30-Mile Cooking Club Meal

July is 30-Mile Meal Month here in Athens, Ohio. The 30-Mile Meal Project is an initiative challenging people to focus their meals around locally grown foods and products. Yumi hosted this month's cooking club, and she challenged us to make our own 30-Mile dishes!

Nancy started things off with a basil cheesecake and spelt flour crackers. It was AMAZING!!! What a delicious appetizer. SO fresh and delightful!



Nancy used Village Bakery yogurt (made from Snowville Creamery milk), Integration Acres goat chevre, eggs from Albany, basil from Valerie's garden and honey from Shade. She made the crackers with Shagbark Seed & Mill Co. spelt flour.

Yumi made herb polenta with mixed peppers and wineberry gastrique.



I LOVED this. I looooove polenta, and the peppers were sweet with a hint of spicy and just bursting with flavor



Yumi used Shagbark heirloom corn meal, herbs and peppers from Cowdery farms, Cantrell lotus honey, Tillis Highlands Farm wineberry vinegar & wineberries and Shew's Orchard apple vinegar.

Valerie made black bean, corn and tomato salad, served in little lettuce wraps with pepper jack cheese. I was helping myself to little lettuce tacos all night long!! They were so yummy.



Valerie used corn, cherry tomatoes, garlic, pepper jack cheese and wineberry vinegar from the Athens Farmers Market, red onion, basil, and leaf lettuce from her own garden, and Shagbark black beans.

Summer made pork tenderloin with blueberry chutney.



It was great!! Look at the color of those blueberries! Summer used local pork tenderloin and fresh picked blueberries, lodi apples, red onion and red wine from West Lafayette, Ohio.

I made roasted new potatoes and green beans with feta.



This was an awesome recipe from Eating Well. Click here for the recipe. The potatoes, green beans and and scallions all came from the Athens Farmers Market, and the goat feta was from Integration Acres.

All together, now!



For dessert, Emily made Peach Kuchen.



She used peaches and eggs from the Athens Farmers Market, Snowville Creamery heavy cream, Hartzler's Amish-style roll butter and Shagbark spelt flour. I'm sure you can tell just by reading the ingredients that this dessert was DELICIOUS!!!

Such a wonderful meal and such a fun challenge! It definitely proves that you don't have to go far to enjoy an amazing variety of food.

After dinner, it was time for games! First, we played Foodie Fight. Here is my team congratulating ourselves for getting a tough question right. Go, us!!



After that, we played the game where you write the name of a person on a Post-It note, stick it on your forehead, and then try to guess who you are by asking questions. It was really fun!!









Valerie, Nancy and Emily!



Yumi, me and Summer!



The first round. Check it out, Tom Strodtbeck!!



Round two!



Hercules.












Round three!









Round four.



And that concludes another amazing cooking club!! YUM.