Apple Picking 07

Well! It's been a long time since any of us have updated! One Local Summer is done, and I bailed on the last meal. Onil's sister and her family came down to visit us for Labor Day and there was too much going on to make sure everything we ate was locally produced. We did have a Cowboy BBQ (much like our Luau BBQ) and most of what we ate was local anyway. We'll do pictures of that whenever we get through everything -- between the Cowboy BBQ, Knoebels, boat racing, and just general sitting around, we took like a billion pictures that weekend. It's going to be a lot to go through, is what I'm saying.

This past weekend, though, we went apple picking. We wound up with 37½ pounds of apples. What are we going to do with all of those apples? Make 37½ awesome pounds of apple sauce, that's what. And maybe a pie or two. We went to Cherry Hill Orchards, south of Lancaster city. Here are our pictures:





Onil and Anna, waiting for the fun to start:



Faith and Amy, walking around and picking apples:



Anna and Onil wanted me to do a perspective shot:



They also wanted to get some shots of apples in mid-flight, so they chucked apples up in the air and took like a billion pictures:



Onil Appleseed:



I'm not sure why, but there was a corn field in between two rows of trees...



So someone (probably Onil) got the bright idea that we should lay down and look like we got run over like the corn.



Children of the Corn:



We always get a picture of Amy crying by signs telling you that you're not allowed to do stuff. Here's the latest in a series. (We should make a photo album just of pictures of Amy crying at signs.)



And then we have Amy getting up and looking like she's farting:



This is the sign you see when you're leaving. Bye until next year, Cherry Hill Orchards!

One Local Summer, Meal 9

This meal was kind of thrown together, and we forgot to take a picture so this is a recycled shot. The fact that we were able to put a local meal together on the fly, though, is a testament to how we're eating more local foods in general. I don't think we could have come up with something quick before we joined One Local Summer. Also, I think this may be the last official meal of One Local Summer -- it's been a lot of fun!

Our meal this week was bacon, eggs & pancakes.



Bacon - Meadow Run Farm, Lititz (12 miles)

Eggs - Meadow Run Farm, Lititz (12 miles)

Blueberry Pancakes - Whole Wheat Flour from Daisy Flour, Annville (16 miles); Egg from Meadow Run Farm, Lititz; Milk from Kreider Dairies, Manheim (2 miles); Blueberries from NJ (more than 100 miles)

Maple Syrup - Brennemans, Salisbury (188 miles - not within the 100 mile limit, but the closest-produced maple syrup I could find)

One Local Summer, Meal 8

Our local meal this week was cheeseburgers on the grill! Yay!



Hamburger - Meadow Run Farm, Lititz (12 miles)

Whole Wheat Hamburger Buns - S. Clyde Weaver, East Petersburg (5 miles)

Cheese - Guernsey's Gift, East Petersburg (5 miles)

Corn on the Cob - Farm stand, Lititz (5 miles)

Roasted Potatoes w/ Grape Tomatoes - Farm stand, Lititz (5 miles)

Basil - My yard

Milk - Kreider's Dairies, Manheim (2 miles)

Summer Videos

Onil finally made a video of our summer pictures and I loaded it up this morning. I apologize for the jerky quality of the videos -- I really don't like the way they load up. They look a billion times better on our home computer. Onil tells me it's because it's a wmv file and the usual video sites don't relate well to wmv. It might also be because it's a big file.

These videos are totally giving me fits. They're not working or something is messed up with them. We've been trying to post them for weeks now and something keeps going wrong. I blame Photobucket. So I'm going to provide links to our Chinese circle fireworks. Onil built a sweet stand for it and after the first one fell over, we figured that we needed to put weight on the bottom. The second attempt turned out great!

The following video, which I am able to imbed because I loaded it up on You Tube, is about our summer vacation so far:



This next video is of us picking the girls up at camp and stopping at Crystal Caves in Kutztown. They had a good time at camp, by the way. They both made some friends and they're going to try to all come back the same time next year. Yay!

One Local Summer, Meal 7

We had a pretty simple meal of just sandwiches this week. I have a confession to make. If you haven't already been able to tell, I really don't like vegetables, especially raw ones. They are always the last to be put on my plate and I can only stand them in limited quantities (except for lima beans, I could eat a truckload of those). The kids are worse than I am (except Amy loves lima beans as much as I do). Onil will eat more vegetables than me, but really, for us, it's all about the meat and starch (rice/bread/pasta/potatoes). I ate a piece of fresh raw tomato last week and nearly gagged on it. We will eat fresh fruit, though, so we've got that going for us.

