First Day

Saturday is the University District Farmers Market. I got there about half an hour after it opened and bought blueberries, raspberries, apricots, nectarines, Rainier cherries, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and a loaf of honey-oat bread. July is the right time to start eating better in Seattle, with the sheer variety of fresh local produce available.

Since it was also a hot day by Seattle standards--I think the official high was around 85--I decided to make salads for lunch and dinner. Lunch was a BLT bread salad, made using elements of an old Cooking Light recipe and an Alton Brown one. Here's what it looked like in process:



You can sort of get a sense of how tight the quarters are in our kitchen. You can see the smidge of counter space to the right of the stove. There's a similar amount to the left. To the right there's our sink and counter space entirely taken up with a drying rack and a George Foreman grill, and behind where I'm standing is a butcher block currently cluttered to the point of uselessness with assorted food canisters, boxes of cereal, a bottle of wine, etc.

Here's the finished product:



I used butter bibb lettuce, heirloom tomatoes, and sweet onions from the farmers market, plus four strips of good but not especially fancy or organic bacon and lightly toasted cubed French bread. I suppose I could've/should've used whole wheat bread, but I didn't think the sweet taste of whole grain would mesh well with the other flavors, and this isn't supposed to be a diet of absolutes. Dressing has mayo, red wine vinegar, olive oil, and a little salt and cayenne pepper. It was good, if I do say so myself.

Dinner was a southwestern pasta salad recipe I found on AllRecipes.com:



About 8 ounces of ordinary pasta, not whole wheat, because we bought a lot of pasta last time we went to Costco, and I'm trying to be more frugal as well as more healthy. Black beans, corn, bell pepper, onion, and tomatoes. I was going to use the last of the heirlooms from the farmers market, but my 5-year-old kept coming through and grazing on them as I cooked, so I put them in a bowl and gave them to her to share with my husband and put in a can of diced tomatoes instead. Dressing is mostly lime juice, canola oil, and chili powder.

It wasn't as good as the BLT salad, but it was completely edible and left me with two or three servings worth of leftovers for work lunches this week.

For dinner I also threw together a spinach salad from a Fresh Express kit. I doubt Mark Bittman would approve, but QFC had sent me a coupon for a free salad, and did I mention I'm trying to be frugal? And that I'm not a good cook? Hey, it's another vegetable.