Farmer's Marker Finds

The passed month or so I've been more intentional about shopping at a local farmer's market here in town. I'm learning how to cook with less meat, more veggies, and veggies that are in season (this is key... and also takes some getting used to). Here in the states we suffer much from INSTANT gratification. I know, I'm quite guilty. But truly, buying what's in season and locally grown is SO much better for us! Tastes better too. Cheaper? Not necessarily. But cheap food is not honest food (I highly recommend every American watching Food, Inc). I truly believe it all goes back to learning how to wait on the Lord, His timing is perfect... even down to the last strawberry.

This week the market was the biggest I've seen so far. More farmer's showed up and there was so much more of a selection! The passed few weeks there really has only been some radishes, green onions, and different green leaf veggies. Now, I'm not complaining, I do love greens. I've always loved salad and a few weeks ago I put together a really tasty salad made up of the things I found at the market. But this week.... YUM!

I called my mom and told her I "hit the farmer's market jackpot"! We came home with green leaf lettuce, radishes, broccoli, cauliflower, baby spinach, strawberries, squash, and sugar snap peas! I am so excited to get cooking this week. We will be eating a lot of salads :) And I'll probably be freezing some strawberries because I still want to go to the fruit and berry patch here in Halls before the season is over.

Then later for dinner I made vegetarian taco salad for the second time. I LOVE this meal. And so does the hubby! I cannot believe I would ever be saying that. Dustin has always been the typical male meat lover. But honestly, I haven't made a meal with meat in the passed week! Even then, I haven't actually bought meat in over a month. We're buying organic meats/ dairy and grass-fed beef now. Which is definitely pricey, but a thousand times healthier. Because of the increase there, we're cutting back on how much of it we buy. Decent trade-off. Dustin is venturing out, willing to try different things, willing do without meat. It's great :) Coming from the girl who was a vegetarian at one point in her life.

Here's the tasty taco salad:

Hubby gave me a funny look when he saw me taking this picture. I assured him, "Baby, if you made something this beautiful that was this tasty, you'd blog about it too!" ;) I can't take the credit for the recipe though. My go-to place for vegetarian and in-season recipes has been Eating Well.com.

The finished product:

Tomorrow's menu: veggie pizzas.