The best local dishes I made…

While, as I stated in a previous post, I ate a lot a lot of salad during the course of my strict totally local diet, I did also create a few excellent full Sunday dinner(and breakfast)-style meals.  

Here are couple things I came up with I feel are worthy sharing:

• A goat’s yoghurt and dill topping for potatoes roasted with garlic, onions, butter, ground coriander seed, and salt.
• Scrambled eggs with onions and fresh dill (I’m noticing a bit of a herb trend.) It was refreshing and eliminated any residual childhood-born urge to put ketchup on my eggs.
• A mixed green salad with kale, mustard greens, roasted beets, goat’s cheese and a touch of garlic and dill dressing. Wow, I might actually have a serious dill addiction.

I have always liked food, but I haven’t always loved vegetables they way I do now, which is more than the average person. What I did notice about not having a variety of available spices, is I was forced to enjoy the natural flavours of the vegetables.

On the kindness of people

The inherent goodness of human nature is a belief I typically ascribe to, even though my philosophical viewpoints often lend toward that of a skeptic. In life, however, you can’t deny the sometimes surprising goodness of people.

So far, along my local-food journey I have encountered an extraordinary amount of kindness and support.

First, let me tell you about the woman who helped me at The Cheese Gallery in Thornbury. Barbara Trafford was patient and helpful as we tried to determine which cheeses were made within my geographic dietary restrictions. Oh, and we did, with the help of my Blackberry. I have Pine River cheddar from Ripley, and yogurt form Wooldrift Farm in Markdale. Not only was she kind when I was in the store, she emailed me later with a list of local producers she knows of and if that weren’t enough to demonstrate that Barbara Trafford is a thoughtful person, she dropped off some feta at the E-B from Wooldrift Farms.

The woman who owns the chipper with her husband, is always so kind. When I asked her where their potatoes came from she laughed and told me “from the ground.” After I explained what I was doing she was pleased to tell me they are local potatoes. And it didn’t seem like she was just happy to sell me some, it seemed as though she was happy for me because I could eat them and not have to sit silently while my family feasted on poutine and burgers.

Then there was the server at Three Guys and a Stove, who helped me determine which parts of the meal I could have and never showed any signs of irritation, even when I was irritating everyone else at the table.

I can’t forget the women who own and work at the Creemore 100 Mile Store, who organized the Local Food Challenge. They are intelligent, kind, caring people. I have spent little more than half an hour with them, but I walked away inspired, with a renewed sense of faith in humanity. Yup, I’m a bit of an idealist.

The young woman at Georgian Hills winery on Grey Road 2 busted out the new 2010 Marechal Foch for me to try, which was quite nice. If you like light whites and haven’t tried their Seyval Blanc, I recommend you do.

Most of the people selling at the farmers’ markets…nice, and they genuinely care about the food they are producing, which automatically makes me like them.

Close enough?

I love food. I think about it often. But it seems to be the only thing on my mind since I started the local food challenge on Saturday morning.

My 100-mile diet got off to a great start with an amazing breakfast being sold at the Local Food Challenge booth. It consisted of delicious beet and carrot pancakes courtesy of the New Farm interns, served with a garlic, dill, and yogurt sauce. There were also more traditional buttermilk blueberry pancakes and whole spelt pancakes. The breakfast sausages were from Stayner Meat Packers (I took note for next time I need to get meat.)

I can’t say I have been eating poorly since then – the quality is great — but my creativity with using what’s available and my excitement is dwindling. I really am used to eating what I want, when I want it.

I used to think cooking for one was hard. Try cooking all-local for one.

Also, snacks are difficult – the only thing I can think of is fruit, salad, or a pepperoni stick, which I have been going through like madwoman.

“I’m just going to make a quick salad,” was my most-used phrase over the long weekend. They are fantastic salads, don’t get me wrong; mixed greens, mustard greens, and kale from the New Farm, topped with dill goats cheese, and yellow plums, or beautiful multi-coloured carrots. But the sheer amount of salad I have been eating is borderline ridiculous.

The thing is, I haven’t had any bread or pasta. Some of the quickest meals you can make involve those items. I could make my own bread, but I don’t even have the time to figure out where to get flour from. That will be this week’s goal: eat some bread.

I have discovered: Georgian Hills winery has some nice wines; Creemore Springs does not grow on site, but I have been drinking it anyway. Close enough? I am a caffeine-addict – I feel like I might actually die without coffee, so I have been doing the next best thing and having ethically-produced, fairly-traded, locally roasted coffee. The cheese I have had is some of the best in my life.

I tried going out for dinner while my family was here on the weekend. I was irritating even myself. Although the restaurant sourced its meat and seasonal vegetables locally, imported vegetables were mixed in with the medley, the potatoes were from P.E.I., Plus, I could not have any seasoning on my steak. So really, I had a ball of steak for dinner, which warranted another quick salad when I got home.

I have been eating a lot of raw vegetables; roasting a lot of potatoes and beets; frying sausages and eggs; using a lot of dill, basil, oregano, onion, and garlic for flavouring; and covering most things in cheese. I replaced the contents of the pepper grinder with coriander seeds, which is a good alternative and instead of replacing olive oil with canola of flax, I have been consuming an awful lot of butter.

Honesty, I’m not sure if I can afford to do this for a full two weeks, but I haven’t given up yet.