August 22 harvest and food, food, more food!

Yesterday was a good day. Before R and I drove to Lausanne, a French-speaking Swiss city north of Geneva, I had the best omelette I have ever had. On Friday, at R's invitation, our neighbor Pierre came over to pick the mushrooms in our backyard. And yesterday morning, his wife Denise made the omelette below using eggs from the chickens that they keep! The mushrooms were tiny, but full of flavor and this is a taste memory that will last a lifetime for me. Mmmm.


Pierre and Denise's chickens and rabbits - the eggs came from these chickens, which ones exactly, I don't know! The big breeder rabbit is going to have a new litter in a few days and I can't wait to go over there and meet the new bunnies.


It's been a strange, wet month...but now the sun is out and my garden is thriving. The past week, I've been harvesting 5 tomatoes daily; smaller in size than the ones you may find at the market, but these ones taste so much juicier and full of tomato goodness. Yesterday I harvested another monster zucchini, or courgette in French.

To combat the heat today, I decided to make something fresh and healthy using ingredients picked fresh from the garden: Vietnamese summer rolls with peanut sauce. Everything you see on the plate was picked this morning (except for the store bought red peppers and carrots): garden lettuce, mint, baby tendrils of cilantro, tomatoes, 1 lonely baby beet with beet greens, and zucchini.


With so much zucchini, I wondered what I could make. After a quick Google search, I found a great recipe for Korean zucchini pancakes, or Pa Jeon. Has anyone made these before? Looks simple enough...if only I could also have Korean BBQ and all the side dishes with it too.

Yesterday, before driving to Lausanne, R and I stopped at Mekong Market at Ferney-Voltaire so I could stock up on a few Asian staples. I got nori, pho paste, cha lua, rice flour, and tapioca starch to make Bánh Cuốn, steamed Vietnamese rice rolls with pork sausage.

I also got some nems, yellow mung mean cakes, sate paste (to make satay skewers), and a Chinese pork bun with Chinese sausage, egg, and pork in it.

And finally a view of the mountains from a skylight in my bedroom - the mountains you see are the Juras, a chain of mountains that are older than the Alps but much lower. They run from this area all the way to Basel, Switzerland, which is near Germany. I often hear and see cows grazing on grass on these meadows between our house and the mountains.