big farmer's market take results in RAGU * 2

More and more farmer's markets are including local ranchers and purveyors of local meats. By and large, these small farms raise their animals the right way - fed on the land, no hormones, no antibiotics and plenty of sunshine.

Well the take from yesterday's farmer market visit yielded two AMAZING ragu today. The only unpleasant part was standing over the stove in August cooking these sauces.

but with my homemade bread and a salad of heirloom tomatoes, they made an amazing dinner and even better leftovers.

Fruits

I bought some local peaches, spinach, pasta sauce (from Petaluma). Unfornately the tortillas from Whole Foods is from New Mexico. Mainly fruits and vegetables from California are contributing to my diet.

Farmer Market Triumph

Wow, what a heavy heavy shop this Saturday.

Cantaloupe, 15 peaches, 5 apples (first of the season), eggs, bell peppers, corn, garlic, ...

And to learn from the end of last week, we're cooking most of it to enjoy during the week.

August will be a cheesy month

Hungry House
So I stopped by Murray's Cheese on Thursday and picked up 1 1/2 lbs. of cheese. We found three New York cheeses, Sprout Creek Toussaint, Dancing Ewe Caciotta and Lively Run Cayuga Blue. Added to that was a Lancaster, PA cheese - Goot Essa Cheddar. There are all fantastic cheeses, but the major cheese eaters deemed them all behind our house favorite, Cato Corners Bambino Vivace (which we bought another 1/2 lb of at the farmer's market).

The Grand Army Plaza market also has Lynnhaven Goat Cheese, so that'll be next weekend.

All the cheeses made a fantastic cheese plate, along with a few wedges of our house bread.

Hungy House Exempt Meal no. 1

One had pizza at Adrienne's Pizza Bar. The other had lunch at Union Square Cafe.

Lunch at Union Square was:

1. Bread - baked in-house, but of flour from far away
2. Heirloom tomato salad with onions and goat cheese - all local
3. Frascatelli with all sorts of things - made in-house of man far, far away ingredients.

looking forward to the weekend. the house is getting very spare....

Day One in the Hungry House

Well, we ate well. We ate green beans, corn, eggplant, strip steak, chicken soup, and homemade bread.

Bread? Ah bread. We'll be making our own bread this month. We found a grist mill that buys wheat from Long Island and mills it in RI. But, they only make whole wheat flour, so we'll be eating some seriously dense loaves as I work in 10% white flour, milled in VT, but grown in SD.

Already, I realize that we need to cook a lot on the weekends and have food available.

Day One

Okay, so when I signed up for the local challenge I didn't really contemplate that there would be sacrifices in eating local. I signed up because I thought it would be easy enough to do. My two exemptions are bread and cereal, because my understanding is even the ingredients must be local. Thus even if I buy fresh baked bread, unless the flour is locally made, I'm out of luck. Therefore, chocolate is out for a month. Yesterday I went to Lucca, my favorite sandwich shop, on Chestnut Avenue in San Francisco. The problem, however, is that it carries imports. Fortunately, the turkey and cheese are locally produced in Sonora. The hummus was made at the shop, but the chickpeas were imported so I had to pass. I am sure that I will commit a number of violations as I attempt to eat locally. For example, I doubt the scone that I snack on today at Starbucks was made locally, and of course the Cotswald cheese left in my fridge from last week that I had with my eggs today is made in England. More or less, I ate locally today with corn, ravioli with artichokes, and a turkey sandwich.