Summer Soup

We've had a nice cool off in the past two days. This means that temps are now in the low 80's, as opposed to high 90's. WE ARE LOVING IT! A cousin of mine married into a farm family, giving our side the chance to work for them at farmer's markets around West Michigan. I primarily work at the one in my neighborhood, the famed Fulton Street Farmer's Market, which has been around since 1900 or so. It's not that huge, but it does the trick for us. While I don't have as much opportunity to homestead this year, besides the little balcony greenhouse garden, the market has been giving me some wonderful chances to experiment with food in ways I wasn't able to last year. Take for example this pot of soup. [Viewer discretion advised. Below is a picture of a real live chicken carcass, boiling up for soup.]

This is real deal chicken soup. It is not messing around. It all started with 3 pounds of "Chicken Soup Bones" meaning necks, skin, fat, wings, bones, marrow, tendons, all that good stuff. I have never, ever tried anything like this before. Some herbs were then thrown in (parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme no doubt) as well as onions and garlic. The pot simmered on the stove until the meat was done cooking and the whole place smelled like heaven. After everything was strained out of the stock pot, carrots, potatoes, and broccoli were added, plus a little salt. It was SO GOOD. Removing meat from the bones was the trickiest part because they were so oily, but I didn't mind. Dinner tonight was 99% local. There was the soup made mostly from farmer's market buys today, plus some herbs from the garden here. Then there was homemade dilly beans, the beans, garlic, and dill all from the farmer's market a few weeks ago. To drink, there was kombucha with added tea made with homegrown mint and foraged chickweed and goldenrod. And to finish off the meal, there was lassi (an Indian drink) made from diluted homemade yogurt with local milk, a drop of raw local honey, and a dash of cinnamon.

This. Is. Summertime. August...my favorite month for produce, when it seems to all roll in faster than you can catch it. Everything is ripe! I took home some peaches today - the very first ripe, local, West Michigan peaches of the season. Biting into the first one, I had to close my eyes in reverence. The peach was so juicy and ripe that I found teeth weren't even needed to eat it; the peach flesh just came away from the pit no problem, yet it wasn't overripe at all. Besides the fact that this entire meal is incredibly nourishing, it includes no gluten or sugar, and I don't feel like I'm missing out. There is indeed a Candida Yeast overgrowth living inside of me, and those 'wee yeasties' make me crave gluten and sugar, but meals like this make me excited about being healthy (finally) soon.

♥ emily