A Dinner Plate to be Proud Of

I have been eating really well from the garden in the past few weeks.  Most of my dinners include a fresh picked salad using a variety of lettuces that are growing among the corn and beans.  They are doing very well in the shade of the taller plants, and many of them haven't bolted yet.  My salads have had a good variety of other veggies in them as other crops are becoming ready to harvest.  The extra variety started with the radishes, and some broccoli florets, but I have since been able to start adding sliced cucumbers and fresh carrots to my salads as well.  In another week or so I should also have fresh tomatoes to add to the mix.

As for side dishes, I have started harvesting my potatoes and onions little by little.  I like to make a dish that my father refers to as "Potatoes A La Wendell"  It is basically fried potatoes with onions and garlic added for flavor.  I usually make this dish for breakfast, though in smaller amounts it makes a good side dish for dinner as well.  It makes a good base dish for adding a variety of vegetables to.  For dinner today I added a little bit of sliced green pepper from a young pepper that had a damaged area that was going to go bad.  The other side dish for this meal was some fresh broccoli left over from the last batch that I froze.  Aside from the pork chop on this plate, everything that you see here came fresh from my garden, and I picked it only minutes before I cooked it up and ate it.  Let me assure you, it was delicious.

 I have to admit that I feel a real sense of accomplishment when I sit down to a meal like this.  This food is here for me because I planted the seeds months ago.  Those seeds are going to feed me many meals over the coming winter.  Those seeds mean less trips to the grocery store, and more money in my pocket.  Those seeds mean healthy, fresh food that is only as far away as my backyard, or come winter, my freezer and pantry.  Garden season is heading for it's peak, so it's going to be a very busy next couple of weeks, but by the same token, there will be many garden fresh meals to be had.  I'm looking forward to every single one of them.