The Dark Days Challenge is a challenge to use sustainable, organic, local, and ethically produced ingredients in your meals in the "dark days" of winter, when fruits and veggies are not widely available. (That's why it's a challenge!) Since this is my first year participating, I'm using an approximately 200 mile radius and will probably be making plenty of exceptions as I go along. For now, I'm counting as exceptions: olive oil, salt and pepper, spices, chocolate.
For my first meal, I went for an easy "breakfast for dinner" option. I used eggs, breakfast sausage, and Herdsman cheese, all from Cherry Grove Farm in Lawrenceville. I added in a bit of cilantro - it's surprisingly still good from our last CSA pickup in mid-November. We went a little overboard on the sausage, as you can see from the picture. It was pretty tasty and it actually gave me a few ideas for future meals. As you can see, I'm set with meat, eggs, and cheese... it's the veggies that will be a challenge.
Hooray for breakfast for dinner! I know what you mean about this being a little intimidating. Some people (hosts AND participants) were commenting about finding locally grown flour to make their own bread, and meanwhile I'm like "I scrambled some eggs." You're right though, it's about the effort and awareness, and a few mostly local meals are better than none at all right? It's my first year participating too. Glad I found someone else who's as new as I am! :)
ReplyDeleteYes - so glad I'm not the only one! Mostly local is local enough for me this year, especially since it was a pretty terrible season in this area and I wasn't able to find many storage crops. Also, I'm just not giving up salt. Ever!
ReplyDeleteHi Monica. Did you make it to the Princeton farmers market this week? I was really pleased to see local organic produce at this time of year. Whole Earth, Terhune Orchards and Cherry Grove still seem to have some but you're right about the storage crops. Terhune sells its own organic potatoes, which I am going to use for next week's post. Karen
ReplyDeleteHi Karen, yes I did make it to the Princeton market and I was so pleasantly surprised to see all the fresh vegetables. The woman from Chickadee Creek told me she grows a few things in unheated greenhouses and is hoping to be there with veggies all winter. I stocked up on almost everything. I even bought wine from Terhune - so good! I was able to find some local onions and sweet potatoes at Whole Foods as well. I'm going to post in a little more detail in my next Dark Days post. Can't wait to see what you're making - it helps me to think more out of the box!
ReplyDelete