A Sunday Harvest

We cooked up a delicious Indian meal for dinner tonight. If I must say, it was so good we wished we'd invited some friends for dinner. The meal was greatly enriched by harvesting and using many of our own garden fresh ingredients picked minutes before preparing the food.

From the garden:

mint, arugula, small tomatoes of various sorts, cilantro, cucumbers, green beans

 
Along with dal, rice, and meat patties, we made a dish with sweetcorn and potatoes. We just discovered this recipe in Madhur Jaffrey's Indian Cooking. It includes potatoes, sweetcorn, garlic, tomatoes, fresh coriander and mint, as well as a smattering of Indian spices. The mint and cilantro came straight from the garden. The corn came from Tecces, a small farm stand in Durham, which has the best sweetcorn around. Even my brother who was just visiting from the Chicago-land area said so, and he knows his corn.

The other veggies -- green beans, cukes, and arugula -- will find their way into other meals this week. The garden is overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants.  My days are busy with the usual routine of work and play, plus some time devoted to freezing, canning, or otherwise storing this bounty of food. So much comes in such a short time. Frost will come knocking sooner than we know or want.