Farmer's market!

When I was a little girl, I waited all year for the sugar snap peas. That was summer for me...when they were finally here and my mom and I would go out to the garden and pick them by the bowlful. We would usually eat just as many as we picked, but nobody minded. The sweet, yummy, wonderful crunch...ah. A friend at the farmer's market yesterday dubbed them as "being better then chips!" and I have to agree. As does Nathalie. We bought a bagful from Morning Dew Farm's lovely Brady Hatch, and then managed to eat most of them before we left. So I had to go back and buy more so that we would have them for longer then a day.

I did plant about six feet of peas, but after the chicken fiasco, where they managed to eat just about everything I put in the ground, only three little shoots came through in the end. My girl discovered that these shoots did in fact have peas on them yesterday when we settled down to pick the TONS of lettuce that has taken over in the heat.

For the past month or even two, I've added a new extreme to our diet, or mine at least. After being forced into the gluten free universe with Stella's intolerance for it, I found myself eating occasionally the scientific experiments known as gluten free bread. Tapioca starch, xanthan gum and the like. I realized that I did not feel good with so much refined ingredients in my body- who cares if they are "gluten free" or not... (I had long ago decided that refined anything is probably not the way to go...sourdough and sprouted all the way...)So in any case, I decided to just cut it all out all together. And with it, most grains. I admittedly will occasionally eat a little brown rice, or a sprouted corn tortilla. I have been LOVING quinoa and buckwheat lately, which technically speaking are not a grain. They are a seed. (Fancy that!)
This seemed like just the season to begin experimenting with my diet in ways that included TONS of veggies, some fruit, animal products and seeds/nuts. We have a lovely (but enormous) half cow in our freezer, 1/2 a pig and some chickens from our buddies at Buckwheat Blossom, which helps along in this whole high protein thing. Admittedly, after being a vegetarian for twenty years and then starting to eat meat only about seven years ago, my favourite part of this whole arrangement is the vegetables. I LOVE them.
And especially this time of year.
Drool.

And yesterday, walking around like a kid in a candy store with all those simply lovely displays...ah. Beet greens, new carrots, peas, kale, chard, collards, salad greens with flower blossoms, summer squash, cucumbers, brand new teensy potatoes...ah, sigh. It's like I've died and gone to vegetable heaven. I LOVE summer, the heat and all.