Picking dinner

Rosa bianca eggplant, beets, carrots, sweet peppers, button squash roasted with lots of oregano, and steamed green beans, topped with a garlic yoghurt dressing, all of it bar the powdered milk used to make the yoghurt with about 10 steps of food miles. 

I have hit one of my ridiculously busy spots this last month, and the garden has had so little attention, it feels like cheating. But the weather has been kind – enough rain and no floods – and permaculture gardens once established can mind themselves pretty well for a while.

There is something very decadent about dinner shopping like this. You will never find Rosa bianca eggplants in the supermarket, but they are so good, so smooth and creamy, no hint of bitterness. The carrots and the yellow button squash caramelise in the baking tray. A good many of the beans fail to make it even the 10 steps.

And there is nothing nicer than going out in the cool and quiet of the evening to pick dinner. No real plan, just seeing what ends up in the basket then considering what to do with it, and then what else needs to be picked from the perennials to go with it. And listening to the frogs start up.