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All local, except for the lemons and bananas. Yum! by Sarah Henning

How’s it going, folks? Here’s hoping you’re up to your ears in the bounty that is local produce these days, whether it’s coming from your CSA or one of the farmers’ markets, the grocery store or all of the above.

My counters are swimming in produce right now and both crispers are completely packed. We have two fruit bowls and they’re both brimming with the good stuff: local peaches, Asian pears (one of my favorite fruits to buy locally), melons and non-local tropical fruits (a girl’s gotta have her bananas and lemons). Right there next to the fruit bowls are our tomatoes, coming daily from our garden and then every few days from the market or our CSA, Rolling Prairie. In the fridge, we’ve got corn, greens, beets, carrots, cucumbers, summer squash, basil … so many good things, all coming from within a small radius of our house. Totally delicious.

The goodies our CSA supplied to us last week were carrots, blackberries, cherry tomatoes, roma tomatoes, cucumbers, corn and yellow squash.

It’s funny, because when I first started my CSA subscription years ago, I had a really hard time balancing what we’d get in our weekly CSA share and what I wanted to buy at the market and the store. But this summer my mantra seems to be: the more the better. So, honestly, we used up our CSA haul really fast this week (within 24 hours) and had to replace if fairly quickly with the same stuff, procured elsewhere.

Basically, a blackberry snack, some green juice featuring the squash, cucumber and carrots (below) and two salads took care of things this week.

Green juice with local summer squash, carrots and cucumber. by Sarah Henning

One of the salads featuring local produce was this super easy one: Sweet and Spicy Corn and Tomato Salad. I made it last Monday (pick-up day) while the hubby was running and I was kind of surprised when I didn’t have any left over to give him (whoops). But don’t worry, it’s really easy to double or triple the recipe.

Sweet and Spicy Corn and Tomato Salad (yes, there's corn in there ... it's all the way at the bottom). by Sarah Henning

Sweet and Spicy Corn and Tomato Salad

Kernels from 2 ears of corn, cut off the cob

1 large heirloom tomato, chopped

½ avocado, chopped

Peach or mango salsa

Squirt lime juice

Hot sauce (optional)

Nutritional yeast (optional)

Combine all ingredients in a large bowl. Enjoy! Serves 1 as a main course or two as a side salad.

What’d we get this week? Tomatoes, cucumber (1), onions, multiplier onions, watermelon, bell peppers and kale.