My book club book for May/June was “Animal, Vegetable, Miracle” by Barbara Kingsolver. The book got me interested in buying locally where I can. Here in the Gulf South, it’s easy to buy local shrimp and other seafood. Today I went to the farmer’s market in my town and picked up some local produce, too.
As a result, I’m not only going to have to plan the main dishes for our meals this week, but also the sides, so we can be sure to use up all the vegetables before everybody leaves for our June road trips. I bought six tomatoes, a pound of green beans, two crowns of broccoli, two GINORMOUS green peppers, six sweet banana peppers, two very large sweet potatoes, two pints of blueberries and about two cups of basil. Here are the menus that will use up all this food:
Dinner tonight: Basil Cream Chicken with Pasta, Country Green Beans (both recipes from allrecipes.com.
Sunday lunch: Pepper Quesadillas, tomato salad.
Sunday dinner: some sort of casserole, broccoli
Monday lunch: tuna and tomato salad, bread
Monday dinner: Pork ribs, sweet potato casserole, Country Green Beans (again) (green beans and sweet potatoes are used up at this point.
Tuesday: A shrimpy pasta thing; tomatoes and probably the basil are used up at this point
Wednesday: Pepper quesadillas for lunch again, green and banana peppers are used up at this point.
Thursday: another casserole thing, broccoli. Broccoli is used up at this point.
Whew! That was a lot of work just planning it. But we’ll have lots of green things to eat this week, and they’re all from within 100 miles of here.
http://vimeo.com/moogaloop.swf?clip_id=2539741
a little new orleans dinner music for your feast
Mmmmm….Love it!
We hit a few farmers markets here. Since nothing grows in Vegas none of the stuff is local, and the prices about double what we can get the same stuff at Von’s for, looks like that’s how they get the stuff, just shop at supermarkets.
We have a great Farmer’s Market. Last year I was really into the routine of going every week. I haven’t done that yet this year, but gone a couple of times and bought some of our garden plants there. When we (meaning the newspaper) did our Reader’s Choice Awards this year the Farmer’s Market was voted best place to buy produce.