Local Variety
One of the things I love about eating locally is the variety of foods that available. A couple weeks ago my brother-in-law asked me if I’d be interested in some meat rabbits. He had found a local lady that raised them and she had some that were almost ready. Last week he delivered my 2 fresh meat rabbits. My local grocery store doesn’t carry rabbit, I would have to drive all the way to West Side Market in Cleveland to buy some, and I don’t even know if those are local.
I was trying to decide how to cook them, when I remembered the Jamie Oliver cookbook I read last winter featured a wild game section. Since his recipes focus on fresh local ingredients I knew one of his recipes would fit the bill. After some searching I came across his recipe for: Grilled Marinated Rabbit and Rabbit Stew with Dumplings. I decided to try them both. The stew was my favorite, probably because I’m partial to stews with dumplings instead of grilled things.
I was happy to have all the ingredients needed in my pantry, and most of them were local. The garlic was from my garden and the herbs are potted in the living room. The pearl onions were the little ones from my garden and I happened upon oyster mushrooms at the market on Saturday. I didn’t have local dark beer, although if I got some Great Lakes that would count. I generally keep Guinness around for cooking.
I love learning new things, so it was interesting to learn how to portion and cook rabbit (I did take some photos but I’ll spare you, they’ll be on my Flickr if you want to see them). This wasn’t my first time eating rabbit, but it was for Mr Chiots. I also just found a local source for Muscovy ducks and I’ll be getting one of those soon, perhaps instead of a Christmas goose we’ll have Christmas duck. I can’t wait, I don’t think I’ve ever had duck before. I just found out that there are wild boar in Ohio! I’ll be encouraging Mr Chiots to go hunting for those now that he’s an accomplished hunter.
What’s the most interesting local item available to you?
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Fresh Produce from Local Roots Market
I love my local farmer’s market, it’s fantastic. I enjoy chatting with the vendors and seeing all the things they grow. If I want endive or arugula I have to grow it myself or do without, none of the vendors at my local market carry the more exotic vegetables. If I want regular potatoes I can find them, fingerlings – not a chance. If I wanted anything but apples past September I was out of luck. I thought I hit the exotic vegetable jackpot this summer when I spotted one savoy cabbage.
Not so with the Local Roots Market. I spotted lots of arugula, endive, fingerling potatoes, bitter winter greens and lots of other interesting things. I mentioned yesterday that I was impressed with the variety of produce I spotted on Saturday. It was a hard choice deciding what to buy, but I finally settled on these things.
Four stalks of brussles sprouts and a big celeriac root. The sprouts we’ll roast or saute with bacon and onions. The celeriac is most likely going to be made into this soup.
These fingerlings were roasted in the oven last night. We ate half last night and the other half will be eaten with eggs tonight.
These oyster mushrooms will be sauteed in olive oil and tossed with some soy sauce. The winter greens don’t have a plan yet, I think perhaps they’ll end up being paired with a warm mustard bacon vinaigrette and topped with those mushrooms and some caramelized onions.
I scored a huge bag full of red onions and a few cipollini onions. The red ones will be caramelize and made into caramelized red onion soup to be enjoyed with a crusty bread. Some of them will make their way into braised red cabbage and others will most likely top potatoes and grace other savory dishes.
These carrots were roasted in the oven whole and we enjoyed them with a side of fingerling potatoes, brussels sprouts, and mushrooms. I also bought a few more balls of hand spun yarn from Trinity Woolen Mill, I forgot to take a photo of them until too late last night.
I also scored a few bunches of sage which will come in handy for our Thanksgiving feast on Thursday and for savory soups throughout the winter. I didn’t buy any endive, I forgot actually. I have arugula growing in the garden so I didn’t buy any of that either.
What’s your favorite exotic vegetable?
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Local Roots Market in Wooster, OH
This past Saturday I went to the Local Roots Market in Wooster, Ohio. I heard about it this summer while at the local fair and I’ve been watching their website for news and updates. They opened recently and since I had Saturday off, I headed over to Wooster to see what the market was like.
Their plan is to have an year-round indoor farmer’s market to connect the community with local sources of meat, dairy, vegetables, honey, and other locally produced products.
