Monday, October 5, 2009

Day 18-19 & 20 – 100-mile Diet : A very big and productive week-end…


I hope everyone had a great week-end. Sorry for being away for a few days. Between not being home and then being home but having the computer unhooked for painting, I haven’t had the chance or the time to write.

Day 18 (Friday) was pretty uneventful. After work, we drove across the river to pick up a few wine bottles from one of our favourite local wineries and stopped at La Fromagerie Bergeron (cheese maker) and stocked up there. During our little trip, we came across a wonderful little farmer stand that had beautiful corn and beautiful spaghetti squash so we picked those up and had ourselves a dinner.



Saturday (Day 19) was the beginning of a very busy week-end. We had major home renovation plans for Sunday so all the cooking and baking had to happen today.

First, we tried our hand at a new yeastless recipe for rye bread. It turned out pretty good, but very massive and chewy. We HAVE to figure out this sourdough starter thing…

We set off, after a lovely breakfast, to my parents place where we brought the corn we had bought the day before and had 100-mile lunch with them. We had brought over a nice bottle of local apple cider and had a big filling meal before going apple picking.

Although it was raining, we bundled up and head out to my favourite local orchard and picked 25 lbs. of apple for eating, baking (we will try our hand at 100-mile apple pie this week!) and for making apple sauce.


Then home for dinner. One recipe we had been wanting to make since the beginning was 100-mile perogies. Seemed to me like an easy enough recipe. We have flour, we have eggs, we have cheese and BOY do we have potatoes!

100-mile leek and cheddar perogies

First, make your mashed potatoes. I decided to caramelize some leeks and grate some local sharp cheddar and mash them all in. Set the potatoes aside.

The recipe for pasta is pretty simple: 1 egg for ½ cup of flour. Then knead for about 10 minutes, adding flour when it gets sticky. We decided to not bring out the pasta machine and went with the rolling pin. Roll out the dough until it is almost paper thin, then take a large mouth cup and cut out circles. Place a spoon full of potatoes and fold in half. Press the edges with a fork.


Place the perogies on a baking sheet and place them in the freezer for about 30 minutes. I find this helps them stick together better when boiling. Take them out of the freezer and boil them for about 6-8 minutes.

We served them with left over tomato sauce and grated aged Gouda.





Sunday (Day 20) was a huge day! We were up at the crack of dawn because my husband wanted to paint the entire main room of our apartment. We had been living with the horrible faded milk chocolate brown color of the old tenants since we moved in last July.

During this time, I was put on canning duty.

CONFESSION

I must be honest, what I was making this week was my fruit ketchup. I did not make it 100-mile. Although the ketchup won’t be ready to eat until after the challenge is over, I needed to come clean about having cooked with ingredients that were not from within my range. I make ketchup once every 2 years (I make about 30 jars) and fruit ketchup with only apples is kind of, well, apple ketchup. My recipe asks for pears and peaches and although they were not from here, I did manage to find Ontario growers that sold them up here. I figure it’s not 100-mile, but at least it is growers from my side of the country. The veggies (onions, celery, tomatoes…) and apples were 100-mile.

We promise not to eat the ketchup until after the diet challenge is over. But because we cooked with 100-mile ingredients knowingly, we have added 2 days to our challenge.

Our challenge will now end on November 19, 2009.

1 comments:

Daisy Soap Girl said...

This sounds absolutely delicious. You guys amaze me.