blue corn tortilla tacos

  

The special Dark Days Challenge this week was to cook a vegetarian meal, but seeing that we are  vegetarians, this challenge was not a big deal for us.  I did end up going out on a limb though by making blue corn tortillas out of local blue corn meal.  I've only made tortillas once before. Despite that, I'd say the tortillas turned out well.  Most of all, I was impressed by how incredibly local the whole meal was and without much effort.  In addition to the local blue corn meal, we had on hand local anasazi beans, potatoes, spinach, and homemade mostly local peach salsa.

Blue Corn Tortilla Ingredients:
blue corn meal
instant masas flour (not local)
salt (not local)
boiling water

Filling Ingredients (inspired by Veganomicon's Potato and Kale Enchiladas):
potatoes
frozen spinach
roasted green chiles
anasazi beans
garlic
salt (not local)
cumin (not local)
lime juice (not local)
peach salsa (inspired by Local Kitchen)

carrot marmalade

 

It's time to start thinking about garden seeds! Having some of last years bounty to ponder over is certainly added encouragement... This carrot marmalade was made from purple carrots that we grew in last year's garden. Good stuff. The recipe is in Ball's "Blue Book of Preserving." Have yourselves a lovely day-dreamy weekend!

homemade peanut butter

 

I made peanut butter for the first time! It wasn't even my idea, it was my friend Julie's. Seeing as we are both named Julie, our future peanut butter business should probably be called PB&J&J.

We roughly followed Alton Brown's recipe: nuts, honey, salt, oil, food processor.  The flavor turned out really good though we had to add quite a bit more oil than the recipe called for to get a decent texture.  Maybe the nuts I chose weren't fatty enough?  Let the experiments begin!