The Summer SOLE Food Challenge, SSFC, is over. I made it through remembering to post almost every week. Eating locally is so easy around here when the markets are still hopping.
Today is the East Columbia Market. Miller Library finished yesterday. The Glenwood and Oakland Mills markets will continue until the weekend before Thanksgiving, and East Columbia ends on the 15th of November. Stocking up on meats from the markets will allow me to continue to put something made in Howard County on my table throughout the winter.
We haven’t heard yet what would be included in the delivery and whether our CSA delivery will take place today. After I finish with the first graders at the Conservancy, I am either picking up a fall delivery, or heading to East Columbia to get a few things. I let the refrigerator get pretty empty before the storm.
I did remember to take some tomatoes and pesto out of the freezer yesterday so tonight there will be pizza with TLV bacon, tomatoes and pesto from my garden, and Bowling Green mozzarella. Mostly local, except for the crust.
The pesto and oven roasted tomatoes are defrosting today. The bacon is out, and I will fry up the entire package, crumble it and use it in salads, omelets and soups. I need eggs, as I hit zero yesterday. Sounds like a trip to TLV Saturday is in store.
You can eat healthy, organic, IPM, non GMO foods around here fairly easily. The ten of us from our challenge have all signed on to continue looking for sources and posting about what we do in the winter. Details are being worked out by us now. I will modify my Food Challenges page to reflect it.
I made a really good crock pot potato leek soup last night, letting the soup cook while we cleaned up the house, and put things back where they belonged. No pictures, because besides being exhausted, two of the potatoes were purple so the soup looked a little weird.
Yes, you can mix all sorts of potatoes into that soup. One of them was even a white sweet potato. I put half the soup in the blender just before serving so we had chunky creamy soup. Four leeks, all the potatoes, an onion, a little celery from the fridge, my homemade veggie broth as a starter, and towards the end I added a cup of almond milk to make it creamy but keep it lactose free. Everything was cut into cubes or small pieces and dumped in the crock pot with a little salt, pepper, and herbs de Provence.
OFf to chase first graders around for a few hours. We are teaching rocks, fossils and extinct animals. Should be a fun morning. Here’s hoping the sun comes out.
hocofood@@@
AnnieRie Unplugged 
No Sandy Spring CSA today, they sent an email about 10:30 this morning. It went into my Spam folder for some odd reason & I almost forgot to check there.
Have you heard of this? http://www.friendsandfarms.com/
I subscribed a month or so ago and am loving it so far.
My husband called me when I was leaving the Conservancy to tell me that it was canceled. It may mean we get some interesting extra items, like mushrooms, or honey, or some pantry products. We shall see. They will be adding items to the seven deliveries they make.
tmunky, yes, I have heard of friends and farms. It looked interesting, but there is too much of the meat choices that we don’t eat, and we like the organic produce from Sandy Spring and from Breezy Willow. Right now, I only have 9 weeks a year without a CSA. We can handle that break, since we pop down to Silver Spring or Dupont Circle once or twice a month, and England Acres, TLV and Breezy Willow have Saturday hours at their farms.
A few day trips to Lancaster to see friends, or stopping at Shrewsbury rounds out our local seasonal buying.