Harvest Time

Even though it is just the two of us eating, our meals are still planned and enjoyed. I learned a long time ago that going to the market with a plan, especially when our boys were younger, was key to having variety and choice in our dinners. So we always sat down with our sons, even when they were bitty boys, to choose a week's worth of menus. This allowed everyone at the table to have some input in what was eaten so if one son wanted hot dogs and the other requested filet mignon we could talk about the choices and pick sides and make a plan.

My husband and I still sit down and set a week's menus. Sometimes circumstances intervene and we rely on meals that made too much and ended up frozen for just such an occasion. We do like to go out to dinner, but not to fast food so planning ahead makes a difference to us.

Another part of planning ahead involves making seasonal meals. I know that nowadays fancy restaurants are all in to locally sourced and seasonal food, but as a child of a grandfather and a father who grew all sorts of food, I learned young that the corn needed to be eaten when the corn was ready and the strawberries needed to be eaten when they were at their peak. As a side note to those strawberries, our basset hound would come out to Long Island with us for the summers and she loved strawberries. She would wander over the road to the farm side of the property and pig out, driving my grandfather crazy because he not only loved strawberries but he loved making strawberry preserves.

Anyway, we don't have much of a farm here but we do grow tomatoes, peaches, and squash. We also live close enough to NJ which still has a variety of truck farms providing produce to farmer's markets and to some local stores. It's the end of harvest season now and eggplant, zucchini,  tomatoes, and peppers are fresh and full of flavor. So ratatouille was on our menu tonight. It was delicious with everything fresh and from within 10 miles of where I live except for the mushrooms and those come from about 20 miles from here--Kennett Square.

Because it's just the two  of us, one eggplant is too much for even ratatouille so I have been making baba ganoush with the other half. As I wrote previously, there really isn't much as satisfying as making good food whether one is growing the ingredients or simply assembling them and cooking them. My youngest son is on his honeymoon in Italy now (that was our wedding present to them) and he is extolling the wonders of Italy and I do love Italy, but sometimes southeastern Pennsylvania is just as remarkable.

The owl or some other predator came back and took the remnants of the rabbit and this afternoon a fox was ten feet from my front door eating something. Birds are disappearing in remarkable numbers around the world but my little bit of Eden still has a ton of everything. I am glad that I am old so I don't have to witness a dead world.