Local Finds

There are farms all over my area, the grocery stores also carry tons of local produce, and there's a weekend Farmer's Market nearby where you can score some delicious goodies.

Unfortunately, there are not a lot of organic farms. That said, below is my most recent score - the cucumbers are from my dad's garden, they're organic (and awesome!), the cherry tomatoes and corn are from a local farm, the tomatoes are the sweetest I've had in a very long time.

The strawberry-rhubarb jam is from another local farm, she makes an amazing array of home-canned items such as pickles, jams, 'salads' (like 3-bean salads), etc. She had a lot of delicious sounding varieties such as peach-thyme, melon-mint, cantelope, jalepeno, etc.

I could not resist making a tomato-cucumber salad - I added 1.5 Tbs olive oil, 1 Tbs 3-leaf balsamic vinegar, 2 tsp sea salt, and a large handful of fresh chopped basil.

Yum!!

The best part about shopping local is that you know the ingredients are fresh. When I bought the corn, the farmer actually went out to the field and picked a dozen ears for me, he then told me to eat them within 8 hours as he said that around 8 hours after being picked, the sugars would begin to break down. How cool is that! We ate the corn within about 4 hours, and he was right, it was incredible sweet and crispy!