What is a Dark Days Challenge?

The Dark Days Challenge was started by Laura McCrea at the Urban Hennery.
Unfortunately I couldn't get into her challenge, so I started my own blog.
The challenge is to try to eat one meal per week consisting of 100% locally produced food. I'm choosing to define "locally produced" as Washington State.
In my recipes I tell you the origin of the ingredients I use.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Week Thirteen of Dark Days Challenge

OK, I have to be honest here. That's the point of a blog, isn't it? I did sign on to create one meal per week of 100% local ingredients. But I didn't promise to create a totally new menu, did I? Frankly, I am getting just a little tired of potatoes and portobello mushrooms. But here is our menu for last night, with an additional dish from dinner tonight:

Roasted Potatoes with Carrots, Garlic and Rosemary
Brussels Sprout Salad
Bonus recipe from another dinner: Braised Brussels Sprouts and Portobello Mushroom





Roasted Potatoes with Carrots, Garlic and Rosemary
This is a simple dish
2-3 cups of potatoes (I used tiny delicious marble potatoes from the Klesick Family CSA box)
1 big fat carrot, trimmed and cut into fat matchstick shapes (this came from our garden)
1-10 cloves garlic (we're working on the last of the garlic from our fall harvest)
1 Tablespoon dried or fresh rosemary
olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.
Note: if you are using larger potatoes, cut into small chunks.
Prepare all the vegetables and place in a large flat baking dish. Pour about 1-2 tablespoon of olive oil on them, sprinkle on the rosemary, salt and pepper. Stir well to coat everything.
Roast in oven 10 minutes, then take out and stir. Repeat until they are done.


I LOVE this brussels sprout salad.
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/brussels-sprout-salad-recipe.html

The first time I made it I sliced the brussels sprouts by hand. I made a small amount because it took a long time. When I made it yesterday, I used my food processor and zipped through 2 cups of sprouts in no time at all. They recommend a mandolin but I don't have one.


Additional recipe
I'm calling this additional because we didn't have it with our 100% local meal, but we had it for dinner tonight and it was very delicious.

Braised Brussels Sprouts and Portobello Mushrooms
2 cups Brussels Sprouts (these came from our garden)
2 large Portobello Mushrooms (these came from the Klesick Family CSA)
1 cup sliced leeks, trim and clean well (these came from our garden)
1 Tablespoon coconut oil (or your preference of oil for cooking)
1 Tablespoon Tamari soy sauce or Bragg Liquid Aminos
1/2 to 1 cup vegetable broth

Heat the oil in a large pot. Add all the vegetables and stir fry 1-2 minutes. Add the Tamari or Bragg's and the vegetable broth. Bring to a simmer, cover, and cook until the vegetables are tender.

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