Buttons to the rescue

Well, we're almost through our first day of local eating. I have spent a great deal more time preparing food than I normally do, as well as much more time spent planning, but we've had delicious meals!

I actually started the cooking last night, preparing food for lunch today. (Ben and I both pack lunches for work and generally take leftovers.) I made chappatis (a flat, fried bread) with some of our whole wheat from the local mill, butter from a local dairy that sells to supermarkets, and water. I would normally make a curry to go with these, but since none of the spices are local I made a vegetable sauce (curry without the curry, as I told a friend at work). I fried onions from our garden with hot peppers from the freezer, then added a puree of frozen pumpkin, canned tomato juice, and a bit of apple cider from a local orchard. I also added a few frozen green beans. We each took this, along with an apple (Virginia grown, from the grocery store), for our lunches today. It was quite tasty, though I missed the salt somewhat.

For breakfast I tried a new recipe: Strawberry Soufflé from the Simply in Season cookbook. I used more whole wheat, eggs from our hens, milk, butter and a bit of maple syrup. After it was baked we topped it with frozen strawberries from last season. We also had one of our exceptions to the local rules: tea.

Supper took some hard thinking and searching through cookbooks. Several of my planned meals for the week involved cheese, which I was planning to get from the farmer's market but have not been able to find. Maybe it's too early for the goats to be milking yet. I have started some milk to sour to make some soft cheese, but it's not ready yet. So without cheese several of my planned meals (pizza, quiche) were not to be. My sourdough starter also didn't look ready, so no bread.

At last I decided on a meal my mother and grandmother used to make. The English translation of the Low German(?) is "buttons." (I won't attempt to spell the Low German here.) [Note: I found out later from my mother that this is actually a Swiss meal.] It's a dumpling made of flour, eggs and milk, boiled and then served with stewed tomatoes. I had all the ingredients for the buttons, so I made them, fried some more green onions in butter, added a can of tomatoes from our supply, and just a bit of honey. I also made applesauce from some of the apples.

I've been pleased with the meals so far, though they definitely take more work at this point. And, somewhat to my dismay, we have decided to declare an exemption for salt. It's in the local butter we bought, it's in our home-canned tomatoes, and, well, some things just really don't taste good without it!

This evening we're going to make some homemade grape nuts for breakfast tomorrow and some wheat crackers for snacks. The farmer's market is also open tomorrow morning, so I plan to stop by before work and see what's available.