Dining and Opining

The flavors of summer are my favorite. Crunchy cucumbers, ripe tomatoes, sweet corn, juicy watermelon, rich basil! All leave my salivating and wanting more. The only problem with these flavors (like all seasonal treats?) is that they're fleeting. So when we heard that our CSA farm, Vermont Valley , was offering U-pick tomato and basil events, we jumped at the chance to load up on extras that we could preserve to have a hint of those summer flavors later in the year. We drove out to beautiful Blue Mounds, WI to wander through the fields and gather the bounty. I forgot my camera, though, so some images from the Vermont Valley website will have to do. You can see the tomato fields on the left and the basil fields on the right:  These images all from http://www.vermontvalley.com/festivals-and-events/ We picked alongside lots of other CSA members, overhearing snippets of conversation about the differences in basil varieties, how people would prepare the tomatoes that night ...

During a recent visit to my parents' house, I got to look through their freezer and take a peek at their food storage situation. It made me realize (or re-realize, I guess) that I picked up all my food storage habits from somewhere very close to home! Bags and bags of stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, okra, and yellow summer squash (all straight from their garden!) Cranberries, on the left, (bought from the store during peak cranberry-selling season) and so many bags of frozen dried wild pears, which my Papa picked from a wild pear tree in the woods beyond their house, and then dried with a food dehydrator, on the right: Needless to say, when we're with my parents, we always eat well! (I'll be back with some more evidence of this soon...)