Anyway, this week we just had Monte Christo sandwiches, and they were very yummy!



Ham - Kunzler Meats, Lancaster (10 miles)

Turkey - Sensenig Poultry, Lititz (7 miles)

Cheese - Guernsey's Gift, East Petersburg (5 miles)

Whole Wheat Potato Bread - Martins Bread, Chambersburg (86 miles)

Eggs - Meadow Run Farm, Lititz (12 miles)

Milk - Kreider Dairies, Manheim (2 miles)

Maple Syrup - Brennemans, Salisbury (188 miles - not within the 100 mile limit, but the closest-produced maple syrup I could find)

Potato Chips - Kay & Ray's, Chambersburg (86 miles)


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I've gotten several requests for the cantaloupe juice recipe, and one for the Filipino adobo from last week. I haven't taken pictures of the preparation process for either but I'll try to describe them. If you have any questions, just ask! :o)

Cantaloupe Juice
Ingredients:

1 Cantaloupe
2 tbsp. Sugar, Brown Sugar or Honey (we like honey the best)
Water
Ice

Cut cantaloupe in quarters and remove seeds. Scrape out the inside flesh with this tool (Onil says a fork works well, too). Do this all in a bowl to catch the juices. Put the the scrapings and the juice in a pitcher and add the sweetener; stir to dissolve. Top off with ice and water and stir. Refrigerate and serve cold with juice and scrapings (you may want to include a spoon or a wide straw).

The link for Market Manila also suggests adding a little lemon juice or fresh mint to your cantaloupe juice. I'm not so sure about the lemon juice, but the fresh mint sounds like a great addition and something we're going to have to try in the future. If you're not going to serve it to kids, a little white wine also might be interesting.


Slow Cooker Chicken Adobo
Ingredients:

Bone-in Chicken parts (I use 2 breasts & 2 thighs, and I remove the skin)
1 small Onion, sliced
8 cloves Garlic, chopped
3/4 c. low-sodium Soy Sauce
1/2 c. Cider Vinegar
1/2 c. Water
2 tbsp. Brown Sugar
1 tbsp. Peppercorns
1 Bay Leaf

Spray inside of slow cooker with nonstick spray and layer chicken pieces in slow cooker. Top with onion and garlic. Mix together soy sauce, vinegar, water and brown sugar until sugar dissolves; pour into slow cooker. Add peppercorns and bay leaf. Cook on high for one hour and turn down to low for five or six hours. Serve with rice.

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

Call It Amy and the Dream of Horses

Dream of horses, ba da dum bop, you dream of horses, ba da dum bop....

Even though it's three weeks since the 4th of July, I still wanted to post about our activities for that week. There are a lot of pictures to slog through so I asked Onil to make a movie and I'll post it here. I asked a week and a half ago, though, so who knows when we'll get that. :o\

While we're waiting, I wanted to share some pictures of Amy riding. Amy's been taking horsemanship lessons for close to a year now. Her usual day is Wednesday which means that because I work in NYC I can't go to see her ride unless I have the week off from work. The bright side of not seeing her ride every week is that I got to see how much she has improved. And boy, has she improved a lot. She started riding last fall and I saw her in December. She was good but very much a beginner -- she needed to learn a lot. I just saw her ride again on July 4th, and she has definitely come a long way. I love her posting form and the cool way she handles the rails and jumps. It helps that the horse she rides is pretty calm and easy-going (she just doesn't like other horses, which, sister, I can relate -- there are plenty of times I don't like my species either). The horse's name is Duchess and she's big and sometimes grumpy but she's a good horse overall.

This weekend Amy and Anna are going to overnight camp in the Poconos (the same one I went to as a kid) and Amy will be a corral-aide for the first time. This involves getting up at 5 in the morning, mucking out stalls, feeding and brushing the horses, cleaning the tack, and generally anything that needs to be done in the stable. For girls who love horses, this is a dream come true. Hopefully Amy will enjoy herself as well.

Here are some pictures of Amy and Duchy: