100 Mile Monday requirements for the meal or recipe you link:

• All produce, grains, dairy and meat are from < 100 miles away.

My meal posted below meets the requirements.  The one thing that I really couldn’t get locally was a good type of nut.  Ontario seems to have peanuts, but I have not yet found any good tree nuts like walnuts locally.  I hope to eventually find some, but have only lived here for 3 months!  So yes, I used walnuts in my dish, but not very many!   All my produce, grains, dairy, and meat were from <100 miles away.

The Meal:

Our meat for this week was the last piece from our small box that we got from Vibrant Farms through Bailey’s.  On Thursday I cooked it as a pot roast in the crockpot with potatoes, parsnips, onions, carrots, and radishes.  I also made 4 loaves of whole wheat sourdough ciabatta, and my new favorite beet and apple salad! Oh man, I know I’ve been eating beets all winter but they keep getting better.  The beet and apple salad idea came from Food & Wine but I modified the recipe a bit, partly because for starters I didn’t have pistachios and didn’t feel like buying them.  I’ve seen plenty of salad recipes that feature beets and apples (my own included) but many were more complicated or used spinach (which I rarely have on hand at this time of year).

At the very last minute that evening we invited the neighbors over and the meal turned out to be a great one for sharing!  Everyone enjoyed it and even though it was a huge crockpot full of pot roast there wasn’t too much leftover.  We had 3 of the 4 ciabattas too so I’d say they were well-received.  Oh and the beet & apple salad?  There was none left!

Pot Roast

When I make pot roast in the crock pot I just add whatever wintery vegetables I have available, a piece or two of local meat, some garlic, Italian seasonings, salt and pepper, a bit of red wine, and water and let it cook all day.  Things usually turn out quite tasty so I haven’t done much to improve upon this.  However, here is a link to a standard pot roast recipe.

Whole Wheat Sourdough Ciabatta

I’m not ready to do a recipe for this yet because I wasn’t completely satisfied with how it turned out.  Bread is tricky, especially if you have little experience.  Therefore I don’t want to give a half-hearted recipe and tell you to experiment.   Until my recipe seems completely replicable here is a link that looks good and is similar to what I did (I was working with the knowledge of several non-whole wheat recipes and also sort of making things up).  I kept track of what I did so I can improve my own recipe and post it in the future.

Holy Cow Vegan’s recipe looks straight-forward and successful, with very nice bubbles!

http://www.holycowvegan.net/2012/03/whole-wheat-sourdough-ciabatta.html

My Favorite Beet and Apple Salad

This is adapted from Food and Wine’s recipe.

Ingredients:

• 4-6 medium beets, cooked/roasted
• 1-2 apples, sliced into wedges
• ½ cup walnuts or pecans
• ¼ – ½ cup goat cheese, crumbled
• 3 Tbs. oil
• 2 Tbs. apple cider vinegar
• 1 Tbs. lemon juice
• 1 Tbs. horseradish or horseradish sauce
• Salt and pepper

Put a tablespoon of oil in a baking dish (I used Corningware because it has a lid), roll the beets around to coat with the oil, cover and bake at 375 for 1 hour.  Remove the dish and leave the lid on allowing the beets to slowly cool*.  Peel the beets, and then slice them into pieces about 1cm thick and wide.

Careful, after 1 hour in the oven these are a little hot!

If you like your walnuts sweet and crunchy you can add a small amount of butter (1 Tbs.), honey (1 Tbs.), and salt (dash) to the walnuts and lightly candy them, by cooking over medium heat until they are just starting to turn black.  Remove the pan from heat and allow to cool.  They should be crunchy!

Make the dressing by thoroughly mixing the oil (your choice, preferably local), lemon juice (this will never be local here) horseradish, and a dash of salt and pepper.

Toss the beets and apples with the dressing and top with the walnuts and crumbled goat cheese.  To crumble goat cheese from a “log” just unwrap one end and twist a fork into the cheese allowing the cheese to crumble onto the top of the salad.  Drizzle any extra dressing on top and serve or refrigerate until dinner.

So, before you think I cooked all this in one day you should know that the roasted veggies were leftovers.  But they were still great, in fact, they were maybe even better because they weren’t quite soft enough the first time. The celeriac-beet salad was fairly simple, although celeriac can kind of be a pain to peel, and the ciabatta was really a side product of a large batch of pizza dough for Friday night’s dinner (I make my pizza dough 1-2 days ahead).  Finally, the slow-cooked chicken pretty much didn’t take any work other than preparing a spice combo, rubbing it on the chicken, and stuffing the chicken with a quartered-onion and 4 cloves of garlic.  Anywho, the meal is as follows:

Slow-Cooked Chicken

Adapted from A Year of Slow Cooking

• 1 whole chicken (4-5 lbs)

• 2 tsp salt
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1/2 tsp dried thyme
• 1-2 tsp Italian seasoning
• 1/2 tsp black pepper
• 1/2 tsp of chili powder or Cajun seasoning

• 4 whole garlic cloves (optional)
• 1 onion, quartered (optional)

Rub the chicken all over with the spices and add more of them if you feel like it.  I can’t say I measured and it turned out awesome!  Then stuff the inside of the bird with the garlic cloves and quarters of the onion.  

Put the prepared chicken in the crockpot and set to low (if you have 8 hours until dinner) or on high (if you have more like 4-5 hours).  Obviously don’t make this meal if you are planning on coming home after work and cooking dinner with no preparation, unless you want to eat at like 11pm, which I guess is fine if you live in Spain.

I checked the progress a few times throughout the afternoon and—surprise!—each time it was a bit hotter according to my thermometer.   Having put it in the crockpot around 10:30am we ate at about 6pm and it was perfect!

Celeriac-Beet Salad

• 1 celeriac
• 2 medium sized beets

• 3 tbs. oil
• 1 tbs. horseradish sauce
• 1 tbs. (Dijon) mustard
• 1 tbs. lemon juice
• 1 tbs. (balsamic) vinegar
• Salt and pepper

Peel the celeriac and beets.  Neither of those jobs is fun exactly, but I think it’s worth it.  I think I need to learn a bit more about celeriac because I struggle to peel it.

Anyways, I made it through that job and then grated the two types of vegetables.  I grated the beets on the standard grater and then used the side with three cutters for the celeriac, but I think it would have worked better with the standard side.  I then put the beets on the lower tray of a bamboo steamer and the celeriac on the higher tray and steamed for about 20-30 minutes.  The dressing could just be your favorite salad dressing if you don’t want to make one, but I thought the horseradish sauce would bring a nice spice to the dish.  Toss the steamed vegetables with the dressing and top with crumbled feta or goat cheese.

Roasted Winter Vegetables

Assemble 4-5 of your favorite winter vegetables—potatoes, sweet potatoes, turnips, rutabagas, carrots, beets, onions, etc.  Chop them up and toss them with some oil and a dash of vinegar, then sprinkle with salt and pepper and fresh or dried herbs.  Roast them in the oven for 30-40 minutes.  If you want the onions to not get over-cooked wait 10-15 minutes and then add them to the mix.  Make more than you need and eat them with other meals too!

Whole Wheat Ciabatta

I based my recipe various ones that were on the internet, a good starting place is http://www.thefreshloaf.com/keyword/ciabatta?page=1.  I feel like I haven’t perfected my own whole wheat recipe yet so I’m going to wait to post it until I feel like a ciabatta maestro!