OLS Week 13

Wow, so it's almost the end of summer and the end of summer means my birthday extravaganza. I'm really lucky in that my birthday has a tendency to be celebrated over the course of a week and in that week I usually spend every night out to dinner meaning that I don't cook. We did manage to have one local meal, a roasted chicken and huge salad, all local ingredients picked up from the co op. I just joined and love the place. The food is of the quality of whole foods but the prices are a lot closer to wholesale. They have a policy of buying local when possible and list the farm or producer next to the products.

I decided to do OLS right after reading Michael Pollen's "Omnivore's Dilema" and had a hard time imagining how to get all of the different ingredients that I needed to make my usual pantheon of recipes. What I learned was where to find local food in my foodie friendly neighborhood, how to adapt to what I found at those stores, and how to stock up on local pantry items. I also realized how many of my friends and family shopped locally. Most of my family is in NJ and it's a state where Jersey Fresh is easy to find even at the worst grocery stores. I also began to savor those imported items so much more since they were almost always specialty items instead of just normal things that I used to buy without thinking.

Perhaps the greatest addition to my cooking repitoire is all of the different dessert recipes I figured out. I usually make chocolate desserts but I learned many new cheese-based desserts that are just as good. Next year I hope to branch out a bit more, try some pickeling and canning, and maybe do more grilling. Hopefully by next year we'll have a deck.

Thanks to Elizabeth and the folks at www.farmtophilly.com for organizing OLS. For anyone who has read along with my OLS adventure, check out farm to philly and consider doing it yourself when the season is right. Its a challenge that can be as little or as big as you would like. If you like my food blog, let me assure you that there are lots of other great ones out there.