Watermelon. Feta. Mint. Heavenly!

Finally, summertime! Don’t know what is better, the salad or the gazpacho.

I suppose you could call this my “Buy Local Challenge” practice meal. There are at least ten locally sourced items in the dinner. For the challenge, you need to eat at least one a day for nine days. No requirement that the nine be different, but in the spirit of the challenge, finding nine locally sourced items and using them during the nine days would certainly be successful as a participant.

The watermelon, feta, mint salad is a summertime staple in our house. Simple. The watermelon is from a farm stand on the way home from our visit to Linden Vineyards. Feta is Bowling Green Farms from right up the road here in Howard County. Mint from my garden, bought years ago from Greenway Farms. Add some olive oil, salt, pepper and at the last minute squeeze the lime over it. An amazingly flavorful salad that just screams Summertime!

The gazpacho. My first of the season. CSA tomatoes, onion, and cucumber. Basil from my garden. A green pepper from that farm stand. A cup of Bloody Mary mix bought in St. Michael’s and sourced from Virginia. Some red wine vinegar, salt, pepper and a couple of garlic cloves left over from my Breezy Willow CSA in May. Blended together. No measuring. Just four tomatoes, one red onion, one green pepper, half a huge cucumber, and all the seasonings to taste. We like our gazpacho garlicky so I did toss in a teaspoon of garlic powder since I am waiting for my garlic to cure and I have none left otherwise.

The rest of the dinner?

A small filet of ahi, sesame crusted. A CSA potato, baked in the microwave and served with Trickling Springs butter. The little vat of garam masala spiced butter is for the corn on the cob that finished the meal.

Oh, and the wine?

Summertime in a glass. Linden Rosé.

And to round out a lovely Sunday dinner, my table arrangement from the garden. I can’t believe how the gladiolus are going absolutely nuts from the rain.

Oh, I almost forgot. We harvested our first six sun sugar tomatoes this morning. Whoo Hoo! Summer really is here.

Here’s to many more lazy flavorful local dinners!

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