The Dark Days Challenge is on! Running until March 31, 2012 over 100 participants will be doing our best to cook and blog about one meal per week featuring SOLE (sustainable, organic, local, ethical) ingredients. Recaps will be hosted by the blog collective Not Dabbling in Normal where you can follow along with all of the other participants.
Gail and I are both Jewish and Christmas was never celebrated in either of our households growing up. The very common practice of Chinese food and a movie for Jewish families on Christmas is one I am very familiar with. Gail's sister is married to a great guy who celebrates Christmas. They visit his family on Christmas eve and their kids get to celebrate with all their aunts and uncles. For the past few years Gail and I have had the pleasure of celebrating Christmas day, and sometimes Chrismukkah when the calenders align like they have this year!
We spend the afternoon munching and early evening playing with what seemed like an endless array of new toys and games with a pair of hyperactive 5 1/2 & 4 year old's munching on a ton of great snacks, and enjoying a delicious (and very not local) Chinese food feast with Gail's sister, brother in-law, and their kids. It is a really nice tradition we have started with them and one, I hope to continue for many years!
Before we headed over to the Murphy's, Gail and I decided we would make a nice Christmas breakfast together(which I hope will also develop into a nice tradition), and figured we could easily make it a local meal. We filled our bellies with scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese & red pepper, buttermilk pancakes with maple syrup, Irish soda bread scones, bacon, and drank local cider and locally roasted coffee. The pancakes and scones were made from Garelick Farms buttermilk and King Arthur Flour, but did feature some baking ingredients that are pantry staples(Check back tomorrow for the Irish Soda Bread/mini-scones recipe). Gail even tried a few pieces of the very crispy bacon, enjoyed it and declared 'all bacon should be crispy!' Given that she is slowly integrating meat into her diet any successful attempt is worth noting. The Bacon was from John Crow Farm, the cheddar Cheese from Grafton Village Cheese, and the red pepper from The Herb Lyceum and their greenhouses while the eggs are from Spring Brook Farm, and the maple syrup from the Vermont part of Cooks Farm operations. The apple cider is from Pine Hill Orchards and is slightly sweeter then the 'made from local apples' blend that many of the farmers put their apples towards. The coffee was a light roast Rwanda Coopac from the Barrington Coffee Roasting Company and their new Boston Cafe .
With New Years celebrations this coming weekend I would guess our next Dark Days meal will come during the later part of next week and will probably feature something from our freezer or canned goods!
2 comments:
And a Happy Christmukkah to you too. Our family (and a lot of our friends) have mixed families. We eat Chinese food on Christmas eve and have a Christmas party that we go to where the Hanukkah candles were lit. Some of the food I brought was local. I had bok choy from the garden and the ham I brought was raised by a friend of a friend. (Only one family keeps semi kosher.) I know the fudge I brought was so not local.
Daphne - It can't all be local, nor should it have to be!
With something as delicious as fudge it is definately worth splurging!
Post a Comment