Delicious.  You have been much lauded in absentia today, Marlene!  Thanks from all of us.

For a change, a “before” image.  This is another lunch with tons of market ingredients, with baby leeks, asparagus, spinach, and green garlic in the bechamel all grown by the guys over at Nichols Farm.  I am just realizing that I have been buying from them for at least a dozen seasons now.  Wow.  I have been a food geek for waaay too long.  They’d probably tell you the same thing.

This is a repeat, but it’s been a while.  The sauce is from scratch, consisting of tomatoes, thick yogurt, coconut milk, lots of spices, cilantro, onions, scallions, garlic, and lemon juice.  It’s an old standby in our house – easy and delicious.

Served with brown basmati rice and naan.

So I think that, once a week, I’m going to try to make the entire lunch with ingredients sourced from the market.  Today, I came up with the idea of frittata and salad – pretty simple.  I found some wild fern shoots on my way out of the market today and decided to use those, along with crimini mushrooms, green garlic, free-range eggs,  and a Wisconsin farmstead cheese in the frittata.  A few gorgeous heads of bronze leaf lettuce dressed with a simple dijon vinaigrette and ciabatta loaves rounded out the meal.

The fern shoots were deliciously reminiscent of asparagus when simply sauteed with the green garlic.  And the cheese, from Saxon creamery, was delicious – I’ll be returning to that.  One observation that John and I shared – the eggs were really “eggy”.  Which they should be, of course.  Have our tastes been so altered by the flavor of supermarket eggs that the true flavor of fresh eggs overwhelms somewhat?  Should the egg flavor be more of what we’re used to – a background note, almost more of a flavorless binder?  What do you think?

All in all, I hope this will be a fun experiment this summer.  Great for us to support the market and hopefully, we will all enjoy…

I had overbought basil last week for the banh mi, so to use it up, I very creatively made pesto.  Actually, this whole salad has a bit of the “kitchen sink” quality to it, as my main objective was to clear the fridge because – hallelujah – the Green City Market opens tomorrow.  It might not quite yet be time for “hallelujah”, but I am looking forward to asparagus, lettuce, and garlic scapes, if nothing else.

By special request of Lucas, whose company we have enjoyed all week.  Today’s grain salad had red quinoa, hearts of palm, cherry tomatoes, avocados, and a lime-mint vinaigrette.