Dinners from the garden.

For a person who loathes shopping- any kind of shopping except thrift store shopping, that is, which is more like a treasure hunt in my mind- it is wonderful when you can wander out to your garden each afternoon and find dinner. As my friends know, I am always pleased when I can avoid a trip to the grocery store. Here are some pics of some dinners from the garden. I see that there is a lot of basil as well so pesto will be on the menu fairly soon, the only problem is that unless I want to make the pasta myself (which I do on occasion), I have to go to the store to get some before we can have pesto pasta. :-(

My guys love zucchini sticks which I don't make very often because I think of them as fussy to make. Actually when they are done in big slabs like this they are quite an easy meal.

This is one of my favourite ways to eat beans. I cook them lightly while in a separate pan I melt some butter (earth balance or olive oil works too), toast some walnuts (actually supposed to be almonds but we have to walnut trees so...), then add a squeeze of fresh lemons and add the cooked beans. You can top off with a grate of Parmesan or Romano (or not) and then enjoy.

Lots of this kale growing that needs to be used up. Unfortunately I let it get too big for me to enjoy it raw and so....

it became this. Normally soup would not be on the menu in the summer, it would simply be too hot to enjoy a hot soup but this is what the weather looked like yesterday late afternoon. Seems to me it was just right for soup. You can see that my Calendula in the solar dryer was not getting very dry.
And this is something that I think will turn out to be a new favourite here, it is polenta. Thanks J and Z for telling me about it. It is actually very easy to make and on hotter days can be grilled on the BBQ with any number of different garden toppings. I forgot to take a picture of what it looked like when I was done with it because we were too busy eating it.