local diet. I decided to head over to the Boise Co-op, just to see what I could find. I am used to eating a lot of beans, lentils, nuts, tofu in order to get enough protein. I was feeling a little disenchanted until I started looking through their bulk food items and found great white beans, red lentils, split garbanzo beans and pink beans (they look like pinto beans, but they are pink!) all grown in Idaho. It didn't give a specific place of origin, and I am almost sure that they are from Northern Idaho, more than two hundred miles away, but I am counting them.


In other great news I found some beautiful produce at the farmer's market this week AND I finally got a basket for my bike, so now it is much easier to carry them home.The best part is that the basket detaches, so I can carry it through the farmer's market to carry around my produce. The picture you see above is some delicious napa cabbage, a huge head of romaine lettuce, and white garlic from the Boise Farmer's Market.


My main meal this week was a Rustic Cabbage Soup. I found a recipe on a really cool blog called 101 cookbooks. I forgot to take a picture, but you can check out the one on her website. Her blog has all kinds of amazing vegetarian recipes on it. I did some adjusting to the recipe to make it local, but these are the (all local) ingredients I used: white beans, potatoes, napa cabbage, garlic, onion (from my garden!), water, salt and pepper. I think it was some of the best soup I have ever made. Johnpaul liked it, but of course couldn't help adding that it would have been great with some sausage. I served it with a salad made with the lettuce from the farmer's market, baby peas from my garden, and onion greens from the onions I used in the soup. Delicious!

I also made some of my own yogurt this week. It is amazing how easy it was to make local yogurt. My mom found my an awesome yogurt maker at the thrift store a couple weeks ago. I have been really interested in making my own yogurt for quite a while now. My mama used to make homemade yogurt when I was little. This machine is just like the one she had, except hers was yellow. I used skim milk and nancy's yogurt (not local, but now I can use my own homemade) for the starter. It is so mild and delicious paired with fruit, especially those strawberries from the Berry Ranch.

xoxo~stephanie

Crater Lake and More

Last Wednesday, Ben and I went to Crater Lake for the first time ever. I thought I would post a few pictures cause it is an awesome place. I can't wait to go back!The first day the water was amazingly blue...
The second day it was less blue and more reflective. So awesome!
Our best self portrait yet!

My New fence.

A few photos from the garden at the beginning of June...Sorry it took me a few weeks to get them posted.

Go Local - Almost all local fried rice

Ben made us some fried rice for dinner.

It was almost all local, everything except the rice, which was from India and is Organic at least.
Added to the rice was egg, asparagus, cilantro, shitake mushrooms, and Onion. The eggs came from Washington, the Asparagus from the produce stand up the road, and the mushrooms, cilantro and onion from our Spud delivery (organic produce delivery, providing us with many local ingredients and some non-local as well).
-M

Go Local - Breakfast Eggs

So, when you happen to have a lot of local ingredients laying around you end up eating local much more frequently that just once a week.
For Breakfast this morning and yesterday morning, we had all local scrambled eggs with spinach from the produce stand and fromage blanc from Juniper Grove Farm. It was fantastic. We scarfed it down so fast we failed to take a photo of it twice...however, in addition to being delicious it was also beautiful.
-M

Go Local - Cheese Plate and Spaghetti

Thursday night Ben created a fantastic all local meal out of the several items we picked up from around Portland and our trip to and from Crater Lake.
To start we had a fantastic cheese plate. Here's what it included:
On our way home from Crater Lake we stopped in Redmond and purchase cheese from Juniper Grove Goat Cheese Farm. All of our cheeses came from them. They are amazing!
Redmondo,
Tumalo Tomme,
Dutchman's Flat,
and Pyramid.
We purchased crackers from New Season, which is a Portland based family owned natural foods grocery store. The crackers are Artisan Sea Salt and are from The Essential Baking Company located in Seattle.
The Apples, Strawberries, and Pears were purchased at a local fruit stand just up the road from our house.

For our entree we had Spaghetti with Veggies and Trout
The Spaghetti was made by pastaworks located on Hawthorne in Portland.
Veggies (peas, asparagus, spring onions, shitake mushrooms, and spinach) was from our Spud delivery (organic produce delivery, providing us with many local ingredients and some non-local as well) and the produce stand up the street.
The trout was caught by my Uncle Denny on the Prineville Reservoir.
Some think I am spoiled (Mom, who was lucky enough to partake in this meal), as always, I welcome those people to move to Portland.
-M

our trip to bend

Mom, Tracey and I returned last week from a trip to Bend. It was eventful. Here are some pictures to show you what happened:

We took a drive with dad to Shears Bridge. We stopped at the high bridge.

I know the picture is dark, but this is Tracey and I at Shears Bridge.


We stopped to take our grandparents out to lunch.

We hung out in my grandma doris's beautiful garden.

We visited several greenhouses in the Central Oregon area. Including this one, where the little frog was sunning itself in the water plants.

We saw how tomatoes are grown using hydroponics....look at the size of those tomatoes!

xoxo~ steph