Day 1

So, this is it. Today is the summer solstice, June 21st, and the day we decided we would start our Eat Local Challenge...and I wasn't ready!! I was staring in the fridge at 5:30pm thinking to myself, "What the heck am I going to make with lettuce?". We've just come off a busy weekend, my husband Keith is away on a business trip, the kids were hungry and I had nothing local to feed them. I'd taken a moose steak out of the freezer the night before and put it in the fridge, but then forgot to put it on the counter to thaw completely. No BBQ'd steak for us. The only veggies we received from our CSA delivery last week were snow peas, lettuce, green onions and baby swiss chard...nothing terribly exciting or worthy of a 4 year old's palate. I almost gave up and made PB and J sandwiches, but then reminded myself that if I wasn't committed on the first day, how did I expect to make it til the fall? So, I rolled up my sleeves and got creative.


Upon inspection I discovered the moose was thawed just enough to make it easy to slice into little strips. I pulled down my wok, threw it on the stove and turned it on. I stir fried the meat, added a couple tablespoons of last years homemade salsa, salt and pepper and at the very end tossed in some snow peas and chopped up green onion. I made a quick vinaigrette using olive oil, rice vinegar and maple syrup and drizzled a bit on the mixed baby greens from the farm and voila...dinner! The kids turned their noses up at first, but Sydney had a change of heart and polished off the stir fry and asked for seconds and ate about half her salad. Cameron was in a mood so he didn't each much, but he at least gave it a try and ate about half....his tune changed when he saw that we were having frozen yogourt and strawberries for dessert. Dessert is magic like that.

Mrs. Duguay happened to call while we were at the table....she confessed she was having hot dogs!! Gasp! She told me she needed another week to get her plan together, and I'll give her that since she doesn't have the stock of local meat and CSA delivered veggies that I do.  Next week though...I'm cracking the whip!


So, I guess I pulled it off. It wasn't spectacular but it was edible. A friend who had a more successful year hunting than we did, gave us the meat. The onions, snow peas and lettuce are from our CSA. The maple syrup was purchased through our CSA from a local sugar shack, we made the salsa and I hand picked the strawberries last summer just down the highway. I was going to use balsamic vinegar but since it came from Italy and the rice vinegar was at least made in Canada (although likely with imported ingredients), I put it back on the shelf and used the second choice. The frozen yogourt was my only real fail, but I thought I kind of owed it to the kids for not serving up something better. Pat on the back for me.


Shannon A.