Local Summer Eating

This week we made a delicious Cream of Purslane soup--made with the most abundant backyard weed vegetable in our garden. After steaming the greens, we pureed them with local cream (but you could use yogurt instead if you had some in the fridge), stock made from the week's vegetable peelings, and a little bit of salt and pepper, and garnished with backyard basil. We only discovered how much we love purslane a few years ago--and it serves a starring role in many a summer dish.



We continued the meal with zucchini (from our garden) cooked down in pureed tomatoes that we canned ourselves a few weeks ago. South Carolina rice, the grain that often anchors our homegrown vegetable dishes, served as the base.



For dessert we had a handful of blackberries. David and Son had gone for a bike ride to the adjoining neighborhood/town of Silver Spring right before dinner--and they passed the lovely little backyard farm of an older neighbor who sells fruits and veggies from his yard. The berries were tart and plump--my very favorite fruit and a marker of the height of summer.