End of One Local Summer Challenge

Well, Becke said last week she was hoping we'd go out with a bang since this has been the last week of the One Local Summer Challenge. And I'm going to have to let her down. No big production this week - just a lot of good local produce and simple meals. We had a quiche with local eggs, mushrooms from the farmer's market and cherry tomatoes from our yard. One night we had a beautiful fruit salad - all from our CSA and other stands at the farm market. Tomatoes on sandwiches, tomatoes in salads, tomatoes in gratin and sometimes... just plain sliced tomatoes. Big red ones, dark colored Black Russians in large and small sizes, pear-shaped little reds. And they are cooperatively getting ripe in the garden a few at a time. So we eat a few one day, by the next evening more are ripe.

Last night was one of our simple, but all local and very delicious dinners. Aileen and one of her college buddies joined us. We each had an ear of corn (from the farmer's market) with a very lovely gratin made with zucchini and tomatoes (both from the garden). Then, having had a fairly light dinner, we enjoyed a raspberry (backyard frozen earlier) and peach (farm market) crisp. Aileen happened to have brought a pint of "Ginger Dream" ice cream made by one of her neighbors last week which went extremely well with the crisp.

The recipe for this gratin was in "the Oregonian" last week. Needless to say - a recipe using summer squash and tomatoes, both making big appearances in our garden - I cut it out immediately. Here's a link to the recipe and a photo:
Zucchini and Summer Squash Gratin with Parmesan and Fresh Thyme


The picture was taken shortly after I started cooking it. And, then, when it was done, I forgot to take an "after" picture. But, this gives an idea of what it looked like.

So, local eating will continue here since we are now in the season where the choices are plentiful and will be for a while into the early fall. But the crushing pressure of producing a report every week will be lifted. Whew!!