Dark Days - meal 6

This week we picked up a very lovely local ham from our market.  Baked using this recipe, it came out just beautifully!  This evening for our dark days meal we ate that ham, served with roasted acorn squash (from our CSA) and my husband's home-made herby bread & local butter.

I like to pre-cook my squash a little in the microwave so it doesn't take as long in the oven.  Just 10 minutes on high (cut in half, cut-side down on a plate), then I season with salt, pepper, hungarian paprika (adds a kick) and cinnamon sugar.  A nice balance of sweet & savory.  Add a small pat of butter and pop them in the oven cut-side up for an additional 10 minutes at 400 degrees F.

We also had a very special treat as an appetizer: tomato slices!  I'm a little embarrassed to admit, but while cleaning off the counter I "found" the VERY LAST TOMATO from our garden, which had been brought in the house, green and rock solid, before the first freeze.  It was perfectly ripe and ready to eat.  I had my slices straight up with a touch of salt, while my husband added a dab of mayo.  It was a heavenly little taste of summer!

A word about the bread:  he still used the flour we had bought before the challenge (according to my own rules I put forth in the beginning), but in the future we will be able to make bread and other stuff with locally sourced flour, since I found local flour last weekend in Philly! 

I bought buckwheat flour, whole spelt kernels, and whole wheat pastry flour, all made less than 100 miles of Philadelphia and even closer to Baltimore! 

I also did some research on other resources for local flour and came up with a couple additional choices.  Our local market is even going to contact the sources for flour I found in Philly to see if they'd be interested in selling at Mill Valley.  Pretty excellent.