The eating’s been good around here since June 7 when we picked up our first weekly bag of produce at Wllber’s Northside Market. Since signing up for our first Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share three years ago, Hiram and I have been eating healthy every summer.
For the past three weeks, each bag has contained a couple quarts of freshly picked strawberries. It’s not easy for two people to eat that many strawberries (Hiram froze half of last week’s berries since I was at a writers’ conference), but we’ve been doing our best. So far we’ve enjoyed strawberries with sugar and cream, strawberry-rhubarb crisp, and strawberry shortcake. If there are strawberries in next week’s share, strawberry-rhubarb pie is on the docket. Amazing how delicious farm fresh produce can be.
Not to mention healthy, healthy, healthy.
Of course, we’ve been getting veggies, too. Leaf lettuce is a favorite because we love to break out Grandma Fern’s Wilted Lettuce recipe. The combination of fresh lettuce and green onion, along with hot bacon/vinaigrette dressing and crunchy bacon bits is heavenly. We usually fry more bacon than the recipe requires, but the extra fat is no problem because of the fresh produce.
After all, it’s healthy, healthy, healthy.
Another favorite is sugar snap peas, also in this Tuesday’s bag. Last night I made chicken stir fry (it’ll be next week’s blog recipe) and threw in half the snow peas, along with onions, sweet red pepper, toasted peanuts, peanut sauce, and lemon juice. I kinda over-toasted the first batch of peanuts and had to make a second batch. But then, we decided the first batch wasn’t burned, just nicely browned, and sprinkled all the peanuts over the stir fry.
And we did it guilt free because stir fry is healthy, healthy.
This healthy cooking mentality is worming its way into my regular grocery shopping, too. Yesterday at the store, Georgia peaches were on sale, so fragrant and enticing I selected enough to make a fresh peach pie this weekend. With lard crust.
But that’s no problem because peaches are also healthy, healthy, healthy.
Today, I have to figure out what to do with the rest of the produce. Should I use Grandma Hess’s cream and vinegar dressing for the two fresh cucumbers or should I use the salty brine dressing? Do I stir fry the fresh green beans with garlic or steam them with water and bacon grease? Do I dip the kohlrabi slices in salt or put them in a sandwich with white bread and butter? I guess it really doesn’t matter, because whatever the fresh produce will taste divine, no matter how it’s fixed.
Not to mention healthy, healthy, healthy.
