The Frittata

I belong to the Purple Dragon Food Coop. Every 2 weeks, I pick up a basket of fresh organic fruits and vegetables. This time of year, most of it is local and terrific and plentiful. So July's Local Food Challenge has been easy. In addition to using local food, I challenged myself to prepare some new foods, to dig into some cookbooks and come up with some new ways to eat all these wonderful foods, and I discovered The Frittata. I had to make a trip to Bed Bath and Beyond to buy a skillet that could go in the oven, but it was worth the investment because I am in love with The Frittata. The first one had loads of greens like swiss chard and cilantro and fresh tomatoes and onions and wonderful salty feta cheese. The second one had roasted potatoes and then roasted vegetables like peppers and zucchini and a custard with cream cheese and then cheddar cheese and olives. It wasn't "light" but it was outrageously delicious. DH and I ate frittata for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I put a few slices in the freezer that will find their way into my lunchbag. The great thing about The Frittata is that you can use whatever vegetables you have on hand and probably any cheese, too. Change up the spices to give it a different accent. It's a vegetarian's local food dream come true. Recipes abound, just ask google and you too can come to love The Frittata.

An Ordinary Thursday

Thursday is my day off. It was a rather ordinary day. I went to the gym in the morning and then ran errands. Errands included picking up the produce from my organic food coop. What a lovely sight! an overflowing basket of fruits and vegetables in a vast array of colors. After I got it home, I set about cleaning out the frig and then deciding what to cook. I made 3 bean salad, Caribbean carrot soup and My First Frittata. I chopped up 2 tomatoes and a big pile of swiss chard. Added some garlic, cilantro and grated feta cheese. Oh, and eggs. Wow, it was really delicious. This was a vegetarian dinner done right! and I'm looking forward to lunch tomorrow. It was in keeping with the spirit of the Local Food Challenge. Most of the vegetables were grown locally and all the ingredients were in my house-- and I consider that local.

Other ordinary events and errands included getting DH to take 2 big bags of clothes to the Salvation Army. There were 75 articles of clothing, yes I made a list. So, even though it all went in one week, I think I should get "credit" for at least 5 weeks for the 7 Things Project. I'm not being greedy, I didn't ask for 10 weeks.

Local Food Challenge

I belong to an organic food co-op. I get a basket of food every 2 weeks. The co-op buys the food from farms near (blueberries from New Jersey and far (bananas from Ecuador) and distributes it to the various "pods." I'm not sure how many pods there are in the co-op, but each pod has 15 members. Each pod is responsible for dividing the food into 15 shares. In our pod, members volunteer to do this job (you save $15 if you pack). Anyway, you cannot pick and choose what you want, you have to take whatever the co-op buys that week. I don't usually buy much other produce. It takes me about 2 weeks to use all the food. I am facing this local food challenge without the opportunity to shop at a local farmer's market. So, I have decided that in addition to the local food I get in my co-op order, I am going to concentrate on using up food that I have in the house-- can't get much more local than that. Time to cook all the chicken breasts in the freezer and add salsa to the tofu scramble and make salads with barley or wheatberries. I am going to cook and pack lunches for DH and I. Eating out will be more of a special treat.

The most recent co-op order did include blueberries from NJ and kale, lettuce, mushrooms, and yellow squash from Pennsylvania. Those are my local foods. Been working on the lettuce with salads, and last night I made some wonderful blueberry pancakes for dinner!

This morning I rode with "Ladies of C." There's a group of us that are 40+ years old, and we are all slow C riders. We rode 35 miles this morning and it went down pretty easy. It felt good!