Oh! Good.
I should have added to my last post that if you want to make something, and would be inspired to make something with walnuts and ā above all ā if you are okay with making a pierogi-like stuffed pasta, there is a wonderful italian dish called pansoti con salsa di noci which is pasta pouches filled with aromatic greens, and then the hot cooked pouches are smothered with a no-cook sauce made of walnuts, stale bread and milk, which have been pounded together until creamy.
You can find many recipes on line, including ones in English, but you can also use Google translate. Some call for adding cream to the sauce (frowned upon by purists), others will add or omit garlic or other herbs. The challenging part is finding the right kind of greens for the stuffing, because in Italy, it would mainly be borage but also wild greens and weeds. But any local combo of green stuff will do. Just cook them long and well to remove any bitterness.
If you donāt feel like making a ravioli or pierogi type stuffed pasta, the walnut sauce is also good with just ribbony noodles (not egg however) or on gnocchi.
BTW when i say regional cuisine, that includes U.S. as well.
Ultimately I am just throwing ideas out. I think there are about 5-10 posters interested in the variations of DOTM idea, and probably more once the idea gets started. so its just a matter you all finding a theme that you are interested in participating and keeps you engaged- DOTM, RCOTM, SDOTM. You can have the flexibility too if there is interest to keep this going- some months it can be DOTM, some months it can be SDOTM, RCOTM, etc.
Iām a fan of it being Dumplings or a Regional Cuisine since one can cook recipes that fit any (most any?) diet. If a dish ends up being inspired by the cuisine (due to using locally sourced food, in season vegs, ect) rather than authentic thatās ok by me as long as itās tasty.
I have wild arugula and loads of borage in my yard . These wont come up until spring
It doesnāt entirely overcome my objection, but Iām not trying to block the idea for this forum. If I were living in Maine, I wouldnāt eat the foods of Florida and Arizona, or Seattle, for a whole host of reasons, just as I wouldnāt make dishes using olive oil.
Sure, I can go with this ā although sticking to locally sourced is often more restrictive than people imagine. For instance, where I live in Italy, there is no shrimp other than frozen shrimp from thousands of miles away. My local butcher only carries lamb at Eastertime because nobody raises sheep around here. I donāt know where you live, but there are only a handful of places in the US with conditions suitable for growing olives, so what would you do with a DOTM when the region was Greece? Iād find it fairly easy to do Greece, and absolutely impossible to do the Caribbean. Again, not trying to stop it or tweak it so I can participate.
To me Dumplings is a more flexible concept , open to using local ingredients.
Worth waiting for. Toss in dandelions too if you have them. If you have ever wondered what else you can do with borage, using them to for ravioli is great. There are dozens of recipes online. Or, if you are really lazy like me, you can take all the ingredients for borage ravioli and instead of making ravioli, cook pasta ribbons or squares, cook the borage separately then toss it all together with ricotta, and sprinkle it with pepper and grated cheese.
I would join in a DOTM group.
I agree with HolyTerroirās ideals and try to eat as many local ingredients, in season, as I canā¦ but I also love to try out foods Iām not familiar with and cook dishes that originated all over the world. I donāt travel as much as Iād like, and if I can make my version of a French dish that I ate in France here in the Pacific Northwest, Iām going to do it. And I try olive oils from different countries rather than limiting myself to local butter or canola oil.
One of the things I love about a forum like Hungry Onion is that I get to ātalkā with people who live in other parts of the world, then try cooking things they cook and enjoy.
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In the past, I have contributed to the DOTM. I donāt always, as there are some things that donāt interest me. BUT - I appreciate when it is drilled down to a certain ingredient and then let all the people add a version on how to use that. To me, that is more useful as I learn so many ways to use something I may have in my freezer/pantry than I had ever thought. Just my 2 cents.
Soā¦ you would only use olive oil if you lived in an area that produces it? Talk about limiting yourself for no good reason.
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I donāt want to imagine my life without coffee, tea, chocolate, olives and olive oil, lemons, limes, oranges, real parmesan, French champagne!
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etcā¦ I wouldnāt either but the concept of cooking with local ingredients is not to avoid or eliminate those pantry items we need. That would be too extreme and impracticable. No, The Main ingredients ought to be seasonal. Local usually means as near as possible to where weāre living. Less than 100 miles away IOW. Seasonal means just that. Those food stuffs readily available in our area at he time weāre using them.
For example, right now (the Ides of Jan) locally this week we have: broccoli, broccolini, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, celery root, collards, fennel, kale, leeks, mache, potatoes (maincrop), pumpkin, rutabaga, salsify, sweet potatoes, sunchoke, turnips
grapefruit, kiwi fruit, oranges, pomegranate, tamarillo, tangerines, ugli fruit
duck, goose, quail, rabbit, venison
clams, crab, mussels, oysters, scallops.
Bear in mind al this is not in the Boston area today, but itās available somewhere in the US.
Thatās an enormous assortment of stuff to work with.
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This is the reality of where I live in Italy. I can only cook with what is grown locally. It is imposed on me by geography and economics (I live in a village), not a choice or ideal. Itās turned out to be illuminating and a boost to my well-being, and it is has entirely changed my way of cooking and eating, so I donāt think I will ever go back to eating any other way even if I ever leave here. If I end up living in a part of the world that doesnāt produce olive oil, Iāll live off the fat of whatever land that is.
But like I said, if peopel want a different kind of DOTM format rather than a focus on seasonal or local, Iām not going to stage an online opposition to it.
I love thisā¦ when I think about my grandmother in rural northern California, Iām sure she used butter or animal fat for everythingā¦
Ah, I thought for a moment you were saying that those foods were grown locally not just in the US. I was, like, WTH, weāre under several feet of snowā¦and citrus doesnāt grow here anyway. 
Holy T , Why donāt you pick a ingredient or ingredientās from where you are living . Here in the US most items are available to me . Not all of them though . Make a list of ten what are available to you and weāll go from there . Such as a protein and vegetable or whatever and cook that ingredient any way you like .
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IMO, DOTMs arenāt the dishes where everyone will cook every month. Either ingredients arenāt available or one isnāt interested in the particular dish. The month is short 
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Youāre right . Iām giving up on dish of the month . It canāt be done . 
Oh for goodness sakes. This thread reminds me of too many cooksā¦etc.
One ingredient. Yes, it is cold somewhere, no, there are only 3 animals alive here, yes, we have onions, but no we have no other vegetables.
Dish of the month should be water. Everybody has it. Figure out what to put in it to make it taste good. 
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I actually really enjoyed the voting and (sometimes) the resulting threads, even tho many times the winning dish wasnāt something for which I voted or cared to cook.
I think it would be interesting to see if thereās a quorum for it. Why not give it a shot?
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I agree. But I donāt think this thread is even close to a quorum. Maybe a new thread?
