Dark Days recap, week 2

Our Thanksgiving was fabulously local, and mostly home-grown.  But I’m not going to blah-blah about Thanksgiving for Week 2.  Nope.  Saturday night’s dinner will be discussed instead.

The Dark Days Challenge was put together by Laura of (not so) Urban Hennery to get people to try to eat locally at least one meal per week.  Her encouragement also went so far as to challenge us to source that food within the guidelines of SOLE:  sustainable, organic, local and ethical.  She asked me to join because Michigan is not exactly a hothouse of fresh produce in winter, but she knew that we eat as fresh as we can, thanks to our greenhouses and root cellar.

Steering away from turkey and fixings, then, we barbecued a pork loin roast from the now-defunct Providence Farm, serving it with steamed Red Norland potatoes (gotta hurry and eat this crop, as it’s one of the first to sprout) in a butter/parsley/chive mix, as well as Marconi strain Romano beans from the freezer, a greenhouse salad of cold-hardy lettuces (Amish Deer Tongue, Brune d’Hiver, Forellenschuss, Grand Rapids, arugula, mache and others) with Red Beard bunching onions, a gigantic Scarlet Nantes carrot, and a medium-sized Zefa Fino fennel bulb with some fronds thrown in.  Buttermilk/yogurt dressing (our cultures of both) with lots of garlic.  And, yum, Galeux d’Eysines pumpkin custard for dessert!  Local wine too:  Round Barn Red Demi-Sec.