The Cooking Locally Project

Last night I had a stroke of genius. There are two things that I really love in life: fitness and food.

This is seemingly a contradictory love affair...you know, having to lie to one about your whereabouts when the other calls to ask where you are.

For example. Last night, I taught at good ol gdubs and it hit me that I had three beautiful cuts of salmon in the freezer from this weekend. I took one out and left it close in the microwave to defrost.

While at the gym, I thought about how I'd poach the salmon, put a little bit of lemon juice and dill over it with some spinach with a tiny spritz of apple cider vinegar. Food was calling and leaving voicemails on my cell phone while I was in the middle of lunges and bicep curls. It was saying "buuutttteeeeerr."

I got home, browned a bit of butter, threw in the beautifully thawed salmon, dusted with sea salt, black pepper, and dill weed. Perfect.

You can see my dilemma. Poaching salmon is too easy and boring. Browning butter and doing [what I assume is] a butter bake of the salmon is very Top Chef (which also happened to be on last night) and totally a middle finger to the hour long class I'd taught before. It didn't help that the spinach kinda sucked since it was frozen. As I was choking through spinach, I had that stroke of genius.

Now that I won't be teaching two classes on Sundays, I can go to the amazing Dupont Circle Farmers Market on Sundays....and I can do what I saw featured on the marathon of Top Chef. Local cooking: Cook Locally.

A background:

One of my favorite restaurants, Founding Farmers follows this concept. Their menu revolves based on what is in season in the area (being about a 100 mile radius)--not what is flown in from Peru. Not to mention, their food is awesome. Soon to be guest-blogger Jill and I used to go there for brunch and girls nights out. Check them out and see what local food can do--great wine list as well.

And don't forget my favorite place: SweetGreen . SweetGreen is awesome to follow on Twitter, especially on Sundays where they let you know what they're picking up at the Dupont Market. Every week they have local featured items from the market, the farm they're from, and how far away it is. Step back and watch support of local organic food thrive and turn into the best salad you've ever had. You can also find me there about 3-4 nights a week.

So. As of this Sunday, provided I survive my Have Yourself a Merry Little Cocktail party on Saturday, I will be at the market in the morning.

The details:
- I will bring $30 in cash. That's it.
- I will be cooking for 2 people.
- I can only use items from the market, unless it's spices or dairy
- I will create my own menu/recipes (though I know I'll start out using the interwebs as a cheat sheet)
- I will post the results every Sunday night and give you a breakdown of where everything came from, how much it was, and how good it tasted.

In the mean time, check out Founding Farmers and SweetGreen and then give me 10!