One Local Summer

We're back from vacation and in the midst of eating mostly locally produced foods with a few exceptions. This week's share brought us a whole chicken from Griggstown. I decided to go with the classic Sunday dinner of roast chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes, and green beans. I also added a salad of homegrown red oak lettuce to the dinner table as well.

I opted to slow roast the chicken in the crockpot and not fire up the oven. I marinaded the chicken overnight with a paste of garlic, olive oil, paprika, oregano, ground pepper, kosher salt and onion powder. I ran out of onions so I stuffed the cavity with lemons and garlic. The chicken cooked on low in the crockpot for most of the day. It fell apart when I pulled out to slice for dinner.

Sides included simple mashed potatoes, homemade chicken gravy and steamed green beans dressed with salt, pepper and Amish butter. We also had the rest of the bread from Slow Rise Bakery I picked up at Greensgrow.

Non-local ingredients: salt, pepper, some spices and lemon.

After dinner, I clean out the crockpot, and tossed in the chicken carcass from Sunday's dinner and another chicken carcass that has been hanging out in the freezer. I also threw in all bag of all of my frozen veggie scraps from the last few weeks. I added some herbs and filled the crockpot up with water and let it simmer all night for homemade chicken stock.