AnnieRie Unplugged

The easy meal for my Eat Local all Winter challenge. The challenge is to eat at least one meal a week from locally sourced items. Most of this last week, I have had local items in almost every meal, but Sunday breakfast is the easiest to make.

Particularly, eggs, bacon and toast.

I never get tired of these lovely eggs. Rich orange yolks. My eggs come from three local farms, depending on where I go to pick up other items. These are Breezy Willow eggs. I also now have England Acres eggs in the fridge, and some weeks when I get to TLV, I will buy eggs from them. All are from free range hens.

The England Acre hens, in their portable fenced in area, that is moved around to allow them to find good things to eat. It doesn’t seem to deter a few hens, including this one who “flew the coop” and was wandering around towards the parking lot. Out at England Acres, Judy has small bags of feed that she keeps for children to buy and go out to feed the chickens. An easy way to teach the little ones about the chickens. They are funny. They all run in the direction of any children who come to the farm, even abandoning the area where their feed is located.

I learned a technique for doing eggs. I use just a touch of unsalted butter in the pan, and a splash of extra light olive oil after the butter starts browning. Put in the eggs. Let them cook until white is set, then gently spoon the hot oil over the yolks to set them. Nice sunny side up eggs, perfectly finished. The bacon in the pan added just a bit of fat. I only used a few small pieces of already cooked bacon. The bacon came from TLV, and I cooked up a package to use in a number of meals. It will be used in the mofongo I am making tonight, to use those plantains I bought.

After I defrost the bacon, I cut it in quarters and fry the entire package. I save the grease in a jar in the fridge to use if I am going to make venison, as venison is so lean. This time I didn’t save it, because I have some from a few weeks back when I made chili. Amazing how much fat there is in bacon, isn’t it? This bacon is destined mostly for the mofongo, and for some homemade bacon dressing I will be making for spinach salad topping, and for potato salad to use up the last of my CSA potatoes. One bout of cooking. Four different uses for it. Multitasking again.

As for the toast today, it was Spring Mill Bread. This has become my husband’s second favorite toast bread. After Atwater’s. Too bad Atwaters isn’t in the Olney winter market. Canela is. We have so many great bread makers in the area now. Easy to get a locally produced loaf of fresh bread. Let’s see. Atwater’s, The Breadery, Bonaparte, Great Harvest, Spring Mill, Canela, Stone House. At the markets and some local stores, look for freshly baked whole grain bread,

Seven Grain Crunch. The reason I love this bread is the lack of preservatives, dairy and oils. Yes, I am sometimes bad and put Trickling Springs butter on it, but I love it with just a touch of local jam, or some of my crushed berries from the freezer. Toast to mop up all that lovely yolk left on the plate from the eggs.

Sunday breakfast is a very easy way to make local foods part of your weekly dining.

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