One Local Summer, Meal 6

We wanted to do some Filipino food for one of our local summer meals, just for something different. This is adobo, the unofficial national dish of the Philippines. Every family in the Philippines has an adobo recipe with some variations, but the basics are always the same. The meat is usually pork or chicken, but I've also seen it with goat. It's made with soy sauce and vinegar, and you would think that would make it sour, which it does, but it mellows out a lot while cooking. Add to that garlic, onion, bay leaf, peppercorns, and a spoonful of brown sugar to cut the sourness, and you've got one good dish. We all love it, including the kids. I even made it when my dad was over once, and he loved it, too.

I made this in the crockpot this past weekend. We ate it with rice and drank more cantaloupe juice, a Filipino drink. I got a request for the recipe and procedure to make cantaloupe juice, but I don't have pictures of that with me today so I'll post that in my next local meal post.

Most of the ingredients in this dish aren't local, but that's fine with me. I'm not going to eliminate dishes from our meal rotation because we don't grow rice or black pepper or harvest salt in Lancaster county. I like finding ways of making our usual meals from as many local ingredients as I can and will continue to do that, even after this summer is over. If I have a choice between buying something produced locally and something produced from further away, I'll buy the local product. It's really changed the way we eat and the way we look at our food.





Chicken - Sensenig Poultry, Lititz (7 miles)

Onion - Nolts Produce, Manheim (2 miles)

Garlic - Hilltop Grocery, Manheim (2 miles)

Cantaloupe - Nolts Produce, Manheim (2 miles)

Non-local ingredients - Cider vinegar, soy sauce, brown sugar, bay leaf, peppercorns, jasmine rice