Dark Days Lunches (with a little cheating)

It wasn't easy to pick a meal this week to dedicate to the Dark Days Challenge.  For some reason I kept changing my plans at the last minute and adding in an ingredient that made the meal not quite qualify.  So in place of one fully local plate I give you my past two lunches, each with one glaringly not locally sourced ingredient but lots of local flavor.

First we have yesterday's Sunshine Chicken with roasted roots.  I used a whole chicken from Hubbell Farm, which I broke down, the wings are pictured.  I shared this recipe back when I first started blogging and my family and I still love it.  Of course it calls for lemons and my lemon tree croaked right after I got one batch of fruit from it but they are in season and organic.  The root vegetables I roasted this time were turnips, beets, parsnips and onion-- a very good combination.  They came from 9 Bean Rows and vendors of The Saturday Farmers Market at the Village.  I cooked the roots in Hubbell Farm's turkey shmaltz.

And today's lunch was lamb arm chops from Starlight Hill Farms served with a variation on this cherry tomato salad.  I used kale, turnip greens and red onion from my 9 Bean Rows winter CSA share but couldn't resist the totally out of season cherry tomatoes John brought home.  I dressed the salad with verjus from Black Star Farms, lots of dried spearmint from my garden (re-hydrated in the verjus), salt, pepper and Higher Grounds olive oil.  You can see the distinctive oil label glowing in today's fantastic sunshine in the background of the photograph.

*Both of these meals fit the requirements of my January Whole 30

Visit Not Dabbling In Normal on Sundays for the round up of Dark Days meals. You can also visit our coordinator at Unearthing this Life to see some of our Midwest group entres.