Halibloggers Eat Atlantic: The Dinner Party Edition

As previously mentioned… Lynn, Angie and I decided to take part in the region’s Eat Local challenge and put together a little “girls’ night in” dinner party on Friday night.

The appies:

Sourdough bread (from the Farmers Market) with real butter (yes it’s Atlantic made!), Cow’s extra old white cheddar (PEI), local canteloupe (from Sobey’s), local raspberries (from Pete’s Frootique) and fresh local shucking peas and sliced Sunrise apple (also from the Farmers Market).

 

The wines:

Angie spent some time chatting with the knowledgeable lady at the NSLC and brought these two bottles…

Blomidon Estate L’Acadie White

 

Lunenburg County Blueberry Wine

I loved the white.  I was the perfect compliment to the fruit, cheese and bread appetizers and I actually savoured my second splash with our meal.  It went very well with the fruity salad and chicken.  (Truth be told I bought another bottle to keep in the fridge for the next time the mood for white wine hits me…)

The main:

Shout out to Farm Girl’s hubby J for helping me out at Pete’s Frootique.  He spent some time showing me the selection of Atlantic area meats the store carries and it is a lot more than I had realized.  Next time my freezer empties out of meaty goodness I’ll make a trip to Pete’s to try out something fun like local venison or emu.  :)  Or maybe just steak if I’m not feeling overly adventurous that day…

For our meal I chose to buy a small roasting chicken from EdenValley Farms. 

With all of the cooking I do, I’ve never actually cooked a whole chicken.  Shocking, I know!  So I called up a friend (hi Phil!!) and asked him how he would do it if he was going to put it on the BBQ.  He suggested the easiest way would be to take out the backbone and flatten it out, so I Googled “how to butterfly a chicken”, followed this video, and in under 10 minutes I had a lovely flat bird ready for the BBQ.  It was super easy…I’ll definitely do this again!

We seasoned it simply with some maple chipotle seasoning Lynn brought, and laid it out (breasts up) on some tin foil on a med-hot grill for about 20ish minutes.  Then I flipped it over and cooked for another 10 minutes or so.  Let sit in the hot BBQ for a few more minutes, then rested on the counter for 5-10 minutes while we finished the rest of the sides.

It turned out juicy, moist and deeeelish.  The meat and skin were basically just falling off, so I easily just broke it down into four pieces for serving and we just tore off what we wanted. 

The sides:

Lynn took care of the yummy side dishes.  She packaged up some beautiful local potatoes…all diced up with EVOO, spices, fresh local garlic from Angie…and wrapped in foil to cook up on the BBQ next to the chicken.  So good!

And corn-on-the-cob, which she was disappointed in because it came from Superstore and the guy there couldn’t tell her where it actually came from (nice, right?) and it was a bit past it’s prime.  Still juicy and good with some real butter though!!

The salad:

You had to know I’d offer to take on the salad!  What would a Haliblogger Dinner Party be without one of my bigass salads?  haha.  This particular salad was completely inspired by the Farmers Market.

In the big bowl: fresh local spinach, fresh local mixed baby lettuces, fresh local orange cherry tomatoes, fresh local blueberries, fresh local sunrise apple, fresh local purple bell pepper, and Ran-Cher Acres goat cheese (bought at Pete’s).

 

For dressing: EVOO, big squeeze of fresh lime, ground sea salt, and a big drizzle of Lynn’s Nova Scotia honey.

All together:

My plate:

Dessert:

Lynn cooked us up some of her stash of frozen strawberries from Farm Girl’s family farm, and served them over Farmer’s Old Fashioned Vanilla Ice Cream.  Deeeeelish.  *drool*

All in all, a true success.  Our meal was 99.99% Atlantic grown or made and unbelievably delicious (and fun!!).  Just goes to show that a bit of thought and discussion makes it pretty easy to eat locally.  In fact, it wasn’t even more expensive.  You just have to plan for it and make it second nature to know what you are buying.