Despite my Jewish roots, beef brisket is not a cut of meat I grew up with. We had the occasional pot roast, but mostly my mom gravitated towards quicker cooking bits of beef and lots of chicken. It wasn’t until a few years ago that I discovered the miracle that is brisket, thanks to my meat buying club (recently renamed Sweet Stem Farm).

In preparation for the braising urge that I knew would soon strike, I added a brisket to my January order and this Sunday was the day (it also happened to take up an excessively large amount of room in the freezer). My preferred way to braise brisket is to season it well with salt and pepper, brown it in my big oval Staub pot and then remove it to plate. Then three or four chopped onions get cooked in all the deliciousness that remains in the pot. Once they’ve gone soft and brown, the brisket goes back in the pot and half the onions go on top. Two bottles of beer go in (I used Philadelphia Brewing Company’s Kenzinger this time and it was perfect) and then the whole pot goes into the oven at 300 degrees for four to five hours.

The meat was incredibly tender, flavorful and fragrant. It smelled so good while it was cooking that I could barely take it. We ate it with some roasted carrots (local) and steamed broccoli (not local – the pickings are really slim around here for local green things at the moment). So, so good.

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This soup was several days in the making. While working from home last Friday, I poured two pounds of chicken feet from Sweet Stem Farms into a pot with a chopped onion, a couple of bay leaves (from a tree I had for a time) and nearly five quarts of filtered water. This simmered most of the day, cooking down into a three concentrated quarts of broth. The thing I love about making broth from chicken feet is that they express a great deal of gelatin into the finished product, making it really rich without adding a lot of fat.

I let the broth chill out in fridge until this afternoon. I cooked up onions (Winter Harvest), carrots (Rineer Family Farms), cabbage (Winter Harvest), garlic (Fair Food Farmstand) and kale (Winter Harvest from a couple of weeks ago – it was a bit sad and wilted). Once it was browned and softened, I added the broth back in. Once it came to a boil, I dropped in some raw chopped chicken that had been in the freezer for a while, originally purchased from Sweet Stem Farms.

I didn’t actually eat the soup tonight, as I was hosting a group of friends from my church for a fondue dinner (a couple committee members and I offered it as an item in our annual auction last spring). Scott had two bowls tonight and pronounced it delicious (the few spoonfuls I snagged were pretty darn tasty). Best of all, there’s a half gallon in the fridge, just waiting to be eaten for dinner tomorrow night.

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I know, I know. It’s not the nicest looking plate in the world. Thanks to the lack of any true binding agents, my all-local meatloaf fell to pieces and greatly resembled nothing so much as a mound of Purina. Happily, it was one of those looks terrible, tastes great scenarios. Scott is half way through his month of hard-core Paleo dieting and so I’m cooking creatively in order to make things he can eat while not going crazy with boredom.

In addition to two pounds of grass-fed, local beef from Rineer Family Farm, this meatloaf contains a pureed mixture of carrots, onion, parsnip, garlic and parsley. Again, really good flavors but not much in the cohesion department. On the side, a stalk of brussels sprouts, roasted in a bit of rescued bacon fat. Local eating at its best.

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My March column in Grid Philly (it’s a local magazine dedicated sustainability) is all about eggs. I’ve come up with three seriously delicious egg recipes that are a little different from your standard scrambled or sunnyside up. Because the magazine devoted to keeping things local, I try to only develop recipes with ingredients that are currently available (or will be when the issue is available) from Philly’s 100 mile food radius. So frequently, my dark days eating overlaps with the recipes I’ve tested for my piece.

This dish is a quick tomato sauce, made from minced onions simmered in some cultured butter, a big can of crushed tomatoes and several generous handfuls of tunnel grown baby spinach. Once the sauce was thickened, I carved out four little hollows at 3, 6, 9 and 12 o’clock and dropped in pullet eggs (smaller eggs from young chickens). I added a splash of water so that there’d be enough liquid to cook the tops of the eggs and put a lid on for a few minutes.

