This Week's Local Meal

My youngest daughter was so excited when we received our Greenling's local farms delivery, that she asked if she could make our local meal this week from start to finish. The following was what she prepared:

We first started with a salad made with beautiful green leaf lettuce. She topped it with sunflower sprouts and a dressing of valencia orange juice and olive oil.

Next were the cabbage cups. I thought this was a great idea, and they were so delicious. She simply took leaves from cabbage from our garden and filled them with roasted beets. She then drizzled meyer lemon juice on top and added a sprinkle of celtic sea salt.

The final course was sweet potato souffle with sauteed beet greens. She lightly cooked the sweet potatoes and added just a touch of butter made with raw milk by local Amish, and then topped it with local pecans and some apple sweetened cranberries (the only item in the entire meal not local). The beet greens were sauteed and topped with a squeeze of meyer lemon juice and dollops of local goat cheese.

Her creative dinner was pretty to the eye and scrumptious to the mouth.

Local Meals - Raw and Cooked

We were thrilled with our Greenling's box this week--great goodies including all sorts of root vegetables, greens and wonderful citrus! We made two meals for our local meals this week, one cooked and the other raw (for me).

First we roasted some veggies - turnips and cabbage from our garden, and carrots and beets that came in our local box. While they were roasting, we cooked the local potatoes and then mashed them with Texas Olive Oil and some of our home grown hatch chilis that Laura roasted and put up in the freezer. Then we assembled our roasted root veggies in the bottom of a deep dish pie plate and loaded the taters on top. Then the pie was baked for a bit so the flavors could marry.

Next came the sauteed greens. We used a combination of our garden turnip greens and local beet greens. These were topped with sauteed local yellow onions. My daughters absolutely loved these dishes.

My raw meal was sooo...... good! Collard wraps.

I started with two collard greens from my garden. (So much better and softer than what you get in the grocery store) I made some guacamole from avocados, lime juice and minced onion--all local, of course. I spread that on top of the collards and topped it with shredded local beets and turnips from my garden. I then topped it all off with pieces of baby lettuce and chives from our garden. Wow!

Here are the names of some of the local farmers that contributed to our local box from Greenling's:

Avocado, lime, meyer lemons, grapefruit and oranges - G & S Groves
Beets and potatoes - Naegelin Family Farm
Baby carrots - Animal Farm (We're saving the carrot tops for soup this weekend)

Snow? In My Garden?

Snow? Here? In December? We awoke a few days ago to snow covering our deck and garden and scattered over the grass. For some of you, that doesn't sound odd. But here in south central Texas, it's kinda fun to see. We haven't had a really decent snow since, I think it was, 1985.

Anyway, I thought I'd share some of my snow dusted veggies - broccoli, collards, chard, and cabbage for a few.

Veggie Juice of the Day

I've been enjoying a veggie juice lately that's sort of like a green V-8. However, I use fewer ingredients and VERY green. I start with one large cucumber and add two stalks of celery, 3 hydroponically grown tomatoes (taste better than other out of season tomatoes), one LARGE bunch of cilantro, and one large clove of garlic. I whir that up in my Vita-Mix and then strain through a nut mylk bag. Then I add a dash or two of cayenne for some pop (I don't have any jalapenos left from my garden) and a spoonful of one of my favorite green super foods.

This is such a great juice for breakfast. Very alkalizing and no need for salt because of the wonderful natural sodium from the celery.

Today's green food was chlorella from Watershed. This picture was taken prior to adding the chlorella, so the end result was a much deeper green.

Some of my other favorite green superfoods are:

E3Live - Blue Green Algae
Spirulina - from Health Force Nutritionals
Vitamineral Green - from Health Force Nutritionals
Pure Synergy

Local Salad

Many of our meals consist only of a large salad. This was a truly local salad. Every ingredient came either from local farmers in our Greenling's local box, or our garden.

The base of the salad was three different types of greens. We mixed in a large amount of sunflower sprouts and several herbs such as dill, chives, cilantro and tarragon. Next to be added was grated zucchini, sliced avocado (yes, local) and sliced radishes. We then made a dressing from the juice of a meyer lemon and Texas olive oil. The absolutely only ingredient that wasn't local was the celtic sea salt we sprinkled on at the end.

We actually had several other salad items we could have added, such as cabbage, broccoli and dark greens from our garden. But we wanted this salad to have a light texture with the baby lettuces and herbs. It had such a light delicate taste.