Eating Local in the Summer Is Easy

July 15, 2010 by Kristen
Filed under: Cooking, Food, Gardening, Local Food, Venison 
Despite the sweltering, miserable, suffocating heat of Mississippi in the summer, I still adore this time of year because I am able to grow a lot of my own food, watch hummingbirds (from a distance though because they’re a little too much like big bees for my taste), and have daylight until after 8pm.  I also enjoy buying vegetables from an old man on the side of the road and going to the farmers’ market.  Side note: This year, my husband and I are even running a booth at the market.  We bake and sell fresh bread.  It’s tasty.  Read about it here.  End side note.

My most favorite thing about summer, though, is the amount of fresh and local produce I am able to eat.  Case and point, this meal, in which nearly everything was either locally made or locally grown.  For dinner, we had hamburgers and grilled corn.  I shall take you through the ingredients, so you can see just how easy it is to eat locally, especially in summer.  I like to use the word “shall”; it’s far too under-used.

First, the ingredients: bread, mustard, tomato, lettuce, onion, pickles, cheese, burger, smoked jalapenos, corn, olive oil, salt, pepper.

Now, the local ingredients:
Bread–fresh rolls/buns made by the husband (they were awesome, by the way.  Best yet, I think.)
Tomato, onion, corn–bought from local farmers at the local market
Burger–made of venison; from a deer killed by our friend this spring
Jalapenos–grown in a friend’s container garden, smoked on our grill
Pickles–cucumbers grown in my garden and pickled myself

And the non-local ingredients:
Mustard, cheese, lettuce, salt, and pepper–from Kroger
Olive oil–from Whole Foods

Quite frankly, I’m pretty proud of our home-grown, home-made meal.  I would love to declare the whole thing local, but can anyone really live without olive oil, mustard, salt, and pepper?  I can’t.  I also cannot live without cheese.  At least not for now.  I could have lived without the lettuce this time, though.  Although a burger with lettuce is better than one without, I could have lived without it.  Lesson learned there.

I encourge you to seek out your local farmers’ market (or road-side stand).  I think you’ll be surprised just how much you can find there and how tasty and ripe it is.  It might just get you out of a food rut and force you to try new foods and recipes–reason enough for me.

Check out how awesome that bun looks.  It tasted even better.  Yay for spouses who bake.

Look how pretty corn is when the husk is still there.



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Comments

7 Comments on Eating Local in the Summer Is Easy

  1. Dawn on Thu, 15th Jul 2010 9:01 pm

    2. Reading this made me hungry, and I just ate dinner. I also laughed aloud when I read that hummingbirds remind you of big bees.

  2. Kristen on Thu, 15th Jul 2010 11:37 pm

    3. So glad to be able to call forth hunger when you’re full! Hummingbirds are a little scary, don’t you think? The whole flying forwards and backwards freaks me out. Also, they buzz when they fly. Birds shouldn’t do that.

  3. Kristen on Thu, 15th Jul 2010 11:52 pm

    4. Also, Dawn, I’m loving your use of “aloud” instead of “out loud.” Very classy.

  4. Selena on Fri, 16th Jul 2010 11:30 am

    5. Don’t buy tomatoes. We have too many. If you want I can bring you some. This burger looks really good.

  5. Kristen on Fri, 16th Jul 2010 2:18 pm

    6. I would love some tomatoes! I coud trade you if you’re interested. I have a lot of zucchini and white patty pan squash. I also get about a basket of cucumbers a day. Let me know if you need any of these. I’ll definitely take any unwanted tomatoes off your hands though. Thanks!

  6. Danielle on Sun, 18th Jul 2010 11:17 am

    7. That meal looks awesome! I just discovered my love of corn this summer after my dad’s garden produced so much that he was forcing us to take buckets full of it. I’ve been cooking it in crab boil and eating it up.

    Also, that bun looks so perfect! I keep trying my hand at baking staples like loaf bread and buns, but I can’t produce anything that looks even close to that.

  7. Dawn on Mon, 19th Jul 2010 3:45 pm

    8. Until now, I’d never really associated hummingbirds with bees. That’s a pretty valid point, though. Those little guys are seeming creepier by the minute.

    Also, I had to fancy my comment up with aloud since you used shall in your post. :)

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