BlissFullU

On Saturday, we had a couple of additions to our spring vegetables available at the Cary Downtown Farmers Market: spring baby potatoes and English peas, the kinds of peas that you actually have to shell. They came from a brand-new natural farm called LB’s Farm. They are just getting started and so didn’t have a lot of product, but they sold out completely within a couple of hours! So it looks like I was not the only one to jump on some new local produce to expand my family’s diet.

See how great our newest spring vegetables look:

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Dinner ended up being a mostly locavore/Farmers Market meal. I made a soup I called Spring Green Soup from HS Howell’s asparagus (which I wrote about last week) and broccoli, cooked in vegetable broth and thickened using a trick I learned from Julia Child at least 25 years ago, which is to blend in some leftover cooked rice to give it a creamy texture without any dairy. Then I boiled the potatoes and when they were almost done, I put the raw peas in a colander and placed that on top of the boiling potatoes with the lid on top and steamed the peas for about 5 minutes to keep their fresh taste and texture. Once the peas were just starting to wrinkle, I took them off and ran cold water over them to keep them from cooking any more. When the potatoes were done, I drained them and sautéed a couple of spring onions in some Earth Balance (organic vegan margarine). After cooking the onions, I kept the pan on low heat and added the potatoes and peas, mixed everything up and heated up just a bit, and they were done.

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So the recipes were vegan. However, because my family likes a bit more kick to our food, when I served the soup, I sprinkled chipotle spice and additional pepper on top, and added a large spoon of jalapeño goat cheese from Paradox Farm, which was delish. But if you want to keep it vegan, leave that out, or add vegan sour cream or something like that.

Healthy, plant-based, local, and it made my family happy…what could be better than that on a spring evening?