Holiday Feasts

Holiday meals have a lot of tradition. In our house I've been serving turkey for thanksgiving and nice beef cuts for Christmas for a few years. The side dishes vary some, but between the two holidays there is always cranberry relish, mashed potatoes, some sort of sweet potatoes and a green vegetable. This year I was pleased to incorporate a lot of local foods into these feasts.

I have to admit, I opted not to buy a local turkey. Fair Shares had made arrangements with some local turkey growers, but my family doesn't really care for turkey very much so I try to buy a small one that won't have leftovers. Along with my non-local turkey though I had all locally sources side dishes. I was able to use a family favorite sweet potato soufle that is topped with pecans, using local sweet potatoes and locally grown pecans. In the picture above you will see it on the table next to pan roasted brussels sprouts topped with locally sourced cheese. It was a fun way to prepare the brussels sprouts, but not as good as some I had at Mazara a couple of weeks ago. They did a silimar preparation but added prosciutto. I'm going to try it again with some great berkshire bacon from Salume Beddu.

In the top pictures I feature grassfed beef tenderloin steaks from American Grassfed Beef. The beef was awesome. I tenderized it using a tool I bought from the American Grassfed Beef website, a Jaccard meat tenderizer. At $39.95 I wasn't sure if it would be worth it, but it has been a great investment. The steaks were wonderful. (but they may have been even without using the Jaccard), but I've also used it on chicken breasts and on a pork tenderloin. I also bought one for my mother. She uses hers often and believes it does make meat better.

With the beef, I served mashed potatoes and turnips. I made a mistake by trying to boil the potatoes and turnips together. The turnips take longer to cook so we had hard lumps, which turned off my kids. We also had sauteed apples, using apples from Schwarz Farms, in OFallon, Il, and a tossed salad with salad dressing made from jam from Centennial Farms, of Augusta, MO. (the salad included fresh veggies and sprouts from various farms) My mother made homemade rolls -- you can't get much more local than mom's homemade rolls.

Overall, it was nice to be able to incorporate locally produced and grown foods in our traditional holiday meals. We didn't have to give up anything we would usually have, and found even better flavors in most of the dishes.