Slow Food

I believe we qualify as "slow food people" because our food is all cooked "from scratch."  That's a funny expression, isn't it?  But I mean that we don't use prepared foods.  For dinner each day I make a salad from raw fixings, cook our own potatoes, pick and cook fresh vegetables from the garden and prepare a small serving of meat (about 3 ounces each).  Breakfast is always a large fresh fruit salad that Jim prepares (Thanks, Jim!) and some homemade muffins, bagels, oatmeal, etc. that I make.

This time of the year slow food is even slower.  These peas were picked between 12  and 12:15 today, shelled and boiled lightly for dinner at 1 p.m.  Have you ever had peas that fresh?  They are incredibly better than anything in a can.  Of course, in the winter, we are eating peas from the garden that have been boiled lightly, drained, cooled and frozen, packed into plastic bags and stored in the freezer.  They are still incredibly better than anything in a can.




Likewise, tomatoes that have been plucked from the plant 15 minutes ago, still warm from the sun, combined with an onion that was in the ground this morning, and whatever other fixings you have on hand for a salad, outshine anything for sale in the supermarket.  It's always a sad day in the late fall when we use our last home grown tomatoes and have to revert to buying greenhouse tomatoes from the grocery store.

Tomatoes can be picked green at the end of the season, just before the first killing frost, stored in the spare bedroom, spread out on newspaper under the bed (in the dark as much as possible) and taken out a few at a time.  Some years we eat
our own tomatoes until late December.

The corn that we planted early this summer (early enough that we had to cover it about five times to preserve it from frost) is getting close to ripe.  We've actually picked a few ears yesterday and today, but the kernels, though sweet and delicious, are not fully plumped out, and an ear doesn't fill you the way it should.  We each had two ears today.

We should let them go for at least four more days to fill out sufficiently.  Corn is my favourite vegetable, so it's hard to wait.  Fresh corn on the cob is another one of those treats that are available for just a short season.  I use lots of corn kernels the rest of the year  either from our own corn that I have frozen, or from a bag from the supermarket freezer.  There's not a whole lot of difference there between the home grown and the store bought.

Enjoy the wonderful freshness of summer vegetables while you can--either from your own backyard garden, the farmers' market, or your local grocery store!