Veggies Galore!

Saturday turned out to be an upbeat day. We spent some time meandering through the downtown Farmers' Market in the morning, but today was different and we didn't buy anything deliberately. We knew that that afternoon we would go visit a friend's extensive garden. He is very generous to us in giving us anything we want to pick. However, it's about 60 miles away; so we don't go that often. The land lays along a tributary of the French Broad. The trip is more than 15 miles off of the interstate, and we meander up into the foothills of the Smokies. It was a beautiful day for the ride.

One word for today: Leafy! We took home three kinds of lettuce, two kinds of chard, as well as carrots that were pulled a little early but needed to be for thinning out, onions, radishes, beets, and cabbage. But it was the spinach that was the most fun for me. "Take all the spinach you want. I'm tilling it under after you all finish because it's bolting." (We learned that bolting means flowering.) Hmm. ALL the spinach I want? Can one be a spinach glutton? We picked a lot, and I was happy to find "how to freeze spinach" instructions on a number of web sites when I got home.

I don't know how much money we saved over what we would have spent at the Farmers Market, but we are going to eat veggies morning, noon and night for quite a while. I'm going to a cover dish Tuesday night, and I'll be bringing SALAD.

I had slipped some fancy pastries from a downtown shop in their fridge. I hope he remembers to tell his wife where they came from!

After a leisurely time of picking, we enjoyed a glass of wine sitting at the picnic table by the creek, during which we watched a muskrat swim down with his dinner. It was so perfect with just enough breeze coming through the trees. Such a contrast of life to the one we live as city dwellers. Ah, a good afternoon, indeed.