What Eating Local Really Means

It's funny to me how used to variety in my eating I've become. Having a garden, I had this idea that I'd be making these complex dishes with all my produce all summer. But the fact is that the carrots and the lettuce don't come in at the same time. Nor do the snow peas and the onions. What I'm starting to do is, instead of looking for recipes that focus on the main ingredient I'm currently harvesting, I am just putting the ingredients I have together and pouring vinaigrette over them and eating it. In this way I've discovered two wonderful salads.  In June, I pretty much lived on lettuce and snow peas with vinaigrette. For the last week it's been  cucumber, cherry tomatoes and blanched green beans with dill and/or mint and/or oregano and a simple white wine/lemon/oil vinaigrette. It's light, crisp, crunchy, fresh and flavorful. The flavors blend well. It's colorful. The green beans don't hold up well if you have extras, but for the most part it's good the second day as well.

Yellow and red tomatoes are coming in now, so I can make my cold tomato soup, and there's still basil for caprese. I'll have my next batch of lettuce at the same time I'm harvesting carrot, which will start the salads up again, especially if the cherry tomatoes are still producing.

August looks like it will be a crazy week of guests and work, but somehow I want to have time and figure out how to make pickles and also, in addition to freezing more beans, dry tomatoes and can salsa and tomatoes. We'll see how it goes. It may just be a matter of eating things as they come...