Home Grown

Between our gardens, freezers, refrigerators, and pantries, there were very few ingredients we needed to purchase for this meal!

When we were discussing this meal, the one thing we knew we would make was an Heirloom Tomato Pie from the July/August 2011 Food Network Magazine. We had been waiting for there to be enough sun to ripen lots of tomatoes in our gardens to make this recipe, but since that didn't happen we settled for the next best option--buying heirloom tomatoes from a farm on Vashon. We also substituted home-made fresh cheese curds for the manchego cheese in the recipe, and all the herbs were freshly cut from Cornerstone's garden!

Our meat dish was Aged Rib Eye with Onion Puree from the September 2011 Bon Appetit magazine. We cooked a few steaks that Ian and Jeanette brought rather than the one large rib-eye that the recipe calls for.

Unfortunately we didn't still have enough onions in the garden either, so they also came from a farm on Vashon. The chicken stock and buttermilk in the puree were home-made though!

All the greens for Late-Summer-Greens Saute (from September 2011 Bon Appetit) were from the garden at Cornerstone, and the shallots came from the same farm as the onions - Island Meadow Farm

Even dessert came from the garden...well, sorta...the zucchini did!

These are Zucchini Whoopie Pies from Not Without Salt. The cookies pretty much taste like zucchini bread, as they have very similar ingredients.

While we were taking pictures of the cookies, a little someone tried to sneak one off the cooling rack!

The whoopie pies have a delicious buttercream-like filling made with home-made marshmallow fluff. We had them with home-made raw vanilla ice cream

For breakfast the next morning we made Cherry-Chocolate Coffee Cake from the July/August 2011 Food Network Magazine. This is another recipe we had been waiting for a while to make--first we were waiting for the cherries at Cornerstone to ripen, then it was just a matter of finding time to get together and make it! Luckily there were some bing cherries from the tree in the freezer, because by the time we made the cake there were no more cherries on the trees!

The cake calls for sour cream, but we used home-made raw buttermilk instead. We also left out the orange zest in the streusel, as well as the cherry liqueur in the filling. As if having cake for breakfast were not enought, we made raw whipped cream to have with it!