I was given a tour and told all about the future plans of the Local Roots Market. They plan on opening up a cafe that uses local food. A local butcher would like to open a shop in the back of the building selling locally raised meat. They want to install a commercial kitchen the farmers can use to add value to their produce. It’s a wonderful plan that I can get behind. I’m very excited to have a source for produce all winter long. I plan on attending several times a month (when I have a Sat off) and supporting this great initiative.
There were a variety of farmers/artisans there on Saturday because they were holding their annual Holiday Market. Generally they don’t have vendors selling crafts. This is a nice change. I’ve heard that some farmer’s markets are more craft markets than produce markets.
The variety and quality of produce available was wonderful. I do love my local farmer’s market (which ended yesterday morning), but because it’s a very rural area the variety of produce is at times lacking. I’ve never seen arugula, endive, bitter greens, fingerling potatoes and other interesting items at my local market. This market featured many of the items I love to eat. I saw endive, arugula, purple and white carrots, all kinds of herbs, ground cherries, brussels sprouts on the stalk, spelt artisan bread, raw milk cheese, grass-fed beef, celery roots and much more.
All the vendors have signs with their farm name, the type of farming they do: organic, conventional, integrated pest management, etc. This is great because you can look at the sign and know right away if the use chemicals or practice organic methods.
The market was packed, which is always good to see. It’s clear that there are a lot of community members that are interesting in eating locally and strengthening the local food system and the local economy. I’ll show you all the delicious things I got tomorrow.
Have you found that the local food movement is growing in your area?
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Local Unpasteurized Cider
Fresh cider is one of my favorite fall treats. We buy gallons and gallons of it throughout the months of Sept-Nov. When we first moved here 8 years ago we found a great source of unpasteurized cider from a small local mill. I’ve tried cider from many of the other small local orchards, but the Mapleton Cider Mill has the best product!
One of the things I like about this cider is that it’s unpasteurized, so it hasn’t been heated to death or treated with ultraviolet light to kill all the goodness inside. How does this affect the flavor? Well, I can’t really explain besides saying it tastes like cider and not apple juice like much of the stuff you buy in the stores.
4-5 years ago they tried to make selling unpasteurized cider illegal in Ohio. I guess there are a lot of people like us that prefer the taste because there was an uproar. Our mill sold it “under the table” that year, they didn’t put up their usually signs by the road. It didn’t hurt their business because they were always low on cider when I stopped by.
The state finally decided to let people sell it as long as they put a warning on the cider. This doesn’t deter us, we drink gallons and gallons of cider this time of year.
My favorite way to drink cider, mulled of course; with cinnamon, cranberries and other warming spices. I also boil some down to make cider syrup, which we enjoy over pancakes and drizzled over apple pie. I add some to my apple butter as well and I often make mulled cider jelly to give away. I also use several gallons to make apple cider vinegar and this year hard cider.
Another thing I love about small local places is that they use the honor system. We stop by, grab a few gallons and put our money in the box. You just can’t beat living locally!
What’s your favorite way to enjoy cider? Do you have any special cider recipes you’d like to share?
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Staying Warm with Local Wool
For the last couple years we’ve been trying to live more locally, not just in what we eat but in all areas of our life. I try to search out a local source for just about everything I need. Since Mr Chiots is taking up hunting this year, he’s going to need a nice warm scarf. I decided a wool one would be ideal and set out to find a source for local wool. I finally found Trinity Woolen Mill through Local Harvest. Luckily they were going to be at a nature arts festival nearby so we went to see what they had.
I bought some lovely brown yarn that was from “Pansy” a Blue Faced Leicester. I love that the yarn came with a photo of the sheep it came from, how wonderful is that? Their yarn is all natural, they practice sustainable husbandry of their flock and they use bio-degradable, non-phosphate, dye-free, fragrance-free potions in the processing of the wool.
I haven’t knitted since I was in jr high, so it took me a few minutes to get back into the swing of it. It’s like riding a bicycle though, so in no time I was back in the groove. Mr Chiots even tried his hand at knitting after a quick lesson.
Knitting is something I’ll definitely be doing a lot more of in the future. It’s such a wonderful evening activity, perfect for those cold winter evenings. I just found an alpaca farm that makes hand spun yarn not too far away and I’ll be searching for more sources of local fiber. I can’t wait to make myself an alpaca scarf or a pair of fingerless mittens.
What kind of hobbies do you take up in the winter to make up for the loss of gardening?
