Christmas Dinner

As I wrote in my last post, Christmas was not what we had originally intended.  Dinner was wonderful nonetheless.  I was excited to be bringing an entire feast of foods that I had grown and made to the table.

I almost forgot to photograph it, but did get a snapshot just as we started to eat.

It's not the best, but you'll get the idea.  The prime rib was of course from DenBesten farms.  The carrots and green beans were from the garden.  I'm really hoping that all of this snow will melt and I'll be able to harvest the last of my carrots.  The potatoes were Yukon Golds that I grew.  We've almost used all of the yukon golds, but since they're starting to sprout, that is just as well.  They also had bacon that I made earlier in them and some Cabot cheese. 

Dinner was delicious, but would have been better if my parents could have been there.  I was able to get another meal from the prime rib and made stock from the bones for later meals.  Nothing goes to waste here.  Toby even got the carrots and last of the meat from the bones after the stock was made. 

This was the 4th meal for the Dark Days Challenge at the (not so) Urban Hennery.

Meal #3 lot of stored veggies from the garden.

I woke this morning to a dusting of snow.  The kids were excited to see even the coating that we got.  The week is supposed to bring flurries most days this week, with no meaningful accumulation.   Right now, I'm really happy with pretty, but not inconvenient.  Tomorrow is the solstice and I'm planning to plant some things to celebrate.  For now, we still have lots of stored veggies from the garden. 

Last night we ate some more of those veggies.  I decided to make a roast in the rotisserie oven.  You will remember the infomercials from 8 or 10 years ago.  Hubby bought me one long ago and it is in sad shape.  The plastic arms that hold the door on have broken.  Hubby had taken it into the fire station once and we're now missing parts as well.  It still works though, and I refuse to throw it away until it completely dies. 

As you can see, the roast was a perfect medium rare.  I never make roasts and when we order our half cow from Den Besten farms, I always account for that.  There are always a few that I allow, but generally even those get turned into jerky.  The sides are the Rio Grande russets from the garden with raw milk from a local farm.  The sugar snap peas were frozen from the garden, along with the beets that were harvested in July. 

It's amusing to set a plate in front of my family and have them ask for more veggies before they even eat.  The garden veggies have that effect on us.  Somehow the store veggies just don't taste quite the same.  These will run out eventually, so I'm planning a trip to the Providence farmers market with some good friends in January.  It will be nice to see all the other lovely things they have as well.   Dark Days meals aren't so tough when your pantry and freezers already hold so many wonderful local things.  You would be hard pressed to find a meal we eat that doesn't have at least something from one of the local farms. 

This post is part of Harvest Monday at Daphne's Dandelions and The Dark Days Challenge at The (not so) Urban Hennery. 

Dark Days meal #2 Dinner with the kids

Tis the season for craziness.  I had started this challenge ready to take on the world.  Then daily I would think "Oh this meal would be good, but there are 2 items that don't count.".  So, last night I decided to just bite the bullet and make sure that the meal was done and taken care of. 

It's been interesting to define what SOLE means to this challenge.  I'm trying very hard not to bend the rules.  Everybody seems to have different ideas of what exactly will count.  There was a great discussion in the email list last week about this.  To define what I'm doing I'll say that since I am so close to the coast, I'm going to include all of Southern New England and the lower half of New Hampshire, Maine and Vermont.  I'm sure this will have some tweaks throughout the year.  For instance, when we were on vacation in Virginia, we bought a cured Virginia ham from a tiny little farm.  It isn't local to me at home, but was certainly bought in the spirit of the challenge.  When we eat that, it will probably be included. 

So on to the meal.  Last night Hubby was working at the fire station and it was just the kids and I.  They, being kids wanted something that didn't have too much going on as far as complexity.  My kids will eat a lot of things that other children won't, but they do have their limits.  Last night was all about them.

The components of the meal are:

-Hamburger sans bun from Den Besten farms in Raynham Ma topped with raw milk blue cheese from Great Hill dairy in Marion Ma  The kids did not have the blue cheese. 

-Bread and butter pickles that I made from my garden last summer  It was a particularly good year for pickles and we're running out of them quickly.

-Home fries made from the All Blue potatoes that I grew in my garden.  They were fried up in the lard I rendered from the pig we got at Den Besten.

-Cascadia sugar snap peas from my garden.

It was a yummy, but simple meal.  The burger with the blue cheese and pickles was really amazing.  Hubby is going to be very sad that we ate some of his favorite sugar snaps without him.

This post is part of the Dark Days Challenge at the (not so) Urban Hennery.  The meals from around the country are really neat.  Head on over and check out what's cooking.

The first night of Hannukah

Last night was the first night of Hannukah.  Since Hubby is Jewish and I'm a Christian, we celebrate a lot of holidays.  The kids love it and really enjoy the fact that they get to celebrate two religions.  This year our Hannukah was even better because the meal came in large part from our own garden. 

We had latkes made from potatoes that I grew and eggs from our chickens.  The applesauce was made from apples we picked at the farm down the road from us.  I made the brisket from the half cow we got this summer from a local farm and it was simmered with carrots and onions from our garden.  I had even made beef stock from the bones when we got the cow this summer and canned it up.  The best part was that it was delicious.  There are even leftovers for tonight. 

This post is part of the Dark Days Challenge at the (not so) Urban Hennery and Simple Lives Thursday.