When it was time to serve, I ladled two eggs and their sauce over a piece of toasted rustic bread that I’d rubbed with some raw garlic. It was absolutely wonderful eating and all ingredients (save the bread – it was from Metropolitan Bakery) were purchased from the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market. This meal would be in heavy rotation around here, if only Scott liked poached eggs. As it stands, this one is a regular dining alone meal because it only take about 20 minutes from start to finish and it a complete meal (the green vegetable is right there in the sauce).

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This gorgeous plate you see is all thanks to Scott. While I’m typically the one who handles the cooking in our home (essentially, I’m just more interested than he is), he has a few specialties, including boiled corned beef with cabbage and potatoes, turkey burgers and eggplant parmesan. He is also deeply knowledgeable in the ways of the omelet.

This particular three-egg omelet contained onions and red peppers from the Rittenhouse Square Farmers’ Market (that red pepper has been in the crisper for at last three or four weeks and was on its very last legs) and eggs from the Farm to City Winter Harvest program (if you live in the Philadelphia area, Winter Harvest is a fantastic way to keep the local food flowing even in these dark days). The cheese was a hunk of Tillamook white cheddar that we hand carried back from Oregon in October.

The toast started out life as a multi-grain boule from Metropolitan Bakery. Spread with the last of the butter from our Greensgrown CSA and a dab of my apricot jam, it was a lovely breakfast indeed.

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When Scott and I were out in Oregon back in October, we ate dinner at a little restaurant called the Irish Table. During the daytime, it’s a quiet coffee shop and roaster but at night it transforms into a very cozy dining spot. The night we were there, Scott ordered their beef stew and I’ve been thinking about it ever since (I stole many tastes during our meal).

This Saturday afternoon, I cooked up a Dark Days appropriate batch of stew. The beef and the bit of bacon grease I used as lubricant were from Meadow Run Farms, the vegetables (carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, mushrooms, garlic) were all from the Rittenhouse Square Farmers’ Market and the tomato sauce was some I canned last summer (I cooked it down a bit in a small pot to get something akin to tomato paste). I also had half a bottle of red wine from our Berks County Wine Tour excursion to use as part of the cooking medium. The only non-local item was the bit of ap flour I used to dust the beef before browning.

The stew spent four hours in the oven on Saturday afternoon. When it came out, the meat had become incredibly tender and the vegetables were creamy but not quite falling apart. The only thing that could have made our meal more perfect would have been a dusting of snow.

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The short, chilly days of winter are now upon us and that means just one thing. Time for another round of the Dark Day Challenge, in which participants from all over the country (and world) prepare at least one intentionally local meal per week during the winter and blog about it. The goal is to prove that it’s possible to eat locally, even during the cold months when the verdant abundance of summer is just a memory.

For this first week, I have a meal that’s actually doing double duty for me. It’s the bulk of my article for the February issue of Grid Philly, all about how to have a romantic and tasty home-cooked Valentine’s Day. You’ll have to wait until that issue hits the street (or internet) to get the full details of the menu. However, I can tell you that it was everything you want in a celebratory meal – a little bit special, not at all too hard and very satisfying. It also requires the use of both a knife and a fork, which alone elevates it above more than half the meals I make on a regular basis. All ingredients were sourced from the Fair Food Farmstand at Reading Terminal Market, a highly useful resource for Philadelphia grocery shoppers as they carry nearly everything you need for virtuous eating, all year round.

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We’ve come to the end of the Dark Days Challenge. Along with participants all across the country, I’ve been cooking one intentionally local meal every week since November. I’ve eaten lots of my own home-canned goods, along with brussels sprouts, potatoes, Lancaster County meats and dairy. As a result of shopping with the challenge in mind each week, my everyday eating has been far more local than it ever has before.

