Monday, July 16, 2007

Eating Locally - Squash and Onion Sautee


Thanks to various different sources of information and just a general renewed sense of wellness, I have been trying to eat well and eat locally lately. The idea is that if you eat food grown within 100 miles of you it is likely to be fresher, more nutritional and less processed. There's even a movement called The 100 Mile Challenge designed to get you to patronize local farmers and minimize the amount of fossil fuel being used to bring your meal to your table.

A local blogger who calls herself The Restaurant Widow writes about her quest to eat locally with lovely pictures (much lovlier than mine!) of the produce she gets in her CSA box each week. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. It's a way of paying a farmer in advance for a whole season's-worth of fresh, pesticide-free produce, flowers, eggs, etc. I think it's a great idea and will be looking into doing it next spring. I urge you to read her blog - it's full of great recipe ideas and local Columbus restaurant reviews.

The farmer's market helps me in my attempt to eat locally. I went this weekend and got all sorts of beautiful veggies...and a nice grass-fed sirloin steak! Here's what I did with some of the veg.

I couldn't resist these baby squash, zucchini and pattypan. If you're not familiar with Pattypan it's a nice little squash - the French call it "priests bonnet". It's a low calorie vegetable - also a good source of vitamin A, magnesium, copper and iron. The taste is similar to zucchini.

These are beautiful little candy onions. They are larget than pearl onions but have a much sweeter flavor when sauteed, which is exactly what I did with them. When you have such fresh ingredients the key is simplicity. I washed and prepared the squash and onions, then sauteed them in a mixture of butter and olive oil. I sauteed the onions for 5 minutes before I put in the squash. Then I sauteed the whole mixture for another 5 minutes.

I put the mixture into a bowl, sprinkled with salt and pepper and basil...and volia!! It was lovely and fresh with minimal cooking. It was truly a taste of summer.






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