A Fresh Focus
What I love about July is that so many delicious fruit and veggies are in season. This makes the possibilities endless for great summer dishes. Last weekend, I had two friends visiting from out of town.
They brought some items from their CSA box, and I had some veggies from the Manassas Market, so we combined our efforts to make the world’s greatest salad! Okay, maybe not the world’s greatest, but most likely the second greatest.
We ended up cooking almost everything we had and throwing it into a bowl- and it was yummy and healthy. So here’s what the finished product included: squash, eggplant, potatoes, spinach, green beans, tomatoes, carrots, cucumber, corn and couscous. We roasted the eggplant, squash, and potatoes; sautéed the green beans, and chopped everything else up and tossed it all together. Filling and delicious.
After they left, I was nearly cleaned out farm fresh goodies—but I had spaghetti squash, some tomatoes, basil, mozzarella, and tomato sauce in the cupboard. That evening, I had a dear friend over, and we roasted the spaghetti squash. If you’ve never had one, it’s called spaghetti squash because you can pull out the meat of the squash and looks just like spaghetti noodles.
While it doesn’t necessarily taste like pasta, it’s pretty close, and it’s much healthier for you. It’s a great way to sneak veggies into the meal if you have picky kids. We cut the squash in half, scooped out the seeds and loose pulp, and roasted it at 375°, rind side up for 40 minutes.
Once the squash was cooked, we pulled out the insides with a fork, and tossed it with tomato sauce, cheese, oregano, cayenne pepper, fresh tomato, and chopped spinach. You can tell that the squash is done by testing to see if the flesh is tender with a fork.
We placed the mixture into a glass 8×8 oven safe dish and baked it for 15 minutes, until the cheese was completely melted. It turned out great. For a small spaghetti squash, it could have fed about three people.
The other great thing about July is that peaches, watermelon and cantaloupe are sweet and farm fresh and make a delicious dessert by themselves. I hope you can use some of my meals from this week as inspiration to get out to the market and buy some great produce!
As I mentioned last week, we started up our Tuesday market. It was a success! Stop by and see us from 4-7 p.m. in parking Lot F on the corner of Main Street and Prince William Street.
