After bagging the garden-raiding porcupine (see The Critter Gitter Gits Its Critter) Michelle made porcupine bourguignon. The resulting meal was an extreme example of eating locally.
The onions, garlic, side salad, and—in this case, even the porcupine—came from our garden. The red wine for the sauce came from our homemade stock. We used hawkwing mushrooms harvested from the slope behind the cabin Even the bay leaf, while not strictly local, came from my grandfather’s bay tree. (Periodically, my cousin sends us an envelope of dried bay leaves harvested from the tree.) We also had homemade bread, made with whole wheat we ground ourselves from stores that came with the cabin.
Most of the salad dressing ingredients (see Our Favorite Scratch Salad Dressing Recipe) a few of the herbs and spices in the main dish, and the butter for the bread came from the store. If you want to get technical, the components of the red wine also came from elsewhere. The rest came from the “homestead” compound.
It was delicious, by the way!
Porcupine bourguignon, a complete meal from the homestead (Photo: Michelle L. Zeiger).
Interesting – looks great – No need to settle for beans and cornbread just because you live remote
Nothing wrong with beans and corn bread, though!