A Local Feast

Today's local menu included:

• Homemade granola (with a few adjusments to that recipe based on what we had on hand) and strawberries from mom & dad's garden in Olympia with Yami vanilla yogurt (Auburn, WA)
• Grilled cheese with homemade wheat bread (made with Stone Buhr Northwest-grown whole wheat flour and local honey), Tillamook pepper-jack and cheddar cheese (Tillamook, OR), and green onions from our deck

and on tap for tonight:

• Pizza with a Tillamook cheese sauce and local beets, sausage, and green onions.  The dough we make using the recipe for focaccia bread I discovered last summer in the cookbook Simply in Season and mentioned in this post, except with half the yeast, which makes a fabulous pizza dough.

Here's one of our pizzas with similar ingredients from a few weeks ago - YUM!!!

… And we’re back!!

The decision has been made: Pam and I will once again be eating exclusively local this summer! Our official start date is June 5 (aka, the day Mike is finished with AMT…), but we’re doing some gearing up to get ready for it.  I’ve gotten much better at making bread since last summer, as evidenced by the rosemary garlic French bread (modified from this recipe that my dad directed me to) that I made today – delicious!!  I’ve now got some of our frozen strawberries and rhubarb from last summer thawing out so I can make a big batch of jam with some local honey to hold us over until berries are ready this summer to make more.  Some seeds have been planted and a few seedlings are sprouted, mostly herbs thus far, and Pam has plans to make pasta next week as well, so we’re definitely on our way!

We learned a lot last summer about what sorts of foods are available locally and fun alternatives for others that aren’t, and we were introduced to many new things, so we’re looking forward to continuing all of that this summer.  We’d love to have you all follow along and experiment with us, and be sure to let us know if you find any new local favorites so we can be sure to try them!  Stay tuned for more updates as we jump back into this!