Wow, I could not for the life of me take a decent picture of my local meal. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t make the swiss chard and basil pesto look like anything other than a green pile of yuck. It was tasty though. I had pesto laced potatoes with sour cream, a simple salad, a sliced plum and I also snagged a couple of Joe’s chicken wings just for the extra protein (and because they are so good!). I was excited to find a bag of sun dried tomatoes from Full Belly Farm at the co-op to add to my pesto.

It seems as if I have a surplus of baby knits that really have nowhere to go, so they will just be folded up and stuffed into a box, left to live out their lives unused. Unless anybody that I know has a baby in the oven that I don’t know about. I’ve made newborn sized socks and a sweater. It seems sort of silly to waste time knitting for a baby when I don’t know any that tiny, but I wanted to practice socks and sweaters, and didn’t want to practice them in adult sizes just yet (more time and more money for bigger sizes).

Now that I have completed socks and a sweater, I’m going to move on to the real thing. I bought a few skeins of yarn and started myself a sweater. My gauge is right on, so let’s hope it stays that way. I wonder how it will turn out and how it will fit me…

Ask me in a few weeks. I’m knitting as fast as I can (and it’s still not that fast).

Who’s gonna remind us how absolutely ridiculous humanity is now?

Man am I ever a flake sometimes. I put together this basil, smoked mozzarella and tomato salad the other night. It was late. I was tired.  I wasn’t thinking clearly. Last minute I thought I should throw in some whole wheat couscous to make it more substantial. Did I remember that the couscous that I had in my cupboard was not local? Nope.

I just realized right as I was posting. Oops.

It was still mostly local. The cheese, tomatoes, string beans, basil, and olive oil were all local. So were the blueberries and cherries. Oh well, do I get points for trying?

I took a women’s brewing class today held at the local brew shop which is just a five minute walk from our back door. Good thing too, because it was already hitting triple digits by the time I was walking over. I almost broke a sweat on my way there, but I’ve found that I stay drier longer if I keep thinking about iced tea or ice cream and cool breezes, and it worked! Mind over reality…

The class was great fun. The two teachers had both been brewing over 10 years and were already seasoned judges for various beer competitions. One even started her own contest, “The Queen of Beer” competition (which our class was preparing for). I’m wondering if I can manage a decent brew by September. I really would like to, but I don’t handle criticism very well. I’d like to think I do, but deep down, I let things bother me too much. Could I handle a professional critique? Three of them?

Either way, the class was fun and I’ve learned a lot of little things that would make the brewing process easier (like tempering the malt! why didn’t we think of that?). I also got to sample more beer than I normally drink in a month or two! And you know what mixes really well with beer? Heat….lot’s of dry heat.

Can you sense the sarcasm here?

Just a few days back, our weatherman estimated we’d be happily in the 80s today. Perfect for brewing outdoors. But what did I feel when I stepped out of my house this morning? Not nice, cool 80 degree weather. No no no. More like miserable 100 degree weather, with rain. Yeah, you read right. It rained today too. Not a bunch, and it didn’t even stay long on the pavement it was so hot, but it rained! I know other states get rain when it’s hot, but it’s also really humid in those areas. It felt dry as a bone here (as usual) so rain was the furthest thing from everyone’s minds today. What next? Puppies falling from the sky? Okay, that’s a bit of a leap, but you get where I’m goin’ here. Weather has been getting down right weird!

This was meal #2 of my One Local Summer challenge. I found locally made pasta! They had a great lemon-chive fettucini that I combined with local chicken, olive oil, vinegar, garlic, and chives.

The drink was homemade ginger ale with local ginger.

*vegetarians: look away now*

Yum yum yum.

I’ve signed up for the One Local Summer challenge this year, although I found out about it last summer. For one whole summer, I will eat one meal a week which will consist of all locally produced food. This is in an effort to not only reduce the energy normally wasted by transporting goods long distances, but to have the freshest foods available. Because I live in Northern California, this challenge should be easy for me, so I’ll try not to complain too much here. I can find a lot of locally grown and raised foods here. I have to keep in mind the other participants who don’t have as long of a growing season.

This was the first week, so how did I do? I’d say I could have done better, but I did manage a to eat a darn good local meal along with quite a few tasty local snacks.

Here’s the run-down:

- Barbequed chicken wings and grilled corn on the cob

- strawberries and vanilla quark (yes, locally made quark!)

- blueberry, honey and vanilla goat’s milk yogurt smoothie (yep, local goat’s milk yogurt!)

- I haven’t used it yet, but I even found out that we have a multitude of locally produced olive oil (as well as rice).

Despite such variety, I’m still having trouble putting a whole meal together that consists of entirely local foods. I enjoyed locally made pita bread this week bought from the farmer’s market and homemade hummus (with local tahini), but the chickpeas weren’t local. I can come close, but get hung up on some crucial ingredients because I can’t find a local source for them. I need to learn to be more creative. Instead of having a recipe in mind and looking for necessary ingredients, I need to find ingredients first and shape a recipe around them. That skill eludes me still. A few weeks ago when I signed up for this, I had visions of homemade pasta, but I still have yet to find a local flour source. Can I somehow make rice flour out of my local rice? Rice pasta? Hmm…

This week’s meal wasn’t quite up to my expectations. Joe made the chicken wings and corn on the cob dinner for us. It was great (of course!), but it was nothing new. We usually eat this for dinner, but I didn’t even know it was a local meal until we had to start paying closer attention. This coming week I’ll try to venture into new territory.