Livin' It

(Sydney's 1st corn on the cob)

These thoughts have been tumbling around in my head since Saturday and each day adds to my excitement and I have to let it out. I read a great quote by Anais Nin on a blog yesterday:"We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospecton." Ah, so true for me. And, since I've lost my favorite journal pen, it has to be the blog.

anyway...

Anyone who has talked to me in the past 9ish months has come to know my new local/organic/sustainable food obsession. Michael Pollan created a monster in me with The Omnivore's Dilemma and since then I've added to my obsession with The $64 Tomato and just recently Barbara (my beloved) Kingsolver's Animal, Vegetable, Miracle about eating local for a year. I suppose it all began with my reading of Fast Food Nation several years ago, but my fear of what lurks in our foods and my diligence in wanting to put good foods into my man and my baby has increased with each text. In a fevered food conversaton a few weeks ago, a friend suggested I quit reading all of these food books. But, my fever has become more excitement than fear these days because we live in the beautiful Palouse and can actually get great, responsibly produced food locally. yay.

While reading AVM I kept dreaming of a farmer's market full of all she described, when ours only seemed to have handmade goods and some basil. Her writing about gardening made me dream of something more than my 3 tomato plants. Well, the dreaming ended when Sydney and I went to the Moscow Farmer's Market with our dear Juli this past Saturday and hit the jackpot.
Up to this point I think not much produce was showing up due to the weird weather this year (snow on June 10th) and I was arriving rather late in the market. But, this week it was like freakin' Disneyland! People were piled in front of the stalls that were overflowing with yummy goods by 9 a.m. and here I felt like we were getting there early. It's a good thing Juli agreed to go out early with us or I'm not sure how I would have navigated the jog stroller through all of the people and armloads of produce.

Anyway, for $20 we came home with: beautiful tomatoes, the largest cucumber I have ever met, peaches, blueberries that Sydney thinks are a new kind of candy, green beans, a sweet onion, corn on the cob, apples, new potatoes and a gargantuan bunch of basil. And, we have been eating like royalty this week! Yogurt and cucumber soup on Saturday, followed by a crazy blackberry/apple/basil crumble that was surprisingly yummy, gazpacho on Sunday, Mary Lou's Buttermilk fried chicken, corn on the cob and mashed potatoes last night, tonight will be pork chops and green beans... And, today I turned that bunch of basil, which we'd already used for gazpacho and in the crazy yummy dessert, into two jars of pesto and one little tub of soon-to-be-frozen basil for soups and other winter fun.

It's just so fun to read and read about eating locally and responsibly and then finally get the chance to dive in during the peak of the harvest season. And, to further the local eating fun, I called today and reserved half a hog and 5 chickens for us to eat all winter --both raised by a family from our church who seems to be living the dreamy farming I read about in TOD. We are almost through our grass-fed beef and I'm looking forward to cramming our basement freezer full of good meat from our two ranching friends so that I no longer have to read the cryptic and misleading messages on shrink wrapped meat in the grocery store. yippee.

I'm now hungry. I think there's just one helping of that crumble left...