eastowners

Current Mood: Happy & Surprised

So, I was tagged by my pal Big Binder to do an Eat Local Meal this week. What this requires is that the majority of your meal comes from within in a 100 mile radius of where you live, and if that’s too hard then at least from the state you live in. The reason being, if you buy and eat local, the majority of your money stays in your local area. Since MI is in such a bad place, the more local things you buy the faster our state will recover.

After some thinking, because it does require thinking to figure out what and where are we going to get local foods, we came up with what we hope to be a tasty Mexican Fiesta! We went to our local greenhouse grocery Horrocks to see what we could find. It didn’t take much looking, or searching for products when we got there…..but thinking of a recipe made me draw a blank - which is why I called on my trusty partner in crime life. Thanks to Brad though, he created what I think is a pretty good meal! So, here’s our recipe for Vegetable Burrito’s ala Brad:

1 1/2 cups Calrose Rice (cook as directed - we use our wonderful rice maker, but you can use the stove. After it’s cooked add the juice of a lime - let steam for a minute or two then add 1/3 cup fresh chopped cilantro, stir well)

1 1/2 cups Black Beans (we found Carlson-Arbogast Farm out of Howard City, MI) Cook as directed, and season with 1tsp. minced garlic (if you do fresh 3-4cloves), 1/4tsp. cumin, 1/4tsp. salt, pepper, 2tsp sugar

1 pepper of each color: Red, Orange, Yellow, and Green (our green peppers came from Brad’s Parent’s garden in Niles - 104 miles away but who’s counting, the others were store bought)

1 Crookneck Squash sliced, and then quarter the slices (Ours is not from within the 100 miles of home, but it’s from Char’s Parent’s garden in Goodells, MI - 164 miles away…hey it was free to us, and something we had on hand)

Saute the peppers & squash in 2 tablespoons Olive oil, add 1/3 cup tequila, salt, pepper, and Fajita Seasoning (all of our spices come from Penzey’s, not local but fabulous!)

1 package of 10″ Flour Tortilla’s (ours were San Marcos from Grand Rapids, MI)

Salsa freshly made by Horrocks

Monterey Jack cheese (also from Horrocks in their local cheese bin) shredded

Steam your tortillas in the microwave for about 1.5 minutes

Build your burritos (by the way this makes about 6 burritos maybe more if you don’t make them too big) by spreading some sour cream on, add the rice, peppers & squash, shredded cheese, and salsa. Wrap up and ENJOY! As a side we also served up our favorite El Matador Tortilla Chips (from Grand Rapids, MI) to dip in our yummy salsa from Horrocks.

Brad did a fabulous job on these, and I hope that we’ll make them again soon. I wish we would have taken a picture of them so you could see our final meal, but it’s a burrito…..do you really need to see it?!?! Everything in our meal was local (if not to our 100 mile area, at least our state) with the exception of the rice, limes, cilantro (maybe?), the seasonings, the tequila, and the colored peppers.

Now, I am supposed to tag 2 people to do this Meme as well. I tag Mom to Two Boys and The Artistic Pursuit of Life on Earth. If the 2 of you actually do this Meme (I sure hope you do…..I’d be interested in seeing what you come up with) please be sure to link back to Eastowners as well as Big Binder. Good Luck, and Happy Cooking!