Information and resources for eating only food locally produced in Whatcom County
Category : Appetizers, Make It Yourself, May, Sauces and Dips, Snacks, Vegetarian, Whatcom Locavore Basics
If you love cheese, learning to make it at home can open a whole new world of culinary adventure. While some cheese requires special ingredients and tools, many cheeses can be made with equipment you probably already have in your kitchen. Continue Reading
Category : Holidays, November, Recipes, Soups, Vegetarian
Here’s a simple, yet unique, tomato soup that I guarantee you will enjoy! It has a rich smokey flavor with just a hint of peppery heat. Continue Reading
Category : July, Snacks, Whatcom Locavore Basics
This Whole Wheat Cheese Crackers recipe is a special favorite for kids. It’s a local (and healthier) version of the little fish-shaped cheese crackers kids love. Continue Reading
Category : Main Dishes, Recipes, Sauces and Dips, Vegetarian
Some sauce recipes have become “classics” known to everyone. For example, experienced cooks learn how to make an Alfredo sauce, a buttery bechamel, and an herbed tomato sauce.
One reason these sauces are classics is their versatility. They can be used in many ways with many different ingredients. For example, bechamel sauce can be used as is over potatoes, or as the basis of a mustard sauce for chicken or a creamy herb sauce for steamed vegetables. Herbed tomato sauce can be served over pasta, grilled meats, or spread on toasted bread as a crostini appetizer. Continue Reading
Category : Main Dishes, Recipes
Zucchini is infamous for how quickly and easily it grows around here. If you don’t pick it while it is small, zucchini just keep growing, getting larger and larger until it gets ridiculous. One plant can easily produce a dozen or more zucchinis. I find it to be a good source of garden humor.
If we are honest, virtually every gardener who has ever grown zucchini feels a little angst when thinking about the harvest season. No gardener wants to waste the smallest bit of the food they grow, but what do you do with the vast surplus of zucchini that seems to appear overnight if you aren’t rigorously diligent at picking it? Giving it to friends works for awhile, until we begin to see the look of panic in our friends’ eyes when we offer zucchini yet again and they frantically try to think of a polite way to say, “No more!” Some gardeners I know resort to dropping off zucchini by the door at night, or when they know their friends aren’t home. Others simply put it out in front of their own house with a “free” sign. Continue Reading
Category : Grilling, Main Dishes, Recipes, Vegetarian
I enjoy starting with a classic, ordinary recipe and making it local and special. This week I was in the mood to bake bread, so I decided to attempt an improved, locavore grilled cheese sandwich.
I knew just the cheese to make it special–Appel Farms’ Sweet Red Pepper Gouda. Homemade bread, artisan cheese, spread fresh basil leaves over it, and voila! I could almost taste it just thinking about it! Continue Reading
Category : Farm Stands, June, Menu Ideas
I was in the mood to bake bread this week, so I decided to attempt an improved, locavore grilled cheese sandwich. The Appel Farms Cheese Shoppe immediately came to mind. I remembered their Sweet Red Pepper Gouda, a perfect central flavor. If I sliced the cheese onto homemade bread, added a generous amount of fresh basil leaves, put it onto the grill to melt into gooey perfection…well, my goal was clear. I headed out the door, turning toward Ferndale on Northwest Road, on a quest for the ingredients. Continue Reading
Category : Main Dishes, Recipes, Salads, Vegetarian
By late spring many of the salad greens are ripe enough for first harvest. Fresh local leaf lettuces in various colors, salad mixtures with flavor powerhouses such as arugula, mesclun, mizuna, and frisee, and so much more have begun to show up in grocery stores, home gardens, and farmers markets.
When I want to make a meal of a salad, it becomes the “kitchen sink” variety. I go through my produce drawer and mix in a little of everything. Continue Reading
Category : June, Menu Ideas
It’s that wonderful time of the year for putting together spring salads with enough variety to make a meal unto themselves! Gardens and farms are currently harvesting a cornucopia of lettuces, mixed salad greens and other salad vegetables. Continue Reading
Garlic scapes are the curly, peculiar-looking thickened parts in the middle of the garlic stem where the flower and seed head eventually forms. Farmers raising garlic usually trim off the scapes before they fully form. Instead of putting energy into flowering, it encourages the plants to use the energy to form larger bulbs at the base of the stem. Continue Reading
Sometimes I happen to create a recipe that is a serendipitous combination of simplicity and deliciousness. This recipe is a perfect example. It’s so good!
It starts with some homemade yogurt cheese. Add the flavor of fresh mint and some local honey for sweetness. Finally, I had some frozen raspberries from last summer in the freezer, and I put those on the top.
The result was unbelievable. Be quick when you serve it to friends or family or you may not get any for yourself! Continue Reading
Cheese fondues were popular decades ago. In fact, if you’re over 40, admit it–you have a fondue pot somewhere in the garage or storage room, don’t you? The number of unused fondue pots was so large that it became a joke to have one, kind of like having exercise equipment used as a laundry rack.
Well, it’s been long enough that fondue is coming back into fashion, though you don’t actually need a fondue pot to serve them. You can use individual serving bowls, if you like, and use the microwave to reheat them if the fondue sauce cools down too much. Continue Reading
Category : May, Menu Ideas
Artisan cheeses are one of the great joys of locavore eating in Whatcom County. Several local farms produce traditional and gourmet cheeses which are available year round.
I recently visited Appel Farms (Ferndale). Their family-owned dairy has been producing a wide variety of delicious cheeses for over 30 years. You can browse the coolers in their retail store, the Cheese Shoppe, located right on the farm, open Monday through Saturday from 9am to 6pm. Each cooler has an inviting array of tasting samples so you can readily savor the flavors and styles of cheese available. It’s a culinary adventure since Appel’s products range from familiar cheddars and feta to less well known varieties like paneer and quark. Their aged, smoked, and flavored gouda cheeses are my personal favorites. Try their red pepper gouda–a tasty delight! Continue Reading
