To close out the summer, we savored the best of local foods from coast to coast. I’ll write more about our Oregon finds later this week, but for the official last post of One Local Summer I wanted to detail the family barbeque we had this weekend for the toddler’s 2nd birthday.

On the menu:

• Heirloom vegetable crudite with Italian “Little Tree of Sarzano” zucchini, lemon cucumbers, yellow and purple peppers, purple cherokee cherry tomatoes
• Corn chips with fresh peach salsa
• Watermelon gazpacho
• Grilled corn-on-the-cob with South Mountain Creamery butter
  
• Virginia beef hamburgers (freshly ground by the butcher) on Va.-made buns with Tom’s cave-aged smethe cheese & Amish pickles (PA), Bigg Rigg’s ramp mustard (WV) and Mr. Ugly tomatoes (MD)
• Beverages: Peach Sangria, with Barboursville sparkling wine (VA); Fordham (MD), Dominion (VA) and Dogfish Head (DE) beer.
• Dessert: birthday cake & cupcake from Buzz Bakery.

The produce came from our Potomac Vegetable Farms CSA; Mt. Olympus Farm, Reid’s Orchard and a Northern Neck VA farmer at the McLean market; and Tom the Cheese Guy, D&S Farms and the plant stand at the Del Ray market.

Only non-local ingredients: tortilla chips (though Snyders were from PA), jicama, seltzer, Gulden’s mustard and organic ketchup. One lesson learned – don’t ask a butcher how much beef you’ll need unless you want some giant burgers! But they were oh so very good.