I always feel bad when my efforts to eat local interfere with other things in my life. Last week, I turned down a friend’s offer to go hang out on a boat and watch the sunset during the longest day of the year because I had bought all the ingredients to cook a local meal. (Note to self: don’t turn down any more offers to hang out on a boat.) So it was a refreshing surprise this week to have someone else propose a local meal to me. I got this email from my friend Doug on Tuesday:
“We haven’t had a dinner party in awhile so I figured it would be a good idea to get that started again. You may have heard of a documentary that just came out called Food, Inc. that’s basically the movie version of The Omnivore’s Dilemma (it looks into where food really comes from, how it’s made/raised, and eating local), and I was thinking we could do a theme that revolves around that. Maybe go see the movie and then back to someone’s place for an all local dinner.”
Um, twist my arm. I volunteered our house to host the meal, and we settled on this afternoon to go see the movie. I have to say it was pretty gratifying to sit in the theater realizing the quality of the ingredients that were waiting for us as we returned. Here was our menu:
AAAA salad (arugula, avocado, asparagus and apple)
Carlsbad mussels and clams, steamed in Ballast Point Yellowtail Pale Ale
Rotisseried Womach chicken with lemon and sage
Roasted cauliflower and mushrooms, plus roasted baby potatoes
Grilled corn on the cob
South Coast Winery Ruby Cuvee (sparkling syrah)
Murrieta sangria with stone fruit and berries
And fruit salad for dessert!
The surprise of the evening came about a half-dozen mussles in, when I glanced down at my fork and saw what looked like legs sticking out of the mussel. Turns out they were legs…crab legs! A little critter had seen fit to crawl into an open shell and hang out for a while.
yikes!
Other than that little surprise, the meal went off without a hitch.
Hey Doug, good thinking!
And now that I know everyone has seen Food, Inc., I have a hunch we’ll be doing this again sometime soon…
Tags: one local summer
One Comment
I’m currently writing a post about styrofoam to-go containers and stumbled across a post of yours from a couple years ago about your boyfriend buying styrofoam plates. I just wanted to let you know that I placed a link to your post on my post because I liked it so much.
I’m really happy I stumbled across your blog in the pursuit of bashing styrofoam. I will definitely check back for more!
Thanks,
Janie