Eating Locally

I love a carrot picked straight from the garden. The smell of it as you crack the top off takes me right back to my childhood and harvesting carrots and other produce with my mother. Growing up, I remember helping my mother plant seeds of varying fruits and veggies and then weeks later being sent to the garden to collect items to put into a salad or sometimes even a loaf. My mother made the best chocolate zucchini loaf. In my mind I can remember being a young child and the anticipation and excitement to taste a slice of the fresh loaf as I waited for it to cool slightly. I would slather it with salty butter and wait a minute for the butter to melt in. My mouth is watering just thinking about it!

Today I was a very lucky lady. I was invited over to my sister-in-law's house for lunch and to help her harvest some of her garden. Lunch was delicious. She made a rice salad with shredded beets, beans, corn, pecans, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper - sorry if I'm missing any ingredients. To accompany the salad she made an amazing pumpkin soup, which was perfect for an overcast autumn day. She also made some pumpkin buns which were not vegan and which I didn't have, but I know they must have been good because my daughter kept asking for more. She sent us home with some buns and rice salad for the next few days. I'm hoping there will be some buns left by the time I finish this challenge, should I decide to momentarily step off the vegan wagon and have one.

My sister-in-law and her family live on the outskirts of the city and have a massive garden, at least by city standards. We (mostly she) pulled up some potatoes, onions, beets and the most gorgeous carrots ever! She sent me home with lots of everything and for that I have nothing but gratitude. We've already tried some carrots and they are super!

We didn't end up with much of a garden this year for our family. The day I was going to plant my garden was the day that I had our youngest son, who came one week early, much to our surprise. So all we had this year for a garden were some tomatoes, which were really grown in pots. I love fresh tomatoes straight from the garden - they're so sweet and delicious and completely mouth watering. I still have a few little ones left and want to savour them because I know once they're gone, we won't have any as tasty for nearly a year!

Growing your own food, no matter how small the garden, is so fulfilling. I'm grateful to my sister-in-law for including me in her gardening experience today - it's made me even more excited to plant one of our own next year. I will use our garden as an opportunity to teach our children more about eating locally and hope to create some everlasting memories like my mother created with me.

Just so I can include a picture, let me talk about dinner this evening. We had leftovers - no surprise there! Warm wraps, just like yesterday, along with yam fries, the wonderful rice salad from lunch and a spinach salad I threw together!

It was a very colourful and satisfying meal!