From my Kitchen: Road Side Bounty

Double rainbow over the field.

One of the things I love best about this time of year is all the little roadside stands that pop up along the highways and country roads selling yummy fresh fruits and veggies. These people are usually just hardworking "tailgate farmers" who sell their goods at reasonable prices and try to have the freshest products available, sometimes even coming right out of the field with them.

Most weekends we tend to hibernate in order to stay away from all the traffic (especially holidays), but this weekend we took a couple of day trips, one with our bicycles and the other just to do a little sight-seeing in the mountains, and along the way we passed several roadside stands, finally stopping at one on a less-traveled road.

Anyone that knows me knows that my love for sweet corn borders on insanity. I mean, I can plow through a half-a-dozen ears before I have to come up for air. But my love for sweet corn is only rivaled by one other thing- fresh, plump strawberries. I don't waste time when those things are near, I just dive right in and ask questions later.

Since we had Lily with us, I stayed in the car with the air conditioner running while Hubby checked out the goods at this particular stand. He came back to the car with a smile on his face and said,

"They have peaches and cream corn." (My favorite.)

"They also have watermelons." (His favorite.)

Then he said the magic words-

"They also have fresh strawberries by the quart or gallon."

I think I squealed.

No, I know I squealed.

They also had peaches, although they weren't from around here, but I never met a peach I didn't like so he got a small bag of those, too.

This bounty of fresh fruits and veggies pretty much made up our menu for the weekend- the corn and watermelon were perfect with the pork barbecue sandwiches we had Saturday, and the peaches got turned into a cobbler....

And the rest of the strawberries became a pie.

(The "rest" being ones I managed to keep from eating.)

Even the chickens enjoyed our roadside bounty- they got to enjoy the leftover corn cobs and the strawberry cappings.

Lily, however, was a little confused as to why the chickens got a treat and she didn't.

Happy Tuesday, everyone!