Last night’s meal was basic but good. A ham steak from Meadow Run Farms, cubed and browned. Some Rittenhouse Farmers’ Market kale, wilted with a bit of garlic. And some little red potatoes, lubed with a spoonful of bacon fat and roasted in a cast iron skillet (if you don’t roast in cast iron, give it a shot. The spots where the food comes in contact with the hot pan get brown and crisp).

I have a confession to make about the potatoes, though. The exact ones you see on the plate there, they aren’t local. I bought them at Wegman’s on Sunday afternoon. You see, I thought I had potatoes still in the fridge, so I didn’t buy anymore at the farmers’ market on Saturday morning, when I bought my kale and unpictured carrots. They were right there, but I’ve been trying not to overbuy food, and I virtuously skipped them, falsely remembering that I still had a few leftover from the buying club.

However, since the potatoes could have been local, I’m counting this as my final Dark Days meal. I’ve already given myself so many exceptions, what’s one more?

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Scott and I spent large hunks of today outside, rejoicing in the 70 degree day and fragrant springtime air. Around noon, our friends Thad and Angie (just days away from their first encounter with parenthood) picked us up and we headed down to the Italian Market for lunch at Paesano’s and an Italian Market wander. Later in the afternoon, the two of us struck out again, to stroll through along the Schuylkill River and zigzag our way back home through the lovely neighborhoods around our apartment.

And what did I make for dinner when we returned from the warmth and sunshine? Well, a hearty shepherd’s pie! I realize that it seems deeply counter-intuitive to tuck into something so deeply winter-y after such a glorious day, but the sad fact is that we’ve only had this wonderful weather for about five days (and it’s supposed to rain tomorrow), so the local farmers markets haven’t had a chance to catch up with the newly temperate climate. Sadly, it’s going to take a few more weeks of balmy days before those springtime items begin to appear in our markets.

Nonetheless, the shepherd’s pie was delicious. I sauteed together a chopped storage onion (Winter Harvest), diced carrots and parsnips, kale and cabbage (all farmers market). I admit to deglazing with non-local wine. After it had cooked down, I added a pound of grass-fed beef (Meadow Run Farms), a couple of teaspoons of flour and a bit of water, to help create a gravy.

While that was all cooking, I peeled and boiled the last of a bag of yukon gold potatoes (Winter Harvest) and mashed them with a bit of milk, butter (Winter Harvest), salt and pepper.

I had cooked the meat/veg combo in an oven-safe cast iron skillet, so when it was all cooked, the potatoes were smoothed over top and broiled until golden brown. Delicious, full of vegetables and enough for at least three more dinnertime servings. That’s my kind of cooking!

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Last Monday night, I left work on time, walked my quick commute home in some rare early March sunshine and made the lovely, local meal you see above. It was a salmon filet, broiled with dabs of butter (Winter Harvest buying club) across the top. Boiled beets (Winter Harvest), peeled, sliced and dressed with a quick balsamic vinaigrette. And a couple handfuls of local greens and grated carrots (Rittenhouse Square Farmers Market).

Now you may be thinking to yourself, “Huh. Last I heard, Marisa, you lived in Philadelphia. I didn’t know you could get local salmon there. Particularly this time of year.” Some of you may even have a doubting eyebrow raised in my direction.

Thing is, you skeptical people would be right. However, I included this salmon in my Dark Days meal because it was fished, packaged and sold by Otolith Sustainable Seafood. They are a small organization that works to get sustainably harvested fish into the hands of the people. Last summer, I bought a share in their CSS for $180 and over the course of three months, got fifteen pounds of salmon. It came frozen and neatly packaged in vacuum-sealed, freezer safe plastic pouches. Our final pick-up was in October and we’ve been happily eating our way through the salmon ever since (I think I’m down to my final four pounds, though). It’s the only way I buy fish anymore.

I believe one of the intentions of the Dark Days Challenge is to get us thinking about our food in a new way and to always consider the source when buying groceries. The food on that plate was carefully considered, thoughtfully purchased,  joyfully prepared and appreciatively consumed. By my accounting, I am good.

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