One Local Summer, Week 3

Another good haul from the Farmer’s Market at the Newark Co-op.

OK, so we’re looking at a half dozen ears of corn, sour cherries, sweet cherries, strawberries (good number of these eaten before picture was taken), bag of mixed salad greens, lovely striped yellow-and-green zucchini, quite large cucumber, bunch of potatoes, big ol’ tomato, and hunk of Cheddar with Garlic and Chives.

Yum, yum, yum, and yum.

These were all the same farmers as last week, so I’ll spare you the farm-by-farm.

So for appetizers, I cut up the tomato and layered some fresh local mozzarella (bought inside the co-op, didn’t think to include it in the picture) and some basil from the backyard. Normally I would salt the tomato and maybe have a splash of balsamic…

Didn’t bother. It was excellent as is.

Next up, no-brainer, boiled those ears of corn.

I follow the advice of my well-used copy of The America’s Test Kitchen Family Cookbook , the best cookbook ever written, and add a tablespoon of sugar to the pot, boiling the ears for six minutes.

Just the best corn I’ve ever eaten… Pretty too.

And finally, we have potato salad, complete with homemade mayonnaise. That’s right folks, I actually cooked something. Well, sort of.

The potato salad turned out pretty well, but I’ll never be able to replicate it. Jacob and I were throwing stuff in willy-nilly. Measuring spoons? Recipes? Bah. That’s for boring people. We are guerilla gourmets.

In addition to the homemade mayo (which we were patting each other on the back about, we really were fully prepared for it to be inedible), and the red potatoes, we used a handful of parsley from the garden, the spring onions that were included with our bag of spring greens, local eggs from Lancaster, and a hit of salt, pepper, and mustard powder.

The original plan involved going back out to visit Meadowood Farm, which is a sheep farm five miles away and sells sausages, cuts of lamb, honey (I think they will let you visit the hives) and sheeps-milk cheese. I was going to pick up some meat for my husband to have with dinner. I kind of ran out of steam and figured since he wasn’t part of the challenge he could have some of the steak we had leftover in the fridge…

Turns out I needn’t have worried, we were stuffed anyway. The kids managed to find room for some sweet cherries for dessert, but Jeff and I couldn’t fit another thing. Maybe I’ll go tomorrow and squeeze in a bonus local meal this week- one that involves actual cooking beyond boiling corn and potatoes…