How to Cook a Seasonal, Locally Sourced Meal

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Cooking a Meal, Part 1: Salad

At this point, I set out to cook my local, seasonal meal using the ingredients I purchased at the farmers’ market. If you don’t know where to begin when deciding what to cook, consider what meals you make on a regular basis that might benefit from these new ingredients. Many websites such as Allrecipes.com will let you list your ingredients and then provide you with recipes that use those items, so if you’re looking for ideas, that might be a good place to start.

For a salad, I had to do some more searching to find a recipe, since I’d initially planned to make a fruit salad involving watermelon and peaches. This recipe for watermelon, tomato and basil salad from Morgan Moore’s blog One More Moore sounded unique, and since I grow herbs in my yard, I didn’t need to go out and buy any.

Photo: Jennifer Berry, Earth911

What You’ll Need:
Small ripe watermelon
2-3 tomatoes
1/2 cup fresh basil
For the dressing:
1/4 cup or less, olive oil
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
Honey or agave to taste
Kosher salt
Freshly ground pepper

Directions:
Simply chop up the melon and tomatoes, cut the basil into fine strips and put all three items in a bowl. Mix all of the dressing ingredients together with a whisk and pour over the top.

I used spices, agave and balsamic vinegar that I already had in the house, along with some locally-made olive oil that one of my co-workers had on hand.