Shooting Stars of Thought |

As I’ve said numerous times, one of my favorite exercises on this blog has been One Local Summer. In participating, you commit to preparing, eating, and blogging about one completely-local meal a week, for each of the 10 weeks of the summer. I started it in 2007, and I’m delighted to be able to participate for my third summer in a row.

This week kicks off the first week of OLS 2009. Because I a) had everything on hand, b) had very little time this week, and c) wanted an excuse to live up to, uh, my favorite apron–

I decided to go with a classic. Burgers!

This was a really simple meal. Here are the ingredients I happened to have on hand:

That’s eggplant and corn from Kawano farms, German butterball potatoes from Mary Hillebrecht, tomatoes from Valdivia farms, and ground beef from Brandt Beef, fashioned into patties. All of that came from the Thursday afternoon downtown farmers’ market. Then, there are eggs from a neighbor about 2 miles down the road, and arugula and lettuce from the front yard.

I also managed to scrounge up a sandwich roll from Bread on Market, which I had stored in the freezer and which made a satisfyingly monstrous bun–even with just half a roll per burger:

Well it turns out I had way more ingredients than I needed for the meal. The potatoes and eggplant went back into the fridge and emerged at the next night’s dinner (also nearly local–steak frites with a side of spicy eggplant and peppers). Tonight, though, it was all about simplicity.

We cracked open some Stone IPAs, tossed the burgers and corn on the grill, and the eggs in a cast iron skillet. In about 20 minutes, we had our first One Local Summer meal:

I can’t wait for next week!