Dinner

When I lived with Ali Segal in Chicago in 2002, we used to both make the "house special" at least once a week: pasta, broccoli and red sauce. At some point my tastes changed and the house special became whole wheat pasta, asparagus, olive oil, fresh parm, salt and pepper. Amazing! But when asparagus isn't in season and there are veggies in the backyard, the formula changes.

In mid-July the snap peas were desperate for the picking, the ugly yellow squash just getting fired up, and the first zucchini - skinny and perfect - were ready for harvest. Behold pasta primavera - locavore style:

From 2009 07 July

From 2009 07 July

It was a good spring

I should be banned from the blogosphere for my absence.


I wish I could claim that I was so busy in the garden this spring that I didn't have time to write, but it's not true. Instead I've been having a moral dilemma: each time I get on a train of thought, it's about pests. Weeds, ants, bugs, the thing that is gnawing on my zucchini, oh, and slugs. The famous Pacific Northwest slug. And then I remember that's the point about organic gardening - no pesticides means pests right alongside my veggies. Well, it wasn't all bad this spring: I had a great crop of field greens and green and red leaf lettuces. Snap peas were abundant and flavorful, especially in these last few days as they've gotten really plump. Raspberries were sweet and strawberries were juicy.

The garden put on quite a show when Lindsay and Ali came to visit at the end of June. Lindsay joined a CSA last year in Chicago and it transformed her cooking repertoire. She brought some CSA zucchini that we thoroughly enjoyed on our camping trip, and snap peas that tasted completely different from mine but lovely in their own right. Ali gardens organically at a community garden in Missoula and I give her huge credit for getting on her bike just to water the veggies. Anyway, I was so happy that they were able to snack in my yard - no washing required.

From 2009 06 June