A "Local" Birthday Celebration

This post has been a long time in coming. For Mike's birthday this year (in January ;-) he decided he wanted to have a couple friends over and serve a dinner that was all "local" food.  So, it took some planning, but we really pulled it off. We are so lucky to live in a place where food grows year round.  But there still were a lot of lessons learned about just how difficult it is to find things that are grown locally and not flown in from around the world.  We know consciously do an "all local" meal once a week.

A delicious New Zealand Spinach and Strawberry salad (the spinach was grown locally) fresh from the farmer's market.

Mike's favorite Bruschetta (mine too!).  This was quite popular.  We are lucky both Strawberries and Tomatoes have a January season here.  The bread is an Artesian bread from our farmer's market.

Undoubtedly the favorite dish - dessert.  A persimmon pie.  Persimmon's are a fruit that I consider to be a cross between an apple and a peach.  We only stumbled upon them when they came into season last August.  We ate so many that we got a little tired of them.  Then I discovered they are wonderful dehydrated so I started buying them again.  For Mike's dinner I was so excited to think of adapting my yummy and healthy peach pie recipe with these persimmons.  I had no idea how wonderful the pie would be.  I think each of us would have eaten our own if there were enough.  Alas - the next week the farmer's market was out of persimmons.  We must wait to experience this pie again until next August.  Ugh!

And another of our favorites - Artichokes.  These have been just wonderful fresh from the farm since January and we have been enjoying them ever since this dinner - sometimes twice a week.  

I forgot to take photos of the fish but we also were able to grab some yummy fresh local caught halibut at the farmer's market.  Everyone enjoyed it thoroughly.

Happy Birthday Mikey! Let's do it again next year ;-)