Market Dinners

The epic Pacific Northwest summer continues: sunny, hot, and dry. My days are full of work, play, and generally attempting to avoid homework, which is easily done by shopping at the Tuesday market and cooking the goodies.

Dinner was inspired by the remains of last week's market expedition and tonight's visit to the market with a little Metropolitan Market thrown in for good measure.

What you see here is a collection of vegetables--Walla Walla onions, crimini mushrooms, bok choy, and arugula---sauteed in olive oil, fresh basil from my back porch plants, and black pepper. On top of which is a piece of delightful Wild Alaskan salmon from Metropolitan Market, with a slice of lemon. Having eaten a lot of fish throughout my detox diet in February and discovered that it is quicker to cook than any other meat, I now feel like my week is not complete without eating it at least once. As a gal from the East Coast who grew up eating fish maybe once a month from the grocery store IF it went on sale, the availability and affordability of salmon and other fish here in the PNW still amazes me. Thanks to a friend we occasionally even have a fresh salmon from a local river filleted and delivered straight to our freezer!

Dessert was a handful of blueberries, which are bigger and sweeter this week than their predecessors last week. Tiny's Organic finally has pluots, the combo of plums and apricots that has become my favorite stone fruit. I also saw a small group of tomatoes at the market today, and am happy to report that my plants have little green fruit and several more flowers.

The sunflower placemat? Target, $1.99.