From Dirt To Dinner :: Rhubarb!

From Dirt to Dinner is back with a *mostly* local meal. the happy springy ingredient of choice this week is RHUBARB! click on over to my friend and DTD partner Beth's blog and see what she came up with. it's sure to be awesome and tasty!

so, it's not easy eating only local foods. i had to go to 3 different places to find the local rhubarb that i thought would be a cinch to get. that's ok, though, the farmer's markets are back now, so i'm all about getting everything i need there. luckily for me, i have a few markets to choose from! i love where i live. . .

this meal was a big hit, i'm happy to say. ok, the kids didn't love the radishes, but what can you do? "mommy, these are like......like.....SPICY!" but they are so beautiful. even though i knew it was a long shot, i had to get them just because of how much i enjoyed looking at them. and of course, i ate them, nearly all of them myself. that's alright.

so, we have here chicken apple sausages, boston lettuce wedges with radishes and ranch dressing and for dessert RHUBARB fool. awesome.

he tried. he really tried to like the radishes. i think he thought they were as lovely as i did. but only for looking at.

i was surprised to see the lettuce wedges (or tacos as we called them) went down easily. they were confused about how to eat them until i said, "eat it like taco!" oohhhhh! this is especially lovely because neither will eat much salad, so hey, we'll eat lettuce tacos instead. good by me.

onto The Fool. again, i turned to The River Cottage Family Cookbook for this one. i love love love this book. yes. can't say it enough.

so, what you do is get an orange and juice it. put the juice in a pot. add a couple tablespoons of superfine sugar. next add about 5-6 rhubarb stalks cut into inch long pieces. cook it down until it starts to mush up, but there are still some chunks floating around in there. you don't want baby food. let that cool to room temp. then fridge it til cold. next get about 2/3 of a cup of heavy cream and whip it all to crazy. add a bit of superfine sugar to taste. finally, either layer the 2 of them parfait style or just mix it all up! YUM!

when thinking about this meal, i couldn't help but want to sort of tally it up, see how i did on the local food scale. how close to home did i get. how many ingredients were local vs. not?

here's how it shakes down. . .

found locally:

purple radishes - 1.7 miles

boston lettuce - 1.7 miles

rhubarb - 10.3 miles

heavy cream - .5 miles (we have a dairy farm right down the street. we often pass by and wave to the "girls."

chicken apple sausages - 70 miles

not bad, right!?

decidedly not local:

superfine sugar

orange

ranch dressing

you have to do what you have to do... a little citrus, a little sugar, a little Newman. i will, before this season is over i will do some completely local meals, top to bottom.

next friday we'll be doing a little chat about bread making and then on june 4th it's PEAS. peas of all kinds! so now it's your turn! join us in the venture won't you!! the more the merrier. for the "rules" of play go here.