Rediscovering the Produce Section

Something happens in winter.  My diet, which has never been strong in the vegetable eating area, starts to include more and more bread, potatoes, and foods from the chip world and less and less of the green leafy stuff.  By this time of year, it's easy to say my body has ingested nary a vegetable unless it was in the form of tomato on my pizza.

I'm not proud, but with only myself to cook for I don't feel like I have to make a good impression on anyone.

And then the flowers started blooming reminding me of the vegetables that would grow in my grandmother's garden.  There were tomatoes, corn, zucchini, squash, and cucumbers.  My grandmother and I would pull bright orange carrots from the earth.  My cousins, brothers and I would run screaming through the trellises that held the pole beans.  There were vegetables everywhere and my granny new just how to cook them.  My favorite was yellow squash cooked just right with salt and pepper.  When it was too hot to cook there were cukes pickled with onions served chilled.

Maybe it was the amount of bread I ate over this past Irish weekend, who knows.  Something pushed me into the grocery store this afternoon.  I filled my basket with a green salad mix, cucumbers, red onions, and cherry tomatoes.  Once I was home I turned to the always ready to go internet in search of a quick salad dressing and got to chopping up those fresh veggies.  No finger slicing tonight!

Twenty minutes later I feasted on a lovely, fresh salad topped with a piece of salmon and a lemon basil vinaigrette.  Yum, yum, yum. 

To be completely honest, I munched on a large portion of pita chips when I walked in the door because bad habits are hard to break.  Nonetheless, the salad reminded me just how good vegetation can be.