A Locally Grown Meal with Pheasant

A Locally Grown Meal with Pheasant

Feb 28, 2023

It's a meal we look forward to and half the fun is gathering the ingredients.

We call it our Locally Grown Meal because that's the focus - to source ingredients that are produced or made locally.

That can be hard to do given the season - winter! But it is possible. That's how the meal started a few years ago. It was around January or February and I had just started my blog - thelocalgrowers.com. For posts around November and December if focused on local food ideas for Christmas presents. But, now that the holiday season was over, how could I continue to show you CAN do local in the midst of snow.

Thus, the Locally Grown Meal was born.

While I knew I could source the ingredients for a meal and I could prepare it, my cooking would be pretty basic. So I turned to someone I know has great cooking skills - Leon. Leon and his wife, Lori, have been great friends. Our kids are around the same ages and we've maintained a great friendship all these years.

I approached Leon with the idea saying it would be like an episode of The Food Network's show Chopped except instead of a basket of unknown ingredients, he would know beforehand what was being sourced. We would then have a meal, Leon would share recipes and cooking methods and it would be an experience we would share through the blog.

Our first meal featured spatchcocked chicken and lamb kabobs plus roasted rainbow carrots and fingerling potatoes. A cottage industry business prepared an Aronia berry galette for our dessert.

We've had a few other meals since that tone where we've dined on pork ribs and a breakfast themed meal featuring pork and local eggs.

Every time we discussed the entree, Leon has commented on pheasant. We made it happen with this meal. Due to our iffy winter weather as of late, we ended up having the pheasant shipped. It would be a five hour round trip to pick up the birds from Oakwood Game Farm of Princeton, MN. Normally the trek wouldn't be an issue, but, again, the iffy weather and travel conditions prompted the move.

Some of the ingredients weren't too local - coffee beans from a Puerto Rico coffee plantation (thanks to Leon and Lori who picked up the coffee during a mission trip there in January) and the lemon infused olive oil used on the toasted baguette - but each item in our meal had a story that was important to us. Those stories added to the meal.

Oh, and don't forget the locally harvested wild rice! Thanks Paul Shol! It was interesting learning the wild rice harvesting process much less now knowing we do have wild rice in our county!

Learn more about the meal and the ingredients at thelocalgrowers.com.

And thanks for your support.

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