Early Summer Eating

After a month of late nights and less-than-healthful eating choices, it feels sooooo good to be back to grocery shopping in the garden. One big success this season has been our head lettuce:

This is one beautiful head of Buttercrunch lettuce, and we put it to good use in some lettuce wraps:

This is a great way to eat stir fry on a hot day because it's lighter to have lettuce than all that rice. It's also nice when you're in a hurry and don't feel like waiting 45 minutes for brown rice to cook. Kirk made the filling by marinating chicken in soy sauce, ginger, and garlic. He then fried up the chicken with a mixture of cashews, pineapple, shitake mushrooms, and a spoonful of peanut butter for extra richness. Once the stir fry was almost done, he added some fresh cilantro at the last minute. Yum!

The things we have in the garden right now lend themselves well to Asian dishes, so we had a proper stir fry last night as well:

This one featured chicken with the same marinade, our purple snap peas, one beautiful head of broccoli, plus an early onion. By the way, have you ever gone without onions for any period of time? We usually have a gap between the last of the winter leeks and the first spring scallions. When that onion hit the pan and we smelled it again … mouthwatering. There are also fermented black beans in this mix — I'm a huge fan!