Eating Healthy and Local! :)

Whoot! The other day for lunch, I made a salad worth talking about. It was the first time I made a salad without any of the typical ingredients. There wasn't any lettuce, cabbage, spinach, or other type of leafy base. And no, it wasn't a pasta salad, potato salad, or even a fruit salad. It was an EPIC vegetable SALAD made with the seasons!

I was at the Davis Farmer's Market at Central Park last wednesday and went to purchase from one of my favorite vegetable vendors (Jenn at Good Humus). I wanted to make a salad and asked for any vegetable leafy base, but she said they weren't in season! Instead she recommended a crazy salad that I never would have anticipated... beets and corn! What the heck?!?! I was terrified at the thought of 1: making a salad w/o lettuce or spinach and 2: eating beets!?!?! To be honest, I sometimes forget what beets are because I almost never eat them. But I ended up getting a medley of vegetables including those recommended beets and corn. THEN I made the salad... I was so super excited and proud that I wanted to post it here AND include a picture.

Here is me eating my carrot, corn, beet, purple bell pepper, cucumber, tomato, and green beans salad. Props to my mom for the green beans and some of the carrots included in the salad. They were from her garden at my home home. :)

I LOVE farmer's markets for two primary reasons. First, I love the vendors that I meet and befriend. The people I buy from are wonderful loving and awesome. :) I am working on making the one in Davis like my second home by getting to know everyone. Ivan is at the Davis hotdogger. I think that about 50% of the people who purchase a hotdog or sausage from him don't actually like them; they just love his jokes and their character. Tara also has a wonderful personality and hooks her customers up with delicious certified organic fruits at a great price. Jenn works at Good Humus; she tells me what to do with vegetables I've never seen or heard of before and told me about the beet & corn salad. Sabrina has a little farm 5 miles away that has AMAZING fruits; I am buying strawberries from her. Maryelena sells delicious free-range organic eggs at a GREAT price from Vega Farms 5 miles away; I get 30 medium eggs for $5.50 and they are classified salmonella free! Finally, Luanne sells REAL free-range organic beef at Yolo Land & Cattle. :)

The second reason, if you couldn't pick up from the description of the food I buy, is because I LOVE real food. Yes, I did imply that some food isn't real. Packaged, processed, non-organic and even some organic food just isn't REAL food to me. You can literally taste the difference in quality. The strawberries I got from Sabrina are the best strawberries by far that I've ever tasted. They don't look perfect because they aren't sprayed with any pesticides, not even organic pesticides. And yes, there are organic pesticides. Look them up on Google. I wondered why some organic produce looked as good as non-organic. Turns out they were both sprayed with pesticides! The same is true with fruits from Tara and the vegetables from Jenn.

Plus, I love knowing my meats and eggs are safe to consume if I don't cook them properly. Because they are free-range and certified organic, I know that the animals were treated properly and never got sick. Salvaging dying and abused animals by injecting them with antibiotics or feeding them antibiotic-rich feed is not safe. but that is what happened to most of the animal products at supermarkets. (Watch Food Inc if you aren't familiar with this... it's powerful). I would never want to eat any food product associated with animals that had anything like that done to them. I am glad to pay a little extra for something quality that I will enjoy eating so that I can save money later when I'm not paying hospital bills (or sick at all because I don't get sick!).

Well, now you know about my epic salad and my food philosophies. :) But, what about you? What is the most epic salad you've made? What are your food philosophies?

I love my life! :)