Locavore June 21

Nothing special in the locavore log – same salad style lunch yesterday and home-made pizza (again!) last night. My baker always makes a double batch of dough…

Lunch today was a lot of fun, though. I was holding a workshop “Growing and Cooking with Herbs”. The class started at 10:00 and we spent about 1 ½ hour in the garden, talking about common culinary herbs – and some not so common; their different cultivars; how to plant, propagate and grow them; how to harvest and use them. We had plants samples so we could touch, smell and nibble on a leaf to compare flavors. Then I handed out the menu, and each student was given a basket, a pair of scissors and a list of herbs to harvest. We moved back to the house where I demonstrated the preparation of 2 kinds of no-cook chilled soups, roasted herbal chicken, sorrel potatoes, pesto, herbal vinegar (students picked the herbs they wanted to use as they were taking their vinegar home), minty green apple sorbet and lemon verbena poached peaches with kaffir lime. At 1:15 we were ready to eat. Students took those recipes – and a few additional ones we did not have time to prepare – home. Supplies for the meal was my own garden, Waterpenny Farm for some of the herbs & vegetables, Roy’s Orchard in Sperryville for the dairy products (from Pennsylvania – less than 100 miles, so I’ll call that “regional-local”), the peaches (from Georgia – more than 100 miles, so not local… I know I know…) and the green apples (theirs). The chicken were raised in Culpeper County and bought at Food for Thought. I hope that my students left with the sense that one can make uncomplicated (and easy to prepare) food that taste delicious when one is using fresh herbs and fresh seasonal produce.