One Local Summer – Week… lost count (week 8!)

We’ve been away on several trips, one after the other, and have had numerous Local Summer meals en route and when staying with friends. None of which I was able to photograph (well enough), and few of which I remember in detail (as in ingredients, let alone mileage!).

I do have a picture of today’s mostly local meal, though (cooked, finally, at home):

One Local Summer meal (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

  • All organic and local (within 100 miles):
  1. Corn
  2. Sicilian roasted pepper and eggplant salad (recipe from Silk Road Cooking): green pepper, eggplant, garlic, goat cheese
  3. Mushroom dish: squash, leek, onions, garlic
  • Homegrown (within 3 feet):
  1. Cilantro in eggplant salad 
  2. Oregano, dill and basil in mushroom dish
  • Not local:
  1. Mushrooms
  2. Spices: salt, pepper, cumin powder, paprika, cayenne, sugar
  3. Olive oil
  4. Organge juice (an ingredient in the Sicilian pepper and eggplant dish)
  5. Grains and rice (Near East Whole Grain – roasted pecan and garlic: our favorite quickie, but I’m on the lookout for a homemade and potentially more local alternative)
  • This week’s lesson

There’s nothing like being back home and cooking in one’s own kitchen (however much of a mess it is)!

So many “exotic” recipes – like the ones I am trying from the wonderful travel adventure, food history and cook book by Najmieh Batmanglij, Silk Road Cooking – can be made locally. The ingredients are often readily available (around here, at least), only the spices can pose a problem (see above). Still, those spices can be the something precious, luxurious and special that makes us dream of far away places and that puts our “local” meal, and place, into perspective…

Enough ruminating: dessert!

  • Dessert

Local peaches and blueberries

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