Harvest Sunday

Sunday around our house is a little crazy.  Most people spend their weekends relaxing - and especially Sundays. We usually end up more tired at the end of a Sunday than we are from a whole week.  We fall into bed exhausted and we wonder why we punish ourselves.

Well, Sunday is our farmer's market day.  It runs from 10-2. Although people have started shopping by 9am now so you really have to get there early if you want to get the good stuff. This does usually allow us a little time to enjoy a slow breakfast together which is always nice.  But once the shopping starts, the day speeds up quickly.  The Farmer's Market results in probably 35 pounds of food. Usually carried on my body! If we bring the kids we can shove it into the stroller but I always feel a little silly pushing the stroller full of food when I don't bring the kids!!!  At the market we get 90% of our fruits and veggies.  I finally figured out a way to get some fruits that we can keep and eat at the end of the week - Melons! I put them in the fridge and cut them on Thursday. This is great so we don't have to go back to the store mid-week.
We come home and cut everything up - serve a random lunch of fresh produce, and Andrew goes down for a nap. Then I usually run to Trader Joes for everything else I need for the week.

When I'm really organized, I usually get some cooking done for the week by 3pm - then we enjoy ourselves for a couple hours before getting dinner on the table and....well, then the whole bedtime routine kicks in as well as packing lunches and getting organized for the week.

We also have to do all of our yardwork and gardening on Sundays.  Today the kids wanted to help so they got to stay home with Mike and "work" with him as he pulled out tomato plants and got the gardens ready for fall planting (not sure when we'll actually be able to put plants IN the ground tho!).

So Sundays are all about harvesting.  I've begun to almost dread it b/c I know it's going to be exhausting...but then I remind myself that if I were a farmer, this would be every day for me.  Oh - and I'd have to pick ALL of the 35 pounds I carried around the market!

Here are a few of the fun things I did with today's load:

Arugula salad with yellow tomatoes, roasted yellow beets, broccoli rabe, and goat cheese.

Broccoli Rabe (or Rapini) is one of my favorite things. They even sell it at Trader Joes in ORGANIC!  I just throw some olive oil and garlic into a saute pan and saute it for about 10 minutes.  It stays crisp which is nice. And you eat more of the stems then you would on regular broccoli. If you can ever get this stuff fresh out of a garden it's amazing.

And here's something fun - did you know you can cook the green tops from beets? The tops of some of the root vegetables are actually more nutrient dense than the actual vegetable. Beet tops and carrots are two such cases.  Beet tops are yummier than spinach when you cook them - just wilt them down in either steaming water or olive oil.  Add a touch of salt and you're set.  Kaelyn loves these!  Carrot tops are not so yummy cooked -I put them in smoothies. 

I hope you enjoyed your Sunday -whatever you did!

Keeping it real! Kathy