Weeding

Of course a big part of OLS is to have a garden. We don’t get much rain here. In fact, there is a forest fire burning about 20 miles south of our house. It is very dry and has been hot. The garden suffers. But we keep trucking along. Here is Lulu, one of my twin daughters, weeding the carrots. She is very precise in her weeding. I think she will make a great gardener when she grows up. She is already very “mother earthy”

Extra good news is that I found a source for local produce, so we won’t have to rely so much on the mediocre garden. They are about 40 miles south in good soil with a creek. They usually deliver to the coop, but will also deliver to my store downtown and will call on Mondays to get my order. That was a bonus! They had a flyer up at the coop.

This means I won’t have to make an extra trip to town on Saturday to go to the Farmer’s Market. Some days it is a real hassle to get there by 10am to get the good produce.

I still love my garden. But with two jobs and two kids its hard to keep up with it.

One Local Summer Starts!

OLS — Taco Salad!

I am so excited. I put together my first One Local Summer challenge meal. It was out of this world fabulous! Everybody had seconds — me, Mark & the twins. It was that good. I started out by making some blue corn tortillas with my new tortilla press. This was very, very easy with the press. But Oh. My. Gawd. The tortillas made by hand are absolutely nothing like the store bought tortillas. These were so, so good!

Ingredients:
3/4 cup blue corn meal
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 – 3/4 cup flour

I used organic blue corn and flour that I picked up at our co-op.

You put the boiling water and blue corn meal together in a bowl and mix. I used my Kitchenaid mixer (one of my favorite things ). Let rest for about 15 minutes. Then add 1/2 cup flour and knead for a few minutes. (I just let the dough hook on the Kitchenaid do the work.) Let rest. Then roll the dough into 8 balls and press them in the press between two sheets of plastic wrap. Fry in some olive oil (I used Pam spray).

Here they are ready to press:

Next I used some grass-fed buffalo meat from a neighbor’s buffalo ranch. Our own grown lettuce. Tomatoes, cucumbers, onions and cilantro from the Farmer’s Market.

I browned the buffalo, added a chopped onion, garlic salt and mexican spices. I made pico de gallo: chopped tomatoes & onion and lots of cilantro, mixed with generous garlic salt.

That combined with yogurt sour cream made with milk from our neighbor’s Jersey cow.

This was the BEST MEAL EVER!

Just in case you were wondering, this is what I had last night. Salad with all FM ingredients and boiled new red potatoes also from the FM. The rest of the family had chicken with theirs, but this was enough for me. So technically I ate locally last night too, but the rest of the family had regular grocery store chicken with theirs.

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