backyard grub

Slow Foodies Love Farmers

Tonight my Slow Food convivium is having dinner at a restaurant in Carrboro called Panzanella. It's a unique place-- it is a community-owned restaurant, and part of the wonderful Weaver Street Market, also a co-op. So tonight is the first Totally Local Dinner-- all the ingredients are, well, totally local (grown within 250 miles). Part of the proceeds will benefit the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

If you can't join us, well, find a farmer and give 'em a hug. And buy their produce. Oh, and let me interest you in some reading: our convivium leader is a decent writer-- check out his food articles for the (Durham) Independent Weekly.

Saturday our convivium is having a tomato tasting at the Durham Farmers Market. I'll be the one cutting up tomatoes!

Salads with Bread

I am loving summer. Loving it. Trying to squeeze all the flavor out of it, because I think this will be my last summer in North Carolina before I am banished to a frozen American urban tundra for a year or two. (More on that to come later.)

So I am enjoying the produce at the farmer's market, I don't like to put a lot of cooking on fresh locally grown seasonal produce, so I keep it simple. Two of my favorites are salads with bread. Oh, I know, it's a lot of cutting. But I think of it this way: all I'll have left to wash is a knife, cutting board, and bowl!

This week I found some heirloom tomatoes, some purple ones (I think Black Cherokee) and some that were red and yellow bi-colored tomatoes. Mmm. So I used those, along with some ciabatta bread, to make panzanella. (That's Martha's recipe.)

Another of my favorites is fattoush, which my husband has taught me to make. It's kind of a Middle Eastern version of panzanella. Or maybe it's the other way around. At any rate, fattoush is great, and you can play with the ingredients, whatever you have available, whatever you like. (Which is why there are no exact amounts here. We just put whatever we think looks good to eat.) I like mine on the tangy side so I always add an extra splash of vinegar. I have also seen recipes with fresh lemon juice instead of vinegar. You can use other herbs, too, like fresh parsley or fresh mint.