To Everything There Is a Season

You know what's delicious? A seared pork chop lying on a bed of salty/sweet apple and walnut rice, covered with a mango chutney and served beside a stack of grilled asparagus. You know what stinks? The ingredients in the dish are spread over all four seasons (translation: it is very difficult to make the recipe when buying locally grown produce).

I get a basket of produce each week from my CSA and have to figure out what I'm going to make. Every night of dinner is like an episode of Chopped. "Hmm, I have cucumbers, hot peppers, beets, goat cheese and, well, I'm not sure what vegetable this is." Go.

I'm not going to lie. The salad with arugula, avocado, cranberries, goat cheese, pears and cucumbers didn't really work. However, grilled potatoes, grilled leeks, grilled jalapeno vinaigrette, sun-dried tomatoes, spinach and fresh Parmesan cheese was delicious. But hit-or-miss dinners do not please me. I take a lot of pride in my cooking and when I create a failure, it makes me crazy. I still obsess over the time I turned a strip steak into a hockey puck and let's not discuss the debacle where I learned Cajun seasoning was really flavored salt AFTER I battered my catfish and served it to Michael.

This long-winded (as per usual) preamble, is just to say, I like recipes. In fact, I love them. The first time I make a recipe, I follow it down to the last letter. After the first time, it's free game. I tweak and spice things up to fit my taste.

But seasonality offers its own challenges when trying to find a recipe. Sure you can look up a main ingredient, but 9 times out of 10, the other ingredients aren't in season and they certainly aren't in my basket of goodies.

Luckily, I stumbled across THIS AWESOME WEBSITE to help me figure out what to do with all the new vegetables I was receiving. I mean, how cool is this site!?!?! If you scroll down, you can pick out the ingredients and Wham! recipes galore incorporating tons of in-season produce. This type of eating is becoming quite the trend as well, so there are entire cookbooks dedicated to farmer's market recipes. Isn't that convenient? In fact, I've heard from a close source that it just so happens Santa will be bringing me one such cookbook. I have my stocking up already.

Anyway, the website...I recommend:

Blackberry Avocado Salad
Watermelon Feta Salad
Grilled Halibut

Which, naturally, you'll have to wait to make NEXT year, since basically all those ingredients are out of season. But here's a handy calendar to see what is in season. How convenient is that!?!?

Speaking of calendars (yes, there were a lot of far-reaching segues in this post), you'll notice a lack of recipes (and posting) over the next few weeks. Michael and I are *gasp* getting married in two weeks. So we've been eating salads and trying to get all the last minute details wrapped up. You know, like buying wedding rings, figuring out a first dance, deciding who to invite...the last minute details.