Summer foods.....

 Herbs from the garden.

 I sweat(to remove bitterness), cube, then bake the eggplant for a bit to help it maintain its integrity while I simmer the garlic, add the onion, then the zucchini, then the eggplant. Let that cook for a bit. 

I add the tomatoes and herbs, and a healthy toss of salt and pepper. Simmer for a few hours. Enjoy. 

While I'm incredibly grateful for the meals that have helped our family survive for these past 8 weeks....it hit me today as I am off crutches that I have been missing out on some of my favorite summer foods. As my zucchini and yellow squash is producing and the farmers market is abounding with eggplant and onions and tomatoes, this time of year is when I start to turn from asparagus and corn and caprese at every meal and start to long for big steaming bowls of ratatouille topped with locatelli cheese. This was a staple of my august every year as a child, and will now be one for my children. Eggplant and zucchini are easy to grow (though we seem to have shitty luck with tomatoes due to the herd of deer which live in the field behind us and our lack of a fence around them......anyway, ratatouille is the taste of late summer, to me. I can go days upon days where a steaming bowl of this topped with cheese and habaneros from the garden is my lunch and my dinner. It is so filling and hearty and just oozes the goodness of summer all in one bowl. I think of it as an italian thing as my grandmother used to make it, but its name is distinctly not italian. Here is more on its history. Wherever it comes from, it is delicious and this is the time to make it. I make big vats of it when the garden is giving up its goods or friends are begging for people to take their overabundance of zucchini or eggplant, and freeze it. Nothing like tucking into some summer goodness in the heart of winter :).

It was an excessively social sort of weekend, and we woke up super late this morning. We declared it family day, took the kids out to our favorite and strangely named breakfast joint  (Nudys?) and as we had all slept in so late and bad weather seemed to be looming we realized that we could catch a movie. We do movies maybe once a year? This was Jake's first movie, and since Jake doesn't even watch TV yet, it was a bit of a disaster. I mean, he made it through most of it, but not because he was watching, really. Anyway. We made it. The kids are sleeping, I am cooking, the house smells overwhelmingly like garlic and tomatoes and basil, we have made some important decisions this weekend, and all in all life feels quiet and content as we head into a nice week.  I took a few days off ~ I am ADAMANT about not getting sucked back into the gym world..........and am enjoying seeing my gym girlfriends outside of the gym. I have to fight my tendency to go from zero to 60, and yesterday I put on my suit and cover up, drove to the gym, and turned around in the parking lot as I simply knew that I had to much to do, and that I was trying to shove in a workout where A workout didn't work. Balance. Instead I had a great trip to our favorite ridiculously fancy grocery store where we could both buy a housewarming gift, buy a dessert (we had to deal with both GF needs and Peanut Allergy needs), and pick up some food that we needed ourself for the house. By the time we got home we had time left over to let the kids play while I weeded, we had a picnic lunch, and all were off to bed while I napped myself! Balance. Perspective. We had a fun day instead of a FRANTIC day. And I missed a workout. And today we had a FUN family day, and I didn't workout. And it's alllllll good.

What are your tastes of summer? What dishes do you feel like you can't live without this time of year?