Four Homegrown Items in Every Meal

There is a rule in our hose during high garden output season; except for breakfast, you have to eat a minimum of four items from the garden at each meal. Without this requirement some lovingly grown vegetables might go to waste.

Some meals are easier than others to ensure four different vegetables make it. Last night I made a base of grits, with some crumbled goat cheese top with a melange of vegetables; okra, green beans, cherry tomatoes, red pepper from the garden and an onion and a handful of corn not home grown. (Russ actually added a bird’s eye pepper to his so he had a bonus vegetable.) It was delicious and a great way to eat okra since I don’t have enough plants to make a whole okra dish.

For lunch I had a BLT, the reason to grow tomatoes. I don’t grow wheat and therefore can never count bread as home grown, even if it was homemade. I don’t raise pigs because they would just be a pets. I don’t have an avocado tree ( yes a BLT is better with Avocado). But My big tomatoes are finally ripening so there is that most important part of the sandwich from the garden, I still needed three more garden items to get to four. The answer was two types of lettuce, both red leaf and green leaf and a leaf of basil gets me to four.

Tonight, being Saturday, we had lobster rolls again like we did last Saturday. No that is not a rule, just that I got lobster tails on sale and why not. The only home grown item in the lobster rolls were chives. The chives were certainly needed for the lobster roll, but not to get me to four vegetables. We had my favorite summer Greek salad, cherry tomatoes, cucumber, red pepper, basil (all from the garden) with avocado, feta and balsamic vinegar. So the total tonight was five items.

Russ is a good sport about eating some of the many refrigerator pickles I have made with the abundance of cucumbers. Just eating some of those pickles gets you four items because I also put homegrown dill, coriander and bird’s eye pepper in them.

Thank goodness I grow so many herbs because that really helps get me over the finish line on my four item rule. I think I may have to make some soups or else Russ is going to tire of that Greek salad.