Sunday Lunch

I had a great time visiting friends that I haven't seen for a while. I was well fed during the trip, visited a farmer's market, a community garden and a really nice Italian garden, shopped a bit, and chatted a lot with friends. After all the fun and excitement, it was nice to come home, sleep in the familiar bed, and wake up in the morning and walk out to our garden.

On Sunday morning, I pulled out some carrots (yellow and orange) and a beet. Potato plants looked yellow but I wasn't sure if it was because they were ready for harvest or because they were stressed out from lack of rain. Feeling impatient, I decide to harvest one of the two potato bags. I simply dump the soil out of the bag, started going through and picking up potatoes! Oh my, that was so fun!!

For lunch, Dan decided to make grilled shrimp dish with lime, cilantro, garlic and peanuts, which happens to feature in martha stewart Living magazine. He marinated the shrimp in lime juice and garlic, grilled the shrimp first, and then in the skillet cooked the peanuts and cilantro briefly which later joined by grilled shrimp. He also made a small batch of fried potatoes with freshly dug yukon gold potatoes. Since we had a grill going, we also grilled the beet, and smallest potatoes from the harvest.

For salad, I made a quick thai-style slaw with sliced cucumber from the farmer's market, julienned carrot, chopped mint, vinegar, sugar and fish sauce.

First tomatoes are coming in too. We were very excited with our first two striped roma tomatoes, and made the classic combo of basil, tomato, fresh mozzarella drizzled with olive oil, and some salt and pepper. I know, we eat this a lot throughout the summer with different tomatoes, sometimes with different cheese, and sometimes dressed up more with balsamic vinegar and so on.

How local was our lunch? Let me list. Tomatoes, beet, potatoes, carrot, basil, cilantro, mint and garlic were from our own garden. Fresh Mozzarella cheese was from South Mountain Creamery in Middletown. Cucumber was from Whitmore farm in Emmitsburg. Peanuts were from Virginia. Olive oil came from Spain, salt from Portugal, peppercorns from India, and shrimps from Thailand. I wish we had local shrimp but overall we did pretty well. All the vegetables were very local, most of them being from our own backyard.

Dan and I are proud of our small garden and our on-going patronage to local farmer's markets. But really, it simply comes down to the pure joy of eating fresh delicious food. I can't wait to go to downtown farmer's market at Everedy Square this afternoon and buy fruits and vegetables at their peak. Oh, I shouldn't forget fresh eggs!

Yeon