Sunday, September 26, 2010

All Mattole Foods Potluck 2010

Winner for Best Vegetable Dish: Lindsay's Carrot, Onion, Potato Cakes with Sliced Tomatoes and Yogurt Cheese

My Summer Veggie Quiche


Winner for Best Beverage: Ian's Yellow Jacket Apple and Cherry Juice


Winner for Best Dessert: Jim and Kristen's Lemon Blueberry Ice Cream

Winner for Best Meat Dish: Duck Dumpling Stew by Todd and Jessica


Winner for Best Overall: Ryan's Pumpkin Stew with Yogurt Chive Sauce





Each year the Mattole Self-Sufficiency Project puts on an all Mattole food potluck. Anyone can enter a dish, but all the ingredients of the dish must be raised in the Mattole watershed.

For this year's entry, I made a Garden Veggie Quiche. I grew some wheat two years ago, and ground the flour with our hand-powered mill. I made butter and ricotta cheese with milk I got from our friends' milk cow. I mixed up that butter and flour with a little milk and rolled out a crust, and then filled it with an onion, garlic, basil, egg, ricotta, corn, zucchini, and pepper filling. It was delicious.

The potluck featured a lot of lovely dishes, many of which were more complex this year due to the addition and availability of cow dairy. There were soups, stews, salads, veggie dishes, dried fruit, fruit leather, ice cream, grasshoppers, juice, alcohol, applesauce, and more.

The dishes were judged on a combination of flavor, complexity, difficulty of procuring the ingredients, and it seems there was a bonus for using other people's ingredients, as this represents community food sustainability. The winners were:
  • Best Veggie Dish: Lindsay's Carrot-Potato-Onion pancakes, served with sliced tomatoes and yogurt cheese
  • Best Meat Dish: Todd and Jessica's Duck Dumpling Stew
  • Best Dessert: Kristen and Jim's Blueberry Ice Cream
  • Best Side Dish: Mimi and Harold's Dried Fruit Collection. The presentation of this particular dish was stunning.
  • Best Overall: Ryan's Pumpkin Stew, served with yogurt chive sauce
All admission prices were paid in Petols, our local currency, which is based on the value of silver, and prizes were awarded in Petols.

I think that the next kind of food category to conquer is vegetable oil, such as sunflower, rape, olive, etc. That's mostly what's missing!

3 comments:

Unknown said...

fabulous event...and always inspiring me with ideas and gratitude for P-town folk. Love you all!

Unknown said...

Oh i miss being there now!!!!! What beautiful dishes and i love the expansion of the possibilities every year. Congratulations for all the contributions and all the various plannings, plantings and preparations that bring it to fruition. I hope you'll post some recipes.

Love to all,

Oma Judith

yesIah garvey said...

thanks for this terrific report !