Week 1!

First week of eating local is in the books! Since there’s not much available for fresh fruits and veggies, I decided to check out Clancy’s Meat and Fish selection of meat and dairy from local farms. Along with a few goodies I found at my local grocery store I feel like I got off to a pretty good start.

Clancy’s: steak, ground beef, heavy cream, deli ham, deli turkey
Kowalski’s: frozen veggies, frozen berries, alfalfa sprouts
The Oak and Plough Farm: garlic

*Brown Bag lunch

Lunch for the week we made sandwiches from deli meat at Clancy’s (turkey for me and ham for my husband). I also lucked out with some locally grown alfalfa sprouts. I’ll be honest and admit that i wasn’t able to make it all 5 work days with the same sandwich… but 3 out of 5 isn’t too bad! I’m going to look for some more lunch ideas for next week to keep me from getting bored with the same old sandwich.

Clancy's turkey sammich

*Sunday

Fettuccine With Lima Beans, Peas, and Leeks. I found the recipe here, on Real Simple.

Fettuccine w/ lima beans, peas, and leeks

The cream, peas and garlic were all local, cream from clancy’s peas from ….. and garlic from The Oak and Plough Farm (with whom we have a great hookup through my husbands work). YUM

*Monday

Steak and roasted veggies! Again, I found the recipe on Real Simple here. This is a recurring theme, I can’t help it, it all sounds so good!

*Friday

Sandwiches for dinner, neither of us felt like cooking…..still tasted great!

*Saturday and Sunday

Chili! I used the recipe below with my grass fed, Minnesota raised ground beef

1 lb. ground beef (browned)
1 16 oz. can of corn
1 16 oz. can of chili beans
1 16 oz. can of kidney beans
1 16 oz. can of tomato sauce
1 16 oz. can of tap water
1 yellow onion (chopped)
2 cloves of garlic (minced)
salt, pepper, and chili powder to taste!

Throw everything in a crock pot and cook on low for 8-10 hours. Serve with crackers, shredded cheese or whatever you like!
It’s perfect for these cold winter days (high of -4 anyone?)

*Dessert!

I almost forgot the best part of the whole week! Homemade whipped cream made from the rest of the cream from the pasta I made on Monday. It was a really easy recipe from ‘A World of Cake’ by Krystina Castella. We piled the whip cream on top of some frozen berries from Sno Pac, grown in Caledonia, MN.

1 cup cream
1.5 T of sugar
1 tsp vanilla
whip until soft peaks form

So far so good! I’m going to spend some more time searching the shelves to see if I can’t get all of my dinners to include some local ingredients. I also have a few other ideas I’m working on to share with you here. Have a great week!