The Dark Days Challenge
December 5th, 2011 by Diane FishThe 2012 Dark Days Challenge is upon us. Shannon, who is more motivated to participate in these sort of things than I, signed us up. And then today, she had a dinner failure. So, it falls to me to keep our end up. Good thing that we had a decent dinner tonight. Those Sundays when we eat left-overs, chips and salsa and scrambled eggs for dinner don’t really make for a very convincing blog about sustainable, local or organic meals….all winter long.
During late summer and early fall the blog world is full of folks posting about eating local, 100-mile diets, 100-foot meals…ad infinitum. Now, I am not a complete zealot like the 100-mile folks. I am not going to run down to Scenic Beach and dip water out of the Hood Canal to evaporate and make sea salt. We grow and raise about 90% of what we eat and I cook from scratch much of the time – which upon reflection makes me sound sort of Amish which isn’t the case (the bonnet not withstanding) – but let’s just say we are less dependent upon the grocery store than the average family.
Frankly, during that time of year I am too busy canning, freezing, picking, weeding, feeding, milking, and mucking to blog about what we are eating. I think about blogging a lot while I am doing those things! But until they develop the technology for me to plug a USB port unto my ear and download all those great blog posts composed in my head it isn’t happening. The really interesting thing about those days in the garden and nights canning and freezing is that I am doing all the time consuming and hard work associated with warm winter meals. Beans frozen in August take minutes to heat for dinner in December. Tomatoes blanched and canned in September make pasta dishes in minutes for mid-week meals – garlic harvested in July is Fettuccine Alfredo when I have a yen for something rich and creamy.
So, as we kick off the “Dark Days Challenge” I thought it would be interesting to go back in time and take a look at the genesis of tonight’s dinner!
The menu -
- Pork Chops – the last of the chops from a hog butchered last spring. We buy piglets from a neighbor, fatten them on extra milk and grain and butcher about twice a year. We don’t buy any extra meat and eat out of our freezer all the time so we go through a whole hog, half a beef, 20 or so broilers and 10-15 stewing hens a year.
- Smashed red potatoes – from the garden with fresh cream and salt and pepper.
- Milk gravy – pan drippings, milk and Shepherd’s Grain Washington grown white flour!
- Sauerkraut with apples and onions – we had great plans to collaborate on the ‘kraut this summer but the day we were planning on doing it I got side-tracked so Shannon made it. She jump-started the fermentation with whey from some homemade yogurt and it has a wonderful zing to it. The King apples were picked at my mom’s house right before Thanksgiving and the onions were from the garden. I season it with a bit of brown sugar, pepper and caraway and saute until caramelized. Very tasty.
- Applesauce – from Mom’s apples. I typically can 15-20 jars – need to get around to doing that.
- Pickles – dutch spears made from the abundant cucs we planted last spring. This is a refrigerator pickle recipe that I got from The Joy of Pickling. I only made a few because I didn’t know if we would like them. Need to make more next year! Sweet, tart and spicy!
- Green beans – from the garden.
- Milk – from Ellie
- Raspberry Juice – from the berry patch
And the best part about this meal? It was a meal eaten around our family table with my husband and children, we were truly grateful for the bounty of our life, and were able to talk and laugh as we enjoyed the fruits of our labor. Regardless of whether your food comes from 100 miles or 1000 miles from your home, if you are unable to eat with the people you love, they are dark days indeed!
Tags: Butter, DDC 2011, Dinner, food preservation, Garden, Hogs, Raspberries, Vegetables, winter
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