Whatcha eatin'?

Lots of green! (Those are fruit smoothies with kale. My brother did it first. I cannot take credit. As I look at that picture I see my girls' beautiful eyes and their apparently brush-deprived heads of hair.)

Between the farmers' market and the back yard garden, we've gotten more and more into local food. This year we joined a CSA. One Straw Farm brings its produce to a couple of pick-up places in the city once a week and those of us who've joined for the year just go get it. We can walk to ours. (It's so fun to keep saying I can WALK places! Kind of makes up for the frequent sirens.)

Beyond supporting a local farm and eating seasonal food, we've been exposed to SO much food we'd never cooked or even eaten before. It started in June with a bazillion different lettuces. Yes, a bazillion. You'd excuse my exaggeration if you'd eaten it all, too.

There were a few glorious spears of asparagus--I had no idea until reading a book Courtney gave me called "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" how desperately short the growing season for asparagus is. It makes me want to grow our own patch. (I'm so good at wanting things...not so good at the effort of getting them!)

Swiss chard in different colors, and summer vegetables--yellow squash, tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, watermelons, cantaloupe, and lovely white beets. I roasted them in thin slices and put them on a salad. Garlic, onions, and a green called purslane that I'd swear is a weed--I pulled something out from between the cracks in our front walk yesterday that looked SO much like that purslane stuff that we ate over the summer.

Kale, mustard greens , acorn squash, butternut squash, thyme, marjoram, red beets, broccoli, and different kinds of potatoes. The fun part is trying to use and eat it all before the next week's pickup. Last week I found a Potato and Mustard Green soup that we all ate rather dutifully. It was SO bland, even with my addition of the thyme and marjoram. But the next day I added sweet potatoes and mild Italian sausage to it and Evelyn was BEGGING for it. (Okay, so she's in a growth spurt...and she WAS saying, "Mommy, I want the soup with the MEAT in it!!")

Saturday night I made vegetarian chili that had mustard greens, kale, chard, eggplant, bok choy, and the usual peppers, onions, tomatoes, and garlic (you get to Saturday and you think, "If we don't eat all that produce in the frig, where are we going to put Monday's pickup?!?") Tonight we finished the leftovers of it with corn bread.

It HAS kept us from going to the grocery store as often, and it has certainly kept us eating and cooking things we'd never have tried otherwise. I'm really getting a kick out of it. Feel free to send me recipes, books on eating/cooking locally, and any other hippy-dippy thing you find. I do feel quite at home with a bandanna in my hair.