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Garden Bounty

Posted at 10:17 AM on August 11, 2008 by Autumn Long

The month of August brings the height of garden bounty, making life as a locavore oh so simple. At this time of year our diet is heavy in fresh vegetables. In fact, many dinners consist of nothing but vegetables from the garden -- grilled or sautéed squash, peppers, and onions (we harvested about 75 sweet onions and 250 long-keepers last week); sweet corn; green beans; sliced tomatoes with fresh basil and a drizzle of olive oil and vinegar. Tired of squash? How 'bout some potato salad or cucumber salad instead? We are even going to have eggplant this year, thanks to a successful container-gardening experiment. (In years past, the flea beetles had decimated the eggplants before they could produce fruit. This year I am growing them in pots on the deck, resulting in a much lower level of flea beetle infestation. Moussaka, here I come!) With all those veggies, there's often no extra room in the belly for meat or grains.

Likewise, what to take for lunch is no longer a question: Tomato sandwiches! There's nothing more delicious, in my humble opinion, than a fresh tomato sandwich with mayo, some sliced cucumber and sweet red onion, and a dash of salt. Yummy! Our early tomatoes are ripening steadily now, with the bigger, juicier heirlooms not far behind. There's an incredible difference in quality of flavor and texture between the early hybrids (Early Girl, in our case this year) and the heirloom slicers and beefsteaks. As delicious as the early tomatoes taste right now, I know they won't hold a candle to the Kellogg's Breakfasts, Black Krims, and Brandywines I'll be sinking my teeth into within another week or two. But I'm not knockin' the Early Girls too hard; in fact, I think I'll go eat one right now. Happy harvesting, fellow locavores!