Each season I find myself in a routine, and I like that, even in the summer. In the morning kids go swimming, I teach, lunches are late. The summer nights are long and the sunsets beautiful over the garden. We spend a lot of time growing, harvesting, and making food together and I really love that. My husband makes great salads, the children run around eating raw veggies. I make sure bread, rice, beans, yogurt are ready to go.

But there are the garden leftovers that does not get put away or preserved.  I just do not like to toss food, so I keep a bag of older veggies, steams, and once in a while I make a big pot of dirty rice. For tonight’s dinner I used onions, a couple of garlic scapes, yellowed onion greens, chard steams and a handful of snow peas. I fried the rice until golden and cooked with broth and garlic. After the rice is ready, I mix to sauteed vegetables. One night last week when I was cooking with our church members at Camp Hunt in Hubbardsville, New York, there was a handful of celery, cabbage, half onion and some lentil sprouts and it become dirty rice for the staff snack.

Happy Summer eating!