"When eating fruit, remember who planted the tree;
when drinking water, remember who dug the well."
-- Vietnamese proverb
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| Vegetable frittata 7-30-14 |
"We may find in the long run that tinned food
is a deadlier weapon than the machine-gun."
-- George Orwell
"Shipping is a terrible thing to do to vegetables.
They probably get jet-lagged, just like people."
-- Elizabeth Berry
One of the most singular pleasures in life, for me anyway, is cooking a meal with food that comes straight from the good things growing in my own garden.
Yesterday I did just that, using ingredients I picked twenty steps from my backdoor. Anything I didn't grow myself came from someone I know who did.
I provided the zucchini, basil and tomato (I found my first ripe one blushing on the vine yesterday).
My farmer friend Bob grew the spinach a stone's throw away on his local vegetable farm.
The eggs came from a physical therapist named Megan who raises her own chickens. She personally hand-delivers dozens of her home-grown brown beauties -- eggs so far beyond "jumbo" that the cartons won't close over their tops -- to my husband at work every week or two.
With this handful of simple, good things, I took a personal stand against "big food" and the corn cartel and environmental negligence and processed pseudo-food and cooked up a nutritious, deliciously simple vegetable frittata.
It was probably the best frittata I've ever eaten. I made enough to fill my biggest cast-iron skillet -- plenty for four people -- and ate half of it all by myself. I'd give you the recipe, but there isn't one. Sorry. I just free-formed with what I had and made it up as I went along.
I like cooking that way.
It feels more creative and exciting and satisfying. Instead of running to the store to buy something some cookbook or recipe writer says I should use, I'd much rather assess what I have on hand, and go from there, creating something good all on my own -- with a little help from my friends.
