Fill Your Plate from the Farmers Market

It's the time of year for finding foods from every food group at our local farmers market.  Animal proteins, fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy-they're all available locally!  Today's sampling was a combination of 3 recipes:  Pork Meatballs in Orange Sauce with Grilled Mid-East Vegetables.

The ground pork was lean, combined with fresh ginger, onions, whole grain cornmeal and seasonings.  These I baked before the market, covered with a homemade orange sauce and kept hot in a commercial soup crock.  Our sponsor and friends, the meat and poultry farm family, sponsor the space and provide the meat, eggs and some supplies.

The vegetables were donated by other vendors at the market.  I pre-cooked the butternut squash and pumpkin, cut and marinated all the vegetables in lemon juice, olive oil and seasonings.  Today my husband cooked these on the griddle top.  The aroma permeated the market.

We served 230 meatballs with vegetables, seven  times the consumer recipe.  The meatballs were mixed yesterday, portioned and baked this morning.  The sauce was made today.  2 gallons of vegetables were portioned in 6 bags, each with the following marinade:

3 tablespoon lemon juice, 2 tablespoon olive oil, 4 teaspoon turmeric, 1 teaspoon cumin, 1 teaspoon garlic powder and 1 teaspoon garam masala.

Many thanks to dietetic interns Madison and Madison for serving and promoting the individual farms.