0 Mile Meal

I’ve always loved the concept of having a vegetable garden. Beautiful home-grown vegetables, picked at their peak with maximum flavour. When we bought our house, we knew that the south-facing garden would be perfect for producing a bountiful crop. When we finished landscaping the backyard, a good-sized plot was created for to grow our vegetables. I wanted the luxury of having fresh vegetables in my backyard without the work. In my mind I thought little smurfs could plant and tend to the garden and leave the fresh ingredients in a basket on my back porch.

Reality Check… There’s work involved in having your own garden, and smurfs don’t really exist. But in actuality, I’m not that hard done by as Ben has taken the great veggie project on and I only do minimal labour. No baskets are left by my back door, although I’ve realized part of the fun is getting into the garden to pick each vegetable at its peak.

Wanting to delight in the bounty, I decided to take advantage of as much out of the garden as I could for dinner. You’ve heard of the 100 mile Diet? Well, my first thought was that I was going to try to put together a 0 Mile meal. But for as much as I had in the garden, tonight I was not disciplined enough to stick only to what I had and I included some other things to supplement the meal, (I needed meat). Even writing this now, I feel like I should have tried harder. Oh well, next time!

The beets out of the garden are beautiful right now.

I decided that serving these beets simply would be the best way to go. My recipe for this easy beet salad can be found here.

For this green veggie dish, I quickly blanched all the above veggies and shocked them in an ice water bath. I added the herbs, lemon juice, olive oil , crumbled feta and s&p to complete the dish.

It’s so tough for me to go without having sort of animal protein for dinner, and the lamb looked so lovely at the market. I marinated the lamb chops in hoisin sauce, sesame oil, chile sauce, garlic and orange rind. Grilled perfectly to a medium rare.

Maybe next week while the picking is still good in the garden, I’ll truly attempt a 0 mile meal. Oooooooh, now I’m looking forward to the challenge of it!