Whatcom Locavore Holiday Dinner Menu Plans have been created to help make it easier for you to serve local foods to your family and friends this year. Three five-course menus are available, one with a beef entree, one with salmon, and one vegetarian (lacto-ovo-vegetarian to be precise, since eggs and dairy are used).
The five courses include an appetizer, soup, salad, main dish with side, and dessert. (The vegetarian entree needs no side dish.) Serve them formally one at a time, or family style with some courses combined.
You won’t find “turkey with all the fixin’s” on any of these menus. Instead, the recipes have been selected to help you discover exciting new holiday flavor combinations using familiar, locally grown, seasonal ingredients. Continue Reading
When our family takes driving trips, we like to have snacks to munch on along the way when fueling stops and hunger pangs don’t align. Beef jerky is a snack I grew up eating, and it’s perfect for traveling. It doesn’t require refrigeration, is loaded with flavor, needs no preparation, and provides a long-lasting energy boost because it’s mostly protein. Jerky also takes a lot of chewing, so a little lasts a long time.
Here’s a beef sausage recipe I created as a substitute for chorizo in a recipe for
We’re so excited! The 
“Organic” is a term used to describe some food and farming techniques, but the meaning can be confusing. Let’s try to sort out some fact from fiction. 
A lot of appetizers are served cold, but sometimes it’s nice to have warmer options, especially during winter holiday entertaining. These meatballs with a creamy wine sauce make a heartier offering, but still are bite-sized to keep them easy for your guests to eat. It’s also a simple recipe to prepare. 
Colorful leaves, a chilly bite in the air, howling gales and horizontal rain–ah! Fall in Whatcom County, just the way we like it! And at the Farmers Market and farms all around the County, what says “Fall is here and winter holidays are coming!” more than beautiful orange pumpkins? 
When I think of classic comfort food, I think of meatloaf. When I was a child, meatloaf was my favorite main dish. Top with a little Worcestershire sauce and ketchup, serve mashed potatoes and green beans on the side, and I was a happy kid.
One of the advantages of buying beef by the “side” (half a beef cow) is that you can get cuts that would be difficult to find (or afford) in a retail grocery store. The cow’s tail, or “oxtail”, is one of those parts that are typically missing from the store’s meat case. 
There’s nothing like the taste of the first fresh apples of the season! We have an opportunity to taste a remarkable array of literally hundreds of apple varieties every year at the Cloud Mountain Farm Center’s Fall Fruit Festival.
Sauerkraut and sausage are a long-time favorite flavor combination. Apples and sauerkraut* are an equally familiar and frequent combination. What if they were all combined, I wondered. 
