One Local Summer, Week SEVEN??

Friday I gathered an entire grocery bag's worth of fresh basil from a Freecycler who was nice enough to offer it up. I've got 3 plants myself, but only one of them has really thrived. And pesto is the best way I know of to preserve that goodness that is fresh basil.

So I made a quart of it yesterday.


The farmer's market was, as usual, hopping. I've noticed that with the exception of winter squash, there haven't really been any new additions to the merchandise in the last few weeks. Just deletions. I took time to stop and talk to the vendors I could. I bought some ground beef after a nice long conversation with a rancher guy from 41 miles away. (No, I don't know why his website just has equipment on it for sale and no info about the meat.) When I use that beef I'll write up my take on it. There's also some honey I was sad not to be able to buy. A quart from within Durham itself for just $10.

I got some longbeans.


I had Michele over for dinner, and I went back and forth all day over what to make. I had local requesón (ricotta) from SuperCompare, so I ended up making homemade cheese ravioli.


I used Anne's frozen dumplings as the pasta, and figured I'd wing the rest of it. The filling was ricotta, feta and egg. The sauce was garlic, green onion, red frigitello peppers, and long beans in cream from Mapleview Farm. see the pesto dolloped on the sides? Mix that in and it's pesto cream sauce. It was good, but I oversalted it. :-(

The veggies were from the farmer's market, except for the peppers, which were form my garden. The feta was from Chapel Hill Creamery, and the eggs were from Latta's Egg Ranch.

Dessert was a shared key-lime tart from my favorite local bakery and cafe, Guglhupf. Since Michele and I got there at the end of the day, the very, very, very cute bakery boy was blessing each customer's bag with a free cheese danish or two from the surplus they were going to have.



The ice cream was the very best part, though. Homeland Creamery frozen dairy goodness has appeared recently at my local Whole Paycheck alongside the Mapleview Farm ice cream. I picked up some lemon ice cream, and it was way better than the tart.

As Michele put it, it's like a creamsicle, only lemon!

p.s. OOPS! We also had local wine, thanks to Michele. It's from the coast, and is a "dry" white wine called Oleander Bianca. I put "dry" in "quotes" because in NC if it's called a "sweet" wine, that basically means a 1/2 glass could flavor a 2-liter bottle of club soda. The Oleander Bianca was gently sweet, which is pretty much how I like white wine to be.