A super special delivery

When my sweet friend D offered to send me a sample basket of her organic produce, I expected, well , just a small sampling. Instead, I woke up to the super generous and colorful bounty you see in the photo above (there's a lot more in the basket you don't see: more potatoes, onions, kalamansi , another head of broccoli, another head of cauliflower, a zucchini and more tomatoes)! Don't they look gorgeous? It made me wish instantly that I didn't have to leave for work that day. I wanted to stay home and admire my lovely present and make delicious things with them. In an ideal world, that's how that special day would have played out, with the time to blog about each and every one of the dishes.

But in reality, I barely had time to arrange the veggies and shoot this photo before I grabbed some breakfast and dressed for work. Since that day though, we've enjoyed the freshness and all-natural goodness of these vegetables in simple dishes such as tortang talong, spanish omelettes, cauliflower au gratin, eggplant parmesan, steamed broccoli in oyster sauce, and tortilla de patata. The super crisp lettuce & juicy tomatoes I take with me to work for a nice lunch salad along with various other toppings, and all the carrots have already gone into the juicer with either oranges, grapefruit, celery and/or cucumber, melon, mango etc. (boy, do I love my fresh juice!!) :)

I'm really enjoying this stash! So much so that I've asked D to put me in her 'system', with an every-other-week order. I'm really loving how accessible all these locally-grown organic fruits (she'll be adding mangoes, papaya and bananas to the next batch:) ) and veggies are becoming, giving busy people like myself the opportunity to support local farmers.

I've also placed an order with another local organic farmer to try, the same one Joey ordered from and who was introduced to us by our dear friend, Katrina. (Thanks, Kat!:)) He delivered his produce this morning, looking just like Joey's in her photo, along with a dozen organic eggs, 2 papayas and one mabolo fruit. :) I can't wait to try everything!

Thank you, dear sweet D, for such a lovely and healthy present! :)