Eat Local Challenge Day 3

Well fall is surely here.  The weather theme for the past 3 days was cool and wet.  It's not so bad when cool and wet fall on days I have to work, but it is down right annoying when they fall on my 3 day weekend.  There was a brief break this morning so I spent about 3 hours hiking around the Dorset Wildlife Area near our house.  Exploring these woods is something I have wanted to do for some time and since the wet made outdoor chores like lawn mowing impossible, I decided to grab the opportunity to go for a walk.  When I got back to the house, the rain started up again and so I did the next best thing which is to start making food.  We were almost out of cookies so a batch of chocolate chip cookies came first.

Then batch number two of apples from the farmer's market went into the crockpot to make applesauce.  These were Jonagold apples this time, a much firmer variety than the McIntosh.  They went through the peeler, corer, slicer contraption in record time.  I love when things work like they should!  Even the finished product looked better than the first batch. 

Next dinner and the eat local challenge meal.  Once again, not 100% perfect, but pretty close.  Mike took some bell peppers, jalapeno peppers, hot and semi hot peppers over to the Middlefield Produce Auction this afternoon and when he got home it was getting dark.  And raining.  So I sent him out to the garden to get some sweet corn and bell peppers for dinner.  What a good sport!  One dozen ears of sweet corn were picked, husked, kernels cut off the cob and put into a pan to make a new recipe from the Southern Ground Cookbook called "Heavenly Creamed Corn".  Then I cut up a couple boneless skinless chicken breasts from the chickens we butchered last weekend.  Stir fried the chicken and set aside.  Then I stir fried the red, yellow and green bell peppers that Mike had picked.  Added the chicken back in along with some pineapple and sweet & sour sauce.  Served the stir fry over some brown rice.  Dessert was apple crisp made with apples from the local farmer's market.  Mike said that even though the rice wasn't local, it was wet enough outside that it looked like we could grow rice.  Sounds good to me.

Tomorrow's eat local challenge might be a challenge.  We have some leftovers that have to be eaten tomorrow, but it does include some potatoes from our farm.  I wanted to make some homemade wheat wraps for my sandwich tomorrow, but with the cookies and the applesauce and the creamed corn and the stir fry, well for some reason I just didn't get it done.  I'll see what I can come up with when I wake up and start fussing around the kitchen tomorrow.  No need to be too prepared.