Waking up to a sunny day we headed out to Miyajima to check out Mt. Misen. We rushed out the door to take the bus to the train to the other train to the ferry to find our adventure for the day.
Everyone knows that buying local/eating local is great. Good fresh food, supporting local businesses, often time small businesses and typically you can always get a good story to go along with your purchase. This weekend I spent a lot of time shopping locally. First my cousin and the Monkey walked down town to grab some tasty ice cream and pick up some fresh live lobster. We had the lobster for dinner that night. Here you can see us setting up for our lobster race. The first place winner gets boiled first, a mercy if you will so he won't see what happens to his friends first! My next adventure was awesome! I am still working on improving my cooking skills, slowly building my little recipe book. While in Hong Kong I started taking cooking classes and when I got back I asked some of our friends to teach cooking classes for our small community. Some of the classes we had covered Armenian food, Korean dishes, Mongolian khuursuur and more. So as soon as we found out we were heading East I started looking around for somewhere to continue classes. Google helped me find Newport Cooks. This weekend's class was a Farm Fresh Cooking Class at Zephyr Farms along with a Beekeeping lesson from Fruit Hill Apiaries. Our tour of the farm was lead by Michele, the Owner/Farmer of Zephyr Farms and her dog Addy. Ii was interesting to learn about her story and how she became a farmer and everything she has to do to keep it all going. I didn't realize the extent of loans/costs that go into keeping a farm afloat. I had some idea but it definitely gave me a new respect for farmers. Part of the land she farms is a part of the Southside Community Land Trust. This is a unique program that allows farmers to rent land to work collaboratively to manage and operate the farm land. This idea is awesome, or at least to me it is, what a great way to give people access to farm land in places where land is at a premium. It made me think something like this would be great for my brother whose dream it is to have a farm. Afterwards we picked fresh veggies and herbs to use in our cooking class. Fun fact of the day green bell peppers are not really a thing- they are just unripened yellow, red or orange peppers. Same goes for jalapenos...weird. The second part of our day was the cooking class. We made Grilled Mussels with Eggplant Caponata, Fresh Salad, Italian-Sweet-Pepper Marinated Pork Tenderloin and Walnut-Raisin Bread with Ricotta, Basil, Blackberries and Honey. Everything was locally sourced and absolutely AMAZING. (The mussels and Walnut-Raisin delish pictured below.) The Caponata wasn't as hard to make as I expected and I really liked it even though I think eggplant is pretty gross. It is the texture, seriously it feels like eating a sponge, not a fan. Since it was chopped up very small I didn't notice it at all. It was good on the mussels but I think it was best on the grilled bread. We also had a fresh salad full of peppers, zucchini, radishes and other fresh goodies. The salad was so tasty that while I was stuffing my face I missed the grilling of the pork, which to be honest is what I really need to learn. Grilling is a mans sport in my family and I don't know anything about it so, yea, oops. I will just have to search out more opportunities for grill lessons. The tenderloin recipe will definitely be used this upcoming week- it was magical. The final dish was the grilled walnut-raisin bread with ricotta, basil, blackberries and honey- a treat for me since we are a dairy-free household due my hubs and wee ones. I will have to search out some a dairy free ricotta substitute to see if the recipe tastes a good while making it edible for the whole family. It was cool to learn that everything we made can be find locally. As much as I want to buy exclusively local,our budget doesn't allow but it is good know that there are options other than just the commissary and now I know where to go and that there is a winter market so I can try to incorporate locally grown and produced as much as budget allows. What about you, what tasty treats can you find locally?
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