One Local Summer Week 2: A meal both simple and complex

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My one local summer meal for week 2 is salad for lunch.  Last week I thought hard about what do for my official local meal and ended up with only mediocre results.  Today putting together my official local meal wasn’t on my mind or my agenda.  I am teaching online this summer and today represents day two of the class.  My attention was on the 70 students with questions and concerns and on finding a rhythm for the next 8 weeks.

How my lunch came to be:  About noon I became aware that my stomach was growling.  While having my coffee this morning, I noticed that my lovely and bountiful freckles lettuce was looking a bit past its prime so a salad seemed like a good idea.  I grabbed a colander and wandered out to the deck where I  pulled up the remainder of 4 of the 8 lettuce plants tossed the leaves into the colander and the roots and base into the compost bucket.  (That container has since been replanted with New Zealand spinach).  Here is the start of lunch before it was lunch.

While tending to the lettuce, I noticed that some of the spinach that I have been clipping was starting to send up flower stalks so out of the dirt came those plants and into the colander went the leaves.  I spent a lovely 10 minutes or so wandering about the deck clipping a various herbs (parsley, chives, oregano, some flower buds from cinnamon basil) and snipping a leaf or two from various other greens (kale, bok choy, chard). The final additions to the mix were a couple of green onions, a few carrot greens that followed some much needed thinning of the carrots and a few purple green violet leaves for color.

Back in the kitchen I popped some asparagus that I had purchased at Chesterton’s European Market from a Michigan grower into a small pan to steam.  While the asparagus cooked I washed, chopped when necessary, and assembled the garden gleanings into a mound of lovely freshness.  I topped the greens with some dried pears that I had cut into strips and some walnuts (both purchased last fall from Lehman’s Orchards), some  mixed sprouts that I had growing, and some Capriole goat cheese.  The lightly cooked asparagus was added around the edges and the whole thing was sprinkled with not at all local but oh so good Perel Black Fig Vinegar purchased at Apple Valley Market in Berrien Springs, Michigan.

In the photo you might notice a hard boiled egg.  It actually went into the refrigerator to be used for another meal. It didn’t fit with everything else in either terms of taste or my hunger.  The salad was an amazingly complex and delightful combination of flavors.  It was a salad that had to be eaten in very small bites as each bite would present a different mixture of tastes and textures.  While the eating the salad was a complex adventure in taste, the preparation was a simply joy.  Not only did I get a healthy, fresh, and local meal but I also had a break in the sunshine and a container garden that was tidied as I prepared lunch.

All in all a meal that captured the spirit of eating local, my belief that food should nourish the spirit and the community as well as the body, and my efforts toward living in ways that strive for sustainability and indpendence from the corporate food stream.

Postscript:  The dried pears deserve more attention than they received in this post or in this salad.  It was my first time to eat them and they are amazing.  I plan to stock up on them when pears are in season and experiment all I can with the quart jar I have of them now.

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Filed under One Local Summer 2008

Tags: 2008, Add new tag, black fig vinegar, dried pears, OLS, OLS 2008, One Local Summer, salad, week 2