One Local Summer, Week 1 Report

It's time for the first week's report on our efforts in the "One Local Summer" challenge. And the story here on Ladd Avenue is lettuce, lettuce, lettuce, rainbow chard, various herbs, and - did I mention lettuce?! We have had some beautiful salads from our garden the past couple of weeks. If you're not from Portland, you wouldn't know that it has been Rose Festival for the past two weeks here. And, one guarantee with Rose Festival is crummy weather - well, crummy for me, at least. Really, I don't know why they always hold it at this time, but it is entrenched in tradition, so there it is. (presumably good for the roses) So, the good news is that our backyard lettuce and the chard love Rose Festival weather - cool and rainy.

But the raspberries are not so much loving it. Usually during the last week or so of school, I would be able to bring in a bowl of raspberries. But, this is what the raspberries look like at this point:

And the loganberries are not much closer:

But, we've had one fully local meal and a couple of "almost" dinners. The first, and my favorite, was actually a brunch where I made a scramble with local eggs, Willamette Valley farmstead cheddar, Oregon crimini mushrooms, troll-caught salmon from the coast, yellow fin potatoes ( the salmon and potatoes leftover from our trip to the coast). Also this week, we had chicken enchiladas one evening, where everything was locally grown or made except for the enchilada sauce which I had to buy ready-made because of shortage of time. And another evening we had a grilled steak (Country Natural Beef, Brothers Oregon) and polenta with roasted vegetables. I don't have a local source (that I know of yet) for polenta, but the vegetables were all from the farmer's market.

And, beyond that, it was a lot of eating elsewhere. It's the season for graduation and retirement parties and one 60th birthday celebration. We'll have more of that in the next couple weeks. But, I did bring home some nice things from one of the farmer's markets yesterday to complement our continuing crop of greens for our meals at home.