A quick and easy local meal

Last night I roasted the very last red pepper from my garden (the only thing I grew successfully this year). I'm not even sure how it made it to harvest, we've had a light freeze already. I roasted and froze the bumper crop that I'd received as part of my CSA share already - a great use of peppers, especially if no one else in the household likes peppers.

Since I was on my own for dinner last night, I took the opportunity to make an open face roasted pepper and goat cheese sandwich. The goat cheese was delivered along with our milk. Bread... home made on Tuesday night. This was local eating at its best!

Local... in another place

This weekend we took off to West Virginia for a family memorial service. The family plot is in the middle of nowhere, and we've made a habit of staying a couple hours away at an adorable B&B. The town itself, Sutton, WV, hosts a small community - around 1,000 people. It's nestled against a river between Charleston and Morgantown. Tim and Melody Urbanic started Cafe Cimino in 1999, an upscale restaurant in the middle of the town's main street. They moved the restaurant and started a B&B, and that's how we found this GEM. We needed a place to stay, and just got extremely lucky to find a comfortable B&B featuring fantastic local foods. Once you're checked in, you can read about their "trans fat" free establishment and their passion for serving fresh, local foods.

The whole operation is in a beautiful  100+ year old home, with a carriage house (where we stayed) and a separate building hosting a wine/cigar bar.

The Carriage House (hosts 4 rooms, I believe)

The Wine/Cigar Bar - named Cimino's Little Dishes

We ate our dinner at Little Dishes both nights - we love the casual, relaxed atmosphere. We also loved the bartender Jill who waited on us the first night, and her husband Aaron who, while he doesn't usually work there, was pitching in on our second night. A great couple! (That's Jay in the picture - trying to pretend he wasn't having his picture taken!)

The walk from our room to the Little Dishes was short, but so cute. We pass the river and a firepit. (And since it was chilly both nights, it was very much appreciated!)

 

Even though both of our dinners were spectacular, the food highlight was breakfast. The 3-course breakfast was out of this world both days! Our second breakfast started with a fruit plate:

Followed by cranberry and golden raisin scones and blueberry muffins:

And finished with veggie and feta frittata with pepper bacon, crispy polenta and fresh mozzarella with a tomato balsamic dressing:

It's an adorable little town, and we'll most definitely be back!

And we begin again...

Ok, so here's the deal. I started this blog because it had become increasingly important to me to have a sustainable, local and mostly organic lifestyle, and I wanted to document my transition. Well, document my successes while I transitioned. It very quickly became obvious that it was harder than I ever realized. And since I wanted to talk about my success... well, I had little to talk about. It's not to say I haven't had successes, because I have, but I've had far more, um, lessons learned than I expected.

So I think from now on, I'll have to talk about the whole story. I haven't given up, not by a long shot. I'm just finding it harder than I expected, which was pretty naive to begin with.

Coming soon, I'll recap some of my successes (local milk? check) and challenges (local wine? um... not so much). Stay tuned!

This is challenging

I wouldn't call this week the most successful week, in terms of the local food movement. We ended up eating out more than usual because my grocery purchases were so much less than normal. Sure, we could have eaten salads every night this week, but we didn't.

Not only that, so far, the most challenging meal is lunch. Jay and I usually take our lunches to work, his with sandwiches and fruit, mine is usually some type of frozen meal and fruit. We did have some fruit leftover from the previous week's shopping, as well as the bananas and mandarins I bought. It was still much less in both quantity and variety than usual, and there's just no such thing as a "local" frozen meal. I'm really stumped on how we can incorporate local food into our regular lunches. I'm sure there's a way, but I'm not sure to thinking out of the box yet.

Last night we had an almost completely local dinner though. We had a potato frittata and mixed green salad. The frittata was easy and really tasty.

I think, short term, my goal will be to just have the healthiest foods I can. This will include as much local food as possible, but in the absence of those options, I'll supplement with whole, healthy organic options as well. I'd rather eat an organic pear than none at all.