My One Local Summer: week two meal

Not dinner yet

I ask myself this question on occasion: Am I an epicure?

I hesitate to answer it in the positive for many reasons. Mainly, I don't think I am there yet. (And also, can I really be an epicure if I deny myself the pleasure of animal flesh?) Yes, 'tis true, I do have high standards. I mean, hell, I moved my family from the city to the country so I could GROW SOME FOOD. And at restaurants, I have a very low threshold for the mediocre: if I am paying for a meal, especially now that good meals are hard to find, that meal better sing. But I mainly answer in the negative (so far) because, in essence, I am asking myself, Am I Insufferable Yet?

This was last night's fare. (It was my birthday, so I cooked for five.) Beets are coming in, and boy, do I love them. Crepes are easy yet people think they're magical. Feta. I made my first feta ever with milk from my goat guy. And fava beans. They never do really well for me, yet, like a spurned lover, I keep planting them, year after year, and tend them with such care. Oh, and salad. We're at the point here where our salads are bigger than the salad spinner can take.

Buckwheat crepes: ground buckwheat from last year's planting; eggs from Bea and Bonnie; local whole wheat flour; stock from last year's veggies; salt and butter not local.

Beet filling: Chioggia and Detroit Red beets and their greens; Walla Walla onions; hardneck garlic; Italian parsley, Par-cel cutting celery, garlic scapes and onion greens as garnish. All from the garden.

Crepe topping: Stock, goat-milk feta.

Salad: Speckled romaine, Amish deer tongue, bibb, arugula, cress, onion greens, garlic scapes and the last of the peas, with vinaigrette made from last year's scallions, garden herbs and local gone-bad red wine

Favas: Just butter.

Dessert: Mom made a tart cherry pie, with some of my local flour, Michigan sugar, and local (to her) cherries.

Beverages: Local wines from Tabor Hill.


Dinner.