The Perfect Meal

As a wrap-up to Local Food Month, and in conjunction to finishing reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, I proposed trying to create The Perfect Meal.

Unfortunately, I never did get around to actually hunting, collecting or harvesting all my own food, so I let it slide. But last night I think I got about as close to the Perfect Meal as I'm going to get.

It was Sunday Family Meal night and I harvested from my backyard potatoes, beets, carrots, onions, garlic and rosemary for a roasted vegetable dish. I also oven roasted locally grown corn and made (if I do say so myself) some absolutely fantastic Rioja braised chicken thighs (from local, organic chicken) with a plum port sauce, using the Plum Port jam I made last month. I still can't get over how crazy good my creation turned out. I can't wait for leftovers tomorrow. Let me know if you are interested in the recipe and I'll post it on Crunchy Chicken Cooks.

I also wanted to let you all know that Joel Salatin (of Polyface Farms - the farm featured in The Omnivore's Dilemma) has a new book coming out. He was kind enough to send me an advance copy, so I'll be posting a review when it's closer to the book's publishing date. Between that and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, I'm in food reading heaven!

Omnivore's Dilemma book discussion - Section III (chapters 18-20)

This is it! The final installment of The Omnivore's Dilemma book club.

Chapter 18: Hunting - The Meat I found it interesting the description that Michael Pollan gave of the adrenaline rush of hunting an animal. Having never hunted before I can't quite relate. I think the closest I can get to it is fond memories of playing hide and seek, where your senses are heightened and the anticipation is unbearable. Do you believe that humans still hold an evolutionary throwback to this hunting physiology? If you have hunted before, have you experienced this as well?

Chapter 19: Gathering - The Fungi I live in the land of the fungi, yet few people I know are proficient in hunting mushrooms. It's something that we have wanted to do for a while, but just never got around to it. The closest I've gotten to mushroom hunting was when I was wrapping our Dogwood with Christmas tree lights last December and spied this giant fella. I still, to this day, don't really know what the heck it is. Anyone have any ideas? And, no, I didn't eat it. Although it smelled wonderful and I was tempted.

Chapter 20: The Perfect Meal In the spirit of Local Food Month, I'd like to propose a meal similar to the one Michael Pollan enjoyed in this final chapter. The rules are a little looser than his, but the concept is the same - get to know intimately where all the food comes from that makes up one meal. Think of it as an über-local meal.

Here are the rules for "The Perfect Meal":

1. Everything on the menu must have been hunted/fished, gathered (including U-Pick), or grown by you
2. Everything must be made from scratch (this includes pasta, bread, etc.)
3. The menu should feature at least one representative of each edible kingdom: animal (vegetarians can skip this one), vegetable and fungus (only if still available and, since I don't want to kill anyone, just use local mushrooms)
4. Everything served must be in season and fresh
5. You have to cook the meal yourself
6. You have to invite at least a few guests to share this meal with you, preferably those that have helped you in acquiring the foods

You have a couple weeks to plan and work on this one. I'll have you post pictures and a report of this "Perfect Meal" by August 20th. I'll do a follow-up post in the intervening time.

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Also, just as a head's up, I will doing a book giveaway of my relatively pristine hardbound copy of The Omnivore's Dilemma. So, if you don't already own a copy and would like one, stay tuned for this Friday (7/27) when I commence the giveaway.