Eating local is so nice we did it twice.

Pretty easy meal this week. We had some friends over to swim in our pool and this is what I made for dinner. (yes, I do all the cooking in our little household)

Marinated broiled Round Steak (from the 1/4 cow we bought)
Roasted red potatoes (farmer's market)
Zuchinni and Summer Squash (farmer's market)
Blackberries (farmer's market)

Round Steak marinade
1/2 veggie oil
1/2 apple cider vinegar (should have been red wine vinegar but didn't have any)
2 tbls steak sauce
1 clove garlic (market)
1/2 medium red onion (market)
1/2 tsp salt and pepper
I marinated it for 5 hours but longer would have been better. It had a ton of flavor but wasn't really that tender.

I wasn't all that pleased with the way it turned out broiled on my grill pan. I'll probably just use the grill pan on top of the stove from now on.

The red potatoes, zuchinni and squash were rolled in a flavor mix which I stole and modified from here. (This is the same spot I got the salsa recipe from. Put this in your favorites. She comes up with great recipes). Anyway, the potatoes were roasted almost completely and then rolled in the mix and put back in to finish up (probably about 20 minutes) and the zuchinni and squash mix was rolled and put in the oven at the same time. I've made this recipe before and it is great. The zuchinni and squash have tons of flavor.

Modified flavor mix
Some olive oil (I didn't measure it but you know how much you need)
Finely minced garlic-I used about 2 cloves (market)
Finely chopped fresh basil--I used about 10-12 leaves (garden)
Sea salt and pepper to taste

I thought I had made more than enough to enjoy leftovers this week but sadly it wasn't meant to be. Our friend was heading to do his National Guard drills the following day and I think he was happy to have one final good meal before eating on Uncle Sam's dime for two weeks.

Our second local meal this week (in reality our meals are mostly local. Only little parts here and there aren't. It's usually chicken that isn't local because I haven't gone to the final step of buying some yet, or our fruit portion) was a meal of the other piece of round steak I had defrosted, egg noodles and a corn/green bean saute.

I put the round steak (cow from farmer) in the crock pot with some red onion (market) and a can of cream of mushroom soup (does this count as a spice????). About halfway through cooking (and it turns out, too early) I put the leftover Amish egg noodles (23 miles) from last week's meal and some water. When I got home from work I cut some corn off the cob (market) and sauteed it in a little butter (not local, but from Iowa based company), garlic (market) and red onion (market) and threw in some green beans (market) to cook through (we like them crunchy so not too long). Turned out pretty good with really not a lot of work.

Some of you may already know this based on the ingrediants, but this turned out a lot like Beef Stroganoff. Heck, maybe it IS Beef Stroganoff for all know. All I know is it was pretty good and it was a good use of a fairly tough, inexpensive cut of beef, although the picture doesn't do it any favors. We'll do this one again. I didn't have any local fruit so we went without for this meal.

There you go. Entertaining while eating local is easy. Cooking easy no fuss meals for the work week while eating local is possible too.

FGLB