Farm Stand Dinner

Maybe my favorite thing to do is wonder around a farmer's market on a sunny afternoon (or a gloomy one if that's my only option) and figure out what delicious things I can concoct for dinner at home. Buying from the farmer's market is an amazing way to not only ensure that your food is fresh and often at times organic, it is a was to help reconnect the world and all of us in it.  Knowing and respecting where your food comes from plays a big role in saving our environment, healing our bodies, and feeding our soles.  First, by buying from a local farm you're guaranteeing your food is driven straight from the soil in which it was grown to your neighborhood avoiding the thousands of miles of transit much of our supermarket food is trucked or flown.  All that travel means burned gas and energy that could have otherwise been saved for more emergent needs or (better yet) not used at all.  Also, many of the farmers that frequent the markets are organic (or organic to some degree, it takes years to be stamped organic).  This means less chemicals and pesticides in our environment and less run-off into our waters.  Farmers Market food is always fresher than that found in supermarkets.  This means it's packed with nutrients in a way that supermarket food cannot be.  When a fruit of vegetable is picked is when it starts to decompose immediately (as does meat when it's killed, but that's a whole nother topic all together).  The sooner you eat it off the plant, the better it is for your body: plain and simple.  Plus, seeing all those colorful fruits and veggies and smelling their amazing aromas would make any Meat Eating Joe crave a vegetarian dinner!  And lastly, meeting the guy (or gal) that grew your food is pretty awesome.  Learning how much work went into growing that juicy tomato or strawberry is awe inspiring.  Farmers are generally pretty cool and grounded (pun intended;) people.  They're happy to chat about the food they're selling and often they'll make some recommendations on how to prepare it.  As a society we are too separated.  There is such little human contact (I say this as I sit in front of my computer, but as soon as I'm done with this post we're hitting the street fair here in PS) in our communities these days.  We barely know our neighbors, let alone the people who grow our food or work in our local coffee shops.  It's important to know and connect.  That is not only what makes us better people, but our lives more interesting!  Everyone's got a story...listen up, it might be a good one;)

This past weekend we headed back out east to the beach and on our way we hit up my favorite farm stand.  Buying fruits and veggies straight from the farm is even more special than buying from the farmer's market!  Seeing exactly where they grow everything is supercool and Avi loves to roam around a bit when we first get out of the car and see the chickens and the flowers and the farm land.

This time I had something in mind before we left Park Slope and swung by Pizza Plus before we left for some whole wheat pizza dough.  I grabbed some greens, cabbage, carrots, leeks, garlic, potatoes, and strawberries for the weekend.

That night I made a supersimple and yummy dinner of Greens Pizza with truffle oil (a take on Alicia Silverstone's Recipe from her amazing book- more to come on that in a future post) and Tomato Based Vegetable Soup.  The whole meal was light and rustic and exactly what we were craving!