This weekend we went to the Cary Farmers’ Market.  It was wonderful!  SO many beautiful tomatoes, beans, melons, jams, and pastries.  It was fantastic!

Surprisingly enough, now that there is a sufficient amount of time between me and my backyard laboring last summer when we had our giant tomato harvest of 2009 and the mini cornfield complete with invading bugs and sad, little corn harvest, I now have nothing but fond memories of the whole experience and can’t wait to be settled somewhere someday where we can grow our own food again.  There is something really rewarding about eating food you’ve watched since it was just a little flower.

The tomatoes at the farmers’ market were really incredible.  Lots of varieties I had not heard of before, and a few favorites as well.  Just look at how beautiful they are all sliced up… mmm!

To add to our feast, we also bought some sweet corn.  It was incredibly sweet and delicious… almost as sweet as the corn in Cairo.  (The sweet corn in Cairo is probably enough of a reason to live in Egypt.  It’s really, really good.)

Anyhow, tonight we decided to put most of the produce we purchased to good use.  Inspired by an amazingly delicious avocado appetizer we had last week at Mez, we picked up a couple of avocados and decided to give it a try.  We grilled the avocados on the grill for a few minutes and served them with green zebra tomatoes (in lieu of Mez’s sweet red cherry tomatoes), red onion, fresh cut sweet corn, garlic, and our attempt at a lemon chile oil that turned out to be quite tasty.

It was delicious, although I’m still not sure what exactly was in the phenomenal chile oil dressing on Mez’s version.  Guess I’ll have to have it again soon!

And last but not least…

…my first backyard burger of the summer.  From bottom to top, on a whole wheat bun — mayonnaise, Morningstar Farms Grillers Prime burger, cheddar cheese, that amazing tomato, sweet white onion, and just a tiny bit more mayo.  Oh my goodness, it was delicious!