From a Local Kitchen: Allgood Eats

In our ongoing series on eating locally, this week’s guest post is by Erin Allgood, a self-professed science geek who loves food. Erin can be found sharing her passion and knowledge of nutrition at her blog, Allgood Eats, and at the Seacoast Eat Local booth during our Winter Farmers’ Markets. Recently, Erin teamed up with Jennifer Purrenhage of Get Well Grounded, to show how to prepare and cook different featured winter vegetables. To accompany Erin’s “Tips for Shopping and Cooking from the Winter Farmers’ Markets,” she’s given us a week’s worth of healthy and delicious meals based on local food:

 

 

 

My journey in eating locally began growing up in a food-oriented household with a mother who’s a professionally-trained chef. I was constantly surrounded by good food and developed an appreciation for it. However, once I went off to college, food was relegated to the back burner of my life.

 

I rediscovered my passion for food my junior year in college when I fell in love with nutritional biochemistry; I was fascinated by how nutrients were broken down and utilized within the body. A friend gave me a copy of Michael Pollan’s The Omnivore’s Dilemma around that same time, and I started to immerse myself in food culture. I entered the Master’s program in nutritional sciences at UNH and, before long, I realized that it was difficult to eat healthy unless I was cooking my own meals.

 

Surprisingly, I hadn’t picked up a great deal of cooking skills in my life, and needed to teach myself how to cook. I started by watching the Food Network, scouring cookbooks and using my mother as a resource. Now, cooking is one of my most favorite activities to do on my days off.

 

As I progressed through my Master’s thesis research, I began to understand that many of the healthy fruits and vegetables I was eating seemed to have a great deal of pesticides or other environmental pollutant residues. Buying locally-produced or organic fruits and vegetables provided me a way of finding out exactly how my food was produced and handled, and gave me control over what I was putting into my body. Also, local foods simply taste better and have a more “real” quality to them.

 

Primarily, my cooking has always been to create healthy, tasty meals, and to allow room for some decadent food as well. Buying local and creating relationships with farmers and producers has been invaluable to the way I cook, and I generally structure my grocery shopping around when I can get to the farmers’ market. This year, I will be part of a CSA with Meadow’s Mirth Farm, and hope to grow as many herbs as possible in our limited outdoor space. At 600 sq. feet, our apartment has little space but we were able to wedge half a pig that we bought from a local farmer into our small freezer, and we’ve been brewing beer in our guest bedroom. I haven’t ventured into canning or preserving foods yet, but hope to once we move into a bigger space.

 

Eating locally and being active in the local food community has enriched my life so much. I have made great friends through Seacoast Eat Local, and feel a part of this locavore movement. We are so fortunate here to have amazing farmers and phenomenal artisanal food producers. More and more restaurants are buying locally, making it easier to eat out and still maintain that local flavor. I feel lucky to live on the seacoast, to eat this great food and to share it with all of you!

 

From Erin’s Local Kitchen:

During the week, I tend to make very easy to prepare meals, such as pastas, pizzas and salads. On the weekends, I usually focus on cooking in bulk for the week ahead, but I also allow myself to cook with creativity. Meal planning has been helpful in ensuring that I eat all the food that I buy and don’t waste anything.

 

Sunday

• Butternut squash soup: squash, garlic, sea salt, pepper, ginger, organic chicken stock

• Stuffed portabello mushroom: sausage, kale, sea salt, pepper

 

Monday

• Watermelon radish salad: watermelon radish, apple, turnip, carrot, sea salt, honey, apple cider vinegar

• Potato, bacon and kale soup: potato, kale, bacon, carrot, onion, garlic, sea salt, pepper, organic chicken broth

 

Tuesday

• Green salad: organic salad greens, goat cheese (regional), dried cranberries, almonds

• Leftover watermelon radish salad

• Leftover butternut squash soup

 

Wednesday

• Pizza: wheat dough, oyster mushrooms, kale, onion, sea salt, butter (regional), mozzarella, parmesan, tomato sauce

• Leftover watermelon radish salad

 

Thursday

• Whole wheat pasta with tomato-squash sauce: whole wheat pasta, organic canned tomatoes, roasted delicata squash, sea salt, shallots, goat cheese (regional)

 

Friday

• Mushroom-Kale Quiche: kale, shallots, oyster mushrooms, Caerphilly cheese, eggs, butter, sea salt; for crust: butter, oats, flour, almond milk

• Green salad: organic salad greens, goat cheese (regional), dried cranberries, almonds

 

Saturday

• Leftover quiche

• Squash with greens: delicata squash, kale, onion, garlic, butter (regional), sea salt, pepper, olive oil

 

Sunday

• Me and Ollie’s breakfast sandwich: bread, cheese, eggs, tomato

• White Heron Chai tea

 

Snacks

• Apples with organic peanut butter

• Popcorn with chili-garlic vinegar and sea salt

• Beer: homebrewed and Redhook

• Wine: Sweet Baby Vineyards

 

Ingredients marked in bold show what is available locally. Photographs courtesy of Erin Allgood/Allgood Eats. Thanks, Erin, for sharing your week with us!

This entry was posted on January 19, 2011 at 7:06 am and is filed under From a Local Kitchen, author: Debra, recipes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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