Fresh local produce and fresh bread

August has been a quiet month. Most of our meals have been eaten at home, with all the local produce that we could easily find: peppers (red, yellow, green and the purple one above), tomatoes, peaches, melons, herbs, corn, squash, and more. Along with the produce, we've been enjoying Len's fresh-baked loaves of rye, whole wheat, and white bread. In my kitchen this month, there are thus two themes: Len's bread baking and fresh produce.

Two New Items for Baking Bread

New items: a book and a dough tub for Len's more and more successful bread:

The new bread book is The New Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. We can't imagine what is meant by the title's "5 minutes," as the instructions are clear in requiring far longer times to form, rise, and bake the bread!

Besides the book we have a new, bigger dough tub with a lid:

The recipe for this bread comes from one of the books we purchased earlier: The Bread-Baker's Apprentice.

Fresh, Local Produce Won't Be Available for Long!

We've purchased our produce at the Farmers Market, the Argus Farm Stop, the Produce Station, and even Whole Foods. While Whole Foods in past years managed to find good local suppliers, this year it's had very little local produce. Most disappointing: the new Amazon regime at Whole Foods offers only hard, tasteless, industrially grown tomatoes, while in former years they bought vine-ripened ones from local farmers. Sad!

So... in my kitchen this month, here are some of the local foods (well, mostly local foods) we've eaten:

Watermelon with feta. Garnish: mint from the garden.
Local tomatoes with chives. The feta is from France.

Gazpacho made in my big pyrex measuring cup from fresh tomatoes.

Peach crisp. Or you can call it crumble.

From the farmers market: a locally-made curry sauce, fantastically fresh eggs, and Michigan tomatoes.
The freshest and most beautiful eggs are definitely the ones I buy directly from the farmer.

A bowl of vegetable curry with eggs and tomatoes.

Dinner: roasted eggplant with feta cheese, fresh vegetables (including farm tomatoes), and grilled steak.
The eggplant was flavored with zatar and olive oil.

More Michigan peaches. My favorite summer flavor!

Delicata squash, patty pan squash, and onions, with rosemary from our garden.

Roasting squash and onions in the grill basket.

Grill-roasted squash and onions.

Grilled peaches and lamb chops for the two of us. (Sorry but the lamb is from Costco!) The roasted squash was the side dish.

From a previous post: corn with salad and Michigan peaches.
We've had corn several times. And peaches all the time!

And one meal from a restaurant kitchen: a poke bowl from Slurping Turtle.
There were plenty of sushi-tuna cubes under the veggies! 

To see what other bloggers have in their kitchens this month, check out the In My Kitchen post at Sherry's Pickings HERE.